by Maxey, Phil
Mo squawked and soon the both of them were flying over the parking lot and then downwards until Zach was within a few feet of the concrete ground. The half bird half monkey let go and Zach landed on the ground with a small hop.
“Yes!” screamed Abbey, while throwing her arms in the air, then winced a little and held her wrist.
Zach looked around, not being sure of what just happened. “You got him well trained.”
Abbey ran and hugged Zach, then pulled back. “I wanted you to let go, did you not hear me?”
“I was hanging five floors up, even if I did hear you, I wasn’t going to be taking that advice too seriously!”
She smiled. “I just communicated to Mo that you were in danger, and he kind of knew what to do.”
Another squawk came from Mo causing Abbey to look at the buildings that lined the streets around them. “There are more E.L.F’s here, we should get going.”
They both ran back towards the pickup truck, parked alongside others that were crumpled with large slices through their steel and aluminum bodies.
Zach put his fingers into his mouth and whistled, then looked around him. Where the hell is he?
Abbey looked at Zach concerned. “You don’t think he was in the building when it collapsed do you?”
Zach nodded and went to whistle again when there was a thudding noise from the street behind them. They both looked around to see the large wolf creature bounding towards them on its hind legs.
As the large brown fur covered creature climbed into the back of the pickup, Zach went to climb into the driver’s seat but then stopped.
“What is it?” said Abbey from the passenger’s side.
Zach kneeled and touched the dust covered concrete.
Pains then shot through Abbey’s head, making her hold her temple. “We should go Zach, I’m feeling a lot of something coming towards us, it’s a little overwhelming.”
Zach again went to climb into the truck as the ground around them visibly started to shake. He jumped into the seat, turned the key to the ignition and pulled away, out onto the street.
As they drove past office buildings and parking lots a low drumming noise permeated the air around them. Zach increased their speed as the road stretched out ahead.
Glancing in the rear mirror he saw sections of four and five-story buildings start to collapse like the one he was clinging onto. The pickup shuddered in response even being far from them.
Abbey looked back, while grimacing. “There are hundreds…no, thousands of E.L.F’s behind and around us, I’m trying to reach out to them but it’s like trying to grab hold of an eel, every time I feel I have established contact with one of them, I lose the connection,” she grabbed the side of her head again. “There are too many Zach, I can’t control them.”
He reached across and briefly squeezed her arm. “It’s okay, we will be out of Dallas soon. Try and concentrate on the map, find us a route out.”
The drumming was now so loud he was having to shout his words to Abbey just a few feet from him. A huge crashing noise made him look once again in the rear mirror. A large four-story building was falling into a cloud of dust, while a wall of black moving spots shot upwards in the opposite direction.
“Abbey! We need a route now!”
She held the map up in front of her, resting it on the dashboard. “Right, take the next right!”
The pickup skidded around the corner, while the wolf creature clung on best he could in the rear.
The sound of masonry and steel beams hitting the ground came from buildings large and small all around them as Zach pressed down on the gas pedal.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see the mass of black rising up, emerging from craters and holes in the ruins around them like gushing oil.
Abbey looked back. “They’re joining up—”
Zach swerved around an abandoned semi-truck, skipping over the sidewalk and back onto the road.
“Right again!” She shouted.
Zach threw the pickup into the bend, causing it to tip momentarily onto three wheels.
“We need to get onto highway thirty, that will take us out of the city.”
Churches with missing spires and grand looking buildings with broken pillars flashed past, while street poles and signs violently shook.
“At the end of this road take a left, then right onto the highway.” Abbey tried looking back from where they had come, but trees and buildings blocked the view. She closed her eyes. “I think they have stopped coming after us.”
Zach drove the pickup into a small road near the highway, then took a sharp right up an incline and eventually bounced onto the highway which was full of vehicles, scattered and smashed.
As they weaved in and out of the crushed metal boxes, Abbey looked back to the skyscrapers at the center of Dallas. A swirl of black, like a fog with a mind of its own circled the still gleaming buildings of the downtown area.
She watched as more buildings collapsed, and the mass of creatures descended downwards out of sight. Sighing, she looked back towards the direction they were moving in. “Remind me not to want to check out a major city again.”
Zach briefly looked at her.
“Well, apart from Boston.”
CHAPTER TWO
The sun was setting as they drove along the highway, north of the town of Gladtow, which was on the northeast tip of Texas.
Large flat-roofed buildings loomed on both sides of the road.
“There’s a 'Hardware holdings' over there,” said Abbey pointing to one of them. “Might be a place to hold up for the night and find some supplies.”
As they pulled off the highway towards the large store, destroyed barracks and the remains of Humvees could be seen scattered across a beige concrete area some miles off on the opposite side of the highway.
“That was an Army depot back in my day. Looks like it still is, or was,” said Zach. “Might the be worth checking out as well. You sensing anything around here?”
