Part 1
[Note: This part of the account is part 2, not part 1.]
Part 2
Desperate, I watched Foras out of the corner of my eye. He seemed to watch me in return, though his eyes constantly flicked back to the road. I saw the headlights reflecting off strange eyes in the alleyways and buildings, but whenever I turned to look, only the shadows remained.
I had my seatbelt on, and Foras didn’t. He must have felt confident in his abilities, and unconcerned with a car crash. I knew he had power, and I quickly formulated a suicidal plan.
I accelerated the car. Ahead of us, I saw a light pole with a long-dead, dessicated corpse hanging from a fraying noose. I tried to line up the passenger side of the car directly with the metal pole. Holding my breath, I closed my eyes as the car closed the last few feet, still accelerating, engine roaring.
I couldn’t have been going more than forty miles an hour, but it sent Foras flying through the shattered windshield. The driver’s side airbag deployed, smashing me in the face so hard I saw stars. I felt blood gushing from my nose, and the world seemed to go dark for a few seconds. The engine hissed, spitting coolant and transmission fluid in great, steaming gouts that puddled under the car.
After regaining my senses, I looked up to see Foras. He lay on the hood of the car, moaning and moving his hands in random circles. Blood streamed from a deep gash on his skull and covered his inhuman face. He wasn’t smiling anymore.
Stumbling, my fingers trembling, I undid the seatbelt and opened the driver’s door, falling on the cracked pavement below. I breathed hard, then with a sudden burst of will, I pushed myself up. Foras still grunted incomprehensible sounds, apparently unaware of where he was.
I heard him repeating the same nonsense over and over: “Ennngh, ennng, ahh, uhhh, mah…” he said, clenching and unclenching his twisted fingers. I thought of just choking him then and there, while he was seemingly weak and defenseless- but I didn’t know how defenseless he actually was, even in this weakened state.
Moreover, I had no idea how to get back to my world, and killing the only being who I felt sure knew the way might backfire spectacularly, dooming me here for the rest of my life. I decided to book it as fast as I could and leave him there, bleeding on the crumpled front of the car.
I started walking fast, stumbling slightly as a sharp pain ran up my leg. When I felt I had mostly regained my balance after the crash, I started jogging away. Looking back towards the car, I saw him getting up slowly, trying to push himself off the hood of the car with his long, strange fingers. He fell back down on the hood, then reached down with shaking hands and took something out of one of his bound leather satchels, placing it in his mouth.
I took a left into the first alleyway I found. This whole city was a horrorshow, a deluge of nightmares. Rotting corpses lay everywhere, and I saw a dumpster at the end of the alleyway filled to the brim with body parts. Decomposing legs, arms, chests and hands, all sliced off, had been thrown into the dumpster haphazardly, like common refuse. One hand limply reached out, as if trying to motion for help. It had blackened fingernails and the thumb was missing.
The body parts overflowed the dumpster, a cloud of bugs buzzing around it. The smell, as I got near, was overwhelming. I gagged, moving to the other side of the alley, trying to put as much distance between myself and that dumpster as humanly possible. It was an odor like rotting tomatoes mixed with feces and rancid meat. But before I left that city, I would see- and smell- much more like it.
I took random turns left and right through the streets and alleyways, trying to put as much distance as possible between myself and Foras. Paranoid, I kept hearing imaginary footsteps, but it was always just the echo of my own. In one alleyway, I saw what looked like a mutated racoon standing at the far end. It was the size of a German shepherd, with huge tumors and fibroid growths all over its body. I saw a fifth paw hanging down underneath its stomach, boneless and stunted. It gnawed on the corpse of an old woman that had long since dessicated, chewing open her bones and trying to suck out the marrow with its twisted, stained teeth.
The racoon didn’t notice me, or the strange silhouette slowly sneaking up behind it. As soon as I saw movement, I quickly looked around and saw a stainless steel garbage can with dark, thick fluid that dripped down the exterior. When I hurriedly peered down, part of me expecting to see Foras’ inhuman, grinning face in there, I found something nearly as horrible.
