David Dunwoody - Empire's End

The Omega straddled Adam’s back. “ We’ll burn here together, Reaper — back to the abyss! ” A cacophony of insane laughter tore through the air. The old man’s meat was cooking. His skin blistered and split open. “ We’re starting to look alike, Reaper! Can you feel it — the burning? The terrible burning? Do you feel it eating you alive? ANSWER US! ” Rising, the Omega turned Adam over and kicked him in the chest. “ SPEAK! ”

Adam coughed up ashy spittle and rasped, “Enough talk.” He grabbed the chain hanging from the Omega’s hand and yanked as hard as he could.

The Omega stumbled over him and into the conveyor belt. It spun around, but not fast enough, not even close — Adam leapt across the room and drove his knees into the rotter’s ribs. Both flew over the belt and into the fire.

Adam sent his fist crashing through the Omega’s teeth. Its head snapped back, bone tearing through flesh. It laughed. Adam grabbed it by the wrist and swung it into the wall. Its arm cracked loudly. Still the fiend cackled. “ We’re already dead, demon! ”

Its hand found a meathook on the floor and closed over the wooden handle. Adam saw it coming and caught the Omega’s wrist. With a grim smile, he crushed it to powder inside his fist.

He swung at its jaw again. This time, it caught his fist in its broken teeth. Driving his thumb into the underside of its jaw, he gritted his teeth and twisted… twisted . The Omega yelped. It struggled feebly with his grip, and then it grunted and its jaw was ripped free with a wet sound, its black tongue spilling down its chest.

The rotter’s eyes were wide with shock. It clawed at Adam’s face, and still the voices poured out from the hollow of its throat. “ No! You can’t do this! You have no right! ”

“ YOU have no right!” Adam snatched the chain from the Omega’s hand, coiling it around his fist as the rotter staggered away. “You’re already dead!” He charged after it.

“ YOU HAVE NO RIGHT! ” he thundered again. His fist sailed through tongues of flame and shattered the Omega’s cheekbone. The voices inside screamed in horror — the killers, the rapists, the corruptors of humanity were all wracked with despair as Adam’s fist rained down on their shared limbs, breaking kneecaps in two, driving splinters of ribs into bursting organs, pulverizing joints and crushing tissue until there was a pulpy, sagging bag of bones left dangling in Adam’s grip.

“ You can’t…” the Omega pleaded. Ichor ran from its punctured eyeballs and into the creases of its smashed face. It raised broken fingers before itself and hissed, “ YOU CAN’T!! ”

“I am,” Adam spat. He threw the crippled corpse into the fire.

“No! Adam!” Lily was crying. Dalton did his best to ignore her as he sped down the street. She grabbed at the wheel.

“Stop it!” Dalton barked. “He’ll be all right! He’s not like us!”

“No, they’ll hurt him!” Lily protested.

Dalton was trying to think of a response when a towering beast stepped into the road ahead. He swerved to the left, felt himself losing control, the tires losing the road. Then the impact.

Dalton fell out his door and onto the sidewalk. Where was his gun? Drawing his combat knife, he crept around the rear of the Hummer to see just what had run them off the road.

The Petrified Man seized Dalton’s hand, crushing the bones of his fingers within their tubes of flesh, and lifted him to eye level.

“Run!” he shouted, praying Lily could hear him. “Run!”

The Petrified Man glanced downward. Lily started screaming. Dalton craned his neck to see her in the arms of another rotter. “NO—”

The Petrified Man rammed his fist into Dalton’s ribs. He was able to see his sternum buckle and split, erupting through his tattered uniform. He was able to watch the rotter pull his spine out through his chest, and lift it overhead to suck the fluid from it. Then, and only then, did he die.

Voorhees heard another commotion outside the Hummer. The door beside his head was torn open, and freeing cold washed over him.

“Where is she?” cried Adam.

“I don’t know what happen,” Voorhees breathed, enunciating as best he could. His strength was failing. He’d held onto this fragile, broken body long enough to finish Meyer; now, just when he thought he could finally lay his head to rest, another crisis. It never ends.

“I heard the driver yell at her to run,” he told Adam. “Then I heard him die.”

Adam strapped the scythe on and turned to face the empty street. Gaylen was an inferno. Somehow, the icy winter winds were still cutting through this concrete canyon, but its walls were all ablaze and flakes of snow were eroding away before they touched the asphalt.

And, at the end of the street, a hunchbacked rotter was dancing. Arms spread wide, head titled, a crazed grin on its face, it writhed in dark celebration. It beckoned to him.

Adam broke into a run. Nickel stopped dancing and lumbered into a mass of flames: a huge building that had been a train station a century prior. Adam followed without hesitation. He knew it was a trap. He knew it was the last trap, the end of this grim campaign — but he knew they had her.

He ran into the station. Tongues of heat crawled across a vaulted ceiling five stories overhead. He was flanked by columns bathed in fire. All was silent but for the crackling of the flames.

Nickel ran at him from the left. He turned and plunged the scythe through the rotter’s black heart. Threw the body aside. Too easy.

Eviscerato roared from the other end of the room.

He crouched like a threatened animal, pacing back and forth, Lily clutched against his chest.

“ Let her go! ” Adam bellowed.

The King of the Dead cocked his head and clacked his teeth together: CLACK-CLACK-CLACK , like some sort of primitive taunt. He tightened his grip on Lily. She screamed.

“I said LET HER GO GODDAMMIT! ”

Eviscerato held out his right arm. He shook it violently, then pointed at Adam. The scythe. He wanted it off.

Adam removed the straps and let the blade clatter on the marble floor. “All right!”

The Petrified Man seized him about the waist in a brutal bear-hug, swinging him high into the air and then squeezing his body against the zombie’s own bony bulk.

Then he was spinning through the air — a column approached — his back was folded around it for one brief, agonizing moment before he slumped to the floor. The Petrified Man was upon him immediately, smashing his head into the column. He grabbed the behemoth’s shoulders and pulled himself up to slug him in the jaw. The zombie simply smashed him into the column again. Adam’s world trembled. Bits of flaming plaster fell around him. Now flying again — slamming into the floor. Lily screaming.

Eviscerato hurled her aside and raised his cane over his head. Charged at Adam. The former Reaper lifted his head, and the cane lashed him across the jaw, sending him reeling straight into the Petrified Man’s arms. He was turned upside-down and swung into another column. Unconsciousness threatened to overtake him.

Eviscerato drove the cane deep into Adam’s gut, piercing his false flesh and churning his insides. Adam howled in agony. Eviscerato snapped his teeth and smiled that dreadful smile of his, that showman’s smile. Watch the fallen angel suffer and die at the hands of a mere human — less than a human, in fact! Nothing more than a rotten corpse, a dancing, capering corpse, meekest of all men — inheritor of the earth! The world is dead and soon she will be dead with us, Reaper. And you will be NOTHING—