Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (14 page)

He
turned his dreaming eye inward to the passenger cabin. Two rows of seats sat
divided by an aisle, two chairs in each row. The dark cloth on the seats hid
stains left by thousands of riders covering thousands of miles of track. Samuel
looked up and noticed a single, glowing bulb: the one above his seat. The car
rattled and hitched as the train pulled it through a slight curve in the track,
still bearing east on its unknown, eternal voyage.

“I’m
not leaving here.”

Samuel
turned to his right and saw Kole in the seat across the aisle, smiling and
flipping through a pornographic magazine.

“I’m
dreaming,” Samuel said.

Kole
shook his head and chuckled. “No shit.”

Samuel
sat forward and raised his head above the seats. He looked to the front of the
car and then toward the back.

“Just
the two of us.”

Samuel
turned back to face Kole with a look of disgust.

“I’ve
always hated that song.”

The
single reading light flickered and died, leaving Samuel’s dream self with
nothing but the silhouette of empty seats and Kole’s voice.

“I
don’t care, because I die with this locality.” The sentence drained the
remaining frivolity from Kole’s voice.

“What
about me?” asked Samuel.

“What
about you?” Kole asked in return. “I don’t know what your trip is, man. I don’t
know what punched your hole or how you slipped. But I know why I ain’t going
home.”

Samuel
slid from the window to the aisle seat. He looked into Kole’s face and saw a
line of moisture under one eye, the darkness concealing everything else.

“I
can’t give you absolution, but I can listen.”

Kole
nodded and began. “Always shot my mouth off before my brain could catch up. Guess
they woulda labeled me ADHD these days, shoved drugs down my throat to cure me.
Back in the late ’70s I was a simple troublemaker. Knew early on that college
was not in my future. My older bro got the brains, I got the brawn.”

Samuel
saw Kole glance down at his left bicep.

“After
high school, I started to unravel. Hung out in the wrong places with the wrong
people, and sooner or later, that shit catches up to you. My dad warned me. I
always knew he liked me the best: well, the best out of the boys. My youngest
sister was definitely his favorite kid. Anyway, he knew where I was headed. He
never told us stories of his childhood, but I had a feeling he’d been up to the
same shit, which is why him and I bonded.

“I
ran numbers for a while, and scored a stash with low-level dealers, mostly
street thugs who would sell you a vial of rat poison and let you die an agonizing
death for ten bucks. I found out that selling drugs required much less time
than running numbers, and that if you skimmed the inventory, you could get high
for free. That’s when I lost control.”

A
low, rumbling whistle emerged as the train continued toward the horizon, now
dotted with the first stars of the evening. A sliver of moon poked up from the
underworld. Samuel looked at Kole.

“Drugs
make you do shit. They make you do things you couldn’t imagine doing. The
system is broke. I did three stints in county, and none of them were long
enough to straighten me out. All they did was make me that much more hungry for
the good shit, the drugs you can’t get from dealing with the prison guards. The
third time I got out is when it happened.”

Samuel
leaned in closer to Kole. The floor of the train vibrated underneath his feet
and began to rattle his teeth.

“Got
hopped up on the synthetic shit. Some redneck in a trailer probably cooked it
up in a bathtub. It was really bad. I probably woulda been better off if it had
made my heart explode, but it didn’t. Nope, just shut my brain down to the
point where I was more animal than man.

“I
never did deals in a park or crowded place. Sure, it was safer and there was
less of a chance of eating a bullet, but I didn’t give a shit about my own
safety by then. That deal in the park shoulda never gone down, for many
reasons.

“My
sidekick, Hoppy, set it up with one of the local street gangs. These thugs got
their hands on a crate of Russian assault rifles, and all of a sudden they were
rolling through town with their cocks swinging. I told Hoppy we didn’t need the
score, that we could move it without dealing with these assholes. But the money
was too tempting, and the drugs fuck with your ability to make rational
decisions.”

Kole
paused. He knew most of the story was procrastination. He pushed through,
without a choice. “I never saw her. Well, that’s not true. I stood over her
dying body punched with seventeen bullet holes, but I never saw her before
that. Was it my gun? Hoppy’s gun? The motherfucking
puta
that
emptied his clip in the park? It doesn’t really matter, does it?”

