“We really should split up and search through the nearest houses. That’s where I’d go if I was wanting to hide,” Daniels said.
“Normally I’d agree with you, but I don’t think that’s where they’d go. I think it’s much more simple than that. They’re stoned off their asses and probably not able to think straight,” Clay said as he steered the cruiser onto the roadway.
“Stoned, like on drugs?” Daniels asked, apparently shocked at the concept.
“Didn’t you see the signs? Eyes dilated, the mood swings? They’re probably both so high to try to deal with the severity of this entire fucked-up situation.”
Daniels sat in silence as Clay’s words sunk in. “Hell, maybe we should find some drugs and take their approach.”
Clay chuckled. The thought certainly had its merits. “If only it were that easy,” he said, the memories of the previous night flooding his thoughts.
Over the next few hours, the duo searched. They slowly drove up and down every street in the vicinity. They’d occasionally see what appeared to be movement in the distance, but each time it turned out to just be the rustling of trees or shrubs caused by the unusually harsh wind.
When all appeared to be lost, Clay changed directions entirely. He pulled out of Megan’s subdivision and headed to the far side of town.
“So, we giving up, then?” Daniels asked.
“Not quite. If you were alone and afraid, where would you go? Someplace familiar—someplace safe. We’re going back to where we picked them up.”
Several minutes later, they turned onto the street where the teens had lived, and sure enough, two people were walking along the middle of the road, just a few houses away from their destination. Clay noticed Daniels nodding his head, relieved. “Now what?” he asked.
“Now we grab them again, and this time we don’t let them out of our sight.”
Clay glanced at his watch and was surprised just how much time they’d already spent away from the hotel. It was nearing three in the afternoon, and he hoped the teens would not try to evade them, wasting more precious time.
Thankfully, his concerns were unwarranted. As he pulled his cruiser alongside of the walking siblings, he noticed their euphoric state had been replaced with utter fear. They stopped walking as Clay slowed his vehicle. Without any semblance of protest, Brandon and Brittany climbed into the back of the vehicle and slammed the door.
“Just so you know, we’re only going with you because you’d keep coming for us otherwise,” Brittany said, her face screwed up into an ugly frown. “And as soon as we’re out of this town, we’re on our own again, you hear?”
Clay pursed his lips together, feeling more anxious with each of her words. Daniels remained stoic, staring ahead. Clay simply nodded as he eyed the gas station on the main road, noting he needed to fill his tank before roving the rest of the way through town. He pulled over, grateful to be outside of the car, doing something as familiar as filling his gas tank.
Daniels appeared beside him, his eyes on the horizon. Always, it seemed, they were watching for danger. “That was easier than I’d expected,” he whispered.
“I think they’re still in shock,” Clay muttered. “I didn’t know so many people had been killed already. We haven’t seen many dead bodies, and they’re probably scared of being alone.”
“Could be hidden, I guess,” Daniels said, nodding. “Hard to say.”
Suddenly Brandon began pounding on the window, his eyes popping wide. “HEY!” he cried. “HEY!”
Fuel continued to pump into the gas tank. Clay turned toward them, rolling his eyes. But he popped open the back, his fingers tracing his gun in his holster. “Hey there,” he said. “What seems to be the problem?”
“Brittany has to pee,” Brandon said, scoffing. “We’re allowed to do that, at least, aren’t we?”
Clay eyed the empty gas station. “Will you walk her in?” he asked Daniels, shrugging. “We can’t take the chance that they’ll escape again.”
Chapter 47
Daniels walked with Brittany toward the entrance, opened the door for her, and took a position outside. As they waited, a wind blasted from the west, whipping at Clay’s face and causing him to feel strained, fatigued, like all they were doing was for naught.
“You can’t keep us like this,” Brandon called from the back seat again, a final plea.
“I think you’ll like the others,” Clay said, trying to be reasonable. “We’re all in this together, now. Nobody’s getting left behind.”
“Ha,” Brandon said, punching the back of the front seat violently. “You say it like you know how to make it all go away.”
