by Sean Platt
The man stepped from the kitchen, into the scant light seeping through the windows, and aimed his gun at Ryan. “Shoulda left well enough alone, Soldier Boy.”
Ryan tried to raise his rifle, but realized too late that his hands were empty. He’d dropped his weapon when the bullet hit. The pain in his gut spread like fire, and he felt dizzy and nauseous, making movement difficult, if not impossible. He wasn’t sure if this is what it was like when your body went into shock, but he prayed he would stay conscious. If he closed his eyes, he’d never open them again.
Move, damn it! You can’t die like this!
But he couldn’t.
Red Jacket leaned down, grabbed the rifle, then went into the back of the apartment and silenced the stereo. Ryan waited in the silence, listening, unable to turn around, waiting for Red Jacket to reappear and finish him off.
Time slowed to a crawl, and Ryan thought of Mary and Paola. He flashed back to the night of his daughter’s birth. How scared he’d been, waiting in the emergency room. Mary’s water broke seven weeks before Paola was due. They raced to the hospital, Ryan driving like a bat out of hell, pushing his Chevy to 110, fully anticipating a police chase or accident to give their story a different ending, but far too afraid not to drive like a stunt car driver.
The surgeons waited almost 16 hours before deciding they’d have to do a C-section. They said it was routine, but there was “always a chance,” however small, that something could go wrong. As Ryan waited in the hallway outside of the operating room while they prepped Mary for surgery, he grew more fearful that something bad would happen — that he’d lose the baby, Mary, or both. He’d never felt more helpless. He tried to tell himself surgeons performed these procedures all the time, and that things almost never went wrong, but nothing gave him comfort.
It was nothing short of a miracle when things didn’t go wrong, and they handed him his beautiful baby girl. In that moment, every fear and reservation he’d had since Mary said she was pregnant vanished in the purity of his newborn child. Ryan had thought he’d known what love was, but had never known anything like what swelled his heart in that moment.
The pain numbed as Ryan continued to wait for Red Jacket to show himself. He wanted to get up, but his limbs refused to obey.
Instead, he thought more about Paola. And Mary. And all the pain he’d caused them with his affair. He wasn’t sure where it had all gone wrong, or why. And now, as his world was about to end, it didn’t matter. All he had was regret. He thought again of Paola, and the first time Mary saw her child. She was out of it during the procedure. So she had to wait until the nurse came to Mary’s recovery room a couple hours later. The look in Mary’s eyes, the happiness and joy, that moment when things weren’t perfect, but were so damned right, that moment would be the one he’d cling to as the icy cold of death came to greet him.
Red Jacket finally stepped back into view. Ryan saw only the man’s boots and jeans; he was dead enough already to be unable to look up.
The man stood in front of him, quiet. Ryan wondered why he wasn’t saying anything. Was he toying with him? Was he thinking of some fucking cheesy movie line like the kind a monologuing villain might give before dispatching the hero?
But then Ryan realized he couldn’t even hear the man’s breathing. Or his own.
It was as if someone had wrapped gauze around his head. The few sounds that made it through were muffled. For all he knew, Red Jacket was reciting the Declaration of Independence and encoring it with Born in the U.S.A.
Ryan couldn’t believe it. He was dying.
No last-minute reprieve. No rescue.
This is it.
Suddenly, Red Jacket’s legs were gone. Snatched in an instant.
Ryan heard screams – muffled shrieks – and gunfire.
His heart raced as he strained to move and see what was happening. But the connection between his brain and body was severed.
The monsters had gotten into the room, that much he knew. Beyond that, everything was darkness and muffled chaos.
Please God, please don’t . . .
More screams, and then something grabbed Ryan’s legs and pulled. He slumped from the wall and onto the ground, looking up at the ceiling.
And then it appeared over him, the monster.
Oh God.
Ryan closed his eyes, pictured Mary’s bright eyes, so happy and filled with joy. So full of love. So full of ... life.
