Coda

by Keith Knapp

  As the dog-things dined, Rachel jumped to her feet and began to run. She didn’t know where she was going or what she was going to do once she got there. All she knew was that she had to get away as quickly as possible from these things.

  She heard another bone crack behind her.

  Rachel ran faster.

  She still couldn’t scream.

  15.

  “She’s coming to,” the man said. “Take it slow, lady. Nice and slow.”

  Offering her support with an arm on her back, the man helped her sit up. Sophia narrowed her eyes against the brightness of the day, the haze of having just woken up slowly disappearing. A tough-looking woman stood behind the man.

  The man ruffled a hand through his thinning hair, then placed a Dallas Cowboys baseball cap onto his head. “How ya feelin’?”

  Sophia’s entire body ached, that’s how she was feelin’. Stiffness in every bone and joint. “Like complete shit.”

  “That sounds about right,” he said.

  Dazed, Sophia looked past the man and the woman and up to the sky. “What happened?”

  The woman in the flannel shrugged. “I’m afraid you know about as much as we do.”

  Back to the woman she looked, wetness in her eyes. “And J-juh-Jody?”

  Another shrug of her shoulders: she had no idea who Sophia was talking about.

  “Name’s Mike. This here’s Jillian. We don’t know no Jody.”

  “Where’s Jody?” She tried to stand up, but a wave of lightheadedness overtook her, keeping her on the ground.

  “Easy,” Mike said. “Just take it easy. What’s your name?”

  “Sophia,” she said. The dizziness was turning into a migraine and getting worse by the second. Her eyes, which burned like hell and felt like they were being shoved into her brain and out of her head at the same time, found the station wagon twenty feet behind them, and the small garage just beyond that. “My daughter,” she went on, “was with me. Jody. Fifteen. Streak of red in her hair. Have you seen her?”

  Mike shook his head. “No. I’m sorry.” He folded his arms across his chest and took in a deep breath. “We looked all around. It’s just us. And all we know is that we’re not where we used to be.”

  Once again Sophia tried to force herself to her feet. Her legs wobbled like jell-o.

  “Why don’t you just-” Mike started.

  Sophia cut him off. “Help me,” she ordered.

  So Mike took her by the crook of her arm before she could fall down again. The ground felt unstable beneath her shoes, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was on her feet and there was still no sign of Jody.

  She took in their surroundings, and like Mike and Jillian, Sophia didn’t know what to make of the new environment they now found themselves in. While they had all seen a forest before—and grass, and sky—everything about this place seemed slightly off. Those things looked like a forest, grass and sky, but they weren’t right. They all looked…fake, somehow. And those mountains. Too tall to be in Los Angeles. Where in the world were tall mountains like that found? Hawai’i? Japan? Denver?

  Sophia limped toward the station wagon. At least that was something familiar. Mike kept a hand under her arm, giving her balance when he could. Jillian quickly moved to the other side of her, acting as a second crutch. Within a few seconds they made it to the wagon, where Sophia succumbed to her lightheadedness and fell back to the ground.

  “I don’t suppose this car still works,” Sophia said.

  “I highly doubt it,” Mike answered.

  “I don’t suppose you can fix it.”

  “I highly doubt it.”

  Jillian leaned against the wagon. She peered in at the dog, still resting on the back seat, deep in a slumber. “I say we wait here,” she said. “Wait for help.”

  “Help from who?” Mike asked, absentmindedly adjusting his cap.

  “Firemen, ambulances, cops…someone’s sure to come by sooner or later,” Jillian said.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone else around.”

  Jillian pushed herself away from the car and approached him. Annoyance grew in her eyes, the kind of annoyance that said she just wanted some answers and for all the bullshitting around to stop. “Okay, if you don’t want to wait for help, what do you suggest?”

  Mike jerked a thumb behind them at the small garage. “We go check that place out,” he said. “Maybe there’s a phone in there. Mine’s dead, as I’m sure yours are, too.”

