Dark Creations: Hell on Earth (Part 5) (20 page)

Amber tossed her key to Gabriel.  “Take Main Street to its end and turn left on Lorillard Place.  Lorillard place is unlike Main Street.  It’s a desolate stretch of road.  You’ll see farmland, and that’s about it.  You can’t miss our arsenal.  It’s the only building in the area that’s not a farmhouse.  It’s the white one,” she told him.

“Take Main Street till it ends then make a left on Lorillard,” Gabriel repeated.  “And I’m looking for a white warehouse.”  

“Yes, that’s right,” Amber nodded and watched as Gabriel began climbing the steps. 

“Gabriel!” she called out to him.  “Be careful.  And wear my helmet.  Members will recognize you without it, and the Hunters, too.”

Kyle moved closer to Amber and their shoulders touched.  The feel of him so close to her, the contact, sent an arc of fire blazing up her arm to her shoulder until it fanned through her chest.  Gabriel held her gaze for several seconds then looked to Kyle quickly before returning his eyes to her.  A slow smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, recognition flashing across his features as if any suspicions about her feelings for Kyle had been wordlessly confirmed.  She felt heat spread across her cheeks, but did not look away.

“I’ll be careful, and I’ll wear the helmet,” he assured her then disappeared up the stairs. 

She did not regret her decision to lend him her bike.  Her motorcycle would be useless in moving four people.  Her hope, as well as Kyle, Jackie and Hailey’s hope, now rested with Gabriel.

She started to move, hesitant about breaking the contact between their shoulder
s, and felt him watching her.  She turned to face him.  When she did, she saw that he watched her intently, pulling her in with his stare.  What he tried to tell her without a sound was a mystery to her.  She was just happy to lose herself in his irises, a light-brown palette speckled with green, gold and blue flecks.  He reached out unexpectedly and rested his hand on her forearm.  She felt the fine hairs on her body raise and her skin tighten pleasantly.  The fire of his touch nearly consumed her. 

“Do you think this plan will work?” Kyle asked her and did not remove his hand from her arm.

“I hope so,” she managed through the breathlessness his touch evoked. 

Suddenly, Amber did not feel that Gabriel was alone in having something, or someone, important at stake.  She, too, had someone she wanted to liv
e to see a possible future with, even though she feared that when he found out what she was, he would never reciprocate her feelings.

Chapter 16

The sun hung low against an anemic bl
ue backdrop.  High, filmy clouds paled the sky further, shrouding the last rays as they were slowly swallowed by low mountains along the horizon line.  Gabriel sped westward, into the dying light, his mind intent upon one thing: freeing Jackie, Hailey and Kyle from their imprisonment.  He did not know how else to fight the man Amber referred to as Lord Terzini on his own, save for helping a family survive.  Their lives now depended on him.  He would not allow them to die. And the warehouse was his only hope.

He passed countless
storefronts as he turned from Dearborn Boulevard onto Main Street.  Restaurants with tables and chairs set up outside, a movie theater, quaint shops and boutiques, and markets of every kind lined the road, all abandoned.  Crowds that should have milled about on such a mild spring evening were absent.  Not a soul strolled on the sidewalks.  Shops stood empty, chairs unoccupied, and the letters announcing a feature film glowed vacantly, an eerie reminder that life had existed there not long ago, at least
human
life had.  Everywhere he looked, signs of death loomed like spectral reminders.  Downtown Taft had become a ghost town. 

A
dull ache smarted in Gabriel’s chest.  Taft was a warning of what was to come.  If Lord Terzini had his way, every town in America, the world, would look just as Taft looked right now.  He could not allow that to happen. 

He shifted gears and felt the bike lurch forward as he tested the engine.  Without other vehicles or pedestrians to be mindful of, Gabriel ignored traffic lights and raced down Main Street. 
Countless storefronts rushed by him in a blur.  But unnerving flashes of yellow began to appear within the blurs.  He slowed marginally, scanning the buildings.  At first he saw nothing and was about to dismiss what he thought was just paranoid figments of his fraught imagination.  But then he saw movement.

