by Mike Kraus
After what she had seen, Nancy was certain the woman was dead, and didn’t relish the idea of staying around in the house any longer. She stepped back outside the bathroom and closed the door, putting her arm around James again and continuing on through the exit.
“What did you see?” James wheezed at Nancy. She shook her head, not wanting to think about it any more. “Hell.” James nodded grimly at this and picked up his pace, moving faster to get outside.
Pushing through the door, Nancy and James exited the house into a side yard. Directly across from the house was a small picket fence, then another house. As they glanced around, trying to find the best way to go, they saw that they were nestled in a small neighborhood. The houses were all intact, with windows, doors and shingles unbroken. Green grass and trees surrounded them, underscoring how little damage the neighborhood had received from the bombs.
James raised his arm and pointed at the end of the driveway. “There, that’s their truck.” James was nearly doubled over in pain, but continued stumbling along the driveway with the help of Nancy.
The pair had almost reached the brothers’ truck when a scream came from inside the house. Nancy and James looked at each other, realizing that Richard must have woken up and found his dead brother beside him.
“Get in, quick!” Nancy shouted at James as the anguished screams of Richard continued to echo from the depths of the house. They had just reached the truck when they heard a door slam. They turned around to see Richard storming out the front door of the house and standing on the porch. He was wild-eyed and pointing at them, still screaming incoherently.
Nancy helped James around the side of the truck to the passenger seat and opened the door. Footsteps behind her warned her of Richard’s approach, but she turned around too late. He was on her in a second, slamming her head against the back side of the truck and then shoving her to the ground. Nancy’s head felt like it was exploding and she blacked out as she hit the rough pavement of the driveway.
Satisfied with his handiwork, Richard turned to face James, knocking the pistol from his hand with a savage swipe. James was backed up against the seat of the truck and Richard stared at him, anger and hatred burning in his eyes.
“Your turn!” Richard screamed at James, leaping forward at him.
Marcus Warden
8:37 AM, April 1, 2038
For once, Marcus had no dreams during the night as he slept, and woke the next morning feeling more refreshed than he could recall. His muscles in his legs and back ached from the bicycle, but with no nightmares to disturb his sleep, he felt rested and alert.
The rising sun cut through the cloud cover, painting a new picture on the world that surrounded Marcus. He jumped out of the back of the van, yawning and stretching as he looked around. Most of the fallen trees that surrounded the interstate and disappeared into the distance were dead, their limbs stripped bare of leaves, showing evidence of the destruction that had rained down not many miles away. Though Marcus assumed that the epicenter had been somewhere over the city of Charlottesville, seeing this much damage so far out made him concerned for the much larger city of Richmond and what he might find there.
Marcus walked around the van, holding his backpack in one hand, and slung it over the bike. He pulled out the binoculars and held them up, eyeing the interstate that stretched far to the west, past the destroyed overpass he was camped on. The interstate made a few close passes to the city along its path and he could just make out the next exit on the horizon. From what little he could see through the glare of the sun and the smoke on the horizon, it looked like the destruction was going to get significantly worse before it got any better.
Overturned trees and cracks in the interstate were the least of his worries. Over the next few miles, he could see large swaths of the road had been ripped from the ground from the force of the explosions, tossed aside like candy wrappers. Cars, trucks and pieces of what he assumed to be buildings all littered the ground ahead, blocking his path. Marcus sighed at this and pushed the binoculars back into his backpack, contemplating his next move. While the overpass was mostly destroyed, he could still squeeze by on the side with the bike, negating the need to backtrack and go around. Afterwards, though, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do to get past all of the destruction. One thing at a time.
Marcus shouldered his backpack again and wheeled the bike over to the edge of the overpass. A small section of the support column in the center of the median on the highway below had survived, leading to a thin piece of the overpass structure surviving as well. It was only a foot in width, though, and looked like it might collapse at any time. Marcus turned the bike around in front of him, gripping the handlebars. Slowly he pushed the back wheel onto the strip that extended over the highway. With a deep breath, he walked out after the bike, steering it with the handlebars to keep it firmly in the middle of the strip as he followed behind. After a moment of careful pacing, he grew more confident and sped up, walking at nearly full speed to get to the opposite side of the overpass.
In a flash, everything went wrong. A small piece of rebar that protruded through the cracked strip of overpass caught on the back tire, sending it to the left, towards the ground below. Trying to correct the course of the bike, Marcus ended up overcorrecting, steering the front wheel into the edge of the right side of the overpass. This forced the back wheel farther over the edge, catching on the underside of the structure, threatening to pull the rest of the bike down with it.
