“You would kill the Prophet for this? But, she is just a little girl.”
“I…” Kate ran a finger over a healing tooth-shaped bruise. “I don’t know. The priest said it is a creature of evil that only looks like a child. Maybe it made itself look innocent so no one dared destroy it? What if this Prophet is really that evil you’re talking about?”
“That is stupid.”
“Think about it…” Kate caught sight of buildings in the distance and veered off course. “You say she can heal and wants to help everyone. How many die fighting over her? If you count the number of lives she saves against the number of people who died because of her, which side wins?”
“I… I never thought that before. It isn’t her. It is greed that makes them kill.” Alejandra stopped walking a few paces ahead, waiting. “The legends say she can cure anything, except death.”
Kate looked up. “Anything?” She teased a finger at the dirt by her toes. Maybe I should talk to her… it first. She thinks the girl is real. What if that priest is trying to trick me?
Long shadows stretched across the road from what remained of old buildings littered about open yards of browned scrub and dirt. Some looked like they had been vehicles in a past life. The burned husks of former military trucks clustered together at the end of a long, one-story building painted in white, blue, and bullet holes. Kate stuck her toe under a thin, rectangular piece of dented metal on the road and kicked it over. Enough remained of green paint and white letters for her to read the name of the once-town.
“You can’t wear that,” said Alejandra. “And it is too weak for weapons. The metal will not hold an edge.”
“It’s a sign. This place was called Edgewood. We’re getting close. It feels like just past the mountains.” She looked up at the waning sun. “It will be dark before we can cross. We should shelter here for the night.”
“The metal speaks to you?”
Kate spent a moment explaining the concept of written words. Alejandra had never heard of such a thing, but seemed eager to hear about it. Kate’s thoughts drifted back to the old doctor teaching her while she floated inside her tank/prison. Holographic projectors had created numbers and letters in the gel with her, so she could do the lessons. Their discussion of the alphabet continued on their walk through the abandoned town. Someone had hung scraps of wood and glass from numerous branches. The chimes shifted in the wind, lending an eerie musical backdrop to the haunted desolation around them. Kate headed onto a narrow road, barely two lanes running north-south. The pull tugged at her; the urge to follow it grew.
A door creaked somewhere out of sight, the sound sharing the breeze with a chattering whisper. Kate stalled, raising a hand to silence Alejandra as she looked around. Daylight had weakened to the point where even simulating black, her outfit took on a spectral glow.
Something is here.
Alejandra jumped back at the voice injected into her thoughts. Chain fragments rang on the paving. She shrugged the shotgun off its strap and held it at the ready.
Great swaths of open ground spread between the ancient buildings, providing little in the way of cover. Moonlit scrub brush cast long shadows over the blue-glowing dirt. Kate squinted at broken windows, long-dead cars, and the occasional drift of shadow she hoped was an animal in the dark.
“You are lit up,” said Alejandra. “If we are hunted, they will see you.”
“That should make it easier to kill them.”
A weak moan emanated from their right. Kate tiptoed in that direction, hands raised in preparation for a fight. She cringed at the clamor of Alejandra’s broken shackles when she moved to follow.
“Watch behind us,” whispered Kate.
Alejandra whirled about, walking backward.
Beyond a collapsing grey building, a man writhed upon the ground. Whoever lived here had staked out an emaciated, nude man, spread-eagled on the ground with large, blood-caked hooks pierced through both wrists and behind his Achilles tendons. Blood from thousands of small cuts covered his chest, and his mouth was a gory mess of sharpened teeth. A bloody file still sat on his stomach below where someone had started the process of stitching dark brown leather to his skin.
The sight of the mad tailor’s work made Kate gag.
A sick, wheezing moan foamed blood over what remained of his teeth as he raised his head toward her. Tight leather also covered the upper part of his skull like a second skin, held to his cheeks by a zigzag of straining black threads. Dilated eyes focused on the light of her phantom clothing. His arms wobbled as he clenched his fingers as close to fists as he could get them. More blood welled out of the point where the hooks pierced; ropes creaked.
