The Dark Horde

by Brewin

  She smiled at the sound of more groans from the audience. “This, folks, is Hermit’s Knoll. From there the track winds back and past a junction where you don’t keep going straight ahead, but turn sharply right to head back towards the school. The track crosses Carters Creek a bit further on and following the track up the other side, you’ll see that it joins onto the standard course where the stiles are over the fence into the horse paddock. From there it’s just a simple matter of following the standard course home.”

  Danny wasn’t listening to the directions. He never did. It was much easier just to follow those in front of him.

  “One final thing. It is raining and most of this course is on dirt tracks, so it’ll be slippery in some places. So take it easy, especially when going downhill like you will when you leave here.”

  The humans moved to a line drawn in the sand. Some pushed to the front, others did last minute stretches and some just talked.

  The time had come...

  Danny saw the others lining up and slowly followed. He stood at the back of the throng to avoid attention.

  Mrs Moffatt stood beside the line that bulged with poised runners. She held up the starting pistol. Heads turned to look at her or bent low, eyes and ears straining to judge the moment to start.

  Adjusting an earplug, she pulled the trigger...

  And like a river bursting its banks, the masses surged forward. Five hundred odd feet trampling down the dirt road leading past the main wood shed, through the gates and out of the school grounds.

  The usual show-offs began the race by sprinting away, savouring the few moments they led the pack, before burning themselves out and finishing behind the first hundred.

  Danny ran with the tail of the group, in his usual company of the overweight, asthmatic and physically inept. He surrendered his body to the gravity of the hill, letting it carry him like a leaf floating downstream. A slave of will, Danny followed like all the others.

  The human herd began to stretch out as they settled into their running rhythms. Fleshy frail creatures struggling to obey orders, their knees wobbling and jarring with their descent.

  The lead pack was past the basketball courts and the Wood Shed as the last runners reached the bottom of the hill. By the time the stragglers reached the Wood Shed, the leaders were beyond the school gates and halfway to Mueller Road.

  Danny ran in a slow jog at the end of the field. His chest burning, his breath became laboured and a stitch began to aggravate his left side. He made to stop and walk...

  But his legs would not respond.

  Some alien force dragged him onward, compelling his legs to keep moving... A force he feared was all too familiar.

  Danny ran on, moving past the others around him who had stopped to walk like he wished. His face flushed and his side aching, he felt like vomiting but still his body refused to relent. Now positioned behind three-quarters of the pack, he saw some of his fellow Unit members up ahead.

  The beast within kept calling...

  Danny continued to move further upfield, stranger to this new determination. Of his Unit he passed Mark, then Price, then Mike and the others he ran with.

  Some ignored his passing and some turned their heads in amazement, whilst others sneered things like “Are you running away again, Danny!” or “Is your mummy waiting for you at the end!”

  Danny ran on past them. The voices, the pain and even the world faded into unconsciousness. It was easy to forget who he was.

  He reached Mueller Road and broke into a sprint as he turned down its length, shackled and helpless to this strange drive. He shoved his way past others who normally beat the shit out of him, surging beyond their reach before they could respond. He dashed past the drink stops without slowing and leapt easily over a fallen tree at the side of the road that others avoided.

  “That was Danny Malone!” said a stupefied Mrs Farell to the principal Lucas Prescott at the drink stop.

  Nearing the track turn-off now and in the upper half of the runners, Danny’s limited body finally gave out on him. His knobbly legs buckled and he went crashing to the hard asphalt. There was a horrible ripping sound as the tarmac tore at his hands and knees.

  Nathan and John, the two runners he had just passed, almost followed him down. Jumping clear, they both stopped.

  “Shit, Danny! Are you alright?” John said as he moved to Danny’s side to help him up.

  Blood flowing down his leg from one of his knees, Danny forced himself up and pushed John away with lacerated hands.

  Nathan pointed at Danny’s gory knee. “You better go back to Mr Prescott.”

