This Is the End: The Post-Apocalyptic Box Set (7 Book Collection)

by Craig DiLouie

  "Why?"

  "Because I think this is a bit of his leg."

  I pushed the cart as quickly as I could and went over to look at Rudy's grisly find.

  "Oh, hell! That's gross."

  There was a lump of bloody flesh about the size of my fist lying in the street. I'd literally taken a chunk out of CutterJack.

  "And if he does come back, he is going to need some new knives," said Rudy, pointing up at the door.

  They were embedded at least six inches into the wood. One was protruding from the door, and the other was stuck hard in the wooden floorboards of the porch.

  CutterJack had left his knives behind.

  It took me about five minutes to pry the one out of the floor, while Rudy went round inside the building, trying to find a way I could get in. It was no small knife. The blade was about two feet long and as sharp as a Stanley knife. Damn, if that thing had gone in me instead of the door...

  The one in the door took longer. I'd just managed to pull it out when Rudy came back.

  "There is a window at the back, on the second floor. I think if you can get up there you might be able to get in. There is a rope hidden behind the drainpipe. I didn't spot it at first. It's well hidden. All the other windows in the house apart from that one and the one on the top floor are all shored up on the inside. Someone made a fortress out of this place."

  We left the cart at the front of the house, and made our way round the row of buildings and into an alleyway. It looked like someone had been shoving their junk into the alley for years. I had to climb over three fences before we got into the yard.

  I couldn't see the rope, even when I looked behind the pipe. Then I noticed a bit of it poking out of a hole in the drain, high up near the window. It went inside through a small gap where the window had been left open, just a little bit. The rope was tucked into the pipe. Whoever had put it there had hidden it well, cutting a slit all the way from the top to the bottom and stuffing it inside.

  Day 28

  We are holed up in the house. All the windows are shut and the door is locked. I hauled the rope up and pulled it back through the window. There is so much to say about what we have discovered in the house, but I've not had the time. Feeling sick and dizzy. I need to sleep.

  I asked Rudy if he had spoken to me when CutterJack was trying to bang the door down in the building opposite the shop the night before. He says he didn't. I shrugged it off; maybe I'd imagined that I heard it, but I was almost certain that someone had spoken to me. It hadn't been CutterJack. Why would he have told me to be silent and still? He wouldn't have. Someone other than Rudy had told me, someone who didn't want CutterJack to find me.

  Silence.

  Don't make a sound.

  Day 29

  Rudy thinks I may have had a slight concussion from when I hit the paving, after my fall. I remember being dazed for a while afterwards, so I guess he could be right. I don't have any injuries though, so if I did bang my head it can't have been too hard. I think I've just been feeling sick from fear, after nearly being butchered. I know, I've fought with zombies a couple of times now, and they are gruesome-looking, but they are slow, and I always had time to line myself up for each swing. Well, nearly every time. CutterJack was different, and I think that's why I've been feeling sick.

  Luck. Just Luck. Nothing else. That was all that had kept me alive during my brief fight with CutterJack. If it hadn't been for me falling at the right time, and Rudy walking through the door at that same moment, CutterJack would have torn me to shreds. He was so fast. I barely even had the time to realise he was on me, let alone react.

  What we found in the house was nothing short of a revelation, exactly what we needed.

  Adler had lived here. No, we're not sure how long ago, could be a decade or more, or it could have been yesterday, but we found all kinds of maps and notes. I've read journal after journal detailing lots of random stuff about what he found here. I'm taking a few of them with me, hoping that if I get the chance at some point, I can put them in order, piece together everything, but for right now we found some quite interesting stuff.

  This one, from a diary that looks old, put a smile on Rudy's face.

  "I regretted leaving within days. Of course I still knew my primary goal was to return home, but leaving Rudy was a hard thing to do. He wouldn't listen though, wouldn't hear reason. I decided that I should still make one journey back, one last attempt to convince him to leave.

  Alas, my dear friend is gone. I returned too late. My tormentor must have followed me back to the shack, found Rudy, and ended him. It's my fault. I should have never taken the compasses, and I should never have given one to Rudy. What else could I do though? I had to stop CutterJack from doing what he has been doing for so long.

  I couldn't stay and bury Rudy, though it pained me not to. CutterJack had killed Rudy very recently, maybe only hours before, so would still be close by. I had to keep moving. I'm sorry Rudy, for everything. If only I could explain.

  The compass that I gave to Rudy was gone, either lost or back in the hands of that monster."

  "He came back." Rudy seemed pleased at that, and went quiet for a time.

  There was more. A lot of what is in the journals is undecipherable, the handwriting is too messy. Maybe I can sit down some time, and figure it out, but for now I have to use whatever I can read in this dim light. I went back further, to a previous journal.

  "The compasses, they are his keys, how the damn thing works, I have no idea, but I know that the compasses that I took are the keys, and while they are not in his possession he can do no more evil. When I can retrieve the fourth, I may be able to figure out a way of using the device to escape, but with only three of them all I can do is hide them from him, and keep searching. I can't risk him catching me up and getting all three back so easily.

