Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller

by Ashlei Hawley

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I can see, Ray,” Amy countered. “It isn’t night yet. There are shadows, yeah, but not so deep that someone could hide in them.”

  “The shadows themselves are the threat,” Ray said, too quietly for Amy to hear as she walked away from him, closer to the overpass. Raising his voice, he called, “Amy, don’t. We’ll go up and around. It won’t take too long.”

  “Oh, my Lord,” Amy said while rolling her eyes. “Ray, come on. You can’t seriously think someone’s waiting in there to jump us.”

  “I’d just rather be safe,” Ray explained as he took her by the hand and drew her to the right. They could climb up that side, he thought; it wasn’t as steep as the other. “It’s a practice you should get into. Think of it as training.”

  “Whatever makes you happy,” Amy said. Her tone was dubious, but she submitted to Ray’s preference to go around. It wouldn’t take that much longer, she reasoned, and it would make him feel better.

  “Stay out of shadows, even in the daytime,” Ray advised as they scaled the small incline together. “If you absolutely have to go into the dark, have a weapon at the ready. There’s a good chance it won’t help, but it’ll be better than going down without a fight, you know?”

  “Wow, Ray, that’s a really positive thought,” Amy said sarcastically. “Thanks for that. I’ll take it to heart.”

  Not paying as much attention as she should have been to the frozen ground, Amy lost her footing and slipped down. She yelped and instinctively held out a hand, which Ray grabbed securely. He used his height and strength as leverage and pulled, helping Amy to regain her footing without losing his own.

  “Thanks, Ray,” Amy exclaimed with a gasp.

  Ray made it a point to give her a few seconds to affirm she was secure in her footing before he released her hand and gave her a belated, “you’re welcome.”

  “Good reflexes,” Amy continued as she made her way up the last few feet with more caution. “I would’ve been hurting for sure if I took that tumble.”

  “At your service,” Ray joked back as he lifted himself easily over the guardrail, and then held out his hands to help Amy over. She was much shorter than he was and while he could stretch over the low cement wall with little issue, Amy would have more difficulty.

  “Do you plan on lifting me over?” Amy asked with a laugh.

  “If you need me to,” Ray answered seriously, making Amy laugh harder.

  “Nah,” she said. “I think I’ve got it covered. If I can use you for balance, we should be good.”

  After Amy was over, they both stood overlooking the long, curving stretch of highway before them. Nothing moved; no cars drove, no people walked. There wasn’t even an animal in sight, which was unusual. Whenever Laura picked Amy up for a weekend, Amy frequently saw deer on the side of the road. With their owners lost to madness or worse, Amy had expected to see several household pets, dog and cats, at least, out and about as they walked. But they had seen no indication of life. It perplexed Amy deeply, and made her think on things she hadn’t wanted to consider.

  “We should open as many doors as we can when we get into town,” Amy suggested in a quiet voice as she and Ray continued to look over the deserted freeway. She spoke in funereal tones, a voice reserved for mourners in a crypt.

  Ray gave her an inquisitive look and asked, “Why?”

  “Well, there are pets that will end up starving if they’re left home alone,” Amy said, and she was embarrassed that the thought was one of the big concerns she had. “Outside in the cold and feral is better than inside starving. They’ll have a better chance if we let them out.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought of that,” Ray mused, but he nodded. “It’s a good idea, I guess. Let nature do with them what it will. No point in letting them suffer from starvation or dehydration.”

  “Right,” Amy concurred, and she sounded relieved. “Thanks for agreeing with me, Ray. I know it’s a stupid thing to think about with everything else going on.”

  “I’ve never thought anything you think is stupid,” Ray said in a chiding voice. “Come on. Our best chance to get you safe before dark is to keep moving.”

  “Ray, look!” Amy exclaimed in an excited voice as she grabbed his arm. Her grip was tight and she nearly bounced with renewed hopeful energy.

  “Someone’s alive,” Ray murmured.

  The economy van was silvery blue, coming down the freeway opposite the way Ray and Amy were heading. The vehicle had only one obvious occupant; a man, Ray saw as the van drew closer to where he and Amy were jumping up and down, waving their arms, hoping to flag the driver down. He slowed the van and stopped on the other side of the overpass. Ray and Amy ran toward the car, which the man put in park before he stepped out of it.

  “Hi, there,” the man called up, and he sounded wary.

  “Hello!” Amy responded. Her voice was almost giddy. “Please don’t drive away! We’re normal, I promise. We’ll be right down!”

