by David Peters
END WORLD
Ultimate Corruption
By David Peters
Copyright © 2010 by David Peters
The End World Series
End World: Dawn of the Corrupted
End World: Ultimate Corruption
End World: The Captain’s Tale (2012)
Prologue
April 15th, 2013
His feet pounded into the mud as he tracked his prey. Every rapid step bringing him closer to the vengeance he wanted. He could see he was closing in. The foot prints he was following were becoming more distinct and had yet to completely fill with water. Lightning tore open the night sky as a simultaneous crash of thunder rolled over Dylan and down the valley. There was anger written into his face. A deep hatred had been created where nothing like it existed before. It was consuming him as he continued splashing through the storm. His eyes said it all; he would kill a man tonight.
He followed the muddy trail of foot prints until it exited the cover of the dark pine trees and entered into a vast empty field. Lightning lit the darkness before him. He could see the man he was hunting was half way across the field and in a state of near panic. Dylan began running faster and narrowed the distance between himself and his prey. Again lightning flashed. The rolling thunder that followed failed to mask the sharp crack of Dylan’s rifle.
“Williams!” Dylan screamed at the fleeing man, “I won’t miss with the next one you son of a bitch!”
Williams stopped running and turned to face Dylan, “You all just don’t give up do ya?” He said as he gasped for breath, “You just don’t know when to quit.”
“I know you keep a pistol. Pull it out slowly. You make one wrong move and I’ll blow your head clean off your shoulders,” Dylan had his lever action Marlin centered on the bridge of Williams’ nose.
“You can’t hit shit in this darkness asshole!” Williams sneered back at Dylan.
There was no lightning before the next boom. Williams felt the heat of the passing bullet as it grazed his left ear. He winced and ducked reflexively.
Dylan started walking closer without lowering the rifle. The rain was gaining in tempo, changing from a drizzle to a torrent of large drops. Lightning again split the night and illuminated the adversaries for a fraction of a heartbeat. Williams had his first good look at Dylan’s face. He could feel the burning hatred coming from the man.
“You think I can get that close and not miss you at this range you piece of shit? Throw your weapon as far as you can. This is your last warning. I’ll leave your headless corpse out here to rot.”
Williams pulled the pistol out of his waistband. He hesitated for a second, debating whether he could beat Dylan or not. Then he thought better of it. Williams threw the pistol far into the darkness. The sound of it landing was lost to the raging downpour around them.
“I’m guessin’ you take me back to camp now? Face some sort of town justice or some bullshit. At least I won’t be taking orders from some bitch now.” He said with a sneer.
“That’s not what is going to happen at all. I’m going to tear your heart out with my bare hands.” Dylan dropped his rifle and charged Williams.
Lightning flashed again as the two crashed together. Williams was fighting like a man with everything to lose. Dylan was fighting like a man that just had everything taken away.
Williams landed a solid hit to Dylan’s chest, forcing him to the ground as he gasped for air. He didn’t waste the opening and jumped on top of Dylan, sending his face into the heavy mud.
The two rolled and wrestled until Williams came around with Dylan in a head lock. “Looks like I get to end the entire Murphy line in one day. Sometimes days just don’t end the way you think they will.” He closed his arm tighter and tighter.
Dylan felt his strength beginning to ebb as he fought for air. He had fought too many battles and lost too many friends. He would not let it end here. He paused for only a second to gather his will and collect his last remaining strength. Dylan put everything he had and pushed himself out of the mud. Williams relaxed his choke hold just long enough for Dylan to pull his knees up and push himself onto his back. Dylan came crashing down on top of Williams but the man still held his choke hold on Dylan. Again the pressure increased and the darkness started entering the edges of his vision.
Dylan put all of his weight into it and brought his elbow back repeatedly, pounding Williams in the gut until he let off enough for him to break out of the choke hold.
Both men stood up as the storm continued to rage around them. Dylan was covered in mud and looked like a demon standing there. Breathing heavily as the mud dripped off of his face Dylan stared into Williams’ eyes. Williams met his eyes and turned to run again. Dylan screamed with rage and sprinted after him. It took mere seconds for him to tackle the out-of-shape man. They slid several feet through the mud. Williams kicked away from Dylan and both stood up.
He charged Williams again, this time leading with swinging fists. Dylan pummeled the man like a rag doll. First a left to Williams’ stomach then a wild haymaker swing to the man’s jaw. He continued to hit him with repeated left and right swings, sending Williams staggering back as he attempted to duck and block the blows. Dylan let go with a final uppercut that lifted Williams into the air to land him with a splash on the muddy ground.
Williams held his hands up to ward off Dylan. His face was cut and bloody as he took deep gasping breaths, “No more, you win. What do you want from me?”
