by Jake Bible
Morty stood there and let the obsidian blade fall from his hand. He chewed on the end of his cigar and started laughing. Only half a chuckle made it out before his body stiffened and stopped moving.
“WHY IS IT SO QUIET?” Hannah asked as she and Elisa huddled together in the corner of the truck. Highlander was up on the bed, having slept through it all, his blood loss too much to even stay awake for the end of Hell’s reign.
“I don’t know,” Elisa said. She slapped at her waist and found the pistol she had strapped there. “I’ll go look.”
“No,” Hannah said with a hiss. “It could be a trap!”
“Why?” Elisa asked. “They have the numbers by a factor of like ten thousand. They don’t need to set a trap.” She got to her feet and drew her pistol. “Maybe it actually worked.”
She moved slowly to the end of the truck then blinked a few times as she looked out at the dirt road. A couple of hundred possessed had started to swarm around the truck, but they never made it. Instead, they lay still on the ground, their bodies tangled and intertwined with each other.
“Hannah,” Elisa said. “I think it worked.”
Elisa didn’t turn around, but she felt the truck shake as Hannah stood up and joined her.
“Are they dead?” Hannah asked.
“I don’t know,” Elisa said. “We should check.”
“But what if—?”
“They’re not,” Elisa interrupted before Hannah could finish. “Can’t you feel it? The demons are gone. That chilly feeling of hatred and evil is gone.”
Hannah shivered at Elisa’s words and nodded.
“Come on,” Elisa said as she holstered her pistol. “Let’s check them.”
She hopped down and went from one body to the next. Most were in such bad shape, having been completely neglected by their demon hosts, that they were basically dead on their feet when possessed. Elisa pushed corpse after corpse out of the way until she came to a moaning young man.
“Hey, can you hear me?” Elisa asked as she crouched next to the man. “Mister? Wake up?”
The young man’s eyes cracked open and he winced.
“So bright,” he muttered and closed his eyes again.
Elisa looked about at the night’s darkness. “Too bright”?” she asked. “Jesus, where did they keep you?”
She left the young man, who had lapsed into a shivering sleep, and continued searching the fallen horde.
“I have one here,” Hannah cried out. “A little boy!”
“Here’s another,” Elisa responded as she found a woman alive, her arms wrapped around her body, eyes squeezed tightly shut. “And another!”
The two women continued to search through the bodies. They made it out in front of the truck and were standing at the edge of the quarry when Elisa stopped, having found a pair of twin girls clinging to each other for dear life. She got them calmed down then looked for Hannah.
“Where are the Gs?” Elisa asked when Hannah came over to her.
“What?” Hannah replied.
“The Gs,” Elisa said. “If it worked, and we sent the demons back to Hell, then why haven’t Morty and the others come up here to help us? Where are they?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” Hannah said.
“Stay up here and see if you can get the survivors to move to the truck,” Elisa said. “It’s not going to take us anywhere, but it will be a place we can regroup.”
“Where are you going?” Hannah asked.
“Down,” Elisa said and pointed to the dirt road that lead into the quarry. “I’ll look for others and see what’s happened to the Gs.”
“Be careful,” Hannah said.
“I will,” Elisa replied.
She moved off through the horde, checking bodies here and there as she made her way down the road. She wasn’t looking for survivors since there wasn’t much she could do for them, but she did discover more than a few on her way to the bottom.
When she reached level ground, she found the survivor rate plummeted to almost none. Bodies lay this way and that, dead eyes staring up into the night. Elisa pushed on until she came to Coins and Geffe. She reached out then drew her hand back in pain. Their stone bodies were so cold, it hurt to touch them.
“I don’t understand,” she muttered as she studied the frozen Gs. “How did this happen?”
Then she saw Morty. He stood in the middle of the dead, his cracked and broken wings sticking part way out, Tom’s obsidian sword at his feet. He had a cigar clamped firmly between his lips. Elisa tried to pull it free, but it began to tear, so she let it be. It was better where it was.
“Thank you,” she said and leaned in to kiss his cheek. The cold burned her lips, but she ignored the pain and lingered for a second before pulling back. “Thank you so much, Mordecai.”
She moved past him and found Tom. She thanked him as well.
Elisa took a deep breath. She needed to get back up top and help Hannah with the survivors. She didn’t know what to do about the frozen Gs, but they weren’t going anywhere. She began to walk away, certain no one had survived whatever happened at the bottom of the quarry.
Except she was wrong.
Elisa had made it only a few steps before she heard the whimpering cry. She spun about and peered into the darkness, hoping to see movement. She listened hard, but there was no new sound.
“Hello?” she called. “Hello?”
Another whimper, very faint.
Elisa hurried to where she thought the sound was coming from, weaving around most of the bodies, clambering over others when her way was blocked. She froze almost as solid as the Gs when she reached the source of the sound.
