by Lee Deadkeys
Frank looked at the others in turn; they met his gaze briefly and then looked away. He seemed hesitant and reluctant to go on. Sam’s curiosity was piqued.
“This is where it gets tricky, Sgt. Story.”
“It’s Sam.”
“Okay then, Sam. There was something in there, something that I’ve never seen or even heard of. The only thing I can think of is maybe some sort of new biological terror weapon.”
The younger man, Mason, spoke up while shaking his head. “But how would terrorists—if that’s the angle we’re taking—how would they get all these containers in so many places, at relatively the same time with no one witnessing it? Jess and I saw on the news where some had popped up in the middle of a busy street. In what, two, maybe three days these things have circled the globe.”
The others nodded, looking dismayed. Mason went on, “What I mean is, it’s an impossible feat.”
“And don’t forget about the phones,” Jessica said.
Sam perked up, “What about the phones?”
“Have you tried to make a call, Sam? Turned on the TV, tried the damn radio?” Jess asked.
“All right, all right, I get where you’re going. And as a matter of fact, I did notice something funny with the phones and TV, but they still work. So what are you getting at?”
Jess stood and walked to the phone beside Chad’s bed. She smoothly snatched it off its cradle, placed it to her ear and then thrust it to Sam.
Sam took it from her and placed it to his ear. The thrumming static that he’d noticed earlier had intensified a hundred-fold. He placed the receiver back on its base.
Jess walked to her father and held out a hand. He looked at it blankly for a moment before placing his cell phone there.
Sam had his hands up. “OK, you’ve made your point, it’s probably not terrorists. So, what the hell was in the containers?”
At this, Jessica went back to the place beside her sister-in-law and sat down. Frank seemed hesitant to continue and Sam, always direct himself, felt his cool slip another degree. “Look, pops, technically, we do have all day, but I’d really rather you tell me what you know now, and then maybe I can think of what to do next.”
“Sam, it’s not as simple as saying, the box opened and X was inside. That’s what I’ve been trying patiently to explain, and do it in a way that you will understand how massive and how deadly serious this thing is.”
“I get it, Frank. I’ve spent years working around deadly serious people and situations. Just had a deadly serious situation a couple days ago, cost me my job, too. What I am patiently trying to explain to you is, just tell me already—spill it! I’m a big boy, trust me, I’ll deal with it.”
Over the next few minutes, Frank told Sam everything that had happened over the last few days. Denial, disbelief and then something akin to horror played through his thoughts. He interrupted a few times to ask questions but, for the most part, he just listened and shook his head.
When Frank finished, Sam sat silently for a few moments. No one spoke, they just let him process it, and find out which parts he would reject and which he would keep.
After some time had passed, Sam looked to Frank, “One last question before we start working on a plan of action.” Frank nodded, go ahead. “Why did you think this was the work of terrorists?”
Frank opened his mouth and then closed it. He passed a hand down his face, collected his thoughts and said, “Because any other explanation is madness.”
Day 5,Early Afternoon
Ox
Boulder City, NV
As Ox turned the corner of Randal and Third, he nearly rear-ended a car sitting sideways in the road. A glance through the back window of the vehicle showed him that the car was empty. He gave the horn a brief honk to see if anyone would step forward with an explanation; flat tire, overheated, something.
No one came; in fact, there was no one to come because the street appeared deserted.
The sense of urgency seized him again, something was off here. He pulled around the abandoned car and continued up the block at twice the posted speed limit.
He noticed other vehicles now; a white VW with the passenger side front tire resting on the curb outside Derik’s Pharmacy, and halfway down the block, a minivan with its rear-end resting neatly on the hood of a sports car.
He slowed and craned his neck as he passed the minivan, trying to get a look inside, offer his assistance if it turned out to be a frazzled teen trying their hand at parallel parking Mom’s soccer shuttle.
A physical jolt passed through him when he noticed that the driver-side window had been shattered, the remains scattered on the road, glinting in the sun. There was something smeared on the window frame, it looked like blood. Someone must have bumped their head during the fender-bender, he re-assured himself.
