“Do it and I take him with me!” Hendrix shouted, running the knife along Malik’s neck.
BAM!
Bennie fired anyway. His shot obliterated Hendrix’s left ear.
Hendrix cried out, dropping his knife and running toward the far wall where another stairwell and metal door were visible.
Hendrix mounted the steps. Bennie aimed at his back at the moment the metal door burst open and a bevy of moon-colored arms spidered in.
It was impossible to determine how many Thresher were there, but one of them broke from the swarm and grabbed Hendrix and then two more seized the insides of his legs and ripped him apart as if he was a chicken wing.
Moses covered Malik’s eyes as Hendrix’s gurgled screams rose and fell.
Marisol stood near Elias, pointing back down the hallway.
“We need to run right now and not look back!” she shouted. “We’ve only got ten minutes!”
Hesitant looks were traded and she screamed, “RUN!”
They did, shooting down the hallway as the Thresher burst down into the underground tunnel, shrieking like sinners roasting in hell.
With Marisol in the lead, the group loped up through the tunnel. They halted only once, seeing the Thresher filling up the foyer of the Codex Building, overwhelming the remnants of Longman’s army along with several partisans who were still battling them.
Marisol and the others watched in nerve-shredded wonderment as the delegation of demons, their eyes whiter than sheets of paper, seemed to roll right over the fighters like a great wave. There were two more of the battle machines left, the operators protected inside their metallic exoskeletons. The cannons on the end of the machines’ arms continued to spin, mowing down dozens, perhaps hundreds of Thresher. But the cannons soon fell silent and the white-eyed monsters grabbed the machines and pulled them down and set upon the operators, prying them from inside their metal cages as Marisol turned away.
She looked around, realizing the ground was carpeted in bodies and appendages, the tile and steel underfoot slicked with gore. There was no time to shed tears for the fallen, however. If they were lucky, blessed might be a better word, they’d have just enough time to exit the death trap.
With no good way out, Marisol scrambled up an inner staircase to the building’s second floor. Jessup and Bennie were at the very rear, providing cover fire, shooting at the approaching monsters who stampeded over the bodies of the dead and dying.
Marisol and Elias led everyone through a maze of ductwork and metal corridors, passing startled workers and others in the employ of Longman who were frozen in place, shell-shocked.
Marisol screamed for the onlookers to run, but most were too terrified to move. They just stood and watched as Marisol guided the pack over a section of metal grating toward the rear of the Codex Building. How long did they have? Eight minutes? Maybe nine? There was a window in a rear office that provided an excellent view of the wall and Marisol struck off toward it.
The group entered the office and slammed the door behind them, shutting out the howling of the Thresher and the wailing of Longman’s people as they were devoured, that was echoing over everything.
Everyone looked out the broken window. The edge of the wall was close, maybe ten feet away, and appeared to be unguarded. Marisol glanced back, judging the distance.
“Let’s go, let’s go!” Bennie shouted. “We need to leave up out here, like yesterday!”
“We can jump for it!” Marisol screamed.
Jessup studied the frame of the window. He realized it was too narrow to allow a full, running jump.
“Get back,” he said.
The others moved back, ducking and covering their heads. Jessup followed them and fired the last shot from the grenade launcher.
The area around the window exploded in a hail of smoke and debris, showering everyone in grit. When Jessup looked up, there was an enormous hole in the wall.
“That’ll do,” Jessup said.
Then he signaled to Elias and Marisol. “You first.”
Elias trotted back and then ran forward, his feet touching the edge of the wall before he went airborne. He sailed over the open space that lay between the building and the wall and then—
WHAM!
Hit the wall and rolled over. He signaled for the others to follow and they did.
Jessup was the last behind, peering through the pebbled glass window on the office door. He could see the slump-shouldered figures of the Thresher outside, noses raised, searching for him.
He dropped the grenade launcher and went running forward as the door imploded behind him. At the moment the Thresher entered the room, Jessup had already landed on the wall.
He and the others looked back to see the Thresher hissing and clawing at them from the hole in the side of the Codex Building. Marisol raised her hand and led everyone along the top of the wall, down to the spot where a hole had been blasted in it by the suicide bomber.
“How long?!” Jessup called out.
Nobody replied. Marisol had a feeling that they had, at most, six or seven minutes before the warhead detonated. She was terrified at the prospect of the explosion, praying that its effects might somehow be contained by the size of the building. If they were overcome in the explosion, so be it, she thought. But they wouldn’t give up. Ever. They couldn’t.
They reached the end of the wall and Marisol looked back one last time. She saw Longman’s people, his workers, sycophants and muscle, staring out from the windows in the upper levels of the Codex Building. Below them, a ragged pack of thousands of Thresher shambled through the urban canyons of what was once New Chicago. Out of sewer grates and from the undersides of buildings and various duckholes they emerged, their numbers growing exponentially as they surged forward.
Marisol felt little sorrow for the people trapped in the Codex. They’d sided with Longman and she’d tried to help them. She’d done what she could, but there was nothing else she could do for them now. She slid down a chute at the end of the wall that led to the hole that opened to the grasslands.
