Sleepers Awake

by Patrick McNulty

  “You know I could have had you killed in the tunnels,” Petra said. “Shredded in front of your new best friend up there, and all your little ghosts.”

  “What stopped you?”

  She laughed. “I wanted to do it myself.”

  “That was stupid, but I guess you don’t know where you are.”

  Petra rose from her throne and all the Zijin slowly rose to their knees.

  “You found this place by accident, thinking it was perfect for your purpose. The mining company thought it was perfect too, back in ‘66. But it isn’t perfect. And do you know why?”

  Petra moved toward him now, slowly. Her beautiful blue eyes rolled over black. The markings of the Zijin language swirled over her skin. Her complexion dropped from ivory to the color of cement.

  Bishop’s hands opened and two thin tubes of explosives slid from his sleeve into his waiting palms.

  “Too much fucking water,” he said, and threw the explosives into the far end of the cave. The two metal cylinders rattled off rocks and finally landed near the edge of the wall.

  The explosion ripped through the rock wall and floor and thousands upon thousands of gallons of water rushed into the cave.

  Petra rushed him and Bishop met her halfway. They collided and Bishop’s dagger pushed right through her stomach. Pieces of the cave walls and floor exploded upwards as the rushing tide shot forward, filling the cave floor in seconds. Zijin were smashed against boulders and crushed under falling rocks as the cave collapsed.

  Those few that weren’t killed outright were carried out of the cave on a raging current that propelled them up the path of least resistance.

  Sean spun and kicked the screaming face of a small girl who was in Kevin’s class. He fumbled with a fresh clip, slammed it home and fired wildly, missing his targets.

  The children charged roaring after Sean. He stopped, took careful aim and fired. The little girl’s face exploded in a red spray. He fired again and missed. That was all they needed. Sean fired again but they were too close. Kevin launched himself at his father and knocked him to the ground. Sean grabbed him by the neck to stop him from biting his throat, but the others kicked and punched him. Sean was fading. He couldn’t hold his son. Or what his son had become. The little kid seemed to be made of iron. Sean could feel its hot breath on his face.

  He heard thunder, getting closer, a roar.

  Suddenly he was under water and carried away up the spiral of the tunnel. Kevin had let him go and he kicked toward the surface, gasping for air.

  Bishop and Petra were locked together. His dagger kept them that way. They exploded to the surface as they passed the mouth of the cave, heading up higher and higher toward the light of day. Bishop pulled another knife from his coat and went for her throat. She dodged and batted his hand away, knocking the knife from his hand. Her hands flew at his face and throat, tearing huge gouges out of his skin.

  The current slammed them from side to side against the tunnel walls, but Bishop held on. He was not losing her now.

  He kicked to be above water and felt her hand on the back of his head pushing his face down. Another Zijin slammed into his back and wrapped its arms around him. And then another. The Zijin dug its nails into his flesh and anchored himself to the hunter.

  Petra drifted quickly away from him. The Zijin weighed him down and he couldn’t get free. He was trapped and sinking fast. Bishop twisted and kicked but it was no use. He couldn’t shake the dying Zijin.

  He sank into the darkness.

  Sean spun through the current, slamming into walls. He kicked to stay above water, but in the dark it was all luck of the draw. He expected to smash his head on a support timber or an outcropping of rock. He braced himself for it, but it never came.

  He finally did hit something. Hard. His body twisted around the thin metal bars of the spiral staircase that led up into the abandoned office buildings. He cried out and took a minute to realize where he was. He was dizzy from blood loss and the wild water ride. He could barely concentrate, let alone carry out the elaborate task of climbing a staircase. The water rose fast, splashing into his mouth, climbing over the back of his head. He thought seriously about not letting go of the staircase. The water wasn’t even that cold anymore. His eyelids were heavy. His head dipped and he swallowed a mouthful of dirty water. He spit and gagged and then started climbing.

