by S E Lunsford
“I hadn’t actually gotten that far with thinking about what you can do,” I said.
“We did,” she cut me off. “We tried, you know on our mom. Our dad, he was already gone. We didn’t know where, but mom, she knew she wasn’t feeling well, so she locked herself in her room, told us to take the car and run, told the boys,” she stopped her voice thickening as tears began to gather in the corner of her eyes.
Moving closer I put my arm around her. “You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do because you have to know,” she interrupted me, blinking rapidly before straightening her shoulders and taking a deep breath. “You know about me,” she said in an undertone. “So, you should know that I can’t, I mean I just can’t.”
“It’s okay, no one’s asking you to,” I said ruffling her hair and wondering what exactly happened when she tried to heal their mom. No wonder they thought it wasn’t a disease, but Chris hadn’t said it wasn’t a disease, he said it was that and something more. My mind folded over that thought as I held Rosalie closer to my side, and glanced over her head at Cassie, who looked back at me with questioning eyes.
I knew my friend wouldn’t have missed any part of that conversation. I also knew that since Rosalie healed her, she would figure out what Rosalie had insinuated that she had tried to heal her mom and couldn’t. Cassie shivered, not from the cold, but from whatever pictures her mind was conjuring up about what had gone on with Rosalie and her brothers as they tried to save their mother.
I also knew it wasn’t lost on her that somehow their mother had figured out she was going to change, and had voluntarily locked herself up and told her children to run in order to protect them. That was something I had never heard of before. And, if that was the case with their mother, it wasn’t too far of a stretch that my Aunt on some level far beyond and underneath what she had become, might have known me when she saw me. And maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t trying to eat me or infect me when she was pounding on the car window but was trying to give me her ring to let me know that underneath it all, she was still herself.
I shuddered to think that if that was the case, how many of the other creepers were trapped in their own bodies. That somehow deep inside their selves they still had an awareness of who they used to be. Just the thought of it made my stomach turn, causing the oats and raisins in the granola bar I had eaten to turn on each other.
“I don’t think so Dani,” Cassie said staring at me intently. I should have guessed she would know where my thoughts would go. “I think most of them are gone, they’re just gone.” Her voice trailed off as she looked into the darkening trees.
I followed her gaze, taking a deep breath and stopped. A tangy scent that was out of place rode the air.
“What is it?” Cassie asked, stopping to look around as we both reached into our packs for our pistols.
Rosalie made a little clicking noise with her tongue and all her brothers were armed in less than a second. Chris and Robert kept walking quietly seemingly unaware of any change.
“What is it?” Cassie repeated.
Shaking my head, I took a slow step forward. “It’s the air, it doesn’t smell right.”
“Creeper?” she whispered, as Rosalie grasped the back of my hoodie.
“No, something else,” just as the words fell from my lips, I lost sight of both Robert and Chris around a particularly large tree.
Edward was about to follow when he did an about face, his face pale. “Run,” he rasped as something large came around the tree after him.
Grabbing Rosalie’s hand, I dove to me left hoping that Cassie would follow as we crashed through the underbrush. I could hear the others as they went in other directions in the forest, with whatever was after us following their direction and not ours. The sound of it got fainter the farther we ran away.
The brush tore at my hoodie and arms making me bleed as I hacked our way through it as best I could. Rosalie’s heavy breathing was the only thing I heard for a moment and I thought somehow we’d lost Cassie before I realized they were actually breathing in unison which struck my as funny. A harsh laugh escaped from my throat.
“You’ve finally lost it,” Cassie said from behind Rosalie.
I shook my head as we slowed down and stopped. The silence of the forest greeted us as we strained our ears to hear anything.
“You smell anything?” Cassie asked, her eyes flitting from one direction to another as we stood our feet sinking slightly in the loamy forest floor. I was so thankful to have whole shoes at that moment. I didn’t even want to imagine what it would be like to sink into the soil in the shoes I’d worn holes into as we walked from Arizona.
“No,” I whispered.
“So, no creepers?”
“No,” I shook my head as my eyes darted around. “What was that thing? Did you get a good look at it?”
“It was really big,” Rosalie said, her eyes looking especially big in the dim light.
“I know, but it wasn’t a creeper.”
“I hope everybody got away,” Rosalie whispered.
I just nodded, I couldn’t promise something like that.
“Me too,” Cassie said. “I wonder why Chris or Robert didn’t say anything?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But, we’d better get moving towards somewhere that’s slightly safe for tonight because full nightfall is going to be here in, well, really fast.”
We all looked up at the dusky sky that we knew was going to flip to full darkness fast.
“Maybe we should just go into the trees now,” Rosalie said.
“She’s got a point,” Cassie said. “If we get high enough maybe we can see something.”
Looking at the trees, there was no way that any of us could climb them. Let alone get to the top to see anything.
“Why don’t we walk a little ways and find trees that we can actually get into?” I asked.
“Which way do you think we should go?”
