The End of Everything Box Set, Vol. 1 [Books 1-3]

by Artinian, Christopher

  “Adam has these people wrapped around his little finger. They’re like Beliebers. They’re all over him: it’s scary.”

  “You’re only jealous because you’re not a chosen one,” Wren said, and they both laughed.

  Darkness crept in as the girls played cards and listened to the sounds from the corridor outside. Excitement abounded as these chosen ones talked enthusiastically about how much harder they were willing to work to prove their worth. Both girls let out the occasional giggle as they listened to snippets of conversations as people passed the door. They were the ramblings of people whom they would have crossed the street to avoid in Edinburgh town centre, but alas, here they were, literally surrounded by them. As promised, Wren had wedged a chair up against the doorknob.

  Wren dealt another hand, and a bolt of lightning lit up the room. The lights flickered and then went out.

  “Aha!” Robyn said. “I guess that’s our cue to get an early night.”

  “It probably makes sense. We’ll set off again straight after breakfast tomorrow.”

  “Hopefully it will just be the two of us.”

  “I told you. There’s no way Elizabeth will come. I just wanted her to realise that she is in charge of her own destiny. I can’t stand the victim mentality. No man would ever tell me what to do.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that, sis.”

  They climbed into their beds, but neither of them could get to sleep straight away; the sounds of the building and the storm outside kept jolting them from their drowsiness. Eventually, their weariness won over, and they began to drift.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Elizabeth helped the nurses light candles and lanterns around the ward. They did not have many patients, but the two that she was most interested in were the recent admissions. Once there was sufficient lighting, she sat down by the window with her old friend, Doctor Mortimer.

  “Tell me about Ethan and Murdo,” Elizabeth said.

  Doctor Mortimer smiled. “I still observe my Hippocratic oath, you know; I can’t discuss a patient with you.”

  “Listen. I’m worried about them, and us. Those two girls who came in today? They said that scratches carried the infection. That if people got scratched, they could turn.”

  The doctor laughed. “Turn?”

  “Die then come back to life. Become one of those things that the girls said are taking over the world.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck and looked at the notes in front of him. “What I am worried about is sepsis. We could use stronger antibiotics. Ethan had to have a lot of stitches. Whatever it was that attacked him gouged out a chunk. Murdo got a few nasty scratches, but the wounds weren’t too deep. They’re both running a high fever, but it’s nothing that I haven’t seen before. There’s no hocus-pocus out there; the dead do not come back to life. But the medical fact remains, these are wounds that may go septic if not looked after carefully. I am concerned for Ethan because his wound was the worst, and it was several hours before he got his first treatment. There, happy now? Forty years of observing my oath gone in forty seconds thanks to you.”

  “Look, let’s just say I’m your counsellor. Anything you say to me is in the strictest confidence and will go no further,” Elizabeth said, smiling.

  “And do you have any qualifications for this role?”

  “Well, I’ve listened to you moaning for long enough, haven’t I?”

  “In fairness, that qualifies you better than most.”

  “Don’t work too late, will you?”

  “I’m just going to do one last round then Eleanor and Mary will be looking after things here until I get back in the morning,” he said, gesturing to the two nurses who were busy refilling water jugs.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Elizabeth said, giving him a hug.

  “See you tomorrow.”

  chapter 9

  Eleanor sat a sad vigil by the side of Ethan’s bed. They had seven patients in all, but he was the one who was most critical. The doctor had been concerned by the marked inflammation in the deep wound he had sustained. They had treated him with antibiotics; they cleaned the wound regularly and applied new dressings, but no matter what they did, Ethan was not getting any better.

  She heard a chair pull up beside her and then the warm hand of her friend wrapped around her own. “We have done all we can; now we can only pray. It is His decision, what happens to Ethan. He will either return him to us after this test, or he will take him to that divine place, where Ethan will be waiting to greet us when we ascend.”

