Chapter 10

A layer of fine ash coated my body and turned the world gray. Everything happened too fast. One moment I was sitting in psychology, filling a requirement to graduate, and the next moment I was in a forest, all alone.

The first of the scabs found me, and I didn’t care. I sat and didn’t move. Its kick to my shoulder knocked me over, and I didn’t care. The scab ripped the rifle from my back and dragged me across the pavement by my vest, and I didn’t care. I felt nothing and collapsed into myself. None of it was my fault.

When the breach opened, it wasn’t my fault. When the beasts came, it wasn’t my fault. When the sirens blared, and they ignored the missiles, it wasn’t my fault. And when I couldn’t heal anyone else, it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t deserve the blame for their deaths. Nobody had the right to blame me. But whose fault was it?

It was Mike’s fault; he left me. It was The Order’s fault; they fled when things became difficult. It was the government’s fault; they never prepared and kept the truth hidden. Every one of them was at fault. What did I do wrong? What did Lia do wrong? We trusted them, and we shouldn’t have. They betrayed us. All of them betrayed us. Everyone betrayed me.

The scab quickened its pace, and soon two more arrived. No different from any other scabs. Two males, one female, and each of them wore no clothes. Rotten bags of flesh and bone that lost their fight to hold on to the little humanity they had left.

The new arrivals pulled my legs from my chest and lifted me. Festering hands that carried me as if they’d toss me into a mass grave. Mom and dad swung us when we were children, with father taking our legs and mom holding our arms. The scabs weren’t my parents. They had no right to lift me from the ground.

None of them had the right. To lift me, to kick me, to hurt Lia, to mock me, to cheat, to lie, and leave us behind; none of them had the right. I wanted them dead.

They needed to die.

The scabs carried me awkwardly and stumbled with no coordination. I kicked one in the face, and all three lost their balance. Before I hit the ground, I twisted my body enough to land on my side, and I pulled the mace from my vest. The female scab leaped onto my back as I stood, but she was too light to stop me, too small, and her arms couldn’t slip under my helmet for a chokehold.

I spun and bashed a scab’s head, caving his skull and knocking him to the pavement. The other male pulled me to the ground and fell on top of me. The raccoon didn’t give me much essence, but it gave me enough to overpower him. I locked my legs around his body and grabbed his throat with my free hand. My fingers weren’t long, and my palms weren’t wide. They didn’t need to be. My tiny hands were large enough to dig into his thin, decaying flesh. To grab his throat and clench his windpipe.

The female clawed at my helmet, but I ignored her. One scab above me, one below me, the three of us locked in a deathmatch.

I constricted my legs tighter and squeezed my hand as hard as I could. Scabs were no longer human, but they needed air like everything else. They needed food; they needed water; they needed a place to live. Scabs lost their minds, but they still knew fear.

The male scab gripped my arm and tried to wrench it from his throat. My fingers dug deeper. They tunneled through his soft neck until I tore the skin, and his body spasmed.

Saliva mixed with old blood from its crusty mouth dribbled down its chin onto my visor like bubbly motor oil. When his body dropped, no longer fighting, and my hand cramped from locking so long, I released my legs and pushed him off.

The female scab below me continued to scratch my vest until I thrust my hips in the air and drove my feet into the ground. Her body slid across the asphalt like a sled, and the skin ripped from her back. Once I freed myself from her grasp, I twisted to all fours. She tried to get up, but I held her to the ground and put my knee across her throat.

The skin on her face fell from her skull like a wax statue in the desert, and her muffled cries didn’t stop my knife from going through her decaying eye.

Like a hammer and nail, I pounded the mace into the butt of the knife, three, four, then five times until the point struck the pavement. The blade dulled from my lack of maintenance. The priest had a small stone for sharpening, but I didn’t know how to use it. One more thing I should’ve learned instead of watching dance competitions.

I ripped the knife free using both hands and wiped the gore on my pants before sheathing it back to my waist. I killed three scabs, but more would come. After strapping the rifle to my back, I turned my attention towards the town. The flames hadn’t crossed, they wouldn’t. But they grew taller. The wind still blew from the south, and the fire started northwest of the town. Whatever lived in the church was too dangerous to deal with.

