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Fear etches my sister’s features, breaking my heart in two, as we bump along the lumpy gravel road that connects Cassowary to Galway. Testing the engine of the truck, Sully drives in silence, though I swear that if I listen closely enough, I will hear his thoughts, and they will match my own.
“Riley and Oliver are okay, you’ll see.” I say the words but even I hear that they lack conviction.
I twist in my seat to look at June. Her silvery blue eyes lack their usual sparkle. She levels them at me, and I see cold, hard resignation lurking in their depths. “They’re dead, Avery. You know it as well as I do.” Her voice is steel wrapped in velvet, unyielding but tempered with the rawest, softest of emotion. A pang of guilt and pure sadness pierces my chest as the starkness of her words shivers down my spine. I worry there’s truth to them, worry that they portend my worst fear at this point.
Shaking my head to ward off her statement, as well as the awful feeling that accompanies it, I try to reassure her. “Don’t say that. We don’t know anything yet.” My attempt is feeble at best. In truth, I have no comfort to offer. I feel as she feels, that hope is a dangerous undertaking.
I right my position and venture a sidelong glance Sully’s way. Pain touches his features, a fact that makes me want to reach out to him, to console him—both of us. But there is no consolation for him, for me, for any of us. The only possibility for solace exists in finding Galway intact as it should be, and all its inhabitants safe and sound
But that possibility of solace ends abruptly when our four-car convoy approaches our neighboring city. The view that fills my field of vision landing like a fist to my gut.
Feeling as if my heart has stopped mid beat, I take a ragged breath and try to process the sight before me. Thousands of dead Urthmen litter the grassy area beyond the protective wall. Body upon body strewn like refuse. “Oh no. Oh my gosh,” I hear myself say in a breathy whisper, and my heart takes off, battering my ribcage at a frantic pace.
I clamp my jaw shut at the sight, taking deep breaths in and out, willing the frothing mix of dread and terror gurgling inside me to subside. But it doesn’t. The closer we move toward the gate—the fact that it stands wide open—the more intense the feeling becomes.
“Avery, what is all this?” June’s voice quivers, making her sound as she did when she was just eight.
My lungs collapse in on each other. I’m incapable of responding, not without tears.
“Dammit!” Sully balls his fist and pounds the steering wheel. He slows the car to a stop then all of us jump out of the car.
The stench of blood and sulfur hangs heavily in the air as I advance toward the gates, toward the bodies. Looking down, I see that some of the Urthmen have been shot while others are skewered by arrows, more than one in most cases. Sweeping my eyes from left to right then from the ground to the top of the wall, I survey the situation inasmuch as I can without spewing the bile burning up the back of my throat. June’s muffled cries are a haunting melody that accompanies the gruesome scene around which I tread. Physical pain torments the spot above my heart, and my legs feel as if they will give out from beneath me at any second. But I force myself to move through it, to fight the growing need to fall to the ground and sob. I make myself take in as much as I can of my surroundings, for it reveals much. Blinking back the tears burning the backs of my eyes, I focus on the towering structure of smooth concrete. Grapples with lengths of rope dangling from their hooked claws hang from the top of the wall in at least a hundred places and crudely formed ladders lean against it in others. Chunks of stone have crumbled and are scattered among the bodies indicating that an attempt at either blasting the wall or fastening some kind of metal to it has occurred. All that I see screams that this was not a random assault. The scene is marked by strategy, by coordination. It had been planned carefully.
Awareness prickles at my skin. A breeze blows and carries on it a whispered warning, a haunting wisp that traces the back of my neck and raises the fine hairs there. Instinctively, I turn and address the volunteers who wait by their vehicles. “I need at least five of you to stay behind with the cars.” I rattle off the first names I can think of and gesture for the rest to follow. The realization that we will likely need them nearby and able to have the trucks ready for a fast exit hammers in time with my pulse.
The men nod in acquiescence and I look to Sully then June. Sully shakes his head, his lips pressed to a firm line, and June’s arms are wrapped around her midsection tightly, as if to hold herself together. I understand them both. I feel as they feel. And I want answers.
With Arnost, Lark, Brom and the remaining four who accompany us, we navigate the labyrinth of corpses and head toward the open gate. Armed with an automatic rifle as everyone else is, my sword at my back is still the weapon that keeps my legs moving. I try to keep my gaze locked straight ahead, but I must watch where I step lest I trip and fall upon a mangled Urthman. My eyes flicker to the ground, and when they do, I freeze in place, scrutinizing the overall appearance of the beast at my feet. An elongated skull with a broad, overhanging forehead that hoods small dark eyes is glaringly different from the Urthmen I’ve seen in the past, as does the boxy chin that juts to an under bite with oversized teeth. “What the heck?” I hear myself say.
