Armageddon's Children - Terry Brooks [50]
He was through the fence in moments, a Knight of the Word in full-blown frenzy, as savage and unpredictable as the creatures he hunted. Feeders appeared as if by magic, swirling all around him, hundreds strong, hungry and expectant.
Cringing prisoners scattered before him in all directions, howling in fear.
Once-men came at him in waves, firing their weapons, trying to bring him down.
But ordinary weapons were no match for his staff, and he scattered them like leaves. He moved deliberately from fence to fence, from tower to tower, from one building to the next, sending everything up in flames.
He kept his eyes peeled for a demon, but none approached. He was lucky this night, but then luck was a part of what kept him alive.
The once-men were falling back, losing heart in the face of his wildness and seeming invulnerability. Their mad eyes and sharp faces lost their hard edge and turned frightened. Soon they were fleeing into the night, seeking shelter in the darkness. The camp’s prisoners flooded through the shattered fences after them, hundreds of men, women, and children. Strange skeletal apparitions, they fled through the brightness of the flames without fully understanding what was happening or where they were fleeing. It didn’t matter to the Knight of the Word. It only mattered that they run and keep running and never come back.
When the camp was in flames and the pens emptied, he turned his attention to the isolated cluster of cabins that sat deliberately untouched at the very center. He stared at the ramshackle structures, and his rage drained away with the slow onset of his horror at what must happen next. He hesitated, a mix of almost unbearable sadness and disgust welling up inside him.
Then Michael’s voice reached out to him from the long-ago.
Don’t think about it. Don’t try to make sense of it. Do what you must.
He took a deep, steadying breath and started forward.
‘COME LOOK, BOY. Come see what hides here in the darkness.”
Michael stands waiting on him near the shadows from which the hissing and mewling issues, his face carved of granite, his words hard-edged and commanding. Nevertheless, Logan hesitates before advancing knowing he should flee, that what he is about to see will scar him forever. But there is no running away from this, and he comes forward as bidden.
As he does so, the things hiding in the darkness slowly begin to take shape.
His breath catches in his throat and his chest tightens.
They are children, he sees. Or what once were children and now are something bordering on the demonic. Their bodies and limbs have turned disproportionate to their bodies, made long and crooked, and their hands end in claws. Their backs arch like those of cornered cats as they twist and writhe angrily. Their faces are distorted and maddened, cheeks hollow, chins narrow and sharp, noses flattened to almost nothing, ears split as if with knives, eyes yellow slits that are mirrors of their souls, mouths filled with needle-sharp teeth and tongues that protrude and lick the air. They are manifestations of evil, of the monsters to which they have fallen prey.
He tries to ask what has been done to them, but words fail him. He cannot speak, cannot do anything but stare at these creatures that once were children like him.
“They have been changed by experimentation,” Michael tells him. “They cannot be saved.”
But they must be saved, the boy thinks, looking quickly at the older man for a better answer. No child should be