Kings of Carrion

by Keri Lake

  Nerves rattled, I scramble forward as if to catch him.

  Titus nearly dives head first after him, and judging by the tremble of his muscles, he must have grabbed hold of him.

  “Cadmus!” I slap a hand over my mouth.

  Titus pulls his brother Alpha through the vent, which slams shut on the Ragers, and Cadmus tumbles to the floor beside me. His leg is bleeding, pants ripped to shreds below his knees. The three of us scramble back as a claw slips beneath the vent door.

  Titus hammers his boot against it, and an awful shriek echoes from the shaft. The creature’s claw disappears. After a few seconds, it almost seems like they’ve abandoned their pursuit, until the claw appears again.

  A quick glance around shows we’re in a small room filled with large structures, which I’m guessing are the specimen storage chambers, with big steel doors and clasps. Tapping Titus’s leg beside me, I point to the storage chamber, and as if he understands my intent, he nods, helping me to my feet. He opens the doors to both chambers, while I tear off a piece of Cadmus’s bloody pants and lay it across the chamber’s threshold. Then all five of us hide behind a large metal table arranged in the center of the room that appears to have housed a sink at one time.

  The creature climbs through the vent, followed by a second, and a third. They lift their faceless heads into the air, and I see small slits wriggling where a nose might be, as if sniffing. They scamper on all fours toward the chamber, finding the bait I laid out. Two of them venture inside the structure.

  C’mon. Go! The third seems to have picked up on the scent of Cadmus from where he stands, sniffing the air in our direction. My heart thrums inside my chest, as my gaze bounces from the mutation, to the chamber room, where the other two investigate.

  I glance back to Cadmus, finding him crouched, poised to run in the opposite direction, undoubtedly offering himself up as a distraction. Before I can stop him, he pushes to his feet and runs toward the other end of the room.

  The mutation snaps its head in his direction, and nails scraping against the tiles, it scrambles after him. Titus and I race toward the chamber door.

  The mutations inside swing around, and I’m practically swallowing my heart as we shove the door shut just before they breach it. A hard thump knocks it open a crack, but we press into it, and once it’s lined flush, I slam the locking mechanism over.

  The other mutation screeches from the far end of the room, and I turn to see Cadmus tearing its head from its body. Red spatters of what I presume is blood covers his arms, as he stands breathing hard, clearly worn down by the fight.

  Pounding against the steel chamber door is followed by a screech. A reminder that we can’t linger here too long. These are not the same mutations we’ve come to know. They’re heartier. Stronger. Even faceless, they seem to have developed keen senses and can apparently pick up the slightest scent of blood.

  Cadmus strides toward us, breathing through his nose. “See?” His gaze is all for me. “Told you I’d be here for you. High or not.”

  On an exasperated sigh, I give his arm a squeeze. “Nice catch down there, by the way. Thought I was about to be their next meal.”

  “You think I’d let anything happen to you, Sunshine?”

  More thumping against the door startles my muscles, and I look up through a small square window in the panel, to see those faceless creatures tipping their heads back, as if trying to smell us through the steel.

  Having pulled up the rope, Titus tosses the wound-up pile of it onto the floor beside the vent. “Just so none of the others get smart.”

  Chapter 22

  Wren

  The camera that’s fastened to the mask on Six’s head offers a clear view of those glowing eyes getting bigger, meaning whatever it is approaches the group.

  As it closes in, my heart thumps faster, until the beams of their flashlights give shape to its silhouette. Small, crouched.

  “Is that a cat?” I ask, squinting at the screen.

  The moment it steps into the light, it’s clear it’s no longer a cat, anymore. With patches of fur torn away, and one ear that appears to have been bitten off, the cat hisses and growls as it crouches low, ready to pounce. Its face is mangled, one eye sealed shut and its paw seems to be deformed.

  I have to look away. I’ve seen feral cats before, out on the Deadlands, but nothing like this poor, tormented soul. The moment it lurches, Six snatches it up by the neck, and the hissing intensifies, its jaw snapping to make contact with flesh. In the camera’s view, I can see where the animal has been tortured with bite marks, and its spine appears to have an unnatural curve. Whatever did this, did it only for amusement.

