Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller

by Ashlei Hawley

  “What in God’s name?” Laura asked around her panting.

  She felt like she’d just been running wind sprints. Her head throbbed, her throat burned and buried within her, she could feel the seething rage of the creature she was now sure she shared her body with.

  When Trevor moved, Laura had another strange sense of feeling his passage more than seeing it. He was going for Mel; she knew that as well as she knew she could not let him touch her. When he got slightly closer to the bed than she was, Laura pushed him to her left, away from Mel and into the light that spilled through the half-cracked blinds of the girl’s window.

  The light seemed to hit Trevor like acid, and he screamed and danced a dance of frantic agony. Laura crazily expected him to start smoking like some kind of vampire, burst into flames and leave only a pile of ash behind. However, even though he screamed like he was burning alive, his skin remained whole and no physical fire appeared to consume him.

  Melissa was startled awake by her brother’s screaming and rolled over to see what was happening. Her wide eyes, the same metallic brown as her mother’s, were full of sick fear and concern for her brother.

  “Trevor, what’s wrong?!” Mel yelled in a voice quickly filling with tears.

  Laura moved then, shocked out of the spell of immobilization by her daughter’s voice. She was afraid of the light, afraid because she knew whatever affected Trevor had caused his adverse reaction to it and whatever that contamination was had touched her, as well. Regardless, she walked into the light and took firm hold of her son.

  He was no longer screaming, and that was a relief. Laura stood with him in the light and felt none of the burning he had apparently been overcome with. When he lifted his eyes to his mother, they were bright blue again; no obsidian darkness marred his confused gaze. He was Trevor again, and Laura hugged him to her fiercely.

  “Mama, what’s wrong?” Mel asked in a terrified whisper, and the tears in her voice were on her face now. “What’s wrong?”

  Laura was shaking as badly as Trevor was, and she hadn’t directly experienced the cause for his tremors. The empathy that is a staple of motherhood insisted the boy’s pain was her own, and that was enough to start the tears.

  While she cried silently, Laura stroked Trevor’s mussed hair and down over his cheeks. The boy’s skin was clammy and slicked with sweat. In normal circumstances, Laura would be fearful of illness, but she knew what was happening was much worse than a simple cold or flu. If there was sickness, it was one of the soul, and they were both incurably infected.

  Melissa stepped out of bed tentatively and moved toward her mother and brother. Laura immediately identified the swelling presence within her, and knew it wanted her to turn her head lightning quick so it could snap at the girl again.

  Utilizing the vast quantity of stony restraint that was a trademark of her personality, Laura forced her head to turn slowly, her breathing to remain even, and the enemy within was not able to usurp control as it had earlier. The light, Laura thought, also very probably had something to do with the thing’s inability to take her over. In the light, she felt more secure of herself. She counted it as a blessing.

  “Trevor’s fine, Mel,” Laura assured her daughter. “But something is wrong. I need you to get dressed, then we need to try to get in touch with daddy.”

  The tears were immediately back, clouding the girl’s gaze and making her expression thundery with fear and worry.

  “Daddy isn’t home?” Mel whimpered. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know, baby,” Laura said in what she hoped was a soothing voice as she stood and helped Trevor gain his feet, as well. “He had to go to work, but I’m sure he’s fine.”

  The lie almost hurt her teeth when it squeezed between them. If there was anything she was sure of, it was that Sam was not fine. Melissa didn’t question her assurance, though, and Laura was glad for it.

  As Trevor stood on his own and began to regain some color, Laura studied her youngest child. She wasn’t affected by whatever plagued Trevor and her mother, Laura was sure of it. While she slipped into the thick pants, short-sleeved shirt and sweater her mother handed her, Melissa exuded none of the wrongness Laura could sense from her other child and within her own body. Melissa was completely whole and healthy, and completely herself. Something about that fact was luridly important, but Laura couldn’t identify it for what it was.

