by Josh Hilden
“Where the hell are we?” Kyle asked as he tracked his head all around the cave, trying to get his bearings.
“This is the prison of Ast-Murath.” Lisa said and drew the mental Fang from the sheath on her belt. Kyle realized there was a fighting Pike on his back. He unstrapped it and held it point forward. In the far distance was a stalagmite with a leveled top, and on it was the book that had opened the locks of the prison.
“What do we do now?” He asked.
Before she could say anything, laughter filled the cavern and the form of Rudolph Clarke, in his bestial visage stepped out from a side passage. “Now, boy, you die!” He hissed. Then before anyone could respond, he charged them. The transition to the prison of his Master had made Rudolph Clarke even more feral and animal like than he’d been on their previous transition from their corporeal forms to their astral selves.
Lisa flared with power. The gloom and the murk of the cavern was banished in a crystal bright light. In the radiance, Kyle was horrified to see on the walls of the cavern were hundreds of thousands of corpses, writhing on the spikes they’d been impaled on. Kyle was transfixed as the bright crimson and the blinding white of the two powerful people mixed in a dazzling light show. Then he heard a soft feminine voice that was painful in the recognition.
“Kyle, get the book.”
“Mommy?” Kyle asked to the person that he couldn’t see, but whom he felt all around. He had known that voice before any other in his life. He would never forget it.
“You have to hurry Kyle. Lisa is not as powerful as the Dark Priest. You have to do it now.”
“Do what?” He asked and he felt the familiar irritation with his mother rising in him. But that had been a different person, a boy who had never done much with his life, and had no conception of the darkness that the world could contain. He was a man now, with a family of his own. And he knew what he needed to do.
Her ghostly form appeared in front of him and a ghostly hand brushed his cheek. “I am so proud of you Kye, I love you so much.” Then she was gone and he was filled with new strength.
Kyle sprinted across the room, and made a bee line for the book lying nestled on the geologic altar. It pulsed with a hideous rotted heart beat when he touched it.
“No!” Clarke yelled from where he was committed to his struggle with Lisa.
“Pay attention, you son of a bitch!” Lisa yelled and slammed a light enveloped fist into his chest. Rudy was knocked across the room in a ruby smear of light. Lisa followed fast behind him in a blinding white blur and continued the fight.
Kyle lifted the book, and had to struggle to remove it from the stone. The weight was more commiserate with a sack of concrete than of a moderately sized book. He opened it, took hold of the first page, and ripped it from the leather binding. There was a flash of fire and a burning sensation on his hand as the page was destroyed. Then a dark and liquidous voice screamed in his mind.
“NO!”
“Fuck you!” Kyle yelled, and ripped three more pages from book, biting back the scream that wanted to explode from his mouth as the pain raced up his arm from the burst of flame. He was tangentially horrified, as he saw the blisters and dark patches forming on his hands. Then he knew, the monster was trapped all around him. Kyle was sickened to realize they were actually in its imprisoned and crippled mind. Ast-Murath spoke directly to him again.
“Stop that, stop and I will make you my right hand, and I will spare your friends!”
“Can you give me back my friends and my family? Can you give me back Liam? Can you give me back my Mommy?” Kyle screamed and tore a dozen pages followed by 20 more and this time he allowed the scream to live, and fill the cavern with its music of pain.
“STOP…Stop…stop…”
As he tore page after page from the binding, the voice became weaker and weaker. When the last page was in his hand, he looked toward the fight between Lisa and Clarke, and saw his soul sister had the advantage and was hammering the evil man into the rock. Screaming at him in the same burbling language she’d been chanting over the pool.
“I want to go home,” he said, and then ripped the paper from the binding.
18
The Beach Isle Royale
November 30, 2012 AD (Day Forty Three)
12:15am EST
Sometime the television shows and the movies got it right, but more often than not they got it very, very, wrong. There was no mystical portal or spinning gate allowing them to arrive on the cold sandy beach of Isle Royale. There was a faint popping sound. Then Lisa Sutton and Kyle Carson fell to the ground with a thump and a splash of cold, black water. Darkness embraced them. The moon and the stars shone in the clear night sky.
Kyle hacked and coughed. Then he vomited more than a quart of the stygian fluid from his stomach and his lungs. He lay on the snow covered sand, face turned to the side with tears pouring from his face. He’d danced with the devil, and walked away with his mind and body intact.
But it had been so close.
Lisa lay on her back, coughing and hacking. She’d faced the cause of the world’s collapse, and sealed the portal to the prison where it lived. She’d left it raging at its own imprisonment. But Ast-Murath was no longer alone in its purgatory. Rudolph Clarke would be there for eternity to keep his Master company.
