by Maxey, Phil
A screech pierced the chilled air and he and Arlene swung around and fell back in one movement. The thing with multiple clawed limbs climbed over the top of the ladder and landed on the ice covered surface with a thud. Its mouth opened revealing row after row of shark-like teeth, then it slowly stepped towards them, seemingly savoring their fright.
Daryl and Arlene backed up, bumping into each other and the final furthest corner of the roof. He quickly looked down to the street and the other alley, it equally filled with things and grabbed hold of the young woman, pulling her close. No words were needed. They both closed their eyes…
He heard the whoosh before he heard the guttural scream, but it wasn’t human in origin, and he opened his eyes feeling a surge of wind across him. The creature was on the ground, crawling towards them, blood oozing from a gaping wound. Another whoosh, this time Daryl seeing the impact hit the thing and it collapsed completely.
“Look!” shouted Arlene, pointing up.
A black helicopter, almost completely silent sat above them, its large blades just a blur and on both sides sat black uniformed soldiers, with strange looking helmets.
Joy and relief rushed into him and he joined Arlene jumping in excitement. “Yeah, kill’em!” He spun around to the street as it erupted in a furore. Another helicopter was hovering over it, and even though he could hardly hear the automatic weapons he could see the flesh being torn by the projectiles slamming into the fleeing creatures. He punched the air. “Yeah!”
“It’s landing!”
He turned back to Arlene, looking up as the gust from the rotor blades became so strong he had to lean forward. He held her hand, walking forward to the soldiers jumping down to the roof. He couldn’t see beyond their blackened visors, but as he propelled himself towards salvation, he missed an almost silent snip of a projectile which sliced the air. Even before his hand went to the back of his neck to investigate the sudden irritation, he was starting to lose the feeling in his legs.
The snow softened the blow of his head against the floor, but not enough to stop a laceration from opening up on his left temple.
As he lay, his entire body feeling as if it had been removed, he watched two others jump down from the helicopter as the soldiers fanned out. They walked towards him but were just blurs in his hazy vision. He tried to speak, to cry out questions as to what was happening, but the words became mere grunts when they reached his almost completely paralyzed throat. He looked up at the two human shapes in dark uniforms that were giving him close attention.
“He… traces… vaccine. Almost gone from… though. What should… do with him?” said one of the forms to the other.
“Leave.” said the taller individual. Then looked to Daryl’s side, to where his eyes could not go. “The girl… another… Bring…”
CHAPTER TWELVE
9: 20 a.m. Dover.
The watch on Jess’s hand felt heavy. She hadn’t looked at it for a few hours and she wasn’t going to. Seeing the hands would just confirm which she already knew, but would not fully believe. Their time was up. It had been at least twenty-four hours since they had eaten the chocolates that Amos had given her. She had failed to get her family what they needed. Whether they continued to exist as humans or as something else was in the hands of fate.
She looked out to the completely flat beige landscape, only broken up by the occasional group of bushes or outbuilding of some kind. There weren’t even any abandoned vehicles on this stretch of the highway. She was glad to be out of storms though, and there was just the hint of blue amongst the blanket of gray above them.
“We’re coming up to a town, larger than the last one. Should I go around?” asked Meg.
Jess hesitated. Was it time to give up? Accept that whatever had been released from the probe had defeated her?
Landon’s angry face appeared in her mind. “You keep going, Jess. You run, hide and survive.”
“We don’t have time,” she said. “Go through.”
Meg nodded. “At least the ground is only a bit damp, no ice out here. We can keep up a good speed.” She glanced at Jess again. “What about Kansas City?”
Jess nodded, avoiding the older woman’s gaze and continued to look outside. “Same. Stay on the…” She squinted to better see the smudge of dust in a field, maybe a mile off to their right.
Meg noticed it too then looked in the rear mirror. “Sam. In my pack, there are some binoculars. Can you get them out and see what the hell that is over there?”
The young girl rummaged until she found them and held them to her eyes. A whimper came from her lips, confirming what the two adults feared.
Meg instinctively eased down on the gas.
“Let me see,” said Jess. Sam handed her mother the eyepieces, and Jess changed the focus a little until she saw what was almost lost in a haze of brown mud particles. “It’s… running… towards the highway. We need to go quicker.”
Meg glanced at the speedometer. The dial bounced around at the top, hovering around ninety. “We’re already pushing it.” She applied even more pressure to the gas pedal, the engine producing a high pitch hum, almost being eclipsed by the wind noise.
The dust cloud had now taken on the shape of the thing it contained. An angry concoction of brown limbs, with claws that flashed and flailed at the air.
“It’s going to crash into us!” said Sam.
“No, it’s not!” said Meg, then whispered something under her breath.
Jess studied the vision of fury that looked as if it had been literally imported from another world and dropped in the middle of Missouri farmland. Was that its blueprint? Did the virus simply allow life from another world to start again here?
Josh and Landon are d—
She coughed as the sedan bumped, making Meg grapple with the steering wheel to keep the car firmly fixed in the right direction.
