Darkness and shadow spew out, but the air is cold and without smoke. Tears blur Merchant’s vision and flames quickly turn their attention to the opening and race to block his way.
Face pressed into the crook of his elbow, he races through the opening and down the stairs. He can hear the crying of his family. His boys’ pleas for help are muffled and the soothing words of his wife are soft amongst the horror that surrounds them all.
“I’m here, Tracy,” Merchant calls.
She does not turn his way. Pulling their boys closer, she hugs them to her chest. Shotgun resting over her legs, their two sons are curled beneath her protective arms and tears cover all three of their faces.
“I’m here,” Merchant whispers. He kneels in front of them. “I know I almost failed you, but I’m here. We can get out of the house. You just need to follow me.”
His words fall on deaf ears as she kisses each of the two boys on the top of their heads. Gray ash mixes with their dark hair and rivers of black soot streaks from his beautiful wife’s face. Lifting one hand away, she reaches into the top of her white blouse, unrecognizable beneath the blood and ashes and pulls at the chain hanging around the slenderness of her neck. Light from the fire makes its way down the stairs and reflects from the metal and jewels of the piece.
“Please, baby. Listen to me. Grab the boys and make a run for it. The men outside have scattered. Go out the back and get to the shed. The ATV is gassed, just like you always made me promise it would be,” he pleads.
Her eyes watch the light flicker over the medallion before lifting. Warm blue medallions consider him for the smallest of moments. Red with tears but still the crowning jewels of the world her eyes regard him with the tenderness of pity he has not felt in all his memory.
Merchant reaches forward. His bloody, fire torn hand shaking as his fingers draw closer to her cheek.
Eyes widening, her mouth begins to move but no words come out. Something grabs the back of Merchant’s shirt and tugs him with such force it sends him sprawling through the air until he hits the wall on the far end of the basement. Boxes of stored Christmas decorations, dust, and pieces of wooden shelving crash all around him in a jingling mass of trinkets and waste. The bones in his back crack with the pain of the impact and it is a struggle to move.
Lifting his head, he rests it against the stone wall of the basement. The feeling of cold fear ripples its way through his body. He tries to call out. There are no words. Before him the darkness he has been chasing materializes. Pulling into substance from nothing, the figure approaches.
His wife’s screams turn from fear into defiance. His boys plead, and he cannot move. The thing has no description. It is not a person, or an animal. It is something, yet not really there, and it locks him to the wall.
He watches as it approaches his family. The fire and chaos above are lost. Silent and dead, the world around them is no more and everything within existence is locked into this room.
The screams and cries die out as the darkness of the horror between them engulfs his family. Merchant struggles to pull free. Tears burn the skin of his face as the unknown chains pinch against the skin of his arms and legs.
He yanks and tugs, screams and curses, but he cannot move. Enveloping everything, the shadows move in around him. He can no longer see anything that he isn’t touching.
“Tracy!” he screams.
Everything his tries is useless. He’s a prisoner left to be forgotten in the confines of his burned-out home. Given nothing more than a life of misery and loneliness down within the depths of hell. With one more tug the chains and restraints that bind him fall apart.
Merchant stumbles to the floor with the force of his exertion. Dust and ash choke out the air and his tears taste of acid over his lips. Digging his fingers and bloody nails into the ground, he drags himself across the floor.
Light filters in the through holes in the floor above and the opening to the stairs that led him down. The darkness recedes from where his family still rests.
“Tracy!” he cries again.
They are gone. Their burned husks lay quiet and undisturbed. Sobs rack his body and tear at the injuries bleeding across his body. Stretching his hand, he lets his touch rest onto the wilted shoes of his wife’s foot. Bones crack and turn to ash beneath his embrace. The bodies dissolve into one another.
A pile spills onto the floor enveloping his misery. His wife gone. The children laid waste within reach of his grasp. The wind swirls and lifts their remains into the air. A tornado takes them up and out through a gap in the charred floor above.
Merchant watches them go. All that he has ever loved and cared for is gone, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth and a hatred that will never be quenched.
He rolls onto his back. The cries of a dead man will never hear the words spilling from his mouth. The disgust for life and anything bright within this world dies as the cracking of his world splits the home around him. He does not care. Pieces of his world crash around him. First a beam that splits the stairs back up to the safety that is the outside. Then the cracked and unrecognizable remains of the television in the living room slips through the floor and shatters on the cement of the basement.
Inch by inch the remnants of his soul crumble around him. Merchant does not care. He welcomes it. Revels in the certainty of it all as the last beams above split and sing the song of death as they plummet through the air.
He does not move, does not try. Death takes him, and he is its willing partner.
Gasping for breath, the world spins in Merchant’s eyes. A searing fire races through his arm and the taste and smell of blood is everywhere. He cannot move. The feeling in his hands is gone and his shoulders feel pulled beyond the extremes of his joints.
There is no strength left in his legs.
He tries to lift himself up.
Needles cut through his feet and bone scrapes against bone within his knees. The candle light swirls in his eyes and his stomach heaves. Vomit chokes his throat and spews from his mouth. The body of Red begins to move. He tries to speak but only spittle comes out.
