by Jason Brant
“Only if there is anyone around to tell the story,” Aaron said, his mood growing dour.
Stephanie worked her hands together in slow, nervous movements. “Are we all that are left? Has the rest of the world disappeared too?”
“I don’t know,” Walter said.
Everyone expected answers from him. Because he was the oldest member of their newfound group, he understood why. That, however, didn’t mean that he knew any more than anyone else. Perhaps they viewed his lack of fear as some kind of leadership quality.
What they didn’t understand was that he wanted death. He didn’t fear it – he welcomed it. Now that he knew the last vestige of his family had been taken away from him, Walter saw no point in living. His life was now worthless.
The weight of the pistol in his waistband pulled at his thoughts. Though he conversed with his fellow survivors, his mind continually wandered back to the gun. It would be his release – hopefully sooner rather than later. Just knowing that his end drew near helped him to relax.
Walter looked down at the teenagers, seeing the stress and fear on their faces, and felt a wave of guilt wash over him. They depended on him. He was the elder survivor and that gave him at least some form of responsibility for the others. As much as he wanted to face oblivion, he knew that he would have to delay his date with the pistol for a little while longer.
He would see if he could find them a safe haven first. Then he would take the final step.
“Walt?” Christy slid from the desk she sat on, sidestepping to Walter.
“Hmm?”
“The crazy lady is waking up.”
The woman moaned as she stirred on the cold linoleum floor. She moved her head from side to side, smearing the small pool of blood that had formed under the right side of her face. Consciousness hadn’t returned yet, but it was on the way.
“What should we do with her?” Aaron asked. “She’s crazy as shit.”
“Nothing,” Walter said. “We leave her here. If we find help, we’ll send it back for her.”
“You want to leave here?” Christy asked.
“I don’t think we have a choice. The generator will eventually run out of gas if we stay here. Our batteries will die. We might be able to siphon some gas from cars and keep things going for awhile – days even. But eventually we’ll have to leave. I’d rather do it now. Besides, we don’t know how far the darkness has spread. It could just be Aberdeen. Maybe it’s all of Maryland. The point is that we won’t know if we don’t try.”
“But it’s safe here. What we if get all the way to Baltimore and nothing has changed? We might not find another place with a running generator.” Christy looked back and forth from Walter to the teenagers. “If we leave here, we might be passing up our best chance at surviving.”
“Or we might be sitting here, our lives in danger, while the neighboring town is fine,” Stephanie said. “Then again, morning is coming soon, right? What happens then?”
“Maybe the sun won’t ever come again,” Walter said. “All bets are off at this point. All I’m saying is that we should be proactive. I don’t like the idea of waiting around and hoping for the best.”
Aaron grunted as he worked his way to his feet. The bandage on his side had turned a dark shade of pink. “So how do we decide what to do? Vote?”
Despite Aaron’s regard for conspiracy theories, Walter liked the way the boy thought. He was sharp.
“Sounds fair enough. I vote we borrow a patrol car from out back and take our chances.” Walter stood, waiting for everyone else to give their opinions.
“I can’t stay here with her,” Stephanie said, pointing at the waking woman. “I say we go outside.”
“Same here,” Aaron said. “I want to see if this thing has spread everywhere. If it has, what’s the point of holing up here? We’re screwed.”
Christy glanced around the group. “Fine.”
“If you go out there, you’ll all die.”
The crazy woman had maneuvered herself into a seated position, her hands still cuffed behind her back. Blood saturated her hair, matting it to her face and scalp. She could of stepped out of a horror film.
“And it’s what you deserve. You’re filth and God shall judge you.”
“Shut up, lady.” Aaron rolled his eyes.
“Search for flashlights and keys. There’s no point in sitting around here any longer than necessary.” Walter headed for the biggest office he could see, which sat along the left wall of the lobby.
He took his lantern with him just in case the generator died.
The office belonged to a Lieutenant Davis. Pictures of the man’s family adorned the walls, hanging beside two degrees and a handful of certifications. A pegboard was nailed to the wall behind the desk with a large assortment of keys dangling from it.
Walter moved across the room and examined the labels above each key ring. The bottom row of the pegboard held the spare keys for the patrol cars. Not knowing what vehicles were actually at the station, Walter grabbed each one, dropping them into his pockets.
Before heading back to the lobby, Walter pulled the pistol from his waistband and popped the cylinder open. Empty. Again. He couldn’t catch a break with these damned guns. He tossed it onto the desk and went back to join the others. There must have been other firearms somewhere in the building, but he didn’t want to spend time searching for one. All he had to do was turn out the lantern when the time came.
“I’ve got the keys,” he said.
Christy held a police-issue flashlight in her hand, testing the power of its beam on the wall beside her. Finding it satisfactory, she stuffed it under her arm and continued rifling through a desk.
Aaron and Stephanie did the same, though their search didn’t appear to have uncovered much.
“Man, you would think there would be all kinds of stuff here. This is a freaking police station,” Aaron said.
“They probably have everything locked up,” Stephanie said. “That or the cops take their equipment home with them, rather than leave it here. That probably makes the most sense.”
