The Melting

by Christopher Coleman

  The Melting

  Christopher Coleman

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 1

  “Hi Sharon. It’s me. It’s Dominic.”

  The thing that used to be Sharon shows no glint of recognition, and I wonder if it can hear me at all. Her external ears are gone, and as she approaches, bringing me as close to the crabs as I’ve been since the event happened a couple of months ago, I can see only the tiniest of orifices on the sides of her head. They appear almost reptilian, like those of an ashen crocodile, a comparison made more a propos by the cold blackness of her eyes.

  But the thing seems to hear my words, giving a cock of its head, like a beagle who’s just been asked a question.

  “I should have been here with you when it happened. And I’m sorry for that. I’m so sorry for everything.” I pause, thinking of Naia. “Some of them things you never even knew about.”

  It is guilt that has brought me here, to my home of fourteen years, by way of the refrigerated box truck that sits parked outside in my driveway, the engine running, my new companions—who are now only four in number—still screaming my name, warning me to leave. But I’ve made the decision to follow through on my plan, a plan I finalized on my way here and which sounded in my head something like this: if my wife was still here at our home, alive somehow, I would tell her everything, all about Naia and the affair, as well as the weeks I’d spent at the student union and later the diner. And then, once the plates stopped flying, I would try to convince her to come with us. She would hate me for a while, forever maybe, but she would be with me, under my protection. And alive.

  On the other hand, if she was dead, or not here at all, I would turn back to the truck immediately and go with the group. I would be broken and distraught, and my heart would no doubt be overflowing with culpability, but there would be nothing to do at that point other than go on, so that’s what I would do.

  But there was a third possibility to prepare for. If Sharon had turned into one of them, had become one of the victims of the snow, I would stay. It was a conditional suicide mission, of course, since I now know of their strength and had witnessed the violent things they did to Naia and Alvaro. And it was also a mission I had not revealed to my traveling party.

  Sharon is only six feet from me now, maybe less, and there is a familiar smell that I realize is the same one that came from the Thai restaurant where Alvaro was killed. I hadn’t placed the crab as the source of the odor at the time—not with all the spoiled food left over in the kitchen—but I have no doubt about it now. It’s a chemical smell, something close to ammonia.

  She’s now only a couple of feet away, but I stand my ground. Her skin is so white and her eyes so black she looks like a human-sized version of a classic cartoon ghost.

  Until she opens her mouth.

  Inside, past the thing’s white lips, instead of the black abyss found in the eyes of the crab, there is the color of flesh and gum. Teeth and tongue. All the pink and viscous characteristics of her pre-crab self.

  Sharon closes her eyes and the black pools disappear beneath eyelids as white as the snow that created them. She opens them again, this time only halfway, and then, without even the slightest twitch of a warning, she thrusts her body towards me, raising her naked white arms above her as she comes, looking like some kind of crazed albino chimpanzee.

  I close my eyes to accept her attack, awaiting the crash of this not-quite-human body against mine, preparing to fulfill my morbid plan. Just before it reaches me, before its bleached skin connects with the layers of clothing covering my body, I have an absent thought of the afterlife, about what the universe has in store for my soul once the next thirty seconds or so ends.

  And then comes the explosion.

  The sound of the blast deafens me for a moment, and my first thought is that I’ve already begun my entry into that afterlife that I’ve just conjured. The blast was the sound of God’s voice, perhaps, as He prepared to explain to me that I have no right to His kingdom.

  It takes me only seconds, however, to realize I’m still a part of this earth, awakened by the contents of the crabs’ innards collapsing on and all around me. As I had known from the incident inside the Thai restaurant, when the crab was crushed by the freezer door, the insides of the things appeared just like those of any normal human—red and purple and sticky—and I’m coated in a shower of blood and bone and brain, as well as the unique additive of vanilla skin.

  Sharon’s torso propels forward and lands on top of me, and, instinctively, I catch it in my arms before releasing it almost instantly, hurling it to the side with a gasp, watching in horror as the lump of flesh thumps to the floor. The headless corpse of my wife now spouts a geyser of blood from between the shoulders across the foyer and into the carpet of the living room. Absurdly, I think of how badly Sharon had wanted hardwood in that room, and how distraught she would be at this mess.

  I’ve lost the ability to breathe, to blink, and as I stare at the dead creature below me, I’m suddenly baffled by its demise. Did I somehow destroy it through some telepathic feeling of love or blame or fear? Was what remained of the crab’s intellect incapable of co-existing with the deluge of emotions occurring inside of me, causing it to explode?

  And then I look up and see her. It’s Danielle, standing tall, her eyes wide and her face nearly as white as the one she’s just destroyed. Beside her, butt down and barrel in her left fist, is the shotgun that she’s brought with her from the diner. It’s the same one she had pointed at me from the street on the day Naia and I left the student union of Warren College and ended up in the parking lot of Balmore Plaza. Naia had gone to scope out the Thai restaurant, and I had taken to investigating a box truck that sat out in front of the diner where Danielle worked. Within seconds the shotgun was on me, Danielle protecting the contents of the truck with attitude and buck shot.

