by Pete Kahle
“Did you hear that woman scream?” she asked.
I nodded.
“It sounded like…” Kim glanced down at the machete. “Where’d you get that?”
“I’ll explain later.” I dropped to my knees and opened the first aid kit.
This one had everything I needed: two rolls of gauze, anti-bacterial cream, iodine, tape, scissors, Band-Aids, three butterfly bandages, and along with individual packets of Tylenol, a half-full bottle of Vicodin prescribed for Paul Harris.
Moving over to Kim’s leg, I found Chase’s T-shirt already soaked with blood and dripping onto the road. She grabbed my wrist and groaned when I peeled it off.
“Sorry. I’ll make this quick.”
I handed Kim the bottle of Vicodin, poured iodine onto the gaping wound, smeared anti-bacterial cream over that (which elicited a few jerks from her as she dry-swallowed the Vicodin), pulled the wound partially closed with butterfly bandages, wrapped it with gauze, and taped it up. Then I retied the apron around her upper thigh.
When I finished, she reached for the anti-bacterial cream. She wiped the blood off my face with her hand and lathered my cut with the cream. After crossing three Band-Aids over it, she kissed my cheek and hugged me.
“I love you,” she whispered into my ear.
As I rubbed her sweaty back with one hand and tousled Chase’s hair with the other, I heard fast footfalls thudding on the pavement behind me. I grabbed the machete, jumped up, and spun around.
A tall man in black coveralls jogged by, repeatedly glancing back behind him. Fear sparkled in the blue eyes hovering above his blood-smeared cheeks as he passed through a set of headlight beams.
“What’s going on?” I asked, stepping toward him.
He never looked at me, but I could hear him whispering, “It’s out… it’s out… it’s out…”
After he drifted out of earshot, another horrid wail soared through the tunnel.
“We have to get out of here,’ I said. “Something’s not right.” I took Chase’s arm and pulled him upright. “We have to help Mommy get up so we can walk that way. Be a big boy and help Daddy, all right?”
He nodded.
“I don’t think I can walk,” Kim said.
“When I lift you up, throw your arm over my shoulder, and I’ll help you hop on your good foot. Chase, grab Mommy’s hand and hold it tight.”
“What did that man say?” Kim asked as I helped her up and we headed deeper into the tunnel.
“He said, ‘it’s out, it’s out, it’s out.’ And he looked terrified.”
“What’s out?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out.”
The wreckage became easier to maneuver through the farther we went. Most of the people had exited their vehicles. A few people were headed the same direction we were, others just stood around, stunned. Injured people littered the tunnel. Some leaned on bumpers, others sat on their hoods, others in the road.
We passed a giant graffiti Pac-Man someone had spray-painted on the wall about a third of the way into the tunnel a couple of years back. About ten yards ahead of that, nine or ten people were standing around a Saturn. Three of them stood in the headlight beams arguing. A jack-knifed, swivel-head Penske truck and a mini-van blocked all but a small gap of the road behind them.
All of their heads snapped toward us when Kim blurted out: “I need to rest for a minute.”
A fat man in a pinstriped suit standing in the headlights aimed his gun at us and we froze. He stood motionless for a moment, then lowered the gun and turned back around. The man in black coveralls was standing directly in front of him. Another guy, a college student I guessed from his Radiohead T-shirt and baggy jeans, stood next to Pinstripe, smoking a cigarette.
I helped Kim sit down and lean back against an Explorer’s tire about twenty feet to the left of the Saturn. Chase sat down beside her and snuggled close. She threw her arm around him, kissed his head, and then let out a long, shaky breath.
“It’ll be all right,” I told her, kneeling down and taking her hand. “When that Vicodin kicks in, it should take some of the edge off.” I gave her hand a firm squeeze, and we held eye contact for a moment. “I’m going to go see what’s going on over there real quick.”
I kissed her hand and walked over to the Saturn and stood at the back of the group, angled where I could keep an eye on her and Chase. I noticed that the cigarette in the young guy’s hand was actually a clove. Definitely a college student, I thought. He was questioning the man in black.