I saw the garbage can was filled with rotting dogs and cats, piled one on top of another like cordwood. For a moment, I was so horrified that I almost forgot what I was doing. Then my brain screamed at me to move, to hide, and I lunged to the side, hoping the man on the far end of the alleyway hadn’t seen me. I held my breath, trying not to inhale the overwhelmingly rancid stench that radiated from the can. Decomposing animals smell different from rotting human corpses, as anyone with “experience” in both can attest to. Rotting corpses always had more of a rotten tomato smell combined with a sewage smell, compared to the musky odor that mixed in with the putrefying meat of a dead animal. Both were absolutely horrible, some of the worst smells I had ever experienced.
At first, I thought it was some sort of deformed monster, with irregular growths and fibroid tissue standing out all over its body. Then I saw it was just a man, some sort of mutant or victim of a genetic disorder or radioactivity, or maybe something even worse. He had a bat with nails sticking out of it, and before the mutated racoon could turn its head, he had whipped the far end of the bat into the top of its skull. The racoon crumbled to the ground with a soft exhalation of air.
My first instinct was to run, but something in the man’s demeanor made me think he wasn’t the monster I at first believed. He walked in a childish way and talked to himself. I could hear the sad words he muttered in a low voice, echoing off the brick walls of the alleyway.
“More raccoon,” he said. “I’m so sick of eating racoon alone every night. I wish I could find some more jerky… remember when we found that big stash of beef jerky in the bunker? I shouldn’t have eaten it all so fast. Dumb Frankie, never thinking about the future.” He whacked himself, hard, on the side of his deformed head.
“Hello?” I called out, overriding my better judgment. I had few options, trapped in this strange, dead city in another world. The man, who had just started dragging the racoon corpse away by the scruff of its neck, immediately froze, his face a comical mask of confusion. He didn’t seem scared at all, but now he noticed me for the first time as I stepped out from behind the garbage can. He looked me up and down.
“What’s a normie like you doing in the city?” he asked. I saw one eye had a slanting look, like a fold of skin had partially grown over his eyelid. The other widened comically in surprise as he saw my clothes. “You look like the ones who come through the stairway. Never turns out good, I’ll tell you. They don’t know what they’re doing, coming down those stairs.”
He dropped the racoon’s body and quickly strode over to me, moving much faster than his size would suggest. He put out his huge, scarred hand. I stared at it for a moment, confused. Then I reached out and shook it. I felt his iron grip crush the bones in my hand, and tried not to wince. I looked at him closer, and realized he looked similar to the Elephantman, except far more solidly built and mobile. He had the same strange growths emerging from his face and body, however. They didn’t hide the bulging muscles underneath.
“I’m Frankie,” he said, smiling, showing his few remaining teeth. “I used to live here with my family…” He motioned to the destroyed ruins of the city around us. “But after the bomb, my momma… she disappeared. I miss her so much. I keep looking, hoping I’ll see her again, but I don’t think she’s here anymore. I think I’m all alone now.” He looked like he was about to cry. I had no idea what to say.
“I’m Jason,” I said. “I’m sorry about your mother, Frankie. Do you know your way around this place?” His sad expression evaporated, and he smiled again, the corners of his mouth forming a partial smile, which seemed as far as he could move them. It made me feel sad to watch him. He had a sense of innocence and friendliness that contrasted heavily with the hellish conditions surrounding him. He seemed like he was mentally somewhat slow, but he also had a sense of confidence in his ability to survive in this apocalyptic wasteland, which I admired.
“Of course. Didn’t I say I grew up here? There’s a building near here, very strange, though. It changes often. The passageways move around, the doors switch places, and it leads down… very deep. I don’t go down to the bottom.” He shuddered. “It’s filled with horrible things.” I was about to respond when I heard a strange humming noise. It sounded ethereal, almost like a gong or a singing bowl, and yet the sound also seemed to get into my bones and made my eyes water. Even now, a few years later, my eyes water just thinking about it. It was one of the most jarring and horrendous sounds I’ve ever heard.
Frankie’s eyes widened in horror. He dropped the racoon and grabbed me by the arm. He ran towards the street.
