Dark Creations: Dark Ending (Part 6) (28 page)

“You okay?” he asked, though he saw that she had not been hit. 

“Yes,” she said and lowered her weapon.  “I’m fine.”

He started to tell her she’d been brave when footsteps echoed from behind another door.  “Do you hear that?” he stood still.  The sound came from beneath them
, from the ground level.  He wondered whether she’d heard it.  He doubted she could hear anything over the shrill ringing that followed gunfire. 

She shook her head and he pointed to the door he’d heard the sound behind.  “There,” he said
and knew at once that the sound he’d heard had been footsteps.  Members were advancing to the roof.  His heart plummeted to his feet.  Alexandra, Daniella and Ryan were on the roof, and members were headed their way.

“Let’s go,”
Anna interrupted his worry and took a tentative step in the direction of the footfalls.

“No,” Jack said and stopped her.  “
I need to keep you two safe,” he said and looked between her and her mother.

He boldly rammed his shoulder against the door closest to him.  He stepped inside the small space that served as an office and saw that it was empty. 
“Both of you will hide in here,” he told Anna and her mother.

“No, you need us,” Anna began to protest
, but he did not stay to listen.  He raced from the office without saying good-bye to either Joan or Anna and sprinted to the next door.  He tore it open and bounded up the stairs, taking them two at a time, heedlessly hurrying behind the heavy footfalls he’d heard seconds earlier.

He reached the top landing and stood before a metal door and heard more gunfire beyond it.  “No!” he wheezed.  His voice was a strangled whisper.  The firing was answered immediately and his panic soared. 
Crossfire
, he thought and his mind raced as quickly as his feet as he ran full-speed.  Clutching his rifle tightly, he resisted the urge to smash into the door and burst through it shooting.  He knew he needed to remain inconspicuous, that the only way to help his friends would be to sneak up on the members.  He pushed the door open slowly and glimpsed a flash of black flicker in his field of vision before bright sunshine blinded him temporarily. 

He squinted against the overwhelming intensity of the golden light, his eyes watering, and saw that six members were advancing on a large metal box in the center of the roof.  The muzzle of a rifle
dipped below the metal block and Jack guessed that whoever was behind it had been responsible for the return fire.  He only hoped that Alexandra, Daniella and Ryan were still alive. 

Regardless, he knew he needed to take the members down.  He needed to act now. 
Jack squeezed the trigger on his automatic rifle and bullets spewed from it, spraying three members in their backs before the others turned on him.  He braced himself for certain death when the three drones with their weapons trained on him stumbled forward.  Their guns went off and sent bullets cascading in every direction.  He dove to the ground and tried to cover his head, but not before catching sight of Ryan’s bear-like form showering ammunition into their wriggling bodies. 

“Bastards!” Ryan screamed.

When the firing ceased, Jack called out.  “Hold your fire!” he shouted to them.  “It’s me!  It’s Jack!”

Confident that t
he continual blasts had come to an end, he rose slowly. 

“Jack!” he heard Alexandra
cry out to him.  “Holy shit!  Are you okay? What the fuck is going on?” she asked and he’d never been so happy to hear her cursing voice in his life. 

He bolted toward them and stopped short of barreling into Ryan.  Relief washed over him at the sight of three of his friends and nearly brought him to tears.  But it was short-lived as their lives
remained in jeopardy. 

“We need to get out of here!  They are storming the storefronts from behind, picking us off!  We have to leave,” he shouted. 

“Oh my God,” Daniella gasped. 

“And this is only the first wave.  There are thousands more of them,” he added.  “We have to go!”

Alexandra, Daniella and Ryan exchanged terrified looks then faced him and nodded solemnly.  He turned and began jogging across the rooftop, back to the door he’d just come from.  Alexandra and the others followed and they descended the staircase to the second floor.  They stopped outside the door of the office he’d forced Anna and her mother to hide in.

