This is the End 3: The Post-Apocalyptic Box Set (8 Book Collection)

by J. Thorn

  What had she said? he wondered, then remembered:

  "The dark. The clocks. Time slows down. And you're all alone."

  He blinked at the memory, feeling an odd sense of disquiet as he looked again at the clock built into the microwave.

  "The clocks...."

  The display flickered weirdly as Jason looked at it, and he thumped the appliance with his hand.

  There was no change. The numbers were still blurred as though he were seeing them through an unfocused camera.

  He reached around into the dark space behind the microwave cart, groping for the plug. He found it, and yanked it out.

  The numbers disappeared.

  Jason plugged the appliance back in.

  The numbers reappeared. Still the same. Blurred. Weird. Disquieting.

  Jason decided that he'd rather not look at this - or have it behind him - and though he knew he was acting irrationally he unplugged the microwave again.

  He almost laughed out loud at himself. What did he think was going to happen? Was he going to be gunned down from behind by a mad attack microwave? He snorted then, as he thought of the headlines: Cop Killed on 'Popcorn' Setting.

  The thought was almost enough to goad him into plugging the damn thing back in. Indeed, he was halfway to doing so when he stopped.

  Screw the headlines, he thought, and left the microwave unplugged.

  He stood then and without any further thought he walked to the inky, forbidding basement. He reached his hand into the sharp demarcation between light and darkness...tense, groping.

  Found the light switch.

  Click.

  Click-click.

  No go. Whatever had happened to Sean had also broken the basement light.

  Jason sighed and pulled a mag-lite off his belt. He clicked it on.

  And stepped into the basement.

  ***

  A moment after Jason Meeks disappeared into the darkness, the basement door quietly slid shut on well-oiled hinges.

  A moment after that, the microwave clock turned back on. The clock was still jumpy and blurred. Glowing green in the dim of the kitchen. Glowing green, in spite of the fact that the plug was very clearly no longer even touching the outlet.

  ***

  FIVE

  ***

  Lenore stood beside the line of students wending its way through the cafeteria lunch line and concentrated on thinking about something other than her missing student or the almost equally disconcerting visit by Sheriff Meeks.

  The air in the line was somber: even the ninth through twelfth graders were quieter than usual, with less shoving for place in line than usual.

  The school knew that it had lost one of its own.

  Then a small disturbance erupted nearby. Lenore turned to see Albert Gomberg stumbling away from a group of cheerleaders. She sighed: Albert was in eleventh grade, and was a target for bullies as young as ten. He was the quintessential audio-video kid: the kind of boy who volunteered to be the A-V department assistant over the summer...and brought his own video equipment because what the school had wasn't up to his standards. He was the kind of quiet, smart, shy kid that others loved to pick on. It made Lenore sad, because she knew that if something didn't change - and quickly - Albert would likely be doomed to live the same kind of life that she herself did: a life where the only alternatives were to hide or be attacked.

  She walked over to the students, and as she came closer she saw that Albert was desperately trying to hide a small camcorder in his hands from the senior cheerleaders who were even now trying to viciously pull it from his grasp.

  "Hey!" said Lenore, but was ignored. The cheerleaders kept pulling at him, trying to separate the boy from one of his beloved recording items. One of the girls, Sarah West, was particularly vicious, yanking at his arm as Albert, almost reduced to tears by the episode, struggled vainly to protect himself and his property.

  "Hand it over, freak," said Sarah, and for a moment Lenore actually thought that the cheerleader was going to bite the younger boy. Sarah looked almost rabid, almost angry enough to do it.

  "Leave me alone," cried Albert.

  Lenore finally got close enough to the girls that some of them noticed her and stopped harassing Albert. Lenore was not the most imposing woman in the world - far from it - but even so, she was cloaked in that invisible yet potent aura of "teacherness" that would stop most students from acting out.

  Most students.

  Not Sarah West.

  "What is going on here?" demanded Lenore.

  "This pervert," said Sarah, and yanked again at Albert's encumbered hand, "was filming my ass."

  Lenore could see Albert's ears instantly redden at the accusation; could see just as clearly that he had been engaged in no such activity.

  "I wasn't, I really wasn-" he began.

  "Ass-shooter," retorted Sarah.

  "Sarah, that's enough," said Lenore in a voice that was as close to loud as hers ever came.

  "Enough?" Sarah swiveled to focus her ire on Lenore now. "This creepazoid conspiracy-theory freakshow geek goes around filming my ass all the time and-"

  "Enough!"

  Lenore said the word far louder than she meant to. All activity in the cafeteria ground to a halt as everyone looked around to see what the altercation was, as though the possibility of a fight in the cafeteria were the highest form of excitement the students could conceive of.

  Maybe it is, thought Lenore, and the thought saddened her immensely. So many of the students were either predator or prey, in actuality or in training, and so whenever a fight broke out they had to see it, as though watching fights would provide them with clues about how to act in their respective roles.

  Sarah was also looking closely. But not at Albert anymore; Sarah was now focused intently on Lenore. The cheerleader's face was curled in a derisive, malicious smile, as though she knew all about Lenore and knew that a confrontation with this particular teacher could actually be won by a student.

