Brink of Extinction

by Nicholas Ryan

  The man broke from cover and fired the second barrel of the shotgun from the hip, bracing himself as he swung the muzzle in an arc. Another guard went down, his head torn from his neck and his blood dashed across the wall in a gruesome splatter.

  The whole stage area erupted into a chaos of confusing pandemonium and deafening gunfire. The heat from the flames was intense, leaping up to the dark shadowed ceiling. One of the bidders was ablaze, running stumbling. As he tottered his head lit up like a fiery torch. Flames smoldered the hair and consumed his clothing. He blundered into the line of chairs and crashed over. The smell of his burning flesh was thick and cloying.

  The man bounded up onto the stage roaring his fury to add to the confusion, and Gideon Silver took to sudden flight. He flung himself from the platform, landed awkwardly, then fled out through the loading bay doors. His face was stricken ghastly – the horror of his own hideous injuries like a private nightmare returned. He ran screaming and shouting, flailing his arms and barking orders that became lost and confused in the mayhem.

  The man threw down the empty shotgun and snatched up the Glock from out of the waistband of his jeans. He loosed off a shot at the grotesque fleeing figure and missed. The bullet tore a chunk out of the loading bay door just as it was swinging closed – just as Gideon Silver escaped.

  The man swore bitterly and turned his attention to the boy’s ropes. The heat in the room was rising, the flames becoming an inferno that licked at the walls and swept over the stage. The man hacked at the bonds that clamped the boy’s wrists, covering his face against the searing heat with the crook of his arm. The thick ropes fell away and the man thrust the knife into the palm of the boy’s hand.

  “Cut your feet free!” the man shouted. One of the other guards was still on his feet, hidden against the far wall amidst the roiling black plumes of choking smoke. The man saw a flash of movement and fired. He heard the retort of a shot and felt the warm flutter of the bullet’s passage past his cheek. The man flinched instinctively, returned fire with two more snap shots and then shoved the boy down the stairs, screaming at him with his eyes wide and the desperation upon him.

  “Get out!” the man roared, the heat was squeezing out oily beads of perspiration from across his brow. “Make for the front doors, and don’t stop for anything.”

  Standing below them, windmilling her arms in horror, the woman in the white dress was on fire. Her mouth was open in a tortured soundless shriek, the flames melting the flesh from her cheeks and arms, licking at the blonde tresses of her hair until her whole head finally caught alight and she became consumed in the pyre. She looked like a writhing creature from hades, wrapped in an infernal cloak of fire. Her skin mottled and then blackened like charcoal, and the reeking stench of her burning flesh stifled the air. She fell at last, still screaming in gruesome agony, her legs kicking weakly. The man and the boy stumbled past her.

  More shots rang out as they fled, tearing splintered chunks from wooden display stands and ricocheting away into the darkness. The man and the boy ran for the front doors, the building behind them ablaze, and filling the vast abandoned space with a choking heavy veil of smoke and dust.

  They burst out into the freezing cold of night, gasping and heaving to fill their lungs with fresh air. From within the old department store they could hear the sounds of the roof collapsing and see the leaping orange glow of the fire wreaking a path of destruction as it spread out of control. A dark black scar of smoke rose from within the building, smudging into the inky blackness of the night.

  “This way!” the man hissed. He snatched at the boy’s arm and led him back to the abandoned restaurant. The man seized his canvas bag and slung it onto the rubbed-raw flesh of his shoulders. Side by side they went running into the darkened night, across the black expanse of the snow-covered parking lot in the direction of the gas station.

  The snow was thick around their knees, each step like a sinking mire that sucked at their boots and drained away the last of their energy. They slowed to a walk, the man casting frantic glances back over his shoulder every few seconds. The hulking shape of the department store still glowed in the distance, lit up internally as the fire finally took hold of the roof. The flare of light painted the snow around them with an orange tint to show the way.

