by Casey Herzog
“I am his mistake, boy. I am his darkness, the hateful thoughts in his mind. I am the side of him he’d rather not show to the world, but which you have earned the right to see…I am the lord of his domain. I am Webster, but I am not. You shall soon understand.”
Mocking laughter followed him as he swung up into the forest’s canopy and cried out.
“Now you better be quick getting to the clearing, boys! Your power handicap is going to weigh down on you pretty soon…”
The voice disappeared, and the group was left there in the middle of the forest.
“What now?” Keith asked with annoyance. They were weakened and exposed now, free to be targeted by any of the forest’s threats, or even fellow students. If I come across the Lucid Dreamers now, I have no chance, Dante thought.
The rustling of leaves interrupted his thoughts, and Dante turned around.
“What’s coming?” he asked, but nobody answered. It was all around them now, the sounds of approaching threats.
Servant was the first to cry out, his arm grabbed from the bush to one side of him. He pulled back and stumbled several steps. An ugly, deformed face growled at them, its hunched form stepping out from the suffocating underbrush. Another threw itself close by, landing on its hands as it pulled itself from a shrub beside Dante. He kicked it in the face and stepped back in the tight circle his companions had suddenly formed. More of them were coming now, and without powers or weapons, the group was going to have a very hard time fighting them.
“We have to go,” Observer said, “They’re everywhere!” He ran into a space between two trunks, but a mutant stumbled out and grabbed him.
“Observer!” Animal growled, tearing the subhuman off and pulling Observer to his feet. “Watch out, man, these mutants are no joke—ahhh.” A mutant had bitten down into his shoulder and wrapped its claws around his arms, giving him no chance to escape. Blood ran down his shirt and Animal’s eyes widened in terror.
“No!” Dante cried, throwing himself onto the mutant with a rock in hand and smashing it down into its face. Animal groaned from nearby, pulling himself away from a group of approaching mutants. Something screamed from above, and one of the subhumans came falling, landing hard and breaking its legs as it fell, but soon joining in on the approaching mass. The shadows that had been permanently on the edges of their vision were finally revealing themselves, and the forest had just turned on the group as if it hated them.
Everything had gone to hell real fast. Dante shouted for help as he pulled at a wounded Animal and wished he had his healing powers. As they began to run into the only seemingly safe direction, he knew their professor had gone too far this time.
Webster, if I survive this, no matter what the punishment is and no matter what reasoning you have behind doing this to us…I’m going to fucking hurt you.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Collapse, Part II
With the darkness came the monsters.
The prisoners from his neighboring cells turned to look at him right away, triumphant looks on their faces as they closed in. Fillmore knew they were both Russell’s men, and they had wanted to jump him for a while. They had their perfect moment now, the chaotic dark giving them the chance.
“Little bitch,” one of them spat, a one-eyed man with a scar on his neck. “I’mma fuck you up, and there won’t be any guards around to save you anymore.”
Fillmore saw the man behind him move from the corner of his eye and threw his elbow back hard, but it didn’t connect. The same man used the captain’s momentum to pull him back into a tight hold. Fillmore grunted as the one-eyed miscreant threw a hard punch into his gut. The wind was knocked right out of him, but he managed to mutter a curse. Fillmore was thrown inside the cell and kicks rained down on his form. He tried to drag himself out, but they pulled him back inside and threw him into the wall of metal bars, hitting his skull on them with a clang. Fillmore spat out a tooth and threw a useless punch to protect himself, but it barely registered on the scarred man’s face.
Something flew up over the balcony and clattered to a stop beside him. Fillmore turned curiously as the other man pulled his fist back to punch him. Oh…
He lifted the gun and fired through the man’s skull twice, shooting the one-eyed man a moment later in the chest and watching him fall back with shock across his face.
“Looks like,” Captain Fillmore managed through a wounded mouth as he rose, “someone still managed to save me after all, bitch.”
The bullet went through the prisoner’s remaining eye and blew his brains across the cell. Fillmore took a deep breath and stepped out with his smoking pistol. Below him in the yard, there was chaos taking place. Prisoners were literally throwing themselves over the rails of their cell blocks to land painfully below, all to escape their cells without having to wait for the elevators to start functioning again. The emergency lights had only just been activated, but the constant gunfire from the small circle of guards provided enough light already.
At first the guards had kept full control of the situation, but it was rapidly collapsing with the fall of the I and K blocks in the neighboring sector of the prison. The prisoners there had managed to kill their captors and loot the guns for themselves. They were now trying to bust their way into the larger sector where Fillmore and the rest were.
The captain’s thoughts were cut short, and he fired down several times at a prisoner who was attacking his patrol ally among the guards. The young man looked up in relief and thanked him as he saw the pipe-wielding prisoner fall at his feet. He’d been pardoned for his moment of insubordination, but Fillmore knew that execution awaited him if the riot was controlled. Execution or dying at Russell’s hands…I’d take the former.
