Untaken Page 5

  Altogether, they looked like a ragtag militia of demon-slayers.

  Bill eased the steel tubing away from the window. He heard something out on the yard. It was a slow humming, almost like chant. Carefully, he climbed into the well, and poked his head out. On the yard, there was a group of the Marked, swaying back and forth under the neighborhood firelight. Their eyes black and soulless, they hummed a low tune of horror, just waiting for the group to come out.

  Bill sank silently down into the well and slowly eased his way back into the window opening. He heard a quick snort and a shuffle outside. He threw himself into the window and worked quickly to replace the steel tubing, hearing the thump of a body against the wall on the outside and a horrifying screech at the window. An arm reached past the tubing and into the basement before he could secure the passageway. The arm was gray and wrinkled, covered in blood. It looked dead, but it clawed at the stale basement air for anything it could find. Bill slammed the tubing shut and locked it in its notch, pinching the arm in the passageway opening. The Marked were at the window, shaking the tubing, their fingernails sounded evil against the steel. Bill grasped his sword and gave a quick chop to the intruding arm, severing it to the bone, a limp, corded tendon keeping it attached. The Marked tried to retreat, but the arm remained pinched and unmovable. Bill gave another chop with the sword, and the arm fell to the floor, still grasping for a hold of a victim. They heard a sharp squeal of pain.

  The tubing came alive under the efforts of the Marked on the other side. The demons were clawing for entry, roaring with anger and seemingly groaning in pain, craving the fresh blood trapped inside.

  Jake was unshaken, “We’ll cut them down one by one as they show themselves. Open the window.”

  “How many are out there?” the priest asked.

  “A lot. More than I’d like to face with this sword.” Coming from the warrior Bill, the others gave no agreement to Jake’s suggestion. “They’ve gathered out there, waiting for us. More than I remember seeing before.”

  “Up the stairs then. Do you think they found their way into the house?”

  “I haven’t heard anything above. We’ll have to be quick. One noise and they’ll be on us.”

  The stairs were barricaded with an assortment of furniture and appliances, including Bill’s refrigerator, living room sofa, and bookcases. The door on the other side had a curtain of chains across it, secured with a padlock.

  They went to work, each of them removing a piece of the blockade, careful to not bang an edge and alert the Marked outside as to what they were doing. The steel tubing at the window remained a symphony of terror that motivated them to move quickly. Between moving pieces of furniture, Brooks would rap on the steel tubing at the window to keep the attention of the Marked. Each time he did so, a new energy of anger would erupt on the other side.

  With the stairway clear, Bill silently stepped to the basement door at the top of the stairs and put an ear through the chain curtain. It was hard to hear anything over the racket at the window well. He rotated the padlock and began stripping the chains from the entry.

  Bill gave a glance backward down the stairs. They were all ready. The priest held his revolver out, but Bill motioned for him to ready the flamethrower. Its blue light made a bouncing silhouette of Bill against the door.

  Slowly, the door from the basement eased open, creaking slightly on its hinges. The priest held his finger on the flamethrower trigger, ready to light up the darkness with a furious fireball. The house was dark. It smelled dusty and uninhabited. Bill had been in the basement for a week. With the house empty, the curiosity of the Marked had not reached beyond the window well of his house.

  They heard nothing. They filed up the stairs and into the house. Bill led the way through the living room to the front door. It was on the opposite side of the house as the window well. He peered out the front windows, into the dancing light of the night fires.

  They went outside, down the front porch and stayed against the outside wall of the house. They could hear the manic anger on the other side of the yard as the Marked continued to fight against the steel tubing. It clanged loudly and was accompanied by the snarls of evil. Oscar the dog, whined softly and stayed at Jake’s heels.

  Jake was in the front of the group, leading the way. They crossed the yard and swiftly made their way to the next house. Brooks kept the torch low. It had lost some of its brightness, but it lit the ground around the group well. The houses in the neighborhood sustained their bright burn.

