Humanity's Edge- The Complete Trilogy

by Paul B. Kohler

  Clay whispered, “We’re going to leave now. But I’ll come back for you. Know that I will. All right?”

  Seconds ticked along, stretching into minutes. Clay backed from the room, sensing that he’d begun looking at a corpse. He stumbled down the steps and into the empty Main Street, discovering Brandon vomiting near his cruiser and Ralph, Connie, Norah, and Daniels all piled in the military vehicle. Clay sniffed, sliding into the driver’s seat and waiting for Brandon to tuck in beside him. Brandon swiped the back of his hand across his lips before tumbling in and slamming the door. Clay hurried from the hotel and down Main Street, speeding toward the edge of town. Toward the mysterious unknown.

  Chapter 49

  They approached the perimeter, where an energy field had formed a greenish haze encircling the town and rising up, bubble-like, toward the sky. Clay’s eyes narrowed. Beside him, Brandon leaned forward, trying to spot where the bubble burst. “It’s like a giant bug zapper,” he whispered. “I mean—this isn’t common, is it? This doesn’t seem normal.”

  Clay didn’t speak. He’d spotted Alayna’s car, which she’d apparently picked up from the station, near the energy field and on the other side of the main road. She stood leaning heavily against the hood, glaring across the green film. The moment she spotted them, she popped up and waved, her face showing no sign of happiness.

  Clay and Daniels parked beside her, their tires sinking into the grassy edge. The moment Clay exited his vehicle, Alayna rushed toward him and wrapped her arms around his neck, shuddering. “I’m so sorry I left like that,” she whispered. “It wasn’t right. I just . . . I needed to find her.”

  Clay patted her back soothingly. Her muscles were tense and spasming at his touch. “But did you find her?” he asked, eyeing the green horizon. “What happened?” Outside of the perimeter, several cars were rolled over, burning, spitting black fumes. He winced when he noticed people inside them.

  Alayna’s head drooped down. “She’s nowhere to be found. I went to her house, but she had already cleared out. I tried a few other places I thought she might go, but found nothing. So I decided to come out here. I knew this had been the checkpoint. The way out of town. At least, it had been yesterday.”

  Clay nodded, remembering the long line of townspeople waiting to scurry from Carterville. Now the artery was desolate.

  “But when I got here, I didn’t find any government station, obviously,” she said. “I only found that.” She pointed toward the other side of the energy field, where smoke and fire burst forth from the horizon, alerting them to crisis and disaster.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Clay said, taking several steps toward the energy field. He brought his palm upward, stretching his fingers along the green hue.

  “Me neither. Or heard about it,” Alayna whispered.

  As they stood, staring wordlessly at the energy field and at the steaming, smoking vehicles strewn out on the other side, the rest of the clan all lined up beside them. Norah leaned heavily upon a makeshift cane, a stick she’d picked up somewhere along the way.

  “What the hell is this?” she said with asperity.

  “It’s from the aliens,” Connie said, her voice harsh. “What else would it be?”

  No one else spoke. Alayna and Clay made eye contact, sensing that their pack of rescuees was growing panicked. Brandon began to sneer, stomping about all along the energy field edge, muttering to himself. “They just ate her,” he whispered. “They just gobbled her up. Just like that. And now it’s over. It’s done.”

  “Who’s the kid?” Alayna whispered to Clay.

  “We picked him up at his house. His sister, she died,” Clay whispered back, noting the intensity in Brandon’s eyes.

  “And the doctor?”

  “He couldn’t leave the hotel. Was still alive when we left, but . . .” Clay trailed off, eyeing Ralph and Connie off to his right, who were becoming increasingly quarrelsome. They seemed like decorations in the terror at the end of the world.

  “I might as well throw you into that thing,” Ralph spat at his wife, shifting his weight. “You little tramp. I know you cheated on me with Fred. After church last week, I knew where you were. You second-rate floozy.”

  “HA!” Connie yelled. “As if you weren’t off with your little side thing two weeks ago yourself.”

