Page 430 of Coal Hearts

How empty my mind was as I added yet another soul to my tally.

I felt no guilt.

No remorse.

Nothing but single-minded determination to find Ily.

Fisting the torch, I eyed up the crevices leading from the large cave where death dripped down the walls. The one to the right was the largest. The one slightly to my left utterly uninviting with its ill-fitting crack and jagged rocks.

I chose that one.

If I wanted to hide, I’d probably go that way. Choosing the least inviting direction to dissuade those chasing me.

Twisting a little, I stepped into the dank, damp chill.

My stolen paintball gun whacked and cracked against the narrow walls, hindering me a little as I clicked on the torch and left behind fake sconces and a blood-stained altar.

I stopped counting minutes as I followed the long seam, heading deeper and deeper into the earth.

Every step, the blackness inside me billowed, matching the blackness swallowing me whole.

I feared the beast within me.

The thirst for blood.

The hunger for carnage.

All around me, heavy rock suffocated the sounds of existence, making it feel as if I’d been buried alive. I walked in a grave with no ending, laid to eternal damnation beneath soil full of saltwater.

On and on, I walked.

Heard no one.

Saw nothing.

Flashes of what I’d done to Charles popped like holograms in the gloom.

His eyes as I snuffed them out.

His lips as they turned blue.

His death had been satisfying but also...hollow.

It hadn’t granted me peace.

If anything, it’d opened a clawing, rabid hunger inside to do it again. And again. To eradicate every son of a bitch on this island until I was the only one.

I sniffed back the whiff of paint on my soggy clothes as I travelled through perpetual cave-dark night.

The journey acted like a sedative on the snarling mayhem in my veins.

It gave me space to think instead of act impulsively, and by the time the narrow pathway spat me out into another cave, I bordered human once again.

The click of my torch as I turned it off echoed in the rock-wrapped chamber. I didn’t need any light as the cave had electricity—burning brightly from exposed light bulbs suspended from the ceiling by thick plastic-wrapped wire.

Glancing around, I spied a few things of interest.

The uneven ground was soaked with the black-crimson of dried blood. A heavy wooden box tucked to the side looked like a treasure chest of murder. A heavy-duty hose hung, coiled and sleeping against the wall. The whiff of ocean filled the space, doing its best to tease my nose with wild water instead of the lingering stench of viscera.