by Ray Wallace
Oh, God, what now? Thomas wondered.
Whatever it was, it couldn’t be as bad as the bugs the day before or the blood that fell from the sky the day before that, now could it? But of course it could, he realized as he took a look for himself. Just as bad if not worse.
At first his brain refused to believe what his eyes were telling him.
He was looking down from the second floor of a building and what he saw down below was…
Snakes.
Everywhere.
Writhing masses of them, in some places so thick that you couldn’t even see the ground over which they crawled. That last moan Thomas had managed to suppress made its presences known. He felt an elbow in his ribs and fell silent. He and his two newfound companions stayed where they were for some time, seemingly mesmerized by what they were witnessing, watching the light intensify on that awful scene. Full daylight did little to dispel the horror of the view through the window. It only served to fill in the details.
Thomas had a snake phobia. As a child he’d been held down by a neighborhood bully who’d dangled one of the awful, limbless creatures over his face for what was probably only a minute or so but had felt like hours of terror. Looking back, he realized that it had more than likely only been a garter snake but to Thomas’s young imagination it had seemed the size of an anaconda, ready to wrap him up tight and squeeze the life from his lungs. Laughing, the bully had eventually let him up and he’d run home, crying all the way. He’d had nightmares for weeks after the incident often waking up in the middle of the night gasping for air. The fear of the serpent that had been instilled in him that day had never fully left him.
And now this.
He was practically paralyzed by the sight of so many of the undulating monstrosities. And some of them truly were monstrous, twenty feet long if they were an inch, a good foot in diameter, any one of them quite capable of squeezing the air from the lungs of a now fully grown Thomas Wright, of slowly swallowing and digesting him, of basking in the summer sun with a human sized lump at its midsection. The thought of it gave him a sick feeling above and beyond what the previous night’s drinking had left him with. Wide-eyed, he eventually backed away from the window. This was after he realized that the vehicle he saw down there with the snakes crawling over its hood and windshield and roof was his own. So he was in an apartment located above the liquor store. He had to assume that the people now sharing the room with him had helped him up here some time during the night when he was either out cold or just too drunk to remember. They had saved his life. He had yet to exchange words with them. He didn’t even know their names.
He stood and circled around the bed, passed a dresser and a small book case as he approached the door he assumed would take him out of this place. He wasn’t sure where he planned to go but he knew he just had to get away. Images of all those snakes flickered through his mind, a phantasmagoric display of long, grey and green and black bodies, flickering tongues and hungry yellow eyes. As he reached for the doorknob a hand fell on his shoulder and spun him around none-too-gently.
“What do you think you’re doing?” asked the man in a hushed but forceful tone, anger evident on his face. He was shorter than Thomas by a good four or five inches. But he was thick, his shoulders wide beneath the black t-shirt he wore, well muscled arms on display. His hair was cut short, nearly to the scalp, military style. Dark eyes glared at Thomas from above a slightly crooked nose that had obviously been broken a time or two in the past. The woman, slightly older and noticeably taller, came over and stood next to him. Dressed in a t-shirt and a pair of jeans, her long brown hair was pulled back tight in a ponytail. She was fairly attractive with a wide adhesive bandage covering a wound on her forehead. They both wore police issue holsters at their hips, the butts of handguns visible there. Now why didn’t I think of that? thought Thomas as he reached down and patted the gun still tucked into the front of his jeans. Just too many things on his mind when he’d visited the police station, it seemed.
“Getting out of here,” Thomas replied, returning the shorter man’s glare. A fight with the other man probably wouldn’t go well for Thomas, but the headache, the nausea, the thought of all those snakes... It was all making him consider some less than rational courses of action.
“Oh, well that sounds like a great idea,” the woman chimed in. “Who knows what’s beyond that door? Damn things could be waiting out there, ready to take you down as soon as you open it.”
Thomas imagined the creatures all over him, biting and squeezing. It made him want to scream.
“Well, we just can’t stay here!”
“And why not?” It was the man speaking again. “It’s safe enough for now. We’ve got food. Water. And if they behave the way those bugs did yesterday, then maybe they’ll eventually just dry up and blow away.”
“And if they don’t?”
“We’ll worry about that when the time comes. We just need to stay calm, don’t do anything stupid, take action only when completely necessary.”
Thomas knew that it was a sensible argument. A lot more sensible than opening the door, running outside and hoping for the best. The confrontation had served to distract him from the images filling his mind, enough so that he was able to think a bit more clearly. Some food would help. Definitely some water. Maybe an aspirin or ten. Goddamn, all this drinking and drugging is gonna get me killed. He told himself he would have to stop. If he wanted to get through this—whatever this was, exactly—if he wanted any chance at figuring it all out, at possibly ever seeing Julia and the kids again, then he was going to have to keep his wits about him, to stay on top of his game. He decided right then and there it was time to go on the wagon. Drugs and alcohol were not going to make anything better. They would only make things worse. This he knew from experience. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d have to dry out. There’d been times throughout his and Julia’s marriage when he’d started to imbibe a bit too frequently. Once, she’d actually threatened to go stay with her mother, to take the kids with her if he didn’t do something about it. He’d quit then, gone cold turkey for more than a year. But eventually his willpower had eroded and he’d gone back to the bottle. Not as badly as before. In fact, he’d been able to hide most of it from Julia, to let her believe it occurred only on rare events. She wasn’t happy about it, reminded him of her threat, said that she’d go through with it if things got worse again. But they hadn’t. He kept it all under control quite nicely. And then his family had disappeared, and the skies started raining blood, and he’d run to the bottle again, sought the solace that it promised, the escape that it offered. But the escape was short-lived. And each time he returned he felt that much less capable of dealing with the grim reality of his situation.
