Humanity's Edge- The Complete Trilogy

by Paul B. Kohler

  “Thought you’d catch me in the middle of slacking off, didn’t you?” she teased.

  But Clay’s face didn’t break into its familiar grin. He raked his fingers through his hair, shaking his head. “You didn’t call Helen about the meteorite, did you?” he asked her. “Or anything else?”

  Alayna frowned, shaking her head. “No. Of course not,” she said. “That’s up to you. I wouldn’t overstep.” She paused, thinking. “Why. What’s up?”

  “They’ve already sent help,” Clay said. His voice was soft, almost a whisper. “Like they already know we’re in trouble.”

  Alayna dropped her pen. The pair stared at each other, faced with this terrible truth. Who had called Helen? Had it been someone in the town who didn’t trust Sheriff Clay’s actions or abilities? Had it been Lois herself? He quickly dismissed this thought after recalling their conversation that morning about discretion. Perhaps Darcy’s father, certain that something was afoot?

  “Damn it all to hell,” Clay burst, which was quite out of character for him. His normally even-keeled temper suddenly took a left turn. “Lois is going to have a conniption when she hears that word has leaked out somehow.” Clay sighed heavily, trying to level his mood out. “I think I’m going to order something real to eat. Maybe I just can’t think straight. You know?”

  “Order me a sub sandwich,” Alayna affirmed. “Otherwise, I might collapse in this office. And I know you need me. You’re getting up there in age, after all.” She winked at him, trying to spring their playfulness back to life.

  But Clay gave her just a brief nod before returning to his office, feeling like the world had tilted just a little bit off. And he was left to figure out what was going to happen next.

  Chapter 9

  Cliff Henderson stared at his hands helplessly as he sat on the jail cell’s only bench. Feeling his stomach quake within, he shuddered uncontrollably. It was nearly three in the afternoon, and he still hadn’t used his allotted phone call out of fear that nobody would answer. He didn’t want to acknowledge the fact that after nearly nine months in Carterville, he was alone. It was as if he was a foreigner in a far-off land. He was only half correct.

  He’d gotten drunk and, in turn, too rowdy. And this time, he’d landed himself in an unfamiliar jail cell. Despite having a relative fondness for the drink, he had the unequivocal inability to embrace loneliness.

  The previous evening’s antics were blurry at best. He remembered feeling the tremors in his chest, and then the coughing fits as he wrapped up his shift. He’d stripped himself of his white coat and gloves and glared at his own reflection in the bathroom mirror, feeling the onset of flu alongside sheer, unadulterated solitude. The familiar creep had been present within him for nearly a decade, and he knew just the ticket for release.

  Cliff had marched to the local bar at around nine in the evening, hearing the roar of the local football team’s crowd down the street. He’d spit upon the ground, feeling a sudden rush of hatred for their kind. The men and women who always belonged—and always would—were the cheerleaders, the football players, the popular ones. It never changed. He’d always been a freak scientist. He wouldn’t be anything else. Ever.

  He’d eased into the local bar, collapsing upon the barstool and ordering a whisky. Or was it a double? He hadn’t eaten since he lost his appetite, most certainly caused from the unexpected off-gassing that had overcome the lab. Of course, the rest of the town thought he worked at Moe’s Candy. As if a town like this could support an abundance of truffles.

  And so, because of his experimentation, he drank on an empty stomach, feeling his eyesight grow blurry as the night swept on.

  Then, around midnight, Trudy had come in, all legs and thin arms and big breasts and fluttering eyelashes. He remembered flirting with her and tossing his arm around her, feeling like she was the only person he’d ever known his entire life. It was strangely pathetic.

  He remembered feeling that violent anger toward her when she’d leaned toward the other woman at the bar and kissed her. Was Trudy a lesbian? He didn’t care; he didn’t mind lesbians. He just didn’t want to bark up the wrong tree. The moment Trudy finished her face sucking, the woman she’d kissed called the police, irate, and he’d begun to scream at her. “I THOUGHT THIS WAS IT FOR US. I THOUGHT WE WERE GOING HOME TOGETHER.”

