by Sean Platt
“I don’t know what you think is out there. It’s not like there’s people living life like they used to live. Humanity’s broken, Em. It’s nothing but people killing one another, bandits and rape gangs, survival of the fittest. Even those who manage to make it still have to look out for the Ferals.”
The Ferals were the aliens that Desmond had brought with him prior to the invasion, a species designed to wipe out the humans before the Pruhm arrived. Once, the Ferals had been under his complete and utter control. Lately, though, for some unknown and mysterious reason, Desmond was losing contact and control with the aliens. The Ferals were just as likely to attack humans as they were Guardsmen in The Wastelands.
“You don’t know that The Wastelands are like that. Maybe that’s just what the aliens here want us to think. Humans could’ve come back.”
The look in her eye, that glimmer of hope that there might be a paradise waiting, was too much for him to crush. Better for Emily to see for herself. Then maybe she’d be more realistic in her expectations.
“Fine,” Paul said. “Go on your trip. I think it’ll open your eyes and make you appreciate what you have.”
“Thank you.” She sipped her juice, still not meeting his eyes.
“Please, Emily, don’t ever talk like this, not being happy here, around them. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m serious. In fact, don’t talk like this, period. You can’t trust anyone other than me. Do you understand?”
Emily finally looked up at him, eyes still wet. Then she sliced him with his words. “Can’t trust anyone other than you in this island paradise. Gotchya.”
Emily stood from the table, having barely touched her food, and went to her room to finish getting ready for school.
Paul stared at his plate, his appetite gone.
Emily was right. Paul hated living among the fuckers as much as anyone. But there were no other options. Even if his boss allowed him to leave — which Paul highly doubted — it wasn’t as if they’d last five minutes in The Wastelands, where only death waited.
Yes, he had to compromise his beliefs, but morals meant nothing next to protecting his daughter. He would do anything to keep her safe. They had creature comforts — good food, running water, housing, medical care, and even entertainment by way of old sitcoms the aliens ran 24/7 on one of their two TV stations broadcast on The Island and in two sectors of The City occupied by blue collar humans and hybrids.
Emily was too young to remember the aliens’ arrival. How bad things had got, how sick she’d become. Yes, she remembered the plague killing her mother. But Emily never knew the struggle of daily survival. It was Paul’s job to ensure she never did.
His communicator rang on the kitchen counter.
Paul stood, went to the kitchen, and looked at the screen.
Desmond rarely called him at home.
“Hello?”
“Where are you?”
“Home. Why? What’s wrong?”
“Get here. Now!” Desmond hung up.
Sickness crept into Paul’s gut. Something told him today was a horror waiting to happen.
* * * *
CHAPTER 6 — Brent Foster
The scream came from outside.
Brent raced to the living room, Teagan by his side. He grabbed a shotgun from one of the gun racks then ran to the front window, looking out. Teagan grabbed a gun, too.
The front yard was pitch black. Brent shook his head at Teagan as she went to one of the side windows. She looked and shook her head, too.
“I’ll check the back,” she said.
Another scream, definitely coming from out front. Teagan stopped in her tracks — the house was alive with movement as Joe, Marilyn, and Peter descended the stairs. Marina charged behind them, pistol in hand, as if it had been under her pillow.
“What the hell was that?” said Joe, a forty-five-year-old former mechanic, and The Farm’s de facto leader.
Still at the window, Brent said, “Something out front. I can’t see anything.”
Joe grabbed a rifle from the gun rack. “Brent, Marilyn, come with me. Peter, you stay back and protect the others in case this shit gets out of hand.”
Peter, a young blond in his early twenties, nodded his head and grabbed a shotgun.
Upstairs, the kids started crying, though Brent couldn’t tell for sure if Ben was among them. There were four other kids on The Farm besides he and Becca.
“I’ll settle the kids down,” Teagan said then headed upstairs, gun still in hand.
Joe headed toward the front door, rifle raised.
Brent and Marilyn, a fifty-one-year-old trucker before shit hit the fan, followed behind.
More screaming. “Open the door!”
Brent recognized the voice: Otis, the man guarding the front gate.
“It’s Otis!” he said.
Brent’s gut soured with panic, imagining the scenario leading to the front guard screaming for help. Were aliens about to overrun the place? Had bandits found them?
Joe, as if thinking the same thing, turned back to the room, now filled with nearly everyone in the house, save for the children and Teagan. “Everyone get a weapon and prepare for the worst.”
Brent wished he could be upstairs with Ben, Teagan, and Becca. They were the only ones he truly gave a damn about. He had other friends, but going through hell together made you family. He moistened his lips, swallowed hard, and focused. He had to defend the house, and his family, from whatever waited in the dark.
Joe opened the door.
Otis stumbled forward holding his left arm, mangled from midway down. His bloody stump of a hand hung by sinewy threads. His face was shredded, blood coating the front of his shirt and pants. He looked as if he’d been mauled by a wild animal, maybe a wolf.
The wolf I heard earlier?
“What happened?” Marilyn helped him up the steps and onto the porch.
