by James Sperl
At some point she had risen to her feet and backed a few steps away as Sean clutched at his abdomen with both hands.
“Ah, fuck!” he screamed as he fell off the bench and onto his side. He writhed on the ground in unbelievable pain.
Janet spun in an instant from Alvin at the commotion. She jumped to her feet and rocketed over to where Catherine stood, grasping a shotgun in one hand.
Leanne roused dizzily, almost drunkenly, from her brief sleep. Confused and disoriented, she squinted her eyes at the rising sun when the sounds of Sean’s screams propelled her into full cognition. Her eyes sprung open as she climbed laboriously to her feet.
“Sean?” She could see him clearly, lying on the ground, twisting in the earth. His arms were wrapped around himself tightly, his head lurching about uncontrollably.
“Sean!” Leanne screamed. She ran toward him until the length of chain that bound her would allow no further ground. “Sean!” she screamed again.
Janet flew to Catherine’s side, watched as Sean continued to suffer. His legs kicked involuntarily, the tendons in his neck rising like guitar strings.
“What time is it?” Janet asked, panting slightly.
“Time enough,” Catherine replied simply. She allowed tears to stream down her cheeks as Sean hollered in agonizing pain.
“Sean!” Leanne shrieked. “Jesus Christ, somebody fucking help him!” She yanked fiercely at her chain to no avail.
Catherine turned to Janet and nodded. Janet nodded back then raised her shotgun. With white knuckled intensity she clutched the fore-end of the gun then pumped. She pointed it at Sean’s head.
“Go in peace,” Janet whispered. Then she pulled the trigger.
Click.
Catherine’s eyes grew as wide as dinner plates as Janet pumped the rifle again. An unfired shotgun shell flung from the ejection port and somersaulted to the ground. Janet retrained her weapon at Sean and fired.
Click.
“Janet, come on!” Catherine cried through tears.
“I’m trying!” Janet pumped and fired again to the same result. “Shit. The first was a dud and now I’m out!”
“Well, get some more for God’s sake, hurry!” Catherine screamed.
“Damn it,” Janet hissed as she charged for the shelter stairs and disappeared below.
Sean howled unbelievably. His arms suddenly flung backward, his hands twisting into contorted knots. His face screwed into a look of unrelenting pain as he gnashed his teeth like someone undergoing electroshock therapy.
Catherine never felt more helpless in her life. At least when she and her children were attacked, there was something to be done. A fight to be had. A way to assail the assailant. But now, on this chilly forest morning, all she could do was bear witness to the immense torture and imminent death of a promising young man and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.
Sean flopped onto his back, arching it in ways that bordered on impossibility. Guttural gurgling sounds escaped his throat. His hands clawed at the earth, blood oozing from split fingernails.
Leanne screamed repeatedly, the sheer terror in her voice enough to draw gooseflesh. She threw herself against her restraints tirelessly, yelled at Catherine through snot and tears, beseeching her to do to something, anything.
Time seemed to slow for Catherine, as if she had slipped into some form of suspended animation where she was made to endure interminably the sickening death throes of a man who, minutes ago, had successfully managed to help prop back up her ego. All that made her human yearned to reach out to Sean. To snatch him up and cradle him in her arms. To reassure him that everything was going to be okay even though they both would know this was the farthest thing from the truth.
Then she heard the sounds.
At first Catherine thought it might be someone traipsing through the woods toward her, clumsily crashing through dead and dried branches. But a quick assessment would direct her to a different source. And as she found herself staring back down at Sean, fought the urge to vomit with every fiber of her being.
Sean’s chest rose and fell in quick, violent bursts. Loud, muted cracking, like bamboo soaked in water, sounded with each sudden inflation of his chest cavity. Catherine could only assume the noise she was hearing was the breaking of his ribs.
The force with which Sean screamed would haunt Catherine for the remainder of her days. Ungodly howls that seemed to redefine pain.
Alvin paced like a caged panther. He watched Sean with the fearful eyes of a man who saw his own future and desperately wished for a different outcome.
