Red Lashers

by Kyle Dane

  “Captured?” verifies the New Jersey voice.

  “Oh yes! Right now…I tell ya’...right now they hold him hostage in the White House. Think of it! Being held hostage in your own house...it’s downright disrespectful!” he explains.

  Love it. Better than I bargained for. He tells the story like he was there at the heart of everything, privy to precise details unbeknownst to anyone else. Glad I came tonight. I like this guy. True scholar.

  “Like I've said a hundred times, Craskol, if that’s true about them bein' aliens then where’re the space ships? Besides, I wasn’t talkin’ to you. Was askin’ our lovely new friends here what they think might could be happenin',” responds Big Morda.

  I think they’re a couple. Rings encircle both of their wedding fingers. I don’t get it. Why do people even bother? It won’t last. Sooner or later death will come to Craskol’s black hands...hands that will no longer be able to caress Morda’s white skin, and, boom, just like that their relationship will be over and done as if it never even happened. Same fate as my parents. Years of building trust, memories, happiness, a home, a family with kids, a retirement plan...all of it gone. The point? Beats me. Of course I crave the warmth of companionship like the next lonely human, but I don’t see the logic of comforting a cold heart with a warm blanket, when the blanket will only be stripped away later on. That’s the purest form of torture—temporarily enjoying what you’ll eternally be without. I’ll leave that silliness to silly people.

  “Well dang it Morda...it might...it might could be true! True as-as the blood red moon that rises over us every nine days!” Like a net, Craskol’s wiry beard catches spit that falls from his mouth as he passionately defends his position. He now cocks his head back and takes a big swig out of a liquor bottle. Same one I destroyed from my supply box earlier today. Lots of people will be getting wasted tonight.

  A recognized pessimist—my kind of human—throws her thoughts into the mix with a bland Mid-Western accent like mine, “What if it’s only getting worse? What if other countries have Lashers now too? These meetings would be pointless!”

  Another round of awkward silence trails the comment, led by yet another lapse of vacant stares into the flames.

  I start to think about what's factually known of Lashers. Not opinions, speculations, or crazy illusions, the facts. We know what they are not. No zombie, werewolf, or any other fabricated creation I’ve ever heard of or seen in movies fits the profile. Nothing.

  We know what they once were. Human. They transformed during the first Red-out, the night that blindsided us all and set into motion this endless cycle of death that repeats literally once every nine days when the night sky turns red. That's when they come out. After a few hours of hunting, they disappear into darkness not to be seen again until the countdown for the next Red-out is up. Why nine days? Where do they go? If you dared follow them to find out, you wouldn’t survive, so we’re left with nothing but question marks to plague the mind’s imagination.

  Worst of all Lasher truths is that they can’t die. I remember the first time I tried to kill one. California. Fourth Red-out. A war party of enraged women and men planned to rally together at the high school football field as soon as night fell, ready to meet the Lashers the moment the red mist brought them out of hiding.

  In the last decimals of sunlight, I made the decision to join the fight. I remember running towards the stadium, towards the sound of thousands of people yelling fearlessly while doing other things to lure the Lashers, including banging tin trashcans like the drums of war. I could see the battle from far off. The Lashers—a mere few dozen—had barely fallen upon the human fighters. Some people had baseball bats for weapons. Axes. Garden tools. Some even had guns. Many others drove their cars and trucks into the Lasher horde.

  Me? On my person I carried nothing more than the fresh image of my dead mother and father. Vengeance was my weapon. And regret. How I wish I treated Mom better when I had the chance. I wished then, as I do now, that I gave her the hug I withheld at Sterlings. I’d run to her if I could. Wrap my arms around her so tight that I’d never let go. Say thank you over and over again so she’d know just how much she meant to me. I’d apologize, for everything.

  Sprinting at the Lashers was me confronting my guilt, but it was a lost cause from the start. I was probably fifty yards away when it happened...when I realized how terrifyingly powerful the Lashers are and that this was a war we’d never win. Ever. A man fired several gun shots into a Lasher that was only a few feet from him. It was affected, sure—slightly dazed by the blasts of full metal jackets entering its head but not stopped. The Lasher continued its advance.

