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

by Roach, Aaron

  “Right. Easy peasy.”

  They lined themselves at the door and Kat took one more peek through the fisheye of the peephole. “It’s still empty,” she whispered.

  Behind her, she felt Sophia steel herself. “Okay, let’s go.”

  Kat turned the latch of the deadbolt and pulled the door open.

  The aroma of the hallway outside was both sour and sweet, as if chocolate milk had been left out in the sun. They stepped into the space and made their way down the hallway, where they ascended the stairs in eerie silence until Sophia broke the quiet.

  “Where are all the dead people that were here yesterday?” she asked.

  Kat didn’t have an answer. Wherever those things were, she was just happy they weren’t there with them now.

  When they arrived at the top floor, at the exit to the roof, the door was locked, barring their path. Kat twisted the knob and leaned her shoulder into it, hoping to force the issue, but it wouldn’t budge.

  They weren’t getting out there without a key.

  They heard the roar of helicopters growing louder and closer outside, urging them to hurry.

  “What should we do?” Sophia asked at Kat’s hip.

  Kat thought for a moment. The building superintendent had a small office in the basement of the building. If she remembered correctly, the superintendent had dozens of keys hanging up on a wall behind his chair. She sighed in frustration, “I think we have to go downstairs, kid. There might be a key in the basement.”

  Their return down the stairs was quicker than their ascent, but when they hit ground level, halfway down the hall to the door that led to the basement, the air changed. To Kat, it was like the smell of old apples, as if she was walking through a dead orchard, abandoned to winter. The aroma stopped her in her tracks.

  “Kat? What’s wrong?” asked Sophia.

  “You don’t smell that?”

  Sophia sniffed the air. “Smells the same as before.”

  Kat’s senses were tingling. It was like yesterday morning, when she was under the pavilion and her instincts were screaming at her to wait out the rain. Something was taking place. A threatening something. Something bad.

  “Come on, Soph, we have to hide. Now,” she muttered softly, trying to keep the panic out of her voice.

  Together they jogged back down the hall from where they had just come. Safely hidden behind the edge of the wall, Kat peered out and stared towards the door that led to the basement, from where the stench was emanating.

  Even as she watched, the door clicked and creaked open until it was halfway ajar. Kat squeezed Sophia’s hand and put a finger to her lips.

  Quiet.

  Noises – gasping and rattling, like ghosts playing dice – made their way up the basement stairwell.

  “What’s tha –”

  The door slammed open and out spewed a handful of skeletals. They came shrieking, sideways and upside down, as they scurried across the walls and ceiling of the corridor. Halfway down the hall they stopped and tilted their eyeless, skinless faces, sniffing the air.

  Behind the corner, the two girls pressed themselves flat to the wall, willing themselves invisible. Kat, who was closer to the edge, gave a quick prayer of thanks that Sophia couldn’t see what she was seeing. She must have sensed her tension though, as her grip on Kat’s hand was stronger than before.

  Behind the creatures, another skeletal emerged from the dark space of the basement, walking upright on two feet. It was larger than the others, larger than any Kat had seen yet. Its massive skull was dented and cracked, and the bones of its hands had somehow grown together into calloused clubs. It walked to where the girls had been standing only moments earlier and sniffed at the air inquisitively. It came down onto all fours, resting itself heavily on its clubbed fists like an ape and lowered its face to the ground to lick at the carpet there. Its tongue was meaty and rasped at the fabric like a tiger licking meat from a carcass.

  It snorted in acknowledgement before bursting into a sprint towards their little corner, bellowing in rage.

  “Run!” Kat screamed to Sophia, pushing her away from the path of the oncoming beast. But the demon was already on them. It rounded the corner and threw itself at Sophia in a roaring tackle, pinning her to the ground. The monster was up immediately, raising its clubbed hands high to smash down onto the girl’s sobbing face when -

  No!

  From blocks away, the once-Burome had been sending its thoughts out to its horde, directing its war chiefs to positions across the city, when one of its chiefs picked up a scent the once-Burome recognized from its birth. In its mind, from somewhere deep and dark, something very human sparked to life – the memory of a girl with a pigtail on the side of her head.

