by P. T. Hylton
She couldn’t even tell which direction his voice was coming from. She waited to see if he’d speak again, but he didn’t. She was alone.
2. Sanctuary
For the past few years, Nate had often wondered what would have happened if he’d never gone to see Zed speak in the park that day so long ago. He’d been drawn in from the moment Zed opened his mouth. What other people in town had seen as weirdness, Nate had recognized as genius. And the best part was Zed had seen something in Nate as well.
A fairly large group had been coming by then. Not huge, but probably two dozen. Zed had taken one look at Nate and invited him to talk one-on-one. And that had been that. Zed was the first person in Nate’s life that had seen him as special. Oh sure, a few others had said it. His parents. The occasional teacher. Mr. Rogers on TV. But there had been something different about the way Zed had said it. It wasn’t like he was saying it to make Nate feel good. He was simply stating a fact.
It had taken a long time, but, after watching Jake’s leadership style and thinking back on what had gone down in Rook Mountain, Nate had finally realized something: Zed was an asshole.
Now that theory was confirmed.
He was still reeling from the death and destruction he and Leonard had seen. They’d gone to warn the others, to make sure they weren’t caught unaware by the unbanished people and their Larvae. But they had been too late. The first cabin they came to was Yang’s. He laid dead the middle of his living room. Pieces of him were gone, presumably carved away by the Larvae. Or maybe their naked friends. Or both.
When they left Yang’s cabin, they saw the fires. Someone was burning the cabins. They saw shapes through the smoke, shapes with round things on the tops of their shoulders and the ends of their hands. At that point, Nate decided it was time to start thinking about survival, and he and Leonard retreated to Jake’s house.
“So what’s the plan?” Nate asked after they were inside. Three of the formerly banished residents of Sanctuary were slogging toward the house, each wielding four Larvae. Nate and Logan watched the approach through the window.
Logan nodded toward the two on the right. “The woman’s Rosenberg and the guy’s Harris. Old pals of mine.”
Nate recognized the other one. His name was Gilbert. Logan said, “Let’s see if they get through the door. If they do, Nate, Leonard, you take down Rosenberg. Kill the Larvae first. Then hold her down and Taylor will chop the head off. Evan and Gail, you do the same for Harris. Frasier and I’ll take Gilbert.” She turned to Mason who was still standing behind her. “Honey, I need you to go in the bathroom upstairs. Lock the door and don’t come out until I tell you. No matter what you hear. Try to be as quiet as you can. Understand?”
The boy nodded.
“Good,” Logan said. “Go. Now.”
He hurried off down the hall.
The three unbanished reached the house, and there was a banging, grinding sound. Larvae spikes broke through the door, splitting the wood, and then disappeared again, leaving long thin gashes.
“That door’s coming down in a minute,” Logan said. “Everybody ready?”
No one replied. Their eyes were glued to the door.
Fear hung thick in the air. Nate felt it penetrating his every pore. These weren’t soldiers. They were just people. And now they were being asked to fight monsters. It wasn’t fair, and it was a wonder they were holding up as well as they were.
The wood buckled inward, and Gilbert was the first through the gap. Logan and Frasier rushed toward him.
Nate looked at Leonard. “Ready?”
He had his knife gripped tightly in his hand. He nodded.
“I’ll take the right side, you take the left.” Nate didn’t wait for an acknowledgment. Rosenberg was through the door now. He rushed at her.
He saw the soft spot, the spot Sophie had shown them, on the Larva on Rosenberg’s right shoulder, and he stabbed at it. His knife sunk into the creature with a satisfying crunch. He felt spikes brush past his cheek as Rosenberg tried to grab him.
He grabbed the wrist as her right hand flew past him and dispatched that Larva too. The smell of the dissolving Larvae hit his nose, an intensely sweet stench like rotting fruit.
Leonard moved in, taking out the one on Rosenberg’s left shoulder.