Meg glanced at the beast just a few hundred yards off to their right. It was as large as a bus. Huge. If it slammed into them, it would be game over. No getting to Jess’s friend’s house. No vaccine. No surviving this insane plague. She wasn’t prepared to let that happen. She pushed the pedal harder into the—
Jess coughed again, this time though blood and yellow matter ejected from her throat and sprayed her side of the windshield. The splatter was accompanied with a scream of anguish from her daughter.
“Mom! Mom!”
Jess had felt the tingling in her stomach before the warmth spread throughout her limbs, and knew what was happening. Her mind was evenly split between blind panic and complete acceptance of what was about to happen, but somewhere lost between both was a voice which pleaded for her to get out.
Save the others…
She doubled over. Throbbing pain was now parading through her arms and legs, a pressure which was stretching her muscles to breaking point. Her hand flicked out and grabbed the door handle and she realized her fingers and palm were different. The skin had become rougher, her nails longer.
Meg’s eyes darted between what was happening to the woman just two feet away and the marauding creature that was moving towards the highway, its huge powerful legs propelling it on a crash course with the speeding car. She also saw Jess fumbling with the door handle and for a moment she agreed with her course of action, but instead her right hand flicked out and grabbed Jess’s arm as the passenger’s door flew open.
“No!” screamed Sam, then scrambled to retrieve something from her pocket.
Jess’s coughing was now constant and as she fought with Meg to be allowed to jump out, the sedan sped past the creature which leaped at it, but missed, sliding all the way to the other side of the highway.
Sam didn’t ask her mother what she wanted, she just pulled Jess’s head back, and with her other hand, slammed the last chocolate into Jess’s mouth, forcing it between her lips. “Eat! Chew on it!”
Jess coughed again, the pain now all-encompassing, but something told her to chew on the sweet tasting thing in her mouth. A distant voice sh
e trusted. Forcing her teeth and tongue to act as if they were still hers, she quickly swallowed the pieces of candy, not fully understanding why.
Relief was instant.
She sat up, her clothes covered in sweat, pulled the door closed and looked, blinking at Meg and then her daughter leaning between the two seats. “You… had more vaccine?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
9: 43 a.m. Highway 70, western outskirts of Topeka, Kansas.
Seemingly innocent outbuildings passed by. Landon didn’t want to pass through a city, but he had no choice. He was sure his wife and daughter were not far ahead. Just another twenty minutes. He would turn a bend and see them. He was sure. But at the back of his mind a clock that had been ticking since they left Rocky Pine, had stopped.
Maybe they changed…
The thought that he would soon find an overturned car on the side of the road was too terrifying to fully grasp, so each time the idea tried to slide into his consciousness, he immediately thought about something else. Anything. It wasn’t easy, as Grace, Ben or Ray would fill the space but eventually he settled on what they were going to do, once they found Amos’s home and had more vaccine. Where to hide from the things? And what about after the six days were up? What would the country be like? How many had died?
It was obvious things weren’t going back to how they used to be. He wondered what place a detective would have in this new version of reality.
The highway was empty, which surprised him. He would have thought it would be jammed with vehicles. People desperate to escape the winds carrying the virus, but instead he had a clear view in both directions.
It happened too quick… they had no time to pack and leave…
A large green sign hung over the highway and mentioned an upcoming exit, which would take him deeper into Topeka. A route he definitely would not be taking.
He pushed on the gas and came around a long bend. As with the previous five, his expectations were high, knowing there would be a view ahead for a few miles, but as before, there were no moving vehicles in front of him. Just an expanse of open road, bordered by beige spindly trees.
“Next one…”
“What…” said Josh, opening his eyes. “You see mom?”
Landon let out a breath then quickly produced a smile. “No, but soon! If you stay awake, I’m sure you will see their car around the next bend, or maybe the—” A man was standing in the middle of the highway, a few hundred yards away, waving his arms above his head.
“Who’s that?”
“I don’t know.” Landon slowed the pickup.
“He looks like he wants to talk to us.”
“Yup.” Landon’s muscles flinched as he started to move towards his handgun, then realized it wasn’t there.
Josh looked at him as they grew nearer. “Are you going to stop? What if he becomes a monster?”
Landon could now see the bearded man’s face. He looked younger than himself, maybe mid-twenties, wearing a heavy winter coat and he really wanted them to stop.
“If we stop, will we have time—”
“I don’t know Josh. Let me take care of this!” Landon immediately regretted his tone, but he needed to assess the situation, and he needed no distraction to do that. He stopped the pickup some twenty-feet from the man, who started to jog forward. Landon pushed his door open quickly, standing behind it, and held his hand up. “Wait there! I’m a law enforcement officer. Don’t come any closer.”
The man stopped. “I need your help! My wife is badly hurt.” He looked to the trees and a small dirt track to his left. “Our car is just over there. She’s hurt real bad, but we’re out of fuel. Can you get us to a hospital?”
The small dog in the pickup, barked.
