Keys of Candor: The Red Deaths

by Casey Eanes

  Her cold blue eyes scanned the colored map. The tracks that run to Lotte cut straight through the western part of the city. He’ll take that route back to his country. Fear flew through her as her mind connected the dots. Time was slipping away for her to find a cure. Hagan would die if Grift escaped. He was the only one who knew the true nature of Hagan’s poisoning.

  She called into her radio one more time, “Halt the line cars from running. I need two platoons of men to sweep both lines that run toward Lotte’s borders. Update me as soon as you have them in place. I’ll be there shortly.”

  The radio crackled back, “Understood. Units are being dispatched now.” Willyn’s heart pounded and her mind raced. How could this assassin be so good? How could he make us look like fools?

  Willyn raced to her quarters to prepare herself. If Grift had so easily taken out her prison detail, she knew she could not take any chances. She slung open the doors of her battle locker and strapped on an armored vest. She snatched up clips for her pistol, hoping she would not need them. As she put the clips on her belt, she glanced back over her equipment. Deep within the locker set a quiver of javes. The long spears were made from a light titanium alloy and were equipped with a range of different functions. Some in the quiver were standard, razor-tipped at the points, used for hunting, while others held special properties. Some were configured to be explosive, incendiary, or even as advanced as utilizing heat-seeking technology. She picked up the quiver and strapped it over her free shoulder. She had been lucky to have taken him down once with her rook, but to enter the tunnels erased any advantage she had before. Her face was grim when she left; she bore the face of one going back into war.

  One man at a time. One problem at a time. Get Grift. Save Hagan. Nothing else matters.

  ***

  Willyn arrived at the opening of Tunnel 1AAE, the primary entrance for all of Rhuddenhall’s underground rail cars. She sat as the engine of her rook hummed around her. She stared into the darkness before her, wishing that Grift would simply step out of the shadows to surrender and end this pointless game. The smell of damp moisture and stale air wafted out of the large entrance, causing her to scowl. Gods above, what a day, she thought to herself. Her militia stood ready at the entrance when she arrived, at attention, waiting on her command.

  “Leave your rifles outside. If you fire live ammunition inside the tunnel you risk ricocheting and killing yourselves. Just take in your shock rods, taze nets, or pulse rifles. Make no mistake, I want Grift alive.”

  The platoon obeyed without a word, dropping their rifles and pulling out smaller weaponry and nets from their ruck packs. Willyn pulled out a jave and led the party into the darkness.

  “Lights on, soldiers.”

  Willyn flipped a switch on her battle armor and a shoulder mounted light fired to life, sending its beams bouncing down the deep channel ahead of the party. The pinpricks of light seemed to get swallowed in the sea of black that flooded the tunnel. A single line of rail ran through the middle of the underpass, and there was a clearance of ten feet on each side of the enclosure. With each step, Willyn could feel the low, barely audible echo of her movements hum within the concrete cavern, echoing deep into the depths. In silence, she split one half of the detail to stay on the left of the tracks while the remaining party came up the right. The wall of men followed her, dutifully marching further into darkness, stopping at regular intervals to listen and look for any signs of Grift. The only movement within the tunnel was the slow gusts of horrid wind wafting over them, bringing foul odors of mildew and rot up from the subterranean labyrinth.

  Willyn could not contain her disgust. "Gods, what is that?" It smelled foul, like something died, and with each step the stench grew in strength and presence. She had smelled death in all its forms, but something about this was uncanny. It made her uneasy. The militia marched on through the darkness, ignoring the sound of dripping water and the low moans of rotting wind blowing through the tunnel. Even though she was flanked by thirty soldiers, she could not shake the feeling of being alone, her focus and determination preparing her for her next inevitable confrontation with Grift.

