by Jesse Gagnon
“It’s a safe house for the Highwaymen who scavenge out here and research Azrael activities. It’s actually one of the nicest facilities we have. It was once called Paul Simon Job Corps Center and had all the elements of a good safe house. ” Savanna responded.
“Good, makes sense. Who is in charge of this Highwaymen facility?”
“We maintain these facilities so that if we are in a pinch and can’t make it back to the Central Chicago District before nightfall we can sleep comfortably. Did you notice that the Azrael gathered near the factory nearby? The transmission towers do something to them. We’re not exactly sure why they are drawn to it.” Savanna said.
“Yeah, we noticed that ourselves. We took a detour around and followed the railroad tracks. Do you put the power on those lines to keep them there? Does your power grid back feed to keep power on the lines just for this?” He asked.
“No, we actually are running on a separate cable that we set up when the Highwaymen were institutionalized. Several volunteers ran those lines in parallel with the power company’s lines. They feed other safe houses in the area. We can’t always make it here. The transmission tower thing with the Azrael has been a recent discovery and it’s very much appreciated. John ….uh, a guy I know actually works on those things.” Savanna realized she gave too much information and tried to play it off. Maybe he didn’t catch it. He didn’t respond to her mistake.
“You guys seem to have a good system out here. Boy, I’d love to meet who developed this program, he’s probably a genius.” The man said.
“You have no idea what kind of man he is.” Savanna said remembering that he saved her life on his last mission. She owed him everything.
“That’s good to hear. So, where is John?” The man said with an unreadable expression.
“John who?” Savanna said looking away.
“Don’t play with me woman. I know you travel in two’s. It’s called highwaymen not highwayman and you are too calm to have been captured by a man you don’t even know. My back has been to the door this whole time and your eyes have been scanning behind me this entire conversation.” The man said with confidence without looking behind him once. Savanna had been giving away clues this entire time and she didn’t even notice it. This man was dangerous, extremely dangerous, she thought.
“He dropped me off and left to check on another safe house.” She lied and didn’t know why she did.
“She’s lying. I can even tell she’s lying. Why are you lying? This man is a cold hearted killer. I seen him kill six men without taking a scratch. That man is nasty.” The girl said revealing too much information herself. The man shushed her and shook his head.
“He’s here, probably in the male dormitory. I could easily find him and have him down here with you. Make it easy on yourself and your friend and just take me to him. This will be easier when we are all together in one place.” The man said with a cold voice.
“That house! Did you kill those men in that house? We were detoured there, it was a disgusting place. There were dead girls in the closet. They... cover your ears sweetie.” Savanna asked the girl to cover her ears.
“Don’t talk about that place. Take me to your friend, now.” The man said lifting her up and led her outside towards the male dormitory.
“It was you. Those men were freakin’ twisted. You did a good thing killing them.” Savanna said turning her head as she was being pushed towards the exit.
“I told you to drop it woman. Nothing good was in that place.” The man said pushing her arms up causing a bit of discomfort.
“Okay, okay let’s go to John.” Savanna said and noticed the girl was breathing heavily and couldn’t make eye contact with her. She followed the man without hesitation.
They approached the male dormitory and entered the building. Savanna led them straight to the room where he slept. She’s slept there several times. She actually hoped to be in there later for some much needed release. She opened the door and he was still showering. The man turned her and placed her on the bed.
“Here, take this. Shoot her if she decides to run.” The man said and the girl took the gun with no questions and she aimed it towards the woman. The safety was on which made Savanna feel a little more comfort about it. The man walked towards the door to the bathroom and opened it.
“So you want to fuck already. Shit I ain’t even done cleanin’ up yet. Why don’t you come join me.” John said from inside the shower.
“I don’t shower with other men unless I’m deployed. Get a towel on and put something decent on. I got a young girl outside who doesn’t need to see anymore man than she needs to.” The man instructed to John. John pulled the curtain quickly and attempted to punch the man. The man blocked the attack with one arm, grabbed his wrist and yanked John down. He slipped and his chin struck the side of the tub.