As Clay stared at Brandon, realizing the truth of his statement, he heard a gut-wrenching scream from deep inside of the gas station. He rushed toward the door, listening as the gas pump began to spurt gas onto the pavement. He hadn’t bothered to click it off. Brandon chased after, his tennis shoes sloshing through the river of gasoline and his voice ringing out, “BRITTANY!”
Daniels entered the gas station first, Clay and Brandon following close behind. They gasped for air as they stood near the window, watching as several of the crazed swarmed around Brittany, tearing into her shoulders, her stomach, her thighs. She screamed with panic, grasping at their faces and hair, tossing their dead curls to the ground. She’d popped one of them in the eye with her finger, and the eye was now bobbing along on the floor, coating the tiles with slime.
“NO!” Brandon cried, thrusting himself forward.
Clay gripped him and forced him back and out of danger. Panic then drove him forward, reaching for his gun. Daniels followed. As they entered the chip and pretzel aisle, a few of the crazed separated from the gluttonous horde and began to charge toward them. Clay and Daniels lifted their guns to the crazed monsters’ freakish heads, shooting them swiftly in succession, causing them to crash against the pile of melting ice in the corner. As the thunderous shots echoed throughout the confined space, Brittany couldn’t maintain her defensive stance near the bathroom. She bucked back against the wall, her skull bouncing dully, before she slid down the white wall, trailing a stark, crimson line. The moment she landed, her jaw dropped open, revealing a dollop of green goop on her sickish tongue.
Clay reached her first, noting the depth of her injuries. Her brother, Brandon, was in a heap near the doorway, screeching. “THEY GOT HER, TOO! THEY GOT HER.” He wept, clenching his hands together, making one giant fist. “NO!”
Daniels knelt beside Clay, checking the girl’s pulse. He dropped her chilly arm quickly, making a motion toward the door. “I didn’t know they were in here,” he muttered. “I made a quick check before I let her in.”
“Were they hiding?” Clay asked, wondering what kind of intelligence they were dealing with. “Did they see us coming up the road?” He eyed the almost-humans splayed in bloody heaps around them. “Jesus. This is too fucking much.”
“I don’t know,” Daniels whispered. “I just don’t know.”
Behind them, Brandon had stopped screeching. His inhales came sharply, cutting into their ears. “We should get him back to the hotel,” Clay said, jolting to his feet. “Out of here.”
As they gathered Brandon and eased him back toward the car, he fought against their restraining arms, attempting to lunge toward his sister’s dead body. But Clay and Daniels held him firmly.
“She wouldn’t have died if you hadn’t made us leave,” Brandon whimpered, leaning heavily against the car. Around them, the gasoline had split into many different rivers and capillaries, churning toward the road. “She never would have died.”
“Kid, that’s where you’re wrong,” Daniels spouted. “She would have, and so would you. Now you owe it to her to keep yourself alive.” He prodded the kid’s chest with a dominating finger before shoving him quickly into the Naugahyde-covered seats. “Clay. We should go.”
Clay nodded, rushing toward the driver’s seat. As he ran, he heard the familiar beeps of his walkie-talkie, still at
tached to his side.
“Sheriff? Clay?” The voice was familiar, causing his heart to warm instantly. “Are you there? Over.”
Clay lifted the walkie-talkie, making momentary eye contact with Daniels. “Alayna. Copy. God, it’s good to hear from you. Where the hell are you?”
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” she said, her voice sounding haggard. “I need to make this quick. Clay, you need to gather everyone from the hotel and bring them out to the edge of town. That’s where the energy field is.”
“Which edge of town?”
“Out past the Crawford farm. Where it all began,” Alayna said. “Clay. Come quickly. I can’t stress this enough.”
In that moment, the walkie-talkie halted its crackle and an eerie silence settled in. Before long, the glare from Lieutenant Daniels and the teenage boy howling with pain and terror in the back seat finally spurred Clay ahead. Without wasting another moment, he shoved himself into the front seat and floored the accelerator, pushing them back toward the hotel, all the while praying, inwardly, that nothing else had gone wrong since they’d left.
