March till Death (Hellsong Book 3)

by Shaun O. McCoy

  “What?”

  His hearing must be as fucked as mine.

  “Help me with the door!” Aaron shouted.

  Several more soldiers and a troop of slaves were passing through the hallway, heading from left to right—heading deeper into the complex.

  “Why are the lights flickering?” Avery yelled.

  “Light flows through skystone veins in the rock,” the soldier answered loudly through the woodstone. “When the stone separates, the veins can get disconnected.”

  Avery put his shoulder against the door.

  “One, two,” Aaron counted, “three!”

  He and Avery pushed while the soldier pulled. Kelly added her own weight to the effort, pushing against Avery. The door moved an inch or so, but the rubble wouldn’t give.

  “Again!” Aaron shouted.

  Their sudden effort bought them another inch, perhaps, but nothing more.

  “Again!” This time there was no progress.

  “We’re going to have to dig you out,” the soldier said.

  Dyitzu fire lit up the corridor.

  “Mithras!” A shout came from down the hall. “They’re here!”

  The soldier dropped to one knee and raised his shotgun. A fireball whizzed over his head. Another impacted close enough to the door that Aaron had to jump back to avoid the splash of the fire. Avery got a little on his shoulder, but Kelly smothered it with her lavender robe.

  “We got ‘em!” one man shouted.

  “It’ll be just a minute,” the soldier promised, and Aaron could hear him digging at the gravel by their door.

  A couple more soldiers came to his aid.

  “Corpses!” One of them reported.

  There was another tremendous boom, and more rubble fell down from the hall’s ceiling. A large stone, large enough to kill, dropped into their room. Dust filled the air. Aaron found himself on the ground again.

  When the shock had passed, the light in the hallway was almost completely gone. It was flickering on and off like an old world fluorescent bulb.

  Aaron coughed up dust and dragged himself to his feet.

  “Quickly!” the soldier was ordering.

  Aaron peered through the crack in the door, placing his head against the woodstone so that he could see down the hallway. It was nearly pitch black, but it lit up for brief moments like a strobe light. There were silhouettes moving through the dust.

  “Corpses are still coming!” a soldier warned.

  “You two, shoot them down,” the soldier shouted. “Everyone else work on this door.”

  The room was filled with the sound of their shotgun blasts. Aaron could hear the reports as brief bursts through the background ringing. He felt pressure on his ears, as if they needed to pop.

  The shadows of the corpses moved slowly down the hallway, stumbling through the rubble. In the brief moments after one of Calimay’s soldiers fired, Aaron could see their faces in the muzzle flash. Their skin was horribly pale. They seemed like corpses. Maybe it was just the dust and the distance, but they didn’t seem to be covered in rot.

  “Can’t aim for shit through the dust,” one soldier shouted.

  But Aaron could hear the buckshot tinkling amidst the fallen debris. The next muzzle flash showed clearly the black eyes of one of the corpses.

  Not corpses. Wights.

  “Bullet’s ain’t working!” one man shouted.

  “Stone wights!” another yelled.

  And they were getting closer, and closer.

  The soldier left the door and leapt forward to engage one, blocking Aaron’s vision of the hallway. The man’s body was slammed back against the door. Dyitzu fire was sizzling through the air. Suddenly the weight of the soldier was enough to overpower Aaron, and the door was slammed shut.

  “Push it open!” Avery shouted.

  Again, Aaron and Avery pushed against the door.

  When they had it ajar again, they did not see either the corpses or the soldiers.

  What?

  He heard the sound of rock crunching under a hoof.

  Through the crack in the door Aaron saw the giant bull head of the Minotaur. In that sliver of vision, Aaron could see one of its eyes. That eye was looking back at him.

  It stepped back, putting one hoofed foot up on a pile of rubble. Dust from the ceiling poured down around it, bouncing off its horn and pouring off its shoulders.

  “He’s found us,” Kelly said.

  One Horn roared.

  “Close the door!” Aaron yelled. “Close it.”

