Among the Fallen: Resurrection (25 page)

Thick heavy smoke filled the shop with noxious air as the crying carcass stumbled and tripped, its charred flesh turning red and her wet and exposed muscles glistening from the fire light outside.

Within moments the creature re-fleshed and Alex became whole again, swaying as her steaming body glared upon the flames and burning bodies outside.

She stood for a few seconds looking around, her body and hair still smoking as the flames danced furiously in the ruined and flattened street behind her. She pulled down the shops security shutters as the burning corpses slowly advanced through the wreckage, the intense heat stripping the dead flesh from their bones. She suddenly stepped away from the front and stumbled through the shop bewildered and tormented, dropping into a corner and watching the dead crowd as they gathered outside; observing with a bitter gaze as they slowly collapsed in the heat, only to be replaced by another.

As she brushed the soot and ash from her skin she stared at the unholy creatures with more anger now than pity, her mind adjusting to the situation as anticipated by her guide. These creatures were nothing more than animals, driven by instinct and the need to feed. Thinking about it, there was nothing spiritual or even demonic about them, the Wraith said they were nothing to do with them and considering the theory, he was probably speaking the truth. They showed no signs of intelligence, communication or even the simplest of abilities; they just followed their food and ate it, the simplest and basest of human instincts.

So where did this leave her?

She was definitely uncertain about the whole situation that was for sure, uneasy? Definitely; but these creatures, if that was the word for them, were absolutely lethal in great numbers; maybe staying away from the main streets would be a better plan than most; keeping an eye out at all times was now important and this whole damn game had just got even more complicated and barbaric, which only served to add insult to injury.

Alex stood to her feet and took a quick glance over the shop. Televisions, Radios and all manner of electrical equipment, nothing of any use to her; she was relying more on the hope that there were some sort of back exit or window at very least.

All of a sudden, the televisions switched on one by one, lighting the shop around her in an eerie glow of static; the store suddenly rampant with moving shadows and gleaming screens. Alex fearfully sat in the corner, watching curiously as the channels started searching for a signal, flickering between stations as they hunted automatically through Blackwater’s many signals. As the glare of light cast over her face of intrigue, she looked away suddenly as cars continued to explode and car alarms cried out before faltering, the fires spreading throughout the deserted streets. Suddenly, the screens stopped, revealing what appeared to be a CCTV video of a street. Alex calmly stood up and approached the largest of the televisions and watched intensely. The image was black and white, very grainy and a time stamp ran in the corner as it looked down into a strangely familiar street.

The cadavers strolled about lost and fires burned in the vehicles, their details lost and the flames being nothing more than a white glowing blur on the screen. Alex frowned as she stared at one of the burning shops on the screen and turned, seeing the same shop immediately across the street opposite her current position, its flames lashing up the walls and ripping through its foundations.

Suddenly, on the screen she saw a cadaver thrown into view, and then another, the creatures suddenly turning and headed off camera. Alex turned and looked through the security shutters; sure enough, the cadavers were walking away and vanishing towards the end of the boulevard. Pushing up against the shutters tightly, she attempted to see where they were all going, more importantly; what was attracting them, but the slight curve in the street along with the wreckage and burning cars made any kind of visibility next to impossible.

She stormed back into the shop and stared at the screens as the creatures were thrown and tossed about, ploughed down by something out of the cameras range. Alex watched the screens intensely and nervously as they lit up her black eyes, waiting for whatever had the cadaver’s attention to come into view. Suddenly, a man walked into range, his size almost colossal, twice the height of the creatures that lumbered towards him. His features were grainy and blurred but he wore a long black coat and stomped through the streets, knocking down cadavers and throwing obstacles aside effortlessly. Alex watched in fright as the man grabbed a car and threw it down the street, knocking down the dead and crashing through posts and debris. Alex turned startled as the car bounced passed the shop with a deafening crash of twisted metal. She glared out the front of the shop, clasping the gates and listened with desperation as the chaos outside grew closer, the man’s loud footsteps stomping through the street towards her. She immediately ran to the counter and leapt behind it, watching a monitor above her as the strange giant approached her location, her hands trembling in fear as a long deathly shadow was cast into the shop. She watched on the monitors as he stood patiently, glaring into the shop as his deep and laborious breaths echoed around her. She held her mouth and breath, shutting her eyes as the shadow hovered over her, the man’s gasps heavy with congestion and almost animal like. Her body started to shudder and her eyes streamed in panic, the giants broken gasps continuing behind the shutters. After what felt like a lifetime, the shadow suddenly pulled out of the room and she watched on the televisions as it walked away from the shop, eventually disappearing off camera. Alex breathed an overwhelming sigh of relief and started to cry uncontrollably, instantly stopping and regaining her control.

