Out of the Shadows

by Timothy Boyd

  When I noticed my holster and gun were gone, I sprang up from the cot. Dizziness washed over me, and I fell back onto the makeshift bed.

  “Sorry about your head,” came the same male voice that had been behind me outside.

  I turned and saw a short, young Asian man, probably around five-foot-eight, leaning up against the dishwasher. He was in a black T-shirt, blue jeans, and old Airwalk shoes. His arms were covered in tattoo sleeves depicting an epic battle between what I assumed was heaven and hell. His long, black hair was pulled back into a braided ponytail that hung down the length of his back, and the piercings in his ear lobes were gauged up so large I could probably have stuck my thumb through one. A black plug filled a pinky-sized hole in the middle of his bottom lip.

  “Who are you?” I demanded of him.

  He gave a small bow of his head and replied, “Tsuyoshi.”

  “Who?”

  But before he could clarify, the door from the main bar burst open and Deb stumbled in, trailing a bottle of whiskey in her hands, the tails of her white button-down shirt hanging loosely, no longer tucked into her pants. The liquor reminded me of how thirsty I was.

  “Yoshi!” Mama hollered at him. “Quit pesterin’ my friend, Bear! He’s a regular, an’ he’s got a good heart!”

  Yoshi smiled and bowed his head to her, seemingly familiar with her antics, drunken or not.

  She fell into me, and I had to lower her down into a sitting position on the cot. Yoshi removed the whiskey bottle from her hand without her even knowing. She leaned her head against my shoulder and patted my leg. “Bear,” she said before taking the deep breath that was a sure sign that someone had had too much to drink. “I’s so glad when Yoshi dragged ya in here from outside. It’s nice to know you’re all right.”

  “He clocked me pretty hard.”

  “Well!” she began, a sudden wild fire in her eyes. “Ya never can be too careful! And if you’re gonna…” she halted, looking at her empty hands with a furrowed brow. “Wait a damn minute. Where’s my whiskey?!”

  Yoshi handed her a huge glass of water, which she chugged without taking a breath, making no mention of the fact that it wasn’t the whiskey she’d wanted. Clearly, Mama hadn’t been taking current events very well.

  “Sorry for hitting you,” Yoshi said. “We haven’t seen any normal people for hours, and when I heard your truck pull up, I was worried it was another of those messed up Jehovah’s Witnesses wanting me to join their community.” He smiled at the clever reference he’d devised.

  I shrugged away his words. “I’m just glad someone’s here for Deb.”

  “She won’t leave. I’ve argued with her for hours, but she just won’t. And I’m not going to leave her here.”

  Deb stood and wobbled, waving her finger wildly in Yoshi’s face. “You’re damn right I ain’t leavin’! A captain never abandons ship!”

  “This isn’t a ship, Mama,” I tried to reason with her. “You’re not safe here.”

  “Balls I’m not!” she argued, stumbling back out into the main bar.

  I glanced at Yoshi, who was following her out the door, so I stood and trailed behind them.

  Out in the bar, heavy shelves had been pushed against the windows, blocking entry from the outside. The tables had been overturned and pushed against the shelves as well, for extra protection. Yoshi had fortified the place sufficiently, but we would need more than liquor to wait this thing out.

  “So,” I began, motioning around at the blocked windows and bolted door. “Do you have a plan?”

  Yoshi stood behind the bar and flipped the switch on the small radio in front of him. I expected static, but instead, a male voice spoke with urgency. “…evacuating southwest Ohio. The following counties, be advised: the last rescue helicopter will lift off from the roof of the Franklin Police Headquarters at sunrise. I repeat: the last evac before neutralization will lift off at 0630 this morning. The list of counties affected are as follows: Montgom…” and Yoshi switched off the broadcast.

  My eyes were wide, and my heart fluttered with hope. Rescue! When I got the fax in the police station earlier in the night, I had wanted to head toward Franklin anyway. It was only a ten or fifteen minute drive on the highway. But then a particular word in the radio message flickered in my mind.

