Pagan
Apocalypse
Wrath of the Old Gods Book 1.5
By John Triptych
J Triptych Publishing
Copyright ©2016 by John Triptych
All rights reserved.
ISBN (soft cover) 978-621-95332-2-5
J Triptych Publishing
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, and/or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover by Deranged Doctor Design (http://www.derangeddoctordesign.com)
Interior formatting by Phillip Gessert (http://phillipgessert.com/)
Author’s
note
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For Cholly and Freddie.
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
The Garden of Proserpine
Chapter 1
It was around eleven in the morning when the call for evacuation finally came but it was far too late. I had been sitting in my bedroom just staring at all the posters of my favorite cars that I had to leave behind and I was feeling rather gutted about it. I had two bags that were all packed up; I actually wanted to bring more but Dad said no, just bring what you could run with so I had one rucksack filled with my football kit along with my favorite t-shirts. The other gym bag was filled with two pairs of my best trainers and another pair of expensive inline skates (there was no chance that I would leave those behind) that I begged my mum to buy when we went shopping just two weeks ago when I turned thirteen. And finally my mini-laptop was strapped in on the bottom of the bag too. I had wanted to bring the two game consoles as well but Dad insisted we leave those behind. All that was left in the closet was my school uniforms and I most certainly wouldn’t be taking those filthy rags with me.
My dad started to shout at me from downstairs. “Steve, get down here, now!”
“I’m coming already,” I said as I ran out of my room and hurried down the small flight of stairs to the ground floor.
The two of them were just standing there near the front door, waiting. Dad was wearing a jacket over the wool sweater that my grandmother had knitted for him while she was dying of cancer in her hospital bed a few years back. My mother was wearing jeans and the blouse she usually wore at the office; her mascara had run down her cheeks and it was obvious she’d been crying. Both had on the rugged mountain rucksacks that Dad had bought for all of us when we went camping in Scotland last summer and it looked like they had filled them up with only the essential stuff.
It occurred to me that my sister wasn’t there. “Where’s Amy?”
They both looked at each other incredulously. Mum was wild-eyed; it looked like she was about to scream before she put her hand over her mouth.
Dad turned around and looked at me. There was a growing fear in his eyes. “I thought she was upstairs with you?”
I rolled my eyes. “Why would she hang out in my room all morning?”
Dad took off his rucksack and started to run upstairs, shouting some more. “Amy! Where are you?”
Mum’s chin was trembling as she placed both her hands on my shoulders. “Please tell me you saw her this morning, Steve.”
I couldn’t believe they thought she was with me. “I’m sorry, Mum. When I woke up I took a peek over at her room and she wasn’t there. The bed hadn’t even been slept in,” I said softly.
Mum put a fist in her mouth. “Oh my God.”
At that moment a loudspeaker could be heard in the street outside. “May I have your attention, please. The final call for the evacuation has begun. We have enough transports to take you all and you are advised to take only the items that you can carry. No pets will be allowed to join you. Can everyone please line up in an orderly manner so we can begin processing you now.”
Dad ran back down the stairs. His forehead was dripping with sweat. “Where the bloody hell is she?”
“Bill, we have to go,” Mum said to him as she tugged at my arm while opening the front door.
As the three of us walked out into the street we could see the whole neighborhood was there. Two military transports were at the end of the lane and it looked like representatives from the city council were there along with a squad of soldiers who were guarding everything. This was the first time I had ever seen armed men in full battle gear and it looked terribly exciting.
As we lined up behind our neighbors, the Tasker family, Dad turned around and looked at me. “Are you sure you don’t know where she went to? She seems to talk to you more than to us these days,” he said.
“I think I might know where she is,” I said.
Mum started to get hysterical again and several other families standing alongside us began to notice. “Oh my God, why didn’t you tell us! Where is she?”
I shrugged. “I think she might be with her boyfriend; his name is Mark, I think.”
Dad’s eyes widened like saucers. “How could she be with him at a time like this? Where does he live for God’s sake?”
I pointed to the other end of the street. “A few blocks down that way, just a few houses away from my mate Ray.”
Mum was livid. “So that’s why she didn’t complain when I asked her to make sure you didn’t walk alone to Raymond’s house—her boyfriend lived nearby and she never told us!”
Dad shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe all this. Why didn’t she ever tell us she had a boyfriend?”
“Perhaps because she thought you might not approve of him,” I said.
“Rubbish,” Dad said. “I’ve always been open minded about who she sees. She’s almost eighteen and will be taking her A-level exams next year.”