  As the memories of his own voice rang through his head, regret sputtered through him. And as he fell into it, he felt his stomach constrict. His eyes opened wide as he realized, all at once, that he was going to vomit.

  “Shit,” he said. He lunged for the toilet and wrapped his hands around the cold steel, feeling the vomit erupt from the depths of his body. Kyle, the officer who had picked both him and Trudy up the night before, shifted in his chair on the other side of the cell bars.

  “You okay?” he called.

  “Sure,” Cliff spat. “Probably just the hangover.”

  “You were pretty messed up when I got to you,” Kyle affirmed. He flipped a page in his newspaper.

  Before Cliff could agree, before he could inquire when he could go home, the vomit was coursing through him once more. His eyes were wide, panicked. He felt as if his brain was burning. As he retched again, he noted that the toilet was filling with blood. He hadn’t eaten in nearly a day. He had nothing left. Was this a side effect from his experiment? No. Surely he’d been careful enough. Surely he’d followed best lab practices.

  But that wasn’t always like him. Not at all—not in his past. In school he’d been written up many times for being lazy with his techniques, never washing his hands enough, always using dirty pipettes. It hadn’t mattered then. He hadn’t thought it really mattered now.

  Shit.

  Then, all at once, Cliff began to convulse, his limbs thrashing violently. He turned toward Kyle, who now stood erect, his paper in a heap at his feet. “Cliff?” he called. “Cliff, should I call the doctor?”

  Cliff wasn’t responding. Not anymore. Kyle tapped the buzzer, alerting someone, anyone else in the station that he needed assistance. Kyle’s bright, youthful eyes hadn’t seen anything so fierce before. Cliff’s actions bordered on the demonic, his body thrusting against the jail cell bars now. He was bludgeoning his cheeks. Blood spurted from his mouth, from gashes near his eyebrows and chin. He no longer looked human.

  Chapter 10

  Clay was hunched over his wastebasket. After inhaling his takeout lunch, his stomach had turned over, and he’d spent the better part of the previous thirty minutes retching. His stomach clenched violently. Then, suddenly, the station’s intercom alert drowned out the sound of his guttural heaving. He wiped his lips, listening to the resounding alarm.

  “If anyone’s out there, I need help! Damn it, I need help right now!”

  He ripped himself from his wastebasket the moment that he recognized Kyle’s voice. What could he need? As far as Clay could remember, he was babysitting the lone person in the jail cell. That guy who manned the candy store. What could be so difficult with that?

  But Clay was the epitome of diligence. He stood, swiped the last fleck of vomit from his lips, and marched toward lockup, his hand upon his gun. He couldn’t allow the troops to know he was out of sorts. Not with everything going on.

  When Clay reached the detention block, Kyle was poised before the bars, his hand upon his own gun. The candy man, Cliff, jerked forward in violent spasms. Bloody vomit spurt from his mouth. Clay yelled out to Kyle, feeling panicked. “What the hell’s going on?”

  Kyle was aghast. He took a step to the side, allowing Clay full view of the thrashing man. Cliff’s head was lacerated at nearly every point on his forehead and near his ears, and a strange, purple substance oozed down his face. His eyes looked crazed, alien.

  “CLIFF? CAN YOU HEAR ME?” Clay called to him, bending at the waist, unsure of the strength of his bowel control. He couldn’t feel his spinning stomach any longer, but that didn’t mean a thing. “CLIFF. GET AHOLD OF YOURSELF.”

  But Cliff continue
d to thrash frenetically. Clay reached toward the side desk, grabbing a Taser from the third drawer. He lifted it toward the crazed man and tried to spark him, tried to make him stop. But Cliff’s spasms became more violent by the moment. A forceful head butt against the cell bar exploded the skin above his eyebrow, exposing bits of skeleton.

  “STOP!” Clay cried out, still holding the Taser. He couldn’t believe the man couldn’t sense it. Perhaps he was having a seizure? It couldn’t be an elaborate ruse at this point. It seemed medical. It seemed homicidal.

  Moments later, with chunks of bone and blood dripping down the jail cell bars, Cliff fell to the ground. He was unconscious. He lay in a heap, his left arm abnormally reaching toward the far wall. He looked dead.

