by Jon Fore
“Yeah, I hope it was okay, but it looked like you were about to open the door.”
“Yeah, I was,” he replied weakly. “I thought for a moment it was just a dream.”
“Do you know who that woman was out there?”
“Yeah. Remember what I told you about the mountain, Heart House? That was Madison.”
“She is alive?” Shannon tried to sound calm about the idea, but failed.
“No, she is dead, or something close to it.” Ethan dropped his eyes from Shannon’s. “Thank you…”
“My pleasure. Next time, let’s wait until I am done healing; can you stand it?”
Ethan looked back up at her to see a sly smile playing across her teeth. “I’ll try.” Ethan smiled back at her. “Where is Kayla?”
“Sleeping, still. Do you ever remember being able to sleep like that?”
Ethan stood and walked towards the campsite, his back stiff from sleeping on the cold floor. He found Kayla barely protruding from the top of her cartoon sleeping bag. “I don’t think I ever slept like that.” He looked at Shannon again, her face so close to his, and he kissed her, long but not with passion. “Thank you for saving me last night. I imagine it was pretty hard considering…”
“Well, it’s fine. I was just not entirely sure I was ready; we’ve only known each other for what, a day and a half now? But I am an adult.”
“Still…thank you,” Ethan said into her eyes.
She gave him a crooked smile and embraced him for a bit, longing to stay there but releasing him in the end. “The sun is just starting to come up. We should get ready to go.”
“How long did I sleep?” Ethan asked as he stole a sip of flat soda from an opened can.
“About three hours.”
“Let’s get our stuff together then, and make our way. The granola bars and trail mix and, of course, Twinkies should be edible. We could also carry a couple of bottles of water each. I don’t remember how far it is to the next town, but I remember it was pretty far.”
“It’s about thirty miles or maybe a bit more. My sister lives there. You’ll like her, she actually is crazy.” Her smile took any sting out of what she had said.
“Then let’s go visit her. There are backpacks in that aisle. A small tent might be a good idea, also.”
It took them a bit to gather as many supplies as they could then sort through the most important. Kayla finally woke and studiously rolled up her sleeping bag as if she were at a sleep over. She then started on the Twinkies and soda again.
Ethan collected a toothbrush, toothpaste, and mouthwash for the girl. “When you’re done eating, make sure you use these.”
“Thanks! Uh, where can I spit?”
Ethan took a pot down from the shelves to his right. “Here, this will do.”
“But can Mr. Jerkins sell this if I spit in it?”
“He won’t mind, honey, I promise.”
This whole exchange reminded Ethan of camping with his friend’s family. It was as if they were heading home today after a one-night stay. It almost felt normal in a way…with the exception of the florescent lights and the racks of goods stretching away in every direction. He hefted the backpack onto his shoulders and adjusted it a bit. It was rather heavy, considering the bleach and the water, but tolerable.
Shannon stood a moment later with her pack adjusted and resting on her shoulders while Kayla slung hers over one shoulder. They looked at each other for a moment before Ethan finally spoke.
“Let’s get out of here…” he trailed off as he walked to the front of the store.
He stopped before the glass doors and reminisced about the night before for a moment. He then handed the small Glock handgun to Shannon. “Here, I’ll keep the shotgun up front, you take up the rear with this, and we will simply walk out of here. Kayla, sweetie, you stay between me and Shannon, alright?”
She looked up at him and nodded vigorously. She still held the bottle of spray bleach in her hand while the other carried a can of soda. She had selected a puffy jacket as well, and to Ethan’s relief, it was an electric pink color which would be very easy to see from a distance.
Ethan looked at the locks for a second before figuring them out. A much easier task now that he had his wits about him, unlike last night. The doors whisked open, and fog rolled into the store ominously. It was no thicker than the day before, but this was their onetime sanctuary, and to have it violated by the ashy smoke seemed a trespass.