“No way,” she said as she knelt and looked under Tom’s body.
Desiree’s eyes were wide-open and blinking back tears.
“He’s heavy,” Desiree said. “And really cold.”
“Shit,” Elisa cried out.
She put her hands on the grotesque and shoved with all of her strength, putting her legs into it, ignoring the ice-cold pain in her palms, until the-stone-that-was-Tom began to shift.
“Come on,” Elisa grunted at Desiree. “Crawl out. I can’t hold him forever.”
Desiree scooted out from under Tom and rolled out of the way as Elisa let the body fall.
“Mama?” Desiree called, the girl that should have been dead sounding very much alive. “Is my mama here?”
“Come here,” Elisa said and took Desiree into her arms. The girl cried for her mama softly and Elisa gently stroked her back until the tears started to dry up. “Yeah, baby, we all want our mamas. But we take the family we can get.”
The sky above the quarry lightened. Elisa explained to the girl that they couldn’t stay there. They needed to get up and move. Elisa managed to get her to her feet, too exhausted to attempt to carry her. She checked the girl over, but wasn’t surprised when she didn’t find the faintest trace of any wounds on her.
“Where are we?” Desiree asked, her eyes avoiding all the bodies and staying focused on Tom.
“A long way from home,” Elisa said. “But we’re leaving this place now. Come on.”
She led the girl through the corpses and up the road. They passed dozens of men and women, young and old, who were alive, and none of them could open their eyes. Elisa told them to stay where they were and she’d come back for them.
When they finally reached the truck, Elisa had Desiree join Highlander on the bed. The young man was still out cold, but breathing evenly.
“Can you watch him for me?” Elisa asked Desiree. The girl nodded. “Thanks. You probably don’t remember him, but he once saved your life.”
Elisa hopped out of the truck and found Hannah talking to a woman who was seated up against a tree.
�
�They can’t open their eyes,” Hannah said.
“I noticed,” Elisa replied.
“She says that they were trapped inside their own bodies, held in pure darkness,” Hannah said.
“A void,” the woman croaked.
“Sounds like Hell,” Elisa said.
“It was,” the woman croaked. “It truly was.”
20
IT WAS TWO MONTHS before the first survivors began to regain their sight.
The stories they all told were of an absolute void, so dark that darkness didn’t even exist. To open their eyes to the light of Earth, even the light at night, was beyond excruciating. Many went mad with pain even with their eyes closed. Blindfolds became the post-demon fashion trend. But many survived. Several hundred from the vessels who had laid siege to the cathedral and dozens from the quarry.
With so many people to help, Elisa was able to get teams together to head into the nearby towns and see if they could salvage any of the buildings. It was another two months before they got even a dozen structures in habitable condition. Keeping things tidy was not on the possessed’s list of priorities. Neither was using toilets.
Elisa decided controlled burns of most of the houses was the safest, and most sanitary, way to deal with the filth problem.
Four months later, the last of the survivors left Margaret’s Patch. Elisa moved everyone into Bryson City. It was the most intact and least defiled. The majority of the people gathered in apartment complexes and hotels. But a few—those done with being herded together—picked houses to live in.
Elisa pulled her diesel pickup to a stop in front of one of those homes, honking the horn until Rider and Joanie came running out.
“Brian’s staying here,” Joanie said as she hopped into the backseat of the cab. “Kimmy is about to pop and he won’t leave her side.”
“Is Highlander with them?” Elisa asked.
“He’s at his house,” Joanie said and pointed to a two-story ranch a half a block away. “Hannah’s with Kimmy and will send Brian to get him when it’s time.”
“I hear there’s a surgeon living at the Holiday Inn,” Rider said as he got in the front seat. “A couple of nurses too.”
“Yep, I met them,” Elisa said. “They’re busy getting a clinic set up. The hospital is destroyed, but they think they can clear out the shelves from an old CVS and use that space.”
“Cool,” Rider said. He looked over his shoulder at the loaded trailer the pickup was pulling. “Bulldozer?”
“Nope,” Elisa said. “Front end loader. Bulldozers have that huge blade for shoving.”
“For bulldozing,” Joanie laughed.
“Exactly,” Elisa said.
“So what’s the front end loader for?” Rider asked. “I thought you said we’re going to find something.”
“We are,” Elisa said. “But we’ve got some work to do first before we can do that.”
“Okay,” Rider said.
“Okay,” Elisa said and nodded then got the truck rolling.
The kids had dropped the teenage attitude months before. Oddly, never having been possessed conveyed a certain status amongst the survivors. While they weren’t considered better, they didn’t have demon taint on them. They were uncontaminated in a world in which very little had escaped contamination. Those living in Bryson City trusted the former wards more than they trusted each other.
There was no shared bond amongst the formerly-possessed. In the void, they had been totally isolated, completely alone. In survival, many felt almost the same way. Trust would take time. Maybe a lot of it.
