by Brian Rowe
By the time she started speeding her way through Reno, wearing a low-cut red dress, her curly black hair falling down below her shoulders, she had already murdered over 500 people. And that didn’t include everyone around the world she had set her diabolical curse on. Hannah was just getting warmed up. And as she started heading up the hill toward the Caughlin Ranch neighborhood, she giggled to herself, knowing that after the clock struck noon, the misery and suffering and destruction in every city, in every country, would officially begin. The end was near. And the world was about to be hers.
“Out of the way!” Hannah screamed, swerving around cars, running over a screaming woman in the middle of the road, as she tried to outrun the vehicles behind her, which had tripled in the last ten minutes. “They’re gaining on me,” Hannah said to herself, glancing in her rearview mirror to see an endless stream of cop cars and bright, colorful sirens. “They’re trying to keep me from killing all these innocent people. So inconsiderate!”
Hannah slowly veered her car into the other lane, just for fun, to try to dodge the oncoming cars the best she could. Three cars, seven cars, fifteen cars, all swerved to the left and right, some of the cars speeding too fast, crashing into other vehicles, and flipping into the air. When Hannah saw an explosion behind her, she wished she had someone sitting next to her who could have filmed it.
“Pull your vehicle to the side of the road!” an old male cop shouted on his loudspeaker.
Hannah made her way back into the appropriate lane, ran a red light, and happily mauled down a homeless man, as well as an old couple who looked frightened but relieved that the nightmare was finally over.
“You want me to pull my vehicle to the side of the road, huh?” Hannah said to the rearview mirror, where she could see nearly a dozen police cars following her as she made her turn. “As you wish, Officer.”
Hannah nearly missed slamming into another barrage of cars as she pulled into a supermarket parking lot. She looked franticly for her destination, and slammed the brakes when she found what she was looking for.
“You want me? Come and get me.”
Hannah stepped outside of her car and turned around to see at least fifteen cop cars approach her from every which way. Men and women, all old, all in pain, jumped out and pointed their guns at Hannah. She just giggled.
“Put your hands in the air!” the same officer from before shouted. He looked the oldest of all.
Hannah kept giggling. “As you wish.”
She brought her hands up in the air, but she didn’t keep them there for long. She lashed out the red streams of light from her palms, one after another, starting to her left, then her right, then finally in the middle. Some cops started fleeing, and a select few started shooting, as most of the cop cars shot up into the sky, bursting into flames, as Hannah kept unleashing the deadly streams of light out of her swollen palms.
One of the cops, a woman who looked twenty in the face but old everywhere else, just kept firing her gun at Hannah, as if she had an infinite amount of bullets. Hannah struck a few more cop cars, shot her streams of light at a few others, then brought both of her palms together to make a large ball of fire that grew to be more than three feet high. When the young woman fired again, Hannah fired her own weapon, the big ball of red fire smashing against the woman’s head and decapitating it from her body.
“Jesus Christ,” she said, “that Comedy Central show was right about you bumbling morons! You’re all nincompoops!”
She shot a few more streams out of her palms, but there wasn’t much more to kill, or explode. When the last of the cops fled the area, Hannah turned around, shook her hands for a few seconds, and calmly licked her lips. She wasn’t just hungry. She was thirsty now, too.
“Can’t have a girl watch the end of the world on an empty stomach, now can we?”
Hannah approached the shopping center before her. Starbucks was closed indefinitely, so she fired off her red light and blew up the building. She did the same to McDonald’s, then to the supermarket, as well as a tiny salon in the corner, just for the fun of it.
Before the hour was up, Hannah was surrounded by fire, with the burning of buildings, cars, and corpses all around her. She could hear screaming in the distance, more sirens going off. She could smell the dead bodies, which were filling up the streets now more than the living.
She locked her car, just in case, and started making her way up to the one building in the center that was actually open, and the only one that didn’t have flames shooting out its windows.
Hannah entered the establishment and nodded to the elderly chubby man in the back, who obviously wasn’t expecting much business today.
“Uhh… may I help you?” he asked.
“Yes, thanks, hi,” Hannah said with a smile. “I’d like a foot-long, please. The five-dollar foot-long.”
“Uhh, OK.” The smoke from the adjacent supermarket was starting to seep its way into the sandwich shop. The man looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but here. “What kind of bread?”
“Wheat, please. I’m watching my figure.”
“Oh… all right…”
“I’ll have a turkey sandwich. Swiss cheese. The works, please. Just hold the olives.”
The man was trembling. Both he and Hannah turned around to see a police officer running past the establishment screaming, his body engulfed in fire.
Hannah turned back to the sweaty employee. “Pretty hot out there, isn’t it?”
He swallowed loudly and asked, “Would you like your sandwich toasted?”
She leaned in. “Absolutely.”
The man served her the foot-long sandwich for free, and Hannah surprised him with a twenty-dollar tip.
“Have a wonderful day!” she shouted, swiping a bag of Lay’s potato chips, and a large iced tea.
“Uhh… you too…” Hannah heard the man say softly as she kicked the door open and stepped back out into the big, scary world.
