The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two

by G. Wells Taylor

  The Bullyboys howled at that one, booing and hissing her performance. A big one in the lead wearing rubber bib overalls pushed his dark welding glasses up.

  “You bitch!” he yelled. She saw that his lips and strong cheeks were smeared a dark red. “You Brazil-waxing bitch! I’m on the highway to hell too!” This was followed by howls of laughter from his companions. “Shake your ass for them, Cherry!” they yelled. More laughter.

  The other bouncer laughed along with them. “Yeah, you go in baby. You’re a peach.” The bald man had a Mohawk of bolts piercing the skin across the top of his skull. One of his hands squeezed her left buttock.

  Cawood snarled and smiled at him, then moved through the door they held open. She made sure her buttocks ground against the bouncer’s groin. A grunt of pleasure and she moved past. She walked through darkness in a short hallway past a smoke-filled coat-check then the music caught her. A throbbing electronic beat hooked on something deep inside her body and drew her in. The vibrating air ran invisible pulsing fingers over her skin. Passion and shame colored her cheeks as she pulled a cigarette out and lit it. She watched out of the corner of her eye as men along the bar devoured her with looks. Sodomy. Sin. Purgatory. Whore. Cawood felt a tingle rush over her pelvis as they whispered approval to each other.

  She took a deep drag from her cigarette and walked over to the bar purposefully choosing a point between two large groups of youngish looking men. She thought “youngish” because she knew that everyone had suffered the effects of the Change and were a century older than they looked. But she sidled in between a couple of tall men one black and one white, purposefully ignoring their gazes. She had noticed a pair of women eyeing her seriously but fresh from Juanita, she was not in the mood for more cunnilingus. She felt like a man.

  “Vodka and seven!” she shouted at the bartender.

  A pale redheaded man with serious lines around his mouth nodded and made the drink.

  “Hey sister!” a man said to her left.

  Cawood froze, fear coursing through her.

  “Hey sweetheart,” a voice said on her right. She turned slowly. He was tall and muscular. His skin was as black as coal and shone with a blue light. “Can we buy you a drink?”

  Her fear drained away as she looked at the man’s solid chest. “Yes, you can.”

  “I’m Dave.” He smiled, the black light turning his teeth sun bright. “That’s my buddy Raul.”

  Cawood turned to his friend. He had long sandy hair, was shorter than the black man, and of a smaller build.

  “We’re waiting for our bro’ Sam.” Dave called her attention back by tugging at a loose locket of her hair. “We’re gonna trip.”

  “Trip?” Cawood took a long sip of her drink, turning her back to the bar so she could see both men. “Where are you going?”

  “Ah fuck,” Raul said, his eyes wide and pupils dilated. “Trains already left baby.”

  “Hey sister.” Dave grabbed Cawood’s free hand. “What’s your name?”

  “Call me Karrie.” Cawood smelled his cologne as she shouted her name.

  “Here’s your ticket. Karrie.” He placed a small colored capsule in her hand.

  Cawood looked at it, then up into Dave’s dark eyes. “What is it?”

  “Fucking Salvation Baby.” He laughed showing all of his teeth.

  “Salvation.” She held the capsule up in the weird light. “I need Salvation!” Cawood tipped her head back and dropped the capsule in. It tasted like nothing, but she washed it down with a splash of her drink. She looked at her companions. They slapped each other’s palms laughing. “Salvation!” Cawood felt Raul’s hand slide over her hips and pause over her tailbone.

  “You’re fucking beautiful, Karrie,” he said, his breath garlicky with chemical traces.

  “You’re not!” She laughed, and then kissed him wetly.

  Raul looked up at Dave and the pair shared a secret smile. Cawood watched the writhing bodies on the dance floor as she waited for the drug to kick in.

  16 – The Hit

  Balg’s key opened the apartment door without a sound. Felon moved in quickly, quietly locked the door behind him. He hurried cautiously through the living room. It was late 20th Century female. The walls were pink, the carpets red. Victorian era remake chairs and chesterfield gathered around a maple wood coffee table on a dark Indian throw rug. Magazines fanned out across the table’s shiny surface. Plaque-mounted prints hung on the walls. Felon hated it at first glance. Fucking women.