Perhaps the nightmare was nearly over.
Chapter 48
Clay and Daniels arrived back at the hotel minutes later, leaving the car idling outside and popping open the back door, allowing Brandon to exit. He had grown catatonic in the moments after his sister’s death. His jaw was clamped shut. He shivered, his eyes searching the abandoned road as he followed Clay and Daniels into the gleaming hotel foyer. Clay felt as if ages had passed since they’d left the hotel.
Norah sat in the foyer, her aging, grey eyes turned toward them. She sighed as they entered. “They’re all upstairs at the bar. The doctor—he isn’t going to make it. He’s shivering, sweating, losing blood from his nose, mouth, and eyes.”
Clay nodded, taking the information in stride. He gripped her forearm gently, feeling the dryness of her skin. “I understand, and we can sort him out in a bit. But right now, we need to go see Alayna. Can you head to one of the cars? We found another holdout, and he’s already waiting out front. I’m going to gather the others.”
She nodded without protest, rising to stand, her knees creaking beneath her. “The deputy. Did she find her girlfriend?”
“Don’t know yet,” Clay said, turning toward the steps. He felt he was living a dream, pounding from the first floor to the second, discovering Ralph and Connie pointing at each other and rehashing some argument from their past. Their eyes flashed as they screamed. They looked like raccoons.
“The doc’s not doing so hot,” Connie said, her voice blaring. It seemed she was tattling, like a girl in school.
“So I’ve heard,” Clay said. “But right now we have to get to the edge of town. Get out front. Lieutenant Daniels will drive you.”
Connie rolled her eyes but shot down the steps, racing her husband. They burst past Norah, who was still easing toward the sheriff’s car. Clay took a final look down the empty hallway, which reeked of mold and age, before skirting into the doctor’s bedroom. He quivered beneath his sheets, wrapped like a burrito and sweating profusely. His forehead and nose poked out from beneath the damp sheet, each a pale green. Clay knelt beside him, noting the terror in the doctor’s eyes. He looked like a man on the brink of insanity.
“How’s it going, Doc?” Clay breathed, reminded of the morning he’d spent with his wife the day she’d delivered Maia. “I’d say we’ve both seen better days, wouldn’t you?”
The doctor couldn’t speak. His eyes, bloodshot and irritated, fixed on Clay’s. They alone spoke volumes, and Clay knew Norah was right. He just hoped that that whatever this infection was would take the doctor peacefully, but he sensed it was a futile wish.
Clay whispered, “We’re going to leave now. But I’ll come back for you. Know that I will. All right?”
Seconds ticked along, stretching into minutes. Clay backed from the room, sensing that he’d begun looking at a corpse. He stumbled down the steps and into the empty Main Street, discovering Brandon vomiting near his cruiser and Ralph, Connie, Norah, and Daniels all piled in the military vehicle. Clay sniffed, sliding into the driver’s seat and waiting for Brandon to tuck in beside him. Brandon swiped the back of his hand across his lips before tumbling in and slamming the door. Clay hurried from the hotel and down Main Street, speeding toward the edge of town. Toward the mysterious unknown.
Chapter 49
They approached the perimeter, where an energy field had formed a greenish haze encircling the town and rising up, bubble-like, toward the sky. Clay’s eyes narrowed. Beside him, Brandon leaned forward, trying to spot where the bubble burst. “It’s like a giant bug zapper,” he whispered. “I mean—this isn’t common, is it? This doesn’t seem normal.”
Clay didn’t speak. He’d spotted Alayna’s car, which she’d apparently picked up from the station, near the energy field and on the other side of the main road. She stood leaning heavily against the hood, glaring across the green film. The moment she spotted them, she popped up and waved, her face showing no sign of happiness.
Clay and Daniels parked beside her, their tires sinking into the grassy edge. The moment Clay exited his vehicle, Alayna rushed toward him and wrapped her arms around his neck, shuddering. “I’m so sorry I left like that,” she whispered. “It wasn’t right. I just . . . I needed to find her.”
