Oasis of the Damned Read online

  The night had turned quiet, still.

  Then she saw them, and in that moment, Richter was certain she was either still dreaming or had suffered a far more severe head injury than she’d originally suspected. Because what she was looking at defied reason.

  At the very edge of the outpost there stood twenty or more figures that vaguely resembled gaunt human beings. But there was something wrong with them, something hideously wrong, and although the moon above and fire below provided a fair amount of light, the surrounding and outlying darkness helped shroud the beings from full view. Still, Richter could see that the lean and muscular forms had gangly arms too long to be human, and though they stood on two feet, like men, their short thin legs more closely resembled those of a quadrupedal animal. Some of the creatures were completely nude, their skin a strange light gray color, while others were clad in tattered clothing, many in what appeared to have once been military uniforms of some kind. But it was the eyes that held Richter’s attention. Nothing human had eyes like that. In fact, no living thing she’d ever seen had eyes like that. Bulging and jaundiced, they sat above a skeleton nose and a hideously large and gaping mouth filled with two rows of shark-like teeth, while the ends of their hands and feet sported long talons.

  One creature stood alone at the front of the pack. Raising its arms to the sky, it threw its head back and screeched at the moon. It was an unearthly sound so terrible it defied description, but the others followed suit until their deafening cries filled the night.

  And then they scattered and charged the outpost from every direction, their screams a war howl, a bloodcurdling demonic battle cry of hostility and inconceivable violence.

  Richter’s bewilderment and disbelief quickly turned to terror.

  She fell back on her haunches, safe behind the wall for the time being, she hoped, and relieved she could no longer see the things making such a horrifying racket. Scurrying back to the ladder, she dropped down into the tower, her body trembling uncontrollably and her mind a blank of panic and shock. After pushing the ladder up and out of the way, she swung the door closed. Denied the moon, the room fell darker, the modest oil lamp providing the only light.

  The screams continued. The creatures were everywhere, circling the outpost from the sounds. Closer then farther away then closer again, as if this were some sort of twisted game, some sick gag only they understood.

  Richter covered her ears and dropped into a crouch, but she could still hear them out there, just beyond the walls of the tower. It was like the first time she’d been caught in crossfire and experienced combat. The awful sounds—the noise, the helplessness and panic—all of it came crashing down on her in a single wave of terror. She’d have given anything for it to go away, to stop, for what she had seen just moments before to be nothing more than a bad dream.

  But this is no dream.

  Forcing herself back to her feet, she fell against the wall and tried to gather her wits. “God in Heaven,” she heard herself gasp. “God in Heaven, help me.”

  A spray of gunfire down below cut the night, followed quickly by a second burst, then a third. Another scream mingled with those of the creatures’, this one human. Owens. He was firing and screaming back at them, trying to hold them off, trying to—

  They’re trying to get in, they—they’re trying to get inside and up into the tower.

  She grabbed the machine gun next to the bed. It was heavy, awkward and reminded her that she hadn’t handled anything but a pistol since her time in the service. Think, goddamn it. You know how to do this. Although she was unfamiliar with this particular weapon, she knew firearms and had been trained in their use. Referencing that training, she gave the weapon as quick and efficient an inspection as she was able. It was loaded and appeared to be in working order, but until she attempted to fire it, there was no way to know for sure if such an old weapon would still function properly.

  Certain she’d find out soon enough, Richter ran, as if by rote, for the stairs, the night, the sand, the screams, the madness.

  And the horrors that surely awaited her.

  4

  As Richter hurried down the stairs, she could no longer see the creatures, but she could still hear them. Worse, she could sense them—feel them—as if they were attacking her mind with the same viciousness with which they’d stormed the outpost. This couldn’t be happening. But it was. Those things couldn’t be real. But they were. When the bottom of the stairs and the doorway beyond came into view, her mind again fell blank, shifting to an automatic pilot, of sorts, she hadn’t tapped into in years.

  The door at the base of the steps had been left open, and she could see Owens at the entrance to the building, crouched behind the sandbags and reloading his rifle as those awful howls continued, louder and clearer now. Closer. She stepped down onto the floor of sand and rushed forward, machine gun leveled and ready. But before she reached him, Owens had already turned and begun firing into the night.

  Sliding onto her knees, Richter dropped down alongside him behind the sandbags. The night came into clearer focus. The full moon and fire revealed more horror, a wave of creatures charging toward them, their gaits strange but powerful; a lope resulting in a long but graceful stride and, at times, inhuman speed.

  Owens fired, hitting one in the face. The back of its head exploded and it dropped to the sand, but the others kept coming. He hit more, and they dropped, but within seconds they slowly rose and continued forward.

  “The head or the legs!” he screamed. “Aim for the head or the legs!”

  Richter braced herself and fired, sweeping the machine gun in a slow arc back and forth. Thankfully, it fired properly, dropping the majority of the charging creatures. But as before, seconds later, they began to rise. Mind shattering, she leveled the machine gun and fired again.

  Owens put his rifle aside, reached down to the sand and came up with a grenade. He pulled the pin, tossed it, then took cover behind the sandbags, yanking Richter down next to him as he did so.