129
At that very moment, the powerized cart was careening down through the semi-darkness. Farrow could hear two sounds at once: the whirring of the timer on the nuclear warhead, and the wailing of the Thresher that seemed to be coming from every direction.
Longman’s face was as white as a tombstone, his vitality ebbing with every moment. With great effort, he lifted his head and fixed a look on Farrow.
“There’s no way to stop it,” Longman chuckled. “The bomb. The end of everything is inevitable.”
Farrow thought about this, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Maybe that ain’t such a bad thing.”
The cart skidded to a standstill. The tunnel out in front was blocked. Blocked by hundreds of Thresher who were snatching at the air, ready to taste Farrow’s and Longman’s flesh.
“End of the road, asshole,” Farrow said, tipping Longman’s body off of the cart.
Longman peered up at Farrow and expected to see malice in his eyes, but saw something else entirely. What was it? The flicker of hope. It disgusted him.
“Go ahead and end it,” Longman said. “Kill me.”
“Not before I let you know something,” Farrow said, kneeling, feeling the patter of the approaching Thresher on the cool cement floor. “I used to work with a man who was once in the Secret Service.”
Longman spit blood at Farrow.
“And this man had once guarded the Vice President down into a hole in Nevada where they used to test nukes. He told me some things I’ve forgotten, particularly about containment. You know what that is, Longman?”
Longman just stared at him.
“This building here, the one you spent so much time fortifying, was built to trap explosions,” Farrow said.
“So what?” Longman replied.
“So we’re in a tomb you and me,” Farrow said. “The people that you wanted to kill? The girl and the boy and all the others who are lu
cky enough to get the fuck out of this place? They’re gonna live to fight another day. Bottom line is, you lose, dickhead,” Farrow added, sliding to the ground, chuckling.
Longman groaned, processing this, rolling over onto his side, struggling to breathe. In those last few minutes, his life seeped out all around him and there came to him, in a flashstorm of images, every terrible thing he’d ever done, from the most recent, to the earliest. He saw the ghostly faces of those he’d killed or ordered put down. They were grinning at him, whispering, warning him that they would be waiting for him on the other side. But what troubled him most wasn’t these images, but the fact that he’d lost control of his bladder.
In the seconds after he pissed himself, Longman looked up and saw the shadows alive with movement. And then the face of a female Thresher appeared, mouth open like a shark’s. The woman bit down on his forehead as more of her brethren fell atop Longman who screamed as his life winked out.
Farrow watched this and eased back on the cart as the Thresher descended on him. There were stirrings of fear inside that were quickly overwhelmed by a sense of hopefulness. The Thresher were on top of him, but he felt no pain. He’d left his physical body and could see his wife and daughter standing on the other side of an enormous door made of white marble and they were beckoning to him. He smiled and waved back even as the Thresher ripped him apart.
The final sound he heard was the timer on the warhead clicking over. There was a pause and then a wall of brilliant white, almost angelic light, exploded.
A column of sterilizing light issued forth, followed by an ocean of fire that vaporized everything in the tunnel which absorbed much of the initial blast.
The fire surged through the tunnel, however, carbonizing the thousands of massing Thresher before the blastwave scythed up and through the Codex Building with a sonic BOOM!
Blazing flames melted the Codex’s lattice of steel joists, the building shell giving way, the superstructure bowing, the floors crashing down in a domino effect that collapsed the entire structure in less than ten seconds. But it had held, the building’s bones and all of the extra metal welded onto the outside had contained most of the blast.
A partial shockwave nevertheless spread out like a wave across portions of New Chicago. The wall absorbed much of this secondary blast, protecting the survivors who were running through the grasslands. Those that remained within the wall, however, the Thresher and Longman’s people were swallowed up in sea of fire that was so intense that the streets soon began to glow orange.
Out in the grasslands, perhaps a half mile or more from the wall, Marisol and the others were knocked to the ground by the blast. They looked back in terror as the tell-tale mushroom cloud spiraled up into the sky.
Elias’s ears popped and he clutched them, holding back a scream. A trickle of blood leaked from Jessup’s nose as the waves from the explosion rolled through the grass, standing the blades at full attention, before dissipating.
“My God,” Jessup said, rising, his voice sounding distant, distorted. “My … God.”
Everyone stood, too terrified to speak as the fireball rose into the heavens. Next came the debris from the explosion, falling over the grasslands like snow flurries.
“We need to move,” Jessup said.
“There might be radiation in whatever falls from the sky,” offered Liza.
Some of the other survivors, members of Guilds of some prominence, cast wary eyes on Marisol and the others. They still associated Marisol and Elias with Longman and were wary of them, regardless of whether the dictator was dead.
“We don’t have to follow you,” said one of the Guild members, a tall, thin man with a mop of white hair. Marisol watched the man move toward Jessup as the others waited with baited breath. Then Marisol strode up to the man and held his fiery gaze.
“No, you don’t,” she said, standing, still holding her blood-stained sword.
“Who are you to even speak, girl?” the man said.
“Her name’s Marisol,” Elias said, clenching his fists.
