Brent crouches down beside me as best he can in the cramped space. His hands are cold and clammy against my blazing skin. Part of me wants to slap his hands away, but I fight back the urge. He’s all I have left, just as I am his. We are each other’s end of the line. I wake myself enough to reach out for his hand, and he tethers himself to me.
The others begin to roust themselves, confirming that we’re all still here. Their eyes blink owlishly in the dim glow of dawn peeking through the holes in the door.
“We made it?” James asks, almost as though this were all some horrid dream he’s waking from.
“We did,” Seth replies in an ominous undertone.
Heads swivel in our direction, expressions varying from pity to outright disgust. No one’s saying it but they all know one thing for certain: It was all my fault. I know it.
Brent’s arms tighten around me, shielding me from their judgement. Nothing he can do to protect me from myself, though. The true onslaught is coming at me from within.
James’s expression is the least judgmental. I see a mirror of my guilt in his eyes, and I know that he is carrying a burden on his own shoulders. To blame me would mean accepting his own weakness. Part of me knows that if I open the door to those emotions, they’ll flood through and I won’t ever be able to close the door again. So instead, I turn the key. I lock that shit up tight.
With a deep groan, the splintered door is pushed open. It’s dangling from the hinges, too tattered to ever count as protection again. I hope these assholes realize how close they came to being monster chow, that my dad died protecting their lives. Protecting my life, for whatever that’s worth.
As we step up into the sunrise, I hesitate. Brent is leaning heavily on me, and I’m not sure he can handle the scene we are bound to encounter outside this cellar. Not that I want to see it either, but I’m prepared. I feel like it can’t possibly be worse than what I witnessed within my own mind last night.
James and Seth step forward, clearing our view of the RV. Brent begins to shake, tiny hiccupping sobs wracking his body. I push his face into my shoulder. I’ll protect him as much as I can from the carnage. The two girls come over to offer their condolences, but they’re both actively avoiding looking at the mess that used to be my father.
I take it all in, objectively. The RV is destroyed. A couple of the guys are over there, picking through the debris for something useful, but it’s pretty obvious that there’s no way we can possibly drive it out of here.
We aren’t looking much better than the RV. I realize now, looking down at my bloody hands, that I really had fought to get out of that cellar. The others are covered in scratches and bruises, courtesy of me. I somehow don’t think an apology will cut it, though I can’t imagine that anyone will demand one. I’ve already paid the ultimate price...
Seth crouches down over what’s left of my dad’s body. He fumbles out a prayer, rarely used and mostly forgotten, and I’m hit with gratitude for this man, this stranger. He peels his shirt off to lay over the body. The blood quickly wicks into the threadbare fabric, and I finally turn away.
James stands in the light of the rising sun, not yet hot enough to burn. His posture is one of absolute defeat. “What’s the point? To anything? They know where we are now. They’ve found us.” The others turn to look at him, but no one argues. “We have nowhere to hide. Nowhere to go. You can’t change the end game.”
For a second, I think James is just going to stay there in the sun until it’s over. I think of the end my father met, and I wonder if I don’t deserve to burn beside James. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
When James finally shuffles over to the shady side of the building, it’s like a signal to the rest of the group. One by one, they take their place along the wall, sliding down until they’re settled into the dirt.
Brent, still crying softly, follows me blindly, numb to the world. I get him settled into the dust before I lean back against the wall. What else can we do except wait… although I’m not sure exactly what we’re waiting for. Death, I suppose. The beasts will most certainly be back for us tonight.
Even in the shade, the sun is painfully bright. Whereas my vision last night had been detailed, now the sun leaves my eyes feeling dry and bleached. The light washes all the details away.
Nothing wrong with my ears, though. I have no trouble hearing James mumble, “We’ll be fine…”
What utter horseshit.
29
Kenzo
I wake up—or at least I think I do. Honestly, this could almost all be a nightmare. Except I don’t remember ever having a dream hurt quite this much.
I peel my face off the floor, the non-stick metal grate plucking at my skin. “Shit, that really hurts,” I moan, bringing my hands up slowly and pushing myself into a seated position. When I touch the tender skin below my eye, my fingertips come away slick with blood. “What the hell happened?’
The last thing I remember is releasing the vials into the ventilation system, and I gotta say, this isn’t at all how I thought things were going to go.
I pat myself down, searching for injuries, but find none other than the scrape I sustained when I supposedly collapsed onto the floor.
A feeling of dread sinks into my gut, slowly as I realize that my plan didn’t work. Maybe I got the dosage wrong? How much time has passed? Are the Shredders already in the compound? Have they already killed everyone, all those men, women, and children?
A sob breaks from my lips. I wish they had killed me too.
I swing open the door to the hallway, prepared for whatever I may face. Except… nothing has changed from when I walked into the maintenance room. The hallways are barren, the emergency lights still offering their scant blue-tinted glow. An eerie silence hangs heavy in the air, almost tangible. I begin to walk down the long hallway, a shiver dancing across my skin.
