Beneath: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Taken World Book 4)

by Flint Maxwell

  “What can I say? It’s my secret weapon,” he said. “That’s the reason you guys have never beaten me, the reason you’ll never beat me.”

  Tyler, the ultimate competitor, said, “We’ll see about that. Go on, start us up, May.”

  Just as she lined up for her shot, the lights cut off. The resulting dark blanketed the entirety of the mall.

  “What happened?” May asked.

  “Lights went out,” Ray answered.

  “No shit,” Florence said. “What made you think that? She means what made the lights go off?”

  “Hell if I know,” Ray said. “Could be we’re out of juice.”

  “I just filled it up yesterday,” Avery said. He let the basketball fall, and it bounced off the court, rolled farther into the darkness. “Can’t be that.”

  But Tyler knew what it was. It was the same thing that seemed to follow him wherever he went. Monsters. They’d somehow gotten inside of the mall, his paranoid mind said.

  “You don’t think it’s Kurt, do you?” May said. “Come to exact his revenge.”

  “Hold on a second.”

  Avery’s footsteps receded. The sound of a drawer opening, contents pushed aside, then the clicking of a button. Light filled the room.

  Avery held a flashlight. “I think there’s a few candles left in the store down the way. C’mon.”

  He led them from the basketball court, the beam sweeping at the darkness. The only sounds Tyler heard were their steps and their breathing. He heard nothing else, nothing sinister…like banging, scrabbling, or other footsteps. That was good, he supposed.

  At the candle store, the smell of a million different spices filled his nose; cinnamon, vanilla, watermelon, clean linen, apple, and pine were the most pungent, and they mixed together, forming one strong, odious scent.

  They took candles off the shelves, lit them with a lighter left at one of the checkouts. Soon, the place was a lot brighter.

  “Let’s go check out the generator,” Avery said.

  Ray shook his head.

  “Aw, you big baby. C’mon.” Avery poked him in the chest. “You got a pass for not going out with us when we saw Tyler and May here running from a bunch of bugs. You don’t get a pass now.”

  Ray dropped his head like a kid who had just been scolded by a parent.

  “I’ll go with you,” Tyler said. “I don’t mind.”

  “You will?” Avery asked, surprised.

  “Sure. As long as you get me a weapon and a flashlight.”

  He got a weapon. A pistol, almost brand-new. It smelled of oil and steel. Tyler liked the weight of it when he held it in his hands. He also got a flashlight.

  The generator was on the roof. Avery and Florence had set up a pretty intricate system that powered their most inhabited parts of the mall, but they had the ability to power other places, too, with just the flick of a switch. Avery had worked for an electric company, having had an obsession with electricity ever since seeing the stroke of lightning that reanimated Frankenstein’s monster in an old black and white flick that he’d watched when he was much too young. Before that, he’d bounced around jobs and was in and out of college.

  “I never thought what I learned in electrician’s school would come in handy outside of my nine-to-five,” he told Tyler as they went up the service steps to the roof. “But, yeah, it did. It really did.”

  They rounded the staircase. A sign said the roof exit was only one more level up. Tyler felt fine, though. Had he been doing this before the Ravaging, he would’ve been breathing hard and covered in sweat. The end of the world had hardened him. He could walk for miles without problem. His feet were calloused, his hands, too. And he wasn’t even scared. He had seen it all before; nothing could surprise him. Living amongst aliens from some other dimension or universe or, at the very least, planet, had taken away most of life’s surprises.

  “Back when I met Florence, I taught her as much as I could,” Avery continued, talking in a low whisper. “She caught on pretty fast. Faster than most of the guys and gals I went to school with. We rigged this place up pretty nicely. Didn’t take long, either, because all of the components were there. We just had to make a few tweaks here and there, and voila.”

  “So you don’t think it’s your workmanship?”

  Avery paused, looked back with an arched eyebrow. “I’m not saying that exactly. Sure, there’s a chance we might’ve wired something wrong or put too much juice here or there, but…I doubt it.”

