Eleven

1 – Officer McIntyre

   Officer Davis McIntyre did about everything he could do. His heart was still beating fast by the sight of that beast of a creature and, once it had a chance to slow down, it would certainly ache for his failures to save Scott from the fate he’d met.

   “You have never been able to save anyone, have you?” He could hear a voice whisper as he entered a section of tall-grass,  but was unable to identify where it was coming from. For all he knew, it could have been those damn fools messing with the intercom system again. He had a hunch he wouldn’t be so lucky with what was really in-store for him. “You weren’t able to save Scott, and you weren’t able to save your wife either, were you?”

   “And, I don’t expect I will receive an answer on how you are able to know that, will I?” Officer McIntyre replied, offering the best attempt he could at seeming deadpan and nonchalant. He could feel the sweat running down his chest with every word the woman said.

   “I can feel your sadness, Davis,” The voice said. “All the time you spent feeling down about yourself, drinking yourself into a coma for your wife to see. All the time you spent cutting yourself down, and, in the end, it was you who came home to cut her down.”

   “If you can feel my sadness, maybe you can also feel my other emotions. Like the one that tells you I am about to lodge a bullet in your skull,” Officer McIntyre replied, swatting away at the weeds with his hand. The stands of grass glistened like none he had ever seen, glowing, each with their own distinct identity beneath the melancholy sky.

   “I don’t think I am the one you’ll shoot,” the voice answered back.

   Officer McIntyre felt the weeds began to wrap around him, strapping themselves around his arm like shackles. They were easy to fight off at first, tugging them out from the ground. However, it became more difficult the faster they came around, compacting to form a rope-like consistency around his arms. Her intentions became clear in time. His eyes were soon met by the barrel of his handgun.

   Davis gritted his teeth. This would be his end. After everything, it seemed only justified he went out by his own hand, and yet, he fought against it with the best of his ability. As long as the young-girl Crystal still wandered the mountain, he had something to fight for.

   “Fuck you!” Officer McIntyre yelled.

   The creature revealed itself from within the tall weeds, a pale skinned creature with raven hair stared back at him, black holes looked back from where her eyes were meant to be. Her teeth were large and sharp as they curled into a large smile emphasized by her charcoal lips. “So much anger. I wonder what we would find if I pulled up the curtain, maybe we would find that anger is at yourself?”

   The woman walked around him. Her body maneuvered in such an effortless manner like she merely shifted and didn’t need to use her legs to move around. She rested her ice cold chin by Davis’ shoulder and whispered, “I think it is time we let sleeping dogs lie, don’t you?”

   Officer McIntyre felt his hand shake as he struggled to fight away the weeds that tried to position it. He only had two bullets left before the handgun was reduced to nothing except a paperweight, and he didn’t intend to use either of them on himself. Officer McIntyre jerked his head to the left in a last ditch effort, firing the handgun. It didn’t hit its mark. That is, it didn’t leave a bullet hole in the woman’s forehead, but it did catch her off-guard, causing her to momentarily release him from the weeds’ restraints.

   Davis seized the opportunity. His weary bones reacted as though they were new again. That was the bonus of adrenaline, perhaps. He continued to run as he left the patch of weeds until something brought him off his feet. He fell face first in the dirt and felt himself being dragged back toward the weeds. He struggled to maneuver himself and saw what had gotten hold of him. It was a tangling of grass; appearing dead because their sickly color. The way it was fashioned was purposeful, however. The weeds had bounded together like a noose, knotted around his boot.

   Hidden in the weeds, Davis could see the pale woman staring back at him. As the weeds tugged, he had no choice but to start his return to her grasp. He readied his handgun again. 

   His whole body wobbled unevenly as the weeds yanked and pulled on his feet. He tried to steady his breathing and focus his intent, aiming the handgun at the woman. He fired off the bullet, watching it miss her completely.

   That was it then.

   Davis McIntyre braced for the worst, and was surprised when he watched a large knife come down and cut through the rope. The vines recoiled back with the rest of the patch, like a frightened animal.

   Officer McIntyre kept his guard up as he returned to his feet, expecting the pale skinned woman to attack again at any moment, but nothing came from it. A woman looked back at him, her eyes were bloodshot, but filled with fiery passion, as well.

   “Thank you,” He said. The intensity in her eyes almost made him wonder if he should be thankful or afraid, but as she nodded her head, it seemed clear she meant him no harm.

