by S E Lunsford
I looked through the window in the door into the hallway, pushing down on the door handle that gave but didn’t move. Frustrated I pushed harder when a pair of deep blue eyes looked back at me through the window. Gasping I jerked back and fell just as a loud crash came from below followed by the unmistakable smell of creeper rot.
“Get the door open,” Edward yelled as the sound of bodies scrambling over themselves to get up the stairs got louder. The blood on the stairs below sending them into a frenzy. Glancing over, I saw he stood at the top of the stairs a shoe in each hand. I stood up, launching myself at the door, just as he managed to grab a hold of the stair rails and kick out at the first of the fast moving group snapping the necks of multiple zombies with one smooth motion. They fell back stopping their comrades in death momentarily and becoming a light snack before the main meal, which was us.
The door opened as I made contact with its cool steel. I flew through the open space landing on all fours on the carpet, quickly followed by Becky throwing Felicia forward, who landed on my back. Bucking her off, I pushed myself up standing just in time to see Edward nailing creepers in the eyes with the shoe heels as he kicked out and stepped back in an impressive dance to not get bit or overrun.
A young man darted into the stairwell and pulled Edward back into the hallway, as three others appeared out of one of the rooms across the hall. They quickly slammed the door securing it with a piece of furniture as the creepers thudded against it howled with rage.
Felicia used the wall to crawl up to a standing position, as the rest of us watched the door to see if it would hold. It did.
“Come on,” Edward said, making his way down the hallway.
All of us followed as the lights flickered then went off.
“That would put an end to communications,” said an unfamiliar voice.
“You think?” I asked having trouble keeping the sarcasm out of my voice, then realizing I didn’t really care. “Who are you?”
“It doesn’t really matter who we are at this point,” said another voice. “Just know we’re from Sanctuary, and we’ve been working on freeing the women from the angels for a while.”
“Freeing us,” Felicia voice pitched up so that it vibrated on the edge of a shriek. “We don’t need to be freed, who do you….” she trailed off with a gurgle, and began to cough.
I took a deep breath only smelling the faint scent of creepers and nothing else as I made my over to her in the dark hallway. Reaching out, my fingertips grazed the fabric of her dress and she clasped my hands to hers.
“We can’t survive with them,” she whispered to me her voice vibrating with urgency. “You don’t know what they do.”
“Down here,” came Edward’s voice from down the hall.
“Come on,” I said to her as I pulled her hands towards his voice, and was immediately met with resistance.
“No,” she said her voice gaining a little steel. “I won’t go with them, you don’t know what they do.”
“Listen,” I said leaning forward so only she could hear me. “You’ve been here with the angels for a while, out there, out there where I just was a few days ago, Sanctuary is where we all head to and if we can get there, we’re lucky. They’ve come to help us. We’ve got to go with them.”
“No,” she said again.
I could feel Becky move closer to us. “We have to take her back to her angel,” she said.
Turning in the darkness I tried to see Becky’s form. If I narrowed my eyes just so, I could see her, a slightly smallish darker form against the darkness, and she was a lot closer than I thought she was.
I felt rather than saw her lean towards us. “Besides, even with all we’ve heard out there, we still don’t really know if they’re okay, these guys,” she said dropping her voice into low tones so only Felicia and I could hear.
“See,” Felicia said bolstered by Becky’s show of support.
I gripped her hands feeling torn, if these guys were from Sanctuary then they were the ones who could get us there, and possibly to Cassie and Chris and the others if they made it. But, in reality, I knew nothing about the place, except that it was supposedly safe from creepers. More than safe if the stories that circulated that the residents of Sanctuary could walk among the creepers and not get attacked and eaten or turned were true.
“What’s going on?” Edward’s voice came from down the hallway. “We have to get going, there’s a transport.” His voice came closer.
I gave Felicia hands a squeeze before I reached out with my right hand for Becky’s hand, who knew just where to find mine. We stood linked together as he stopped in front of us.
“Dani?” He whispered.
“We’ve got to get her to her angel,” I found myself saying. “He will take care of her.”
The others down the hall snorted in derision at my words.
“They take care of no one,” called out a voice.
“They do,” Felicia hissed.
Edward stood still in front of us. I could sense every muscle in his body tighten as he processed my words.
“How long do you think it will take?” He finally said.
“Not long,” Becky answered. “I saw where he was when we looked out the glass doors. He may not have moved far waiting for her to come back.”
“You’re sure?” Edward’s voice came for the darkness.
“Yes,” she said. “The ones who are,” she stumbled over her words. “The ones that are fond of their partners, they do seem to take care of them.”
I stared at the black spot where her voice came from wondering how she knew these things when she’d just come into the mix today.
“I notice things,” she said softly as if in response to my thoughts.
“All right,” Edward said. “We can’t hold up the transport, if you do this you may be on your own. I’ll try to find you, but if we can’t find each other, head North, the compound is a little North of the city.”
