No Refuge from the Dead

by Anthony J Melchiorri

  No Refuge from the Dead:

  A Short Story from The Tide

  by

  Anthony J Melchiorri

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Books by Anthony J Melchiorri

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  About the Author

  Books by Anthony J Melchiorri

  The Tide Series

  The Tide (Book 1)

  Breakwater (Book 2)

  Salvage (Book 3)

  Deadrise (Book 4)

  Iron Wind (Book 5)

  Dead Ashore (Book 6)

  Ghost Fleet (Book 7)

  The Eternal Frontier

  Eternal Frontier (Book 1)

  Edge of War (Book 2)

  Shattered Dawn (Book 3)

  Rebel World (Book 4)

  Black Market DNA

  Enhancement (Book 1)

  Malignant (Book 2)

  Variant (Book 3)

  Fatal Injection

  Other Books

  The God Organ

  The Human Forged

  Darkness Evolved

  No Refuge for the Dead: A story from The Tide

  Copyright © 2018 by Anthony J. Melchiorri. All rights reserved.

  First Edition: March 2018

  http://AnthonyJMelchiorri.com

  Cover Design: Eloise Knapp Design

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

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  A harsh wind cut across Clifton Becker’s face. It carried the fragrance of ocean and carrion. What once inspired a gripping bout of nausea with a single whiff no longer caused him so much as a stifled gag. Under a blanket of stars, he crept behind the grass-draped sand dunes. He used a line of wind-blown trees as cover as he snuck home after a failed evening of fishing. No fish meant he’d have to resort to his dwindling stores of preserved food.

  His compound bow bounced against his hip, secured by his shoulder sling. One hand never strayed far from the grip. The fingers on his other tensed, always ready to nock an arrow.

  Decades ago, his father had taken him bowhunting throughout Maryland. He recalled the electric feeling of sneaking up on a buck and drawing the bowstring back, his forearm trembling. The world around him would fade as he sighted up his prey and let loose the arrow.

  He had been a hunter then. Always considered himself one.

  Until now.

  Now he was the buck, constantly alert, heart pounding, ready to flee at the first snap of a branch.

  Something in the distance rattled on the breeze. It sounded hollow and dull, like wind chimes made of bone.

  Probably not far from the truth.

  He let himself sigh. It was a quiet luxury that did not go unnoticed. Something cold and wet pressed against his palm. His German shepherd, Sage, nudged his hand until Cliff scratched behind her ears. Sage let out a soft whimper as if to ask Cliff what he was sighing about.

  “I thought we’d be safer here, girl. Didn’t you?”

  Sage’s tail wagged lightly. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth.

  “Walks aren’t as much fun as they used to be.”

  Again, Sage’s tail wagged as if she disagreed.

  To her, maybe this late-night stroll through Maryland’s Assateague Island wasn’t so different from all the other hikes they’d taken here. Long beaches, not half as crowded as Ocean City, held a certain allure. Cliff had enjoyed walking up and down them with Sage, the salty air whipping through his hair. When he wanted to get farther from the crowds, he delved deeper south and a bit inland to hike the humid marsh trails. The insects might bite, and the view from the bayside marshlands wasn’t always the most beautiful, but he relished the serene isolation.

  Before taking refuge out here, he’d been a security guard at the Ocean Pines Casino. Not a night went by when Cliff wasn’t forced to escort out a belligerent drunk who had lost it all on the slots or a bad hand. He’d been spit on and punched and called all manner of names. The pay had been just enough to keep him from quitting. But dealing with so many people drained him. There was nothing he liked more than spending time alone to recharge his patience and energy.

  Of course, the cheap wood-frame apartment he lived in meant even at home he was never really alone. The ceiling trembled whenever his upstairs neighbor went to the fridge for another beer, and the couple who lived next to him fluctuated between intense verbal bouts that competed with his television’s volume, to noisily making up after those fights. The snores that came from the neighbor who shared a wall with his bedroom sounded so much like sawblades chewing two-by-fours the man may as well have been operating a woodworking shop from ten ’til seven every goddamn night.

  Home didn’t provide much of an escape from humanity.

  So when all else failed, Cliff went out hunting, hiking, or fishing with only Sage and a radio as companions. Assateague happened to be one of the closest parks to him. It became a favorite place to get away, a refuge from all the stress and stink of other people.

  And now, Cliff thought hopefully, it would prove a refuge for him again. He needed it more than ever to escape civilization. Or rather, to escape what had become of civilization.

  Cliff had stuck it out in his apartment as long as he could. The local police and responding National Guard units had advised the citizens of Ocean Pines to do just that. It was supposedly the safest course of action. He had believed them at first. He had actually thought they were going to protect their little town of Ocean Pines even as the rest of the country was overcome by them.

  “Heard the brass is calling ’em Skulls,” one the Guard soldiers had told Cliff during a patrol through Cliff’s neighborhood. “They eat people, too.”

  “No shit?” he’d asked.

  “No shit.”

