The Footsteps of Cain Read online

  The Footsteps of Cain

  by

  Derek Kohlhagen

  The Footsteps of Cain

  Copyright © 2016 by Derek Kohlhagen

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2016

  ISBN-10: 09973689-1-8

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9973689-1-8

  For more information, or to contact the author, visit derekkohlhagen.com, or send email to [email protected].

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

  To my wife, who continues to do the real work so that I can daydream, my daughter, who teaches me far more than I could ever teach her, and all the family and friends who gave me the time, encouragement, and self-belief I needed to keep me going. I love all of you. Thank you so very much.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue – ???

  BOOK ONE: THE SPIRE

  Chapter 1 – Samuel

  Chapter 2 – Samuel

  Chapter 3 – Samuel

  Chapter 4 – Tristan

  Chapter 5 – ???

  Chapter 6 – Samuel

  Chapter 7 – Gorman

  Chapter 8 – Samuel

  Chapter 9 – Samuel

  Chapter 10 – ???

  Chapter 11 – Samuel

  Chapter 12 – ???

  Chapter 13 – Samuel

  Chapter 14 – Ejelano

  Chapter 15 – Samuel

  Chapter 16 – Ejelano

  Chapter 17 – Samuel

  Chapter 18 – Samuel

  Chapter 19 – Ejelano

  Chapter 20 – Samuel

  Chapter 21 – Ejelano

  BOOK TWO: THE TALE OF EJELANO, THE FORMER

  Chapter 22 – Ejelano

  Chapter 23 – Shaleer

  Chapter 24 – Ejelano

  Chapter 25 – Lena

  Chapter 26 – Ejelano

  Chapter 27 – Ejelano

  Chapter 28 – Ejelano

  Chapter 29 – Olhando

  Chapter 30 – Ejelano

  Chapter 31 – Ejelano

  Chapter 32 – Ejelano

  Chapter 33 – Olhando

  Chapter 34 – Ejelano

  Chapter 35 – Ejelano

  BOOK THREE: THE END OF THE WORLD

  Chapter 36 – Ejelano

  Chapter 37 – Samuel

  Chapter 38 – ???

  Chapter 39 – Samuel

  Chapter 40 – Samuel

  Chapter 41 – Ejelano

  Chapter 42 – Tristan

  Chapter 43 – Samuel

  Chapter 44 – Samuel

  Chapter 45 – Ejelano

  Chapter 46 – Samuel

  Chapter 47 – Samuel

  Chapter 48 – Ejelano

  Chapter 49 – Samuel

  Chapter 50 – Ejelano

  Chapter 51 – Samuel

  Chapter 52 – Ejelano

  Chapter 53 – Ejelano

  Chapter 54 – Ejelano

  Chapter 55 – Ejelano

  Epilogue – Banoro and Elhadra

  Prologue – ???

  15 days, 7:11:36 hours to go

  “I will wait for you.”

  Shock. A brother became an enemy across an instant, wearing a horrible mask of triumph, ridiculing him. The world turned a red shade of rage, and his actions were suddenly no longer his own. A struggle; blood splashed his world, staining it with an immutable taint of violence and death. Blood lust gave in to horror as he was struck with the full weight of the thing he’d done. Then she was there before him, but he couldn’t see her, not for what she really was. He spurned her. Her desperate pleading invaded his ears like a rival tribe. She begged for his love, raking his skin with her nails as though she could tear it from him. Her closeness choked him, stole his breath from his body. He turned, hurling her away in an attempt to find air again. More blood, this time a bright hue of crimson that would scorch his vision, forever.

  Panic. His sea of self-loathing closed over his head, and insanity gripped his body with clammy hands, threatening to pull his mind apart. He knelt down beside her to see the light fade from her eyes, locked onto him as the last thing they would ever see. He cradled her, called her name.

  LENA!

