As he reached the front of their procession, it became clear what Carlos had spied: tire tracks.
Isaac motioned towards the tracks, about 30 yards in the distance where a break in the woods indicated there had once been a road. “Paragon?” he suggested in whisper.
Carlos nodded. “Multiple vehicles.”
“When?”
Carlos shrugged. “Cover me.”
Isaac raised his rifle to his shoulder and scanned the tree line as Carlos dashed ahead to get a better look. Emerging into the roadway, he crouched for a moment and ran his fingers through the marks in the ash. Then he stood up and walked back, more relaxed than before.
Approaching the squad, Carlos called out, “At ease,” and the tension electrifying the air evaporated, everyone dropping their weapons to their sides.
“Not fresh?” Isaac confirmed.
“Maybe last week.”
Isaac released a long, low whistle and gave Carlos an appreciative nod. If they hadn’t stayed in the shelter so long, they might have run right into them. “You were expecting them?” he asked.
Carlos grunted. “Let’s just say I wasn’t not expecting them.”
They’d all been wondering, of course, if Paragon was behind the explosion. But then again, the rebels had jerry-rigged a nuclear reactor, so that was always a possibility as well – maybe they’d made some kind of ill-fated mistake. The presence of Paragon’s troops, though, indicated to Isaac that they were probably somehow involved.
He returned to Alessa, and the party marched on, two by two, in solemn, restless columns like a funeral procession. Eventually they found themselves on a familiar path cutting through the forest, and before long, they’d reached the picnic space in the wooded area north of the complex.
“Almost there, Less,” Isaac breathed. He turned to her, his eyes imploring. “We’re going to find something, right? They can’t possibly all be gone.”
The jade of Alessa’s eyes flashed up at him, but he couldn’t read what he found there – or maybe he just didn’t want to. He couldn’t give up hope just yet, though the knowledge that Paragon was clearly aware of what had happened left a lingering pit in his stomach.
They plodded on for the next 20 minutes in silence, the thick layer of ash at their feet muffling not only the sound of their trudging but also any optimistic thoughts that may have bubbled up in their chests. But with each step the tension amplified, until the squad finally emerged from the trees all but quivering.
And there they found… nothing.
Isaac rubbed his eyes, disbelieving. He was standing on pavement – he couldn’t quite see it through all the ash, but he could feel it, solid, under his feet, a distinct change from the forest floor. But where Raptor Defense Systems should have stood, there was just a massive depression in the ground filled with indistinguishable gray rubble. A crater.
He felt Alessa clutching his arm, and looked to her for confirmation – was this really real?
He found her frozen in place, eyes scrunched closed, a grimace of pain lining her face and her other hand clenched over her heart.
“Less?” he panted in concern.
Finally, she moved, just a barely perceptible shake of her head.
She opened her eyes, and the despair was etched right there, like disfiguring scratches on emeralds. She didn’t even have to say the words.
“They’re all gone,” she breathed.
20. INDECISION
Deion watched over Alex’s shoulder as he perfected the sketch, adding a little more shading here, contouring a sickeningly sharp fang there. He shuddered silently and turned away.
A moment later, Alex put his pencil down and sat back to contemplate his work. “I think it’s a good likeness, no?” He held it up to Deion’s face.
Deion put his hand up in involuntary defense. “A little too good.”
The images that terror had seared into his memory were enough – he didn’t really want to relive it any more than he already had in his nightmares.
“Now, who can we show this to?” Alex pondered aloud. “Someone needs to know this thing is running loose on the compound, trying to murder people.”
Deion sighed. “I wish I knew.”
It took him right back to the weeks when he and Alex had noticed everyone around them becoming sluggish and detached, when they realized there was something wrong but didn’t know where to turn for help. It’d taken a while to realize the culprit was the heavier cafeteria foods that neither of them could ever stomach, but even once they’d pieced that together, they couldn’t find anyone to alert, anyone to approach for answers. It’s not like they could talk to the daily assignment screens, and everyone around them had just shrugged their concerns off – no doubt that was the point of whatever was going into the food.
Eventually, they had just let it go.
But how could they let this go, too? Who could they trust to help?
“I just don’t get how no one ever warned us about this,” Deion grumbled. “We could have been killed.”
“Maybe I should just hang this up in the common room?” Alex suggested, holding the sketch out at eye level as if to test its effectiveness at grabbing a passerby’s attention.
But Deion barely heard him. “It makes me wonder what else they aren’t telling us,” he muttered darkly.
Alex looked down at his drawing for a moment, then finally crumpled it up and threw it across the room, as if he’d realized the futility of his plan. “I know. But what can we do? It’s too bad all those military guys on the drama aren’t real – they’d take care of business.”
That gave Deion a thought. “What about the ‘rebels?’ What if they were real?”
“Why would they be? None of the rest of it is.”
“Would you have thought that thing was?” Deion questioned, pointing across his bunk at the ball of paper in the corner.
Alex turned his hands out. “I guess not.”
“So humor me.”
“Ok,” Alex reasoned, “let’s say, for argument’s sake, the rebellion is a thing. How would we find someone involved?”
