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

by Craig DiLouie

  Only one more compass to get now, and thankfully Adler told us where the key to the safe was hidden.

  I laughed until I was almost in tears when he told me. Talk about irony. It was one of the keys hanging in the ignition of the bus.

  Day 37

  Is it really thirty seven days since I got here?

  Every time I write the day in this journal now it seems like an eternity. I feel like I've been here much longer, which worries me. What if I end up stuck here for years, like Rudy and Adler?

  That's not the plan, I know. If I get out of here and I take the compasses with me, hopefully my ghost friends will go with me. What happens to them wherever we end up next, I don't know. I don't think either of them cares, so long as it isn't an eternity stuck in this place.

  We spent nearly the entire day heading through The Warrens, and I camped out again in another nook up in the rocks. The trail was easy to follow and I wouldn't have needed directions. The footprints and bicycle trail left in the dirt, long ago, by Adler, seemed quite permanent, which wasn't promising as far as water was concerned. I didn't have many bottles left.

  The entrance to The Warrens came out not far from where I'd first stepped up onto the plateau. About half a mile of walking across the open rocky ground and I saw the rocks that lined the bottom of the slope. I was missing the glowing grass already.

  DogThing went all hyper as soon as we left The Warrens. I guessed that we were back on his home ground now, barely a mile through the mushrooms to reach the bus. You know I don't think Adler and Rudy stopped talking even once during the whole time. You would have thought they were two old friends, still alive, and just out for a walk in the park somewhere, instead of two ghosts.

  We stopped at the foot of the slope. Adler was paranoid about CutterJack being around, even though it had been years since he had been here.

  "I don't think he is here. At least I can't sense him, like I could before, but that doesn't mean we should be rash. He could be anywhere, waiting."

  "Or he could be back at his home, wherever that is, still licking his wound."

  Adler laughed.

  "Yes. True. How did you manage that? I still can't get my mind around it. You actually injured it."

  "Luck and clumsiness," I replied. "I wouldn't have stood a chance if Rudy hadn't come running through the door at that moment."

  "Plus I think the Maw had given him one hell of a battering before he got to the door," said Rudy. "He could quite probably have already been injured."

  "Yes," said Adler, "he is wary of the Maw, and rightfully so, I have seen first-hand what they are capable of. Well, so have you."

  I looked over at DogThing and wondered again why such a creature had decided to become my friend.

  I picked up the pace a bit, and soon we were walking through mushrooms again, following the marker poles. I had too many questions for Adler; so many that I couldn't remember half of them.

  "Did you ever find out who put these markers here?"

  "No, though I did repair a few that had fallen down. They are old, I know that much. I can only suspect that this place has had people coming through it for a long time. Well, there is evidence all around us is there not? The junk yard, The City, buildings dotted all over the place that have been run down for what might be centuries. It has puzzled me for years - were they made here? Or are they like other things, brought here by some mysterious occurrence?"

  "I think they were brought here," I replied. "It's all too random. Take The City, for example - it just starts; there is no reason for the roads to be where they are, it's almost like they were once attached to other roads, and still should be, but a chunk of it was picked up and dumped right there."

  Adler was nodding. "Exactly my point."

  "Even some of the roads are broken up where a rock underneath has pushed them up. Rock doesn't do that, does it? Tree roots I can understand, but a rock pushing its way up through the road? Seems too odd to me."

  "Yes, indeed, and the building on the edge of the swamp. Have you noticed that they are sitting on top of a sandbank? I looked. In one of the cellars the walls have collapsed and sand has poured in. Who builds foundations into sand when there is solid rock only a few feet away?"

  We camped out in pretty much exactly the same spot that DogThing and I had used on our trek through the mushroom field the first time, underneath the giant mushrooms. I'm almost certain that I slept under the same one. It seems so long since we made that journey, like it was years ago. It's hard to believe that it has only been a few weeks.

