All Roads Lead To Terror: Coming of age in a post apocalyptic world (Dreadland Chronicles Book 1)

by Richard Schiver

  “Do you know where they keep their prisoners?”

  “It’s where I escaped from, that’s why they were after me, I can show you,” the boy said with a nod.

  They exchanged glances, sharing the same thought, was it wise to trust this boy. Gregory shrugged and Meat stepped back, motioning for the boy to lead the way.

  With a last longing glance at the ruined library he followed. Some day he would find a library still intact, the books inside impatient to share the secrets they held.

  Twenty Five

  Emerging from the shadowy depths of the library they followed the young boy down what had once been a busy street in Richmond’s past. Now it looked like a war zone. A traffic jam of rusting cars clogged the debris-strewn street, abandoned where they had stopped by those who had been fleeing the city in the early days of the awakening.

  Many of the initial survivors had not made it, their skeletons all that remained, having been stripped clean by scavengers that had converged on the city in the early days, drawn by the feeding frenzy. In some vehicles mummified corpses were still trapped behind the wheel. No one had bothered to clean the area, a good sign that there were few survivors left in the city.

  Unlike the Bluff where in the early days those who had perished during the awakening had been properly disposed of. A couple of the old timers had shared their stories of going from house to house in the early days to recover and dispose of the corpses that remained.

  Here they had been left where they had died, adding to the oppressive cloud that seemed to hang over the city. It served as confirmation, as if any were really needed, that the world had changed, and not for the better.

  Abandoned cars crowded the roadway, the windows in each smashed, with piles of shattered glass lying in glittering heaps upon a cracked and weathered roadbed. A layer of debris covered everything, papers plastered to asphalt by past rains, old clothes abandoned in the haste of flight, weathered, worn, just like the world around them. Storefronts facing the street, their showroom windows shattered to expose the shadowy maws of vacant stores that had long ago been stripped of anything useful.

  It was the face of a dead city, yet its voice continued unabated, refusing to surrender to reality. Wind whistled down narrow alleyways between low buildings where those with less than honest intentions once lurked. All that remained were the impassive walls that had as yet to surrender to Mother Nature who was making slow but steady headway. Here and there spots of bright green testified to the tenaciousness of nature. Flowers bloomed where once concrete prevailed, grass pushed up through the cracked pavement, slender blades emerging from the detritus of a time whose reign had passed.

  Perched atop the buildings to either side of the street, watching their progress with beady black eyes, crows had gathered in anticipation of their next meal. The pickings had grown slim in the city since those first days when the blood had flown freely upon the streets. A commotion erupted over the remains of the boy Gregory had shot as scavengers flocked to the scent of freshly spilled blood. With raucous cries they swooped in, scattering those gathered over the body, stealing what they could before flying away on flapping wings. Natures cleaners were hard at work and in no time the boys body would be stripped down to the bone.

  Coming to an intersection they stopped and took a long look in each direction. As far as the eye could see lay more of the destruction that surrounded them. In the distance, at the end of the street in the direction they were headed towering buildings loomed. They had yet to enter the downtown area where massive skyscrapers created asphalt canyons. Around them the buildings were no more than six stories tall. One corner of the intersection was occupied by an Enterprise rental business. Cars sat abandoned in the parking lot, their windows long since shattered, the windows in the building itself having fallen prey to passing vandals.

  They stopped.

  “How far is it?” Gregory said.

  “Just down the street there’s a tunnel we can use.”

  “A tunnel?” Window said.

  The boy nodded, pointing at a steel manhole cover in the center of the intersection, before turning around to resume his trek.

  Meat’s unease grew at the gesture. He’d been feeling unsettled all morning with the confrontation at the apartment building followed by the discovery of that bizarre display surrounded on all sides by the destruction that had befallen the city. Coupled with his worry over the loss of their sign the day before, and the ease at which they had found what they were looking for, all added to the deepening suspicion that had been nagging at him since they entered the city.

  They were being led like willing lambs to the slaughter, but with the sign gone what choice did they really have?

  “Are you all right?” Window said as he stopped next to Meat.

  “I don’t like it, it was too easy, I feel like we’re being led into a trap,” Meat said, the unease growing with the vocalization of his worries.

  “They’ll find they’ve bit off more than they can chew,” Window said.

  They watched as the boy continued on without them. When he was thirty yards away he stopped and turned back to face them.

  “Are you coming? I told you I can show you the way in.”

  The four of them exchanged glances and Meat was comforted to see that he wasn’t alone in his worry. Their awareness of what might be coming would serve them well.

  “Are we gonna keep going?” Billie-Bob said. Even he had a worried expression on his face.

  “Yeah,” Meat said with a nod, “let’s keep going.” He surveyed the intersection where they stood.

  Across from the Enterprise store stood a small corner diner. Over the vacant maw of the front door that had long ago been taken off its hinges, a sign hung from a single chain, turning slowly in the steady breeze that filtered down the street. Chef Mamusu’s Africanne Café. The sign read. Within the café shrouded in deep shadows, the memory of a better time lay trapped in the dark wood décor. Soon the weather would do its damage and the once gleaming wood would decay, the memories locked within its depths lost forever.

