A breeze blew through her short black hair and rustled the once-purple streaks, which had faded to a violet-gray. She fiddled with the silver jewelry in her upper ear, a nervous habit that Trevor both loved and hated. He enjoyed watching her slender fingers move, but he hated that she felt nervous.
He turned and led the way across the rooftop. Ty followed, her boots thudding in time with his sneakers. She stuffed the gift box into her jacket pocket and zipped it shut. Trevor was right. This was an argument for another time. Not on the roof, not now. It wasn't safe up here.
A disturbing chatter filled Ty's ears, and she stopped. She scanned the sky with wide, leery eyes. A loud clicking sound, out of rhythm with their footsteps, had echoed off a neighboring skyscraper. It sounded like the “clacker” toy she had as a kid—a plastic noise maker she received as a party favor. Her mother hated it, and the noisy toy quickly found a place in the garbage. She reached out and squeezed Trevor's arm. He stopped, and they listened to the city together.
The clicking sound didn't repeat itself, but they heard the flapping of gigantic wings. A silhouette swooped over the moon. They froze, watching, waiting...
The creature glided through the air, heading towards the beach, its leathery wings carrying it further into the distance. They sighed in unison and exchanged a look that expressed an unspoken agreement: They needed to hurry up, finish their task, and get their asses back inside.
They neared the metal railing of the fire escape. Ty was hesitant to approach. A mammoth creature lay motionless on the cement. Its black wings were pulled close to its furry body. A portion of its head was missing. Pieces of brain matter and skull littered the ground. Ty put a hand over her mouth. It smelled like rotting meat, but Ty guessed that was because the creature had been feeding on corpses. It was too freshly dead to be decaying.
The hair that covered the creature's snout was stained a dark red, and its mouth hung open, revealing pointed teeth the size of Trevor's fingers. Ty fought off a shiver. She had witnessed identical teeth ripping her family and friends to shreds, an all-you-can-eat buffet of humans.
“This has got to be the dumbest idea ever,” Ty noted.
“Agreed. But I don't want to starve.” Trevor knelt down and opened a backpack that lay near a congealing pool of crimson bat blood. The shot gun lay just within reach, but he was hoping he wouldn't need it any more tonight.
He reached into the canvas pack and pulled several plastic bags and two knives from inside. “You've got to help me. We need to get back inside before long. This guy here was an early bird,” he said, pointing to the corpse and forcing a fake smile.
Ty knew he was right. Most bats didn't wake up the very moment night fell. Just as humans used to sleep past sunrise, the bats liked to snooze for a while before breakfast. The moon had just started to shine in the dark sky. But soon... soon there would be too many to fight.
Trevor tossed her the knife, and she removed its leather sheath. “Take these, too.” He threw a pair of rubber gloves at her feet. The were yellow, the kind used for scrubbing dishes. “I found them at Mrs. Jenson's place.”
Ty donned the gloves and set to work, slicing a thin layer of furry flesh from the bat's body and discarding it onto the blood-soaked ground. She carved deeper into the meat, trying to find a piece that resembled something she could eat. Her mind raced. “What if it makes us sick?” She pushed the finely honed blade through the animal's flesh, coming away with strips of meat that she dropped into a plastic bag.
“It won't.”
She shook her head. “You don't know that.”
Trevor drove the blade into the creature's muscle tissue, pushing until the handle stuck straight out. The knife stayed in place as he bent over to tie the two sides of a plastic bag together. His blood-soaked hands smeared the bag with crimson droplets.
“We can't get sick. Everyone else... they got sick so easy. A sneeze. A kiss. It spread like wildfire. Hell, maybe it was airborne in the end, who knows. But we didn't get it. We still haven't. We're immune, Ty. It can't hurt us.”
She shook her head and stopped cutting the meat. She squeezed her eyes shut, biting her lip until it turned white around the tooth. Memories of the disease went flashing through her mind—the illness that turned her loved ones into drooling madmen. It caused hallucinations, hysteria, and it racked their bodies with pain. Like rabies, it spread through the bat bites, but this new strain was much more severe and a hundred times more contagious. The disease was like nothing the world had ever seen. It all started with the bat bites, and it went to hell from there.
Ty released a deep breath and opened her eyes, frowning. “I'm scared. I don't want to eat one of these... things.”
