Gates

by Edmund A. M. Batara

  I stepped out as did Jen. She went straight to me.

  “You know, there was one thing surprised me that entire time,” she commented.

  “What?” I asked as my eyes examined the area in front of us.

  “It didn’t attack you. It stopped right in front of your hiding place. I could swear its tail was wagging.”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” I said as I walked forward.

  “I am not joking! Its tail was wagging!” she laughed.

  To that observation, I unfortunately didn’t have a ready retort.

  7

  A Bloody Night to Remember

  We decided to stay for a couple of days at the farm—first, to see what we could do to help and second, to rest. Our assistance was clearly needed. The three surviving men were severely weakened and needed food and rest. We collected the weapons and whatever we thought could be of help to the survivors. Fortunately, none died or were injured during the firefight.

  The farm had a deep well as a source of water. It was a manual one but a welcome surprise. Unlimited fresh water and baths were luxuries. A series of solar panels provided basic electrical power, enough for lights and a ham radio. But no one was transmitting or answering our calls. The interference with radio, phone, and other signals was still there. The only possible long-range communication I could think of was either by landline or telegraphic means—those with closed systems and not dependent on wireless signals. But I doubted the lines had survived the continuing chaos and destruction.

  It was a miracle the survivors weren’t sick or worse. The professor diagnosed severe malnutrition, several muscle injuries, and fractures. There were some medicines stockpiled by their unlamented overseers, but without access to a hospital, he couldn’t say if there were long-term internal injuries.

  The seven surviving women were slightly better off but also had malnutrition issues, though their beatings were less than those inflicted on the men. We assumed it was because the dead slavers didn’t want damaged females.

  We made the main building the primary recovery and meeting area. The three men and the females who were the subject of the slavers’ heinous attentions were quartered there. The rest were told to rest and recover after eating.

  Severe lack of food and sleep, beatings, and other physical abuse demanded it. We did have to remove the chains and manacles binding their feet first. The dead sadistic bastards tied them up similar to a prison gang, feet manacled and chains connecting the prisoners together.

  But the non-patients refused to stay in their previous quarters, preferring another structure which was used as a tool house and a stockroom. I could understand that. The pit behind their former housing was a mass graveyard.

  A large, deep trench was dug by the backhoe and if a prisoner died, the body was brusquely thrown in and covered by soil. Judging by the size and depth, the overseers apparently expected a lot of dead victims. But the guilty were there now, buried together with their victims.

  Wretched emotions rushed through me the first time I saw the mass grave. Sadness, anger, horror, shame? Words really couldn’t convey what I felt during the time I stood, silent and miserable, before that wicked pit. When I found myself able to speak, a mumbled prayer was all I could offer.

  Talking with the more lucid and stronger among the prisoners, we pieced together the story of the farmhouse. The people who ran it never did say who they were, according to Mike, the oldest among the survivors. But he could tell they came from the city as a group.

  Jen took over cooking duties in the kitchen, Henry as the medical overseer, and yours truly drafted as the new and sole guard, after doing my job as general cleaner and gaffer, of course. It was tiring but necessary work. Dragging the dead to the mass grave was a job which Henry and I handled, with the backhoe serving as an impromptu carrier.

  The stockroom of the main building did reveal a lot of clothes and miscellany, the detritus of enslaved individuals. Mike told us their captors were very picky about who they kept alive – the very old, the infirm, and children under ten were all summarily bludgeoned or knifed to death. The bastards didn’t want to waste ammunition.

  Up to now, I still couldn’t understand the mindset and thinking which gave rise such savage and barbaric actions. It all looked and sounded so bizarre and horribly inhuman. The few kilos of cocaine and meth we found and subsequently flushed dopwn the toilet might partially explain the unbelievable obscenity which happened, but I doubted if it was sufficient to explain away the cruel and monstrous reality we encountered.

  The story Mike told us merely confirmed our suspicions. The previous occupants—I really couldn’t say owners as there was no way of knowing if that was true—created a trap to waylay people and serve as a source of slave labor, and for more heinous purposes.

  Four of the six women we found in the main structure were non-thinking automatons. My thought was that the trauma of being beaten, raped, and abused for days on end was too much for their minds. They had mentally shut off everything. At least the two others had some kind of response, though the cries for mercy and expressions of terror were heartbreaking. They couldn’t distinguish their rescuers and the other survivors from the source of their pain and abuse. We gathered from Mike that the more defiant were summarily disposed of.

  Another disturbing occurrence was the appearance of the beast. I didn’t tell Jen or Henry about my suspicions about how it materialized. The assumption sounded so stupid—me, creating a rift? The ziggurat incident might explain it but accepting such a premise strained credulity.

  At least when the night arrived, we found ourselves with a roof over our heads, proper beds, full stomachs, a change of clothes, a bath, and tired as hell. The three of us stayed in the main building – Henry’s patients were there and after so many fearful and stressful nights together, it was inconceivable for us to separate from each other.

