by McBain, Tim
Flowing.
Churning.
Like a babbling river but heavy somehow. Deep-voiced. Roaring. Threatening violence. Much different from the pattering sounds of the rain on the roof from before.
In the dream, he entered a cave to get out of the storm. Scanned the craggy ceiling for the source of the watery noises. There must be a waterfall here or a place where rain was funneling and gushing into this section of cavern.
He could picture it — some burbling pool deep in this cave, the water tumbling in through a skylight some forty feet above — but he could not find it. It had to be close. Had to. He inched forward, fingers trailing along the cool rock wall.
Thunder rumbled far away, echoing toward him from some great distance, much further out than this burble that was right on top of him.
It was right there, the wet, but he couldn’t see it. It didn’t make sense. Stalactites reached down from above, pointing at him, but he could find no trace of the water.
The sound grew louder. An urgency to it. And his heart beat faster. Some sense of doom coming over him. A rising tension like something was about to break.
He woke in the dark. Confused and frightened. Blinking. Hands feeling around on the dash and center console.
It took him a second to remember the reality of their situation. The voice in his head talked him through it.
We’re stuck in the car. Stalled out on the side the road. Surrounded by the dead.
But we’ve got food and water, and we’ll be OK.
It’s just the rain.
Bits of the dream flashed through his head — the images already fading. And yet the sound remained strong. He could hear the churning wet outside now, but it didn’t seem as violent as the dream version. Lacked that deep voice, that sense of menace.
This night was darker than the last, the moon a tiny sliver hung up high in the black that offered little help.
He could just make out Lorraine’s outline in the passenger seat — a deeper blackness in the dark. Solid. She slept, undisturbed by whatever thrashing he must have done. Her breathing slow and even. Good. It was better that way.
And now he couldn’t remember the dream at all other than some vague notion that it had been a bad one involving water. He also couldn’t see the dead outside well enough to fear them.
Just the rain. It did sound different than before, but there was nothing to be done about that. No use in worrying about it.
He took deep breaths. Gripped tightly to the relief that had washed over him, made sure to not let it go.
His heartbeat slowed in his chest little by little.
Soon he closed his eyes. Started to drift.
Sleep drowned the sound away this time. Reduced the wet burble to a soft murmur, barely more than the silence.
And then a deafening crack split the night open.
Not thunder.
Wood.
Trees splintered en masse outside. Thrashing. Branches snapping everywhere. Leaves hissing in anguish.
He couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.
Something was ripping the woods apart.
He realized the sounds were moving. Advancing. Getting closer.
How the fuck?
And then the car itself lifted up. Gravity losing its grip.
And they were moving. Flowing with the water.
Downstream.
The corpses thudded into the side of the car. Swept up in the water as well.
One of them flopped onto the hood. Laid out flat. Sliding up until he belly smacked the windshield. Stuck there like a dead bug.
And as Louis stared into the featureless black face of the dead thing, the idea hit him.
A flash flood.
Erin
Rich Creek, Virginia
9 years, 37 days after
Erin kicked and flailed. But the hand clutching her ankle did not loosen.
She reached out, hands feeling around for something — anything — she might use as a weapon. Anything she could use to get the thing off of her.
There was a loud crash and then the light was suddenly brighter, and Izzy was there with the lantern.
“Izzy, no! Get out!”
And Izzy said something back, but Erin couldn’t hear, because in the dim light, she got her first look at the thing gripping her.
Izzy was right about it being a mummy. Deep brown flesh more dried up than rotten. Patches of what looked like white mold on its skin. It resembled a month-old banana than anything remotely human.
The fingers felt like broken sticks wrapped in old leather gloves. Rough and dry and bony and clinging to her with more strength than they had any right to.
Erin scrambled backward and gave one swift yank of her leg. The motion freed her of the dead grip, but she was backed into a corner now, wedged between the far wall and a shelf of some kind.
The thing wriggled toward her. Its legs splintered, two tattered things slithering behind it. Broken. Maybe it’d been damaged in the fall down from the hatch. Or maybe it had already been like that. Either way, both of the thing’s legs were fractured badly. Erin could see the sharp ends of yellowed bones protruding from the moldering pantlegs.
It wormed forward on its belly. Face blank. Picking up speed in a sudden burst.
The thing used its bony fingers to claw on top of her. Clutching and dragging.
The head lurched for her. Jaws snapping inches from her throat, but Erin caught it under the chin and shoved the maw away.
Scrabbling. Fighting. Screeching. The thing grew more frantic, more furious now that it was close. Maybe it smelled blood or flesh. But it clung to her now, and all she could really do was keep ahold of its head and try to squirm just out of reach of the biting jaws.
Spindly hands crept up her body like centipede legs. Seized her around the throat. Squeezing. Choking.
Strong. Impossibly strong.
The world flashed red and black, and Erin’s strength dwindled.
The rotten banana face inched closer. Opened its mouth and let out a hiss.
Her fingers pried at the bones cinching around her neck. Felt leathery skin peel away from the knuckles. But the grip didn’t let up.