  “Hence the guns.”

  Avery nodded.

  Still, no fear filled Tyler. He only held his gun tighter.

  At the top stair, Avery paused and held up a hand. They waited in silence for a long moment, listening. Tyler heard nothing. The door, however, was thick steel, locked tight with thicker steel chains. Avery dug in his back pocket and pulled out a ring of keys. He unlocked the padlocks adorning the chain. It tinkled softly as he pulled it from around the crossbar.

  Tyler waited, the gun growing heavier in his hands, ears still straining for some kind of sound.

  Avery set the chain on the top step, in a coil, out of their way.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  Tyler nodded.

  He pushed the door open. The hinges made no noise as the cold darkness atop of the roof enveloped them. Then the door made no noise as it closed behind them.

  There was…nothing.

  No monsters. No Kurt or Skylar. No other road bandits, come to sabotage them.

  Nothing out of the ordinary at first glance. It seemed this way to Tyler. But there was a sound coming from behind one of the generators. A zapping sound, like one of the wires had come undone and was sparking.

  “Shit,” Avery said. “Not good.”

  “Good thing we came up here,” Tyler replied. “Roof would’ve burned down and fell on top of us.”

  “I should be able to fix it, as long as we caught it before it melted the circuits.”

  Guns raised, they approached the generators, which stood shorter than the roof battlements. The dark of the sky made it feel like they were contained under a giant dome.

  Avery led the way. He stepped around the generator, lowering his gun for a moment. A scream, mostly of surprise and shock rather than fear, escaped his throat and cut through the quiet of the world.

  Tyler jumped and aimed his gun toward the generator.

  “What? What is it?” he asked Avery.

  Avery stepped backward, disgust on his face. “I-I don’t exactly know,” he answered. “Come see for yourself.”

  Tyler came around the generator. The first thing he noticed was the smell, burning flesh and hair. The second thing he noticed was the dark smoke spewing from a part of the broken metal casing. Something had lodged into it, almost like a meteor fallen from space.

  He knelt to get a closer look and waved his hands at the smoke. Once the smoke cleared, he saw what it was. Not a meteor.

  “Is that—?” Tyler began.

  “I think so,” Avery answered. “Mutated.”

  Tyler, against his better judgment, stood and toed the object out of the generator with his boot.

  In the simplest terms, it was a skull; it had once been a human skull, they reckoned. Not so much anymore. Part of the facial features were melted, running down the sallow cheekbones like wax on a lit candle. An eye rested on one side of the crooked nose; the other eye was turned around in its socket. Little suckers protruded from the flesh like those on an octopus’s tentacle. The mouth was sealed shut, but not well enough for them to not see the ghostly lines of where the lips had once been. Part of one of the cheeks had burned away, and a dark hole the size of a quarter sat where there shouldn’t be one. Through this hole, they saw teeth much too big for the jaw, like stalactites in a cave—long and yellowish white.

  It was certainly a mutated human head.

  The question on both of their minds was, how did it get up here?

  Avery kicked the skull away, a smoke cloud trailing it. Neithe
r of the men spoke for a long moment. Neither of them could speak.

  Finally, Avery said, “I can’t fix this right now. I need a bunch of tools that are downstairs. And a bunch of courage I don’t currently have. What I can do is reroute the lights to a different generator. We’ll burn more fuel that way, but it’ll get us through the night. It’s a quick operation. Won’t take more than a few minutes.” He twitched as if freezing from the cold. The weather was chill but not that chill. Tyler knew Avery was scared.

  He felt the same way. Seeing that skull mutated, in the process of turning into a monster, made him think bad thoughts. He almost wished it had been Kurt up here, messing with the generators.

  “I’ll cover you,” Tyler said. It was all he could think to say. He didn’t really think he would need to cover Avery, unless more mutated skulls started raining down on them, which was highly unlikely.

  “Thanks.”

