Dark Creations: Dark Ending (Part 6) (24 page)

Terzini
lay wordlessly with his mouth agape.  Gabriel was sure it was a first for him, that he was speechless after being verbally bested by a fellow creation.  He decided to not waste any more time and continued.  “So tell me about this device.  Amber tells me it has a five-hundred-yard range.  If that holds true then once the men on your property fall, you will still have the thousands of soldiers that you sent to Eldon, right?”

Still, Terzini said nothing.  “I’m pretty good at this, huh?” Gabriel taunted
as he hoisted Terzini’s body to a sitting position.  “And you have a decision to make,” he said and drained his voice of mirth.

Terzini held his gaze for a moment, as if deliberating his next move.  When he nodded, a movement so small it was almost imperceptible, Gabriel said, “Let’s go get it now.” 

He helped Terzini to his feet with the gun pointed on him every step of the way and he and Melissa followed him out of the room and back down the long corridor.  They entered an oversized room with a couch and desk and door that opened into a palatial room so luxuriously appointed, it looked as if it belonged in a palace.  But he was not there to ooh and ah over furniture and decorations.  He was there to obtain a weapon that would kill the hundreds of members stationed outside. 

He shoved Terzini further into the room
and they crossed it to a safe at the farthest corner of a walk-in closet larger than the living room of his apartment.  There, a large, metal safe waited. Terzini began twisting the dial on its hinged door.  Before long, the door of the safe swung open and he was handed a remote device that was not larger than or more impressive looking than a laptop computer. 

“Is this it?” he asked.

“Yes,” Terzini answered and wiped the slop from his face on the sleeve of his shirt.  “I just push this button,” he said and pointed a finger at a small rectangular button. 

“Do it,” Gabriel commanded then swallowed hard.  “Do it now.”

Terzini leveled his sooty eyes at Gabriel.  “You are despicable,” he hissed.  “You are killing your own people.”

A flash of anger rocketed through Gabriel’s core. 
“Those are not my people,” he matched Terzini’s tone then pointed to Melissa.  “
She
is my people,” he replied unblinking. 

Melissa was his people.  She was his home, his sanctity.  She was one of the many people he cared for, but reserved his deepest, purest feelings for her, his profoundest love.  The people milling about in the courtyard were robots with flesh, nothing more.  And they would die.

He leveled his gun at Lord Terzini’s slimy face and ordered him, “Do it.  Do it now.  Kill them all.”

Chapter 20

The
sun continued its ascent and felt warm on Jack’s face as he looked out the window of an apartment above a small hardware store on Main Street in Eldon.  Morning had come and nearly gone and noon was fast approaching.  Hours had passed since he’d left the residential neighborhoods and arrived in town, and in that time, nearly a thousand townspeople had arrived, ready to fight for their town, for their lives.

Jack marveled at Eldon’s resolve, at how so many lived up to the mayor’s high opinion of them.  They were, indeed, a close-knit community, and with each car that arrived, the strength of the fabric that bound Eldon was reinforced.
 

Fletcher Hardware, the first store in a long row of shops that lined the street, was beneath him.  He stood with his arms folded across his chest and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.  So many people had shown up
, armed and prepared to take instructions.  Each resident that owned a rifle was now either perched on the roofs along Main Street or occupied the second story of a storefront.  He spotted Sheriff Baker on the street directly below him.  He had just pulled to the curb and climbed out.  Mayor Sheldon was with him and lumbered out of the passenger seat.  They stood and spoke to a man Jack did not recognize then looked up at him.  He waved and they returned the gesture before marching off with the man they’d been talking to.  That had been the most activity he had seen in the roadway in several minutes.  Everyone waited, as if collectively holding their breath, for the arrival of Terzini’s members. 

Jack counted himself among them, though he was not a
local.  He felt a special connection to the town, to a group of people willing to unquestioningly help one another and stand together, and to a particular citizen of the town with crystal-blue eyes whose stare he could feel boring into the back of his skull. 

