He sat down on his rock and warmed his gloved hands over the flames, rubbing them together until he could smell the Gore-Tex burning. The coals crackled and spit out a black skull, launched out of the fire by the explosion of the heated core of a vertebral disk. It rolled toward his feet until it nuzzled his toes, coming to rest on the occipital bone. Black eyes full of burnt tissue stared accusingly at him.
Richard pulled off his gloves and set them in his lap, his eyes never leaving those hollow sockets. His fingers unconsciously sought his face, prying at the thick scabs on his cheeks until his fingernails drew fresh blood. He was oblivious to it as it drew lines down his cheeks.
“Stop looking at me,” he whispered, nudging the skull with his toe, the entire front row of teeth snapping off. “Stop looking at me!”
Richard leapt to his feet and stomped the skull, the bone giving way easily for his heel to squish out what little of the liquefied brain remained. He stomped again and again, finally kicking it back into the fire with a cloud of black dust.
Panting, he plopped back onto his rear end on the rock, still peering into the fire at the remainder of the corpses. It took a moment for him to remember that he wasn’t alone. When he looked across the fire, the man was staring directly at him through wide, unblinking eyes. Richard smiled and the man looked away so quickly he toppled off his seat. Laughter exploded from Richard and the man scurried off, mumbling something incoherent about checking on the others.
Richard felt the trickle of fluids on his face and smeared it away, his entire face below his eyes now covered with blood. The dampness allowed the frigid air to nip into his skin, so he found his gloves on the ground and shoved his hands back in, again holding them over the fire. Flames slowly took root in the singed fabric, but the warmth felt magnificent. He left them there until he could take it no more and pulled out twin hands of fire, watching them burn. Waving them in front of his face only fanned the blaze, forcing him to find the nearest patch of snow into which to shove them. When he finally pulled them back out, his black fingernails poked out of the burnt ends. His first thought was of watching his diabetic grandfather peel off the dead nails from his necrotic toes and wondered how it might feel.
“Hey!” a voice shouted from above. “They’re coming!”
Richard launched himself forward and scrambled up the rock to where the man was still flat on his belly sighting the rifle.
“Out of the way!” he snapped, shoving the man so hard that the rifle clattered from his grip. Richard pulled it to his shoulder and pressed his cheek against the cold steel, seating his eye against the scope. Two figures faded in and out of the storm, trudging directly toward the island. As they approached, he recognized the one on the left as the albino boy who had opposed him on the far shore what felt like a lifetime ago now. One simple squeeze of the trigger and he could pay back that freak, but it would spook the man to his right, who carried a bundle of blankets across his chest. But he knew good and well that those weren’t just blankets. Beneath was the key to his rule, the tool that would metamorphose him in the eyes of his people from their ruler into something far greater. Inside that bundle was the catalyst that would transform him into a god.
“That’s far enough!” he shouted. The figures stopped where they stood. Waiting.
Richard heard the other men scamper up the rocks behind him so they could see, winded from running all the way up the stone slope from the snowmobiles. He sighted the man holding the bundle. It was the same man who had met with him earlier, the one who appeared to be in charge. What was his name again? Adam?
“The albino kid stays right there!” he shouted. “If he moves a muscle, we fill him full of holes! Understood?”
Both of the figures nodded.
“I want to see the boy!” he screamed. Licking his chapped lips, he watched Adam fold back the blanket to reveal a white face with a stocking cap pulled nearly down over its eyes. A plume of exhaust escaped the boy’s lips and Adam covered him quickly back up.
“You promise to leave us in peace?” Adam’s spectral voice called.
Richard passed the rifle back to the man who’d been on watch. “Don’t let either of them out of your sight.” And then to the others, “I want another one of you to cover them from where they can’t see you. Blow them to hell if they try anything funny. Two more… Get on your snowmobiles and go get that kid!”
“I said, do you—?” Adam called.
