Trail of Blood

by Michael McBride

  Two shadows closed from either side, appearing as if by magic from the abandoned side streets.

  The world around him seemed to simultaneously slow and speed up at the same time. He saw streaks of white, thundering skeletal legs spurring flowing streams of black, but his reflexes were sluggish, the brakes even more so. There was no time to flash the taillight to warn the others. The shapes had appeared from nowhere, blocking off the road and hiding Missy from sight beyond. They were horses, stripped of flesh and yet somehow animated like War’s steed had been. One had a long tail like a bridal train of thorny bramble that turned the asphalt to powder, the other a long crocodilian tail, which thrashed side to side before shimmering and turning transparent. Heavily stitched drapes covered everything else but their heads. Twin riders cloaked in the same material that he at first thought to be leather, clung to the beasts as they pawed wildly at the air between them. One horseman was significantly larger than the other, his hands tangled in a mane of wicked briars originating from the exposed spinous processes of the horse’s cervical spine, its bony face snapping back and forth with bared teeth and glowing eyes. The other, smaller rider grasped a living mane composed of hundreds of serpentine tails, writhing things that coiled around the skeletal wrists. The steed’s eyes appeared liquid, unstable.

  Adam couldn’t see either of their faces in the deep darkness of their cowls.

  The bike screeched to a halt, kicking sideways before Adam forced it straight. He looked behind him to see the other bikes skidding on the loose gravel before the rubber finally grabbed pavement.

  When he turned back to the hideous beasts, both returned to all fours with a crash of their front legs that shook the ground and echoed like an explosion. The riders trotted them a full circle, the exposed equine skulls still whipping side to side, before coming to rest sideways, their bulk blocking off the debris-clogged street. Adam could feel the weight of inhuman eyes upon him from beneath the hoods, but neither horseman made the slightest movement.

  “What are we supposed to do?” Evelyn said.

  Adam could only shake his head, fearing his voice might trigger whatever attack was coming, terrified to steal his stare from them in case that was all the opportunity they would need. But they couldn’t just sit there all day. Missy was alone somewhere past those creatures, and Lord only knew what prepared to descend upon her.

  Sunlight glinted from the swishing crocodile tail and the slithering mane, while the other horse’s sickly brambles stirred on a non-existent breeze.

  Was this a standoff or were these beasts stalling, waiting for them to make the first move?

  Adam felt naked without the rifle, which hung over Ray’s back behind him. They had one weapon between them, and were otherwise completely unarmed; two men, one blind, two women, and a child. They may have outnumbered their adversaries, but the riders exuded a frightening dark strength.

  What were they waiting for?

  Adam nudged Ray and they both climbed down. The street around them was silent, save for the occasional impatient stamping of hooves.

  “Move back into the rubble,” Adam whispered to Ray without taking his eyes off the horsemen for a second. “Train your sights on the big one. First sign of attack, you shoot.”

  Ray didn’t respond, but Adam heard the scuffing of footsteps on the fragments of asphalt and mortar as Ray hurried to the side of the road. Evelyn’s cold, trembling hand found his and held it tightly.

  “Jill,” Adam said, his elevated voice causing the fleshless steeds to shake their heads and stomp impatiently. “I want you and Jake to find a safe place to hide.”

  “What about you guys?” she whispered.

  “Just do it!” he snapped.

  The riders spurred their horses to their hind legs again, hooves slicing through the air with a sound like screaming.

  Behind a ragged section of broken concrete, fire rose from Ray’s eyes, his finger tightening on the trigger, the barrel shaking.

  The smaller rider on the right let out a horrible shrieking sound, which trailed off into a low buzzing.

  Hooves slammed back to the earth, fissures expanding through the pavement in all directions from where they struck. Skeletal heads snapped around to face them.

  Adam clenched Evelyn’s hand and then released it.

  The horses neighed, a sound like strangling children, and bolted forward.

  A resounding bang echoed from the crumbling, fallen structures surrounding them as the battle commenced.