  The group had pushed more than a mile into the tunnel system with no solid leads. After an hour of marching they found nothing and Willyn began to worry. The hair on the back of the neck stood up, and her blood hammered through her veins. On the battlefield she had long learned to trust her intuition, and she had a palpable sense that something was wrong. There was another waft of air, but it was ice cold and reeked of putrefied flesh. This air is not coming from the other end of the tunnel. Willyn bounced ideas through her mind, calculating the origin of the odor as she worked not to show any visible signs of distress toward the men.

  “Steady, soldiers,” she whispered. She could feel them, their nervousness, their anxiety; it all let off an invisible energy within the darkness.

  Thoughts blasted through her mind like red hot rockets slicing through the night sky. They were terrible and impossible to ignore. Grift was not in the tunnel, and she concluded that her initial assumptions about his strategy were off. His guise worked, and now Willyn was nowhere near her target. None of that mattered because her mistake landed her into a trap. His trap. She quickly realized that soon they would have to either fight or run. Her mind tried to prepare itself, but the answer came up short. Fight what, Willyn?

  A strong gust of wind pushed in from the group’s right side. An opening. A vast chasm had been dug out from the side of the tunnel. Willyn signaled for her men to focus their lights on the void with a flick of her wrist. The cold light fell into the tunnel. In the distance, a man stood alone in the dark.

  Willyn’s heart jumped at the sight. She had not expected this. The man showed only his profile towards the party and was slumped over, failing to acknowledge either Willyn or the other soldiers. It was as if they were invisible to him. He was old and very unkempt, and his chest pulsed in quick, shallow breaths as he stood up slowly, rolling one visible eye toward them, unblinking in the harsh light. He did not bother to move his body to turn and face them. Though he was too far away for Willyn to distinguish any telling facial features, it was apparent that something was wrong with him.

  “You there, what are you doing down in the tunnels? Trespassing is forbidden, even for the homeless. Have you seen anyone else come through here?”

  There was no response. The man just stood like a pillar in the dark, completely unaware of the militia’s presence; comatose.

  Willyn took a cautious step forward. There is something wrong with this. There is something very wrong with this. The thought just kept banging in her mind as all her instincts told her to stay back, but curiosity overtook her fear and she inched forward.

  She moved within three feet of the man as he stood wheezing for breath. She tried to ignore how much her hands were shaking as she clutched her razor jave. She was steadied only by the thought that at any moment she could easily decapitate the man should he pose any danger. The squadron behind her trained their pulse rifles on the stranger as he stood like an old, rotting statue. She took another step. Another. Another. In a flash the man turned to face her, and Willyn’s mouth fell open.

  His face was completely mutilated, carved away from the skull, rotting flesh dangling in the foul dark air. What was left of his jaw was unhinged, dangling like a rag doll. A guttural, screeching snarl rolled out of his ragged maw, as his milky eyes stared back at her. The one scenario Willyn hoped would not come true was horribly confirmed. They had disturbed a morel hive.

  “RUN! Fall back!” The need for stealth was over. When you disturbed one morel, you disturbed them all. Willyn screamed as she plunged the jave deep into the fiend’s chest. It staggered and bellowed while furiously clawing at the jave’s shaft.

  “Morels! Get out!” she screamed.

  Willyn spied the outline of three more morels sprinting from the depths of the cave. The beasts had frothing mouths, and hot, white clouds streaked through their eyes. Five more,
ten more. The hive was awake and hungry, and the entire hoard was pouring toward Willyn and her men.

  The cave erupted in the blue glow of pulse rifles firing into the masses of morel bodies. The bursts of energy held them back, but only for a moment, as they continued to push forward, one after another. The pack grew from three to twenty in mere seconds, and they continued to stream from the shadows like ants from a disturbed mound.

  “Your weapons are no good! RUN!”

  Willyn pushed her way back into the main passage and dropped a grenade at the mouth of the morels’ cave. The explosion blew through the tunnel with deafening force, partially collapsing its entrance. It was not enough. Morels forced themselves out of the rubble to continue their hot pursuit.

