Abomination (The Pathfinders Book 1)

by Jane Dougherty

  “And we’ve got to pick up Dee and Zo from the infirmary,” Matt reminded him, the determined expression on his face at last replacing the one of hatred.

  * * * *

  Moving in silence along the deserted walkways, Jim, Matt and Tully decided to take the most direct route and run the risk of meeting a patrol of Ace’s men. The chances were slim, since Ace would want to keep all his warriors around him in case there was any truth at all in Tully’s story of yet more tribes waiting to move in. They would probably all be huddled in their quarters, waiting for instructions.

  The dreary murk that passed for broad daylight did little to dissipate the shadows lurking in the wreckage of the mall. Unguarded lift shafts and escalators hanging free were obvious sources of danger, and the unlit caverns of pillaged shops contained untold hidden dangers, from missing floors to nests of ratmen. Blackened piles of crumbling, carbonized sofas and armchairs blocked one route, spewed out from a rocket hit on a designer boutique, along with the chrome clothes rails now twisted and broken.

  Typically, a path had been hacked through the middle rather than clearing the obstacle out of the way. Ice and rainfalls had formed treacherous zones where moldering refuse was gradually breaking down into an unrecognizable slime. The place stank of mold, urine and decay. Nothing could ever be made to rise from these ashes, Tully thought. And people like Ace were not even going to be bothered trying.

  They reached the walkway that led to the Lady Day boutique. Just a little way beyond, it turned to the right, where it broadened out into the main thoroughfare that led to the supermarket. The cafeteria, where they hoped Ace was assembling his warriors, was on the second level, above the supermarket. They moved along, keeping close to the wall, peering into each opening as they crossed it. Nothing moved. They heard no sound. The Lady Day boutique came into view, its metal blind raised a couple of feet off the ground. Jim held up a hand. They stopped. Somebody was in there. Tully swore to himself. Even now, with the Burnt Man breathing down their necks, Ace was still laying traps for him.

  Silently, they all slipped inside an open doorway and crouched down. Jim took out a pebble from the collection he carried in his pockets, and threw it down the walkway past the boutique, where it hit the ground and ricocheted into a broken plate glass shop front with a noise that rang out like gunfire in the silence.

  Immediately, two shapes slid out from beneath the blind and crept down the walkway hugging the wall. Jim threw another pebble as far as he could. Ace’s men moved carefully down the mall until they were just blurred shadows.

  Jim leaped up and unrolled a length of rope from around his waist, gave one end to Matt and jerked his chin to indicate the other side of the walkway. Matt dove across, under a broken roller blind and crouched out of sight. The rope lay between them on the ground. Jim nudged Tully and pointed in the direction of Ace’s men, then the rope. He pointed at Tully, jabbed his thumb back the way they had come and made the gesture of running, then he gave the rope a sharp jerk. Tully gave him the thumbs up and got ready to run.

  Jim took another pebble and threw it at the blind of the Lady Day boutique. There was no reaction from inside so there were probably only the two guards, who came scuttling back at the sound. Jim nudged Tully and chopped one open hand down on the other in a rapid gesture. Tully jumped into the walkway and began to run. The two guards shouted and something whistled past his head.

  Jesus! They’ve got ammo!

  He ducked and carried on running, weaving from side to side. The two guards pounded after him, then tripped their length on the ground when Jim and Matt pulled the rope taut.

  Matt and Jim leaped on the two men and held them down, their hands behind their backs. One of them—it was the ferret twins—raised his head to yell. Matt took a vicious delight in placing a knife blade against his cheek and whispering, “You specially attached to this eye or not?” Neither of the twins moved another muscle.

  Tully swerved and came back, still at a run, rummaged through Jim’s pockets for more rope and began to tie their hands and feet. Matt relieved the twins of their belts to use as gags. Matt and Jim dragged them into the Lady Day boutique while Tully rushed around grabbing his gear and Carla’s, a change of warm clothing for Matt and Jim and a thick jacket he hoped would fit his dad. There didn’t seem much point burdening themselves with cans of food—if they found the same devastation at the end of the Sacred Hole, a few slices of corned beef wasn’t going to make much difference to their chances of survival. In less than five minutes they were ready to leave, pulling the blind down as quietly as possible behind them.

