by Maxey, Phil
Landon’s disappointed shake of his head became a nod. “We’ll use the basement door to the back. Get everything out there to the shack.”
“What about the monsters?” said Josh.
Meg rushed back into the hallway, her voice fading as she moved into the kitchen. “I’ll make sure its clear!”
The old house creaked and groaned as everyone made trips through the hallways and stairs, running, while carrying what they could. Jess got her kids to grab their packs and anything else they could and ferried them out, across the backyard to the shack, where she sat them down then ran back into the main building.
As she crouched in the hallway, a wall of smoke above her head, she scanned both rooms for anything else they needed, but the air was almost opaque, her lungs protesting at trying to breathe. A shadow she recognized appeared from the gloom.
“We have to get out!” shouted Landon.
She nodded and started to turn when something in the radio room glinted against the orange flames. Her cell phone. Staggering forward, leaving Landon’s hands behind, she fell to her knees, pushing pieces of wood away then grabbed the small black device.
A heavy crash came from above, and dark shapes fell inches from her face, clattering into the floorboards. She spun around, trying to remember the direction she had come from, heat beginning to blister her skin.
A hand gripped her wrist from the swirling dark and pulled her along the floor, and then through a doorway, to where the air was fresh and cold.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
6: 33 p.m. Keller’s property.
Jess looked up from her seated position through the cobweb infested four panel window to the orange glow twenty yards away. The house she had planned to raise her family in, was now a cruel burning joke.
Alive… we’re alive…
It was what she had been telling herself continuously from the moment she walked out into the snow, her clothes and face blackened by smoke. The space she was in was barely ten by ten feet, but the old wood planks, that supported a roof barely higher than the top of Landon’s head, felt like sanctuary. It even came with a wood burner, which they had managed to start a fire within. The inferno which took her home warmed the entire area, providing warmth against the bitter cold, but the flames were beginning to die under the constant icy flow from the sky. She had no idea what would happen once it completely went out. Would the monsters return? Finish what they started?
Sam and Josh were laid against her, she hoped asleep. Landon sat opposite, his rifle in his hand, waiting for what might try and crash through the flimsy door. She was sure he was as empty of ideas as she was.
She looked at Owen, near Grace who kept checking his vitals. She had managed to bring some of the medical supplies with her, and now his head as well as stomach were bandaged. Jess swallowed as the image of Abby’s body being forgotten by the falling snow, brought with it sadness. News that someone was going to have to deliver to her boyfriend once he regained consciousness. Meg sat by her side, her shotgun across her arms, her eyes closed. And opposite her, to Jess’s right was Daryl and Arlene, the latter resting against the former’s shoulder, seemingly sleeping.
Meg leaned in closer to her. “If the things don’t come back,” she whispered. “And we can keep the fire going, we should be good here for the night. Hopefully, one of the pickups is still working. We should just about be able to get everyone into it, but it will mean leaving some of our supplies behind.”
“Where should we go?”
“Back into town, find another vehicle, get supplies. Then head back out into the wilds. Find another place, like…” Meg hesitated. “Like your old place.”
It was as good a plan as any. Jess nodded.
Five more days…
Her hand fell to her side, catching the solid object in her jacket pocket. Reaching in she pulled out her phone. Surprisingly, its screen immediately lit, the generator having charged it before the spores got to it.
“Don’t suppose you could order us a pizza on that thing?” said Daryl, his voice hushed.
Jess forced a smile, his quickly dissipating.
She looked at the digital screen. Close to the email icon was a small, one. Opening up the app, she immediately saw the name of the newest message.
‘Amos Williams.’
Her mouth began to fall open, but she quickly hid her shock and lifted the phone closer to her face, shielding the screen from the others. Tapping on the email from Amos, she quickly saw that it contained no text, other than a subject line.
‘Watch! Urgent!’
With the email was a video file attachment. She pulled her backpack closer, doing her best not to disturb her children, hoping what she needed was still in the bottom of the pack. Her fingers rummaged within and found the ear buds and put them in her ears.
Arlene glanced at her, then looked away.
Jess tapped on the file and Amos immediately appeared, his face large and red. He was walking somewhere dark, the previous night no doubt.
“They’ve done it…” He was out of breath. “I told them it was wrong. But they threatened my family…” His face flushed with emotion and he looked directly into his phone’s camera again. “I pray you ate the chocolate.” He looked away. “If you did not, then may you all rest in peace.” He looked back. “But if you did, then I’m sorry I couldn’t put more of the vaccine in them, only enough for two days—”
Two days?
His words stuck in her brain, despite the video and his message continuing.
Two days? The vaccine only works for two days? A day has already passed…
A cold sweat of panic washed through her. She shook her head, trying to slow her racing heart then tapped to pause the video and dragged the timeline back to the last words she heard.
“Only enough for two days. After that I’m afraid you will be as vulnerable to the virus as everyone else. I wish I could have done more, but if you see this message, there is hope for you and your family. The virus will be dead by the twentieth, it was designed that way. I have stolen more of the vaccine. If you can make it to my home, west of Jefferson City, you know the place, then I can give you some more, so you can—” A noise came from somewhere, making him suddenly crouch. Jess could see he was in a parking lot, perhaps at Biochron. The video ended.