Fillmore ran to the elevator and leaped out over the rail, catching the thick wire that led down to the ground as he fell, slipping down its length before jumping down to the ground. He finally caught sight of Callum, the soldier fending off three prisoners with barely more than a sharp blade he’d managed to take from someone. He was holding his ground, but the men were slowly getting closer to him.
Funnily enough, Callum spotted Fillmore with his raised gun at that exact moment and simply shook his head.
“I’m good, Cap’n! Find your allies!” He reassured the patrol officer by thrusting his blade into one of his attacker’s eyes, and Fillmore turned away to find a way through to the nearby Block B. At least three of his fellow patrollers had been kept captive there, and he hoped to find them.
“Captain,” a voice whispered from nearby. Fillmore turned to look at a wounded prisoner who was resting against a cell. He had been shot several times in the gut and was bleeding out.
“Shit, Pollock,” the captain cursed. He approached and took a look at the bullet wounds. There was nothing to do. “Where are the others?”
“I saw them following most of the fleeing prisoners. We need…” he winced and coughed up blood painfully. “I’m sorry, sir, you need to escape. All of you. The University must be warned.” He stopped talking and pressed down hard on his wound, gasping.
“You don’t need to say any more. Do you wish for mercy?”
The man nodded. Fillmore put a hand on the fallen soldier’s head and whispered an apology before pulling the trigger of his pistol.
A loud bang made the captain turn, and he knew the prisoners from the neighboring blocks had arrived. It doesn’t necessarily have to be bad news, Fillmore thought, they haven’t heard of Russell at least. Still, more prisoners would mean more trouble, and with the guards looking incapable of holding the place for much longer, it could mean ten new Russells could spawn within the prison.
Another heavy object slammed into the door and dented it outward this time, causing a full squad of the guards to detach from the defensive line they were holding and kneel to one side in front of the door in case the other prisoners burst through. Fillmore hurried from cell to cell, looking for his people.
“I’ll help you,” a blood-spattered
Callum said from beside him suddenly, and Fillmore decided it was better not to ask what had happened.
In truth, there was order behind the chaos. Most prisoners were doing what prisoners would do — escape — and the guards were simply protecting their own lives. Only a small minority was taking advantage of the prisonwide disaster to get personal vendettas sorted or prepare for Russell’s arrival. Fillmore caught one of his men trying to escape and pulled at him by the collar.
“Where are you going?”
The patroller looked uncomfortably away in shame.
“I thought those two men had gotten to you…I threw the gun up, but something told me it was too late.”
“It was you? Great job, it’s what kept me alive. Anyone else still here?”
“No,” the man said with a shake of his head, “They’re either dead or gone. We have to go; Russell is only minutes away.”
“One of our people is among the guards,” Fillmore said, but he looked again and saw the passion in the young man’s eyes as he held the Coalition line. Die as a true soldier, my friend, Fillmore thought. “Forget it, let’s move!”
An explosion lit up the sky as if to remind them of the urgency of their situation, and Callum led them away to the hole in the fence the prisoners were using to escape.
“Why isn’t it guarded?” Fillmore asked his fellow patroller.
“It’s because the guards know it just leads to another part of the prison and not to an actual escape. There’s no real way of getting out without actually reaching the boundaries of this forsaken place. The best we can hope for is that the ensuing chaos from Russell’s arrival brings more guards from the far borders of the prison and allows us to get out through the less-guarded places they leave behind!”
“Makes sense,” Callum sighed.
The mass of prisoners was pushing at each other, violently stampeding through a yard they had accessed by cutting the fence apart. It was empty of life and littered with abandoned trash and rubble. Fillmore looked back one last time at their blocks and wondered if he and the other two would be safer with the guards.
The gate within the yard smashed open, and the prisoners burst through, descending on the circle of guards like ravenous beasts within seconds, and Fillmore was forced to abandon his idea. We took the best course of action.
They ran across the wreckage-strewn yard as gunfire and explosions echoed from behind them. Fillmore knew there wasn’t much to do but continue onward until they could tear their way into another part of the prison. As if that means salvation. Maybe we’ll walk into something worse.
The captain stopped suddenly, catching sight of the tall column of smoke visible to the northeast of them. Russell was at the prison.
However, the direction of the attack meant good news, if they could exploit it.
“Guys, I believe we can get out if we locate our strongest contingent of patrollers. There is a large presence of them in the W block to the south, but we may need to fight through several layers of the prison to get to them. If we can just get near to them, we could—”
He never got to finish his sentence.