  The distant screams continued. Some were painful and some were surprised sounding, as if a survivor had just been discovered by a Marked before being gruesomely dismembered by a garden of gnarled teeth.

  Jake took the group to the end of the street and followed the sidewalk to the south. It was out in the open, and they risked being seen, but the amount of the Marked in the neighborhood had diminished, and Jake was in a hurry to get to his father. He trusted the darkness. Down the sidewalk and to the right at an intersection, they passed through a community park and playground. On one of the swings was a lifeless body. Upon further inspection, Jake noticed that the body was missing its left leg. They kept going.

  Another scream in a nearby house was enough for Jake to reconsider his gonzo charge down the sidewalks, and opt for a pathway that was more hidden. He took them into the yard of one of the houses, through the fenced gate, and into the backyard. Behind the house, over the fence, there was an open field and a paved urban bike path. This was what Jake was looking for.

  The bike path wound its way up a hill and went past Jake’s father’s home. The field was open, and they would be visible, but they had to take the chance.

  “Over this fence, through the field-”

  “To your father’s house we go,” Brooks finished Jake’s sentence, and lifted himself over the wood slats of the fence. He paused, crouched at the edge of the field and looked in every direction.

  “C’mon. Go now.”

  The others followed over the fence. The field was dark. There were houses that had caught fire from the wave of dark red clouds earlier, but they were spaced out and away from the open stretch of grass. The light from their torch against the darkness made them an easy target to spot.

  “We’re going to have to go fast. Up the hill. Keep low to the ground and if you need to stop, find a shrub that will hide you from the skyline.”

  They went. Brooks first, followed by Emily, then the priest and Bill. Jake held up the end with Oscar.

  More screams, this time coming from up the hill. They had managed to get halfway through the field and up the incline when they heard them. They were close. On the hillside, a group of the Marked was scrambling down in their direction, running on all fours like dogs, and shrieking insanely. Their movement was highlighted by the faint flickering of the fires, and they drew closer in a strobe-like way.

  Brooks hit the grass on his stomach, his crossbow ready, but aimed at the blackness. He couldn’t make out a target in the dark. He extinguished the torch by shoving the burning end into the dirt, and held the crossbow up to his shoulder. Emily hunkered down behind his large body, the samurai sword held tightly in her arms.

  Bill and Jake were an arm’s length apart. They thought they could make out five moving bodies, outlined in the firelight on the side of the hill. However, with blackness all around them, their imagination ran wild, and it sounded as if there were an army of demons approaching. The Marked were tightly spaced, running in a pack. A whooping, screeching pack. The sky was black.

  Bill readied his sword. He was crouched in the darkness and considered himself concealed. Jake held his shotgun at his shoulder, ready to unleash a peppering of buckshot into the first Marked who came upon him. They came fast, they came mean, and even in the darkness they seemed to know where to find blood.

  Jake looked left and right quickly. He knew that Bill was immediately to his left. Brooks and Emily were to his right. Oscar at his feet. The priest…

&nbs
p; The screams of the Marked were upon them, demonic and groaning. Both Brooks and Jake had trigger fingers a moment away from squeezing off retaliation into the yelping darkness in front of them. Bill and Emily were both ready to swing with their blades. And the priest…

  The darkness in front of them turned bright. The heat of the flamethrower burned at their small hairs, and dried their eyes. The cold of the darkness had momentarily disappeared and they felt heat. The angry shrieks of the Marked transformed mid-breath to agonized moans of pain, as their bodies captured the flame and burned in the field.

  The priest took wide, arching bursts with the flamethrower, back and forth, making sure he was not missing a flanking Marked. When the priest’s finger lifted, the writhing, rolling, bodies of the Marked, five of them, continued to light the field. Their screams carried far in the night air.

  Jake, not wanting to use a round of the shotgun, held back. Bill took a windmill rotation of his short sword and separated the head from the body of a burning Marked. And another. Again he severed the head of a flaming Marked, and again, until there was one left, still thrashing in the field, igniting the dried grass underneath its burning body.

