Villagers should have been quite busy right now, trying to complete the day’s tasks and preparing for the evening meal before darkness swept across the land. Donavan stood to his feet. The only thing active right now was a steady breeze blowing dust and light debris down the streets of the little town.
Perhaps the citizens of the village had already gone indoors leaving him for dead out in the street. It wasn’t a comforting thought, or an unexpected one. After all, Ezekiah had been right about the response the preachers would experience as they traveled throughout the kingdom spreading the good news.
Donavan brushed at some of the dirt encrusting his shirt and jacket. The best thing he could do at this point was probably to move on. No one would likely grant him a room after so warm a reception. Still, the thought of trying to travel through the wilderness toward the next town at this late hour was not a very promising prospect.
A lamp was burning inside the local general store. Donavan could still feel the coin pouch hidden beneath his belt. At least the villagers hadn’t robbed him. He began walking across the street toward the store. He might at least purchase some provisions for his journey before setting off in search of a place to make camp for the night.
As he approached the store, Donavan noticed that several of the small square panes making up the whole front window had been smashed. There was no one stirring within, as far as he could tell from the street. A wagon with no horse sat in front of the store. However, when Donavan came upon it, he noticed that part of a torn harness was lying before it in a pool of blood that trailed away from the wagon down the damp street.
Donavan’s eyes followed the trail until he spotted the dark figure of a horse lying on its side near the edge of town. It was not moving. No driver could be found. Fear crawled up Donavan’s spine. What had happened while he was unconscious in the street? Had the angry group gone on some bloodthirsty rampage?
He stepped over the crimson trail, coming to the door of the general store. It was hanging on one hinge half open. Donavan pushed past it, trying to make as little noise as possible. He crept inside. His feet crunched on the broken glass lying on the dusty wooden floor. He paused, grimacing. But no one appeared to have noticed. Nothing moved. He noticed that some of the goods had been knocked off the shelves. Sacks of grain had been torn open, spilling their contents out onto the floor. A shelf near the back wall had been overturned.
He spotted a bloody handprint on the wall behind the counter. The stain was smeared as though the hand that had made it were sliding downward. Donavan tiptoed to the counter and looked behind it. There, lying on the floor was the body of the shop keeper. His neck was twisted almost completely around and his abdomen had been torn open—not at all like a blade had done the work.
This looked like some beast had gotten to him without care for the carnage it wrought. Flies had begun to buzz around his open wound, and Donavan thought he might be sick if he didn’t get out of there immediately. He backed away from the counter holding his hand over his nose and mouth.
As he started to turn for the door again, Donavan noticed something out of the corner of his eye. A man was standing at the rear of the store in the shadows looking at him. Donavan knew he had not been standing there before. “You there, do you know who did this to the shop keeper?” he asked the man.
There was only a low gurgling sound, then the man shuffled forward a few steps, coming more into the light. Donavan had been about to ask again, but was horrified as the light revealed the man’s blood stained clothing. His nose and mouth were covered in fresh blood; not as though he’d been injured, but more like he had been feeding. He had the appearance of a man who drops his face into his plate, eating ravenously.
Donavan caught sight of his eyes then. They were black as night even where the white sclera should have been, like to opals set into the man’s skull. Donavan realized he was trembling, barely containing his own fear. He wanted to run, but instinct told him it was unwise; like standing your ground with an angry dog, knowing that if you run it will think of you as prey and come after you.
His eyes scanned the room. Donavan spotted farming implements and tools laid out on a table nearby. He looked back at the man who still hadn’t moved toward him. Donavan edged toward the table, letting his hands creep over it, taking hold of a hatchet in his left and a machete in his right.
The bloody fiend had followed his movements over the table. His gaze returned to Donavan’s face as he straightened with his makeshift weapons in his hands. Even though he was armed now, Donavan was still terrified. The fiend grinned at him, as if smelling his fear in the air. It licked its lips hungrily and started toward him.
