Safety (One Eighteen: Migration Book 1)

by Christopher Wiig

  I woke up today on the gas station floor and took my medicine, and then went to Paradise Falls.

  I don't know what it all means, the dreams. I couldn't guess what what any of this means, to be honest. Even a day ago I'd say the dreams were important.

  Maybe not prophetic, I wouldn't go that far, but important. Allusions of things my mind needed to work out, the ghosts of problems I may not even be consciously aware of. I don't feel that way anymore. I feel like the whole world is a goddamned joke and I'm the punch line.

  As I write I'm resting against an elder tree, right in the very spot where Horace and at least two others offered up a blood sacrifice to Paradise Falls.

  This is where they shot from. I missed it on the way out, in the dark and the snow. I stepped right over friends and neighbors.

  The thaw is full on now, and from my elevation I can watch the snow recede all around me. An early Spring is fighting it's way out from the chill. I can even see parts of the road. A few days from now, just a few more days and we all could have made it. Close, but no cigar.

  Bah, I can barely find the energy to be sarcastic.

  The tree looks how I feel. Old, sick, and in the wrong place. It's gnarled roots are erupting from the side of the bluff as erosion slowly takes it's home away. Just like me, it's screwed by virtue of location.

  Some time in the future, maybe years from now, the ground will wash away and the tree will fall and die. No one will remember it was ever here.

  I wonder if my body will go with it, or if the wolves and crows will have torn me to nothing by then. I'm out of fight. I sprained an ankle, and then ran on it for a couple miles, and it's swelling as I write. It won't hurt tonight, but by tomorrow I won't be able to walk without a cane.

  The Dead Things are all around the area... not here yet, but they're around. I hear them, fuck I can practically feel them. Hunting.

  And thawing.

  I got past them once, when I could run and they weren't so fast. I can't move faster than a hobble anymore. I can't run, I can't hide, and I've only got a handful of bullets. Each one is a thunder-crack to lead more corpses to me.

  The term "well and truly fucked" comes to mind.

  But I can tell the story. I can do that. If the right person finds this, maybe they can help. I wasn't strong enough to be a hero, but I can be a journalist and hope this is found by someone who can do what I couldn't. For that, I can hold on a little longer.

  I never made it all the way into Paradise Falls; the unwelcoming committee was enough to keep me out.

  And the slitting posts.

  They started a mile out, one every twenty feet or so, all the way to Paradise Falls. I don't know what else to call them but slitting posts: giant wooden X's by the side of the road, each one with a Dead Thing on it, struggling. The now undead bodies of men.

  Formerly living men.

  They'd been tied to these posts alive, and then slashed across the stomach and left to die. Animal bones, feathers, and other shamanistic objects decorated the posts, and symbols and images were painted on their bare flesh.

  Some of them I knew, some I didn't. Pastor West. Ed Hunter. Even Jeff Cooper, Wendell's father. If I had the ammunition, I'd have put them all out of their misery. I didn't so I tried to ignore them as they struggled on the posts, trying to get free..

  I felt sympathy for them.

  I felt the same sort of frustration. I could see Paradise Falls in the distance, a haphazard Barricade of it's own surrounding it. Unlike Greenly's fairly professional design, the defenses of Paradise Falls consisted of the burnt out hulks of old trucks, machines from the factory, and other scrap piled between houses and buildings.

  Thick black smoke rose from the center of the town. People were alive there... but the kind of people who'd tie a man to a post and slit his belly open.

  Madmen.

  I didn't see the little girl at first, though she'd been near the whole time laying flowers behind the post. I thought she might be a Dead Thing the way she barely flinched when I pulled Alex's gun on her. She just looked up at me with wide eyes.

  Somber.

  "You shouldn't be here mister," the little girl told me, playing with the hem of her long blue dress. Her long blond hair was ratty and tangled, and tattoos covered her neck and arms, all the skin I could see. I uncocked the gun, fascinated with her. She was a spitting image of a girl I'd seen before.

