Previous chapters of BADLANDS can be found here

CHAPTER 11

In the distance came the shriek of a child’s scream.

“The camp!” exclaimed Cyril.

“We’re too late!” Lucius yelled. “Run for your life!”

He turned and bolted as fast as he could, making the choice to drop the extra weight of his rifle. However, Lucius’ young and strong legs were no match for the pack of four-legged beasts on his tail. Together, they swept past Cyril as if he wasn’t there. Their leader, a hulking creature, easily twice the size of any of the others, ran with the speed of a wildfire. Bearing down on Lucius, the beast sprang into the air. In mere moments it brought down its human prey with swift brutality, sinking its fangs into the soft flesh of Lucius’ neck. Like a rag doll, Lucius tumbled to the dirt, pinned to the ground with the coyote on his back. Lucius lifted his head and tried to scream just as the massive beast’s mouth clamped down around it, the powerful and unforgiving jaws severing it from the rest of Lucius’ body in the blink of an eye.

Within mere moments other members of the pack descended upon Lucius, tearing at his carcass, feasting on his flesh.

Cyril stood thirty feet away, stunned into a state of utter paralysis, his feet feeling nailed to the forest floor.

Run! The voice inside his head screamed again, finally awakening his instinct to flee. He spun on his heels and bolted just as the leader of the pack turned its head up from Lucius’ carcass, its muzzle thick with blood. Cyril bothered not with checking behind him to see if the beasts were giving chase for to do so would be the waste of a precious second and he was plenty certain he had not one to lose. Cyril pumped his legs as fast as he could, carrying the rifle in one hand. He had one shot and he was going to save it for just in case, though it crossed his mind in a sudden flash that contingency should not exclude using it upon himself if the worst were to happen.

The sudden attack on Lucius had turned Cyril around to the point of having lost his direction and it was only his best guess that his feet were carrying him back toward camp. He had to make it. He had to save the others.

His mind began to play with the concept of escape when he started to feel their hot breath upon his heels and the sound of their paws beating loudly on the dirt.

Don’t look back, keep running! He told himself.

Now he could hear their growls thundering at his feet as they closed the distance in mere seconds. Cyril thought of the rifle in his hand. One shot. That’s all he had. They were many, he was alone. He had seen what they had done to Lucius, rending him limb from limb, their razor sharp fangs ripping into his flesh. With no time to reload, there was only one choice. Cyril made the decision to not go out the same way as Lucius.

He just needed to make sure the rifle was aimed correctly though. Not something he could do on the run. He needed time.

The first coyote was upon him, foaming at his heels. Cyril turned and slammed the butt of the musket into the beast’s muzzle, crushing the cartilage underneath. The coyote collapsed, tumbling forward while it shrieked in pain. There were others, Cyril was sure, and they were coming. Ahead was a large rock jutting from the earth, a massive boulder rising ten feet above the ground. Cyril ran toward it, scrambling to reach its rounded peak.

Behind him, another member of the pack sprung from the ground at his feet but Cyril was too fast, luckily pulling away in the nick of time as the beast instead smashed headfirst into the boulder and tumbled aside with a loud yelp. Cyril knew what he had to do, his nimble fingers cocking back the hammer on the musket. There was no time to waste. They were practically upon him. Cyril didn’t bother with a prayer he just jammed the loaded musket’s barrel underneath his chin as his right thumb scrambled to find the trigger. There was no moment of hesitation or reflection, only action. The rumble the rest of the pack made as they bore down on him, charging at full gallop was deafening and it caused Cyril to look up, only momentarily.

In an instant, the pack leader left the ground at full speed, its body arcing high into the air. By the time Cyril saw the leaping beast it was too late. The coyote crashed into him before he could get off the fatal shot, knocking Cyril clean off the rock. The musket flew from his hands as he abruptly thudded to the ground, onto his back with the coyote leader right on top of him. Instantly, the wind was knocked out of Cyril’s lungs and coupled with the heavy beast pinning him to the ground he could not get up nor breathe.

In complete terror he could only lay there, staring into the yellow eyes of the coyote as it bared its fangs, the hot saliva dripping from the beast’s dark muzzle onto Cyril’s face.

Cyril braced himself for the unspeakable. His heart shuddered as his brain exploded with panic. The air around him was thick with the scent of the pack—smells of earth, dirt and especially blood—as they surrounded him. The other coyotes circled their leader, blotting out everything in Cyril’s periphery. He tried again to move but couldn’t. The pack leader began to emit a low, angry growl that shook every bone in Cyril’s body and though Cyril had turned his gaze from the coyote leader out of extreme fear, he turned his head slightly and peered upwards into the eyes of the massive beast. Again, it growled, this time louder and deeper, rumbling like thunder. But something about its voice seemed to be trying to compel Cyril to look deep into its eyes.