“I don’t think there are any functioning hospitals…” His mind flashed back to Grace. “And I don’t know any doctors…”
The man looked exasperated. “Well… where are you going? Maybe—” The guy kept looking to his left, Landon’s right. Something was off. “— You can give us a lift to where we can get help?”
Landon looked to where the guy kept looking, but it was covered in a group of trees. There was something behind them, maybe a parking lot, but it was hard to see. He had to make a decision, his family or someone else’s. “I’m sorry buddy, but I have to...” He heard the click when it was too late, and let out a breath. A grin broke out across the bearded guy’s face. Landon turned around slowly to an older man, ten feet away, holding a handgun in his direction. He thought about diving inside the pickup and hitting the gas, but he had no doubt the balding man would start firing and who knew where those bullets would end up bouncing around. “I have a child with me!”
“You got any guns on you, lawman?” growled the old man, who Landon could see was missing teeth.
“No guns, but we got some candy and some tins of food if—” A solid fist struck his lower back, as Josh screamed, but the impact had claimed the use of his legs and he collapsed forward onto the concrete. Fighting the pain, he spun around as the bearded man dragged Josh from the driver’s seat and flung him to the ground as well. The small dog leaped forward, latching onto the man’s boot. Without breaking his smile, he shook him loose and gave his own louder growl back at the animal, who backed away, snarling. Landon staggered forward, covering his son while looking up. “Take the food, take what you want, just leave us be.”
The younger man stood near the open door, looking down, his grin not leaving his angular face. “What you think we should do with them, Clint?”
Clint looked across from the other side. “Ah, the things will get them. No point wasting a bullet. Let’s get out of here.” He climbed into the driver’s seat, the other man doing the same in the passenger’s and Landon and Josh watched the old pickup drive away.
“What are we going to do! We have to find mom!” cried Josh, as tears ran down his face.
Landon pulled his son to his chest. “It’s okay. We’re alive, that’s what matters. We’ll find mom.” He scanned the fields opposite then turned back to the nearby trees. “Come on, we need to—”
A distant roar came from where the pickup had gone, deeper into the city.
He touched Josh’s shoulder then picked up the dog’s lead and they ran towards the trees, which they quickly arrived at. “There’s a lot or something on the other side, keep running!”
They burst out to a largely flat beige-green field. Single-story block-like buildings sat beyond a parking lot on the far side, next to a large sign angled towards the highway which they could only see the back of.
Like the horn of a distant train the roar bellowed out again, this time deeper in tone. They continued running across the field, their boots sinking slightly in the wet patches of mud and were glad to make it to the concrete of the lot.
Landon handed the lead to Josh then immediately moved past the closest car, a white SUV. “Too modern,” he said under his breath and kept going, skipping the next as well then ran to the driver’s door of a black van. He tried the handle and on it being locked, looked around for something heavy.
Something crunched or collapsed on the opposite side of the building, but he ignored the metallic sound instead running towards what lay under a nearby wall which ran up to the double glass doors of the entrance. Grabbing the heavy pot, he didn’t even bother emptying it and ran with it to the left side of the van. “Stand back,” he said to Josh, who did and thrust the pot into the window which immediately shattered. He pulled the door open. “Get in! Crawl over to the other side!”
Josh let the dog jump first, then did the same, his father following, pulling the door closed.
“Dad!” shouted Josh, while the dog started to bark and growl again.
Landon flicked his head to his left. Something was emerging around the far left corner of the building. He didn’t have time to sit and stare and he ducked under the steering wheel, frantically pulling wires, then flicked open his pocketknife and cut one.
“Dad!”
“I know!” he said, stripping the plastic covering, then slid one exposed piece of copper wire against another with no result.
“Dad!”
The engine fired up and he threw it into reverse, hitting the gas and causing the van to surge backwards across the lot and the flat field. He caught glimpses of the brown, beige creature, which walked on heavy legs as the van bumped up and down, then swung it around, everyone being thrown to the side and pushed down on the gas once more, this time heading for the road which joined the highway. Bumping up, over and down a curb, he skidded onto the first of the four lanes and sped away. In his side mirror he saw the mass of limbs or perhaps tentacles flailing at the air. “Yeah, fuck you too.”
“Dad!”
Confused by the new shout from his son, he finally turned to his right. Josh was looking behind them both to the rear of the van. He looked in the rear mirror and almost slammed on the breaks. The sudden jolt threw the young woman holding a large knife forward until she caught her balance.
“We don’t mean you any harm!” shouted Landon.
“You’re in my van!”
“I know. I’m sorry… we didn’t know!”
She waved the knife again. “Where are Clint and Jay! What did you do with them?”
Landon glanced at his son then back to the woman. Several answers went through his mind in a split second, but that was okay, he was used to making quick decisions. “You mean the two men that just hijacked my car, then drove off, leaving you?”
Her eyes widened and she turned, scrambled to the back of the van to look out the small windows in the door. “No! Bastards!”
“Actually, they drove the other way… towards Topeka. Which is where we’re going as well.”
She whirled around. “You want to go to Topeka? Don’t you know what’s there?”
