Page 73

The Warning

T owering from the sands, in complete contrast with the new world, is a fucking mansion.

We aren’t talking a big house, we are talking about a house big enough to hold the whole clan.

The windows are now brown and dusty, the outside, that obviously started as white, is dirty with more stains than I can count, but it still looks…

good. Plants grow on each side of the stairs, which lead up to a wraparound porch and two large wooden front doors.

Three stories tall with more windows than I can count, and spanning the whole of the clearing, it’s an imposing bit of architecture.

Bikes and cars span the left side of the patch of gravel in front of it, and a smaller building is shut up to the right.

That’s where Dray leads us, and I park up behind him before jumping off and looking around.

Again, it’s silent. No guards, no Berserkers. ..no people.

“Where is everyone?” Drax asks, and when I look at Dray, I can see he is thinking the same.

A Seeker slips up next to him. “I just checked the guard stations, they are all empty.”

Frowning, I look back at the still house. How can something like a home send fear shooting through my body? I have a terrible feeling, so I draw a blade and I hear a few others do the same.

Dray doesn’t bother talking but strides up the steps to the front doors, where he kicks them open.

They bang against the wall and I slide up next to him, he goes in right and I go left only to stop and blink.

I expected bodies and blood, but the inside is pristine, well, as clean as you can get when you live in a Wasteland.

Paintings hang on the left canary yellow wall and on the right white wall.

Looking up, I take in the room. High ceilings, running right to the roof, are covered in intricate paintings and even hosts a chandelier, squinting I hold in a laugh when I spot the weapons hanging from it.

A staircase, split in two, runs from just in front of it, going up three stories.

We seem to be in some sort of entrance. A door leads off the right and a hallway leads through the middle of the split staircase.

I shake my head when I spot the decorations, that is more like it.

Big suits of armour stand at attention and every weapon you could image decorates the wall like an armoury.

Dray heads that way, us on his heels keeping an eye out for anyone.

The hallway is dark when we reach the middle, the light barely penetrating back here, so I nearly yelp when I slip on something, grabbing an axe on the wall to keep myself upright.

When I right myself, I crouch down and run my finger through the dark liquid pooling in spots on the floor, lifting my finger into the air I growl.

“Blood.” I point out, tracing the spotting across the floor and where it leads to a closed door on my left.

Standing, I grab my swords and head to the door.

Dray meets me there. I put my back to the wall as he waits for me.

When I nod, he kicks in the door and I quickly spin into the room, crouching lower just in case anyone is aiming a gun.

When no shots go off, I slide to the left, putting my back to the wall once again and allowing Dray to follow me in.

He doesn’t hesitate like me, but stands in the open doorway, the light framing him as he searches for the source of the blood.

When no one jumps out, I step away and go to search my half of the room.

I have to squint, the room is that dark, but I can make out the shapes of objects.

Mainly what looks like tables and chairs, maybe it’s some kind of meeting place?

Running my hand along the wall, I stop when I reach material.

Feeling around I open the curtains, letting some light stream into the room.

Carrying on, I freeze when my hand touches something wet.

Pulling my hand back slowly I look down at the floor as my feet stick.

There, laying in a drying pool of blood is a Seeker.

“Dray,” I murmur in a hushed tone as I drop to a crouch and push the body over. When I do, the head rolls away until it meets Dray’s boots as he stops in front of me.

“Berserkers,” I confirm, looking up at him. He ignores the head, but anger crosses his face. Nodding, he offers me his hand and I take it, he helps me to my feet and we quickly search the rest of the room before joining the others back out in the hallway.

“Get ready, Berserkers have been here. That kill is no more than a day old. They will have taken out the guards before playing with the others.” They all nod, their faces stark and filled with anger as we head back down the corridor. Maxen and Thorn come up the back and watch our rear.

We carry on, slower and more cautious this time.

We pass doors and stop as each person takes a room until we have cleared them all.

Stopping at the end, the hallway opens into a large circular room, a water fountain in one corner and a fucking garden growing in the other.

Only one more door stands down here, a massive hand carved one waiting for us.

When we sneak across, tiptoeing lightly, I spot the bloody handprints before the others and tighten my grip on my weapons.

As one, we throw open the doors and rush inside only to stop in horror.

What looks like a banquet hall, complete with two long tables on either side, and one running along the back wall, make up the room.

Game tables are set up in one corner and a bar is in the other.

Large stained-glass windows are framed at the back, their red and yellow panes of glass refracting around the room.

Large, elaborate light structures hang from the ceiling lighting the large room, but it’s not the size of the room that has me freezing, but what has been left behind.

“Fuck me,” comes a whisper from behind me and I can’t do anything but nod.

The room is filled with dead Seekers, no, not dead––massacred Seekers.

Body parts are littered everywhere, and it would take weeks to find out where they all belonged, but there must be over twenty bodies in here.

Blood is splattered on the walls, like buckets of it were thrown against the bland white, standing out as it drips down.

The marble floor is covered in red, splashes and slides of it everywhere your eyes look.

I spot the odd dead Berserker but not nearly enough.

They wiped through them, it’s obvious by the room they weren’t expecting them.

They had set up for dinner, the flies now feast on the rotting food.

Every time I run my eyes around the room, I notice something I didn’t the last time, like my mind is trying to reject the horror before me and protect me.

I couldn’t even make out where the parts went at first or what the bits of bodies were, but now I can, and I have to swallow hard.

