by Laeser, Nico
The truck’s tires crunched over sporadic patches of debris and ticked rhythmically along the smooth stretches between as the rocks and glass, wedged between the tire-treads, were sanded smooth or spat out behind the truck. The rumble of the engine, ticking tires, and the sloshing of gas and water, were somehow soothing. We were headed home.
“What happened to Kate and Owen and Kyle?” I asked.
“They ran for the train.”
“Did they make it?”
Powell nodded. “They got on it. I don’t know if it’s going to be any better wherever they end up, but they got on.”
“Sam and Abby?” I asked.
He nodded. “They’re all together. Wherever they end up, at least they’ll have each other.”
“I thought I was going to die,” I said. “If you hadn’t come when you did, I would have.”
“I thought that it would be harder than it was to take a life. I’ve spent my adult life helping people, trying to save people. I thought that taking a life would undo all of that, but the choice was him or you. It wasn’t a choice at all.”
He sat, staring at the rifle by his side. I reached over, took his hand in mine, and said, “Thank you.” Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Haley peering back over her seat with a worried look on her face.
I turned to face her and offered what I could of a smile. Her expression changed to mirror mine. She turned away for a second before pressing her notepad against the glass. On it was a heart with Emily and Powell written inside. I allowed my smile to widen and gave a subtle nod.
***
We drove for the remaining hours of daylight and stopped for the night at an agreed location, a two-vehicle obstruction marked on the map. The vans had been checked on our way to the camp and marked on the map as nothing of value, but what they offered now was a place to sleep and shelter from the cold.
The sun was low in the sky and the air was beginning to cool. Powell prepared food by the dimming light and then we sat and ate without a word. When the food was gone, Sarah took Haley to one of the vans, tucked her into her sleeping bag, and kissed her goodnight
Sean said, “We abandoned the van long before we reached the lineup. We had to walk the rest of the way at Owen’s pace, on that makeshift crutch. There were droves of people all headed the same way, so we all joined the crowd and shuffled on.”
Sarah returned and sat down next to Sean as he continued. “We thought that we would be able to register and leave, but when we got closer and saw the trains taking people away, we talked about turning back.”
Sarah added, “It was a mistake to go there. The soldiers were ordering people back in line or taking them forcefully into one of the buildings. There was nothing we could do, except wait and do what we were told.”
“What were those things running around in the camp?” I asked.
Sean said, ‘Some of the people around us said they were just dogs or deer, but the way the crowd reacted when they came anywhere close makes me doubt it.”
“They’re not dogs or deer,” Powell said in a sober tone.
“You saw them?” I asked.
Powell frowned. “I saw something. I watched one of them running, seemed like it was on all fours, then it raised up, bigger than a man, a large dog-legged figure, broad across the shoulders and ...”
“What?” I pressed.
Powell turned to face me. “Horns.”
“Horns, like the devil?” I asked.
“I don’t know, just horns, like a ram or a bull. It looked like the shadow of a minotaur,” Powell said.
“A minotaur?”
“There were others, smaller and faster. They were swiping and biting at the crowd, but not causing any damage, only panic and terror. The people were frantic, even the soldiers were running.” Powell dropped his eyes to the bottle of water in his hands. “If it’s like the last wave, when these things materialize in our world, they’ll kill us all. The camps will be a feeding ground. It looked like the soldiers were trying to keep the people in the camps, maybe so that those things would stay in there too.”
“That’s horrible, why would they ...” I started.
“Because if they can cage them inside with enough food to keep them busy when they materialize, then they can fight the others outside the camp, and maybe stand a chance against whatever they are.”
“Food? You mean people?”
Powell nodded. “Bait.”
Sean interjected, “You’re talking like the Army knew those things were coming.”
“I don’t know, I’m just telling you what I saw. If they knew or not, I saw them trying to keep people in the camp, I saw the soldiers leave the camp and lock the gates. If it wasn’t their plan all along, they figured it out pretty quick and enforced it,” Powell replied.