  “Oh my god. Hand me the keys,” Clay called, grabbing them from Kyle. He slotted the key into the jail cell hurriedly, adding, “And call the ambulance!”

  The cell door opened slowly, with an ominous creak. And the moment it was wide enough to allow Clay’s entrance, everything seemed to explode. The man splayed before him sprung up, crazed, almost flying. His mouth opened, revealing sharp, bloodied teeth. He flailed his arms toward Clay with the intent to destroy—with inhuman tendencies—Clay was sure of it.

  Instinctively, Clay reached for his gun. He pulled it up, shooting Cliff once in the chest. Clay blinked rapidly, watching as the beast recoiled backward from the force of the impact. Cliff lifted his bloodied hands toward his chest, his raving eyes still upon Clay. He heaved. And then, like a monster in a film, he lurched forward. The impact of the bullet hadn’t destroyed him. Not for good.

  Clay took a defensive stance, and in the final moment, he lifted his gun to the candy man’s head and shot a bullet between his eyes, blasting his brains across the bricks of the jail cell wall. Cliff Henderson flung back and became a collection of bones and limbs and fat. He was a mound. He was nothing.

  Chapter 11

  Clay breathed heavily, questioning what he saw before him. His sight was momentarily obscured by Cliff’s spattered blood, but a quick wipe with his free hand and his vision cleared. His eyes turned from the gun to the dead man and then toward Kyle. Kyle still held the phone in his hand. He was visibly shaking.

  “Sheriff—” Kyle began, shaking his head. “What the fuck was—”

  “I don’t know, Kyle,” Clay whispered. He felt the adrenaline drain from his muscles and brain. He was strangely empty, almost without awareness. “He hadn’t been acting like this all day?”

  Kyle shook his head. “I—I picked him up with Trudy last night,” he said. He moved forward, looking at the man with morbid curiosity. “He was just drunk, Clay. He wasn’t anything special. He wasn’t sick, not that I could tell.”

  Alayna burst into the detention block, her gun drawn and ready for action. She quickly scanned the room, her eyes resting on Clay’s pale form standing over a dead body.

  “What happened?” she gasped as she moved into the crowded cell. The moment she saw Cliff’s ravaged face, she took a quick step back and averted her eyes.

  “I—I’m not sure. Kyle says he was fine just before, but then he went crazy,” Clay began.

  “It’s like a switch went off inside him. One moment we were talking, and then the next, he turned into this . . . zombie-like monster,” Kyle added.

  An eerie silence settled in the block, and seconds later, Alayna’s complexion turned green and she rushed from the cell, her hand covering her mouth.

  Clay left the cell, feeling the weight of the death upon his shoulders. He exited the station, allowing the sun to fall upon his cheeks. Absentmindedly, he reholstered his gun. He’d never killed anyone before. He’d always wondered about it, what it would mean to erase someone’s name from existence. But he hadn’t craved it. He was in the business of saving people, not destroying them.

  Moments later Kyle appeared beside him. He peered at him like a son looked upon his commanding father. He was similar to Maia, only a few years older. A few years wiser.

  “You did the right thing,” Kyle said, sniffing. “Seriously. He was out to kill you.”

  “Let’s just get the coroner out here,” Clay said. He appreciated Kyle’s words, but he didn’t want to acknowledge them. He wanted to move toward understanding. He didn’t want to dwell on this new, confusing, terrible feeling. He wanted answers.

  “Why don’t you go home and get cleaned up, then,” Kyle said. “We can handle things for a bit.”

  But Clay shook his head, recognizing that in his normally peaceful town, two people had now died in less than twenty-four hours. “I have to stay,” he said. “I have a change of clothes. I always do.”

  Chapter 12

  Later, Clay and Alayna sat in his office. Silence seemed impenetrable as their thoughts turned wild within them.

  “Are you feeling any better?” Clay asked, tapping his fingers absentmindedly. “Your stomach, I mean.”

  “Ah, my lunch in reverse,” Alayna exhaled sharply. “I forgot about it, really. Everything feels . . . wrong. Doesn’t it to you?”

