The Loki Variation

by James Riley, Sabrina

  Kelly thrashed, her blond hair flying from the elastic band holding it in a ponytail. The vehicle was dead quiet aside from her, until after several agonizingly long moments, suddenly she went still. Her head hung down, her hair covering her face. Derek tensed. He was listening to her heartbeat. It was incredibly strong and dangerously fast. He thought he might have been able to hear it without his newly found superhero ability to hear.

  She stayed motionless for an unbelievably tense few seconds, until a movement sent everyone’s focus to her hands, tied down with double reinforced ropes. Her fingers were twitching, then they balled into a fist. Her head shot up, and her face had completely transformed. The soft features from just moments ago were now somehow grossly less appealing. Her eyes were black, even blacker it seemed than Derek’s. Her pixie nose was wrinkled in a snarl, and she lunged forward with astonishing ferocity at Derek. He didn’t flinch, he only sighed sadly. The ropes held.

  “Kelly!” Adam cried, but Sasha put her hand out to quiet him.

  Derek made one last ditch effort at any kind of communication with Kelly. Her eyes were staring into his, her angry face trembling with rage. He was desperate to find her in there, to make any kind of connection. But there was nothing human left in them. She pulled against the restraints, Derek could hear the fibers of the rope straining against her force. She screamed, a guttural, primal scream, drops of saliva sent flying from her mouth. Derek stood up from his kneeling position and gave Hud the look he had been waiting for.

  Sasha instinctively put her arm around Nora’s head to protect the girl from the gunshot that was inevitable. Nora had already buried her face in Sasha’s chest and had her hands over her ears. Hud raised his arm, the one with the pistol in it, and lifted the barrel until it was pointed right at Kelly’s head. Adam looked away, covered his ears. Travis watched, unable to turn away.

  Then it was over. The screaming stopped, Sasha’s ears were ringing and Adam was breathing in quick, shallow jags.

  Derek couldn’t hear her heart anymore. She was finally still, her face looking peaceful again, despite the apparent gun wound in the side of her head that was quickly turning her light hair a deep red. Derek untied the girl, still gently. He carried her through to the passenger door, everyone else silently making room for him, and carried her to the edge of the road. He didn’t enter the forest, but came close to it, laying her body on the grassy shoulder of the road. It felt wrong to him, leaving her just like this, laying on her back with her black eyes staring up at the sky. But there was no time for a funeral, and no one to speak a eulogy. He headed back to the Mauler.

  Hud didn’t start the Mauler back up. Instead, he sat on the second row of seating, after he had tucked his pistol back into his waistband, and addressed the boys.

  “So what’s the plan?” He asked. Adam looked confused, and he looked at Hud with a dumbfounded look.

  “Aren’t you here to rescue us?” He asked.

  Hud seemed confused himself for a second, until he realized why the boy would come up with something like that.

  “No, no. I mean, yes, we can help you. But we aren’t military. Well, they aren’t. And I am not…active right now. There’s no one to take command from.”

  At last, Travis spoke to someone besides Adam.

  “Where are you going?” He asked. It sounded more like an insinuation than a question, but Hud glossed over that.

  “Where were you going?” Hud reflected the question right back to the boy. Travis looked irritated, finally sucking in a deep breath.

  “I don’t know.” He stated. He was trying hard to make it sound like he was just keeping it a secret. Like he knew of a place that was safe from all the chaos and death that surrounded them now. But he was fooling no one. He had no idea where he was going at all.

  Adam was watching Hud’s reaction fixedly, and had apparently decided that even if Hud wasn’t part of a formal military rescue team, he was still trustworthy. He didn’t share Travis’ resentful tone, Sasha noticed.

  “Can we come with you?” Adam said after a moment. Derek was expecting Travis to attack Adam, but it never came. Instead, after a moment, Travis’ eyes softened, as if he had just discovered the secret of survival. Power in numbers. Hud, Sasha, and Derek shot quick glances at each other, knowing what was being asked and then knowing what the answer was in just a few moments of eye contact.

  “You can come with us. But you’ll have to make yourselves useful.”

