Humanity's Edge Trilogy (Book 1): Turn

by Kohler, Paul B.

  A few feet away, a large swarm of the crazed monsters, blood dripping down their cheeks to their chests, bucked forward and into the town containment zone. The world was theirs for the taking. And they were hungry.

  Moments later, the energy field flickered to life once again, sealing in Carterville’s latest guests.

  Chapter 69

  Alarmed, Alayna raised her hand, her voice cutting through the tense air of the lab kitchen. “Clay. Daniels is right. You can’t go out there and just try to ‘get lucky’ with the energy barrier. We have no way to know when the power outages come and go. They’re brand new for us. We need to assess them first—for days or weeks maybe—before making any such decision.”

  Clay understood, then, as he gazed into Alayna’s eyes, that she wasn’t with him. Perhaps she couldn’t be any longer. The world they’d cultivated had imploded. And now every person was alone. There were no more companions. There were no more truces.

  “I have to do this,” Clay said. “I have to get out there. I need to find them.”

  He offered no other explanation.

  He began to pack a large backpack, filling it with enough supplies for at least a week of being on the other side. As he packed, he felt strangely centered. He could no longer feel the angry stares from the other survivors, who almost assuredly knew that they would soon have to fend for themselves, without him. Norah, the weakest of the group, sat in the corner as he packed, praying for him. Her words weren’t a comfort.

  Clay’s backpack, stocked with water bottles and matches and granola bars and nuts, felt strangely light on his back as he lifted it. He nodded toward his fellow survivors with finality, and then he turned toward the exit door, already anxious to feel the ground beneath his feet.

  But the survivors followed him, scampering after him like abandoned animals. He could feel Daniels hot on his heels.

  “Adam, nothing you say can change my mind,” Clay said. “This is the only way I can see to find resolution. I can’t live like this, not knowing what has become of them.”

  Daniels didn’t respond. Neither did the others. They followed Clay up the steps, Norah’s knees creaking as she walked. A gumball was squashed beneath Clay’s boot, and the fresh air tasted good on his tongue. He needed these last sensations before the grimness of the outside world was revealed to him.

  On Main Street, he turned back to find his group of survivors in a single line near the storefront, their eyes upon their feet. They looked skittish. Alayna wrapped her arm around Norah’s shoulder, whispering to her. Clay felt his stomach drop.

  But during this moment of brief nostalgia, he heard something. He turned his head toward the street corner, noting the shadow that began to form across the pavement. And before he could say anything, an entire horde of the crazed came rushing toward them, their arms flailing and their lesions bleeding languidly.

  Norah shrieked. One of the crazed slouched toward her, his teeth barely missing her shoulder blade before Brandon shoved him, full force, to the pavement. Daniels blasted a bullet through the monster’s brain, and the splattering blood painted the approaching horde. One of the crazed licked his lips, as if he liked the taste of his friend.

  As if on autopilot, Clay burst forward and ripped his gun from his holster, aiming at the mutants’ brains and pummeling them to the ground. “GET NORAH INSIDE!” he cried to Brandon before blasting the crazed flailing toward the teenager and the old woman. “HIDE. GET OUT OF THE WAY.” He continued to blast, one after another, his eyes filling with panic and rage. “COME ON.”

  Daniels, Alayna, and Clay rampaged, then, destroying one crazed monster after another, lining their boots with the blood of the dead. Ralph was in the center of them, flailing a large stick he’d picked up from the ground, bucking their bodies sideways. Clay focused upon the miscreation beside Ralph, blasting it seconds before it attacked. But he knew they were losing time, and it seemed that the crazed kept rushing from beyond the corner.

  “RALPH. GET DOWNSTAIRS!” he cried, blasting two more crazed, then grasping Ralph’s collar and flinging him toward the door of the candy shop. He felt menacing, like an animal or a warrior. But they were running out of ammunition, and it seemed they would be eaten at any moment.