  Judgment. A sentence. A powerful grip on his arms, holding him fast. A burning pain shooting into his chest, the ripping of his flesh. That horrible sound of his heart’s desperate, discordant rhythm followed by its sudden, stifling silence.

  He should have died, but he hadn’t been allowed to.

  He knelt in the dirt, clutching at his chest and screaming her name.

  Wait.

  No, that wasn’t right.

  He hadn’t been screaming. He hadn’t spoken a word...well...as long as he could remember.

  There was a name, though. Somewhere inside his head. And a face. He could never bring the whole thing into focus, all at the same time, but he could see pieces of it. Dark curls. A crooked, spirited smile.

  He’d done something to her. Something...bad.

  He felt like it was important, but the mist in his mind was too thick to fully reveal the memory. It wasn’t a nightmare, for he hadn’t been sleeping (his body didn’t need sleep), but still he was haunted by the presence of whoever she was. Whenever he came to, he always had the idea that he’d known all the details clearly, just a brief moment before. Now, as always, it felt like something had been placed between him and lucidity, distorting it in the same way a warped piece of glass might.

  He opened his black eyes and stared at the sky, disoriented, his mind still smoky. His hands, stained dark (how many years?) with blood, fell to his sides. He unconsciously scooped up a clump of dirt and rubbed it between them in a feeble and ultimately ineffectual attempt to remove the red impurity.

  Then, his mind snapped back to the present.

  It all came rushing back to him as it always did, and the fog of his walking dream receded and clarity rushed in, welcoming him back to the world with its frigid, empty embrace. He once again came to grips with the horror that surrounded him. He dropped his head low, and when he moaned it came out low and soft, like the last wheeze of the dying. He rubbed his eyes with his palms, roughly, as if he could wipe away what he had witnessed...what he’d done. Finally, he let those terrible hands fall into his lap, and raised his eyes.

  The first thing they fell upon was the body. A dead man...no...thing...lay before him.

  It had been the last one to fall, but only after many grueling hours of murderous work. In order to retain some small scrap of sanity, he’d been forced to think of these things not as human, but something man-made, tools only good for one hellish purpose before their eventual disposal. It was clothed sparsely in shredded rags, old clothing that had long ago faded in the eyes of an angry sun, clothing that he also wore. Sinewy muscles were visible where the clothing didn’t cover, and they contoured the arms, legs, and torso in powerful strips, just as his own did. Although the body was turned slightly away from him, the head was twisted at an unnatural angle; bending back so that he could look directly into the face of the dead thing. Empty eyes stared out from it, eyes without iris or sclera, eyes whose smoldering, charcoal shade matched his own perfectly. The face had been beaten severely; it was covered in ugly purple bruises that distorted the facial features, and blood still oozed out of multiple places where the skin had been ripped open. Despite its twisted and battered appearance, he knew that when he gazed into the face of the thing, he gazed into his ow
n.

  Death had not only touched this thing ahead of him. It was everywhere. Without even needing to look, he knew that he was surrounded by the silent dead, strewn all around where they had fallen to the slaughter. There were many. Hundreds. Some were outside, but most still lay below in the bowels of the towering metal structure, now entombed in the place they used to call home. He could feel their presence. Men, women, and children lay all around him, many of their accusing eyes cast in his direction. Now freed from life, those eyes were only mirrors that reflected his emptiness.

  It was all he was, now. A reflection in the eyes of the dead.

  He shifted to get his legs under him, and screamed once more, this time in physical agony. All at once his entire body was burning. Excruciating bolts of liquid fire shot up and down his arms and legs and through his gut, pounding at his head with spikes and hammers. His body had seen no rest, and he could feel the damage it had taken from the battle, damage that would need to be repaired before he could move on. The pain was only a small part of his punishment. It would inevitably pass, and soon he would continue; even now, it was fading at a rapid pace as his body made itself whole again.

  He rose and stood on two unsteady legs, swaying precariously. He concentrated on maintaining his footing while his weakness created the sensation of the earth tilting, seemingly determined to throw him once again into the dirt. But no, he remained standing, unsteady, waiting for strength.

