by Greg Dragon
Alysia dropped the phone, put her hands up to her face and cried. She didn’t want Tracy to see her so she faced the wall away from the entrance to the bedroom. She cried hot, painful tears that knew no end, the pain of her loss too much to overcome. She understood why her father couldn’t call her but she had to lash out at him, anyway. It was too surprising, too much of a shock to lose her one and only mother.
She felt numb; now everything that was going on meant nothing. The concern for her safety, the wondering at why their world had turned upside down … nothing mattered but the fact that she would never be able to see her mother again.
She could hear her father’s voice through the fallen phone as she stared at the wall in disbelief. He was calling her name, begging her to pick it up and talk to him. She couldn’t move; she didn’t want to move. What was the point? Why bother?
She stood like that for a long time until a tremor shook the apartment and she heard Tracy curse in the background. She wanted to be okay, to move on and find her father so that they could mourn her mother together, but she could not move. Why me? she asked herself. Why is this happening to me?
Throughout her entire life, Alysia had heard her mother refer to her as the best thing that had ever happened to her. She was a gift in the form of an early pregnancy that had slowed her mother’s rise in the corporate sector. She went through abuse, poverty, and shame as a single mother before she started her own business.
When Alysia would hear the stories of her mother’s struggles, she would always feel a pinch of guilt. She used to wonder if her mother held any resentment towards her because of her birth, but Kendra loved her more than life itself.
There were rough patches in grade school and Alysia got into many fights. It felt as if her mother had a permanent seat in the principal’s office. Like many children in her position, she lashed out for attention.
When James Knight came into Kendra’s life, he claimed the entire package. Alysia was his daughter: no step, and no veiled titles. She was his, and he loved her to the point where she had to accept him, too. Her grades picked up and her behavior got better. He was there day and night, doting on her, loving her, and training her. The fractured Bell family became the Knights and when Alysia became a woman, love was the only thing that she remembered.
These memories of the past took over the young woman’s mind as she sat, frozen. James was still calling for her on the phone, the tremor of a giant still shook the ground, and Tracy was still screaming out expletives in the background. James Knight loved her, he loved her as his own, he was trying to talk to her, and she was ignoring him.
She realized what she was doing and picked up the phone and spoke into it. “Sorry, Daddy.”
She could hear him sobbing in the background when she did this. He didn’t want to lose her, too, and to hear the noises in the background and her silent on the other end had been torture.
“CeeCee, you okay? I know it hurts, baby. Your mother loved you more than life itself, you hear? So what I’m about to say to you is important.”
“What is it, Dad?”
“You need to survive and keep on living, no matter what comes in the next few days. Don’t let grief and carelessness squander your life. It’s what Kendra would ask of you. Live, so that you can tell your children about her. Look out for yourself, and don’t be a stranger.” He was speaking as if it was his last words and Alysia noticed this and panicked.
“Wait, where are you going, Dad?” she asked.
“I love you, baby girl. I need to handle something here, but when it’s done, I’m coming to get you.”
Alysia collapsed upon herself and bawled aloud when this happened, which prompted Tracy to run inside the room to see about her. She kept on asking her what was wrong, but Alysia was screaming and crying, so she ran over and held her close.
~ * ~ * ~
Two weeks passed before the power went out. The helicopters in the sky had disappeared and the streets were empty, save for looters and random creatures. The days held no sunlight, due to the thick black clouds that wouldn’t break, and the tremors had stopped completely. Alysia’s ankle was better but still a little sore, and Tracy was preparing for war.
When she wasn’t playing with Luciano, the policewoman was cleaning guns, stockpiling ammunition, and speaking violently about her plans for the creatures. Every other day they would leave the apartment to collect supplies. Tracy did not feel it was a good idea to travel until Alysia was “war ready,” as she put it, so they kept food stocked and she readied their weapons.
“How you doing, kid?” she asked Alysia one day as the young woman stared out through the glass door at a number of atrocities happening in the streets.
“That’s a good question,” Alysia replied. She was still numb and hurt from the loss of her parents, but she had gotten good at going through the motions.
“I bet you miss school,” Tracy joked, and Alysia looked at her to see if she was being serious.
“Do you know what I miss? I miss … control. I miss the ability to wake up, decide what I want to wear and then run with it. Whether I would take the bus or hover-lift to campus, skip a day, cram for a test, and attend a party. I miss all of it. Right now, we’re two fireflies stuck in some kid’s jar. We make plans as if we can get out, but in reality, we’re doomed, aren’t we? Any day now, something can come through that door and eat us, or some other thing can knock the building down. We—” She was crying again and screaming at Tracy and the police officer let her vent her frustration.
“We have control. Think about it, girl. No police.” She winked at her to let the irony sink in. “No rules, and all the guns and ammo we can use. I say we go down into the city and take it. We can become Amazonian queens and rule this hell until our last days!”
“Tracy, maybe I should be asking YOU how you’re doing,” Alysia said as she looked at her intently. “You sound insane.”