“Jack,” Anna said.  He did not need
to hear her voice to know she stood behind him.  He’d felt her long before he’d heard her.  “Do you have a second?”

Jack turned to face her.  In the golden light
streaming in through the window, Anna’s face was more breathtaking than it had been when shrouded in shadows.  Her pale skin was like porcelain and her eyes like two aquamarine gemstones.  The dark curls that framed her face looked afire, sunlight emphasizing the rich auburn highlights of her hair.

“Sure,” he said and fought to catch his breath.  “What’s up?”

Thousands of men were heading their way, yet their approach did not make his pulse rate spike as Anna’s presence did.  He shifted his weight from one leg to the next, his nerves demanding that he keep moving.

“I s
ee Joe is directing traffic,” she said and pointed past him and down the road where Joe guided arriving cars to various lots to park.  Cars needed to be stashed quickly and completely lest Terzini’s army spied them and began following them.  Right now, the only advantage – if it could even be called that – was the element of surprise. 

“Yeah, who knew he’d be doing that?  I’ve known him for longer than I can remember.  Never thought I’d see him at the center of the town like this.  He looks like a ringmaster,” Jack admitted.  And he did.  Joe looked every bit the ringm
aster in the circus of their lives. 

“Huh,” she said and looked thoughtfully at Joe, as if Jack had said something profound. 

“You, uh, wanted to talk to me about Joe?” he asked and hated how words worked and flowed smoothly in his mind, yet tripped over one another as they fell from his lips. 

“No, I didn’t want to talk to you about Joe,” she said and looked at him briefly before lowering her eyes.

The silence that hung between them crackled with energy he could not name.  He did not know what to do, what to say exactly.  He wondered whether he’d somehow insulted her by asking her about what she’d come to talk to him about.  Perhaps he’d been rude.  He knew very little about women, about their sensitivities and what made them tick.  He had not dated anyone other than Dawn, and that had been when he was in high school, during a time when courtship did not include text messaging and social network status updates.  Back then, during a period that might as well have existed a lifetime ago, when a boy liked a girl, he simply asked her out. 

“What is it then?” he asked and heard that his voice sounded harder than he’d wanted it to.

She looked at him through her lashes.  “I was just wondering,” she started then cleared her throat.  She tilted her chin up and stared directly into his eyes. “I was wondering whether you think we have a chance in hell at surviving what’s coming our way.”

Jack stared back at her, stared into the bottomless dep
ths of eyes that looked like waters he’d once seen when he’d visited Destin Pass in Florida, crystalline and sparkling, and said, “I won’t let anything happen to you.  I will keep you safe.  I promise you will live through this.  I will not fail again.”

The last part came as a surprise to him.  He seldom spoke of how he’d failed Dawn, how he hadn’t
been there for her.  He had not saved her.  And now she was gone.

“What do you mean
fail again
?” she asked and gathered her dark brows. 

Her question should have cut him life a knife, but shockingly,
it did not.  He had never spoken of Dawn to a woman he was interested in, probably because he had not been interested in any women other than Dawn.  He was treading in uncharted waters, and sharks were circling.

“I’ll tell you when this is over,” he said softly.

She did not question what he meant and she did not pout.  She simply offered him a knowing look.  He appreciated it, appreciated her understanding.  He’d meant what he’d said, too.  He would keep her safe no matter the cost.  He would do whatever it took to keep Anna and her mother safe. 

“I guess I should get back to my mom,” Anna said and patted his forearm before leaving the room.

Jack turned to resume his watch at the window.  When he did, the sight before him made his insides freeze. Every hair on his body rose and quivered like quills.  A torrent of black flooded the street, descending on Main Street like a tide of dark, murky ocean.  The members had arrived, their numbers swelling against the sidewalk as they surged closer.  Jack stopped breathing, felt his lungs halt completely as if the air inside them had congealed to a thick impenetrable paste that bound them both.  His heart slapped against his ribs, but was drowned out by another sound.  The rhythmic clacking of combat boots crashing against asphalt resounded as they marched through the square. 

