Another roar.
But this wasn’t singular; it was answered by a mad barking, like a rabid dog had been crossed with a lunatic.
More were coming, drawn by the sound.
Tyler, focusing on not turning around to find the source of these muffled noises, lost his balance and tripped over his feet. A searing pain in his lower ankle brought tears to his eyes, which fell down his plaster-dusted face, cutting tracks through the grime. He tried scrambling up, but he could feel the hot breath of the monsters behind him, smell their foul, noxious stench—death, rot, evil.
Realizing he would never get to his feet in time, he crawled on all fours, like a monster himself. If he’d had a tail, it would surely be stuck between his legs.
He screamed out as a cold claw touched his back. The sharpness went through his shirt and would’ve cut skin, had he not acted on pure instinct. This act was simple yet effective.
With all the strength he could muster, he threw his arm back. There was a sickening crunch as his elbow connected with the ice cold snout of the beast. He felt the skin and bone and cartilage give beneath the force.
The creature reared back, a darker shadow coming over Tyler as it stood on its hind legs. He risked a glance behind him now, saw that the monster was easily over eight feet in height as it stood, dwarfing him. And beyond this monster was the fleabag, the one that had gotten away after draining Ray of his blood in the sporting goods store.
Tyler lunged forward. Grabbed the lock and stuck the key into it. He was shaking so badly, he almost missed the latch, but by sheer force of will, he was able to get it inside. It unlocked on the first turn. He pulled the chain and padlock inside the armory with him.
There was no light in here, but his eyes had somewhat adjusted to the darkness. He made out the muted stocks of rifles, the grips of pistols, the boxes and boxes of rounds and magazines. Before selecting a weapon, he laced the chain through the handles—Thank God there are handles on both sides, he thought—and locked it with a snap.
He shuffled backward. The supply closet wasn’t very big, but he was able to get enough distance between himself and the door that he felt safe for the moment.
Running his hands over the assault rifles, he picked one up and threw the strap over his shoulder. Loaded it with a fresh magazine. Grabbed a handgun and stuck it into his waistband. Extra magazines went into his pockets. As he was doing this, the door exploded inward, the chain stopping it from getting blown off its hinges.
The creatures outside barreled into it. Screeching, roaring, raging.
He didn’t know how long the chains would hold. As much as he wanted to stay inside, to lick his wounds and catch his breath, he couldn’t. Pretty soon, he would have no choice.
The door shuddered again. The hinges groaned, the frame buckled. Each hit widened the gap between the two doors.
Tyler waited.
Waited.
And waited.
On the next hit, the monster’s snout poked through. It was shiny with dark blood. Its teeth were bared.
Tyler didn’t hesitate. He aimed the rifle through the gap, braced himself, and pulled the trigger, holding it down.
The gun ripped off an array of rounds, each shot shuddering his bones the way the creature’s hits to the door had. The monster took the barrage of bullets straight to its face. In the flashes of light, Tyler saw how the shots carved it up, turning its face into pulp. The creature reeled backward, shrieking in pain. Its red eyes exploded in a wash of blood and no longer glowed.
It crashed and flattened a kiosk in the middle of the hall, then lay unmoving on the floor.
It made no more sound. In fact, the mall was completely quiet; the only sound Tyler heard was the distant echo in his ears from his own thunderous gunshots.
He reloaded. After about a minute, he finally heard something. The scuffling steps of the fleabag monster. Tyler leaned forward so he could see out of the cracks in the door, which was now banged up and crumpled, much like the ventilation system and the part of the ceiling he’d fallen out of.
Instantly, he regretted this decision.
The fleabag came upon the dead monster in a way that reminded him of an old horror movie called The Blob, almost enveloping the entirety of the reptilian beast. Pretty soon, all Tyler could see was the dark claws poking out from the fleabag as it grew larger and larger, feasting on the reptilian beast’s cold blood meal.
The sound: Slurrrrrrrp…sluuuurrrrp….slurrrrrp.
