by Maxey, Phil
He didn’t want to stop. Needed to keep driving. Every hour spent standing still was another chance for something bad to happen. Need to keep… His son’s voice broke his chain of thought.
“Dad. There’s lots of places here we can hide. I… don’t want to be driving at night…”
Ben was right of course. To drive the mountains then desert at night would be insane. Who knew what lay out there.
He nodded and looked back to Carrie. “Yeah. We should.”
A number of hotels passed by, each one offering a good night’s rest, but then another large parking lot appeared not far ahead and at the back of it a large superstore.
He slowed and turned right, into the lot then around two cars which had crashed into each other, and kept on going, not caring for the right route and slowed right outside the large glass entrance. He then bumped up the curb, turning the wheel so they were yards away from the glass doors.
“If we’re going to stay somewhere for the night, it might as well be—”
A squawk came from somewhere above, as if it was right on top of the pickup.
They all stretched their necks to see the sky.
“You see it?” said Grant. One of his hands was on a new rifle.
“No, I think—”
A large shadow moved off, sliding across the concrete until the creature blocking the sun came into view. It was huge, but not as big as the thing they fled from. It had a multitude of legs, dangling from a featured body and a head which belonged on a wasp. The thing kept on making its incessant noise but luckily continued to move away, quickly disappearing behind a large building on the other side of the freeway.
Grant switched his attention to the dark hole that was the store’s entrance. Some of the glass doors were cracked, but one of them was open, a cart stopping it from closing. “Both of you wait here. I’m just going to have a quick look. If it looks safe. I’ll be back and you can both come inside.”
They nodded and he got out, closing his door quietly. He looked back out across the expanse of concrete that was the parking lot, and realized what he thought were permanent patterns on the ground were in fact something else. In all directions were dark stains. In his mind he saw shoppers happily going about their day, but then creatures appeared and…
He blinked away the vision then turned to the entrance, walking to the cracked glass and looked inside to the shadows.
A sea of plastic bottles and packets lay strewn across the smooth floor. He stepped over the cart and moved inside and immediately had to hold his nose. He would have backed out if it weren’t for the fact that he knew the stench wasn’t the kind a dead body gives off. He switched on his flashlight waving it across the mostly empty shelves. Directly in front of him was the ‘fresh goods’ aisles, except they were not so fresh anymore. Mounds of brown and yellow vegetables lay rotting.
He stepped forward, moving into the space behind the counters and aisles, walking from one to another, sweeping the scene with his light and barrel of his M4. He arrived quickly at the end where a number of freezer cabinets stood proud, their doors open, their contents long gone. Now he needed to go deeper in, to the back rooms. He took a look back at the entrance which was bathed in light. No sounds were coming from that direction so he presumed they were both okay. He had his radio, but standing in the cavernous store he didn’t want to alert anyone or thing to his presence.
He moved past the glass doors and arrived at the back, where there were still some cartoons of milk and other drinks on shelves. There was also a door marked for staff. His mind flashed back to just a few days before when he was in a similar place. He doubted two idiot kids were on the other side this time, but there might be something else.
He pressed his ear up against the door and listened. On not hearing anything, he placed his hand on the handle and pulled it back in one motion, raising his light and rifle at the same time.
In the corridor was a door to the right and at the end stairs to the left and another door directly opposite him. His heart beat in his ears as he walked into the gloom. The first door was already ajar. He pushed it open with his weapon. It swung back revealing chairs, a table and a vending machine. Almost a replica of the room in the store from the camp.
He then looked at the end of the corridor and walked forward quietly. The door had a glass panel. He looked through it to a large warehouse. Unsurprisingly most of the huge shelves were empty, but there were still some pallets with cardboard boxes. He made a mental note to investigate them if they stayed.
He swung the light’s beam up the stairs and jolted slightly when it revealed a decaying body. It looked like a young man, still wearing his uniform. A small plaque on the wall mentioned there were company offices upstairs. Grant walked up the steps, avoiding the body then turned at the top and walked up another flight, coming out to a carpeted lobby with a series of doors. He walked forward slowly trying to pick up the slightest of noises and looking at the names and titles whom the offices belonged to.
He started with the store managers.
Outside Carrie sat in silence with Ben, memories wanting to invade her mind. She kept pushing them away, instead concentrating on the parking lot and buildings around. She looked back at Ben who had his head down, drawing. He scribbled something with his pencil then looked up, his eyes immediately becoming large. She flicked her back around.
“Fuck!” she said scrambling to get her rifle from the footwell.
A young woman with frizzy black hair and a rifle over her back was sprinting towards them on the sidewalk. She ran straight past the pickup ignoring them both and clambered over the shopping cart, then stopped and tried to unjam it from the door.
“What’s happening?” said Ben, a quiver in his voice.
Carrie looked between the girl and the direction she had come from and then she saw it. A black smudge in the hazy blue sky. “Grab, your stuff. Quick! We’re going inside!”
