Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (18 page)

The horde had reconfigured
itself. Half of the closest creatures swayed beneath his tree, no longer
looking up or reaching into the sky for him. The other half inside the Barren
circled the cabin, standing silent guard and waiting to pounce on Major, Kole,
or Mara if they came out.

He thought
about those three.

I really
don’t know who they are. I can speak with them in dreams. Maybe I’m not
concerned about getting them out. Maybe I’ll swing through these trees like
Tarzan and make them a distant memory.

As much as he
tried, he could not convince himself to abandon them in the cabin.

They are my
responsibility now. I’ve got to go back.

Samuel shook
the thoughts from his head and focused on the immediate task at hand. He
shimmied around the trunk until he was able to climb onto another branch on the
opposite side of the tree. This one grew out toward another that was twenty
yards away. He looked down at the huddle of creatures and then stepped out,
locking his feet behind him, toes down on the surface of the branch while he
used his knees to squeeze it between his thighs. Samuel put his chest on the
rough bark and inched forward. He had made it halfway across when he made the
mistake of looking down.

The creatures had
reassembled, following his motion. They shambled along, thirty feet below. Samuel
closed his eyes and kept moving until he came to the main trunk of the next
tree. He slapped the trunk and let out a victory holler, the only sound wave in
the barren landscape. He stood and did another survey of the situation. Although
the darkness and the cloud fought over the locality like two mutts over a hunk
of meat, he had gained a different perspective. The Barren stretched out a bit
behind him, facing west. Samuel thought he could see a faint, blurry area
between the edge of the advancing cloud and the black sky. The strip glimmered
as if hanging above a bonfire. He watched the shapes break and meld, and
wondered what would happen if the cloud swallowed the entire sky, as he thought
it would. Beyond the Barren, and as far east as he could see, Samuel spotted
another rise, probably a mountain. The peak extended into the blackness as if
surrounded by clouds. He strained to see a fine line meandering down the tree
line and into the valley at the base of the mountain. Whatever it was, Samuel
believed it was proof that something other than the horde had created a path
beyond the Barren. He committed as much of the landscape to memory as he could
before sitting on the branch and resting. He looked down at the swaying heads
of gray flesh and bone beneath him.

Like
magnets,
he thought.
Too many to fight. There has to be another way.

Before his mind
had time to contemplate the thought, a swift motion caught his eye. The cabin
door was flung open.

***

“You wouldn’t
be so eager to get out there if it was your leg they were gnawing on.”

“We have to
give him a chance, or we’ll all suffer to the cloud.”

Mara looked at
Major for emotional support. He sat in silence, giving none.

“You think if
he gets out in front of those monsters that he’s going to repel the cloud, stop
the Reversion, and come back to save you? How fucking romantic.”

“The girl is
right,” said Major. “We’re not in a position to wait things out. Time is not in
our favor.”

“What is,
chief? Every time we face a rotten situation, you lay some bullshit on us,
something you’ve been holding back. Well, I’ve had enough.” Kole stepped behind
Mara and put his back to the door. “Nobody is leaving this cabin unless I open
the door.”

Mara stepped
forward and slammed her balled fists into Kole’s chest. He stood motionless. Mara
winced as her hands lost the battle.

“What’s it
going to take, son?”

“I’m not your
son, first of all. And for me to open this door is going to require some
answers. Like right now.”

“To what
questions?” asked Major.

“Don’t be
fucking cute with me. You know what I’m talking about. I want to know how
you’ve slipped Reversions.”

Major sighed
and brushed his hand at Mara as if signaling that her attempts were futile. “Fine.”

Kole nodded at
Major and crossed his arms on his chest. He did not step away from the door.

“This isn’t my
first rodeo.”

Mara felt a
perplexed look creep onto her face. Kole shook his head at her, signaling not
to interrupt the old man.

“And you ain’t
the first folks I found here. This is the third or fourth locality I’ve entered
with a slip. Based on what’s outside, I’d say it’s the most depressing of the
lot.”

“You’ve slipped?”
asked Kole.

Major nodded.

“So how do we
slip outta this shithole?” asked Kole.

Major raised
one palm and shook his head with a smirk. “Not so easy. If you want answers,
you gotta shut up and quit asking me questions.”

Mara smiled,
and Kole closed his mouth.

“The last one
had only wolves, not the horde. It felt more like winter than whatever the hell
we’re in here, and it was forest as far as you could see. No mountains, hills,
valleys. Just trees. I came across two people in that one. Two men, older. They
had the growing paunch and shrinking hairline of middle age, although they
didn’t seem to know each other. I found them arguing on a path that led to the
Barren.”

“This place?”
asked Mara.

“No,” replied
Major. “It was a series of caves, but I think it served the same purpose. The
men called it the Barren, and so that’s what I called these cabins when I found
them.”

Mara shook her
head.

“Don’t know if
it’s the slips, or the fact that I’m always landing in a locality that happens
to be fighting a Reversion, and I don’t remember how I got there or where I
came from, but I do know that it wasn’t from my birth locality, what you guys
might think of as your ‘real world’ existence.

“Anyways, the
wolves eventually became like the undead, and they served the same function. Whatever
energy runs the different localities must reformulate in different ways,
because the wolves did the same thing. They pinned us down inside the cave. If
someone went out, they pushed ’em back in. I know what you’re thinking, muscle
man. I can see it in your eyes.”

Kole smirked.

“I searched
every square inch of the inside of that cave, and it was solid rock, no way
out.”

