by Angela White
“You won’t keep me from my boy, Kenny! That was the old world. Things have changed, and you’re the one who should be careful!” She sucked in a breath as he screamed obscenities, then overpowered him with her anger. The words blasted out in a furious snarl. “If anything happens to my boy because you didn’t listen, there won’t be a place on this fucking planet that you can hide from me!” she slammed the door before he could respond in kind.
“He’s in a good mood,” Angela said with a shaky smile, forcing her demon back.
Marc’s voice and eyes were hard. “I won’t let him hurt you or the boy. I’ll protect you. My word on it.”
Angela turned away as her heart continued to thump. That was the first time in over a decade she had stood up to Kenny so openly. There would be a payment for it.
“You can’t promise that. You think you know what you’re up against, but you don’t. He’s a violent, trained killer, and in the end, someone’s blood will spill.”
“His, not yours,” Marc stated flatly and she shook her head, hating it that he was thinking of murder again.
“Please don’t, Brady. It’s on my hands if you kill him, and it would destroy me as sure as losing my boy would. My freedom’s not worth another life. I need you to swear to me that you won’t.”
“I can’t. You don’t deserve to be treated that way, and I won’t just sit by and watch.”
“I’ll figure something out. For now, you think we can stay here until the storm’s gone?”
He sighed at her obvious distraction, looking around as he ran a hand over neck-length black waves in frustration. Wasn’t he getting to her at all?
“Sometimes too much.”
He flinched guiltily, and she waved a hand. “Well?”
“I don’t know. Let’s have a look around and we’ll decide.” Marc let it go, didn’t tell her he could make it look like an accident and not feel any guilt. He too, was a violent, trained killer.
“Dog, in.” Marc closed the door behind the big animal, not wanting him to get distracted by things blowing in the heavy wind and run off into the storm.
“Guns and light. Move out,” he ordered, thinking if he decided to handle her man that way, Angie would never know. He’d lock it up so tight, even he wouldn’t be able to access the memory.
3
A few minutes later they were on the upper balcony, the ghostly smell of popcorn and butter that still haunted the stale air, almost covered by the fishy rot blowing in through the broken glass doors with the rain.
“Wanna watch a movie while we wait?”
Angela smiled sadly. She hadn’t been to a movie since Charlie was a baby and kept herself from saying it only by looking at the poster for A Miracle on 34th Street, trading one pain for another. “You know how?”
Marc listened harder, fighting the urge to find a room with a window. “Think so. Just have to find the generators, add some gas.”
Angela was reading movie posters, ignoring the unease of her stomach. After the morning they'd had, that was to be expected. “Okay. How about The Shadows of Fate? I loved The Chronicles of Riddick.”
Marc grinned, feeling unworthy of her beauty with his long hair and unshaven face. “You just like Vin Diesel.”
Angela laughed at his joking accusation, eyes admiring his sexy goatee. It added to his image of an old west gunfighter. My own John Wayne, she thought, smiling. “It was a good story.”
“It was crap with a lot of eye candy.”
She turned away, grinning. “Not just for the eyes.”
Marc stilled suddenly, looking over the destroyed lobby and dark, shadowy hallways where he thought maybe bodies should be, but weren’t. This would have made a good place to hole up, but until they’d hit it (literally) there hadn’t been… “You hear that?”
She listened for a moment, hearing only the storm and things moving with the wind, then shook her head, “No. What?”
He turned, shrugging. “Sounds like someone clearing snow with a metal shovel.”
The image made her frown, and she pushed at the door in her mind, as her stomach dropped. They had made over a hundred miles in the last week, and she was tired. The door hadn’t opened on its own. Something was happening.
“Up, I think. We should go up,” she whispered, eyes narrowing, ears open.
BOHICA, Marc thought. Bend over. Here it comes again. “But Dog and the Blaz…”
“No time.”