“Shit!” Marcus yelped loudly, digging his heels in and leaning back, not daring to let go of his only mode of transportation. His legs and arms very nearly screamed in protest, with the pain of the last few days coming back in full force. The bicycle, while easy to ride over a smooth surface, was not the lightest thing in the world, and Marcus was caught off-guard by the suddenness of the entire event. Grunting and straining, he fought against the weight of the bicycle and the friction of the overpass, struggling to pull the fallen wheel back up and over the edge. With a heave, he gave one giant tug and the wheel popped loose, nearly sending the bike flipping over to the opposite side of the strip.
Marcus panted and gasped from the exertion, but dared not let go of the handlebars of the bike lest it start to fall again. He slowly stood up, pulling the bike up with him, and continued on, walking at a snail’s pace as he did when he had first started out. When he finally reached the other side he fell to the ground, pushing the bike to the side to crash next to him.
Marcus gave the bike a nasty look as he sat on the interstate catching his breath. “Never again.”
Leonard McComb
6:35 AM, April 2, 2038
Although Leonard hadn’t spotted the creature since escaping from Washington, fear and adrenaline drove him onwards into the night. He stopped once, briefly, to refill the Jeep around the Fredericksburg area, but decided against staying there. Stopping during the night made Leonard nervous, since there was no way for him to tell if anything was nearby. The Jeep’s headlights, while bright, weren’t enough for him to feel comfortable trusting his life to.
By morning, Leonard had nearly made it to Richmond. Sitting on the hood of the Jeep outside a gas station in Ruther Glen, he examined a map that he scavenged from the front counter. Food, at least, was still plentiful, and Leonard stocked up on water and nonperishables, going so far as to put a few cardboard boxes filled with chips and vacuum-sealed snacks into the back of the Jeep. Aside from the damage to the trailer hitch receiver, the Jeep was still working well despite the trials he had put it through.
From studying the map, Leonard figured he was about forty miles outside the heart of Richmond. As he got closer to the city, he would run into more suburban areas and – like he experienced in Washington – more damage that would be difficult to traverse. Still, due to the path he was on, it was the best route to take on his trip to South Carolina. Leonard figured that if he could get through to the southern edge of the city, he could link up with the railroad and take that a
ll the way down the coast. It’s not gonna be easy, but easy left the building a long time ago.
The main issue with traveling at this point was exhaustion. Leonard wasn’t about to pass out from lack of sleep, but he could feel his alertness dropping, and feared that if he kept going he might end up hurting himself along the way. Leonard cast a long gaze back up the highway to the north, as if he could somehow see all the way back to Washington and find out where the creature had gone. He sighed and slid off the hood of the Jeep, climbing back into the driver’s seat.
A couple hours of sleep wouldn’t cure his tiredness, but it would at least get him headed in that direction. As long as nothing happened during that day or night, he figured he could sleep again that evening once he got into Richmond and found a secure spot, then pick up and continue traveling through the city the next day. The important thing would be to try and get through the city in one go, since stopping or slowing down too much could mean attracting the attention of more creatures, if any others were out there.
Leonard pulled the Jeep into the shade next to the gas station and settled down in the seat. He left the engine idling, choosing to risk a bit of noise in exchange for having an immediate getaway should anything go wrong. Within minutes of closing his eyes and leaning his head back, he fell asleep.
Like his mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, Leonard was one of those rare people who could “set an alarm” in their minds. Before he fell asleep, no matter where he was, he would spend half a minute repeating the time that he wanted to wake up to himself, over and over again. In his entire life, he had never overslept by a single minute when using this method, no matter what time he fell asleep, what time he had to wake up or how tired he was. While this skill wasn’t particularly essential in day to day life, it proved to be invaluable in this situation, since he had no way of setting an alarm to wake him up later in the day. Without a watch, Leonard wasn’t sure what time it was, but he knew it couldn’t have been much past noon, so he told himself that he wanted to wake up at three o’clock that afternoon and his body took over the rest.
Rachel Walsh
11:41 PM, April 3, 2038
Shadows jumped at Rachel from every direction, thrown by the flickering fires of the city as she walked slowly along the damaged train tracks. Without Sam to warn her of unseen dangers, Rachel moved slower than normal, keeping a watchful eye and ear out for anything out of the ordinary. She still hadn’t heard the buzzing again, and was starting to wonder if it was just her imagination when a new sound echoed from up ahead.
The dull clanging of metal upon metal drifted through the night. Rachel tucked further in to a small group of buildings as she moved forward, keeping herself in the shadows and out of sight as much as possible. As she neared the source of the noise, another sound came into focus: buzzing. The low frequency hum of the silver masses coalesced, intermixing with the clanging to form a cacophony that drew her closer, curious as to what they were doing.
Rounding a large bend in the mangled track, Rachel finally came upon the source of the sounds. For a moment she crouched and held still, barely breathing as she took in the sight. Up ahead, several hundred feet along the track, she could see swarms of the silver masses flying around the ground. Large pieces of steel were being shifted into place and secured with ties and railroad spikes. The silver clouds seemed to be doing the moving themselves, swarming around each piece of track to move it into place, working at a steady pace to repair the damaged railroad track. Just beyond them, rolling very slowly down the newly repaired tracks, was the reason for their efforts.
