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

by Roach, Aaron

  Shit.

  The thing loomed closer, bringing its snarling skull close to Sharpe’s face.

  Is it grinning?

  Sharpe spat into the smile.

  The skeletal snorted at the insult and turned away, grabbing him by the ankle. Sharpe felt himself being dragged across the ground before he was swung hard into the control panel next to Neyra’s putrefying remains. A moment later, through half-closed eyes, he heard the sounds of eating.

  Gasping, Sharpe propped himself up into a sitting position. He looked down to see the skeletal feasting on his legs like a hyena on a carcass. He chuckled when he realized that he felt none of it, nothing below the gaping wound in his gut. Out of morbid curiosity he watched the monster devour him until his eyes registered the wooden handle of Neyra’s axe on the floor next to him.

  Sharpe’s chuckle turned into a maniacal laugh.

  The thing kept eating.

  Sharpe’s hand seemed to crawl to the axe of its own volition. It closed around the handle and lifted. He brought the tool to his chest, switching to a two-handed grip before raising it up high.

  “Hey…” Sharpe grunted. “Hey!”

  At his legs, the skeletal snapped its head up, chittering.

  “Eat this.”

  Sharpe heaved the head of the axe downwards and buried it deep in the beast’s temple. It collapsed on top of his knees, squealing with the impact. It twitched there for several moments before it stilled into death.

  After the beast succumbed, Sharpe simply sat there, wheezing air into his punctured lungs as the lights in the room began to fade. Alone and bleeding out, he closed his eyes and tried to focus. When he opened them again, he saw sunshine and sand and heard the tumbling waves of the ocean nearby. He felt a presence and turned to see his ex-wife standing next to him, smiling as she looked out to sea. God, how I missed that smile. She still had her wedding ring on, and his heart soared at the sight. He clasped his hand in hers, beaming. At their feet their dog ran circles around them in the sand, a stick in its mouth. Hey, Buddy. He took the stick and threw it down the beach and Buddy gave chase until both the stick and dog disappeared somewhere over the horizon. Did you see that? Sharpe asked, turning back to his wife. But she was gone, too. Instead, his men were there, smiling reassuringly at him.

  She’ll be back sir, they said, but you’ve got one more thing to do first.

  Sharpe looked down and saw that he was back in the room full of metal. Collapsed on his legs was the dead alpha skeletal, and beyond that, a few feet away, was the pistol the thing had knocked out of his hand.

  He groaned as he rolled over onto his side, fighting the black that crashed in waves across his vision, and began pulling himself across the floor with his elbows. When his hand closed around the weapon, he sat back up.

  One more thing to do.

  Sharpe turned it around on himself and placed the end of the barrel against his sternum, above the heart. He closed his eyes.

  Not there, the voices said sadly, it won’t do the trick.

  A wheezing sigh. He brought the barrel up beneath his chin and felt his jaw cool at the touch.

  Almost there, boss.

  Only one more thing to do.

  Sharpe squeezed the trigger.

  -86-

  Kat awoke in the darkness to the sounds of panicked screaming outside and a man close behind, grunting into her ear. Then a wave of nausea and horror slammed into her with the realization that the man was there, between her legs and inside.

  Kat screamed, pushing off the ground and slamming her head backwards into where she assumed his face would be. He was too quick. She felt his fingers wrap in her hair and shove hard, bashing her face against the floor until her nose flooded with blood. She kicked into the floorboards, trying to heave the man off, but he punched her in the back of the head and sent the darkness closing in again.

  Behind her, the grunting didn’t stop.

  -87-

  When the sirens began to wail, Ward ran to the fence that divided the soldiers from the civilian population. In the distance, on the other side of the camp, he watched spotlights dancing across the trees and pale figures charging out of the woods. The figures threw themselves at the fence until it buckled beneath their weight. Once inside the perimeter, the figures scrambled up watchtowers, swarming them until the spotlights went out. Then Ward heard it; moaning and shrieking carried through the night air, pockmarked with the sounds of gunfire.

