The Last Rite

by Chad Morgan

  One of the child monsters came from an angle he hadn’t anticipated. It came up and through the flames. Daniel aimed and pulled the trigger just in time, but instead of the blast from the shotgun and the head of the thing exploding, there was only a click and the monster was on him. As they fell back together over the counter, Daniel understood his gun was empty. His back hit the floor hard, but adrenaline masked the pain. He held the monster off him with the shotgun as the child-like head grinned at him, a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth.

  No, not just a child-like face, but his face, the child Daniel had shot as a cop. For a moment, Daniel could see the boy, dead for years now, smiling at him as he stood over Daniel as he bled out. The scar in Daniel’s abdomen burned as if the memory made the wound fresh again. The creature wore the boy’s face, with that exact same grin he had when he raised the gun at Daniel for a second and final shot.

  What had the old woman said? They knew his fears? His own dark thoughts? Maybe, but these dark things didn’t know Daniel half as well as they thought they did. He sneered at the monster and said, “Fuck you! You didn’t give me a choice!”

  The child-monster’s cherub face snapped at him with its rows of piranha-like teeth, then his face exploded. The body fell limp against him, it’s black blood oozing out of the head. Daniel shoved the thing to the side before any of it got on him, then twisted around to look at the corner. Lisa sat there, the shotgun aimed where the child-monster’s head had been a second before. Faint trails of smoke wafted from the barrels.

  “Thanks,” Daniel said.

  “I don’t want to die,” Lisa said, almost begging.

  “Then help me,” Daniel said.

  Daniel leaped to his feet and pulled Lisa to hers. Lisa chambered a round into the shotgun as Daniel reloaded. Soon they were both firing at the child monsters crawling at them, the cracking of the shotguns deafening in the close quarters.

  “Do you have to set everything on fire?” Lisa yelled, more to be heard than out of anger.

  “It was the only thing I could think of!” Daniel yelled back.

  “It’s the only thing you ever think of!” yelled Lisa.

  “Reloading!” Daniel shouted as he reached for a box of shotgun shells from under the counter.

  Lisa asked, “So?”

  “So, cover me while I reload!” Daniel ordered.

  Lisa fired over and over, not taking the time to aim. There were so many of the abominations, aiming wasn’t needed. Even wild shots were likely to hit something. Lisa yelled, “There’s too many of them! They won’t stop coming!”

  Daniel finished reloading and chambered a round. The plus side of the room being ablaze, it was easy to see. The once-dark corners were now illuminated in flickering orange and yellow light. Daniel pointed to the far corner. “There! There’s a hole in the ceiling. They’re crawling through there!”

  As he said it, another of the child-things crawled through the hole, squeezing through the tight fit like a cockroach coming up a bathroom drain. Daniel fired, and the limp form dropped to the ground and out of sight.

  “Reloading!” Lisa shouted.

  “Gotcha!” Daniel shouted back, swinging the shotgun to Lisa’s side. He picked off another creature from along the ceiling as Lisa reloaded.

  Once fully loaded, Lisa stood up and fired at another creature. The other far corner began to crack, and plaster and wood dropped to the floor as more creatures forced its way into the store, fearless of the fire and smoke. Lisa aimed with her gun and shouted, “Over there! There’s more!”

  Before Daniel could react, a large avalanche of crashes sounded from the back room. Daniel aimed at the doorway to the back room and fired as the child creatures began pouring out.

  “They’re breaking in from the back!” Daniel shouted as if Lisa couldn’t come to that conclusion herself.

  “We’re surrounded!” Lisa yelled.

  It had looked desperate earlier when Lisa was paralyzed with fear, but once she joined the fray Daniel had hoped they could weather the wave after wave of child-monsters flooding the store. Now that optimism was evaporating as the tide of child monsters flooded in from more areas. They were drowning, and Daniel could see no way out.

  But Daniel had been here before. More than once Daniel escaped death by just holding on long enough for an opportunity to present itself. They had to keep firing, keep holding death at bay until something happened to give them a chance.

