Kings of Carrion

by Keri Lake

  “If we make it out of here alive, you’re in trouble.” Brow kicked up, he stares down at me, and licks his lips.

  Biting my own lip fails to hide the smile itching to break free. “How so?”

  “Two months is a long time for a man to spend dreaming about his female.”

  “It’s been a lifetime for me, as well.”

  A thunk echoes through the room, and I swing my attention toward the door. Growls vibrate from the two remaining dogs, and they prowl forward, as if they sense something approaching.

  The anxiety twists in my stomach, as I watch the elevator pause, then make its climb back to our floor, but when a crashing noise sends my heart shooting into my throat, I glance back at where Valdys has already started in the direction of the sound. The dogs barking only strums the urgency beating against my muscles.

  “No!” I reach out for his hand, shaking my head. “It’s almost here!”

  Valdys keeps his eyes toward the door as he backs himself to the elevator. At a clicking sound, the dogs pounce through the swinging door. One of them yelps, its suffering bouncing off the walls of the morgue.

  I swivel back around to see the elevator has arrived. “C’mon! Let’s go!” Climbing inside, I watch Valdys slowly back toward me.

  The second dog yelps.

  Once he’s climbed into the elevator beside me, Valdys whistles for the dogs, while I press the button.

  Instead of the animals, a mutation barrels toward us, just as the elevator begins its descent, and it swipes out a claw that slashes Valdys across the arm. The top of the elevator sinks to the floor level, severing the claw from its body, and the harrowing screech that follows skates down my spine. A thud hits the ceiling of the elevator. Claws scrape against the steel. The top of it caves, likely from the weight, and the elevator bounces, like the mutation is scrambling to find a way inside.

  When the elevator comes to a stop at the second floor, Cadmus rushes toward us, the dog barking and growling on his heels. The elevator bounces again, the weight of it dipping the car to just below the floor, before we can climb out.

  Cadmus hauls the mutation off the top, and Valdys squeezes his massive body through the gap between the floor and the top of the car. Once out, he reaches to help me through, and all I can think about is the cable snapping and severing my body in half.

  The moment I’ve cleared the car, he throws himself into the brawl, holding the mutation down, until Cadmus has torn its head away from its body. The dog rips away an arm, the twitching limb dangling from the canine’s bloody maw.

  Blowing out a breath, Cadmus shakes his head. “I don’t remember those bastards being so hearty.”

  “They’re running out of food. Becoming desperate. Your timing for this rescue is truly shit,” Valdys says, with an air of amusement that I know holds a small bit of seriousness, too.

  At the sound of a boisterous clash, everyone swings their attention back toward the dumbwaiter behind me.

  Another mutation has fallen atop the elevator and claws at the air, trying to turn onto its stomach. When a cold grip of my arm yanks me forward, giving it a small bit of leverage, a scream rips from my chest. It tugs me closer, and on instinct, I reach out to push the button back to the floors above us, but a burn streaks up my arm where its claw slices at my skin. “Ah, shit!”

  Valdys jumps between me and the beast, severing its hold on my arm, and the elevator jerks into an ascent, just as the creature manages to gain its footing, but it disappears into the shaft, lifted out of view.

  Hand slapped over my wound, I flinch, and Valdys takes my arm in his hands as he examines the scratch.

  “I’m fine. It just scratched me.”

  “Looks like it needs stitches.”

  “Well, we’re not doing that right now.”

  He tears away a piece of his shirt that’s spattered in blood, and wraps it tight around my arm. “I recall having to do this once before.”

  “And I recall the kiss that followed.” Smiling, I wait for him to finish tying the knot, and he hooks his finger under my chin.

  Lips pressed to mine, he steals the opportunity to kiss me again, and if not for the audience, I’d lengthen this one for as long as I could go without needing a breath.

  “I’m glad to see you haven’t improved in some things,” Cadmus says from behind. “Still shit at kissing a woman.”