She and Ben quickly ran from the pickup, joining the struggling woman.
“We need to close this door! They’ll be here in seconds!” she said.
Ben and Carrie stepped over the cart then with the girl’s help, levered the mangled metal cage and wheels, left then right, then finally back, freeing it.
A humming noise filled the air.
They all pushed the door closed. The girl then turned and ran into the gloom behind them.
Carrie turned away from the door. “Come on, we need to find your dad.”
As they ran down the aisle the humming became a constant drone, making the shelves rattle around them. They got to the end and looked back at the light in the distance, which suddenly was snuffed out as if the sun had entered an eclipse. A tornado of black things swept past. A stream of angry shadows. One of the glass panels in the entrance cracked some more.
Carrie looked at the door near her and pulled it open to Grant. He looked down the aisle and pulled them both inside, closing it behind.
“There was a girl?” said Carrie.
“She ran past me. She’s upstairs.”
“There’s…”
Grant pulled his son to him. The sound of breaking glass came from the store outside. “Upstairs, first door on the left.”
Carrie and Ben ran down the corridor while Grant slowly pulled the door open. With only a few inches of a gap he peered into the darkness, when a dark form flew towards him. He closed the door just before the thing slammed into it. Grant stepped back, pointing his flashlight and rifle at the white painted wood. Scuffling and scraping filled the air for a few seconds then everything fell silent.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Grant looked at Ben sleeping on the sofa. Carrie was right, he had been incredibly brave throughout the ordeal, but Grant also knew bravery alone wouldn’t keep him alive. The boy needed to know how to fight in this new world. As soon as they got a place where there wasn’t a constant threat from E.L.F’s he would teach him properly how to fire a gun. Something Grant had always been against, but now t
here was no other choice.
The room they were in was the largest of the four on that floor, the others being smaller offices and a closet. It had a long slither of a window which looked down upon the store, which made Grant reluctant to use it for refuge considering what attacked him downstairs, but the view to the ground floor meant they could see what was coming, and that trumped everything else. And if there was anything outside, the blinds would do their job and block out any light from flashlights. There was also a long conference table, a flat screen TV and a cupboard full of alcohol, which Carrie had already started on.
They were both sat on the floor in the dark, only using the flashlights when they needed too.
“You knowww…. whicsh room the… girl ish in?” said Carrie slurring her words.
“No.” Earlier he had only caught the girl’s face for a second, but it was enough for his police brain to assess she wasn’t a threat.
“Mayvee I ssshould go check.”
“Maybe you should lay off the bottle.”
There was a thud. “Hey! I know whshat I’m—”
“Lower your voice!”
“Oh…sszorry.”
Grant sighed. “Get some sleep. I’ll check the other rooms, see if the girl needs anything.”
There was another thump. This time Grant switched on his flashlight. Carrie was laid out on the carpet under a part of the table, with the bottle in her hand and her eyes closed. She mumbled something as he took it from her and placed it on top, then crept to the door, opened it and walked outside. He presumed the girl wasn’t in the closet but knocked on the door anyway. There was no reply. He then moved to the next door, lifting his hand to knock on it.
“What do you want?” said the girl on the other side before he made contact.
“My names Grant.”
“I’ve got my rifle aimed at the door Grant—” He took a step back. “— So again what do you want?”
“Just wondered if you wanted anything. We have plenty of water, some food.”
“Rifle ammo. I need that. Leave it outside the door.”
“I’m not going to give ammo to someone who won’t even tell me their name…”
“Amy.”
“We can spare some ammo. Where did you come from? We came from the San Diego camp.”
There was only silence through the varnished wood.
“Amy?”
After a few seconds he turned and walked back to his own room, when the door behind opened. A woman, maybe in her early twenties appeared. He noticed a rip in her pants on the thigh.
“You injured?”
“Was. I think it’s healing.” She looked at his cheek. “You?”
“Same. My friend and my son have fallen asleep. I can bring some food and water out here, if you will wait?”
She nodded. He moved back into his room, took a small bottle of water and a candy bar from his pack then returned to the hallway. Amy was leaned up against a wall. He handed the items to her.
“Thanks.” She pulled the lid off the water and drank. “I was visiting the area with my parents when… Well, when it all went to shit.”
Grant knew there was no point asking where her parents were. She didn’t seem the kind of girl to leave them if they were still alive. “Where’s home?”
“Small town in Colorado. You?”
“Was LA.”
“That seemed to be where it started?”
“Partly. A friend of mine was into this kind of thing—”
“Monsters?”
Grant smiled. “Yeah. He told me a week back that it started in a number of different places around the world before it hit LA. Coastal areas always took the brunt of it though, seeing most of the creatures came in from the sea first.”
“Where’s your friend—”
The door behind Grant swung open and Ben soon in the feint glow from the flashlight. He looked at the girl standing nearby.
“This is Amy.”
“Hi…”
“And this is Ben, my son.”