Oliver appeared at the top the stairs, followed shortly by Josh, Shelby and Madeline. Catherine imagined the screaming had probably roused everyone, the curiosity too strong to pass up. But it wasn’t until seconds later when Tamara’s head poked above the surface that Catherine abandoned any semblance of calm and grace.
Whirling in the direction of the shelter, Catherine stormed toward her children, shouting hysterically. “Get the hell back downstairs right now! Right now! And don’t come back up, no matter what you hear!”
Tamara vanished instantly; Josh and Shelby retreated slowly back below ground.
“And tell Janet to hurry the hell up!”
“Caaaaaaaaath-riiiiinnne,” Sean drawled painfully. “Heeeeelp mmmeeeeeee.”
Catherine ran back over to Sean, stopping shy of him by ten feet. She fell to her knees and reached out, gesturing to him in a calming manner, her open hands rising up and down like the soft lulling of a waveless tide.
“Shhhh. I know sweetheart. I know.” Tears poured from Catherine’s eyes. Her lip quivered uncontrollably. “It’ll be over soon. I promise.”
Sean’s legs jolted rail straight. His arms pounded the ground involuntarily. Sickening sounds like dropped eggs on pavement emanated from somewhere inside him, his eyes rolling into the back of his skull so only the whites showed.
“Oh, God,” Catherine muttered to herself. She turned and hollered with full lungs, “Janet!”
Janet sprang up the stairs, running and loading simultaneously. She sprinted past Leanne who sat on the ground, her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them as tight as they would go. She stared off into the distance someplace far away.
Janet skidded to a halt alongside Catherine, sliding the last shotgun shell into the loading port as she stopped. She gazed down upon Sean’s writhing and contorted body.
“Fuck me,” she gasped, immediately pumping the fore-end.
“Do it, Janet!” Catherine shouted. “Do it—”
Sean suddenly shot to his feet in a move that seemed almost superhuman. He flung his arms out wildly to the side. His head craned back in an unbelievable angle, the tautly drawn skin over the trachea strained to its limit. Then, in a rush of physiology never before encountered, Sean’s body exploded.
Charcoal gray appendages shot through the soles of Sean’s feet forcing his limp and ravaged body three feet into the air where it hung like a stranded marionette. Similarly colored protuberances ruptured out of his arms, splitting the muscle and sinew lengthwise from wrist to shoulder. What was left of Sean’s arms hung lifelessly, dangling like a carelessly tossed towel over a drying line. Simultaneously, Sean’s torso elongated an additional two to three feet, the skin unable to maintain integrity as it ripped and tore until the chest cavity erupted outward. Sean’s now useless innards spilled to the ground, his once athletic body now hanging like a jacket over the horrific monster that came into being.
Janet and Catherine could only stare, Janet all but forgetting the shotgun to which she clung in her sweaty palms.
In a final insult to the human that was Sean McAndrews, a small, slime covered head emerged where Sean’s gaping, lolling head held tenuously to the remaining cartilage in his neck. The new reptilian-looking head pushed Sean’s back with a sickening pop, freeing it from the beast that stood before Janet and Catherine, dripping with primordial ooze. The body that was Sean fell to the earth in a p
ile of discarded flesh, the skin smacking like wet rags on marble.
For Catherine, the world had ceased to rotate. It was as if time had stopped, the events too surreal to put into a context of real life. Standing before this otherworldly creature, Catherine found herself curiously filled with equal parts revulsion and fascination.
She stared incredulously as the twelve-foot tall creature stood motionless before her and Janet. Its features were indistinct and only in the barest of ways did it resemble a human what with its spindly legs, wispy arms and undersized head. But that comparison ended when attention was drawn to the immensely barrel-chested torso and the knowledge of what lay beneath the mottled, chalky flesh.
“Kill it,” Catherine uttered dryly to Janet, the words escaping like sawdust on her tongue.
