People Scream in the Night
I wake up. Black feathers surround me and I feel the fear race through my heart. Do I dare look? How long has it been?
My black wings wrapping around me, I hear screams. Deathly chilling, blood curdling screams of fear and death. I lie there a moment wondering if this is another nightmare.
I hear another scream.
Likely not.
Unwrapping myself does not help, it is still as dark as India ink. I feel my way around, I’m on an air mattress, on the floor, covered with sheets. I feel a small table beside me, and turn the other way. My wing knocks something over and I cringe at the noise.
But at least I still have them.
I crawl across a dusty carpet, and find the door to the room. This is a modern house, I can tell by the baseboards and door handle. I peer out into the hall. Blue light filters down a second-story hallway, and I can tell this isn’t my house.
I slip out into the hall, my wings brushing against the door frame, and I head into the master bedroom. The window is open, and ashes cover the floor.
I can hear someone from the basement or first floor call out, “Is someone there?” Followed by a quiet, “Shh!”
Outside, it’s dark. Ashes fall from the sky. The streets of this small residential neighborhood are covered by piles of snow-like ash.
I’m back in the real world again.
And now I have my wings.
I hear another scream.
There’s movement on the street. It is hard to tell, but it looks like people are moving about at night. What the Army said must be true, it comes at dawn and goes away at night.
I turn and go downstairs. I hear someone’s voice. “Someone’s in the house!”
“I’m not here to hurt you!” I shout, turning on the stairs and walking into a working-class living room still cast in the dark. A flashlight illuminates me and I shield my eyes. Someone is in the back, behind the kitchen, perhaps in a laundry room.
“What’s with the wings?” They say. They must be kids or teenagers, half scared out of their mind.
“I’m an angel of death.”
The flashlight turns off.
I speak to the darkness of the kitchen. “I’ll be leaving now, only go out at night, and take cover during the day. Don’t even open a window. It’s like the ozone layer or something, it’s in the sun but it can go through clouds.”
I feel my hip. No sword, and I’m still in this nightshirt and panties, barefoot. Damn it. Why didn’t I go to sleep in my armor?
I pause.
“Do you have a gun?”
“What would an angel of death need with a gun?”
“Fair point. Do you have any clothes?”
“Upstairs. Second bedroom, in the back. Are you a looter?”
“No, I’m not a looter. I’m trying to save the world. I’ll be back, stay right there.”
I walk upstairs and find the second bedroom. It’s a younger teenage girl’s room all right, with band posters on the wall, stacks of shoes and schoolbooks, and a closet full of clothes. I find paper bags marked “Jenny’s project, for Goodwill” and sort through those. If they were going to charity anyways, it’s not stealing.
I get dressed and walk downstairs. The flashlight from the kitchen is on again and shining on me.
“You look like an angel of death that shops at Hot Topic.”
“Shh!”
He was right. Black pre-ripped jeans, black suede boots with faux Indian-frills, a black top with a large pink pony on the front, and I took the leather bracers which I thought were a bit punk, but they reminded me of my armor so I put them on.
“I took them from your charity pile. Do you mind?”
A frightened girl’s voice barely says, “No. Class project.”
The flashlight turns off.
My wings drop a foot and I tilt my head back. “Where’s your mom?”
The voice is quiet, sniffing. “Gone.”
We’re quiet for a moment. What do I do? There’s a couple kids here in trouble. Two, maybe three. Alone. Their mother probably passed away in the master bedroom opening the window. It’s night, there’s no power, and they are all alone.
If I was a teenaged actress in some action movie, I’d leave them with some good advice and go save the world. However, I was a mother of two, and I recently lost everyone I loved.
“You three, come out. Come out here where I can see you.”
Motherhood always wins.
Two brothers and a sister, all younger than me. They have backpacks, suitcases, and travel bags full of junk stashed in the kitchen. The little girl has been crying. The younger brother puts on a backpack and pulls a suitcase over. “Are we going somewhere?”
