All Roads Lead To Terror: Coming of age in a post apocalyptic world (Dreadland Chronicles Book 1)

by Richard Schiver

  Thirty One

  As Billie-Bob explored the floors below them Meat and Window were left in what had once been a small apartment, with a kitchen along one wall, and a single door opposite. The windows had been covered by sheets of plywood leaving the room dark with a narrow strip of light outlining the plywood as dense shadows lay crowded in the four corners.

  Window crossed to the door and tried it. Surprised to find it unlocked, he pulled the door open wide, and cautiously peered around the corner to look down the vacant hallway. Light came from the window at the end of the hall, casting shadows across the debris strewn its full length.

  “How high up do you think we are?” Meat said as he crossed to the window where he inspected the plywood as slivers of daylight illuminated its perimeter.

  “I counted five floors as they brought us up.” Window said from the doorway where he continued to stare down that shadowy corridor. He was certain he had seen movement down near the floor.

  From the wall next to the window Meat heard a steady scratching that served to awaken old memories he’d thought had been long buried. From a time before he and the man he called Dad found Bremo Bluff, when he was very young.

  The sound intensified as the memory stirred. It felt like something was reaching out to him from the building itself. Something far older than any of them could understand.

  “Do you hear that?” Meat said.

  “What?’ Window said as he stood at the door staring into the gloomy depths of the hallway.

  “In the walls, that scratching sound.”

  “It’s probably rats,” Window said, “why did they bring us up here and leave? And what the hell is the master?”

  The scratching grew even louder as that old memory rose to the surface of his consciousness like an air bubble rising through the oily waters of a stagnant swamp.

  “Maybe they’re feeding us to whatever it is.” Window said. He stopped in front of Meat and looked at him with a worried expression. “Are you all right?”

  “I guess, why?”

  “You don’t look so good.”

  “I feel okay.”

  “Are you sure? You’re not gonna croak on me are you?”

  “Of course not,” Meat said as movement against the far wall caught his eye. The walls of the room had been finished in garish floral wallpaper, red flowers against a white background, and as Meat watched it looked like the surface of the wall itself was rippling in response to that shadowy movement. As if something were passing just beneath the surface of a perfectly still pond, with only the ripples on the water’s surface to mark its passage.

  That unseen object vanished into the narrow crevices around a closed door and Meat was overcome with the need to see what lay on the other side of that silent facade. From the other side he heard the rustle of movement, the clatter of clawed feet upon a hard surface, the cry of a baby.

  Thirty Two

  “Don’t be afraid,” a familiar voice whispered in his ear as Gregory fell into the waiting arms of his wife, comforted by her warmth, he allowed himself to relax for the first time since that day in March when the world had been turned upon its ear. Around him was a familiar place, the living room of the small cabin in the mountains west of Richmond, but that couldn’t be right. They’d lost that place to another band of survivors. A group of men who had proven to be more savage than he could bring himself to be in the early days of the awakening.

  Soft yellow sunlight flowed through the window, painting a bright square on the floor where Roscoe, their daughters mutt lay sleeping. He was a good dog, your average run of the mill Heinz fifty seven running more towards spaniel, his black and white markings so reminiscent of a cow that at times they referred to him as their miniature cow.

  “Where’s Shelly?” he said as a shadow flashed across the window, accompanied by the distant squawk of a bird. Roscoe remained asleep, undisturbed, locked forever in the time and place that were a part of his memories.

  “She’s asleep in the back,” Maggie, his wife said.

  Shelly was asleep, a sleep from which she would never awaken. He looked towards the hallway at the back of the cabin, a short corridor that branched off into the two bedrooms that occupied the back. He could see no further than a few feet into the passage. Shadows filled the hallway and from them came a cold wind that chilled him to the bone.

  “No matter what happens,” his wife said, “don’t be afraid.”

  “But I am,” he admitted as he tightened his grip about his wife’s waist afraid to let her go as he lay in her lap.

  “We will always be here for you, waiting,” she said.

  That cold wind strengthened as the sensation of his arms about his wife’s waist slowly slipped away from him and the room around him darkened. He struggled to remain where he was, clinging to the memory of his wife, his daughter, and that brief interlude of safety they’d experienced as the world came crashing down around them.

  Points of pain erupt across his body, sharp points that penetrated his flesh, covering him from head to foot as his arms were stretched out to either side.

  That cold wind grew stronger as the sensation of something clinging to his shoulder intruded upon the memory. He looked up into his wife’s eyes, so full of warmth and love. They shuddered, the image jumping like film knocked from its tracks, and her gaze took on a cruel indifference, darkening to a single black spot that watched him with the odd detachment of an animal surveying its next meal.

  What have I done?

  He blinked, opening his eyes to be immediately overwhelmed with a sense of vertigo as the street running along the apartment building lay eighty feet below him. He looked down at his feet, to find them tied by wire to a steel post, his arms stretched out to either side of him, the wrists likewise tied by wire as he hung precariously over the edge of the roof.

  He squeezed his eyed shut, terrified of the reality that greeted him, the sound of birds crying out in raucous voices coming to him from above. He tiled his head back, looking up to see crows circling about above him. From his left came the harsh flutter of wings beating at the air as the sensation of something clinging to he flesh of his arm came to him.

