Dark Creations: Hell on Earth (Part 5) (13 page)

Gabriel put his hands up in front of him in mock surrender.  “You don’t need to sell me on his resume.  And when it comes to seeing crazy shit, I’ve seen my fair share.  Not in combat per se, but in a whole other kind of way.”

Jack gave him a knowing look and nodded in agreement.  “Kid’s got a point.  Tell him, Joe.”

Gabriel braced himself, preparing for the worst.

“When Jack told me there was something going on here, at first, I thought he had lost his mind. I mean after what happened to Dawn, who could blame him?” Joe began.  “But Jack is a good friend and one of the best soldiers I’ve ever known, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and came all the way out here to see.” 

Joe shifted his weight from one foot to the next, obviously uncomfortable with what he was about to say.  “After surveying the area, we saw teams of people, all dressed in dark, u
niform type clothes, moving into houses.  Shots could be heard shortly after the teams went in,” Joe raked a hand through his short hair.  “I knew something was happening right then.  I wasn’t sure what exactly; just that some fucked up shit was going down.”

Jack
nodded solemnly, corroborating Joe’s story, but Joe’s eyes remained fixed on some distant point neither of them could see.

“We decided to
haul ass back to the farm to get the rest of the men to move in.  At the time, there were only eight of us so we split into two teams.  Jack led one group while I led the other.  He went to do recon a couple of miles south of where we were going.  My team slipped from street to street.”

“We’re real good at getting in and out of places without being seen.  Years of service, man
,” Jack added.

“
Damn right.  We waited until dusk and followed a truck from the outskirts of town to a house a couple of blocks from Main Street.  It stopped and parked outside a house in a residential neighborhood.  The doors swung open and a group of four went up to the front door.”

“All dressed in
those military type uniforms, minus the camouflage,” Jack chimed in.

“Once they went inside, me and the guys slipped across the lawn
, unseen, and looked into a first-story window,” Joe squeezed his eyes shut as though he were reliving the events of that day.  “They shot a man as soon as he opened the front door.  We saw it happened, saw the bullet knock him backward before he fell, dead, in the foyer.”

“They must’ve stepped right over him because seconds later we moved along the side of the house and looked in a kitchen window.  A woman was
already slumped over the sink, the water still running, with a bullet in the back of her head.”

“Holy shit,” Gabriel muttered. 

A chill raced over his skin though the air temperature had warmed considerably overnight and must have been near sixty-five degrees.  People were being murdered in their homes, innocent people who’d had no idea what was going on in their town.  They’d simply decided to answer their front door when the doorbell had sounded.  They’d never suspected that answering their door would lead to their demise.

“And that’s not the half of it,” Jack said and he screwed up his features in disgust.

“How much worse can it get?” Gabriel asked and felt his stomach drop.

“These bastards, they went upstairs,” Jack spat.  “And there was a minivan in the driveway, so you know what that meant.”

“Children,” Gabriel whispered and felt as though he’d be sick.

“Damn straight,” Jack said then closed his eyes and pressed his lips to a hard line.

“They went upstairs for the kids, and me and the guys knew we had to do something. These people were armed with some high powered shit, you know.  But we assumed they wouldn’t be a problem for us.  We’d done stuff like what we were about to do before, and against some terrifying enemies.  We couldn’t let them go kill the kids.

“I signale
d to the men with me to move into the house.  But Tom, one of my oldest friends, took two steps toward the back door that was off the kitchen and a Goddamn monster came out of nowhere and tore him to pieces.”

“A monster?” Gabriel asked flatly.

He knew monsters existed.  Not the boogeyman or the fabled stuff of children’s nightmarish tales, but honest-to-goodness monsters.  He’d seen them.  He knew they’d lived, but had hoped they now existed in the past.  Apparently, he’d been wrong.

