by Maxey, Phil
Trailer homes, garages and abandoned trucks passed by as they moved deeper into the small town.
Landon scoured the driveways and sidestreets. “Where the hell—”
“Hello! Yes, we hear your vehicles!” said a woman from the radio. “We’re on the east side of—” As she spoke the small convoy stopped at an intersection and all the occupants could see the things scurrying across the road a few hundred yards away to their right. “— town. In the old school building… Over!”
“We… we’re not going over there, are we?” said Toby, peering out of the rear door window.
Arlo looked at the man next to him, thinking the same. “We got the vaccine. We can just keep driving…”
“Hello? Are you coming? Over.” said the woman, her words laced with desperation.
Landon lowered the radio to his lap. There was a part of him that was willing to tell Arlo and Tracey to drive. To pretend the voice on the other end of the radio never existed. He shook his head.
What are the chances that people would need help… now, after I have the bottles…
“What we doing, boss? Over,” said Tracey.
Landon nodded to himself, having made a decision. “Okay.” He held the radio back to his mouth. “We are coming. How many are you? Over.”
“Just me and a teenage boy. Please, come quick. I don’t think they will stay outside for much longer. Over.”
Landon looked at Tracey’s newer, lighter car. Her’s would be quicker, but the vehicle he was in could take more punishment. He pushed open his door, quickly getting out, then pulled the rear door open. “Kids, out.” They looked up at him with shock then did as they were told. “Get in the back of Tracey’s car.”
“But—”
“Now!” he shouted, kick-starting the young girl’s movement. She ran with Toby and jumped into the back of the other sedan as he ran to the driver’s side window, which was already open. “Give me the pistol.” Tracey looked up at him incredulously. “Quickly!” She frowned then handed it over. “Head south, the same route we agreed. Keep in touch for as long as you can on the radio.” He let out a breath. “I hope you find them. We’ll follow on when this is—” A screech echoed across the concrete. “Go!”
She started to speak then stopped, words not being of any use and hit the gas, the car jolting forward across the intersection, splashing through puddles. He ran back, pausing before returning to the passenger’s seat. The rain was falling in sheets, battering the ground, crashing off the old car and everything else. Within the gray, things with awkward shaped bodies and arms in wrong positions lurched and skittered between weed covered parking lots and sidewalks.
He got back in, not waiting for the words to fall from Arlo’s open mouth and held the radio up. “We’re going to pull up outside the front of the school building. You’ll need to come running out and jump in. You got that? As soon as we pull up! Over.”
“Yes, yes! We’re ready! Over.”
Arlo drove them slowly into the road to the right then stopped. “We sure we want to do this?”
Landon checked the bullets left in the gun. “As sure as I am about anything in this mess.” He looked up, trying to see through the water running down the windshield. “Drive fast to the front of the building. Keep the engine running.”
“Okay…” Arlo eased down on the gas, then harder, quickly picking up speed. A small sign, warning of a twenty-five miles-per-hour speed limit, flashed by along with the brown and white blurs of the town’s buildings.
Through the gloom the top of a red-brick building appeared above the treetops.
“There it is!” said Landon. He just as quickly spotted the masses swirling around the street outside. Beige and pink skinned things were staggering, others motionless, all positioned in a ring, roughly ten or so yards from the entrance.
The car slowed. “There… there are too many of them…”
“Keep going! On the right, drive over the grass, get close to the door!”
Arlo was already drifting in that direction, the car bumping over the uneven road and potholes, then slammed on the breaks, skidding the car, while slowing. A creature from a nightmare, all claw and fang took a swipe at them as they slid past, sliding to a stop, narrowly missing a tree. The building’s door immediately swung open, a gray-blonde haired woman running out, a lanky hooded individual close behind, both charging towards the rear of the car, its door already open.
Arlo’s eyes grew large as something dark with multiple legs, akin to a beetle but the size of a horse stormed towards the rear of the car, its sharp appendages digging into the sodden ground. As the woman and young man bundled into the back, Landon standing beside his door, resting the pistol on the roof, fired off shot after shot at the oncoming vision of anger.
“Let’s go!” shouted Arlo, revving the engine.
Landon started to dive back in, when he heard a sound, almost lost to the deluge and screeching.
“What are you doing! Get in!” shouted Arlo again, while keeping an eye on the thing about to crash into the back of the vehicle.
“Jesssiiiccccaaa…”
Landon flicked his head to his left, at the shadows which lurked behind the fences, trees and nearby homes. A roar claimed his attention once again and he fell back onto the seat, Arlo hitting the gas before the car door was closed. In the swampy ground the wheels spun for grip.
“Come—” Arlo’s frustration at the old car was cut short by something heavy slamming into it, shunting it forward. It jolted onto the sidewalk, its tires gaining traction then surged back onto the road.
As they sped away, Landon looked in the rear mirror. His mind still ringing with the name he heard.
“Thank you…” said the woman out of breath. “I’m Joan. This is Lachlan.”
