666 - The Devil's Mark (ON HOLD)

Prologue: The Beginning

Dedicated to BlackRaven- for the amazing cover she made!!

The Beginning

"Larah, quick honey, we need to get out of here before someone sees us." My mother tugged desperately on my hand, dragging me from the rough-hewn ground of the fruit farm I had called home for almost thirteen years; my entire life to date. I wanted to resist; to stay and continue picking the ripe fruit from the towering branches, but the fear that was flitting through her usual light and cheery tone sent a shiver racing down my spine.

The muffled rumble of a distant stampede, filled the air around us as she tugged with increasing force on my innocent arm and began racing away from the place we had called home for so long. The only thing we had to show for the years of hard work and strain, a couple of meagre bags of fruit, hastily picked in a few scavenged moments, before the horde could descend. 

"Is it the marked people, ma?" I couldn't help but ask, even as we ran from whatever was currently speeding in our direction with blood in its eyes, "Are they going to turn us into the living dead because we didn't get the mark?" The fear instilled in my heart by the burning red eyes of those monsters that used to be human, rose to the surface as the thought of being captured and killed swirled endlessly through my mind. I had only seen them once from a long distance, their elongated bodies, twisted and warped, liked they had been stretched out too far, almost as pale as the dead ones beside them, but their eyes were the epitome of evil itself; even the memory had me quaking in fear.

 She made no response; simply moving faster, hauling me forward into a stumble before I forced my feet to regain stability on the broken ground and was once again racing along beside her. Racing for our lives, as far as we knew.

We made it to the house, before coming to a sharp and sudden halt that sent me reeling and questioning what was going on. Weren't they behind us? I could still hear the muffled rumble, steadily rising as they closed in.

"Oh God," her voice was rough with a desperation so foreign that at first I didn't even realise it was my mother that had spoken the words. Still heaving in breaths from the wild sprint, I straightened and glanced at her, in question, "I'm sorry, baby. Please forgive me." She whispered, her gaze bored into mine as she begged for forgiveness for something yet to happen. She lifted her eyes to the space before us and mine followed unwittingly of their own accord. The empty space, once our front yard, was filled with people, only fifteen or so in total, and for a moment relief flickered in my chest; surely they would help us? 

Any hope was soon slaughtered before it even had a chance to develop, as I took in their stance and the dangerous glint in their eyes. They weren't going to help us; I didn't know what they wanted, but they were advancing steadily on us and the movement had me falling back a stride, tugging my mother along with me.

Of course the small movement was not enough to stop them reaching us.

"Stop, please don't hurt us; you can have the food. You can have everything. Just please don't hurt her." This time her words weren't desperate, they were hopeless, fear had settled over the woman that, for my entire life had been so strong, and able to handle everything. That simple fact left me frozen; if she was terrified, how were we going to get out of this? She was supposed to know what to do, always.

A rough chuckle overflowing with ambivalence, drifted slowly through the rumbling air. A grubby man, with a greying black beard hiding the planes of his face, stepped forward faster than the rest, emitting the spine chilling sound.

"Well, hand it over then." He growled, with something akin to humour lacing his words, as he reduced the already too small distance between us even further. My mother hastily tore the hessian bag I was gripping in my spare hand, away from me, all too willing to give them everything they wanted. And as he reached his filthy, gnarly fingers forward to take the bags, I realised I would rather face the marked, or living dead, than that group of so called human beings; at least the monsters had an excuse to no longer be human. What reason did these people have? Anger raced through me without warning, surging up from the depths, and a plan to give them exactly what they deserved came to mind without further prompting. We were dead anyway, why not take these worthless beings down with us?