  Danny seemed not to hear them, they couldn’t even be sure that he saw them, he simply turned and ran on again, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.

  Inhuman and unstoppable.

  The road became an open path, then a muddy trail winding through Wattle trees towards Hermit’s Knoll. Branches swayed above, dumping wattles, leaves and rain on those below.

  Danny, now abreast of three-quarters of the field, didn’t hear the cries of those he passed. There was only the wind in his ears.

  Danny coursed up the steep hill and careered down the other side, leaping over boulders and past an ever-thinning field of other runners. His feet slipped a few times on the muddy descent but he retained his footing and the momentum carried him onward.

  The ground flattened out and continued through wet scrub until reaching the turn off. Danny charged ahead into the undergrowth the other side of the path, oblivious to the barbed blackberries and stinging nettles there to mar his passage...

  Then his head hit something hard and the world went black.

  “You’re a failure.”

  Danny’s head throbbed with pain, his hair sticky as it clung to his face. His body leaden, he lay immobile in the mud. His eyes stuttered open, but he could only make out splashes of red adorning him. A chill voice whispered in his ear.

  “We should kill you now.”

  Danny managed a forlorn whimper, “Then do it!”

  “Haha! You think we’ll reward you with charity? No Danny, you will suffer. We will torture and rape you until your body is so mangled and broken that you cease to be recognisable as having once been human. We will reduce you to what you started your pathetic existence as: protoplasmic jelly. And then Danny, you will be re-created... As one of uuusss.”

  “Wh-Why are you doing this?”

  “A puppet does not question its master. It knows only to obey. Now rise!”

  As if by strings, Danny was lifted to his feet, scattering flies that crawled over the exposed meat of his torn knee. Searing pain scored his head. His upper body hung in the air like a crucifixion.

  “Wh-Wh–”

  Danny suddenly pivoted and ran at a tree to his left. Unable to stop himself, he impacted face-on against the unyielding trunk. The crippling force felled him instantly. He felt a burning sensation in his nose as fresh blood began to spill down his face.

  “Haha. Dance puppet!”

  Once more he rose against his will and threw himself at the tree. Again the collision floored him. Blood washed his eyes and his nose was a pulpy mess squashed against his cheek. Unable to resist, he rose again and again to keep hurling himself at the tree.

  “Please! Please stop!”

  “Even death is denied you, Danny. There is only one way it will stop.”

  “I’ll do anything! Just please stop!”

  His head jerked towards the stub of a broken branch, poising to slam eye-first onto the protruding spike.

  “Obeeey.”

  Danny thrashed at the branches around him, but still his head remained poised for impalement.

  Between choked sobs, “I obey! I obey! Ple-e-e-eeeaaassse!”

  “You will not fail again.”

  Danny flung himself at the spike. He felt it pop his eyeball before driving into his brain... Obliterating consciousness.

  TUESDAY 6:31 PM

  No one was there.

  Brian
looked through steady rain on his windshield at Frank Weston’s house. In fading daylight he saw white police tape extending around the modest weatherboard building and down a dirt side road to encompass a white Torana lying there. Neither the building nor the vehicle showed signs of activity. There were no other cars or people to be seen.

  Fucking typical.

  Brian sighed as he picked up his two-way radio...

  “VKC Wangaratta, this is Howqua Hills 150.”

  The only reply was static.

  “VKC Wangaratta, are you there?”

  Again, only static.

  He threw the handpiece at the dashboard and flung open the car door. He stepped out of the patrol into a large puddle.

  Brian looked down at the muddy water splashed over him...

  One fucking thing after another.

  A strange mewing sound reached his ears, somewhere close. Brian turned to determine its source as the noise emanated again from a copse of gum trees near the Torana.

  That’s it.

  Brian stormed over to open the trunk at the back of his 4WD patrol. Inside laid an equipment belt with a pair of steel handcuffs, a baton-sized torch and a pump-action shotgun. He took them all.

