The Things We Bury - Part 1: In Anticipation of the End of the World [Completed]

Chapter 12: Situation Desperate (Parts 6 & 7 of 8)

Consciousness wasn't something he wanted.  The dark, soft world of forgetful sleep was a much better place to be.  In that murky realm, the pain was just a faint dispatch from a distant land.

But reality demanded attention and after several minutes, it became clear to Horus that he was pretending to sleep more than he was actually sleeping.

Deep bands of agony stretched across his chest and thighs, unwelcome mementos of the crash and the punch of the airbag.  There was a sickening rawness in the back of his skull, like a metal shard embedded in his scalp.  It reminded him of the men.

They came after his car marooned itself in the scrubby dirt at the side of the highway.  They got him out.  Prised the door open, deflated the airbag, and pulled him from the BMW.  They got there too quickly to be EMTs.  Helpful motorists, he thought until he saw they were masked.  Their gloved hands were too rough with him—gripping hard, tugging painfully, dragging him through the broken glass, and dumping him face-first in the dirt.

Still stunned from the crash, the threat his rescuers posed was abstract.   He knew he should get away from them but there was no urgency to his fear.  When he should flee was just as mystifying as to why. The only concrete things his mind could grasp were the hot ground beneath him, the baking sun above, and the layers of pain in the middle.

There had been a pickup truck.  It had come out of nowhere and swerved into him.   No, it had hit him square on—it had rammed him.  It must have been waiting.

The tingling panic that flooded through his body clarified the need to escape—escape now.

He began to struggle to his feet.  Horus got as far as raising himself up on his knees when the restrictive feeling in his chest—the thickness filling in his lungs as though they were filled with mud—started an uncontrollable coughing fit.  His hand shot out to support him as he collapsed forward with wracking convulsions. 

 Horus never saw what cracked against the back of his skull.  There was only the sharp impact and then the void of unconsciousness.

That abyss of non-being was in all ways a better place than the netherworld of darkness he found himself in now.  This real-world was hot and airless.  Jarring vibrations bumped him around but he couldn't move his body.  The noise was awful—a demonic screech that clawed at his ears.

There was absolutely no curiosity about where he was.  That knowledge was tainted with deep dread.  Horus was absolutely certain that the answer to the mystery was more terrible than anything he could imagine.

But despite himself, things began to clarify as time dragged on.  He was in a vehicle, sitting on a hard bench.  His hands were bound to metal rings in the seat.  It wasn't the night that made things dark, although it very well may have been night.  Just as easily as it might have been day.  A heavy sack over his head hid the truth.  The air inside was humid and stale from his recycled breaths.

The last thing that came into focus was the noise.  The horrible, torturous noise.  The concussive thumps, the whining like a cat in heat—they were drums and guitars.  Horus recognized the series of shrieking machine shop sounds as what could loosely be called a tune.  A radio was blasting the Princes of Darkness.  It echoed in the vaulted space of the mysterious container that imprisoned Horus.

On the radio, Kyle Silver began to sing.  The incoherent voice of his Strafer persona was too familiar to mistake.

Someone near him began to sing along.  Horus wasn't alone.  He was about to call out when another person joined in.  Soon a whole chorus was chanting to Kyle Silver's words.

Horus really had woken up in hell.

***

Barbara had never felt less.  Numbness spread through her as though she'd been injected with a fast acting drug—a novocaine of nothingness drowned everything inside of her.  Like a lost doll, she stared off blankly, while still holding onto to Carlos.  Slowly she raised herself out of the blood she was lying in.  Standing up, the weight of the medic pack tugged at her arm.  Somehow it was still hooked onto her.  She didn't have the strength to shrug it off.  Stepping out from behind the desk, she walked into the barrage of gunfire.