by Mike Kraus
Along the back side of the cavern, Marcus spotted a small outcropping and recess in the cavern about halfway up the wall. It looked large enough for him to rest in for the night, which he preferred to sleeping on the open floor of the cavern. Getting up to the outcropping would be relatively easy, too, since there were enough handholds in the cavern wall that he could pull himself up to it with relative ease.
Marcus took off his backpack and slung a bottle of water into the air, arcing into the recess. A second later he heard it bounce off of the back wall of the recess, rolling towards the edge of the outcropping from the force of the throw. When it didn’t fall down, he shrugged. “I guess it’ll work.” Marcus pulled off his backpack and flung it up after the water bottle, landing it safely on the edge of the outcropping.
The climb up to the recess wasn’t difficult, though it took Marcus three tries because of how tired he was. On the third try, he grabbed the ledge, pulling himself up onto the outcropping. The recess was only a few feet high, but several feet long, shaped like a naturally built sleeping cocoon. The outcropping on the side of the recess provided just enough space to keep his backpack tucked out of sight of the floor below.
For the first time since starting the climb up the mountain, Marcus felt reasonably secure from the creature. With no room to build a fire, he ate another cold meal and spread his bedroll out in the recess. Marcus laid the machete near his head, within grabbing distance, then lay down on the bedroll. His muscles and back were aching from the day’s hike, and he hoped that the creature would give up the pursuit so he could have a peaceful day tomorrow. Whether that would actually happen or not, though, remained to be seen.
10:39 AM, March 30, 2038
Nancy Sims
Nancy passed the night in the driver’s seat of the truck, parked in a stand of trees. She took a blanket from the house before she left and was thankful, since the nights were still chilly this early in the year. She had driven most of the day uneventfully, though she had to learn how to drive off-road faster than she would have liked, due to the condition of the highways. Every time she passed by or through a large enough city, the damage to the area grew larger, forcing her to seek alternate routes to continue moving forward.
The next morning, Nancy got off to an early start. She was just outside Springfield, IL, having driven a good six hours past Kansas City the previous day. She had hoped to enter the city, but the eastern side of the city looked worse than the western side, so she didn’t know what else to do but continue driving, moving east at a brisk pace.
While driving through both populated and non-populated areas, Nancy hadn’t caught sight of any people, a fact that was increasingly worrying to her. Even with all of the destruction around her, she had survived, yet for some reason, she hadn’t seen evidence of anything. Other than that silver… whatever it was.
After passing around Springfield, Nancy drove for an hour, watching signs telling her that she was drawing ever closer to Indianapolis, when she noticed something in the distance. A figure was walking along the road, heading in the same direction she was, towards the border. Nancy’s eyes widened in happiness as she drew closer, seeing that the figure was a person and not the silvery mass she had encountered back on the farm.
She sped up, racing to meet the person who was out walking. After a moment she reached them, slowed down and rolled down her window.
“Oh thank God! Hello!” she yelled. The man stopped walking, but kept his back turned, not looking back at her. Nancy grew puzzled and pulled the car up several more feet, put it in park and jumped out, running up to the man.
He looked to be in his mid-forties, with greasy blond hair that was thin and wispy, going every which direction. He wore a dark blue jumpsuit and thick brown work boots. A pack was slung over his back, and he stared at the ground as he stood there, not meeting Nancy’s gaze as she approached.
“Hello? Can you hear me?” Maybe he’s deaf, she thought. Nancy slowly walked up to the man, waving her arms, trying to catch his attention. When she was a few feet away from him, a loud metallic sound behind her made her froze. Though Nancy had never been held at gunpoint, she recognized the unmistakable sound of a pump-action shotgun.
“Hold on there missy. Not another step.” The voice was behind her, smooth and deep.
“Wh—who are you?”
The man holding the shotgun spoke with a slow, deep voice that conflicted with the shotgun that was pointed at her head. “Why, I do apologize, missy. My name’s Joshua, and that’s my brother, Richard.”
Nancy gulped audibly as Richard raised his head, revealing a scarred face covered in dirt, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Chapped and bleeding lips pulled back, revealing a row of rotted teeth as Richard gave her a twisted grin, sending shivers up her spine. She turned to look at Joshua, who was also dressed in a blue jumpsuit and work boots. His hair was darker and thicker than Richard’s, with a part on the right side, and his face was clean, too, with white teeth behind the grin he gave Nancy as she stared at him.
“Now before you go asking us what we’re about to do with you, missy, I have to ask you to put your hands behind your back and let ol’ Richard there tie you up.”
Nancy’s face went pale as she realized what they intended to do. “You’re kidnapping me?!”
Joshua’s smiled broadened as Richard grabbed her arms, forcing them together behind her back as he tied them together with twine. “That’s such a dirty word, missy! We prefer to call it—”
“Liberatin’!” shouted Richard, spit flying from his mouth as he guffawed loudly in Nancy’s ear.
Joshua gave a low chuckle, joining the laughter of his brother as they finished binding Nancy’s hands and feet and carried her up the highway next to a truck parked on the shoulder, well-disguised among a group of broken down vehicles.
