by J C Walsh
More hogs go down. One gets close, avoiding the blood hound that runs up to jump on its back. Frightened, the hog swipes its multi horned face into the side of my car. I fight to keep control of Midnight Beauty, trying to steer clear of this hog only attacking in defense, while trying not to drive into others from the herd. Time is running out. If Alex doesn’t wake up soon, I can see this going bad in so many ways. I’d hate to go back to our world when he’s not fully healed. then we would have another situation to deal with. Midnight Beauty covers two more miles of desolation with the horde still keeping up with us. Another pack of blood hounds are charging in for the kill, and they are coming fast.
Finally, Alex stirs awake and starts coughing.
“Hey, hey man! You alright?”
He pops up from behind the seat, smiles at me, then throws his head behind Jack’s seat and throws up. Jack winces. When Alex is done wretching, he sits up. He puts his head between the seats again; his eyes are feverish, and he’s pale, but I think he’s good enough to go through a wormhole. Now we just need to find one.
“Randy?” he asks, his voice is hoarse.
“Yeah, it’s me buddy. Here to save you,” I say.
“What the hell took you so long?”
“We were occupied, man,” Jack adds, “Not like you weren’t wrapped up or anything.”
“Oh,” Alex says, “We are funny all of a sudden. I see how it is.” He looks out the windshield. “Holy shit, is this the Red Plane?”
“Yep,” I answer. “We’re not going to be here long; we have company.”
Alex turns around, his eyes are wide when he looks at us again. “What the hell are those things?”
“Long story,” Jack says, “But they are nothing compared to the company you had in your apartment. I think you may have to reconsider who you have over to your place.”
Alex chuckles. “Right, sure. Enjoy the smell of vomit behind your seat, asshole.”
“You’re cleaning that when we get out of here,” I add. In all honesty, I am hoping it’ll clean itself up.
One of the blood hounds’ leaps onto the hood; it stands in the middle of the windsheild hissing. We all scream collectively. I swerve the car left, then right, trying to shake the thing off. It’s head splits open, revealing the vertical rows of teeth lining the sides. A tentacle lashes out and strikes the windsheild. It retracts, then hits it again and again.
I can’t shake the damn thing off my car. Jack jumps up in his seat, pointing ahead.
“There! Right there! Wormhole! Get us the hell out of here!”
Up ahead, where Jack is pointing, there’s a wormhole swirling on the surface of the nearest mountain. I turn toward it, while the creature on my hood continues its onslaught against my windshield. I grit my teeth as a crack appears. No, I don’t care if it gets in. I can kill it with my bare hands. I’m mad that my car is taking damage after just getting her back.
The thing is still holding on as we drive into the wormhole. Surprisingly, it hasn’t dissolved into nothing, or lost its grip on my car. Its black talons hold onto the lip of the hood. I turn on the windshield wiper blades; they go back and forth, striking it in the face numerous times. The vertical mouth and tentacle go after it, only to be met with a face full of windshield washer fluid. It screeches while all three of us laugh at it.
Midnight Beauty exits the wormhole; we are now in a wooded area. Tires cut into dirt. I down shift and hit the brakes. The creature loses its grip and is flung off the hood. It hits the ground, rolling over a few times before coming to a stop. It gets up, hisses at us again, and gets into position to charge at my car.
Rapid fire cuts through the air; the creature dances sporadically as its riddled with bullets. It falls dead. The bullets strike the ground in front of the car. Bullet holes appear in the hood as the shooter aims at my car.
“Get down!”
The three of us duck down as the windshield explodes, bullets whiz by our heads. One hits the head rest of Jack’s seat. I’m afraid to look to see if he was hit, but he looks ok, hands over his head in cover. Alex has his body squeezed between the front and back seats.
The gun fire stops. The shooter must be reloading.
I open the car door and get out of the car, using the door as a shield in case the shooter is ready to unload another round on us. I tell Jack and Alex to get out of the car and take cover. Up ahead, I see a trailer; one of the windows is open. I close my eyes and focus; when I open them, a rock the size of my fist flies through the window. I hear a grunt as the shooter is stunned.
