by Platt, Sean
Boricio nodded because anything else would’ve been a lie screaming inside him.
The old man said, “This isn’t a mistake, Boricio.” He shook his head back and forth so fast it looked like it had batteries. “God doesn’t make mistakes. You and me,” he clapped his hand on Boricio’s shoulder. “The Good Lord has brought us together, given us a special acquaintance so we could do something as one. Something special.” He paused, then, “Something that’s never been done on His green Earth before.”
Boricio didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. A few minutes faded into five before the old man relieved his bottle of its final drops, then filled Boricio’s red cup with another few shots of fuel.
“What can you tell me about the vial, Boricio?”
Boricio suddenly wanted to leap from his chair, and fly toward the old man and start beating his face in.
How the fuck does he know about the vial?
The Prophet was either exactly who he said, or what Boricio feared he might be.
“How do you know about the vial?”
“Same as everything else, Son — When He whispers, I listen.”
The old man reached out to Boricio. “Our time is right now,” he said.
No, this isn’t right.
Boricio stood, then said, “Of all bad men, men of the cloth can be the worst.”
The last word was the hardest. His head started to swim, and Boricio wondered how long it had been since he’d felt so drunk.
Except it wasn’t drunk, not exactly.
He collapsed to the edge of the bed as the world went dancing in circles.
“What is it, Son?” the old man asked. “Tell me what’s in the vial.”
Boricio’s heart was pounding. He had to reach his bag, make sure the vial was safe.
He rose from the bed again, then swayed but stayed on his feet, swerving back and forth like a pendulum as he tried to keep himself steady.
But he couldn’t.
Boricio tried to ask the old man what in the fuck he had done to him, but his words like his breath were trapped in his throat.
He collapsed to the floor and fell into a fresh abyss.
* * * *
CHAPTER 7 — Ryan Olson Part 1
Black Mountain, Georgia
March 31, 2012
FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT…
Ryan tried to cover his ears from the sound of the braying alarm, buzzing on and off for what seemed an eternity until someone finally appeared outside his cell door.
It was Lisa, one of the Guardsmen who’d found him and brought him to Black Mountain. She was covered in a bucket of blood and sweat, though as far as Ryan could see, none of the blood appeared to be hers.
“Something got in here, or escaped,” she said.
“I know,” Ryan said, standing. Her shotgun was still in her hand, but she, along with several others, had come to trust him, so it wasn’t aimed at him. “I saw. They’re doing some sort of experiment, which somehow linked me to the kid, Charlie. Now I can see inside his head.”
“Whoa,” Lisa said. “That’s crazy.” Then, “Does that mean you can tell us what in the hell he’s doing?”
“He’s not the Charlie you know,” Ryan said. “He’s been compromised. Something else came in here, in the body of an old fat man they threw in the cell next to Charlie’s.”
“The Prophet?”
Ryan thought for a moment. He didn’t recall the thing thinking of itself as any name, let alone The Prophet, so he shrugged. “I dunno.”
He asked, “How many are dead?”
“A lot. Dead, or infected,” Lisa said. “And the weirdest thing, most of the infected people are mutating immediately — like you, but without your control. It’s happening so fast — I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Why are you in here?” he asked.
“I need your help. I know what you’re capable of,” she said. “We’ve gotta save Billy.”
“Who’s Billy?”
“This kid I found on our last trip out. He was alone, scared shitless. I told him I’d protect him. He’s three levels down, and the thing is making its way toward him right now.” She looked in what was left of Ryan’s eyes. “Do you need a gun?”
He looked back, then held up his right hand, deformed and ending in a blackened claw, “Can’t use one. And don’t need one. But I’m glad to see you trust me enough to give me one.” He tried to smile but his face hurt too much.
“Don’t make me regret it,” she said.
**
They stepped from the elevator and into a long hallway on a residential level. The alarm continued to buzz, with bright red lights spaced every 40 feet or so blinking along the ceiling.
The halls were splattered with blood, black liquid, and too many corpses to count. “Jesus Christ,” Lisa said, staring at the carnage in horror.
Ryan’s elevated senses picked up on a two heartbeats nearby, at the end of the hallway, in one of the rooms to the left. “I can sense two people here, though one heartbeat is way faster than the other,” he said to Lisa, pointing toward the far end of the hall. “But I don’t think they’re mutants or the aliens. I sense them differently.”
“Is one of them Billy?”
“I dunno,” he shook his head, slowly making his way down the hall.
Before they reached the door, Ryan sensed someone behind it. He turned to Lisa. “Maybe you should go in first, so I don’t scare whoever’s inside?”
“Good idea,” she said, then stepped through the doorway, which slid open at her approach.
The door slid closed behind her, leaving Ryan alone in the hall, standing beneath a blinking red light, listening to the on and off alarm which was growing increasingly annoying.
Lisa was taking forever inside the room. Ryan wondered if something had happened. Perhaps the person was hiding, or maybe they’d left the room. He considered going inside, but was still worried about scaring whoever was in there, or worse, having them mistake him for a monster and opening fire when he stepped through the door.