Richard grunted as they lifted Nancy up and threw her into the back of the truck. “After she’s taken care of, you go back and get her truck. We could use it for the spare parts.”
Nancy landed in a heap, banging her head against the metal bed of the truck. She was lying facing backwards out of the truck, with a still body next to her, dressed in a suit and tie that had been torn in several places. The last thing she saw was Joshua tying a potato sack around her head. Then, a few seconds later, something hard hit her temple, causing her to black out almost instantly.
7:12 AM, March 28, 2038
Leonard McComb
Leonard awoke early the next morning to the sounds of the waves lapping near his feet. After a quick meal and an answer to the call of nature, he once again shouldered his bag and his remaining jug of water. A train track that carried ammunition to the pier in the bay was nearby and he decided to follow that inland. Leonard passed through residential neighborhoods and large groves of trees, curving south with the railroad track. As he continued to walk farther south into Jersey towards the parkway, he noticed that the damage to the area was growing less and less severe.
At several points, Leonard stopped at houses, knocking on the front doors and yelling out down the streets to see if anyone was still alive. Silence was the only response he was met with. While this didn’t bother him after what he witnessed in New York, he was growing increasingly disturbed by the lack of something else: bodies. Ever since landing on the beach, he hadn’t seen a single body anywhere he looked. There were plenty of collapsed buildings, overturned cars and other signs of destruction, but no people.
He hadn’t been underground for long after the bombs fell, and was confused by the strange juxtaposition of scenarios. On one hand, massive doses of radiation could have easily killed the population in the area, but then why wasn’t he sick from the radiation after being aboveground for so long? And even if the population had been killed by radiation, that still didn’t explain why there were no bodies. Radiation would have killed them, but it certainly wouldn’t have erased their bodies from the face of the earth. Even cars that had clearly been wrecked while being driven ha
d no evidence of people in them aside from a few splashes of dried blood. Whatever had happened, it was starting to look like it was something larger than just a nuclear attack.
After a few hours of walking, Leonard passed by a middle school. Just beyond, he could make out the parkway that ran south down to the cape. Leonard’s stomach rumbled and he decided to make a quick detour into the school to see what he could scrounge up to eat. Leonard still had a few MREs left, but given that he had yet to find a working car (which didn’t surprise him in the least), it might be a very long walk to his destination, if he managed to get there at all.
The main outer doors to the school were unlocked and Leonard walked in, switching his headlamp on as the doors swung closed behind him. Bits of light filtered in through side windows, but the building was fairly dark, with long shadows projected from the lockers and water fountains in the hallway. Leonard walked down the hall, peeking into classrooms to see if he could find food and water anywhere.
After a few minutes of searching, Leonard found a set of large double doors that led to a cafeteria. It was brighter in here, with the entire room lit by skylights, most of which were broken. In the center of the room a mop and cleaning bucket were lying on the floor surrounded by a puddle of dirty water. Leonard made a beeline between the tables to the door to the kitchen. The door to the walk-in freezer was ajar and he grimaced at the smell that emanated from within. Leonard peeked in the door and quickly closed it, sealing the rotting food inside.
Ten minutes later, Leonard finally found what he was looking for. A large stash of dried cereals were inside a pull-out drawer on a shelving unit, and he dug into them, washing down every few bites with a gulp of water from his jug. Leonard continued walking around, shoveling cereal into his mouth from one of the buckets he removed from the drawer. On one side of the wall, he saw what amounted to a miracle in his eyes: two vending machines, intact and upright.
Leonard set down the cereal and picked up a large metal meat tenderizer from the kitchen. Hefting it in both hands, he walked in front of the first vending machine filled with bottled water and juices. He pressed it gently against the front of the machine, feeling the thick plastic flex slightly under the pressure. Leonard set the tenderizer down and opened his shoulder bag, digging around until he found a utility knife in the side pocket. He scribed a large circle in the center of the clear plastic front of the machine, digging in as far as he could go. With a deep breath, he swung the tenderizer at the center of the circle he had cut, landing the points of the tenderizer directly against the plastic.
With a loud crack, the plastic split apart and the circle Leonard cut slammed inward, separating from the main portion of the front of the machine. Leonard grinned and dropped the tenderizer. He pulled out several bottles of water, stuffing them into his shoulder bag. Once the bag was full, he began tying them to the rope that held the water jugs.
With his water supply replenished, Leonard turned his attention to the next vending machine, full of packaged peanut butter crackers, candy bars and chips. He performed the same operation on this machine, to the same effect, emptying the machine of food and dumping the load onto a nearby table. Leonard didn’t have any room for the food in his bag, so he set his shoulder bag down and walked back down the hallway, looking into windows again, searching for a bag to carry the food.
At the door marked “Administration” he peered through the window and saw a cabinet marked “Lost and Found.” Maybe some kid lost their backpack, he thought, entering the room and opening the cabinet. Luck was with Leonard once again, though not in the way he had hoped. In the cabinet, the only backpack that he saw was an oversized pink backpack, covered with white flowers and images of what looked like a cartoon cat with large eyes and a dress on.