  They reached the abandoned shell of the gas station and stood together in the dark shadows, staring back from where they had come. There was a cluster of dark agitated shapes gathered in silhouette before the burning building; a tight knot of figures strobing flashlights across the uneven snow. The lights were weak dim yellow fingers, their reach fading back into blackness well before the walls of the gas station.

  “We’re safe – for the moment,” the man said. His breath came sawing across the back of his throat, his shirt beneath the leather jacket wet and sweat-clinging to his back. He scraped away a layer of grease and soot from his face with the edge of his hand, and let the bag slide down to the ground.

  The boy stood hugging his shoulders, shivering in the freezing cold and the aftershock. The man shrugged off his jacket. The boy’s shirt was torn, hanging in shreds from his arms. The boy took the jacket wordlessly and hunched deep down into its warmth.

  “Are you okay?”

  The boy nodded, his eyes huge and haunted. He held up his wrists for the man to see – the skin had been rubbed away by the coarse hemp rope of his bonds leaving bleeding, weeping welts of raw skin.

  The man grunted. “You’ll survive,” he said gruffly. For an instant they were looking into each other’s eyes, then the boy looked quickly away. The man let out a sigh of sound and slumped against the brick wall of the roofless building. There was a faint shudder in the tops of his legs from the tense exertion, and his fingers still trembled. He checked the Glock and reloaded the weapon with a fresh full magazine from his bag. He held the knife out to the boy. “Carry it with you, just until we’re safe,” he said.

  The boy looked down at the weapon and his eyes filled with agony and despair. He pocketed the knife reluctantly and then looked away, into the darkness. His shoulders slumped.

  “I have to tell you something,” he muttered softly.

  The man went very still.

  “I killed a man tonight.”

  The man felt his breath catch. “The body inside the gas station?”

  The boy nodded, then hung his head and stared down at his boots for several seconds. “It was an accident,” his voice broke. “He attacked me. We fought…”

  The man stayed silent and at last the boy spoke again, his voice barely above a whisper. “When it happened… when I realized what I’d done… I was excited,” he confessed. “I felt… I felt powerful.” On his tongue the word sounded crude and jarring, but he could think of nothing more accurate. “I stood over him and watched him bleeding, and I felt… proud.”

  The man said nothing. The boy shuffled his feet in the snow and then turned around. His face had become tortured with regret. “But then… afterwards… I… I…”

  The man nodded. He started to reach out for the boy and then stopped himself. His hand hung awkward in the void of empty space, and then fell limp to his side. “It’s a difficult thing to do,” he said quietly. “And it’s something you’re going to have to live with for the rest of your life.”

  The boy nodded. His eyes were brimming with tears. “I never understood…”

  The man sighed, heavy-hearted. “I wished you had never found out how it feels,” he said.

  They stood at the corner of the service station for long minutes, not speaking, alone with their own dark thoughts and regrets. They watched several figures gathering in front of the burning building. At last the man handed the binoculars to the boy.

  “How many men do you see?”

  The boy adjusted the focus. “Eight,” the boy said, “No. Nine.”

  “And what are they doing?”

  The boy paused. “Standing round.”

  The man nodded. There was a distant rumble of sever
al vehicle engines, revving without seeming to come any closer. The man’s mouth curled into a wry grin that lacked any trace of humor. “They’re not going to come after us,” he grunted. “Not tonight – not with all this snow. The roads would be impossible.”

  The boy lowered the binoculars and stared anxiously into the man’s eyes. “They have a snowplow,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The gang. They had a snowplow. It was parked out in the loading bay area with a lot of other vehicles. I saw it.”

  “What?” the man’s voice rose with alarm. Urgently he snatched the glasses back off the boy and pressed them to his eyes, traversing the lenses in a slow sweep, searching the darkness beyond the halo of orange firelight. The sound of aggressive engine revving came again on the gentle breeze, and then faded once more.

