The Shadow Anthology

Zoe

The crisp breath of morning had blanketed the fields of the night. Milbrey Farm had become a desolate wasteland of frozen dew. On the horizon of Milbrey Cottage, a faint mechanical whir could be heard. The clouds covered the warming sun and hid the flowing meadows from warmth. It had been years since anything except lustrous grass had grown on this fertile land; the flowers were too frightened to bloom and the weeds were worn so far into the earth that a single beam of dazzling sunlight would throw them into flames. The rest of the country would experience a sun-drenched day like no other, but the cold, conniving clouds covered Milbrey Farm with an elongated shadow for the entirety of the day, forcing the lonesome lodge to make its own light which none would see bar the viper queen and the son of a dead man.

Zoe Karmir was drained from the years of work she had put in with this loathsome family. The woman was tired of the life she could never fully return from. She adopted a child decades ago and raised the little thing to be a wonderfully deceitful murderess. The poor girl never expected her own mother to murder her for fear of what she could expose. Zoe saw it as a necessity, though was loathed to do it because of the irreversible bond which she had felt many years before but would never feel again.

She had changed her face so many times; she could hardly recall who she was as a child. Zoe still held the principle of never taking drugs; her body was her temple no matter the form she took. They payment Oscar had given her promised a long life without hassle as whomever she chose to become, though there was still the final matter of their contract, not that Oscar would know if she fulfilled their agreement, or so she thought.

The barren house of Chris Milbrey still contorted her stomach. Before entering, Zoe chose to finalise another matter. The quiet hum of machinery grew louder as it tried to harmonise with her oncoming truck. The laboratory, training centre and warehouse were all still alive. She had designed these places with care and knew to retrieve a gas mask from behind the control panel before entering the laboratory.

Sealing the door behind her using the interior keypad, Zoe flashed her hands across the device and released a gaseous rain stop all her workers. The chemists and guards all fell to the floor, paralysed for what was to come. The cold-blooded serpent strode upstairs to the training centre where numerous bodies were piled onto the floor. Enhanced guards were yet another of Oscar’s adequate ideas, though Zoe had to make alterations to ensure their compliance.

Strutting back downstairs, all eyes were fixed upon Zoe. The keypad had many uses and Zoe was about to use her favourite. The bulletproof barriers descended, startling the guards outside. Suddenly, the grimy building became a fortress. Turrets protruded from the newly formed battlements. There were five guns on each side of the castle, all of which targeted her mindless guards. With instructions to wait until commanded otherwise or return fire in all cases built into their fresh flesh, the guards stood idly by while they were aimed at.

As a whirlwind of bullets shredded the sky, Zoe Karmir skipped across the paralysed bodies with a devilish smile. She found the bombs hidden within the walls and charged them, though no timer was set. Once all the explosives were armed, Zoe marched back to the panel to observe the receding chaos outside. The door to the warehouse had been flung open and all the remaining guards were being pulverised as Zoe tapped her foot and glanced at her wrists. Finding no watch, she scanned the ground and picked up a nearby arm. Half a day had passed since Oscar vanished. She released the arm and it flopped back to its owner.

Seeing the piles of pulverised people, Zoe released the armour and set down the turrets. With a calculated ten minutes before the workers would awaken, the door was unlocked and flung open, allowing Zoe to dart across to the warehouse. A hollow building stood before her, save for the stacks of syringes and pills. She left, following a stark scouting of the place, giving her five minutes left. Throwing a case of drugs into the backseat, the unscathed woman sped back to Milbrey Cottage. With less than a minute left, Zoe searched the house like a madwoman until she finally found the detonator hidden under the first step of the house. Flicking the second switch, Zoe Karmir breathed a sigh of relief.

Milbrey Cottage held no sentiment for this woman. She left immediately to witness the glorious plumes of smouldering smoke stirring on the horizon. With one final sigh of completion, she ignited the remaining switch. When nothing happened, Zoe cursed her pre- emptive idiocy and turned back to the house. Unsure of what charging the bombs would do, Zoe adjourned to her truck. Beside her case of drugs on the backseat lay the only gun she currently possessed. Zoe betook the flamethrower into her hands and marched toward the house. She stood back, put her headphones in and smothered the doorway with a symphony of scintillating scorch-marks which eventually encompassed the whole of Milbrey Cottage.

Zoe held her position beside the car for hours into the night, confining the insatiable flames to the house alone. In the darkest hour of the night, Zoe’s ear twitched. She remembered what it felt like to be hunted and prepared herself for a fight. Suddenly, her feet were grabbed from beneath the truck and she was dragged down. Her attacker rolled out and entered the vehicle, turning it on.

“Oscar has a message for you; he says!” Mason revved the engine and accelerated, unaware Zoe had escaped and now clung to the roof. She shattered the window and ripped him through the gaping hole, hurling him onto the mumbling carcass of Milbrey Cottage. No flames roared but the ground still spat venomous sparks. Zoe launched herself atop Mason. He spat blood in her face and grabbed a hunk of scorching wood in his peeling palms. “This is for Alex Brittle!” Zoe paused for a moment to question her familiarity with that name, giving Mason an opening. He swung the instrument only to have it turned back on him and thrust through his heart. Rather than dying words, Mason pulled his foe above him and pierced her stomach, binding them in blood. Mason Brittle died believing he killed his father’s murderer.

Zoe Karmir refused to die. She pushed herself off the charred male corpse and gushed onto him like a crimson faucet. The viper queen slithered from her sopping deathbed and crawled across the hissing wreckage of Milbrey Cottage toward her truck. Her hands recoiled from the dim glare of the blackening rubble. Behind her lay a red trail of inevitable death but before her stood the contradictory promise of life. With her back to the devastation, and hands resting on the crisp, decaying grass, Zoe dragged herself up by the silver handle of the car’s backdoor. Her eyes were welded shut with smoke, so she staggered her hoarse hands to the tightly packed parcel. She gnawed at the cellophane with her fangs until it came loose, causing her to accidentally bite into a pill. Syringes shattered as her hand crashed into them to retrieve one. She quickly crammed as many into her pockets as she could and shot herself full of the drug for the first time, causing her wound to clot and scab before she moved to return to, what she believed was, the salvageable Mason Brittle. Before she could return to the wreckage or turn her head, the hollow syringe fell to the earth next to a dying patch of bloodied grass. The intestinal trail no longer had a source, however, because Stephanie Ario had vanished from sight.