  “Let me do your hair, baby,” Laura said as she reached for Mel’s brush and a hair tie.

  The casual way with which she accepted the necessity of the act even in a situation that felt like an episode of X-Files almost made Laura laugh. She choked back the sound, fearing it would come out sounding more like a scream.

  “Melissa, you have to listen to me,” Laura said softly, keeping a close eye on Trevor as she spoke and pulled the brush gently through her daughter’s hair. “I know it’s going to be hard for you to understand, but you have to try and you have to trust me. You need to stay away from people, Mel. If you notice Trevor or me coming at you and you think something seems wrong, run away and hide. Don’t trust any other people, all right? Do you hear me, Mel?”

  “But, Mama, what’s wrong?” Melissa asked tearfully. “I don’t want to have to run away. I want to stay with you.”

  “Something’s dangerous with me right now, and with Trevor,” Laura struggled to explain. “I’ll try to keep it from hurting you, baby, but if you can tell we’re not really us and we’re trying to do something bad to you, you have to run. Run and hide.”

  Laura was not sure Melissa understood, but the girl nodded morosely, nonetheless. Laura just hoped that she could keep control of herself and Trevor long enough to figure out a way to ensure Melissa’s safety.

  “Okay, you’re done,” Laura announced, trying to keep her voice light as she showed Melissa her own reflection on the mirror mounted to her dresser.

  The girl’s eyes lifted half-heartedly to the mirror, briefly taking in the ponytail her mother had fashioned for her. She nodded again and then hugged Laura around the waist, feeling small and delicate in her mother’s arms.

  “Don’t leave me, Mama,” Mel begged in a whisper, and Laura squeezed her tightly in response.

  “I’ll try not to, baby. Now let’s go get some breakfast before we try to find your daddy.”

  Chapter Five

  At the time of breakfast in the Walker home, the missing member of the household finally awakened. Sam was groggy and disoriented, and his head hurt like hell. When he rolled over, his back screamed a protest at him for daring to lay unmoving on the frozen Michigan ground for so many hours. Cursing it for the several kinks he now had in his neck, Sam lifted his head to remove the helmet he still wore.

  That was when he saw Dennis, laying facedown beside the truck, not ten feet away from where Sam himself had collapsed. He was not moving.

  Memories came back to him in Polaroid flashes; the fire, the dead man (Sam knew he’d been dead. There was no question.) And the girl, the girl with her freakish teeth, and then the way Dennis had screamed before darkness had overtaken Sam’s senses and rendered him blind and deaf.

  Sam scrambled over to his partner and turned him face up. There was blood on his uniform, blood on the ground and even before Sam met Dennis’ blank, forever staring eyes, the feeling of death had been all around him.

  He was torn open, torn the way the man they had pulled from the house had been. Logic dictated the girl had killed them both, and yet that same part of the mind screamed that that was a pure impossibility. Little girls did not grow wolfish teeth to attack and tear apart grown men!

  Scuttling away from his partner on all fours, Sam retched and brought up nothing except bile. Dennis was one of his oldest friends, one of the people closest to his heart, and he was dead on the cold, hard ground and no one except Sam seemed to care. There had been no one around to help, and even now there was no one near to help Sam take care of his fallen comrade.

  Sam wanted to take Dennis home
to the dog that had been like a child to him and the house that was as familiar and comfortable to Sam as his own. He wanted to bury his friend, yet somehow he knew funeral services were the last thing on the mind of the world right now. Even so, Sam considered them to be something that should have been in great demand. He didn’t know what was happening, but he did know it was death. Death all over, death all around.

  Sam retched again, and then pulled himself shakily to his feet. He was doing his family and friend no good sitting here having a hysterical breakdown. He would check the radio, check the phones and cover Dennis with one of the blankets they kept on the truck. Then, he would find a way to his family. His home was less than a ten minute drive from here.