  Avery went about taking the wires from the bashed generator and running them over to the other two. He moved with grace and care. The movements reminded Tyler of an artist as he painted or drew with a skilled hand.

  Tyler patrolled the large roof. It was impossible to see very far in the dark. He did not like being out here in the open. He remembered seeing flying things, things with wings as large as a plane’s, and veiny, their hides the color of a rotting corpse. Those things could swoop down at any moment, could pluck Tyler from the roof and take him back to their nest, where he would be ripped apart and fed to the creatures’ offspring.

  He felt naked, exposed.

  “Almost done,” Avery said.

  In the light of the flashlight beam, his skin shone with sweat. The broken generator behind him no longer smoked, but the smell lingered.

  “Take your time,” Tyler said, his voice shaking and betraying him.

  “And…done. C’mon, let’s get back inside.” Avery stood up, and his knees popped loudly.

  “So everything’s working?” Tyler asked.

  “Should be. Like I said before, I’m pretty good when it comes to this stuff.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Now we can get a game of basketball going.” Avery nudged Tyler with his elbow.

  But Tyler didn’t exactly feel like playing basketball. After seeing that skull burned and mostly inhuman, he didn’t want to do much of anything besides lie down and try to sleep. If he slept, though, he was sure he would dream of it, and that was nearly just as bad.

  “Yeah, basketball,” he said.

  They went in through the door, closed it behind them. Avery chained up the crossbar, locked the padlocks.

  Tyler jumped again, straining his ears. He thought he heard something…

  “Did you hear that?” he asked.

  “What?”

  That was when a scream shattered the silence of the stairwell.

  “That,” Tyler said.

  19

  The Fight for Amsterdam

  The first thing on Tyler’s mind was May. He ran down the steps, leaving Avery behind.

  “Wait up!” Avery called.

  But Tyler was long gone, using that reserved athleticism he’d saved for the basketball games. He bounded across the main corridor, toward the screams. They had undoubtedly been May’s. He’d never felt so low in his life, hearing the sounds of them. How could he have just left her behind?

  Because you didn’t think anything was truly wrong, that’s why. Go easy on yourself, Tyler.

  When it came to May, the only person he seemed to care about in this odd, apocalyptic world, there was no ‘going easy’. He loved her and he’d be damned if he’d let something happen to her. Without her, what was he?

  He was no one. He had nothing to live for.

  So he ran; he ran as fast as his middle-aged muscles would allow him—which was surprisingly fast, considering how much physical activity he didn’t do.

  “Tyler!” Avery called again.

  His voice sounded like a distant echo, a voice from another when. Tyler kept running, like his life depended on it.

  He called out to May, but heard no reply except for screaming. The screaming was indiscernible, but womanly; he wasn’t sure if it belonged to May or Florence.

  That doesn’t matter, he told himself. All that mattered was that he get there in time…before one of them got hurt…or died. If that happened, he’d never be able to forgive himself.

  Though the mall was mostly dark, he had a flashlight. Besides the beam, the screams and sounds of struggle guided him. Far behind, or so it seemed, Avery was trying to catch up. He could almost hear the man’s ragged breathing.

  Ray is with the women. He’ll put up a fight if nothing else…Tyler thought, almost pleadingly. And Florence will, too. May…I hope—

  The screams seemed to be coming from the sporting goods store. As far as he knew, there weren’t any mall entrances or exits there. How anything could’ve gotten into the place was beyond him.

  But of course they had.

  What Tyler didn’t know, or didn’t consider in his frenzied state, was that nearly every store on the westward side possessed a door to the outside for loading and unloading merchandise.

  The door at the sporting goods store, along with nearly all the other stores, had been barricaded well enough, but that wouldn’t stop whatever monsters were lurking outside.

  They were hungry. The sustenance of other monsters had run out, and from below the surface of the city, they’d smelled the sweet scent of human flesh, as cloying and alluring as fresh apple pie on a cold winter’s night.

  They came as aggressively as the Reaper and his two men dragging Kurt Walton behind were coming.

