The Reaper

by S E Lunsford

  I backpedaled quickly as blood gushed from the wound in his temple, running down the side of his face before landing on his wings. The red spread out over the individual feathers, changing them from a pearl white to a deep crimson.

  A hand grabbed my arm, and I was pulled back towards the dead end. I quickly changed direction, my feet keeping pace with my captor as the air behind us filled with the sound of the creator’s wings. The small door lay just where he said it was. He ripped it open and we scrabbled down the steps that led into darkness. As it closed, I saw the feet of the two creators landing next to their fallen comrade before the darkness of the space surrounded us.

  The air stilled as we both sat holding our breath. Thudding footsteps coming down the street made the hair on my arms raise. A finger lightly tapped the back of my hand making me flinch and pull away. It followed me, tapping again more insistently this time. My lungs felt like they would explode with the air that I held in them. Tapping my hand a third time, I barely heard him gently release the air from his lungs then take another breath. Realizing he was trying to tell me to breath before I passed out, I carefully did the same. Silently letting the stale air out of my lungs then just as silently taking in another as the dank, dirt smell of the underground room settled in the back of my throat.

  The edge of the fear of discovery slid away as the sound of the footsteps grew fainter, only to rear up whenever the steps became more distinct signaling that they were that much closer to where we hid. Scuffling outside the door that suddenly went quiet made my heart race. I tried not to gasp. Again, the soft tapping on my hand told me to breath silently.

  In the still air, I heard sniffing followed by a frustrated growl just on the other side of the door.

  “We can’t leave him here much longer, they’ll be swarming him soon,” came the voice of one of the creators.

  “I know,” said the other. “But, I know she’s here somewhere, it’s just her scent is gone and there’s something more…,” the lyrical voice trailed off. After a moment its owner began to laugh.

  “What?”

  “It’s him,” came out of the laughter as its owner tried to control it.

  “Him?” The first asked becoming even more confused. “But he’s just a, just a…”

  “A myth?” Said the creator that I’d finally placed as the third. “A non-existent myth?” The creators’ voice had become deadly serious, so much so that I could almost hear the bitter edge of it held far from the words themselves. “You underlings, all you care for is humans, humans, humans,” he spat out. “There are much more important things at risk, and yet here you are asking me if he is real.”

  “Reaper,” the voice exploded into the air so loudly that every muscle in my body froze, not only at the decibel of it but at the raw emotion the word held for this creator. “I will find you, and I will make sure you reap no more.”

  The footsteps moved quickly away from the door, until it wasn’t long before we heard wings beating the air as they lifted their fallen companion.

  As we sat making sure they didn’t return, the realization of what the creator had said sunk into my mind making its way down into the pit of my stomach and settled their uneasily. The few people that Cassie and I had allowed ourselves to speak to all had the same story about the reaper who walked the earth, no one knew what for, but it didn’t sound good. No one really believed he was real, but no one really wanted to meet up with him just in case. I tried to ignore my nerves as I was possibly sitting in a dark earthen basement with the myth himself. Except he didn’t seem like a myth, he seemed like a man. A man who smelled really good, but a man none the less.

  “We have to go,” he said quietly.

  I nodded before I caught myself, feeling a little foolish because there was no way he could see me. Moving towards the door, he caught my wrist and pulled me backwards.

  “Not that way,” he whispered. “The creepers looking for humans, and the humans looking for angel body parts will be all over the street soon.”

  Even as his words dropped softly into the space, I could hear the shuffling of creeper feet. They were drawn to the area because of the noise and the scent of blood that still lay tantalizing in the air. It wasn’t just the creator’s blood they smelled, there were humans trying not to be seen, but were checking to see if anything of the creator had remained. Even a feather from one of their wings was extremely valuable and could be used for trade.

  Early on Cassie and I had seen a creator go down for what looked like no reason at all, and within moments humans had set upon him ripping him apart until every last shred of him was gone. Someone had even dug up some of the bloodied ground that had been underneath him to barter with. We had whispered about how he had gone down for days afterwards, but came to no conclusion about it.

  “Where’d the people come from?” I asked the man, my mind making a mental inventory of the abandoned town. Cassie and I had been careful not to travel in areas where there were many other people walking around.

  “Wherever there’s a carcass the eagles will gather,” was his only response. “Come on.”

  He pulled at my wrist with more pressure, making me dig my heels in and pull back towards the door even though I could hear the creepers starting to turn around in circles on the street nearby.

  “They’ll catch your scent,” he whispered.

  “I don’t even know you,” I spat out.

  “Well, let me introduce myself,” his voice dripped with sarcasm across the space that was tense with my resistance.

  For some reason this shocked me into stillness.

  “You have a name?” I said.

  “Yes, I have a name,” he said a chuckle cutting through the space between us. “It’s Chris.”

  “I can’t leave my friend,” I whispered.

  “Your friend?”

  “My friend, she’s the reason why I was trying to get,” I was interrupted by a snuffling sound just outside the door that was quickly followed by a heavy thud of something, a foot or a hand, on the wood that separated us from them.