Then they both heard it: that headache-causing sound of metal and stone meeting, but instead of a distant echo, it was loud and close. The vibrations rattled the walls and pounded through the floor under them.
“Up?”
Angela nodded, heading for the employee door to the right of the upstairs concession area. “We have to…”
The grinding noise was suddenly deafening, and Marc grabbed her arm, shoved them both into the dark stairwell as the building around them moved, knocked forward on its foundation.
A twenty foot wall of mud and debris slammed into the back of the movie theater like a bomb, blowing out walls and windows. The sound of it was like a tanker truck jackknifing, and the space immediately began filling with feet of sliding ooze. The entire back wall of the cinema crumbled under the onslaught, filling the rows of seats with thick, dark mud. The side walls held against the wall of mud, which slowed and then was finally stopped by something bigger than it was: the strip mall around the theater, which was more than a mile wide.
Sludge continued to invade, flooding the theater and parking lot around it with ten feet of thick, lumpy glop that poured around. It gushed over counters and ticket booths, shoving the two vehicles against the glassless front doors and then out of them.
Angela and Marc flipped on their penlights to see the dim stairwell and bowed-in door below them.
“Is that mud?”
Marc shined his light on the bottom of the door, where thick, blackish silt was gushing under and he waved a hand, looking upward. “Yeah. A slide.” He waved her up the steps. “That door’s not gonna ho….”
CCrraack! Sswwwooosh!
The door gave way, buckling under the weight of the sopping mud that began to flow into the dark hall from a doorway. The soggy dirt was almost up to the ceiling, and pale worms the size of pencils squirmed all over each other and the debris, trying to rebury themselves. It horrified Angela. It was normal that the smallest and fastest breeding animals would begin to change first; snakes, rats, worms, but the sight was enough to wake that steel in her spine.
“Those are wrong. They shouldn’t be that big,” Angela stated with an odd tone to her voice, feet rooted to the spot as the desire to kill them flooded her. They were a future danger, an abomination. They needed to be handled.
“Not by us, Honey,” Marc nudged her further up the steep, twisted stairs. “Keep going. It’ll take a full day to go back that way.”
She turned reluctantly, and they moved to the roof’s exit door, but Marc pulled her back before she could step out, both of them listening for Dog in the light wind. “Wait. Check it out first. Always.”
“Teach me how to do this.”
He nodded, leaving his eyes on hers. She really would have made a good Marine, a strong fighter. “Stay no more than two feet away and step where I do. If I were to fall, you should come back here and start digging your way out with boards or whatever you can find.”
Angela kept her head down at the thought of losing him, and her mind flew to her gifts. She’d do what she had to, no matter how forbidden it was.
“The whole hillside’s gone.”
They stood just outside the doorway, the rest of the roof cracked, crumbled, missing in places. The Show Me state gave them an awful view of missing homes, businesses, and roads that had been between the hill and the theater. Even the reeking turkey farm and rye field beside them was now a twenty foot high pile of uneven, treacherous mud and debris as far as they could see to the east. Small puffs of smoke and dust rose eerily in the early morning ch
ill.
“Look.” Angela pointed to a black corner, where thick, sloppy mud was still spilling around the front of the theater. “Is that a Blazer?”
Marc sounded relieved. “Mud must have pushed ‘em out. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Angela smiled. “Think we already did. I hear Dog.”
“Come on. Let’s get down from here before the whole mall collapses.”
“We need rope.”
“It’s in the Blazer with my bag.”
Marc was reprimanding himself for leaving his kit when she pointed to the dead telephone wires. “Can we use those?”
Marc frowned. “It’s the grip that’s hard. The poles and wires are sprayed with a flame retardant chemical that makes it slippery. We’ll have to braid a rope together.”
He began fishing in his pockets. “We’ll hope the pole wasn’t loosened by the mudslide.” He cut the phone, cable, and electric wires, and quickly wove them together.
“Will this work?”
He shrugged. “We’re gonna find out. If it breaks, try to go limp.”
