Rebirth (Excerpt)
The being looks down upon the kneeling acolytes who are chanting and swaying, lost in a hypnotic trance. Then a flame of golden red erupts from the center of the white hot figure and a savage cry fills the room. A low hiss can be heard and then what appears to be the head of a snake covered in iridescent red and gold scales slips from the fire and strikes two of the acolytes in quick succession.
They cry out in pain, but do not stop their chant. The snake disappears into the golden red flame which in turn, becomes engulfed by the blinding white heat. Another scream fills the cavern, that of a great beast. It shakes the ground upon which they stand and pebbles and dirt rain down from the ceiling.
With one last cry from the acolytes, they fall unconscious, lying like rag dolls around the figure in the center. The priestess and the sacrifices are the only ones left standing as the white heat flares and fills the entire room. Their senses have been obliterated, leaving only a vision of pure light.
Blinding whiteness. Silence, but more than silence. Void of all sound. The oxygen has been sucked from the cavern. There’s a sensation that those in the room are no longer in their physical bodies. Then a voice rings out. It is both male and female, as if two voices are speaking at once, but coming from one mouth.
They hear it not with their ears but with their minds. It is around them, and inside them.
“In the beginning, there was not darkness. No. In the beginning it was light. Bright, hot, white light. From this light came life. And from this life, came darkness. We were the light, and we weren’t the light. We dreamed the light. We created the light. We gave birth to the light.”
Then the soundless void envelopes them again. The light seems to strobe brighter, then dim, then brighter again.
The voice returns, its volume unbearable to their minds.
“As long as the light exists, so do we. As long as we exist, there will be light. We are a constant in this world and a spectator among the stars. We are the directors, the puppet masters, the illusionists. We are all and everything.”
The lack of sound once again falls on ears that no longer seem to exist. Then the throbbing light grows stronger. Dim, bright, dim, bright. It is at this moment that it begins to change. The red and gold return, intertwining with the white. These are warmer colors. Not as cold and harsh.
“And thus, you are us. We take what we need, you have no choice but to give. There is no free will, only the illusion. There are no Gods, not in the way your feeble minds see them. We are everything. We are the dark. We are the light.”
The white light wanes, dimmer, and dimmer as the red and gold increase in intensity. Senses begin to return to those in the room. Dan and Molly are still strapped to the tables, drying blood crusting their eyes, face, and chests as fresh blood pours from their ears. The acolytes are rising from their place on the floor. They have ceased chanting. The priestess approaches the figures now no longer bathed in white, but instead, each one is illuminated in a different color.
She is red. He is gold.
And they no longer look like Gladys and Tom.
Flawed
She was what some might call pretty.
From afar, her hair was this sort of cinnamon color. Somewhat red, somewhat golden, somewhat brown. It waved and curled in a natural, loose fashion. The ends were layered, like a gentle waterfall and the light danced off of it like water.
Her eyes were a blue that changed shades with her moods. Sometimes colored like your favorite pair of old blue jeans. Sometimes nearly aqua, like the jewel of the sea. And sometimes, such a deep blue you felt yourself falling into them if you stared too long. Her smile was quick and could light up a room. But when no one was looking, one could catch a glimpse of a subtle sadness just ghosting her face. Her lips had a perfect cupids bow shape, and parted slightly when relaxed. All together, these parts made for a pretty girl.
However, as you came closer, those parts began to fade into the background and her flaws stood out. Her nose was overlarge for her face, long and narrow and full of large pores. Those pores spread over her cheeks, which were always ruddy in reaction to the sun, the cold, her emotions. Anything could send her cheeks, forehead, chin and chest aflame. Her hair line was far up her billboard sized forehead which helped to support her bushy caterpillar-like eyebrows.
Her parted lips showcased some rather large front teeth that came over her lower ones in a generous overbite. Her chin was weak, nearly lost in the slope of her double chin, an indicator of her body size. Her chin and her giant nose made her look even worse in profile.
One could consider the possibility that makeup might help her. A little eyeliner to draw the attention away from her more unfortunate features to the one saving grace of her face. A touch of eye shadow to help showcase the shade of blue for the day; maybe in a gold or a soft brown. She could try a little foundation to help hide the pores, but in all likelihood, it would only accentuate them. Lipstick would just draw attention to her buck teeth. Really, she wasn't all that pretty when one studied her. Adding any sort of enhancement would just be illustrating the saying about putting lipstick on a pig.