But she smiled at the thought of Tracy on a throne, protected by the dinosaur creatures that had attacked them. She was about to say something more when they heard gunshots and she saw a group of masked men running across the intersection. Tracy walked up to stand beside her and to see if she could get a better look at what had happened downstairs. They expected to see a creature chasing the running men but what they saw was a young man. He was lying on the street, bleeding out from the bullet wound he had suffered.
Tracy grabbed her handgun and ran outside, her police instinct too strong to resist the urge to get involved. Alysia made to go after her but Tracy stopped her, locking the door behind her as she descended the stairs to the street. This is foolish, Alysia thought, she is one woman and there were at least ten men running from the murder scene after it occurred.
She walked back to the glass door and stepped onto the porch; it was the first time she had been outside in days and the air smelled strong with sulfur. She could see Tracy hiding behind a post, trying to find the murderers, but they were gone and the streets had gone silent like they were before.
Tracy stood at the post for a time and Alysia began to worry for her being out there alone. I should be down there with her, she thought. But she felt weak and her leg was still hurting. As she made to go back inside to change and join her friend, she noticed some movement behind Tracy.
Without thinking better of it, she screamed at the top of her lungs. “TRACY, BEHIND YOU!”
The policewoman spun in time to catch the lizard-like kreple that had come to investigate the gunshot that it heard. She fired six shots into the creature as it ran towards her with its jaws agape. The bullets did the job and it crumpled lifeless in front of her as she spun this way and that to make sure there weren’t any more.
After another minute had passed, she checked on the young man. Alysia could see that they were having a conversation but after some time he slumped over and stopped moving. Tracy stood up and brushed back her unruly red curls before running back to the apartment building. When she came back inside and locked
the door, she didn’t say anything. Alysia walked back inside and sat in front of her. Tracy looked up at the young girl and shook her head.
“We gotta get outta here, kid,” she said to Alysia after some time. “That poor guy told me that those murderers were once his friends but they’ve gone crazy.”
“Why did they shoot him down in the streets like that?”
“He said that he wouldn’t play along with their anarchy. We’re women and there is no one around to help us right now, Cee. We’re no longer safe in the city.”
Alysia understood what Tracy was getting at and knew that it was only a matter of time before the men found them. “Isn’t it a little early in the game for people to go full on Viking raider?” Alysia muttered.
Tracy shrugged and then ejected the clip from her handgun and replaced it. “You’re gonna have to learn how to shoot,” she said to Alysia while flipping the gun around to shove the butt into her hands. “Safety’s on. Let me show you where it is.”
She then proceeded to give Alysia a quick lesson on guns and their different properties. The lesson went on for a time before she heard a knock at the door and her heart fell to the floor. She put a finger up to her lips to tell Alysia to be quiet, and she tiptoed to the kitchen to collect a shotgun.
Alysia stood frozen, not knowing what to do, until Tracy pointed to the bedroom and mouthed the words for her to go. Alysia did as she was told. She took the safety off the gun and held it pointing down, thinking it wouldn’t be so difficult to actually shoot it.
The knocking on the door grew louder and more violent until it flew open and a large man with long brown hair stepped inside with a gun. Tracy deployed the shotgun and the man screamed and fell. A number of other men rushed at her and she jumped over the couch and rolled before firing off a few shots from her handgun. But one of the attackers shot back at her and she slid to the ground with her mouth open.
Alysia was upset with herself for her delayed reaction but it had all happened so fast that she was in shock. She raised her gun to fire it but couldn’t complete the motion. A few of the men pointed in her direction and then all of a sudden, everything went black.
3
“Wake her up and bring her over here,” were the first words Alysia heard.
She had been conscious for a time, but she was working out her options, and she worried that if she opened her eyes for too long, the big men inside of the house would get curious.
There wasn’t anything good about her captors. First, they were all men—four of them, from what she counted, and one of them was touching her thigh. The one barking the orders was a massive brute, and he called out to them from what appeared to be a bedroom. She gathered that she was in a cabin.
She was sitting in between two white men who looked like junkies, and there was a big black one guarding the only door. The leader was dark and disgusting, but she couldn’t tell if it was his complexion or the dirt from staying unwashed for days. The stench that permeated the house made her settle on the latter, and her imagination began to play at time-traveler, showing a future that she wanted no part of.
The two junkies grabbed her arms and started to drag her into the bedroom but she reacted instantly and somersaulted backwards, forcing them to release their grip. She kicked the closest one in the groin and he collapsed into a heap, but she didn’t wait for the other to react. Knocking his hand away when he reached for her, she threw a finger into his eye – a bloody good strike – and then scrambled for the gun that the first one had dropped.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Alright now, girl, calm on down,” the leader said as he walked to the doorway of the bedroom. He placed his hands above it and leaned forward. “Yo, Vinny we got us a live one here,” he said to the man by the doorway and smiled at her with a wicked glint in his eye. “I saw you in that apartment. You didn’t shoot at us like your girlfriend did. You ain’t got it in you.” And he walked forward and backhanded her across the face in what seemed like a millisecond.
