by Dana Fredsti
“It’s all over,” he said hoarsely. “We’d be better off dead.”
15
“We’d be better off dead.”
Amber lay on her sleeping bag, huddled under her blankets, car coat under her head. She knew she needed to get some rest, but it just wasn’t happening. The only time she remembered ever being outside without ambient light was years ago on a family camping trip up in the mountains. Even then they’d had a campfire, along with a full moon and a spectacular display of stars in the skies above.
Here there were no moon or stars to be seen—just a seemingly endless stretch of fog.
“We’d be better off dead.”
The words haunted her, kept her awake. She continued to watch Blake, checking to see if he was actually asleep. Every strange noise, every creak, every howl, every other eerie sound from outside was less frightening than the possibility that the man sleeping next to her might wake up and decide to show her the same “mercy” he’d given the woman in the swamp.
After they’d seen the dinosaurs lumbering through the mist, down where the Thames used to flow, Amber thought Blake was going to charge down the hill in some sort of suicidal last stand. Instead he’d stayed on his knees and stared numbly at the reality that had replaced his hope. The shock had broken something inside of him, at least temporarily.
Unwelcome sounds—howls, yips, grunts, growls, and worse—had echoed in the fog that surrounded them, with no way to tell where they were coming from. He might have remained there until something ambled out of the mist and ate him, had Amber not pulled him away.
“We need to get to shelter,” she’d said.
Even as she’d spoken, the sun had started to set, and visibility became that much worse. Blake had pulled himself together long enough for them to backtrack and take shelter in one of the few buildings—a men’s clothing and tailor shop. It looked like it had survived the event relatively unscathed. The door had been unlocked, the only sign of disturbance being several impeccably dressed tailor’s dummies lying on their sides on the plush hunter-green carpet, along with a few bolts of cloth and a pair of shears.
Amber had quietly pocketed the shears.
When she’d tried to talk to Blake and make plans for the next day, he’d acted as though he hadn’t heard her, busying himself by throwing down a couple of long Edwardian-style coats as a makeshift bed. Now he lay silently in the corner, his face turned toward the wall.
Should I stay or should I go?
The Clash song played in Amber’s head, its lyrics totally apropos. She wouldn’t have survived up to this point had it not been for Blake, but now she was certain that he’d end her life as unhesitatingly as he’d saved it.
Yet the thought of setting out on her own again terrified her. She’d been lucky to make it to the Romford Arms unscathed. The last day and a half had taught her that anything could be lurking out there. For all she knew, packs of raptors roamed the grasslands, like in Jurassic Park. There might not be any place left that offered genuine safety, with or without Blake.
The bottom line?
She wanted to survive.
Which means I need to leave.
Waiting until the sun began to rise felt like common sense. But if she waited until daybreak, she’d never be able to make it past him. He’d demand to know where she was going, and he wouldn’t just let her walk away.
At least, she didn’t think he would.
I need to leave and I need to do it now.
Her backpack had food and water in it. She and Blake had divided up the supplies. “If we’re separated,” he had said, “you’ll still have the basics you’ll need to survive.”
She wouldn’t be able to get very far, however, regardless of when she left. Her feet still hurt, and even at her best she doubted she could match Blake’s rapid pace. He’d catch up for certain. So she needed to figure out a way to disappear, and give herself a real head start. Yet how would she get far enough away in the dark without running into who knows what, with no chance to see it coming or protect herself?
How could she keep him from following her trail?
Unless…
She knew what she had to do.
Amber sat up, slowly and silently. Taking care to make as little noise as possible, she pulled out her flashlight. She covered the beam with her hand before she switched it on, then cautiously allowed no more than a sliver of light to leak out in Blake’s direction, careful to not let any fall on his face. He didn’t move. His breathing was deep, punctuated by surprisingly soft snores.
Switching off the flashlight she pulled on her coat, careful not to make a sound, then quickly folded up the blankets and secured them to her backpack. Gathering everything up, she rose to her feet and crept stealthily across the carpeted floor to the back of the store, away from the street. She moved as if she was blind, inches at a time, feeling cautiously for obstacles, not daring to risk the light again.
Slowly turning the knob, she pulled on the back door, and it gave a tiny protesting squeak. She froze.
“Amber?”
His voice sounded far away.
Should I answer?
She said nothing, waiting, barely daring to breathe, listening for any further sound.
Nothing. Not even a snore.
Amber crept into the hallway and with the utmost care, gently shut the door behind her. She risked using the flashlight beam to guide her to the end of the hall and down the stairs, and then out the door below, where she slipped into the fog-shrouded night.
* * *
An hour before dawn, just like clockwork, Blake opened his eyes. He’d always been quick to wake, even as a child. The habit had served him well in the military.
This morning, however, his eyelids were uncharacteristically heavy, the remnants of unpleasant dreams still lingering at the edges of his consciousness. He shook his head to clear it and turned his head to see if Amber was still asleep.
The girl was gone.
So was her gear.
“Amber?”
