Beneath the Flesh: They kept all the demons out … except one Read Online Free PDF Page B
Author: Alex Kings
immediately.
Outside! Outside the compound, outside the van, on their own in a city of demons. Pistol still out and levelled, Luke did a slow circle, checking all angles. The road was a commercial place, lined with shops, the pavement in front of them glittering with the shattered glass of their fronts. Nearby, and old McDonalds with half its sign torn down lay open to the world, revealing chairs and tables still in place where they were bolted to the floor. Unhealthy-looking weeds grew up through cracks in the pavement, between buildings, from drain covers. Some of them were plants Luke was sure he'd never seen before. The whole place smelled thickly of a sort of sweet, pollen-rich rotting.
He'd expected there to be bodies, he realised. No, not bodies after this long – skeletons, then. Bloodstains, at least inside where the rain hadn't washed them away. Remains of some sort, after the massacre after the demons had first come through. But there were none. They'd all been removed, or eaten, or something.
And on one side of the road was their way out: A little narrow passage leading to a flight of stairs.
No demons visible.
They set off. Luke pushed the trolly and kept a watch ahead, Jess took up the rear. There was a narrow ramp by the stairs, so they could get the trolley up without too much difficulty. Luke was still wondering about what had happened to Jess's arm back in the van, but he thought it would be best to save that conversation until a bit later.
At the top of the stairs and the ramp was a wide pedestrian plaza, roughly triangular in shape. Again, the standard wall of ruined shop fronts. There were shopping trolleys here too, probably from the supermarket on one side. They lay scattered about, all heavily rusted and mostly broken in some way. Other litter too that hadn't been washed or blown away in the months since the fall: A walking stick, corroded metal chairs from a cafe, a supermarket shelf, a broken riot helmet. There was something human-sized lying near the middle of the plaza; Luke approached it with his pistol drawn, but it turned out to be more rubbish, so thickly covered in mould that he couldn't make out what it had been when it was dropped.
He lowered his pistol and turned to Jess. “With everyone telling us how dangerous this place is, don't you think it's a bit weird that we haven't seen more demons?”
“If we'd run into a crowd of runners like the van did back there, we'd be dead already. I think we've just been lucky so far – they're all busy somewhere else.” She looked at the mouldy lump with a grimace of disgust. “I wonder why, though. What do demons get up to when we're not around?”
They started walking slowly across the plaza to the road opposite.
“Wander around waiting for something to attack? They're just like animals.”
“Yeah, and animals have lots of different sorts of behaviours. What are the demon behaviours? Are they all the same? Is it just trying to infect us, or is it something more complex?”
Luke had never really thought about it that way before. “Let's focus,” he said slowly, “on getting you healthy. Then we can focus on studying demons.”
Jess said nothing. The walked in silence to the end of the plaza, back onto a dilapidated-looking road, turned left where to map told them, then right, and –
“Oh, shit,” said Jess.
The road was lined with cheap apartment blocks with faces covered in pale, chipped paint – pinks, blues, yellows – and broken windows. It followed a gentle slope downhill, the lowest part holding the remains of a bus, lying on its side, and a couple of cars smashed together. Beyond this, they could make out the front of the hospital just visible at the end of the road.
But in the way, around the bus and the cars, were dozens of demons.
They were maybe a hundred metres away. Like dogs, thought Luke. Like skinned, eyeless dogs, with wet, pink-grey
Outside! Outside the compound, outside the van, on their own in a city of demons. Pistol still out and levelled, Luke did a slow circle, checking all angles. The road was a commercial place, lined with shops, the pavement in front of them glittering with the shattered glass of their fronts. Nearby, and old McDonalds with half its sign torn down lay open to the world, revealing chairs and tables still in place where they were bolted to the floor. Unhealthy-looking weeds grew up through cracks in the pavement, between buildings, from drain covers. Some of them were plants Luke was sure he'd never seen before. The whole place smelled thickly of a sort of sweet, pollen-rich rotting.
He'd expected there to be bodies, he realised. No, not bodies after this long – skeletons, then. Bloodstains, at least inside where the rain hadn't washed them away. Remains of some sort, after the massacre after the demons had first come through. But there were none. They'd all been removed, or eaten, or something.
And on one side of the road was their way out: A little narrow passage leading to a flight of stairs.
No demons visible.
They set off. Luke pushed the trolly and kept a watch ahead, Jess took up the rear. There was a narrow ramp by the stairs, so they could get the trolley up without too much difficulty. Luke was still wondering about what had happened to Jess's arm back in the van, but he thought it would be best to save that conversation until a bit later.
At the top of the stairs and the ramp was a wide pedestrian plaza, roughly triangular in shape. Again, the standard wall of ruined shop fronts. There were shopping trolleys here too, probably from the supermarket on one side. They lay scattered about, all heavily rusted and mostly broken in some way. Other litter too that hadn't been washed or blown away in the months since the fall: A walking stick, corroded metal chairs from a cafe, a supermarket shelf, a broken riot helmet. There was something human-sized lying near the middle of the plaza; Luke approached it with his pistol drawn, but it turned out to be more rubbish, so thickly covered in mould that he couldn't make out what it had been when it was dropped.
He lowered his pistol and turned to Jess. “With everyone telling us how dangerous this place is, don't you think it's a bit weird that we haven't seen more demons?”
“If we'd run into a crowd of runners like the van did back there, we'd be dead already. I think we've just been lucky so far – they're all busy somewhere else.” She looked at the mouldy lump with a grimace of disgust. “I wonder why, though. What do demons get up to when we're not around?”
They started walking slowly across the plaza to the road opposite.
“Wander around waiting for something to attack? They're just like animals.”
“Yeah, and animals have lots of different sorts of behaviours. What are the demon behaviours? Are they all the same? Is it just trying to infect us, or is it something more complex?”
Luke had never really thought about it that way before. “Let's focus,” he said slowly, “on getting you healthy. Then we can focus on studying demons.”
Jess said nothing. The walked in silence to the end of the plaza, back onto a dilapidated-looking road, turned left where to map told them, then right, and –
“Oh, shit,” said Jess.
The road was lined with cheap apartment blocks with faces covered in pale, chipped paint – pinks, blues, yellows – and broken windows. It followed a gentle slope downhill, the lowest part holding the remains of a bus, lying on its side, and a couple of cars smashed together. Beyond this, they could make out the front of the hospital just visible at the end of the road.
But in the way, around the bus and the cars, were dozens of demons.
They were maybe a hundred metres away. Like dogs, thought Luke. Like skinned, eyeless dogs, with wet, pink-grey
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