Shelter

by C A Bird

  Directly in front of her was a reptilian monster creeping forward towards an unsuspecting Mark. Mark stood frozen, looking up… way up, at the largest of the creatures she had yet seen. The smell in the corridor was overwhelming. The decaying, putrefying, beast glared at Mark, grinning, anticipating its most satisfying kill, and behind this monster, huddled together and sobbing in the darkness, just barely visible, were her babies and little Jeremy Thompson!

  “Mark! Behind you!” She was afraid to shoot with him in the line of fire.

  Her scream broke the spell, and the Arby thing lunged for Mark. He pulled the trigger on the shotgun, aiming high to avoid any possibility of hitting the children, and leaped to the side!

  Arby screamed as Mark’s shotgun blast took him in the chest, slowing him down and causing pain, but little damage and Lori saw Mark disappear into the side corridor. She opened fire at the nearest monster. Lori saw the gigantic creature beyond start for Mark but then it saw her, and confused and enraged by her gunfire, it paused. She was still filling the closer monster full of lead when it fell into the flood leaving Arby a clear view of her. It was ambivalent, swinging its head from side-to-side looking at her and then at Mark.

  Mark scrambled to his feet, from where he’d dived into the water still grasping the shotgun and trying to hold it above water. It was drenched. “Would it still work?” he wondered.

  “Come on, you Son-of-a-bitch!” He pulled the trigger. The bullet spray hit Arby again, irritating him further, and deciding for him that it was Mark he wanted. Mark had retreated down the corridor firing again and Arby followed slowly scratching at his wounds like they were mosquito bites. Mark fumbled to reload from the bandolier as he backed away. He fired once more before Lori moved into the intersection and Mark had to stop shooting or risk hitting her!

  “Lori! Get the kids! Go upstairs and get to the exit tunnel that way!” He heard a roar and saw other monsters approaching from her back.

  He saw her hesitate. Their eyes met - and for a moment he thought she wasn’t going to leave him. Her hand came up, reaching toward him.

  “Lori, for the love of God! Go!”

  With sudden determination she turned the Uzi toward the ceiling. She couldn’t aim directly at the thing without risk to Mark. She began firing into the exposed rock. He raised his shotgun and joined her in blasting away at the ceiling hoping neither of them would be hit with ricochet. Rocks and dirt flew everywhere and suddenly a massive portion of the ceiling gave way, collapsing on, and burying, the huge creature. She swung on the others she could hear approaching from behind her, firing everything she had, literally. The Uzi ran out of bullets.

  “Arrrgh!” she screamed at them furiously, and heaving the Uzi in their faces she turned once more toward Mark. Through the dust she saw him trying to reach her by climbing around the rubble, but his passage was effectively blocked.

  “Lori, go, I’ll meet you in the cave! Get out of the way!” She dove into the stairwell to allow him a clear shot of the remaining monsters. He stood firing at them through a space beside the rubble, slowing them down.

  She slammed the door. “Come on kids, let’s go! Climb the stairs. Quickly!” She knew Mark wouldn’t leave while there was still a chance she could be followed. She picked up Kevin, who held so tightly to her neck she didn’t even have to hold onto him, and grabbed Ashley’s hand. Jeremy ran up the stairs in front of them. She looked fearfully behind her but Mark’s gunfire was holding the creatures at bay. Mark kept firing, watching monsters fall, holding them back from entering the stairwell in pursuit of Lori.

  She hit the upper floor running, just as the gunfire below quit.

  “Oh, please God! Please let him make it!” she prayed as they sped down deserted corridors toward the back stairwell.

  Suddenly the rocks alongside Mark exploded apart as the giant creature buried in the debris reached out and clutched Mark’s rifle, jerking it roughly from his hands and pulling him forward, where he fell into the deepening, now muddy, water. He choked down a mouthful of foul liquid, coughing and sputtering, which temporarily incapacitated him. The creature was trying to shake off the debris, picking up and flinging aside the rocks that held it pinned. Mark backed away, still unable to breathe. The creature would soon be free! He whirled and half ran, half swam toward the far corner. He was gaining control and making better progress as he reached the corner. Looking back he saw the monster pulling itself free from the debris. The others bellowed and surged forward but the gigantic creature turned on them, threw out its long arms and let out an ear-piercing scream that stopped them in their tracks. The man-thing was his!

  Mark rounded the corner and his heart leapt as he saw Lori, David and the children enter the escape tunnel. Then he couldn’t see anything as the red glow faded, the emergency lights finally failing 50 yards too soon! He heard the susurration of the air conditioning cease, as the shelter that had been their home for eight months took its last breath and died.

