by Nancy Isaak
“My feet hurt,” Rhys whined.
We had just crested a hill, beginning our descent to where Mulholland Highway eventually crosses over Kanan-Dume. I could see Rocky Oak Park on one side of the intersection, across from one of the area’s many vineyards.
“If you need the bathroom,” I suggested, “there’s a john in the park.”
“A little late for that,” Rhys said. “But maybe if there’s a ranger there, we can use their phone to call Triple-A.”
“We’d have a better chance just knocking on someone’s door,” said Kieran. “There’s hardly ever a ranger in that park.”
Suddenly—we heard a loud CRASH!!
It was followed by a tinkling noise—as if glass was being shattered.
“What is that?” asked Rhys—his head whipping around, searching.
“I think it came from down the hillside, on the left,” said Kieran.
There were boulders spaced all along the edge of the road. We shimmied through them to peer down at a large gabled house in the valley below.
A flash of orange immediately caught our attention.
“Oh-oh,” murmured Rhys. “That doesn’t look good.”
“Get down!” I grabbed my brothers—one by each arm—and pulled them toward the ground. We knelt there, hidden among the rocks, watching.
“Are those guys who I think they are?” asked Kieran—keeping his voice low.
“It looks like it,” I nodded.
Down below, a big Hispanic guy in his late teens, picked up a rock and chucked it through one of the gabled house’s enormous front windows.
CRASH!
Two other guys—one white, one African-American, also in their late teens—stood nearby, laughing and cheering him on.
“How come they’re wearing orange, Jacob?” asked Rhys. “Like even their pants are orange.”
“They’re criminals, doofus,” hissed Kieran. “Don’t you know anything?”
“Criminals?!” Rhys looked terrified.
“They’re from that juvie camp, the one over where Mulholland turns into Encinal Canyon,” I explained. “They must have escaped or something.”
“If they’re juvenile delinquents,” asked Rhys, “shouldn’t we call the cops, then?”
“Sure, moron,” said Kieran. “With what phone?”
“Oh,” said Rhys, in a small voice.
“Crap!” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. “Look—over there. You can see them through the trees. There are more guys coming up from Mulholland.”
* * * *
A group of seven or eight teenage boys emerged from a strand of alders—all dressed in orange—walking toward the first three. They were laughing and pushing each other, their excited voices echoing off the canyon’s walls.
As we watched, one of the biggest guys suddenly turned and cold-cocked a smaller kid beside him. The boy went down, staggering under the attack. Moments later, the other guys in the group surrounded the smaller boy—kicking and punching.
“What the hell?!” cried Kieran, horrified.
The same boy who threw the first punch suddenly pulled out a large knife. He slashed downward, again and again. From our angle and distance, we couldn’t see exactly what he was connecting with, but each time his knife rose up—it was redder and redder.
Beside me, Rhys began to whimper.
“We have to do something,” he sobbed. “They’re killing him, Jacob!”
“There are too many,” I whispered. “They’ll kill us, too, if we try to interfere.”
“Then, what are we going to do?!”
“We need to get help. Find a phone somewhere and call the police.”
“Uh, Jacob…” Kieran’s voice had become small and shaky. His hand snaked out and squeezed my arm. “Look down,” he said, urgently. “Look down now!”
* * * *
They were coming for us!
While our attention had been focused on the second group and the horror they were perpetrating, the first three juvies must have caught sight of us up on the road above them.
Now the three of them were scrambling up the hillside—pulling themselves up through the chaparral, their faces grim and determined.
As I peered down, the largest of them—the Hispanic—looked up at me and grinned. He was just close enough for me to see the thin scar that ran from his right ear across his cheek to just underneath his chin.
There was a large knife in his right hand and he held it up.
Looking directly into my eyes, he drew it across the air, just in front of his throat.
The implication was obvious.
My brothers and I were in deadly trouble!
("365 Days Hunted" is available now for pre-order at your favorite retailer.)
Also by Nancy Isaak:
(The following excerpt is from “Anarchy”.)
ONE
From the bluff where she stood, the young woman could easily see the children playing down on Leo Carrillo State Beach—50 feet below—throwing Frisbees, scampering along the sand, energetically leaping into the green-blue waves of the Pacific Ocean.
A few yards away from the children, a young couple walked hand-in-hand along the edge of the water, while two older women laid out towels and a picnic basket.
Just another glorious sunny day in Southern California.
Tilting her head in utter fascination at such frivolity, the young woman could almost hear the children’s cries of delight from where she stood; she could almost feel the heat of the sun on her bare arms.
Except that—she couldn’t.
Because—that marvelous, vibrant summer day at the beach existed now only on the faded Polaroid photograph that she was holding up—its corners tattered and fraying.
Because—that glorious summer day had actually happened nineteen years ago.
One month before the ‘Event’.
Two months before ‘they’ had emerged from wherever the hell they had been hiding.
Three months before the world had been ‘changed’ forever—at least for humanity.