  The explosion left their ears ringing and rocked the building, and cries from the creatures tore through the night. But these screams were different. These were screams of pain, of defeat.

  Owens grabbed a makeshift torch he’d lit previously and stuck it into the sand next to him. Standing, he pulled one of the swords from his belt with his free hand and held it out for Richter. “Take it!”

  She did. It was even more awkward in her grip than the machine gun.

  Drawing the other sword for himself, Owens threw a leg up and over the sandbags, then dropped down on the other side. Unsure of what else to do, Richter followed; the machine gun in one hand and the sword held out in front of her with the other.

  Three creatures, killed by the grenade, lay dismembered and mangled in the sand.

  The others stood their ground, neither charging nor retreating.

  With an athletic prowess she would’ve never guessed he had, Owens rushed the creatures, swinging the torch in one hand and the sword in the other. Clearly afraid of the fire—or was it the light they feared?—most backed away, holding their clawed hands up in front of them as if this might help ward him off. Others froze where they stood as if mesmerized, their strange yellow eyes eerily reflecting the flames.

  With a single violent swing, Owens decapitated the closest creature. It collapsed to the sand. This time it did not get up.

  The others reacted by backing up again, but they still did not turn and run. Most had wounds—many of them head wounds—but seemed unaffected, crouching and snarling like cornered animals as Owens and Richter inched closer.

  “Put your back to mine and watch the tower,” Owens said. “There’ll be others coming from that direction.”

  Much as looking at these things horrified her, at least she knew where they were. Looking in the other direction would no longer afford that, but Richter did as he’d told her. As if on cue, more creatures came slinking through the darkness, slipping around the side of the building from the backside of
the tower.

  Owens and Richter inched the marauders back until the creatures were trapped between them and the wall of fire at the entrance to the outpost. If they were going to flee, they’d have to do so the same way they’d entered, scattered and from the sides.

  Those coming from behind were still advancing, but doing so with caution, their screeches beginning again but more quietly this time, building slowly, as if they were working themselves up into the necessary frenzy to attack.

  “The others,” Richter said. “They’re coming!”

  Owens ignored her, and instead thrust the torch at the creatures. They backed farther away, which was exactly what he’d wanted them to do. He’d maneuvered them into a trap. Touching his torch to the sand, fumes from gasoline he’d poured prior to the attack ignited, shooting a line of fire that erupted and rapidly shot straight from the torch to the creatures, engulfing most in a burst of fiery carnage.

  More howls of pain followed as those who had avoided the trap vaulted off into the darkness, running now and hopping the walls along the side of the outpost like giant gaunt insects, escaping both the wall of fire at the entrance and the flames that were slowly killing their brethren.

  The burning creatures writhed about as if this might help free them from the fire, but after what seemed an eternity of spinning and jerking about helplessly, they began to drop one by one until there was nothing but a pile of six or seven of them, a bonfire of creatures burning in the night.

  “Owens,” Richter said, “the others!”

  He turned and charged them, waving the torch as he went. Richter ran after him, her feet sluggish in the deeper sand, her heart racing and her eyes tearing from the gasoline fumes and soot from the torch.

  The creatures, perhaps ten in all, charged as well, but this time individually and from slightly different angles, rather than in a single wave as the others had.

  Owens hit one with the torch on the side of its head. It cried out, then lunged. But Owens was prepared and already swinging the sword to meet it. The blade entered the side of its neck and easily severed the head, which flew into the air in a misty spray of bluish red blood before bouncing and rolling away in the sand. As its body collapsed, Owens took out another, and then another, while he and Richter gradually made their way back toward the tower.

  Richter had never used a sword in her life, but she swung it as violently and with as much power as she could muster, taking off one creature’s arm at the shoulder and chopping another down by severing its leg just above the knee. It fell but continued crawling toward her, until Owens stepped in and decapitated it, using the same precision he’d used on the others. A torch to the face of the other wounded creature sent it screaming and reeling back into the night in a spray of sparks and blood.

  Back to back, they fought on, whirling and using the torch and other weapons until the howls stopped and quiet had returned to the desert.

  All that remained was their labored breath.

  Owens headed for the sandbags. “Hurry, we’ve got to get back inside.”

  “But they’re gone, I—I think they’re gone.”

  He looked back at her with bloodshot eyes, his beard dripping and neck sprayed with the bluish tinted blood from the creatures he’d slain. “They’re not gone,” he told her. “They’re regrouping.”

  They ran for the tower, jumped the sandbags and collapsed behind them, exhausted. After a moment, Owens peeked out over the bags. The bonfire was dying, and the wall of fire he’d set at the entrance to the outpost had all but gone out. Bathed in moonlight, the bodies of those they’d killed lay in pieces, scattered across the sand like dismembered and broken mannequins.

  “They’ll be coming at us again any minute,” he warned.

  “This isn’t—this can’t be happening,” Richter said, fighting tears of horror and rage. “It’s a goddamn nightmare, it’s—this isn’t real!”