  Unable to compute what my eyes were witnessing, I quit running and stood in place long enough to watch the weaponless Lasher lunge forward and impale its frightened victim through the chest with bare hands as though its fingers were sharp knives. Then, after abandoning the carcass, the Lasher moved on to the next victim, then the next, and the next after that, exuding the only documented behavior typical of a Lasher: violence. Why do they lash out? It’s not for food. They don’t even eat the bodies of their victims but leave them to rot on the ground—the way they did my parents. The only feeding they do is on the misery of others. Is it hate? Is it a bad rewiring of the brain that occurred during transformation? An extreme case of self-preservation that views other species as threats? Their motive is unclear, but they’re clearly motivated...to kill.

  The grotesque appearance of the monster only added to the horrifying scene of death, which was my eyes’ first official encounter. Although from a distance, I could see the shadowed look of a human: two arms, two legs, a head with eyes and ears, and normal limb-to-torso proportions.

  However, I swear I noticed long lines or cracks that spread all over the half-naked body from head to toe as if it’d gone through a giant paper shredder and lived. Its skin seemed thick and coarse like dried-out leather or a charred piece of meat over-cooked on a high flame, the color of which was a unique shade between dark red and black. No hair, whatsoever.

  The Lashers moved in a crooked way well-suited to their crooked look—torsos hunched over, heads tilted down but forward, arms flared out to the sides, and legs almost crisscrossed over each other as they ran at inhuman speed. Everything about the creatures was unnatural and wrong, the creation of a dark, fictitious thought. Yet it was all real. And my physical eyes couldn’t reject reality. The horror up close and personal, face to face and eye to eye is an experience I hope to never have.

  The next thing I did was less than heroic, but what other option was there? I hid inside a dumpster behind a thrift store while the massacre ensued, a place that became my safe haven for about five months, where my life’s apathetic cowardice became a consistent routine. Each Red-out offered no shortage of screams to be heard outside the dumpster, someone in need of help, however I never budged. Yes it’s torture listening to blood-curdling cries splat across the wall of silence while being the coward who does absolutely nothing, but playing the hero would only result in martyrdom.

  Can still smell the putrid garbage odors that mixed with my own fear-triggered urine and BO. How could I not feel fear when sitting there, waiting for the dumpster lid to lift at any second and my life to be over? I remember when it eventually did at the end of a Red-out. The lid opened, but it wasn’t the Lashers like I expected. New friends found and took me in. Saved me. But that’s a dead time as is our so-called friendship. Would’ve been better had they left me in the dumpster where trash belongs.

  Another emotional earthquake. Will they ever stop? I turn my face away from the Assembly, shut my eyes tightly, and, with focused effort, stabilize the ground-shaking fury of my seismic heart. Don’t like my weaknesses showing through to public judgments, otherwise I’d allow the outburst. Dang. Maybe I should’ve shredded up Meilos a bit longer.

  ∆∆∆

  “Ok…so what I do know for-for-for a fact of science is…um…” Craskol restarts the conversation. I patiently
wait for him to collect his fleeting thoughts when suddenly, in a moment of channeled anxiousness, Craskol spits out a series of fully coherent sentences as if he were magically no longer intoxicated. “Y'all, Lashers CAN be stopped! But the thing is them got cracks in their skin that run deep to their core that can open up wide, allowing the red Zadium to enter their bodies to give em’ the special power they need to carry out…” he slows then swallows dramatically. “...carry out their evil design like puppets on a string. They don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t want to kill!”

  “Amen,” sounds Big Morda.

  Although I’d love to believe that Lashers can be stopped, per Craskol’s claim, nothing else from his mouth convinces me to take him seriously. Zadium? No idea what that means, never heard the word before. Cracks in the skin? That one actually almost has my attention but is overpowered by the anger I’m beginning to feel at his last claim that they “don’t want to kill” because they’re “puppets on a string.” Tell that to my parents!

