by Jack Lothian
I picked them off one by one with a bullet to the forehead. My head pounded from all the gunshots, and the smell of burning gunpowder briefly overpowered the smell of necrotic flesh.
It jarred me out of my rhythm when they stopped clambering overtop of their counterparts. I forced my index finger back to the trigger guard and pressed through the emptiness in my ears to listen for the shrieks. There were none.
I turned back to the cabinet to reload my gun before inching my way toward the accumulation of bodies on my laundry room floor. I gave them as wide of a berth as possible in such a narrow space and used my gun hand to balance against the doorframe when I had to step atop them to get through the doorway.
Any other Howlers that’d entered the house would’ve come running to the sound of the firefight, but I still cleared every room on the first floor after knocking the front door shut with my foot. Their bloody tracks only made it halfway up the stairs, so I didn’t bother mounting them to check for a hidden Howler in the master bedroom or bathroom.
For the first time in a long time, the cabin felt secure. The Glock waited for me on the counter next to the plates of now-cold rice while I retrieved one of the last water bottles in the refrigerator. I sat down and finished my rice.
* * *
Flynn shuffled through the front door nearly two hours later. His respirator hung around his neck, the plastic face-shield crackled like a car windshield after being struck by a rock. His shotgun was nowhere in sight. There wasn’t a piece of clothing on him that hadn’t been shredded, and the skin showing through the gaps in fabric was raw.
“Isabel.” My name was hoarse in his throat.
I shot to my feet and then grabbed onto the counter to keep the sudden dizziness from knocking me to the floor. In doing so, I bumped my arm ever so slightly, and the broken bones screamed.
“Easy, hon.”
His hands were on my upper arms, guiding me back to the barstool so that I could lean back against the counter’s edge. He kept his hands in place while I breathed through the pain. Inhaled through my nose. Exhaled between my teeth.
The blinding pain eased little by little until it hit a bearable level. It was then that I got a good look at Flynn, and what I saw made my heart drop.
“Flynn,” I said quietly. “Did you get scratched?”
Flynn stepped back until he was an arm’s length away. When he looked me in the eye, I knew the answer.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
I reached up to wipe away the tear that rolled down his cheek. It was all that I could do to ignore the way tears fogged up my own vision.
He took hold of my hand and gently kissed the inside of my wrist. His breath warmed my skin, leaving behind the barest hint of moisture.
“I don’t want to leave you here,” he said. “I can’t let you be alone. It’s my job to protect you, to keep you safe.”
His fingers caressed my skin and fluttered across the edge of the splint.
“It’s going to be okay,” I lied. “You’re going to be okay.”
He shook his head. “One of them scratched me. I’m-I’m not going to turn into one of them; I can’t let that happen. But I can’t leave you.”
His eyes suddenly focused on the counter behind me, and he snatched an object from atop it. It wasn’t until his fingers wrapped around my Glock that the realization of what was about to happen dawned on me.
“This is how it has to be,” he said.
I lunged for the gun. My fingers wrapped around the muzzle and forced it away from my chest. I’d caught Flynn by surprise, so he let me push the gun away without offering much resistance at first. But then the full force of a six-foot, two-hundred-pound man turned on me and proceeded to wrench the gun out of my grasp. The muzzle moved back toward my chest in slow motion as his finger darted behind the trigger guard and onto the trigger.
I screamed.
Flynn hesitated for a fraction of a second, which was long enough for me to dart forward again. I wrestled and scratched and banged my knee into his groin and rammed my forehead into his chin. His grip never loosened, but he wasn’t able to force the muzzle against my chest again.
The gun went off.
All the fight drained out of Flynn in an instant, and I found myself sitting atop his prone form while blood cascaded from matching holes beneath his jaw and at the crown of his head. Bits of brain and skull lay scattered across the hardwood floor.
I scrambled backward until there was nowhere else to go, and even as I sat frozen and pressed against the wall, my eyes never left Flynn. As if he would sit up at any minute and come after me. As if I would wake up in the king-sized bed with Flynn snoring beside me.