I sighed. “North, that seems like the most logical way.”
“Yeah, then maybe we can find the safe house,” Rosalie commented. “And north is that way, because the sun is going down over there and that’s west, and east is where it came up over there, so it has to be that way.” She pointed as she spoke as if what she said made perfect sense. Glancing at Cassie she shrugged, before we silently began to make our way towards the direction Rosalie pointed.
The shadows grew from gray to a darker gray when we stopped at a grouping of trees that looked like we could access them.
“Come on,” Cassie said as she began to shimmy up one. “We need to get high enough up so that we can’t be seen from the ground.”
"You're kidding right? I had no idea," I sassed her as she took a moment to look down at me and roll her eyes.
Hoisting Rosalie up behind her, I glanced over my shoulder, narrowing my eyes to make sure there was nothing in the shadows. Nothing moved. By the time I’d reached where they were, Rosalie was high enough up that she was settled onto a large tree limb. I pulled myself up until I was sitting next to her. Putting her finger to her mouth she pointed upwards.
Cassie was far above us already. She had always been a natural climber. When we were kids, she was able to scale the monkey bars like nobody’s business, and now that talent was being put to good use.
“You hungry?” I asked, turning toward Rosalie, and being reminded of how small a girl she was as she sat still as could be looking out over the forest.
She nodded as I fished around and found a granola bar and a bottle of water we could share. I didn’t even have to say anything about conserving our food and water, Rosalie just assumed and accepted that we were only going to get a few bites and sips of water.
The breeze brushed through the trees causing the leaves to dance a little. Rosalie wrapped her arms around herself as we waited for Cassie to come back down. She was so silent up there that if I didn’t know she was there, I would have never guessed anyone was above us.
Pulling Rosali
e closer to me, I unzipped my hoodie pulling her into it with me then zipping it up around us.
Suddenly Cassie was next to us, settling onto the tree limb around the trunk from ours.
“You see anything?” I whispered.
“There’s an open space not too far north of here,” she whispered back. “There’s big lights and everything.”
“Electricity?” I asked.
“Yeah, big industrial lights. It looks like they’ve got quite the encampment, and it looks like it may be near the place where Robert was taking us.”
We all went silent as that bit of information sunk in.
“Well, the electricity isn’t that rare,” I commented.
“Rare enough,” was Cassie’s response.
When the angels came, one of the first things they did after people started to get antsy about them was to slowly cut back on everyone’s electricity until they finally shut it down all together. It made it way harder for us to communicate with each other. The weird thing was, if they wanted who was left of us to know something, the electricity would magically come back on. Streets would light up, televisions would broadcast, radios would turn on and even dead cell phones would come back to life all to broadcast a message that they wanted us to hear. As soon as we figured out the cell phones could be brought back to life, we ditched them. The last thing we needed was to be found by the angels. We heard horror stories of people who had clung to them, been found, and taken to who knows where only to reappear as creepers not much later.
“Did it look like there were a lot of people there?”
“Kind of,” Cassie said. “But it was hard to see.” She sighed. “I guess I just have to climb up there early in the morning to see what’s going on.”
I nodded even though I knew she couldn’t really see me in the growing darkness. “We’re going to have to strap ourselves to the tree limbs, the last thing we need is to fall down.”
“Yeah, I know,” Cassie replied.
Reaching into my pack I found the rope we needed before settling back again the tree trunk with Rosalie scooting over with me, as I wound it around us and the tree trunk until it was secure. Cassie’s rope rustled softly as she secured herself to the other side of the tree trunk. Sighing I realized how easily we were about to secure ourselves into a tree, secure in the knowledge that it at saved us many times. But, that didn’t mean that I liked it. I resigned myself to sleeping half sitting up.
“Wanta watch?” Cassie’s voice floated over after we had all settled in.
“Do you think we need to?” I answered, looking up at the clear sky that peeked through the branches before glancing down to the ground that was totally obscured by the branches below us.
“Not really,” she answered. I could tell from her reply that she was looking down like me.
I tucked my fingers into the sleeves of my hoodie as the temperature dropped. Rosalie stayed curled up against me, her breathing uneven as we waited for sleep to come, or the night to end, whichever came first.
Stars peeked through the branches above us as I wondered where everyone else ended up. They could be in the trees like we were, or something else. I shuddered to think what that creature could do if it found them. I hadn’t really seen it but sensed how big it was and how different it was from the creepers. It didn’t smell of decay, it smelt of something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Looking up and seeing those stars, their light looking just like it had from the time I was little, it was easy to believe that somewhere out there things weren’t as dire as they were here.
When I was small I used lean out of my bedroom window at night when my parents thought I was asleep and think of my cousin in England. I would wonder if she was looking at the same stars that I was, just on the other side of the world. As I grew older and learned how the earth turned, I knew there was no way we were looking at the same stars at the same time, but I would still wonder if maybe we saw the same stars just at different time. Thinking like that always made me feel as though I might be a little closer to her.
