Phoenix reached the stairs at the end of the room and used them to rise to his knees, crawling around the landing until he was able to grab hold of the railing and haul himself to his feet. His legs trembled, threatening to drop him back to his knees, but he willed himself to walk, taking one stiff-legged step at a time—
Bang!
The first gunshot had been so loud that he thought something inside of his head must have popped. By the time he recovered enough to drag himself onward, there was a man yelling at the top of his lungs and firing blast after blast into the room. Light flashed above at the top of the staircase, illuminating clouds of powder that exploded from the plaster walls. Phoenix could only manage to cover his head, barely able to see anything besides his arms, and advance at a crouch. The creatures moved like shadows, darting out of the illumination from the discharge, not running on both legs, but flattening themselves to the floor and then scurrying up the nearest wall. By the time they opened their eyes and betrayed their location, the ceiling was positively covered with them.
The scream was cut off abruptly, followed by a thunderous crash that shook the floor.
All of the eyes rained down from the ceiling, a black tangle of darkness scrabbling in the middle of the room like roosters in a cockfight. Blood splashed the walls all around, even slapping down on Phoenix as he neared the top of the stairs. The warm fluid caught him by surprise, starling him just enough to allow for a moment of hesitation.
A pair of the beasts had crept over the ceiling and gotten behind him, his stall throwing off their attacks as they flew past and over his head.
Light flashed from the room above, flickering like an 8mm reel. It sounded as though a wind had spontaneously generated and was blowing straight into the house, but he knew otherwise as soon as the bullets started slamming into the walls all around the room, taking chunks from the railing beside him.
Hissing arose from the darkness as the shadows came to life, scurrying up the walls and to the ceiling again, where they immediately closed their eyes, though in the flashes of gunfire he could still see them advancing toward the front door from above like a rolling tide.
“Shoot at the ceiling!” Phoenix railed, his voice finally returning in a scream.
He dared to peer up over the edge of the floor, through the railings into the main room. A shadowed man stood in the doorway, framed against the rich gray sky outside. Phoenix was sure that the man looked directly into his eyes before raising the weapon from in front of him and directing it up to the roof.
This was his chance!
Phoenix dashed around the top of the staircase into the living room, his eyes fixed firmly with desire on the outside world behind the silhouette.
Manmade lightning crackled in the close confines before being overwhelmed by a furious hissing. Warm fluids drained down on him from above as straps of flesh and chunks of bone pounded the ground all around him. He couldn’t think. He was functioning on pure instinct; all he could do was watch the strobe of the discharge as he sprinted toward the man with his arms over his head, already soaked with a thick fluid.
The whir of gunfire died and the man backed quickly out of the room onto the porch, swinging the butt of the gun as the wounded leapt down from the ceiling and raced toward him as fluid as the living darkness.
Phoenix dove forward, grabbing the lip of the threshold and pulling himself out into air that felt alive with static energy—
A clawed hand seized his ankle. The pain was so intense it felt as though it had grabbed bone beneath the skin.
He screamed as he was pulled back into the darkness with hissing and the clattering of eager talons all around.
The man jumped quickly to his aid, slamming the butt of the assault rifle down squarely in the middle of the thing’s head. The pressure abating, Phoenix scrambled forward and tumbled out onto the cement porch, tearing the skin from his knees and ankles, but he didn’t even feel it. All he could think was how amazing the outdoor air felt passing his lips and rushing down his trachea into his lungs. It was as though he were a rag doll tasting its first breaths of life.
Two other men rushed toward him, each grabbing him beneath an arm and hauling him off toward an open gate in the middle of a chain link fence and onto the dirt road beyond.
“Stay with him!” the larger of the two men commanded and whirled and sprinted back toward the house.
“Are you hurt?” the remaining man shouted into his face. He held a weapon extended in his right hand while he yanked the contents of his camouflaged sack out with his left.
Phoenix shook his head to the negative, though he was sure that the man was otherwise occupied as he jerked the smock off over Phoenix’s head and forced his arms through the sleeves of a shirt matching those of the other men, all the while watching the front door, his nervous finger tapping on the trigger.
