by Jack Lothian
“Coast seems clear,” Doc Holland muttered as he entered the code.
Now that Marcus thought about it, the Other had been silent for most of the latter half of their cautious trek through the Broken City. Was it possible that they’d actually been able to escape the beast?
Despite the silence, Marcus still found himself looking about cautiously in every direction, the ends of every nerve in his body pulsing with electricity. As Doc finished entering the code, he peeled back the metal door. It opened with a high wail, which echoed off into the distance. Marcus jumped at the sound, and Doc paused halfway to listen for signs of movement. Nothing seemed to respond to their inadvertent call, and so Doc finished the job.
The opening where the door had once been revealed only a deep, black hole. A rusted ladder dived down into the grim dark below, and Marcus felt inexplicably as though they were trading the giant, gaping maw of the Other for some new, more mysterious beast. However, he knew that they had no choice in their descent. With the sun gone, the Other would likely have the advantage, as its kind were often better suited to seeing in the dark.
“You go first,” Doc whispered. “Once you’ve reached the bottom, light up your lantern. I’ll climb down and close the door behind us.”
“Yeah, all right,” Marcus agreed. He mounted the ladder cautiously, not entirely trusting the ancient metal’s durability. Thankfully, despite a few minor groans in protest, the ladder held his weight without much difficulty. He counted fifteen steps to the bottom, which was something of a relief considering that, from the top of the ladder, the pit looked as though it could have gone on forever.
As Marcus stepped away from the ladder he fumbled around the pouches on his belt, until he found his book of matches. His hands were shaking with a slight, residual fear, but he was able to get his lantern lit easily enough.
Doc Holland began climbing down the ladder. Marcus watched as the moon disappeared behind the metal door, and suddenly felt strangely as though they were locking themselves in a cage. Still, he was comforted by the thought that they would no longer have to hide from the Other—at least for the remainder of the night.
“All right, then,” Doc Holland said in his normal speaking voice, which sounded almost alien after their hours of silence. He went to lighting his own lantern, and Marcus noted that his hands were surprisingly steady. They were the hands of a man who had seen his share of monsters; the hands of a man who survived each close encounter to tell the tale time and time again.
Once both their lanterns were glowing—almost protectively, Marcus felt—Doc began to walk deeper into the way station. While Marcus could see only long, black corridors with no end in sight, Doc seemed to know exactly where he was going, and before long they came to a series of hallways that split off from the main passageway. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the placement of these passages, with no signs to mark where they led. In spite of this, Doc Holland pointed to one of these new passages, and said, “Head down the left hall, here, and see if you can find us any food.” He then took a few steps forward and glanced down the other hallways as if he was trying to remember where he needed to go. Then, to validate whatever thoughts were running through his mind, he nodded in silence.
“Where are you going?” Marcus asked in a voice that was almost pleading, as if to say, Don’t leave me already!
“To look for supplies,” Doc replied. “Might be ammo around here, if they’ve stocked the place recently.” He started down one of the corridors on the right, but paused briefly to look back at Marcus. “If you need anything, just give a holler. These tunnels are bound to carry your voice to me.”
And then Doc Holland was gone, the faint glow of his lantern disappearing along with him.
Marcus sighed softly, and began his hunt for food, the embers of anticipation slowly beginning to burn within him at the prospect of eating something other than dried meat, which had been their only source of sustenance on the road. It was the first happy thought he’d had in hours, but even that little bit of happiness was enough to make their encounter with the Other seem like a simple, harmless memory.
After a reasonable stroll down the hallway Doc Holland had pointed to, Marcus came across an open doorway. This door had a sign next to it, which simply read: Food and Water. Marcus allowed himself a triumphant smile at this. Things actually were starting to look up.
Marcus passed through the doorway with the thought of canned peaches and pears on his mind. This thought was quickly erased, however, when he found himself kicking something hard into the room with him. The hard object skittered across the floor with a clackity-clack. Curiously, Marcus approached where the thing had landed. What he saw gave him pause.
The item in question was a bone.
To make matters worse, Marcus also noticed that many of the shelves containing jars of food had been knocked over carelessly. Broken glass, fruits, vegetables, and pickled meat all polluted the floor. And there was something else, too, a strong, sour scent that rose even above the smell of vinegar from the pickled meat. It was a familiar scent that Marcus had experienced only once before in his travels with Doc Holland, and it was one that immediately extinguished the small flames of hope that had been building within him—it was the smell of old sewers.
“Oh God,” Marcus whispered as he walked further into the room. The light of his lantern illuminated the wall on the opposite side of the storeroom, and there, in the center of the wall, was a large, gaping hole. Marcus stopped momentarily, then took a few more hesitant steps forward.
More bones littered the floor near the wide aperture. Some of them were snapped in places, others seemed to have been chewed on by sharp, uneven teeth.
Why don’t we travel the sewers unless absolutely necessary? Doc Holland’s voice asked in Marcus’s head, coming through some old memory.
“Because the Others claimed them first,” Marcus whispered in response, speaking to nobody other than himself.