“Did you do it?” Kyle gasped as he drew the freezing air into his lungs and winced at the pain.
“Yes,” Lisa said, and then groped her hand toward him, and took his hard strong mitt into her own. “We did it.”
He squeezed her proffered hand and closed his eyes. What had been seen could not be unseen. But for the moment he could ignore the horrors he’d been subjected to.
Footsteps could be heard pounding down the beach. Both Kyle and Lisa turned their heads slowly to see who was approaching. They both knew they’d given every last drop of fight they possessed in the struggle on the forgotten island. If the Dead were coming for them, they were as good as dead.
“Sir, it appears to be two people!” A young female voice yelled from the direction of the footsteps. Now that they were closer, both Lisa and Kyle could make out half a dozen people in Army BDUs making their way toward them. As they adjusted to the new environment, they realized they were less than 100 yards from a lighted construction area with more than 100 people milling around.
“I think we might be OK.” Lisa said to Kyle and then started laughing. After a few seconds, Kyle joined her in the laughter.
The soldiers arrived and stared down at them. “Holy shit, it’s the Colonel.” One of them blurted out, and then someone new joined them and pushed the Looky-Lou’s away before he started checking their vitals. Kyle wasn’t even surprised to see it was Dr. Jason Aten, and if this was really Aten, then they’d been sent directly to the refuge on Isle Royale.
“We need to get them warm. Somebody get dry clothes and blankets!” The Doctor yelled. Then he pointed to someone else, “Make a fire right here!” he bellowed. Kyle laughed a little, the man was still the same ornery son of a bitch he’d been during the whole journey north, and he loved him for it.
A few minutes later, they were warming themselves by the fire and sipping on mugs of hot instant coffee. Kyle wondered how long they would be able to still have coffee before they ran out, just one of the many things they would not be able to replace once they were gone without a ton of effort.
“Good to see that the two of you are still alive, although you are going to have to satiate my curiosity and tell me how the hell you got here.” General Hart said as he tromped down the beach and joined them at the fire. The older black man looked tired but pleased. From what little Kyle could see, the man had accomplished a minor miracle getting the island ready to accept the people from White Harbor.
“We will,” Lisa said with a grin and then got serious, “What is happening in town?” She asked. Neither of them wanted to hear that things had gone bad, but they needed to know and Kyle was glad that Lisa had bitten the bullet and asked
the question.
“The losses were heavy, but we got the noncombatants out ahead of the town’s fall.” He looked sad, “The town is a complete loss, and fire has gutted it.”
“And what about our people?” Kyle asked, referencing the left behind to hold the town.
“The helicopters were sent less than half an hour ago to get them.” Hart said.
“So we won?” Lisa asked him.
“Yeah,” he wouldn’t look at them, “we won…but the cost.” He stood and looked toward the invisible mainland and shook his head. “Now the real work begins,” he said and walked away.
19
The Docks
12:20am EST
A sudden and dramatic change had come over the Dead assaulting the final defensive position. Though they still pushed against the blades and makeshift riot shields, they seemed to be getting slower, as if the cold they’d been able to shrug off, unlike the rest of the dead, was finally affecting them. But still they pushed forward like an unstoppable wave. On the new line, everyone who was still standing and capable of wielding a weapon was fighting for their lives, and the lives of their friends and family on the docks. They were frozen in place when the explosion on the far side of town blossomed in the night sky. Then the chain of smaller explosions as the fuel lines running through town and the natural gas lines erupted. The defenders of White Harbor who’d faced the Dead and not run broke and headed for the far end of the pier, allowing the Dead to advance on them.
Jennifer and Rich attempted to keep the Militia men and women from breaking, but only Ken and Candace stood with them. They all knew the cause was just about lost. Hundreds of the Dead pressed on them for the next 30 seconds, and it seemed they were about to be overrun and consumed, when the main fuel tanks near the pumping house blew and the thermo baric wave knocked everyone, living and Dead, into the lake below.
Jennifer splashed into the water. She immediately scrambled for one of the boat ladders to get herself out of the water before one of the Dead could sink their teeth into her. She looked around, and realized with the entire town burning her vision was very clear. She saw many of her people gaining the top of the pier once more, but she also heard the screams of the poor souls who’d survived so much becoming meat for the Dead.
A hand reached from the top and hauled her up. The young and old face of Ken Michener greeted her. She was glad to see Candace had also survived the fall to the water, though she was covered with quickly spreading bruises. Ken’s left eye seemed to be a solid red orb and the socket looked crushed.
The smell greeting her as she regained her composure was a combination of smoke and burned meat. Everyone who’d survived the explosion stumbled across the pier in a daze. Jennifer placed a hand on her stomach, and prayed her daughter was alright nestled inside of her body.