  Directly behind the corner building, built to fit within the space available stood a drive thru for a local Bank. The bulletproof window was still whole, though it showed the signs of past attempts to break into the interior.

  A side door stood open and Meat wandered over to take a peek inside. He found a block of hundred dollar bills still wrapped in heavy plastic lying on the floor, protected from the elements they looked as fresh as the day they had been printed. But that wouldn’t last, in time even the plastic protecting the bills would surrender to the relentlessness of the elements and the money inside, about as worthless as the paper it had been printed on, would soon be returned to its natural state.

  Their heads on a swivel they moved down the street, weaving among the traffic jam of the dead, their weapons at the ready. They were in enemy territory, not knowing if anyone other than the ever present crows was watching their progress from the vacant windows that gazed out upon the dead street. For Meat it was the most uncomfortable sensation he’d ever experienced, surrounded on all sides by the evidence of a world that had suddenly ceased to exist on the day of his birth.

  He was better suited to the forest, he understood its voice, and the incessant sound of life that gurgled just beneath the surface of his consciousness. Here there was but the restless voice of the wind, an occasional cry somewhere in the distance, and the chatter of the birds that came and went in no discernable pattern. To Meat the city was an alien world and the sooner he escaped its smothering embrace the happier he would be.

  To their left was a row of businesses, their windows shattered, doors torn from their hinges. It looked like a violent storm had passed down the street destroying everything in its path. Except for one section. Here the glass in the single door was still intact, the drawn shade giving it the illusion that the owner had stepped out for a moment and would be back any minute. On the white wall to the right of the door someone
had written a single word in heavy black paint.

  HOPE!

  Scattered around it, that single word was repeated in different languages, all written by hand in black paint, all he believed proclaiming the same simple sentiment.

  HOPE! This simple message had stood against all the violence that had gripped the city.

  “What do you think it means?” Window said.

  Meat shrugged, but he had a wide smile on his face. Like a beacon amid all the destruction the message had stood untouched. And that simple fact filled him with a renewed optimism.

  They would survive. All of them, the human race would overcome the despair that was now gripping it. In places like Bremo Bluff, and here amid all this destruction, hope would overcome the obstacles in their path. He rejoined the group, a spring in his step, comforted that he was not alone in his desire to see the human race succeed.

  That feeling of hope was short lived as they came upon several corpses hanging from the few remaining streetlights that lined the road. They were fresh, and as one of the corpses slowly turned at the end of its taunt rope, he recognized it as the young man who had been kicked in the balls the day before as they watched from the roof of the apartment building. The other two were his friends, united in death, as they had been in life.

  “We’re in their territory now,” the young boy said as they stopped and gazed up at the hanging corpses.

  “One hell of a way to mark a boundary,” Gregory said.

  “Where’s the old man?” Billie-Bob said.

  “Maybe he got away,” Window said.

  “Somehow I doubt that, keep an eye out,” Meat said, “they probably know we’re here.”

  Gregory shrugged as he checked his pistol, the others followed suit, preparing for the worst, yet hoping for the best.

  Twenty Six

  They reached an intersection filled with a snarl of traffic, cars having smashed against one another as their occupants fled in a blind panic, sealing their fate. A fire had started sometime in the past, the tangle of cars in the center blackened beneath the rust that slowly consumed the metal. In several the charred remains of the occupants sat behind steering wheels that had drooped into their laps from the intense heat of the fire that consumed them.

  Those traffic lights that remained swayed from steel posts that arched overhead, pushed about by the relentless wind that moved down the narrow canyons between the towering buildings like a freight train of the past. Several of the traffic lights had fallen from their places, lying in shattered piles among the wreckage, abandoned.

  “This is as far as we can go. They’ll be watching the street,” the young boy said, “we’ll have to go under them.”

  Under them? Meat thought as the young boy crossed to a manhole cover and motioned for the others to help him. After a brief struggle Gregory and Window managed to lift the manhole cover and they gently laid it on the street next to the hole.

  As he watched them lift the heavy steel cover a thought occurred to Meat.

  How did he get out to begin with?

  He obviously didn’t come this way or the cover would have already been off. Glancing down the street behind him he spotted movement in the distance, several boys moved among the abandoned vehicles crowding the street. They were too far away to see what they looked like.

  He motioned for Billie-Bob and pointed down the street at the two boys, “tell me what you see.”

  Billie-Bob sighted down his rifle, watching the two boys for a moment before he lowered his weapon.

  “They look like the boy at the barn, and the ones in the library.” Billie-Bob said, “do you want me to take them out.”

  “No, we don’t want to alert them that we’re here, if they don’t already know it” Meat said, playing out the hand he had been dealt. If they had any hope of finding the missing children they’d have to allow themselves to be led like an unsuspecting lamb to the slaughter.

  “Are you coming?” Window said on his right, drawing Meat from his thoughts.