  It was then that they heard the screaming.

  * * * *

  “How do you feel now, Jeff?”

  “Okay, Mr. Keane.”

  “Jack. Well, I’ll have my jacket back then, if you don’t mind. This cold’d freeze the balls off a brass monkey.”

  Jeff blushed and sat up. “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “Don’t worry, no damage done yet. But we’d best be getting ready to move. The others should be back any minute.”

  Carla tried not to look at her watch again but couldn’t help casting a surreptitious glance. Tully had been gone half an hour. In not much more than an hour, Ace would begin to get restless. She had no idea how long Ace would wait before he set out to look for his warlord, or whether he would do as he had been told and settle down in a defensive position.

  She paced about, aware that Jeff’s anxious eyes never left her, but unable to stop herself. It was too much. After all that she had lost, with the building terror of what was on its way, to have Tully out of her sight for even a minute made her feel like screaming. She went to the door.

  “Just a quick look,” she pleaded, and stepped outside. The door had barely closed behind her when it slammed open again. Carla bundled back in, her face red with excitement. Tully followed, then Jim, pushing a furious-looking Matt in front of him. Tully threw the jacket to his father.

  “Here, put this on if it fits. Carla, here’s your bag. Kat, can Jeff walk? Good. Now let’s get moving.”

  “Whoa, hold on a minute!” Jack grabbed his son’s arm. “What happened? You lot look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Almost,” Tully replied. “We heard one.”

  “Loads of ’em,” Jim added.

  “That’s good enough for me.” Jack hoisted Jeff to his feet and opened the door. “Let them wagons roll!”

  Carla slung her pack over her shoulder and followed them through the door with Kat close on her heels. Matt hung back.

  “You go on. I’ll catch you up in a minute.” His voice came over unnaturally calm, and when Carla turned, she saw the tension in his face.

  Jim grabbed him by the shoulder. “It’s too late,” he hissed, his own face a chaos of conflicting emotions. “You can’t go back there.”

  Matt wrenched himself free and spun on his heel. Then the screaming began again, and this time they all heard the slop and suction of a gigantic oily wave pouring through the mall, and the smell of rotting meat hit them like a gas attack. The screaming diminished until the last terrified jabbering had faded. Covering their faces against the stench, the darkness and the fear, they plunged head down out of the bank, through the east side entrance and into the wasteland, Jim keeping a firm hand on Matt’s shoulder.

  “This way!” Kat pointed to where the motorway had once been that led to Chartres and the waving grain fields of the Beauce. “Watch where you put your feet. There are chunks of the crash barrier scattered everywhere.” She struck out across the car park, one arm holding Jeff tight.

  “Here. Let me,” Jack said gently, bent down and held his arms out behind him. “Up you get, Jeff.”

  Jeff hoisted himself onto Jack’s back and wrapped his arms around his neck. Jack grabbed him around the back of the knees and stood upright.

  Kat shot Jeff a quick smile. “Now, let’s move it!”

  The wind, vicious and cold, blew ice crystals into their eyes. Jim and Mat
t hung onto one another, their eyes glazed over with grief. Tully and Carla watched their feet, tried not to see the shadows that shifted and flocked around them.

  The screaming that began while they were in the Lady Day Boutique had swelled to a wave of red terror, rolling through the desolate hollow entrails of the mall. Carla shot a terrified glance over her shoulder. They thought they were outrunning it, but she realized that the terror was following them. The sense of a dark presence, so ancient as to be untouched by notions of good or evil, poured like pus from a burst boil into every space behind them, leaving no hiding places, no quarter. The air itself was thick with it, reaching into their lungs, pouring into their ears, smothering their thoughts. She ran after the others, shaking her head and sobbing.

  They had left them behind, the last of the agonized pleas for mercy, but the silence did not reassure them. Carla and Tully had barely known them, but the others had lived with the Flay Tribe for the last five years, had grown to maturity with them. Chance might have thrown them together, but some genuine friendships had formed. In some cases, friendship had grown with time to something more. Carla thought of Dee, and she knew Matt did too.