“Anna and her mother are hiding in the office,” Jack told Alexandra when she appeared at his side. 

Alexandra nodded to him, and he opened the door to the office.  “Joan!  Anna!” he whispered, though he wasn’t sure why he whispered.  When no one answered, he felt his lungs burn as if the air were being squeezed from them.  His chest tightened and his feet refused to move when he saw the top of Joan’s head beside one of the legs of the desk. 

“Over here!” he heard Anna call.

“Oh my God, Joan!” he heard himself say as he rushed to her side.  There, he saw Anna hovering over her and fanning her face.  “What happened?” he asked and felt tears spring from his eyes at the slow rise and fall of the old woman’s chest. 

“She fainted,” Anna said with calm he did not know a person could possess in such dire circumstances.  “It happens to her from time to time.”

What an awful time for it to happen
, Jack thought.  “We need to get her out of here.  The members are raiding each store on Main Street and killing everyone they come across,” he said and looked directly into Anna’s eyes.

Anna feverishly blinked back tears to no avail.  They slid down her cheeks. 
“Okay,” she said and blew a steady stream of air through pursed lips.  “Mom,” she said and tapped her mother’s cheek lightly.  “Mom, you’ve got to get up.  I need you.  We need to get out of here.”

Joan’s eyes darted from side to side beneath her eyelids then her lashes fluttered.  When finally she opened her eyes and looked at the
m, a strange expression clouded her features.  A mixture of confusion and surprise held her features before they smoothed.

“What happened?” she asked.  “Did I faint again?”

“Mom we have to go,” Anna said firmly.  “Can you walk?”

“I suppose so,” Joan replied. 

“Shit, I’ll carry you on my back if I have to,” Alexandra chimed in from the doorway.  “Whatever it takes to get your ass out of there.” 

“Oh, I see
she
is back,” Joan said as she stood.  “Thank you, dear,” she said to Alexandra.  “But that won’t be necessary.  I can make it on my own, thank you very much.”

Jack looked to Alexandra and saw that she smirked.  “Well, all right, granny.  Let’s go.”

“Alex!” Jack scolded.

“What?” she asked with insult. 

“Now is not the time,” he warned through clenched teeth.  He then turned to Anna and her mother and said, “Everyone needs to stay behind me.  There are members everywhere and I’m not taking any chances.”

The women nodded and they filed out of the office after him.  Ryan joined them and picked up the rear and they rushed past the bedroom Jack had shot from when the first members had rolled through Main Street.  Jack opened the last door at the end of the hallway and found himself in the stairwell that led to the hardware store. 

Three more members were marching up the steps.  Jack began shooting without delay.  Bullets pierced flesh and blood spattered the cream colored walls.  The uniform-clad creations reeled backward and tumbled down the stairs.

Joan winced and Anna took her arm.

“Don’t look down when you step over them,” he offered.  Then to the rest of them he said, “We’ll go through the store and out front.  They seem to be entering from the backs of buildings.  That means they’re occupying the side streets.”

Daniella shook her head in disbelief and Ryan rubbed her back.  Jack led the way and everyone followed. 

Once out of the hardware store and onto the sidewalk, the sun blazed from overhead and the gravity of their circumstances came into grotesque focus.

“
Oh my God,” Alexandra inhaled sharply. 

Dozens of
civilian bodies littered the street, their mangled bodies splayed unceremoniously atop hoods of cars, mailboxes and all along the pavement. 

“Stay close to the building for the time being,” Jack said as another body hurtled to the asphalt with a sickly
thwack
.  He felt Anna’s cheek press against his arm as her breath caught in her chest.  Several more of the militia he’d formed, and residents of Eldon who’d fought bravely, careened to the concrete, their bones crushing and bodies contorting unnaturally.  Shots began firing at them from above, raining down along with bodies.  He realized then that none of them were safe where they were, not even if they hugged the side of the buildings as they attempted to escape. 