And then pain.
I love you, girls.
Ryan’s body shut down as the darkness swallowed him.
Ryan woke to a cool, wet rag dousing his head.
He opened his eyes, and the brightness blinded him. Carmine’s face swam into focus as his eyes adjusted to the light.
He was lying on Joe’s couch.
“He’s awake, Gramps!” the boy said, as excited as a child on Christmas morning.
Ryan tried to move, but his body was still racked with pain. His stomach, back, and neck felt as if they’d been crushed in a giant compressor that stopped just short of breaking every bone in his upper body.
“I thought you was never gonna wake,” Joe said, wheeling himself next to Carmine.
“What happened?” Ryan said, nervous and scanning for his rifle, remembering his last moments, as chaos erupted around him.
“You’re safe now,” Joe said. “That thug is dead and so are the monsters.”
“How? Who?” Ryan asked, voice cracked and thin, throat raw.
“Get him some water, will you, Carmine?”
“OK, Gramps,” Carmine said, and went into the kitchen.
“I know you told us to stay put, but when a fighter hears all hell breaking loose, he don’t hide.”
Ryan smiled. Balls of steel.
“There were two of them. Not sure where the rest went, but only two made it up the stairs, and we were able to take ‘em out. They’d already killed the thug who shot you.”
“Thank you,” Ryan said as Carmine returned with a bottle of water and brought it to Ryan’s lips. Ryan took a sip, nearly choked, causing water to dribble down his chin, then took another sip. The water soothed his throat and felt like the best liquid ever sipped.
“Thank you for saving Carmine,” Joe said.
Ryan downed more water, surprised how thirsty he was.
“How long was I out?”
“Five days,” Carmine said.
FIVE DAYS?!
“You was in bad shape,” Joe said.
“How did you guys heal me?” Ryan asked, reaching to his gut to feel where he’d been shot. The skin was tender, but smooth, hair missing from the area. No stitches or open wound.
“We didn’t. Your wounds healed on their own. Like a miracle,” Joe said.
Ryan didn’t know what to say. Though his body was achy, the pain wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been. He tried to sit, and though groggy and stiff, he managed.
“The Lord must’ve been looking out for you,” Joe said. “I never seen a gunshot wound heal that quickly. And the bite wounds are almost all gone, too.”
Bite wounds?
TO BE CONTINUED …
::Episode 10::
(Fourth Episode Of Season Two)
“COLD FRONT”
Thirty-Two
Callie Thompson
Abrams, Georgia
March 22
Afternoon
When Callie was small, she used to watch The Wizard of Oz with a heavy heart beneath a blanket of sadness, wishing she could be swept away by a tornado, then delivered to a fantastical world with talking scarecrows and tin men with hearts of gold. Instead, her first tornado delivered her to hell.
She woke face down in the mud, body aching, scratches up and down her arms and face, raked by the flying debris. She scrambled around in search of her gun, but found nothing but mud. Her arms were lacerated with fresh cuts. Everything was gone — the store, the parking lot, the trees, and everything else as far as she could see. It was as if God himself had reached down, sc
ooped up the top layer of earth, and tossed it into the heavens.
There was an awful, ashen nothing smothering the world in every direction.
“Charlie! Adam! Vic!”
Where are they?
She wondered if they’d landed safe as she had, or if they’d been torn to pieces inside the belly of the twister or carried God knows how high, before being flung violently to their deaths.
Her cry brought nothing but a windy silence punctuated by the beating of her own heart. The ground beneath her was a mixture of dirt, mud, and the few remaining roots of vegetation. She could vaguely make out small mountains of debris in the distance, probably the remains of the store and every bit of surrounding life. Her eyes strained to find bodies among the tall piles, but a thick fog rolled in from the west and blanketed the world from all sides, imprisoning her vision beneath a gauze of white.