  Daniels reached toward his back, then, and revealed a menacing automatic weapon. He screamed, “CLAY! ALAYNA! GET BACK!” And then he began to spit bullets at the mutants. Each line fell back upon the ground, slamming against the pavement. And then, when another line came roaming toward them, he blasted them to the ground as well. Clay watched the carnage, trying not to recognize any of the monsters’ faces or think about their names. He was breathless, his eyes bulging as the minutes continued and the bodies built a mountain in front of the candy store. The rest of the survivors were huddled at the entrance, watching, Brandon’s arms wrapped around Norah to hold her standing.

  Finally, after what seemed like forever, Daniels stood huffing, tilting his gun skyward, without another crazed to destroy. His eyes were manic and almost yellow, and he breathed heavily, spitting.

  “Jesus,” Alayna gasped. “Where the hell did they all come from?”

  Jacobs stepped out of the storefront. “My guess is with all these power fluctuations we’ve been experiencing, the perimeter energy field is also wavering.”

  Clay turned to the other survivors, who eyed him with fear and confusion. He gestured toward the bodies, knowing he looked crazed. “You see? Just as I thought,” he told them. “We are no safer here, in the center of Carterville, than we would be on the road. I think we can make it through the energy field during a down phase, which seems to be happening more and more often.”

  “But we’ll be killed on the road, too,” Ralph spat. “And military man here doesn’t have an endless supply of bullets.” His ears dripped with blood. A scratch had formed down his cheek, from the monsters, but he appeared unbitten.

  “We just need to make it to Earlton,” Clay said. “That’s all.”

  “But we tried to call them,” Norah reminded him.

  “As far as we know, just the physical phone lines are down. We’ll only know for sure if we can make it to the military base. And we also know that the military base is safe and stocked with supplies, if things get too bad out there.” Clay swallowed.

  Ralph muttered something to Brandon that Clay couldn’t hear. And Brandon nodded succinctly, squeezing Norah’s upper arm. Behind her stood Jacobs, always in the background, leering. Clay’s adrenaline was so high he wanted to punch him in the face for all the devastation that he’d caused.

  “We don’t really see another way, now,” Brandon finally said. “We’ll come with you. And we’ll die with you, if that’s what it comes to.”

  Ralph nodded, and Norah’s eyes burned with a sudden passion. “We’ll not go down without a fight,” she said.

  Chapter 70

  Clay and the survivors gathered back in the basement to reassess their plans. Clay felt Alayna’s hand at the small of his back as he stood at the coffeemaker. She shook slightly, and Clay turned to her, placing his hands on her shoulders.

  “You doing okay?” he asked her, tilting his head. “Really, I mean.”

  “I’m fine,” she murmured, her eyes far away. She bit her lip, her words coming soft and intimate. “I’m just . . . better knowing you’re not going alone, is all.”

  Clay nodded. He felt the same but remained silent about it.

  “And I’m so sorry about your wife and Maia,” Alayna whispered. “I know you must be feeling a strange range of emotions right now. And I know I must be far from your mind, in so many respects. But know that I’m here for you.”

  Before Clay could respond, Brandon and Norah entered the kitchen from the side, both holding on to backpacks filled with various supplies, including fruit and bottles of water. Brandon zipped his heartily, explaining that the others were packing up and would be ready to leave within the hour.

  “How do you think we should go out that way, anyway?” Bra
ndon asked, his eyebrow high. “There’s seven of us now, which is too many to go in a single vehicle.”

  Clay tilted his head, realizing he hadn’t thought this through. “Shit. You’re right,” he said. “Not even Adam can take all of us.”

  “Could we go in separate cars?” Alayna asked. “A few of us in your cruiser, and then the rest of us with Daniels? We were doing that before. It seemed to work all right.”

  A feeling of dread passed over Clay. He imagined being helpless in his vehicle while another, containing his newfound family, burst into flames before being overtaken by the crazed. There would be nothing he could do.

  “I don’t want to split up,” he declared.

  Jacobs, Ralph, and Daniels entered from the warehouse, their lips thin. Daniels looked like he’d just returned from war. “What is it?” he asked, sensing that the conversation had turned.

  “I think we need to locate a vehicle that can haul all of us, including our supplies,” Clay said. “Do you know anyone with a big van that might have been left behind?”