  The image lingered for a moment, threatening to collapse the once-Burome’s mental hold on its army. Confused and angry at the sudden instability of the horde’s mind-web, it let the memory go where it faded away like ash in the wind. The once-Burome re-strengthened its grip on the horde and sent out a command to the war chief that had found the girl’s scent.

  Leave.

  Kill invaders.

  In the corridor, Kat stared in horrified awe as the monster froze its attack on Sophia, its clubbed fists only inches away from caving in the little girl’s face. Beneath the creature, Sophia squeezed her eyes closed, readying herself for a horrible end.

  The monster stood upright and turned its empty eye sockets towards Kat, then back down to Sophia. It huffed angrily, dribbling a gob of red saliva onto the girl’s shirt, before turning its back on them and walking away to join its bony comrades down the hall. Together, the pack exited the building, leaving the two girls alone.

  Kat helped Sophia to her feet, “Are you hurt? Did it bite you?”

  “No, I –”

  Before Sophia could finish her sentence, a chorus of moans rose out of the basement like a growing squall, and the girls scrambled to take cover behind their little corner once more. A moment later, they watched as hundreds of shuffling corpses began emerging from the dark basement, their bodies mottled with bite marks and their grey, glazed eyes gazing unseeing into the distance. Their eager groans reverberated so loudly down the corridor that Sophia and Kat could feel the vibrations through the walls. Like the skeleton monsters before them, the ghouls shuffled towards the building’s exit and began spilling out onto the street.

  As the dead marched, Kat looked down at Sophia and saw the girl’s eyes were wild and teary. Unsure of what to do, Kat pulled the girl into an embrace and used her hands to block her ears from the hungry groans. She held her there until the noise died down and they were once again alone.

  “Kat?” asked Sophia, her voice muffled against the older girl’s shoulder. “Can we get out of here now, please?”

  “Sure, thing Soph, I just have to get that key first.”

  When the dead had departed, so too had the scent of old apples, and though unsure of how she knew, Kat understood that the basement was probably now safe for them to enter.

  “You know, you can stay here if you want. I can go get the key by myself. I’ll be back in no time.”

  Sophia shook her head. “No, I’m coming with you. We’re supposed to look after each other. Like sisters, remember?”

  Kat couldn’t argue with that. She squeezed the girl’s hand and together they made their way down the hall towards the darkness of the basement’s doorway.

  Blocks away, the once-Burome sent out a tendril of thought to one of its scouts, carrying with it the scent of a memory.

  Follow.

  -32-

  The chopper tore across the sky above Boston.

  Sharpe had been born and raised in sunny southern California, before the country had fractured by the Frontier Rebellion, and had never been to Boston before. Yet he somehow easily recognized it. It looked like a battlefield, and he had seen plenty enough of those. Parts of the city were on fire or smoldering, and the roads were blocked with eerily silent traffic. And, of course, ther
e were the bodies. Thousands and thousands of them spread out across the city like stars on a flag. Every so often, one of them would stand up and just amble away.

  Hammering home the illusion of a war-torn city were the hundreds of other helicopters in the air with them, an armada of military, civil, and personal aircraft swarming towards the broken metropolis. For a moment, Sharpe’s heart lifted at the sight of so many birds in the sky – on the battlefield, aerial support was always welcome – except this flying armada wasn’t there to support the operators’ mission. The copters were there to find and rescue as many people as possible, while theirs was a mission of retrieval – Thaniel Briends – locate him, get him out, find out what he knows.

  One man, in all that chaos.

  The team had already searched Briends’s apartment but had found nothing. Neither the man, nor evidence linking him to Dr. Neyra, could be located. Now they were en route to the New England Times building, where their target worked. If they didn’t find Briends there, Sharpe didn’t have a plan for where to go next.

  “It’s like a day at the beach,” came the voice of Hyres from behind him, looking over his shoulder and interrupting his thoughts.

  “What’s that?”

