by William Oday
As strange as all of it was, it wasn’t the part that had her questioning her sanity.
Twenty or so soldiers carrying flashlights and rifles hurried back and forth like industrious ants. Helping people into the trucks, loading their things along with them.
It was what the soldiers were wearing that made the scene feel like an apocalyptic horror movie.
The soldiers wore bright orange hazmat suits. The oversized puffy kind that was commonly seen in every zombie outbreak movie that had ever been made. Their faces showing through the clear plastic panels was the only part that proved that they were human and not some alien race.
One of them walked by reading an instrument in his hand. It clicked audibly as he waved it back and forth through the air.
Emily had never seen a geiger counter in real life, but she knew that one was the first.
Another suited figure approached with a pen light in his hand. He stopped Marco and shined it into Emily’s eyes a few times. “Come with me.” He led us to the nearest truck. The one at the rear of the column.
A soldier already in the back of the truck reached down to help and then snatched his hand back as Oscar’s head popped up and he hissed with anger. “What is that thing?”
“Just a weasel. He’s with me.”
The soldier didn’t look convinced. “You need help getting in?”
Marco shook his head. “No.” His arms tightened slightly.
The soldier nodded with relief and backed away.
Marco ducked under the canvas roof and sat on the empty bench seat next to the cab. Ten others were already seated and ready to go.
The man who’d directed them to the truck knelt beside Emily. He touched her forehead before digging into a white satchel filled with medical supplies. A doctor. “What happened?” His voice sounded strangely muffled coming through the plastic visor.
“She almost drowned.”
He opened the bag, dug out a thermometer and slipped it into her mouth. “How long was she in the water?”
“I don’t know.”
The doctor glanced up in confusion. “Did she lose consciousness?”
A soldier appeared at the back and slammed the lift gate into place. “The fallout rain is coming in earlier than expected. We have to get moving.”
The doctor nodded before turning back to Marco with a questioning look.
“Yes. She was unconscious when I pulled her out.”
The diesel engine rumbled and the truck lurched forward.
The doctor would’ve fallen over, but Marco’s extended leg kept him upright.
The back bounced up and down as they picked up speed. Either this wasn’t a road by any conventional sense of the word, or this truck had leaf springs made of cast iron.
After Emily bounced off Marco’s lap a couple of times, he lifted her slightly so that his arms absorbed the bounce.
The doctor returned to digging through his kit, looking for something. He pulled out a bottle of pills and snapped the cap off. “Take this. It’s iodide.” He cracked the top off a bottle of water. He dumped two pills into Marco’s outstretched hand and tucked the bottle into a fold of the blankets. “One pill for each of you.”
He looked down at Emily and forced a smile. “We’ll be back soon. Just hold on, okay? And no going to sleep.” He turned to Marco. “Keep her awake.”
Marco nodded as the doctor rotated around to pass out pills and water bottles to the other people sharing the truck.
The patter of rain hitting the canvas surged as the storm front overtook the column of trucks speeding through the night.
53
MARCO cradled Emily above his legs so that his arms took the worst of the spine-jangling ride. He watched her like a guardian angel, ready to intervene in any way he could to make her life better.
Her bloodless skin had his stomach in knots. What if she didn’t survive?
That he’d found her at all was a miracle that must have meaning. God and the universe must’ve had a reason for shifting the falling sands to land like this.
So she couldn’t die now? Right?
She was just so pale. And so cold.
A faint smile formed on her lips and he forced himself to smile. She needed his light, his energy, his strength, and he wasn’t sure he had much to offer.
Anxious dread was the only emotion he had in abundance. And it was all he could do to not let it dump out like a dam with every gate wide open.
“That bad?” she said and the smile returned.
He looked away and just as quickly returned. He coughed several times to clear his throat, to be sure his voice wouldn’t break with the lie. “You look great. Seriously.”
She rolled her eyes. “Terrible liar.”
He laughed, a genuine response this time. Even half-dead and frozen like a human blood slushy, she still had fight in her heart. She still had a withering wit blazing pathways through her brain.
There was only one way to describe her.
“Did you know you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met?”
She tried to shrug but the layers of blankets mummied around her didn’t allow for much movement. “Yeah.”
A laugh cut short in his throat as the truck hit a crater sized pothole and the back of the truck leaped into the air. The canvas stretched over his head and, fortunately, gravity quickly prevailed and he landed on the seat with a knuckle punch to the coccyx.
The coccyx. The vertebrae that comprised the final four in the spine. They typically got no attention until they took a shot and radiated electric agony through the pelvis.
Like Marco’s did now.
He somehow managed to hang on to Emily while he got his feet planted, groaning through the pain.
Oscar had stayed put by digging his claws into Marco’s skin. The indignant weasel chirped and chittered before settling back in to his favorite position.
As the pain in Marco’s pelvis ebbed, the stinging of the furrows Oscar had dug into his skin grabbed his attention.
