by Maxey, Phil
Zach picked up a second box, this one filled with bottled water, and they all walked back out into the snow. As soon as they were outside, they blinked a few times as the icy flakes dropped on their eyes and started to move towards the bus. It was then they noticed Bass and a soldier walking towards three huddled figures that were walking towards the vehicles from across the street.
Bass raised his gun as he stomped forward in the foot deep fresh snow. “Stop, don’t come any further!”
“Are you the military, can you help us?” the first of the figures, a heavily clothed man, staggered forward, one hand helping him keep his balance, the other around a woman, who in turn had her arms around an equally well wrapped up young girl.
Bass put his gun over his shoulder, and went to walk forward, when there was a shriek, and a dark form swept by just a few inches in front of him, knocking him backwards. Dazed, he quickly regained his feet and looked back at the people, there was now one less. The man was gone. In his place, the woman and child were screaming, and droplets of crimson trailed off across the snow.
Looking upwards, a large flying creature similar to the ones that were perched on the snow covered peaks near the river was ascending fast, the struggling man not seeming to slow the E.L.F down. The soldier behind Bass started firing, and Bass raised his gun, looking down its sights to do the same, but the creature was already merging with the low clouds. He looked back at the woman and child and ran forward.
“We can’t do anything for him, come with me.”
The woman’s grief made her heavy to pull, so Bass concentrated on the little girl, and picked her up in one swoop. “I will take your little girl, but we have to get back to the bus, there might be more.”
As if fated, another shriek echoed around them, and the soldier behind started shooting upwards, others joined in the firing from near the bus. The woman, as if woken from a dream, leaped forward and ran with Bass back to the bus, both running inside. Bass returned the child to the woman, and ran back outside. There were now so many shrieks that they overlapped making it hard to know how many creatures were above their heads.
A particularly loud shriek rang out and a large fluttering creature fell to the ground close to the bus almost disappearing into the snow, its legs scrambled to get a foothold, but more bullets slammed into it rendering it motionless.
Zach waved to those still firing, to return to their vehicles. “We’re leaving!” he shouted but his words lost most of their strength in the orchestra of sound around him.
With all back inside the vehicles, the engines roared and the two buses and Humvee pulled off, their wheels sliding against the snow. As the convoy sped off, the creatures surrounded the one that had been killed and preceded to tear into it.
After passing through a few towns, the sparse few trees grew in number, until they were once again surrounded by pillars of bark and pine. The new woman’s name was Faith, and her daughter’s name was Gracie, although that was the only information they could gleam from them. They sat towards the back of the bus with the kids on and shivered even though they were wrapped in a blanket.
In the Humvee, Fiona looked over the map. “If we keep up a good pace, we should only be in this forest for thirty minutes.”
The wipers worked back and forth, pushing the increasingly heavy snowflakes from their view as they charged forward. In the last vehicle of the convoy, Rob, concentrated on the bus in front of him, making sure there was enough distance between them, that he could stop in the snow without crashing into it.
Tyler leaned forward. “They’re getting too far ahead of us.”
“I know what I’m doing, haven’t you got anything else to do.”
Tyler looked at the floor, then turned and headed to a seat further back. The back half of the bus was almost entirely full of boxes and plastic containers. He preferred the other bus. Before it’s role as a people carrier in the apocalypse, it had sat in their family’s junkyard, mostly forgotten, but not to Tyler and his slightly older sister. To them it was a spaceship, and the mashed up cars around them enemy robots to be fought against. He had now lost two siblings. The magnitude of that was something that had to be suppressed until he was older and mature enough to think about it. As he sat on the checkered hessian seat, he observed his brother, his only brother and wondered what must be going through his mind. He had never seen him like how he was after Earl had died. In those dark few hours of grief Tyler had become the older brother. In some ways he felt like he now still was. He was more accepting of this new world, but Rob was tied to a past that only existed in their minds.
Reaching into his pack, he pulled out a small notebook. It wasn’t as fancy as Dr. Joshi’s, but it still enabled him to keep a diary of what had happened, including rough drawings of some of the creatures they had encountered. Who knows maybe one day he could also be a scientist, like Raj.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Raj sat back in the crumpled Humvee. He felt his face. The area around his noise felt warm and sticky, and a burning sensation was starting to take hold. The soldier in the front was only partially in his driving position, being that his helmeted head was lodged within the glass of the windscreen. For a moment only ringing and a distant muffled drone was all that Raj could hear, and then in a flash all the sounds of the battle ranging around him rushed in.
They had started their journey leaving by the south gate with confidence. They had two battle tanks, lots of troops and even an attack helicopter. They even had a rudimentary system to take advantage of Raj’s sonic device. But it wasn’t long while traveling through the heavily built up cities on the west coast, in southern Oregon that they started to be attacked with an intensity that even Raj, traveling the arduous route to the camp he had just traveled found hard to believe.
Tinley had transferred himself to a battle tank after the first attack, deeming the Humvee, not ‘appropriate’ for him.