“I don’t know,” Deion replied.
“Exactly, no more than I know how to find a military guy. So it’s a nonstarter, just like everything else. Hence,” he concluded, motioning toward the remains of his earlier attempt at bringing attention to the issue, “that.”
Deion groaned.
“Not to mention,” Alex added, “if the show is for some reason showing actual footage of these ‘rebels,’ wouldn’t that big ol’ explosion mean they’re pretty much finished anyway?”
“You’re right,” Deion sighed. “I just don’t know what to do.” He hadn’t felt this helpless and lost since watching the world crumble around him all those years ago. But at least back then he’d had the security of feeling safe within Paragon’s walls, knowing they were quarantined from the virus.
“Well, we definitely won’t be sneaking around past curfew anymore,” Alex offered.
“No, we definitely won’t,” Deion acquiesced. But – thinking of the horrors he now knew could be found within Paragon’s walls – that didn’t give him quite the comfort it once might have. “I just hope that’s enough to keep us safe.”
21. UNION
Still numb, the handful of shell-shocked stragglers who composed what remained of the resistance had trekked back to the picnic clearing to set up camp for the night. None of them had the energy to figure out what to do next. Alessa wasn’t sure if any of them had the will to even think about going forward.
She zipped up the opening to their tent and collapsed into the sleeping bag, burying her face in Isaac’s chest as he stared at the ceiling. For some reason, the only thing she could feel right now was a desire to be as physically close to him as possible. She hugged him tighter in an effort to wring out any remaining space between their bodies.
“What are you thinking?” she whispered, peeking up at his face.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, the blue of h
is eyes still glued towards the heavens, searching. “I don’t know what to think,” he murmured truthfully.
Alessa sighed. She understood that sentiment.
“It just doesn’t seem real,” she offered. “Janie, Jo. Martha, Al. Regina, Lizzie. Sato. Michael. That tall guy that filled in for Carlos sometimes, what was his name?”
“Jackson.”
“Jackson. All of them. How could they all just be… gone?”
Isaac shook his head. “They can’t be.”
Alessa didn’t want to believe it, either, but she knew what she had felt earlier, knew the pain of a thousand voices crying out as they expired in an instant, vaporized into dust.
“But they are,” she breathed, not quite able yet to process it herself.
She’d dreaded this moment for so long – had spent years agonizing over the possibility of losing her sister – and now that it was here, she still couldn’t quite wrap her head around it. She was still waiting for Janie to zip open the tent and thrust her face through the gap, a big glowing smile on her face and that infectious laugh ringing out into the night, like it was all a big, ridiculous joke.
If only.
Isaac shifted and she glanced up to find a look of consternation carved into his features. “It had to be Paragon. Right?”
Alessa shrugged, thinking of the tire tracks they’d found earlier. “Maybe they saw the mushroom cloud, same as us, came looking for answers? It could have been some kind of accident…”
“That conveniently obliterated Paragon’s only serious threat? You don’t really think that.”
“No,” Alessa admitted. “All I know is I don’t really want to think about any of it.”
Still lying on top of him, Alessa slunk her way up Isaac’s body and took his face in her hands. When their eyes met, she kissed him deeply, pouring into it all the sorrow, all the shock, all the rage, all the gratitude to somehow, against all odds, still be here and by his side.
Isaac returned her passion, crushing her in his embrace as he flipped them both over and ran his hands desperately across every inch of her, needing her, needing to feel alive.
And, her mind going blessedly blank, Alessa found the only solace she would that night in the union of their bodies.
Alessa rolled over, an ache in her back, and sat up to move Isaac’s arm out from under her. She fumbled in the dark for some clothes, then softly unzipped the tent and padded out.
The night was cool and eerily quiet, everything blanketed in the muffling effects of the ash, no crickets or bats or birds left in the vicinity to shatter the silence.
By the moonlight, she stalked to the nearby line of trees to satisfy her newly-formed – and unwelcome – habit of relieving herself in the middle of the night. She didn’t know if it was anxiety waking her or an actual physical need, maybe a side effect of her body processing the radiation? Whatever it was, it’d been happening every night for days now, and it was annoying.
She squatted down among the brush, and something about the darkness and the stillness and the gentle sound of pattering summoned a wisp of memory from deep in her subconscious: waking in the night to her mother unzipping the tent and stalking away to the designated ‘go’ area.
Her family had taken that camping trip when she was only a kid; she was surprised she could remember anything from it, besides what she’d seen in photos in the ensuing years. It felt like another lifetime. Her mom had been pregnant with her younger brother then, so she couldn’t have been, what, more than four or five years old?
And just as the thought resolved in Alessa’s head, another one sidled in beside it, gripping her heart in a sudden clench of terror and dread:
Could this be a symptom of –?
No. No. She cut off the thought. It could not be.
Radiation sickness. A lingering stomach bug. An enormous amount of stress. There were a million other things that could explain how she’d been feeling the past few weeks. It could be any of them. Just, no.
Shaking off her momentary fluster, she tidied up and took a deep breath.
