The Sound

by James Sperl

  No sooner had Travis ended the life of one of his own than Andrew crashed his truck through the shed doors. Wood exploded in a shower of fragments, as Andrew barreled toward the porch. The engine revved with to-the-limit urgency, the RPMs whirring into the red.

  Jon jumped into anticipatory action.

  “Let's go!” he screamed. “Everyone. Now!”

  Streaming to the opposite side of the porch, he pulled Evan then Sean to their feet. Clarissa was already up and yanking laboriously on Rachel, who sank back with reluctance but ultimately acquiesced. Valentina flew to Cesare's side to assist him with Elenora, snaking an arm around the woman's waist.

  “Run for the truck!” Jon called out, but everyone was way ahead of him.

  The group clung to the far right side of the porch stairs, away from the encroaching flames, and made their way down. They crouched a safe distance behind the burning vehicles until the sound of a motor pushed to its limits overtook the roar of hungry fire.

  Jon powered to his feet. “GO!”

  Bolting forward, he leveled his weapon—and its one remaining bullet— at Travis, but Andrew's truck skidded to a stop directly in front of him and cut off his line of sight.

  Lucky bastard.

  Andrew threw open the driver's side door and, with rifle in hand, rocketed to a standing position on his seat. Swinging the gun over the roof of his truck, he aimed and fired a volley of shots, further scattering the remnants of Travis's dwindling crew.

  Jon caught a glimpse of Travis through the back window glass. Livid didn't begin to describe the expression engraved on his face. This was supposed to be a cakewalk for him, a thorough, unchallenged ass-kicking to provide a morning's entertainment. For a moment—and just for a moment—Jon wondered if it wasn't better that Travis survived so he could endure this ego-deflating failure.

  Travis howled at his fellow thugs. “Kill those fuckers!”

  The few that remained directed their entire arsenal at the area in front of the porch. Bullets chirped off Andrew's hood and screamed into the stone columns and walls. The air filled with Doppler-like pings, as shots whistled past into the raging blaze that had once been Andrew's home.

  Jon sprang to the rear driver's side door and ripped it open.

  “Get in! Go, go, go!”

  Clarissa pushed Rachel ahead of her into the back seat then smartly ushered her into the front passenger side where the two huddled on the floor. Valentina, who shrieked all the way while tears spilled down her cheeks, leaped inside. She slammed against the rear passenger door hard then reached out shaky arms to receive Elenora, who Cesare had briskly crammed into the truck before he squeezed in after her.

  Evan was next, but not before he ducked ferociously from a shower of gunfire that rattled the truck bed and detonated several large cans of corn. He scrambled inside and followed Clarissa's lead by climbing into the front seat and fitting himself in the narrow gap between her and Rachel.

  Andrew rotated as if on a swivel, firing in every direction. Jon thought it a miracle no one had shot him. He took Sean by the arm.

  “Now you!”

  Sean nodded then hopped into the truck but jumped back out when he realized he would take the last available space.

  “There's no room for two!” he shouted above the din.

  “I'll find a place,” Jon screamed. “Get the fuck in!”

  “No, not without you!”

  Jon gripped his husband's shoulders forcibly. “Sean. There's no time for th—”

  Jon's forearm exploded just below the elbow. The bullet that had just ricocheted there shredded the tender meat and draped pink, tattered flesh over his hairy arms. Blood spurted in a left-on-faucet trickle from the wound. The pain was searing, worse than he could have ever imagined.

  “Jon!” Sean howled. He dropped to a knee to catch Jon, who sank as if the ground beneath him suddenly gave way. “Jon, oh my God!”

  Andrew whirled around and performed a visual triage of the situation.

  “Get him in the truck!” he belted between a pair of shots, one of which took the top of a burly man's head off. “We'll tend to him later. Just get him inside!”