“How are we going to fight them?” I asked, feeling the futility of my question.
“Fortify your house, and shoot any that come near it,” Powell said, with a coldness in his voice I had not heard before. “We need to talk to Randall,” he added.
“Because he’s an ex-soldier or because he’s an ex-preacher?” I asked.
Powell stared back at me. “Maybe both.”
34 | The way back
The way back would be long, offering too much time to think about what was coming—about what we could do about it, about what we couldn’t. Our stand against these things already seemed futile, and I had all but accepted death was coming for me, for us all. None of us could boast of having had a full night’s sleep. I had slept in one-hour intervals, awakened each time by the gray eyes of the shirtless man, or by the snapping teeth of horned demons, or by Powell’s choking gasp as his nightmare reached its climax. We set out again at first light, drove for most of the day, ate in the truck, and only stopped when biological functions begged.
There was a vehicle in the distance, a truck moving faster than ours, and gaining quickly.
“There’s a truck,” I said, pointing up the hill.
Powell picked up the rifle, racked the bolt, ejecting the spent cartridge that had saved my life, and fed a new round into the chamber. I followed his lead, retrieved the shotgun, and pulled it across my lap. A shell was already chambered—the one I should have used on the shirtless man.
Powell tapped on the glass. Sarah turned and slid open the glass panel.
“There’s a truck coming down the hill,” he said.
“What do you think we should do? Speed up or pull over?” she asked.
My heart told me we should speed up, drive away as fast as we could, but we had driven up this way, had seen the wreckage, cleared some of it, and slowly worked our way around the rest. Before I could speak, Powell said to pull in close to the rocks and let them pass on the cliffside, his side.
He wound the gun strap around his hand, perhaps as a way to steady the rifle if needed, or perhaps as a way to steady his nerves. If Powell was scared, he did well to hide it, much better than I could. With all that had happened, the thing that scared me the most was not ghosts, or demonic dog or minotaur-like creatures, but people, desperate people, people willing to kill us for what little we had.
Sean pulled close to the embankment. The wheels bounced over small rocks and uneven terrain, and plumes of orange dust rose up beside and behind us. Powell kept the rifle down, out of sight, with his finger resting outside of the trigger guard.
The deep sound of our truck’s engine was soon harmonized by that of the approaching vehicle as it strobed closer through the cyclones of dust. The square front end of the oncoming truck edged through the storm and into view. The truck slowed to pass, and as it emerged from the dust cloud, I glimpsed the driver—an older man with white hair and a long gray beard, and he was alone in the cab. I relaxed my grip on the shotgun and let out a shaking breath. The driver kept his eyes on the road, and we kept our eyes on him as the truck crept up alongside. It was only when the truck cabs drew level that I saw the other man, crouched in the bed behind the cab, holding a gun
that was leveled at us.
Only my heart managed to react in time, synchronizing to the rapid spit of gunfire. A second later, there came another burst, a sharp crack, crack, crack, punctuated by the sound of imploding glass. Powell swung the rifle up and over the side of the bed, but he fell back as Sean stepped heavy on the gas pedal. Our truck swerved and scraped along the rock face, and I slid with the sleeping bags to the back of the truck bed. I gripped the tailgate with both arms and watched the shotgun slide away, while Powell clung to the side, the rifle swinging from the strap still wrapped over his hand.
The truck rocked and bounced, lifting me up from the bed, and it took all of my strength to hold on. My stomach rose as the rest of me slammed down and then whipped against the adjacent corner of the bed. For a second I seemed, glued to the tailgate, and then came the scraping sounds of metal against rock, a sudden thud, and I was sent through the air. My elbow clipped something hard, and a pain shot through my arm. The sky, trees, and road became a swirling blur, and the screech of metal was replaced by whistling wind. Something whipped my back and I was turned again. Countless branches flew past me, while others snapped as they tried to catch me. My contact with the ground was soft, but brief, springing me back into a flailing spin through thick foliage. I was dealt a glancing blow across my back, and another. The green blur was interspersed with bright flashes of pain and immeasurable periods of darkness.