After a while, Lisa came out of the room with a 20-something dark-haired woman, looking 10 months pregnant judging by the way her belly pushed tight against her black dress. Her eyes were two confused saucers.
“She doesn’t speak English,” Lisa said.
“So what are we doing now?”
“We’re gonna get her out of here,” Lisa said. “To somewhere safe.”
“I think she’s safer here,” Ryan said. “I can feel them, too many, out there, roaming the halls on the other floors.”
“Yeah, but if we leave her here, she’s defenseless. Once they get to this level she’s done.”
Ryan looked at the woman, and sensed the two heartbeats, hers, along with the child inside her, both beats thrumming like drums in his head.
He wondered if the Darkness, the aliens, or the other mutants could sense people as well, or maybe even better than him. If so, it was only a matter of time before humanity was picked like every cherry from a tree, or transformed into Darkness.
“Come,” Lisa said, waving them back toward a connecting hallway. “Can you sense anyone else? Can you sense Charlie?”
Ryan stopped and closed his eyes, searching for Charlie’s signal, like trying to tune his mind to a distant radio station.
In his head, he could hear hundreds of echoes from dozens of different sounds — clicking, shrieking, and even random grabs of thought in garbled clicks and beeps. Whatever the sounds were, they likely made sense when passed between the aliens and mutants, but Ryan couldn’t untangle the noise, despite his condition.
Most of him was grateful.
He could also see some of the same images the creatures saw as they scoured hallways searching for humans to either murder or draw into their collective Darkness. Each time a fresh body was absorbed, Ryan felt a small surge in power. He wondered if the other monsters felt it too, then swallowed with a sickening certainty, knowing that they did.
> We’re their food.
As he tuned his senses through the endless assault of sound and image, Ryan found Charlie and the Guardsman — outside the mountain, roaring down the road in a van.
“They’re in a van, heading toward wherever Boricio went,” he said.
“Shit!” Lisa yelled. “Then we’ve gotta get to the tunnel and get the fuck outta here now!”
“Why? Are we going after them?”
“We have to,” she said. “We’ve gotta warn Boricio and the others. They have no idea that something is coming after them.”
“You have a radio, don’t you?” Ryan said. “Can’t you call?”
“I tried, but I’m not getting through. Had problems with reception out there before, too.”
Ryan looked around, trying to think of what they should do next. Upstairs, one of the mutants seized on someone, sinking its razored teeth into their neck. It was a young boy. Billy. Ryan felt a refreshing surge of energy rush through his body, could taste the blood in his mouth, and feel the beautiful agony of the boy being bitten.
He closed his eyes, trying to shake the images — and the feelings — from his head.
“What’s wrong?” Lisa asked.
“I can feel it . . .”
“Feel what?”
“All of it — all the suffering, all the energy. All of it.”
“Energy?”
As his pain started receding, Ryan explained how he could taste the blood, and feel the same energy the creatures felt when they entered someone’s body. Each shell absorbed became part of the collective, adding to their power — magnifying the volume in his head, and moving it from intense to nearly unbearable.
“I think they got Billy,” he said.
“Are you sure?” Lisa asked, her face going pale.
“Yes, I see glimpses of his memories. I see you with him.”
“Fuck!” she cried out.
For a moment he thought she might break down right there. He had to get them moving before it became impossible to do so.
“Let’s go,” he said, taking the lead, and following Charlie’s memory toward the tunnel. They turned down another hall and were close to the tunnel, when Ryan sensed five mutants in the hallway before he could hear them.
“Wait here,” he said, turning to Lisa and the terrified pregnant woman.
Ryan went through the door, and immediately sensed how the mutants saw him.
He was just another one of them — a relieving yet horrifying thought.
How much longer until I’m exactly like them?
The group of mutants was made up of two Guardsmen and three civilians, all male. All but one were hybrid mutants like him, slightly more human than alien, though no less deadly. The last one was nearly mutated in full, its skin all black and slippery wet, both hands already twisted to claws, with a wide mouth rowed high and low with razor sharp teeth.
Ryan sensed something new — they’d picked up on the women outside the hallway. They felt a hunger, an immediate craving, which Ryan felt building inside him as well — like sympathy hunger pains. They started toward him, on their way to the door, moving slowly, as if not quite sure how to regard or navigate past him.
Ryan had to protect the women.
He took a swing at the first mutant, his claw slicing through the man’s neck, as a gallon of dark red and almost black blood seemed to pour from him at once.
One down.
The other mutants turned on him, shrieking and clawing and charging forward with rage. One of their hands caught his ribs and sliced into his slippery skin.
Ryan screamed, then twisted from its grip before the clawed blade could do any more damage. He brought his own clawed hand up and through the fucker’s neck, then thrust up and sideways, killing him instantly.
Each time Ryan killed one of the mutants, he felt sharp pains where he had inflicted the injuries. The pain was so intense it was nearly blinding. It took Ryan a full minute to shake the feeling, though the pain lingered as he allowed the mutant to slip through his still human hand.
Two down.
Ryan had no time to celebrate his win. The mutant behind him, fully transformed, with the razored teeth to prove it, roared toward him, snapping its jaw on the way to his shoulder.