  Feasting upon the monsters and the scum beneath the roads had proven successful for the monsters that had been birthed mere days ago, and they were now beyond full-grown.

  They were also hungry. And when hunger came over these creatures’ minds and bodies, there was no stopping them.

  Tyler stumbled through Sports Town’s entrance, nearly tripping over his feet and hitting the floor. He caught his balance before that could happen, fortunately.

  May was lying on her back. She held what looked like a broomstick up into the air, as a monster that resembled a large flea chomped at the wooden rod. She was screaming. Her hair was in a whirl, nearly covering her face completely.

  Tyler shouted. He didn’t know what he shouted—some unintelligible word—but it got the monster’s attention. He raised his pistol, and, not thinking, pulled the trigger as many times as he could, until the gun’s slide ejected and signaled that he needed to load another magazine.

  The monster leaned back and opened its mouth. It had taken all the bullets into its open maw, and a waterfall of black blood cascaded from it, as if a dam had burst.

  It then keeled over and died.

  Tyler hesitated, unsure of what to do next. It seemed his brain had drawn a blank.

  A few seconds passed. In that few seconds, May crawled out from beneath the monster’s dead body, covered in a black, inky mess.

  Tyler rushed toward her. He hadn’t thought of reloading his pistol, the only tool separating him from death, until May screamed, “Florence and Ray are in the back!”

  Then he ran.

  He ran for Florence. It was an action based purely on reflex. He barreled through the door, a swinging thing, and as he plowed through it, he heard Florence call out in pain.

  The air of the back room smelled like an odd mix of new sneakers and death. Through the faint emergency lights, Tyler saw Ray beating at something that also looked oddly like an oversized flea. Florence was pinned against the wall, and the monster slobbered all over her as she screamed.

  Ray yelled obscenities, and Florence kicked at it. Tyler aimed and then pulled the trigger of his pistol, only to hear a resounding click. He had forgotten he emptied the gun on the first flea-thing.

  “Shit,” he said, quickly dipping into his pockets for the extra magazine of ammunition Avery had given h
im.

  But he fumbled and dropped it. His fingers felt numb, otherworldly, like he was a ghost of himself.

  Still, despite fumbling the ammunition, he aimed anyway. He pulled the trigger. He knew he’d only get another click, but hey, intimidation might work. He had nothing else going for him, right? So he pulled the trigger, thinking if nothing else, the monster might be frightened.

  He was wrong.

  A creature such as this didn’t understand the concept of intimidation. All it cared about was food. Currently, Florence was its food.

  It came at her with snapping jaws and a spray of saliva. From its mouth, the stench of rotting bodies wafted.

  Tyler shouted at it, again unintelligible words, but the monster paid him no notice. All it cared about was the flesh of the woman it currently had pinned against the shelves of boxed shoes, the Nikes, the Pumas.

  Now Tyler had no choice but to find the magazine he’d dropped in his haste. He fell to the dark floor and began patting around like a blind person. He couldn’t find the magazine. He knew he wouldn’t in time. Soon the monster would tear out Florence’s throat.

  But a sound behind him, a concussive boom, told him all would be okay. For now.

  Avery shot at the beast. He’d yelled, “Get down!” beforehand, but it didn’t matter much because Tyler was already out of the way.

  The shot hit the beast, and it bellowed, falling back, away from Florence. She fell to the floor and scrambled toward Tyler, May, and Avery.

  The monster disappeared into the darkness, knocking over a shelf full of shoeboxes.

  “We have to get out of here!” Tyler said. “It’s not safe anymore.”

  “Where’s Ray?” Avery asked.

  “I just saw him,” May answered. “He was back here with us.”

  “How many monsters?” Tyler asked.

  No one answered. He looked at May with fire in his eyes.

  “How many monsters?”

  “I-I’m not sure. There was at least two, I know that.”

  He grabbed May and tried pulling her out of the backroom, but she resisted.