by Laeser, Nico
I worked to stay the panic, rationalizing it had been more than twenty-four hours. I knew they would have taken what they could and left as quickly as they’d come, but I could not shake my fear. The realization it had been more than twenty-four hours, and in that time no one had called for me or come to find me, was enough of a sign no one else had made it, but it was not enough to prepare me for what I saw.
The mangled truck was up on its side—part of the window frame was caved in—and what glass remained was coated with dried blood. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the scene to change, unable to accept what I’d seen. I had to force myself to look again, just in case there was anyone left alive, but what I saw of Sarah, what was left of Sarah, was not enough to carry her back to her feet.
She lay in a tangle of blood-matted hair, behind the draped arms of her husband, slumped and held above her by the taut seatbelt. If I hadn’t known who was driving, I would not have recognized Sean by what remained of his face. They were both dead. We had come to find them, tried to save them, and had lost everything in the process. They had not been killed by ghosts or demons, but by men.
I couldn’t bring myself to look inside the cab. The thought of seeing Haley’s lifeless body was more than I could take. All of my strength leaked and poured from my eyes, and I collapsed over the pack. I reached into the pack, fumbled for the fabric holster, and shook the handgun free. It would take only a single pull of the trigger, with the barrel pressed against my temple, and all of this would be gone—the pain and the nightmare would be over, but I needed to see Powell first. I had been thrown from the truck, and perhaps Powell had been thrown too.
I dragged myself on my knees and forearm, the gun still clutched in my one good hand. Stinging hot tears filled my eyes and fell to the road as I crawled. The first thing I saw was the rifle and then the strap still curled around his hand. I edged around the truck and saw his arm, thick with blood, and I braced myself for the sight of his body, but there was no body.
I stared at the severed arm and at the dark red strip of road, flecked with bits of bone and fat, and I began to shake. Between incoherent pleas, came a murmur, a muted moan that seemed foreign and detached. I heard the word Powell sobbed over and over. It was my voice, but from somewhere far away. I wanted it to be over. I willed my body to move and rolled onto my back, freeing the shaking hand that held the 1911. With my eyes closed tight and my breath held, I pressed the barrel against my temple.
Over the loud thumping pulse in my head, I heard the muffled cry once again, but it was not coming from me. The whimpered vowel sounds were coming from inside the truck.
“Haley?”
I gritted my teeth to the pain as I rolled back onto my stomach, and rose onto my knees and arm. I crawled to the cab as fast as I could and peered inside, but I couldn’t see her. Shattered glass cubes dug into my back as I wriggled over the twisted window frame, while the sharp salt and copper smell of blood filled my nose and lungs, causing me to cough and gag.
I found her, wedged down between the tangle of legs, trapped under the bodies of her parents and camouflaged by their dried blood. I rolled onto the dislocated shoulder, shrieked through my teeth at the pain, and extended my right hand to find hers. Haley’s eyes opened, bright white against the dried blood over her face. Pink lines striped her cheeks where steady streams of tears had carved their own path through the scabbed mask.
“Oh, Haley.” I took her hand in mine.
She looked like a wild animal in a cage, terrified and staring back at me through the cloth and flesh bars, but seemingly unable to recognize me. I tried to push and pull at Sean’s leg, but the dash was skewed, pinning the limb in place. Haley was trapped and I was too weak, too hurt to offer her a way out.
The 1911 sat on the road, just outside the window frame, in sight, but just out of reach. I motioned toward the gun, but Haley held on tight to my hand and closed her eyes.
36 | PRESS
As Haley and I lay together, trapped by more than just our need for living human contact, I thought about Powell, about all we had gone through together to survive this far, and what it had all been for. I thought about my father and brother. Perhaps, Sam was still out there somewhere, alive and trying to get home.
Beyond the 1911, the only way I could think to free Haley was to unbuckle Sean’s seatbelt, let him fall, and have her climb up and over the body—up and out through the twisted gap where the driver window used to be.