Angela watched as he stood up, eyeing a dark patch of brackish mud that she was sure covered a deer that had been impaled by the thin branch of a walnut tree.
Marc wrapped the braided cord around his fist, and then his waist.
Angela scowled fearfully. “Is this the best we can...”
“Hang on!”
A second later she was tight against his body, feet in the air, and then they were dropping off the side of the building.
“Semper Fi!”
His shout gave her the courage to wrap her legs around him and keep her head up as the ground flew closer.
Marc had swung them toward the pole, hoping to slow their descent. He put his feet straight out so that they slammed into the wood with a jerk that had their grip on each other tightening painfully.
Legs holding them to the slippery pole, Marc’s eyes picked out a shallow-looking patch of mud and swung them for it just as the braided cord snapped under their weight, dropping them to the ground with a hard, wet thud.
They landed with her on top, legs pinned around his waist, and she winced as the layer of mud shifted beneath them, putting more pressure on her knee.
“You okay?”
His eyes were closed, and she leaned closer, muddy hands feeling his pulse. “Brady?”
Dazed, but aware she was getting upset, Marc opened his eyes and said the first thing that came to mind, “Never have I seen anything so beautiful.”
Angela blushed, fighting the urge to lean down and kiss his pouty lips in relief. “If you say so. How about getting off my sore leg?”
They were on their feet a second later, and he was reaching for her. “Let me see.”
"I'm fine." Angela moved back, turning away as she slung mud from her hands. “Let’s see about Dog.”
Marc followed her, frowning. Another side effect of her man or the life she’d had? "Neither," his heart whispered. "She feels the attraction too. She’s not scared. She’s interested and feeling guilty about it." That made sense. Angie and loyalty went hand in hand.
While Marc let the anxious wolf out, Dog eagerly rushing to check them both over, Angela took a minute to scan what was left of the town for people, for survivors. She still hoped they might be able to help if someone was stuck, or leave food, but there was only silence. Kirksville was a ghost town, and it made her think of the History Channel. All the bodies that had to be buried under that mile-long stretch of thick mud - would archeologists find them hundreds of years from now and try to figure out what had happened?
“We got lucky.”
Angela nodded, but didn’t say anything, sure it was more than luck. Fate had allowed both of them to survive again and again. Was it because it wanted something from them, something bigger than just their tiny lives?
The two Blazers were mud-splattered, the glass on Marc’s side window cracked, but other than dents in the fender and bumper, both vehicles had held up despite being shoved through the glassless windows by a wall of mud. They climbed into driver’s seats with squelches, grimaces, and shared grins. They were alive and on the move. It had been a good day.
As they drove, Angela’s mind was on her reaction to Marc reaching for her. She had wanted to step into his embrace! She was no longer able to ignore the closeness that was growing. He’d broken through her walls, and the old Angela was now wide awake and longing. They had traveled well together, even with the occasional awkward looks and searing tension that sometimes happened. He was still a good man. "Your man?" the Witch questioned and Angela was glad when Brady interrupted.
“You okay back there?”
She flashed her lights in response and saw he wanted to say something, but wouldn't. She’d been a fool not to call him all those years ago.
“Ready to go till dark?”
She smiled, picked up the mic, “And then some. You lead, I’ll follow.”
“Copy that.”
They had been traveling together for a month now. Five hundred miles of heartbreaking, gut wrenching, unbelievable horror, and Missouri was no different than Indiana, Virginia, or Ohio. Except that the ground here felt bad; smelled and looked worse. They had even seen their first mutation yesterday. Only a single ant, pitch black and the size of a baby’s shoe, all six of its eyes had watched them alertly as they went by.
When she’d stopped, Marc hadn’t said anything, just waited while she squashed the freak under her tires. It had been a powerful moment for him, seeing Angie so appalled by something that she would decide it didn’t have the right to exist, and he had never felt closer to her than at that moment. It was how he’d spent most of his adult life.