  And both were missing a foot.

  "Are you... is your name Sadie?" I asked.

  When she heard the name she winced for a moment, then the wide eyed stare was back. With a groan of metal on pavement, some part of the Barricade moved in the distance.

  Opening.

  "I don't know who that person is," the little girl whispered, nervously looking back towards Paradise Falls. In the distance, men appeared.

  Men with weapons.

  I didn't see any guns, but they were a mile out so I couldn't be sure. I did see tools, though. Shovels and axes, and what looked like a sledgehammer.

  "My name is Cordelia,” she said very quietly. “My name has always been Cordelia. The Fat Man said no more visitors. He promised." I wanted to run; the men from town were clearly organizing, but curious Jonas held me there.

  A clue.

  The thing on the post writhed and she touched it's leg soothingly. Like she was calming a pet. I couldn't push too hard. She was a child. A very sick child. But I'd have to run soon.

  "The fat man? Horace? He knows about this place?" The group of men grew larger, and the light reflected off something held to a pair of eyes in the distance.

  Binoculars.

  They knew I was there, and they were organizing a party in my honor. And two of the men carried a brand new slitting post. How fast could an average man run a mile? Ten minutes? Eight? How fast could a madman do it? More importantly, could I do it faster?

  "We don't like visitors, and especially you. They'll be mad if they find you here. They'll sacrifice you to... Mama White." Cordelia whispered the name, and then shivered, looking around as though someone was watching us.

  The men were coming now. Not running yet but moving with purpose. Dark men, tattooed and primal, carrying nasty things. Rusty tools and sharpened metal. Making noise.

  Then from the east came the Dead Things, a line of two dozen or so, moving towards Paradise Falls. And I was in between them with more questions than answers.

  "Who's that? Why me? Why especially me?" I asked. She kept playing with the hem of her dress so I grabbed her shoulders and shook her.

  "Why me goddammit? Answer me!"

  Then Cordelia was struggling and a barber's razor flashed inches from my eyes. I dropped to a knee, half-moving half-falling out of the range of the razor as she slashed at me, her eyes wide with fury and fear.

  "No! Don't touch me! You're with the Nightmare Man; the one who made the bad things. Stay away from me! He's over here!" she screamed.

  The pack charged and I fled; only a half-mile between us. The Dead Things were coming en mass now. A wall of rotting, dead, angry flesh, but I'd never been so happy to see a corpse in my life. They were slow, the lunatics would not be.

  I ran towards the Dead Things, pumping my legs like a linebacker. The adrenaline fueled me, the Codine quieted my screaming muscles.

  I stumbled in the snow, my ankle twisting, pain flaring, but I was back on my feet in less than a second, picking up speed again, and then the Dead Things were there.

  I whispered no prayers, and crossed no fingers. I just tucked my head down, summoned every last bit of strength I had and shoulder checked my way through the corpses.

  I broke the line and didn't look back.

  I didn't stop until I tripped over Adam Finnegan's body, half exposed now by the thaw. He'd been part of the expedition to Paradise Falls. He was face-up, half of his skull destroyed by a bullet.

  Then I found another body.

  Bill Pruser, also gunshot.

  Then another, Eric Larson, multiple sho
ts in the back and head.

  I frantically tore at the snow and found fourteen more bodies. Daemon Donigan, Joe Lupo, Nathan Perilo, Sean Rourke, they were all here. Half the expedition, more than half and they'd never even made it into Paradise Falls.

  They'd been ambushed.

  Stopping first to make sure I wasn't followed, I inspected the kill sight. The bodies had been stripped of anything useful. They'd all been shot in the head, but some undoubtedly after the fact. Some to keep them down, others were kill shots. The pavement was broken by bullet-holes.

  They'd been shot from an elevated location.

  The bluff next to the road was the most likely place. I should have been worrying about what was taking place behind me, but something was important here, and I was missing it. No one seemed to be following.

