by Noah Fregger
But hope … his hope belonged to Amanda. And when surrounded by fear, hope remained the only thing worth clinging to.
But she’d hardly spoken to him during their walk back to her apartment; and for fear of being presumptuous, Ethan waited for her to notice he’d not followed her up the fire escapes. Stepping onto the second level, she looked down to discover him still on the sidewalk.
“You comin’, or what?” she asked.
The rain slid cold over his face as he looked up at her. “You sure?”
“Unless you’d rather stay down there.”
He nodded, accepting the invitation, the clanks of his feet echoing as he rushed to meet her.
“I think it’s best if you stay with me for awhile, Ethan,” she said as they reached her flight together. “Claire seems to think that ... it’ll be too dangerous for you out on the streets right now.”
He nodded again. “I don’t want to be an inconvenience, though.”
Amanda pulled open the window and stepped inside. “It’s too late for that, Ethan,” she said, leaving it open for him to follow.
30
Just Reward
“You were right, James.”
He looked up to find Victoria, the curves of her figure against the frame of his door.
“I'm not too proud to admit it.”
“Well, I'm glad to hear you say that,” he said.
“I always knew Rick was a piece of shit,” she shook her head, “but I never would've guessed he could be so ... diabolical.”
“No doubt he was smarter than he led us all to believe,” the hunter agreed. “Best to rid the world of men like that.”
She nodded. “And thank you for changing your mind about Hazel.” She took a step inside, closing the door behind her. “But I ... I get the feeling Jackson beat the tar out of John.” She rubbed her left hand over her right. “His knuckles are messed up pretty bad.”
“Well, Jackson's got a stable head, but John probably said something to upset him.”
“How long you think you'll keep him in the pit?”
“Not my call, Victoria. I left him to Jackson. That was the deal.”
She tucked a chunk of blonde hair behind her ear, her blue eyes fixed on him.
“He's a prisoner. It's the price of Hazel's safety.”
“I understand.”
And he was glad she did. As much as the hunter enjoyed her challenges every now and again, this really wasn't the time. With patience already worn tremendously thin on the subject, he would have grown angry with any objection she might have had on John's behalf.
Possibly sensing this, it seemed she'd decided to let it go. “I'm just happy Hazel's safe,” Victoria said.
“Good.”
She turned and exited, leaving him alone again, the frost of her shoulder nearly thawed to its core.
And it happened just as he'd predicted.
With the bogeyman dead, she could finally relax; and with Victoria relaxed, the hunter's world would instantly become a better place.
So he soon found himself making a new prediction. One, if indeed it came to pass, that he'd consider just reward for all his efforts. For surely, in light of her many errors, it was in Victoria's best interest not to let him sleep alone on this night.
31
So This is Perfection
Several days had passed since the bogeyman's supposed demise; and Mohammad considered it a just reprieve, allowing the hunter and his men time to rejoice in their victories. For as soon as they felt most secure in their footing, that was when Mohammad would return to pull the world out from under them ... and that would be the end of it–his vengeance delivered, his focus then undivided from whatever else Gabriel required of him.
Until then he would feast on the thought, on the images in his mind's eye. God knows he'd been given enough time to plan it thoroughly, tweaking the design here and there to allow for a more effective reveal.
So let them enjoy their final days on this Earth, to drink and fornicate to their heart's content. And if it be in the name of their fallen enemy, then so be it; for the blade of the bogeyman would be coming to relieve them their duties soon enough.
So Mohammad left them at the back of his mind, resurrecting another three individuals in the process. That made for ten in all, every one of them male, as he awaited news of a pregnancy amongst his kin.
"Can't you ... douse the city in pheromones, or something?" he asked, only half joking.
"If there's one thing I've noticed, Mohammad," Gabriel twisted his head to look at him, "it's that the human race needs no catalyst for procreation."
"Point taken." Mohammad nodded. No pun intended.
