by Platt, Sean
Sampson looked at the van.
“We’ll give you a ride, Ms. Sampson.”
“Thank you.”
Ed opened the side door, waved his hand, directing Sampson to one of the back seats.
She stepped into the van, looked at Marina and Acevedo, and must’ve noticed their cuffs. She turned to Keenan. “Don’t worry, they won’t bite,” he said, then closed the door.
They drove down a long path in silence, took a couple of turns at Ms. Sampson’s direction, and found themselves at a clearing with four campers along the lake, each surrounded by about five hundred feet of yard. It seemed like a nice place to retire from the rat race. Keenan couldn’t wait until he could retire from this life, settle somewhere with Jade, and maybe Teagan and Becca if they wanted to come along. Hell, he’d even bring Brent and Ben, make it one big hippie commune.
Ed stifled a laugh at the thought of them all living in the woods then stepped out of the van and let Ms. Sampson out.
“Right this way.” She led Ed past her small garden, festooned with whimsically painted bird feeders, garden gnomes, and a few dream catchers hanging from the branches of a small tree.
Sampson opened her front door, which Ed was surprised to see wasn’t locked. Man, she must really trust her neighbors. He couldn’t decide if it was nice to live in that sort of community or if she was simply too naive to realize that you could never truly trust anyone.
“Just this way.”
Keenan closed the front door behind him as Ms. Sampson flicked on lights to illuminate a small, but well-decorated space.
“It’s just inside my bedroom,” Sampson said making her way down the small hall.
Ed followed, even though she seemed like she wanted him to wait in the living room. Sampson had seemed cooperative so far, but he couldn’t take the chance that she might sneak into the room, grab the vial, then open it. She didn’t seem like one of the cult kooks in Harmon’s church, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t. Hell, Harmon’s daughter, Marina, seemed like a perfectly reasonable, normal person, not at all someone who would buy into J.L. Harmon’s homespun bullshit. You never could tell who was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
Sampson clicked on her bedroom light and gasped.
Ed, immediately behind her, shotgun in hand, saw two people, a man and woman in their mid-forties standing in her bedroom, blank eyed and slack jawed.
“Carol? Kevin? What are you doing in here?”
“Give us the vials,” her apparent neighbors said together in voices that belonged to neither of them — the voices of hundreds braying through their mouths.
The Darkness was here.
* * * *
CHAPTER 9 — MARINA HARMON
Marina stared at Acevedo, wondering what his mind might be concocting. Part of her was hoping he wasn’t going to do anything. Another part longed for an escape plan.
He was staring at his handcuffs, as they were parked in front of the woman’s camper with time for action evaporating. Soon, Keenan would come out with the final vial, then one of three things would happen: Keenan and Luther would bring them somewhere safe as they’d promised, the agents would send them to some secret prison for God knows how long, or the agents would simply kill them and dump them in the middle of nowhere.
Luther, sitting up front, was impatiently bouncing his leg like he had to use the bathroom.
Or maybe he’s itching to kill us.
Acevedo looked up, eyes wide.“Something’s wrong.”
“What’s that?” Luther asked.
“Something bad is about to happen. I can feel it.”
Marina’s heart began to pound as she wondered what Acevedo was up to. Was this his move? If so, what was he hoping to do? He was selling his anxiety well. His eyes were going back and forth, like he was trying to see through the van’s walls into the darkness. And if he wasn’t faking, what was he sensing?
Luther turned in his seat, looking back at Acevedo, and grabbed one of the two shotguns resting in a rack in front of the van’s center console.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“We’re in danger. You need to tell Keenan to get out of there. Now.”
Luther’s brow furrowed.
Gunshots erupted from inside the camper.
Luther turned and hopped out of the van, shotgun in hand, slamming the door closed behind him.
“What’s happening?” Marina asked Acevedo.
The priest shook his head. “It’s coming.”
“Who is coming?”
“It!”
Marina heard an odd animal-like clicking coming from outside the van, though it didn’t sound like any animal she’d ever heard before. And it wasn’t a single clicking, it sounded like several, surrounding them.
Her heart raced in anticipation of the unimaginable.
Something thumped the van’s side, hard, as if a wild animal had barreled into it. The van shook violently in the wake of the crash.
Startled, Marina let out a yelp.
She looked up front to the van’s only windows but could only see Kerri Sampson’s camper in the dark, along with the tangled shadows behind lit curtains, suggesting something awful inside.
Acevedo pulled hard on his cuffs, frantic as something kept slamming the van.
“No,” he said to himself. “Focus.”
“What is it?” Marina asked.
Acevedo closed his eyes, continuing to stare at his cuffs, just as he’d been doing through much of their trip.
What the hell? Does he think he’s a Jedi?
More thumps, this time harder, and from both sides, rattling the van as if it were between giants playing kick the can.
Marina wasn’t sure what was outside in the night, but her mind flooded with images of black, fluid-like creatures descending on the van from all sides — The Darkness, the same Darkness that had infiltrated Steven.
The driver’s side window imploded.
Marina screamed, pulling at her handcuffs, hard, trying to slide out, near certain that if she tugged any harder, she’d tear her left hand off at the wrist.
