The Broken Ones [Book 1]

by David Jobe

  "They. Them. Me. I. It doesn't matter in the end," the young woman said, perhaps answering his question or just continuing on her odd rant.

  Chris switched from watching her back to the pristine dead that hung above him. After a moment, he discovered what it was that made them different. They were expertly painted, but they were wooden. From their wrist and ankles tiny little wires descended into the tree branches. "Puppets."

  "Of a sort," the woman said.

  He looked back at her, "are you talking to me?" This was all too damn cryptic.

  She went to open her mouth, but another voice interrupted. A familiar voice he had hoped he would never come across here.

  "The problem is in not in the mix, but in the person."

  Chris turned to see Lanton climbing the hill behind him. Chris's mind screamed to look away, but he knew he had to look. That was why he was here. He had to see as much as he could, so he could find a way to stop death.

  Lanton was dressed in his usual clothes, but his badge jutting from his belt was not one that Chris had ever seen. Its lettering was lost in the shadows of the tree, but he suspected it would become important later. What caught Chris' eye was that the left side of Lanton's face was distorted. Lanton turned at a slight angle and Chris could see that Lanton's left side was a mess of exit wound. Lanton smirked at him and then turned the other way. On that side was a bullet wound just at the temple.

  "Is that self-inflicted?” he asked Lanton in fear.

  "We do this to ourselves, but someone else is guiding the hand." Lanton turned to level a gaze at Chris. Lanton's left eye was skewed to the left, making him look like he might have a lazy eye. Chris knew it was the effect of the blast. It would have reworked the bone structure and pushed the eye out of place.

  The answer was cryptic, but Chris felt it would be something he could work to decipher. "Who is pulling the strings?"

  Both girl and Lanton pointed toward the distance beyond the tree, away from the position that Chris had started.

  Chris followed their gesture and walked around the huge trunk of the supernatural tree. As he rounded the tree, he could see a wide valley below, with jagged mountains circling the horizon. Within the center of the valley was massive factory billowing black smoke from three enormous smokestacks. The smoke stretched up to the sky and oozed out in all directions. It could be the reason that the sky revealed no stars or it could be that in this world, stars did not exist. He was too far away to make out the name on the building, but he could see monstrous creatures of various sizes lumbering around outside the main complex. Though most exhibited humanoid form, something inside Chris told him that nothing down there was human. Their movements were either too jerky or too fluid. Their build was either too large to just be muscular or too thin to be capable of such smooth movements. The ground around the building was scorched as if some great fiery battle had taken place there. From here he could smell the rich aroma of sulfur and ash.

  "What is down there?" he asked the two.

  "Same thing as up here," Lanton replied.

  So, they were speaking to him. Everything was cryptic, but it was going to be helpful somehow. "How do I stop this?"

  The puppets overhead began to laugh again. That was when Chris heard a deeper laugh. It was a slow rumble that sounded both ominous and somehow victorious. Searching out the origin of the laugh, he found himself looking over Lanton's right shoulder, he saw something in the shadows behind him. Chris peered closer and discovered that a red-skinned, black horned demon lingered just behind Lanton, close enough so that it leaned forward and whispered in Lanton's ear.

  Chris woke with a start, his eyes blinking open to find Lanton looking down on him, worry and tiredness etched in the younger man's face.

  "Christ on a cracker, Chris. You are supposed to be getting clean. What the hell were you thinking?" Lanton's face remained whole, yet contorted in confusion and not so subtle rage.

  Chris found himself smiling. It had worked. It had fucking worked. "I was embracing my destiny."

  Lanton frowned, looking at the nurse who shrugged. Looking back he asked, "What is that supposed to mean?"

  "It means that we have work to do."

  The story of The Broken Ones will continue!

  About the Author

  David Jobe is an author whose story "Dead of Night" was recently featured in the Anthology "Gifts of the Magi". David has a Bachelors Degree in Criminal Justice. He is currently finishing his Bachelors in Psychology and plans to pursue a doctorate in that field

  This is the first novella in the Broken Ones series.