"We just need to be patient,” Gabriel added. “It will happen."
The hyper-wall then awoke before them, the emerald city shifting to show new coordinates.
“We got another one,” Mohammad noticed as the city ceased its adjustment, enlarging the room of a loft apartment complex. Within it, a violet soul was beginning to slip more into the color of crimson. “Where’s my nearest door?” He expanded the view, discovering it at ground level. “Couldn’t be dying down there, could you?” he huffed, noticing he’d need to climb a significant amount of stairs to get to him. “Fine.” He selected the door; and noticing no one else in the area or anywhere else in the building, he opted to skip the invisibility on this particular run. He’d been using it more seldomly as of late.
What use was there to being a ghost without anyone around to elude?
He stepped through and out onto the street, the afternoon’s sun upon his flesh. He stood there a moment, enjoying it, the pinks of his lids when he closed them.
God, it felt good.
But the building towered just beside him, the impending corpse within it in dire need of his assistance. He stepped to the front of the building and pulled open the large doors leading to the downstairs lobby area–no attractive lady at the front desk to meet him. With the newly deceased on the eighth level, he found the door to the stairs unlocked. Mohammad leapt up the flights, using not the steps but the railings as he propelled himself vertically. No human could move as he did; and he could only imagine how he must have looked–more arachnid than man, perhaps, as he ascended the stairway in a matter of seconds.
He came to stand before the door marked with a large, black number eight. He pulled it open, the whine of its hinges through that portion of the structure. It somehow maintained its smell, the aroma of its carpeted floor clean and appealing, the softness of it beneath the soles of his shoes.
There were a great many rooms to choose from, each of their chestnut doors lining the hallway in which he was standing. But which one was the body in?
He summoned the emerald city where he stood, inspecting the building again …
Down the hall, to the right, third door on the left.
He let the hologram diminish as he continued onward, eager to get this guy transferred and back home again.
Found it.
Room number eight thousand six hundred sixty six.
He tried the knob.
Locked …
Unlocked.
Love this thing.
He opened it, stepping inside. “Anyone dead or dying in here?”
But from the brief hallway beyond, silence was the only answer. Mohammad walked through, finding a tidy kitchen on the left, a neat living room adjacent to it, and the boots of a fallen man protruding out from behind a recliner.
“Gotcha.”
Mohammad approached him, readying his wrist device, when he heard a slight whimper. And there, hiding behind the opposite leather couch, head low and ears flattened, was a German Shepherd.
He squinted at it. “I remember you.” Mohammad looked back at the man, the same man that was there when he woke up on the street. “Don’t worry,” he told the dog. “I’ll have him back, good as new.”
Mohammad knelt over him, about to place his hand aside the man’s head, when he reached up to seize
Mohammad by the wrist. The man’s eyes opened, and all the Fijian could see in them was pure and utter blackness.
Mohammad yelped, stumbling backward, raising the glove in defense.
“Do not fear me, Mohammad,” the man spoke, rising to his feet. “I will not harm you.”
But his voice, his voice wasn’t the same as before. It was different. Deep, scratchy and hollow, it was a voice that in no way should have belonged to him.
“What are you?!” Mohammad demanded, ready to splatter him across the wall’s impressionistic artwork. “Answer me!”
“So this is perfection,” the man smiled, looking him over. “Still so much you don’t know, so much Gabriel has hidden from you.”
“What are you?!” Mohammad repeated, the chill of his spine putting his hair on end.
“Here.” The man reached a hand toward him. “Let me show y …” But the man collapsed suddenly, sprawling onto the floor again, the dog retreating down the hall and off somewhere else within the apartment.
Mohammad stood, stunned, unsure of what to do … when the man began to stir again. He began lifting himself from the floor; but in his eyes, no blackness resided. In them, there was only terror.
“Help me,” he pleaded, looking up at Mohammad, the man’s voice as he remembered it being. “Jesus, help me.”
