“You think she’s still out there?” Violess stirred a cup of hot chai green tea with 10 packets of sugar. She loved sugar and didn’t care what the amount she consumed did to the body. She even had a theory that it could be helping to preserve the tissue, but science didn’t back that up. Not yet anyway.
She and Kael were in her corner office, watching the schoolyard in the dark, while Kael stood in front of her desk like a dutiful soldier. His arms were behind his back. She watched Kael’s reflection in the glass. “I mean, if she’s alive, that is?”
“It’s a high possibility. If she was dead, your ghouls would’ve recovered the body by now. They were out there scouring for an hour and turned up nothing.”
“They saw blood.”
“They saw blood and then nothing.”
Violess sniffed the over-sugared green tea and sipped in silence. She wondered if the real reason the body didn’t turn up was that he had let her go, but she wasn’t going to make that kind of accusation now. Not without a little silver to defend herself.
Kael let out a sigh and said, “If she is out there, she’s probably looking for more help.”
“She’s not going to find it. Not in time, anyway.”
“True. That town’s all but useless to her now, and the next has already gotten infected. The phone lines are down. She will have her hands full just trying to find a living body, let alone one willing to help.”
“Why do you want her?” she asked, turning away from the glass. She set her mug on the desk and then sat. The chair squeaked. She stared, chin up, waiting for Kael to respond.
“I wish to put her down myself, slowly, inflicting the same amount of pain she has put my pack through.”
“They got over it.”
“Yes, they got over it. But their morale is shattered, and their loyalty to me is wavering. She won’t survive this.”
“I hope not.”
Kael laughed. “I want it to last days, weeks, maybe even a month. I want her isolated from anything. I will slice her with her own shattered blade, but I will not end her life with it because that would still be too clean for her. When it’s all done, then I will rip the spine from her back and dangle it in front of her pretty face while she finally dies.” Kael nearly believed that himself. He made it all that up on the spot because, truthfully, he didn’t actually have a plan.
Violess raised her mug to him and then sipped. The amount of sugar he smelled from it made him nauseous. She twisted the chair to look back over the yard but kept his reflection in her sight. “I’ll have my men ready to go soon. I insist you come along, just in case.”
“Alright.”
“We go fast, before she can have a chance to get back here, after failing to find help or raiding a hardware store for supplies. Who knows what kind of explosives she could make with all that fertilizer shit?” Not that she was worried. The time to prepare a reliable homemade bomb after rounding up the necessary supplies was longer than what Violess needed to revive Bahtzuul, she believed. She could also raid a gun store, and sure, ghouls could typically be taken out by a blow to the head, but one wounded person could easily be worn down by mass numbers. Marco proudly claimed he got her leg good, so handling a crowd of hungry ghouls could prove difficult for the girl. Then there were meat-puppets, the ghouls that were hosted by fellow demons. So, what if they were shot in the head? The demon will still keep the truck going.
Kael said, “She was shot, and if on foot, she will be very slow. She might even be breaking into a pharmacy or veterinarian office to steal something to kill the pain or infection.” He set his hands on her desk, and she carefully watched him. “I can send Winnie after her, since she is still on grounds, recovering from the decapitation, if you’d like.”
“She’s already recovering?”
He nodded.
“You mutts do heal quick.”
“If we can attach limbs quick enough, it helps. Regrowing one would take longer. Much longer.”
“But it was her head.”
“And …?”
Violess paused for a moment, mildly astonished at a werewolf’s regenerative capabilities. It’s one thing to read or hear about it; it’s another to witness the damage. It’s been several hours, but it still blew her mind. “If she’s up for it, please do.”
He nodded again.
“Go ahead, instruct her to do that when she’s ready. Hopefully, Rutger’s little sidekick doesn’t raid an antique shop and steal a couple of legitimate silver forks and knives to fend her off.” She sipped the mug again and then smacked her lips.
“It would be a good death if that were to happen. A warrior’s death.”
“For whom?”
“Either.”
Violess giggled and set her mug back down. “Be ready soon.”
“How soon?”
She sighed and leaned back in the chair, looking up at the ceiling for an answer. “Three-thirty should be fine.”
“Three-thirty it is.”
Kael left to give Winnie her instructions while Violess chugged her sugar tea. She kept her eyes on his reflection as he left. When his reflection was long gone, she studied the schoolyard view below.
The fallen ghouls were still littered all over the yard. Violess shrugged without care. They’d rot away into the ground eventually, becoming fertilizer. She would soon summon Hector and Tamarin, demons familiar with the needed ritual, so they could prepare before the arrival of the sacrifices.
Fiya sat in the tree, sleeping. A breeze came and rustled the branches, and she woke when she felt her balance shift. She could sit and sleep in the branches, but they weren’t thick like oak from the south, so the support was less trustworthy to spread out comfortably. She adjusted herself and looked back toward the school.
It was still dark and quiet. Fiya yawned and tried to stretch without falling. Her elbow was stiff, and her leg throbbed like hell. She had a massive headache from her temples down her neck, and she still felt like vomiting. It all hurt, and she had no drugs on her to help, but she didn’t want to leave her perch to find something in town. She figured she could easily miss something happening at Timberwild Elementary if she did.
