Alone (Book 2): Lone

by Prunty, Mercedes

  “How did they though? This isn’t a hospital it’s not like they have equipment to work with”.

  “They have the old torture devices though”, he grimaced, “They used the one where they tie you down and pull at your body until normally it breaks and gives way or just splits down the middle and tears you apart but no, with me it just stretched me. It broke my legs and they laughed kept pulling until they hoped it broke my back but it didn’t. They all had ago at biting me with their different infections”, he lifted his hands to show all the old scarred bite marks, “It hurts so much”, he sobbed tears falling down his swollen cheeks.

  “What’s your name?” Kaley asked hoping this wasn’t a trap that she would move nearer and he would grab her and devour her but because of the pain he couldn’t move any further.

  “Dexter”, he sobbed, “You?”

  “Kaley”.

  “Well Kaley can you please help me, put me out of my misery. I want to be with my family now, not here”.

  “You want me to kill you?” she asked.

  He nodded his chin wobbling again, “Please”, his voice turning to a hoarse whisper, “They leave me to wail and howl to myself all the time, they don’t care about the pain. They bring me food and I’m so hungry, ridiculously hungry I eat it, I can’t starve myself but you could do it, I know you can”.

  She lifted her hands, “I don’t have any weapons though”.

  “You don’t need weapons, you have your mind. I felt it just now, I’ve never felt anything like it before but I know its powerful and then like an angel you land by my feet”.

  She looked to the hole in the roof, “How did you know it was me?”

  “No one else here has that kind of power and I’ve never seen you before”.

  “I don’t know if I can, you seem a nice person, how can I kill someone who’s nice?”

  “Would it help if I told you I wasn’t a nice person and that I used to beat my wife and that when the creatures first attacked I let them take her in the hope I would be spared, does that help? I can tell you more of what an asshole I am, I bullied my little brother to the point he left home and committed suicide just because he was overweight but now look at me, whose overweight now? I thought everything was so black and white in the old life but now I see it wasn’t, the world was full of brilliant people my wife and brother were two of them and I beat them down and betrayed them. But I feel I’ve been punished enough now and I want out, I want to be with them to apologise for all the bad things I’ve done… please”.

  Kaley just stared at him, glared into his eyes willing him to let her in, she entered his mind. She looked deep in the darkest places, the old filing cabinets that people think just get forgotten. She opened one and saw the memory of him hitting his wife, blood dripping from her nose, her tears and his laughter. She exited out and flipped through a few others and came to the one of him bullying his brother, he was a large man with obvious eating problems but instead of helping him Dexter wished him dead, that the world was no place for monsters like him, then he beat him, beat him to a pulp so he felt so ugly he took the pills from the care home he worked at and was found the next morning. She stepped back and looked at the human slug on the floor, she could feel his pain like an empath, it flowed through her body and mind for a few seconds before it whittled out.

  “See I wasn’t lying”, he said, “I don’t want you to feel sorry for me because I don’t deserve it but I think Karma has paid me back enough, please just do it”.

  She said nothing but looked deep into his eyes, she felt the tendrils of her power flow out from her eyes into his like an invisible piece of string connecting the two of them, she trailed them all through his body and found his swollen but still pumping heart. Like a hand circling into a fist she pulled her power around the beating blood pump and squeezed, it began to jump and slow trying to restart its rhythm but she kept a tight hold fighting it until it gave up, his pain and blood screamed in her ears, screamed so loudly she screamed back, until he slumped further on the floor, blood pouring from his eyes, ears, nose and mouth and covering his now lifeless body. Still screaming she fell to the floor until her power flicked off and the lights went out.

  ~

  I raced through the grand hall and up the stairs with Lara close behind me, turning to the door that was wide open I ran in to find it empty and Kaley missing, she had not come back up here.

  “Where is she?” I said looking around the room even though I knew it was pointless.

  “They have her, the others”, Lara said looking down, “They take the ones they think are ‘Still Human’ to the torture tower and experiment on them, they have probably taken her there”.