  "Enough or what?" asked Sarah with a snort.

  Lenore blushed. Sarah might be right: Lenore was the type of teacher that even a student could get away with bullying sometimes.

  Sometimes. But not today. Not when the target of the bullying was someone as obviously harmless and good-natured as Albert. Besides...Lenore had a bit of a talisman - a silver bullet of sorts - in the case of the rude young woman who now looked down her nose at her.

  Lenore leaned in close and whispered her secret to the cheerleader: "You leave this boy alone right now, or I'll tell everyone why you never cheer at the swim meets."

  The sentence had the desired effect: Sarah's mouth opened, then shut again. The girl's perfectly tanned face turned a shade lighter as the blood drained from it. Then she mumbled, "I'm not very hungry now," and left the line, pulling her cronies from the cheerleading team along with her.

  Lenore turned to tell Albert he could go to the front of the line. It would be paltry repayment for the constant humiliation he had to stand at the hands of people like Susan, but it was what Lenore had power to do.

  Albert, however, was gone. She cast her eyes around, looking to find him, and saw one of the nearby doors - the opposite side of the cafeteria from the one that Sarah had gone through, thank goodness - swinging shut as Albert went through it and disappeared.

  Lenore hurried out after him, managing to catch up to him in the school's "quad" - the common area that was directly behind the cafeteria and in which the students tended to congregate after eating their lunches.

  "Hey," she called. Albert didn't so much as pause. If anything, he sped up, as though afraid that Lenore would be the one to bring the next round of bullying into his life. She had to physically grab his arm to arrest his movement.

  "You okay?" she asked.

  Albert tried to look sullen and tough, but all he could manage was a visage of half-veiled fear. "They're all out to get me," he said.

  "Sarah's just a teenage girl," Lenore said, even though the "just" was
a stretch. Sarah was the most stereotypically nasty teenage girl she had ever had the misfortune to encounter. "Teenage girls can be difficult sometimes," she continued.

  "It's not just them," responded Albert. "It's everyone." He blinked back tears, clearly trying vainly to hold onto whatever perceived dignity he might be retaining.

  "Come on," said Lenore. "I'm sure it's not everyone."

  "It is," insisted the student. "It's everyone."

  Lenore touched Albert's arm. She smiled, trying to make a connection with this sad, lonely boy. "Not everyone," she said. "Not me."

  Albert looked at her, and Lenore was heartened to see what looked like a smile trying to break through his expression of dismay.

  "Why won't she cheer for the swim meets?" he asked suddenly.

  For a moment, Lenore's gentle smile faltered. She didn't know if she should tell what she knew. She had found out the information when in the school office one day: one of the school's two counselors had left a file open on one of the tables, and Lenore had happened to see a notation inside it, so she didn't know if it would be any kind of a breach of confidentiality to talk about what she had seen.

  But then she decided: she had made no promise to keep the contents of the file secret. It had been an accident that she had found out. Besides, if revealing the information would keep Albert safe from future attacks, then it would be worth it.

  "She's afraid of water," said Lenore. "Like, really afraid. She won't even get near a pool."

  The smile that Lenore had seen fighting to emerge from Albert's expression was just millimeters away from seeing daylight now as he practically inhaled this wonderful bit of information as to his nemesis' Achilles heel.

  But then, in the instant before the smile could emerge fully formed, like a butterfly from its chrysalis, Lenore's own expression changed from reassurance to horror, and she screamed as Albert's eyes started to bleed.

  Only no, it wasn't blood. Instead it was some kind of viscous black fluid that was dripping now from his eyes, his nose, and had begun spurting from the boy's ears.

  Lenore screamed again, backpedaling wildly, tripping over several nearby students and bringing all of them down in a heap.

  Silence reigned in the quad as she regained her feet.

  She slowly looked back at Albert, prepared to rush him to the school nurse, or perhaps even just to get him in her car and bundle him off to the small hospital in the next town.

  What she saw stopped her heart.

  She saw nothing. Albert was fine. No blood. No black ooze dribbling in spurts from ears and nose and eyes. Just a sad-faced boy with concern writ large in his eyes.

  And then the worst thing Lenore could think of happened: Sarah West, bitch-cheerleader extraordinaire, had apparently come out onto the quad during the momentary fracas. She seized the moment: "Geez, Freakshow, you even frighten the teachers," she shouted.

  The students all laughed, obviously scrambling to grab onto any excuse to break the uncomfortable silence.

  Albert looked around at the laughing faces and pointing fingers, and Lenore could practically see the thoughts in his mind: his worst fears being realized as all his peers pointed and laughed at him. They were all against him.

  He ran out of the quad, eyes awash in tears.

  And Lenore, stunned at the fact that she had just seen a student hemorrhaging what looked like old motor oil and then just as suddenly return to normal, didn't do anything. She just watched him leave.

  What's going on? she asked herself.

  She didn't know the answer. But she thought of Sean Rand disappearing, and then of Albert's horrifying visage as he had...bled...and for the second time that day she pulled her sweater tightly around her shoulders even though the weather was warm.