The initial thrust by multiple E.L.F’s happened around the city of Eugene, roughly fifty miles south of the Portland camp. They had lost around one hundred people in that attack, but within a day Raj stopped counting the losses in terns of individual people, and instead just recorded it as numbers of vehicles lost. A coach equaled roughly forty people, a bus similar, a motor home around twelve and so on.
Raj resented Tinley more now, than even that first morning. There was a kind of insidiousness about the Colonel. He was nowhere to be seen when the shit hit the fan, but was quick to take credit for anything that went right. Raj felt like he was strapped to the front of a rocket that was heading full tilt into the sun, and there wasn’t much he could do to stop it. He had tried a few times to tell Tinley that they should split the convoy up into smaller parts, and that it’s size is making it an easy target, but Tinley would just act as if he did not hear the request.
By time they reached the mountains of northern California, they had lost twenty-one vehicles, or eight hundred and forty men, women and children, reducing their cargo to around seventeen thousand people. Raj was resigned to the fact that most of them would not make it to Bravo. If only he could get a message to General Trow, or even Zach. Tinley needed to be relieved of command if these people had any hope of survival.
“Dr. Joshi! You need to come with me,” said the soldier with blood trickling down his cheek, and his helmet sitting at an ungainly angle.
Raj’s hand instinctively reached down and unbuckled the seat belt. He went to move and instantly winced as a pain shot through his shoulder.
The soldier looked concerned. “Are you hurt?”
“I don’t know, I think I’m okay, just my shoulders bruised,” Raj rotated, resisting the pain and placed his feet down on the smooth white ground outside the wall of the store they had just driven into. Luckily the six-foot high mound of snow along the wall had softened the impact, otherwise Raj was sure he would be dead, like his driver.
They were in a small town, and the decision had been made to investigate this area to gather more supplie
s before heading deeper into the wilderness. The main convoy was still on the highway, which curved around the town to the south. Raj now regretted asking to go on this resupply mission.
“I need to get you into the APC. Tinley will have my ass if anything happens to you.”
“It’s okay Captain, I’m not dead yet.”
The automatic fire had died down, and whatever had attacked them had retreated back into the snow-covered forests.
Raj stood uneasily, and looked back one last time at the soldier he had spent a number of hours chatting too. “I’m sorry about your man, he…” Raj wasn’t sure what to say, he hardly knew the man, but felt that he should say something positive. “He was a good driver,” inside he cringed at the insufficient accolade, but his mind was still trying to absorb what had just happened.
As his vehicle, and three more, including an army truck entered the small picturesque town all seemed quiet. But just as they were slowing to find buildings to politely ransack, creatures emerged. Raj had not seen these types of E.L.F before, six-legged and each the size of a large car. Initially he thought they were normal bears, larger than a grizzly but still bears, and then within the fraction of a second that he realized they couldn’t be, he spotted the extra limbs. They jumped down from the roofs, slamming into the vehicles. His driver, accelerated, but one landed directly in front of them, and he turned to avoid the collision sending them into the building. While he was unconscious soldiers piled out of the APC, and took down the three creatures that had attacked them.
As the Captain half dragged him towards the APC, looking anxiously at the roofs around them, Raj stopped, looking at the fallen carcass of the bear looking E.L.F.
“Wait, I need to do something.”
Walking across to the mound of warm, fur and teeth, he took out a vial from his backpack, and a syringe and plunged the needle into what looked like a soft area of tissue, extracting deep red blood.
“Quickly, doctor,” the Captain’s anxiety took form in white mist from his mouth.
Raj placed the sample and syringe away and climbed into the APC.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The ride through the forested areas took longer than Fiona predicted, but was surprisingly uneventful. A few times, there had been movement in the high pines around them, but nothing that made them alter their course. Soon the forests and peaks were behind them and flat white plains stretched out for as far as the eye could see.
“I wonder what they grew here,” Abbey looked sad watching the barren square patches of forgotten farmland pass by.
“Potatoes, onions, sweet corn and similar,” said Jacob.
“You know a lot for a small town sheriff,” replied Abbey, her words sounding more inquisitorial than intended.
Jacob smiled, even though he was sitting behind Abbey and she wouldn’t have seen. “Not a lot of crime in a small town, so I got the chance to read a lot.”
Irene walked carefully up the central aisle of the bus, trying not to clip anyone’s feet, until she got to the silent seats. She then bent over slightly, and held her hand out. Faith looked up from the blanket that covered her head and her daughter who was sleeping stretched out with her feet up against the side of the bus.
Irene waved the candy bar. “I thought you could do with this.”
Faith cautiously took the bar. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, I’m Irene. I hear that you have a little one, called Gracie?”
Faith went to nod, not being sure if Irene was completely blind or not, then stopped. “Yes, she’s sleeping.”
“I know, I can hear her breathing, shallow and regular.”
Irene sat down on the seat opposite. “There are a few kids her age on the bus, Mary and I, look after them. It’s not been easy, but as you can see, and hear they are doing okay.”
Faith looked down the bus at the kids playing games. One was leaning over the back of his seat and playing with the nose of a large man, who was sleeping. The man’s head propped up by a prosthetic hand. Every now and again, his other hand would flap across his face as if trying to swap a fly away in his dreams. A blond haired man sitting next to him was egging the young boy on. They seemed good people, but she couldn’t be sure, not after what happened.