2 – Scott

   The creature’s insides were unlike the anatomy of any creature Scott had ever seen. In-fact, it couldn’t have been, and yet, it was. Scott sat in the dark and waited; it was the least someone could expect after being eaten. His death didn’t come, however. He crawled forward until he met the walls of the creature. Were they its mouth or its stomach? Neither seemed accurate when he clawed his finger nails into it. The bottom of his nails were filled with dirt and his hands felt the coldness of stone or rock, not something similar, actual stone or rock. The realization dawned on him before his brain could fully comprehend it. He had been eaten by the mountain itself.

   All he could do was sit and wait for death to meet him; the sooner would be best. As if fate were waiting on the remainder of his hope to deplete out of him.

   After the minutes became hours, and the hours blurred. He heard footsteps echoing and, after, saw the perpetrator – it was a soldier, for certain. That, in itself, was terrifying to consider. The man neared him. His armor was slightly unique from the usual Kudos getup, but Scott wasn’t exactly able to identify the distinction.

   The knight shined his torch within the darkness. He hadn’t yet discovered that Scott was among him. Scott remained quiet, but did consider making his presence known. The Kudos knight would off him and it would be finished. Either that, or he wouldn’t simply kill him, Scott thought again. Either that, or the Kudos knight would mutilate him the very same way they had done to Chelsea. The symmetry might have been poetic, but Scott very much did not want that for himself.

   He remained quiet; his back propped up against the wall. The knight continued past him until all it would have taken was for him to shine the torch slightly to the left and Scott would have been seen. Scott held his breath.

   “Hello!?” A voice yelled out from afar. Scott recognized the voice – it was Bryan’s.

   The Kudos soldier turned his head. The way his helm covered his head made it difficult to distinguish whether he was startled or alerted, but whichever, he was now headed in Bryan’s direction. Without even realizing it, Bryan had signed his own death wish by announcing himself. Scott felt his eyes watering up for only a second before he made his decision: “Run, Bryan! Fucking run!”

   Bryan said nothing in-response, which meant Scott could only hope the message was received. If no one else, it was at least a certainty that one had noticed Scott’s outburst. The Kudos soldier withdrew his sword and let out a guttural grunt as he readied himself.

   “Crippled,” The Kudos man observed. “Dr. Rindan would have loved to meet you, but it appears someone has already used you up for about all you’re worth.”

   “Dr. Rindan,” Scott said for his own benefit. “Is he the man that killed Chelsea. The man who propped her up and gussied her up to look like a bird?” There was no intensity in his voice, no anger in his inflection, merely a weakling asking a question in his final seconds of life.

   The Kudos soldier nodded his head and laughed, “Dr. Rindan is an odd man. I can’t pretend I understand his many unique obsessions and quirks.”

   “But you satiate them. You find men and women and you gather them up and he tortures them. You are no better than he is. How can you live with yourself after something like that?”

   “I don’t live with myself after this or haven’t you learned as much?”

   Scott hadn’t learned as much, to say the truth. He wasn’t entirely certain who or what it was that stood opposite him. Had it been an actual human, once upon a time, or was it the idea of a human? Did it have the emotions of a man who had once lived during the Great War, or was it a replica of that? Was it a carbon copy of what once was, minus the soul? Or was it the residual of a ghost reenacting its greatest hits? It was what would kill him, at the very least.

   Scott bowed his head as the Kudos soldier neared him.

   “Bah,” The Kudos soldier grunted, and as Scott looked up at him, he saw Bryan had leaped on his back and latched onto him like a leach.

   The act had taken courage, for certain, but the spectacle itself looked less than impressive with the Kudos soldier walking around with Bryan on his back. Scott watched as the soldier jabbed his sword aimlessly at his attacker before dropping to one knee, unable to carry the weight.

   The man was caught off-guard, but Scott knew the very moment he regained himself, both he and Bryan would be dead. He reached out and tried to fight the sword out from the knight’s clutches, trying to turn and maneuver it until it could be stabbed into him. The knight refused to release it from his death claw grip, however. 

   Instead, Scott did the only thing he could think of, reaching out and retrieving the unattended torch. As Scott brought the flame to the soldier’s face, his frantic movements told the story of his agony even if he didn’t wail out in pain. The sword soon fell from the knight’s grasp, and Bryan was swift to react, grabbing the sword and driving it into the knight’s belly. The knight did as Bryan had seen the others do, falling away into ashes.