  Sean struggled with Jon's weight. Crippling shock had enveloped Jon and left him feeling less like a fully functioning person and more like a just-dead cadaver. Getting shot was always the primary concern when downrange—as it was for everyone—but it wasn't the pain from a bullet or the shrapnel from an IED that he feared most: it was the body's response to it. Jon had discovered during his time at boot—as well as from the ill-advised hazing rituals that had gone on there—that he could tolerate high levels of pain and discomfort. More so than most of his peers. But it was the debilitating haze of shock following an injury that he had never mastered. It left him ineffectual and unable to be in control of himself despite the fact that he was fully aware of everything happening around him. It was as if he were standing on the sidelines watching and cheering himself back to full consciousness, all through the thick of a slow-lifting cloud.

  Much like now.

  Jon's hearing returned from its state of numbness, and he began to sense and smell the heat that permeated the air. Shapes reorganized into recognizable forms again, but it wasn't until the glass beside Valentina's head erupted in a cascade of tinkling pellets did Jon rouse as close to full cognition as he was likely to get.

  Sean had him by the waist. He attempted to hoist Jon into the back seat, but his clumsy effort resulted in an inadvertent head knock on the door frame, which jarred Jon further into consciousness. Taking hold of his trauma, he concentrated on the hot molten sizzle that needled his arm.

  “I'm okay,” Jon said, his voice barely audible. He patted Sean's arms and nodded vigorously. “I'm all right.” Finding Andrew, he said with a firmer voice: “I'm okay. Let's go!”

  Andrew fired off another collection of shots then swung his rifle around to climb down. He was just about to slide back behind the wheel when his face fell slack with inexplicable horror. It was at the same time Jon felt Sean's arms go limp.

  Sean fell away from Jon, and Jon knew even before he turned to see what happened to his husband of thirteen years that he was dead.

  “Goddamit!” Andrew belted, enraged. He drew the rifle to his shoulder and fired toward the rear of his truck.

  A pudgy kid in black skater ware, who had slunk around the truck's backside, took two rapid-fire plugs to the chest. The boy collapsed, shuddered, then stopped moving.

  “Dad!” Evan screamed from the front seat. His voice trembled and reached unnatural pitches. He fought to get out, to claw his way to his injured parents, but Clarissa encircled her arms around him and pulled him to her chest.

  “No, Evan,” she said, his body going lax. She cried along with him.

  “Jon!” Andrew shouted. “Get in!”

  Jon looked up at Andrew dreamily. Andrew shouted something else, but Jon couldn't make sense of it. The world tilted on an ever-changing axis. His eyes fell to Sean, whose own eyes stared ahead blankly through a misting of dust that had already begun to settle over his face. The bullet had entered through the small of his back, likely separating his spine and churning up a couple of organs for good measure. Blood dripped into a small pool below him, the earth absorbing all Sean had to give it.

  Jon drifted on a toxic cloud. One extreme reality exchanged for another. He thought of clichés regarding one's life passing before their eyes, and though he wasn't dying, his brain had a hard time believing otherwise. Life events fluttered through his mind at lightning speed, the moments flitting by like shuffled playing cards, but they weren't moments already lived—they were future moments that would now never exist.

  Sean would never see Evan graduate high school or college. He would never meet his grandchildren or know Evan's choice for a life partner. He would never stand on the Rialto Bridge to watch passing gondolas nor would he get to enjoy a selection of tapas and a glass of sangria under the shadow of La Sagrada Família. There would be no more
vacations together. No more holidays. No nothing. So many incomplete moments flew at Jon from out of his future memory bank, each one a picture frame bereft of a photo, that his heart could barely withstand the sadness. Were it not for the flash of orange and the hand that clamped his shoulder, he would have been quite content to curl up beside Sean and wait for whatever happened next.

  But Cesare was in his face.

  “We're leaving, Jon! Let's go!”

  Before he had a chance to protest, Cesare heaved him into the truck then reached across Jon's slumped form to wrench the door shut.

  “Go, Andrew! Go!”

  Jon barely registered Andrew, who at some point had lowered himself back behind the wheel. He threw the truck into gear. It lurched forward with surprising power, fishtailing wildly until Andrew regained control. Jon witnessed all of this as if viewing it through a layer of gauze, but even as his brain entered shutdown mode, he was still keenly aware of the horrifying sight that played out through the windshield.

