by Sean Shake
Either that, or he was one of the guys behind the barricade, though I was pretty sure they’d all gotten out of the way in time.
I was placed onto the ground, and then I heard Abigail’s voice. “But we didn’t do anything. You tried to shoot us!”
Zip it girl, I thought. Never talk to the enemy.
Coincidentally, whoever Abigail was talking to felt the same. “Shut it kid.” The voice sounded old.
Really old. Like seventy or eighty. And like he’d spent a lifetime smoking unfiltered cigarettes and chugging moonshine.
“What’d you do to him?” I heard Emma ask.
So she was here too.
They both were okay.
I prevented myself from letting out a sigh of relief, but I was relieved all the same.
More than I would’ve expected to be, given that I really barely even knew them.
But I was glad to see them, so to speak. To know they were okay.
“We didn’t do nothing to him. Youse the ones that crashed.” This sounded like the big woman who had been driving the van.
“And where do you think you’re going?” another voice said. This one was a woman’s.
That was odd, another woman.
“I need to help him. I’m a nurse.”
Goddammit, I thought.
“That why you wearin that weird outfit?” someone asked.
“A nurse,” another voice said. “That’s a useful skill.”
To my surprise, since I expected them to stop her, I heard Emma ask from beside me, “Gage?” Her fingers pressed to my neck, and I heard her let out a sigh of relief when she felt my pulse. “He’s alive.”
“No shit,” a voice said, it sounded like the same woman. “He don’t deserve to be. Not after what he did to Hunter.”
“Ran her over. Just a kid,” someone else said. A younger male. Late twenties or early thirties.
There were a lot of them around right now, and as much as I wanted to make a move, I’d have to wait.
“The guy on the motorcycle?” Abigail asked, furious. “He was trying to shoot us!”
“Shoot out your tires,” the young man corrected.
“And it wasn’t no he,” the woman said. “She’s a girl. Just a teenage girl. She didn’t—” The voice broke off, choking up.
A teenage girl? I thought.
What the hell were they doing with a teenage girl?
I could guess.
Then again, I didn’t think they’d give her a gun and a motorcycle if they’d kidnapped her and made her a slave.
Maybe it was someone in the group’s daughter?
But if someone had a daughter, how would they allow the group to go around kidnapping young girls?
They wouldn’t, my mind told me, and an unpleasant possibility forced its way into my consciousness: maybe they weren’t the bad guys here.
Maybe I was.
23
I sat, watching Emma work on the girl.
The girl who I’d stabbed through the shoulder and knocked off our truck.
The girl who’d subsequently been run over, or at least the lower half of her body.
Miraculously, she was alive still, though both her legs were severely broken.
Emma had cut her motorcycle gear off, and the girl now lay there in her underwear looking fragile and exposed, large swaths of her pale skin dulled with several bruises, the shoulder where I’d stabbed her swollen and red.
Blood oozing out from her shattered legs.
Two very angry looking men with guns were stood in front of me, the guns held at the ready, though not pointed at me.
They wouldn’t meet my eyes.
We were inside the Walmart, and I was propped against one of the tables in the McDonald's. I was actually under the table, perhaps so I couldn’t pop to my feet and surprise them.
My hands and feet were still bound with duct tape, my hands behind my back and my legs straight out in front of me.
Standing around Emma, watching her work, holding back their tears, were a group of people, men and women and children alike. They watched, but kept their distance.
Abigail was standing to one side of the crowd, hand over her mouth, tears running down her cheeks, her eyes red.
She had some minor cuts on her face, and had been knocked out as well, though for a shorter time than I had been.
Emma was the only one who’d escaped our crash unscathed and without getting knocked out.
Which was good, cause I might have already given her a concussion when I hit her with the door back at the prison, and she didn’t need another one.
Walmart was no hospital, but it did have quite a bit of medical supplies.
Supplies which Emma was putting to good use splinting and stitching and bandaging.
Still, the girl’d been run over.
I had the feeling she needed more than what Walmart and a prison nurse could supply.
The old unfiltered-cigarette-smoking, moonshine-drinking man, the one whose voice I’d heard when I was playing possum, the one who’d told Abigail to shut it, walked over to me. He was dressed in jeans and a tucked-in blue flannel shirt, revealing a handgun on his right hip, and a large walkie-talkie on his left.
He was the first person since the crash, other than Emma and Abigail, to meet my eyes.
He looked back at the girl being worked on by Emma. “Son, why couldn’t you have just gotten out of the truck?” the man asked, shaking his head.
It seemed like a rhetorical question, so I said nothing.
He looked at me again. “I’m Jed. I’m guessing you’re Gage?”
So he had paid attention when Emma had called me by my name.
I nodded slightly, not seeing what advantage knowing my first name could give him. And also having the growing horrific feeling that these people were not what I had assumed.
“I’m sorry about the girl,” I said, adjusting my position slightly, imperceptibly, on the ground, feeling my hand slip out of the duct tape, keeping my eyes on the man, Jed, not looking at the two men with guns, not giving away what I had done. “I didn’t realize… With the helmet and armored motorcycle gear…” I shook my head. “But someone did shoot at us first.”
