by M. O. McLeod
“I know all about them. I know what drives them, what they crave, and what makes the Phantom wild most of all.”
“Tell me,” the mayor was intrigued by the idea of finally ridding the city of the Phantoms. He would clean the streets back up and win the city back. If he could do this then he would undoubtedly be able to run for governor next term. The citizens of the mega-city would back him 100%, even though there weren’t as many citizens as before. Still, Alexandria would no longer be his problem if he could move up the ranks.
“Mayor, what drives a Phantom wild the most, what really gets him stirred up is me of course,” Kurma simply said.
“You,” the mayor said in a disappointed voice.
“Yes me, and everything that I am. You see, my friends and I are not like you and your wife that is back there tied up,” said Kurma as she began to unbutton her shirt.
“You have my wife tied up…” the mayor said with a dumb look on his face.
Rimselda had tied the wife up herself with an extension cord and gagged her. She wasn’t into the hurting business but she couldn’t have the wife calling the cops and messing the plan up for the girls. Rimselda could hear feet moving upstairs seconds later and suspected the wife had gotten loose. She clearly wasn’t into binding housewives up either. Sorry Kurma, she thought.
“Yep,” Kurma said as she silently transformed her human body into her Raptor state before the mayor’s eyes. “But it seems that she has gotten loose.”
The mayor was dumbstruck and gawked at Kurma who was rushing out the door. Rimselda could hear a light scuffle before Kurma entered back into the room with the mayor’s wife, oven mitts and a pistol in tow.
Margie screamed for dear life as she looked Kurma up and down. The mayor grabbed her from the back and forced her into his armchair. He stood up and paced back and forth while looking at the winged creature that stood before him.
“What is she, Chauncey?” Margie screamed at her husband. “What have you brought into my house?”
“My house,” the mayor corrected her. He stopped pacing and said, “You are definitely not a Phantom.”
“You think,” Jackie said off to the side.
“What are you called and where did you creatures come from?” asked the mayor in an exasperated tone. “Is there something in the water? Seriously, tell me that.”
“I’m a Raptor and so are my friends,” Kurma reassured the mayor. “There is nothing in the water as far as I know and you will not turn into a Phantom or a Raptor, unless we want you to.” Kurma went to sit back down and stared at the mayor’s wife. “Do we have an agreement?”
“What agreement is she talking about Chauncey?” Margie questioned her husband.
Kurma handed the gun to Rimselda and it felt heavy in her hand. She had never held one before and didn’t feel comfortable taking care of it, second in command or not. She passed it off to Jackie who was sitting next to her. Jackie probably had seen guns before in her line of work.
“Margie, we can talk about this later. Just sit there and be quiet,” the mayor instructed his wife.
“Yes Margie, do be a dear and zip it,” mocked Kurma.
“Hey, don’t talk to my wife like that.”
“What part about me not being questioned by anybody, including you, did you not understand?” she asked.
The mayor gave Kurma a dark glare but didn’t say anything back.
“Mayor, may I suggest that you get all your people on the ground and behind this immediately. I’m talking news reporters, the media, the radio, the police, everybody needs to hear how you will get the Phantoms off the streets,” Kurma said.
“There is no electricity in half of the city, how will anybody see me on the news giving a message. There is barely anybody reporting the news anyway,” the mayor argued.
“The lights are on here in the north, the paper still gets delivered every morning, the people on the north side still get up and go to work and talk amongst themselves. Word of mouth travels fast when everybody is waiting around listening. Get this story on the news by tomorrow morning.”
“But, wait a minute,” said the mayor. “You never told me how exactly you were going to get the Phantoms off the streets.”
“Girls, I think it is time for you all to go,” Kurma instructed.
Rimselda and the rest of the Raptors got up to leave, taking the free clothes with them.
“Mayor Wilks, Raptors are capable of the same things as the Phantoms are. We Raptors,” Kurma paused, “eat Phantoms and the Phantoms eat humans.”