  He seems hesitant at first, but Six gives its neck a hard snap, and the animal stills.

  Perhaps a more merciful death in the end.

  “Let’s keep on,” Jed says, while Six gently lays the cat down on the floor.

  The first twinge of pain hits my belly, as they continue down the dark corridor, and I slide my hand across my abdomen, breathing hard through my nose. I don’t dare make a sound that might distract Six and, instead, clench my teeth, so as not to allow a peep to slip past my lips.

  In my periphery, Gregor tips forward as if to get my attention, and I fervently shake my head to keep him from saying anything aloud.

  The pain intensifies, bringing tears to my eyes as the ground glass sensation rakes across my insides. With a trembling hand, I rest my forehead against my palm and breathe.

  Breathe.

  Gregor pushes a key on his computer and turns toward me. “Perhaps you’d like to go lie down.” At the widening of my eyes, he shakes his head. “Its muted. They can’t hear us, at all.”

  “I don’t want to lie down. I’m fine.”

  “This is your pregnancy doing this to you?”

  Another contraction of pain in my gut leaves me doubled over, trembling as it wracks my womb. I nod, eyes clenched so hard, an ache throbs in my sockets. “Comes … and … goes,” I grit out.

  “I can keep watch, and alert you if there appears to be any … danger.”

  “No.” There isn’t a chance in hell that I’ll move from this spot. Or that I intend to take my eyes off this screen, no matter what pain comes.

  “Very well. Would you like some water?”

  At my nod, he rises up from the chair, and it’s only when he’s out of the room that I give thought to the possibility that he could poison it. It’s merely instinctual, though--one firmly rooted by years of survival. When he returns, he’s carrying a pitcher and two glasses that he sets down on the desk in front of me. He pours both, and lifts his glass to his lips, polishing off about half of it in one sip. There’s a brief thought that he could’ve laced the glass with something, but I brush it off for the new cramp pulsing through my belly.

  Flicking my gaze back to the screen, I watch Six and the group descend what appears to be a stairwell, and as the pain in my stomach begins to subside, a new ache churns at the sound of screeching that echoes through the speakers.

  Jed turns around and pauses, his chin in the air. “Seems they sense something. It’s best if we all stay close. But if, by chance, we should get separated …” He reaches into his pack and tugs out a pill bottle, flicking his fingers. In the camera’s view, a palm about twice the size of Jed’s reaches out, and the smaller man dumps a pill in the center of it. He offers the same to Tinker and Ratchet. “Atropa belladonna. Otherwise known as deadly nightshade. One capsule contains twice the required amount to kill two human adult males. You’ll be dead in less than a minute, which will seem far too long, if one of those mutations should get their hands on you.”

  “Six …” I want to tell him to end this expedition and come home, but I know it’s too late, as he curls his fingers around the pill. I imagine he stuffs it into his pocket, once it disappears from the camera’s view. “Please.”

  “It’s going to be okay, Wren. I promise.”

  His words are neither comforting, nor founded in any gu
arantee, or truth. They’re only meant as a balm to the stabbing pain in my heart.

  They reach the foot of the stairwell, and as Jed pushes through the door, the creaking sound skates along my nerves like a blade against the bone. Skin beaded in sweat, I grab the glass of water set out before me, and swallow it back, every drop. Hell, if Gregor poisoned me, and I died, Six wouldn’t have to venture after that damn sample, after all.

  The screeching from before seems louder, or maybe my nervous system has gone haywire as I wait, anxiously watching the three men enter what appears to be an abandoned laboratory. A sign on the door shows the biohazard symbol I became quite familiar with in Papa’s lab, and below it: Highly inflammable. No smoking or naked lights.

