In the Aftermath: Burning of the Dawn

by Coleman Thompson

  “What am I suppose to do with flares?” Clarissa asked. “My intentions are to avoid any attention. I think those would do the opposite.”

  “When the sun goes down you keep them with you at all times.” Daniel answered bluntly. “That’s what you’re suppose to do with them.”

  Clarissa made no reply; she understood what Daniel meant. Vita and Maria stood silently nearby. Nobody said anything for a while, until Clarissa finally broke the silence.

  “We should go now.” She stated.

  “Yeah, me too.” Daniel added. “I’ve got a busy day ahead.”

  “Right.” Clarissa spoke softly. “It’s time to go, girls.”

  Before doing as her mother commanded, Vita walked over to Daniel and quietly put her arms around him in a gentle embrace. Maria immediately did the same. Clarissa allowed this show of affection and held no misgivings. Daniel did not touch the girls, but he did not reject them either. Eventually, Vita eased her grip and released her hold on Daniel; she sobbed softly and walked away. As Maria eased her embrace she spoke.

  “Thank you for everything you’ve given us,” she said. “It’s more than you know.”

  “The pleasure’s all mine.” Daniel replied. “Stay safe, Maria.”

  Maria followed her sister’s trail and both girls entered the vehicle. Clarissa made her way to her door with Daniel following close behind. She laid her shotgun in the passenger’s seat—both of her daughters had elected to sit in the back—and then put herself in the driver’s side.

  “You have the map, right?” Daniel asked Clarissa. Clarissa had shown Daniel, in a road atlas, the general location of where she believed the Doniphan family might still be residing. Daniel, in return, marked the exact location of his house in case Clarissa ever needed to find it again; he then gave her the atlas.

  “I do.” She answered.

  “All right, take care, Mrs. Hannigan.” Daniel implored. “Don’t ever hesitate to come back for any reason.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Clarissa spoke as she reached for her door. “So long, Mr. Holloway.”

  Clarissa closed her door, started her car, and backed away from Daniel’s house. She turned the car around in the large driveway and headed back down the road she had come in on the day before. Daniel was alone again. He walked over and took a seat on his front door step. Daniel had a dense feeling inside of him that he knew he wouldn’t be able to shake anytime soon. He commiserated with himself for a little while longer and said a silent prayer for the Hannigan family.

  To better rid his mind of the current situation, Daniel resolved to do what he said he would do and seek out this mysterious family that the Hannigans had met two days prior. He entered his home and retrieved his overcoat which lay folded upon a box in his storeroom. Meticulously, Daniel reequipped himself with his previously confiscated weapons. The knife Vita had given him was added to this collection. The M14 rifle, which he so prized, stood imposingly in a nearby corner. Vita had looked after it well. Daniel took the weapon in his hands; it felt good to have it in his possession again.

  Daniel pulled the front door closed, but left it unlocked. The place was not likely to get any more visitors today. He made his way to his vehicle and got inside. He laid his rifle down on the seat beside him and started his truck. His truck was a hybrid of fuel and battery power; good for the extra power, but the battery could go fast if he wasn’t careful. Unlike Clarissa’s vehicle, Daniel’s was not rigged for a solar recharge. He had to depend on fuel, which could be very difficult to find. Daniel had a decent stash of gas, but it wouldn’t last forever.

  The place where the Hannigans had met the Doniphans was a little over twenty miles from where Daniel lived. Daniel knew the area well; he had been to this place on multiple occasions, but it had been a while since his last visit. It wasn’t a good town to stay in for very long, as the Sayona, unlike Daniel, visited regularly. Lake Canadohta was a nearby landmark which the beasts seemingly held a fondness for.

  The town was eerily quiet as Daniel drove idly down its silent streets. He looked for anything that might indicate the presence of people. After half an hour of searching he had still found no indications of anyone. Clarissa had told him that the family had emerged from what she believed was a furniture shop. She was right; Daniel looked the place over but could find no traces of them. He sounded the horn of his vehicle on several occasions hoping that the family would respond. They obviously did not. It was a dangerous idea, and ultimately unsuccessful, but searching house to house was not an option. If the Sayona were out too late, they could’ve been forced to take up residence in this smaller town rather than attempt to try to make their way back to the major cities in the blinding sunlight.