* * * *
With an irritated sigh, the young woman lowered her ragged photograph—revealing the true beach as it now existed, stretching out from the base of the bluff on which she was standing.
This Leo Carrillo State Beach was empty.
A barren expanse of sand running alongside a silent parking lot, dotted here and there with the rusting hulks of dead cars and overturned garbage cans.
Where thousands of families had once laid on beach towels, where they had slathered sunblock on their reddening backs, where they had eaten barbequed chicken and potato salad and sung camp songs around small fires—now there was nobody.
Just a lonely beach—abandoned, deserted.
Its only occupants the bits of trash that skittered here and there, propelled by the gloom and dank of an incoming marine layer.
"Okay…here we go." The young woman lifted up a small video camera, aiming it—not at the beach—but at her own face.
"Hey, guys," she spoke into the camera's lens. "So, this is Frankie-cam—Episode 1! And me? Why, of course...I'm the soon-to-be famous Frankie!"
She grinned, widely—proud of herself.
"Yay, my first show—here I go! So…I’m twenty-three. Pretty sure about that, but I was like four when Jellystone blew and Abby was only nine, so we could maybe of gotten our ages wrong. But I’m pretty sure I’m twenty-three."
Frankie stopped to rewind her camera, then set it on preview. As she watched her intro wind past through the tiny viewing window, Frankie began to giggle—absolutely delighted.
"Look at me…I got a t.v. show!"
She was very pretty—a delicately-featured girl with long blond hair held back in a messy pony tail, and a pair of light-green eyes that sparkled with life and laughter. In so many ways, Frankie seemed almost childlike, ethereal—immature, full of self-interest, light of conscience.
Which clashed oddly with the seriousness of the submachine
gun.
And the machete.
Frankie wore them both—the submachine gun strung across her back, the machete hanging from her belt. She was also wearing a ripped and stained black t-shirt, and blue jeans bleached almost white from the sun, threadbare and covered with a dark red splatter that could only be the remnants of dried blood.
Ironically—once upon a time—Frankie’s clothes might have been considered ‘shabby-chic’. Now, however, Frankie’s jeans and t-shirt were no more a fashion statement; they were simply really old and really dirty.
And the same could be said about the video camera Frankie was holding.
It was an older model—most likely from the early 2000’s. About the size of a paperback, the camera was scratched and dented, with a chunk of plastic missing from its eyecup.
Frankie turned that camera to the scenery around her now—filming a full 180 degree turn—a close-up of gloomy Leo Carrillo State Beach, to a pan across the dusty hillside behind where she was standing, then finally zooming in on a small beach house in the distance.
"Right there, ladies and gentlemen…that’s where me and Abby live!" Frankie excitedly narrated. "Nice, huh?"
* * * *
In actuality, the beach house was a dilapidated mess—tucked in amongst a tangle of overgrown trees and out-of-control bushes. To anyone else but Frankie, it would have been obvious that the little cement block building was falling apart. It appeared decrepit, uncared-for—almost as if it had been abandoned and left to rot—the walls covered in ivy, while part of the roof seemed close to collapse.
And—if there had once been a front yard to Frankie’s home—it was now completely encased in a riot of brambles; the vegetation was consuming the house—returning the land to its original pre-human condition.
* * * *
"We don’t get a lot of skeeters here," Frankie spoke into the camera. "I mean, you still gotta be careful, but they don’t seem to like being near the water much. So, as long as you’re in by nightfall, it’s basically safe."
Seeing something out of the corner of her eye, Frankie swung the camera around, aiming it at a pod of cetaceans leaping and cavorting along the shoreline below.
"Ooo…look! I love dolphins!" Then, she swung the camera back to herself, once more speaking into the lens. "Abby says that before the Awakening…even before the Event…that there weren’t as many dolphins as there are now. Abby says that people…they actually killed the dolphins and ate them in tuna samiches."
"Abby also says that it’s about to get dark!"
With some reluctance, Frankie turned around to face her older sister.
* * * *
Like Frankie—Abby was very pretty.
But—unlike Frankie—it was difficult to appreciate Abby’s beauty, unless you were willing to look past her wariness, her severity…her hardness.
Because—where smiles danced easily over Frankie’s lips—a frown was Abby’s constant companion. While Frankie laughed into a camera for an audience that wasn’t there, Abby’s eyes flitted first this way, then that—searching, always searching for any possible danger that could be coming their way.
Frankie—the younger sister—always the child.
Abby—the older sister—always the protector.
With a mischievous giggle, Frankie swung her camera over toward her sister. "So, this is Abby."
SMACK!
Abby’s hand shot out, slapping the camera away. "Get that fracking thing out of my face!"
"But it’s my t.v. show," Frankie pouted. "It’s Frankie-cam!"
"Like I give a crapola." Abby reached for her submachine gun that—like Frankie—she was wearing across her back. Its strap snagged on a silver cross around her neck and she struggled for a moment to unhook it. "Dammit!"
