Among the Fallen: Resurrection

by Ross Shortall

  She suddenly turned, gazing towards an opening in a wall, closed off with mesh and a red light that faltered from within; revealing machinery and the strange movements of something that seemed to watch her from the shadows. She approached the opening as the gears hissed on the other side, tubes pumping with dirty red fluid as a man’s head swiftly appeared from a small hole, his head wrapped in sacking and featureless. Alex stepped back startled, its eerie gaze staring at her as a black eyeball blinked from behind a rip in its hessian hood. Suddenly, it reached down with a grey arm, its skin streaked with blood and grease, turning a gear painfully before suddenly disappearing back into the darkness.

  Alex stepped away, waiting for the strange man to reappear, but he never did. She calmly backed into the street, gazing at all the areas that appeared similar, wondering if these creatures littered the whole of Blackwater. Had they been watching her the whole time? She eventually stepped away from the area and approached another; again, metal grids protected the elaborate fans and machinery, gears that hissed and cogs that turned laboriously, but she saw nothing living. She suddenly clutched her head, her paranoid mind trying to justify what she had seen with lights and shadows; but Alex knew, as far as tricks of the eye went, that was too good to try and ignore.

  Calmly, she strolled further into the street as the scaffolding creaked and the plastic flapped.

  Dresses, skirts and underwear littered the ground, blood stained and grubby; they merely festered away on the wet poisonous roads. She strolled up to a car and climbed up onto the bonnet and sat on the roof, thinking and wondering. As the Doctors macabre and chilling words rolled over and over in her head, she sighed as she tortured her thoughts with his gossip. Maybe the daft old sod had gone senile or maybe even turned a bit funny; in all honestly, she wouldn’t have blamed him in the slightest and she was most definitely half way there herself. She pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

  She took a puff and held her breath for a moment or two and blew out the smoke, gazing at the meshed and sealed off areas with a distrustful sense of paranoia.

  The sky above gave an almighty crack of thunder and she waited silently for the rain to come, but it never did. The dark clouds raced across the red sky and a slight wind blew across her face, bringing with it the fowl stench of decaying meat which made her wretch and hold her mouth as her stomach revolted.

  Suddenly, she turned her head curiously towards a heap of corpses across the street; staring almost undeterred at the decaying pile. Men, women and children all piled up carelessly, their clothes tattered and torn, flapping quietly in the wind; their skin stretched over the bones like elastic, their skull like features frozen in sudden pain and riddled with flies. The sight sickened her, but weirdly, she couldn’t look away, she was drawn to this one pile as if she in some way was supposed notice something, something hidden. She slowly put the cigarette back in her mouth and pulled another lung full, her black eyes just staring at the corpses without repent. She looked at the child on top of the heap; the decay had made her so old looking and ugly that it somehow did not look real. What had this one child done that she deserved to be treated so heartlessly?

  Alex coughed and looked away, wiping her eyes and dropping the cigarette to the floor. She panned around the street at more piles of bodies, crawling with flies as nature broke them down slowly to their bones. She leapt from the bonnet and calmly walked over to the pile that had her so mesmerized, pulling her hand into her sleeve and covering her mouth and nose with the cuff. She studied the dead almost too closely and noticed each had traumas to the head, bullet holes around the brain area, some had indents from bludgeons, but most of the wounds they had were in the skull; bite marks to the arms and legs, the throat in some cases, heavily bruised and ravenously infected, the veins were swollen and the skin blistered.

  What had happened to these poor people?

  Alex stood up and walked away from the pile of bodies and stood in the centre of the road just looking around, hugging her arms and her hands shaking nervously. She looked down at a handbag at her feet, its contents partially littering the ground. She pushed the contents around with her foot, examining the items curiously, suddenly smiling and picking up a small tub of vapour-rub. She unscrewed the lid and scooped some of the gel out, smearing it under her nose and taking a deep breath. The Menthol was a God-send, it didn’t get rid of the smell around her completely, but it was more tolerable at least; Alex put the lid back on and put it in her pocket.

