by Glynn James
It was mid afternoon when we finally reached the crossroads that Cory had mentioned. Further on ahead of us the road seemed to crumble into nearly nothing as it wound further upwards and into the mountains. I could see that even further up a collapse had happened at some point in time and the road was completely covered with mud and stones that had to have come from the huge chunk that was missing in the rock face above it. To the right, the road ran even steeper, winding its way up and over the top of the area of rock that had collapsed.
Left.
That is what he had said.
No words were spoken. We simply all turned into the new road that fortunately ran almost straight along the top of the ridge. It wasn't until we had walked a few hundred yards that I noticed the first of the blackened buildings in the distance.
Landshaw. The buildings had to be the beginning of the ruined city, where Cory said The Sisters of Rahl lived.
We walked on for maybe two more hours, so that some of the buildings were about half a mile away, and then stopped. I'd already said I wanted us to go into the city in daylight, just in case. No one disagreed. We all knew that what we were going to find in there might be easier to handle if the sun was shining.
We set up camp and even lit a fire this time. Reg insisted on it. He wanted to cook before we went into the city. I watched him as he set up the pot and poured some random tins into it. Beans, Lentil soup. Beef chunks.
"I thought you might try and rush into there tonight," I said to him.
"Oh. Yes. It did cross my mind. But after the warnings that Cory gave us, I want daylight just as much as you do."
"I'd have expected you to be in a hurry, considering that your wife may be in there, somewhere."
"Well. You would think that wouldn't you? I've been waiting so long that another day won't make much difference. And to come all this way and get killed by some night creature just a short way from finding her is not in my plan. I may not look old anymore James, but I've got a lot of years of patience behind me and I've learned to trust my instincts."
"Understood."
"And damn it if a few hundred of those Maw around us hasn't convinced me to wait as well. Why go alone?"
I laughed at that.
Rudy appeared from behind one of the trees nearby.
"Me and Adler are going to go into the city to investigate. Unless you have any objections?"
I couldn't think of any reason why not to have a heads up on the place. And some ghostly and unkillable scouts were the best people for the job.
"Sure. Go for it. Just keep low and don't draw too much attention if you can help it. I'd rather not have a whole city of dead things wandering about, ready for us when we go there tomorrow. If that is what is in there."
"We'll take care of any that we find. Don't worry."
I smiled. My own personal zombie clearing advance party.
Rudy started to walk away, but then stopped and turned back.
"Is it just my imagination, or have more than half of the Maw left us?"
"Yes. They have. I noticed it too. I'd ask DogThing what's going on, if he were around. A lot of them stayed back at the station, but I've seen quite a few wandering off in various directions into the woods the whole day."
"Good," said Rudy."Well, no not necessarily good, but at least It's not just me seeing things. The young ones and the females have gone, haven't they? It seems to be mainly the big black ones left. Adler is still trying to figure out what he calls their 'social structure'. It baffles me. I hope they don't all go running off. I liked having them around to watch over you. Made me feel a little less worried."
"We'll be fine. There are enough of them still prowling around to alert us of anything coming our way."
"Okay. Good. We'll be back before the sun comes up."
"Good luck."
I watched him head off into the woods, and smiled as he just stepped through one of the trees. Finally he was getting used to his new form. Is that what it's called? His new life.
Day 49
Rudy and Adler were waiting on the road when I woke up, but DogThing was still not around when the sun had been up for over an hour.
"Did you find anything?" I asked.
Rudy shook his head.
"Lots of empty buildings."
"The place is absolutely huge," said Adler. "It goes sprawling for miles. We didn't really get to look around that much of it and we were walking all night. It was very quiet in there, no animals moving around, which may not be a good sign, but also nothing else that we could find, and we delved quite deep in some buildings."
"Also no supplies," said Rudy. "The place is completely burned out. You'll see when we get there. Looks like the whole city burned."
We were soon all packed up and waiting, the Maw milling around us and looking edgy.
Still no DogThing.
"Do we wait longer?" asked Reg.
"No. No point. Where the hell is he?"
"No idea, my friend," said Adler. "But it's not like he hasn't done it before. He usually seems to know where to find you."
"True. Let's get going. Maybe we'll catch up with him."
As we moved along the road, I noticed that the Maw were sticking closer to us. I also noticed that Reg had both of his shotguns at hand, where he would normally only carry one, with the other slung over his shoulder. I guess he was as edgy as me.
There were significantly less Maw now. Maybe only a dozen of the big black ones surrounded us. They were even walking in the road alongside us, where they would normally have been creeping through the trees at a distance. One of them even walked at my side. I wasn't sure whether to be re-assured by him or more nervous.
