by Doug Goodman
Alyssa rolled her eyes. “You have no idea. Wait till they break out the role-playing games. That is something I haven’t missed.”
“I miss eyeliner and Facebook.”
“Facebook, yes, but what I really want is some Jane Austin. I’d settle for Jude Deveraux. I could use some escapism.”
“We’ve come a long way from Elizabeth, haven’t we?”
“The more I see of the world, the less inclined I am to think well of it.”
Riley guffawed, then held her hands to her lips. For a moment, the boys looked over at them, and then they returned to their game. Riley nodded to the boys and said, “It behooves us all to take very careful thought before pronouncing an adverse judgment on any of our fellow men.”
“Look at us, Riley. We are as bad as they are,” Alyssa said. Then she gave her half-smile and said, “It is a universal truth that a boy in possession of a role playing game will not be want for a wife.”
Before she could laugh, something in the woods caught Alyssa’s eye. She tried to see through the curtains of rain that had started in force again, but she couldn’t make it out.
“I think someone’s out there,” she said.
Riley stiffened and turned. “Do you think it’s Aidan?”
“No. He wouldn’t come back without Kirk.”
Riley cupped her hands over her eyes and searched the side of the road. “I don’t see anything.”
“You don’t? Over there. It’s like a shadow in the rain.”
Without another word, Alyssa pulled the hood up over her raincoat and walked out into the rain. The boys suddenly stopped playing.
“What’s going on?” Jaxon asked Riley. Peter and Colt were right behind.
“She said she thought she saw something in the rain.”
“Stay here,” Jaxon said to Riley, and they all went out.
Riley tried to see what was going on, but all she could make out were that her friends’ shadows were gathering at the edge of the road. Then all four returned, but there was someone else with them. An old man. He had a big black jacket, pants, and boots, and he walked kind of funny, like maybe he had sprained both his ankles, or something.
The man was cold to the touch, so Alyssa took him away from the opening of the trailer. The man said not a word. Just sat down on one of the boxes of cola. Peter offered him a drink, but the man shook his head.
“Are you okay?” Alyssa asked him. “You look like you’ve been out there a long time.”
The old man wheezed as he breathed. He looked forward with the thousand yards stare that they had seen in so many people over the past two and a half months.
“What’s your name?” Peter asked. “I’m Peter. We come from south of here down in Houston. Lakewood.” When the man did not respond, he raised his voice. “Where are you from?”
The man said nothing.
The first hornet buzzed by Aidan’s ear as he caught up to Kirk. They were both dead sprinting through the mud and trees with no direction in mind. Aidan felt the hornet’s wings beating so close he could feel the filaments. He twisted his head away, and the bloated body of the hornet zoomed past him. He leaped over a rotted log and turned as they came into a nest of thorny vines. A hornet jabbed at Aidan and missed. They ran some more. Another hornet knocked Aidan in the back and he stumbled. He put his left hand down and felt a sharp pain in his hand. He also lost the rifle. He didn’t stop, though, as he tried to keep his balance and run deeper into the forest.
Up ahead was a small abandoned house. The doors were closed and the windows shuttered. Vines and leaves covered the sunken roof. He wasn’t sure how much protection it would provide, but if it gave them a chance to catch their breath and think, it was a gift from heaven.
But as they ran to it, a creek bed with steep sides appeared between them and the house. Aidan and Kirk jumped, but this time, Aidan slipped and fell backwards into the mud and water. Two hornets lanced their stingers at him. He was too quick, though, and the first hornet stabbed a stump. The second one cut his pants open and tore a ribbon of red into his leg. Aidan cried out as he tried to climb out of the creek bed.
A hornet flew to the side and knocked into a tree. Wood exploded above them, covering them in rotted-out wood. A thick, rotten stick landed in front of Kirk. He picked it up as a black and yellow hornet rushed towards him. Kirk swung hard and connected with the hornet, which he sent crunching wetly against a pine. Then Kirk dropped the stick and hoisted Aidan up, while several more bloated bodies, full of enough venom to kill thirty men, slashed at them. They ran into the house and slammed the door shut. There was no way to close the door, so Kirk braced his foot against the bottom of the door while he held to the knob.
