by Maxey, Phil
The thing was almost as big as the white vehicle, as it buffeted a streetlight, then crashed through a fence bordering the property. Arlo could smell its breath as its leathery skin glistened in the afternoon—
The time flying backwards through the air was thankfully brief but came without warning and he crashed painfully into the soda dispenser, falling to the concrete sidewalk, his head buzzing, his face stinging from the flash of heat.
He looked up, frantically trying to locate the creature, but a groan bellowed out giving him its location. The pickup roared with flames, a door and parts of the rear now lying elsewhere across the lot.
Arlo got to his feet, feeling momentarily dizzy and staggered forward. His side feeling wet, he placed his fingers on a spot of blood but the source was going to have to wait until he knew the thing was down. Moving around the pumps, burned appendages and torso then finally the thing’s head came into view. Its charcoal black neck coiled in his direction, its mouth opening, letting out a growl, but part of it was still burning. The thing wasn’t going to be chasing him anytime soon but he had seen them come back from worse damage.
He lifted his t-shirt. A red gash, an inch long was seeping blood. It stung but it wasn’t going to kill him. He looked across the fields and the ruts the thing had created through the mud. The other creatures must have heard the explosion. Taking a wide birth around what was left of the thing, he walked as fast as his aching limbs would allow and spotted two more cars. A compact and another pickup. The smaller vehicle’s door was open…
He broke into a jog, quickly arriving at the blue car’s driver’s side, and immediately let out a breath in relief at seeing the keys dangling from the ignition.
CHAPTER FIVE
2: 33 p.m. Eastern outskirts of Kansas city.
The buildup of abandoned vehicles told everyone they were nearing the big city as the highway dissected apartment complexes, retail parks and shopping malls, spread across a dull brown landscape of patches of trees and faded fields.
“We can go south around the city, if you want?” said Vance to Jess.
“No, I want to see the city.”
“Okay.”
The small convoy weaved between the trucks, sedans and SUV’s as large multi-storey buildings reflecting a watery sun, became apparent on the horizon.
“You, er… sense anything?” said Sanchez from the back seat.
She had been trying to since they moved past the sign mentioning the city but just felt exhaustion. No buzzing or headaches, nothing to indicate anything of danger was nearby.
“Hey,” said Sanchez, looking to their left at a huge parking lot.
The radio in Jess’s lap crackled, followed by Landon’s voice. “Everyone seeing what’s in the lot? Over.”
She nodded. “We do. Over.”
Between the tiny vehicles sitting in neat rows were other things. Lumps of festering organic material, some as big as the cars. But these weren’t monsters to be feared, but the remains of them.
They were on an overpass and Vance slowed then stopped the pickup, Esther doing the same with the truck behind, almost everyone getting out and walking to the side wall.
“There are hundreds of them,” said Brad, as Agatha jumped down from the cabin, struggling to stop Donnie and Syd from pulling her forward with the leashes she held. He glanced at her. “Don’t go far.” She frowned.
Landon walked close to his wife. He would have offered her his binoculars but knew she didn’t need them and scoured the landscape through the eyepieces.
Jess strained to see what he already could, which were countless dark brown patches across the sidewalks and lots.
“You were right about them dying…” said Tracey to Vance. He remained quiet.
Jess glanced at Landon. “Can I use the binoculars?”
He looked at her, a little shocked. “Sure,” and handed them to her.
She adjusted the dial and looked as deep into the city as she could from her vantage point, twenty or so feet above ground level. The lumps of decaying matter stretched all the way back, between the beige, cream and red brick sky scrapers, littering the streets and sidewalks. Shifting her view closer, she focused on the parking lot just a hundred yards away and a pile of something, studying it in the early afternoon sun. A cool breeze wafted over her bringing with it a faint odor of rot, pinging memories she’d rather not have. Within the eyepieces, the mass of tissue, bone and sinew was static. Nothing stirred within its disjointed textures.
The scene was a victory of sorts. The virus which had caused such suffering was gone, most of the creatures it bore, the same but no part of her could celebrate. She turned to the others. “We need to get back on…” Toby was wondering around the back of the truck. “What’s Toby doing?” she asked, but before Landon or anyone else could answer, one then both dogs began barking which was followed by a child’s screams.
The small crowd ran past the vehicles, immediately spotting a van they had passed further down the slope. Agatha was running back towards them. “It’s moving! It’s moving!” she yelled. Brad took the leashes from her as Scott, Vance and Landon moved towards the white vehicle. Silver peeked through gouges in its paintwork and they walked cautiously towards the two rear doors, which rocked on their hinges. All three smelled what the interior space contained and Scott raised his weapon as they moved around the back, Jess joining them.
A heap of bony protrusions sat within a mound of brown skin and flesh. Multiple bloodshot eyes blinked and rotated in their direction. A hand or perhaps a claw extended in their direction then gave up and collapsed back into the moist surface. Those watching almost felt sorry for it.
