Death Springs Eternal

by Robert J. Duperre

  But she didn’t wake up. Her unblinking green eyes stared at the ceiling, their light now gone, as an ever-growing pool of blood expanded beneath her. Josh’s head felt like it would explode. A millennia worth of pain, sorrow, and torment permeated his soul, doubling him over, forcing a howl from his throat.

  The world seemed to shake as he roared.

  * * *

  Tom watched the redhead get the back of her head blown off, and then he slid down the wall. His master laughed at him, but despite that a smile crept over his face.

  “I win,” he muttered.

  His vision wilted, his mind became mush. The last coherent thoughts to go through his head were of his family, of Allison and Shelly, and how they would be much better off without him…

  * * *

  Fury grew inside the general, rising through his gullet and into his brain like magma in a volcano. He stared at his fallen lover, at the blood-smeared wall behind her. He looked to his right and saw Steinberg, slumped against the wall, tongue hanging out, not breathing. He looked to his left and saw Sergeant Jackson and a strange, tall woman dressed like she should be working at some cheap strip club. Questions rambled through his mind—what had gone wrong, why the kid had ducked, why did Steinberg suddenly have a heart attack, why in the world did Jackson bring a hooker with him—but he didn’t bother searching for the answers.

  None of them mattered.

  The woman of his dreams was dead.

  In a fit of rage, he flipped the pistol in his hand until he held the barrel—it was still hot—and charged. The kid never looked up from the dead woman, even when Bathgate screamed and pistol-whipped him in the back of his head. The young man collapsed, sprawling out over his lover’s corpse. Bathgate raised his hand, prepared to strike him again, but paused mid-stroke.

  He stood there, frozen, and stared at the kid. He didn’t just want him dead. He wanted him to suffer.

  “Sergeant,” he growled. “Get the fuck over here.”

  Jackson appeared at his side, still dragging the girl behind him. Tears streamed from under the black mask she wore.

  “Yes, sir?” said Cody.

  Bathgate nodded to the prone kid and dead woman. “Where is the rest of their troupe?” he asked.

  “Um, I’m not sure. Pitts was the one who checked them in. He kno—”

  “Fuck Pitts. I killed him this morning. And I asked you the goddamn question, so answer it.”

  Jackson cleared his throat and tugged on his collar. “Well, I know for sure the chicks he was with were in the auction, and I think the kids were sent to Morales’s girls for care.”

  “Good. Get some men, gather them all up, then meet me at the hole.”

  “The hole?”

  “Yes, the fucking hole.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “Also, put an end to the stupid bullshit you have going on out there. This isn’t a goddamn kegger. It’s serious.” He pointed at Steinberg’s skeletal frame, and his tone rose. “This guy supposedly worked for a force that rivals ours. What happens if they don’t hear from him and get itchy trigger fingers? What if we’re invaded? Are we ready? No! Especially not with you acting like a goddamn sadistic teenager! So get out there, tell everyone to return to their posts, give everyone back whatever they spent, put the girls up in the museum, and contact the fucking border guards. Now get the fuck out, and send in Biggs and Constantine.”

  “Y-yes sir,” Jackson stammered. The girl beside him, still hidden behind her mask, hitched a sob.

  “And Jackson, get rid of the fucking whore. I see her again, I’ll put a bullet in both of your skulls.”

  The Sergeant nodded and double-timed it out the door, dragging the girl along with him. Bathgate once more stared at the unconscious kid at his feet. He bent down, yanked him off the corpse of his dream woman, and gave him a swift kick in the ribs. The body shuddered, a wheeze escaping its throat.

  The general knelt down beside him, grabbed him by the hair, and lifted his head. “You’re going to suffer,” he growled, wishing the kid was awake to hear it. “When you die, you’re going to die slow.”

  EPILOGUE

  In his dream he floated along the ocean, the sun beating down on him while seagulls cawed overhead. Then came a wave, and it overtook him. Water flowed into his lungs, making him choke. He thrashed about as sharks circled, trying to breathe, but every intake poured more water down his throat.

  Fingers laced under his chin and lifted his head, and Josh coughed out the invading liquid. He opened his eyes to a world rimmed with darkness. Hulking shapes loomed nearby, craggy giants with long, serrated tusks, waiting to pounce. He thrashed, wiggling out of the hands that held him.

  “Josh,” whispered a young woman’s voice. “Josh, it’s me!”

  “Jess?”

  “Yeah. What’s happening to us?”

  Josh glanced around, and his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Jessica was indeed kneeling before him, naked and caked with mud, Zachary sucking his thumb by her side. Mary Kincaid was there too, and Emily, and Yvette, and Andy, Francis, Meghan, Bliss, and the rest of the children. All were in different states of disrepair, all looked frightened beyond belief. He gazed beyond them and noticed that the monsters he’d seen when he opened his eyes were lumps of earth sprouting severed roots. They were in a circular pit, at least twenty feet deep. The rain kept on falling, and water spilled over the edges of the pit like a hundred cascades. There was a strange, sour odor in the air.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  Jessica drew back a sob and said, “I don’t know. I was at that auction, and then a bunch of guys came in and broke it up. I thought we’d been saved, but then another group of guys dragged all us from Dover across the city and dumped us in here.”