  The front of the store crashed in, and light from the outside shown in. The store had been so thoroughly boarded up, he thought he had awoken to night, but now he can see light from the setting sun, or whatever this world’s equivalent of the sun was. Wood and plaster and bodies of abominations fell to the ground as giant tree-like avatars pounded the top of the store, bringing the weakened beams down. Daniel thought of the scene from The Two Towers where the living tree creatures attacked the villain’s tower, but instead of creatures that looked like trees, these were trees that wove their branches and roots to look like creatures. The things looked like a cross between a bear and an elephant on its hind legs. Daniel still didn’t know if these tree-creatures were on his side, but he did know they hated the other kind of monsters, and that was enough for now. He jumped down behind the counter, grabbed his backpack, and threw as much ammo on top of Bethany’s doll as the bag could hold. Then he grabbed Anna’s diary from the counter, shoved it in the back and zipped it up.

  “Run!” he shouted to Lisa as he slid the bag onto his back.

  “What?” Lisa asked.

  Daniel jumped over the counter and grabbed Lisa’s bag from the floor by them. He pulled Lisa down, handed her the backpack, and shouted, “Run!”

  He pulled Lisa behind him, leaping over the flames and running forward for the opening the tree monsters had made. He ignored the monsters, both kinds, and eyed open air. A child-monster jumped at him, but something looking like a tree stump came down on it and crushed it. It popped like stepping on a ketchup packet, black goo spraying out under the foot.

  As they ran, Daniel felt Lisa being pulled back from him. He tightened his grip on her hand and turned to see Lisa pulling against one of the child-like abominations. The abomination was pinned under another trunk-like foot of one of the nature creatures, the abominations lower half smashed into a dark smear, but one of its claws had caught Lisa by her necklace. There was a moment Daniel was sure the abomination would rip in two, and the monster’s asymmetric torso would be dragged along with them, but the necklace snapped. Bits of silver and turquoise caught the light as it fell in pieces to the ground, but they were free again. They ran unhindered out of the chaos, past the monsters killing each other, but they had nowhere to go.

  “Oh, my God, it’s getting dark, and we’re outside!” Lisa yelled, her hand clutching where the necklace used to be as if she could still feel the silver against her neck.

  Daniel searched the streets for a place to run too. Lisa was right, the monsters were more active at night. They had to get off the street. Looking around, Daniel caught sight of the wolf. A wave of relief washed over him knowing the wolf wasn’t dead, but he pushed that aside. He could be happy for the wolf later, for now, he needed to concentrate on survival. The wolf stood in front of what looked like a government building, missing any eye-catching signs of a business or the personal touches of a residence. A school maybe? It didn’t matter, as long as it was shelter.

  “That way!” Daniel shouted to Lisa, pointing to the steps of the large building.

  The wolf stood there waiting as Daniel pulled Lisa through the large double doors, then followed them in as Daniel slammed the doors shut. Daniel looked around for something to bar the doors with. Around him were rows and rows of bookshelves, the center of the room cast in a dull glow from the setting sun coming through the windows above it. The center of the room was clear of shelves but lined with tables and chairs. The far wall was a counter where he guessed an administrator sat. His first thought was a public records office, b
ut it was too large for a town this size, and then the obvious answer hit him. They were in a library.

  “Here!” Daniel shouted. “Help me!”

  Daniel ran to the nearest bookcase and started to push. He looked to Lisa, but she stood back, arms crossed, and glaring at him. He was about to call her again when the bookcase teetered, then fell over against the door. Books spilled all over the floor in front of the entrance. He waited to hear the banging of monsters against the door, but none came. The two tribes were too busy killing themselves, it seemed, to pay them any attention.

  Catching his breath, he turned to Lisa. “Are there any other entrances? We need to make sure . . .Lisa?”

  Lisa was standing there, her backpack and shotgun at her feet. The way she was glaring at him, even in the dim light of the setting sun, Daniel was afraid she’d start another fire.