Irene got to her feet. “Okay well, if you need anything, just let me or Mary know.”
Again Faith went to nod and stopped herself. “I will, thank you.”
Irene started to move off down the aisle when Faith spoke again. “If you don’t mind me asking, have you always been blind, or were you injured during the Cascade?”
Irene paused, and then turned smiling. “Ever since I was a child,” she then continued her journey back to her seat.
Zach glanced at the Map. “We are just past the halfway point.”
It was coming up to 2 pm and they still had three hours of daylight left. Progress was good now they were on wider roads, although they had to zigzag around abandoned vehicles more often. In one town they drove through, hundreds of wooden crates lay scattered for over a mile across the road, causing them to slow to a crawl as they drove over or around them. In another, a graffiti covered freight train sat motionless next to the road. Eventually small walls grew up around their route, and they were on a traditional highway, which passed through the outskirts of a city. Every few hundred yards, once proud tall neon advertising boards, leaned at awkward angles. These were almost as frequent as the snow covered semi trucks, glinting in the afternoon sun. Since they had entered Idaho, there seemed to be more of these types of vehicles than any other. Each time they drove by one, Abbey caught Zach paying more attention to it than the countless cars they had passed.
At one point the highway opened up to six lanes just in the direction they were traveling, but the freedom to drive was curtailed by the number of cars and trucks they had to weave around. Equally difficult for Zach was resisting the temptation to drive down one of the off ramps and explore the multitude of superstores and warehouses, which lined their route. But he knew that E.L.F’s loved civilization, so they had to stay away from them.
After a short time the landscape returned to its white-beige complexion.
“Driving through those towns and cities, it almost felt like life hadn’t changed there,” said Zach to no particular person in the cab. As he finished vocalizing he realized that everyone could be asleep, but Fiona responded.
“Yeah, it’s strange, not much destruction in these areas. I don’t think I’ve seen one E.L.F since, those flying creatures in the small town.”
Cal stirred in his sleep, Jacob and Abbey lay still.
As the sun threatened to move unwelcomingly low on the horizon, hills and peaks once again grew close to the highway. At one point the highway rose to give a view of a river a few miles to their north. There was lots of movement from the twinkling blue water and on its banks, but it was so far off Zach couldn’t make out any details. He was the only person that saw them in the Humvee, everyone else was asleep. As the miles melted away he found himself seeing Tinley in his old family home, standing over the bodies of his… Stop. He drew his hand over his face, which was clammy, stopping before it touched the area around his eye. He couldn’t think about those things, if he allowed himself to fall into that, he would be no good for those that depended on him.
Soon the sun hovered over the horizon and the shadows grew long. Zach clicked on his radio. “This is Captain Felton from Bravo Camp, we are coming from the Portland Camp with survivors, is there anyone out there. Over.”
A green exit sign pointed to the right, and Zach took the off ramp to head south into the town of Helier. After a few more miles, Abbey started waking up. To their right, and all around them the ground fell away into an impressive canyon with a river at the bottom. Luckily the lanes going into the town were reasonably free of obstruction, for the exiting lanes were full of vehicles, some hanging precariously off the side of the bridge they were now all passing over. Zach and Abbey looked at the holes in the bri
dge walls and it wasn’t hard to imagine the panic there must have been when the people of this city made a mad dash across the bridge to escape whatever variety of creature decided to attack them. Abbey looked away, nor did she want to know what resided in the depths below them.
The gloom now overtook the light, and Zach stopped the convoy at a junction with bent traffic light poles, to look at the old map he was given from General Trow.
He clicked on his flashlight, pointing it down at the crumpled pages, when his radio came to life.
“This is Caroline Decker of the southern Idaho outpost, what’s your location Captain. Over.”
Zach quickly clicked on his radio. “We have just come over the bridge from the north, and we are at the first junction. Over.”
“Keep heading south, for a few miles, I’ll meet you at the junction where there’s a sign for Millie’s hotel. Over.”
The convoy pulled off, and drove a short distance through what must have been a thriving business and shopping area but was now cold, broken and deserted. Most of the vertical poles, whether they where for phones or electricity supply where now lying along the powder white ground. Vehicles, some with their roofs flattened, sat at angles at odds with the direction of the road and dark stains and streaks lay scattered over the sidewalks.
Zach pulled up in front of a modern white pickup with more than a few dents in its paneling. A medium height dark haired woman, in her early forties sat in the driver’s seat. Her voice once again came from Zach’s radio.
“Nice to meet you Captain, we need to get back to the outpost, follow me. Over.”
She backed the pickup up a few yards, then turned in a tight arch driving down the road that was originally behind her. The convoy followed. After a distance of a few hundred yards, they drove past an impressive two story building, with a domed roof and hardly any windows. The pickup took a left and they drove along a flat park area with the occasional tree, until she slowed near where the sidewalk widened and headed for the building’s entrance. She then drove up the curb, over the patchy snow covered grass and stopped just outside a semi-circle of impressive pillars. A wooden sign with a corner missing, sat on the grass a few yards in front of the boarded up entrance.
