“Do you want me to drive?” Logan asked.
Jane shook her head. She had to remain strong.
“I’ll be okay,” she said.
They were heading down North Avenue, toward Chestnut Road, when someone ran out in front of their car. Jane slammed on the brakes. The guys were pitched forward, and Logan nearly clocked his forehead on the dashboard. Behind him, the luggage flew into the front seat, hers opening and spilling out her three days’ worth of clothes onto the floor.
The person in the middle of the road was covered in blood. Their clothes were in rags, and one of their shoes was missing. Beneath all that blood, Logan thought the person was a female, but he wasn’t completely sure. It could’ve been a man with long hair, one of those hippie fellas that thought the year was 1969 and not 2018.
The person waved their arms, trying to get their attention—which they certainly had. “Help me!” she said. The voice was unmistakably female.
She had scratches all over her torso. Deep gouges in her skin that looked like they were in dire need of stitches. If not seen to, Logan was sure this woman would bleed out.
“What’s happening?” she said.
Logan had a name for what was happening, though he kept it to himself: The end of the world.
“Please help me,” the woman said.
Just as Logan opened the door with the intent of helping her, something snatched her out of the darkness.
Blink and you fucking miss it.
The car was filled with silence. None of them could speak, and if they could, what would they have said?
What the fuck was that?
What’s happening?
Dear God, help us?
That seemed about right.
Jane’s eyes lingered on the spot in the broken concrete where the woman had been standing. She’d looked like death, and now she was gone. Something had taken her.
What was it? A bear? A wolf?
No, it was too big for any of those. It didn’t look like it had any hair, either; just reptilian skin, full of bumps and ridges. Oozing.
A fucking dinosaur?
For a moment, Jane couldn’t move. The seat may as well have been covered in super glue. Her body stuck to it like a fly in fly paper. She felt as if her blood had frozen inside of her. She couldn’t even pry her eyes from the spot where the woman had been standing.
Derek was the one who broke the heavy silence. “Go!” he was saying. “Go!”
His voice startled Jane. Her palms were so sweaty that when she jumped, they slipped off the steering wheel. She glanced into the rearview and saw that Derek was turned around, looking out the back window. He gripped one of the suitcases so tightly, his tendons stood out in his hands like exposed tree roots.
Something thumped the ground outside. Thunderous.
Jane’s eye flicked away from the mirror. She made herself look ahead. Not back. Never back.
“Go!” Derek yelled again. “It’s gonna hit—”
Jane slammed on the gas pedal, and Derek jerked backward, buried again by the suitcases. The tires shrieked outside of the windows, but not loud enough to mask the sounds of whatever was coming for them.
Jane whipped around a van lying on its side, broken glass crunching underneath the tires. Up ahead, a firetruck was parked diagonally across the pavement. Jane took a hard right down a side street—Chestnut Road, though she didn’t catch the name… Her mind was too busy trying to forget about the deep gashes she’d seen in the firetruck’s metal body. Even if she had caught the name of the street, she wouldn’t know it was the same street Brad Long and his mother lived on. Not yet.
The turn down Chestnut proved too difficult.
Jane, grunting, whipped the wheel around, trying to avoid hitting a parked SUV.
She didn’t.
She slammed on the brakes; alas, they did not help, and the left side of the Honda’s front bumper clipped the front end of the SUV.
Her grandfather used to say something many years ago before lung cancer did him in. ’They don’t make ‘em like they used to.’ He would say this about everything, but he was especially fond of that saying when it came to cars. He’d point out that, back in his day, they were made out of solid metal. ‘Now, they’re practically made out of plastic! Think plastic is gonna hold up? No!’
Jane’s grandfather’s voice was so clear in her head, it was as if he were sitting in the passenger seat whispering to her, instead of Logan.
Plastic, she thought again, as the front end of her Honda shattered into a thousand pieces, and the hood crumpled upward, blocking her view of the street.