Immediately, I feel the warmth of Sully’s skin brush against mine. “Avery, what is it? Are you okay?” He cups my elbow in his hand.
I do not answer verbally, rather I point, too shocked and confused to form the words.
Sully follows the trajectory of my finger and gasps. He immediately crouches for a closer look. “What are they?” he mumbles. “Are these even Urthmen?”
Within seconds, June is beside us. Her hands fly to her mouth, covering it, when she sees what we’re looking at. “They’re more monstrous than Urthmen, if that’s even possible!”
“I know.” Words finally find me. “They’re faces are, I don’t know, more distorted.” I allow my eyes to roam the length of the body beneath me. The torso is shorter and the arms longer. Clad in only a length of material that covers his pelvis, the Urthman is nude.
June scrunches her features in disgust, regarding the thin layer of what appears to be downy fur that covers his arms, back, shoulders and legs. “He looks like he’s part Lurker.” Horror laces her words, and she’s right. That’s exactly what he looks like.
I look to Sully and see that his gaze is pinned on the Urthman’s left hand.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Look at his hand, at his knuckles.” He points to thick, toughened skin crusting the joints of his fingers. “It looks like, I don’t know, like his hands drag along.”
The length of his arms certainly suggests as much, as does the strange skin on his hands. I stare at it unblinkingly, the moment surreal. We’re surrounded by enemy bodies, foreign in appearance, the fate of our brethren as yet undetermined. The sick knot in my stomach tightens and I swipe the beads of perspiration that dapple my forehead with the back of my hand. “Sully, we have to get inside.” My voice trembles and the world around me tilts, the slick slide of fear sending me sloping toward a dark abyss of immobilizing panic. “These things, these mutated Urthmen,” I choke on the word Urthmen, “they got inside.” I point to the open gate with an unsteady finger. “We need to go.”
June blinks several times. Any unshed tears that’ve welled spill over her lower lashes. She sets her jaw though and wipes them with her fingertips before clutching her rifle in both hands.
Sully rises to his feet and looks between my sister and me. He doesn’t utter a word, but knowing him as well as I do, I read the look on his face. It screams that he believes we’re about to walk into our worst fear realized.
“Hmm, well I don’t give a damn what kind of monsters these are.” Brom’s voice is deep and gravelly, his tone gruff. He snorts and spits on the body we examined. “What’s it matter? An Urthman with long or short arms or any other damn differences is still an Urthman.”
June looks at Brom for a moment, her expression unreadable, and I notice that Lark’s gaze bounces from June to Sully then finally to me. Arnost lowers his head and shakes it, a wry smirk playing across his lips. Even Sully’s eyes narrow as he pauses for a split-second. No one speaks for several beats before I begin making my way to the open gate. The sound of footsteps behind me is the only way I know I’m being followed. And that sound is muffled, drowned out by the rush of blood roaring behind my ears like a raging river.
As I am about to step over the threshold of Galway, beyond the towering, iron gate identical in construct to ours at Cassowary, Sully’s elbow brushes my arm. I turn to face him, grateful for the warmth of his nearness, for the tenderness in his russet eyes. With my sword at my back and him at my side, the sliver of remaining resolve I possess is fortified.
But that sliver of resolve is tested, stretched so thin it threatens to snap, when I remove my gaze from Sully and focus it on the city.
The metallic stench of blood assaults my nasal passages before my mind can comprehend what my eyes see and grows cloying to the point it feels as if it coats my tongue and throat. I suppress the urge to gag but it’s a challenge. I take several labored breaths, my chest feeling as if it’s incapable of rising after each fall.
Death surrounds me. Barbaric, horrific death.
“Sully.” My voice echoes as if it’s traveling through a tube from a great distance, frail, eerie and alien to my own ears.
I blink, seeing stars swim before my eyes. The city walls bulge then sink in. The ground rocks beneath my feet and I groan, feeling as though I’m trapped in a city of horrors. Blood and gore stain everything I see. Walls, grass, rock and wood all bear crimson marks. And bodies, too many bodies to tally, to process, are scattered. Women, children, old and young, all are familiar. All are residents—friends—from Galway.
“Nooooo!” June’s cry is visceral. I want to go to her, to wrap her in my arms and shield her from the carnage, but my legs refuse to move and feel as though they’ve taken root in the ground beneath me.
My eyes are riveted to torn limbs, to areas of flesh that appear to be gnawed at and bear imprints of teeth, and the contents of my stomach rushes up my esophagus. Retching so hard my eyeballs threaten to pop free of their sockets, tears fall unabashedly. Murmured cries and low, mournful voices echo from behind me, June and Sully, Lark, Arnost and Brom and the rest of our group utter words of shock, of revulsion and dismay. Every one of us knows someone who was killed here. Every one of us has someone to grieve. Once the vomiting ends, I straighten my posture, the bloodbath coming sharply into focus once again.