“Well, I'm sorry, but you're out of luck. The nearest grocery store is three miles away through an area thick with nests. I showed you through the binoculars; you know this already. The people in our building were poor, Ty. They didn't have well stocked kitchens, and well... we're out of food. Nada. Zip. Zero.”
“Okay, I get it.” Frustrated, she gripped the knife handle—knuckles white—and scowled as she carved the meat. Her stomach grumbled. Even with the world in ruins and no use for money, Ty still had it worse than the rich folk. If two yuppies were stranded in that upscale apartment complex that ran along the beach to the west, they surely had a much better stockpile of groceries than the slim pickings Trevor and Ty had found around their building. The entire world had changed, but one thing remained the same: Things were rougher on this side of town.
The sound of thumping wings pulled Ty from her thoughts. Followed by another sound. The clicking noise again? No. It was closer, much louder this time. A series of abrupt screeches assailed her eardrums, like the incessant squeaking of a rubber bath toy, but baritone and feverishly fast.
There was a loud shriek. A large shadow moved over the moon. She felt a gust of wind as the creature descended, closing in.
“Look out!” she screamed as it dove for Trevor. He dropped and rolled across the ground, narrowly escaping the attack. It shrieked again, and its massive wings flapped as it took flight, ruffling their clothes and hair in the wake of its powerful ascent into the star-filled sky. Moonlight shone on its translucent black wings, making them appear gray as it glided through the air. Ty could see the long, skinny arms and spindly fingers that powered the leathery flesh.
The carnivorous mammal swooped around, a dark, furry boomerang headed straight back to where Trevor lay on the roof. It did a nose dive, its eyes shining light onyx marbles in the moonlight, fangs glistening in the pointed slope of its hairy snout.
Trevor focused on the shotgun that lay just ahead. His gloves left bloody hand prints on the ground as he scrambled forward on all fours. The bat's shadow grew large around him. He reached out, gripped the handle of the gun.
Pain exploded through Trevor's back and side as the creature sank needle-point teeth into his body. He cried out. It felt like a bear trap had closed around his torso. The bat's strong jaws and dagger-like fangs made it impossible for Trevor to scramble free without ripping himself to shreds.
He held the gun in both shaky hands and was preparing to aim it when he saw the ground pulling away from his face. The bat was lifting him, trying to take flight. His heart pounded in his temples. Trevor dropped his right hand away from the gun and stretched his arm out as far as he could. His injuries tore open, and he winced but managed to wrap a hand around the railing of the fire escape. He thought the bloody glove might be too slippery to hold on, but was relieved to find it had some traction.
Trevor craned his neck to look at the winged beast. It shook its head, attempting to yank its meal from where it clung to the fire escape. Drool leaked from the bat's mouth, a viscous fluid that oozed down its angular snout, dripping into the holes of Trevor's ripped T-shirt. It felt warm and thick against his skin and mixed with the blood that ran from his aching wounds.
He still held the gun in his left hand, but he screamed, “Ty! I need your help. Shoot i
t! Shoot—”
A spear plunged through the top of the bat's head. Blood rained over Trevor as the creature released him, shrieking with such fury that he smelled the rotted meat on its breath. Ty ran around the side of the creature, reaching for Trevor's hand. “I got your back.”
The rabid predator spread its wings and pumped them feebly. It gained a few yards of height, but its movement was slow and disoriented. The harpoon dangled from its head, whipping around with the jerky motion of its clumsy ascent into the air.
Ty helped Trevor to his feet. A searing pain burned in his puncture wounds, but he ignored it. He raised the gun. Tried to steady his trembling arms.
A shotgun blast hit the creature in its wing, tearing a jagged hole. A flap of loose material, like a ripped movie theater screen, hung limply from its leathery flesh. Through the hole, Trevor saw a dozen stars shining.
It screeched again. This time it curdled Trevor's blood. It was a war cry. The bat was getting pissed.
It narrowed its onyx eyes, lips drawn back to expose two rows of sharp yellow fangs. It was Ty's turn to scream, “Shoot it! Shoot it!” Trevor grimaced at the pain caused by the shotgun's weight. Every movement he made filled his torso with agony.
He steadied the barrel and aimed. Boom. The bat's cranium shattered. One side of its face went missing. Chunks of bone and furry flesh exploded outward from its head like a Fourth Of July firework. Its wings stopped pumping, and it fell, convulsing on its way down.
