Darkened Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Epilogue

  DEADWORLD

  by Bryan Smith

  Copyright ©2011, Bryan Smith

  All rights reserved

  www.bryansmith.info

  Cover design by John Hornor Jacobs

  www.bastardizedversion.blogspot.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the permission of the author.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Ebook creation by Dellaster Design

  This one’s for Rachael.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: I’d like to thank each of the following people and organizations for various reasons. Rachael Wise, Cherie Smith, Jeff Smith, Eric Smith, Keith Ashley, Shannon Turbeville, Dorothy C. May, Jay & Helene Wise, Ben & Tracy Eller, Derek Tatum, Kent Gowran, Joe Howe, Mark Hickerson, KAOS, Tod Clark, Paul Synuria II, Paul Legerski, Brian Keene, Mark Sylva, John Barcus, Liz Rowell, Brittany Crass, Blake Conley, John Hornor Jacobs, Steven Shrewsbury, Kim Myers, Shane Ryan Staley, Scott Nicholson, Doug & Jamie Dobbs, Paperback Horror blog, Jeff Burk, Carlton Mellick III, Rose O’Keefe, Deadite Press, Delirium Books, Jonathan Maberry, Gregory Solis, The Creeping Cruds, Ronald Kelly, and all my regular readers through the years. Your support and encouragement is appreciated.

  Prologue

  The first thing—and, really, one of the very few things—you’ll need to know about me is that I survived the End Times. This should be obvious. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here to put pen to paper. Of course it’s questionable whether anyone will ever read what I have to say within these pages, but I think it’s important to at least attempt to establish some sort of record of what happened.

  There are precious few of us left, we humans. Whether those of us who remain can repopulate and renew this decimated world remains to be seen. I frankly wouldn’t bet money on it. Not that money really means anything anymore. On the off chance I’m wrong, however, my hope is this manuscript might serve as a cautionary tale. It is my intent to be as honest as possible in this account. Therefore I’ll be adopting the role of third person narrator for the rest of these pages. If I do the job I’ve assigned myself properly, you shouldn’t be able to guess which of the players in this tale is me. At least not until very close to the end of my story.

  What follows is the truth as I know it. I was privy enough to the thoughts and feelings of my compatriots to feel confident that I can accurately portray events from their points of view. Here and there will be bits one might interpret as ‘fiction’, though I prefer to think of them as artistic license. These are included to convey the grand scale of what happened during those first calamitous End Time days. In these instances the specific event might not have occurred, but many things like them certainly did.

  Once upon a time we lived in a fairy tale world in which the only monsters we had to worry about were of the human variety. Madmen and terrorists. Crooked politicians and corporate greedheads. An ordinary world inhabited by billions of ordinary human beings. A flesh and blood, concrete world built upon an unquestioned foundation of solid, non-malleable reality. This was our world, earth, and anything beyond it was unknowable and purely the theoretical province of theologians and spiritualists.

  Until, that is, that unbridgeable gap between our reality and the unknowable began to decay. Until the denizens of that dark place came howling into our world, bringing with them a storm of death and destruction, and planting a seed of rot that would infect each of the intermingling alien worlds.

  This is my story.

  This is everyone’s story.

  This is how the world died…

  CHAPTER ONE

  From out of the blackness, a shape emerges and hides in shadow.

  It is a formless, amorphous thing. A shifting, slithering mass of a substance resembling raw petroleum. It looks like nothing that has ever drawn breath in this world, like nothing that could possibly be alive, but alive it is and within it resides an awful consciousness, a black-tinged, malevolent intelligence that pulsates with hate and a gnawing need to destroy all that is alien.

  All that is of this strange new world it has invaded.

  But to do this it must adapt.

  It begins to discern the shape of the world beyond these shadows and what it detects sickens it. So strong is this initial repulsion that it nearly attempts to retreat to the world from which it has come, a realm it subjugated and made its own long ago. So long ago that this new world may not have existed then. But it is an ancient thing and time is a concept so small, so abstract, that it attaches no significance to it.

  All that matters is beginning anew the process of conquest and annihilation.

  To that end, it casts a net with its mind, searching for a place to begin…

  Searching for a suitable Host.

  Then…here.

  Yes, this will do.

  * * *

  The day the world watched the president of the United States of America die on live television began for most as uneventfully as any other.

  For most, but not for all.

  * * *

  Nashville, TN

  September 25

  6:00 a.m.

  Emily Sinclair awoke to the not-quite-dulcet tones of the morning zoo crew on one of the local Top 40 stations. She groaned and slapped the radio alarm clock, knocking it off the nightstand in the process. The clock landed on the floor with a thunk, but the zoo crew babbled on, the tinny, snickering voices drilling into her sleep-befuddled brain like a thousand tiny needles.

  Gritting her teeth, she reached over the side of the bed, gripped the clock’s electrical cord in a shaking hand, and ripped it free of the outlet. She relinquished the cord and fell back into bed. She stared at the ceiling, just barely visible now in the dawning light of the new day, and tried to think of a good reason to get out of bed. She was unemployed, having been fired from her bartending job at the Villager Pub a week earlier. Rick McAllister, her boyfriend of the last year and a half, had dumped her the week before that.

