Innocence Ends

by Robinson, Nikolas P.

  As petrified as they both are, finally they begin to move.

  The quickest route back to Gale’s house will be to cut through the park, but Abraham feels that they are better off going slow and sticking to the lawns and edges of houses wherever possible. He knows that it won’t necessarily be any safer, but it isn’t worth the risk of being out in the open for too long.

  Overall, it’s smooth going, aside from a couple of times father and son find themselves hiding while another small mob group shuffles by and one instance when they sit still, terrified because there is a tremendous commotion within the darkness of a house they are skirting by.

  It is pure luck that Abraham isn’t seen by a crazed woman, bleeding from the corners of her mouth where her lips appear to have been torn wide, staring hungrily through an open front door. She happens to be gazing off to the left when he peeks up from her right before immediately dropping back to the ground and hugging the sodden earth with all of his strength. He crawls slowly back to the edge of the house before he and Ben return to the rear of the yard and move through the neighboring lawn instead.

  It’s only as they reach and evade staggered groups of people patrolling the streets that they realize they are getting diverted from where they’re trying to go.

  Abraham pulls his son in close and kneels on the ground for a minute, trying to get his bearings and attempting to think through a solution.

  Gale’s house is not an option, he realizes, considering how drastically they’d gotten turned around.

  The mine.

  Gale had told them about the abandoned mine when he was discussing the history of the town. There would be shelter there, somewhere they could dry off and warm up a bit while they sort out the remaining options.

  It’s the next best destination he can think of, the only other destination.

  They go for it.

  It feels like they’ve spent uncountable hours crossing the town in the opposite direction of their original path.

  Finally, they are near the main street in what passes for a downtown, near where they started their run from the diner so long before.

  Through bursts of light provided by lightning, they can make out the hill, but not the road that leads up to the mine Gale had told them about. They’ll find it though.

  Hopefully, the others have managed to get through the nightmare gauntlet better than they have and maybe they’ve all gotten where they all meant to go.

  27

  “That’s only mildly ominous looking,” Hewitt mutters to himself though the words are overheard by Deputy Albert.

  The deputy shivers before replying, “You ain’t fucking joking.”

  The scar in the side of the mountain opens up only about 20 feet from where they stand, a patch of forbidding blackness greater than the surrounding shadows. Neither of them is particularly fond of the thought of crossing the remaining distance to the threshold of that cavernous expanse.

  After the horrors they’d both witnessed, each of them expects far worse to be awaiting them in the depths of the mine shaft itself.

  Hewitt had never been a religious man and he still finds himself wondering if this isn’t some sort of supernatural affliction, demon possession or something like that, the sort of shit he’d seen in movies hundreds of times. The deputy is a religious person and his imagination had taken him that same direction quite some time before. If from the depths of the mine, Hell was somehow pouring over into the real world, neither man would be particularly surprised.

  “So, we should probably just get this over with, for better or worse,” Hewitt says. The dryness of his throat and mouth, strange in the abundantly wet surroundings, making the words stick as he attempts to speak.

  They move forward almost in unison. The previous hour together had developed a bond of sorts between the two men, something below the level of conscious thought, that place where shared combat instills a sort of brotherhood between men who were previously strangers.

  As far as either of them knows, they are the only people in town who aren’t dead, homicidal maniacs, or zombies.

  There’s a shared sense of relief as they reach the entrance without hordes of shambling monsters spilling out to meet them and that relief is amplified as they no longer feel the rain tapping out its minor abuse on their heads.

  Beyond those small blessings, there is no real sense of comfort as they pass beyond the mine’s entrance.

  Sound works differently just a little way inside. Already tense and nervous, the two of them are tuned in to every little noise, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the pervasive darkness inside the shaft. Neither of them wants the deputy to risk trying his flashlight or cell phone to illuminate the surroundings, both of them irrationally scared of what they might see and knowing that making themselves a target to whoever or whatever might be lurking in the shadows is not a risk worth taking.

  It takes Hewitt a minute to realize he’s been holding his breath. He exhales as quietly as he can manage. Deputy Albert had been doing the same and he remembers to exhale when he hears Hewitt doing the same.

  It is slow, letting their eyes adjust, but finally, they do begin to pick up on some faint details emerging from the blackness around them. The mine appears to be empty as far as they can see, and it certainly should be, based on what they deputy had suggested regarding the place being sealed off to keep local children from being injured if they happened to venture up the hillside.

  The deputy taps Hewitt on the shoulder before slipping closer to the wall, gesturing for him to follow.

  He immediately understands that they are standing out, no matter how dark it is outside if anyone deeper in the mine happened to be looking out. Minimizing their profile is a good move.

  They both slide to the ground, backs against the rough wall, trying and failing to will themselves to relax for the first time in neither of them can recall how long.

  Tense and terrified, they nevertheless begin breathing more deeply after only a few minutes and their heartbeats slow to a more regular and less panicked rate. They shiver from the chill that’s seeped its way into them, not just from the rain but from the horrors of the hours leading up to this first moment of peace either of them has experienced.