  The wind gently howled through the buildings and skyscrapers as papers and rubbish floated down from the heavens, softly landing on the metal coated roads and vanishing amongst the debris and litter. Her black eyes blinked erratically as she looked from one disheartening sight to another, her eyelashes clogged with black dirt and dried tears. All around her in every direction there was just death, blood and this strange metal skin and scaffolding that appeared to strangle the city and yet, there was not any conceivable purpose for it. She turned and started to walk further down the street, trying to ignore the mess of humanity and bereavement, closing her eyes when she needed to, avoiding the macabre sights that were too much for her. Suddenly, there was a smash from beside her and Alex jumped in fright as something hit the concrete across the road; a person?

  She could see an arm amongst the pile of bloody mess and on further inspection there was what was left a man. Its innards were steaming slightly, but they were more of a light brown in colour than a rich blood red, blistered and rotten the organs just rolled to the ground painfully. Suddenly, there was another, this time hitting the ground close by, splashing its insides everywhere. Then another; and then another. Alex looked up at the skyscraper and watched as more and more people walked through a window up on the thirtieth floor, not jumping, but walking; as if the ground suddenly vanished or they simply didn’t care. More and more dropped to the ground, piling up until the final few simply hit the pile and rolled off onto the ground. What was making these people step from such a massive height? What had they seen? Alex stepped back cautiously as the final few bounced from the rancid pile and slowly moved, their heads cracking and their necks creaking, their arms slowly stretching out and pulling themselves along the ground. They did not cry nor speak; they were purely silent as they crawled towards her exalting great effort and obvious pain. Alex backed away nervously until suddenly there was crash as a door from a squad car hit the ground revealing a police officer, agonizingly dragging himself from within, his skin burnt and black, his uniform welded to his flesh. All around her people started appearing from the shadows and shops, cars and alleyways. Slow moving, yet increasingly determined, their heads lowered without looking up, they simply shuffled blindly and crawled towards her from all directions. Soldiers crept from bus windows, dragging their weapons behind them, their grey paper-like skin cracking around their mouths as they gasped at the putrid air around them. Hundreds of people from all walks of life, suddenly descended upon the streets with nothing but a hunger fuelling them; pushing them headlong towards the only living creature for miles around.

  Alex backed up against a wall and looked around in fear as the masses lumbered silently and slowly towards her, wounded and rancid; missing limbs and their skin decayed, bones broken and snapped from the flesh. She had seen far too many movies to not know what these were, but these were different, almost too realistic, these actually moved as if they had been dead a long time. She watched as some toppled over as their leg joints snapped, their solid coagulated muscles breaking down under the strain of their strenuous movement. Some wheezed as they gasped, others simply collapsed under the strain; others juddered as their limbs dropped to the ground without reaction; but all walked blindly, as if their necks were powerless to lift their heads.

  As they closed in on her, all she could think was sorrow, guilt and sympathy for these poor people.

  Suddenly, her suit came alive, wrapping her up in armour and her eyes turned to a vicious red glow.

  The skin on her arms ripp
ed painfully as bone snapped out and into blades, her suit writhed and thick black tentacles whipped and lashed around her as it whispered and hollered in her mind.

  “What?! I can’t! These people are sick!” she mumbled angrily. She gripped her head in pain as the silent voices screamed in her mind. “Please, these people are not well, they need help!” she begged almost innocently.