  “I don’t know anyone in this town,” Jacobs said. “This is your territory.”

  In the silence that followed, no one stepped forward with knowledge. Norah said something about her old pickup truck but remembered that she’d given it to her daughter nearly ten years before. Brandon shrugged sharply. The future seemed bleak.

  Then Daniels turned toward Ralph, assessing him. “You look like you’re in deep thought. Anyone you know keeping something around? Something big?”

  Ralph kicked his heels as he walked, pouring himself a cup of coffee. It was clear that he sensed he had an audience, and he held their attention. “Well, well. Let’s see. Old Mike, he was working on something at that mechanic station across town. That old one off Jefferson Avenue. He told me about it. An old Humvee, actually.”

  “That would be perfect,” Clay said, suddenly thrilled. “You know for a fact it’s there?”

  “That’s what he said. Don’t think he would have taken it out of town. The old bastard, Mike, I’m certain he didn’t leave his place, even. Probably one of those monsters now.”

  Everyone was silent for a while, allowing Ralph’s words to register.

  “You should know, though, I don’t know what its condition is. Mike was an asshole and a drunk, and I’d say that he wasn’t all there in the head, especially in the past few months. So the car might work. Or it might not.” Ralph shrugged.

  “Well it sounds like the best chance we have,” Clay said.

  In the silence that followed, they heard a clattering in the store above: an alert that more of the crazed were coming.

  Daniels gripped his automatic weapon and set his jaw. “I’ll go get more bullets from my bag,” he said, then disappeared through the side door.

  “We can’t rely on Adam for every attack. I think if we’re all going to be out on the streets, we should be armed,” Alayna said, glancing from person to person, resting her gaze upon Jacobs a few seconds longer than the rest. “Every one of us.”

  Chapter 71

  After gathering their things, the survivors stood at the other side of the candy shop’s hidden door, Daniels at the front holding his gun like a beacon. He bowed his head and then kicked the door in, revealing a barrage of the crazed scrambling over the gumballs and chocolate bars, their eyes dripping.

  Daniels blasted through them. The survivors watched as bodies crumbled to the floor, while stray bullets burst through the candy shop window, forcing stray glass shards to flash through the air aimlessly. Daniels gestured forth, and the seven of them loaded into multiple cars before heading toward their first destination.

  Clay opened the back warehouse of the sheriff’s station, where they kept the guns in reserve, realizing that this utilization of keys in locks was now an antiquated thing—that the world was now a dangerous, unlocked place. He flung the key to the warehouse floor and began passing handheld guns to Ralph, Norah, and Brandon, before handing a final one to Jacobs, who held it like a toy. Clay couldn’t help but judge him: this science boy who’d decided that the world was his playground. And now he could hardly protect himself in the face of its uproar.

  After retrieving the guns, they began their trek across the empty town, eyeing the familiar once-warm coffee shops, the gas stations, and the houses without trust. Despite their previous attempt to sweep the town, any one of them could contain more of the crazed. Any one of them could contain their death.

  “It’s strange. I remember I met Megan at that bar once,” Alayna whispered, pointing. “She was the most beautiful human I’d ever seen. I was so confused, then. About life, my career, my sexuality . . .” her thoughts drifted off. “And now look at it.”

  The bar’s front window was blasted open, the bar stools crooked.

  The mechanic shop was two miles away. The survivors drove in silence: Clay, Alayna, Norah, and Ralph in the lead vehicle, and Daniels, Brandon, and Jacobs bringing up the rear. Clay turned his head from side to side as Ralph pointed out the tucked-away mechanic shop. “Ayup,” Ralph said. “There it is. I see it through that dirty window.”

  Clay stopped his cruiser and Daniels pulled up beside him. As they neared the entrance, he saw that Ralph’s observation was correct. The military-like Humvee sat just inside. It was open, its insides gleaming from the daylight that filtered in through the window. It had recently been worked on, but the mechanic—Ralph’s old pal—had long since fled.

  The storage unit’s lock was rusted and easily broken with a firm kick from Daniels’s military boot. They opened the door, watching as it slid up, revealing the huge vehicle.

