by Stu Jones
Kane walked at a brisk pace, wanting to make his rounds and get back to the courtyard, but his pace slowed as he neared the rear of the station and looked toward the small bluff that peered out over the ocean. There a growing number of crosses had been planted in the sandy earth.
It’s been too long since I’ve visited.
He continued to slow his stride as he approached the small bluff. Then he came to a complete stop, the gusty sea breeze pushing the smell of salt and garbage into his nostrils. Taking a few more steps up the hill, Kane stopped before a small mound with a crooked metal cross. Lowering his head, he took a deep breath in through his nose then exhaled. He hated these moments. Stooping, he straightened the marker.
“Hey,” Kane said. “Here we are again.” He paused, as if waiting for the earth to speak. “Never were much for words, were you Molly?” He smiled and rubbed the back of his hand along his chin. “I was just checking the perimeter fence for any weaknesses. We’ve been having a problem with Sicks recently, but they’re not like you remember them. They’ve evolved or something. I’m not sure. They attacked us last night, killed a few of the night watch…but…well, you probably don’t care about all that anyway. We’re doing okay. We’ll make it.”
Kane stood and dragged the toe of his boot across the sandy dirt. He put his hand to his chest. “My heart has been hurting again recently. I thought I was better, you know? I thought I was past that, but it seems to be returning. I don’t know why. I thought God healed me. Wanted me for some purpose. I haven’t gotten my head around it yet. Maybe it’s not that. I guess I could be overstressed or…something. Anyway,” Kane said, gesturing with his hands, “I think you would have gotten along really well with the folks at the station. We have a pretty good group, lots of hardworking people just trying to find a new start in this crazy world. Sometimes I try and picture what you’d be up to if you were here with us. I miss you a lot. It’s not easy losing a friend like you. Your reassurance kept me going in those early days. Kept me…balanced. I don’t know if I ever told you, but I always appreciated that about you.”
Kane looked up and away from the grave, his eyes wandering out to the ocean, the nothingness beyond the horizon.
“I can’t forgive myself. I forced Malak’s hand. I squeezed him and he squeezed back, and you got caught in the middle. I should have done better. I shouldn’t have pressed him so hard, or I should’ve done more to…” The words caught in his throat as he wiped a tear from his face with the sleeve of his tattered shirt.
“I’m just sorry, Molly. So sorry.”
Kane rubbed at his face, fighting back the tears. He made a suppressive motion with his hand in frustration as he turned to leave.
“There’s just one more thing. You were wrong about Susan and the kids. They’re dead, and they’re not coming back. I can’t do this anymore. I’ve got to let it all go, let you go. If I don’t, it’s going to break me.”
Kane turned and meandered away from the small hill of graves. The darkness growing deeper as night settled in around him, he made his way toward the courtyard feeling a growing sense of dread and wondering what the night had in store. As the last light faded from his shoulders, shadows leaked into the hollow places in the sand left by his weary feet.
SIXTEEN
The slender figure crouched low along the ridgeline as the dark of night consumed the fading evening light. A faint breeze slipped across the barren landscape, making its way inland toward the emptiness of the land and whatever lay beyond. The breeze ruffled the figure’s ragged clothing as it sank lower, sliding lizard-like across the ridge to meet with the others and wait for the rest to join them.
They had grown in number; the Father had seen to that. Many gathered on the hillside out of sight from the inhabitants of the radio station. Their ways were simple: feed, survive, adapt. Complicated reasoning or thought was not prevalent. They relied only on instinct—the instinct to survive, hunt, and kill. The Father was the only one with any complex cognitive abilities. The rest lived as animals of the forest and the fields, driven by singular and simple purposes.
Atop the ridgeline, the one who called himself the Father stood in the group’s center, his arms open in a welcoming gesture, summoning the many who were still on their journey to join the others on the hillside. This group had never come together before. Some came from the wastes, while others came from Columbia, Charleston, or Georgetown. As they gathered they looked to be one unit, familiar as brother and sister, all drawn to the song of the Father. How they had known to come remained a mystery. In the darkness they swayed lightly with the breeze as it cascaded over them, filling the air with a distinct and pungent stench. With their blood red eyes squinted, appearing to burn like a hundred tongues of fire in the silent night.
Though those who gathered did not possess the mental capacity for higher reasoning, but they did understand two things. First, they knew the Father was like them. By smell alone they identified him as one of their own, and they found themselves unable to resist his siren song. Second, they knew with a strange clarity that the smooth skins had to die—every last one of them. Some would be eaten. Others would be taken. The rest would be left with their guts strewn about to rot on the hot sand. One way or another, their deaths were as good as done. Though the smooth skins would fight, they were no match for the speed and ferocity of these creatures.
The painted boy and his monster were the only ones who had faced their ranks in open combat and prevailed. But even the boy had abandoned them now. It was a pity. The Father wanted so badly to fill his mouth with the boy’s tender flesh. It was but a small loss for the Father. Soon they would feast on the warm flesh of the smooth skins below, creatures that cowered inside their flimsy wire wall.
