Other Dangers
Part One:
Slipped Through
Amanda M. Lyons
Edited by: J. Ellington Ashton Press Staff
Cover Art by: Michael Fisher
http://jellingtonashton.com
Copyright.
Amanda M. Lyons
©2017, Amanda M. Lyons
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book, including the cover and photos, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. All rights reserved.
Any resemblance to persons, places living or dead is purely coincidental.
This is a work of fiction.
Chapter One:
These Things Happen
In the late hours of a sweltering August night, two dimly lit figures walked down a deserted highway. The larger shadow was that of an obese man, made to seem larger by the burden on his back, an unconscious woman in her mid-forties. The woman walking beside him appeared to be about the same age. It was dark; the sounds around them were those of a forested area, here and there interspersed with alien noises he couldn’t identify. The path was peppered with weeds and grass, a highway gone to seed from disuse.
The man was named Henry, and on his back was his wife, Rachel. The tall, gaunt woman beside him was a stranger and had yet to give him a name by which to call her. Each breath he took was labored; each exhalation interrupted by another gasp of fresh air, the pace of his breathing was choked by his frustrated anger. The woman beside him reached into her pocket and pulled out a half- flattened cigarette, lighting it as she walked.
“I…th-thought…we had to…keep from attracting…at-attention.”
Her look was cold as she drew the orange circle from her mouth, its contours drawn into a knot of exasperation before she blew out a puff of smoke. Their pace wasn’t slowed by their conversation; if anything, the woman’s pace had increased.
“Look, Henry, I know a hell of a lot more about this place than you do; considering that, I’ll warn you to keep your mouth shut. I’ve been through a lot of shit in these last few years and I don’t react well to having my authority questioned, all right?” She put the cigarette back into her mouth, drawing another lungful of smoke before exhaling it. He hated her in that moment, the harshness of her personality and the sharp contours of her body denying the curving femininity she obviously held at some point.
He understood her contempt, however; with his newly ruined loafers, tailored khakis, and polo shirt, he was the picture of suburban indulgence. At least, that was, until a few hours ago.
It had all started two months ago. His wife had lost her teaching position at the high school; up until that time she’d been a fairly successful English Teacher. Ordinarily, Rachel was a fairly calm and reasonable woman; her students honestly had little problem with her and even enjoyed her classes, certainly a rarity in a high school setting. Unfortunately for her, there was one class, occupied by a group of juvenile delinquents who constantly berated her, which made it impossible to teach the class as she intended to.
The events that followed were to be expected, if a little overblown. The students that had been interrupting her class started to do so again, this time making it a graphic exchange about sex and drug use, full of laughing sneers and erotic gestures. The normally reasonable woman who had tackled most of these scenarios with calm, clear firmness lost every ounce of her cool and began to scream at them, looking half-rabid with her snarls and barks, obviously in the middle of a terrible breakdown. One kid wound up being hit in the head by a teacher’s edition English Lit book, another ended up being clawed and smacked by the irate teacher, and a third was knocked over still sitting in his desk, catching his Spanish, Chemistry, and Algebra books with his face. By the time his wife was herself again and saw what she had done, the bruised faces, the scratches, and the looks of bewildered horror on her students’ faces, both belligerent and otherwise, she could do nothing but whimper and walk out of her classroom.
As a result of the whole mess, the boys’ irate socialite parents sued Elmwood High, and the school elected to fire Rachel in order to save their bacon. The psychiatrist charged then twelve thousand dollars to diagnose her obvious breakdown, and promptly suggested that she begin taking Selexa. After all of this, Henry was angry and began to blame the whole episode and all the stresses involved with it on his wife and their marriage began to crumble. Matters only got worse when he realized she was hooked on her medication and even more money was lost to a rehab center to get her through that mess. Any hope of restoring her teaching career was well buried by then and so the majority of the financial strain fell firmly on him in its entirety, causing still more stress and frustration for both.
Finally, there was the thing that really spelled the end for Henry’s life as he understood it. Rachel sent their seventeen-year-old daughter on a camping trip with her clearly pleased boyfriend against Henry’s wishes and this started the argument that ended two hours later with Rachel giving him an ultimatum.
“I have an idea, something I’d like to try before we make any other major decisions. I think we should get away,” she said, her hips resting against the kitchen counter as she looked into her coffee cup. “Go on a long vacation together. I want to see if we can save this marriage. If not…well, that’s it then, we’re over. If you don’t agree to at least try this, I’m leaving, and I’m taking Karen with me. We’ve both been through enough from you lately.” Her gaze was steady as she burned the words into his eyes. “I won’t let her go through that, not after my breakdown; things have to change, Henry, and we have to start now.” Having stated the terms, she swallowed a few aspirin and headed off to lie down.