  An hour more had passed and Daniel was still searching. He could not search much longer; he was using up valuable gasoline in a search that had, so far, been fruitless. His luck would soon change, however. While coasting down one of the random streets, Daniel noticed some items lying in the road. It was tattered clothing, ripped apart and strewn all over the street. As he pulled his truck up next to what was left of Joseph’s shirt, Daniel spotted the blood stains. It was dried, so there was no way for him to accurately tell how long it had been there. He looked around for any shoes, as the Sayona had a strange habit of gnawing on them, yet none were to be found. Daniel took that as a hopeful sign – or so he aimed to convince himself. The fact was simply that Joseph was not wearing any shoes at the time of his death.

  As Daniel came to the end of the street, he noticed the Doniphans’ vehicle a short distance from the crossroad he had reached. Cars were still scattered around the neighborhood, but this one stood out. Bitten out tires were common, yet the Sayona didn’t normally destroy the windshield and windows unless they had a good reason for going into the car (though occasionally they would steal the rear windows for devious purposes). As Daniel pulled his truck into the driveway and next to the Doniphans’ busted up car, he saw that both the front and back windshields had been demolished along with the driver’s side window. Upon further examination of the car, Daniel could see clothing, comic books, empty water bottles, and a small doll (with the name Sophie written on the bottom of one of its feet) all within the vehicle. Any hope Daniel had previously convinced himself of was now fading fast.

  Daniel turned from the vehicle and looked to the nearby house. The missing front window was immediately noticeable. He retrieved his rifle and an LED flashlight from his truck and made his way onto the front porch. Daniel tried the door first, which was locked. He carefully and quietly climbed through the broken window. The atmosphere in the old house was heavy. Over the last year, Daniel—along with many other survivors—had become more adept with their perceptions and intuitions, and it was clear to him that something very unfortunate had happened in this house. Daniel was convinced that whoever owned the car out front was dead; he continued on regardless. If possible, he wanted to know if it was the family that the Hannigans had left behind.

  There were a few items in the living room that belonged to the Doniphans. Daniel paid them little attention. His first priority was to make sure that no people or Sayona were still present within the building. The cellar was the most likely choice for the location of either human or beast, so Daniel ventured there first. He observed the broken doorknob. Someone, or something, within the cellar had broken out at some point. As he opened the door any anticipation he had of any Sayona being down there instantly vanished. There was a source of sunlight coming from somewhere; the Sayona would not have tolerated this. More confident that the house was empty of anything living, Daniel moved swiftly down the stairs. He found the source of the sunlight: a small window at the back of the basement. It let in light, but the place was still dim; Daniel switched on his flashlight to aid his vision. Not much could be made of the debris scattered across the cellar floor. It was very dusty, so these items could have been in this place for who knows how long. Daniel also noted that the small cellar window was broken, whi
ch would have accelerated the dust accumulation. It was unclear how long it had been since anyone had last been down here, but Daniel continued his examination of the cellar. He saw what could have been recent footprints in the thin dust on the floor, but it was difficult to identify just how long they had been there – or if they were even human. Daniel made his way to the small window. The glass and much of the frame were gone, as was the latch once used to lock the window. The size of the window made it impracticable that a full grown human would break into this house through here, but Daniel was convinced that something had come through violently. He soon noticed a nearby shovel with its handle broken off… somebody had put up a fight. Someone had come down here to hide, Daniel figured, but they did not hide well enough. Perhaps they had left a light on, or perhaps it was just a lucky find by the Sayona. Whatever the reason, it didn’t matter. Whatever happened in this cellar had not happened within the last few days, or even weeks. He was not going to find anything down here, so he thought. That thought changed as he made his way back to the stairs. Something under the staircase was different: two large boxes were stacked behind some boards and broken shelves. Daniel went over to investigate. He pulled out one of the boxes and opened it. It was Louis’s ration bars. Daniel opened one and tried it. It was clear that these items had not been down here for more than a few days… and that their owner had never left this house.