He sat straight up, and scanned the room.
She’s gone.
No.
No, this was unacceptable.
It was suddenly clear. Blake had been floundering. Whitehall had been his final anchor, and once his troubled mind had accepted that it was well and truly gone—lost to whatever mad hellscape had claimed them—he’d nothing to which he could cling.
Except for Amber.
And now she too was gone.
The sobering realization pulled him from the mental wreckage in which he had been trapped, snapped him back into a semblance of his regimented self. It gave him a goal once again. He had to find her. Springing to his feet, he grabbed his duffle bag, and quickly inspected the front door. The latch was still locked, just as he had left it. He turned and left through the back door.
Once outside, he scanned left and right. The fog still lay thick over the landscape, but he could see there had been an alley here, now split lengthwise. Beyond the half-road, where there should have been buildings, cobblestones melted into asphalt. A few yards beyond, nothing stood but knee-high grass.
“Amber!” he called out. “Amber, can you hear me?”
No response came, apart from faint echoes off the building walls behind him. He fought a growing irritation, choking it down in order to keep his focus. Making a circuit of the surroundings, he took an inventory of his options.
The remains of the shops formed a small urban island, surrounded on three sides by a border of grass. To the north, east, and south he found no signs of passage, no trace of footprints leading away. That only left the portion to their west, a stretch of asphalt that finally gave way to scattered patches of cobblestone, concrete, and the debris of other ages.
The girl had to be heading west by southwest, then, back into London. The most she could have had was a three-hour lead. If he made good time, and she went at her usual slower pace, he thought he could catch up to her in no more than two hours.
/> Blake returned to the shop to gather his supplies, packing them quickly into the duffle. Then he set off at a brisk pace toward the southwest.
The hunt was on.
* * *
Amber peered from the upper-story window of the adjoining inn, remaining carefully hidden behind the curtain. She watched Blake head deeper down into what was left of London.
When at last he disappeared from sight, she gave a sigh of relief. Then she sat back and made herself watch the clock on the wall. When it had ticked away a full twenty minutes, and not a moment before, she picked up her things and strode out again, heading off through the grassland in the opposite direction.
16
Trudging through ankle-high snow, Amber shivered as the frigid wind sent icy fingers under the coat to assault her bare legs. Her toes were numb under the socks and high-tops, and she wasn’t sure she could unclench the hand holding the staff.
She didn’t think she needed to worry about frostbite yet—surely it wasn’t that cold—but if she didn’t find her way out of this snowy landscape by nightfall, that could change. Using the staff to test the ground under the snow, Amber stepped up her pace, hoping for a glimpse of something other than skeletal trees set against white ground.
It had been hours since she had entered this new region. She’d wrapped one of the blankets around her head to keep body heat from escaping, with the other draped over the coat to help keep the wind at bay. It was arranged in a cross between a Roman stola and a shawl, held in place with a couple of large safety pins.
Where’s a toga party when you really need one?
These random thoughts surprised her every time they popped up. Her dad would call them “graveyard humor.” Amber wondered if it was a sign of impending insanity.
Then again, what was she supposed to think or feel under circumstances as incredible as these? Not even her oh-so-unflappable mother would have been able to keep it together if she’d seen brontosauruses ambling through the streets of La Jolla.
With a sinking heart, she realized that there actually might be dinosaurs wandering the canyons of the Southern California coast. If this phenomenon was worldwide, there was no telling what her family was experiencing.
Just let them still be alive.
Amber’s right foot suddenly punched through a thin crust of ice that she’d somehow missed with the staff, submerging her shoe in a couple inches of icy water.
“Shit!”
She pulled her foot out, but not before the sides of the High Top got totally soaked. Instantly she felt frigid water seeping into the sock. She’d just have to suck it up, though, and keep moving until she reached someplace where she could rest in relative safety. Maybe even someplace with hot water so she could bathe. While her thick hair didn’t require daily washing, this was pushing it. Her scalp itched, she smelled funky, and her underarms needed shaving.
God, what a stupid thing to even think about.
Still… she’d kill for a shower.
Starting up again, she used more care to test the ground ahead of each step, ignoring an inner voice that kept urging her to hurry up. She hadn’t seen any scary wildlife since leaving Blake behind, but she’d heard ominous noises more than once, and something had left massive paw prints in the snow not far from where she’d first entered the bleak winter wasteland. Heart pounding in her chest, she’d made sure to walk away from the direction those prints were headed.
* * *
The icy crust started giving way to patches of slush. Water dripped off branches as more snow melted and the chill in the air went from frigid to merely butt-ass cold. Amber caught her breath as she saw a splash of green off in the distance. She walked just a little faster, resisting the urge to break into a run. After all, she might find herself back in the swamp again. Without Blake and his compass, she had no idea what direction she was traveling.
It soon became apparent that the green she saw wasn’t a swamp, but rather a line of trees stretching out in either direction, their leafy branches interlocked like a chain of protestors with their arms linked. As she drew closer, Amber saw that there weren’t any trees— or even grass—on the other side of the line. It was as if someone had plucked a row out of an orchard, so orderly and yet so out of place. A precise line in the middle of so much chaos.
