He turned again to face them, the sun behind him turning him to a black silhouette in their vision, an entity of shadow. Looking from one to the next, he lowered his voice to purvey the gravity of his words and to prepare them for the trials ahead.
“The worst is yet to come.”
Chapter 10
I
The Ruins of Denver, Colorado
RICHARD HAD GIVEN UP SCREAMING LONG AGO AND SUCCUMBED TO THE intense pain. Consciousness returned in fleeting spurts, but he chased it away in favor of the cold darkness of the unconscious, where the agony was only peripheral, and he didn’t have to think about the claws curled around his ankles, so sharp they had carved clear through to the bone, or the snow that continually buried his face, making every breath a struggle. In his mind, he was at home in his den with a snifter of brandy and CNN on the plasma screen, while his body was dragged through countless miles of snow, bouncing off of hidden boulders and skimming over frozen lakes. The only respite came when the creatures that dragged him climbed into the trees to wait out the light of day, leaving him dangling upside down from the branches, never relinquishing their hold. In those moments, when all of the blood in his body rushed to his head, he had no choice but to experience the pain. He wondered how much a man could endure before his body simply shut down, and prayed he would soon reach that point. The pangs of hunger went unheeded, his water requirements met by the accumulation that fell into his mouth, warming just enough to trickle down his throat.
If he had met with madness before, there was no name for what he now experienced. Rage and hate were beyond the reach of his emotions. Fear was a thing of the past. Now he simply existed, banished to the recesses of his mind, a mind that had shattered like a stained glass window, leaving only the colored shards of a life that no longer meant anything to him upon which to reflect.
When the movement stopped, it took a few minutes to rationalize it. He kept waiting to be yanked upward to dangle inverted, but it never happened. The pressure around his ankles abated and his eyelids slowly parted, even the darkness of night stinging his retinas. He had no idea how long they had been traveling or how far they had come, only that eternities had passed in the interim. The black clouds came into focus above, violet lightning rippling from one to the next, swirling around the top of the black structure behind him. The imposing monolith loomed over him, leaning slightly to the side where the building beside it had fallen to prop it up. All of the windows had been shattered, leaving the exposed framework and girders as though permanently arrested somewhere between creation and demolition, life and death, as he felt right now. There was a shadow in the upper reaches, barely within sight on the top floor. Were it not for the obscene glow of the eyes, he might never have noticed it at all. The darkness and coldness that surrounded him seemed to emanate from the figure. He was frightened to the point that he wished for death, but deep down, he knew that should such a wish be granted, it would only bring him closer to whatever it was that watched him from above.
Why had they dragged him across so many endless miles only to abandon him at the base of this tower? Surely they had butchered all of the others at the hotel. He couldn’t fathom the prospect that all of them were somewhere in the black heart of this dead construct. What did they want from him that they had gone to so much effort to procure? Why couldn’t they just kill him and be done with it?
Footsteps approached on the fused glass and crusted ice, two sets, their tread so soft it sounded as though they merely floated over the surface. A pair of small, cold hands closed around his left ankle while a larger pair seized his right. Their touch caused exposed nerve endings to sing, racing up his spine and exiting his mouth as a scream. Again he was moving, the jagged earth cutting into his back. Blinking the snowflakes away, he watched the tower as it drew near, growing larger until it eclipsed the sky. They dragged him across the threshold and into the dark lobby, passing the demolished reception desk and uprooted plants in a scattering of the soil that had once housed their now bare roots. His last thought before they dragged him out of the diffuse light and into the absolute darkness was that it looked like a hurricane had blown through. Shattered glass ground beneath him, the waterfall a pile of rubble to his left, the elevator doors standing permanently open, the mirrored walls destroyed.
A foul smell grew stronger with each breath, reminding him of the scent that had bloomed from the fly-covered carcass of one of his grandfather’s cattle. Raw meat dissociating from bone, the hide slipping off as whatever infected the intestines gnawed its way out through the rotting flesh. He retched, but was unable to produce anything more substantial than a mouthful of stomach acid.
They turned to the left and he felt his legs lower, his back bending sharply before his shoulder dropped onto something hard, his head ricocheting off of what felt like a boulder. Again and again the process was repeated as though being dragged down a flight of stairs crafted for giants. The repeated blows to the base of his cranium tried to send him into the comfort of unconsciousness, but the fear bound him to his senses.
The descent finally ended and they slid him along on his back, over heaps of rubble and what he was sure had to be corpses, but he couldn’t turn his head enough to see. As the uneven floor rose and fell under him, he caught glimpses of the two shapes at the end of his stretched legs in the weak aura of light ahead. One was so small it hardly looked like more than a child, its appendages like twigs. The other was much taller, its contours smooth and polished. As the light beyond them became brighter, it converted them to shadows again. The yellow glow shivered and flickered, cast by flames that came into view as torches on the walls, though rather than burning from lanterns or atop wooden clubs, the fire crackled from human skulls.