  “Look at them,” said the chief, pointing with his nose down at the bodies below. “They’re all just lying there, soaking up the sun. Those ones getting up are just finished tanning, that’s all.”

  Sharpe forced a chuckle, “Roger that, Chief. Just another day in paradise.”

  Hyres clapped him on the shoulder before making his way back to his seat, navigating over legs in the cramped interior of the aircraft. Sharpe’s eyes skipped over the rest of his crew. Maldonado had resumed his dozing, but the others, Neto, Cooper, Grimaldi, Merril, and Salim all looked like the grizzled vets that they were – anxious, calm, and intense all at once. He wasn’t surprised at their demeanor, given the scenes below. It looked like war, but it was home, on Federation soil. Sharpe hoped they would be able to make the mental disconnect necessary to do their jobs well.

  He returned his gaze out the window to where some of the choppers broke from the fleet towards waiting, waving figures atop nearby skyscrapers. A few of the figures were lifted away safely, while at other buildings small skirmishes broke out with the distinct flashes of gunfire. He didn’t have time to dwell on that though, as ahead, the New England Times building came into view and stole his attention. It was a stout fortress of a building on the edge of the Common, small in comparison to some of its towering neighbors. The pilot brought the bird down towards the open expanse of its roof.

  “Alright, gentlemen,” Sharpe said, turning to his men, “It’s time to earn our paychecks.”

  “Hooya,” came the reply in chorus. The operators locked and loaded their weapons, checked the straps of their go-bags, and set their expressions for war, professional and cold. They were battle ready.

  When they felt the thump of the copter touching down, Sharpe and his men exited the helo, rifles raised to kill. A hand gesture later, they were moving swiftly to the rooftop entrance that would lead them into the building’s interior.

  Thaniel’s colleagues ascended the stairwell’s last steps and Chris slammed his shoulder into the door in his urgency to get outside. As he fell out into the open air of the rooftop, his relieved intake of breath quickly turned into a shrill cry of fear as he stared into the barrel of a rifle pointed directly at his face.

  “Thaniel Briends?” accused the face at the other end of the barrel loudly, over the sound of the helicopter.

  Chris shook his head. The sudden shift from fear of being eaten alive to fear of being shot had his mind reeling for words that never came.

  “Are you Thaniel Briends?” The voice repeated, louder.

  Thankfully, behind him, Jason answered. “Thaniel is downstairs. He went…”

  An unearthly howl echoed up through the dark stairwell, interrupting him. The noise seemed to startle the armed men too, who shifted their rifles to aim at the open door.

  “The helicopter! It’s too loud! They’re coming!” shouted Kim over the thundering blades.

  “We have to get the fuck out of here!” yelled Eric.

  But Chris was already on his feet, running towards the waiting helicopter.

  Sharpe didn’t need to say anything. Salim was already on the man, tackling him to the ground from behind. While Salim handled the runner, Sharpe rounded on the rest of the civilians, raising a pointed finger at Jason.

  “You. You will tell me where Thaniel Briends is. Now!”

  Jason stammered, “He went back downstairs. We heard someone who sounded like they were hurt, so he went to help. What’s going on here? Why do you need Thaniel?”

  More howls reverberated through the door, closer now.

  “The fuck is that noise?” asked Neto from behind Sharpe.

  “I don’t like this,” added Cooper, from Sharpe’s side.

  Then several things happened at once.

  Salim roared out in pain, swearing loudly. He held his palms over his eyes and stumbled backwards. The man he’d tackled was shakily rising to his feet, his outstretched hand aiming a spray canister of unknown liquid at the stunned and blinded Salim.

  No more questions needed to be asked at that point.

  Maldonado rounded his rifle and pulled the trigger, blowing holes in Chris’s torso and legs. He fell to the ground dead.

  Kim cursed at the armed men.

  Then a monster was among them.

  It burst from the stairwell like a leaping jaguar and landed on the blinded Salim. It stabbed jagged points into his shoulders then slammed its thickened skull into Salim’s face. On the second or third blow, the front of Salim’s head caved in like a deflated ball.