They walked slowly from the store to find the parking lot much as it was before. Ethan half-expected Madison to come flying at him from a distance but he did not see her anywhere. “Which way do we head?” he asked thoughtfully.
“Make a left around the store and follow that road straight until we get to the bridge, then we make a left and take that out to Route 27 and make a right,” Shannon instructed.
He began walking, the others shuffling along behind him. The roads looked dryer, more aged than the day before. They were cracked and pot-holed just about everywhere, and the foliage along the length, decorating the lawns of collapsing houses, lay dead and rotting. The cave plants were here as well, but now in more quantity in more places. The screams of the day before seemed to have fallen silent, which meant to Ethan there were no more survivors to seek out or return to rescue. To his greatest relief, the screeching had stopped at some point during the night, which meant he could hold on a bit longer to his sanity—that is, if he still had a grip on it.
Brook Street sloped upwards and then eased down into a valley of housing and small strip malls. Gas stations and convenience stores seemed to have found a union amongst themselves and cohabitated in many places. Where these small stores were not, housing stood in communities of cul-de-sacs and roads, small and large houses, community centers and parks. All of this now hidden under the oppressive smog, obscuring their finer details, thieving them of their normalcy and warmth. To Ethan, it was the very definition of a modern ghost town, sans the tumbleweeds.
The small bridge was barely visible, only noticeable when the light breeze pushed the fog about. Just beyond was the turn, but it was still roughly a mile away. They continued down into the suburbia valley and towards the bridge. The town had fallen into an eerie silence. The mist hissing like poured soda around them and an occasional mechanized whine were the only sounds.
The bodies lining the streets, now almost two days old, had begun to lose water to the dry air and rot under the unnatural aging that had taken to dilapidating the buildings and roads. To their relief, the corpses had quickly passed the stages of stifling stench, but their appearances were all the worst because of it: they looked much like the bog bodies of Ireland, unnaturally preserved and slightly glossy-looking.
They reached the bridge without incident, and Shannon looked over the railing at where water used to rush by. It was now still, stagnant, and shallow to the point of making scattered muddy puddles. Dead water creatures littered the shores in the same rotten way as the human corpses on the street above. All along the banks of the one-time river, the foliage and plant life had given to the death and decay saturating the water and soil, killing everything.
“This town will never be the same, Ethan,” Shannon said sadly. “It was such a nice place to live…”
“There’s a truck over there, stopped in the middle of the road. Maybe it still works. Come on,” Ethan said as he began to walk towards it.
Shannon turned to find a dirty yellow truck, rusted along the edges of the sides, those bulbous puss plants growing over most of it. She urged Kayla ahead of her with her hand while fighting the feeling something was dreadfully wrong. “Ethan, I don’t like this…”
Ethan stopped at her voice and stared at the vehicle, waiting for it to make a sign of its intent, to give away some secret danger. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It just feels wrong—like a trap,” Shannon explained as she caught up with him.
They both watched the vehicle for a time, but the cab appeare
d empty. There were obvious bloodstains along the bed and a couple of corpses nearby, but nothing moved or made a threat. “Should we just walk away from it? It’s a truck; we might be able to drive out of here.”
“Just be careful; there is something wrong here. Feels like we are being watched, doesn’t it?”
Ethan led with the barrel of the shotgun, moving slowly and stealthily. He made it to the bed of the pickup and began to skirt along the sides, much too close for Shannon, but she did not want to call out to him; the silence seemed to forbid it.
Ethan jammed the barrel through the open window of the cab, and then eased it back out and turned to Shannon. “It’s empty!”
Shannon saw something rising from the bed of the truck, a small black triangle moving towards Ethan. “Look out! There is something—”
A dog leapt from the bed of the truck right into Ethan’s chest. It was a large dog, mostly coated in blood and missing large sections of its hide. Ribs and muscle showed in the windows left by the torn skin and fur. Shannon and Kayla screamed a chorus at the dog and clutched each other instinctively.