  Day 38

  The weirdest thing happened. I awoke hours later, having had another dream, the first in days. Adler and Rudy were sitting over near the marker pole, a few yards away. DogThing was underneath one of the mushrooms. He was sleeping, I think, though I don't know if he ever really sleeps the way people do. It started raining again. Just like that. One moment ominous silence, and the next moment there was torrential rain, just as it had been the last time we passed this way. Yes, last time it had been drizzling for a day or so before, but the torrential downpour had happened while we had been under the mushrooms.

  In the dream I was walking round a house. It was not a place that I had been to before, though it seemed familiar somehow. There was no furniture in any of the rooms, like it had been cleaned out before a sale. The walls in every room were painted white and there were no curtains at the windows.

  I happened to glance out of one of the windows on the top floor, and saw that there was scaffolding everywhere. The oddest thing. I went downstairs to find the front door, so that I could go outside, but there was no front door. I walked all the way round the ground floor of the house and there were no doors leading outside.

  There were three floors to the house, and the front door was at the top. There was only one large room up there, and in that room, tucked into the corner, was a small dressing table with a mirror. Someone was sitting on the chair, facing the mirror. I spoke, but there was no answer. Then I found out why.

  The person in the chair was dead, and had been for a long time. I stood there, puzzled for a while, and then I recognised the dead man's clothing.

  It was me.

  That was when I woke up.

  I didn't get back to sleep. The noise from the rain was so loud. I lay there for a while, drifting in and out, but didn't manage to drop off again. I think I may have been drifting into a deep sleep when all hell broke loose.

  They even took DogThing by surprise, but he was up and tearing into them before I was even fully conscious and aware of what was going on.

  Adler and Rudy ran past me as I stumbled and tried to find my blades. My blades? They had somehow become mine now, no longer stolen from CutterJack.

  It must have been the rain that obscured their sound, or their smell in DogThing's case. It had to be that. He normally sensed zombies approaching before they were anywhere near us, and it wasn't like it was just one or two, stumbling slowly through the mushrooms. There were hundreds.

  Adrenalin finally kicked in and I was up, throwing my rucksack over my shoulders. With a blade in each hand I ran towards where the others were now furiously battling the mass of zombies. I slowed down as I got nearer and made my way closer to DogThing. Unlike Rudy and Adler, who were now running through the horde, throwing themselves about and knocking down zombies every few steps, I was not going to get trapped in among them.

  The first one that got past DogThing and came shuffling towards me was the nastiest I had seen yet. How the thing managed to stay held together I don't know. CutterJack must have been in a particularly cruel mood when he created this one. Instead of legs, it walked on six hands, all of which were attached to the back of the first poor soul. On top of this were two other torsos, each with a head and no arms. Where the legs had gone I don't know.

  I stepped backwards and waited for it to get closer, pulled back both of my blades and swung the first, then the second. All three heads screamed at me furiously and it tried
to grab my legs, toppling itself over in the process. I was nearly sick, but still managed to get in two more stabs before I backed off and saw the thing writhe on the floor for a moment. It reached out one hand in my direction, before finally collapsing.

  There were too many. It didn't matter how many DogThing, Adler and Rudy were killing, more were appearing to take their place. But as much as I shouted, Adler and Rudy carried on. DogThing took notice of me though, and was following me as I slowly backed away.

  Then without warning Adler stopped fighting. He was looking around. I think he was trying to find Rudy, but spotted me first.

  "Get out of here," shouted Adler. "Get to the bus, lock yourself in! They can't hurt us!"

  I ran for Adler's bicycle and leapt onto it, hoping to God that it wouldn't fall apart on me. The last time I had ridden a bicycle I had been about twelve years old, so the first thing I did was fall off it. Ten yards was how far I got, and then crash, straight into one of the larger mushrooms.

  DogThing tore into a zombie a few feet away, and I hauled myself back onto the bicycle and pushed off as another zombie reached out to grab me.