  “Wait… neutralization?” I asked, pretty sure I didn’t want clarification.

  Yoshi nodded grimly. “It’s exactly what it sounds like.”

  “Jesus.” My brain raced with the implications, and I finally added, “It could be a trap.”

  “Even if it’s not, I’m pretty sure those things out there have heard it by now.”

  I scratched my face in thought, prickly stubble beginning to force its way through the surface of my skin. “You think we should give it a shot?”

  “I think it’s our only shot.”

  “So… what are we waiting for?” I wondered.

  Yoshi bobbed his head in Deb’s direction.

  She stood behind the bar, pouring herself a tall drink. The ice cubes clanged against the glass and echoed awkwardly through the bar.

  “Mama?” I called out to her quietly, not wanting to anger her.

  “It ain’t alcohol. Don’t get your panties in a twist!”

  I sighed. “We really need to head to Franklin. It’s the only way to—.”

  She wobbled over to the bathroom and pounded on the door, yelling out and interrupting me. “Mary, come on out now! You been in there too long, an’ there ain’t no reason to hide!”

  The bathroom door slowly creaked open, and out stepped a shy, young girl with long brown hair in blue jeans and a pink hoodie zipped up the front. She clutched a hold of Deb’s leg and yanked on the white dress shirt. The bartender leaned down as Mary whispered into her ear.

  Deb waved her hand and said, “Naw, this here’s a friend of mine. He ain’t one of the bad things.”

  The young girl stepped out from behind the cover of Deb, and she stood staring at me, her hands clasped behind her back, her face showing diffidence.

  She looked so much like Annie.

  Yoshi approached the girl, placing his tattooed arm around her shoulders. “When I was running from my house earlier, I heard her screaming for help next door. I went in and…” he hesitantly looked down at the girl and saw that she didn’t want to relive the horrors of what happened within her house, so he merely said, “I went in and got her out.”

  My eyes were locked on Mary, unable to move. Emotions that I thought had been buried within the ash of my old house had floated to the surface again. My hands shook, my heart raced, and my mouth had gone dry.

  Yoshi crouched down and looked the girl in the eyes. “Mary, this is Nick Barren. He’s one of the good guys.”

  Mary timidly waved at him. “Hello, Mr. Barren.”

  “Call him Bear!” Deb blurted out from behind the bar, having given up on her whiskey, now drinking her tall glass of water. “He likes it,” she added.

  Finally, I broke from my stupor and smiled at the girl. “You can call me Nick or Bear. It’s up to you.”

  Mary smiled. “Bear’s a funny name.” She thought about it a moment longer and added, “I like it.”

  I nodded, “Good.” Her smile both warmed my heart and made it ache for the one I never again would see from Annie.

  Deb used the soda gun to fill a glass with fizzy water and bitters to calm her stomach, but halfway through, it sputtered and cut out. “Shit,” she lamented in defeat.

  “I can change the soda for you,” I offered, thinking that the more I could do to help her sober up and come to her senses, the better. I headed for the door leading down into the basement liquor room.

  “No, don’t!” came the nearly unanimous cry from the group.

  I froze and turned to them, expectantly.

  “You… you can’t go down there,” Deb said, dropping a mint leaf into her glass and chugging her half-filled soda water.

  I looked back and forth from Deb to Yoshi, an
d I noticed Mary looked frightened as well. “What’s in the basement?”

  Deb sighed. “There’s a lot of ‘em in there.”

  My breath caught in my throat. “Those things are in here?!” I halted and listened, but heard no noises coming from below. Surely if there were dozens of people locked in a tiny basement, some ruckus would ensue. I studied the two adults, waiting for them to crack a smile like a big joke was being played on me. But they never did.

  I glanced at the basement door and noticed a thick towel had been crammed under the seam. What was going on? I looked at Deb and said, “I need to see them.”

  She reached for a nearby broom, holding it like a baseball bat as Yoshi pulled Mary back into the far corner. “Suit yourself,” she said. “But Bear, make it quick an’ don’t let ‘em out.”