The crazy woman talked to herself as she sat on the floor. Her words came in quick, staccato sentences that sounded more like gibberish than any kind of coherent language. Walter wanted to get far away from her, as quickly as possible.
“Between a car and all of our lights, we should be OK.” Walter went back to the water cooler and took another long drink from it. His buzz had mostly worn off and now he was dehydrated.
He grabbed his bag from the floor, hooking one of the loops over his shoulder. “Ready?”
“Enjoy Hell.” The woman spat in their direction as they left the lobby.
Molly growled at her.
“You better hope the power doesn’t go out again,” Aaron said. “Or you’ll be headed there next.”
Aaron led them to the back of the building.
Blood splattered the bars of a jail cell on their right.
“This is where Psycho shot me.”
The back door had several bullet holes in it. They’d been lucky to survive.
“Everyone ready?” Aaron asked as he stopped at the exit. “There is a light out there by the generator, but I didn’t see much beyond it. We’ll need our lights to find a car.”
Aaron unlocked a bolt and eased the door open. The generator chugged along, clunky metallic slams emanating from it. It’s best operating days were behind it.
Walter took the lead as they crossed the small area of light, heading along the back of the building. He held his lantern up, searching for police cruisers.
Two cars were parked around the corner. Walter fumbled with the keys he’d taken, jamming them one after the other into the door. On the sixth key he found success.
He took the driver’s seat, Christy beside him in the passenger side. Aaron and Stephanie sat in the back, behind the cage that separated the rows. Molly hopped up between them, laying her head in Stephanie’s lap. Aaron scratched her behind her ear.
> “I feel like we’re under arrest,” Stephanie said, rapping her knuckles against the metal cage.
“This isn’t your first time in the back of a police car, is it?” Aaron asked her, his face serious.
“What? Of course it is! How could you think that about me?”
Walter watched them in the rearview mirror.
Aaron’s face cracked into a smile and he chuckled. “I’m just kidding.”
“You douche!” Stephanie lightly punched him on the shoulder.
Nice one, Aaron.
Christy saw their flirting too and exchanged a small grin with Walter. It felt good to have a moment of levity in the middle of madness. She took his hand in both of hers. She reminded him of his daughter in so many ways. Memories of his family flooded his mind, bringing the sting of tears to his eyes again.
He was empty without them.
Walter pulled his hand away from Christy’s, not wanting to sit there and bawl over the loss of his wife and daughter.
A bevy of lights filled the interior of the car when he turned it on. A computer on the center console came on. A shotgun was locked in place against the dash.
“Let’s get out of here,” Walter said, putting the transmission in reverse.
They hung a right onto Franklin Street.
Route 40 was three blocks down. Assuming it didn’t have a road block or traffic jam, they could follow it out of town. They would only have to go a few miles before they could see if only Aberdeen had been affected.
Walter swung the patrol car onto forty and pushed the accelerator toward the floor.
Chapter 14
Aaron sat in the backseat, his hand on the old, sleeping dog, and tried not to get caught staring at Stephanie.
Her hair mesmerized him.
They’d gone through so much in the last few hours, but they had somehow struck up a friendship of the oddest kind. Socially, he was so far beneath her that he might as well have been a cockroach. Yet, they had just shared a handful of moments. At least he thought they had.
He knew next to nothing about dating or flirting or anything of the kind, so he could be mistaken. But it felt like they had a connection.
Or maybe she was just gravitating to him because she might have lost her parents.
Either way he loved it. Not just because he was enamored with her, but focusing on her kept him from dwelling on his parents. His stomach constricted every time he thought about what had probably happened to them.
He felt his throat working and tried to turn his attention back to Stephanie.
Walter steered the patrol car around empty vehicles that were scattered randomly on the highway. Because of the time of night the road wasn’t too congested. They were only going ten or twenty miles an hour, but they moved much faster than they could have on foot.
When they first got in the car Aaron had thought about suggesting that he drive. Walter reeked of beer. He seemed sober, but Aaron hadn’t been around enough drunken people to really know all of the warning signs. But Walter was a sharp guy and Aaron just hoped that he knew what he was doing.
Aaron realized how incredibly lucky they’d been at the police station. Had Christy, Walter, and Molly not shown up, they would have been dead. That crazy woman fully intended on killing them. They only knew of five people that were still alive and one of them was a nut.
Beyond being saved, Aaron also felt much better having found other survivors. When he thought that just he and Stephanie had survived he’d been overcome by dread and hopelessness. Though he didn’t know what future lay ahead of them, he felt a small piece of optimism creeping through his despair.
Despite his best efforts, his mind wandered back to his parents.
To his friends.
Classmates.
Stephanie turned toward him and he watched as tears spilled from her eyes. He used his thumb to wipe them away.
The road opened up ahead of them as they drove past a row of townhouses on their right. Walter sped up.
“We’ll be out of Aberdeen soon – three or four miles at the most. What I’m hoping is that the neighboring towns still have electricity. I don’t know where the cutoff is for homes that get their power from APG though. With any luck it’s not much farther.”
