Book 1 Part 7

The trail was cold. The Vrungo made its way through the forest pausing here and there to taste the foliage and sniff the winds for any sign of its quarry. It was seventeen days into its hunt for a young mage who had run afoul of the Apoloestus family. The Vrungo had never been eluded for this long before, but it was not the least bit frustrated or disheartened, quite the opposite.
The Vrungo was more machine than beast anyway, less susceptible to those humanlike emotions. It was clockwork and steel, geared for speed and ferocity. The flesh that still remained after untold eons of use clung haggardly to the face and neck, and other areas of the creature’s body that for one reason or another had seen little friction. In other areas bone was exposed, reinforced here and there with steel and electricity. Upon the creature’s bone plated forehead burned the crimson magemark of Romnor, imbued with the life stealing magic of the most vile of wizards.
The sky was growing dark and the Vrungo was steadily increasing in speed and sensitivity as night set in. It was designed for the darkness, moving quickly and silently through the dense forest. The magemark pulsated with shifting magic, allowing the Vrungo to explore multiple dimensions simultaneously.
The mage was near; the Vrungo could taste the illustrium powder in the air. Mages used the ground up stones for almost all of the magic they conjured. The chance that the scent was residual, or from some other mage was slim, given the fact that they were now four hundred and thirty seven miles away from the nearest outpost of civilization.
The smell of illustrium was coming from a large tree nearly two miles away. The Vrungo covered the ground quickly, arriving at the base of the oak moments later, flickering through dimensional shifts while inspecting a curious glyph etched into the bark. It was curious because it was a simple embodiment glyph, which meant the mage had melded with the tree, temporarily becoming a single entity. The Vrungo quickly figured that such a move meant one of two things; either the mage thought the great oak was a worthy adversary for the Vrungo, or the mage was using the spell as a decoy, because the young wizard couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to think he could simply hide in such a fashion.
The Vrungo scanned the surrounding area intently before turning back to the oak in disgust. It was an easy enough obstacle to overcome, but the Vrungo was thirsty for blood. The creature sunk it’s talons into the soft bark and began climbing. As it moved up the towering tree it secreted an oily substance that ran slowly down, defiling every inch of wood and leaf it came in contact with.
Once the Vrungo was satisfied, it readied itself to leap off while shifting to Espleth, a favorite dimension among mages and thrill seekers because of its gentle gravitational pull.
It was precisely at that moment that the Vrungo realized why the mage had chosen the embodiment spell. In Espleth the great oak was a lashtrap fungus, spewing its glue like digestive fluids all over the Vrungo, temporarily immobilizing the startled beast.
The fugitive mage shattered the embodiment glyph by mere force of will and emerged inches away from the raving beast, protected from the senses of the lashtrap under a windsilk cloak. The sparkling figure aimed for the creature’s magemark and plunged an ice knife deep into the evil beast’s squirming electronic brain, ending the life of the 3 thousand year old cybrid a moment before blinking away to another dimension.

Dreaming

She was trapped somewhere and she was calling to me. I was pushing my way through a crowded room of people and I couldn’t make out what she was saying. I knew she was somewhere nearby; I just couldn’t focus on the sound. Then suddenly I can smell her, my nostrils are filled with her flowery scent as if I pushed my nose into her hair. It’s all around me, she’s here, right here. I’m spinning around now and the crowd blends into a swirling of color but I can’t find her. I start grabbing people at random and examining them quickly before tossing them aside. Each face in the crowd is a stranger and I think to myself how odd it is to find myself dreaming about a bunch of people I have never seen before. Just as I’m thinking this the faces begin turning towards me. The strange faces are all staring at me, they’ve heard my thoughts somehow and they’re angry because I’ve noticed them. I start backing away as they reach for me. Long bony hands grasp at my clothes and I’m twisting away to avoid hands from behind. Suddenly I am gripped on either side of my face by a pair of strong hands and my head is yanked around to face the enemy. He brings his face close to mine and I see the madness in his glazed eyes that are full of blood. His skin is yellowed and cracked everywhere and watery blood drips here and there from the ragged holes all over his face. He smells like vomit and I fight the urge to puke. He laughs and shakes my head around violently. I get dizzy and he laughs harder. He peppers my face with spit when he laughs and now I’m feeling for my sword. There it is, right on my belt where I would expect it to be, and before I realize what I’m doing the enemy is staggering backward waving around bloody arm stumps. Then he’s bent over fumbling with his stumps trying to pick up his two hands that are flopping around on the floor like two fish out of water. I grit my teeth and finish off the demon with a sweeping arc to the side of his head. Now everyone is closing in around me and all I see is blood. The sword whips this way and that viciously and all I can hear are the screams of the falling monsters. None can escape; I run the last one down across the length of the large room and horizontally bisect him directly in front of the doorway he was running toward.