Though deeply struck with paralyzing fear, Cyril obeyed the command he thought he heard in his mind. He turned his head even more to gaze into the face of the beast. And as he did, the image of the coyote changed before his very eyes into the figure of a man. A man whose scarred face was mostly hidden in shadow. And suddenly all around him, Cyril could hear them, their voices lost in a cloud of whisper. A hundred conversations going on all at once. His head snapped around and the coyotes which once surrounded him had all changed into human form—cloaked figures, their faces barely visible in the dim light of the forest. To his left was a man with raw empty sockets where his eyes had been. Another bore extreme facial disfigurement obviously caused by disease. Cyril could see their lips moving slightly as the whispers around him grew louder.

With a deafening snarl, the pack leader brought Cyril back to his impending future. In the blink of an eye the shadowy human figure pinning him to the ground returned to it’s hulking coyote body. Its yellow eyes piercing deep into Cyril’s soul. And it was then that Cyril suddenly realized, as his heart lay frozen in terror, that the eyes he was staring into were the very eyes of death itself.

“No,” he uttered with his near-last breath just as the coyote’s mouth clamped down upon him, engulfing his face from his cheek to his neck.

Cyril’s arms flailed and shuddered as the beast’s powerful jaws tore at him, ripping away not only flesh but sinew, muscle and bone in an instant. The pain was unbearable as Cyril’s brain responded by firing every synapse in his body in a desperate attempt to mercifully overload his nervous system. His eyes, still fully functional, locked onto the coyote leader, unable to look away as its bloody jaws came at him again, this time clamping down onto his open screaming mouth, its teeth sinking into Cyril’s soft palate. He felt a sharp tugging at his head and then a ripping from within his ears as the coyote pulled away Cyril’s bloody lower jaw from his skull. Cyril’s mind, still fighting, registered this as if a bolt of lightning had struck his body.

The coyote leader shook its head violently, tossing aside Cyril’s mandible.

His life was draining though Cyril could still feel his fingertips as his shaking hands balled into fists from the trauma that had been inflicted upon him. His brain could not form a single cohesive thought; only a deafening ringing filled his ears.

And then the rest of the pack descended upon him, first ripping at the soft flesh of his limbs. Each new bite became a tug, then a tussle turning every new puncture into ragged gashes. Within moments the fingers on both of his hands were taken followed by both of his feet as the coyotes made quick work of his shoes.

From either side of him he could feel them yanking at his arms, jostling his body back and forth. At the same time he was being dragged downward by the ones chewing on his legs. He was hemorrhaging blood so quickly now that his mind barely clung to the precipice of conscious thought, but still he could sense their teeth tearing into him. As their sharp fangs ripped into his torso, severing connective tissue from muscle, all of his physical awareness drained from his mind. When they continued to gnaw at what was left of Cyril’s limbs, stopping only at the bone and then chewed into the flesh between his legs, he felt nothing.

But still his body hung on to dear life, even if just barely clinging to a morsel of fading consciousness.

Within moments his mind registered complete darkness as the pack leader took Cyril’s eyes with its hungry jaws.

Cyril’s heart struggled then stammered and then suddenly, in a flash from deep within his failing brain a voice rose from the pure nothingness.

Its words to Cyril were absolute. His part in all this was that of a human sacrifice. In no uncertain terms, he had been made into an offering.

And we thank you, the voice said.

Just as that offering was being accepted hungrily by the creatures feasting on his body.

In what was left of his mind there was no question. No wondering of why. That part of his brain, which managed such things, had been closed down, shuttered like an abandoned house. All that remained was a bare flicker of life clinging to his mortal body.

And we thank you, we do… the voice in his head repeated, over and over. Still there was no release as each living moment of this hell faded slowly into the next, the voice repeating and rising into a crescendo.

And we thank you…

And we thank you…

And we thank you, we do…

Only to be suddenly silenced as the pack leader tore into Cyril’s neck and ripped his throat away.

From within the chasm Cyril was instantly plunged into there was no conscious thought, there was no awareness. All that existed was a void, a vast nothingness between himself and the world of the living. And it was in this darkness that he remained until summoned forth by a force beyond his comprehension.

For it was in those very same woods that Cyril’s eyes reopened and his lungs let out a mighty gasp. Although a period that spanned over a dozen decades had passed since the world he had left behind, it was, to Cyril, as if not one moment of time had elapsed.

Suddenly, he felt something pulling him forth and his gaze snapped to a young boy standing before him staring back with soulless black eyes.

The boy then opened his mouth to Cyril and spoke. “I am Miles Lawton, and you will serve me.”