  Cracked and dirty walls carry mold and water stains. A series of windows to the right are broken and shattered. Rusted equipment hangs by cords from the ceiling, as if ripped away. The crackle of grit, and what must be broken glass beneath their boots, leaves me cringing that the sound is far too loud for what lurks somewhere in that lab. Through the darkness, the light shines on Jed’s face, and he points down a dark and ominous-looking corridor. “The samples were held there. At the end of the hallway.” Lowering his hand, he flattens his lips and shakes his head. “The mutations were kept in the adjacent rooms.”

  Oh, God. Oh, God.

  Jed tugs at his zipper, as though checking the seal on his suit, and holds his arms outstretched, perhaps examining for any breaches, before jerking his head.

  My heart can’t take this. I can scarcely breathe, watching them make their way deeper into the belly of this hell. Before I can stop myself, I grab Gregor’s hand, where it rests beside me. And as if we share the same terror, he places his palm over mine. I feel helpless, watching Six venture head-first into danger. The idea that this whole mission relies on the Alphas’ ability to fight off the mutations is the most twisted part about it.

  “If only I believed in prayer,” Gregor whispers beside me.

  The sound of a hard thump echoes through the corridor, and the camera swings toward a door.

  Don’t go in there. Please

  Jed approaches Six, rustling his suit as he seems to search for something, and the light flicks to a green haze. At the same time, Gregor pushes the same button as before, the one that muted the camera. “I suspect any noise on our end would pose a danger to them. A distraction.”

  “Why is everything green?”

  “Its a night vision camera. So they’re not detected.”

  They gather at a window of the lab, where an echoing thump continues to hammer my nerves to shreds. Inside are a half-dozen beastly things, like those I saw roaming the hallways just before we escaped Calico. Their skin is blistered, from what I can make out in the altered coloration, and deformed. Muscles bent and distorted, but bulky and intimidating. Where the Ragers tend to be thin and gaunt, these creatures clearly carry the Alpha gene.

  They pace around some kind of machine made of glass. Inside is a cylinder, also made of a clear material, beneath a light that beams down on its contents. I squint to focus on what it is inside that cylinder. It’s only the long locks of hair that give any indication it’s a body.

  A human body.

  “Pneumatic tube system.” Gregor’s voice is as grim as the view before me. “It was designed in the early stages, to transport cadavers down to the lab for study.”

  It’s then that I notice other glass tubes lying about the machine, reminding me of desecrated and discarded coffins. Their openings have been torn away, half cocked and destroyed, the tubes themselves bent and battered.

  “It’s seems this is how they’ve been staying alive. Calico has been sending them bodies to feed on.”

  Horror fills my chest, suffocating me, as I watch the mutations pound against the machine, as if it’s stuck. One screeches at it, and pounds again. The woman inside is dead. She would have to be after two months.

  Jerking his head again, Jed signals for Six to follow, and they stay crouched to the floor, passing beneath the window. Through deep breaths, I mentally count down how long it takes to put distance between them and those beasts.

  At a crackling sound, my breath stalls, and the camera swings around. The view pans down to the floor where Tinker has crawled over a broken lightbulb. A substance coating his hand, unidentifiable through the night vision lens, must be his blood. Eyes wide, mouth gaping, the look on Tinker’s face as he stares back through his mask sends a cold chill down my spine. Camera panning upward shows one of the mutations sticking its head out the window, sniffing the air. The half of its face I can see appears to have been burned away, and its skin droops there. I can’t tell if it’s the night vision that makes its eyes look stygian black, but they are completely devoid of life. Bunched, irregular muscles give it a different appearance from the mutations I’ve seen before. These monsters are beasts, likely strong enough to tear a human being in half with their bare hands.

  Tinker remains on all fours below it, head low and visibly trembling in his suit. Behind him, Ratchet doesn’t move, also keeping his head low, though I can’t see his face from this angle.

  I shift in the chair, the anxiety twisting and churning in my stomach, while I watch this creature sniff and twitch, undoubtedly searching for the source of blood. The hazmat suits likely cloak some of their scent, but I suspect fresh blood probably gives off a strong enough aroma to narrow in on their hiding spot.

