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

by Craig DiLouie

  My heart began to beat faster. Hope. That was all I could think of. If a Maw was willing to risk its life to try and help me, then there had to be a chance, even the slightest chance that I could escape, and I owed it at least an attempt.

  Another flash of fur, this time from a different direction, and another lizardcat screeched as it was struck.

  Then another

  And another.

  There was more than one Maw, maybe many. I had no real way of knowing. They appeared, struck, and were gone before I could make out any discerning features.

  Again and again the Maw made attacks upon CutterJack's pets, disappearing a moment later, back into the mist, before any of my captors could react. The lizardcats flew into a rage as one after another they were bowled over and mauled. They shifted around, confused and seemingly dazed, helpless to stop the attacks, and even snapping at each other.

  I looked up at CutterJack. His attention was not on me. I knew then that he didn't even consider me to be a threat, and I knew that I would only have this one chance.

  Now was the time, if ever there was going to be one.

  If I tried to escape, tried to run out of this circle of my enemies, then I would probably die, but that didn't mean I was going to lie there and hope that the Maw would rescue me. In one desperate last attempt to stay alive, I took a deep breath and lashed out, kicking CutterJack in the leg, hoping that it was his injured one. I gave it everything I had, even though my own legs were still weak from riding the bicycle, and my whole body fought against it. I struck him, and I knew it was hard.

  Thud.

  I was lucky. He howled and stumbled away, hobbling for a moment before spitting at me and pulling his blade back, ready to strike. He advanced again, jumping forward, but his injured leg faltered.

  I was ready, stumbling to my feet and grabbing the other blade, which had been underneath me the whole time. I lashed out at him, but missed as he stepped back so that the blade cut through empty space.

  We were both up now, facing each other, barely ten feet apart. How I ever believed, for even the briefest of moments, that I could stand there and actually fight him, I don't know, but there was something waking up inside me, and it said that I could do it. I would keep him at bay if he came at me. I would fight him off long enough for the Maw to decimate his pets.

  CutterJack stared at me, warily watching the blade in my hand. Then Adler and Rudy were by my side, yelling and screaming at him. I knew they couldn't help me, but did CutterJack know that? It seemed not. He backed away and looked around at the chaos.

  The first lizardcat, the one that had first knocked me down, jumped out of the way, glaring at the ghosts warily. They hadn't scared it the first time, but I guessed that it had never seen its master show any sign of weakness. It started to back away.

  "Get back here," CutterJack cursed, but the lizardcat still backed away even further, edging towards the bus.

  "Stay calm. Hold your ground. Don't back away. "

  The voice in my head was back again.

  Then I saw CutterJack's one eye open wide. He was staring straight at me... No, not at me, and not at my ghost friends. Something else. Something that was behind me.

  Then he was backing off, moving quickly past the bus, taking off at a run. His lizard pets broke away from their guard and bounded along to catch up with him.

  I didn't understand; even with the help of the few Maw that were hounding them, I would quite probably be dead if he had decided to come for me.

  "This is not over, rat," CutterJack yelled as he vanished from view into the junkyard.

  Then I heard the growls behind me, and turned round to see what he had seen before he fled, what it was that had frightened even this most deadly of monsters.

  CutterJack had not been the only one waiting for me at the junkyard.

  The Maw had arrived, and I don't mean the few that had caused disarray with the lizardcats. There were scores, maybe even hundreds. So many that I wouldn't even try to count them. They jumped over the piles of junk and poured in from the mists around us. At their lead, a few feet away, was my DogThing, a little shaken, but still fighting fit. Several of them broke off from the main group and sped past me at an astonishing speed. I could tell that they were the ones who had made the attacks earlier. They were different to the Maw I had seen so far, different to DogThing. These Maw were larger, quicker, deadlier, their fur almost black, and their eyes even larger than DogThing's. They vanished a moment later into the mists, in the same direction that CutterJack and his pets had gone.