Jess walked away, back up the hill. “Like I said, let’s leave.”
*****
3: 52 p.m. Outskirts of Denver. Highway 70.
Josh looked out at the long shadows cast from neighborhoods mixed in amongst greenery and beige fields. He vaguely recognized the southeast extremities of his home city and couldn’t help feel a tinge of excitement, despite being with a crazy man with super powers. The creatures were gone, left behind, not needed he figured and as the early evening gloom descended on the shopping malls and hotels, he started to see the others. The ones that had died and become… well he wasn’t sure what monsters became when they died, but scattered across the sidewalks and parking lots were piles of brown mush. Some were not even that, being reduced to just dark stains. In a few weeks all traces of what he had been running from would be gone, only existing in his nightmares. The world wiped clean ready to start anew…
A wave of despair dropped across his thoughts.
Alone…
He had no idea why the crazy man had taken him or why he and the things had killed everyone at the school. Josh wanted to know, but each time his anger rose to a point where words almost burst from his lips, fear overwhelmed him and he remained mute. In those moments the soldier in the front would look in the rear mirror, catching his eyes and he would look away, frightened that the ability to read minds was something else the driver could do.
They turned south at an intersection, the glossy buildings being somewhat familiar to Josh. He raked through memories and a particularly sunny morning came to him of being driven to his mother’s workplace. It was a day where employees could bring their children and as Sam didn’t want to go, Jess took him. He didn’t want to go either but he was glad he did, for most of the day he spent in the diner with other kids, discussing films, comics and toys. There was also candy, lots of it shaped into something called DNA, which he learned was something to do with cells… or something.
The man in front was grumbling. Josh made the mistake of looking at the rear mirror and caught the man’s pained expression. Was he talking to himself? Probably, he was insane. But something was bothering him and Josh wondered what could cause that emotion to a man who can jump across buildings and could move so fast that he became a blur.
“What you looking at, kid?”
Josh quickly aver
ted his eyes.
“Yeah, I see you staring at me. Well I don’t like that. So stop. We’ll be there soon and then he can explain why you’re so important to his plans… it’s just…” He looked back to the road, making another turn into a complex of buildings and shook his head. “He’s not responding on the radio. I don’t like that. Something’s happened, I’m sure of… it…”
They came to the top of a small hill and stopped. Josh was afraid to look but did so anyway. At the bottom of the slope and across the faded grass were more of the piles of brown sludge, but there was something else. A crater, as if a bomb had exploded, with a black smokey ring around the rim. The man in front swore then hit the gas, pressing Josh back into his seat who desperately tried to hold on as the car veered left then right, then bumped over a curb onto a sidewalk and continued over the grass, until slowing as it bumped down into a parking lot.
The driver was now shouting, swearing and Josh wondered if he was talking to him, but remained quiet regardless, not taking the chance to enrage the crazy man further.
They skidded around a corner of a building, almost doing a complete one-hundred-and-eighty until they were lined up with a garage entrance which was open. Without stopping the sedan drove inside and just when Josh was convinced they were going to keep going and slam directly into one of the interior pillars, they promptly stopped with a screeching of brakes.
The man threw his door open, jumped out and ran across the greasy floor disappearing into the gloom of a doorway and the hallway beyond.
Josh leaned forward slowly, trying to better see where the man had gone but the shadows were too thick. He shuffled across the back seat, straining to see clearer then on not seeing any movement, quickly turned around and looked at the wide open entrance to the garage and the dark gray sky outside. This was his chance. Did the man even centrally lock all the doors? Josh didn’t think he did and there was only one way to find out.
He backed up against the door, his fingers stretching out against the rope around his wrists, pressing against the plastic until… his nail then fingertips caught a latch which he pulled up and with a click the door opened a few inches. Not waiting, he bundled it open then swung his feet around, landing on the floor then stood and ran towards…
The vice-like hand grabbed the back of his neck just as his left foot made it across the threshold to the parking lot and within the blink of an eye he was lifted, pain shooting down his shoulders and dropped back near the sedan like a doll. Despite Josh’s struggling the man kept his hand clasped around Josh’s neck and like a puppet master rotated the boy around so he was facing…
A new horror was standing just yards away, near the open doorway. Josh screamed as laughter echoed off the walls.
CHAPTER SIX
4: 46 p.m. Outskirts of Southeastern Denver.
Arlo felt the dashboard which was hot despite the snow starting to fall again from an almost completely dark sky. The engine of the small car strained as he pressed down harder on the gas and scoured the landscape for any hint of shapes that shouldn’t be there. There were no downed telephone poles, no sign whatsoever of the reason he had journeyed all the way across Kansas into Colorado. He swore under his breath then awkwardly unscrewed the lid of his single bottle of water and lifted it above his mouth and waited… no moisture was forthcoming. He swore again, throwing the bottle in the back.