  Come then, devil...restore me so that I might finish the hunt, and be rid of this mockery of a life.

  Without warning, a raspy voice thundered into his head. It came from everywhere yet nowhere, exploding across his mind and soaked with contempt.

  DEVIL? TSK, TSK, TSK. YOU HURT ME. YOU KNOW I CAN FEEL YOUR THOUGHTS, VERMIN. YOU REALLY SHOULD BE MORE POLITE. AFTER ALL THE TIME WE’VE SPENT TOGETHER, AFTER ALL WE’VE DONE FOR ONE ANOTHER, WE SHOULD BE BETTER FRIENDS!

  He heard the rustling of wings, then in his peripheral vision he caught it, over to his left. Perched on a pile of bodies was a single crow. It stood watching him intently, with an evil intelligence.

  The spirit was usually just that; ethereal and bodiless...a never ending stream of words in his head. Yet, occasionally it seemed to derive a particular thrill from inhabiting a physical vessel, as it chose to do now. It perched, waiting for him, a silent sentry looking on while he returned to the waking world.

  He met the crow’s soulless stare with a hateful one of his own. As disgusted as he was by the presence of the thing, he was resigned to the fact that there was now a connection between them, one that had proven over many thousands of lifetimes to be unbreakable, despite all his attempts. His only choice was to see his task through, and be done with it forever.

  The crow took flight on pitch black wings, veering toward him. At the last second it changed trajectory to land on the dead body of the man (thing) in front of him. The voice in his head boomed once more.

  I HOPE YOU DON’T MIND ME EATING IN FRONT OF YOU, VERMIN. I’M FAMISHED. ONE FOR THE ROAD, AS THEY USED TO SAY!

  The crow broke its gaze with him and plunged its razor-like beak into the neck of the dead thing, tearing off a large piece and snapping its head back to force the gore down its gullet. It gorged itself with another piece and then another, until sections of bone became visible on the body. He looked once again into the dead thing’s eyes while the bird feasted on it, and was once more reminded of what waited for him. As he watched the crow devour more of the thing, he beheld his future, a finality that was now very, very close. His clock was winding down, and at the final stroke his oblivion would open and consume him just as this bird consumed the body before him. His task was almost finished, and soon the great numbness that he’d so longed for would, at long last, take him.

  Finally the crow finished its ravenous feast, and once again locked eyes with him. He felt the condescending sneer ripple across his consciousness.

  DELICIOUS, AS ALWAYS! I THINK THE NUMBER ONE REASON I LIKE TO INHABIT A BODY IS FOR THE TASTE BUDS...A TRULY WONDERFUL INVENTION!

  It sighed in satisfaction, and then got back to business.

  AHH. ALRIGHTY, THEN. LET’S GET THE LEAD OUT, MY BOY. WE’RE BEHIND SCHEDULE. COME ON, OFF YOU GO. ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR! HIPPITY HOP, VERMIN, HIPPITY HOP!

  He scowled with weak indignation.

  I’m not doing this for you. I never have.

  WHATEVER YOU WANT TO TELL YOURSELF. NOW, LET’S GO KILL SOME MORE PEOPLE! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? YOU’RE ALMOST DONE!

  The crow threw itself upward, beating its wings against the arid breeze. It climbed off into the steel gray sky, until it was only a black speck.

  He took a tentative step, and then another, and when his body told him that he was ready, he fell into steady strides across the dirt, past the body and after the crow, toward the distant horizon. Dirt and ash swirled around his feet as he passed, coating his legs, coating his spirit.

  He stared at the ground ahead of him, his head weighed down by eons of toil. The only sounds that met his ears were his own footfalls, eerily reverberating off of the twisted, ruined structure around him. The eyes of the dead watched him leave, their open mouths shrieking silent outrage.

