I allow a long pause, envisioning the absolute chaos and horror of the attack, before I ask, “How many were there?”
“Too many to even guess.” Oliver sits up slowly. “And as far as I could tell they couldn’t even speak. Just one that I heard. And he spoke in single words, like he was commanding the others. He was the biggest Urthman I’ve ever seen. He walked upright and had hair on his head, long, scraggly hair. And he was killing men by the dozens with his bare hands.”
His words chill the marrow in my bones and warning sweeps up my spine. “We have to get out of here.”
No sooner than the words leave my lips, the sound of gunfire echoes from beyond the open gate. It is followed by bloodcurdling screams.
“Oh no, they’re back.” Oliver’s face collapses as his words send a rush of pinpricks stealing across my skin. And in that moment, I know we are in big trouble.
Chapter 5
The thunderous explosion of gunfire echoes though my body with steely reverberations, banging in time with the frenetic rhythm of my heart. Feet racing and sidestepping countless dead bodies—both human and mutant Urthman—I sprint toward our vehicles.
The people we traveled with are the only ones who possess firearms as far as I know. The fact that they’re currently being deployed does not bode well in the least. It means they’ve come under attack, and that more of the monstrous creatures we found strewn all around Galway have returned.
The sick pit in my stomach bottoms out at the thought, and after a brief lull, more firing erupts. In my periphery I see June and Sully running beside me, their expressions as grave as mine. Oliver trails behind June with Lark at his side. The notion that all of us are rushing to our deaths flashes through my core like a quicksilver bolt of lightning, still I do not slow my pace. I race headlong until I reach the threshold of the gate. And when I do, a scene I will never forget for as long as I live comes into full view.
Gunfire has ceased. Hair-raising screams replace it and drill through my brain, punctuating a vision so gruesome I cannot blink, cannot swallow or scream, and cannot breathe even. My body shuts down temporarily, held hostage by shock and horror.
A beast, crouched low and feral, is perched atop John’s body on all fours, its face buried in his chest as a series of wet, slopping sounds, crunches and grunts intermingle with John’s cries. When the beast rears its head slightly, it holds in his mouth ragged, bloody chunks of flesh.
Violent tremors rock me. My eyes dart from side to side as my brain struggles to make any semblance of sense of what I’m seeing. The remaining people who stayed behind with the vehicles are positioned similarly, all prone and with a hideous fiend hovering above them, feeding.
Snarling and devouring hunks of skin and fat, the mutant creatures are oblivious of our arrival. That changes, however, when my muscles shudder to life and I raise my gun. Taking aim at the nearest one, I squeeze the trigger. Sully follows suit, as does June and the others with us. Shots ring out. Bullets zip and whizz with deadly intent and burrow deep into deserving hosts. The beasts howl in pain, their agonized yelps masked by the incessant screaming all around me.
Strident cries of disgust and disbelief crash like waves in a choppy sea. Four men are dead, residents of Cassowary, my friends. Astonishingly, John clings to life and coherence despite having a gaping hole gorged in his torso. He shrieks. It’s a tortured, anguished noise. All of us rush to him.
I drop to my knees and cradle his head. “Kill me, please.” Blood burbles from between his lips, spilling down the side of his face and pooling near his ear. Tears intermingle and my heart clenches like a fist.
“Shh, it’s okay. You’re okay,” I lie.
Eyes glazed with pain roll in and out of focus and faint recognition flickers across John’s features. He sees me, is aware of me. He recognizes who I am. It’s a good sign, I hope.
“Stay with me, John, okay? Just stay with me. We’ll get you out of here and get you fixed. You’ll see.” I have no idea whether he’ll survive the ride home, whether he’ll survive being lifted into our vehicle. All I know is that he is one of us and that I’ll do everything in my power to save him.
John’s left hand lifts limply. He gestures to nowhere in particular and mumbles words that are indecipherable. “The tru—” he tries, but his words are slurred by pain and vacillating consciousness.
“Shh, it’s okay. Don’t speak. I need you to stay strong.” I sweep the hair off his brow. His skin is cold and clammy. My eyes immediately find Sully. Our gazes meet and I shake my head slightly to convey that John is slipping fast. Still I refuse to give up. I refuse to accept that he will die.