The truck lurched to a stop and the other passengers sprawled on the floor picked themselves up.
The doctor climbed up to the bench seat and plopped down. The rubber suit squeaked as he looked around in confusion.
With the engine idling, the pounding of the driving rain hitting the canvas took center stage. It was like a river falling out of the sky.
A soldier appeared at the tailgate. “Sorry about that. The rain is tearing up the road and I didn’t see that hole until it was too late. We’re going to take it slow from here. Everyone hang on.”
Seconds later, the truck rolled forward again.
Now at what must’ve been less than fifteen miles per hour.
“Hey, doc!” Marco yelled over the clanging orchestra of ambient noise.
He paused picking up various supplies from the floor and glanced up.
“How long to get to your base?”
“Normally around fifteen minutes. But probably another thirty at this rate.”
The truck steered left and right as they went, crawling around the worst parts of the road.
But getting closer.
Closer to Project Hermes. Closer to help for Emily.
Her eyes fluttered and Marco’s chest squeezed tight. His heart rate spiked.
He touched her cheek. “Hey there, no snoozing.”
She blinked awake and nodded. “Right.”
Was she just exhausted and needed rest? Or was it something more? Something lethal? Something that merited the bubbling acid in his belly?
The truck jerked to a stop and a rushing sound like an avalanche coming down on the truck made everyone look around with fearful eyes, seeing nothing but the olive green canvas and the dark blanket of nothing out the back.
The front of the truck dropped several feet.
Marco slid forward and caught the back of the cab with his feet to avoid Emily’s head taking the impact.
The diesel engines thundered like Thor sending down a storm
of lightning. The vibration ran up through the metal bench and continued on through his belly and chest.
The tires spun throwing mud like firehoses.
Glops of thick goo smacked into the green canvas, punching at it like an angry mob.
The truck jumped backward, but Marco was ready with his feet out wide for support. It hurled back a dozen feet and skidded to a stop.
The same soldier appeared at the back. “The road’s washed out! The other vehicles already made it by, but it nearly took us along for a ride!”
The doctor’s eyes went wide. “What are we going to do?”
“Keep your head on straight, doc! We’ll loop around to the back entrance. It’s a longer route, but we’ll get there.”
“How much longer?” Marco yelled over the pouring rain.
“From here, forty-five minutes or so. Assuming we don’t run into anything else.” He was gone and the truck got moving again soon after.
54
Exactly forty-three minutes later by Marco’s watch, that caveat came back to bite them.
The poison rain had slowed and the truck had been moving along at a fast clip for the last twenty minutes. It now slowed to a crawl and turned to avoid something in the road.
Road?
Path was more accurate.
Suggestion of a path more accurate still.
Each time the doctor shined his flashlight out the back, there seemed to be less and less of anything that resembled a road.
BAM!
Something slammed into the truck, causing it to tilt over on two wheels.
Marco pressed into the backrest and his head into the canvas as the truck leaned over.
Oscar’s claws dug into Marco’s skin as the weasel fought to stay anchored.
The people sitting on the opposite bench flew face first into the other side. Fortunately, no one was sitting directly across from Marco and Emily.
The truck stopped at the peak of the arc, perfectly balanced, but only for an instant. It creaked and moaned and then slammed down on its side.
Marco’s head smacked through the canvas onto the road. He rolled to his side, doing his best to cradle and protect Emily.
Oscar leaped away and landed on all fours, ready to attack. His nose twitched and he hissed with fury.
CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK!
Automatic rifle fire split the air.
A soldier appeared at the truck’s gate, his face as white as a sheet except for the gash on his cheek leaking red. The first soldier appeared with two others at his side. “Everybody out! Now!”
He spun around and emptied a magazine into something outside. He replaced it while one of the soldiers threw the gate open and helped people out.
Marco and Emily were the last to exit. As he climbed out and stood up with her in his arms, Oscar leaped up onto his pants and skittered up to perch on his shoulder. He rose on two legs and sniffed at the air.
Someone screamed.
A hideous, soul-crushing wail of terror.
The sickening sound of a body being torn apart. The wet ripping of living flesh.
The soldiers fired while screaming to each other.
“What the hell is that thing?”
“It’s one of those giant lizards!”
A strange clicking echoed back and forth through the darkness.
“There’s more than one!”
“Target at nine 0’clock!”
The lead soldier dragged Marco forward and shoved a flashlight in his hand. “Take this!” He yanked the pistol out of his holster and shoved it into Marco’s other hand. “And this!” He pointed at the entrance to a cave further up the hill. “It’s in there! Go!”
Marco didn’t need a second invitation.
He knew what was out there.
He’d seen one before.
The terrible beast that the ancient men were hunting. The one that had an uncanny ability to camouflage itself into its surroundings. An ability so profound and adaptive that the lizard almost looked like rushing water as it moved over the ground.
