The Vengeance of Shadows

by Phil Maxey

  “Actually, maybe we should open it…” said Evan.

  All three pondered in silence.

  “What the hell’s going on?” said Marina, pushing past the hanging sheet, and brushing her hair from her face.

  Ignoring her comment, Joel looked up at Anna. “Well, going back to LA is out of the question, there’s nothing but death there…” He tried not to notice Marina’s stare.

  Evan reached under the table and pulled out his laptop.

  “Then let’s find another military base, one that is still functioning, and see if they know what to do with this case,” said Anna.

  “On it,” said Evan, pulling the computer open and typing away.

  Marina looked down at the case. “What is so special about that thing? I thought you had your favorite gun in there or something.”

  Joel shook his head. “Months back, I would have been happy to get rid of it, but now… I’d prefer to know what it contains before I give it to anyone, including the government.”

  Marina poured herself some water.

  Anna sat on the sofa. “The only way to get it open without destroying what’s inside is to know the combination. I don’t suppose the former owner of this thing gave you the seven digit combination?”

  Joel shook his head. “He was delirious, just kept saying ‘water too.’ We had to get to one of the basins at the marina, so I presumed it was just him wanting us to get there…”

  Marina sipped on her water, and scrunched her face up. “He knew you had to get to the dock to get to a ship anchored nearby, so why keep saying it?”

  “He was dying, who knows why.”

  “You sure it was ‘water too’ and not something similar sounding?”

  “Even if it were, so what?” said Joel.

  Evan looked up, his gaze at no one in particular. “Waterloo…” He then looked at Joel across the table. “Could he have said Waterloo?”

  “I guess… why?”

  Evan typed away at the keyboard, then looked at Anna whose hands were still resting on the case. “Try, one-eight-six-one-eight-one-five…”

  She lifted the case slightly and spun the small black dials around, until they lined up with the date of the battle of Waterloo.

  She looked at those standing around her, and slid her hands to the latches at the side and pushed. They slid outwards stopping with a click.

  Everyone inside the RV could hear each other’s hearts racing as she placed the case back on to the table and pulled the lid up.

  Evan picked up the flickering candle and moved it around to light the contents.

  On top was a black stone tablet sealed inside a clear plastic case.

  Anna reached in and picked it up, as she did, an ethereal blue light came from what was underneath. Two large vials of a translucent blue liquid, with tiny spiraling sparkles within, sat embedded inside black foam.

  “What the hell is that?” said Marina, looking at the strange radiant substance that was causing ripples of shadows to appear on the ceiling and bathing their faces in a blue glow.

  Anna turned over the plastic-covered stone as Joel reached in to touch one of the vials.

  “Be careful…” said Marina.

  He nodded and lifted the vial from its holding. It was heavier than he expected and, as he held it close to his eye, the liquid swirled, settled, then fizzed… He felt the temperature around him change to a dry heat before he saw stone walls, each one meticulously carved with symbols.

  “What…”

  His mind felt detached from his senses and he spun around to face a large square walled cavern with circular pillars at regular intervals. Light came from burning torches and in the center were sarcophagi. Four surrounding one much larger. These were not like the versions he had seen in history documentaries or once or twice in museums. These were covered in black, silver, and gold etchings and lines that connected them all. But that wasn’t what was so strange about the scene, for the surface of the sarcophagi seemed alive, the symbols constantly changing form and colour.

  “Joel?”

  He blinked. The three others were looking back at him from inside the RV.

  “You okay?” said Anna.

  He moved the vial away from his face, placing it back down in its soft holding. “Yeah, I’m fine.” The strange image lingered in his mind, until he looked at those looking at him.

  Everyone shifted on their feet as if they were lifting their unease at seeing him transfixed.

  He looked at the stone tablet in Anna’s hand. “Recognize what that is?”

  She shook her head. “History was never my thing. But it looks old… real old.”

  “Let me see…” said Evan. She handed it to him. He examined the gold-etched symbols on the smooth surface. “My grandfather would know better than I, but these look Sumerian.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Joel, Anna, and the rest sat around the coffee table in Shannon’s living room. She still hadn’t made an appearance despite Jess leaving the bedroom and being ready to leave.

  Bill sighed. It was the third or fourth time he had while looking at the symbols on the stone tablet.

  Mary appeared from the hallway, carrying a few mugs of coffee.

  Outside, the sun was just starting to seep through the drapes, and Marina pulled them open to reveal a clear looking morning sky.

  Joel looked away from the glare, squinting, and back to Bill. “So?”

  Bill shook his head slightly. “Some of these symbols are Sumerian, but there are others here that I don’t recognize at all.”

  “What about the symbols you do recognize, what do they say?” said Marina, sipping on her coffee.

  Bill looked across to Evan, who met his gaze. They exchanged a knowing nod.

  “Care to share?” said Marina.

  “Well, the original Sumerian creation story was discovered on a stone tablet, but it was incomplete. There were parts missing. This—” He held it up. “Appears to refer to things that were not mentioned on that stone tablet. Actually, I would say that stone tablet is a copy of this one. This, I think… is the original.”