“Of course!” Richard shouted, turning to shove the men to motion. “I’m sending two of my men down. You give them the boy and you’ll never see us gain, but if you even think of trying to trick us, you’re dead! You hear me? Dead!”
“We hear you,” Adam called back.
A scream filled the air behind Richard and another immediately joined the chorus. The wail of the engines softened to a buzzing sound and he waited breathlessly for the snowmobiles to appear from around the side of the island to his left. With a squeal they flashed into view, headlights scanning across the snow. The two figures faced the approaching snowmobiles, which stopped about twenty yards away so as not to be in the line of fire.
Adam walked toward them, struggling with the weight in his arms.
“Keep your crosshairs on his forehead,” Richard said.
It felt like it was taking forever for Adam to reach the snowmobiles. Richard’s rage bubbled in his gut and he wanted to scream for his men to just shoot him already.
Adam stopped about five steps from the nearest snowmobile and shouted up to Richard. “I need your word that you aren’t going to hurt him!”
“The child will live, but you will not unless you pass him over right now!” Richard bellowed, his voice echoing off through the storm.
Adam hesitated, staring back up at Richard before closing the gap and setting the boy on the snowmobile behind the man pointing his shotgun right in Adam’s face
Snow fired from the tread and the engine wailed as the snowmobiles turned around and sped back toward the island.
“You still have him in your sights?” Richard asked.
“Yes, sir,” the man replied.
“Shoot him.”
VII
Salt Lake City
OSCAR STUMBLED THROUGH THE DOORWAY ONTO THE ROOF, ILL-PREPARED for the weather. Snow buffeted him in the face before he even took his first step into the accumulation, though the cold was a welcomed sensation against his broken nose and stinging eyes. The mixture of tears and Garrett’s blood tightened on his face as it froze, the sudden drop in temperature doing little to dampen the adrenaline rush. Clutching his bleeding hands to his chest, he shuffled across the roof, which felt as though it teetered from side to side beneath him, toward the first person he saw. The man had his back to him, looking out over the edge of the roof toward the city, steam rising from the thermos in his grasp.
Oscar hadn’t gone into prison as a criminal, but had emerged with all of the tools of the trade. He had been a nineteen year-old punk who took a ride with a buddy when he shouldn’t have. When the cherries had blossomed in the rearview mirror, he’d known he was screwed, but not nearly to the degree he had been. Hector had tried to race away from the cops and failed miserably, wrapping the hood around a streetlight. He’d been able to outrun Oscar though, and so long as there had been a Mexican to collar, the cops had been happy enough. The stolen car alone wasn’t nearly as damning as the heroin in the trunk. Maybe the grand theft auto charge would have gotten him six months of cable and free food, but the drugs earned him five solid years. Five years of sleeping with his eyes open and doing whatever it took to survive. He couldn’t bear to rehash the thought. Maybe the other people mourned the end of the world, but not him. As far as he was concerned, the world got what was coming to it. Just like that guy who had beaten him, tied him up, and left him for dead. Some people said that two wrongs didn’t make a right, but as far as Oscar was concerned, no amount of wrongs could ever make things right.
But this…this was his chance to start a
new. No LAPD waiting on every corner to pitch him that third strike. No more factories and foremen who made sure he was never paid for his overtime. No more coughing up ten percent of his check just to get it cashed or getting coke for his parole officer and paying for the privilege. This was the only way he would ever be given a fresh start, and he had begun with the most valuable skill he had learned in the joint.
He had killed a man…and he’d never felt better.
“Hey, buddy,” he said, approaching the man at the ledge.
The man turned to face him. “Jesus,” he gasped, his thermos falling to the ground, the hot coffee eating a brown puddle into the snow. “What happened to you?”
“I was born again,” Oscar said, smiling around bloodstained teeth.
“Hey, Chaz!” the man shouted, “Come give me a hand!”