On the floor near a table leg I spy a young girl’s face, and over on the other side of the room I see the half cut up face of an older women.

They didn’t just kill the men, the warriors, they butchered everyone.

“This isn’t everyone,” Dray rumbles, his voice freezing cold.

“How can you be sure?” I ask, my voice even and numb.

“I know,” is all he replies as he carefully walks further into the room.

I turn to see the anger and pain on the Seekers’ faces behind me and I feel stupid for not thinking about the fact these people were probably their friends, their brothers or sisters, wives, children.

They have lost nearly everything, yet they stand strong and proud looking at Dray to tell them what to do.

Most people faced with the sight before them would wither away, they would freeze in shock and be nothing but a numb shell.

Dray is different. He pushes that all away and focuses on being a leader, a warrior.

Pride fills my chest as he turns to face us, his strength is astounding even when met with the potential end of his people.

“We need to find the others. We will check upstairs before we check the basement. We stick together and watch each other’s backs.

They will not get the better of us again!

” he screams the last and picks up a chair, throwing it at a wall where it smashes.

His chest heaves as his face turns animalistic, his rage taking over.

“You heard him. Let’s go and stay low, Berserkers love going for the throat.” That makes me freeze and I quickly look back at the bodies, seeing the lack of heads I close my eyes. “Be on the lookout for the piked missing heads, they will be somewhere unless they took them back to Ivar as a trophy.”

We do as Dray ordered, we stick together and work our way slowly through both upper levels, but they are untouched, and we find no evidence of anyone.

When we gather back in the entrance, Dray turns to a section of wall and I watch in rapt interest as he pushes on a panel that looks no different from any of the others.

A section of the wall slides away to reveal a set of stairs going down.

Grabbing a lit torch from the stone wall, he starts descending to the bowels of the mansion and I quickly follow, unwilling to leave him to face whatever awaits us down there alone.

All you can hear as we stomp down the stone stairs is our breathing and footsteps, anyone down here listening hard enough will know we are coming.

Dray stops suddenly and holds his arm out to stop me.

I do so silently, tilting my head to the side to listen to whatever has alerted him.

When he lets out a laugh, I eye him worriedly. Has he finally lost his mind?

I suppose the death of your people would do that to someone, especially seeing as though he wasn’t the most stable of people before.

“They are safe,” he declares and before I can caution him, he reaches out and runs his fingers along a wire which was invisible until he pointed it out.

“Boobytraps?” I ask. He nods and quickly ducks under the wire, waiting he holds it for me and I slip under. He drops it again and the Seeker behind me swears as he tries to find it again.

“How many are there?” Looking around I am extra careful.

“That tripwire, which drops blades from the ceiling, a mine at the bottom of the stairs, and flamethrowers a couple of feet down,” Dray answers as he carries on, a renewed urgency in his steps.

“Well aren’t you fucking prepared,” I mutter incredulously. Who the hell boobytraps their home with mines and flamethrowers? Oh, that’s right. The psychopath in front of me.

I like the idea of the blades though. I reckon I could rig something similar up for my room. There is no such thing as overkill when you have a fucked-up Berserker King hunting you.

Once Dray knows the booby traps are still set, we move even quicker, bypassing them until we reach the bottom of the steps where he turns and, without asking, lifts me over a normal looking stone tile and puts me down on the floor next to him.

Turning to the others I point out the mine, just in case they didn’t see, and follow after Dray as he strides down the hallway.

When he reaches a corner, he throws himself around it just as an arrow goes flying by where his head would have been.

He plucks it out of the wall and laughs.

“Too slow, I thought I taught you better,” he jokes as a mammoth sized man lumbers around the corner, clutching a crossbow delicately. He’s huge, his bald head shining in the light and his ridiculous arms bulging. His face is square and angry looking, only highlighted by his Seeker scar he wears.

“‘Bout fookin time,” he rumbles, shuffling to put his crossbow away over his back.

“What happened?” Dray demands, all signs of joking gone.

“Fookin’ scraggly haired fucks attacked as we sat down for suppa.

Started slaughtering everyone, I managed to grab as many as I could and get em locked down here.

Bastards stayed for hours, sounded like they were searching the place for somethin.

” Looking at Dray seriously, he steps closer.

“Why the fook are those pigs attacking us?”

“They want a war,” Dray answers simply.

I grind my teeth, but something doesn’t sit right with me. Why come all this way, kill half the Seekers then just up and leave? They didn’t even leave anyone behind by the looks of it. So why?

“Did you see a man with a skull crown, a giant sword strapped to his back who was surrounded by a snake looking man, and a man the same size as you?” I question, trying to add up in my head why this feels so wrong.

The man turns towards me, throwing Dray a look that says ‘who the fuck is this’ but he answers anyway.

“No, only those fookin rats.” He jerks his head upstairs.

So, that means Ivar and his closest men weren’t here, so, where were they?

And why did they send Berserkers to attack the Seekers?

Questions pile up, but Dray distracts me as he speaks.

“Get everyone back upstairs, sweep the camp. Bring any of those bastards to me alive. Then we honour our dead.” The man nods before slamming his fist to his chest. Dray returns the gesture and turns back to me as the man lumbers around the corner, his voice booming out to the remaining Seekers I am guessing.

“Something doesn’t feel right,” I spit out, a sick feeling forming in my stomach.

“I know, I feel it too. Let’s get back upstairs, soulmate.”