  The security force pounded down the tracks as the morels sprinted after them howling and hooting like banshees. Their loud shrieks echoed through the tunnel walls, making it feel as if they were surrounded. Willyn, her mind clear with the adrenaline that was ripping through her, threw three razor javes in quick succession toward the twisted mob of monstrous bodies. The javes shot through the tunnel like lightning and found her targets, slicing at limbs and pinning down some of the creatures. One of the javes exploded into a wide taze net that stunned and held a mob for a few seconds, but the pop, pop, pop of the net’s metallic fibers bursting at the seams announced that the beasts had broken through. They clamored over their fallen, ravenous to destroy and feast on every one of them.

  Willyn calculated multiple options as her lungs burned. She could feel her mind whirr and click into place, denying the fear that boiled in the bottom of her stomach and clawed at her throat. It would be another half mile before they cleared the tunnel. She kept up her pace, forcing herself to remain calm. She turned to see her pursuers’ progress. Like a buzzing swarm of bees, the morels came, sprinting and jumping over one another, many spilling up on the sides of the tunnel. They trampled over one another in their dogged pursuit. Their claws mutilated each other at random, unaware of the damage that they rendered upon themselves. They craved to feast on the fresh flesh that had so foolishly entered their hive.

  Willyn goaded her men to keep running. “Drop your packs! Drop your packs!” Her men obeyed and flung their tactical vests and backpacks to the ground. The scheme worked for a moment as the morels dove on top of the packs and ripped into them, fighting one another for the opportunity to feast. It bought them only a second, but a second nonetheless.

  The sounds of live ammunition ripped through the air. Willyn fired back at them with her pistol, ignoring her earlier warning to her soldiers. Willyn cursed herself as she thought how nice it would have been for her men to be fully armed. I would rather die of ricochet fire than at the hands of one of these monsters.

  The shots left the pack unfazed. The injured and the dead were engulfed in the sea of monsters. As Willyn stumbled to catch up to the rest of her party four of her men turned back, spreading out a large taze net. The nets cast a blue light in the dark tunnel, illuminating the faces of four of her most loyal men, led by Corporal Waden. The men blurred past Willyn and straight for the horde.

  Willyn screamed. “Fall back, men, fall back! That is an order!”

  Waden answered in proud defiance, “No, General. Better you survive.” The four broke in unison into the ancient Grogan marching song and broke away from the others.

  The echoes rang through the underground chambers as the men met their fates.

  “To die a good death is great, my friends, all for all. For the Groganlands!”

  The men disappeared in the darkness, meeting their good death beneath the tidal wave of morels that engulfed them. Willyn’s stomach lurched at the sound of their screams and the sharp snapping of bones that filled the tunnel. She kept running. Her loyal men bought them one more second.

  Someone erupted with joy, “Faster, faster! I see the entrance!” There, at what seemed a thousand miles away, was the light of day streaming in, illuminating the wet, curved sides of the hellish tunnel. The men were gasping as they pushed every ounce of their energy into a full blown sprint to freedom and safety. Willyn screamed into her radio.

  “I need morel barrier force coverage at the entrance of Western tunnel 1AAE. Do you copy?”

  “We’ve got the target set, General Kara.”

  Willyn heaved for breath as she neared the exit. “Wait...for my signal.” She glanced back at the ravenous pack. They were only about fifteen yards behind her.

  The militia ran out of the tunnel, and Willyn was the last one out. She lifted her wrist up to her face and screamed into her radio, “FIRE!”

  A thunder shock vibrated through Willyn as she saw a mortar round launch up from the vista of Rhuddenhall. She yelled to her squadron, “HIT THE GROUND!” They moved in unison, as the mortar fell just behind Willyn at the tunnel’s entrance. A fireball of pure energy exploded, hurdling her and her forces like tumbleweed into the ravine on the side of the line tracks. There was a din of screams and wails over the roaring flames as Willyn’s body slammed into the ground. The blow knocked the breath out of her and sent a spike of pain up her back. She gasped and wheezed for air and turned to look at the carnage behind her. The morels that cleared the tunnel were caked in fire, flailing and screaming during their last moments. , The mortar had completely caved in the entrance of the rail-line, sealing the hoard of living nightmares behind. Willyn emptied her pistol on the brains of the few that were still standing, walking pyres of living flames. She felt no sympathy for them. The Fallen would never have sympathy from the Grogans. Willyn hurriedly counted her men, barking orders.

