Ferine Apocalypse (Novella): 4 Hours

by John F. Leonard

Caution seemed more important than ever as they neared the objective.

  Since they’d reached Lancaster Court, Raylens had dropped back.

  He was no longer taking the lead, appeared content to bring up the rear with Angela Gacek.

  Pearcey had no idea if she was happy with that and he didn’t have time to worry about it.

  He was more than a little unnerved at having that nutjobby from crazy town at his back, but there wasn’t a lot to be done about Wayne Raylens right then. The man had delivered what he’d said he’d deliver and that deserved something in return.

  Even if it was only the benefit of the doubt.

  That was a risk. Giving anyone that much leeway.

  Sometimes, the circumstances dictated and you just had to live with it.

  That wasn’t quite right. Sometimes you just had to stay alive with it.

  <><><>

  As he got closer, more detail was revealed.

  Pearcey thought it had been a woman. Mainly because of the shredded remains of what looked like a skirt.

  It was horrible. Sickening.

  Her lower half had been shattered.

  Smashed.

  And tried to reform. To mend.

  Leg bones had broken through the skin. Splintered and pierced. Driven by unimaginable force. From the waist down she’d become a melded mass of bone and flesh. Spines and fractured spikes partially wrapped with dead red wetness and leathery patches.

  It whirled at the last moment.

  Reared on its arms and turned to Pearcey.

  Took him by surprise, if he was honest.

  He’d been entranced by the monstrosity and stillness and forgotten where he was, what he was attempting to deal with.

  The lower half of it was useless, but its upper body hadn’t given up.

  The hunger still burned within it, driven by whatever dark miracle had worked the transformation. It should have been dead, but the infection had changed that. The process that it triggered, the result of the metamorphosis, was incredibly tenacious.

  Unwilling to let its victim go once the mutation had taken hold.

  The creature raised its upper body and swivelled to meet him.

  The horror below its hips fishtailing behind like an after-thought. Dead weight that left no option but to crawl, to propel itself with clawed hands and transfigured arms.

  It skittered across the concrete and launched itself at Pearcey with a ferocity beyond expectation or comprehension.

  Hit him hard and took him to ground.

  Furiously backpedalling to avoid its snapping jaw. Huge and seemingly too big for its head. Filled with teeth that were jagged distortions. Razor-edged weapons that crowded the wet hole of its mouth.

  Worse than when they’d emerged from the CIMC garage. It was worse than that. Nowhere to go, no quick retreat emergency possibility nestling at the back of his mind.

  No time to regain his feet, to draw the knife or gun.

  Pearcey reverted to brute force and basic instinct.

  Hammered the sole of his boot into it. Did it repeatedly and managed to push it away.

  It twisted, righted itself and came again.

  Hit his raised legs and laid him flat on his back. Spine jarred, skull slammed hard against concrete, air whooshing out of him. It scrambled over him, reliance on its arms for mobility the only thing stopping it from chewing into him.

  Pearcey summoned whatever strength he had and put it into another brutal thrust of his leg.

  Felt his foot connect with the side of its head and neck.

  Heard a nauseating crunch that signified damage done. Some sort of suffering inflicted.

  He had no idea how much. No time to consider it.

  He rolled and staggered upright.

  Winded, slightly dazed.

  Running on empty if he was honest.

  It was still moving. He’d come close to killing it, but not quite completed the job. Gallagher stepped forward and delivered a savage strike with the crow bar. Then again and again and again.

  Smashing its head to a ruptured blood red mess. Fragments and thick liquid flying in small arcs and short spurts. An abstract horror piece drawn on dirty urban ground.

  Gallagher lurched away, the bar dropped. A clatter that set Pearcey’s nerves on edge.

  Scared that any sharp noise could bring death to them.

  Gallagher stooped, hands on knees as if he were struggling for breath. Maybe struggling not to vomit.

  Pearcey reckoned that either or both were understandable.

  <><><>

  “You’re getting careless, Bunker Man.”

  Raylens had appeared at his shoulder like a shadow.

  Nearly startled him into a violent reaction. He idly wondered if that had been the intention. The man was close enough to be surprising, but not close enough to make it easy to hurt him.

  “Old and careless are gonna get you dead in this new world. You need to watch your step.”

  The gargling sound that might have been laughter.

  The rifle casually held but pointed in his direction.

  Pearcey stared into the glass planes of the mask’s eyepieces.

  Wished that he could see the man’s eyes.

  That would have made a difference. Seeing his eyes.

  He nodded and half smiled.

  Came to a decision there and then.

  There was an increasing chance that Wayne Raylens might have to die. If Pearcey could do it without killing himself, or anyone else, at the same time.

  Carlton Pearcey believed in fairness above all else.

  Chapter 15

  Lock-Ups

  There were two lines of steel shutters. Six or seven on either side of a central driveway. Pearcey didn’t dwell on the number. Just a quick appraisal.

  They were old style structures.

  Doors adjacent to the shutter.

  One garage was open.

  An old shutter, opened in a hurry, if he was any judge.