  Jillian and Sophia pulled their phones out of their respective pockets and discovered that Mike was, indeed, correct.

  “No signal,” Jillian said.

  “Me, neither,” said Sophia.

  “I thought so,” Mike hmphed. “Mine’s never not had a signal, and now it doesn’t.”

  “Could just be the towers,” Jillian suggested. “And that was, like, a triple negative or something.”

  Mike looked around at their surroundings again. “Nah, I don’t think that’s it,” he said. “I still say we head for that garage, see what’s what.”

  “That’s a terrible idea,” said Jillian.

  “Come on, it’ll take thirty minutes,” said Mike. He then looked to Sophia. “And I can probably hop on the roof and get a better view of things, maybe we’ll see where Jenny is.”

  “Jody,” Sophia corrected.

  “Jody, right,” said Mike. “Plus, someone’s home.”

  “How do you know someone’s-”

  Jillian’s question was forgotten as she looked back at the garage. A small cloud of smoke had started to come out of the chimney. “That smoke wasn’t there before,” she said. “Was it?”

  “Nope,” said Mike. “Someone grab the dog.”

  Still slumped and droopy in the back seat, Roscoe hadn’t moved much. The dog let out a small gruff, then re-adjusted himself, intent on not leaving the car. He placed his head on his paws and looked sadly from person to person.

  Sophia walked to the other side of the car, her mind slowly but surely clearing at the thought of moving things along. A plan. They had a plan now, and that was good. There was comfort in a plan. A plan had an end, a resolution. She opened up the rear door and began to rummage around.

  “Here we go,” Sophia said as she returned from the back of the station wagon. A plastic blue leash hung in her hands. “We had a dog once. Always kept a leash in the back seat. You know, for walkies.”

  “Then by all means,” Mike said, motioning for Sophia to attach the leash to Roscoe’s collar. “You’re on dog duty.”

  She clipped the metal hook onto the latch of the dog’s collar, smiling at the memory of their own dog, Samsonite the Greyhound. Poor guy got hit by a car when Jody was five. She’d cried for days when he hadn’t pulled through.

  The sound of the latch clicking closed on his collar forced Roscoe’s ears to prop up. Lifting his head, he looked up at Sophia and wagged his tail. A drop of drool escaped his mouth and landed on his paws.

  “Come on, boy,” Sophia said.

  Apparently that was the cue Roscoe was waiting for. He jumped out of the car and readied himself by Sophia’s feet. After a few seconds, he stood on his hind legs, rested his paws on the driver’s door and examined his mistress’ body. A whimper came out of his throat. He leaned in and licked her face, clearing blood from her cheek.

  Sophia rubbed the dog’s head but didn’t dare look in at the body. Just the idea of it brought the fear that Jody might have suffered the same fate. Needing to steer clear of such ideas if she had any hope of keeping her sanity, she concentrated on the plan. Stick with the plan, think about the plan, not the dead body in the car, but the plan.

  “We’ll come back,” she said to the dog, then lightly tugged on the leash. Roscoe’s front paws fell from the door, but he didn’t start walking. Sophia tugged the leash again, a little more aggressively this time. “We’ll come back. I promise.”

  * * *

  Three pairs of
red and yellow reptilian eyes watched the three humans and one dog move away from the car. The group huddled together, keeping close to one another. The human’s dog stayed at the heels of the young female.

  Six eyes moved in unison to the automobile they were leaving behind. They all spotted the deceased driver in the front seat.

  Three mouths began to salivate.

  16.

  Mike Randal led the small group of three (four if you counted the dog) toward the garage. It was more of a large shed, really; about half the size of the average, every day, run-of-the-mill garage, with a person-sized door for entry in the front. This wasn’t where someone worked on their car or motorcycle on the weekends or stored their tractor—this was where tools were kept or maybe a wading pool that you didn’t need to break out until July. Except for the chimney, which shot all those theories to shit. That chimney signified this was somebody’s home.