“I don’t kn
ow what else to call what I saw,” Joe said and looked uncomfortable. “It walked on all fours, crouched low like a wolf, but bigger than any wolf I’ve ever seen.  This thing was
massive
.  And had a full, light-colored mane like a lion or something.  Its eyes were the creepiest part, though.  It had murderous eyes, yellow, but more of a gold color, like amber.”

The fine hairs on Gabriel’s body rose as awareness raced through his core.  He could think of only
one person, or monster, since his creation that had had murderous, amber eyes: Eugene.  The mere thought of his name made each of Gabriel’s muscles bunch and tense, preparing to fight.

“We turned our
weapons on him, mostly handguns and a couple of rifles, but it was gone before any of us could hit it.  With it gone, I moved to Tom to see if he was alive.  I doubted it, but you never know.  I wouldn’t leave one of my men behind.  I took five, maybe six steps toward him and heard a scream behind me, then another.”

Joe’s face had paled to a sickly gray.  Gabriel had seen that complexion far too many times, and always at the handiwork of his maker. 

“I turned around,” he continued.  “Steve and Carl were gone.  When I turned back to Tom, that damned mutant monster had come back.  It was standing over Tom’s body staring at me standing on two legs like it was human.”

Gabriel watched as Joe tried to collect himself.  He folded his arms across his chest then raised one hand to pinch the bridge of his nose.  He began pacing
.  Gabriel knew all too well what he was feeling, had lived with gruesome images of up-close gore and death.  He had no words of consolation to offer.  Nothing he could say could purge the hideous images from Joe’s memory. 

“This thing, it looked like something that had escaped from hell.  On its hind legs, it stood at probably seven feet tall, or something damn close to it.  It just stared at me with those fucking eyes, like it was daring me to do something, to move even. 
And I did,” he said and dropped his chin in shame.  “I ran and I am not proud of it.  I got as far as the end of the driveway.  Another mutant was waiting there, staring.  It was like they were toying with me.  I fired at it, but it moved so fast, I didn’t hit it.  I jumped into the minivan in the driveway.” Joe paused for a moment and shook his head with his eyes closed.

“You always hear about people in small town
s, how they’re trusting and whatnot,” he continued. “Well, imagine my surprise when I lowered the visor of that minivan and a pair of keys fell into my lap.  I never thought it would happen.  In hind sight, I can smile about how a family’s overly trusting nature saved my life.”  He shook his head again, slowly, and smiled without mirth. “Anyway, I started the van, slammed it into reverse and gunned the engine.  I plowed right into the fucker at the end of the driveway.  It howled out, but I didn’t stick around to see if I’d hurt it.  I flipped it into drive and steered it over the front lawn.

“When I did, I heard something crash
onto the roof of the minivan.  I pointed my gun toward the roof and squeezed off a bunch of rounds.  I heard it cry out and roll off the roof.  I gunned the engine again, and kept checking the rearview mirror.  Before long, I noticed two more chasing after me.  I got up to fifty miles an hour and they still kept up.  They just ran so fast.  Funny thing was, when I hit the town line, they stopped short like a dog running into those invisible fences.”

Gabriel could not feel his feet or legs.  His entire body felt as though it floated, hovering over Jack and Joe, and all that he’d heard.  He knew he stood, that what was happening was real, too real.  But it felt like a dream, a
terrifying hallucination.  He opened his mouth to speak, but his mouth had gone dry.  What Joe had described, the creatures with deadly amber eyes that had torn apart his friend and had pursued him, the ones capable of rising onto their hind quarter and towering at seven feet tall could only be creations of Dr. Franklin Terzini.  But his mind reasoned that Terzini was dead.  He had seen Dr. Terzini’s wrists cuffed behind his back around a pole in an abandoned brewery, had watched Alexandra press the remote detonator that had instigated a colossal explosion and claimed every creation inside.  Terzini could not be alive.  At least that’s what the remaining sliver of rationality he possessed argued.

“Here
,” Joe said to him and handed him a pair of heavy binoculars.  “Take a look for yourself.  Don’t take my word for it.  Mount them over there,” he gestured to a tripod Jack had opened and set up a few feet away. 