  He was running in darkness, darker than he had ever known, had ever thought possible, as though light was gone forever from his world. He sprinted through the endless corridor with something unspeakable in pursuit. He could hear it coming closer.

  Running, trying to escape its unclean grasp as water flowed all around in a tide that climbed up his legs, his hips, swirling by him on all sides, seeming to come from everywhere. The water trapped him as he moved in slow motion, as though his legs were embedded in concrete - while the thing behind him gained ground. He heard it come around the corner into the hallway he was traversing. If only he could enter the tunnel and have the door close behind him!

  He smashed his face into the wall ahead of him. The escape door was on his left. Frantically he felt for the manual lever. He could hear the thing coming through the dark!

  He found it and heaved with all his might, waiting while the door took forever to open. He turned sideways and scraped through even before it drew back completely.

  Mark groped forward with his hand on the wall until the tunnel turned to the left. The escape cave had its own battery-powered emergency power system and Mark saw a light at the end of the quarter-mile tunnel, impossibly small, so far away it was still pitch black at this end. He heard a noise at the door behind him and whirled to see, but it was too dark to make out anything. He realized that with no power the doors had remained open. He heard, rather than saw, clawed hands grab the edges and slowly try to force them to open wider. He turned and partially swam, partially ran as fast as he could. A quarter-mile. The length of a single, oval high school track. It looked like a mile.

  The tunnel slanted slightly upward, curving, gaining approximately four feet by the time it reached the cave. He sped up slightly as the depth of the water decreased, and halfway down the tunnel he looked back… wishing that he hadn’t. The creature had made it through the door into the tunnel and had just come around the corner.

  It was gaining rapidly, deadly silent, intent on overtaking him.

  As he came closer to the light, he saw figures in front of the opening. Then two things happened, filling him with dread! One of the figures broke free from restraining arms and entered the tunnel, running in his direction.

  Lori!

  And the other, was that the level of the water reached almost to the level of the cave floor!

  He screamed at her, barely able to breathe with the exertion of sprinting for so long through the deep water, “Get back! There’s... nothing... you... can...do!”

  One hundred feet...!

  The water reached the level of the cave floor and started sloshing into it. Three figures had followed Lori into the tunnel and they grabbed her, dragging her back into the cave.

  The huge, metal blast door began to descend!

  “Oh God, no,” he whispered, knowing it was sensor controlled and they couldn’t stop it. It was designed to prevent the flooding of the cave in event the reservoirs were damaged. He was sure they could see the thing in pursuit of him. Fifty feet and he c
ould hear the creature close behind!

  He was so exhausted he was certain he couldn’t go on, his legs were leaden, his lungs burning with every inhalation. The door was slowly sinking, halfway down now, six feet to go. He saw Lori struggling, could hear her pleading with them to release her as they dragged her back into the cave.

  The opening was filled with people encouraging him to go faster.

  “Come on Mark!”

  “You can do it.”

  “Run, man!”

  “Sprint!”

  A thunder of voices, all pleading, cheering him on. The water was down to his calves, the door down to four feet, faces peering under it.

  Twenty feet.

  Through ankle-deep water he accelerated, heard the creature’s bellowing, furious scream, trying to paralyze its prey with fear. He felt it grab for his shirt as he lunged forward, the shirt ripping off his back as sharp claws tore skin and fabric together, digging deep and burning all the way down his back. He juked toward the side of the tunnel and angled back toward the door causing the beast to miss its second grab and lining him up for his only chance.

  The opening under the door was now just two feet high. He ran and jumped, splashed onto the ground hard, his body as parallel to the door as possible. The air whooshed from his lungs as his breath was knocked out, and he again inhaled water as he rolled under the descending door. His mind blanked out, endorphins raging, as he expected to be crushed. The only thing he perceived was a tremendous, frustrated shriek and the sound of a heavy body smashing into the barrier as he cleared the door. Hands grabbed him and pulled him along the floor. The door thunked down in its track, cutting off the flood and damning the creature from hell to its rightful resting place.

  Then he was in Lori’s arms.

  “Oh Mark, thank God!” She was on her knees, her arms around him, her face buried in his neck.

  He reached out and held her close. “I love you, Lori! I thought I was going to lose you!”

  “Never, not ever,” she murmured, shocked to hear his words. “I love you too.” And they clung together in the cavern, as others pounded him vigorously on the back.

  May 8, 10:30 a.m.