  Chapter 25.

  Adam was much easier to talk to, as he was more inclined than Travis to respond. Sasha and Derek took turns asking them everything they knew about the monsters. Adam compared the whole thing to every horror movie he had ever seen, and even wondered out loud about whether this was an attack by an alien race. Travis snickered at that.

  The boys and Kelly had survived up to this point by staying at their campsite deep in the woods. They had stolen a vehicle and driven back to their hometown just outside of Savannah, but had found only more carnage and death. After a very emotional decision to head back into the woods, they had hidden there until they had run out of food. Travis had suggested looting a few stores that were near to the road Hud had been driving on.

  Adam knew he was going to die when they had alerted some infected people at the edge of the woods, who started chasing them. He was openly grateful for the rescue, and interested in the plan for the future. Derek told him about the cabin, and when he mentioned showers and hot food, Adam almost melted with happiness.

  Travis remained quiet, his dark eyes reflecting distrust and apprehension. Sasha did her best to make him feel like he was safe, but he gave her the same cold response as he did everyone else. When Hud pulled back onto I-95 North, Sasha and Nora retreated to the back of the Mauler; Nora was exhausted and Sasha wanted to take a break in case she was needed to drive soon. She didn’t know how to operate the Mauler yet, but she was sure that after a briefing from Hud, she would pick it up.

  Derek sat in the front passenger seat, keeping his eyes peeled as Hud’s backup. Adam and Travis sat behind them, ate the food they were offered from the storage bins, and then Adam fell asleep. Hud remained fixed on the road, and Derek lost himself in thought again.

  Sasha. The few moments he had enjoyed with her earlier seemed like an eternity ago. If he hadn’t still been able to smell her on his own skin, he might have believed he had dreamed it. He was starting to think that this was some elaborate cosmic joke being played on him. It’s the end of the world, literally. There were, as far as he knew, six people left alive. One of them had done what he didn’t think possible, sent him falling in love.

  What kind of future was there for them? It’s not like they could go out for a nice dinner somewhere, get to know each other. He couldn’t even kiss her, for all he knew that would be signing her death warrant, if whatever he now was carrying were to infect her that way. Walking along the beach holding hands would probably end up involving running for their lives and possibly firearms. He wondered if this was the point at which he should shut his emotions down, or at least try to, and concentrate on just surviving, and keeping her and Nora alive as well. It seemed logical to him.

  That was if he could shut his emotions down. He was having trouble right now, fighting with the desire to turn his head back to see her face. In a moment of sheer weakness, he did, and she was leaning up against the back of the Mauler, using a sweatshirt as a pillow. Her eyes were closed, but he could tell by the irregular pattern of her breathing that she wasn’t asleep yet. Nora was curled into Sasha’s arm, long lashes lying on her own cheeks, sound asleep.

  He felt a persistence, and suddenly it broke his concentration on Sasha. He fluttered his eyes and noticed that Travis was watching him. Travis had apparently just now had a chance to see Derek’s eyes up close. The look on his face was disgust and fear.

  “Hey, no. I’m different.” Derek said, not sure where to even begin explaining it to Travis.

  The boy’s eyebrows shot up, archi
ng over his suspicion filled eyes.

  “How?” He asked, barely moving.

  “I don’t know why I’m different. The same thing happened to me that happened to Kelly, and your friends at the store. I was tied up too, right where Kelly was. When I woke up, Hud was holding his pistol to my face, and the only reason he didn’t do to me what he had to do to Kelly was because I was able to talk. I’m still me, I just am…different.”

  Hud was listening to the conversation now, interested in how Travis was going to react.

  “Your eyes are black.” Travis hardly blinked as he maintained a steady gaze right into Derek’s eyes. He looked less afraid, but still unsettled.

  Derek broke down the new abilities he had acquired since waking up after his seizure. Travis tested him, just as Sasha and Hud had, and then his body language changed from fright and distrust to a more comfortable, speculative mood.

  “So you can do what they can, the hearing and the strength? You can kill them?” Travis asked, sounding, for the first time, a little hopeful.