  “Emily. Do it,” Bill ordered her. They needed each member of their team willing and able to protect themselves and the others. Bill had his doubts about Emily’s ability to do so. A disabled enemy, needing a mercy kill was the best introduction he could give the young woman to the destruction that they would face.

  “Emily, do-,”

  Before he could finish his sentence, the Marked lay headless on the grass, its body still burning, its head was a ball of flames and the dark eyes, now filled with fire, seemed to be the brightest part. Emily had given a swift and accurate chop with the samurai sword. She had not hesitated, and Bill was not the only one who stood impressed.

  “We need to get out of this field and into hiding. Go.” Just as it had before, Jake was expecting that a commotion like this would draw more of the Marked out. Jake led the group up the remainder of the hill and took a sharp turn around a boulder in the field. They could hear the hungry screams coming toward them in the darkness.

  “Over the fence. Get into that house,” he pointed.

  Jake had full confidence that they could enter his father’s home safely. His dad was a good man, and would not have been touched by the demonic clouds that had rushed over. He would not be Marked. If anything, Jake believed that they might get inside and they would find the house to be empty. His father may have been taken by the golden sky, hours ago.

  The screams were becoming louder. Jake ran to the back door. Without a break in his stride he kicked the door open and the group went in behind him. He quickly closed the door, careful to not let it slam, and locked it.

  Inside, the house was dark. Jake couldn’t see anything. They lay silent for a spell, listening for any movement that might be in the house. He moved through the kitchen, feeling his way around, not wanting to light a torch and attract the Marked outside. Into the living room, he walked in a crouch and made his way to the bottom of the stairs.

  Jake heard a question whispered low in the dark, “Who’s there?”

  Oscar growled lowly in the darkness, but Jake recognized his father’s voice, “Dad, it’s me.”

  “Jake. Thank God you’re here.” He had never heard his father’s voice sound so relieved. He still could not see him in the darkness. “I’ve been fighting these…monsters off.”

  “I brought some help, dad. There are five of us here,” he patted Oscar on the head, “and a dog.”

  Emily handed Jake the lighter from her pocket. He flicked it once, and it lit the second time. The stairwell came into view under the light. At the top, Jake’s father, Thomas, was lying down in the hallway; a Glock .40 was in his hands. Jake recognized the handgun. It was the same one that his father owned when he was a boy in this same house. He had never seen his father use the pistol, or even hold it, but he had seen it many times in his father’s desk drawer.

  Thomas’ face was red with dried blood. He had a deep scratch from his left eyebrow, down across his lips and ending in the crevice of his chin. His collar was stiff and red. His gray hair was matted.

  “Dad, are you bleeding? Are you hurt?”

  “Huh? Oh, the blood. No. That was a while ago. Maybe hours ago.”

  It seemed that time had disappeared. There were no working clocks, no cell phones. Even the hands of a wristwatch had frozen. There was no sun outside to judge the hours by. Enough time had gone by that the blood on his father’s face was dry and flaking off. Had it really been that long since this had started?

  A scream outside. It was nearby. Next door. The group held their breath. Behind Thomas, Jake heard movement. It was in the house. It was in the hallway, behind his dad. “Dad, get down!”

  Jake bolted up the stairs with the shotgun out in front of him, the lighter still in his fingers and the light from the flame dancing on the hallway walls. The face of a little boy emerged from the darkness. Jake had the barrel of the shotgun stretched out in front of him, just a few inches from the boy’s face.

  “Jake, don’t,” Thomas stood in the hallway between Jake and the boy and pushed the shotgun to the ceiling. “This boy is Jimmy, my neighbor.”

  The lighter was getting hot against Jake’s thumb. He dropped it and the hallway went dark again. He heard more movement coming from behind his father. When he flicked the lighter alive again, there were three children in front of him.