“Will!” I yell, “It’s me, Randy! I have Jack and Alex with me! Stop shooting at us.”
I honestly am not sure if it’s Will who’s shooting at us. If I think about what the Eye of Beholder told me, and the order our cars were in at the shop, then we must be at Will’s trailer. We are met with silence. I am happy with the small break. Between the attack from the creature and then the gunfire, I haven’t had time to truly think. Twigs snap; something moves quickly, in the woods, to the right of us.
I point, in that direction, to Jack. His handgun is in his hand, but he doesn’t have time to bring it up. A tall man comes out of the woods with an automatic rifle. I recognize Will, even though he’s in army fatigues and his head is shaved bald. It’s the brown eyes and the bushy eyebrows; his long face hasn’t really changed either, maybe a few lines from aging, other than that it’s him.
“Damn, dude,” I say holding up my hands, “You move fast.”
Will aims the automatic rifle at my head.
“Don’t move.”
“Come on, man.” I say taking a step forward. “It’s me, Randy. I can’t be that ugly that you can’t recognize me.”
“Don’t fucking move!”
I shouldn’t be surprised he would be living out here, in the woods, in a trailer, and dressed the way he is. He’s always been a conspiracy freak, even in high school. The big one was that he was a believer that Tupac was still alive. He never let that go either, even as we got older. The attacks on 9-11 didn’t help his mental state. He spun deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of theory after theory. We entertained his theories for fun, especially when we went out drinking.
“Will, we don’t have time for this, just put down the gun and— “
He pulls the trigger.
Even though I have healing powers, I don’t know how I could survive a head shot. I duck, as quickly as I can, the moment he sprays the gunfire.
He wasn’t aiming at me.
The blood hounds squeal when the bullets strike them. I turn around, a few fissures are open throughout the woods. The creatures fall, more come out of the fissures. I pull out my snub nose. Jack is aiming his handgun. All three of us are firing at the emerging creatures. Once they all fall dead, the fissure closes.
Will walks up to one of the dead creatures and spits on the carcass. “Fucking illuminati.”
I open my mouth and then close it. Deciding it is best not to correct him.
He looks at me questionably. “How the fuck did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Appear out of nowhere like that?”
“Come on, Will. Get your head out of your ass, you know what’s going on. We talked about it after seeing Randy at the hospital,” Jack says.
“Oh.” He stares at me.
I point at myself. “Not the illuminati.”
He looks at Alex.
“What’s up, buddy?” Alex asks.
Will nods to him. “Yo.”
He slings his rifle over his shoulder and walks away. I look at Jack. He shrugs.
“You guys coming or what?” Will asks.
“Where we going?” I ask.
“I was cooking dinner before you assholes rudely came out of nowhere. Don’t worry, I’ll still feed you.”
Will walks over to a large grill, pulls the cover over, and smoke pours out. The sweet smell of barbeque fills the air. I salivate. My stomach rumbles. I look up to the sky, past th
e trees; this is the first time I see blue, and normal puffy clouds. Far into the distance though, there’s a hint of red. This place has not been as badly affected as the few realities I’ve visited. We have time. We do need to eat though, to keep up our energy.
The ribs are delicious. I devour a whole rack and a chicken breast, relishing the flavor as I lick off the sauce, feeling I could take my fingers with it. At first, I was hesitant to drink any beer, but I do it anyway. I drain the first one quickly and release a healthy belch. We all need this, to feel some sort of normalcy, to have something that reminds us of our world, something we all enjoyed together. I think about what the beholder said about the testimony of truth. I would imagine it meant trust, or a gathering, like breaking bread, to bring our group back together again.
I sit by a bonfire with my old friends, drinking cold beer and eating awesome barbeque. We talk of old days, high school and the best part of our racing days. Good memories. We all seem to remember things that we haven’t or couldn’t before. Maybe it’s because we are together; our collective brains brought positive energy. We can focus on memories that were real to us. But our faces grew grim when it came to Chris and Cody.