  Eleanor looked across at Mary and smiled. Mary was a lot younger than Eleanor, but she had an “old head” on her shoulders. “You are right; of course you are right. But I hope He doesn’t take him away from us just yet.”

  “Ethan is strong; he will continue to fight. I’m sure—”

  “What is it?” Eleanor asked.

  “I…can’t see his chest moving.”

  Both women stood and leaned over the patient. Eleanor picked up one of the candles from the bedside table and hovered it over Ethan’s frail body as they watched his chest. They jumped as a loud, hollow exhalation of air blew from Ethan’s lips, followed by...nothing.

  Eleanor handed the candle to Mary, and a crash of thunder made them both jump again. The older woman felt Ethan’s wrist for a pulse. His skin was slick with feverish perspiration and already unnervingly cold. “I...I can’t get a pulse. She placed her head on his chest, trying desperately to hear a heartbeat, but other than the slight creak of bedsprings as she pressed her head against his body, she was greeted by silence. She moved the candle up to his face. It seemed the colour was visibly draining from his once rosy skin.

  Eleanor peeled back one of his eyelids and leapt up with a scream, dropping the candle and stirring some of the other patients. The candle bounced off the mattress and onto the floor where it extinguished. “What is it?” cried Mary.

  “His eyes,” she said as lightning lit up the room, followed by another booming peel of thunder.

  “What about them?” she asked, ignoring the questions and calls from the patients.

  “There’s something wrong. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

  Mary went across to the small nurse’s station and grabbed the paraffin lantern from there. “It’s probably just a trick of the candlelight,” she said as she approached the bed.

  She leaned in and was about to take a look for herself when Ethan’s eyelids sprang open. The golden-brown irises were gone. The eyes were milky lakes of grey with wild, ebony pupils, flaring wide in the surrounding darkness. Mary screamed and stumbled back, dropping the paraffin lamp. It smashed on the floor, and a puddle of flammable liquid ignited, spreading blue flames across the tiles and catching the edge of the bedside cabinet.

  The creature shot upright with a speed and ferocity neither nurse thought possible. They retreated, avoiding its grasp, but then it leapt from the bed like a viper making its strike. The two women stood there frozen as another flurry of lightning flashes exploded through the darkness. With each sheet of dazzling illumination, the beast was one stride closer to them, strobing like it was all part of some gruesome flipbook.

  The flurry of light came to a stop as quickly as it began. Everyone’s sight normalised, but it still took their brains time to compute. The man that had been lying dead in bed less than a minute before was now straddling Mary as she kicked and screamed on the floor. It brought its head up with a spongy chunk of something hanging from its lips. It was dripping what looked like black oil in the shadowy light cast by the candles, but the strong coppery smell that began to fill the room told everybody what it truly was. Eleanor stood there shaking, unable to come to terms with what she was seeing. Mary screamed and cried, her body convulsing as she held a hand up to the missing flesh on her neck. She began to shake uncontrollably, and the beast that was on top of her cast his gaze to the woman who was watching it all unfold. He leapt again, and now, Eleanor did understand what
was going on as his fingernails dug into her like the claws of a wild animal.

  She let out a scream that echoed around the ward and down the hallway, and that’s when the rest of the patients began to scream as well. The beast lunged towards her neck in the same fashion he had done with her friend. Its mouth widened, and she inhaled the smell of death as thunder cracked, droning out the terrified screams.

  Eleanor felt the hellish agony as its teeth bit through her pale soft skin, dragging its mouth back as if it was pulling the very life out of her. She screamed until her cries turned to bloody gurgles in her throat, and like her friend, she collapsed to the floor. Tears filled her eyes, but as they did, she saw Mary begin to move again, but it was now with the edgy, sharp movements of something inhuman. Her head fell the other way, and before she shut her eyes for the last time, she saw the flames rising from the bedside table, up the wall, and to the neighbouring bed. The smoke alarm began to shriek, but fire was the last thing anyone would worry about tonight.

  Eleanor felt something dark begin to rise within her, and her last thought as a human was: Am I in Hell?

