The Gristle & Bone Series (Book 1): The Flayed & The Dying

by Roach, Aaron

  “I'm hiding, just like you!” she snapped back.

  “Couldn't you have picked a different place to hide?”

  “No, I'm sorry Don,” she said sarcastically, “I wasn't aware this hiding place was occupied while I was trying to run from the fucking monsters outside!” She glared, daring him to say something.

  Don’s ire folded under that look, and he could only mumble his retort. “Just...keep your mouth shut, I don't want those…those things hearing us,” he said before turning his back on her to go pout in the corner.

  Delilah turned her back on him and listened through the door to the wet sounds of feasting.

  -10-

  The world in which Sophia now found herself was full of corpses. She stood at the top of the museum stairs and looked down onto the street below. She shuddered, forcing her mind to accept what her eyes were seeing. Each body lay in its own individual pool of blood, their limbs snapped and protruding at odd angles as if they had been dropped from the sky and hit the ground hard.

  It was just like inside the museum, but everywhere.

  Interspersed among the dead were handfuls of people who were still alive. They wandered shell-shocked and confused around the bodies, or were halfway out of their cars, undecided whether to help or keep driving. Others shouted to call 911 or were on their knees sobbing over loved ones. But mostly people were dead, and the world was very quiet.

  Sophia felt lost from her perch at the top of the steps. Her dad's voice had told her to run. But run where? She wanted to go home, to go look for him there, but home was too far away. Another part of her knew that her dad wouldn't be at home, that he was still inside the museum– and changed.

  Sophia quickly shut those thoughts down. She could dwell on those later.

  Down the steps and across the street was the esplanade which followed the Charles River. She knew the park well and thought there would be plenty of places for her to hide until she figured out what to do. Her decision made, she dashed down the steps, skirted around the dead, and ran into the shade of the overhanging trees of the esplanade. As she left the road behind, she could have sworn she saw, through the corner of an eye, a few of the bodies begin to twitch.

  -11-

  Thaniel was no stranger to street theatre or public protests; it came with the territory of living in the city. So, when the people around him suddenly collapsed onto the ground, flailing and screaming, his first inclination was that he had been caught unawares by some public demonstration.

  But then he registered the violence of it all.

  Thaniel’s next inclination was to help. He threw himself off his bike and into stopped traffic, bending low over the victim nearest to him.

  The girl was of Asian descent and her dark hair blended in with the wet pavement. A student, Thaniel assumed, from the name of a college printed across her sweatshirt. Her eyes were panicked and teary, but they seemed to register him. Her body, however, acted of its own volition, with her hands coming up to her face to scrape away the flesh there. She tried to speak, but whatever words she tried to muster caught in her throat.

  Instead, the girl screamed in her suffering.

  Thaniel cupped his hand to cradle the back of her head, to stop her from slamming it into the asphalt with her convulsions. With his other hand, he caught hers, both small enough to hold in his one, and pinned them to her chest so they would cease the self-mutilation. “It's okay, it's okay, it'll all be fine,” he murmured, uncertain if his words were meant for himself or the girl. But her body fought him. She kicked her legs hard against the ground, bringing her hips up high, and heaving him off. As he fell away, she resumed her thrashing with such ferocity that he paused, afraid to help further.

  What the hell is happening?

  And then, almost as quickly as it started, the screaming that had filled the street began to die away and the spasming girl slowed into death.

  Thaniel stood up, dumbstruck at what he'd just witnessed. Then he looked around and truly took in the extent of the chaos that had just befallen the city.

  The dead were everywhere; each having flayed themselves to such a degree that the corpses were almost skeletal now, more bone than flesh. It was as if God himself had dug up all the old cemeteries of the world and dumped the bodies unceremoniously across the city. Every few hundred feet, lone, unafflicted survivors stood upright, staring down at the dead like defeated soldiers after a battle.