My thoughts drifted to Chris. Looking at one particularly bright star, I wondered if he could see it and if he could, if by some chance, he was thinking of me too. Since I’d met him, he always seemed to be near when I needed him to be, which made me more than slightly uncomfortable. This was not only because I didn’t like the idea of needing someone to get me out of a jam, but also because my heart rate seemed to double when he was around, which was not a good thing since my heart was already beating out of my chest every time I ended up having to fight anything.
“Do you think we’ll find them?” Rosalie interrupted my thoughts, her voice no more than a breath.
“I’m thinking we have a pretty good chance of finding them,” I answered patting her on the back, and wondering where my own confidence in my answer came from. “I don’t think they’re going anywhere if they don’t know where we are.”
She nodded, staying silent until she began to breath at an even pace as sleep overcame her. I found myself matching my breaths to hers and began to drift off.
“So, you think they’re around here?” A man’s voice floated up from the ground jolting me fully awake. I froze, feeling Rosalie breathing evenly next to me. Even though my mouth felt dry, I tried not to swallow, straining to hear if the man would say anything else. Cassie was too quiet on her side of the tree, so I knew that she was all ears trying to hear what was going on below us just like I was.
“Of course, they’re still around here,” another man rasped back irritation clear in his voice. “There’s no way they could have gone very far. We just got to find them before we go back.”
“Did you see how they all came out of that bunker?” Another voice said. “They were like rats leaving a sinking ship, so much for the renowned loyalty of John’s men.”
“Yeah, they ran in all directions,” answered the rasping voice.
If I only counted the voices, so far there were three men down there. I took a deep breath my nose wrinkling as the acidy smell of fear rose through the smell of the sweat and greasy hair of the men below us. Each of them had a slightly different smell to them, so I figured there were at least a couple more. At least five of them. A rhythmic scratching sound from Cassie caught my ear before stopping abruptly telling me that she figured there were five too.
“Yep, then ran again when they saw it,” they laughed at that comment, then grew quiet.
“Too bad they can’t train it to do something useful,” said the first guy who spoke.
“Like what?” Replied another.
“Like not shred people we’re trying to catch alive,” said raspy voice.
Rosalie went still as she woke, hearing the men below us. I patted her on the back to let her know I was awake too.
“It sure would be a lot easier if they let us communicate with each other while we’re all looking around, then we’ll know who’s caught who and when we can stop looking,” raspy voice said.
The others went silent at the thought.
“Maybe the boss will be able to work something out,” said a heavy voice that until then had been silent. “But for now, we assume that no one has caught anyone but the first two, we keep looking and we bring the rest of them in alive.”
Their words bounced around my mind as they quietly made their way further into the forest, their footsteps receding as they disappeared from hearing. Somehow the men who were searching the forest had managed to capture two people, maybe two of our group. If that was so, then the question was, which two, and where were they keeping them? My mind skittered away from the question of whether they were actually keeping them anywhere at all.
“You think they meant two of us or two of everyone that came out?” Cassie whispered.
“Of us,” Rosalie answered knowingly and just as quietly while I mulled the question over in silence.
The early morning hours stretched out as the cold continued to creep in underneath our clothes. Cassie would move restlessly every
once in a while. I knew she was itching to climb back up the tree to find out what was going on, but there was no point in the darkness. Finally, a sliver of blue rose from the east, and she began to unlatch herself from the tree.
As she scrambled up, Rosalie and I sat up on the branch stretching as much as we were able. My hands and feet were numb from the cold. Flexing my fingers and toes, I did what I could to get the blood moving back through them
“Here,” Rosalie whispered holding out her hands to me. Putting my hands into hers I immediately felt a slight heat as feeling and warmth flowed through them.
“Thanks,” I said. “That can come in pretty handy.
“I know,” she said smiling back at me. “Are there anymore granola bars left?”
I fished around in my pack until I came up with one that was squashed but somewhat still in the shape of a bar. I handed it to her watching as she took delicate bites of it even though she must have been starving. We’d all learned to handle our hunger in different ways since the change came, some people I’d seen would tear into any food they could find, while others insisted that they maintain some semblance of civility as they ate. Obviously, Rosalie was in the second camp. I stopped myself as I tore into a piece of jerky, apparently I was in the first camp.
Cassie shimmed down the tree without knocking down leaves or even moving branches at all. The fact that she could climb trees of any sort without any sort of telltale movement of a leaf or branch always amazed me.
“So?” I asked as she got settled and began eating a piece of jerky I handed to her.
“Still big,” she said around chewing. “It backs up to a steep hill that looks as though an underground bunker could be built in it. So, I think that’s where Robert was taking us.”
“How many of them are there?” I asked.
“A lot. There are angels there too, as well as huge crates and creepers in cages.”
“Cages?” Both Rosalie and I exclaimed.
Cassie nodded. “Yeah I know it sounds really weird, but there they were.”
“How many?” I could hardly wrap my head around the fact that they were caging up the creepers.