The Sound

by James Sperl

  I want to go home! I want to go home!

  One step followed the other until Clarissa walked an involuntary path directly for the light.

  Stop moving! She commanded herself, but her legs didn't listen. STOP WALKING!!

  A shudder of dread rippled through her body, as the diabolical truth of her situation crystallized—she was no longer in control.

  She screamed and thrashed in an attempt to disrupt her momentum, but she only proceeded forward. There were no more footsteps. Instead, her body subjected to a preternatural glide that coasted her ever closer to the light.

  Clarissa felt more than saw the devilish things in the dark, as they scampered about with manic hunger. They grew eager, anticipatory. The sensation withered her resolve to fight, but fight she had to. She had to get out of this sub-Hell nightmare.

  She sped up, her body accelerating toward that ominous blue glow. More impossibly formed shapes raced by, immense, lofty objects that defied contemporary reason and seemed to exist only to emphasize her mortal insignificance.

  Soul-wrenching screams begged to unleash, but Clarissa couldn't find the ability to give them voice. Faster, she sped, until the vast Nothing Place became a perpetual blur. The light grew.

  Faster.

  I want to go home!

  Faster. Faster...

  I want to go home! I want to go HOOOOOMMMEEE!

  “Clarissa.”

  She burst into consciousness and rocketed to a sitting position, her eyes globes of fear. She scanned the mechanic's garage where she had awoken, absorbing the familiar space with a sliver of comfort.

  “Whoa, girl,” Valentina said through a shocked recoil. She sat at Clarissa's feet, one hand on Clarissa's boot. “Take it easy.”

  “What happened?” Clarissa said, panting. She twisted to the side and swung her legs off the cot, where she had been sleeping, to the floor.

  “You had a dream is what happened. Pretty bad one from the sound of it.”

  “No shit.” Clarissa scrubbed her face with both palms. “Jesus. Why didn't you wake me sooner?”

  “I woke you as soon as I got back and saw what was happening.”

  Clarissa cocked her head at this.

  “What do you mean 'as soon as you got back'?” Valentina's lower lip retreated inside her mouth. “You didn't leave me alone, did you?” Clarissa swept the shop to check for others from the group, but it was just the two of them.

  Valentina stared ahead intently as if the correct response would suddenly materialize in front of her.

  “It...it was only for a minute.”

  Clarissa leaped to her feet. “You left me alone? Jesus Christ, Val!”

  “I had to go to the bathroom! What was I supposed to do?”

  “Oh, I don't know, call for someone? Wake me the fuck up? Anything other than leave me alone. God, I can't believe you. I could have been taken, Val!”

  And Clarissa believed it too. She and the others had all heard rumors of the Nothing Place over the past couple of months. Stories swirled of a cavernous room where nothing existed yet everything happened, described in the same chilling way: black and terrifying. Popular opinion held that it was the place to where people disappeared. Based on her nightmarish experience, Clarissa was inclined to agree.

  Valentina stepped to Clarissa's side and pawed pleadingly at her forearm. “I'm sorry, okay? Don't hate me. It'll never happen again.”

  Clarissa only shook her head. If she spoke, she might say something she couldn't take back. After a dense moment of silence, Valentina couldn't stand it any longer.

  “Look, I'll make it up to you, okay? I'll...I'll take your cooking rounds for the next week, all right? You know I'd never want anything to happen to you!”

  Valentina lurched forward and wrapped her arms around Clarissa's shoulders. She waited until Clarissa returned the gesture, which Clarissa did by way of a limp-armed hug and three-tap back pat. Valentina released her and stared into Clarissa's eyes from inches away. Up close, Clarissa saw bloodshot whites, which was to say nothing of how dilated Valentina's pupils were.

  “So, are we good?” Valentina asked hopefully.

  “Yeah, Val. We're good.”

  Valentina pinched off a twitchy smile. “Good. I'm so glad. Anyway, I think we're heading out soon, so you should probably get your stuff together.”

  “Okay, I will. Thanks.”

  “Sure.”

  Valentina peeled away and offered a final over-the-shoulder, tight-lipped grin before she disappeared outside.