  Curious Jonas had time.

  It took me a while to find a gentle enough slope to climb in my condition, but when I managed, it didn't take me long to find the spot the ambushers shot from.

  It was marked by the discarded body of Ryan Maloney, his tin Deputy star still pinned to his light fall jacket. One shot-out eye-socket filled with snow stared at me. He'd been laughing when they got him, and his face was locked in a twisted smile.

  “You should see the other guys.”

  I found beer cans and candy-bar wrappers, and lots of brass from rifle shells. And cigarette butts. Two brands but only one interested me.

  The Camels.

  Camels. Horace's brand. Suddenly, the whole goddamned thing came together in my mind. It wasn't an expedition, Horace was cleaning house.

  Pastor West was one of the first to publicly speak his disapproval of the Deputies. Jeff Cooper refused to let Horace deputize Wendell. Ed Hunter who wanted to take the whole town south before the winter. Adam Finnegan, who owned the drugstore that went right to "the greater good" when he died.

  Several shop keepers in fact. Almost all of them.

  Christ, he'd wanted me to go, but I'd been sick and couldn't. How much had he gained in that one weekend?

  I could practically see it. A turkey shoot on the highway. Horace and a few others up on the bluff, waiting. The Valentines? Almost definitely. Maybe Fetch too.

  No... no Fetch was in town, and so was Hawkins.

  The expedition is ready for Dead Things, expecting slow, unarmed, trouble. All eyes are ground level. No one expects bullets, and as men fall, there's got to be ten, maybe fifteen seconds of confusion. Then how long to find the shooters?

  Five seconds?

  Ten?

  And no long guns. Horace forbade them; said they were too crucial to town security to risk. And besides, they'd only be dealing with the Dead Things, right?

  The brave ones and the quick ones fire back, but prone riflemen in a tangle of roots would be hard to hit with a rifle and scope, let alone pistols and shotguns. They might as well have thrown rocks. It's a massacre.

  Men die, and some flee towards Greenly, but to do so they have to pass right under Horace. They're slaughtered. Some stand their ground, but without cover, they don't have a chance. Ryan Maloney takes one in the eye, sure. But it's a lucky shot and the little fucker knows it even in death.

  He's laughing at me.

  The rest run towards Paradise Falls, right into the arms of the madmen. Wendell's father, the Pastor and Ed Hunter, go right up on the posts.

  Jesus.

  Paradise Falls wins because they don't face thirty armed men. They get to do as they please without having to worry about Greenly. Why they're afraid of us I can't even speculate on. They seem more than capable, but they're afraid of something.

  Horace wins because the expedition is hand picked. Every "troublemaker" he needs to get rid of goes right into the wood-chipper. Every business he wants falls right into his hands. Every boy he can't get in his clique gets orphaned, and goes looking for a goddamned father figure.

  Everybody wins. I lose.

  Golf clap for good sportsmanship.

  So here I am, writing. Resting against a tree. I made it about a mile away from Paradise Falls before I collapsed. My arm's useless, my legs are useless. I'm useless. I'm fucked. There's a road and both directions end in my death. I'll be shot if I return to Greenly, and far worse if I go to Paradise Falls.

  My ankle wont hold out for anything further, if there IS anything further, and I have no proof that there is. Just the word of a dead man named Franks, who wouldn't be dead if he'd stayed the fuck away from me.

  I want to die on my own terms. I'm too much of a coward to put Alex's gun to my head and pull the trigger.

  I tried.

  I barely have the strength to chuckle at the irony of that; but there it is. Too goddamned scared to take the cowards way out.

  But not too scared to take a few too many drinks of the cough syrup and drift away. I already drank what I had left. I'm tied to the trunk of the tree now, so that when I come back I don't kill anyone else.

  I just... I just feel like I wasn't supposed to lose. Why Greenly? Why did my parents die when they did? Why wasn't I in Iowa City, or on a dig in Israel, or... anywhere but this fucking town if I wasn't meant to... to do something.