“What was in your truck then?”
“I don’t know,” the man said, keeping his eyes on Pinstripe’s gun. “I already told you, I’m just a driver.”
“Bullshit! If it was in your truck you have to know something.”
“No, I don’t. I’m just a driver.”
“Who do you work for?” the kid asked as he stomped out his clove. “The government?”
“I don’t –”
“Yes you do.” Pinstripe interjected, raising his gun and tapping it on the man’s chest.
“They didn’t tell me. I swear.”
“He’s lying,” the kid said.
“You know what was in that truck,” Pinstripe added.
“No, I don’t. And I don’t think we should stand here talking about it either.”
Pinstripe pointed the gun at the man’s face. “You came over here looking scared shitless saying ‘it’s out, it’s out.’ Now why would you say it like that if you don’t even know what the hell it is?”
“Because I heard it breathing… or hissing… or something,” Sweat drizzled down the man’s face. “And then it grabbed a woman crawling out of her car back there and… and….”
“He knows more than that,” the kid insisted.
“I agree,” Pinstripe said. He moved the gun closer to the man’s face. “Well?”
The man’s lower lip quivered, and he squeezed his eyes tight. A second or two later they sprang open. “The trackers who loaded it into my truck were talking about a cave with carvings in South America… or South Africa… or South something. That’s all I heard though. I swear. I told you, I’m just –”
A woman’s piercing scream cut the man off. She sounded close. My fingers tightened around the machete handle. When her screams stopped, a loud, eerie, I heard a rhythmic rustling that sounded like millions of leaves spiraling around in a tight formation on a blustery fall afternoon.
After a brief pause, everyone around the Saturn bolted toward the Penske truck and the mini-van in a panic. Some of them squeezed through the gap, some climbed over the vehicles, and others crawled underneath them.
Holding Chase, Kim was trying to stand. Chase gazed at me over her shoulder as I ran toward them. He looked confused and scared. I took him from Kim, and we rushed toward the small gap.
As Chase sidled between the two vehicles, a deafening gunshot rang out up ahead of us. I jerked him back and held him against my leg for a moment, but when the ringing in my ears subsided and the rustling became audible behind us again, I quickly nudged him onward.
I held the machete high and stood guard while Kim slowly worked her way through the gap, and after I squeezed through, I ducked under her arm, Chase grabbed her hand, and we hurried off.
There was less wreckage in the last section of the tunnel, but the road had a slight incline making it difficult for us nonetheless. Other than a young couple who stood arguing in front of a Corvette, and two people who ran around us, we didn’t see anyone as we trudged uphill, trying to outrun the rustle.
After a couple of grueling minutes, the mouth of the tunnel came into view. The night sky was out, the moon visible just above the horizon.
“Look,” I said, pointing with the machete. “There’s the –”
I broke off when Kim moaned and fell limp, forcing all her one hundred and twenty-five pounds onto me. I squatted her to the ground. She looked pale. The gauze-wrap on her leg was dripping with blood, the apron on her thig
h loose.
I quickly stooped over to retighten the apron, and as I finished, another gut-wrenching scream sailed down the tunnel. A few seconds later, the man who’d been arguing with a woman in front of the Corvette sprinted by us.
“We have to go,” I said. “It’s not much farther.”
“I don’t think I can…” Kim whispered, her eyes nearly closed.
I turned toward Chase. “I’m going to pick up Mommy and carry her the rest of the way. I want you to stay right next to me and hold on to my pants, okay?”
He didn’t respond but grabbed my left pant leg.
I pulled Kim up, lay her belly-down over my left shoulder (I’m only two inches taller and thirty pounds heavier than she is), and we continued on. I struggled to hold her in place using only my left hand and held the machete in my right.
When we were about twenty yards away from the mouth of the tunnel I saw a fire truck and an ambulance approaching on the center median. The first four paramedics on the scene were tending to people on the pavement. Pinstripe and the clove-smoking college kid were standing with a large cluster of people around one of the three police cruisers.