   Scott stared over at Bryan who breathed heavily. As soon as Bryan noticed, they both smirked at each other, exasperated and gone mad. Bryan’s hands were covered in blood. The Kudos soldier must have gotten in at least a few licks of his own with his sword before it was all said and finished.

   “How have you been, Bryan?” Scott replied. Bryan’s smile faded as he noticed the nub where one of Scott’s legs had been, but Scott kept his composure all the same.

3 – Melissa

   Melissa heard commotion only a short ways away from her. She didn’t know what to make of it yet, whether it was time to run for the hills or not. She remained still for a moment, listening in to see if she could hear anything distinct. The voices she heard seemed calm and ordinary. No one the mountain brought back seemed interested in mere conversation, and from that, she had the belief she was listening to actual humans. She carried onward, her skepticism was still intact. Soon, she was able to see them, looking out from within the underbrush as they congregated.

   Her assessment was correct. They were, in-fact, human, but their demeanor did not appear friendly. The group donned black cloaks that loosely fit around their bodies, reminding Melissa of a druid or a reaper’s cloak. Some of them wore masks and some didn’t. The masks were not uniform with each carrying a unique aesthetic. Some of them appeared to be homemade. Melissa saw one mask in-particular that appeared fleshy and like it had been painted over with makeup and another which appeared like a black baseball pitchers’ helmet. The ones that didn’t have masks had their own decoration, so to speak. They had tattoos that practically disguised all perceivable facial features. They appeared to be designs and symbols as opposed to a particular image, but Melissa wasn’t close enough to say for certain. 

   These were the cult members that had brought hell onto the mountain.

   Melissa backed away from the scene, certain not to ruffle the grass or alert them in any way. To her surprise, however, she soon felt a cold hand on her bare shoulder. As she shivered and reflexively yanked away, she was surprised to see Jessica. Once her mind accepted that fact, it was back on the cult, being for certain they hadn’t noticed her presence. They hadn’t.

   Jessica looked about like Melissa imagined she had looked; her clothes were tattered and her body was covered in little scratches and scrapes. Unlike Melissa, it appeared like Jessica had avoided any major injuries, however. Her eyes told the story of the mountain. They told of a woman who had been terrified to near hysterics and was on the brink of losing her mind.

   Jessica nodded her head without saying a word and Melissa did the same. They brought themselves away from the crowd, keeping obscured by the camouflage of bushes and tall grass.

   “Jessica, who are those people?” Melissa asked in a shouting whisper.

   “They are the reason all of this is happening, a bunch of whack-job assholes. I heard them talking about this artifact, the, uh, Water Lily,  they called it, that one stone-rock flower-thing that they had locked away in the Urgway church. They said that they were able to make all of this happen by harnessing the strength that’s kept inside of it.” Jessica explained.

   Melissa’s first thought was that she might have misjudged Jessica. Maybe she wasn’t actually on the brink of insanity, maybe she had officially crossed that line and went nuts. The second thought was the one she went with, choosing to believe the words as Jessica had said them. Even if that didn’t make any sense, it made about as much sense of anything else, and seemed about as real as anything else happening to them.

   “How many of them have you seen,” Melissa asked, looking where they’d left them, even though they were obscured by trees. Perhaps she was subconsciously making certain they hadn’t found them? When she saw them earlier, she had counted at least six different hooded figures, but she hadn’t thought to do a body count.

   “Ten, I think, but I don’t know for certain. There is a husband and a wife. I think they are the ones calling the shots on everything, the woman is who we heard talking on the intercom.” Jessica explained.

   It must have taken Jessica a while to find all of this information. She had to have been close enough to hear them speak back in forth. Her having the fortitude to do that after seeing how they had mangled Chelsea and after seeing all the dead bodies they had left behind was something Melissa wouldn’t have expected, but was impressed by. Melissa didn’t see a lot of options for them. If what they said was true – about the sky falling and drowning everyone – if it was meant literally than everyone would be dead soon. Regardless, that didn’t meant Melissa and Jessica could go in gun’s blazing and kill them, that much would be suicide.

   “There’s something else I have noticed as well,” Jessica began, catching Melissa’s eye. “Whatever that is happening around the mountain. All the crazy creatures and armored men, all of the crazy things the mountain is doing, none of is changing here. I heard them say something about it, but, apparently, they can’t come too close to the Water Lily.”