  Together he and Avery gripped the handle, pulling it back. The door slammed shut and Kelly slid the latch over. Then the door was ripped back, the latch and lock splintering out of the woodstone. There was a thud from the door slamming into the rubble. Aaron could see the Minotaur’s eyes. The thing was looking straight at him.

  “Fuck!” Avery screamed.

  “Grab the door!” Kelly shouted over his still ringing ears.

  Aaron watched helplessly as One Horn closed the door and jerked it back again, getting it a little farther open.

  “Grab it!” Kelly screeched.

  The Minotaur pushed the door closed again, and this time Aaron grasped it with both hands before One Horn could jerk it back. All his strength did nothing. He felt like his arms were almost pulled out of their sockets as the Minotaur jerked the door open. Aaron slammed into the woodstone and dropped to the debris covered floor. Avery dragged him back to his feet and together they clutched desperately at the handle.

  One Horn pulled again, overpowering Aaron and Avery as if they were children, crushing the gravel and forcing the door open another inch. This time Aaron shoved Avery away and hopped up, holding the handle with his hands between his knees and placing his feet on the wall on either side of the door. He pulled back with all his might, pushing with his legs. Avery grabbed onto his torso and tugged as well.

  Again the Minotaur pulled. Aaron felt as if the muscles in his thighs tore as the handle was ripped out of his grasp. He and Avery fell to the ground.

  “We need to tie it!” Avery shouted.

  Kelly took off her robe and tied one sleeve around the handle.

  She ran back with the robe, ready to fasten it to the bunk.

  The door jerked open, and the Minotaur tried to reach in, grasping for the robe. Aaron added his strength to Kelly’s and the door slammed into the Minotaur’s wrist. Its thick fingers grabbed a hold of the robe. Avery picked up Kelly’s shotgun and put it against One Horn’s forearm. He let loose a pair of shells.

  The Minotaur roared again, jerking its hand back. The door slammed shut. Kelly tied off her robe to the bunk and pulled hard on the knot. The Minotaur tried to open it again. The robe was stretched taut, but the fabric held.

  “Yes!” Avery shouted.

  The Minotaur tried again, and again. Cracks started to spread out from where the bunk was attached to the wall.

  Oh God no!

  The sound of gunfire reached Aaron’s ears. Then there were more shouts. Then Aaron could hear the crunching of hooves on stone. Soldiers issued cries of pain and agony. The flashes of light coming in from the cracks around the door frame and the hole in the latch gave Avery and Kelly’s faces a surreal look.

  A line of blood was dripping down Kelly’s face from a cut on her forehead. “One Horn will be back, but . . .”

  “But what?” Avery asked.

  “Turi’s out there.”

  Arturus stood still.

  The explosions had stopped. Loose stones and gravel were pouring down around him from the hole in the ceiling, filling the air with dust.

  He had thought he was going to make it home, that he was going to love Kelly and have a child.

  What a fool he was.

  Hadn’t his father warned him about hope?

  A man screamed from the other side of the door, “The bullets aren’t working!”

  Calista, still nude, crossed the room to where her robe lay. “They’re already here.” Her voic
e was the voice of a hopeless girl. “The escape plan, it won’t work if they’re already here.”

  Arturus moved to the door.

  “Don’t leave me!” Calista was pulling on her robe. “Protect me!”

  I can’t protect you! I have to get to Kelly. I can’t even . . . oh shit. You’re carrying my child.

  He remembered how he had fought in the Deadlands. He remembered the running firefights he’d had all over the Carrion. He remembered driving the silver leg spiders towards Pyle and his men.

  He remembered slitting the dyitzu’s throats.

  Calista’s purple robe hung open around her breasts. Her eyes were wide, and why wouldn’t they be? She had never worked. She had never fought. She had never been forced to see Hell. This must be her first experience with pure terror.

  “My father told me that facing death is the truest test,” Arturus told her. “You asked me to pretend to love you, and I did. Now I need you to pretend to be brave. Will you be the woman I can die fighting for?”

  She nodded.

  “Then come with me.”

  Arturus walked over and tried the door. It opened only a little before the rubble stopped it. He put his shoulder into the woodstone a few times, but he couldn’t make much progress.