  There had been no sign of Jody yet, but they were all hopeful that if Jody wasn’t in the shed itself that Mike would be able to get on the roof. No one wanted to admit it, but there could be bodies strewn throughout the meadow and yes, one of them could be Jody. But the searching wouldn’t stop until she was found.

  An eighth of a mile ago they had noticed a small sign posted into the ground just to the right of the shed. They were now a quarter of a mile closer, and still none of them could make out what was painted on it. But whatever the words were, they had been painted by hand.

  After a few more minutes of silent walking they were close enough to understand the letters on the sign. Mike read them twice. He adjusted his Dallas Cowboys cap, read the sign a third time. “Well that isn’t very helpful.”

  The four words offered no clue as to where they were and no hope as to any notion of help:

  Welcome to the shed.

  Passionately, Roscoe wagged his tail. The leash connecting him to Sophia’s hand stretched as his front paws went up in the air and he tried to make a break for the shed. Sophia gripped the leash with both hands and used her weight to hold all of his one-hundred-and-fifty pounds back. Roscoe looked over his shoulder at her. Come on, lady, come on, let me go!

  “He sure is on about something,” Mike said.

  Furrowing her brow, Sophia aimed her eyes at the St. Bernard. “Easy, guy, easy,” she said in a tone that could only come from a dog owner.

  That tone caused Roscoe to pause in his endeavor to break away from the group. His eyes went to the sign as if he was reading it, then back up to Sophia. He then scooted back to her feet, his tail wagging a mile a minute, but he had at least managed to push some of his excitement back down.

  Impressed, Jillian raised an eyebrow.

  “Just gotta know how to talk to ‘em,” Sophia said.

  The shed stood ten feet high and was made of wood. Its caretaker, if it had ever had one, seemed to be on an extended vacation. Parts of the building were rotted and falling apart. The wood had grown dark and moldy-looking. There were no windows on the front—just the one door that they now noticed was open a crack.

  Mike shot a glance through the sliver of an opening. Inside he saw the flicker of candles and what looked like the corner of a bed. Somebody was home, alright. The smell of the scented candles—grapefruit, he thought—floated out.

  The door swung inwards on its own, startling him. The ghosts inside were inviting them in. He felt something brush against his leg and realized that Roscoe was the only ghost here—the dog had pushed the door open with his snout, eager to find the source of the grapefruit scent.

  One by one, the group followed Mike inside, where there was a single room with an open door at the rear leading to a second room. Three beds were set up—two on the left, one on the right—all made up with clean white sheets, military-style. You could bounce a quarter off the mattress, those sheets were so tight. The scented candles sat on mounted shelves throughout the room, two candles on each of the five shelves. In the corner was a small fireplace ablaze with an arm-full of logs. Framed paintings had been nailed to each of the walls: one of a sailboat in a harbor, another of an old log cabin on an empty street. The third was a Rorschach inkblot, and to Mike it looked like a skeleton holding a penis. No telling what a psychologist would make of that.

  The grapefruit aroma flooded the room, and it was soon hard to even breathe. The air was thick with the stuff. Mike’s lungs craved for simple fresh air, but there was none to be had. He looked behind him at the door, which was now closed. Had any of the others closed it? He didn’t think so. He grabbed the knob and twisted, but the door was locked.

  Sophia covered her mouth, trying to take in a deep breath but not succeeding. The hand holding Roscoe’s leash went limp, and the strap fell to the floor. She followed it with her eyes to Roscoe’s neck. The dog had found a place at the foot of one of the two beds by the wall and was sound asleep.

  Moving across the room, Mike tried to pry open one of the windows. Whether he pushed or pulled, nothing worked. Onto another window, then. Planting both feet firmly on the wood floor, he gripped the edge of the frame and pulled with all his might. His fingers gave before the window did.

  Jillian tried the doorknob again, but it was locked tight—it wouldn’t even twist a little in either direction like a knob usually did when locked. Feverishly, she brought the bottom edge of her flannel up to her mouth to form a make-shift mask, but her eyes were already glazing over.