  “This is Jimmy, Josh, and Jenny. They live next door,” Thomas held his hand out to introduce the children to Jake. Thomas leaned in close to his son’s ear, “Their parents were gone when the sky was so light earlier. The kid’s woke up alone in their house. I brought them here.”

  This seemed odd to Jake. The children’s parent’s had been taken, and yet the children were not. Certainly, these kids could not have committed so many sins in their short lives to keep them from being taken. Jimmy, the oldest, couldn’t have been much older than eight.

  He spoke to them from his haunches, “Hi kids. How are you? Sorry if I scared you just now.” He turned on his heels and looked down the stairs, the flame from the lighter cast a shadow behind the group.

  “These people down here are our friends.” Jake introduced each of them, burning his finger again on the lighter. “Damnit. Brooks, do you have the torch?”

  Brooks had left the first of the torches in the field when they had fled from the Marked. Emily pulled one of the other two torches from her shirt and handed it to Jake. They soon had a lot more light in the hallway, and it gave them comfort.

  Seated on the living room couch, the priest slept. Emily slept on the opposite end of the couch. Brooks and Bill both lay on the floor of the living room, exhausted, and soon fell asleep. The children were snuggled together on the corner of the couch with Emily. Josh, the middle sibling, held Oscar in his arms.

  Jake sat with his father in the darkness at the kitchen table. He was exhausted and had managed to sleep a little through the night, but he was restless and the rumblings that came from deep within the earth shook the pictures on the house walls and jostled him too much for him to sleep soundly.

  The tremors would come and go, never much to send the group into panic, but it did reinforce that the end times were upon them and the universe was unstable.

  “How many Marked have been in here?”

  “Marked?”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s what the priest is calling the…demons. The people who were touched by evil but not taken,” Jake lowered his voice, “Emily was one.”

  “The woman who’s with you?”

  “Yeah, Emily. She was one of them. The black smoke. It turned her into one of them. She looked horrible.”

  “How did she…?”

  “Holy water. When it’s on them, they change back. Quickly too. I was bit by one. On my shoulder.” Jake pulled up his shirt and showed his father where his wound had been. It was almost completely gone. “We put wate
r that was blessed by the priest at Holy Apostles.” He nodded his head to the sleeping priest on the couch.

  “You’re not going to change are you? Into one of them?”

  Jake smiled at his dad, “I don’t think so. They’re not vampires, dad.”

  “How many are out there?” Thomas asked.

  “I dunno. Not a whole lot. It’s pretty sparse out there. Most people were taken by the light or taken by the darkness. It’s just us survivors left. Some people were touched by the darkness and changed and some of us were left alone completely.” Then Jake looked at his father’s shape in the darkness. He barely knew God at this point, but felt comfortable thanking Him for letting him find his father. “Why are we still here, dad?”

  “Why weren’t we taken? I don’t know. Why weren’t the children taken?”

  “Yeah. Why? They couldn’t have been skipped over by God. Why would he leave innocent children here with such evil going on? Did you know their parents?”

  “Mattie and John. Yeah. They were good folks. They took the children to church every Sunday.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. They’re good. They should have been taken with their parents.”

  Thomas shrugged in the darkness. He was comforted by having his son here with him. It was a weight of worry off his shoulders.

  “Dad, do you think we’ll see mom in the end?” Jake asked. His father and he both shared a locket with her picture around their necks. Jake’s mind wandered to her often, imagining what she must have been like.

  Smiling at the thought, Thomas leaned back in his chair and scratched his head. Jake could see the caked blood on his face, and Jake realized that there was light. It was a dull, veiled light, and his father’s features were still shrouded in shadow. But there was light.

  Jake moved to the kitchen window and looked out. It was a shrouded gray light that illuminated the dull sky. There was no sun, no moon, and no stars. He couldn’t see the source of the light, but he could see the backyard clearly and in the distance, over the fence, he could see the open field that they had run through to get to his father’s house.