I winked at him. It was nice to see them squirming with worry for a change. They never used to ask for my advice on anything. “You do remember the last time she had a boyfriend, right? You almost threw him out onto the pavement.”
A city councilman at the front of the line was now standing beside us. He was busy jotting down names on a clipboard. “Okay, you’re next, can I have your names, please.”
“Symonds,” Dad sai
d to him. “William, Emma, Amelia, and Stephen.”
The councilman checked off the page on his clipboard and then looked back up at him. “You gave me four names but there are only three of you.”
“Amelia’s n-not with us at this moment,” Mum said nervously. “But s-she should be here any minute now.”
The councilman shook his head. “I’m sorry but every slot in the vehicles must be assigned to the people that are here because we need to go right now.”
Mum was pleading with him. “Please, you can’t go yet, she will be here. I promise.”
A soldier who was standing beside the councilman began to point to the back of the lorry. “You need to get in there now, otherwise someone else will take your places, ma’am.”
Dad sighed as he took Mum’s bags. “Let’s just take our seats for now, we’re holding up the line.”
All three of us climbed up into the back of the military transport. Several of our neighbors were already sitting down in the rows as we took our seats and placed our bags in front of us. Mr. and Mrs. Tasker were there along with their great aunt, who had to be helped onboard because she was in a wheelchair. Leo Hill, the former footballer who retired a few years back, was also there along with his wife and four sons as well as the entire Patel clan; they occupied half of the forward compartment.
As more and more people slowly began to fill the back of the lorries, I had a strange feeling that I’d somehow forgotten something. That was when I started to rummage through both my bags. My curiosity soon turned to worry because I quickly realized that I had left my mobile phone sitting on my desk in my bedroom. It had all the emails and numbers of my best mates and we had made an agreement that we would contact each other as soon as we got to the safe zones. Without my mobile, there was only a very slim chance I would be able to hook up with them, if any.
Since the house was pretty close by and they were still loading people onto the transports I could still get over there and grab it. I quickly stood up and made my way to the edge of the lorry.
My dad noticed that I had gotten up and tried to grab my arm but he missed by a few inches. “Steve, what are you doing?”
I stole a glance at him as I sidestepped another old woman who had just been helped up into the lorry. “I’ll be back, Dad. I’m just going back to my room to grab my mobile.”
As I jumped out of the rear of the vehicle and started to run back towards the house my mother started to shout at me. “Steve! For God’s sake, come back!”
Another soldier who stood nearby noticed me and tried to pull me aside but I quickly shifted to the left as I narrowly avoided his grasp and continued to dash towards the house. It was less than a hundred feet away and I would have plenty of time to get back on the transports since there were still a few families being processed.
Grabbing the house key from my trouser pocket, I inserted it into the door and got it open in just a few seconds. As I ran up the stairs I heard my phone buzzing. Judging from the ringtone I knew that it was my best mate who was calling me so I swiped it from the table while leaping through the bedroom door and quickly activated it.
I placed the phone beside my ear. “Steve’s Skate Shop, how can I help?”
The voice that answered was definitely my mate, Raymond Lin. “Steve, they’re attacking us!”
I started to laugh. Ray was good at winding me up. “Bollocks. Come off it, Ray. I know you’re just taking the piss again.”
He sounded like he was running out of breath. “I’m not joking, mate! I’m running down the pavement away from my house! I need to get out of here!”
Now he had my full attention. “Ray? What happened? Where are you, mate?”
Ray’s voice was bordering on hysterical and I could hear him gulping air. “Those monsters attacked us just as we started evacuating. I think they got my mum and my dad. Oh my God!”
“Ray, where are you?”
“I-I ran away. I’m near Victoria Park. T-that old geezer was right.”
“What do you mean he was right?”
“Remember when you were at my place? The website that we looked at, remember? The old man who claimed to be a wizard, he was right about all this. Those monsters, they’re the Fomorians.”
“Ray, come off it—”
Just as I said those words the line went dead.
Bloody hell. I put the mobile phone into the right pocket of my hoodie and sighed. Just days ago my life was as normal as it could be. Now all of a sudden the world had gone topsy-turvy on me.
As I stood there dumbfounded I suddenly heard screams and shouting coming from the street below. When I looked down from the bedroom window I noticed that the few civilians left on the street were in a state of panic as they tried desperately to get onto the transports that were already moving away while the soldiers that were still on the ground were taking up firing positions. As I turned to look at the opposite end of the avenue I let out a cry of shock and surprise.