Leonard rolled his eyes and sighed deeply. Of course. It had to be a girl’s backpack. With a grimace, he picked up the backpack and opened it, dumping the few books and pencils inside back into the cabinet. Sorry, kid, but I need this more than you do. The thought put a frown on Leonard’s face as he wondered who owned the backpack, where they were and if they were even still alive.
5:39 PM, March 30, 2038
Rachel Walsh
When the silver mass attacked Waters and Roche, Rachel closed her eyes and lowered her head, covering her ears from Russell’s high-pitched screaming next to her. She tried to block out the sights and sounds, but the shredding, ripping and screaming was too much for her.
When Rachel was home on weekends off and during brief vacations, her family usually relaxed by sitting at home, watching movies, eating lots of food and catching up on one other’s lives for the previous few months that she was away. One of her fondest memories was making smoothies with her daughter. Normally she and Julie were at odds with each another, but cooking was the one time when they set their differences aside and were able to function well as mother and daughter.
Ever since Julie had been a little girl she had loved smoothies, and she always begged Rachel to let her push the button on the blender after it was loaded full of fruit and ice. Julie giggled when the blades whirred, crushing the fruit and ice together into a pulpy mess, delighted in seeing the whole fruit turned into a delicious drink.
As Rachel thought back to the time with her daughter, Russell’s screams changed in pitch and she felt his hand grab her, pulling on her as he shouted. “For God’s sake, help me! Help me!” Russell’s hand was like iron on Rachel’s arm, his nails tearing through her clothing as he clawed at her, desperate to escape the torture being inflicted upon him.
Rachel scrambled for the door handle as she glanced over at him. Russell’s face was frozen in agony as the silvery swarm completely enveloped his body. It moved like living smoke, passing through his mouth and nose to enter his body, then exiting again in thin wisps around the edges of his eyes. Holes appeared in his clothing and flesh seemingly out of nowhere as the mass swirled around and through him, turning the man into a pile of rapidly disappearing flesh on the seat of the Humvee.
Rachel’s memories of making smoothies with her daughter flashed in front of her again, causing her to gag as nausea swirled in her stomach. A loud buzzing permeated the air, changing in pitch every time a new hole appeared in Russell. The buzzing gradually replaced Russell’s screaming, which stopped shortly after it started, once his lungs and vocal cords had been disintegrated.
Rachel finally got the door open and stumbled out, running to the side of the road where she cowered behind an overturned car. In the span of no more than thirty seconds, the three men had completely vanished, leaving nothing but tattered pieces of clothing and a few remnants of blood and skin on the ground and inside the Humvee.
“Sam! Here, boy!” Rachel shouted, her voice cracking as she fought against the nausea and revulsion of what she had just witnessed.
Sam leapt over the back seat of the Humvee and out the back door, running towards Rachel, the swarm parting neatly around him as he ran towards her. Having finished its job, the swarm slowly returned to its previous form, hovering a few inches above the ground next to the Humvee as it pulsated and turned.
Once fully re-formed, the mass shifted, seeming to stare at Rachel, though it had no eyes or face with which to watch her.
“Fuck you, assholes!” she screamed at the mass. “I know you can understand me, so fuck you!”
The silvery mass did not react to her verbal abuse, seeming content to merely hold its ground next to the Humvee, studying her. Though it felt like hours, it was only a moment or two before the mass began to move again, away from Rachel. It buzzed away noisily, continuing down the highway in the direction it had been going, eerily reminiscent of the first mass that she had seen near her home.
Rachel collapsed back onto the ground, shivering as she lay still, pulling Sam tightly against her chest and shuddering uncontrollably. What have I done?
4:17 AM, March 30, 2038
Marcus Warden
Marcus found himself standing back on the hill where he
first spotted the creature. Though he recognized that he was in a dream this time, he didn’t wake up. Instead he was repeating the same actions again: lying down on the ground, viewing the creature through the binoculars and watching as it turned to look at him. Rather than running towards him, though, the creature simply vanished into thin air after it looked at Marcus. He stood up, confused, searching the distant fields, wondering where it went.
A soft breath came from behind him, like the gentle snort of a horse, and he felt a warm breath across his neck, making the hairs on the back of his head stand upright. Marcus lowered the binoculars slowly, fearing to turn around, forgetting that this was all just a dream. He slowly reached for his machete, pulling it out of the scabbard and gripped it tightly in his hand.
With a shout, he whirled around, swinging the machete as hard as he could, caught off balance as it whipped through empty air. There was nothing behind him. Marcus began to panic, feeling sweat trickle down his face as his heart began to race faster, his body no longer fully under his control.
A second breath came from behind him again. This time he twisted around immediately upon feeling it, slicing upward with the machete as he fell backwards, losing his balance in the intensity of the turn. Again, there was nothing. Marcus laughed nervously. “This is all just a dream! Come on out and show yourself! I know you can’t hurt me!”