David Dunwoody - Empire's End

Lily grabbed Halstead’s legs. She screamed in protest as Adam pulled her away. Together, they watched the cop’s body slide out the window into the night.

Gregory shook Adam by the shoulder. “Can you help us get to the vehicle outside?”

Adam nodded. He pulled the scythe from under his cloak and strapped it on to his arm. “Where is it?”

“Out front.”

“Of course,” Adam sighed. He walked over to the barricaded doors and started pulling crates away.

Dalton pulled Cam to her feet. “We need you. C’mon.”

As Adam took down the barricade, he sensed something, something vague and threatening that gnawed at the back of his mind. What was it? The horde waiting outside? No, it was something worse.

As he pulled the last shelf away, the doors fell in beneath the weight of the undead. Zombies spilled into the room.

“Open fire!” Gregory shouted.

Adam sliced a pair of rotters in half and kicked their spurting remains away. He turned to grab Lily, pulling her onto his shoulders. He turned back just in time to be tackled to the floor. Lily tumbled away from him.

She scrambled past Gregory, who was busy shearing the heads off of rotters with his shotguns. He knelt to reload — cold hands clamped down on his shoulders. He batted them away and retreated further into the room.

The undead were still pouring in — far more than thirty now. It was a full-scale assault. Adam stood at the threshold and pared them down, but again and again he was overwhelmed by their numbers, and they broke through in waves. Such a wave swept over Ian Gregory. He discharged the shotguns as he fell, taking a couple more with him. He was fading fast beneath an onslaught of teeth, and fumbled through his uniform for the grenade there — released the pin — his last act of defiance.

The muffled explosion threw the dead straight up in a smoking geyser. They came down in pieces, only to be replaced by others. Every blast, every bullet — it meant nothing, the rotters were swarming in at an exponential rate.

Tripper and Cam were backed into the far corner of the room. They turned a shelf on its side and used it for cover until their guns were empty.

Tripper lit a joint, took a long drag and passed it to his lover. “I don’t know what to say,” he muttered, barely audible above the groans of the encroaching dead.

“There’s nothing to say.” Cam gently kissed his neck, then wrapped her arms around him.

The rotters pulled the shelf aside. Tripper glared at them over Cam’s shoulder. “Fuckers.” Then the pair was swallowed.

Lily cowered between a shelf and the rear wall. She screamed as a shadow swooped down to collect her. “It’s all right!” Dalton yelled. “We’re getting out of here!”

“Reaper!” he shouted. On the other side of the room, Adam turned to see the soldier and child surrounded by undead. He hurled himself into their midst like a torpedo, raking his scythe through flesh and bone and cutting a path to Lily. Dalton handed her over. “The car!”

He stayed glued to Adam’s back as the former Death made his way to the entrance. They ran out into the freezing cold, into the night — only to find the sky lit by flames as every building around them burned. Adam glanced up at the library’s roof and saw his horse’s head hanging over the edge, dead. It must have been struck by shrapnel. So, then, on to a new steed — Adam yanked open the Hummer’s passenger door and put Lily inside. Dalton was already behind the wheel. Gregory had left the keys inside. Knew he might not make it back. Good man to the end.

“ WAIT! ” a voice snarled. Adam turned — and was blown away by a volley of bullets.

Finn Meyer staggered toward the Hummer. “ Get out! ” he screamed at Dalton.

Dalton raised his hands and scooted out of the driver’s seat. “I have a child here!”

Meyer grimaced. “I don’t care!”

Then he heard a sound at his back — a ragged scream, but not that of the undead. No, it was a cry fraught with rage and grief and desperation, and Meyer managed to put his finger on the voice just before the widowmaker separated his head from his neck.

He fell into the snow; blinked a few times, in disbelief, at Voorhees, and at his own decapitated body; then his mind faded.

A zombie bit into Voorhees’ shoulder. He hacked into its skull and shoved it aside. Didn’t matter now. He’d followed Meyer’s gunshots and footfalls until he heard his voice and was sure. Now it was over.

“Voorhees!” Lily cried.

He held his hand out, clutching at the air. “Lily?”

Dalton put his arm around the half-dead man and dragged him to the Hummer. “Here. Get in.”

Adam got to his feet and grimaced as he felt the bullets searing his insides. He saw Voorhees, and that Lily was safe, and he left out a sigh of relief. At least it was finally done.

Then Eugene stepped around the front of the vehicle. Adam saw him for the first time, and that feeling of strange dread gripped him again.

“Who are you?” he called.

The old man opened his mouth. He did not speak, yet a voice— voices —poured forth like flies boiling from his lips. “ We have many names. ”

It was the Omega.

He’d fully regenerated.

And, with a strength unlike any man Adam had ever seen, the Omega surged forward and knocked him off his feet, driving him through a burning wall and into the mouth of Hell.

“ WE ARE ONE THOUSAND MILLION STRONG! WE HAVE WAITED AN ETERNITY IN THE ABYSS FOR THIS MOMENT — WE ARE THE END, REAPER, YOUR END, AND NOW WE SHALL REAP YOU! ”

Adam was half-conscious, barely aware of the scorching heat enveloping him as he was carried through a burning room. All was white around him, a swimming storm of flames, a maelstrom without end. Then he was slammed down on a table of glowing steel and the fissures of his burnt flesh opened to receive the pain.

The Omega smashed Adam’s head into the table in a mad frenzy. All the while his jaw hung open, hateful words spouting forth: “ DEMON! FUCKING DEMON — NOW YOU JOIN US IN HELL! NOW YOU’LL KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE! ” Hundreds of voices or more were fighting to be heard, screaming over one another in various languages, all of which Adam could understand — and all of which were saying the same things. They were wrong, he was no demon, he had once been a man himself. He pushed the Omega’s hands away from his throat and tried to speak.

“ WE DON’T WANT YOUR LIES! WE WILL HAVE OUR VENGEANCE! ”

The Omega tore the scythe from Adam’s arm; wouldn’t have done him any good anyway. He tried to look around and figure out just where they were. All he saw were flames.

The Omega overturned the table and sent Adam sprawling. He splashed down in a hot, coppery liquid. Blood. The floor was covered in blood.

Adam stood up. He was standing on the killing floor of a slaughterhouse.

A white-hot chain was slung around his neck. The Omega lifted him off the floor, its own hands blackening as it pulled the chain taut. The façade of a healthy man was being scorched away. It shook Adam violently, throttling him, and he felt his flesh becoming brittle ash and falling away in flakes. Can’t take much more of this.

The Omega hurled him over a fiery conveyor belt and into a steel wall. Adam landed on his hands and knees and crawled toward an enormous block of machinery. He had to get out of here. He could feel the heat searing the lenses of his eyes. His body was falling apart. Had to keep moving.

The chain snapped against the side of his head and sent him sliding through coagulated gore. He heard the distant braying of livestock as the flames consumed them. Was he to join them, just another servant-animal gutted and cast aside?