  Valdys exhales a forced breath through his nose, and when he pulls away, his jaw is tight. “I see you’re still a prick.” The corner of his lips kick up in a smile, as he turns around to help his friend to his feet, where he sits slumped against the wall.

  “You been practicing with this one, right?” Cadmus points toward Atticus and gives a wink. “Bet he was looking pretty, all those months.”

  Atticus shoots him a glare that says if he wasn’t injured, Cadmus would probably have a foot square up his ass.

  “Hey, are you there?” Kenny’s voice has officially become my least favorite sound, an omen of bad news, and the bleak tone of his voice rattles my nerves.

  “Yeah,” Cadmus answers. “What now?”

  “I can’t get the entrance open. There is no way to override the system. It’s stuck in an error and will probably take hours to fix.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Lowering the walkie-talkie from his face, Cadmus looks like he’s about to throw the damn thing, as he rubs a hand over his skull. “So, what’s the plan, man?”

  There’s a pause, followed by the sound of Kenny huffing through the speaker, exacerbating my already-simmering anxiety. “We have to go back the way we came. Through the tunnels.”

  My chest tightens, and I step toward him, shaking my head. “Those mutations are in the tunnels. Are you crazy?”

  “Unless you’ve got a better idea, that’s the only way we’re getting out of here.” Even in the thick of disaster, the bitterness weighs heavy on Kenny’s tone.

  “We have no idea how many are down there, though.” The only thought racing through my head is the one I had while dangling from Cadmus’s grasp in the ventilation shaft, as he pulled me away from their swiping claws—that I was grateful I wouldn’t have to see those damn tunnels again. “At least here, we can see them on camera! Down there, we could be trapped against hundreds. And they’re more violent than the ones here.”

  “We came through there once. We can do it again.” Cadmus reaches out, as if to comfort me, but slides his gaze toward Valdys and lowers his hand. Eyes on me, he lifts the walkie-talkie to his face, instead. “Rhys and the others. Where are they?”

  “In the tunnels now,” Kenny answers. “I’ve told them to sit tight. That we’re on our way.”

  Lips pressed to a hard line, Cadmus rubs his hand over his jaw, the anxiety creeping its way into the expression on his face. “Do you have a visual of the tunnels?”

  “No. All I have is their communications by walkie-talkie.”

  Wincing as if the news just pierced his ear, Cadmus lowers the walkie-talkie as his shoulders sag. “All right. So, we’ll meet in the specimen room where we came in?”

  “Yes, but be careful. Those faceless things we locked up? Looks like they broke out.” Yet another of Kenny’s horrific premonitions.

  “Fucking brilliant.” Cadmus clips the walkietalkie to his belt and gives a jerk of his head. “Let’s get out of here before that bastard tells us something else is wrong.”

  Chapter 28

  Wren

  “I’m going to make us some lunch.” Gregor pushes up from the chair beside me and, grabbing the pitcher, pours the last of the water into my glass.

  “I’m not hungry, thank you.”

  “You haven’t eaten, at all. Which means, neither has your growing baby. Do it for the kid.”

  Sighing, I nod and sip the water. “Fine.”

  As he disappears out of the room, I watch the screen, on which Jed and Six sit in the dark tunnel, waiting for the rest of the group. Apparently, Kenny couldn’t get the main entrance open, w
hich leaves them sitting ducks. I don’t like this, but the tunnel currently stands empty, making it safer than venturing inside that hospital for the moment.

  “This disease … what is it that makes it so deadly?” Six asks quietly.

  “It was a non-transmissible prion that we dredged up from the soil.” Drawing his leg up, Jed rests his elbow atop his knee. “It affected certain parts of the brain responsible for pain reception, immunity, healing. Virulent enough to cause serious damage to the neurons, but only dangerous to those in direct contact with it. The prion itself is very slow, pathologically speaking. A person with healthy immunity could’ve gone years without symptoms.”

  “So, what happened?”

