Like the one I’m taking now, he thought ironically.
Hopefully, she survived.
Bray splashed into the marsh, his scabbarded sword bouncing at his side. Regaining his bearings, he readied his pistol, glancing along the bottom of the slope, searching for a muddy, fleeing boy. All he saw were fat, dark trees and endless swamp. Something loud and hard pierced the water near his leg.
He glanced back up the hill. One of the slinging men stood there, stuffing his dirty hand into his pouch.
Bray fired, striking the man in the shoulder, sending him tumbling. He didn’t wait for the man to hit the bottom of the hill. He tore through the swamp, heading in the last direction he’d seen William. He leapt over snarled tree roots, fallen branches, and sprawling weeds. Deep in the distance, he saw figures chasing after an unseen person.
Where is William? Is he alive?
The boy had survived situations that Bray wouldn’t have expected. He was smart and savvy. But those skills didn’t ward off death forever. Sooner or later, a person met their inevitable end.
Plunging his boots in and out of the thick water, Bray used the trees for cover, dodging whistling projectiles, until one finally hit its mark.
His rifle slammed against his body.
He grabbed for the strap, steadying the jolted weapon. Rushing toward the nearest tree, Bray found an acorn-sized dent on the gun’s barrel. A few inches in either direction, and he might have a hole in his hand, or in his abdomen.
Dirt scratchers!
More cries filled the air. Splashes hit the water. The world became a cacophony of noise. Somewhere, William’s pursuers were getting farther away from him and closer to William. He was losing ground.
Snarls.
Two mushroom-headed, scraggly demons surged through the swamp and towards Bray, drawn by the commotion. Of course, the gunfire had alerted them. If they’d been in a different situation, Bray would’ve thought twice about using his loud, deadly weapons. But he’d had no choice. And the whistle of the men’s slings hadn’t helped.
He got his pistol up, but not in time to stop the first demon’s reaching hands. The creature swiped and clawed, hissing. Blocking a scratch from its jagged nails, he kneed the beast, knocking it backward. The mutant crashed into its brethren.
Bray fired his pistol, striking the first twisted man in the head, sending it reeling.
His gun clicked empty.
The next demon leapt at him with as much ferocity as its brother. Tangling with Bray’s rifle, the monster clawed at the metal, searching for precious flesh. Bray cried out and pushed the thing back, just as it latched onto the leather strap, snapping the clasps and breaking the rifle from his body.
Beast and gun fell backwards. The rifle landed in the murky water and sank. And then Bray was fending off a voracious, muddy beast with an empty pistol.
The creature’s putrid breath filled the space between them. Its eyes blazed hungrily. Bray shoved it backward, instinctively grabbing for his knife. The demon was on him before he could unsheathe the blade, clacking its rotten, broken teeth and preventing him from doing much of anything. Knobby, fungal warts rubbed against Bray’s arms. The mutant snaked its fingers toward his throat, searching for soft skin to tear, to chew.
Sudden dread filled Bray. A hundred similar moments flashed in his mind.
Maybe this would be his last memory.
No! With a grunt, he heaved the thing backward into the mud, pulling his knife and bending down, stabbing it in the throat. The beast’s final screech died in its windpipe.
Bray looked around for the rifle. Where was the damned thing? The opaque water made it difficult to find. He splashed back to where he thought he’d dropped it, searching with his hands and kicking with his boots.
Hisses drew his attention to the trees, where four more demons skirted through the trunks and toward him. Bray cursed. The men and William were getting farther away.
Dammit! He could either muck around here, or he could rescue his lost friend.
Quickly reloading his pistol, he rushed through the water.
Chapter 14 – William
Run!
William forged through the turbid mire, panting for breath, gripping the small knife he’d pulled out. The six-inch blade would be useless against a long-range attack. William wasn’t foolish enough to think he could handle a vicious group of men.
He’d die before he got in more than a few swipes.
Still, the thought of being empty-handed was even worse.
His legs were tired. His bones ached. He pulled his boots in and out of the muck, searching for easier travel. All he saw was the same, grim landscape. To his left, the slope climbed sharply, but he’d never make it to the path before the men overtook him. They were too close. It felt as if he was doomed to trudge forward forever.
Doomed to die.
Maybe a whizzing stone would strike him and bring on his ill-fated end. The thought brought a momentary reprieve.
Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the men lower their slings. New fears. Perhaps they meant to capture him alive instead of killing him.
He’d seen the cruel intentions people could have for children in The Arches, and in Brighton. He’d been a pawn for evil people, thrown away after their ends were achieved. He wouldn’t be used again. Anger combined with his fear.
He plowed ahead, swerving around the trees, even though he could feel his pace slowing. The men didn’t have the disadvantage of the infection, afflicting their knees and elbows. They weren’t travel-weary. William stumbled, nearly falling.
And then he heard something.
A hiss!
A cry drew his attention behind, where a scrawny, shrieking monster grabbed hold of one of the men, pulling him into the water while the other men frantically tugged it away. More monsters emerged from the trees, battling them.