A blur darted out in front of his truck and stopped. Ox jerked his head forward as his foot stomped on the brake. Had he been going any faster, he would have never been able to stop in time and would have surely killed the crazy woman who stood waving her hands frantically in the air.
“What the hell?” His truck had come to rest just inches from her chest. He looked at her, dumbfounded, as she continued waving her arms back and forth. She looked to be in her late forties and was dressed in a pink running suit; the bottom half of one leg was torn off, the leg inside caked with blood.
“Oh my God!” he said, jumping from the truck. “Where you in that minivan, lady?”
She stood there, staring ahead as if he wasn’t there, as if he hadn’t almost run her down like an errant pink poodle.
“Lady?” Ox said as he hesitantly stepped forward. She finally stopped waving her arms and dropped them to her side.
Ox looked up and down the street. Nothing stirred that he could see, but he had the uneasy sense of movement from the shadows that made his mind think of squirming rats concealed in the walls. There, but not there. Again with the rats, he thought, and with that came the nasty urge to get to his mother’s house.
He couldn’t just abandon the woman, could he? He took her by the shoulders and turned her to him.
“Lady! Are you OK? What happened here?”
She blinked and opened her mouth. Ox held up a hand. “Uh-uh, don’t scream, lady. You’re OK now. Just tell me what happened.” She closed her mouth, and when she opened it again she didn’t scream, not really.
“Mr. Baker bit me. On my leg. Like a Goddamned dog. He was in his yard. I was running by. He BIT MEEE!”
Her voice was rising, nearing hysteria. Ox feared that if she started to lose it, reached that certain decibel of pitch, that he would happily follow her over the edge. Sometimes crazy is just easier, and it’s always contagious.
He began shaking her by the shoulders. They were surprisingly thick shoulders for such a small frame, an image popped into his mind of Pink Lady jogging along merrily, pumping matching pink dumbbells in each hand.
He was still shaking her when she spoke. “Stop rough-handing me.” She shoved at him but only managed to push herself back a few inches.
“Sorry. I thought you were losing it.”
“I just might, but not yet, maybe later.”
He wondered if it was possible to choose when you lose it. It would be nice if you could.
“Mr. Baker bit me,” she said again. There went that theory. See seemed to read his thoughts, shook her head to clear it, “I thought he was having a heart attack. He was on his lawn, on all fours and when I went to check on him… he grabbed my leg and bit me. He even growled as he did it. I uh, I had to kick him in the head… he did stuff to his face as I backed away, ran away, actually.”
Ox suddenly felt weak and tired, exhausted. “Can I take you somewhere, the hospital?” He asked, hoping she would say no and feeling ashamed for it.
“No. Thank you for stopping though. My friend has a café two doors up, I’ll have her run me to the hospital. Thank you for stopping… I think Mr. Baker is crazy,” she said, turned and ran up the street. Ox watche
d her until she ducked into a door and disappeared.
Five minutes later, Ox turned onto his mother’s street. Rolling past a neighbor’s house, he craned his neck to get a look around a big RV parked on the road. As his mother’s place came into view, a panicked groan escaped him and adrenaline throbbed in his ears. He hit the gas, his truck jumped the curb and bounced onto the sidewalk. Ox threw it in Park without braking and stared in unbelieving horror.
The shed stood open. The doors yawned wide exposing an interior as black and soulless as a stygian abyss. A thick, toxic-looking smoke belched out, clinging low over the drive, dense enough to blot out most of the rat corpses. He thought at first that something within must be on fire, when movement from inside caught his eye.
His mother stumbled from the shed in jerking steps. She had a partially devoured rat in one hand, her hearing aide in the other. Ox sat frozen in horror as she jammed it in her ear. A gout of blood popped from the ear hole and ran down her neck.
“I hear time moving!! She screamed as the smoky stuff licked at the wound. Ox jumped from the truck, unaware of his own screams as he ran for his mother.