  He looked to the left, turning his head as far as he could, finding his head fastened to that steel pipe by strands of wire that cut into the flesh of his forehead. His gaze settled on the black eye of a crow that watched him with indifference.

  “Don’t be afraid,” his wife’s voice came to him from the depths of his memory and he squeeze his eyes shut to escape the despair that surrounded him. Struggling desperately to rejoin her in that cozy room.

  Something pecked at his cheek, tearing the flesh and he cried out in desperation, his shout sending the crow that had settled on his arm back into the air amid a flurry of flapping wings. It wasn’t long before it returned, accompanied by many more that fought among themselves for a good spot, his cheeks were shredded by pecking beaks as their raucous cries surrounded his head like a halo. Pain flashed white hot as one of them found his eye and he screamed in agony as they battled over the morsel that had been plucked from that cavity, ignoring his cries, confident that he could do them no harm.

  “If thine right eye offend thee, pluck it out,” the droning voice of Reverend Jacobs recited as the memory of stuffy mornings trapped in the close confines of The First Church of the Revival filtered through his thoughts. His parents had been a part of the good Reverend’s flock, attending his every service, dragging Gregory and his little sister Mariah, with them.

  With the memory of his sister came the guilt. She had called him that morning of the awakening, begging for his help. She only lived twenty miles away, but Gregory had been afraid as he packed up his wife and daughter to flee into the hills. He could have gone to get her, and maybe things would have been a little different, as it was he hadn’t and had never heard from her again. Except for the middle of the night, when he lay awake, his sleeping wife beside him, as the guilt gnawed at the faith his parents had worked
so hard to instill in him.

  “Don’t be afraid,” his wife’s reassuring words whispered from the dark recesses of his thoughts and he struggled to embrace them as his remaining eye was plucked from its socket by the crows that had gathered around his head.

  Thirty Three

  Meat didn’t want to go in there but he had no choice, and just as he had done nine years earlier, as a child of five hiding with the man he called Dad, in an abandoned home. He had been drawn to a closed door at the end of a long shadowy hallway. The memory of that day blossomed in his mind as he slowly approached the door shrouded in thick shadows.

  The past and the present came together as he once more approached that single door with hesitant step. Bright light illuminated that narrow strip between the floor and the bottom of the door. A glow that pushed back the night and offered refuge from the terror of the deep shadows that throbbed with evil intent all around him.

  Psychologically he had never left that house after he discovered what lay behind that silent door, screaming as only a terrified child could. The vocalization of his terror drawing the man he called Dad who had raced down the hallway, grabbing him with rough hands and pulling him from the room before he slammed the door on what he had seen.

  Pain is love, love is pain. The words whispered through his mind as he recalled the harsh way the man he called Dad had pulled him from the room. An act of love that had left an indelible scar.

  But it didn’t matter; his psyche had become trapped at the single moment of time, lost in the past. It was as if he had never found Bremo Bluff, Window, Einstein, or Billy Bob. Lost and alone in a wild world that sought only to cause him harm.

  Pain is love, love is pain.

  Now in the present he was facing that door again, only this time there would be no one to save him when he revealed the secret that lay behind that silent facade. As he reached the door he felt it all around him, a presence that was as much the walls of the building as it was the air he breathed. A presence that enveloped him in its chilled embrace, drawing him to the door with a growing anticipation, a wild eagerness that washed through him with barely restrained excitement as his hand settled on the knob.

  On the other side of the door lay a truth that would set him free and finally allow him to make sense of the world around him. As the door slowly opened he heard the sound of movement. Tiny claws skittered across a hard surface as the smell of decay washed out of the room and the door swung open.

  In the center of the room, illuminated by a faint glow, stood a bassinet. In the shadows beneath it the floor seethed like the surface of a storm tossed ocean. Darker objects slithered over and around one another with the island of the bassinet in the center. The cover was up, concealing what lay within the bassinette but Meat already knew what waited for him on the other side of that innocent white fabric.

  Dark objects moved up and down the sides of the crib, tiny claws grasping for purchase against the material of the bassinette with a distinct sound that itself was a trigger for the memory that filled his mind as he stepped around the side of the baby bed.

  A single tear traced a wet path down his dirty cheek as the air around him was filled with an expectant hush. From the bassinette came the cry of a wounded animal punctuated by the growl of a predator as it took its prize. Those shadowy shapes continued to race up and down the sides of the bassinette, tiny claws tapping against the material, muted squeaks as tiny flashing teeth sparkled like distant stars in the velvety emptiness.

  Something stirred in the shadows around him, reaching out to him across a vast gulf of time and space, curling itself about his psyche like a cold dog seeking warmth. It brushed against his cheek and for a brief second he was aware of some alien thing taking sustenance not from the salty substance of the tear, but from the terror that infused it. A terror born one fall day when a five-year-old child discovered the harsh truth about the reality in which he lived.

  The memory of that day was unleashed and as he stepped around the side of the bassinette he was no longer the self assured fourteen year old who had led a band of his peers in search of the missing children. He became what he had always been at heart. A frightened five-year-old child trapped by terror.

