by Luke Kondor
And then a noise far more terrifying than any bullet pierced the skies. A horrific screeching of some feral creature that brought everyone to a standstill in a single moment. The Hopefuls whipped their heads around. The Millers looked at Patrick, seeing for the first time the position he was in. Then a single voice called, “Up on the roof!”
All eyes turned to the figure standing on top of the admin cabin, arms outstretched, screeching to the sky. A person whom all the Hopefuls recognised in an instant.
The Scarred Man.
A moment later, the replies of the horde came from every direction.
~ 35 ~
What little trace of Benjamin was left in there was now all but gone. If it hadn’t been for the fact that his face remained mostly untouched, his identity would have been lost to the rot. In the dark space on top of the roof, where only the furthest reaches of the torchlight could touch, all eyes were on the man. A ten-foot tall undulating mess of webbing and threads. The Scarred Man screamed at them as he took a step, stumbled off the roof and slammed face first onto the floor, exploding in greasy crimson puddles.
Henry was transfixed, his attention no longer anywhere near Patrick who seized his chance to crawl silently away from the crowd, wincing every time he bore weight on his pierced arm.
The Scarred Man – or rather, the Scarred-Man-turned-rotter – raised its head and looked at the crowd with bloodshot eyes. A pathetic click escaped his lips. Henry couldn’t help but feel a well of emotions as he looked at the man who had been one of the originals. One of the first to have walked these paths before it was even called Hope. They had never truly understood what happened during the time that the Scarred Man had gone missing – back in the days when he had been no more than Benjamin Rydell. But in that moment Henry wished they’d done more to seek the truth. What happened to him out there to turn him into this creature? Is this even related? Has this rot been hiding in him all along? Had he been keeping a bomb in his own township all this time, sending his daughter to see him every day to keep him fed, watered, and ready to blow?
“Benjamin?”
The Scarred Man fixed his eyes on Henry, and for a moment there seemed a sense of recognition. He reached forward, then erupted into one final screech of desperate pain before another bleach-covered arrow flew through the air and sizzled in the Scarred Man’s forehead.
Bullseye.
There was a pause for silence.
And then the others came.
“Watch out!” came a woman’s voice from the back of the crowd.
Eyes turned in every direction as the rotters emerged from every crack and crevice like ants on a hot day. Mutated bodies squeezed between cabins, jumped off roofs, sped across the bridge, until, no matter which way you turned, you were surrounded by the horror.
“Fucking run!” a voice cried, and Miller and Hopeful alike tried their best to move. The crowd squeezed tight together and began running for the bridge – the place where the rotters seemed the thinnest in their numbers. Though as the first line of Hopefuls felt their feet hit the treated wood, they were instantly taken down. The rotters leapt into the air and the last thing the victims saw were a mass of undulating white threads before they crawled and penetrated orifices and found their way into their insides, working quickly to integrate their spores with their victims’ nervous systems to increase their population numbers and allow the rot to spread. Those lucky enough to run past their former townspeople could already hear the screams of the people at the back of the throng as the rotters caught up and brought them down too. It took only moments before a dozen or so Hopefuls and Millers were rising from the floor with rage in their eyes and threads waving out their extremities.
Colin found himself in the centre of the stampede. As he tried to push forward with the others he whipped his head around to see if there was any hope of escape whatsoever, or if the group were needlessly running and exerting energy on a battle they were never going to win. Over to his left, he saw Diana Miller pointing a pistol at a nearby rotter as she fired a bullet that popped into its face. The force temporarily knocked the rotter backwards before it regained its footing and continued onwards – just with a little less head. Ahead of him, Colin saw the younger Miller lad, Jackie-Boy, struggling to lift himself from the floor. He didn’t look as though a rotter had attacked, rather, it seemed as though he had tripped and was being trampled alive, face burying in the muddy ground with each step. As he lifted his face to take a long breath, Colin watched with great intrigue as a young boy, a child, paused at Jackie-Boy’s side, weighed a large rock in his hand, and then launched it at Jackie-Boy’s face. Colin heard the Miller’s skull crack and saw the life fade from his eyes before the boy was grabbed by the hand and dragged onwards.