What choice did he have? A week later they were on their way to her father’s cabin in New Hampshire and things had already begun to take a turn for the worse. They’d been fighting for hours, about coffee, about food, about well…everything. In the middle of a particularly vocal bout they swerved off the road and into a dense forest. It was dark and they couldn’t see the trees as they roared at them at forty miles an hour, but he did his best to avoid them and managed to do pretty well for the first few minutes. The inevitable happened all the same, of course, and they struck something; the force of the impact and the subsequent thunder of the air bags bursting out of the front dash knocked them unconscious.
After a long darkness, Henry had woken to the sound of a fist as it rapped on the driver’s side window, remarkably intact for the impact it had endured. When he first opened his eyes then, it was to see an immense old growth oak driven partway into the front of the car, which was crumpled but had somehow managed not to go straight into their bodies. His eyes darted to the woman next, took in her angry eyes and the wave of her hand in front of the glass which demanded he get a move on and then he’d carefully pulled his legs out of the car, gotten onto them and taken a look at Rachel, slumped over against the door on her side. The woman stabbed one annoyed finger into his shoulder and then shot it toward his wife before gesturing to the road a few feet away. It was how he’d come to be walking down this strange highway, next to his equally strange and hardly endearing guide.
***
The weight of his wife’s body pulled laboriously at his back shoulder muscles as he moved, and the militant nature of the woman’s orders hadn’t improved his already aggravated mood. The tension and the annoyance had built to something of a head.
> A sudden inhuman scream came from the woods and scared him badly enough for him to dump an added burst of momentary speed into his progress. Instead of joining Henry, the woman stopped and fired into the woods, apparently striking whatever it was with her shot. A wet pop and crashing sounds followed and he was suddenly certain that he would have a stroke, the weight of carrying his wife and his obesity having put strain on his heart and body. The woman turned back toward the road ahead and smiled at him, satisfied with her kill. They moved on with little pause afterward.
Henry’s wife mumbled and moaned over his shoulder. “Henry, I want to go home.” He was frustrated and tired; the words were something he could identify with even if they were out of context. Sweat poured from his body, stung his eyes, and dripped into his half-open mouth as he trudged on.
Gradually the woman slowed down, finally took off her rifle, a backpack, a machete, and a hatchet, and then she started gathering wood. He watched as she set the wood down on the double yellow line and began to build a fire, mystified by the idea of it, something that would have left them open to getting run over back home.
“We’re camping here tonight, so get comfortable. Set her over there.” She gestured to the right side of the fire and he followed her direction not knowing what else he could be doing at this point. When he sat down it was in a half-swoon, the energy and strength pulled out of him by the long trek he had just taken.
He looked across the fire at her, realizing she could weigh no more than ninety- seven pounds. Her face was gaunt; her whole body looked a bit ragged and worn, as if she’d been through a war. She was tall and attractive in a brooding way, her lips thin, and her hair a dark shade of black that made her pale grey-blue eyes stand out in her face. She was dressed in olive green khakis, black jungle boots, and a worn olive tank top. Even if he hadn’t heard her voice he would have known she was British, it was in the look of her eyes, the way she moved.
As he looked her over, she had been looking into the fire and only now looked up to meet his gaze with a quizzical one of her own. Embarrassed, he looked away, taking the area around them in and finding himself puzzled by the apparent abandonment of this road. Where was the traffic? There was nothing coming from either direction and he doubted if there ever would be. The idea was bizarre to a man who came from a suburb only miles from the industrial center that was a major city.
He turned back to her and asked a question over the fire. “Where are we?”
She shrugged. “What does it matter? In a few days you’ll be home and I can be on my way again.” She lit the cigarette with this same nonchalance, puffing the smoke in and out with little interest.
“Do you honestly think my wife will live that long?” He looked at Rachel’s softly breathing body and found himself doubtful; the damage to her head seemed more serious than could be dealt with out here in the woods and emptiness.
She breathed in a hit off her cigarette, considering things briefly before she blew it out. “Well, that all depends on you, Henry.”
“And just where in the hell did you get my name anyway?” His anger was sudden, and in reality, directionless. He was tired, hungry, and worried all at once.
She responded quickly enough, reached into her pocket and cast something brown across the fire to him. When he had caught it, he realized that it was his wallet. “What gives you the right?”
“Relax, money means nothing here. Names are nearly as lost to us as well.” She said the last words softly, almost to herself, as she looked on, thinking.
“What happened here? Where are we? And who are you?”
Her eyes moved from the fire to his eyes and back again. “You don’t need to know, it’s hardly relevant at this point.”
“Why isn’t it? Why shouldn’t I know?”
She laughed to herself, her eyes rolling before she responded. “I don’t think you’d want to know if you knew what you were asking. I know you come from a place where every tidbit of knowledge is handfed to you in sanitized portions by the news channels, but…well, it’s not the world I live in anymore.” Her eyes were distant, lost in some memory.