  I turned to Yoshi. “Where’s my gun?”

  “That won’t help ya,” Deb warned.

  I began to realize that what I thought was in the basement was very different than what was actually down there. I inched toward the door, trembling just slightly from the unknown. I turned the knob and pushed it open just far enough for me to flip the light switch and peek down the staircase.

  Inside, the floor and walls were completely covered with thick spider webs, and nearly every inch of the floor was crawling with quarter-sized arachnids, scurrying everywhere, on top of each other, up the walls, over the webs. My breath froze in my chest at the horrific sight. The second I saw a horde of them start scampering up the steps toward me, I flipped the light off and slammed the door, making sure to secure the towel under the seam again.

  Images from the night flashed through my frazzled brain: the black spider I saw on the steps in front of the police station, the unusual volume of scurrying bugs within the walls, the spider outside of Billy’s cell that crawled up my arm toward my face, how the grass felt sticky under my feet at the house, the webs in Sarah’s basement.

  Billy had been locked up in his jail cell – he had been covering his mouth, as if blocking his heaving breaths from escaping, but he had known. He had been stopping something from getting in. And he’d failed. I remembered the black speck I saw flash past the eyes of the people outside my truck – the spiders were inside of them!

  I ran to the front door and flung it open, stepping outside and gasping for fresh air. I stared at the trees that once glittered in my headlights, and now, studying them more closely, I finally knew why. They were covered with spider webs!

  I slammed the door and leaned against it, panting to catch my breath as Deb, Yoshi, and Mary watched me cautiously. I thought back to the fax that listed all of the towns that had fallen to this new menace. And I realized they were all small towns heavy with nature – lots of woods, lots of grass, lots of dirt, lots of bugs.

  Now the real threat had shown its face. We were being invaded. And the invaders didn’t just want our planet. They wanted to change it to their liking. “They’re going to take everything we have!” Sarah had said before she died. They were terraforming.

  And they inhabited our people to carry out their plans. Like puppets.

  As I pushed down the tidal wave of nausea that threatened to upheave itself from my mouth, I wondered if by this time tomorrow night there would be anything distinguishable as Earth. Or would everything be a gray silhouette, covered in sticky webs?

  “You want a drink now?” Deb asked, noticing my obvious mental distress.

  I spun on her. “How can you think we’re safe here?!”

  “Front door’s jammed. Windows are blocked. Back door’s bolted.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I suddenly felt as though neither of them had truly thought it through. “We’re in the middle of a forest, Mama! Spiders live in the forest!”

  Mary began to cry from fright, burrowing into the side of Yoshi’s leg.

  “You’re scarin’ the girl!” Deb chastised me.

  “You think spiders can’t crawl through cracks in the walls? Or through the air ducts?” I continued my argument, hoping she would soon realize that it was time to leave.

  Deb shifted her weight and sighed. “Then why ain’t they in here yet?”

  I paused, pondering her valid question. Why hadn’t they come in yet?

  Yoshi stepped forward. “Maybe they’re waiting for something.”

  “Spiders don’t wait for things!” Deb scoffed.

  “These aren’t real spiders. You know that!” he argued.

  The old woman exhaled deeply in frustration. “Then what? We’ve been in here for hours. What could they possibly be waitin’ for?”

  But it didn’t take me long to figure it out. And I stood, frozen, my heart drumming a frightening cadence in my chest, forcing the blood to rush through my ears, deafening me.

  Yoshi grew concerned when he saw my shock. “What is it, Nick?”

  My eyes flicked toward him. “Me.”

  “What?”

  I pointed a trembling finger at Deb. “They knew I would come for you after Sarah. They were waiting for me!”

  From the other side of the door, a loud knock rang out. Everyone inside the bar jolted and immediately readied for defensive actions.

  An eerie, smooth, emotionless woman called out, “Nick Barren. We’ve come to take you and your friends. And this time, you have no choice.”