“Unggggh…” Thick, bloody goo oozed from his mouth.
Alejandra, mesmerized by the ghastly sight, almost walked into Kate from behind. She gasped, taking her left hand off the shotgun to cover her mouth. Again, she made the sign of the cross.
“He wants me to kill him,” said Kate in a near-whisper.
“H-how? That was speaking?”
Kate glanced at her and opened a telepathic link. I can hear his thoughts. They are an insane scramble of agony. He’s barely human.
Recognition widened Alejandra’s eyes. Tears ran down her cheeks. “Thank you for making me shoot the chain. We have to run away, now.”
“Why?” Kate advanced on the helpless, writhing figure.
Alejandra stayed at the corner of the building, making noises at her as though she called a cat. “Nibblers. They will eat us. We have to run!”
The man stopped fighting the ropes as Kate neared, laying back on the ground and exposing his neck. Involuntary shivers kept one leg rattling.
“Kate!” hissed Alejandra. “This is their home. They are turning him into one of them! We must leave before they see us.”
She locked eyes with the man. One brief instant of sanity returned; enough for him to nod. The first deer had been easy to kill, but hard to accept. The second deer was the hardest kill, harder even than the first time El Tío asked her to help him with a problem. She had almost hesitated killing someone because she’d been told to, but the idiot pulled a gun.
Kate couldn’t look away from where the man’s cheeks warped at the pull of the zigzag threads. All the times she had killed in the past, why now did it feel almost wrong? Even with the man begging for it.
“Kate!” whispered Alejandra, waving. “You cannot help him.”
“Yes, I can.”
A fireball formed over Kate’s outstretched hand, hovering inches from her skin. She concentrated, forcing a buildup of energy, shifting the burn from blue into white. I don’t want him to suffer more. He stared at it, thrashing his head in a violent nod. Pity made for weak motivation, no stronger than the detached nothing she so often afforded people El Tío wanted dead. They died screaming. She wanted this man’s relief to be instant.
Kate thought back to Esteban, the face he made when he burned himself. She held onto the longing and the shame, her anger at being a freak no one wanted near them. An audible whoosh surrounded the orb as it turned pure white. A trace of pain licked at her hand―the fire approached the limits of whatever subconscious mechanism kept her from burning herself. Hurt triggered the normal human reaction to burning and she flung it downward, willing it into a missile more by power of mind than physical gesture.
Skin and leather vaporized on contact, leaving charred bone and empty eye sockets smoldering. Tiny patches of candle flame lingered on the blackened skull. The body jerked twice, and went still. Kate stared at the corpse, lost to wondering if he was better off.
Boom.
She jumped at the sound of a shotgun going off behind her. Alejandra pumped the weapon and fired a second time after a slight correction in aim, earning a wail in the distance. Though the loud and substantial report shook the air, Alejandra barely moved under the recoil. Bodies glided around in the dark, silhouettes flecked with bits of gleaming metal. The shadows had an eerie hybrid gait somewhere between m
onkey and stalking panther. A scrape of metal on stone pulled Kate’s head around to face forward.
A wiry man, covered head to toe in leather except for around his mouth and eyes, flowed around the corner of the building. His outstretched left hand raked the wall with metal claws. Both arms ended in a fistful of five-inch blades, triangular shards of steel grafted onto his fingers―nail extensions from Hell. Their sharpened edges still bore the dried blood of a prior victim.
Teeth, filed to points, oozed liquid two parts saliva and one part blood. Wild eyes regarded her without a trace of lust or attraction. One thought bounced around in his head, a tiny rock rattling around in an empty can: food.
Kate lost a few seconds staring at the claws. Her skin crawled with the memory of the rad ghouls’ hands all over her. Fingernails lasted long enough to scratch before they disintegrated; metal claws wouldn’t burn. More shadows gathered behind him making chitters of excitement.
Boom. Alejandra fired again.
The jolt destroyed hesitation.