Arlo was still shaking his head in shock to still be alive. “Oh right, yeah. I’m Arlo.”
Silence fell within the cabin and the driver looked at his passenger. “You okay?”
Landon looked at him. “Er… yeah.” He turned around. The hair of the forty something woman was matted to her face. The teen though, stayed under his soaked hood. “I’m Landon, the guy on the radio. Happy to help.” He turned back to the front and held the radio to his mouth. “Tracey. We got them. We’re on our way.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
11: 43 a.m.
Jess looked out at the mist which clung to the brown and beige fields, limiting her view of the landscape to a few hundred yards at best. Within the gray, farm houses and grain silos, moved by, but her view of the Missouri landscape, although bleak, wasn’t unnatural. By the road map, she was roughly two hours from the small town that Isiah called his own.
I’m coming Sam and Josh. I’m on my way…
She knew Meg wouldn’t take them too far. They would be holed up away from towns, perhaps in a farmstead. She paused at an intersection then snorted at doing so. The way was clear in all directions, forever. She eased down on the gas and continued on, down the undulating country lane. She had parted with Daryl north of Kansas City and was glad to do so.
He’ll know I’m different… He would have seen them…
Her logical mind could not make sense of what occurred in the bowels of her apartment building. Soon after, she dismissed it as if it had never happened. Perhaps her fear had distorted her rational thinking. Made her hear things that weren’t there. She was in the pitch black surrounded by monsters. Was it any surprise that her panicked mind would invent even worse horrors?
But as the towns and gas stations melted away, as they moved further from Colorado she allowed herself to believe the possibility that something in the dark had uttered her name. It knew who she was. Even though that was impossible.
And since then she had seen them. The thing’s, watching. Knowing…
“Think this through, Jess. What does it mean?” It felt good to speak aloud even if it were to herself.
She tapped the steering wheel, trying to squeeze an answer from her brain while
driving across railway lines at the edge of a small town, almost without realizing it. She stopped, looking for an alternative route. There wasn’t one.
“Shit.”
She let out a breath. The old, white-gray wooden buildings, submerged between trees and bushes looked unused, abandoned. As if they were never inhabited. It looked safe. Certainly no sign that the world had ended. She looked in the rear mirror to the route she had just traveled along. She could go back, but looking at her map, there was no alternate to heading in the southeasterly direction.
“It’ll be fine…”
She needed the reassuring sound of her own voice and eased down on the gas, moving slowly, scanning across the single-story homes and outbuildings. As her car moved steadily through the town, she avoided looking too deeply at the shadows beyond the windows, not wanting to know what lurked there and quickly came to the main street, driving past a post-office, barbers and finally on a corner, a gas station which looked like it had been pulled through time from the 50s. As she left the town, she passed a sign at an entrance for a school and fought a wave of emotion. The magnitude of what had happened was too large for her to fully process. Better to just concentrate on Sam, Josh and Landon.
She stopped where the road joined the freeway and consulted her map. Her path east was fairly free of big towns. A good clear—
A sound jolted her head upwards, looking to the south to the two-lane road and in the distance, perhaps three miles out… a vehicle.
A sports car, yellow in color was approaching fast but due to the slither of a windshield reflecting the white sky above, she was unable to see the occupant.
She thought about reversing backwards, steering into a side road where she would be hidden, and watching the immune driver fly past. But as the car’s engine grew louder she found herself watching with curiosity as to who it would be, that would just happen to be driving along the same remote piece of highway at the same time as her.
The sports car slowed.
She almost ducked lower in her seat, but resisted the temptation, instead strained to see who was inside the wedge like vehicle. Somebody lurked within the confined space. She could see movement, even some details, such as a head, shoulders…
The gull-wing door swung upwards, and out stepped…
Her mouth fell open, just as her brain flashed memories across her eyes. A man she vaguely knew, but disliked, stood smiling a hundred yards away. He had something in his—
Bullets pinged off the concrete, some slamming into her car. Instinctively she floored the gas pedal, but a second later released the pressure, applying the brake.
He’ll outrun me…
Instead, she threw her old sedan into reverse and sped backwards, steering left and right as the road curved, and finally bounced over the corner of a curb and backdown onto a road which led towards the only two-story brick building she had seen. The school. As her car raced towards the entrance, her eyes desperately looking for any space where she could hide her vehicle, her mind become a confusion of tangled thoughts, none of which gave her any answers to why the mayor of the small town in Colorado, a man she was sure was consumed by the change, had somehow shown up on the exact same road she was on.
No coincidence…
Mud and dust flew as she skidded backwards around the corner of the building, and then spotted possible salvation. School busses sat abandoned across the parking lot, but beyond, at the back of the open area was a garage, unoccupied, one of its large metal doors open. She accelerated onto the concrete, narrowly avoiding clipping the front of a bus and steered sharply to the left, angling for the welcoming gloom within the garage. Her car slumped on the right side, bringing with it the sound of scraping. She could smell the rubber burning from the blown out tire, and struggled to keep the vehicle on the straight trajectory, but within a few seconds she slipped inside the dark confined space and switched off the engine.