  I went back to the first place that came to mind, somewhere that I knew would be ideal for hiding at least one of them, the scrap yard. The safe would still be there, hidden among the trash, where I found the stash of Roman coins. I'm so glad I still have the key for it. There were no constructs there, or there shouldn't have been. It took me quite a time to get back, but it was worth the trek.

  I'm not sure what I will do with the third, for now I will stash it in the toolbox on the bus, and hope I can find somewhere more suitable. I need to go back to the bus anyway, to get the torch. I found batteries in one of the houses on Maldon Street."

  I stopped reading at that moment, and ran down the stairs to the cart. There it was, right where he said he had hidden it. How I had never spotted it, I don't know. I thought that I had emptied the box out. It was tucked inside a small compartment at the bottom of the toolbox, Adler's toolbox, the one that I had found on the bus.

  Another compass.

  I had two of them all along, and the third was in some kind of safe in the scrap yard. I didn't remember seeing a safe, but at least I knew where to start searching.

  There was more in Adler's diaries; I skipped through them until I found what I thought might be the most recent. None of it was dated.

  "He nearly caught up with me again today, but was unable to keep up the speed once I put some leg work in. If I hadn't fixed up the chain on the bicycle, I think he would have had me. I was pleased to not have to hear a constant squeak as I rode, but it would seem that my efforts paid off tenfold.

  I have a dilemma. Considering what I have heard and seen, I can't in good conscience just give him back the compasses. But now I have him hunting me, and I'm not sure if I can keep up this game of cat and mouse for much longer. If it isn't him, then it's those damn creatures he has control of, disgusting abominations that they are. I had no idea that the creation of such a creature was even possible, or that anyone would have a mind twisted enough to conceive them in the first place, but then I suppose there are many things in The Corridor that don't make sense, or even follow the laws of nature. I should be used to the unexpected by now."

  "That would expla
in why the zombies were in the scrap yard when you arrived here," said Rudy.

  "You mean they were searching for the safe? For the third compass?"

  "Seems reasonable to me."

  "I didn't see a safe anywhere. I know there is a shed-load of junk to hide one under, but..."

  I stopped talking. Of course!

  "James?"

  "The microwave."

  "The what?"

  "There was something in the junk yard, right near to where I first arrived. I thought it was a television or a microwave, but it was a solid block of metal. It's quite possible it could have been a safe. I never managed to turn it over."

  I asked Rudy what Adler meant by "The Corridor".

  "That's what he called this place. He said he found it in one of the few remaining books in the library, said the building was somewhere in The City, but it was burnt out. There was half of a book left, a history book or something like it, detailing the past of The City."

  "Strange thing to call it."

  "Yes, though that was just what Adler called it, he said the name was obscured in the writing, The Something Corridor. Actually, I remember it now, he said the same went for The City, it was called something else. The ‘The' was only part of the name."

  "Adler was convinced that both the building and even most of The Corridor didn't exist here once. He thought that somehow it all just ended up here, like all of us, I suppose. I don't know if I believe all that, but I envied him that he even had some ideas. He was clever, the professor, and I'm a much simpler man than he was."

  It's hard to imagine isn't it. Not only does it seem that I have ended up somewhere that I don't belong, but according to our mad professor friend, Adler, the place where I ended up shouldn't be here either.

  I wonder if we are all in some kind of limbo, like purgatory, but that wouldn't make sense either.

  Am I dead? I don't think so.

  Not yet.

  Day 30

  There were diaries everywhere, stacked up on shelves, piled high in corners, and left lying around in seemingly random locations. Neither of us knew where to begin. In a strange way, it was fortunate that most of them were completely illegible. I think that at some point the majority of them must have been soaked in water. Maybe the building wasn't watertight. There were some entries that I could still read, but a lot of that was meaningless garbage.

  The light in the upstairs room was handy as hell. I didn't have to run down any of my own supplies. It was set up the same as the lamp had been in the shop, attached to a battery. It wasn't bright, but it was light enough to read by. The same battery powered the small tape player that was blasting out the same few songs over and over again, until I switched it off. How the battery had lasted so long I have no idea.

  Dotted all round the house were the strange objects that Adler had collected. In the middle of one of the downstairs rooms there was a six-foot-tall statue made entirely of scrap metal. I wasn't sure what it was supposed to be. It looked like a kind of grotesque winged angel, and it was so intricate in design that it must have taken him weeks to build it. That is if he even made it himself. I suppose he could have found it somewhere. It didn't even need propping up. It stood there, balanced of its own accord.

  Plates! Hundreds and hundreds of the damn things, all stacked on shelves or hanging on the walls. Some were actually real plates, either plastic or metal or crockery. Is that what they are called? Crockery? What the hell is a crock anyway? I don't know. Most of them were those display things you see in pubs and old houses. Who needs that many plates anyway? The cooker doesn't even work, without any electricity.

  The best find for me was the wardrobe full of clothes. It seemed that Adler had made quite a collection of clothing over the years, and most of it looked about my size. After close to a month in the same rags, I was glad to dump them in exchange for something that was at least clean. I found a couple of pairs of reasonably undamaged jeans and put a pair on. A full change of clothing later I felt a lot more comfortable, and glad to be rid of those oversized, ripped up, and dirty trousers.