  Thinking about it now, as she lay half-awake in bed at the ungodly hour of 6 a.m., it seemed pretty obvious she had nothing to live for and so getting out of bed to face the day was really quite pointless. Except…

  Except that she’d made a promise to her mom during an excruciatingly endless long-distance phone conversation the previous night. A vow that she wouldn’t allow herself to sink into depths of intractable depression. She wouldn’t sit around in her apartment moping all day. She wouldn’t keep drinking vodka until she passed out. Because, as her mother had so sternly reminded her, she’d gone down that path once before in her life and it hadn’t turned out so well, now had it?

  Mom’s guilt-tripping worked its predictable efficient magic. Emily had gone to bed the night before fully intending to get up bright and early and go hit all the top temporary employment agencies in town.

  But something had changed within her between the moment she turned out the light and closed her eyes the previous night and now. The sense of motivation instilled by her
mother’s words had deserted her utterly.

  Her gaze flicked to the right, where she’d laid out the clothes selected the night before for her temp interviews. Prim and proper dress clothes. The sort of buttoned-down, conservative outfit she could never comfortably wear. The blouse and skirt were cleaned and pressed. They were the clothes of a conscientious, careful woman. No wonder they looked swiped from a stranger’s wardrobe.

  Emily’s normal clothes lay in a rumpled heap on the floor. Her cropped black t-shirt with the fishnet sleeves and her black, low-slung hip-hugger jeans. And the studded black vinyl belt she wore with nearly every outfit. Her rock ‘n’ roller clothes. The real Emily’s clothes. Emily the songwriter and musician. For maybe the millionth time this week she lamented the fact that creative people couldn’t go out and apply for jobs in their chosen fields the way, say, a junior executive or customer service rep could. It seemed colossally unfair, but it was the way of the world. There was no temp service for out of work novelists or singers. A deeper darkness tinged her thoughts now, the way they always did when she allowed herself to contemplate the steep odds against ‘making it’ in any of the creative fields. It depressed her to think of all the genuinely gifted people who every year resigned themselves to a life spent working as automatons in factories, their talents left to wither while they did what they had to do in order to collect those meager paychecks, a bit of money that kept the lights on and kept food in the fridge. The hand-to-mouth life.

  Emily sighed.

  “Fuck it. I ain’t doin’ it.”

  She rolled onto her side and lifted the cordless phone from her nightstand cradle. She punched in Phil Parker’s number and listened to the pulse of the ringing phone.

  Phil picked up on the fifth ring. “You better have a good fucking reason for calling me at this hour, Emily Sinclair.”

  Emily winced. “I’m sorry. I know it’s early.”

  “You’re fuckin’ A right it’s early. Christ…” There was a pause. “Holy shit, it’s six in the goddamned morning.”

  “I’m sorry, Phil, really. It’s just that…can I please have my job back? Look, I know I freaked out when Rick dumped me, but that’s all over now. I’ve got my shit back together and I want to go back to work.” The pleading tone in her voice made Emily cringe, but she couldn’t help it—there was just no way to mask this level of desperation. “Look, I’ll do whatever you want to make up not calling those times I skipped work. Double shifts for a while. Anything.”

  Phil sighed. “I don’t know, Emily. I already took on another girl part-time…”

  “So fire her.”

  Phil laughed. “You’re really something, Emily, you know that? I can’t fire a girl I just hired for no good reason.”

  “Can’t you? You’re the boss.”

  A heavier sigh emanated from Phil’s end this time. He didn’t say anything for several moments. Then he chuckled. “You said you’d do anything, right?”

  Emily’s grip tightened on the phone. She bit her lip, steeling herself for what she knew was coming. She managed one word: “Yeah.”

  Phil cleared his throat. He at least had the courtesy to sound nervous when he said it: “Will you…have sex with me?”

  Emily hesitated only a moment, then said, “Once. I’m not gonna be anyone’s whore, Phil.” She quickly switched to a sultrier tone: “But I’ll make that one time memorable, I promise.”

  Phil chuckled again, but he still sounded nervous, like he couldn’t quite believe he’d had the nerve to propose something like this. With his wife still asleep next to him in their bed, at that. “You’ve got a deal. Show up an hour before time to open. That way we’ll have the place to ourselves long enough to…do it. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  Emily put the phone back in its cradle.

  Then she pulled the sheets up over her eyes and went back to sleep.

  * * *

  Kent Gowran emerged from the Fido’s coffee shop on 21st Avenue at five minutes after noon. He took a seat at one of the sidewalk tables, set his steaming styrofoam coffee mug on the table, and flipped open that day’s edition of USA TODAY. He scanned the headlines but found little of interest in either the national or international news. Same old empty rhetoric and bluster from the leaders of both political parties

  He flipped through the sections until he reached the Life section and was just digging into a story on filmmaker Michael Moore’s latest documentary when something at the edge of his peripheral vision tugged his gaze away from the newsprint.