“Yes. I’m taking you somewhere safe.” I sigh. “What’s your names?”
The oldest speaks. “Buddy, Tanner, and Jolie, we call her Jo-Jo.”
“Empty the backpacks, take only water and food that keeps. No toys. No sweets. Medicine too if any of you need it. Come on. Now.”
Within minutes I have the two brothers packing their backpacks with what I hope would last them a while, and Jo-Jo up on the counter where I’m wiping her tears away and telling her everything is going to be all right. I made an exception for Jo-Jo’s Sandy doll and the five pound bag of Shop-Mart chocolate though, split evenly between them plus a couple bars for myself, who can’t survive without chocolate?
“Everyone take a bottle of water and a flashlight, but don’t turn them on unless I say so. Keep your mouths covered and don’t breath in ash. Tie those towels around your faces like cowboys.”
I take a hoodie, but discover it won’t fit over my wings, so I resort to a head-scarf. I lead them to the front door, and I step out on the ash-covered lawn. I kick the ash away from the door and step out onto the lawn, being careful not to slip on the steps.
The little girl lets out a wail from behind me and I freeze dead in my tracks.
They won’t come out.
I hold out my hand. “Come on, it’s safe.”
“Are you sure?” Buddy hesitates, and Jo-Jo tries to run back inside. Buddy has her by her arm and she’s screaming “No, no, no!”
“I’m out here.” I hold my arms up, ash hitting them.
Tanner holds onto the door frame. “But you’re the Angel of Death.”
“Seriously? Then why would I try to save you?” I walk back to them, take Jo-Jo’s hand, and wrap my wing around her. She’s so scared she’s shaking. “My wings will protect you. Come on.”
They come out, slowly, stepping carefully on the ash, the fear clear in their faces. “Don’t slip on the steps, careful.”
We’re on the front walk before they get the confidence to walk anything faster than a slow creep. I open the front fence and we walk by the old car parked out front. People are walking down the street, slowly, just taking things in and seeing what happened to the world.
“Hey!” I shout, waving my arm. “Over here! I have some kids, we need help!”
Some of them turn slowly towards me, and they walk slowly down the driveway in a lumbering pace. All of them carry guns. It must be really slippery out here or these survivors are totally out of it…
They have no eyes.
They have black holes for eyes.
They raise their guns and fire, lighting up the night with gunfire.
The first rifle bullet shatters the front porch light, and I’m hustling the kids back inside. Tanner slips and I pick him up, and I’m carrying Jo-Jo as she screams. “Run, back inside, back inside!”
Another bullet tears through the air as the hunters close in on us.
I put Jo-Jo down and point at Buddy. “Go get your Mom’s keys! Now, go get them! Tanner, stay with her, right here.”
I turn down the walk. “I’ll be right back.”
I storm down the walk, steeling my wings to diamond-hardness. I keep one in front of me like a shield and I feel a bullet shatter against it. I run out the front gate and
I hear one cycle the action to his gun. He’s close.
I swipe upwards with my wing, slapping him full force with my black wing of death. The impact is tremendous, sending the undead hunter sailing through the air and crashing through a fence. Another bullet tears past me, and I feel the air it’s so close.
A soulless hollow-eyed hunter runs at me with a meat-cleaver, black flies crawling across the blade. I bring my left wing down in an arc, slicing his right arm and leg clean off with the razor-sharp edge. The hunter falls to the ground screaming a blood curdling scream, howling in the night.
Other hunters cross lawns around me, cycling their guns, taking shots off that impact the ash and walls around me. I spin low, using my wings to protect myself, and I feel another bullet hit them and bounce off into the darkness.
In front of me lies the first hunter’s AK-47 rifle and his belt of military-style magazines.
When I turn and stand, I’m an angel of death, cycling the first shell into the weapon, putting it to my shoulder, and firing back at the oncoming horde of undead. I land bullets in their chests, into their faces, and fire over my wing, using it as a bullet shield. I fire slow, single shots, taking out legs, heads, and chest-shots one by one.