  II

  MISSY LEAPT FROM THE MOTORCYCLE BEFORE IT EVEN STOPPED, ALLOWING it to skid sideways into the base of the mound of debris. The cement bit into her palms and knees when she fell, but she didn’t even feel the abrasions. Stumbling forward, she left bloody handprints on the broken sections of piled cement as she climbed.

  She couldn’t breathe. Her heart felt like it had stopped beating, though her pulse pounded so hard in her temples that it shook her vision. The world around her fell away as the only thing that mattered was above her in the slanted ray of light.

  “Oh, God,” she moaned, finally reaching the base of the cross on her hands and knees, coming face to face with a rusted length of rebar dripping with blood from the overlapped feet staked to it. “No, no, no, no, no…”

  Her hands trembled as she grasped both heels and gingerly tried to pull them forward. The broken bones within made cracking sounds, but refused to budge.

  “Help me!” she screamed back over her shoulder. She stood and grasped Phoenix around the waist, trying to hold him aloft to take the strain off his arms, pressing her shoulder and the side of her face into the exposed muscles on his abdomen, which shimmered with coagulating fluids. “Somebody! Please! Help me!”

  He was cold. So cold.

  Missy looked up into his face. His long bangs were crusted in crimson clumps, his face stark white. Lacerations crisscrossed his cheeks and forehead, his pale pink eyes staring blankly down at her, the whites now a wet scarlet. His swollen, split lips were parted to reveal his broken front teeth, his entire mouth a crimson wound.

  “No!” she screamed, lifting his weight. Droplets of blood pattered her head. “Please, God! Help me!”

  She lost whatever semblance of control she maintained, shaking her head and wailing as she lifted and pulled. With a damp sucking sound, his hands slid forward on the rebar stakes. She tugged and his hands sloughed free, dropping his torso onto her shoulder and knocking her backwards to the ground. The sharp rubble gouged her back, but she managed to sit up and pulled on his waist to release his feet with a snapping sound.

  “Wake up, Phoenix,” she cried, rolling him from atop her. She leaned close to his face and paused, her lips inches from his, praying for the slightest breath to tickle the sensitive skin. His eyes stared through her, the lids fixed halfway open, sealed by blood, the sockets turning into massive bruises. “Please…wake up.”

  Her words morphed into a moan of sorrow and she collapsed onto him, wrapping her arms around him and holding him to her. So cold. Her cheek against his, their hearts aligned. Two hearts that would never again beat in time.

  “Don’t take him from me,” she sobbed, curling her hands to fists beneath him, the rubble cutting her hands. “He’s all I have. Please, God…I love him. Please…”

  The heavenly spotlight that had illuminated him thorough the building abruptly vanished. A frigid sensation flooded over her. Raising her head, she kissed him softly on his unforgiving lips and looked up along the black face of the tower into the sky. A pair of blood-red eyes met hers, contrasted by a black form, the source of the coldness.

  “Come on!” she shrieked, pushing up from the ground and grabbing Phoenix beneath his arms. She pulled him away from the cross and down the treacherous slope, leaving a trail of blood behind. Stumbling, she struggled to balance them both until she reached the bottom and continued dragging him through the courtyard, off the curb, and into the street.

  A gunshot pierced the sound of her sobbing from
behind her, but she continued pulling Phoenix away from the darkened cross.

  The clamor of stampeding hooves was like thunder.

  Another bang! was punctuated by an inhuman scream.

  She hauled Phoenix behind a broken section of the road that stood erect, a black-tarred tombstone. Kneeling over him, she stroked his cheek, unaware of the chaos behind her or the savage red eyes watching her from above. Phoenix’s wounds parted for her fingertips, but no fresh blood seeped to the surface. Her tears dripped onto his pallid skin. She finally closed his eyelids and fell on top of him, holding him as tightly as she could, refusing to let go.

  Her shoulders shook as she cried.

  The entire world around her filled with screams.

