Nests: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller

by Napier, Barry

  I felt a creeping fear in that moment but I was able to push it away. There was something about being in that great wide open space. We were in the middle of some town that I didn’t know the name of. I didn’t care what the name of it was. Our first planned stop would be in Monroe, a smaller town (but bigger than this one) where I hoped we might be able to start looking for a vehicle of some kind.

  We meandered outside of the little town and found ourselves on a straight two-lane road that ran through more blackened trees. I kept my eyes peeled for any sort of culverts or drainage pipes along the edge of the road, hoping to find some sort of shelter for the night.

  Maybe it was beginner’s luck or God feeling that he owed us for our resilience, but just as real darkness began to fall, I caught sight of a house sitting just off of the road. It was a simple white house that was hidden relatively well in the trees. It was one of those properties that would have been absolutely drowned out by the golds and browns of fallen leaves in autumn. The driveway was round and empty. From where we stood, there seemed to be no real damage to its structure.

  “Might as well give it a try,” Kendra said, noticing that I had slowed and was eyeing the place.

  We walked down the short driveway towards the house. I handed Kendra the baby and then walked slowly inside to check the place out before we decided to call it home for the night. A quick sweep found nothing more than the smell of rotten food coming from the fridge in the kitchen. I saw no dead bodies, nor any sign of where other passersby had used the place for lodging.

  We settled down for the night in the living room. We had no candles and only a few batteries for the single flashlight that we had packed. So we sat in the darkness of the living room with ache sin out feet and hope in our hearts.

  The world was dead quiet all around us. I rubbed Kendra’s feet as she fed the baby.

  In the dark, I looked to my watch and saw that it was shortly after nine o’ clock. The baby was asleep on one of the blankets in the floor. I lay next to him and Kendra took the couch. I opened my mouth to ask Kendra if she still thought this was a good idea but sleep stole the words away before I could voice them.

  10

  The baby woke us up shortly after five in the morning. Kendra fed him a small breakfast of peaches and dry cereal before taking him to her breast. I knew she had concerns about her milk running low and I tried not to broach the topic unless she mentioned it first.

  As the baby ate, I rummaged through the house for anything of use. I found two individual packages of Saltines in the kitchen. I checked them over for mold and any sort of insects but found none, although they were very stale. Still, twenty crackers was a pretty big score for so early in the day.

  Everything else in the kitchen was either spoiled or had gone way past its expiration date, but I took a can of chicken broth that was only four months gone. I found batteries in a junk drawer, but they were C and we needed AA.

  I was looking through the bedroom closet when I heard the noise. It was coming from a great distance, but it was recognizable: an engine.

  And it was getting closer.

  I ran into the living room where Kendra was wiping the baby down with a cloth. She had heard the noise, too. She was looking towards the single window in the living room, her eyes wide. I knew that we were both thinking the same thing.

  If that vehicle belongs to someone looking for supplies, they’ll stop by this house if they see it.

  “Stay down,” I told her and went to the window.

  I could see the road clearly from the window. It sat less than fifty yards from the house in a slight bottom that was partially hidden by the trees. As I looked out, the engine grew louder. After a while, I could see the glow of headlights cutting through the lightless dawn. I could tell by their approach that the vehicle was moving fast. I thought the likelihood of them stopping at the house was very small due to their speed.

  Seconds later, a beat up 70s model pickup truck went roaring by. It did not slow as it passed. Still, its presence meant that there could be people in the area. And we had learned a long time ago that you could not trust anyone anymore.

  With that slight scare in us, we packed up. I added the crackers and broth to our bags as well as one more blanket I found in the top of one of the bedroom closets. We waited for some semblance of sunlight and then headed back out onto the road.

  11

  Shortly after eleven o’ clock, we passed a sign that read: Welcome to Monroe. On the other side of the sign sat a town that looked to have been mostly spared by nuclear fallout, but had been victimized by arson. It made me think of the scene in New York where I had watched Ma die in the chaos of one of the riots.

  That seemed like a lifetime ago, watching Ma fall to the street. Countless people had trampled her before the army truck had come through. I had watched the truck plow through numerous participants of the riot and it didn’t even dawn on me that they wouldn’t see Ma until the front wheels caught her.

  I shook the memory away as Kendra and I walked into Monroe. I held the rifle out in front of me, ready to fire if needed. Kendra was wearing the baby sling and softly held his head to her chest as we walked on. She carried our pistol in her free hand but I could tell from the way she held it that she was not really prepared to use it.

  Monroe was quiet. The air smelled very faintly of smoke and an earthy smell that reminded me of thick red mud. I started looking for a car dealership, hoping we’d catch a break that was even bigger than finding that house at the last minute the previous night.

  As it turned out, we didn’t need to locate a dealership. Two blocks into Monroe, we came by an abandoned car. It was a 2002 Ford Eclipse, its headlights busted and its windshield cracked. I looked inside and, amazingly, saw keys hanging from the ignition. There was also blood in the floorboard, on the dash, and splattered in the driver’s seat.