  Ward pivoted and dashed towards the depot where he knew the company vehicles were parked. He chose a Humvee – one with a turret-mounted machine gun – and leapt into the driver’s seat, starting it up and flicking on the headlights. Ahead, through the fence across from him, undead faces were lit up, caught like fish in a chain-link net.

  The attack was coming from everywhere.

  Holy shit.

  The section of fence nearest him caved inward and the dead swarmed before Ward could gain any significant speed. He was forced to drive slowly through the reaching mass while groaners thumped against the hood, murmuring hungrily. The vehicle rose and fell as some were run down and crushed beneath the tires.

  When the crowd grew sparser and the groaning bodies farther apart, Ward slammed his foot onto the accelerator. The Humvee roared into the civilian portion of the camp, its headlights flashing across panicked faces. He saw with dismay that the dead were everywhere within the terrified mob, feasting.

  Ward swerved to avoid running down a fleeing family when he saw a blur of bone in his peripherals. A moment later, there was a crash atop the roof, and he looked quickly upward to see a grinning skull glaring back at him upside-down through the windshield. He slammed the wheel to the right and sent the thing flying, only to watch in his side-view mirror as it hit the ground in a roll and came up onto all fours unharmed. It immediately tackled a man running past, pulling him into a spiked embrace.

  He drove over to where he first saw the dead coming through the fence, where he knew Litz had been on duty at one of the watchtowers. As he neared the area, he pulled to a stop and rolled down his window, cupping his hands over his mouth to shout his friend’s name into the night. Then he saw him, a soldier cutting through the grass in a mad sprint, firing blindly over his shoulder at a pack of skeletals close on his heels. A dozen yards behind the skeletals were gape-mouthed groaners, running and reaching.

  Please let that be Litz.

  Ward drove directly at them, blaring on the horn and accelerating.

  Litz beelined for the incoming Humvee and at the last second juked left and threw himself out of the heavy vehicle’s path. Ward kept his foot on the gas and felt the crunching of skeletal skulls slamming against the grill a moment later. The skeletals shrieked as they were run down, their bodies snapping and breaking with the impact, but Ward didn’t stop. He continued plowing through them, through the clear space beyond, and into the swarm of groaners at the rear. When the mass of bodies became too thick to push through, he slid the gear into reverse and backed out of the swarm, forcing more groaners beneath the tires before turning and driving towards Litz, who was still firing his weapon. He brought the Humvee to a stop next to him, leaned over, and opened the passenger side door.

  Litz, seeing who it was at the wheel, barked a laugh and shook his head in disbelief. “Alright. I see you, Ward. Maybe you’re not such a coward after all.”

  “You coming?”

  Litz looked up at the machine-gun turret mounted on the Humvee’s roof. He smiled broadly. “Yeah, I’m coming.” He hopped in through the open door and stood up in the cab until his torso popped up through the vehicle’s top. “Ready!” he called.g “Let’s do this thing.”

  The duo shot through the camp raining gunfire and curse words. Between pulls of the trigger, Ward could hear Litz whooping with glee and calling out challenges to the dead. Then the gunfire would resume and everything else was drowned out. Groaners and skeletals alike were cut down in the vehicle’s path until, ahead, they saw Kat and Sophia’s h
ousing unit.

  “There!”

  They drove in a circle around the trailer, running down the dead in the narrow alleys between the other units. When they were clear of any immediate danger, Ward jumped from the driver’s seat and sprinted up the stairs to the door, shouting for Kat and Sophia. The long room was empty, though bloody handprints decorated the walls and floor. He ran back out to Litz, still firing from the immobile vehicle.

  “It’s empty!”

  “What now? They could be anywhere!”

  Ward looked around, unsure. Where could they have gone?

  There were pockets of dead all about the camp, huddled in swarms around unseen victims. The largest of one such swarm was in the distance by the school building. There, at the outer edges of the mob, the dead had their backs to them, reaching for somewhere towards the center.

  “We start there!”