She shook her head. “Just the slightest of sensations, many miles off, nothing close to us.”
They drove across the deserted forecourt and pulled up outside the large glass entrance. Inside only darkness looked back at them.
Abbey got out and beckoned her ground based E.L.F towards her. “Come on Jai, we need to go inside there,” she briefly pointed towards the building. The large creature bounded from the back of the pickup and ran into the shadows, though the glassless doors. She then looked up and saw Mo circling high above.
Zach looked at her. “Ready?”
“Yeah, he’ll come down when he wants.”
Zach grabbed a large pack from the back, and pulled out a flashlight which he turned on. Abbey did the same, and they both raised their weapons. Stepping over broken shards they stepped through the doorframe and waved their lights around. Many of the shelves were empty, but some still contained boxes.
“Stay close to me,” said Zach as they walked past a checkout till.
The high shelves of the aisles looked down upon them as the sound of their boots echoed on the smooth floor. Towards the back of the store, at least four shelves had fallen on top of each other. As they moved their beams around, dark patches on the floor came into view.
“Let’s keep moving towards the back,” said Zach.
Soon they were near a door with a sign above that said ‘STAFF’. Zach slowly opened the door and waved his light down a small corridor with two doors. Walking steadily to the first, he pushed on it and it swung back. Inside was a room of around twenty feet square, with a few tables, chairs, kitchen area, food and drink dispensers. Surprisingly they looked fully stocked.
He looked back at Abbey. “Looks like we won the lottery. Get set up in here, I’ll check out the other door, and secure the one we came in from.
Abbey slowly walked into low ceilinged room, and leaned on one of the chairs. A light blue jacket was hanging over the back of it. The smooth material felt good between her fingers. She then w
alked over to the far wall, which was covered in pieces of paper, most announcing an event of some kind in the local area.
She put her own pack down on the table, then pulled out a knife and set about jamming it into the side of the drink dispenser to try to open the front of it up. After a few tries it came loose and she pulled the glass front back, and grabbed one of the bottles of water. As she was drinking it Zach reappeared.
“The other door is another way into the warehouse, there’s nothing there. I dragged in some bags of cement, together with some wooden planks and pushed them up against each of the doors, we should be safe in here.” He then took one of the chairs and pushed it up against the door behind him, with the back of it under the doors handle.
He walked over to the food dispensing machine and smiled. “Frozen Candy bars or Spicy beef chips?”
Abbey didn’t respond.
He turned. She was sitting on the chair looking off into the darkness of the rest of the room. “What is it?”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For dragging you out here with me. We had just won, defeated those assholes, and now we’re back out here again, trying to survive.”
Zach kneeled next to her. “That’s what we do, that’s what we have always done, ever since we woke up and discovered the world wasn’t what it was from when we went into that hole in New Mexico. And anyway I’ve never been to Boston,” he smiled.
She smiled back to him, gently nodding.
CHAPTER THREE
Abbey sat up with a start. For a moment she thought she was back at the Core, then the previous day came flooding back to her. Zach was sitting on a chair with his back to her, a few yards away. He seemed to be studying their map with his flashlight.
She swept her hand through her thick hair and blinked a few times. A candle burned on a table nearby and filled the air with a slight scent of smoke.
“How’s the route looking for tomorrow?” She said, her throat feeling like there was gravel stuck in it.
He didn’t respond.
“You asleep?” she whispered. He remained motionless.
A feeling of discomfort pushed its way into her stomach, and she unzipped the sleeping bag and got to her feet. She then heard noises from beyond the walls around her. The sounds of exotic creatures, howls, grunts and screams of a kind she had come to recognize as E.L.F’s.
“Zach! I think—”
As her hand touched his shoulder, his head slowly fell to the side, along with his flashlight landing and then rolling across the floor. As she moved further around to his front, she refused to believe what she was seeing. His body was torn and shredded. She then realized she was standing in a pool of red.
No… no… no.
The incessant noise around her increased, and then the ground started to shake and the white boards on the walls and the items in the dispensing machines fall off their hooks. Nothing made sense as she ran to the door, not even bothering to grab her gun, but before she got to it, the walls and roof above her disintegrated revealing the landscape around the building. But this wasn’t the beige and subtle greens of spring in Texas, but a scene more akin to a tropical climate with an abundance of green trees and leaves. She could feel the sun above on her skin and the air smelled of oranges and the fragrance of flowers in full bloom.
She wanted Zach to see this, to witness what she knew was coming. She looked back but he was gone, along with any semblance of the room she had been sleeping in.
Around her life of all kinds scurried and flew between the high trees, and across the cloudless sky.
She went to take a step forward when she felt a hand on her shoulder, she went to turn—
“Abbey!” said Zach urgently, laying next to her in his own sleeping bag.
“Wh—What? Where am I?”
She sat up, and looked around the staff break room. One candle half way burned flickered in the corner.