The big man’s hand echoed painful throbs into her skull and Alysia was dazed and blinded by her tears. She knew what was coming next and she steeled herself to fight back. But a scream that came from Vinny made her look towards the front door.
Something had broken the door down and pulled him out, and the leader turned away from her to see what it was. He dropped her and ran outside, shouting. A few gunshots went off and she could hear the thumping of someone beating something rapidly. She hopped up and checked the gun. Why was she so afraid to shoot a human being? I am not a murderer, she reminded herself, and then threw the gun down.
She sprinted outside, making sure that she headed in the opposite direction of the leader. It was dark and the clouds were covering the moon, but she could make out some cloaked figures that moved to intercept her as she fled. They were relentless in their pursuit, and though she got deep into the woods that bordered the cabin, they eventually caught her and threw a bag over her head.
~ * ~ * ~
It had been early in the morning when James Knight took off to find Alysia, but by the time he rolled into town, it was late in the afternoon. He observed the lay of the land and found the silence disturbing.
He parked his bike and stepped out into the street, looking up at the high-rises and trying to see if there was any sign of his daughter. He couldn’t find anything, so he rode around on the various streets for a time until he found the dead body of the man.
James was a master tracker, back when he was a US Navy SEAL, so he checked the body and the nearby buildings. Tracy’s footsteps led him upstairs and he followed them until he found the charnel house that was her apartment.
A kitten poked his head up from behind Tracy’s body, and James walked over and looked at her, recognizing that she was the friend Alysia had told him about. Tracy was still alive but she had lost a lot of blood. James helped her up and took her to the room, where he looked over her wounds and did what he could to help her.
“Are you Alysia’s dad?” she asked in a weak voice as James bandaged her shoulder and held her still.
“Yeah, I’m James Knight,” he said, smiling at her as he walked to the sink to wash his hands.
“Thank you, James… CeeCee—”
“They got her? Those punks got my girl?” he asked, and Tracy tried to read the emotions in his face but found that he was too composed to reveal them.
“I—I think so,” she managed and shook her head in disappointment over what had transpired.
“Who are these fools and what do they want with Alysia?” he asked, his focus solely on getting enough information to rescue his child.
“They are thugs, taking advantage of the situation. CeeCee is alive, I’m damn sure of it, but they took her away, and I was too hurt to notice where they took her to.” It was after saying this that Tracy realized that she had left the guns out when they attacked and more than likely, they had taken everything.
~ * ~ * ~
Alysia woke up to a loud noise and the feeling of something burning against her face. She felt binds on her hands and feet and when she opened her eyes, she saw a strange ritual going on. There were a number of men dancing around a bonfire. Some of them she assumed were her kidnappers, but all she could make out were their silhouettes. She wanted to scream, but she didn’t know where she was or why they had taken her so she thought better of it.
She was no longer in the city and all around she could see trees. The men ran around the fire screaming like banshees and as her vision got better, she noticed they weren’t men, after all. Their ears had points, and their posture held a beastlike quality. Some of them had small horns, and their skin looked charred – black with a bit of red poking out. When she looked at them, they reminded her of barbecue.
How funny would it be if gangs of barbecue ribs were my captors? she thought. They were probably upset with the human race for eating them.
Two females walked over, released her bonds, and then dragged her to a tent nearby. The combined smell of
their sulfurous bodies and the heat of the bonfire made Alysia gag. She sized them up to see if she could get the slip on them but she felt weak to the point of passing out.
They stripped her of her clothing and undid her braids, brushing oils into her hair and on her skin. When they were finished, they forced her into a purple dress, lay her on a bed and tied her hands and feet to the post.
“Really, this is what you captured me for?” she said to them, defiantly. “I’m sure some demon king or something is going to walk in here next and you all are just going to let him do whatever he wants with me, right?”
The women looked at one another and then kept on working, and then they left the tent to join the circle with the others. Alysia was frightened and she could feel the loud thumps from her heart beating in her ears. The demons were singing now and the fire had grown, its brilliance shining through the thin fabric of the tent. She tugged at the ropes that held her wrists and cursed at the fact that she was too weak to break them.
She used her body to see if the bed could move, and when it rocked from her attempts, she felt a glimmer of hope. Rocking and shifting her weight this way and that, Alysia managed to loosen one of the binds on her arms. She kept this going until she had one hand free, and when she was finally out, she looked around for a weapon.
Run Alysia, she told herself, and then looked at the doorway where the women were waiting for whomever it was that was supposed to be her consort. She lifted the lower part of the tent near the rear and slid under it, staying low to the ground as she did.
The demon circle was right in front of her, but they were looking at a particularly large, shadowy figure as he stepped from out of the circle and walked proudly to the tent. She slipped into the bushes and started sprinting; this time, she had a good lead on them and since they hadn’t discovered her escape yet, she felt good about her chances. I must be special, she thought. A city full of people and they choose me.