“Are you kidding me John? I’m trying to do this without force. Just don’t, okay.” The man said pressing down on his hand as the other one held a knife to John’s throat. John complied and stepped out and the man tossed a towel at him. He dried off and began to get dressed.
“So you’re going to watch me? Are you gay or something?” John asked.
“I don’t trust you. So, yes I’m watching you. Do I look gay to you?” The man asked.
“No, no you don’t.”
“So shut the hell up and get dressed.” The man said and John got dressed quickly and they exited the bathroom together.
“John, it’s the guy who killed those guys at that house. Don’t try anything.” Savanna tried to warn John. He exited holding his jaw as blood was leaving his lip.
“Too late Babe.” John said and smiled at her. His front teeth were covered in blood and one of them seemed chipped.
“You dumb ass.” Savanna said.
“Keep it together. There is a girl present.” The man said.
“I’m not some little girl, Mario.” The girl said.
“So your name is Mario. My name is Savanna and this is…well you know.” Savanna said.
“So, Savanna, the message on the radio saying that Chicago is safe, is that where you guys are from?” Mario asked.
“Yup, the doc thought it would be wise to put a message out there for survivors. I thought it was a stupid ass idea. Who knows who you’ll bring into our safe district?” John said.
“True, it is foolish. However, it did bring me here from Missouri. I’m Master Sergeant Mario Cortez from Fort Leonard Wood. This is Taliah, I found her at that house. It’s a bad memory in her past. I don’t appreciate you keep bringing it up.” Mario said and Taliah hugged him.
“I’m so sorry Sweetie. I didn’t know. Those were horrible men and I’m glad that Mario did what he did to them. They deserved everything that happened to them.” Savanna said trying to get up and hug the girl but she was still cuffed. “Uh, can you take these off? It’s not necessary.” She asked.
Mario looked at Taliah and she agreed. He cut the cuffs off and she pulled her hands up and rubbed her wrists that were now red and irritated.
“I was taking a shower and came out and Taliah was gone. Then I found you with a pistol to her head so I felt it was necessary. You can’t trust people anymore.” Mario said emotionless.
“You put a gun to the girls head? What the hell Savanna.” John said.
“I didn’t know who she was or why she was raiding the vending machine. Hell, she could have been one of those lone wolf Azrael we saw at the Mason House.
“Lone wolf Azrael? Explain.” Mario asked. The two explained their run in with the giant lone Azrael and watched it attack and eat a bear. They described how it didn’t attack them like the others do and how its demeanor was different than the normal Azrael.
“I’ve seen something similar.” Mario said.
“So it’s not isolated. Maybe it’s a new strain of the virus.” Savanna said.
“This one was being hunted by a very sophisticated herd led by a dangerous alpha.” Mario added.
“Th
ey hunted their own kind? The doc has to hear about this.” John said.
“They completely ignored me and he sent in waves of the Azrael to attack it to gauge its strength. It took out quite a few before the alpha tore it apart. These new Azrael have a more focused look to them. They somehow seem a bit more connected, and I think that threatens the Azrael. I don’t know. So who is this doctor you speak of?” Mario asked and they filled him in about Dr. Schwinn.
“So, want to join us back to Chicago?” Savanna asked.
“Yes, it’s why we are here in the first place. This is the first stroke of luck we’ve had in a while.” Mario said.
“Not for the girl, not for Taliah.” Savanna said smiling at her. She forced a smile and clung onto Mario.
CHAPTER 8
AWAKENED
The constant ringing in his ears caused him to cringe when he awoke. The body was at it again, and he cringed to see what was on the menu this morning. It’s been a long time since he lost connection to his body, stuck within the cadaver of a serial killer. Only, his mind remained unbroken and he fought to keep his humanity together. He used to try to take control of his body with the hopes of saving his body’s next victim. Each attempt and failure weighed heavy on his heart, well the heart in his mind. Hell, he didn’t even control his actual heart anymore. He faintly remembered a name he once was called, Robert or was it Randall. Shit, was it Ronald, Donald. He began to panic. Was he finally losing who he was? A voice in his head spoke through his panic.
