Grim Tidings: Hellhound Chronicles

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “Bite me,” Valley said. “I get Cain’s chew toy, I make nice-nice with his creepy ass, now you get busy with your end. Need I remind you that all of these moving pieces you love to shove around the board all have the potential to get us skewered on the end of Uriel’s sword.”

  “You guys are cute,” I murmured, trying out a whisper. Talking hurt. Everything hurt. I was used to waking up in strange places with strange bruises, but when I tried to open my eyes all I saw was a couple of blurry streaks and a blinding light that make me squinch up my face in self-defense. I tried moving and found that my wrists and ankles were immobilized. When I wriggled, a chain rattled.

  “You’re chained good, Rover,” Valley confirmed, her voice drawing closer while another set of footsteps retreated. “Prison shackles. The kind that they used on chain gangs.”

  I tried opening my eyes again. One whole side of my face was swollen, so that explained the blurriness, but from what I could see lying on the concrete floor, we were in a windowless room. Shelves lined the walls and a couple of caged bulbs lit up their contents. Lots of cans, lots of metal ammo boxes. A cot was across from me, moth-eaten wool blanket arranged with military corners. The shelves on the other side were full of books and questionable antiques. Taxidermy animals dressed in little costumes—cowboy, chef, scary clown. A jar full of animal teeth, a tangle of those weird monkey puppets with the cymbals. The walls that weren’t covered in shelves were squeezed with taped-up newspapers and drawings on the backs of book pages. The drawings weren’t of anything pleasant. The whole effect sort of looked like the place had been decorated from an estate sale held by the Manson family.

  The only way to the outside I could see was a metal hatch-style door, and a hallway beyond. A shadow blinked out of view. Whoever Valley had been chatting with was making themselves scarce.

  Valley patted me on the cheek again. “The chains are just a precaution. Your boy here might have his own ideas.” She walked away too, and metal screamed on metal as the hatch shut. There was movement from the corner of my eye and Cain’s shadow blotted out the feeble light. “Still chirping,” he said. “I don’t know if you’re spirited or simply stupid.”

  “Votes are split,” I tried to say, but he grabbed me by my hair and yanked me up, unlocking my chains with a big old-style skeleton key. I whimpered, and he shook me like a toy.

  I struggled against him as he pulled me down the hall, but I didn’t have any luck getting away until he let go of me, shoving me into a metal chair in a bare-bones kitchen. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, slamming around a dented kettle and lighting a burner under it.

  “No, why would you?” I said. “You already hurt me. The hurting’s done, and I know you’re capable of a lot more so why don’t we just get to why I’m down here and how many sweaters you’re gonna knit from my hair.”

  “You know, you did me a favor that day,” he said. “That day on the highway. I was a lost soul. Full of rage, centuries of it. When I came out of that storm . . .”

  I held up my hands. “No offense, man, but bad poetry is not making this bunker experience any better.”

  “Silo,” he said. “There are missile complexes all over the Midwest. Once they housed dozens, to make the missiles fly. But one by one they were abandoned. I found my way here a time after a tornado.”

  The kettle started to rattle and spurt, and he turned down the flame, reaching for one of the rusty metal tins above the stove and pulling out a tea bag. “I meant what I said. I don’t want to hurt you. When I saw you and that man in Buchenwald I was full of rage. Burning alive with it. But now I don’t feel anything toward you. I ordered you brought here so that you and I could speak without you being in harm’s way.”

  “Ah, so I can leave whenever I want?” I said. He shook his heavy head.

  “Of course not.”

  I felt the pull of the thrall, heavier than ever. Before it was like being drugged—that detached, pillowy softness of being above it all. This felt more like I was pinned to a board, being examined by something massive and curious.

  Either way, whenever I thought of running my mind darted away from me, like a fish slipping through your hands underwater. I couldn’t even focus long enough to see if the kitchen door was open or shut. My eyes always jerked back to his face, and his power over me made all of it just fine.

