Graveslinger
Darren Lee Compton
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or undead (though if undead, please let me know, I’d like to hear this), events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Darren Lee Compton
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address: [email protected].
First Edition June 2021
Book design & illustration by Darren Lee Compton
Edited by Karen Bradford & Nicholas Lawrence Carter
ISBN 978-1-7364061-8-2 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-7364061-9-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-7364061-0-6 (ebook Kindle)
www.darrenleecompton.com
Created with Vellum
For my Parents, who let me dive
into my interests instead of keeping me from them.
Contents
Infestation
The Damned Pickle
Tales by a Crackling FIre
Holes
Road to Skyhill
Escape
First Blood
Shadowing
If Only
The Blasphemous Ceremony of Violess
Graveslinger
After
Acknowledgments
About the Author
The fattening moon above watched a slick black rat skitter across the grass. With its vapid eyes rimmed with dull green goop, the rat carefully watched a plain white building without windows on the lower floor. Its fur matted with old, congealed blood. Its mangy mouth frothed. A repugnant stench of rotting flesh wafted from its body; a smell so foul a nearby owl decided against having it for a snack.
The building was a warehouse facility, stretching for a quarter-mile north and nearly half that wide, and standing three floors high. The facility remained in seclusion for many years, miles from civilization, hidden in the wilderness in the shadow of the mountain range to the west. An emblem hung over a single entrance in the shape of the Angel of Power rune, with what appeared to be a spike or spearhead down the center of it.
Some hikers had stumbled upon this building and security would be deployed to get them out of there. The statement given to these witnesses involved it being a restricted government training and research facility. On Google Maps, the facility stayed hidden by a green blur to blend with the surroundings.
Rumors persisted that it was the Area 51 of the Pacific Northwest. The rumors weren’t far from the truth.
A wrought-iron fence provided little obstacle for the rat to climb, nor did squirming through the spiraling barbed wire. It stayed close to the shadows and froze in its tracks the moment a security camera rotated in its direction. When the cameras turned away, it felt safe enough to move forward. While there were enough blind spots to hide from the cameras, if a security guard came out to check, the rat could do very little to hide its smell, so it needed to sneak with caution. This place took any hint of death, rot, or decay very seriously and would extinguish the source without hesitation.
Having windows on the bottom floor would’ve made the entire infiltration job easier since there was nowhere for the rat to climb to get to the higher ones. According to the new intel supplied from the rat’s master, there was one small entrance on the west side that it should fit through.
As it waited for another security camera to look the other way, a voice in its head commanded, “Go!” And go it did, wobbling from side to side along the base of the building.
The rat halted at a small vent no more than five inches across. It sniffed the edges in a manner of courtship before proceeding to chew on the wire. Once it gnawed a large enough hole, it squeezed through, unconcerned about any wounds the wire left on its skin, and skittered down the long, narrow passageway.
Thick curtains of webbing got in the rat’s way, but it powered through like they were nothing. Strands of web got caught in its fur, draping behind the rat like a gothic cloak. The web’s homeowner and architect, a plump black widow spider, panicked as it found itself along for the ride. As soon as it found its intruder, it sank its venomous fangs into the festering hide of the rat, causing it to flinch from its path. It then rolled the spider into the metal casing of the vent. The black widow spider popped under the rat’s weight, leaving a snotty trail of spider guts that stretched and snapped as the rat moved further down the vent.
There were a few detours the rat could have exited, but none were the openings it needed. It ignored them, hunting for the right one. It came to a stop and peered through a thin plastic grating, and the sultry voice in its head whispered, “Bingo!” Between the plastic strips, it could see a lit bathroom. Directly below was an empty stall with a toilet bowl open for it to dive into. No feet were visible from the nearest stall, so it knew now was the perfect time to make a splash.
The rat gnawed through the plastic vent slits, not minding the years of fart dust that stained the plastic. It squeezed through the new opening, dangled from the ceiling, and then dropped with a magnificent plop. Toilet water splashed into a spire upon impact.
“Holy sweet Jesus! Are you okay down there?” The voice came from five stalls down, near the entrance of the restroom. Pants around his ankles with his tie slung over his shoulder so it wouldn’t dip in the toilet water, a man looked up from his phone and waited for a response. He itched his bristly mustache as a foul stench crept its way to his stall. He quickly snorted, trying to keep the stench from entering any farther into his lungs and pulled his shirt up over his nose. He called out again. “You might want to give us a courtesy flush, okay, amigo? Getting kind of ripe over here.” He knocked on the stall wall and waited for a reply.
Though it wasn’t hot in the bathroom, he frequently broke into sweats when dropping the ol’ number two. A pattern of sweat pooled on his shirt, and he wiped his brow on his sleeve.
Still, no response came from the other stall, which made him feel uneasy ... Perhaps the gentleman in the other stall passed out after that last push? He’d heard of worse happening. He recalled when he rushed so fast to the urinal that he had a blackout and smacked his head against the tile in mid-piss. Surprisingly, his aim was better than when he was fully conscious.