But as hard as I willed those realities to be true, nothing changed. Flynn still lay dead on the kitchen floor with blood now trickling from the wounds where the bullet entered and where it exited.
The wind howled on the other side of the cabin walls in competition with the fresh wave of explosions close enough to shake the cabin. My water bottle toppled off the counter and bounced off Flynn’s foot before coming to rest against the leg of the bar stool. I stared at it for a long time.
Then I got to my feet.
I pulled a weathered hiking backpack from the closet in the hallway and darted around the house as I packed it. Clothes, matches and lighters, an assortment of screwdrivers, boxes of ammunition, granola and energy bars; all of it went into the bag. I shoved the entirety of our medical kit into the front and side pockets.
The last item I picked up was my Glock. It lay beneath the coffee table in the living room. I checked the magazine; three bullets left. I tucked it into the holster that I’d threaded onto my belt before slinging the bag and both rifles on the hall tree over my shoulder.
When I left, I closed the front door softly even as the wind tried to rip the handle from my hands.
Freshmint
M.B. Vujacic
“This can't go on,” Weasel said.
He stood on tiptoe, his belly to the wall, looking through the musty glass at the street outside. The Arabian Nights hookah lounge lay in the basement of an old apartment building, its windows offering an unprecedented view of any passerby's ankles. Or they would have, had there been any pedestrians left. Nowadays it was just an empty sidewalk lined with abandoned cars, the asphalt shimmering in the oppressive heat.
“This can't go on,” he said again, and began pacing around the room, staring at the same couches and ornate cushions and dead TV screen he had been staring at for the past two weeks. Painted on the walls, a desert strewn with pyramids and mosques and distant oases. Empty hookahs rose from the tables like glass-and-steel minarets.
“I raise one,” Gabe said, and added a cigarette to the half-dozen already on the table. He sprawled on a couch, naked but for his boxer shorts. He had removed those, too, at one point, and had only put them back on after numerous complaints from Weasel and Pauline. When this all began, his head had been freshly shaven and his goatee thick and trimmed. Now his hair had grown to a dark crew cut and his beard approached that shipwreck-survivor look.
“Sure,” Pauline said, and rolled another cigarette to the pile. She sat across the table from him, also clad only in her panties. She had worn a shirt for nearly a week after they had holed up in here, but the rising temperatures forced her to abandon her modesty. Weasel and Gabe hardly noticed her breasts anymore. The heat left everyone semi-comatose.
“Let's see them,” Gabe said, and dropped his cards on the table. Pauline obliged. They stared at the two hands in solemn contemplation. “Damn,” he said as she scooped up the cigarettes. Three days in, he had called her into the back room and tried to hook up with her. He had come out shaking his head, saying, “She's into chicks. Hell, man, when it rains it pours.”
“What I wouldn't give for some rain,” Weasel muttered.
Gabe looked at him. “Huh?”
“Freshmint. I miss freshmint. With saloom."
Gabe sighed. "I feel you, bro."
They had run out of hookah tobacco four days ago. A huge problem, as aside from playing cards and getting inebriated, smoking was their premier pastime. More importantly, it calmed the nerves. Kept hands occupied and masked the stench of stale perspiration. Restless, they turned to the cigarette rack above the bar. Pauline was a weekend smoker so she had already consumed some of those. Gabe hadn't bought a pack in years, but he started again out of boredom. Even Weasel, whose only encounter with tobacco was the weekly hookah with Gabe, had a few. And he hated them. Couldn't understand how anyone could enjoy such flavorless smoke.
Not that he understood much of anything anymore. The world had officially gone to hell fourteen days ago, though the signs of the coming calamity had been there for a bit longer. A month or so. First, the nights had changed. Became warmer. Brighter. After a week, you could no longer tell night from day. Then the new light appeared in the sky. Everybody assumed it was a comet, what with it having a tail and all, but then all the big shot astrophysicists came on TV to explain that it was in fact a star. A red giant that somehow shot through space like the galaxy's largest, meanest rocket.
