Between Rubble and Ruin: Chapter 4 – A Beginning
Chapter 4: A Beginning
They ran through the forest that had fought its way out of the roads and ancient rubble. Judith silently admonished herself, beset by guilt over her failure to save her sister. Her companion’s mind was occupied with doubt as well, his mother’s belt now worn by some stranger for reasons he couldn’t find. The trees slowly thinned and were seamlessly replaced by buildings.
They stopped at the sudden sight of the cityscape before them. It stretched to the horizon and seemed to go on forever. Building after building, crumbling storefronts and the ruins of skyscrapers alike overwhelming the two kids who had called plains and forests home all of their lives. Vines crawled up the limitless heights and foliage peaked its head out from every nook and crack in the road. The fallen too were a presence here, almost natural in the way dozens of them speckled the landscape, silently crumpled over upon the sidewalks and eternally resting their rotten backs upon old brick walls.
“We shouldn’t be here.” Carlos muttered. Judith stared at him, emotionless in her expression. “Mom told me that places like this were for the dead,” he paused for a moment, turning his head away. “and for the demons.”
“This is where the nightmares are.”
Thrashing in the brush behind them announced that they had no time to discuss and rationalize. They were the hunted and they only had time to run. Judith grabbed her friend’s hand and pulled him forward. He resisted for a moment only to shake his head and follow. They ran down the road, turning the decrepit heads of some scattered fallen who likely hadn’t seen prey in decades. As the lumbering things started to pursue them, Griff entered the city, caught sight of the kids and cautiously ran towards them while making sure to give the dead a wide berth.
They turned into an alley and raced to the other end only to find it to be anything but refuge. Countless fallen milled about in the adjacent lot, packed in so tight that some of them were so wedged into nearby fences that they looked to slowly be slicing their own bodies into cubes. Panicking, the two turned around and ran back into the alley. Griff appeared blocking their retreat while the endless fallen were clumsily squeezing their mass numbers into the other side. Desperate and stuck, Judith tried a metal door to their right. Locked. Griff stared past the two at the sight of the horde of rotting dead.
The kids ran for another door, this time relieved to have it swing open with ease, the handle having long since fallen off. Inside was a pitch black hallway, lit only by the scant few rays of sun that emerged through the hole in the door. They clumsily groped forward in the dark, finally emerging into an open room with windows. It was a dusty place long since stripped bare, now left with nothing but metal racking, empty registers and a few cracking mannequins strewn across the floor and acting as testaments to the fates of the ones who once called this city home. There would be no exit, for the dead had set upon this side too, lured perhaps by the noise of their brethren and the sight of the 3 living who had been nearby. Carlos yelled for Judith and pointed at a sign. Stairs.
They rushed into the claustrophobic stairwell and climbed upwards, the sound of footsteps pounding in the hallway they had just been in. The stairwell was even darker and Judith quickly lost sight of her friend as they rushed up multiple flights. Suddenly something snatched at her leg and with a scream she tumbled to her knees, barely managing to keep herself from tumbling down by holding on to the handrail with her free hand.
She yanked her leg back, but whatever had grabbed it would not let go. Carlos called for her, but he was too far up and couldn’t see her in the darkness below. The hissing and moaning and clicking teeth of a fallen were a horrifying thing and filled the young girl’s mind too full of fright to think straight. Her eyes began to adjust to the darkness and she found her attacker to be skewered to a metal support and dangling over the side of the stairwell that had partially collapsed. Carlos had been lucky to have missed it. It had been like this for years, judging by the long vertical hole in its stomach formed as the weight of the rotting body caused it to slowly sink deeper and deeper into the pipe.
The thing’s head was unable to reach her foot, but its skin-bare arms of sinew and bone yanked her towards a chattering maw all the same. Judith pointed the handgun at its head, her hand shaking like it always did. She closed her eyes.
“It isn’t alive. It isn’t alive.” She reassured herself before squeezing the trigger. The ear-piercing bang of gunfire echoed through the tight space, bringing her ears to ring and her body to flinch. She dropped the gun in fright and it tumbled over the edge and down a few flights of stairs. After the slightest moment to breathe she stood back up, Carlos now managing to find her in the darkness.
“Are you okay?!” he asked. She simply nodded.
Back at the city’s edge, Patience stumbled as her captor tugged her forward onto the street only to immediately be struck awe by the scene. A nearby building was being swarmed by the fallen. Hundreds, maybe thousands, were upon it, pushing against the glass panes of windows and slowly scratching down the doors. Her gut churned in sickness and she felt like she was going to vomit in fear. Her sister was somewhere in that mess and there was nothing she could do to help, bonded or no.
