The Survivor Chronicles: The Risen (36 page)

"Mom," Leah said and then shuddered. Her
gaze drifted toward the trees as tears brimmed in her eyes.

Phoebe rested her hand on her sister's
shoulder. Mary Ellen stared at them but they didn't elaborate and
no one pushed them on it. They all had their horror stories they
didn't want to share. "Maybe that means we'll finally be able to
get into town," R.J. said.

Mary Ellen's head shot up at those words.
"What do you mean?" she inquired sharply.

"It's overrun with Nutters," Rusty said. "We
were living next to another group of ten people. They were
determined to try to go into town and find supplies. They asked us
to go with them but we'd already traveled around the outskirts of
town enough to know it was overrun. Nutters are smart and they've
been in charge in there for awhile; I'm sure they've set traps by
now. We told them that but they believed there were enough of them
to make it." Nausea twisted through Mary Ellen's stomach, her eyes
lifted to the darkening sky. "We never saw another member of that
group again."

"Oh God," she breathed as she stared at the
empty drive. The other group had gone out with ten people and never
come back. They'd only sent out five, half that number.

"What is it?" Phoebe inquired.

"There are five more of us. They went into
town this morning to search for supplies. They should have been
back by now," she answered.

Rochelle took hold of her hand and squeezed
it. Mary Ellen pulled her closer and held her against her side; she
knew her daughter would be devastated if they didn't return. They
all would. All of the losses they'd suffered had been
heartbreaking, but she wasn't sure they could recover from the loss
of five of them.

"I'm sure they're fine," Leah said but Mary
Ellen heard the hollowness in her tone.

"Have you seen anyone? Have you heard
anything? Do you know how this all started?" Nancy inquired
anxiously. Donald rested his hand on her arm as that frantic look
came back into her eyes.

Rusty frowned at all of them. "You haven't
seen one of them yet?"

"Seen one of what?" Donald inquired.

Rusty ran a hand through his white hair,
causing it to stand up in little spikes around his lined face.
"We've only seen one, thankfully. We were holed up at a horse farm
in Goshen. It came that night."

Riley,

She'd witnessed a lot of things over the
past couple of months. She'd watched three of her friends die, one
of whom she'd killed herself when he'd tried to
eat
her. Planes had crashed from the sky, holes
had opened within the earth, lava had flowed forth, humans had
turned into cannibals and mindless beings with only basic
functions. The whole world had been turned upside down, inside out,
rotated on its axis, and kicked in the ass but
none
of it compared to what emerged from in
between the buildings of what she assumed was the maintenance area.
None of it could have prepared her for what she was witnessing
now.

Everything within her went cold. It felt as
if her bladder emptied out, and she would have thought she'd pissed
herself if it hadn't been for the fact that she was as cold as a
naked man in Antarctica. At least her pee would have been warm, but
then maybe her body had caused it to freeze on its way down. She
didn't feel it trickling down her leg, but then she didn't feel
much beyond her spinning brain.

For all she knew she was a disembodied head
and the rest of her had ceased to exist. She didn't find the idea
as implausible as she would have five minutes ago. In fact, if
she'd been able to move her hands she actually would have checked
to see if her body was still there, but her limbs were a part of
the body she no longer controlled.

She couldn't even be sure if the others were
around her anymore. For all she knew she now stood in a completely
different realm. One that was beyond anything she ever could have
imagined and had nothing to do with the world she'd always known.
Her eyes were still working as they sent rapid images into her
brain but maybe they'd been fried out by the light, or perhaps they
had
completely malfunctioned.

The horses had run to the fence at the other
end of the track, they remained oddly silent as they crowded close
together. As one, they turned and ran back toward them. Riley
wanted to scream at them to go away, to go back to the other side.
They were what the thing that had materialized was looking for as
it changed direction and started toward them.

But it wasn't a thing. No matter how much
her brain was screaming at her,
no, no,
no
! It also registered everything and knew exactly what
it was before her. It was also screaming at her,
yes
! Every thing that had happened over these past
couple of months, that there had been no answer for, and no
understanding of
finally
made
sense.

Weeks ago, she'd accepted the fact they
would never know what had caused it all, but that was ok because
the answers wouldn't do anything for them. They couldn't. No matter
what the answers revealed, it was impossible for them to help in
any way. The answers wouldn't bring back her family; they wouldn't
bring Carol, Lee, Bobby, Josh, and countless others back to life.
They wouldn't transport her into her home again and they wouldn't
make it all better.

She'd been fine with never knowing, she'd
actually begun to realize the answer would probably only make her
angrier. The answers would only bring more why's with them; she'd
accepted the simple,
because it
was
, explanation. There was nothing anyone could tell
her that would make her understand, so what was the point of
knowing?

She didn't feel angry now though. She was
strangely empty inside and yet filled all at once. They were the
oddest sensations to have hit her at the same time, but there they
were colliding like atoms inside of her.

The horses piled up against the grassy hill
beneath them. John, the first to find his feet again, took a step
away from the animals that were beginning to crawl over each other
like ants now. With John's movement, Riley felt tears well up in
her eyes as she stared in dismay at the distressed animals beneath
them.
The mounds
, she finally
understood them now as one animal toppled and another climbed on
top of it.

Tears slipped down her cheeks but she didn't
understand them. She hadn't cried for the man she'd killed today,
she hadn't even cried for Josh, and yet she was openly sobbing for
the animals beneath her. Openly sobbing for the world, she realized
as the light that glowed brighter than any ray of sun continued to
approach the hill. Except unlike the sun, this light didn't burn
her flesh or heat her iced skin. It wasn't a cold light emanating
from it, not like the moon bouncing off of the snowcaps on a
January night would have been, it was simply just a light.