  Sitting in the bassinette, surrounded by a pile of decapitated rats, an infant looked up at him with silvery eyes. The baby had turned, where there had once been the pink flesh of healthy life there now existed only the pallid gray cast of a diseased carcass that moved with a slowly disjointed pantomime of life. As he watched the baby brought another squealing rat to its mouth and savagely bit off its head, dropping the corpse onto the growing pile as it sought another with pudgy grasping hands.

  It was a trade off, those rats around it that were still alive fed upon the exposed viscera that lay in the Baby’s lap. Like a twisted parody of a Venus flytrap the baby was using the scent of its ruptured abdomen to draw its victims to it. Unable to seek out sustenance on its own it had adapted to the situation as best it could.

  Blood had turned the inside of the once white bassinette a bright pink and the baby looked up at him with hungry, cataract coated, eyes. It leaned forward, pushing aside the pile of carcasses that surrounded it, reaching for the end of the bassinette where it clung to the side with pudgy, blood covered, hands as those sparkling eyes never once left Meat’s face.

  The tears were flowing freely now as that alien force surrounded him, embracing him with a chilled presence that sent goose bumps washing across his flesh. He felt something licking at his face as hot tears of terror spilled from his eyes, a rubbery yet coarse sensation that pulled at his flesh as it dined upon the terror that fed the tears.

  Meat pulled his revolver as he backpedaled across the room. Leveling the muzzle at the baby he fired, the sound hammering his eardrums in the close confines of the small room. Pounding footsteps came from beyond the opened door and Window raced into the room carrying a candle.

  “What the hell man? What are you shooting at?”

  Meat pointed at the center of the room where the bassinette had been, but the room was now empty. In what little light they had they saw a shadowy figure against the wall to the right, the walls around them covered by assorted drawings, interspersed with a name written in thick black marker.

  Watson, the oldest writing proclaimed and upon closer inspection they saw that the drawings were crude renderings of Celtic crosses wrapped in barbed wire, with assorted passages from the bible. A single phrase dominant among them. Pain is love, love is pain.

  “I think I know who the master is.” Window said from the other side of the room.

  They had built a shrine to honor him.

  The mummified corpse of an older man had been crucified on a rough wooden cross, a dirty white collar circled his throat. Strands of barbed wire had been wrapped around his outstretched arms and his body, drawn tight the barbs had pierced the flesh, staining the fabric of the coat with spots of blood. In the center of each palm a rusted nail protruded from the flesh. It was obvious he had been alive as there were signs of struggle where the nails had torn the flesh.

  “Looks like they might have taken his teachings a little too seriously.”

  “Did they think he was a God?”

  “Maybe.”

  The handle of a butcher’s knife protruded from his right eye and Meat imagined the children huddled in the dark, as their leader, whom they had crucified, was reborn into a flesh-eating demon, fulfilling an ancient prophecy as it fed their terror and, the shadows in turn fed upon their fear. He had arisen as their belief said he should, but what had awakened on the cross bore little semblance to the man he had once been.

  Upon closer inspection Meat discovered a network of interlaced veins covering the leathery flesh of the dead man’s face. The same type of veins covered the hands as well, vanishing into the cuff of the heavy black jacket he had been wearing when he was crucified.

  “What are you looking for?” Window said as Meat knelt down and looked at the man’s feet hanging
several inches above the floor. From within the loose cuffs of his black pants twisted strands of the veins ran to the floor, snaking away into the dense shadows, coming together in a thick strand of twisted veins that ran along the wall behind the body, following the corner where the wall and floor met.

  “Look at this.” Meat said as he followed the twisted strand until it vanished into the wall.

  “What the hell is it?”

  “I have no idea,” Meat said as he removed his knife from the scabbard on his belt and probed the surface of the membrane with its point. The flesh was elastic, giving as he applied pressure, bouncing back to its original shape when he released it.

  Pushing harder he penetrated the surface, and was rewarded with a thick yellow liquid that oozed from the wound around the tip of his knife. A putrid stench rose from the liquid, reminding him of the pus from an infected wound.

  “It’s in the walls,” Meat said.

  “What’s in the walls?” Window said as he watched over Meat’s shoulder.

  “I don’t know what the hell it is, all I know is I want to get out of here.” Meat pushed himself to his feet and crossed to the door. After a quick glance down the hallway he looked back at Window, “are you ready?”

  “It needs our terror to survive,” Window said, his gaze focused on something over Meat’s shoulder. Meat swiveled his head around to search for what Window was looking at, finding the empty wall behind him.

  “Did I ever tell you I was afraid of spiders?” Window said

  “What are you talking about, we gotta get out of here,” Meat said as he shook his head and a soft chill whispered the length of his spine. From the hallway came the sound of movement.

  “It’s waiting for us,” Window said as a single tear traced a wet path down his cheek. Shadows had gathered around Window, caressing his face with indistinct wisps that greedily slurped up that single tear. “It’s the biggest fucking spider I’ve ever seen,” Window continued in a soft voice, as if he were afraid that speaking any louder might draw the attention of whatever was in the hallway.