  Tully had thrown his world into confusion. Carla had seen how Matt and Jim had begun to look at the girls differently. She had seen how Matt looked at Dee. It was obvious to her what Dee thought about Matt, but he seemed to have only just realized what those tender looks meant. And now it was too late to do anything about it.

  Her heart went out to Matt as he shook his head from side to side. She felt the awful, gnawing pain that tore through his chest, squeezing his heart. But nothing would shake out the cruel fact. They had left Dee behind. They had left all of them behind, Belle, Zo, Sam and Ben, to face the screaming horror, with that useless fucker Ace to protect them. Matt gasped as if he had been kicked in the gut.

  “Dee,” he sobbed, and spun on his heels, stumbling blindly back the way they had come.

  “Matt, no!” Jim turned and grabbed him. “You can’t do anything for them. You heard. He’s here. All we can do now is run. Tell him, Kat!” Jim was shouting now, against the wind, against his fear. His face was full of the nightmare that lay behind them, and a determination not to let his friend run back into it.

  Then Tully was there, beside them both, helping Jim drag Matt along. Carla stumbled ahead with the others, one thought pushing out all the rest—reach the Sacred Hole before the Burnt Man caught up with them. The sense of evil grew with every step they took, a dark mass growing at their backs, spreading like a disease across the meager ground they had covered, spreading at the speed of a galloping horse.

  Black tendrils of a viscous, putrid material seeped up out of the rubble, winding itself around ankles and knees. Already the seeds of panic were there, confusing their vision and making them stumble and fall. Carla had a deep gash across her left palm and Tully’s hands and legs were bleeding from a fall into a nest of barbed wire.

  The icy wind veered around, blowing now from behind, from the heart of the darkness, carrying the stench of carrion and the sound of moaning. It could have been no later than the middle of the morning, but the sky was black as pitch. Clouds billowed around them like soot from a chimney. Kat had stopped, hesitating.

  Carla grabbed her arm. “Where is it?”

  They both cast about, at first seeing nothing but the cloud, hearing nothing but the moaning that might have been the wind and might not. Then Kat pointed at something that lay almost at her feet, a twisted metal sheet, white letters on a blue background.

  Chartres 75.

  She peered ahead into the massy cloud, at the broken finger pointing slantwise at the furious sky. The flyover!

  “It’s not far now,” she gasped. “Up the incline. We’ve already begun to climb, I can feel it.”

  “Watch out, worms. The Magnificent Seven are on their way!” Jack was panting too. Jeff had slumped around his neck, a dead weight in his terror.

  Tully was back at Carla’s side grabbing her hand and shouting, “Run! Don’t look back, just run!”

  “Over here,” Kat screamed. “We made it. Come on!” She disappeared over the brink of the hill, Jack close on her heels. Behind them, Jim was struggling to keep up, dragging Matt along. And closing in them, so close it looked to Carla as though they were on the verge of being engulfed, was the curling black cloud that she saw now was not vapor, but a compact mass of bodies.

  Animal eyes shone red in the darkness and faces gleamed white as bone. In the center, three shapes detached themselves and plunged out before the rest, three huge drax with dead eyes, and paws clawed and padded like heraldic griffons, ridden by a knight in black armor, a skeletal corpse and a man with half his face burnt away.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Between them, Tully and Jim managed to drag the struggling Matt up the hill. The others were waiting on the edge of a pool of deeper darkness that appeared to move, like oil on sunless water. Jeff was visibly terrified and gripped Jack’s neck tightly, his head buried in Jack’s collar, as if he was trying to make himself invisible.

  “Nearly there, Matt,” Jim urged. “Just don’t look back.” But they had run out of time.

  “Eblis-Azazel! The Bringer of Light, summons you!”

  The voice froze them to the spot, a hollow voice that rang and reverberated inside their heads, prying into every corner and turning over every hidden thought, dragging their eyes around despite themselves. The Burnt Man, Light-Bringer, or whatever else he called himself had caught up with them, searching for something or someone.