A horde of monsters was steadily making its way down the street. There must have been dozens of them and it looked like they were in all shapes and sizes. Some were walking on two legs while others didn’t have any legs at all and instead just used their hands while crawling on their swollen bellies or slithering forward using their snake-like torsos. A few had armored carapaces covering their insect-like bodies while others had a granite sheen on the blubbery folds of their skin. One of them had a single eye like a Cyclops while another had three. It was an entire gang of misshapen beasts that began to advance towards the panic-stricken people below.
I stood rooted to the spot, unable to move as I saw some of the soldiers open fire on the crowd of monsters while slowly retreating towards the end of the avenue. They were able to hurt a few of the creatures but their shots merely enraged the larger and more heavily armored ones. As the military transports were finally clear of the street the soldiers tried to get back into their Land Rovers but several of the creatures broke into a run and caught up with them. My mouth was open in shock and horror as I saw some of the poor soldiers being literally torn apart by gigantic claws and fanged maws. That was when one of the creatures turned and saw me staring back at it from my bedroom window. It hissed at me as it started towards the house.
I needed to do something, otherwise I would get eaten, just like in those zombie movies. I quickly got out of my bedroom and I remembered there was a small crawlspace in the corridor leading towards the stairs. A few years back I had found a panel behind the tub in the bathroom where I could move it and squeeze through. But that was when I was still a small child; I had gotten somewhat bigger since then. With no other choice I ran into the bathroom and closed the door behind me before opening the window. Then I thrust my hands into the back of the heater and pushed back the paneling behind it. Sure enough, the crawlspace was there. Hearing the creature coming up the stairs, I clenched my teeth as I started to squeeze myself into the narrow opening between the metal heater and the hole in the side of the wall. There must have been a nail sticking out the back end of the crawlspace because something sharp ripped through the back of my hoodie and cut into my skin as I got stuck. The pain was pretty bad but I held my breath and stopped myself from crying out; I heard the creature outside the bathroom door, beginning to smash it down.
There was no chance I could squeeze into that tiny space so I had to make a quick decision before I got turned into mincemeat. Looking up at the ceiling, I remembered a scene from a movie that I could possibly do. Just as the door was about to give way I climbed up on top of the sink before stretching my body out just below the ceiling. My hands were pushing on one side of the bathroom wall as I stretched my legs out and pushed as hard as I could on my feet on the opposite side so that my body was completely horizontal and I lay suspended right below the ceiling. I managed to get myself into position just as the monster burst through.
It shambled into the bathroom less than a foot below me. I clenched my teeth as my knees and arms began to buckle from the strain
of keeping myself aloft. The creature looked like something out of a horror movie but it was totally real. One of its arms was longer than the other and both ended in long, black-clawed hands. Its pale head was a flat oval with round eyes shaped like an amphibian’s that were situated in the front part of its hideous face. It had a snake-like tongue that slid out and about as it tasted the air while its short, trunk-like legs ended in webbed feet. It smelled of rotten flesh and blood.
The creature hissed and snorted as it took a look at the open window. The pain in my arms was so intense that I felt like screaming but I bit my lip and closed my eyes. After a few seconds that felt like an eternity, the creature finally turned around and waddled out of the bathroom. As I heard it moving back down the stairs I finally let go and was able to get my feet back on top of the sink as I took in a deep, silent breath while rubbing my sore arms.
Just to be sure I was alone I waited for almost an hour, ready to wedge myself back up towards the ceiling if it came back but thankfully the house became quiet once more. The sun was beginning to set as I carefully made my way around the house and made sure that none of those monsters were still around. As I got to the edge of the front door I carefully looked out into the street. Save for a few corpses lying around it was now largely deserted. I carefully closed the front door and locked it before going back to the bathroom upstairs. Since there was still a sharp pain across my back I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and took off my hoodie and then my shirt before twisting my torso so I could have a look at my back. Sure enough, there was a long cut where the nail had sliced across my back; it had stopped bleeding and it resembled a stylized crimson-colored lightning bolt across the back of my body. I remembered what my mum used to do when I got cuts so I took some antiseptic from the mirrored cabinet and used some of her cotton balls to absorb the medicine before using them to swab my back. Almost immediately I regretted doing that because it sent a burning pain all over the back of my body and I nearly screamed due to the agony. I made a makeshift bandage with what was left of the cotton balls and some electrical tape; when I was done my back looked like some sort of weird modern art exhibit but it was better than nothing. I went back to my bedroom and pulled out a new hoodie from the closet and put it on. My best clothes were in my rucksack, still sitting at the back of the lorry that had hopefully taken my parents away from this mess, so I had to make do with the ones that I really didn’t want to wear anymore.
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