Trail of Blood

by Michael McBride

  It was more than the fact that the boy had proven to be of little opposition. There was something else, a feeling he couldn’t quite rationalize. He hadn’t been able to enjoy the process of torturing him. For every wound he inflicted on the child, every slash through the forgiving flesh, one opened within him. Not physical pain per se, but it was definitely tangible. Hurting the boy had weakened him dramatically. Killing him had opened a hole in his very being, an uncomfortable void that ate at him like a cancer. No. Not eating at him, but missing from him.

  He stared up at the lifeless body dangling from the cross. He had watched the last of the blood drain from the body, which was now so pale the skin was almost transparent. Bruises rose where bone met skin in the cheeks and the rims of the eyes, nearly obscured by the crusted hair dangling in front of his face. The boy’s hands and feet were now nearly purple. Yet still Death couldn’t tear himself away. The rising sun behind the tower cast a single beam of light through the shattered windows, spotlighting the boy on the cross, creating a golden aura around his corpse.

  It infuriated him. Cocking his head back, he hissed up into the heavens, strands of saliva slapping from his mouth. Even the rubble shivered at the sound.

  He had won. He had faced the best the Lord could muster—a child, a weakling child!—and put him down like a mongrel dog, staking claim to the entire world. His world. His realm to rule. So why did he not feel triumphant? Where was the rush of power and accomplishment?

  Enraged, he stormed up the heap of refuse to the cross, flicking out his claws and slashing the body across the abdomen. No blood flowed. Nothing. Only four parallel slices through tissue that hardly even parted.

  He looked straight through the errant ray of light, directly into the sun. It was as though God was taunting him, tormenting him. His anger boiled over, seizing him in animalistic fury.

  The child is dead, a voice from another lifetime spoke in his head, the words laced with an Arabic accent. Let him be.

  Death lost control and began slashing repeatedly at what was now only a slab of meat.

  Thuck!

  Scream! I need to hear you scream!

  Thuck!

  Scream!

  Thuck!

  SCREAM!

  He whirled away from the body, chest heaving, red eyes blazing.

  Let him be.

  Death rocked back, thrust his arms out to either side and hissed up into the sky. He looked back down, focusing on Pestilence and Famine, both of whom took an unconscious step away. They still flanked the base of the mound, faces shrouded beneath the darkness provided by their cloaks of flesh. If he couldn’t make the boy scream, then maybe he could just tear into them, make them feel the pain he had been denied, and through them, he could feel it himself. Even pain would be vastly preferable to the emptiness inside of him. It was almost as though by butchering the child, he had slain a part of himself as well.

  That was it, wasn’t it? He and the boy: they had been two halves of the same whole, hadn’t they? They had both been the children of God. His destiny had been to serve in the capacity of His Wrath, while the boy had been chosen to be His Love. Opposite sides of the same coin. Wrath had triumphed as he had always known it would, but in doing so, he had only beaten himself. Such a bittersweet victory. The wasteland that was the earth was now his, a nuclear-ravaged, fire-scorched planet that would soon know only peace under the reign of one who craved only destruction.

  He imagined God laughing at him from on high. There had never truly been any victory to be had. Not for Death. His eradication of mankind only served the Lord’s purposes, while if the child would have beaten him, He still would have won. It was a game of chess the Maker played against himself. Death was merely a pawn, but even a pawn could topple a king. He just needed to play the game. He had destroyed humanity’s last hope, but that didn’t mean there weren’t still humans out there. All along he had planned only for their elimination, but the remaining handful could still be useful. With the help of his brother and sister, he could recreate them in his own image. Repopulate his kingdom with denizens who would worship him alone.

  Maybe he couldn’t beat God, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t become Him.

  He focused on Famine and Pestilence in turn, seeking their eyes through the darkness obscuring them. Both bowed in acknowledgement of his silent command, turned away from one another and struck off down the street. The sound of clopping hooves echoed from the distance, drawing closer by the second.