  He turned back and stepped up to the opening in the street, gazing down at the darkness that pulsed with a life of its own as the sound of running water came from the shadows, carried on a musty old smell.

  “We need to go down there?” Meat said.

  “What’s wrong, are you afraid of the dark?” Window said.

  “No it’s just, there’s rats down there.”

  “Yeah, so, we’re bigger than they are.”

  “Yeah, and there’s more of them than there are of us,” Meat said as the young boy turned and climbed down the steel ladder, vanishing into the street. Carefully the rest followed, one at a time, until they were all standing in a square room twelve feet beneath the surface of the street.

  “Which way?” Gregory said.

  The boy turned and vanished into the dense shadows without a word.

  “I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” Meat whispered to Window who was keeping pace beside him.

  “What other choice do we have?”

  “Not much I suppose, but keep an eye on this boy, I don’t want any surprises.”

  They reached a junction and followed the boy who had turned right. From the shadows around them came the unmistakable clatter of tiny feet on concrete.

  Rats.

  Meat looked left and right as they ventured deeper into the city. His imagination began to run wild, filling the shadows around them with masses of small furry bodies twisting and turning, slithering over and around one another as they kept pace with the small group of invaders who had entered their domain. The flesh of his arms crawled at the thought of the rats washing over him in a wave of teeth and claws that would rip at his flesh as they smothered him beneath their mass.

  “It’s just up ahead,” the boy said as he emerged from the shadows into a softly lit square chamber that resembled the one they had entered from the street. He pointed at the steel ladder whose rungs were imbedded in the concrete of the wall.

  “It leads to the place where they keep their prisoners.” The boy said.

  Gregory went first as he was the strongest and would be able to move the manhole cover to the side easier than any of the others. One by one they emerged into a small room. A furnace stood in one corner, water pipes vanished into the concrete block walls that surrounded them, and steel ductwork ran across the ceiling above their heads. Everything was covered by a layer of rust, the result of years of neglect. It was a cramped space, hot and airless, and they were anxious to get out of its restricting confines.

  A single steel door offered access to the building. Once they were all in place they opened the door and slipped quietly into the narrow hallway. Here they heard the sounds of children crying in fear. There were distant shouts, muffled by the walls, carried to them by way of the ductwork with wire mesh vents evenly spaced along one wall at their feet. The smell of unwashed bodies, of decay, of piss and shit, and cooking all mingled to create a greasy atmosphere that lay upon the tongue.

  “This was too easy.” Window said. Meat nodded in response as he held his hand to his nose, breathing through his fingers, trying in vain to filter the air with the scent of his own body.

  “Stay back,” Meat said, turning to Billie-Bob and motioning for him to stay back. The hallway spilled into a larger room, in the opposite corner a wide set of stairs vanished into the shadows of the upper levels.

  Two young boys, armed with shotguns, emerged from the shadows in the corner of the room. Muzzles aimed at the group, more came down the steps, flooding into the room. Some carried shotguns, others held knives, and a few came armed with crude pikes fashioned from whatever was handy.

  Twenty Seven

  Meat raised his hands, Window and Gregory following suit, each of them in their own way aware of the same thing. They were outnumbered, and though they were armed it wouldn’t do them much good in the close confines of that small room. Most likely they would end up killing themselves from ricochets. Looking around Meat was comforted to see that B
illie-Bob was not with them.

  “Pain is love, love is pain,” the children, none of whom appeared to be older than twelve, said in a single voice as a taller boy, obviously the leader, pushed his way through the crowd. “punish us for our trespasses, love us with steady hands, show us the path through our pain for pain is love, and love is pain.”

  The crowd parted for the leader who was savage and lean, his dusty flesh covered by intricate tattoos, a full head taller than the others around him as the children repeated the passage. He too wore a loincloth that looked like it had been made from a set of drapes. There was no fear in his eyes, no anger, just an animalistic savagery.

  Reaching them he waved his hand for silence and the children gathered behind him grew quiet. He looked each of them up and down, sniffing the air about them, a smile spreading across his acne scarred features.

  “I told you I could bring them to you,” the young boy said, “now let me go like you promised.”

  The leader glanced at the young boy with an annoyed expression, revealing rotting teeth filed down to points. His exhaled breath carried a decaying scent that turned Meat’s stomach.

  While they might not have been paragons of dental hygiene, they had managed to care for their own teeth to a point. Of course with no real dentists available their only option for a bad tooth was to have Harvey, one of the blacksmiths at the compound, yank out the offending object. Without anesthesia it was an option that compelled many of them to take better care of themselves. Of course the lack of processed foods that contained refined sugar had cut down on the number of cavities.

  The Leader motioned for two older boys who moved forward to flank the young boy.

  “But you promised me I’d never have to go in the room again,” the young boy said.

  “You won’t,” the leader said.

  “No,” the young boy shouted as he tried to back away. The two older boys gabbed him by his arms, “you promised me,” the young boy cried.

  “Send him to Heaven,” the leader said.