“What is it?” the other man called, tromping through the snow from his post at the corner of the rooftop. “They come to spell us so we can finally get some of that wonderful smelling…?”
Oscar watched the color drain from the man’s face, his eyes widening. The man jerked his shotgun to his shoulder, his hands trembling so badly that the barrel shook.
Following the man’s eyes, Oscar looked over the edge of the roof.
An enormous man sat atop a tall steed, just on the other side of the fence. He raised his hands from where he clutched a mane of spikes poking from the equine’s skeletal head. Curling his claws into the hood shrouding his face, he peeled it back and dropped the black cloak from his shoulders. Some sort of crimson-colored armadillo hide formed a suit of armor over him, his face shielded behind an arched shield with ragged holes slashed across eyes that burned with fire.
He jumped down to the smoldering ground and his stallion rose to its hind legs, its front legs waving hooves shod with molten metal and flames. It made a screaming sound like a choir of slaughtered goats and slammed its hooves back to the ground, shaking the building on its foundation. Fissures opened in the earth, racing through the asphalt and concrete like lightning bolts. A loud hissing sound erupted all around them as though they’d been set down in the middle of a stadium of angry spectators.
“Please, God…” the man whimpered, pulling the trigger over and over, deafening them to the sound of their impending demise.
Black bodies poured out into the streets from behind buildings and out of alleys, jumping down from rooftops and leaping over parked cars. The Swarm raced toward them, shoulder to shoulder, claws curled in anticipation of the slaughter. Their dewlaps unfurled in their excitement, capes the colors of autumn leaves trilling beneath their chins.
“They’re here!” someone shouted behind them, dashing for the door and shouting down into the stairwell.
A dozen men and women sprinted toward the gas cans beside the piles of wood lining the fence to light their flaming barricades, but they never had a chance.
The Swarm hit the iron fence from all sides. Some flattened themselves and slipped between bars without breaking stride, while others climbed atop them, throwing their bodies right into the tangles of barbed wire. The sharpened points tore away chunks of scales and gouged deep lacerations into the flesh, but it didn’t even faze them. Gushing white blood and flashing rows of sharp teeth, they joined in the fracas. The people below were torn apart before their very eyes, attacked by so many claws and teeth at once that gobs of flesh and spatters of blood filled the air.
The creatures flooded the courtyard, and still they crowded the streets in a seemingly endless parade of evil.
Shotguns blasted and rifles blazed from across the rooftop, but if they had felled any of the creatures there was no way to tell as more and more packed in to wedge the dead on their feet.
“Give me a gun!” Oscar screamed, whirling in a circle, but none of the others even looked his way. He leaned over the ledge and looked down. The creatures blew through the plywood over the windows and doors on the bottom floors as though they were no more substantive than spider webs.
Screams tore through the twilight from below.
War still stood on the other side of the fence, his minions flowing all around him as they poured across the fence. He took a single stride forward and raised a mighty hand, flicking his razor-honed fingertips to the sky before slashing straight through the iron bars, leaving the severed ends glowing orange. One more slice from his other hand and a large section of the fence fell inward, clattering atop the mounds of sticks his prey had never had the chance to light. He stepped through and walked toward the building, his legion parting for him like the sea before a cutter.
Standing at the base of the hotel, he looked straight up at Oscar, who screamed at the top of his lungs. The fire in War’s eyes enveloped his forehead in response as he slammed his right palm against the bricks, the talons latching into it, and then his left. His whole head now ablaze, War began to scale the building.
Still screaming, Oscar whirled and ran toward the door, turning back in time to see the other guards sprinting after him.
War crested the roof and stood on the ledge, the Swarm clambering over the edges all around him like bathwater spilling over the edge of a full tub.
Oscar threw open the door to the stairs and was assaulted by agonized screams. A splash of blood patterned the wall in front of him as a reptilian head peered up from the landing below, trilling a rust-colored frill dripping with blood, yellow- and black-marbled eyes looking directly into his.