  My feelings about what has just occurred a foot or two inside my home, about what Danielle has just done to my wife, are beyond my analysis, and I can only remain frozen in place, a statue of fear and sickness and uncertainty.

  “What the hell are you doing, Dominic?” Danielle asks, her words slow and wary as she stays focused on the corpse at my feet. She takes a deep breath and then looks up at me finally. “Why did you do this? Why did you come inside here? You heard us. You must have seen her...it. Look at it, Dominic. There was nothing you could do.”

  “I told Tom not to wait for me,” I answer, my voice low and robotic, and I force myself to avoid Danielle’s eyes. “I was clear about that.”

  “If you thought that’s what Tom would do—what I would do—just leave you to die, then you don’t know us at all. But I guess that’s the truth isn’t it? You don’t know us.”

  Danielle pauses, waiting for some rebuttal.

  “I was out of the truck the second I saw that thing in the window. Before you even stepped foot inside. No suicides, Dom. Not at this point in the story.”

  In spite of myself, I turn my head away in shame. Hearing the word ‘suicide’ as applied to me is unsettling in a way I wouldn’t have imagined.

  “People have been murdered, Dominic. Friends of mine. Tom’s son. People who didn’t deserve to die but did anyway. And now you want to just throw yourself on the pyre? I don’t think so.”

  “I should be the one lying here, no
t her. I was the one who cheated. I was the one who was off with my...It should have been me. I should have protected her.”

  Danielle sighs, and I can imagine the glaze of sympathy that comes over her face. “Protecting her from what, Dom? The snow? What would you have done differently? You wouldn’t have known. We still don’t really know what happened, except that the snow fell, and, if you happened to be outside in it at the time, you...well, you know the rest. But tell me honestly, Dominic, would you have kept your wife from going outside?”

  I know Danielle is right. I couldn’t have kept Sharon from enjoying the snow even if I had wanted to. And why would I have wanted to? “We could have gone together,” I say, answering another question altogether.

  “I know Dom, and death would have meant an end to the pain your feeling. But that pain will lessen—it will—and in the meantime, with the life you still have, you can use it to keep her in your memories.”

  I smirk and give a gentle scoff, finally meeting Danielle’s eyes. “Pretty smart for a waitress,” I say, continuing a running joke.

  Danielle smiles. “And besides, the main reason you can’t die is because we need you. Who knows what we’re going to run into out there? You menfolk had gone out of style there for a while, but you’re suddenly back in fashion.”

  I give a full laugh now, and then a single tear falls down my cheek, followed by a full on weeping session. I sit on the floor with my back against the door, crying into my hands, the smell of my dead wife’s altered body heavy in the air. Danielle doesn’t say a word. When the tears finally end, I take a deep breath and say, “So where do we go from here?”

  “We know things we didn’t before,” Danielle answers, not missing a beat. “About the event that caused this. And we have a pretty good idea it was our government that was behind it. Or at least some kind of shadow government working in secret. I guess I’d like to believe that. I mean, who else has tanks?”

  “I’m not sure we know any of that, but let’s say we do. Let’s say Terry and Stella were telling us the truth about what they knew. What does that mean?”

  “It means we can do something to stop them. It means we have an obligation to stop them.”

  I shake my head, confused. “Stop them? It’s been done. Whatever caused this, whatever brought the snow and the crabs, it doesn’t really matter anymore. It’s already happened. By all accounts, it’s happened everywhere.”

  “Those radio reports were lies Dominic. You know that. You heard Terry and Stella. Those reports were just part of the experiment.”

  “We don’t know that for sure either. Whatever plan Terry and Stella were a part of was obviously not the real plan, not fully, so we have no idea what’s true or not. It could be that the reports were right after all. It could be the world is, for all intents and purposes, over.” I’ve regained my sense of the moment now and have, at least temporarily, accepted the death of my wife, whose body still lay at my feet, the pool of blood at the base of her neck and shoulders enormous.

  “So what then, Dom? You’re just going to give up? Should I just go ahead and take your head off too?” Danielle raises the gun to her shoulder and stares at me through the sight. “This what you want?”

  In a way, it is what I want, even though I know Danielle’s dramatic display is just for show. But what is there to do now? The world has been changed beyond repair, at least the world that we can see from here, and it’s a world now inhabited by murderous crabs and some demented military force.

  I hear the front door open behind me, and I turn my head to see Tom standing at the threshold. He surveys the scene with a look of sympathy, and then gestures toward Danielle to lower the gun.

  “They’ve been keeping their distance so far,” Tom says, “but they’re closing the perimeter. We have to go soon if we’re gonna. Can’t leave Terry and James out there with no weapon. Are you ready, Dominic?”

  Tom has the demeanor of a grandfather and the gravitas of a general, and all I can do is nod.

  Tom looks to Danielle. “Weren’t gonna shoot Dom were you, Danny?”

  Danielle cocks her head and shrugs. “Guess we’ll never know.”