  Clarissa sank back to the cot and hung her head in contemplative silence. Val. Clarissa loved her friend, but the past few months had taken a toll on her. The uncertainty of constantly moving from place to place fostered a paranoia in her she couldn't suppress. At any moment, she felt that whatever took people would come for her. Specifically her. Never mind that she was part of a group of eight people whose numbers all but assured her safety as she slept.

  Clarissa thought this relevant fact would have brought Valentina some solace, but she only became more despondent with each move, convinced that her and everyone else's time was drawing nigh. So she had taken measures.

  It started off with caffeine pills and copious amounts of high-octane energy drinks, but she quickly evolved to more serious medication: Ritalin, Adderall, Dexedrine—any prescription amphetamine she could get her hands on to prevent sleep. And those were just the ones Clarissa knew about. Lord knew what other narcotics Valentina had come across, particularly the sort that came distributed in small plastic baggies rather than in pharmacy-issued amber vials.

  Clarissa knew precisely where she got them all too. While the rest of the group swept empty homes to backfill supplies, Valentina would rifle through medicine cabinets and bedside tables. On more than one occasion, Clarissa had caught her friend exiting a bathroom or master bedroom, her face coloring to a deep pink, as she offered up her findings, which usually consisted of over-the-counter painkillers, anti-depression meds, and miscellaneous first aid supplies.

  Mugger's pay.

  But she had a bigger problem with her growing dependency. Conventional wisdom suggested that food and water should be the most common form of currency during a worldwide societal collapse, but drugs were the new gold standard—particularly the kind that staved off sleep in favor of a nerve-amped high. And Valentina was flush with cash. But her logic was tragically flawed, for once she depleted her stash and her body came to its senses, deep sleep was all that remained. For many, though, the present day's sunrise was all that mattered.

  Clarissa had never approached Valentina about her habit. It wasn't her place. Val was a big girl. She could take care of herself—at least that's what Clarissa told herself. She was well aware that even the most responsible adult could slip if left alone with his or her vices, and Valentina was anything but responsible. Clarissa wondered if an intervention might be in her friend's future.

  But no sooner did the thought enter her mind than it got some pushback. Who was she to tell someone how to live, especially when so much scary stuff was going on? Everyone had his or her way to cope with the events of the past few months. Some smoked. Some drank. What made Valentina's method—a method employed by more than just a few people—worse than anyone else's?

  Regardless, Valentina was still a friend, and friends looked out for one another. Clarissa vowed to keep a watchful eye on her, though she knew as sure as the sun set in the West that Valentina's ill-timed trip to the bathroom had nothing to do with base bodily functions.

  Clarissa rolled up her sleeping bag and collapsed her cot. She gave the tiny garage a final once-over on her way to the metal, grease-stained door that led outside. “Thank you,” she uttered to it gratefully, and she meant it. In recent weeks, the group had taken to isolated camping instead of utilizing structures and public areas. Terrifying world-gone-mad stories of rape, murder, and all out violence became so prevalent no one felt comfortable bedding down where men of such ilk might lurk. So the night sky
became their new ceiling.

  The campground Clarissa and the others had puttered into late the previous night was vacant and looked to have been that way for some time. Camping plots bore the charred scarring of campfires past, but nothing suggested the campground had seen many recent visitors.

  The garage was an anomaly. A one bay set-up, it sat on the fringes of the campground just outside the entrance and right beside a shuttered check-in kiosk. It reeked of oil and gas and was no place Clarissa could imagine anyone ever bringing their car to for maintenance except in the direst circumstances. But it had a roof, and that was good enough for her. She never realized how much comfort four walls and a ceiling brought her until after she had spent weeks with only a paper-thin polyester sheet separating her from the elements. Shaking the remnants of her terrifying dream from her thoughts, Clarissa pushed through the garage door.