  Chris yanked me forward. I almost fell blindly into him as the floor gave way beneath my feet and I was sliding down a dirt tunnel churning up sharp rocks and the tangy scent of fresh soil as I tried desperately to keep my balance. Chris’ hand on my wrist steadied me, as the downward slope became flat ground. We ran on an underground pathway that smelled vaguely of rum like my grandfather used to drink.

  Sweat began to pour off of me, running down my back and into my eyes. My heavy hair come loose from its ponytail sticking to my neck and back as we continued to run, as a stitch began to grow more and more painful in my side. Finally, he began to slow down, his whole body seeming to listen to what could be coming behind us. There was nothing but silence in our wake. The only noise was my deep ragged breaths as I tried to gather enough oxygen in my lungs to get quiet again. He stopped, letting go of my wrist, as I immediately pitched forward my hands landing heavily on my knees as my breathing slowly got under control.

  “Run much?” Came the snide voice of my newly minted companion.

  “Yes, I’ll have you know,” I snipped back at him. “And I’m a damn good shot too.”

  His comment irritated me more than he could imagine because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why I was so out of breath.

  “It’s the moisture in the air,” he said more gently this time.

  “What?” I asked with the sinking feeling that I may be sharing space with someone who, although he saved my life, may not be playing with a full deck of cards.

  “The reason you’re winded,” came his reply. “Now to figure out where we go up and out from here.”

  “What I’d like to know is where here is,” I said finally taking a deep breath, as what he said sunk in. “Don’t you know how to get out of here?”

  “Sure,” he said amusement coloring his words. “Just not the exact specifics of it.”

  Straightening up, I glared at the black space w
here he was.

  “My friend, my best friend is up in some house up there, and you don’t know where we can get out?”

  “Yeah, you mentioned her before, what happened to her?”

  “A bioengineered, it looked like a bioraven,” I ground out, as my own thoughts wound their way through the direction we had come and where under the town we might be. Since my breath was caught, and I no longer was racing to keep up with my own body, I realized that we couldn’t have gone that far.

  “Not good,” he breathed.

  As if I didn't already know that. I could have hit him, if only I could see him.

  “This way,” he announced.

  “Are you sure?” I asked, taking in a deep breath so my anger at getting myself into this situation didn’t take over.

  “Yes,” was his clipped reply. “Keep up.” He tossed over his shoulder as he began to move away.

  I pushed myself away from the rough coldness of the dirt wall, chewing on my lower lip to keep myself from mumbling something that was better left unsaid. That was until I tasted the metallic tell of blood, then I just held my lower lip between my teeth. Chewing my lower lip had always been a nervous habit. A habit I learned to control so I wouldn’t draw blood, because the creepers could smell blood from what seemed like a mile away, even if it was just a drop. I couldn't believe that I had just let a couple-plus years of habit training go to waste because of this stranger.

  Following his footsteps, I was relieved when I could no longer taste the metal of my own blood. At least I’d found out that if I was underground, the creepers probably wouldn't be able to smell blood because we were still alone walking without another sound either behind us or in front.

  My thoughts drifted to Cassie. Worry began to gnaw at the edges of my stomach because her infection had left her helpless in that attic. I hadn’t intended to be gone this long. I knew that if the creepers, or worse yet the creators, got wind of her scent they would do anything to get to her.

  The space between Chris and I contracted as he slowed to a stop. I stopped right behind him and began to listen as intently as he seemed to be doing. No sound met our ears, just more of the same long silences that lined the tunnels.

  “I think this might be it,” He whispered, his tone as quiet and still as the air around us.

  “It was a blue two story house,” I said.

  “We're right below the neighborhood,” he said moving just slightly forward. “I think I know which house you're talking about. But, we want to make sure we go up into a house nearby, that way if there’s undesirables there they won’t know that’s the house we’re after, and she should be safe.”

  He said undesirables the same way that people said cockroaches before the creators came. Now since cockroaches were a form of protein people weren’t so derisive of the horrible little insects that not only could survive a nuclear bomb, but looked set to survive the apocalypse as well.

  Chapter 2

  The ground beneath my feet began a slow rise. Chris stopped in front of me, and I blinked realizing that I could actually see his outline. Looking around for the source of the dim light, I saw that he was actually standing in front of a set of concrete steps that led to a door, and it was the slim light from the doors bottom that slightly illuminated where we stood listening intently. I heard nothing above us, not a creak or a slight step to give away the presence of anything.

  Taking a breath, I went to say something to him, but he quickly held up his hand before motioning me to bring up my gun.

  I wondered if he heard something that I didn’t, and forced myself to focus even more intently on sounds that might be above us, coming up with nothing. Even so, I pulled out my gun feeling my heart rate push up as I did so. My muscles tensed for what might be an instant fight the minute we opened the door. Irritation began to build along with my blood pressure, I hated going into a fight behind someone because it was a good way to get killed. I willed myself to push down the anger that coiled in my stomach and took a deep breath as Chris motioned that we would walk up the stairs and through the door.