  Minds drift, for the first time not focused on surviving what’s immediately in front of them, as the two men stop and rest, memories of the experiences eliciting shudders from both of them.

  Fight or flight isn’t meant to be a sustained state, something both Hewitt and Deputy Albert have come face-to-face with. It exhausts and strains a person in ways no other physical or mental exertion seems to. If Miles were there with them, Hewitt figures, he’d call him a pussy for being so drained.

  Miles.

  He starts to worry about Miles for the first time in an hour or two.

  Hewitt has never believed in any sort of higher power but he almost starts praying right there, praying that his friends had gotten to Gale’s after all and that everyone else was there, together, that they are safe and in a position to relax just like he is right now. Mostly, he knows that he needs Mariah to be safe and that everything hinges on her being ok, at least for his state of mind.

  Thinking about Mariah, he wishes he had some way to reach her, to let her know that he’s alive and that he’s found an ally in the form of the deputy. Mostly he just wants to hear her voice and to know that she’s still out there.

  He knows that there’s no benefit in thinking like that.

  He has to focus on now, on what’s in front of him; and what’s in front of him is looming darkness and stone and little else. His friends aren’t here with him and he has no way to do anything about that.

  Contrary to what the deputy insisted, there has to be some way out of this godforsaken town. The road can’t be all there is. At the very least, they should be able to cut a path through the forest and over the mountains until they reach the road again, somewhere past the flooding river.

  “Do you have a family out there?”
Hewitt asks, surprising himself. He didn’t even know he was going to speak until the words blurted out, surprising him as much as the sound surprises Deputy Weber.

  “Nope,” he replies. “I’m permanently single. No wife. No kids.” He pauses for a moment before continuing, “Parents passed away in an accident years ago, black ice on the highway down near Boise.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Hewitt says.

  “No cause for sorry. It’s one of those things that happens. It is what it is.”

  Hewitt nods, knowing how stupid he probably sounded apologizing out of habit.

  The two men sit together in silence, long enough that they begin to drift in and out of consciousness.

  It could have been minutes or it could have been hours. The quality of the light penetrating the mine doesn’t appear to have changed when the deputy wakes with a start.

  Only barely awake himself and momentarily surprised by his companion’s startled inhale, Hewitt says, “It’s ok. We’re still safe here.”

  Safe.

  The word almost makes him laugh at having uttered it. There hasn’t been a minute of anything like safety in the last 48 hours of his life, perhaps more.

  The shaft returns to silence as neither of them speaks for a while, slowly bringing themselves back to the real world and wakefulness.

  “I’m heading back down there,” Deputy Weber says, his voice a clear indication that he wants nothing to do with the thought behind those words.

  “You can’t be serious?” Hewitt responds.

  “Sadly, I really am. I’m not totally fond of the idea of being back down there, but there could be innocent people still in town, and there’s no pretending those people aren’t in danger.”

  “I get that, I do, and it’s admirable that you want to do something about it. You’re just going to get yourself killed out there though. If there are people alive down there who haven’t gone mad, they’re probably hiding somewhere too, just like we are.”

  “It’s ok to be scared, Hewitt,” the deputy replies. “I’m fucking terrified. But the fact is that I have a job to do.”

  “I’m not sure your job description includes serving yourself up on a platter to a lynch mob or as dinner for a zombie.”

  “You’ve got friends, right? Those friends of yours are still out there somewhere. Don’t you want to find them and make sure you’re all safe and that you’re together?”

  Hewitt has no response to that. The words hit him like a hammer between his temples, and he winces in response.

  He’s being a coward and he knows it. Shame and fear swirl together in his mind. He knows that he should still be out there trying to find everyone. He should be like this cop, trying to save lives and sort out some kind of sense from the nightmare, regardless of the consequence and with no concern for the sacrifice.

  He just doesn’t have enough left in the tank to go back down there and he knows it. Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that he doesn’t want to be left alone here in the dark. Albert may be hardly more than a stranger to him, but at least with the deputy there, he isn’t by himself like he had been for too much of the time he spent running through that horror flick brought to life.

  “I do,” he finally says. “I want that more than I can say. But I can’t.”

  “I’m not asking you to come with me. In fact, I would prefer if you stay put right here. Knowing that you’re here, I can feel better about sending any survivors this way if I find anyone who’s still sane down there. Maybe I’ll even run into those friends of yours.”

  “You’re out of your damn mind, you know?” Hewitt smirks.

  “Believe me, I wasn’t kidding. I don’t want to go back to that place ever again. I’ve known some of these people for years, maybe not well, but well enough. Witnessing what’s been going on there has been devastating.”

  “I’m sorry for what you’ve been going through,” Hewitt says. “It hasn’t really crossed my mind to consider just how different this is, coming at it from the inside. This whole mess has to have been especially trying for you.”