“OH MY GOD, RICH!” Somebody screamed from the front edge of the pier.
Jennifer snapped her head in that direction, and saw a half dozen people pulling a body from the water. Forgetting she was battered and bruised, and that her skin felt tight and drawn, she ran as fast as her wobbly legs would carry her toward the fallen man. When she reached him, the first thing she worried about was whether or not Rich had been bitten by one of the Dead in the water.
“Has he been bitten?” She called out as she kneeled next to him.
Kelly Hodges, with a bloody bandage wrapped around her forehead, looked up and shook her head, as she frantically cut the badly burnt clothing from Rich’s body. When the coat and the hat Rich had been wearing were removed, large swaths of skin and clumps of hair came with them.
“This is bad,” she said and then looked at Jennifer, “If the choppers don’t come soon and get us out of here, he is going to die.” The starkness in her voice scared Jennifer more than all the Dead she’d faced in the last two days.
She was about to respond, when in the distance the sounds of rotor blades beating at the air became audible. The survivors on the pier, less than 10 percent of the men and women who’d stayed behind to fight the Razors and the Army of the Dead, cheered as the helicopters arrived to bring them to safety.
20
Jacobson Farm
1:55am EST
The snow and ice under the front tire of the battered and blood-streaked Harley cracked and crunched like gravel. When the power he’d been granted by the mark on his brow disappeared and returned him to his normal state, James McCoy had watched the town of White Harbor burn from his position outside. He could have gone in with the Razors and attempted to finish off the bothersome fucks. But he’d planned to just run and find some new place to setup when a voice spoke in his mind.
“James…James McCoy, I need you to take up the mantel that has been dropped by he who was unworthy. I need you to become my Priest and my right hand on the Earth, and to make my Army Rise again and free me. I offer you all the power that was given to Rudolph and more.”
James cocked his head and thought. He’d known Clarke was on some sort of leash, and that the man had probably been crazier than a shit house rat well before the Rise of the Dead. James was actually a brilliant man, and he could smell the true opportunity being laid before him. He did not have to think very long.
“I will accept, but on one condition. I want to be able to do things my way.” He spoke the words aloud and in his mind. He could sense the surprise in the unseen speaker through their tenuous connection.
“Done.”
James felt his body consumed with power and changed into a more perfect and powerful form than the one his first mark gave him. When the pain and the exhilaration of the change passed, he knew what he had to do. He gathered the rest of the Razors, only 17 of his original group, and headed for the farm house where he knew Clarke had died.
The Dead left to guard Clarke and the prisoners were frozen in the fields where they’d fallen. There was no sign of the human guards left behind, but James knew he would be able to locate them and punish them once he finished in the house. The body and head of the elder Jacobson was still in front of the house, but James ignored the sight.
The basement of the farm house stunk of death and smoke. The body of Rudolph Clarke lay in the middle of the floor burned almost beyond recognition. In the corpse’s left hand was a two foot piece of metal that glowed slightly in the gloom. James reached down and pried the branding iron from the corpse’s grip, and as soon as he touched it he was flooded with knowledge and power. The liquid on his forehead shifted from crimson to silver.
James smiled, he could feel the Dead in the fields around the house rising to serve him, and he knew this was the beginning of a whole new day. There were miles to be covered and tasks to be accomplished, but James McCoy was in no hurry, he had all the time in the world.
Chapter Six
1
Isle Royale Refuge
Formerly Isle Royale State Park, Michigan (North Western Lake Superior)
November 30, 2012 AD (Day Forty Three)
3:45pm EST
Lisa stood next to Kyle and watched as he breathed in the cold clean air off of Lake Superior. The wait for the arrival of the flights back North from White Harbor had been rough. Many of the men and women who’d chosen to make the suicide run against the Army of the Dead would not be arriving on the rescue choppers. So very few of their number survived the fiery climax which consumed the bulk of the Army of the Dead and completely wrecked White Harbor.
Lisa was proud of the kid, and understood why Liam had loved him so much. He’d stood his ground when they faced off against Rudy and his followers, and he had acquitted himself with honor. There was strength in him that was seen maybe once in a generation. He’d stood by her side, gave her the strength to stand that monster down, and hopefully shut the portal forever.
“You OK, Kye?” she asked him.
“Just worried, when I talked to Captain Chen on the radio, he said Scarlet and Andi were on the deck waiting for the next long boat to bring them to shore.” The wiry little man had been as
good as his word, and gotten his passengers out of White Harbor ahead of the enemy. He trusted the word of the salty little Asian man, but still he gazed at the smoke steadily rising on the Southern horizon and worried.