Being Hunted

by C A Gleason

  Jonah was also shaken by it, if he were honest with himself. Molters weren’t supposed to be able to get that close, and it was rare for them to be out during daylight. And their most recent outing, the hunt with Jonah and Heike—another experience in their lives—was now tainted by them.

  Recent events meant Jonah would be even more vigilant for a while, which meant he would behave as if an invasion were imminent, and the ladies would go outside only to use the outhouse. His worst fear was a day when as many of them appeared in real life as they did in his bad dreams about them—so many that their numbers stretched across the planet, and Jonah, Doreen, and Heike were the last humans alive.

  It was somewhat ridiculous because the Earth was mostly ocean, but it was an image that flickered into his mind enough—the nightmare of millions attacking at once—that it fueled him. If he killed Molters whenever they crossed his path, it was less he would need to kill in the future and also less that would take human lives. Part of Jonah’s fear was somewhat realistic—the part about them being the last humans—because he hadn’t seen another person since they’d left Henrytown.

  The fact that he’d had to kill the three on the hill was really pissing him off. He hated that Molters had practically destroyed everything established, the normalcy of every day existence, and it was another example of him letting his guard down. Although he was hard on himself—and that was on purpose—his overconfidence continued to get him into situations that endangered others, and he couldn’t allow that to happen anymore, especially because he’d reassured Doreen so recently.

  Patiently teaching Heike to hunt should have waited. They’d gone out too far, and if Doreen weren’t a former soldier with training and practiced caution, the Molters might have surprised her. An image of her down on the ground and being fed upon briefly pried its way into his mind, but he kicked it out just as quickly.

  How were they so close?

  It made no sense to him. His hunts—for Molters and Behemoths—were too regimented to surprise him like that. Eliminating cocoons ensured a Molter sighting was not only rare but somewhat impossible. Where had those three come from? What direction had they been headed in? Did they know where they were going, or was it random? Jonah knew they weren’t desperate to feed and starving. They didn’t really survive that way. When there was nothing to eat, they shut down, turned off like a machine, and hibernated.

  Maybe they’d emerged from a cave like the one he’d discovered, or maybe they were hunting across long distances now, which also made sense. It wasn’t as if Molters had something better to do. And it wasn’t as if they were being tracked as other predators had been in recent history by humans, tagged and then studied, and in recent decades from a computer.

  They may have come from the opposite side of the country for all he knew or another one entirely. He wasn’t sure how far they hunted, but they did need to rest, but that could be day or night, and that irritated him, the not knowing. He also didn’t know where to begin to find answers to his recent questions. For now, there were too many of them, and because of that—and also because of everything else that had transpired—they all agreed to go to bed early.

  CHAPTER 14

  The engines sputtered, causing the other passengers to voice their panic. Judging by the way they were reacting, the plane was going to crash. He had a row to himself, but none of the flight attendants would stop whenever he asked them a question or even slow down when he shouted at them. They only mumbled something unintelligible, their lips moving as if they were talking to someone other than him. They just kept zipping past him as if they were running away from something, heading in the opposite direction of the cockpit.

  What was even stranger was how all of the flight attendants resembled each other. They looked like the same woman passing by him over and over again, as if the aircraft were attended by clones. They all had blonde hair, too much makeup that was running down their cheeks from sobbing, and the same expression on their faces; they were terrified.

  When he stood to get a better look at the layout of the plane itself and try to get the attention of anyone else long enough to answer a question or two, he found he couldn’t even get out of his seat. He glanced down to see the seatbelt was clasped, but there was also another one somehow tied around his waist. It looked impossible to remove without cutting through it.

  Every attempt at unravelling the knots only turned it into more seatbelt spaghetti. Whenever he tried to stand, he hit his head on the overhead bins located directly above him, far lower than on any other plane he’d ever been on, bringing on feelings of claustrophobia.

  The other passengers were blocking his view of whatever was causing the clones to do a poor job of hiding their terror. Somehow he was the only one trapped by seatbelts. He searched his waistband for the machete he always kept there. After yanking it out of its sheath, he sliced through the belts as if they were made of yarn, stood and ducked at the same time, and then pushed his way into the aisle.

  The engines groaned and shook the floor, struggling to accommodate the weight of all the passengers, and he was finally able to see over their heads. The aircraft was enormous, absolutely gigantic, the size of a stadium with aisles stretching its entirety. There were thousands of passengers on the flight, unseated and milling about with confusion, and the cause of the chaos was something mixed in with them.

  There were men, and women, and children, and they suddenly ran in different directions, most of them toward the back of the plane. Then the floor broke apart, except for the main aisle, and fell away all around him, and thousands of passengers fell with it. When he looked down at his surroundings again, there were no other seats except in his row. The rest of the plane, or whatever type of aircraft it actually was, looked to be shaped like a giant bowl. Below him and out of sight, it sounded like the humans were being fed upon. The vessel was a slaughter.