I exited the tunnel, trotted another twenty yards, and lay Kim down. One of the paramedics ran over to us and knelt beside her. I turned around to pick up Chase, but he wasn’t there. He was standing just outside the mouth of the tunnel, facing me, starry-eyed, and two large black hands with uneven, jagged fingers were emerging from the darkness behind him.
“No!” I screamed, rushing toward him.
I jerked him up by his shirt and tossed him aside. As I cocked the machete and backed up, an awkward, hunched creature stepped out into the moonlight. It took three slow steps forward and stopped about five feet to my left. It was solid black, dull black, uniform black, and crude—as if some mad mechanic with no eye for detail had used a stash of dirty oil to sculpt the foulest beast his weak imagination could conjure and then jolted it to life with a car battery and jumper cables. Its gnarled hands were attached to long, unnaturally thin arms, and the feet, attached to similarly thin, slightly bent legs, mirrored the hands. When it turned its oblong head my direction, it didn’t have any obvious eyes, or a hole for a mouth, or an exact nose, or ears, though it had vague divots and protrusions that slightly resembled those things. But the one thing that was glaringly obvious was that its skin was rippling, and that the ripples increased in size as the rustling sound, which seemed to be coming out of its entire body rather than a mouth, intensified.
Driven by a primal instinct to destroy anything that threatened my offspring, I lunged at the monster and slashed at its neck. Looking back, I think now that this may have been exactly what it wanted because it didn’t react. Its head sloughed off without resistance and slapped onto the ground with a splat, like a large brick of warm butter. The body briefly tottered, then fell on top of the head. There were no bones or tendons inside the neck or base of the head to hint at structure. It was black and gooey, nothing more.
I was slowly back-pedaling with the machete cocked, watching the ripples slow, listening to the rustle fade, when one of the feet twitched and I lunged forward and began chopping at the decapitated body, screaming. I must have sliced through it twenty or thirty good times before I dropped the machete and went down to a knee with my back to the mutilated creature.
I took a few deep breaths, knuckled my eyes, blotted the sweat from my face, and was just getting back to my feet when the rustling started up behind me again. I sprinted forward a ways and spun around. The individual pieces of gelatinous flesh that I’d chopped the body into had morphed into rippling spheres and were rolling away from one another. And growing. I watched in disbelief as each blob became a slender torso and sprouted thin arms and legs, large, crooked hands and feet, and oblong, indistinct heads.
They stumbled around like newborn deer for a second or two before coalescing in a mass at the edge of the tunnel. Their collective rustle escalated for what seemed like hours, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute before they rushed toward us, fanning out, galloping on all fours. Terrified screams shot across the humid night air.
I turned around and saw Chase walking toward Kim, about fifteen feet behind me. I darted toward him with outstretched arms, yelling his name, but one of the creatures slammed into my back and knocked me over. I jumped up quick but didn’t see Chase anywhere in the chaos—people were running, the creatures chasing. The rustle was deafening, disorienting. Gunshots rang out. I was spinning in frantic circles searching for Chase when the rustle suddenly cut off and the all creatures stopped moving. A few seconds later, they stood up on their hind legs and dashed off, each clutching at least one victim in their hands. As they disappeared into the dark hills on the west side of MoPac, I sprinted to the edge of the pavement yelling Chase’s name over and over, louder and louder, hoping he’d come running back and dive into my arms. But he didn’t. He was gone.
Trembling, I looked back and saw Kim lying alone on the road, her head slightly angled up. I ran over to her, knelt down, and clasped her arm.
“Chase?” she whispered, her eyes begging for the right answer.
“He’s… he’s…gone,” I stammered. “They took him… they… I couldn’t… I… I’m sorry… I… I… couldn’t…” She slowly shook her head and tears started streaming down her cheeks, but she never said another word.
It’s been two days now, and she still hasn’t spoken. She won’t eat or drink, either. I’m staying with her at a psychiatric facility on the south side of town where she’s under evaluation. I bathe her and read to her and brush her hair …and try not to cry in front of her.
