Judgement (The Twelve) (2 page)

“Bugger this!”
he
yelled.

Chris blinked the rain away and the figure was now directly in front of him. God he stunk! Not the unwashed smell that Chris had grown to ignore but a terrible rotting flesh smell. It reached for his throat. Chris saw that it had talons instead of finger nails. Mentally he had gone from thinking of it as a person to an IT. Without thinking he
swung his right arm up to deflect the things
hand away. What happened next scared the crap out of Chris. At the point of first
contact, two things happened almost simultaneously. Firstly a strange voice inside his head shouted triumphantly, ‘
Be Judged!
’
T
he
second thing to happen was that the
things
hand exploded into red hot ash
that was instantly absorbed by
the rain!

The
thing
let out an ear
splitting blubbering
scream of rage
,
pain
and confusion
, in a flash it
was
running fast down the road, clutching at the stump where
its
hand used to be. Chris stood routed to the spot, in the blink of an eye the thing was gone from sight. Chris looked at his own hand, the hand that had made contact with…whatever the hell it was. The skin on the back of his hand was blistered but as he looked the blistering slowly disappeared.
A
sudden pang of intense pain
covered the area where moments before the blisters had appeared. Then just as quickly, the pain faded into nothingness.

Chris found himself panting as his heart was racing wildly in his chest. Gulping, he tried to slow and control his breathing. Moving forward whilst still staring after the, whatever the hell it was. Chris found himself standing in front of Wally’s cardboard home. One of the front flaps was bent back revealing a pitch dark interior.

“Wally you okay man?” Chris found himself whispering for no apparent reason.

Oblivious to the rain and the fact he was now drenched, Chris reached out with a shaking hand to open the flap wide.

“I wouldn’t do that
kid
.” A
high pitched
male
voice instructed directly
behind and
to his left
.

Chris
jumped six feet in the air, sp
un
to face the speaker
but there was no one there, yet his eyes snapped
to the left
and he actually seemed to see the outline of
a person in the pouring rain. The next
second
it was gone
.

A gr
uff
chain smoking male voice
spoke from out of the darkness across the road next to Chris’s home,
“He saw you.”

This time Chris saw the person who spoke, or rather the outline.  Then
for the first time something clicked on inside his head and
his vision seemed to sharpen, driving away the night. As clear as day he saw the person
who had spoke
n
. He
appeared
in his fifties and
clad head to toe in black leather.
Leather steel to
e
capped pointed boots, leather trouser
s
. No shirt but a leather waist coat worn under
a leather
collarless style jacket
.
He was minus
part of his
left
arm the
sleeve cut off and sowed up over the stump just above were his elbow would have been
. He was bald
but
wore
a grey goatee beard.
But
it was the hilts of dozens of
throwing
knives protruding from stud covered sheaths worn in bandoliers across his chest
, with a further two larger ones s
heathed
along
each thigh
that got
Chris’s
attention.

“Not fuggin possible!”
The same
high pitched
male voice
exclaimed
from behind and above Chris.

Spinning around so fast he didn’t even remember moving, Chris found himself looking up at another figure hanging from a V shaped intersection  of old fashioned iron drain pipes running down the building besides  Wally’s doorway. The voice belonged to a teenager about Chris’s own age. Tall and very slender, with combed back fair hair
, h
e t
o
o wore black leather
in the form of a trench coat over thin black leather trousers tucked into combat boots.  He wore fingerless studded leather gloves.
Chris noticed the teenagers long slim fingers seemed to end in short curved claws
like a large cat instead of fingernails like a normal human.

“Moves almost as fast as you do,” Added the gravely voice.

Chris automatically glanced behind him
for a fraction of a second
before looked back
,
the teenager
was
gone!
Had he fallen off? No he wasn’t behind Wally’s box.

C
hris turned
around again to look back
across the road, “Who are y…”

But the other one had vanished
as well
.
He glanced up and down the road for several seconds before
remember
ing
Wally
. C
arefully he opened the flaps on his cardboard box. Once again his vision seemed to pierce the darkness within. Wally lay dead. Of that
,
Chris was one hundred
percent sure. He stepped back
wards
in
horrified
shock, Wally lay in a pool of red rain water, except Chris knew it wasn’t rain and it wasn’t water.
He
lay in a pool of his own blood
, with the rest still
trickl
ing
down his chest from the stump were his head used to be. The head! Wally’s
head
lay in his lap, eyes staring wide open up at Chris
, as if to say,
‘Look what’s happened to me!’

Chris
started
to
stagger
back away from the sight, when a hand descended gently upon his left shoulder, “Told you not to look kid.”

Chris spun around to stand face to face with the bearded one armed man. He glanced at the knives.

“You killed him!”

The man shook his head slowly from side to side, “A Shade meat gatherer did the job.”

Chris didn’t understand, “A Shade what?”

“Not me that
’
s for sure and you interrupted us from doing our job kid,
A
nvil
won’t be happy.”

That
same
high pitched voice appeared in Chris’s right ear, real close. So close he felt
his
breath,
“Shade
got away.
Anvil
will be pissed that’s for sure.”

Chris yelled and jumped back a step, the teenager moved to stand next to the bearded man, “see him do it?”

The man nodded, “Touch flash burned the bugger, never seen that before.”

The teenager jerked his head from side to side, “
H
e saw it as well. Saw it clear as day.”

The man nodded again, “Best we tell
Anvil
.”

The teenager flickered and in the blink of appeared next to Chris, “Take him with us?”

Chris had had enough, “Hey freaks I’m not going nowhere
s
with you.”

The bearded man was deep in thought and absently corrected him, “
It’s anywhere, not nowhere
s
.”

Chris was beginning to realize three things. One
,
a dead man not fifteen feet away had been murdered. Two, some….thing had killed him and three
, he
looked at these strange leather clad men,
“Who the hell are you?”

The bearded man seemed to ignore him, “No let’s tell
Anvil
first
,
we can always find the kid again.”

Chris watched as both the teenager and the bearded man flickered, shimmered and faded into black and white and started to walk away.
They looked almost like ghosts. Chris
stood there with bulging eyes as he followed them.

The teenager glanced back, “Hey he can see us!”

“Not possible.” Bearded man replied but he stopped and stared back at Chris
, none the less.

“Hum, “He added as he searched Chris’s face.

The teenager flickered and flashed to stand in front of Chris,
now back in full techno colour.

“What are you kid
, y
ou
something new?
”

“
Not a Shade or a Ghoul.
”
Half answering his own question.

Chris automatically stepped away from him, “What are you two?” It was a justified question all things considered.

The teenager snapped his head back
to
wards the one armed
man;
Chris was amazed his neck didn’t snap. One arm
met his look and
nodded once.
The thin ones head
snapping back, he smiled a cold smile that didn’t reach his eyes. His hand flashed
upwards,
Chris almost blocked the blow but failed. The impact under his chin struck hard.
The world spun and Chris felt the ground coming up fast. The last thing he remembered was
trying to hit back and
a
voice yelling
,
“
Don’t hit him ask him!
”