Adam looked past Bruce at the fire on the island, sparkling against the storm.
“So what happens now?”
“You come with me,” Bruce said, slipping out of the sling and holding the rifle across his chest. “By choice or by force. Your call. I’m sure you know which one I’m rooting for.”
“No need for the gun,” Adam said. “Where are we going?”
“To the island. Richard’s waiting.”
“We can take him,” Norman whispered into Adam’s ear.
“Try it,” Bruce said, chambering the first bullet and clicking off the safety.
“Lower the weapon and I’ll come with you now.”
“You’re in no position to make demands.”
“Then he isn’t going alone,” Gray said, stepping forward while pushing against Jake’s chest to make sure the boy wouldn’t follow.
Bruce’s eyes lit with recognition. Just the man he was looking for.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Me, too,” Lindsay said. She’d traveled with Richard and had seen the way he looked at her. The implications of what she was thinking scared her to death, but in a pinch, she might be able to use that to her advantage.
“I should go,” Norman said.
“Why don’t we all go?” Bruce said. “Make a day of it. Pack a picnic lunch.” His face burned red with anger. “I’m taking you and you.” He pointed at Adam and Lindsay, and then to Gray. “And you’d better believe you’re coming too.”
“No!” Jake screamed, fighting out from behind Evelyn, who had stepped in front of him in Gray’s absence. “You can’t go!”
Gray turned at the sound of his voice and was nearly bowled over by Jake, who wrapped his arms around his legs.
“Please don’t go,” Jake sobbed. “Promise. Promise you won’t go.”
“It’s all right,” Gray said, peeling the boy off. “I promised you that you’d be safe.”
“But you won’t come back…”
“I’ll be back before you know it.” Gray’s eyes filled with tears.
“No, please! They’re going to kill you! Please, Gray… Please…”
Evelyn and Jill each took the boy by a shoulder, drawing him close enough to hold him back.
“Let’s get this over with,” Gray said, walking toward Bruce, whose expression was no longer one of rage, but bewilderment.
Bruce looked at Jake, wailing as the two women knelt in the snow and held him. There was something wrong with the way this was playing out. He’d heard of Stockholm Syndrome and victims sympathizing with their captors to the point of aiding them, but this was just a little boy. Kids could see through all of the idealistic garbage and weren’t swayed by politics. They were by nature self-serving and ruled by their emotions. After watching his mother die before being kidnapped, he should have been screaming for Bruce to save him. He’d expected to find the boy locked up or under some sort of guard, not out in the open where he could easily run away. The bottom line was that he had come to liberate the child, but Jake wanted to stay by choice. The entire situation reeked. He had no allegiance to Richard, and certainly not to any of these others. He had come to save the boy, and that was exactly what he was going to do.
He took a step toward the sobbing boy, but the women turned him away and a couple of teenaged boys stepped between them. These were unarmed kids, putting themselves in harm’s way for a boy they couldn’t possibly even know. Until he knew what was really going on here, he would have to be extremely cautious.
“Start walking,” he said, gesturing toward the mound of sand and snow with the barrel of the rifle.
Adam moved first, fighting with his legs to keep them from trembling. He cast a glance back to see Evelyn watching him, mortified. Phoenix was behind her, paler than he had ever been before.
“Turn around,” Bruce said, following behind the three of them as they crossed over the hill they had built and stepped out onto the ice, heading toward the island with its crown of flames that would soon enough know the taste of human flesh.
VIII
The Ruins of Denver, Colorado
DEATH DESCENDED THE PILES OF RUBBLE AND DEBRIS INTO THE SUBTERRANEAN levels, skirting the bones of the saved that had been gnawed clean by the damned. The air was rife with putrescence and rot, but he was immune to it by now. He could see through the eyes of War that the final battle would soon be at hand, but there was a growing sense of unease chewing at his insides like worms in a corpse. The Lord was showing favor for his mortal children that He hadn’t in the past. It was almost as though He Himself had set against the legion He had spawned to wipe the slate clean. It was the dichotomous nature of the Maker, Death knew, but his biological drive had become an imperative. He had been placed upon the earth with a single goal, a mission that was outside of his power to resist. The human portion of him was dead, its remains boiling in a burbling cauldron of hate that rose from his stomach and burned in his throat.
He found himself in a position he could never have foreseen. He was pit against the God who had birthed him, in a battle where the Almighty had a stake in both sides. Had he been aligned against them not as their executioner, but merely to test them to discover their worthiness? The idea was unthinkable, and yet that was precisely what he was doing. Were they toy soldiers set in opposition for some kind of cosmic amusement? Even so, he knew nothing but destruction. He reveled in the exquisite pain of the dying and the sloppy flesh of the dead. It may have been the Lord’s will that had cast him into this pathetic sack of skin, but it was his will that would bring about the end of mankind. God had loosed him upon them and turned away, only this time, He had peeked. And now, whatever side his Master secretly hoped would triumph, he would fulfill his destiny and decimate what little remained of humanity.
Whether God wanted it or not.