“Put these on and stay down!” the man commanded, thrusting a pair of pants into Phoenix’s chest and then placing his body between Phoenix and the open doorway.
The purr of automatic gunfire summoned a frenzy of hissing and a chorus of thack, thack, thack as the bullets tore into the walls and ceiling.
“Fall back!” a voice shouted.
As Phoenix tried to force his feet through the awkward holes he assumed were for his legs, he tried to see around the man crouching in front of him with his rifle trained on the doorway. One man sprinted at them, his rifle dripping with white sludge, the barrel still smoldering, while the other backed down the beaten path, releasing clouds of bullets back into the house until the chamber spun dry with a whir.
“Cover fire!” he bellowed, dropping his weapon to his side and running toward the gate.
The man who clothed Phoenix rose to his feet and stepped forward, the men dashing toward him throwing themselves to all fours and crawling quickly past him.
No further gunfire ensued as a dust of plaster and smoke wavered in the blackened doorway like a mist. Nothing moved beyond. No shadows stirred. Only the thinning mist as it slowly dissipated.
“Carter and Samuels?” the man holding the rifle in his shaking hands asked without looking back.
“Neither made it,” a voice said from right behind Phoenix.
“What in the name of God are those things?” the other man squealed, tossing aside his spent cartridge and chambering another with a loud click.
“The Swarm,” Phoenix whispered.
The man in front of him turned around at the sound of Phoenix’s voice.
“The what?”
“The Swarm,” Phoenix whispered again, watching through the gap between the man’s legs as a dark form slithered into the open doorway. A crimson flap unfolded from beneath its broad chin, flapping like a cape and shivering with the exertion of a massive hiss. A long red scar drew a diagonal across its right eye to a star-shaped gash on its cheek.
Phoenix knew The Man, no matter which form he took.
The scarred creature took a single step back and blended again with the shadows, that same insane look fading from his eyes as he closed them and become one with the contained blackness.
“We have a long journey ahead,” Phoenix whispered, rising to his bare feet on the dirt road. He started walking away from the house for the first time in his life with the men simply staring after him.
Phoenix suspected that the head start they’d been given would only last until what remained of the sun drained from the sky, and that even in death The Man would be unable to let him go.
Chapter 8
I
Aurora, Colorado
DEATH SAT HIGH ATOP HARBINGER, THE PROUD STEED WEARING A NEW suit of shiny black human flesh stripped from the corpses littering their path, drawn tight and stitched over its skeletal form. The patchwork skin suited the nature of the beast, a haphazard creation of both the living and the dead. Death wore a matching cloak to hide his black, scaled flesh, only his had been stitched together from the skins of the living while they endured the torment of their screaming
nerve endings, praising God, praising Death, when their suffering was finally ended. Only he wore the browning skins that shrouded his form, the long hood shielding his face, the residue of dried blood lingering around him, flaking off on his skin. The others wore the black, rubbery skins of the dead like their horses, for to wear the skins of the living, one must truly be able to appreciate life, and who would be able to more than Death? The others were simply ravagers, serving their one function and no other. For Famine, his seeds had been sewn and fertilized, it was only a matter of time until they transformed the entire landscape as they had the humans unfortunate enough to have had weighted souls that couldn’t rise to Heaven, their eternal sins and wickedness trapped in the realm of the living dead, boiling in the fire that coursed through their veins. They were Death’s minions at War’s command. They would kill for him. Die for him. And only then would their souls be set free, their penance complete. Pestilence’s day had come and gone as well. It was her mosquito swarms that had sucked the lifeblood from the survivors, releasing the souls of the righteous to take their ethereal journey, while leaving the souls of the sinners in their bodies to be fertilized by Famine’s locust-borne seed like so many maggots in manure. The animals though, their souls were untainted by the seven sins of man. They knew only instinct, be it grazing or killing, and aspired to nothing more. They were essentially turned inside out to wear their souls on the outside after shedding their prisons of flesh. It was only man who remained to be taught the lesson that must be learned, man who must bear the weight of the sins the Son of God had tried to bear for them. How soon they forget.
That was the problem with man: he could see no further back than yesterday and no further ahead than tomorrow. It was a species born unto the grave.