  From the looks of it, the owner had been injured and had been forced to abandon the car in a hurry.

  “It’s got to be out of gas, right?” Kendra asked. “We can’t be that lucky, can we?”

  “Let’s see,” I said, opening the driver’s side door.

  The blood was dried on the seat and the steering column. It was also splattered along the panel that held the gas gauge. It struck me as odd that there was this much dried blood in the car, but no damage to the windows. There was no evidence of a body. Something bad must have happened to the driver and they apparently had not been able to make it farther than Monroe.

  The fact that there was no body in the car made me certain there would be no gas in its tank. Still, I reached over and tried the keys. There was a hiccup in the engine before it finally caught. The engine sounded like it might be straining a bit. I watched the gas gauge and was surprised when I saw that it hovered just over the E.

  “Not much, but there’s some,” I said. The fact that the low gas indicator light wasn’t on yet was enough for me. We had enough gas for at least thirty miles; depending on the car’s mileage and our luck, maybe as much as sixty or so.

  I ignored the blood as we got inside. It felt odd to be behind the wheel of a car again but I wasted no time in shifting into drive once we tossed our things into the back seat. I drove through the main thoroughfare of Monroe, watching the husks of businesses and houses as they passed. Monroe was a featureless town. Even before the world went to hell, it had probably been dead most of the time.

  We saw for bodies on one of the streets, lying side by side. Two of them had their hands interlocked. They all looked to have been shot. We passed a McDonald’s, a Subway, a Dollar General and a supermarket that had burned to the ground. Less than two miles later, we were out of the town’s main hub. The road along the outskirts of the town was clear. There were no wrecked cars or debris in the road, although we did see the broken shapes of two more bodies lying in a small front yard of a quaint white house.

  Kendra surprised me when she reached out and rubbed my arm. When I looked to her, she was smiling. I hadn
’t seen her smile like that in a very long time. The baby was asleep against her chest, cradled in the sling with a faint smile of his own on his slumbering face.

  “What?” I asked her.

  There was something in her eyes that excited me. It was something hopeful and almost joyous. When she smiled at me again, her eyes narrowed and it became something else entirely. I thought it might be what her face would look like in those weighty and anxious few seconds before sex.

  “If it’s going to be this easy,” she said, “I wish we would have left a long time ago.”

  I wanted to tell her that it was far too soon to be making such assumptions. We’d run out of gas within an hour or so. It would save us some walking, sure, but that was about it. It might shave a day or two off of our total trip time.

  I said nothing, though. I simply returned her smile, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with her.

  No more than three minutes passed before the car was filled with the sound of abrupt static.

  Kendra and I both jumped. The baby made a fussy noise against Kendra’s breast, but then fell back asleep. We stared at one another and when I saw her eyes pleading for some sort of explanation, I became suddenly terrified.

  I’m supposed to protect her, I thought. What if I can’t?

  The thought didn’t have time to take root. Instead, the sound of static filled the car again.

  “What the hell?” Kendra said.

  The static continued this time and filled the car in a low consistent drone. Within a few seconds, it was accompanied by a high pitched whining in the background. It was a sound I was not familiar with, but had heard in movies and TV shows. I thought it was the sound of uninterrupted AM radio static at first.

  But then there was the click, followed by silence.

  Then a voice filled the car, quiet, and almost robotic.

  “Is someone there? Did someone pick up the Eclipse?”

  For a moment, I was confused to the point of absurdity. Were we sharing some delusion or were we under some sort of attack that I didn’t understand? But as my nerves settled and I looked around for answers, I noticed the black wire that ran along the carpeted runner of the console and the floorboard. It was thick enough so that I should have seen it from the start, before we even got into the car. But I had been so flabbergasted that the damned car had actually started, I had missed such trivial things.

  I saw this black wire snaking around to the rear of the console where all of the radio wiring was located. The other end wound beneath my seat.

  “I’m going to pull over,” I told Kendra.

  She nodded as the voice sounded out again. This time, I knew it for what it was. It was someone speaking to us through a CB radio.

  “Hello?” the male voice said. “Is someone there?”

  I pulled the car to the side of the road. A few yards ahead of us, I saw a road sign that read: Now Leaving Monroe. Visit Again Soon!

  I opened the car door and looked under the driver’s seat. Sure enough, there was an old CB radio hidden there. I pulled it out and looked at it as if I had never seen one before.

  “What was it doing under there?” Kendra asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  I had never used a CB radio before but my reliance on movies told me what to do. I picked up the mic and pressed in the call button on the side.

  “Hello. Who am I speaking to?” Then, just because it felt right and I had never had the chance to do so before in my life, I added: “Over.”

  I let go of the button and the car was silent for a few seconds. There was a brief hiss of static and the man’s voice returned.

  “My name is Tom Vance,” he said. “I’m a member of the National Guard. We placed that CB under the seat of that Eclipse almost a month ago. How many are in your party? Over.”

  I looked to Kendra. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to divulge this information. Even if it was the National Guard on the other end, the whole set-up seemed odd.