Richard tried to scream, but nothing came out. He tried to fight against them, but his arms and legs were unresponsive.
No! his inner voice shouted. You can’t do this to me! Not me! Kill you…I’ll kill you all!
They passed out of the hallway and into a larger room, the walls covered with those skull torches, lending the impression that the whole room was on fire. Tables passed to either side, from atop them the thumping of bodies and hideous guttural sounds unlike anything he had ever heard. There was another sound beneath…a high-pitched whine…vaguely familiar, though he couldn’t immediately place it. All he could tell was that it originated from everywhere at once. The ceiling above was slanted, as though the floor above had partially collapsed, invaded by shadows that almost appeared to be moving, writhing like still waters with life forms just beneath the surface.
The hands tightened around his ankles and yanked him into the air, his back folding over the edge of the table. He saw their faces clearly now, one almost skeletal with parchment skin pulled taut over sharp bones, the other appearing to be made of pearl, even his eyes stark white. Their very existence caused him to shake. They were abominations against nature. He had to turn away as they opened his palms and staked them to the table with copper spikes and then did the same to his feet. In that one moment, he was grateful for the lack of sensation, but he would have gladly welcomed the pain in exchange for the loss of sight.
On the table beside him, similarly staked and thrashing against its restraints, was a creature beyond his imagination, the mere sight of it finally freeing the scream from his chest, but it was quickly drowned out by a high-pitched buzzing sound. The walls and ceiling came to life, mosquitoes swarming above him like smoke, descending upon him before he had the chance to close his mouth. Spindly legs crawled over his bare eyes until he closed the lids, pinning them between his lashes, but there was nothing he could do to prevent them from covering his skin. He shook his head, but they still crept into his ears and skittered up his nose.
He screamed against the searing agony of their stingers burning into his flesh, his own cries trailing him into the eternal darkness, along with the image of the monstrosity on the table beside him.
And the understanding of what he would soon be
come.
II
Mormon Tears
JILL DROPPED THROUGH THE ROOF OF THE UPPER CHAMBER OF THE PUEBLO, sitting down on the floor with her legs crossed, across from the skeleton as she had before. She lifted the skull from where it had fallen into its lap and set it atop the bony cervical column. Drawing a deep breath, she took the remainder of the woman’s hands into her own and looked into her hollow eyes.
“Thank you,” she said, offering a sad smile. “We owe you so much. Everything, in fact.”
Vacuous sockets stared back at her through eons of dust.
“Well…” Jill said, not exactly sure what she was supposed to say or do. She had a vague understanding that this woman’s people, the noble Goshute, had given themselves to the blizzard hundreds of years prior in preparation for the battle they had narrowly won, offering their souls to whichever of the gods controlled it so that they could help their species persevere without thought as to the personal consequences. They had trusted the decomposed woman’s visions enough to build a place for them to live and had then just wandered out into the wicked storm and blowing snow to their deaths.
All for them.
There weren’t words to express the kind of gratitude owed for such an enormous sacrifice based on nothing more substantial than the dreams of a girl hardly older than she was. The mere thought that a group of people so long ago could care so much about the perpetuation of future generations was staggering.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she said, lowering her brow. “We’re grateful for everything and all, but I just don’t understand. Why would all of you give your lives for us? We were the ones who claimed the land as our own and drove the natives from it. We built the weapons that destroyed the planet and we were the ones hell-bent on using them. Why sacrifice yourselves for future generations who have so little regard for the value of life?”
Silence.
Jill chuckled at herself. She wasn’t sure why she had gone there. Had she expected the bones to answer? Perhaps she’d been hoping the woman’s spirit would offer a vision to explain everything. There was nothing within the human range of emotion to justify such a gift. Mankind was greedy and self-serving, and as much as she wished it weren’t true, deep down, she knew she was too. They all were. Wouldn’t the world have truly been a better place had humanity been wiped out? Man was merely a blink of time’s eye, and yet they had pillaged the planet of every natural resource, and all but destroyed the atmosphere with industrialization and the landscape of war. Had they the kind of altruism and passion that the Goshute had demonstrated, they would have knelt graciously before the legion of War and done the same to secure the future of the species that wouldn’t destroy, but rather would rebuild. Wouldn’t fight, but colonize. Why should they survive when all man was capable of bringing to the world was death?
The darkness in the skull’s sockets drew her in, swallowing her and spitting her out into another time and place entirely. She was standing before a rock wall lit by flames dancing behind her, a blank canvas awaiting the chalk scattered around her feet. She looked down at the colors needing only her inspiration and application, noticing the clothes made from stretched and dried animal skins and the large round belly contained beneath. With great effort she knelt and took a piece of chalk from the cavern floor, struggling to bend with the life inside her. Bringing the chalk to the wall she started to draw, her eyes rolling up inside her head to better see the vision that spawned her art. When she lowered her eyes again, the mural was halfway to completion as though weeks had passed in the interim. Dropping the nub of chalk, her eyes followed it to the ground, where a puddle expanded beneath her.