  Scunted to one side and out of true. The up and over mechanism seriously damaged. Never to be closed again in all probability.

  No concern of his. But a stitch in time and less haste, more speed.

  All that good shit that his mother used to say. A bit of care and that door might still be operational instead of hopelessly broken.

  Just the one open, the rest were closed.

  Someone had got their motor and hightailed it.

  Left in a hurry. Got out fast. Done one.

  Decided to get out while the getting was good.

  One person from a possible baker's dozen. It told some sort of story. Pearcey wasn’t sure he was the one to interpret it.

  Who could blame them?

  Whoever it was.

  They’d taken action in the face of impossibility. Accepted a new reality and adjusted. Said fuck it, let’s quit Dodge before Dodge becomes too difficult to quit.

  <><><>

  It was dark inside Gallagher’s lock-up.

  The open door shed some light, but it wasn’t any great illumination.

  The car was a battered Toyota pick-up. One of the extended jobs with four seats. Big bumper. A decent ride home in Pearcey’s opinion.

  “Give him the keys Sonny-Jim.”

  Tiredness was beginning to tell. Pearcey wanted it to be over. Get the girl and get back home.

  Home?

  He meant shelter.

  Safety.

  Home had become a nonsense concept. There was no home now.

  The rules had changed. Were still changing. Pearcey had a feeling the rules would be in constant flux from here on in.

  Gallagher handed over the keys.

  “How do I get there? The bunker.”

  Pearcey stared at him.

  Weighing it up.

  The rifle was in what he was beginning to think of as its customary position. Loosely held, but angled in such a way that it would be all too easy for him to be shot.

  “How do I know you’ll wait Wayne?�
�

  The gargling noise again from inside the mask. Pearcey was now pretty sure it was laughter.

  Crazy laughter.

  “Baby, you fucking-well don’t. There’s no guarantees in life. You should know that. Are the alien worms eating into your brain? Why would I want to dump you? Any directions you give me could be bullshit. I need you man. Inter dependency is just fucking great isn’t it.”

  Gargling again.

  Pearcey thought he might hear that sound in his dreams. The bad ones where he was drowning in responsibility and failure.

  Apart from anything else, Raylens was right.

  Pearcey had met raving lunatics who were saner, but the man was as sharp as the bayonet hidden inside his indie rock star wannabee coat.

  He needed Pearcey or Gallagher.

  If they didn’t come back, all he had was a motor with some petrol. Great in itself, but not the keys to the kingdom. All ready to roll on down the road. Pastures new and all that good stuff.

  Maybe even pastures that weren’t crawling with creatures from your worst nightmare.

  Pearcey gave him instructions for the main entrance.

  Told him that if he parked in front of the gate, he’d get picked up on the surveillance system and be allowed admittance after being checked.

  There was even a remote chance that it was true.

  “How long are you going to give us? Before you go.”

  He looked at the girl.

  The ambiguous Angela, clutching her bag to her chest.

  Standing in the shadows like she might be swallowed by them. Blend in and disappear into the darkness.

  He felt indefinably bad about her.

  She wasn’t his concern and he knew next to nothing about her.

  Scratch that.

  He knew nothing at all. But she’d fallen into his orbit and he felt responsible. Felt as though he’d committed himself when he asked her into Anwar’s emporium of downmarket delights.

  Angela reminded him of some lost girl.

  A waif.

  A stray. Someone who needed protecting. Maybe it was his daughter. Maybe Angela was simply a substitute. A living surface upon which he could paint his failings and sense of guilt.

  Perhaps.

  It didn’t matter. It was pointless to ponder any of it.

  There was no way that he was taking her up to Gallagher’s apartment. No way on this earth or any other. She was staying here with the knife-wielding, gun-toting nutjob. Wayne Raylens.

  “Half an hour. Thirty minutes baby, and then we’re history. All you’ve gotta do is walk a couple of hundred yards, go up some stairs and come back down again. It’s not fucking rocket science.”

  Gargling noise and the gun trained on him.

  He nodded and dismissed it. Accepted the answer and the limitation it imposed. It was what it was, and he wasn’t in a position to debate it.

  They were wasting time.

  Chapter 16

  Home Run

  Raylens came outside with them.

  As far as the doorway to the lock-up anyway.

  Stood with the door resting against his shoulder as Pearcey and Gallagher stopped in the middle of the driveway between the row of garages.

  They moved off.

  A quick, watchful walk to the end of the line of squat buildings.

  Maybe the end of line in more ways than one. It’d be the end of the attempt to rescue Gallagher’s daughter.

  That was for sure.

  He hoped Annie was okay, hoped that they found her, but if she wasn’t here, Pearcey was done.

  He wasn’t about to take this any further, whatever Sonny said.

  The job had been fact finding and they’d found more facts than Pearcey wanted to know. He’d seen the footage back at the bunker, of the mutated creatures, of the state of the world, and it hadn’t penetrated.

  Not properly.

  Not deep into his head.

  There’d been a part of him that was sceptical, despite having accepted it on the surface.

  The diversion to get Anne Gallagher had seemed like a good idea.