“That gear might’ve saved her life. Though for how long, who knows…” He trailed off, looking back at the girl again. Then he fixed his gaze on me. “As for shooting, well, that was an accident.”
I nodded. “We both made a mistake.”
“But our mistake didn’t hurt one of you,” he said solemnly, then went on before I had a chance to reply. “What is it exactly you’re doing here?”
“Same thing anyone would be. Looking for supplies, trying to stay alive.”
“You ain’t gonna be alive for long,” one of the men with guns said. He was tall, and a bit chubby. And in contrast to his deep voice, he had a smooth, round baby-face.
“Cut it out, Junior,” Jed scolded.
“But he—”
“I said cut it out.”
Junior fell silent, glaring hatred at me, then looking away.
“What are you gonna do with us?” I asked.
“Us?” he asked. “Well the two girls there, they weren’t the ones driving. And one of them, the nurse, is trying to save Hunter. As for you…” He fell silent, apparently unable to decide what to do with me. Finally he said, “I don’t know, to tell the truth. We could’ve helped you, could’ve taken you in.”
Junior tensed at this.
“But not now, not after what happened. Even if she makes it, she’s got two broken legs. That won’t be easily forgotten. Specially not if the world goes the way it looks like it’s going to. Like as not, those legs won’t heal right.” He shook his head. “It will be a hard life for her… If she makes it,” he repeated.
I imagine he, along with Junior and the other man guarding me, thought I wasn’t a danger to them, sitting here under this McDonald’s table, hands and feet bound.
But they’d be wrong.
&n
bsp; The only thing keeping them alive was my… not guilt, but if that girl, Hunter, didn’t have to die, then I didn’t want her to. And if she could be saved at all, Emma was maybe the only one here who could do so.
So I’d let Emma save her, bide my time.
The radio at Jed’s belt crackled to life. “Jed? Come in Jed, we got—”
Jed unhooked the radio, still looking at me. He raised it to his mouth. “Come again? You cut off there.”
But then the gunfire started.
24
Jed and the two men guarding me rushed out to provide aid, Jed drawing his handgun as he ran, still trying to raise someone on the radio.
The doors didn’t open automatically, and Junior cursed as he ran into them, causing them to rattle, but not break.
They were stronger than that.
Junior and his other gun-toting friend pulled them open while Jed continued at the radio, getting no response.
Once the doors opened, he turned to the group standing around Emma as she worked on Hunter and yelled, “Anyone with guns, with me!”
Most of the group jogged past me and out the door, following Jed and his two companions.
Nine stayed behind, along with Abigail and Emma.
And Hunter, of course.
After a quick glance to make sure she wasn’t in imminent danger, Emma ignored all of this and kept her focus on her patient.
The last person out pulled the unautomatic doors shut, then dashed out of sight.
The rate of gunfire outside increased and became near constant, and I wondered how much ammo they had. Wondered if they were wasting it, or if there were really that many things attacking.
Wondered how long they could fend those things off.
Wondered if guns were even effective at doing so. The man on the radio hadn’t thought they were.
Mark.
Why was that name sticking in my head?
I tried to catch Emma or Abigail’s attention, but Emma was focused on Hunter, and Abigail kept turning her attention between what Emma was doing, and the doors leading outside, skipping over me entirely.
Ensconced as I was under the McDonald’s table, I couldn’t see what was going on beyond the doors.
I moved my hands in front of me and pulled the now-loose ring of tape off my right wrist and tossed it aside. I checked that no one had suddenly developed an interest in what I was doing, and then slowly reached down and started to unwrap the tape from my ankles, cringing at the noise it made.
Then I got an idea.
I positioned my hand between my ankles, aimed, said a prayer, and made a fist.
The dark blade shot out between my ankles, severing the tape around them, and taking a piece of my ninja pant leg with it.
But none of my flesh.
I crawled away, putting a shelf displaying Christmas decorations between me and the group, then, staying low, rushed to the doors and pressed myself to one side.
If anyone from the group looked over, they would see me standing here, and likely not be too happy about it.
My heart damn near leapt from my throat when someone cried out, but it was just Hunter.
Good, let her distract them.
Why was I so jumpy? I felt uneasy. Stalked.
I quickly checked that there was nothing immediately beyond the door, then got to my knees and pried them open.
The sound of the gunshots and chaos increased as the doors slid open, and I poked my head out, the Imp of the Perverse filling my mind with the grotesque image of the doors forcing themselves shut, paying no mind to my neck being in the way.
Like the prison before, it was pandemonium outside.
If I thought the prison was bad, I was wrong.
They were no animals this time, nor insects, only those demon things.
What Mark, the man on the radio, had called hellspawns.
Yes, that was closer. Not demons. hellspawns. While some had horns and wings, they didn’t look like what I would expect demons to look like.