The doorway was tall and reflective and I could not remember seeing it before. Through the way I can see nothing, but the reflective surface of the door frame gives me a curious feeling and now I’m drifting through the doorway into total darkness. The ground drops away and I’m speeding toward it like a skydiver. The air is whipping by my face so quickly that all I can hear is the roar of the wind across my ears and although I still can’t see anything I know that the ground is down there somewhere and that sooner or later, I’m going to catch up with it.
I hit the ground with such incredible velocity that the stone floor I land on cracks in a spider-web pattern outward until it touches all the walls of the octagonal cell. Clear blue light pours from the cracks in the shattered floor and finally I can see. I examine my surroundings while turning and jumping this way and that, expecting a foe to materialize at any moment. I’m paranoid because the room is familiar. I’ve seen it before in other dreams and nightmares and it serves only one purpose; it is a crossing. Only if I choose quickly and correctly can I escape this place. The octagonal room is small and claustrophobic, the ceiling bulges downward in the center so low that I must duck my head to pass under it. There are eight doorways in the room and I hear the doorknob of a door to my left begin to rattle. I rush across to the nearest door that isn’t rattling and just as I begin to turn the knob the door explodes outward and I’m thrown across the room so my limp body slams into the foot of a door frame. I’m paralyzed, I feel no pain, it’s as if I’m simply too heavy to move. My head is laying sideways and I’m staring across the room in horror as the first gateway stands wide open emitting an almost inaudible noise that creeps up on me over the racket of rattling doorknobs. I can only describe it as the exerted breath of something most definitely not human that is trying to force its way through the rift. I can hear its grunts of frustration in many voices simultaneously and I don’t want to look, I’m trying to get up. I’m panicking, I can’t move a muscle, I can’t even close my eyes. Parts of it begin to squeeze through the vibrating doorway and the many voices roar as the doorway splits allowing the largest piece yet to wriggle its way through the gap. Its many creatures put together sloppily and the many parts of it moan in pain as its surface fluctuates with the pops and clicks of countless malformed joints and raw connections. I can not be imagining this, it is far too horrible. The door behind me shakes, but I still cannot move to open it. I’d gladly take any chance on door number two at this point. But door number two chooses me instead and implodes, sucking me through the rift and into a swirling vortex of light that spins me upward and warms my skin. As I look around my jaw hangs slack in drooling awe of the landscape. The lights are in every color and there are millions of them swirling as far as the eye can see in every direction. It is the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life and I think again that I cannot possibly be imagining this. I have never imagined anything so overpowering and beautiful, something so incredibly expansive. I don’t know what to do so I just float there; happily tumbling through the light as if it’s a ride at an amusement park. I notice that my hands, which I have been trailing through the light globules, have begun to glow with a faint light. They feel powerful as if I absorbed some of the energy from the light. I test my theory by catching some of the light between my palms and squeezing it. My hands glow white radiantly and they feel like helium balloons pulling me slowly upward. I start grabbing more light and start padding it into my chest and face and it is a truly wonderful feeling. I’m floating upward faster and faster as my entire body begins to glow with the mysterious light and it’s as if my entire body is vibrating with energy. For only a moment it is as if everything is completely perfect in the universe, and then it begins to rain. The rain is cold and dark and where it hits my skin the light disappears and I feel my body getting heavier again. The air is not filled with light anymore and the rain continues to pound the last remnants of the curious globules into annihilation as I begin to fall, first slowly, but increasing in speed until I’m falling faster than my mind tells me is physically possible; I’m rocketing toward the rain soaked ground so fast that my arms and legs flap around behind my body like fabric and my mouth is stuck hanging open with the air rushing through my lungs too fast to catch a breath. I feel like I’m getting torn apart, it’s excruciating, and when