by Jason Brant
A man stepped onto the trail ahead of them, a rifle butted against his shoulder. He sighted them through a scope. “Stop right there.”
He wore the white shirt and pants of a cook. A net had corralled his hair in a bun behind his head.
Allison recognized him instantly. He worked at Sally Mae’s diner on Main Street, cooking breakfast for the first shifters. Allison went over there during her lunch break occasionally if she wanted something greasy to help with her daily hangovers. They had the best hash browns she’d ever tasted.
She waved at him and kept running. “John! Thank God, we’re being chased by—”
“Stop or I’ll put you down right now.” John squinted his left eye shut, his right watching them through the scope. “If you crazy bastards come any closer, I’ll blow your fucking heads off.”
Drew stopped and held his arms out so Allison and Sammy couldn’t run past him. “Relax, buddy. We don’t want to hurt anyone.”
They stood twenty yards away from him, all three drenched with sweat.
Allison squinted, trying to get a better look at John. His white shirt had streaks of blood stained across it. Four deep gouges ran down his left cheek, running from his temple all the way to his jawline.
“How do I know you aren’t like the others?” John stayed where he was. Blood trickled from one of his ears.
“We’re running from a couple of crazy men behind us.” Drew raised his hands and showed that he wasn’t armed.
Allison hadn’t noticed until then that he didn’t have his pistol anymore. Blood ran from a gash on the back of his right hand.
John opened his squinted eye and lowered the rifle an inch, peering at them over the top of the scope. “Allison? You haven’t gone full psycho like everyone else?”
“It’s me.” Allison stepped around Drew, standing in front of him. “Dr. Franklin is chasing us along with some other men. He had...” Allison visualized the tongues hanging from his belt. “He’s hurt some other people.”
“Did you answer your phone?”
“What?” Allison’s shoulders tensed. The question was so bizarre that she thought John must have gone as nuts as Dr. Franklin.
“Did you answer your goddamn cell phone this morning?” John raised the rifle again and looked through the scope. “Tell me right now or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
“You know I don’t even have a cell phone.”
John’s posture relaxed. The rifle lowered down to his waist. “That’s right. I forgot that you don’t bother with that tech stuff. Thank Christ for small miracles.”
Drew looked over his shoulder. “We need to get off the trail.”
“Who do you have with you? Can they be trusted?” John’s eyes flicked to Sammy’s chest and then back to Allison.
“They’re good people.” Allison moved toward him. “They’re helping me get out of here.”
John frowned. “It’s not smart to be out in the open without a gun. I just heard some shooting a few seconds ago.”
“That was me,” Drew said. “Some men are chasing us. We need to hide right now.”
John ignored him. He kept his attention on Allison. “You said Dr. Franklin is after you?”
“He’s gone crazy, I think.”
“Everyone in the whole goddamn town has gone crazy.” John turned around and waved for them to follow him. “I got a hiding place over here.”
Sammy grabbed Drew’s shoulder. “Can we trust him? He has a gun and we have nothing.”
“He’s not acting like the other people we’ve seen so far.” Drew watched John walk down the path. “I don’t know if we have much of a choice right now anyway. I emptied my pistol back there and had to throw it at the doctor. Bastard caught me on the back of the hand with his saw.”
As if on cue, Dr. Franklin shouted from behind them.
Allison shuddered at the madness in the scream. A man in control of his mind didn’t behave in such a way. “I’d rather go with John than wait for Dr. Franklin to catch up.”
18 – Dude Smells Like Burned Chicken
The kid had me.
My body was racked with pain and still in shock from the fall. He’d only clipped me with his first shot in the hallway. There wasn’t a snowballs chance in Hell that I would dodge this one.
“Get up, Ash!”
I didn’t bother answering Nami.
The kid in the window smiled at me. I was getting really fed up with all these sick bastards giving me that devilish grin. At least I wouldn’t have to see it again.
A gun went off, and I braced myself for the end.
And then a red splotch blossomed in the kid’s chest and he staggered away from the window, his smile gone.
I craned my neck around and saw a man standing beside Nami, her pistol in his hand. He had it aimed at the window for another second before lowering it and looking over at me.
“What are you waiting for? Get your ass up!” He was also a big man, though he didn’t come close to approaching the size of good ol’ Butch.
What the hell are they feeding these guys around here?
Sunken, bloodshot eyes stared at me. Half a dozen holes had been burned into the mechanic’s shirt he wore. Soot covered his face and hands. The slide on Nami’s pistol had locked back, the mag empty. The man gave it a quick glance before tossing it to the sidewalk.
“Get moving!” He turned and fled into a house behind him. A yellow sign hung above the door that read Johnson, Johnson, & Associates. It was a row home that had been converted into a business.
Nami stayed on the sidewalk, waving for me to get up. “Let’s go!” She hopped on her toes twice, pigtail flying.
Butch appeared in the window, ducked down so he could see out. His giant melon filled the majority of the open space. He bellowed into the street, “They’re going into Johnson’s!”