Kate brought her hands together wrist to wrist, fingers splayed, and projected a streamer of flame into the figure’s chest. He howled, far higher pitched a noise than she expected to come from anything male, and leapt around the corner out of sight. Kate flung herself into a white door two paces closer to where Alejandra cursed the misfeeding shotgun. A Nibbler leapt off the roof, landing between them with a keening wail, facing Kate.
Alejandra whipped around, bashing it in the back of the head with the butt of the shotgun. The impact knocked it face-first into the wall. She hit it again in the back, and when it turned on her, she cracked it across the face, knocking it to the ground. In the moment of reprieve, Alejandra pulled fresh shells from the bandolier and loaded them.
Kate jumped shoulder-first into the door, succeeding only in blackening ancient paint.
“What are you doing?” yelled Alejandra, shaking the weapon. It went off, liquefying the downed Nibbler’s head into a spatter.
“They’re everywhere. We need a choke point.” Kate bounced off the door again. “Fuck!”
Alejandra, pumped, aimed behind her, and fired. A howl of pain erupted from the distance. She backed up and fired again. Kate fumed, and kicked at the door with all she had. Several black footprints and an intact door mocked her.
“You are a skinny little thing,” said Alejandra. “Move.”
The next leather-clad figure around the corner bore the brunt of Kate’s anger. She never asked to have the body she got; the scientists thought it would help her be a spy. Idiots. The nibbler dropped where he stood, cradling his burning chest, face on the ground and ass in the air. Inconspicuous works better than a red-haired gazelle. A long, sustained, flamethrower effect forced a pack of whooping crazies racing in from the other side to dive for cover. She snarled, tossing fire left and right in a faltering effort to keep the nibblers away. Unless they… Of course, I was going to be an assassin. Cozy up to the big boss, get him in bed and…
Four nibblers to the right went flying as Kate’s anger caused a midair detonation.
Alejandra held the shotgun sideways, reared up on one leg, and booted the door by the knob. It cracked, but held. A screeching voice from above preceded a jagged-toothed mouth grinning over the roof. She got the shotgun up as it leapt at her. The tip caught it in the chest as it went off, blasting a hole in the body, which the weapon slid through. His dead weight falling on her knocked her flat on her back.
Kate flicked a fireball into another one sprinting for the pinned woman, killing it in an instant.
Alejandra rolled left, jerking the shotgun back and forth in the corpse to pump it before firing at one charging Kate from behind. She shoved the body away and leapt up, rushing the door with a war cry and a kick that knocked it wide open.
Kate pulled existing fire from a smoldering corpse and backed into the building, gathering it into a sphere, which she hurled at two more nibblers brave enough to run out of the darkness. Dry mustiness hung in the air, though she didn’t have time to gawk at the prewar furnishings.
Two nibblers ran for her, claws raking the air as they loped up to a sprint. A few quick fireballs made them jump away; the building shuddered at their impact with the wall on either side of the door. A clatter of metal behind her broke the silence. Alejandra pulled shells from her belt and stuffed them into the shotgun while Kate burned another one trying to follow them inside.
The frantic whooping outside faded to silence. The nibblers seemed hesitant and wary of charging headlong at the door. To the left, the main ‘living room’ area merged with a kitchen. Three windows and the front door gave them a limited view of the outside. The other end of the room had a narrow hallway leading to a few doors.
“What’s that smell?” asked Alejandra, pumping the shotgun and sticking one more round in. Three remained on the belt.
“Smell?” Kate blinked. “Oh…” The fragrance of smoldering linoleum brought a growl to her voice. “Nothing to worry about.”
At least the place had a concrete slab instead of wood for a foundation. She grumbled, hating the sensation of standing in sticky goop as the floor bubbled around her toes. A desperate nibbler appeared, running for the door with a trash can lid held up like a shield.
Blam!
It didn’t do much against buckshot.
“Are you okay?” Alejandra sounded worried, but in control.
“Just peachy.”
The woman lowered her voice to a reassuring tone. “You’re trembling.”
