Shriekers | Episode 1 | The Scarecrow Man

by Jay, Jess

  Instead, she parked her bike and walked closer to the shrieker, curiosity hijacking her better sense. She had never seen one that old before. When Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Emily were alive, they made her stay inside whenever a creature popped up, and she had never argued. Her nightmares held more than the woman. They didn’t need to tell her how dangerous shriekers could be. She knew. Deep in memories she refused to remember, she knew.

  Ten feet from the creature Thea slowed to a stop, not willing or able to risk getting closer. She wondered who the shrieker had been, what they had been doing, where they had been going; wondered if it turned at the beginning, during the Chaos; wondered what it was thinking, if it thought anything as it stood in the sun’s rays, worshiping.

  She didn’t know what caused shriekers to freeze in the daylight. Uncle Jeremy thought it had to do with the green inside them feeding off the sun’s rays. After it ate all the meat in the body, it had to survive on something and with most of humanity dead, there wasn’t a lot of prey. Thea suspected this was more than a theory, that her uncle knew more than he let on, but never pressed him. She figured he’d tell her when she was older.

  Instead, he showed her when he turned. Aunt Emily showed her when she faded away into nothing. That was all Thea needed to know. When you’re infected with the green, when you eat something contaminated or the green gets into your blood, you either become a shrieker or you die. Thea didn’t know why it was one or the other, didn’t know what ultimately decided a person’s fate, but she was certain she would never become one of them.

  If someone was going to die, they should die. To continue on as a meat puppet, eaten away and controlled like some green-stringed marionette… To look at a loved one with deflated, hollow eyes and make that horrible, haunting sound…

  Thea was gripping her gun before she realized what she was doing, her hand shaking, all curiosity replaced with something darker. She wanted to shoot the creature, wanted to stab it, but she knew it was pointless. All organs except one were eaten away, leaving nothing to wound. It would repair the damage in seconds. Even if a bullet penetrated the last organ—the brain—it would only shock its system, causing the shrieker to shut down. If a person was lucky, it would be enough time to escape or end things more permanently.

  Fire was the only thing that killed a shrieker, and the sound they made as they burned was worse than any noise imaginable. The memory of it caused her to grit her teeth. It was why Uncle Jeremy called them shriekers. It was how they communicated, how they hunted, how they called to each other.

  If Thea shot the witch-like creature and the bullet didn’t shock its system, it would only make it angry. What was worse, she couldn’t be sure a bullet to the brain would damage it. She had only shot a shrieker once, and it had been brand new. If she used the sunlight as a distraction and set it on fire, the sound it made would draw any other shriekers in the area. Even if they generally traveled alone, they defended their own, or so Uncle Jeremy had told her. It would be suicide to do anything but leave the witch-like shrieker behind, no matter how angry she was. Deep down, she knew the anger wasn’t aimed at the creature.

  Thea put the gun back into her belt, her trembling hand making it more difficult than it needed to be. With one last look at the shrieker, she turned and walked back to her bike.

  But it wasn’t actually her bike. She outgrew hers, and her aunt’s wasn’t good in rough terrain, so she used her uncle’s. It was worn down, old and rusty, and the seat had been repaired with duct tape. It didn’t have many years left. She knew she should go to the sporting goods store and get a new one—they had rows, still in boxes—but she held onto her uncle’s bike. She held onto her anger, to her grief. As she got onto the bike and continued on, she carried them with her.

  Uncle Jeremy

  Until that day, Thea never thought of her life as difficult. It was harder than it would have been Before, but that world fell years before she was born. She didn’t miss the conveniences or shortcuts that used to be available because she never had them. Living without the sense of loss that plagued Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Emily gave her a freedom they could never have again, and Thea was happy. She worked hard, but she had time to play and had a family who loved her and whom she loved. She had time to be a child.

