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  BLIZZARD OF SOULS

  The God’s End Trilogy:

  Book Two

  Michael McBride

  Blizzard of Souls: Book Two of The God’s End Trilogy copyright © 2008, 2015 by Michael McBride

  All Rights Reserved.

  Paperback Snowbooks 2008

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Michael McBride.

  For more information about the author, please visit his website: www.michaelmcbride.net

  Also by Michael McBride

  NOVELS

  Ancient Enemy

  Bloodletting

  Burial Ground

  Fearful Symmetry

  Innocents Lost

  Predatory Instinct

  Sunblind

  The Coyote

  Vector Borne

  NOVELLAS

  F9

  Remains

  Snowblind

  The Event

  COLLECTIONS

  Category V

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  FOREWORD FROM THE AUTHOR

  BLIZZARD OF SOULS

  The God’s End Trilogy:

  Book Two

  FOREWORD

  To my faithful readers:

  It’s important that I say the following up front. I am nothing without my loyal friends and readers, for whom I am eternally grateful. My goal for every title is for it to be better than the last. You deserve no less. It is with this in mind that I write the statement below.

  Statistics show that the average American changes careers five times in his or her lifetime. This trilogy represents a change in mine. I divide my writing years into two distinct segments: pre- and post-Bloodletting. Prior to 2008, I fancied myself a horror author. I wanted to be the next Stephen King, to write stories that would terrify people and make them question the very nature of existence. When the first book in the God’s End Trilogy was released in 2007, things went crazy in a way I never expected. Delirium Books bought the hardcover rights, Snowbooks picked up the UK rights, and Random House purchased the German translation rights. Suddenly, after a few specialty press releases, I was staring down the barrel of a successful writing career and honest-to-God deadlines for the remaining two books in the series. I knocked out Blizzard of Souls and Trail of Blood during the next six months and felt as though I’d written the series I had set out to write. There was only one problem…

  I no longer wanted to be the next Stephen King. I wanted to be Michael McBride. I wanted a distinctive style and a means of telling stories that was uniquely my own.

  So I did what any author hell-bent on derailing his success would do…I took a six-month break from writing to determine what exactly that meant. I discovered that horror was a largely linear form of storytelling—in my opinion, anyway—and I was a big fan of twists and turns. I still loved the darker aspects of the world and human nature, and had an affinity for the crueler aspects of science and nature, so I decided to combine the two with a mode of storytelling in the suspense/thriller vein. The result was 2008’s Bloodletting, and the books that followed. Innocents Lost, Remains, Burial Ground, Vector Borne, Predatory Instinct, Snowblind, The Coyote, Ancient Enemy, Fearful Symmetry, Sunblind, Condemned…

  Please allow me to be direct…this book, and the other two in the trilogy, are works of fantasy and horror. They represent an early phase in my development as a writer and are being re-released for a faction of my readership that clamors for a return to this particular world. If you’re looking for something along the lines of Burial Ground or Snowblind, then this probably isn’t for you. I won’t take your decision personally and certainly won’t hold it against you. But if you’re interested in being swept away into a post-apocalyptic world where the forces of darkness wage war against the light, then continue on, cherished reader, and take a journey with my younger self beyond the end of days…

  Respectfully yours,

  Michael McBride

  December 2014

  Avalanche Territory

  BLIZZARD OF SOULS

  The God’s End Trilogy:

  Book Two

  Michael McBride

  For my mom

  “And pray ye that your flight be not in winter.”

  “For in those days shall be affliction,

  such as was not from the beginning of the creation

  which God created unto this time, neither shall be.”

  “And except that the Lord had shortened those days,

  no flesh should be saved: but for the elect’s sake,

  whom He hath chosen, He hath shortened the days.”

  “And then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ;

  or, lo, he is there; believe him not:”

  “For false Christs and false prophets shall rise,

  and shall show signs and wonders, to seduce,

  if it were possible, even the elect.”

  “But take ye heed: behold, I have foretold you all things.”

  “But in those days, after that tribulation,

  the sun shall be darkened,

  and the moon shall not give her light,”

  “And the stars of heaven shall fall,

  and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.”

  —Mark 13: 18-25

  Chapter 1

  I

  Mormon Tears

  PHOENIX STOOD ON THE WHITE SAND, STARING OUT ACROSS THE GREAT Salt Lake, Mormon Tears, as the sun rose somewhere behind the black clouds. Though it appeared as only a muted stain of gray against the distant horizon, he could feel its radiating warmth on his face. Closing his eyes, he reveled in the sensation, its gentle caress on the soft skin of his eyelids chasing away the bitter cold that sliced into him like hooks of ice. He sighed and the wind stole the cloud of exhaust from his lips, carrying it back over his shoulder. Deep inside he could feel a sense of contentment, of peace, for the first time in his entire life. The theater of the sky stretched infinitely in all directions, though a lone spotlight of sunshine permeated the ceaseless nuclear stormheads to shine upon him on his stage of sand, the foamy ivory brine lapping at his chafed, red toes. He knew he needed to enjoy moments like these, for they would be fleeting. The dark power was building beyond where the sky met with the seemingly eternal black water and the spotted islands of smooth stone rising from it. Even from such a great distance, he could feel the enemy’s swelling ranks gathering their awesome strength for the battle to come. His adversary’s evil power emanated across the hundreds of miles like an earthquake, issuing aftershocks of impending bloodshed that caused the earth itself to shiver.