I head back towards the lab. What other choice do I have? When I left, Howell was busy making his plans for evacuation. Did they already leave? That thought actually brings me a small amount of comfort.
From a door on the right, I hear a soft sobbing. I slow my pace but do not stop. There’s nothing I can do for them now.
The next door brings instead a roar of rage and the smashing of wood and metal from within. The sound carries a weight of grief and anger, emotions I can relate to. I could easily drown myself in a sea of frustration if I allowed the rising tide past my barriers.
The door to the lab is standing ajar when I come to it. I place a hand against the cold metal. Push, dammit, I will myself. Get it over with.
The blood looks purple in the glow of the emergency lights. There’s a huge pool of it dominating the hallway, wall-to-wall blood puddle. I so very much do not want to take another step through this doorway. I want to turn the other way and run screaming into the streets.
But instead I find my feet shuffling one in front of the other.
My eyes trace along the edges of the blood, where it seems to swallow the white linoleum. There I see Eleanor lying face down. Her limbs are twisted at impossible angles. I’m torn between rushing to her side to see if she’s okay… and knowing that she is not.
A slight movement beyond her corpse brings my attention up. A figure is standing as though part of the shadows; if he hadn’t moved, I don’t think I would have even noticed him. And now that I’m looking at him, I know instinctively that he moved on purpose. It was the only warning I’m going to get from this man.
Not a man, I remind myself.
Ellis’s head is bowed, chin to chest. I’m painfully aware of how fragile I am, how frustratingly human when compared to this engineered killing machine. Instinct has me inching toward the door in a last-ditch survival attempt, but I freeze when his whole body goes tense. I half expect him to lower into a predatory crouch. Will he attack with his claws? Tear out my jugular? Maybe he’ll simply disembowel me and wait for me to bleed out. He likely isn’t very hungry anymore…
“I don’t know what happened
…” he whispers. He still sounds like Ellis, and my heart breaks for him. For the loss of my friend. “She—she opened the door. She was only trying to help me, but… I couldn’t stop myself.”
He raises his head slowly to look at me, and his black eyes glisten with tears. “What am I?” he sobs. He holds his clawed hands out in front of him and stares down at his open palms, smeared with gore.
I shake my head, whispering for forgiveness. I am as much to blame as he is, maybe more so. “I’m sorry, I tried to stop it all before it got out of control. The Shredders were coming in, we were all about to die, and I had the power to stop it. I just thought that if I could level the playing field, make us all equal, then we would have a chance. I put the portentum noctis virus through the vents. I exposed everyone, the entire compound. But I couldn’t even do that—”
A low growl has me spinning, on high alert. A second figure has materialized behind me, filling the doorway. This silhouette, however, is nothing like Ellis. It is still in the early stages of the transformation; its skin textured and limbs elongated, the tips of its claws just beginning to push through.
“You!” it hisses from between its pointed teeth. “This is all your fault. You made us all like… this.”
What? Me? My brain begins to cycle through who this monster used to be, taking in its clothes, now tattered and torn. But there’s something familiar about the tilt of its head as it watches me, prowling nearer. “Telly?” I gasp.
But… how is Telly a Shredder? I pat my hands over my body, still obviously human. This doesn’t make any sense. The virus should’ve turned me too.
“I came here looking for Howell, but you’ll do just as well. Your blood… it smells… delicious.” Its tongue darts out, wetting its lips with a viscous saliva. “There’s no one left, Doc. No one human. Nothing to eat… except you…”
I bring a hand to my abraded cheek as though I can push the blood back beneath the surface of the skin. It… he… The monster and the man blur together in my mind. They are one and the same. If I look too closely at myself, maybe I’ll find that I’m just as much a monster as he is.
Telly said he came for Howell. But where is he? Did Ellis kill him too? Did he retreat back into his private bunker? Does Howell smell like food?
Or is he, too, a Shredder?
A cold sweat beads on my forehead. “What have I done?” I’ve doomed us all. I take a step back, but then freeze. To walk away from Telly means moving closer to Ellis. Which one of these monsters is the lesser of evils?
The answer is obvious when Telly lowers into a crouch, claws extended. The doorway is entirely blocked by his hulking shape. I’m trapped.
This is not at all what I had intended. I just wanted to save everyone. If what Telly says is true, that there’s no one human left, then somehow, I’ve managed to infect everyone else but not myself. How? Why? My eyes dart back to Eleanor’s body, cooling on the floor. If she hadn’t opened the door, would she have turned too? Was her death all just a matter of bad timing?
Telly lets out a feral snarl. I barely have time to react before he leaps, arms extended. I stumble with a gasp, landing flat on the floor on my back. But Telly never reaches me. Ellis is there, he moves so fast. He swats the monster out of the air with ease, tearing a gash across his throat. Black blood spatters across the walls.
“But—H-how—?" I watch Telly gasp like a fish, blood bubbling from his ruined neck. I’d always believed that Shredders were bulletproof, but Ellis’s claws tore through Telly’s skin like gauze.
“Ellis?” I whisper. His shadow falls across my face, but I’m too terrified to look my friend in the eye.