She put the makeup down and turned her back on the mirror.
M.R. Lyon3-24-2017
Dear Diary-December 13th, 2016
What the hell, diary?
Today started like any other day. I woke up late, jumped out of bed and did my usual bathroom routine, threw on some clean work clothes, and rushed out the door after making sure the cat had food, water, and some head scratches. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary at the time; in retrospect, I suppose I should be more observant when I drive. Not that that’s going to be an issue for a while. Traffic was more of a bitch than it normally is. Dysart, which is typically like a parking lot, was backed up quite a way heading toward the I10. I just figured there was some detouring happening on some other road. It seems like there’s always some construction or some shit going on around here.
I pulled into the parking lot with about a minute to spare. I booked it out of my car, hitting the lock button as I walked fast toward the door. No one was around, which told me they had already opened the doors for shoppers. I hoped that the opening manager had already moved on from the front doors as I approached. When I flung open the door, I didn’t notice anyone around. I quickly headed toward the inner offices to clock in and then made my way to my desk without confronting anyone. Relieved, I still felt uneasy for a reason I couldn’t comprehend at the time.
I think I was so relieved to make it without being seen, that I didn’t notice things were amiss. Now I realize where that unease came from. Ambient noise was missing. There was no murmur of employees on walkies filtering through the walls. The sounds of tubs and flats and boxes being emptied were missing. The ever present annoyance of the beeping of our electronic tools wasn’t playing in the background.
Utter silence. It was eerie. It was wrong.
But I still hadn’t caught on to my own gut and what it was trying to communicate to my brain. I unloaded my own mail onto my desk, and then headed back to print out the days communications at the computer in the back room. Normally I turn on the radio before I do anything else. Why I didn’t this morning, I haven’t a clue. If I had, I might have realized what was happening sooner.
I pushed out of the employee doors and onto the main sales floor. No one was around. There were boxes strewn about, as if whomever had bowled them out took no care in where they landed. I thought it odd a manager hadn’t given them any shit but kept walking. My head down, looking at the floor as was my habit. The less eye contact you made with customers, the less they annoyed you.
That’s how I saw it. I came down the center aisles from the front of the store to the back in my usual path. Through health and beauty, across to stationary, through to housewares and then across to domestics. It was between domestics and toys that I found my first solid indication something was very wrong. A puddle of blood. I stopped, my own blood draining from my upper body, leaving a cold and clammy panic in its place. I haltingly moved forward, suddenly wishing we sold weapons and came upon my first coworker that morning. From the body shape I could tell they had been female. I didn’t recognize the identity, there was no name-tag. And there was only half a face left. The entire head had been ripped open, like a ripe cantaloupe. I could just make out the tip of the nose below the glistening red of blood and gristle. What I assumed were parts of the head were strewn nearby. The brain, was nowhere in sight.
I didn’t scream diary. It’s not my style. Neither is throwing up but I had to struggle with that one. Good thing I hadn’t had time for breakfast. At this point my brain left the vicinity, and I moved on, deeper into the back of the store like one of those dumb-ass characters from the horror movies. It didn’t take me long to find the remainder of the employees. They were strewn about from toys through electronics, and into the backroom. And this, this is where the eerie bubble of silence I hadn’t been aware I was in, burst.
There was a noise and like a complete moron I went toward it. But this time I had my wits about me enough to grab a makeshift weapon in the form of a kids plastic bat that happened to be on a tub. Good deal. Plastic. Awesome. But I crept forward toward that noise. It was a noise my brain understood before it let the rest of my body know. When I found the source, my mind tried to run and hide in the darkest corner it could find.
A fellow employee, I could tell by the color of the clothes, was on the ground, bent over another fellow employee, feasting away on the contents of the poor bastards now empty skull.
Are you fucking kidding me, diary? Zombies? I hate zombies. I find them to be the most basic asinine cliched horror trope. But this, cliched as it might be, was real and horrifying because it was right there in front of me in the very flesh.
Well diary, I’d like to say I was awesome and bad-ass but I’m not fucking stupid. I backed away, hoping the abomination wouldn’t notice me as it kept on in its gluttonous glory. I backed down the hall, and out the door and walked really fast through the field of death, looking everywhere for more of the bastards. I doubted one zombie had been able to take down a whole shift of workers on its own. And I couldn’t understand why none of them had called for help. I made it to my office where I first checked the other offices in the vicinity. I found one headless manager-can’t say I was too saddened by her demise-but the rest were empty.