  Light..., white, blinding light. The light flooding the cave had a brilliance the survivors had not seen in months, intensified by reflections off the dust particles that twinkled like fairy dust, filling the cave and puffing toward the slowly opening doors. The color was wrong. They had become used to the 3200 K wavelength of artificial illumination. It felt like the old days, coming out of a movie theater during the brightest part of the day. As the gap in the rock wall slowly widened they threw their arms across their faces to soften the glare. There was an impression of limitless blue sky and they realized this back entrance to the shelter was above the ground level of the valley. There had been no reason to wait to open the doors. The cave didn’t have any monitoring equipment and they couldn’t stay in the cave for any length of time.

  Mark quickly glanced at Darryl who was staring at the scintillation device in his hands having purposely turned off the audible alarm that would alert others to danger. Darryl looked up and nodded at Mark with a hopeful smile. Mark realized he was holding his breath and let it out slowly. There may be traces of radiation, but apparently it wasn’t in a dangerous or lethal range.

  The people in the cave were immobilized, staring through the widening aperture, as though not believing the world still existed beyond their shattered realm. The only sounds were Dr. Jim and Carmen urging Sandi to push against the pain that had reached its greatest intensity, her accompanying moans, and Pete’s murmurs of encouragement. Mark tore his gaze from the door and turned to Will whose eyes were fixed on the breach in the cave wall. The look of pain had vanished from his face and he now had an expression of satisfaction and joy. His eyes flicked briefly to Mark’s and he smiled. Then they closed, as his breathing became labored and his head dropped back against Chris’s shoulder. Mark jumped to his side, going down on his knees, and gently took Will from Chris who sat on the dusty ground, tears streaming down her cheeks and her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. Will’s breathing slowed and then ceased, and Mark held his body close for a few moments before lowering it to the ground. Aaron appeared beside him, his fingers on Will’s wrist. He looked at Mark and shook his head, then turning to Chris, he helped her to her feet and started to lead her toward the door.

  Through tears, Mark glanced around the large cavern. Over two hundred people, their eyes adjusting to the glare, slowly edged toward the open doors. The injured were carried or helped by others. Mark rose and took Lori’s hand, looked once more at Will, and with the children, they moved forward with the others. They would come back for Will and give him a proper burial in the valley below.

  At the side of the cave Sandi gave a final push and Dr. Jim held up the newborn child. As the bedraggled and battered group of survivors spilled out onto a wide shelf in front of the cave they heard his exclamation, “it’s a girl!”, and the baby’s cry echoed off the cave walls and spilled forth into their new world.

  Before them lay an incredible valley, the most beautiful place any of them could have imagined. Above, shining through gaps in the rocks, shafts of golden, morning sunlight spilled over the mountain top and cascaded out onto a huge green meadow that filled half the valley and extended to the mountains on the right. A forest covered the left side of the valley and a river ran through the meadow close to the forest’s edge. The river’s origin could be seen as a wide waterfall flowing out of the cliffs on their left and the entire valley, except for the very far side, was surrounded by sheer mountains, most still crowned by snow.

  The cave entrance was approximately fifty feet above the level of the valley floor. On the left, a path cut into the side of the mountain led down the cliff and through boulders and debris fallen from the cliff face. It traversed a rock bridge that spanned the river, crossed a meadow and disappeared into the forest. People began to move down the path, with the animals from the shelter herded before them. Mark, Lori and the children stood holding hands and staring across the magnificent valley. They could make out animals, possibly elk or deer, grazing at the far side of the meadow.

  William Hargraves had led them through the shelter to this beautiful valley, where they would have still another chance to survive the holocaust that had transformed their world. Mark didn’t know what the future held for any of them but he was willing to bet that Will had planned ahead to this eventuality, and they would find the tools they needed to make new lives somewhere in the forest beyond.

  Read Book Two “Emergence” next!

  Humanity Abides – Book Two

  “Emergence”

  Humanity Abides – Book Three

  “The Search For Home”

  carolannbird.com

  If you enjoyed the Post - Apocalyptic Series Humanity Abides, you may also enjoy:

  Blood Plague by L.A. Bird

  Apocalypse Aurora by Drake Dow

  And if you like Murder Mysteries and Thriller you might try:

  Dying Vengeance by L.A. Bird

  About the Author

  Carol has had a life-long interest in all things relating to survival. Joining the Army at the age of eighteen, she was the first woman to attend the U.S. Army Chemical School, and was trained in CBR, or Chemical, Biological and Radiological laboratory techniques. Carol has participated in two 10 day backpacking/survival trips and is a certified scuba diver. She has a private pilot’s license and has completed three 50k races, several marathons and many, many races at shorter distances. She graduated from California State University Northridge with a Bachelor of Science in Biology/biotechnology and has worked as a Clinical Laboratory Scientist for most of her adult life. Carol has three daughters and a son, and lives in Colorado Springs with one of her daughters, a granddaughter and her newly adopted grandson.