  Late morning sun embraced her like a warm hug. As expected, Evan was in the midst of breaking down the massive eight-person tents they had acquired at a Cabela's outside Mitchell, South Dakota some weeks back. Much to everyone's surprise, the store had only been lightly picked over: summer clothing, footwear, and hunting and fishing items were the sections most looted, but that still left a plethora of gear to plunder. With the exception of food, they had replaced nearly everything they lost on Andrew's trailer and then some. It was one of the few days Clarissa marked as a win, though she still felt melancholic guilt when she pushed her overloaded cart past vacant cash register stands.

  Evan concentrated on the second of two tents. He extracted support poles and layered the material into a large square with meticulous care.

  “Need any help?” Clarissa said, as she tossed her pack and cot into the bed of Andrew's “new” truck. (His previous F-350 had sustained too much damage from Travis and his crew, so he replaced it—with the same vehicle, right down to the midnight blue color.)

  Evan looked up from joining two corners of material, which formed the tent more into a trapezoid than the sought-after square. “Nah, I think I got it.”

  “You're becoming a real pro at that. What does it take you, five, six minutes to break that thing down?”

  “Ha,” Evan chuckled. “I wish. I'd be happy to get it done in under ten.”

  “Still better than the thirty it'd take me. You sure you don't need a hand?”

  “Nope. I'm good. Besides, it gives me something to do.”

  Clarissa knew the feeling. At one time, when waist aprons defined her life, she longed for the freedom to be able to do what she wanted when she wanted, as so many of her fellow worker bees did. But after weeks of day-to-day tedium, with little to break up the monotony, she would have happily sawed off her hand with a butter knife to return to the gloriously dull routine of a breakfast shift at Aunt Mae's—and each instance of the Sound only amplified that yearning.

  Over the past two-and-a-half months, the distinctive—and terrifying—noise had exploded across the sky on twelve different occasions. The occurrences seemed random. Sometimes only days separated a series of events whereas other times more than a week would pass before it shrieked its arrival and shattered everyone's hopes that it had stopped. No one could figure out a pattern.

  The initial days after Clarissa and the others had fled Andrew's cabin were fraught with crippling fear and anxiety. At that point in the Sound's timeline, everyone had experienced it a total of two times. Panic had already set in among the world's population, as people became suffused with despair. By the fifth event, people were out of their minds. Cities began to fall. Societies crumbled. It became every man, woman, and child for themselves.

  Clarissa often reminded herself how fortunate she was to have been rescued by Andrew and become part of such a reliable and likable group of people. The number of ways in which she, Rachel, and Valentina could have found themselves in a different situation was too numerous to count. Though they no longer had the benefit of a permanent base camp, they had each other. Given the circumstances, that was more than she could ask for.

  Shoving her hands into her pockets, Clarissa surveyed the campsite. She found Cesare sitting on a log beside Elenora, who used a tree stump as a chair. The pair chatted quietly, while Cesare rubbed his grandmother's feet. He looked up and caught Clarissa gawking and offered a smile, which she returned. It dried up, however, when she failed to locate her friends.

  “Evan,” she began, “you seen Rach and Val?”

  Evan straightened. “Rachel went down to the creek to wash up the dishes. I think Val went to help.”

  Yeah, right, was all Clarissa could think before chastising herself for being so cynical.

  “Okay. Thanks. Last chance for some help.”

  “Be gone, foul temptress.”

  Clarissa let slip a giggle, as she rounded the front of Andrew's truck and walked past the group's other vehicle, a Toyota 4Runner SUV they had commandeered from a used car lot. It was past it where she found Jon and Andrew. They were looking at the Map.

  The Map.

  Clarissa couldn't even begin to estimate the number of hours both men had been spent hunched over it. Each day, the group convened around its increasingly tattered edges to determine the day's best route, but that rarely mattered. For as soon as the meeting was over, Jon and Andrew got together and reevaluated what had already been unanimously decided. They never came up with a preferred alternative.

  Men and maps.

  Clarissa's foot snapped a dry branch with a loud crack as she approached. Jon and Andrew didn't budge from their stooped-over positions.

  “Any further developments?” she said, her voice tinged with sarcasm.

  Jon pushed himself up from the table. “Nah, you know the drill,” he said with a wry grin. “Just us guys exercising our guyness.”

