The Flame Never Dies

The beast slammed into my chest, driving me onto the chipped steps of an abandoned small-town courthouse. A chunk of concrete dug into my back, just left of my spine. The monster’s jaws snapped at me, drool dripping onto my shirt, and I shoved my right forearm against his emaciated throat, narrowly preventing him from tearing mine out with his teeth.

I pressed my left hand against the beast’s chest, and bright light surged between us. The monster screeched, his bald head thrown back, dark hollows stretching beneath his cheekbones, and the fire from my palm blazed deep into his flesh, burning the demon from its soulless, mutated human host.

When the light faded and the monster sagged against me, I shoved him onto the fractured courthouse steps, then rose to assess the fight still going on all around me. Finn stood guard with his rifle in front of the courthouse’s massive double doors, which no longer quite closed because the building had both settled and begun to rot in the century since it last saw use. Ana, Grayson, Mellie, and Tobias watched from a first-floor window, despite instructions to stay on the top floor, at a safer distance.

Reese, Devi, and Maddock were each locked in combat with other degenerates in the street—Reese was fending off three at once—and as I took stock, one of them abandoned the fight and darted across the overgrown lawn on all fours, her thin, matted hair flying out behind her.

As she hit the courthouse steps, I grabbed her by the tail of her torn, filthy shirt, then shoved her facedown onto the concrete and pressed my glowing hand against the back of her ribs. She screamed and flailed beneath me, and I could only ride out her violent death throes even as another monster lunged at Finn.

He swung the rifle like a bat—reluctant to kill a human host, because that would free the demon within—and the thunk of the steel barrel against skull made me flinch.

I backed away from the dead host beneath my hand and grabbed the degenerate he’d just bashed, then pressed my still-burning left palm against its bare, filthy flesh. The demon thrashed, caught by the flames blazing between us, and on the edges of my vision the other members of Anathema gathered to watch me burn out the last of the small horde.

Grayson pushed the courthouse door open as the monster crumpled to the ground. She ran past Finn and down the steps to throw herself into Reese’s arms. “I’m a walking monster magnet,” she groaned into his shoulder while he stroked her brown curls. “They won’t stop coming until I exorcise one and trigger my transition.”

I knew how she felt. During my transition a few months before, two small hordes of degenerates had managed to breach the walls of New Temperance, drawn to the emergence of my exorcist abilities like fish to a wriggling worm. But in the badlands, there was no wall standing between Grayson and the monsters. There was nothing but us.

Unfortunately, she was right; that wouldn’t stop until her hand began to burn in response to their presence, allowing her to actually exorcise a demon, which would usher in the full speed and strength that came with her new ability.

“Maybe if I help fight them, the close proximity will trigger my flame?” She held out her left hand with a hopeful look up at him, but he only shook his head.

“I’m not going to put you in danger to test a theory. When you’re ready, it’ll happen.”

Until then, all we could do was wait.

“Lemme see the bodies!” Tobias tried to run down the steps but tripped over a loose chunk of concrete and crashed to the ground instead. When he stood, blood welled from a gash on his right knee.

“Careful!” Anabelle knelt to examine the cut. “Hold still and let me get a bandage.” We’d found a crate of them in the cargo truck, and Tobias had gone through half a box in the two days since we’d found him.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he said while she rummaged through her satchel. “I can’t even feel it.”

“You’ve got to hand it to him,” Melanie whispered from my right, rubbing her belly with one hand. “That kid’s tough. Last night he burned his arm when he got too close to the campfire. It blistered, but he insists it doesn’t hurt at all.”

“This one’s still smoking!” Tobias squealed as Anabelle pulled him away from a corpse lying in the street. It was indeed still leaking smoke from the hole in the center of its back.

“Don’t touch,” Mellie scolded, leaving my side to tug him even farther from the body. “They’re probably crawling with germs.” Not that we were exactly clean since leaving the abundance of clear creeks and small lakes behind.

“Does the hole go all the way through? Let’s roll it over!”