As soon as we came out on the street, my breath caught in my throat. One of the largest buildings I had ever seen stood there, the color of polished silver. I saw windows spiraling around the exterior of it, like the stairs on a lighthouse. Looking up, I couldn’t even see the top of it. It seemed to simply fade into the dirty gray clouds above our heads.
“No time to look now!” Frankie whispered, a tone of urgency in his voice. “Come on!” He pulled me forward to the other side of the huge street, across twelve lanes of cracked concrete and rubble. He ran into the shattered glass doors of the massive skyscraper. I heard shards of glass and rusted nails cracking underneath my steel-toed shoes, and I was glad I had come from work and hadn’t been wearing sandals.
That humming seemed more insistent, higher-pitched- and closer. I turned to look quickly, and I saw Foras coming out of the alleyway, a look of fury and hatred twisting his bleached-white face. His eyes blazed, and he kept snapping his head to the left and right, almost certainly looking for me. As he got closer, the humming grew louder, and I saw him holding the same pebble he had held to the demonic boy’s face as he had died. Though tiny, it gave off a strange black light that threw twisting shadows over the rubble and ruined buildings outside. I realized, with horror, that he was using it as some sort of tracking device, to find me and very likely kill me.
He still had dried blood staining his face, and I saw fresh drops running down his scalp. He ignored them and, like a bloodhound berserk with the scent of its prey, moved forwards towards me.
“You need to hide!” Frankie said urgently, and he pointed at the corner of the lobby. I saw a hatchway sitting open. “The bunker. Let’s go.” Without any more urging, I sprinted towards it. Frankie went down first, and I followed. As I poked my head out, reaching up to grab the hatch, I saw Foras only feet from the shattered glass doors of the skyscraper. As quietly as possible, I lowered it, pulling out my phone to shine some light, and I turned the steel wheel, locking us inside.
I used the light to catch up with Frankie, who seemed to know the tunnels so well that he could navigate them in the dark. He turned his deformed face towards me, smiling and excited, a childish glee evident from his expression.
“He won’t be getting through that!” Frankie said. “That’s a bomb door. It was built for the big ones- the H bomb and the antimatter one.”
“What is this place?” I asked.
“They call it Sanctuary,” he said. “There’s an entire underground town in here. This is where General Matheson used to run his government from. It goes up 200 stories! How do they build it so big?” I shook my head.
“I don’t know,” I said. “So do people live down here?” He frowned at the question, thinking for a long moment. Then his eyes widened.
“People?” he asked. “No, no people…”
“OK,” I said. “No people? So what does that mean?”
“Well,” he said, “other things do like to live down here. It’s a big place, you know. Even I haven’t explored most of it. But sometimes, the pigmen get in here. And the snakes. I usually run when the snakes get in here.” He shuddered.
“What kind of snakes?” I asked. “Like… rattlesnakes?” His expression stayed stoic for a long moment as he considered the question, then he began to laugh, a sound like a child amused by a dirty joke.
“You mean those little ones with the rattle on their tail in the deserts?” he said, still chuckling. “No, no. I mean snakes. Usually about my height, and as long as…” He pointed down to the end of the tunnel, a few hundred feet away. I groaned.
“Some people also think General Matheson lives under Sanctuary,” he said. “But the tunnels further down run for hundreds of lengths, you know.” I didn’t know what a “length” was, but when he explained in his slow, plodding way, I figured out it meant about half a mile. Or so I guessed, anyway.
“Why would General Matheson live down here?” I said, genuinely curious now. The story Foras had told me had intrigued me. It reminded me of certain events that had occurred on Earth, my Earth, though nothing nearly as catastrophic as this.
“He disappeared during the War,” Frankie said. “He was last seen in Sanctuary, running down the stairs, when the antimatter bomb hit.” He shrugged. “The true believers still think General Matheson is down here, waiting to come back and lead everyone into glory and power.” He gave a low laugh. “The Iron Servants have looked, though, and they haven’t seen a bit of him. I think he’s dead. I think he’s been dead. But some people will never believe that.”
I wondered if he was right, when the ground started to shake. I thought an earthquake had started, but Frankie’s horror seemed to suggest much more than that.
“The snakes,” he whispered, his eyes haunted.
Part 3