“Man, the fucking wheelman jobs,” Alex says, putting his face in his hands.
“Raise your hand if you had to kill someone from a racing gang because of a job Chris had given us.”
I raise my hand. Then Will. Then Alex. Jack is hesitant; finally, he slowly raises his hand. Just the look on his face, the shame and embarrassment. Somehow, I know what happened. Even if my crew had made a pact to help me, Jack had had to go to New Hampshire to escape for a bit with his family, to get away from this madness so he could feel prepared to handle it once again.
“Well, this was fun and all,” Jack says, “But I think it’s time to get to business.”
We all nod at the same time.
“Yeah, I hope Tupac is in the Red Plane, I got so much to ask him.”
We all look at him, then start laughing.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Alex says, eyes streaming with tears from laughing so hard.
Jack was on his back laughing.
I calm down and say, “I’m not surprised. You thought those creatures were part of the illuminati!” More laugher.
“Fuck y’all,” he says, “Bunch of ball busters.”
Somewhere there is an explosion, far out in the woods.
The laugher stops.
“That’s one of mine,” Will says as he stands up.
“You can do landmines, too?” Alex asks, jumping up and grabbing his stuff.
“Yup. We need to hurry.” He walks to a spot nearby, reaches into the leaves and pulls on a handle, opening a storm door.
“Holy shit.” Alex breathes. We all look down into the bunker.
“Wow,” I say, “That’s impressive.”
“Better be. I see what you have in that bag, kid’s play.” Will laughs, “Come on, let’s load up before we get out of here.”
There’s another explosion, while we scavenge through the shelves. The guys grab more automatic rifles. I grab an Uzi, wanting to stay with smaller weapons. I’m happy to find that Will has an extra case full of .38 bullets for my snub nose.
Quickly, we load up my car with everything. Such a shame, not just that the food and the good times are now tainted, but it’s this place, so serene and peaceful, barely touched by the Red Plane. The sky is still blue, the clouds still full, like looking up into a painting. I want just a few more moments of this before we jump ship again.
Will speaks, pulling me out of my somber mood.
“Do any of you clowns know where the fuck my car is?”
We all laugh.
The explosions are closer when we finally get in my car. I see things moving between the trees in the woods. Midnight Beauty roars like the beast she is, and off we go, back down the dirt trail we came in on. The car speeds into the new wormhole that appeared for us.
The next stop The Deceiver, something about that places a sickening feeling in my stomach. When we exit the wormhole, we are back in my neighborhood. Only this time, in this version, it’s untouched by the Red Plane. It looks like it did when I left it. Street lights are on, the night sky normal above our heads, the stars winking at us. I pull into the driveway to a new home.
7.
My heart is pounding in my chest. The light is on in the house. I see a figure pass the kitchen windows a couple of times. Thankfully, it’s not a ghoulish thing from the Red Plane. It’s a female figure.
Laura.
I didn’t think she would be home. I didn’t think any of the lights would work in that house. When I last left the desolated place posing as our home, it looked like no one had been living there for months, years. But there she is, moving back and forth throughout the house as if she had a purpose. It brought back the nights I would come home from working at the shop and she wasn’t working nights at the hospital yet. I would see her in those windows, busy making dinner.
I push open the car door. As I place my boot on the driveway, the memory slowly fades. Alex has crawled out from the back seat and is standing beside me. His brow furrows as he studies the light from the windows. The whole house is lit up, welcoming. Warm.
“Great, Laura’s home,” Jack says. He walks around the front of Midnight Beauty and stands on my right side, which is itching madly. The pain level was a dull four, it’s slowly escalating to peak agony.
Will pops open the trunk and reaches in for the bag of guns, his and the ones I scavenged from my basement.
“Leave them,” I say.
Will’s head peers around the side of the open trunk lid at me.
“You crazy?” He asks, “Something doesn’t look right.”
“I know but bringing in a bag of guns isn’t going to help anything; we don’t know which Laura we are getting. You might scare her.”
