To the right, he could see through the open doorway into a restaurant where tables and chairs were toppled amidst the spoiled remnants of their final meal, now growing a flourishing, furry coat of green and white mold. The dining room wasn’t nearly as saturated with blood, allowing reptilian footprints to be showcased on the slate gray tile, save for the strip down the middle where they had obviously flooded into the room. There were even prints on the walls and upturned tables where the wood had been carved away by sharp talons. But there were no bodies in there, only tatters of shredded clothing.
All of the bones had been stripped of their meat and piled in the center of the lobby, the revolting heap easily several feet taller than Adam. Based on the sheer amount of blood in the room, he was sure that most of them had been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the vestibule to be butchered. The long bones were still capped with the nubs of gnawed tendons like drumsticks, cracked in half to release the trapped marrow. There were splintered ribs and vertebrae singled out from the spinal columns, skulls split along the fissures to grant access to the tender gray matter. A scattering of teeth and the small carpals of the wrists covered the ground like popcorn. Apparently, in the Swarm’s hurry to move on and cross the lake, they had left the tougher sections, presumably to tide them over on the return trip. The gristly tendons on the knees and ankles were still attached, though the blood had been sucked clean from them. Adam had no idea what the accumulated bones of ninety-some souls would look like, but based on the sheer enormity of the pile, he guessed they were all accounted for.
He could only imagine the pain to which these poor men and women had been subjected, the torture of having their flesh torn away while they were still alive and conscious enough to experience the excruciating agony. He hoped their deaths had been quick, for he knew there was no chance they’d been painless.
“I told you not to come in,” Phoenix said from behind him.
“I needed to see,” Adam whispered. When he turned to face the younger man, tears streamed down his cheeks. “I should have been able to prevent this. I should have been able to convince them to stay.”
“There was nothing you could have done.”
“Do you really believe that?” Adam snapped. “It was within my power to persuade them not to leave and I failed. These people—all of them—died horrible deaths because I failed.”
“They would have died anyway, Adam. It was their destiny.”
“Their destiny? To be torn limb from limb while they were still alive? I refuse to believe that.”
“Whether this way or another, they would have still died all the same.”
“So what’s our destiny then? Are we just going to die, too? What’s the point then? Why don’t we just do it ourselves on our own terms? Why should we struggle to endure if we’re only going to end up like this?”
“Because that’s life,” Phoenix said with a shrug.
“Tell that to them,” Adam said. He walked away from the carnage and past Phoenix without looking back. There were several tables to his left that had been knocked against the wall, the objects that had formerly been atop them piled against the baseboards. Shotguns and rifles, boxes of shells and bullets, hunting jackets. They hadn’t even had time to arm themselves.
He pulled out one of the larger jackets and stacked half a dozen shotguns onto it, lifting his cargo by the sleeves. Struggling to balance the awkward weight, he headed through the foyer and out into the fresh air. Inhaling deeply of the oxygen no longer dripping with death, he headed for the semi cab, threw open the passenger door, and slid the guns onto the floorboard. Without pausing, he strode back inside and loaded the coat with as much of the boxed ammunition as he could make fit, and this time just set the whole load, coat and all, atop the steel and polished wood. He was still shaking his head when he climbed up into the driver’s seat from the other side and slammed the door.
No matter what Phoenix thought, he should have been able to save them. And that was a burden he would have to bear through the rest of his natural life. Their blood was on his hands.
Phoenix climbed up through the open passenger door, sat down beside him, and gently closed the door. The cuts the birds had inflicted all over his face had healed as though they had never been there at all. Merely noticing that fact caused Adam to ponder the wound in his gut he had received at the hands of War, which had left only the hint of a scar. The boy had special abilities, there was no doubt, but for the first time since Adam had met him, they appeared to be weighing heavily upon him. Phoenix’s usual smile and sense of wonder had been conspicuously absent since the night of the siege, but the damage was more than superficial. Something was eating the boy alive from the inside out and he seemed unwilling to open up enough to allow any of them to help.
“I’m fine,” Phoenix said.
“So you can read minds now?”
“It was the way you were looking at me.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“You aren’t the only one with a cross to bear.”
“You tried to help me with mine. Surely turnabout’s fair.”
“There’s nothing anyone can do to help me,” Phoenix said, still able to feel the darkness inside of him that he had so willingly embraced. The creature that had once been the Man had hurt Missy, but it was far more complicated than that. The Man had been willing to repent, even in his evil reptilian state, but Phoenix had incinerated him in cold blood with a physical power that the rage had awakened inside of him. Not only was that black seed still inside of him, but it was beginning to germinate, sending out roots even into his thoughts. While his visions had never been beautiful, they were now truly dark and insidious.
“I’m here when you need to talk,” was all Adam could think to say. He knew that whatever demons Phoenix was battling were far beyond his understanding. He had seen what the boy had done, what he was capable of doing. It terrified Adam, so he could only imagine what it must be doing to Phoenix.