  The man snatched at the canvas bag just as a white fountain of powdery snow erupted from the dark side of the building, and a truck with a plow blade across its front burst into view. There were two bright spotlights mounted atop a roll bar behind the vehicle’s canopy, piercing deep into the night. The truck slewed, the back of the vehicle fish-tailing, and then straightened up and screeched to a halt in front of the burning hulk of the old department store.

  “Run!” the man hissed.

  “Where?”

  “The museum.”

  “It won’t be open.”

  “It will,” the man insisted. “Now move your ass!”

  * * *

  They ran, plunging through the knee-deep snow, staying away from the main road. Behind them, like the undulating mournful wail of the undead, rose the sound of the snowplow’s rumbling engine – veering closer and then drifting away, clearing a path along the main roads for other vehicles to follow. Once, the bright beam of headlights flashed over them, and they threw themselves heavily to the ground. The light swung away in a wide arc, flickering through distant trees. The man and the boy dragged themselves to their feet, grunting and breathing hard.

  After a few minutes they turned diagonally to follow a narrow side street and then cut across an open field towards a burned out roofless building with empty black windows like the sockets of a skull.

  Hidden behind the dark shelter of a wall, the man bent at the waist and dry retched into the snow, spitting up bile. The straps of the heavy canvas bag had cut into the flesh of his fingers. He pummeled them with his other hand and felt the agony of fresh blood flowing. His face was a mask of sweat, salted with flakes of snow. The boy beside him leaned against the rotted timber siding and slid down to his haunches, his head hanging with his own exhaustion.

  Slowly, uncertainly at first, the boy sensed something, not definite, nor loud enough to be an actual sound – merely an instinctive awareness that something lurked close by in the night. The boy held a breath and heard a murmur of movement that could have been a guarded footfall, or maybe a strained breath. Then he became aware of a smell. It was the reek of something long dead, the stench of festering carrion – the boy lifted his head slowly and his eyes filled with ominous foreboding. He gestured in a mime to the man, pointing first to his ear and then jabbing with his thumb towards the interior of the ruined building. Cautiously he rose back to his feet and took a step away.

  The man’s face became wary. He had a flashlight in his bag, the precious batteries near exhaustion. He had been loathe to use the light during his hunt for the boy for fear of giving away his position to strange searching eyes. Now, reflexively, his hand dug slowly into the mouth of the bag.

  With the flashlight in his left hand and the Glock in his right, the man edged close to one of the empty windows and then the pale finger of the flashlight’s glow spilled a soft pool of glow across the dark interior of the building. For long seconds the man could see nothing but broken rubble and black charred timber remains like the broken bones of a skeleton. Then the rank, vile smell came again, a little stronger, a little closer. He flicked the light sideways – and saw the animal.

  It was a dog – a massive black dog, hunched in the corner of the room, snarling softly, gnawing something between its slathering jaws. The man felt himself stiffen. He slammed the base of the flashlight into the palm of his hand and the light blinked a little stronger.

  The man’s face turned white with sudden horror.

  The dog was eating a baby, worrying at the infant’s soft pale belly with its great barbed teeth. It had one of its massive paws on the infant’s head, pinning the corpse down into the dirt while its jaws unzipped the pouch of its belly like slashing razors. The dog sensed the sudden light and swung its great shaggy head, ripping open the baby’s stomach so that the glistening ropes of its intestines tore out and hung from the dog’s blood-covered jaws.

  The dog growled, and its lips peeled back tight from its mouth, baring it’s barbed and jagged teeth.

  The great beast stalked closer, its head rocking from side to side. The coarse hair along the dog’s back bristled like barbed wire. It shook its head and thick foaming drool hung in ropes from its jaws. It gnashed at the baby’s glistening entrails.

  The man took an appalled step away from the window, the weak beam of the flashlight fixed on the dog. The boy was staring over the man’s shoulder.

  “What is it?” the boy hissed in a whisper.

  “A dog,” the man murmured. “A big fuckin’ dog.”

  “Do we shoot it?”

  “Not if we can help it,” the man grunted. “The sound of a shot…” he didn’t need to finish the sentence. The sound of gunfire in the midst of the night would ring as loudly as a tolling bell. Gideon Silver’s men would be drawn like fireflies.

