by Perrin Briar
It was difficult to figure out which part of the mangled bodies belonged to this guy and the others. His jaw was fractured in the middle, his tongue flopping out of his mouth, falling between the missing teeth in his bottom jaw.
“It is over,” the Lurcher said. “But not in your favor.”
It’s voice was gravelly and harsh, like the throat was torn, the vocal chords barely a hair’s breadth. It was the Overlord In Black talking.
“Of course,” the Overlord In Black said. “You’re digging for weapons. I should have seen this.”
“How do you know that?” Liz said.
“I didn’t,” the Overlord In Black said. “But a couple of my slaves did. They were pirates, marooned here by Captain Ching Shih herself. For crimes they actually didn’t commit. This captain, at least, ought to prove something of a challenge.”
“You can read their thoughts?” Liz said.
“To call what passed through these men’s minds thoughts is a bit of an insult,” the Overlord In Black said. “Mere scramblings at the purpose of life. But yes, I can read them, though I can hardly read their current thoughts. They have none. Even more empty now than they were before I took them. No matter. There’s plenty of time. You may have won this round, but it is a spat in a war of global proportions.”
“We’ll be getting out of here as soon as we can,” Liz said. “You have won nothing. Who are you? What are you?”
“A superior being,” the Overlord In Black said. “One you need fear. For what will you do when I have your nearest and dearest in my possession?”
Liz’s expression froze and her blood turned cold.
“You’re bluffing,” she said.
“I don’t bluff,” the Overlord In Black said. “I threaten.”
“It’s a trick,” Ernest said. “He doesn’t have them.”
“Would you care to speak with them?” the Overlord In Black said.
Before Liz could respond, another voice came through the Lurcher.
“Liz?” the Lurcher said.
The cadence had changed, and though it was still the same voice, Liz recognized the speech patterns immediately.
“Bill?” Liz said.
The blood drained from her face.
“Are you okay?” she said. “Where’s Francis?”
The undead opened its mouth wide, and a high-pitched scream emitted from deep in its throat. Francis. He was screaming.
A clutch of crows, preparing for the feast it would soon enjoy on the cadavers below, took flight.
“No!” Liz said.
“If you want them,” the voice of the Overlord In Black said. “You’ll have to come and get them. Come get them. Come get them.”
The Lurcher reached up with its only good hand and pulled out a shard of bone from its brain cavity and viciously stabbed itself in what little brain it had remaining, again and again and again, over and over. Its features went limp and the poor beast was finally put to rest.
The family was silent a moment as they took in what had just happened.
“Are you all right?” Fritz said to his mother.
She took a seat, practically falling onto it.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m fine. It’s your father and brother we should be worrying about.”
“Do you think they’re still alive?” Ernest said.
None of them wanted to ask that question. It wasn’t pleasant to contemplate the answer.
“Can you shut up?” Fritz said. “You’re upsetting Mom.”
“We need to ask the question, at least,” Ernest said.
“But we don’t need to answer it right now,” Fritz said.
“No,” Liz said. “Ernest is right. The sooner we figure a way out of this, the sooner we can rescue Francis and your father. We’ll work under the assumption they’re both still alive. That means we’ll have to go in soft.”
“How will we defeat him?” Jack said. “He’s got Pa and Francis.”
“Inquisitiveness,” Ernest said.
“What?” Fritz said.
“He’s both disgusted and fascinated by us at the same time,” Ernest said. “That’s why he finds us so interesting.”
“And how is that supposed to help us?” Jack said.
“Because he can’t help himself,” Liz said. “He wants to make the most of us, to enjoy us, play with us, to make us think we might win. That’s what he’s seeking. That’s what he wants. A challenge.”
“That’s great,” Fritz said. “Except we don’t know where he is or where Pop and Francis are being held.”
“Oh yes we do,” Liz said.
“Where?” Ernest said.
“The place where he suffered defeat at our hands,” Liz said. “Falcon’s Nest.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
BILL’S EYES were sunken, grey. He had heard the voice of Liz via the Overlord In Black. It had been a shock to him. He didn’t like to think about the things they were going through, and worse still, what they would do after they heard his own voice.
Of course, it might not have been real at all, just a figment of the Overlord In Black’s imagination. But there was something in the way he had presented the voice that gave him no reason to doubt it was genuine.
Francis had been in tears when he’d heard his mother’s voice. He was still upset now. Bill had attempted to soothe him, but it was no good. He was a child who missed his mother. He was almost always with her. And perhaps he could sense the fear in Bill’s voice. If his father, a fully-grown man, was afraid of something, a little boy most certainly should be.
They were tied to a pair of tree trunks Bill had formerly chopped down. They were now used as weight support for the main body of the treehouse. If these should fail, then the entire treehouse of Falcon’s Nest would collapse too. They would be crushed beneath it. It was no small weight.
There were ovens, tables, cupboards full of items necessary for survival, and a plethora of other things, any one of which could spell their end should they be unlucky enough to get squashed beneath it.