  Slowly, Matt turned, his hands not limp in obedience, but clenched into fists of defiance. He peered into the dark crowd, staring past the riders on their snarling drax and he stiffened. The shifting shadows revealed faces in the crowd, blank, dead faces, faces spattered with blood, faces they all recognized. There could be no pretending now about what had happened.

  “Ace,” Matt screamed at the tall, gangling figure with no face and no left arm. “If it was still possible, I’d kill you for what you did—to me and all of us.”

  But before he could lunge at the ghostly figure, Jim and Tully pinned his arms behind his back and pulled him away. The black cloud rolled forward, faces, limbs, and dead eyes moving in and out of focus in the black mist. Tully swallowed back the nausea and forced himself to look too.

  They were all there, Ben, Zo, Joe, Belle, and little Dee, though there was little that was doll-like about her battered face now. Matt’s eyes were staring wildly, his breathing rasped. Tully and Jim held his arms as tight as they could, then they saw them, the nightmares that had followed in the wake of the Burnt Man and his scourges. From out of the shadows behind the shambling horde of corpses, the creatures from hell advanced.

  Tully screwed up his eyes, but the creatures remained imprecise and formless, as if the eye refused to focus on them. The shifting shapes dragged cloaks of black fog about them that clung like putrefying skin, and all Tully could make out with certainty was the sickly white gleam of raw eyes and a bestial panting and murmuring from throats ravaged by disease and decay. The hellish voices echoed inside his head, as if putrid lips were pressed up to his ears, pouring out an endless litany of poison.

  Stricken screams rose from a pack of terrified drax, driven before the Burnt Man and his muttering shadows. As they galloped past Tully and into the darkness, a laggard, small enough to be still a puppy, slipped into a pothole and yelped in pain. Kat leaped to one side, but Jeff reached down an open hand. The beast rolled its eyes and flattened down its ears, but lay still at Jack’s feet.

  “Keep together,” Jeff shouted in a piping voice that was almost a scream, “or the Burnt Man will kill us all.” Then he slithered from Jack’s back and crouched down beside the young drac, placing a protective hand on its head.

  The man with the burned face had pushed his drac forward to join the skull-headed man, and now raised his hand, pointing it at the group huddled by the Sacred Hole. Jim closed his eyes, and Tully cringed
, waiting for the ball of fire to engulf them. That part of Jim and Matt’s story, how the Burnt Man had killed off all the useless mouths, came back to him with horrible clarity. But nothing happened.

  “Eblis! Step forward!”

  “Keep together,” Jeff pleaded. “Move back slowly toward the hole, but keep together. As long as we stay in a group, he daren’t throw his fireball at us. He might kill Eblis by mistake.”

  “Eblis,” the Burnt Man called a second time. “Your name means Despair. Look on me and accept your destiny.”

  The skeleton too pointed a finger that glowed dully in the sooty darkness. “Eblis!”

  “You filthy, murdering bastards! I’ll see you all in hell first,” Matt screamed and threw himself forward, trying both to destroy the hollow shell that had once been Ace, and to take the broken, lifeless doll that had been Dee in his arms.

  “Matt, don’t!” Jim grabbed at the back of Matt’s jacket and pulled.

  Matt spun around, lashing out with his fists and shouting in a voice nobody recognized. Tully couldn’t make out the words. They were hacked into unintelligible chunks with sobbing, but their sense was clear. With a final roar of despair, Matt wrenched himself free of his jacket and threw himself at the sinister figures in the fog. The scourges wheeled their drax around to encircle him.

  “Jump!” Jeff turned. Grabbing Jack’s hand and the scruff of the drac’s neck, he plunged forward.

  “Matt,” Jim called out one last time in despair. But his friend was beyond hearing, beyond help. Kat reached out and her fingers closed around his hand, urging him on. Jim stumbled behind her, his face streaming with tears.

  As Matt threw himself at the ghost of Ace, the skeleton reached out a bone-white hand with a shout of triumph, and immediately drew back, hissing in fury.