Dark Vanishings 2: Post-Apocalyptic Horror

by Dan Padavona

  “Certainly you must appreciate, Mr. Masters, the sensitivity of the information shared within these walls and the complications that would arise if information were to leak out.”

  “You estimate the Florida-based community will have at best several hundred members. Unarmed. We have over 2000 here, trained. We have technology. And we have two former military who think they can launch a missile. This isn’t a war. It’s a massacre. Quinn and I could march into Florida on our own tomorrow and clean the place out. No sweat. I’ve had enough of this bullshit national security act getting shoved down my throat.”

  “You underestimate them because you don’t understand their capabilities.”

  “And you talk about this teenage boy and girl like they are a real threat to anyone.” Masters took another step. He stood inches away from Lupan, staring down at him. “You know what I think? I think you’re nothing but a yellow-bellied bureaucrat who’s never gotten his fingernails dirty, so you hide behind a position of power, while people like Quinn and I do all the hard work.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is, if I say it is. Stand aside, Lupan, and I’ll forget this conversation ever happened. Otherwise, you and I will have a serious issue. Fight your own fuckin’ war.”

  The room went quiet, except for the bull-like breathing of Masters and Harsted. Now Harsted moved to Masters’ side. Jacob stood transfixed. Clearly Harsted and Masters intended to physically impose their will on Lupan. But despite being out-sized and outnumbered, Lupan wore an unblinking calmness on his face.

  “Mr. Masters, I cannot allow you to leave these premises. The information risk is unacceptable. You know the penalty for desertion.”

  “I don’t see anyone around to back you up, Lupan, except this psycho kid.” Jacob’s eyes narrowed, burning holes into Masters. “It’s just you and us. We’re walking out of this room. You can stand aside and let us pass, or we can walk over you. Your choice.”

  “I will not allow—”

  Masters struck Lupan in his face. Jacob’s eyes widened.

  He bleeds.

  Blood streamed from Lupan’s nostrils, yet the man stood, unwavering.

  Harsted, who had cringed when Masters threw the punch, now became emboldened. As he watched Lupan bleed, he tightened his own fists.

  “Stand aside.”

  Masters punched Lupan in his stomach. Lupan grimaced, his lips curling into a smile. Blood trickled around his mouth like the paint of a macabre clown.

  Harsted landed a punch to the side of Lupan’s head, and still the man wouldn’t fall. Harsted cast an unsure look at Masters.

  Lupan’s eyes changed. It was as though match light briefly flickered in the blacks of his corneas.

  “Fools,” Lupan said.

  Grinning wide, Lupan’s face contorted into something evil. Jacob turned his head away, afraid that if he looked into Victor Lupan’s eyes, the Medusa-like gaze would turn him to stone.

  Masters screeched like a terrified child. Jacob heard Harsted drop to the floor, and when he stole a glance at the man, he saw Harsted lying on the floor with his knees drawn up into the fetal position. The man lay sobbing, but his eyes were locked on Lupan as though paralyzed.

  Masters crashed to the floor, shaking the room. One eye was frozen on Lupan, while the other seemed to be looking at Jacob, begging him to help. In that pitiful moment, Jacob saw Tori’s eyes begging to him. He was half-consumed by his fear of what Lupan was doing to the men and his longing to kill Tori.

  “Look at me,” Lupan whispered.

  Blood trickled from the ears of Masters and Harsted. Their veins stood out like strands of blue licorice. Their mouths moved, forming silent words. Jacob watched as their eyes rolled back in their heads. Their bodies quivered, then broke into tremors. As though a candle had been snuffed out, life departed their bodies.

  Jacob fixated on the mens’ corpses, sensing Lupan’s gaze on him.

  In a whisper that made Jacob think of rats skittering across a mausoleum floor, Lupan said, “Do not ever think that you can leave us, Jacob.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Somewhere West of I-40

  They crossed the Tennessee border into North Carolina on foot, shielding their eyes from a sun that broiled the asphalt of the county route. Mitch “Indiana” Bloom had come across Beth Tranor, a 32-year-old sixth grade teacher in northern Kentucky, and together they had driven Mitch’s pickup into Tennessee before running out of gas.