  Then I was away, riding as fast as I could through the mushrooms, on a bicycle that I thought would fall apart at any moment. But it didn't. I reached another marker and then slowed down, stopping for breath.

  Adler and Rudy were standing about a hundred feet away, facing in the direction that we had come. Of course, I'd somehow forgotten that my leaving would drag them away from the fight.

  DogThing padded over and sat down a few yards away, panting.

  The break was short-lived as a single zombie staggered into view, and then another. These ones were moving faster than normal. I don't know why. Maybe CutterJack's experiments had yielded better results with these few.

  DogThing turned and growled at them.

  "No, leave them," I said, and started cycling away again. Thankfully DogThing did leave them. I think Rudy and Adler would quite happily have dealt with them, but I wanted the hell out of there.

  I didn't ride as fast this time. DogThing could move damn fast when he wanted to, so that wasn't a problem. But I was losing my sense of direction. Thankfully Rudy spotted another marker and we picked up the pace again, forced onwards by the presence of the zombies that would appear through the mist every time I slowed down.

  After an hour of this I was beginning to tire. My legs were screaming at me. I'd forgotten how much work riding a bicycle was. I protested when Rudy ordered me to stop and rest for a few minutes, but I couldn't really argue. Although I had become a little more resilient after living here for over a month, I was still no athlete, and this was pushing it. We'd reached the junkyard at last, or at least the start of it, and I collapsed next to the first pile of junk that I saw. I smiled; a few yards was the familiar pile of bicycles and prams that I had built, which meant we weren't far from the bus.

  We'd left the zombies behind, even the faster ones, so I walked, leaning on the bicycle. I know it would have been much easier to ride if the ground hadn't been so uneven and muddy, plus my legs felt like jelly.

  A while later we reached the bus. The relief of seeing it looming in the darkness was short lived though.

  Something had been waiting for us.

  There, sitting on its haunches at the back of the bus, was a creature I had not seen before, but I knew what it was immediately. The grey, lizard-like skin was stretched taut over its powerful frame. It was larger than DogThing, much larger, and as close to a cross between a panther and a crocodile as you could get.

  I stopped in my tracks, dropped the bicycle and reached for my blades as it stood up and stretched its legs casually. DogThing growled and the creature answered with a hiss.

  So this was the mysterious species that had been killed in the storeroom at the back of the shop. That meant it was killable, but it didn't help much when it was bounding towards me, its massive jaw opening to reveal rows of teeth that would make a shark envious. DogThing leapt at its throat, but the creature reared up and batted him aside with one of its massive paws, sending him hurtling away over a pile of junk to disappear into the darkness with a crash.

  I stood my ground, crouching, hoping desperately that somehow these two blades would be enough to hurt the creature.

  Adler and Rudy ran past me, charging at it, but they fell straight through it. This was no unliving abomination that could be hurt by ghosts. Their attempt did slow it down though, but only for a moment.

  It jumped at me and I lashed out in return, feeling the flat of the blade hit its skin and deflect off as I was thrown to the floor. Then it was on me, one massive paw pushed against my chest, crushing my ribs; it looked down at me and bared its teeth.

  But it just stayed there.

  Why hadn't it killed me?

  Then I heard the footsteps behind me and saw a long pale hand pick up the blade that lay on the floor next to me.

  "I told you I would find you, little rat."

  As CutterJack stood over me, I saw his face for the first time. If I thought that the zombies were hideous, they were nothing compared to what stared back at me out of that hood.

  I knew at that moment that CutterJack was no human, and never had been. He was too alien, too grotesque to have even been one of his own experiments. Everything about his face said death. His skin was pale, almost transparent, and a mass of scars, though there were no veins visible underneath. His features were twisted, as though they had been carved up, and sewn back together many times. He had only one visible eye, blackened and bloodshot. The other was sewn over, crossed by a stitched scar that ran from his pointed chin to the top of his forehead, but no surgeon had made these stitches. Instead, metal staples stuck out every inch or so along the opening, and between them, I could see the grey bone of his skull, cracked and rotten where the staples had been forced in. The skin around his mouth was drawn back, and taut, showing rows of sharpened, bloody teeth. Where his nose should have been, there was just a gaping hole, split by a small, sharp sliver of bone.