  Forty feet behind him, Petra followed the curve of the mining tunnel, riding the same raging current as he, as it delivered her to freedom. She watched Sean as he neared the top of the stairs. He was struggling and weak. He shuffled through the metal door at the top and disappeared. Not far, she thought. Not in his condition. With any luck he hadn’t dropped dead just beyond the door. She yearned for the chance to hurt him, maim him, and finally kill him, for what he and the hunter had done to her children. So many lives lost. Too many.

  She angled her body in the dark water and directed herself to the staircase. She gripped the metal bars gracefully and hoisted herself up onto the risers. Moments later a trio of Zijin collided heavily into the stairs and scrambled up the structure after their leader.

  Bishop was sinking fast. The Zijin holding him was dead. That much was clear, but he had dug his claws into Bishop, keeping him prisoner. Bishop hacked and slashed at the Zijin’s hands until blood filled the water around him. Bishop was dying. He was losing his sight. His vision curled in at the edges. He skated along the rock floor of the tunnel, still carried by the vicious current, when he finally cut the dead Zijin away from him. Wraiths watched him even then. They looked to be workers. Miners, Bishop thought. Trapped in the mine forever. Never again knowing the sunlight. He wasn’t about to join them. Not today.

  His lungs burned from oxygen deprivation. He kicked off the tunnel floor and broke to the surface.

  The water rose steadily. Only a foot of space separated the tunnel roof and the water line. He was traveling fast. He rode the current around a bend, and then another and finally he saw it up ahead. A glint of metal. The tunnel opened up above his head and he swam as hard as he could with the current to the stairs.

  Sean pushed through the heavy steel door and stumbled into the room where he had found Floyd Tinsel’s camping gear. He sat down heavily on the unrolled sleeping bag and closed his eyes. He was awakened by the sound of grinding metal.

  He opened his eyes and found Petra standing less than ten feet away. Three Zijin crawled over the walls and ceiling like huge gray insects, twisting their heads around to see him. Sean’s gun snapped to the ready. He fired three times and missed. Petra smiled serenely without so much as flinching. She was beautiful, radiant. Her features softened as she drew near, her eyes almost sorrowful. A flicker of emotion that felt something like shame passed through Sean. The gun felt heavy and useless in his grip. He let it drop to the floor.

  “Don’t be afraid, Sean,” she whispered.

  It was her voice. He pushed against the wall behind him to stand. In his mind he saw her through dark water, listened to her beg him not to leave. He saw her face as he let go of her hands. He watched her pale form grow darker and darker as the Jeep quickly dropped out of sight.

  “No, you’re gone,” he whispered.

  “I am not gone, Sean,” she replied. “I am here for you. For always.”

  And she smiled a beautiful smile that warmed Sean through his wet clothes. It was a welcome balm to his many wounds, beyond logic and practical thought.

  “We’re all here for you,” she said, her voice smooth and soothing, and very near. He didn’t see or hear her move closer to him. It was as if she glided. He could almost feel her breath on his face. “Me, and Kevin. Forever.”

  His body shuddered under her fingertip. She was inches away now. The markings swirled restlessly over her pale skin. Her breath was sweet, her skin cold, like the dead touch of frozen metal. And something else pulsed beneath her skin, something alive and wanting, a vibration, a hum of some great engine cycling faster and faster. He could see it behind her
eyes. Petra was gone. All that remained was a thin, beautiful shell.

  Sean moved away from her touch, from her coldness. He watched her through the frozen distance between them, watched the woman he had loved disappear in front of him. The symbols stopped swirling and lay flat and stagnant, darkening her skin to a dull gray. Her voice sounded like the voice of an angry crowd, a warrior nation. She did not scream. She barely spoke above a whisper. Her eyes glittered with contempt.

  “You will be beautiful.”

  Sean spat in her face.

  “Fuck you.”

  Her right hand opened, no longer a hand. Her long, black fingernails hooked into a talon. She stabbed Sean just below the ribcage, digging her nails through his flesh, punching through his stomach. Blood filled his mouth as he tried to scream. She lifted him off his feet and tossed him toward the far wall where he crumpled in a heap against the floor. The waiting Zijin swarmed him like a pack of hungry dogs.

