“My name is Oscar Boruta, and you are a foolish man. This is the End of Days, yet you stroll through the countryside without a care for your own safety.”
Hernandez looked around at the open countryside. “All seems pretty safe to me, old man. Your concern is unwanted.”
The old man grinned. Burnt abominations in the shape of men emerged from the landscape, seeping from the bushes and stepping out from behind trees. The old man's grin turned to a scowl. “You haven’t taken a single step without it being seen, fool. It is only your outright foolishness that has allowed you to live this long. I admit to a certain curiosity. You wear anger around your neck like a leaden torc. Your soul reeks like smoking, black oil. A dark heart like yours is a shame to waste.”
“What are you talking about?” Hernandez eyeballed the demons coming closer on all sides. “You’re human. What are you doing with these creatures?”
The old man blinked, eyelids moving sideways like a lizard's. He flicked a forked tongue. “We were all human once, fool, but no more. I am something greater now, a ruler of a new earth. Your life is mine, fool, as is all life fated to tremble beneath the gaze of the Red Lord.”
“Who is-”
The old man ignored him. “That black chain around your neck—who put it there?”
Hernandez frowned, then realised the man was referring to his anger. “A man who wronged me. A traitor.”
“There’s a place for traitors, but it’s been recently relocated.”
Hernandez was tired of being spoken to like a child. “Leave me be, Mr Boruta.”
“Do not make demands of a Lord, you worthless insect. I could crush your skull with a blink of my eye. Your insolence amuses me, though, as does the blackness of your heart. I will allow you to take your revenge, fool, for the spilling of human blood honours my master. Go! Go and spread your suffering.”
Hernandez nodded, strangely thankful that someone supported his mission. He took a step forward to leave, but then stopped. He realised he was surrounded by hundreds of demons. They would rip him apart, surely. “How do I—”
“Come here, fool.”
“W-what?”
“DO NOT MAKE ME REPEAT MYSELF.”
Hernandez stumbled towards the frail old man, almost wetting himself, as even the sun seemed to flee. As soon as he got near, Boruta lashed out and nearly broke Hernandez's wrist, clutching it in a crushing grip. Hernandez wanted to scream, but he knew it would only shame him in the eyes of this wicked creature disguised as a man.
Boruta gritted his sharp, rotting teeth and raised his free hand. The nails on each finger lengthened like retractable blades. He sunk them down into Hernandez's exposed wrist.
This time, he had no choice but to scream.
After several seconds of excruciating pain, the old man shoved Hernandez away who bent over double, clutching his burning flesh. “Keep your arm attached, and you will be safe, for now.”
Hernandez rubbed his burning forearm and felt ridges. When he examined, he noticed strange markings scored into his flesh. Scar tissue had already formed over the wounds.
What had the old man done?
Boruta waved a hand dismissively. “Go!”
Hernandez began walking, his legs hollow and unstable. The demons in his way glowered, but they moved out of his path. Within seconds, a dozen of them had scattered, leaving a clear passage through their centre. Hernandez then realised what the old man had done.
The markings on his arm...
He was untouchable. Free to move amongst the demons.
For now, the old man had said. You will be safe, for now.
Better make the time count, Hernandez thought, making his way towards Portsmouth with both hands clenched in fists.
23
SKULLFACE
Skullface grew tired of battling with the children, so he shoved them aside and into the arms of his minions. Let them restrain the snivelling worms, he had preparations to make. Children of his own to nurture. Their arrival would be glorious. Their plague of pain a joyous event.
Beedle. Molok.
The original connoisseurs of agony.
Skullface trod on the disembodied skull of a dead human and enjoyed its hollow crunch. The corpse was not his doing, but it still pleased him. This field, with its gaudy fairground rides, had laid witness to some wonderful atrocity in days past. The brethren had swarmed here and left a meadow of human corpses behind them. Every seat on the Ferris Wheel had a body hanging from it. The coconut shy's bristly fruit had been replaced with open-mouthed heads; eyes gouged out and placed between the teeth. It felt like Lord Amon’s work. Had his army been here? Scouring the land clean?
Skullface sought to honour the Red Lord with the greatest gift he could give: the gift of his son and daughter, Beedle and Molok. The first humans ever to bask in the suffering of others. Humanity’s first serial killers.
Beedle and Molok, twins alike in looks and spirit, had tortured and gutted a mongrel before they turned six years old. He, their father, had found them playing amongst the animal's innards in the hills beside their home. The murder had not disturbed him, no. He was a proud father.
He was Cain.
His children had murder in their veins.
They killed their first woman at nine years of age. Beedle had wept in the forest, yelling that she was lost and afraid. A nearby shepherd’s wife heard her cries and came to help, but Molok waited nearby with a club and cleaved her skull in two. The children played in the woman's insides until dusk and even took the intestines home to attract more hungry mongrels to kill. Sometimes they ate the mongrels. In years later, they would eat their human victims too.
While Cain had lived a thousand years, his children were young, less blessed by the pure life force of God passed down through Adam and Eve. Every line of descendants diluted that essence and therefore, Cain would watch his children age and die. Before that happened, though, they would show the world true darkness. Humanity could only know light if it cowered from the shadows. That was Cain’s gift to the world.