Nate felt his arm go numb as Rosenberg slapped him in the shoulder with the creature in her left hand. His first thought was of Carver and how he’d lost his arm after a similar injury. He pushed the thought away. He needed to concentrate, and thoughts of amputation, let alone thoughts of how Carver was likely burning in the Welcome Wagon right now, weren’t helping.
Leonard stabbed the Larva.
“Thanks,” Nate said. He tried to block out the pain in his arm. He knew they had to take Rosenberg down quick before she could call for backup. He wrapped his arms around her, fighting the urge to recoil at the texture of her cold waxy skin, and threw her to the ground. “Grab the legs!” he shouted to Leonard.
Nate pinned her arms to the ground. “Taylor! We’ve got her.”
Taylor sprinted toward them, and Nate barely had time to lean back as the ax whizzed past his face and separated Rosenberg’s head from her body. A spray of greenish-red liquid caught Nate in the face, and with it a rotten smell like decomposing vegetables.
Nate looked at Leonard. “You all okay?”
The man nodded, but he was deathly pale.
Leonard pointed. “Looks like Evan could use a hand.”
Nate spun his head around. Evan held Harris by the wrists, and he was backpedaling while desperately tried to keep out of the reach of the Larvae on the man’s hands and shoulders. Gail was on the ground next to him, struggling to find her feet. Blood oozed out of a nasty gash in her left cheek.
Nate and Leonard ran to their aid. With Evan holding Harris’s wrists, they made short work of the Larvae.
Nate tackled Harris and the group held him down. “Taylor, we’ve got him ready!”
Taylor stood over Rosenberg, looking down at her. He slowly wiped the blade of his ax on his shirt, his eyes distant.
“Taylor, wake up!” Nate screamed. “We need you here!”
But it was too late. Harris threw back his head and let out the piercing whine Nate had heard earlier.
“Taylor, now!”
Taylor finally looked up. His eyes were alive, and Nate didn’t like what he saw there. It looked like a strangled mix of anger and pure joy. He galloped to them and swung the ax, removing Harris’s head in one stroke.
Four Larvae had answered Harris’s call and were speeding through the door of the building. Frasier was on the ground, still on top of the now headless Gilbert. He didn’t see the Larva rushing toward him. It slammed into the back of his skull, and he fell to the ground.
Logan quickly stabbed the Larva and it fell away. Nate, Gail, and Leonard dispatched the other three creatures.
Logan rolled Frasier over. “Frasier! You still with us.”
Frasier groaned weakly. His eyes were cloudy and unfocused.
Nate leapt to his feet. “Damn it, Taylor! What the hell’s wrong with you?”
He was once again wiping his ax on his tee shirt. “What’s the problem?”
Nate rushed toward him, getting up in his face. “The problem? I was calling you and you didn’t come! You just stood there!”
Taylor didn’t flinch. “Yeah, sorry about that,” he said, looking anything but. “I guess I spaced out for a second.”
Nate wanted to punch the guy, but he knew he needed to save his strength. “You spaced out? Really? In the middle of a fight for our lives?”
Suddenly, Nate felt something. Something he hadn’t felt in a long time. Back in Rook Mountain, Zed had given Nate and the other selectmen a bit of telepathy. The power had vanished when Zed disappeared on the roof of city hall, but Nate felt a tiny twinge of that old telepathy now. He saw a flash of something in Taylor’s mind. Something dark.
Then it was gone.
“Okay, eno
ugh,” Logan said. “Look.”
Darcy, a woman of fifty, came running into the room. Her clothes were torn in a dozen places, and her face was bloody. “They’re coming! They’re on their way!”
Logan grabbed her shoulders. “Whoa. Calm down. Explain.”
Darcy took a deep breath. “They went cabin to cabin killing everyone inside. They’re burning the cabins. There’s blood everywhere. Must have been seven or eight of them. And there was a man with a beard. He seemed to be leading them.”
Nate felt his heart sink. How many were dead? How many of his friends? Hell, he might as well say it: these people were his family.
“I went out the window,” Darcy said. “I thought I was dead, but I killed the Larva on its hand like Sophie showed us. Then I slipped away. They’re on their way here right now. They’re traveling like a pack.”
