by Josh Hilden
“We need to regroup on the pier. The helicopters are going to need a central place to pull us from.” Candace said from his right hand side. She was knocking the Dead down almost as fast as he was, but she was also carrying the radio they’d been issued before the assault. The bud cradled in her ear was relaying information from the choppers as they streaked south from the island refuge.
There was a break in the swarm of the dead. The unity of the enemy command disintegrated the instant that Benny put a bullet in the brain of General Baker, but there were still a shit ton of them. “Let me have the mic,” he said holding his hand out to her. When she tossed him the wireless microphone, he keyed it and gave the orders needed to be given.
“This is Kenneth Michener. I am assuming command of the defense forces on the docks. Choppers are on the way, we just need to hold the Dead off until they arrive.” He paused to chop down a little girl with only one arm before talking again. “We are still outnumbered and dangerously low on ammunition. Everyone needs to regroup on the main pier, where we can control the flow of the Dead.” He handed the microphone back to Candace. Then the two of them began working and hacking their way back to the giant dock.
As they reached the pier they were join by one, then two, then 12 others, as the remaining members of the disparate forces united for their last stand. Either the choppers would arrive and pull them out before the Dead overwhelmed them or they would not.
It was in the hands of whatever Gods might be looking out for them.
3
The Jacobson Homestead
12:00 Midnight EST
Wind blew across the landscape. The snow piled higher and higher on the sides of the house that had been in the Jacobson family for more than 100 years but was now the property of no man. The body of Einor Jacobson was frozen in a pool of his own blood on the front porch. His head still lay at the bottom of the steps, where his brother had left it. The bodies of Einor’s wife and children were strewn around the house in a multitude of pieces. A dozen living soldiers from the Army of the One True God stood in a circle around the perimeter of the house to ensure the privacy and safety of their Master. More than 500 of the Risen Dead were spread out in the fields surrounding it.
Rudy brought his captives back to the Jacobson Farm house, leaving the army in the capable hands of General Baker and Lord Barton. When they’d arrived, the boy and the bitch came out of their daze, and they had fought him unsuccessfully. When he’d beaten them into submission, they were restrained and the real battle, the battle in the other world, began.
The basement had been converted to a redoubt in the days following the Rise of the Dead, and was now being used as a sort of interrogation room. Kyle Carson and Lisa Sutton were hanging from the basement rafters with their cuffed hands over their heads. The pain would have been excruciating if the two figures had been aware of their physical surroundings. They both hung limp, with their eyes staring at nothing and drool running from their open mouths. In front of them stood Rudolph Clarke, the blood flowing from the various wounds Kyle and Lisa managed to inflict on him was clotted on his skin and clothes. The wounds themselves had healed and vanished. He also stood staring at nothing with his mouth hanging open. The calmness of the denizens of the basement belied the conflict that raged between them.
4
Somewhere Else
Some Time Else
Before they had arrived here, the last thing Kyle could remember was insane cackling from the priest, and then the pearly white light erupting from Lisa. The dark man had screamed, and then Lisa had looked directly at the two of them at the same time without turning her head. She seemed to have two, or maybe 200, heads at the same time, but he could only see one of them. Then they were here.
The empty plane rolled on forever in front of Kyle and Lisa. There were no sounds, no smells, and nobody else there except Rudy Clarke, who no longer looked like the Dark Leader of the Army of the Dead, but instead seemed to be a demon with cracked and burned skin and long, stringy, grey hair. Kyle believed this was the manifestation of what the insane priest really looked like.
Lisa, on the other hand, seemed to be seeing things Kyle could not perceive. He had not wanted to make this trip, but when he looked into her glowing eyes, he’d felt yanked into this reality. Once again, he wished he had not followed Lisa when she’d slipped away on this insane mission to kill the Dark Priest.
“Where are we?” Kyle asked, surveying the desolate and blank landscape.
“Nowhere,” Lisa said dreamily, “Everywhere.”
Kyle shook his head in annoyance. What he wanted to do was get the fuck out of here and away from the all this madness. He had no idea how to do that.
“Welcome to the other side boy.” Rudy said and then cackled. “Oh you stupid little bitch, this is the worst thing you could have possibly done. You are no Speaker, and you have no inkling of what you have stepped into,” The laugh which rippled from his maw sent ice down Kyle’s spine.
“You are wrong, False Priest,” Lisa said, and again the world changed.
Light exploded again from her form. The void filled with substance. Trees and rocks sprang forth from nothingness. The sky was filled with blackness and rain clouds, a fat and somehow wrong moon hung low in the saturated night sky. All around them, the sounds of people crying and of rain pounding the muddy ground became audible, accented by crashing thunder and flashes of lightening that preceded even more thunder. Humidity that was too cold to be real caressed Kyle’s skin, even though he was sure he had no skin in this world to feel it, and the rain soaked his clothing and ran from his bald scalp. The smells were the last to coalesce, the rank smell of jungle vegetation that was closer to rot than to bloom. Salt from the ocean Kyle somehow knew was close by, and a dark and fetid smell which seemed to permeate everything.
