The Azrael (Book 4): Tricon

by Gagnon, Jesse

  Suddenly, gunshots popped off in the background in scattered bursts. The behemoth paused for a moment and when the shots returned, it released a heavy growl. Janice couldn’t see the Azrael anymore as she hid behind hanging clothes in the back of her closet. Infuriated, it flung a heavy-duty sewing machine that sat on a folding table nearby breaking the metal door handle off the door. She held her palms against both of their mouths to keep them quiet. She closed her eyes and awaited a brutal end to her day. A quiet calm came afterwards drawing the sound of Janice’s own heartbeat to her ear. More gunshots continued in the background followed by stifled grunts and screams. They were alone for now, but not for long. They needed to relocate quickly before that large Azrael returned.

  “We’ve got to go, now!” Jane insisted.

  “Out there? No fucking way!” Austin protested.

  “I’m with Austin on this one, Janice.” Stan admitted.

  “It’s going to come back. It knew we were in here, but I guess the gunshots were more important than us right now. I’ve read the updates on the Highwaymen message boards. These things are getting smarter and everything within me is screaming to run and hide somewhere else.”

  “That’s what we’re doing, hiding!” Austin continued to disagree.

  “How are we still hiding if we’ve been found? Huh?” She asked.

  “You don’t know for sure.” Stan questioned.

  “I know that this place is not safe, not anymore. So, you can trust me and move on to somewhere else or you can stay her and take a chance that you’re right. What’s it gonna be?” She asked.

  “I’m with Janice.” Stan said.

  “I’ll take my chances here. They haven’t found us yet. We’re still alive. Going out there is suicide. Fuck that.” Austin continued to argue.

  “Fine, I’m not going to force you. Just make sure your gun is loaded and...do what you need to do if you don’t want to turn into one of them.” She instructed gesturing to his pistol. He held it up, studied it for a moment, looked back up at her and shrugged.

  “Save that advice for yourself. I’ll be fine here.” Austin retorted.

  “Dude, what are you doing? This is crazy. You should come with us.” Stan urged.

  “You already chose Janice, Stan. You’re making the mistake. She’s gonna get you killed and when that happens know that I’m safe right here.” Austin gloated.

  “What’s your deal?” Stan asked.

  “He’s scared and stupid. We’ll only get ourselves killed if we bring him along. You shouldn’t have come out here Austin.” Jane explained and crawled out of the closet pushing the heavy sewing machine back as she opened the damaged door. Stan followed behind.

  “Austin, come on!” He urged in a whisper, one last attempt to save his friends life. He was met with silence.

  Janice brought herself to her feet, quietly stepped towards the door and could smell the Azrael everywhere. They heard the closet door behind them close quietly. Gunshots continued to fire outside the building. She tiptoed towards a window that faced the direction of the shots and saw a small militia of men and women making a stand near the buses.

  “Why don’t they just leave and save themselves?” Stan asked.

  “They won’t. As long as people are still alive in here they will stay and fight.”

  “Why?”

  “If we don’t fight for each other then who do we fight for?” Janice asked.

  “Ourselves.”

  “Then what? When you’re all by yourself struggling to survive, constantly in fear of what’s next, who can you call for help? Will you be eaten? Will you starve? It’s all on you. Who can you talk to? Who will you fall in love with?”

  “But you’re alive.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re waiting to die.”

  “You think they’ll beat them?”

  “I don’t know. I hope so. At least they’re trying. Staying back in that closet is giving up. We’re going to live or at the very least we’re going to try our best.” Janice explained.

  “Do you think Austin...?”

  “Yes, maybe not now but it will happen. He’s weak Stan. People like that end up dead or...” She pointed to an Azrael charging into a barrage of bullets outside. “We should get moving while they’re busy down there.” She continued.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the roof.”

  “We’ll be trapped up there. How...how the hell are we supposed to get up there? It’s not some flat topped roof.”

  “No we won’t. You’ll see. It was Giselle’s idea.” She smiled and headed for a maintenance closet on the same floor. She unlocked the door with a key from her pocket quietly and urged Stan through the door.

  “Hurry, inside...go!” She whispered while waving her hand towards the small room.

  She quietly closed the door behind her and walked towards the back of the room. She stood on a sturdy table, pushed up a ceiling tile and moved it out of the way.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Stan asked.

  “Quiet. I’ll show you in a sec.” She whispered.

  Janice climbed up on to the supporting rafters above and cussed.

  “Shit! Who put this chain here?” She spat out. Stan could only see her legs. The rest of her disappeared into the darkness above.

  “What’s wrong? What are you doing?” He asked again.

  “Someone locked up the access to the roof. Fuck it...Giselle showed me how to pick locks. I’ll see if I can do it too.” She mumbled.

  “What? Didn’t catch that last part. Do you know where the key is?” He asked.

  “Give me a sec.” Janice removed two hairpins from her pocket and tried to pick the lock. After a few minutes of wiggling the pins around, it popped open. “Hell yeah!” She blurted.

