by Brian Harmon
Olivia tugged at his arm and steered him to the right.
“Where are we going?” Wayne asked.
“I don’t know!” But she guided him through the trees as though she knew the way.
A resounding crash erupted at their backs. Broken branches rained down around them. A large chunk of splintered wood bounced along the forest floor, passing only a few feet to their left as they ran.
At this rate, they were more likely to be killed by falling trees than by the monstrosity itself.
“Look!” Olivia pointed at something ahead of them, but Wayne saw it before she had even lifted her hand. It was a light, shining softly through the branches, a small one, dim, but well contrasted against the inky blackness around it. “What’s that?”
He didn’t know, but he was sure it had to be what they were looking for.
An explosive crack severed the silence of the forest almost directly behind them and another flurry of splintered timber and broken branches rained down on them. Wayne glanced back in time to see the bare, skeleton-like branches of an enormous night tree crash to the ground almost at their heels. In the same heart-stopping instant, he saw the thing behind them. It was a terrible, black shape that seemed to bubble from the forest like a great, shadowy blob. It reached out for them, a dark, pulsing thing, and he knew it was over. There was no way that great hand—or whatever it was—could miss them from that distance.
But again he was wrong. The beast veered suddenly to its left and slammed into a massive tree with enough force to send it tumbling to the ground in great, stuttering crashes. With a loud, gushing roar that was something between a sigh and the weak moan of a dying man, it reeled back and vanished into the darkness from which it had come.
Wayne and Olivia stared back as a furious cacophony of crashing trees and snapping branches rose from the nearby forest.
“What the hell just happened?” Wayne asked. One second it had been on the verge of dashing them into mush and the next it was leaving.
Olivia didn’t know, but she could still hear it thrashing around out there. It was still far closer than she cared for it to be. She tugged on his arm again and they both turned back toward the mysterious light.
As they ran, it occurred to Wayne that what just happened was not unlike what happened in Gilbert House with that thing that almost killed him and Albert. The old man had said that the Sentinel Queen got into its head, that it had been distracted. Was this the same thing? Had the Sentinel Queen stepped in and saved their lives? Or could the old man also be capable of doing such things?
“Where do you think that light’s coming from?” Olivia asked between breaths.
“No idea. But I think it’s where we’re supposed to go.”
The creatures were gathering again. Wayne could see them in the trees on either side and in front of them. He noticed with some concern that something seemed to be moving swiftly off to his left. He considered pausing to try and find a tree branch he could use as a club, but he didn’t think it would be wise to waste that much time.
There came a resounding crash from behind them. It was hard to tell, but it sounded to Wayne as though the thing had reoriented itself and was plowing through the trees again.
“We’re almost there,” Wayne said, trying to comfort himself as much as Olivia.
Up ahead, Wayne saw several more of the forest’s lifeless inhabitants. They had been facing away from them, moving toward the light, but now they turned to face them, their faces decayed, yet filled with an insatiable hunger.
“Wayne…”
“I see them.”
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know.” Suddenly he remembered the way the creatures had swarmed Gilbert House when they shined their flashlights through the windows. If that light had been there for any length of time, those things were probably crawling all over it by now.
He looked up at the light again and felt a spark of understanding. It was up high, shining through the treetops. Looking at it now, he saw that it was shining from a rectangular opening in a very large structure of some sort. A building. He stopped and stared up at it, amazed. “Is that…?”
“What?”
“That’s Gilbert House!” Suddenly, he realized where the light was coming from. “It’s your flashlight! I left it in the solarium.” He laughed. “We did leave a light on for us.”
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s not important.” He stared up at the enormous structure as they approached it. It was fully intact out here, as completely built as its impossible interior.
“Isn’t Gilbert House all sealed up on the ground floor?”
Wayne suddenly felt very sick. She was right. “Yes. It is.” There was no way in on the first floor.
“So how do we get in?”
“I don’t know.”
The creatures were moving toward them now, slowly, cautiously, but deliberately, closing in around them. More were coming out of the darkness. There were dozens of them, and there were dozens more behind them.
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know.”
There was another crash from behind them. That monster was closer now, and it was moving quickly.
In front of them, and on either side, the things that were not dead and yet not alive came closer and closer as more appeared out of the darkness, drawn from the light in Gilbert House to the light in Wayne’s hand and the life in their pounding hearts.
In greater numbers, they were braver, he realized. These things weren’t afraid of his cloak the way the scattered ones out in the forest had been. They were closing in much faster.
Olivia squeezed his hand. “I’m scared.”
“I know. So am I.”
Chapter 16
Wayne had time to consider how brave Olivia really was. She had been through hell these past two days and yet she still pushed on. Her determination to survive was amazing. Others would have given up by now. He might have given up by now.
His eyes darted from one creature to the next, studying them. Some of them were slow and shuffling, but others, most of them in fact, were light and agile, less like walking corpses than wild animals. They were suspicious of them, thanks to the old man’s mysterious cloak, but a great majority of them were obviously not afraid of him.