She looked over at Acevedo, still staring at his cuffs as if trying to will them open.
Something black appeared in the left corner of her vision. Marina turned to look and saw thick black, ropy strands circling their way into the van’s driver side, as if searching for something.
The vials!
She pulled harder on her cuffs, heart thumping so fast Marina wasn’t sure it could go faster without exploding, killing her in an instant.
The clicking grew louder, not just outside but inside — as if coming from the alien’s ropy appendages.
It must be using some sort of radar mechanism to locate the vials — or us.
The strands encircled one another, melding, growing thicker and certainly more formidable. Its tip, now one instead of many, turned to them, that awful clicking filling the van.
Marina screamed as it seemed to see them.
The van shuddered as the aliens pounded the sides, their pelting echoing off the walls, blending with the clicking to create a chaotic chorus of madness and nightmare.
The Darkness grew closer, the appendage inching toward Marina.
She looked at Acevedo. His eyes were closed, as if he were meditating, like that might prevent the creatures from tearing them apart.
She screamed, “Father!”
His eyes opened.
Acevedo’s cuff fell from his wrist. How he’d managed to open them, Marina couldn’t tell.
He bolted forward in the cabin, dived to the floor, and rolled between the middle seats, beneath the writhing black tentacle.
Acevedo grabbed the second shotgun from the rack, turned it upward, and fired at the alien’s slick black flesh.
The Darkness reeled back, its broken tentacle retreating as screams erupted from all sides outside the van.
Acevedo looked up, met her eyes, seemingly as surprised as she was that he managed to momentarily scare the
creature back.
He did it!
Marina thought Acevedo would take the gun and perhaps go rescue Keenan and Luther. Instead, he turned, looked in the glove compartment for the vials, nodded, then turned back to Marina.
“We’re getting out of here.”
“What?” she yelled.
“What about the agents?”
“They’re on their own.” He threw the van in reverse. Dark, ropy strands appeared in the front window while Acevedo raced backwards. “This is our chance.”
“Our chance for what?”
Acevedo kept the van in reverse as The Darkness raced after them like rippling fields of black wheat in an angry wind.
“Our chance to finish what we started.”
Acevedo slammed on the breaks, and began to spin the van around.
The black tentacles began to close in.
The van’s tires struggled to find purchase in the dirt as the tentacles closed in from behind. While she couldn’t see them, Marina could hear their awful clicking growing louder.
Dozens would reach out in seconds, and likely race around the van and through the broken front window to overtake Acevedo and Marina.
“Come on, you cocksucker!” the priest said, pumping hard on the accelerator.
The van kicked forward and then found speed.
Marina listened as The Darkness shrieked and clicked.
Sounds grew mercifully distant as Acevedo put the pedal to the floor and raced forward into the night.
Marina was glad to be away from the aliens but couldn’t help feeling guilty for leaving the agents to die.
Acevedo, seemingly to sense her consternation, said, “There’s nothing we could’ve done.”
He was right. She wouldn’t know how to fight something like The Darkness even if her left hand wasn’t still cuffed to the seat.
“Just be glad we made it out alive.” He looked in the rearview and sighed with relief.
Marina couldn’t share it fully. Though she’d escaped the agents and the aliens, she had yet to escape Acevedo.
And as she stared at the priest, Marina couldn’t help but wonder if she was in worse hands now than before.
* * * *
CHAPTER 10 — EDWARD KEENAN
Ed fired two shots, one for each of the infected, right into their chests.
Ms. Sampson screamed, turning toward Ed, eyes glaring. “You shot them!”
Ed heard the aliens’ sick clicking coming from outside.
The Darkness appeared, seeping through the bedroom’s broken window — not more infected humans, but dozens of tendrils from Its true alien form.
“Get down!” Ed shoved Sampson to the ground, lifted his shotgun, and fired into the largest mass where most of the tendrils seemed to diverge.
The tendrils vented a scream and scurried back out the window.
Ed heard chaos outside — more clicking, screams, and thumps against the van. This was an assault. The Darkness had somehow found them here and was going after the vials.
“Luther!” he shouted into his jacket mic, hoping the agent was still alive.
Ms. Sampson peered up from behind her fingers and cried, “What was that?”
“That’s what’s in the vials. Now where did you put it?”
Two shotgun blasts exploded in the living room.
Ed turned to see Luther standing over another pair of infected corpses.
“All clear in the living room,” Luther said.
Ed heard movement behind him, followed by the sound of Sampson choking.
He turned to see The Darkness that had been in her neighbors forcing itself into Sampson’s mouth, infecting her.
She cried out, hands scraping at her lips, trying to pull at what was essentially a liquid form, like trying to stop a waterfall with a fishing net.
“Damn it!” Ed raised the shotgun and blasted Sampson in her head.
Luther stared down at the woman’s corpse, eyes wide, then looked up and raised his gun at Ed, or something behind him.
Ed dropped to the ground. Luther fired three more shots at a mass of writhing Darkness.
Luther connected, but not enough.