  “You get it?”

  “Got it...I just need to...shit....”

  The chain that was wrapping around the handles for the roof access slipped through her fingers. Her heart stopped as they fell in slow motion. They clanked against the ceiling rafters and slid off them loudly on to the table. They eventually silenced after striking the floor in a loud clanking noise as they coiled on top of themselves. Stan froze. Sounds of Azrael hurrying up the steps towards the closet came soon after. She pushed the access open and climbed out.

  “Get your ass up here!” She hollered down.

  “Right...coming.” He answered climbing on top of the table and pulled himself through the ceiling opening. As soon as he exited on to the angled roof, he couldn’t find Janice and panicked.

  “Hurry up here!” She shouted from the top of the roof. She headed towards a large antenna that shot up twenty feet from the peak of the roof.

  Stan climbed out. He heard the door to the closet slam open and hissing noises of Azrael following their scent exited from the opening. They were following them.

  “Run Stan!” Janice cried out when she noticed that he paused. She climbed up the ladder that led to the top of the antenna.

  He snapped out of it, climbed up to the peak, and straddled the roof on all fours.

  “I...I...I’m afraid of heights.” He mumbled.

  “What? I can’t hear you. Hurry up. I can hear them coming.”

  Stan hurried as fast as he could, focusing on the antenna. He fought through his fear and climbed up behind her.

  “Wh...what...what are you doing? They’re coming.” Stan stammered and turned to see one of them exiting the opening.

  “Put this harness on...quickly. Watch how I do it...focus!” She explained.

  She quickly donned her harness and assisted to get one on Stan. One of the Azrael reached the ladder. She removed her pistol and shot three times. The last shot destroyed the brain and it tumbled down the angle of the roof and fell off it.

  “You killed it!”

  “Get it together. We’re going to live, you hear me?” She encouraged.

  She attached his lanyard to a trolley on a line that led from the top of the antenna to so
mewhere Stan couldn’t see.

  “It’s going to be a rough landing so move out of my way if you can.” She pushed him. He didn’t have time to react and descended quickly. By this time, three more Azrael were on the roof heading for the antenna. She quickly attached another trolley, attached her lanyard to it and leapt off. She slid down the zip line smoothly.

  “Fuck!” Stan hollered up ahead as he whizzed past a tall tree by only a few feet.

  The roof of the other building was just on the other side of a river to the south. It came into view quickly. Wet mattresses and pillows littered the landing area and he struck them violently. He rolled out of the way, as he heard Janice following behind. She landed a bit more gracefully and wore a large grin.

  “Whew! That was exhilarating!”

  She turned and inspected the roof of the dormitory they just left. A group of Azrael had climbed up onto the Antenna platform. Two of them wrapped their arms around the zip line in attempts to follow. After a hundred feet, the friction of the line tore through their arms and they plummeted down into the river.

  “Are we...safe?” Stan asked still breathing hard.

  “I think so, for now.”

  “You pushed me...I...wasn’t ready.” He panted.

  “I didn’t have time for you to be ready.”

  “That was wild.”

  “Wasn’t it? Most fun i’ve had in forever.”

  “Fun?!? We almost died.”

  “Almost, but here we are.” She dusted off her pants and smiled at Stan.

  “What about the others down there fighting? They saw us.”

  “Yeah, I saw that too. Their sacrifice saved us Stan. I’m sure they were proud.”

  “Do you think?”

  “I know. Just saving one person from an imminent death is like a drug. It drives you to do it more often. It also gives us the opportunity to radio in back-up.”

  “Haven’t they already done that?”

  “I doubt it. Two nights ago, the antenna that we were just on had all of its cables ripped out and the electronics attached were destroyed. It was the only direct communications we had back to the Highwaymen Station.”

  “The Azrael?”

  “No, one of us did it. Probably assumed that the whole mission would be scrapped if we lost communications.”

  “Why would someone do that?”

  “Fear is just as dangerous as the Azrael.”

  “But this only makes it more difficult to survive. That’s stupid.”

  “I agree. Fear doesn’t run on logic.”

  “So, how are we going to radio in?”

  “This building is a secondary safe house, in case something like that happened.” Janice heard gunshots in the distance along with several screams. “At least they’re still fighting.”

  “You think Austin...”

  “Don’t worry about that right now. He made his choice. Live with yours.”

  Janice opened the door that entered the building and hurried to the room below. A CB radio sat on a table and a map of the city and its surrounding neighborhoods was hanging on the wall. She turned on the radio and delivered her message after retrieving the frequency data chart from the safe to verify that she was on the right channel.

  “Highwaymen Station, this is agent 133 with an urgent message, over.”

  “133 this is the Highwaymen Station, you’re coming in clear. Standing by for your message.”

  “Coms with the Pelican Station are broken. Delivering urgent request for immediate support due to Azrael activities. Agent 133 is with one soul at secondary safe point, over.”

  “Pelican Station under attack. Requesting immediate support. Agent 133 is with one soul, copy. Stand fast agent 133. Support is on its way. Roger, out.”