  Another mutation slams into the window beside the first and the two fight, pushing each other back and forth, momentarily distracted from the smell, it seems. Six reaches out from the camera to pat Tinker, giving him a nudge in the darkness, and he moves forward, while the beasts create a clamor inside the room.

  Slowly, they crawl away from the window, and I force myself to take a breath, my lungs wound tight with tension. Backing himself away, never taking his eyes off Tinker, Six seems to breathe far more steadily than me, his consistent inhalations never confessing fear.

  Movement just behind Tinker brings both men to a halt. Tinker lifts his gaze to Six, and before he can stop it, their friend is yanked backward and pulled through the window of the lab.

  “Oh, shit,” Gregor says beside me, sitting forward in his chair. “Oh, no!”

  “Fuck!” Six barrels forward after his friend.

  Ratchett’s flailing arm swipes out at nothing, as he, too, attempts to grab Tinker.

  The sound of Tinker’s screams skates down the back of my neck. Peering through the window shows the mutations inside throwing him around in the air, tearing off limbs as if they’re nothing but frail and fragile twigs on a tree branch. Blood coats the face shield of his suit and the stainless steel surfaces inside the room—even that is discernible through the camera’s green haze. In seconds, the man has no arms and legs, yet he continues to scream as their claws tear into his flesh.

  “Six … get out of there!” I’m screaming, but he can’t hear me through the muted screen. With a trembling hand over my mouth, I watch through tears as those monsters tear apart a good man with no remorse. One who gave continuously to our small tribe and didn’t hesitate to join the group down inside those tunnels.

  I hear Six breathing hard through the mask, and I know he’s trying to hold back tears and his rage.

  “C’mon,” Jed whispers beside him. “Before they find us. We have to keep moving.”

  The tears stream down my cheeks even as the camera shifts away from the macabre, and only one thought pounds through my skull.

  How easily that could’ve been Six.

  Chapter 23

  Cali

  Walking through the halls of the hospital, the stench of rot sticks to the back of my throat all the while, while my skin crawls with thoughts that something is watching us from the shadows. Distant sounds can be heard, echoes of what could almost pass for voices, but there is no sign of life anywhere. Only death and carnage.

  We pass a familiar room, one I remember from while on my way to a check up years ago.
Through the room’s window, I watched one of the male subjects, maybe in his twenties, having sex with a female subject, who’d been strapped down to a bed. Guards stood by, observing, while the girl screamed between sobbing. Medusa didn’t even acknowledge it at the time, and I later learned it was where they impregnated second generation female subjects, to study third generation offspring. Some of the males used were carriers, some in the early stages of infection, and others had turned to monsters.

  I’d become so ingrained with the atrocities of this place, it didn’t even occur to me I had witnessed a poor girl’s rape. At the time, I was just grateful it wasn’t me lying on that gurney.

  The room stands in disarray now. Window busted out. Fluorescent lightbulbs dangling from the ceiling. The bed that likely facilitated the rape of countless girls now tipped over, with its restraints scattered on the floor.

  We keep on to the level below us, and flashlight sweeping the corridor of the first floor, I find only the remains of soldiers who got trapped inside with the mutations. All of them mutilated and mostly consumed, leaving behind that god-forsaken stink clinging to the air. There is no smell worse than death, but this is something else entirely. A morbid memento of human suffering and terror. Its repulsive stench reaches deep inside my gut, stirring a thick black dread.

  Brandon’s sniffling doesn’t hide his tears, while he runs his flashlight over every fallen soldier’s name etched into the dogtags at their throats. A few he collects, perhaps friends he knew, hanging them around his own neck, as though to salvage the names of the forgotten.

  Ahead of him, Kenny leads us to the computer room. As I understand, from there, we should be able to see where Valdys was taken before the hospital sealed shut.

  My body still carries the tremble of our earlier encounter with the mutations from the tunnels, and I know they won’t be the last before we leave this place. “The faceless things. They were the mutations you saw a while back. The ones in the tunnel?” I ask Cadmus over my shoulder.