From Oblivion's Ashes

by Michael E. A. Nyman

“Wait here,” Paul muttered, letting him go.

  As if he had a choice.

  “Took you long enough to come back here, boy,” the terrible voice said. “Is it possible that you’re afraid of me? Afraid of what I might do to that soft skin of yours?”

  “I’m not afraid of you anymore, dad,” Paul’s voice came filtering back to T-Bone’s ears. “Those days are over. I’m the man, now, and you’re just a used-up, wasted pile of skin. I have all these beautiful women, dad. They all know what kind of man I can be.”

  “Ooooh! Look who’s all tough and full of vinegar. You hear yourself? You ain’t a man. You may think you are, but you don’t know the first thing about it. It’s about power, son. You take it, you use it, or else it gets used against you. That ain’t no fortune cookie, boy. It’s the first lesson. That’s how God burnt the devil, and that’s how the devil burns you.”

  “I remember your lessons, pop,” Paul said bitterly. “All of them.”

  “You gonna cry? Was Daddy too hard on you? Suck it up, son! Life is hard, and crying is for girls. Is that why you brought the prissy boy home?”

  “For Bethany,” Paul explained. “He’s Bethany’s brother. I’m just trying to keep my women happy, dad.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what men do.”

  “That’s your momma talking. After all these years, are you still a momma’s boy? You still want to take her place?”

  “Fuck you, dad.”

  The terrible voice guffawed.

  T-Bone lay there, petrified. The voice didn’t even sound human. It was what a… a lion might sound like, if it came from the deep south, had a chest the size of a rain barrel, and twenty years of smoker’s cough to spice it up. It was possibly the most horrible noise he’d ever heard.

  Terrified beyond words, he raised his head. He needed to see what kind of being could possibly be responsible for such a voice. Through the lattice of the second shelf, which still partly obscured his view, he could see two vague figures standing face to face. For a clearer look, all he’d have to do is stretch, and he’d be able to peer around the base of the shelf and see.

  Summoning up his courage, he stretched, and took in the scene.

  For a moment, he couldn’t understand what he was seeing. There was a big, old-fashioned easy chair and end table with a beer bottle on it in front of an inert, old-fashioned television set. In one wall, there was a hallway leading god-knew-where. But Paul… Paul was standing ten feet away with his back turned towards T-Bone, addressing…

  It was a mannequin. In the heightened tension of T-Bone’s haunted imagination, that might have been bad enough, but there was… something on the mannequin, something leathery, old, and hand-sewn, something that went all the way down to the ground. At the pelvis area, there was a protrusion, sticking straight out like a…

  All at once, T-Bone knew what it was and let out a hissed intake of breath.

  Human skin.

  The protrusion was its penis, sewn around some piece of wood so as to appear erect. The mask of the face was an inhuman mess of reconstructed leather.

  At the sound of T-Bone’s gasp, Paul turned around.

  Only, it was not Paul. Paul, the placid-seeming, calm wallflower was gone. The… the monster that grinned down at T-Bone now was nothing like him. The eyes were wide with madness and cruelty. The slouching posture was upright, gigantic-looking, and terrible with power. And the smile showed enough perfect white teeth to haunt T-Bone’s nightmares for the rest of his life.

  “Looks like your girlfriend wants some loving,” the thing that was not-Paul chuckled. “Looks like she’s seen me in my altogether, my dick hangin’ out! See her? Peeking around the corner like a brave, little girl. Think she wants me to show her what happens to little girls around here, boy?”

  The thing that was not-Paul spasmed, and suddenly there was Paul.

  “He’s not a girl, dad,” Paul insisted. “I won’t let you have him. It’ll upset Bethany, and I won’t jeopardize my relationship with her just to amuse you.”

  T-Bone retracted his head and, wriggling like a mad thing, fled back across the floor in mindless panic. Never had he felt so terrified. Never had the fear taken him like this. In all his time in prison, with all the monsters he’d had to share cells with, even those times he’d been brutalized and assaulted that had constructed his whole world view, never had he felt this frightened. Whatever that… that thing was, T-Bone wanted to be as far away from it as possible.