  “You drink tea?” he said. I stayed quiet, gripping the cold edges of the chair. It was freezing in the kitchen, even with the stove going, but he didn’t seem bothered.

  “I give you my word that I’m not going to harm you,” he said. “I just can’t allow you to fly away, little bird. And your companion— he is human, and humans are not even birds. They are rabbits, or rats—small things, easily scared, easily panicked. From the hawk’s view, they are all the same, small things scampering over the ground.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe the guy with the army of dead people outside just wants to chat with me,” I said. “And don’t punch me again, but you sound exactly like a guy who’s spent sixty years living in a missile silo.”

  “I was alone long before that,” he said. “I was alone from the moment I struck down my brother. The moment I stood and felt the earth under my feet soak up his blood.”

  He stared straight ahead through the steam from the kettle, and I could tell he wasn’t looking at the wall, or me, or anything else around us. “But now all that’s done. All that rage is like a bad dream. Now you and I will stay here. Until it’s over.” He pulled a metal mug off a hook and set it on the counter with a clack. “Truthfully, I’m glad it’s all done. I have no wish to see what the dead do when they walk. I’m not the same man I was when you met me.”

  “You do sound different,” I allowed. “You’re talking and not threatening to kill me and everything I love.”

  “You love nothing, just as I do,” he said. “That’s why I don’t mind waiting here with you. You won’t weep at what happens up there.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, although the churning in my stomach said I understood pretty well. “You’re talking like we’re going to live down here together. Don’t you need to be up there, you know . . .” I flapped my hands helplessly. “Leading your zombie army?”

  “It’s not an army,” he said. “It’s an extinction. And we’re just to wait here. Wait until it’s over. That’s all.”

  “Until what is over?” I said. The kettle started to scream, and Cain turned his face to me.

  “Everything,” he said. “Nobody up there can escape the ones who’ve been marked. It might take a few years—even a decade—but what’s that to us?”

  He smiled to himself as he put the tea bag in the mug and reached for a shelf of jars. “Do you take honey?”

  I looked down at my hands, shaking my head. I’d had a lot of bad moments imagining what would happen if the Walking Man caught me again, but this went beyond any of them.

  “Why would you do it?” I said, after he thrust the mug into my hand. “Why would you help two insane Fallen destroy the world?”

  “We all do what we must,” the Walking Man said. “This is my part to play. I am just glad that you are here to play your part with me.”

  He reached out to touch my face, and I flinched back, but after a heartbeat his power took over and I felt myself lean forward into his palm. “I knew,” he whispered. “From the first moment I saw you in the camps. A thing made by the angels, constructed of the same clay as I was. A companion for all the dark days of my time on this earth.”

  I shut my eyes, feeling tears shudder down my cheeks. “I wasn’t made for you,” I whispered. “I am a hound. I was made to stand beside Death, not stand behind a bitter, broken soul like you.”

  He turned his hand and struck me as easily as the tornado had picked up the car all those years ago. I went flying off my chair, hot tea splashing my pants leg, and landed hard on the cement floor.

  I licked at my lips, tasting blood, and he stood over me, frowning
. “You are not for the reapers,” he growled. “You want Death? I am Death. And you will be with me forever.”

  He lifted his hand again and I flinched, curling into a ball and waiting for a blow to rain on my back. Nothing came, though, except the scuff of his shoes and the slam of the heavy door.

  I lay there for a long time, breathing ragged. I felt the last bit of rationality in me struggling to escape like a wriggling rabbit in a snare, but I held on to it.

  I’d flinched when he’d touched me, and when he’d struck me. I hadn’t been able to do that before. I’d just been a doll, totally under his power. Now there was a thread still pulling me away from his influence. It was tiny, and fragile, but it was there.

  I reached out and took the sharpest fragment of the shattered mug, sliding it up my sleeve and tucking it against my skin. I’d flinched.

  That was enough.

  CHAPTER

  16

  I lost count of days much faster with no sun and darkness to at least give me a sense of time passing. All the clocks in the place were long drained of power, so I passed the time by counting heartbeats, steps, words Cain spoke to me.