It squeezed. Flexed. Crushed.
Some hateful animal aggression pressed into her flesh. Closing off her airway.
Fragmented memories flashed through Erin’s head. Pieces of her life glittering like a strobe light in her skull. Meaningless. Images too fast and short to be understood.
The faintest whimper escaped her lips. Pathetic.
Is this how it ends?
The light snuffed in one violent thrust. All the sound and the fury seeping out in three seconds. Incomplete. Hollow. Empty. Winking out all at once.
Death heaving, surging, ripping.
Taking.
Erasing.
A loud thunk echoed through the bunker. Shivering echoes reverberating off the walls.
The skull flew from the thing’s shoulders. Rolled across the concrete floor. Butted up against the wall. Came to rest.
The headless neck gaped at Erin for a second. Body still upright out of habit. And then the body collapsed like a sock filled with sticks and stones.
Izzy hovered over her, shovel ready to swing like a baseball bat again, should the thing show any sign of movement.
The bony hands slid from her throat, fingers curling inward like the legs of a dead spider.
Breath heaved in and out of Erin’s chest, and neither one of them spoke for several seconds.
Finally, she found her voice.
“I think that was a home run.”
Baghead1
Rural Illinois
9 years, 36 days after
Fever dreams disfigure Baghead’s sleep. Mangle the images flashing through his brain.
He lies in a field in the dark. Looking up into the stars. Into the infinite. All those tiny pinpricks of light, the burning energy that breaks up the endless dark of the universe for a while. He thinks about how t
he stars die, how they burn out after a while, and he wonders what will happen when the last light goes out, when all that’s left is the black nothing of space that goes on and on and on.
He shifts his body as though he can wriggle away from this discomforting thought, shoulder blades knifing into the ground. He feels the cool of the grass touching his neck, and he settles himself once more. Tries to release the odd tension built up in his abdomen.
His chest swells and recedes on endless repeat. Cool air rushing to fill that void in his ribcage and then seeping out. There is nothing else in the universe, it seems. None but light dotting the vast darkness and him to observe it for no good reason.
The dream’s lucidity thins for a moment, wanes, and he can almost remember where he really is, outside of this dream world. Gets the picture of the road in his head. The yellow line that flecks the center of the asphalt strip. A journey, he thinks. A road trip. But the destination eludes him. Where would he be going? And what for?
The murk of the dream swallows these thoughts, submerges him once more so that only the field and sky are real, the dying stars lighting his way.
And in time, he sees movement above. Flitting shapes. Warped faces in the dark. Fleshy heads seem to hover over his sprawled figure, all bloated like pumpkins lit up on Halloween. Glimmering strangely in the dark. Sinister somehow, like someone holding a flashlight under their chin to tell a ghost story. Their bodies remain concealed in the blackness, though movement in the shadows implies that they are there, that the heads aren’t truly floating.
And it occurs to him that all of the faces are pinched on one side. One cheek bone and brow higher than the other, a perpetually surprised expression baked into that side like some sort of monster mask, like a giant hand had squeezed that half of each face, left it taller and thinner than the opposite side. Incongruent.
Forceps as an infant, maybe. During birth. The metal tongs squishing the skull before its fully baked, so to speak. Is that a thing? It seems familiar, but he’s not certain.
Whatever the cause, this crooked state leaves all the faces with a beautiful angelic side and an ugly side, a squished side. Wrong. Monstrous. Looking at incongruent faces like these is disorienting, overwhelming. Makes him feel that familiar bile climbing the back of his throat, that strange and awful tingle one got in their gut just before vomiting. Not disgust so much as sheer sensory overload. All of it somehow too intense, too striking to stomach.
And the faces are speaking to him, he realizes, their voices small and hard and urgent, but the lips and words don’t seem to line up. Out of sync. He can’t process it. Too distracted watching the lips flap. Up and down. Front and back. Wet lips gliding over wet teeth. Animal-like somehow. Like a cat licking its paw a few times and then smearing the wet foot over its head to clean itself.
Then the faces morph the way dream images seem to do. Instead of being squished, they have growths. Knobby protrusions like those that occupy his own face, the ones he keeps tucked under his canvas bag all day and night.
Again he wants to vomit. Feels the nausea clench in his gut like a fist. Not because these faces disturb him but because of the memory of his own. Pictures in his head he can never erase. That he lives with every day.
He closes his eyes. Looks away from the disfigured creatures. Breathes. And something changes. The familiar smell of the car sharpens reality around him some.
When he opens his eyes, they’ve morphed again. The fever dream images peel themselves off like masks and he can see Delfino and Ruth leaning over him. Brows creased. Looking worried.
He’s in the car. Yes. The Delta 88. Sprawling in the backseat, staring up at the loose upholstered ceiling, the fabric hanging down like a swollen belly. It’s a relief to find these familiar images, to realize where he is. The car feels like home after all this time. This backseat become his bedroom, snugged under the covers.
But something is wrong.
He moves to sit up and pain jolts in his left hand. Bright and hot and overwhelming. It blinds him for a moment. Blackens the whole world as though burning it out. Sends a shudder vibrating through his skull.