  What's going on in Rising?

  ***

  SIX

  ***

  Jason held his flashlight high so as to take in as much of his surroundings as he could. His flashlight was powerful but small, so that it created an almost laser-like beam that slashed through the darkness in thin slivers, illuminating only glimpses.

  The glimpses were enough.

  Blood was everywhere; he could immediately see what Hatty had meant when she had said there was "too much blood." Shelves were knocked down, and....

  Jason knelt and felt at the floor of the basement. It was concrete, tough and unyielding. But in spite of the strength of the material, he saw what he could only describe as long furrows or gashes in the ground. As though...

  (as though a monster's claws had gashed the place while gutting the boy)

  ...as though something had gone to town on the floor with some kind of chisel or something.

  Jason pursed his lips. What could have caused this? he wondered.

  Then he whipped around suddenly.

  Had something moved behind him?

  He cast his light around as he again sensed as much as saw something moving, something dark and dangerous. He was reminded of another dark time, another dark place, and could almost hear a gun cocking, could almost feel a man lining up a woman and her innocent son in his sights.

  Jason turned again, soon finding himself spinning around, ever more disoriented and afraid.

  There! He had heard it that time, he was sure of it! A gun cocking. Just like...

  (just like that night)

  ...he had heard countless times at the Academy in Los Angeles, just like he heard all the time now when he practiced at the makeshift firing range he had created behind his own home.

  Then the beam of his flashlight caught something. Something dark and small and round. Rolling along the floor toward him.

  Jason stooped and picked the object up with trembling fingers.

  A black crayon.

  He flashed back to that night, that dreadful night, and once again...

  Elizabeth's feet disappear into the darkness of the alley.

  Jason is almost there. But too slow. Moving too slow.

  Something rolls out of the alley: a single crayon. Black.

  Complete silence, save only the sound of blood pumping in his ears.

  He runs as though through syrup, cloying and nasty, pulling him one step back for every two steps that he takes.

  He can hear his watch ticking. Slow. Everything is slow. Tick...tick...tick....

  Then, at last, a pair of hard, fast sounds pierce the night: two gunshots.

  Jason felt every fluid ounce of blood drain from his face in an instant; felt himself grow cold and weak and faint as his heart started pounding again at his ears. He shone his light all around, but he was alone.

  Only him and the ghosts of the dead in this room, in this place, in this entry to Hell.

  He left then, almost running out of the basement, sure when he reached the top that the door

  (and the door was closed had he closed it he didn't remember closing it so what could have closed the damn thing)

  would be locked to his touch; that he would have to stay and learn in the most horrifying fashion exactly what had taken Sean away.

  But no. The door opened easily on well-maintained hinges, and Jason was through the door in an instant, fairly slamming it shut behind him in his hurry to get away.

  It was only after he had been standing in the kitchen for several seconds that he realized he was still holding something tightly in his hand.

  The crayon.

  "Aaron?" he whispered.

  The name of his dead son seeped into the still depths of the house, like the susurrations of dying leaves as they cast themselves from a tree that would sleep through the winter, leaving behind so much of itself in the process.

  Nothing moved. All was silent, dark, deep.

  Haunted.

  A chill prickled at the back of Jason's neck as the word leapt into his mind unbidden. Haunted. Ghostly. The ghosts of the past were here.

  He left the kitchen quickly, and for some reason he felt himself consciously avoiding looking at the microwave. Even though he
had unplugged it, even though there was no way that it could hurt him, even so he did not want to look at it, convinced for a moment that if he did he would once again see those horrible, blurred green numbers.

  Haunting him.

  He went back into the entry, then went up the steps to the second floor. He was spooked, but he still had a job to do. Still had a boy

  (no boy there was too much blood, far too much blood)

  to find.

  He went into the first room and could see at a glance that it was little Sean Rand's room. Bed shaped like a racecar, a pinboard with family pictures above a used desk that had clearly been inherited from his daddy, a chest of drawers. It all fairly screamed out to him of Sean's presence.

  Jason poked through a few things, but found - as he had expected - very little. Only evidence that a truly nice kid had spent hours of happy time here. He moved to the desk and opened a drawer, then cried out in disgust as hundreds - no, thousands - of black, writhing cockroaches squirmed over and upon each other within the drawer. Jason felt himself propel backward, knocking into the bed and falling onto it with a small cry before managing to stand up again.

  He could hear the cockroaches hissing. Did cockroaches hiss?

  He reached out to slam the drawer shut, to trap the vile insects inside until he could come back with some gloves and find out what had attracted them to this place...then he stopped in mid-motion.

  The roaches were gone.

  But what was there - what had not been there before, he was sure of it - was equally disturbing.

  He opened another drawer, and it had more of the same. Another drawer, and still more. Soon all the drawers in the room were open, and Jason felt something inside himself slide, as though he were a mountain and a part of him were sloughing away to plummet thousands of feet, never to be found again.

  It can't be, he thought. Not here, not like this.

  Every single drawer held the same thing. Thousands of them, all exactly the same, all bringing forth memories of a night - of the night - with their dark, burgeoning power.