The man waved his hand. “She needs to remain silent. I know who she is. Most of us do. She was in his service … she was a killer for Longman.”
“That’s right,” Marisol said, holding the man’s look. “I did. I killed for him and so did you.”
The man’s face reddened and Marisol pointed at his followers. “So did all of us!” she shouted.
Murmurs in the crowd, the other Guild members traded looks as Marisol slammed her sword into the ground. “It’s a hard thing to say, but before, if you weren’t against Longman, you were for him.”
“That’s a lie!” the man bellowed.
“It’s the truth,” Marisol said. “Those who stood up to him, people like my father and brother, are no longer with us. The only reason any of us are here is because we served some purpose for him, even if it was unintentional. None of us are blameless and none of that matters anymore does it? What matters is that we made it out and now we have the chance to make a future of our own choosing.”
Some in the crowd nodded at this. Several people, mostly women looked at Marisol with expectant eyes and newfound respect.
“So you can come with us, or you can go your own way, and that’s just fine,” Marisol said.
She looked to Elias, Jessup and the others who nodded and picked up their gear. They began moving across the grasslands as the man called out to them. “Where will you go?”
Marisol looked at Elias, Jessup, Bennie and the others. Jessup shared a moment with Liza, then peered back toward the coastline. The boat was still there and they could easily load Marisol and Elias and a few others aboard, but then what? The place they’d come from was no better than the grasslands and most of the others they’d ventured to were much worse.
Jessup angled around and gestured out toward the grass.
“There’s a train out there,” Jessup said. “A train that’s controlled by good people who are looking for folks like us to start over.”
“How far is this train?” the man asked.
“We won’t know until we get there,” Jessup said.
Jessup looked to Marisol and Elias and they nodded. Jessup grabbed Liza’s hand and squeezed it as everyone began walking through the grass as slowly, the other survivors picked up what meager belongings they had and struck out after them.
They’d gone only a short distance when Marisol moved away from the others, striding to a small stream that flowed out toward the coastline. She reached in a pocket and pulled out the only item she’d kept. The photograph of her and her family. She tore the picture into tiny pieces and dropped them into the water as the current carried them away.
“What’d you do that for?” a voice asked.
Marisol spotted Elias standing behind her.
“Because everything that happened before today is ancient history,” she said. “The only thing that matters is what we do from now on.”
He nodded and leaned in and kissed her on the lips, resting his forehead against hers. And then they turned and ran after the others, racing past them to take the lead as the procession melted into the grass.
About the Authors
George S. Mahaffey Jr. is a lawyer, screenwriter, and author. His script Heatseekers was bought by Paramount Pictures with Michael Bay producing and Timur Bekmambetov directing. In addition, he’s sold or written scripts for Arnold Kopelson, Jason Blum, Benderspink, director Louis Leterrier, and is the creator of In the Dust, an action-horror graphic novel in the vein of 30 Days of Night to be published by Top cCow with art by Christian Duce. He has also written the Horror Books Amityville: Origins, Amityville, Amityville: Revenants, Razorbacks I, II and III, the Vertical City zombie thriller series (4 books), the Broken Road action series (2 books), The Devil’s Ark, the vampire book Familiars, and The Pact.
www.georgemahaffey.com
Justin Sloan writes vampires and shifters, often in the genres of post-apocalyptic, urban fantasy, epic military fantasy, and supern
atural thriller. He is a video game writer (Game of Thrones; Walking Dead; Michonne, Minecraft: Story Mode), novelist (Justice is Calling, Hounds of God, Falls of Redemption, etc.), podcaster, and screenwriter.
He has written on the subject of taking writing from hobby to career in his book Creative Writing Career and its sequel, and how veterans can pursue their passions in Military Veterans in Creative Careers. Justin studied writing at the Johns Hopkins University and UCLA after five years in the U.S. Marine Corps, and now works as a writer and editor for Military.com.
Favorite properties: Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, The Princess Bride, Tomb Raider
A Kurtherian Gambit Author
For more information on Justin’s writing, follow him at:
@JustinMSloan
www.JustinSloanAuthor.com
www.CreativeWritingCareer.com
Author Notes Book 1
George S. Mahaffey Jr.
There’s a line in the movie “The Devil’s Advocate” where Pacino (the Devil) says that he loves the law because it’s the ultimate backstage pass. In creating the BLOOD RUNNERS books, I kept that line in the back of my head as I worked to fashion a story in a post-apocalyptic Middle America around a villain who would be the opposite of almost every bad guy we’ve seen before. He wouldn’t necessarily be a bad-ass soldier or a one-dimensional killer, but more like a master manipulator. A former attorney, the guy standing at the back of the room that nobody notices, who finds himself at the top of the heap after the world unwinds. And in an effort to bring order out of chaos, he institutes a system of justice that he remembers being employed in the Middle Ages. Thinking the medieval concept of human “sin eaters” would be pretty cool, I then added our heroes, a young woman and man, who are actually hired by the villain to hunt each other down, but discover in the process, a dark secret that might bring an end to the villain’s rule.
Blood Runners: Box Set Page 50