The slain bodies of the people of Galway intermingle with that of the mutant Urthmen. Limbs entwined, eyes and mouths wide in macabre scenes of struggle, frozen in time and irrevocably imprinted in my mind. I go to June, my legs suddenly mobile and moving as if of their own accord, and, lowering my weapon, I wrap both arms around her. Sobs rack our bodies. June’s tears dampen my shoulder. Sully envelops us both and I feel that he’s shaking.
I wish we could vanish from the awful scene in which we’ve become submerged, that I could close my eyes and our bodies could merge with the atmosphere and be carried on the wind to a place where monsters do not roam, never existed. But such a phenomenon isn’t possible. Death is a part of life, and being hunted by an ever-devolving adversary has been a way of life for humanity for centuries.
I begin to loosen my grip on June, my brain wrestling with the reality that Oliver and Riley have met the same fate as those in Galway, when movement to my left demands my immediate attention. I snap my head in the direction of the sound, the rest of our group following suit, and my gaze fixes on a heap of rubble that undulates.
I exchange a cautious glance with Sully then we nod to the others. Brom, the only one among us who’s seemingly indifferent to the slaughter, tips his chin toward the direction of the sound then moves with speed that betrays his heft to the spot. I follow with Sully and June in tow and we see the source of the commotion. An Urthman with his arms straight and torso lifted off the ground writhes and snarls like a rabid beast. Foam froths at his mouth and his small eyes are wild. Legs, little more than bloodied stumps with tattered skin and muscle trailing like gory serpents, wriggle and thrash. Brom takes several long strides and cocks his weapon, brandishing the butt of the rifle. “Filthy beast!” Brom huffs before promptly smashing it into the suffering Urthman’s face. The wet, sickly sound of bone and cartilage yielding makes my stomach roil anew. He spits upon the now-dead Urthman.
“Why’d you do that?” I shout in spite of my nausea. “We needed to question him!”
Brom sniffs loudly, leveling an unreadable gaze my way. “You think that thing looked like it could talk?” His words are more of a statement than a question. And I don’t particularly care for his tone. But in light of what we’re all going through, his tone is the least of my concerns.
“We won’t know now, will we,” I say sharply.
Sully rubs my back in a small circular pattern. The act soothes me, but only minimally, for I know the daunting task of searching the surrounding buildings still remains.
“C’mon,” I say to Sully quietly. “Let’s see if there are any survivors.” My voice cracks on the word “survivor.” The possibility of finding anyone alive is remote at this point.
He wraps his hand around mine and gives it a gentle squeeze. Together, we walk to the closest building. As soon as we enter, the overpowering scent of copper hangs in the air like a mist. Blood. I recognize it immediately, doubt I’ll ever be able to purge it from my senses. Smeared and splattered on every conceivable surface, blood and bits of flesh dot the walls, floor and furniture. The only thing more disturbing than the gore is the state of the bodies we come across. While the Urthman mutants remain intact, the bodies of the humans are fragmented. Arms and legs, torn from their torsos, display bite marks with chunks missing in some places.
“What the hell do you suppose happened here?” Sully wrinkles his nose in disgust and points to what appears to be a child’s arm, mangled and half eaten. His voice is tight and charged with revulsion, with anger.
“It-it looks like something was eating the bodies, the bodies of the humans.” I swallow hard against the surge of sickness rocketing up my esophagus.
A large hand settles on my shoulder. I twist and see Arnost. His face is a mask of horror. “In all my years, I’ve never seen anything like this.” His words resound in my marrow. What I’ve witnessed will haunt my days and nights for the rest of my life.
We continue and inspect the remaining buildings, a process that is gut wrenching. When I exit the last structure and see that all hope is lost, my chest feels as though it’s caving in on itself. My insides plummet to my feet. The trembling that never ceased intensifies and cold funnels from the vicinity of my heart, swirling in a glacial vortex through my lungs and down my arms until all I feel is icy-hot pain. Only the cold does not numb me in the least. To the contrary, it stings as if I’ve been scorched.
June, clearly feeling as I do, sobs without restraint. Lark tries to console her, but it’s of little use. No amount of hugs and kind words can bring back the family we’ve lost. Nothing can.
I make my way toward my sister, struggling against the ache of loss, and as I do, a faint sound catches my attention. It’s a soft hiss, murmured words that are whispered in the wind and nearly carried away. But I hear them. Fleeting, ethereal wisps of sound, I swear they are words, that a human voice speaks them. Whirling, I search the faces of those who are with me. Brom, disgruntled and disheveled, is oblivious. But Sully looks over his shoulder, his body rigid and his eyes keen. Lark looks all around and Arnost is as still as a boulder. They hear it. And moreover, they feel it, feel the shiver of energy as a life reaches out to them.