He reached out blindly before making contact with me and pulling me close to him. Wrapping his arms around me, I sensed he opened his mouth as if to say something before closing it abruptly.
“I’ll be looking for you,” he said, before releasing me as quickly as he hugged me, leaving me feeling cold. “Go to the other end of the hallway, there’s a set of stairs to the outside that’s protected, no creepers there. Hopefully Becky can guide you from there. And here,” I felt him push two sheathed knives into my hands, “One for you and one for Becky, don’t let them know where they came from.”
“Okay,” I whispered finally finding my voice around my dry tongue. “We, Becky and me, we’ll see you there.”
“I hope so,” he whispered furiously before he turned and disappeared into the darkness.
Chapter 10
The window at the end of the hall suddenly flared with light allowing us to see the door to the stairway that Edward had mentioned. We crept towards it, stopping so we couldn’t be seen from below and looked down at the controlled chaos. Angels and men were working together to herd creepers into cages. The angels grabbing them with their bare hands, while the men pushed at them with what looked to be electric batons.
Watching one man in particular, I noted that the creepers didn’t respond to the baton, but they did respond to the man. I had never seen such a thing before, they didn’t even lunge for him, just allowed him to herd them into a waiting cage.
“Why are we waiting?” Becky gently touched my arm before her gaze followed mine. “Oh,” was her only comment.
“Why aren’t they attacking the men?” I whispered.
“They train them,” came Felicia’s flat response from behind me.
“Train them?” I turned to her. She stood, a gray figure next to the door that would take us downstairs and into the fray.
“They’re afraid of them, the men,” Becky said.
“How do you know?” I asked looking back at her.
She just shrugged before making her way to the door and putting h
er head next to it to hear what might be going on on the other side.
“Come on,” she whispered as she opened the door before disappearing inside.
Felicia and I slipped through behind her. The stairwell was pitch black and silent. Groping over to my side I grasped Felicia’s hand as Becky walked down the stairs her feet whispering so softly on each step that if I hadn’t been listening intently, I wouldn’t have heard them. Carefully, I found the steps gently tugging on Felicia’s hand behind me until we had safely navigated the stairs in the dark.
“Ready?” Becky said.
I nodded before I realized that she couldn’t see me.
“We’re ready,” Felicia said quietly, her voice firmer than the shaking of her hand.
Becky opened the door slowly letting a shard of light into the stairwell. We stepped into the hall, and I looked down into the gray haze that had settled there seeing the door we had gone through before more than three quarters down from where we now stood, not a creeper in sight. My stomach twisted as I thought of them coming back.
“They won’t,” Becky said, as if reading my mind again. Looking over at her I knew the disbelief I felt had settled on my face, but she just smiled as she saw my expression. Turning back towards the hallway she smiled. “What do you see?” She asked pointing.
Following her hand, I looked again seeing limp golden scarves hanging from the walls exactly across from each other. “They won’t go past those,” she said.
“Okay, that’s just about the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said looking back at her. “What do you mean they won’t go past those?”
“We don’t have time for this,” Felicia whined.
“We do,” I hissed glaring at her. “What do you mean?” I turned to face Becky again.
“They’ve trained them,” she explained. “They’ve trained them not to attack the people who have that golden thread or scarf on them, at least they’ve trained the ones around here.”
Mentally turning over what she said, I could hardly believe it. I thought back to the servers I had seen, along with some of the other people, but I didn’t remember seeing any of them with the gold material on them. Glancing over, my eyes seemed to focus on the veils that still hung loosely from our heads and that despite their main color, they all had gold threaded through them. I felt realization dawn inside my mind.
“You get it?” Becky said. “The veils aren’t just about the angels, they’re about protecting us from the creepers.”
“Do we need to wear them on our heads?” I asked.
“Not really,” she shrugged. “That’s just for the angels, for some reason they like that, I suspect it’s an inside joke with them. We can just as easily wear them on our arms, which actually might be a good idea, just in case we do come across some who aren’t responsive to them. The last thing we need is having those stupid veils falling in our eyes if we’re having to fight.”
“Aren’t responsive to them?” My head was reeling with this new information, at the thought that the creepers could be trained, and all manner of things that could be done with them, which brought back a memory I had buried as being too bizarre to examine in Cassie’s and my flight across the country. “So, that’s why,” I whispered.
Becky nodded. “You’ve come across some of the creeper armies?”
“That’s not what we thought they were,” I said. “It was just so odd. We saw men walking with a group of them in the distance, and were just thankful they didn’t head towards us, but they were definitely headed for something.” The word armies sunk in. “People are using them to fight each other?”
“That’s what I’ve heard. Some men, mostly in the South, have figured out how to control the creepers and are using them to try to create their own countries or something. I’ve also heard they’re using them to attack some of the angels creatures even though they don’t work against the angels themselves,” she said, as she pulled her veil from her hair and handed it to me. “Can you knot it on my arm?”
The idea of trainable creepers churned through my mind as I made sure the veil was firmly attached to her arm, and she tied mine. Felicia shook her head when we looked over at her, the question of changing the placement of the veil not even our lips.