“That little girl sure is good at making friends.” Jeff mocked, his words jabbing her in the heart. She looked at the man she knew as pure evil with eyes that pleaded for the slightest shred of humanity.
“Your man is in there too, we have to do something!”
“Oh we will.” he yanked her rope and forced her to follow him as he walked closer to the army of the dead. “We’ll go get a better view of the slaughter.” Patience cursed at him to no avail and as they stumbled into the building adjacent to the one her sister was in, the fallen too interested in their attack to notice.
Hearing their pursuer gaining ground on the stairs, Judith and Carlos pushed into the first door they encountered, appearing in a hallway of sorts. They looked around at all of the near-identical doors marked with rusted bronze nameplates so worn their letters no longer be read.
“In here!” Judith called, leading her friend to one. She pulled it open only to find the groans of the dead inside. The room was packed from wall to wall and they were lunging towards her almost immediately. With a scream she slammed the door back shut with her shoulder, barely managing to contain the threat within.
Griff appeared in the hall, his figure towering over the two kids mere steps away. Gun still over his shoulder, he drew a knife from his belt, glancing between the kids and the door which held the scratches and wails of the soulless. Judith stumbled back, but Carlos held his ground pointing his own knife at their attacker.
“S-stay away!” the boy stammered.
“Cute.”
In two long steps he was there. Carlos weakly thrust the knife, but the man caught his arm and shoved him aside into the wall. Judith dropped to her knees, latched onto his leg and opened her mouth. He yelped in pain as she chomped down as hard as he could onto his ankle. Cursing he shook his leg and stumbled back again, Judtih quickly releasing her bite and jumping to her feet.
“You little bitch!” He swore, regaining his balance, but Judith’s teeth was the least of his worries. Carlos started to bull rush him and he barely had time to turn to face the boy. Meanwhile Judith yanked open the door, and soon the two were falling into the arms of the fallen. They grasped onto Griff as Carlos rolled off of him safely into the hallway. Ghoulish and horrifying screams pierced the air as multiple rotting maws ripped into the man. The dead spilled over him and each-other in an attempt to feed and soon mindlessly tripped out into the hall.
Judith stared in horror at what she had wrought, but her companion grabbed her shoulder and shook her out of it. Unable to go back to the stairwell they ran to the end of the hall and into a random room. Thankfully this was empty of occupants, alive or otherwise. They desperately searched around the room for salvation, but neither really had an idea of what they were doing.
“Here!” Carlos cried, pushing open the window. He climbed out onto the fire escape and suddenly went silent staring down below. Judith quickly joined him outside.
“What are those?!” she whispered in horror.
A few flights below the two buildings had collapsed into each-other, now a pile of rubble serving as a precarious bridge between the open faces of the opposing buildings. It was a miracle the neighboring one hadn’t fully collapsed, but that wasn’t what interested the two so much as the dismembered and defiled corpses that littered the area like nightmarish decor.
At first she thought it was a pack of wild dogs. They certainly seemed canine-enough, but their hellish coloring quickly betrayed they weren’t cuddly puppies. They snarled maws of razor sharp teeth from their sickening nest of gore and and howled in a pitch that felt alien in the way it reverberated through their souls. Patches of flesh were missing here and there, but not as wounds. Rather this was their natural state.
“Nightmares.” Carlos muttered, as Judith gagged on the horrific stench in the air. The hounds burst into action, scampering across the bricks and one by one making the seemingly impossible leap to the fire escape a few flights down. Carried mostly by adrenaline and fright, the two climbed further upwards as fast as their bodies would allow.
Across the street, Jeff and Patience found themselves in an old office. Dusty desks scattered throughout the room and faded leaflets and papers littered the ground. With a brisk pace, the slave-master pulled his captive towards the back of the room. She had no struggle left and let him lead, barely present and instead lost in worry for her little sister. They stepped past yet another desk, a shattered old monitor teetering from the edge, seemingly just waiting to be bumped off.
There was a sound like the wind passing through a narrow gap, almost musical in its pitch. A dozen steps away near a door, a fallen arose from its slumber, a metal pipe protruding from its squalid throat. Perhaps it was a remnant of a past fight, but whomever thrust it through must not have known such a thing wouldn’t take down something already dead. Jeff held the stolen rifle like a club and started his approach. Suddenly another fallen lunged from behind a desk, bringing him to dodge erratically, sending patience tumbling backward into a desk and bringing the old monitor crashing down.