Phoenix placated him with a nod, which Adam took as his cue to drop the subject. He started the engine on the second try and backed the trailer into the bloodstained lot. It took several attempts to make the trailer move behind him like he wanted, but he figured it out and gunned the motor, blowing through the leaning gate and sending it skidding across the road. They turned into the warehouse district, watching the signs of the distribution centers on either side. The detour into the hotel had cost them their buffer and now they were really going to have to hurry. They needed a large stockpile of food and enough wood to replace their demolished defenses. Of course, the main object of their search was already clattering on the floor under Phoenix’s feet.
The lot to his left attracted Adam’s attention and he slowed the truck to a halt.
They were definitely burning daylight, but this was a necessary stop, he was sure of it. He looked across the console at Phoenix.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Phoenix said.
Adam started the truck rolling again, turning down the short drive and passing through the open gate into a sea of gray and white granite.
VIII
The Ruins of Denver, Colorado
DEATH RODE HARBINGER DOWN THE CENTER OF THE STREET THROUGH THE destruction. Rubble was piled high to either side where apartment buildings had collapsed upon themselves, now mountains of fractured concrete and tangles of steel girders, the dust from the mortar blowing across the asphalt like snow. High- and low-end stores shared the same fate, their wares rotting beneath the cold weight of bricks and cinder blocks. Streetlights had toppled from the cracked sidewalks to cross the intersections they had once ruled amidst twinkling shards of melted red, yellow, and green plastic. Crumpled cars had been tossed in every direction by the blast to land on their sides and hoods, some still on their tires, the molten rubber fused to the ground. Overpasses had fallen down, crumpling into Vs of broken concrete with rebar poking out like bones from beneath skin. Sections of the street had collapsed into the sewers and
sub-terra, leaving chasms of jagged rock and pavement.
He could smell those trapped beneath, their bodies liquefying where the Swarm had been unable to reach them. Coupled with the feces produced from those that the creatures had been able to scavenge littering the road, the resultant smell was how he supposed a zoo might smell after a plague swept through.
The sound of Harbinger’s clopping hooves echoed back at them from the desolate side streets, the skeletal beast leading them to the east under the midday sun. The other steeds trod more softly beneath Famine and Pestilence, who flanked him to either side, though maintaining their distance behind. The other riders wore their cloaks, their hoods hanging over their faces to obscure all but the shadows beneath. Famine’s white fists were curled into Scourge’s mane of thorny briars, while Pestilence allowed the serpentine tails rising from Harvester’s spine to slither into her sleeves and wrap around her wrists. Death, on the other hand, had grown weary of hiding his visage from the Lord, riding out in the open for even the Divine to see his black scales and broad, adder-like head. The fall of his army, his Swarm, enraged him. They should have easily overwhelmed and crushed the remainder of man. Instead, he was now in a position he had never even contemplated before. He had failed, and he had no choice but to begin anew.
By all rights, the battle should have been over. Each of the horsemen had served their preordained function. Death had created the other three riders and organized his army. Pestilence had released her mosquitoes to separate the souls of the saved from those of the damned and Famine’s locusts had laid the genetic seeds of their rebirth. War had led the Swarm, the Lord’s armada of vengeance, against the survivors, and even though he had fallen and his troops perished, his designated task had been completed. They had fought the battle for which they’d been created, and whether they won or not, the ordeal should have been over. But Death couldn’t allow this to be the end. God had intervened and cheated him. The rules had been changed, so it was only fitting that he make up his own moving forward. He would learn from his mistakes.
The animals were helping the survivors. Thus, all lower forms of life needed to be eliminated entirely from the equation. He knew of the flying stallions that saved the men by the lake from the Swarm and carried them across the countryside. He had seen those giant white falcons through War’s eyes as they had descended upon him, had felt the warrior’s pain as their beaks and talons had destroyed his armor and shredded his flesh with his counterpart’s blood. They had hidden in plain sight under the cover of the snow. Granted the blizzard and the birds were now a memory, but looking forward, he needed to ensure that there could be no recurrence. The time had come to implement his plan to remove that variable, to prevent outside intervention.
To defy the Lord and bar His influence.
The beasts they had spawned in the bowels of their dark tower roared in anticipation as they passed out of the city and into the open prairie to the east, following the path trampled by the Swarm between the torches cast from the inverted skulls of the dead, long since darkened, having burned through their fuel of human glycerol. Where once the amber waves of grain had rippled, there were now brambles and briars with thorns sharp enough to cut flesh through to the bone, as evidenced by the mutated tufts of fur scattered throughout the dense thrush, nourishing the roots of the vicious vegetation with their spilled blood and sloughing carcasses.
Death crested a knoll and trotted Harbinger in a circle. All along the eastern horizon, the bramble had laid claim to the ranches and farmhouses, scaling the wooden siding and burying the roofs, leaving only random patches of shingles and the occasional chimney as testament to their existence. It was an aggressive species of plant with spiraling appendages capped with razor-honed thorns tangling around broad leaves and thick stalks that in a matter of days had grown taller than a man. To the north and south, the suburbs waged a losing war against the encroaching vegetation, which overcame fences and yards to begin consuming the clusters of matchbook homes. To the west, the black skyscraper lorded over the gray rubble of downtown, the edges of the crater surrounding the destruction now invisible beneath the advancing briars. He could only speculate as to the kinds of animals that had adapted to living in the savage underbrush, out of sight, scurrying beneath on the mat of nettles. Soon enough though, every single one of them would be dead.
