After the Fall- The Complete series Box Set

by Charlie Dalton

  “Look out!” she said.

  That was when the creature opened its eyes.

  99.

  DONNY SPUN around at the voice. It took a fraction of a second longer for his brain to process the warning attached to it.

  A chittering noise, low and sinister, turning the contents of his belly to water. It was how a man must feel when looking into the eyes of a hungry lion or an alpha male wolf. He was slow to turn, despite his instincts telling him to turn fast. His mind didn’t really want to see what was at his feet.

  The Reaver leader was rising to his full height. He turned his head to one side, cracking his neck, and grinned. Then his eyes rolled back, and his body convulsed. No, not his body, something inside his body. The grin tore apart, splitting down the middle, the skin stretching. Then something else, something larger, folded itself from Mantis’s shell. Something big, brown, and powerful.

  It threw out an impossibly long arm, striking Donny. He jolted back, skidding and rolling across the ground. The dust settled like a curtain on Donny’s unmoving form.

  100.

  THE REAVER named Harold—one of the few who retained his real name—stared, eyes bulging, at the creature that had unfolded itself from the Mantis’s body, now an empty floppy human costume in a pile on the ground.

  Just how long had they been following this creature as their leader? Had he always been one of those things? Occasionally members of their clan had gone missing over the years. They’d assumed they’d changed their minds about the lifestyle and simply left. Had they instead been consumed by this monster?

  Harold shook his head. He didn’t care. It didn’t matter.

  “What the hell is going on?” Spike, standing beside Harold, said, wearing a matching haunted expression.

  “This is too much,” Harold said. “I didn’t sign up for this shit.”

  He turned and headed away, back into the depths of the forest.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Spike said. “You can’t desert us now!”

  “I might get stung, bitten or drown to death,” Harold said. “But at least I know what the hell I’m up against in here.”

  He pressed on. If Spike wanted to fill him with lead, so be it. A quick death was better than whatever had happened to the Mantis. Within seconds, Spike was beside him, matching him step for step.

  Mantis by name, mantis by nature. Never a truer word said.

  101.

  THE CREATURE stood over Donny’s unmoving form, multiple black eyes staring. It extended one of its two front legs. A black needle, about the thickness of a man’s arm, extended. It raised it above its lofty head and prepared to bring the arm down on Donny.

  “No!”

  A shout from a desperate throat. Giant ants rained down on the beast. Sensing an enemy, the ants choreographed their attack and bit at the same time. The creature waved its great arms and brushed the ants off. A minor irritation.

  Donald ran, sliding to a stop before his fallen son. He turned to look back at the creature. If he hurried, he might have enough time to get away.

  “Grab him!” Jamie said, standing to one side, pistol aimed at the creature’s abdomen.

  “We’ve got you,” Fatty said, standing on the opposite side of the clearing, displaying a level of courage Jamie had never witnessed before.

  Donald scooped his eldest son’s unmoving form into his powerful arms and carried him away. The moment he began moving, the creature—something like an oversized bug—lowered its head, its abdomen rising and rushed forward. Its speed was immense, unbelievable with its long legs.

  It pulled its exposed front black claw back to strike. Held it firm, rushing forward using its other limbs. It was drawing up to Donald already. He changed direction but it was no use. The creature changed just as fast, exceeding his pace.

  Then the creature shrieked, pulling back, as blue blood, becoming oxygenated, sprouted from its abdomen. Four bullets and two arrows impaled it in quick succession. It waved its arms as if to ward off the zipping projectiles.

  As Fatty nocked another arrow and Jamie reloaded Donny’s pistol, the creature turned to his assailants. He chose one at random—Jamie—and charged.

  102.

  TOSSING THE ants had been an act of desperation. The ants had stung his fingers as he’d scooped them up and hurled them at the creature.

  Donald knew full well the users of the pistol and bow would gain the creature’s attention. The pistol was by far the most powerful weapon, so as soon as Jamie opened fire, he changed course and headed in his youngest’s direction. What he would do after that, he didn’t know. He only knew he had to protect his children. He wasn’t about to endanger one son by putting the other in the creature’s path.

