by Matt Drabble
“Pass me one of those,” Casey ordered Simmons, pointing at a rack of old pool cues hanging on the wall.
She unscrewed the cue and set aside the lighter top portion, settling for the heavier base; it wasn’t much of a weapon, but at least it was one.
A few of the others followed suit and picked up similar heavy objects, but Casey couldn’t help but notice that most of Pearl’s cronies were now hiding at the back.
“O’Brien,” Casey said, ordering the man forward.
She pointed him to the door and mimed at him to pull it open quickly.
She waited for the noises to come around the outside of the basement until they were at the door. She gripped the cue tightly and took up a swinger’s stance.
Part of her wanted to merely keep the door locked and stay inside, but she was tired of sitting around hoping for the best; it was time to reclaim her house.
She motioned for O’Brien to open the door and braced herself. O’Brien yanked the door open hard and a silhouette pitched forwards off balance and fell into the basement.
Casey swung the cue and mercifully missed.
“WHOA!” Anderson Jennings cried out in fear with his eyes bulging wide as the pool cue flew millimetres over his head before smashing into a shelving unit behind him. “It’s me, it’s me!” he said quickly.
“Jesus Christ, Anderson! What the hell are you doing creeping around out there?” Casey demanded.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I got turned around out there. Shit was going crazy, people were fighting. I don’t know what the hell happened so I just ran.”
“Bloody coward,” someone called anonymously from the back of the room.
“Hey, man, you weren’t there!” Anderson replied defensively. “You didn’t see those crazy bastards.”
“A bunch of monks?” Pearl laughed bitterly. “Big brave man, aren’t you, Anderson?” to which he only looked down at the ground.
“You know what I say?” Dale said, standing up and addressing the basement. “I say we stop hiding like sheep down here.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Pearl snapped. “And since when did we have to listen to you, Dale?”
“Since my family built this town,” he snapped back pithily. “This is our town and this is our island, right? RIGHT? We’re the ones who built this place - every sawn piece of timber, every screw, every nail: our blood, our sweat, our tears!”
Casey watched the man as he started to pace up and down. There was something different about Dale Clayton now; there was a confidence that she’d never seen before and she wasn’t sure that she liked it. Not to mention the fact that every now and then he seemed to look into a corner of the room where no one was standing and nod his head with a creepy smile on his lips.
“You got a plan?” O’Brien asked, looking like he was buying what Dale was selling.
“Oh yes.” Dale nodded, mainly to himself. “Yes indeed.”
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The storm was finally starting to die down as the night took a deep hold on the residents of the island.
The islanders were mainly hunkered down inside Casey’s shelter beneath her bar.
The Niners were mainly secreted back at the monastery, save for a few scattered agents sent out by Torvan.
Calvin Morrison and his men were starting to stick their noses out of the harbour building, testing the air to see if it was finally safe to come out of hiding.
Back on the mainland, Haynes’s boss, James Merlin, was starting to get annoyed at the lack of progress. Haynes hadn’t reported in for a while now, and Merlin was starting to smell a rat rather than become concerned about his employee’s well-being.
A strange sense of calm seemed to be settling now across the island as the high winds dropped to a gentle breeze and the skies cleared, leaving an uncountable amount of twinkling stars.
The heavens seemed to be looking down upon this small speck of nothingness inside a vast open cosmos and for one brief fleeting moment in time wondering what was about to happen next.
There were still bodies lying about the woodland, broken and bloodied, an appetising aroma for the freshly emerging carnivorous wildlife.
Flesh was torn open by hungry sharp teeth and dead men were pulled deeper into the shadows to be feasted upon later as animals started to get a taste for human meat.
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Torvan wandered the long empty stone halls of the monastery alone. This was his kingdom now but somehow it still felt like his father’s; perhaps it always would.
The storm outside offered little fear for him for it was a gift from the gods. The Nine had sent the extreme weather to offer them shelter and disorientate their enemies. It was yet further proof that they were on the righteous path.
His subjects were sleeping soundly in their beds. The celebration had run on a long time and much mead had been drunk, no doubt leading to heavy heads by the time that morning broke.
He knew that it was only the first battle but it had been a bloody and decisive one in their favour. Their enemies had been cut down and their invading force turned back, but it was not over and wouldn’t be until they had extinguished the islanders from existence.
He had sent agents out into the upcoming night with orders to instil fear through death and to send the rats scurrying into their hiding holes; life was good.
Torvan wandered the long corridor and suddenly found himself lost. It was a crazy notion given that he had grown up here, but now he had no idea where he was.
He picked up his pace and started to move quicker along the hallway towards the exit door, but the door moved further away. He started to run and then he was flat out sprinting towards an exit that was matching his pace and only moving further away.
He stopped and stood panting. His body was shaking with panic and it was getting tough to breathe.
He changed tact and reached out to grab a door handle by the side of him. He yanked the door open and charged in, not caring whose room he was entering, but when he ran inside, he found himself back in the same hallway again.