  A sense of something approaching. What—and from where—he couldn’t immediately discern. An object roughly the size of a football entered the upper range of his field of vision, an indeterminate brown blob plummeting from out of the sky. It hit the sidewalk in front of him with a wet SPLOOSH! Someone, a woman from the sound of it, let out a startled yelp. Droplets of moisture splashed the cuff of his slacks and his shoes. The paper slipped from his fingers, hit the edge of the table, and slid into his lap. Numbly, he messily folded the section and put it away, then leaned forward to examine the bloody mess on the sidewalk.

  Other people drew near the fallen creature—which he saw now was a bird, a big black one—and there was a babble of excited voices. None of the words registered. He was too busy trying to figure out what had happened to the fallen creature. It didn’t look as if it had been shot (and he couldn’t imagine anyone would be shooting birds out of the sky on a busy city street, anyway). But it stank. Bad. Like something that had been dead long enough to begin decomposing.

  He shook his head. “What…the fuck?”

  Just then a louder, booming voice intruded, and the crowd of rubberneckers began to disperse as a big shadow fell over Kent’s shoulder. He looked around to see a big man—in all senses; the man was well over six feet tall and weighed in at probably 300 pounds—in a chef’s apron standing over him.

  “Sorry ‘bout that, mister. We’ll comp your meal, of course.”

  Kent could do nothing but blink and nod. “Uh…”

  The big man put his fingers in his mouth, sucked in a lungful of air, and let out a whistle loud enough to pierce eardrums in the next hemisphere. “Yo, Jimmy! Get your ass out here! We got another bird on the fuckin’ sidewalk!”

  The man looked at Kent, smiled, and spoke again in a milder tone. “Sorry ‘bout that. That’s the third of those bastards to land on my sidewalk this week.” He sighed and shook his head. “Bad for business. Real bad.” He smiled again. “Listen, why don’t you take a nicer table inside? We’ll even give you some more freebies.”

  Kent shook his head. “No…no, that’s okay. I’m fine, really.” He glanced down at his pants and shoes. Only a very few drops of blood had touched him. No real harm had been done. But the whole episode was creepy as hell. He looked again at the big man, who he assumed was either the cafe owner or manager. “Why do you think birds are just dropping out of the sky here?”

  The big man shrugged. “Wish I knew. Lot of weird shit happening lately. It’s not just here. One of my neighbors had a bird, way bigger than this one here, land on the windshield of his Hummer. Smashed right through it. Bunch more dropped outta the sky over a highway outside of Memphis. Caused a bunch of wrecks, a big tractor truck jackknifed. Some people got killed. Poor bastards didn’t know what hit them. Like I said, man, some weird shit…”

  Kent shook his head again. “Jesus. This is the first I’ve heard of it. What do they think it is? Some kind of airborne disease?”

  Yet another head shake from the big man. “Nobody knows. And it ain’t just birds it’s happening to. And not just animals. People are droppin’ dead for no reason. And I don’t mean like they normally do. It’s some kinda epidemic or somethin’. Only nobody can identify a cause.”

  Kent’s brow furrowed deeply. “What? But—”

  The big man clapped him on the shoulder. “Listen, I ain’t got time to talk. All kinds of crises brewing in the shop.” He nodded at Kent’s USA TODAY. “There’s
an article in that front section you should check out. Second page.”

  The man left without another word, disappearing through the cafe’s front door. A kid of about nineteen—also wearing a white chef’s apron—came bustling out with a fistful of cleanup tools. Kent got up with a sigh and moved to the next table over while the kid snatched the bird up with gloved hands and dropped it into a heavy black garbage bag.

  He was just settling into his new chair when he happened to glance at the shopfront directly across the street. A fat man in a Hawaiian shirt was looking over a table of bargain books outside the Bookman/Bookwoman used books store. But it wasn’t the man (or his loud shirt) that had drawn his attention. At the moment, Kent was unsure precisely what he’d seen. He frowned. There’d been…something. Whatever it was had unsettled him on a primal level. He became aware of a crawling sensation along his spine, a tactile feeling so intense he was briefly certain a snake had crawled up under his shirt.

  “Jesus…” he muttered to himself. “Way too much weirdness today.”

  The physical sensation faded, but the sense of disturbance remained. Something indefinable, he had no clue what, was wrong. His gaze flicked to the left, where he saw Vandy students and businessmen filing into Bosco’s brewpub for lunch. Then to the right and the dark door of the closed Villager Pub. He stared at the closed sign on the bar’s door and wondered whether it was that darkness that had attracted him.

  No. He didn’t think so.

  Kent sighed.

  He watched the people walking up and down the busy Hillsboro Village sidewalks and tried to shake off the bad feeling. The Village was what passed for a ‘hip’ neighborhood in Nashville. Vanderbilt Hospital was a couple blocks down 21st, and the Vanderbilt University campus was just beyond that. Vandy had a well-earned rep as a rich kid’s school. So the neighborhood reflected a certain amount of affluence. It was also a great neighborhood for girl-watching. Sleek businesswomen and young Vanderbilt students in fashionable clothes strutted by. It was a bright day. The beginning of fall, but the weather still felt like mid-summer and the women were still wearing outfits displaying a lot of tantalizing flesh.