A Story of Cinders: From the Ashes

Chapter 44: Embers

First crosses a hairless leg, taking a limping step forward. Skin red, puffy, and cracked, with a slight gloss to it. The muscles thin and atrophied. It looks like bones covered in dry leather. The other foot drags forward through the ash. The creature groans, as if every movement causes it unbearable pain. Now with it in the light, they all stare at this wight in horror. Its fingers long and clawlike, its arms skinny like its legs. Its ribcage almost seems to pop out through its skin. Its face hollow, with clusters of thin, wiry hair clinging to its scalp. Scraps of burned cloth hung from its body. Its dead eyes scan the commotion. They all stare back, frozen in terror.

           

     Then it shrieks. An inhuman shriek that could give the Devil nightmares. Suddenly, dozens more of The Charred crawl out of the rubble, wheezing and growling. The soldiers quickly try to reload, hands trembling, seeming to forget all their discipline. One of them finally managed to get a magazine in their gun and started shooting. A Charred growls something guttural, almost sounding like a word or phrase. The Charred converge on them faster than they can be shot down. One grabs a soldier from behind, tearing off pieces of armor. Another pulls him forward, clawing his throat and face. One tries to take John from behind. He ducks, stabbing it in the stomach. It wheezes as the air escapes its body. John throws the body over his shoulder, pulling out his knife at the same time. Blood splatters up his back, staining his uniform. "We need to leave!" he shouts.

     "I agree!" Red shouts, pulling her knife out of a Charred's eye socket. The three of them rush back to the truck. John started it and peeled out, watching two Charred pursue the car while the rest overwhelmed the Zhar-Ptitsa soldiers. John looked over at Charlie, who was staring at his bloodless kukri.

     "What's wrong?" John asked. "And don't tell me it's nothing." Charlie blinked a couple times, then shook his head, coming back to the real world. "That whole thing was just... I've gone this long convinced the Charred were a myth. And then to be surrounded by them like that..."

     "Little eye-opener?"

     "Yeah, sure." Charlie's mind was still elsewhere.

     "You're lying to me, aren't you?"

     "Of course I am."

     "You ever gonna be up front with me about this?"

     "I don't intend to, but the way things are going right now... Let's get to safety before we worry about that, though." John continued driving for another ten miles or so. They watched as the tall ruins became shorter, hollowed out structures. In the past, they would have been small shops, restaurants, and houses. Broken tree branches and metal posts from chain link fences stuck haphazardly from the ash, like bones from a compound fracture. As they traveled farther from downtown, the buildings became sparse and more spread out. John turned left, taking a country road that cut through a valley between two tall hills. They were back in the country now, on the edge of the forest. The silhouettes of mountains were barely visible in the haze of ash. How long had it been since they had been to the mountains? Or even seen mountains, for that matter.

     "Hey John, I don't know if you noticed, but there is nowhere to hide out here. We should've stayed in the city," Red comments, staring at the open, ashy landscape stretching ahead of them.

     "There's somewhere up ahead we can hide," Charlie called back, applying pressure to his bullet wound. "How's your face, by the way?"

     "Stings a bit. Wait, how do you know that?"

     "Because I can see it. It's nice and isolated from the city. Good place to lay low." A lie.

     Sure enough, a few seconds later, John saw the structure of a silhouette on the horizon. It was a few stories tall, and seemed relatively unharmed. Then John stopped to think for a second. There was no way Charlie could have seen that before him. "How did you know that was there?" he asked Charlie.