by Gerald Rice
“She’s not my mother and she smells like death.”
“All the Nephilim do. They basically rot from the inside, being abominations and all, but she makes a mean pound cake.” Michael sat on the edge of the pew. His white uniform shirt nearly glowed in the dark. “I don’t know what to tell you, man. We each have our sides to prepare and you and I—we’re not on the same one. You have your place and I have mine and one day we’ll have to fight.”
“I just want to own a few Burgeropolises. I don’t want to Ascend to anything. I didn’t ask for any of this.” His voice was unsteady and his hands threatened to shake the last of the water from his paper cup.
“Dude—I don’t know what to tell you. I’d say you could stay here, but I’ve got my own army in the basement, and I’m not sure how they’d take a defector, especially, you know, the ‘King of Fierce Countenance.’ ”
There was a pounding at the door, followed by more poundings by multiple fists. Michael looked at Jonah, “Don’t worry. They won’t come in. I mean you’re an abomination and you’re here, but they know the score and respect boundaries. I’ll go see what they want. Will you be okay for a minute?”
Jonah nodded and watched Michael head back toward the front doors. He didn’t know what was going to happen next, but he thought it was very likely he was about to lead the best damned crew the world had ever seen, whether he wanted to or not.
The Shoal
* * *
* * *
Lee Moan
“Steve, hurry up.”
“The gas ain’t gonna come out any faster, sis.”
Callie took a few steps out onto the road.
“They’re comin’,” she said.
“Can you see them comin’?”
She looked east, back the way they had come, and studied the bend in the road. The blacktop shimmered through the heat haze. “No, but . . . I can feel they’re comin’.”
Steve continued to grip the gas gun, eyes fixed on the LED display. They didn’t look at the dollar total anymore, not these days. It was all about the quantity.
Callie raised her arm, creating a hood over her eyes against the blazing sun. Through the blurry haze she saw a shape forming, small at first, but growing fast. A spike of fear slid through her gut. She backed slowly toward the gas station forecourt, lips moving in silent protest.
Steve looked over. “Callie?”
“Time to go,” she said.
“Really?”
“Really.”
The shadow now filled the road at the bend, the heat haze giving it a mesmerizing, almost magical appearance. Sunlight glinted off the multitude of tiny writhing bodies, like a shoal of fish sparkling beneath clear blue ocean waves. Tearing her eyes away from the vision, Callie spun on her heels. She ran toward the car, stumbling in the dirt. Up again, she yanked open the passenger door and jumped in.
“Come on, come on, come on!” she screamed.
Steve was trying to hook the gas gun back into its cradle.
“Just leave it!”
Steve threw it to the ground, precious gas squirting into the sand. He clambered into the driver’s seat, turned the key. The expected roar of the Trans Am’s engine never came. He looked at Callie, eyes wide.
“No.” He turned the key again.
Nothing.
“Seriously?” Callie screamed.
She glanced out at the long desert road. The shimmering mass was less than fifty yards away, approaching like a freight train.
“Swap over,” Callie said, grabbing her brother’s arm. He fell across her lap, reluctant at first, but three quick punches in the ribs told him to forget fighting her. She grabbed the wheel and turned the key four times in quick succession, then turned it a fifth time, hard. The engine coughed, sputtered, died. She repeated the sequence, pulse thudding in her temples. She didn’t want to look at the road again. She knew it was close.
The cloud. The shoal. The monsters . . .
The Trans Am exploded into life, engine growling like an angry beast. Her heart soared and she floored the accelerator. The car spun on its back wheels, Callie leading it on a crazy zigzag across the forecourt and out onto the blacktop. She fixed her eyes on the road ahead, aware of the dark shadow at the edge of her vision. As the car straightened out on the highway, she heard the thud-thud-thud of tiny bodies hitting the back end of the car. Steve craned over the back of his seat, cursing like a madman. Callie kept her eyes ahead, lips pressed tight, willing their vehicle to increase its speed. She didn’t know just how fast the shoal traveled, but the Trans Am was a damn fast vehicle—that was why they’d chosen it.
Stole it.
Yeah, they stole a car. The world had gone to hell and now they were doing things they’d never dreamed of doing even a month ago.
“Faster, Callie,” Steve said.
“That’s the general idea. Have you checked the windows?”
Her brother made a quick search of the Trans Am’s four windows. “We’re good,” he said.
Callie glanced in the rearview mirror, and immediately wished she hadn’t. The typical view of the highway was obscured by a writhing mass of hideous faces—needle-like teeth, bulging eyes, and scaly bodies. They were like piranha but worse, more . . . alien. In the place where fins should be, long tentacles sprouted, clawing at the air around them. And then there was the sound they made—a long, loud exhalation that made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle.
The Trans Am was increasing its speed, but not fast enough. The shoal surrounded the car like a swarm of giant bees, ebbing and flowing, the lead creatures edging into view by Callie’s window, keeping pace with their vehicle.
Callie had her foot pressed hard to the floor but the car maintained the same speed.