  The civilians scrambled out of the way, shouting in fear, but Sharpe’s men were professionals. Grimaldi and Merrill were already firing on the creature in controlled bursts. They advanced on it, their bullets forcing the thing off their dead comrade. The skeletal squirmed and shrieked from the onslaught and would have died by their efforts if they hadn’t been interrupted by more monsters that came screaming out of the stairwell. One charged out of the doorway at such a speed that, when it crashed into Merrill and Grimaldi’s flank, its momentum took them over the building’s edge and out into the twelve-story abyss on the other side.

  Sharpe watched it happen in slow motion. In less than a minute, he had lost three of his men. In his entire career with the operators, he’d never lost anybody.

  Until now.

  Sharpe roared, letting loose a burst of gunfire at a creature on all fours, snapping its jaws at one of the civilians who kicked out at the thing as he tried to scramble away. The rounds that Sharpe fired did little damage. Instead of collapsing into death, the thing leapt up onto a large ventilation fan before jumping off that towards Neto’s back. Both Sharpe and Hyres tracked its path and blew it out of the sky before it could land on their comrade. They watched it twist in the air like a falling cat, land on its feet, and then charge full tilt towards Cooper, who caught the thing’s momentum and tossed it over his shoulder in a way that would have made a judo champion proud. Cooper stomped a heavy boot into its chest, aimed his rifle at the thing’s face, and let out a barrage of bullets until it ceased all movement.

  Sharpe looked around at the last of his teammates locked in desperate struggles of life and death. Maldonado had one of the creatures by the skull, his massive fingers gripping its eye sockets like a bowling ball and inverting the thing’s spine while it thrashed and stabbed, inches away from one of the civilians. Neto and Hyres were still firing at the rest of the creatures that had joined the battle on the roof.

  The mission was already fucked. Sharpe’s only concern now was getting what was left of his team out of there alive. He began to call for a controlled retreat to the helo when he was cut short, tackled to the ground. He looked up in time to see pronged bones come stabbing down toward his chest. The wind was forced from his lungs as they c
onnected with his protective vest plate. Instinctually, he reached up and thumbed the thing where its nose should have been, catching the momentum of its head before it could be slammed down into his face. With what little leverage he could use while pinned against the ground, he slowly bench pressed the snarling skull away from him. Then, suddenly, he felt the creature’s weight go limp in his hands.

  -33-

  Private Ward pushed his way gingerly through the forest of standing bodies, thousands upon thousands of them, like a city of mannequins. They filled the streets and alleyways, their silhouettes etched behind apartment windows and car doors. There were bitten doctors in spattered scrubs, bruised children with ripped schoolbags, and bloody police officers in torn uniforms. All the dead things, from all walks of life, stared up at the sky as if praying to the sun for their old lives back. Their mouths hung open in silent screams as the red orb eventually passed over, denying them.

  Every now and then, one of the corpses would let out a low, long moan like a death rattle.

  When he had first heard the noise, Ward was passing a slack-jawed corpse of a teenager when the kid had groaned. Ward spun on the teen, rifle at the ready, but the dead boy just stood there, his gaze trained skyward. Ward stared at it, inches away from the end of his rifle, willing it to move or attack just so that he could pull the trigger and ease the tension in the air. It never did, and Ward had been forced to move on.

  Beyond the noises, the dead did nothing outwardly hostile. They just stood there, rooted to the pavement and staring openmouthed at the sky.

  Somewhere to Ward’s left, he could hear a soldier muttering a prayer in Spanish. Ward didn’t know how to pray, and he didn’t know Spanish. All he could do was push forward, shutting his eyes for heartbeats at a time, rejecting the dead faces until he had to check his path lest he stumble into one of them. He could only walk around blind for so long.

  “Ward. Litz.” Whitney hissed from somewhere ahead, his voice mercifully pulling Ward from his blind, stumbling march.

  Ward stepped around the bloodied corpse of a firefighter and into Whitney’s field of vision. Litz was there too, standing next to a woman with no throat. Whitney nodded to an intersection a block ahead – “That’s you, boys.”