Beneath the Flesh: They kept all the demons out … except one
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Authors: Alex Kings
Beneath the Flesh
Book 1 of the
Beneath the Flesh
series
A novella
Alex Kings
Copyright © 2016 Alex Kings
All rights reserved
To keep up with new releases and have access to extras, visit the author's website at
www.AlexKings.com
Contents
Luke clutched his machine gun firmly and slowly raised it, aiming at the compound's outer gate. The four others on guard duty all did the same. They were all lined up on the gate's left from the perspective of someone coming in, to cut the risk of friendly fire if they had to shoot. Their commander waited at the end of the line, similarly armed. The overcast morning was chill, and Luke wished he'd put on something thicker.
Tom, who was standing nearest the wall, looked around and said, “At least they're early this time.”
Mike, standing beside him, grunted without saying anything.
“Yeah,” said Karen. “Maybe we'll get off early. But let's get this done first.”
The other two guards, guns held by their sides, went up to the great gate and pulled back the latches holding it shut.
The gate was a nine-foot high mass of salvaged parts – sheet metal, scaffolding, other smaller gates from before they fall, all welded or tied together. It was set in the equally high and hodgepodge outer wall. It squealed on its rollers as it opened. A second later came the sound of a revving engine, and the delivery van rolled into view.
Before the fall, it wouldn't have been something you'd look twice at. Now it was transformed into something vicious: Metal grating over all the windows; more armour of sheet metal covering the bonnet and bodywork and wheels; old rotary lawnmower blades affixed to the doors to cut up anything that tried to hold on without being invited.
As soon as it was through, the guards pushed the gates closed again. Luke kept his gun trained on the gap – closing, closing, closed. The guards slammed the great latched into place, and he felt a wave of relief and lowered his gun.
“Good job, guys,” the commander said.
Then something scuttled out from beneath the truck. It was halfway towards them before anyone even registered what was going on.
It had been human once. Parts of it still were: The legs, despite their speed and the weird way they moved, were covered in old, tattered jeans, stained with dirt and dry blood. The feet at the ends, though, were too big and meaty, with claws for toes. Its bare torso was about the right shape, but covered in so many lesions and red-grey growths like rotting raw meat it was impossible to tell if the original person had been male or female. Its arms were tipped with sharp blades of bone poking through the flesh. And its head – it had no head, just a gaping mouth surrounded by irregular teeth and insect-like mouthparts.
Shouting: “Fucking runner!”
“Get it!”
By the time the guards had managed to raise their guns and aim, the demon was almost on top of its intended victim: Tom. It bounded into him with its bone spikes outstretched. He screamed as the spikes went into his shoulders – and stopped a second later when a proboscis shot out the creatures mouth and embedded itself in his neck.
Luke was the one who saved them. He held a steady enough aim on the demon's left knee. As it moved away from Tom's body, its leg bent sideways, and it toppled to the floor.
It kept moving, crawling on its spikes. But by now, the guards were able to surround it, all firing. In the end, Karen came in with an axe. She brought it down first on the creature's shoulder, biting into the flesh, which oozed something more grey than red. A second blow took of the arm.
Again, she hit it, and again. All the limbs off.
The remaining pieces lay on the ground, twitching.
Tom, laying in the ground in a pool of his own blood, began to shudder. An infectious demon, then.
The commander ordered them to shoot him in the head. They did so.
He stopped moving.
Luke lowered his gun, and stared at the mess. Two piles of stinking meat meat. The truck, still waiting, with a line of bullet holes down its side. The drivers had been smart enough to wait in the cab until the runner was dead.
Not all demons were infectious. Most weren't, in fact – most of them were simply aggressive. But a small portion held a fluid called
demon blood
, which could infect any living animal and, over the course of a few minutes to an hour, begin the transformation into a demon.
And runners – well, you couldn't call them walkers when they were that fast, could you? But people needed a term to distinguish the demons which had once been human from all the others.
At least the attacks weren't getting worse. For the past year and a half Luke had lived in Paradise Compound, things had been steady. Their precautions had got more sophisticated, and deaths had become less common. Even in the face of apocalypse, daily life had kept going.
