by Greg Dragon
Rett asked the man at the register, “What brought so many planes down?”
“Terrorists are what they’re saying, but my wife overheard talk about a wave.”
“What kind of wave?”
“No one knows. Lights are out from Beaumont back to Savannah and from Richmond down to Jacksonville. Folks claim an earthquake occurred but how did it crash planes?”
“Most phones aren’t working, and CNN is off the air. Other stations claim the East Coast is in ruins,” a woman behind him in line said. “End times are here.”
Rett wanted to ask for more details but the line had grown long.
The gloomy atmosphere reminded him of nine-eleven. The boys were asleep when he opened the door. He turned the radio down low to get information on the mysterious wave. To his surprise, most stations carried on like normal. When he switched to AM talk radio, Rett got more information.
One old boy called in and said, “Wave? Hunker down, people.”
“New caller,” the DJ said, “you’re on.”
“Cuss, my brother works at the airport. He claimed four monsters jumped off the plague plane. Said two looked like movie-type zombies, but the others were half man and half beast.”
Rett turned up the volume.
The DJ said, “Whoa dude, back up. Zombies and beast-like monsters? Was he drinkin’?”
“No, sir. Dallas TAC team—you know, like SWAT teams? They unloaded their weapons on them. Man, he said it took over a hundred rounds before the two big’uns went down for good. Someone in law enforcement shot the runt at least twice on the plane. He fell a bit faster.”
“Hang on, caller. Hey everyone, this is the Cuss Brown show. I’m not going to break on a whopper like this one. Here’s the public service announcement I’m supposed to play with a spin all my own: Citizens of Texas have been ordered to stay home. If you’re caught rubber necking, you’re going to jail. Dallas/Fort Worth is under a mandatory quarantine because of the plague plane. So stay home unless you’re a first responder or hospital worker. Now, some cell towers are down and some aren’t. Hope you’re lucky. Landlines, if you still have one, are operating west of Beaumont. Now, let’s get back to the big story.
“Okay caller, I’ll bite. Where are their carcasses?”
“That’s the best part, Cuss—they’re still in the airport. Men showed up in HAZMAT suits and put a plastic tent around ’em. Hundreds, and I mean hundreds of pictures were snapped. Open your website and ask for ’em.”
The DJ laughed. “I like a challenge, so if anyone wants to hit me, go to www.cussupastorm.com. Now, I heard the plague plane was full. Any information?”
“Yeah, but call it the slaughter plane. Heard dead and mangled bodies plus body parts covered the field around the plane. Passengers are being rounded up. I’ve said enough.”
“This is Cuss—go for it, new caller.”
“Cuss, I don’t know how long it will be ’fore they shut down folks like you, but the previous caller was dead on. My husband is with the TAC team. After they killed them, he called me. He told me to drop everything and go to my family’s ranch. I’m on the road out of state now.”
“Are you sure you’re a Texan? We don’t cut and run, girl.”
“Yeah? Well, my hubby isn’t used to doing it either, but he was scared. The TAC team has been quarantined. He said those things boarded the plane looking like everyone else. What got off wasn’t human.”
“Whoa, emergency responders have been quarantined? Take care of yourselves, listeners. I’m betting 911 emergency calls will be delayed.”
“Cuss, the entire airport and all employees and responders are quarantined. Boyd said both beast monsters had chest armor, both front and back. Said it looked natural and grew out of their bodies. Armor-piercing shells is what brought the adults down.”
“Adults? One kid?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. I apologize to Dallas’s finest. Good job, boys! This is Cuss—hit me, new caller.”
The woman’s voice quavered as she spoke. “I was on the plane, Cuss, and I’m still in the parking lot. I’ve sent pictures and they’ll be rounding me up soon. They claim we’re all infected. The lucky passengers sat in first class and the first few rows behind them. Everyone on the plane was fresh meat, including women and babies. Babies, Cuss. I want folks to know it wasn’t a terrorist, it’s monsters, and they were after someone on the plane!”
“Whoa! Hold it, sister. Who was it after?”
