Part 1: Fall from Grace
"Luna…come back." the words were hollow, muffled, yet he knew he had screamed them. She could not hear him, not here. Not this far from home.
He made to whimper but could not; sense had abandoned him, thought had abandoned him. All that remained was the spectral, angelic image of her figure, pale and pure like the newly fallen fields of winter, the kiss of a candle's flame. He watched her eyes; watched the cold despair engraved like a sigil across her features. Around her loomed the shadow, an inky void that threatened to envelop the world in oblivion - threatened to take her forever from his grasp. He reached a hand out in desperate defiance, "James. Help me…"
Reality came like an electric shock, a skeletal hand that dragged him unceremoniously from the landscape of his dream. James gasped at the air, his mind trapped between two different levels of visceral conscious. He struggled vainly against the heavy mass of quilts and bed sheets that gripped him like asylum restraints but to no avail; the nightmare would not release its grip on his mind so easily. Her eyes burned behind his own like frozen stars, twin pearls of brilliant azure that held him with such desperate, urgent pleading.
Finally, his subconscious relented - releasing him from the torture of her sorrowful, accusing stare. Cold, grey light poured over him; a dull shine that stung his vision as he sat up to face the world. "Fucking blind," he cursed, the acidic tone of his own voice seeming surprising even to him. He looked through blurred eyesight towards the twisted heap of plastic below the window and sighed deeply, I've gotta' get out of this place.
Struggling against the urge to collapse back into unconsciousness, James swung lethargically from the warmth his bed to meet the morning's bitter chill head on. Shivering, he rose and moved over to the offending window, kicking the broken blind away in disgust. Outside, the world stood frozen and lifeless, grasped eerily by the pale shadow of winter.
It had not snowed for days, yet the frost had done enough to preserve that which remained, leaving everything enveloped in a field of gleaming white crystal. A mingling of fog and acrid smoke drifted low across the street, choking the air with long, finger-like tendrils of dingy vapour, "Damn. The city's burning - riots must've got pretty bad last night," he focused his vision as he spoke, trying vainly to make out anything in the distance. It was useless he knew, the smog consumed everything, and worse, it had begun to descend.
Suddenly aware of the biting cold, James quickly began to get dressed, "Why the hell did she have to go?" he sneered at the sound of her explanation in his head; "James something's happened in the forest. Something bad. They're taking me up there tonight, I'll call you as soon as I reach base camp."
Why hadn't he said something? Why hadn't he stopped her from going? God knows what's out there and I just let her walk out. You're a God damned idiot James. It had been three days since then, yet the phones remained dead to any attempts at contact - even the TV revealed nothing but a swirling blizzard of static. Silence had become his only companion in the house. Silence and time.
His eyes froze on a violet gown still hanging from the dressing table - the last remaining icon of her femininity, standing out like a beacon in the midst of seclusion. Grunting his anger, James strode from the room.
The house felt like a tomb, a lonely collection of rooms and useless possessions, forgotten memories and the distant chorus of contentment. Without Luna the silence was unbearable - an eerie stillness that echoed through every brick and tile, every creak and groan of loose timber; without her it was no longer a home, it was a prison.
Who am I kidding? I can't wait here, the sudden decision stopped him halfway through a forced breakfast. His stomach churned at the idea of food, yet the long journey he knew lay ahead goaded him through each spoonful. I'm coming for you Luna - you don't need to be scared any more. With a final, hard-fought mouthful, James set off into hell.
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The ignition shuddered, spluttered and promptly died, leaving the car's interior in perpetual hush once more. James sighed and sagged forward onto the steering wheel, his face a picture of subdued frustration, "Always me. Always God damn me," cold, grey breath vapours swirled over the windscreen as he spoke, leaving their ghostly patterns etched across the glass like glyphs.