I rolled onto my shoulder, grunting and hissing at the myriad of aches in my torso. Dehydration, exhaustion, and utter misery sapped my strength. The railing of the fire escape had blunted some of the impact from the fall, but it had still kicked the shit out of me.
Shouts came from the streets lining both sides of the apartment building and pharmacy. The clatter of dozens of people melding into a murderous mob drew closer as I got to my knees.
Butch roared again, his rumbling voice echoing through the town.
Nami ran into the lawyer’s office, disappearing into the darkness beyond the doorway. I staggered after her, holding a hand against my chest, just under my ribs. Something hard was grinding into something soft in there.
I plunged into the building and saw Nami hang a left at the end of a hall. Headshots of lawyers and politicians lined both walls as I ran by, my left shoulder brushing against several of the frames, canting them at odd angles. My back straightened out a little more with each laborious step, the pain ebbing incrementally.
The house had high ceilings, wood floors, high-end furniture, and antique lights. The lawyers had a decent business going despite the depressed nature of the area.
“Hurry the fuck up,” Nami yelled from somewhere ahead.
More people shouted from the street behind me, their voices getting closer. I gritted my teeth and pushed on. A dining room that had long ago been converted into a conference room opened up at the end of the hall.
I banked left through an open door, stumbling into yet another hallway. Nami stood at the end, her tiny frame silhouetted in a doorway leading outside. She watched me over her shoulder before plunging into the blinding light outside.
I followed her into a small parking lot behind the townhouse, having to squint against the sunlight. The man who looked like he’d taken a roll through a barbeque pit waited for us in the entrance of an auto-repair at the far end of the lot.
“Move!” he hissed. He held the glass door open for Nami and beckoned me to hurry with a few quick waves of his hand.
I obliged.
The voices behind me bounced through the townhouse, bleeding into t
he parking lot.
As I ran past him, the big man pulled the door closed behind him and clicked two locks in place. “Follow me.”
He brushed past me, and I caught a whiff of singed hair and burnt clothing.
Nami stepped aside as he lumbered through the receiving area of the repair business. A counter stood in the middle of the floor, papers covering it. A light blinked on an LCD monitor on a desk against the far wall.
The man paid little attention to anything as he hurried through the darkened space. Only natural light spilled inside from the glass door and a lone window in front of the counter. The lights were off, which I hoped might keep the mob chasing us from checking inside.
I followed Nami through two more offices before we speed-walked into the garage part of the shop. Disassembled cars sat atop lifts, their tires dangling uselessly in the air.
The place reeked of grease and gasoline.
“Over here.” The man jogged past two cars and stopped at a third.
It was parked on the floor, the hood popped, cables hanging from the engine. A grate was open underneath the front of the vehicle.
“Climb in there.” The man gestured to the tight space.
Darkness waited below.
“Hell no.” Nami shook her head, pigtail flying. “We’ll be trapped down there.”
“I’ve already been hiding in there this morning.” The man looked past me at the offices. “Get in or get out.”
That was all the prodding I needed. From the sound of it, half the town could be descending on us soon. Even John Rambo wouldn’t have liked those odds.
I dropped to my ass and tossed my legs over the side. Grease and dirt mixed with my sweat, adding yet another nasty color to my skin. Add some long hair and I would have looked and smelled like a yeti.
The shadows under the car swallowed me as I slid into the space. The walls ran three feet down to the floor with an oily screen in the center.
Nami climbed in after me, bitching the entire way.
I couldn’t even imagine what this man had thought when he saw the two of us together. In a normal situation, in which an entire town hadn’t lost its collective sanity, someone would have seen us and assumed a homeless man had kidnapped a little black girl.
As I crawled further under the car, the big man dropped in behind Nami. He grabbed the metal grate on the garage floor and slid it into place above him, bathing the small space in darkness.
The glass door at the front of the office shattered a few seconds later.
We sat and listened.
My breathing sounded impossibly loud.
Footsteps clomped into the garage.
Angry voices bounced off the cinder-block walls and concrete floor.
“I told you I already checked the garage,” a man said. He had the gravelly voice of someone who had spent decades damaging his throat with whiskey and cigarettes. “No one came in here today.”
“We heard ya the first time,” a woman said. “But Butch saw Jim Picking in the street, and he works for you. Stands to reason that he would hide out here.”
“But—”
“Shut up and search the cars. I’ll check the back.” The woman’s voice moved past our hiding place. “Yell if you find ’em.”
The way they spoke to each other took me off guard. I’d expected to hear something more aggressive, more nonsensical. These people were chasing us with murder on their minds, but they spoke as if they were just passing the time.
The grating above us had tiny slits in the metal. As my eyes adjusted to the low light, I could see the faint outline of the front end of the car. I quietly moved past Nami and stopped behind the man I assumed to be Jim. The silhouette of his head was just barely visible as he stared out into the garage.
Shuffling footsteps moved across the dirty floor, heading toward the first car. A door opened, then slammed shut a moment later. The man cursed and meandered back to the second car.
I could hear him huffing as he got closer. His heavy, quick exhalations made me picture a fat man who didn’t want to be bothered searching around.
“No way they could have climbed up there,” the man mumbled to himself. “This is such a waste of my goddamn time.”
