by Eddie Patin
The young woman knew these roads and paths like the back of her hand, but right now, it felt like hostile territory, and Megan fought a feeling of being overwhelmed by the fear of the unknown. The tourists were turning into predators—that’s how they looked at her. Like predators. Lions and tigers and bears...
“Oh my...” she whispered to herself.
Ramon may become one of them sooner or later, himself...
Later, the two of them passed the broken down car where Megan had talked to the bearded guy who was there with his family. Was that guy at the Lodge right now, taking turns with everyone else touching the golden monolith, as if the alien thing was the focus of some kind of cult? Megan imagined the man, with his insecure and possessive wife and their kids, all having golden eyes that looked like bright and shiny pennies...
She and Ramon walked through the canyon between softly sloping, arid hills that rose along either side of the road for long distance, sticking to the path that went between the Floor of the Valley Road and the river. Megan was amazed that this was the same path they followed three times the previous day, but now, it was tainted and smothered with a black sense of dread of being hunted by warped tourists corrupted by a weird, alien power, and stalked by dark beasts that she could barely imagine...
When Megan saw the Canyon Junction up ahead—the shuttle stop where the road to the Lodge connects with the highway out of Zion, she was thankful when she didn’t detect any people in the area.
There was a broken-down shuttle bus on the road that continued on past the campground to Springdale and St. George.
Strange, Megan thought. She never noticed it before, back when they were walking back to their campsite yesterday. Then, she smirked, and realized that the path to the campground went in a different direction. Now, they were keeping to the road. Yesterday, they didn’t—they followed a walking path that went under the road and headed off around to the back side of the campground.
Now, the big, white bus sat dark and empty, half pulled over onto the shoulder of the road.
She approached the cracked-open door to the vehicle, putting a tentative hand on the doorframe...
“What are you doing?” Ramon asked.
“Taking a quick look inside.”
“For what?!”
“Just to see,” she replied, pulling out her flashlight.
Megan slipped through the crack and climbed up the first stair, shining her light into the interior of the shuttle. It was even darker inside than night was behind her, because of the heavily-tinted windows.
Nothing interesting.
The shuttle was utterly abandoned. Everyone who had been riding it at the time it broke down, including the driver, had apparently taken all of their stuff with them. There was no one inside.
They continued along the highway, past signs that read “35 mph” and followed as the road curved away from the river, surrounded by shallow fields of desert plants, short bushes, and trees, while the canyon walls grew gradually away more and more until the two of them approached the turnoff to the Zion Museum. Close to the dark building with windows gleaming in the starlight, Megan saw a couple more shuttle busses, along with several cars and trucks, left abandoned in the dark...
“Maybe we can find a phone at the museum,” Ramon whispered. “What do you think? Should we?”
“No,” Megan replied, continuing past the turnoff where the morning before, they had stopped to use the bathroom before starting their run. “Everything’s dead here. There won’t be anything working in there, or else people would be gathering inside to use the electricity by now...”
“Oh.”
Continuing south on the Zion-Mount Carmel Highway took them closer to where they were camping and where Megan’s own car sat, dead in the water, and Megan couldn’t help but startle at every cluster of branches waving in the breeze that looked like it might have been a long, clawed hand. Every occasional rustle and crackling caught her attention, stirring in the pitch-black spaces off of the road, hidden from the light of the stars and the full moon that was now climbing in the sky.
After passing over a bridge and seeing the walking trail from the campground follow a creek under them, then walking by a turnoff that Megan knew went off to a hidden-away neighborhood, they soon saw a yellow glow coming from around the corner on the left.
People had fires going in the campground.
So not everyone had gone to the Lodge...
Deep shadows of the tall, lush trees around the campground waved and flickered as the wind blew through the valley, painting the road ahead and the turnoff to the South Campground with foreboding.
Megan was tempted to venture back into the area where her car and the rest of their gear was waiting for her, to see if the other tourists there that had decided to stay with their stuff were also transforming into the weird cult of gold eyes back at the Lodge. But she reminded herself that the point of leaving ... was to get out of here. She was frankly surprised by now that she and Ramon had never detected any of those weirdos following them! Those predators back there, so obsessed with her for some reason, must have realized by now that they never actually went to the Emerald Pools, and that they weren’t going back...
“Come on,” she said, trekking out into the field on the opposite side of the road from the campground. Ramon followed her, despite a confused and sour facial expression in response, and the two of them passed around the area, giving it a wide berth, then kept moving on to the Ranger Station.
On foot, the campground seemed endless, going on and on to their left, and Megan tried to hug the bottom of the rising ridge on the west of the road as best she could. She could barely hear raised voices from the glowing areas inside the trees from time to time, and wondered what the campers were talking about...
Was she just getting paranoid?
Did all of that strange stuff that spooked her even really happen? Were those people back at the Lodge really being weird and staring at her en masse, triggering her danger sense legitimately?
Or was she just going crazy?
Megan thought back to her temporary roommates in Room 140, standing in her way outside of the bathroom door...
No, Megan thought. She should definitely trust her instincts on this one!