A lithe form
slunk in the shadows, an exceptionally large lithe form.  Warning screamed through every cell in his body.  He alternated between watching the road that lay ahead and the darkened niches between each structure, trying to catch another glimpse of what sloped in the growing gloom of dusk.  With each twist of his body, he felt the bike swerve beneath him, his hands involuntarily mimicking the motion of his head.  But he could not ignore what lurked alongside him, what stalked him. 

His senses prickled, crawling with warning.  An instinctive voice inside him demanded that he test the engine of the motorcycle further and get as far away from the sooty shapes as possible. 
He was about to heed the voice inside him when he noticed something steal from the shadows. 

A powerful paw slipped from its obscurity and into the waning daylight.  Massive and with finger-like e
xtremities, its lethal claws caught the light for an instant and gleamed as black and shiny as polished onyx before disappearing again.  Gabriel gasped and nearly lost control of the bike when the rest of the beast emerged. 

A hulking
creature that loped on all fours, pacing him, burst from the darkness.  Behind it, a torrent of black dashed with impossible grace given their considerable size.  Though they appeared to be little more than a flurry of blurred shapes moving in a coordinated manner, murky wraiths with murderous eyes that glowed like gilded amulets, Gabriel knew otherwise.  He knew the Hunters were tracking him. 

He wondered
if they would synchronize their attack, and why he hadn’t armed himself.  He’d believed what Amber had said about his clothing, that they blocked his scent.  But perhaps his scent was unlike the other members or human beings.  Perhaps his trail possessed properties that were impervious to the protective uniforms. 

Sweat g
athered at every juncture of his limbs, a reaction he was sure only frenzied the Hunters further, as he saw in his peripheral vision that they’d accelerated their pace.  His heart slapped frantically against his ribcage and the voice that warned seconds earlier continued to warn and now stormed, presaging of imminent danger.  In his mind, Gabriel envisioned the twin girls huddled together in the basement of their house, their curls tumbling down past their shoulders like Melissa’s hair did on a humid day, their pale skin ashen with worry, and vowed he would not leave them to die.  He would not allow them to be a meal for the creatures flanking him.  As long as they followed him, they were not at the house feasting on the twins.

With a twist of his wrist, the motorcycle
whined and pitched forward, whizzing ahead and surpassing the pace of the Hunters.  Gabriel studied his side view mirrors briefly and counted roughly a half-dozen beasts trailing him.  They’d materialized from the shadows, no longer shy about making their presence known.  He continued to monitor them every few seconds, and every few seconds their number grew.  More and more manes of gold appeared behind him as he looked from the darkening road ahead to them.  The effect, alternating between lightness and darkness quickly, became like that of a strobe light, pulsing with flashes of sick, nightmarish images.  If they decided to strike, he would not stand a chance against them, whether he’d been armed or not. 

He tried to force an attack from his mind, but quickly found it was an impossible feat.  The only thought that distracted him and brought him a glimmer of hope came in the form of a street sign.  Up ahead, he saw an intersection with a cross street.  The sign there read Lorillard Place, the street Amber
had said the warehouse was on. 

When he reached Lori
llard Place, he turned right onto it and saw that the neighborhood changed immediately.  A sharp contrast to the quaintness of Main Street with its numerous shops and what would have been a thriving business district were it not for the absence of people; Lorillard place was a stretch of empty road.  Beyond the empty road was land, lush, uninterrupted land, save for the occasional farmhouse.  He supposed that animals and tractors once contributed to a bustling farm scene not long ago, but now the land was stark and untended.  Not even a stray animal roamed about.  The farms were deserted.  The only movement around him besides the hunters was wisps of straw that blew and tumbled in the slight breeze that stirred.  They’d likely escaped from the numerous bales of hay that had been arranged on the properties he passed and existed as another sign that life had come to a screeching halt. 

