Sage
But so much had changed. Nothing was as it had been. Searching, sniffing through rubble that shattered at our merest touch. The heat of death, still smoldering at the base of many buildings that had once been. A red ring of infrared . It was thick, death, mostly zombies, quite a few zombies if my estimation was correct. Here and there I could find human remains. Those that had bunkered down in the basements and cellars, no doubt fallout shelters from the fifties, believing themselves safe. Never imagining that their deaths would come from their own kind and not the zombies at all.
I shuttered. Bile rising in my throat and aversion rearing it's ugly head. A pile of bones, children's bones, lay heaped together in a corner still standing. They clung together in death as they had done so in life. I said a prayer. God had taken them. A better place than this. My hand gripped my abdomen on its own accord. Sensing life and a flutter of hope.
My frustration grew as we shifted more rubble, as the ash cloud settled down around us and the hatred of dirty snow stained all and everything.
Suddenly, the scent of Ash arose over the smell of destruction and I paused in my search. Finally his scent returned and it was fresh. The beauty of it took my breath away and I sighed as I realized it was moving away from the heart of the city, moving towards the outskirts. I signaled to Zane, seeing his relief as much as my own. We backtracked, heading further north than our original transition had brought us.
Suddenly, the howl rent the air. A curdling scream of horror, anger and insidiousness...it wasn't right... The hair on my body came on end, the adrenaline burst through me in a rampant wave of pleasure and power. Whatever it was, it was behind us. Still farther away and unaware of our scent. But it was searching too. For what, I was not sure?
But it was cold, deadly and bloody. Hackles would rise from the chill of destruction those howls were unleashing on those within earshot. I did not know, but somehow I did, that whatever was approaching would be the end of everything, the end of us all.
Copyrighted 2014, Aelfwynn MacGregor, AMB
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Darke Night
HorrorNormal life if for the mundane. You don't learn this, until you lose it. Darkeness can descend quickly in a storybook world, and even quicker in the real one. Darkeness comes on in the time of disease. As the flu sweeps nations, changes begin in the...