  Why did all of this happen to me if I wasn't supposed to help those people?

  Surviving all of that, and the dreams and Sarah and... all that to just die under an the shell of a half-dead Judas tree in the melting snow, watching the thaw I'd been praying for happen all around me.

  I'm going to sleep now. The Codine is already pulling me down... when I wake up... if I wake up... I'm going to finish it. A shot in the temple, then this whole thing slides away. I hope I have the guts. I have a lot of hopes, actually.

  I hope when turn, I won't hurt anyone else.

  I hope Alex makes it to Galveston safely.

  I hope that out of the ashes of this world comes something better than this.

  I just fell asleep for a few moments. Got to write fast.

  It's so hard to keep my eyes open.

  To whoever finds this, I just want you to know that I tried my best.

  Jonas Waight

  Tried

  [Personal Notes:]

  I can't read ahead. I don't mean that in a trying to be a good boy "I can't have another piece of cheesecake, or I can't cheat on Adrienne with the cute girl who gives out the ration coupons” kind of way.

  This is not a matter of me not wanting to spoil the ending prematurely, or keep my research in chronological fashion.

  Yesterday I wanted to check something- for the life of me I can't remember what, something numerological -and it required me flipping forward a few pages to look for something.

  Then, as I was about to do so, I didn't. My hand was not held by some unseen force, the journal's pages did not suddenly become cemented together, I was just going to do it and then

  [Pause]

  I didn't.

  I remembered a few hours later, and so when I came in today the first thing I did was started to flip forward and then again, I just didn't. The same sort of absent minded "oh I'll do it later" feeling, and it almost got away with it.

  Almost, but this time I was paying attention. So I tried to force it... but then I didn't. I tried to skim, but even then, I just sort of

  [Long pause]

  decided not to.

  I can't explain it exactly what it was like, being so peacefully under duress. It didn't feel like some sort of coercion was at work, and yet

  [Pause]

  I mean...

  [Pause]

  if I can't read ahead when I try to force myself to- It's either something from the journal, or something inside of me (and neither of those are ideas I'm particularly pleased with.)

  So I'm to read it as is, carefully, and no skipping to the ending. That's the way it wants to be read, or for some deep psychological reason that's the only way I can read it. I should report this

  [Long Pause]

  I'm actually required to report this

  [Pause]

&nb
sp; but if I do then I'm done.

  They'll take me off it and someone new will come in and make a mess of everything I've worked so hard for.

  [Pause]

  No, that's drastic and irrational. It's one minor thing. Just a tic. Nothing worth reporting yet.

  I'll monitor myself closely, maybe take a day off. Not this week but soon.... soon. Just need more rest.

  [Long Pause]

  Eventually.

  ...I fell into the dark. The Codine pulled me down, dragging me into the pit. A thousand tiny devils swarmed me, taking my pain away and yet... the pain was still there. My heart beating faster and faster, rebelling against the poison.

  The madness of a sick mind going haywire as I tried to end this.

  All I could think as I went down into nowhere was that hemlock would have been more appropriate. Cyanide, arsenic, anything but fucking cough medicine. Something dignified. I should die like Socrates, but there I was, back against the elder tree, killing myself with fucking cough medicine.

  And the Dead Things were coming. First I could feel them. Then I could see them all around me, vision growing foggy as they shambled in. Dozens of them. All coming to watch me die. The Dark Thing by my side. Whispering to me. I didn't look at his face.

  "Do you want to die Jonas?" he asked.

  My vision grew hazier. The Dead Things were there and gone, the pit with the living, bleeding walls flickering in and out. The world, then the pit... then just the pit. Falling, the smell of blood and rotting flesh all around me as I fell into the darkness.

  But the Dark Thing was with me as I fell.

  "No," I told him, "No I don't want to die but my arm, my body. I'm rotting and weak and-"