“Sully.” The word is a haunting thread that weaves between us like a spectral being.
Sully’s head snaps toward me, his eyes wide as if questioning whether I heard it, heard his name breathed through the ether.
I nod to acknowledge that I heard it, and we both move toward the direction of the sound.
“Sully!” the voice is louder, stronger this time, and achingly familiar. Hope trills through my body like a shockwave.
“Oliver!” I shout his name at the top of my lungs. “Oliver! Is that you?”
“Avery,” he replies, his voice towing me like an invisible line. He’s alive. I can hear him and he’s alive! Hurrying my steps while dodging the dead bodies at my feet, I rush toward the sound of his voice, stopping at a pile of rubble that was once a wall.
“He’s under here!” Sully shouts and begins tossing debris. Between the chucks of concrete, his pant leg is visible.
June and I join in the digging, as does Lark and Arnost. Brom folds his meaty arms across his chest and watches us with one eyebrow quirked, a point that chafes me immensely. The deeper we dig, the more people join. Before long everyone—save for Brom—is helping. Oliver’s face becomes visible. Scrapes and cuts mar his skin but his eyes are bright, his gaze alert. When the last piece that remains to be lifted is a substantial support beam, each of us places hands on it and on my command, moves it aside. “Everyone lift!” I shout as I heave the massive plank, carefully sliding it right so that all of Oliver’s form is now visible.
Several people advance toward him.
“Don’t move him, whatever you do!” Sully’s stern tone halts them. “It could do more harm than good.” He tempers his second statement with a bit more composure.
“His back could be broken.” Lark’s dulcet voice draws everyone’s attention her way. Her cheeks blaze a crimson hue and she lowers her lashes to cover her eyes.
“I don’t think anything’s broken,” Oliver says. “I’ve just been trapped here for at least a day.”
Lark closes the distance between her and Oliver and surprises me by planting a kiss upon his forehead. She pulls her canteen from the sling on her hips and gives him a drink of water. The moment is surreal, the tender, emotional act occurring among our group, among countless mangled and bloody corpses. I wait for it to pass then go to him. June joins me. We both hug him and express excitement about finding him alive. But in June’s voice there is a vibration of uncertainty. Her eyes are glassy and I see the question lurking in their depths. “Oliver, I’m so glad you’re okay, but where’s Riley?”
A tremor of pain corkscrews in the air between them, and Oliver’s features grow dim.
“I put her on a horse,” he says as he raises up onto his elbows. “I let her out through a rear entrance as soon as the gate was breached.” He lowers his gaze to the ground. “I know I should have stayed and fought on the frontlines, but I had to save my sister.” His eyes roam the bodies nearest to him. “I came back after she was out of sight. But things were bad, really bad. Next thing I knew, the building was blown and I was trapped.”
Several beats pass as we process what he’s said, the gravity of his words.
After a few moments, June says, “So she could be alive?” A fat teardrop slides down her cheek.
Oliver’s gaze meets hers, locking there. “Yes.”
Relief washes over June’s face, her features brightening visibly.
The beauty of the transformation is ruined, however, when Brom steps closer. Clearing his throat loudly then hocking and spitting, he says, “What exactly happened here, bud?”
Oliver pauses a moment and looks between Sully and me. “These things—creatures that look like Urthmen but worse—attacked our wall.” His gaze grows distant and unfocused. “There were tens of thousands of them. They just kept coming. And at first, they were getting shot down by the hundreds, but they were unfazed. It’s like they didn’t care that their own kind was getting picked off.” He squeezes his eyes shut then shakes his head. When he opens them, they shine with tears he’s struggling to stave off. His jaw is tight and he talks through his teeth. “They were like animals, some running on all fours. And they-they, some of them started eating our people, the ones they killed.” He swallows hard and I see the small muscles around his jaw bunching and flexing. “No one knew what was happening. They—we—were shocked.”
I allow a long pause, envisioning the absolute chaos and horror of the attack, before I ask, “How many were there?”
“Too many to even guess.” Oliver sits up slowly. “And as far as I could tell they couldn’t even speak. Just one that I heard. And he spoke in single words, like he was commanding the others. He was the biggest Urthman I’ve ever seen. He walked upright and had hair on his head, long, scraggly hair. And he was killing men by the dozens with his bare hands.”
His words chill the marrow in my bones and warning sweeps up my spine. “We have to get out of here.”
No sooner than the words leave my lips, the sound of gunfire echoes from beyond the open gate. It is followed by bloodcurdling screams.
“Oh no, they’re back.” Oliver’s face collapses as his words send a rush of pinpricks stealing across my skin. And in that moment, I know we are in big trouble.