  -88-

  The man’s grunting was slowing, but Kat never stopped trying to fight him off. She strained against the floor to heave his weight from her back but every time she struggled, he sent fists flying at her head. Then, as she felt the last of her strength ebbing away, Kat heard someone else enter the room. She sobbed words which could have been either a plea or a warning.

  “Hey asshole!” the newcomer shouted.

  Sophia.

  Suddenly the grunting at her ear became a squeal of pain and she felt her rapist scrambling away, freeing her of him. She brought her head up and saw through tear-filled eyes Sophia standing at the entrance of the room, her slingshot raised and drawn. The girl let loose another missile, and the man roared in pain once more. Then there was a crashing of shattered glass.

  “Kat!” Sophia cried out, running across the room to her. She tried to help Kat to her feet, but her legs buckled and she collapsed to her knees, her face buried in her hands.

  Sophia crouched down and held her friend. She saw Kat’s partially removed jeans and the drops of red on her legs, and even at her young age, she understood. “I’m so sorry, Kat,” she murmured. “I scared him off. He’s not coming back.” She tried to say more, but nothing else came out.

  She didn’t have the words for what Kat had experienced.

  Through it all, Sophia was ever aware of the cries of the dead and dying outside. The longer they waited there, the more dangerous it would become. They needed to leave, to flee the camp, before there was nothing left but the dead. “He’s gone, Kat,” she said over Kat’s soft weeping. She ran her fingers through her friend’s hair. “I know it hurts, Kat, but we need to go. We need to leave now. Right now. Right this moment.”

  Kat’s hand trembled and she pulled air in deep, shutting her eyes to find focus. Behind her eyelids, grabbing hands came at her in the dark. She ignored them and forced herself to stand.

  “There you go, Kat.”

  Kat glanced over her shoulder. Though she knew for almost certain that he wasn’t there, she had still to make sure her attacker was truly gone. At the other side of the room, she saw the shattered window and realized he must have thrown himself through the glass in his haste to escape. She looked down at Sophia staring back at her, pained worry written in her face. She pulled the girl in close and held her tightly for a long moment before speaking, “Thank you Sophia.” Then, another pause before, “Did you get a good look at him?”

  Sophia nodded, “It was Mr. Truant. Don. The one from the helicopter, the one I knew from the museum. I saw his face, Kat,” she shuddered. “There was something dark there, something evil.”

  The man from the helicopter, the one she had hit.

  The hollowness inside Kat’s belly grew until it threatened to consume her. Her knees trembled and she moved to sit again, but Sophia caught her.

  “Kat, I know you’re hurting, but it’s getting bad outside. We really need to go.” As if to punctuate her point, from somewhere outside the building they heard a roar loud enough to drown out the sounds of screaming and gunfire. The terrible noise must have come from something massive, and incoming.

  Kat wiped the tears from her eyes and tried not to think of the fury and self-disgust building inside her. “Okay.”

  There was bedlam when they stepped outside. Uncounted thousands of the dead were already inside the perimeter of the camp, and in the distance, even more were crawling or shuffling over downed fences. Many were on their knees, pulling innards from victims and eating voraciously. Others ran in groups, chasing down terrified prey with stabbing limbs and biting teeth. Kat, who was already teetering on the brink, closed her eyes to the despair. How were they ever going to cut a path through the massacre alive? Even now, as they stood atop the stairs to the schoolhouse, dozens of groaners shambled towards them, moaning and reaching.

  We’re never going to make it.

  “We’re going to go through them, Kat,” Sophia said next to her. “You’ve got to trust me.” A small, unsure smile played on her face.

  Without further explanation, the girl grabbed her hand and pulled her down the steps and towards the incoming bodies.

  Kat tried to pull back, to yank Sophia away and place herself protectively between the girl and the monsters. But the girl held fast, and Kat could only watch in horror as the dead swarmed. Then, like a stream diverging across the face of a boulder, the charging dead split around them until the two were surrounded in a perfect circle. At the edge of the circle, the dead grasped and moaned, unable to reach the girls through some unseen barrier.