What the hell was that?

There were creatures and demons everywhere and Alex held her face in grief as her lips trembled, her thoughts stricken with grief, panic and paranoia; this game of the Fallen becoming even more dangerous with every passing moment. Alex slapped herself around the face a few times, trying desperately to regain control of her tattered emotions, heaving as her stomach turned in fear.

Slowly, she stood up. The televisions suddenly went dark and the shop fell into darkness once more. She stood for a few moments gazing at the floor, not looking directly at it though, it just happened to be where her head was pointing when she started to think and ponder. The fires continued to burn outside and a few cadavers returned to the front of the shop, their blistering skin filling the shop with the foul barbecued flesh smell that she couldn’t seem to escape. She turned her head and stared at them for moment or two, her mind filling with a hundred questions and zero answers. Alex approached the security shutter and held it calmly, watching as a cadaver approached. Suddenly, she pulled her hands away as the cadaver snapped at her fingers, and then swiftly stood upright before lowering his head again.

“What the hell are you?!” she whispered with a deep frown as the cadaver stood as still as stone, waiting with infinite patience. Alex walked away and made her way through the back of the shop, ignoring a corpse that sat in the corner of a small warehouse area. Dust fell and blew around the main floor as the air conditioning faltered randomly above her, the crates glowing with patches of red as the light beamed through the windows. She swiftly looked over the bland warehouse before approaching the backdoor, looking out into the adjoining street with caution.

Alex frowned intensely and opened the back door and strolled into the deserted street, stomping across the road hastily and walked straight through a window across the boulevard without even flinching, glass shattering and crashing on the ground with a deafening clatter.

She grabbed a puffy black sleeveless body warmer and a pair of joggers, complete with a new pair of trainers and put them on, tying her hair back into a tight ponytail and grabbed a rucksack; swinging it over her shoulder before storming back out into the street. She took a look around then darted into another shop, grabbing more cigarettes and a couple of lighters. She hurried down the aisles grabbing more vapour-rub and smearing it under her nose desperately, snatching anti-sickness tablets and a map. She threw it all into her rucksack and left the shop.

She stood staring at the cindering cars and wreckage for a while, almost hypnotized by the flames as they lashed up the bricks intensely, the whole street a glow with a dim light and mischievous shadows. The air was filled with tiny black floating slithers of plastic, smelling of burning chemicals and smoke poured across the far end of the street. As the city cried, she just stood debating on what her next move should be, the clock was ticking and she still had four Fallen to find. She watched quietly as a few of the cadavers entered the street and some seemingly dead bodies twitched on the ground, making it pretty obvious that once these things fell over, they found it hard if not impossible to get up again. As the flames flashed light all around the walls and the ornamental trees burned, she contemplated as memories of the past started to come back to her in little amounts, popping into her head, before vanishing again. .

Why had they taken most of her memories?

Maybe they hadn’t, maybe being dead for three months has that effect on a person’s brain. As the dead writhed and struggled in frustration, she simply stepped over them as she wandered the miserable horizon, tactfully pushing over strays that got too close to her.

She suddenly stopped and stared at one that she he had pushed over, curiosity swiftly getting the better of her. She grabbed its forearm and snapped it off violently; the cadaver never even flinched nor reacted. No blood?!