  “Anyone can kill them, they’re just people. Anything that would kill you would kill them. They just…have these abilities. Like me. I just don’t seem to go crazy like them.”

  “This just keeps getting more insane. First it’s like a movie, blood and screaming and everyone dying. Then it’s like a comic book. Mutants take over, and then one of them turns good and decides to be a superhero.”

  Hud couldn’t stay quiet after that one.

  “This isn’t a comic book, kid. Those were real people dying, real blood. And Derek is no superhero. Whatever made him like this is what has pretty much taken out the human population. He’s lucky, or he’s immune, or he’s going to get worse. But he’s not a superhero.” He kept his eyes on the road, his jaw clenching.

  Travis was stunned, he snapped his mouth shut and a quick look of anger washed over his face. Derek shot a look over at Travis that said No biggie, don’t worry about it. He turned back towards the front to let Travis try to sleep, and soon he was.

  When Hud couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer, Derek volunteered to drive. He had little trouble learning the instrument panel and the pedals. It was like driving a large truck, just even more cumbersome and it took some getting used to the steering. Hud had made it sound like it would require training, but now Derek knew that Hud had done that purposely, to keep at least one ball in his court when they were still playing the power struggle game back at the base.

  Everyone else remained sleeping, and it wasn’t long before Hud was breathing deeply in the passenger seat beside Derek. Driving with the eyesight he now possessed was interesting, he was able to see every leaf on every tree, the details on the cars that occasionally blocked the lane. It was desolate out here, and between each abandoned car, Derek let himself hope that the plague just hadn’t reached its way this far north. But there were signs everywhere.

  He lost track of time, and was barreling the Mauler forward, trying to make it as far north as he could, closer to the cabin and refuge. Sasha was dead set on finding survivors, on proving that this wasn’t the end of the world. Her empathy and sensitivity towards other people was one of the things that Derek now found extraordinary about her. In the midst of all this, she was still concerned for everyone else more so than herself. She showed it every time she looked at Nora.

  He let his mind wander further, to things he had been trying to avoid. Questions without answers danced in his head as he watched the scenery lumber by. Was he going to get worse? He didn’t feel any differently, his heartbeat was still pumping away furiously, his hands still gripping tighter than normal. He still felt surges of extreme energy, but had been able to suppress them. Although his body was shaky at times, he was beginning to not even notice it, and he didn’t crave human blood. That was his greatest worry.

  What had happened? Was this really a virus? If it was, how could an outbreak like this happen? He had always felt pretty confident that the United States had a handle on communicable diseases. Then again, he had also always felt pretty confident that the Unites States had a handle on roaming hordes of frenzied cannibals.

  He allowed his questions to go further, delving into the future. How far had this spread? He could have never imagined an entire city full of vibrant, healthy people could be eradicated in such a small amount of time, but he had seen it happen. He didn’t know how many were actually dead and how many were transformed into one of the killers, but they were still out there. He imagined the entire country, from the cozy small towns in the Midwest to the bright lights and tall towers in New York, all the way over to the West Coast, Los Angeles’ teeming streets and Seattle’s drizzly neighborhoods. He pictured them all as desolate as Jacksonville, as ominous as Savannah. As hard as it was to imagine, he was sure now that this was the case. Because he knew that if there had been anyone left, any kind of organized population, he would have been saved at the base.

  His future was narrowed down to hiding in a cabin, scavenging for food and fighting to keep Sasha and Nora alive. Even if the monsters died off, what would be left? Sasha was so hopeful, still clinging to the idea that this was just the beginning of the end, that we still had time to save the world. To Derek, this was the end. Everything else from this point was mere survival. That was not quite what he had pictured when his mother had told him as a child that he could do or be anything he wanted when he grew up.

  Outside in front of him, several cars were blocking the lane. There were more than he had seen since he had started driving, and he had to move to the outside gravel to get around them. As he passed, he cursed his so-called ability to see so well.