When they finally passed the campground and the turnoff that crossed the river to the left, Megan could hear the fluttering of the American flag up ahead, telling her that the Ranger Station—the little toll-collecting booths that regulated traffic through the park—lay ahead in the darkness in between the rising hills and ridges that bathed the valley in shadow...
“Is that it?” Ramon whispered.
“Yeah,” she responded, slowing down. “Shh...”
When the road opened up into multiple painted lanes, revealing many dead vehicles that were in the process of heading in and out of the park when the electronics all got fried, Megan could barely make out a parking lot on the right, and two little huts spaced between the lanes up ahead.
“This is where he went?”
Megan glared at Ramon.
“Yes. Please be quiet.”
“Why are you so scared all of a sudden?” he asked. “You’re acting like the woods are full of bad guys or monsters or something...”
“The lodge was full of something,” she said.
“What are you talking about??”
Megan didn’t want to spell it out to him, and she wasn’t entirely sure what it was she even felt that made her feel so full of dread. For one thing, there was the golden monolith, appearing out of thin air and destroying the Centennial Cottonwood tree, along with the guy that went insane when he climbed on top of it, ripped his eyeballs out of his head, and went berserk, killing several people! And the gold eyes and increasingly predatory glances? People obviously losing their minds back there, acting like they were being brainwashed by the obelisk..?
Shaking her head, Megan sighed. No, it didn’t make any sense. But that’s how it was playing out wasn’t it?<
br />
She knew beyond the shadow of a doubt, deep in her gut, that if she herself didn’t get out of there back when they did, she’d be in serious trouble by now...
All of those people—those men—were focused on her.
Not the other females—not even just a few of them...
Just her. Megan.
But why?? she thought. This was insane—like it wasn’t real.
And because it didn’t make any sense, Megan was starting to doubt her own sanity about the whole situation. Still, she didn’t feel like she was crazy. This was like something out of the Twilight Zone—a really creepy, rapey Twilight Zone—but she told herself to trust her gut.
Keep moving.
Get out.
Get home.
“There’s something not right going on here, Ramon,” she replied. “Just trust me here, okay?”
“If you say so...”
They slowly and quietly approached the first of the two ranger huts. Megan pulled out her flashlight, but decided not to turn it on until she needed it. She didn’t know why her senses were telling her to be wary of something out there waiting to get her, but there was no point in giving away her position if she had any real reason for concern...
She approached the first hut slowly, eyeing the abandoned minivan that was stopped, pulled up to the collection window. The passenger-side door was left open, and was clunking repeatedly against a concrete pillar as the wind picked up and died down.
Megan looked into the cracked open window of the booth.
It was empty. On the desk was a computer, papers, maps, a couple of chargers for radios, an abandoned desk chair, and not much else...
She sighed.
Megan clicked on her light to look into the collection booth to make sure that there wasn’t anything else interesting inside, then turned it off again before heading around to the other hut. And as she stepped into the next lane, turning around the corner of the little building, eyeing the inside of the parade of vehicles that stopped and died while heading into the park, Megan stumbled.
She thought it might have been the flagstone embankment that grabbed her foot, but whatever it was she tripped on, it was soft...
Megan looked down and gasped. Then, she clicked on her light to make sure with a trembling hand.
The body of the older male ranger—the man that shot the crazy guy back by the golden monolith—lay dead, spread out in the sand and granite dust and pink stones that lined the median in front of the eastern-most booth. When the bright, white light of her LED connected with his body, Megan just about gagged when she saw the glistening red slices in his back, the white of his shoulder bone peeking out in between tatters of his pale green uniform shirt. The ranger was sprawled out, a radio in one hand, his face in the dirt, pressed to one side.
Dead.
Dead as a doornail, with several deep lacerations streaking across his body, and more in his leg. A pool of curdled blood had gathered in a depression in the flagstone under his left side.
He still wore all of his gear—even his revolver, sitting safely in its holster! Only he was torn up by some sort of beast, as if attacked from behind, like the man never stood a chance...
“Oh my God!” Ramon said from behind her. “Is that the ranger??”
Megan found her heart suddenly racing and her breath quickened. The spot of white light she put over the body was shaking, and she felt a little dizzy...
“Oh no,” she whispered to herself. “What—?!”
“What the fuck did that?” Ramon exclaimed. “What the fuck?! What’s fucking out here?!”
“Be quiet!” Megan hissed back. “It might still be here somewhere!”
Even though her body compelled her to stand still and stare at the dead ranger, to trace over his grievous wounds with her eyes again and again, Megan convinced herself to move. She pulled the light up and scanned the horizon with her little LED beam as best she could. The rolling green hills of the valley extended around them for quite a ways before rising up to steep ridges—the canyon itself was more shallow here, it seemed. She looked back down at the ranger again...
The first thing she grabbed at was the radio in his hand.
The dead man’s fingers resisted, and Megan grunted as she tore the blocky thing from him.
Holding her light in her mouth, she fidgeted with all of the dials and buttons. There was no glowing red light. No sound, no squelch—no nothing. It was dead.