  Janice placed the receiver down and sat in a nearby chair.

  “Pelican station?”

  “Code words.”

  “You didn’t use it for the Highwaymen Station.”

  “They aren’t under attack. Don’t want to reveal weaknesses in our facilities to those out there that would exploit them.”

  “Like who? Who’s left out there that would do that?”

  “The Azrael aren’t our only enemies out here. Beyond the Chicago walls, new organizations have begun their own rebuilding process. Not everyone shares Mr. Killbrook’s belief in humanity.” Janice explained while pointing at different locations on a large map of Illinois on the wall nearby. Different colored pins were decorating it indicating something important.

  “What do the colors mean?”

  “Red are Azrael owned territories, yellow are independent colonies, while blue are hostile human encounters.”

  “That’s a lot of blue. Another map in the opposite side of the room was a map of the US. Very few yellow decorated the map. 80% were red and 15% were blue.

  “Is...this accurate?” Stan stammered.

  “As far as we know, yes. However, it is information provided to us by those yellow pins you see. We’re losing more allies each month.”

  “What’s this black pin?”

  “Ground zero.”

  “In Atlanta?”

  “The airport, yes.”

  “How about the other countries?”

  “About the same as us. Third world countries are all in the red. Their governments were unprepared for the Azrael.”

  “Who was?”

  “Good question...maybe isolated islands that enforced their borders, maybe.”

  “The Azrael aren’t flying planes or operating boats. How are they making it to these other countries?”

  “When it started people didn’t understand the nature of the virus or what it had done to those infected with it. Several were detained and flown across the world to provide treatment. Some were dead and were treated as corpses. Some made it on large cruise ships or locked in airplane bathrooms. When the virus arrived, there was no information about it. Hell, I was in denial about it when the news finally found me and my fa...Well, some people treated it as the apocalypse, while others believed it was nature’s way of starting over. ” Janice explained.

  Stan glanced down over the ledge and noticed a small herd down the road drawn to the sounds of their arrival. He walked over to her and out of view of those monsters.

  “Which do you believe?” He asked.

  “Does it matter? I want to live. I want others to live too. I believe in life.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Then there’s hope for you yet, Stan. Let’s go take a look at what they got to eat in this place. I’m starving.”

  “Me too.”

  Chapter 7

  Finding Jason

  Travelling from safe house to safe house, searching for Jason seemed like a lost cause and wasted time to Giselle. Another member of the Veil had fallen victim to the Azrael horde led by the Alpha. Toko had been extremely patient and supportive of Giselle’s personal mission. After Vladomir met his end, Toko had been distant and reclusive. Giselle decided to talk to him about it.

  “Toko, I’m sorry I’ve been wasting your time. We should get back to Chicago and help...”

  “We will find your brother Miss Giselle.” Toko interrupted.

  “But...we’ve wasted months out here searching for him.”

  “We have wasted nothing. We have discovered places where Jason is not. We have learned more about each other and due to my brothers’ sacrifice, we have learned a great deal about Awakened Azrael. All of this information will help guide us in the right direction and hopefully allow us to understand Jason when we do encounter him.”

  “You still have so much hope, Toko. With all that you’ve lost...”

  “I’ve gained much more Miss Giselle. Stop thinking so much and listen. Listen to the world. Listen to your heart. Listen to your thoughts.”

  “What will that do?”

  “Cause you to realize that you have too much in there.” Toko tapped Giselle’s temple with his left index finger. “When you stop and listen, you gene
rate the window to what’s out there. What is your heart telling you about Jason? Don’t say anything now. Listen Miss Giselle.”

  “It’s not talking.”

  “You can’t listen when you yourself are talking. Listen, don’t think, and just listen.”

  Giselle watched as the moon travelled across the sky. The sounds of crickets chirping, leaves stirring in the wind and the creaking of trees as gusts made them dance overwhelmed her sense of hearing. The aroma of pine needles, the faint hint of the Mississippi River and the various woodland odors also wreaked havoc on her sense of smell. Each stirring leaf that moved in the wind, the distant clouds, and nocturnal animals also placed her vision in perpetual fight for focus.

  “I...I can’t do this...it’s just too much going on.”

  “Close your eyes. Take shallow breaths and listen Miss Giselle. You might have mastered the art of multi-tasking your gifts but you need to learn how to focus on just one sense. Let go of everything else. Listen Miss Giselle.”

  She closed her eyes, controlled her breathing and listened to the world. The distant current of the Mississippi River several miles away was brought to the forefront. Creatures moved through the woods, breaking branches and stepping through bushes and wild grass. She heard her brother laughing, not as he is now but when they were kids. They were fishing with Dad. She heard Jason crying as Dad beat him for dropping and losing his pole in the river. She heard her father’s foul mouth as he called him everything other than his name. The singing of birds brought her to the cottage that they stayed at for a few summers as a kid. A birdhouse and birdbath sat not but fifteen feet from the kitchen window. She whistled back to them and smiled