“Get up,” Mohammad ordered, creating another hyper-wall there in the man’s living room.
“It put something in my eyes.” He tried to stand, clutching at Mohammad’s arm. “Fucking burned something onto my neck.” He stretched out his collar, showing Mohammad the extraterrestrial brand spanning past his collar bone–some intricate, blistered crop circle design.
“Jesus.” Mohammad lifted the man to his feet, choosing the door to the factory, and pulled him through. “Gabriel!” he shouted, holding onto him. “Gabriel!”
The Traveler turned, his eyes enlarging at the sight of their new guest. “What have you done?!”
The man shrieked as Gabriel began storming toward them, Mohammad holding him by a handful of his shirt.
“Relax. He will help you.”
“What is this?!” Gabriel bared his teeth in anger. “What didn’t you understand about discreet, Mohammad?!”
“This is different,” he assured the Traveler. “Something worked on this guy, made his eyes turn black. It talked through him, knew my name.”
Gabriel’s features softened as he’d given Mohammad time enough to explain, looking at the man, then cursing in a robust, alien tongue.
“You gotta fix him, Gabriel,” he finished. “You know we can’t leave him like this.”
“No.” Gabriel nodded, sighing heavily. “No, we can’t.”
The man had fallen over, his back propped against the wall, head slumped to his knees.
“Stand him up,” Gabriel ordered.
“C’mon.” Mohammad grabbed the man’s arm, helping him to his feet. “He’ll help you.”
“Ready the door, Mohammad.”
He turned, gracing it with his glove, as the emerald city rose to view. “Where do you want to …”
But a blast of plasma silenced his statement, the man beside him colliding with the wall and rolling back onto the floor. He slumped to his side, loose limbed and broken, his skin seared by the blast.
Mohammad stood, unable to speak, the symbiote healing patches of flesh along his face and arm as he witnessed the murder of a man he sought to help.
“You killed him!”
“No,” Gabriel hissed. “You killed him. You find a spy and you bring him here?”
“He wasn’t a spy! He was defenseless!”
“I am responsible for you, Mohammad–only you.” The Traveler extended a finger toward the dead man. “He was not one of mine.”
“Then whose was he?”
“What did he say to you?”
“What?”
“You said he spoke to you. What did he say?”
“He called me perfect,” Mohammad told the partial truth. “Who is he?”
“Another Traveler,” Gabriel stated. “His name is Kuldryn.”
“Kuldryn?” It felt awkward off his tongue. “And what does he want with me?”
“To sabotage you, wants you to fail.”
“Why would another Traveler want us to fail?” Mohammad approached him. “Don’t you work together?”
“No.” Gabriel shook his head. “While you and I strive to salvage what’s left of mankind, he strives to destroy it.”
“Why?”
“Because, peaceful or violent, change is going to happen here, Mohammad. You must understand that change is inevitable. This is the last trial for peace, and if we fail in our mission, fail in bringing new life to Earth, then Kuldryn will gain the permission to start anew.”
“Start anew? Like wipe us out?”
Gabriel nodded, sympathy bringing slack to his pale face. “If we fail, Mohammad, I will be ordered to leave. Kuldryn will take over. And then everyone, including you, will die.”
32
The Ghoul
Just when Mohammad felt like he was getting a handle on things, in comes the curve ball. He lay awake that night for the longest time, replaying the recent events through his mind. The voice of the man possessed, versus the one claimed by fear. Something had gone to great lengths to reach him, reconstructed an innocent man to do it. In no way could it have been a coincidence that it chose the first man Mohammad saw when he awoke. Something had been watching him, something that wished to pass on a message.
And the way Gabriel simply obliterated that man; it sparked a distrust in the very Traveler that brought him back to being. Kuldryn said he was hiding things from him … and that much he was beginning to believe.