“Maybe this is why Paul thought it was best just to sit this one out,” she said to herself. Her voice, hoarse and dry: “This sucks.” She reached into her backpack and looked at her phone: only 15 percent power, even though she had it on airplane mode to conserve battery power. No new messages, no missed calls. No signal.
The time showed 3:42 a.m. and then she shut the screen off. In her bag, she had one protein bar, her mask, and the Blackhawk Hunter with the silver bullets scattered at the bottom. They had sprung loose from the handkerchief in the action. She used the handkerchief, tying it around the wound to put pressure on her leg, and tossed the bit of torn shirt aside.
The setting moon bounced light through the trees from above, getting ready to check out for the night, and illuminated a spot on the revolver she had never seen: an inscription on the bottom of the handle. In a laser-etched cursive font, it read: For Fiya, the Graveslinger. She stared for what felt like an eternity, and for that small moment, she didn’t notice any of her pain.
Suddenly, the throttle of an engine boomed in the distance. A truck, but Fiya wasn’t sure what kind. It didn’t growl too differently from the bus. She could tell it came from the school, rather than up the road, but she couldn’t see it anywhere, not even the headlights. She adjusted herself again, from letting her legs drape around the branch like riding a horse, in position to climb down as fast as she could.
Her elbow pain loosened, but her calf still felt like someone was stabbing it with a hot iron.
In the distance, at the top of the hill where the school sat, a moving truck appeared. She wondered what was over there. The cafeteria? Administration offices? Possibly. It wasn’t important, so she shrugged off guessing any further.
It stopped moving, although the engine was still running, sitting at the top of the slope. Then a
second truck appeared, right behind it, followed by a third. They seemed to be waiting for each other. None of them had their headlights on, but Fiya knew she had to move now, or she was going to miss them.
She attempted to climb down the tree, but in her haste, she wound up sliding most of the way. A burning sensation grew in the palms of her hands, even through her tactical gloves. Her knees cursed at her when she got to the bottom.
The trucks were on the asphalt now, making their way to the broken gate. Though they weren’t moving too fast, she could still miss them if she didn’t move fast enough.
She ran through the trees until she saw the road and squeezed herself against the nearest tree thick enough to keep her out of sight from the drivers. She listened for their engines and breathed.
The first truck passed, still moving slowly, and she waited for the second truck. No use trying to sneak along to the first or second truck if the third truck could see everything in front of it.
She took another deep breath, held it, and as the third truck passed, she sprinted as fast as she could with her bum leg to the back end and climbed on its diamond-patterned step above the bumper. She let out her breath as she stood upon the step and looked up to the roof of the truck. It was just out of her reach; not her first time wishing she were taller.
Her heart raced as she psyched herself up, because if she fucked this up, she knew she wasn’t landing back on the step: She’d be rolling on the asphalt while the trucks drove away. “This feels so incredibly stupid,” she whispered.
Then she jumped.
Fiya clung to the smooth roof of the truck, grateful for the extra grip on her gloved palms, but her legs swayed behind. As the trucks drove down the slithering road, they picked up speed, and she could feel it.
She strained to pull herself up, careful not to let her feet touch the roll-up door or dangle out from the sides so the driver would see them in the side mirrors, blowing her cover. She heaved up her torso, the hardest part to do, and then pulled the rest up, sliding carefully across the metal.
When she felt secure, Fiya laid flat on the roof, staring at the night sky. Then she realized the roof could bubble in from her weight and was relieved that it hadn’t.
She breathed easy and watched one of the stars wink at her from above.
A girl walked a block away from the Seattle Art Museum ─ “The SAM” to the locals ─ with earbuds snug in her ears. Short pigtails bounced as she walked in rhythm to her music. She was tempted to break into a dance with the other pedestrians, but she knew they would only give her strange looks. She saw in a mirror how she looked dancing, and she was well-aware of how goofy she looked.
While she was deep in the middle of a hip-swaying strut, lost in the soul of the beat blasting in her ears, a ghoul crept up on her. He ripped his fingers into her throat while gnawing off her ear like plucking a pepperoni off a pizza. One of the earbuds went with it, giving the ghoul a light zap.
If only Ellie had taken the newscaster’s warning about going outside a little more seriously …
It was a routine morning for Ben when he was standing in line, waiting for his coffee. The city shut-down alert advised everyone to stay in their homes, except for the essentials, and Ben sure considered his chocolate-chip frap an essential. His ex-girlfriend often would give him crap that a Frappuccino wasn’t real coffee.
He even enjoyed the shorter line, relieved he could dodge sitting in the drive-thru for another day. As he waited for his frap, he caught the eyes of a girl looking at him. When their eyes connected, she smiled. A green tea was called out for a Tara, and the gal stepped forward to grab it. He liked that name, Tara. He smiled back, a big goofy smile that was pure and honest but often got him mocked in school yearbooks.