Perhaps his prayers had been answered.
William turned forward again, looking at the slope. Ahead, he observed a break in the mossy incline: a tunnel. Shadow filled most of the hole, which looked like it ran from one side of the slope to the other.
Maybe he could escape through it to the other side, where he could climb up more safely. At the very least, he’d hide.
Gasping, he ran for the dark passage.
Chapter 15 – Bray
Twisted men darted everywhere, hunting and snarling. In just moments, the forest had come alive.
The appearance of so many monsters meant more obstacles between Bray and William—distractions Bray couldn’t afford. He kept a straight course, following the bottom of the slope and avoiding most of them. Through the trees, he saw the mud-slicked men engaged in their own battle with the infected.
For the moment, they fought the same enemy.
A snarl alerted him to more danger. Two more of the things barreled in Bray’s direction, their mouths hanging open greedily.
His eyes flicked down to his sheathed knife. He pulled it out and sank it into the first creature’s massive head, saving the reloaded pistol’s rounds. The second creature clacked its jaw as it ran. One eye drooped slightly, evidence of some previous battle.
With a cry, Bray charged the demon, driving his blade through its damaged socket. The creature’s arms slapped uselessly as it fought for life. But it was as mortal as any man.
The creature fell, dead, the blade still embedded in its eye.
Bray bent and retrieved his weapon, cleaning it off. In the distance, he saw the three mud-slicked men engaged with the demons. Beyond them, farther away, was something else: a large, round tunnel in the side of the trail.
A small, familiar figure ran into it.
William!
Chapter 16 – Kirby
Kirby splashed through the marsh, directing her horse while leading the other with the rope. Bray’s hasty exit had given her little time to second-guess their decision. For a while, she’d fired on her attackers, driving them back long enough to get down the slope.
Now she
was on flatter, but no less dangerous, ground.
She thrust her rifle behind her, squeezing off more bullets. Back near the slope, several mud-slicked attackers ducked or dove.
Distance. She needed distance. The horses were moving briskly, but she needed to gain more ground. Ahead, she saw the thick patches of foliage that Bray had pointed out. With any luck, firmer ground hid underneath. Maybe he was right; maybe she had a chance at escape. Desperate thoughts followed:
What then?
She hated that she was apart from Bray and William, just as much as she hated their predicament. Horrible decisions.
Her horse whinnied and pulled harder, aggravating one of her old, forgotten wounds. All at once, Kirby was stalking through a different forest, in a different time. In her memory, she and several other soldier-slaves wove between the gray trunks of old, enormous trees in their homeland, the bugs nipping at their sweaty skin. The smell of smoke and burnt skin filled their noses. They passed a wood-walled house, orange flames licking at the sides, screams echoing from within.
Several of her comrades ran out from behind the structure, vomiting. One of the men dropped the torch he’d been given, after setting the building ablaze.
Everyone faced the same fate: follow orders, or die.
Fighting the sick feeling in her stomach, Kirby rushed up to the burning building, grappling with the instinctive urge to run inside and help. Emotions she wasn’t allowed to feel pricked at her, forcing tears, as the dying screams faded.
She couldn’t do anything that day, just as she couldn’t do anything now.
Kirby shook off the awful recollection, pulling herself to the present. Sometimes it seemed her memories crawled away and hid, waiting for the worst time to spring out and torture her.
She needed to focus on her current predicament, or she’d die.
The clop of firm ground beneath her horse’s hooves gave her a surge of hope. She looked around to find green, lush foliage. She’d escaped the mud-covered swamp for smoother, drier land. Bray had been right.
Maybe this was the break she needed.
Chapter 17 – William
William splashed through the tunnel, his mud-soaked clothes and his bag adhering to his body. Dark shadows filled the space, seeming to close up around him. Running in here had been an act of desperation.
Now he questioned that decision.
The tunnel was about thirty feet wide and three times as long, filled with the putrid odor of decay. Long, ropy vines covered most of the opposite entrance, allowing in only a few stripes of light. The parts of the walls that he could see were crumbled and stained, splashed with brown liquid. The deeply pooling water around him made him feel as if he was still slogging through the never-ending river, rather than crossing through a small patch of covered land.
The water in here was higher than it had been outside. It was nearly at his waist.
He trudged slowly through it, heart hammering.
For all he knew, more men waited, half submerged in this dark passage, ready to pull him under to drown.
Or drag me away to their treacherous ends.
He looked on either side of him. Most of the area was cloaked in shadow, but at the tunnel’s edge, he saw a dry, rocky embankment.
Demon snarls and hisses echoed from behind him, still outside. Sooner or later, either demons or men would survive, and the victor would come after him.
Demons he could talk with.
The men, he couldn’t.
William veered toward the embankment, splashing through the dark pool toward the ten-foot-wide strip, hoping to make better speed.