  Then Uncle Jeremy got careless and ate something he shouldn’t have. Thea had asked him, in tears, what it was, why he did it…but all he would say was that it was an accident. He didn’t know how it happened, but that didn’t matter because he had done it and everything was over. His life… Her innocence… All they could do was wait for him to change, and he was going to change. The rate of his decay was too fast, the vines under his skin too active.

  Thea watched him as he sat in his chair, staring at his book so he wouldn’t have to look at the people he was leaving behind. Aunt Emily sat at his feet, her head on his knee, eyes closed and tears streaming down her cheeks. His hand, vines working beneath the surface, rested on her head and Thea wondered how her aunt could stand it. He was being eaten away before their eyes. Thea couldn’t look directly at him, let alone tolerate being touched by him. Still, her aunt accepted his caress, and they sat and waited.

  When it was time, Uncle Jeremy closed his book, set it down on the arm of his chair, and stood. He looked down at his wife, helped her to her feet, and kissed her. Sobs escaped from her mouth as he pulled away, building off each other as she clung to him. His calm expression fractured, and he held her closer, held her tighter than his weakened body should have allowed, whispering to her, stroking her back.

  After an eternity, he let her go. He gave her one last look, one last touch, placing his hand on her cheek, then he handed his gun to Thea and walked out the door. He had told her what to do. She was going to have to be an adult, going to have to be strong.

  She followed her uncle out of the basement.

  The sun was warm, and as she trailed behind him into the clearing he made, she could almost see the shadows of him teaching her to shoot in the grass as it swayed, hear his firm but gentle voice on the wind. In the center of the clearing was a patch of salt with rocks creating a border around it. A can of gasoline and a box of matches sat next to it. Everything they needed for the task at hand.

  Without wavering, Uncle Jeremy stepped into the center of the ring and turned to Thea. She tried to smile at him, to reassure him she was going to be strong, but her mouth didn’t move. How could a girl of twelve be as strong as she needed to be for this?

  “If you’re ready, you can do it now,” Uncle Jeremy said, his voice harsh and hollow. Thea shook her head and sat down outside the circle. Her uncle hesitated for a moment then sat down across from her, managing a smile.

  They sat like that for what felt like hours, waiting. Thea watched the vines snake and slither under his skin, his eyes becoming sunken underneath closed lids. At any moment she could have ended his suffering, but part of her refused to believe what was happening, refused to believe everything was over. That their happiness was over.

  “You should do it now, child,” he said, his words a struggle. “Now.”

  Thea stood up, gripping the gun and aiming at him the way he had shown her. She had to do it quickly so he could die as himself—so it could finally be over for him, so he could finally move on—but she didn’t. How could she shoot him when he was still himself? How could she kill the man who saved her and protected her, who took all the burden of murder for his family and let that burden eat at his soul?

  She should have pulled the trigger.

  Uncle Jeremy jerked backward then forward, his movements unnatural. Thea wanted to rush to him, to hug him one last time, but instead she stood outside the salt, unmoving, the gun gripped so tight in her hands it almost broke the skin, her eyes fierce with tears. He was on his hands and knees, shuddering, shaking, his breathing ragged and face desperate. Then he looked up at her, his eyes gone, his mouth opening to scream, but a scream wasn’t what came out.

  Thea shot him and the world ch
anged.

  Chapter Four

  The ride into Town was a long one. Uncle Jeremy used to grumble, telling Thea that Before it only took ten minutes by car. Thea tried to imagine what that was like: hopping into a vehicle and driving to the store when you needed something. It seemed too easy, too unreal, like something from a fairy story. Everything from the world before seemed like magic: devices to speak to anyone you wanted, to see them and interact with them even when they were far away; transportation that could take you to the other side of the world in a few hours; machines that held the answers to any question but fit in the palm of your hand… It was all so foreign, so unimaginable. She would sit at her uncle’s feet some evenings, listening to the way the world used to be. To her, they were fascinating tales—to her aunt and uncle they were something much different.