  “What does it say?” said Joel. He had been trying to forget the strange vision that took over his mind hours before, but he couldn’t help feeling that it wasn’t merely his imagination, but something that needed to be seen.

  “Like I said, there are markings here I can’t read, but others appear to describe a place called Onkir which the Sumerian gods called home. There is also a list of ingredients, to create something called the ‘Alkron’ which was given to the ‘Kingly’ so that they may ‘divide from the beasts’…” He looked directly at Joel. “I think… this could be what Copeland found in the desert.”

  “How did the CDC get it?” said Anna.

  Bill shook his head.

  Marina walked forward and looked down at the glowing vials. “This is what is responsible for ending the world?”

  Bill nodded. “With Copeland’s involvement, yes.”

  In one movement Marina pulled her handgun from the back of her pants, swiveled it around in her hand, so the butt was facing down, and lifted her hand to bring it down upon the glass vials.

  In the blink of an eye Joel moved forward and caught her arm. “We don’t do anything until we know more about what this stuff is.” He could hear her heart beating and she looked back at him with moist eyes. She dropped her arm back to her side.

  Joel moved back to his seat, and an awkward silence descended until Bill cleared his throat. “The contents of this suitcase are very valuable and deadly in the wrong hands. I’m sure there are many that are trying to locate it.”

  “Liquid scourge…” said Evan under his breath.

  “If this did belong to Copeland, he’s going to want it back,” said Anna.

  “Somehow, the CDC got it from Copeland—” said Bill.

  “I doubt he offered it up voluntarily,” said Marina.

  “—Probably not. And they were trying to get it somewhere else, out of
Cali.”

  “Away from Copeland…” continued Marina.

  Joel sighed, remembering his part in the failed attempt.

  Anna looked at Evan. “Did you find any military bases near here?”

  He nodded, sliding his laptop’s screen around so it faced the others. “There’s a number of National Guard bases around us, but the closest major bases are an Air Force base north of Salt Lake City, and then three hundred miles east of here, an army base.”

  “Seeing we were going to Salt Lake anyway, the Air Force base seems the best bet,” said Joel.

  Most around him nodded in approval.

  “Finish up your coffee. Use the restroom. We leave in ten.” He got to his feet and moved close to Marina. He nodded towards Shannon’s bedroom door. “Now or never.”

  She nodded.

  It wasn’t long before everyone but Marina and Shannon were in the RV. Marina stood outside her bedroom door. She could hear the young girl moving around inside the medium-sized room and knocked. “Shannon, I know you know we’re about to leave. Please, come with—”

  Before she finished, the door opened, and Shannon was standing facing her. She had a backpack over one shoulder of a dark blue jacket, which was covered in cartoon patches, and her long hair tied in a ponytail.

  She walked past Marina, walking through the open front door. “Let’s go.”

  Marina looked back at the white envelope neatly resting on Shannon’s pillow on her bed, turned, and joined her walking to the RV.

  *****

  Even the threat of light from the waking star made Copeland feel uneasy. He looked down at the deserted homes of the once thriving neighborhoods, and felt all of his children looking up at him as he soared through the sky towards his compound. Even though some were starving, not having had a drink of fresh blood for days, he felt no pity for them. Those were human emotions, and he definitely wasn’t that anymore.

  Just as the glow from the sun peered over the distant mountains, the entrance to his apartment in the Copeland tower swung into view, and he quickly swooped lower until its shadow blocked the sunrise. He immediately felt a weight lift from him, and he landed on the twelfth story balcony, his wings receding into his back. As he walked forward, the specially treated clear polymer door slid back, and he walked into his sanctuary. The temperature inside the series of rooms that made up his abode, was twenty degrees higher than the outside. He found, once he changed, he preferred a climate warmer even than north California’s at the end of summer.

  He collapsed onto his large bed. He was tired. He did not need to go out for blood, and he was finding he was having to go further and further to find humans, but the hunt was always worth the effort.

  As he felt the embrace of sleep, a beeping noise came from the large screen which sat opposite his bed.

  He sighed and sat up. “Screen on…” He said into the darkness.

  The large digital display changed to one of an anxious-looking dark haired man, with equally dark-rimmed glasses. His suit was ill-fitting, and he kept fixing his tie. Behind him through a glass wall, men and women in white lab coats continued their work within a large modern-looking laboratory.

  “I just wanted to catch you, er… before you slept, we have finished cataloguing the Alkron code variations—”

  “And?”

  “—We have identified forty-seven different mutations, these include human and animals.” He nodded to the side, off screen, and a neon diagram appeared alongside his own face, showing circles and lines, arranged into groups. “Err, as you can see, most affected by the scourge are of type one, and present as what you would call your common vampire.”

  Copeland noticed the bottom of the diagram and the single red pulsing dot. “And what is that, at the bottom?”

  “That is the forty-seventh variation, and we believe the last that is possible. We are calling it ‘X.’ By our calculations—” More numbers slid onto the screen. “—Only 0.0000005 percent of the population are compatible with X. Which works out to be—”

  “One hundred and sixty two in this country…”

  “Yes, sir. We believe the man that our security forces is chasing is one of this group.”