He slammed the door shut and felt a body slam into it from the other side. The other men were nearly to him before being dragged down from behind and mercilessly ripped apart. Blood spattered all over his face, but he couldn’t force himself to close his eyes. Limbs were torn from joints, flayed to the bone by claws like knives, and shoved past greedy, scaled lips.
The creature on the other side of the reinforced steel door was banging so fiercely it knocked him away and to his knees in the snow.
The snarling creatures closed in, their expanded dewlaps flapping so hard they fanned the snow from the rooftop back into the air.
And then they stopped.
Oscar could feel them all around him, the roof bowing beneath their weight. They snapped at him like rabid dogs as he looked from one to the next, hatred radiating from them nearly as strongly as their hunger. Black blotches swam on those golden eyes.
The ground shook beneath him and he heard the sound of cracking joists.
“Valleys of shadows and darkness,” Oscar mumbled. “Temptation of shepherds. Yea though I walk.”
The sea of blackness parted for War to step through, the whole building threatening to collapse under each footfall. He stopped right in front of Oscar, looking down on him through eyes that blazed hotter than the sun.
“Just get it over with!” Oscar screamed.
War’s hands struck like vipers, the talons carving through the muscles in his shoulders. In one motion, he lifted Oscar and held him several feet off the ground, his legs flailing uselessly. Blood poured from the wounds, dripping from his fingertips for the Swarm to slither in and lick from the snow, darting back like mongrels afraid of the master’s stick.
“What are you waiting for?” Oscar screamed, his head bucking back in pain.
“For God to look away,” War said in a voice cast from the epicenter of an earthquake.
He snarled and jerked his hands apart. Oscar’s wail of pain terminated in a wet splash and the clatter of snapping teeth.
VIII
Mormon Tears
“IT’S NOT TOO LATE,” ADAM SAID, READJUSTING THE WEIGHT AGAINST HIS chest. His back hurt so badly he could hardly keep his eyes open. Even forming words tested his resolve. “We can still turn back.”
“I’ll be fine,” a voice said from under the blanket.
“You know…you know what they’re going to do to you, don’t you?”
Silence from beneath the covers.
Adam nodded, if only to himself, and looked up toward the top of the stone mountain ahead. He could
only vaguely discern a pair of silhouettes against the gray sky.
A pair of headlights appeared around the southern edge of the island, bringing with them the high-pitched whine of engines. Snowflakes cut through the beams, creating shadows like clouds passing over the sun. They slowed and stopped at a safe distance, the snow thrown up in their wake overtaking them before being chased away by the wind. There was a single shape on each of the snowmobiles, barely visible behind the halogen glare directed right at them. The light glinted from the barrels of the weapons the men pointed at them.
“God help us,” Adam whispered.
Hefting the kid up to get a better grasp, his biceps and forearms feeling like the muscles were being torn apart strand by strand, he forced his trembling legs to move. It took every last ounce of his courage to walk toward the snowmobiles. He could sense the awesome weight of the twin barrels on him and wondered if he would feel the steel shot tear him to ribbons before he died. The headlights stretched his shadow across the snow all the way back to where Phoenix waited behind.
Adam stopped when he was nearly to the vehicles and looked back up at Richard.
“I need your word that you aren’t going to hurt him!” he shouted.
“The child will live,” Richard’s voice drifted with the wind, “but you will not unless you pass him over right now!”
Adam’s heart was beating so fast that he couldn’t make his legs move. He’d be killing this kid if he crossed the final five feet.
“Go on,” the voice said from under the blankets.
His legs moved of their own accord, leading him to the closest snowmobile. The driver clambered off and thrust the shotgun into Adam’s face, but he continued on, gently setting the boy, blankets and all, onto the long seat. He stepped away, all the while the driver keeping the end of the weapon so close to his face that he could smell the gun oil.
Blizzard of Souls Page 22