  Travis was on fire.

  No less than four of his delinquent friends charged over to him, their shirts pulled off and their faces screwed into looks of frightened disbelief.

  A flash of orange.

  Jon tried to rally his thoughts and assemble a narrative to accompany what he saw. The only thing that made sense was that Andrew had shot Travis as he held a Molotov cocktail. He hoped he was right.

  Travis reeled. His arms thrashed wildly, his body flailing, as fire consumed him. And though he howled with ferocity, the cry sounded more pissed off than a result from any pain. He spun then ran instinctively, forcing his friends to chase after him. One of them was clever enough to issue a straight-armed shove that sent Travis to the ground. Once down, the others descended upon him with their grimy clothing, smothering him with rancid T-shirts.

  Andrew's truck kicked up a rooster tail of gravel, as he peeled away from his beloved home. Jon watched him in the rearview mirror and witnessed anguish on parallel with his own. The house may have been just a structure comprised of wood and stone, but it clearly meant something more to Andrew than a place to simply lay his head.

  Evan reached for Jon from the front seat. He was inconsolable. Tears sprang from his eyes, and he wailed with such desolation, Jon could barely bring himself to look at him. What sort of father subjects his child to such misery?

  “Dad!”

  Jon clamped both of Evan's hands in his remaining functional one.

  “I'm sorry, Ev,” he said behind a weepy, consciousness-challenged breath. “I'm so sorry about...”

  Evan heaved then let out a body-wracking sob. He followed this by shaking his head fervently as if he were attempting to will himself not to cry. He forearmed away the wetness on his face then gaped in horror at Jon's wound.

  “Dad, your arm!” he choked out.

  “I'm okay,” Jon said, just this side of sounding convincing.

  “It's bleeding, Dad!” Evan cried, strings of saliva dribbling from his lower lip. “Like, really bad!”

  Jon nodded weakly. He didn't want to look at his arm, mostly out of fear that he would be unable to hide his concern for it. If the amount of pain he felt was in direct proportion to the amount of blood he was losing, it must have been spilling out of him by the liter.

  Clarissa plastered on a smile, but the tears that pooled along her lids belied sincerity.

  “We'll get him fixed up, Evan,” she said. “I promise.” She laid a tender hand on his head, and Jon could feel Evan's fingers release tension in his grasp.

  Andrew skirted the mob that tended to Travis then stood on the accelerator. The engine roared with purpose, devouring fuel as if it were the lifeblood, but no sooner did the truck accelerate toward the driveway's ridge than a vehicle crested it at top speed from the opposite direction.

  Andrew yanked ferociously on the wheel to avoid a grill-to-grill collision, but instead of veering counter to Andrew, the car swerved toward him. Everyone screamed as the car barreled forward. Andrew cut the wheel to an even further degree, forcing a pair of the truck's tires to temporarily leave the ground.

  The car growled past, so close Jon could see the black-toothed grimace of the driver, who swerved eagerly to sideswipe Andrew. He missed, but the luck spared Andrew's truck did not extend to the trailer. The speeding car connected with it head on. Once again, two of the truck's tires left the ground, as the car smashed into the trailer and twisted it free from the hitch. Jon thought he heard a metallic groan from the chassis at the moment of impact.

  Foodstuffs exploded as if launched from a cannon. Crushed canned goods and obliterated glass jars sprawled over the yard, months worth of essential food relegated to compost. The car continued to plow through the trailer until it got hung up, its nose ramping over stacks of six-to-a-case restaurant grade canned vegetables that left its front tires stranded in air.

  Andrew fought through a harrowing skid, the truck's rear whipping contrary to each of Andrew's attempts at correction. The truck sailed off the drive into a patch of grass and knee-high scrub; the dense swath of meadow was enough to provide it the much-needed traction to regain control.

  “Everyone okay?” Andrew called out, as he gunned the accelerator and steered the truck back onto the driveway with white-knuckled intensity. No one answered.