  “How did they get on this topic?” Alayna asked Clay, allowing a simple smile to stretch across her face.

  “Seems they’re always fighting. It must be what they do,” Clay said sadly, his eyes still far away.

  But as they stood, Ralph and Connie’s fight escalated. Ralph shoved at Connie, pushing her closer to the green-hued energy field. Brandon flung his fingers toward his mouth, clearly panicked. “Don’t,” Norah breathed, her back hunched.

  “How dare you?” Connie hissed. “You want me to fly through that thing, is that it? As if it could hurt me? We’re all going to die here anyway.” She thrashed her finger through the air, yelling at Ralph.

  “Calm down—” Alayna began, taking a step closer. “We need to stick together.”

  Connie turned toward Alayna, then. She seethed with anger. “As if I should listen to you, you dyke. You abandoned all of us. You left us at that hellhole hotel. Just mind your own business.”

  “Fly through that energy field for all I care!” Ralph yelled. “None of us want you here. None of us even care if you live or die.”

  With that, Connie spun toward the green bubble. With her arms flailing, she rushed toward it. Daniels screamed, taking huge leaps toward her, trying to reach her. But her body hit the force field far too soon, thrashing and then suddenly disintegrating, splattering blood and viscera on either side of the green bubble. Her bones emitted a speck of light before sizzling to nothingness. One moment, Connie existed, lived, breathed, and yelled. And the next minute, her blood coated the fluttering wild flowers along the roadside.

  Chapter 50

  Immediately Ralph dropped to his knees. His wails echoed across the fields, booming against their vehicles. “CONNIE!” he cried, over and over again. “CONNIE. COME BACK!”

  Everyone stood horrified, their hands over their mouths. Clay took several steps forward, watching as blood began to coat his boots. Alayna murmured behind him, “Clay. Don’t.”

  He eyed the green energy field more closely, noting that it sizzled with electricity. Ralph continued to moan with anger and sadness, whimpering, Connie’s name eternally on his lips. Brandon and Norah didn’t move. Norah’s eyes were stern, hard, as if she’d seen battle before. And Daniels moved closer to Alayna, placing a hand on her back.

  “What the hell are we going to do now, Sheriff?” Brandon asked, breaking the silence. Clay turned to face the group.

  As if on cue, howls and screeching rang through the air, reminiscent of the crazed monsters in the town. Clay whipped his head back toward the energy field, watching as three of the once-humans crawled from the interior of the smoking SUV at the side of the road. One had a broken neck, and his head lolled from side to side as he stretched his limbs toward them. The other two with him, both young men, began to wail and rush forward. Alayna and Daniels ran to stand beside Clay as a first line of defense. They lifted their guns.

  “Shoot them in the brain,” Clay said. “When they get close enough.” The unarmed people in his group cowered behind the military vehicle. Ralph continued to weep.

  When the approaching crazed were mere feet away, Clay swallowed sharply, his Adam’s apple catching. He could see into the window of these monsters’ eyes, almost sensing what kind of men they’d been before they turned into their manic forms. He was going to kill sons, fathers, brothers—men of his beautiful town. And he couldn’t afford to think about it.

  The moment Clay was about to shoot, the first monster blasted into the energy field. Just as Connie had done moments before, he disintegrated immediately, his crimson blood blasting like a bomb through the air. The other two followed along the same, mortal path. Their brittle bon
es coated the grass on either side of the energy field and splattered over Clay’s pants. Clay leaped back, feeling the strength of the blast. He blinked toward Alayna, noting that her nose dripped with blood.

  “What the—?” Ralph cried again. “What the hell is going on?”

  But in the silence that followed, Clay couldn’t find words to console his group. The crazed individuals who had been meant to remain on the inside of the energy field were now on the outside. It seemed that Colonel Wallace’s plan hadn’t panned out precisely as they’d all hoped.

  And Clay didn’t even want to consider what that meant for the rest of the world.

