by Glen Krisch
"There's others?"
"If you didn't look so fit and eager, I probably wouldn't have even let you in."
Claudia felt a bizarre twinge of pride.
He thinks I'm fit! Claudia did a pirouette, her gown twirling around her ankles. The bars on the windows were like a mother's embrace. She would remain safe, with occasional visits from her love. She couldn't have planned this out any better. Maybe the apocalypse wasn't so bad after all.
So Close to Home
Story Notes
Drew, Aaron, Molly...
All gone now. Changed into something else. Something vengeful. Something hungry. His sons, his wife. All infected, damned like all the others. The attack began the night before when Aaron, a boy all of eleven and with a lamb's disposition, slashed claw marks across Saul's cheek. Saul recounted those details as he ran through a twisting ravine, sloshing through the bone-chilling creek that halved Beaumont County with its ceaseless slurry.
Had there been a moment... one last instant when I could've done something different... something to prevent what happened?
There was no answer. No slight instant lost to fate that might have altered the course of events. And now, hours later, they followed not far behind—his family for God's sake—tracking him like wolves closing on weakened prey.
As mist gathered at his brow he remembered his youngest staring at the blood on his fingernails, marveling at the crimson luminescence. And then, in the stillness filling the moments after the initial attack, Drew, strong for his sixteen years, entered the fray with a rage Saul hadn't seen since 'Nam. The boy pounded Saul's back with a maniacal drumbeat of fists to his spine, his kidneys. With the wind forced from his lungs, moonlight cut across the living room rug, enveloping the melee. Saul reached desperately for his wife's half-extended hand. But Molly, love of his life for twenty years, retrieved her grasp to her bosom, glaring down at him with scorn and confusion.
Saul had wanted to strike back, to mar and scratch and maim, his rage building, ready to match Drew's. But something clicked inside his head. A bright, blinding notion that defused his will to fight back: the need to preserve his family. The need for his sons to continue on, a need deep seeded in his DNA. No, he couldn't hurt them, could never harm a hair on any of their heads. No matter the illogic. No matter what they had become.
So he slipped the boys' clumsy grip, shoved by his dear wife, and made a break for the door. He sprinted down the gravel driveway, running with a single-minded clarity driving him on: preserve the family. Preserve the family at all costs.
Molly and the boys had been keen to his trail since his escape, first slyly, ducking behind trees and never straying from the shadows, before eventually shirking the safety of cover for the sake of speed. Crazed, hungry, unleashed from the civilizing bonds of humanity, they closed on his position. While Saul would do anything to avoid harming them, their intent could be no further from his.
Pre-dawn fog rolled through the hollow surrounding the Lowdermilk farm, touching everything within its reach with a wet sigh. Dean Lowdermilk had raised a family on the small farmette tucked into the flat valley bottom, as his father and father's father had before him. Molly bought Lowdermilk's asparagus in the Spring and his back-bowing pumpkins come autumn. Saul only knew Dean well enough to exchange with him amiable nods when they saw each other in town. Now, in his desperation and dragging with exhaustion, Saul mounted the stairs of the wraparound porch. As he opened the door, he scanned the rolling woods for signs of pursuit. He entered the home without bothering to knock, assuming the Lowdermilks were gone, like all the rest. Every family with roots deep in the hollow had taken sick with violence, turning on one another with their teeth bared.
Country life, with its unlocked doors and neighborly hospitality, would it ever be the same?
After stepping inside, he checked the shuttered windows. Shadows shifted through the wispy fog. Getting closer.
He slumped to the floor, his fingers lingering on the dried blood on his cheek, the rent forged by his son's fingertips. How could this have happened to his family? He pressed his back against the wall and slammed his fist against the floor, despondent. They would never again be a family.