  “Where they killed Albi?” I asked.

  She nodded, “But she might already be dead”.

  “No she is still alive, I know it, come on”, I grabbed her hand and we raced out the room and charged down the stairs and out into the courtyard. Out here it was strangely quiet, nothing stirred and no one charged us. Taking the quickest route to the torture tower we burst up the stairs and into the room where Christian and I had spoken only a couple of days ago revealing to me what a bastard he really was. The room was empty, there was no Kaley and no fresh blood which meant either they had taken her somewhere else or she had run but where had she run to?

  Suddenly my body fitted to the floor as something or someone invaded my mind, it showed to me like a film all in black and white. Kaley falling and screaming through a roof and landing in a dark room, a slithering sound, a vile sickening smell, a man, a slug, entering his mind opening the memories, then grasping his heart and ending it all, “Arghhhh”, I screamed out just as she had then the darkness came, she had blacked out again and I had no clue where she was.

  “Stacie? You alright?” Lara asked worried, “Is it him is he in your head?”

  I knew who she meant, “No, but Kaley is she’s alive but not here, she’s with a slug?”

  “The slug man, Dexter?”

  “I guess so, where’s he kept?”

  “At the other side of the castle, they built a small dungeon to keep him in but we would have to pass Christian…” she trailed off at the thought of her sister.

  “Take me there”, I said and walked up to the caged cupboard that held mine and Kaley’s bags, I thrashed out a claw and sliced the lock broken and took my belongings, I flung my bow and arrow and my rifle over my shoulder along with my bag and then somehow balanced Kaley’s too, it would weigh me down but I needed for us to be able to leave as soon as possible and coming back here would be suicide.

  Walking over to the swords and other weapons I lifted one up and passed it to Lara, “I think your need this”.

  “I’ve never used one before”, she replied.

  “You’re learn on the job”, I smiled, “Now let’s go get Kaley and leave this place”.

  Walking back out into the courtyard Lara led the way, the sword she held was a small one but was heavy and as she walked she now leant to one side, she was a strong minded woman keeping sane throughout all the tortures of this place but physically by muscle strength she was weak. She led us through a small outer walkway which led round the back of the castle and in plain view of Christian’s wife’s birthing unit, we kept low trying to stay out of eye shot especially near the windows. I could sense inside that there were a lot of Christian’s men all congregating near the great hall, luckily for us they didn’t seem to be near where we were headed. The walkway was slippery as the snow had turned icy but using our hands to balance on the wall of the castle we made it round the other side. A large tree with a snapped off branch stood just a few metres away from us along with a shed like outer building which had metal bars on the windows which had also been boarded up with wood to keep something in and most probably people out.

  Reaching it we looked around for a way in, Lara told me the main entrance was through the staffing quarters but with Christian and his new child roaming around I didn’t want to risk going that
way so I decided to check the outside to see if there was a weak spot to get in. I knew Kaley had fallen in through the roof so handing Lara the bags and telling her to wait I hoisted myself up onto the roof using loose planks of shed wood. Once on top I knew if someone looked out one of the windows now I would be a sitting duck but I had to try. Looking into the hole I spotted Kaley’s legs sticking out from the shadows, jumping in I waited to see if anything or anyone would jump out but nothing, only the gentle breathing of Kaley who was unconscious, the slug man as Kaley had thought of him was covered in a pool of his own cooling blood which stunk. I made it to her and gently placed my hand on her shoulder but before I could call her name I was sucked into something, a vision of some sort.

  The snow was white, pure and perfect, untouched for months since its first lay. The ghost town that lay abandoned was eerily quiet and full of shadows which watched my every move. The moonlight which was the only source of light cast a menacing glow over one of the buildings, this one was the largest out of them all, the windows had all cracked and were just blank, void spaces like most of the world. The brick work was slowly crumbling away, the roof tiles missing and strangely not a plant in sight. Most places by now had been over grown by the natural world which was slowly taking the Earth back to its former glory but in this place it was just buildings and snow, so much snow.