Kyle was about to speak when he saw the woman running down the road that extended up the mountain to the unseen peak. As she ran, a road was created with each fall of her feet. The scene was rendering ahead of her as she proceeded.
He was struck not only by her beauty, but by her resemblance to Lisa. The hair was different and the skin was more coppery than the ivory Lisa wore, but the features were eerily identical. They could have passed as sisters.
“I know the truth now.” Lisa said, turning to Clarke, and for the first time since Kyle was forced into the man’s horrid presence, he saw uncertainty on his hideous face. And under that uncertainty, fear seemed to lap the edges.
“Where are we Lisa?” Kyle asked again. For the first time, she seemed to notice his actually being there. She smiled at him, and the light shimmering on her face touched him, warmth flooded him, and his penis leapt to attention. That would have concerned him, considering he was sure the penis was no more real than the wet skin, but all his attention was on the scene growing around them.
As the seconds passed, the scene became more substantial, and Kyle could feel the next crash of thunder in his spine. Then suddenly the woman who was running hesitated. Kyle was sure she’d seen them, if only for a fraction of a second. Then she continued on down the mountain.
“We are at the beginning.” Lisa said.
5
The Silver Island, the Shallow Sea
October 21, 1624 BC
Three Minutes to Midnight
Tana hesitated as she barreled down the mountain. For the briefest of moments, she’d been sure she’d seen three people in strange, foreign garb, or was it two people and a servant of the darkness appear on the side of the road. She only hesitated for a second before continuing her journey.
The sun had not shown in the sky for more than a week. Tana ran as fast as she could through the pouring rain with no end. The water had been falling for days. If she didn’t make it to what was left of the town, she would never make it off of the island. For weeks the sea level had been rising faster than the levy builders could work, and it was a certainty now that the island community would be lost. The last surviving outpost of th
e once mighty At-Lan Empire was experiencing its death knell.
The people of the Silver Island had continued on as a civilization for more than 200 years since the fall of their Lost Motherland on the far Eastern side of the Great Ocean. Once, they’d been nothing more than a simple fishing and trading community existing only to support the temple of Ast-Murath, high on the Silver Mountain. It was the last of the seven Gateways discovered more than a thousand years ago. But when the last haggard ships arrived carrying the refugees from At-Lan, the people of Silver Island were horrified to learn they were the last Guardians of the Gateways.
Tana knew what this meant better than most of her people. She was one of the last of the Speaker Caste. It was in her blood and in her soul, as it had been in countless others of her bloodline for untold numbers of centuries, to understand as much of the workings of the Other Worlds as a human being was capable of. In time and with much training, she would be able to add her own will and strength to the rituals and incantations keeping the Gateways secured.
With the fall of the Homelands, Silver Island was the last bastion of the Speaker Caste. All of the power known to be left in the world of men and women was gathered here, at the last bulwark that had been erected. Now that bulwark was now crumbling. It was only a matter of time before Ast-Murath attempted to ascend to this world.
Tana waded into the heart of what had been her home neighborhood. The waters had risen to her thighs. She saw hundreds of dark shapes floating in the rising waters. She knew many of them were people who’d not been fast enough to escape the waters. Sickness had become a real threat in the last few days. Even though the bodies were disposed of as fast as possible, it was inevitable that the number of corpses would outstrip the Islanders’ abilities to handle them.
The rains had not stopped for more than a month, and the elders said it would continue for many more days. The people of the Homeland had done something drastic all those years ago, in an attempt to seal the Gateways and to stop something awful and unknown from happening. But they had failed, and the payment that the human race was forced to render caused the fall of the At-Lan Empire. The effects could still be felt all these years later, hence this attempt by the heavens themselves to drown them like so many rats on a ship.
In the distance through the rain and darkness, Tana saw two large and armored figures moving through the water. They were carrying oil lanterns. One of them saw her and raised a weapon, her mind decided it was a crossbow, and called to her.
“Where are you going? The town was ordered evacuated.” He sounded scared.
“I am Tana Moonwalker, Initiate of the Temple. The High Speaker, my Father’s Brother, ordered me to escape the island.” She shivered in the rain, all her life the rains of the island were warm. Even during the storm season the rains were mild, but for the last month, the rains had been icy and cutting.
“What of the High Speaker and the rest of the Initiates?” The Sentry asked. He sounded calmer as he brought his lantern forward, and verified that she was who she said.
