“Belker’s hometown.” Caleb announced, channeling his hero.

  “A pity he ever left…” Kayleigh said, matching his gravelly tone.

  Oliver nodded.

  Where is his survivor? Caleb thought. Has he not earned one yet?

  “I wish you idiots would quit that voice,” Johnson muttered. “I don’t like being mocked.

  At an outcrop on the edge of the forest, the town was well in view now. It was like an early settler’s town - replete with new-build log barns. Fresh-cut timber leant against the hefty frame, surrounded by a pool of sawdust.

  “This town looks new.”

  Johnson grumbled. “I shouldn’t be having to tell you all this…” he whispered to himself.

  “It’s part of the Ravensbrook ethos. It is a place of evolution. Of constant rebirth. So every year, in the spring, they give their thanks to the trees that protected them over the long winter, take them down and start anew with the next oldest crop.”

  “Talk about busywork…” Oliver studied the group of children who circled a white stone well. “Even that stonework looks new.”

  “It isn’t just wood that suffers the rot of winter,” Johnson said, his voice somber.

  Well, if this isn’t a new side to the soldier. Caleb thought.

  “What are they doing… ?”

  Each of the children stood atop the well, looking anywhere but the darkness in front of them. Some gazed up into the shimmering clouds, while others tightly shut their eyes.

  But they weren’t clouds anymore. A silver fog settled around the village, obscuring the draw distance as the facility’s contents settled on the village

  A cloaked figure cut through the fog with a thick bamboo cane. Oliver thought he saw a child’s arm begin to bubble and blister.

  “C’mon,” Johnson urged. “This place sniffs out weakness. Don’t let it get to you.”

  He pulled them back into the woods as the cloaked figure raised the cane to the sky…

  Johnson forced his way through the trees around the town.

  “That place is cursed,” Kayleigh said. Nobody wanted to talk about what they thought they saw, but they all saw it.

  “All this pollution…” Caleb coughed. “It’s getting worse.”

  “Try not to breathe it in,” Dave said. “You don’t know what Belker’s put in it.”

  Caleb’s mind turned once again to Belker’s words. The Progenitor Machine. The fact that he had forced the destruction of his own facility. All according to plan.

  Sure wish I had a hint now…

  It had been a while since Caleb had seen or heard anything from the angels, and he worried that they had abandoned him entirely.

  New location. New objective. We’re not in the tutorial anymore…

  Oliver sighed, his frustration becoming impossible to miss. “Johnson, sorry, but what the hell’s the plan?”

  “First and foremost, We need to get the fuck away from Ravensbrook. They won’t be happy with the facility’s destruction.”

  “Hang on,” Caleb shook his head. “They liked that place?”

  Johnson silenced himself, unable or unwilling to formulate the words.

  Something shuffled in the trees behind them.

  Caleb met the hillbilly face-first. It shambled forward, ignorant to the squashed head that lay at his shoulders like a deflated balloon. He dodged to the side as the dead hillbilly recklessly pawed the air.

  Dave buzzed into action. “I don’t like killing things twice,” he said, pinning the hillbilly to the wall.

  Dave rammed a fist through the hillbilly’s chest. The hillbilly wailed in a forever death rattle, sucking in air through the new cavity and belching it out in a foul mix of gases and fluids.

  The trees swayed and twisted as reinforcements descended.

  “We’re surrounded.” Johnson waved his knife at shoulder height as the unwashed stink intensified.

  “That smell…” Kayleigh said. “It’s because they’re fucking dead.”

  Something hit Caleb in the back of the head. Hard. The world immediately disappeared, like a plug had suddenly been yanked out of the wall.

  But YOU ARE DEAD never came.

  First, he smelt it. Wax and smoke. Pine. Rotting meat.

  Caleb awoke to find himself alone at the altar. Cloaked heads bowed in the pews beyond. They hummed in a low atonal drone that made Caleb’s already-tender head rattle. He reached into his pockets for a herb or two. They smelt good. Better than good. He ground them between his fingers and bunged the powder straight up his nose. The effect was immediate, relieving the headache and opening up his nasal passages. He could breathe freely now.

  A frail figure made his way up the pew, waving a smoking thurible to and fro. The crowd lifted their chins, one after the other, until they faced Caleb. Now that Caleb’s vision was focusing, he saw impossibly injured faces still living, breathing, humming. He saw Scrapers, cradling razorpi like they were children.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  On the other side of the pew, a giant stained-glass window carried Belker’s withering gaze - his small mouth tight-lipped, his expression unreadable through the goggles.

  The revelation hit him like a freight train - Belker created the village.

  “All rise for the sacrificed form,” the priest said. “All rise for the reborn form. All rise for the wheel that makes the change possible.”

  “All rise.” The congregation repeated, with various levels of elocution. This was not a healthy crowd.

  “We are gathered here today, lost in a fog of uncertainty.” The priest gestured upwards. “The holy place that once bestowed us gifts has been destroyed by outsiders, and our catalyst for change has been lost on the winds. Thankfully, the world is soon to receive the gift of the wheel and its many unpredictable evolutions. Here before me is the outsider that journeyed here to wreck our beautiful palace.”

  The congregation hissed and growled.

  Caleb weighed up his options. They’d tied him to a stone, albeit loosely.

  I guess they figured I wasn’t going anywhere with the whole damn town watching.

  He looked around for signs of Johnson, Oliver, Kayleigh and Dave. No, he was alone here.

  The priest produced a vial from under his robes. He lifted it high above his face, letting the warm candlelight catch it and project a green glow onto Caleb’s face.