  The survivors would be brought before him.

  And they would be remade.

  He turned and spared one last glance for the fallen savior nailed to the cross. No longer was his carcass highlighted in a celestial glow. The golden aura was gone, leaving a pathetic, small corpse dangling uselessly, like an autumn leaf. The sun had risen to the top of the building, lending the impression that the entire structure was ablaze, but he didn’t care. It was an empty threat.

  Striking through the wreckage, he prepared to take his position on the roof, the vantage point from which he would watch his ultimate victory.

  III

  MARE STRUGGLED TO PULL THE METAL SLAB OF THE DOOR ACROSS THE GAP, but it wouldn’t budge. Not from where he stood and with so little leverage. He could hear panicked breathing behind him, screams muffled by hands clasped over mouths so as not to betray their presence in the shadows, but it was too late.

  The creature knew exactly where they were.

  A black head rose from the burbling magma, followed by a pair of shoulders, maybe ten feet out from the flaming shore.

  With renewed vigor, he tugged at the lodged door, his shoulders threatening to dislocate, the skin on his fingers tearing away.

  When he looked up again, the thing was out of the lake past its waist, rising straight up as though on a platform, unscathed by the fire.

  Mare lowered his shoulder and rammed at the door to free it, if only a little. Rubble and dust rained from above the doorframe, momentarily hiding the monster, which now stood atop the surface, a black figure with flames lapping at its legs. It stretched its arms to either side, palms to the sky.

  “You have to close it!” Jill screamed, shoving him to the side and frantically trying to loosen the metal slab, her whole body thrashing with the effort.

  A broken metal pipe no more than an inch wide fell from the ceiling, the wires it had formerly housed now hanging exposed from the fractured ceiling.

  “Stand back!” Mare shouted, pushing her away far harder than he had intended, nearly hurling her to the ground.

  She looked back at him through teary eyes, wounded.

  What have I become? he thought, momentarily frozen. An image of his father catching him in the closet where he had hidden the money he had stolen flashed through his mind. His old man had grabbed him and thrown him to the floor, a maneuver he had nearly duplicated.

  “I am not my father,” he growled, hurrying through the doorway.

  The creature took a swift stride toward him across the molten lake and Mare forced himself to turn his back to it.

  “Hand me that pole!” Mare shouted.

  Jill grabbed it and thrust it out the door into his waiting palm. He jammed it under the far side of the door, using it like a crowbar to lever the door forward and backward, but it barely moved at all.

  He shot a glance back over his shoulder.

  The dark man was already to the edge of the lake.

  Mare bellowed in frustration as he fought with the stuck door, finally flinging the pole to the ground in frustration.

  “Hurry!” Jill screamed. “Please, God. Hurry!”

  The others were calling to him, their voices a cacophony of horror. He looked back at them, wide white eyes against dirty faces, clinging to the darkness. Adam tried to shield the rest of them with his body.

  The wind shifted, blowing a cloud of smoke toward them.

  Mare raced back through the doorway, peeking over his shoulder. The creature still had its arms out at its s
ides. A streak of fire slashed its face in a smile. Flames rose from its palms and spread up its arms toward its head, the whole body igniting to become a living beast of flames.

  “It’s right behind me!” Mare shouted, urging Jill out of the doorway. He jerked at the door. It slid only a couple inches and stopped. “No! No! No!”

  Jill flinched as though about to be struck.

  Mare’s mind filled with a million thoughts. The door wouldn’t close and that creature would be able to walk right into their midst and torch them all. He had shoved Jill too forcefully. He wasn’t his father, but he was going to be a father. Unless he could get the door closed, they were all going to die. But then what? Wait out the beast until their air ran out? They were still dead, regardless of what he did. Unless…

  He turned and looked Jill right in the eyes. He knew what he needed to do. Pulling her to him, he hugged her as tightly as he could, knowing it would be the last time he ever did so. He imagined he could feel his daughter through her belly. He was not his father. He was his own man. Damn genetics and his upbringing, there was nothing he wouldn’t do for the woman he loved and the child she would bring into the world, regardless of the cost.