She took a deep breath, then looked at Zach who looked concerned. “Sorry, I was dreaming.”
“Here, take a drink, you look like you need it.” He handed her the small bottle.
She could feel the sweat on her forehead and across her body, as she gulped the water down. She looked at him and smiled. “It’s okay, it was just a dream. What time is it?”
“Around 1 am. Lay back down, we’ll need to be up in around four hours from now.”
She then realized her head was throbbing with an intense headache. She reached into her pack, pulled out some painkillers and took them with the water. As she lay back down, the images and sounds of the jungle she just dreamed about still resonated in her mind.
*****
The smell of coffee invaded Abbey’s senses before she was fully awake. The low hiss of a small gas stove was somewhere on the kitchen counter and Zach stood with his back to her once again. A momentary sense of panic threatened to take over her mind, but then she looked around her at the candles burning, and presumed this was real.
He turned around with a mug in his hand. “How’d you sleep? No more dreams?” He walked past a large radio set on one of the small round tables, and brought her a coffee.
She took it and sniffed the fumes that were rising from it. “Thanks I need this. Have you contacted the Core yet?”
“I was waiting for you to wake,” he walked and sat next to the foot square green box, with a large aerial sticking upwards from the back.
He picked up the mike. “This is Brigadier General Zach Felton for Core Operations. Over.”
A few seconds of static passed before a voice replied. “Good to hear from you Brigadier General. What’s your status? Over.”
“We are at the northeast tip of Texas, in the town of Gladtow. We should make it to the non-responding outpost in Kentucky by nightfall. How’s the rebuilding going there? Over.”
There was a further delay then a recognizable voice came from the speaker. “Morning Zach. Rebuilding is progressing well. I’m not sure if you want to hear this, but we now have the numbers that we lost during the battle. Over.”
Zach sighed. “Go ahead. Over.”
“Approximately three thousand four hundred and twenty military personnel and just over seven thousand civilians. But before you blame yourself for those deaths, remember those numbers would have been far, far higher if it weren’t for yours and everyone else’s efforts,” said General Trow.
He then felt Abbey’s hand on his shoulder. “She’s right.”
“I know.”
“Most of those were from their E.L.F’s though, and the other times when their forces came up against ours, they lost, even with their tanks and helicopters. Over.”
Zach felt the pull of the camp on him. I should be back there, helping. “Will you be resuming missions outside of the walls? Now the gang has gone and with the Cascaders, there are lots of materials we can take from further afield. Over.”
“Already on it. Two salvaging teams will be leaving today. Over.”
“Good. If this set still works from inside Kentucky I’ll send you another update, at approximately nineteen hundred hours. Over.”
“Stay safe, both of you! Over.”
Zach put the mike down. Abbey went to hold him, but he pulled away, getting to his feet. “Let’s pack up our stuff and get back on the road.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Abbey rested her arm on the window frame of the pickup and let the cool morning air flow past her. “There’s a truck stop up on the right, might be worth checking out?”
“We don’t have time, we got a lot of ground to cover,” said Zach.
Not much in the way of conversation had passed between them since they left Gladtow. She had thought it was because he was tired, but as the green and brown shoots of early spring flashed past her across the fields and trees around them, she wondered if he was starting to regret taking the trip to Boston.
“General Trow seemed to have everything in hand,” she said.
“Yup.”
S
he sighed.
“Within a few days we should be back at the camp.” It wasn’t what she really thought, but she felt the need to say it anyway.
“Hopefully.”
After four hours of tree lined highway and only the occasional exchanged word, they approached the city of Little Rock, Mississippi.
Abbey felt the back of her neck, it was the first time she had felt any sensation of creatures since their last stop. “There’s something up ahead.”
“How far out?”
She put her finger to her temple. “Some miles.”
“Our route passes over a major river, could it be there?”
“I can’t tell.”
Zach slowed as clouds begun to clump together above, dulling what had been a bright sun filled sky.
As broken advertising boarding’s passed by, the volume of trampled trees and the remains of buildings grew in intensity.
Abbey closed her eyes to better focus the sparkling sensation in her mind. “Five or six miles out, towards the center of the city. A number of large creatures, they are not aware of us yet.”
Zach looked across the small group of multistory buildings that started to emerge in the distance. He also noticed something peculiar about them. “Look.”
She opened her eyes and looked towards where her senses were telling her the threat was coming from. What were once office buildings and skyscrapers were now covered in sheets and layers of a white substance, with a myriad of holes.
“I’m guessing something lives—” before he could finish the ground shook and a creature which looked like a giant beetle rose up from the side of the highway and moved across their path some two hundred yards in front of them. Zach slammed on the brakes, causing Jai their wolf like E.L.F to fall into the back of the cabin. Zach quickly threw the pickup into reverse as the ground continued to shake.
“Look!” shouted Abbey frantically looking around them.