Leaving the room Rimselda heard Kurma still talking. “It’s the nasty trick of nature releasing two new species upon the city of Alexandria, but we all just have to evolve.” Rimselda nodded to the maid who was eavesdropping in the other room and closed the front door. Kurma would have Mayor Wilks in her back pocket by morning; things were looking bigger and better for the Raptors.
Chapter 17:
Into The Desert
The Rosales were leaving Alexandria and Inis didn’t care what he had to do. Cramped in his Aunt Prissy’s car, Inis was heading through the west side of Alexandria behind the wheel, arms tense, body tense, and eyes trained on anything out of the ordinary.
The west side was an entire part of the city where business and skyscrapers stayed out. The west was cramped and filled to the brim with houses. The houses were lined in rows and columns. Most of the houses were the same size, same design, and the same color. But now, as Inis drove through the west he saw homes that were burned down, brown lawns where green grass once grew, boarded up duplexes, abandoned car lots, and dirty yards with trash and junk accumulating. People sat on their front porch holdings rifles with dead looks in their eyes. The stray dogs roamed the streets and men hung in groups on the street corners, watching. Inis drove along with cars and trucks that were leaving the city, the stray dogs walking along with the traffic, barking and howling. Inis passed fences and gates with graffiti and drove by several soup lines. The lines held women with broken spirits and crying babies. There were no police on the west side; this part of the city was just as dead as the south and the east side.
Inis slowly passed the inner houses of the west and followed the traffic out of the maze and came to the last stop light leaving the city. Inis looked to his right and noticed a bright yellow sign, it read: Now leaving Alexandria, the mega-city of lights, population 35,000,000. Next to the population number was a huge black down arrow spray painted on the large sign.
“Can you spare any change?” a raggedy voice came from Inis’s left and scared him half to death. A bang on the window came after the voice.
Inis rolled his window down and dropped a few coins into the man’s rusty looking hands. “Here you go sir,” he said. He tried to roll his window back up but the homeless man placed a huge paw on the glass and shoved his face close to Inis’s.
“You better not go out into that desert boy,” the man grumbled.
“Sir, please, let go of my window,” Inis tried again to roll it up but the homeless man didn’t move. Inis could see all the hair growing wildly over his face and small freckles lined his nose.
“If you go out there boy,” the man kept going, unfazed by Inis, “you just better pick up something heavy and get to swinging.”
The light changed green and horns honked for Inis to go.
“That’s it lord,” the man screamed at the sky and let his hand off the window. “I did my part, don’t you ask nothing more of me!”
Inis put his foot on the gas and sped off, leaving behind the homeless man who was still screaming up at the gray clouds. Inis looked in his rear view mirror and saw all the traffic leaving out of the city. There were the infamous skyscrapers there too in the back drop, silver, black, white, and glass buildings grew smaller and smaller as the car gained distance from the city and entered into the desert.
Fae woke up and looked around. She saw brown and white on the road, snow and sand was all around her. She hated the wi
nters in Alexandria, but it wasn’t deep into the months and she was glad that her family was leaving before it snowed really badly. “How long have I been out?”
“About four hours now,” replied Inis, never taking his eyes off the road.
Fae smoothed her hand over her son’s knee and said, “Not so bad now, huh? Only about six more hours until we reach the Bluff.”
“Yeah, all the cars and trucks are staying together for the most part,” Inis said. “It’s going to get dark pretty soon.”
“How are we on gas?”
“We are going to have to stop some time but I haven’t seen a gas station yet,” he replied.
“There has to be one somewhere in this desert.” Fae looked out her window and saw the skies getting dark fast. The breeze and sand rustled outside and she could hear the winds picking up gust. There were sand dunes high up and made waves as if in an ocean. She didn’t see any signs reading where the next stop was and could barely see the license plate on the car in front of her. “The kids are going to be hungry when they wake up.”