I finally had my wits about me enough to turn the radio on, and I understood why no one had called for help. Or, if they had, no one had been able to come to their aid. Worldwide mass epidemic. Germ warfare or some such shit that had backfired and exposed the entire planet. It was human error. It was political conspiracies. No one knew the truth. I suspect if anyone survives, we might never know. But multitudes of people were trying to escape the larger cities hoping that they could outrun or avoid it. But if the zombies didn’t get to them, accidents were, or others taking advantage of the chaos.
All I knew at that point, was I wasn’t staying at work to await my demise. I began to leave, but I stopped, my brain now working on overdrive. Survival mode diary, it’s real. I grabbed a cart, and I made my way to the home improvement aisles where I grabbed anything that could make a weapon. Various tools, hammers, shit like that. We don’t carry much but I grabbed anything that might work to save my life. Then I made my way to the food department and I filled my cart with enough dry goods to survive on for a couple months and then I cleared the shelf of bottled water.
It wasn’t easy, diary, I was pushing that cart around obstacles. More employees that met with horrendous ends. I kind of just shut off the emotions and the rational brain for a while. I was afraid if I entertained the darkness threatening to close in on my mind, I wouldn’t make it out alive. I still couldn’t believe I hadn’t found more zombies though. I should have kept that thought out of circulation. As I was heading for the pet section, because my cat needs to eat and shit too, I came across two zombies.
You know that slow-ass shuffle usually depicted? Where you’re like, how the fuck do these bastards catch a healthy living human in the first place? That’s bullshit. So is the super speed that is also depicted in some of the newer fiction.
The truth is they move at about the speed of the average human. But, they halt sometimes, walk into shit, fall down randomly. Their brains don’t work right, after-all. They try to talk too. That’s some freaky-ass shit right there. Because the wires are crossed and when they speak they still sound human but…wrong. The words are jumbled. Their mouths smile. Their eyes are dead as hell. Cloudy. I’m not sure how they see their prey. Prey. Fuck. How fucked up is this?
Anyway, I saw those two bastards in the pet department. They were attempting to tear open bags of dog food. I’m not sure if these zombies were wrong, in zombie terms, or just desperate. But the moment they sensed my presence, they honed in like hawks. Their heads cocked to the side like damn dogs. Their faces were covered with blood, bits of brain, and hair.
Hell, there’s that urge to vomit again.
I wasn’t leaving my cart of stuff. I had a plan and a desire to survive. I pushed it along and went down an aisle, hoping to outsmart them and come around behind them. I grabbed my hammer and a large knife I had grabbed from the kitchen section on my way to pets. I turned around to look and they were on my tail. Walking, tripping occasionally. One would bump into the other and the other would push back like a fighting sibling. If it weren’t so fucking wrong it might have been comical.
I turned down an aisle that contained dish soap and I grabbed bottle after bottle and poured it behind me. They turned the corner into the aisle and slipped immediately. One went down and smacked its head hard enough on the floor that I heard the crack clear like a gun shot. The other landed on top. I watched a moment as the one on top struggled in an attempt to untangle itself and stand in the slippery goo. I started to turn and walk away, but stopped.
These had been coworkers. Fuck, I didn’t want to be there any more. But I felt I needed to try something. I retreated down the aisle and pushed my cart out of it and down the way a bit, then I headed back the way I had come, past the aisle with the still struggling zombie, and made my way toward the nail polish remover. I grabbed as many bottles as my arms could carry. I dumped these on the floor of the aisle with the zombies and headed toward the registers for the last component. Then I returned to the zombies, and one after another I opened the bottles of nail polish remover and poured them over the zombies. I grabbed a pack of dishrags from next to the soap, ripped open the package of lighters and lit the rags. I stepped back a little, dropped the makeshift torch, and then backtracked to my cart. I watched as the zombies burned. The one on the bottom never made a sound, but the one still conscious, shit man. It reminded me of that time I heard the bunny get grabbed by a hawk. I never knew bunnies could scream. It was like that but-louder. I waited until the screaming stopped. Until there was no movement. Until the smell started to make me ill. And then I quickly inspected my surroundings and then headed to the cat food and litter. My cart overflowing, I pushed it out the front doors, into the deserted parking lot, and quickly loaded up my car.
