The Dark Horde (30 page)

Lucas looked puzzled and glanced over at Danny. “Of course, Danny! I wasn’t going to leave you!”

“Of course you weren’t.” Danny smiled back. “You may even be spared for your services, although I can’t guarantee anything... They look pretty hungry, y’know.” Danny directed Lucas’ gaze to the rear vision mirror:

The cabin behind was filled with demons and not children at all. Their massive hairy bodies crammed the available space, the air hard to breathe for their heavy odour. They were laughing.

“I’ve got lots of friends now, Lucas.” Danny grinned.

Lucas shrieked and drove the minibus at the cliff edge. In a couple of panicked seconds, he’d unclipped his seat belt and flung himself out the door, all as the minibus launched off the road and down the steep, forested mountainside. He landed on the road and rolled many times before stopping: shaking, bruised and bleeding.

Lucas lay shuddering a few moments, before forcing himself to his feet. He staggered to the roadside and looked down to see the wreckage of the minibus, smashed against a tree amongst scrub fifty or more metres down the slope.

Grimacing in pain, tormented to tears, Lucas turned and started running towards town...

Soaked with tears and sweat, Lucas ran on down the lonely mountain highway, his tortured mind circling endlessly over the same questions:

What fell calamity had befallen humanity? What cruel cosmic forces had delivered such an indomitable evil? And what unspeakable act had he just committed?

He rounded a corner and in the moonlight saw the figure of a child standing in the middle of the road...

Waiting.

As Lucas approached, the shadows slid from the child’s face and Lucas stopped, speechless in open-mouthed horror.

Danny smiled back at him. “We meet again.”

Lucas struggled to speak, “B-B... How did you get here?”

“Don’t underestimate me, Lucas. I can do lots of things now. I’m not a useless wimp anymore. Now I’m on the winning side.”

Lucas began to make out the details of Danny’s injuries. Through gaps in torn clothing and across his grinning face, numerous cuts oozed blood that seemed black under the feeble light.

“You’ve joined forces with
them?
” Lucas asked.

“They chose me, Lucas. And now I have more power and freedom than I ever could have imagined.”

“What do they want?”

Danny’s smile grew wider. “The fruits of humanity.”

“Where do they come from?”

“I’m not actually sure. But regardless, it doesn’t matter: they’re here to stay.”

“Somehow Danny, sooner or later they will be destroyed. Such evil cannot succeed. It is against God’s design.”

“Yes, that’s a nice fantasy, isn’t it. Good always triumphs over evil. A God exists to save us. Such fairytales you believe, haha.”

“Once the word is out, they cannot hide. They will be hunted. They will be defeated. They will be destroyed.”

Danny laughed long and loud. “You and who’s army?”

“The world’s! We will come together to fight for our survival. We have to. Perhaps this is our judgement day.”

“You cannot even comprehend them, let alone defeat them. They can manipulate our minds with ease and control our perceptions, thus changing reality as we know it. And through them, we can too. That’s how they blend in and what they’ve already been doing for aeons, accumulating power and waiting for the right moment to strike.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No one can. Such things are beyond the human mind.”

Suddenly, one of the demonic beasts burst forth from the bush lining the road. It landed next to Lucas on all-fours, shaking the earth with its force. Cruel red eyes stared at him from its wolfish visage.

“Behold the future,” Danny said.

The beast reared up, brandishing long bloodstained claws and unleashed a thundering roar, exultant.

Lucas turned and ran on towards town. Head down, arms pumping, he didn’t look back.

God give me strength.

But the beast merely watched him go...

Laughing at his folly.

WEDNESDAY 11:44
PM

All life, all hope, all belief in this cold, heartless world of lies, hate and greed. Gone. Gone with the world he had once known: his home, his family, his relationships, his job, his very being.

Yet the fury burned on within, an all-consuming fire propelling him onwards...

To victory or death.

Brian drove towards Howqua Hills in his blue Ford XF Falcon, oblivious to time. Manic, he drove at frantic speed, no longer caring for the law he had once fought to uphold. Everything rode on what he had to do now, in what might be his final act.

The last roll of the dice.

As Brian crested the rise into Howqua Hills, he was greeted by an ominous ruby glow over the town ahead. Gritting his teeth, shotgun across his lap, he urged his car faster, speeding into the heart of hell.

Fuck them all.

Brian reached the edge of the small town where Banner Road became Main Street and wondered what he had returned to. No houses were lit, no cars drove on the roads. There was only an eerie red permeating the town. In a few more moments, he could see the town centre...

And the source of the sinister light.

Where the Troopers’ Monument once stood at the large roundabout in the centre of town, there now soared a luminescent fifteen-metre obelisk, bristling with horrible barbed spikes impaling the bleeding bodies of tortured victims, undulating slowly with nefarious life.

Crowding the ruby shadows cast by the unholy pillar, were swarms of hairy beasts, under which people lay slowly squirming in their final agonised death throes. An army of demons in an orgy of torture, rape and slaughter.

Towering over the flock near the column of pain, stood a six-metre scorpioid abomination, shining crimson in the infernal light. Its armoured body bore two massive red pincers, a long segmented stinger arching forward over its head, spiky mandibles like tusks and a mass of green eyes like a spider.

The massacre of mankind had begun.

Brian slowed the car to a stop a few metres from the writhing masses and stared hopelessly at the thousands of
Dark Horde
gathered before him.

Fuck.

Then came the sound of chanting, growing more distinct as the volume increased:

“We are as one, as many are we...”

Brian shivered in his car as he looked for the source of the sound.

Then the crowd parted to expose the road leading to the centre of the hellish congregation, as a chilling chorus repeated:

“Become one, once more be...”