  “Lisa? Are you okay?” Daniel asked, concerned, afraid she was wounded from the escape from the camping store. He looked her up and down, but saw no sign of a fresh wound, save from the scratches on her neck where the necklace was pulled taunt before snapping off.

  “We could have left,” she said, her voice smoldering with anger.

  Daniel’s shoulders slacked. At least she wasn’t injured. “Lisa . . .”

  Before he could explain further, Lisa rushed him and hit him against his chest. Lisa’s punches bounced off him, lacking much strength in her exhaustion. Daniel dropped his backpack to the ground and tried to grab Lisa’s arms, but her slender wrists, covered in sweat and grime, were hard to hold. As her punches flew, Lisa screamed, “We could have left! They were going to let us leave and you said no! How could you?”

  “Lisa!” Daniel shouted a verbal slap.

  “You said you were going to get me out of here!” she yelled, her fists flying. “You promised!”

  Daniel finally secured a grip on Lisa’s wrists. She pulled at him, trying to slip free so she can hit him more. Daniel held her just tight enough to hold her and not so tight as to, he hoped, hurt her. He pulled her close so he could look her right in her eyes. “I’m going to. But I need to get my daughter . . .”

  “The girl you just met?” Lisa snapped.

  Daniel’s jaw dropped, and Lisa took advantage of the shock and yanked her wrists free of his hands. She didn’t resume hitting him, but Lisa read his face and took a savage pleasure in finally hurting Daniel with her words when her fists couldn’t.

  “It’s true, isn’t it?” she continued, twisting the verbal knife. “You just met this girl? How do you even know she’s really your daughter, huh?”

  “There was a DNA test to confirm.” Even as Daniel said it, he knew it sounded weak. The truth had served him well in the past, but in this argument, it was a rubber sword and a paper shield. How could he sum up in a few words what Anna had meant to him, the mystery over her leaving, his sense of duty, or his own mental arguments over what Bethany meant to him?

  Lisa laughed hard. “You needed a DNA test? Father of the year, aren’t you?”

  Daniel was sinking and he knew it. “I . . . I don’t . . .”

  “We could have left!” Lisa snapped, her laughter gone in a manic instant. “We could have been safe, God damn it! But you had to trap us here so you could go save a daughter you don’t even fucking know!”

  “I’m not leaving without my daughter!” Daniel shouted.

  Lisa leaned in close, so they were nearly nose-to-nose. “You killed us.”

  Daniel opened his mouth to speak, but before he could make a sound, Lisa’s slapped him hard. When he turned his head back, Lisa was already stomping away to the darkness of the library.

  “Lisa,” he called out, but his voice lacked any conviction. He knew that, while she was angry, there would be no getting through to her.

  “Just leave me alone!” she shouted back, a kinder retort than Daniel expected.

  30

  Lisa marched through the rows of bookshelves to a corner table. Lisa was raised in Shellington Heights and visited the library often as a child. It hadn’t changed a lot since her childhood, and even in the darkness, she could find her favorite table. The table was low to the ground, built for children instead of adults, so Lisa sat on the table itself instead of one of the miniature chairs set around it. The sun had set, and the moonlight was diffused by the ever-present fog, but she found the dark corner of the library bright enough. She could even read the spines of the books as if everything was bathed in a dark blue light.

  The library was the original town hall. When the new town hall was built, along with the police station and medical clinic, the old town hall was converted into a museum, but attendance wasn’t high enough to keep the museum open. The mayor, with help from the Native Americans at the reservation and the mayors from the neighboring towns and some state and federal grant money, turned the building into a library. Many of the exhibits and pictures on the wall from when it was a museum still adorned the library. It was meant to be a library not for the town, but for the county. People would drive in from other towns for access to the latest books, at least until the age of online digital distribution. Now the building was again neglected, and while the library stayed open it was a whisper of its former glory.

