Dark Creations: Hell on Earth (Part 5) (9 page)

She could see the frantic rise and fall of his chest, see the pulsing at the side of his neck.  He was slipping away from her. 

“Stay with me, help me for your sisters.  I know you don’t want them to die,” she added. And with her words, his head snapped in her direction, as if the insurmountable shock he’d been feeling had temporarily dissipated.  

“Hand me the gnome,” Amber asked him.

He handed her the statue
cautiously.  As he transferred it to her, she noticed that it felt heavier than she’d imagined it would and was glad.  She gripped it tightly to steady the incessant trembling that shook her insides, sickened by the task awaiting her.  She then carried the gnome to where Kit lay, hoisted it high above her head, hovered briefly, nauseated, before bringing it down hard.  She smashed it against Kit’s face with a sickening thud then raised it again and again, hammering it until sweat dripped from her brow.  Each swing lacerated flesh, crushed bone and pulverized features.  Blow after blow landed on Kit’s skull with a stomach-turning
thwack
.  Amber felt that at any moment, she’d be sick from the gore and end any chance at survival.  She breathed through her nose, avoiding blood that sprayed from splattering on her own clothing.  Hunters, with their heightened sense of smell, would track her indefinitely if she were perfumed with blood.  All the while, she fought to keep from vomiting.

When the urge became too overwhelming, she stopped swinging and stepped back.  
She looked down at what she’d done.  “Oh my God,” she breathed as violent tremors racked her body.  Kit’s once aesthetically perfect face had been caved in.  She was no longer recognizable.  And two more of her team remained.  The ghastly act she’d just performed would need to be repeated two more times, a thought that left her reeling.

She looked over her shoulder, certain she’d find Kyle had looked away at some point, but to her surprise, he hadn’t.  He stood, eyes wide and unblinking, staring at the grisly scene she’d created.  She wanted to drop the bloody gnome, close the distance between them and throw her arms around his neck so that they could cry on one another’s shoulders.  The need to feel the warmth of another, some form of
human contact, gripped her as it never had before.  She doubted he’d be receptive to being close to her; much less accept affection from her.  Not after what had happened, not after the barbaric acts she’d committed in his presence.  To him, she was sure she was a monster.

She brushed the sweat from her brow with her forearm and tore her eyes from Kyle.  She did not have the luxury of time.  None of them did.  The rest of the members needed to receive the same treatment Kit had.  With leaden legs and unequivocal heaviness in her chest, Amber set about
to complete the tasks before her.

Kyle looked on in horror as s
he repeated the process with the remaining two members that had been on her team.  When she’d finished, she turned to him, arms aching and trembling from shock and exertion.

“
I need you to help me again,” she said in a voice that matched the quivering of her entire body.

He gaped at her incredulously.  “Please, there’s no time,”
she pleaded, repeating their time constraint.  “These bodies need to be taken outside.  We need to bring them to the street,” she said and heard how macabre it had sounded.  After all, it was macabre.  She’d never tossed bodies out into the street like refuse and was relatively certain Kyle hadn’t ever either.  They would experience a gruesome first together.  She shuddered at what she’d already put him through, what she continued to put him through. She had yet to tell him that his parents would be among those placed in the street; that their bodies would be for the Hunters.  She swallowed hard against the constriction in her throat.  “We have to bring your parents, too,” she said quietly.

“
What?
No! 
No!
  I’m not dumping my parents into the street like garbage!” he said.  “No!”

His face had turned an unhealthy shade of white and his lower lip quivered.  His face was a mask of shock and disgust
, tears streaming from his eyes freely.

“This is the worst thing you’ve ever had to do, ever
will
have to do, I’m sure of it,” she said in a soothing tone and felt anything but calm.  “But they’re coming, and they’re expecting five bodies, not three.”

Kyle gripped his head with both hands then squatted.  “This can’t be happening,” he muttered to himself several time
s. 

“
Kyle, if we don’t do this, you’re all going to die, you and your sisters. That is not a possibility or a threat, that’s a definite.  I don’t know much about parents.  I never had them.  But from what little I do know, I am sure your parents would not want you and you sisters to die,” she took a deep breath, hoping she wasn’t pushing Kyle beyond what his mind was capable of handling.  “I think your parents would want to help any way they could, even if it meant sacrificing themselves.”

Kyle dropped his arms from his head and glared at her. 

“I do not mean to offend you.  I am not trying to be disrespectful.  I’m just telling you what I think.”

“Screw you!” Kyle hissed.

His words upset her, but she did not blame him for feeling as he did.  The problem still remained, though, that the Hunters were expecting five bodies.  She needed to convince Kyle, and soon. 

“There won’t be a funeral for them, for your parents, for anyone.  If you do not do this, you and your sisters will die, and you will
all
go to the Hunters.” 

The gravity of her words seemed to appeal to his remaining shred of practicality.

“We have to do it, Kyle.  There is no other way.”

Amber expected Kyle to protest more, to ask more questions about what
was going on, who was expecting five bodies, but thankfully, he did not.  He was better off not asking.  He did not want to know what was going to happen.  She wished she did not know what was going to happen. 

“All right,” he said quietly and glanced at his sisters.  “Let’s go.”

He made his way over to where she stood by Kit’s head and she directed him to grab her teammate’s feet.

“Get her feet,” she said softly. 

She lifted Kit’s shoulders off the floor and Kyle did as she’d asked him to and lifted her feet.  She figured he ought to be as far from the gruesomeness of her crushed and bloodied face as possible.  Together, they shuffled quickly down the staircase and out the front door to the street.  There, they dropped her body, away from the house, away from Kyle and his sisters.  They did the same with the two male members.  When finally all the bodies had been placed on the asphalt, they hurried into the house.