  I collapsed on the floor, dropping my blade and holding my chest. The lizardcat had nearly crushed me. My chest was tight with pain, and I found it difficult to breathe without it hurting. Broken ribs maybe. I reached inside my shirt to where the wound was, and was relieved to find that it was only the slightest of cuts. It would need cleaning, somehow, but if I didn't let it get dirty and infected, it should heal.

  "Are you injured?"

  It was Adler, leaning down over me.

  "I'm ok. I'll be ok." I was gasping for breath. "I just need a moment. My ribs feel like a car rammed into me."

  After a few minutes, I got up slowly and headed over to the bus. Around me, the Maw were spreading out, surrounding the whole area. Far away, back towards the mushrooms the noise of a furious fight drifted towards us, the screams of zombies mixed with the growling and barks of the Maw. I could hear howling from the junkyard, where I imagined the Maw were prowling and hunting, seeking out CutterJack and his pets. I had a sense that they had not caught him.

  A war was raging around me, and how different this place seemed to when I had first been here those many days ago. It had been so quiet, so barren and void of life, and now, all around me, the noise of fighting. I couldn't help but feel that, in little more than a month, I had turned this surreal chaotic world into even more chaos.

  I stumbled onto the bus and leaned over into the driver's cab. The keys were still in the ignition, which surprised me.

  "It's that one," said Adler, pointing to a small, bronze key dangling on the loop among a dozen other keys. I pulled them out of the ignition, deciding that it might be better to take them all in case the others had a use.

  I was confused.

  "Adler, you said you thought he could hear all of our thoughts, and know what we were planning? Well how come this key is still here if he knows what it opens? Surely he would have read that from my mind?"

  Adler was nodding.

  "Yes, I believed it was so. But this does suggest that maybe he isn't quite as omniscient as I thought. I was rather confused when we first met. It had been so long since I'd seen anyone else."

  "Then he may not know everything."

  "Indeed. This is good news, is it not?"

  "Yes, of course. If he had known that the safe key was here, it wouldn't be here any more, and he would already have the safe open, and the last key would be his."

  "Which means that, unless he has managed to break open the safe, the last compass should still be there."

  "Let's go." I stepped out of the bus, grabbed my bag, and started hobbling off towards the junkyard.

  "Are you leaving the bicycle?" asked Adler.

  I‘d forgotten about it, but was glad that Adler hadn't. It made a usable crutch of sorts, taking some of my weight as I moved slowly along. There was no way I was going to ride it again, at least not for now, but I was able to hang my pack over it.

  Rudy caught up with me. He looked concerned.

  "You don't need to rest? That was quite a fight, and you took a battering."

  "I'm good, and we are too close, plus we have the Maw with us now. We don't have time to mess around. Every minute or hour we give him means another ambush or something worse. I can't let him have the time to plot."

  "But there is no point if you collapse before we get there."

  "I'll be fine."

  In truth, I felt dizzy and sick, but I was determined to go on. Rudy was about to pro
test further, but Adler shook his head.

  "James is right. We need to do this now, especially while he has the protection of the Maw."

  Almost as though they knew what to do, the Maw broke off from their guard perimeter and split into packs, moving with us, patrolling down all of the different paths through the piles of junk that we passed. I couldn't believe how many of them there were. Hundreds it seemed. It was as though they had known that something important was about to happen, and had come from all over to be there. There were Maw of all sizes. This wasn't just a pack of fighting dogs; they had brought their young as well. On the edge of visibility, I saw a large group of the huge, black-furred ones, herding an even bigger pack of tiny Maw, some no bigger than a cat. I smiled at this. Maw puppies.

