by Phil Maxey
Caroline then pointed to the blonde haired woman. “This is Esther, and…” before she could finish, the elderly man, stepped forward slightly limping with one hand on a walking cane. “And I’m Travis.”
Travis gave a brief smile. “General Trow told us that there was a second much smaller group that left Portland, I guess you are it.”
Zach stepped forward with his hand out, which Travis shook. “We are. I’m Zach,” he smiled, and quickly introduced those around him.
“Okay then, please make yourself at home, find space where you can. Are you hungry? We don’t have a lot of supplies but we have sufficient to feed each of you a little.”
“We have food in the vehicles outside, we can get that stuff in the morning, but for now, sure that would be great.”
The group started to spread out. The kids excitedly ran and sat around a small Christmas tree with lights and ornaments.
As the children laughed and played, Zach, Abbey, Caroline and Travis watched, enjoying the scene of a tradition that seemed would never have a place again in this new world.
It was Travis that broke the spell. “How’s the journey been from Portland?” as he spoke he led them back to his desk area, where he sat in an old wooden chair. Zach and Abbey sat in front on two upturned wooden crates.
“Easier than the journey to Portland,” Zach smiled.
Esther approached them with a silver jug that was steaming. “Does anyone want coffee?”
“You have coffee?” said Abbey excitedly.
“Yes, we brought the equipment down here from the small café that was upstairs.”
“I would love some!”
Zach also happily agreed. Esther looked at Travis, but he smiled and said no.
She moved off a short distance to one of the many metal-shelving racks, and plucked some brightly colored mugs and returned. She then quickly poured the hot brown liquid out, and Zach and Abbey started blowing on their bounty to be able to sip as soon as they could.
“How long have you been down here?” said Abbey between puffs.
“About three months now.”
“How did you end up here? A museum isn’t the first place that comes to mind when you need protection from monsters.”
Travis gave a brief laugh. “Well yes indeed. I was the head of science here. I live locally…” he paused for a moment seemingly lost in thought and then continued. “I lived in the suburbs with my wife, have done for many years. When the area started being attacked, we waited in our homes, like I think most people did. Waited to be given guidance on what was happening to this beautiful world of ours,” the last few words came out with a tinge of anger Zach thought. “After a few weeks of watching our neighbors pack up and leave, we felt we needed to do the same.”
Abbey finally managed to take a sip of her coffee. “The army never came?”
“Not in those early few weeks no. By the time they did make an appearance, the E.L.F’s were tearing the city apart and they were pretty ineffectual in putting a stop to it,” again his voice trailed off. Standing while leaning on his cane, he continued. “The lovely home we had lived together in, had to be left behind, but where to go?”
Zach and Abbey weren’t sure if they were meant to answer, but Travis continued.
“When we were still befuddled of our destination, Caroline called and told us that her and a few others were coming here to the museum. At first it seemed an insane idea, but then of course I thought about the building itself and how securely it was built and it seemed the perfect location to try and ride out this storm of nature. We have been here ever since.”
Abbey’s brain resisted the question she was about to ask, but the words fell out of her mouth anyway. “Your wife is here?”
Travis sighed. “I’m afraid not. We were out on a supply run a few days after we first started settling in here, and one of the E.L.F’s… well she was killed.”
Abbey looked down into her coffee, feeling ashamed to have asked a question with an obvious answer. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“We have all lost people.”
Zach took the lull as an opportunity to take the conversation in a different direction. “Do you have any information on the large convoy?”
“Not much, the General just told me that they were taking heavy losses.”
The news of the hardship the other convoy was taking hit Zach with a thump in his stomach. I could have saved those people, he can’t be allowed to live.
Abbey noticed Zach was having an internal conversation with himself, so took over. “Do you know roughly where they are?”
“Trow said they are in southern Nevada.”
Zach’s mind returned to where he was. “So they are behind schedule?”
By now Travis was realizing there was something more going on with these questions than just finding out the state of the others. “I really don’t know. How long do you intend to stay here before continuing your journey back to the camp?”
“We just need to rest up for the night, then we should be moving out tomorrow. What’s the situation like in the city currently? I saw a lot of large stores and a sign for malls in the area, have they been emptied out?”
Abbey suppressed her surprise at the urgency of moving everyone on so quickly.
“As you may or may not know, E.L.F’s are like the creatures they have replaced in the regards that they need food, which mostly has been made up of humans until now, and water which they are getting from lakes and rivers. We have a major river to our north, which I believe you passed over. There has been a lot of creature activity along that river, but because it is deep within a canyon, mostly they stick down there and don’t come up into the city… well apart from the flying ones of course… Tell me, what other survivors have you found?”
“There are some. We have just come from a small community near Mt. Hood, they seemed to be doing okay. Do you plan on staying here? If you are just the few we have met already, we have room to take you back with us. The camp near Austin is the last of its kind, if humanities going to survive anywhere it’s going to be there.”
Travis sighed, his mind seeming mulling over the options. “My instincts are for us to stay, we are surviving here, but it’s not solely my decision, I’ll let you know.”