  The visits had been performed daily at first then damn near hourly. The National Guard’s official stance was that they were checking to make sure everyone still had proper food, water, and medical attention. The Skulls were rumored to be the result of some act of bioterrorism. Words ranging from nanobacteria to engineered virus had been thrown around. Cliff wasn’t sure what to believe. All he knew was that something was happening to people, supposedly turning them into some kind of monster, and that you didn’t want to run into a person when they became one of those Skulls.

  But it had taken Cliff no leap of genius to understand the soldiers didn’t care about Cliff’s dwindling rations or the fetid water he’d eventually been forced to drink.

  They wanted to see if the people of Ocean Pines were becoming them. Becoming the Skulls.

  Then there was the night gunfire that erupted all around the town. Howls echoed between the shots, an unholy chorus of monsters unlike anything Cliff had ever heard. Sage had trembled at the foot of Cliff’s bed, barking and whining. Tortured human screams resounded over the streets. Cliff never found out what happened. But it was enough to convince him Ocean Pines was no longer home. He needed to leave.

  The roads had already been clotted with traffic and military vehicles, so driving away wasn’t an option. The closest place to get away from the
towns and cities he assumed would be filled with the monsters—the Skulls—was here in Assateague.

  The wind started to die again. Without the protection of the breeze, insects began to buzz, biting when they had a chance. He swatted them as he could, and Sage shook herself frequently, just as annoyed with the little beasts. But getting bit by mosquitoes wasn’t going to kill Cliff.

  The Skulls, on the other hand...

  They crested another dune. Enough moonlight filtered through the clouds to cast a ghoulish glow over the shore. Cliff stopped, his heart catching in his throat. Grass wasn’t the only thing jutting up from the sand.

  Bones.

  Dozens of ribcages and femurs and long snaking spines were half-buried by the windswept sands. There was not a shred of meat or flesh left, and most of the bones had been broken, their marrow sucked dry.

  Something twisted painfully in Cliff’s gut. These weren’t humans. No, they were just victims of the Skulls. Word had spread in Ocean Pines that the Skulls devoured anything and everything that moved, not just humans. He’d seen a few corpses on his journey to Assateague. But nothing compared to the massacre he saw before him now.

  Assateague had once been filled with wild horses. They were brazen enough to try raiding tents and coolers for food, despite campers’ and beach-goers’ attempts to shoo them away. Cliff had enjoyed watching horses trot off with a bag full of tortilla chips or a loaf of bread while unwitting campers could do nothing about it. Signs were posted all over the park with warnings that the horses would bite. All visitors were required to stay at least ten feet from the animals. The placards and paper signs were complete with graphic images of the results of horse bites. The park rangers probably never imagined that humans would eventually be the ones biting back.

  Cliff surveyed the macabre tableau, counting the skeletons and wondering how many Skulls it had taken to decimate this herd.

  “Sad twist of irony,” he said to Sage.

  A tingle of pity sparked at the back of his mind. It was hard enough to believe humans had inflicted the biological agent causing people to turn into monsters. But he found it even harder to swallow that those actions had impacted innocent creatures like these horses.

  A howl cut through the still night air. One of the monsters was still nearby.

  “Shit,” Cliff muttered. There was nothing but grass and a few dried trees around him. He’d hoped to have made it farther, deeper into the denser foliage of the marshes. There was precious little for cover here. He threw himself into a patch of grass and motioned for Sage to join him.

  “Down, girl.”

  Sage followed the command, though her nose stuck up in the air, sniffing.

  Cliff held his bow at the ready. He’d always traveled by night, avoiding the Skulls at all cost. Doing so had prevented him from coming face-to-face with one of them. But he’d only been in the wild like this for a few days.

  Maybe his streak of avoiding the monsters was coming to an end.

  A high-pitched neigh exploded from beyond the bone field. Cliff peeked from between the leaves of grass. A horse galloped across the beach, clouds of sand pluming behind it. A chunk of flesh hung from its hindquarters.

  “Good God,” Cliff muttered.

  Sage trembled.

  The howls rose in a cacophonous fit. The Skulls were closing in. They’d be here in seconds. The horse didn’t stand a chance. And if Cliff and Sage didn’t move, they wouldn’t either.

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  The horse crunched over the bones of its fallen brethren with a pained whinny.

  “Sage, let’s go,” Cliff said.

  He ran from the dunes with Sage at his heels. They soon reached the road running through the center of the island. There was no cover here, and he sprinted across, his pack slapping against his back.

  Another whinny exploded from the horse. The damn animal was coming this way. Cliff burst through the brush on the other side of the road. Already, the horse’s hooves were pounding the asphalt. Hellish hunting cries rent the air behind it. The horse and whatever Skulls were chasing it would be on him soon.

  He could keep running. But crashing through the woods like this was too damn noisy. The Skulls would finish off the horse then come after him.

  Then he heard a thud, like wet meat slapping against a chopping block. He peered from the woods, risking a glance back at the road. Through the dense dried stalks of plants and trees, he saw a few strange silhouettes pouncing on what he assumed was the horse.

