Empire's End (18 page)

When he opened the door, the dogs ran past
him to the gate and began pacing in front of it, making
high-pitched whimpers.

They sensed something. Dalton dropped the
rifle into his hands and approached the gate. “Back. Get back.”

What could they possibly be on to? Maybe they
did just want out after all. But his instincts were sharp, too, and
their behavior told him something was wrong. Dalton unlocked and
unbolted the gate, muttering into his radio. “Section nineteen,
going out for a quick look around.”

He peered through a pair of binoculars and
scanned the horizon. Nothing but falling snow on a flat plain. All
the trees and foliage had been cut away to provide a clear view.
Not a damn thing.

He turned and saw the dogs backing away from
the gate. Kneeling, he patted his knee and called, “C’mere! What is
it? You’re gonna have to show me.”

He looked back toward the badlands. Hard to
be sure whether or not there was anything out there. He took
another look with the binoculars. Nope, not a thing.

Wait. A tiny black shape moving on the
horizon. Then another, and another. Then dozens.

Dalton backed through the gate and slammed it
shut. He barked into the radio, “Section nineteen! I need backup
here... got either badlanders or rotters rushing the gate!”

The dogs already knew which it was. They
leapt about him in a panic. He could see nothing but wild terror in
their eyes.

“Go,” he said, waving them off. “Get the hell
out of here!” They didn’t have to be told twice.

His radio crackled. “Nineteen, do you have a
visual?”

“Hold on.” He climbed the ladder and stood
atop the Wall. He saw a storm of ragged figures surging toward him.
He heard their moans on the wind. There were hundreds, hundreds!
Their numbers stretched as far as he could see.

Then a huge rotter broke through the ranks,
swinging a hammer over his head, and the gate was blown off its
hinges.

Dalton dropped onto his stomach, gasping

“Rotters!” into his radio. He started
crawling along the Wall, but grim dread weighed his limbs down and
he knew there was no point. He was alone in a sea of undead. And
they’d already seen him.

Something was clambering up the ladder. He
sat up, shaking, and took aim.

* * *

Devour her!

Get up, now—consume her flesh! We need her
power!

GET UP!

The Omega could barely move his fingers, let
alone move across the room—but the voices screaming in his head
urged him on, and slowly, painstakingly, he began tugging his
mutilated corpse across the floor.

It was the consumption of the Reaper’s flesh
that had thrown open the gates of Hell, had let them into this
simple creature’s mind—they, the dead, the damned, untold millions
who had passed on under Adam’s watch and who blamed him for their
ultimate fate. Murderers, rapists, the architects of atrocities
that had shaken entire nations. Masters of terrorism and genocide,
they had found themselves cast into a dark abyss where there was no
peace, no rest, only bitter suffering. And it was because of
him—Death!

So, although there was nothing in this world
or the next that could free them from the abyss, they would at
least have their revenge against Adam. They would tear him
apart.

The Omega pulled the blanket from the woman
in white’s nude form and began clawing at her pale flesh. She was
strange—half human, half something else entirely—but there was
still power lying dormant in her being and they would have it. They
pushed the Omega on, as he filled his hands with bloodless flesh
and lifted them to his broken mouth.

He swallowed her. She filled him. He
stiffened and began to shake.

His body thrashed on the floor and fresh
blood, rich red blood, began pouring from the many wounds Adam had
given him. And then the wounds, like mouths, began to close.

He threw his head back and vomited into the
air. Maggots and bile splattered on the floor around him. All of
the corruption was leaving him. The meat of the undead had only a
fraction of this effect! New life was surging through the Omega,
regenerating him in a matter of moments—and then he collapsed.

VENGEANCE SHALL BE OURS!

Our Legion is now unstoppable—never again
will he leave us in ruins—this time we shall destroy him!

Their cries echoed through the Omega’s mind.
He struggled to his feet. Newfound strength bore him out into the
night.

Long live the new flesh!

* * *

“It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.”

Adam faced a young white horse. It had been
standing alone in this field, grazing, probably separated from an
infected family. It eyed him cautiously as he approached.