He first encountered the infection at work. Julia Kemp, his office clerk for seven years, attacked a custodian named Nate, as he entered the building to start his day. Though outweighed by fifty pounds, she slammed his face through a pane of window glass. She tugged down on his struggling body, letting the window shards sever the workings of his neck. When a police officer happened by the bloody scene, he ordered Julia to lay on the ground with her palms flat against the blacktop. Instead of obeying, she flung herself at the gun-drawn officer. Saul witnessed the altercation from his office window as the officer was forced to gun her down. Julia took a slug in the shoulder, and still she charged. A second bullet hit the meat of her thigh, barely slowing her advance. A bullet between her eyes sent her sprawling to the sidewalk, and there she twitched once, twice, then was still.
Had that only been two days ago?
After that incident and a wave of violent acts reported on the news, Saul and his family retreated to their cabin, hoping it would be the ideal location to wait out whatever was happening. They arrived the day before under the cover of darkness, immediately turning on the television for the latest news updates. When they heard the same vague reports as in town, with little or no added information, Saul turned off the set and locked the doors.
Aaron, the sensitive member of their family, had been the first to show any signs of change. The boy began pacing the cramped cabin kitchen, his arms crossed tightly in front of him as if to hold himself together, keeping a wary eye on Saul. Saul tried ignoring the boy, insisting to himself that any suspicions he might have were simply paranoia.
How things can go to shit so fast! Saul thought for the hundredth time.
He noticed a body in the corner of the room, a ratty-worn recliner blocking its face. The naked legs twisted unnaturally from behind the recliner and bite marks marred the left calf. Dean Lowdermilk, maybe his boy, Thomas, Saul couldn't tell. It unnerved him that at this moment, when he was running for his life under untenable circumstances, his stomach should remind him how long it had been since he'd last eaten. It grumbled and he scratched it like he would a bug bite. He looked away from the body, wondering what he might find in the kitchen.
When he looked up, Aaron stood inside the opened front door, the sound of harried footsteps closing in behind him. The boy raised the slingshot Saul bought him for his birthday the year before. His son sneered, drew the weighted load, let fire.
A ball bearing slammed into Saul's temple. He flinched, felt a distant caress of pain, but didn't otherwise move.
"You're not my Dad." The boy was crying.
Saul could only tremble where he sat. Trapped.
Drew and Molly hurried inside. Molly saw Saul and gasped as if gut-punched.
Saul sniffed the air. His mouth watered uncontrollably, spittle dribbling down his chin. Something clicked inside his head, the last gasp of his humanity shutting off, his notion of preserving his family along with it. He quickly gained his feet and took two strides toward Aaron and launched himself, his lips pulled wide, striking at the weakest and most tender of his flock.
Drew leveled his shotgun, then leveled judgment on his father.
"I'm so sorry, Dad. We couldn't let you go on like that."
Saul never heard his son's apology.
Winterlochen Academy
Story Notes
The slight boy, Wight, made slighter still from months of starvation, hid in the murk of the choir balcony. The howling of wolves echoed the shrill wind's cry as it whipped the walls of the academy's two hundred-year-old church. With such a ruckus, Wight had trouble eavesdropping on the conversation below. He shifted his positioning, but still, only snippets reached his ear:
"We need to leave, Howard. No one's coming for us."
It was unsettling to hear Dr. Julia
n's given name uttered by Darby McGuire, one of Julian's students and the girl who had captured Wight's heart when she arrived on the island the year before.
"We can't." Dr. Julian turned toward a gothic stained glass depicting the Ascension. His breath shot out in hazed clouds. The old church creaked with cold and hadn't been heated in over a year.
"If we gather enough supplies..." Darby pressed.
"You don't understand—"
"Brownlie and Francis," Darby said, cutting him off. "They were just kids, freshmen, remember? They probably couldn't even read the compass you gave them."
Brownlie and Francis left the academy grounds a month ago in search of other survivors, never to return. Their plan was to veer south after leaving the grounds, reaching the Winterlochen village within a day. If the boys found no survivors, they planned to steal a boat that would sail the rough lake waters, making for the mainland by whichever direction the wind pushed them.
After they exited the grounds, the brutal westerly wind eroded their tracks through the swirling snowdrifts. Those who stayed behind had erased the two spirited boys from memory just as quickly. It was easier that way, Wight figured. It's immeasurably easier to mourn the singular world than each individual struck from its departing warmth.
