Path of the Horseman (7 page)

Simon picked up on this.

“You can stay here tonight,” he told me. “If
you still want to find Kade or Logan tomorrow, I’ll lead you out.
Sometimes I leave the resort to get food, so I know the safest ways
in and out of the city.”

“But you’re not going to come.”

Simon shook his head. “The world’s going to
starve, Avery. Might as well eat all the food I can find. No point
in wasting.”

He tried to smile, but it looked
uncomfortable on his face. Simon sighed, took his box of Cheerios,
and left the living room. At least I had the couch.

***

I had expected all of this. The flames, the
blood, the screams. It was all part of the Tribulation, the great
cleansing to save God’s earth from the sinners.

But I hadn’t expected to feel it with a human
heart. I understood why we had been given these bodies. It was
easier to play the part of the wolf when it was clothed as a sheep.
Yet when the time of retribution came, when the first of my victims
contracted the perfect, incurable disease, I had not expected to
feel pain.

I did not know what burrowed its way into my
heart the day I watched that little boy get bitten by a much
stronger Plagued. He screamed and reached out with his tiny hand,
begging his parents to save him from where he’d fallen. His father
had run back, shoving the adult corpse away from his son. He picked
the boy up and ran for safety, unable to silence his child’s
screaming.

I watched them all, trying to rationalize why
my pulse felt heavier than normal. The parents hid as well as they
could, the father and the boy’s older brother watching nervously
with crude weapons while their mother attempted to soothe him.
There was nothing to be done. The boy was shaking and trembling and
screaming, too weak to hold back the agony placed in him.

The younger humans always died sooner than
the adults. Death came for the boy within eight hours instead of
twelve. The younger the victim, the faster the death. T he family
crowded over him, weeping at their loss.

My brother rose, invisible to the remaining
members of the human family. He walked over to me, silent as the
grave. He stood by my side and watched as I did. There was nothing
on his face. Mine felt wet.

“
Tell me he deserved it, brother,” I
whispered. He looked at me. “Tell me he had an evil soul, and would
have ruined lives if he still breathed.”

I couldn’t tear my eyes from the family
huddling and crying over the dead boy in the dark bus station.
Death paid them no attention.

“
You know I cannot see that far,” he
answered.

It was as though a giant fist had been
plunged into my chest, gripping my human heart like a vice. It hurt
when I breathed.

“
This has to be done,” I tried to tell
myself. “There must be sacrifices made for the Second
Coming.”

Death was silent for a long, long time. It
felt like hours before he spoke again.

“
Perhaps. But not all of them are
justifiable.”

The boy woke violently. The smell of flesh
hit his nose, and he sank his little teeth into his mother’s neck.
She screamed in tune with the older boy. Her husband pried the
little one off, but held him as though he feared causing further
harm to the child. The dead boy thrashed and bit his father’s hand.
The older boy ran for his father, raising his hand to strike his
brother. He hesitated, unable to see the monster wearing his
sibling’s skin. The little boy did not have the same connection. He
lurched over and bit his brother’s calf. The older boy collapsed
and fought weakly.

Death left my side, and waited for his
moment.

I tilted my head back, tears streaking past
my temples. I watched the dark clouds mix with the rancid smoke
from War. I waited for the voice that released me to speak
again.

“
You made me instrument of this turmoil,”
I told the sky. “Why are you making me feel its pain?”

I waited for an answer. A sign. Anything to
tell me that all of this suffering would be worth it.

None came.

The screams behind me were silenced.

***

The sharp bang in my dream woke me up. I
rocketed up from the couch, pulling out the knife I’d hidden behind
the pillow under my head. My pulse was hammering and my breathing
was harsh, but there was no threat I could see. No Plagued slamming
into the walls. No Soulless pounding through the door. No demons
appearing out of thin air to roast me. Simon wasn’t in trouble. He
hated fighting, but he wouldn’t be quiet if he were in trouble.

I relaxed my grip on the knife and dropped
back onto the couch. I sighed and ran a hand down my face. I never
technically had dreams. Dreams and nightmares were human things,
and I was far from human. All I had were memories, but they might
as well have been nightmares.

It was still dark out, but I had no idea what
time it was. Nobody cared about time after the Tribulation. You had
sunup, day, sunset, and night. Judging from how dark it was
outside, it was probably the middle of the night, which meant I
only got a couple hours of sleep. I figured I might as well get up
and go through some katas or something. I sure as shit wasn’t going
to get any more sleep.

Swinging myself back up and twisting so my
boots were on the carpet, I rose to my feet and walked to my
rucksack. Aside from the food I’d taken from Simon, there wasn’t
much in there. A flashlight, spare clothes, a couple more knives. I
did have a small block of wood with a circular target drawn in it.
Being alone meant lots of time to train, so most of the holes in
the wood were in the center of the target. I was pretty good at
knife throwing, and practiced enough that I could even throw
KA-BARs, which were designed for stabbing instead of tossing.

Simon was a pretty heavy sleeper, so I didn’t
think he’d wake up to bitch if I propped up the target and starting
practicing–

A heavy, muffled bang came from the
window.

I snapped my head in the direction of the
sound, wondering if I was hearing things. The bang came again, and
I knew I wasn’t imaging it. I dropped the target and held my knife,
then walked to the window and looked down.

The window gave me a perfect view of the
resort’s golf course. A horde of Plagued were shambling through the
main path, dragging themselves along with as much enthusiasm as
reanimated corpses could muster. There were at least two dozen of
them.

But that wasn’t what made me press my hands
against the glass and gape like a stranded fish.

Stuck in the middle of the golf course was a
stained yellow school bus. Outside the bus, trying to repair it and
take cover, were people.