I gave her hand a squeeze and mouthed the plan to her wild eyes, asking her to nod if she understood. I couldn’t tell if she was reading my words or looking through me to the body of her twice-dead mother. Perhaps, to Haley, the reassuring hand that held her own was not mine, but Sarah’s, trying to wake her from the nightmare, trying to shake her from the state of shock. There was no way to raise my voice to anything more than a whisper to her eyes. I squeezed and shook her hand and eventually pulled mine free.
I shuffled back, trying all the while to forget what, or who, it was that I now crawled over, imagining only roots and tree limbs digging into my back as I climbed. I twisted onto my bad side, and the sudden rush of pain seemed to strangle the truck’s interior to a narrow, blurred tunnel, ending with a small red button with embossed letters that read, PRESS.
I reached up and pushed the button to release the seatbelt. It clicked, but the clip remained wedged, and the belt was still locked in placed. I struggled at the clip and pushed at the body, but each attempt to push Sean’s body away added pressure and pain to my own. I slid back down to settle against the passenger door, brought my knee up to my chest, and pressed my good foot against Sean’s shoulder. I gave a shove and the seatbelt lock disengaged. The body fell, the belt zipped, clicked, and locked again, suspending the grotesque remnants of my friend’s face just inches from my own. As I turned away, he kissed my cheek before sliding free of the belt to rest lifeless on top of me. I gritted my teeth around an uncontrollable shriek. The pain was immense and came in waves, each one delineated by a cold shiver through my body.
I took several breaths in rapid succession, each one sobbed back out. I craned my neck, peering around the body to find Haley.
“Can you get out?” I managed through my teeth, but her eyes were filled with tears and blind to my words.
The sickly dull aches joined down my left side, each seam stitched and cauterized with sharp, red-hot needles that seemed to stab through the bone. I stretched out my arm and fingers to find hers. Haley looked back at me and painted a pink stripe across her eyes with her sleeve.
I struggled to control my mouth around the words and to keep from wincing while I spoke. “I need you to try to climb up and over. Okay?”
For a moment, she simply stared back at me.
“Haley?”
Her lip began to quiver as her eyes searched the confines of the truck cab, as though waking up and seeing the carnage for the first time, and then she began to climb. The extra weight, pressing down on my shoulder and arm, was more than I could handle. Bright sparks flew past my eyes, dancing erratically while I screamed. The truck interior darkened as she squeezed through the mangled frame, pushing herself up with one foot on the body of her father and the other on the steering wheel.
I heard the tiny patter of her feet on the door of the truck, and the slap of her shoes on the road outside, and then it was quiet. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the mouth that had kissed my cheek, the jaw and cheekbone exposed in places under a gelatinous red wax. His lifeless body seemed to exhale a last breath, a cold breath that permeated my skin and traveled down the length of my body. A shudder became a shake that wouldn’t stop, and pain turned to panic as I tried to pull myself free. I was trapped inside the same cage Haley had been trapped in for more than a day, a cage made from the bodies of her dead parents. Again, I was somehow detached. I could hear myself crying, giving in to bouts of hysteria, while my mind wandered back to my own father. I was staring down at the mannequin, modeled and dressed to look like
my father, laid out on the drop sheet that would be his coffin.
I felt a tug at my shirt and opened my eyes. The light was bright and amplified by the return of burning pain throughout my body, as if I had awoken in a pit of fire. I couldn’t tell how much time had elapsed—weeks or perhaps only seconds? Had I lost consciousness?