  Alex watched as the burnt police officer crumbled and broke apart limb by limb, collapsing to the floor as he heaved and vomited. Suddenly, a cadaver lunged for her and she grabbed its throat, its arms stiffly by its side, rigid with solid blood. As the cadaver snapped at her angrily, its black eyes crawled with mites and its jaw dropped, ripping the flesh from its cheeks and revealing two or three rows of teeth, these were not human; or even the creatures she knew from the movies, these things were far deadlier. Alex frowned as she realized the voices were right, these were not people, these were what the people of the city were fighting, and they knew exactly what they were doing to, the heads were the weakness. Alex pushed the creature away and it stumbled falling onto its back. She hastily stepped over it and started to run through the hordes, slicing off the heads of those unfortunate enough to be in her way. She ran in and out of the crowd, slashing violently as the heads and bodies fell where they stood. She looked up suddenly and more and more of the sickening creatures fell from the windows above, pouring from shops and streets, buses, cars; they were everywhere. She paused briefly and considered her options, but sadly, there weren’t that many. If just one of these things grabbed her, the others were sure to gain up, and with this many, she would never regenerate quick enough before they had her down to the bone. She ran up the boulevard as quick as she could as they surged into the street, darting and weaving in and out of the un-dead hordes as they lunged and collapsed, dragging themselves desperately after her. As limbs and severed heads fell to the ground, all that could be seen was Alex running lightly, swiftly through the hundreds that had gathered around her almost instantly; they had her surrounded and she needed a plan fast. She grabbed a chain and agonizingly pulled herself up to one of the bridges that over shadowed the street and wrapped her arms and legs around the scaffolding desperately as they all gathered below. As Alex clambered over the metal anxiously, the cadavers froze, still and motionless; they stood without even looking at her, thousands of the zombie like creatures, just staring at the ground and waiting for her to come down.

  “Fuck!” she scorned as she looked down both ends of the street at the sea of decaying heads, all silent and all ready for the moment she dropped.

  Chapter Seventeen: Riot

  Alex hung clutching at the cage as her heart pounded within her chest, her stomach sick with nerves as the cadavers waited silently and patiently just feet below her. Suddenly, her breath turned to steam and the smoke that poured into the sky quickly froze, the metal framework she hugged so anxiously, glistening with frost and sparkled like diamonds as the city all around turned dark and grey. The windows in the streets glowed red and all the streetlights in the area suddenly exploded leaving Alex deeply nervous as she knew only too well what was coming. She clawed her way deeper into the cage, wrapping her legs around thick iron poles and grabbed chains, weaving them around her wrists as the church bells suddenly cried out in the distance. A sudden blast of wind coated the cadavers below with an icy fog and Alex’s teeth began to chatter uncontrollably, awaiting the Wraiths arrival as its cloak appeared all around her.

  “Remarkable organism that you are wearing, do you not think, Alexandra?” a familiar voice bellowed from above. Alex peered past the metal and steel and saw her guide perched on the top of the bridge, its cloak flowing in the wind and playing in the air. His minions were standing quietly, guarding each end of the bridge and just staring at her as she clamped the metal frames with dear life.

  “Some constructive advice really would be useful about now!” Alex sneered, panting and puffing with obvious exhaustion. “Or better yet, some HELP?!”

  The Wraith nosily peered over the edge at the carpet of decaying people that stood waiting unwearyingly below; his eyes flaring up then dimming again as the Bound suddenly twisted and looked upon his master clearly confused.

  “They cannot reach you, Alexandra, why do you need help?” it said innocently with complete seriousness. Alex only grunted and begun to claw her way up the side of the bridge, clambering carefully without looking down. Her guide stood staring out over the infested streets patiently as she suddenly appeared, grasping at the metal and cautiously standing herself up. The creature gazed upon her intently as she got her breath back, the Blind walking along the overpass and gazing sightlessly into the congested boulevard with heavy steps. Alex grumbled and wiped her face before nervously putting her hands in her pockets and pulling out her cigarettes, desperately trying to calm her fraying nerves.

  “What happened to them?” she asked inquisitively. “And don’t say Hell, Demons and shit, I need to know what I’m dealing with here!” she barked. “How many of these things are there? Is everyone like this?”

  The Wraith watched below as its cloak danced merrily in the wind just a few feet above the zombie-like people, watching as its playful shadow cast the rotting cadavers in a surreal and eerie darkness.

  Alex huffed in disappointment and turned her back on him, starting to walk away.

  “Do not concern yourself with these natives, Alexandra! They are not significant and do not bare any effect in the needed result. Stay away from them, they are nothing to do with us!” the Wraith bellowed heartlessly.