But the precision was an illusion, she discovered. The line of trees lay in a long, narrow slash of terrain that trailed off shortly to her right. She couldn’t see the other end, to the left. It continued as far as she could see.
She slowed her pace and approached the tree line, glancing nervously upward as something suddenly rustled in the leaves above. Amber gave a little yelp and a lone squirrel scurried from a low-hanging branch to one higher up, where it turned and chittered at her.
Amber didn’t know whether to laugh or swear.
She passed underneath the tree and through the line, then stared in dismay at the landscape on the other side. There the ground looked as if it had been transplanted from a dead planet—perhaps one that had died in a nuclear holocaust. It made the swamp seem cozy and inviting by comparison. Nothing good could be here.
I could follow the tree line for a bit, she thought. See where it takes me. That seemed like a better idea. At least the trees gave her an illusion of cover, and she could always climb up into the branches if the necessity presented itself.
Amber took another look at the desolate scenery in front of her.
I should at least check this out.
She didn’t know where the thought came from, but it hit with an immediacy and urgency that couldn’t be ignored.
Amber stepped out onto the fallow land and continued forward. She moved slowly and quietly, stepping over scorch marks that crisscrossed the ground. The terrain was devoid of plant life, reduced to a gray and black speckled crust that crunched softly underfoot, puffs of dust rising with each step.
It looked like photos she’d seen of Hiroshima.
She repressed a shudder.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” she muttered. Her voice sounded too loud, and totally out of place. Nervously she glanced around.
Nothing.
Lots of nothing. A dead zone.
So why was she so scared?
This is stupid, she decided. I’m out of here.
She turned to walk back toward the trees, but that niggling itch returned, like a mute ghost in the poorly lit back corridors of her mind, trying wordlessly to persuade her to continue.
Keep going.
Don’t be afraid.
She frowned.
“Well, crap.”
Turning around again, she marched across the gloomy quasi-moonscape, one softly crunching footfall after another. But toward what?
Suddenly she felt a sudden urge to halt, right where she was—but there was nothing there. Just more of the same black-and-white limbo. It began to creep her out and she started forward again. Before she had gone more than a dozen steps, however, the ghost was back, silently urging her not to leave.
Not yet.
“This is getting ridiculous,” she said to herself irritably. Nevertheless, she dutifully obeyed her gut and walked back a few paces. The rush of relief was downright palpable when she stopped at the same spot as before.
“Okay, what is up with this?” she called out loudly, to nobody. She looked around to see if there was anything she was missing, even scanning in the sky above, then gave the ground a few exploratory jabs with her staff.
Nothing.
Wait a minute!
The staff hit some resistance—there was something down here. She crouched and dug a little more, scratching at the crusty ground. There was definitely a hard surface, buried just below the powder and grit. She used her hands to clear away the gray crust and ash.
Her eyes widened.
“Holy shit,” she breathed.
Amber had uncovered what seemed to be a square hatch of stone or concrete, about a yard square. A thin groove ran along the edges of the
block, but there didn’t seem to be any hinges or latches. She ran her palm across its cool, smooth surface, then looked around again, struck by a flutter of paranoia, suddenly certain she was being watched.
There was no one.
Turning back to the hatch, she stared at it. Willing it to give up its secrets.
“Open sesame?” she tried.
Nothing.
She felt around the edges for any sort of clasp or hidden button, racking her brains to think of all the ways James Bond or Scooby Doo might trigger a secret door. When nothing came to mind, the initial wonder of discovery began to be chipped away by frustration.
Shaking it off, she rocked back on her heels and tried to puzzle it out, drumming her fingers on the hard surface. She didn’t know what was in there—hell, she didn’t even know if there was anything on the other side of the concrete square. Even so, at that moment nothing else in the world seemed quite as important as finding out.
She didn’t try to reason why. The “why” wasn’t important.
Think. Think, think, think…
Her eyes glazed over. A not unpleasant drowsiness washed over her, along with a lazy lack of urgency. It was oddly comforting to be here, not doing anything but relaxing peacefully and contemplating the fine blankness of the hatch, letting her gaze sink deeper and deeper into its solidity, into its emptiness, into its void…
Time passed.
How much?
Who knew? Who cared?
Red Triangle Upright
The image of a red triangle appeared unprompted in her mind’s eye. It sat upon the hatch, at least in her imagination.
Indigo Heptagram Anticlockwise
Amber imagined a dark violet star shape, serenely spinning in place next to the solid red triangle. She realized with surprise that she knew—in that curious way you just know things in dreams—that the star was a heptagram, and it had seven points.
Sinoper Nonagon Yaw
A third shape joined her imaginary lineup. This one looked like a stop sign on steroids—it had just one side too many, but somehow it worked. It was a rich rust color and it wasn’t just spinning, it was doing a three-dimensional pirouette.
