by Maxey, Phil
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 averted 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 o
f 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.
The creature in the passenger’s seat looked back to the front.
“You sure you don’t need to rest, or… heal or something before we—”
An orchestra of groans emanated from the creature making Josh and even the driver jolt. The sound then became a single gravelly word…. “No…”
If Josh could have got closer to the rear left door he would have, but his arm on that side was already turning red from how hard he was pushing it into the suede and plastic. He rested his head on the glass, exhaustion suddenly enveloping him. He wasn’t sure what was the last time he slept properly. When Daryl…
His eyes moistened.
He was my friend…
Josh gripped the door handle and squeezed, anger rising inside of him. The plastic creaked and he let go, letting out a breath. He had no idea why the soldier killed all those people, why he killed his friends.
He looked at the single-story wooden homes passing by, their paint chipped planks and infrequently tiled roofs soon fading back into the night. They were out of the city now, the glass and steel towers far behind, the surrounding area, more rural with hints of beige fields on the right of the two-lane road.
Leaving home…
He wondered where his parents were. Had they found his sister? Could they be out there somewhere still?
He frowned with a sigh. Even if they were, even if they somehow found him, how could they rescue him from…
Dark shapes were gliding below the clouds. It was the creatures, he was sure of it. They were returning to them. He had almost forgotten about the other monsters. The ones that used to be normal people, the ones that had devoured their way across the country.
A noise came from the thing in the passenger’s seat. If Josh didn’t know any better he would have said it was the sound of excitement.
They took a right, driving up a road which dissected abandoned warehouses and homes with metal fences, arriving at the end where a large, modern white building sat. Screeches and roars filled the air.
Josh wanted to jump out and run. If the door wasn’t locked he would have done so, but instead he did his best not to look at what existed within the glow of the headlights, sat across the muddy ground, between the infrequent old buildings, across—
The thing in the front threw his hands up in the air, as if in celebration and in turn the noise outside increased. “Ssssttttoooppp!” bellowed from decayed lips.
Finn looked at his passenger. “I thought we were in a rush to get south?”
The creature turned his head slowly, without further comment.
Josh couldn’t see but he was sure the man driving frowned and the car slowed then stopped. The creature then pushed open the door and awkwardly got out, immediately raising his hands again and the brown and beige masses of awkward limbs emerged from the darkness, moving towards him, roaring, screeching, lifting their own claws into the air. Josh couldn’t believe what he was seeing, the things were accumulating in their dozens, around whatever the passenger was as if he were their leader… or something.
A grunt came from the man in the front, pulling Josh’s attention from the madness outside. Whoever the soldier was, he didn’t seem happy.
*****
5: 28 p.m. Outskirts of Southeastern Denver.
The metal staircase clanged and rattled as Luci and Millar pushed their legs to race to the top. They weren’t sure if it would lead to the roof of the cavernous warehouse, but they needed to find out as quickly as possible in case the car they had just followed to the motherload of monsters, drove off. A scout had seen it emerge from Biochron and a few minutes later they were in a pickup, driving east trying to locate it, which they soon did.
Luci held her fist up as they came to a small landing, a metal ladder visible within her flashlight’s beam. The roars and growls of the things outside reverberated through the walls, leaving them in no doubt that death was only a few walls away. They moved forward slowly, then looked upwards to a hatch. Without hesitation she climbed, the other soldier behind her and slowly slid the latch across on the metal door, then pushed it up. A snowflake fluttered through the gap as did a stench. Lifting it further she climbed out onto the slope of the metal roof, crouching behind an air con unit, and looked out across the few acres of graveyard which was bathed in moonlight. The stones were easy to spot but harder were the dark shapes amongst the patches of grass. The things were congregating, all moving steadily towards an area below her view.
She switched her flashlight off and without exchanging a word they walked forward as quietly as walking on a metal surface would allow until they reached a point where they could see the twenty or so feet to the ground and the road which ran along the side of the building. A sedan sat at the center of a swarm so thick it looked like a swirling oily liquid.
“What the hell…” said Miller.
Luci had already produced a small set of binoculars from her backpack and focused them on the vehicle. “Too damn… dark… Looks like two… nope, three occupants… Damn…”
“What?” said Miller.
“I think there’s a kid in back.”
Miller scrunched his face. “Why is there a kid in the middle of a monster convention
?” He looked down the iron sight of his weapon, focusing on the things that were visible within the arc of the headlights, moving from the head of one amalgamation of misshapen body parts to another. “No way we can do an extraction. There must be a few hundred of them down there… and these seem real excited about something.”
The car door opened and out clambered… Luci wasn’t sure what it was. It was human shaped and similar in size, but even lit by the light from the cabin of the car, its features were blurred. Its arms hung from an assortment of rags which covered most but not all of its lumps and angular forms and it appeared to stand with some effort. Despite that, it raised its arms and bellowed out words which were more grunt and roar than language. The crowed of things instantly quietened which was the most shocking thing the two watching soldiers had seen so far.
“What is it saying?” said Luci.
“Hell if I know. I don’t talk freak.”
Luci shook her head. “Poor kid…”
He glanced at her. “I know what you’re thinking, but don’t. We go in guns blazing, those things tear us apart before we get near the car. Best thing we can…”
She looked at him, but he wasn’t looking down anymore but past her to her left.
“Hand me the eyepieces.” She did and he immediately slid the view across the dark forms of the landscape then highway, resting on a small nondescript shape sat atop the highest point of the road a few miles off.
Luci looked in the same direction but couldn’t make out anything of interest. “What?”
Miller waited and then he saw it. A small spark of light or perhaps a reflection of something moving. “Something or someone’s on that overpass.”