“What do we do?” Nate asked. “Run? Scatter into the woods?”
Logan shook her head. “It takes at least two of us to take down one of them. If we scatter they’ll pick us off one by one.”
“Alright,” Nate said. “Maybe I can talk to Zed. He and I were close once. Maybe I can bargain for our lives.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Logan spat.
“Why is diplomacy idiotic?”
“You really need me to list the reasons? First, you don’t know where he is. Second, Jake and Sophie are already out there trying to find him. Third, he probably sent a hoard of zombie plant monsters to kill us, so he doesn’t seem reasonable. Fourth, we don’t even know he’s the one controlling them. Maybe this is what people are like when they come back from banishment.”
Nate opened his mouth to respond but then paused. He couldn’t refute any of her points. “Okay. I give. What do we do?”
Logan looked out the window down the trail and Nate followed her gaze. There they were. A hoard of eight people wielding thirty-two Larvae.
She sighed. “Maybe we can do this different than last time. Their heads seem to come off pretty easy. Let’s gather near the door. They can only come through one, maybe two at a time tops. Taylor, give me your ax. I’ll take off their heads as quickly as I can. Then the rest of you’ll deal with the Larvae. Deal?”
She held out her hand. Taylor frowned at the ax for a long moment, his brow furrowed.
“Come on, man,” Logan said.
He handed over the ax, then pulled a knife out of his belt with what looked to Nate like melancholy.
“Logan,” Nate said, “you sure you don’t want me to take ax duty?”
“You don’t think I can handle it?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. At all. But that kid needs you.”
Logan smiled. “That’s exactly why I can’t trust one of you nerds with the ax. Or Captain Space-Out there. I want us to survive this.”
Nate held up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay. Just thought I’d offer.”
The unbanished were almost at the door.
Nate gripped his knife. “Everybody ready?”
A chorus of tentative, vaguely affirmative noises came back to him.
Logan raised her ax. “If we make it through this, we really need to start having cadence drills or something. That was weak.”
The first naked man stepped across the threshold, and Logan swung her ax.
What happened next was a blur to Nate. The battle may have lasted three minutes and it may have lasted thirty. All sense of time and reality was lost for him. All he knew was the glint of his knife blade, the sharp cries of the injured, and the terrible sights and smells of wounds and death.
Logan neatly knocked off the heads of the first four banished. Leonard took a bad wound to the side, but, other than that, they killed the first twenty Larvae without trouble.
Logan moved like an unholy force of nature. There was no hesitation, no sign of concern for her own safety. It was as if she had been born for this moment.
The fifth man through the door was smarter or luckier than the rest. He lunged a step to the left as Logan swung at him, causing her ax to ricochet off the Larva on his shoulder.
“Logan!” Nate yelled, but it was too late. The man in the doorway grabbed the Logan’s ax and pulled, dragging her outside. There was a flurry of movement, and Logan went down. He never even heard her cry out.
He choked back his emotion. He couldn’t lose it. Not now. Not with the rest of them trying to survive. He saw the handle of the ax sticking inside the doorway. He reached out, intending to take over for the fallen Logan, but another arm snaked past him and grabbed the ax.
“I got this,” Taylor said, lifting the ax.
Nate paused, then nodded.
True to his word, Taylor quickly decapitated the next two who tried to pass through. The third one got by him as he was trying to pull his ax from the stubborn neck of the last man he’d taken down.
The man sprinted forward and drove a Larva-baring fist into Leonard’s face. He spun and shoved the other fist into the side of Darcy’s head.
Nate screamed in rage and dropped the two Larvae who were hurting his friends. Gail felled the two on the man’s shoulders, and Taylor quickly followed up with an ax to the neck.
It was too late for Leonard and Darcy, though.
Nate looked around. It was only him, Taylor, and Gail left. And Mason, of course, who was still locked in the bathroom.
They all turned toward the door. Only one of the unbanished left. He moved toward the doorway, seeming to walk slower than the rest of them had. Nate recognized this one. Dale. He’d been banished for attacking a woman a few years ago.
