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  HALL OF TWELVE

  By Rebecca Besser

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this story are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text Copyright © 2011, 2012, & 2013 Rebecca Besser and Hive Mind Press.

  All rights reserved.

  Sincere thanks go out to God, for giving me the ability to write and create;

  to my family for their never ending support;

  to Matt Nord for having the contest on CotD forum which I wrote the flash version of this story for;

  and to James Conway for loving the dark side with me, especially this story.

  HALL OF TWELVE

  Jack Henderson was driving home from work when he noticed something was different. At first, he couldn’t place what exactly the difference was, but that it was there. By the time he reached his street the feeling started to turn into dread. Where there were normally children playing and elderly neighbors working in their yards, there was silence – no movement, no sound, no people.

  Concern for his wife and daughter caused him to accelerate, and his dark-blue luxury sedan slid sideways with a squeal of tires as he maneuvered into his driveway. He jumped out of the car, leaving it running as he banged his way through the open front door.

  “Maggie!” he yelled. “Regan!”

  He slid in something slick and wet on the floor of the foyer, falling and landing on his back; the marble tiles almost knocked him out as his head made contact with the hard stone.

  Groaning, Jack rolled onto his side and rose up to his knees. He stayed that way for a moment with his eyes closed, trying to remain conscious. When he finally opened his eyes, he instantly wished he hadn’t. The foyer floor was covered in blood and it was now all over him.

  Slipping and sliding, he forced himself to his feet, gripping the banister of the stair railing to hold himself upright while the world spun.

  “Maggie!” he bellowed again. “Regan! Answer me!”

  Silence.

  He closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths before letting go of the banister. When he opened his eyes again, he was looking at the floor. The world had stopped spinning moments ago, but it began again as his stomach lurched.

  Lying on the bottom step was his daughter’s tennis shoe with a bloody bone protruding out of it, pointing into the corner. Blood dripped from the leg to the step and onto the tile of the foyer; strips of muscle and skin hung loosely from the bone, slouching limply against the red, saturated carpet.

  Jack bent over as he lost the contents of his stomach, adding color and acidity to the already wet floor. He fell to his knees, and that’s when he saw Regan’s head; it was sitting in the potted fern by the door.

  Her eyes were gone, leaving dark hollows where the windows to her soul had once been, and all the flesh was missing from her face. Her cheekbones were still pinkish red from the blood that was trickling down over her small, exposed white teeth to drip into the dark soil beneath her jawbone, which hung at a drunken angle.

  Slowly, he crawled over to her, envisioning her beautiful face and her bright smile. Held in his vision of the girl he loved so much, he lifted his hand to caress her hair, but when his hand came in contact with slick, rough skull, he knew the carnage was indeed reality. He cupped the head of his daughter in his hand and drew it close into the crook of his arm – his mind and body were numb with shock and grief.

  Jack’s hand absently caressed the top of the bloody skull and his fingers became entangled in the few scraps of scalp and clinging hair that still remained on the bone. With disgust he shook them off, and as they landed in the blood and vomit mixture with a plop, he noticed for the first time that there was a hole in the back and the brains were missing. Around the hole were deep groves that looked like they’d been made with something long and sharp. The only thing his brain could come up with was tooth marks, but he couldn’t think of anything that large with teeth that big. Now curious, he looked over at the leg bone laying a few feet from him; he could clearly see similar grooves on it.

  Suddenly, his brain cleared a bit and he remembered his wife. He’d been so shocked at finding the severed pieces of his daughter, he’d forgotten all about her.

  “Maggie,” he whispered, and looked around frantically, but he didn’t see any of her laying in the entrance way of their home.

  Setting Regan’s skull down on the step beside her leg, Jack stood, slipping slightly but righting himself before he fell again. For a moment he stood undecided, looking up the stairs and then down the hall, wondering which way he should go and what horrors might be awaiting him.

  Cautiously, he moved through the rooms on the first floor, but found absolutely nothing else alarming. The backyard looked normal, and he even went half way down the basement steps to check if anyone or anything was down there. Nothing was moved or missing from any of the rooms he searched.

  Again he stood at the bottom of the stairs, and tears returned to his eyes as he looked down at the remains of his little girl – she’d only been six years old.

  Trudging up the stairs, he gripped the banister once again for balance. As he ascended each step his heart sank lower. There was still no sound coming from anywhere. If his wife was upstairs, he expected her to be dead.

  Jack searched all the rooms, ending up in the master bedroom. He was almost surprised to see that the covers of the bed and all of the pillows were shredded – some of them streaked with blood. He examined them more closely and noted there wasn’t enough of the red liquid for it to have been a fatal wound to whomever had been injured – there was a streak here, a small puddle there, but nothing significant. Because of the remains downstairs, he believed the blood to be his wife’s, since there was no other logical explanation. So, it appeared his wife was still alive and was injured. Someone had taken her for some reason he didn’t know or understand, and he didn’t have any idea what to do about it; he felt helpless and lost.

  He sat down on the bed, letting his head fall forward into his hands.