"It's not that, Darby. You don't know what's happening out there. No one does."
"But you do?"
The teacher turned, his eyes glassy. Julian had been the most junior instructor at the academy. Now he appeared wizened beyond his years.
"As a matter of fact, I do. We can't leave. None of us can ever leave."
Judging by the increased volume of their cries, the wolf pack was closing on the church. It wouldn't surprise Wight to see one reckless member of the pack crashing through the stained glass, sacrificing itself to allow access to its family. The dwindling academy populace weren't the only ones running out of food these last few months.
"We'll starve if we don't do something."
"Starving is better than what waits outside the academy gates."
"You're crazy!" Darby snapped, losing her patience.
Julian took two powerful strides toward Darby. The aggressive uncoiling of his limbs made Wight think he would strike the girl. Wight stood, ready to call out, but Dr. Julian merely took Darby by the shoulders and said, "But you love me anyway."
The older man leaned over and kissed Darby McGuire on the lips. High in the choir balcony, muted by the baying of the starving wolves, Wight cried as his heart broke for the first time in his fourteen short years.
Wolf cries woke Wight the next day. Their baying was no longer that of starving hunters but of cornered prey. Curled under a mound of blankets, Wight wondered what could possibly scare the island's most vicious predators. The cries soon trailed off, as if the melee had caromed over the surrounding drifts and beyond. Wight pulled himself free from his bed to start another hopeless day.
He couldn't stop thinking about how Darby McGuire had allowed herself to be kissed by her former Natural Sciences instructor. Dr. Julian had claimed the girl loved him. If that were true, Wight couldn't imagine a crueler world.
Wight moved to the remote Upper Peninsula Island three years ago. He didn't come as a student, however, considering his youth and low social standing, but as the charge of the academy's new groundskeeper, Hiram Durant, his paternal grandfather. Wight attended the tiny island's public school in the nearby village bearing the same name as the iconic private school. Sure, he would occasionally sneak inside the great lecture hall to listen to Dr. Rauch's warm baritone as he described the lives of Plutarch or Archimedes, but those occasions had been few and far between. Instead, he had bided his time, bored and daydreaming amongst the village children, waiting until he could attend Winterlochen Academy as a student.
Just shy of Wight's start as a full-fledged student, the world came undone. The Spring thaw, first thought to be simply delayed, became quite mysteriously, a non-event. April and May came and went in a blur of sleeting snow and treacherous black ice. The snow banks deepened into the height of Summer, eye-high by the fourth of July. The President declared a national state of emergency on what would have been the first day of school. His brief statement opened the overburdened floodgates, allowing chaos to rule the island. While the declaration caused most students and faculty to abandon the sheltered shores of Winterlochen for more southern locales, Wight helped his grandfather with his added duties: wood-splitting, the shutting of vacant corridors, the inventorying of pantry levels.
He missed the old man.
Wight rose on rickety bones from his study desk, feeling like an old man himself, gathering the blanket around his shoulders. He glanced at the bundle in the corner of his room, but didn't allow himself to linger. Doing so would only bring about a darker mood, and he couldn't afford anything like that today. Not when he had to put on a happy face for Darby McGuire.
After rubbing warmth into his hands, he approached the hearth and jabbed a poker at last night's coals, finding slumbering embers at the core. In short order, he had a small fire going. He made some tepid tea, but had nothing else left for breakfast. The tea warmed him somewhat and pushed away the gnawing hunger.
"How could I let this happen?" he said aloud, pacing the room, picturing Darby's warm brown eyes. "I think I love her... no, I do love her." He stopped in mid-stride and looked at the bundle in the corner. It was easy to make out the outline of the shrouded face, the hook nose, even the rise of his bushy beard. "I wish you were here, Grandfather. You would know what to do."
