Empire's End

Forty-Four / The Beast

“WE ARE ONE THOUSAND MILLION STRONG! WE HAVE WAITED AN ETERNITY IN THE ABYSS FOR THIS MOMENT — WE ARE THE END, REAPER, YOUR END, AND NOW WE SHALL REAP YOU!”

Adam was half-conscious, barely aware of the scorching heat enveloping him as he was carried through a burning room. All was white around him, a swimming storm of flames, a maelstrom without end. Then he was slammed down on a table of glowing steel and the fissures of his burnt flesh opened to receive the pain.

The Omega smashed Adam’s head into the table in a mad frenzy. All the while his jaw hung open, hateful words spouting forth: “DEMON! FUCKING DEMON — NOW YOU JOIN US IN HELL! NOW YOU’LL KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE!” Hundreds of voices or more were fighting to be heard, screaming over one another in various languages, all of which Adam could understand — and all of which were saying the same things. They were wrong, he was no demon, he had once been a man himself. He pushed the Omega’s hands away from his throat and tried to speak.

“WE DON’T WANT YOUR LIES! WE WILL HAVE OUR VENGEANCE!”

The Omega tore the scythe from Adam’s arm; wouldn’t have done him any good anyway. He tried to look around and figure out just where they were. All he saw were flames.

The Omega overturned the table and sent Adam sprawling. He splashed down in a hot, coppery liquid. Blood. The floor was covered in blood.

Adam stood up. He was standing on the killing floor of a slaughterhouse.

A white-hot chain was slung around his neck. The Omega lifted him off the floor, its own hands blackening as it pulled the chain taut. The façade of a healthy man was being scorched away. It shook Adam violently, throttling him, and he felt his flesh becoming brittle ash and falling away in flakes. Can’t take much more of this.

The Omega hurled him over a fiery conveyor belt and into a steel wall. Adam landed on his hands and knees and crawled toward an enormous block of machinery. He had to get out of here. He could feel the heat searing the lenses of his eyes. His body was falling apart. Had to keep moving.

The chain snapped against the side of his head and sent him sliding through coagulated gore. He heard the distant braying of livestock as the flames consumed them. Was he to join them, just another servant-animal gutted and cast aside?

The Omega straddled Adam’s back. “We’ll burn here together, Reaper — back to the abyss!” A cacophony of insane laughter tore through the air. The old man’s meat was cooking. His skin blistered and split open. “We’re starting to look alike, Reaper! Can you feel it — the burning? The terrible burning? Do you feel it eating you alive? ANSWER US!” Rising, the Omega turned Adam over and kicked him in the chest. “SPEAK!”

Adam coughed up ashy spittle and rasped, “Enough talk.” He grabbed the chain hanging from the Omega’s hand and yanked as hard as he could.

The Omega stumbled over him and into the conveyor belt. It spun around, but not fast enough, not even close — Adam leapt across the room and drove his knees into the rotter’s ribs. Both flew over the belt and into the fire.

Adam sent his fist crashing through the Omega’s teeth. Its head snapped back, bone tearing through flesh. It laughed. Adam grabbed it by the wrist and swung it into the wall. Its arm cracked loudly. Still the fiend cackled. “We’re already dead, demon!”

Its hand found a meathook on the floor and closed over the wooden handle. Adam saw it coming and caught the Omega’s wrist. With a grim smile, he crushed it to powder inside his fist.

He swung at its jaw again. This time, it caught his fist in its broken teeth. Driving his thumb into the underside of its jaw, he gritted his teeth and twisted… twisted. The Omega yelped. It struggled feebly with his grip, and then it grunted and its jaw was ripped free with a wet sound, its black tongue spilling down its chest.

The rotter’s eyes were wide with shock. It clawed at Adam’s face, and still the voices poured out from the hollow of its throat. “No! You can’t do this! You have no right!”

“YOU have no right!” Adam snatched the chain from the Omega’s hand, coiling it around his fist as the rotter staggered away. “You’re already dead!” He charged after it.

“YOU HAVE NO RIGHT!” he thundered again. His fist sailed through tongues of flame and shattered the Omega’s cheekbone. The voices inside screamed in horror — the killers, the rapists, the corruptors of humanity were all wracked with despair as Adam’s fist rained down on their shared limbs, breaking kneecaps in two, driving splinters of ribs into bursting organs, pulverizing joints and crushing tissue until there was a pulpy, sagging bag of bones left dangling in Adam’s grip.

“You can’t…” the Omega pleaded. Ichor ran from its punctured eyeballs and into the creases of its smashed face. It raised broken fingers before itself and hissed, “YOU CAN’T!!”

“I am,” Adam spat. He threw the crippled corpse into the fire.

“No! Adam!” Lily was crying. Dalton did his best to ignore her as he sped down the street. She grabbed at the wheel.

“Stop it!” Dalton barked. “He’ll be all right! He’s not like us!”

“No, they’ll hurt him!” Lily protested.

Dalton was trying to think of a response when a towering beast stepped into the road ahead. He swerved to the left, felt himself losing control, the tires losing the road. Then the impact.

Dalton fell out his door and onto the sidewalk. Where was his gun? Drawing his combat knife, he crept around the rear of the Hummer to see just what had run them off the road.

The Petrified Man seized Dalton’s hand, crushing the bones of his fingers within their tubes of flesh, and lifted him to eye level.

“Run!” he shouted, praying Lily could hear him. “Run!”

The Petrified Man glanced downward. Lily started screaming. Dalton craned his neck to see her in the arms of another rotter. “NO—”

The Petrified Man rammed his fist into Dalton’s ribs. He was able to see his sternum buckle and split, erupting through his tattered uniform. He was able to watch the rotter pull his spine out through his chest, and lift it overhead to suck the fluid from it. Then, and only then, did he die.