  He looked ahead and saw a mass of unstoppable death in the distance. There were so many of what he feared that it looked as if every human on earth had molted except for him and the few thousand others who were on the flight. Far too many to count, a moving sea of predators that could cover the entire planet, and each one was trying to get ahold of the few remaining humans. They ran for their lives and screamed, climbed over dark obstacles in the distance that he couldn’t see clearly—probably the seats that had fallen away—and also over one another in desperation to survive.

  “Jonah.”

  It sounded like the voice was behind him. He tried to answer but found he couldn’t say a word, and he was also unable to turn away from what was before him. He was transfixed, but it was also as if his head couldn’t move. All he could do was struggle to speak one drawn-out word that he was unable to finish. Then he found his voice, but that became a groan of despair as he saw that the slaughter before him, though far away, was edging closer. He tried to turn and run away like the others before they’d fallen out of sight, down the aisle toward the back of the massive aircraft, but he found he couldn’t move again.

  Glancing down he saw why; there were multiple seatbelts tied around him now, on his arms and his wrists and even his legs and from both sides of the only aisle. Trying desperately to turn his head to at least see who had spoken to him, he twisted far enough to realize there was no one there, and when he turned back again, he was alone. There was no one else on the cold metal aisle but him, not even the flight attendants, and now there was a jagged drop-off at the end of the aisle as if the metal had been torn off. Shredding sounds and screams came from a place he could not see.

  The rest of the people who were still alive were beyond where the drop-off ended. He caught glimpses of the massive bowl-like structure filled with the dying, and each person could only wait for their turn to die. The howling, growling, and snarling were deafening.

  The blood of hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, became so deep that the world was now an ocean of red, and its depth was rising by the second. Then everything, the people and t
he Molters, disappeared under its frothy red surface. The aisle he lay on was the last remaining sturdy ground. He could still hear screaming under the blood, but it was garbled.

  “Jonah.”

  That was the voice. The exact one he’d heard before. He wasn’t by himself after all. How did she know him? He was on the flight, and she must have been able to access that information through their computer system somehow. Strangely, with everything going on in front of him, she sounded very calm, but how could she be that way?

  He made another desperate attempt to twist toward the woman saying his name, look behind him in the other direction, but again found it pointless. The seatbelts lassoed every part of him, even his head, covering his mouth and steadily getting tighter, and now they were slowly dragging him toward the drop-off. The sea of briny, churning red rose and fell and moved with violent waves as if there were a storm.

  Thunder and lightning boomed all around him, and the wind blew red droplets all over him. The heat of it was so warm it was as if he were taking a hot shower. He struggled and yelled and pulled against the bonds that held him and dragged him toward the edge, closer to the bloody hell storm that the world had become.

  The blood waves crashed where the aisle ended, where it had been sheared off. He tried to say something, to ask anyone to help him, but he couldn’t. The machete he used earlier had disappeared. There was nothing else he could do except wait to be submerged and for death to take him too.

  “Jonah, wake up.”

  The voice was familiar, but he didn’t know who she was. It was as if she were someone he’d known a long time ago. Then he heard another familiar sound, one he knew all too well. It was the sound they made when they were about to attack, an eager anticipation that meant their hunger was about to be relieved.

  Although desperate to tear his view away from the dreadfulness advancing on him, he found he could do nothing. All he could do was watch as a Molter emerged from the ocean of blood, getting a grip on the jagged edge of the aisle, and haul itself up with a splash. It had multiple limbs like a Behemoth and dozens of eyes.

  When it saw him, it reached for him, stretching as it did, its many eyes glowing and its oversize, sharp, jagged teeth dripping with blood. Then it leaped on top of him, and its claws sank into his back to hold him in place. He felt its hot breath on his neck.

  A scream belted out of him through crushed lips. He knew he was seconds away from feeling it bite into his flesh and would feel what it was like to be drained of the precious fluid that kept him alive like the millions of other humans who had already died.

  “Wake up.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Muffled voices. Almost like English backward until he realized he was coming out of a slumber, his consciousness rapidly swimming toward the surface where everything would make sense.

  “He’s fine,” Doreen whispered. “Go back to bed.”

  “OK,” Heike said.

  Doreen caressed Jonah’s shoulder and kissed the back of his neck. “You’re all right.”

  Instant relief is what he felt, being teleported into his woman’s embrace, her love, her care. But that didn’t prevent him from remembering. “Damn. That one was . . .”

  “Just a dream.”

  “So real. But not at all. Felt that way, though.”

  “You’re safe.”

  “It meant something.” Hopefully not the immediate future. Give us a few more good years.

  “If you want to talk about it . . .”

  “I woke you and Heike.”

  “It’s OK. Doesn’t take much noise to do that around here.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

  “I know you didn’t. Not your fault.”

  “I didn’t scare her, did I?”

  “She was just concerned.”

  “I’m fine, Jonah,” Heike yell-whispered from her room.

  Doreen snickered, and Jonah couldn’t help but laugh. Doreen climbed out of bed, slowly and carefully, as if Jonah were still asleep. It was funny how nighttime made everybody creep around like would-be burglars.