  Traffic was at a standstill, with bodies lying between the vehicles, and more than a few drivers blared their horns as if still intent on getting to work despite the madness. Thaniel noticed curiously that almost everyone in a vehicle was very much alive and unafflicted.

  The girl at his feet twitched and Thaniel stumbled backwards in surprise. A heartbeat later she jolted upright onto all fours, growling. She turned the face of her exposed skull towards him and his breath caught in his throat as the glaring pits of her eye sockets stared through him. He looked away, only to see other corpses springing to their feet across the Common. They exploded upwards out of death as if their souls had been launched back into their bodies from hell.

  Behind him, Thaniel sensed the girl moving, and he turned back to see that her skeletal face was now aimed at the blaring, honking cars. The girl snarled and in the next instant she was running full tilt towards the sound. Like a stampede, the rest of the skeletons followed suit. They swarmed the honking vehicles like ants on pavement-stuck candy, denting and shattering windshields with their skulls, or puncturing through the roofs with their snapped bones. Their howls of hunger blended with the sounds of tearing metal as they pried themselves into the cars.

  With the skeletons running in one direction, Thaniel was on his feet running the opposite way towards the New England Times building. His race across the Common was joined by a handful of other survivors with the same idea. A sudden cry of pain had him looking over his shoulder to see one of his fleeing companions tackled to the ground by a skeleton-thing. It leapt onto the man’s shoulders and tore into him through his back. To his right, another runner tripped and was set upon by two more of the monsters; and behind him, too close, he heard the baying howls of the dead running the rest of the little group of survivors down.

  Thaniel willed his legs to move faster.

  -12-

  Delilah and Don crouched across from each other on opposite corners of the little custodial closet while the sounds of feasting from outside, gurgled and wet, emanated through the door. Don had his face buried in the crook of his elbow. He hadn't said a word to Delilah since their first encounter. Delilah was fine with that. Instead, she reclined her head into the corner and tried to count the little black dots that speckled the ceiling tiles.

  Anything to distract her from the noises outside.

  Eventually, to the relief of both, the noises died away. Delilah stood up, curious at the quiet.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” demanded Don in a harsh whisper.

  “Just checking.”

  Delilah made her way to the door and put her hand on the knob.

  “What the fuck are you doing?!” Don hissed again.

  She ignored him and cracked the door open.

  As Delilah had expected, there were bodies on the floor. But there weren't as many as she would have thought. In fact, there were only a handful of them, the corpses of those survivors who had been with her when she and Jenn were trying to resuscitate that poor man. Of the skeleton monsters that had killed them, though, there was no sight.

  “Don, I think it's safe,” she whispered back at him without taking her face from the cracked door, “Oh no, wait.”

  The bodies on the floor began to move, and then one by one, they stood up slowly and stiffly. The paramedic in her wanted to go out and help, yet she had seen enough craziness that morning to know not to go running out there and try to be a hero. Instead, she watched through the slit of the door in dark fascination. In whispers, she tried to describe what she was seeing to Don.

  �
�These ones are coming back to life too, but...but it’s different somehow. These ones aren't moving so fast...and they...they aren’t so…skeletal, bony.”

  Delilah shuddered, remembering the way the bone-monsters had stabbed their victims with their broken, jagged appendages. Her mind’s eye saw the surprise on Jenn's face as she was stapled against the wall by that big skeleton’s ribs. Tears stung her eyes at the memory.

  One of the newly risen corpses let out a moan, low and long.

  “What's happening?” asked Don. She could sense him standing behind her now.

  “I don't know. These new ones…They look like they're sleepwalking. They don't seem so angry or aggressive, not like the other ones. And they still have most of their skin, like they're still human.”

  Delilah’s eyes jumped from face to face, until they settled on one she recognized.

  Jenn.

  If she hadn't seen with her own eyes what had happened to her, Delilah would have thought that Jenn was okay, that she was just in shock, or in a daze. But she saw the wound that went through Jenn’s chest and the mortal gash on the side of her neck where the creature had bitten into her.

