by Darst, Matt
They follow.
Peter returns to his home nearly twelve hours later.
He spent the night on the roof of the corner store. From that vantage point he spied them, dozens, if not hundreds, stumbling about like drunken Cubs fans, with one key difference: Cubs fans generally don’t eat other fans. The crying peaked toward midnight. But both it, and the crowd, thin towards morning.
He uses alleys and gangways to get home, hiding in dumpsters and underneath cars.
Home. Not anymore. The living room is in shambles. There’s no sign of his family, nothing but a hastily scribed note. The lettering is bleary with her tears, yet still legible. It says: “Peter, Mr. Carr found us. We are driving to mother’s. We are fine. God, where are you? I love you. I’ll love you forever. J”
Their bags are gone. The car is gone. They are off to Kentucky. Their flight from this place is confirmed, Peter sighs. Thank God. Time for him to leave, too.
He steps gingerly out the front door, picks up the messenger bike, and rides off.
**
Wright and Burt track the mile markers, counting ten on their journey north. There’s no underpass, though, so they keep walking, keeping to the high weeds. Four miles further they find an overpass. But no Van. No Anne.
“Where do you think they are?” Burt asks. “You don’t think they went the wrong way?”
Wright shrugs her shoulders. “Your guess is as good as mine.” She can only hope they went the wrong way. She hopes it’s not something worse. She turns 360 degrees for a sign, anything that might—
And then she sees it, a hint of Van’s red, hooded sweatshirt deep in the meadow. She sighs in relief. Van’s inside it.
The four sit quietly for the next several hours, waiting for Ian. His diversion worked, but he should have rejoined the group by now.
Finally Wright tells them they need to move. They need to return to the woods where they’ll set up camp for the night.
**
Wright decrees no fire this night. It’s still too dangerous. So, they chat low in the coming darkness, heads hung.
Anne talks about Jessica. She says she’s the sister she never had. She catches herself: was the sister she never had. She was so sweet. The others agree. She already misses her, Anne sobs, more than she misses home.
Like I miss Ian, Wright thinks. She’s only catching portions of the conversation. She’s too consumed with pain. She can barely wrap her mind around Jessica and Ian’s legacies, both barely adults, both sacrificing for the greater good. She should have sacrificed herself. She shouldn’t have let Ian do it.
She tried to talk Ian out of it. She said it was too risky. She should be the one to play the role of the pied piper of the damned.
But Ian was resolute. He said no. The group needed her if they were going to survive. The stakes were too high for Wright to decide to risk all their lives. The risks were not too high, however, for Ian to gamble his own. He argued with fervor. While he might not be as strong, he’s definitely faster and more agile than Wright. Plus he doesn’t know how to use a pistol or a machete. He can’t navigate like Wright. And he ultimately consumes much more food than her. Without him, there would be more rations for the others. He closed by saying, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one.”
“Isn’t that from Star Trek?” she asked, half laughing, half crying.
“Yeah. Wrath of Khan. I kind of stole it,” Ian admitted with a smirk.
“You are such a nerd.”
Then Ian touched her arm.
She leaned in.
And he went for it. He went for the first kiss.
It was a soft, long kiss. His lips were firm, and they silenced her escaping breath. For moments, they stood chest to chest, locked together in an iron embrace. Then Ian suddenly pulled away and squeezed her shoulders. He turned down the hall, leaving Wright with just the synchronized drumming of their hearts, a sound that still resonates inside her.
She wants to say something about Ian now. She should say something about him, but the words don’t come. She feels like she’s going to puke. Her heart is breaking.
But Wright doesn’t need to say anything yet. Van wants to talk.
“I’ve known Ian almost all my life,” Van starts. “He’s not perfect, although he’d like you to think that. He’s too much of a straightedge. He’s a pain in the ass. But he’s always been my best friend. Whenever I needed an alibi, he was there, either to help me craft one or serve as one. Whenever I’ve faced trouble, he’s been the one to bail me out. He’s the only one to ever give me his ear, even when I’m talking smack.
“Ian’s never once thought about himself. He’s saved my ass over and over and over.” Van’s voice cracks, “And now he’s saved us all.”
They nod in unison, sighing heavily.
“I’m a pain in the ass?” says a voice somewhere behind Wright. “Van, you should walk in my shoes.”
“Ian!” they cry in harmony.
Wright spins, spotting his face in the moonlight, and draws him close. He is filthy, but she hugs him anyway. Her embrace is firm, but momentary. She realizes the others are approaching, and releases him. She wipes tears from her cheeks.
“Sorry I’m late,” Ian apologizes.
“What happened?” Van begs.
Ian says there’s not much of a story to tell. He made a racket and got the ghouls’ attention. He headed south, monsters in tow. But the creatures spread wide as they tracked him, and Ian had to push farther before turning east and driving north.
Or at least that’s the version Ian will leave them with. He’s left out some parts. Actually, most parts. The scary parts.