  There was more in the wardrobe. Stuffed into the bottom were three pairs of boots. Proper walking ones. Again they were a bit tatty, with worn treads, but they were so much more comfortable than the tatty boots that I'd been wearing for a month. There was also a belt with some small carry pouches on it, like the ones hikers wear. I stuffed some of my more important things into each of the pouches. My lighter, keys, wallet, a bottle of water, the journal fitted in there with some room still left. There were even little knife holders and a strap that held the battery torch. Don't know why I put the harmonica in.

  Strewn all over the house, either in boxes or stuffed onto shelves, was every type of tool imaginable. Dozens of hammers and saws, boxes of screws and nails. There was even one of those electric bench cutters plugged into a wall socket. Completely useless - at least that is what we thought. How the hell had Adler got that thing into the house? Maybe it was already here when he arrived?

  Then Rudy called me. He was in the back room on the ground floor. All the windows were blocked up and the back door out into the garden was boarded over double thick with wooden planks. Set up in the middle of the room was something I hadn't expected.

  The front half of a car.

  The wheels had been removed and the whole frame was propped up on rows of bricks. All of the metal panelling had been removed to reveal the engine, the dashboard and the ignition. He'd even removed the steering wheel.

  Where the exhaust should have poked out there was a long bendy plastic pipe attached. It was hanging on bits of string that were nailed to the ceiling. The pipe ran across the room and up the chimney, where it was nailed to the wall about three feet up, just below a metal grid that blocked the chimney, but let the air in.

  The key was still in the ignition, so I turned it, not expecting a damn thing to happen, but it did. The engine coughed a little, and spluttered, and then gave a roar that made me nearly jump out of my skin. It juddered and hummed away happily.

  It was noisy, but I thought screw it, it's not like I've been that effective at staying hidden anyway.

  All the lights in the house came on.

  Rudy was pointing at something, something lying on a chair in the corner of the room. It was another journal. One that looked more recent than the others. The ink was much clearer than the other books. Of course it could still have been written years ago.

  There was only one entry.

  "I found the fourth key and I'm going to collect the others now. Hopefully I can make it all the way to the device and activate it. Maybe, just maybe, it will take me home. During CutterJack's curses and taunts, while he was outside the house, he let slip about some of his deeds on earth, the things he took, the horrific and brutal things he did to people. So overcome with his own pride, that terrible creature. He didn't even realise that the threats of what he had done to his past victims were giving away clues as to how to resolve my own predicament.

  Even if it takes me somewhere completely different, it has to be better than here. I could cope reasonably with another world, or even another universe, but to be stranded in this dark and claustrophobic place for the rest of my days, for ever hunted by a creature of such evil intent. That is a thought that makes me cold to my heart. I cannot even bear to contemplate the possibility of becoming one of his abominations.

  Of all the places the key could have been. I would never have guessed. Why would someone have poked it under the door? How did I not see it there before? I spent hours gazing at that white flower. Maybe someone pushed the key under there because they didn't want CutterJack to find it.

  I thought I would never know, until that damnedest of creatures came to taunt me once more, a few nights ago.

  It was something he said, about chasing one of my predecessors up to the door that ‘Those ones has locked in on me'. His English is thoroughly common, no, that would be an insult to common folk, a barbaric half wit at best. Regardles
s of that, he murdered the man right there, right where we had camped for all those days while Rudy and I tried to get the door open. I'd never even thought to look there, and I wasn't looking for a key when I went there. Something knotted up inside me. I had to go and look up there, to see if there was any evidence of CutterJack's victim. There was. That pile of rocks hid more than other bits of rubble.

  I covered the poor man back up again after I said a few words. It was the least I could do. In a way I feel that his life was extinguished to my benefit, as self-centred as that may sound. If he had not died there then CutterJack would never have mentioned it, and in turn I would never have been led to find the final piece of the puzzle. I swore I would place a memorial of some kind to my anonymous benefactor one day. I only regret that there was no form of identification upon the remains. I will never know who he was.

  I'm leaving my diaries here, in case someone else happens to end up here. CutterJack can't read. If he could, he would have been able to understand the note that I left for him, but I could see from my hiding place, peering out of the top window of the house, that he couldn't. He looked too puzzled. He also can't get into the house if it's secured properly. He tried often enough. I don't think he is the cleverest of creatures. How he gained the knowledge to do such things as he does, I have no clue.

  My journey will have to take me across the swamp, even though I dread the mere thought of it. Every other way is crawling with his creatures.

  If you are reading this now then I hope that you will find the place that I travel to now, and I hope you find the device intact. Know now that it is the same device that CutterJack has used for centuries to travel to other places and perform his butchery, so beware of him on your journey. The device is located near to the wall, past the junkyard. The wall somehow marks the boundary of this place, how I cannot tell you, I have not yet discovered why, only that a scrawled note in a book that I found in the library suggests that it is dangerous to go beyond the Wall.

  ‘Do not, ever, ever, cross to the other side of the wall from the ground.' it said, and ‘Seek the house that was never built.'