  Alex turned and stared at him with an angry frown, insulted by his ignorant lack of compassion towards her people. She looked over the side then the other, gawping down the end of the street as more cadavers entered from alleyways and slithered through windows. She took a lungful of her cigarette and then flicked it over the side as the Wraith just watched her intensely; her cigarette exploding with glowing ash on the head of a cadaver below.

  “I still could have used a little help down there; I don’t know what I’m doing, I aint no fighter!” she scowled intensively.

  “We cannot help you, if you fail to eradicate the five, if we facilitate in any way; we win by default, that must not happen!” the Wraith growled as its eyes flared in seriousness. “I can only advise you, they will undoubtedly know!”

  Alex stood profusely and defiant, glaring over towards his underlings as they stood watching the swarms below as if they were in some way amused by it all.

  “How will THEY know?” she asked unnervingly. “Am I being watched?”

  The cloaked demon turned to her slowly, the chains that hung from his flesh rattling as the leather rasped; his glowing eyes peering over his black leather seamless collar with growing intensity.

  “You are being watched by many, Alexandra. In the same vain that we always know where to find you.” it scorned. Alex pulled a face of slight perplexity and rubbed her head in torment.

  “So the powers that be… urm… your bosses? Whatever they are… they know you’re here and talking to me… right?” she asked in an attempt to flush out some truths from the outlandish creatures.

  “Of course, we are acting within the boundaries of the rules, Alexandra!” the Wraith grumbled. Alex turned and faced the Gagged almost arrogantly, his teeth gnawing his strap relentlessly, every now and then drooling as he gasped for breath in a panic.

  “I saw a man, hiding behind a vent, in the street I mean, who was that?” she asked as she tried to describe the mysterious encounter as best she could, lacking the imagination and words to put it across successfully.

  “Veniams or Fabres” the Wraith growled intensely. “Engineers that keep the city alive until it can self-sustain itself, innocuous mostly; they have no business with you and will not interfere!”

  Alex rubbed her head with a frown of bewilderment, sighing with torment as the Fallen watched her and the plague below.

  “It all sounds like some fucked up dream, fairy tale
s and nonsense, will it ever end?!” she mumbled solemnly as the night begun to take its toll.

  “At sunrise when you’re victorious!” it answered almost immediately. Alex lit another cigarette and stared out over the street, tapping at the ice that had formed on the bridge with her foot.

  “If I were to fail, all this spread and humans died or whatever, what happens to me?” she said selfishly, attempting to grasp at all the available options. The Wraith’s minions suddenly turned towards her, glaring at her as their painful faces glistened with frost under the red sky, awaiting their master’s response with unflinching loyalty.

  “You will become a Fallen, but as a failed challenger, a representative of the Earth realm, you will be an outcast, a traitor!” the Wraith growled. “Every other Fallen that breathes your air will hunt you down like a parasite!”

  “Why me?!” she mumbled. The Wraith turned and looked upon her frown with an intensive stare.

  “Why not that guy?” she said pointing into the crowd below. “Why not him? Or him, or her?! Why ME?!” she grunted aggressively. “If I were alive when all this shit happened, would I still have been chosen?!”

  Her guide looked down at the floor then raised its head slightly, staring at Alex with an intimidating glare. The Gagged stepped passed her and slowly scrutinized over the creatures below, his teeth grinding the leather as his drool and blood dropped into the crowd beneath.

  “I do not have all the answers, Alexandra, my knowledge is restricted!” he said as he turned his back to her defiantly. Alex scowled and her teeth ground viciously. Suddenly, the flesh on her arm split and a bone blade snapped out; blood poured to the metal at her feet and she stormed up behind the Wraith angrily. The guide tilted his head slightly and glared belligerently as she stormed up behind him, the Wraith’s eyes glowing as he deliberately allowed her abrupt approach. Suddenly, she leapt on his back and pushed her blade into its collar, sinking her knife-edge into its throat savagely.