The Darkness broke into four separate branches. Two limbs were slapped by the blasts and fell onto the bed in wet chunks of oozing blackness. The other two kept moving, like tentacles, melding into a single razored limb that shot forward straight into Luther’s gut.
It tore through him, slicing into Luther then spreading through his body before Ed could do anything.
Luther’s face filled with panic then pain. “Get out!” he screamed, dropping his gun and clawing at the tentacle.
Ed wasn’t sure if Luther was warning him to get out before the alien took over or begging the alien to leave his body.
Either way, Ed barely had time to raise his shotgun before Luther’s intense eyes were on him. He swung one of his massive limbs at Ed, knocking him back onto the bed, and sending the shotgun from his hand.
Luther leaped, landing on top of Ed and pinning him to the bed. Luther, now even stronger because of the alien form coursing through him, grabbed Ed’s jaw with one hand while prying his mouth open with the other.
“Let us in,” hundreds of voices said in unison. The black liquid flowed as if weightless from Luther’s maw towards Ed’s parted mouth.
“No!” Ed scratched, squirmed, and kicked, trying to free himself from Luther’s grasp.
He couldn’t budge the behemoth.
Ed could barely move his head. Luther held Ed’s mouth open and let the black, wiry tendrils hanging from his mouth creep closer.
The Darkness was inches from Ed’s mouth, squirming like worms eager to burrow into his body.
Ed bit hard on Luther’s fingers. The taste of hot iron flooded Ed’s mouth, but the big man held tight.
Tendrils poured down Keenan’s throat.
But then as quickly as they entered, they pulled themselves out, as if Ed’s mouth was infected with something repugnant.
The Darkness fled back into Luther’s throat. He released Ed with one hand, only to punch him in the gut with the other.
Ed gasped, then fell to the floor on top of Ms. Sampson’s corpse. He glanced up at the big man, wishing he could get the alien out without murdering him but knew of no way to cure the infected. Ed continued to lie there as Luther turned away from him, searching the room, clicking as he did.
He’s looking for the vial.
Ed wished the woman had found the vial before he had to bring her down. As it was, he had no clue where to find the damned thing. Her bedroom was lined with bookcases, two dressers, and a closet stuffed with boxes.
Ed had an idea: he could continue to stay down and play dead or injured and wait for Luther to find the vial, assuming The Darkness had some special ability to sense it.
Ed closed his eyes, lying on the floor beside the bleeding corpse, playing dead as Luther stomped around the bedroom, making that horrible clicking, searching for what The Darkness had come for.
Ed wondered how The Darkness had found them. How It had known he was here for the vials. Perhaps It had Its own version of Paola It was using to search for the missing vials.
Luther ripped the closet door from its track and threw it aside where it banged into a bookcase, knocking it to the floor.
Not one for subtlety, that one.
Luther ripped at boxes in the closet, grunting. A shotgun blast exploded outside. Ed hoped that Luther had given Marina and Acevedo a gun before leaving them alone in the van. Otherwise, he’d have more bodies on his hands, and more aliens to fight off outside.
Luther continued tearing through boxes as Ed impatiently waited.
To play possum while all hell was breaking loose outside was gutting him. He needed to get up, go outside, secure the other vials, and protect Marina and Acevedo.
But if he got up before Luther found the vial, he might never get the last one.
He couldn’t risk moving. Yet.
Luther will
find the vial soon.
Luther suddenly stopped throwing boxes.
For a moment, Ed thought perhaps Luther was onto him, and was coming back to finish him off.
Ed risked opening an eye to see Luther still facing the closet, holding a small black wooden box in his massive hands. He lifted the lid and cast his face in the vial’s blue glow.
Yes! He found it.
Luther closed the box, turned, and looked down at Ed.
Ed closed his eyes, hoping The Darkness wasn’t running some sort of body scan. Ed figured the alien inside his partner was capable of telling the difference between a dead human and one playing possum.
Outside, the van’s tires were kicking up dirt.
Shit!
Luther ran from the room, drawn by the fleeing van.
Ed popped up, grabbed the shotgun, and followed his partner out of the room.
No time for regrets or second thoughts. Ed raised the barrel and fired into the back of Luther’s skull, sending him dead to the ground.
Ed grabbed the box with the vial, and searched the camper through the open front door.
There were no infected, just waves of Darkness in its raw form pursuing the van down the dirt road.
Ed hoped that Luther had freed their prisoners before leaving them. Otherwise, God only knew who was driving the van, or what happened to the priest, Marina, and, of course, the other vials.
Ed couldn’t stick around to find out — he had to get out of there before The Darkness realized he had a vial and it returned to salvage whatever victory it could on this night.
Ed raced out of the RV and along the path toward a camper, bright in the distance. In front of the camper, a Harley.
Ed hoped he wouldn’t have to kill anyone else to get it.
* * * *
CHAPTER 11 — MARINA HARMON
They’d been driving for nearly an hour before Acevedo finally pulled into a gas station on the side of the highway.
He crawled into the van’s rear and looked down at Marina’s cuffs. “I can’t find another key, so you’ll have to sit tight until I can find something to pick those.”
“What do you mean? Why don’t you use your Jedi mind power or whatever the hell you did to get out of yours?”