  Looking around I saw the glow over this building call to me and I slowly made my way to it, the front door was closed but not locked, it opened with ease and it echoed a loud shriek of the hinges groaning. Inside the place was empty and creature free, not a soul in sight. Pictures on the walls showed me that this place had once been occupied by workers, maybe miners of some sort but they had left here many, many years before the infection and war had hit. The tiles crunched underfoot as they were lose and sharp, glass from picture frames jingled and sprinkled down to the floor as I accidently brushed up against some, the light shimmering over the glass like water. Coming through the main hall I reached two doors, opening one it came out onto what looked to be an old cinema type place, rows of chairs and a huge screen which had been torn sat gathering dust. Closing the door I made my way to the other and came to an old empty swimming pool, the tiles had thick slime and dust covering them along with large windows which had been smashed but over the outside large shutters had been locked down, the only moonlight getting in here was through a large hole in the ceiling above and through the roof. Closing this door I made my way further down the hall and stopped at a random door which was small and inconspicuous, opening it I found an old cleaning cupboard, a bucket, mop and some old empty bleach bottles scattered over the floor but what caught my attention in the faded moonlight was that I could just make out where the dust had been unsettled recently, foot prints, two sets of them leading away from a wall. A wall with shelves and other chemical bottles on, touching a few of them I found that they had all been glued down and didn’t move, but why?

  Touching all of them I slowly pulled at each of them until I came to a random figure, this figure was of an angel but its wings had been worn away by years of use, pulling it slowly forward I was surprise to feel it give and move. Holding my breath I watched as the wall slowly tilted and lifted up revealing a staircase that led down into the frozen earth. There was red emergency lighting that lit up the whole stairwell, my heart caught in my throat but I had to follow it what else was there to do? Step by step I found myself plunging deeper into the earth and weirdly I was getting warmer, it was like someone had just flipped the central heating on and it wasn’t the earth that was warm it really was a fake heat. I touched one of the walls and felt a breath of heat coming from a small vent that was built into the cement around me.

  The stairs went down for what felt like an age finally ending at a large security door which was bolted shut, a flashing light on a panel at the side indicated that it needed a key card of some sort to open it, reaching into my pocket I found what I was looking for, sliding the card over the reader I watched as the light flashed from red to green and the door clicked open. Pushing on the heavy metal I came into a world of clinical copper units, false sun lighting and test tubes, hundreds of test tubes all filled with vile green liquid and pulsating chunks of flesh. What the hell was this place?

  “Stacie?”

  I came back into the world of reality and looked up as Kaley sat up rubbing her temples with her fingers, “We did it again didn’t we?”

  I nodded, “Yup you went into my head”.

  “Maybe my gift leaked out whilst I was out for the count, I told you when I was drunk I had less control but this is weird, it just keeps wanting to come out, like its pushing against my brain”.

  I shrugged, “Whatever the reason we need to leave, Christian’s kid has been born and we need to warn Monique and the others before they attack the camp”.

  Kaley nodded, “Then let’s go”.

  “Not so fast”, Christian’s voice said from a now open door, he looked down at the slug man or Dexter as he had once been known, “You can’t leave, not now my child has been born and not now you have murdered Dexter”.

  “We murdered Dexter?” Kaley hissed, “You tortured him, made him so infected his body gave up, he was in so much pain, he needed to be put out of his misery”.

  “Shut up you fool”, he said and back handed her across the cheek, she fell to the floor and landed in some of Dexter’s cooling blood, she heaved but held onto her stomach. She was getting stronger by the day.

  “You alright?” I said giving her my hand, she took it and stood up, glaring at Christian.

  “I’m fine”.

  “Good, then you will both be ready to meet Murphy and for him to feed from your very flesh, he’s a hungry boy you know”, he snarled.