It was as if a subterranean explosive charge had been set off, a rippling shockwave tearing the ground apart and throwing everyone in the area off their feet. Men screamed as they were crushed under tons of earth and rock, and other unfortunate prisoners were sucked into the whirling blades that emerged from the ground beneath them like metal demons from some kind of underworld.
“It can’t be,” Callum breathed, struggling to his feet as the vehicles ripped out of the ground and the familiar booming laughter reached his ears.
“Oh, it feels good to be back!” Russell said, spreading his arms as his drilling vehicle flew out of the ground and landed heavily on a fallen prisoner. The Lord of Lawlessness had returned, and he hadn’t just brought a mob of vengeful prisoners.
He had brought an entire army.
A group of armed men tensed, their hands wrapping around their weapons.
Through a series of favors, threats and murders in the past couple of days, they had wormed their way onto the guards’ good side and been sent to control the inevitable riots in a nearby block. Not a moment too soon, their leader had thought when they’d arrived at Block G. The guards there clearly needing the backup, despite hating the idea of fighting alongside prisoners when the trouble had begun.
The Whisperer [Ed 2]smiled as he opened fire on the rioting prisoners before they could even cause trouble, his rifle kicking in his hands while he mowed down the criminals. If we can keep rising within the ranks, we’ll be out of here in no time, his logic had been. No need for Callum Thorpe, the patrol officer or anyone else. It would give him a chance to salvage his rapidly-fading sanity before he completely lost his mind within the prison.
However, they had all just heard the noise from across the space separating their current block from their former one. Reiner looked at his men and saw the way they looked back at him.
The time had finally come.
“Where are you going?!” a Coalition guard growled as he watched them pulling a gate to one side and stepping through. “Stop, you have a duty!”
“Do you have any idea who just arrived at the prison?” Reiner asked, his rasping voice giving the other man pause.
“Who?” the custodian asked, clueless.
“The man who will either kill us all…or die by my hand. There will be no other outcome. I will be there to stop Russell, and you’re not going to get in my way.”
The guard looked like he was about to challenge Reiner, but the Whisperer was quick to slit his throat, leaving the guard to fumble uselessly at the wound and bleed out.
“Men,” he barked at his remaining Angels of the Apocalypse, his rifle raised and his mouth a thin line, “Vengeance or death. It’s time to kill Russell for good and get the fuck out of here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Too Far
Maria had known they would finally break her and force the anger, pain and grief out of the depths of her heart. It was inevitable — the moment was bound to arrive sooner or later — but the entire mystery had been what would finally push her over the edge and make her lash out with the blade she’d concealed on her person.
It was little David in the end, the sickly boy who had always needed care and protection.
At first, the boxes and crates had been pushed inside slowly on their tracks, only one or two of them entering their smaller warehouse per hour. Maria and the kids made quick work of opening them and organizing their contents into smaller, easy-to-deliver packages. These smaller packages were then removed by the thugs through a small window in the side of the room and taken away to wherever they were kept until shipment. Two guards watched the entire time, their eyes keeping track of what was brought in, what was shipped out and who wasn’t working.
The first time the skinny, cruel one had spotted David, the child had just received a warning. I’ll take a few fingers, blah blah blah, was all Maria had heard. She’d patted the boy on the shoulder and told him to work a little harder. He had breathing issues and a racing heart, but there was too much at stake to allow him to give up.
“Come on, David,” she’d said. “Just a bit more.”
It had been a lie, but not one she’d expected to be so far from the truth. Unfortunately, the men had not only increased the flow of crates and boxes, but also kept them working for far longer than usual. By the third hour, David had collapsed to his knees, breathing hard and asking for a break. Maria had looked up at the two guards and knew immediately there would be trouble. The skinny one crossed the room in an instant and threw a punch at the back of David’s head without any mercy, knocking him to the floor before kicking him as the other guard stood by and grinned.
Maria had cried out, and the assailant laughed at her while she fought to keep David conscious and bring him back to the area where they were working.
Half an hour later, his hungry, sickly body had given in for real,
and he’d finally fainted.
The children gasped collectively and winced as the grinning guard was the one to move forward this time, his hand removing a weapon from his belt.
It was a military-grade taser.
The high-pitched scream that came from David’s mouth when the high-voltage device was stabbed into his back was what made Maria lose it. Her despair turned to fury, and she shrieked a wordless scream as she crossed the room, her blade slipping into her hand and her other palm wrapping around the man’s thick neck. She plunged the knife into his heart all the way to the hilt, twisting it and pulling it out before charging at the thinner man and slicing his throat with a single savage cut.
Both men fell forward on their faces and began to bleed out, the children taking a few steps back as the thugs emptied their arteries and veins out onto the damp, dirty floor. David’s eyes were wide, and he dragged himself away as best he could, coughing and panting heavily as he recovered his breath.