  It was then that it clicked. I had never considered it before. I had always presumed that the Maw had come from here, that they were natives, and that they belonged here, like every other strange thing that I had encountered. But what if they weren't? What if they were the same as us, lost and trapped here? It seemed obvious to me now. They simply wanted to escape this place like we did. That had to be it. It explained so much. Why else would such creatures befriend me when there was so little for them to fear in this place? I always knew that there had to be a reason, and now, here they all were, gathered around me, probably the entire pack, going wherever it was that we were heading. Somehow they must have known that we were making a break for an exit, a way out, and they wanted out too.

  Without the fear of bumping into zombies or CutterJack, we moved fast. I was in a lot of pain, but leaning on the bicycle helped. We soon arrived at my old camp. After over a month, here I was, right back where I had started.

  There were already fresh zombie kills littering the area; the ground was covered in destroyed bodies, right where the safe poked out from the top of a junk pile. There were several dozen Maw lying around the place, licking their paws and scratching their fur, like DogThing always did after a fight with a zombie. I looked behind me. DogThing was still right there, a couple of feet away. He was sticking closer to me now than ever before.

  "CutterJack knew something was here," said Adler. I frowned. It was strange to hear Adler say our enemy's name. I guess that the professor had thrown away the idea that his thoughts were being read.

  "Or he knew that James had been here," said Rudy.

  "Ah, yes, well thought of, Rudy. It makes perfect sense for him to cover every possibility."

  I climbed up onto the junk and made my way over to where the safe still sat. Some of the Maw followed me, hopping across the piles of refuse, sniffing in the gaps and glaring into any spot that was dark or able to hide someone or something.

  It was strange being back here again after so many days. The last time I was here I couldn't see a thing; my eyes hadn't adjusted to the dark back then, but now I could see clearly. The great wall loomed ahead, blocking all vision past it, and there, tucked away among the junk, was my old camp, the fire in the middle still piled with fresh logs.

  I cringed as I looked over and saw that the car wreck was still there, untouched. A shiver went down my spine as I thought of what had been in the footwell, what still probably lay on the floor, the other side of the wall. I wonder if he ever got to Namibia.

  The safe hadn't moved, and I could see now why I had thought it was strange, why I hadn't recognised it for what it was. The door was on the underside where I couldn't open it, where I would never have seen it when I first arrived. I would need to turn it over.

  I leaned on it for a moment, waiting for the pain in my chest to stop. I nearly laughed. How ironic that when I return here I'm not in a much better state than when I first arrived.

  As I was propping myself up on the safe, I happened to glance down. Something metallic was lying on the floor a few feet away, tucked underneath a broken kitchen table. I crouched down, reached into the gap, and plucked it from among the broken glass.

  It was my mobile phone.

  The first thing I tried was switching it on, like it would have been any use. Of course, there was nothing. The battery must have run down. I looked at it puzzled, it was my phone, sure enough, but somehow it was wrong. I couldn't place why.

  Adler and Rudy were watching me the whole time.

  "Find something?"

  I smiled.

  "My phone. I wondered where it had gone."

  Adler frowned and peered at it.

  "That is a telephone?" he said, shaking his head. "How things have changed in the decades I have been here."

  We all stood frowning at the safe, puzzling over what to do with it.

  "So how are we going to get that thing tipped over?" asked Rudy.

  "Ah, yes." said Adler. "It seemed like a good idea at the time, turning it over."

  "Hose pipe."

  "Hose pipe?" asked Rudy.

  I even remembered where I'd found it before. It wasn't far from the old camp, only a ten-minute walk. It did mean backtracking on ourselves a bit, I couldn't think of another way of moving the safe. All of this junk lying around and nothing looked useful for shifting it.

  It took a while to haul the rest of it out from underneath all the trash and rubble. The last time I had been here, I had cut off a bit that was quite easy to get at. I didn't have that luxury this time. I couldn't move some of the rubble, but I managed to uncover enough of the hose pipe to make a loop round the safe, and give me a few feet to pull on.