Harbinger snorted a gust of flame and smoke, dancing eagerly from one foot to the other as its master stared through eyes that varied in color as the leaves of fall to match his mood, now as red as the heart of the earth, toward the horizon from atop that scorched knoll. Pestilence and Famine flanked him, though several paces behind, their steeds yet to crest the hill, faces swallowed by shadows within their cowls. War stayed behind them, Thunder treading the same path as that of the master, the red rider cloaked in the festering remains of the dead. Behind him, trailing all the way to the horizon in a triangular formation to shame the largest battalions to set foot on the earth, was his army of black-skinned abominations, their glowing eyes lighting the way like so many torches.
The sun had only recently set. The night was theirs.
Death studied the jagged crests of the Rocky Mountains standing like broken glass against the western horizon, fading in and out of the dust that was only now beginning to settle. The grasslands of the eastern slope surrounding him were flattened and dead, what remained of the houses now little more than random walls standing guard over their rubble, chimneys lording over the destruction. If there had been any saved by the thumbprint of God, then they were surely not out this evening, as the only movement belonged to the reptilian denizens of the night as they joined the ranks of the army of the damned from all directions, as they became one with The Swarm.
The suburbs stood in a ring around the crater and wasteland that had only the day before been Denver, Colorado, missing roofs and walls, some still burning for lack of anyone to put them out. The sky tasted of ashes, the powder of death drizzling like rain beneath the blue lightning. The entire area had taken on the smell of scorched rubber, a liquid scent that seeped in through the pores.
Where downtown had once stood, at the epicenter of the enormous crater, skyscrapers had toppled into one another to create a spire of destruction into the heavens, leaving a moat of black earth around the fallen structures. Partially demolished buildings and houses lined the rim of the crater, broken and burning walls standing like tombstones.
The tangle of crumbled and bowed metal that had once been the city skyline of Colorado’s largest city now appeared to be one ungodly structure with portions of felled buildings looming over the rubble like leaning parapets of exposed girders and steel. A central tower rose from the midst of the wreckage, pinched in place from either side by other fallen skyscrapers like a middle finger raised to the sky. The ground surrounding shimmered with violet from the constant assault of lightning reflecting up from the fields of shattered glass melted into a continuous sheet by the blast, covering everything from mounds of powdered brick and mortar to the crumpled and abused remains of cars.
From where Death stood, it looked like a giant castle in the middle of a lake of electrical fire.
This was the seat of power, the staging grounds from which they would wipe out what remained of humanity and prepare the world for its next evolutionary leap. The human race had been a mistake, a mistake easily enough rectified.
He kicked Harbinger in the sides with his spurred heels, startling the beast to gallop forward, the long train of sewn flesh flagging like a cape.
Famine and Pestilence rode behind.
As War took to gallop, Heaven and Hell alike trembled beneath the advance of The Swarm.
Chapter 9
I
West of Fallon, Nevada
THEY’D ONLY BEEN ABLE TO MAKE IT TO THE SUBURBS OF EUGENE BEFORE Darren’s Blazer could take them no farther. The interstates were clogged with stalled vehicles and long pileups of crumpled metal and taillights dying like red eyes through the smoke. Half of the city looked to be on fire, but there wasn’t a single siren to respond. The base of the cloud of black smoke just seemed to grow wider and wider as it enveloped the city, and with the way the wind had been picking up, it was only a matter of time until it consumed everything. The only good thing about the thick smoke was that it was so overwhelming they weren’t even able to smell the carnage anymore.
The majority of the occupants were still in their cars, visible through insect marred windows and shattered windshields, their bloated black bodies only now beginning the process of deterioration. Still other cars were empty, save for the straps of flesh torn from whatever had crawled across the jaggedly fractured window into the night, shedding its former humanity in a puddle on the road. There was no sign of them at that point, though as the sky grew increasingly darker, the shadows beneath the bridges and under the wrecked cars seemed to come to life.