Her rope no longer held, she fell down with it. As her captor struggled with the fallen, she looked at a broken shard of glass still connected to the ancient display. Desperate for release she grit her teeth, took a moment to aim and slammed her hands down on it. It slid between the rope and the upper part of her right wrist, scraping skin off is it went. With a scream she pulled her hands back out. The rope was frayed, still tight but loose enough that with some struggling she managed to rip her hand free.
As Jeff crushed a skull underneath the butt of the rifle, she looked back at her escape. The fallen no longer were unaware and had begun to mindlessly split their ranks. Their would be no escaping the way she came. She looked back at her enemy. Breathing heavily and holding a rifle painted with blood, he looked back, almost amused at her escape. She burst into motion,vaulting over a desk and towards the door the pipe-throat fallen had been guarding.
She rushed into the stairwell, and up through the darkness. All of her being told her to climb, and despite being unsure why she continued six flights up and then out onto the roof. Hit by sunlight, she slammed the door behind her, stepped to the side and waited with her back pressed against the wall. There was a stillness in the air like time was waiting on her to exhale. Across the roof sat a makeshift bridge reaching over to the besieged building; made up of three long boards fastened together by rope and seemingly just resting upon the edges of the rooftops. It was a saving grace and a gift left from survivors of old, but she was through running. She was through waiting to be gunned down. Here was where this ordeal ended. There was a storm of steps from within culminating in the door exploding open like thunder from the sky.
Patience leaped at her pursuer, catching him by surprise. She grabbed onto the rifle and pushed upwards so hard her feet left the ground. He tried to yank the gun away from her grasp and misfired a shot into the sky, the noise of which brought a sharp pain to both of their ears.
“One!” she screamed out, counting down to the last round by pure instinct. Jeff pushed back, sending her reeling and smashing into the wall. She grunted in pain, but her grasp on the rifle’s barrel didn’t waver. She was determined, and her fingers had become unrelenting vices whose hold would not be broken. She lunged forward with her knee, hitting her foe between the legs and causing him to buckle slightly. Then she dove forward, both hands tightly wrapped around the barrel. Jeff hung on as best he could, but her momentum forced the rifle from his grip. Patience hit the ground in a heap and tumbled a few feet forward before quickly getting up on one knee, twirling her rifle into firing position as she went. Her foe stopped dead in his tracks, and as she aimed it him with a grin on her face, she finally felt as if the tables had turned.
Judith rushed out of a door and onto the adjacent rooftop, Carlos quickly in tow. He turned and tried to slam the door, but something hit into it. He stumbled back, turned and continued his retreat. The demonic hounds still gave pursuit, only a scant few steps behind the kids and gaining fast. The sisters caught sight of each-other, bringing the younger to spot the precarious bridge and race towards it. Patience looked on in horror at the sight of such monsters, but her gun stayed trained on her foe.
“Those beasts will catch them before they can cross.” Jeff chuckled, looking out at the opposite rooftop, before turning to Patience. ‘One bullet left. What do you do?” Her hands shook in rage at her own helplessness. What could she do? Taking out one would do nothing and she knew this. Her mind raced for a plan, but she had no time to think. With a grimace, she swiveled her body and took aim, eye down the sights and on her target. She breathed in and pulled the trigger and watched her shot hit the mark exactly.
“Zero.” she whispered, letting the rifle drop to the floor.
Carlos simply looked surprised as he hit the ground dead. Startled, Judith turned around in time to see her friend being set upon by the hounds, his skin quickly being torn to shreds. She looked back at her sister with eyes screaming in place of the voice she was too shocked to call upon. Patience had done what her mother had asked; she had kept her sister safe, but at a horrific cost. As Judith carefully crossed the bridge, Jeff’s unsettling laughter broke the relative silence. Patience slowly turned her head to look at the man, face and eyes both dead and sullen.
“Impressive!” he beamed. “Not even I would have come up with that.” Patience gave no response, not even a twitch of the brow. With a flick of his wrist, Jeff turned and walked towards the stairwell door.
“Where are you going?” Patience asked, more in surprise than anything else. He didn’t even bother to face her with his response, instead uttering a simple sentence as he vanished back inside.
“I did what I came here to do.”
Judith reached their side of the bridge, kicking it away behind her and sending it plummeting down into the horde of fallen below. She fell onto her hands and knees and stared at her sister, eyes welling up with tears and brain unable to process Patience’s actions.
Looking at each-other as their ears filled with the moans of the dead and the grotesque feasting of hounds, both girls knew things would never be the same again. The life they knew before was never coming back. There had been no survivors, for the siblings that escaped into the woods only a few long days ago were gone, two wholly new people having just been born in their place.