Roughly half an hour of walking and we passed the first of the burned out buildings. Everywhere around us the blackened ruins rose from amongst the trees. It seemed that over time a whole forest had risen up in the streets, between the hollow ghosts that had probably once been a thriving place. In amongst the trees were the rusted ruins of vehicles, but there were no skeletons in the seats, and there were no remains anywhere to be seen. All of the buildings were blackened with soot.
Reg stopped and looked towards a massive high-rise building that rose out of the tree line a few hundred yards from us.
"You were right about this whole place being burned to the ground," said Reg, shaking his head.
"Indeed," said Adler. "Quite an astonishing sight isn't it?"
Reg looked at me. "Did Cory say anything about where to look?" asked Reg.
"No. Just that they live in this city, somewhere."
"Christ. The Sisters could be anywhere. We have no idea how big this place is."
"Cory said it was once a city, so it's probably going to be big, but we have to start somewhere. Just keep looking for any signs of life."
There were none. We searched street after street all day, and must have walked for miles. Several times we ended up back in the same place having managed to go full circle around a block of buildings. Then late afternoon we crossed over a bridge that spanned a dried up river, or a canal. It looked far too straight to be natural.
"We didn't come this far," said Rudy. "We stopped just back there because the sun was coming up.
We headed further along the street, moving slowly between the ruins and the trees. It was strange to see trees that were hundreds of feet tall just poking up in the middle of the road. At one point we came across one that Adler said was an oak tree, or at least similar. It must have been three hundred feet tall, with the branches spanning across the entire road. In places the end of the branches continued out of sight into the sides of various buildings, and I could see that the walls and windows of the buildings had collapsed inwards to let the mammoth creature spread its arms wide.
Eventually we made our way to what I believed must once have been the very centre of the city. All around us the trees grew together and wound around each other. There were no buildings in the way here, and I could see that the area had once been a
huge plaza of some kind, so large that you might have been able to land a plane in it. All around the outside of the plaza were the remains of some of the biggest and most elaborate buildings I had ever seen in my life. They were massive, sprawling affairs, with columns and rows upon rows of open stone balconies that seem to climb their way up into the very clouds.
It was there, in one of the smaller buildings where there were still a few doors and the place looked reasonably untouched by the massive fire that must have destroyed most of the rest of the city so long ago, that we found a second floor room overlooking the entire plaza and camped up. Reg lit a fire in the centre of the room, which must have been some kind of meeting place if the piles of broken chairs and broken vending machines were anything to go by.
Strangely, I noticed that the Maw were staying very close to us, still. They were all in the same room with us, where normally they would wander out and find somewhere to hide away for the night. These Maw were all sitting at the windows and the stairwells, watching.
I went over to the nearest vending machine and prodded around in the wreckage, smiling as I spotted three cans of drink buried under the dust and twisted plastics and metal. I pulled them out and wiped them down.
Cola. The same brand that I had drunk myself nearly to death with in The Corridor.
Reg and I were sitting drinking two of the cans when it happened.
First, one of the Maw, a large one that was over near one of the windows, stood up and snorted sharply. The other Maw immediately jumped up from their positions and began sniffing the air. Some of them started growling very quietly and scratching the ground.
I may not have been able to communicate with them, but I knew what those signals were.
Something was coming. Something that was not friendly.
I put the can down and grabbed the two guns that were at my feet, checked the two that were strapped to my thighs, and stood up. Reg moved quickly to grab his shotguns, frowning at me.
"Something coming, you think?"
I nodded. Walking over towards the window where the first Maw was now standing, staring out into the darkness.
"What's that noise?" asked Rudy, but was then silent, listening.
The sounds were distant and quiet, screeches echoing through the buildings far away, drawing slowly closer to us as the minutes went by. They seemed to be everywhere, yet nowhere that I could pinpoint. One high pitched rasp would echo through the skeletal buildings and be answered moments later by another. The sound made my skin crawl. It was like nothing that I had ever heard before, and much more chilling than the groan of a zombie or the howls and barking of the Maw. Gradually the screeching sounds drew much closer. They were in the buildings around the plaza now. We kept close to the edges of the windows, all of us silent.
Then I saw them, moving swiftly through the trees and across the plaza, like shadows. Hundreds of them darting between the massive trunks and jumping over the car wrecks that littered the ground.
They were running fast and heading straight towards our building. The rubble between us and them seemed to slow them down only for a moment before they leapt up and over it.
"What on earth are they?" asked Adler. He and Rudy were crouched by the window next to me.
"I have no idea, but they don't look like they are here just to say hello."
"There's a lot of them," said Reg.
As I glanced around the bottom of the plaza and the area around our building, trying to see where they would enter the building, the first of them hit the wall below us and started climbing. Others joined it, clawing their way up the broken stone work at a speed that made my heart jump, and yet more of them burst into the ground floor through the broken windows. I could hear them running across the ground below, heading for the stairs. The first of them reached just ten feet away when we started firing. I could see its eyes glowing in the darkness, the mass of sharp teeth that were bared and ready to bite. They were humanoid and roughly the same size as a man, except they were thin. Their dark skin looked stretched over a fragile frame of bones, like a human that was near starvation. Come to think of it now, they looked like they were starving. Hungry for us.
