by Kody Boye
With that in mind, I knew we had to do everything we could to secure the supplies necessary to keep us, and the people of Fort Hope, comfortable for the coming winter.
Flowerpots were the first things we came across, though as fortunate as we were to find them, the plants inside were not so lucky. We dumped their contents, knocked the dirt from the sides, then arranged them alongside the curb before we headed into the first house. Jason shattered the door’s stained-glass window with his gun.
“Are you sure we should be breaking in like this?” I asked.
“Why shouldn’t we?” he replied, nodding to Asha as she craned her head to look inside. “It’s not like any of us know how to pick a lock.”
“True,” I said, “it just seems like we’re being too loud.”
“We’ll be fine. We have these. Remember?” He slapped the butt of his rifle and nodded as he broke the last of the glass, reaching in to unlocking the door. “Ladies first.”
I bit my tongue to keep from saying anything. Entering as silently as possible, I grimaced when my boots crunched across the broken glass and sent teardrops of sound throughout the silent space. It looked like a perfectly normal home, albeit one that had been abandoned for years. Though I wanted nothing more than to turn around and leave—as we were trespassing in a space that felt wrong beyond all sense of measure—I steeled myself and turned into the kitchen.
While Jason and Asha searched the pantry for nonessentials, I checked the drawers—gathering flashlights, candles, sticks of matches, and any plastic wrapping or aluminum foil that remained. While doing so, I listened to the sounds of Jason’s breathing, of his grunts as he shifted through items, as he lifted boxes from the top shelves and lowered them to the floor for Asha to sift through.
“I think this is all I’m going to find here,” I said, turning to face them.
“Go check the rest of the house then,” he said, then paused to look up at me. “Just be careful.”
“Are you sure you shouldn’t—”
He responded by reaching into the pantry and lifting another box.
Frowning, I waited to see if he or Asha would accompany me, but when neither did—and when Asha simply offered a shrug and mouthed, It’ll be all right—I hefted my gun into my hands and turned toward the deeper recesses of the home. The old wood creaked beneath my feet enough to spook me to no end. I passed into the living room and grimaced as I took note of the pictures on the walls—of a family that had once existed; of people who had once lived there; of individuals who were surely dead.
I was about to start toward the stairwell when a flicker of movement came from my left.
My gun was lifted instantly.
I peered down the hall and saw that the back door had been open the whole time.
“Jason!” I called, though I was no more than a few feet away from him and Asha. “Something’s—”
Something lunged from the opposite hallway.
My gun went off.
Its teeth sunk into my arm.
I screamed and struggled with all my might to free myself from the Coyote’s grasp, crying out in fear and rage as I slammed my fist into its gargantuan face. Jason appeared from the threshold, and the Coyote, having not expected a second individual, ceased its attacks to look at me. Gunfire sprayed the air and the creature bounded through the house, running as fast as it could.
It made it to the back door before the bullets cut it down, sending it sprawling against the wall and to the floor.
“Ana!” Jason cried, throwing himself to his knees. “Ana! Ana! Are you all right?”
“I’m… fine,” I managed, though the world started to spin and the blood in my mouth from where I’d bit my tongue overwhelmed my senses.
“Stay with me, Ana. Stay with me!”
“What’s going on?” Henshaw called as he burst through the front door.
“A Coyote attacked Ana!” Asha cried, pushing my hair from my eyes and taking my face in her hands. “Come on Ana. Stay with me.”
I reached out to take hold of her hand and forced a bloody smile. “I’ll be okay,” I said, struggling to maintain my focus as my eyelids grew heavier and heavier. “Everything’s going to be fine, Asha. Everything—”
The world spun and darkened.
Then I blacked out.
Chapter 6
After what felt like days, I awoke to the sound of grackles cawing in the distance. In more pain than I could have possibly imagined, I opened my eyes to find myself in a finely-painted apartment in which there were many stretchers. An IV line dripped into my left hand and my right arm was bandaged from wrist to elbow.
At first, I wasn’t sure what’d happened.
Then it all came back.
The house—
The shadow—
The Coyote—
The attack—
My head throbbed from where I’d struck the ground. My tongue, still swollen, bulged inside my mouth, slicing with pain each time I swallowed or whenever I opened my mouth to breathe. I tried to move—tried to push myself into a sitting position—but found myself unable to do so.
“What the—” I tilted my head down.
Two heavy leather straps secured my chest and waist to the bed.
Why was I tied up? What was going on?
“Hello?” I managed, though my throat was dry. Little more came out than a crack of sound. “Hello. Is anyone there?”
“Ana!” my sister cried, throwing herself from her seat in the corner of the room. “You’re awake.”
My mother followed close behind. “Thank the Virgin Mary.”
“What happened?”
“You were attacked by a Coyote,” Xiomara said. “Jason Parks saved you.”
“It’s all… fuzzy.” I grimaced as the creature’s face appeared in my mind, then as fresh pain radiated along my lower arm. “Why am I tied down though? What’s going on?”
“It’s a precaution,” Frank Henshaw said as he entered through the apartment door.
“You idiot!” my mother screeched. “How could you let a seventeen-year-old girl outside the walls?”