  He removed his razor from his pants and whipped out the blade. With the door cracked open, there was a gap large enough for him to slip the razor through. He used it to pry the pins out of the hinges on the far side of the woodstone door. The door fell outwards into the room beyond, landing with a crunch in the rubble. The light was uneven in the hallways and chambers beyond. Pockets of light—illuminating the blankets of dust that hung in the air and the life and death struggle of combating silhouettes—were separated by swaths of pitch black darkness.

  He slid the razor back into his pocket.

  I am a murderer. A killer. The darkness is not my enemy, it is theirs.

  In the nearest pocket of light Arturus saw a man’s twitching body. On top of him a corpse—no, a wight—was eating his neck. The man’s throat had already been partially consumed.

  The wight looked up at him, its black eyes flashing in the purple illumination.

  “Your mother?” Arturus asked Calista, “Do you know where she’d go?”

  “Yes, the other purple level, two floors down, near the red level stairs.”

  The wight stood and began walking towards him slowly—deliberately—traversing the rubble without so much as a stagger.

  “In the room where we first made love?” Arturus asked.

  “Yes.”

  He called up the mental map he had made of the place during his last stay here. He knew the way.

  “Stay close,” Arturus ordered.

  “Yes.”

  He walked forward to meet his enemy.

  This is my time.

  Wights were faster than undead, as fast as humans, but this one was not fast enough. Arturus advanced his left leg towards the creature with a quick step. He slung his right arm around in an overhand strike, twisting his hips to add power to the blow. His blow hit the wight across the face, causing it to stumble. Even while the wight staggered, Arturus pivoted off of his lead leg and spun his body around the wight. It recovered, facing in the wrong direction, swinging at where Arturus had been. It turned towards him, but as it did so, Arturus stepped forward, throwing his arm up and around again.

  This time it was not a blow Arturus was landing, not this close to his enemy, but a hold. His left hand gripped the wight’s wrist as his right circled over the thing’s shoulder. Arturus grabbed his own wrist, using the same hold he’d executed on the sword wielding corpse in the Deadlands. When the arm could bend no more, the corpse was forced to move around him. This time Arturus kept it spinning, pushing it downwards. He dropped his weight, ramming the wight’s face into the floor with enough force to send gravel shooting through the air. Arturus let go of the thing, knelt on its back, and picked up a large rock. He slammed it down with both hands into the back of the wight’s head. When that was not enough to kill it, Arturus hit it again, and again.

  He stood, peering into the darkened halls, and felt Calista coming up behind him. He advanced forward into the bubble of light where the wight’s victim lay. There were dyitzu moving in the shadows of the corridor ahead.

  Arturus picked up the shotgun of the fallen soldier.

  It is my time. Calista has my child, and I have all the weapons I need to protect it. Galen raised me, Galen trained me, Galen made me the killer I need to be to defend what I love.

  But more than that, Arturus was angry. Angry at Hell. Angry at the devils in it. Angry at the gods and demons who had fashioned this place—and he wanted to hurt something. He wanted to hurt something so badly that he could feel his anger in the back of his throat. He felt it burning in his stomach and tickling his nostrils.

  Someone had to suffer for endangering his unborn child. Someone had to pay for the pain Rick must be feeling even now, thinking his loved ones were lost. Someone had to give up a pound of flesh for the misery of all the people who’d ever lost anyone.

  Someone has to die for taking Johnny.

  And the next one to suffer was the dyitzu creeping towards him. It formed a fireball and hurled it. Arturus guided Calista back against a wall. He advanced as the fireball tore through the air by his head. He ducked low and juked to the left, the dyitzu tried to follow him but Arturus came right back up, his shotgun raised to his shoulder. He only fired when the barrel of his weapon was six inches away from his target. The buckshot pulverized the dyitzu’s head and sent its brain, blood, and pieces of its skull up into the air as a heavy mist. He cocked his weapon and advanced. There were two more dyitzu that he could see, so he dropped them in quick succession—spent shells falling onto the loose stones at his feet. His next enemy was another wight, so he tossed the shotgun back to Calista.

