Empire's End

Thirty / Dead to Rights

It was nightfall and the snow was still coming down. Dalton was climbing down from his post on the wall, rifle slung over his shoulder. The dogs had started baying inside the guard post. They’d been in there for a few hours and were probably going mad from the confinement. But he didn’t want them running around in this weather at night. They’d just have to put up with it; but at least he could give them some chow and calm them down for a while.

When he opened the door, the dogs ran past him to the gate and began pacing in front of it, making high-pitched whimpers.

They sensed something. Dalton dropped the rifle into his hands and approached the gate. “Back. Get back.”

What could they possibly be on to? Maybe they did just want out after all. But his instincts were sharp, too, and their behavior told him something was wrong. Dalton unlocked and unbolted the gate, muttering into his radio. “Section nineteen, going out for a quick look around.”

He peered through a pair of binoculars and scanned the horizon. Nothing but falling snow on a flat plain. All the trees and foliage had been cut away to provide a clear view. Not a damn thing.

He turned and saw the dogs backing away from the gate. Kneeling, he patted his knee and called, “C’mere! What is it? You’re gonna have to show me.”

He looked back toward the badlands. Hard to be sure whether or not there was anything out there. He took another look with the binoculars. Nope, not a thing.

Wait. A tiny black shape moving on the horizon. Then another, and another. Then dozens.

Dalton backed through the gate and slammed it shut. He barked into the radio, “Section nineteen! I need backup here… got either badlanders or rotters rushing the gate!”

The dogs already knew which it was. They leapt about him in a panic. He could see nothing but wild terror in their eyes.

“Go,” he said, waving them off. “Get the hell out of here!” They didn’t have to be told twice.

His radio crackled. “Nineteen, do you have a visual?”

“Hold on.” He climbed the ladder and stood atop the Wall. He saw a storm of ragged figures surging toward him. He heard their moans on the wind. There were hundreds, hundreds! Their numbers stretched as far as he could see.

Then a huge rotter broke through the ranks, swinging a hammer over his head, and the gate was blown off its hinges.

Dalton dropped onto his stomach, gasping

“Rotters!” into his radio. He started crawling along the Wall, but grim dread weighed his limbs down and he knew there was no point. He was alone in a sea of undead. And they’d already seen him.

Something was clambering up the ladder. He sat up, shaking, and took aim.

Devour her!

Get up, now — consume her flesh! We need her power!

GET UP!

The Omega could barely move his fingers, let alone move across the room — but the voices screaming in his head urged him on, and slowly, painstakingly, he began tugging his mutilated corpse across the floor.

It was the consumption of the Reaper’s flesh that had thrown open the gates of Hell, had let them into this simple creature’s mind — they, the dead, the damned, untold millions who had passed on under Adam’s watch and who blamed him for their ultimate fate. Murderers, rapists, the architects of atrocities that had shaken entire nations. Masters of terrorism and genocide, they had found themselves cast into a dark abyss where there was no peace, no rest, only bitter suffering. And it was because of him — Death!

So, although there was nothing in this world or the next that could free them from the abyss, they would at least have their revenge against Adam. They would tear him apart.

The Omega pulled the blanket from the woman in white’s nude form and began clawing at her pale flesh. She was strange — half human, half something else entirely — but there was still power lying dormant in her being and they would have it. They pushed the Omega on, as he filled his hands with bloodless flesh and lifted them to his broken mouth.

He swallowed her. She filled him. He stiffened and began to shake.

His body thrashed on the floor and fresh blood, rich red blood, began pouring from the many wounds Adam had given him. And then the wounds, like mouths, began to close.

He threw his head back and vomited into the air. Maggots and bile splattered on the floor around him. All of the corruption was leaving him. The meat of the undead had only a fraction of this effect! New life was surging through the Omega, regenerating him in a matter of moments — and then he collapsed.

VENGEANCE SHALL BE OURS!

Our Legion is now unstoppable — never again will he leave us in ruins — this time we shall destroy him!