Reaching the lowest level, so far beneath the ground that he could hear the heart of the Earth beating, he weaved through a maze of toppled cabinets and crushed tables, through a minefield of feces left by the Swarm that had infested the darkness before being sent to battle, and to a short hallway that would lead him to his quarry. He had seen through the eyes of Pestilence and Famine, but this…this he wanted to see with his own eyes.
The sounds of heavy, raspy breathing reached him before he even saw the entrance to the room. His brother and sister of the apocalypse had been sequestered down there for days, working by the dwindling torchlight to create the most ferocious creatures to ever set foot on the planet. In his fervor to please the Lord and ensure that should man survive the Swarm, they would fall to the second wave of His wrath, had he actually defied Him? It was a simultaneously frightening and liberating idea. God had seen fit to give them the power to birth the Swarm, but at that very moment they were taking the next step. Had this been His will, would they not have created these beings from the start? And if their experiments were contrary to His grand design, and He hadn’t punished them or struck them down, was it possible that their power was independent of His? Had He turned them loose on the planet without a leash? Could they exert their influence regardless of His wishes?
Were they free?
The buzzing of mosquitoes welcomed Death into the chamber, taking flight from the walls and bodies to fill the air around him. Pestilence opened her mouth and drew them all back into her diminutive form, her parchment skin cracking against the strain of the bodies writhing inside of her. She stood over a long table with what had once been a man staked to it, the body brown and slick with the spew of locusts. Famine hovered behind her, his blind white eyes scouring the entire room at once, his insect minions scurrying under his pale skin like raindrops down glass.
They exchanged glances in silence, their thoughts on the same frequency. This was the one. The culmination of all of the vile experiments to which they had subjected their prey. All of the tearing skin and tortured cries came down to this specimen, its eyes wide open despite the physical agony it surely endured, pinned down
like a butterfly by jagged stakes formed by sections of copper piping ripped out of the walls.
It roared and strained against its moorings, leathery skin like a bat’s wings tightening over bulging muscles. Long, coarse black hair grew in tufts from its shoulders, a long mane of it running down the thing’s back from its forehead all the way to its rear. Opening a mouth that split its face nearly from ear to ear, it displayed hideously sharp teeth in rows that pointed back into its mouth like a great white’s. Its eyes were useless black coals, barely able to see their vague outlines against the firelight, though it could easily triangulate their locations in its mind, sensing them by sonar. Though unlike its winged brethren, it issued not an inaudible shriek, but a guttural roar that shivered dust from the ceiling above, their every contour coming into perfect focus.
Death nodded his approval, walking along the side of the table until he reached the monster’s fingertips, curled around the end of the stake, trying to jerk it free. He pulled one of the fingers away and straightened it so that the hooked talon at the end pointed straight up. Opening his palm, Death pressed down on the nail, barely feeling the pain until after the tip of the nail poked out through the back of his hand, passing through his tough scales without the slightest resistance. Excellent. They would be able to see through even the densest smoke and make short work of their prey. They were a life form like nothing that this planet had ever seen: able to hunt under the worst conditions and on the darkest of nights. Though they had yet to truly test the creature’s strength, the musculature was superhuman. All that remained to be seen was how fast it could run and if it could indeed reproduce.
Death looked at Pestilence, who answered his unvoiced question with a deliberate nod.
Perfect. These beasts would dominate whatever survived the coming battle between the humans and the Swarm, and usurp the top position on the food chain. And best of all, they would pay their allegiance to Death, who was beginning to think that he just might want to stick around for a while.
Damn God and damn the consequences.
Chapter 6
I
Mormon Tears
ADAM TRUDGED STRAIGHT AHEAD, THE STORM SWIRLING SNOWFLAKES all around him, shifting from side to side in an effort to knock him from his feet. Lindsay walked to his left; Gray to his right. Bruce followed behind with the rifle pointed directly as his lower back where a single bullet could sever his spinal cord and paralyze him. The thought of bolting wasn’t even an option, though. The others were counting on him to do whatever he could to not only guarantee the boy’s safety, but all of theirs as well. He didn’t know Richard well at all, but he’d seen in the man’s eyes a determination that promised he would do absolutely anything to get what he wanted.
It felt as though they’d been walking forever, surrounded by nothing but snow, when the island of rock came into focus, wavering in and out of the sheeting flakes, black plumes flagging from atop it like an industrial smokestack. The stone face towered over them, even larger than it had appeared from the distance. He looked all the way up to the top and caught the familiar glint he knew all too well. The scope of a rifle.
“To the right,” Bruce called to be heard over the whistle of the wind along the rock wall, waiting patiently for them to veer along the smooth stone before resuming his guard behind. He couldn’t chase the image of that little kid’s eyes from his mind. The boy had been scared of him. Not the others who gathered around him. Not those who had abducted him from the hotel and killed two people in their rush to escape. It had been he who frightened the boy. And that sat like a hatching egg sac of spiders in his belly.
They skirted the island with the wind at their backs, rounding the side to find the wind waiting to batter them directly in the face. Leaning into it, they stumbled through the drifting accumulation until they reached the spot where a group of snowmobiles were parked in a small cove created by large round stones.
