The Scourge Box Set [Books 1-6]

by Maxey, Phil

  “You can’t stay here, they broke in through the roof. We need to get everyone to a safer spot.”

  *****

  Marina stood in the main hall of cellblock C. Part of her wanted to go out into the corridors, to the other blocks to help. But she wasn’t going to move more than ten feet from her daughter and Jasper.

  She had checked on them a few moments ago. They were both scared, but keeping each other busy by playing cards together. Jasper looked up at her as she left the cell, and said the word. “Many.”

  She nodded then closed and relocked the cell door. In her hand was Flint’s leash with the German Shepard on the end of it panting. He was also looking at the entrance to the cellblock as if he was waiting for something, or someone, to appear.

  Now, both her and the dog were in the main hall, and she and everyone else had joined the dog watching the main entrance. If the vamps were going to come from any direction, it was going to be from there.

  Outside, they could all hear the chaos. Roars, with the occasional clatter of gunfire.

  Her ears picked up a repeating tapping in the corridor beyond the iron bar entrance gate. It was growing louder.

  Footsteps? Vamps…? No, not vamps, too organized.

  She looked down at Flint.

  He’s not too concerned. Must be humans.

  She ran forward, glancing at a few of the men sitting on the ground. “Come with me.’

  They frowned then got to their feet.

  She unlocked the gate then slid it to one side and ran out into the corridor.

  In the distance, just visible through a series of security doors, a large man was pulling a convoy of five hospital beds, all seemingly linked together, and each one occupied. Alongside him were other people, but she couldn’t make out who.

  She ran forward along the corridor stopping at each gate and quickly pulling it open.

  “Shouldn’t they remain closed?” said a young man just behind her.

  “Help me get them open!” she shouted at him.

  It wasn’t long before both groups met.

  The large man looked down at Marina. “These people are ill. Yours was the closest cellblock.”

  Marina stood to one side, waving them through. “Yes, quick, we need to get them inside.”

  The large man continued pulling them. “I’m Dalton,” he said as he passed Marina. The other men from the cellblock stepped back slightly as they saw the blood-soaked leviathan of a man stride past.

  Anna and Lee passed as well.

  “Hey, I’m Kizzy! Nice to meet you!” said Kizzy, holding her hand out to Marina.

  Marina frowned then quickly walked past her and pulled the security gate closed.

  They were soon all back inside the main hall. The beds lined up in two rows which Lee moved between.

  “They got into the operating room. If Dalton and Kizzy hadn’t got to us when they did…”

  Marina held Anna’s arm. “Nothing’s getting inside this cellblock, trust me.”

  “Do you know what’s happening elsewhere?”

  Dalton walked to them while Kizzy was playing with Flint.

  “Me and Kizz been moving around the prison, doing what we can, but there’s too many vamps. They in—”

  Another sound echoed along the corridor outside.

  Flint jumped down from Kizzy’s grasp and moved to the block’s security gate. He let out a small bark.

  Marina walked forward, facing the armed people around her. “This is it! They’re going to be at this cellblock soon. You shoot, you stab, you slay as many of those fuckers as you can. You get that?”

  “Yeah!” came the reply.

  A chorus of scratching and shuffling came from the corridor outside.

  Some stood pointing their guns at the iron bars which separated the block from the corridor, others kneeled looking down their sights.

  Flint started barking, his fur bristling, and his eyes turning black.

  Marina looked at the patients. “We need to get them into the cells.” She walked to the nearest bed. “Leave the beds, just lift the mattress with the person on it, we’ll carry them inside.”

  Anna helped while Kizzy and Dalton did the same to the other patients. They moved as quickly as they could into nearby cells.

  The sound of the cascading vamps now filled the entirety of the space around them. Flint was jumping up at the bars.

  With the patients safely locked away, Marina, Anna, Kizzy, and Dalton moved back to the main hall.

  Each one gritted their teeth and secured their footing.

  Vamps flowed around the corner, slamming up against the iron bars which rattled but held.

  Booms and cracks rang out as the air filled with bullets and shrapnel. A blanket of creatures fell to the ground but were soon replaced by others.

  The iron bars rattled once more as countless claws strained through the bars to get to the other side.

  The metal poles holding the bars in place started to bow.

  In Tower A, Joel watched as the walls began to crumble. Holes from thousands of razor-sharp claws were combining to remove huge pieces of masonry which crashed to the ground.

  He looked back to the almost complete darkness in the fields beyond. An infinity of green glows looked back at him.

  There’s no end…

  He thought the walls would hold. He thought if they made it to daybreak; they might have a chance.

  As thousands more vamps flowed through the gaps in the wall, he realized he had been wrong.

  A hundred yards away near Tower C, Carla looked back at her colleagues. They had been firing constantly at the things just feet away on the opposite side of the metal shielding. They were now all out of ammo.

  “I’m out!” said Bishop.

  The APC rocked and swayed by the constant battering from the raging creatures outside.

  Carla pulled her handgun from the back of her pants and passed it back into the cabin. “Here, this is all I got left. Do what you can with it.”