Everything began to click as he finished approaching that big, open cavity in the wall. He and Doc hadn’t been this way in weeks, but Marcus was willing to bet that if they’d made it to town, someone would have asked them to come out here to investigate some strange and sudden disappearances.
It never stopped chasing us, Marcus thought frantically to himself. It just noticed which direction we were heading, and decided to beat us here.
He held the lantern through the crevice with unsteady hands and peered only briefly into the vast darkness of the sewer before seeing his lantern’s glow reflect in two yellow, feral eyes.
The rumbling voice of the Other came to greet him from the darkness. “Hello, meat,” it said with an evil purr.
And then the monster came at him, heavy arms crashing against the concrete surface of the tunnel with a great and terrible ferocity. Though he felt paralyzed by fear, Marcus’s legs began to work automatically. He turned without thought, and sprinted out of the storeroom.
“Doc!” Marcus screamed into the dark tunnels ahead. “Doc, help!”
The Other pursued its prey easily enough in the corridors of the way station, though they were terribly narrow for a beast of its size. Marcus could hear the monstrosity thumping into the walls behind him as it gave chase, breathing subtle growls from a mouth that thirsted for the copper taste of blood. Marcus could feel its warm breath on his back as it drew closer, and could smell the wretched rot and decay of the bits of flesh that still lingered amidst its jagged jaw. Then the Other groped for him with a massive hand, and while he was just out of grabbing distance, its razor-sharp nails still sliced through the back of Marcus’s shirt. They trailed long, thin gashes through the flesh of his back as though it were nothing more than paper.
Marcus’s lantern just barely illuminated the walls of the main corridor when Doc Holland stepped into view. He was holding a red container, which sloshed with liquid. He dropped the container at his feet and shouldered his rifle. On instinct, Marcus dropped out of the rifle’s sight and sl
id across the smooth surface of the floor toward Doc, whose rifle rang out in a deafening defense. One, two, three rounds Doc Holland fired into the leviathan, and when Marcus turned to glance at the damage that was done, he saw that in these close quarters each of Doc’s bullets had found their marks. The Other stood ten feet away, now blinded with ebony sludge spilling from its eye sockets.
Doc kicked the red canister toward Marcus. “Drench this bastard,” he commanded.
Marcus, still on the ground, hastily uncapped the container. He turned back toward the Other and began to toss its contents onto the beast. The scent of gasoline filled the air as the Other thrashed violently about. It moved steadily toward them, enraged by its blindness. The walls spider-webbed outward in places as the Other threw its heavy arms wildly about, smashing the brick into dusty clouds.
Marcus took a few steps back and watched as Doc Holland took the lantern from his belt. “Get behind me, lad,” he said calmly. Marcus obeyed without question, and observed with a wicked fascination as his mentor smashed the lantern onto the monster.
Flames instantaneously covered the Other’s crimson flesh, making a brilliant show of light in the darkness of the tunnels. In its rage the Other lunged for the hunters, but the two were able to avoid its mass by dodging into another corridor.
The Other crashed harshly to the floor and began to thrash around. As it did so, Marcus noticed odd deformities on each of its arms, but as he watched the beast he noticed that these were unlike the rest of the muscular growths that had covered its surface. Indeed, these grotesque shapes were much more unnerving.
Just under each of its shoulders, the beast had the form of a baby just barely protruding from the surface of its skin. They were almost engraved there, as if their forms were carved, or perhaps even melded, into the flesh. As Marcus stared at one of them, horrified by the sight, he saw that the infant’s eyes looked back at him. They were beady and black, and appeared almost hateful beneath the glowing flames. The face was twisted in horrible pain, and Marcus realized suddenly that it was screaming a long, high-pitched shriek as the flames continued to work at the Other’s skin.
Marcus recalled seeing children who were joined together at the waist in one of the towns. Conjoined twins, they were called. Doc Holland had once said that it was one of the many birth defects left behind by the holy flames. Marcus also remembered that some of the older Others were born in the wombs of human mothers after the radiation of the holy flames twisted them into strange, inhuman beings. The holy men always said that this was the devil’s work, as with most of God’s children gone, Lucifer’s demonic legion could walk the land unopposed. Marcus was never sure why holy flames cleansing the land would have such horrible repercussions, but it was deemed unwise to question his elders, and so he simply accepted this as fact.
Watching the mounds of burning flesh, Marcus imagined two conjoined twins in their mother’s womb. He pictured a tumor rising up in the flesh that bound them together, and saw in his mind that tumor slowly grow in the radiated stomach; saw it overtake the two until it was the dominant form. The thought made him sick to his stomach, but just as he was about to turn away, the Other began to speak once more, rising to its feet.
“Fools,” it said. “I was born in the holy flames! Do you truly think a little fire will kill me?”
“Perhaps not, demon,” Doc Holland replied coldly. He placed the barrel of his rifle to the creature’s temple as it rose. “Regardless, I think it’s past time someone sent you back to the hell from which you came.”