I lick my lips and am about to open my mouth to ask Sully to help me lift him when without warning a flash of light bursts in my field of vision and is accompanied by an earsplitting blast. Instantly, John’s eyes glaze over, his body stilled. Light from overhead is eclipsed by Brom’s burly form, his rifle still pointed at John.
“Nooo! What did you do?” I scramble backward, screaming at him. “Why would you do that?” I spring to my feet and lunge at him, balling my fist and driving it against his jaw with as much strength as I can muster. The force of my blow causes his head to jerk back but does little else. My hand throbs, my knuckles feeling as if they’ve shattered, but I don’t relent. I curse at him and swing a second time; only he catches my fist and squeezes it hard.
His voice is a growl, warning as he speaks through his teeth at me with thinly harnessed rage. “He was suffering. It was the right thing to do.”
Yanking my hand free, my nostrils flare and my lips stretch over my teeth tightly. “He wasn’t an animal!” I stab my finger toward John. “He’s a human being! Just like all of us! And if there was a chance to save him, we have to try!” I level a hateful gaze his way. “That’s twice now,” I say in a low, threatening tone. “You need to follow orders, my orders.”
Brom’s face hardens, pinching to an unattractive point of ire. His demeanor matches his expression, making plain that he doesn’t approve of me yelling at him. But I don’t care. He just killed a friend of mine, and while John probably would’ve died from his injuries, Brom’s actions were unacceptable.
Leaning in, Brom stabs his finger in my direction and utters an ugly profanity. Within the space of a breath, Sully is between us and launches two hands forward, shoving Brom back so that his spine slams into the truck. “Back off, Brom!” he shouts, his voice as savage as the gleam in his eyes. “She’s right! We don’t put our people down like animals!”
“He was suffering! I did the humane thing!” Brom puffs out his chest and squares his shoulders. Suddenly, he bursts forward, charging Sully. Dropping his shoulder, Brom collides with his midsection and knocks him the ground. They wrestle briefly before Sully frees his arm and he rams his fist into Brom’s face.
Immediately, Arnost grabs Brom, pinning his arms behind his back and lifting him to his feet. “That’ll do,” he says as Brom bucks and resists. “Enough!” he barks a final word of warning. Reluctantly, Brom calms. Sully is subdued by Oliver and Tim, another of our men from Cassowary.
“Both of you cut it out!” Oliver says. “We don’t have time for this. We need to find my sister and get back to Cassowary before more of those things come.” He turns and points to the mutant carcasses. Involuntarily I shudder, the thought of encountering a legion scuttling across my skin like a thousand insect feelers.
I study Oliver for a moment. He’s right, of course. Staying here and fighting doesn’t help us in the least. We need to leave now. And I’m not alone in acknowledging this fact. The tension slowly seeps from Sully’s body and then Brom’s. As much as they wanted to tear each other apart seconds ago, neither of them wants to be torn apart by one of the flesh-eating monsters.
Arnost, still with a firm hold on Brom, says, “You know he’s right. Let it go already so we can leave. I, for one, don’t want to come across a pack of those nasty things.” He tips his head toward the fallen beasts.
I
take a fleeting look at the carnage surrounding me and my gaze settles on our trucks. I freeze, staring unblinking. My pulse quickens, drumming at the base of my throat. “No, no.” My words come out on a gasp. I take a few tentative steps toward them.
“Avery? Avery, what is it? What’s wrong?” June asks. “Sully, what’s going on?”
“The trucks,” I mumble. “The hoods are up.”
“What? What’re you talking about?” Arnost asks.
Ignoring his question, my pace picks up. I jog to the open hood and peer inside. Wires are torn. Hoses are detached. And the engine looks as if it’s been slammed repeatedly with a sledgehammer, dented beyond repair. “This can’t be,” I say. “No! This can’t be!” Pounding my fist against the front of the truck, I turn and dash to the one parked beside it. Its hood is raised and its engine looks nearly identical. “Are they—” I start to ask when I feel Sully beside me, but cannot finish my sentence. I already know the answer to my question.