  He made it all the way back to the fallen sacks, bumping into one of them, before he came to his senses.

  His knife! He still had the knife! While Paul argued with… with himself, or whatever that thing was, T-Bone could be cutting himself free, giving himself a fighting chance.

  He struggled to get his hands down to his ankles and found, to his frustration, that he could not reach. He kicked the floor, and felt the knife clatter loose and land on the cold tiles. Wriggling in a circle, he brought his bound hands down on top of it, cutting himself on one arm in the process.

  He gripped the knife, awkwardly but firmly, behind his back and rolled over onto his stomach. With shaking fingers, he turned the blade around so that he could saw it across the thick rope. He achieved little success. Sharp as the knife was, he could not get the leverage to press down.

  “Don’t spite me, boy! We both know how that ends!”

  “We know how that used to end,” Paul shouted back. “Not any more! I’m the man, now! I’m the man! I’m the man! I make the decisions. I have thirty-five women who worship me, and I just brought home another, younger than all the rest. I wasn’t going to take her, but she gave me no choice. And she’s beautiful, dad. That makes thirty-six. How many did you ever have? One? A few on the side?”

  “This ain’t hockey, boy! We ain’t keeping score!”

  That was when he noticed something else for the first time.

  The second sack, the one that had not sprung open, was moving.

  He stared at it blankly for a few seconds. Then, almost before he knew what he was doing, he wriggled forward and tried to tug the sack open with his teeth. When it didn’t open, he rolled over on his back, sat up, and butt-walked his way back to the sack. Thus positioned, he was able to grip the sack in one hand and apply the knife to the cloth with the other.

  His efforts provoked muffled protests from the sack, but T-Bone’s manic energy had no time for waiting. He felt the knife cut through, and then heard the cloth rip along the cut as he threw himself against the hole. Whoever was inside helped expand the tear by kicking and struggling, before T-Bone lost his balance and toppled sideways.

  He barely managed to avoid impaling himself on the flailing knife.

  Rolling over, he came face to face with the occupant of the bag.

  “Angie?” he whispered, shocked. “What are you doing here?”

  She stank of urine and fear. When she saw him, she cried out, but the gag muffled her response. Desperate and driven by fear, she tried to wriggle away.

  She was afraid of him. She’d actually peed herself at the sight of him.

  T-Bone was confused. She was afraid of him? Of him?

  And all at once, the epiphany came crashing down on T-Bone, and he felt like a part of the universe was sliding into place. Like a confirmation of everything he had privately feared, like a blind man discovering that he’d only had his eyes closed his whole life, like a burn victim seeing into a mirror for the first time, T-Bone recoiled as a sudden and painful despair impaled him straight through the chest.

  Of course, she was afraid of him. Why shouldn’t she be afraid? He wasn’t a hero. He was every bit the villain that Paul was, a… a thing to be feared and reviled. Maybe there were worlds of difference between them, or maybe it was only madness that painted the divide, but how was a little girl to know the difference? What had he ever done in his whole, worthless life that warranted anything better?

  He looked haltingly up to the severed head of his si
ster, and gazed into her twitching dead eyes. His judgment. He wasn’t a hero. He was a failure, as a man, as a brother, as a survivor of the apocalypse, and this was no accident.

  This was karma, baby.

  He was right where he deserved to be, his soul devoured by monsters.

  “It’s all right,” he told her. “I’m… I’m trying to help you. See? I’m a prisoner too. Paul captured us. But you need to escape. Here.”

  With a flick of his fingers, he tossed the knife in her direction. Her hands were bound at the wrists in front of her, so she had no trouble picking up the hilt.

  “Cut yourself free,” he said.

  He rolled over onto his back so that he could look up at his sister’s lifeless, wriggling head, and let his body go limp.

  I’m sorry, Bethany.

  The dead head of his sister gaped like dying goldfish.

  “Get free, find the switch by the door and get the hell out of here. Don’t look back. Just… do whatever it is that you do to fool the zombies, and get away.”

  “’Ar’ uh’ie ‘oou ‘eh I ‘eh ‘erhee,” Angie said, already sawing at her bonds.

