by Sean Platt
“Stop right there!” the lifeguard yelled.
Luca paused, halfway up the ladder, and looked down to see Monobrow halted just as he was about to follow Luca onto the ladder.
“He just attacked my friend!” Monobrow said.
The lifeguard looked up at Luca, “Come down.”
“No, they tried to drown me!” Luca cried.
He started climbing again, eager to put more distance between himself and Monobrow. While the lifeguard appeared to be around eighteen or nineteen and looked like he could fight, Luca couldn’t imagine that he would listen long before chasing Luca up the ladder to extract revenge.
The lifeguard whistled again as if it would bring Luca down, then followed with a stern, “Get down, now.”
Luca cried out, “They tried to drown me!”
Luca saw Rose approaching the lifeguard and Monobrow.
The Darkness spoke in Luca’s ear: Go to the diving board, now.
Luca wasn’t sure of Its intention, but he listened, stepping away from the ladder, onto the platform, then out to the diving board.
Below, Luca heard Rose ask, “What the hell is going on here?” playing her Adult Card with perfect pitch.
She’s buying you time, The Darkness said.
For what?
To do what must be done.
What?
Look down.
Luca looked down and saw the pool crowded with kids, surrounding Shovel Face, looking at him like a car wreck. Some were asking if he could walk, and a couple offered to help him out.
The Darkness spoke: Now is your chance.
Chance to do what?
To do what you wanted. Kill him.
Kill him? No. I don’t want to get in trouble. I want to go home.
You broke his kneecap. Sometimes the only way out of trouble is to plow through it.
Luca felt an odd vibration coming from the pool. With it the sound of static. No, not static, but the voices — no, thoughts — of every swimmer in the pool.
I’m connected to all of them? How?
Suddenly, there was nothing but silence below, save for Shovel Face crying.
Look down, The Darkness said.
Luca looked down. Everyone in the pool — ranging from young children to adults — was staring up at him blankly.
They’re awaiting your command.
Luca looked down and saw that even Rose was staring, as if he’d somehow frozen time and hypnotized the world.
Shovel Face looked around and screamed, “What the hell is going on? What did you do?”
Luca smiled at the jerk’s confusion. Even though Shovel Face was a Neanderthal, he could sense that Luca was somehow responsible for whatever was happening. Luca could taste his fear, palpable, sweet like sugar from ten feet above.
Luca stood on the diving board’s edge, no longer paralyzed. He wasn’t afraid of heights, he was enlivened by his position above them all.
Luca yelled, “I’m gonna give you to the count of five to get out of the pool.”
Shovel Face looked up and laughed, though he couldn’t mask his fear or confusion.
“One.” Luca said.
“Fuck you, freak!” Shovel Face yelled.
“Two.”
“You don’t scare me.”
“Three.”
“Whatcha gonna do? There’s one of you and hundreds of us!”
“Four.”
Shovel Face cried out, “Fuck you!”
“Five,” Luca said as a smile crossed his lips.
Go.
As soon as Luca thought what to do, everyone in the pool acted, en masse, closing in around Shovel Face.
“What the fuck?” he yelled, turning, hopping on his one leg as people crept closer, bumping into him.
Someone hit him in the back of the head.
Shovel Face screamed, spinning around to face his attacker.
A woman jumped on his back, opened her mouth wide, and bit down hard on the side of the Neanderthal’s cheek, ripping the skin from his Shovel Face.
He screamed as he tried to throw her off.
He went under.
Many more piled on, keeping Shovel Face under, drowning him as they hit, kicked, gouged, and bit into his flesh.
Luca smiled then turned to find Monobrow, standing beside the lifeguard, still staring up at Luca as if awaiting instruction.
Luca turned his attention at the lifeguard, and inserted thoughts into his head.
Go.
The lifeguard snapped into action, kicking Monobrow’s feet out from under him and slamming him to the ground before he knew what was happening. The back of Monobrow’s skull hit the concrete with a sickening thud.
Though he was dead in an instant, Luca directed the lifeguard to grab both sides of the fat kid’s head and repeatedly smash it into the concrete, turning the soup of splashed-up water into ruby goo.
Luca wasn’t sure where the Hispanic kid had gone off to, so he searched.
No loose ends.
From below, Rose called out, “Stop!”
All at once, Luca’s connection to the crowd was severed.
Screaming started as people reacted to bodies and blood. Luca wasn’t sure if they were aware of their involvement, though judging from the residual emotions he didn’t think so.
Fear and confusion shrouded the crowd as they rushed to flee the pool.
Suddenly, they all stopped, and everything went still.
What’s happening?
“We can’t leave this mess,” Rose said, her voice in his head.
Luca realized that she was controlling the people in the pool. He’d never seen her exact control over more than one person, not without sending a bit of The Darkness inside them.
Luca looked down in the pool, startled to see everyone go under at the same time as if engaging in some sort of breath-holding contest.
He looked down, and the horror hit him. Men, women, and children. Innocents. Rose was planning to drown them all.
“Stop!” he yelled down.
“No, we can’t leave witnesses.”