***
Sunlight swirled over the wet of my eyes and flared into bright white lines between my eyelashes as they fluttered open, and then the light shrank and faded back into the darkness. Something was wrapped around my ankle, gripping it tight, twisting, and pulling. I tried to pull away, and searing pain shot through my left side—my veins becoming the conduit for lit gasoline. The howling wind softened to a whistle, rustling the leaves and shushing me back to sleep, dousing the fire in my veins and numbing the pain.
I dreamed I was flying and awoke to the cold wind against my face. Far below me, the sea was dark and still. I waited for my eyes to focus in the darkness. The black below was not water, but land. I was hanging over the edge of the cliff, staring down at the plains. A tree, curving up from the face of the cliff, had broken my fall, and possibly my body. I made an effort to turn, and the pain in my left side screamed at me to stop. I screamed back and pushed against one of the tree’s thick roots.
I clenched my teeth, twisted around, and fell back against the tree, sobbing and whimpering as the tension on my left ankle mounted. In the dark, I could just make out the tree root, breaching the bed of leaves, twisting and cinching around my ankle, and plunging back down into the black earth. Above the ankle, my leg was numb, but my arm pulsed a steady, stabbing reminder that I was hurt, and hurt badly.
I tried to cry out for help, but my throat was dry and my plea devolved to a coughing fit. I winced at the sudden pain in my side, took a deep breath, and let it out through gritted teeth, waiting for the sharp pain to recede among the myriad dull and sickly aches.
“Powell?” My voice was weak and barely over a whimper, not strong enough to make it up the hill, to the road, to the truck.
My mind raced to collect and piece together the scattered shrapnel of memory. The truck had flipped.
“Oh my God. Powell. Haley ...”
I struggled to pull myself free, screaming through my teeth at each new pain stemming from the discovery of broken, bruised, or otherwise damaged parts of my body. The feeling returned to my foot as I shifted, turned, and pulled. My foot came free and my full weight fell against the tree. I scrambled in the dirt, searching with the hand of my one good arm for purchase, something solid to hold onto. I dragged myself forward using breaching roots and half-buried rocks like the rungs of a ladder, writhing and working my way from the edge and up the hill like a half-eaten caterpillar. The bank rose and plateaued, each rise with less than a thirty-degree pitch, but the loose dirt and leaves made it feel much steeper. I dug my foot into the dirt and pushed to find the next handhold. Each stretch and struggle sent hot needles through my side and cold shivers down my back.
I stopped to rest on the tread of the giant dirt stairway. The stepped hill faded into a black abyss beyond the next rise, and looking back, the tree that had wrapped its limb around mine to save my life was barely visible against the blue abyss below. The joints and muscles in my right side burned with an intensity comparable to the pain all through my left. I couldn’t go on; I didn’t want to go on. I curled into a position that offered the least amount of pain and closed my eyes, thinking if I didn’t die from my injuries, then perhaps the cold would offer mercy and take me peacefully in my sleep.
35 | A way out
My eyes opened to something foreign in the dull blur—a bright red square, glowing in stark contrast to the natural pastel colors of tree bark, moss, and dirt. I stared at the shape, trying to shake my mind from a dream of Sam and our father, while my damp body shook in response to the cool morning air. All around were colorful markers and sparkling diamonds. I blinked and rubbed my eyes against the arm that had been my pillow. The red blur resolved, taking the form of one of our gas cans. The sparkling diamonds were something much more precious.
One of our packs hung from a low tree branch farther up the hill. Its contents had spilled, a runway of color, of canned food, medical supplies, and glistening bottles of water. The bedroll hung like a dead dog’s tongue from the open mouth of the pack. It was Powell’s pack, recognizable by the red first-aid kit still strapped to its side. I began my crawl toward the pack and the promise of food, water, warmth, and first aid. I fought the temptation to veer off course for closer items, knowing it would do little more than waste what strength I had. Once I reached the pack, I would have all the supplies I needed to quench the fires, and my thirst.