  Tom snorts a laugh and gives a twitch of his head, gesturing toward the truck. I follow him out to the stoop and instantly see the closing circle of crabs to which Tom just alluded, their alabaster bodies nearly featureless against the backdrop of the snowy landscape. The closest one is still probably thirty yards away, but my former subdivision is a closely packed cul-de-sac of houses and shrubs and trees, and with a blanket of snow covering all of it, it’s hard to know where any one of the white monsters might be hidden. There could be one crouched behind a parked car, or maybe camouflaged next to a downspout, and we would never see it until it was too late.

  And though we’ve been able to observe them periodically over the last several weeks, their movements are still somewhat unknown. We know they have the potential to be violent, of course—I’ve already seen two people killed in front of my eyes—and when they did kill, they were ferocious in the way they devoured the bodies, tearing at the flesh with their teeth and hands, continuing to maul the corpse long after death had come to the victim.

  But exactly when and why they attack is still somewhat unpredictable. It seems proximity plays a critical part, but the exact distance at which they are triggered remains a mystery. And perhaps sound and movement play a role as well. They appear incredibly curious by sounds and actions that don’t follow a regular pattern of behavior.

  I step up into the passenger seat of the truck and move to the middle, allowing Danielle space to move in beside me. Tom reclaims the driver’s seat; the engine is still running. Neither James nor Stella, who are both seated in the back, say a word.

  I look over at the dashboard and note the gas gauge, which is somewhere between a quarter tank and empty.

  Tom doesn’t look at me, but he seems to read my mind. “I guess before we can save the world, we’re gonna have to find some fuel.”

  Danielle closes the passenger door and Tom immediately shifts the truck into reverse, allowing it to roll gently out to the street.

  “There’s a station a couple miles up near Turnberry, just off 2.”

  “Don’t know where that is, but I’ll follow your directions.”

  I nod and point straight ahead.

  Tom shifts the truck into drive and eases us onto the freeway.

  I look up to the clear sky above us and the sun shining brightly.

  Chapter 2

  It hasn’t snowed in days, and as we head north towards the city, with every mile that passes, the accumulated snow on the ground seems to thin. I have no way of knowing if it’s due to the distance were putting between ourselves and College Valley, or if the weather has just improved, but every few minutes I throw a glance towards the odometer, tracking the miles.

  “I need to know that you’ll be able to do this with us,” Danielle says from beside me. Hers are the first words anyone has spoken in twenty minutes, and I turn to see the side of her face pressed against the passenger door window; she seems to be staring up at the clouds in the distance.

  “Do what?” I ask.

  She turns her head toward me slowly. “Whatever it is we’ll need to do to survive. I don’t think I got confirmation from you back at the house, and I need to know you’re with us.”

  I look away from Danielle at back towards the front of the truck. “I’m good. I’ve made peace with...what happened. You made a lot of sense about life or whatever.”

  “I’m not just talking about that. I’m glad you’re feeling better, but you used us. You used us in order to leave the diner so that we could bring you to your house. But you didn’t tell us of your full intentions. I understand why you did it, but it was still a violation of our trust.”

  “I wasn’t completely honest with you, I’ll admit that, but I didn’t use anyone. We voted to leave the diner. And I seem to recall that you were in my camp from the start.”

&nb
sp; Danielle doesn’t retort, and instead turns back to the window to continue her sky-gazing. “I am sorry about your wife, Dominic. Just in case I never said.”

  I swallow hard and feel the flood form behind my eyes again. “How far have we gone, Tom?”

  I ask the question as a distraction. I already know it’s been thirty-eight miles since we left my house and the wreckage of my former life. We passed the last of the county’s businesses two miles back, and are now beyond the furthest point any of my companions have explored since the blast.

  The two-lane stretch of highway is deserted, and has been for the entire trip, other than the occasional crab crouched low on the side of the road, its shoulders pointing high above its head like a bat. Their gazes always seem to follow the truck as we pass, their eyes somehow never leaving mine, like one of those old posters where the stare of the subject would fixate on you no matter where you walked in the room.

  “About thirty-five miles,” Tom answers. “We’re only ‘bout ten miles from the county line.”

  Whereas Warren County is small and secluded, surrounded on three sides by water, the neighboring county of Maripo is a bustling suburb, a closer representation to the capital city bordering it to the north. It’s also the home of Stella and Terry’s employer, a vaguely labeled chemical engineering firm who, according to Stella, sent the two scientists to Warren to observe what was ostensibly to be only a psychological experiment, but instead turned out to be the disaster we’re faced with now.

  “This is your neck of the woods, right Stella.” I say with a hint of contempt.

  Since the moment Stella first revealed she and Terry were privy to the fatal experiment of Warren County, our interrogation of her has been steady, and Terry’s demise back on the exit ramp at the hands of a mysterious army colonel has only enhanced our questioning. But the few details she’s offered since the diner have been inconsequential. Still though, I feel like there’s more she’s not telling.

  “I...yes, though not quite. Our laboratory is about fifteen minutes from here. Across the Maripo River Bridge and then just—”