“Let’s get out of here, Kenzo.” I’m not sure where he thinks we’re going, what possible future we could have in store. But when he extends his hand to me, I find myself reaching out to take it. Part of me hopes he kills me. His skin is hot to the touch, but smooth like steel, his claws brushing against my wrist. I shudder. He handles me like a porcelain teacup, gently helping me to my feet.
If I open my mouth, I might start screaming, so instead I try to think like a doctor. A scientist. I have so many questions.
But when a voice cuts through the quiet, it’s not mine, and it’s not Ellis, though it’s as familiar as my own mother’s. “Well, well, I didn’t know you had it in you, Dr. Kimura. You’ve really put us in a bit of a pickle, haven’t you?”
Dread, guilt, and downright terror war for dominance. I look up and see a woman, no longer how I remember her. Instead of her emaciated frame, she’s now bulky, muscular. Knobby, scabby, and lethal, her hair sprouting in patches from her scalp. She tsks. “Here I thought we were just coming for lunch. But instead, it looks like you may just be the solution to all our problems,” she says.
“Hello, Judith,” I tell her.
Epilogue
Lori
Oh god… what have I done…?
There’s blood everywhere. My hands are dripping with it. And there’s something wrong with my hands. They’re… deformed?
The landscape around me is littered with gore. Tattered clothes, ribbons of flesh. And so much blood. The wall I had spent all day leaning against is now a Jackson Pollock painting of gore.
“Brent?” I call, my voice hoarse as though I’ve been screaming. “James? Seth?” I never bothered to learn everyone’s name, I didn’t see the point. Even less of a point now, I suppose.
I stand there, unmoving, for far too long. No one’s here. And if anyone is still alive, I can’t imagine they’re ever coming back.
But Brent? He would come back for me. If he could…
The sun is dipping below the horizon, throwing a red haze over the whole devastating scene. I can no longer see each individual drop of blood as it blends into the glow, and the relief it brings me causes a twist of guilt. It wasn’t enough for me to cause my own father’s death? No, I needed to have literal blood on my hands.
The patter of blood dripping from my fingertips is the only sound.
Until it’s not.
The beasts are emerging from whatever hidey hole they’ve been stashed in all day, converging around me. I know I should feel fear, or even anger, but the only emotion I can muster is one of defeat. This is finally the end.
Good riddance.
I close my eyes and welcome death with open arms. Except it never comes. The monsters keep their distance, startling in their quietude. I can feel the heat coming off them, but I don’t hear a single breath pass their teeth.
I feel the low hum rumbling from one of them, and the reverberation in my chest feels… familiar. It feels like they’re communicating with me, in a language I’ve only heard in my dreams.
When I open my eyes, the sun has fully passed beneath the horizon, and we’re nearing full dark. Just like last night, my vision is crisp and detailed, everything bathed in silver. I can see the creatures spread out around me in a loose circle. One silhouette breaks apart from the rest, stepping forward, and I tense, but not from fear. I can’t bring myself to be afraid of something so familiar.
I recognize the way his body moves, lithe and confident. “Trey?” It’s him, but it isn’t him. Like that woman, Kelly, back at the department store wasn’t really Bob’s daughter anymore. All his features are there, but they’re not quite where I left them.
“Hello, Lori. We’ve been waiting for you. I’ve come to take you home.”
“Home?” I whisper.
“Yes,” he says. “Your mother has been waiting for you.”
TO BE CONTINUED...
About the Author
T.K. Bradley lives in the far north, in the great white expanse of Canada, with a variety of pets, all with ridiculous names that only children can be blamed for.
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Continue Lori and Kenzo’s story in Predator
Available for pre-order on Amazon
Habi
ts are hard to break. And right now, survival feels like one long bad habit.
Nothing is the way it’s supposed to be. Not the world, and certainly not me. I’m still Lori Fisher — daughter, sister, military-bunker survivor — but I’m also… different now. But I am alive, and that’s more than most can claim, so I should be grateful, right?
It was my dad’s plan to head north. Shorter days, cooler temperatures. And when we hear about a secret military research facility in northern Canada, it solidifies it as our best (aka only) option. Sure, what’s a pesky little thing like a journey across thousands of miles of scorched wasteland? Piece of cake. Let’s not talk about the undying thirst coursing through my veins. And we definitely won’t discuss the unlikely travel companions that I have no choice but to trust. Ugh. This is not the apocalypse I signed up for.
In this tension-filled sequel to Prey, Lori discovers that there’s more to life than simply surviving, and maybe it’s worth fighting for. The Walking Dead meets Doomsday Preppers in Predator, a sci-fi post-apocalyptic tale set in a future where solar flares and rising temperatures have decimated the population, leaving survivors to shield themselves from the sun. The night, however, comes with its own perils.
If you like Jonathan Maberry, Nicholas Sansbury Smith, Justin Cronin, and A.G. Riddle, you’ll love this gritty series from author T.K. Bradley.
Prey (The Shade Chronicles Book 1) Page 27