Their cries echoed through the Omega’s mind. He struggled to his feet. Newfound strength bore him out into the night.

Long live the new flesh!

“It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.”

Adam faced a young white horse. It had been standing alone in this field, grazing, probably separated from an infected family. It eyed him cautiously as he approached.

He stroked its head and whispered, “You’re safe with me.” The horse stood still as he pulled himself onto its back.

To the Great Cities. To Lily.

P.O. Billy Rhodes was charged with removing the undesirables from Gaylen. He knew the truth about Cleveland, that it was a hellhole situated outside the Wall, populated only with the worst of the worst. He didn’t much care. Made his day job a lot easier getting the trash off Gaylen’s streets. Kept the hookers cleaner too.

The guy in the cage, handcuffed in the back of Rhodes’ SUV, looked like a filthy mother. Name was Jarrett Willows. Apparently the guy had seen some bad shit go down back East and had lost his marbles. He’d been picked up in downtown Gaylen, preaching from a street corner about some gibberish that Rhodes couldn’t understand.

The perp was doing it now — muttering “Ia, Ia,” under his breath and rocking in his seat. It was creeping Rhodes the fuck out. He slammed his fist against the cage separating them. “Shut up, Willows!”

The long-haired transient stopped rocking and looked at Rhodes in the rearview mirror. His eyes were wide and bloodshot. Crazy. Smoothing his mustache in the mirror, Rhodes tried to make like he was ignoring the kid — Willows was only in his mid-to-late twenties — but he couldn’t break eye contact.

“The old gods left the plague here,” Willows rasped. “This world’s nothin’ more than a toilet. They shat their voodoo all through the aether and disappeared from this place, never to return. We’re just insects crawling around in a toilet, you get it? Some of ‘em are fat flies but they still eat shit!”

Willows dragged his long nails through his hair and glared at Rhodes. The P.O. focused on the road ahead. “I thought I told you to shut the fuck up.”

“You don’t get it.” Hooking his yellow nails in the wire of the cage, Willows leaned forward and said, “Their magic is still here. It still responds to the old words. Words long forgotten, but I found ‘em — in the books in the forgotten places, I found the words.”

God, his breath stank of sour mash and rotting teeth. Rhodes pounded the cage again. “Get back!”

“The new god calls it blasphemy. He just don’t want anyone to learn the words, you see, to be able to call on the magic. He calls it evil. Ain’t no such thing. Good and evil are social constructs! Feh! Feh!”

Damn fool had almost started to sound lucid for a moment. Rhodes had seen worse, though. Yep, Cleveland was full of nasty motherfuckers. Jarrett Willows was going to have his hands full once he arrived in his new home.

“Ia! Ia!” Willows laughed. “I found the books in a library in old Massachusetts. I knew, soon as I laid my eyes upon ‘em, what I had. Something strange and wonderful — feh! Evil? Feh! Fuck”

He lowered his head began speaking softly, almost reverently. Well, at least he wasn’t talking to Rhodes anymore.

They were on the outskirts of the city. It was twilight; smoke rose into the sky above dark buildings. The fires had probably drawn some rotters into town. Things weren’t going to be very pleasant. Rhodes figured he’d drop Willows off at the first intersection.

“Your people knew the old words,” the man whispered.

“What do you mean, my people?” Rhodes snapped.

“The niggers, I mean.”

Rhodes spun and smashed his fist into the cage. Willows jumped in his seat and threw his hands in front of his face, shrieking, “Blacks! Blacks!”

“I am blacker than black, motherfucker,” Rhodes snarled, “I’m fucking Billy Rhodes and I will tear your fucking throat out if I hear one more word out of you. Got me? Huh?”

Willows nodded, cowering. He lowered his head again. Before long, he was whispering his gibberish, but Rhodes didn’t feel like bothering with him anymore.

“Ia! Ia!”

Rhodes pulled over to the shoulder and killed the engine. “All right. I’m done with this shit. You’re home, psycho.”

