Afterworld: Into the Arms of Darkness Ch.53
Title: Afterworld: Into the Arms of Darkness
By: Pink Rabbit Productions
Chapter: 53
Date: 17 July, 2011
Rating: R (for sex and violence)
Disclaimer: Hmmm, characters, not mine, situation, mine, though with the proviso that certain scenarios owe a major debt of gratitude to George Romero. Sex? Likely. Genders involved? Likely all female (at least anything on camera). Also there are likely to be very bad things in this story. I'm not one for prodigious amounts of gore, but this is horror and there is likely to be ickiness and things that might disturb some folks. Seriously. If it's gonna bother you, move along.
Summary: When the dead rise, civilization falls.
Author's Notes: Awhile back, just for fun, I did a faux movie poster that set Otalia in a horror setting and used some elements from an idea I've had running around for ages (what can I say---it was the Halloween season). See the poster here: http://altfic.com/artgallery/otalia/glafterworld01b.htm . Sooo, at some point, it seemed like fun to take a gander at writing them in that universe. I've quite deliberately tried to break away from my usual style and make it a bit faster moving, with frequent chapter breaks, deliberate cliffhangers, shorter scenes and more directed pov. We'll see if I can keep to one pov per chapter (well, they are short chapters...lol).
Dedicated to: My mom. Seriously. All of my growing up years, she would constantly throw me these what-if scenarios and press me to figure out logical ways to survive/get out of various emergency situations. Now, she never mentioned the zombie apocalypse, but I'm sure that was just an oversight or a desire not to scare a little kid (because, really, I grew up as the daughter of a top secret type during the cold war...I already had enough fear issues), but really, that odd little game was the genesis of...well...not just this story, but a lot of my love of writing. So, thanks mom.
Previous Chapters: | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25 | Chapter 26 | Chapter 27 | Chapter 28 | Chapter 29 | Chapter 30 | Chapter 31 | Chapter 32 | Chapter 33 | Chapter 34 | Chapter 35 | Chapter 36 | Chapter 37 | Chapter 38 | Chapter 39 | Chapter 40 | Chapter 41 | Chapter 42 | Chapter 43 | Chapter 44 | Chapter 45 | Chapter 46 | Chapter 47 | Chapter 48 | Chapter 49 | Chapter 50 | Chapter 51 | Chapter 52 |
Author's Note: Many thanks for the kind words of interest and support. Mom's doing well, mostly feeling good and getting her garden in shape. Her latest CT was stable and her doctor is very happy with how she's coming along.
Author's Note #2: I had hoped to get this posted sooner, but it didn't work out that way. The good news is that I have the next chapter written and the one after that about 25% done, so hopefully I can get back on a more reasonable pace.
Afterworld:
Into the Arms of Darkness
Chapter 53
Natalia leaned her forehead against the shutters, feeling the rough wood against her skin. Her breathing came in ragged pants and she was shaking violently. Her every instinct was to scream at Olivia, to drag her back, hold on and never let go.
But she'd been frozen in place, unable to utter a word as the other woman was climbing out the window.
And now it was too late.
Again.
Shaking her head dazedly, she staggered back from the re-shuttered window, the gun in her hand feeling impossibly heavy, but still less so than the words sitting, unspoken, on the tip of her tongue. She wasn't good at things like this, at thinking fast, at defying authority, at knowing the right path to take without serious time to consider her options.
Sometimes even when she had time, she didn't know what to do. She saw too many routes to disaster, too much potential for hurt and loss, too many ways to let down those she cared for. All the possibilities left her confused and uncertain and too often, frozen where she stood.
Too often utterly paralyzed while the world shattered around her.
She stumbled back another step, staring at the wooden shutters that bore silent witness to yet another failure to act in time...
Unable to stop herself, Natalia mentally replayed all the things she should have done...
...all the things she should have said, even the ones she didn't quite understand herself, leaving her to wonder what might have tumbled out if she'd just started talking.
"How did we go from trying to kill each other," she whispered almost inaudibly as she fought to escape the guilt, "to this...friendship?" Even as she said the word she knew it wasn't nearly enough, but it was all she had and all she was ready to give voice to. Trembling in spite of her fierce determination not to, she consciously straightened her spine and took a deep breath to settle shattered nerves. "Please, please, please," she begged God, the universe and anyone else who might listen, "please be all right." A brief pause and then she admitted, "I can't do this without you," and fell silent.
Seconds passed, each one ticking by like another piece of eternity. Natalia tried to imagine where Olivia might be in her journey, but with her sense of time skewed, simply didn't know. And it didn't matter anyway. She couldn't follow Olivia, not with the dead gathering around the house. Her presence would just make things worse. All she could do was wait.
And hope.
And pray.
Then the silence was broken by something outside the thundering roar of her own heart. It was a soft scraping sound, only a little louder than might have been made by a mouse passing behind the walls.
Natalia's chin snapped up, her gaze moving from point to point, nervously hunting for...something.
A moment passed and then another. Nothing.
She was almost ready to conclude she'd imagined the tiny sound or that it had been nothing more threatening than the settling of an old house on uneven foundations.
Almost.
Another beat, then the barest of muffled whispers, so low and sepulchral she intuited the words more by instinct than actual sound. "Oughta be worried ‘bout yerself."
She jerked back more on instinct than thought, eyes wide and hunting the ceiling as she found nothing more substantial to aim at than a stray cobweb. It fluttered gently on a nonexistent breeze, the faint movement drawing her gaze in the absence of anything else to look at.
