Among the Fallen: Resurrection (20 page)

“Tells me a lot, thanks!” she mumbled with irritation.

“I’m here to lead you and guide you only, Alexandra. I don’t expect you to understand anything I myself say. I’m not here to answer your questions, so be thankful if I do!” it said morosely.

“What have I gotta do then?” she asked bitterly.

“Find and destroy the other four Judges, Alexandra! Find them and the human’s plan to cross the realms will fail. In exchange, we will allow you to put right certain moments in your past!” The creature said ghostly. Alex threw the towel on the floor and stretched out her arm, her white skin tightened and her fist clenched firmly.

“That thing, nearly took my head off, I’m not sure I can do what you ask!” she said with a frown, her tormented soul tainted as it wept from within. The creature looked at her blankly as she sat picking coins out of the fountain like a child, sulking as her confidence slowly slipped away.

“The Fallen are merely humans possessed by us. We can’t completely walk your Earth until our kind complete the crossover. That’s why you stand a good and fair chance. The human body is easily executed.” the creature mumbled with a hint of superiority. Alex sat flicking coins into the fountain, hanging onto the creatures every word. It was good news in a sense, these Fallen had a weaknesses just as everything else, but finding those weaknesses was another story.

“What do you look like? I mean really?” she asked blankly. The creature turned and looked at her bizarrely; her question was clearly unexpected but just as amusing.

“Prey to your chosen God you’ll never have to see, Alexandra!” it hissed aggressively. Alex sat rocking for a while as the creature lifted the Butcher’s rancid corpse into the air and sniffed it like an animal. She turned away visibly sickened by the sight before her, the corpses blood slowly creeping down its hanging limbs and splashing her trainers. Suddenly, the creature threw the corpse to the ground as Alex sat looking at her hands. They felt strong, her grip was dominant and she felt powerful.

“I feel different!” she said as the ghost stepped away from her.

She gave a grumble and then jumped up and walked lightly towards a market stand and paused as the suit rambled something in her head. The Gagged stepped away and stood patiently in the shadows, the other minions turning and watching her tolerantly. Alex twitched and gave off a smug smile, the voices finally coming together into something she obviously understood. She knelt down and grabbed the stalls legs, watching as the metal buckled in her grip, suddenly lifting it into the air.

She stood with a smile with at least a ton of metal, wood and produce and held it conceitedly in the air in front of her as if it were as light as a feather. As the market stand broke up and fell apart, its metal framework buckled under its weight and she abruptly threw what was left across the mall, watching it crash through a shop window much to her delight. The Fallen merely stood watching her emotionless as she walked back towards them arrogantly, her stolen strength obviously pleasing her and overwhelming her with confidence.

“When you consume the soul of a Fallen you steal what it has to offer!” her advisor said unemotionally, almost as if it were some everyday occurrence. “Make sure you feed it blood regularly, Alexandra! There’s plenty of blood about but the less tainted the better. If you find a pure blood then you will feel power beyond the limits of your imagination!”

“A pure blood?” she asked.

“A living, breathing and unscathed human!” it answered with a strange tone of seduction in its voice.

“There are survivors?” she said shocked and with a hint of relief.

“Of course, some humans are better trained than others, to some survival comes naturally. These are what the Fallen crave, these are what you must sacrifice to accomplish the strength you need!”

“I aint killing nobody! Forget that! With him it’s different!” she said trying to justify herself. “Well he aint human is he… I’m not hurting anyone normal!”

“Your power is very limited and there is only so much damage you can take, you need to start collecting the blood or next time you might not have the power to regenerate, and believe my words, Alexandra; you do not want to be stuck in the limbo between realms.”

“I take it that’s bad then?!” She said almost sarcastically. “Coming from something that looks like you do, that’s one hell of a statement!” she joked as the creatures walked off and started to disappear into the darkness. Her advisor stopped suddenly before turning its head back towards her.

“Exactly!” it barked grumpily as it swiftly vanished back into the shadows without a trace.