What had Emily called it?
Megalania. That was it.
It had taken a small tribe of hunters to take one down.
And now there were more than one. Possibly many more out there in the darkness, beyond the reach of the truck’s headlights.
Two soldiers ran a screen on one side as all of the passengers ran toward the cave. The one in the lead fired at shifting, blurred air and then went down under a mouth full of sharp teeth.
He shrieked in agony as the thing bit his arm off.
Another lizard appeared and tore through the flimsy suit and into the man’s belly.
Fueled by the terror of letting them get Emily, Marco ran like he’d never run before. Emily bouncing in his arms, a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other. A weasel clinging to his shoulder, riding it like a bucking bull.
Marco’s head swiveled back and forth, waiting for the night to shift and ripple and take them.
One of the other passengers, the closest one behind, screamed and went down. The horrifying sounds of being eaten alive followed.
The monsters weren’t far behind.
The cave wasn’t far ahead.
Just had to get there.
And then a thought nearly made him trip and wipe out. He didn’t know what was inside the cave. Was the door directly inside? What if it was closed and locked? Which presumably it would be.
Then they’d be trapped, backed into a corner with insufficient firepower to have a chance at escape.
The monsters were gaining.
They were fast. What had Emily said? They could run up to twenty-five miles per hour. Was that right?
It didn’t seem possible for such a lumbering beast, but then again he remembered being shocked by how fast the one he’d encountered had moved.
The sound of pounding ground behind.
Not from boots.
Marco raced into the mouth of the cave, half-expecting to turn the corner and slam straight into a door. He didn’t.
Instead he turned into a large cavern that went back into a man-made corridor carved into the rock. He would’ve kept running in that direction…
Except for the rock he didn’t see before it was too late.
The toe of his boot smacked it and he flew forward, carrying Emily like Superman carrying Lois Lane.
Only this ride was short-lived and it wasn’t going to be a soft landing.
In mid-air, he pulled her in and spun around. An instant later, he landed hard on his back and Emily bounced out of his grasp.
Oscar squealed as he was flung away.
The flashlight hit the ground and blinked out, dropping the cave into an inky darkness that may as well have been a black hole.
Marco tumbled end over end and side over side before flattening out and cracking his head on the dirt floor.
Got his bell rung.
Because it sounded like that. Like he’d shoved his head into the Liberty bell and Thor had hit it with his hammer. The sound vibrated through his skull and down to his toes.
He hurt everywhere at once.
But his chest hurt the most. Terror shoved an icy fist straight into it and twisted, hard. “Emily!”
He rolled onto his stomach and swept his arms in wide arcs back and forth. “Emily!”
She groaned from somewhere to his left.
On all fours, panicking more than thinking, he scrambled in the direction of the sound. His hands sliding back and forth over the ground.
His fingers hit something cold and he recoiled from the unknown an instant before realizing what it was. He found it again and picked up the pistol.
He swept the other hand through the dirt, hoping to find the flashlight nearby.
No luck.
From somewhere nearby, Oscar chittered softly.
Fear.
Something he’d never heard from the weasel.
He listened for Emily to make another sound. She moaned and he mo
ved his head back and forth like a radar to localize on the direction.
CLICK.
CLICK CLICK.
Something clicking. Like two rocks smacked together.
The sound of something heavy dragging through the dirt.
His pulse spiked and he wanted to scream.
One of the lizards was in the cave!
The clicking continued.
He swung the pistol around and listened in the direction he thought it had come from. Then swung to face another direction. Then again another.
The sound echoed off the rock, making it impossible to localize the source.
Emily groaned again and the heavy dragging picked up speed.
The monster had found her!
The horrifying sounds of her getting torn apart. The shrieks of agony while being eaten alive.
The imagined scene flashed through his mind and dissolved his reason.
“I’m here! Come get me!” he screamed into the shadows. He pounded his fist into the dirt. “Here!”
More of the clicking. Getting louder. Closer.
Oscar’s plaintive chittering an ominous warning of what was coming.
Marco swung the pistol with each click, but the next click always seemed to come from a different direction. He couldn’t start firing in random directions because he might hit Emily.
His heart hammered in his chest, a fast and furious beat that echoed in his ears.
“Marco?” Emily whispered from the void.
He spun toward her voice as the heavy dragging sound and clicking stopped.
Silence.
Even the weasel had gone quiet.
“Don’t talk and don’t move!” he shouted. “There’s one in here with us. I’m here! Come get me!”
He waited for the inevitable rush of speed and power. To be crushed under the massive beast. To feel its rank breath wash over him before it tore him to pieces.
But there was nothing.
Only silence.
No movement. No clicking.
Was it gone?
Had he imagined the entire thing?
“Emily?”
“Here,” she whispered. “I have the flashlight.”
He was about to tell her to keep it turned off, but was a second too late.
The light clicked on.