Pounding heart, rushing blood, trembling hands, ragged breathing. She was suddenly a rough conglomeration of disparate body parts and instinctive responses. The roar of her own blood should have obliterated any noise outside the confines of her own flesh and yet she heard the soft crack and creak that followed with eerie clarity.
Wood floor upstairs. Oak planks set in a ship lap. The wood was tightly fitted, hard, and well aged and doubtless sitting on a pine underfloor. Normally, it would take considerable time and a good ax or chainsaw to get through both layers.
A slow rasping sound cut through that thought.
She could almost see the tough thumbnail dragging between wood joints, slicing away splinters, creating a gap between planks, then widening it stroke by stroke. Soon he'd be able to get his fingers into the space. Nearing death, Olivia had been inhumanly strong and fast. If Jeffrey had her strength-or worse, even more-once he got a grip, he'd tear up the flooring with ease, then bash through the thin support floor in a few blows.
For the first few minutes he'd been roaring, raging, chasing them like a wild animal on the hunt. That, she understood. The ones outside were just the same, driven by hatred and hunger, screaming bits and pieces of words maybe, but mostly incomprehensible, and really only reacting to what they could see, smell or hear. They didn't plan, didn't think, didn't take their time.
During those initial moments he'd been just like them.
But now. This.
It wasn't his strength that terrified her. It was his mind. He'd apparently calmed himself and understood she was on the other side of the floor, could envision something beyond his immediate environs and plan a way to break through and take what he wanted.
A tiny sound that might have been a giggle punctuated that thought. "Gonna have some fu-un," he sing-songed, the sound distant and oddly high-pitched, but more distinct than before.
Natalia backed up until her shoulder blades nudged up against an outer wall, the gun still aimed on the blank surface of the ceiling. Suddenly she wished she'd gone with Olivia for an all new reason. The dead outside, she knew how to fight. Even when the odds were bad, she knew tricks and was confident that if she could just get into the right position, she could wait them out. This was something altogether new, and she had no idea what to do.
* * * * * *
Everything hurt. Every. Single. Inch. But Olivia gritted her teeth and ignored the pain as she scrambled up the ladder on a hand that was most likely broken and a body that was more bruised than not. The ax handle was shoved through her belt at the small of her back, the shape of it balky and uncomfortable. She ignored that too.
Her entire focus was on moving and moving fast. Instinct told her Jeffrey was getting close to his target. She couldn't have said how, just that she was sure he knew what he was doing and was zeroing in. Maybe it was just that he'd hurt her and those she cared for so many times and with such unerring accuracy. That Natalia had come to mean so much could only mean that Jeffrey would try to destroy her as well.
Or maybe it was just that she knew how life worked. Death too.
Or maybe-perhaps even most likely-it was just that she was so goddamned scared she couldn't breathe and was imagining the worst scenarios possible.
In a world where the dead walked, it was hard not to let your fears run down very ugly pathways.
She hit the top of the ladder, threw an arm over the windowsill, then hauled herself and over, falling ungracefully to the carpeted, wood floor with a thump that seemed painfully loud to her ears.
She fully expected Jeffrey to come running, but instead she got silence and stale air that still reeked of death and decay. Her stomach rolled, but she ignored that too. She had more important matters to attend to.
Retrieving the ax, she pushed to her feet, expression set in hard lines.
The hallway was empty, but Olivia spotted a few flecks of fresh blood on the surface of the carpet. They were still red, not yet dry and brown. Only a few minutes old.
He was close. She sniffed the air, picking up the telltale odors of sweat and urine along with the expected metallic bite of blood. So close and yet so far. Her gaze swept back and forth as she hunted for clues to guide which way to turn. A beat passed and then any debate was resolved by the a low, mad giggle that echoed from behind a cracked-open door to her left. She was already moving when she heard a husky scrape that ended in the high-pitched shriek of wood cracking.
Summoning some sleeping part of herself-the part that knew Jeffrey's impulses better than she would have wished-she hefted the ax high and crept forward on light feet. God willing-if God still lived and didn't hate mankind as much as it often seemed-Jeffrey O'Neill's head was hers to take.
The door was cracked enough that she could see his back. He was crouched low, his body hunched over in a gawky, eerily abnormal position. A noticeable splotch of blood over his upper left side marked where the bullet that killed him had exited. As she watched, muscles knotted across his back and shoulders and a board angled upward from the floor, pried free and slowly broken by hands that were torn and bloodied.
He moved smoothly and showed no signs of pain from the myriad of wounds both large and small.
Olivia redoubled her hold on the ax handle, heart slamming against her breastbone as she went at him in two long strides, the head of the ax arcing smoothly toward the back of his neck.
One hard blow would do it. She saw the glint of good, carbon steel as it carved through the air on the way toward carving through flesh.
And then everything went to hell.
Somehow he rose and spun in one move, nothing of human behavior evident in his unnatural speed or strength.
The ax jarred to a halt as it slammed into his palms and he grabbed it, holding tight with obdurate strength.
They were standing almost nose to nose, so close she could smell the stench of his body, but there was no breath to smell, no hot air running across her face, just the cold and chill of death.
Jeffrey grinned and giggled. "Notsofast," he taunted, the words running together. He shoved hard on the ax handle, throwing Olivia into the nearest wall and pinning her there. "Timetaplay," he sing-songed.
Unfortunately, his game had all new rules...
* * * * * *
TBC