Kate looked at her shaking hands. “Isn’t this a normal reaction to being surrounded by blade-fingered lunatics that want to eat me? The damn curse won’t protect me from their claws. I feel naked.” Bullets splatter… will those? She shivered, not wanting to find out if her subconscious defense against getting shot worked on steel blades too.
Alejandra didn’t say it, but her expression did.
“Yeah, yeah… I know,” grumbled Kate.
Both women looked up as feet tapped over the ceiling. Kate squeezed her hands into fists, wanting armor… wanting something between her and sharp pointies. She glared out the window over the sink at a nibbler poking out from behind a wrecked car twenty yards from the door, staring. In his surface thoughts lurked a view of the house from outside.
“Kitchen windows,” Kate shouted, pointing. “Two coming. I’ll cover the back.”
Glass shattered deeper in the building before Alejandra could question. Seconds later, nibblers attacked the doors in the rear hallway. Leather-wrapped arms raked their claws, splintering and chewing up the flimsy hollow wood. Dim blue light flickered over the walls as fireballs flew.
Bang, ka-chuck, bang.
Screams and twinkling glass filled the vacuous silence in the wake of the blast. Alejandra covered three windows and the door while Kate kept a burn stream on the ones attempting to enter via the hallway.
Even expecting it, the gunfire inside the house made her jump and her ears ring with each shot. With the back hallway clear, Kate ran to shove the front door closed, but it bounced open.
Alejandra loaded her last three shells.
Another nibbler leapt in at Kate, claws raised. She managed to get a fireball to form in her hand before the shotgun went off from behind, blasting a gouge out of the side of his neck. The limp nibbler’s charge became a hurtling dead weight that crashed into her, knocking her down. He smoldered on contact, gasping for air while pawing at his throat. Arterial spurts shot dark streams three feet in the air, covering her in boiling blood.
Kate shoved and screamed; bits of metal worked into his leather shell scraped her skin. She kicked the body to the side and looked up at two more coming in the door. Crawling backward, she hurled flames between her knees.
Alejandra’s shotgun went off again. Her last shell cored out the head of the one on the right. She tossed the empty weapon onto the table and drew a pistol from her belt, firing at the kitchen window.
“How many of these fuckin’ guys are ther
e?” Kate looked around in a frantic search for options. A gleam of silver gave her an idea. “Get in the fridge!”
Alejandra almost ripped her skirt off trying to get her second gun out. “What?”
“Do it!” Kate screamed.
Nibblers crawled in the windows, chittering and clicking their bladed fingers. Bloody foam oozed through shaved teeth. More emerged from the back rooms as another filled the only door out. Alejandra fired wild at the ones in the kitchen, running for the large metal cabinet in the corner.
Kate waited for the whump of the rubber-sealed door and curled into a ball. Not since a platoon of grown men had been ready to shoot a little girl had Kate felt such overwhelming terror. Tempered with age, her fear flashed, a spark in the infinite blackness of her adult mind. Dread became anger: pure, unbridled rage at what the world had done to her. In her mind, a child’s scream of terror built into a grown woman’s cry of determination to survive. Sounds of stomping, crashing, and breaking glass closed in.
A hand touched her, breaking the calm.
The spark expanded with the sound in a brilliant flash in her imagination. Her body shuddered from an incredible pressure wave and slumped from a tremendous drain of energy. A deafening roar drowned out screaming for several seconds before perfect silence returned. Faint snaps and hisses lingered in the quiet; the all-too-familiar clatter of burning timber raining back to earth brought reassurance and peace.
She uncurled, not bothering to open her eyes as her limp body rolled out on the floor like a meat carpet. The strange sensation of cold floor on her naked skin barely registered. Wind tousled her hair and caressed her front. Fatigue left her paralyzed. Minutes passed in silence until the suctioning sound of the refrigerator door opening brought her out of her delirium. Open, starry sky greeted her gaze.
The entire house had vanished.
Kate rolled her head to look at the refrigerator lying on its back some twenty meters from where it had been before. A steel sink hit the ground with a clank farther away. Bits of flaming ash hovered in the air, a snow of embers.
Daugher of Ash Page 21