Donavan backed away toward the awkward hanging door, crunching broken glass beneath his feet again. The fiend picked up speed, lumbering toward him despite being unarmed. The man raised his gore-stained hands, reaching for his next victim. Donavan turned, running through the half open door.
He began to sprint away from the doorway when the fiend smashed through the remainder of the large front window. The creature slammed down upon Donavan, driving him to the street in a shower of broken glass. The machete fell from his hand, landing a few paces away in the dirt.
The fiend kept Donavan’s hatchet-wielding hand at bay, scrabbling over him; its blood-streaked teeth bearing down upon his throat in an attempt to rip it out. Donavan was pushing with his feet, trying to reach the machete. He threw his weight one way then another, hoping to keep his neck and face away from the frothing gurgling mouth of the creature.
The beastly man lunged for his throat as Donavan’s hand closed around the handle of the machete. He brought it forward desperately. The silver blade sank into the creature’s skull with a sickening thwack, like cutting into an unripe melon. The man moaned loudly, now straddling Donavan’s torso as he tried to remove the machete from his skull.
Donavan was still holding onto the handle of the machete when the fiend finally got the blade out. But Donavan reached back and let the machete fly again. This time it landed in the softer flesh of the creature’s neck, biting better than halfway through with his first swing.
The head bobbed sideways, teetering on the remaining muscle and sinew, then the grisly man-thing fell away from him into the street. Donavan hoped severing the creature’s spinal cord might stop it. After all, legends said that the only way to kill a death walker was to sever the spinal cord, separating the creature’s tortured mind from the body it controls.
Donavan kicked the twitching body away from him, rolling back to his feet with the machete at the ready. Death walkers were not technically dead. They could be killed; only it was usually very difficult. They ignored much of the injuries that would kill a normal person. The legends said they were created by the dragons; a punishment upon those who offended them. There were worse things than death.
For these poor creatures death was a release from their torment. It was said that spirits haunted their minds and took over their bodies; inhabiting the living. Insanity quickly resulted. They were driven into the wilderness, scavenging on carrion or whatever they could kill. It was unheard of that one should come into a town on a killing spree.
The body stopped moving. Donavan’s heart stampeded inside his chest. He tried to calm his breathing, then turned to see if anyone had heard the commotion and had come running to investigate. Another death walker was standing down the road. What appeared to be entrails were dangling in its right hand, dripping onto the ground.
Probably a fresh kill, Donavan thought. The creature was staring at him, much the same way the other death walker had been just before it attacked. This time he didn’t bother with easy movements. Donavan lunged for the hatchet, arming himself against what he knew was coming.
Another walker appeared on the opposite side of the street, shuffling out of a home, dragging a small corpse by the hand. Donavan shuddered at the grisly sight. He was nearly frozen with fear. Three death walkers? Death walkers coming into a civilized area? Wh
at was happening?
The dragons had never allowed such a thing before. The tormenting spirits that inhabited death walkers were supposed to be under their control, driving their victims away from society to wander in the wilderness alone. Donavan seemed to have found a pack of the creatures hunting together; killing men, women and children without any regard for the Serpent Kings’ authority.
Another blood covered fiend wandered into the street behind the others. Three pairs of pitch black eyes stared at him, hungering for another victim. Donavan knew he couldn’t possibly take on two, let alone three, death walkers at once. No one could.
He turned and ran in the opposite direction, heading north the way he had come from. With fresh prey in sight, the death walkers came running like a pack of hounds. They may have been gaunt with malnutrition and ravaged by disease in their flesh, but the spirits pressed them onward, energizing their sinewy frames with unnatural strength.
Donavan turned his head, checking to see how close his pursuers were. They were running after him at different speeds; the last in line loping along with a bad leg. He turned back the way he was going and smashed right into a death walker who had appeared out of nowhere. It was a woman.