Crunching metal and shattering glass echoed from below, like the sound of cars crashing together. Ty gulped. She and Trevor connected eyes, and they stepped toward the railing. Trevor lagged behind.
Ty looked down at the fallen creature. Its neck was twisted at an unnatural angle. It twitched for a moment before finally going limp. Even from up here, it looked massive. It had struck a car, the roof completely flattened, the metal frame so smashed that the windshield was nothing but a haphazard slit surrounded by splintered glass.
Ty considered, yet again, where these creatures might have come from. She wondered if she'd ever know the answer. There were theories, of course—speculation among various groups of scientists, government officials, and conspiracy theorists. But the human race dwindled so quickly, and in such devastating numbers, that even the nation's leading scientists had not discovered a reason before most of the humans died out.
The disease that spread after the bats arrived... it was too deadly for the world to fight. Everyone was gone. And all she had left was Trevor.
She looked over at him as he slumped against the railing, resting his face in the crook of his arms. “Are you okay?” Her voice shook as she studied the tattered cloth of his shirt. She saw bloody lacerations through the holes.
Trevor raised his head and smiled, though his face was tense with fighting back tears. “I'll live.”
“But—”
“I said I'll live. It hurts like hell, but I don't think—” He winced, holding his side. “I don't think it punctured anything vital. I'm standing, aren't I?” Ty nodded, but her eyes lingered on his blood-soaked abdomen.
“The gift was for you,” he added.
She raised her eyes to meet his. “What?”
His words were strained as he pulled away from the railing and stumbled back toward the butchered bat. “I said... the gift... was for you.”
She thought about this as she removed her gloves and threw them into the backpack. She found the knife she had dropped and returned it to the sheath, then said, “But we weren't even dating before—” she circled her hand in the air, “all this.”
“I wanted to date you.” He found his knife and tucked it into the pack “I just didn't have the guts to ask.”
Ty rolled her eyes. “Yeah right. So you bought me a present without even asking me out?”
“When I saw it, I thought of you. I thought maybe some day, when the time was right, I would give it to you.” He moved closer, peeling the gloves from his fingers and stuffing them into his pockets. He grabbed both of her hands in his. “I know you, Ty. I know you shortened your name because your hippie parents named you Tiger Lilly and you hate it.” She closed her eyes and cringed, a half smirk on her lips. He smiled. “I know you're a sweet, beautiful person who deserves better than the last jerk you dated.” Now it was Trevor's turn to cringe as he realized that the “last jerk” was probably a dead man by now. Ty didn't seem to notice or care.
“Okay...” She pursed her lips. “Then why haven't you given it to me?”
A grin spread across Trevor's face. He chuckled, slow and deep, like he knew something hilarious that Ty didn't understand. “Open it,” he said and laughed again.
Ty gave him a puzzled look and slid the box from her jacket pocket. She opened the lid. A silver necklace glimmered in the moonlight. Hanging from the chain was an onyx pendant outlined in thin, polished silver. The black stone was in the shape of... a bat.
Ty snorted, and the corners of her lips curled upward. She giggled breathily, shaking her head. “Oh,” she said. “I see your point.”
They both exploded into laughter. “Under different circumstances,” she managed to say with some effort, “This would be a very gorgeous necklace.” They both smiled.
The sound of wings flapping in the distance and bats chattering in a colony killed the moment for the two young lovers. “C'mon,” he said and kissed her forehead. “Let's get inside before we get a guano shower.” Ty laughed. Even bleeding from a bite wound and with an empty stomach, Trevor always found a way to make her smile.
They gathered their things and headed for the stairs. Ty carried the plastic bags as Trevor shuffled along, clutching his side. She loved him, she knew that now as she watched him stumbling towards safety, in pain. Ty hoped he'd be okay, and she wondered if she would have loved him this way before the world came to an end.
Or maybe the world hadn't ended. Not yet.
###
Lindsey Goddard’s stories and poems are a reflection of her love for the dark side. She has been published over forty times. Recent credits include Dark Moon Digest, Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing, James Ward Kirk Fiction, and Sirens Call Publications. She lives in the suburbs of St. Louis, MO with her husband and three children. For more information, please visit: www.LindseyBethGoddard.com
The Tooth Collector (and Other Tales of Terror) Page 14