Among the Fallen: Resurrection (11 page)

Suddenly, she heard a creaking door, as loud and clear as it could possibly be; almost deliberate and obvious. She turned her head and saw the door on the public toilets swinging gently in the wind.

She frowned to herself bemused and stood up, her bones cracking as she stretched; it felt like every time her body relaxed for just two minutes, her body seized up and felt like concrete. Slowly and carefully, she approached the toilets, gazing upon them in uncertainty as she little by little crept closer. She leant in the doorway and peered around the dirty tiled wall, the smell swiftly repulsing her, not the smell she expected though, more like a rancid rotting meat type smell; something somewhere had been long dead and left.

She crept in slowly and just gazed upon the dishevelled and derelict toilets as the eerie red night beamed softly through its frosted glass windows, casting shadows of the empty cubicles on the dirty grease tiled wall behind her. The sinks were soiled and grimy and one was full of water, blocked by the toilet paper that floated like a mist under the surface; its taps dripping with long pauses in-between each drop. Suddenly, she heard a cough, as if it were released and then covered by a scared hand.

“Hello?!” Alex mumbled with a scare. Her heart sank in her chest as silence fell upon the cold and lonely room. She waited for a response for a few moments but nothing came. She frowned and stepped closer, her feet treading cautiously and leaving tiny footprints in the grime. “Hello?!” she said louder, but only to be greeted by the ghostly stillness. Alex got down on the floor and looked under all the doors of the cubicles, gazing from one to the next, but they all appeared to be empty.

She stood up confused and clearly frightened, unbeknown to her that a man stood in the corner, his featureless face hidden in the shadows as he simply observed.

She suddenly felt his gaze upon her and turned her head staring into the now empty corner, the man gone without trace or clue. She rubbed her head frustrated and tired, thinking that maybe her senses were playing tricks on her, her sight and hearing being toyed with by the night and her own growing paranoia. She walked further into the toilets, slowly pushing open the first cubicle revealing an empty toilet. She moved on to the next and tapped the door.

“Hello?!” she said softly, her ear placed on the wet wooden door, listening patiently for a response.

Suddenly, someone knocked back at the door at end and Alex jumped back with a heart dropping fright. A long drawn out silence suddenly fell upon the morbid bathroom, the trees blowing frantically outside, distorted as they lashed against the frosted glass. Alex took a few steps forward as the ghost watched her from his corner, observing as she slowly crept up and got on her knees, peering under the gap and into the cubicle. She stood up and placed her palm on the door, pushing it carefully as it slowly opened.

The cubicle was splashed wall to wall with blood and scratched with words; her first guess would have been Latin or something similar. The toilet seat and lid was down and the white rim was covered with congealed blood that had set all around the porcelain bowl. Alex covered her face as she wandered into the cubicle cautiously, peering over the system but finding nothing of real interest. On the wall, hidden among the scratched Latin verses, she saw scratching’s that were carved in English.

Message on the wall in the public toilet, Gabalia Cove, Blackwater Approach.

When the city is over cast by the red skies and the dead, the fathers and the sons watch in shock as
the illness is spread. Sitting alone we find our way among the fog of death; we can do nothing but
watch the city gasp for its final breath. As the evils of the visitors spread their vile way of life, the
survivors struggle and weep as they reach for gun and knife. As the battle wages against the under
Earth aliens and infected, the men and women so fall as two worlds are connected.
Anon

Alex sighed and rubbed her face with worry as the lightening flashed outside the windows, the room falling into another unsettling and creepy silence as she read the poem over in her confused and tortured head.

She turned and cautiously left the toilets as the silent man watched her, this time standing in the opposite corner of the room, his naked and scarred body lit up in glowing red light. His eyes and mouth were painfully sewn shut and his skin covered his weak skeletal frame like paper; but he did nothing but watch with blind eyes as the young girl walked away from his tainted soul; leaving him alone within his cursed dwelling.

As Alex left the toilet the cold fresh air hit her face and she took a deep breath as the rotting smell faded from her nose. She looked over at the burning city one more time before heading back to the road, continuing her journey back to the home she once loved whether she liked to admit or not. In all honesty things had changed; her views and opinions were now altering through desperation. The city she always wanted to leave, she now mourned and the father she once hated, she now preyed silently for his safety. As more and more of the night unveiled itself, as did more of the feelings deep within her it haunted, a future standing before her of very little hope and good times in her mind saddened by events she still knew nothing about; walking alone in the darkness just made her think more, more about what was waiting for her in the city of flames just over the hill.

Suddenly, she came to a post on the side of the road, a road that lead off into even more darkness, an old sign saying
Welcome to Blackwater city: Population 3,821,650,
with Alex’s name crudely scribbled on the front of it in what looked like blood. Her bones cracked and crunched as she began to walk off into the void, only just noticing that the rain had stopped leaving her to walk on slushy muddy roads. As she walked off towards the city she could not help but wonder what would happen once she got home.

Would her father and the staff that worked there be as shocked as she was?

Would they believe her story?

Where were these Judges?

Blackwater was huge, finding five, whatever they were, would be ridiculously impossible. As her head spun with a whirlwind of questions, she wandered down the dark road home, wondering about the reactions she’ll get, hoping she will be greeted with joy happiness, if they were even there at all.

Chapter Nine: Another World

According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming
of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. -
Thessalonians 4:15

The exit 89 from freeway 28874 was for all intentional purposes the only way to get into Blackwater, unless of course you chose to hike through five miles of woodland, farms and fields. During the day it was quite a pleasant walk, with squirrels, birds and other little signs the world was still alive; but most people drove it. Tonight however, Alex was walking down the isolated and probably the loneliest road in American backwater history, with quite literally, the world on her shoulders.