No more brokenness. No more segregation. Now they functioned as one, a family group living under the Father’s guidance. And as he welcomed them with open arms, he raised the bone flute with a clawed hand to his wet, gray lips. Each creature froze, hundreds of them against the slope, staring in anticipation and delirium as the first few notes of the Father’s song leapt from the flute. A moaned rush of euphoria swept over the scores of gathered mutants as they raised their clawed hands to the darkened sky and screamed in delight.
In the station courtyard, Kane leaned against one of the vehicles in the motor pool. He threw his head back and laughed. The kid was completely out of control.
“I’m serious,” Jacob said with a smirk.
“You’ve lost your mind, kid.”
“Come on. Just for a few hours. We’ll bring it right back.”
Kane laughed again. “No way. Not in a million lifetimes. You are not going to borrow a vehicle to go on a date, and you’re certainly not going to use precious fuel to drive around aimlessly. End of story.”
Jacob wouldn’t let it go. He’d been talking nonstop about Christina, a girl who worked shifts in the commissary.
“Come on, Kane. You’ve gotta work with me here. She’s so hot, and she wants me,” Jacob begged like a dog in heat.
“It boggles my mind that with everything that’s happened and the state the world is in, all you can think about is sex.
“Dude, she’s amazing,” Jacob oozed.
“Dude, she’s like fourteen, and her aunt hates you. Hates,” Kane reinforced, unable to suppress a smile.
“She’ll get over it. I just need the girl and the car for a couple of hours.”
“Let’s approach this from another perspective. Let’s say you do hook up with her.”
“Yeah, yeah. I like where this is going.”
“No, just hear me out. So you hook up with her. Are you going to marry this girl? Make an honest woman out of her?”
“Come on, man.”
“No, I’m serious. What if she gets pregnant? What then? Where would she have the baby? And if the baby survived, would you be man enough to raise it out here in the wastes?” Kane waved his arms through the air.
“Aw, man. You’re ruining this for me. I w
as talking about something totally different.”
“Yeah, I know what you were talking about. I was a walking testosterone factory at your age too, but I’m serious when I say you need to think this stuff through first.”
“Sure, sure,” Jacob muttered.
Kane smiled and patted his young friend on the shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I understand where you’re coming from.”
“Yeah, all right.” Jacob looked up and smiled, but they both stopped to listen to a strange noise that was growing in the distance. It rose, wailing, like hundreds of wild voices screaming into the night. The strange sound drifted across the station, causing everyone to stop and listen. A few curious individuals inside the station came outside to see what was going on.
Kane released his rifle from its sling and headed to the front of the station, the kid hobbling behind. As he arrived at the front gate, the sound began to dissipate and fall silent.
He called out to the guards, his confusion morphing into fear. “Did you guys hear that?”
The guards nodded, their faces drawn. No one knew for sure what the sound had been, but everyone agreed that it wasn’t human. Kane scanned the ridgeline but found nothing. He turned to the guards, two men, and a woman. He couldn’t remember their names.
“Did you guys see anything? Any movement outside the fence?”
“We didn’t see anything, Kane. We were just sitting here talking,” one of the men responded.
“All three of you, keep watch on the ridge. Let me know if you see any movement at all.” Kane turned and called to a woman on the catwalk above. “Hey, find Courtland and tell him we need all the station lights on. Then tell him to get down here.”
The woman acknowledged Kane’s request, entered the fire exit, and disappeared. Kane turned back, listening to the blowing of the ocean breeze. He scanned the ridgeline once more. Still nothing. The halogen lights clanked and buzzed, blinking to life above him and bathing the station in a pale-blue light. Kane was shaking his head and pacing along the fence when Courtland exited the station doors and approached.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’ve got a bad feeling.”
“What happened?”
“There was a sound. It was loud, like the way thousands of people yell in a football stadium.”
“You heard screams?”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t…” Kane looked at Jacob. “Help me out here.”
“I don’t know either,” Jacob said, shrugging. “It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard, that’s for sure. I don’t know what to tell you.”
Courtland looked back at Kane. “So what are you thinking?”
“The sound seemed too close and too much like a whole heck of a lot of people yelling.” He paused, thinking. “We still can’t see the ridgeline from here, and all the light is on us. Is there any way to redirect some of the spotlights to illuminate that hill more?”
“I’ll see what we can do,” answered Courtland.
“OK, while you’re doing that, I’ll have a group walk the perimeter with torches again just to play it safe.”
Courtland headed toward the station as Kane briefed a group to begin checking the perimeter. Courtland instructed two men to loosen the bolts on a few of the courtyard spotlights so they could tilt them to observe outside the fence. With their tasking under way, Courtland returned to Kane. They waited in the quiet dark, observing the hillside while the two men on the roof fumbled, attempting to swivel the floodlights.
“What’s taking them so long?” Kane muttered.
“The bolts are pretty rusted.”
Kane nodded. “Something isn’t right. I can sense it. It feels like we’re being watched.”
Courtland nodded but said nothing.