Gabriel checked his side view mirror again and saw that a group of Hunters had paused and sniffed the air
at the gated entrance to one of the ranches.  Several yelps sounded and a few others gave up pursuing him.  He guessed they’d found a meal.  Maybe they’d unearthed a corpse they’d missed, or maybe they’d happened upon a dead animal or a nest of dead rodents.  Either way, fewer followed, and with less urgency.

A wave of relief wash
ed over him with the realization that a lesser number of Hunters pursued him, that and the fact that the white warehouse was now visible.  He increased his speed and raced dangerously toward a large, white structure he assumed was the arsenal.  He slowed when he approached the dirt road leading to it, scanning the area for vehicles or movement of any kind.  He supposed the building had been under construction at one point and that it would have been some type of shopping facility because it had a ramp that led to an indoor parking area.  He veered and directed the bike up the ramp and braked when he reached a door on the second level.  To his surprise, none of the Hunters had followed him into the parking area.  Had they chosen to follow, they would have had him cornered.  They must have believed he was a member.  After all, he was clad in one of their uniforms and drove Amber’s motorcycle.

Gabriel climbed from the motorcycle and jogged to the door.  He tried the handle and found that it turned, yet when he pushed against it, it did not budge.  He rammed his shoulder against it once, and still, it did not move.

“Come on, dammit!” he muttered under his breath before he turned the handle and forced every ounce of his might against it.  With a creak of complaint, the door squawked open and Gabriel’s eyes widened in shock.

Row after row of every kind of gun and ammunition imaginable were displayed neatly on shelves. 
He moved through the aisles hastily, looking for anything with the word
explosive
in either its warning label or title.  He passed bomb timers, coil relays, primers and batteries and grabbed three of each before moving on.  Rocket launchers, machine guns and AK-47s were exhibited further than they eye could see; a dizzying spectacle of destructive potential.  He stopped when he reached a section devoted entirely to products carrying labels with orange diamonds cautioning of their volatility.  Dynamite, TNT and Tovex were the first three he saw.  As the three most common high explosives, he knew any of them would do the job.  He’d spied a gurney against the wall when he’d first entered and had shivered at what had undoubtedly been on that gurney before it occupied its current space.  He hurried to it, eager to have anything with a flat, stable surface and wheels, and dropped what he’d gathered so far.  He forced himself to ignore the rust-hued swirls strewn over the plastic exterior of the mattress, tried not to think about the massive tongue that had likely lapped blood from it, creating the circular shapes, and pushed it to the section of the warehouse where he’d found explosives.

After scanning the room, he
began carefully removing the cartridges from the shelves and placing them on the gurney.  Once the gurney had been filled, he carefully glided it to the farthest corner of the warehouse.  He set several sticks of dynamite there then affixed the primer, battery, coil and timer.  He set it to detonate in one hour.  He rushed to the next corner, one that faced the outside.  There, he placed a casing between his knees, mopped the sweat from his brow and opened two cartridges of Tovex, a water-gel explosive, and filled it.  He then placed the casing on the concrete floor gently and repeated the process of installing the bomb’s timer.  The TNT was distributed evenly throughout the rest of the space, and all with timers primed to ignite in one hour.  

Satisfied that the warehouse had been wired accordingly with explosives
poised to discharge in a little less than an hour, Gabriel raced to the parking garage, hopped onto his motorcycle and tore off into the dim light of twilight.  He flew down Lorillard Place to Main Street then to Dearborn Boulevard, back to Amber and Kyle, back to Jackie and Hailey.  He raced against the Hunters, against Lord Terzini, and he raced against time itself. 

Chapter 17

The heaviness in Melissa’s chest felt oppressive despite her friends’ attempts to help.  She sat with Alexandra, Yoshi, Daniella and Ryan in the barn
, willing herself to listen to what they had to say when all she really wanted to do was be alone.  But her friends knew that alone, she would only wallow in jealousy.  Little did they know, she could multitask and was doing exactly that, even as they tried to convince her otherwise.