Before I got into my car, I puked into the bush. There’s a limit. I had reached mine.
Somehow I made it home, through the traffic heading to the interstate. Passed the abandoned cars. I wonder if they had been there when I went to work, and I was so in my own world that I didn’t notice.
I pulled into my driveway, watched as cars drove past me at high speed, trying to escape. The expressions the drivers had on their faces mirrored my own. Disbelief. Fear. Panic. Shock. I climbed into my car at one point while unloading, and had to wait while a zombie in a bathrobe and fuzzy blue slippers ambled down the street. It never looked my way, and I waited a long time to be sure it was far enough away before I finished unloading the car.
For now I think I’m safe. I’m locked in the house with my cat. I’m eating dry cereal though I know I should use up the milk. The cats dish is overflowing with his favorite food, and his litter pan has fresh litter. I’ve got a go-bag packed, ready if I need it. I’ll probably have to let him loose if it comes to that. He’d survive better in the wild than with me. Though I’d rather not entertain that idea yet. It would break my heart.
Maybe in a couple days I’ll head to the nearest home improvement store and stock up on boards to block the windows and doors. I Googled the nearest place to find swords too. Before the cable went out, the news said the only way to stop them was to decapitate them. Severing of the spinal column, to be precise. They aren’t living breathing beings any longer, so gun shots do nothing but speed up the decay of their body.
I know fire works as well.
I think I’ll Google where to get flame throwers as well.
I wonder how long the internet will stay up.
It’s unclear how long their bodies keep moving. What purpose the brains serve, if any. But, there’s hope that this will pass. Apparently, a few people have a natural defense against the source of the virus. They were pleading for these people to come in to local hospitals to help in any way they could before the radio signals were lost. I’m not going anywhere. Screw that.
Michelle R. Lyon
Them
It was a sound that woke him. Though he was sleepy his senses were immediately on high alert . He wasn’t sure if he had actually heard the sound or had dreamed it. A second later he had his answer when first a rabbit ran past, and then a fox scuttled over their intertwined limbs.
Panic set his heart to double time as he pawed his family group awake. He shook them hard, but stayed silent. They would know, there was no need to utter a sound. The danger was coming from the east. He lifted his face toward that direction. The dark was absolute and their eyes were poorly adapted to the moonless nights.
They had only one advantage. Smell. He sniffed, grateful the breeze at least was on their side. He smelled the earthy scent of grass, moss, and rotting leaves of their bed beneath the trees. He hoped he wouldn’t smell their scent. It could be a wolf, or a mountain lion. Those they would have a chance of surviving in a fight or scaring off to live another day.
But they weren’t so lucky this time. It was them. Death. He inhaled the horrible odor that gave them away. The stink of strong glands on hot summer days. They had no choice. They never had a choice. They had to split up and run.
There was usually more than one. They came out in groups to hunt them. Sometimes they used weapons for the sport. Sometimes it was more about the chase and they would fall upon them to tear them apart. It didn’t matter. He and others like him were game to be hunted, nothing more.
He wanted to run with his mate but knew the odds of survival were improved if they split up. She clutched their child to her breast, gave him one longing look, and then dashed off into the night. The others scattered as well. The air was cool and damp, causing small bumps to break out over his skin. But as he ran, he quickly began to heat up, sweat slipping down his body in small trickles of fear and exertion.
He could hear the other clutches around him coming to alert. He could see some of them, slipping through the trees. Their footsteps through the layer of leaves and twigs littering the forest floor were like giants yelling, “Come get me!” He could hear some soft sobbing from the darkness. These were the ones that were broken or ill and had no choice but to wait for Death to find them.
Trees flashed by him as he ran, their branches striking his flesh like small whips. They may not have evolved everything needed to keep themselves alive but some things were better than they had been in the beginning. They had stronger muscles, sharper survival skills. Sometimes he thought hard about why they still ran, still fought, still came together in mates and reproduced. It was pointless really. A life of fear. But there was something instilled deep inside his kind. The desire and determination to survive. Maybe, given enough time, his species could become better, stronger, and fight back against their most dangerous enemy. He didn’t see it happening in his lifetime, or his children’s. But maybe someday it would be possible.