“The big one near me made noises like clucking sounds. Every once in a while he growled out ‘Brett’ or ‘Dred.’”
“How’d you survive?” the DJ asked.
“I chickened out. I was trapped by a window seat and I’m short. I slid down on the floorboard, legs under the seat in front of me, and covered my head with a blanket and ducked down. The aisle was blocked by luggage and trampled people after the wave. Folks panicked and climbed over the seats to escape. More than one stepped on me. The monsters didn’t have to look for the scaredy cats to eat.”
“Smart thinking. Can you explain the wave?”
She took a wheezy breath. “It felt like the hand of God grabbed our plane, shook it around, and then tried to shove us out to the stars. I thought we were goners, but our pilot must have been the best. I hear he’s dead too.”
“New caller. Wait. Folks, you’re not going to believe it. Hang on. My website crashed, but not before we got images on our back-up server. Listeners, you got to see it to believe it. I’m calling the big’un Humgill. Humgill biting a man’s brains out, Humgill snapping off a guard’s arm, Humgill clawing a woman’s face. People, we are in bad trouble if a virus causes us to kill each other like that!”
Rett turned off the radio. He knew shooting the kid had to be done, so his kids could escape unharmed. A feeling in the pit of his stomach turned his heart cold and heavy. A few minutes earlier, the thing he’d shot had been a normal teenager. Right around Eddie Jean’s age, he guessed. Oh, baby, where are you?
I can’t go back for her like I promised. The realization made him feel faint.
Rett pulled off the road and cried like a kid. In less than a day, he went from abhorring guns to shooting two monsters and carrying a gun in his lap. He abandoned his sick daughter to whisk his boys to safety. Circumstances had changed him, and he feared the end result. He wasn’t sure he could live with it, but he’d try. At least he didn’t kill the boy, but he had weakened him and slowed his change process. He dried his face with his shirt and called Uncle Jed.
No bars on the cell. A few minutes later, he saw a payphone near the road in a closed service station. Rett pulled in, looked around, and drove to the phone. He could use it while sitting in the truck. He kept one eye peeled as he fed the machine quarters. Fast-food trash littered the oil-stained concrete, but no people in sight. Rett put the gun on the dash and called.
“Hallelujah!” Uncle Jed sounded happy. “I worried you boys were in one of the crashes.”
“No, sir. But weird things happened on our flight from Atlanta.”
“Atlanta? Figured you’d fly out of the ’Ham. News claims a virus got released on your flight. Airport authorities ordered the passengers and crew to be locked up in quarantine. Dead people filled the plane.”
“Yeah, we drove to Atlanta and we flew first class. The killings went down in the rear, and later the center of coach. We were lucky to escape.”
“Listen here, officials claim a killer virus got released on the plane. They’re even roundin’ up the folks who tried to help calm passengers down after the rough landin’.”
“Rough landing? Pilot did it on purpose to give us a chance. Emergency landing was the only way to get us down fast and dirty.”
“Let me say again, son. They say escapees are contagious and could wipe us all out with a new form of plague. A friend told me the dead got up and walked.”
“I didn’t see if they died first. I saw people changed into a new species, or monsters. You ever hear
of a virus severing arms or eating human brains? Truth is, I killed a monster last night in Cloudland. He didn’t look like the ones on the plane. We were exposed, but didn’t come in contact with blood or body fluids. Your call, Uncle Jed.”
A long pause followed before Uncle Jed said, “Texas will freeze before I turn my kin away. Better go to red alert.”
“Payphone.”
“Good choice.”
“Have you heard any news from…home?”
“Not from home, but around Cloudland. It ain’t good.”
“You want company or not?” Rett asked, giving him a second chance to refuse them.
“You remember what your old man said to do in a red situation?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll have stew waitin’, then.”
Rett pulled the battery out of the cell and pulled back on the Interstate. A few minutes later, he tossed it out the window. He waited ten miles and tossed the phone in the road. Rett drove on until he spied a rest station and pulled in near picnic tables and a trashcan. Very few cars or trucks were parked at the Welcome Center. He looked around a moment and heard the comforting sounds of road traffic.