**
As his friends escaped, Ian ran about the house, shouting at the demons in the yard, screaming at the monsters on the porch. They spun almost leisurely, gasping, ambling toward him, arms outstretched. There were yards, expanding yards, between him and the nearest creature. This is going to be a breeze, Ian thought. If he didn’t watch out, he would lose them and defeat the entire purpose of this excursion.
So, he stayed close, mere feet from the dead, tempting them like a professional baller playing keep-away with a group of small kids. He led them to the front walk, down the deer path, and past the spot where the attack occurred on the Hestons…
The Hestons.
Fuck.
It dawned on Ian that he had not seen Dr. Heston since the attack. Not outside the windows, not on the porch, not on the lawn…
Then he felt an icy hand lock on his ankle.
Dr. Heston let loose a guttural growl as he pulled himself from the shrubs. He twisted to sink his teeth into Ian’s calf.
Ian shrieked. He pulled loose, falling in the process and landing at the edge of the path. Heston snapped at air.
At that moment Ian grasped with equal parts horror and revulsion just why he hadn’t seen the doctor earlier. It was because there wasn’t much of Heston to be seen. There was no Dr. Heston, just the remainder of what was once him, limited to a head, a torso, and a single working arm. The rest of him no longer existed, chewed and devoured by ghouls whose digestive systems ceased to function decades before.
Heston loosed another piteous moan and inched toward Ian, his one arm dragging him forward through the dirt like a gondolier moving his vessel with a pole. His lone eye—the other was nothing more than a dark, empty socket—met Ian’s own and locked. It accused Ian of failing him and his wife. It betrayed his empty needs. It conveyed the pain of a lost soul that will never be relieved.
Ian’s face broke, tears streaming. Shit, there’s no time for this, he thought. Wiping his face with his sleeve, he mustered a weak, “I’m so sorry.” He wanted to put Heston out of his misery, but there were no tools, not enough time. He was losing valuable seconds, the droves of creatures almost upon him. Goodbye, Dr. Heston.
He decided to lose them in the woods, off the path. With that, he took off with a sprint, moving deep into the foliage.
The
branches and the roots grabbed at him, slowing him as they tried to lay claim to his body. He ran blind, unable to shake the things behind him. They only needed a hint of his scent to propel them unflaggingly.
Ian panted hard, his lungs straining to capture oxygen. He was light-headed, losing his orientation. He was no longer sure he was heading south. In fact, he couldn’t discount the possibility he might be running in circles, about to lap the very monsters hot on his tail. God, what if he’s leading them back toward…he thought about slowing to gain his bearings, but then it was too late.
He bounced off the trunk of a thick cedar, its roots digging deeply into the soil of the forest. He spun for a glimpse of his pursuers and took three backwards steps. And then he disappeared.
Chapter Eighteen: The Accidental Spelunker
For thousands of years, the native trees channeled rain through the earth and into the slightly soluble bedrock below. The runoff percolated through the limestone, forming veins in the rock. Over time, these veins expanded, interconnecting and creating fissures, and those fissures expanded further. A channel the size of a small stream flowed thirty feet below Ian. Washed out bit by bit, the rock could not support the substrate. The cave collapsed inward, forming a sinkhole thirty feet wide that swallowed the forest floor and dragged several cedars down to the depths. They jutted out of the cavern like crazy tusks from a boar’s maw.
The sinkhole snatched Ian from the brink. The slope was steep, and Ian flipped end over end. As he bounced toward the cave’s mouth, his ribs struck something sharp—a rock or a cedar limb? The blow forced a voluble groan. Ian sailed over the lip, and into the jaws of the grotto. Suddenly, Ian was tumbling through the air in silence. He prepared for the impact. A dozen feet later, he hit. The stream that awaited him was shallow, perhaps a yard deep. The splash was closer to a “splat,” and it barely broke his fall.
The cold took his breath, and Ian sucked air. He shook and pulled his wet hair from his brow. He surveyed his predicament.
He was in a cave. He deduced this from subtle hints he gathered in the darkness. His breathing echoed against the cave walls. He thought he heard the flutter of bat wings flitting to and fro. Dampness hung in the air. A slow current dragged at his jeans.
As his eyes adjusted, further clues revealed themselves. The water reflected the stars of the night sky hanging above the cave’s circular mouth. As Ian shifted his weight, the water rippled and hundreds of points of light danced before him. The mirror-like surface was framed by a number of large cedars that had come to rest on the floor of the cavern. The downed trees were stacked like a bunch of giant and haphazard tiddlywinks.
He palmed the limestone walls. They were wet and smooth, and the wall’s angles too severe.
Then there was a stirring above him, at the edge of the sinkhole’s entrance. A shadow fell and plunged into the water just six feet from Ian.
One of them!
Quickly, Ian dove deeper into the cave. He submersed himself completely, swimming like a frog under water. Ten feet later, he stopped and squatted, just his head above the waterline. He opened his mouth wide to take a silent breath, then he sank a few inches so just his eyes and the top of his head were exposed.
The creature exploded from the underground stream, gurgling and writhing from side to side. It was slighter than Ian, maybe a woman.
It’s hunting me, Ian thought.