  Jon glanced at Andrew's concentrated scowl in the rearview then looked past it to the disturbing and impossible sight reflected in the distance.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jon muttered. He pushed himself up and twisted around to gape open-mouthed through the back window. His exclamation drew the attention of everyone else in the cab, all of whom followed his gaze.

  Travis was on his feet. He stood with his arms splayed, his chest thrust forward in defiance, as if he hadn't just endured a bath of fire. His charred body smoked from head to toe, his previous model-ready looks reduced to blackened features atop which lay isles of melted skin and seeping, peeling flesh. He stared at the truck with potent hatred, the glare not one Jon would soon forget.

  With fists that were either clenched or fused, Travis sucked back lungfuls of noxious air and screamed with unrestrained fury.

  “Clarissaaaaaa!” he howled. “This is only the beginning! No matter where you go, no matter how far you travel, I will find you! Do you hear me, Clarissa? I will find yooouuuu!”

  The truck's cab fell silent. Travis's threats petered to an incoherent wail that eventually diminished to nothing. Andrew barreled down his property's driveway until he hit the main road, which he cut left onto without braking.

  Eyes drifted covertly to Clarissa, who clung to Evan as if he were a security blanket.

  Words of reassurance sprang to Jon's throat. “It'll be okay,” he wanted to say. “It's an empty threat. We'll never see him again. That asshole's gone from your life forever.” But he couldn't get the sentences past his lips. Not because of excruciating pain or that he was too mired in sorrow for his late husband to articulate support.

  But because he straight up didn't believe them.

  CHAPTER 30

  76 Days Later

  Clarissa was in the Nothing Place. She knew this not because she had been there before, but because she felt it to be true. The assumption was easy to make—she had never experienced a darkness such as this. A black so black it redefined the color. Only she could still see.

  Hazy shapes and nondescript forms materialized out of the pitch and stretched into oblivion until shadows consumed them. Towering objects that only feigned to define space, their intangible contours mapping a type of location that didn't exist. Couldn't exist.

  Blackness pressed down on her from above and cloaked within it resided something sinister. This she knew. What exactly, she couldn't see, couldn't know, but something was there, lurking, preying. They were experts, these things, skulking about in the Nothing Place and moving furtively in the trenches of her peripheral vision. They not only didn't want to be seen, but a sixth sense told Clarissa that this place prevented her from seei
ng them.

  Movement shimmered to her left. She turned and stared into an abyss of inky eternity, her eyes trying and failing to adapt to the darkness. Her breathing stuttered, staccato bursts that implied a yearning to fill undernourished lungs. But she could breathe, even if the air tasted as empty as the space that contained it.

  In the distance, a dim halo of light churned with barely there malevolence. Something happened in that light. Something unspeakable. Again, Clarissa could sense it. She could feel negative energy radiate off it in a steady flow, permeating the Nothing Place with an unquantifiable menace.

  The things in the shadows skittered and crept around her. Each motion felt deliberate, intentional, as if they corralled Clarissa toward that enigmatic light.

  She spun and tried to run but only ended up facing back in the same direction from which she had just turned away. Panic and fear competed for dominance. She could feel the presence of the things in the dark sneaking closer, hungry wolves padding toward her with unflinching purpose.

  She tried to backpedal away, but each step only brought her maddeningly, inconceivably closer to the circle of light. Clarissa tried to scream; her words dissolved into silence as soon as they hit the foreign-tasting air.

  What the hell was happening?

  The light began to whirlpool and expand. Bands of ice blue rotated around a black center, a tornado as viewed from above. She tried to scream again, but her voice was swept up and devoured.

  A sharp movement dodged on her right, which was followed by a second one that shifted directly overhead. Clarissa whirled, her heart throbbing, as she sought out each black-on-black motion around her.

  Cold descended on her, the air thick with inevitability. Shapes took form, hideous near-silhouettes that flitted about unseen and staked iron pins of dread along her spine.

  I want to go home! her mind cried when her mouth failed to do so. I want to go home right now!!

  More agitated movement swirled, yet she could see nothing. The light beckoned, and suddenly she found herself struggling to resist it. For the first time, her feet trudged reluctantly toward it.