by A. P. Fuchs
The sword still plunged into the wall, Nathaniel slung his shield over his back with his other hand, then shoved his fingers into the wall on the other side of her head. His eyes still held her gaze; the grim determination on his face—a part of her wondered if he would even spare her as he dealt with the demon.
Del screeched again, and in one fluid motion Nathaniel removed his sword and jerked out his other hand, dragging Del through the wall with it, the demon’s hand sliding off Billie’s mouth. She collapsed to her knees, gasping for air.
Del’s growl immediately drew her eyes upward to where Nathaniel held him by the throat. The demon sent its claws slashing into Nathaniel’s face and neck. Wisps of white smoke danced around the angel from every gash as the demon tried to tear him apart. Nathaniel only faltered a step once before drawing his sword back then driving it hard into Del’s middle, the blade entering at the gut then coming up through the torso and neck and out the back of Del’s head.
The demon howled.
Nathaniel tore him apart, snapping the sword out to one side, his hand to the other.
Del burst into smoke.
Billie stayed on her hands and knees, coughing. She wiped her eyes and when she went to say thank you, Nathaniel was back on the other side of the wall of fire, taking on the demonic forces beyond two and three at a time.
She slowly got to her feet and approached the wall of fire. She was maybe a foot or so away. Its heat was present, but not nearly as hot as she expected it to be. Its warmth was pleasant, in a way.
Nathaniel moved along the floor without need to obey the rules of gravity. He didn’t fly, but instead almost danced as he glided along the floor, plunging his sword into demons. At times, when cornered, he scaled the wall, sometimes as if running up it, others using his hands and feet, then landing behind the demons and cutting them up.
A couple of demons threw their scaly, arachnid-like forms against the wall of flame. Billie yelped each time and jumped back a step. The demons merely bounced off, only to be met by Nathaniel’s sword.
The angel stood in the middle of the room alone. Billie thought the fight was over, but was proven wrong when a half dozen demons appeared and charged him all at once. Nathaniel spun around, slicing the heads off two of them. He jumped into the air and plunged his sword deep into the reptilian head of another. A fourth demon flapped its wings and took him down mid air. The remaining two demons joined their kin and dove on top of him, a grotesque pig-pile. Nathaniel’s flaming sword appeared through the back of one of the demons, then through the head of another. He threw the last one off him. The creature soared through the air and recovered its fall by rolling across the floor and immediately springing back up onto its feet. It ran at Nathaniel headlong, claws raised, mouth open. Screeching profanities, the demon jumped into the air. Nathaniel did the same. The demon lashed out with its claws. Nathaniel removed them with his sword, soared past the creature as it landed, and was on his feet behind it. With a quick reverse of his blade, he slammed the sword into the creature’s back, turned around and finished the killing stroke by swiftly drawing the blade through the creature’s back and head, cleaving it in two from the waist up. The demon burst into black smoke.
Nathaniel stood in the room alone, sword still at the ready. He remained there for several minutes, watching, waiting. Finally, he slowly stepped backward toward Billie. Once at the wall of flame and without turning to face her, he pressed his sword against it. The blade drew in the wall of fire like a vacuum. Once complete, the fire of his blade went out.
The sudden absence of yellow and orange light sent everything into blackness.
“I can’t see,” Billie said.
“Your eyes will adjust,” Nathaniel said.
She felt his hand take hers, warm, strong, comforting. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Are they gone?”
“I don’t sense any.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He gave her hand a tug and drew her forward as he began to move. “Can you see enough to walk?”
She blinked her eyes several times. “Yeah. Sort of. Everything’s there, just dim.”
“Okay, then. Let’s go.”
Nathaniel remained in front of her as they made their way through the room to the other side. She kept her eyes on him, a beacon of light in the dark. Once at the door, Nathaniel cut into it with such ease it was as if the door wasn’t even there. He cut out the locking mechanism then gave the door a quick shove open with his hand. Light greeted them and they went outside. The metal door screeched closed behind them.
The two stood outside the building as Billie let her eyes adjust. The familiar grayish brown sky came back into the view. Dead trees and shrubs made up the forest around them. What she wouldn’t give to see color right now.
Suddenly, her legs gave out from under her and she collapsed, pulling on Nathaniel’s hand as she did.
Nathaniel knelt down beside her, the brilliant bronze of his robe repelling the dirt. “Are you all right?” he asked gently.
She took several deep breaths before answering. “It’s just . . . catching up. Just caught up.” She sniffled and pulled her hand away from his and buried her face in her palms. Crying hard, the fear took her. Her heart raced and she grunted and groaned into her hands. Her heart broke as the memory of August’s death presented itself anew. Images of him being torn apart by the dead danced before her mind’s eye, stirring hate and grief and utter loneliness. The vacant look in his eyes as his dismembered head was passed around by the zombies as if a trophy.