  “No, you won’t,” T-Bone answered, intuiting her words. “You just run and don’t look back, okay? If you can, get back to the community and let them know about Paul.”

  She scowled at him over her gag.

  “Listen,” he said, turning his head so she could see his eyes. “I’m serious about this. I need you to escape. I need to do at least one, fucking good thing before I die. If you try to help me, you’ll get caught, and I need you to get free. Paul can’t have us both.”

  He turned back to his sister, and in his darkest imagination, he thought he could see her smiling at him. Angie’s eyes, confused, looked with him.

  “Her name was Bethany,” he said, “and I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t even save myself. But please, Angie. Let me save you. Please let my life mean something.”

  Angie didn’t answer.

  “And get back in your sack while you work,” he added. “If he comes back and sees you trying to get free…”

  He stopped as he saw she was already taking his advice.

  This was it. He’d gone through fear and come out the other side. Fuck you , Paul. Fuck you, not-Paul. You showed me who I was, but you can only kill me once.

  Now, it was monster versus monster.

  A shadow fell across T-Bone.

  “Time for us to get better acquainted, T-Bone.”

  T-Bone looked up from his place on the ground and into not-Paul’s mad eyes. It was like looking up into the eyes of a T-Rex, and T-Bone felt a curious sense of relief as he faced the storm. I am released from fear, he realized. I am free.

  Angie would need time if she was to escape.

  He grinned up at the killer. The angrier he gets, the longer he’ll take with me, the better Angie’s chance of getting away. It may not be Bethany, but it’s the best my choices have left to me. So I’d better get my best insults in while I can.

  “Go fuck yourself,” he told the terrible apparition that was not-Paul. “You’re not even alive, you know that? You’re a fucking piece of skin. And about that dick of yours. You call that a dick? You even had to stick a piece of wood up it, just to keep it up. What’s that, the asshole’s version of Viagra? You’re nothing. Just another pathetic loser trying to convince himself that he’s a man.”

  “Well, well, well. We have a fighter, do we? Only he fights with words. Do you know who else fights with words, bitch? Women fight-”

  “Yeah, yeah,” T-Bone interrupted tiredly. “You want to fuck me, I get it already. Why not? I’m a good-looking guy. Keep trying to convince yourself that I am a girl though, if it makes you feel better about your own homosexuality. You wouldn’t be the first.”

  “I ain’t no fag!” the apparition roared.

  “No, you aren’t,” T-Bone said. “I’m a fag! Surprised you there, didn’t I? And I’ve known plenty of other fags, who had my respect. At least they didn’t go around spouting bullshit about words and women and manhood, just because they wanted to pork somebody. And speaking of bullshit, you know who else fights with words, stupid? Humans. It’s called language, moron, and they invented it back in the Stone Age. Look it up, if you can read.”

  A brutal kick caught him across the jaw, jarring him and making his eyes swim.

  He grinned upwards with a mouthful of blood.

  “Did somebody get his tender feelings hurt?” he sneered, the mockery dripping from his tone like honey. “Ooh! You know who has feelings? Girls have feelings. Are you a girl, shit head? Does it sound just as stupid when I say it, asshole?”

  “Shut your mouth!”

  Another kick snapped his head back like a football.

  But he twisted back up with savage defiance, glaring straight into the eye of the storm.

  “Come on!” he snarled, though his senses rang. “Is that the best you can do? My mother could kick harder than you, and she was an alcoholic slut! What does that make you, asshole? If you’re gonna kick me to prove that you’re a man, just fucking kick me!”

  Another kick, and T-Bone felt one of his teeth tear from his mouth and go bouncing across the floor. His head spun with lights and the blood gushed down his chin.

  He laughed up at his tormentor, causing blood to spray across Paul’s pants and shirt.

  “Seriously?” he shouted. “That’s the best you’ve got? Jesus, Paul. Why were you afraid of this pussy?”

  The purple mask of rage above him seemed to shudder, and suddenly it was Paul again, looking down at T-Bone with a look of confusion and alarm.