Balance.
Evil needed to exist for good to flourish, and his children would provide it. It was as God intended.
Yet it was all ruined by a motherless widow. Her tears burned Cain's memory even now, millennia later.
That whore.
Beedle and Molok were in their twentieth year when they brought home the twin girls. They had never killed fellow twins before, or even seen such an oddity repeat itself. Such a thing was rare, and the villagers exalted any children that came in pairs. Beedle and Molok had tortured them for days, cutting off parts and strangling them half to death before bringing them back again. All the while, Cain tended his cornfield, readying the year’s harvest.
The children’s mother had returned home from a walk that evening to find her husband dead—his skinless body propped beneath a nearby willow tree. Screaming without relent, she had feared finding her precious twin girls the same way, but merely found them missing. The men from the village saw the devastation wrought upon the woman and set out with torches and clubs. Rumours had fluttered for many a year that innocent souls fell to the creatures at the shack upon the hill—the one surrounded by the cornfields.
Cain had hidden his identity for many years, known only as a quiet man who traded corn. That he even had children was unknown to most, which was why, when the widow and the mob fell upon Beedle and Molok in the midst of peeling off the dead girls’ faces, they had been horrified. But their horror had quickly turned to fury.
Cain had tried to intervene, but he was restrained by too many men and forced to watch while his glorious progeny were strung up by their ankles as the snarling widow hacked away at their torsos. Cain winced as his children's ribs broke, fought his captors tooth and nail for the three hours it took for the widow to murder them. Then, when the whore was done, the men had pulled Beedle and Molok down and set their corpses on fire.
Mankind had learnt murder that night, and let the darkness i
n willingly.
The mob left Cain with two broken legs and both hands cut off, a dead man unable to even staunch his own bleeding. But he had left the wretched earth with a grin, for, using the last of his strength, he had visited the murderous widow at dawn, found her sleeping on a patch of hay in her barn. He set upon her with handless arms and floppy legs, yet had successfully impregnated her by the time her screams brought help. Before anyone could drag him away, Cain bled out right there on top of her.
The widow had kept the child.
Enoch.
Sent to Hell to burn with Lucifer and the rebelling angels, Cain found himself unable to locate his children. From Lucifer himself, he learned that God had banished them to the darkest pits of the Abyss, a place he could not enter.
Why God? Why did you punish my children for their nature? They brought darkness to your earth so that mankind could truly enjoy the warmth of your glow. You punish innocents.
You punish my children?
Then the Red Lord had burst forth from Hell's centre and invaded God’s many paradises—each one in turn. Now, Cain would use his captured prey to finally free his children from the undeserved prison. He glared at the two snivelling children now and wished there had been more to pick from. The boy was defective, but would have to do. Children were scarce in any form. The girl was pure, yet resembled his daughter in no way. Again, compromises had to be made. Soon their bodies would play host to Beedle and Molok and humanity’s original serial killers would return.
This time their lives would be glorious and without end.
24
RICHARD HONEYWELL
Rain poured again, the sky so grey, day felt like night. The van’s automatic headlights came on and cut a shaft through the silvery sheets of falling rain. Wipers lunged back and forth furiously to keep back the tide. Richard’s followers were able to cram themselves into a single vehicle—so few of them left.
Richard rode up front. Corporal Martin had the wheel. “Which way?” he asked Richard as they approached a T-junction.
Richard closed his eyes and listened to his blood pulse in his ears. If God existed, this was the time to lend a hand. Please, just show me the way? Which way do I go? Give me a sign. Please.
Movement caught his eye. Corporal Martin leant forward over the steering wheel. “Is that…?”
“Yes,” said Richard, a bemused expression on his face. “That there is a chicken crossing the road.”
Dillon and Alice had fought to save the lives of a group of chickens because they were innocent children who still valued life. If Richard was hoping for a sign from God, this was about the best he could imagine. The chicken bobbed its head without a care in the world, despite the heavy rain, and then disappeared into a nearby hedge off to the left.
“That way,” said Richard, pointing to the left. “We go that way.”
Corporal Martin gripped the wheel and took the turn. As they passed by the hedge, the chicken was nowhere to be seen. Richard was unsure if it had ever been there to begin with. They headed down the road for the better part of a mile before they were forced to stop. An overturned lorry, its cargo spilled across the road, blocked their way ahead. A small slip road led down a woody embankment on the left.
“Skullface could have blocked the road ahead,” said Corporal Martin. “Could be an ambush.”
Richard thought about it but disagreed. “He didn’t go that way.”
“How do you know?”
The lorry’s fallen cargo contained vegetables, fruits, and grains. A miasma of mould festered on the road—blackened bananas covered in fuzz, dried out apple husks withering away like cancer-infected hearts. Yet none of it had been trodden on or disturbed. No apple or banana lay squashed or kicked aside.
“Skullface has demons with him,” Richard explained. “A lot of them. If they came this way, they would have trampled through all this mess. Nothing is crushed or splattered though. A horde of demons did not come this way. If they went anywhere, it was down this slip road.”