  “It’s certainly nothing I trained for. Hell, I don’t think I could have trained for anything like this. But those people down there, they’re my responsibility.”

  Deputy Weber brushes himself off in the darkness, Hewitt barely being able to see anything but the faintest hints of movement.

  “Stay safe up here,” he finally says, readying himself to venture into the night. “I’ll see you again soon, I’m sure.”

  With that, the deputy steadies himself, nods to Hewitt, knowing that the gesture is likely lost in the shadows, and walks back into the rain and out of the mine.

  Just like that, Hewitt is alone again.

  Alone in a dark, abandoned, and empty mine with nothing but the worst thoughts the recesses of his mind can muster. The situation could be worse, he tries to tell himself, but he’s not entirely certain how.

  It takes him a while but he does finally fall asleep again, curled up in the dirt on the floor of the mine, like a baby hoping to be embraced by its mother.

  28

  “Hewitt and I had to split up and go our separate ways,” Miles says after standing in shameful silence for more than a minute. “There were five of those assholes after us and we had to try and shake them however we could.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?” Mariah asks.

  “It was right after we left the bar,” he replies. “We didn’t even make it a block before he cut right and I went left.”

  Mariah steps backward and sits herself down in a chair, slumping, not knowing how to respond. When Miles had walked into the room all full of swagger, she knew Hewitt would be right behind. Hearing that he was still out there somewhere was devastating.

  “I’m sorry, Mariah,” Miles says. “I really am. I wish he was here with me right now because I hate the thought of him being out there with whatever the fuck is going on.”

  She says nothing in response and silence fills the room like something permeable, weighted and cloying. The words unsaid are more substantial than anything they could hope to say at this moment. They’ve all seen horrific things since they left the bar, things that only served to highlight just how awful the situation is. Kateb’s death, as horrific and painful as it had been, seems to have been simply the first incident in a night that has become little more than a waking nightmare.

  Knowing that Hewitt, Abraham, and Ben are still out there has Miles on edge and he begins pacing the room, desperately trying to think through the whole sequence of events and find some sense in anything that’s happened. If he can find some rational or even plausible explanation for everything, maybe he can find some way to get them out of this alive, with the other three in tow. This is who he is and it’s what he does. He doesn’t leave anyone behind. Abandoning Kateb is still breaking his heart more and more each time he allows himself to think of his dearest friend laying there on the dingy floor of that bar.

  He stands before the window, barely able to make out the distant hints of light where the street lights still glow. There is no movement, and the darkness inside of the home ensures that no one is seeing in.

  Miles breaks his silence, still staring into the night through curtains of rain, “Gale, you’ve been here for a few years now. You know the environment and the people here.”

  Gale nods, not knowing where this is going.

  “We need to get a handle on what we’re up against here. We need a map of this fucked up little town and we god damn well need some rough population statistics.”

  Silence still, as Miles continues staring off into the night.

  “I meant fucking now, Gale!” Miles says, turning to look his friend in the eyes. “I’m not sure what you two might have seen on your way here, but this place is well and truly fucked. There’s some spooky shit going on out there and I mean really spooky.”

  Gale continues staring back, unfocused, no indication he’d even heard what Miles had just said.
>
  Mariah looks up from her seat, pulling out her phone, “I’ve got a map on here. I had it stored offline since the area wasn’t likely to have any kind of stable network access. It’s not perfect, but it gives us a bird’s eye view of the streets and businesses. I’ve got fuckall for statistics though.”

  “It’s a start,” Miles grins.

  “I’ve got maps, “ Gale finally says. “I have maps, detailed population and demographic statistics, census data, and pretty much everything else you could ask for.”

  Miles turns to look at Gale again, confused and taken aback by the abrupt response. There’s none of the usual self-effacing demeanor present as Gale had spoken, and seeing his friend as seemingly broken and distracted as he’s been since Miles made it into the house, he has been feeling like Gale had slipped back into the old mode of being, subdued and timid. Just when he’d been adjusting to the new and improved Gale, seeing the man as he’s been the last few minutes felt familiar enough that the return of that self-assured tone is a bit of a surprise.

  “Hell, I can provide you with medical histories, NRA memberships, and concealed carry registrations,” Gale continues, his voice sounding manic. “I can even pull up education records for every man, woman, and child here.”

  “What the fuck, Gale?”

  Miles isn’t the only one stunned by the outburst and slightly frantic tone from their friend. Mariah’s mouth hangs open, no idea what to say.

  Gale inhales deeply before sighing. “Of course, we’d need to get to my lab first and that means getting through town and making it to the old mine on the other side. It could give us an opportunity to find everyone else though since I’m worried they aren’t going to be making it back here if they haven’t already.”

  “Wait one second,” Mariah interjects. “What are you even talking about? What lab?”

  “Did you think I would move somewhere remote like this, somewhere this isolated, without being outfitted to continue my work?” Gale begins, sounding exasperated. “This isn’t a vacation home for me, Mariah.”