  In a daze he reached for the handset of the phone, which had been knocked out of its cradle and now lay on the floor – assumedly by the struggle resulting in the appearance of the bed.

  His brain was in a fog, but he managed to dial 9-1-1. There was no answer. He frowned down at the phone for a moment and then threw it across the room as hard as he could; a violent shudder ran through him as it shattered the mirror it collided with.

  He jumped when a loud booming voice yelled from downstairs.

  “Hello? Is anyone here?”

  For a split second Jack panicked, thinking he should hide, but he realized he had nothing to lose: his daughter was dead; his wife was missing and could be dead as well for all he knew; and there was no help coming, because he couldn’t even contact emergency services to help. He was alone and broken, and depression was quickly seeping through him, all the way to his bones. . .to his soul.

  He stood and walked toward the doorway, stumbling like a drunkard as his head wound pulsed painfully. Once he exited the master bedroom, he went left along the landing hallway and made his way downstairs. Just as he stepped off the last of the stairs into the foyer and turned toward the living room, a burly man appeared in the archway; they both jumped at the site of each other.

  The larger man raised a rifle, aiming it at Jack’s face.

  “If you’re robbing me, I don’t care,” Jack said with a smirk. “Shit, take everything – it means nothing to me.”

  The man opened his mouth, but shut it again, lowering his gun. He looked Jack over; he was quite a sight covered in dried blood and vomit. His gray eyes held a hollow sadness and tears quivered on his dark lashes, but at the same time, hi
s countenance held defiance and strength – his clenched jaw, ridged stance, and harsh tone proved that he was a fighter at heart.

  “We aren’t here to rob you,” the burly man said with surprising gentleness. “We came here to see if there were any survivors, and we found you.”

  Jack sighed heavily and looked down – the tears finally fell and washed streaks down his face.

  “My name’s Ben. Do you have any family? Is there anyone else here? We need to get moving and find somewhere safe. Those. . .things might come back.”

  Jack’s head shot up and a berserk desperation replaced his sadness. “Things? What things? Have you seen them? I think whoever was here took my wife!” He darted forward and gripped the front of Ben’s shirt, half dragging the much larger man down to his level. “Tell me, damn you!”

  Ben would have laughed at the crazy behavior if it hadn’t been warranted. “Calm down. Calm down. I don’t know exactly what they are yet – I haven’t seen them myself. My daughter caught a glimpse of them before she managed to hide.”

  At the word “daughter” Jack groaned and released Ben. Going limp, he slid to the floor, sitting with his back against the door jamb.

  “We have to get what supplies we can, and move out. George, there, he has a cabin in the woods we can hide in for a while.”

  Jack glanced to the entrance of the house to see a small group of men standing outside. One nodded at him, and Jack assumed he was George. Having been so focused on Ben, he was surprised to see the others.

  “What’s going on?” Jack asked, dragging his hands through his blood crusted hair. “I don’t understand any of this. Why do we have to leave? What’s happening? Why aren’t they answering emergency calls?”

  Ben sighed and squatted down beside Jack. “We aren’t entirely sure. We can’t reach any emergency personnel. Hank saw something on the news before everything went crazy – he can tell you more than I can.”

  He looked outside at the group of men who were milling around the yard, waiting to see what they would be doing next. He scanned them with his eyes, not finding the one he wanted.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “Has anyone seen Hank?”

  A young man, who couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, stuck his head in through the door.

  “He took a small group and went to the next house,” he said. “I guess he figured you had things handled and wanted to check the last few houses before dark.”

  Ben nodded. “Thanks, Xavier.”

  The young man nodded and ducked back outside after his eyes darted to Jack briefly.

  “So,” Ben said. “Are you going to come with us? Or stay here and try to sort things out on your own?”

  Jack turned toward the stairs, his eyes falling on what was left of his daughter.

  “I’ll come with you,” he said. “If nothing else, I want to pay those bastards back for what they did to my little girl.”

  Ben followed his line of vision and saw the skull and leg lying on the step. His jaw tightening in contempt for whoever would do such a thing to anyone, much less a child.

  “I have some debts to settle with them as well,” Ben said, thinking back to the carnage he’d found in his own home. “Let’s get your daughter buried in the backyard while the guys collect supplies. We’re loading up as many trucks as possible with food and anything else we might need. Oh, I don’t think I caught your name. . .”

  “Jack,” he said standing, and nodding. “Jack Henderson.” He walked over and gently lifted what was left of Regan into his arms and carried the pieces out to the backyard without another word. From the shed he retrieved a shovel and started digging.

  Ben followed him out, stood his rifle against the privacy fence close to the grave site, and found another shovel in the shed. He too started digging.

  The burial didn’t take them long, since there wasn’t much left of the girl.

  They stood over the small grave, not saying a word. The clangs and bangs of the men gathering food and supplies from the house echoed out to them.

  Jack sighed. “Could I have a minute, please?”

  Ben nodded, put his shovel away, collected his rifle, and went back into the house.

  Jack knelt down and caressed the loose brown dirt with his hand, tears once again springing to his eyes as a lump formed in his throat. For a few moments he had a difficult time breathing, but finally he was able to speak.