“Holy, hell!” Kirk said through deep breaths. “Those things are monstrous!” Then, he said, “Your hand!”
Aidan leaned back against a 1970s-era stove and gasped for air while he looked at his hand. Adrenaline was pumping so hard through his body that he hadn’t realized what happened when he stumbled and fell on his hand. His little finger on his right hand was pointing in the wrong direction. Before he could think about how much pain he was in or how wrong the finger looked, he popped it back in the correct direction. A shower of pain rained up from his arm, and he screamed.
Momentarily safe and secure, the energy rushed out of Aidan like the air in a popped balloon. Aidan sat down on the floor and moaned.
“Did you see that?” Kirk asked. “I totally Pujoled that hornet!”
Using his legs only, Aidan pushed himself up off the floor and looked out the shutters. The buzzing had stopped. Except for the ones at the front door, the hornets were crawling on the walls. Their legs made little ticking sounds as they walked along the paneling.
“They are searching for a way in,” Aidan said.
They both scanned the room. The place was a dump and was probably used by squatters, so there were small holes in the siding, but otherwise it looked intact.
“Well, I wouldn’t like my odds against a warg in this place, but I think the holes are too small for the hornets.”
“I can’t hold this door forever.”
“I think there are only four of them.”
“I thought I saw six. When we’ve caught our breath, we should run for it.”
“Where? I can’t run forever.”
“Good point. It will be nightfall soon. Don’t wasps go to sleep at night? Maybe we can wait them out.”
“Maybe. But what if these guys don’t go back to the nest at night. Since when has any animal acted the way it was supposed to in the past two to three months?”
“That brings us back to running.”
A sound of wood popping echoed in the one-room house.
“We need a decision quick, Aidan.”
Aidan looked back to the stove.
“I’ve got an idea.”
Peter handed the old man an open can of beans. “Sorry, but we don’t have a campfire, or I’d warm it up for you.”
The old man turned his watery eyes away, and then towards Peter. The old man dropped the can and muttered something.
“Okay, did he just say hymen?” Peter asked.
“No, not that,” Jaxon said.
The old man muttered again, but this time a little louder. His voice came out in ragged, forced syllables.
“Dry her?” Peter asked. “Dry who? Alyssa and Riley are toweled off.”
“Dryder?” Colt offered as he approached the old man, who turned his vacant gaze on the boy.
“Dryder,” Jaxon confirmed. The old man croaked the sounds, “Dry-der,” encouraged by the five.
Peter reached down to pick up the can of baked beans. They were unusually red, like somebody had mixed tomato sauce in the beans. Then he realized he was staring at blood. His blood.
“I think it’s working,” Kirk said as the fire blossomed in the chimney. They were lucky to find some old cans of gasoline to help ignite the blaze. Aidan had used his fire starter on a stack of gas-soaked m
agazines and broken futon legs. Now, Aidan brought more trash from around the room – fast food bags, cardboard boxes, and porn magazines – and he tossed them in the old red brick chimney. He put most of the weight on his right hand. His left throbbed like crazy.
“I just hope the chimney doesn’t catch fire,” Aidan said.
“Are you kidding? That would be awesome,” Kirk said. “The ensuing chaos and the flames taking over the house would probably save us. I could finally let go of this doorknob and we could make a run for it. Did you just throw away porn?”
“Well, it was to save our lives.”
“Good point. Did you just throw away the porn?”
From behind them, they heard the buzzing of insect wings. Kirk and Aidan turned around and saw one of the hornets had forced itself through a narrow opening in the wall and now stood on the inside of the house. Its large insectoid eyes glared at them while the creature crawled click-clack-click-clack down the wall. Its bloated thorax seemed to throb with venom.
Kirk saw a bat in the trash. Slowly, he stretched his arm to it, but it was too far away.