  Jamie had reloaded by the time Donald met him. Checking over his shoulder, he found the creature already barrelling toward their position. Donald dumped his eldest son on the ground and grabbed the pistol.

  “Take your brother!” he said, turning and opening fire on the creature.

  Its head was smaller in relation to the rest of its body and, now aware of the capability of their weapons, it ran with its front claws over its head.

  Jamie took Donny by his arms and pulled, dragging him. He wouldn’t get him far like this but there was no other option. His elder brother was simply too heavy.

  Donald moved sideways, away from his boys, giving them every inch he could muster. The creature altered course, trailing Donald. It growled, shrieking as another arrow found its mark in the creature’s abdomen. It snarled in Fatty’s direction but the podgy boy didn’t so much as flinch. That surprised Donald. Good on you, little man.

  Donald ducked and weaved, rolling to one side then another as the creature’s extended claws stabbed at him, piercing the ground, aiming for a clean and clear target. Donald was moving on instinct, letting the most primitive part of his brain conduct his movements. When he found an opening, he shot at the creature. It hissed with each successful strike. None of the blows were a killing shot.

  The creature landed a blow, knocking Donald back, sailing through the air. He slammed into a boulder. Winded but not out, Donald raised the pistol and fired.

  Click.

  He was out. His eyes widened and he moved to drop and roll but the creature rushed forward and buried the tip of its claw in Donald’s gut. A sharp ting noise as the claw struck the rocky cliff face behind him. The needle had passed right through him.

  Donald grunted and coughed blood, painting the creature’s front claw. He put a hand to it in a weak and fruitless effort to pull the claw from his body. The creature only watched Donald’s expression with curiosity. It twisted the claw, severing internal organs and causing greater pain. Through gritted teeth, Donald filled his mouth with blood and spat on the creature’s black eyes. Repulsed, the creature pulled back. Angry.

  It thrust its second claw into Donald’s gut, beside the first. Then angled its powerful front arms out. It was going to use its immense strength to pull its arms—and Donald—apart.

  The creature shrieked in pain as one of Fatty’s arrows struck the creature in the back of the head. It peered back at Fatty and growled. But it wasn’t yet done with Donald. It turned back to Donald. And then shrieked again.

  The creature was near impervious to attacks on its hard outer shell. It was weak on its underside. Where Donald now had access to. He withdrew the plastic toy blade and buried it in the creature’s extended neck. He pulled up with all his strength to cut the creature in two just as it was intending on doing to him.

  The creature leapt back, removing its front claws from Donald’s body. It attempted to extract the knife from its body too but lacked the dexterity. Donald couldn’t hold his own weight any longer and slithered down the wall, leaving an arched smear of blood.

  The creature coiled its powerful back legs to dash forward and finish off the worthless human.

  “Hey!” a small voice said. “Ugly!”

  The creature turned to find Lucy st
anding on the short hill overlooking the scene.

  “You came looking for me, right?” Lucy said. “Well, here I am. Come and get me.”

  “Lucy!” Jamie said, at the edge of the clearing now. “Don’t do it! It’ll kill you!”

  “No,” Lucy said, shaking her head. “No, I don’t think it will. And if it does, then maybe it will leave the rest of you alone.”

  Her hard expression of confidence broke into a broken smile.

  “Thank you,” she said. “For everything.”

  “Lucy. . .” Jamie said.

  He took a step forward. Lucy held out a hand for him not to come any closer.

  “I have to do this,” she said.

  Do what? Die?

  Lucy turned to the alien creature. “I couldn’t remember before. But when I saw you. . . something came back to me. I’m here to fight you, somehow. To destroy you. All of you.”

  Lucy’s angry confidence returned to her voice. The creature prowled toward her like a hunting lion. Attention focused entirely on her. It decided upon a course of action. It curled its long back legs and sprung, leaping the impossible distance. As it sailed through the air, rising higher and higher, Lucy altered her stance.