As I fire, my hatred grows, and I feel my deadly intent flow into the weapon. My bullets absorb my rage, and the shots become more powerful, like point-blank shotgun blasts, with each bullet taking off arms, heads, and throwing the undead hunters back with a single blow. I’m walking towards them, firing again and again, the muzzle-flashes lighting up the darkness, my last few shots in the clip completely blowing the creatures in half with my hatred.
I toss the empty clip to the side, the gun smoking, snapping a new one into place, and twenty of the hideous creatures laying motionless on the lawn. A huge crowd of more of them is howling and screaming from down the street, and the house is taking more fire, the upstairs window exploding in a shower of glass.
“Angel!” Buddy screams from the door.
“All of you, come on!” I motion, pointing. “Get in the car! Now!”
The kids are scrambling to get in the car, and I am shielding them with my wings. Bullets are imapcting around us, and one snaps through the sheet metal of the car before the kids get there.
“In, in!” I get Tanner and Buddy in the back seat, and Jo-Jo buckled up in the front seat, and I feel three more rounds bounce off my wings. I look back, even more hunters are crossing the lawns like something out of The Undead Hordes cable show that Brad and I used to watch on Sundays.
“You’re bleeding!” Buddy points at my leg, and he’s right, something grazed it, tearing open my jeans at the knee, probably one of the bullet fragments. Despite my wings, my body is still very much vulnerable.
“Later. Keys?” Buddy tosses the keys to me, and I force myself in the car. I have to soften my wings, and physically shove them inside the back like I was a college kid overloading a compact car with junk. Tanner is laughing in the back at the wall of black feathers filling up the back seats in front of them. He stops laughing when another bullet hits the back of the car.
I force myself in, and I feel trapped in the car. I can’t see out the back window, and the two brothers behind me are totally lost in a mass of feathers. I slam the car door shut and put the rifle next to Jo-Jo. “Hold onto this, but don’t touch.”
I slam the car in reverse, driving on ash is like driving on ice, and we careen into the fence behind us. “Is everyone okay?”
I hear two muffled yes replies from the back, and Jo-Jo nods.
I spin the car into drive, and fishtail around in the driveway, heading towards the street. Ash falls through my headlights like snow, and I try to brake before we get to the street. I fail, we skid into the street, hitting an eyeless hunter, and sending him onto the trunk of our car.
Jo-Jo screams as the eyeless man presses his face to the window and slams his large fist on the glass, cracking the windshield into a spider web.
“You have got to be kidding me!”
I slam the car in reverse, spinning around in a circle, the undead hunter holding on by our bent windshield wiper. He’s screaming his howl of death, slamming his fist on the window, Jo-Jo screaming her lungs out, and the car spinning on the ash.
A bullet flies through the window beside me, covering me in glass.
We hit something behind us, maybe a brick enclosure for a mailbox, and the car lurches to a stop. The undead man on our trunk nearly slides over the car, but he uses the force of the hit to shove his hand through the glass and straight for my throat.
I floor the accelerator and we’re spinning our tires.
A line of hunters down the street are firing at us, and shotgun pellets spray the trunk of the car. The ghoul’s hand comes within inches of my throat, and I press back into the seat to give myself a couple more hairs of breathing room. His broken and black fingernails grasp at my throat.
Our tires finally hit pavement, and the car lurches forward. We’re moving, but now the zombie has his hand firmly around my throat and he is choking the life out of me. Jo-Jo is still screaming, and Tanner’s head is out of the back wall of feathers and he is screaming too.
Me? I’m focusing on the road.
I clip another undead hunter on the street sending him off into the ditch. I’m blacking out now, spots in my eyes as the ghoul’s powerful hand closes around my windpipe and I feel the pressure increase like a vice placed on my neck.
The street is so slippery, it’s like driving on ice. We are skidding back and forth, the sideways motion pulling the creature’s hand from my neck and giving me a half-gasp of air every now and then. It’s not enough, I’m feeling faint headed and blacking out.