“Of course...” she mumbled with the light in her lips.
Megan dropped the radio to the ground, then, crouched down to retrieve the dead officer’s gun. Even though Megan didn’t own a gun herself, she was no stranger to them, having had boyfriends in the past that were into firearms. And, of course, whenever she was with a guy who was into guns, well, that meant that she was into guns, too—for the time being. Megan didn’t feel like an expert by any means, but she knew how a revolver operated, and knew enough to use it if she needed to, and how to keep from accidentally shooting herself...
Breaking the snap of the leather thumb break, she pulled out the long and heavy stainless steel weapon. She fumbled around the man’s duty belt on his left side, and found two pouches that held extra ammo inside speed loaders. She threw the extra ammo into one tight pocket on her left, then, with the flashlight still in her mouth, she opened the cylinder to make sure the pistol was still loaded. It was.
The poor guy didn’t even have a chance to defend himself!
“What are you doing?!” Ramon asked. “That’s a gun!”
“No shit, Ramon,” she replied, standing and moving the light back to her hand. She shined all around them before taking a few more steps to the south. “Let’s get outta here!”
“You can’t take his gun! He’s like a cop!”
“He is a cop. Was a cop. Come on, Ramon.”
With one more flash of the light, Megan was ready to turn it off and continue. She’d keep the gun in her hand until they reached civilization and could find a hotel or something. But when her LED beam flashed over the field east of the booth, the glint of two golden eyes in the darkness reflected back at her, and Megan was slammed with a gush of fear that made her gasp and bring the light back around!
The eyes were still there...
In the darkness, just twenty feet or so away from Megan and Ramon, out in the brush, were two menacing golden eyes, framed by a pitch-black face that swallowed up the darkness. When the face opened its mouth, and rows of long fangs gleamed back at her from the shadows, Megan suppressed an involuntary shriek, and her heartbeat swelled into hammers in her ears...
When the beast growled, a sound that made Megan’s spine vibrate, she barely had time to entertain the idea of deciding whether to shoot it or to run away...
Her muscled tightened like a well-oiled machined springing into motion, and Megan bolted down the road to the south as the monster launched itself at them from the field!
“Run!!” she screamed, vaulting into a solid sprint, her toned body and sharpened mind instantly performing exactly as she’d taught it to do over years of running and training! The backpack cinched down to her waist and shoulders was close and tight to her back, and didn’t move much. She grasped the revolver tightly in her right hand, and her flashlight in her left...
Megan ran—sprinted for Springdale—with Ramon scrambling to keep up behind her, and a large, black-furred beast pursued them...
3 - Chad Murray
Manhattan, NY
“We’d better get going,” Santos said.
Chad looked down. He was staring at the water again.
This city of glass and steel skyscrapers was strange enough, towering around him. He had never been to New York before.
True, he was from Los Angeles, but the massive buildings of Manhattan Island were old and haunting. It didn’t help that the city was completely quiet, aside from the murmurs and arguing of the hundreds of people wandering the dead streets around him.
And the constant, oceani
c rush of the goliath globe of water hovering over a hundred feet in the air next to what was apparently the ‘Chrysler Building’ made Chad feel like he was in a dream...
The sphere of fluid stood solid and dark in the morning air, surrounded by thin, swirling clouds that moved as if confused; Earth’s weather was glitched by the strange orb’s appearance. And a constant torrent of hazy water—a waterfall of epic proportions—poured down into the intersection under the iconic gothic-spired skyscraper.
Chad felt the cold water creep into his shoes.
He was still standing on the curb in front of the UEA Complex. The water was low enough, about three blocks away from the anomaly, that when the constant flow spread out in every direction away from the orb, it split at the wall of the sidewalk at Chad’s feet and ran off to the north and south.
But now, the water was rising, and it breached the curb.
Chad took a few steps back.
Would this entire island be underwater eventually??
The metal crate in his right hand moved, and the young cameraman heard a high-pitched yelp.
Chad held the container up to eye level—the puppy inside hardly weighed a thing!—and looked through the metal grating in the front of the crate.
Max the puppy looked back at him with wide, dark eyes...
“He must be terrified,” Chad said.
“Who cares about the dog, man?” Santos replied, the nylon of his vest and gear making noise as he shifted his weight nearby. “Let’s get the hell out of here! What the shit is that thing?!” He raised his left hand up from supporting his rifle, and pointed at the mysterious, rippling globe of water in the hovering in the distant sky.
Chad looked up at the orb again.
“I dunno, but it’s dumping water like crazy!”
“We’d better get to the west,” the soldier replied.
“That thing’s to the west!”
“Then let’s head south for a couple of blocks and get around it.”
“Okay.”
So they did.
Chad and Santos walked together south on 1st Avenue along the sidewalk, barely out of reach of the constantly flowing water. While the ever-increasing fluid did seem to be gaining ground in time, the two men stayed ahead of it, until they were half-way past a large empty lot full of tall, green grasses and knee-high weeds, then, they turned west onto East 39th.