I'd only just managed to take in all of the features of the nearest one when Reg's shotgun tore the creature apart, also knocking three others from the wall to fall backwards to the ground.
More climbed the wall faster than I could take in. I fired at one of them that was climbing up the edge of the building, just a few feet from where I was standing, then at another that was close behind. My guns didn't have a blast effect like Reg's, so I was going to have to aim carefully and make every shot count.
Growls and screaming erupted behind us and a quick glance back revealed that the fight between the Maw and whatever these creatures were had started on the stairs. Three of the Maw were blocking the way up, taking it in turns to dart forward and bite at the creatures, each time catching one in its teeth, shaking it furiously and then launching the dead thing back down the stairs on top of those trying to make their way up. The other Maw were blocking the other windows, lashing out at any of the creatures that tried to get through.
There was no exit. They had us completely surrounded, and there were so many of them that I was sure that this was to be the end of us.
One of the creatures darted into sight from the wall next to me. I hadn't seen it come up from the ground. It had to have come down from above. It lashed out at me, claws scratching deep into my shoulder but not penetrating my jacket. I stepped back and kicked out with my boot, connecting hard with its chest and sending it stumbling backwards into the mass below. Another dropped down to take its place, but this time one of the Maw darted forward and ripped the things legs out from underneath it. Grey liquid splattered the ground as the top half of the creature fell backwards out of the window to tumble down to the ground below.
My eyes focused beyond the gap that was left behind, a window in the chaos that was around me. Down in the plaza, the creatures were still swarming over the trees and wreckage. There were far more of them than I had first thought, and there was no way that we were going to be able to withstand this kind of assault for the time it would take to kill them all.
There were too many of them.
In my head I screamed. Where the hell was DogThing? Had he already died, been killed by these creatures?
"Not dead. Trapped."
My heart jumped yet again as his voice echoed in the back of my mind. I dodged down and shot rounds off at two more of the creatures that leapt into view.
"Where are you? You must be close."
"Trapped."
"Where?"
"Under the ground. Tunnels."
"What? How did you get down there?"
"Under the buildings. Ways. I searched. The Tunnel collapsed."
"We're under attack. So many of them."
"Go to the tunnels."
Down. We had to go down.
"Reg, Rudy, Adler. Get ready to go. We have to leave."
Reg looked back at me for the briefest of moments, wide eyed.
"Where the hell are we gonna go? They're everywhere."
"DogThing is close and says that he is trapped underground in some tunnels. We may be able to escape down there. We have to go down the stairs and have to somehow get the Maw to clear the way."
"You can't talk to them," shouted Rudy. "Or can you?"
I went into my head again, still somehow able to fire at the creatures that were now swarming into the windows. Reg and I backed away, unable to keep up with so many of them jumping at us from different directions.
"DogThing. Can you reach the Maw that are with us? Can you speak to them?"
"Yes."
"Guide them. Please. Tell them we need to go down to the tunnels. They need to clear the way."
I backed further away, edging slowly towards the stairs. Reg was now standing shoulder to shoulder with me, unloading shot after shot into the creatures. Rudy and Adler tried to help, but th
eir ability to hurt zombies didn't seem to apply to these new creatures, whatever they were.
Come on, DogThing, I thought. Get them moving.
Almost as though the Maw had heard me, they moved as one, backing away from the windows and towards us. Three of them broke off and dashed across the gap, leaping past us and down into the stairwell to join their brothers. As we began to take the stairs, slowly at first, but then faster as the Maw intensified their assault, it became more difficult with each step to try and fire weapons up the stairs. There were half a dozen Maw up there, furiously tearing at the mass of creatures that now poured down the stairs after us. How the Maw manage to fight on without seeming to suffer injury just baffled me.
We took the first few flights of stairs steadily, but after that the way seemed to clear. We passed the ground floor and just kept on going. The Maw in front of us were now running, taking down the few night creatures that had strayed downwards instead of heading up the stairs to the floor that we had been on. Flight after flight of stairs I ran down, nearly stumbling several times, but Reg was always behind me.
Then the stairs ended. A set of double doors and scattered broken glass was at the bottom. Beyond the doors it was dark, but there was just enough light coming from above to figure out that we were on some kind of platform. A few yards ahead and the floor dropped away, down onto railway tracks.
An underground railway.
"We need to block up the door," shouted Adler.
"With what?"
I glanced around quickly, trying to find something, anything. Every second or so the quiet of the station was shattered with the sound of Reg firing at the creatures that were still following us down the stairs. There weren't so many now, but I was convinced that our escape route would not remain quiet for long.