"Potty mouth!" Frankie lifted up her camera and aimed it at her older sister again. "Sorry, folks, but my sister’s kind of a bitch."
Abby’s hand lashed out, slapping the camera down again.
"Stop it!" yelled Frankie.
"You know it’s stupid, right?" taunted Abby, finally unhooking her submachine gun. She checked that its safety was off, then her eyes flicked to the hillside above them—looking for any threats. "There isn’t even anyone to see your stupid show."
Frankie aimed the camera at herself. "Frankie-cam out!"
Then, she turned the camera off and turned her attention to her older sister. "People might want to know, Abby…like in the future."
Abby motioned with her submachine gun—a full circle, all around them. "Have you seen any people?"
"There were the Websters, Ms. Know-it-all."
"Over ten years ago...until the skeeters got them."
"You don’t know that! Maybe the Websters went to Canada. They could of got there safe…they could of!"
"Without saying good-bye? Just up and left." Abby snorted in amusement. "You are such a dumbass."
Frankie’s eyes narrowed. "And you’re a bitch…and I told everyone on Frankie-cam, so they know that you’re a bitch, too."
Abby simply grinned. "Bitch with oranges."
An ecstatic smile lit up Frankie’s face.
She immediately took off running toward the beach house.
Abby followed more slowly—her eyes scanning the hillside, the bushes—any place that a predator could hide.
FRANKIE
When I was 6-years old, Abby told me of something called the ‘Event’.
It happened in this place called Jellystone Park.
There was this thing called a volcano there, and it blew up and a lot of people were killed—thousands.
Abby told me that the ‘Event’ was the thing that started it all.
The end of the world.
TWO
"Even after all these years," mused Abby, "all that volcano stuff in the sky…it makes for real beautiful sunsets, don’t it?
The sun was setting—lowering itself into the Pacific Ocean—a horizon of fiery orange-red glare. To the east, a line of dark approached—the shadows of evening making their first appearances.
Abby and Frankie sat cross-legged on a weather-beaten picnic table, overlooking the waves. They were halfway down a hill, on a small cement patio; fifty feet below was the water, fifty feet above, their beach house.
A tilting stone staircase connected all three.
There was a pile of orange peels below the table, lodged here and there in a layer of invasive ice plant that covered the ground all around them. On top of the table—within easy reach—were the girls' weapons.
Two submachine guns and three machetes.
Frankie moaned in delight, practically devouring a handful of orange slices; juice ran down her chin and she licked at it greedily. "Love oranges!"
Abby spit out an orange seed. "You love everything."
"Don’t love skeeters," Frankie quickly corrected her sister.
FRANKIE
When the Event happened—it brought the skeeters out of hiding.
This was called the "Awakening".
Abby said that most adults thought that the volcano going off in Jellystone must have opened a door to a secret world under the ground, and that was how the skeeters got out. Other people thought that maybe the skeeters had been hibernating somewhere and they simply woke up.
The old-timey newspapers—they said it was the ‘Awakening of the Beasts’.
But there were other people who said that the Event and the Awakening were actually this bible-thing called the ‘Rapture’.
They believed that the skeeters were beasts that came from Hell, and that they were sent to earth by God to eat up all the bad people.
The real truth was, however, that nobody ever did find out where the skeeters came from. They just showed up one day and started killing…and they never stopped.
So, whether they’re vampires or demons—Abby and I don’t know.
What we do know, is that they stink…like really bad.
Abby jokes that their smelliness is our ‘skeeters
early-warning system’.
Doesn’t matter if you can’t see them—you smell skeeters, you darn well better start running.
By the way, it was Abby who came up with the name ‘skeeters’.
The old-timey newspapers always called them ‘Beasts of Unknown Origins’ or ‘Unidentified Beings’. There was even one newspaper, it called them ‘Were-vamps’.
For us, though—it’s skeeters.
Although, when Abby grabbed me that first day and we started running—like before I can remember—Abby said that she was calling the beasts sh*t-kickers.
She said that it was because she overheard our daddy tell our mommy just after the Awakening that—if you come up against a beast—you get out real fast, because it ain’t easy beating them. Abby said that Daddy told Mommy that the beasts are big and tough and they’re scary, and that they’ll sure as heck kick the sh*t out of you.
So—that’s when Abby started calling them sh*t-kickers.
However, even though it was a really good name, Abby eventually felt kind of bad using it—because sh*t is a bad word…and poop-kickers just sounded kind of stupid.
That’s when they became skeeters.
THREE
It was dark inside of the musty beach house, the only light coming from the full moon, its slight rays shimmering in through the large picture window.
Inside of the wooden box, it was even darker—pitch black.
Frankie and Abby slept there—huddled together—their machetes and submachine guns at their sides.
This was Abby’s invention—the wooden box.
She had built it for Frankie and herself four years ago, carefully following the instructions she had discovered while scavenging one day—two pages of handwritten notes to ‘Keep Yourself Safe From The Beasts’.