Hannah pulled her phone out of her pocket and kept her eyes glued to it as a cop slowly crept up from behind with his gun. Hannah didn’t even turn around; she had sensed him coming for the last ten seconds. When he approached her dangerously close, she formed a ball of red light in her palms, lifted her hands up in the air, and swung the ball backward, splitting the cop into two pieces.
“Hey Yolanda, it’s me,” Hannah said on the phone, approaching her truck. “Call me back when you get this. Let me know how it’s going over there.”
She threw the phone down on the passenger seat and started her car up again, maneuvering past body parts and crashed cars as she pulled out of the parking lot.
Hannah had the address written on a piece of paper, and it took her a few minutes to find it in the glove compartment. But it didn’t take her long to find the house in question. She made her way to the back of the posh, mostly desolate Caughlin Ranch neighborhood, to find Cameron Martin’s house up top a hill that looked out over the city. It was a remarkable view, one that was especially joyful to Hannah because she could see all the destruction she’d imposed on the city in the last hour, particularly with all of the burning casino buildings in the distance.
But one building she hadn’t touched was the house in front of her. Charred, smoking, looking ready to implode on itself, Cameron’s dilapidated house sat sad and sickly before her. Hannah stepped outside her car and crossed her arms with frustration, realizing that this little problem could throw a wrench in her plan.
But when the mad-eyed, curly-haired woman appeared from the side, Hannah could do nothing but smile.
“Oh thank God, thank God,” the woman said, her face and clothes dirtied, tears streaming down her face. “Please… help me…”
Hannah rushed up to Kimber, a fourteen-year-old who now looked to be in her early fifties, and grabbed hold of her shoulders. She pretended like she was there to help. “Oh my word! Miss, are you OK?”
“My mom… she’s…” Kimber started coughing. “She was in the house… she was…”
She started coughing again, and Hannah sighed, knowing that the time spent with this girl was going to be agonizing.
“Just relax,” Hannah said.
“I called the cops… I called 911…” Kimber said. “Nobody came… nobody bothered! You’re the first person to show up!”
“It’s OK… come with me…”
Hannah tugged on Kimber’s hand and started bringing her toward the car. But the sounds of barking stopped the both of them.
“What’s that?” Hannah asked.
“CINDER!” Kimber shouted. “There you are!”
Kimber kneeled down and planted big, wet kisses on the family dog. She hugged the animal and started crying again. “Oh Cinder… I thought you died, too… I thought you were taken, too…”
“Come on, Kimber,” Hannah said. “We need to get you help. You can’t stay here.”
“I know,” she said. “But can my dog come, too?”
“No. Only you.”
“Why?”
“You’re in shock,” Hannah said. “You’re not thinking clearly. You can’t think about anyone else but yourself, understand? Now take my hand and come with me.”
But Kimber didn’t move forward; instead, she took a step back, holding onto her dog with a death grip.
“I don’t understand why I can’t bring my dog,” she said. Then Kimber stared at Hannah suspiciously. She opened her mouth, then closed it. When she opened it again, Hannah knew the question headed her way. “Wait a minute. How did you know my name?” Kimber asked. “I’ve never seen you before.”
“I’m friends with your brother,” Hannah said.
“With Cameron?”
“Yes. He’s one of my best friends.”
Hannah was bored. And she was tired of talking. So she kicked Kimber in the groin, knocking her to the hot cement pavement. The dog started barking at Hannah, but she picked it up by the neck and tossed it into the bushes beside her.
She grabbed Kimber by her hair and pushed her forward, all the way up to her car. Kimber tried to make a run for it, but Hannah leapt forward and slammed Kimber’s face into the front of her Dodge Ram, which was drenched in blood. When Kimber fell to her back, she looked up at Hannah with a gruesome face that didn’t look old or young anymore, just revolting.
“This should keep you pretty still until we’re ready for the big showdown,” Hannah said, unleashing a small but painful stream of red light against Kimber’s stomach. “Try to make a move, and I’ll kill you.”
Hannah shoved Kimber into the passenger seat and slammed the door. Then she jumped into the driver’s seat, blasted the AC, and grabbed her sandwich. She savored every bite—the swiss cheese had been a smart choice, and the wheat bread was light and fluffy—as she admired the view of the burning house before her and the comatose girl to the side of her. She saw the dog appear again, and she considered running her over.
But she didn’t. As much as she deplored human beings, Hannah didn’t have any issues with animals.
“I’ll let you go,” she said to the black cockapoo in the distance. “For now, anyway.”
She turned on the ignition and backed out of the driveway, quickly making her way to the street down the hill.
Hannah smiled and looked at the clock.
“It’s almost eleven,” Hannah said, rubbing her palms together, this time not to make a ball of light, but to showcase her growing enthusiasm. She turned to Kimber. “You think you’re looking old now? Just you wait.”
Even though Kimber was barely moving, Hannah could see the growing rage in her eyes.
“Your brother’s still alive,” Hannah said, “and he’s gonna try his best to save you. Let’s just say it’s going to be fun to see him try.”
Hannah thought she had weakened Kimber to the point where only her eyes could move. But it turned out that Kimber’s mouth could work, too.