Then the fleabag moved from it, its belly swollen, the skin stretched to the point of translucence. Blood sloshed inside of it. Tyler held his breath and his gun as the monster skittered out of view.
In the clear, he thought. Still, better to be safe than sorry.
Which was the truth. In this world, the way it was now, ‘better safe than sorry’ was more relevant than ever.
When enough time had passed, he moved forward. The ammunition clanked around in his pockets, the sound explosively loud in the silence of the mall. He moved slower than before, more carefully. He pulled the key out, stuck it in the padlock. Turned it.
The clank! it made echoed through the corridor.
Still, he held his breath and moved the chain away. He likened the act to standing at the top of the high dive, looking down into a pool full of freezing water, not knowing the first thing about swimming.
It was not a good feeling.
But the chain came off, and the doors squealed open.
Tyler stepped forward, avoiding the leftover blood from the reptilian beast, which was now a shrunken husk, a mummified corpse.
Savages, he thought. They truly are savages.
The reptilian beast was dead, a hundred percent. It might not have been, if not for the fleabag. Sure, Tyler had shot it—hell, had buried a whole magazine into it—but that wasn’t saying much when it came to these creatures. They were vicious, relentless, and any other number of qualities you could think of.
Tyler paused and listened. He heard nothing.
He turned and walked toward the suit store, sticking to the shadows.
Less than a dozen steps later, the sloshing filled his ears again. He was prepared—as prepared as someone could be for such an abomination. He quickened his gait, ignoring the pain in his legs, and rolled over the counter of a watch kiosk up ahead. But he had lost the assault rifle in the movement.
Damn.
The fleabag came at him with hunger in its many eyes.
Tyler pulled the handgun free from his waistband, squeezed the trigger, and shot it in the face. The round made a hole the size of a fifty-cent piece near its jaw. It reeled back and stumbled on its six legs, roaring.
Scooting backward, Tyler braced himself against the counter. He aimed again. Waiting. Waiting.
Waiting.
It was possibly the longest wait of his life, but when the monster came, it was in a halfhearted movement. Stumbling, the thing seemed to focus on Tyler’s gun. When it realized it was likely to get another hole blown in its face, it thought better of its attack and scurried away, half-running, half-hopping.
Thankfully, what the creature possessed in resemblance to a flea stopped at its appearance. No super jumping for this monster. Perhaps the creature had been injured worse than Tyler had thought.
Whatever the case, it was gone. For now.
25
Trapped
Kurt Walton led the way into Amsterdam Mall. The men moved slowly and cautiously. So far, they had seen no signs of either monsters or the previous inhabitants. The latter both satisfied and disappointed Kurt. Part of him wished he would stumble upon Tyler’s mutilated remains. If he did, he’d drop his pants and urinate on what was left of them right there in front of the Reaper, God, and everybody. Another part of him wished he would stumble upon Tyler Stapleton in a normal state, so he could make the poor bastard suffer.
Already, Kurt had begun thinking he was a part of the Reaper’s merry band of derelicts. His wife was so far removed from his mind,
she might as well have been nonexistent. All that mattered now was survival. Rolling with the Reaper and the gang…well, survival would be had.
By the time the group reached the middle of the mall, where the Starbucks and the empty tables and chairs stood, they heard their first sign of monsters. A crazed shrieking sound. Before that, they had heard a noise like a wall being knocked over.
This was, of course, Tyler falling through the ceiling.
Kurt thought it was a monster, but he couldn’t be sure. Not until he heard the screaming screech did he freeze so abruptly that Gash bumped into him, almost knocking him over one of the tables.
“Sounds like it is preoccupied,” the Reaper said. “Keep moving.”
Kurt did. Slowly again.
A few minutes later, they heard the barrage of assault rifle shots. Almost instantly, Gash and Drew cocked their pistols, the sound barely audible in the rifle’s echo.
“Shit,” Kurt hissed.
The sound had come from the eastern corridor, down the way toward Macy’s, in the same direction the armory was.