She’ll probably never know about the three bedroom house I put the down payment on. I don’t think I’ll ever go back there, anyway. Not even to get the ring. It’s not worth it. Seeing the bike would hurt too much.
We haven’t gotten any answers about Chase or what was in the tunnel yet. I’ve heard rumors that the police and military officials found nine bodies inside the Pac-Man. Supposedly, they were shriveled and black and unidentifiable. Supposedly, around fifty more unidentifiable bodies have been found over the past day and a half in a wooded area north and northwest of Lake Travis. But nothing has been confirmed or denied on the news.
Some Austinites think the government’s responsible, that the creatures are aliens or genetically spliced humans or something. Others, citing old Mayan and Aztec stories, claim the original creature was the guardian of the entrance to the underworld. Others are in denial; they think the whole story’s absurd, inaccurate, and misconstrued, that the creatures don’t exist, can’t exist. I personally don’t know who’s to blame, if anyone, but I do know that the story you’re reading is accurate and the creatures most definitely exist. I also know that wherever they’re from, whatever they are, they’re spreading, fast (some people are saying a soft rustle was heard outside of San Antonio last night) and everything we’re doing to defend ourselves and protect our families—like my hack job for example, and like what a farmer did with a shotgun in San Marcos yesterday—is helping them multiply.
Right now, as I type this with Kim silently staring out the window next to me, I can hear an ominous rustling outside, and it sounds louder than it did last night. If you close your eyes at night and listen well, I’m certain that in the near future you’ll hear it too, no matter where you are.
Jeremy Hepler is a stay-at-home dad who lives the Texas Panhandle with his wife and son. In the past six years he's had twenty-three short stories published in periodicals, anthologies, and online. Most recently, he placed second in the Panhandle Professional Writer’s Short Story Competition and is shopping his first novel, The Boulevard Monster.
Contact or follow him via Twitter: @JeremyHeplerwhere you will find links to his blog and Facebook author page.
ONLY A MATTER
OF TIME
By Rose Blackthorn
Blood; there was so much blood. Splashed on the walls, splattered across the ceiling, a
nd the floor—the floor was awash with blood. It filled the room, almost an inch deep. Missy sat in a corner, not moving, barely breathing. The seat of her pants was soaked with blood, her shoes saturated and squishy with blood. She closed her eyes; the coppery meaty raw smell filled her nostrils. She wouldn’t breathe through her mouth, because she could taste the rich scent on her tongue.
From somewhere beyond the room, there was a growling grunting sound, and she didn’t move because she didn’t want to draw any attention to herself. The door to the hall was open about a foot, the only light in the room a narrow slice of glare from that opening. She had shifted once, planning to get to her feet, and had seen the shallow ripples travel across the pool of blood. If something was out in the hall, and saw ripples moving across the floor, it would know she was in here. It would come inside to find her.
So she sat still, listening to the vicious, hungry sounds coming from somewhere else in the school. This was like one of Gram’s horror vids, she thought. The genre was dead; the powers that be had determined horror and violence and scripted fear were not good for the mass psyche, and so all the old movies and books had been destroyed. No one these days would even admit to ever having seen one of those old shows, or read those old books. They were still available on the black market, but were a major taboo. Missy only knew about them because of Gram.
Gram had grown up before the government took complete control, deciding what was good for people, and banning what was bad for them. She had loved the old movies; creature features, slasher flicks, demonic possession and ghost stories. She’d seen them all, so she said—Freddy Krueger and Jason, Aliens and Poltergeist, Dracula and the Wolfman and zombies galore. During the day, out in public, she was the perfect picture of propriety. A grandmother who had taken in her orphaned grandchildren, hair pulled back into an elegant twist and bleached-white teeth belying the black market cigarettes she smoked on the sly. But at night, safe in her own home, she regaled Missy and her brother Billy and their younger siblings with stories of mummies, swamp creatures, and in-bred hillbillies searching for young nubile breeding stock.