Kole stopped
smiling.

“So we’re in the
same boat. One of the guys decided he would make a run for it, not sure if the
wolves would get him or not.”

“The wolves are
here too, aren’t they?” asked Mara.

“They are,
sweetheart, and I’m not sure why or where they’ve gone. Maybe they can smell
the rotting corpses out there,” Major said with a light chuckle. “Good thing we
can’t.”

“You said you
got out,” said Kole, trying to force the pace of the old man’s story.

“Eventually. We
tried a few times to get past the wolves. They never attacked, but each time we
tried, they shut us down. Once we realized the cloud would get us before the
wolves would let us out, things got desperate.”

“How
desperate?” asked Mara.

“Bad enough
that the two men came to fisticuffs, almost the way our two meatheads did.”

Mara looked at
Kole, and he avoided her stare.

“The man that
tried to get past the wolves had it all along; he just didn’t know how to use
it.”

“Had what?”
Kole asked.

“The talisman. It’s
a physical item that somehow punches a hole in the locale and sets you up to
slip and to take others with you. I can’t remember what mine were, but I must
have had them to get here. It’s the only way of escaping the Reversion. The
kicker is that I keep slipping into another locality that’s in the same shitty
condition. The cloud keeps following me.”

Mara paused and
looked at Kole. Major remained quiet, letting them process the information.

“You think one
of us has a talisman that’ll slip us all out of here?” asked Kole.

“Nope. He knows
that neither of us has it,” said Mara.

Kole looked at
Major and then back to Mara.

“Then that
means—”

“Yes,” interrupted
Mara. “That means Samuel has it. And if he doesn’t, we’re all going down in
this Reversion.”

Major sat back
and folded his hands on his lap. He smiled at Mara.

“And you let
him out there, carrying our key out of this place, to fend off the horde?”
asked Kole.

“It was a test,”
said Mara, pointing at the door, “and now Major has his proof,” she finished,
pointing at Major.

“So I guess
it’s time we get him back here and find out how he’s going to slip us the hell out,”
replied Kole.

Chapter 12

The horde
responded to the opening door with a consistent, sludgy movement. The creatures
slithered toward the stimulus, dragging remnants of clothing and tattered flesh
behind them. Samuel placed a hand over his eyes more out of reflex than
necessity, as no sunlight existed here to play with his vision. He saw Major,
followed by Kole and Mara, step outside the cabin and stand shoulder to
shoulder.

“What the hell
are you doing?” he screamed.

Mara stepped
down and ran to the opposite side of the cabin, drawing a portion of the
fluctuating mass to her. Major yelled something to Kole, who dashed in the
other direction, creating a narrow gap between the undead. Major looked at
Samuel and waved him down.

Samuel noticed
that there were only one or two creatures remaining at the base of the tree. They
both paced tight circles, bumping into each other, mindlessly moving like
forgotten leaves tossed by the winter wind.

Major waved
again, his motion more urgent this time.

“Damn it,”
Samuel said.

He turned for
one final look at the path extending out of the Barren, blinking several times
in hopes that he could burn the features of the landscape into his memory.

He tied the
loose end of the rope around the trunk of the tree, threading it over the top
of the branch that held him aloft. He then checked to make sure the other end
held fast around his waist. Like an expert rock climber rappelling down the
face of a mountain, Samuel gripped the rope in both hands. He backed off the
branch, using his feet to push outward while allowing the rope to slide through
his hands. Samuel cried out as the friction of the rope on his palms began to
burn. He descended in a lazy arc from the last push, and the rope slackened as
his feet landed on the ground. Three of the creatures shambled in his direction,
angling in a way that pushed Samuel toward the cabin. He untied the rope around
his waist and jogged to the steps of the cabin, where Major stood with his arms
crossed on his chest. Kole came around the cabin from one side, and Mara
appeared on the other. Like a drain clogged with blackened sludge, the horde
oozed back out and around the cabin, encapsulating it. The creatures moved forward,
tightening the noose and letting them know that it would be best if they opened
the door and went back inside.

“C’mon,” said Major
while waving over his shoulder.

He opened the
door and stepped inside, followed by Mara and Kole. Samuel stopped and turned
to face the rope dangling from the tree. He watched it sway back and forth,
writhing like a snake. Samuel looked at the cloud above, and then to the unseen
trail in the distance, before entering the cabin and pulling the door shut
behind him.

***

“I saw a path. East.”

“It doesn’t
matter.”

“Sure it does,”
replied Samuel. “It’s going away from the cloud.”

“That thing
will eventually swallow this entire locality. Going east on the path only buys
us a little more time,” replied Major.

Mara and Kole
sat on the floor, waiting for their heartbeats to subside after the dash around
the cabin.

“Unless you
have a plan for getting us out of here, I’m not sure what choice we have,” said
Samuel.

“You have
something that will allow us all to slip with you. Get us out of the path of
the Reversion and land you in another locality. It might be a world
degenerating faster than this one, but it’d be a different locality in the
existence, either way,” replied Major.

“I don’t have
much on me,” said Samuel.

“Then it
shouldn’t take long to determine which object is the talisman.”

Major stepped
forward with a smile cracking the lower half of his face. Samuel stepped back into
the wall without thinking. He felt the rough planks nibbling at the fabric of
his shirt.

“What are you
doing?” Samuel asked.

Mara stood and
looked at her feet. Kole jumped up and moved beside Major.

“Just let us
look at your shit. No need to get your panties in a bunch.”