Ethan fell backwards, but back peddled enough to stay out from under the dog before falling flat on his back. The dog charged him, seeing its prey lying prone before it. Just before it pounced on Ethan, the collar holding it to the truck pulled tight, and the dog did an acrobatic flip of hind-under-head and fell on his back with a yelp. Ethan crab walked quickly away from the animal as it lunged at him again, still held at bay by the thick collar and chain leash.
Ethan scrambled to his feet and brought the shotgun up. “You son-of-a-bitch!” he screamed at the dog before blowing it into three large pieces, all of which struck the truck then fell wetly to the road’s surface. He stood there, half bent over, and panted at the decimated corpse before him.
Shannon lifted Kayla and ran to Ethan, throwing her arms around him. “We stay together from now on, right? No more going off on your own. We have to trust our bad feelings from now on, right?” She sounded close to tears.
“I’m fine, really,” Ethan assured into her shoulder.
“You’re not going to leave me here in this fucked-up place, you hear me?” she shouted at him.
“I won’t, I promise!”
Ethan brought her with him to the cab of the truck, being careful not to step close to the large pieces of dog. He opened the door, reached in, and turned the key. The engine did not even sputter. The battery was beyond dead, and Ethan screamed at it, “Fuck!”
“Come on, let’s keep walking. We don’t have much left of the day,” Shannon encouraged.
“Yeah. Shit, I thought that was it. I thought we were going to drive out of here.”
“Please don’t say bad words,” Kayla requested from under Shannon’s arm.
This simple call for morality brought both Ethan and Shannon quickly back into focus. “Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. Those were bad words, weren’t they?” Ethan put his hand on her cheek.
“Yes,” Kayla said sheepishly.
“I promise to try and not do that ever again, alright?”
“Thank you,” she replied with a tiny smile.
They continued a few more yards down the road and made the left turn where they were supposed to, and the road vanished under a wall of the thick smog. Ethan walked a bit further, found the snotty membrane again, and backed away quickly. “It’s blocked, also,” he informed the girls.
“Well, great! Now what do we do?” Shannon’s irritation was clear in her voice.
“I don’t know. We could try skirting the wall; see if there are any breaks in it. I know I can get us through the woods, if we need to.”
“What about up there?” Kayla asked as she pointed up the foot of Black Water Mountain where a path was utterly clear in the moving fog.
Chapter 31
“Is that Black Water Mountain?” Ethan asked as he looked up the sides and along the opening in the dense smog.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Shannon replied softly.
“I’m not sure we want to go up there.”
“Maybe the fog is thinner near the top, and we can skirt around the edge of the mountain and come down the other side. Route 27 will be there, and it will take about ten miles off of our walk.” Shannon did not sound comforted by the idea.
“The problem with this town started up there…” Ethan trailed off deep in thought and worry.
“I know, Ethan, but what else can we do? We can look for another break in the fog wall, try this path, or find a place to hide until all of this is over.”
Ethan did not want to go back up that cursed mountain. It had almost killed him the last time; whatever that creature was, he did not want to encounter it again. However, he could not invent any other solution. They could not skirt the entire town in one day nor could they hold up in a building until someone realized that the whole town was missing. He took a deep breath and let it slowly slip between his lips. “We might be heading right where we shouldn’t go.”
“I know,” Shannon replied, concern dripping from her words. “Did you notice that the plants along that trail are not dead—well, at least not all of them?”
“Yeah, I noticed. It’s just… If you want to, we can go up there. It might get a little crazy, though.”
“We can head up and look for a way around. If we get too high, we can come back, right?” Shannon asked in an attempt at encouragement.
“Well, let’s get some mountain under us, then,” Ethan decided with an air of finality and started towards the trail.
Kayla began to skip after him, and Shannon rushed to keep pace.