  Her mother brought her here when she was younger. Lisa would sit at the table as her mother found books for her to read, stories that were read to her mother when she was young and she now shared with her daughter. She was so giving, her mother, giving her time and her attention, which for a young girl was precious. Tears rolled down her cheek. Thinking of her made Lisa’s heart ache, and thinking of the thing her mother had become, the thing that tried to kill her, the thing that Lisa was forced to kill, made her sick to her stomach.

  Lisa scratched at the dressed wound on her right shoulder, and part of her mind knew that it was the wound and not her heart that ached, the same part that was alarmed when the bandage squished when she rubbed it. Syrupy black blood oozed from the bandage and over her hand, and that part of her mind that knew what was happening screamed, but the rest of her mind was numb, swimming in anger and sorrow and self-pity.

  From the central area of the library, bathed in the fog-clouded moonlight, Daniel made circles. To Lisa, he was glowing, as if a huge spotlight shown on him. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Wolf? C’mon, I saw you run in here. Where are you?”

  Daniel turned and looked at Lisa. No, he didn’t see her. He knew what aisle she walked down, but Daniel couldn’t see her in the darkness.

  “Lisa, did you see the wolf?” he called out.

  A swell of anger grew in her like nausea coming up her throat before vomiting. “Fuck off,” she growled.

  Daniel shook his head and walked off. There was a part of her that wanted to reach out to him, to apologize, the wrap her arms around him and hold him tight. That part, the same part that knew something was wrong, was screaming louder as it drifted further away, desperate to be heard and being pushed further away from her conscious mind. No, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t her mind anymore.

  She pulled her hand away from her wound. Had she been scratching at it again? It itched. No, not just itched, that muzzled part of her mind screamed it was on fire. Lisa looked at her hand and saw the black ooze all over her fingers. Lisa pulled off the bandage and saw, even in the dark, the black tendrils spreading from the wound, blisters swelling and the skin turning white, then a sickly yellow. Holding her hand out in front of her, she turned back to Daniel.

  “Daniel?” she called out, but her breath was gone. Her leg gave out from under her and she fell to the ground. As her wounded shoulder hit the floor, the black ooze spurted out like a popped pimple. Lisa’s eyes were wide as she started to convulse, black froth coming from her mouth. She could feel her skin rip apart as bones splintered and stretched, but she didn’t have the strength to scream. Besides, a part of her, a part that wasn’t really her but something else, liked the sensation of the pain.

  “Fucking Lightfoot,” the business s
uit man said next to her.

  The camping store was a smoldering ruin, the roof and beams smashed in from both the assault of his abominations – and the business suit woman thought of them as just that, his abominations - and the counter-assault of Lightfoot’s creatures. From their vantage point at the other end of the street, they could see the silhouette of the two armies ripping each other apart, backlit by the dying flames. Burns had set the building on fire, with himself still inside it. She wasn’t sure if Burns was attempting suicide, desperate to try anything, or too stupid to know the building would burn down around him. There had been a fire in the apartment building that morning. Burns must have determined fire as being an effective weapon, though his improvisational acts of arson got away from him.

  “Think Burns survived?” she asked her partner. She had her own analysis, and she didn’t need the confirmation of her partner, but she wanted insights into how he was thinking.

  “I don’t know, but we better find him before Mr. Lightfoot does,” he growled, his voice deep. “Did you catch a glimpse of him by chance?”

  “No,” she said, then realized she had assumed her partner meant Lightfoot. There was a single heartbeat of panic, but a quick mental review of her words and actions didn’t show any tells. She looked at her partner, who stared out at the flames. If he picked up anything in her words or expressions, he didn’t show.

  “Let’s split up,” her partner said. “I’ll take the alley, you circle back to Main,”

  He walked off without another word, making for the last few battling monsters as if they weren’t there. The woman in the business suit turned and walked down towards Main street, grateful to get away from her partner. He was enjoying all this death and destruction too much. The business suit woman was willing to do what she needed to do, but there was a difference between that and enjoying causing the pain and suffering. She wondered if he was too enthralled with his actions to question them. An addict wouldn’t ask too many questions if he was paid to feed his addiction.