  The rest of the patients were now screaming at the top of their voices, far louder than the thunder that began to echo once again, as the first, and now a second creature advanced towards them.

  The beasts seemed to move faster than the lightning itself as they pounced from one victim to the next, tearing through clothing and flesh, dragging tendons and veins away from tissue and bone.

  Harry Banks, the head plumber at the monastery, had been admitted to the infirmary earlier on in the day. He had been experiencing dizzy spells for some time, and while carrying out maintenance on a boiler, had passed out. Doctor Mortimer had wanted to keep him in for observation, but now, dizzy spells were the last thing on Harry’s mind as he saw patient after patient pounced upon by these rabid beasts.

  The fire was spreading further as Eleanor jumped back to her feet and locked eyes with Harry. He could tell, even from that distance, that it was not Eleanor any longer. The beast sprinted towards him, and as it leapt through the air, he dodged and shoved it as hard as he could, deflecting the creature. It went crashing into the wall, and that pause while it gathered itself gave him the time he needed to collect his thoughts. He ran as fast as he could down the middle of the infirmary, which was essentially a single ward with a procedure room and a doctor’s office attached.

  He burst through the swing doors and continued down the hall, the back of his hospital gown was wide open, revealing his flabby white buttocks and hairy back, but didn’t give it a thought as he sprinted faster than he ever had.

  “Help!” he screamed. “Help!” he cried again. His words bounced off the ancient stone walls as still more clatters of thunder rattled outside. Candle lanterns had been mounted on the walls, but they did not so much illuminate, as suggest light. It was enough for him to see where he was going, and Harry was more than halfway down the corridor when he heard the doors burst open once again. The growls that followed him announced he had more than one pursuer, but he did not intend to look back to see how many exactly.

  He ducked right up a wide passageway, and there was the entrance to the huge dining hall. He barged through the doors as another flurry of lighting lit the room. Before they swung closed he heard a high pitched scream rip through the cold night air, and his already cold buttocks and back rippled with goosebumps. Harry continued running, his weight and his health condition cured temporarily by the adrenalin surging through his blood. He reached the serving counter and crawled over the stainless steel top, flopping onto the other side. He let out a whine of pain as his bare knees banged on the tiled floor.

  Harry struggled back to his feet and ran into the kitchen, and there it was: the most surefire way he could think of to rouse people, to alert them to the catastrophe that was unfolding...the dinner bell. He pulled the rope over and over again. The clapper thumped against the heavy bronze, making a ring that the Lord himself could hear over the sound of the thunder.

  If nothing else, this would raise Adam. Adam would know what to do. He was a prophet, after all.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “What’s that?” Robyn said, bypassing the grogginess from her sleep and jumping to her feet.

  Wren flicked on her torch and suddenly, accompanying the sound of the bell, the two sisters could hear shouts and screams. The screams of horror became screams of pain, and both sisters knew instantly what was going on.

  “Oh no!” Wren cried.

  “We need our weapons, then we need to get out of here,” Robyn said, pulling her boots on.

  “The sensible thing to do would be to climb out of the window now and just make a run for it.”

  “And how far do you think we’ll get?” Robyn asked.

  “We’ve got the crossbows, and a crowbar, and knives, and—”

  “Okay,” Robyn interrupted. “Give me a hand.”

  The window was old fashioned, like much of the renovated monastery. A wooden frame sat in the stone surround, and layers of unbroken paint suggested it had not been opened in years. There were two panes of glass with a thick, white wooden slat in the centre.

  Robyn slid the latch across and then tried to lift the window with all her strength, but it was like it was cemented into position. “Let me try,” Wren said, barging Robyn out of the way. She could put the shot fourteen metres, and had far more strength than most girls her age, or women, for that matter, but she could not make the window budge. “It’s no good, we’re going to have to break it,” she said, just as a flash of lightning lit up the grounds.

  “We’re too late,” Robyn said as they both watched figures running across the gardens and vegetable plots. In that one instant flash, they saw hunted, and hunters and both sisters knew then that it was as dangerous outside as it was in.