He rushed to wipe. He knew something odd was going on and immediately texted security. He paused for a moment before clicking “send,” realizing he had just touched the screen of his phone without washing his hands. Hell, he didn’t even have his pants up yet. Then he shook off the disgust and sent the message.
He remembered to flush this time, wanting to remove his own mess from the scene, just so no one confused his scent with the bomb in the other stall.
As he reached for the waist of his pants to yank them up, a sharp crackling pain from his wrist came over him. He cried out in pain with an indecipherable whine. It felt like lightning pulsing into his arm, followed by a dentist drill bit without Novocaine. He forced his eyes open to look and saw a little black rat, covered in dry blood, crusting pus, dust, webbing, and drenched in toilet water, gnawing at his wrist. His own blood spilled on the bright-white hexagonal tile floor. The rat let go and scurried off into another stall to hide and watch.
Gasping, he lifted his arm for a closer view and saw it was already too late. The venom already blackened his veins around the wound.
He heard the bathroom door open, followed by a concerned voice. “Garrett? We got your message and then heard you cry. Everything okay in there?”
He recognized Les’s voice. He ran security on this
level and even had greeted him as he took his break headed toward the bathroom. Garrett found it difficult to speak, barely managing even a stutter. He reached out and managed to flick the stall lock left to open, wanting desperately to get the hell out of there. Though Garrett was trained in these situations and knew full well that he needed to put a bullet to his head pronto, panic still took over. He just wanted to run. The Order of the Immortuos Venandi had trained its office workers what to do in case of Ghoul Fever, but in the heat of reality, enough panic can kill almost any amount of training. What scared him even more was that this contagion seemed to act faster than what he was told to expect.
Foaming drool hung from his lips. He felt tranquilized yet hungry, and to his surprise, Les smelled tasty. He bared his teeth as he heard a clomp from one of Les’s boots.
“Hey, man,” Les said with much more clarity. “Give me some kind of sign. Any will do.” He saw a spray of blood on the tile beneath Garret’s feet. He gasped, thinking the guy may have blacked out again and banged his head something serious this time, and then ordered, “Tap your feet together if everything’s swell, man.”
Garret’s feet moved, but they didn’t tap.
Les groaned and stepped toward the front of the stall, wincing at the idea of seeing the man on the toilet, hoping he at least had his pants most of the way up. He knocked on the stall door, which swayed open a little, letting him know that it was unlocked. He took a deep breath, noticing the rotten smell lingering in the bathroom, and tapped the door open.
The last thing he saw was Garrett with bleeding-red eyes lunging at him. Les tried to reach for his sidearm, but Garrett’s massive weight crushed his back into the sinks behind him, and the pistol fell on the floor. Les’s blood sprayed across the bathroom mirrors as Garrett tore into his neck.
The rat watched from inside the stalls and then creeped on out of the bathroom.
Soon, after biting a secretary on the ankle and then another security guard on the hand, the Ghoul Fever spread like fire with the rampage of the two infected men from the bathroom. One bit another, and then bit another, and bit another.
The alarms quickly activated, and a thick sheet of heavy steel slammed shut over every exit of the facility, trapping everyone working that evening inside.
The rat knew it would die here, all part of the plan, engulfed in an inferno, as the Pacific Northwest Order of the Immortuos Venandi executed its own self-destruct sequence.
Still lurking between mountains before dawn, the Moon then bared witness to the escape of Thomas Bradley and his daughter Liama. They did their best to rattle the fence as little as possible as they climbed over it and sprinted into the woods. Thomas’s right knee trembled and ached as he recovered from his landing.
“We need to get away from here as fast as we can,” he huffed. His leg shook as his weight slammed on it again and again.
“I’m tryin’ to, Daddy!” she cried back.
Realizing she couldn’t keep up, Thomas grabbed his little girl’s hand and whirled her up into his arms. Her clothes were dirty with sweat stains and dust. She wore a pink and white long-sleeve shirt with a unicorn printed on the front, cut-out holes over the shoulders, and a hood draped behind her like a short cape. Her black tights reflected splashes of glitter resembling stars. Her thick hair had been brushed back into two black buns, but now unevenly straggled with two days of neglect.
Thomas wore a thicker long-sleeve hoodie and cargo pants, with earthy tones of dark green and grey. His taste in color was more straightforward than his daughter. His greying wooly hair, “steel wool,” as his late wife fondly called it, also appeared not to have been cared for in days. Red scratches cut through his brown skin, over his left eyebrow, while his left cheekbone swelled into a greasy plum.
To his relief, Liama was unscathed, at least physically. He was certain she’d be at least a little traumatized and could need counseling.
His heavy boots stomped, uncaring about the sounds he made at that point, and they disappeared into the embrace of the woods, a shadowy mix of Douglas Fir and Blackwood Cotton trees.