He was about to introduce himself when a man freshly infected with Ghoul Fever drove his car into the coffee shop, slamming Ben and Tara into a pillar. The driver crawled out of the wrecked car and successfully reached and chewed on the nearest person.
If only Ben listened to his conspiracy-theory radio that told him to get the hell out of Seattle as soon as possible.
The elevator door dinged when it reached the lobby floor of the Grand Hotel, and when it opened, ghouls poured out of the elevator onto those who patiently waited. Some were able to turn away and run, but others got to know what it felt like to be an all-you-can-eat buffet.
If only the hotel staff had canceled reservations and shut down like it was supposed to.
The hospitals were hit the worst. Cases that seemed at first like aggressive forms of the flu became rabid Ghoul Fever infections. A disease with no known cure, vaccine or even relief; 100-percent mortality rate, and difficult to identify until too late. The children who weren’t bedridden were the easiest to catch and turn. Police were being called from neighboring cities to help contain and control it.
The ferries became overcrowded, and those left behind waiting for the next ferry were swarmed on the docks by ghouls. Soon, the ferry services were canceled in fear of spreading the contagion, although no incidents on the other side of the Puget Sound were reported.
Interstate 5 was jammed, both north- and southbound, by those who listened too late. By nightfall, the streets ran red. Evacuations were underway in Seattle and every neighboring city within 50 miles, and all were being handled poorly.
If only ...
No one paid attention over the last few days that dozens of unmarked moving vans scattered throughout Seattle, dumping ghouls from Skyhill into the allies, docks, and abandoned buildings.
By dawn, about the same time Fiya rode the rooftop of a moving van to an unknown location, the City of Seattle was quarantined, and those left inside the barricade were on their own. Abandoned vehicles were used to wall the interstates overnight.
Hundreds of thousands of people, thousands of families were still left behind the barricades while the infestation of Ghoul Fever rose in the center of the city, slowly spreading out.
It was unknown how much time those people had before someone could transfer them as the military hurried to barricade the city to stop the ghouls from spreading. They focused their efforts by rounding up anything they could use to barricade fields and wilderness, creating a massive perimeter.
If only they acted sooner …
Dawn came with a bright rose tint, and Big Devil Peak spied on three unmarked non-franchise 26-foot moving trucks on Highway 20. They wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary, if not for the person flat on the roof of one of them. The rooftop was so high that Fiya managed to stay out of view of nearly every vehicle on the road—including the very few police in the area. She really didn’t need them messing up any of this if she was caught.
Police, though well meaning, could discover the prisoners, so that would be a good thing, yes? She pondered the idea, tempted to sit up and let herself be seen, but any cop she saw headed westbound at a shocking speed. Undoubtedly, one of them would notice if she sat up and made herself visible? But then, if they did pull the vans over, what was to stop Violess from just unleashing Kael on the cops right there on the highway? Their bullets wouldn’t stop him, and he didn’t seem to have a reason to hide anymore. It would be a slaughter.
Fiya mulled over the idea and scrapped it. It was better just to do her best to continue staying out of sight, not letting others get involved, and worse, getting hurt. Or even worse, die.
The trucks turned off the highway, headed south. Fiya put on her mask since the rushing cold air was harsh on her face. Though she didn’t like the wind on her face, it did make her leg feel a little better. She was careful not to bend it to catch more of the cold or accidentally signal any nosey travelers.
While heading south, she noticed there seemed to be a lack of police vehicles on the road. She took out her phone to look for any news on the ghoul problem in Seattle, and her insides soured on the results. Reading about the barricade and the government taking its time to decide how to get the rest of the civilians out only aggravated her, and she i
magined plowing a bus through one of the barricades. The imagination, though, is a funny thing: If she were to do that, yes, she’d save lives, but what would she do about a mass population of ghouls that would surely follow? How would she safely separate the ghouls from the people? The more she thought about it, the more complicated it got.
A train sat idling at an old train station. The front was a semi-automatic engine, and it was followed by a mixed batch of cars: some carriage, some cargo freights, mismatching paint, and different sizes. As Rutger was pulled out of the back of the truck, he figured this group must’ve stolen each car from a train graveyard and Frankenstein’d themselves a ride. They couldn’t have been stolen from active trains, as the FBI would’ve been all over them like flies on dog shit, and it definitely wasn’t something Amtrak would put together.
Forced to march to the train, he looked around and saw nothing but dark green forest and mountains. In the distance, he saw Glacier Peak, blanketing with clouds. He saw a paved road that led to the dilapidated station, the one they must’ve come upon. He couldn’t see if there was a town nearby, just the cracking asphalt path disappearing into a nest of pines that led them there.
He’d been given back his clothes, and this comforted him against the cool air at this elevation. He would’ve hated to have his bare chest exposed in this climate.
Ghouls prodded the prisoners along with shovels and baseball bats. Thomas and Liama were unloaded, and Liama hung her head low. She was all out of tears, but that didn’t stop her face from moping. Dried clusters of salt left from her tears clung to her cheeks. Thomas understood, but when he tried to kiss the top of her head to let her know things will be okay, a shovel jabbed into his back. He winced and cringed.
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