  The creature was flying straight for her. To crash into her and seize her with its long arms.

  Just as the creature was about to smash into Lucy, she leaned over and began to fall backward. At first, Jamie thought it was her attempt to avoid the creature, but she was doing it so slowly, so calm and relaxed. It was part of a plan.

  The creature passed over her, missing by inches, scrabbling to grab her with its long arms. Lucy’s own arm reached up and grabbed hold of the knife Donald had stabbed into the creature. The monster’s own momentum carried it forward, the plastic knife, deceptively sharp, tore the creature’s soft underbelly, sternum to abdomen.

  The creature’s entrails slipped from its body before it even hit the ground, splattering Lucy’s upper torso. She turned her face to one side, the thick blue blood caking her. Lucy maintained her grip on the knife and got to her feet. She looked down at the creature, writhing and flailing on the ground, limbs a blur in its death throes. Having failed to capture her, it seemed intent on harming her any way it could.

  It edged closer but couldn’t find its feet.

  “Let me take it from here,” Fatty said, stepping up beside her.

  He took aim and fired at the creature’s many eyes. It took three arrows in three separate eyes before the creature stopped flailing, doused in a blue pool of its own blood.

  “What the hell is this thing?” Fatty said. “I swear, I’ll never burn ants with a microscope ever again.”

  The weight of the creature’s body took it down the opposite side of the hilltop, down into the recess on the other side. It was then Lucy spotted the egg-shaped pod Donny had come across earlier. In her eyes wasn’t a look of confusion, but recognition. She’d seen pods like that before. But where?

  A flash of light in her mind. A photograph of a pod. A different one. In a research lab somewhere. From another time, another place. The instant it appeared, it was gone again.

  Mysteries within mysteries.

  103.

  DONNY LEANED on his younger brother for support as they rushed to their father’s side. Donald lay like the creature—in an expanding bloody puddle of his own making. Jamie cupped his father’s head in his arms.

  “Get up,” Jamie said, rocking him. “Please. Get up.”

  Donny, pale and weak, pressed with all his weight on his father’s stomach to stem the bleeding. Donald’s eyes fluttered open and closed. They wanted to close forever. It was only due to a momentous act of sheer will on Donald’s part that they didn’t.

  “Protect. . . protect Mountain’s. . . Mountain’s Peak,” Donald said through gritted teeth. “They need you.”

  Tears ran down Jamie’s cheeks. Donny was still weak from the creature’s blow, in a state of shock.

  “Don’t leave!” Jamie said. “Please! Don’t go!”

  “It’s not too late to save him,” Lucy said. “There’s still time.”

  “How?” Jamie said.

  “There’s no time to explain,” Lucy said. “Follow me. Bring your father.”

  They rounded the hilltop where the creature still lay, and left the sparse furnishing of trees, to find the bizarre egg-shaped capsule in the deep recess of the earth.

  “Why are things getting stranger and stranger?” Fatty said.

  No one paid him any attention as Jamie and Donny carried their father’s weak body toward the pod.

  104.

  “WHAT IS that thing?” Fatty said.

  “Looks like a giant egg to me,” Donny said.

  “I think I just laid my own egg,” Fatty said.

  Lucy reached out a hand to touch the pod. She didn’t know what she was doing. She was working on instinct. It somehow felt right.

  “Lucy, I’m not sure you should touch it,” Jamie said.

  Lucy wiped the blue blood of the creature off her forehead and smeared it across the pod’s smooth surface. A light blinked and a partition in the pod shifted open. A doorway. Lucy stepped inside. There was a terminal at the front, sparse and simple, and small crevices on either side. She tossed most of it aside. She couldn’t guess what most of it was for. But there was something here, something she did know the purpose of. . .

  She came out with an object the shape of a gun. It was solid metal and, besides the rough shape, looked nothing like the weapons they had at the commune. It was small and futuristic, with a glass cylinder on the top filled with a thick green liquid. Lucy moved it in Donald’s direction.

