The World's Last Breaths: Final Winter, Animal Kingdom, and The Peeling

by Iain Rob Wright

  He’s right…I am a sinner. But how did anybody ever find out?

  “Come on, Harry Boy, time to go.” Lucas grabbed him from behind. At first Harry thought it was to turn him over to the hooded stranger, but it wasn’t. Lucas and Jerry both dragged Harry backwards through the snow, heading through a small gap in the wall of fire.

  “What are we doing?” Harry asked wearily as they dragged him along by the armpits. His legs trailed in front of him uselessly.

  “Running for our lives,” said Lucas. “What the blazes do you think?”

  “The supermarket must be nearby,” said Jerry, struggling with Harry’s weight. “At least I hope so.”

  “It is,” said Kath. “We’re here.”

  Harry looked up to see the dim shape of a building present itself through the blizzard, only twenty yards ahead.

  They were going to make it.

  Lucas and Jerry continued to drag and pull him across the snow. Kath overtook them, searching her pockets frantically, no doubt for the building’s keys.

  Harry had a question, and he shouted it out. “Where’s the stranger? Where did he go?”

  They reached the supermarket’s locked fire door and dumped Harry down. Lucas stared down at him and offered his hand. “I don’t bloody know where it is, but get up and be ready in case it comes back.”

  Kath pulled her keys from her pocket and started sifting through them. “I can’t see a thing out here.”

  Harry managed to stand, his legs turning from jelly to gradually-setting cement, not yet firm, but getting there. He looked back in the direction they’d come from and found his heart stopping in his chest. “You’d best hurry up and get us inside, Kath. I mean right NOW!”

  Coming through the snow, with a steady and methodical purpose, was the hooded figure; but this time he was not alone. There were other robed strangers getting nearer. Dozens of them. Their ghostly visages melted into the background of the whirling blizzard and there could have been an endless legion of them out there for all Harry knew.

  Kath frantically tried her keys on the lock. Lucas fell to his knees, muttering. Harry thought he heard the Irishman say something about ‘an army of Christ’, but there was no time to ask about it. The robed strangers were approaching quickly, almost seeming to glide across the deep deep snow.

  “How’s it going?” Harry urgently asked Kath.

  “I’m trying,” she said, sounding close to tears. “I’m sodding trying.”

  As if things could get any worse, Harry heard something awful.

  Growling.

  The sound was so guttural that it might have emanated from a pack of rabid wolves. Alongside the army of strangers were a dozen beasts. They fit Jerry’s description of the creature that had attacked them. Giant dogs with innumerable teeth in their salivating jaws

  “Hell hounds,” said Jerry. “Just like the one that attacked me and Jess. Believe me now?”

  Harry clutched the chef’s knife tightly in his hand, but had a feeling it would prove useless. “Jerry,” he shouted. “If we live through this, I will be the first in line to apologise for not believing you, but now’s not the time for humble pie.”

  Jerry seemed buoyed by the vindication and actually began to smile. He moved to Kath and picked up the baseball bat she had propped against the supermarket’s door and hefted it over his shoulder.

  Lucas was still on his knees, but had stopped his incoherent rambling. He fixed his gaze on Jerry. “What the b’jaysus are you doing, lad?”

  Jerry narrowed his eyes. “I’m getting even.”

  With that, Jerry trudged through the snow at a speed as close to running as possible in the thick snow. He held the baseball bat high above his head as if it were a holy sword of Justice. The strange army of unearthly figures continued approaching with their hell hounds. Jerry didn’t seem concerned by any of it as he picked up speed.

  “Jerry, get back here!” Harry shouted, but his words faded into the blizzard.

  What is that boy doing?

  Harry watched as Jerry came to a halt six feet in front of one of the giant dog-like beasts. He stuck out an arm and made a ‘bring it’ motion. “Let’s go, Cujo!”

  Jerry swung the baseball bat down over his head in a downwards arc. It connected with the bulbous skull of the hell hound. With a snarling whine, the beast collapsed sideways into the snow, which immediately begun to melt around it. Jerry swung the bat again, connecting a blow with the beast’s hindquarters, causing it to yowl in agony. Before he had chance to swing it again, the beast rose to its feet and fled.

