The Ashes of Pompeii

EPILOGUE

“Come home.”

Night after night, and sometimes even in the day, they chased him. Hunted him. It didn’t matter how many times he got away; they always picked up his scent again, and the chase would resume. It wasn’t the other blue eyes he had to worry about. They weren’t any faster or stronger or smarter than him. No, it was really just the one person (thing) he couldn’t escape, regardless of how high he climbed, how deep he dug, or how long he ran.

Mabry.

The name echoed inside his head. It was always there, lingering at the corners of his mind, waiting to spring. Its voice was like that of a patient father, whispering to him, cajoling him to do things he didn’t want to.

“Come home,” it would say. “You took her from me. Now you have to take her place.”

He wouldn’t answer, because responding would be to give himself away. He didn’t know how he knew, he just did.

“You can’t run forever.”

Escape was impossible, because Mabry was a part of him, the way he (it) was a part of Kate and the ghouls that stalked the darkness, that chased him even now. They all came from Mabry, like the veins of a river.

Thousands of veins.

Tens of thousands.

Millions.

The war was lost. He knew that now, even though he once tried to delude himself into thinking otherwise. Or maybe he had really, truly wanted to believe it. Not for himself, but for her. For the others, too. He had come to his senses days ago.

Or was it weeks ago?

Months?

Impossible. It couldn’t have been months. Or even weeks.

Could it?

How long had he been running, trying to stay one step ahead of them, one step ahead of Mabry? Time was fluid, especially when all he could see was darkness. That was his life now. Racing through the blackness, the nothingness. He had forgotten the feel of the sun against his skin, the warmth caressing his flesh…

Flesh.

…and bones.

Thinking about it only made it worse, so he concentrated on surviving instead. He was good at it. Had always been. Even now, when he was a remnant of what he used to be, he still knew how to stay alive.

He crouched in that always present darkness now, listening to them moving in front of him. They had come down the stairs a few seconds ago, somehow tracking him across the last three cities and dozen towns and hundreds of miles of countryside and woods. All the way down to this basement, in a house that hadn’t been lived in for a year. It didn’t matter how far he went, how deep he hid, they always found him.

“You can’t hide forever.”

A small splash of moonlight intruded on the basement from a high window just above his head. Not that he needed light of any kind to see with. His eyes were different now — they were made for the darkness.

There were two of them, and he recognized what they were almost immediately, even before he saw the deep blue glow of their eyes. He could feel them. Sense them when they were nearby. It wasn’t the same as with the black-eyed ones. Their thoughts may have been shut off from him, but the air was different — it smelled and even moved differently — when they were around. He could always tell how many there were just by the way the wind moved, their aura like a living thing pressing against his flesh.

They were talking, but their lips weren’t moving. No. They had a more efficient method of communication now. Sometimes, when he was close enough and they let their guards down, he could hear their thoughts and eavesdrop on their conversations.

And he learned.

“How did you ever think you could beat us when you know so little?” she had said to him once.

But he was learning. Slowly, he was learning.

In the quiet moments when he found shelter and was safe from pursuit, he let himself think about all the things he knew about them. He knew so much now that he didn’t know before, but it still wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

Not yet, anyway.

That was always the tricky part: Seeing the options and choosing the right one to exploit. But in order to do that, he had to have more information.

More. Always more—

One of the creatures had turned its head in his direction. It had sensed him, maybe in the same way he could always tell when they were around. Why hadn’t he realized that possibility earlier?

Before the first blue eyes could act, he leaped out of the corner and straight at it. He was fast. So much faster than he used to be. At first it had frightened him, but now he embraced it because his survival depended on it. The speed, the ferocity, the ability to move almost instantly as soon as his mind conjured up the idea.

The skinny thing, eyes blazing blue, made to lift its arms in defense, but he smashed into it with everything he had. It crashed into the second one, and all three of them tumbled in a tangle of limbs and clacking bones to the floor.

Before the first one could right itself underneath him, he drove his fingers — all five digits pressed flat against each other like steel knives — into the side of its neck and pushed, pushed, pushed until it came out the other side. With his other hand, he gripped the creature’s head, fingers digging into its eye sockets, and pulled.

There was a soft wet pop! as the head came free, and black blood arced through the air, splashing the walls and floor of the basement and his chest. He ignored the thick liquid, the taste of it against his lips, and flung the head across the room. The body slumped back to the floor with a dull thoomp, black tainted blood slurping out of the stump that used to be a neck.

The second blue-eyed ghoul had risen, and it looked at its dead brethren. Then it sneered at him.

“Come home,” it said inside his head.

But it wasn’t this creature standing in front of him talking. No, it was someone (something) else.

Mabry.

He (it) was speaking through the blue-eyed ghoul standing in front of him now.

“It doesn’t matter where you run,” it said. “I can follow you to the ends of the Earth. Come home. Come take her place by my side. You belong with us now.”

“Never,” he hissed, and leaped at the creature.