  My senses were assaulted by a rank, musty stench that somehow spoke to me of death that was far older than anything I had ever known. There was something in those eyes that I will remember, always; a malevolence that hated not only what it was seeing, but possibly everything living that had ever existed.

  This was the creature that now stood over me, his pet pinning me to the ground with a force that I was unable to resist. He was even taller than I had first thought, easily over eight feet in height, probably closer to nine. His body was thin and gaunt, like a ragged skeleton over which the darkest, dirtiest clothing was hung. He leaned closer to me, so that his face was barely inches from mine, stared me straight in the face, and smiled. There was no warmth in that smile. It was a smile of victory, the kind that only the most wicked of hunters saves for taunting his helpless victims, before ending them.

  I wondered if that was what I was about to become, and whether it would last very long. Was I about to become a plaything, a toy to torture? Was my fate the same as all those countless abominations that walked the dark mists of this place? Part of me longed at that moment for it to all be over. Do with me as you please, I thought. I have had enough of running now.

  "Be still," he hissed. I did as I was told, but then I realised he wasn't talking to me. He was commanding the lizard creature (a lizardcat?) that had me pinned to the ground. It lifted its paw off my chest, but still bared its razor-sharp metallic teeth at me. I coughed and drew a sharp breath in.

  Then CutterJack's attention was on me again.

  "I think you have something that is mine, little rat," he rasped, his voice rattling like his lungs were filled with water, or with blood.

  He reached down and pulled at my shirt, searching for the compasses that had slipped and now dug into my back. But then he stopped and stood up, suddenly distracted. His smug grin vanished, replaced by suspicion, his one eye squinting as he looked around. Something had disturbed him, something I couldn't sense
.

  "Give me the keys, quickly or I will end you," he said, pointing the blade at my chest. There was urgency in his voice now, and I felt the blade pierce my skin. I gritted my teeth against the pain as I felt a warm trickle of blood run across my ribs, and down my side. It took every bit of will that I could muster to not breathe in, and force myself to lie still. It was the only way I could avoid being impaled on the blade.

  The lizardcat whined and growled, scanning around frantically. It began to back away from us. I heard an answering hiss from over near the bus, and my heart sank as at least a dozen more lizardcats bounded round the corner, spreading out in a circle around us, hissing and spitting as they glared into the darkness. Something was coming. They could sense it, CutterJack could sense it, and now even I could feel the change in the air.

  CutterJack pulled his blade back, but still kept it aimed at me. He glanced around again, shifting irritably as the lizardcats around us shuffled and twitched, peering in every direction.

  He looked down at me.

  "Rat. Give me the key, now!" he shouted, but then he suddenly looked away, dropped into a crouch, and lifted his blade up in defence.

  Whatever it was that was coming, was coming right now, and I didn't want to see the thing that could scare CutterJack and his lizards.

  A flash of fur rocketed across the gap between us and the nearest junk pile. It moved at a speed that made my heart leap. The Maw shot through the gap between two of the lizardcats before either of them could even react, instead they moved moments after it passed, snapping at an empty space, as the Maw went directly for CutterJack, leaping high, and straight at his throat. But this time CutterJack was fast, and ducked down just in time, swinging his blade quicker than my eyes could even follow. The Maw went hurtling by, to latch on to one of the lizardcats with its teeth. I heard a ripping noise as it tore a massive gouge in the creature's back as it went by. The lizardcat stumbled, and spun around, lashing out with its claws and screeching in anger, but the Maw was gone, speeding off into the darkness, lost from view in the mist. I had only the briefest of glances at it before it vanished, but I knew that neither blade nor claw had touched it.