Janet could only nod as she raised her weapon chest high and prepared to fire. But no sooner had she aimed the barrel than the chest of the creature split open vertically in a nauseating crack, tendrils of slime and muck clinging to the edges of the chest cavity as the rift grew wider.
The creature’s arms moved for the first time, swinging inward in slow, graceful arcs as it reached in toward its own gaping wound and wrapped its skeleton fingers along the berm of its chest, pulling it open even more.
“Kill it!” Catherine shouted to Janet.
But Janet only stared, entranced. The shotgun felt like a barbell in her hands.
The creature, having finished opening itself, plunged its hands into its chest cavity. Grotesque sounds spilled from the hole as the bony hands dug and searched.
Catherine managed to tear herself away from the spectacle long enough to look at Janet. She stared into the woman’s shocked eyes and knew there was no immediate return for her. She would have to do this herself.
Wrenching the shotgun free from Janet’s grasp, Catherine raised and pointed it into the dark chasm directly before her, the slimy hands of the creature buried up to the wrist as it worked something free.
Catherine tucked the stock into her shoulder and prepared to fire. She had never actually fired a shotgun before, but knew enough to know the kick from the recoil would be immense. But just as she applied pressure to the trigger the sight before her gave her pause.
Emerging from the gelatinous hole in the creature, aided by the slender fingers that guided it, was a human form, nude and coiled into a fetal position. It was covered with a thick layer of slimy afterbirth. And as it was being removed from the cavity, ready to be introduced to the world, its head turned.
Having all intentions of pulling the trigger and closing the chapter on Sean’s life and his subsequent replica, Catherine suddenly found herself physically unable to do so.
The Sean clone was lowered to the ground. The legs started to extend, the arms reaching out into the morning air. The head turned further in Catherine’s direction until the face looked directly at her. Then the eyes opened.
Catherine shut her eyes. It’s not Sean, she told herself.
It’s not Sean.
In a swift and instantaneous movement, Catherine popped open her eyes, locked the shotgun against her body and fired.
The single blast disintegrated the left shoulder of the New Human, the remainder of the arm falling to the earth. But just as Catherine’s shot found its mark, a hailstorm of bullets fired synchronously from somewhere behind her riddled the creature.
Soft and tender flesh exploded outward in a torrent of mini-explosions. Sean’s replica thrashed helplessly in its womb as its new body was shredded into an unrecognizable pile of meat.
Catherine fell to the ground, the sound of machine gun rounds whistling over her head. She twisted around to discover Derrik at the top of the shelter stairs, unloading a full magazine. When he depleted it, he expertly discharged the spent mag, reinserted another and fired until he was finally met with a silent and anticlimactic click, the last bullet having been fired.
Righting herself into a sitting position, Catherine gazed upon the remains of Sean’s clone and the slimy beast that had birthed it. Steam immediately began to vent from the body, increasing in intensity until the air around it became choked with thick, post-mortem gas. The body hissed as it sublimated, the mounds of flesh bubbling through the transformation like a slice of ham on a hot skillet.
Janet looked back toward Derrik who stood stoically, the machine gun smoking at his side. She nodded to him, he nodding back, as she turned her attention to Alvin.
He sat on a tree stump, faced away from the carnage. He leaned forward, arms rested on his knees, hands clasped together in front of him. His head hung heavy and unmoving.
Janet peeled away from everyone and walked in Alvin’s direction, stopping a few feet away from him and kneeling on one knee.
Catherine watched for a few moments as Janet conversed with Alvin. By the time she turned back, any evidence that there had once been a college boy named Sean McAndrews had now been reduced to a wet stain in the dirt. Thin plumes of gas continued to mist skyward, but seconds later even they were a memory.
Oliver walked over and stared at where the body used to be. “I don’t think I’ll eat for a week.”
Catherine actually found herself smile at this as she wiped her face free of tears.
“He seemed like such a good kid,” she said. “It just...”
“Say no more, Catherine. Say no more.”