Still, Kuldryn was not to be trusted, his motives far different from theirs. He would be the bearer of death, should Mohammad and Gabriel fail in bringing forth new life; for Mohammad already bore witness to his nightmarish work, obvious that it had been crafted by the hand of tyranny.
His brain was still thick with questions when he observed the first slither, like the sound of a snake twining the area fifteen feet below.
Let the lessons continue.
Again he peeled the shirt from his back, grabbed his hunting knife and rolled off the nest, landing with hardly a whisper. He, too, took to the forest of rolled paper, the same area where the drone had first torn him to pieces.
But he was better now. And he opted to be the hunter this time around.
With the boundaries of his human mind pushed further aside, he was far more lethal than when last the hammer made a mockery of him. And back on the grounds from which it happened, he sought revenge for the slicing of his throat.
The days of taunting were over as Mohammad disappeared into shadow, placing the blade of the knife between his teeth as he climbed halfway up the labyrinth to better his view. The gleaming blackness of its skin caught his eye as it glistened beneath him; and he descended upon it, burying the blade deep into its jugular, then ascended again.
It thrashed at nothing, wailing in anger and agony as Mohammad watched it, studied it. Fatally wounded, it slumped over, crawling its way through the rollroom, leaving a trail of synthetic blood in its wake. He dropped to the floor, following it, casually flipping the knife through the air as it tried to articulate itself into something more useful. With legs folded over its back, the hammer seemed to be changing to something of a scorpion when it stopped, hardly able to move any longer. Its limbs went limp when he planted the knife into its skull, yanking it free again to wipe the blade between his thumb and index finger.
“I guess that makes us ev …”
But something then passed him in a flash of white, spilling his blood onto his chest. He had a moment to witness it before it disappeared again–something completely different than the first drone. It was thin, ghostly pale, with skin so tight that shadows lingered beneath the depth of its ribs.
He’d relaxed too soon–claimed victory before it was
rightfully his, and already marred for his foolishness.
With neck healed, Mohammad ascended again, in search of the ghoul that cleaved him on his open guard.
It wouldn’t be so lucky on a second pass.
But it was far stealthier than its predecessor, its movements remaining incredibly silent. He dropped back to the floor, weapon at the ready, as he traversed the darkness in its pursuit. Pale as the ghoul was, it should have been easier to see against the backdrop of infinite shadow. He swept with silence through the aisles, his nocturnal eyes dissecting the surroundings.
The ghoul eluded him for a time, until it tore out from between two towering rolls of paper.
Mohammad dove, slicing at its Achilles’ heel, as it leapt at him. With wounded foot, the ghoul clamored away, Mohammad on its tail. He sliced the thing again along its calf as it dragged its wounded leg behind it.
The ghoul screamed, twisting, its face an entirely new horror to behold. Sunken and skeletal, the creature looked like a reanimated corpse. Unlike the hammer, no mandibles adorned its open jaw and the skin about its skull looked as though it were on the verge of splitting.
The ghoul drove its hand into Mohammad’s shoulder, its taloned fingers piercing his skin and snapping off at the second knuckle. It kicked away, its fingers still lodged within him, as he dropped his knife to wrap his hand around the first of three it left behind. Mohammad yanked out four inches of blood-coated talon, one after the other, as the symbiote assisted in dislodging the third. He witnessed the organism at work as it pushed the third out and sealed the flesh behind it.
“Neat trick, Ghoul,” he gave the thing credit. “Remind me to break my foot off in your ass.”
He scooped the knife up from the floor and thought it best to gain some higher ground on the creature. The ghoul was wounded, that much was certain; and from those wounds, it left him a glossy trail of bread crumbs to follow. Leading him on a winding path through the labyrinth of paper, it ended abruptly at one of the center aisles, the ghoul vanishing beyond it. But Mohammad’s hand met a cold, damp substance as the thing fell upon him, sinking its teeth deep into his neck. Holding back a scream, Mohammad kept the blade clamped in his mouth as they toppled down together.