  Jed pauses a moment, picking at his fingernails, and snorts a laugh. “Our great and powerful leader had an idea. To design a biological weapon that he would sell to the military and finance his dreams.”

  “Szolen?” Six asks the question swirling inside of my head.

  “Yes. Szolen. We were tasked with figuring out a highly effective means of incapacitating large populations, which boiled down to transmissibility and pathophysiology. In other words, we had to figure out a way to make it spread quickly, and speed up its infection process. So we fused it with a virus.”

  It seems strange that Jed would divulge so much information, particularly something that, if known by others, would likely result in Andrew Szolen’s execution. After all, who would trust a man responsible for murdering millions of people?

  “He wanted to wipe out the population?”

  “Not everyone. Only our enemies. Unfortunately, the science got out of hand, so to speak. We had a breach at the facility and samples were removed. Unleashed before they could be contained.” Jed sighs and crosses his arms, shrugging. “A pandemic rooted in sheer ignorance. It’s no wonder there are so few of us left. We never deserved this world.”

  Movement flickers out of the corner of my eye--not on screen, but through the sheer curtains over the window across the room--and I duck low, peering around the computer monitor.

  The two Legion soldiers I drugged the night before are walking up to Gregor’s porch. No doubt, they’re looking for me, and if they find me unescorted and sans Cali, it’ll be cause to have me arrested. The doorbell rings, alongside the thud of footsteps that bleed through the walls.

  Gregor heads out and answers the door, while I remain crouched.

  “We’re looking for a woman. Have you seen one roaming around? There may be two of them.”

  During the quiet between Jed and Six, I concentrate on the voices outside the room.

  Gregor snorts. “How perfect for you guys, huh? One for each.”

  “This is serious business, sir. These women may be dangerous.”

  “Then, it’s a match, am I right? You could double-date. Go kill shit together.” His sense of humor is clearly not appreciated, and I’d be inclined to tell him to shut the hell up before he gets us into trouble, but this is his personality. This is what they expect from him. Behaving any other way will signal something is wrong. Gregor is a known smartass who doesn’t play by rules.

  “Look, if you see them, please alert us right away. They have direct ties to the rebels.”

  “The rebels? How the hell did they slip past security?”

  One of the men clears his throat. “Please alert us if you see them,” he says.

  “Sure. I’ll give ‘em your numbers. Have a nice day, gentlemen.” The door clicks shut, and I exhale a breath, watching the two retreat from his front porch.

  They cross the yard and make their way to the next house. On a positive note, they’ve obviously not alerted their superiors yet, otherwise, there’d be doors busted down and a whole slew of Legion barging in. My guess is, these two aren’t interested in having to relay that they fell asleep on the job.

  Abandoning my watch of them, I turn to see Gregor standing in the doorway, holding a tray with sandwiches and fruit.

  “You know what’s interesting. If they knew I was fucking Jed, they wouldn’t hesitate to string us up and stone us. In the absence of knowing, Jed and I are highly respected experts in our field. Ones they turn to for advisement and council.” He stands looking thoughtful for a moment. “There’s something very satisfying in that, you know?”

  Crossing the room back to my chair, I smile. “Why do you stay here?” I catch a quick glimpse of Jed and Six on camera, still waiting for the others to arrive in the tunnels. “Why not leave Szolen and live the way you want to live with Jed.”

  “Oh, you mean out with the cannibalistic marauders, who would rape us to death before they eat us? Or with the Ragers who would skip the foreplay and head straight for dessert?” He enters the room and places the tray down in front of me. “No thanks.”

  “You’d live by your own choices. Love who you want to love. Live how you want to live.”

  “That might work for someone like you, Wren. But I’m older. Slower. Christ, I rolled out of bed this morning with a fucking ache in my shoulders. From rolling out of bed.” He rubs his hand over his lower back as if to emphasize the point. “There’s no way I could defend myself out there.”

  “And how will you defend yourself when they find out you’re fucking Jed?”