  In his mind, the ebony waters continued rolling toward the shore, the waves bringing with them a thickening slush of ice. Lightning crashed from roiling thunderclouds, an ultraviolet blue against their black hearts, turning the waves crashing into the beach to a deep crimson.

  They were coming.

  The time had come to begin preparations.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Missy said from behind him, causing him to open his eyes.

  Phoenix turned to face her, a smile forming on his lips as it always did when he saw her. After living so long in the darkness, unable to see her face even in his mind, he tried to commit every expression to memory, the sound of her voice more comforting even than the beat of his own heart.

  “Yeah,” Phoenix whispered, though he’d already forgotten all about the lake behind him.

  Mis
sy blushed, but didn’t appear self-conscious in the least. She had a quiet confidence about her that belied a hidden strength she had only begun to tap. He worried that she didn’t see him as he saw her, but it didn’t matter. The only thing that was truly important was being close to her.

  She walked past him to the edge of the water and imagined the sunrise.

  “We aren’t safe here, are we?” she asked without turning to face him. She didn’t have to try to read his expression as she knew that he would tell her the truth.

  “We’re safer here than anywhere else.”

  “That wasn’t my question.”

  “No,” he whispered. “They will find us here.”

  “What are we supposed to do then? Where can we possibly go?”

  “They’ll find us wherever we go. This is where we are supposed to be. This is where we will make our stand.”

  “And will we win?”

  Phoenix remained silent.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said, turning back to him with a wan smile.

  “I didn’t say we wouldn’t.”

  “You didn’t say anything at all.”

  “The truth is that I just don’t know.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “I’m not sure. All I know is that the time is at hand to ready ourselves for war.”

  “Against whom? Those black lizard men?”

  “Against God,” he whispered.

  A shiver crept up her spine, erupting as goosebumps from the backs of her arms.

  “Come on,” she said, forging a weak grin and trying to force the implications of his words from her mind. “The others are making breakfast. I’m sure we could both use something to eat.”

  Phoenix matched her smile and turned his back to the inland sea. More people had arrived during the night, their vehicles parked at odd angles all across the beach, the sounds of life only now beginning to filter out of the system of caves in the stone hillside. There was an old pickup with a camper shell in the bed off to the left, shades drawn tightly over the windows. A ring of motorized dirt bikes surrounded a canvas tent, the tarp covering it flapping on the breeze. Mountain bikes and ten speeds leaned against the rock fortress, which they had only begun to explore. There were a half dozen cars parked off to the side as a windbreak, all of them older models from a dirty white Ford truck with California plates to an ancient Buick now more rust than metal. Nothing with integrated computer components survived the blackout trailing on the heels of the atomic wind. Phoenix had heard someone speculate in the darkness about an electromagnetic pulse created by the nuclear detonations, but that meant nothing to him.

  The mutated equines that he and his friends had ridden in upon appeared as comfortable in the water as they did in the air, their crested seahorse heads rising from the lake behind him as they splashed toward the shore from wherever they had gone during the night, summoned by the aroma following the thick black smoke out of the mouth of the widest cave. Phoenix didn’t recognize the scent, but his mouth was already beginning to water.

  “What is that?” he asked, his voice dripping with wonder.

  “Baked beans,” she said with a chuckle.

  “They smell wonderful.”

  “Are you telling me you’ve never had baked beans?”

  He grinned, his eyes alight. There was something charming about his naïveté.

  Faces he only vaguely recognized from during the night began to emerge from where they’d bedded down at a comfortable distance from one another, drawn by the intoxicating scent. Soon they would have to reach out to one another or they would be butchered like so many sheep.

  They needed to steel themselves against the coming winter.

  II

  The Ruins of Denver, Colorado

  DEATH LEANED BACK INTO HIS THRONE OF BONES, BUILT FROM THE REMAINS of those migrating westward and unable to find suitable shelter before the Swarm overcame them. Their skins were stretched from ceiling to floor, stitched together to form a tent-like partition in the middle of the top floor of that leaning black tower. Everything else had been shoveled out the shattered windows to create the feeling of isolation that he demanded. The only light inside his chamber was produced by the illumination from his golden eyes, though he would still have been easily able to see without. Even in complete darkness, he could clearly discern the outline of every long bone forming the structure of his throne and the flayed skin stretched between. Broken ribs and the crushed skulls created a small mound beneath to raise him above his subjects.