April had whispered something about her parents being wrong; this couldn’t have been the way The Rapture was supposed to happen. When God called his faithful children again to his side, they were supposed to simply vanish, flesh and all, leaving only the sinners to stand against what the world would soon become. None of these bodies showed any signs of even the souls departing gracefully. Every face they passed was a frozen mask of agony. Had their eternal life force indeed risen from their flesh, then why had it not done so sooner? Why had everyone been forced to endure what must have been an excruciating death so that their souls could be free? She wondered what kind of sick God would force his own children to endure such an awful and violent death when He could have done as the Bible promised and made the righteous disappear and reappear at the side of His eternal throne. The prospect of the Bible being wrong lead her down the thought path that inevitably led to the dilemma of if there even was a God, and if so, how could He possibly justify being so cruel? She hadn’t spoken since, at least not to Jill, who was beginning to wonder if she really should share the blame for everything going on. Perhaps they would have been better off had they been claimed by the insects like everyone else.
It seemed as though Darren was the only one still in touch with his wits. He didn’t have a plan per se, but he seemed capable of making a decision. Had it been left up to the rest of them, they would have still been sitting in that Blazer waiting for the permanently snarled traffic to move. He’d been the one to spot the Yamaha Cycle dealership a half mile off the highway, and his idea to change their mode of transportation to allow them the ability to either weave through the mess of cars or completely avoid them by heading off road.
O
f the five of them, only Ray had ridden a dirt bike before, but once the others managed to figure out how to manipulate the handheld gearshift and toe clutch, it hadn’t taken long for them to be able to keep up. The shoulders on the sides of the highways had been relatively clear, the headlamps adorning the front of the cycles just long enough to warn them of impending danger before they slammed right into it.
After leaving Eugene, they’d kept to the back highways where they knew the traffic couldn’t possibly be as bad, cutting through the northeast corner of California into Nevada, skirting Reno as, even from a hundred miles away, the sky was charcoal-colored with the smoke from that burning city, the horizon a solid glow like the rising sun. They’d passed through a small town called Virginia City, which had been a ghost town, before straightening out to head to the east.
The best part of this new traveling arrangement was that none of them had to talk to each other. For as long as they rode with the buzzing of the engine and the vibrating motor between their legs they were alone inside their heads. Tina rested her head against Ray’s back, her arms wrapped around his chest and thighs pinched tightly around his hips. Every time Jill thought Tina had fallen asleep, she’d raise her head just enough to betray her consciousness, generally looking past Ray’s shoulder down the road toward Lord only knew what.
Darren and April rode behind, though April didn’t look half as comfortable. She had the entire front of her body pressed so firmly into Darren’s back that it was a wonder he could even breathe. Each time the tires so much as threatened to kick out on the gravel, she bolted straight and held on for dear life.
Jill envied them as she followed from the rear, pushing the bike uncomfortably fast to try to keep up. Much as she would have rather just been riding behind someone like Rick, hands locked over his chest, feeling the reassurance of his heartbeat, she didn’t think she’d be much good to anyone at that point. All she knew was that they needed to head southeast and even that wasn’t something she could articulate. She felt no more in control than the needle on a compass being drawn toward magnetic north. All she knew was that her mind kept repeating the phrase More man tears over and over until it became the only thought in her head. She was a ghost residing in her own form, watching the headlight bounce up and down on the uneven shoulder, merely making sure that she followed the red taillight in front of her whenever it swerved to avoid something, sputtering out the dust from its passage. Her mind rehearsed those three words over and over until it became almost musical. It found a way into that old Berlin tune that No Doubt covered “No More Words,” the modified chorus playing again and again like a skipped record. What was that supposed to mean? More than anything, she just wanted to be left alone. To sleep a dreamless sleep. To lose herself in the void if only for a little while. The world around her had become something out of a nightmare. The Joshua trees and pitchfork cactuses appeared to be slowly metamorphosing into something different altogether. Granted, she could only see them as silhouettes against the distant lightning slashing the sky, but they almost appeared to be growing more appendages, creeping toward the road from the desolate desert. She was even starting to think that there were other things out there as well, other black things that held to the shadows, dashing across the sand on their bellies to hide behind the next stand of wildly branching sage like birds flying past in the trees.
The Fall Page 33