  At the time.

  Two birds with one stone and all of that happy crappy. Helping a friend and fulfilling the mission in one neat package.

  All good.

  Except none of it had turned out good.

  And it certainly wasn’t neat.

  It was a frigging nightmare.

  Pearcey was more scared than he’d ever been in his whole life. And there’d been plenty of times when he’d been scared. Plenty of reasons to feel that cold sweat creep out of his pores. Fear coating his skin like bad oil.

  The list was long enough to write a book.

  This was different.

  Another level of anxiety.

  A different sort of fear.

  What he imagined true dread felt like. In the past, however difficult the situation, the worst that he’d been dealing with was the unpredictable. Sometimes the unknown.

  Not the unknowable.

  In the past, sometimes there had been monsters. He’d come across men who were so evil that they’d make your skin crawl with revulsion. They usually looked like everyone else. Normal clothes and unremarkable faces.

  The ordinary, everyday type of monsters.

  Not real, actual monsters. Things from a horror film or a dark art sketchbook.

  In the past, he’d not been dealing with what amounted to the end of the world.

  What he was beginning to think of as a genuine, real to God, apocalyptic event. Not just the breakdown of civilisation.

  The rising of a new species.

  The dawn of a new order.

  <><><>

  They paused and surveyed the short route to Lancaster Court.

  A road, a low fence, some grass.

  Bejewelled with shards of glass. Dotted with the occasional ragged bundle. The remains of a corpse or dead creature.

  Pearcey mentally corrected himself.

  Possibly dead creature.

  They didn’t die easily. He’d just been given a near fatal demonstration of that lovely little fact of their new life.

  “Will that poor girl be alright with him?”

  The question filled Pearcey with an irrational fury.

  Part of it was irritation at what he classed as a distraction. Part of it was simple human fear of where they found themselves. Maybe there was a shot of guilt in there as well.

  He wanted to shout at Gallagher.

  Grab fistfuls of his shirt and shake some sense into him. Tell him to get his shit together. Get his head straight.

  Worry about what was in front of them.

  The most immediate problem.

  The priority.

  Before what was in front of them rose up and made all of their personal concerns so much nonsense. Smoke that blew away and disappeared into nothingness. That’s what they’d be if they didn’t focus on the mission. Deal with the here and now and deal with whatever followed when it presented itself.

  “Look Sonny, I’m not happy about leaving her with that crackpot lunatic. Weird Wayne is off the fucking scale in my opinion. But what am I gonna do? We can’t bring her with us. Putting it bluntly, she’s a liability.”

  Pearcey didn’t have time for this conversation.

  Not there, standing in the open with the clock ticking and threat lurking in the lengthening shadows.

  “When this is over, I’ll try and get him some counselling. How about that? If I can find a psychiatrist without fangs and claws. Right now we have to attend to the matter in hand. Let’s worry about your daughter before we start fretting over somebody else’s.”

  He glanced at Sonny and detected anger in his eyes, in the set of his jaw.

  “I’m sorry man, I don’t mean to be an arsehole. But we don’t have the time apart from anything else. I don’t intend being stranded out here at night and if you haven’t noticed, there isn’t much sun left in the sky. But let’s forget about night time creeping up on us, if
that bastard drives off while we’re having a cuppa in your flat, we’re fucked. Hunting round for another motor is the last thing I want at this point.”

  The objection remained on Gallagher’s face but he nodded and didn’t speak.

  Pearcey was grateful for that at least.

  <><><>

  They approached Lancaster Court at a cautious jog.

  Pearcey wanted to move more slowly, but compromised at a steady trot.

  He knew the creatures were sensitive to sound.

  He was more or less convinced that they were alerted by motion as well. So gradual movement seemed the best option. Less potential for noise and less likely to create a visual signal.

  He was pretty sure that it was a sound theory.

  From what he’d seen in this brief spell in the field and from what he recalled from the presentation in the CIMC shelter.

  The now blissful shelter, back across the river, buried beneath well-known streets. A place he detested and never expected to spend any time longer than the occasional orientation visit in the course of his work. Now it was a safe haven.

  Sanctuary from a world that was determined to kill him.

  And none of it mattered.

  He and Gallagher were on the stopwatch. He could theorise as much as he wanted, but the choices were limited by circumstance.

  Sometimes every choice was a bad choice.

  <><><>

  They skirted the bodies and avoided the glass. When they saw it. Sometimes it was easy to miss in the weirding light.

  Pearcey felt like his nerves were stretching.

  Tight and ready to snap.

  Halfway across the grass, he became aware of a change in the light. The sun was dropping, but it wasn’t that. There was an orange glow rising above the houses that surrounded the block of apartments.

  The fire they’d left behind was coming their way. Catching them up like the car that just won’t quit.

  Pearcey didn’t know how that affected things.

  It wouldn’t be good.

  There was no way that it would be good. That was for sure.

  None of this had been good and he didn’t see any reason to think that it would change.

  Plenty of things were changing, but his luck didn’t appear to be one of them.

  <><><>

  Gallagher guided them to a door at the rear of the block.