The force launched her forward, too much to withstand, and she hit her head hard on the steering wheel, which seemed the most solid part of the car. Had she not been wearing her seatbelt, she would’ve gone through the windshield, thrown amongst the glass and shrapnel.
Despite the Honda swiping the SUV, the car kept going, but by this point, Jane had lost control. She stomped on the brakes again and again, but no luck. The Honda had a mind of its own.
A tree appeared out of nowhere, barely visible over the accordion-shaped hood.
The Honda plowed into it.
Mother Nature wins again, she thought deliriously.
The last thing she heard before the deep black of unconsciousness took her was her husband’s strangled cry…and the roaring of some great beast.
15
The Beginning of the End
Northeast Ohio received only a small portion of the shit-storm ravaging planet Earth that night.
In Fresno, California, Rick Kerr and Lola Jones, both college-aged (though Rick had opted to work at his father’s garage), laid in the back of a pickup truck, their heads propped up on jackets they did not need. It was always warm in summer, but that night was almost unbelievably warm. The sky had darkened considerably since they’d arrived at the Lover’s Nest lookout spot, but both of them had chalked that up to a coming thunderstorm—nothing out of the ordinary. Not yet.
These two young people were in love. But not even love could save them.
However, it was love that was in the forefront of their minds; not the odd shapes that had popped up all over the world, and certainly not the one just over sixty miles away in Pixley, at the Pixley Wildlife Preserve.
No. Just love.
It may have taken Lola a little longer to come around to this love, true, but the first night Rick had seen her (dressed in her cute carhop outfit, serving overflowing root beer floats while she tried to keep her balance on roller-skates), he knew there was no one else in this world for him. He couldn’t tell you why or how. He just knew.
Any night with her was perfect.
Her hand was on his chest, rising and falling with the steady movement of his breathing, her head nestled beneath his ear. They were both young and happy and at peace. Rick didn’t care if they ‘went all the way’ that night or any other night, just as long as he was with her. The summer would eventually wind down, and she would have to go back to school, but like the voids, that was far from their minds.
“Look,” she whispered, pointing into the clear, night sky where the stars sparkled the exact way Rick thought her smile sparkled. She wore his high school class ring on her index finger. It, too, sparkled.
Rick’s eyes followed to where Lola was pointing, though he didn’t need the guidance. What was in the night sky, burning like huge fireworks, was impossible not to see.
“It’s a shooting star,” Lola said. She leaned closer and kissed him on the cheek. “Close your eyes and make a wish.”
The void in Pixley had opened less than an hour before, vomiting up a million creatures. Hungry creatures. Creatures that had wandered toward Fresno under the cover of the void’s manifested darkness.
Rick smiled. “I already got my wish.”
Lola squeezed her body up against his. “Oh, Rick.”
He didn’t answer with words. Instead, he drew her face up to his and kissed her, long and deep.
>
When the kiss was over, Lola turned around. She’d heard something rustling in the trees. Then she heard people screaming in the town below. Her heart seized.
“What is that, Rick? What’s going on?” She fell off him and curled up to his side.
“I-I don’t know,” he said, reaching for his jacket. His smartphone was in the pocket, and surely the CNN app would be reporting on that. If not, he’d check Twitter and Facebook. But when he took his phone out, the screen was black, and the ON button did nothing.
“You have your phone?” he asked Lola.
She shook her head. “It’s in the truck. I’ll get it.”
Before she could take more than two steps, whatever was hiding in the bushes revealed itself. Lola screamed high and shrill. Rick was quick to rise off of the car’s hood, but by then it was too late.
Lola’s head was gone, and something was standing over her. Its flesh was scaled. Spikes jutted from its back. A swollen, black tongue escaped between huge teeth and lapped at the blood spurting from Lola’s neck.
Rick could not help himself. He screamed.
The creature cocked its head, saw another meal, and advanced too fast.
Rick looked up in time to see his life flash before his eyes. Not much of a life, he thought. Pretty cookie cutter, if he was being totally honest.