Melanie distracted Tobias with a bottle of water and the bag of cookies she now kept at the ready. I wasn’t sure what we’d do with the precocious little boy when we ran out of sweets with which to bribe him.

“You okay?” I asked Finn when I noticed blood dripping from his arm. He blinked, then frowned at me until I showed him the long scratch across his forearm. “That last one had claws.”

“Oh. Yeah. I’m fine.” He swiped at the blood with the sleeve of his other arm, and then his focus strayed back toward the road. I followed his gaze to find Maddock staring westward into the setting sun, both fists clenched at his sides.

* * *

“I said no.” Anabelle plucked the chocolate bar from Tobias’s grip and tucked it into the front pocket of her backpack. “That’s the last one, and you can’t have it until you’ve eaten some real food.”

“I’m tired of beans for breakfast.” Tobias poked at the contents of his can with a stainless steel spoon. “I want bacon.”

Devi rolled two half-burned candles in an extra T-shirt, then stuffed them into her bag. “Do you see any pigs running around?”

Tobias’s bright brown eyes widened. “Bacon comes from pigs?”

“And from little boys who don’t do what they’re told,” she said, supporting my theory that she probably hadn’t liked children even when she’d been one of them. The child stuck his tongue out at her. Devi laughed and knelt to roll up her sleeping mat.

“I gave you beans because you said you were tired of stewed tomatoes,” Anabelle pointed out as she wiped her own spoon clean with a damp rag.

“They don’t taste good anymore.” Tobias pouted. “They don’t taste like anything. I think they went bad.”

I picked up his nearly full can of beans and read from the back. “They’re two years from their expiration date, like all the rest. You just don’t want to eat anything that’s actually good for you.”

“Yet he never grows tired of candy.” Reese winked at the boy and slid him a secreted chocolate bar from his own bag. Tobias grinned at him and took another small bite of beans.

I stood to gather the cans we’d emptied at breakfast and at dinner the night before, and my gaze fell on Melanie, still lightly snoring on top of her sleep roll. The further her pregnancy progressed, the more easily she tired, yet the harder it was for her to rest. We let her sleep late whenever we could afford to.

As I cleaned up I noticed that Maddock and Finn were both staring out the window. “What’s up?” I said, plucking the empty peach can from Maddy’s grip.

“They’re back.” Finn scooted to make room for me at the window, and I saw the problem immediately. We’d slept on the third floor of what was once a small-town courthouse, and the vantage point gave us a view of half the town, and of the crumbling two-lane road leading into the badlands.

About a mile outside of town the nomads had set up camp with four vehicles, two dozen tents, and about twenty horses. They hadn’t been there when we’d settled in the night before.

“Two days in a row.” Maddock frowned. “We can’t keep calling it a coincidence. They’re following us.”

I picked up the empty can at his feet. “Maybe they want to help us. Or warn us about something.”

“Or rob us blind and kill us in our sleep,” Devi offered from across the room, where she was stuffing her bedroll into her bag.

“If that’s the case, why make their presence so obvious?”

She shrugged. “It can’t be easy to hide an entire herd of horses.”

I stood by my theories, but Finn and Maddock hardly seemed to know I was there. The farther west we’d come—two-thirds of the way in two days, thanks to prewar roads kept passable by the Church—the more tense they’d grown.

Tobias, on the other hand, seemed happier with each mile that passed beneath our tires.

“How are we fixed for gas?” Reese added Devi’s duffel to the three others hanging from his shoulders.

“Too low to pass by the next station without filling up,” Finn said. “If I remember correctly, there’s a fuel depot a couple of miles south of town. With any luck, it’ll be locked but unguarded.”

Assuming the Church hadn’t anticipated our westward shift.

Maddock stood and hefted his pack onto his back. “Devi and I will take the SUV. Reese, you take the truck.”

“I’ll go with him.” Grayson rushed ahead before anyone could object. “I’ll stay in the truck, but I’m going. You can’t keep leaving me behind.”

“Oh, let her go,” I said. “Finn and I will hold down the fort here.”