  The radio issued a hiss of static and no one gave Sam a response when he called out for one on all channels. His cell phone-where he’d left it on the truck-wasn’t working at all, and neither was Dennis’s, which had been sitting right beside it. Sam took a blanket as he’d intended to and took it outside to cover Dennis.

  Though it hadn’t been working, there was always a chance cell service would come back, so Sam pocketed his phone and Dennis’s. They had different providers. Maybe that would mean something.

  “Sorry, old buddy,” Sam told Dennis in a miserable voice as he gently covered his partner with the blanket.

  Dennis had been one hell of a good man. For him to end like this just wasn’t right.

  After the task of covering his friend had been completed, Sam observed his immediate surroundings. The girl and the body of her father were both gone. This struck a nerve of extreme disquiet deep inside Sam, but he pressed on with his observations through it. The dead man couldn’t have hurt him, and the freak of a girl had apparently done all the damage she’d wanted to do here.

  There were no people. No one drove down the empty road, no residents were walking out to get their mail or put their trash to the curb in robes and slippers. The world was eerily silent and as far as Sam could tell, he was utterly alone.

  With his observations of the area around him finished, Sam turned his attention inward. He could sense something wrong. He didn’t waste time trying to convince himself otherwise, because he knew it as plainly as a cancer patient can see a tumor on the x-ray screen that he was infected with something. The darkness wasn’t something as simple as a malign mass. Sam felt that whatever had claimed him was far more nefarious, and would be far more deadly than something connected with bodily illness. This was an infection of the soul.

  “Get moving, Walker,” Sam told himself aloud. “Standing here being scared of it isn’t going to help anyone, is it?”

  Because a ten minute drive was a much longer walk and he wanted as soon as possible to get back to his family, Sam looked around for something he could drive. He didn’t want to take the fire truck-it was a bitch to maneuver and in the event that nothing too extraordinary was wrong, he didn’t want to be accused of stealing company property. It almost amused him that he could still think that way, and then he happened to glance down toward Dennis’s unmoving, shrouded form.

  Any amusement that could have been born within him was immediately and viciously aborted.

  The houses to either side of the one they’d been called to had burned down to smoldering ruins in the time that Sam was unconscious. He assumed any vehicles belonging to the owners were either with their drivers or had burned in the garages. He would walk a few homes down, he decided, and knock on some doors while he tried to figure out a more solid course of action. He couldn’t be completely alone in the world, he tried to assure himself. Someone would help him.

  Moving in the direction of his own home, Sam didn’t look into the hollowed-out shells of what used to be people’s houses. A runaway fire that got to realize the full extent of its destructive potential was a personal failure to Sam, and it meant loss on so many more levels that one would at first realize.

  How many items of memory and sentimentality had perished in the flames? How many investments, hopes, fruitions of hard work and landmarks of achievement had been unfeelingly devoured? It wasn’t just loss of life Sam tried to prevent, but the loss of the inanimate but still woefully important items fire could destroy. The beast was nondiscriminatory, and gleefully killed dreams and other items of worth as easily as flesh.

  The first house Sam came to looked like it might have someone inside, because he could see a television playing through the cracks in the living room window blinds. When he knocked on the door, however, no one answered. He knocked long and loudly, but got no response. Though he considered breaking into the garage and seeing if he could simply commandeer a vehicle, his instincts compelled him away. Chances were there was someone inside, and Sam didn’t want to risk a confrontation.

  Especially if whoever was inside was like the girl had been. Sam moved away, and kept moving.

  Every time he tried to put his focus on thoughts of the girl, his mind shied away like a nervous horse from an inexperienced rider. He wanted to know what in the hell had been wrong with her, and at the same time never wanted to put thought to the incident again.

  At the second house he came to, Sam had a nearly identical experience as with the first house. Though his reasons for the assumption were unclear even to Sam himself this time, he felt almost certain the house was occupied. However, when he pounded on the door for a good thirty seconds, no one came to answer it.