  “You have to stop, T-Bone,” he urged. “Whatever you’re doing, it won’t work. He’s just going to get angrier. You have no idea how much he can hurt you. He’s impressed with how tough you are, but your only hope is in convincing him that you’re a man. But whatever you do, don’t-”

  “But we’re not men, Paul,” T-Bone said, sagging under the weight of what he knew was coming. “Can’t you see that yet? We could have been. There was a chance. Boys are burnt and broken, but men rise up from the ashes. They survive to fight the demons, the horror, the pain, to protect the things that matter. We may not have been able to save ourselves, Paul, but as men - true men - we could have chosen to take a stand against the evil we know exists, know better than anyone else. We didn’t choose to do that, Paul. Instead, we chose to die as children and let ourselves be reborn as monsters. Everything else is just the bullshit we tell ourselves to avoid seeing the truth.”

  He looked up at Paul, who was gazing down at him with horror.

  “Can’t you see it yet, Paul?” he asked. “The truth? Is there some part of you that can see what you’ve let yourself turn into? Or are you still listening to the lies?”

  For a second, Paul simply stared at him. Then, he raised his head and gazed at the room around him, at the shelves and the bottles and the cutting tools and the ten thousand dollar freezer. His face was as open and as drear as a November sky.

  Then, in a spasm, he clenched his eyes shut as tight as he could, shaking his head like a man trying to dislodge a colony of spiders.

  His eyes opened, and not-Paul glared down at T-Bone with malice.

  “Just as I suspected,” not-Paul growled, leering down at T-Bone with menace. “Little Pauline ran away like a frightened bitch. He’s just like his mom, only she didn’t get to run away. And neither will you, pussy. You ran your mouth, but the only thing you accomplished is to give me free reign to do to you what I did to Little Pauline. Let’s see what kind of man you are then, eh? Think I’m gonna cut myself off a slice of T-Bone steak for Christmas Dinner. You hear that, boy? Around here, a man eats what he kills.”

  A punishing fist flattened T-Bone to the floor like a sack of bricks, and the ex-con’s face smacked hard onto the cold, white tiles.

  He raised his head and met Angie’s frightened gaze through a hole in the sack where she hid. A grip of steel seized him by the ankle and lif
ted one leg into the air.

  Don’t look back, he mouthed at her, even as he was dragged away to the back of the chamber. As fast as you can, and don’t look back. You understand? As fast as you can!

  Angie furiously sawed at her ropes.

  Thirty seconds later, T-Bone started to scream.

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Day 93: Christmas Dinner

  “This is Paul’s old place, isn’t it?” Luca asked.

  “It is,” Krissy said. “Marshal told me all about it. He and Jackie were out in the Crapmobile when Angie found the place. See the security camera above the door? It’s receiving power, which Angie took to mean there might be people inside. She went to search, but after she found nothing, she simply rang the doorbell. Paul answered on his intercom, and when Marshal and Jackie arrived to pick him up, he was magically waiting in his living room.”

  “So his hiding place could be anywhere?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “Well, there ain’t no question that he’s here,” Luca said, eying the Camoucart parked out front. “We’d better go in and look. But listen. We may not have a lot of time here. If this guy is as psycho as we think he is-”

  “No arguments,” Krissy said, launching a drone. “We’ll do a quick scout for undead, then head on in.”

  The three men jumped into the last Camoucart, and Marshal pushed it into drive.

  “Eric,” he said, as he steered the garbage hulk out into the street. “Get the surveillance up and running. Scratchard, launch a drone. We may have only seconds to save whoever’s out there.”

  “Up and running, sir,” Eric said from the co-pilot’s chair.

  “Launching drone… now,” Scratchard said, closing the roof hatch.

  “Good. And don’t call me sir, Eric. It’s Marshal to you, and always will be.”

  “I appreciate that, sir,” the Captain said, “and when we’re back upstairs sharing a beer and toasting our success, I promise I will. But we’re on a mission, and you’re in command.”

  “You can take the man out of the military,” Scratchard muttered as he steered the drone, “but you can’t take the military out of the… wait! We have a visual from the drone. Putting it on a secondary screen.”