Day 5, Afternoon
Rudy and Rhonda
Several Miles South of Lake Pleasant
The old ranch house moaned and creaked as the gathering dust storm buffeted its weatherworn boards. Rudy Prescott dozed contentedly on the sofa, lulled by the secret prose exchanged between wind and wood, until his sister’s call roused him from his peace.
“Help me with the linens, brother,” Rhonda’s voice carried in through the screen door out back. Rudy sat up and stretched, a twinge in his lower back hinting of rain before his nose picked up a whiff of moisture in the air.
He leaned over and found his boots set neatly beside the couch. Pulling on aged leather over socked feet caused the twinge in his back to spasm. He smiled, remembering his mother’s cantankerous grey mare who’d thrown him into a fence many moons back. Their mother had still been alive then, he recalled, and the smiled faded.
“Rudy, a hand please!” Rhonda called again, her tone telling him it was time to move.
She was fighting a king sized flat sheet that snapped away every time she made a grab at it. Rudy had to chuckle. She insisted on line-drying all their bedding because, as she stated frequently, ‘they came out softer and smelled of sun-soaked mornings’. Personally though, Rudy thought her sheets could tear the hide off a man and smelled of horse shit and dirt.
“Where’s Virgil?” Rudy asked as he made a grab for the twisting fabric. “Is he getting his gloves on so these sheets won’t strip his hands to the bone?”
Rhonda glanced over her shoulder, chin down, one brow arched. “Don’t start with me,” she said, the hint of a crooked smile shattering her scolding tone. She made another grab at the sheet, caught it and began removing the pins. “And you know, you can always do your own washing if my way is so intolerable to your delicate lady-skin.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Rudy said, chuckling. “Let’s not talk crazy here. And besides, you know Virg and I can’t help but tease you, we’ve been doing it since we were kids.”
Rhonda nodded, laughing goodheartedly, “I know. I tolerate it from him because he’s my husband. But you, mister….”
“… am a terminal bachelor, yes. I’d be lost without my sainted sister to keep my old ass in line.” Rudy said with a grin and wrestled his own sheet into submission.
The wind gusted suddenly, peppering everything with stinging sand and dirt. Great, he thought, extra sand added to forty grit sheets. Amused by this he opened his mouth to goad his sister some more when the wind changed direction, bringing with it what sounded like a long, pained scream. He froze, gripping the sheet tight to quiet it as he listened for the sound to come again. His sister had also gone still, her hand on a pin and he knew she’d heard it too.
“Where’s Virgil?” Rudy asked.
Without turning, Rhonda said, “Out in the barn, mucking the horses. But… he’s been out there awhile now.”
Rudy glanced at the position of the sun and then at his sister’s rigid posture. “His lazy ass is probably passed out in the hay. Ya know how much he hits that flask when there’s work to be done.” He waited for her to counter this with something smart like, ‘said the man napping on the couch’ but she said nothing and continued to stare in the direction of the barn. He thought she might be worried that Virgil was hurt and laying out there, his head stoved in by horse. That had happened to their uncle a few years before their mother passed. Uncle Bob hadn’t died instantly but had lingered for days, raving and feverish. He had suffered terribly.
“I’ll go check on him after we tend these linens, sister.” Rudy said and hurriedly dumped a sheet in the basket and moved to the next.
“Maybe I ought to—” Rhonda started but the rest was cut off by a sharp intake of breath.
Rudy moved to the side, trying for a look around the flapping sheet.
Virgil emerged from the barn and shambled toward them across the hardpan. Rudy felt a flash of irritation when he saw the way Virgil stumbled as he walked, as if he had been hitting the hell out of that flask. But then… there was something else, something off about the man’s movements, off about his appearance but nothing Rudy could immediately nail down.
The wind caught the sheet in front of him and cut off his view for a moment. When it flapped to the side again, Rudy saw what felt wrong about his friend. It was a smudge, a dark blur obscuring Virgil’s face and head, but animated, like his head was veiled in a swarm of blackflies. Rudy felt a clenching in his guts as if he’d stepped off a curb without anticipating the drop. His hand dropped to the holster slung low around his hip, his alarm at finding it empty matched only by the sickening shock that he’d intended to draw on his friend.