  It was as though everyone was trying to project the image of a mass disappearance. If such a cruel prank could be accomplished on so large a scale, Sam would not be impressed by it. The feeling of being estranged from every other human being in a new ocean of alien emptiness was not something anyone should ever hope to achieve.

  “Fucker,” Sam cursed at the door as he kicked it in anger and then stepped off the porch. Lashing out wouldn’t help, but it did make him feel a little better.

  The next house he came to was the same, and so was the house after that. Just as Sam was about to give up and commit some kind of criminal activity, the door to the house he was currently pounding on opened with the careful pace of extreme hesitation.

  “Hi,” Sam said in a deeply relieved voice.

  The much younger man, probably a year or two shy of his eighteenth birthday, locked wary eyes on Sam and didn’t respond. When the door was fully open, Sam tried to offer a friendly smile and a handshake.

  As soon as he moved, the teen snapped forward, his body jerking like he’d been pulled forth by invisible puppet strings. From somewhere within his center mass, from somewhere Sam couldn’t immediately identify, a shadow shape lunged forward and locked a mouthful of three inch fangs on Sam’s shoulder.

  The creature looked insubstantial-the teeth were not.

  The massive jaws of the shadow beast allowed it to cling like a rabid dog to Sam. His muscles screamed a protest against the pain and agonizing fire spread from the wound as blood gushed from underneath the unnatural blackness.

  “Fuck!” Sam shouted as he tried desperately to detach the alien entity from his shoulder.

  As though snapping himself out of a trance, the younger man jerked back, and the shadow shaped slipped back underneath his skin.

  Already pale, the teen now looked ghastly. Already with a face still slightly rounded by youth, he now looked like a small child facing the wrath of a parent who had caught him in some monstrous wrongdoing.

  “I’m sorry, mister,” the young man said in a whisper. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s happening.”

  Sam dropped to his knees, legs shaking too badly because of the pain for him to continue to stand as he gripped his mauled shoulder. No matter that the shadow thing had been ghostly in form; it had done its damage physically enough. Sam’s skin was deeply lacerated, and blood poured between his fingers as he clasped his hand over the grisly wound. He felt like throwing up or passing out.

  “I got some stuff,” the younger man continued in a rush. “Some bandages and stuff. My mom’s got a first aid kit in the bathroom. C
ome on, mister, lemme help you up.”

  When Sam didn’t move, the boy hesitantly came forward and tried helping the older man stand.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” the teen continued as he pulled Sam haltingly to his feet. “My name’s Austin. My dad never came home last night and my mom…” He trailed off, and his hazel-brown eyes clouded with consternation. “My mom wasn’t right. She ran off in the night and I don’t know where she went or what’s happening.”

  “Kid, I don’t know what’s happening, either,” Sam said in a strained voice as he allowed the boy to lead him inside and toward the bathroom. “I got knocked out myself, been to hell and back since last night, it feels like. Have you been watching the TV, listening to the radio? Someone has to know what’s happening.”

  “TV’s been out since early morning,” Austin told Sam as he guided the older man to the toilet to sit down on the closed lid. As he rummaged through the cabinet on Sam’s right he continued, saying, “We don’t have a radio. Stupid, I know. Internet’s been down, too. Now how does that happen, man? How can they shut down the whole system in one damn night, you know?”

  “They?” Sam asked as Austin turned back to him with bandages, wash clothes and medical tape.

  “My mom’s a nurse,” Austin explained when Sam gave the first aid collection a look of appreciation. “Always has stuff like this on hand. And as far as ‘they,’ well, that’s what’s happening, right? Something came, and they’re…doing stuff to us. Isn’t that how it seems to you?”

  Sam pondered the thought as Austin ran water until it was warm and soaked two of the cloths in the stream.

  “That shadow thing,” Sam said slowly. “That’s what you’re talking about? Like we’ve been taken over by something?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Austin agreed excitedly as he turned back to Sam. “Like aliens. Like we went to sleep and they got inside us, right?”