“It’s part of the territory, ma’am.”
“Mama,” Xiomara said. “Please, don’t—”
She launched into a tirade in Spanish, including several carefully-worded expletives that instantly made me blush. My mother rarely, if ever, swore. The captain merely stood and listened, either unaware of what she was saying or maintaining the best poker face I’d ever seen. By the time she finished, she had collapsed into tears. She kept repeating, Te amo, te amo, te amo mi hijita as she stroked my face like a mother cat separated from her kitten.
“I’m fine, Mama,” I said, wanting to reach up to push her away, but held in place by the restraints. “Really, I’m—”
My gaze shifted past her to settle on the captain as she took hold of my hand. He continued to watch me through narrowed eyes.
“Fine.” I drew my hand away from my mother’s grasp. “Mama… could the captain and I be alone for a moment?”
“I’m not leaving you,” she sobbed. “Not again.”
“Just for a minute,” I said. “No more.”
My sister—aware our mother would not leave without some intervention—stepped forward, took hold of her hand, and spoke softly in Spanish. I caught the tail end of a phrase I knew—we’ll be right back—before they walked out the infirmary’s front door.
When we were finally alone, I sighed and turned my attention to Captain Henshaw. “Tell me,” I said. “Why am I tied up?”
“People who were attacked by Coyotes in the past have… hallucinated,” he said, taking care to word his explanation as delicately as possible. “They’ve had violent fits. Psychotic episodes. Have claimed to see visions of other worlds before they’ve attacked anyone around them. This is why you’re strapped down.”
“But I feel fine.”
“So did they, at first.”
“Am I going to die?”
The cap
tain didn’t reply.
“Sir?” I asked, trying to fight the binds. “Why aren’t you answering me?”
“Those who were attacked by Coyotes in the past sustained more serious injuries. You should recover just fine.”
Should? I thought. I should recover and not, say, succumb to insanity from being bitten by an alien creature?
Not knowing what to say, I exhaled. I settled back on the pillow, allowing my upper body to relax as much as possible. “Can I have some water?”
He reached into a basket at the end of the bed to withdraw a bottle of water, then grabbed a straw from the nearby table and placed it to my lips.
I drank.
I sighed.
The water was bliss.
When I finished, he moved away, capped the bottle, and observed me for several long moments. “I’m sorry this had to happen on your first outing. The supplies you, Jason, and Asha recovered are going to help a lot of people sleep better when it starts snowing this fall.”
“Will I be able to go back to the wall?” I asked.
“As soon as you’ve recovered.” He turned and started for the door. “If you need anything, just yell. There’s a nurse in the other room.”
“How long will I have to stay tied up?” I asked as he opened the door and stepped across the threshold. “Captain. Captain! How long am I—”
He shut the door without an answer.
I closed my eyes, tightened my jaw, and struggled to free myself from the binds.
It was no use.
The straps were too tight, my body unable to fight any harder. It looked like I would be in it for the long haul.
The day passed. Darkness came. I dozed inconsistently until the full moon shone through the high windows, and fell asleep only after the beams fell across my face.
Then the dreams began.
They were inconsequential at first—images of a place I had never seen, of a land I couldn’t possibly have imagined. A multitude of standing stones adorned rolling gray hills. The Coyotes stalked around their fixtures, dancing to the beat of an unheard drum. Above, a disc-shaped Harvester flew. It beamed Them up slowly, one by one, and took off. It moved faster than the speed of light, until it came to hover in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. This was when the dream shifted—to a time and place I knew as September 17th, 2024. I saw, in my mind’s eye, an image of the house I used to live in, of a terrified family hiding beneath a dining room table.
We have to run, my father’s voice said.
We have nowhere to go, my mother replied. Quiet. It might hear us.
I thought I’d been invisible all those years ago, when looking upon the creature. The dream made me realize it had seen me all along. Through its eyes, I watched it fumble for the doorknob. It stared through the window and its mouth parted with a sinister grin when it finally understood how to open the door. Laughter escaped its chest.
Then it stopped.
The dream shifted to darkness, then revealed a single entity’s face. Tall, grey, with three bulbed fingers—it looked at me with a pair of black eyes that held intelligence far beyond my own. I trembled as it reached out to touch me.
The dream ended before it could do more.
Quivering and dripping with sweat, I glanced at the nearby window to see light brightening the horizon and listened as doves began to sing.
“Hello?” I asked, clearing my throat when my voice cracked. “Is anyone there?”
Doctor Helen Parish rounded the corner with a kind smile. “Hello Ana,” she said, reaching out to adjust the IV drip along my arm. “I hope you slept well last night.”
“I had… dreams,” I said.
“Of what?” The doctor frowned.
I paused, unsure if I should proceed. There was something in her eyes—in the way she looked at me, in the way her mouth pulled downward—that made me reconsider telling her any more. I was, of course, tied to the bed; and was considered a potential danger to those around me. So rather than speak the truth, I lied. “Of the night it happened.”
“The First Harvest?” she asked. I nodded “I’m sorry to hear that. But at least you know it was only a dream and it will never happen again. Right?”