She removed her glasses, held them by the arm between index and middle finger, and put her face back in her hands
She couldn’t stop crying.
Nathaniel put a hand on her back. His touch was warm and comforting, like a father’s, but she quickly pulled away.
“You let August die,” she said. “He believed in you guys. Believed in God. He was the one who gave us hope when we didn’t know what to make of all this. He was shot, beaten and eventually killed by these things. His family . . . . Have you no compassion or do you even care?” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “He’s dead. He’s dead.” Des is dead. Joe . . . “August.” My friend. The notion that the old man died for her struck her hard . . . especially when she realized it was true. He had protected her as best as he could during Del’s and May’s interrogation. He did all he could in the condition he was in as they tried to escape. He spoke with her about important things and connected with her in a way she hadn’t with anyone in a long time. Even with Joe.
Except for Des, she realized, August had been her closest friend in this world of the undead.
“Why did you let him die?” she asked and gave him a shove. Nathaniel took it, and didn’t respond.
She let the tears fall without reserve. Even when her head began to pound, she kept crying.
Nathaniel didn’t say anything, and she was happy that he didn’t. Instead he merely stayed beside her, one hand upon her back, his presence enough to give her comfort but not so overwhelming she felt smothered.
Billie didn’t know how much time had passed until she finally stopped crying. She pulled her face away from her hands, which were wet and slick, and let the remaining tears roll down her cheeks. She wiped her face in her sleeve and used the bottom of her shirt to clean her glasses’ lenses. She put her glasses back on, the world clear once more.
Nathaniel still had his hand upon her, but instead of being clothed in a bright bronze robe like before, he now wore blue jeans and a gray turtleneck and faded white running shoes. His clean-shaven face was white, his hair brown, cut short and neat.
“Thank you,” she said and sniffled once more.
“You’re welcome. And you’re not alone. My God and King is with us.”
“Wish He’d explain Himself . . . or just why I’ve lost everything.”
“He doesn’t have to, Billie,” Nathaniel said.
<
br /> She pressed her lips together. She knew what she wanted to say, but was so weak with emotion that forming the words was too difficult.
“But maybe in time,” Nathaniel said, “because He loves you enough to let you know why you’re here and why things happened the way they did.”
“I hope so,” she whispered.
The two remained there a few moments more before the angel said, “Come, we have to get moving.”
He helped her to her feet and the two started toward the forest.
“Why can’t we take the plane?” Billie asked, pointing to the bi-plane that first brought her and August here.
“Because,” Nathaniel said, “they’ll be looking for it.”
They went a few more paces. “What about you? Can’t you fly?”
He smiled. “I can, and I could take you with me. But we’re not done here.”
She stopped in her tracks. Nathaniel continued a few paces before turning back to face her.
“Not done here?” she said. “What? Why? What is there left to do? What else must I endure?”
“Soon,” he said and started walking again.
She ran past him and stopped him. “No, no. No way. We’re not doing that. We can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Don’t give me this cryptic stuff like ‘soon you’ll know’ or whatever. That’s not fair.”
“Do you really want to know why we need to go on foot?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Many reasons, two of which are: demons fly, too. You saw their wings. Certain ones rule the air above. That’s their domain. They’ll see us and I’m not going to fight an aerial battle where I’m at a disadvantage while also trying to hold on to you. The other reason is we need to see a friend of mine.”
“Friend.” It was more of a statement.
“Yes. We have friends, too,” he said with a smile. “I was with him before I came for you. He’s in these woods, fighting our fallen brothers.”
“Who?”
“His name is Michael.”
24
Dillon
Fists clenched, Mark listened for that voice again. He could barely see anything, the light from Michelle’s flashlight only reaching so far.
Zombies groaned in the darkness. They were close, probably following their scent to the ramp.
“Srrrmmmoonnnngggrrr . . .” The voice was behind him now. Sometimes it was so clear, other times muffled.
“Mark!” Michelle shouted from behind.
“No!”
“I found him!”
Heart leaping into overdrive, he quickly made his way around the cars, eyes focused on the flashlight in Michelle’s hand. She was at the bottom of the ramp, standing beside a brown Station wagon, the front end of it smashed, partly buried in rubble from the wall beside it.
Mark ran to her side. “Is he—?”
She eyed him carefully, as if sizing him up. “I want to make you see this. Want to make you know what you came in here for. It’s not pretty. Up to you.”
“Up to . . .” His mother usually protected him from as much of the grisly displays of this world. If there was a body, he was normally told to look the other way. What Michelle was doing . . . would his mother approve? Dillon was his friend. To not see him seemed dishonoring. “Did you kill him?”
“No. There was a zombie just ten feet beyond. Its mouth covered in blood.”