Immediately she heard the roar of the sport’s car’s engine. Somewhere in the town. The school and the busses blocked her view of the roads, but it wasn’t far away.
“Why… why is he here!” she whispered in anguish.
Following…
A series of images came at her, revelations through horrific memories that led to realizations that almost gave her relief.
The creatures… he knew through the creatures…
The idea that Colm had been communicating with the things, that somehow information of her whereabouts was being shared, was too insane to fully appreciate, but it was the only thing that explained why she was currently in a school’s bus garage in a tiny town, out in the middle of nowhere.
He wants to kill me… revenge for what we did to him… Wherever I go, he’ll know… the things will tell him…
As the sport’s car’s engine gave sound to the otherwise silent collection of homes and stores, an overwhelming feeling of being alone fell upon her. A psycho had tracked her, and now wanted to make her pay for what he thinks she did. She played with the idea of reasoning with him and then let it go.
He hasn’t come all this way to make up and leave, Jess! He’s changed… Like… me…
If she was ever going to see her family again, there was only one choice left open to her. She was going to have to kill Norman Colm.
*****
12: 31 p.m. Highway 63.
Meg looked up at the writing, printed on a board above the banks of radio transceivers, then clicked on the transmit button on the mike. “This is radio station… twelve, on highway sixty-three, just outside of Sturgeon in the northern part of Missouri. Is anyone receiving this? Over.” She waited, but only white noise came from the speakers, and beyond, clangs from the metal walls of the trailer she was encased within.
She placed the mike on the desk and took another sip of the golden liquid the former pastor had given her an hour before. ‘Helps take the edge off,’ he said. She didn’t need convincing. A numbness had settled inside her, replacing the fondness she had for the boy she had saved a few days before. She couldn’t shake how unfair it was. He had survived his grandparents disappearing, had the luck to have been found by Landon and her, and then what Isiah’s people wanted to do, just for his ‘immunity’ to run out.
She lifted her plastic beaker to take another sip but discovered it was empty.
She knew his story was repeated a millionfold across the country, maybe the world, but she didn’t know the others, she knew him, Tye.
Her thoughts moved back to Sam and Josh. Another two lucky kids.
I have to keep them alive…
She knew Jess and possibly Landon were out there, somewhere, trying to get the vaccine and trying to get back to their children and she knew there was a good chance they would. For some reason fate had chosen this family among all others to survive the plague that had descended on the masses, but there was a chance the parents would fail, and if they did and if the vaccine lasted a few more days in their systems, it would be down to her to keep the two youngsters alive. To help get them settled in whatever passed for life in the new world.
Less than three days left…
The plan was to stay with Rufus until the nightmare was over, and then get the old pickup working and head on out. Find a home of their own. Perhaps another building perched on the side of a mountain like she had—
“Any... Highway… Traveling… Out there? Over.”
She looked, slack jawed at the rows of bouncing needles and LCD screens, and then the speaker. Landon started speaking again. She grabbed the mike. “Yes! Landon? Can you hear me? Over.”
Static played through the mesh covered wooden box, before his voice echoed around the confined space again. “Miles… southwest… Sam…. Reply… Over.”
“Landon! Can you hear—”
“Meg!? I hear… are you? Over.”
“You’re breaking up. I’m on highway, sixty-three! Over.”
“Sam… and… Over.”
“Sam and Josh are okay! I’m on highway—” One of
the trailer’s rear doors opened, Sam climbing up. “— Sixty three. Do you copy? Over.”
“Sixty…”
“Sixty three!”
“I… it… Sixty three.”
“Dad?” Sam ran forward, Meg handing her the mike. The young girl repeated her question. “Dad? Can you hear—”
“Sam!”
Tears ran from her eyes, as well as Meg’s.
“Dad…” She said again, through a cough and sob.
“I’m… way… not far. Over.”
“Is mom with you?”
“No… Be there soon. Over.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
12: 42 p.m. Northwestern Missouri.
Other than her heart beating, Jess’s breathing was the only sound she could hear as she stood in the second-floor window of the small town’s school. If it had been any other time of year the noonday sun would have broken through the blanket of gray above and provided some color to the old, mostly wooden constructions that made up the area, but as it was, everything was bathed in various shades of white mist, the rain adding to the blur which she saw outside.
She had spent the prior hour learning the layout of the building she now hid within. Every entrance, whether that be a door or window had obstructions nearby, preferably noisy ones, so any intrusion would be heard. She had also armed herself with various pseudo-weapons. Two knifes, one large, one not so, she had found in the small kitchen area, and a baseball bat which she’d driven nails through, the latter found in the metalworking department on the ground floor. But these were just crude implements she would fall back upon if the main plan failed.
Her whole life she had been praised for having a gift for numbers and formula, but now her extra ability would truly be put to the test. One which would involve a fight to the death. But it wasn’t her own life she was fighting for, but her children’s. To have the chance to breathe as humans for another two and a half days. To deliver what they needed. The vaccine.