The glow of the massive fire burning on the post could be seen through a line of trees to their left. The blaze had been going for a long time now. Whatever it was that exploded must have been huge.
Aaron’s mind wandered.
What had happened on the post?
Were they running some kind of secret experiment that went wrong?
Was this really like The Lost Colony or the Philadelphia Experiment?
What did this mean for mankind? Even if this phenomenon was relegated to Aberdeen, how would the rest of the world respond? Something that they couldn’t comprehend hid in the shadows, just beyond their perception.
It was like a child’s nightmare.
Is this why people are afraid of the dark? The idea that something watched you in the night was apparently true. Children everywhere were scared of the boogeyman. Parents always told their kids that he didn’t exist.
Evidently, he did. Maybe not in the form of someone hiding in your closest – unless it’s dark in there, anyway.
“Shit!”
Aaron looked up in time to see Walter jerk the wheel.
A young woman stood in the middle of the street. She disappeared behind an abandoned truck as their headlights passed over her.
The patrol car veered off the road, the tires sliding in the gravel on the shoulder. Walter slammed the brakes. Christy screamed from the front seat as they slid into a guardrail.
Gravity shifted.
Aaron wrapped his arms around Molly, hugging her tight to his chest as the car flipped over the rail.
The vehicle landed on its hood and roof, sliding down a bank on the other side of the guardrail.
The windows shattered.
Gravel flew into Aaron’s face.
Stephanie shrieked.
The smell of gasoline burned his nose.
They came to a stop at the bottom of the bank, the patrol car rocking back and forth slowly. Blood rushed to Aaron’s head, a headache forming immediately. Molly whined in his arms so he lowered her to the ceiling, releasing her carefully. The dog rolled from her back and got up, stepping through Aaron’s shattered window.
The lantern rolled around on the other side of the cage between Walter and Christy. The plastic casing around the light had cracked, but the unit still functioned. If it had gone out, like the lights from the car, they all would have been taken.
“Is everyone still with us?” Walter asked.
Aaron brushed aside some glass on the roof and pushed off the clean spot with his hand, trying to take his weight off his seatbelt. His free hand fumbled with the clasp, searching for the release button.
“I feel like I could puke,” Aaron said.
Stephanie mumbled something incoherently beside him. He could see her outline, but her face was covered by her hanging arms.
“Stephanie? You alright?”
“I think so. My head really hurts though.”
Aaron finally pushed the button on the clasp and he fell to the floor, bits of window digging into his shoulder and back. He worked at clearing more glass, metal, and debris from under Stephanie.
“Christy? You hurt?” Walter freed himself in the front seat, but his legs caught under the steering wheel, keeping him from collapsing to the ceiling as Aaron had.
Christy didn’t respond.
Walter eased himself down, twisting his way to a seated position. Even through the shadows created from the lantern, Aaron could see the obvious pain Walter was in. “Christy? Answer me.”
Aaron focused his attention on Stephanie. He could help Christy after he got Stephanie clear of the car. Warmth ran down his side. He placed his hand against his bandage – it came away bloody.
Stephanie’s face looked like half the blood
in her body had run to it. A large vein stuck out on her forehead.
Aaron felt the absurd urge to kiss the tip of her red nose. What was wrong with him?
He put his arm under her shoulders, taking some of the strain off her seatbelt. His other arm went behind her lower back, bracing for when she dropped to the floor.
“I’ll catch you,” Aaron said. He hoped he had the strength to soften her fall. Weights and workouts had never been a big item on his agenda. “Reach up and unbuckle yourself.”
Stephanie’s belt released and all of her weight fell into Aaron’s lap. His arms strained as he guided her body so that she landed back first onto his legs. Though he’d managed to clear away the large pieces of glass, other small pieces were still littered about, digging into his hamstrings and calves.
Her legs spilled out of the broken window, flopping down on the tall grass that surrounded the car. Her shoulders rested against his legs, her head cradled in the elbow of his left arm. She looked up at him, the color already draining from her face.
They stared at each other in silence for a moment.
Aaron felt lost in her eyes.
Everything that happened to him that night melted away as he took in the curves of her face.
“Are you OK?” he asked.
She raised her hand, cupping his cheek.
Without knowing what he was doing, he found his face lowering toward hers. Her eyes slipped shut when their lips were inches apart.
“Christy! Answer me, damn it!”
Walter’s shouts pulled Aaron from the moment. He gave his head a quick shake as he straightened his back. What had he been thinking? Had he kissed her she probably would have socked him right in the nose. He figured it would have been worth it anyway.
Stephanie cleared her throat, still looking up at him.
“We should help get Christy out of the car,” she said. She scooted through the window, carefully placing her hands so they wouldn’t grab onto something sharp.
Aaron crawled out after her, still trying to fathom how close he’d come to kissing Stephanie White. The area outside the car was bathed in darkness. Only the glow from the lantern in the front seat allowed them to see anything. Aaron stayed low, not wanting his head to be exposed to the dark.