  She hit the gas pedal, but the truck just rocked forward. She pushed down harder, the engine roaring, but the wheels refused to give any forward motion.

  “What the fuck! Come on!” she shouted at the dashboard.

  “Err… Ma’am, we got a problem back here…”

  She looked back into the cabin. One of the small window slits was now a foot wider, the metal to the side of it having been torn away.

  A loud creak made them all look up. A piece of the roof was missing, replaced with an arm and a claw at the end of it, trying to reach what it could inside.

  Bishop stepped forward, pointed the handgun into the gap, and fired. A squeal filled the cabin and the hand went limp.

  Another creak. Another piece of the vehicle’s roof was missing. This time, a vamp’s head was visible, its enlarged incisors visible in the cabin’s light. Its claws scythed just above everyone’s head. Carla took a knife from beneath her feet and hacked away at the creature. Spraying blood across them all. More claws surged into the enlarged window.

  In cellblock C, the main gate’s iron bars snapped and flew inwards. Dalton plucked it from the air then roared forward with it.

  Vamps poured into the main hall, immediately slicing through three defenders.

  Dalton swung the twelve-foot-wide piece of gate around, smashing into vamps, sending them spiraling into the air.

  Anna and Marina’s eyes were dark, their hands becoming claws, both thrusting their nails into the creatures in front of them, slicing them apart, dropping them to the ground. But more hateful things replaced those. An overwhelming tide that was streaming into the hall.

  In the workshop, Bill attached another bandage with Joel’s blood to the tablet and looked at the laptop’s screen.

  The double doors shook and rattled.

  Josh and Rachel were holding one of the milling machines against it.

  “Is it working?” shouted Josh back to Bill and Max who was standing nearby.

  “I don
’t know, give me a minute!” said Bill, trying to see any change in the graph on his screen. It scrolled by with barely a bump in the dotted line.

  Bill sighed.

  A piece of wood in one of the double workshop doors splintered and a claw pushed through, waving just inches from Josh’s head.

  “Try again!” shouted Josh.

  The hole widened, and the vamp pushed its head and other arm through, a claw slashed across Josh’s cheek.

  In cellblock C, Marina was fighting three vamps simultaneously. Anna was trying to get to her, but vamp’s claws and teeth kept flailing at her from every direction.

  Most of the humans outside the cells were dead or dying.

  Flint snapped and bit at the creatures that were falling on him, trying to bring the dog to the ground.

  Kizzy and Dalton fought side by side. A huge werewolf, that despite cutting down swathes of vamps, was slowly waning as hundreds more flooded through where the metal gate once stood. Kizzy, now twice her usual mass, had multiple limbs with hands that were claws. Vamps flew away from her as she flung them like rag dolls, but others sliced at her skin.

  Jess and Jasper sat huddled together at the back of the lower bunk bed, pushed up against the back corner.

  Mary stood near the bed, in her hand a baseball bat. The cell door rattled as claws scratched along the outside.

  In the workshop, the old wooden doors were almost completely disintegrated. Arms and claws fought to get inside. The milling machine started to slide backwards.

  “We can’t hold them back!” shouted Josh, blood pouring from the wound on his face.

  Bill looked at the fury that was about to be upon them and then at Max.

  He looked down at the few remaining drops of Joel’s blood in the small glass bottle.

  “Oh, to hell with this!” He grabbed it, unscrewed the lid, and shook the viscous crimson liquid onto the tablet surface.

  Immediately it lit up, the symbols glowing and changing across its surface.

  The graph on the laptop screen suddenly burst into peaks and troughs.

  Snapping vicious things were almost inside. The heavy piece of metal machinery slid backwards into the room.

  Symbols and data flowed across Bill’s screen, his tired eyes trying to catch what he could of it, something that would help. Then he saw it.

  He lunged over the worktop, bringing two fingers down on the tablet’s surface at the same time.

  The tablet burned intensely bright, so much that Bill and Max threw their hands up to shield their faces.

  Just when the furnace in front of them seemed it could not get any brighter, a pulse of energy exploded outwards knocking the two old men back against the walls as well as throwing Josh and Rachel to one side.

  The vamps, desperately trying to gain entry, froze, shuddered, then disintegrated.

  The mysterious wave expanded outwards, dissolving vamps as it progressed.

  Carla, Bishop, and the others watched as the claws and arms that were inches from them froze then fell apart, breaking into dry ashes.

  In cellblock C, everyone who was still breathing was equally frozen. The few hundred vamps that filled the hall, stairs, and inside some cells were gone, replaced by darkened clumps on the floor.

  Marina fell back against her daughter’s cell.

  Sixteen hundred miles to the southwest, everyone in the main operations room of the Copeland Corporation was also speechless. The drone that was hovering thousands of feet above the prison had just shown them a scene they couldn’t believe.

  Tens of thousands of vamps had just disintegrated in front of their eyes as if an invisible wave had swept out from somewhere deep inside the prison.

  One by one they started to slowly turn back towards the demonic figure standing at the back of the room.

  Copeland’s fist slammed down on the operations table, smashing through it and sending glass shards into the air. Those inside the room scrambled away.