He heard them then, their unmistakably haunting ululation as they stalked their pray. Silence and cunning weren’t tools Death needed. It was simply a matter of odds for himself and the others around him. Who ran the fastest? Who hid the best? Who escaped their clutches by the skin of their teeth?
He heard some of his kind were kept in farms as sources of food and livestock to be released into the wild to keep the population robust and healthy. Some would say it hadn’t always been like this. They'd say things were different before Death arrived.
However, at that moment none of it mattered. Not if he didn’t survive this hunt, and the next, and the one after that, and so on. If his mate didn’t survive or his child to keep his line going so that maybe, someday, they would be free to live without fear.
He ducked his head down, and ran harder, pumping his legs. Around him others thrashed through the brush, beneath the branches, over fallen logs. His kind weren’t the only ones running. Everything that called the forest home was fleeing in terror. Even the winged species, normally silent throughout the night were taking flight over his head.
He could still smell Death, so he knew they were close. He wanted to look back but that would certainly mean the end for him. He just kept pushing, his breath coming in painful rasps, his chest tightening a little more the further he ran.
In front of him someone fell. There was no time, no choice. He leapt over the form of the fallen stranger and kept running. A half a breath later and he heard it behind him. It was a sickening sound. Wet and sucking, with the ganshing of teeth and guttural growls of a feeding animal. He’d been saved.
He keened for the loss of one of his own, but kept running. If he stopped for any one, he'd die for sure.
There was a meeting point that had been agreed upon. A small stream ran through the woods, slightly to the north west of where they’d been sleeping. He had to make it there. He had to know his mate and child were safe.
He began to pull ahead of the rest of them. He felt both relieved and sickened by this. His survival meant others died. But there was nothing he could do. Guilt wasn’t a luxury they as a species could afford. Survival was priority. His pace began to slow. He felt he might be safe now that he had pulled so far ahead. His muscles were screaming for a break and his breathing was whistling and burning. He was almost at the meeting point. He had to keep moving and be certain Death hadn’t followed him.
Finally he stopped, the sound of the stream gurgling away just out of sight. He turned, carefully surveying the forest around him. He couldn’t see anything past the first line of trees. He strained his ears to hear above his labored breathing and cautiously scented the air. Nothing. No one. He was safe.
He reversed to begin making his way toward the stream and ran right into one of them. It had circled around him so that its scent wasn’t being carried to him on the wind. Death stared him in the face as hot urine coursed down his leg. The hair on his body stood up on end and his heart threatened to beat right out of his chest.
It was smiling at him, causing fear to clutch its glacial grip around his heart. Its teeth were razor sharp and jagged, perfectly suited for tearing into flesh. The eyes were large dark orbs with spots of white in them. He thought for a moment how they reminded him of the dark night sky sprinkled with stars. The stench this close up was vile decay. Despite his paralyzing fear, his stomach retched and his meager meal hours before ejected from his mouth.
What his irrational mind focused on more than anything though, was how similar they were to he and his kind. They had two arms, two legs, five fingers and toes on each of their two hands and feet. Their skin color was a variety like his kind, but there was a gray tint to their flesh. It could best be seen on the palms of their hands, the lips, tongue, and gums surrounding the sharp and ferocious teeth.
There were rumors of pockets of his kind, hidden deep underground in vast cave systems, rumors of those that still spoke the full range of language, and existed as more than hunted game. But that’s all they were, rumors. He had never put stock in them. Had never come across anyone that knew much about the old ways. The ones that could spin the stories of their ancestors and how the visitors from above had destroyed them, had been massacred long ago. There no longer existed anyone that knew the full truth.
The creature standing before him, the visage of death, opened its mouth wide. He attempted to run, as he lost all control of his bowels, but Death grasped him hard with its vice-like grip and dug its long, pointed nails into his flesh. Guttural sounds emitted from its mouth, garbled by the thick gray tongue and sharp teeth that seemed to fill the entirety of the orifice. He didn’t understand the words, but comprehended the meaning. It was taunting him, playing with its food. This one had no weapons, save for the teeth it showed him in that demented grin. He understood his doom at that moment, as Death descended upon him. He screamed as it tore into his flesh in a blaze of hot pain and the foul, acrid odor of his own blood and bowels combined. He thought of his mate, of his child and screamed as his lifeblood poured from his savaged flesh. He screamed as the sound of Death eating him filled his entire being, until finally, his voice and mind became as dark as the sky above.