  Chapter 51

  After several minutes of stunned silence, Clay turned on his heel and strode back to his cruiser, swiping his arm through the air. “Let’s . . . get away from here. Let’s go back to the hotel,” he said. “Come on.” His hope wavered, but his motions were sure, disguising his inner turmoil. As he watched the group of stragglers meander toward the vehicles, Clay considered the fact that those rescued over the last twenty-four hours might now be an elite group of survivors, no longer misfits that were left behind. He knew he had to get them away from that energy field and out of the open, where they seemed like fresh meat for the virus-impaired crazed.

  Alayna guided her patrol car back toward town, Clay and Daniels following close behind. They sped through the deserted streets, continuing to disobey common traffic laws. Clay and Brandon didn’t have words for each other. What they’d just seen was treacherous, dramatic—but certainly not as horrible as Brittany’s death earlier in the afternoon. Clay couldn’t bring himself to think about Valarie and Maia, hopefully tucked away safely in Austin. He felt the weight of his phone in his pocket, remembering that the cell phone towers were no longer operable. He just wished he could talk to them—hear their comforting voices. But he was alone, isolated. He and his group of survivors had nothing but each other.

  The three vehicles parked outside the hotel, finding crooked spots on Main Street. The group rushed into the hotel, breathing heavily. Ralph stomped directly up the steps and toward the bar. His unsteady hands wrapped around a large bottle of bourbon, and he tilted it back quickly. Clay watched him from the corner, inhaling sharply, sure the man would lurch forward, vomiting.

  Finally, Daniels reached forward and snuck the bottle away from Ralph, leaving the man gasping. No one spoke. They turned toward Clay, assessing their leader. He could sense their thoughts. What the hell were they going to do?

  He swiped his hand over his balding head and eyed the clock. His mind was pulsing with fear, and he couldn’t calculate how much time they had left. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem like enough.

  “We don’t have a way to contact the government,” Clay finally spoke, realizing honesty was essential. “The cell towers are down. And our walkie-talkies simply won’t reach that far. Without Lieutenant Daniels’s device to get us out . . .” His words drifted off.

  Daniels took a hearty sip of the bourbon and swiped the back of his hand across his mouth with a violent motion. “He’s right. But do we even want to get out of here?” he said gruffly. “Whatever those things are out there, they are just as rampant as the ones that were inside the containment zone. There’s no telling which is the safer play.”

  Norah collapsed onto a barstool, her white, permed hair lopsided on her head. She clacked her knuckles against the bar counter, and Ralph handed her an entire liter of vodka. She uncapped it with a flourish and sipped from the bottle. It was clear: she felt she was nearing the end of her life after a long, hard road.

  “Whatever,” Brandon scoffed, sitting next to Norah and pouring himself a glass from her bottle. “Maybe we should all just give up and die. It’s not like we have a lot to live for anymore.”

  The air was tense with low morale. Everyone except Daniels, Alayna, and Clay seemed to drink quickly, allowing the comfort of alcohol to fold over them. Clay felt too guilty to drink and too tense to eat. His stomach flipped as he eyed Alayna. With her hands stuffed in her pockets and her nose toward the ground, she looked defeated, a shell of her former self.

  “I just wanted to find her,” she whispered. “You don’t think she went toward the energy field, do you?”

  “We can’t know anything,” Clay said. “We didn’t see any sign of her. It’s no good to think the worst. Hope is the only thing we have.”

  “And we don’t have a whole lot of it,” Brandon blurted, tilting his head back for another sip. “Hope won’t bring back my sister or my parents. I’m alone now, without anyone to call my own.”

  Clay didn’t speak. Brandon’s snide tone cut through him. Beside him, Daniels leaned toward Alayna, sadness in his eyes. “You know, Alayna,” he began, “I’m really sorry for everything that happened. I mean, how I treated you. Not listening to you. And then—and then becoming a part of you and Megan’s fight—” He paused, his voice haggard. “I didn’t mean for this to come out of it.”

  Alayna turned away from him, blinking wildly, hiding tears. “Whatever, Lieutenant. You cocky bastard. You thought you could save us all. But all you did was ruin my life.” Her voice was wistful, almost lost. She lifted a finger high in the air, gesturing toward Ralph. “Pour me one of those, will you?”