“We can’t stop; they are just going to have to eat in the car.”
“Well, I have to pee,” came Aunt Prissy’s voice from the back. She had awakened.
“Aunt Prissy, I’m not trying to leave the group of people on the road. When they stop then so will we,” explained Inis.
“You don’t even know those people out there. The first store we see we need to stop and re-up on everything.”
“But I’m the one driving and I think we should keep going.”
“I didn’t ask you what you thought and this is my car,” Prissy retorted back. “Remember that.”
“Ma, can you do something here?”
Fae spoke up, “We probably are low on gas Inis, let’s just stop at the next rest stop.”
Inis couldn’t believe his mother. If they left the group of cars and trucks leaving out the city then they would be sitting ducks if something were to happen. There was power in numbers. Only an irrational mind would want to be divided and conquered.
“If the group pulls over on the road first then we should stop and stay with them,” Inis tried another angle.
“Didn’t your Mami just say that we needed gas?” Prissy said. “We stop at a gas station and that’s final.”
As soon as Aunt Prissy said this, cars and trucks on the road in front of Inis began to slow down and swerve off of the road onto the soft sands of the desert.
“Don’t you dare think about it, Inis,” hissed Aunt Prissy.
Inis could see out his rear view mirror that the vehicles behind him were pulling over as well.
“Pull over Inis,” Aunt Prissy yelled in his ear from the back. “I’m about to drive, get in the back with the kids.”
“Pull over Inis, like your aunty said,” instructed Fae.
Inis rolled his eyes and moved off the road and let a passing trailer truck go by. The gigantic truck zoomed by the small car and kicked up dirt as Inis opened the car door and let his Aunt Prissy out.
“That is the last time I am going to let you drive,” Prissy yelled. “It’s very simple, we fill up the tank and we can keep going into the night.”
“We can do that now but at least we will have people around just in case anything happens,” Inis tried to explain.
“These people will not help us,” she said. “They only care about themselves. You think they would give us a gallon of gas if we run out five miles from now?”
“I’m not saying everyone is a saint but there is power in numbers and I don’t want to be out here in the desert by ourselves on the road at night.”
“Well its already night and these people want to pull over on the side of the road and we are only about five hours away from a city that’s teeming with cannibal Phantoms on the loose…crazy.”
“Aunty, I know what you are saying but let me just go ask somebody where is the next gas station,” Inis said. “What if the gas station is 40 miles away? I don’t think that we can make it if so.” Inis turned his head and saw headlights coming in their direction. He had no idea who would be dumb enough to come into Alexandria at night while the Phantoms were on the loose.
“Well go ask somebody then. But I still say we should go for it and be the first ones out of this desert.” Fae closed her front car door and left Inis outside in the cold.
Inis turned to walk off but didn’t know which car to approach. They probably wouldn’t know anything. They were leaving the city, no one came out of the city; no one left the city by desert anymore. But still, Inis knew that there should be a gas station or a diner somewhere along the route. Inis noticed a man getting out of a purple minivan to have a smoke.
“Excuse me,” Inis yelled up to the man. The man lit his cigarette and waved him over.
“How you doing?” The man bundled his arms tight around him and exhaled the smoke out.
Inis walked up to the man and saw that he had at least seven people in the van. They looked out the windows at him and talked amongst themselves.
“Want some smoke?” the man unhooked his arm from underneath one another and brought the cigarette out for Inis.
“No thanks man,” Inis responded. “I just came over here to ask if you knew about a gas station that might be out here or something.”
The man nodded his head yes. “There is one about ten minutes up called HGP gas, can’t miss it.”
“Why didn’t we stop up there then?” he asked the man.
The man answered, “We have to go scout that place out before we all stop there. I think we are waiting for one of the guys to come back and clear it.”
Inis shook the man’s hand to thank him and was about to leave when he saw something big in his peripheral.
“I think that might be them up there coming this way,” said the man.