The creature’s arm is getting sliced up pretty bad by the glass. I can see his gray, dead tendons flexing as the skin peels away from his sliced-open arm.
I spin the wheel hard to the right and put the car into a spin. We slam into a parked camper. The glass slices the beast’s arm off from the torque and impact, leaving us with an arm sticking out of the windshield, but no zombie as our hood ornament. I gasp for air and pull the dead fingers from my neck.
I toss the dead, grasping hand and arm out my window. “Sorry about that kids, let that be a lesson to you, never pick up hitchhikers.”
I floor the car and we head away into the ash-filled night.
CHAPTER XX:
There’s a Light in the Distance
And it turns out to be a church.
I pull up out front, and there are real people waving to me in the darkness. They have guns, but they are alive and friendly, living eyes peer out of their face-masks.
“Who are you people?” One of the masked church militia says, looking through my broken window. “It’s dangerous out here.”
I close my eyes and tilt my head back. “Tell me about it. Kids, out of the car.”
The kids climb out, and I sit there, thanking God we made it.
The man reaches in the window, tapping my shoulder. “Miss? You coming inside?” He pauses. “Why did you pack the car full of feathers?”
A moment later, I’m climbing out of the car, and the church militia sees me pull my long, black wings free. I fold them on my back, and sling my rifle over my shoulder. Their mouths are wide-open under their masks.
I dust my hair off and pull it back into a tail. “Take me to see a preacher.”
They walk me towards the front doors, and the church is lit by hundreds of candles. Jo-Jo holds onto my wing, and the two brothers follow closely behind.
Buddy pulls on my other wing, stopping me. “Is it okay for you to go inside?”
“It’s okay.” I nod. “God knows who I am.”
Inside, hundreds of people stay huddled together in song and prayer, Christians and non-believers, Arabs and Jews, and hundreds of different faiths brought together by this terrible day. When we are at our worst, sometimes the best comes out in us all. I push my way through the crowd, and when people get a look at me, they p
art in shock, clearing the way to the altar.
The room goes silent. The pastor’s eyes go wide in shock as he sees me. “Jesus Christ.”
“Exactly who I’m looking for,” I say, looking back at the silenced room and then back to the pastor, “I am in need of some spiritual help, Father.”
He points at my wings. “Are, are those for real?”
I unfurl them and a hushed shock echoes through the congregation. I seat them on my back and shimmy them into place. “Last I checked.”
“Angel?” Jo-Jo is pulling on my wing. “Are you going away?”
I turn and kneel to face her. “For a little bit. Someone here is going to take care of you three and make sure you don’t get separated from your brothers.”
She hugs me. The two brothers hug me and my wings. Tanner says, “Thank you,” and I ruffle his hair. Buddy holds onto my hand, and then lets go, he doesn’t want to cry but I tell him it’s okay. I motion to a woman with a family in the front pew and she says she will take care of them. It breaks my heart to leave them, but I have a world to save.
Their world.
CHAPTER XXI:
We’re Gathered Here Together
The Christian pastor is an older man with gray hair, and he’s holding a bible. The Baptist minister is a jovial black fellow who shakes his head and says “Oh Lord” a lot. There’s a balding Jewish rabbi, a Catholic priest, a Mormon elder, and a bearded Muslim Imam in the back seminary room as well, all listening to my story. They’ve checked out my wings, inspected me, and questioned me endlessly about what I have seen and what I have went through.
Pastor John, the Christian, walks around the room. “So if what you told us is true, we are dealing with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I suppose we prepare our congregations for the end of days.”
“But they said God heard my prayer!” I say. “This isn’t happening, they said they have been on Earth a number of times before, and God has stopped them every time.”
Father Michael, the Catholic, sits back in his chair. “It could be true, the Black Plague, the Fires of London, World Wars, and other cataclysms could have been brought upon by biblical forces. This could be meddling by Satanic forces, and God could have heard our prayers.”
On Black Wings Page 11