“We need to find someone who can help us and the others,” he said, huffing harder as they built up speed. “We’ll go west and stay off the roads, or they’ll find us again! They’ll be searching every street, every highway.”
“What about the police?” Liama whimpered.
“No, baby, they’ll never believe us. They never believe us. We can’t trust cops, but with this, it’ll only be even worse. They’ll say I’m crazy and take you away from me, and the others will be forgotten about.”
Thomas was as urgent as he was paranoid. He wasn’t sure if even he would believe some of the things he saw back at the abandoned elementary school they fled from, after days of confinement by some strange cult.
The school shrank in the distance behind them. The lower level’s windows were all boarded up, and the upper level had most of the glass still intact. No light came from inside, but Thomas and Liama knew they lurked in there.
While they were in captivity, they witnessed an elderly man die. It could’ve been from anything since the guards quickly took the body away and never let them or the others know what happened. Thomas tried to inquire about the cause of death, but he was told to shut up. He believed the old man’s name was Charlie Scott. Charlie’s face showed the canyons and fault lines of a long life, with hair whiter than freshly bleached linen. A long-retired railway worker, a technician, if Thomas remembered right. Sometimes, it was hard for Thomas to tell what the man was saying through his gravely mumble. Charlie hadn’t said much but gave Thomas the sad impression he had been there the longest of any of the prisoners.
Waking up early that morning to find Charlie’s cold, dead eyes staring back at him from his cell lit a fire under Thomas’s butt to get the hell out of there.
Thomas had kept his distance from most of the others, focusing more on protecting Liama. He was grateful that she got to share the same cell as him.
Javier occupied the cell next to theirs and often ran his mouth off. The boy swore so much that Thomas found himself worrying about how much foul language Liama absorbed, rather than the conspiracy theories Javier rattled off. Javier apparently felt that Thomas’s being black gave him permission to speak at great length: This must be a group of Satanists sponsored by the government, led by the real Charles Manson “… because he didn’t really die, ya know?” Javier was convinced they were planning on some new helter-skelter catastrophe.
When they noticed the horrible smell of rotten meat from one of the guards, Javier’s theories sharpened into zombie-apocalypse talk, which gave Thomas a much-needed laugh.
All the others appeared to have been easy pickings for abductions, ranging from middle to almost senior-citizen age and a couple of children. Not one of them was in good shape, which was probably for the best since they’d put up less of a fight. Seventeen people in total, including themselves, soon increased to eighteen when the guards replaced Charlie Scott with a squawker of a woman named Harriet.
One of the captors dropped something when they brought her in, and Thomas quickly snatched it before they noticed: a plain, ballpoint pen. He used it as a lock pick to sneak out and find help. The others agreed to keep quiet because they knew Thomas needed to move out of there quickly before the guards came around again. If time hadn’t been a factor, he would’ve picked all their locks. They trusted he had every intention of coming back: He had promised.
On the rooftop of the school, two figures appeared, carrying flashlights. They wore dark coveralls, and their faces were covered by dirty cloth and goggles. They steered the lights to the playground and then along the fence line.
The figures fixed the lights on a section of trees where tall grass swayed without wind. Other guards appeared on the ground, searching the fence line.
Thomas looked over his shoulder and saw light from the edge of the forest. The trees did their damnedest to hide them, and he continued running.
&n
bsp; “Da─” Liama started as soon as she saw the light approaching them. It reflected off a bead of tears that rolled down the curve of her cheek.
“Ssssh, baby,” he whispered, unsure if they could be heard.
They delved deeper into the woods, where the light no longer penetrated. Still, Thomas and his baby were oblivious to where they were, having been drugged and blindfolded during their trip there. Once imprisoned, they witnessed cruelties they never expected in real life, but it happened right in front of them.
Help was what he needed to find now, but definitely not the cops. He hadn’t been in Washington long enough to experience them; the ones he’d met in California didn’t treat anyone with his skin color well.
But what if he just told them they were kidnapped, without mention of the weird stuff? Like tehe rotten-death smell or the bizarre animal sounds coming from the hallways? No mention of any of that? Maybe he could try the police? Maybe it could work? He wrestled the thoughts over and over in his head as they continued running into the darkness.
She wasn’t sure how it happened, but somehow Fiya Pratt Diaz always wound up in a seat in the back, leaving her to wait for everyone to get off the plane before her. At her turn, she grabbed her bag under the seat in front of her and inched off the plane. The stewardesses waved their pleasant goodbyes while Fiya merely nodded with a razor-thin smile.
Over the years, Fiya had become familiar with the corridors at Sea-Tac ─ Seattle-Tacoma International Airport ─ and navigated through the crowds of people. She had to maneuver around them, but even that proved tricky with their random starts and stops. Having done this many times, she’d gotten used to it, but that never meant it was less annoying.
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