  His eyes scanned for and found the fire escape’s black iron silhouette at the end of a hallway that brought him to the bedroom and bath. A feathered spirit catcher hung in the window that opened onto it. To his left, he passed a small kitchenette with tiny breakfast nook, stove and fridge. The apartment was small, well maintained, and intended for a single occupant.

  He opened the bedroom door on silent hinges. The bed had a floral-patterned comforter in place and a pair of pillows in lace-trimmed covers. He closed the door behind him. Balg’s envelope had contained a photo of the woman: a redhead, five-foot-six, athletic build and chestnut eyes. The photo had been snapped as she climbed from a car, unaware. Chrissy Morgan had a candid carnal look that vaguely stirred something in Felon. The combination of apparent youthful innocence and sexuality started to explain the Demon’s interest in her. The bio completed it.

  Age: 27 (Pre-Change), Occupation: Secretary for City Phone Company. She worked from 8:30 to 4:30. Arrived home after a workout at Silver’s Gym at approximately 7:45 p.m. if she didn’t eat out with friends, 9:30 if she did. The file said she was meeting someone from work at the gym at seven-thirty. She’d be home after that.

  Morgan was a member of the New Life Group—an organization that sprang up fifty years after the Change promoting a New Life in a New Age through temperance, nutrition and exercise. Its founders believed the regimen encouraged the growth of latent powers in the mind. Felon thought it was a waste of discipline. Chrissy went to bed early and got up early. She was Demon bait.

  The assassin glanced at his watch: nine o’clock. It was early, but success depended on the element of surprise. He looked around the bedroom and walked to the closet. Folding lattice doors: perfect. Felon could set up his hunter’s blind behind them. He stretched, took a deep breath to relax his body before entering, and then pulled the closet doors shut after him. He settled himself cross-legged behind perfumed dresses and suits. He pulled his gun from its holster, checked the silencer and laid it in his lap. He waited.

  The Incubus would be dangerous. The assassin had long ago learned to shape innate fears into reflexive defenses—so much so that he had almost lost the ability to flinch or be surprised. And his life, his individuality became irrelevant when he started killing. The storm of concentrated fury protected him like razor wire.

  Felon heard the door click. A muffled voice followed, a woman’s humming a formless tune. There were thumps and bangs of a briefcase dropping and shoes being kicked off. Then he heard the quiet rustling of a nylon rain jacket falling to the floor or over a chair. Felon lost sound of her, until he heard clicking, a beep, and then garbled monotones as she listened to her phone messages. He’d seen the ancient reel-to-reel by the door. A long beep, and more clicks. There followed a rushing of water and more humming. Then the bedroom door opened. A dim light flicked on. Felon’s hand reflexively tightened its grip on the gun. He watched her through the slats, moving rapidly toward the closet. She flung the doors wide.

  The assassin was hidden behind the long dresses and coats. His pulse raced when he smelled her perfume, and the breeze from her movements touched the hair on the back of his hands. She was dressed in a pair of tight black leggings and tunic. He couldn’t see her face, but he had glimpsed it as she approached the closet. It was Morgan.

  With quick motions her tunic was a tangle on the carpet and her tights were down and off. Felon’s position allowed a detailed view of her taut buttocks as she walked away; but he blinked his eyes mechanic
ally, the thought of killing more important than arousal. She slipped into her bathrobe and left the bedroom. Faintly, he could smell the woman’s scent rising from the tangle of clothes on the floor an arm’s reach from him. He raked the gun across his ribs to keep his focus.

  When the Incubus was engaged, Felon would stand and fire. He had four clips in his coat pockets, two in easy reach thrust through his belt. Felon’s heartbeat surged at the thought of the kill. Stahn might have any number of tricks up his sleeves, but a low-level Demon like an Incubus was unlikely to waste energy transubstantiating a weapon from the Infernal places. Balg said it took too much power.

  Felon looked up as the woman re-entered the room in her bathrobe. She hooked it on the back of the bedroom door and strode naked to her bed, lit the lamp beside it before returning to the entrance and turning off the overhead light. When she walked into the bathroom, Felon studied the kill zone. The Demon would appear somewhere near the bed. That was the only certainty. The assassin’s blind had a clear line of sight. He would wait for Stahn to begin his work.