  “Any injuries? Status report, soldiers!”

  The sergeant clamored up to her from the ditch where he landed. “Some burns and broken limbs, my lady, but no life-threatening injuries.” His eyes dropped, “We are four short, however.”

  Willyn could feel her heart swallow itself with grief for the fallen soldiers. They made it out alive but at the expense of four of her finest men. She quietly replied, “What were their names, sergeant?”

  The sergeant brought up his datalink, scrolling through the names of those who died. “Private Morgan of Rhuddenhall, Private Broach of the Boroughs district, Corporal Waden of Rhuddenhall, and Private Rote of the Mountainfoot colony.”

  “They will be honored. They were good men.” They saluted one another and she dismissed him.

  Willyn called into her radio again, “We need a medical team down here...and an extinguisher force and cleanup crew.”

  Twisted tendrils of dark smoke rose from the blaze of fire lapping up the dry corpses of morel flesh. Willyn stood and looked into the furnace of hellish kindling. Her red hair flew in her face, singed by the fire that nearly killed her but saved her men. Her mind raced. Where are you, Grift Shepherd? The answer came in an instant.

  Gods above, Willyn Kara. You fool.

  She stood, shocked at her own stupidity. Grift would not leave the Groganlands...not without finishing the job.

  Utter fear washed over her.

  “Hagan.”

  ***

  Willyn rushed back towards her brother’s compound. All of Rhuddenhall’s billboards and public terminals projected a rotation of the faces of the men who laid down their lives for their general; Morgan, Broach, Waden, and Rote. Seeing their faces caused Willyn to feel an odd mixture of both guilt and pride.

  When she finally made it through the doors of the royal family compound two guards saluted her before opening the gate to the private channel-car line. Willyn boarded a small car that carried her towards her brother’s chamber. The dark tunnel and mechanical rhythm of the rolling cart weaved its way to Hagan, as Willyn paced, jave in hand. As she rode alone through the darkness she could not shake the image of her brother’s pale, tortured face. He was still fighting to stay alive, to stay with her, and she knew she could not stop fighting either.

  Two more guards greeted Willyn as she sprinted from the cart and entered the elevator leading up to the main stronghold.
She punched the button impatiently as the old machine creaked to life and the stubborn doors slid together. Little by little it carried her back above ground, but it did not move fast enough.

  “Come on, come on, COME ON!”

  As the doors slid open, confirmation of Willyn’s fears flooded into the elevator.

  Across the room, the unconscious body of the foyer guard was slumped on the ground. She put her fingers on the man. A pulse. Why would an assassin leave a guard alive? Bullet holes riddled the lock on the door and the hinges appeared to have buckled from being kicked in.

  Willyn slid through the open door. There were no lights burning in the Sar’s great hall, only moon glow that fell through the open sky lights lit the room. The luminescent light left small square patches leading up to the doors of her brother’s quarters. Willyn pressed herself against the wall and inched down the hall, avoiding the open moonlight. The hall’s silence was broken by a low moan. Willyn squinted and then saw someone. Hosp was lying face down in the middle of the hall writhing in pain. From her distant position, it seemed apparent that he suffered a blow to the head and a cut had opened on his brow. Willyn could not hide the smile that crept over her lips. You are too merciful, Grift. You could have at least done me a favor.

  Willyn approached Hagan’s door. She spied two of Hagan’s personal bodyguards, his Elites, lying face down. Willyn checked their vitals. Alive. Alive. Why is he leaving these men alive?