Then, all of a sudden, her stomach inverted and her terror thickened at the sound behind her. In that instant, Callie went from feeling like a single speck on an infinite landscape of nothing to a walking bull’s eye, targeted by an unseen enemy.
Click, click, click.
The sound echoed, scurrying in every direction. She turned, scanning the inscrutable for any signs of the creatures, but could see nothing.
She’d heard the clicking in the thick of the tornado, too, though she saw no evidence of the creatures anywhere from within the storm’s angry eye. But the storm itself seemed almost alive, sentient in its precision and utter destruction, like it was looking for them. It had certainly found them; maybe the fog had come to finish the job.
“Charlie!” she cried again, as wisps of white fog swirled around her, like cold fingers on her crawling skin.
A shiver ran through her, and she balled her fists, tensing at every shadow, real and imagined. She was a blind woman entering an arena and waiting for arrows to pierce her from all sides. She wanted to call out again, but each time she spoke, it seemed as though the fog sensed it and thickened to strangle her words.
“Charlie!” she called again, damn the consequences.
Nothing.
Then, the fog seemed to part in the distance, opening the curtain to reveal a hint of a structure. Is that the store? Another building? Positive identification was too hard as the fog further dimmed her vision and perception of distance. She continued to inch toward the shape, hoping to find Charlie, Adam, or hell, she’d even settle for Vic.
Click, click, click.
The noise now sounded like it was coming from behind, so Callie accelerated her pace, moving faster toward the shape in the fog. It loomed impossibly tall as she drew closer. She squinted her eyes, trying to pull sense from the inscrutable.
I don’t remember passing anything that tall. Is it a radio tower?
Radio towers were so commonplace in the urban landscape, they almost blended into the background unless you were looking directly at them. But this shape seemed too solid for a radio tower. She moved faster still, out of curiosity as much as an instinct to evade death and desire to find her companions, until the shape’s truth was finally unveiled.
Oh my God!
It was a tower, alright, but not manmade. Now she knew where all the debris had gone. Cars, shards of building, trees, grass, glass, windows, rock, power lines, and everything else were all twisted together, impossibly woven into a giant tower as wide as a shopping center and so tall it vanished into the fog overhead.
It was 20 stories if it was an inch.
Icy talons slithered around her soul and slowed her heart’s beat to a snare of terror. Whatever had done this, whether it was nature or supernatural, was powerful, and there was no doubt it was indeed sentient. It knew exactly what it was doing.
This kind of organization couldn’t happen by accident. It had to be by design.
Callie wasn’t sure how long she stared at the tower. Her internal clock, which had been pretty damned accurate most of her life, was haywire. And the fog wasn’t helping.
She called for Charlie and the others a few more times, continuously moving toward where she thought the highway had to be. Soon, another shadow appeared, and this time, lights came along with it. Truck lights, approaching, maybe 40 yards away.
Charlie?
She waved her hands frantically and called out his name, though she couldn’t be certain the driver could see her in the blanket of murk.
The vehicle, which she could now tell was a van, slowed. The driver had seen her. As it got closer, she realized it wasn’t Charlie, Adam, or Vic.
Her heart raced as she wondered what to do. If this gang were the bikers they’d run into, she was a dead girl walking.
Click, click, click.
Shit! I have to get out of here!
The van — black, with blacked-out windows — looked like it meant business. She stepped aside as it pulled up and she was facing the blacked-out passenger window. Callie waited for it to roll down, heart in her throat, fists balled, and feet ready to turn and run in an instant. Instead, the side panel door burst open, and two men in black paramilitary gear with giant, black goggles covering the intent of their eyes hopped from the van, darting toward her, rifles in hand.
She turned and dashed into the fog as fast as she could, ignoring the threat of monsters.
The truck revved behind her, though she didn’t dare turn to see where it was going. It was angling to head her off, she figured. She got maybe another 10 yards before something struck her in the back of the legs. She tried to jump, but instead, the hard object, a black wooden club like police carried, tangled her legs and sent her sprawling into the cold mud.