“What do we do now, Jack?” Ryan asked.

Jack’s eyes surveyed the carnage surrounding him and was about to tell them he was all out of ideas when a final one popped into his head.  It wasn’t much of an idea, but it was still an idea. 

“We’re going to head toward the cars.  That car,” he said and pointed to a newer model
Chevy Suburban close by.  “Quick,” he said as bullets sprayed the sidewalk beside them.  “They’ve got us in their sights!  Everyone, get under the Suburban, now!” 

The six
of them raced for the parked SUV and rolled beneath.  Bullets rained from above and rocked the body of the car as they pelted it unendingly.  He curved to his side and attempted to peek from below the front bumper.  When he did, he saw a swarm of black descending on the street. 

Marching as one, the horde of black overran the black of the pavement and spilled onto the sidewalk.  Members approached
, filling the street as far as the eye could see.  Thousands of Terzini’s deadly creations were advancing to seize the town.  Everyone would die, his friends, Anna and her mother, everyone. 

Heaviness settled deep in Jack Downing’s chest as he watched his fate looming on the horizon. 
He slid back beneath the cover of the SUV and looked at the terrified faces of those he’d sentenced to death.  In that moment, he knew he would die no matter what he did.  The last thing he wanted to do was remain where he was and await death.  He was a soldier.  He did not wait for death to find him.  He would fight until his last breath escaped him.  He would fight to his death. 

Jack clutched his automatic rifle and said
a heartfelt, “I’m sorry,” to Anna and her mother before he rolled from the concealment of the Suburban to make his final stand.  On his feet and confronted with a veritable ocean of black sweeping toward him, he released a war cry and began firing into the sea of men.  He screamed and braced himself, preparing for bullets to tear through his flesh, and spied Alexandra, Daniella and Ryan at his side.  He would die with his sisters and brother at his side.  Though he had not known Daniella and Ryan long, they were now family.  They would fight alongside him and die alongside him.

Tears streaked down his cheeks as his rifle pumped round after round when all of a sudden, screams slashed though the sea of members.  Jack looked all around him and saw that his friends were unharmed.  Still, he waited to be fired on.  But when a ripple waved through the ranks like wheat being stirred
by a breeze in a field and members began to fall, his stomach roiled anxiously.  One by one, uniformed creations clutched their heads and fell to their knees, moaning and writhing in pain. 

“What the hell is happening?” Alexandra shouted over the wails. 

“I don’t know,” he hollered back. 

The writhing and moaning slowly gave way to blood.  Gore seeped from their eyes, noses, mouths and ears.  Weapons clattered to the pavement and Jack could not believe what he was seeing.  Members scrambled from their rows and collapsed on the sidewalk, toppling over bodies of fallen Eldon residents and the bodies of their brethren in the process. 
Some began convulsing while others continued to howl in agony.

Over the cries, however, the
rumble of an engine could be heard followed by the blare of a car horn. 

In the distance, Jack saw a Jeep
Wrangler approach.  Three people were inside: two men and one woman.  A man in the back stood holding what looked like a laptop computer aimed at them while the other man drove and the woman rode in the front seat.  Goosebumps arose on his flesh and his scalp tightened and tingled.  “Gabriel! Melissa!  Yoshi!” he called out reflexively.  He did not need to see their faces to know they were the ones in the approaching vehicle.  He felt it in his heart.  They lived!

“Melissa!” Daniella called as the
Wrangler drew nearer.  Tears streamed from her eyes and she outstretched both arms.

“It’s over!” Gabriel shouted at the top of his lungs.  “It’s finally over!”

Jack felt tears burn his eyes before blurring his vision.  He looked around as dead members fell from open windows and rooftops.  He looked at the members in the street then at the good people of Eldon who’d fought and survived.  His chest swelled and he said a silent prayer for those who’d lost their lives then turned to his friends and felt peace for the first time in longer than he could remember.