“The High Speaker says they have to stay. He says if they don’t finish the rituals…” she took in a sharp inhalation of air before continuing, “He says that IT will be able to cross over into our world.” She shuddered and made the protective sign.
The Sentry cried out softly and also made the protective sign. “It’s the cause of all this?” The Sentry asked, and gestured helplessly around at the flooded landscape.
“More than you know Captain.” She looked back toward the signal light still glowing on top of the Silver Mountain, “It is the cause of all that has happen this year. The people on the far and lost Homeland stopped it from emerging, but they were unable to stop it forever before the waters swallowed Holy At-Lan.” Saying the name of the lost Homeland made her want to weep.
The Sentry looked from the Mountain to the Sea and then made a decision. He gestured toward his partner. The other man joined them.
“My Lady, we have a ship waiting in the harbor, if we leave now, we can make it to the mainland before things get much worse. But we have to leave now.”
Tana nodded toward the Sentry. Then the three of them waded further into the flooded town toward potential safety. Behind them, lights rapidly flashed in a fury of chaotic reds and golds on the mountain top. The Signal Lamp was outshone at night for the first time in almost 1,000 years. Even with thousands of feet in elevation, and many miles between Tana and the source, the lights were bright enough to illuminate the great dome of the Temple of Ast-Murath against the blackness of the night sky.
They were wading through the rising stagnant water now above waist depth, when the pitiful lights of the harbor came into view. Tana sighed quietly with relief and allowed her guard to relax.
Then moans cut through the darkness and the rain like a crash of lightning. The moans were followed by far away screams. They sounded like screams of terror. Tana and the soldiers whipped their heads back and forth, searching for the sources of the noise. Tana saw the shape of another human being approaching them. She was about to call out to them and ask if they knew what the source of the noise was, when the individual lunged at the soldiers, moaning and stumbling through the water.
As the person got closer, it came into the circle of illumination cast by the oil lamp, and Tana saw it was a man dressed in the garb of a farmer. His throat was caked with old and semidried blood. Tana thought in the instant before the lamp was dropped and they were all plunged into stygian darkness, she could see his windpipe and esophagus exposed through the ripped flesh.
The younger soldier dropped his crossbow and the oil lamp, and attempted to flee from the thing that had once been a man. His armor weighted him down in the water, and the abomination was able to seize him, and close its jaws down on the man’s exposed upper arm. The young soldier screamed and tried to wrench his arm away from the monster. Tana could smell copper in the air as the blood flowed into the still rising waters.
“It’s a monster!” The Guard Captain screamed as he unsheathed his short curved sword and advanced.
The creature forced his victim under the water, and was partially submerged itself as it thrashed along with the now drowning soldier. Yet Tana was astonished to see that the monster, the Captain had to be right about that, refused to release its meal for any reason.
The Captain plunged his blade into the left side of the creature and withdrew it rapidly. He then repeated this maneuver, thrust and withdraw, six times, until the monster finally released the now still soldier and turned its attentions toward them. Lightning flashed, and Tana could see there was a large chunk of meat hanging from the monster’s mouth. Brown diluted blood flowed down the front of its body.
“Why won’t you die?” The Captain screamed at the creature. Tana was more than a little distressed to hear the fear return to the Captain’s voice.
The creature began to stumble toward them, moaning and reaching as it advanced. The Captain summoned all of his courage and charged the thing that had killed his comrade. He raised the short sword above his head and screamed at the top of his lungs, “DIE YOU SON OF A ROTTED WHORE!” and brought the sword straight down on the top of its head.
Tans found the sound of steel, steel the likes of which would not be forged again by a human hand for thousands of years, cleaving through flesh and bone and then burying itself deep in cranial tissue was much quieter than she would have guessed. The creature dropped under the water like a thrown stone and the blade slid free.
“Captain, are you alright?” Tana asked as she cautiously approached the man.
“Yes, my Lady, or at least I will be when my guts untwist themselves. You are learned my lady and I am a simple soldier, what was that? It looked like a man, like many men from my own home village to be sure, but it was a demon. I know it was.” The last was delivered at a whisper.
“I think it was a demon.” She said, “But I have no idea what kind.” She looked around trying to penetrate the gloom and then continued, “
We have to make it to the boats.”
He nodded and then he sheathed his sword.
A flurry of splashing caught their attention. It was quickly followed by another moan, low and guttural. They both turned as one, and saw to their collective horror the other soldier risen from his watery grave and moving toward them.
“We have to run!” Tana shrieked. Then she began pulling her slight frame through the water as fast as the Gods would allow. She was beginning to hyperventilate. She heard the sound once again of the Captain’s sword cleaving through flesh and bone. Then he was pushing her forward faster than she could have moved on her own.