Getting out of the car, he scanned the city ahead for any signs of trouble. Bastards sometimes tried to sneak up on him, to get the car. He’d popped more than a few highwaymen in his time — far more than he ever listed in his incident reports.

They called him Cleveland Joe, those who knew what he did, and he had a no-bullshit reputation that the people around here unfortunately didn’t seem to be aware of.

Drawing his Glock, he opened the back door. “Out, Willows.”

The loon just sat there, head bowed, unmoving. Was he trying to pull some kind of trick? Rhodes stepped back and pointed the gun at the prisoner. “I said out.”

Jarrett Willows looked up. A cluster of tentacles unfurled where his face had been, pushing his filthy hair aside and stretching toward the cop.

Rhodes screamed and emptied his clip into the figure, stumbling backwards as he did so. Willows jerked violently in the car and fell over on his side.

“Shit! SHIT!” Rhodes dumped the empty clip and reloaded. What in the blue fuck had that been about?

He looked up to see Willows standing outside the car, his hair again covering his face.

He let out a hideous squeal, and his chest split down the middle — his sternum coming apart in an eruption of blood, ripping open his shirt and turning it crimson.

His arms shot straight out and his fingers clawed at the air. His yawning torso gurgled, then spread wide — and it emitted the nightmarish squeal Rhodes had heard. A dozen black tentacles lashed out, and something hit Rhodes in the chest with a wet splat.

He looked down to see a heart beating its last beat on the ground.

Rhodes broke into a run. He wasn’t stupid. If a full clip hadn’t done the job, there was no sense in sticking around. He’d have to hope that he was able to lead the monster away from the SUV — and then that he could make it back to the vehicle in one piece.

Passing a burnt-out warehouse, Rhodes stayed in the shadows, running across an intersection and toward an alley.

“Hey, copper!” An old man in rags flipped him off.

“Get the fuck outta here!” Rhodes barked. The man dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

Entering the alleyway, Rhodes realized he’d boxed himself in. Shit! He wasn’t going to make this his last stand. Had to turn back.

Then the old man’s screams reached his ears.

He moved along the wall, slowly, toward the mouth of the alley. The geezer’s cries were choked off, and it grew deathly quiet.

Maybe the monster would be too busy to go after Rhodes. He could make a break for it.

He stepped out to see a desiccated rotter tearing into the old man’s neck. It was too late for the poor bastard. Rhodes decided to head down the street, away from the intersection.

Before he could, something snapped through the air and wrapped around the zombie’s head — jerking the rotter away from the old man and hurling it into the side of the warehouse.

It was Willows — or it had been, once. His torso was now closed — threaded with tentacles like stitches sewing him up. More tentacles were coiled around his legs, walking his forward. And his face—

He had no face. The thing inside him had turned his head inside out. His exposed brain pulsated in a nest of tentacles.

Rhodes took aim at the brain and fired three rounds. Chunks of gray matter flew away from the fiend’s head, but it showed no reaction. Then… it stumbled. Staggered. It was losing it!

It fell to its knees beside the old man’s body and clawed at his head. Rhodes realized what was happening and shot the fucker’s hands, but they kept working at the geezer’s scalp, peeling it away, then cracking his head open like a walnut—

And ripping his brain out to plant it in place of Willows’!

“All right motherfucker!” Rhodes reloaded. Last clip. Had to make this count. There weren’t any other brains around except his. As long as he could cripple the bastard he was home free. He hoped.

The monster lumbered toward him, arms outstretched. The tentacles in its head flowered, waving lazily in the air. Rhodes stood his ground. Had to let it get close. Had to be sure.

The thing made an excited squeal. That was close enough.

Rhodes dumped all every last round into its stolen brain, pulverizing it, sending the creature reeling. The tentacles in its chest pulled free and swung around, as if in desperate search of something with which to repair itself. The straining appendages found no purchase. Billy Rhodes was already hauling ass down the street.

Old words. Old magic. Old gods.

In a world where the dead walked, anything was possible. Perhaps even something worse than what Willows had become.

From that day forward Billy Rhodes slept with one eye open and his Glock under his pillow.