  Mostly he wanted me to sit with him, close to him so that we shared body warmth, while he stroked my hair and whispered the same stories over and over, of battles he’d seen and blood he’d shed, of the time he’d first seen me in the camp. I wasn’t stupid—he was batting me around, wearing me out, waiting for the moment when I’d finally break in half.

  He was gone for long stretches, too, and while I could never quite wrap my mind around the concept of finding a way out of the silo—any thoughts he didn’t want me to have simply wouldn’t stay put, like the words to a song you can’t remember—I did start stretching out my chain to its maximum length, little by little. I mapped every inch of the silo—which wasn’t much. Most of it was taken up by a vast empty bay, at least four stories high, where the Titan cruise missile had once waited on its cushion of rocket fuel, nose cone pointing toward the stars. The kitchen, a bunk room, the big room Cain had turned into his weird habitat—aside from them and a small medical room the rest was just corridors and hatches.

  There was an escape hatch somewhere, I knew it. A long, dark climb to the surface, but an escape nonetheless. And while I couldn’t begin to think of opening the little door at the bottom of the missile bay marked fire escape and seeing if the ladder was intact, or the shaft still open, I held on to the location of the door like I held on to my own name.

  I also held on to the broken shard from the mug, hidden in my clothing. Hoping that when the time came I could use it like I’d planned.

  The Fallen who’d been with Valley had never returned, and I’d never seen her again, although I could always tell when she’d paid a visit because Cain would come in and slam the door, make his footfalls heavy, and snap at me. “Why do you look so sad?” he demanded once. “This is where you’re safe. I am who protects you. Why do you look as if you’ve lost something?”

  After the slap that had broken one of my teeth, I’d never mentioned Leo again. But I made myself remember him, whenever I felt myself slipping or my memories fading. I made myself think of his face, of his voice. I pictured every tattoo and every scar, over and over. I did it with everyone I knew—my grandmother, Uriel, even Gary got his chance to star in my struggle not to lose my memory in the face of Cain’s thrall.

  I had my eyes shut, listening to Cain drone on about the smell of blood and the buzz of flies, or whatever he was on that day, when I suddenly couldn’t take him stroking my hair any longer and grasped his hand, sitting up to look at him. “Why don’t you just make me do what you want?” I asked.

  He frowned, his craggy brows landsliding together. “What do you mean?”

  “You brought me down here to be more than a maid,” I said. “You could force me to do anything you want. Why haven’t you?”

  “Poor creature,” he said, stroking my palm. I fought not to yank it away. That was getting easier, the pulling back, and I didn’t want to let on. If his power over me was fracturing, I wanted to be ready when it snapped entirely. “You have been forced to do a great many things, no doubt,” he rumbled. “But when you submit to me it will be a true union. We are meant to be, little bird. I wouldn’t taint that for anything in the universe.”

  I settled back, but I kept my eyes open. However he dressed it up, he needed me to give in to him willingly. I’d bet it wasn’t for any of the romantic crap he spouted. There must be something about this fucked-up dance of his that required a willing partner.

  As long as I could hold out, I could get out of here, I realized.

  “One day, Ava, you will say you love me,” he whispered in my ear. His breath was sour, like he’d gone a long time without brushing. “And when we join it will be the greatest day this burning world has ever known.”

  I smiled and let him pull me back into his arms. This time the urge to fight him off and run was almost irresistible. I thought of the fire escape and held it in my mind. I thought of Leo waiting at the top, holding out his hand to pull me into fresh air and sunlight.

  As if someone had reached between us and sliced a rope, the hold Cain had on me was suddenly gone. He let out a sigh, and I almost panicked before I realized he was just settling back onto his cot.

  “My head aches,” he said. “I’m tired of stories. I will sleep now.”

  I didn’t move, just lay back to press against his chest. “I’ll stay,” I said softly. He grunted, then let out a contented sound.

  “We will only sleep. Until you come to me.”

  “Until then,” I agreed, reaching up and touching his face. I stayed very still when he shut out the light, matching my breathing to his until I was sure he was asleep.