Fucking
human people.

Vance was right. There were survivors.

And now the dead surrounded them.

“Simon! Get the fuck up!”

My brother must not have fallen asleep yet,
because he was as quiet as a pissed off elephant when he rushed
into the living room. He glared at me, but his bow was in hand and
his arrows were strapped to his back. I saw all of this out of the
corner of my eye. The goddamn living, breathing,
humans
still had ninety-nine percent of my attention.

“What the hell, Avery? There’s nothing–”

“Fucking
look
!” I shouted as I pointed
at the golf course.

If the sharpness of my voice didn’t
immediately grab his attention, the next gunshot did. Simon rushed
the glass window and stared down at the bus.

“Holy shit,” he breathed. “That can’t be
right…”

But it was. Soulless were weapons. They
didn’t need guns. If they got bored and wanted to take apart some
Plagued, they went at them with fangs and claws. And they damn sure
didn’t huddle in a tight circle and protect each other.

There was no doubt in my mind. Those were
seven living humans down there fighting for their lives against the
monsters I had created.

“We have to do something,” I said. I pushed
away from the window, grabbed my machete from the side of the
couch, looped its holster over my head so it rested on my back, and
raced for the door.

Simon swerved in front of me.

“That’s not a good idea,” he warned me.

I blinked. “Are you fucking insane? They’re
human
, and they’re going to get killed out there. We can’t
let them die.”

I tried to move forward, but Simon put his
hand on my chest and stopped me.

“Avery, listen to me. You’re not human. If
you go out there and fight, you’re going to use your powers, and
all their alarms will go off. Humans aren’t entirely stupid.
Eventually they’ll figure out who you are, and that you’re the
reason the Plagued exist.”

Leave it to Simon to be the voice of
rationality and common sense. Leave it to me not to give a
shit.

“Those people out there survived for a
reason. I need to know what it is. They could be part of the Second
Coming, the whole reason we were sent down here to fuck up the
world. So either help me or don’t, Simon. But I’m going out that
door right now.”

My brother took his hand away from my chest
and stepped off to the side. I marched past him to the door and
practically yanked it from its hinges. I didn’t hear Simon follow
me. I had no time to care.

I sprinted down the stairs at a frightening
speed. I’d been gifted with a little extra speed when I was given
the meat-suit, but time was never on anybody’s side. No matter how
tough those humans were, they would run out of bullets sooner
before later. That was assuming a lucky Plagued wouldn’t bite them
when they weren’t paying attention. All it took was one bite to
screw everything up. Those humans had probably been together for
the last six months. They would see each other as a family. If just
one member of that family died, the rest would be crushed.

The image of a little boy eating his
heartbroken parents flashed through my mine. I ran faster.

When I made it out to the grounds, finding
the group was easy. All I had to do was look for the horde of
corpses and listen to the gunfire. I bolted across the grounds,
leaped up the steps and hurtled over the bodies of the
definitely-dead.

Shouts mixed in with the gunfire. They
sounded urgent and desperate. Not good.

As I approached the crowd of Plagued, I
thought about how best to attack them. I hated to admit it, but
Simon was right. I couldn’t use my powers at the drop of a hat and
think the humans would shower me with hugs and kisses. They’d see
me as another monster to turn into confetti. Even if I bent the
rules a little bit, I’d still risk the chance that they’d glimpse
my smoke. Blades were the only way to go.

Looked like I was going to get my practice
after all.

I drew my machete from my back and gripped it
in both hands. The Plagued never saw me coming.

I raised the blade and slammed it down into
the skull of the first Plagued I saw. Its skull split like a piece
of wood under an axe. I moved to the left, swinging the machete
like a baseball bat and cutting through the neck of the next
corpse. Its head and body tumbled in opposite directions. The head
bumped the shoulder of another Plagued, and that was when they
started to notice me.

Here we go
.

I slashed out with the machete again, taking
off another head. More of the Plagued turned and staggered toward
me. I had nothing to worry about at my back, so I let them
come.

Rushing forward, I swept my blade up, slicing
open the face of another Plagued. I pivoted and swung down, the
weapon crashing into the temple of a bulky corpse that had been
reaching for my arms. The machete was stuck deep in its head, and
didn’t come out with one yank. I spotted a Plagued woman making
good time on my left. I gave it my approval by kicking it in the
face.

Finally freeing my machete, I backed up. I’d
taken out five already, but now seven had seen me as fresh meat.
Lucky me. One of them, a former cop by the looks of his ragged
uniform, held out its decaying hands and opened his mouth, showing
me a blackened tongue and blacker teeth. I grimaced and hacked off
its arms in one clean slice, then drove the machete into its open
mouth until it cracked out of the back of its head.

They were getting closer now. I pulled my
machete free and chopped down on another Plagued’s neck. Its head
didn’t quite come off, but it wasn’t going anywhere with a severed
spinal column. I drew a knife from my belt and reversed its grip. I
rushed another Plagued and jammed my knee in its stomach. It
buckled in half, the perfect position for me to drive my knife into
the base of its neck.

Letting the body drop, I swung out again and
sliced open two more Plagued necks at the same time. The strike
didn’t kill them, but it made them stumble back. I took a step to
rush them when heavy hands planted themselves on my shoulders.

I staggered from the abrupt weight, then
slammed my head back. From the smell and lack of noise, I could
tell a Plagued had grabbed me. My skull smashed into its nose and
rocked its head back. I slipped free from its grip and shoved my
machete into its throat. I twisted the blade and ripped it out the
side of the monster’s neck. Blood squirted, and the heavyset corpse
dropped.