Slamming the car door hard behind him, he grabbed his rucksack and turned to face the winter-warped city ahead. The smog had descended almost to ground level, a drifting white-grey smokescreen that blocked his vision and stung his throat with the bitter taste of cordite. A chill breeze had begun to guide the wandering miasma down through the street, stinging his eyes as each frozen gust whipped across. Wrapping a scarf tight around his face, he stepped forward into the gale, utterly defiant, "If I've got to walk to find you then so be it. Weather won't stop me. Nothing will."
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Huge, cyclopean structures leered from the mist like the demented faces of mindless leviathans, their dark, empty windows mirroring his own isolation. Block after block of apartment buildings, offices and warehouses that he had once passed by with indifference now appeared almost personified by the rolling smog, their ominous presence wholly belligerent to his passage. Where the hell is everyone? James wondered absently, pulling his coat tighter to his chest. He could only assume the combination of riots and bad weather had forced everybody out of the city during the night - yet there was no sign of life anywhere, not the frenetic rush of those late to leave, not even the discordant hum of sirens attending the inferno far in the distance, nothing. He walked alone in a ghost town.
Shivering, he pressed on, determined to reach the forest before nightfall. Piles of litter, driven and possessed by the wind, snapped furiously at his ankles - countless leaflets, newspapers and missing person notices, all discarded and left to time's inevitable decay. He paused as one garish headline fell at his feet; "Riots turn into slaughter! Evacuation of Racoon begins!" James studied each word in turn, allowing its horrific meaning to sink in, "Jesus Christ…what's going on here?"
Before long, Hallowgate's maze of suburban streets and bypasses began to merge together into one expansive thoroughfare heading for the city centre. Here, countless vehicles had been abandoned in a jam that stretched aimlessly away into oblivion. Cars, bikes, trucks and even emergency vehicles had all been simply left to decay, their owners also appearing to prefer the long walk. Doors still open creaked and rattled as the wind howled through their frozen hinges, provoking and fanning fires that had grasped the discarded mass of possessions like kindling. James sneered as he gauged the jam's direction away from the main city - away from where he now headed.
Well what can I do? Forest's on the other side of Racoon - going round these riots would take days I don't ha… he paused his self-reasoning, suddenly aware of a humanoid form looming out of the mist in front of him. The figure stood motionless in the road's centre, its back turned and shoulders slumped.
Drawing closer into focus, James stopped; shocked and aghast at the sight that stood before him. Naked apart from a tattered pair of tracksuit bottoms, the brutal cold had left the figure's body in ruin, How the fuck is he still standing? James wondered, squinting to ensure what he saw was actually real. Its back had swollen abnormally and turned a sickening pale blue in colour, outlining the deep fissures and cracks that covered every inch of skin like grizzly tattoos. "H..hey! Hey you!" James shouted, unsure of how to approach, "You need to get inside man, it's too cold out here! You'll end up getting hypothermia or something. Come on I'll help you!" The figure remained unmoving, its gaze fixed firmly on something far in the distance.
James hesitated, dubious as to whether the man had already succumbed to the subzero temperatures - only to stagger backwards as a deep, rasping gurgle carried through the wind. The man slowly turned, his feet shifting languidly across the frost-covered asphalt to bring him around. With each agonising movement, frozen skin split wide open, sending watery, off-coloured blood cascading down across him like spilt juice.
"Holy mother of god," James whispered, his jaw dropping as the chill-warped figure finally revealed its face. From what little features remained, he could see the man was young, perhaps only nineteen or twenty years old - yet he had been horrifically mauled, almost to the point of being utterly unrecognisable. His eyes shone like bloodshot shells, devoid of colour or life - though still managing to fix James with a stare that spoke palpably of an endless, perpetual hunger. Both ears had been ripped cleanly from his scalp, leaving behind only a mass of blood-matted hair and twin, congealed craters of flesh and bone. Yet the most horrific sight still awaited James's gaze, for the man's face simply concluded at his upper lip. Beneath this, his lower jaw and tongue had vanished; both torn out in some unspeakable act of violence. Gasping and gurgling, the mutilated figure raised a blood stained arm and began to stagger forward…