  “Don’t long for the way things were,” Uncle Jeremy would tell himself, though he often failed to follow his own advice. Thea hadn’t understood what he meant, but she learned. It was something she told herself as she rode past the sign to Town, its surface covered in vines and leaves, even its name stolen by the green. Things were the way they were, and no matter how much she wished otherwise, it could never be like it was. She had to be strong and she had to live. She had to leave the past behind.

  The town was small and sparse—one of the few left in the world. Before the Chaos, smaller cities continued to expand, merging into each other, taking more space and making it difficult to farm natural, additive free food. Eventually, lawmakers allowed certain states in the Great Plains to limit urbanization by enforcing population caps. The waiting lists to move into those towns, to cast aside the bustle of the megacities and live at a slower pace, were decades long. Somehow her uncle had bought his home but would never tell her how, or even why it was so important to him. It was too painful for him to talk about, but she had her theories.

  It was lucky that her uncle had the foresight to create an underground shelter beneath the farmhouse and to create a greenhouse full of vegetables, fruits, and nuts. It was almost as if he knew the end was coming. True, he could have been paranoid or overly cautious, but she felt it was something deeper than that. Something darker. She never asked about it, fearing that if he answered, she wouldn’t like what she heard. He was running from something so he moved to a town where there were more crops than people and only one fast food place.

  Uncle Jeremy had taken her there once, telling her what it used to be like. Standing in line, ordering food from a friendly-looking robot… Going up to a counter and asking for something to eat and actually getting it… There were even small meals for children complete with little toys. When her eyes lit up at the mention of that, Uncle Jeremy smiled and hopped behind the counter to get her one. She could remember waiting in the dining area, watching sunlight fight past vines growing across the windows to shine on the face of the rundown and broken automaton that stood behind the counter.

  It had a pleasant face—not like a human’s, but put together in a way that seemed kind, meant to endear itself to people. She wished for it to wake up, for it to greet her as it would have Before, wanting to interact with something—anything—other than her aunt and uncle, but it didn’t move. When Uncle Jeremy returned he handed her a torrent of small animal figurines and the robot was forgotten.

  As Thea pedaled past the fast food place, she noted how sad and lonely it looked, but then again everything looked sad and lonely: the hardware store, the recharging station, the elementary school… Everything was covered in vegetation, plants crawling over every surface—grass grew as tall as Thea’s waist in some areas, trees took root in the tar of parking lots, growing twenty to thirty feet high. The street remained, but it was broken and bumpy, causing the shotgun clipped to her handlebars to rattle.

  Still, the town was infinitely better than the city. In the city there were too many unknowns, too many places for monsters to hide. It loomed in the distance, hazy but visible, a Great Tree towering over the sea of buildings that surrounded it.

  It was one of two megacities in the Great Plains, having developed before the limitations were set in place. Her Uncle told her its name once, but she forgot it, only remembering its nickname: the City of Fountains. It sounded beautiful. In a way it looked beautiful, the Great Tree with its shimmering golden haze hovering around it.

  Uncle Jeremy told her it had once been a building itself, but plants took root through its floors, breaking through their pots and digging into the cement, spreading throughout the building. Somehow, over time, all the vegetation combined and made the Great Tree. Her uncle told her there were others—dozens of them—throughout the vast city, but Thea only saw the edge. The city went on for a hundred miles. She could only imagine what wonders and horrors it held.

  * * *

  Thea arrived at the plaza as the sun was highest in the sky, beating down on the strip of stores and heating the patches of blacktop that remained. Her destination, a little shop that Uncle Jeremy cleverly referred to as the Drug Store, sat next to the even more appropriately labeled Food Store. Its front window was smashed, plants winding their way through, creeping and latching onto whatever they could.

  As Thea crawled through the window, gun in one hand, flashlight in the other, she tried to keep focused, tried not to let her nerves get the best of her. She had scavenged by herself before, had scavenged with Uncle Jeremy many times before he died, but that didn’t matter. She didn’t think she’d ever feel at ease out in the world. There were too many possibilities, too many dangers.