Dylan pulled his aged pistol out of his hip holster and worked the slide, “I don’t want anything from you. I want you to give back to me what you took, but you can’t do that, can you. No one can. You took everything from me. You were given too many chances as far as I am concerned. We should have kicked you out of town before you could have hurt anyone. I’m done being nice.”
Dylan put his foot on Williams’ chest and held him in place.
“You can’t do this. This is wrong!”
“Wrong?” Dylan laughed slightly at the word, “You think this is wrong? You killed my wife. I am judge, jury, and executioner. I am hereby sentencing you to death.”
Lightning flashed again as the final gunshot rang out.
Dylan turned and walked away from the body. The anger he had built was bleeding away in a pool behind him. The only thing remaining was a vast emptiness he didn’t know could exist. He bent over and picked up his rifle out of the mud. He thought briefly about finding Williams’ pistol then decided against it. He wanted everything about Williams, his belongings, his body, his existence, to be left out here and forgotten forever. Somewhere down inside a part of him hoped the Corrupted would find him as he turned back towards Paradise Falls and started the long walk back to camp. There was no rush or need to hurry. There would be no one waiting for him to get home.
Chapter 1
December 25th, 2012
A deep blanket of snow covered Paradise Falls in a shroud of cold silence. A smoky haze filled the small Eastern Oregon valley. The only movement came from the town guards manning the walls of the commune turned fortress, most huddled around small fires to keep warm and awake during the long hours of nothing. Where narrow paths hadn’t been maintained between the small cabins the snow was nearly two feet deep. Each home had a small column of smoke rising from the wood stoves inside giving the wooded valley the warm smell of a heated hearth. The town had been quiet since the first heavy snowfall arrived in late November. There hadn’t been a single attack in well over a month. This had caused two different factions to evolve in the town. One side thought the Corrupted had died off from the cold and probably wouldn’t be back even when the weather warmed up. The other side assumed that
the Hunters just didn’t like the cold. Deep down inside no one truly believed they were really gone but denial was a powerful enemy to some. The rebuilding of the Sumter hive was hard to miss. The town sent out daily scouts to keep an eye on the Sumter hive and patrol the general area around the mountain they called home.
Most of the townspeople knew the first sign of a sunny warm day would bring the Hunters back around in their constant search for a weakness they could exploit. Some way to break through the layers of defenses that now surrounded the town. Some overlooked section of wall that would grant them access to all of the humans inside. The Hunters and Sappers would exploit that weakness and flood into the interior of the town, converting or killing all they came into contact with. To the survivors it seemed as if the destruction of humanity was the one driving force that kept the Corrupted going.
It has been over three months since their battle in the nearby town of Sumter. The team from Paradise Falls had delivered a heavy blow to the local Corrupted population. Dylan’s group had sent the central hive in the town skyward in a massive explosion but the trade-off in human lives lost hardly felt worth it. When it was reported that the hive was completely rebuilt from the damage they created a month later it made the pain of loss that much more powerful and meaningless. It had been easier to justify the loss of those so close when the town’s people could say the Corrupted had been stopped cold in Sumter. It was a sign that once again they had underestimated the enemy they were fighting.
To the survivors living in Paradise Falls, home was their final bastion for survival. Many had fled the bigger cities when the chaos of those first days began to spread, finding protection and community in the remote Oregon woods.
It was six months ago during the record heat of the summer when all hell had broken loose in the small town of Colfax, Washington. Dylan had called the town home his entire life and his wife Niccole moved there when she was a pig tailed little city girl. As far as anyone could tell this outbreak of Corrupted was duplicated across the country and possibly worldwide. The couple had fought their way south to the Central Eastern Oregon town not long after the first Corrupted had shown up on their doorstep. Daniel had been the town mayor and Dylan’s older brother. It was in their late teens when the two began to truly struggle for an identity of their own that the paths they chose in life began to diverge. Their views on nearly every aspect of their lives diverged so much that for them to even have a simple conversation without an argument breaking out wasn’t possible. All of those petty differences and all that time estranged had vanished in the blink of an eye. They had found in each other the brother they had grown up with. They had realized that the petty bickering about politics and the world in general amounted to nothing more than wasted breath. It was the old times they shared together as young kids running free in the Palouse hills that mattered. It was family and friendship that was truly important to them.
Daniel had been one of those lost in the battle of Sumter. Dylan still found himself grieving several months later and unable to come to terms with what had happened. His brother had been bitten during the fight. There was no cure that anyone yet knew of. No way to stave off the horrific and painful change that would come. They couldn’t save him and Daniel had known it. He had told Dylan he could already feel the fire burning through his blood as the disease or virus of whatever evil it was that moved the Corrupted converted his existence to theirs. He sacrificed himself in order to buy time for the rest of the team fighting their way out of Sumter. If he had fled with them there was nothing but pain and eventual death for him as he was quickly converted to the Corrupted way of life. Regardless of how little he really could have done, Dylan would forever feel like he didn’t do enough. He wasn’t even able to give Daniel a proper burial, just a simple headstone in the small town graveyard marking his passing and baring witness to his existence. The town had placed many of these makers since that previous summer.
