Epilogue

Epilogue 2.01

---Jewel---

     Slurp.

     That's the noise the kravlar demon makes as its proboscises suck the cerebral fluid out of Pierre's brain through his eye sockets. Even with my fingers plugging my ears, all I can hear is that noxious noise. I bite down on my tongue, hard, because I know if I so much as whimper, they'll do something even worse.

     Instead, I watch Gisela. She's strong, not like me. She doesn't look away, even during the worst of it. They have her kneeling on a pile of rusted metal. Blood trickles down her inner thigh, where a jagged strip of metal has left a gash in her skin. She doesn't react to it. She just keeps on staring at Pierre.

     I shift my attention to the stained bricks that line the walls, the rusted pipes and snapped wires that dangle from the ceiling. Very little light seeps in through the panels in the roof, and the windows are all boarded up. I keep scouring the place for anything to fixate on—anything other than that horrible sound.

     When the slurping sounds finally die down, I look to my left at Jun. He's always smiling, even in the darkest of times. But not now. There's an empty look in his deep-set eyes, which seem to drift meanderingly in a halo of darkness.

     I shake my head, flinging tears left and right. They've as good as killed Pierre, and nothing I can say or do is going to change that fact. If it weren't for him, I never would've made it three days into the apocalypse, let alone one and a half years. I squeeze my cross until my fingers are sore. I'm not... I don't... How do I even...?

     "Please..."

     "What's that, love?" Rex holds a claw up to his left ear—a shell-shaped bone, devoid of any flesh. He retracts his proboscises into his forehead, where they form a pair of bulges that resemble horns. His rough, green scales shimmer like tiny blades. His murky-violet lizard eyes seem to slither up and down my body.

     I squeeze my eyes shut until it hurts. No. I force them back open. Face it. Pierre is dead, or he will be soon, and that... that monster killed him.

     I smell smoke. Rex is standing right in front of me, a cigarette dangling from his crooked lips. A few ashes sprinkle onto the sleeve of his motorcycle jacket. "You'll have to speak up," he says, turning his good ear towards me. "My hearing ain't what it used to be."

     "Please... help him," I half-whisper. Pierre's still alive—I can hear him groaning. But he won't be for long. I'm unable to breathe. I think I'm having some sort of panic attack. I can't... can't...

     Rex turns his back on me and paces back and forth across the abandoned warehouse he and his horde use as a lair. He kicks up sawdust as his boots stamp across the floor.

     One of the other kravlar demons, a fat one with half of its scales dyed black, starts to stomp its way over to me. Without turning around, Rex makes a clicking noise with his teeth. The tattooed demon freezes in its tracks.

     Rex takes a drag on his cigarette. "I don't make the rules, sweetheart. It's plain and simple: one of out of every five humans that passes through this city belongs to us. And by 'belongs to us,' I mean we get to eat 'em." He pauses. "Hm. I reckon that's why they call it a consumption tax, innit?"

     "We're done here," says Gisela, rising to her feet. Jun does the same. But me... my legs are numb. My eyes glaze over Pierre's still-twitching body, and my head starts to feel light. I sway and fall forward. Tino catches me and helps me to my feet. I look over at Derek and Shana, both of whom are in tears.