It made no sense, the landscape was fairly flat and he had kept going west. Where were they?
Ahead, a series of overpasses covered the highway. The nearest of which was caught in the headlights and held up a large green sign mentioning possible routes into the city.
“That’s where you’ve gone, haven’t you…”
He drove beneath the concrete bridges, the sound of the car echoing off the pillars and walls and tried to see to the end of the stretch of highway he was on, but it rose a few miles off, blocking his view. The beige muddy banks also obstructed his sight left and right into the darkness, the four-lane road being in a shallow valley of sorts.
He wasn’t looking forward to traveling into the city. Despite what Vance had said about the creatures dying, he had followed hundreds of them across the state and they were anything but dead. The city would probably be the same, but if he could just—
A large shadow had already slid across the main beams and onto the dirt before he hit the brakes, rapidly slowing from eighty to fifty while desperately looking around, trying to see the source. Another overpass moved past above and he slowed again, suddenly feeling vulnerable. His heart thundered in his ears which was why as he drove up the slope he didn’t hear what was laid out for miles on the other side.
He shook his head, giving up on whatever eclipsed the light from the car and looked back to the…
This time his pressure on the brakes was constant, his body being forced against the seatbelt strap, the discs on the wheels screeching.
“Stop… stop… stop…”
The car shuddered to a halt as he frantically switched the headlights off and sat on the raised piece of highway, frozen in place waiting for what he could hear and smell to descend and tear the car apart…
After what felt like a minute but was actually twenty seconds, he let out a breath and dared to look left, over the small wall to the ten or so feet below. With the last vestiges of light from the previous day he could see them. Hundreds of dark shapes, sitting… waiting… Some moved slowly, staggering in no particular direction, others took to the air, while similar unnatural shadows landed. He had found what he was looking for, but now he wanted to be anywhere else.
Amongst the dark appendages and clumps of clawed black shapes were the more consistent rectangular forms of gravestones, and further back, perhaps half a mile away, a large monolithic building. He guessed, some sort of distribution facility.
“Now what…”
They must have detected him he thought, if not by smell, certainly by sound and light, but not one had made a move in his direction, not even the winged monstrosities were flying at him, instead taking to the air and flying in a circular motion against the lighter sky, high above. He realized his first instinct was correct. They were waiting for someone or something. Maybe if he did the same he would find out what that was.
He switched off the engine, reached across the passenger’s seat and grabbed a beer.
*****
5: 01 p.m. Central Kansas.
A sign caught the pickup’s headlights, mentioning a town and Sam momentarily imagined streets lined with brown heaps of decaying matter. The remains of what the townsfolk had become.
One big graveyard…
She had not told her mother but she remembered. She remembered it all. Her time spent inside the circular tank and how the substance inside ate away at her, leaving something which was dead.
A zombie…
Maybe she still was one, she thought.
After she opened her eyes and saw Jess looking down at her, her mind couldn’t gather the memories of the previous twenty-four hours. She was shocked to be alive. But what she lacked in knowledge of the past she made up for with a newfound energy, as if electricity were pumping through her veins. She was still getting used to being ‘different’ when Joan kidnapped her, but whatever it was that happened while with Rackham had transformed her completely. She wasn’t even sure she was human still. Maybe she was like Finn? The man Joan mentioned. He was inside the other chamber, alongside her, both experiments for the crazy scientist that ended the world.
Not like him…
Anger simmered within her each time she thought about Meg or Daryl, or any of the others that had lost their lives due to the man that lived within the bowels of Biochron. And now his lackey had taken her brother…
She was going to kill this super soldier. She had the strength and speed to do it and there was the other ability she had… the one she didn’t like thinking about. The one that saved her mother. The ability to become a monster…
CHAPTER SEVEN
5: 12 p.m. Outskirts of Southern Denver.
The thing in the front passenger’s seat of the sedan wheezed. It was as if a performer from a ghost train attraction had been persuaded to join the soldier, except the scarred tissue, misshapen back and skull were not makeup, but somehow… real.
Josh didn’t want to examine the wound on the back of the thing’s head which still oozed some form of liquid, didn’t want to think about how this thing was still alive, but couldn’t stop himself. Part of him, the part which kept his foot shaking or his fingers twitching was terrified, but another part, perhaps what he got from his mother was observing the two things just feet from him in the front of the car, with detached curiosity. Real life monsters. It was straight from a comic book, he thought, which was kind of cool.
Almost as if the thing knew it was being watched, it turned slightly to the left, its neck producing a creaking sound like an old tree in a high wind or the timbers in the bowls of a wooden ship and Josh flicked his head to the window, doing his best impression of someone interested in the outside world. He didn’t want the zombie to talk to him, that would be worse, far worse than the sound its lungs struggled to make. Until now he had been able to be in the back seats, invisible, unimportant. Just someone accidentally caught up in the monster’s plans.
“It’s a long way to Galveston,” said Finn.
