by Barry Napier
But then seeing those gates swing slowly open made it even more triumphant. And when I saw the green army truck approaching the opening from the other side, it made me want to cry. Even before I knew the intent of the two men I could see through the windshield, I felt like we had won.
I had succeeded. I had gotten Kendra and the baby to safety. And even if these men had ill intent, I almost didn’t care. I had gotten us here. Now I could die and be happy.
The truck stopped a few feet ahead of us. Both men hopped out, dressed in military fatigues. They had guns, but they were holstered to their sides. When one of the men gave us a hesitant wave, I could have sworn he looked like Vance.
I felt the world spinning. I was going to pass out, I was sure of it.
Little sparks of light swam like fish in my eyes. I blinked several times and it seemed to wash them away.
But then Kendra reached out and grabbed my hand. She squeezed it softly and I remembered her telling me that she loved me last night. The baby squirmed in my other arm, slapping at my shoulder. I felt the weight of my family with me as we walked towards the truck and the smiling military men that waited to greet us there.
43
“We had just about given up on finding anyone else,” one of the men in fatigues said as they drove us through the gates. The nametag on his uniform read Fields.
The baby seemed fascinated with this new face and was smiling brightly at him. Fields smiled back but I could tell it made him feel awkward.
“Yeah,” his companion said. His nametag read Maxwell. “We haven’t had anyone show up for almost two months.”
“How many people are living here?” I asked.
“Seventy-one members of the military,” Fields said. “Another one hundred and two make up their families. Then there are roughly two hundred civilians.”
Beyond the gates, Fields drove the Jeep a bit further down the highway. The remnants of several old tents littered the roads. Little sings sat in front of each tent, but I could not read what they said. Fields then turned off onto a simple two-lane road that almost immediately started taking winding turns into the Blue Ridge Mountains.
“Are any of the other Safe Zones still in operation?” Kendra asked.
“We lost a few...one in Florida, two in California. But there are eight others that are running smooth. All told, there are a little more than one hundred thousand people living somewhat comfortably in the Safe Zones.”
“That’s great,” Kendra said. My God, the smile on her face was radiant.
The baby agreed with a coo.
Fields wound through two miles of curvy mountain roads before he came to what looked to be a tunnel that had been carved directly out of the side of the mountain. A newer road led us into the tunnel and into the mountain. Within a quarter of a mile, this tunnel opened up wider. We drove down a dimly lit road for about two minutes until the road became a concrete corridor. We came to small guard shack with a mechanical barricade attached. Fields slid his ID card through a slot in the side and the barricade lifted. We drove through this and then the tunnel became an actual roadway.
“Has this always been here?” I asked.
“Since the early 80s. It was a project that was started because of the Cold War. This was a just-in-case sort of thing. All of the Safe Zones were.”
Fields brought the jeep to a T-intersection and took a left. Almost immediately, we came to a small parking lot. Several government vehicles were parked sporadically around the place. It looked normal; it looked secure and safe. Overhead, thin white fluorescent lights lit the scene in a ghostly sort of glow.
I watched this all, still feeling dizzy. Maybe it was just too much to keep track of. On the other hand, the baby was enjoying it. He stared up to the lights with grinning fascination. I looked up, too, and those menacing little pin pricks of not-really-there light interrupted my field of vision again.
Fields parked the jeep and helped us get out. Fields and Maxwell led us to the far end of the parking lot where a thin elevator had been installed in the side of the mountain. It was wide and bulky, but looked impenetrable.
“We have plenty of room,” Maxwell said as we came to the elevator. He slid his ID card into a panel along the side of the elevator and I could hear something mechanical at work within the rock walls. “But before we can give you a room or food, we need to have a physician check you over. I’m sure you understand. There are a lot of radiation threats and other nastiness out there.”
“Of course,” I said.
My voice sounded thick and sluggish. I suddenly felt a little sick, too.
The thought of the baby getting proper medical attention and a healthy diet filled me with joy. It pushed the sickness aside and had me already thinking of spending time with this little boy in warm, secure spaces.
This joy was punctuated with a slight ding noise as the elevator arrived. The doors slid open, warm and inviting. Briefly, those rockets of white and yellow light flickered before my eyes but they were gone as soon as they arrived.
“After you,” Fields said, gesturing us into the elevator.
Kendra stepped on and then I stepped on with the baby.
Only, I didn’t have the baby. And neither did Kendra.