   That was it then. The cult had stolen the Water Lily from Urgway’s church and had used it to unleash mayhem over Mt. Kass and were now sitting back and enjoying themselves, celebrating the massacre they’d created. Everyone would be dead, but they would be safe in the confines of their sanctuary. They would descend the mountain and would be interviewed by anyone and everyone about what had occurred and they would fill everyone’s heads with any bullshit they could come up. It wasn’t like there would be anything substantial that linked them to the crimes. They would be celebrated as survivors and be praised for their courageousness amid the tragedy.

   On the other hand, if Melissa and Jessica were quiet, then, they would survive as well. They would see everyone on the mountain’s demise and would live to go down the mountain as well, and maybe even tell the truth of what happened. No one would believe the truth if they heard it, however. They would sooner lock Jessica and Melissa both up in the loony bin when faced with the alternative. If they did nothing then they would receive no consequence for their action. They would get away with Shaun’s murder and everyone else who was killed. Melissa knew she couldn’t let that happen.

4 – Officer McIntyre

   Officer Davis McIntyre’s rescuer was a woman who introduced herself as Kelsey Jane, or K.J., for short. For a while, Davis followed her without any real reason, only because it felt like she had at least some idea of where she was headed. Or, at least, she carried the illusion of so. She hadn’t said anything to him other than her name and carried a shotgun strapped over her shoulders. He wondered if she actually knew how to use it or if the kickback would knock her silly when she tried.

   His body was drenched in sweat and his heart felt like it was beating out from his chest. Adrenaline and pure fear was something that couldn’t be ignored. When the body felt it, the body felt it, and no cold exterior or wishful thinking could make it otherwise.

   “I don’t suppose you have any idea where you’re headed?” Officer McIntyre asked.

   “I don’t want to die,” K.J. answered plainly. Her eyes were bloodshot and carried a fiery intensity behind them. “So I have to find a way to kill that woman I heard on the intercom.”

   “That might be tough. The woman literally has an army at her disposal and we don’t even know if killing her will stop any of this. Maybe the genie can’t go back in the bottle. What happens then?” Officer Davis’ remarks weren’t merely done to talk some sense into the young girl, they were because he wanted her to have an answer for him. He wanted her to have some type of knowledge unbeknownst to him that would make it all seem realistic.

   “If what has been done can’t be undone, then at least I can kill the woman who brought it all on us. That way, I won’t be her victim, she will be mine.”

   Officer McIntyre held a stern face as K.J. spoke. Not only did the situation call for it, but he could tell how filled with piss and vinegar she was about the whole ordeal. All the same, it was nonsense to think she would be able to stop the woman and everything happening by herself. Even with an army, they wouldn’t be battling under normal circumstances.

   “And how do you plan to do that? I’ll tell you, kid, I don’t know what all you’ve seen, but I do know you’ve met that black-haired creature in the tall-grass. I have seen armies of men slashing at everything in-sight without prejudice, I have seen a giant fucking worm squirm around and nearly eat me whole. I don’t,” Officer McIntyre stopped for a moment, looking up at the trees as though he were looking for more inspiration about all the things he had seen. And, to his surprise, he found it.

   “No,” Officer McIntyre slurred beneath his breath. He ignored K.J. asking for an explanation and moved forward. As he walked toward it, he heard the surprised gasps of K.J. from behind him, showing she had figured it out for herself.

   Above them, Officer McIntyre looked up at Crystal’s corpse, impaled on a tree branch with her clothing drenched in blood.

   “Did you know her?” K.J. asked.

   Officer McIntyre looked over at K.J. and then, bowed his head. Some habits died hard, like putting ones’ head down to hide when they cried. Ever since Davis was a boy, he had done it. He raised his head up from the dirt, meeting K.J.’s fiery bloodshot eyes with a pair of his own, “Do you have bullets for that shotgun?”

5 – Bryan

   The jury was still out on how bad Bryan’s wounds were from the fallen Kudos swordsman, but, from the looks of it, Bryan would live to tell about it. At least until someone came by and offed him or the sky came crashing down, whichever it was, Bryan felt a sense of comfort by finding Scott. He cleaned the wounds with alcohol as Scott watched on from beside him, lit from the darkness by the torch the soldier had left behind.

   “I don’t suppose you planned to share,” Scott asked him dryly.