And as she rose again a familiar sense washed over her – one that should have raised her hackles in alarm, but instead tonight brought an unexpected comfort.
It was him.
“Joe?” she whispered into the dark, her voice barely audible even to herself.
She knew it was stupidity – even if it was him, it wasn’t likely he could understand her, or answer. And it was questionable whether he could, or would, even fight off the urge to eat her.
But for some reason, on this strange, soundless night where everything else felt lost, knowing that he was here – surviving, in whatever form, when so many others had not – was something. She had to know.
She stood up and scanned the trees, looking for movement. Then she closed her eyes and reached out with her mind, searching instead for she didn’t quite know what.
As had happened occasionally in the past when he was near, a quick image flashed in her mind. This time, it was Janie, asleep, curled around a little girl.
Alessa’s eyes shot open.
What could he be thinking of? She tried to conjure the vision in her head again. She thought the girl looked an awful lot like Josephine, but that didn’t make any sense. Joe couldn’t possibly have memories of her; Janie sure, but he had never even met Jo.
But before she could consider the possibilities, a searing pain flared in her brain, and she felt, rather than heard, a heavy thump in the woods not fifteen feet away.
She turned around to find Isaac clutching the butt of a gun, and what appeared to be a body at his feet.
22. DISBELIEF
Of all the times for his gun to jam! Isaac cursed under his breath.
He’d managed to knock the hideous monster creeping up on Alessa unconscious, but he wasn’t sure for how long. He needed to figure out how to kill it before it came to.
Isaac ejected the magazine and pulled back to expose the chamber, shaking the rifle in an effort to clear the obstruction.
He felt something give way and rammed the magazine back in, taking aim at the back of the sorry creature’s head.
“Isaac, no!” Alessa’s voice rang out as she grabbed the barrel of the gun and shoved it away from the creature.
“What are you doing?!” he exclaimed.
“Don’t hurt him,” she pleaded, panting with exertion.
“What? Why not? It was about to attack you!”
“No he wasn’t,” Alessa argued, still catching her breath. “He wouldn’t hurt me. I think.”
Isaac shook his head in bafflement. He knew it’d been a long day – a long couple of weeks – for both of them, but this just defied explanation.
“Get out of the way, Less,” Isaac insisted. She’d positioned herself between him and the beast. “Before you get us both killed.” He cocked the rifle and motioned for her to step aside.
She stood firm. “I can’t let you do that. Just trust me.”
Exasperated, Isaac pointed the gun at the ground. “What are you talking about, Alessa? This doesn’t make any sense!”
“I know,” Alessa soothed, placing one hand on the gun and pushing its barrel even further away. “I know it doesn’t make any sense. But you don’t want to do this.”
“Yes!” he argued. “Yes, I do!” This was absolute insanity. What was she waiting for? The thing could wake up and tear them to pieces at any moment!
“Isaac,” Alessa stated, her voice unyielding. “Isaac. Listen to me.”
“I’m listening,” he squabbled, trying to shake the gun loose of her grip so he could at least aim it in the right direction.
“Isaac.” She put her free hand on his shoulder. “Look at me.”
He sighed and gave up, searching her face. “What? What’s going on?”
She took a deep breath. “I don’t know how to tell you this. I’m sorry,” she sputtered, her words pouring out in a torrent. “I thought about it, but I didn’t know how. I just wasn’t sure. I
didn’t want to say anything unless I was certain –”
“Less!” he cut in.
She exhaled for an impossibly long time. “Isaac. I think this is Joe.”
Isaac’s head spun. He staggered backwards a step, trying to catch his balance, grappling to right the upside-down world he was seeing in his head.
“What do you mean? That’s impossible.”
“I know it’s impossible.”
“That’s impossible,” he asserted again.
“I know it’s impossible,” Alessa reiterated. She paused a moment, then added quietly, “but it’s true. I’m pretty sure it’s true.”
A battle raged in Isaac’s chest. He wanted so badly to see his brother again, but it couldn’t be – Joe was dead, he’d been dead for years.
And anyway, even if he could have him back, not like this. This gruesome… thing… in front of him could never – in a million years – be his brother.
It was impossible.
And yet, here was Alessa, gently removing the rifle from Isaac’s hands and slipping the magazine into her pocket.
She was serious. She really wasn’t going to let him kill it.
Before he could say anything more, she bent over and grabbed at the creature’s hulking shoulders.
“Come on,” she looked up at him. “We have to move him before anyone else wakes up.”
Isaac couldn’t quite believe it, but he found himself gripping the monster’s legs and hoisting them off the ground.
“There’s a storage shed nearby. We can lock him up in there until we figure out what to do.”
And like some kind of waking dream – or nightmare, definitely a nightmare – Isaac’s feet floated behind her through the forest, his mind still straining to catch up with the strange events unfolding before him.
Any moment now, Isaac was going to wake up.
Please, he pleaded with himself, wake up.
23. SERENDIPITY
“Sausage. Yeah, I’m definitely thinking sausage. And pancakes. What are you thinking?”
Deion shrugged apathetically. “I could do sausage.”
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