“Why aren’t we going any faster?” she yelled.
Her brother shrugged.
Then she remembered. Faulty gas exchange. Got to release the pedal and reapply.
Reluctantly, she took her foot off the accelerator for a heartbeat and stamped on it again. The car surged forward. The black shapes at the edges of her vision dropped out of view.
Stupid girl.
The voice. The voice she hated.
You should’ve known that. Same old story. Got rocks in your head, girl.
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Steve said, gripping the dash.
The Trans Am tore up the highway, the shoal not far behind. How long could they maintain this speed? How long would the beasts follow them?
Forever?
On the flat horizon ahead she saw a cloud of dust approaching from the west. For a moment she thought it was another shoal, but a glimpse of red, white, and blue amidst the cloud gave her a flicker of relief . . .
A Greyhound bus heading toward the highway.
Relief quickly gave way to anxiety. They were leading the shoal straight to them.
What could she do? They had to keep going. Slowing down to change course would be lethal. And where could they go? Flat desert stretched out on all sides. They had to keep on toward their destination. Fort Leavenworth. Their last hope.
The Greyhound thundered toward the highway, churning up dust.
“Watch the bus,” Steve warned.
“I am watching the bus.”
Through the cloud forming ahead, Callie did her best to keep the Trans Am on a straight path. The coach loomed large in the view ahead. She waited for the crunch of metal against metal, but it didn’t come. As the dust cloud dissipated, she found herself trailing behind the gray behemoth by some twenty yards. The thud-thud-thud of tiny bodies bumping against the windows matched her racing heartbeat. She could see the heads of the bus passengers in the dirty glass windows, looking back at them. The bus was full.
What do I do? she wondered. Try and overtake and keep the shoal with them, or slow a little, let these people get away?
Before she could make a decision, the swarm suddenly lifted away from their car, rising in the desert air
like a giant vampire bat where it hovered, thinking, deciding . . .
Then the shoal descended, pushing ahead with a sudden and frightening burst of speed. The cloud of dark bodies swarmed along the near side of the bus. Only then did Callie realize that the Greyhound’s entry door was open. The passengers were exposed. The cloud of creatures swam through the air toward the opening.
“Oh, Jesus,” Callie whispered. Wishing for more speed, she remembered her earlier trick and reapplied the accelerator. The engine growled, a satisfying sound. The Trans Am ate up the road, pulling level with the front of the bus.
The bus driver was a gray-haired man, bulging stomach pressed against the wheel. He looked out at them through the open door with an angry expression.
“Close your door!” Callie shouted.
“What?” the driver said.
“Close the door!”
The driver shifted his gaze to the right-hand mirrors. Only then did he see the swarm crawling along the side of his vehicle. The angry scowl melted away, replaced with bone-white fear. He looked back at Callie and Steve.
“I can’t,” he said. “It’s broken.”
A hollow pit opened in Callie’s stomach. All her hopes for those people dropped into it. The door was open, the shoal was coming. What else could they do?
What else could they do?
The sea of dark bodies rushed in through the open door, filling the interior of the Greyhound like a deathly cloud. Callie and Steve watched as the windows of the bus began to discolor, jets of dark red blood darkening each panel. A chorus of screams sounded above the roar of engines. She saw a woman’s face appear at one of the windows, squirming bodies attached to her. Her mouth was stretched in a dark oval, hands tearing at the floating bodies, but failing to remove even one. The bus driver fought against the invading swarm, batting the ravenous bodies away with surprising vigor, but before long, he was overwhelmed. He stumbled toward the open door, his upper body lost in a swirling vortex. He tumbled forward, hitting the highway blacktop and lost in a spray of red mist. The Greyhound veered into the path of the Trans Am. Callie tried to keep the car on the road, but the sheer size and weight of the bus sent them into the dunes. The wheels shuddered against the rough terrain.
“Slow down!” Steve screamed.
He was right. There was no way they could outrun the runaway Greyhound. She stabbed the brake with her left foot. They fell forward as the car rapidly dropped its speed.
Everything seemed to slow down, all sound dropping to a whisper. The front wheel of the bus hit a boulder and the entire fuselage crumpled and buckled. The sound came to them seconds later, the screeching sound of complaining metal. The Greyhound rose up in the air as if it was about to take flight but the body twisted in the air, turning over. The bus slammed down hard on the desert floor, on the door side, and then began to slide. The vision was lost in a dense cloud of brown dust. Callie had to concentrate on keeping the Trans Am on the highway but found it hard to tear her eyes away from the tragedy unfolding in the dunes. The Greyhound came to rest as they rode past it. Callie watched the unmoving vehicle, a terrible ache in her heart as she imagined the horrors taking place within.
“We should . . .”
“What?” Steve said.
She stared at the bus.
“There’s nothing we could have done, Callie. There’s nothing we can do now.”
She hated him for saying it, but she also knew he was right.
“Drive,” Steve said. “Let’s just . . . drive.”
Callie pressed her foot harder on the accelerator. The ache grew bigger the farther they traveled up the highway.