By the time I reached the pack, I was no longer cold, but tired and longing for the safety and comfort the sleeping bag had come to represent during my climb. My head throbbed a silent alarm, warning of critical dehydration, while my stomach churned at the sight of water, now within reach. A sudden and excruciating pain shot through my left arm as I brought it up to unscrew the bottle cap.
With my teeth clamped around the cap, my cries were dampened to a whimper. I spat out the cap and drank greedily, spilling more than I knew I could afford and drinking too fast to keep it down. As I coughed it all back out, my body replied with a plethora of pain, chastising me for my greed and impatience.
I tried again to cry for help, but the pain in my torso cried louder for me to stop. While I sipped the remaining water, I surveyed the landscape—littered with our precious cargo. I thought of Haley and Powell. Had Powell been thrown from the truck? Had the others survived? I tried to push the images away and busied myself with the task of unhooking the pack from one tree limb using the dead, severed limb of another.
The first-aid kid was full and stocked beyond the level two description printed inside. Even if I could not fix all that was wrong with me, there would at least be something to help with the pain.
I had to remove the lace to get my foot out of the boot. The sock was stuck to my foot and crusted with dried blood. I slowly peeled the sock off, revealing my swollen, purple foot, and retrieved the peroxide and cotton swabs. The skin was grazed and raw, and it looked like blood had pooled and settled beneath the skin of my heel. I did my best to wrap the ankle and squeezed it back into my boot. Looking down at my left shoulder, the skin was stretched tight over what seemed like a second joint. It was dislocated, and the thought of trying to pop it back in place came with a wave of nausea that threatened to expel the small amount of precious water I’d so far managed to retain. My left elbow was swollen too, and any attempt to bend it was met with a sickening, burning pain.
My mind returned to the crash, being thrown from the truck bed, clipping my elbow, and being sent helpless through the air, through leaves and branches—colliding with limbs, slowed by the bending of some, sent reeling and spinning like a ragdoll by others. I had sur
vived by chance or luck—good luck or bad—and my hopes for the rest of the group diminished further with each part remembered. The man in the back of the passing truck had leveled his gun at us, at Sarah and Sean. I closed my eyes and tried to hold back the tears but couldn’t.
I continued on, dragging the pack, with what items I had repacked or collected on the way—some water and food, a poorly rolled sleeping bag, and whatever else I could manage. I stopped before the ridge, afraid to crest the hill and to prove the validity of my fear that everyone else was gone. I leaned on the bedroll, trying to get my breath back, trying to work up the courage to face the wreckage beyond the crest, hoping somehow they had made it, but knowing there was little chance they had. If they were gone, would there be any point going on? Would I want to live if I was the only one, and if it was just me, how would I make it back to the house with only one leg, one arm, no vehicle, and limited supplies?
At the bottom of the pack was a fabric holster, and inside that holster was a handgun. Gary had said that it was a war issue 1911. If the rest were gone, perhaps that would be the only item I needed, but where would that send me? The dead were returned to our world, and Hell’s creatures waited at our gates. Could there be anything worse than the seemingly inevitable and bloody end that would devour us all soon enough?
***
The sun blazed, high and unobstructed in a clear blue sky. The road was too hot for more than brief contact against the bare skin of my forearm, which left little choice but for me to keep moving or return to the shade beneath the trees. The pack repeatedly slipped from my shoulder as I crawled on my hand and knees, until I relented to let it drag behind my wrist. My knees bumped against the pack, and the pack bumped against my arm with each shuffled step, but the pack also served as a place to rest when the crawl became too much.
I leaned over the pack and pulled a bottle from the side pocket. While I drank, I stared at the road where it curved around the cliff. Beyond that corner would be our truck, or what was left of it, as well as what was left of the people I had come to know and love. I was gripped by a sudden terror as thoughts of our truck evolved to include the other truck. What if the other truck and those men were still there?