The astrophysicists claimed that Mira II—that was the star's official moniker, though people soon dubbed it Wormwood—would come no closer to Earth than two hundred million miles. A hair's breadth in space terms, but still too far to affect us much. Two days later, earthquakes. Chasms opening everywhere. Streets caving in and buildings toppling. Villages buried under avalanches. Volcanoes erupting to spew searing death over the countryside. Tsunamis galore.
Gabe and Weasel were at the Arabian Nights when it began. The owner, Adnan, cranked up the TV volume and then everyone in the lounge stared at the destruction on display, hookah pipes hovering before slack mouths. Then the tremors began. Deep in the earth, like an electrical current prickling the soles of their feet. Hookahs fell from tables, spilling coals over the linoleum. The building groaned. The screen went black. The lights flickered and died. Patrons screamed in the gloom. Adnan grabbed his head and fell on his knees and wailed like a man doomed.
Gabe and Weasel were the first out the door. Though it was ten in the evening, outside it may as well have been high noon. People ran from buildings in abject panic. Cars crashed against each other. Flowerpots fell from balconies to explode on the sidewalk. A cloud of dust rose over distant rooftops. On the pallid blue sky, Mira II swam mindless like a fiery tadpole.
The tremors passed, but the panic stayed. The streets were soon blocked with wrecked or abandoned cars and people were stampeding. Weasel would've stampeded with them, but Gabe grabbed his arm and told him they should stay put. "Where are you gonna go?" he had said. "You've seen the news, the fucking earthquakes are everywhere. We should stay here and wait to be rescued."
"But Gabe...what if the building falls?"
"Look at it, it's already stopped shaking. If we stay in the street, we're gonna get trampled or bricks are gonna fall on our heads or we're gonna get shot by looters. Unless you got a helicopter, it's best we hide and wait for this whole thing to blow over."
"And if it doesn't?"
"What is this, the end of the world? Of course it will."
They returned to the deserted Arabian Nights. Adnan had fled along with the rest. He had left the keys on the bar, so Gabe went and locked the door. Two hours and a hookah later, their bellies began to groan. The fridge behind the bar was stacked with juices and booze and bottled water, but no food aside from a homemade chicken sandwich. Adnan's dinner, most likely. After they had eaten it, Gabe said, "We hafta get some cans."
"Cans?"
"Canned food, bro. Tuna. Sardines. Beans. Stuff can last us years."
"Where will we find that?"
"In the supermarket across the street, of course."
"I...I doubt it's open now."
"So? We'll loot it."
"What? No."
"There's no power, remember? Security cams are all dead. Besides, after we're rescued and everything returns to normal, we'll go back and pay for the stuff we took. This is about survival, bro. I wouldn't be surprised if the place has already been looted."
They arrived at the supermarket to find its front window shattered and its cash registers emptied. They filled two trash bags with cans, crackers, candies, rice cakes, toilet paper, bottled water, soft drinks, red wine—Gabe insisted even the cheapest, warmest red wine tasted okay if you mixed it with Coke—and cartridges for the portable gas stove Adnan kept in the back. "Don't worry," he said as they headed back. "We'll have ourselves a cozy catastrophe."
They first saw Pauline as they walked back to Arabian Nights. A twenty-something redhead with a messenger bag under her arm, she stumbled down the sidewalk, leaning a hand on a nearby wall like a sailor traversing a storm-wracked deck. Gabe asked if she was okay, and she said, "No, fuck no, I'm not okay," and showed them the matted, bloody hair at the side of her head.
They took her to Arabian Nights and disinfected the gash with tequila and dabbed it with napkins until it stopped bleeding. Pauline had been outside when the tremors hit. A chunk of masonry broke off from a first-floor balcony and clipped her on the head. She had tried to get home, only to discover a gaping fissure had zig-zagged through the city, swallowing entire buildings. She had been wandering the area, searching for a way to cross the chasm, when she ran into Gabe and Weasel. Weasel asked her why she didn't just follow the fissure itself, and she licked her lips and said, "I did, at first. But then I heard..."
"Umm, heard what?"