  We need to trim our rucksacks down to the barest essentials, enough food for tomorrow and the day after and our weapons. If we’re going to get out of here, we’ll need speed more than anything, and we can’t do that carrying a mobile pantry on our backs.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Where are you going?” demanded Adam as Elizabeth rushed to the door.

  “I’m going to get our children.”

  Adam ran around and flattened himself against the door, spreading his arms beyond the frames. I won’t let you go. You’re not opening that door—they’ll get in here,” he said.

  They had more light than anyone else had in their room. Rechargeable lanterns lit the large interior, revealing a level of splendour that no other chamber in the monastery enjoyed. Elizabeth looked into Adam’s eyes as they glinted in the lantern light, and she did not see a chosen one, a prophet…or even a man. She saw the eyes of a small, spoilt, selfish, fearful child. Not a man. Not even a shadow of a man. “Get out of my way, you coward,” she said and surprised even herself. The words left her lips before she could even think about them, and once they were out there, there was no taking them back.

  Suddenly there was something else in Adam’s eyes, something beyond the fear and selfishness. There was rage too. “How dare you!?” he demanded, unleashing a mighty crack across Elizabeth’s face. She let out a high-pitched yelp of pain, and immediately brought her hand up to her cheek. “You’re forgetting your place,” he said, swiping at her again from the other side. His open palm slapped her just as thunder began to rumble. The screams from down the hallway became more numerous and more frantic, but Elizabeth was deaf to them now.

  “You are a coward,” she spat with a ferocity she did not think herself capable of. “You want to hide in here while our children need us; what kind of a man does that?”

  He swung again, but this time she caught his hand in mid-air and dug her nails into his wrist with all her strength. He let out a scream of pain and closed his other hand around her throat, pulling her towards him. He began to squeeze. “You have become far more trouble than you are worth. I could have had any woman I wanted, yet I took you, and this is how you repay
me.”

  Elizabeth began to struggle to breathe as his finger and thumb tightened even harder around her throat. She saw madness in his eyes. She had known it was there for some time, but for the sake of the children, she had continued to play the doting wife. But now this, this greatest of betrayals, saving his own skin and being prepared to sacrifice his own kin; this was one step too far.

  She brought up her knee as hard as she could into his groin, and he immediately let go of her, doubling over for a moment. Elizabeth looked around the room. There was a pair of scissors on the dressing table near the door. She grabbed them, and while Adam was still bet over, plunged them into his back with all her might.

  “Aaarrrggghhh!” he screamed, collapsing forward, and reaching around, desperately grappling to reach the stainless steel blades. “You bitch! You’ll burn in Hell! Mark my words,” he said as he started to struggle to his feet.

  Elizabeth looked at him, then cast one last look towards the opulent room...the opulent prison, as it had become these past few years, before she opened the door. She was about to step out, then saw the two silver door keys sitting on Adam’s bedside table. She ran, pushing her husband over as she went past; he fell back, and the scissors were driven deeper into his back. He let out a scream even louder than the first, and a spasm of pain shot through him, rendering him paralysed for the moment.

  Elizabeth grabbed the keys and rushed back over to the door as growls and howls of pain filled the hallway.

  “Elizabeth!” Adam screamed with one pleading hand outstretched, as she stepped into the hall, she looked back at him. He lay there on the floor, looking more pathetic and helpless than ever, but she felt not a twinge of sympathy.

  “Go screw yourself, Adam,” she said, throwing the door wide open and disappearing into the dimly lit corridor.

  “Elizabeth...Elizabeth!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “Hello? Anyone? I’ve been stabbed!” His shouts were lost to nearly all as they drifted into the hallway. The thunder, the sound of the smoke alarms, the screams of victims and the growls of monsters were way too much chaos for most to even think about anything but their own salvation. But his calls did not go entirely unnoticed. The figure at the opposite side of the hall stopped running almost in mid-stride.