  The lighthearted quip sailed past Andrew, who didn't react in the slightest and only continued to trace a thin black line on the map with his thumbnail. Jon looked from him to Clarissa and frowned comically. He followed this with a wince, which resulted from opening and closing his left hand repeatedly.

  Clarissa winced along with him. “Aching?”

  “Yeah, a bit.” He massaged his gauze-wrapped forearm. “Some days, I forget I was even shot, but I can always count on an eventual reminder.”

  Clarissa didn't forget. She didn't think she ever would. The chaos of escaping from Andrew's property had been a total mindfuck, but the situation spiked to exponentially worse when she became the one tasked with treating Jon's gunshot wound. Valentina and Rachel were too distraught to help, and Cesare had his hands full calming Elenora. Andrew had only one goal in mind at the time, and that was to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Travis's band of roving psychopaths. So the duty fell to Clarissa.

  She had never seen so much blood. It was on everything, and still more flowed. The wound was a shredded mess of pink flesh and looked nothing like it did on those cop shows. Skin was torn and singed in equal parts in the meat of Jon's forearm as if something had burrowed its way out from inside. More than once, she thought she would pass out as Jon had and join him on the backseat, but Clarissa knew she had to rise to the occasion. His life depended on her.

  Andrew was smart to have packed the medical supplies in the truck. After she cleaned Jon's wounds with half-drunk bottles of water and packed the gaping holes with on-the-spot donations of non-sterile clothing, Clarissa was sure Jon would develop an infection, or worse, gangrene. But a combination of potent antibiotics and Andrew's staggering knowledge of in-the-field first-aid techniques (something she would later learn he had only ever read about and never actually performed), Jon pulled through. His arm would look like a gift from Dr. Frankenstein for the rest of his life, but at least he wouldn't lose it.

  Sometimes, when his nerve endings screamed in conflict, Jon would cry. It was as if the pain served as a catalyst for Sean's memory: each needle jab of torment in his flesh mimicked one of equal agony in his heart. Jon missed Sean terribly and battled daily to put on a
brave face for Evan. Everyone felt his loss, and no one blamed him if he had to excuse himself from a task suddenly to collect himself. Sean's death was as raw and visceral as the injury Jon had sustained.

  Days passed, and though the hurt never went away, it lessened to a more tolerable degree. Jon still had his moments—as anyone suffering through a sudden and inexplicable death would—but they were fewer and farther between. Curiously, today was the first time he had failed to shed a tear at the onset of an episode. Perhaps what they said about time healing all wounds was true. For Jon's sake, Clarissa hoped they were right.

  Andrew stood up from the map.

  “So,” Clarissa said with mock interest, “we still good?”

  Andrew leveled his gaze at her. “Ha ha.” He picked up the map and folded it. “There's nothing wrong with reevaluating our options.”

  Clarissa screwed her face into an expression of mock approval. “Absolutely.”

  “Uh huh,” Andrew said, sizing her up. He swatted her on top of her head with the folded map. “Come on, let's get a move on. We've got a lot of road ahead of us.”

  “What else is new?” she scoffed.

  The road. It was their new perpetual home. Day in. Day out. And all because Jon had stumbled across a radio transmission. Most days, Clarissa wished they had never heard it.

  A few days after their escape, when things calmed, Jon relayed what he and Clarissa had heard on Andrew's ham radio. The questions that followed were swift and many and nearly all of them unanswerable: What was Rosenstein Biotechnologies, and why were they supposed to find it? Did they know what was happening? If so, why didn't they alert the government or the media? Did they have a solution? An upsetting counter-question followed: What if the whole thing was someone's idea of a sick joke? A final hoax before the world went belly up?

  Subsequent debates were passionate, if not fiery. Some, namely Valentina and Rachel, were adamant in their position to seek out a new shelter away from people. To hunker down and ride it out. But Andrew argued that they had already tried that, and that had been on home turf. How likely were they to succeed against like-minded adversaries in a different, foreign location? Ultimately, and with no small amount of persuasion, the group reached a unanimous, if shaky, decision: they would travel to Ashland to find Rosenstein Biotechnologies. They had just one lingering question—which Ashland?