  “They’d give me the opportunity to atone for my sins first. Offering me one of the Daughters to impregnate.”

  The Daughters are a group of young girls, mostly virgins when they first join the sect, who are chosen to help repopulate the community. Their sole function is to get pregnant and have babies, with as many different men as they can, to increase the diversity. As I understand, they’re deflowered by a priest, who’s supposedly sterile, in a ceremony that sets them free from any persecution, or fault. When a man takes one of the Daughters, even if he’s married, it’s not considered adultery, or sin, but prolonging the viability of our species.

  The Daughters are off-limits. They don’t marry or commit to one man until they’ve fulfilled their duties, by bearing children for a certain number of years, and in return, at the end of their term, they’re given a nice home, the opportunity to marry and raise the children they’ve brought into the world. They will never want for anything again, and they’re treated like something holy and virtuous. Parents actually encourage their daughters to become one of them, in the same way they encourage their sons to join Legion. And every boy in Szolen grows up wanting to marry one of the Daughters, to raise his status and be respected by the others.

  It’s sickening.

  “How fortunate for you.” The edge of sarcasm in my voice seems well received, when he bows his head and smiles.

  “Yes, well, sex with little girls isn’t my thing, so I guess I’ll be opting for punishment when that day comes.”

  “Or, like I said, you could always leave this place and live by your own terms.”

  “Like you?” His sarcasm isn’t as well received, and my eye twitches at the question.

  “I wouldn’t be here, if Six didn’t insist on going back into those tunnels. I’d be off living my life, accepting the consequences of my choices.”

  “And my choice is to stay and accept the consequences here.”

  I bite down into my sandwich, chewing on his words, along with fig jam that explodes in my mouth. Turning back toward the camera on screen, I see that Six has focused the camera’s view on something to the right of them. Something prowling toward them on all fours along the ceiling and walls. Mutations.

  “Oh, my God.”

  Gregor stands in front of the screen, staring in horror, and pushes the button on the keyboard. “Jed, can you hear me?”

  “Can’t talk at the moment. Pretty sure we’re about to die.”

  “There’s a lever up by the ventilation shaft. Do you see it?”

  The camera pans upward, to where a metal lever sticks out, high enough that Jed can’t reach it, but Six can.

  “Pull that lever. Now.”

  Without hesitation, Six yanks down the lever, setting off a
cranking and ticking noise. From the ceiling, a thick steel cage slides down, just before the mutations reach them. It stops short of a small gap at the bottom, not wide enough for any of them to slip through, but I sit forward, my stomach churning.

  “It’s not closed all the way.”

  “Must be something stuck in the track. But don’t worry, they can’t lift the gate unless the lever is pushed up again. It has a locking mechanism.”

  Claws swipe beneath the gate and between the bars. The growls and snarls on the other side of the barrier send crystals of fear through my chest. Every mutation in that research lab must be gathered on the other side of the gate. All of them starving for the men who stand on the this side of it.

  “It’ll hold against them?”

  “It’ll hold against a fleet of tanks. We designed this facility alongside the military, before the Dredge. All the materials are high grade.”

  Exhaling a breath, I shake my head. “Why don’t they just leave the tunnels now? Why do they have to wait there for the others?”

  “The hatch locks automatically. The only way to release the lock is if both gates to the tunnel are closed. It’s a safety mechanism. To ensure mutations don’t escape. They’ll be locked inside a small chamber, out of harm’s way from either side, and can climb back up through the hatch to safety. If he pulls the lever now, the others will be trapped on the hospital side of the tunnel.”

  “You really had to complicate shit, you know that?” I rub my hands down my face. “Will the hatch open if that gate isn’t down all the way?”

  “Should, as long as it’s locked. Guess we’ll have to wait for the others, to know for sure.”

  Over the growls and snarls, a loud screeching sound echoes, and when Six swings the camera to the other side of the tunnel, my stomach sinks.