Someone knocked on his door. Wight's breath caught in his throat. He couldn't remember the last time someone had come to his dorm room. Those who remained at the academy had insulated themselves, alone or in pairs, against the paranoia inherent to a small group with diminishing supplies. Once the structure and stability of the everyday disappeared, so did any possibility for trust.
The knock came again, this time shaking the door in its frame.
"Who is it?" Wight's voice felt scratchy from disuse.
"It's Dr. Julian."
Wight opened the door only slightly, but Dr. Julian forced it wide, entering as if it were commonplace.
"Wight. Hello."
"Can I help you?"
"I need to speak with Hiram."
"He's..." Wight said, unable to finish. He hadn't yet spoken it aloud, and didn't want to. Instead, he looked at the bundle in the corner.
"I'm sorry, Wight, but you see, I'm in a hurry."
"What is it then?" Wight snapped, surprised at his rising anger.
"I wouldn't have bothered you if it weren't important. I need a weapon."
"Aren't you a pacifist? Isn't that what you've always lectured?"
"This concerns our survival. I think that changes things to a certain extent."
"Who's survival? Yours and Darby's? How old is she, seventeen?"
Julian pointed an index finger as if to emphasis a stridently articulated point. Instead of yelling, he said in a small voice, "Our relationship is none of your business."
"Thanks for stopping by, then. It's been a pleasure," Wight said, and with an exaggerated conciliatory motion, he opened the door.
"You heard it, didn't you?" Julian said, ignoring the boy.
Wight unconsciously glanced at the window, remembering the crying wolves. "What are you talking about?"
"So you did. I can see the fear in your eyes. Good for you. Fear is an essential survival instinct."
"What's more frightening than starving to death?"
"Predation, for one. We are in the crosshairs of one of nature's great hunters. Humans. Hunted. Can you even imagine? That hasn't happened in ten thousand years."
All Wight wanted was for Dr. Julian to leave. Darby had tabbed it right last night—Julian had lost his mind. Despite himself, Wight pressed on: "And what hunted us ten thousand years ago?"
"The same beast that slaughtered those wolves. Sasquatch. Yeti. Abominable Snowman," Julian said, his voice becoming qu
ieter with each monstrous iteration. He could be telling scary tales beside a campfire, ready to pounce once the story reached maximum tension.
Wight couldn't believe how ridiculous Julian sounded. "That's just stories." Though he laughed to punctuate his point, his voice trembled.
"The Sasquatch myth is found in all parts of the world where ice sheets descended during the last ice age. I've researched the myths extensively. The subject would've been the topic of my doctoral thesis if my adviser hadn't strongly recommended otherwise. Our current long period of winter has brought them out of hibernation, and thus awakened, they are insatiably hungry."
"If they're such terrible creatures, why do they only come out during ice ages?" Wight asked, his curiosity growing.
"They have a role, as we all do. It is their role to clean the planet of the remaining populations. As the ice sheets retreat, and Spring dawns again, the beasts leave behind a pristine landscape. Though they are only awakened sporadically, they live quite extravagantly for that short while."
"You sound envious," Wight said cynically.
"Believe me or not, it'll be back. If not tonight, then soon. And when it comes for us, that'll be the end." A weighted silence grew between them, a tense bubble inflated with accusations, condemnations, and perhaps even a hint of violence. A minute or more went by. Wight had a crazy notion that his grandfather would sit up at the waist to scold them both.
Finally, Julian spoke: "I need a weapon so I can kill this thing. I'm sure Hiram had a gun of some sort, he hunted game didn't he? Don't do it for me, or even you, but think of Darby. You wouldn't want anything terrible to happen to that sweet girl, would you?"
Wight wanted to blurt out that something terrible had already happened as she'd fallen under Julian's spell, but he held his tongue. Instead, he went to the coat closet and removed a ring of keys his grandfather had hidden there since the emergency declaration.
"This square key opens a shed behind the garage that houses the lawn mowers," Wight said, holding up the key. Julian reached out like a child desperate for candy. Wight pulled his hand back. "Once inside, this round key will open Grandfather's gun safe. Take what you need. Just do it. If there really is something that dangerous, kill it."