I scream I cannot even hear it because the sound can’t even catch up with me. I become a ball of meat spinning out of control and when I hit the muddy ground I disappear beneath the surfaces like a bullet into mashed potatoes. I’m deep in the earth and I cannot move, yet it feels as if I am healing and growing. Somehow the earth is nurturing me and I’m pushing my way toward the surface in the form of a tree while at the same time my roots are growing ever deeper and outward in search of sustenance. I break through the surface and grow to become a massive tree. I cannot see myself, but I can feel every branch, every leaf, and as the rain pounds down and the winds buffet me it is an incredible sensation that I know could not be a product of my mind. I am the tree, and I grow a single large piece of fruit that grows large and ripe and falls from the tree just as it reaches the zenith of its existence. Now I am the fruit as it falls from the tree and I land on my hands and feet absorbing the impact like a cat. The forest is dark all around me, yet in one direction I can see light filtering through the trees. I run in that direction and when I break through the tree line I emerge in a familiar grassy backyard that I can remember from my childhood.
There she is, just as beautiful as always, running from her car to greet me. She throws her arms around me and all I can smell is her hair. I’m spinning, I’m dizzy, she squeezes me tightly, but it only lasts for a moment before she pulls back and tells me that she wants to play hide and seek. I ask her why but she’s already walking backwards telling me to cover my eyes and start counting. I think it’s odd that she wants to play this childhood game, but I close my eyes and begin counting anyway, I’ll do anything she asks of me.
When I open my eyes it is dark, but I don’t need light to navigate across my backyard toward the tree line in the direction she was headed. The trees are tall and thick and beneath the branches there is nothing but darkness. I plunge into the forest while scanning the entire area for a glimpse of that white shirt she was wearing. I keep walking deeper and deeper in but there is no sign of her. I call out to her playfully; “Come out come out wherever you are!” There is not a sound. The wind has stopped and the woods are as silent as a tomb. I start sweating, I turn around and look behind my back but I am no longer sure if I actually came in from that direction. I hear the snap of a twig off to the left and I run in that direction. I stop momentarily to listen again and now I can hear hurried footsteps leading away about twenty feet ahead of me. I dash after the sound but when I stop again to listen there is no noise to direct me and I stand there in silence.
After a few minutes of complete silence I call out to her again. I beg her to stop with this stupid game and I ask her to come back to the house with me so we can sit down and talk and catch up on the last five years that we’ve been separated. There is no sound for a long moment, and then I hear it. The sound of rain starting to fall; as the first drops begin to tumble down through the highest branches of the trees around me I hear a second sound far off in the distance. She’s franticly calling for help! I bolt through the forest without any regard for the trees and branches that get in my way. My swinging arms and legs smash through everything in my path and even the largest and stoutest of trees explodes in a shower of splinters as I careen through the forest like a juggernaut. I hear her call out again but she’s getting farther away. I push myself faster even though I am already moving as fast as I possibly can move. The ground speeds by beneath my feet and I leave a furrow of chewed up earth in my wake. I must be catching up; I’m moving so fast now that all I can hear is the sound of my own heart beat. I come to a screeching halt to pause to listen. The rain is still pouring and the cold wetness of it saturates me instantly now that I have stopped and allowed it to catch up with me. I hear nothing, not a whisper over the cacophony of the falling rain. I call out to her as loudly as I can and I hold my breath as I wait for a response; nothing.
I run straight ahead anyway, but not as quickly as before. My clothes are heavy with rain and I’m scared and shivering. I call out to her again, nothing. I change direction slightly hoping to get lucky because all of a sudden its feeling like I’m not going to find her. No I will find her, I must; I call out to her again. I’m running quietly, listening for the response that I’m not so sure I’ll hear anymore but I refuse to give up. I scream out her name at the top of my lungs and stand incredulously enraged when I hear no answer.