A long line of train cars, at least 200, was heading down the track. In front, pulling them, were two engines buckled together back to back. The main light on the front of the first engine wasn’t on, though the emergency and backup lights on the sides of the engines and cars were. This offered enough illumination for Rachel to make out the train in the darkness. With each new segment of track that was laid, it was put down just in time for the train to slowly roll onto it, inching forward at a slow and precise rate.
Rachel’s mind whirled with the magnitude of what she was seeing. Not only were the silver masses repairing the tracks, but they had – presumably – repaired the train and gotten it operational enough to attach hundreds of cars to it, too. But what are they hauling? It was too dark to see the types of cars that were being hauled, and even knowing that wouldn’t guarantee any useful information about their contents. The only way I’m going to find out what’s going on is to get in there and see for myself. Rachel swallowed hard at the prospect, but was determined to carry it out. They won’t hurt me anyway, she thought. Well, they shouldn’t….
Rachel looked around at the path up the mangled tracks to where they were being repaired. There wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver or hide if she took the direct route and she didn’t feel like tempting fate on purpose. Keeping her eyes trained on the masses for any signs or signals of a behavior change, she backed up to a cross-street that was nearby and jogged east. Once she hit the next road that went parallel to the tracks, she headed north again. In a few minutes she saw the form of the train take shape between the buildings to her left. She ducked into the nearest alley and crouched between the buildings just a few feet from the train cars.
She was just a few cars down from the twin engines and close enough to the masses that she could feel their constant buzzing in her chest. Every few minutes a group of the masses would move to the opposite side of the train, retrieve a tie or piece of track and then move it back up to the main group for installation. They worked with a clockwork precision and the train continued its steady movement forward. Rachel waited until a group retrieved a set of ties and then she moved forward to the train, jogging farther down the line of cars until she was a safe distance from the masses.
Standing next to a car with a large sliding door, Rachel decided to take a chance and see what it contained. She grabbed the large swing bolt and carefully lifted it up, trying to keep the noise down to a minimum. Once the door was unlocked she slowly rolled it open and squeezed in, then rolled it closed behind her. Inside the car, it was dark except for the bits of light leaking in through cracks and crevices in the doors and walls.
Rachel flicked her flashlight on low and covered it with her hand, only allowing the smallest of beams out between her fingers. Even with the thin ray of light, Rachel immediately recognized the contents of the car and gasped as a terrible realization began to grow. Engrossed as she was at her discovery, Rachel failed to notice the door of the train sliding slowly open. Only when she heard a scraping sound behind her did she realize that she was not alone inside the train car.
Nancy Sims
4:15 PM, April 1, 2038
Nancy’s sleep was disturbed by a rhythmic thumping. She cracked her eyelids slowly, wincing in pain at the sunlight that shone through the front windshield of the truck. She was sitting in the passenger seat of the truck that she had been trying to put James in just before Richard attacked them. She turned to her left, startled to see James sitting there, driving down the road with a death grip on the steering wheel.
Nancy groaned as she moved, her head throbbing from a terrible headache. James looked over at her, smiling grimly.
“Hey, you’re awake! I was scared there for a while. Didn’t think you were ever going to wake up. That was one nasty head wound you had.”
“Wh-what happened? How did we get here?” Nancy’s mind was foggy and she struggled to remember what had happened. She glanced down at James’ chest and was startled to see the dried blood that covered his abdomen. “Wait… you got shot. Oh no, you got shot! We have to get you to a hospital!”
James chuckled, coughing feebly as he did so. “Somehow I don’t think a hospital is in my future, Nancy.”
Nancy looked around, confused, then the memory of the last several days came flooding back, reminding her of all that had happened. They were driving through a countryside on a wide, four-lane highway, and James was
traveling fast, at least eighty or ninety miles an hour. There weren’t a lot of cars on the highway, but there were enough that he stayed focused on the road, weaving back and forth between lanes as he sped along.
“James, we have to stop and try to bandage you up, please.”
James took one hand off the wheel and raised his shirt, revealing a thick wrap of cloth that was tight around his midsection. “No worries. After I took care of that little bastard I got some painkillers and a blanket. I think the bleeding stopped, at least most of it. It stopped enough that I got us this far.”
“You mean Richard? What did you do to him?”
James laughed, then started coughing. Once his cough was under control, he grinned at Nancy, clearly pleased with myself. “I’ll tell you, that little mental case was one tough cookie. To think I was more afraid of his psycho brother. I tell you, Richard was the worst of the two by far. After he knocked you out he came after me, ripping and tearing, trying to pin me down. Luckily, the little fiend was too distracted to notice this.” James reached one hand under the seat and pulled out a tire iron, the end of which was caked in blood.