Kimber hocked a huge loogie right at Hannah’s face, striking her on the cheek just below her eyes.
Hannah wiped the slimy glob of spit from her cheek, shook it off her fingertips, and slammed her fist in Kimber’s face, knocking her out cold.
“What a little bitch,” Hannah said, pulling onto the Steamboat Ditch trail up above the neighborhood and heading toward her ultimate destination.
15.
“I mean… but… how are you feeling, Wes? Are you in pain?”
“There wasn’t any at first,” Wesley said. “But now I’m feeling sick and achy all over, like I have the flu. And at the start of every hour, on the dot, I get this really sharp, intense pain that lasts about a minute.”
“Yeah,” I said, sitting beside Wesley in the back seat, trying to comfort him as Liesel drove the car, “that’s the feeling of your body aging a whole year in the blink of an eye. Fun, isn’t it?”
“I had no idea about the pain you went through,” Wesley said. “I’m sorry I didn’t have more sympathy, especially last year, when you really needed me.”
“What are you talking about? You gave me that video.”
“That was a stupid nothing. Cam, I’ve never been there for you the way I could be. Looking death in the face kind of opens up your eyes.”
“You’re not going to die, Wes.”
“Aren’t I?”
I sighed and turned my attention to Liesel. “How much further, Leese?”
“We’re ten minutes from Reno,” she said. “We’re almost to the state line. How’s he doing?”
“He’s OK,” I said.
“How’s your leg, Cam?” Liesel asked. “Does it still hurt?”
“It stings. But I’ll be all right.”
I saw Liesel eyeing me in the rearview mirror. She didn’t seem to be holding herself together as well as before. She looked panicked, like even she didn’t know what today’s outcome was going to be.
“Cam, since Wesley’s house is closer than yours, I say we stop at his place and swap cars. We have no idea if those cops are still hunting us. We don’t have the time. We can’t risk being pulled over again.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Good idea.”
Wesley coughed, then said, “Cam, how old do you think I am?”
I just shook my head. “It’s hard to say.”
“Fifty? Sixty, maybe?”
“Something like that.”
“Why does this have to be happening so much faster than when it happened to you last year?”
I hugged my friend, knowing that there was a strong possibility he wouldn’t make it to tomorrow. “I don’t know.” I took a deep breath. “Wes, right now, we need to focus on getting you better. And I promise you… I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure you get through this. You understand me?”
“It’s OK if you can’t,” Wesley said. “I’m just glad I got to see you one more time.”
I had to keep myself from crying as Liesel pulled off the I-80 freeway and headed toward Wesley’s home up off McCarron Blvd. It was almost eleven. Time was running out.
Wesley had to give Liesel proper directions to the house. I hated admitting it, but I hadn’t been over to Wes’s in years, probably not since junior year of high school. I remembered the house well, though; it wasn’t as big as mine, but impressively large just the same, sitting at the end of a small cul-de-sac. I remembered the paved trail that ran alongside his house and behind his backyard, all the way down to the hidden lake at the bottom of the hill. We camped out back there a lot as kids, and part of me wished we could visit that serene location one last time.
Liesel pulled into the driveway, nearly crashing into the garage door before slamming on her brakes.
“OK, Wes,” she said, jumping out. “Where’s your car? We need to swap.”
“It’s in the garage,” Wes said. “You’re gonna need to back out.”
“Oh, duh.” Liesel looked tenser than ever. Throughout the terror of the last week and a half, she had for the most part kept her cool. But now she looked like she was suffering a bout of anxiety; all the fear she’d
been bottling up inside had finally started scratching her surface.
Don’t freak out now, Leese, I thought. Please. You’re the only one who can get me through this.
Liesel parked next to the paved trail and pulled Wesley out of the back seat. “Do you know where the car keys are?”
“They’re in the… they’re in the—”
Wesley released a loud shriek and fell backward, slamming his head against the car door and hitting the ground on his left side.
“Wes!” I shouted, stumbling out of the car, my right leg still aching. “Wes, what is it?”
“The pain…” he said. “Oh God, it hurts…”
I stared at his face, and I watched with horror as a group of lines literally morphed right onto his cheeks, and around his frightened eyes. I watched, shocked, completely bewildered, as Wesley literally grew a year older right in front of my face.
“Leese, what time is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Eleven, maybe?”
“11:01,” Wesley said, looking at his wristwatch. He breathed through his nose a few times, before sitting up. “It’s OK. I’m OK now.”
I looked at Liesel with sadness and despair. In an hour, the pain’s not gonna strike once an hour. It’s gonna strike once a minute. The pain’s never gonna let up. He’ll be in pain until he dies.
“Come on, let’s go inside,” Wesley said. “I’ll get you guys the keys, and you can be on your way.”
“OK,” Liesel said, before giving me a worried glance.
The three of us made our way over the lawn and toward the front door.
“Is anybody home?” Liesel asked.
“No,” Wesley said with a frown.
“What about your parents?” I asked.
Wesley just shook his head. He didn’t have to say anything more. If Wesley looked as old as he did now, there was no saying what his parents would’ve looked like if they were still alive. We heard a loud barking at the door, followed by a discernable meowing sound.