  Now the sun burned like a white-hot funeral pyre, wilting the grassy fields that butted up against the road. Miles and miles of telephone wire stretched endlessly into the horizon.

  Beth wiped the sweaty, brown curls out of her face and watched Melody out of the corner of her eye. The teenager’s black clothing clashed with her pale skin and the sparkle of multiple piercings.

  Mitch and Beth had discovered Melody wandering outside of Nashville like a zombie out of “Night of the Living Dead.” Mitch had identified Melody as a drug abuser immediately, even before noticing the track marks on her arm. The long, dirty blonde hair hanging in her face barely obscured the teenager’s sunken, clouded-over eyes. Melody looked as though she had gone a few rounds with a prizefighter.

  As the late afternoon sun beat on their shoulders, Melody followed Mitch and Beth, dragging her feet over the road surface.

  “What’s the point in all of this? How much longer do we need to walk before you admit there isn’t anyone out here? We’re alone,” Melody said.

  “Gotta get to the highway,” Mitch said. “I’ve already seen two cars in the last hour headed south, just like we are.”

  “What kind of idiot heads south when it’s a hundred degrees?”

  “Maybe there’s a reason for everyone to head south. I really don’t know.”

  “Well, I’m tired and hot. What if I don’t feel like following you anymore?”

  “Nobody is making you come along. But we’re headed for the highway. Come, or don’t come. I’m tired of the complaints.”

  “We can’t leave her alone,” Beth said. “She’s only seventeen.”

  Melody rolled her eyes. “I was doing fine before the two of you came along.”

  “Fine?” Mitch spun around to Melody. “If we hadn’t come along when we did, you’d be dead now.”

  “I was sleeping.”

  “You were choking on vomit.”

  “It’s hot out. I had sun poisoning.”

  “You were poisoned, all right. Look, whatever you did with your life in the past is none of my business. But if you want to stick with us, there are going to be ground rules.”

  “There aren’t any rules anymore, Indiana. Wake up.”

  “As long as you are with us, there damn well will be rules. And that means no drugs and no alcohol.”

  “I don’t do drugs.”

  “Yeah, and I am the Prince of Persia.” Mitch and Beth started up the road. Melody stood watching them, her arms folded as she stared off into a field of rye. Mitch checked his wrist watch. It was after 5 o’clock. “You coming or not?”

  Their shadows began to stretch longer across the road. Beth touched Mitch’s arm, leaning close to him. “Be patient. She’ll come around.”

  The wind wandered through the field, cutting transient paths that continuously formed and dissipated through the grass, like ripples on a pond.

  “She’s thinking about her next fix, Beth. Look at her. It’s hotter than hell, and she’s shivering.”

  “All the more reason we can’t turn our backs on her.”

  “I don’t want to leave her. But we’ve got a three hour walk to the highway, and that’s about how long we have until sunset. If we don’t start moving, we’ll have to find I-40 in the dark. I don’t like those odds.”

  His dark, wavy hair matted against his head like a helmet, Mitch wiped the sweat out of his eyes and looked back to the north. Unlike the confusion that others experienced upon waking on Saturday afternoon, he had emerged from an afternoon catnap and looked o
ut his farmhouse window thirty miles outside of Evansville, watching the wind play through acres of corn. He had worked the fields through sunset, taking advantage of the cooler temperatures in the final hours before dark.

  Sunday had been a busy day, too. His farmhand, Charlie Rendell, hadn’t shown up to work the fields, and Mitch couldn’t reach him by phone. So Mitch had worked double-time from sunrise to sunset. Charlie didn’t show up on Monday or Tuesday, either, and it was about that time that Mitch noticed the phones were dead.

  It wasn’t until he headed into town Wednesday morning that he knew something was seriously wrong. Four trucks were parked in the Agway lot, and the doors were open. With the interior store lights out and no one behind the counter, he assumed a power outage had occurred. But why had they left the store unattended?