Jim had been tied to the tree too, though what danger the unconscious boy might provide, Bill didn’t know.
The knots the Overlord In Black had used came from the knowledge of a knot master—probably a sailor, Bill thought. The fact the Overlord In Black could absorb and share information so quickly and easily was at first a shock to Bill, but the more he thought about it, the more sense it made to him in this brave new world of theirs.
Bill would have loved to have sat down and examined the blood the overlord possessed, sequence his DNA. He was a freak of nature, but with billions of people to evolve from, evolution would almost certainly have other subjects it had used for the same horrific experiment.
Bill did not believe the Overlord In Black was the only one of his kind. There could be hundreds of them, thousands even. Bill cringed. The thought alone brought him out in hives.
“One taste of your blood, and I will know everything you do about your family,” the Overlord In Black said. “What advantage do you think they’ll have then?”
None, Bill thought angrily. He’d squirmed against his restraints, but he couldn’t have prevented the overlord from taking his blood than he could if he’d wanted to slit his throat.
He’d cut a small slit in Bill’s skin—a cut on the shoulder—and pressed his finger just under the wound, causing great pain and the blood to seep out, dribbling down Bill’s arm. The overlord took no notice of this, apparently deaf to the pleas of a man in pain, and put his finger to his lips. They were blood red before he even drew his finger away.
Bill took solace in the fact it had been him the overlord had chosen, and not Francis.
“Yes,” the Overlord In Black said. “I can feel your anger, your rage. It courses through you right now, doesn’t it? A river of black. We each of us have a river of hate in our hearts. We only need to dig it out.”
He looked at Bill’s chest like it contained a great treasure, as if he really did want to di
g Bill’s heart out. The Overlord In Black smiled and turned away.
“I was once a powerful leader of armies that swept the Earth clean of the living,” he said. His expression turned sour. “But I was defeated by a traitor, an overlord boy who had sided with uninfected scum. They defeated me, and now here I am, washed up, with little chance of recovering what was taken from me. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun with you, does it? This is my island now. You cannot escape. You will remain alive, so long as it interests me to keep you doing so.”
“There are more like you?” Bill said.
“Many more,” the Overlord In Black said.
Bill shut his eyes. It was as he had feared. There was little hope for the human race anymore. Building a community, building something that might last the ages, it was all a pipe dream. It was never going to happen. It was over for them all.
“Now,” the Overlord In Black said. “Do you think I should do the same to Francis? Have a taste of his blood? Perhaps he might know something you do not. Children so often overhear things they should not, make the most ingenious leaps of logic.”
Bill stiffened against his restraints. It only made the Overlord In Black’s grin grow larger.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
WE SHOULD NEVER never have left Bill behind, Liz thought, shaking her head. He was injured. He had to take care of Francis and Jim too. It was too much for him. We should have defended him. We should have done what families do, and stuck together.
She was on the verge of tears, working herself up into a frenzy. Her eyes were filling up and prepared to slip over the edge and run down her face. Her boys were watching her. She felt embarrassed and ashamed. Worse, she knew she was talking nonsense. They would never have found the guns if they hadn’t left Bill and the others behind, much less dig them up.
She couldn’t be selfish, couldn’t be weak, not when they needed her the most. They needed a strong mother, someone to rally around, someone they could cling to. She sucked up her courage and buried her weakness deep inside herself. Those feelings weren’t gone—would never be gone, in truth—but they were buried. For now.
“Pa knew what he was getting himself into,” Fritz said. “And if we were all there together now, we would have all been caught and there would be no hope for any of us. At least now we have each other and our weapons. There’s at least a chance for us, isn’t there?”
“He has Pa,” Ernest said.
“And Francis, and Jim,” Jack said.
“How are we supposed to rescue them now?” Ernest said. “Our whole plan was based on the expectation father and Francis would be free. We would arm ourselves and fight against this demon. But this guy is smart. Smarter than any of us. How do we beat someone smarter and more powerful than us?”
“You’re forgetting we’re armed now,” Fritz said. “Well armed.”
“He’ll demand we hand over our weapons first,” Ernest said. “That’s what I would do.”
“We can’t give them up,” Liz said. “No matter how much we want to get your father and brother back in one piece. The moment we do, we lose. We can’t afford to do that. Your father wouldn’t want it either.”
“Then what do we do?” Ernest said. “No doubt he’s considered a million different things we might do, every last possibility.”
“Great,” Fritz said, shaking his head. “Then all we have to do is what is mostly like to fail, only turn it around and make it successful somehow. How do we do something like that?”
“By relying on the one thing the Overlord In Black has no control over,” Liz said.
“What’s that?” Jack said.
“Luck,” Liz said.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
FRANCIS WAS in tears, his head down, looking at the ground. The Overlord In Black placed his finger under his chin.
“Francis might know something about your family that you do not,” the Overlord In Black said. “Children so often see and hear things they should not, often blurting out the truth. What do you think?”