His steps came directly toward us.
I held my breath.
Stared through the grating.
Waited for the moment when he would reveal our hiding place.
My muscles tensed, legs coiled under me. If the grate moved, I planned to explode out of the space, fists flying in a tornado of badassery.
I’d probably get shot between the eyes for the effort, but that beat getting killed while hiding in an oil pit.
One of the car doors above us opened. The door ajar alarm dinged.
The lighter, less plodding steps of the woman came from behind us. “What about under the cars?”
“What?”
“Don’t you climb in those spaces underneath them to change oil or whatever?”
The man sighed. “I think I’d see them if they were under there.”
“Not the one you’re standing by, dummy. It’s covered up.”
Jim Picking, the Human Barbeque, shifted his weight. He turned his head and looked at me. I couldn’t see the expression on his face, but I could only assume that he was grimacing the same way I was.
“Fine.” The man’s feet slid on the floor as he moved to the front of the car.
I balled my hands into fists.
His fingers appeared above the grating, reaching down.
“We got someone down here!” a voice yelled from the front of the garage. “Another one for the feast!”
The outline of the man above us stepped back. “Told ya they weren’t in here.”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s go get us a piece of that little black one.” The woman ran from the garage, giggling maniacally.
The man followed her, his shuffling gait a bit faster than it had been during his search.
I waited for a full thirty seconds before letting out a long sigh.
Jim pushed the grate up a few inches and peeked into the garage. His eyes darted around before he slid it aside and climbed out.
I hopped out of the space and turned around, proffering my hand to Nami. She took it, and I hauled her up from the darkness. My hand consumed hers, and I was shocked again at just how tiny she was.
Here I was, a fairly big, well-trained telepath, and I was scared shitless. I couldn’t even imagine what she felt at that time. I could handle myself in a physical confrontation, but Nami would have trouble fighting off a declawed kitten.
“What the hell is with these people?” Nami asked. “Haven’t they ever seen a black woman before?”
“I’m more concerned with the fact that they’re hunting us down, not calling you names.” I looked at Jim, who stood off to my left. “Thanks for that. You really pulled our asses out of the fire.”
I grimaced at my stupidity then. I’d just thanked a man who looked as if he’d spent the morning in a frying pan for not letting us get burned.
He grunted and then headed for the rear of the garage. “Follow me.”
“Where are we going now?” Nami asked.
“The boss has an office in the back with some monitors for the security cameras. We’ll see if anyone comes in again.”
Not knowing what else to do just then, I decided to keep following his lead. I had no clue as to what was going on or why, and the Human Barbeque seemed to know his way around.
We quickly walked to an office at the rear of the garage. It was a small room with three chairs, a tiny desk, and a bank of three monitors against the right wall. The office had two windows with blinds drawn in front of them.
Jim maneuvered around the desk and carefully eased himself into the leather chair behind it. He hissed quietly as his back came into contact with the seat.
I quietly closed the door and sat in one of the two chairs in front the desk. Nami hopped onto the other one, her feet swinging freely above the fl
oor.
“I’m Ash, and this is Nami.”
“Jim.” He turned on the monitors on the wall and stared at them as they powered up.
“Like I said, thanks for the assist back there.”
Nami leaned forward. “Fuck the pleasantries. What in the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is going on out there, Jimbo?”
Jim squinted at her. “In the name of what?”
I said, “She’s weird—ignore her.”
“She yours?”
Nami’s mouth dropped open. “Say that again?”
“You his kid?”
I shared a glance with Nami, struggling not to break out in a fit of laughter. The mortified look on her face made it even harder not to burst into giggles.
Masculine, testosterone-fueled giggles, that was.
“I’m in my thirties, goddamn it.” Nami crossed her arms over her chest. “And we aren’t even the same race. Do I look like his kid?”
Jim shrugged and looked back at the monitors. “Thought maybe you were adopted.”
I checked out the screens as three separate images appeared on them. The first was of the front office. Glass littered the floor in front of the broken door.
The second monitor showed the garage. The camera sat high on one of the walls, near a corner. It angled down, pointing in the general direction of the cars atop their lifts.
The final camera pointed at a door in the rear of the building, an exit sign glowing in the semi-darkness.
For now, at least, we didn’t have anyone chasing us with pitchforks.
“Do you have any idea what’s going on around here, Jim?” I cocked a thumb at Nami. “We drove into town and stumbled into a bunch of people who were trying to kill us.”
We’d been on the run since we’d left the police station, and I hadn’t been able to stop and consider what had happened to everyone.
“Welcome to the club.” Jim swiveled his chair around so he faced us. His eyes kept cutting back to the monitors as he talked. “Everyone in the whole town has lost their minds.”
“Do you know what caused it?”
“Damn right I do.” Jim bobbed his head. “I was in the gas station getting some breakfast when everyone’s cell phones rang at the same time. Everyone but me and Bob, the dick who runs...” Jim paused and looked down at the desk. “Who ran the station. We didn’t answer the call, but everyone else did. It came from an unknown number. When they answered, their faces just went blank.”