  Closing his eyes, he focused his concentration, the ragged dewlap of crimson scales stretching beneath his chin like a cape, shivering. In a heartbeat, he was seeing through the eyes of Famine, their collective consciousness allowing him unflinching access to their minds. He was crouched atop the roof, poised at the edge like a gargoyle. The white horseman, his polished opal skin reflecting the blue lightning tearing the sky, stared thirty stories down to the charcoaled ground. Enormous vats of molten metal burned in a ring around the base of the building, billowing clouds of smoke and flame into the grumbling sky. The Swarm seethed beneath, their glowing eyes like so many fireflies. His gaze rose from the masses at the foot of the monolithic fortress to the horizon, where a flood of their minions still poured in from the eastern plains, following the trail of devastation. Torches blazed from the skulls staked to the line of poles leading to the skyline, burning the oily mess of fatty fuel sucked from the dead. Formerly placid fields of wild grasses were now rife with briars and brambles, covered with thorns sharp enough to carve through a buffalo’s hide.

  Famine opened his mouth in a soundless scream, releasing a flume of locusts that expanded into a whirlwind, swirling around the massive tower of darkness before funneling through the open windows and into the bowels of the construct.

  With a flick of clear eyelids over his reptilian irises, Death was transported into another section of the fortress, somewhere in the bleak shadows beneath his feet. The sounds of screams pierced his ears, an exquisite choir of agony. Pestilence used her fingertips like scalpels, opening the bodies of the damned to grant access to the legions of mosquitoes crawling out of every orifice of her mummified form, her parchment skin ripping away to birth the large insects. Death watched through her lifeless eyes as the mosquitoes squirmed around in the open wounds of the bodies nailed to the conference tables in front of her. Men and women alike cried out in their divine pain, raging against the spikes pounded through their wrists and ankles to secure them to the wood. Their abdominal contents shifted sickeningly beneath the shimmering skein of the peritoneum that contained them like a layer of plastic wrap, beneath which the mosquito larvae could be seen wriggling through the blood and tissue.

  The ceiling of the subterranean room slanted under the weight of the canting building, the residual radiation still emanating from ground zero filling the claustrophobic air with the smell of burning hair and skin. Torches flickered from the walls where they burned a seemingly exhaustless supply of human grease, highlighting a medieval torture chamber crossed with a modern day conference room. The juxtaposition lent a surreal feel to the intense suffering as though the pain stretched through even the barrier of the ages. With a roar of wings and a buzzing that vibrated the floor beneath Pestilence’s dainty feet, the cloud of locusts filled the room, descending upon the bodies nailed to the tables, crawling all over them. They burrowed into the lacerations inflicted by the former surgeon’s touch, fertilizing the larvae with mutagenic DNA in their tobacco-spit spew, before scurrying back out from the flesh and buzzing contentedly back toward the roof, leaving in their wake an absolute silence bereft of the screams of the now recently deceased.

  Pestilence observed with clinical detachment as the miniature mosquitoes metamorphosed into elongated flagellates like wingless dragonflies and lanced into the various organs. Even God, it seemed, could not always predict the outcome of His experiments. The crossing of the insects’ chromosomes, wound into helices in the b
urbling cauldron of creation itself, created an encephalitic swelling in the human spinal column that produced the reptilian armada of the Swarm. She needed to discover what other mutations could be caused by attacking other areas of the anatomy. Would alterations to the pituitary gland produce dramatic changes in growth patterns? Would parathyroid interactions significantly alter bone density? What other modifications could be made to produce creatures of limitless potential?

  Death smiled twin rows of razors as the changes began to manifest in those formerly dead bodies, savoring the surprising physical mutations arising from Pestilence’s Mengele-inspired experiments.

  His consciousness shifted slightly and his vision was narrowed by the ragged tears in the mask over War’s eyes. He sat high atop his monstrous steed Thunder, surrounded by rubble. A traffic light leaned away from the corner over which it had once lorded, half-buried beneath a wall fallen from the façade of what had once been an ornate church. The scorched outlines of the people who’d been vaporized near the epicenter scarred the few structures that remained upright, spectral visions of their last terror-filled moments the only testimony to their existence as their ashes had long since blown away. Now all that remained was the Swarm, their reptilian bodies crammed shoulder to shoulder in the intersection, phosphorescent eyes glowing like crackling embers from burning logs. The air was alive with hissing, tatters of scales flaring from beneath wide chins resplendent with the rich colors of autumn leaves as they scuffled to establish their hierarchy. The weakest of the species lined the sidewalks, their bones picked clean by the more ferocious.