  I was so relieved when it worked. After pulling and pulling for what seemed hours, I finally managed to topple the safe over onto one side. The noise was thunderous as it crashed through the piles of wood and broken glass, hitting the rock floor with a loud crack. Around me, the Maw were startled, and dropped into a crouch before they realised that there was no threat. I could have sworn DogThing was frowning at me.

  I tried the key. It was stiff, but after I wriggled it around in the lock there was finally a satisfying clunk, and the door swung open. Piles of old papers and books spewed out, spilling across the ground. I rummaged around, feeling almost desperate as I got to the back of the safe, but it was there right at the back, stuffed inside a book. It was a copy of Adler's thesis.

  "Always something that puzzled me, that," said Adler. "Of all the things in my house that could have travelled here with me, it was a box of copies of my thesis. They were due to be picked up and taken to Oxford University, after I had signed them. I kept finding them everywhere, all over, even in some of the houses in The City. It's so disheartening to know that they won't have been read."

  I put the thesis in my pack.

  "I'll keep this one for you, you never know, we may get back, and I can deliver it myself."

  Adler laughed. "Only a few decades late."

  I had all four compasses, each of them identical except for one small detail. They each had one of the four compass directions engraved upon them - north, south, east and west. Not one of the compasses moved any more when you turned them.

  I held them up, each dangling on an identical chain.

  "So, what do I do with these then?"

  Rudy and Adler stood watching me.

  "I have absolutely no idea," said Adler. "I know we have to find the way to The House That Was Never Built from the scaffolding, but once we are there we are walking blind. I must admit, I had hoped that something significant might happen when all of them were together. "

  "What do you mean?"

  "I haven't a clue, my friend."

  "Let's go and find out then."

  We set off across the junkyard once more, heading straight towards the scaffolding.

  "What is The House That Was Never Built, Adler?"

  "Ah, just a name for the strange structure that appears to not even be there. I am not sure. I am certain that it has something to do with the scaffolding. It is strange is it not? The scaffolding is there, like it surrounds a building, but there is no building; such a curious thing. Is it for another purpose I wonder? Did you ever go to the top?"r />
  "No."

  "You never went up to see? Even out of curiosity?"

  "No, I didn't have time, I was too busy scavenging for food and water, too busy starving."

  "Ah, that's a shame. If you had gone up there, you might have ventured far enough to see the door. It's quite odd, just sitting there in the middle of nowhere, no hole for a key or anything useful though."

  "How does that make it a device?"

  "It's not, not as I understand it anyway, but I believe the door is special in some way, that it may even be the device. I have not seen inside the door, if indeed it even goes inside anything. I read about it in a journal of sorts that I found in The City. It described what the person had found. Our nemesis also blurted some of his secrets once, while he was trying to get into the house on Merriwether Avenue, in between his curses. Beyond the door should be whatever he used to travel between places. How he did it, or how we use the keys, well, I don't know."

  We passed the mountain of books that I remembered discovering on my expedition out from the first camp. Something had been rummaging in them since I was last here, or maybe there were simply more books, I couldn't be certain. It had been a reasonably neat, if not huge, pile. Now they were strewn all over the ground, like someone had been searching for something.

  The Maw became fidgety as we approached the scaffolding site, and as we made our way round one of the massive junk hills, and the skeletal structure came into view, I found out why.

  There were zombie bodies everywhere, or at least bits of them. I hadn't heard any fighting as we approached, so the Maw must have fought this battle long before we arrived. I trod carefully through the carnage, carefully keeping my distance in case one of them happened to still be moving.

  I never had a proper look at the scaffolding the first time I came by this way, and certainly didn't notice that it led round in a spiral, all the way from the ground to maybe five, six or more levels high. I had an eerie feeling that I had been up there before, some kind of déjà vu, but I couldn't remember when or why. The memories were right there, hidden from me, screaming to pour out. There was something terribly familiar about all of it, and somehow I knew that there was something up that scaffolding that was waiting for me, something that had been waiting for me the whole time that I had been here.