  Clay swiped his fingers through his hair, remembering the frenzy of Cliff’s limbs. “Damn it, Alayna. He didn’t even register that I was tasing him. It seemed like he was so far away. And then, when he came at me—” He shook his head, furrowing his brow. “I’d only met him once or twice. I took Maia in to buy some chocolate maybe two months ago. He seemed like a regular guy, if a bit withdrawn and disorganized. And then, he’s picked up for being disorderly last night. Do you think he was on drugs?” His words came fast.

  “I’ve never seen a drug impact somebody like that,” Alayna whispered. “Never in all my years.”

  “Granted, maybe the people in Helen have,” Clay offered. “We’re just a small town here. I’ve spent no more than three or four days at a time in any other city. It’s all just too much for me.” He shuddered, remembering marching through the New York streets on a vacation with Valerie nearly five years before. He’d only felt solid, safe when they’d returned back to their Carterville home. He’d wrapped himself tightly in his private little hamlet, facing the truth: he wasn’t cut out for any other kind of life.

  “It has to be a coincidence, right?” Alayna said then. “With this meteorite crashing down. And now, with Cliff acting like a maniac—”

  “I’m sure they’re not related,” Clay stammered. “The science isn’t there. Plus, Cliff was miles away from the meteorite, locked in the jail cell. If he was affected by it, then everyone around us should be too.”

  “Right,” Alayna said. Her voice sounded small, far away.

  As they sat in the silence, they both sensed a sudden trembling beneath their feet. Clay lifted his hands to the desk, noting that the wood itself was vibrating. He eyed Alayna, unsure if he was truly going crazy this time.

  “Do you feel that?”

  “I do,” Alayna said.

  They rose from their seats and made their way toward the front office of the station, noting that more of the staff had also deserted their positions. They formed a line outside the station, their arms crossed, gazing out at the horizon. Clay stood, his boots shoulder width apart, glaring into the sunlight. Far down Highway 77, which became Main Street as it went through town, he saw the haze of several large, menacing vehicles. He tapped his hand against his revolver, noting it was still flecked with Cliff’s blood. He shivered.

  Alayna whispered toward him, anxious for no one else to hear. “What the hell is that?”

  Chapter 13

  As the caravan of vehicles grew closer, more townspeople appeared from their homes and shops, glaring out into the distance. Several gasped, but most looked firm, stoic, with the “come what may” mentality of good provincial people.

  Finally, when the convoy was closer, rolling down the dry and dusty pavement, Clay caught the military insignia on several of the vehicles. A large tank trailed them, pointing a massive gun toward the center of the town square. Clay pushed through the crowd on Main Street, standing in the cente
r of the road, his chin high. He sensed that this was the “backup” from Helen. But why on earth had they sent the military, rather than a few cop cars and perhaps some scientists who would investigate the meteorite? None of it made sense.

  Alayna hurried to his side and stood with him, her fingers tapping lightly on her own gun. As the military slowed to a crawl, Clay’s mind flashed to images of his daughter and wife.

  The procession formed a sturdy line between the early twentieth-century buildings and shops. Clay could see slight movement in the driver’s seats of the vehicles but still clung to his gun, realizing all of the townspeople had their eyes upon him.

  In that moment, one of the transport’s doors burst open, revealing a large combat boot, followed by a sturdy, long leg. A military man emerged: all seven feet tall of him, his hair short and cropped, almost Nazi-like, and his blue eyes flashing. He marched toward Clay, lifting his hand to his brow and saluting him. He then turned toward the expectant station’s staff. They peered at him like bunny rabbits about to be slaughtered.

  “Staff of Carterville Sheriff’s Department, thank you for welcoming me,” he barked, his voice harsh. “My name is Colonel Scott Wallace. I like to keep a tight ship around here, and if you follow my orders to a T, we won’t have a moment’s problem. Is that clear?”

  Clay felt mass confusion deep within, laced with fits of anger. The man towered over him, and yet he felt a longing to reach up and punch him across the face, then ask him who the hell he thought he was. What made him think he could come toward his people, his staff, and begin bossing them around?

  Clay strode forward, clearing his throat. He felt like a child, exerting his force on the playground. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’m Sheriff Clay Dobbs. What’s going on here?”