  Main Street looked odd. About as many vehicles as normal were parked up and down the roadway, but not a single vehicle moved, and the sidewalks were empty. It was as though Mitch stared at a still photograph of downtown.

  After entering several businesses and finding each abandoned, he panicked. Had there been a hazardous spill or a terrorist attack?

  Racing south into Evansville in his pickup, he found the city equally as dead. It seemed that a giant vacuum cleaner had descended from the heavens to suck away every person in the city. The power was out in Evansville, too—traffic lights dark above the empty asphalt. He saw a few dogs and cats darting from behind parked cars, and in the distance, a single SUV crept through the city like a lost soul.

  Back at the farm, Mitch spent the rest of Wednesday and Thursday in a daze, working the fields with such mechanical indifference that he often found himself looking around, wondering how he had gotten there. The unexplainable disappearance of the people of Evansville ate at him constantly, dominating his thoughts. His sleep was fitful Thursday night. Not since he had been an adolescent, wary of a bedroom closet door with a disturbing habit of creaking open in the dead of night, had he experienced a full-blown nightmare like the one he had that night.

  He was lost in the cornfield. In the sky, black clouds boiled, rotating around a funnel that slithered serpent-like and crackled with electricity. The air went still, and there was a peculiar pressure that made him want to pop his ears. He needed to get to the storm cellar, but he felt as though he was drowning in an endless sea of green with no sign of shore.

  As he ran blindly through the corn with his heart trying to beat its way through his chest, he cut through row after row, never closer to escaping the field.

  He came upon a scarecrow—black holes for eyes, painted blood-red grin, straw bleeding through torn fabric—nailed to a wooden cross like an abomination of the Savior.

  I never placed a scarecrow in the cornfield.

  The funnel danced, descending and rising. The wind gusted, peppering his skin with grit.

  The scarecrow’s head turned toward him. A scream was trapped at the back of Mitch’s throat. As he backed away, the corn parted several rows behind the scarecrow. A black shadow crept through the stalks.

  He ran.

  Thunder pealed. Lightning flashed bright and hot, exploding in the field and leaving him deaf. The storm came for him, rain soaking him, hail pounding his head and shoulders. Behind him, an unholy roar descended from the clouds. The sky turned as black as night, and as he rushed blindly through the rows, near-constant lightning provided the only visibility, flashing like a strobe light.

  He looked back, seeing the distinct shadow coming closer, now just a few rows behind him. The figure wore a black, billowing robe that the rain did not seem to touch. Hidden deep within the cloak hood, its eyes glowed red.

  The robed figure came for him, impervious to the swirling mass of black storm swallowing the field. The twister engorged itself with dirt and stalks, spitting out debris which rained down upon him.

  He stumbled and fell. The storm roared, hungering for him. He turned his head. A mile-wide, spinning monster of a tornado barreled toward him. Thunder exploded in his ears. The wind pulled him toward the storm, sucking him into the vortex. His fingers tore at muddy earth, but he kept sliding backward, closer and closer to the storm.

  A chill fell over his skin. He looked up and saw bloody eyes glowing in the storm.

  Mitch came awake screaming Friday morning. The sound of his voice echoed through the upstairs of the farmhouse, ricocheting off the walls and startling him out of his nightmare. For several minutes he remained frozen under the blankets, feeling a cool, night wind touch him through the open bedroom window. The bedsheets, soaked with sweat, clung to his body like a second skin. It had only been a dream, yet it felt real to him.

  Drifting on the ether of consciousness had been an undefinable urge to leave Indiana, as though the storm of his nightmare would come rushing out of the northern plains and level the farm.

  The coming of the sun was but a sliver of silvery gray where the eastern sky met the land when he reached the highway, motoring south in his pickup truck past empty townships and cities. Along the shoulders of highways and secondary routes, he encountered a scattering of vehicles crashed against the guardrail, as though the drivers had drifted off to sleep and plowed into the barrier. The roads were otherwise unclogged. Heck, the driving had never been this easy. He didn’t miss the rush of morning commuters or the impatient honking of horns, but he longed to see people. By mid morning, with over a hundred of miles behind him, he began to believe that he was the only person alive on earth. His only thought—why me?