When his vision comes back to him, everything is a little swimmy along the edges. Warped with colorful whorls and shimmering like heat distortion. He can feel the sweat seeping out of his skin, pooling along his brow and top lip.
And he remembers now. The images flash in his head. The machete. The face of the thing that wielded it — a mask of savagery. Something animal. Inhuman, it seems in his memory.
The pain lies not in his hand. It pulses where his hand used to be.
He looks at the stumped spot where that arm dead ends, wrapped in a towel stained brown like tobacco juice from the dried blood. Another wave of tingling jitters through his head.
He closes his eyes. Wishes he could have stayed in the dream, even if it was a nightmare. Wishes he could flee this plane, this pain, this life. Wishes he could disappear.
When Delfino speaks again, Baghead can only make out one word.
“Sepsis.”
Lorraine
Tennessee
1 year, 53 days after
The car flowed through the dark. Crashed along with the whims of the water, of the flood. A gurgling sound roaring all around them.
Lorraine cupped one hand to her swollen belly. Some instinct to protect the baby.
The other hand gripped the door handle so hard that her whole arm trembled. Cords near her wrist pulled taut until she could see them through the skin like cables.
The car lurched. Jerked her to her left. Threatened to tip her out of her seat.
Then it tipped back the other way. Throttled her. The water spitting and spraying against her window.
She tried to see anything out there. Some glimpse of the moon or stars. Some sense of the foliage around them. But the dark and the motion together were too disorienting. Just murky black shapes. Tiny places where silvery moonlight glinted off the swirling rapids.
It felt like a riding roller coaster. Whirling and tipping and rushing up and down hills. Too fast.
And terrifying.
Pants-shitting terrifying.
The dark enhanced the fear. The unknown blackness draped over them. Enveloping them. Choking them.
Mostly the car seemed to follow the road from what she could tell. With less debris, the current would be strongest there — it made sense to some part of her brain still able to think.
And she knew the surging water would suck them along. Faster, faster. Until it ditched them somewhere. Crashed them somewhere. Split open this shell around them and let the dark water have them.
She stared out into the gloom. Tried to verify this suspicion of increasing speed, increasing danger. It was hard to be sure exactly what was happening.
The corpse still squirmed on the hood. Turned over now like a turtle stuck on its back. Dim. Slow. Stuck there somehow. And its face wore the same blank expression as ever.
Wheezing drew her notice away from the dead thing.
Louis.
He seemed to be hyperventilating in the driver’s seat, hands locked in a death grip on the steering wheel like he could somehow navigate them through the flood, make the water obey his commands.
The water spun them in slow motion as if to mock Louis’s attempts to steer. A slow counter-clockwise rotation that screamed in their faces just how much the rain did not care what they thought of any of this, that the universe itself did not give a fuck about them.
She tried to put her hand on his arm. To offer him some comfort, maybe. Remind him to breathe. But the water jolted them just then, lifted her out of her seat, and she had to catch herself instead, keep from whipping her head into the dash.
The car rotated so the front end faced sideways relative to the rushing water. Rocked them back and forth like that. Surging along.
And then the bottom seemed to drop out of things. Falling. Confusion. Just a plunge into the black.
The angle of the trees floating
alongside them against the horizon somehow clicked for her. They were rushing down a fucking hill.
Before she could fully wonder what the bottom would bring, it hit.
The changing forces around them applied pressure as the ground flattened out. Gravity’s pull smashed her into her seat like dead weight flung atop her. Pressing. Pinning. Crushing.
The front end of the sedan dipped. Sliced into the black water with a sound somehow reminiscent of a flushing toilet. Sucking and gurgling.
The black murk swallowed the corpse still twitching on the hood, slowly blackened the windshield, deadened the sound outside the car. Blocked out the world.
They were underwater.
Delfino1
Rural Illinois
9 years, 36 days after
Delfino clenched the steering wheel like it might try to squirm away from him. Knuckles flexing over and over along with the muscles in his jaw.
His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, watched the cloud of dust kick up behind them. It was morning now. The bagged figure in the backseat had made it through the night, which hadn’t seemed like a sure thing. He’d moaned some. Babbled nonsense. Confused.
At first light, Delfino had checked the wound. Found the meat there going black. He was no physician, but he knew what that meant, knew it was about the worst thing he could find. Gangrene. Necrotic tissue. It would mean death sooner than later without damn near immediate intervention.
Delfino didn’t know what to do with this information. He’d heard you could put maggots in the wound, let them eat the tainted flesh which would keep it from spreading. But where to find maggots as you raced down the highway? Should he check any roadkill they might happen upon? Would they even see any in the next 24 hours?
“What can we do?” Ruth said from the passenger seat. “How can we help him?”
“Not a lot we can offer him, way I see it,” Delfino said, shaking his head. “Hope and pray and all that kind of stuff, I guess. Haul ass to where we’re going, too.”
“But he’s going to die,” Ruth said. “You said if it’s sepsis, he’d die within the week. Maybe sooner. He’d get sepsis shock or whatever.”