Luca watched as The Darkness’s tendrils spiraled from her mouth, found the people still outside the pool, grabbed them, knocking them down, forcing its way into their mouths.
“Stop!” Luca cried out. “You can’t kill all these people!”
“I didn’t do it, Luca. You did. By losing control.”
Luca tried to access his own powers, to intervene, but he wasn’t even sure how he’d infiltrated the minds of everyone in the pool to begin with.
Please, stop her, he begged The Darkness.
She’s right, The Darkness said. We can’t leave this many witnesses.
Luca stared down helplessly as the hundreds of lifeless innocents people began to bob in the pool.
He spotted the girl, Ashleigh, whose worry about disappointing her mother he’d shared just moments ago. She was floating, face up, dead eyes wide open, staring at her killer.
Oh my God. I did this.
Two
Edward Keenan
Somewhere in Maine
Ed pulled his pickup into the parking lot of Tom’s General Store, immediately following the early morning crowd’s dispersal. The small lot’s only other vehicle was an old Harley whose best days probably predated Woodstock.
Good, Gary’s working.
He got out, looking up and down the highway one last time before entering the shop, just to make sure no one was coming. The store was smack dab in the middle of nowhere, scabbed on a long stretch of highway with woodlands and nothing in every direction, the nearest town five miles away.
It had been three weeks since shit hit the fan with an infected Sullivan, and Ed had yet to see anything on the news about himself, dead agents, or the murder of Brent’s wife. Still, this offered little comfort.
He still had no idea if Sullivan was alone in his infection and was responsible for the attempts on Ed and Brent’s family or if the director, Bolton, had also been compromise
d. Either way, Ed was certain that the Guardsmen, and all other agencies, were likely in pursuit — to either find out what happened or to silence them.
Either way, Keenan had to stay off the radar.
Ed was done with the agency, done with the Guardsmen, and on his own with no more resources. No one to turn to, and no one for help. He managed to secure one last safe house in Maine where he was lying low with his daughter, Jade, and Teagan, Becca, Brent, and Ben.
The house was well stocked, but Ed found himself trekking into town every few days for supplies — diapers as Becca was nearing two-years old but still refused the potty every time. They also needed fresh milk and other staples that seemed to run dry no matter how much he stocked.
Ed pulled his black cap low, covering his eyes before raking his fingers through his thick beard and pushing his way through the shop door. The bell rattled against the glass, announcing a visitor to Gary, wherever he was. The store belonged to yesterday, a time before clean shops with minimal stock. This shop was crammed so deep that Ed had to wonder if the owner was a hoarder.
Maybe we should’ve just bought this store to hide out in.
As Ed walked the aisles, stuffing his plastic tote full of supplies, Gary came out of the back stock room. The clerk was fifty-something years old with long gray hair and a longer mustache, carrying a box filled with cigarette cartons to stock the shelves behind the front counter.
“Hey, Jack,” Gary said, greeting Ed with his assumed identity.
“Hey,” Ed said, “how’s it goin?”
“Same shit, different day.” Gary ambled toward Ed, on his way to the front.
Ed didn’t care much for the other clerks. They looked at him oddly, as if in suspicion. Gary didn’t seem to give a shit. From their few conversations, Ed could tell that Gary had lived a tough life and wouldn’t annoy his customers with the wrong sorts of questions.
“How’s the wife and kid?”
“Same shit, different day,” Ed joked.
“Ha!”
Gary leaned toward Ed and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Had some folks come in asking questions on Sunday, asking if I’d seen a guy, two girls, and two kids. Showed me a picture.”
“That so?” Ed asked, wondering if he should drop his basket and reach into his jacket to grab his Walther PPK.
“Yeah,” Gary said, looking like he was about to start asking the kinds of questions Ed had hoped that he wouldn’t. “Looked familiar.”
“Yeah? So, what else did he say?”
“He said they were wanted for some serious shit, but wouldn’t tell me what. Asked if I’d seen anyone that fit the description.”
Ed kept calm, watching Gary’s reactions to mine the man’s aim. Gary was good at holding emotions close to his vest.
Is he fishing for information, or wanting me to know that he knows I’m not who I say?
“So, what did you say?” Ed asked, meeting Gary’s eyes.
“I told him to get fucked, that’s what I said, Goddamned government types always up in people’s business.” Gary laughed.
Ed smiled, allowing himself to release the slightest sigh of relief.
Gary continued. “Didn’t look a thing like anyone I knew. For one, the guy was bald. And he certainly didn’t have a beard.”
Ed smiled. Gary was good people, as Ed’s grandpa would’ve said.
“Well, I better go stock these.” He patted the side of box.
“All right,” Ed said. “Thank you.”
“No problem. You let me know if you need any help dealing with pests.”
Ed wasn’t sure what kind of help Gary was offering, but smiled and thanked him just the same.
Ed finished shopping, paid in cash, then went out to his truck, acid boiling his stomach. He looked around, searching for anyone camped out with their eyes on the store.
The woods could be crawling with agents, and Ed wouldn’t be able to see them.
Gary might not have knowingly sold him out, but there was no way of knowing if the man had managed to mask his initial reaction to the photo. If the agents had seen the slightest trace of recognition they’d be on the store, waiting — and now closing in. Like Ed, they were trained to spot lies even from the best liars.
