He struck the bamboo pole harder and harder. His hands started to hurt. Even though his palms had hardened with the training regime set by Hikari, he could feel blisters forming. He ignored the pain and continued. Before him, he imagined that the poles were his enemies. Demons, the cultist followers that worshiped them — it didn’t matter. He just wished to strike them down. Anger burned like coals in his stomach.
Most of all, he imagined that they were the ones that killed his mother. He struck even harder and felt wetness in his palms. They were bleeding, but he didn’t care. He cried out with the next strike and both the shinai and the bamboo target shattered. He didn’t stop. With one fluid movement, he picked up another shinai from the ground and began his assault on another pole.
He struck again and again, pouring his rage and frustration out on the inanimate objects, and catching sight of himself in his sword. His irises, once black, had now turned blood red.
Breathless and exhausted, he collapsed to the ground, his palms leaving moist patches of darker red on the soil. He wished he could cry but he could not. Instead he screamed, over and over. When he could scream no more he wrapped his arms around his knees and began rocking back and forth.
He heard a noise behind him and could tell by the careful tread that it was Hikari. If he’d wanted to, his master could have crept up on him without his knowledge. His master intended for him to hear — probably fearful of alarming him.
He felt the arms of his master wrap themselves around him and hold him tight. “It’s alright,” said Hikari, rocking the five year old boy gently. “It’s going to be alright.”
Sam clung to his master just as tightly. Hikari was wrong though. It was not going to be alright. His mother was dead and he would never see her. Nothing would ever be alright again.
3
5 WEEKS SINCE THE RAPTURE
“Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.”
Sam awoke from a dream of dark shadowy figures and a feeling of dread to find — somewhat surprisingly — that he was alive, huddled into a foetal position in a bed of ash. He sat up quickly, spitting and grimacing, pulling embers out of his mouth.
A quick inventory. He had no broken bones which was downright amazing given the distance he fell from the Astaroth’s claws. It seemed that the ash had cushioned his fall. The wounds and various scrapes from the Lemure’s claws were already improving. He had always healed quickly — one of the benefits of his demonic heritage.
His katana was still clutched in his left hand. The wakizashi was gone, but after a quick panicked search amongst the ash, he found it buried nearby and breathed out a long sigh of relief. Without his weapons, he would not last another night.
Still crouching, he looked around carefully, taking a deeper interest in his surroundings as Hikari had taught him. He was in a depression so deep it was almost a crater. The falling powder had filled it up, making a convenient landing pad for him. It was daylight, or at least what passed for daylight now. Dark clouds scudded across the sky as if they were in a hurry to be somewhere else. The heavy cloud cover refused to allow any trace of sunlight through. Of course, there was no sign of the Astaroth or any other demon. Daylight did not suit them.
Sam stood up and sheathed both weapons, sending a flurry of soot in all directions. He brushed it off his clothes and absently adjusted his hood to hide his horns as he took in his surroundings. Above the crater rim to the south he could just see Jacob’s Ladder Airport, and the thought of the food court caused his stomach to rumble. He was ravenous.
Sam took out his small cooker and attached the gas cylinder, igniting it with a lighter that he kept in a zipped pocket on his sweatshirt. He pulled out a small pot and selected a can of beans from his dwindling supply which he opened with his pocket knife.
While he waited for the beans to heat, he moved silently to the edge of the depression and gazed down at the airport. Jacob’s Ladder airport was a small domestic airport, catering to the skiers, mountain bikers and other outdoor enthusiasts who once frequented the area. A small terminal, silent and grey, sat to the left of the runway.
Two small planes were standing on the runway, doors open but seemingly abandoned. Judging by their coating of ash, they had not moved for some time. He could just make out the tail of another plane down the far end of the runway. It looked like it attempted to take off but had failed and crashed into the safety barrier. Sam couldn’t be sure, but from this distance, it appeared to be blackened with fire.
The image reminded him of the events following the massive volcanic eruptions in Iceland and Chile some years earlier. Flights around the world had been disrupted because of the dangers of flying in ash clouds. It seemed that these planes had been affected in a similar way. Perhaps the two on the runway had simply refused to start? Maybe a pilot had managed to get the third going which then choked just before take-off, hurtling the doomed plane into the crash barrier …
There were no signs of life anywhere; no movement at all other than the gentle flutter of dust. There weren’t any bodies visible either but this wasn’t surprising — the demons were thorough. Either that, or the bodies were shrouded in ash.
Sam shrugged and turned back to his cooker. The beans were hot but he scooped them into his mouth with his fingers, oblivious to the heat. Ash had fallen into the mix but he didn’t care and ate every last morsel. He licked the juice from the bottom of the pot, still hungry but unwilling to deplete his already sparse supplies. There was more buried in the Devil’s Garden but that food would have to sustain him during his trek over the Rockies.
He took out his water bottle and had a swig. Hardly satisfying, but enough to moisten his tongue. Using a cloth to wipe out the pot — water was too precious to waste on cleaning — Sam put everything carefully back into his pack. He settled it comfortably around his shoulders, did a quick weapon check and then strode over the edge of the crater towards the terminal.
From one of his few visits to the place, he recalled that the airport contained vending machines. Vending machines meant snacks. He wasn’t hopeful — they’d probably been cleared out like most of the shops and houses in Jacob’s Ladder — but it was worth a shot. As he trudged towards it, he reflected that the Astaroth had done him a favour, albeit a small one and mistakenly given. It had moved him closer to his initial goal of Devil’s Garden — only by a couple of miles, but a couple of miles was better than nothing.
Perhaps he could subdue an Astaroth and harness it, using it to transport himself over the Rockies? Flying would be preferable to walking. Instantly Sam realized his stupidity. If last night was anything to go by, he doubted whether he’d be able to defeat an Astaroth in combat, let alone subdue it to an extent that he could ride it.
Not for the first time did he question his refusal to drive on this journey. Hikari had never taught him to drive and the need never arose; not once in his almost eighteen years had he left Jacob’s Ladder or its surrounds. But he was sure he could learn. How hard could it be? Pretty much all the other teenagers in Jacob’s Ladder were doing it. Or had been doing it. He’d even gone so far as to try out one of the abandoned cars parked on the side of Main Street. The owner had clearly been taken by the Rapture — their clothes were still gathered in a pile on the driver’s side and the keys were still in the ignition. The controls seemed simple enough and he’d got the hang of it pretty quickly. Put it into drive, go forward; reverse, go backwards. The handbrake had flummoxed him for a while but he had eventually worked it out.