There wasn't time to dwell on this too much, though, because there was more stuff to do. The commander had them ready their weapons again and spend a few seconds searching the van to make sure there wasn't anything else hiding. When the search turned up clean, and the van rumbled off toward to loading area, they busied themselves taking the remains to the incinerator to prepare for the funeral.
“We're getting soft,” said Mike to no-one in particular as they carried what was left of Tom's body. “Letting soft people in. That's the fucking problem.”
Luke said nothing. Mike wasn't his favourite person.
“They're gonna fucking drag us down, get us all killed,” continued Mike. With Luke's help, he dumped the body in the storage room next to the incinerator. “They'll be making friends with the fucking demons next.”
Once they were finished, they were allowed to sign their names on the roster and clock out.
Bad dreams:
Her flesh bubbling up and erupting, growing into something new. Holding people she loved down with claws or chitinous legs, tearing away pieces of them while they screamed and begged. Limbs – whose? – twisting round, twisting off, leaving rags of meat that clutched at the air like new hands. And –
Jess woke shivering. A familiar, icy pain swept in waves down the right side of her body, receding after a few seconds to a dull ache. She lay still, listening intently. Not too far away came the sound of gunfire in repeated bursts. Then silence.
She summoned up enough energy to pull herself out of bed. The room was tiny: Barely big enough to hold the bed and the bucket of water. A small unmarked door by the foot of her bed with a bolt. But it was private, which by the standard of the compound made it a luxury.
A thin stream of light trickled through the window up high, just about illuminating all the greys and browns of the walls and floor.
And all the holes in her right arm.
They weren't sores, or spots, or anything like that. Just holes, maybe a millimetre across, circled by a ring or firm, slightly raised skin. But they were deep, too deep to see the bottom, and packed densely. They started halfway between her wrist and her elbow and continued in a dense, random pattern all the way up to her shoulder – then past her shoulder, down the side of her body, covering part of her belly, and ending just above her hip.
When they're started appearing, just under her ribcage, she hadn't been able to look at them. That was three months ago, at least. Now she inspected them every morning with a sort of resigned, morbid curiosity, interested to see how far they'd spread.
The compound had showers – even with warmish water now – but they were communal, so she washed alone with the bucket of water and a couple of cloths. It was easier this way.
Just past her belly, her hand brushed against something – a light presence, but dry, cold and prickly. She jolted her hand back and stared, just in time to see whatever it was retreating back though one of the holes just below her ribcage. It was gone too quickly for her to get a good look at it, but the it made her think of a long, thin spider leg.
She prodded experimentally at the hole where it had vanished. Nothing happened, as if the leg, or feeler, or whatever it was, had never been. She sighed, and went on washing.
Soon after she'd dressed and slid the bucket back under her bed, there came a knock at the door. Then, from the other side came Luke's voice: “It's me.”
Jess surged forward to open the door. As soon as he was inside, she bolted it up again.
Luke had untidy black hair and verging-on-untidy black stubble. He was about her height – not short, but average. Jess was the tall one. And he had in her opinion, an unreasonably nice jawline. And today he looked upset over something. She remembered the gunfire that had woken her.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Nothing, really.”
She gave him a look. “You've got some blood on your collar.”
He glanced at the stain she'd pointed to, then, looking defeated, turned back to her.
“We had a runner get through,” he said. “It got Tom. You know Tom?”
She had done, though not very well. “Shit,” she muttered.
Luke stiffened, like he was trying to brush off his previous show of emotion. “Well, it happens.”
She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close. For a while, they said nothing, just standing together and kissing occasionally. She wished she could stay like this forever, but eventually she had to pull away. There was still stuff to do.
They left her room holding hands and headed towards the outer compound.
Paradise Compound had been part of a village, once. Nothing spectacular – houses and shops, maybe a couple of hundred metres across. It was small enough to wall off and clear of demons. Some of the houses had remained as houses, Others had been converted to other uses – food stores, meeting rooms, and even a couple of offices to organise trade. The fences between gardens had been pulled down, and the soil turned into allotments. Over time, with skill, new buildings had been built, like the incinerator. People had put together a system for getting fresh water, for disposing of waste. For surviving.
