The Loki Variation

by James Riley, Sabrina

  The front door on the other side of the car opened, and Sasha watched another police officer jump onto the undercarriage of the car, which was now the top. He was across it in one stride, and leaped down on the other side where his partner was. Sasha was surprised he had survived, let alone gotten out of the car and then jumped over it. He stood for a moment in a crouched position, Sasha didn’t understand why he was taking so long to help the other cop, but then he fell on his knees and started devouring him with the other. Sasha’s stomach rolled.

  They seemed unaware of her. She wasn’t aware of how long she sat, watching, trying to absorb it as reality. She realized her breath was fogging the window, and jerked her head back. She could hear Nora breathing hard, and looked at her with as much reassurance as she could. She pressed the gas pedal to the floor, keeping her eyes on the feeding. The last thing she saw in the rear view mirror was the two men stand up, apparently done mutilating the victim, and they were watching her as she drove out of sight.

  Chapter 2.

  “Ripley, come on, girl.” Derek whispered to his stocky brindle dog, who had burrowed her nose into another irresistible spot in the unfamiliar grass. He was sitting in a deck chair on his Aunt Cheryl’s back porch. He would had thought that driving all day from his home in Maryland to visit Aunt Cheryl in Jacksonville would have had him sleeping like a baby by sundown, but once again, he was awake during the hours the rest of the world dreamed. Ripley seemed restless as well.

  She bounded onto the wooden deck, and pushed her nose into Derek’s hand. He petted her, half-heartedly, and wondered if he had made a mistake by coming down here. His mom and stepdad Dan had taken their annual cruise, and he couldn’t stand the thought of sitting in that house alone for two weeks. He always felt out of place in Maryland, although it had always been his home. He just could never find a good enough reason to leave. He frowned. At 25, he should have already had his whole life figured out, right? Finished college, found a job he didn’t hate? He sighed.

  Cheryl was a lot younger than his mom, at least. She had told him earlier that she might have mentioned to some of her friends that her handsome nephew was coming to visit, and he was available. Derek had smiled politely at that, but his insides had tightened. The last thing he had wanted on this trip was to have to deal with women. He had avoided all serious relationships so far, a choice he had made partly due to his introversion. Cheryl had already planned a night out this weekend to introduce him to her apparently interested friends. He sighed again.

  Ripley suddenly stiffened, her piqued ears creating wrinkles between them. Derek tried to see what she was looking towards, but saw nothing in the dark. Ripley became stone still, listening. Then she did something Derek had never seen her do in the 2 years since he had adopted her. She lowered her head and emitted a menacing, guttural growl, sending goose bumps up his arms.

  “Whoa, what’s up, Ripley? Raccoon?”

  Derek slowly stood up, still peering in the same direction as his dog, but seeing nothing. She was now backing up, fur standing along her spine, pushing Derek back towards the house with her body. She was staring toward the furthest corner of Cheryl’s backyard, in the shadows where the privacy fence came together. Derek decided that Ripley had been spooked by something bigger than a raccoon. Then he saw the shadow, a large shadow, approaching the middle of the yard. Ripley was getting frantic now, baring her teeth and barking with everything she had. Derek was reaching behind him for the door that went into the house, intimidated by his own pet’s actions, when the shadow lunged.

  What his eyes saw didn’t make sense. It was an older woman, with matted gray hair. She began moving forward, crouched low, faster than should be possible, from the middle of the backyard to the steps of the porch. In the next instant, she was on the table where he had just been sitting. Ripley was in the air in front of him before he could react; all he could see was her muscular body, knocking the woman off the table, sending it and them all crashing to the deck. Ferocity emanated from Ripley’s throat. Derek felt the door knob behind him. He turned it and fell into the house.

  “Ripley!” He yelled. Ripley was standing over the woman, who was making choking sounds. Derek had his hand on the door, ready to slam it as soon as Ripley was safely inside. As she flew past him in a blur of brown fur, the woman rose to a low, predatory position, looking right into Derek’s eyes. There was nothing human in her eyes. There was blood on her face and down the front of her light nightgown, but he had the chilling hunch that it wasn’t her own. She placed one white hand on the deck, positioned to charge the short distance to where Derek was watching incredulously. He swung the door shut, it latched a fraction of a second before the woman’s body came crashing into the decorative glass windows it was patterned with.

  “Cheryl!” He boomed. She didn’t answer, and he didn’t expect her to. She was upstairs asleep, but there was no way he was going to be able to restrain this woman and call the police at the same time. She slammed into the door again, and the brittle glass gave way. Derek was already behind the sofa, where he was supposed to be sleeping, and the closest thing he could pick up to defend himself with was a small end table. Fluidly, the woman started over the sofa, and he swung the table with every ounce of force he could. It disintegrated across her body, and she went down hard. He was left holding two splintered legs of the table; he threw them down and ran to the stairs.