As the darkness lifted and the red glow from the shops dimmed back to normal, Alex stood staring at the corpse as it lay slumped on the ground. She felt sad and regretful, yet at the same time glad it was him and not her, selfish and pleased to be alive. She looked at its twisted and deformed body and tried to imagine what the other four would look like; but her imagination was never that good at the best of times; the night before her was a blank and most unsettling. Anything her mind thought of simply unsettled her further and decided just to forget about it and make her way on to the next target, wherever that may be.

Alex sighed and made her way upstairs, climbing the dead escalators as she tried to calm her nerves.

She was about to leave when she looked towards the rubble in the newsagents. She walked over and picked up a few boxes of cigarettes and some spare lighters. Alex felt a bit more confident with her extra strength, but that didn’t stop her feeling sickened and saddened by the whole affair. The Butcher had left a nasty taste of blood in her mouth that was just taste bud overkill, rancid and iron-like, and the worst part was the fact it wasn’t even her blood. She searched through the rubble and picked up a packet of sweets and quickly rammed a few in her mouth in an attempt to get rid of the tang, it sort of worked; well at least it took the edge off it. She stood silently chewing away for a few moments and then knelt down picking up a map from the mess. She knew Blackwater very well, but that was by car, the streets were in no fit state to drive and were full of blockades; her journey was going to have to be on foot and she needed to find the quickest route possible to the island.

She opened the map on the counter and spat the sweet out, lighting a cigarette and tugging away as she simply examined the map with almost no map reading skills at all. As the revelation of there actually being no quick route at all sunk in, she stood up straight and sighed, blowing thick smoke into the air. She grabbed a few more boxes of cigarettes and left the newsagents through the big gaping hole in front of the shop, kicking away debris and rubbish as she went. She took one last look down the now ruined mall, trashed and wrecked as if there had been a hurricane pass through it.

She looked up at the clock and soon realized the night was rapidly slipping away, the lights in the mall suddenly falling into an eerie darkness and Alex grumbled impatiently, staring into the war-torn streets with a glare of resentment. She kneeled before the hole and sighed, zipping up her coat and preparing for the worst; and with a grudge, left the mall.

Chapter Fifteen: A Survivor

“you gave through your servants the prophets when you said: ‘The land you are entering to possess is
a land polluted by the corruption of its peoples. By their detestable practices they have filled it with
their impurity from one end to the other.”
Ezra 9:11

Alex stepped into the dark deserted streets as the perverse landscape of dishevelled buildings and slain bodies once again haunted the red skyline. The cars and debris slowly burned themselves out and the crows continued to scavenge at the rotting cadavers; but strangely, something was different. In the distance, among the crows and screeching car alarms, she heard the sound of moans and groans, tired and painful cries that seemed to rise from the city streets. Hundreds or maybe even thousands of separate tortured souls, all crying into the night; ghostly mumbles and whimpers of silent words that seemed to vanish over one another.

She stood still and just listened as the creepy noise echoed all around her, but bizarrely, the streets were as empty of life as they were before. News-stands stood alone as their newspapers and magazines blew open in the wind and the florists across the road were silent; the ground before it covered in dead petals and weeping flowers. Burger-stands laid abandoned, their grills covered with charcoaled meat and buzzing with vermin as their supplies wasted away.

Alex walked further down the desolate road as more strangeness bared itself, the city that never slept now lying departed and long gone. The once uplifting Parker Brothers Tram stood still and buried within the wreckage of cars, its windows smashed and hiding the dead from sight, its front splashed with blood and side panels scorched with flames. She walked past the tram bewildered and saddened, it’s iconic and almost nostalgic place in her childhood now poisoned. As the mysterious metal cages and walkways from above cast her in a passing darkness, Alex solely edged her way through the withering streets from one ghastly sight to the next, her haunted memories of her once proud home fading rapidly. She wandered the disheartening streets as the cold wind howled around her, trying her hardest to replace the morbid sights with happier memories; but sadly as try as she might, hiding away from it was next to impossible. She walked for ages as if time stood still, climbing barricades and stepping over corpses as if they were trash; peering into dark windows and striding through pools of thick blood, disturbing the thin skin that had congealed over them.