"Noises. From the fissure. They weren't tremors. They were more like...squawks."
"Squawks?"
"Yeah, like there were giant birds down there."
"In the fissure?"
"Yeah. I got scared so I ran away."
"It's just nerves," Gabe said.
"Screw you, I know what I heard."
Gabe shook his head. "You probably heard the earth shifting and the echo made it sound weird."
"No, it wasn't like that. It sounded like a bird."
"An underground bird is an oxymoron."
Sadly, Pauline was right. Their one remaining link to the outside world, the radio, was crammed with people describing the monstrosities that had emerged from the cracks in the earth. Biologists speculated there was an entire ecosystem deep beneath the planet's crust, hitherto unknown to us, and that the seismic disturbances caused by Mira II's gravity had sent its denizens skittering for the surface. The last broadcasts they heard before their batteries ran out urged listeners to avoid these creatures, since most appeared omnivorous.
Not that they needed the warning. Every now and then, they, too, heard things. Hisses. Squawks. Growls. A week in, a woman dashed through the street outside. Before they could call to her, something else darted past the window. A serpentine body lined with myriad segmented legs. Gone too fast for a good look. They heard a heavy thump as the woman slipped or was dragged down. The ripping, snapping noises that came after she had stopped screaming have fueled their nightmares ever since. The incident erased whatever ideas of leaving Arabian Nights they might've entertained. Until now.
"Freshmint," Weasel said. "God, do I miss freshmint."
Gabe wiped his brow. His hand came away glistening. "I hear you, bro. I'd kill for any flavor right now. Even orange. These cigarettes taste like trash."
"I'll be happy to take them from you," Pauline said.
Gabe groaned.
Weasel licked his lips. "I was thinking. Maybe we could..."
"What, bro?"
Weasel shook his head.
"Can't leave me hanging after you got me wet, bro. C'mon, say it."
Weasel looked through the window at the parched street. "There's that place."
"Which one?"
"The one next to Nefertiti."
Gabe's eyes widened. "You mean..."
"Yeah."
"What the hell is Nefertiti?" Pauline asked.
"A hookah lounge Weasel and me used to frequent until the new own
er made it a booze-free establishment."
Pauline arched a brow. "And?"
"There's a hookah store next to it. It stocks everything hookah-related. Probably has boxes full of flavored tobacco."
"Freshmint," Weasel said. "And saloom."
Gabe grinned. "And lemon. And apple. And coffee. And chocolate. And watermelon. Holy shit, I'd drink my own piss for a watermelon hookah."
"With saloom," Weasel said.
Pauline frowned. "You can't be serious."
Gabe shrugged. "It's just half a block from here."
"I don't care if it's next door. Those things are out there."
"We haven't seen them in days."
"That doesn't mean they're gone. I'm not letting you two go out. You saw what happened to that woman."
"Well, umm, she didn't have a gun," Weasel said.
All three of them looked at the shotgun on the couch, its wooden haft scratched and glazed with age. They had found it in a drawer behind the bar, laid alongside a nightstick and a can of pepper spray. Adnan's security.
Pauline shook her head. "Nobody here can shoot a gun."
"I can," Gabe said.
"Yeah, right."
"I've been to the range."
"How many times?"
"One."
"Did you use a shotgun that one time?"
"No, a pistol."
"Forget it. Not happening. There's no fucking freshmint in your fucking future."
Weasel and Gabe spent most of the following twenty-four hours standing by the windows, watching the street for signs of inhuman presence. They occasionally saw it, too. A pigeon landed on the sidewalk and pecked around. A rat scuttled under a car, its hairless tail bouncing. A skin-and-bone cat came by and looked at them, its yellow eyes narrow and judgmental. It looked diseased. When it became apparent no monsters infested the streets, they brought up Nefertiti again.
"Use your brains," Pauline said, looking up from her game of solitaire. "Those things lived all their lives underground. Daylight must be blinding to them. They're probably hiding inside buildings."
Gabe threw his hands up. "What would they be doing in there? Either they went back underground, or they migrated in search of food."