There was another crash from behind them. Most of the creatures stopped and looked in that direction. One of them actually took a step back.
Wayne watched this. He remembered the way the creatures had fled when the monster first appeared and suddenly he had an idea. “Come on.” He tugged her hand and ran.
“What are we doing?”
“You probably don’t want to know.”
“Oh god!”
The majority of the creatures were in front of them, moving toward them from the direction of Gilbert House. Wayne went right, circling around the gruesome crowd, weaving between trees and creeping corpses.
One of them stumbled into his path and he shoved it aside. He was surprised at how light the thing felt. It offered almost no resistance. It could have been made of cardboard.
After he’d gone several yards, he turned again and ran straight toward the light of Olivia’s dropped flashlight. The idea was to get around the group that had gathered around where they were standing, to allow them to get as close to Gilbert House as possible before the things surrounded them.
One of them grabbed Wayne’s arm and he jerked it free with a grunt. A moment later another lunged at him, its jaws open, actually trying to bite him. He ducked away, crying out in revulsion and horror.
“Wayne!”
“Come on!”
A creature with a great, swollen belly and a badly mangled arm sank the rotten fingers of its good hand into Olivia’s thick hair and pulled, drawing a terrified shriek.
Wayne turned, letting go of Olivia’s hand, and punched the thing, planting his fist squarely into its face. The skull cracked like a rotten log against his knuckles and it staggered
back and fell to the ground, taking a little of Olivia’s hair with it.
“That works,” Wayne said, turning back toward Gilbert House. It was nothing more than a reflex, but it had bought them another moment. He picked the nearest of the creatures and threw another punch into its ghastly face. The soft crunch of fragile bone was disgusting, but satisfying.
They pushed forward, into the clearing in which Gilbert House stood, shoving through the lumbering corpses and into the crowded courtyard that bordered the inner walls of the U-shaped structure. Here, they stopped, unable to go any farther. They were surrounded. Hundreds of creatures were coming at them, far more than he had expected, and all of them were reaching for them.
Olivia was screaming at him, her eyes wide with terror. After all she’d been through, it seemed she was finally about to die, and this was certainly not how she would have chosen to go.
Wayne threw another punch. This time the creature recoiled, but did not take the damage the other ones had. This one was harder. It even hurt his hand, as though its head were made not of flesh and bone but of packed clay. He struck it again and heard a sick crack of bone as its head snapped back, but still it did not back away. It staggered a little, distracted but undeterred. He threw both hands into its hard chest and shoved it back into those behind it, toppling them into a writhing pile of brittle flesh.
Olivia was still screaming. One of the creatures had her by the wrist, trying to drag her away. Wayne put it down with another punch, but they were not stopping. At his feet, a corpse with no legs was clinging to his ankles.
They were all around them, reaching for them, clawing at them. Olivia kicked one of them, driving it back, and then turned and grabbed Wayne’s cloak, yanking it hard enough to jerk it open.
Wayne kicked the one on the ground, driving his heel into its head, and then threw another punch. This time his fist actually broke through the face of the corpse he hit and his hand came back wet and cold. He cried out in revulsion even as he was striking the next one.
They were crowding closer, closing in on them, leaving them less room to resist. Vaguely, he realized that the old man’s cloak was probably the only reason they hadn’t already killed them. Whatever it was, it slowed them down, making them cautious, preventing them from swarming them all at once. Without it, they probably would have charged them both instantly, dismembering them before they even had a chance to fight. But this wasn’t such a blessing. Now they would die slowly instead of swiftly.
“What do we do?” Olivia sounded on the verge of hysterics, her voice shrill. One of the creatures grabbed her hair again and she smashed her elbow into its face by sheer reflex. It stumbled back, but did not release her.
Wayne didn’t have an answer for her. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how much time they had. He threw another punch, then another and another. He was fighting off an army and there was no way he could keep it up forever. He was already losing.
One of the creatures he knocked to the ground was clutching at his foot. A short, scrawny creature with an enormous skull had wrapped one gnarled hand around the hood of his cloak and was yanking fiercely at it. A thing that might have passed as human a few hundred years ago grabbed his arm and clung to him with frightening determination.
Behind him, Olivia was kicking at one on the ground while she struggled against two others that held her hands. Something cold and rotten was clinging to the side of her face.
Wayne dropped his flashlight and everything went dark around them as it was snatched away by the writhing dead.
Olivia screamed.
The world had become a sea of living corpses. The reek of decay filled their nostrils and cold, dry, bloodless hands groped at their skin.
Dry teeth sank into Wayne’s left arm, sending a bolt of agony through him.
Another creature bit into Olivia’s shoulder and she shrieked as much in terror as in pain. She was being pulled down to the ground and she was not strong enough to resist.