  Ralph bowed his head, pouring the drink and sliding it across the countertop. Alayna wrapped her hands around it, sipping it with closed eyes. With that single motion, Clay felt her slipping away.

  Suddenly, Clay noticed movement out the window. Something white flashed across the corner before darting out of sight. He rushed forward, pressing his nose close to the glass. “What the hell,” he muttered.

  “What is it?” Daniels asked, joining him.

  There, in the center of Main Street, stood a tall, dark-haired man wearing a long white medical coat. He held his chin high as he moved, walking in great strides with a sense of immediacy.

  “Who’s that?” Daniels asked, eyeing Clay. “You know everyone in this town, don’t you?”

  Clay shook his head, trying to get a better look at the man’s face. “He’s a stranger.”

  “I thought you swept the town clean?” Brandon asked.

  Clay turned from the window, questions running through his mind. He charged toward the staircase, Daniels hot on his heels. Who was this mysterious man wandering through Carterville?

  Chapter 52

  Clay and Daniels bounded from the hotel and ran down Main Street and toward the white-coated man. The moment their boots hit the pavement, the man heard them and began to run, his coat streaming behind him like a cape.

  “HEY! WE’RE NOT THEM!” Clay cried. “WE WANT TO HELP!”

  Daniels grunted. “I don’t think he thinks we’re going to eat him. He’s avoiding us for some other reason. Come on. He’s fast.”

  They bolted down Main Street, past the toy store and the church. Clay’s lack of sustenance made his limbs quake. He stretched his legs farther, watching as Daniels skirted ahead of him, chasing after the mystery man. He watched as the white coat turned at Moe’s Candy and bounded up the steps.

  Clay and Daniels reached the entrance right before the white-coated man tried to lock the door. Beneath his dark hair, he wore a panicked expression, assuring Clay that something was amiss. In this desolate scenario, why would anyone run from a sheriff?

  The man began to back through the candy store, busting his elbow against various containers. Gumballs and licorice and chocolate balls scattered to the ground. A smile stretched across his face, showing bright white teeth—so strange and stark amid all the candy.

  “Stop right there,” Clay ordered. “We’re just here to save you. You have nowhere to run.”

  The man’s eyebrows rose high. He took another step backward, knocking into a large jar of jelly beans. They spilled to the floor, raining oranges and reds and yellows. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man whispered, His voice ominous.

  Daniels lunged forward, reaching toward the tall, lanky ma
n. Just as his firm fingers wrapped around the man’s upper arm, the man reached behind him, grasping at what appeared to be a hidden door. He lunged against Daniels’s grasp, huffing. “Let go of me,” he protested.

  “WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?” Daniels blared, shaking him. “Didn’t you get the evacuation notice? Don’t you know you shouldn’t be here?”

  Clay stood beside him, then, glaring at the stranger. “We don’t want to hurt you. Just tell us what you’re running from. Why are you here? What’s going on?”

  The man bolted back toward the door again, grabbing a large jar of jawbreakers and throwing it at his pursuers. It smashed against Daniels’s face. He surged for the door again and rushed into the darkness. After a split second of panic, Daniels yanked him back into the light and punched him, first in the stomach and then across his temple. The man skidded back, flailing against the store shelves and shattering more jars of candy. His eyes closed, and he fell from consciousness.

  Clay gripped Daniels’s arm, flustered. “Why the hell did you do that?” he cried.

  “What do you mean?” Daniels asked, incredulous.

  “Why’d you punch him? Why’d you knock him out? You had him in your grasp,” Clay said, scoffing.

  “I don’t know what the big deal is. We got him, didn’t we?”

  “Sure. But he’s still civilized,” Clay said, gesturing to the man slumped on the ground. “This guy, he wasn’t showing signs of the crazed. I don’t think he was going to eat us or anything.”

  “But he was up to something, or why would he run and put up a fight?” Daniels said, shrugging. He lifted the man up by his armpits before flinging him over his shoulder.