She saw fires all around her and the faces of natives that she recognized on some instinctive level. Her cries echoed all around her. The source of her pain emerged and was quickly swaddled and rushed away from her, despite her screams and the arms that were not her own reaching for the bundle of fur and the heartbreaking wailing coming from within.
The vision blinked and she was standing in the cave, watching as an old woman with sable hair rushed away from her up the beach to the north, the infant’s cries trailing in her wake. She fell to her knees in the sand, pleading with the woman to come back with words Jill couldn’t understand. The sand sluiced through her fanned fingers as she crawled toward the lake with the vague notion of continuing to crawl until the salt water filled her lungs and cured her pain, but when she reached the gentle tide, she stared down at her own reflection on the water that lapped at her elbows and thighs. The face she saw was that of the woman whom she had only known as a skeleton, but the eyes…the eyes were her own.
Jill looked away from the image only partly her own and to the distant eastern horizon where the black storm clouds swelled into the stratosphere like dark pillars, through which she could see a single black tower through the passage of time. It radiated a wave of coldness that stung her and she knew she must return to her work. For her. For her child. And for the child of her countless grandchildren who would have to face more than a vision of the tower.
When Jill opened her eyes, she was again in the top room of the pueblo, though the bones were gone. Something squirmed in her grasp and she looked down at the bundle of fur across her legs. A tiny pink face stared back up at her, again through eyes just like her own. The tiny girl’s hair was thin and wispy, a shade of blond so light it was transparent. When she smiled up at Jill, the right side of her mouth curled upward. Just like her father’s.
Her consciousness spiraled down into her child’s eyes and she emerged into the same room in a place that felt like here and a time that felt like now. She still stared through the generations into the vacant eyes of the woman who had cared enough for her without having met her to give up everything she loved for her.
Will you sacrifice everything for the child? the wind whispered, swirling the dust from the floor.
“Of course,” she whispered, tears drawing tracks through the dust on her cheeks.
She looked up through the open hole in the roof in time to see a great white bird leap from the ledge, long wing feathers clapping to gust a smell of dust and age into her face.
She finally understood. There were few things that were eternal, and only one that could be offered willingly. A mother’s love for her child could transcend even time, and they had offered their souls to the blizzard so that she would learn that lesson, giving her the only gift that would survive even eternity.
Hope.
III
The Ruins of Denver, Colorado
IN THE BLACK HEART OF THE MONOLITH, SOMETHING STIRRED. SOMETHING never meant to exist. An abomination against the Lord and His creation, against even the life that flowed through its veins.
Pestilence opened her mouth, producing a sound like a scream in reverse. The mosquitoes covering its body rose as one to be sucked into the vortex and whisked down her throat. The locusts remained a moment longer, scurrying across its black skin while their seed took root inside of it, formalizing the changes that had twisted its body into something evil, feeding the hatred of the host to give rise to something without pity or remorse. Their red eyes glowed as the locusts sang a final tune with their spindly hind legs. Famine called to them silently and they leapt at his command, merging back into his opaline form.
Death stood behind them in the doorway, fire burning from human skulls to either side of his cloaked head. His eyes glowed beneath, causing his sharp teeth to shine when he spread them into a smile.
Their task was nowhere near complete.
The thing bolted upright on the table, ripping its bloody flesh from the stakes that had held it without knowing the sensation of pain. Rocking its head back, it let slip a roar that made the girders shake in the building’s framework, dropping dust onto them all, hovering around them like a fog.
They would not be banished again to the darkness. They were stronger now. Smarter.
The Master that had summoned them was weak. He could only wage war against the
m from beneath the pathetic flesh suits of the chosen.
More and more of their experiments tore through their own hands and feet to be free of the tables upon which they had been birthed, grotesque black shadows in the settling dust.
The time had come to usurp His golden throne and replace it with one crafted from the bones of His disciples. Death was supposed to have been the Lord’s chosen son. The one to separate the faithful from the sinners and exterminate the species that had strayed from His favor and fallen from His grace.
But in the end, He had aligned Himself with His creations, taking pity upon them, choosing one son over the other.
Death hissed and his blood-red flap unfurled under his chin.
He would kill his brother to spite his Father.
Damn all the rest to hell.
The earth was his. He was God now.
Let them come to him this time.
He would be ready.
His reign of blood had begun.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael McBride is the bestselling author of Ancient Enemy, Bloodletting, Burial Ground, Fearful Symmetry, Innocents Lost, Sunblind, The Coyote, and Vector Borne. His novella Snowblind won the 2012 DarkFuse Readers Choice Award and received honorable mention in The Best Horror of the Year. He lives in Avalanche Territory with his wife and kids.
To explore the author’s other works, please visit www.michaelmcbride.net.
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