“F… foo… food,” her voice croaks.
Merchant dangles from his restraints. The vision of her body struggling for the strength to move splits his brain through the center. He tries to vomit again but his insides are empty. A cold chill sends shivers through him.
His eyes struggle to stay open.
Why won’t the end just take him?
The shadows begin to close around. There is enough strength left in him to smile. This time there is no escape. No angel to comfort him in his passing. The vision of his wife smiling and his boys playing football in the backyard warms him from the inside.
Yes.
He’ll see them again.
Merchant lets the cold hands caress his body. If there is a god in this world, it will all end here. Then the vision of his family turns to dust. Their bodies burst into flames and the ash is picked up and scattered across the world. He screams, and it does not stop.
The world burns around him. Shadows close in and materialize in front of his eyes. That same thing. Whatever that benevolence was in his vision stands before him. He spits blood and whatever is still in his mouth in defiance.
Horror and death do not care. A cold certainty takes hold of him. He does not know what it is, but there is no stopping it.
Maybe this is death.
“Foooood,” Red calls out again.
The cold chill wraps him like a blanket and the pain in his body erupts and vanishes with a thought. His arms drop, and he tumbles to the floor. The cold stone cuts into him like a knife and it is everything he has to roll onto his back. Above the shadows hold form before slipping back into nothingness.
Inside he feels the hatred and warmth of his disgust for everything return. Filling his limbs, the pain returns but slowly the emptiness subsides.
“Fooood,” Red groans again, closer this time.
Too close.
Her movements
are jagged and uncoordinated. Her hand swipes at his torn face but the grasp never reaches. His fingers wrap around the fragile wrist and squeeze until she screams. Merchant can feel the bones beneath begin to shift and crack.
The shrieks from her voice are not human. Rabid eyes filled with hunger and hatred stare back at him as he keeps her at bay through pain as he pivots enough to regain his knees. The bleeding on his arms and legs begin to slow. Fire fills its way through his body and the world stops spinning.
“Hungry!” she shouts and trying to spin away from the pain of her twisted wrist, she tries for his throat.
Merchant swats away the attempt like a lazy fly. With a shove he sends Red sprawling back into the pile of dirty towels and clothes. Laying naked and sprawled on the floor, her body is more shriveled than he has ever seen it.
Feral eyes glare and broken teeth are bared. Like an animal she coils into a spring and he pushes his way to his feet. There is no fear. His bag rests in the far corner. Sight returning, he can see where they left it, disregarded it as nothing more than the useless possessions of a dead man.
Red springs before he can turn to get his things. Hands and nails extended, her grip digs into the flesh of his shoulders but he bites away the pain. Taking a step, he wraps his large fingers around the front of her throat. She tries to bite down, but he feels the pulse of her heart beneath his fingertips. Rapid and wild, her nails continue to dig, and he squeezes harder. The breath from her lungs slow as he closes her throat.
Slapping, she tries frantically to beat him into submission. Drool and blood drip from her lips as the last bits of her body begin to slow. Feet kicking, she does not touch the floor. Pity has no room as he squeezes until her eyes begin to flutter. She stops kicking and slapping. Her arms fall limp against her body and he holds on for a few more seconds.
Darkness has taken her. With a gentleness, Merchant puts her back on the ground. Limp, she sprawls across the floor and he turns away. Lifting his bag off the floor, the strength of his body is still a bit of time away, but inside the familiar jingles of the burden he carries puts his mind at ease. There is a debt to pay, and there will be enough when he gets there. That he is certain of.
20
Enough is Too Much
The end of the world is a loud thing. Full of screams and cries. Blood spilling everywhere and the pleas of the fallen before death takes them all. This is the torturous nightmare promised to everyone in the holy book.
Kelly cannot stop crying. She has tried, but the sobbing runs through her body with unrelenting force and the pain holding it in is worse than the bruises and cuts over her body. Everything is as it was described. The horror. The death. Hell on earth with no way to survive. She wishes she would have died back before they brought her to this place. At least then the pain would be over.
Smoke rolls through her world casting a haze that filters the rising sun into a hellish red. The remains of every building she can see are nothing but empty husks, dark shadows proudly displaying the reminder of their failure high into the air. Men with guns gather survivors and kill those who even look to have an idea of resisting. Looking at faces is too much for she cannot withstand the gut-wrenching fear of watching them die over and over in her mind.
Women cry in the distance. She is too fragile to do the same. Hers are silent and painful. Their wails rip at her soul as she can only imagine what is happening to them.
Clinging to the thinning arms of Nicholi, she can practically feel his skin go slack beneath her grip as his breaths continue to slow. The dark pool covering his stomach grows darker. The men who did this do not bother her as the dying man sits and rests against her.
She smells of shit and she can feel death touching her body. A cough rocks Nicholi and blood bubbles between his lips.
“Lay still, Nich,” she whispers. “You’ll be OK.”
He coughs again, and the left side of his lips begin to curl up.