I continue running even deeper into the forest, so deep that the landscape becomes strange and foreign to me and somehow I have outran the rain and even the darkness. The sun is coming up and I can see the leaf-littered floor of the forest in the pale light of dawn. I’m looking here, there, and everywhere for anything, any sign of her; a footprint, a piece of cloth, anything that could tell me that I’m getting warmer, anything at all.
There is nothing. No sign, no path, no answer whatsoever to the many times I continue to call out to her at the top of lungs. My voice is becoming shrill and weak and my body is still shivering and it is slowly becoming obvious to me that I will not ever find her. She is gone…

I Remember...

My heart is pounding, I gasp for air but there is no air. My hands shake as they reload the 357 Magnum with the last six round quick load. I lean out the ruined apartment window and see a dozen or so undead feasting on someone two stories below. I look around the room and I want to cry. Everyone is dead. Alicia or Mark was infected, doesn’t matter which now, they both came running out of the bedroom and were all over Jessica before Eric and I could turn around from our posts at the windows. Eric panicked, he ran to Jessica and tried to wrestle her away from the creatures, but it was too late. As soon as the Alicia thing took a bite out of Eric’s neck I lobbed my last grenade in between them and hit the floor. Now I’m looking around the room, scavenging my friends’ bodies for weapons. What am I going to do now, we were just about to leave. I find Eric’s pistol with a full clip and I carry a pistol in each hand as I continue to poke around looking for the keys to the box truck waiting in the loading dock downstairs. Why did this have to happen, we were ready to go, all the supplies packed and waiting, and Alicia insisted that we stay the night…it was her, she knew she wouldn’t last the night, maybe she was going to tell us…now I’m left all alone, to retreat back to the jail with enough supplies to last a couple of years, and then what? I can’t live alone forever, what the fuck about me Alicia?! I find the keys but my hands get bloody in the process and I quickly wash them in the sink being careful to continue looking in all directions at once. No one to watch my back anymore. I remove my back pack and load it up with the few other items left in the kitchen from our little celebration banquet. Five years since Hell Day and here the five of us stood toasting to our success on another mission accomplished.
I end up having to leave some of the food behind because there's just too much, there were supposed to be five of us carrying this out! I don't want to risk a second trip since it's only a couple of hours after nightfall, I've got to get out of here, all of this fresh blood is going to attract all the ghouls within a mile. I strap my bags on tight and put my motor cycle helmet and gloves on. I feel claustrophobic in the helmet, I never liked the helmet in the first place, but now without my friends around the edges feel like they are closing in. I check my guns and tools one last time before leaving the apartment.
I kick the door open so hard it almost breaks in half. I sweep the hallway with my .22. Not a very powerful weapon, but one that I carry a lot of ammo for since it's so light. A while back Eric put a scope on it for me and it became my weapon of choice. The hallway is clear, but as I walk down the narrow corridor I can hear them scratching at the walls from inside other apartments. My skin is crawling and I can't stop looking behind me. At the end of the hallway the stairs go down four stories to a sub basement where the truck is parked. Somewhere down there I can hear a shuffling noise but it's drowned out by the sound of my heart beat echoing in the confines of the helmet. I put the rifle on my back and pull out my pistol since the stairwell is so narrow, no telling where the ghoul is until I find it. I take the stairs two at a time making a conscious effort not to look behind me, there's nothing there.
On the basement level landing I find the ghoul. He's dragging himself up the stairs
slowly so I dispatch him with the crow bar rather than waste a bullet. I fly down the last flight of stairs and bolt for the truck through the darkness. Once inside I turn on the flood lights that we mounted on the top to make sure the coast is clear and I'm off.
Outside the parking garage the air is cooler and fresh. The only course in and out of the city is a complicated one, largely due to the number of roadblocks still in place from the first few weeks of the fighting. The quarantined areas were marked by six foot tall cement dividers that had red and white painted stripes along the tops.
Every two or three turns I stopped to consult the map. It was large and detailed with scribbled notes and arrows covering all the margin areas. I was nervous and sweating, finding it more difficult than I thought it would be to read the map and drive at the same time. Some of the undead were following. I could hear there thumping on the sides of the truck each time I came to a stop. They were out there moaning and hissing, waiting for me to exit the vehicle.