  “I know how much you loved to play out here, so I know you’ll be happy to stay. When I think of you, I’ll always remember the sound of your laughter and the sight of the sun shining in your golden hair as you ran and played. I’ll always love you, and I’ll always remember you. I promise that I’ll find Mommy and make sure she’s okay. And I’ll make whoever hurt you suffer for what they did. I love you, Regan. Daddy will always love you.”

  Bending forward, Jack rested his forehead on the grave and sobbed.

  ~

  Two hours later, twenty men, three women, and one child set off for George’s cabin. Jack fell asleep soon after they’d started out. He was spent physically and emotionally, but he soon woke up when shooting started.

  Reaching for the 9mm pistol one of the men had given him, he looked around wildly. The outside world was now dark, deep in the hours of night, and he couldn’t see anything beyond the truck’s windows.

  “What’s going on?” he asked the driver and felt bad that he couldn’t remember his name.

  “Don’t know,” the man said, spitting out the window; the juice from his chewing tobacco hitting the asphalt with a sickening splash. “Sounds like we’re in for a little bit of excitement. Maybe we’ll get to plug a couple of those murdering freaks.”

  The man opened his door and climbed out, taking his pump, 12 gauge shotgun with him. The click-click of the shotgun’s slide echoed through the night, causing Jack to shudder as he too exited the vehicle, gripping the 9 in his sweaty palm.

  Another spray of gunfire blasted from one of the lead trucks; its shiny red paint reflected the flares from the muzzles, creating split second flashes of blinding light. In those brief seconds Jack saw what they were firing at and his blood went cold.

  Five tall figures shrouded in black cloaks were standing on top of a grass covered hill; two of the Beings were holding leashes of grotesque monsters. Brief glimpses of the creatures revealed images reserved for the worst of nightmares.

  One of the monsters was as big as a full grown bull, with a head and mouth similar to a bear’s, but with a longer snout and teeth that were as long as a grown man’s arm. Blood dripped from its jaws as it roared and snarled – its own teeth cutting into its flesh. Prancing on six legs that were nothing but muscle under translucent skin, it strained the chain that its master held.

  The other monster was smaller, more worm like, with a giant centipede body that wriggled while its numerous talon tipped legs pawed at the soft brown earth as it too strained for release. The creature’s entire face seemed to unfold into a huge mouth with multiple rows of blood stained teeth, and even over the gunshots Jack could hear it making sucking noises.

  With eardrum straining shrill cries, the Beings released the monsters. They advanced toward the string of humanity on the road, the bullets not deterring them at all.

  The bull creature slammed head first into the lead truck, which could barely be seen around a slight bend in the road. Roaring ferociously, it ripped the door of the truck open and pulled out the occupants with its teeth and claws while they continued to shoot blindly into the air. Soon screams and the crunching of bones were the only things that could be heard from ahead.

  The worm creature was stealthier, attacking the people in the second truck, slinking behind them as they aimed their guns at the bull-beast. Quickly crawling up their backs, it latched its huge mouth around their heads. With a sharp snapping noise, it pulverized their skulls and sucked out their brains.

  Jack was in shock at how quickly it moved. He also noticed that bullets were having no effect on the mo
nsters. They bounced off the almost armor like plating of the worm’s body, and the bull just seemed too thick with muscle to even feel them, as if the bullets were nothing more than mosquitos.

  After the bull had finished its meal of the occupants of the lead truck, it turned its attention to Jack and the man with him. They stood slack jawed and paralyzed with fear as they were targeted.

  Jack was the first to recover. His arm flew up and he fired the 9 as fast as he could, emptying the clip at its bulk, not really aiming. The huge beast kept coming, ready to make the men the next course of its meal.

  BOOM!

  A shotgun blasted so close to Jack’s head that he thought he would be deaf for the rest of his life. But luckily, the shot had been true, and had blown half of the worm’s legs off on one side, the hollow point slug shredding flesh as it moved through. The creature had tried to sneak up on the two men while they were distracted by the bull-beast, and had almost reached Jack when the driver had opened fire. . .just in time.

  The worm fell to the ground, squealing like a pig, but in a much higher pitch. The bull, running headlong toward the duo of humans, came to a sudden halt and sniffed the injured creature; its long tongue snaked out and licked at the worm’s brilliant orange blood. Seeming to like what it tasted, its tongue shot out again and wrapped around the squirming, squealing, injured monster, trapping it between its jaws with an audible crunch. Blood gushed out of the bull’s mouth while it snacked on its dinner companion.

  Jack nudged the driver and muttered, “I think we should get out of here while we still have a chance.”

  The driver nodded and they backed up the couple of steps to the truck, not taking their eyes off the devouring bull-beast. The truck was still running, which they were pleased about since they wouldn’t draw attention from the consuming monster starting it. They climbed in slowly and closed the doors behind them, locking them securely, although they would have no effect on keeping the beast out if it decided to attack. Ripping the gearshift into reverse and pressed on the accelerator hard, the driver took off at a speed that caused Jack’s head to slam against the dashboard.