“Srrrmmmoonnnngggrrr . . .” The voice came from inside the Station wagon.
Mark went over to it. Michelle stepped to the side and allowed him room. The boy took her flashlight and used it to peer in the passenger side window. A body lay pinned between the glove compartment and floor, bits of plastic and metal running through some of the flesh, keeping it in place. A pine freshener was on the floor beside it.
“M-M-Mark . . .” Dillon said, his voice just above a whisper. A faint smile rose on his white cheeks. Blood ran from his mouth.
Mark noticed a good chunk of Dillon’s shoulder was missing and his friend’s shirt was torn open, scratches and claw marks all over his chest in a multitude of red lines. “Hey.”
“Thanks . . . thanks f-for find . . . ing . . . me . . .”
Mark smiled, but couldn’t speak through the tears that overwhelmed him. He turned to Michelle. “I’m sorry.”
She nodded.
He shone the light once more into the window. He wanted to touch his friend’s head to say good-bye, but he couldn’t do even that in case Dillon was covered in infection. “See ya,” was all he could barely say.
“See ya,” Dillon said softly.
He gave the flashlight back to Michelle and made his way to the bottom of the heap of rubble. He didn’t look back when he heard the gun go off behind him.
25
More Pain
Mark and Michelle emerged from the hole in the rubble. The gray and brown sky greeted them and though they hadn’t been gone all that long, seeing its weird coffee and sidewalk gray mixture made Mark feel worse than he already did.
As they descended the rubble heap, Michelle asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I want to forget it,” Mark said. He stopped in his tracks when he saw his mother lying there on her own, Andrew nowhere to be seen. “Mom!” He ran over to her. Rhonda’s body lay there in a pool of blood, her guts spilled in a mess around her.
Hands shaking, he reached down to touch her blood-soaked face but recoiled when he saw her nose and eyes were missing, seeming to have been dug out. Tears blurred her from view. He wanted to scream, to cry out and let his heart explode, but when he opened his mouth, no sound came, just a choking gasp of pure grief and anguish at seeing the destroyed body of the person he loved the most lying there in ruin.
He couldn’t breath. His lungs constricted as his heart hammered in his chest.
Michelle was at his side, then quickly on her knees. “No. Rhonda . . . no . . .” She looked around then got to her feet, gun out.
The pressure building inside pulsed through Mark’s veins, the searing pain of loss filling every muscle and bone within. Breathing became short and quick, his shoulders rising and falling like a boiler about to go over. With all that was within him, he cried, “MMMMMMMOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!” Tears gushed forth.
Mark wiped his eyes, bringing his mother’s bloody form back into view clearly.
A hand touched his shoulder. “Here, let me help you up. You shouldn’t see this,” Michelle said.
He shrugged her hand away. “I don’t care. She’s my mom!”
Michelle knelt beside him. “She wouldn’t want you to see her like this. Don’t let this be your last memory of her.”
“Last memory?” He knew what she meant, but saying the words suddenly added finality to his mother’s life and the sharp arrow of grief pierced his heart once more.
“Come here. Please, Mark.” She put her hand on his shoulder again. “Please?”
He clung to her and let her help him up, his eyes not leaving his mother’s body. It didn’t look like her, all broken and bloody like that, but it was the knowing that it was her that destroyed him inside.
Finally, he wrapped his arms around Michelle’s waist and buried his face into her embrace.
He cried. He shook.
He couldn’t believe that in less than ten minutes, both his mother and friend were gone.
* * * *
Andrew was nowhere to be seen. Michelle swore that if she saw him again, she’d kill him. Rhonda was no doubt attacked by a zombie. Andrew, it seemed, didn’t defend her. It was right that nobody trusted him or took him in. He deserved to die out here. Alone. The last thing the Hub needed was a coward.
The ground shook. A giant zombie’s head appeared above the rooftop of a building a few blocks away. Michelle held Mark tight. “Don’t move.”
“I don’t care. I want to see my mom.”
She was about to tell him not to say that, but thought better of it and just stood there frozen, hoping the massive cre
ature wouldn’t catch sight of them out in the open like this.
What am I going to do? He’s a kid. It’s his mom. She’s going to get back up and I’m going to have to kill her, she thought.
Maybe as soon as the giant zombie was gone, they’d get moving and they’d be far enough away from Rhonda that she wouldn’t have to shoot her in front of him.
The giant zombie’s heavy footfalls began to fade. Michelle rose up on her tiptoes and was able to clearly see the back of the massive dead man’s head as it continued down its path.
“Come on, Mark,” she said. “Let’s go.”
He sniffled. “I want to look at her before we do. Before . . .”
“You don’t want to. Especially if . . .” Neither said it, but they knew what the other was thinking.