  Enough entertainment for one night. Bedtime. I stand up and walk away from the twelve-person campfire but not before catching one final piece of dialogue from Craskol.

  “Plus…their hearts are-are-are not normal! They beat real fast, which enhances their power!”

  I stop dead in my tracks.

  “What did you say?” I ask, rethinking departure.

  “Wo, cream corn!” cries Craskol. “He talks!”

  “We thought you were a mute,” says Big Morda.

  All eyes are statically fixed upon me, wondering why I care so much about Craskol's last comment.

  “You said something about their heartbeat,” I remind.

  Craskol hovers over the fire and extends his hands widely in front of him as though describing the size of something big. “Yeah, their heartbeat…is-is not human!”

  “How do you know?” I demand.

  “Someone told me. Real nice fella, but-but real sad. I could tell. I can always tell when people are sad just by lookin’ into their eyes.” Craskol zooms into my face as if to judge me. “I’m real good at readin’ people’s eyes...Mama used to say…”

  “Did this person tell you the other things you said about Lashers, also? That they can be stopped?” I unapologetically interrupt.

  “Yes. Well, I’m pretty positive that...no, no...” With a self-satisfying grin, Craskol corrects himself. “…I’m handsomely positive that everything I said was from my friend. Minus the part about the aliens. I figured that out on my own.”

  “What’s the name?” I ask.

  “To be truthfully honest with you, I don’t know. When I asked for it, he tells me, ‘I don’t deserve a name.’ That’s what he said. That he didn’t deserve a name, and no matter how much I asked, he wouldn't say. So it was up to me to name the poor little fella, and bein' that he was a stranger, I just called him…the Stranger.”

  Craskol faces the rest of the Assembly and accelerates his story. “A couple days after the first Red-out, I was outside the bar with a bottle of…sweet southern comfort.” He takes a quick gulp out of the bottle in hand. “That’s when I saw him. The Stranger came wanderin’ in ta’ town stumblin’ a bit. Was wearin’ a fancy lookin’ tag on his shirt with a picture and writing on it. He-he violently tore it off when I asked about it. That joker had a bewildered look upon his face, I tell ya', BEWILDERED! Seemed ta’ be in some sorta shock or…or…maybe…maybe he was lost…like a…” Craskol raises his hands then frantically flutters his fingers as if playing an invisible piano. “…thick fog searching for a graveyard, ya’ know? Or maybe he was just drunk. I know I was!” He laughs hysterically.

  “Anyway, the Stranger ain’t never moved since,” says Big Morda. “Kept mostly to himself, which unnerved folks, but took a likin’ to Craskol.”

  “Where does he live?” I chime in.

  “Where? Where-we-were-at-the-time, of course!” Craskol snaps. "Boy, you need to tighten up!” Whatever that means. He takes a deep, obnoxiously slow breath. “Northern Florida.” His tone mellows out dramatically as if he hit a wall of fatigue. He closes his eyes. “All you have to do is find the place where the Snow Queen lives and the Stranger’ll be there. OKAY?!” The closed blinds hanging over his eyes fling open upon hurling his last word at me, followed by a brief, hostile stare. “That’s all I got for you tonight, curtain closed.” He now re-embraces Morda and the others with a friendly smile and new energy.

  Where the Snow Queen lives? It’s hard to take this dude seriously. Not sure when it’s the alcohol talking or him, but I can’t ignore his comment about the Lashers’ heartbeat. That's a detail I’m personally acquainted with, significant or not, and something I've never heard anyone else mention before. So perhaps there’s validity to Craskol’s other claims.

  Through the years, I’ve heard people passionately insist many explanations about Lashers: alien theories; advanced terrorism; human evolution; an ancient evil summoned through the dark arts; a virus that only affects certain DNA types which is why only some of us turned into Lashers. The list goes on. Maybe one’s right. Or they’re all wrong. No theory is conclusive, but one thing I’m sure of is that Lashers have strange-sounding heartbeats. Loud and fast.