Adam looked back at Bruce, who pointed to a path of sorts that led diagonally up the island on the right, winding around smooth formations and through channels of stone. With Lindsay on his heels and Gray trailing with the barrel pointed between his shoulder blades, he scrabbled up the icy slope, following the path through the piled snow until he reached the top.
Richard stood in front of him, sighting down his forehead through the high-powered scope.
“I take it you didn’t want to do this the easy way,” he said, grinning, with his cheek against the stock. “Just as well.”
He lowered the rife and invited them toward the fire with a gesture of his arm.
They followed, sliding down a rocky slope to alight beside a large cluster of shrubs that had been set ablaze. There were five other men standing on the far side, training their weapons on them through the fire.
Seven men, Adam thought. All armed. They outnumbered these men nearly two to one, but each of those weapons held at least three shells and wouldn’t miss inside of fifteen feet. Conflict would only result in their swift extinction.
“Please,” Richard said, sitting on a rock at what appeared to be the head of the fiery negotiation table. “Have a seat.”
Adam decided it would be best to humor him. Richard was firmly in control of the situation and the last thing they wanted to do was incur his ire. He dropped to his haunches and then plopped to his rear end on the rock. Lindsay and Gray followed his lead, Gray’s eyes never leaving Richard for a second.
The wind screamed past overhead, stealing the black smoke from the fire and absconding with it on gusts of white flakes, urging the flames higher and higher. At least they were out of the snow and in the radiating warmth of the bonfire, though it was nowhere near enough to steal away the chill.
“Let’s dispense with the song and dance,” Richard said, resting the rifle across his lap and leaning forward, his stare seeking out Adam. “You have something I want and I’m not leaving without it.”
“You’re not getting anywhere near that boy!” Gray shouted, preparing to lunge forward, but Adam held out his hand to try to keep the other man from getting himself killed. “I saw what you did to his mother.”
“I tried to protect her from you…but sadly, I failed.”
One of the men from the other side of the fire rose and rounded the snapping flames to stand beside Gray.
“From me?” Gray gasped. “I wasn’t the one who shot her point blank in the face.”
Richard nodded to the man, who casually stepped behind Gray and lowered the barrel of the shotgun to the back of his head.
Before Adam could even cry out, there was a thunderous boom. The fire hissed under the assault of Gray’s blood and brain matter. Gray’s body slumped forward, fluids pouring from the fractured remains of his face. The man placed a boot on Gray’s back just above his rear end and shoved his corpse forward into the fire.
Lindsay screamed.
It had all happened so fast…so fast… Adam hadn’t even seen it coming. He looked away from Gray’s body as his clothing started to burn and at Richard, unable to hide the fear and sheer hatred.
“There’s no room in these negotiations for a kidnapper and a murderer,” Richard said.
Adam heard the man shuck the shell from the shotgun and felt its awful one-eyed stare on the side of his head.
“He didn’t kidnap the boy,” Adam said through bared teeth. “He told us all about what you did to Jake’s mother. What you did to Peckham.”
“He lied,” Richard said, the flames reflecting in his eyes. “I can’t believe you would take the word of a scoundrel like him.”
“I didn’t. I took Jake’s word.”
Bruce flinched behind him as if he’d been slapped. This was spiraling out of control. First, they’d shot the man in cold blood and now, listening to Adam talk, he couldn’t help believing him. With two guns pointed at him and the smell of his friend’s roasting meat on the wind, instead of giving Richard what he wanted, he was defiant. Nothing made sense. There were too many stories. Too many lies. And no
w the stench of cordite and death.
Richard laughed. “That boy would say anything to keep the man who had killed his mother from doing the same thing to him. Christ. He’s just a kid.”
“That’s right,” Adam said. “He’s just a kid. A kid who isn’t going anywhere with you.”
“Wrong decision,” Richard said, pointing the rifle at Lindsay. She screamed and covered her face with her hands.
“Drop the rifle!” Bruce shouted, pointing his at Richard. From the corner of his eye, he saw the man who had just executed Gray turn his shotgun on him. “And tell this jerk over here to throw his weapon down or I’ll put a hole through your head big enough to crawl through.”
“You’re making a big, big mistake, Bruce,” Richard said, resting his rifle on his lap and dismissing the other man with a nod. The man set the shotgun on the ground and walked to the other side of the fire behind the men lining Bruce up with their weapons low enough that he couldn’t see them though the fire.
“No mistake. No one’s moving an inch until I know exactly what’s going on here. Someone’s going to start telling the truth right now or I’m going to—”
“What?” Richard said. His calmness was unnerving. “Shoot us all? That wouldn’t do you much good now, would it?”
Bruce looked at the scabbed slashes crossing Richard’s cheeks. They were the kind of ruts that could easily have been inflicted by a woman’s fingernails.
“How did you hurt your face?” he asked, carefully scrutinizing Richard’s reaction.
“I cut myself shaving,” he said with a laugh. “Some days I think I’d trade my kingdom for an electric razor. And a good masseuse, of course.”
“You’re lying.”
“That’s a serious allegation, Bruce. You’d better be able to back it up.”
“I saw all of the proof I needed in that little kid’s eyes. They weren’t holding him captive. He was there because he was terrif—”
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