The giant hornet flitted its wings and took a few more steps into the house. It seemed to be trying to come to a decision about what to do with the boys and the fire.
Aidan coughed, then realized that the smoke was filling the room. Either the flue was not open or it was broken, but fortuitously at least some of the smoke was staying inside.
The hornet took to the air and circled the room while Aidan and Kirk flung their arms. Aidan grabbed a burning futon log and Kirk grabbed the bat. They both started swinging wildly at the giant hornet, hoping that something would hit. At the same time, the door of the old ramshackle house swung open.
Kirk screamed at the giant hornet, which swiped at him. It missed its target, then aimed for Aidan. Aidan fell backwards as the hornet landed on him. He felt its long black stinger knifing his abdomen as he threw it to the side.
The smoke was filling the room, and it didn’t seem to calm or scare away the hornet. It only made the damned thing madder. Soon, flames danced on the ceiling. From the other side of the room, he heard Kirk yell. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw hornets swarming into the room, their giant black and yellow bodies filling the air.
Touching the bulbous creature’s body sent a ripple effect of shivers up Aidan’s spine. There was just something unnatural about the sensation of the creature’s hard exoskeleton, which was covered in prickly fibers.
In the excitement of the moment, Aidan forgot about his hand. He pushed up with his left, immediately felt the pain railing up and down his arm. He fell back down next to the hornet, which bit at his face. He felt slashes of pain, and then kicked it away. He stood up with his right hand this time and ran through a wall of bloated black and yellow bodies.
Aidan came out the other side of that wall and realized he had somehow escaped the abandoned house. As he looked up, he saw a strong wind pushing the flames to the trees.
“Forest Fire!” Kirk yelled as he came running out of the old house. They both ran from the fires, which were now raging out of control around them.
Aidan felt the heat rushing towards him. He jumped over the creek, and this time, he cleared the gap and landed on the other side of the steep edge. Rather than stop to appreciate his feat, Aidan followed Kirk on a direct line out of the forest. By luck, he saw the family Winchester and picked it up.
Something hit the trailer roof and made a big bang, and Peter was pretty sure it was him. He landed on some boxes, and the wind got knocked out of him. He stood up and pulled out his parang.
The thing – because nobody could really tell what it was – stood in the middle of the trailer. Its broken carapace showed two sides of the old man’s face and body. Underneath the old man’s body sprouted bat-like wings and giant knobby legs. Bright yellow eyes looked out from his waist, and his legs now ended in the front-most feet of the monstrosity, which was neither mammalian, avian, or insectoid, and all three at once.
“Dryder!” The thing screeched as it thrust a leg at Peter. Peter, whose lip was busted wide open and blood was gushing out, lowered his body in a way that only a gymnast could and flipped out of the creature’s kill zone.
Colt and Alyssa stood on the far side of the monster. Alyssa was trying to reach her backpack where she kept a pocketknife, but the creature was between her and the knife. So she placed herself between Colt and the monster and prepared to die fighting for him.
“If it comes for us, run,” she told Colt.
“But…”
“Ya! No buts!”
Instead of Alyssa, the monster lashed out at Riley. It did not strike her. It grabbed her with its spike-haired claws and rolled her in its legs. It hugged her next to its thorax-body. “Dryder!” it screeched again.
“You can’t have her!” Jaxon roared and bull rushed the monster. He blocked the creature’s first strike, and then hacked through a leg with his parang. The appendage bounced and wiggled on the ground as it spewed blood. The monster wailed as it released Riley. Jaxon pulled her towards him as he ran outside of the trailer.
Almost by instinct, everyone knew what they had to do. They did not need to communicate with words. By the time everyone was outside, Peter had already lifted himself up on top of the trailer and heaved the door down. Alyssa, Colt, and Jaxon raised the bottom door while Riley locked it.
They all backed away from the trailer.