Relief struck him as he found his way from water to rocks, soaked through and muddied and crunching over debris. He glanced frantically behind him. He couldn’t see the mud-slicked men, the demons, nor Bray or Kirby. But he needed to get out of this tunnel, and back to the light.
William tripped over something; he looked down, spotting a discarded bag.
He darted more carefully, keeping to the filtered rays of light, passing a rotted wooden spear, and a person’s shredded scrap of clothing. Something small and metal skittered away from him. A flask?
He hurried, continuing on his path, coming across more abandoned clothing and supplies.
What is this place?
A splash froze him. William spun.
Movement.
Fear washed over him as he saw a pair of eyes watching him, reflected from the top of the water, ten feet away.
Whatever it was glided closer.
William quivered as a dark shape—an enormous, scale-covered head—rose from the murky pool. Lumpy ridges covered its glistening skin, extending far past its eyes and down to its long tail. It was bigger than any demon, bigger than anything he’d encountered. For moments that seemed like forever, William and the thing measured each other.
William shook. Panic shot through his body as he realized his size, and the uselessness of his small knife.
He might as well be defenseless.
William surveyed the remainder of the embankment. More steps than he could count stood between him and the tunnel’s opposite edge. His eyes flicked back to the beast, which had stopped moving. It felt like a single breath might precipitate an attack.
The monster sank slowly, lowering its great length into the water. If not for the dim spark of its eyes protruding above the dark pool, William might’ve convinced himself it was a rock, or a limb from a long dead tree.
Icicles of fear crawled through him; he steadied himself. He had to get out of here.
He took a step. And then another. To his horror, the creature followed him in the water. He’d never reach the end of the tunnel. He’d die in this thing’s awful clutches, ripped to shreds between its jaws: monster food.
The gigantic, ridged tail wriggled back and forth, propelling it closer. William blinked hard. For a moment, he wondered if the spore’s madness had caught up to him, and he was hallucinating.
But this wasn’t madness. This was real.
Some terror from the bowels of the earth had come for him.
Chapter 18 – Bray
Bray cursed. Each moment he fought through the dense marsh felt like an eternity.
William was already out of sight, but Bray was quickly narrowing the gap to the tunnel. A hundred feet ahead, the mud-slicked men continued fighting the demons. Their numbers worked against them—three targets were a better prospect for the demons, who flung their bodies at them eagerly.
But the mud-slicked men were as adept as anyone surviving in the wild.
They drew small, ugly shivs, ramming them into the monsters wherever they could find yielding flesh. Bray watched with trepidation as the demons fell into the water, one after the other.
He was within fifty feet of the tunnel when the three closest men turned toward him, finished with their fight.
Bray aimed his pistol.
One man shouted to another.
They wound their slings.
They stopped.
Stunned, Bray refrained from firing. Fear passed over the men’s faces, as they looked from Bray to the tunnel. Perhaps the small, Tech Magic gun had affected them, after all.
Bray wasn’t spitting on his luck. Huffing in a breath, he beelined for William.
Chapter 19 – Kirby
Quiet surrounded Kirby. The ground ahead was thick with weeds, but mercifully dry. For the first time all day, luck shined on her. Still, she couldn’t rest. She needed to find a place to stash the horses so she could go back for William and Bray.
Each moment apart from them deepened her worry.
Kirby looked quickly around. A thick cluster of trees was all she needed. She’d tuck the beasts away, circle back, and find her friends.
A clearing appeared in the distance, surrounded by a broad, dense brush and something beyond.
More luck?
Kirby rode into the grassy field, thanking the gods for easier travel. She surveyed the land in front of her. Thirty fee
t ahead, rows of squat, broken-down structures lined the field, comprised of battered boards, pieces of ancient metal, and logs. Mud and rock spackled the spaces between. A few of the doors swung in the gentle breeze, guarding empty homes.
The old village certainly felt empty, abandoned.
She kept her gun trained just in case, riding closer.
Sparrows trilled from the nearby trees, as she led her horses up the path, between the sagging, collapsed structures, hearing and seeing nothing alarming. Moss crept over the windows, claiming the building’s insides. Most of the structures were too small to store the horses, but ahead, she saw a larger building. She’d leave the steeds there and come back.
Kirby rode close to it and dismounted, aiming her rifle.
She reached the entrance, nudging the door open.
And froze.
The foul odor of sickness and the smell of cooking herbs reached her nose first. Too late, she realized she wasn’t alone. Through the light of several glassless windows, she saw rows and rows of beds, occupied by prone, stationary figures. Rags, towels, and buckets sat on the floor nearby them. Coughs punctuated the room. A soft sound drew her attention to a group of frightened, gasping women, who backpedaled down the middle of the aisle, trying to get away from her.
Kirby tensed, training her rifle on people she hadn’t expected to see.
One scrawny, dirty woman took a step ahead of the others, brandishing a knife, shielding the group. Her labored breathing filled the air as she and the women protected a small group of children, who had already retreated against the far wall.
Kirby had seen places like this before.
This was some kind of quarantine bunker.
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