“They’re destroyed. All of them are destroyed.” Sully stares into the well of the final truck, where a fully functional engine sat not long ago, in shock. He mutters swearwords. Each of the engines of our vehicles has been sabotaged. “This is insane! I’ve never seen anything like it!” He tunnels his fingers through the front of his hair. “Let’s get the ammo and get moving.” The sun hangs low in the sky. Ribbons of salmon streak an otherwise violet sky that’s deepening in darkness with every second that passes. “Night is coming and we need to get the heck away from this place.”
“On foot?” June’s brow is low, her expression incredulous.
“What other choice do we have?” Sully’s tone softens. “We can’t stay here.” He splays his arms at his side, reminding her of what we want to avoid.
“I’ll take my chances armed and on foot rather than stay here, that’s for sure. I don’t want to be here a second longer than I have to be.” I turn, making my way to the rear compartment of the truck. When I open it, however, I’m stunned to silence once again. “Sully!” I shriek as soon as sound makes it past the lump of dread lodged in my throat. “There’s nothing here!”
“What? What do you mean?” Sully is next to me in an instant. He sees the empty compartment. “They’re gone! I can’t believe they’re not here!” He hammers his fist against the carpeted compartment, his face contorted in frustration, and I share every crease that lines his expression. “Dammit!” He races to the rear of each of the other vehicles, only to find them cleared out as well. “They wiped us out! All of our bullets are gone!”
“This can’t be happening! This can’t be real!” June begins to break down, her strong, capable veneer disintegrating.
Why did we leave the ammunition in the trucks? What were we thinking? How did this happen? Without vehicles and ammunition for our weapons, how will we ever make it back to Cassowary? These and so many other questions thunder through my brain on a roar of panic.
“What do we do?” Lark’s voice is shrill. She turns from Oliver to me then to Sully. I wish I had answers. I wish I had something—anything—to say, but I’m dumbfounded. All that has transpired, the deaths of everyone in Galway, the beasts, the organization of the attacks, and then the extraordinarily executed sabotage of any chances of our survival come as an overwhelming shock to me. Quickly, though, I am snapped out of my trance-like state. A sound, distant at first catches my attention.
I look over my shoulder, out into the vast expanse of wooded plains. The sun is sinking fast. Soon twilight will claim the landscape. Fog has begun to settle, slinking and sliding sinuously, hovering like spectral beings. A cluster of bushes moves, the woods stirring, though a breeze doesn’t blow, and all around me the world pauses as if with bated breath, waiting. Watching.
Straining my eyes, I look out into the darkening horizon. It’s filled with hostile looking shapes. I can’t be certain what they are, whether they’re trees and plants merging to shape animal-like forms, or something more nefarious. Warning screams through me.
“Avery what’s going on?” Sully asks, his voice spiked with concern.
“We need to go, now.” Pure terror raises every hair on my body, prickling my skin in a wave.
Our gazes lock on one another and more words and sentiments than can ever be explained pass between us.
“Let’s go. C’mon.” He begins shepherding everyone away from the city and toward the road.
We walk at first. But continual movement in the void disturbs the woods once again. And still, the air has not shifted in the least. Picking up my speed, I push myself to walk as fast as I can, the need to be away from the sound, from the menacing shadows and their phantom movements pressing me. The sound of twigs snapping, closer this time, causes all of us to turn then jog. I look over my shoulder and feel lacy pinpricks of numbing terror spread from my chest down my limbs. I do not see the sinister eyes that watch us; rather, I feel them stalking us from the ether.
Sliding my binoculars from my pocket, I am loath to look through them. When I do, what I see drains the color from my face. “Sully,” I try to speak, but my mouth struggles to form the word, my voice little more than a choked whisper. “Sully,” I attempt again.
He turns to me, sees the look on my face then peers out into the distance. He feels it too. I can tell by his expression. “Run!” he urges everyone.
No one wastes a moments’ time. All of us run as hard and fast as we can.
“Is this it?” June asked feebly. “Is this how we’re going to die?”
My lungs burn and anxiety burdens my legs, makes them feel as if my every movement is against a mighty tide. My heart pumps madly and my T shirt, dampened by sweat, clings to my back. Permeated by instinctive fear, each cell in my body vibrates, my blood throbbing through my veins, against my skin with so much force it threatens to break free.