  Counting the seven steps up, every muscle in my body tensed as I put my feet on each of them. He slowly turned the doorknob and pushed open the door. The scent of clean, musty air free of the creepers disgusting smell and the creators oddly perfumed scent met us as we carefully emerged into a basement. We waited, listening before we took another set of stairs up into a kitchen.

  A quick look around in the kitchen we found ourselves in told me that whoever lived here had a thing for blue, antique blue embedded in a country decor. For half a second, I pictured a woman standing at the country sink washing dishes, her arms elbow deep in soapy water and laughing at something her family was talking about as they sat at the nearby oak table. Shaking my head, I cleared my mind of the thought. I couldn't afford to be distracted by what could have been. I needed to be firmly standing in the here and now, which was what kept Cassie and I alive all this time. If one of us looked to be going off the edge into yesterdayland, the other would pull us back and kept us firmly rooted in the survival of today.

  I quickly looked out the window framed by blue lacy curtains and saw a shadow dragging itself along the side of the house next door. Chris motioned for me to be still. I stopped, raising my gun just in case the shadow materialized into an actual body. I could tell from the way it moved and the smell seeping in through the open window that it was a creeper. It looked like it was on its own. I knew it was only a matter of time before it picked up our scent, because if I could smell it, it would certainly smell us soon. A siren call that fresh human blood and tasty flesh was sitting just nearby for the taking.

  The shadow disappeared as a hand hit the glass of the back door making a thin crack that another hit would split open. The creeper’s face hung in bloody strips on the other side of the glass, its deep yellow eyes oozing pus and other disgusting green liquids as its mouth began to froth over at the idea of a meal just behind the door. Bringing its hand down on the glass again, the window’s crack was deafening as it shattered inward. Immediately the creeper’s hand began to swing wildly back and forth, totally oblivious to the fact that it was cutting itself on the shards of the glass that remained around the window frame. I watched with a horrified fascinating to see if it would, in fact, cut its arm off even as I tried to get a good aim at its head. I didn’t want to waste bullets on other parts of its body that it would barely register.

  It was head shots or no shots with creepers. They still kept coming, even if you shot every appendage off. It never ceased to amaze me that when they were just wandering around, they were as slow as molasses, but when some of them got the scent of a real live human they were lightning quick just like this one had been. Problem was, you never knew which was which until it was right up in your face.

  Chris gestured for me to put my gun down as he stepped forward to confront it.

  “I’m going to open the door,” he said.

  “You’re insane,” I said as I saw my shot. I stepped quickly in front of him sighted the creeper’s forehead and pulled the trigger. The feeling of triumph that never went away no matter how many of them I shot rose up as I saw the neat hole in the middle of its forehead just before it slumped down, its arm hung up on what was left of the window.

  We stood in silence for a moment as we listened for the telltale sign of others that might be in the area drawn by the sound, but nothing stirred outside.

  “Ever heard the saying, silence is golden?” Chris asked, his face an unreadable mask.

  “Of course,” I hissed in response. “But, if creepers need to die, they need to die, and it doesn't sound like there are anymore.”

  “It’s not the creepers I’m concerned about,” he said, making his way into the living room where he carefully pulled back the closed curtains and looked up at the sky. I followed him and looked outside too. The street in front of the house was empty, not a creeper or anything else in sight. Not only that, but it was silent, too sile
nt. No birds singing. No animals scurrying around.

  I glanced over at the blue house where Cassie was hopefully still safely hidden away in the attic. We stood for long moments looking and listening. Shifting from one foot to the other, I knew there was no way that I could stay still any longer as my friend lay in the house next door.

  “It’s been nice knowing you,” I said curtly as I made my way to the back of the house towards the kitchen.

  “What?” Chris whipped around, narrowing his gaze as he watched me.

  “Thanks for saving me back there,” I tossed over my shoulder. “But, I’m not going to just abandon my friend when everything looks...” my words trailed off as the word ‘okay’ trapped itself in my throat. I stopped mid-stride as I walked into the kitchen and saw that the creeper was gone. Not just slipped down from the perch where its arm had caught on the window frame, but it was gone entirely, along with its smell.

  Taking a deep breath through my nose, I tried to figure out if there were other creepers nearby, but their telltale odor of rotten flesh and infected blood was nowhere around. Stepping back with my eyes flicking back and forth between the door and the kitchen window, I was stopped short by a body behind me. I tensed before quickly realizing it was Chris.

  “It’s gone,” I whispered.

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” he replied in an equally quiet voice.

  Pushing me out of the way, he walked quickly through the kitchen and looked out the window, carefully keeping out of eyeshot of anything outside.

  “Yeah, it’s gone,” he commented, looking back at me. “I told you there was more to be concerned about than the creepers, even they won’t come around, which should tell you something.”

  “Look, I know that okay,” I said. “But, I need to get to my friend.”

  “I know that too,” he said. “And that's what we’re trying to do, get to your friend.”