Inside, Amber bounded up the
stairs, eager to distance herself from what would unfold any moment, and in need of a lookout point.  She closed the window Kyle had opened and watched from between the blinds.  Every part of her shook.  The entire situation was surreal, like a hallucination or a hideous dream from which she could not awake.  Everything and everybody around her had assumed a strange, dreamlike quality and moved jerkily.  It was as though her world was being looped through an ancient film reel and each frame bumped irregularly.  She rubbed her temples, feeling the pressure in her head increase to the point she thought her head would explode.  Every cell in her body smarted, throbbing with exhaustion, with remorse.  She had broken protocol.  She had killed her entire team and threw their bodies into the street.  But she did not regret what she’d done.  She regretted what her team had done, what each of Lord Terzini’s directives had compelled them to do.  They’d murdered, mercilessly.  They had not been capable of mercy, thanks to their maker.  She regretted that Kyle had to witness atrocities that would haunt his waking moments for the rest of his life, and she could not even guarantee that he’d have a long life to be haunted during.  She could hardly guarantee him the rest of the day. 

He stood next to her, his shoulder barely touching hers
and she wondered whether he could see her unraveling, actually see her psyche fracture. 

“What the hell?
” he said and ripped her from her descent from sanity.  “What the hell?”

Her world, and her eyes, snapped back into focus.  She gazed out the window and saw the first of the Hunters
prowl by the deceased.  Trailed by two others, he slunk his way around the bloodied bodies like a shadow, stealing on all fours, his muscled flanks quivering excitedly.  He lifted his massive head crowned by a full mane of golden hair and sniffed at the air.  A ripple tore through his body before a long string of saliva dripped from his wide mouth.  And then he sprang. 

The beast dove through the air with impo
ssible speed and grace despite his gargantuan body and landed on his powerful front quarters atop one of the bodies.  He began feasting on the flesh, tearing at it and shaking his head from side to side, frenzied.  The others followed suit and began indulging, devouring the banquet before them.

“What the hell are those?” Kyle
asked, his voice cracking, fright and shock etching his features.  “I can’t be seeing this.  Those, those things are
monsters
!”

“Those are Hunters,” Amber whispered.  “And if you take that uniform off, they will smell you from miles away.”

“There’s no way this is happening,” he gasped. 

Amber
looked down at the Hunters.  They were finishing their meal, had eaten each of the bodies in their entirety, bones and all.  They remained, however, licking blood from the pavement.  Her stomach churned and roiled and she swallowed back vomit that had risen in her throat.  She needed to get Kyle and the girls out of the house, away from the Hunters.  But she did not know how she was going to do it.

“Do you have a basement?” she turned to Kyle and asked.

“Yes,” he answered.

“We need to get your sister
s down there.  You, too, and keep them wrapped until I figure out how to get all of you out of here.”

She knew of no other way to protect them for the time being.  Moving to the lowest level of the house, underground seemed the best, most logical ch
oice.  It was her only choice. Now she just had to figure out how to get them out. But first she would have to meet with Lord Terzini to give him an update on their mission.

Chapter 8

“What the fuck, Melissa?” Alexandra railed.  “I mean, come on!  Can’t we just go stay at a hotel or something, any
damn place other than this shit hole?”

Melissa felt pretty much exactly how Alexandra felt, minus the profanities, about the sleeping arrangements.  But the alternative wasn’t much better.  Ed O’Malley’s house was no better than the eighteenth century barn they now stood in.  Overrun with filth and vermin, she was willing to bet the barn was actually an improvement from the rooms offered to them.  She was certain it was cleaner.

“At least we have privacy here,” Yoshi offered and wrapped his arms around Alexandra’s waist.

“Don’t even think about it!  The smell of hay and animal shit doesn’t get me going.  But I’m glad it works for you,” Alexandra snapped sassily and Yoshi dropped his hands and stepped back.

“It does smell awful,” Daniella said and waved her hand in front of her face.

“It’s not
that
bad,” Yoshi said and glanced at Gabriel.  “It smells better than Ed’s place, that’s for sure.  That house smells like something died in there.”

“I’m sure there
are
lots of dead things in there,” Ryan surprised everyone by chiming in.

Melissa laughed and so did the rest of the group.  He had a point.  The house did have an odor of decay about it.

“I’d much rather be out here than in there,” Gabriel said.

“Me, too,” Melissa added and thought that if she were to spend a night smelling that
stench of rot, she would smell it for the rest of her life.

“You guys are nuts,” Alexandra said and flopped down onto a haystack.

“Why?  You
want
to stay in that house?” Melissa asked.

“Fuck no!  I want to go to a hotel, or a motel, or a trailer, anywhere but here,” Alexandra complained and scanned the space.  “And where the hell are we supposed to go to the bathroom?  Did you think about that, Melissa?”

Melissa hadn’t thought about the bathroom situation, or lack thereof.  Now, as she considered it, the barn seemed even less feasible than before.  She was about to suggest they ask Ed if they could use his bathroom when Ryan spoke.

“Oh, don’t worry about that.  Ed let me borrow some of his camping gear,” Ryan said as he stepped out of the barn briefly and returned with a toilet seat that was equipped with fold-out legs. “See
, the legs fold out and it stands on its own,” he demonstrated.  “We just take it out into the woods behind the barn and do what we need to do.”

“Do what we need to do?” Melissa began but was distracted by the look on Alexandra’s face.  She’d screwed up her features in such a way that they looked equal parts pitiful and hysterical. 

Alexandra stared at the toilet seat with a look of shock and horror before erupting, “There is no fucking way I’m sitting on that thing!  Are you out of your mind?  What am I supposed to, just sit on that thing and crap on the ground?”