Bladed Cross: An End Before The End Times: book 1

THAT WHICH SHOULD NOT BREATHE

Darkness.

That is all he saw, when he regained consciousness.

His eyes opened, and it was as if he had gone blind. At first, he feared that he did. He remembered little of what happened. He seemed to recall his truck exploding, burning, his hearing compromised by a fierce ringing. Then he gave Ted an order. That was the last thing he remembered.

Owen Collins began to move around, groping in the darkness, he couldn't see anything, not even a dim illumination. The back of his head ached badly. Carefully, he touched it, and his fingers came back slippery, and sticky. He realized that he'd been knocked unconscious. Someone had brought him here. Wherever this was and whatever it looked like had turned him into meat for the grinder. Silence was now his most essential tool to survive.

Trying not to panic, he fumbled for his flashlight, but he couldn't find it. He couldn't find anything on his belt. No gun, no radio, no handcuffs. He felt a burning in his gut, and a sob that he muffled. He couldn't see, he couldn't hear anything but his own breathing which he fought to steady. And there was a smell. A smell he'd come to easily recognize.

Death. Not just the present odor of rotting flesh, but something unnatural that lingered in the air, reeking with sinister qualities. A kind of. . . spiritual odor. A sent which belonged to something that should not breathe.

He didn't want to know what was in here with him, nor what had been, but he groped around anyway. Riskily, he managed to get a good idea of what kind of place he'd been brought to. There was bare, cold earth under him. For what he took to be walls were also dirt, but he felt no ceiling. He was underground somewhere.

Owen was able to stand, and he felt around awkwardly, walking slowly and carefully around the seemingly empty space. But it wasn't empty. Even walking as slowly as he could, such caution in the dark yielded no aid. He tripped over something and fell, slamming his face on something soft, and cold. The while, he tried not to make a sound, regardless of the jabbing pain indifferent parts of his body.

The smell was horrible, and he lay right on top of whatever its source was. Owen hesitantly reached out a hand. . . and felt that same softness.

Clothing.

Clothing and flesh. He felt bare skin and shuddered. A disturbing sensation washed over him as he felt hair, then a forehead. A vein, inside which, cold, still blood.

He'd experienced nothing like this. Owen always considered the worst of the situations he'd been in, and all the ones that came before paled in comparison.

This was one of his worst fears, and it had come true. A dark and unknown place, with dead bodies, and the presence of evil.

He slowly got back to his feet and started to feel for something, anything besides dead flesh. But to no avail. Ever so carefully, he began to stand on his toes with his hands as high as the tips of his fingers could reach, and much to his surprise, felt solid wood. He slowly moved around, searching upward. This time his hands hit something different. He reached, felt it again, and paused. Metal hinges.

He was in some sort of cellar or basement.

There was no latch on the inside so he began to move forward, only to run into something hard. He felt it, wood. A wood ladder. He climbed it and felt the wooden door. He pushed on it but it wouldn't budge. He felt surging panic as he climbed back down. Not knowing where he was or what to do, Owen began to hyperventilate.

He had to be careful, forcing himself to maintain a steady breathing, not knowing if this place was airtight or not.

He leaned against the dirt wall with his hands on his chest, trying to think. He was in some sort of underground cellar, robbed of any tools to possibly free him, there were definitely people in here who were now obviously dead, and he was trapped. As frightened as he was, Owen suddenly felt strangely calm. He didn't know why, but he was. Calm, alone in the dark, unaware of his surroundings, hearing nothing, fiddling with a loose rock in the dirt wall. . .