Taylor moved back to the door. As Dale approached, Taylor swung his ax hard, taking off the man’s head in a single blow. Nate and Gail dove forward, killing the Larvae.
Nate was almost sad as he stabbed the last of the creatures. He wished he could kill it again. Kill it a hundred times for the damage its brothers and sisters had done to the people of Sanctuary. Instead, he sat there, dazed, watching the black sludge run off his knife blade.
There was a flash in his head, another tiny bit of his old telepathy. Something powerful was happening in Taylor’s mind. Something primal.
Suddenly, Gail cried out in pain and surprise. Nate spun around. Had they missed one of the Larvae?
What he saw stopped him cold. Even now, even after all this, he wasn’t prepared for what he saw. Then there was a blur of movement, and it was his turn to cry out.
3. Sanctuary
Sophie made her way up the path toward the house, silently cursing Jake’s annoying, untrustworthy, and apparently magical brother. It hardly seemed fair; invisibility was cheating.
He had the book. He had a compass. He claimed he wanted to hide the book from Zed, but who knew for certain?
Worst of all, her own compass couldn’t seem to locate him. He’d somehow made himself invisible even to the Tool.
Jake was dead. The book was gone. She had no way to find Frank. All she could think to do was head back to Jake’s house. The men and women there could be fighting the unbanished people right now. She had to try to help them.
Thankfully, today the trail back to the house wasn’t long. It took her less than fifteen minutes.
When she was almost there, she stopped and gasped. She surveyed the carnage on the porch. Bodies. Heads. So many of the unbanished. Then she saw something else out of the corner of her eye, a swatch of clothing. She put a hand over her mouth.
It was Logan, dead on the ground. Tears sprang to her eyes.
There was Darcy. And Evan. And Leonard, sweet Leonard, who’d had such a crush on her. And, oh God, there was Frasier.
All dead. Them and more.
She had done this. It was her fault. It was all on her.
A sudden noise made her look up.
Taylor sat on the floor near the open doorway, a bloody ax lying across his outstretched legs.
“Hello, Sophie Porter.”
Sophie stepped back. “What happened here?”
Taylor
smiled. “I think you know. You set them free, and they came here to kill us.” He picked up the ax and twirled it in his hands. “Hell of a thing, isn’t it? I’m the one person you wanted dead, and here I am the only one to survive the attack you started.”
Tears were running down Sophie’s face now.
Taylor pushed himself up and struggled to his feet.
Sophie saw Nate on the ground inside the door and let out another cry of sorrow. He lay on his stomach, his left cheek against the floor. The back of his head was split open. That was no Larva wound.
“Taylor, what did you do?”
He was walking toward her, sauntering forward, using the ax like a cane. She cursed herself for not running the moment she saw him.
“Come on,” he said. “It’s not like any of us were gonna survive anyway. I’m done playing house.”
She swung her backpack off her back and quickly unzipped it. She reached inside, searching for the gun. Her hand closed around something else instead, something metal. The compass.
Taylor was moving toward her now, much faster than she would have thought possible for such a big man. And he was swinging the ax. She tried to backpedal, but he was coming too fast.
He was holding the head of the ax and swinging the handle at her, she realized. He wanted to bludgeon her. Just like Heather.
The ax handle collided with her head, and she collapsed. Everything went dark.
She opened her eyes and saw two small legs in front of her. The boy bent down and took the compass out of her hand. She tried to speak, but everything went dark before she could.
The next time she opened her eyes, she heard Taylor whistling.
Her first thought was relief. She was alive. She reached up and felt her head. God, it hurt. But it wasn’t split open. There was no blood on her hand when she pulled it away from her head.
Taylor was crouched on the ground across the room, watching her. Had he been watching the whole time she was passed out? “Glad you’re awake. I was afraid I might have swung too hard. I get carried away sometimes. Like with your sister.”
She groggily raised herself to a sitting position. The world was swimming before her eyes. She blinked hard three times and things cleared up a little.