  III

  THE FIRST SHOT WHIZZED OVER EVELYN’S SHOULDER, STRIKING THE TALLER rider’s steed in the jaw with an explosion of boney shrapnel that sent teeth skittering across the pavement. Its entire snout gone, the beast shook its head violently and turned to face them. Jagged triangular fragments encircled its mouth like a leech’s. The second shot shattered its frontal bone above the right eye and demolished the skull. It swung its exposed cervical column back and forth before collapsing to its front hooves. The rear legs still tried to push it back to standing, but instead scooted it forward on the asphalt, propelling the useless snake of vertebrate. The horseman lunged from its back and landed squarely on his feet. The skeletal horse thrashed on the ground behind him in its death throes.

  The cloaked figure stood no more than ten feet directly ahead of her, motionless.

  Evelyn heard more gunshots and the movement from the corner of her eye became frenetic, but she didn’t dare steal her gaze from the man in front of her, his features bathed in darkness.

  Slowly, the figure extended a pair of smooth ivory hands from its wide sleeves and reached up to either side of its face, took hold of the hood, and pulled it back.

  Evelyn gasped when she saw his face and stumbled unconsciously in reverse. He appeared to be made of pearl, every contour polished and rounded. Even his eyes were white. The only imperfections were the bubbles sliding beneath his porcelain skin, creating the illusion of blood boiling beneath. Though no expression marred his face, she could feel the coldness of his rage directed at her.

  Bang!

  Another gunshot from behind and something screamed off to her right.

  Famine took a long stride toward her and she heard a click from where Ray crouched behind the rubble. Click. Click. Click.

  Evelyn looked to the ground for any kind of weapon, but there was only a scattering of broken bricks. Grabbing one, she hurled it at the approaching creature, but it only bounced uselessly off his chest.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. She started to turn to run, but Famine was too fast.

  Twin fists pounded her in the chest, seizing handfuls of her shirt and lifting her from the ground. She kicked repeatedly at him, striking his shins and knees with everything she had. If she was hurting him, he showed no sign as he stared into her eyes. Panicked, she clawed at his face, but his skin was so hard that her nails merely bent backwards. Even the smooth white orbs that served as his eyes were immune to her best efforts.

  She looked to her right, hoping Adam was coming to her aid, but the smaller horseman had him pinned on the ground beneath the flaring cloak. All she could see were his raised arms struggling to ward off his assailant.

  They were going to die. They had come this far only to fail.

  Famine’s hands readjusted in the fabric of her shirt, climbing upward toward her neck like spiders. She knew when they reached their target all would be lost.

  She grabbed hold of either side of Famine’s face, pressing feebly into his temples with her middle fingers and trying to gouge out his eyes with her thumbs, but it was like attempting to break stone with her bare hands. Screaming, his furious grip tightening over the muscle above her clavicle, she squeezed with all her might.

  Still dangling above the ground, she felt his hands close around her neck, sealing off any hope of drawing breath. She gasped for air, but nothing reached her lungs. She pulled her hands from his face and curled her fingers under his, her nails tearing ribbons of flesh from her own throat. His hands were made of the same impenetrable skin as the face, beneath which bubbles boiled eagerly, pressing even harder against her neck as they squirmed along his fingers.

  Red blotches appeared in the periphery of her vision, moving inward with amoeboid motion, chased by a swelling blackness that constricted her vision like binoculars. Her heart began to pound and her chest heaved. Fingertips and toes tingling, she pinched her eyes shut against the pain, and scraped and clawed at her own neck in a desperate attempt to free herself.

  I’m going to die was her last conscious thought before she gave herself over to the animalistic panic.

  She gagged in an effort to breathe, but nothing came. Her mouth opened wide, tongue lolling wildly, eyes threatening to bulge out of their sockets. She looked everywhere for any sign of help, but there was nothing. No one. All she could see were her forearms under her chin, the tendons taut as she struggled against the opaline man who still stared directly into her face with that same disimpassioned expression.

  The bulging muscles and tendons in her arms visibly relaxed and the darkness closed in upon her. The veins stood out, throbbing in time with her vision, the sickly green growing brighter by the second until the vessels became the color of emeralds.