This was the first Christmas for the town in a period of time that was now commonly referred to as ‘The Fall’. This was the shortened version of ‘The Fall of Mankind’. In normal conversations the days prior to the rise of the Corrupted were referred to as ‘Before the Fall’. Humans were being replaced by something else as the dominant life form. But survivors in pockets around the world continued to hold on. They had rallied and fought back during those tense first weeks. Paradise Falls was in communication with several other townships that had carved out a small island of safety in their part of the world. This network of survivors was scattered around the country and most information was through old style UHF radios and shorter range CB radios.
Word had come to them that other townships had managed to build out an existence in other remote places around the country. They had managed to make radio contact and talk to many of them over the past few months. But over time, one by one and without explanation they had gone dark. No screams on the radio, no warning. They just simply weren’t on the air anymore. The people of Paradise Falls would tell themselves that they had probably run out of fuel for power or the radio had given out. They would use any number of excuses accept what was most likely the truth. Nearly all of the holdouts they had been talking to more than a few hundred miles south of them had gone off the air. Doc had surmised that without the colder weather the Corrupted continued their relentless attacks. Most tended to silently agreed with him.
One group seemed to be much better off than those at Paradise Falls. They had managed to turn a Southern California mall into a fortress. Nearly endless food and water, supplies just a short walk down the now dead escalators. They seemed to have it all in their concrete castle. Then one night they were no longer on the radio. No calls for help, no warnings, nothing. At the standard time of their weekly radio call there was nothing but static. That was over nine weeks ago yet they still sat by the radio at the appropriate time waiting for a signal that they knew would never come.
The one thing everyone knew but no one would talk about was coming. Seasons change and the mountains would be warming before too much longer. The snow would soon be gone and the green would return. It also meant their reprieve from the Corrupted was going to end soon. Once again they would be struggling for their existence. Once again the fight would come to them whether they were ready or not. Once again they would be pitted against an evil that wanted nothing more than for them to be gone from Paradise Falls and gone from the earth as a species.
--1--
Off to one side of the central town square there was a row of small identical cabins. Almost all of them had their small porch facing the center of town and wore a fairly plain but standard oak front door. One cabin stood out from the rest in this regard. One door had been painted blue sometime back when the inhabitants of Paradise Falls had decided that the mayor’s home should stand out from the rest and be something special. What had started out as a practical joke came to mean so much more to the town. Inside the cabin with the blue door Dylan and Niccole Murphy along with their adopted daughter Erica were starting their first Christmas in Paradise Falls. The three had already finished breakfast and were sitting around the warm fireplace passing out the meager gifts under the small tree.
Dylan handed a wrapped box to Niccole and smiled, “Do you have any idea how hard this was to hide from you?” He sat back down on the fireplace hearth and shook his foot nervously.
Niccole smiled at him lovingly, “I can imagine.” She was being extra careful opening the paper wrapped box. Gift wrap had become quite a commodity around town.
With the paper carefully removed she placed the white lightweight cardboard box on the coffee table. She had absolutely no idea what Dylan managed to get her or when he was able to sneak away and make it for that matter. To her it seemed like he spent every waking minute making sure everything was running smooth in the town. Her husband didn’t run the town so much as he had become the glue that bound it together. Most nights he wouldn’t go to bed so much as collapse onto it.
“I�
��m really hoping you will like it,” Dylan said with a nervous smile.
Erica was wearing an oversized fleece robe and sat next to Niccole. She could barely contain her excitement as she leaned in to get a good first look. Even though they were not her parents by blood no one would ever be able to tell by watching them. On their way south from Colfax Dylan and Niccole had rescued her from a rather eccentric group of people at a remote rest stop. The three shared a bond as close as any blood relative could. They were her mom and dad and her birth parents couldn’t have chosen better caretakers if they had tried.
Niccole pulled the top off of the box and folded back the paper inside. She turned an astonished face to Dylan then pulled the red sequined cloth out of the box. As she pulled the dress free it unfolded into an elegant dinner dress, “Oh my word Dylan! How did you ever get this? Where did you get this? It’s beautiful!” As she pulled the dress completely out of the box a small bottle of perfume rolled onto the floor. “Perfume too!”
Erica picked up the perfume while Niccole stood and held the dress against herself. The sleeveless dress came to just above her knees. “I love how it flows!” she exclaimed as she twisted left and right. She picked up the bottle and looked at it, “It’s even the kind I always use. How in the world did you manage this? Dylan this is amazing! I must be dreaming!”