“So they’re fighting them?” I asked Becky looking down at her and thinking of the possibilities of an army that was fighting for freedom from the angels.
“A little,” she shrugged. “But, mostly they’re fighting each other.”
I sighed in frustration.
“What about Sanctuary?” I asked.
“We can’t stand here talking all day,” Felicia exploded. “We have to find my angel.”
We stood silent in the face of her sudden outburst, Becky and I exchanging glances as Felicia made her way to the door, throwing it open before we could say a word.
The stench of the place hit me before we even walked outside. Sickly creeper rot mixed with the appealing fragrance of the angels, alongside human sweat mingled in an offensive combination. My nose wrinkled at it, and I immediately regretted not having any sort of shirt collar to pull up over my nose to mute it a bit. Glancing down at the veil on my arm an idea hit me. I quickly untied it and wound it around my head, covering the lower half of my face and securing it with knot at my neck.
It was relatively silent where we stood. From the window upstairs it had looked like the creepers were largely controlled, but I had no idea where we would find the angel we were looking for. I just hoped we didn’t find the angel next to the pool first.
Hugging the wall, we made our way down the walkway alongside rooms that opened up onto the lush garden area centered around the pool. It was a larger area than I thought. Light would flare up every once in a while, bathing everything in a shadowy orange hue that allowed us to see for a moment before being plunged back into darkness again.
In her haste to find the angel she was looking for, Felicia hurried along, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings and the fact that we were coming to the edge of the building. I shook my head slightly. She certainly hadn’t been living on the outside for very long if she could just rush headlong to an unknown area without being chased. Cassie and I had found that silence, stealth and caution were the watchwords for survival. That first night we’d seen too many people killed or turned by rushing forward to what they thought was safety only to find that it was a trap.
Pushing myself forward, I caught her around the waist just as she was going to turn the corner. She struggled against me, but I held her still.
“Don’t move,” I whispered.
She went still in my arms, and I released her taking a deep breath in. The chaos of smells was still in the air, but didn’t seem to be any closer.
Becky carefully looked around the corner. “It looks clear,” she whispered.
“Don’t just rush around,” I whispered to Felicia. “You could get us all killed.”
She nodded in agreement, but I could tell from the frantic look in her eyes that she wasn’t really absorbing what I was saying. She pulled on the ends of her hair, rearranging her veil as her eyes strayed to Becky then on to the corner of the building.
I sighed. “Come on.”
I grasped one of the knives Edward had given me in my hand, unsheathing it before handing the other the Becky, who to her credit didn’t even ask where I got it or why I hadn’t given it to her before. I made a mental note to find out what her story was, that is if we got out of here alive and made it to Sanctuary.
A crash to our left made me tense and crouch down. Becky whipped around to see what it was too. A body shambled through the foliage, as Felicia took the opportunity to run around the corner and down the hallway. The figure saw the movement and looked over, its yellowish eyes oozing black as recognition dawned there, before moving over to Becky and me.
Homing in on Becky, it dashed forward grasping at her before she even had a chance to raise her arm. Jumping forward I quickly stabbed it in its eye, feeling the kn
ife rip through its brain before it even had a chance to move. Pulling my knife out, I stepped out of the way as it crumpled to the ground in a heap. A flash of light lit up the area and I recognized it as the server who had changed earlier. That was why I hadn’t been able to smell him. He had too recently changed.
Anger and fear buzzed between Becky and I as we took off at a run after Felicia, just in time to see the tip of her veil turn into the garden area. My grip on my knife tightening as we followed, the smells growing stronger. A motion up ahead set every one of my nerves on fire itching to do something.
We stopped short at the edge of the pool area where angels determinedly barked orders at men in uniform and creepers moaned and thrashed. The men were pushing the creepers into a cage that sat at the far back of the area, the space where pool chairs and chaise lounges were just a little while ago. I registered mild surprise as I saw foliage that had been smashed down because trucks had driven over it. The cage sat just on the edge of the open area beyond which shadowy figures moved in the darkness. Flashlights cast flickering light around, sometimes landing on a creeper, angel, person or something else I wasn’t able to quickly identify.
“There she is,” Becky whispered, pointing to the left side of the pool where Felicia had slowed down. She stopped moving, a panicky expression settling on her face as she looked around, making her seem even more pale. Her veil hung at an odd angle in her hair that resembled nothing of the golden locks that shone down her back when we first stood poolside, just a short time ago. A purple blue bruise had formed on her forehead and blood from her gash had coagulated around it. I silently thanked anyone who was listening that it wasn’t still actively bleeding. No matter what Becky said about the golden threads in the veil, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure they would stop the creepers.
Even with the blood just a crusty mess on her forehead, I saw that a couple of the creepers had caught its scent, craning their necks back their eyes rolling to see its source as they were prodded forward into the cage. One of them even shuffled backwards trying to evade the baton to get to her.