  “It’s practically a tank,” Brandon said, impressed. “And it can store all of our supplies.” He walked around the back, noting the size of its rear. “Why would a Carterville man buy something like this?”

  “Mike was mad,” Ralph said. He rubbed his fingers together, eyeing the insides of the Humvee. “He wasn’t finished. You can see here—he was in the middle of restructuring these pipes.”

  “Is it something we can fix ourselves?” Clay asked, knowing his level of mechanical ability was novice.

  “Sure. I can start right now,” Ralph said, eyeing the tools near the corner. “Left everything out, the fool. But we’re going to need some oil and some gas, and of course”—he tapped the innards of the vehicle—“I think we’re going to need to charge up the battery. But we can get a jump from one of our vehicles. Connie always said it was foolish how much I studied up on our cars. Always getting grease all over the living room. But now, she’d be proud.” He looked up, his eyes misty. Clay had an abstract memory of the couple arguing together, bickering, showing not a single shred of love.

  “Perfect,” Clay said, slapping Ralph on the shoulder. “Let’s get cracking, then. Tell us what to do. You’re the boss now.”

  “We’re at your service,” Brandon agreed, no longer the small, maniacal teenager he’d been just days before. He was quickly becoming a man.

  And for a moment, as Clay watched his team join together for survival, he felt a strange sense of pride.

  Chapter 72

  Despite their effort, the repairs proved to be slow and monotonous. Ralph began to bark out orders, unable to understand why Brandon couldn’t do simple mechanical repairs correctly, and occasionally asking him if he’d even been born a man.

  Clay kept watch outside of the garage as Alayna and Daniels headed out to look for gas. They returned with several cans of it, the gas sloshing around in the containers, looking pleased.

  Every few hours, a scattering of the crazed would meander toward them, allowing several chances for them to practice blasting them in the brains. Alayna tried to show Norah how to hold her gun, but Norah balked, telling Alayna, “I’ve been around a long, long time,” before piercing a crazed directly between the eyebrows.

  Alayna gazed at her, impressed. “I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone more than I love you right now,” she laughed.

  Norah l
ooked at her work, shivering slightly. Clay approached her, remembering how he’d felt when he’d first killed one of the crazed—Cliff, what felt so long ago in that jail cell. “It gets easier,” he said. “Both physically and mentally. It gets easier. I promise.”

  Norah nodded, understanding. It was unspoken that what they were going through was horrendous but absolutely necessary. They were building a life for themselves, and that meant they had to stop feeling nostalgic for all time that had passed. Even Clay had been able to fight back emotions about his wife and daughter, turning a clear eye to the issue at hand.

  As Clay stood keeping watch, Jacobs approached him, stuffing his hands into his pockets. They spoke quietly, not wanting the others to hear.

  “How are you feeling since taking the medicine? For the radiation?” Jacobs asked.

  “Actually, I’m feeling good, all things considered,” Clay affirmed, realizing he’d actually forgotten about many of his symptoms since taking that first pill. “My hair seems to be staying in now, thank god. And I haven’t felt a single bout of nausea.”

  “Good,” Jacobs said, nodding his head succinctly. “It’s strange, this radiation. Especially given that the meteorite issue was fabricated.”

  “Sure. But the meteorite actually did fall,” Clay said, his eyebrows high. “I saw it in the ground, steaming. It was about as real as they come.”

  “Well then you were probably affected,” Jacobs said. “With that close range, you probably picked up a small bit of the radiation, or something similarly poisonous. Without assessing the actual meteorite myself, I can’t know for sure. I’m incredibly curious, but I didn’t bring the right equipment to go check it out myself.”

  Clay held up his hand. “I wouldn’t worry about it. What happened happened. And I’m not dead yet, right?” He flashed an ironic smile, listening to the clank of his mechanics in the garage.

  “There’s just no way to know what we’re dealing with, here,” Jacobs affirmed, his eyes dark. “With radiation, you don’t know how it will rear its ugly head. So be alert. I have to admit, now, all of these people are counting on you to pull them through, at least until we get to Earlton.” He spoke with pessimism, watching as Norah blasted another crazed through its soft skull. “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up about your personal survival.”