  We hoped Mike would be able to take care of the group. All of them needed time for recovery, but Henry was in a hurry to reach Great Falls to get an idea of the situation and share what he said was crucial intel. We did survive close encounters with the visitors. If he believed he gleaned some useful insights from such near misses, then who was I to disagree?

  ***

  My guard shift for the night was uneventful, though Henry came out at around one in the morning to take over. I didn’t expect it and was grateful for the opportunity to get some sleep. I went to Jen and snuggled beside her. All around us, the forest was quiet, disturbed only by the sounds of the night.

  After an hour or so, a loud, terrified scream woke me up. The noise came from the tool house structure housing the other survivors. It stridently broke through the stillness of the night, a sound which was terrible in its complete sense of horrified despair. Then several bursts of gunfire erupted. I had no doubt it was Henry.

  I looked at the scared face of Jen; she also had her pistol out, though I could see her hand was shaking. I told her to guard the main building, grabbed my M4 and started to go out of the door. Henry was still firing though no return fire could be heard. Whoever he was firing at apparently didn’t have firearms. The flashes of his weapon as it fired could be seen through the blacked-out windows of the other structure. I rushed out and ran to the open door of the now darkened housing quarters.

  I got to the door just as a large shadow engulfed Henry. The blackness of the strangely smooth shape stood out from the darkened room. It had material form, vaguely humanoid, with bat-like wings under its arms which could be seen as it embraced the professor. Then I saw its face.

  For a second, it stared at me, the intruder who had disturbed it. Its eyes struck me the most; it had intense serpentine eyes but the iris was a bloody red. The creature looked like a giant human bat except for the distended jaws which quickly opened and swallowed whole Henry’s head. The jagged fangs swiftly closed and bit off the professor’s entire skull in one horrifying movement. Everything happened too fast for me. I wasn’t even able to raise my firea
rm.

  After the ghastly deed, the creature ignored my arrival and hungrily nuzzled its face into the headless stump, now furiously spurting out blood in messy sprays. Its loathsome face was bathed with the gore and the surroundings painted with the gruesome fluid.

  As Henry’s body fell, the monster never let go, taloned hands gripping the shoulders while clawed, webbed feet protruded from legs enfolding the body. As one, predator and prey fell to the floor in a frightful embrace. Bizarre soft ululations, which I could only surmise to be their repulsive expressions of ecstasy, filled the room.

  Behind the monster, I saw others feasting on the now deceased occupants of the building, two to three creatures to a body in some instances. The entire space was full of them. I was lucky. Every monstrous being in the room appeared to have a meal in front of it. I slowly backtracked and as soon as I was clear, ran for the main building.

  As I made my panicked way back, two things impressed themselves at the back of my disbelieving mind – the savage death of Henry and the fact that out of the corner of my eye, I could see dark forms clambering out of the broken windows, all moving towards the main structure. Shadows resulting from the weak moonlight revealed more shapes emerging from the trees behind the building I hurriedly left behind.

  I dared not shoot. From what I witnessed, bullets didn’t do squat. Henry’s death was proof enough. I rushed to the main structure, slammed the door shut, directly went to my backpack and grabbed whatever Molotov cocktails I could find. Jen watched me only for a few moments before following suit.

  My noisy entrance woke up the people in the main hall where most were sleeping. The severe cases had been quartered in the individual rooms and now fearfully peered from their doors. I quickly looked around. Nobody was in a condition to help us fight off the creatures.

  “What is it?” whispered Jen.

  “Some sort of large bat monsters. Humanoid in form,” I whispered back. “They killed Henry and all the people in the other structure.”

  Jen’s eyes widened in shock, her mouth opened, and her body trembled.

  “Keep it together,” I hissed. “They’re coming for us.”

  Jen looked around.

  “How are we going to fight back?” she asked. “There’s only two of us capable of doing anything. And that’s even a maybe.”

  “I absolutely have no idea, Jen,” I replied as I continued to watch the door, one hand gripping a gasoline bottle. “There’s a lot of them out there. But try to move everybody to the biggest room. That way, we can concentrate our efforts.”

  But as Jen turned to do as I asked, a sudden crash made me turn toward the commotion at the back of the hall. Long spindly arms had broken through a window, smashing the glass. It quickly grabbed a woman and forcibly pulled her through the thin iron bars of the opening. Blood and pieces of flesh sprayed all over the room.

  Then another pair of horrible arms grabbed another victim. And another. Terrified screams came from the rooms.

  I was horrified beyond belief, not only by the ghastly gore which was now all over the place, but also by the strength the monsters displayed. To swiftly and brutally pull a human being through metal bars was a sight I never want to see again. It was a nauseatingly horrendous and terrifying sight, promising the same experience to the ones who witnessed it.

  Jen’s painful slap on my back brought me out of my shocked and terrified state. Immediately, I realized we were fast running out of people to defend. Screams of terror and agony were already coming from the rooms. My eyes fell on our packs and spears. Jen didn’t waste any time and immediately shouldered hers, throwing mine and Henry’s in my direction. Then she grabbed our makeshift spears.