Clay patted her back soothingly. Her muscles were tense and spasming at his touch. “But did you find her?” he asked, eyeing the green horizon. “What happened?” Outside of the perimeter, several cars were rolled over, burning, spitting black fumes. He winced when he noticed people inside them.
Alayna’s head drooped down. “She’s nowhere to be found. I went to her house, but she had already cleared out. I tried a few other places I thought she might go, but found nothing. So I decided to come out here. I knew this had been the checkpoint. The way out of town. At least, it had been yesterday.”
Clay nodded, remembering the long line of townspeople waiting to scurry from Carterville. Now the artery was desolate.
“But when I got here, I didn’t find any government station, obviously,” she said. “I only found that.” She pointed toward the other side of the energy field, where smoke and fire burst forth from the horizon, alerting them to crisis and disaster.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Clay said, taking several steps toward the energy field. He brought his palm upward, stretching his fingers along the green hue.
“Me neither. Or heard about it,” Alayna whispered.
As they stood, staring wordlessly at the energy field and at the steaming, smoking vehicles strewn out on the other side, the rest of the clan all lined up beside them. Norah leaned heavily upon a makeshift cane, a stick she’d picked up somewhere along the way.
“What the hell is this?” she said with asperity.
“It’s from the aliens,” Connie said, her voice harsh. “What else would it be?”
No one else spoke. Alayna and Clay made eye contact, sensing that their pack of rescuees was growing panicked. Brandon began to sneer, stomping about all along the energy field edge, muttering to himself. “They just ate her,” he whispered. “They just gobbled her up. Just like that. And now it’s over. It’s done.”
“Who’s the kid?” Alayna whispered to Clay.
“We picked him up at his house. His sister, she died,” Clay whispered back, noting the intensity in Brandon’s eyes.
“And the doctor?”
“He couldn’t leave the hotel. Was still alive when we left, but . . .” Clay trailed off, eyeing Ralph and Connie off to his right, who were becoming increasingly quarrelsome. They seemed like decorations in the terror at the end of the world.
“I might as well throw you into that thing,” Ralph spat at his wife, shifting his weight. “You little tramp. I know you cheated on me with Fred. After church last week, I knew where you were. You second-rate floozy.”
“HA!” Connie yelled. “As if you weren’t off with your little side th
ing two weeks ago yourself.”
“How did they get on this topic?” Alayna asked Clay, allowing a simple smile to stretch across her face.
“Seems they’re always fighting. It must be what they do,” Clay said sadly, his eyes still far away.
But as they stood, Ralph and Connie’s fight escalated. Ralph shoved at Connie, pushing her closer to the green-hued energy field. Brandon flung his fingers toward his mouth, clearly panicked. “Don’t,” Norah breathed, her back hunched.
“How dare you?” Connie hissed. “You want me to fly through that thing, is that it? As if it could hurt me? We’re all going to die here anyway.” She thrashed her finger through the air, yelling at Ralph.
“Calm down—” Alayna began, taking a step closer. “We need to stick together.”
Connie turned toward Alayna, then. She seethed with anger. “As if I should listen to you, you dyke. You abandoned all of us. You left us at that hellhole hotel. Just mind your own business.”
“Fly through that energy field for all I care!” Ralph yelled. “None of us want you here. None of us even care if you live or die.”
With that, Connie spun toward the green bubble. With her arms flailing, she rushed toward it. Daniels screamed, taking huge leaps toward her, trying to reach her. But her body hit the force field far too soon, thrashing and then suddenly disintegrating, splattering blood and viscera on either side of the green bubble. Her bones emitted a speck of light before sizzling to nothingness. One moment, Connie existed, lived, breathed, and yelled. And the next minute, her blood coated the fluttering wild flowers along the roadside.
Chapter 50
Immediately Ralph dropped to his knees. His wails echoed across the fields, booming against their vehicles. “CONNIE!” he cried, over and over again. “CONNIE. COME BACK!”
Everyone stood horrified, their hands over their mouths. Clay took several steps forward, watching as blood began to coat his boots. Alayna murmured behind him, “Clay. Don’t.”
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