Joe scanned the darkness with his rifle, searching for enemies.
“A wolf, or … something on the property.”
Marilyn brought Otis inside, laid him on the floor, and called out to Tomas, who’d been a nurse in training, to help stop the bleeding.
The household teetered somewhere between concern for Otis and fear of whatever the hell had attacked him.
Joe closed the front door, locked it, and came back to Otis. “Are you sure it wasn’t an alien?”
“No, I … don’t think so,” Otis said through deep breaths as Tomas tied the man’s arm off with straps to prevent further blood loss. Marilyn dropped beside him to help hold Otis down for what was next. “It was a wolf … a giant fucking wolf, but a wolf.”
“I ain’t seen wolves this brazen before,” Joe said.
“Wasn’t no regular wolf.” Otis screamed and bucked against Marilyn’s weight as Tomas started to saw at what little was still connecting the man to his hand. Brent had to look away, but doing so didn’t prevent him from hearing the agony as Otis cried out.
“What do we do?” Brent asked.
“Well, if we wait until morning, that thing might eat our livestock.”
Brent was afraid he’d say that.
Joe looked around the room. “Who wants to hunt a wolf?”
Three others, including Marina, raised their hands. Joe looked at Brent. “You coming?”
Brent wanted to say no then head upstairs and comfort his son, let him know his world would be okay. It was only a wolf, not aliens or bandits or anything worse. But at the same time, Brent wasn’t sure if four people were enough to take down a wolf that had maimed Otis so badly. The man was tough, and quick on the draw. It was the reason he was on guard duty at night, patrolling The Farm. If the wolf had got the drop on him, what hope did the others have?
Brent nodded: the more hunters, the better their odds.
He turned to Marina. “Can you stay here?”
“What?” she said, as if insulted.
He met Marina’s eyes and lowered his voice so only sh
e could hear him. “I’d feel better if you were here to protect Ben.”
Her eyes said she knew. Marina nodded.
Brent said, “Please let them know I’ll be back soon.”
“Of course.”
He hoped he hadn’t asked her to lie.
**
The night was eerily quiet in a way that was new to this world.
When the aliens had killed this planet, the sounds of wildlife were among the first to feel familiar. Without man and his machines drowning everything out, nature took over and held center stage. Insects, birds, wolves, foxes, deer, elk, and countless species added their song to the symphony. Brent had grown decent at picking out one animal from another, a skill he’d never have gathered while living the rest of his life in Manhattan.
Now he heard nothing, and nothing felt wrong.
“Anyone else notice it?” he whispered. The five of them crept through the amber-lit darkness behind the light on Joe’s rifle.
“Notice what?” Peter asked.
“The silence.”
Joe said, “I don’t like it one fuckin’ bit.”
“What do you think it means?” Sammy said, clearly spooked. Sammy was an Italian giant, who’d worked sanitation before the aliens came. They liked to joke around and say he was in the Mob, and he clearly looked like he could have been — big and pudgy, late forties, tough. While he was a killer shot on the range, and had already taken down a few people who’d tried to fuck with them, Sammy was a teddy bear with the kids.
Brent had never heard him afraid — until now.
Something moved to their right.
Brent turned, his shotgun searching, finger pressed to the trigger.
Joe turned his light to help, but Brent saw mostly darkness. The moon was concealed behind dark clouds with no break in sight.
The aliens destroying most of the power had darkened the night’s usual artificial glow. Usually, Brent liked it — without light pollution, the night sky teased a billion stars.
But even that comfort had its downside. Now that they knew what forces had come from some far-off galaxy, intent on consuming humanity, the stars were no longer a comfort. They made Brent feel occasionally claustrophobic, on display, as if one of the many scouting ships would find and seize them.
Many people had been taken over the years.
Those who had been lucky enough to survive the plague soon found themselves hunted by alien ships, picked up and brought to the only part of the world — so far as Brent knew — with running water and power, a modest-sized island twenty or so miles off the coast of Las Orillas. The people were enslaved, forced to work for the aliens on The Island and at a few spots in The City. It seemed as if the aliens were trying to rebuild society, but only in a space of The Island’s seventy-four square miles, while the rest of the world was left to nature, plague, and barbarism.
Fortunately, scouting ships rarely came this far north, and when they did, they were as loud as jets, so if you were halfway paying attention, and had cover, you could escape detection.
A wolf howled in the distance, and Brent looked to see everyone jump, frantically scanning the darkness with their guns.
Brent supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that they were now being hunted by wolves. He’d seen a few large wolves on the other world. He’d assumed they’d somehow mutated, but maybe they’d always been there, hiding from humans in the woodlands, unseen, undetected, waiting to reclaim their world.
Something moved behind them.
Peter turned and fired.
More shots, this time from Sammy.
Joe scanned the darkness with his light but illuminated nothing other than grass, rocks, and trees beyond the tall wooden fence surrounding their compound.
Because Brent couldn’t see what the hell they were firing at, he held back, not wanting to waste ammo, or get stuck empty and needing to reload as the wolf came right at him.