Her mind was spinning. She tried to remember conversations with Amos, but couldn’t recall any mention of his home where the video mentioned. She felt eyes on her and looked up. Arlene was staring at her again. This time the young girl’s eyes did not look away, but Jess’s did. In fact she closed them.
Two days… Roughly twenty-four hours left… Jefferson City… Missouri, how far? Twelve hours? Still got time…
She moved her arms and slid Sam and Josh backwards, supporting their heads with the bundled clothes and blankets behind them, then got to her feet, stretching. She calmly walked to Landon near the door, and bent down. “Need toilet break. You think you can keep an eye on things with me outside?”
He nodded, getting to his feet.
“I’ll keep watch as well,” said Meg.
Landon pulled the old creaking door open, waving his rifle into the absolute darkness beyond the glow from the burning beams, and beckoned his wife forward. She walked out into the chilling air, scanning best she could the trees around her, and walked to the side a little. She then waved Landon to her, holding her phone up. Sixty seconds later he had also listened and watched the video.
His mouth was open.
She pulled him close. “We have to get to Missouri.”
*****
Colm liked his job as mayor of Rocky Pine. He was the third in a long line of Colm’s that had held the prestigious post, and worked hard to uphold the small town’s reputation as a place where you could safely hunt, ski and enjoy the nature that surrounded it. The fact that the position had always made his family rich was just payment for all the hard work he, and his forefathers had put into the town. And as he lay buried in snow
, the temperature below zero, he was certain he was dead. The afterlife was an ice tomb that never thawed.
But as the hours passed with his thoughts, he started to wonder if maybe he hadn’t passed over. That maybe somehow he survived, when…
He couldn’t remember much from what happened. There were emotions. He was angry, he wanted to stop the outsiders from destroying his town, but somehow they had managed to anyway. They had something… something he needed.
As he lay as a frozen memory of what he used to be, he couldn’t remember what it was, just that they had something which would fix everything. Would return the town to its former glory, return him to his rightful position of authority.
The ground was shaking… trembling… How could he sense that if he was dead? How could he ‘feel’ anything?
As the world around him continued to rattle, and parts of him twitched and reacted to the stimulus, he had an equally strange notion. Could he move?
He tried and to his surprise he felt the packed ice pushing back, so he tried harder and harder.
A blast of cold air slammed into him. It was night, but not as before. The sky and snow were bathed in a green light. A groan came from behind, making him spin around, and in that moment he caught a glimpse of his body. As a slumbering hulk of something moved towards him, he looked at the appendage which came from his shoulder, where his arm used to be. He moved it towards his eyes, and examined the muscles and bony protrusions, and at the end pinchers, which belonged on something else, something not human.
Costume… all a dream…. Drunk…
Ideas came and went, but as he looked down at what he had become, a final, absolute conclusion settled within his mind.
Changed…
The thing which towered above him, leaned down, and green eyes glowed. He cowered, lowering himself to be as small as his new form would allow, shaking in terror, waiting for the inevitable end…
The thing kept on going, moving along the sidewalk. It was as if… it did not even see him, or perhaps…
Continued in book two.
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER ONE
7: 42 p.m, December 15th.
Just outside Rocky Pine, highway 34.
Day 2.
Meg’s pickup lifted slightly as Landon and Daryl jumped down from the back. Jess watched them through a steamed up window, run up the small snow-covered bank towards the white-blue 80s pickup. It was parked alongside the silhouette of a house. Its dark windows as dead as the forest which bordered the highway they were on. Their headlights lit the falling snow, which tried to gather on the vehicle’s windows, but quickly melted due to the seven people desperately trying to stay warm inside the cabin.
Josh shivered. He was sat on her lap while Sam was to her right. Her son was twice his size due to the triple layer of clothes he wore, including a woolen hat and gloves.
“Rub your hands together.” Josh sleepily did and Jess watched Landon outside use the stock of his rifle to break the driver’s side window of the old truck. The sound was muted due to the wind and the idling engine, but each person in the cabin strained their eyes to see the slightest of movements in the void around them.
Daryl who was standing at the back of the abandoned truck looked nervous.
“How long we going to be here,” said Sam to anyone with an answer.
“Daryl and Dad can’t stay in the back any longer. It’s too cold,” said Jess. “We need another vehicle.”
“But we’re not far from the—”
A screeching sound, distant but distinct came from somewhere beyond the house. Daryl and Landon appeared from behind the other pickup, waving their weapons at the two-story structure, then backtracked all the way to Meg’s pickup. Her window was already open.
“We can’t get it started,” said Landon. His head flicked to the wall of darkness which lay just beyond the two-lane road. “And we can’t stay here any longer. We need to go.” He noticed Jess’s pained expression in the seat behind Meg. “There’ll be another truck.” She nodded and he joined Daryl in the bed in the back, immediately wrapping themselves in sheets and tarpaulin to try to keep the weather at bay. Meg pulled off as fast as she could with the weight her pickup was carrying, and was soon leaving the unnatural sounds behind.