  The heavy anticipation returned as Daniel stepped through the cellar door and back into the dreary kitchen. There was something bleak and hideous somewhere in this house. Daniel could feel shadowy hands reaching out to him: a residual haunting that screamed in silence yet resonated throughout the hollow walls. Reluctantly, he made his way to the staircase leading up to the second floor. The heaviness intensified and the air began to taste foul as he ascended. What he was searching for was waiting for him up these steps; he knew it was there and he knew that he had to see it. He didn’t want to see it, but the souls of those murdered by the monsters demanded acknowledgment. If he did not give it to them, they would haunt him forever. They would haunt him forever anyway, but Daniel continued up the stairs all the same.

  After leaving Daniel’s house, Clarissa headed south following the creek that had previously led her into Daniel’s town. She followed until it guided her to the outskirts of a much larger city. Clarissa wanted nothing to do with a city this large, so she carefully bypassed it altogether. She had a rough idea of where she was, and that Interstate 79 was somewhere to the west of her current location. Clarissa had no desires of traveling on the freeway, but she could still follow it and keep a general idea of where she was going.

  She had only put around thirty miles of distance between herself and Daniel’s home, but Clarissa’s neurotic avoidance of cities and interstate highways had burned up a lot of daylight; she had also taken her daily break to rest and to recharge her vehicle. At the first signs of dusk she began looking for a place to spend the night. Further south, Clarissa came upon a long body of water, Lake Wilhelm, which stretched across the interstate. Her idea of staying off of the interstate proved to be wise, as the bridges leading over the water had been destroyed. Clarissa knew nothing of this. If she had, she would have travelled on a bit further. Destroying bridges was not a common practice amongst the Sayona. It was more of a human quirk.

  As Clarissa followed the edge of Lake Wilhelm, she soon found the remnants of a campground. She slowed as she drove by it; Vita and Maria also took an interest in this site. The place showed every sign of being deserted, yet it possessed a strange and ominous sensation that captivated the Hannigan clan.

  “We’re not staying here, are we?” Maria asked.

  “No.” Her mother answered directly.

  Within the campgrounds were many ports and other spaces to park recreational vehicles. What perturbed Clarissa the most about this place was the sheer amount of RVs that were still lingering. After the invasion and the subsequent war, many individuals took to the roads and often banded together for safety. The arrival of the Sayona, however, quickly decreased the sizes of these roving bands of campers and mobile homes, and ultimately put an end to them altogether.

  “That’s a lot of campers,” Vita commented. “You think there’s anyone here?”

  “I don’t know,” Clarissa replied. “Probably not… I think this place is a graveyard.”

  Clarissa pulled her car onto the path leading into the campground. She surmised that the Sayona had butchered all of the former owners of the RVs, but a macabre sense of curiosity compelled her to investigate further. The beasts were thorough, so there would not be any bodies left; yet there could still be useful items left behind. Clarissa didn’t have the time to look for anything on this day, but she could at least look the place over first and make sure that nobody else had taken up residence in the ghost park. As she drove on, she heard a strange noise come from beneath her car; it sounded like the crackling of glass.

  “What was that?” Vita asked.

  “I have no idea.” Clarissa stopped her car and opened her door to look back to see what she had just run over. It was a thin panel of tempered glass lying across the middle of the street. Clarissa had not even noticed it was there. She had broken the panel, but there were no sharp edges or jagged shards to damage her tires. “It’s just a piece of glass.”

  “Didn’t pop our tires, did it?” Maria asked.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Clarissa answered as she drove on. “Wrong kind of glass for that.”

  Practically all of the RVs showed signs of trauma. Doors were torn off, tires were flattened, windows were broken out, and some even had large holes ripped through their hulls. Some of them had tried to make an escape, but they had failed in that attempt and were left either sitting silently in the small streets or crashed into other RVs. A few of the vehicles were lying on their sides. Some of the spaces were empty. Maybe a few had gotten away. Whether they had or had not, there was one thing that Clarissa was sure of: it would have taken a large pack of Sayona to commit a massacre of this scale within a single night. Her daughters were coming to the same conclusion.

  “Wow, there must’ve been a lot of them…” Maria remarked. “To do all of this.”