  “Aunt Cheryl!” He was taking the steps 3 at a time, rounding the corner to her bedroom. He threw the door open, and in the faint light from the window, he could see her bed was empty. Ripley was on his heels, her attention on the closed bathroom door inside Cheryl’s room. In horror, Derek watched it open, and a feral woman was slinking through it. Cheryl. He noticed that her eyes were wild, like the woman downstairs, and then she came running at him.

  Before Derek could even raise his arms in defense, Ripley leaped up in front of him and pulled Cheryl to the ground. Ripley wasn’t very heavy, but she was strong and Cheryl was pinned to the carpet, shrieking unnaturally. Derek went numb as he watched Ripley’s teeth sink into the pale skin stretched over his aunt’s pulsing jugular vein.

  “Ripley, no!” Derek jerked forward, grabbing the solid dog by the fur around her neck, pulling her with all his weight. She didn’t budge. Cheryl went quiet, and only then did Ripley let go. She ran back through the bedroom door, and Derek followed, taking one last look at Cheryl. She was still, but her eyes were watching him. They were completely black.

  Downstairs, grabbing his backpack, Derek looked to where the woman he had dropped with the wooden table had fallen. There was nothing there now except a smeared pool of dark blood. He stumbled on the notion that she had been able to stand after being struck so hard. He jumped when he saw another movement in his peripheral vision, he was relieved to see his own dark hair and eyes reflected in the huge decorative mirror on Cheryl’s wall. He scanned the room one more time for the missing woman, and then he was running through the front door with Ripley. He was keying the alarm remote for his SUV, and as he entered the car, Ripley lithely jumped over him and into the passenger seat. They were out of the driveway before Derek started to breathe again. Putting the truck into drive, he frantically searched the backpack with his free hand for his cell phone. He didn’t know where to go, he didn’t know this city, but he had to get away from this house.

  Winding through the neighborhood, he saw more bizarre activity, more shadows moving like animals in the dark, and he noticed homes with their doors wide open. It was nearing dawn, people should be sleeping, yet the scene before him was not of peaceful slumber. He swerved around a car that was stopped in the middle of the road. The driver’s side door was open, but there was no one inside. He twisted and turned through the neighborhood, toward the entrance to the subdivision, and was questioning his own sanity.

  He turned onto the larger road, picking a direction at random, hoping to see something that looked right, something to make this nightmare dissolve away. Nothing looked ri
ght. The cool, late summer air he had been enjoying a few moments ago felt alive itself, bearing down on him. He focused on the road ahead, ignoring the overturned vehicle to the left, the handful of shadows surrounding it, and finally had his phone to his ear. He had dialed emergency services, and was trying to figure out how what he had to report was going to sound. He heard the vaguely familiar sound of a busy signal and his eyebrows tensed. Whatever was going on was bigger than he had thought if there were no open lines to the emergency dispatchers. He envisioned an emergency services dispatch station, calls coming in at an impossible rate, operators working feverishly to keep up. Then he envisioned the walls coming down, and more shadows, crouching down, lunging at the workers. He had no one to help him.

  Chapter 3.

  Sasha had pulled off the main road into an empty strip mall parking lot. The streetlights above her provided enough light to see for yards around the car, and it was as still as it should have been right before dawn. After seeing the police car crash, she had floored it and driven aimlessly, through scenes of panic and horror. There was blood on her windshield, and she was feeling guilt over not stopping to help the few survivors she had seen. It had been too late for them.

  Sasha had never considered herself a cowardly person. In fact, she had been told she was brave to a point of stupidity. She had, on more than one occasion, put herself in harm’s way before she realized she was doing it, usually trying to help someone she thought needed it. She wondered if that is what she had done again. It didn’t feel like she’d had a choice in the matter, this time at least. She had seen someone in imminent danger, she had reacted. There was no way she would have been able to look the other way, even if it had been the wiser choice in the long run.

  Nora was watching her with a silent question in her face. Sasha didn’t have an answer. She was usually comfortable being in the middle of extraordinary events, but they had always been within a book she was absorbed in, not reality. Her mind searched for some reasonable explanation, some rational excuse for the past 30 minutes. There was none.

  “What do we do now?” She asked aloud, although it was addressed to no one. She hadn’t been able to answer that question the past hundred times she had asked herself in the last half hour, and nothing had changed this time. She had lived in this city for most of her life, she knew where everything was, but she couldn’t concentrate long enough to settle on a place she thought would be safe.

  She let go of the steering wheel, and flexed her fingers. She hadn’t realized how tight of a grip she’d had. While feeling returned to her hand, she looked around the parking lot, hoping a logical explanation would come to her. She caught a movement at the end of the strip mall, but it was only a stray cat, leaping to the edge of a garbage dumpster. It reminded her of how her mother had always set out food bowls for the hungry strays that found her backyard.

  Then she knew where to go. Her father was an avid gun collector, and even though they lived on the other side of town, if she and Nora could make it there, they would be safe. She put the car back into drive, and started out of the parking lot.

  “We’re going to my parent’s house. It will be safe, my dad has guns.” She tried to sound hopeful, because she was, a little, and she wanted to project more confidence than she really felt. Nora stayed quiet and looked out the passenger window as she pulled back onto the main road.