“Three o’clock, down low.”
Angela narrowed her eyes and immediately hit the brakes, looking for a clear way over.
“Use your gun this time,” he instructed and Angela didn’t fight the urge to destroy, the need to do something overpowering. She’d had to let the worms go. These she wouldn’t.
“Slow down. Don’t scare them off.”
The small pack of mutated ants didn’t stray from their slow, disorderly course through the dying switch grass, and didn’t seem afraid of the tires and engines that moved closer, but the Witch said they were aware, that she could feel the scent of alarm coming from them. Angela slid her window down and took the safety off her gun.
“That’s close enough.”
The Witch frowned at the distance, but Angela nodded. She could hit them from here if she really tried, and he knew it, wanted her to use this as a lesson too.
“My how we’ve changed,” the Witch commented as anger and revulsion took over her trigger finger. “Not a killer, huh?”
Angela ignored the hurtful jab. These mutations were in reach and couldn’t be allowed to endanger more of her people, couldn’t be left free to turn America into a cheap slasher film.
Angela opened fire and ants began falling. They tried to flee, squealing, and panic-stricken and she took a savage, guilty pleasure in their destruction, getting the last one with her tire as it darted for cover under the Blazer.
Marc was impressed, turned on, and he struggled to keep it from his voice as he keyed the mic, “Very good. Ready?”
“Let’s roll.”
4
They traveled until it was almost dark. The land around them was wet, deceitful-looking, and by the time they hit higher, dryer ground, the mud had molded to them like a second skin. Marc had chosen to make camp out in the open, on a flat, almost deserted stretch of highway because of the mud, and their only cover was two moss-dotted dogwood trees, both without a single bloom.
“You look like an abused dog.”
Marc grinned, moving to the rear of his Blazer. “Feel like one too.”
“Let's make a shower.”
He thought about it for a minute, then began to gather a mental list. “Got an empty gallon jug?”
An hour later, the wolf was out roaming the breezy, almost
warm darkness around them, and they had tested their crude invention on the dinner dishes, sharing a tired grin of accomplishment. It had been a long day.
“Where should we set it up at?”
She didn’t answer, just tossed a blanket onto the roof of his Blazer and moved one of the jugs they had warmed to the hood. When she turned, he was frowning. “What’s wrong?”
It amused her to see his face was red in the light of their small fire. “Who’s gonna hold the towel?”
She grinned back, starting to get a bit nervous but hiding it. “I’ll pull my Blazer alongside. Once we open the doors and hang a couple of sheets, it’ll be fine.”
Thinking this was probably going to be hard on her, Marc got busy. The privacy was for her, not him. He had showered with ten other naked men in the room nearly every day for years.
When the jugs were ready, Angela climbed confidently onto the roof and sat down, supplies next to her. Marc took off his Colt’s and stepped inside the cozy little 4x4 area. As he began undressing, Angela lit a smoke, trying not to imagine his every move but failing, as she kept watch on the dark, Missouri sky.
Her sharp gaze picked out shadowy forms of mountains to the east that she assumed were the Ozarks. It looked normal from here, but she wasn’t fooled, and went back to keeping watch.
Rap-rap-rap-rap!
Angela fumbled for her gun, felt Marc's frown even though she couldn't see it.
“It’s just a woodpecker.”
“This time of night?”
“Everything's screwed up right now for them, too.”
“Yeah, sorry.”
“Don’t be, just remember it. Once you make yourself familiar with the sounds of your surroundings, you’ll only react to what’s not normal for that situation. Your mind will sort it out for you.”
She smiled softly, grateful for him and all she was learning. He was the perfect teacher, never made her feel stupid, or acted like he was better, and she loved being with him. Angela heard his dog tag clink and felt her mouth go dry at the thought of his naked chest. His belt buckle was next, then a zipper, and a rustle of jeans that made her heart pound.