  Through the blur that was now his vision, Mike saw three women dressed in long white gowns walk through the doorway on the opposite end of the room. Their faces were covered with white mesh held onto their heads by hoods. They looked like beekeepers. He couldn’t make out their eyes, but he could feel them looking at them. Studying them.

  Two thumps came from behind him. Both Sophia and Jillian had crashed to the floor. Mike felt his own eyes grow heavy as he breathed in another lungful of grapefruit. That’s what was doing it. The candles. There was something in the-

  Mike fell into blackness with the others.

  17.

  Air chugged in and out of Rachel’s lungs. Her legs were starting to cramp up and there was a sharp, piercing pain in her lower abdomen, but there was no way in hell she was going to let any of that slow her down.

  She had been at a full sprint for the past twenty minutes. Every few seconds her brain wanted her to take a look behind her, just a quick glance, to see if any of the dog-things had given chase. She hadn’t heard their chomping since running away like a maniac from the corpse of Jimmy (Jesus, he was a corpse now, wasn’t he?) but she could still hear them eating his flesh and crunching his bones in her head.

  The landscape of the forest did not seem to be changing. No matter how far she ran or which direction she looked in, the forest just went on forever. The tall trees—a mixture of oaks, pines, elms and birches—forced her to swerve this way and that, never giving her a straight path. The smell of the leaves infiltrated her nostrils. Besides the memory of the dog-things eating Jimmy, the only other sounds she heard were her feet stomping on sticks and dirt and her own heart pumping so fast she was sure it would explode any second.

  A pine that was as tall as their six-story apartment building in Van Nuys was the next bit of nature to obstruct her path. Rachel veered right and swung around it, doing her best to keep going in the same general direction she’d been heading. The last thing she wanted was to get so turned around that she ended up right back where she started.

  Light weaved its way through the arms and leaves of the trees above her, forming an obscure maze of shadows and light on the ground. Her feet danced in these shadows, moving so quickly she could hardly make out the shape of the comfy old Pumas she had decided to wear that morning for the robbery.

  Her head shot up again to make sure she wasn’t about to pummel into an oak, and that’s when she saw it.

  Her eyes were playing tricks on her. They must be. Surely the movement of the leaves and her own bobbing head had created the illusion. Rachel blinked quickly three times, b
ut what she thought she had seen was still there.

  Between two towering elms was a cloud of smoke. Framed between these two wood wonders of Mother Nature, the smoke puffed and coughed out a steady pillar into the otherwise clear faded-denim-blue sky.

  Her sprint slowed to a jog as she took in the view. Her heart had slowed down a bit, but now it was once again racing. Not only was she lost in some forest, but now it was on fire. She looked to her right and left: no smoke in either direction, just in front of her, so that was good. She wouldn’t be forced back to the dog-things.

  But there was something else, wasn’t there? Yeah, just above that elm, right where the smoke started. A little square.

  She took two steps to the left, moving a set of branches out of her eye-line. There it was, and it was more than just a little square; it was the top of a chimney. The forest wasn’t on fire—somebody had just lit up the ol’ fireplace, that’s all. Where there was a fireplace, there was shelter. Whoever lived there would surely let poor Rachel Martin use their phone. Even if she was unlucky enough to have happened upon a crazy lonely guy living his last days in the woods as Grizzly Adams, he’d at least help her.

  At least that’s what she hoped. The Crazy Lonely Guy might hack her into pieces and feed her to his dog. Maybe he was pals with the dog-things. Maybe the dog-things were his. Maybe she should avoid that smoke like the plague.

  But as she saw it she didn’t have much of a choice. Sure, she could move in any direction she wanted (except back, of course), but whatever that chimney was connected to was probably her best hope. She could approach it stealth-like, take a view from a distance, scope it out before making her next move. There was no reason she had to waltz right up to the front door and knock. She could decide what to do about any knocking that might occur once she knew more.