  What’s the Stranger’s story? I can’t help but feel the need to seek him out; I still care about the seven-year-old vow I made to learn the reason why my parents aren’t with me today when they should be. Sure, I understand they were murdered by a mysterious monster. That’s the reason. But not good enough. I need to know the reason behind the reason.

  Really, Ruko? You gunna travel to Northern Florida? You’ve followed bread crumbs before with nothing but dead ends. You need to accept that this is a mystery you’ll never understand. It is what it is, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re staying here.

  CHAPTER 6: ALTER EGO

  “Good morning, Ruko.” Without fail, Abbud, an old Middle-Eastern man, greets me in his kind accented voice as I enter Mielos Gym. His wrinkled hands move a broom across the entryway floor mat that’s near the front check-in desk.

  “Hey Bud,” I reply.

  He graciously accepts the nickname—like always—with the nod of his eighty-something-year-old head. “You-going-to-have-a good day-to-day?” he asks in a sluggish, crackly tone. The words seem to come out in slow motion, but his choppy English is best understood when he creates space between words.

  I think for a second about his ridiculous question while not stopping my energetic walk towards the free-weight section of the medium-size gym. “Depends...if the fish are biting,” I cast.

  Abbud laughs through closed lips and shakes his head in a manner of disapproval.

  Am I going to have a good day today? Ha. It’s not unusual for Abbud to try converting me into his whacked-out mentality of optimism, as if the quality of my day is somehow my decision. Wish it were that simple. Fish might wish to walk on land, but no matter how intense the desire, they can't grow legs. A good day...yeah, I'd love to have one, it’s something I thirst for. How can I, though, when my life is drilled up with so many voids that are beyond my ability to fill? Unresolved pain of the past, stressful problems of the present, and endless fears of the future. Holes. Holes. Holes. If a good day was a glass of water to be drunk, it’d leak right out of me and become a puddle on the ground. I simply can’t have a good day by choice alone. The holes need to be filled, first.

  ∆∆∆

  As I prepare a bench to work out my chest, Abbud takes his time dusting a cracked computer monitor that doesn't even work. Such a funny dude, being so strangely devoted to his self-bestowed Meilo duties—from cleaning light fixtures, the weights, sweeping the floors, scrubbing the windows, and even making structural repairs caused by my heated hand or from the occasional wandering Lasher. Thanks to him, the place actually looks like it’s in business. Cleaning. I guess that's his outlet.

  Despite being territorial over my private therapy clinic—as of the past four plus years since I arrived to SLC—I consid
er Abbud to be a harmless decoration of the room; I’m cool with his presence. But baffled by his extraordinary niceness. How does he do it? While the world’s whirling chaos carries the mass populous in a wind of narcissistic living, Abbud remains steadfastly grounded in politeness, positivity, and hope. He defends that even the most polluted horizons eventually clear and good things follow, like the bright warmth of a sunrise after a cold, dark night. Reminds me a lot of Mom. She often said, “Be the sunrise you want to see in the world, not the raincloud.” But I don’t know how to rise—clouds are my life.

  Ten pounds, twenty-five, thirty-five. I browse the buffet assortment of weight plates on their numerically-associated racks and decide that I'm in a moderately heavy lifting mood. Nothing too crazy. Not super pissed off, today. I stop perusing in front of forty-five pound plates and grab two.

  Abbud’s life must be easier than mine, for him to be so happy. Or maybe he was born with a mutant happy gene my DNA lacks. But no, according to him, my problem is simply that I’m too high-strung. Need to relax. He says that the day I can rack a forty-five pound plate without scraping the interior metal against the metal bench bar, without making any sound at all, then I am relaxed. Stupid, I say. And impossible. Here goes attempt number one million...

  I stand at the end of the bar that meets my body chest high, holding the forty-five pound plate with the hole perfectly aligned to the corresponding bar end. I glance at Abbud, already knowing he's watching me. Waiting. We stare at one another in expressionless silence like a showdown is about to commence. I push the plate forward through the air, and, at first, the hole swallows the bar without the two pieces touching. But the plate is heavy and the hole barely bigger than the bar's circumference, which grants only a small margin for error.