  Jerry held the bat above his head and shouted triumphantly. “Flawless victory, motherfucker. Yeah, that’s what you get when you mess with the J-Meister.”

  Harry watched the surreal image of the spotty, teenage boy taking on a pack of hell beasts with a decrepit baseball bat and wondered whether he was stoned. Had his drinking progressed to drug-abuse and he was now lying somewhere, hallucinating the whole thing? It was a thought he would’ve liked to have held on to very much, but he knew it wasn’t true. They were all in great danger and none of this was imaginary. It wasn’t a movie.

  “Jerry! Get your arse back here, now!”

  Harry’s warning came too late. The rest of the hell hounds swarmed over Jerry in a never ending wave. Harry was unable to take his eyes away as flesh and fat were shorn from the teenager’s bones like meat from a turkey. Razor sharp fangs pierced every inch of Jerry’s skin and turned him into a bloody skeleton. Harry thought his ears would explode at the sound of the boy’s agonised screams and was grateful that they only lasted a few seconds as the beasts tore out his throat.

  Harry sobbed.

  “Thank God!” Kath said finally, unlocking the door and pushing it open so hard that she fell to her knees inside. Harry couldn’t move, eyes transfixed on the beasts feeding on Jerry’s twitching body.

  Harry tried to blink, but couldn’t. “They’re going to kill us all.”

  “Maybe,” said Lucas, yanking him backwards through the open door. “But there’s no reason for us to make it easy for them.”

  Harry took a long hard swallow. Lucas was right. After all the hits life had thrown at him, there was no way he was going to take a beating lying down. “No,” he said. “The last thing we’re going to do is make it easy for them.”

  Kath locked the supermarket’s door behind them, whilst outside an army of robed demons surrounded them.

  29

  “Damien…

  “Damien, wake up.”

  Damien opened his eyes, expecting light to stream in and burn his retinas; but there was only darkness. Gradually, he remembered the evening’s events. The unending snow, the power cut, and everybody freezing. He could remember no more than that at first, but when he found himself tied to a chair he began to panic as the rest came flooding back.

  “Steph!”

  “I’m here, Damien. I’m going to untie you, but you’ve got to stay calm. We need your help.”

  “That son of a bitch knocked me out. Harry, I’m going to kill you.”

  “Damien, I can only untie you if you calm down. The only reason Harry hit you was because he thought-“

  “I was going rape you.”

  “Yes,” said Steph. “We got it all wrong. It wasn’t you, it was-“

  “Nigel!” Damien remembered finding the sick pervert about to stick it in an unconscious woman. Not just any women either: Steph. Damien was a lot of things, but he was no rapist. Sex offenders and nonces were a whole other level of scumbag, subhuman slugs. He wrenched at his wrist restraints, furious when they refused to loosen. “Where the hell is that fucker? I’m going to kill him.”

  Nigel appeared from the shadows. There was blood dripping down his face. “I’m here, princess, and guess what? This time you get to watch.”

  Damien strained against his ropes, unable to see what was happening as Nigel raced past him. He heard the monster taunting the girls, and them crying out in fear, but with his back to
the fire place and sofa, he could see nothing more

  Damien struggled at the ropes around his wrists. Come on, come on. Need to put a stop to this before it gets nasty.

  The ropes were tight. So tight that the skin around Damien’s wrists was abraded and sore. Still, he began sawing his arms back and forth, trying to create enough slack that he could slip him free.

  A wet slapping sound.

  Damien flinched as a body fell down in front of him.

  Steph lay crumpled on the floor, dazed and barely conscious, blood seeping from a wound on the bridge of her nose. She murmured something to Damien, but it passed him by. It sounded like the word ‘poker’.

  Damien continued rubbing his wrists back and forth, feeling the ropes loosen a couple of millimetres.

  Yes, come on. Come one!

  At his feet, Damien could feel Steph squirming on the floor, slowly moving past his legs. At first he thought she was making a run for it, but a tugging sensation at his wrists made him realise she was trying to untie him.