But Inis didn’t think so. It was the same huge trailer truck that he had let pass him earlier. Those were the same head lights that he had seen up on the horizon prior, and the truck was coming towards them fast on the wrong side of the road. Inis broke the handshake and started to run back to his family.
“RUN!”
He screamed to the cars on the side of the road. “RUN!” Inis shouted to his family who were sitting in the car waiting for him.
But the crash was much louder than his voice could carry. The metal upon metal screeched high as the truck crashed into vehicles head first, blundering down the line destroying everything that it touched.
Chapter 18:
Death to the Desert
“Get out the car!” Fae heard Inis scream as she watched her oldest son stumbling through the sand. Fae’s heartbeat quickened at the sight of a huge hunk of metal crashing towards her. She flung her car door open and pulled her little niece, who was still sleep, from the back.
“Prissy get your ass out now!” she screamed to her sister and grabbed her hand and pulled as hard as she could before the truck could reach them too.
“Fae, what the hell is happening?” Prissy asked as she fell from the car with her son.
Fae had no idea. All around her were screams and shouts. Some Winnebago’s started up and made a U-turn back to Alexandria and others came from their vehicles to help the injured. The massive truck had finally stopped after it hit the tenth car. The truck was painted in a dull looking black shade, and the windows were dark as well. The only light came from the dim headlights and that shut off too, leaving the road in blackness.
Inis ran over to his family and asked if everyone was alright. Fae was definitely shaken up but could only imagine how the people up front felt. “We should go help them,” Fae said.
“Yeah, let’s go,” Inis replied.
Loud noises popped off from the front and small showers of fire lit up the night and screams erupted; everyone stampeded away. Men in dark brown clothes and black masks jumped from the back of the trailer truck which blocked the entire span of the road. They had guns and swung knives at those nearest them; the men in mask
grabbed people and their belongings and tossed them back into their storage unit and moved on down the line.
Fae couldn’t tell how many men there were; they blended in so well with the back drop of the desert and the night, but the guns could not blend in. The guns were big and mean looking, tough weapons that would hurt her and her family if she didn’t run.
“Get back in the car!” Prissy yelled.
Bullets ricocheted off the windows of the cars, making the family hit the dirt.
“Cover the kids,” Fae yelled. She could see frantic feet running in the dirt, leaving them to be kidnapped or killed. She had to get away, whatever she had to do to get away from these masked men and their guns and knives.
Prissy snatched her daughter from Fae’s arms, brought her son to his feet and ran away with the rest of the people. If the men with the guns wanted the car and all of the things in it then they could have it. It was just a car, but her kids were everything to her. She had told Fae and Inis to not leave Alexandria and now they were in the midst of winter in the middle of a desert while being tracked down by masked men. Who wanted what, a beat up car?
“Prissy!” Fae screamed after her. She and Inis ran after Prissy and the little ones. Fae could see that the masked men were taking people, looting cars and trucks, gunning people down, she could see it all as she ran for dear life. Whoever didn’t give up their stuff were dealt with by force. Fae felt Inis grab her hand tightly as they both made their way deeper into the thick sands of the desert and away from the abandoned cars on fire and the fighting.
“There they are,” said Inis.
Up ahead the two saw Prissy and her kids running against the harsh winds of the night. Fae saw it first, two men coming for her sister. “Prissy to your right!” Fae tried to warn her sister but the winds caught her voice and pushed it back down her throat. Inis dropped Fae’s hand and sprinted towards the men. Fae almost lost her mind. Not her son. Why did Prissy have to go off by herself and leave the rest of them? Now her son had to step in; how would he stop two men with guns?
One of the masked bandits picked off the two kids instantly, Inis saw it happen right before his eyes. Prissy took a swipe at the other and they both began to tussle. Inis tried to pick up his long legs as best as he could to get to his aunt in time but it was too late. The bandit smashed the butt of his gun down on his aunt’s head, once, twice, three times. It was an unfair fight, a fight to the death.