  “Good and we will be ready to kill him”, Kaley snapped back, “You people don’t deserve to have children, whether they be fucked up little aliens or normal little babies, you don’t deserve nothing”.

  Christian’s face completely smoked over but a dark snarling grin echoed over his lips, “Then let the fight begin”. He whistled and a strange wet slapping noise plodded into the room, Murphy was no longer the small spiny alien looking creature had been just a hour or so ago, he had grown, his arms were elongated and longer than his legs now, his legs were still hooked under his body and mostly made of claws that scraped along the rotten floor boards. His body was long and spiked, his vertebrae from his spine were so sharp that they pierced through his slimy flesh now, dripping plasma and other bodily fluids down him. His face had grown more humanoid but not by much, his eyes had widened and were a blackened by the infection, his mouth was still lipless but the flesh around it curved up into an almost human smile as it preyed on us, that was until it howled, the howl was something so nerve wracking I was now truly panicking, I didn’t think I could kill something this horrendous, not because I didn’t want to but because I could see its power rippling under its manky flesh.

  “Let the fight begin”, Christian howled again with laughter like a mad man, he ran out the room and locked the door behind him, he looked through a small meshed box like window that had once been used to laugh and spy at Dexter, his eyes piercing into mine.

  Murphy stood up straight snapping his hooked legs into position, he was well above 4ft tall now, which was impossible he was an hour old. Unless, him feeding made him grow, or the virus that pumped through his demented veins caused a rapid growth mutation, I guess I wouldn’t know and I didn’t really care, all I cared about was getting rid of him and keeping myself and Kaley safe. He snaked around the room with a speed and agility that was animal like, I kept Kaley behind me and edged away from him. I knew I hated it but I had to call on the creature inside me, I called upon it to come out and made me the fighting machine I knew I could become, I just hoped Kaley didn’t get in the way and that I wouldn’t accidently hurt her. Flicking my hands my claws surfaced and I readied myself to kill this abomination.

  Murphy lunged for us and I pushed Kaley
out the way sending her sprawling behind some old timbers that had fallen from the roof, the long dress slightly hindered me and I didn’t quite move quick enough causing Murphy to hit me square on and sent me flying and crash landing into one of the walls which made the shed shake with such force I knew it wouldn’t stand up for much longer. Standing up I felt the hot wetness of blood dripping down my chest, looking down I saw that a long claw wound had opened up just below my collar bone but I could already feel my body fixing the broken wound, stitching it back together.

  “Stacie?” Kaley called out.

  “Stay back”.

  She said no more and hid as Murphy swung down a clawed arm, I didn’t have time to move again, shock and pain reverted through my body as I slammed into another one of the walls. Moving and making quick work of my claws I sliced through the dress making the skirts shorter so I could at least have a chance. Throwing the material to one side I jumped to my feet and ran making Murphy move, his alien eyes transfixed on my every move, he charged at me howling and swiped his feet out, his hooked leg reached further than I anticipated and he took me off my feet, I landed with a hard hit to the floor but I spun around on my back and sliced at the thing with my claws hitting a weak spot on his leg. Murphy howled in pain and roared his head back in anger, I took another swipe and connected with his chest, it barely made a mark as it felt like his skin had hardened into a weird scaly armour. Getting to my feet I watched as he turned back to me, his mouth dripping with saliva, his claws moving as his hand opened and closed, then again he ran at me this time I managed to move and duck out the way sending the freak show into the wall, his own claws stabbed through the wooden slats that created the wall, he tore his fists out in frustration and slashed the wall apart bringing in more moonlight. As my eyes adjusted to the new light I spotted a loose beam over head with a large columned panel which came down to the ground like a load baring column, if I could just move it…He came at me again and smashed into my shoulder throwing me around like a ragdoll, the wind flew out from my lungs causing a horrible wheezing sound to come from my throat but I was up and jumping, swinging my arms out to propel me forward as he charged and dug his claws into where I had been just moments before.