  Moving by inches, sure it took me at least an hour, I worked the shard of pottery out of my sleeve. He’d rolled on his back, snoring soft and steady. I felt a hum in the air all around me, like the currents in the air right before the tornado had hit. The darkness holding its breath. Whatever was going on, why he was sleeping and why I’d finally been able to overcome his thrall, I was going to use it. I knew I wouldn’t get another chance.

  I sat up and swung my feet over the edge of the cot, leaning over his sleeping face and examining the choppy planes one last time. I lifted my hand, the edge of the broken mug biting my palm, and his eyes snapped open.

  “Little bird—” he said, and I slammed the shard into his eye with all my strength. The pottery snapped in half when it hit his orbital bone, the sharp end buried deep in his eye with no way to pull it out. He screamed, heaving up and clawing at his face. His eye was a bubbling mess of blood that gleamed in the darkness. I didn’t stick around to deliver another blow. I just ran.

  I kicked open the rusty door to the fire escape and grabbed the ladder, climbing for what seemed like miles, shaking and sweating, until I finally butted up against a rusty hatch. I heaved and beat on it, letting out a scream. I couldn’t have come this far only to get stuck because the last jerk-off to check the silo door forgot his oil can.

  The hatch finally gave way, wet snow and mud raining down on my head as I climbed out and flopped into the cold wet, sucking down the freezing air.

  It was just starting to get light. Far off I could see spotlights and hear the grunt and clatter of heavy all-terrain vehicles. For a moment it was like being back at the Rhine during the last push into German territory, cold and wet and loud. I had the insane thought that somehow I’d never escaped the camp, that the last fifty years had been a dream planted in my mind by Cain.

  Then a Black Hawk helicopter swooped low over the field, the roar pushing away my panicked thoughts as it headed for the swarm of spotlights on the horizon. I slammed the hatch shut and cast around frantically for something—anything—to keep Cain from getting out. The rusty cyclone fence was only a few dozen yards away, and I grabbed one of the broken posts, jamming it into the hatch handle as tight as I could. Then I ran. I ran until my lungs felt like
two saw blades and my heart was hammering so hard to push blood through my veins I saw double.

  I reached a stand of cottonwood trees, bare in the cold, and fell against one, sucking and gasping until I could stand up straight again. I tried to move but my fingers dug into the bark. The hound wanted to make sure nobody was behind me. No one and nothing.

  I waited, in the cold, silent dawn, listening to my own heartbeat. I didn’t hear any hissing and groaning, so I peered out from the tree trunk to confirm I was zompire-free.

  I was standing at the edge of a rest area, near the county road Hank and I had used to get into town. How long ago had that been? Now there was a big orange sign propped in the center of the pavement, CLOSED BY ORDER OF CDC. I was sweating bullets in the cold, shivering, and my hand was sliced and bleeding freely. I went into the little bathroom shed at the edge of the asphalt and washed it carefully. I had to stop putting blood in the air, on the chance there were any of Cain’s offspring roaming. I tore off the bottom of my shirt to bandage the cut once I’d cleaned it, like I had a hundred times before, except this time I started crying.

  Making yourself stop sobbing isn’t really a trick. Bite your lip hard enough and you can be distracted from almost anything. Tasting my own blood, I looked up at the ceiling. There was a dead moth in the light fixture. Outside the door I heard a scuffling, and I froze, shutting off the water and turning to the door. I heard a low voice, muffled by the door and the wind.

  “Ava?”

  It was him. He’d gotten out, he’d found me, and if I looked at him he’d take me back, and this time I’d break and I’d give in and I’d be his.

  I picked up the dented trash can and used it to smash the mirror over the sink, holding up the longest, wickedest shard of glass. “Come on!” I screamed at the door. “Step in here and I’ll put this in your other eye!”

  The door swung open. The black shape standing in the gray first light outside looked me over, his face falling. “Oh, Ava,” Leo ground out, his voice breaking. “What happened to you?”