  Step by cautious step, Thea listened and looked, ready for anything that might come at her. Or at least as ready as she could be. As she weaved through the aisles picked bare by the desperate people during the Chaos, then Uncle Jeremy after that, she tried to find something, anything, of use. All the medicine was, predictably, gone, and a few months before she took the last of the soap and shampoo.

  Hampered with her hands full, she was unable to search as thoroughly as she would have liked. If she wanted to do a good job, she’d have to put aside either her gun or her flashlight, and since her gun couldn’t emit light, she chose to put it away. In one practiced movement, she clicked the safety back on, and tucked it into her belt. If something in the store wanted to eat her insides, it would have attacked her already. With her hand free, she reached under displays and in between shelves, keeping her mind blank, refusing to imagine anything that might wait for her in the creases and crevices.

  After a thorough search, Thea had to admit there was nothing in the front of the store, so she checked the backroom. She had always found something in the back, whether it was a pen or a battery out of the packaging. That day all she found were shadows and pointless little trinkets that would only take up room in her pack and her life.

  The Drug Store had finally been exhausted of resources. She forced her breath to stay steady, kept the tears from her eyes. There were other options. Other scarier options, but they were still options despite how much she may wish they weren’t.

  The Food Store was large and had no natural light, causing it to be more terrifying if not more dangerous. She hadn’t been brave enough to enter it since Uncle Jeremy died, and as she stood outside, staring at the doors held open by vines, she shined her flashlight into the darkness. Shadows devoured the light. She tried not to think of the entrance as a large mouth, which caused her to think of the entrance as a large mouth. If she entered, she was sure it was going to eat her, but she knew that was silly. Probably. Most likely.

  Gathering her courage, Thea entered the store, brandishing her gun and flashlight as if both were weapons, each step and action measured. The space inside was vast. It would be impossible to check and make sure the store was secure, so she had to listen even harder, had to be even more vigilant.

  Like Uncle Jeremy had taught her, she went to one corner of the store and walked down every aisle. It took time, checking for danger and checking for supplies, but the Food Store was more stocked than the Drug
Store. Uncle Jeremy and Thea hadn’t scavenged there as often. She was able to find some soap and shampoo, dish soap, detergent, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and a blanket with sleeves for her arms. She took the last item out of its box so it wouldn’t take too much space and shoved it into her pack.

  It was when she was putting on her backpack that she heard the sound. She froze, straining her ears to hear where it came from, to hear what it was. She tried to tell herself that she knocked into something, but she knew that wasn’t the case. It didn’t sound like her pack hitting a metal shelf. It sounded like a long, scraping noise.

  Muscles shaking from tension, eyes dry from not blinking, she bent down and picked up her flashlight and gun from the floor where she left them. Armed and alert she waited, but no other sound followed. It must have been her imagination.

  Relief flooded through her, but she knew she needed to go. She wasn’t in the right mental state to stay in the darkness.

  As she turned to leave, she bumped into an empty display, knocking it over. A shriek echoed through the cavernous space, magnifying itself and Thea’s fear along with it. She ran, but in her panic she forgot where she was in relation to the exit. It didn’t matter. She had to run, with any luck, away from the creature barreling toward her, knocking over everything in its path. She could hear it crashing through the aisles, gaining on her despite the obstacles in its way, but she wouldn’t look to see where it was, to see how close it was. She had to focus on running, on getting away, on not being eaten.

  A bit of sunlight peaked over the shelves, and Thea chased after it. It beckoned to her, telling her she’d be safe if she could just get outside. If she got outside, she could get on her bike and outpace the creature. She was sure of it. She just had to get there.

  As she rounded the final corner, the doors came into view. Something jerked her back. In panic, she turned to lash out at the creature, but it wasn’t there. One of the buckles on her pack had caught on a broken shelf. A sound of panic escaped her. The monster was twenty feet away, its mouth opening so wide it tore the withered skin of its face, screeching in excitement.