The slope grew gradually, making the going easy but tougher as they went—not the steady incline of the other side, the first slope Ethan had climbed up Black Water Mountain, but a challenge to stamina and determination. The trees along this path still lived, as well as some of the more stout undergrowth. Just along the edges of the fog, however, dead and denuded plants bowed to their lost life and dripped rotting sap to the forest’s floor. The farther trees stood stark and still, drooping to ruin, their deaths seemingly long past.
“Shannon?” Ethan called over his shoulder.
“Yeah?”
“Do you believe in God?” he asked.
“Well, I didn’t, but with all this?” she replied with a yawning arm, indicating the ruin on either side. “This has to be evil, right?”
“Well, it was not the fire and brimstone I expected, but it is evil,” Ethan replied thoughtfully, then listened to the leaves as they scratched beneath their feet before crunching under their soles.
After a moment of thought, Shannon asked, “But this is it, right? Isn’t evil the collective extreme of a society’s distaste, the most deplorable acts imaginable by the sum of a people’s creativity?”
“That sounds right,” Ethan agreed as he navigated around a low hanging branch.
“Could we not say that for every great evil imagined, there is a greater good—a knight to fight every dragon?”
Ethan halted some three hundred yards up, high enough to see the town sprawled below still veiled in the ghostly gray smog. From here, Ethan could see the sister mountain rising from the dankness of the smog. “Look, Shannon, the infection does not reach that other mountain.”
Shannon stopped beside him, still holding Kayla’s hand, and looked to the far mountain. “Do you think, Ethan, that maybe we are the good knights sent to slay the evil serpent?” she persisted.
Ethan turned to her, finally donating enough attention to her to listen. “How do you mean?”
“What if we survived, all three of us, just to battle this evil?” Her eyes looked desperately for vindication, but did not find it. “Think about it: this town has a population of some three or four thousand, we have cops and firefighters and ambulances, a hospital a trauma center, even our own National Guard detachment. Why are we the only ones that survived? Look around, right here, look around and see the fantastical biblical evil. We are in the midst of some worl
d-altering event, not like an earthquake or a volcano; I mean a real world-altering event. The type of event that ruins religions and spawns new ones or adds a new book to the Bible, you know?”
Ethan stared at her a moment before replying, “You have been thinking about this a bit, huh?”
“What have you been thinking about?”
“Last night and how skillful you were,” he replied with a sly smile.
Shannon chuckled back. “But seriously, couldn’t it be something like that?”
“I don’t know,” Ethan said truthfully. “Maybe. But if we are to be the heroes of this tale, we are going to look pretty silly running.”
“Maybe we are supposed to get out of here and warn the world. Maybe this is where Hell breaks through or something and we caution the world about it. We tell people, they fight back the hordes of Hell, and we are the heroes.”
“As long as it includes leaving here, I’m fine with that,” Ethan replied, hoping to close down the conversation. He did not want to think about things like this. To him, religion was a dementia, a lie, and a folly for his mind to fall into, especially one as captive to fables as his. “Let’s get going again. It’s getting close to noon and we still have a way to go here.”
Ethan turned and began stalking up the mountain again. He missed his walking stick; it always helped stabilize him when he hiked and gave him a sense of security, but that he had left inside the Heart House.
The trail led upwards without concern for terrain or tree, boulder or tripping hazard. The climbing became rough and tiring, challenging Shannon and Kayla to keep up. She did not want to slow Ethan down, but she was close to falling. Each time she felt she could no longer stand it and had made the decision to call for a break, the ground would lend itself to an easier crossing for a while before continuing its torturous incline.
Kayla made no complaints and struggled on as best she could in her little mukluk boots and pink jacket. She was a determined little girl, clearly frightened but steadfast in her desire to be free of the smog and the cursed town. Where she was going, she was unsure, most likely her grandmother’s in Little Rock, but she would make it nonetheless. She decided she could live with these two who were helping her. They were both rather nice and seemed to like her.