It wasn't a very healthy looking light
either as it had a greenish/yellowish hue that reminded her of puss
and illuminated a circular area of about thirty feet on each side
of it. She would have given anything not to be able to see every
excruciating detail the light revealed but it was impossible not
to, especially when she couldn't tear her eyes away.

They were pressed as close as sardines and
climbing over top of one another but the horses still didn't make a
sound. Neither did Riley, unless everyone else could hear the
forceful thub-dub of her heart knocking against her ribs. From the
infield of the track the thing continued to approach at a
relentless yet leisurely pace.

There was no rush here, there was nowhere
for the animals to go. Nowhere for any of them to go, not with this
light filled creature walking the earth.

"Death rode a pale horse," John whispered
from beside her.

Though she'd already known it and her brain
had been screaming
no
even as the
knowledge was taking root, his words solidified it in her mind.
Yes, it was Death come to take them all.

She would have expected a proud thrust to
its shoulders but instead it appeared as indifferent to its
surroundings as a fly. Or perhaps
they
were the flies, or the horses were, or the
entire
world
was, and this thing
was the swatter.

It wore no clothes and yet Riley didn't get
the impression that it was naked, or at least she didn't see any of
the goodies. It was more like a Ken doll, all sexless, but minus
the hair. A skull and bones didn't ride the horse like she'd seen
in some drawings and paintings, it didn't wear fancy clothes or
armor. There was simply a sexless, alien like creature approaching
them.

She almost laughed out loud as she recalled
the middle-aged man from the restaurant when they'd been in the
stadium.
Aliens
, he had insisted
and perhaps in some way it actually was an alien. It certainly
hadn't been
born
of this earth. But
then she realized that it had. Death had been as born to this earth
as she had. It had been created and been doing its job thousands of
years before she'd ever been born. It had been placed here by
something far more powerful than she was.

Perhaps the idea of aliens had been created
by someone that had seen this being on some distant day, a day so
long forgotten that the idea of its actual existence had been
laughed off by many over time.

As it came closer, she could make out the
bones beneath the pus colored flesh. The flesh may have been murky
in color but it appeared as smooth and unblemished as marble. No
bruises marred it; no wrinkles lined its face or body. She didn't
know why but she got the distinct impression the flesh would be as
hard as marble to the touch, and as unyielding as the creature
sitting straight on the back of the horse.

Death finally drew close enough that she
could actually make out its features and see that it did have bones
beneath its skin. Flesh covered its skull, but she clearly saw the
skull beneath the flesh that had been molded over it. The contrast
was the strangest thing to see. Death had a thin-bridged nose, full
white mouth, and cheekbones that Michelangelo would have been
jealous of. It was a face that would have made both men and women
jealous of its beauty and strength. A face that would have made
artists weep and musicians sing. It wasn't the face that belonged
on something helping to bring about the destruction of their
world.

The horse it rode had seen far better days,
months ago. Every one of its ribs stood out, its high shoulder
bones were clearly visible, and its jagged hips were harsh points.
Its head bowed as if it carried the weight of the world upon its
back and she supposed in some ways it actually
did
. The horse was grayish in color but a sickly
yellow swirled throughout its mottled coat. Riley wondered if the
horse had been that color the entire time or if the color had been
leached from it by Death. Or perhaps Death's presence had leeched
into
the horse. She wondered how it
even held the weight of Death upon its back as its knees buckled
briefly, before it continued forward once more.

The horses below them stopped moving; she
assumed most of them were already dead as the spectral figure
approached them. The silence that descended over the night was as
complete as a graveyard at midnight. Nothing moved, even the breeze
stopped, as the entire world seemed to hold its collective
breath.

The figure slid with fluid grace off of the
horse. Riley's breath hitched in as the horse it had been riding
crumpled to ash as soon as Death was free of it. One white hand so
large it made Shaq's look small, grabbed hold of the mane of the
horse on top of the pile.

As soon as the hand clasped hold of the
hair, the horse stopped its movements. White began to seep through
the horse's dark mane, bleeding out to spread through the deep
brown coat. The color spread down the neck, through its front
shoulders, and into its back. It continued to turn the once brown
horse the same yellowish white as the one that had crumpled before
it. Every part of the horse changed shade until the only part with
any color left was its black muzzle. Then the horse gave a snort, a
white plume of air escaped its nostrils, and the contrasting black
muzzle faded away to match the rest of it.

Ice
, she
thought as the creature pulled the horse down from the top of the
pile and climbed elegantly onto its back. Though it was completely
white and yellow, the horse still appeared as healthy as it had
when it won the climb to the top of the pile. Not only did Death
bleed the color from its rides but it also drained the life from
them over time.

Of course it
would
, she realized. It was Death after all; it
eventually took the life from everything and everyone.

With its new mount secured, Death's head
tipped back. She was certain her heart stopped as eyes the purest
blue she'd ever seen landed upon them.
This is
it
, she realized. They'd come this far, survived
situations that had taken so many other lives, but no one,
no
one escaped death.

And it knew they were here.

Riley inhaled deeply; she didn't even bother
to grab for her gun. What would be the point? She didn't want to go
quietly into the night but she also wasn't going to run away
screaming or firing like a lunatic at something she'd never be able
to avoid anyway. Apparently, the others felt the same way as none
of them made a move.

Those eyes burned with arctic ice as they
stared up at them. Riley stood and waited for it to ride off the
track, come up the hill, and suck the life and color from
them
just like it had the horse.
Instead, it simply sat and stared at them. Without a word, it
turned the horse with ease and walked it back across the infield of
the track and toward the chain link fence.