“Randall, you haven’t lost who you are. Calm yourself Love. Don’t give up.” The voice of a woman Randall faintly remembered as his late wife reminded him of who he was. Images of his body ravaging her body and eating every ounce of flesh from the bone entered his mind. Why didn’t it stop and turn her like his body did so many others. It’s like his body taunted him, made him watch the most gruesome act imaginable. The moment he was born into this nightmare, his mind had been tested. But how much longer could he hold on? How much more could he take before he would lose his humanity? Did it even matter anymore? He is no longer in control over his actions.
The flavor of flesh entered his mind once again and he turned to look at this new victim. It was a man in his late fifties. The man didn’t have much fight in him. His body just feasted on his flesh without trouble from the man. Suddenly a shot of pain entered his head as he felt excruciating pain shooting throughout his body. He’s been shot before, cut, and even hit by a car. His body recovered and continued on, however, this was different. What happened to him? He scanned his surroundings but his vision was blurry. He tried to focus through the haze, but it didn’t clear up. He did smell a burning aroma in the air faintly and tasted a hint of char in his mouth. He wondered how long his vision would be this hazy. He wondered what was burning and why his body wasn’t moving.
Randall’s vision finally cleared and he started to feel raindrops hit his body. Steam misted around his muscular cadaver as the heat generating within his corpse evaporated the cool raindrops as they struck him. The man his body was eating was leaning on an enormous tree and it had an massive black charred gash in it. He faintly heard thunder in the background. He was struck by lightning. He began to feel his body healing again as the taste of the scorched flesh became more and more enhanced. He could smell the rain, the blood and the smoke leaving the tree and his body. However, his body still didn’t move. He waited for it to pull itself up. He had a thought of his hand and it twitched. He thought of his fingers and they moved. It was not instant, but delayed. He felt his foot and toes and they moved as well. Thoughts of his neck lifting his head brought his head up and he turned his head slowly. Control, he had control. He tried to speak, but nothing left but a rasp. He could feel a weird swelling in his neck. There was a foreign growth that he never felt before wedged between his larynx and his trachea. Again a rasp exited his mouth and he struggled to fully operate his body, his body once again. He spat out the charred meat in his mouth and noticed the man open his eyes. It stood and its eyes were searching the area wildly and looked at Randall in horror. The man sniffed the air, stood up and rubbed its bite wounds slowly. Its skin was pale and Randall noticed the veins in its body swelling as adrenaline started to pump throughout its body. He had become Azrael, only this time Randall was able to watch the whole transformation and the realization its mind was having of the situation. It sniffed the air again and found the scent of the nearby herd. It headed for the alpha, drawn to its primal dominance. The man will follow the herd loosely for the first few weeks, and then it will cling closer as the virus settles.
Randall felt drawn to the alpha himself, like a strange desire to be a part of the herd. The draw to the herd seemed organic. It seemed like a being of its own, like the virus controlled all of them via the dominant alpha. Randall forced his body to stand and struggled to maintain balance. The herd began to move and he could feel a pull on his body to follow. He refused the pull and smelled the human scent in the breeze, an aroma that satisfied his body. He wanted to taste flesh in his stomach. He may have gained control of his actions once again, but his hunger for people remained. As the herd separated from him by over a hundred yards the pull became weaker to join them. He looked at his body, noticed that his muscles were well defined and he was more than capable of overpowering a man and eating them. It seemed natural to him and he began to move his feet, one step at a time. As he walked he slowly started to remember his legs once again. He could feel his toes as he wiggled them.