  Doreen cupped a hand to the side of her mouth and whispered, “Go back to sleep.”

  “I’m trying,” Heike said from her room.

  Doreen closed their bedroom door and got back in bed in the exact same spot she had been in when Jonah woke up, behind him. She held him again.

  “I must have said things?”

  “You did.”

  “Could you understand any of it?”

  “No.”

  “Did I . . . yell?”

  “Your mouth was closed, but it sounded like you were trying to say something, but you couldn’t.”

  I was screaming. But he didn’t tell her that. Like she said, just a dream. Dreams couldn’t hurt him. They never did. This had been a nightmare, though, and like others he’d endured, he suspected they’d begun to take their toll, affecting his behavior when he was awake. Maybe that was the purpose of dreams.

  He was so thankful it hadn’t been real and exhaled as if he were attempting to rid himself of it. He was feeling better as each second passed. Calmer. To go from hell to loving warmth almost made the horror of it vanish from his mind completely. But residue remained in the corners of his mind like pesky cobwebs.

  Why do I dream so much? And when I do, why is it always awful?

  Maybe those were the only ones he remembered. “Must be stress,” he found himself saying, and hearing his conviction was comforting somehow, as was relishing being close to his woman in the soft, cozy perfectness that was the sanctuary of their small bed. “I hate that I woke you both up but especially her.”

  “She wakes up during the night sometimes. You know that. Not a big deal. She’s fine. And we’ve accepted what you go through. Sometimes. Like tonight. Every once in a while.”

  “But so many times that you’ve had to have a discussion about it obviously. I’m sorry about that.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry. What was the dream about?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said in a such a deep, sleepy voice that he realized he was still very tired. If he did get more sleep, he hoped it would be peaceful.

  “Maybe if you do, it will help so you don’t have bad dreams so much.”

  She was probably right. And it was only a dream, but he felt like there was a lot of truth in it, too, a metaphor for what was actually happening in the rest of the world. “I hate it when I wake you.”

  “Tell me, please. You have bad dreams too much. Don’t be nervous. I won’t think any less of you. Even the mighty Jonah can be vulnerable. Especially around me.”

  “Mighty, huh?”

  “Mm-hmm. I want to help you understand why. You were a veteran even before the Molting. You’ve been a soldier for many years.”

  “So have you.”

  “I didn’t go to war. You did.”

  “You shouldn’t disregard your service. Just because you weren’t deployed doesn’t mean you didn’t serve your country.”

  “I’m not disregarding it, but I avoided the trauma that many soldiers experience in a war theater, and you are trying to change the subject.”

  “I just don’t want to . . . I’m uncomfortable with dumping my garbage on you. I avoid it if I can help it.”

  “Yes, you do, and I appreciate that, but I can handle it. I’ve been handling it. This isn’t the first time—”

  “I hate that.”

  “I know, but I love you, and I’m here for you when you need me. You have lots of garbage, probably more than you realize, but your garbage is mine sometimes, just as mine is yours on occasion, and neither of us minds helping the other clean things up every once in a while. Now, tell me.”

  “I love you too.” Jonah exhaled. “I was on a plane.”

  “An airplane or another dimension?”

  “Practically. No, an airplane but not a regular one. It was this giant aircraft the size of a football stadium, or two, or, no, bigger, and it was weird
because it was like it was as big as Earth, but it was flying.”

  “It had big wings too?”

  Jonah cleared his throat. “Actually I don’t remember it having wings. I just knew it was an airplane.”

  “Hmm. Dreams can be so strange.”

  “Oh, it gets stranger. The plane was filled with . . .”

  “With what?”

  “With the last people alive. Running and screaming trying to get away from . . . them. Them and . . . blood. So much, it was as deep as the ocean. There were even waves.”

  “Maybe that part was because we’ve been talking about beaches so much lately? I hear you dream what you think about.”

  “Yeah, maybe but . . . no. That’s not why. It . . . there was meaning.”

  “It sounds awful. How often do you dream about them?”

  “A lot. I just wish I didn’t remember.”

  “With everything you’ve been through, what we’ve all been through . . . I’m just glad you aren’t alone.”

  He rolled over onto his back and tucked his arm beneath her, hugging her close. “Me too.”

  Doreen spoke into his chest. “As long as I’m alive, you never will be.”

  And that, quite simply, was why they were together. Jonah felt the same way as she did, but he didn’t know what else to say. All he wanted to do was lie there and be comforted while he was vulnerable. Jonah was who he was while he was awake, and some would consider him a warrior, but at night, when he was asleep, he was just like everybody else and susceptible to the stress caused by what threatened them every day. Unfortunately Jonah was only human.

  The Molting had absolutely devastated humanity and would likely be the end for the species and probably affected the rest of the life on the planet, except for what swam in the ocean—it might even protect marine life—but it had brought Jonah to Doreen. He would have never met her otherwise. Even under the direst circumstances, people could still find each other, as he and Doreen had.