Instead they were misshapen, cancerous things, as though their whole bodies were diseases. Growths and boils and bony protrusions littered their flesh, which was a dusky red or brown, or sometimes even black. But not a natural black, black like someone covered in charcoal.
Or cooked with it.
And worse than their hideous appearance, was that the bullets the humans were raining into them, seemed to be having no effect.
They swarmed through the night, under the bright yet somehow dull lights of the parking lot, and descended one after the other on the men and women standing guard, holding their ground, firing into the nightmare creatures.
“Jesus,” I muttered. I’d seen some shit, but nothing like this.
This was more than just a slaughter.
This was a feast.
And the bullets weren’t doing a goddamn thing to them, not even making a scratch.
We needed to get the hell out of here.
I pulled the doors shut, then crawled on elbows and knees to one of the registers, where I could get a good look at the nine members of the group that had stayed behind to watch Emma work on the motorcycle girl.
I didn’t see guns on any of them.
Which wasn’t very smart, to leave us in here unguarded.
Of course, they had thought I’d been tied up, and hell was literally descending upon them outside. I imagined we were no longer at the top of their list of worries anymore.
Deciding they posed no danger, that they wouldn’t try to gang up on me—an analysis skill that I hadn’t learned in prison, but which had served me well there—I went to Abigail first.
She jumped when I put my hand on her. “They let you go?” she asked, looking down at my now unbound hands and feet, the cut tape still stuck to my ankles.
Shit, I’d touched her again without thinking. It was the third time I’d accidentally touched her.
I wasn’t usually this careless.
Maybe it wouldn’t do anything, or at least not do anything through clothing.
“We need to get out of here,” I said quietly.
The other people didn’t notice me or didn’t care, all their attention focused on Emma and Hunter, who now that I was closer could hear was moaning.
Then I noticed it wasn’t just that I was closer. Outside, the gunfire was dying down.
Unfortunately, I knew it wasn’t because our side—funny, how quickly our captors had become our side when aliens got involved—had started winning.
Rather, it was because they were running out of ammo. Or being devoured. Transformed.
Converted.
We had to get the hell out of here.
I went up to Emma, the remaining nine just staring blankly as I did, not noticing or caring that I was supposed to be tied up, supposed to be their prisoner.
I grabbed Emma’s arm. “We need to go.”
She looked up at me, then yanked her arm away. She was stronger than she looked. “I’m helping her.”
She’d finished stitching Hunter’s wounds and setting her bones, and now just seemed to be cleaning blood from the girl’s body and face.
I didn’t see any other wounds that needed attention. “You’ve done all you can. Come on.”
“I’m not—”
But her protest got swallowed by the explosion.
25
Somehow I knew.
Somehow, I’d known.
Even before it’d happened, I had sensed it.
It was only now, as glass rained, that I realized it, recognized what that uneasiness had been.
It had been him.
The eyeless one.
I heard him, before I saw him. The uneven slapping of that foot. The wet, horrid sound of it.
People screamed around me in confusion and fear, but I just stared at him, walking implacably toward me, hellspawns beginning to swarm in through the broken doors behind him, crawling up the walls, flying in the air, eager to find prey.
But not he. No, no
t him. He wasn’t hurrying, he wasn’t rushing.
He was certain he didn’t need to. Certain he would catch me.
It gave me a chill deeper than any I’d yet felt.
I spotted Abigail and grabbed her. Emma was still next to Hunter. I grabbed her with my other hand, not caring right now what effect touching them might have, and pulled them away.
Abigail was either eager to go or too stunned to protest, but Emma tried to resist me.
I pulled her anyway, pushing past the stunned or screaming crowd, past the few who had the sense to run, and toward the back of the store.
“We can’t leave her,” Emma protested. “I’m not that kind of person.”
“And we can’t take her with us either. She’s got two broken legs. You want to carry her?”
We ran through the store, and I caught Emma looking back over her shoulder, but I didn’t dare.
I could hear the footsteps, hear the shrieking, the cries of agony, and I could imagine what was happening. I didn’t need to see it as well.
“It’s him,” Emma said.
Yes, I thought, it is him. The one whose eye slit I’d stabbed a broken mop handle into, something dark and sinister behind that slit, behind the obscuring corona of fire.
In the brightest light, the darkest shadows.
The one who now had parts of his flesh missing. And below that missing flesh, in those gaps and trenches, hiding, waiting, something was starting to be revealed, something eldritch and unspeakable.
The one with that grotesque foot that oozed out of his split prison guard’s boot.
The one who had stalked me.
The one who had found me.
I pulled the girls through the store, not daring to let go, but also holding lightly, worried about what would happen if I held too tight, worried about a blade piercing a ribcage.
Luckily it was Abigail I had with my right hand, and she seemed to go along with just my open palm on her shoulder.
But I gripped tight to Emma, and that disc floated above my hand as I did.
Be the sword and shield.
But I wasn’t about to fight that thing, not without more experience. There was something about that eyeless guard that did more than just unsettle me.
It frightened me.