  “Out here, the desert decides what’s real,” Owens said, still watching the dying fires. “We kill as many as we can, then we run, lock down and do our best to survive the night.”

  Richter ran a shaking hand over her forehead. It came back wet with sweat and the same alien blood spattered all over Owens. In a panic, she wiped her hand on her pants. “Get off, get—get off!”

  “Let’s go,” he said, wearily rising to his feet. “They’re coming.”

  Together, they ran for the tower. Once on the steps, Owens closed and barricaded the door. He reached into the darkness and came back with the small oil lamp from the step, which he lit with the torch, then left just inside the door. It burned bright enough to cast a circle of light that encompassed the first two steps.

  “It’s the light they’re afraid of,” he explained.

  Once they’d reached the top of the stairs, Owens pulled open the ceiling door, dropped the ladder down and climbed out onto the tower. Again, Richter followed.

  Below, a group of creatures stood just beyond the outpost wall. The fires had gone out, and at that distance the moonlight was not enough to reveal them all. But they were legion, and this time, when they began to move, rather than charging and screaming, they did so slowly, creeping quietly, jaws snapping and dangling thick drool.

  “Can they get in?” Richter asked.

  “They come every night, haven’t managed it yet.” He ran his forearm across his face, wiping away some of the blood. “But sooner or later, they will.”

  “Can they get up here?”

  “No. But if the desert teaches you anything, it’s that nothing’s impossible out here, and even if it is, it’s not impossible for long.”

  She licked her chapped lips, feeling nauseous. “What are they?”

  “Ghouls,” he said, tossing the torch out over the side. It spiraled down in a fiery flash, hit the sand and continued to burn a while. The creatures saw it fall and halted until it landed, then they continued their methodical march toward the tower.

  Richter hugged herself. “What do they want?”

  He looked at her, and for the first time, she saw fear in him.

  “They’re hungry.”

  She clenched shut her eyes but still couldn’t escape the hideous faces of those creatures out on the sand, their bright and bulging yellow eyes, their razor teeth, their talons reaching for her. It’s a nightmare, she told herself. I’ll wake up any minute now and it’ll all be over, I—

  “Let’s get back inside,” he said.

  They rode out the night huddled in shadows and the limited light from the oil lamp. Neither said much. Neither even looked at the other. They just waited, listened, and did their best to stop their minds from tearing to shreds. For the first time in years, Richter contemplated prayer.

  The attack lasted the rest of the night. The creatures circled the outpost, hurling their rocks and screeching in unison, their talons scraping and fists pounding the walls while others threw themselves at the tower door in wave after wave.

  But the barricade held.

  And then there came a silence nearly as unsettling as the wailing creatures, and bits of sunlight began slipping through the tiny cracks in the ceiling door.

  Night, and the siege, had ended.

  5

  The sun was already blistering by the time Richter made her way down from the tower. The black, star-filled sky had been replaced with golden light so intense it hurt her eyes, and the chill from the night before had gone. In its place was a debilitating, unbearable heat. Even the sand changed during daylight hours, becoming softer underfoot. The world here was so vastly different from night to day it didn’t even seem like the same place.

  But the carnage littering the outpost left no doubt as to where she was.

  Owens had started a new fire, continuing to burn the pile of bodies he’d torched the night before while nonchalantly tossing severed limbs, heads and other body parts into the inferno like so much kindling. The sickly sweet, nauseating smell of burning flesh filled the air, but he was apparently unaffected by it. Perhaps he
’d grown used to it, much the way he’d obviously grown used to handling the dead creatures. Both made Richter sick, and she could only hope she’d never become accustomed to such horrors.

  Dripping sweat and stripped to the waist, Owens poked at the bodies with the tip of his sword, spraying sparks about and shifting them the way one might maneuver logs into better position. “You all right?” he asked, his face flushed red and sunburned.

  It took her a while to answer. Exhausted physically and drained emotionally, she was having trouble sorting her thoughts. “I’m not sure what that is anymore.”

  “Got to get rid of these before nightfall,” he said, cocking his head toward the burning bodies. “They don’t have many weaknesses, but their flesh is soft, cuts easy. You saw how if you get close enough, and you’ve got a sharp blade, you can slice right through them, hack them to pieces. You can slow them down by wounding them, but not for long. Only way to kill these fuckers for good is to decapitate them, burn them, or blow them apart. The bodies, or whatever’s left of them, have to be burned down to ash and scattered on the wind.”

  Richter watched but kept her distance. “And then?”

  “We get ready for dark. Dark belongs to them.”

  “These things, they—they come every night?”

  “Nah,” he sighed, “just holidays and weekends.” He turned to her, his expression blank. “You lived through it last night, Richter, saw with your own eyes and experienced it firsthand. I know you still can’t get your mind around it, still can’t quite believe it. The rest of us went through the same thing. But yes, they come every night. And every night we fight them off as best we can. We kill as many as possible, and come morning, if we’re still alive, we burn the bastards and scatter the ashes. After a while, it won’t matter to you anymore, what you can or can’t believe. All that’ll matter is you’re alive. And more of them are dead.”

  “Surely there must be a finite number of them.”