It was structured around two zones: The inner compound sat in the middle of the outer compound, enclosed in a second wall. It held the homes, the infirmary, some long-term food stores, and a cache of weapons. Everything else – the allotments, other food stores, garages, loading areas, and office huts – was in the outer zone. The idea was that if there should be a breach in the outer wall, if runners and beasts should come through in force, all the most important stuff would still be protected by the inner wall, the inhabitants wouldn't get killed in their sleep, and things might just be salvageable.
A lot of effort, perhaps. But the sort of people who survived the collapse tended to be those who made plans for every eventuality, whose foresight bordered in paranoia.
“Remember our appointment?” Luke said.
She gave him her best hopeful smile. The question didn't need an answer.
“We might actually get all this sorted out,” he said. “When Patel's got what she needs, we might finally be able to –” He paused, taking a moment to see if anyone was in earshot. “– get that thing out of you.”
“Yeah,” she said. Then, in case he might feel that was ungrateful, added: “That'll be nice.”
They passed through the inner gate. It was a door of black metal bars – smaller than the outer gate, not meant for vehicles. Easier to close.
She tried pushing the conversation to a different direction: “What's your next shift, anyway?”
“Maintenance.” He scowled briefly, but it wasn't serious.
She gave him a grin. “Good luck with that.”
“At least it's not more guard duty. Not till Wednesday.”
“What about you?”
“I've got all of today and tomorrow taken up working with that.” She gestured at the delivery van in the loading area, then laughed. “It's been the end of the world for over three years now. Everything ruined. But the last people on Earth are still arguing over trade. Economics – economics never changes.”
After that, they had to split up – Luke to go to the meeting point for his shift, Jess to the office. He kissed her and reminded her about the appointment again, before running off.
What they called the office was the converted inside of a tiny shop near the loading bay. Inside were a couple of desks, and a row of filing cabinets.
It was lucky, Jess thought, she had proved she was so good at organising trade. Most of it was similar to accountancy, and just as dull – but no one could write trade letters as persuasive as she could. And doing most shifts here meant she didn't have to do too much physical labour, where the pain in her arm might cause suspicion.
The inventory from the van was half done already: Tanks of petrol, scavenged. Replacement parts, scavenged. Bricks, scavenged. Panes of glass, scavenged. Ammunition, scavenged.
How much longer can we keep this up?
she wondered.
If we don't make any of this ourselves, how long before we run out?
Civilisation was already on its last legs – running out of these resources would be the end of it.
Paradise Compound grew its own food. And traded it too – three quarters of its exports were foodstuffs. But that wasn't enough to sustain their life, not if they wanted to keep their buildings in good repair, not if they wanted clean water.
Once the inventory was done, Jess set about reading the official trading letter Foxglove had sent. It did nothing to improve her mood: They apologised for the lack of medical supplies. Then they said they needed more food to sustain their scavenging efforts for building materials – and if Paradise couldn't supply, they knew some other compounds who might.
The bastards were trying to put up the price.
She pulled out a fresh piece of paper and set about writing a reply, politely reminding them of the previous agreement – then giving them an opportunity for some proper renegotiation if they wanted more food.
Back when she started in this position,writing trade letters to the other compounds, Jess had tried encouraging them to go beyond scavenging, and to try and build up some industry. They hadn't listened. All pig-headed, short-sighted, selfish. They all wanted the best deal
now.
In the end, she'd given up.
As she was finishing up her letter, she felt something move beneath her shirt, just above her elbow. She jolted her arm back. The pencil – in her left hand – dropped to the desk and rolled onto the floor.
She stared at her shirt. Through the white linen there was motion, and the barest shadow of something. Driven by some instinct she didn't know she had, she made to grab it, try and rip whatever it was out of her.
Something.
But it pulled back, and her hand closed on nothing but fabric and flesh.
Hand still gripping her arm, she pushed her chair back a bit. Then she let go, ducked down, and retrieved the pencil. After staring at the letter for a moment, she put her forehead against the palm her her hands, resting her elbows on the table, and closer her eyes. Could Luke's fancy plan really fix this thing? Could she let herself believe it would work, just for a moment?
Maybe. Just for a moment.