Damn, kid…
Where Henry and Anton were, he did not know.
And then, through the screams and the shouts, Colin heard a voice. One that he recognised. Its timbre taking him back to the days of the rot in London. A voice that reminded him of his wife, Rachel, screaming for their child. Only this time he didn’t hear the name, Fletcher, being shouted, but the name, “Sunny!”
Looking over his shoulder, Colin found Joanna, paddling against the tide as she struggled to run towards the rotters. At first, Colin was unsure why, until he saw the small, pale boy already amongst them all, wandering around the town centre and towards the well as though it was just a lovely night to have a stroll through the village.
Colin tore past Hopefuls, shoving many out of his way to reach Joanna. He grabbed her hand and led the path for them towards Sunny, counting the seconds that the boy had left to live in their heads.
“It’s too late,” he heard Joanna blubber behind him. “It’s too late.”
They watched, unable to run fast enough, as Sunny approached a rotter with the calm of a lion tamer. The rotter swirled its head around and screeched and clicked and roared. Thick gobs of foam pouring from its lips. Threads like deadly coral. Then, as Sunny came within inches of its touch, the rotter began to slow in its movements. As though it were now trying to move underwater. Sunny reached a hand out to the rotter, who froze at his touch as if Sunny were the medicine to its ailments. A calming, walking incense stick. Sunny muttered something that Colin and Joanna couldn’t hear above the screams and screeches behind, and then the rotter just stood there. A haunting statue for a horror exhibit. Sunny closed his eyes, kept his hands on the rotter, and an expression of effort contorted his face. He opened them once more and Colin had to rub his eyes to readjust. For a second it looked almost like the boy’s eyes were glowing. The emerald greens now seeming to emit a fine light that glowed in the torchlight.
“What is he doing?” Joanna whispered.
Colin shrugged, unable to find words.
After a moment the next rotter nearest to Sunny began to calm and slow. Then the next. Then the next. Colin watched the effect as it passed by in a wave, with Sunny at the centre. Rotter after rotter began to move as if through treacle, until coming to a complete standstill. The kid released his hands from the first rotter and walked towards the admin cabin. His eyes now a burning green. All movement in the town centre halted, with the screams of Hopefuls and Millers – now across the bridge – beginning to fade as the rippling effect of Sunny’s powers turned the attacking rotters to statues.
Squeezing Joanna’s hand in his own, Colin led them slowly past the frozen rotters, giving as wide a berth as possible for fear they might still lash out. That this could all be some kind of rotter trick that he did not know about. If Colin had learned anything in the last few days it was that he certainly didn’t know the true extent of the rot’s power – Much less Sunny’s.
As they began to catch up with Sunny, Colin observed the contorted faces of the rotters. Their stench was foul, a mixture of King’s Hill folk and Hopefuls with faces that Colin barely recognised.
Except for one.
It was in front of the admin cabin that Sunny stopped, examining a particularly cur
ious-looking rotter. Joanna and Colin cautiously approached, for a moment more concerned with Sunny than with the mutated mass that was watching them approach with studious eyes. A breathing, writhing mass.
It wasn’t until the thing began clicking that they saw the true extent of the horror that lay on the floor.
The thing had two faces. The Scarred Man, fused together with none other than Henry LeShard. Leader of Hope. Their bodies intertwined and conjoined with threads and flesh. The cheek of the Scarred Man was stitched sloppily into the neck of LeShard. The skin pulled taut to the point where it looked ready to tear like wet paper. There was movement still but only in the LeShard face. A spasm in the cheek. An eyelid flitting.
Joanna clapped a hand to her mouth and cried. Colin felt himself begin to heave at the sight.
*
Sunny cocked his head to the side, listening to the hundreds of voices in his head. They concentrated, though, became one. The collective conscious joined them together and Sunny recognised. A voice that stole into his dreams and plagued his waking mind. At times he felt he could drown it out, ignore the babble of rotters, but he had never experienced so many at this distance. So close. Too close to ignore.