Through the blur, I saw Haley, leaning in through the windowless frame, pulling at my shirt, tugging at my arm, and trying to pull me free. I wrapped my hand around the jagged frame, and before I had time to process the pain, I pulled with all the strength I could find. A dull clunk came from behind my left ear, followed by equal sensations of relief and pain, but the former was quickly consumed by the latter. Images of Powell’s severed arm flashed through my mind as I screamed and pulled, shuffling on my good leg and reefing with all the power that remained in my good arm. The clamp around my left side squeezed, biting down on my elbow, digging in, and stabbing electrically charged slivers through muscle and bone. Haley wrapped her arms around mine and pulled, and with one last combined effort, my arm slipped from under Sean.
We curled up together against the wreckage of our truck, the remnants of our world, and wept.
37 | Held together by sticks and string
If we had not gone to find the others, Sean and Sarah might still be alive. Powell would be. We would have been safe in the house, but for how long? The creatures from the camp would be upon us soon enough, and then all our efforts to survive would be for nothing. Neither Gary’s guns nor Randall’s God were enough to inspire hope of a future with mankind still in it. Haley and I had survived the wreck, but even if we could somehow make it home, it seemed unlikely we would make it long beyond the next manifestation.
The house was a long way off, a day’s drive, a week or more to walk. To crawl home would be an impossible task. We had survived only to delay the inevitable, but we would most likely die before the worst of it, before Hell opened its gates to our world, pouring its demons out to feast on mankind. We would surely starve before they could feed.
I took stock of what food we had and cursed myself for not having collected everything during my climb, but the truth of it was that I had carried all that I could. What we had would sustain us both for up to four days, but for each of those days, we would burn more calories than we would consume.
We shared a bottle of water and made a meal of a handful of almonds and a can of vegetable soup, stabbed open with the multi-tool knife and served cold. Haley made no attempt to communicate. If she still had her notepad, it remained tucked away in her pocket. Part of me wanted to wash the blood from her face, hold her, and coax her out from wherever she had gone, but we could not waste the water, and neither she nor I could afford to shed the numbing armor of denial. If we managed to make it home, then perhaps she could make the transition from denial to acceptance, although, I had not yet accepted the death of my own father, or at least the finality of it.
My father’s words came back to me, and I put my idle hands to work, removing my boot to check on my foot and ankle. Under the dressing, my ankle was purple and swollen and looked no better than it had before. I still couldn’t put any weight on it, no matter how much I tried to convince myself that the pain was all in my mind or that our survival depended on it. I re-wrapped the foot and sent Haley to look for a few large, strong sticks I could use to fashion a crutch and splint, while I collected what scraps and supplies were left in and around the truck. The last thing I collected was the rifle. I couldn’t bear the thought of trying to pry Powell’s fingers from the strap of the rifle; instead, I turned away, ran my fingers along the stock until I found the clip, and removed the strap, leaving it and what remained of Powell behind.
I busied myself, fumbling to cut sections of sleeping bag and lengths of parachute cord while I waited for Haley to return. I tied a long length of cord to the rifle stock to replace the shoulder strap and tied shorter lengths to the fabric holster of the 1911 to attach it to my belt loop and thigh. The handgun was ready and loaded, with the safety off. The only people I could trust were dead or very far away, and I would no longer risk Haley’s life, or my own, hoping people were inherently good.
Haley returned as I was trying to tie a section of the sleeping bag around my ankle. She dropped the bundle of sticks and branches, crouched down, and took the cord. As she wrapped the cord around my leg, I added sticks to each side in an effort to emulate the splint Powell had made for Owen back at the house. The resulting cast would probably do more harm than good, but it was all I could think of beyond a makeshift crutch. After wrapping my elbow, we worked together to make the crutch, tying two of the longer branches together and cinching a smaller Y-shaped branch at one end to fit under my arm. She helped me up to standing. The crutch was strong enough to hold my weight but impossible to hold in my left hand with the arm wrapped and slung. Trial and error led to the crutch being fastened to my belt loop and the “Y” section under my arm being secured with a loop of cord over my shoulder.
