A Dark Horizon(PB2): Chapter Ten-Another Puzzle Piece
“There you are,” Cassandra smiled sweetly, looking up at Riddick as he walked over to her. “I missed you at breakfast. I was worried you were ill but then Jack told me you were sleeping in. You are well aren’t you?”
“I was tired,” Riddick shrugged simply. Snow began to fall all around them, slowly gently. Cassandra grinned innocently and tilted her face towards the sky. The soft white flakes settled in her eyelashes and hair. She looked like an earthbound angel, raising her head to heaven, praying to be absolved at the same time laughing and cursing at the stars, daring them to except her into thier arms. A strange sensation flooded Riddick’s heart:compassion. ‘Welcome to the world of human beings’ he thought he heard Fry’s voice telling him teasingly. “I was looking for the holy man,” he said trying to distract himself away from the unfamiliar and unwelcome feeling, ”you haven’t seen him, have you?”
“Not since this morning,” Cassandra replied with a frown. “Why? Has he gone missing? Oh well, he’ll most likely turn up before nightfall. He’s probably just gone for a walk or
something, I wouldn’t worry too much. Imam seems a resiliant sort of fellow. Linus told me that you know about McCarrick, about what I did,” she sighed. “Are you
dissapointed? Do you think I’m wicked and mean?”
“I think you did what you had to,” Riddick nodded, “wicked or not. Besides, I like wicked,” he grinned dangerously. “Wicked can be good.” He leaned closer to her,
brushing the ice crystals from her eyelashes, softly, carefully. She smiled so sweetly it made his heart ache. She was a little girl lost in the woods and he was a big, bad wolf waiting to snatch her up. He’d always liked the innocent ones best, they were so much tastier. She took his hand in her’s and put it to her lips, kissing the palm tenderly.
He realized she was trying to distract him again. He pulled away, angrily shoving her to the ground. He’d reached his breaking point, with her, with everything on this fucking
planet. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to her feet. “I’m tired of games,” he said calmly, keeping his tight grip on her. “I want to know what’s going on here, the
truth! Who left me that note?! What does it mean?!”
Desperately, Cassandra clawed at his hand, trying to get him to let go. “I don’t know anyhting about a note, I swear. It must have been Linus or Morgan. You’re hurting me,
Johns!” Suddenly, remorsefully, he let go and she fell to the ground once more. She looked up at him, her eyes lucid and unmoved. She was shaking a bit but she was not
angry, not wounded. A strange sort of clarity washed over her. Riddick just stared at her, horrified but unappologetic. She was the first to speak.
“Johns, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for not telling you the truth, about McCarrick, about everything. Please, I...” He didn’t stay to listen to the rest. He stormed off without
speaking a word, leaving Cassandra to wonder at what had just happened.
The rain was falling violently like daggers against Riddick’s skin. He was out in the open, up to his knees in filth and mud and he couldn’t remember what he was doing
there. He realized in horror he was back on that evil planet, he could hear the sonar sounds of the disgusting creatures. His heart began to pound wildly and his throat went dry with panic. He was dreaming again.
All of a sudden, the slippery ground beneath him gave way and began to swallow him
up like quicksand. He clawed at the mud, trying to pull himself up but it seemed the more he struggled, the quicker the ground sucked him under. A hand grasped his wrist,
pale and thin. An apparition. He looked up to see Fry’s beautiful face looming before him, deathly white with large dark circles around each eye. She smiled as she spoke
without really moving her mouth in a voice of a thousand backwards echoes, “Don’t be fooled, Riddick, this is much more complicated than it will appear.” With one hand, she
pulled him to safer and steadier ground and stood at full height.
“Carolyn, I...” his words stuck in his throat. There was no way for him to say what he needed to say. He was shaking, terrified, just as he’d been that night. “You should have
left with the holy man and Jackie when you had the chance,” he choked out. “You should have saved yourself, that’s what I would have done!” he was shouting now, angry. “Why didn’t you leave me?! Why didn’t you leave me behind?!”
He gathered the strength to look up at her now and nearly vomitted when he saw that the left side of her torso was partially eaten away, he could see her heart still beating
erratically within her exposed ribcage. “Be careful, Riddick, be careful.” Everything began to move in a sickening hyper-motion. A series of blinding flashes showed Fry being taken away from him again, then a circle of the bloodthirsty monsters with Fry’s limp, cold body in the middle. Her eyes stared out at him blankly as the creatures
picked at her, pulling pieces of flesh and gore from her corpse.
“Be careful, Riddick, things are not always what they appear to be, “ her voice echoed. He looked away, sickened and found himself now lying on the smooth finished floor of
one of the settlement’s buildings. It didn’t look familiar to him. He stood, looking around. Everything was still, deathly silent. A chill ran up Riddick’s spine and the hairs on his arms stood on end. Suddenly a very small burbling sound caught his attention. He turned towards the noise and saw a heavy steel door bolted shut tightly. Something appeared at the edges, seeping thick and black and stinking. It oozed and dripped from
every crack and corner. Blood.
Riddick awoke with a start. It was time. Quietly, he exited his room making sure he did not wake Jackie who was once again sleeping on the floor next to his cot. The snow
that had collected on the ground served to muffle his footsteps as he made his way to the domed building in the dead of the night, curious as to what he might find there. The door was slightly ajar and freash blood was in sickening red handprints all along the length of it. As he entered, he heard a small sobbing. It was Cassandra, kneeling on the floor holding her brother’s mutilated, lifeless body in her arms.
“Oh god, Johns, thank god!” she managed to gasp out between her hot, hysterical tears. “Oh, god, it was Linus, he made us do it. There was no food here when the others left, only that awful gruel. Linus, he suggested we eat the dead to stay alive. At first it was only the dead, Johns, I swear it, but when we started to run out of bodies, he
started killing to eat! We kept it a secret from McCarrick, he was a compassionate man, he would never have approved. We took the bodies out to the badlands and buried
them as best we could. After a while, they became so plentiful, we just started dumping them there. We couldn’t be bothered. Then McCarrick found the secret graveyard and
Linus made me kill him to keep him quiet. I slit his throat! The man was like a father to me and I slit his throat!
“Morgan came her to warn you. Somehow Linus found out about the note, I don’t know how. He killed my brother! I heard Morgan yell and came running but it was too late. Linus took off, he was heading for the badlands. Oh god, Johns, there’s blood everywhere!” Riddick bent down next to her, wiping the hot tears from her severly flushed face.
“What’s going on?!” Jackie asked, rushing in. She backed away when she saw the blood, then Morgan’s body. “Oh man,” she said, quivering, sick to her stomach.
“You stay here with Cassandra,” Riddick told the girl firmly, leaving no room for argument. “You’ll be safe, you understand? I have something to take care of.”
Linus’ feet barely touched the ground as he ran in the darkness, his breathless pants escaping his mouth in clouds of crysatalized air. He knew he had to keep moving, they
would be on his trail any moment now. Morgan’s blood was freezing to his hands and clothes. He tripped and got up again, tripped and got up again, he couldn’t stop, not
even for a minute. His fist curled over the knife in his palm desperately, knowing that it was his only defense now. His glasses fell off at one point, but it didn’t really matter, he couldn’t see where he was going in the inky blackness anyway.
Raye watched through electric binoculars with thier night vision from a ledge far above the canyon as the man from the settlement fled to the caves and out-croppings of the
badlands. “Intetresting,” she said under her breath. “Most interesting."