As the floodlights came free, squealing to their new position, Kane squinted toward the ridge. As the light swept upward, illuminating the hill, his heart sank. Before them they stood shoulder to shoulder, hunched and feral, extending the length of the ridgeline.
“No,” Kane gasped.
“Lord God in heaven,” Courtland whispered. “There must be five hundred of them, if not more.”
As they stared in disbelief, a new sound resonated across the darkened landscape. It sounded like scraping, a rasping sound of bone on bone. First, the cadence seemed slow, the sound soft until it grew louder and more intentional. Shick, shick, shick, came the chorus as it built in volume and scale like a doomsday herald ringing his bell of judgment.
“Oh, my god,” a nearby man whimpered. “Why are they doing that?”
“They want us to be afraid of them. They want us to fear what’s about to happen,” Courtland murmured, as the noise continued to grow.
“No. My god, no. They’re going to kill us!” the man cried out.
“Be quiet. You’re not helping anything,” Kane hissed.
“No, no. They’re going to get in here, and they’re going to eat us!”
Kane grabbed the blabbering man by his shirt. “Shut up! Get control of yourself.”
“They’re going to get in here! They’re going to—”
Without warning, Courtland placed his massive arm around the man’s neck restraining him in a blood choke. The man had become wild with fear, but he was unable to free himself from the giant’s strength. In a moment he sputtered and passed out.
“He’ll be fine.” Courtland gestured as he hoisted the man’s limp frame over his shoulder.
“Thank you.” Kane sighed and turned back to the chorus of methodical scraping that continued to cascade down from the ridge. Shick, shick, shick.
“Lock him up until this is over. We don’t need him adding to the hysteria we’re already going to have over this.”
Courtland nodded.
“Courtland, I need you to rally every able-bodied person and marshal them here in the courtyard. Tell Jenna to gather all the children and anyone who can’t fight. Lock those people inside the station, down in the cellar. You got me?”
“I’m with you, Kane.”
“Good. I’ll open up the armory and get the perimeter set.”
As they both took off toward the station, Kane looked one last time at the hundreds of hunched forms that extended down the ridgeline. There they waited, dark and ominous like messengers of death.
Raith lay concealed on the south side of the station, observing the spectacle forming before him. He would have left long ago had he not noticed the mass of ghoulish mutants on the western side of the station. At first, he felt awestruck, confused even, at the odd congregation crawling and loping across the hillside. But then he watched as the leader summoned them, controlled them with his primitive flute. As minions to their master, they desired only to do his bidding. What army could stand against a man with such a force?
Raith smiled. The pathetic group of survivors at the station somehow had angered the mutant chief, and now he’d come to exact his vengeance upon them. Unfortunate for them and fortuitous for the Coyotes. Malak would be interested to hear of this news. Due to circumstances now beyond their control, the Coyotes might need to move on the station sooner than they thought.
Raith adjusted his position, preparing to leave, to return to Malak. The excitement energized him, and he wished he could stay to watch the bloody slaughter. He picked up his binoculars and peered one last time at his pretty. She, along with a few other women, had gathered the children and were ushering them into what he presumed was a cellar on the far side of the compound. He watched as they sealed the door, while to his surprise, she remained outside to help defend the station. With a twinge of concern, he wished for her to survive just a little while longer, lamenting the possibility of her death.
So delicate, yet so spirited and brave. Without a doubt, she is perfect.
Raith watched Jenna as she stopped for a moment, clasping her hands together and closing her eyes. He watched her mouth as she uttered some unknown incantation.
Raith whispered to himself, “Yes, pra
y to your god, my sweet. Beg him to spare you from the beasties, for you do not belong to them.”
SEVENTEEN
You are disgusting and weak. You’ve allowed your humanity to interfere with my plan. If you desire to be great, you must abandon that which you know. Lose yourself in me and find yourself anew.
Malak opened his eyes and exhaled, the clammy, humid night air clinging to his naked form as he sat in meditation. The voice was displeased. It chastised him for his efforts. Malak clenched his teeth, making his way to his feet. The faint glow of a lamp outlined his massive nude form as he covered himself in a robe, his movements graceful for a man his size. As he slid from his chambers, moving like a serpent, he continued down the hall to the penthouse balcony. The destroyed wall beckoned him forward to gaze at what existed beyond. Squinting, Malak peered north, up the coast, toward the radio station.
The time was coming. He would step forward into greatness, not only strengthened by the darkness but also becoming the darkness itself. He and the voice would unify, and it would cease to condemn him. Malak now knew where his journey would take him once he destroyed the fragile community at the radio station. Once they were wiped from existence, his destiny would draw him westward, to the heartland of the American continent. There Malak would bring forth the power of the darkness and rule the earth as a god forevermore.
A man entered from the hallway. “Lord Malak, the man Raith is here to see you. Another is waiting as well.”
“Send Raith in. And who is the other?”
“He comes with men who desire to align with the Coyotes by submitting to your lordship.”
Malak nodded and crossed his arms across his chest. Raith entered and gave a slight bow.
“What do you have for me, Raith?”