Face it or die, he told himself. Face it or die.
“I’ve got a terrible headache. You wouldn’t happen to have anything that might help, would you?”
The other man’s expression softened and he nodded. “Just so happens that we do.” The man went and retrieved the duffel bag he’d left lying by the window, set it on the bed, unzipped it and rummaged around inside. He tossed Thomas a plastic bottle of Excedrin. “You know, that stuff they got downstairs… It’ll end up killing you. Especially now.”
Thomas nodded, opened the bottle and tapped a few of the pain relievers into his hand. “Preaching to the choir, my man. Preaching to the choir.”
*
Sure, mine and Julia’s marriage had its problems. What marriage doesn’t? It’s so strange and unfortunate the things that two people who love one another will sometimes put each other through. And make no doubt about it, I loved her and I know that she loved me. Still loves me. How can I be so sure of her feelings? By the simple fact of what it was that she put up with. You may have discovered by now, oh, imagined reader, that I’m a bit of a wreck. Emotionally, that is. Not all the time but enough to make me a bit difficult to deal with on occasion. It’s a shortcoming of mine I’ve never had any trouble recogniz
ing or admitting, either. Where I’ve always run into problems was in finding a proper and permanent way of dealing with it. It would have been easier, I suppose, if I could discover an origin for my emotional struggles. But I couldn’t. Seemed that the shrink I’d spent some time with couldn’t either.
My childhood had by and large been a happy one, the incident with the bully and the snake notwithstanding. My father had a good job which allowed my mother to stay home and look after me. I had my share of friends. There was Mikey from down the street. And Sean from the next street over. The three of us were inseparable throughout most of grade school. We did all the usual things that boys of that age tend to do, I suppose. Rode bikes and skateboards in the summer. Played baseball. Had the occasional sleepover. In the winter we’d play football or street hockey after school. As we got older, we pretended we weren’t beginning to find members of the opposite sex interesting in ways we’d never thought of them before. (Looking back, I can’t help but wonder whatever happened to those guys. Sean and Mikey each moved away within a year of each other. I was in junior high at the time. We had vowed to keep in touch with one another and, for a little while, we had. Maybe a year at the most. But in time I found new friends, got a girlfriend—I assume that they did the same—and we just stopped contacting each other. Sometimes, it’s just the way things go, I suppose.)
High school was fine. I was fairly popular. Got pretty decent grades. All in all, managed to make it through that period of my life relatively unscathed.
My home life had always been good too. My parents had been supportive in anything I chose to do. Maybe to a fault.
Nope, there was nothing from my formative years that should have left any long term emotional scars. Nothing that should have required the levels of self medication to which I was subjecting myself.
The first time I can recall suffering any sort of panic attack was during college. Whenever a big test was coming up or I had to speak in front of the class, I’d have trouble sleeping for nights on end before the event and sometimes it took all of my will to face the test or to stand up in front of the class like that. It’s a wonder I ever got my degree, now that I think back on it. Seems I’m just no good at dealing with certain kinds of pressure. And then came the career, the family, a son and a daughter who depended on me... Sometimes it felt like too much, threatened to overwhelm me.
It was Julia who suggested I see a psychiatrist. The panic attacks had gotten pretty bad. There were times when I had trouble breathing. Light-headedness. A physical checkup said that everything was fine. For my age, I was in pretty good shape. Blood pressure a little high but nothing some small changes in my diet couldn’t set straight. So I started eating better, signed up at a local gym and got some exercise. When these two alterations to my day to day routine did little to nothing regarding the levels of anxiety I continued to experience, I finally gave in and went to see the shrink. He put me on medication, suggested writing about my feelings, the things that worried me, especially the things I felt I had no control over. He told me that alcohol would more than likely only make things worse.
And then Hell came to my town and… Well, if you’ve read this far then you know exactly what happened. I turned to the bottle. And quickly realized that my psychiatrist had been right. The alcohol didn’t help. The anxiety was returning. Intensifying. Even with the aid of the pills it was coming back, fast and furious. As I sat there with Ron and Tanya—those were the names of my rescuers, I came to discover—I could feel the tendrils of panic creeping up my spine and tickling the insides of my guts. And all those snakes, right beyond those walls… God, it was a miracle I didn’t go over the edge, right then and there, just run outside and let those ghastly creatures do what they would to me. Good thing Ron had stepped up and talked me out of leaving that room. That was twice he had saved me. To prevent making it a third time, it was obvious I was going to have to get my head on straight. And in a hurry, too.