  He passed through the gate, where the great doors only partially hung on broken hinges. Over the doors, words were carefully, neatly painted. Not long ago they’d faced out into the Wastes with hope...invitation. Now, the words wore streaks of black from the fires, baring the tatters of their shredded promise to a world that no longer had eyes to read them:

  NEW HAVEN

  He left the smoking wreck behind, step after weary step, one foot and then the other as it had always been. He left one ruin to go craft another. After all this time, it would be his last.

  The last people of the world would feel his slow approach, and the insanity and fear would rise in them like bile. They would turn on one another, and the weak ones would strike out at the rest, their panic carrying out his will, even before his arrival. At the peak of their desperation, they would break down and give in to their most basic instincts to self-preserve. With every cycle of violence and blood, it was the same...he knew only too well the disdainfully predictable nature of humanity.

  The machine of the world had all but ground to a halt; he was finally within reach of silencing it forever. He could feel them, across the expanse of miles that lay in between; they scurried about like insects building a nest, scavenging what they could, while they could...ignorant of the inevitable. Ignorant of him. They would come to understand that he was coming, for as with all his past exterminations, he wouldn’t bother to make his presence a secret.

  Let them scurry. Let them squeal. It mattered not to him, for he knew better than any other that there was no place left to go.

  He didn’t even raise his head when he heard the beating of wings on the air. First a few, then more and more until the roar would have been almost deafening to mortal ears. He didn’t even raise his head when the dark cloud above chased the light from the sky.

  His messengers flew ahead of him to herald his arrival. Humanity’s remnant would soon know the approach of its executioner.

  Doom was his every step, and death stained his hands. He headed eastward, toward his release.

  He headed eastward, toward the blessed end of the world.

  BOOK ONE: THE SPIRE

  2 days, 3:43:57 hours to go

  * * *

  Chapter 1 – Samuel

  Gunning the motor, he, the boy, hurtled across the barren earth. He threw a disbelieving glance over his shoulder and saw another explosion rock the place he used to call home, the place he used to call safe. He saw the orange and red of the flames before the shock wave hit the truck, and for a moment he thought he was going to lose control. The back end of his centuries-old vehicle fishtailed as the rear tires lost contact with the road, spewing clumps of dirt and rock behind him. Mercifully, he was able to pull it out of the skid, and point the front fender back into alignment with his desire to esc
ape. He raced ahead, into the barren face of the Wastes, away from the demolition behind him. He mentally urged the ancient truck to withstand his haste, pressing the accelerator down close to the floor, and it responded with an alarming vibration through the steering column as the speedometer steadily rose.

  He once again focused his vision on the road ahead, the road into nowhere, and suddenly there they were.

  They stood in his way, their eyes fixed on him with malice. He tried to wrench the wheel to avoid them, but it dawned on him that he could no longer feel it. He looked down, and to his horror he saw that his hands were passing through the steering wheel. They were ghostly and transparent...fading rapidly until eventually they disappeared altogether. A few seconds later his feet faded, also, removing any possibility of control over the speeding hulk.

  It was too late. Not one of the monsters ahead made an attempt to throw themselves out of the way; they just stood there, waiting. For a brief moment, he saw their faces clearly. Every face, identical to the next, had the same expression: Hate. It was almost a physical force, and it poured over him and into him, and suddenly he was drowning in it. He thundered into them, and his whole world became broken glass and screeching, ripping metal. Hands flew through the window and grasped his shirt, pulling...pulling....

  He let loose a scream....

  Samuel, the man, was ripped from his slumber as the intercom’s shrill whistle went off beside his head. At first he was completely disoriented, his mind still halfway submerged in the nightmare. His breathing was fast and shallow, and a layer of sweat bathed his entire body, chilling him, although it was not the primary reason he shivered. He could still feel those hands on him, seizing his shirt and searching for his throat.

  Forcing himself to slow his breathing, he glanced over at the old, analog clock on his side table. 8:13 AM. His night had been typically fitful. He never got enough sleep. Not nearly enough.