I chance another look over my shoulder. The sound I heard moments earlier, the low roll that was faint at first, has grown louder and more distinct. Like innumerable hooves beating the earth beneath it, the noise thrums through me in time with my heartbeat, a pounding that sounds as though hundreds of horses are galloping forth, racing toward us. But no horses head our way, of that I’m sure. Something far wickeder is coming.
For a second, it feels as if the world stops, takes a collective breath and holds it. My vision narrows down to the sight before me.
My eyes widen and my breath catches in my chest as I catch another glimpse of what advances our way. Manes of ebony hair that matches their black eyes billow behind them and impressive hands, large and with long, lethal fingers tear at the ground with each stride they take, rushing toward us. The beasts charge at full speed, too many to count, their numbers so numerous they eclipse the light of day.
Panic and terror collide and dread rockets through me, jolting my system as if I’ve been struck by lightning. The thunderous clatter grows deafening; the sight, a nightmarish phantasm.
“No!” I scream and push myself to hasten my pace. Every head whips toward the approaching legion of monsters, the very ones that attacked Galway and won. And in the seconds that what’s happening registers in my brain, I realize the greedy gulps of air I take now will most certainly be the last breaths I ever take.
Chapter 6
“Run faster!” The two words rush from me in a shrill scream that drills through my blood along with a flood of adrenaline. Not wasting a moment, we take off at a breakneck pace, each of us running for our lives. The tide of black that looms on the horizon, darker than the night itself, is doom incarnate.
“Oh my gosh! There’re so many!” June shrieks, her utterances swallowed by the roar of blood behind my ears, and the galloping feet advancing. I reach out and yank her toward me by her wrist and run as hard and fast as I’ve ever run in my life.
Leg muscles burning and wind rushing at my face, all I can think of is the rolling sound that echoes like thunder, the approach of the apocalypse to life as we know it. I think of all that June, Sully and I have survived, al
l that we’ve overcome and all that we’ve worked to build. Urthmen, Lurkers, monstrous spiders and monstrous humans—we thought we’d seen all the horrors our planet has to offer. We’d been wrong. We sprint, the collective sound of our pants drowned by the clatter of feet and knuckles tramping earth.
“We’ve got to take cover!” Sully shouts. “Out in the open is no good!” he huffs as he pumps his arms and legs.
“The forest!” I barely manage, my lungs burning as if I’m inhaling ribbons of fire.
Without needing further explanation or prompting, our group veers off the paved stretch of roadway and sprints into the woods that edge it.
Night will claim the day soon and darkness will reign. Thin branches lash at my face while thorny bushes and creepers claw at my ankles. I feel the sting of broken skin but do not dare slow much less stop. Cold fear has seeped deep into my body, chilling my blood but doing nothing to bank the hot current shivering down my spine, the inherent need to flee from the predators pursuing me. We continue and cross a small seasonal stream, swollen with leaves and debris, and move deeper into the woods. And as soon as we slog through the muck filled water, we’re immediately swallowed by an abundance of growth. Branches, crisscrossed at every turn, threaten to gouge our eyes. Twisting vines tug at my pant legs, and fog gathers, thickening, disorienting me and robbing me of my vision.
Accompanying the thickening fog is a preternatural stillness, as if both have muffled all other sounds. The shuffle of our footsteps is little more than a stifled swish, until the loud snap of a branch to our rear slices through the void. My pulse spikes, quickening to a dangerous level I didn’t think possible, and I force myself to speed my pace. Certain we’re being pursued by a smaller, faster set of beasts that’ve broken free of the massive group, all of us lurch forward. I clumsily try to navigate a riot of twisted, entangled branches. Sweat dapples my clammy skin and I foolishly chance a look over my shoulder. Movement behind me, unseen but distinctly felt and heard, sends me into a full-blown panic. “Go! Go!” I wheeze breathlessly. The approach of darkness, the fog, fear and adrenaline merge with my nearly nonexistent sense of depth perception. I feel my shin collide with something rough and unyielding. Feeling the scrape of skin there burn in time with a throbbing ache, I topple face-first to the ground. I land with a groan, feeling what little wind that remains in my lungs knocked from them. Immediately greeted by the stench of mold and decaying leaves, I scramble to my feet, but not before I feel Sully’s large warm hand wrap around my upper arm and hoist me up.
Planet Urth: The Fate of Urth (Book 5) Page 4