He thought about finding people and eating them. No, not eating them, talking to them. He hasn’t interacted with another person in a long time. However, he still couldn’t make a sound other than a rasp. Again he felt a foreign muscle in his neck. It frustrated him that he couldn’t say anything. The sound that his throat made didn’t even sound like what he wanted to come out in the least bit. He had an idea to write something in the dirt, yes he could communicate with words. He could still read okay, he’s seen many signs. That’s one of the things that kept him together. Whenever his body was hunting, he tried to find something to read to get his mind away from the next kill. He staggered towards an open patch of dirt and searched for a stick. He found one easily and began to press into the dirt with the stick. Nothing that he thought of was being depicted with the stick, not even close. He thought of something simple like ‘dog’. His hand made a squiggle and three dots. The connection wasn’t there. He kept trying with the same result. The only thing his body is going to do is get itself killed. He looked like an Azrael, he couldn’t communicate and he did in fact desire to eat flesh.
Within hours of his awakening his control was good enough that he could walk upright. It felt awkward since the Azrael don’t walk completely upright. They hunch over and move in a constant state of urgency. They are on edge always ready to run to attack or catch a fleeing pray. The muscles over the time he has been Azrael were heavily developed for that specific range of motion. As the day passed and he began to walk more controlled, he gradually began to walk like them again. It just felt natural. Every time he noticed that he was walking like them again he stood upright and fought the pull of the muscles in his back and neck. He could feel his face straining and tried to imagine what he looked like trying to walk upright with this much strain.
Night came and the strain of his mind to control this monstrous hulk of a body waned on him and he succumbed to his desire to sleep. He entered a deep sleep and began to dream. A sweet image of his beautiful wife, dark hair, big brown eyes and a body he was proud to walk with on the beach, entered his thoughts. The draw to her became overwhelming and he brought her in close and kissed her. They rolled around in the bed that appeared and performed intense foreplay. He kissed her neck, smelled the sweet aroma of her body and bit into her. He tore chunks out of her neck and could taste the iron in the blood as he chomped into the meat. She screamed at him, yelling him to get off. He couldn’t resist her and continued to bite into her face ripping out flesh from her cheek. He was
both satisfied and horrified at what was happening. Faces of other people his body attacked emerged in the darkness surrounding the bed. He noticed that they were all staring at him. He heard their voices, but no words were audible enough for him to hear what they were saying. It was like a quiet mumble of voices in a library.
He awoke terrified at what his body has done over the years. He still tasted the iron in his mouth and felt meat in his cheek. He chomped down and tasted the sweet flesh that he tasted in his dream. The night was still dark and he struggled to understand what happened. He slowly felt the weight of something in his hands and focused his eyes on what he was holding. A young woman was mostly bone from her neck down to her stomach. The virus denied this one, and he dropped the almost hollow cadaver and stood up and felt the weight of a feast in his gut. He wiped the blood from his mouth and noticed a campsite nearby and blood leading from the body of the woman to the sleeping bag hanging out of the small tent. He was horrified at what his body was doing as his mind slept. He began to scream from the sheer frustration and unending nightmare he was living in. He released a terrifying raspy howl that carried for miles and caused the entire forest to go silent. It was a sound he had never heard before and it frightened him that it came from his own body. He felt a small draw to an alpha miles away and resisted again. He travelled in the opposite direction of the pull. He heard and felt the flesh slosh around in his gut as he walked. The weight of it caused his balance to be offset and he waddled a bit as he walked. He hunched over and it wasn’t as noticeable, plus the muscle tension lessoned as he started to move like the Azrael once more. He thought that he would continue walking like this only until the meal inside his stomach digested.
As daylight came he began to fully articulate his body and started to move with more ease. When the flesh fully digested within his belly he could feel the adrenaline coursing throughout his body. His muscles throbbed and he felt compelled to run. So he did. He sprinted with ease and without exhaustion away from the occasional pull from an alpha. The woods cleared and a large house revealed itself to him beyond an empty field. The day slowly began to fade as night was taking over. Randall started to finally feel fatigue and hunger. He hoped there were no people in the house. He didn’t know if he could control his desire to eat. A faint smell of human flesh entered his nose. No, he had to leave.