  The monk resumed the hum and the congregation followed him. It rattled through Caleb’s chest.

  The priest uncorked the vial, wafting its sulphurous fumes in Caleb’s face.

  He tipped the concoction over Caleb’s face, and the world once again gave way to the abyss.

  When Caleb awoke, he was locked in a cell. The place was empty, save for a single burning torch mounted on the wall outside the steel cell. Inside it, two bored villagers milled about, their faces obscured by thick towel hoods.

  Caleb checked himself all over. The veins in his arms pulsed with neon green.

  I’m one of them.

  But what has it done to me?

  There was nothing in that threadbare room to see his reflection by. He hopped off the stone tablet bed and crept towards the cell door. They had stripped the boots from his feet, so it was easy to make the distance in silence.

  Rows of steel cells lined the wall opposite. Why does such a small village need such a big jail?

  He figured that Johnson, Oliver and Kayleigh were in a cell each, but what had they done with Dave?

  If he’s imprisoned, he went willingly. Caleb thought, shoving visions of his robotic exoskeleton dismantled into a heap of scrap, roving undead scavengers picked the meaty parts out of him.

  Don’t do that to yourself. It’s not productive. Caleb’s conscious mind ignored his imagination - he saw Johnson felling cvltist under his blade. He stood atop a growing pile of the dead, and continued to swing even as the teeth tore into his arm and the horde overwhelmed him.

  And Kayleigh. She tried to fight, hammering cvltists with blow after blow, pulling their hoods over their heads and kicking dicks with military precision. But their numbers were too great. In a final desperate bid, she equipped the samsara wheel and shielded herself - hoping that the undead considered it too sacred to touch. But the pickaxe shattered it on the way to the inside of her skull.

  Enough.

  Back at Squish Burger, they weren’t always together. They were isolated, trapped in their own stations facing down overwhelming numbers. But even apart, they worked together - just as they would have to now.

  Caleb weighed his options. He scoured his inventory, but it was empty. In lieu of any equipment, he figured the only way forward was to act his way out of here.

  He tested the bars again. They were thick and relatively new. Caleb remembered what Johnson said about the place’s penchant for regeneration and realized that no conveniently placed rotten piece of timber was going to save him here.

  The two hooded cvltists stood facing each other at the right side of Caleb’s cell. A key glinted at the hip of the one leant against the cell opposite, on a massive silver hoop with a clear gap that had been bent back into place. If he got the guy near, and he was quick, Caleb liked his chances.

  The cvltist only had one oversized skeleton key on his person, which meant one of two things - either there was one guard per cell, or that one guard held a single master key that would unlock every cell.

  These guys don’t seem too smart. Caleb thought. So let’s pray for that second one.

  Caleb returned to the stone tablet, lay in place, then coughed once. He tried to keep his eyes as shut as he could while still retaining some vision.

  The guards didn’t move. He coughed again, louder this time.

  Still nothing.

  Caleb groaned.

  That did the trick.

  “Jonas,” gargled the cvltist facing Caleb’s cell. “I think he’s awake?”

  “Already?” A much clearer voice said. This one can’t have been dead for too long. “With that generous dose, I would be out for days.”

  Caleb coughed and hacked, then spat on the floor. He groaned again.

  “He does not sound good.” Both men leaned through the cage now. But Caleb still couldn’t see a single feature over those giant black hoods.

  “Well, he better not die.” The gurgly one said. “He needs to undergo the second stage. It’ll be good for the whole of Ravenswood.”

  Caleb spasmed on the table, imagining that an alien was about to burst from his chest.

  “But he has to undergo the second stage in the chamber!” The rasping guard said, his key jangling on the chain.

  “The timing’s all off. His body’s rejecting the process, clearly. He’s just going to die.”

  The rasping guard hopped up and down in frustration. “And what if he doesn’t?! Do you really think that puny cell would hold him.”

  The rasping guard fussed about with his robes for the keys. “We need to put him in the Regen Chamber now.” He said.

  Regen Chamber?

  It was weird to hear such scientific terminology come out of the mouth of an evil cvltist. Like a medieval knight with an uzi.

  Caleb tried not to dwell on their words.

  They’ve infected me with something. And they’re scared of what I’m going to turn into. Just like Ryder…

  “Fine.” The healthier cvltist said. “I'll warn the others and make sure there’s a free chamber. I doubt the lab is ready for him yet.”

  Caleb shrieked, shredding his dry throat.

  “Well get them ready!” rasped the jailor. He unlocked the door and stepped inside, as the healthier cvltists disappeared down the corridor, muttering…

  Caleb continued to writhe as the cvltist carefully stepped forward. “Come now, my boy...” He said, in as warm a voice as his rotten vocal cords could muster. “You need to see a doctor. Come with me, take my arm, we can help.”

  The moment the cvltist got within reach, Caleb snapped his eyes open. Maggots, dead and alive, rained down on Caleb from the moth-bitten hood of the cvltist’s cloak. His face was noseless and he had a green, waterlogged complexion. He smiled through toothless, septic gums.

  Caleb lunged forward, thinking about grabbing the glinting keys without fully seeing them. Luckily, it worked, he meant to have them. And now he was standing, equidistant from the clvtist and the open gate. The cvltist lurched from the table, growling. Caleb took a few heavy steps forward and slammed shut the cell door. He locked in defiantly then pocketed the keys, waving the cvltist goodbye. The rotting cvltist shook the bars, howling with blind rage. But he couldn’t reach Caleb.

  Now, Caleb thought, considering the dark stretch of cells before him. Where is everyone else?