“Stupid girl, I’m a dead man and you’re using me as a shield,” he answers, his voice now like rocks in an empty tin can. Another cough forces his head back against her chest. His eyes stare off into the distant sky and he takes a deep breath. “Good thinking, but what are you going to do when I’m gone? Can’t sit here forever. This whole world is gone to shit. Too bad I won’t be here to see that bastard pay for this.”
Nicholi struggles as more air comes out than he can get in. He spits more blood, and it is brighter than the sky. His eyes close but he continues to breathe. Kelly pulls him closer and watches as more bodies are dragged and lined up in a double-sided path to the church.
She stopped counting at forty-seven. Shoulder to shoulder, their feet make an aisle to the front doors where the entrance has been nailed shut and the building untouched by the fire.
“This is all your fault, priest!” Logan Barnett taunts while waving one of his two pistols around like an empty fork. “All you had to do is tell us the secret of what cures the infection and none of this would have happened. Then, in your righteous stupidity you sent those two idiots into my home to kill me?”
Brother George stands with his shoulders back and head held high. Gray ash covers his burgundy sweater and his pants are soaked in dark blood that is not his own. Deep gashes slice through the upper thigh of his pants, but she cannot tell if he is truly hurt. He does not glance at the bodies at his feet nor the men who begin to make their way toward the spectacle. Guns held lazily across their shoulders and chests, they circle but Kelly can still see them from where she sits against the remnants of the Sick House.
“Everyone’s actions are of their own making. We did not send or request any of our people make their way to your home. Nor would we have. As for this secret you are looking for, there is nothing secret about what happens here,” Brother George says and then turns to look at everyone, enemy and friend. “We are nothing but a humble community that works with their hands and through the ways provided to us by our father above. Only in his glory have we lived in this world surrounded by such suffering and horrors.”
A rifle butt slams into George’s stomach and he stumbles before dropping to a single knee.
“Don’t give me that shit about God and all those other lies. No amount of praying is going to keep the fucking infected away. They eat, they kill, but they haven’t touched a single fucking one of you. It’s time to fess up and save who you can. Tell me now and the punishment can end with you.”
Brother George looks up at Barnett and his pudgy cheeks bursting at the seams. His large girth blocks the hazy light above and the silence between them sits like a death sentence. Nicholi grunts and Kelly pulls her hand away. White prints puff out where she squeezed her hand too hard on his arm.
“Silly fuck,” the dying man whispers. “Really thinks there is some kind of secret to this. Oh, what is going to happen to us when he finally opens that fucking mind of his.”
“Shh,” Kelly says. “We have to do something.”
Coughs rock Nicholi’s body. Blood trickles in rivers over his chin and the dark pool grows cold on her legs.
“Do what? I’ve got a small knife in my back pocket if you want to cut your way through them. Just leave me the fat one. I’m gonna cut his fucking balls off and shove them down his throat. Make him choke on his own cock.”
“I have told you all that I can. What do you want me to say?” Brother George says, his voice even and slow. “There is no medicine in a bottle that can do what you ask. We have very few weapons and those we have you already showed that they are hardly adequate to protect our homes and ourselves.”
Barnett bends down and lifts Brother George’s chin up. Hacking phlegm into his throat, he spits in the downed man’s face, the sticky strings dripping from dark cheeks.
“You have doomed your people, priest. No one refuses me. Maybe if I start with this young girl of yours, it’ll loosen up those tight lips of yours,” Mr. Barnett says and turns to Kelly.
The cold touch of death and fear washes through her veins l
ike a tidal wave and she can barely breath. Her hands shake as the smile on the monster’s face grows.
“Leave the poor girl alone,” Brother George pleads. “She has nothing to do with this. Your argument is with me.”
“Someone bring that girl over here. Time to see just how much this priest cares about his flock.”
“Grab the knife and make a fight of it, girl. Don’t go down without swinging,” Nicholi says, his words broken between drops of blood and hardly louder than a whisper.
Kelly lets her trembling hand slide behind the dying man’s back. The cold wetness of blood sticks to her skin as it slides over the heavy shirt, a film sticking to her skin. A bulge sticks out just above the man’s belt and she wraps the tips of her fingers around it, her strength barely able to do that.
“Get over here you dumb little bitch,” the soldier who reaches her first says.
“Stay away!” Kelly screams.
The man slaps her across the face and she tumbles to the side but not before securing her hold of the knife. Hitting the ground, she leaves the small weapon between her and the dirt as the tears and sobs kick dust into her face.
“On your damn feet,” the man barks.
“Leave the girl alone!” Nicholi orders.
He swings his fist out at the soldier and his knuckles crack on the man’s vest before being swatted away. A boot stamps down on the hemorrhaging wound in Nicholi’s stomach and the curdle that rolls out of his chest is unnatural and short.
“Foolish man,” the soldier says.
Kelly lifts herself up slightly and turns at the sound of metal clicking back.
“No!” she belts, but it is too late.
Three gunshots tear apart Nicholi’s face and his body transforms into a ragged pile of skin and bones stretched out across the earth.
“If you don’t want to end up like your grandpa here, I said get the fuck up,” the soldier barks again.
Traveling Merchant (Book 2): Pestilence Page 22