It took a few minutes, but he found and evaluated every piece of ID in the truck and on him. He kept his driver’s license, cash, and prepaid credit cards. He dumped everything else except a map and the Glock. With his luck, they might encounter another monster, and he wanted to protect the boys. Hopefully, all would be quiet out in the Texas outback.
He climbed back in the truck.
Teddy moaned in his sleep. It gave Rett the heebie-jeebies. Jenna used to do that too.
He dropped his left hand down to push the seat bench back for comfort. Rett felt cold metal press into his temple. Someone thumb-cocked a revolver. His bladder ached.
Rett heard his old man’s voice. Cat eyes, son. Always check the rearview.
Wilbur
In the doorway of Evaney’s room, Lee pulled UV goggles over her eyes. “Check it.” She fired up the UV wand and held it like an M16. She waved it inside the room. “Bite my man, Drac, and you get this, plus a stake in the heart,” she yelled.
Evaney snarled, but didn’t open her eyes.
Did Lee call me her man? Wilbur’s heavy heart lifted despite what he would face in the next few seconds. He tried to compose a poem to mark the moment. Wilbur still couldn’t connect his words. Heat flushed his ears.
Lee purred, “Leave a tender moment alone, Burr.”
Rose whispered, “Yell, if you need us.” She held her pendulum at the ready. “I’ve got you covered.”
Wilbur stepped inside the sterile white room. His tongue shriveled into a weed, tunnel vision clamped down, and he focused on Evaney. His symptoms were courtesy of adrenalin, he guessed—drug of choice for people scared out of their words.
Evaney Harwood reclined on her back, eyes closed, and she rubbed her hands together. The movements looked coordinated and revealed her inner agitation. Something about her triggered a vague memory from the night Mary died, but he couldn’t recall details. After a moment, he realized her hand movements were attempts at trying to locate her ring.
Years ago, caregivers had taken the expensive ring off her hand. Wilbur touched his pocket to make sure the key to the Saturn was safe. Grandmother Pearl had left her home to the church, but she left him the Saturn. The car key meant freedom to him, like the ring had special meaning to Evaney. Winn Harmon had placed the ring on her finger. Her bloodsucking was the will to live—nothing more or less.
Despite her invasions into his mind, he felt connected to her. Like him, she had doodled facial caricatures in her classroom notebook margins and wrote funny observations about her fellow students and faculty. He’d laughed at three of her comments:
One professor who hit on girls wearing glasses “used truth like Kleenex.”
A student who plagiarized was “the diva of déjà vu.”
A shy guy in the Naval Reserve “could charm gold threads from moonbeams after being on the hard for two weeks.”
Yeah, Evaney Harwood knew how to connect her words as much as he did. Wilbur’s wrists began to itch and his fingers picked at the bandages. He stepped forward and went to the dresser.
“Remember, you’re in Underworld,” Lee whispered from behind him.
He removed her engagement ring from a red velvet pouch. He slid the heavy ring on the straightest finger on her left hand. Evaney’s eyes opened.
“No more blood,” he said. “I’ll listen if you want to explain the accident. We need to know if we’re carrying the same disease as you.”
His vision blurred and then she sent in his head, Vibrations evolve.
Wilbur winced. Did she mean the Hum?
He grabbed the side rail to steady himself. His head felt like it had been split. She used telepathy? His knees sagged. “Get out of my head!”
“Burr! Listen to the house,” Rose shouted.
Wilbur shook his head. He’d come close to stroking out. He turned his head and lied to Rose. “I’m fine.”
“Insects! It sounds like the house is being invaded,” Rose yelled.
“She’s crying bloody tears!” Cookie screeched from the corner.
“Just like a vampire,” Lee said.
Wilbur said, “Tell me what happened after you found the cave.”
“Vampire’s got me,” Cookie screeched.