  The woman she had once known so well now wandered about aimlessly, her dead eyes staring through the ceiling. Jenn wasn't okay, and she would never be again.

  “I'm going to make a run for it,” Delilah said determinedly. She wasn't going to wait around for those bone-people to come back or end up like Jenn and those other shuffling dead things; and she certainly wasn't going to hang around inside the custodial closet with Don any longer. Instead, she was going to go back home, lock all her doors, turn on the news and wait for Federation Forces to come to the rescue. She so informed her closet mate.

  “You're going to what? Don’t be stupid!” Don shot back.

  “They look slow, and I'm sure I can get around them. Look for yourself! There aren’t that many of them!”

  Don ignored her invitation to look. Instead he said to her back, “If those things see you leaving here, they might come looking for me! Don't open that fucking door!”

  “Don't be a coward!” she hissed, keeping her voice low. “If we go together, we can both make it out of here alive.”

  “No! We're both staying here where it's safe. You’re not opening that door.”

  “Don, I'm going. If you want to stay here, so be it. But I'm going.”

  She cracked the door open wider.

  Don panicked. If Delilah left, those things would come looking. He was sure of it. And he sure as hell wasn't going to go out there with the crazy bitch.

  No, Don wasn't leaving, and neither was Delilah.

  Delilah felt Don's hand wrap around her hair just before she was yanked to the ground hard. She tried to scream, but he moved quickly and covered his hand over her mouth before she could open it. He pivoted over the hand, keeping his weight on her face, until he mounted her chest. He was heavy, and she felt her breath forced out of her lungs as he settled over her ribs. She bit down on the hand that smothered her, but he snapped it away only to send it flying back at her head as a fist. He punched her, again and again and again, in silence. He stared down at her, into her eyes, through the whole assault. As her vision started to blacken, she had a fading memory of her and Jenn snuggled up together on their couch, drinking coffee. It was the last thought she would ever have as Don's hands stopped punching and wrapped around her throat.

  Through it all, Don had held his breath, and now that it was over, he let it out slowly. He moved off the lifeless body of Delilah and peered through the still open slit of the door. The dead people, whatever they were, had not picked up on the commotion in the little custodial closet. They still wandered aimlessly through the hall.

  He was safe, for now.

  He eased the door slowly closed, until he felt it click. As he turned around to go sit in his corner, he looked down at Delilah.

  It had been so easy.

  Don didn't feel guilty, in fact, he felt good. He looked down at himself and stifled a laugh.

  He had an erection.

  -13-

  Monsters aren’t supposed to be real.

  Sophia was almost ten now, and too old to believe in ghouls and goblins. But the monster that had growled in her dad's voice back at the museum had been real, of that she was sure, and now there was the one below her, snuffling at the base of the tree in which she was hiding.

  When she had run to the esplanade, she hoped it would be a safe place to hide. A sanctuary of sorts. But as soon as she entered the shade of the trees, the world became a little bit darker and scarier. She felt like Little Red Riding Hood running through a forest filled with wolves, except there weren't supposed to be wolves anywhere near the Charles River. She had been making her way along one of the paths that followed the water when a howl, too close, sent her scurrying up a nearby tree. A moment later, a monster came bursting out of a thicket, snarling and searching.

  From her tree branch, Sophia watched the thing in shocked silence, forcing herself to acknowledge that monsters were indeed very real. It had peeled away much of the flesh from its head and chest, revealing the skeleton inside, and it advanced at a crouch, as if unsure whether it was more comfortable walking on two legs like an ape or on all fours like a crab. It sniffed at the ground right where she had been standing a few moments earlier, snorting in a way that sounded like both a cough and a sneeze and sending out a wet mist through its nasal cavity.