  IV

  ADAM TRIED TO GRAB FOR EVELYN’S HAND, BUT SOMETHING DEADLY PASSED between them with a scream and the ensuing bang of gunfire. He turned to the right to see the smaller horseman’s steed’s right eye splash like a rock hurled into a placid pond. A spray of fluid fired out the other side. The skeletal horse staggered from side to side, struggling to maintain its balance, a wash of black tears draining from its popped eyes. It dropped to its belly to the tune of cracking ribs, but still continued to struggle. The cloaked figure climbed easily from its draped back as though immune to its thrashing, stood beside it, and faced him.

  The shrouded head snapped back suddenly, throwing off the cowl.

  A crack of gunfire echoed through the desolate streets.

  The figure appeared struck, standing upright with its head draped back over its shoulders, neck surely broken. Yet the body still stood.

  Adam was about to rush to Evelyn’s aid, when he saw the smaller rider move. Her head snapped forward into place, brown skin stretched tight over an obviously female framework of bones, strands of long black hair snapping from an otherwise bald pate. She was gaunt and almost looked mummified, her skin torn from her cheekbones in filamentous strings that exposed her maxillae and upper teeth. Even though the shroud made her appear taller, she couldn’t have been more than five feet—

  “Thanh?” Adam whispered. He glanced back to his left at the taller white man who he suddenly realized had once been his former Army friend Kotter. What had happened to them in those caves? Jesus Christ! They were his friends. How had they—?

  An image flashed across his mind. Four figures standing atop a rocky knoll on the mountainside bordering the Ali Sadr Caves, surveying the land at their feet before a swell of dust from the tires of the transport vehicle obscured them.

  Dear God. They had survived, but not in the same incarnation as when they had first splashed down into the sulfurous water. They’d emerged as something else entirely.

  When he turned back, Pestilence had closed the gap between them and stood directly before him, studying him through shriveled eyes that hung loosely in her gaping sockets like raisins dried on optic nerve vines.

  “Thanh… What happened to you?”

  She showed no sign of recognition. Her dried lips peeled back from eternally bared teeth, her parchment skin betraying the manila bone beneath.

  “Thanh. Don’t you remem—?”

  Her hands struck like lightning, tagging his chest with such force that her bony phalanges tore though his shirt and broke the skin, th
e tips fishing around in his muscles. At first he felt cold, as though she had stabbed him with icicles, but the sensation quickly metamorphosed into fiery pain.

  Adam slapped her hands away and clapped his palms over the wounds. He could even feel the heat on his hands, though no blood had been spilled. The punctures puckered and closed beneath. His skin tightened and he got a whiff of what smelled like rotting meat, a scent he knew all too well. Gangrene. But it was impossible. There was no way the gouges could have begun to fester in such a short amount of time. That kind of infection should have taken at least several days. It couldn’t possibly—

  Her tiny fingers grabbed handfuls of skin on his hips and her head darted forward, teeth opening to grab a mouthful of the flesh above his navel. He cried out and stumbled away, snagging his feet and slamming down on his back with her still on him, ripping back and forth, until she finally pulled away and sat upright on his legs, a strip of skin dangling from her bloody teeth.

  Adam screamed and bucked, but she only clamped down on his thighs, her skeletal fingers easily parting his skin like scalpels to prod the tissue within. Pain beyond anything he had ever imagined blossomed in his gut, forcing him to grab his belly with his hands, his face clenching into a fist of agony. It felt as though his intestines were turning inside out and absolving themselves of their contents, his stomach pouring acid over the inner stew. Sepsis advanced with supernatural speed, the disease eating him alive from the inside out.

  Rocking back, he closed his eyes and shouted in agony.

  A startlingly cold hand slapped down onto his forehead and sharp bony prominences latched into his skin like fishhooks. The searing pain was immediate, but nothing compared to that which accompanied the swelling of his brain and the intracranial pressure that followed. The blood vessels in his gray matter bulged and swelled, their thin walls weakening to allow the formation of bulbous aneurysms. A single ruptured lumen and he would bleed to death inside his own head.