  “And the others?”

  “We are developing a method to test for X, and—”

  “It will be completed soon, I expect…”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good, Adrian.”

  Adrian’s eyes widened slightly on being offered the compliment.

  “All one hundred and sixty two must be found, they cannot be allowed to spread their seed…”

  “No, sir.”

  “And news on the vials and tablets?”

  Adrian’s face grew dark and he adjusted the top part of his tie. “No, sir, but—”

  Copeland waved his hand and the screen switched off.

  The governments attack on his compound months earlier almost succeeded in ending his plans before they could bear fruit. Most of the special forces that attacked were killed, but some managed to escape with what he had spent a decade trying to find. The creation tablets of the Annunaki.

  Fools. They have no idea what they have.

  As he laid back, he couldn’t dispel the feeling in his gut that a reckoning was on the horizon. Conflict was inevitable with the remaining humans, and as he closed his eyes, he smiled, rejoicing in the absoluteness of the coming war.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Beige, craggy peaks dotted with points of green were passed by as the RV drove along a road which wound between mountains.

  Marina looked at the banks of fallen boulders, and pine trees that ran up the slopes and sighed. It was the kind of location, just a week earlier, she wanted to find to ‘make a go of it.’ The only other thing she needed was a natural source of water. Looking at the crevices and valleys, she was sure there were streams at the bottom of some of them. A string of images of her finding a cabin, or perhaps even making her own, moved effortlessly through her mind. These were then replaced with scenes of rage and blood, eclipsing the serene life she had hoped for. She looked away from the natural beauty outside the window.

  It’s gone.

  She did not know what the future held for her, but she was sure it wouldn’t contain a pleasant life of living off of the land, while home-schooling her child. Not anymore.

  Hungry.

  The hunger which came with the scourge wasn’t the same as she felt when she was one hundred percent human, although she still also had those kinds of pangs in her stomach. No, the new hunger she felt rattled her entire being. It came in waves, and, at its most extreme, she felt she was no longer the house wife from LA. Once married to Russell and the mother of Jess. She was something else. Something that did not care of the matters of love, suffering, laughter, or any other of those other pointless emotions which made her human. It was only concerned with the glory of that first moment when the heat from the thick crimson liquid dripped into her mouth, and she devoured what used to flow through another living creature.

  “Mom?”

  Marina blinked as if waking from a dream. “Erm… yeah?”

  “How much further?”

  “I think another hour.”

  Jess nodded and went back to reading a scuffed paperback with a dragon on the cover that Shannon had given her.

  Marina looked around the RV. Evan had claimed the bunk in the roof at the front. Anna was driving. Joel was seated next to Anna, and as far as Marina could tell, was asleep.

  Mary sat opposite her, alongside Jess. Hardin laid back on the small sofa to the side, with Shannon keeping her distance from him, and Bill was asleep in the main bed at the back. The complete insanity of the situation suddenly came to her and she giggled, making Mary and her daughter look at her. She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

  She turned around to the yellowing rock faces covered with the occasional blanket of forest and let herself be swallowed once again by fantasies of a different life.

  Anna sat with her hand on
the large wheel. The landscape undulated between green hills and flat planes, and back again, but for most of the time her mind did not even see what was passing by. Instead, she was trying to recall as much as she could from her university days, when her roommate would keep her up late at night with his obsession with UFOs and stories of ancient aliens. She was sure the ‘Annunaki’ played a major part in the conspiracy theories he would tell her, but she couldn’t remember any details. That whole period of her life was a haze of medical books and late-night parties.

  As they drove for the next hour, civilization crept up on the side of the road, which widened to four lanes. Brightly colored flat buildings accompanied large parking lots, which were mostly empty, slipped past, and the occasional abandoned car started to slow their progress.

  Anna wondered if it was worth stopping at any of the large stores they were passing, but everyone apart from Jess seemed asleep. She envied them. The sun seemed brighter than usual, and she kept wishing she had snuck some sunglasses into her pocket at some point. She pulled the sun visor down. Even though her face was now in shadow she could still ‘feel’ the rays on her face.

  As they progressed, a large body of water appeared on her left, while snow-capped mountains rose in the distance on her right. She had never been to this part of Utah, and she almost didn’t notice the near complete wall of vehicles in front of her until she was on top of it.

  “Shit…”

  She slowed then stopped the RV. Sedans, pickups, trucks, and vans sat motionless ahead. Some of the doors were open but mostly they looked as if they were all stuck in a huge jam, and were about to move away.

  She looked across to Joel, who was still asleep, then over her shoulder for some support as to what to do next, but everyone’s eyes were closed.

  She then remembered that just a few moments before she had passed an exit.

  Okay, side roads it is then.

  She swung the RV around, and was soon moving down the slope to an empty junction. She looked up at the traffic lights. No longer did they display red, green, or orange, now they just sat there waiting for someone to give them purpose. She took the turn to the right and drove up a slight incline. In her side mirror, Utah lake started to appear, and as she became absorbed in the afternoon sun catching the ripples, she didn’t feel the first or second bump. The third, though, made her turn her attention back to the road in front and the sea of bodies she was driving over.