  Bishop burst through the metal door and in one smooth motion shot and killed all three Zijin. Petra charged him and he fired into her chest four times. She was blown backward in a red spray of blood and slammed against the far wall.

  Bishop squatted in front of her, grabbed a fistful of her hair and drew his dagger. His blade cut through the air aimed just below her porcelain jaw. Petra grabbed his wrist out of the air and twisted it viciously, breaking it. Her right hand fired up under Bishop’s jaw and launched him backward through the air.

  “You should have stayed dead, hunter.”

  Bishop was on all fours when she delivered a powerful kick to his face that sent him reeling backwards. He rose again, slowly, and on all fours. He stared up at her and smiled, his mouth dripping blood onto the tile floor.

  “You’re dead,” he whispered.

  Petra stomped the top of his head, driving his face into the ground. He made no sound. He rolled onto his back where he lay helpless, his arms at right angles to his body, palms up, waiting.

  Sean lay in a heap against the wall, not moving. The metal staircase creaked just beyond the steel door. More Zijin had found their way up from the depths. Soon they would be here. Sean rolled to his side and saw a pistol lying on the floor about five feet away. Bishop’s gun.

  He could hear the Zijin on the stairs. There was no time. He could barely see, let alone move. Every muscle and tendon in his body screamed. He had to keep blinking to keep his eyes from closing. His breathing was getting harder and harder, as if he were breathing through a flattened straw. He left a wide blood smear on the floor as he crawled toward the pistol and scooped it up off the ground.

  Bishop closed his eyes again and felt the bones in his face knit together, felt the ragged tears in his skin reach for each other across each wound. He slipped to his hands and knees and Petra kicked him onto his back then dropped heavily onto his chest, straddling him. Petra’s eyes were black. Her pale skin was alive with the swirling symbols of the blood figure. Her smiling mouth opened to reveal three rows of razor-sharp teeth. She pulled Bishop’s head up by his hair, and exposed his throat. Blood fell from Bishop’s lips as his eyes threatened to slip closed.

  “You are nothing. Your reign is over,” she said, “We will rip through your streets. Your children. Your families. Everything will be ours. We are the next step. The next leap in your evolution.”

  Bishop’s eyes rolled open and he stared into her face, flushed and shaking with rage.

  “You’re history,” he whispered.

  Three quick gunshots erupted. Petra’s chest exploded outward in a gush of red where three bullets ripped through her. Petra dropped Bishop’s head and turned to Sean. The smoking gun trembled in his bloodstained hand. Petra’s snarl curled into a smile as she laughed until her shoulders trembled. Sean watched helplessly as her wounds stopped bleeding, and quickly narrowed to pinpricks as her body healed itself.

  “Fool,” she hissed. “Pathetic.”

  Bishop looked to his right where his dagger lay. He stretched his fingers and they landed on the edge of the hilt. He edged it closer with his fingertips until he could grip the handle.

  Zijin thundered up the spiral staircase. They flooded through the metal door and poured into the open space, shrieking and chittering.

  Petra was still laughing as she turned back to Bishop. Before the smile disappeared from her lips, a second mouth opened across her throat. Petra fell backwards, clawing at her sliced windpipe as blood poured from the wound.

  Sean screamed and threw the gun at the charging horde but they raced forward. They fell upon him, biting and clawing. Sean cried out and flailed his arms but there were too many of them. His screams were smothered by the writhing mass.

  Bishop dragged himself across Petra, straddling her as she writhed beneath him, squirming and gurgling, her black eyes wide and terrified.

  Bishop held his blade in his right hand. She raked her nails over his arms, reaching for his face. Her jaw snapped as her body bucked beneath him. She spat blood as her legs thrashed.

  The Zijin reached out for him, their powerful bodies charging hard. “Goodbye, Eve,” Bishop whispered, and with one swift motion he sliced her head from her shoulders.

  Brilliant white light exploded from her squirming body.