Abbey looked disappointedly into her mug, Travis laughed. “Don’t worry, we have plenty of coffee. As for the state of the nearby stores, as far as we know they are still stocked. There wasn’t much time for people to make a run on food, the Cascade took everyone by surprise.”
“Not everyone,” Corey stood a few feet behind Zach, his blue flannel shirt hanging over his stomach and jeans. “We don’t have enough bedding for everyone.”
Travis looked as if a small child had just broken his favorite possession. “Look in the storage rooms, there should be more in there.” Corey nodded and disappeared further into the large room, walking between tightly packed racks of shelves into well lit areas beyond. “Corey was our on sight engineer, it was his idea for all of us to come here, as he practically lived down here anyway. If you’re wondering how safe we are down here, I can tell you very safe. Apart from the building above our heads being almost impenetrable, there’s only one way in and out of this basement and that’s the way you came. It was partially built as a vault to protect the museum’s valuable items. Because of that we have a room, perhaps there will be time to show you later, that allows us to monitor the museum above and the outside.”
“What do you do for electricity and water?” said Zach putting his coffee down.
“The museum run’s on its own generator, it also has cold storage, which originally was used for samples now it’s where our food goes… water is a problem. There are streams, which run through the town, but they are not clean enough to drink so we have to forage, and as you probably know that’s not a safe endeavor. We currently have enough to last a few weeks. I apologize if any of us don’t smell too good!”
Zach smiled. “All I smell is the
coffee.”
“Okay, I’m sure you are both very tired. Sleep wherever you want. We can make up some beds on the floor near the tree if the children would prefer that, for the rest of you, there is more space at the back of this room. Corey should be back soon with some more blankets. I will be here at this desk, or in my sleeping area in that direction,” he pointed over his shoulder, “Wake me if you need anything.”
Zach stood. “Actually I wouldn’t mind seeing that surveillance you mentioned.”
“Sure, follow me.”
Zach followed Travis in the same direction that Corey went, while Abbey returned to where Fiona, Cal, Mary, Irene and most of the kids were sitting.
Corey emerged once more from the gaps in the shelves weighed down with multicolored sheets, dumping them on the floor near the brightly decorated tree. “Here you go.”
The kids started yelling and pulling the sheets, Mary’s expression changed to one of disapproval and they sat back.
Travis slid between the cold metal rivets and shelving without resistance, but Zach had to untangle himself a few times until he emerged on the other side. This was similar to the area he had just come from, but here the storage racks had less shelves.
Travis smiled. “Once you remove one or two of their shelves, these racks make surprisingly good beds,” his attention then turned to a small room, behind them on their left. Pushing it open, they walked into a space around ten by ten feet, with a wall of computer equipment and another wall of monitors. The images on them, kept switching after a few seconds.
Travis leaned on the back of a well-worn chair. “This is our security room. A good friend of mine called Mike Dandridge used to work down here. Twenty-three years he sat in this very spot looking at these screens, and I don’t think he had one burglary or act of vandalism to deal with.”
Zach went to say something then stopped.
“You want to know what happened to him? Honestly I don’t know, anyway as you can see, these feeds watch each room of the museum and the surrounding grounds.”
A part of Zach didn’t want to watch the exterior view, if there was something out there he would rather not know. The buses and the Humvee popped into view for a few seconds before the scene switched to one of a quiet grass area with a bench.
“We take turns to keep an eye on things,” Travis then leaned in to whisper, “but Corey is in here the most and we are happy for him to be.”
Zach got the impression that the four of them living down here for all this time was starting to cause friction.
Cal sat with his back against a smooth concrete wall with only the occasional ground out hole or impression. He had hoped that after he purged the insane visions that had plagued him for over a week, Fiona would treat him differently, but if anything she was treating him with more caution than before. You killed a man. “I know!” the words escaped his throat and were free before he could pull them back and now he was sitting with most in the small sleeping area looking at him. Their curiosity only lasted a few seconds though before they returned to their previous state. He tried not to look at Fiona who was sitting next to him. She put her hand on his. He wanted to pull his hand away, he wasn’t disabled, he didn’t need special help, but the warmth of her touch calmed something inside of him that he was thankful for regardless.
Before she could ask he spoke. “I’m okay, just need to get some sleep,” he feigned a smile, before placing his backpack behind his head and sliding lower to try to achieve some kind of sleeping position. His hand automatically slid out of hers.
Zach left the room of monitors and returned to the area where the rest of the group were situated. Cal’s eyes were closed, and Fiona’s looked soon to be the same. Most of the kids where under an assortment of blankets making the area near the tree look like one large bed. Faith and her daughter shared the sofa with Hanna and Megan. Rob and Tyler were close to the door where they came in, with their jackets being used as pillows. The others were using any available floor space they could.
For a moment Zach couldn’t see where Abbey had got too, but then he spotted some more blankets behind the sofa and walked around finding Abbey lying under a large flimsy looking dark blue sheet with a number of moth holes.