  “When did I show up?”

  “About five minutes ago.” She cleared her throat and her eyes tapered in the darkness. “Josh, where’s Kye?”

  He shook his head, tears in his eyes, and Jessica started crying.

  A man appeared at the lip of the trench. He shrieked at the heavens, drawing Josh’s attention. A flash of lighting brought fire to the sky, lighting the man up. It was the short older guy, the one he’d seen guiding Kyra into that small building, the one where she’d been—

  It’s real. It’s not a dream. She’s dead. Gone.

  “Listen up, motherfuckers!” the man on the ledge bellowed. “I, General Alexander Bathgate, Commander-in-Chief of the SNF, hereby declare each and every one of you outlaws against our creed! The penalty for breaking the creed is death. You are to be executed, and in the morning, when the sky clears, we will fill this pit with napalm and burn your remains until nothing is left. You there, sitting with the boy. Stand up so I can see you. She’s important to you, isn’t she?”

  Jessica stood up while Zachary fussed at her feet, and the man leveled his gun at her. Josh shook his head, his eyes widening, and when two cracks split the night he acted on his protective instinct. He dove in front of his friend, shoving her out of the way.

  A stinging sensation in his neck came next, as if someone had pinched his esophagus closed. His chest then collapsed, and bile rose in his throat with no way to get out. He fell down to the muddy earth, feeling sludge and blood flow around him. He heard sudden explosions, and his fading vision saw the evening alight with flames. The man atop the crater screamed.

  Smiling, Josh closed his eyes and spiraled down, down, down into darkness. He willingly accepted the nothingness that followed.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  If it’s possible for things to get both harder and easier at the same time, this book is living proof of it.

  The actual construction of the novel was simple—by this point I have a firm grasp on the process, and the words just stream out of me as I go along. But content-wise…I can’t think of a more difficult undertaking I could have given myself.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way. At first I assumed this would be a light and gory zombie tale. That’s what I
began writing back in 2001. But it grew and changed as I did, and the more I looked at the world as it rolled on by my window, the more I wanted to put these events and theories on paper. Words kept piling atop of words as I typed away at my old, broken down, mid-nineties IBM laptop, pouring out all the angst and anger I’ve witnessed over nearly twenty years of flittering in between the white-collar and blue-collar worlds.

  All of which brings us to Death Springs Eternal, which is by far the most disheartening (to me) book of the series. I’ve poured nearly every ounce of my life’s experience into this work, and yet one thing I want to make perfectly clear is that these may be words I have written, but they are not the opinion I hold. All viewpoints—from General Bathgate’s subversive racism to Jacob Handley’s outward hatred—are those that have been told to me over the years by my superiors, as disturbing as that might seem. Even Billy’s diatribe against the death of racism, though I certainly lean toward his line of thinking, are not my words. In fact, they were directly lifted from a brilliant friend of mine, Jimmy Johnson, after whom a great deal of Billy’s personality has been molded. In a lot of ways, I have Jimmy to thank for bringing this story to what it is today. Without the many philosophical discussions we’ve had in the past, Billy’s character—and the eventual tone of the series—might have gone in a completely different direction.

  Now, I know there will be some folks out there who read the end of this book and feel like I’ve just dumped a thousand-pound weight on their souls. For that I do apologize, but this is how the story had to unfold. There needed to be trauma, there needed to be heartbreak and tragedy. Though a work of fantasy, I wanted to impart a sense of realism as well. And let’s face it, in a world overrun by zombies and mutated demon-people, happy endings are in short supply.

  I need to once again thank Jess, my wife, for putting up with the constant hours away from her as I type these words and never losing sight of the fact I love her. And Jesse Young, my partner in this whole journey…you rock, brother. I also would like to thank Daniel Pyle, Jason Letts, and Daniel Arenson for their help in proofing this novel, and the greatest thanks of all to Ashley Davis, editor extraordinaire, without whom a couple of rather major problems in the book would still exist. And to Amanda Hocking, David Dalglish, David McAfee, Michael Crane, Sean Sweeney, Mercedes Yardley, and Ken Wood—you always keep me on the straight and narrow, even when I start to waver sometimes, and I appreciate that greatly. Also, a great big shout out goes to Jay Chung and Chris Regan, and the Fear Nuttin’ Band as a whole, for allowing me to use their lyrics in the text and their fantastic song, Police State, in the eventual trailer

  Finally, I would like to thank you, the reader, for taking this journey with me. This is a series close to my heart, no matter how depressing and disturbing it may become. Your words are important to me—criticism as well as praise. I thank you for your support in this endeavor, and will say that of course reviews are very important to we unknowns, to please, if you enjoyed the book (or even if you hated it), post a review on Amazon or wherever else you might have purchased it. These reviews help spread the word about good work, which I obviously feel this is.

  If you wish to contact myself or Jesse, please feel free to email us at theriftonline@gmail.com. And if you wish to be updated on our future projects, visit http://theriftonline.com.

  Once again, you have my appreciation, and look out for The Summer Son: The Rift Book IV, which will be available in July of 2012.

  Sincerely,

  Rob D

  December 24th, 2011