No more drinking, I promised myself over and over. Whatever happens.
And for the rest of that awful season in Hell it was a promise I was able to keep.
*
“So where’s it all coming from?” asked Thomas as he ate a granola bar, washed it down with an energy drink Tanya had given him from the duffel bag.
“You haven’t seen it?” she asked.
The three of them were sitting on the floor between the bed and the entrance to the room. There was an oval shaped green and brown carpet covering the wood flooring. The duffel bag had been placed inside the triangle the three of them formed. Thomas was beginning to feel the pain reliever’s healing powers kick in. He and his two companions had been sitting like that for about fifteen or twenty minutes now. Quick introductions had been made.
Ron was all of twenty-five years old. Ex-US Marine. Had gotten a degree and a job in computer programming—all courtesy of the military—had moved to Cleveland two years back and was making a pretty good living as part of a team improving internet security for a national banking chain. He was back in town visiting his folks who he hadn’t seen in over a year, who had now disappeared much as Thomas’s family had. He couldn’t help but wonder, of course, if he’d ever see them again.
Tanya was an EMT working out of the hospital where Thomas had first met Gerald. She too had done a stint in the military, three years with the Army, half that time in Iraq. At thirty years of age, she’d been through enough stressful situations to at least partially inure her to what was currently happening to the town where she now lived and worked. But really, what kind of training could ever prepare anyone for something like that?
She and Ron had nearly collided—Ron in his sporty little Nissan, Tanya driving the ambulance she’d taken from the hospital—during the blood storm at an intersection where the lights were not working. Each of them, like Thomas, had been asleep when the great disappearance had occurred, Ron in the guest room of his parent’s house, Tanya on a couch in the worker’s lounge at the hospital in the middle of a twenty-four hour shift.
“Seen what?” asked Thomas around a mouthful of granola.
Ron and Tanya exchanged a look.
“The hole,” said Ron.
Thomas raised an eyebrow.
“It’s at the center of town,” Tanya informed him. “Right in the middle of 60, out in front of the MacDonald’s.”
“There’s a… hole… there?” Thomas wasn’t quite sure what they were getting at.
“Yeah, big fucking thing,” said Ron.
“More like a cavern,” added Tanya.
“Or Satan’s asshole.”
Thomas couldn’t help himself, he laughed. Tanya just rolled her eyes.
“And you think that’s where all of this…” Thomas motioned vaguely with his hand. “The rain… the bugs… now, the snakes… is coming from.”
Tanya was shaking her head. “No, we don’t think so.”
“We know so,” finished Ron.
“How could you know such a thing?” Thomas took another swig of his energy drink. A second bottle of the stuff and he might just start to feel human again.
“Because we were there when the bugs came out,” said Tanya.
“Yeah, we had pulled up to it in the ambulance,” Ron chimed in. “There were a few other people there standing at the edge, looking down into it. We were about to get out when there’s this god-awful roaring sound. And up out of the hole comes the swarm.”
“Good thing we were still in the vehicle,” said Tanya, a grave expression on her face. “The poor SOB’s who were standing there... The swarm just tore them apart.”
“And this hole, this crater,” said Thomas. “It’s in front of the MacDonald’s?”
Ron and Tanya both nodded.
Thomas snorted a laugh. “Figures.”
“We went back there this morning,” said Tanya. “Saw the snakes come out of the hole, drove the hell out of there. Until the ambulance blew a tire, that is. Not far from here. Just down the road. Then we walked. Saw you sl
eeping out front.” She smiled. “Guess it’s a good thing we came this way, huh?”
Thomas suppressed a shudder. “Yeah, I guess so.”
It was nice sitting there talking like that. Thomas was able to take his mind off of the situation he was in. At least a little bit. For that short while he was almost able to forget about what had happened to Dana and Gerald, about the snakes outside. Almost.
“I guess the question now would be,” said Thomas, “what do we do about all this?”
Ron opened his mouth to say something when there came a loud thumping sound at the door. Quickly, the three of them were on their feet. “What the hell,” said Tanya. The sound came again. Then again. The door shuddered in its frame. Ron and Tanya had their guns out and aimed at the doorway. Thomas followed their lead.
“Whatever comes through that door,” said Ron, “be ready to give it all you got.”
For a moment, Thomas thought about running to the door and bracing it, much as he and Dana had against the bugs the previous day. But it was obvious that the thing seeking entrance to this room was much more physically powerful than some mere insects, no matter how diabolical they may have been. Maybe if all three of them held the door, or if they pushed the bed over…
And then it was too late to contemplate any such action as the door, unable to withstand the pounding from the other side, burst inward and a sight that sucked the air from Thomas’s lungs presented itself to his unbelieving eyes.
It was a snake, of course, but one the likes of which the world had undoubtedly never seen before. It was huge, as big around as a tree trunk, its scales a deep and shimmering scarlet. In the middle of its head, directly between the eyes, was a curved, wicked looking black horn. A forked tongue nearly a foot long jutted from its mouth, wiggling about, tasting the air. Then the mouth opened wide revealing yellow fangs easily as long as Thomas’s hand.