Alex looked down and frowned as she peeled the nasty layer of soggy blood from her trainers and flicked it to the ground in disgust. She exhaled belligerently and glared up at the vast skyscrapers that loomed over her in ruins, their foundations creaking behind the rusting cages; the wind snatching paper and trash from their exposed offices, raining rubbish down like leaves from a dead tree. She pulled out a cigarette and lit it, tugging on it desperately as she wiped the blood from her hand on her jacket.

Where was that noise coming from? Was it miles away? Was it in the next street?

Eventually, she ventured further into the grim streets and turned into Candy Avenue, a specially built strip of street just for toy and sweet shops, adventure playgrounds and where nearly every child in Blackwater spent at least one birthday at one point. She stared down the street at the once colourful cartoon themed land of fun with a tear in her eye at its new bleakness. Giant cartoon statues stood smiling with lossless glee, their faces covered with blood and organs as the colossal parade balloons hovered high above her, gently bouncing off each other with infinite endurance.

Paper windmills blew in the wind and toys of every kind littered the road, smashed and ownerless.

Dolls lay orphaned in the wet roads, their mock hair soaking up blood and rain, their empty glass eyes watching the red clouds pass the sky.

Alex flicked her cigarette to the ground as she immediately lit another, desperately trying to calm her nerves with very little success. As she walked through the ghostly play-land, the tiny bodies of the dead just laid frozen and silent, their torn clothes blowing and flapping in the wind and cradled within the broken arms of their guardians. She approached a burning school bus and stood gazing at it for a little while, debating whether or not to look inside until eventually, her morbid curiosity got the better of her. She grabbed the side and pulled herself up, peering curiously into the window and gasped before quickly dropping down again, covering her mouth in nausea as she stumbled away from the wrecked tomb.

She turned full circle just fighting back her tears. No matter what she saw and when it revealed itself, it always seemed to be something worse and more harrowing than the last. Was it just her humanity and morality that was haunting her, if by some miracle, she somehow managed to dump all those feelings and emotions, would she be unaffected by all this torture and death?

She continued further down the street, treading on sweets and toys as they crumbled under her feet; the noise in the distance getting closer and closer with every step, but bizarrely, the streets were still as vacant as they were before. She pulled in a lungful of smoke then tilted her head back, closing her eyes as a calm wind blew her face softly.

As the moans continued on the horizon, Alex listened with little concentration; they were definitely not local, that much she was certain of. The groans were unquestionably creepy and undeniably unsettling, but there was nothing moving that she could see of and the streets were quite literally dead. Alex frowned and considered them no immediate threat and hiked down the street in the centre of the road, steering clear of shop windows, sidewalks and doorways as best she could.

Alex sauntered along the long metal plated road for a while, trying her best to ignore the death and anguish that scarred the area around her. Scaffolding groaned, chains rattled and the plastic sheets blew gently as a calm angelic breeze danced through streets carrying paper and trash with it innocuously. Huge elaborate doorways and arches decorated what was intended to be a fairy tale stretch of street; palm trees and bushes cut and styled in the shapes of animals, and giant candy canes casting shadows across the boulevard and up the walls, their whites tarnished with blood and blackened scorch marks. As Alex ambled along the silent and forsaken street towards Swinn Street, she dug up memories of the past in a vain effort to save her humanity as the world around her tried desperately to snatch it away from her; walking the wonderland almost haunted, her eyes snatched from one grisly sight to the next, shocked and bewildered. She paused, staring at a stuffed toy on the ground; its fur hardened with blood and a piece of rolled up paper tightly stuffed in its seam.

Alex pulled the paper from it and read the note.

Note from the stuffed toy – Candy Avenue