“Kendra, where is—”
I peered into the dark square of the elevator and saw the person standing there in the center of it, waiting for us. Kendra did not see the figure. She stepped in and stood directly beside that other person, oblivious.
The figure beckoned to me and I stepped forward.
Ma smiled at me, her head still shattered, her crooked smile as red and wide as ever.
“After you,” she said.
This time when the white and yellow flickers darted across my eyes, they did not disappear. They grew brighter...larger...
I screamed and stumbled back. And when I turned to look to Fields and Maxwell for help, they were gone.
So was the parking lot and the glorious fluorescents that had dazzled the baby.
The baby, I thought. Where is the baby?
I looked back into the dark square of the elevator and saw that Kendra was gone, too. I was all alone in the dark with this hellish representation of my dead mother.
“It’s okay,” Ma said, reaching out for me.
And like a child with a scraped knee, I went to her, wanting to feel that reassuring motherly touch.
“Stay here with me,” she said.
But the baby, I thought. Where is the baby? Where is Kendra?
“I’m here, Eric.” I could hear her voice but I could not see her. There was only the dark and those damning white and yellow lights, quickly consuming my vision.
“I’m here, Eric. And I love you.”
And then I heard the baby cooing, making little wet throat noises as he babbled in the darkness.. I looked around for him and as I did, I realized that the world seemed to have flipped on its side. I felt like I was flying, reaching out with one hand to stop myself and feeling nothing but the road and—
“No,” I croaked. “No...please ...”
It all sank in then, and that’s when I let it all go.
I wept at the sounds of the content baby, not sure if I would ever see him or Kendra again because I was being pulled away from both of them—towards some deeper, darker place where I felt I had always been meant to go.
There was darkness everywhere, except for those faint flickering white and yellow lights.
And as I focused on them, I could swear the world was getting warmer.
44
My free hand was numb. My voice was shredded from screaming. All of this was knotted into a singular point of pain that pulled me away from a picture of driving deeper into the mountains with Kendra and the baby. Already, as I tried to recall the faces and names of the military men that had acted as our saviors, I came up blank.
It had all been that thin.
I can faintly recall Crazy Mike speaking about his time in the nest. It shows you what you wan
t to see. Those were the exact words he’d spoken as I had been forced into that first nest with him.
It shows you what you want to see.
I looked ahead and saw that the tentacle was pulling me closer and closer to that odd dawn that lurked in the dark pit ahead of me. The cries of the baby grew fainter and fainter until I couldn’t hear them anymore. But there, near the end, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t crying. He was cooing; I’m not sure he was happy, but he was content.
Just before I was pulled into the dark and waiting center of the nest, I got a true scale of the thing that had me in its grip. Pulled closer to its body, it was clearer to me somehow. I saw its true shape, its true size, and I felt like a flea kneeling to worship a mountain.
And then I thought of Kendra. She had not come to my aid after all. She had been caught up elsewhere and had never found the twisted steel that I had believed she’d used to free me. I only hoped that she was with the baby and that she was just as content.
I wondered, dreamlike, if the best had showed Kendra the things her heart most yearned to see. Had I been a part of them?
As I neared that unfathomable darkness, I kept seeing glimpses of the light from within it. It was spectral somehow—cosmic.
The monsters and their secrets came from there. I knew this as surely as I knew that Kendra and I had never made it to Gate AA of the Blue Ridge Safe Zone.
My final thought as I was dragged into the darkness and the light that flickered modestly within it was of the baby.
I would have named him William.
And I would have told him that the darkness claims us all at some point. The trick is to keep your eyes on the light that is trapped within, waiting for us to reach out with trembling fingers to touch it.
That, after all, is exactly what I did as I was pulled inside.
ALSO BY BARRY NAPIER
Dark Water (Cooper M. Reid #1)
Rival Blood (Cooper M. Reid #2)
Dust and Bones (Cooper M. Reid #3)
Eden House (Cooper M. Reid #4) (coming soon)
As Far Away as Possible
Bound
From Below
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About the Author
Barry has had more than 50 short stories and poems featured in print and online publications. He is the author of Bound, Break Every Chain, As Far Away as Possible, and the Cooper M. Reid series. He was also the winner of the 2012 Amazon contest "Write a Dead Man Novel" which awarded him a contract with 47 North to write the 18th installment of Amazon's Dead Man series, Streets of Blood. He also wrote the mobile-based Choose Your Adventure game, Buried, currently available on most gaming platforms.
Barry lives in Lynchburg, VA where he works as a ghostwriter.
Read more at Barry Napier’s site.