“Virgil?” Rhonda said taking a step forward.
At the sound of her voice, Vigil’s head snapped up and he charged.
Rudy stood stunned, only his gun-hand reacting as it pawed futilely at the empty holster. Coffee table, he remembered, he’d left the revolver on the table before he napped.
Virgil closed the distance between them in a few jerking strides and grabbed Rhonda by the arm. Before he turned to pull her to the barn, Rudy had an up-close view of Virgil’s face, which was so mangled it looked like he’d been at it with hoofing shears. And his eyes, wild and blotted with black specks and bloody motes from burst capillaries.
Rudy watched, unable to process the nightmare playing out before him. He might have stayed that way, locked in his stupor had in not been shattered by the terrified screams of his sister.
Virgil managed to drag her a few feet before Rudy finally reacted. He grabbed Virgil by the arm and tried to wrestle Rhonda free. Despite outweighing him by forty pounds, Virgil managed to toss him off like a ragdoll. Rhonda was beating at the arm clamped on to her, her heels dug in but doing nothing to slow their progress to the barn. Rudy hit Virgil in the jaw as hard as he could. Virgil took a step to the side to steady himself and continued to the barn unfazed.
“The sheet!” Rhonda screamed. Rudy ran to the line, yanked one free and roughly pulled it over Virgil’s head and torso and then clamped him in a secure bear hug. Virgil instantly stilled his assault. Rhonda wrenched her arm free, took up another sheet and tied it around Virgil’s arms. She stepped back, shaking her head and Rudy feared she would lose it right there. He leaned over, hands on knees and tried to catch his breath, tried to steady his whirring brain, and mostly, tried not to puke.
“I can’t. I just don’t—” Rudy’s incoherent rambling was cut short by an inhuman fracas from the barn.
“The horses!” Rhonda shouted. “He’s set them on fire!”
Rudy took three running steps toward the barn and stopped. He’d been around horses all his life and even had a few close calls with barn fires, but the sound coming from those animals was like nothing he’d ever heard before. They were crazed with panic.
Black smoke billowed out the open door
and he took a step back.
“It’s not smoke,” Rhonda said quietly, a slight tremble in her voice. “It’s something else.” That should’ve sounded insane. It should’ve made him turn and look at her to see if she was cracking up, losing it completely. Instead he nodded and took another step back, watching as the noxious fog leaked from the opening and creeped along the ground. Looking for us, he thought. Looking for people.
“It feels green,” Rhonda said, her voice still detached, unnerved. “Evil.”
Rudy did turn and look at his sister. She stared in the direction of the barn, her expression slack and distant, eyes glazed in confused worry.
“Let’s get Virg in the house,” he said, wondering about her state of mind, wondering about his.
It was a struggle getting Virgil in the house. They decided to lock him in the mudroom for the time being. Rudy tried to call for an ambulance, the law, anyone he thought could help his friend, but the phones were out. ‘Knocked out by the dust storm,’ he told Rhonda, but he knew the static on the line had nothing in the world to do with the storm.
He paced around the kitchen trying to think and needing, desperately, to take some action. This sitting on his hands and waiting was no good, the mind got funny when you did that.
“Um, Rudy?” Rhonda said from the door of the mudroom. He went to her. She was pointing at Virgil, at the algae-green stain soaking through the sheet with every exhalation of breath.
“It’s the stuff,” Rhonda said and began to cry softly. “The stuff from the barn. It’s in him.”
Rudy sighed, he knew she was right. “I’ve got to secure him, sister.”
Rhonda nodded, “I’ll get some food and water. Put it in there for him.”
My God, Rudy thought sadly. Putting out food and water for him. Just like you’d do a damn dog.
Rudy fetched the coil of rope from the corner of the mudroom and tied it around Virgil’s waist, then anchored it to a heavy workbench bolted to the floor and wall. Rhonda had set some water and saltines on the seat of a wooden chair and pushed it close to him with her foot.