  “See?” Sophia said. “It’s like what happened at your apartment building. Something is stopping them from harming me.”

  “But…but why?”

  “I don’t know…and I don’t know how long it will last, either, so we should keep moving,” she said.

  The held hands as they ran together, the crowd of bodies parting before them to form an alleyway of the dead. Protected in their unexplained bubble, they pushed their way past bloody soldiers with spilled open bellies, and children with torn away faces. They saw the clipboard woman who had processed them when they first arrived at the camp, her whole lower jaw missing. They ran through dead things in various states of decay, past groaners whose lower halves were gone and who dragged their guts like streamers across the ground, and past snapping skeletals with ribcages that opened out like reaching claws.

  As they pushed through the swarm, Kat detected another kind of movement, and turned to see a different path being cut through the dead, heading right towards them. However, where the dead things in front of Kat and Sophia moved reluctantly, snapping at them from the edge of the bubble, the dead clearing a route for the newcomer seemed afraid, shrieking and falling in their haste to get out of the way. Then suddenly he was there, charging through the wall of bodies and into their little bubble of protection. Kat saw his face clearly for a brief instant before his shoulder slammed into them with a hard grunt.

  A grunt she recognized from behind her ear.

  Her violator.

  Don Truant.

  Sophia hadn’t seen the incoming Don and she bore most of the impact. She was sent flying into the swarm which repulsed away from her falling form.

  Kat, bent on vengeance, charged at the man, sending her fury into her fists and swinging wildly at his head. She swore at him, snarling in satisfaction with each fist that struck home, only to come to a sudden stop when he reached backwards and pulled a pistol from his waistband.

  Before Kat could duck away, Don fired into her at close range.

  Once. Twice.

  And Kat fell.

  On her knees, Kat tried to staunch the warmth that seeped through her fingers. Around her, the dead snarled from the edges of the invisible barrier, watching her die. And there, a mere few feet in front of her, were Don and Sophia.

  Sophia was on the ground. She pulled the slingshot from her pocket and was bringing it up to aim when Don closed the distance. He swatted the weapon away before she could get a shot off and stomped a heavy foot down onto her shoulder, forcing her to the ground. She opened her
mouth to cry out, but he brought his full weight down onto her small chest, straddling her and forcing the wind from her lungs. Kat tried to regain her feet, to save her friend, but shock and pain paralyzed her to the ground. She watched helplessly as Don reached down and wrapped his hands around the girl’s throat. Sophia kicked and fought, scratching at the hands that strangled her, but Don was too strong. He leaned his weight into his arms and squeezed.

  Sophia.

  -89-

  Baby…girl…

  The once-Burome came slowly through the horde, with Others and seedlings alike shifting aside to let it pass. Those who didn’t move quickly enough were skewered onto the points of its horns and tossed out of its way with a grunt.

  Kat, still on her knees, watched the beast arrive. It stepped into the clearing with a heavy foot, breaking through the line of dead who writhed at the edge of the invisible barrier, still reaching to get inside.

  It towered over all of them and for a moment Kat forgot the pain in her belly.

  The thing was different than its skeletal counterparts. It was skeletoid still, but the exposed yellows and grays of its bones had grown darker, calloused. Its ribs had fused together into a solid shell, spiked like a battle mace, and bands of sinew and muscle streaked across its skeletal structure like vines of ivy on an old house. At its head, it wore a red-tipped crown of antlers, each as long as a small man.

  Once inside the clearing, the massive beast whimpered like a puppy that had been stepped on. It looked down at Kat and its whimpering quickly stopped, almost as if embarrassed she had seen its suffering. It lifted its clawed foot and placed it gently on her face, then shoved hard enough to send her tumbling backwards. Kat sobbed as she felt acid roll like a ball of fire in her stomach, and she lay back on the grass, trying to quench the blood still flowing from her gut.

  The beast stepped towards Don and Sophia, and its whimpers resumed, growing into the squealing of a dying pig. It raised its cudgeled hands and slammed them against its crown with a grunt. Again, the squeals quieted.