Staring around, his mind was rebelling against the sight. His heart was pounding hard inside his chest and sweat was running down his forehead.
There was a part of his mind that refused to accept what he was seeing and he tried another door but with the same result. He flung open door after door and found himself constantly running as every door he opened only led back into the same hallway that he’d started from.
Over and over again he ran through doors without success until he sank to his knees in sheer exhaustion. He was panting hard now and he was panicking badly.
“SON! THIS WAY!” his father’s voice cried out. “QUICKLY!”
He ran towards the voice emerging from a doorway up ahead. His father was leaning out and beckoning him forwards. Part of him knew that the man was dead, but a larger part of him just wanted to get out of here.
Solomon Abel ducked back inside the room and Torvan doubled his sprint before the door closed. He ducked in just in time as the door slammed hard behind him.
“Father?” he called out, desperately looking for the man but the room was in total blackness.
He inched forwards with his hands stretched out in front of him to guide his way.
“FATHER!” he roared into the darkness, but again there was no answer.
A spotlight suddenly clicked on with a booming echo and beneath the light stood his mother.
Esmeralda Abel had died when he’d been just a child. His memories of his mother were sketchy and more emotions than actual memory. He remembered her scent, the smell of her hair and skin. He remembered how he’d fit into her arms when she’d held him as a baby.
“Mother?” he asked the woman in front of him.
“Torvan, my sweet,” she cooed to him.
He ran to her then with tears running down his cheeks. He slammed into her outstretched arms and she embraced him. In that moment, he was a child again, seeking love and comfort from hi
s mother. In that moment, he didn’t understand the world around him but he didn’t need to - she would make everything okay.
His mother had been a tall woman but now she towered above him, and he saw with shock that not only did he feel like a child again, he was one.
He hugged her tightly and buried his face into her bosom, breathing in her scent deeply.
“Not so tightly.” She laughed as he squeezed her. “Honey, not so tight.”
He tried to let go but he couldn’t. He hadn’t seen his mother in decades and now she was here to make everything okay again.
“Honey, please,” his mother said again, only this time pleading. “Stop, Torvan! PLEASE, STOP!” she begged, screaming in pain.
Torvan couldn’t understand her cries as he was only a child, a small child; how could he possibly hurt a grown woman?
Her back snapped in his grip and her screams were now hurting his ears, but his arms just kept on squeezing ever tighter, ignoring her pain.
She went limp in his arms, and finally he released his vicelike grip, allowing her to slip to the floor.”
“No, no, no!” he cried out.
“Out of the way!” his father roared as he brushed by and sank to his knees beside his wife’s lifeless body.
“Save her; save her, please,” Torvan begged as he stood by helplessly.
“I can’t.” Solomon Abel sighed sadly.
“You can! Do it! Do it. Please save her!”
His father looked up at him, absently wiping his forehead as something wet ran down through his hairline.
“It’s too late,” his father said sadly. “It’s all too late.”
Torvan looked down at his dead mother and then saw that his father was bleeding profusely from a head wound.
“Father, you’re hurt.”
“Son, I’m dead. Did you forget?”
“What? Who...!” Torvan exclaimed, shaking his head.
Blood was starting to flow heavily from his father’s head, a gushing river that was spewing red water into the air now. His father opened his mouth seemingly to speak, but instead, a scream rumbled up from his guts before exploding out of his mouth.
Torvan could only look on as his father’s face began to tear open. His head started to split down the middle as two sides parted with a bone-cracking wail.
His father was screaming in agony, and the sound was unbearable. The separating line reached his chin as his head was cleaved apart by an invisible force.
Blood continued to spurt into the air. Torvan could only watch his father being split in two before his eyes.
Even though the man’s eyes were now about a foot apart, they never stopped staring right at Torvan with a blazing rage.
Solomon Abel was split down to his groin and the two sides flapped about as he unbelievably continued to stand.
Torvan stared on in horror and disgust as his father waddled towards him with outstretched arms several feet apart. The two cleaved sides of him spilled internal organs onto the ground, and all the while he continued to scream; it was then that Torvan joined him.
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“It wasn’t him,” Caleb said to Quinn as she sat motionless, staring out the car window.
He’d managed to pull her off Cooper with no little effort. Cooper Fox was a scumbag, but he wasn’t a murderer - that would take the sort of commitment the man severely lacked.
Someone had nailed Luther Quinn to his back door with enough nails to hang a house. That took time and devotion to a cause; in short, that took a Niner mind.
“You know it was the Niners,” he tried again.
“I already told you I didn’t do it,” Cooper said sulkily from the back seat.
His lower lip was badly swollen from Quinn’s attack, and one eye was already starting to blacken.
“She’s the one who should be under arrest,” Cooper whined. “In fact, why isn’t she? I want to press charges. You hear me, Constable? I want her arrested and charged.”