Her skin was weathered and brown, her hair stringy and sand colored. Donavan’s momentum combined with the woman’s slight weight bowled her over in the street. He had tumbled one way, her another. Donavan was so startled and terrified that he managed to scrabble quickly back to his feet. If he remained on the ground even a moment, the horrifying ghouls would swoop down upon him, tearing him apart before he could get away.
A wooden fence sprang into view as he ran toward the edge of the town. Another death walker was feeding upon the carcass of a dead horse, pulling its innards out onto the ground, gleefully taking its fill. Another pony was pacing near the backside of the fence, clearly terrified of sharing the fate of the slaughtered animal.
Donavan came up with a plan as he reached the fence and climbed over. The feasting death walker had not even noticed him yet, still kneeling before the horse with its back to him. He ran upon the fiend before it could react, using the machete to slice the creatures head cleanly away from its shoulders.
Leaping over the horse carcass, Donavan charged toward the other pony. He had neither bridle nor saddle, but Donavan had always been a good rider. The pony did not try to get away, instead appearing relieved that someone normal had come to help it get away. Donavan grabbed the mane trailing down the pony’s neck and swung himself up onto the beast’s back.
Looking back, he found the death walkers coming over and under the fence. They ran at him as Donavan kicked his heels into the pony’s sides. The animal took off, directed by Donavan’s clutch of mane within his hand. He had dropped the hatchet, but kept the machete. Two of the male death walkers were knocked aside by the pony’s shoulders. Donavan struck a final blow to the female as she tried to flank him.
The machete cleaved a hunk of skull away from her head, sending her tumbling into the horse manure littering the pen. Donavan didn’t look back. He urged the pony on toward the fence. At the last moment, they leaped as one over the top rung of the wooden fence, barely clearing it with the pony’s hind hooves.
Horse and rider left the remaining death walkers in their wake, galloping away from the village at top speed. Donavan patted the pony’s neck, whispering a prayer of thanksgiving under his breath to Elithias. They had no food and no water, but they did have their lives. And both horse and rider were, in their own ways, grateful for that much.
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Preview: “Perdition’s Gate,” by James Somers
PROLOGUE
December 12th 2085
What had he done? Jacob surveyed his handiwork—endless rows stretching into the distance of the underground German facility. Artificial sunlight bathed the muscular nude frames of his children—grown to maturity by specialized hormonal stimulation. The specified number—two hundred million housed in one thousand bunker labs here and abroad—lay slumbering day in and day out, waiting for the appointed time when the Master would make use of them in his grand scheme.
Jacob ran his fingers along the fiberglass bubble, tracing the outline—one of his creations. How had he managed such a feat? Not without the Master’s hand upon me, he thought. He recalled the night when he had first been summoned nearly ten years ago.
The digital clock had read 2:00am. His name had been called—Jacob was sure of it—loud enough to wake him from sleep. He sat up in bed, rubbing sleep from his eyes and drool from his chin. Jacob’s wife, Elizabeth, slept soundly in the bed next to him.
Jacob.
The voice, deep and resonating throughout the entire house, seemed to emanate from the hallway leading to his bedroom. A low light, building in intensity, filtered through the space between Jacob’s bedroom door and its frame. Jacob started to reach for the revolver he kept in a shaving kit beneath his side of the bed. The door burst open, slamming so hard into the wall that it remained stuck in the fractured drywall.
A fire burned in the doorway from floor to ceiling, yet the house was not consumed. Jacob would have screamed for his wife to wake up, wondered why the smoke alarm wasn’t blaring at them, bolted through the adjoining bathroom to his children’s room to wake his sleeping twin daughters, but he remained transfixed upon the flames. The form of a man was walking toward him from within the inferno.
Jacob’s body seemed to be held in an invisible grip. He couldn’t even tell if he was breathing anymore. “Hello, Jacob,” the voice said. Jacob knew it was the voice of the man standing within the flames before him, though it seemed to originate from everywhere at once. Jacob tried to respond to the dark figure, his eyes smoldering coals that were even brighter than the fire burning around him, but he could not utter a sound.