  “Back away,” the man said. “Slowly. Very slowly.”

  The hound had padded closer to the open black hole of the window. Its eyes were wide and red with maddened rage, rolling demented within the black snarling face. Its snout hung stiff and stained with the infant’s blood, and there was more blood caked on the dog’s huge paws and in the coarse hair across its broad chest. The bottom jaw hung open from the great head, and the blood-coated tongue dangled loosely from its mouth.

  The man aimed the Glock between the great dog’s eyes.

  He took one more step away, feet crunching in the snow… and then the dog went down onto its haunches – and lunged out through the black void of the broken window.

  The boy screamed.

  The dog exploded towards them like a savage avalanche of black snarling muscle. The man threw up the Glock instinctively, no longer aiming with precision, but merely pointing the muzzle at the hulking center mass. The ‘blam’ of the shot was impossibly loud in his ears and the liquid recoil of the shot pulsed back up along his arm. The dog went crashing into the snow, his front legs collapsing beneath him as the bullet tore half its head away.

  Bright spurts of blood soaked and stained the snow.

  For a long moment the world seemed stunned into shocked silence – and then, far away, came a new sound on the night air. The man cocked his head to the side and listened intently and it was almost a full thirty seconds before he was sure. His breathing became shallow and labored.

  “Go!” the man said urgently. He pushed the boy in the direction of the museum and pointed. “Get through those fences.”

  At the end of the open field a broken fence line of sagging posts and rusted barbed wire blocked the way. The boy began to run and the man glanced back over his shoulder. Past the dead corpse of the dog and beyond the edifice of the ruined building, he could hear the sound of truck engines. He felt his pulse accelerate. Now, suddenly, he could see the pinpricks of headlights, racing closer, dipping and swaying as a vehicle jounced wildly across broken ground.

  They ran for the fence and scrambled through. The snow was deeper here so that with each step they plunged down to their thighs. They waded through long tussocks of ice-covered grass and ahead of them loomed the dark mass of a grove of trees. The man frowned and paused to get his bearings then struck out diagonally, heading towards the south. Th
e museum was another mile away.

  Behind them there came the sharp sound of a grinding crash of metal above the roar of an engine and then an abrupt silence. The man stopped and looked back. The pursuing vehicle had collided into the side of the building. One of the headlight beams struck out into the night like an accuser’s finger. In front of the glow, silhouetted by the harsh brightness were the figures of two hunched men, running.

  They were coming closer with powerful, urgent strides, carrying flashlights. The beams jinked and swished over the snow in erratic slashes as they ran on. The man imagined the faces of the pursuers, contorted into cruel snarls of determination.

  “Keep going!” the man urged the boy. He shoved the palm of his hand into the broad of the boy’s back to urge him on. “Get to the museum.”

  The boy faltered. “What about you?”

  “I’ll be right behind you,” the man promised, and raised the barrel of the Glock. The boy hesitated for a split-second longer and then turned and faced the darkness. He could hear the angry cry of voices closing in. He ran for the line of trees and paused, hidden in the camouflage of their deep shadows.

  The man stood tall in the snow, his body balanced. The two pursuers were only twenty yards away, running on doggedly. One of the flashlight beams swung across the snow and then flicked to the man’s chest, and stayed there. The man could sense the moment, some part of his mind going into a kind of instinctive ticking countdown. He imagined the pursuer’s instant of shock and then the delayed reaction. It would take another moment for him to halt in the snow and then a second or two to throw up his weapon, steady his breathing and take aim. The man counted the split-seconds down in his head and at the crucial moment he flung himself to the left, out of the light, rolling in the soft blanket of snow and coming up on his knees with the Glock thrown up stiff-armed in front of him. The man fired once into the bright beam of light and saw the pursuer struck in the face, a cap he was wearing spinning away in a high arc as the dark stranger’s head was viciously snapped back and he fell into the darkness.