Rick Kerr and Lola Jones were just two of the millions ravaged that first night.
In Miami, a drug kingpin was torturing one of his pushers who’d gotten a little too big for his britches, and had started taking a bigger cut than he was supposed to. The kingpin’s name was Louie, but in the streets he was known as Mad Lou. If you saw the small Mexican man, you would think he was the furthest thing from mad. He was pushing fifty years old and had a bad limp. He wore clothes so colorful, they rivaled a peacock’s plumage: a sequined shirt that caught glints of the swinging basement light, and tight, white pants that hugged his bulge sickeningly.
The pusher, one Miguel Cortez—a young man who’d been a user not five years before, but who’d gone through rehab and gotten clean—stood barefoot on the cold basement floor, his hand chained to a support beam. His clothes were in a heap next to him, but the rats had already begun burrowing inside of them. These rats were not afraid of people; they were almost as big as cats, with teeth the size of human thumbs—or so it seemed. Rumor was, these rats were Mad Lou’s pets. He fed his enemies to them.
Miguel though that was horseshit, but now, beaten to the point of delirium, it started to make sense.
“Pliers,” Mad Lou said to his large henchman, looking at Miguel with disgust.
The henchman handed over the tool.
“Think you can steal from me, cabrón? I’ll teach you why it ain’t a good idea to steal from Mad Lou!”
Miguel let his eyes roll to the back of his head, but before he saw blackness, he saw the glittering, yellow eyes of the mutant rats. One of them had his shoe in its maw, and he remembered thinking haphazardly that the shoe cost over two-hundred bucks.
How dare that stupid rat—
The pliers didn’t wind up where he thought they were going to. Not his mouth, or his fingers or toes, but to a place that woke him right up out of his pain-induced haze: his manhood.
He found the strength to scream again.
Mad Lou laughed, eye-level with Miguel’s dick. “There we go! There we go!”
The large henchman had to turn his head away. Miguel was screaming to the point of exhaustion. He thought his eyeballs were going to burst. Louie twisted and squeezed the handles harder.
“Please! Please—” Miguel shouted.
“Please what?” Louie’s voice was calm and steady.
“Please f-forgive me! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Please stop! Please, anything but my dick, man!”
Some of the pressure alleviated as Louie weighed his options. Then, with a lightning bolt of pain, the pliers clamped down on Miguel’s testicles. He felt something pop, and the room’s one hanging light seemed to darken. He screamed, too, but he couldn’t even hear it. The agony wracking his body had set off an alarm in his skull. He only felt his vocal cords shredding.
“Not your dick,” the henchman said, chuckling.
“See, kid, I can’t just let you walk without punishment,” Louie said. “Can I, Bubba?”
The henchmen shook his head.
“Bubba knows, cabrón. He’s seen what I do to the people who double-cross me,” Mad Lou said.
There were drops of blood on the floor. His blood. Blood everywhere in this dank, rat-infested basement.
Speaking of the rats, one big sucker was slinking out of the corner of the room where Miguel’s chino pants and button-up shirt had undoubtedly been taken. Neither Mad Lou or Bubba gave it a glance as it chittered and squeaked, but Miguel’s eyes were on its long paws that almost looked like human fingers, its yellow teeth that were as hard as steel. He had lived in New York City most of his teenage years, and there were rats all over, but none of them were as big as the one looking at him now. Glittering, yellow eyes like gold coins, mangy, wet fur, round, plump bodies.
The rat sniffed around his feet, its nose and whiskers twitching. Miguel felt a scream coming up his throat again, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to let it out. Instead, he looked at Louie and Bubba, who seemed to be having a joyous conversation, laughing and smiling, the pliers slick with red still in hand.
Miguel had done acid once and had a bad trip; this was a million times worse than that.
The rat stuck out its tongue and began to lick the droplets of blood that had dripped from the rivulets running down Miguel’s bare legs. First it licked apprehensively, then greedily, like a starving dog who’d happened upon a dropped ice cream cone. Miguel watched with horrified curiosity. When the rat had licked the floor clean, it looked up. Those golden eyes had gone a maddening shade of red, almost the color of the now gone blood.