Well there was, just not liquid blood. She stuck her finger in the hard fleshy stump and heaved as she pulled out a congealed lump of brown jelly as the truth quickly dawned on her. The reason these things could not move properly is because their bodies were practically solid inside, coagulated and gel like. Alex contemplated for a split second as she wiped her finger down her trousers and threw the limb to the floor. These people are dead but not, her appearance in the city obviously drew them out and it is pretty obvious what they are hungry for. She came to the conclusion that one or two would not be a problem, but huge crowds of these could be a real pain; but why had the Fallen done this? It had to have been them… surly?

She soon decided she was not going to get anywhere just brooding about it, so she turned and made her way to the end of the street.

She walked briskly and ignored the land of the dead; she was becoming quite accustomed to limbs, blood and entrails; as long as she didn’t look into their faces she was fine and held it together pretty well. Over in the distance she saw the silhouettes of more cadavers as they made their way into the streets. She paused and waited, but they didn’t seem to notice her, or at least they didn’t respond to her. She lit a cigarette and walked towards them as few of them got closer, some shuffled silently under a street lamp revealing rotten decaying faces, grey off skin; huge chunks of flesh missing and their clothes almost shredded. Webs of veins and arteries crawled under their skin and their flesh was encrusted with mud, blood and dirt. There was still part of her that fell sorry for these people, it was not their fault and executing every single one of them didn’t really appeal to her morally, but what other options were there?

Where now? She wondered in disorientation as their slow clumsy bodies shuffled towards her, their heads lowered shamefully. One of them shambled in close and raised its head growling at her. As it lunged towards her she simply stepped to one side watching it fall to the ground smashing its face on the concrete. She looked down in pity at it, not noticing the one behind her and it suddenly lunged and took huge bite of flesh from her shoulder. Alex screamed in agony and pushed it away angrily, watching its skull shatter on the concrete. She looked on as a few more entered the street, then a few more, then more. She walked around them keeping her distance, looking on in a distant but controlled panic. As the bite in her shoulder healed itself she just looked upon the dead crowd in an unsettling nervousness. She was not actually sure that
zombies
was the right classification for them, they certainly looked like zombies but these things were a lot more… deader, if there‘s such a word.

She continued through the spaced crowd slowly and calculatingly, making sure she never got within lunging distance of these pitiful creatures. As she passed each one, they turned slowly and shuffled after her, not once did they lift their head to actually see what it was they were chasing. They just somehow knew she was there and it was pretty fucking creepy too. As more and more entered the dark cold street, their numbers steadily grew and they were beginning to huddle closer together.

Alex paused and pushed a few aside, watching as they stumbled and toppled, lost souls that she unintentionally toyed with; someone‘s mother; father; son; relatives of somebody, now nothing more an annoyance at best. She felt almost sad, but it was dwindling as was her patience for them; she didn’t know why and her eyes begun to well up in guilt and despondency.

What happened to these people? Why did it happen?

Strangely, she could not actually bring herself to kill these. These were her people more or less.

She suddenly made a choice not to kill them for the moment, until she found out what they were; and she was going to stick to that. As the cadavers cascaded into the streets, she had to do a major rethink as one bite was painful enough, but there was now enough of them to rip her to pieces at both ends of the road. She glared over the street and noticed a vast building; the East Side Police Station. She wondered briefly; this could actually be a wise move, aside from escaping the dead invasion outside, there could be some clues to as what happened and she could even pull her own murder file… if it were there.

Alex pushed over a few of the dead and made her way towards the Police Station’s giant metal gates, the road full of burning and abandoned police vehicles and dead officers; weapons, glass and scrap besieged the street and the whole area was in ruin. She stood staring up at the station gates as the American flag blew gently in the wind. Stacked up against the fifteen foot outer wall were bollards, burning corpses and one of the wall mounted lights either side of the gate was flickering on and off. As the creatures silently advanced, Alex just stood staring at them and then gazed up at the flag solemnly and angrily, everything it represented just an insult as a pile of people lay cindering beneath it. Irritated and despondent, she approached the gates and saw they were padlocked shut with multiple chains and padlocks, barricaded with wood, concrete blocks and iron girders. She was about to push it open when suddenly it dawned on her that this could be a blessing, if only she could find another way in or over the wall?