  Going down the side of the overpass was much quicker; both due to Amy’s excitement at seeing another person and the fact that it was much steeper than the other. Amy stumbled the last few feet, but managed to regain her footing and avoided face-planting on the pavement in front of the tall, well-muscled male stranger. She saw he was dark as the shadows she was supposed to avoid at all costs, with warm brown eyes strained by recent events. His hair was cut short and was as dark as the rest of him. He had large hands, with clean, broad fingernails. He held one out to Amy and she took it to shake.

  “Hi, I’m Amy,” she said, and she was breathless. Her smile was wide and welcoming, and that put the man ever so slightly at ease.

  “Hi, Amy. Good to meet you. And you are?” he asked as Ray finished his descent and stood protectively near his female charge.

  “Ray. It’s nice to meet you, sir.” He stopped talking after the niceties, giving the man ample opportunity to introduce himself.

  “Well, it’s great to see other people,” the man proclaimed. He held out the same hand Amy had shaken to Ray, who reciprocated the polite gesture out of habit. “My name’s Shane, and let me tell you, I’ve had one hell of a morning.”

  Chapter Ten

  Several hours before, after a wayward Escalade had totaled his ambulance in the night, Shane Harris had found himself walking along a back road in one of Michigan’s many small towns. He’d been on call around ten the night before, when everything had started. He was one of three EMTs that had been in the ambulance when it crashed. The driver had died instantly, and his two co-workers had suffered some shared madness, both devolving into murderous freaks in the blink of an eye. Shane had escaped the wreck, and the other EMTs had gone at each other. All Shane had needed to see was the splash of blood against the cracked back window to convince him to hightail it the hell away from there.

  He’d walked through the trees as often as he could. Being a country boy, he knew his way around a forest, and he’d known he didn’t want to be on the roads. He’d figured correctly that his chances had been good he wouldn’t encounter any other people if he stuck to the trees, and avoiding human-or what currently passed for human-contact had seemed like a good idea to him at the time.

  When dawn had broken, he’d come upon a big, two-story house tucked back in the woods. The driveway was long and winding, and the home was surrounded on all sides by thick copses of trees. It was a nice place, and Shane had decided it would be the first home he would venture into in order to attempt to reinstate human contact. He was a helper at heart, and if something bad was happening, he’d known he couldn’t go too long without offering his assistance.

  As he’d walked through the backyard toward the large house, Shane had seen a young woman leave the house through the open garage door. Though it was an incredibly chilly winter morning, the plump but pretty brunette had been barefoot, dressed in a short-sleeved pajama set. She was holding something in her arms, but Shane hadn’t been close enough to identify what it
was at first.

  She hadn’t noticed him at all, so Shane had discreetly followed the woman all the way down the driveway, cringing at the thought of how cold she must have been. Just as he was about to call out to her, to offer her his jacket or to escort her back up to the house, she had reached the culvert at the end of the driveway.

  The culvert was wide and tall, nearly eight feet from where the young woman stood to the icy water that flowed sluggishly from the cement tunnel. There were rocks and old pieces of concrete in the ditch, and Shane had imagined that in the summer, the water rose high and had all sorts of fish, frogs and crawfish in residence within it.

  As he’d pondered these things, the bundle in the woman’s arms had begun to stir, and issued a tiny cry. It was an infant. She’d held it out for the space of a few seconds, and then had dropped it into the icy water.

  Shane had been frozen by pure shock for all of three seconds. As the woman let herself drop into the ditch, facedown, after the baby, Shane had raced to the edge and plunged into the water. It had been maybe two and a half feet of arctic chill, but Shane had hardly felt it as he went for the baby.

  Luckily, the infant had missed any of the rocks or concrete that could have easily killed it from that high of a drop. Even more luckily, Shane had reacted with speed and experience, pulling the child from the freezing water and wrapping it in his coat, against the heat of his body.

  The woman Shane presumed was the baby’s mother had not been so lucky; blood had already begun to blossom in a frozen flower around her outspread brown hair. She had landed on one of the pieces of concrete, and definitely had a head injury. Thinking only of how he would always react in such a situation, Shane had turned her over so she wouldn’t drown, then had taken hold of her by the back of her neck and dragged her up. The school of thought to not move someone who’d suffered a head injury had to bend a little when the injured party was scantily clad in below zero water.

  Once they were on the ground away from the ditch, Shane had placed the woman on her side, hoping she would last long enough for him to administer care to the infant, who was Shane’s primary concern at the time. He’d pulled the tiny creature from beneath his coat, handling her gingerly as he slipped his coat off, spread it on the ground and placed the baby atop it. Shane had decided upon seeing the infant that she was either a girl or the world’s prettiest boy, and she’d been breathing, having immediately spat up any water she’d swallowed. She’d begun shivering violently, though; little arms trembling forcefully and tiny fists clenching in apparent pain. Her lips had quickly begun turning blue.