Samuel
waited, understanding that Kole was not looking for an answer.

“Her
mom was in shock. She kept tugging at the girl’s backpack, trying to brush the
blood off of it like it had simply fallen in the dirt. She brushed her
daughter’s hair back and ignored the hole that oozed black blood from her
forehead. The scum that tried ripping us off bolted, and that’s probably what
kept Hoppy and me from getting pinched for it. Everyone in the park fingered
the dark-skinned fellas with machine guns strapped to their backs, fleeing the
park at a full sprint. Hoppy and me, we just kinda walked out. We shoved our
handguns into our waistbands and shuffled through the crowd with the same look
of terror that everyone else had.

“The
court never got a chance to put them, or us, on trial. That mom never got a chance
to speak her mind on her dead daughter’s behalf. Is it justice? Maybe. The cops
caught up to them three blocks and ten minutes later. Put over sixty rounds in
each of the thugs.”

The
train accelerated. Samuel felt the windows vibrate, and looked down at the rock
piles now blurring past in the darkness. Hundreds of white pinpoints appeared
in the otherwise-black canvas.

“I
think Hoppy met his match under a bridge about a year later. He thought he was
getting a ten-dollar blowjob, but it turned into a switchblade to the gut. They
say it takes a long time to bleed out that way. That it’s painful. I hope it
was. That fucker deserved to die like a pig.”

“Something
is happening with the train,” Samuel said. “It’s speeding up.”

Kole
shook his head. “We ain’t got much time. I think you know all you need to know
about me.”

“Except
how you got here,” replied Samuel.

“C’mon,
man. Do I have to spell it all out for you?”

Samuel
waited.

“After
the deal went south and I parted ways with Hoppy, I went from King Shit to your
average street junkie. I tried killing myself with that stuff. Man, did I try. But
I ran out of money before I could finish the job. I got real low, as if having
that little girl’s blood on my hands wasn’t low enough. I started doing shit
for money, shit I’m not proud of.”

Samuel
raised his eyebrows.

“Sucking
dick, okay? Not like it matters that I’m telling you this now. You don’t even
know me. But yeah, that’s what I had to do to get my money for blow. Blow for
blow.” Kole watched Samuel stifle a snicker. “It’s cool, man. I was making a
joke.”

Kole
waited for Samuel to stop smiling before he continued. “It’s never across,
always with. The movies get it wrong. Slicing with the vein will almost always
guarantee a tub full of blood.”

The
train jerked to the left, and then to the right. Kole extended both arms toward
Samuel, turning his forearms upside down.

“So
you pulled it off, the tub full of blood?” Samuel asked.

“You
tell me, hotshot. I’m here with you, the old man, and the skinny emo chick. This
place ain’t home, and it’s being eaten by a fucking cloud while zombies parade
around the cabin that wild wolves left to rot. Did I pull it off?”

Samuel
stared at Kole’s face until he blinked. When his eyes reopened, he saw the
crusty, hard, wood floor of the cabin and the wall he faced on his makeshift
bunk.

***

Major stood at
the window, his back facing the others in a cabin that felt more cramped with
each passing hour. He shifted from one leg to the next, muttering underneath
his breath and drawing diagrams in the air. Samuel looked at Mara. She smiled,
legs crossed on the chair. He felt the twinge in his chest as their eyes met. She
was so young. It wouldn’t matter unless he was a college professor and she was
a second-semester freshman. He could see Mara, dreamy eyed and optimistic. But
this was not a campus, and he was not a professor. He let go of her gaze and
turned to face Kole. He had run out of charcoal and so resumed drawing figures
in the dust. Kole winked at Samuel and dropped his chin. Samuel raised his
eyebrows and turned away.

“Thousands,
probably,” said Major.

Samuel stood
and walked over to him. He used his elbow to smear the greasy film from the
windowpane and stooped to look out.