Brian saw that about eight of the demonic beasts stood at the base of the pulsing pillar fifty metres ahead, clad in purple-embroidered robes. They raised barbed and bloody candles to acknowledge his arrival, as if they’d been expecting him.

Then from their midst, stepped a hooded man in matching robes.

There you are, you bastard.

Brian planted his foot, driving straight at the man in front.

One of the two of us is gunna die. Maybe both.

The robed demons easily leapt clear of Brian’s oncoming vehicle, but the man in robes was slower... He hit the bumper bar on the driver’s side and rolled across the bonnet to Brian’s right.

Brian spun the wheel, sending the car sliding sideways into the wall of demonic spectators to his left. The beasts at the front fell backwards onto the ranks behind like a wave, but the elastic wall held and bounced back, cushioning Brian’s car from the kerb. Brian took his foot off the brake and floored the accelerator...

As the windows down the left side of the car smashed, and the creatures there began to get a grip.

Brian’s car lurched forward towards his purple-robed enemy that crawled on two broken legs twenty metres away. The demons surrounding him held onto his car, despite the broken glass that lacerated their hands and threatened to sever their digits. Two demons crashed into the bonnet, as others tore open his tyres.

Just a couple more seconds.

The car stopped moving, but near his target, Brian flung open the door and leapt out, shotgun drawn even as he landed.

The hooded man laughed back at him. A surreal moment passed when even the
Dark Horde
didn’t seem to move.

Rushing in for the kill, Brian fired both barrels of his twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun from close quarters. A terrific blast erupted through his victim’s chest, shredding robes, flesh and vital organs. The body slumped lifelessly in a pool of blood that shone purple in the car headlights...

Please let that be the end of it.

But the
Dark Horde
around him only laughed.

With shaking hands, Brian pulled back the hood of the man he’d just shot...

It wasn’t Henry at all. It was Douglas McDougall. His death mask smiled back at him.

Brian stared down incredulous.

Why won’t you fucking die?

Then a massive red pincer grabbed his throat and lifted him.

He craned his head to look into the alien arachnoid face of the scorpioid monstrosity looming six metres tall... Two large impenetrable green eyes sat either side of two rows of smaller eyes. Its slavering mandibles gibbering furiously and its crimson-coloured tail curled forward over its head towards him, ending in a barbed stinger, stained black with venom, the size of his head.

Without hesitation, Brian shoved the barrel of his shotgun into its cavernous mouth and pulled the trigger...

The top of its chitinous cranium exploded skyward as the lead spray tore through its head. Brian dropped to his feet as the almighty beast relaxed its grip and crashed backwards like a felled tree.

Shit, hey?

Pumping his shotgun to reload, he looked at the countless
Dark Horde
surrounding him... Growling.

Yeah, shit.

“
BLASPHEMY!
” bellowed one of the robed
Dark Horde
as it thundered into him from behind. One claw wrapped around his neck and another wrenched the shotgun from his grasp.

It’s over. I failed.

The beast roared in fury as it raised Brian by his neck and slam-dunked him onto the spiked obelisk. Brian managed to pull his head down to miss one ebony spike a metre long, but another went through his right shoulder, ripping flesh and forcing the wound wide open. Pinned, his feet barely touching the ground, he could only scream in agony. His blood mingled with that of the butchered corpses at his feet and those impaled around him.

In the murk, he imagined he recognised some of them.

The pillar began to beat faster, aroused by the blood of new life.

Brian looked into the dead face of Jason, the twenty-something year-old he’d rescued this morning. His still body hung next to him, staked to the pillar by two spikes going through his torso, leaving dripping intestines spilling down his waist. A nauseating stench assaulted him.

Jason’s eyes flicked open. He smiled as he returned Brian’s gaze.

Do you know what it’s like, Brian, to live in a world without death?

Brian pulled back in panic, wincing at the pain in his impaled shoulder, but could not escape.

His demonic attacker reared over him, red eyes flashing with malice as it flexed its terrible claws. Then it was crash-tackled from the side by another of the robed demons. Before it hit the ground, its attacker’s savagely fanged teeth had torn out its throat.

The victorious demon now stood over the crumpled body of the other, purple ichor smeared across its maw and chest. It curled its lips at Brian and made a low, threatening growl. Are they fighting over the right to kill me now?

“JUST DO IT!” Brian shouted.

The demon stepped forward and grabbed Brian’s head by the chin. Its sharp claws punctured his cheeks and drew blood as its rotten breath bore down on him...

“
Ifff ooonly,
” it answered.

The robed beast turned towards another man-sized figure in gold-trimmed purple robes emerging from the demonic crowds. Brian followed its gaze...

The man-sized figure pulled back the hood of his robes. Cold, angular features behind an evil smile stared back at Brian.

The familiar face of Henry Anthony Wilcox.

“Glad you could make it,” Henry said.

“Fuck you Henry, and your
Dark Horde
.”

“Oh, come now, Brian – they’re not that bad once you get used to them. And besides, why bat for the losing team?”

“Where’s my family, you arsehole?”

Henry grimaced. “They’re a little busy right now, I’m afraid. But once they’re finished, you’ll be able to speak to them... Though they may be a little, how shall I say?” Henry licked his lips. “Buggered.”

“I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU, YOU BASTARD!”

“I know all too well, Brian, that you’d kill me if I gave you the chance. That’s why I had your good friend Douglas McDougall pose in my place when you arrived. But now of course, you pose no threat,” he paused to kick Brian’s shotgun away, “so we can talk like the civil human beings that we are.”

“YOU FUCKING SPINELESS COWARD!”

“Now, now, name-calling isn’t being very civil, Brian.”