Wayne could feel a dull pain in his left shin, and something was boring into his left side. Something else had his hair. He could hardly move. Cold death was swallowing him and yet the only sounds were the soft, almost ocean-like movements of the dead and the piercing screams of the woman he’d come to rescue. He cried out more in anguish than anything else. After all he’d done, after all he’d suffered, this was what it was going to come down to. This was where it would all end. He had failed.
Suddenly, there was a noise, a great, resounding crash as one of the trees slammed down into the clearing and Wayne felt hope spring up from his fear.
He was going to find out now if he had a guardian angel.
As an awful sound filled the air, a sound that somehow seemed to Wayne like the cries of a million dying souls, the sea of not-dead-yet-not-alive bodies suddenly began to shift. A new mood quickly swept through the creatures. Some of them released their grips. Others suddenly turned away.
Taking advantage, Wayne threw his weight into one of the creatures, shoving it away, and then dropped another with a well-aimed punch.
Olivia was still screaming. She was on the ground, struggling to get out from beneath them. Something was biting her thigh, trying to gnaw through the tough fabric of her shorts. Something else was clawing at her exposed belly, tearing shallow grooves in her flesh. Another had her right hand, pulling it back as though it meant to tear it from her shoulder like a drumstick from a thigh. Yet another had somehow grabbed the left strap of her bra and seemed to be trying to drag her away by it. Others were scrambling toward her, piling onto her.
Unable to see, Wayne reached blindly toward Olivia’s voice and grabbed one of the creatures by its bony neck, lifting it off of her. With a strenuous grunt, he hurled it into the crowd and then knelt over her and groped for the next one.
There was a sound, like something large whistling through the air, and then suddenly the creatures on Wayne’s right were no longer there. He glanced up through the darkness, straining to see in what little light shined through Gilbert House’s broken third floor windows. He could see it, but only barely, a glinting, twisting shape towering over the courtyard.
“Oh God!” Olivia cried.
“It’s okay,” Wayne said as he shoved the last of them away from her. The creatures that remained were now scattering, abandoning their prey to find shelter from the thing he had led to them. He lifted her up and held her against him, thankful that the creatures of the Wood had not harmed her any worse.
Olivia sobbed in his arms. “I’ve never been so scared in my life!”
“I know.” Wayne kissed her head, and looked down at her. He could see almost nothing in the darkness, but her skin was slick and wet to the touch. She was bloody.
He felt a violent rush of cold air as something massive passed over them. He looked up, straining his eyes in the darkness, and saw a long, shapeless thing snaking through the air directly overhead. The enormous creature that had pursued them through the forest was only a few yards away, he realized, and it was reaching out, as if with a giant arm, into the courtyard.
As he stared up into that strange, shifting shape that passed between him and the illuminated third floor window, he saw flailing limbs reaching out from within it. Countless desperate corpses passed by, blindly snatching at the empty air, and all of them vanished into the writhing, flowing shape.
It was eating them, he realized. It was scooping up the wretched swarms of deathless corpses and devouring them.
He stared up at the creature, mesmerized by it. It was impossible to see it with any clarity in such darkness. It was nothing more than a rippling, darkling shape against the black sky. But he could see that it was growing.
That was it. That was why it had no real shape. He finally realized what the thing was. He stared up at it, watching it as it began to move away again, following the creatures that were fleeing the courtyard. It was devouring the dead, adding them to its already enormous mass.
It was a living pile of c
orpses, a creature comprised—perhaps entirely—of the body parts of the living dead that it swallowed. Its body was a living sea of bone and mummified meat and flesh.
He had seen the way the creatures fled from this monster, seemingly more afraid of it than they were desperate for him and Olivia. He had thought that it would show up and scatter them, giving them the opportunity to find a way in, but he hadn’t expected this. Without knowing it, he had brought the beast to an all-you-can-eat buffet.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Olivia sobbed.
“Yeah.” The thing seemed to have lost interest in them, but when its food was gone, it probably would not take it long to remember why it had come here. He looked up at Gilbert House, trying to think. His eyes rose to the third-floor solarium, where Olivia’s flashlight still shined, and immediately he saw his solution. It was obvious.
The old man had told him that the roots of the trees would come through the walls of the tunnel if he lingered too long in one place. They reached for the light. It wasn’t even an uncommon trait for plants. And now he saw that the tops of the trees were no different. Olivia’s flashlight had been shining for several hours. The trees in Gilbert House’s courtyard had actually begun to lean toward it, reaching for the source of that light. The one closest to it was bent almost completely through the broken glass.
“Come on.” Wayne took her by the hand and led her through the scattering corpses to the base of the tree. The cloak was unnecessary now. Now there really was something here for them to fear. He reached the tree and paused beside its leaning trunk.
He’d felt that clammy bark when he crawled through the fallen logs to reach Olivia, but that tree might have been dead. For all he knew, the live ones could kill them both where they stood.
He reached out, wincing a little at the horrors that beehive in his brain fed him and touched the smooth bark. Nothing happened. He sighed, relieved and turned back to Olivia. “Look. All you have to do is climb. I’ll be right behind you.”