  Shotgun ready, he approached the copse of trees from which the noise came. Incessant rain soaked him, adrenalin flooded him.

  The distressed mewing continued. Brian slowed his pace as he reached the trees and peered inside...

  Twitching in pools of brown and red were the mutilated remnants of some marsupial animal, its body torn asunder, its head a flattened pulp. And still it made that horrible sound.

  Brian raised his shotgun. “I haven’t got time for this shit.”

  Twigs snapped in the grass behind him.

  He spun around to look across a muddy paddock at a line of gum trees a hundred metres away. He used his torch to scan the area. Trees and scrub waved in the wind and rain, but he could see little else. Satisfied, he turned back to the mewing...

  Lightning struck nearby, revealing a host of hairy black figures crouched among the trees Brian had surveyed, their red eyes lighting up the scrub like spot fires.

  Brian used the torch to guide his shot at the animal’s head and pulled the trigger in time with the coming thunderclap. The animal’s head disintegrated in an explosion of blood, bone and brain.

  Probably shouldn’t have done that... Fuck it.

  Brian looked up at Frank’s house, a beacon of calm amid the howling storm.

  He ran his torch over the abandoned Torana. Unlocked, its rubbish-filled interior revealed little of interest. Stepping through mud, he approached the house.

  Hmm, maybe I should try the radio again.

  Brian returned to his car and picked up the handpiece hanging from the dashboard.

  Still only static.

  Rain continued to lash him as the wind screamed in his ear. Then he realised the wind was also coming from the radio...

  Calling his name.

  Shotgun firmly in hand, he started again for Frank’s house.

  Under cover of wind, rain and darkness, something followed.

  He strode across the wooden porch, passing a saturated green couch, to the front door. He rapped on the door with the brass knocker and stepped back.

  Only the raging storm answered. He shrugged and tried the door knob...

  The door swung open to reveal a short grimy hallway adorned by posters of rock bands, cars and girls. It led to a cluttered lounge on his left and around a corner to the right. There was a filthy stench he could not identify, and yet somehow, it was familiar.

  Carefully, Brian stepped inside the building and leaned around the doorway leading into the lounge with shotgun raised.

  No one.

  Beer bottles, food wrappers, dirty plates, videos and porno mags lay strewn about the lounge: a scene of bachelor excess. Exits the other side of the room were a doorway into the kitchen, where the familiar stench was strongest, and a door to the backyard.

  He stepped past the refuse of the lounge to look in the kitchen...

  And into the red demonic eyes of a huge wolf-like beast. It stood hunched against the middle of the kitchen ceiling, arms ending in savage claws outstretched as if to greet him.

  “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Really,” Brian answered as he fired both barrels of his twelve-gauge shotgun point-blank into the creature’s chest.

  The blast knocked the monster backwards as the pellet spray shredded its flesh. Its ribcage shattered with the force, ripping the vital organs within. Screaming in agony, it crumpled to the ground but managed to keep its eyes defiantly fixed on Brian.

  “You cannot kill what is already dead.”

  Brian laughed, pumped the shotgun to reload it and lifted both barrels to the demon’s face. As the monster lunged, he fired again.

  Its head exploded in a spray of purple and grey, painting the walls and floor the other side of Brian. The beast fell still.

  “Your face is already dead!”

  Think I’ll have a cigarette after that effort.

  Brian lit up as he admired the carnage stretched before him...

  Then footsteps could be heard on the front porch.

  Brian reloaded his shotgun and flicked the cigarette he’d only just started into the carcass at his feet. He crept back into the lounge...

  Another of the demons was there, lunging for Brian as he emerged from the doorway. It grabbed the barrel of his gun as it fired, taking out a large section of wall and a hanging clock.

  Shit, two of the bastards! I’m gunna need more ammo!

  The demon loomed over him as it ripped the shotgun from his grasp. Brian launched himself at a nearby window.

  Brian hit the window hard enough to break through the flyscreen and glass. Splinters cut his forearm and fell around him as he landed hip-first onto the concrete driveway that ran down the side of the house.