Ryan dropped to the ground and pumped his legs, thrusting them both up, sending the mutant flying into the wall behind them. Ryan leapt on top of its body, savagely swinging his gnarled claw, tearing into the mutant’s guts, driven by a blend of human rage and alien instincts.
Three down.
Wait, where are the others?
He heard the shotgun and felt an intensity of pain, no different from if he himself had been shot. Ryan could see through the dying mutant’s eyes — it was still standing, swaying over where it had just knocked Lisa to the ground.
Ryan saw through the other mutant’s vision as well, as it attacked the pregnant woman.
The mutant knocked her to the floor, ripped the dress from her body, then opened its maw, sinking its teeth into her full stomach.
Ryan wanted to rush to the door, but was overwhelmed by a sudden flood of disgust as the creature tore the woman open, then pulled the fetus from inside her and started to feast.
He fell back against the wall, then turned and vomited. He looked up as he heard a second shotgun blast, killing the mutant attacking Lisa.
Ryan rushed through the doors, blinded by pain and disgust, but at the same time, relishing the surge of power coming from the mutant feasting on the dying woman’s baby.
He launched himself into the air, and landed on top of the remaining mutant as the half-eaten bloody baby fell to the ground in a sickening wet thud. The pregnant woman screamed, one hand on her open guts, the second reaching for her dead baby, both eyes wide in horror.
Ryan unleashed his rage, screaming as he sliced the mutant’s throat to an open vent, then plunged his claw into the mutant’s burning eyes, gouging them one at a time.
Ryan collapsed to the ground, shaking, crying, and screaming all at once as he stared at the pregnant woman, dead and cradling what was left of her baby in her frozen hands, eyes open to the heavens as if to beg for an answer to “Why?”
Lisa stared at the woman, eyes tearing, unable to move.
Ryan, now on his knees and shaking, stared up at Lisa, “I’m so sorry,” he said. “They got past me.”
She stared back, and Ryan felt the rage bleeding from her. Maybe it wasn’t meant for him, but Ryan couldn’t tell the difference. She marched toward him, gritted her teeth, then raised her shotgun to his head.
Her hands started shaking as Ryan met her eyes and begged her.
“Please, kill me. Kill me now.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 8 — Boricio Bishop Part 2
Kingsland, Alabama
October 15, 2011
THE DAY OF THE EVENT…
Boricio was chained to a wall, in reality and in dream.
The last few minutes, which felt like hours, of Boricio’s fear-battered dream was spent chained to a dungeon wall as a long line of grotesque demons whipped his body, lashing his back as they screamed through his life’s atrocities line by line, starting with the earliest — stabbing Cricket Branson with a Bic pen when he was four — and ending with his last few month’s worth of personal terrible before finding the end and starting over again.
The violation the demons kept wanting Boricio to repeat, over and over and over again, was the one where he murdered Rose from behind the wheel of her Mini-Cooper, before leading his own father to finish her forever.
The shackles followed him into the waking world. He was in an underground room with shackles on the walls to either side of him. On the wall to his right was a stairway, all of it lit by a low bulb hanging from a chain in the center of the room.
The whole thing seemed like something out of some old pervert’s makeshift sex dungeon.
Where the fuck did The Prophet go?
What did he do with the vial?
He screamed, his bellow fueled by rage and filled with fury. It was also fueled by self-loathing for having been duped by a so-called “man of God.”
As if on cue, The Prophet descended down the stairs less than a minute later. He removed his hat, set it on a wooden table in the middle of the room, then turned to Boricio.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, shaking his head like he was mourning tragedy instead of making it with his own two hands.
Boricio wanted to murder the old man, and probably would have if his wrists weren’t keeping him prisoner. He imagined his free hands digging all eight digits and a set of thumbs into the pasty white of the fat fucker’s turkey neck.
Boricio yanked against his chains, growling.
“Truly I am,” The Prophet continued. “I didn’t want it to be this way, Boricio. And so I prayed to The Good Lord that it wouldn’t be. But,” he shook his head, “His way is the only way.”
The old man sighed, taking a moment before he continued. “I had truly hoped for the two of us, you and me together as The Good Lord intended to usher in the Rapture. Yet, because The Good Lord is good enough to give us free will, He also knows I can only lead you to the water.” He shook his head. “I can’t make you sip from the chalice any more than I can keep you from chewing on the apple. And if I’m to pick one of two dreams, either the one where the Good Lord gives us all Salvation, or the one where He gives us Salvation and you’re smart enough to make yourself a part of it, well, I imagine you can see how my choice is clear as a proper Alabama sky. I chose you, Son. But that doesn’t mean I’ll let Satan whisper in my ear long enough to let the other one go.”
Boricio was still growling, but the old man stepped into it, patting him on the shoulder.
Boricio wished the man had been fool enough to get within biting range.
“So I really am truly sorry, but I’d be negligent if I didn’t give my gratitude, both to you and to the Good Lord for sending you to me. Now I know exactly what I need to do, and I’m eternally thankful to you for that, Boricio. While He will recognize my good works, I am sure He will reward you for your part.”