He stroked its head and whispered, “You’re
safe with me.” The horse stood still as he pulled himself onto its
back.

To the Great Cities. To Lily.

P.O. Billy Rhodes was charged with removing
the undesirables from Gaylen. He knew the truth about Cleveland,
that it was a hellhole situated outside the Wall, populated only
with the worst of the worst. He didn’t much care. Made his day job
a lot easier getting the trash off Gaylen’s streets. Kept the
hookers cleaner too.

The guy in the cage, handcuffed in the back
of Rhodes’ SUV, looked like a filthy mother. Name was Jarrett
Willows. Apparently the guy had seen some bad shit go down back
East and had lost his marbles. He’d been picked up in downtown
Gaylen, preaching from a street corner about some gibberish that
Rhodes couldn’t understand.

The perp was doing it now—muttering “
Ia,
Ia,
” under his breath and rocking in his seat. It was creeping
Rhodes the fuck out. He slammed his fist against the cage
separating them. “Shut up, Willows!”

The long-haired transient stopped rocking and
looked at Rhodes in the rearview mirror. His eyes were wide and
bloodshot. Crazy. Smoothing his mustache in the mirror, Rhodes
tried to make like he was ignoring the kid—Willows was only in his
mid-to-late twenties—but he couldn’t break eye contact.

“The old gods left the plague here,” Willows
rasped. “This world’s nothin’ more than a toilet. They shat their
voodoo all through the aether and disappeared from this place,
never to return. We’re just insects crawling around in a toilet,
you get it? Some of ‘em are fat flies but they still eat shit!”

Willows dragged his long nails through his
hair and glared at Rhodes. The P.O. focused on the road ahead. “I
thought I told you to shut the fuck up.”

“You don’t
get
it.” Hooking his yellow
nails in the wire of the cage, Willows leaned forward and said,
“Their magic is still here. It still responds to the old words.
Words long forgotten, but I found ‘em—in the books in the forgotten
places, I found the words.”

God, his breath stank of sour mash and
rotting teeth. Rhodes pounded the cage again. “Get back!”

“The new god calls it blasphemy. He just
don’t want anyone to learn the words, you see, to be able to call
on the magic. He calls it evil. Ain’t no such thing. Good and evil
are social constructs! Feh! Feh!”

Damn fool had almost started to sound lucid
for a moment. Rhodes had seen worse, though. Yep, Cleveland was
full of nasty motherfuckers. Jarrett Willows was going to have his
hands full once he arrived in his new home.

“
Ia! Ia!
” Willows laughed. “I found
the books in a library in old Massachusetts. I knew, soon as I laid
my eyes upon ‘em, what I had. Something strange and wonderful—feh!
Evil? Feh! Fuck”

He lowered his head began speaking softly,
almost reverently. Well, at least he wasn’t talking to Rhodes
anymore.

They were on the outskirts of the city. It
was twilight; smoke rose into the sky above dark buildings. The
fires had probably drawn some rotters into town. Things weren’t
going to be very pleasant. Rhodes figured he’d drop Willows off at
the first intersection.

“Your people knew the old words,” the man
whispered.

“What do you mean, my people?” Rhodes
snapped.

“The niggers, I mean.”

Rhodes spun and smashed his fist into the
cage. Willows jumped in his seat and threw his hands in front of
his face, shrieking, “Blacks! Blacks!”

“I am blacker than black, motherfucker,”
Rhodes snarled, “I’m fucking Billy Rhodes and I will tear your
fucking throat out if I hear one more word out of you. Got me?
Huh?”

Willows nodded, cowering. He lowered his head
again. Before long, he was whispering his gibberish, but Rhodes
didn’t feel like bothering with him anymore.

“
Ia! Ia!
”

Rhodes pulled over to the shoulder and killed
the engine. “All right. I’m done with this shit. You’re home,
psycho.”

Getting out of the car, he scanned the city
ahead for any signs of trouble. Bastards sometimes tried to sneak
up on him, to get the car. He’d popped more than a few highwaymen
in his time—far more than he ever listed in his incident
reports.