  “Don’t do this,” Jill sobbed into his ear, curling her fingers into his shirt and holding tightly.

  He heard himself crying as well.

  “I love you,” he said into her ear. Even though his heart was pounding, he felt a measure of calmness sweep through him. “Make sure she knows how much her daddy loves her, too.”

  He tried to pull away, but her grip was too strong and he couldn’t free himself. Panic set in. He couldn’t let anything happen to her and the baby. He looked through the opening and saw the creature striding toward them. They were out of time.

  “You have to let me go, Jill!” he wailed, fighting her grasp. “Let me go!”

  Screams filled the confines as the others finally saw the demon framed in the opening. Adam forced them to the ground and tried to make himself large enough to take the brunt of the impending fiery assault, knowing there was no way his pathetic flesh would be a good enough barrier.

  “Now, Jill! Please!”

  She blubbered something unintelligible into his ear as the shadows pealed back around them, the dust- and smoke-clogged chamber filling with the flickering light of flames.

  IV

  JILL COULDN’T MAKE HERSELF DO IT. THE PIVOTAL MOMENT WAS NIGH. THIS was her chance to change the vision of all of them being incinerated, but still she couldn’t force herself to do what needed to be done. She loved Mare. There was nothing she had ever been more certain of in her entire life. He was all that mattered. No. There was the baby to think about. And the others…whose lives were now in her hands.

  Sacrifice the man she loved and they might all live.

  Try to save him and they would all certainly die.

  It wasn’t fair. No one should have to be placed in the position of making such a choice. Damned if she did, dead if she didn’t. All of her former friends and family were now dead. Only pain remained. Lord only knew if by living through this moment that any of them would survive. The creature out there could still kill them all if Mare failed, or maybe some other monster a mile farther down the road. Or maybe they’d be lucky enough to reach their destination, only to be slaughtered on arrival. There were no guarantees. If she had to die, she wanted to do so in the arms of the man she loved.

  Would you sacrifice everything for the child? an ancient voice asked in her mind.

  “No…” she sobbed. “I can’t do it.” But the words were garbled by sorrow.

  She understood now, though. She understood.

  “You have to let me go, Jill!” he shouted into her face, trying to break their embrace. “Let me go!”

  “I can’t,” she cried, but her voice was drowned out by screams of terror. “I love you too much.”

  She tightened her grasp on his shirt, watching his face crinkle with fear.

  “Now, Jill! Please!”

  Why did it have to come to this? It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair!

  The room came to life with the shifting glow of flames, the air crackling with the sound of fire.

  Would you sacrifice everything for the child?

  “Not him!” she screamed. Her fingers felt like they were going to break.

  The smoke grew thicker, clogging the claustrophobic room.

  She could see the creature through the gap, the shifting blaze through the smoke. It was nearly upon them.

  Would you sacrifice everything for the child?

  In her mind she saw both of them locked in an embrace as a wave of molten lava blasted through the doorway and washed over them, skin blistering and then charring, the shrieks of the dying all around her cut short.

  Before she realized she had made her decision, her fingers relaxed and Mare turned away.

  “Please…” she whimpered. “Please don’t take him from me.”

  Mare ducked through the collapsed doorway and stood between them and the fiery black shadow.

  “Mare!” she screamed, tearing her throat raw. She fell to her knees, tears spilling down her face. What had she done?

  “Mare!”

  V

  HE HEARD HER CALLING AFTER HIM AS HE RUSHED OUTSIDE. THE FLAMING creature was no more than fifteen feet from him and closing fast. He couldn’t think about that now. Not yet. He turned his back to it and jerked on the door. There was a loud crack and a small landslide of concrete fragments rolled away from it, finally allowing him to drag the door almost all the way across the opening, leaving only a thin gap through which he could see Jill’s left eye. She had pressed herself against the steel slab from within, curling her fingers around the edge to try to slide it away.