  As the horrifying apparition neared the tree’s base, it came fully upright and pawed its bony hands inquisitively on the trunk. Then, to Sophia's horror, it rolled its head back and turned its face towards the branch on which she clung, the dark cavities where its eyes should have been gazing in her direction. Without turning its face away from hers, the thing bit slowly into the bark of the tree, as if trying to taste her scent, and Sophia could hear the creak of its teeth pressing into the wood like the sound of an un-oiled hinge.

  Sophia wanted to scream, to jump from the tree and flee, but she doubted she would make it very far before the monster caught up to her. Instead, she did the only thing she could do. She reached up and grabbed at a branch, pulling herself up and away from the monster below. She ascended through the foliage quietly; throwing fearful glances back to make sure the creature wasn't climbing after her. It remained on the ground, though the blind hollows of its eyes seemed to track her path up the tree.

  Near the top, the leaves began to thin out and the branches became increasingly smaller. Sophia stopped her ascent, afraid that the smaller limbs wouldn’t hold her weight. Trapped by the open sky above and the monster below, she let out a low, desperate whimper.

  The noise must have been what the creature was waiting for.

  At the sound, the monster shuddered and let out a gleeful howl. Its jaw unhinged and clicked open, the meaty slab of its tongue rolling out, tasting the air. Then it threw itself up the tree. From her perch, Sophia let out a loud sob, which only increased the monster's frantic upwards scramble. She watched, petrified, as it scampered up the trunk in a direct path towards her, the exposed bones of its fingers digging into the bark.

  In a desperate attempt to put more distance between herself and the monster, Sophia moved farther away from the central pillar of the trunk towards the outer edge of a branch, which bowed under her weight and caused her to cry out again.

  Below her, the thing howled.

  Its movement was a cross between a spider and a chimpanzee. Sophia sobbed as it scurried, eating away the distance in only a few seconds. When it reached her level, it began pulling itself hand over foot like a rabid chameleon across the branch they both now shared.

  With nowhere else for her to go, Sophia whimpered and looked on as it inched closer. Not for the first time that day, she wanted to vomit. She turned, readying herself to make a desperate jump from the branch, when she felt a rock hit her back. She looked down, to see an older girl on the ground waving frantically at her. The girl brought her finger up to her lip
s.

  Be quiet!

  Sophia bit her tongue into silence and forced her body to still its trembling. As she quieted, the creature let out a low hiss of confusion. Though it was only a few feet away, it seemed to have lost her position. The monster pulled a rush of air in deep and let out a roar so loud that Sophia felt the tree limb shudder beneath her, and flecks of spit and blood hit her face. She wanted to whimper, to cry out, but part of her understood that was what the creature wanted – to scare her out of her silent hiding.

  Below, the older girl motioned for Sophia to start climbing back down, bringing her finger to her lips as if to emphasize - do it quietly. Then, in a move that left Sophia awestruck, the lady bent over and picked up a heavy stone, took aim at the creature, and tossed it hard and high. It soared upwards but fell short of connecting with the skeleton. However, as the rock fell back to the ground, it struck branches, twigs and leaves in its descent. The noise had the monster scrambling after it, like a blind dog playing fetch. Fifteen feet from the ground, it leapt from the tree and hit the earth hard.

  -14-

  Thaniel threw his shoulder into the glass entryway of the New England Times building, his momentum slamming the doors open. The lobby on the other side of the doors was empty save for Hank, the building’s security guard, who stood behind the welcome desk with his hand resting on the pistol at his hip.

  “Mr. Briends, it sounds like murder upstairs and the line for 911 is busy…hey, where the hell are you going?”

  Thaniel hadn’t stopped running.

  “Get the hell out of here, Hank! Run!” Thaniel shouted as he ran past the security desk towards the elevators at the far end of the room.

  Behind him, the glass doors shattered inwards as the pursuing monsters slammed against them. They climbed over themselves in piles and were so eager to get inside that their tumbling mass became stuck in the narrow channel of the entranceway.