  I ran to the first window, peeking around the big shelf and through the blinds. Outside, there was a sea of bodies, all of them standing with anticipation, waiting for me to open the front door. They had surrounded my truck, blocking any easy escape options.

  And there were at least a hundred of them.

  Barren

  VI

  I have always hated spiders.

  I’m not a particularly squeamish man, but the one thing that endangered my masculinity was creepy-crawly bugs; bugs with many sinewy legs; bugs the size of pocket change that could move far faster than myself, something hundreds of times bigger than it. Which, in this case, would make them a formidable adversary.

  My mind swirled with the whirlpool of information that had bombarded my brain in the past minute, a tsunami crashing against the walls of my skull, threatening to break through and decimate what lay beyond. Were these our spiders? Or were they… from somewhere else? And were they even actually spiders, or was that the cringe-inducing form they’d taken?

  Numerous arachnids have bitten me in my lifetime, and I don’t recall ever being turned into an emotionless shell of a man. If Sarah were still around, she might argue that point, but nonetheless…

  These things had to be something not of this world.

  Through the tiny gap in the blinds, I stared at the throng of people standing outside the bar, waiting to be allowed access to us and our bodies, mere vessels for their bidding. I imagined a tickling sensation in my gut from a hundred eight-legged insects scurrying through my organs and veins, across my bones, up my throat, out of my mouth, around my face and back into my ear, continuing their anatomical tour de stade, animating my newly lifeless body.

  I shivered, not from fear but from disgust.

  “Nick Barren, allow us entrance to this place, or we will be forced to find our own way inside.” I recognized the voice and immediately conjured the image of one of the women from back at the station earlier in the night.

  Deb stood behind little Mary, her arms wrapped around the girl, protecting her from the threat that had not yet entered. She appeared suddenly sobered by the turn of events. Yoshi stood at the window next to mine, peering carefully past his makeshift barricade to get a glimpse at what I was seeing. “Nick!” he whispered. “Their feet!”

  I squinted my eyes through the darkness, made worse from the shadows of hundreds of surrounding trees, and I suddenly knew what the woman outside had meant by “find our own way inside.”

  For a moment, it appeared as if the army of undead were floating on an undulating mass of black magic, but as my eyes dilated, I saw the faint outlines of thousands of scurrying eight-legged be
asts circling their subjects with furious excitement and glee.

  I glanced over at the wooden door that granted entry into Gravediggers, and my eyes gravitated toward the half-inch gap at the bottom between the door and the floorboards. Terribly easy access for something as small as, say, a spider.

  I stepped away from the window and took a deep breath. I had no idea what to do. These things were following me around town, and everyone I cared about was being systematically killed because of me. I should have stayed alone; things were better that way.

  I wanted so badly to fling open the door and start emptying rounds into the faces of evil, knowing that it would be an act of suicide, but at least we’d all go out with a bang.

  My weapon. It was gone.

  “Yoshi, my gun!” I whispered forcefully, knowing that he had removed it from my body after knocking me out, thinking I’d been a threat to them.

  He reached under his shirt in the back and removed my P228 from his waistline, tossing it to me from across the bar.

  As my fingers closed around the familiar piece, I felt as though I could take on anything. Even death. I would not allow myself to become one of those things. I would kill as many as I could, and then I would use the final bullet to silence my own thoughts.

  I made eye contact with Yoshi, and as he pulled his own gun from his waistband, the two of us had reached an understanding: this was it. I walked over to the door and reached down, my fingers resting on the cold copper lockbolt. I paused, finding it odd that I was relishing how the smooth metal felt on my skin, knowing that this would be the last bolt I would ever touch.

  I guess it’s the little things.

  My hand started to disengage the lock when Deb cried out quietly, “Bear!”

  I halted, looking back at the woman who had been my saving grace over the past two years. Fear was in her eyes as she looked down at Mary. The little girl stood quietly, her lip quivering, eyes filled with tears. I could see in her face that she fought to remain brave, but it was torturous knowing how terrified she was.