He tried to tell this to the Reaper, warn him that whoever was here would be armed to the teeth, but the Reaper waved his comment away and pointed ahead.
Moving like a man walking the plank, Kurt obeyed. It took him nearly three minutes to reach the corridor where the sounds had come from. By this time, they heard the sounds of war: banging, tearing, screeching, and more gunshots.
As Kurt rounded one of the stone pillars, the darkened sign of Macy’s standing tall at the end of the hall, he caught his first glimpse of one of the monsters. It was large and hairless. To him, it looked like an overgrown tumor on legs, its belly pulsing and pregnant, so stretched, he could almost see through the skin. Had someone pressed a flashlight against its back, he would’ve seen nearly all the contents of its stomach.
Another shot came from a kiosk in the middle of the walkway, one of those cheap places that sold off-brand watches. The burst of light from the muzzle of the gun lit up the hall, and that bit of light did wonders to take away the shadows.
Kurt wished it hadn’t.
He saw the oddly crinkled body of the thing that looked like an overgrown tumor on legs, and—one good thing—a man’s hand, the skin color dark.
It was Tyler Stapleton. And he was about to get eaten—
The walking tumor took off, bolting from the kiosk, heading in the direction of Kurt and the others.
Gash dove to the right, behind the stone pillar. The Reaper had vanished; where to, Kurt didn’t know. Nor did he care. He and Drew were the only ones who hadn’t moved. They stood there as the creature came toward them, their few eyes locking with the monster’s many. Up close, it looked less like a tumor and more like a giant…flea.
Kurt was frozen when the creature hit him and Drew at a speed of nearly twenty miles per hour. He flew through the air, his ribs crunching with the blow. Gravity ceased to exist for the moment, until he came crashing to the floor, and blackness took hold of him.
26
The Shootout
Tyler heard the horrible scream and crunch that came from behind the kiosk.
Someone was here. Two people, maybe more.
He poked his head out over the edge and looked. Near the beginning of the corridor, crumpled in a lifeless ball was…
“Kurt?” Tyler said, breathless.
Next to Kurt, twisted and his lower half crushed to oblivion, was another man. From his neck hung a yellow scarf, which greedily drank up the blood leaking from his orifices and wounds.
Tyler’s eyes quickly glanced from the unmoving bodies to the fleabag. It stopped in its tracks, rose on its hind legs, and shrieked. A barrage of gunshots hit it, lighting up the corridor and nearly the rest of the mall as if it were a lightning storm.
The beast exploded, a wave of blood drenching the floor. It let out one last dying shriek, keeled over, and lay unmoving.
The corridor reeked of smoke and death.
Tyler waited.
As the shadows covered the mall once more, two figures crept out from behind the pillars. The one on the right was tall and lithe, wearing a long, black denim coat. He moved as if he floated, feet not touching the floor.
“Drew!” the one on the left yelled. From even this distance, Tyler could make out the gnarly scar running down the man’s face.
“Leave them. They were useless in life and are even more useless in death,” said the tall man. “We have a job here, Gash. Take everything you can find and kill the survivors.” He craned his head and closed his eyes. “There are a few in a suit store in the next corridor. Two women and a man. We will deal with them next. They are scared and confused; let them stay that way a moment longer. The armory is down there. Clean it out.”
Tyler looked down at his revolver, reached into his pants pocket, and pulled out more shells. He loaded them into the cylinder with shaking fingers. Shooting monsters was one thing; shooting humans… that was something entirely different. Something he would never fully embrace.
But if he had to do it to protect May, to protect this place, then he would. No qualms about it.
Slowly, he cocked the gun. It made the slightest of sounds, no louder than the men’s footsteps.
“We haven’t forgotten about you, my friend.” The tall man again, his voice bone-chilling.
How? How did he know about me?
“I know you haven’t,” Tyler answered calmly. “But that makes no difference.”
Taking a deep breath, he popped up, aimed the revolver—
The man was gone, as if he had disappeared.