Shots rang out unexpectedly just after a car horn blasted.  Jack frantically scanned the street, looking for the source of the sounds.  When he saw that cars w
ere still attempting to turn onto Main Street from a secondary route, the slapping against his ribs sped.  The members did not hesitate to open fire on them.  Windshields shattered and exploded and crimson splatters mottled what was left of cars that were being obliterated by automatic gunfire. 

“
Oh my God,” he whispered to no one as air finally rushed into his lungs. 

People
were being killed; men, women and children, slaughtered like animals while their fellow Eldon residents looked on.  He heard Anna and her mother whimper from the hallway, raw, strangled cries.  They had undoubtedly seen the attack from the window in the room next to him, a larger window with a closer view. He prayed that no one had been demoralized to the point of rash retaliation attempts.  He would not blame them if they had been, but such acts would upend what they were attempting to do. 

So far, no shots had been fired by anyone positioned in the shops as far as he could tell
and a part of him felt tugged to the hallway, urging him to comfort Anna.  But he knew he needed to stay where he was, that the time to comfort her would come soon.  Right now, his job was to protect her. 

Jack hoisted his automatic rifle high and lifted it so that he could look through its scope.  Ranks of sturdy looking and absurdly handsome faces stared straight ahead impassively.  Every armed individual on Main Street had been instructed to hold their fire until he fired first.  All eyes were on him now, waiting for his signal.

His brow was slick with sweat and the sun blazed through the windowpane.  He watched as a seemingly endless stream of troops poured down the road.  His finger twitched anxiously over the trigger, eager to act, eager to rain down on the murderous monsters with an angry vengeance and merciless wrath.

When the lines stretched and filled nearly three blocks, Jack knew the time had come to enact their plan.  He opened the window and aimed the muzzle of the rifle toward the innumerable targets then took a deep breath as he stared
through the scope.  He leaned out the open window and in his peripheral vision, saw the muzzles of dozens of weapons follow suit.  He said a quiet prayer and squeezed the trigger.  Bullets sprayed and peppered the rearmost line where a voice had shouted orders and marched his men forward.  He zeroed in on that opened mouth and lodged several bullets in it, silencing it forever. 

After his first shots had been taken, the whip and pop of hundreds of guns being fired at once exploded all around him, ringing out from every direction.  Smoke filled the air
from car fires that still burned and the smell of sulfur intermixed with it, forming a toxic smelling fog. Through the fog, however, he saw member after member dropping.  Those who remained scrambled, seeking shelter and dodging bullets that showered from overhead. 

Jack contributed to the shower of shots
, sending them scuttling for cover.  As he did, he could not help but notice how Terzini’s emotionless drones assumed very human reactions.  Chief among them was self-preservation, the inherent need to survive.  That need was carved in their features; that, and fear.  Hundreds turned and ran, stumbling over their comrades to save themselves.

The firin
g continued as did the stampede away from Main Street.  Members scurried frantically like cockroaches, scattering and scrambling for shelter. Terzini’s members retreated, but the people of Eldon did not.  They did not relent and kept shooting.

By the time the smoke
had cleared and the firing had slowed, countless bodies littered Main Street. Any living members that remained had cleared out.  Cheers erupted and echoed like a joyful roar between the stout buildings.  Anna rushed into the room and gripped his arm.

“We did it!” she said excitedly.  “We beat them!”

Jack smiled thinly.  He did not want to end her happiness or the happiness of any of the townspeople.  But he knew it was only the beginning, that what they had just survived was only the first wave in what he bet would be an unending onslaught.  He and the people of Eldon had killed a few hundred, but thousands still lived.  They would regroup and attack again, and he was confident the fight would not be as easy as the one they’d just won.  But for the moment, all he could see were a pair of eyes glittering with hope.