I strained to reach down for the pack, but Haley rushed to intercept the shoulder strap, slipped her arm through, and hoisted it onto her back. It must have weighed almost a third of her own weight, but she gave no indication of complaint. As we began our descent along the high road, she helped to steady me and swung the crutch for each step until I grew accustomed to the necessary motion and was able to struggle on unaided.
Haley remained by my side, but her mind was far away, offering little more than the occasional glance over at me, or back the way we had come. I managed to get her attention and asked her to look at the map, to check for circled sections of road, marked as vehicles unchecked, as much for the hope of finding a working vehicle, as to stop her mind from returning to the crash. I still had the use of my right foot for the pedals and my right arm to steer. If we could find a vehicle that worked, I could get us home.
***
By the time we reached the first obstruction, the painkillers had metabolized in my system and were working to normalize the pain, clipping the sharp, high peaks to somewhere below my new threshold for pain. Even with the codeine, I felt every agonizing step, but without it, I would not have made it much farther.
Having seen the corpse in the driver’s seat of the first vehicle, I directed Haley to the other two and asked her to check them for anything of value. Once she was beyond sight of the corpse, I pulled open the door. It opened like an airlock, belching hot, putrid air, instantly overwhelming my senses. I turned away and pulled the neckline of my shirt over my mouth and nose, but even that wasn’t enough to filter out the sharp smell of rancid meat. I leaned in again and turned the key, but like its well-dressed owner, the car was long since dead.
Behind the passenger seat was a pack of bottled water and a briefcase. I worked my way around the car, pulled open the back door and thumbed the latches on the case. Inside, there was more money than I had ever seen, and all in large denomination bills. I looked again at the driver, a bank manager perhaps, or drug dealer? I closed the briefcase and dragged the pack of water out and onto the road. Inside the trunk was a suitcase, filled with expensive looking suits, shoes, and shiny trinkets, now nothing more than sparkling junk. I poured the suitcase out and set it on the road, extended the handle, and placed the pack of water inside before zipping it up.
The second vehicle was unoccupied, void of supplies, and the keys were nowhere to be found. I thought on the possibility of hotwiring the car, but without the knowledge or skill, I would be relying on luck, which seemed to be in short supply. Even for an electrician’s daughter, the odds on figuring out how to hotwire the vehicle were slim; the odds on the car being dead were high. Trial and error only works when the correct answer offers a reward.
I rejoined Haley at the third vehicle as she climbed out from the back seat. “Did you find anything?” I asked.
She shook her head and looked down at the ground. I moved closer and put my arm around her. She wrapped her arms around my midsection and held on tight, whil
e I fought not to flinch at the miscellaneous pains shooting through my body like fireworks in my blood. I held her while she wept, and then we cried together.
Judging by my need for more painkillers, it had been three or four hours of labored walking before we reached the next point of interest on the map. The car was unoccupied and pulled over to the side of the road, and the keys were still in the ignition. I opened the door and perched sideways on the seat, leaving my splinted leg and tied-on crutch outside while I leaned around the steering wheel and turned the key.
In the dead silence of our desolate world, the roar was unexpected. The engine came to life on the first turn, and the instrument panel lit up showing more than half a tank of fuel. I pulled the release for the trunk, climbed out with the car left running, hobbled around to the back, and lifted the suitcase into the trunk. Haley tugged at the back of my shirt, and when I turned, she was pointing at the car.
“What is it?”
She continued to point and edged around to the passenger side. The back passenger-side tire was flat, and a glance at the other three revealed the spare had already been used. It was not our good luck that had left a working vehicle half-full of fuel for us to find. It was the poor luck of its previous owner, who must have continued on foot to the camp after a second blown tire. My heart sank. How far could we get on three wheels? The answer to that question came as quickly as it was asked. Farther than on three legs.
“We’ll drive it until we find another car that works or another wheel to replace that one,” I said and pulled the jack from its compartment, before replacing the carpeted panel, and stowing all but a few bottles of water, painkillers, and the 1911 still strapped to my thigh.