Elisa put those thoughts away for another day and drove them out of town. She took several turns before Rider said, “Are we going back to the cathedral?”
“Not quite yet,” Elisa said. “In a couple of days.”
“Days?” Joanie exclaimed.
“I told you we have a lot of work to do first,” Elisa said. “Don’t worry, I brought camping gear and supplies.”
“Great,” Joanie said, sounding like it was less than great that she’d be camping.
“Trust me,” Elisa said, “what we’re doing has to be done.”
They wound through the mountains until they found a dirt road. Elisa turned onto it and smiled as she drove. When they reached their destination, Elisa stared at the abandoned truck that blocked their way.
“That’s going to be a problem,” she said.
“That? You mean the truck?” Rider said, as he stared out the windshield at the corpses that had pretty much rotted down to bare bones. “Not the bodies?”
“They’ll be easy,” Elisa said. “That’s one reason we have the front end loader.”
“What’s the other reason?” Joanie asked.
“Come on. I’ll show ya,” Elisa said and got out of the truck.
She led the two teenagers through the corpses and around the box truck, right to the edge of the quarry.
“There they are,” Elisa said and pointed at the far-off figures of Geffe, Scythia, Coins, Tom, and Morty. “Time to take them home.”
TWO DAYS LATER, they had the trailer loaded with not only the front end loader, but the five frozen stone figures.
The gates had never been replaced, so Elisa drove directly onto the grounds. She stopped the truck and motioned for the teens to do the same. They helped her load up the mangled gates that held Jack’s chipped and dented face. Done with that, they hopped back into the truck and continued on right up to the crumbled steps.
“Hey, Roan,” she said as she got out of the truck, nodding at the stone dragon. Roan was as frozen as those on the trailer. “How’s it going? Keeping things safe?”
Parts of him were chipped off from the explosion; he was still scorched all over despite the rains they’d had, but he was mostly like he had been before the end of it all.
“We can’t get inside to the courtyard, but that’s fine,” Elisa said. “Only Artus and Deek are in there.”
“Someone said they came here and could hear Deek playing his flute,” Joanie said.
“I call bullshit,” Rider responded.
“That’s what I said,” Joanie said.
“Who knows?” Elisa replied then walked past Roan to where Olivia and Antoine stood in mid-stride, their arms up and ready for battle. She gave them a pat then turned to look at the rest of the grounds. “It is a place of magic.”
“What is? Here?” Joanie asked. “I thought all magic was gone now?”
“Where did it go?” Elisa asked then laughed and shook her head. “Never mind. Let’s get to work.”
They did.
It took most of the day to get the frozen grotesques, as well as Jack and his gates, off the trailer and into position, but they managed it and Elisa was fairly pleased with the results.
“Someone should make a plaque,” Joanie said as the three of them regarded the grotesques. “You know, to honor what they did.”
“That’s a great idea,” Elisa said. “I’m putting you in charge.”
“What? I don’t know anything about making plaques,” Joanie protested.
“You can learn,” Elisa said. “No one even touched the library. Check out a book. Figure out how.”
Joanie started to protest some more, then scrunched up her face. “Okay. I guess I could do that.”
Rider glanced up at the sky.
“If we go now, we can make it home before dark,” he said. “I wonder if Kimmy had the baby yet?”
“We’ll find out,” Elisa said.
The two teens hurried back to the truck and hopped in. Joanie rolled down the window and leaned out.
“Are you coming?” she yelled to Elisa.
“In a second,” Elisa said.
She closed her eyes and slowed her breathing
. She felt good about bringing the Gs home. They didn’t deserve to stay at the bottom of the quarry. She stayed that way for a couple of minutes, ignoring Joanie and Rider as they called for her to come on.
Elisa opened her eyes and started walking away from the half-demolished cathedral. She paused after a couple of steps and cocked her head. It was faint, but she swore she could hear it. Unless her mind was playing tricks with her, but she didn’t think so.
The teens asked why she was smiling so much when she got back into the truck.
Elisa didn’t answer; instead, she stayed quiet so she could savor the last few notes of the flute that echoed in her ears.
The End
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About the Author
Jake Bible, Bram Stoker Award nominated-novelist, short story writer, independent screenwriter, podcaster, and inventor of the Drabble Novel, has entertained thousands with his horror and sci/fi tales. He reaches audiences of all ages with his uncanny ability to write a wide range of characters and genres.
Jake is the author of the bestselling Z-Burbia series set in Asheville, NC, the bestselling Salvage Merc One, the Apex Trilogy (DEAD MECH, The Americans, Metal and Ash) and the Mega series for Severed Press, as well as the YA zombie novel, Little Dead Man, the Bram Stoker Award nominated teen horror novel, Intentional Haunting, the ScareScapes series, and the Reign of Four series for Permuted Press.