  The ropes began to loosen.

  With the extra slack Damien shifted in his seat and blinked while his eyes adjusted to the scene in front of him. Nigel had Jess pinned up against the wall beside the fire, struggling back and forth as the girl held onto his wrists and did her best to keep his hands away from her. She was putting up more of a fight than Nigel had obviously expected, if his frustrated grunts were anything to go by. Damien almost smiled as he watched Jess spit and bite at Nigel’s face, doing everything she could to defend herself.

  Girl was a fighter for sure.

  Damien felt the ropes fall away from his wrists. A jolt shot from his knees and spread through his entire body as he leapt out of the chair. He threw himself at Nigel, landing hard against the man’s broad back. It felt like hitting a brick wall, but the blow was enough to send Nigel face first into the wall. Unfortunately, Jess was in the way and got squashed. The air exploded from her lungs in a great ‘Oooomph!’ as she fell to the floor like a puppet without strings.

  Taking advantage of the confusion, Damien swung his fist.

  And missed.

  Nigel ducked and countered with a punch of his own. His large, meaty fist connected with Damien’s ribcage with an echoing thud! The air surged out of Damien like a whistle on a steam train; a drawn-out, strangled wheeze that seemed to go on forever. He fell to his knees in agony.

  Nigel stomped towards him like a greasy-haired rhino, grunting and snorting. There was still too little air in Damien’s winded lungs to launch a defence, and he was about to resign himself to defeat when he spotted something.

  The fire poker, lying on the carpet next to his feet.

  Damien snatched the poker and held it in front of him. It seemed to glow in the soft light of the fire like a gift from the gods. It was salvation; a tool to knock Nigel back to the hell he came from.

  Damien rose up, swinging the poker up and over his head.

  The clanging sound of solid iron hitting Nigel’s skull was the most beautiful thing Damien had ever heard. It was music.

  Head banging music.

  Nigel staggered backwards, half-conscious already and legs wobbling like those of a flailing boxer. Damien watched the whites of the man’s eyes roll back in his head. Nigel stumbled in a daze, before losing his legs completely and falling backwards. He landed right in the open fire.

  With an agonising scream, Nigel’s eyes rolled back into their normal position as agony forced his mind back into focus. The top of his head lay in the flames, as if the burning wood inside were a pillow. Immediately his skin blistered and his hair smoked. Like a greyhound out of the starting gates, Nigel leapt upwards, screaming in both pain and fury. The fire was only embers now and that was the only reason Nigel hadn’t been roasted alive. The whole thing happened so quickly that Damien couldn’t think fast enough to react to Nigel’s hurtling back towards him.

  When the knife slid through Damien’s ribs, it felt like a bee sting.

  Then the pain became unbearable.

  “What in the hell is happening tonight? I mean FUCK! Fuck fuck fuck.” Harry felt like he was going to explode. He’d just watched a teenaged boy get ripped to shreds like minced beef. This on a night where the world was being consumed by a never-ending snow storm and demons stalked the streets. On top of everything, it all seemed to have something to do with him. Harry was ‘the sinner’.

  “Seriously, can anybody tell me what is going on? I just watched Jerry get ripped apart by God-knows what, and now we’re trapped in a pitch-black supermarket surrounded by a bunch of homicidal monks.”

  “I don’t think they’re monks,” said Kath.

  “No shit!”

  Lucas ambled over to the fire exit and looked out into the snow. There was movement outside, but for now the creatures outside seemed to be staying away. “I think it would be shrewd if we thought a wee bit less about what those things are out there and a mite more about how to get back to the pub with what we came for. The others need us.”

  Harry let air flow slowly from his lips, trying to calm his beating heart. It didn’t work and only left him feeling more anxious. “We’re fucked, do you know that?”

  Lucas nodded. “Aye, but better to take a shagging standing up than to bend over and take it.”

  The remark brought silence.

  Harry couldn’t help but laugh. “You’ve obviously spent some time in prison, right?”

  Lucas grinned. “You could say that, Harry Boy, and you wouldn’t be too far from the truth.”