  “I love you,” he said, momentarily holding eye contact. He turned away against his will.

  All he could see were flames, the black body within no more than a shadow.

  “Let’s do this,” he said, his tremulous voice cracking. Never in his life had he been so terrified, but he couldn’t afford to fail. Jill was counting on him. They all were. Especially the little girl he would never know. The thought broke his heart, but even though he would never even see her, he loved her more than life itself. That was what it truly meant to be a father. He had only just learned he was about to become one, yet the revelation had changed his world, the very way he thought. He was now part of something greater than himself. In that moment, as he stared at the fiery creature, he understood how his father must have felt when he shoved the barrel of his handgun into his mouth. His old man had been cruising through life in an alcohol-fueled fugue, wallowing in the self-pity stemming from the loss of his wife, taking out his pain on the only people who could actually understand. But it wasn’t until that final beating had awakened him to what he was doing and he made the only noble choice—the only choice he had made as a father in nearly a decade. He had done what it took to save his children from the monster he had become, to save them from himself.

  Mare was facing the same decision now. He was about to lose the love of his life and the child he had known so briefly, if only as an abstraction. It hurt him. God, how it hurt! But no harm would come to them. Whatever it took, whatever the price, he would ensure their survival, that they would feel no pain. He would take it all upon himself willingly, if that was the only option. His life meant nothing compared to theirs.

  Mare reached down and picked up the metal pole he had used to pry the door loose, the only weapon at his disposal with which to face the demon. He imagined this must have been the same feeling of determination his father felt when he pulled out the gun.

  Mare forgave his old man, then and there, for the years of physical and emotional pain, and for his final fateful act, which he had assumed had been designed to hurt his children even more, not knowing until now that it had actually been to save them.

  Grasping the pole across his chest in trembling, sweaty fists, he took the first step
toward the creature through the rubble. Tears rolled from his eyes, his lips a grim line. He raised his left hand high, using his right to point the sharp, broken end toward the beast’s flaming chest.

  Its arm shot forward with the speed of a rattlesnake strike and all Mare saw was molten fire.

  Screaming, he raced forward, magma washing over him, consuming him.

  You will feel no pain, Phoenix’s words echoed.

  From the corner of his eye, Mare saw his left arm blister, the skin blackening and then finally splitting. He saw exposed muscle and boiling blood, but none of it mattered. His clothes incinerated. His hair vanished. The flesh peeled away from his face and chest as he raised the staff.

  Surprise registered on the creature’s face. The flames diminished even as it continued to fire the stream at the charging boy. In that heartbeat, its startled eyes appeared almost human, its mouth a ring of fire.

  Mare’s sight faded, yet still he drove the end of the pole straight through the demon’s chest with enough force to stab it all the way through and out the other side.

  You will feel no pain.

  His dead body crashed into the beast, knocking it backwards and planting the staff in the ground, both of them burning together like blackened logs in an abandoned campfire.

  VI

  “NO!” JILL SCREAMED, YANKING ON THE DOOR, DESPERATELY TRYING TO drag it far enough back to squeeze out. Sobbing, she lost control of her faculties, thrashing like a bear trying to free its foot from a trap. Her left hand was burned from a spatter of lava that had struck the door, but she couldn’t feel a thing. Her world had just crashed down upon her. It should have been her. She was the one who should have been out there burning on the ground. It had been her visions that had predicted it. She could have changed it. She could have shoved him back and charged out to her death in his stead. They never should have come down this road, never should have tried to hide in this collapsed building. She had known it was coming and had done nothing to prevent it. No…that wasn’t true at all. Not only had she not done a thing to stop it, she had willingly sent the man she loved to his gruesome death. All she had needed to do was to hold onto him, refuse to let him go. That had been within her power, and she had simply loosened her grasp and sealed his painful fate. It was her fault that he was dead. Her fault. And now there was nothing she could do to change it.