Callie flipped over, pain shooting through her legs, and grabbed the club, then rose to her feet, ready to swing. She was too late. She saw the Taser seconds before its wires found her chest, sending an agonizing jolt through her body.
She cried out and crumpled to the ground. Seconds later, the van pulled up, and the two commandos threw her unceremoniously inside the back. As the door swung closed and the van drove away, she swore she could hear Charlie screaming her name.
“Who the hell are you?” Callie shouted as one of the men twisted her arms behind her, restraining them with some kind of wire she couldn’t see. The binding chewed hard into her wrists.
“Ow!” she screamed, kicking at the man in front of her, catching him in the crotch.
He screamed, cocked his arm back, and swung hard. His punch landed in her chest, forcefully knocking the wind from her body.
As she gasped for air, the man behind her slid a rag over her face. The funny scent made her feel woozy on contact. As Callie slipped into the inescapable surrender of nothing, she spied a patch on the arm of her attacker’s jacket, which answered her question as to who the hell these people were.
The patch read, Black Mountain Research Facility.
Thirty-Three
Charlie Wilkens
Abrams, Georgia
March 22
Afternoon
“Who took her?!” Charlie screamed at Adam.
“I don’t know. A black van and men in black.”
“Why didn’t you do something?” Charlie screamed, pushing Adam hard. “Why didn’t you stop them?!”
“With what?!” Adam cried, holding out his empty, gun-less hands. “They had all kinds of weapons. Big ones. They looked like military.”
“Military?”
“Yeah, or SWAT, or something. They had tons of equipment, all over them. They looked deadly serious.”
Charlie stared into the fog, as if he might somehow divine answers from the nothingness surrounding them. There weren’t any answers, but there was something else in the fog.
He heard it seconds before the shadow passed them.
Click, click, click, click.
“Shh!” he said to Adam, scouring the ground for anything Adam could use as a weapon. Finding nothing, Charlie flicked open his knife, then pivoted in circles, trying to discern where the monster was.
Click, cli
ck, click.
The shadow, with the weird illumination beneath its skin, moved past them again, this time closer.
Is it toying with us?
Adam drew closer, eyes wide and full of terror. He balled his fists, as if he could somehow conquer the creatures with his knuckles alone.
Click, click, click.
Movement again, then nothing. The fog thickened around them, as if it and the monster were partners in crime.
“I’m scared,” Adam wheezed.
Movement again. Adam screamed and jumped back, holding his bleeding left arm. The cut wasn’t deep, but it looked nasty.
Charlie spun around, knife poised to strike. “Come on, you fucker!” he screamed.
Click, click, click
Charlie spun around, but it had disappeared again into the mist.
Adam looked up, eyes tearing, “It hurts so bad.”
“Stop crying!” Charlie said, annoyed. They didn’t have time for crying. Or weakness. He felt bad that Adam was hurt, but there was nothing Charlie could do, except what he was doing: waiting for a chance to strike back.
Click, click, click.
Charlie turned again as the creature flashed by, colliding into him hard. The knife slipped from Charlie’s hand and fell to the ground.
Click, click, click.
The creature scurried toward the fallen blade.
Charlie couldn’t afford to lose his only weapon. He screamed and dove to the cold, muddy ground, launching himself into the creature and sending it veering off course. Miraculously, Charlie wound up next to his knife. He grabbed it just as the creature recovered itself, stood and shrieked, opening its mouth wide to reveal its rows of horribly jagged teeth, like the charred maw of an alien wolf.
The creature leaped up, at least 10 feet high, then fell on top of Charlie hard, raising a clawed hand.
Charlie thrust his knife up quickly into the creature’s androgynous crotch. The creature unleashed an ear-piercing scream and collapsed to the ground, twitching. Adrenaline coursing his every vein, Charlie rolled over, hopped onto the creature’s slick, wet body, and brought his blade down into its chest, head, and eyes with repeated ferocity.