To The Gun Store

The alley was dark and smelly, but it provided a convenient hiding place for me as a group of thirty or so ghouls made their way down main street toward the scent trap I had set in the square. It took them a few minutes to pass my position during which I took a quick inventory of ammunition. Only five shells left in the twelve gage and fourteen rounds in the biretta. I was eager to use up the ammo in the shot gun, it grew heavier in my hands by the moment. I took a quick swig from the canteen before leaving the alley.
On main street I forced myself to jog, blasting a couple of the more fast moving ghouls from my path and counting down the shells in my head. I spotted a fork in the road ahead that I did not recognize, but it was too crowded to pause to consult the map. I ducked into another alley to check my position and nearly collided with a group of undead feasting on one of their own. I unloaded the shotgun into the group of six, firing high and erasing five heads with the last three rounds. I dropped the twelve gage and drew the katana, decapitating the remaining ghoul before the empty shotgun clattered to the ground. A couple more appeared behind me, coming off the street. I spun low and dropped them with a sweeping arc of the sword. I jogged further into the alley before more appeared and entered a door I found ajar. It appeared to be a mechanic's shop, cluttered with machinery. I paused to catch my breath and consult the map. Only three more blocks to go.
I went back into the alley and started jogging, deciding to bypass as much of main street as possible. A feeble looking ghoul stepped into my path that I shoved hard against a dumpster. The ghoul collapsed in a heap and I kept running.
The alleyway opened to another street and I turned left, staying at full speed with the katana trailing behind, poised for attack. The street was congested with undead and I did my best to dodge between them, trying to avoid stopping to fight. I had to run right past the appropriate turn because the side street was choked with ghouls. I cursed the detour as sweat ran down into my eye. I was over heating in the helmet and gear, I couldn't run much further.
The next street was less congested, but I still had to slow to a walk as I made my way through, hacking a bloody path down the center of the one lane street. All I could hear was my pulse, I felt dizzy from the heat. Suddenly I lost control of myself.
I tore off the sweaty helmet and went berserk with the katana. I decapitated the nearest three. The fourth I kicked so hard in the torso that my steel toe boot stuck there for a moment, causing me to lose my balance. I spun and ripped an arm off another ghoul to right myself. I swung the severed arm at another's head, but it broke like chicken bones against the fresher specimen. I brought the sword around in a wide arc and took his head off just above his bottom jaw. I continued hacking ruthlessly through their ranks until none were left on the street. Thirty or forty of them littered the streets in a broad circle around my position. I retrieved my helmet and wiped the gore from it before continuing down the street fighting back the desire to vomit.
Just around the next bend in the road was the square. I could hear the roaring of the horde of undead drawn by the smell of the blood capsules I had shattered there. They reached toward the top of the monument stained with blood as more and more continuously poured in from the intersecting streets, filling the square with many more than I could count. I leaped up and caught the fire escape I had lowered earlier and climbed up to the roof where I could get a good look at the battlefield. I checked my watch, still five minutes until show time. I sat back and watched as the square filled up until it was standing room only. It almost looked like a concert arena, with all the outstretched hands and the roar of the crowd. I counted down the last ten seconds out loud as if it was some sort of bizarre new year's celebration.
The bombs went off nearly simultaneously, exploding in a ring around the square. The last two explosions came fifteen seconds later, the largest of all, placed right in the center. I could feel it through the building when it went off like an earthquake, bathing the entire square in gas and fire. The ghouls were ignited in a flash, there was still plenty of movement down there but they wouldn't last long on fire. They were spreading the fire out onto the nearby streets and I could see more of the buildings around the perimeter catching fire too. I relaxed and drank deeply from the canteen. It felt good to be getting rid of so many, maybe I really could kill them all if I stayed at it long enough.
After one last look at the devastation I climbed back down the fire escape, headed for my truck that was parked two blocks away. There were no undead on the street when I dropped down from the steel ladder. I could still hear lots of moaning coming from the square, but the surrounding area was virtually empty. I jogged back to the truck uninterrupted. Once safely inside I checked the map and headed for the gun store.