Doc Holland unloaded the rest of his ammo into the Other, one bullet after the next, until bone and brain matter began to fly in every direction. As the Other crashed limply to the floor, black fluids began to flow out of its head in a steady, metal-smelling stream. The childlike cries of the Other’s meaty arms died off weakly as the monster took one ragged, final breath.
At last, the Other was dead.
Marcus and Doc Holland were both silent for a moment as they watched the flames continue to lick at the Other’s remains. A thick, putrid smell began to fill the air as the Other’s flesh began to bubble.
After allowing his poor, tired heart a few minutes of rest, Marcus thought it best to tell Doc Holland about the opening in the storeroom wall.
“Better go see about barricading it, then,” Doc Holland said at once. “No way we’re traversing the Broken City at this time of night, and I’m not about to let any more monsters find their way in here.”
The two took great care in maneuvering around the flaming corpse, and when they had bypassed the flames without lighting themselves on fire, they walked down the long passageway to the storeroom, both feeling tired, though happily victorious. Doc Holland began humming a merry little tune as they went. Marcus found the sound to be quite calming.
Marcus led the way into the storeroom, lantern held steadily before him to light their way. As he walked to the opposite end of the room, Doc Holland paused behind him to survey the damaged goods.
Marcus approached the gap, carefully stepping over the shards of broken glass that surrounded the floor. He then stopped abruptly, and listened.
There was a sound in the distance. It was a low, hissing sort of noise that Marcus couldn’t quite make out. “Do you hear that?” he whispered over his shoulder to Doc Holland.
Doc stepped up beside him and cocked his head toward the opening. “I do,” he said in a voice that was extremely grave.
The sound drew closer, and Marcus held the lantern deeper into the hole. To the left, he was beginning to make out a slender silhouette shambling toward them on all fours. As it drew closer, the glow of the lantern reflected off of its sunken, gray eyes. It had skin the color of ash, with long, almost crooked limbs that made it move awkwardly. Its face was elongated, giving it a sorrowful appearance, though it appeared to be grinning all the same. As it crawled closer, the two noticed long, curved claws on both its hands and feet, where its fingers and toes were fused together by protruding bones.
“Feast,” the Other was whispering. “Feast, feast, feast.”
Doc Holland aimed his rifle at the creature, and pulled the trigger.
The rifle responded with a simple, click.
Forbidden
Jordon Greene
A hard knock on the front door echoes back into the kitchen where I’m stuffing another French fry down my gullet. I jump and almost choke on the crunchy stalk of potato and breading.
I eye Franco sitting across from me at the slate black table, his plate is half empty already. His thick, ruddy brown hair is wavy and messy, framing generous eyes, soft cheeks, and a small pointed nose all coalescing down into a triangular chin. For a second, his hazel eyes meet mine, a hint of worry escaping their depths.
“Who’s that?” Franco asks, crinkling his brow and sweeping his eyes toward the noise.
“Hell if I know,” I say, swallowing down the remainder of my fry with a grimace. “I’ll get it.”
With an annoyed sigh, I get to my feet and make my way through the small kitchen. I don’t need much, but with the Under Shepherd and his fellowship of Deacon's recent crackdowns on objectionable materials, my horde of belongings is even more meager now, or hidden. Before I can pass through the living room, another knock bangs on the door followed by a harsh command. I stop in my tracks.
“Open up,” a deep, commanding voice rings past the entry door just before beating on the wooden frame commences again. “This is the police.”
I gulp and take another step, then another which lands my feet on a small, bland rug just before the front door. I turn to my left and my eyes catch a picture from better days, before the church managed to sneak its way into everything, when we still had a president, a Congress and a real court system. Now it’s just the church and their holy book.
My parents are seated on a grassy knoll somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I’m sitting cross-legged between them, an only child. Everyone’s grinning, something I rarely do nowadays. Tree
s layered in browns, reds and oranges line the background just below a setting sun. I remember it being cool, bordering on frigid that day. I think I was fourteen. My smooth, pale, boyish face was happy then, brown eyes glinting in the light below the same headful of spiky chestnut hair I see in my reflection in the glass. There was a vibrancy in me that day that’s lacking now; hell, I've not felt that in years. I was a normal kid. I played basketball, chased after the girls, couldn't wait to get my license, took my parents for granted. It’s hard to believe it's been nine years since that day on the Parkway, seven years since my parents died at the hands of the church, the Fellowship as they call themselves. Their crime? They were God deniers, at least that’s what the Fellowship called them. It only took a matter of years after the church gained control, no, who am I fooling, took control, for such a crime to be decreed punishable by death.
My parents had instructed me to tell the government I believed in God to keep me safe. That wasn't a problem though, because I did, I do. I don't believe in their God, one that demands such intolerance and heavy-handedness, the denial of free will, but I do believe. Of course, they don't need to know that little detail.
I grit my teeth as another knock comes at the door. I swear if they beat any harder, they’ll splinter the wood. My mind's racing.
Why are they here? Do they know? No. How?
The Fellowship police don’t just show up at your doorstep for a quaint talk; no, they come because they plan to drag you out on the street kicking and screaming from your house.