The Great Game

Sorry for not doing an episode at the start of the week. I’ve had house-guests for several days, and so I wasn’t really able to spend an afternoon writing at them! I’m going to be similarly tied up early next week, so expect the next episode of the game on Wednesday 31st…

The boy nodded. “You can see it, can’t you. I knew you were better. It’s time to cleanse the Earth, you see. You’ve been allowed free reign to mess things up for thousands of years, but it was never yours. You understand that, right? We never died. We just… slept, for a while. So it’s time for one last party. You like parties, don’t you?”

I smiled. “I love parties.” How long had it been since my last party? Years. Too long.

“So will you help us arrange our last party for mankind?”

“TAYLOR! Great God, man! SHOOT IT!”

Travis? I looked up, through the hole in the ceiling. Travis was kneeling there, looking dazed and bloody. Travis…

I lifted my gun almost without thought, and shot the boy. He smiled, an angelic expression of blood-drenched love, and then collapsed bonelessly. I watched his body for a little while, thinking about puppets. I was tempted to go and have another look at his face, see if that expression was still there.

I shook myself, fought down a shudder, and holstered my gun. Then I turned my back on the corpse, and sighed. Infected, Travis has called them. Poor little bastard.

“Taylor.” Travis’s voice was tight. I glanced up through the hole in the roof, and was unsurprised to see that he had a bead on my forehead.

“Sir. Do you have to kill me now?” Exhaustion washed over me, and I found myself thinking that it didn’t sound too bad an option.

Travis stared at me, then shook his head wearily, and lowered his gun. “I don’t think so. Just open fire straight away next time though, will you? Surely you can’t still imagine that there are any humans left here.”

“No, sir. I think I understand now.”

“What happened to you earlier, Taylor?”

I shrugged. “I’m not sure. I think I was somewhere else for those weeks. Whoever you had here, he wasn’t me. Not… this me.”

He stared at me, and then grimaced. “I’d keep that to yourself, man. People are a bit twitchy about mystical crap at the moment.”

“I’ll remember that. Thanks.”

“Good. Now get your arse up here, and if you see any other civvies, for God’s sake just shoot them.”

I picked my way upstairs, limping slightly, and rejoined Travis. The two others were with him again, too. Over the course of the next couple of hours, the four of us swept three buildings. They were all broadly similar, ratty places with plenty of bedrooms. Low-rent living. We saw Adams’s team twice; the second time, they were a man down. The set of Travis’s mouth told me everything I needed to know.

There was a guy apparently watching a broken television set in the fourth building. I put a bullet into him reflexively before noticing that he was already dead. He slumped over on the couch, and then slipped to the floor. As he settled, his head turned towards me, and I yelped. All the flesh had been removed from the front of his face, but the rest of him was untouched. His hair, ears, the underside of his chin were all perfectly normal, bordered by a strip of open flesh which surrounded a ghastly expanse of gleaming skull. I shuddered, and got the hell out of the room. Travis didn’t seem interested in taking it with us, happily.

Apart from that, it was the usual blend of boredom and terror.

There were dorms set up at Travis’s building. No-one was going home any more, it seemed; some neighbourhoods were considered compromised, but people were staying on-site anyway, at Travis’s order. I ate in the canteen, and was assigned a surprisingly sturdy bed in a hall with fifteen others. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see the man’s fleshless face leering at me, and I was sure I’d be awake all night.

The next thing I knew, I was floating in darkness. I couldn’t see — or feel — anything, but I knew it was juddering, and I had the strangest impression that it was hairy. There was an unpleasant background hum that made my teeth ache, and every so often, a little burst of uncomfortable static zapped through me.

After some time, it occurred to me that the static bursts were screaming something. I felt certain that if I concentrated, I would be able to hear what it was. The prospect unnerved me, but it filled me with a wild wonder at the same time.

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Today’s photo is Skull Face by Darker Than Black