  He went to go to work on the rest of the large glass screen which had now blinked out of existence when words spoken by someone unimportant rattled his brain, stopping him mid-fury.

  He spun around to face the diminutive figure who was wearing a white lab coat.

  “Say that again…” growled Copeland at the trembling figure.

  “Doctor Reynolds wanted me to inform you that the sarcophagi have begun to open…”

  Continued in book four.

  BOOK FOUR

  CHAPTER ONE

  The alarm blasted into Copeland’s brain as he stormed through the corridors on his way to the deep underground complex which housed the ancient sarcophagi. Men and women in white lab coats staggered past him, moving in the opposite direction, most of them bloodied.

  As he arrived at the open door to the elevator, a group of the corporation’s soldiers joined him, including a few Alkrons. They went to move through the door, but he held his hand up.

  “I must do this alone.”

  Footsteps came from behind. “Umm… sir, I should go with you. They will not talk our language,” said Galen. He was holding a computer tablet in his hand.

  Copeland nodded and they both stepped over the threshold into the elevator. The doors closed and the metal box plunged through the depths, coming to a stop a few seconds later.

  The door opened to a scene of devastation. Pieces of desks, computer monitors, plastic binders, a chaos of scientific sundries lay scattered amongst the bodies of those who worked there. The metallic smell of blood would have been glorious to Copeland if it were not for the fact that he feared he might be next.

  Three statuesque men were huddled over the remains of humans, their extended teeth sunken into the flesh.

  Copeland wondered if they even knew he was there.

  Galen went to walk forward into the room but Copeland threw his large arm out, stopping him. Each of the individuals that had come from the coffins looked up in unison, staring at their unwanted guests.

  One of the men, whose hair was of the golden variety, and hung on his shoulders, slowly stood and walked forward towards Copeland and Galen. Despite his obvious size advantage over the muscular man who was approaching, Copeland had to resist the urge to close the door and send the box back upwards towards the surface and safety.

  They are here. This is what I wanted.

  He stepped over the threshold but, before he took another step, the half man half vamp moved to him in a blink of an eye. A furious blur which grabbed him by the arm and, in one continuous movement, flung the demonic being through the air, slamming him against the nearby wall.

  The angry creature then moved towards the human, cowering against the back of the elevator.

  Shaking the pain from his physique, Copeland staggered to his feet.

  “No!” he shouted.

  Galen’s tablet translated the word into ancient Sumerian and blurted it back out in the direction of the thing bearing down on him.

  The man stopped, his face one of confusion. The two other men were now standing. The third, the tallest of the three walked forward, stepping over pieces of bodies and furniture alike.

  The blonde-haired man spoke. The words were abrupt but soft. A language that neither Copeland nor Galen could comprehend, but the computing device translated anyway.

  “A… human… machine…” came from the tablet's speaker.

  Copeland stepped forward. “I want to help you…” he said towards the individual who seemed to be in charge of the other two.

  The man, whose dark hair was greying, turned to Copeland and sneered, talking more of those unrecognizable words. “You are the king in this land?” came from the tablet.

  A look of disgust remained on the face of the blonde man. He turned to the oldest. “When do we listen to a—” The computer tablet failed to translate the word.

  Ignoring the insult, Copeland stepped forward once more, walking past the blonde man until he was standing in front of the older. “Yes. I am king of this land—” He fell to his
knee. “— And I pledge my allegiance to you, Rynon.”

  *****

  Joel stood mouth agape at the dark piles of dry vamp remains which filled the forecourt below Tower A. The lights which remained working flickered. In the distance, Carla and her soldiers started to emerge from the crumpled shell of the SWAT vehicle while other doors started to open.

  He clicked on his radio. “Status! Over.”

  “We’re… Alive…” said Evan from his radio. Joel spotted him standing just outside Tower B with Donnie.

  Joel immediately ran down the stairs, moving furniture aside that was barricaded against the broken tower door.

  Pulling the door open, a layer of black ash fell inwards covering his boots. He stepped forward, sinking a few inches into the black dry mush.

  “Towers C to E, report in. Over!” he shouted into his radio.

  “Tower C here. Got some injuries but we’re breathing,” said a voice.

  Joel ran across the forecourt, stirring up a black mist. “Are you okay?” he said to Evan who was staring at the scene wide-eyed.

  “What happened?” said the young man.

  “I don’t know. They all just…”

  “Disintegrated,” said Carla, walking up to them.

  They all looked at each other. “The cell blocks!” they said in unison, then started to run to the closest entrance which was open.

  “Anna, Marina? Over,” said Joel into his radio as he entered the first of the narrow maze-like corridors. Each step felt like walking in crushed black fall leaves.

  “I’m here Joel. Marina’s bleeding pretty bad. I’m doing what I can,” said Anna. A chill ran through his body, and he increased his speed through the wreckage of the prison interior until he made it to block C.

  The iron bars that used to be the partition between the block and the corridor outside laid in warped fragments across the floor which was covered in piles of black ash.

  At first, it wasn’t clear to Joel who was alive as most were laying, hardly moving. A commotion drew his eyes up to the second-floor balcony.

  “Come on!” Anna’s words echoed around the space.