The odor of sulfur hung heavy in the room, rolling off of the shadowy man as he spoke. “I am your master, Jacob. You have been chosen to stand by my side as I bring peace to all the Earth. I will equip you to carry out my will in the days ahead.”
Jacob’s breath came to him for the first time since he’d seen the man. “What is your will, My Lord?”
“I will reveal my will to you at the appointed time,” the figure said. “Rise. Come to me, my child. Embrace the destiny I have prepared for you.”
Jacob’s body began to move. He felt as though he were in a trance, unable to keep himself from obeying the figure’s voice. He rose to his feet, walking across the plush carpet toward the raging inferno boiling in the doorway and the hall beyond.
The shadowy figure reached out his flame-covered hands to grasp Jacob’s head. The fire did not burn him. He couldn’t even feel the heat. The blackened hands gripped his face, the eyes bore straight into his mind. A flood of knowledge flowed into him, as though a dam had withheld the full capacity of Jacob’s brain and now it had been broken down.
His fists clenched, body taught under sustained tetanus, like electricity charging his entire thin frame. He felt terror, joy and every emotion between in a moment’s time. When the Master released him, the dark figure had gone. Only the flames remained.
Jacob barely noticed as the fire began to spread across the ceiling of his bedroom. He felt elated and drained—joyous at the embrace of Lucifer—his long time loyalty finally rewarded. Yet, a question nagged at the back of his mind.
He gathered his breath, hoping to maintain contact a moment longer. “How do I know this isn’t a dream?” Jacob managed.
“Offer me what is dearest to your heart and this honor will be yours forever,” the voice intoned. “Else I will bestow it upon another!”
“No, please,” Jacob begged. The flames licked the walnut bedposts where his wife slept. Neither his voice, nor the Master’s had disturbed her sleep. “I’ll give you anything you desire, only don’t take away your gift from me!”
“Very well,” the Master said. “It is done.”
The flames leaped upon Jacob’s b
ed, as though a bucket of gasoline had been tossed into the room, igniting midair, then engulfed Elizabeth. His slumbering wife woke screaming, thrashing among the covers, the flames clinging to her body like napalm.
“Elizabeth!” Jacob screamed. He plunged into the flames after her neither feeling the heat nor being singed by flames devouring his bride of fifteen years. However, his best efforts were in vain. Jacob could not stifle the fire raging all around them. In moments Elizabeth moved no more.
Jacob began to weep, even as the charred walls crumbled around him. His tears evaporated from his cheeks, yet his skin remained unblemished by the inferno. How could this happen? Why his family? Then he remembered them asleep in their beds.
Screams reached Jacob from the adjoining room. Not my babies, he thought. Jacob ran through the adjoining bathroom, still untouched by the fire, only to find the door unwilling to open. It had swollen into the frame. Smoke poured through the space at the bottom. He hit the door with his shoulder, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Janet!” he screamed. “Tiffany!”
“Daddy!” their voices howled in chorus.
Jacob backed away ten feet then threw his one hundred and seventy pounds at the door. It gave way, smashed to charred kindling. His twins were surrounded by the flames already. They threw off their bed covers as the fire reached out for them. “’Daddy!”
Ignoring the roaring blaze sweeping through the children’s room from floor to ceiling, Jacob grabbed his daughters up from their beds. He started for the door, but a wall of fire awaited them. The window had already blown out, and the flames had followed the oxygen, engulfing their escape in black smoke and searing heat.
His heart sank, realizing it was a three story drop. Jacob had no choice. “Hold on, girls,” he said. He rushed through the open doorway toward the hall. Everything beyond was consumed already. Jacob could hardly see. Everything had gone bright yellow to white in his vision. Still, he never felt the fire. Perhaps he had already been burned so badly that his nerves no longer functioned. He didn’t care. He had to save his girls.