  Chapter 4.

  Ripley sat in the passenger seat, watching Derek instead of watching out the window like usual. He was intensely focused on the obstacle course ahead; enough cars had stopped in the driving lane that Derek had to maneuver around them. Most were empty, but the others were occupied by panicked, frenzied people. Pink light was edging the horizon, the sun was coming. One driver, in unbridled fear, intentionally rammed the car in front of him as several crouched figures surrounded his vehicle. As he drove past on the shoulder, Derek saw that the figures were pulling the man from his car. He looked away as they attacked, but he heard the glass breaking and the gurgled screaming. Ripley fought to keep her balance as Derek went as fast as he could, weaving through the stopped cars, swerving around them on the median or diving into the shoulder to get around.

  He saw several similar events, people being brought down by the inhuman creatures; it reminded him of a pride of lions on a gazelle. He saw a woman on the roof of a car, her arms around several crying children. It literally hurt his heart to keep driving past them, especially when he saw her look at him, her eyes pleading to save them. He knew it was futile, and he swallowed hard and kept driving.

  The few times he had been forced to slow to avoid crashing, it was only instants before his car was being surrounded by the hunting black-eyed people. He had already made peace with the idea of using his truck as a weapon, and had run down several of them. He never looked back to see if they stayed down.

  He was still holding his phone when he made a turn onto a wider road with much fewer cars. Now that he had the room to drive straight, he used one hand to drive and one to dial his mom’s cell number. He was hopeful, but he knew that even if she was okay, the chances of her cell phone getting reception while she was on the ocean somewhere between here and the Bahamas was slim. Her voicemail picked up and he flipped phone closed. There was no one else he could call. His dog had attacked his usually friendly, fun loving Aunt Cheryl, or at least whatever she had become. His few friends were miles away. He was completely alone in an unfamiliar city, barely any gas, and a backpack that held little else of use.

  He thought about trying to make it back to D.C. He had a debit card and couple of twenties in his wallet, gas wouldn’t be a problem. That is, if there were any gas stations that wouldn’t be crawling with these deranged people, or whatever they were. What would he do at home? Call the police there, tell them about Aunt Cheryl? Let them know Jacksonville under attack by…vampires? Cannibals? His mind did circles.

  He turned the radio on, and pushed the seek button to locate a station. The first few that the stereo picked up were playing prerecorded sets, popular music that sounded even more obnoxious than it normally did, given the situation. Then it stopped on a station that was broadcasting the familiar test of the emergency broadcast system. But obviously this was no test. The alarm buzzed for a moment, and then was replaced by a crackling recording:

  “This is the Emergency Broadcast System. All persons in Jacksonville and surrounding areas are advised to stay indoors. Secure all doors and windows and wait for further instruction. This is not a test. Please remain calm and stay indoors.”

  The recording restarted, and he failed to grasp how the announcer had sounded so calm, when the world suddenly felt so chaotic and deadly. At the very least, he now knew he was not imagining these things anymore. The ones in charge of emergencies were aware of what was going on, so help was just around the corner. He was not as comforted by that as he should have been.

  He kept driving. He pulled off onto a small side road, almost taking the corner on 2 wheels. Although there were no cars stopped here, he stayed in the middle of the road, until he came to an intersection where nothing seemed to be moving. Early morning light was rising over the horizon. There was a gas station on one of the corners, and a fast food restaurant on the other. There was not a person in sight, there were no cars, no employees working the breakfast shift at the restaurant. There was a sign detailing which way a few major roads were, but of course, Derek didn’t recognize any of them. He glanced back at Ripley, still sitting alertly in the back seat, and then pulled into the gas station to try and fill the tank up. If he was going to get out of this, he would need fuel.

  As he slid the debit card into the reader at the pump, he was acutely aware of every sound, including his own drumming heartbeat. He had never felt so vulnerable in his life, and he was not sure how to act. He dropped the gas pump into the truck, squeezing the trigger harder than needed, he wanted to fill up and get back in the truck. Looking toward the gas station’s store, he rested his gaze on the unlit neon signs,
the cigarette ads. It was taking so long to fill up the gas tank. A poster in the window caught his attention, an advertisement about the Navy. Jacksonville was home to two Naval stations, he recalled from prior visits to Aunt Cheryl and a couple of her sailor boyfriends, but the military had never interested him. Why was the poster holding his attention?

  The gas pump popped in his hand, the tank was full. Something clicked in his mind as well, and as he rested the gas pump back in its holder, he realized that the Naval Station would probably be the best place to head to. The military would be trained to deal with an emergency situation like this, and maybe he could contact his mother’s cruise ship from the base.

  The only problem is that he had no idea how to get to either base. He knew that one of them was on the beach. He had gone with Cheryl to pick up a friend there a long time ago. Cheryl had lived just west of the Intracoastal Waterway, the brackish river that separated the beach from the rest of Jacksonville, and he knew that heading east would bring him to the coast. He looked back at the directional sign he had dismissed before. This time, he made a note of which road was going east, and finally had a destination.