   Bryan looked over to the different bottles of alcohol he had; snatched at the checkpoint location he had left K.J. at, along with a first-aid kit that ended up being done away with sooner than expected. He didn’t have to think it over very long, rolling one of the large bottles of vodka over to Scott.

   “A man after my own heart,” Scott jested, reaching over and snatching the bottle in his hand. He untwisted the lid and began chugging the stuff down in gulps. As he finished, Scott made a hissing sound that showed his teeth. He looked over at the bottle, “Forty percent alcohol content, tastes like straight up nail polish.”

   “Apologies,” Bryan said, “I wasn’t really thinking about its taste when I brought it with me.”

   “That’s a rookie mistake,” Scott replied in jest, resting his body against the wall of the cave. “So, you got eaten by the worm too then, huh?”

   Bryan stared at him for a moment, then, at the bottle of vodka he held in his hands. Forty percent alcohol content must have been stronger than he thought. “Um,” Bryan began, as eloquent as ever, “I actually came in through the cave entrance over there.” His hand pointed away from them toward the dark. He had barely entered the cave, really.

   “Right,” Scott said, not seeming to have the energy or interest to investigate further. “It is some mountain, isn’t it?”

   “It certainly is,” Bryan answered, noticing the bottle was now nearly halfway polished off. “How did you lose your leg?”

   “Hassan’s face came off and he wanted to sacrifice me to the Gods or something, but when he noticed one of my legs was shorter than the other, he tried to remedy that. He took off a little too much, I think,” Scott replied, taking another large swig of the alcohol.

   “You won’t be very useful if you keep chugging that,” Bryan replied, although part of him was wondering if it mattered anymore.

   “I am not useful now,” Scott replied, offering a small laugh in response to him. “The way I see it. I am as good as dead and that’s that, I don’t want to be anticipating the end, I want to be blackout drunk.”

   Scott offered Bryan the bottle and Bryan politely declined, unveiling one of the other bottles he had stowed away in his backpack. Bryan took a drink and winced. The taste of the vodka was strong and overbearing, but he could tell it would not take him very long to reach the summit of inebriation.

   “I feel like I have spent my entire life being afraid,” Bryan spoke out, answering something that Scott hadn’t asked him. Perhaps it was now, in the face of certain death, he could reflect. Whatever the reason, Scott’s expression changed some when the words crept out from Bryan’s mouth. “I dedicated so much of my time and effort caring about what everyone thought and the whole lot of them couldn’t have given a fuck I existed. Thing is, I knew that too, even then, but it’s different to know something in your head and to apply it to your day to day life.”

   “It is,” Scott said. “You’re not the only one at the money-shot end of the world’s dick. No one can look at their life and have absolutely nothing they wouldn’t change about it. Nothing they wouldn’t have done better and no one they would have treated better.”

   “I haven’t always been a very good friend to you.”

   Scott smirked and shrugged his shoulders, “It isn’t like I can claim sainthood.”

   Bryan reciprocated, then brought the vodka back to his mouth for another drink. “I think it’s because I was jealous of you. I resented you for it, whether you knew it or not. Everything always felt so natural when you did it. Everything felt so easy like you just did it and that was that. I could never do that. Everything is complicated when I do it. I overthink everything until it loses all of its sentiment. But you, I feel like you have lived.”

   Scott scoffed at the thought, feigning shock, “If you only knew, man. Everything I ever did. I didn’t do it because I wasn’t afraid. It was the opposite,” Scott’s words slurred as he said them. The alcohol was beginning to take its toll and then some. “I did it because I was afraid. I was afraid for when the laughter stopped. Every party I went to, everything I did, all of it was a distraction. And, it was a hollow distraction at that. Everything I have had, none of it meant anything except for you. You made me think I could take on the world and, even if I had you fooled, it felt good to have someone believe that. Truth is, I never had an endgame. It was college then death. I never saw beyond that for me. Yet, I wanted to be done with college, just so I could see something more than nothing,” Scott shook his head and laughed. “I am a rambling mess, I know.”

   Bryan took another large gulp from the bottle, “If there was ever a time not to make any sense, I think now’s the time, buddy.”

   Everything became hazier, with Bryan struggling to keep his eyes open. In between each moment or two, he could have sworn he heard other voices. They weren’t footsteps or the grunts of nearby soldiers. It was more like a baby crying or something, which made no sense at all, but he couldn’t focus his mind enough to find out for certain nor could he muster the strength to care about it whatsoever. If their death was inevitable, then they could at least blackout through it.