Gabriel did as he was told and peered through the lenses.

“All I see are blurry blobs,” he said.

“He’s not used to the power,”
he heard Jack say to Joe.

“Look again and turn that dial between the lenses.  Keep looking across the lake,” Joe instructed calmly.

“Okay, I still see blobs.  They’re just a little less blurry,” Gabriel said, frustrated. 

“Try the dial again,” Joe said.

Gabriel turned the dial to the left and the world came sharply into focus.  A man-made wall of stone ran for several hundred feet.  Beyond it were trees then a playground.  He adjusted the magnification a final time, turning it as far as it would go.  And there it was.  In his field of vision, many miles away, a mammoth beast pawed back and forth anxiously along a grassy field.  Behind it, swing sets, slides and monkey bars remained, empty, a haunting reminder that the youth of the town, those who should be enjoying the equipment, had been claimed.  He watched as the beast sniffed at the air for several seconds before its entire body quivered excitedly.  It grimaced as though it was making a vocalization then two more appeared at its side.  All three froze and rose on their haunches, and trained their gaze in his direction.

He felt foolish for thinking they were watching him. Afte
r all, he was the one with high-powered binoculars, not them.  But they were.  He swore they were.  He could
feel
the weight of their gaze.  Gabriel looked away from the binoculars called to the others.

“Jack, Joe, you have to see this.
  I may be crazy, but I swear they’re looking right at me,” he heard himself say and did not care if it sounded crazy. 

Jack scrambled to his Jeep and opened the rear door to where his trunk was.  He returned with two smaller pairs of binoculars.  He handed one to Joe and kept the other for himself.  All three of them squinted into their lenses.

“Holy Christ,” Joe muttered.

“We’re five miles away,” Jack said.

“But somehow they know we’re here,” Gabriel added.

He could not fathom how the creatures could see them, how any creature could possible perceive such vast distance, but knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they watched him from across the lake.  Both Jack and Joe knew as well as he did.  The beasts were guarding the perimeter of the town, and impossibly, stalked them.

Unease washed over Gabriel like ice water, only he wished it had left numbness in its wake.  But it had not. To the contrary, every cell in his body felt afire, blazing with fear-driven rage.  Whoever had created the monsters beyond the lake was threatening the lives of those around him, everyone’s, including those who he loved.  Melissa’s life was threatened.  And Gabriel would not allow for that to happen again. 

Chapter 11

Z
ogg looked out beyond the playground, through a field and across Lake Wellington.  His matchless eyesight sliced through the trees, the foliage,
everything
, and zeroed in on three people watching him.  But he’d smelled them long before he’d laid eyes on them.  He’d been pacing anxiously, hungry, always hungry, when he’d picked up the slightest hint drifting in the air, carried by the breeze off the lake.  Within seconds, the scent assaulted his nasal passages with unparalleled potency, burning through his nostrils until his throat blazed.  The satisfying, seductive fragrance hung in the atmosphere temptingly, urging the scorching sting in his esophagus. 

Blood
.  He sniffed the air a second time, inhaled deeply and recognized it immediately.  Blood tinged with the slightest hint of sweat and a nauseatingly sweet perfume raced into his core, frenzying him.  He felt his flanks quiver with feverish delight.  He smelled blood, needed to taste it.  He felt the corners of his mouth twist upward into what felt like a smile, a thirsty, eager smile, and emitted a yelping sound.  Incapable of speech, he was forced to produce primitive cries.

And cry out he did, alerting two others in his large pack. 
He would have preferred to call to them, to speak as all other creations did and tell them what he saw.  But he and the others had not been granted such a luxury.  They had only been equipped with vocalization capabilities, odd squeals and growls.  The others, like him, could think and reason, perhaps not as intricately as the members could, but they did think, and strategize about feeding.  It seemed a cruel joke for them to be reduced to barking for something as important as eating. It made for a less coordinated meal.