His minions scurried up the hillside behind Pestilence and Famine, darting from one side of the path to the other, snapping at even the gentle movements of the slithering vines. They were rabid, unflinching creatures, far more animal than man now. Wiry tufts of hair covered their bodies, growing longer atop wide heads lowered to the ground beneath shoulders hunched so dramatically that their arms nearly raked the earth. Their nostrils were upturned, scenting furiously, their round eyes useless black spheres. A Mohawk of dense black hair ran the length of their spines, expanding at their shoulder blades and wrapping around their tapered waists. Their ferocious mouths ripped their faces in half when they leaned forward to bellow their hideous growls, their backs flattening and contorting in such a way as to defy skeletal integrity. Hooked teeth lined both jaws, bleeding around the union with their gray gums. A fine layer of pale brown down covered their formerly pink skin to grant the appearance of richly tanned flesh.
But it was the beast that trailed them that pleased Death the most, a true monster among slavering dogs.
Nothing remained of Richard’s humanity within that being, now known as the Leviathan, save for the hatred that burned as brightly inside of that new form as the fire in its eyes. Its skin was heavily scaled, though unlike the smooth serpentine scales that covered Death, its scales were large and abrupt like chain mail, though so black that they were invisible from a distance. They glimmered with the sunshine, but still maintained the sickly ebon of a whole body bruise. Its silhouette crackled with an outline of flames, a living skein of fire flowing over every inch of its form.
The three horsemen sat high atop their steeds and turned to the east toward the never-ending sea of bramble, the creatures of their design gathering in front of them. Death nodded, and the Pack as he had begun to think of them, roared in unison, so loud that even Death’s vision trembled. They froze in place, only their heads swiveling as they scoured the impenetrable vegetation, using their sonar-like vision to triangulate the location of their prey. One raised its flat snout to sniff the air to confirm the location of what it “saw,” then lowered its head and brayed again. The Leviathan stood beside it, following its line of sight into the thorny tangles. It rose to its full height, its chest swelling, and leaned forward, a stream of magma firing from its extended arms. The tight flume of flame burned straight through the twisted growth, which singed and immediately caught fire.
Something out there, hidden in the overgrown field, screeched, and the bat-like creature that had sighted it bounded through the resultant smoke along the fiery line. When it emerged from the smoke and returned again to the path, it was carrying what looked like a cross between a rabbit and turtle by the heels. The struggling animal had no fur, only a thick, articulated shell covering its entire body, perfectly matching the color of the plants. The beast held it high and roared again, the scorched animal kicking with clawed feet to try to free itself, shredding its captor’s skin along its forearm, but it never had a chance. Talons lanced through the joints of the shell. The creature ripped with both hands to expose the unprotected flesh beneath and buried its teeth within. It shook the shrieking animal like a dog until it made no more sound and tossed the exoskeleton to either side. When it turned to face its master, it was drenched with blood.
Death nodded his approval and again the Pack started to howl, only this time the Leviathan didn’t wait for them to isolate their quarry. Instead, it blasted a column of flames in every direction until it appeared as though the entire planet was ablaze. Shrouded in smoke and surrounded by flames, Death jerked on Harbinger’s mane of fire and turned the stallion back to the west, reveling in the almost human-soundin
g screams of the animals burning out of sight.
Burn it, Death thought as he thundered back down the path toward the ruins of Denver. Burn it all.
When he looked back again, the eastern horizon was black with smoke, chased into the heavens by the growing fires like the rising sun.
Chapter 2
I
Mormon Tears
THE SUN HAD SET CLOSE TO AN HOUR AGO, BUT ADAM HAD STILL BEEN able to see the gateway to Mormon Tears on the side of the highway. He turned the semi between the rock formations that looked like praying children facing one another on their knees and drove across the salt flats. Whatever tracks had once been there were now obliterated by the melting snow, but Adam could clearly recognize the mountain they lived inside in the distance. It had taken longer than they had planned to load the supplies into the trailer, now packed full, but it still felt as though they had forgotten half of what they’d intended to grab. Neither looked forward to unloading it all, but at least they would have some help.
Their nerves had been frayed the entire journey and only now that the rocky slope began to rise in front of them did they finally begin to relax. The whole drive along the deserted highway had been tense as shadowed forms darted in and out of their peripheral vision, from behind one tree trunk to the next or ahead on the road at the furthest diffuse range of their headlights. They were silhouettes that neither recognized, unfamiliar shapes only vaguely reminiscent of the animals they had once been. In this new world of mutated livestock and game, none of the creatures they saw were recognizable, causing even the smallest shape to become unnaturally ominous. Lord only knew what these things ate or what they were capable of doing to them.
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