She nodded but didn’t let her eyes stay on Ben for too long. “Anyway. Thanks for the water and the chocolate.” She went to move back to her own office.
“Are you heading in any particular direction? Maybe we can give you a lift somewhere?”
She smirked. “That ain’t happening unless you got another ride. The things would have sliced and diced that pickup of yours.”
Air escaped from Grant’s lungs as if a weight just landed on him. “I… didn’t know.”
“Yeah, well. Like I say. Thanks for the stuff.” She moved into the room and closed the door.
*****
Grant looked out through the gaps in the entrance where glass used to be, to fragments of his vehicle. Pieces of tire, roof and doors lay with parts of the engine block and chassis. And amongst it were their supplies, all they found and had been in the bed. What the girl said was an accurate description of what had become of his pickup.
“Fuck…” he said under his breath.
He did his best to look both ways then ducked and crawled through the door to the sidewalk outside.
It was another beautiful morning and he guessed up to high sixties already. The parking lot was as empty as before. He lifted his binoculars to his eyes and scanned the freeway and buildings that were a few miles off. Nothing looked out of place. He then looked down at the chaos of things on the tarmac and started to rummage through what looked undamaged.
“You need any help with that?”
He stood up and turned. Amy was standing with one of the stores premium shopping bags. He smiled.
Thirty minutes later they had accumulated a small heap of useful things just inside what was left of the entrance.
Grant pickup up a box and held it out. “Your rifle ammo.”
She smiled and took it. “Now I just gotta find a vehicle without being eaten.”
“Where you heading?”
“To your camp in the west.”
“San Diego?”
“Yeah… why?”
Grant paused. “It’s been overrun. I was there for the past month. Helped out. But the creatures, there were too many…”
She wilted with each new piece of information then shook her head. “I gotta go there anyway. I can’t… nobody can live out here. The creatures…”
“You don’t. There are other places.” He noticed a flash of hope in her eyes. “There are camps in Portland, near Chicago and Boston, but…”
“What?”
“I would stay away from camps that are near large bodies of water.”
“Then where?”
“There’s a camp near Austin. I might try for it after visiting my friend in Roswell.”
“He know you’re coming?”
“He knew that if things went bad I would be heading his way.”
“How you know he’s still alive?”
“He’s still alive.” Grant didn’t know, but he felt it was true anyway. “You’re welcome to come with us.”
She looked away, then nodded. “Okay. But first we gotta get some wheels. And that—”
Amy looked to her right at Carrie standing with a set of keys hanging from her outstretched finger.
“Screw small cars and pickups. I say we upgrade to something a bit heavier,” said Carrie.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“You’ve driven a semi before?” said Grant to Carrie. They were both seated in a black semi-truck, minus its trailer. Carrie was sat behind the big wheel.
She looked at the various buttons. “A boyfriend had one. Let me drive it a few times. Yeah, I can drive this no problem.”
He looked over his shoulder. “How you doing back there?” Ben sat opposite Amy in the spacious cabin.
She smiled holding up Ben’s notepad. It was a sketch of the wasp monster they had seen the day before, and a pretty good likeness as well. “He’s very talented.”
Ben smiled in reply, the first time Grant had seen him do so since he got him back.
>
It was now 9:35 am and apart from some distance roars they hadn’t seen any E.L.F’s.
Carrie and Grant looked through the large windscreen for any sign of movement in the parking lot. From the elevated position the dark splotches over the ground were more obvious, but he suppressed his imagination again.
“Everyone ready?” said Carrie.
They confirmed they were and she fired up the engine, then slowly pulled off.
The malls and hotels soon gave way to desert and hills. The eight-lane highway they were on had a good amount of abandoned vehicles to avoid, but when there was a complete blockage Carrie just drove off the road.
Soon the sun was glinting off shapes in the desert.
“Woah, look at that…” said Ben.
Off the right side of the highway for miles was a tangled mess of pylons and blades, scattered and bent laying on the sand and dirt. Some had even made it all the way to the highway, another obstruction for Carrie to drive around.
“Used to be a wind farm,” said Amy looking between the seats.
They were soon moving back up into the mountains. Grant looked up at the ridges above them. Rock falls had made the four-lane road into barely one at some points, but they managed to keep going.
“Pull into that gas station,” he said, spotting gas pumps and a store ahead, sitting alone amongst the hills.
Carrie slowed and stopped near the diesel pump. He had a quick look around then opened the door and jumped down. He hoped the pump would still be working, but on approaching it saw the opening for the credit card. He picked it up anyway, but using the trigger produced nothing. He shook his head to Carrie who was watching and they were soon back on the road.
They passed a motorhome dealership with a lot full of vehicles.
Carrie noticed Grant paying particular attention. “No… I’m not changing again!”
He looked back to her and briefly smiled. The idea appealed to him though.
After a short while they moved into a valley. Businesses and white roofed homes appeared on the side of the road. He wondered if any of them were inhabited still when his radio burst into life.