Wary of the way she peered at me, I nodded. I didn’t seem to be a patient who, after being attacked by a vicious animal, needed all the care and attention in the world. Instead, she viewed me as a monstrosity—a ticking time bomb that could explode at any moment.
“Do you want to get up and walk around for a little while?” The false sympathy in her voice emerged so thick I could almost taste its desperation to be seen as kindness. “Stretch your legs, use the restroom, maybe get a little something to eat?”
“You’re not going to let me leave, are you?”
“I can’t let you leave for at least another day. However—if you’re willing to cooperate, I can let you out of your binds.”
“That’d be great,” I said.
“Are you willing to cooperate?”
It wasn’t as if I had a choice in the matter.
With a nod, I leaned back and allowed the doctor to release the first of two straps along my hips. The second, she took extra consideration in undoing—as if I would fling myself from the bed and wrap my hands around her neck.
I paused, then swallowed a lump in my throat.
“You’re sure you’re all right?” the doctor asked.
“I’m sure,” I replied. “I—”
A stabbing pain lit the center of my forehead, causing me to squeeze my eyes shut and fling myself back onto the bed.
An immense screech filled my ears.
A light covered my eyes.
A Coyote stared back at me.
I screamed.
It was over almost as soon as it had begun.
When I opened my eyes, I saw the doctor readjusting the strap along my hips.
“Doctor Parish.” I tried to rise and grimaced as she tightened the second strap much harder than she needed to. “I can explain—”
“We need to keep you under observation for the time being.” Turning, she withdrew a syringe and glass vial of clear liquid from along the wall. “This’ll help you sleep.”
“Please don’t drug me,” I said as she moved to inject the concoction into my IV. “Oh God, please don’t—”
“Just relax, Ana Mia. Everything’s going to be just fine.”
“No no no.”
The liquid cooled the blood in my arm and began to traverse the length of my body. When it hit my head, a wave of nausea overwhelmed me. I would’ve thrown up if anything had been in my stomach.
Instead, my head swam with vertigo.
Then I blacked out for a second time.
The next time I awoke, it was to voices.
“The antibiotics appear to be fighting the infection,” a man’s voice I did not recognize said.
“That does not explain her reaction,” Doctor Parish replied.
“She was bitten by an extraterrestrial entity. We don’t know what kind of bacteria They have in Their saliva. Who knows what symptoms They might cause?”
“So you’re saying she’s developing psychosis as a result of the infection?”
“I’m not saying anything, Doctor Parish. I—”
I opened my eyes to find the stranger and Doctor Parish standing to the side of my bed. When they realized I was awake, they turned to acknowledge me with false smiles and uneasy eyes. “Ana,” the man said, taking a step toward the bed, but making sure to keep his distance. “My name is Doctor Arnold Peterson. I’ve been assisting Doctor Parish while she observed you over the past few hours.”
“I’m… infected?” I asked.
“Not infected, per se. You are combating an infection, but typical antibiotics like penicillin seem to be keeping the worst at bay.” He pushed his glasses up his nose and leaned forward to shine a pen light into my eyes. “Tell me—did you suffer a traumatic fall when you were attacked by the Coyote?”
“No,” I said, tilting
my head to one side. “Why?”
“One of your eyes is changing color.”
“What?”
The doctor lifted a mirror in front of my face.
I stared at my irises and looked on in shock and awe. My right eye—normally the color of ground coffee beans—had changed color near the pupil. No longer was it pure brown. Instead, it looked like golden dust had been sprinkled into my iris.
“I asked about the head injury because traumatic impacts to the brain can sometimes cause changes in your iron deposition, known as hemosiderosis. This can create a semblance of heterochromia in your eyes, which is what you’re seeing here. If you didn’t suffer a traumatic fall, however, that could only mean—”
“Something in the Coyote’s saliva is messing with my system,” I said, which prompted nods from both doctors. I blinked, closed my eyes, then opened them to see if I felt any different. Other than an enormous headache from whatever medication they’d put into my system, I felt perfectly fine. “Has this happened to other patients who’ve been attacked by Coyotes?”
“Previous patients I’ve treated have always perished before such effects could be seen,” Doctor Peterson said.
“When was this?”
“Before Fort Hope was declared a military sanctuary, and before the walls were erected.”
“We have very little knowledge on what happens to the body’s physiology when it comes into contact with a Coyote,” Doctor Parish added. “This means that anything is likely to happen to your body.”
“You said you were having dreams, Ana.”
“Nightmares,” I corrected.
“About anything in particular, or just about that night?”
“Just about that night,” I answered, possibly a little too quickly for their liking. Both doctors gazed at me with bemused expressions, as if they hadn’t expected my reply. They glanced at each other before they disappeared into the deeper parts of the apartment.
While waiting for them to return, I stared at the ceiling and tried my hardest not to grimace as probing tendrils of nausea spread across my skull. It didn’t help that I hadn’t eaten in what felt like days, and their prying into my psyche definitely wasn’t doing me any favors. Regardless, what bothered me the most was that something was wrong, and the doctors didn’t even know what it was.