Miguel felt a deep strike of fear carving into his stomach. He screamed—
“I said, do you think you learned your lesson, kid?” Mad Lou was looking into Miguel’s eyes and holding up the bloody pliers. Bubba had gone the shade of sewage water. “He don’t wanna talk, guess he hasn’t learned his lesson,” Louie said.
“No! I learned my lesson!” Miguel shouted. The chains around his wrist and over the support beam jingled. “Please! I’ve learned. Just don’t let the rats get me. Oh my God! Please!”
Louie furrowed his brow and glanced over to Bubba, who just shook his head and shrugged.
“Kid’s madder than I am. Ain’t no rats in here, kid. You think Mad Lou keeps rats?”
“No, no no no no,” Miguel said.
Louie laughed. “All right, kid, you learned your lesson.” He turned his back on him and handed the pliers to Bubba. “Clean him up and drop him off back at Rico’s place.”
Bubba nodded solemnly.
“I ruined another pair of fuckin’ pants,” Louie said to himself.
Miguel didn’t look at the man’s pants, he didn’t care. What he cared about were the dark corners of the basement, where that big motherfuckin’ rat had disappeared to, and about getting the hell out of here and up to ground-level.
It was all delirium. My brain was so pained, it made up those fuckin’ rats. Thank God! Thank God! Miguel thought.
It was about five minutes later when one of the monsters from the void in the Everglades took out a semi-truck directly in front of the large house where Miguel was being tortured. The tipped semi struck the asphalt with the sound of a train crash, shaking the house’s foundation. Little puffs of dust fell from the ceiling, coating Miguel’s blood-sticky skin. The single lightbulb flickered, went dark, then came back on again. Outside, car alarms raged, and a gathering chorus of concerned, confused voices drifted in.
“What the fuck was that?” Mad Lou said.
Bubba didn’t answer.
“Sounded like Armageddon.” Mad Lou looked at Miguel, then looked at Bubba. “Go check it out, you big buffoon!”
“What the hell am I paying you for, then?”
No answer, only the frightened look of a man who was much too big to be frightened of anything.
“Fine, I’ll go look.” Mad Lou left the basement, closing the door behind him.
Not long after, a high-pitched screaming broke the stillness. This was shortly followed by gunshots. It was almost another ten minutes before the sweaty and scared Bubba said something.
“Dammit.”
The big man went up the steps, also closing the door behind him.
Miguel screamed for him not to leave, because a feeling had taken up residence in his gut, a feeling that said neither of them would be back to un-cuff and free him. A feeling that would eventually turn out to be accurate.
Minutes passed. Minutes then turned to an hour. Then hours passed.
The power in the neighborhood stayed on for what felt like a few of these hours, but down there in the basement, with the feeling gone out of his arms, and his testicles broken and bleeding, time stretched on for an eternity. Miguel’s head cleared in that span of time. Drifting in and out of sleep—albeit uncomfortably—helped with that.
He thought of his mom back in New York City, working as a maid and cleaning hundreds of floors of Manhattan skyscrapers. He thought about his plan to make enough money to move her and the rest of the family down here to Miami, where it never snowed and the money came in like a tsunami wave at the drop of a hat. He thought of the girls he’d met down here in South Beach, how beautiful and voluptuous they were, how they’d been fun to get with, but also how none of them held a candle to Sabrina, the love of his life, and when he got out of this small jam, he’d call her up and tell her he was still in love with her, and maybe would she like to come down to South Beach to visit? He thought of all these things, and the distance of the unsettling incident with the mutated rat licking his blood grew further and further.
He heard sirens. Gunshots. Shouts. Dogs barking. Cats yowling. Horns honking. But none of this scared him. They were typical Miami sounds.
Ravaged: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Taken World Book 1) Page 9