  The blinding white light filled the room, incinerating the charging Zijin where they stood. The light poured through the hallways like a sudden flood, blasting away shadows, blowing open doors and breaking what windows remained in a brilliant white flash.

  Epilogue

  During the following week, a short-lived epidemic swept through eight different countries and put health organizations around the globe on full alert as thousands of otherwise healthy citizens died, seemingly from natural causes. No one could understand it. No infection was ever detected, no dreaded virus, no poison. Religious groups began calling it the Rapture or Armageddon, depending on which camp you belonged to. Almost all the faiths believed it was a sign from God. Or the Devil. Again, it all depended on which camp you put your lawn chair in.

  The victims varied in age from eight to eighty-two. They were schoolteachers, doctors, pizza delivery boys, elementary school students. They were your friends and neighbors. Normal, everyday people. Or so it seemed to the general public.

  The Ministry of the Wraith knew otherwise.

  The screams began six months later.

  They led Bishop Kane back to Danaid.

  Once again he found himself walking through the familiar rows of tombstones. Of course now the graves were all but obscured by the long grass and thick weeds that had sprung up since the previous winter. No one had taken over the cemetery since Norman and the rest of the town of Danaid had disappeared. No one dared. No one even visited the town now that the FBI and state police had left. It had quickly become a modern day ghost story and web sites popped up everywhere to speculate about what really happened. The theories ranged from alien abduction to a massive cult suicide. Bishop figured it wouldn’t be long before the thrill seekers and ghost chasers would come to the small Alaskan town. They would tear up pieces of floor or steal anything with a splash of blood on it to sell on eBay to other sick freaks who reveled in that sort of thing. But not yet. For now he was alone.

  He pushed farther north through the weeds and a light rain that fell from a slate colored sky. The crowd of wraiths waited high on the hill. Among them, Norman Conklin looked on silently.

  Bishop carried the shovel over his shoulder as his feet whispered through the long grass between the plots. The gnarled trees, now full with leaves, rustled softly in the growing wind.

  As they neared the grave, the cries grew louder. Finally, he arrived atop a gentle rise. Three plots were spaced close together, mother and father on either side of their young boy. The grave of the young boy remained empty, as his body had never been found.

  The sky had darkened since Bishop had left the driveway of Norman’s old house, and now looked miserable. Black and blue, it threatened to drop more than a sprinkle of rain as thunder
rolled close to the earth.

  Bishop drove the shovel into the sod and pried up a healthy chunk

  His breath rose in banks of fog. He worked relentlessly, his arms swinging in rhythm, clearing the dirt like a machine. The muffled cries that rose from the grave grew louder with every shovelful of dirt that Bishop removed.

  Finally, the blade of Bishop’s shovel struck wood. After a few more loads, he was on his knees, sweeping the dirt away from the coffin lid, finding the seam with his fingertips. The man inside scratched at the lid, calling for help, his fists pounding at the ceiling of his prison. Bishop cleared the rest of the lid and instantly, hands from within forced the lid open.

  The man’s eyes were wild and jacked wide as he pushed past Bishop and scrambled up the wall of the grave onto the wet grass. His suit coat, split up the back, flapped in the wild wind.

  “Sean Berlin,” a voice whispered from the dark.

  The man spun to meet its owner as a woman clothed in a hooded black cloak suddenly stood very near. She moved without sound. With delicate hands the color of bone, she raised the hood of her cloak high enough to allow Sean to see her eyes, like chips of jade.

  “Sean Berlin,” the woman repeated, her voice as smooth and as light as smoke. “You will see a world beneath the one you know, a layer of life hidden from most. I can offer this only once.”

  Bishop leaned against a nearby tombstone and watched Sean as he weighed Madeline’s offer. Sean tilted his head to the boiling black sky and the rain beat a rhythm into the smooth white skin of his face. Then Sean returned his gaze to Madeline, his mouth carved into a smile.

  “Welcome to the family,” she whispered.

  Also by Patrick McNulty