  “Okay,” said Kath. “Can we just do what we’re here to do? It’s even colder here than it was outside.”

  Harry nodded and started moving. “Okay. Let’s get the coal, painkillers, and some food. Anything we need to take back, let’s get it all piled up over here.”

  Kath and Lucas nodded and got to work. Before Lucas ran off into the darkness he saluted Harry and said, “Right away, Major Jobson.”

  It was then that Harry realised something important; something he’d overlooked earlier, not once but twice. He’d never told Lucas his surname, or anybody else, so how did the man know it?

  Harry looked over at Lucas and wondered if he’d been played from the beginning. Lucas knew more about Harry then he’d let on. But how?

  And why?

  30

  Jess finally managed to take a breath but it only made her nauseous. She’d watched helplessly as a badly-burned Nigel slid a knife into Damien’s stomach, and she was powerless now to intervene as Nigel heaved Steph’s groggy body onto a chair.

  She scanned the floor for a weapon, looking for a solution, but the only thing she could see was the trusty fire poker, several feet away and out of reach. It lay near where Damien writhed on the floor, gritting his teeth against his pain. He’d tried to save her.

  Jess need to reach the poker without being seen by Nigel. Even worse, she had to do it in such awful cold that her body had begun to shiver and spasm.

  She would just love for Jerry and the others to come barging through the door right now and save her from this wretched nightmare. But, if tonight had taught her anything, it was not to hope for the best because things had a habit of just getting worse.

  Jess started to move, crawling along awkwardly on her numb hands and trembling knees. She shivered constantly. The chill was bad enough that even the fibres of the carpet had begun to freeze. They were sharp and brittle like tiny needles digging into her palms.

  “Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” Nigel said as he shook Steph by the shoulders. “I want you to be awake for this. No fun if you sleep through all the good stuff.”

  Steph opened her eyes suddenly. She spat at Nigel. “Screw you!” But as soon as it arrived, the fight seemed to leave Steph. She was obviously too bruised and broken to keep it up. Nigel slapped her so hard, the sound bounced off the walls.

  Jess stayed down in the shadows and winced. She continued crawling for the poker, just a few feet away now.

  Nigel slap
ped Steph again, this time a backhand. “Spitting is very unladylike,” he shouted, “and anything unbecoming a lady will not be tolerated. If I wanted a bloke for entertainment then I would have tied Damien back up in the chair. Speaking of which, how are you big man?” Nigel turned to Damien who was still moaning on the floor. “Not such a hard man now, huh?” He took a run up and booted Damien in the chest, making him explode with fresh agony and gasp for air. Jess winced again, glad she wasn’t on the receiving end.

  She carried on shuffling towards the poker. It was nearly at arm’s length now.

  Almost there.

  Almost…

  Jess cried out as a heavy work shoe crunched down on her hand. She knew right away that she’d been too slow and that she would most likely pay for it with her life. Nigel twisted his heel and pushed down harder, cracking and bruising the delicate bones in Jess’ hand. She wailed in agony and struggled to get free.

  Nigel laughed sadistically.

  Jess’s screams increased as a rough hand tangled itself into her hair and yanked. The pressure on her hand was released as she was violently hoisted to her feet. She found herself face to face with Nigel. She tried to pull away.

  “Not so fast, sweetheart. Now that Steph is nice and comfortable, you and me have some time on our hands.”

  Jess fought to twist herself free, but it was like being held in a vice. “The others will be back at any minute,” she warned him. “You’re going to get your arse kicked, you sicko.”

  Nigel smiled. “By who? Harry, the alcoholic? Jerry, the loser? Or Lucas, the thick Mick? I don’t think so, sweetheart. They’re probably already dead, and if not then I’ll see to them later.”

  The thought of Nigel killing the others filled Jess with rage. She decided to take a leaf out of Steph’s book and spat. Nigel flinched as the saliva hit his cheek and she used this opportunity to try and get free, driving her knee up as hard as she could toward Nigel’s groin. The blow missed the intended target but still managed to plant firmly in his mid-section. He staggered backwards, releasing her, as the air escaped from his lungs.