“Not quick enough,” the man said, his voice coming from behind Tyler.
What the hell?
Tyler spun, and there was the man, shrouded in shadow, barely visible. He, too, held a weapon. The weapon exploded, the flash of light blinding.
Tyler dropped to the floor hard. For a long moment, he thought he had been shot, but the pain radiating from his arm was because of how he landed.
“Quick,” the shadow man praised. “Quicker than I thought.”
The other man laughed like a lunatic.
“Sometimes, I surprise myself.” Tyler looked through the display case, his eyes barely visible.
He didn’t see the man. This man was proving to be less of a man and more of a thing with every passing second, as if he was made out of a dark mist.
Tyler leaned back against the drawers, held the gun so that the length of the barrel rested on his chin.
“We can make this quite easy, Tyler Stapleton,” the shadow man said. “You can come out and discard the weapon you hold in your hand, and you can kneel before me. Do this, and I may absolve you of your wrongdoings. However, I may not. If I do not, I promise to kill you quickly…before my colleague Gash kills the woman you care so much for. Ah, what is her name? Let me think, let me think.” He paused for a few seconds. “May! That’s it, isn’t it?”
This confused Tyler. He didn’t technically believe in clairvoyant people, but then again, the motto of the world now was, ‘stranger things had happened’. Case in point, the dead fleabag. Not to mention the million other messed up things Tyler had seen in the last few months.
Despite his confusion, a burning rage erupted throughout his body. “Leave her alone!” he shouted back.
“That is out of the question, I’m afraid,” the shadow man replied. “You understand, right? This world is unlike the one you and I were raised in. We have to adapt. Adaptation is the key to survival, I truly believe that.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Tyler saw a large, convex mirror, the kind used for security. In this mirror, the shadow of the man moved slowly, still as if he was floating.
Keep coming. Come on, Tyler thought. Right there.
Perhaps the man was clairvoyant, or at least slightly psychic, because he stopped just below the glass.
“Tyler…come out, come out. It will make this easier on both of us,” the shadow man said.
Footstep
s behind him, quick, choppy. In the mirror, Tyler saw the man with the scar running down the corridor, toward the mummified husk of the reptilian beast. He stopped at the armory, threw open the door. The noise was immense in the quiet.
“Tyler, I’m growing impatient,” the shadow man said in a singsong voice. Now in the glass, Tyler saw the grin on the man’s face. Teeth too sharp, face too smooth, eyes too haunted. “I’m no fun when I run out of patience.”
Bet you aren’t. Just a little closer, motherfucker. Keep coming. C’mon c’mon c’mon c’mon—
“Come on!” he shouted, springing up from his crouch and pulling the trigger.
The shadow man didn’t yell or scream—he roared.
Tyler, despite the fear trying to freeze up his body, shot true. A spray of glass rained down upon the shadow man as the safety mirror shattered, the ghost of his reflection evaporating.
The shadow man raised his hands in a reflexive movement to shield his face from the downfall, and that was all Tyler needed.
He pulled the trigger three more times, thumbing the hammer back after each shot. His fingers moved like a blur. Each shot hit the shadow man. Two in the chest and one in the face.
“NO!” the man by the armory shouted.
But Tyler expected this. His mind had gone blank, his body had begun acting on its own basic instinct. Survival was the name of the game, and by God, that was what he’d do.
He spun, thumbed the hammer back, pulled the trigger again. The shot vaporized the scarred man’s jaw, spraying blood and teeth, and spinning his body with the velocity of the hit. Then he fell next to the mummified monster.
As soon as the man’s body hit the floor, Tyler let go of the gun. It hit the counter, glanced off, and clattered to the floor.
The adrenaline ride was over for now. All the bad guys were dead.
Shaking, he ran his hands through his too-long hair and screamed—in joy, in pain, in fear, and in triumph. Tears ran down his cheeks, but there was a smile on his lips. Not much, but a smile nonetheless.
Beneath: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Taken World Book 4) Page 14