He gave up, recognized the look in her eyes, the same one Rachel’s eyes got after an argument, far away and disconnected from the moment. It disturbed him, out of place as it felt here, where being aware seemed so important. His eyes moved back to his wife and regret settled into his features, for their arguing, for the accident, for every little thing he could have felt badly about now that he was lost.
“I think she’ll be fine.” She spoke a little more warmly now, with more empathy. “As long as we get you back home.” He looked back at her and there was a long silence as they considered each other. “Go to sleep. I can keep watch, I’m used to it.” Too tired to consider if he trusted her, he stretched out on the road, an arm under his head as he drifted off.
***
When he woke up the woman was already at work, having picked up her gear. “You’ll have to carry her again; she’s your wife, after all.”
He bit back his irritation and lifted his wife; he’d need all the air he could get. There was definitely a story here. A woman doesn’t get that thin, that defensive, or that on edge without something happening. From what he could see there could only be one place to find a part of the information he needed. The knapsack.
They walked for nearly an hour before they finally stopped. His back was killing him and he was getting tired of hearing Rachel mutter in her sleep. The woman set down her gear again, not affected by the long hike.
“We can’t afford to take a long break here, it’s too dangerous,” she said, her eyes looking over the area, nervous and watchful.
“It’s been an hour, what’s so risky about this place?” Nothing stood out about it, the same highway and the same close-standing trees.
“Do you remember how I shot that thing last night?” She said, her tone irritated. He nodded. “Well during the day you have some smaller version and then you have La Gente de los Muertos.” His face curled into a frown of incredulity. “They’re a cult, a group of people and zombies. They worship those monsters, offering sacrifices and eating anyone they manage to find.”
“Come on, you can’t-,” It was way too absurd; there was no way it could be real.
The cold look on her face told him otherwise though, she was deadly serious. “They’re just as intelligent as us, some of them even more so. They can also…impregnate normal people or be impregnated by us.”
“What in the fuck-?”
She didn’t stop. She clearly wanted to get it all out no matter what he thought, no matter how much it disgusted him to hear. “As a result, we get hybrids.” She took a breath and then went on. “I have to make something clear, the first set was the type you are thinking of, shambling things out of horror movies, and the second were the people the rotted ones bit. These dead things, these revenants aren’t really quite the same as the movies; it’s more complicated than that, there’s more to it.
“I wouldn’t go into all of this, especially in light of my wanting you to get the hell out of here before you have to deal with any of the greater complexities of my world, but this is something of an everyday way of life for us. Something we all seem to tackle and so you will too. They gained this power, this sort of suspended purification, only because they managed to get to the confrontation without destroying themselves or were one of the many who died there. Something about all of the things that happened there lent them a new lease on life and they’ve been using it on the rest of us since. Now they’re stronger, a lot stronger, they’re the ones that can ‘procreate’. And with the help of the human servants that joined them…”
There was a panicked look in her eyes now, a look that indicated a lot of firsthand knowledge, one that she fixed on him for a moment and then shook off, getting to her feet. “Fuck it; you don’t need to know all of it. It’s not your problem. Get your wife; we have to leave the area before they find us, that’s the point more than anything.”
He looked at her for a moment, horrified by her story and unable to believe it could be true. Zombies? Christ, zombies giving birth? What is she on?
“Move it, Henry, I’m not joking, not in the least.” Her eyes scanned the woods, wary. One hand made a clear point of sticking on her machete while the other stayed on her rifle, not the most comforting sight when he was afraid she was not strictly sane. That being said, there really wasn’t much he could do if she was crazy, not with his wife to consider, and the fact he didn’t know anything about where he was besides. Henry picked up his wife with a grunt and followed her as he was asked to do. The urge to see what was inside that backpack rose the further they went on this adventure.
They spent most of the rest of the day walking, only daring to stop every hour or two because of her fear of the cult. From time to time, there were movements in the trees and small sounds, but so far the only creature that affected them this whole journey had been last night’s creature in the woods.
By the time dusk came, they’d walked the better part of twenty miles. Not long after the sun began to fall, the woman turned to him on the road and motioned that it was safe to make camp. As Henry set Rachel down, he hissed; he’d felt the skin on his arm and face being pulled taut along with the tension and strain in the muscles beneath. The reason for it was clear when he looked at it; angry red sunburn marks ran along the skin exposed over the course of the day, it felt worse than any sunburn he remembered ever having.
A soft hand on his shoulder caused him to turn; it was the woman, of course. She touched the wounded flesh and he flinched, hunching up his shoulders to protect the tender tissue. She looked at it for a moment and then knelt as she reached into the backpack at her feet. After a few moments in which he saw a few brief glances into the backpack and at its contents, she stood and held something out. “Here.” she said. “This should help; I actually should have warned you.”
Other Dangers: Slipped Through Page 1