  “Whoa,” Donny said, holding out a hand to stop her. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Saving your father’s life,” Lucy said. “Trust me.”

  Jamie didn’t have to think long. He nodded.

  “Do it,” he said.

  Their father was dead without help. Without a miracle. He let Lucy put the gun to the base of his father’s neck.

  “Hold him,” Lucy said.

  Jamie and Donny shared a look before pressing their father down. He was so weak a baby could have tamed him.

  Lucy pulled the trigger. The gun didn’t fire a bullet but instead injected the green liquid into Donald’s body. Donald immediately bolted upright, arms and legs flailing. Donny and Jamie rode his impulse, holding him in place.

  Lucy inserted another glass container into the gun. This one was clear. She pressed it to Donald’s stomach and pulled the trigger again.

  “That was to kill the pain,” Lucy said.

  “Pain?” Jamie said. “What pain?”

  Lucy took out a large stapler and pressed it to Donald’s stomach. She pinched the skin together. Donald should have been screaming in pain but he just lay there. Lucy pressed the stapler’s arms together, shoving a pair of large metal staples into his body, holding the skin and organs in place. It wasn’t pretty, but the bleeding slowed.

  “He’s going to live?” Jamie said, hugging his father.

  “Not for long if he doesn’t see a doctor,” Lucy said. “We bought him some time.”

  “We’ll never get him to back to the commune in time,” Donny said. “I doubt Stephen could do much even if we did.”

  “This is beyond the technology you have at the commune,” Lucy said.

  A roar echoed, the noise bouncing off the twin mountain walls that formed the valley to their right.

  “Reavers,” Donny said, taking his pistol from Jamie and reloading. “Perfect timing. As always.”

  “Maybe we can take one of their bikes,” Jamie said. “Then ride it back to the commune.”

  “Your dad would never survive the journey,” Lucy said.

  The shot of adrenaline she’d administered was already beginning to wear off. Donald’s eyes fluttered closed.

  “Guys, we need to get out of here,” Fatty said. “The Reavers are coming. We’re trapped.”

  “We’r
e not trapped,” Lucy said. “We’re right where we need to be.”

  That same sense of knowing came over her. Like she’d been here before. She moved to one of the cliff faces. A sheer wall that looked exactly like the others on either side. Lucy began to feel at it. Looking for something she sensed ought to be there but wasn’t entirely sure where or what it was.

  105.

  “THIS IS where I came from,” Lucy said. “This is where I escaped.”

  “The wall?” Fatty said.

  He exchanged a worried expression with the others. Jamie didn’t share his concern. With what they’d seen the past hour, he could bring himself to believe pretty much anything at this point.

  “I can’t remember much from before,” Lucy said. “Bits and pieces mostly. I get the feeling I was trapped before, like someone was keeping me against my will.”

  “Keeping you where?” Fatty said, peering around at the vast cliff wall. “There’s nothing here.”

  “No,” Lucy said, looking up. “There is.”

  “Guys, we need to make a move,” Donny said.

  The Reaver motorcycles were revving hard now, louder than the worst thunderstorm, bearing down on them. Donny cocked his pistol. Ready to make a last stand.

  “The Reavers are nearly here!” Fatty said. “We need to go!”

  “Give her a minute,” Jamie said.

  “We don’t have a minute!” Fatty said. “They’re almost here!”

  “I’m with Lucy,” Donny said with a nod. “You take all the time you need.”

  Lucy pressed at the wall, feeling at it. For a button or lever.

  “You guys. . .” Fatty said.

  Tiny rocks rubbled and danced on the valley floor. Fatty watched the narrow pathway. He would see the Reavers any second.

  Lucy found what she was looking for. A protrusion of rock that did not look out of place. A light flashed beneath her fingertips. A rectangle of numbers popped up where nothing had been there before. Lucy tapped at the buttons. It took several attempts, then the keypad disappeared.