  Again, I heard the strange soft shouts of the monsters, now mixed in with screams from people in the rooms. But I also made out unnatural growls and hisses coming from outside. And all this time, none of the creatures ventured to use the front door — not a single twist of the doorknob.

  Jen hit me on my left arm.

  “This is now a deathtrap! Decide!” she shouted in a panic.

  She was right. Those still alive had run into a room and barricaded themselves, leaving us the only occupants of the main hall. Then the familiar smooth dark arms and bodies started to appear on the windows, trying to force their way inside. A few of the clawed hands were abruptly pulled away and replaced by new ones. Our still hungry predators were scrambling as to which would get inside first.

  “The door! Open it!” I called out, lighting one of the Molotovs.

  She immediately ran to the wooden door and pulled it open, making sure she wasn’t in my line of aim. Here’s the crazy thing—there was no one, nothing there. I was sure the bastards had the entire building surrounded.

  We immediately rushed outside, heading for the gate. Jen took the lead, moving a few steps ahead of me, spear at the ready. Fortunately, the moon gave us enough illumination to see by. As I risked a glance back at the house, a single room still had a light on, a fact that also betrayed the truth that the house was literally crawling with the things—the roof, the windows, and the outside walls.

  Me? I had my backpack on my right shoulder and Henry’s on the left, a lighted Molotov held in my right hand and a gripped spear on the left. As we ran, what I feared happened. Two latecomers to the show saw us moving and quickly shifted course to intercept us.

  I warned Jen but we didn’t stop going in the direction of the exit. But the flying monsters were infinitely faster. Several feet from us, they landed and started to rush me. I kept an eye on them, and when they got within throwing distance, turned and faced them, ready to toss a flaming welcome.

  But the two stopped, stared at me, and after a few seconds, turned and ran back to join the main group assaulting the house.

  To say I was stunned at what happened was like saying Mars attacked.

  8

  Lamashtu

  Jen grabbed me by the lapel of my jacket and pulled me in the direction of the gate. I was still numbed and dazed by the quick turn of events – the shocking image of Henry's violent and sudden death, the unexpected attack on the farm, the vampire-like monsters we had not encountered before. Everything.

  It was a humongous sensory and emotional dump, all in the span of a few minutes. Not to mention it had happened in the early morning. No wonder soldiers preferred doing their business at such an ungodly hour; the recipients of their ungentle attentions invariably were in a confused and bewildered state when suddenly woken up.

  We rushed out of the exit, right through the dim darkness, blundering through the metal barricades made of crisscrossed abandoned vehicles. Jen led the way. I merely followed, acting on instinct now, my mind burdened by the repeating memories of how Henry died and the horrific face of the monster that had killed him. And the eyes! They were not of a creature driven by instinct. A feral and hungry intelligence lurked behind those dreadful slits. Add to that the worrisome and disturbing puzzle of why the two beings didn't push through with their dinner date with us.

  Finally, we had to stop. Our legs and lungs were murder, not to mention the battering from branches which refused to move out of the way and the uneven ground which insisted on tripping us. Still, we found the strength to climb up a tree after a few minutes’ rest. Not as high as our usual, but it was what our flagging strength could manage.

  In the darkness, individual twigs persisted in trying to poke my eyes out as we made way up. Jen secured a spot for us – two thick branches beside each other and stable enough to bear our weight. Slip knots tied us to the tree, and we thankfully rested, our backs to the tree trunk.

  We were both quiet. Even though we were recovering our strength, our notice was fixated on waiting for the return of the sounds of the disturbed denizens of the thicket. Night sounds eventually returned, to my immense relief.

  If the rapacious monsters pursued us, I doubted if we were in any condition to outrun them. I really must have been tired as I didn't notice falling asleep as soon the forest
sounds came back. Fatigue could be my only explanation, given the traumatic experience I had just undergone. I should have been awake and terrified as hell.

  But the Sandman came and brought me to another nightmare.

  ***

  I knew I was dreaming. There was no way I could be in a mist-enshrouded mound. Nor was it possible for Henry to be in front of me, as I’d just witnessed his head getting savagely torn off in one huge and messy bite. The entire place was a dim oasis of light, though most of the illumination was on the top of the rise. Around the hillock was a forbidding solid blackness and in front of me, on the very top of the mound, yet another waiting darkness.

  Surprisingly, I wasn’t scared or terrified. It was but a dream, after all, my mind told me – a bit weird, admittedly, but still mine.

  Henry's presence in the dream didn't give off a bad feeling. In fact, it was the only comforting aura around. The professor had a slight smile on his face and though he was looking in my direction, I noticed his gaze didn't look at me directly. Instead, it was as if he was staring past my shoulder. I got the feeling he avoided looking me straight in the eyes. It was behavior which convinced me that it was indeed Henry, or more appropriately, his soul.