  “Why did you place the CB under the seat?” I asked.

  “We are well aware that there are some still out there that might not need the car, but would find the CB valuable. So we hid it from plain sight, that way, only someone in need of the car would find the CB. We also hid a tracking device under the hood. Over.”

  It still didn’t make much sense to me, but I felt better about the situation.

  “Where are you?” I asked. “Over.”

  “We’re in Athens,” the man responded. He sounded a little peeved at having to answer so many questions. “You should have enough gas to reach us. I repeat, how many are in your party?”

  Before pressing the call button again, I looked to Kendra.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “If he is with the National Guard, I think we’d be fools not to meet up with him and his people,” she answered. “We might not have to travel all the way to the Blue Ridge Mountains to survive.”

  It was the same thought I’d had. But I also had another one. “What if it’s a hoax? What if it’s just some violent criminal that is baiting people wandering on the road? What if we get to Athens and find a lone man that shoots us in the head just to take our supplies?”

  Kendra considered this for a moment and gave me a half-smile. “Then we have guns too, and he’d be in for a hell of a fight.”

  I looked from her to the baby. I weighed our options and knew in that instant that she was letting me make the decision. It was one of those unspoken marriage-like things that had developed between us in our six months together.

  I pressed the call button again but didn’t speak right away. I looked ahead to the empty road and the sign that told us we were leaving Monroe.

  “Three,” I answered finally. “Myself, a woman, and a baby. The baby is six months old. Over.”

  The man responded almost instantly. It was impossible to be sure because of the static and poor quality of the CB radio, but I thought he sounded genuinely concerned.

  “Okay. Then here’s what you do if you want to meet up with us. We have food, water, and some scattered supplies. We have medicine, too. Come to Athens, but you have to come in a very direct way. Over.”

  “Why is that? Over.”

  “It’s one of those damned Black Spots. There’s a pretty big one between Monroe and Athens. You’ll have to take an out-of-the-way route to get here. You have a map? I can give you directions. Over.”

  Kendra and I shared a confused glance as I pressed the call button again. “What is a Black Spot?” I asked.

  “You haven’t encountered one yet?” He seemed surprised—so surprised that he forgot the Over.

  “Apparently not. We’ve been staying in a house in Kempry until now. We haven’t been out on the road for several months.”

  “Count yourself blessed. Over.”

  “So what is a Black Spot? Over.”

  The silence was longer this time. For reasons I couldn’t identify, the car seemed to shrink a bit. My heart was beating heavily in my chest.

  “I’ll explain it to you when you get here. Just know that, for now, any area of road or open spaces you see that look like they’re being swallowed by the shadow of approaching storm clouds should be avoided at all costs. Over.”

  “What?”

  Kendra was now looking out of the windshield with wide eyes, gazing to the sky. I followed her eyes and saw nothing but that familiar shade of grey.

  “Sir, you have only a little bit of gas. I suggest you come to Athens and we’ll fill you in. Over.”

  Kendra nodded at me. She was stroking the baby’s head in a way she did when she got nervous. “Let’s do it,” she said.

  I pressed the call button and said, “Okay. Give me directions. Over.”

  12

  Tom Vance gave very accurate directions. It actually helped to ease my mind a bit. He was so efficient with giving them that I couldn’t help but believe that he was part of the National Guard or some other branch of the military. If he was lying to us
for some unknown reason, then he was exceptionally good at it.

  He gave very specific instructions to turn off of Highway 78 and to take a roundabout way that would lead us towards Lawrenceville. When we came to the intersection he had indicated, Kendra and I both looked forward. Vance had instructed me to turn left here; he’d said to drive straight ahead towards Athens would be very bad. He explained as best as he could what we’d run into, and I hadn’t really believed him.

  But as we sat there at the intersection and stared at it through the windshield, I began to trust Tom Vance even more.

  Straight ahead, no more than half a mile after the four way intersection, we saw the edges of what Vance had referred to as a Black Spot. The landscape simply started to grow black in all directions. His description had been perfect; it was like looking at the horizon as fat storm clouds rolled in, only these storm clouds were nearly touching the ground. There were dark shadows everywhere, but no clouds overhead to cast them. The further back I stared, the darker it seemed to get. I couldn’t get away from the metaphor of a storm cloud. It was almost as if I was looking directly into one, looking further back into its black guts.

  “What the hell is that” Kendra asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You think it’s some sort of chemical reaction or something? Something to do with the nukes?”

  I only shrugged. It was hard to look away from that blackness. Even as I watched, it seemed to grow by the moment. It wasn’t hard at all to believe that the darkness eventually became so great that the world simply faded away somewhere further down that stretch of Highway 78. Although it resembled the blackest of storm clouds, I had the eerie feeling that it was sentient—that it knew we were there and studying it.

  As I stared, the car dinged at me. I looked to the console and saw that the gas gauge had come on. The needle was sitting on the E. I had maybe twenty-five to thirty miles left. Looking into the darkness Vance had referred to as a Black Spot made this realization all the more terrifying.