  He couldn’t have been more relieved to find Beth wandering along the shoulder of a county road outside of Bowling Green. They hit it off immediately, perhaps due to their mutual excitement of encountering another human. She told him her story—how she had passed out in the backyard garden and later awakened, convinced she suffered from sunstroke. After driving herself to a walk-in clinic two miles from her house, she found the medical facility’s doors wide open, the lights on, and the computer screen blinking dumbly behind the reception desk. But no matter how many times she hammered the bell on the desk, nobody came to help her.

  When he told her of his trip into Evansville, she nodded vigorously in recognition. It was the same everywhere, she said. No police, no emergency crews, nobody at all. She also said something that made his arms break out in goosebumps—Beth firmly believed the missing people were in heaven, or somewhere down below.

  “One day, the Almighty just decides to take everyone away?” he asked.

  “Unless you think they’re all hiding in paramilitary encampments, waiting for the world to end, then yes. That’s what I believe.”

  “But why?”

  “Maybe we’re a failed experiment.”

  “How so?”

  “God put us here, at least in the eyes of many religions, and we’ve been battling with each other ever since. Think of a tic-tac-toe grid. Once each side learns the most effective moves to use against their opponent, the game becomes impossible to win. We fought the same battles over and over and never approached a true resolution. Maybe He watched us make the same moves against each other until He realized the board needed to be wiped clean.”

  “I could almost agree with you except for one thing. Why are you and I still alive?”

  “In the two million years we’ve been on earth, waging wars, arguing over politics and religion while our neighbors starved, we still hadn’t determined if we were evil or divine. Maybe He hasn’t decided yet, either.”

  “So God leaves just enough people behind to pick up the pieces and start over.”

  “A fresh start.”

  “Seems kinda overkill, like shooting a mosquito with a Howitzer.”

  Their newly-formed team had seemed to be working out quite well for both of them. But shortly before the pickup ran out of gas, Beth spotted a dark mass sprawled in a field along the roadside south of Nashville.

  “Oh, my God. It’s a person,” Beth said.

  Mitch threw the truck into park and rushed across the blackt
op. He found Melody unconscious on her back, a stream of vomit sliding down her left cheek like runny oatmeal. While he turned Melody onto her stomach, Beth ran crying across the road.

  “Please don’t let her be dead. Oh, please.” Beth’s eyes pleaded to Mitch as she cast her shadow across his back. He didn’t want the girl to die, either, but Beth was desperate that she live, as though the unknown girl might be the only other living soul left on earth. He forced his hands under Melody’s frame, pulling her up so he could perform the Heimlich maneuver.

  “Pull her shoulders up.”

  As Beth supported Melody’s weight under her arms, Mitch delivered three thrusts to the the girl’s midsection, just above the navel. A wheeze escaped Melody’s throat with each of the first two thrusts. Tears streamed down Beth’s face.

  “You can’t let her die. It isn’t fair. Don’t let her—”

  With the third thrust, a glob of yellowish puke ejected from the girl’s mouth, splattering between Beth’s sneakers. Melody coughed, sucking air as though she was drowning in rapids.

  Mitch pulled her up until Melody supported herself on her hands and knees. His hands held onto her sides, steadying her.

  “Get the fuck off of me,” Melody said.

  “Take it easy. You were choking.”

  “I said, get off me, you fucking pervert.”

  “Are you going to fall if I let go?”

  “I’m not going to fall. Now get the fuck off of me before I scream rape.”

  Mitch straightened, his knees popping like firecrackers. He backed away to give the girl space.

  For over two minutes, Melody remained on her hands and knees, the four appendages stilted like an unsteady table. She dry-heaved twice, and as the sun beat down on the three travelers, the color gradually returned to her cheeks. Or at least some color returned. Mitch pegged her for being naturally pale-skinned, but drug abuse had a way of turning fair into pallid. He had seen it with a cousin who had gotten a taste for heroin while away at college.

  When Melody finally rose, she looked back and forth between Beth and Mitch, as though she expected one or the other to make a sudden move to grab her.