Running with the Demon - Terry Brooks [152]
Oh, God! Oh, God! He screamed the words over and over into the silence and the dark.
Staggering blindly up the roadway, he crested the rise that led out to Lincoln Highway, and a car came out of the lights of the buildings ahead. George Paulsen lurched aside as the car raced past, its horn blaring angrily. The dark things caught him then, bore him back against the cemetery fence, and began to rip him apart. His insides were being shredded beneath their claws and teeth; he could hear himself shriek. With the dark things clinging to him, he turned toward the cemetery fence and scrambled up the chain links. He reached the top, lost his footing, and slid back heavily. He grabbed for something to slow his fall, hooked his fingers into the mesh, and caught his neck on the exposed edges of a gap near the fence top.
Jagged steel sliced through soft flesh and exposed arteries, and George Paulsen’s blood gushed forth. He sagged weakly, pain flooding through him. The dark things slowed their attack, closing on him more deliberately, taking their time. He wouldn’t escape them now, he knew. He closed his eyes against his fear and desperation. They were touching him, their fingers dipping experimentally in his blood. Oh, God!
A moment later, the life went out of him.
Chicago is afire. Everywhere the Knight of the Word looks the flames rise up against the darkening skyline, bleeding their red glare into the smoky twilight. It is an exceptionally hot, dry summer, and the parched grasses that fill the empty parks and push through the cracks in the concrete bum readily. The homes closest to the hollowed-out steel-and-glass monoliths of the abandoned downtown wait their turn, helpless victims of the destruction that approaches. Down along the piers and shipyards, old storage tanks and fuel wells blaze brightly, the residue of their contents exploding like cannon shots.
John Ross jogs quickly along the walkway bordering the Chicago River, moving south from the breach in the fortress walls. He carries his staff before him, but he has temporarily lost the use of its magic, the“consequence of another of those times in the past when he was forced to call upon it — before the Armageddon, before the fall. Thus he must flee and hide as common men. Already, his enemies look for him. They have tracked him here, as they track him everywhere, and they know that somewhere in the conflagration he will be found. A Knight of the Word is a great prize, and those who find him will be well rewarded. But they know, too, that he will not be taken easily, and their caution gives him an edge.
He has come late to the city’s fall. The attack has been in progress for months, the once-men and their demon masters laying siege to the makeshift walls and reinforced gates that keep the people within protected. Chicago is one of the strongest bastions remaining, a military camp run with discipline and skill, its people armed and trained. But no bastion is impregnable, and the attackers have finally found a way in. He is told they gain entry through the sewers, that there is no longer any way of keeping them out. Now the end is at hand, and there is nothing anyone can do but flee or die.
Bodies line the streets, flung casually aside by those who leave them lifeless. Men, women, and children — no exceptions are made. Slaves are plentiful and food is scarce. Besides, a lesson is needed. Feeders slink through the shadows, working their way’from corpse to corpse, seeking a shred of fading life, of pain, of horror, of helpless rage, of shock and anguish on which to feed. But the battle moves on to other places, and so the feeders follow after. Ross works his way along a brick wall fronting the postage-stamp yards of a line of abandoned brick homes, searching for a way out, listening to the screams and cries of those who have failed to do so. The attack shifts to a point ahead of him, and he recognizes the danger. He must turn back. He must find another way. But his options are running out, and without the magic to protect him he is