“Shut up, Cooper,” Caleb replied tiredly.
He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been so exhausted. His whole body ached, but beyond that, there was a heaviness in his soul, one that was pulling him downwards into a pit that he was afraid he’d never climb back out of again. He also knew that he wasn’t alone. The whole island was suffering: a cataclysmic wave of death and destruction had raged across their home, and it remained to be seen just what was left. It also remained to be seen if it was over.
The drive back into town was a slow one as he picked their way through the flooded roads and spilt debris.
Quinn had wanted to bury her father on his land out back, but Caleb had to turn down her request which had led to a stony standoff.
The badge on his chest might not have meant that much to most people on the island, but he was the law here, and Luther’s death had not been a natural one.
He had not wanted to add to Quinn’s grief, but Luther’s body was now wrapped in a couple of bed sheets and lying in the back of the SUV. There was protocol to follow in a murder case, and Doc Simmons would have to examine the body.
They also had to find a way to contact the mainland and request help; that was priority number one for Caleb - hopefully, before anyone else got hurt.
The windscreen of the vehicle was cracked badly from the earlier assault, but thankfully, Quinn hadn’t asked about it. Caleb really didn’t want to talk about what had happened earlier. All he could do was to keep moving forwards and lock everything else out; for now, at least.
He was driving steadily and carefully, but not carefully enough. He never saw what happened, only heard it. One second they had been driving along, the next there was an enormous bang, and suddenly, the car was out of control.
Caleb fought to keep control of the vehicle but all steering had gone and they were on the flooded track. He knew what was going to happen before it did, but he was helpless to stop it.
The four burst tyres had no traction and slipped off the side of the crude track that served as a road, and then the car was rolling and tumbling down the steep slope into darkness.
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CHAPTER 18
Making sacrifices
Marjorie Goodman scoffed at the passing storm. She had lived through several bad weather spells before, and while this had been by far the worst, it still wasn’t nearly enough to finish her off. She wasn’t sure that there was anything on the planet that could put a dent in her.
She was 86 years old now and still going strong. She had no need for the modern world nor its inhabitants. In truth, she saw many of the islanders as invaders into her little world and only had sporadic dealings with them.
As a result, she rarely ventured into town, seeing the one street and handful of buildings as some kind of metropolis to be avoided at all costs.
Her little spread of land contained a cabin and a farming patch, enough to grow 99% of her food. She’d once had cows for milking but Marjorie had outlived the herd when a mainlander disease had run through her stock.
She’d never married and had never sought to either. Men were stubborn stupid beasts who got underfoot more than they ever helped.
She emerged out of her cabin now that the storm had passed. She had felt the animal coming and now felt when it had relinquished its grip.
A cursory examination of her cabin saw a few needed repairs but mainly cosmetic ones. The old girl had stood for a century or more and wouldn’t be felled by any amount of blustering wind.
Marjorie moved out to check her vegetation and wasn’t surprised to see her field decimated. She had harvested everything she could earlier in the week but her heart sank now, as much at the prospect of having to shop in town as for her ruined crops.
She felt tired as she walked about the night with a candle lantern to guide her way. She was a farmer by birth and by nature and her body clock worked on a ‘rise at dawn, bed at sunset’ basis.
The dark figure standing in the middle of her field made her jump when she
turned towards it. At first her heart skipped a beat, one that it could ill afford at her age, but then she was chastising herself for her childish fears.
The scarecrow had stood for many a year in its place of order, keeping the birds from stealing her hard work.
She started to turn away before the thought suddenly struck her that the scarecrow had no right to be standing, given the strength of the earlier storm.
She took a step towards it and held the lantern up higher, but at this distance, its light didn’t cast far enough to illuminate the figure properly, leaving only a motionless silhouette in the night air.
Instead of listening to the scared voice inside her telling her that something was desperately wrong, she pressed forwards, determined that no voice - not even her own - would rob her of her dignity and pride, certainly not on her own land.
She strode out purposefully towards the figure. “Hey, who goes there?” she called out into the darkness, holding the lantern up in front of her.
There was a shotgun back in the cabin but it was too late to go and get it now.
“WHO’S THERE!” she shrieked out, not liking the sound of nervousness in her own voice.
Again, the figure remained silent and motionless.
Her foot struck something hard on the ground and she looked down. There was a broken hoe lying on the ground between her and the figure. In fact, there were several items of debris blown across the field but the stick handle with a jagged broken tip caught her eye.
She snatched up the tool and wielded it out in front of her as she approached the figure again. This time she was closer.
She moved forwards, holding the stick out in front of her like a lance. The scarecrow was still wearing the long tattered coat, and a straw hat that was pulled down low was covering its face. In the dim light, the whole scene was deeply eerie but she refused to be bowed by the childish fear that was tickling the back of her neck.
In a move brought on by creeping dread, she suddenly thrust the broken hoe forwards and stabbed the scarecrow in the shoulder, but it didn’t move.