They called him Cleveland Joe, those who knew
what he did, and he had a no-bullshit reputation that the people
around here unfortunately didn’t seem to be aware of.

Drawing his Glock, he opened the back door.
“Out, Willows.”

The loon just sat there, head bowed,
unmoving. Was he trying to pull some kind of trick? Rhodes stepped
back and pointed the gun at the prisoner. “I said
out
.”

Jarrett Willows looked up. A cluster of
tentacles unfurled where his face had been, pushing his filthy hair
aside and stretching toward the cop.

Rhodes screamed and emptied his clip into the
figure, stumbling backwards as he did so. Willows jerked violently
in the car and fell over on his side.

“Shit! SHIT!” Rhodes dumped the empty clip
and reloaded. What in the blue fuck had that been about?

He looked up to see Willows standing outside
the car, his hair again covering his face.

He let out a hideous squeal, and his chest
split down the middle—his sternum coming apart in an eruption of
blood, ripping open his shirt and turning it crimson.

His arms shot straight out and his fingers
clawed at the air. His yawning torso gurgled, then spread wide—and
it
emitted the nightmarish squeal Rhodes had heard. A dozen
black tentacles lashed out, and something hit Rhodes in the chest
with a wet splat.

He looked down to see a heart beating its
last beat on the ground.

Rhodes broke into a run. He wasn’t stupid. If
a full clip hadn’t done the job, there was no sense in sticking
around. He’d have to hope that he was able to lead the monster away
from the SUV—and then that he could make it back to the vehicle in
one piece.

Passing a burnt-out warehouse, Rhodes stayed
in the shadows, running across an intersection and toward an
alley.

“Hey, copper!” An old man in rags flipped him
off.

“Get the fuck outta here!” Rhodes barked. The
man dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

Entering the alleyway, Rhodes realized he’d
boxed himself in. Shit! He wasn’t going to make this his last
stand. Had to turn back.

Then the old man’s screams reached his
ears.

He moved along the wall, slowly, toward the
mouth of the alley. The geezer’s cries were choked off, and it grew
deathly quiet.

Maybe the monster would be too busy to go
after Rhodes. He could make a break for it.

He stepped out to see a desiccated rotter
tearing into the old man’s neck. It was too late for the poor
bastard. Rhodes decided to head down the street, away from the
intersection.

Before he could, something snapped through
the air and wrapped around the zombie’s head—jerking the rotter
away from the old man and hurling it into the side of the
warehouse.

It was Willows—or it had been, once. His
torso was now closed—threaded with tentacles like stitches sewing
him up. More tentacles were coiled around his legs, walking his
forward. And his face—

He had no face. The thing inside him had
turned his head inside out. His exposed brain pulsated in a nest of
tentacles.

Rhodes took aim at the brain and fired three
rounds. Chunks of gray matter flew away from the fiend’s head, but
it showed no reaction. Then... it stumbled. Staggered. It was
losing it!

It fell to its knees beside the old man’s
body and clawed at his head. Rhodes realized what was happening and
shot the fucker’s hands, but they kept working at the geezer’s
scalp, peeling it away, then cracking his head open like a
walnut—

And ripping his brain out to plant it in
place of Willows’!

“All right motherfucker!” Rhodes reloaded.
Last clip. Had to make this count. There weren’t any other brains
around except his. As long as he could cripple the bastard he was
home free. He hoped.

The monster lumbered toward him, arms
outstretched. The tentacles in its head flowered, waving lazily in
the air. Rhodes stood his ground. Had to let it get close. Had to
be sure.

The thing made an excited squeal. That was
close enough.

Rhodes dumped all every last round into its
stolen brain, pulverizing it, sending the creature reeling. The
tentacles in its chest pulled free and swung around, as if in
desperate search of something with which to repair itself. The
straining appendages found no purchase. Billy Rhodes was already
hauling ass down the street.

Old words. Old magic. Old gods.

In a world where the dead walked, anything
was possible. Perhaps even something worse than what Willows had
become.

From that day forward Billy Rhodes slept with
one eye open and his Glock under his pillow.