  Morgan returned wiping her lips with a towel.

  “I’ve got to sleep tonight,” she muttered, dropping onto the bed while lifting an electric alarm clock to set it. Distantly, Felon smelled peppermint. The woman chuckled, threw back the covers and climbed under them. Her pale hand reached out, and clicked off the lamp. Darkness settled. Out in the living room a light had been left on causing a rectangular slash of dim yellow to cut a section from her bedroom carpet.

  Felon focused on his gun. He felt its weight, its shape. He studied the dimpled surface of its grip. The assassin located each of its clips with his mind, weighed them, measured them, imagined the precise hand actions required to eject and load. He imagined these mechanical actions until the gun oil was strong in his nostrils. Minutes passed uncounted.

  Felon was brought from his meditative state by a gasp—slight, instantaneous—the sudden intake of air a person makes touching a toe to cold water. He opened his eyes. The bed covers, top sheet and all, had floated up toward the ceiling. Chrissy Morgan’s well-exercised body lay asleep, naked and exposed. She reacted to the chill by turning on her side and drawing both knees to her chest. Worried little sounds came from her.

  The covers were suspended in the air as if invisible wires held all four corners. They hovered a second before spinning away to land in a heap by the door. Felon heard snuffling, lapping noises now, wet and bestial. But in the half-light from the doorway, he could not see any physical reason for it.

  Stahn was still intangible, but he was beginning his work. Morgan’s legs suddenly flexed outward as though stretching, and then faintly, Felon saw the outline of a hand like it was drawn in chalk on an invisible screen. A large human-like hand slid out of the darkness, and then another. Both were sketched at first, but grew in detail. Each hand grabbed an ankle, and pulled the legs apart. The darkness between her thighs was thrust upward as her hips turned.

  Felon quietly got to his knees.

  Morgan moaned as the snuffling and lapping noises continued, and now the vague shape of a massive man was appearing on the bed. He was bent over between her outstretched legs. The sleeping woman moaned and her breath drew in more sharply. She twisted her hips against the shadow head that grew steadily more visible. Felon could make out a small pair of curved horns atop the large naked skull. But he could not distinguish a silhouette or profile. Its face was obscured pressing against the sleeping woman’s groin. As Morgan made small laughing noises, she began to buck her hips more powerfully against the Incubi’s slowly resolving face. With each counter thrust, the guttural sounds she made increased—spasmodic gulps of air exploded—and the Demon took shape.

  It was more than eight feet in height, and powerfully muscled. The Demon’s dark flesh was like carved granite. The muscles flexed impossibly—black blood churned through distended veins. The Incubus slipped one large hand under the woman’s buttocks and easily lifted her lower trunk and hips upward toward his foot long tongue. Morgan moaned with pleasure as the Incubus lavished her with monstrous kisses, his tongue flicking, darting in and out, his yellow fangs nibbling.

  Felon lifted his gun as the creature lowered the woman on the bed. Stahn straightened now, arching his powerful back. The Demon’s penis stretched over the woman. It was two feet in length and looked as thick as Felon’s arm. Stahn gathered Morgan’s ankles with one clawed hand and pushed them back to her ears. He grinned, muttered “ficus” to himself, and then looming over her exposed genitalia he thrust. The woman screamed.

  Felon stepped out of the closet, gun level with his eyes. The Incubus swung its head as he fired. The hiss of the silencer drew Morgan from her trance. She screamed again. Impaled, she was dragged over the mattress as the Demon turned. Felon moved slowly toward Stahn, looking at nothing but his head. He fired into the skull, again and again, while his free hand positioned the next clip. Stahn’s head flexed and changed with the first few bullets as he attempted to disappear, but too late, for the impact of the bullets pulled him back into physical form. Each strike punched more solidity into his dissolving head. Roaring the Demon was drawn back to the physical world.