Ed got in his truck, tension twisting his shoulders into knots at his neck. He turned south on the highway rather than north. He stared into his rearview, then chanced a glance at the sky, searching for any sign of being followed by choppers. Of course, they could be tracking him via satellite, and he’d never know it.
Shit.
Ed wondered if the agents in pursuit were only wanting to talk or if they were like Sullivan, infected by aliens and looking to close open loops that might see them discovered.
After a few miles of nothing but logging trucks and the weathered, battered road beasts that normally swallowed this stretch, Ed turned back toward the safe house.
He considered calling the house to see if everyone was OK, but decided against it. While the line was encrypted and he’d installed voice modulation software on his phone as well as Jade’s and Teagan’s, Ed didn’t want to take a single unnecessary risk, especially if agents were closing in on his location.
They’d need somewhere else to go.
Staying in Maine was too risky.
Problem was, Ed had nowhere to run. He’d burned through his money getting this house and had to assume his connections — forgers, weapons suppliers, and the same money guys he’d been using since his agency days — were all compromised if agents had tracked him to Maine.
“Fuck!” Ed slammed his palm into the steering wheel.
He had $6,457 left. He could get some camping gear and equipment then head further north, perhaps into Canada, and do all right. But Ed wasn’t sure how well the others would hold up.
Even though Brent and Ed’s daughter, Jade, were survivors who could be counted on to weather the tough times, he wasn’t so sure about Teagan. She was a child, raising a toddler. Plus Brent had his son, Ben, who was only five.
Ed couldn’t be carting children across creation with the government’s most dangerous black-ops agents in pursuit.
He wished he had some way of knowing if Bolton was compromised. If not, there was a chance Ed could return to Black Island, forge some sort of truce, and maybe get them to leave his family alone.
But if Bolton, or even people above him (who knows how deep the alien’s tentacles had managed to slither?) were infected, Ed would be ensuring his death along with all those he had vowed to protect.
The half-mile long stretch of dirt leading to Ed’s cabin forked from yet another dirt road, blocked by a locked rusty gate that read, No Trespassers!!! and looked like it hadn’t been used in decades. There was no way you’d find the cabin without explicit directions or previous knowledge. Odds of it being accidentally stumbled upon by agents were virtually impossible.
Hunters were a bigger threat, though hunters in these parts weren’t likely to cross the barbed wire or trespassing signs along the property, especially since there was no shortage of game to be had on the neighboring lands.
Ed’s truck bounced violently on the bumpy road as the sky opened to dump rain on his final stretch to the cabin, reducing visibility to maybe ten yards, forcing him to a near crawl.
The slower he went, the more eager Ed was to reach the cabin and make sure everyone was OK, even if he didn’t yet know how to tell the only family he had that they might be compromised and had to leave just as they were getting settled. He wasn’t even sure if he’d tell them of his plan to visit Bolton. Perhaps he’d tell Brent, but Ed was sure Jade would freak out and beg him not to.
That was the last thing he needed. Ed had to keep his head clear and figure out their options.
As he reached the end of the road and the woods thinned to a clearing, Ed noticed a pair of black vans parked in front of the cabin.
Shit!
Ed panicked, not sure if he should back out and make a run for it or get out of the t
ruck and look the piper in his eye. He had to assume that if the agents wanted his friends and family dead, they already were.
Ed paused, still uncertain, and cursed his indecision. He was rusty. Old Ed would know exactly what to do, with a body that moved faster than his mind.
Bright headlights flicked on behind him, likely another black van, barring every thought of retreat.
“Shit.” Ed killed the engine and opened his door.
He stepped out of the truck as the cabin’s front door flew open. Jade came running out, yelling, “Dad!”
Someone — or two someones — grabbed Ed’s arms from behind, injecting him with something before he could turn. He struggled to resist the drug’s effects, and the men holding him, as his daughter screamed.
Ed saw a bag being pulled over his head, then nothing.
Three
Boricio Wolfe
Somewhere in BumFuck, South Carolina
If it hadn’t been for the asshole playing “Friends in Low Places” for the umpteenth time, Boricio might not have found the strength to stand from the bar and get the hell out of the shithole joint before the jolly band of jerk offs started “singing” the song — again.
On the list of worst songs ever made, “Friends in Low Places” had to be Number Fucking One. It was practically an anthem for ignorant hillbilly cousin-fuckers to be blue-ribbon proud of their ignorant hillbilly cousin-fucking ways.
Fuck Garth Brooks for making this piece-of-shit song. Fuck him and fuck his sweat-stained nasty-ass hat.
Boricio stood from his stool and felt the floor swaying beneath him. Despite punishing his liver for three weeks running, not to mention a lifetime of abuse before he met Rose, Boricio was still surprised by his level of inebriation. The world had gone from wavy to what-the-fuck, and that was when anything could happen, and something always did.
Boricio laughed as he made his way to the bathroom, hoping he wouldn’t have to smell too much shit as he pissed before leaving.
Halfway to the crapper, some asshole bumped into Boricio, and nearly sent him to the floor.