Alex peered up into the sky, scowling past the vile tree tops and into the red clouds. She could just make out the stars on the other side, their beautiful glows untainted by the fear and pollution all around her; their souls almost immune to the sickened world around her. Rosetta always told her that each star was a soul that had passed on, a spirit that was released; an angel that watched the good people below. Alex looked down as a tear rolled down her face, her saddened memories once again coming back to haunt her; but this time the rules had been changed. She looked back into the sky and smiled as the stars continued to glow, the angels watching her with their infinite gaze. With all she had learnt tonight, Alex was beginning to understand that science was not absolute, those stars up there could very well be angels, Rosetta could have been right all along; but if they were, she could really use their help about now. Alex sighed and looked into the darkness, continuing her hike along the cold desolate road as the dying wildlife continued to cry around her.

Alex crept slowly and carefully along the road listening for signs of life, aside the crickets, crows and howling dogs, the land appeared morbidly abandoned. As the time dragged on, she thought it was strange that there were no cars what so ever; with this road being the only way in or out of Blackwater, she expected a car either way sooner or later; but there was nothing. Whether anyone would give a lift to someone as creepy looking as her at God knows what hour is another thing entirely, but the question still remained as to why the roads were empty.

Alex sped up the pace, she knew there weren’t a lot of surprises here; okay so it was dead creepy in the dark and if it weren’t for the trees waving about in the wind and the other little noises; she would have been forgiven if she thought she was deaf. But she travelled this road a thousand times before and ironically, it is also the road she was killed on, so it lent a sort of tranquillity to her in a weird kind of way. The fatal night in the car was still in some respects a vague memory to her, yet peculiarly, she had started remembering the smallest of details.

She tried her hardest to look for a sign, a key object that could refresh her memory and bring back some more of the pieces that eluded her; but there was nothing; well nothing she could see at least.

Her mind just tortured itself over and over again at the sight of Sarah’s lifeless body, defenceless and cheated out of a life she deserved to experience. Maybe Sarah was just as
alive
as she was in some way, roaming around city, sitting in her room talking to her imaginary friend and hacking up a colouring book; but even that in itself brought more sad feelings as the thought of Sarah being alone out there, terrified and it worried her to no end. Alex never had an imaginary friend through childhood and took Sarah and her
friend
Gauge very seriously. They say you can never miss what you’ve have never had, but that don’t stop you longing for it. An imaginary friend through her shitty childhood could have been a blessing, most definitely a time killer as there’s only so many video games and DVD’s a person could buy. She felt like in a way she had been cheated from her childhood by her father, if not embittered from it; she was definitely cheated from a normal parent and daughter relationship. Children used to hate her as a child because physically she had everything she ever wanted, but emotionally, she hated everyone else because they had the one thing money could not buy; parents that loved her. She came to believe a long time ago that you are never born with everything, there is always something missing from your life; without a hunger for something then you have no reason to instinctively hunt or better yourself. But this now was very little compensation to her because she knew in her heart she was no longer the person she was, the game has changed and now she’s not even fighting for her survival; which led to the next question: what exactly was she fighting for?

She had been dragged from her eternal sleep and tossed into a fight that was no longer hers; just a random name plucked from a hat out of the millions of the living and the dead in Blackwater’s recent past, but even Alex wasn’t that stupid, she was undeniably picked for a reason. She silently walked through the darkness, thinking and mulling over a twisted history that made her wish she had never been born. Most would jump at the chance at the thought of forever living and immortality, but Alex was a pessimistic even from birth, she was always
the glass is half
empty kind of girl. Immortality meant that one day she would eventually be alone; watching the generations of her family die every fifty years was far from her to-do list.

She thought back to her years among the living as she hiked down the miles of tarmac towards the burning skies of Blackwater. She thought of things that made her happy, people she met no matter how brief. When you are in a situation with no apparent escape, you do tend to think back at what you miss. Maybe that is what they mean when they say
My life flashed before me
.

One of the people in her life she remembered the most was a Housemaid called Rosetta, a big nanny type middle aged Spanish lady with huge breasts and fat belly making her look like a muffin roll.

Huge warts and hairy chin like a man; and many even joked that she was. But to Alex, she was the best thing in the world as she grew up and even treated Alex like her own child and missed her greatly. Rosetta used to take her to Blackwater Church on a Sunday to listen to the Preacher tell stories of old. Bored the shit out of her at the time, but there was something about it that was just calm and happy, almost appeasing in a non-religious way, she always felt safe there. Was the Church still there? Hidden inside the hospital they built around it? She had not been for years since Rosetta died. Alex in her head began making a to-do list, okay so a bit late for a bucket list, but to say she cared at this present time would be a bit pointless.
Things to do in Blackwater when you’re
dead
. Could be a great title for film one day, she thought as she amused herself on her long and seemingly endless walk back to Blackwater.

Alex stopped and looked into the dense forest at a light. Was that music?

She clambered up the verge and made her way through the bed of nettles and broken twigs.

Cursing and swearing as her feet gashed and stung before re-healing again. She listened and headed towards the old music, crackly and from way back; it sounded like that shit your Nan would listen to on a Sunday afternoon. The light was coming from the window of an old lodge, a cabin made up of wood and corrugated iron; covered in moss and vines but sturdy and habitable, not quite as impressive as a log cabin, but definitely as eccentric. A pipe came out the roof with smoke pouring into the heavens with a faint smell of barbeque that teased her nostrils. Flickering candle light stuttered within the dirty fogged up windows, flashing light deep into the forest terrain and cast ghostly, yet warm shadows all around her. She smiled to herself as she realized where she was, Crazy Barrie’s cabin in the woods.