Every time I looked in the church’s direction, my eyes pulsed, and my stomach sank. The church pulled me in and urged me to flee at the same time. The thought of remaining in the village any longer made my legs shaky and gripped my chest, preventing my heart from beating.

Crossing Lake Champlain was impossible. Even without a lake monster, I couldn’t cross that lake. And hoping to beat the spread of the fire and circle to the north wouldn’t happen.

Fires died eventually, and I could probably escape through the spots that already burned. The problem was the wall of flames. There was no way to cut through that firestorm. Southeast was the only choice I had left—southeast through a forest of scabs. I took a deep breath and raced into the woods with my path decided.

The chained scabs continued to scream, but I ignored them and ran between the trees, keeping an eye on the orange glow to my right, and watching for anything that moved. Nothing did. No movement in any direction, only high-pitched screeches mixed with body tingling roars.

The beasts didn’t uproot the tree’s in the area; they never came through the church’s region. A monster may have made the church into its home. If it was a member of The Order at one time, it might have traveled to a familiar setting and took residence.

There were no major cities in the mountains, but the government filled two military bases along the border with frontliners. Montreal was big, and a lot of people fled south after the fourth breach. The last thing I remember of Montreal before it fell was the Canadian military destroying the bridges to the island to contain the scabs.

I went to the city once, to the cobblestone streets and cafes. The Canadian government sacrificed over a million lives to keep nearly 200,000 scabs from the city contained. That many scabs would destroy the province. Still, I couldn’t imagine making that decision.

The two military bases explained the monsters in the mountains. Eventually, some of the frontliners would change.

While I ran, the distance between me and the fire grew, and the forest turned silent. Treetop scab screams faded, and the sound of fleeing animals disappeared. Even the falling ash lessened. Less than an hour from the town, the scabs chained to the trees vanished. I didn't think their territory was so small. Only three scabs came after me, and they were near the town.

I may have been at the southern end of their range, but I thought any group capable of chaining so many scabs as a network must have had a large number on the ground. Somebody had to feed them. I stopped for a moment and rested on a mossy rock.

Two more days, three tops, and I’d leave the mountains for good. Leave the mountains with no hope of finding family. Lia and I never heard from our uncle after he dropped us off at school a year ago. Father’s side of the family always kept their distance. Although they took us in, they never treated us like family. I couldn’t see them surviving. Nobody survived Manhattan, that’s what we learned from the base.

I wiped the gunk from my legs and stood to leave when I saw them.

Five scabs, not running, but climbing out from logs and between rocks—decrepit creatures that hardly stood upright. I had never seen a scab die of rot. They lost their minds, but their bodies continued. I thought they eventually turned into something else, a beast of some kind, perhaps.

From five to ten, and then to twenty, all around me, scabs shrieked and groaned as they dragged themselves across the forest floor. Most stopped after a few feet, and some didn’t bother moving, simply turning their heads at anything that moved. If they changed with the fourth breach, it meant they survived less than two years before they fully rotted.

The forest turned into a graveyard of dying scabs. But what drew them together into one area?

I quickened my pace, avoiding the majority while clubbing those that came too close. There were dead bodies on the ground that hadn’t moved in months, yet crows and vultures left their skeletons alone.

Soon, their numbers dropped, and the sky darkened with storm clouds. The summer started off wet, but in the last few weeks, it only rained once. I hoped it poured for days. The rain would slow the fire and lower the late summer heat, wash away the ash, and knock the dust from the air. I didn’t enjoy the dusty nights, even with the helmet on.

Flat ground transitioned into a hill, and the orange glow turned distant behind me. The woods thinned ahead of me, a sure sign of a pond or lake. But as I came over the rise, my chest tensed, and my eyes filled with black spots. There was no lake. Instead, in every direction, for miles on end, there was nothing as far as I could see.

From the valley floors to the hilltops in the distance, something flattened the trees.