But above it all there was one that was amplified now, a new silky voice that Sunny had heard only once before, in a hollowed out crapheap of a cabin, settling the soul of the Scarred Man. ‘Yes, yes, yes’ the Scarred Man had said then.
Yet, looking at the tangled mass of the two bodies morphing together, melting into each other like two blocks of butter left side-by-side on a summer’s day, even Sunny could see that there was no Scarred Man.
Not anymore.
They had become a hub, and nothing else. A hiver. A transmitter with the power of two hosts joined together to speak louder than the rest of the throng now frozen and standing like chess pieces about the town centre. Sunny moved closer and felt its trueness within.
Itsy-bitsy spider, the voice said, not with words but with thoughts. Its four eyes flickering between Sunny’s own, its body throbbing, but unable to control its limbs to move. Climbed up the water spout…
No, replied Sunny. It was the first time that he could ever remember choosing not to listen to the voice. Not to follow the tug of its tendril pulling him. The first time he felt he could pull and tug back.
Denier? Speaker. Rotten boy. Dirty rotten thing.
The way the consciousness spoke wasn’t with the language of humans, but with an amalgamation of words and imagery. All stolen from the minds it had swallowed up. A montage of images from a time when the Scarred Man had been Benjamin, and before Henry had his beard.
I want you to go away, said Sunny in the language of the rot.
Down came the rain… and washed the spider out— the hiver teased, a grin creeping unnaturally on Henry’s face.
No!
Okay. Boy. Rotten boy. Filthy boy. Bah bah black sheep, have you—
I want you to stop. Leave, and never come back.
Sunny did his best to imagine a scene in which the rotters were gone. He conjured images of raging rivers as they turned to ice and froze. He thought of tiny animals dying, of leaves falling from trees, of rabbits paralysed in fear.
No, the rot said, its voice panicked. The nearby frozen rotter’s fingers began to move, the threads beginning to wave more fiercely as though they were becoming unstuck. Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie!
Sunny ignored the rot’s words and pictured the way a rock thrown into the air stops suddenly as it lands on the ground, the way gravity clutches objects against the Earth’s side. He pictured the way Susie’s arrow flew so freely through the air before abruptly stopping as it hit the bad man’s arm.
With each new image he dreamed, the hiver became more panicked. Its invisible tendrils of thought pressed their way into Sunny, trying their best to rearrange the boy’s thoughts and mind, but it wasn’t working. Not this time.
To those outside of this exchange, they would’ve seen Sunny’s eyes wide open as the pupils shook violently in their sockets. Colin held Joanna back from grabbing him there and then. Fresh images flicked by like movie reels until—
Stop moving! Sunny shouted at the rot’s consciousness. FREEZE!
And then…
…
…
…
it did.
*
Colin looked around in awe as the chaos that had racked the town fell to a stunned silence. Even the far-off sounds of the rotters and Hopefuls now just at the edge of sight on the far side of the bridge had fallen to nothing. Millers littered the floor, either soaking in bloody puddles or standing frozen with their rotter comrades like a line up of soldiers standing to attention with no one to salute.
Sunny grunted, still fighting whatever inner battle he was in the midst of, now holding the hands of the monstrosity that was Henry plus the Scarred Man. A little boy consoling an adult. Consoling—
The Scarred Henry, Colin’s insensitive mind finished. The Henry Man…
The monstrosity was frozen now, staring blankly ahead into the void. Joanna took deep breaths at his side and seemed to move for Sunny before Colin held her firmly back and made his own way forward. He would pick him up and carry him away if he needed to. He wasn’t sure what magic Sunny had cast, but they had no clue how long it would last, or if indeed Sunny was safe. Far behind they could already hear the celebrations of the far off Hopefuls, some punching the air, some simply thanking the Lord that they were still breathing.