“I don’t give a fuck!”
“Will!”
He slams the trunk and approaches me. I wait for him to throw a punch. Instead, his tall body looms over me, face in a scowl. He pokes his finger into my chest.
“Have it your way, Jones. But, when the shit hits the fan and we are overrun, and have no way to defend ourselves, I’ll be the one who told you so.”
I look at his finger in my chest indifferently, then peer up into his face.
“Finished?”
He waves his hand at me, making a sound of disgust and walks away to stand next to Alex.
“So how do you want to do this?” Jack asks. He’s peering into the open mouth of my garage. “It’s obvious her car’s not here; it’s at the shop with everyone else’s.” His eyes move to the roof.
“Randy? Do you see that? That roof looks brand new, don’t you think?”
He’s right. When we had first moved in, the garage was on the list of things to repair. We had mainly focused on the inside before I had my accident. I highly doubt a new garage roof was on Laura’s mind while I was incarcerated. There had been spots where the roofing tiles were missing, like it suffered from bald spots. Some other pieces had been barely hanging on; none of that was present. The shingles are brand new, and, now that I am noticing, so is the paint. I bet, if I were too look inside, it wouldn’t have the disarray of weights and car tools scattered everywhere.
I sigh and push myself off my car.
“Ok, let’s go get her.”
The steps did not creak and moan under our feet; these too are brand new. The wood still smells of the stain used on it. The door does not screech open. I walk into a completely different home.
My stomach feels like I got punched. I don’t breathe for a long time. When I returned home before, it had been in ruins. None of that is present in this version. Everything, and I mean everything, is brand new. Instead of the ripped couches riddled with mold, this new one nearly stretches across the length of the living room, the attachment of the L shaped couch bent at the other side of the wall.
The wide screen tele
vision is easily a 70 inch, it owns most of the wall across from the couch. The coffee table is a nice glass one. The dining room table is the same but the wood looks like it has been polished multiple times. The colors of the walls are warm; they make the entire house look alive with the colors of yellow and blue. Not the grayish colors the walls were before. The stair case is new wood, still it’s original color, not stained yet like the front steps.
This is what our home would’ve looked like had I not raced that night. Instead I had gone against Laura’s wishes. She was done with the life; I should’ve been, too. God, or the forces that be, whatever choice of names you want to give the divine, knew too well I should have been done with that life. It had drained me of my human qualities; Still I hungered for the thrill, the challenge. Cody challenged me, and I complied without thinking twice. Laura was ready to spend days snuggled on the couch after work and binge TV shows all night, go to sleep and start all over. She wanted a family, even though she knew I had blood on my hands. I was not ready; I remained the blood thirsty beast. I did not want to be caged, but I ended up caging myself.
I hear humming coming from the kitchen. Laura’s voice. I can’t recall if I had ever heard her project a harmonious and beautiful sound. Something strange occurs to me; the song she is humming reminds me of a lullaby. I don’t know how or which one, maybe it’s just my subconscious. Possibly, the Red Plane is cherry picking other versions of our lives. She walks out of the kitchen, only comes as far as the dining room when she stops. She sings to the bundle of blankets cradled in her arms a few seconds longer before she pulls her face from it to look up at us. I swallow hard.
Her face lights up with a big smile. “Hey, Honey! I didn’t hear you walk in.” She’s eyeing the guys behind me, the smile wavers, just a little, the corners of her mouth begin to drop, only to pull at the cheek bones again. “And you brought company! What’s up guys? It’s been a while. I didn’t make dinner tonight, and you know Randy, doesn’t tell me everything.” She brings her attention back to the bundle in her arms. “I can order pizza if you want.”
Laura makes cooing noises and wiggles her nose at the bundle, her body bounces back and forth. The bundle giggles. Tiny hands reach out to her as Laura leans in to give motherly kisses. I want to throw up. I want to die right here where I stand. This can’t be happening; there is no way she is holding our child. Laura had lost the baby while I was in the burn unit, healing after the accident.