He lowered himself to the floor and awkwardly slid under the blanket, which was already warm by Abbey’s body heat. He lay there looking at the tiny Christmas lights that permeated the area when his mind gave up resisting sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Zach sat with his back up against the exhibition stand. The mammoth’s huge tusks forming a natural alcove above his head. He had slept for a few hours, and then his mind wouldn’t shut off. Taking one of the candles they seemed to have plenty of, he excused himself from the basement and retraced his steps back up into the museum. Up here in the reverberant halls and galleries he felt he could reflect on what he had to do, and how he could do it. The cold that hung in the air had other ideas, and his single candle, and jacket weren’t providing warmth to allow his mind to settle long enough, for him to formulate a plan.
He swigged from his water bottle like it was something much more potent and looked across at the glass cabinet’s opposite him, and that lined the small room at intervals. The pots and fabrics hinted at exotic creatures and a life not that much different from the world he was now surviving in. Humankind was just one of many creatures that had a right to the earth, and there survival was never guaranteed. Perhaps we can live in harmony with these things as well.
Downstairs Abbey woke abruptly and instantly grabbed to her side for Zach, who wasn’t there. She sat up and looked around, but he wasn’t anywhere around her. Drowsiness started to kick back in but her heartbeat was in disagreement and she got to her knees and then stood up and looked over the sofa. He wasn’t there either. A slight draft hit her neck and she turned looking at the door to the corridor. Walking to it, she pulled the door wider, and took a quick glance at everyone sleeping and noticed a dim neon light emanating from the room that Zach had briefly told her about. She then walked into the corridor pulling the door closed, and followed the primary colored lights back upstairs to the museum floor. It wasn’t difficult to see where Zach was by the flickering shadows produced by his candle.
She walked across the solid floor, her boots making a knocking noise despite her attempts to dull the sound and entered the ancient items gallery. Zach was sitting on the floor lost in his own thoughts. He looked up at her and gave a tired smile. “Couldn’t sleep either?”
Abbey smiled back. “Got a few hours, no idea what time it is.”
Zach looked at his radio. “Just gone 3 am.”
She looked up at the Mammoth. “I always loved Mammoths as a child. Makes you think that maybe these E.L.F’s are not as strange as we think, it’s just the change was sudden, not something that happened over millions of years.”
“Yeah.”
“Was there anything specific that stopped you from sleeping?” she asked tentatively while sitting next to him.
“Just got a lot on my mind.”
“Makes me angry thinking about the other convoy, we could have helped them.”
Zach’s faced contorted, but he remained silent.
“You can talk to me, about anything. I’ve gotten the feeling over the last few days that there’s something you’re not telling me, something that happened in the Portland camp?”
Zach’s face tightened and grew red, his brow lowered until his eyes became afterthoughts, and he started shaking.
Abbey put her hand on his shoulder with concern. “What is it?”
“It was him! He did it! He has to pay!” Zach’s words burst out of him with such force that Abbey jumped back.
Noticing tears were running down his cheeks, she moved back in and held his hands, which seemed locked in anguish. “Who?”
Zach looked at her with the eyes of a child. “Tinley… he killed my family.”
“What?” Abbey’s question was one filled with confusion. “I don�
�t understand, the guy who was in charge of the Portland camp, how?” her words felt inappropriate and intrusive but the sheer absurdity of what Zach had just told her needed some explanation.
“Remember I told you that I was investigating the murders of the local girls in different towns? And that I thought it was an officer doing it?”
“You think it’s him?” Abbey’s words emanated from her, still shrouded in shock.
“He was the officer I thought was doing it. All my evidence led back to him. He was in his thirties at the time, and traveled from base to base. He was the only person I could find that was in the bases when the murders took place nearby.”
Abbey sat back, as her mind tried to incorporate this surreal information into her worldview.
“It was shortly after I visited the base where he was stationed, that what happened, happened to my family.”
“Does he know you know?” she asked, and then continued without getting an answer. “But he’s in charge of all those people, and he’s a murderer… and many of them are dying and…”
It was now Zach’s turn to be the comforter, and pulled Abbey into his chest.
After a short while, he cleared his throat. “I’m going to kill him.”
Abbey sat up. “How? He’s got an army protecting him.” Her voice trembled slightly. “Zach, you will die, we, I need…”
“Abbey, he has to be stopped, if he makes it back to Bravo, even with only half of the people, he will spin it as a victory, and he will be second in command only to Trow.”
Abbey swallowed, and wiped away at the wetness on her face. Tinley’s smug face boiled up from her subconscious, and anger grew inside her. She wanted to harm him too, but the task seemed impossible.
She looked back at Zach. “We will find a way. But right now we need to return downstairs, we need sleep for what comes next.”
Zach nodded and they got to their feet and returned as quietly as they could.
*****
Fiona’s legs dangled over a precipice. Below were tentacles. Thousands of them flailing in an oily blackness that had no end. She tried to pull herself up, and by doing so, she slipped further over the edge. Her legs scrambled to take hold on the ledge, but they just scrapped around causing dust to fall. She tried not to look down, tried not to accept her fate. She wouldn’t give up. She looked at her arm, and it was a tentacle, one that was now turning on her, sliding around her neck.