  The ground around and in between the cars was littered with debris, items from inside cars whose doors were hanging open, paper blowing around, and bodies. He grimaced as he passed a mass on the ground, obviously wearing clothes and with the general shape of a human body; just twisted in a way that defied a skeletal system. He saw others, some that looked like they had collapsed where they ran, not able to continue their escape. The worst were the younger ones, he could see their faces; cloudy eyes and blood.

  He was nearing a larger intersection, an exit ramp loomed ahead. He had made it to a smallish town called Fayetteville. He remembered from his drive down to visit Aunt Cheryl, Fayetteville was in South Carolina. He had crossed the state line and had not even noticed.

  Driving on the rocky shoulder was causing the Mauler to jar and sway. Hud woke up and asked where they were.

  “Fayetteville, South Carolina.” He nodded towards an exit ramp, although he was not sure how he was going to use it, it was completely congested with abandoned vehicles.

  “Just stop here for a minute.” Hud asked.

  Everyone in the Mauler was woken up for a bathroom break, although the only bathrooms were a few scrawny bushes that followed the highway’s edge. Sasha made sure to escort Nora away at an angle where the dead bodies on the Interstate were hidden.

  A cold, unappealing breakfast was eaten, and Adam had about a million questions. He asked about Hud’s prior military experience. He asked about the Mauler. He asked about where they had come from and how they had survived. He asked about Ripley. He asked about Derek and Sasha and their silent daughter Nora.

  As the words came out of Adam’s mouth, Derek felt a stab of anguish. He was a danger, in a way, to Sasha and Nora. He would protect them, and stay with them, but there would be no relationship beyond that. What if he passed this affliction he had to one of them, and they turned out like Kelly. His stomach turned. There was and would be no Sasha and Derek, and Nora was no more family to Derek than anyone else in the vehicle. He already knew it, but to have it spelled out so clearly in his mind was more painful than he would have thought. He stammered, trying to explain the situation to Adam.

  “No, uh, I met Sasha after everything. At the base. Nora was with her, she’s not her mom. She’s not mine, or, um…ours. Sasha and me, we are just…friends. Nothing else.” Derek could feel Nora’s eye
s on him.

  “Oh, sorry,” Adam said absently, “you guys just looked…together.” He continued eating.

  Sasha was trying her hardest to keep her eyes focused on anything except for Derek’s face. Friends? Technically, it was the truth, she told herself. Had she imagined the few moments she had laid her head on Derek’s shoulder as something more? Hadn’t Hud even mouthed off about how into each other they were? She didn’t dare search Derek’s face for the hidden meaning behind the cold way he had explained to Adam, but she began to doubt herself. Had she made something where there was nothing? She replayed everything in her head. She had been the one to initiate contact. She recoiled at herself, she had made him reciprocate; he had done out of kindness, not out of desire. He didn’t feel the same way about her that she felt about him, obviously. Her face burned red.

  Derek had gotten up and was helping Hud clean up the mess they had made eating breakfast. Light was beginning to edge the outside of the sky, and Derek was exhausted. He didn’t know how he was going to sleep, his heart was rattling at the same obnoxious speed it had been all night, and now, every time he closed his eyes, he saw Sasha’s face, the shock and sadness when he had explained that there was no Sasha and Derek.

  Hud had decided for them that there would be no more scouting for survivors in the towns they passed. Pulling an infected girl onto the Mauler had been stupid, he reasoned. If anything had happened differently, if she had been bitten a few minutes earlier, then they all could have ended up dead. He explained. According to the map they had, in a few hours they would be exiting I-95 and following a different highway towards Raleigh. Just on the other side of the city, he would be able to follow smaller roads all the way to where the cabin was located. It was far away from any major areas, he was hoping to make it there before the next morning. He knew he would have to stop at some point and siphon more fuel.

  While Derek fought his mind and body to sleep in the back of the Mauler, Adam and Travis followed Hud’s instructions on making Molotov cocktails out of glass beer bottles Hud had collected and a gallon of gasoline that was stored in a red container under the utility shelf in the back of the Mauler. Sasha and Nora ripped shreds from some of the clothing they had to use as fuses for the Molotovs, and when all the bottles were filled, they stored them in a large cooler.