“C’mon, champ,” Colin heard himself say. Words that he hadn’t spoken since losing Fletcher. He felt a lump rise in his throat. “Let’s leave these people alone now. Come back with me and Joanna, and we can work this whole thing—”
Out of nowhere a body came sprinting at Colin, a face twisted with rage and painted red. Patrick tore from the open door of the bowling alley where he had hidden from the melee and beelined for Colin. With an angry grunt, Patrick swung the machete through the air, narrowly avoiding Colin. Patrick fell to the floor but was up again in seconds. No longer the calm and composed Miller that had led the charge on Hope and had raided the LeShard farm. Now, Patrick seemed nothing more than a feral child, all his rage trained on Colin.
“Yer got lucky, Bolton. I’m going to cut yer fucking cock off.”
Colin raised his hands, ready for whatever Patrick might throw. Patrick charged again, lifting the blade high. Colin managed to catch him by the wrists, but just caught a nick of the blade on his forearm. A tiny stream of red trickled down the skin. Patrick was strong. Surprisingly strong for a man of his age. Spit flew from between gritted teeth as they wrestled for the advantage. For a second it sounded like Patrick was trying to say something. Colin looked into the dark pits of his eyes and saw all the pain that Patrick had caused him. The death of the LeShard’s, the murder of his friend, Wheat, the loss of Dylan, and now Henry too. The man was a cesspit of evil and death. A dog gone too far.
A dog who needed to be put down.
Colin felt an urge of adrenaline and planted his feet in the ground. He twisted the hand with the machete and managed to punch it towards Patrick who took the blow to the eye. Patrick stumbled and blinked, dropping the machete as he pawed at his face, Colin released his other wrist and grabbed hold of the arrow that still poked out of the man’s arm. Patrick let out a tremendous howl as Colin pressed down on the arrow and felt the resistance of the man’s bone. The arrowhead lodged deep.
It was over now. Colin knew it, Patrick knew it, Joanna and Sunny, who were crouched just a few feet away from the hiver, knew it. Patrick tried pitifully to claw his way back, but there was no chance. Colin held onto the arrow as he crouched to pick up the machete. Patrick took a sharp intake of breath as he felt the cold blade against the turkey skin of his neck.
It would be so simple, Colin thought. One quick move and it’d be done. Forever. It’s not like the man doesn’t deserve it.
Yet, as his arm tensed and his teeth bit the sides of his cheeks, Coli
n found that his arm would not move. In the light of the fires, there was one thing that Colin could tell now, more than ever. The demonic face of Uncle Patrick Miller melted away as the torchlight flickered and highlighted the wrinkles that covered his face, the sunken eyes, the moles over his exposed skin.
“You’re just an old man,” Colin said.
Patrick coughed and spat strings of saliva down onto the blade. “I’m more of a man than you’ll ever be.”
“No,” Colin replied, lowering the blade and shoving Patrick onto the floor. “The test of a true man lies in how he leads. It’s in the way that people see him. It’s how a man can build a community, and become an icon for something larger than himself. Something true and pure. Something you could never be.” Colin nodded at the frozen mess of the hiver, Henry’s face seemed at peace amongst the conjoined flesh. “There was a true man. A man of honour. A man of peace…”
Patrick let out a cry as Colin’s boot connected with his face. His head lolled back as he was knocked unconscious.
“… A man of hope.”
~ 36 ~
Colin’s guess had been mostly right. After running a quick headcount and looking into the eyes of the dead around the centre of Hope, it appeared that the Millers had all gone. All dead and accounted for apart from two. Uncle Paddy (who was already being dragged away to Henry’s little survival bunker, where he would be locked away and kept until someone decided what to do with him), and one Thomas J. Miller. The scavvie that had initiated the Millers’ entry into Hope. Where he had gone, no one knew. And Colin kept his lips tight about the man who had deliberately betrayed his family to help him escape.
The Hopefuls were wary around the statues of the frozen rotters, though there were some that leant in for a closer look, retracting moments later with a look of revulsion. Keaghan was the first to grab a torch and set a rotter aflame, and before long a dozen or so Hopefuls took his lead.