“You’re bleeding, Peter!” Colt exclaimed. Peter had felt weak ever since the Dryder hit him, but the adrenaline had pulled him along. Now he looked down and saw a wet black stain across his chest.
“That looks unhealthy,” he said with a smile as he slumped down.
Alyssa pulled him up. “C’mon. We need to get you somewhere safe and look at that.”
“Does anybody smell smoke?” Colt asked.
They turned to see the flames rising up through the rain like some vision of hell, and out of the inferno, Kirk and Aidan came running.
“Go! Go!” they shouted without stopping. The seven jumped into the van and turned it around. They would not come this way again. They had to find another way north.
Chapter Six: Kind
It took them two weeks to find a better way north. First, the seven traveled south back the way they came. But they did not want to go so far south that they returned to Lakewood, so once they re-entered the metro area and the land of buildings and subdivisions, they turned west on a different state road, which took them into a Mordor of industrial zones, refineries, and factories that leaked so many noxious gases that the seven decided to spend a day scavenging for gas masks. Alyssa finally found some military-grade gas masks in the back of a gas station of all places. She found them in the gas station’s back office, which was covered with pornographic pictures. Riley took one look at all the photos of naked women and left the room. Alyssa rolled her eyes and began searching through the storeowner’s cabinets and drawers, which is how she found the gas masks in an opened safe. There was also a place for keeping pistols and bullets, but those were all gone. The storeowner also kept a stack of cash that he left behind. Alyssa left it, too.
Back outside, Alyssa found everyone circled around the station’s gas well, wearing bandanas over their mouths. Peter was pulling up a narrow bucket attached to some string. Aidan had a white scar across his belly where the hornet got him, and he still favored his left hand. Peter had a similar scar from the Dryder and Riley had a couple, but otherwise, the group looked in pretty good shape compared to the past couple of weeks when Aidan was pissing blood and both brothers were in-and-out of consciousness.
“There’s gotta be a better way to do this,” Kirk said.
“When you can turn on the pumps, you let me know,” Peter said.
Alyssa pulled down her black bandana and said, “Hey, guys. Look what I found.” She held the gas masks up as if she was holding all that cash.
“Oh, cool!” Colt said.
“How did you find
that?” Jax asked.
“I guess the guy who owned the shop was always worried about gas fumes from the refineries,” Alyssa suggested.
They stopped driving the van and elected to push it. They pushed it because running the engine with all the traffic to slow it down was a waste of gas.
Each day began with more cars to be shoved off the road. They worked under the sun, but were usually comfortable. Only once or twice did they have to walk down the road wearing nothing but swimsuits and gas masks. Another cold front kept the temperature moderate, but the humidity remained constant and permeating, like the aunt at family reunions who nobody wants to talk to but everybody must deal with. The roads were not as bad as the overpasses, which were frequent and difficult to push the van up.
Peter looked at the latest overpass and sighed. “Can’t we just teleport the van to the other side?”
He slid his gas mask like a ball cap on his head and fumbled around in his backpack, then looked around. “I’m all out. Anybody got some waffles?”
There were shakes of the head from everyone.
Alyssa searched the back of the van. “We’ve got Raman and…more Raman. You want beef or chicken?”
“Never mind,” Peter groused.
“I think I might have a couple of Clif Bars remaining in my backpack,” Riley said.
“Good,” Aidan said as he jerked her backpack from her. He pulled out the Clif Bars and started handing them out to everyone.
“Hey, you didn’t have to do that,” Jax said. “She was going to share.”
“We are running out of food, and she isn’t one of us.”
“I’m sorry,” Riley apologized.
“No, you don’t have to apologize,” Jax said. “I’m tired of this bullshit, Aidan. She’s been with us – what? A month now? Stop treating her like some second-class citizen!”
“He’s got a point, Aidan,” Alyssa said. “You shouldn’t be so mean to her.”
“I’m not trying to be mean. I’m trying to save you,” he said to Alyssa. To Peter and the others he said, “And you, and you, and you, and you. But not her. She eats last, she eats least. That’s the way it goes.”