  A slavering head emerged through the broken window, roaring.

  Ignoring the pain in his arm and side, Brian surged to his feet and down the driveway to the front of the house...

  Waiting for Brian was Sergeant Douglas McDougall and his sidekick Constable Robert Harrington. Both had their pistols aimed at his chest.

  “Don’t move, Brian!” Douglas ordered.

  Brian stopped, raising his hands. He glanced over his shoulder... Nothing followed.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Brian said.

  “You’re under arrest, Brian, for the murder of Barney and Frank Weston. And if you resist,” Douglas smiled, “we’ll shoot you.”

  TUESDAY 7:48 PM

  “You won’t break me... You won’t take me...”

  The lyrics of Judas Priest blared from the stereo next to Jason as he wrestled the joystick playing Double Dragon on his Commodore 64 computer.

  “Cos I’ll fight you under blood-red skies.”

  Jason roamed alleyways and sewers, slamming and bashing hundreds of enemies, in his quest to clear the streets and ultimately rescue his woman. A quest made easier using a cheat to give him infinite lives.

  Then the phone rang, summoning him back to reality.

  Jason left the couch and the game he’d already finished four times to answer the phone.

  “Hello?”

  He ran a hand over his shaven head. “Aaron! Where the hell have you been?... I went ‘round to your house last night and you weren’t there. I haven’t been able to get onto anyone. It was like you, Bruce and Vino had all disappeared!”

  Jason rocked back in surprise. “Well shit, sounds like a story! Um, d’you wanna come over now? I’m not doing anything and the oldies are out somewhere ‘til about ten.”

  Jason nodded, “Yeah, cool man. I’ll see you soon then. Just give me, say, ten minutes or so ‘cos I gotta go take a shit.”

  Jason laughed, “Yeah mate, a real beauty!”

  The doorbell rang.

  Jason strode up to the door of the neat four-bedroom home and pulled it open...<
br />
  Aaron stood there like death. Matted hair fell across a pale unshaven face. Bloodshot eyes stared at Jason from worn sockets.

  “Holy shit, Aaron! You look fucked!”

  Aaron answered grimly, “I am.”

  “Well, come in and sit down. Tell me what’s happened.”

  Jason began to lead Aaron down the hall towards the lounge before pausing at the doorway to the kitchen.

  He turned to Aaron, who was following him like a shadow. “D’you wanna drink?”

  “Naaah, it’s alright.”

  Jason shrugged and turned back for the lounge.

  They sat on leather couches either side of a coffee table occupied by Jason’s computer.

  Jason squinted at Aaron. “Your eyes look fucked!”

  “They are,” Aaron replied, prodding an eyelid...

  His eyeball popped out of its bloody socket to hang down the side of his face.

  Jason leapt back on the couch. “Fucking hell, Aaron!”

  Aaron calmly pushed the eyeball back into its socket. “Naaah, it’s alright. It’s just a lazy eye.”

  Jason cringed with revulsion. “You’ve gotta be out of your fucking mind, Aaron! You gotta get that treated!”

  “Maybe...” Aaron smiled, looking at Jason with his one good eye. “Or maybe I’ll just take yours!”

  Aaron dived at Jason. Jason kicked his leg up to catch Aaron with his foot as he sailed towards him. Aaron’s arms stretched out, fingers seeking Jason’s eyes.

  This can’t really be happening, can it?

  Struggling to hold Aaron off, Jason saw a thick purple scar around Aaron’s neck... Splitting to leak a viscous purple fluid.

  Jason was speechless with horror as he reached for a vase behind him.

  “GIMME YOUR FUCKIN’ EYES, CUNT!” Aaron screamed as his ‘lazy eye’ slipped out again to dangle freely.

  Jason grabbed the vase and brought it down on Aaron’s head with smashing force, drenching him and the room. Oozing hot purple fluids, Aaron collapsed onto Jason, pinning him against the couch.