Corporal Martin looked at the small road leading down the woody embankment and apparently thought about it. Stapled to a tree, a fading blue poster flapped against the rain's onslaught. CASTLE FAIRGROUND. BANK HOLIDAY WEEKEND.
“I suppose we should visit the fair, Richard.”
“I doubt there’ll be candy floss.”
They pulled away from the main road, leaving the overturned lorry in their wake.
THEY TOOK THINGS SLOWLY, the battering rain making the journey no easier. The slip road was old and cracked and led down into a quaint village with white-painted cottages with thatched roofs. The tallest building was a stone church, but even that was small by typical standards. Desiccated corpses littered the small grassy common in the village centre.
Corporal Martin groaned. “There must have been a bunch of people holding out here. How long did they survive before… this?”
Richard bit his lip and imagined Dillon like this, dead and rotting. “This has to stop.”
“No shit.”
“I wish I could kill every one of them. They deserve to pay.”
Corporal Martin sighed but said nothing. What could he say? That humanity had lost, and the demons would never pay? It didn’t need saying.
It didn't need fucking saying.
“I think the fairground is over there,” said Richard, trying not to let his mind fly away. “Takes us in.”
They took a turn and headed towards a Ferris Wheel peeking out behind the church. They found it standing in a wide-open field, alongside Waltzers and Bumper Cars, a Fun House and Ghost Train. The Ferris Wheel took up the centre of the fairground, and from each of its spokes hung a corpse. Inside its bottom capsule, Alice and Dillon sat in traumatised silence.
“We found them,” said Corporal Martin, mouth agape. “They're here.”
Richard put his hand on the door release, but fingers appeared around his other wrist.
“Just wait a minute,” said Corporal Martin. “Look!”
There were demons everywhere, hidden amongst the grisly ornaments and dilapidated rides. Dozens. Not hiding, just dormant.
“We have no ammo,” Corporal Martin added. “They’ll rip us apart if we go down there.”
Richard tensed his arm where Corporal Martin was grabbing it, wondering if he should pull free and make a run for it, but then he calmed down and took a breath. “My son is right there, alive. How much longer until that changes?”
“If Skullface wanted to kill him, he would have already done it, surely. Something else is going on.”
He was right. Something else was going on.
Skullface appeared then from behind the Ferris Wheel, flicking blood from the gaping throat of a severed head. It hadn't belonged to a human, but a demon. With the blood, Skullface seemed to be making a circle around the ride. Inside the capsule, Dillon and Alice remained sitting in terrified stasis. Richard couldn’t sit idly by while his son endured such horror.
“It looks like he’s performing some kind of ritual,” said Corporal Martin.
“I don’t care what he’s doing. This is the end for that abomination. Whatever it takes, I will kill him.”
There was a bang on the back wall behind them in the van. The rest of the group, riding inside the cargo space, no doubt wanted to know why they had stopped.
Richard winced. “Shut them up before—”
The banging turned frantic. The van rocked on its suspension so violently that Corporal Martin and Richard fell against each other, knocking heads.
Terror filled Corporal Martin's eyes, and he pointed through the windscreen. “Shit! They’ve spotted us!”
Sure enough, Skullface stopped before the Ferris Wheel and stared right up the hill towards the van.
“Shit!” Richard pulled the door handle and tumbled out as the van continued rocking. He stumbled around to the side and then to the back door, which was still closed. The men and women inside were screaming. What was going on in there?
; Hands trembling, Richard grabbed the rear latch and yanked open the back.
Chaos met him.
“Help!” someone screamed, but it was already too late. Two primates tore through the van’s cargo bay like the wild animals they were, slashing throats and raking eyeballs. Together, and in such close confines, the demons could slice apart the trapped humans with ease. The metal bed of the van grew slick with blood, and it began to pour from the rear lip onto the grass at Richard’s feet.
One soldier slumped to his chest on the van's floor and crawled towards Richard with his arms out imploringly. “W-we opened the door. W-we thought it was you.”
Richard choked on his own vomit. Skullface had known the entire time they would be coming. Had probably known of their presence the moment they arrived in the village.
“Come on,” shouted Corporal Martin in his ear. “It’s too late. We have to get out of here.”
Richard clenched his fists and bit his lip hard enough to taste blood. “No. I’m tired of running. Dillon is here.” He pulled the combat knife from the sheath at his belt and left the bloodshed in the van. The screaming victims were bleeding out and the demons would silence them within the next few seconds. In the end, they had died as he'd feared they would, like frightened lambs. And he had played a part in that. They had followed him to their deaths in less than a day.
So, it was left up to him to make the bastards pay.
Corporal Martin dodged out of Richard’s way as he sped down the grassy embankment towards the fairground. The demons below gathered to meet him, but they underestimated his furious haste. He passed by the first bunch of demons before they had a chance to grab him, and the next group that got in his way found themselves barged to the ground like kittens hit by a locomotive. Skullface lay right in his path, and he raised his knife, ready to bury it in the bastard’s eye socket.
Dillon saw him coming and screamed. There was hope in his voice.
Extinction: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel (Hell on Earth Book 3) Page 16