The human forms
clumped like cattle in anticipation of a thunderstorm. They stood underneath
trees and out in the open. The lonely figures canted to one side, always
leaning toward the west and the oncoming force of destruction. Others grouped
together, huddled in their rags, with colorless faces. Samuel stared, thinking
that the creatures could be confused for statues. He didn’t see them move but
realized that they had to have arrived there somehow. The Barren no longer
stretched open and clear to the tree line; now the silent forms hid the ground
from view.

“Are they
planning an attack?” Mara asked from the chair, one hand circling and rubbing her
other wrist.

“I think
they’re guardians. Going to keep us in here, stand guard until the cloud can consume
it all.”

Samuel looked
at Major’s face and grimaced at his response. “Pinning us down with sheer
numbers?” he asked.

“Could be.”

Kole stood and
threw a piece of kindling into the corner of the cabin. “I’m out,” he said,
walking toward the door.

Samuel stepped
in front of him and spun so his back rested on the cool wood.

“Nobody’s
leaving,” Samuel said.

“Outta my way,
cowboy.”

Samuel looked
at Mara, then Major. Neither moved.

“I can’t let
you do that. If you go out there, who knows what they’ll do.”

“Looks to me
like they aren’t doing anything but making you shit your pants,” replied Kole. “Get
out of my way before I knock you out.”

Major nodded at
Samuel. He stepped to the side and turned a palm up toward the doorknob.

“Fine. Go right
ahead.”

Kole snickered.
He bent his right arm at an angle and lifted it to kiss the bicep. “Smackdown.”

Kole turned the
knob, and Samuel heard the gasp from Major.

The thousands
of faces that had been staring at the ground turned up in one motion. Every form
revealed a blank, dead gaze, their eyes nothing but eternal black marks, mouths
open with tongues protruding like baby serpents.

“Don’t,” Samuel
said to Kole.

Without a
reply, Kole pulled the door the rest of the way open and stepped out on the
porch. The creatures groaned in unison. Legs moved toward the cabin with the
sounds of brittle bones snapping under the strain. Those standing alone pulsed,
and the creatures in the packs shifted forward in a mass of grey, decaying
flesh.

Mara lunged for
the door and slammed it shut. She threw herself against it, her chest rising
and falling in rapid succession.

“He’s sparked
some interest,” Major said.

Samuel moved
back to the window and watched Kole take two steps off the porch. The bodies
continued moving toward him. They marched at a slow pace, but with the
certainty that their prey would never escape. Samuel looked deeper, toward the
tree line, and saw wave after wave of the creatures coming out of the forest
and making their way to Kole.

Kole crouched,
bent his knees, and raised his fist. He yelled something, but the sound was
swallowed by the dying locality. The first two that came close to Kole wore
men’s clothing. They extended their arms, thumbs touching. Their eyes locked on
Kole, and their mouths opened and closed at irregular intervals. He cocked his
right arm behind his ear and stepped into the punch. The form closest absorbed
the strike, its head twisting with the force of it. The creature’s legs
continued to propel it toward Kole. He reared back and struck the walking
corpse two more times, each one sending a spray of skin and rotted cloth into
the air but not stopping the forward momentum of the creature. Its fingers
grasped Kole’s shoulder, while the second one grabbed his waist. Kole flailed,
and the fight blurred into random bursts of motion. Others continued walking
toward the altercation, including mobs that started beneath the trees and were
replaced by more coming from the forest.

“They’re going
to tear him apart,” said Mara, the nail on her index finger secured between her
teeth.

“It’s what he
wanted,” replied Major.

Samuel shook
his head and turned back to the fight in the yard. Four more creatures had made
it to Kole.

“Move,” he said
to Mara.

Samuel nudged
her aside and opened the door. He heard the grunts of the creatures and the
heavy breathing of Kole becoming buried in their reaching arms. He ran over and
pulled on the shoulder of one. The creature turned, and Samuel froze. Its dead
eyes stared into his, and he felt his heart stammer in his chest. The tongue
writhed inches from Samuel’s face. He regained his composure and tossed the
creature to the side, where it crumpled to the ground, struggling to regain a
standing position. Samuel heard Kole gasp, but could not see the man beneath
the pile of rotted flesh. He shoved a hand toward where he thought Kole might
be.