  I am a murderer.

  His blood caught fire, pumping through his veins to the crescendo rhythm of his heart, boiling away the last of the corpse sludge in his body. It was an anger inside him, overwhelming him, pulsing in his ears and at his fingertips, boiling over, filling his mind with its madness and spilling out of him as tears. The blood stung his eyes, but the pain was nothing.

  Kelly, I’m coming.

  He flicked a jab at the wight’s face, but then ducked low and closed the distance with another darting step. He got up under it, clutching both of its legs to his chest, and with a tremendous heave he lifted the thing into the air. Then he brought it down, as hard and as fast as he could, a scream issuing from between his lips. As the thing fell, its head impacted with the wall. There was a crack, but the wight still struggled. It reached up with its right arm. Arturus overhooked it, kneeling on its chest, and set his forearm under its elbow. Finding his balance and his leverage, Arturus leaned back. He felt the tendons popping. He heard the bones grinding. The sounds became hellsong in his ears, a complimentary melody to the singing of his burning blood. Then, the arm snapped. Oh, how the wight writhed beneath him! Oh how it suffered, reaching up helplessly with its left arm to try and push him away. This one had not suffered enough.

  Arturus overhooked the remaining limb, and, with a quick jerk, broke that one too. Still it struggled. Arturus pushed its head back with his forearm, his bloody tears falling like black raindrops in the dark purple light as he bent over the wight. It struggled madly.

  You are no monster. You have no idea what a monster is.

  How long had it been since he’d last had the corpsedust coursing through his veins? How long since the harsh reality of Hell had been blurred by its delusions? His blood called for the stuff. The half dead nature of his body demanded it. The hatred in the back of his throat filled his mouth and his nostrils, preparing his palette for dead flesh.

  He bit the thing’s neck, biting out a chunk of undead skin and muscle.

  A lesser man would have choked from the bitter, copper taste, but Arturus had consumed the dead before, and a wight w
as not nearly as unpalatable as a corpse. He spat out the flesh and black blood of the dead and went back down for more. He tore out its larynx with his teeth.

  He saw another dyitzu out of the corner of his eye, so he stood, his hand raised back to Calista, who tossed him his shotgun. He aimed and fired, but there were no more shells. Arturus did not care. He advanced quickly over the rubble, dodging left and right around the thing’s fireballs and then swung the shotgun with all his might, the butt impacting with the dyitzu’s head.

  It fell back to the ground. Arturus put his foot on its head and jammed the barrel of his empty shotgun into its hissing mouth. He pushed the gun down so hard that he heard the rubble crunching beneath its cheek. With its head still firmly beneath his foot, he pulled the shotgun to one side, using it as a lever to pry open the dyitzu’s jaw. He did not stop when the jaw locked. Cartilage crackled as the jaw dislocated, sending gleeful vibrations up through the shotgun. The dyitzu’s screams intermixed with the hellsong symphony playing in Arturus’ mind. He beat the thing’s unhinged jaw with the shotgun’s butt, and then hit it again in the temple. It stopped moving. He found another dead soldier and picked up the man’s pistol. He checked the clip, seeing that it had five bullets left.

  Arturus looked to the stairs ahead of him through the pockets of light and sheets of dust. He turned back to Calista and offered his hand, guiding her half naked form over the rubble. He had never received adoration before. He had seen that look in women’s eyes, in Alice when she looked at Aaron, in Kara when she looked at Massan—but never had any woman looked at him that way.

  “You are . . .” she started, but she didn’t know how to finish the sentence.

  Arturus did though. “I am my father’s child.”

  Martin knew that, had he attempted this run a few days ago, he would have given up already. Maybe he was in better shape, or maybe he just knew now how close to its limits his body could go. Either way, this wasn’t the time to stop.

  The dead hungerleaf grove stood silently beyond the empty river bed.

  Whenever I come here, it’s bad.

  He lowered himself into the empty river and then dropped to the bottom. He climbed the far side as quickly as he could. To his left and right, his hunters were coming up around him.