  There was no more whinnying. Just the sounds of ripping flesh.

  Sage let out a soft whine, her nose pointed at where the horse had gone down.

  “Sorry, girl. He’s a goner,” Cliff said.

  He carried on, careful and quiet now. The Skulls there would be distracted by the horse’s sacrifice. Still, Sage stared hard through the brush as if she could see the Skulls digging into the horse.

  “We don’t have time for that,” Cliff said, tugging at Sage’s collar. “He’s dead.”

  Sage followed Cliff with her tail tucked between her legs. Maybe Cliff was going crazy, but he could have sworn Sage was disappointed they didn’t try saving the animal. He climbed over a fallen tree in their path. Sage’s claws slipped on the wet, rotting bark, and Cliff caught her to prevent her from slipping. Hell, even if that horse was a human, Cliff wouldn’t have done anything.

  It sounded cold. Truth was, on his way out of Ocean Pines, he’d heard a woman screaming for help from within her house. He’d hesitated then saw the woman’s neighbor rush to help her. The only thing that accomplished was more screams coming from the house. Cliff had turned his back on them and run, pulling Sage with him.

  His hesitation that night had saved his life.

  As he’d approached the edge of town, another citizen with a rifle in hand told him to stay and help defend the place, that they could only hold back the Skulls if they stood together.

  “If the National Guard can’t do it, we can’t,” Cliff had said before pushing past the man.

  “Coward,” the man had called.

  “Self-preservation,” Cliff had replied.

  Minutes later, the reports of rifles had echoed throughout the town, followed swiftly by the howls of the Skulls. The rifle fire didn’t last long. He had no delusions of what the outcome of that fight had been.

  Since then, he’d made it a rule: don’t bother with others’ lives if you wanted to keep your own. It had pained him at first to ignore the distant cries of a human amid the hellish chorus of Skulls as he’d made his way to Assateague, passing smaller towns. He wasn’t sure he could ever truly get used to it.

  At least out here in the wilderness, maybe he could escape it. Since he’d started camping and traveling around Assateague, he’d avoided the Skulls and their hunts. Until tonight, he had seen very little evidence of Skulls around the island.

  He dreaded the prospect of having to leave the place and venture westward to escape them if they took over the park. Undoubtedly, the towns and more populous lands there would be filled with Skulls.

  The sounds of the Skulls feasting on the horse were long behind him and Sage. Soon they returned to the abandoned trailer camper Cliff had claimed for his temporary home.

  “Smell anything, girl?”

  A few abandoned tents at nearby campsites flapped in the wind.

  Sage slunk forward to the camper, and for a moment, Cliff expected a Skull to come ambling out. But like usual, nothing moved within it. Sage’s tail began wagging as she bounded up the steps and inside. Cliff entered with one hand on the hunting knife sheathed at his waist. He checked the bedroom and bathroom methodically before resting on the musty bench next to Sage and rubbing her head.

  “Guess it’s not such a bad thing we didn’t catch any fish today,” Cliff said. “I would’ve just had to let it rot.”

  He used a broken can opener to pry open a can of beans then poured half the can into a bowl. Sage greedily licked them up as Cliff dipped a spoon into the can. He ha
ted running through his scavenged food like this, but even if he had caught a fish tonight, there was no way he would’ve risked lighting a fire. Not after the close encounter he’d had with the horse and those Skulls. He wasn’t sure exactly how the Skulls hunted, but he assumed they weren’t so different from the humans they’d once been, relying primarily on sight and sound.

  That hypothesis was backed up by personal experience. Whenever he had heard rustling or far-off howls, he had always found a good hiding spot. There, he waited it out until the unseen monsters sounded as though they had traveled far from his direction. Those tactics had worked so far. A crackling, bright fire on a night when a few Skulls were fresh off a hunt might be like a beacon for them.

  Once he was finished with the meal, he took out his handheld radio from his camping pack. He fiddled with the dials, scanning for anything but static. Most of the emergency broadcasts had long since gone dark, but he tried anyway, desperate for some news of what the US government was doing. Maybe the rest of the country was better off than the east coast. Maybe the military was pushing back toward Maryland to fight back the Skull plague.

  A voice broke through the static. He paused, his heart pounding. It had been several nights since he’d heard anything.

  “...advised to remain indoors...”

  Static.

  “...contact may cause mutation...”

  Static.

  “...exposed wound, bite, scratch may lead to infection and...”

  Static. The voice didn’t come back.

  It didn’t take any spark of genius to understand what the robotic voice was droning on about. He’d heard those words before, and they only reinforced Cliff’s opinion that Skulls and other people needed to be avoided as much as possible.

  He toyed with the radio a little longer. The thought of the batteries fading pressed heavily on his mind. He hadn’t found any fresh ones yet, and once these died, he might be completely cut off from any contact with the rest of the world.

  Sage nuzzled against him, leaning in for a scratch behind her ears. At least Cliff still had her.