  Felon had the other clip poised beneath his gun, now ready: discharge clip, reload. Fire! The automatic thumped with each shot. The Demon howled, then shrieked as one of its horns shattered. The bullets fully reversed the earlier process and began to chew a great hole of ragged nothingness in its face. “NO!” it roared—the mirrors in the apartment burst into fragments. Felon slammed in the next clip, opened up

  “NO!” The top of Stahn’s head exploded in a great eruption of black and gray. Hot red streaks flew from the gaping skull and steamed smokily on the dresser and wall. The Demon’s body could no longer resist the impact of the bullets, and was flung to the floor on the far side of the bed. The assassin leapt after it firing.

  He shifted his aim onto its muscular chest until a ragged fist-sized hole was punched. Discharge clip, reload. Fire. Stahn stopped moving. Felon continued to fire. Discharge clip, reload. He stopped; then grimaced. The gun steamed in his hand. Morgan was out of her mind, screaming—her white thighs streaked with Demon blood. She threw herself on the floor and crawled into the closet sobbing. Then Stahn’s body began to smoke. Wisps of silky white thread like solid steam curled upwards. His head was missing from the top lip up—a wide pool of blood filled the crater in its chest. The rising mist was sour.

  Felon turned away.

  “Assassin...” The voice was deep and terrible; the words wet with blood. “Assassin...”

  Felon froze, gritted his teeth, and turned. He swung his gun, stepped near. Miraculously, even as its body was dissolving, the mouth moved. Jawbones slid beneath torn flesh. “I see you,” the corpse moaned. Felon looked at its mangled head. The eyes went in the first volley.

  Felon checked his peripheral vision, caught on the dresser: a white orb. The eye trailed its long gray optic nerve through a pile of gore. The slit pupil dilated. Felon raised his gun and fired. The eye burst into a glob of moisture that painted the wall behind it. The Demon’s body moaned a final time, limbs flailing weakly as it turned to smoke.

  Felon wanted to kill the woman in the closet but Balg wanted her alive. He walked out of the bedroom scowling.

  17 – Bedtime Story

  “What do you think happened to my mother?” Dawn asked from the darkness where she laid on her little mattress by the cubbyhole. Mr. Jay was over at their small table. He used a wooden packing crate as a chair. After returning to their hideout, they had eaten dinner and shared a little chat about the day. Mr. Jay did not tell her anything about what happened at Carmen’s apartment except to say she had pictures of cats. Dawn didn’t think that was any biggy. Since the animals went crazy after the Change, pet lovers had to make do with pictures and stuffed animals.

  She asked him about the men who chased them. And he finally explained that he’d been around a long time, and it could have had something to do with old d
ebts. Though he promised her that he had done nothing wrong or illegal.

  “I was just avoiding trouble, Dawn,” he said. “Sometimes that’s the best you can do.”

  While that explanation didn’t reassure her much, she was still upset about the situation with Carmen, so she let it stand. Before her curiosity got the best of them, Mr. Jay sidestepped more questions by telling her he wanted to make an early start the next day. She should get to bed early and he’d go too after he’d given a couple of his books a quick glance.

  Dawn dozed off but woke back up to find her friend still reading in dim candlelight.

  “Go to sleep.” Mr. Jay turned his green eyes to her. From their faraway look, Dawn could tell that he had been deep in thought.

  “What do you think happened to her?” She pushed herself up on one little elbow. Her nose still twitched at the chemical they had used to remove her beard.

  Mr. Jay sighed, turned all the way around on his makeshift chair. He set his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “Well, I don’t know,” he said. “We’ve talked about that before.”

  Dawn nodded. “But I was just thinking about it.”

  “Well, you’ll have a lot of nights like that.” He smiled warmly. “At least until you know more or get used to not knowing.”

  “You think that will happen, Mr. Jay?” she asked.

  He chuckled, “I doubt it.”

  “And you don’t know…” She struggled with conflicting urges. Dawn had moments of obsession on the topic but she was sure that Mr. Jay was tired of it. Momentarily, she pondered returning to sleep.

  “No I don’t.” Mr. Jay leaned back with one elbow on his table. “But I remember the stories about the riot. It was a bad one by all accounts.” His head drooped forward; his brown beard dusted his chest. “What I heard was that there was a big group of living people in a town called Severance. Now that’s a long way north and west of here as you know, and when I heard the story I happened to be traveling north of it.