Janet returned to Oliver and Catherine. She sighed with the force of an elephant then looked up at Catherine. “May I have that please?”
Catherine glanced at the shotgun in her hand, surprised to find she still possessed it. She held it out to Janet who took it gingerly.
“Is it...loaded?”
“I only fired one shot,” Catherine began, “so any other rounds you loaded should still be...”
The blood drained from Catherine’s face. She peeked around Janet and looked over at Alvin. He was on his knees, his back to them.
“Please tell me you’re not going to do what I—”
“Take everyone downstairs,” Janet interjected.
They had already said their goodbyes. There was nothing more left to say.
Janet stood behind Alvin, looking down on the back of his head as he continued to kneel. She grasped the shotgun firmly in her right hand.
She couldn’t believe it had come to this. In all the years she had served as a corrections officer, she’d encountered the worst examples of the human species from murderers to relentless drug lords to child rapists. And in those years she’d been forced to draw her weapon on quite a few occasions whether it was to break up a fight or aid in crowd control. She’d even fired it a couple of times.
But she’d never killed anyone.
And now, with that jailhouse world light years behind her, the irony of the moment arrested her. Sure, she had killed people since the Event began, but those were strictly a result of the survivalist nature of the new world. Never in a million years could she believe that she would find herself standing over a friend, preparing to execute him at his request.
Janet searched the area and verified that everyone had, indeed, gone below. She squinted at the sun as it began its ascent on the day, the air already warming with its presence. It struck her suddenly that there wouldn’t be too many more of these. In a few more days, it would be the last anyone would see of the sun for quite some time, its beautiful yellow-orange glow soon to be obscured by clouds of bleak gray.
But life was unfortunately full of last times.
And as Janet pointed the barrel of the shotgun at the base of Alvin’s skull, she wondered if this would be the last time such a horrific request would be asked of her.
She would soon learn that it wasn’t.
19
Fuel
Packing up and preparing to leave the shelter had been a somber occasion. Sean and Alvin’s deaths cast an understandably sad and contemplative tenor over the remaining group, everyone having gathered their belongings and restocked the bus with as much food and supplies
as it would hold.
Along with this task, the remainder of the morning had been spent in watch mode over Leanne. Following Sean’s gruesome death, Leanne had all but checked out. Her blank eyes stared dead ahead, unflinching, and all attempts at encouraging water and food were met with only silence.
But she had made it through. Deeming the five hours that had passed since Sean’s death ample enough time to guarantee her void of infection, the group had unanimously agreed to free her and allow her to accompany them to their destination.
Unresponsive at first, Leanne hung limply when helped to her feet by Derrik and Oliver. But when her hands were freed and the chain released from her foot, a glimmer of hope was born in her eyes.
Catherine pondered the course of events that had occurred that morning at the shelter. It seemed like a week ago and yet it had barely been a day—roughly twenty hours. Since then the group had spent the majority of their time on the bus, driving virtually nonstop save a handful of stretching and bathroom breaks as they headed for their new destination.
The decision had been made to push hard and fast during the day, choosing routes that passed through the least populated areas of the country yet allowed as direct a path to their salvation as possible. Time, they were continually reminded, was not on their side and any delays or encounters could be costly. But a similar tactic had been taken en route to Catherine’s shelter, so there was no reason to believe it couldn’t be as effective this time around.
So far, so good.
Upon an initial first glance, the location to which they had been directed surprised Catherine. She’d never heard of the place Warren indicated and couldn’t, for the life of her, figure out why such an obscure sounding area housed a shelter as immense as the one allegedly constructed there. But when she finally had the chance to peruse the stack of printouts she’d obtained from Warren’s upload, it all started to gel. And of the little she knew, one thing was certain: they were headed to New Mexico.
Alamogordo, New Mexico to be specific. Located midway between Las Cruces and the infamous Roswell, and just up the road from the blinding brilliance of White Sands Missile Range, Alamogordo seemed more a perfect spot for a doomsday shelter the more Catherine read.