Wilbur turned and watched Cookie perform a weird, marionette-type dance. “Help me,” Cookie begged him.
Evaney froze him as she let Cookie go. He watched Lee and Rose rush to Cookie, who staggered a few steps and dropped to her knees. Behind him, Evaney sat up and sunk her teeth into his neck.
For feeding her, Evaney shared her memories as if they watched a movie.
Wilbur lived every piquant and tender moment of her engagement night, including their lovemaking, which made him feel shamed. He heard the back-and-forth teasing between the Duke students as they ate breakfast. They pretended to the inn’s owners they planned to hike in the state park. In the Land Rover, he heard them discuss how to spread the news of a cancer cure in Cloudland, if Winn’s sister was cured.
He sat beside them when they found a little used road near the cave spot. And then he felt Evaney’s sudden fear, as her survival instincts from years of child abuse were aroused. She panicked as the other students hiked to a hill. Evaney wanted to tell them a disaster loomed, but she didn’t want them to laugh at her.
Wilbur felt the same all-over skin tingling Evaney did. The tingles turned into shivering. The warning shivers always came before her grandmother beat her. By heeding her symptoms, Evaney gained time to hide. The odd sensation may have saved her life.
The valley smelled like sweet pine and sunshine, but Evaney’s legs trembled and the urge to pee her pants became painful, urgent. Evaney lied to Winn and the others. She pretended a migraine made her nauseous, and she went back to the Land Rover for medicine. Evaney took her time and waited for a sign.
Her fear sickened Wilbur, but nothing happened.
He climbed with her to rejoin her friends. He heard their screams, felt her struggle to hang onto a small tree, and then he felt her body go cold. All that made her human disappeared. Her well-honed survival instincts took over, and Evaney became her grandmother.
You killed Winn and he loved you, Wilbur thought.
She answered, I’ll kill you too.
“Finding out the truth isn’t worth this misery,” he said, watching them help Cookie out. “You betray everyone.”
Evaney responded by revealing vampire history. She told him things about the Hum and how it brought change. The earth had a built-in protection mechanism to induce change and cleanse the environment. Wilbur felt as trapped as Mary surely did.
He and the others had been nurtured on the estate to feed her when the time came. Type O blood gave the vampire their best health. Type O blood from black people gave the vampire an added kick—they could walk in full sunlight. The catch wa
s she needed to ingest type O blood during the Hum’s major effects. The Hum didn’t happen at once, but at spaced intervals until the entire planet was affected.
Wilbur wept for humanity.
He saw destruction and the rise of the vampire class. People were due another DNA upgrade. Evolution favors the fit and healthy, but the sick get a second chance by becoming vampires. Vampires benefitted from a shared memory of their past history. Humans had no such memory advantage. He saw the long line of vampire history, their rise and fall over numerous time periods. Humans had suffered much in forgotten past history. Vampires came close to winning several times, but always, humans defeated them.
Wilbur watched the horror scenes to learn how to kill them. She cut him off.
He grabbed hold of the movie in his mind and asked Evaney what she lived for. He got two answers and felt her anger at his audacity. She tried to scare him by revealing his fate, and how the live-in help would die hideous deaths.
Fear consumed him.
Wilbur figured she had bled him dry. In the mind movie, he watched Evaney look down at Winn, and he saw the Cloudland monsters? Not vampires! Rabid-looking creatures penned in a cave and set free by small quakes. Wilbur wondered if she was confused. The monsters infected her and not vampires. Evaney wanted to be a vampire, had been destined to be a vampire from her blood disease porphyria—except her destiny could’ve been changed in Cloudland. Wilbur fought to exit the nightmare. He had to lead the house help to safety.
“Get him out, Lee!” Rose shouted. “She’s drinking his blood!”
“I’m looking right at her, and she’s asleep,” Lee answered.
“Now!” Rose screamed.
Lee darted forward, UV wand glowing like a lightsaber. “Vampire, release him! Don’t you dare give me the stink eye or I’ll poke it out!”
The horrific images stopped, and Evaney flopped back down in the bed.