“Did you hit anything?” Joe asked, also holding back.
“I don’t think so.” Peter moved forward into the amber light, looking almost otherworldly as he searched for signs of whatever had moved.
Brent watched, certain the man would be swallowed by alien Darkness — before The Darkness came for them all.
Stop it. There are no bleakers, as Mary and others called the black aliens here. We haven’t seen any in more than a year. They’re all in the cities, with all the people.
From the property’s rear, cows mooed in distress.
Joe led the way as the five men went to the fenced-off area where their last three cows grazed. He flashed the light around, searching for signs of the wolf.
“Holy shit!” Joe hopped over the front gate and started running toward the field’s center. His gun and its amber light were aimed at the sky, so Brent and the others couldn’t see what he had.
They followed, guns ready.
Brent was out of breath when Joe finally stopped about a hundred yards from the front gate. He caught up to Joe flashing the light over what was clearly a corpse in the field’s center.
Brent looked down and saw the impossible — a dead man. Not just any dead man, but Otis.
Joe looked up and met Brent’s eyes.
Peter said what they were both thinking. “If Otis is out here, who the hell is that inside?”
“Not who,” Brent said. “What.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 7 — Teagan McLachlan
Teagan was upstairs in the dark bedroom, lying in Brent’s bed with the kids, trying to get them back to sleep. Becca was already drifting off; Ben was fighting to stay awake until his father returned.
They’d been gone fifteen minutes or so, and everyone else in the house was abuzz downstairs. It wasn’t helping Teagan, but at least the screaming had stopped. And the other kids had either gone to sleep or downstairs to be with adults.
“When’s Dad going to be back?” Ben asked.
“Soon, sweetie.” Teagan ran her hand over his forehead and through his thick hair. She often played with Becca’s hair to help her relax — it was worth trying with Ben.
The boy’s eyes seemed to gain weight as Teagan teased his dark hair through her fingers.
She thought about her encounter with Brent. She wasn’t sure what had come over her the past few months, but she’d developed a strong attraction to him — even though he wasn’t really her type.
Truth was, Teagan wasn’t sure what her type was. She’d never been in love, though she’d felt something close with the Ed Keenan from the other world. She wasn’t sure if that was because this world’s Ed had saved her and been so protective, or if it was some need for positive attention she’d never felt from her father. After the other Ed’s death, she never even attempted to connect with this world’s double. He felt more like a father. Plus, she’d become close friends, almost like sisters, with Jade before her death, so it never seemed right.
This thing with Brent seemed out of the blue. Teagan had always thought he was nice, but she’d never looked at him that way.
Sudden lust had sneaked up on her one day when they’d been out eating with the kids under the shade of an oak. He’d melted her heart — something in Brent’s smile and the way he looked at his son with such love and affection. It made her want to get closer and cobble some sort of family together. It also made her imagine their bodies pressed together. Maybe she was getting baby fever.
Like the world needs another baby now!
She’d fought it at first — there was no point in changing what was already working. They were finally in a place where things were sort of okay, and they could have a chance at not just survival but something resembling a normal life in a solar-powered house and a fully working farm. This was as close to paradise as there was these days. And the group generally got along. What more could you ask for?
Why risk things? If their relationship went south, it wasn’t like Teagan could move. She’d still have to see him every day.
Yet the more senseless it
seemed to pursue the relationship, the more she wanted him.
She’d noticed a couple of weeks ago that he tended to wake in the middle of the night and would hang out in the kitchen a bit before returning to his room. Tonight, she’d decided to wait and seduce him.
Putting the moves on Brent, Teagan felt silly and awkward, afraid he’d laugh at her.
Then they’d kissed, and everything had changed.
All her wrong thoughts felt suddenly right. She craved him inside her, even if it meant another child. And despite his awkwardness, he was an animal sexually. Though the event was over way too quickly, she could still feel his lust.
Now, as she lay with the kids in her bed, she wondered if she was being ridiculous to wish for a family. Wondered why she even wanted to try. It wasn’t as if her parents had been happy or showed her how to be a good parent or partner. Then she thought about him cumming too soon, and inside her.
Shit.
Maybe it’s all a disaster waiting to happen.
Just as she started to feel stupid again, a scream came from downstairs. At first, she thought it was Otis in pain again. But it wasn’t his scream.
And it wasn’t just one person screaming.
Teagan heard a sound she’d hoped to go a lifetime without hearing again — the horrible clicking of an alien — downstairs.
* * * *
CHAPTER 8 — Brent Foster
The front door to the main house was wide open when they reached it.
Brent counted six bodies on the front porch and lawn, eviscerated as they attempted to escape. One of them a child, a small girl named Catherine.
Brent shook his head and broke into a jog toward the front door, shotgun in hand, eager to find the monster that did this, and even more eager to make sure the others — Ben, Teagan, Becca, and Marina — were safe.
He crossed the threshold, with Joe and the others behind him, stopping dead in his tracks at the sight of more bodies littering the living room.