Sepulchral Earth - The Long Road

  

            Harlan Cole scrambled over the rise, snarling death at his heels.

            His breath spewed out in rapid huffs, tearing at his ragged throat as though he were exhaling razors. He didn’t dare look back. The scrabbling claws of his pursuers sounded behind him as they scrambled for purchase on the detritus that made up the hill, their whoofing voices wet with bloodlust. He heard their other voices echoing in his head, their words no less fierce.

Their guttural snarls fed his flight, adrenaline taking the reins where endurance had fallen off. His lungs burned with the fury of the run, his heart threatening to crack a rib, as he cast his eyes about looking for defensible cover. He nearly sobbed when he spotted a ramshackle house in the failing light, about fifty yards beyond the base of the trash hill. He hit the descent with abandon, using the butt of the useless rifle, the bent barrel gripped white-knuckle tight like a ski stock to keep his balance. The straps to his backpack bit into his shoulders, twin bee stings of sharp agony. The obsidian sword at his waist, slid sheathless through a loop on his thick leather belt, cut a shallow groove in his headlong wake.

He hit the ground running just as the barks and frothing howls of the dogs broke over the rise. Unable to survey the house beyond what he could see from the front, his mind was already made up. No other shelter close enough to reach before the sharpened teeth of his feral pursuers savaged the flesh from his bones, the boarded-up hovel would have to do.

His weight and momentum behind him, he hit the door at a gallop, his broad shoulder leading the charge. With a thunderous crack that rattled his teeth, it gave way, the frame splintering. He stumbled inside and dug his heels into the moist, moldy carpet to stop, slamming the broken door shut behind him. Though it no longer sat flush with the frame, slivers of reddish light seeping through the cracks, it closed and stayed that way.

Gasping, Harlan cast the useless rifle aside and yanked the dark sword loose. In a quick motion, growls erupting just outside the door, he cut a line across the carpet, at the threshold of the door, and whispered a quiet word.

The cacophony of barks quieted instantly and Harlan dropped to his knees, his shoulders slumped. His chest heaved as he tried to slow his breathing.

“Drop the blade,” a steely voice ordered from behind him, the words punctuated by the spine-chilling clack of a shotgun shell being chambered.