* * *
* * *
The invasion came out of nowhere.
One minute the entire world was going about its usual business—waging religious wars and petty civil skirmishes, ignoring the poverty-stricken while the one-percenters masturbated over their own insane wealth—and the next minute everyone—everyone—was in the same boat. Suddenly everything about the human race became childish and absurd as only one thing counted . . .
Survival.
The shoals appeared all over the world, in every country, every town, every corner of the globe, eating up every piece of living matter in their path. Animals, humans, even birds fell prey to the new threat. The shoals swarmed across the planet like a plague, devouring, consuming, leaving nothing but bones in their wake.
Where had they come from?
There were various theories, but everyone was so busy running for their lives no one had a chance to investigate, consolidate, or even evaluate them.
There had been a meteor shower two days before the first shoal attacks. That was a fact. A huge meteor shower, all over the globe. So what did that mean? Aliens? An attack from beyond the stars? And if so, what did that mean? If this was humanity’s extinction, what did it actually mean?
No answers. Everyone was running.
* * *
* * *
thud
thud-thud
“What is that?”
Callie looked in the rearview mirror. Steve looked over the passenger seat and surveyed the back of the vehicle.
thud-thud-thud
It came from behind the rear seats, down low.
“Can’t be,” Steve whispered.
“You said the windows were all closed,” Callie said, fear rising in her voice.
“They were!” He glanced around. “They are!”
“Then how did it get in?”
“I have no goddamn idea!”
“Wait,” Callie said. She looked across at her brother’s terror-stricken face. “At the gas station. Did you replace the fuel cap?”
Steve’s eyes bulged. “Oh shit.”
thud-thud
thud-thud
He unbuckled his belt and climbed into the back. He bent down into the rear seat foot well, trying to locate the source of the banging.
thud-thud
Steve sat up. “But if it got into the gas tank, it can’t get through to us, can it?”
Callie scowled at him in the rearview mirror.
“I mean, the walls of the tank are metal, right?” Steve said. “They can’t eat through metal. Can they?”
Callie pressed her lips tight together. She hoped he was right, but something, some dark, cynical voice spoke in the back of her mind.
“If it senses there’s food in this car,” she said, “if it knows we’re here . . . who knows what it’s capable of?”
Steve looked down, horrified. “How far to the Fort?”
“No idea.”
thud-thud
“Drive faster,” Steve said.
“Doesn’t matter how fast I drive, Steve. If that thing gets through . . .”
thud-thud-crack
“Oh Jesus,” Steve said.
Thud-crack
Thud-CRACK
“It’s comin’ through!”
Callie closed her eyes for just a moment, tightened her grip on the wheel. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be how it ended. So close to safety. Life couldn’t be that cruel, surely?
Life is cruel, girl.
The voice. His voice.
Life is shit and then you die.
“Shut up.”
She opened her eyes and studied the long straight road ahead. Could they make it? It couldn’t be too far now. Once they reached Fort Leavenworth the army would protect them, they would have ways to keep safe from the worldwide threat.
Survival. That was everything, wasn’t it?
SURVIVE.
Behind her, the space beneath the rear seats exploded in a shower of splinters. Steve screamed. The interior of the Trans Am became a whirling, swirling storm of chaos. Callie caught a glimpse of the invading body, a fat thing with long, jagged fins and oversized teeth. It bashed into the windows, the dashboard, the roof, delirious success after breaking out of its prison. Then it froze in the air to Callie’s right, hissing like a snake. Its dead, alien eyes fixed o
n her. Its jaws spread wide.
You deserve this.
No.
No.
NO!
Callie twisted the wheel hard to the right. The car went into a spin. Everything after that was a blur.
Her head struck something. The creature bounced into the seat behind her. Stevie was little more than a scarecrow floating around the cabin behind her. Sound and vision became indistinguishable. Muted noise and blurred images.
The car flipped.
bang
rolling
bangbang
rolling
bangbang
The car skidded along its roof, metal screeching on the asphalt. Sparks. The smell of burning. Skidding and skidding.
Then the car came to rest and silence fell over everything. Callie opened her eyes, blinking. She coughed. She was upside down. Her seat belt dug into her breasts. She glanced around the car, looking for Steve and . . . the thing.
No sign of the creature.
Only Steve’s arm was visible, stretched out along the backseat. Bloody smears. No sign of movement.
“Stevie?” she said.
No answer.
Where’s the creature?
She looked around hurriedly. No sign of it inside the car.
Something trickled into her mouth. She put her hand to her lips and came away with bloody fingers.
Before she could look up, the pain rushed in. Unbelievable pain.
She screamed.
“My leg!”
More blood dripped into her face. She craned her neck, trying to look up (down) at her leg. She knew it was bad. In the maelstrom of the crash she had sensed that some part of her had been broken, but it was a subconscious thing. Everything seemed surreal, dreamlike.
“Stevie?”
His fingers twitched, flexed.
He made a sound halfway between a groan and a cry.
“Stevie, are you okay?”