“No!” Bill said. “Please. He doesn’t know anything. If you have any questions, I’ll answer them. Please. I promise you, I won’t lie or hold anything back.”
“As if you could,” the Overlord In Black said.
He lifted Francis’s face up to him. Francis whimpered, shying away.
“No!” Bill said. “Please!”
The Overlord In Black pursed his lips, looked at Bill, and then planted a kiss on Francis’s forehead, licking up a spot of blood there from a graze.
“Hm,” the Overlord In Black said. “The boy knows little more than you.”
Relief flooded Bill’s body. But the sinister look on the Overlord In Black’s face did not relent.
“Which begs the question: why would I want to keep a useless boy?” the Overlord In Black said. “Why keep two of you when you both know the same thing?”
“Then kill me!” Bill said. “Don’t harm the boy! Please!”
The Overlord In Black sneered.
“I enjoy watching you beg,” he said. “It gives me great pleasure. Perhaps I’ll get you to beg for your own family more before the day is over. But first, insurance.”
He installed a Lurcher behind Francis, and had him wrap his hand around Francis’s neck.
“One false move,” the Overlord In Black said. “Just one, by you or your family, and I’ll give the order for him to squeeze and bite and claw and turn as feral as my pets are capable of.
“I have seen your memories, Bill. They are more cookie-cutter in design and scale than almost any other human being I’ve Tasted. Few of us have lives worth watching from beginning to end. That’s especially true regarding yours. The only noteworthy things to happen in your little life happened here. Here, you experienced the new world order. I am pleased to see you have taken full advantage of that, using it to better your life and outlook. The new world suits you, more than it suits many, I must say.
“But I know you now. I know you better than anyone you have ever met, even, with a little time, better than you know yourself. Your opinion of yourself is so often distorted and misrepresentative. You cannot look upon those you love and see them only as the powerful tools they could be—either in your hands, or in the hands of others who might attempt to use them against you.
“They feel the same for you and your son, and that’s what makes them weak. Would you like to know what I think they will do? The most likely course out of the near-infinite open to them? They will come here for you and attempt to negotiate for your life. And they will, of course, fail. There is little they can offer me that I can’t just take from them.
“Negotiating from weakness is always a loser’s endeavor. Your wife will try her best, but she will fail. They will not take a risk, not with you and your son’s life on the line. She will join you here, at the fourth column, and together you shall be the four pillars of my plan. The rest of your children will have nothing they can do, and so they will risk their lives in order to save you all, and that will be the easiest step in my plan of all. There will be nothing they can do for you. You will be doomed, and you shall be my playthings.”
The Overlord In Black’s smile faded a moment. He was looking at Jim.
“I almost forgot,” he said. “I ought to Taste the blood of this boy you have in your possession. So often it’s those we think have no chance of understanding that know so very much more about us than we realize. Perhaps it is because they are so often ignored and we underestimate them.”
The Overlord In Black put his razor sharp nail to Jim’s cheek. He looked at Bill.
“What?” he said. “No pleas? No cries? No begging for mercy? You don’t care what happens to this boy? Of course not. Why would you? He’s not your flesh and blood. What concern is he of yours?”
He cut a small slit on Jim’s cheek and Tasted Jim’s blood. He stood silent for a moment, letting the memories fill his mind. A grin slowly spread across his face. He chuckled, louder and louder un
til he was roaring with laughter.
“Oh, this is too delicious!” he said. “All this time and you didn’t know… Didn’t even come close to suspecting… It’s too much!”
But Bill’s attention was taken with the figure who stepped from the jungle. She moved in a way that had always beguiled him.
“The revelation will have to come at a later time, I suppose,” the Overlord In Black said. “Looks like it’s show time. And guess who it is who’s come to see us?”
Chapter Thirty
“I HAVE NO idea how you can climb like this all the time,” Ernest said.
He was in the crook of a large tree limb. Despite Jack telling him not to look down, he couldn’t help himself from peering over the side.
“That’s because I never climb like you,” Jack said. “I had a lot more skill and ability than you at climbing from the minute I was born.”
“I don’t disbelieve it,” Ernest said. “It takes a minimal level of intelligence to realize you’re in a dangerous situation, a level you don’t seem to be aware of.”
“Maybe,” Jack said with a shrug. “But it’s a level of intelligence I’m happy with.”
“That’s because you’re not smart enough to know better,” Ernest said.
“Fritz seems to be doing all right,” Jack said.
“My point proven once again,” Ernest said.
“We might not be as smart as you-” Jack said.
“Might not?” Ernest said.
“But do you think we’d be up here now if it wasn’t for me and my climbing skill?” Jack said.
“No,” Ernest said, rolling his eyes. “Why do you insist on constantly proving my point?”
“Then we’d have no chance of rescuing Pa,” Jack said. “Or Francis. Or Mom.”
“Just shut up and give me the rifle,” Ernest said.