Jess wasn’t the only one to sigh in relief once a few moments had passed and they were back moving at speed along the highway.
Twelve hours…
That’s how long she calculated it would take for them to get to Missouri. If it were a normal road trip, they would have a few breaks and be there by 10 a.m. But she had no idea what was ‘out there.’ The radio was just constant white noise. Not exactly encouraging.
Convincing the others for the need for the journey had been easy. She and Landon showed the video to the rest in the shack, and each realized there was no choice but to leave, and sooner the better. To trek across three states to find a vaccine that would stop them from turning into monsters. It was an easy sell and the clock was ticking on all of them.
As they moved along a sweeping bend, the pickup’s headlights slid past a large cabin style building, nestled amongst the pines. A wide sign on its front proudly announced ‘bed and breakfast.’
“I would kill for a bed, right now,” said Arlene, scrunched up to the right of Sam, Grace the same near the window.
“I know… knew the owners,” said Meg. She quickly moved her eyes from the dark windows, back to the road. “Good people…”
Jess wanted to suggest they could still be alive. Perhaps they were hunkered down in a basement, with supplies, perhaps… But no words left her lips.
“What’s that?” said Sam, her eyes spotting the dark block-like shape directly ahead of them before anyone else.
A bang came on the small rear window, a signal that had already been agreed to indicate that those in the back had seen something, and Meg should stop the pickup. She slowed as the headlights revealed the back of a motorhome, roughly twenty yards ahead. The cream and brown colored vehicle was parked across the lanes.
Landon and Daryl jumped down, both wrapping their gloved hands around their elbows to keep warm. Meg pulled down her window, inviting the swirling flecks of snow inside once again.
“We’re going to check it out,” said Landon. Meg nodded and he unslung his rifle, then with Daryl, slowly walked forward. He looked out into the wall of darkness surrounding them, the peaks of mountains just visible against the slightly lighter sky.
“Side door’s open!” said Daryl, looking down the right side of the twenty-foot long vehicle.
As they neared the back, Landon noticed a brown smear which glistened in the lights from Meg’s pickup. “The thing’s have been—”
A noise came from within the motorhome, making them both flick their weapons towards it. Landon pointed for Daryl to go down one side, while he would move along the opposite, and both men crunched through the few inches of snow as quietly as they could. Drapes covered the left side window, and what gaps to the interior there were lacked any light. The noise repeated and he was sure he detected a slight waver of the vehicle on its wheels. Something was moving inside. He kept on moving, quickly getting to the driver’s window and looked in. A drape sat at the partition between the cab and the living quarters, but that’s not what caught his eye, for just visible in the gloom were a set of keys in the ignition.
Light suddenly came from behind the cab’s curtain.
“Landon!” said Daryl. “Got someone alive back here.”
Taking a chance, Landon pulled the driver’s door open and climbed inside. The change in temperature brought with it the stench he was now used to. The mark that the creatures had been inside the motorhome. He pushed the curtain to one side.
Daryl was kneeled next to a thirtysomething man, more dead than alive. Daryl swept his flashlight across the more complete parts of the person’s anatomy, then back up to the poor man’s blinking eyes. “It’s okay buddy, you sleep now.” A rasp came from the man’s thro
at. Daryl leaned in closer.
“Have… they… gone…”
Daryl looked at Landon then back to the man. “Yeah, think—” The man’s eyes were closed, his chest static.
“Must have been immune,” said Landon. “The others turned and attacked him…”
As the wind howled outside, Daryl remained looking at the body. “I know what you’re thinking… Arlene’s going to change.”
“You should know better than any of us, what that means if it happens while we’re driving.”
Daryl looked up at the older man. “How do you know she’s not immune also? And what we gonna do? Just leave her on the side of the—”
A roar, not dissimilar to what they heard a few miles back echoed around the hills. Daryl stood and both men looked through the open doorway to the darkness outside.
“They’re probably not far. Might be tracking us,” said Landon. He turned to the cab. “The keys are still in the ignition. I’ll see how much fuel is left. Tell the others.”
Daryl crouched again, grabbing the shoulders of the man, pulling him outside. Footsteps made him spin around, dropping the body.
Arlene stopped abruptly on seeing the dead man, then looked at Daryl. “Is it working?”
Another roar came from much closer, the sound of branches breaking coming with it. Daryl went to reply when the tailgate lights lit up, followed by the engine.
“Get in!” shouted Landon from inside.
Arlene ran forward, her boot moving to the bottom step just as a guttural screech split the air. Daryl bundled her inside, pulling the door closed behind him. “Drive!” he shouted.
CHAPTER TWO
8: 15 p.m. Highway 34.
Static burst from Landon’s radio. “We’re approaching the west side of the town of Walland,” said Meg. “We can go around, but it will add at least another hour to the journey. Over.”