  “So either Daniel was wrong about the Sayona moving in small packs,” Vita inferred. “Or he was incredibly right, and they were smart enough to plan this attack.”

  Clarissa silently agreed with the latter possibility. Whatever happened here was sudden, synchronized, and vicious. She had seen enough for now. She turned her vehicle around in one of the empty lots and headed back out the way in which she came, making sure to avoid the glass panel she had failed to notice the first time. There was a small sporting goods store near the entrance to the campground, but Clarissa was confident that it would have already been pillaged by now. Plus, there was no time to check it anyway. She needed to find a place soon to spend the night, or she and her daughters might end up sleeping amongst the trees – something they had done before on multiple occasions. Spending the night in the woods was not something neither Clarissa nor her daughters enjoyed, but driving at night was simply not an option. If Clarissa did not find a place soon, then the woods would have to do.

  After leaving the campgrounds, Clarissa continued traveling south. After a mile and a half more, she spotted the outskirts of a small town. At the edge of this little lakeside settlement was a church whose steeple could be seen from down the road. Clarissa eyed it attentively until something else distracted her. Yet again, a strange shattering sound came from beneath the car. Clarissa stopped the vehicle directly in front of the church.

  “What the Hell?!” Clarissa detested aloud as she slammed on her breaks. She grabbed her shotgun, exited her vehicle, and walked back to the object which she had just run over. Vita and Maria looked to one another; they were perplexed and a little nervous. Vita opened her door, but did not get out of the vehicle. She looked back to her mother. Clarissa was standing above the remnants of another thin panel of tempered gl
ass. Again, she had not noticed it lying in the middle of the road. Her car was moving faster this time, so Clarissa destroyed this panel far more thoroughly than the one back at the campsite. Little bits and pieces of it were scattered beneath her feet and all across the road. None of her tires were damaged, which she was exceedingly grateful for, but she was also becoming increasingly unnerved.

  The first panel of glass at the campground was odd, but Clarissa didn’t think much of it; it could have gotten there due to any number of reasons. However, the fact that she had just hit another one less than half an hour later on a completely deserted road, incited her powerful sense of paranoia. She had a disturbing revelation that someone had left this glass here intentionally. Clarissa’s instincts were telling her to turn around and drive far, far away from this ominous place, but she didn’t have the time to do that now.

  “Mama, what happened?” Vita asked. “Is the car okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s fine.” Clarissa responded as calmly as she could. “I hit another piece of glass.”

  “Another piece of glass?” Vita pondered. “Was it a piece of windshield or something?”

  “No,” her mother answered. “A windshield wouldn’t break like this.”

  Clarissa returned to her car and sat quietly for a moment. Her daughters looked to her intently; neither of them had any disconcerting ideas or opinions regarding the broken glass. Clarissa, on the other hand, knew better. Somebody had left that glass there with a purpose, she was sure of that much. If whoever did it was still alive, they could very well be residing in this small town, or somewhere else nearby. That was not an encouraging proclamation. Clarissa hastily drove on.

  A short drive up from the church, Clarissa took an interest in a house just off from the main road. If this place was uninhabited, it would have to do for the night. A lengthy gravel path led up to the house. Clarissa navigated it carefully; she was not going to hit any more glass panels on this day. The house she was after was a two-story, stone house with a small, covered porch in the front. The house seemed deserted as she approached it; it looked like it had been unattended for years. There were also no signs that any vehicles had been here recently; Clarissa still remained cautious. She stopped the car in front of the house, switched it off, and opened her door. As Clarissa departed from the vehicle, her daughters did the same. Vita was directly behind her with her recently acquired revolver in hand. Maria soon joined her mother and sister on their side of the car. Clarissa had her shotgun in one hand and the MP5 in the other. Seeing that her daughter, Maria, was currently weaponless, Clarissa handed her the MP5. Maria timorously accepted the submachine gun. As she held it in her hands, her mother reached down and moved the fire selector switch from S to E, which took the weapon off of safety and put it into a semiautomatic firing mode (another option remained: F, which would have placed the weapon into a fully automatic firing mode). Maria aimed the gun at the ground and cocked the weapon.