But fortune was on Ian’s side. The monster could not find him. He was hidden in the darkness. The echoes of flapping wings of bats in flight disguised his breathing. The stream masked his scent. For now. It would be only temporary.
He needed to act.
He inched toward the creature on his hands and knees, careful not to stir the water. He stayed to the perimeter, well in the shadows. His left hand came across an oblong rock. Better than a dirt clod, he thought, grasping it. He would sneak up behind this thing. He would crush her skull.
But then another creature fell into the abyss with a splash and a sputter.
And then another.
And another.
And another.
His plans changed quickly, completely. He needed to get out.
Now.
Panicked, he started backing down the cavern passage. He might elude them by moving deeper into its labyrinth.
No. Despite the creatures popping up and bobbing about him, something gave him pause. Something that took form in a single whispered word on his lips. Deathtrap.
No. He would not find refuge in the cave. He needed to get out.
But how?
He looked up, down, right, left. Sky, water, a dozen or more monsters before him, slick rock walls, fallen trees.
Trees.
There was no time to deliberate. It would have to be the trees. He would climb their broken limbs like a trellis.
Ghouls plummeted into the hole like lemmings. He went forward into Hell.
A fiend surfaced near Ian, and he brought the rock down on its skull like a miner swinging a pick. Another burst forth, and he struck at it, too.
He swung the rock methodically. He swung it with precision and calm. He swung and swung and swung.
His body remembered this motion. “Muscle memory,” they call it. His nerves, tissue, and even bone recalled similar blows. He let his mind go blank, and his body harkened back to a summer fair. He had only been fifteen, and he had just met a girl. He had had a crush on her. He had seen a giant stuffed bear held high by a carnie. He had set out to win it, and spent every day for a week at the arcade for a week trying to collect enough tickets. Every day from morning to dusk. Every day playing whack-a-mole.
He finally had won the teddy bear. Whether or not he had given it to the girl didn’t really matter. At least not now. The female creature was about to pounce.
In spite of her wicked and torn face, Ian recognized her instantly. She was the mother from Flight 183. Ian dared not think of what had happened to her infant. He needed to focus on the task at hand. She pounced, and Ian did not hesitate.
He splintered her braincase. Then he was off, scaling the oldest of the felled trees.
They clamored after him.
The wood was soft, and it slid off in decaying chunks as he climbed. He could find no traction. Shit. This wasn’t going to work.
He spied a cedar trunk dangling above him. It ran at a 15-degree angle to the cave floor, extending beyond the cave’s mouth. He was going to have to go for it.
He threw his weapon with all of his might at the nearest ghoul. The rock struck the nearest of the things in the chest. It took a few steps back, then kept coming.
Ian leapt, grabbing hold of the decaying tree. It was slick, the top covered with a deep moss. He fought for a grip. His legs dangled before the creatures’ mouths. Ian resolved he would not go the way of Jessica, God rest her soul. Quickly, he swung his feet upward, a lunging demon just missing him. He wrapped his thighs around the base, locking his ankles together. His weight now distributed, his hold improved.
He hung there like a three-toed sloth, a sloth acutely aware of the groping claws and open maws beneath him.
What now?
What now? Move your ass up! Get around to the top of this thing!
But that was much easier contemplated than accomplished. He loosened his legs’ clutch, and pulled them forward. Then he tightened it again, and advanced his hands. Then he drew his legs inward again. He moved like this, inch by inch, like a caterpillar, for nearly twenty minutes until his head struck the limestone rim of the sinkhole. Once there, he was able to wriggle around to the top of the shaft, his shoulder buttressed by the soil.
Birds were singing. Daylight was approaching.
Ian crawled, digging into the soil with his heels, clutching at bits of root with his nails, literally clawing his way out of the pit. Hand over hand, he used his elbows and forehead to anchor him. His face was low, just inches from the ground, and his vision limited to the patch of dirt directly before him. He pulled, tugged, and pulled so
me more. He thought he could feel the pitch of the earth changing, little by little becoming less sheer.
He glanced up to see if he might be closing in on the rim.
Shoes.
Muddy and worn shoes. Less than twelve inches from his face.
Ian’s eyes moved upward. Soiled pants legs. A bloated torso.
And then the smell.
And the rasping growl.
His eyes tracked upward still.
The remnants of hands stretched toward him, ready to steal his soul.
An eager, almost smiling skull gnashed its teeth. Its face, though disfigured, was unmistakable.
It was the Fat Man.
The showdown between a protagonist and his nemesis caps off an adventure, whether it be literature or cinema. Every moment, every movement, has been just a prelude designed to make the climax that much more powerful and visceral. It is classic good versus evil, and the scene promises to connect all the dots and tie together all the loose ends. It’s what the fans have been waiting for. They expect to be blown away.
Unfortunately, Ian is not an author, screenplay writer, or director. He doesn’t know the rules. If he had known, maybe this battle would have been a bit more elaborate. A bit more staged. Had Ian had foreknowledge, he would have fashioned a sword out of ash or ninja throwing stars from some old vinyl albums.