  Shane had decided he would attempt CPR on the mother, and then get them both back up to the house as quickly as possible. He’d intended to leave the woman there first, covering her with his coat as he got the baby to a warmer environment.

  Course of action decided, Shane had turned back to the woman on the ground. What he’d seen would give him nightmares the next time he was able to sleep, and every time after that.

  Small, slithery creatures had been worming their way from the crack in the woman’s head, sliding down her cheeks like grotesque living tears. Her teeth had broken or vanished, and in their places were bloody, oozing holes from which seeped some viscous black fluid. Her stomach had from one minute to the next become grossly distended, bloated like the belly of a many days dead corpse, but Shane knew the woman had been alive-was still alive?-not three minutes before. With insane certainty, Shane had known the woman’s stomach was going to burst and creatures much worse than those on her face would spew forth toward him.

  What he’d predicted hadn’t happen, because a weak ray of morning sunlight had lit upon the woman, sending her up in gouts of flame and smoke. She had squealed and screamed while she burned, and Shane had watched in horrified silence, clutching the baby protectively to his chest as her mother burned.

  When she was ash on the ground, Shane had crossed himself, sent a word of thanks to the man upstairs, and bolted up the long driveway. The world had gone insane, but Shane had still had a job to do.

  The door had not only been unlocked, but left wide open. Shane had entered the home cautiously, on the lookout for more people who could turn into nightmare freaks in a moment’s time. He’d seen no one on the first floor, and of specific details, only remembered how grateful he’d been for the heat of the place.

  Upstairs, Shane had found himself in the baby’s room. The walls had been decorated with love and flair; fairytale scenes depicted winged women and magical creatures all gathered around a fountain so expertly portrayed, the water almost seemed to shimmer and flow from the wall it covered from ceiling to floor.

  There had been a changing table against the far wall, white wood topped with a foam pad covered by a pink blanket. Shane had deposited the baby atop it and made short work of removing her soaked pajamas and water-logged diaper.

  With the wet clothes off, in the heated home and with Shane briskly rubbing her limbs, the baby had shaken off the lethargy imbued in her by the stinging cold and begun crying. Her voice was weak, but Shane had been nearly ecstatic to hear it. He’d felt cautiously confident that he’d gotten her out of the water in time to prevent any permanent damage.

  The name on the wall, spelled out with wooden letters wrapped craftily in pretty yarn was Leila. It was a beautiful name for an equally beautiful baby girl.

  As quickly as he could, Shane had re-dressed the girl in a new diaper, warm pajamas, booties, gloves and a hat. He’d then left her on her table, still in his sight, which he kept on her in case she decided to roll. He had three nephews from his sister’s two marriages, and all of them had gone through that stage of being unpredictable and dangerous to themselves. Shane was a very involved uncle, and therefore had handled baby Leila expertly from the get-go even though he had no children of his own.

  In the chocolate brown diaper bag he’d found in Leila’s closet, he quickly packed as many diapers as he saw, as many warm clothes as he could fit, the three re-sealable containers of wipes on her changing table, several tubes of diaper rash cream, four winter hats, two spare pairs of gloves and booties, and two bottles of baby hair and body wash. He’d also folded all of her blankets, some handmade, some store bought, and packed them in a large, sturdy, reusable grocery bag. Along with the blankets had gone five canisters of baby formula, a box full of bottles, the toys and pacifiers that littered the otherwise well-organized top of baby Leila’s dresser and three stuffed animals; an orange lion, a blue bear and a pink, long-eared rabbit.

  Looking around the room, he’d seen and taken two framed photo; one of baby Leila with her mother and what Shane assumed were her maternal grandparents, and then a similarly posed picture of who Shane presumed was Leila’s father and his parents.

  On impulse, he’d also taken a pink baby book, with Leila’s name handwritten in tall, scrawling script on the front cover. Not knowing at the time why he’d done so, he’d pretty much taken every reminder in the near area of the people who’d been involved in the small child’s short life until the current time. Shane had known in his bones that Leila would never see any of those people again.

  After bundling her in a snowsuit, Shane had foregone the baby seat for the car and had instead carried Leila with him as he’d investigated the rest of the house. It had been empty of living souls, and the only body he’d found was Leila’s father, dead of a single gunshot wound to the head. Shane hadn’t known if the wound was self-inflicted, or if Leila’s mother had ended his life before she’d sought to end the life of her child and herself. Shane hadn’t wanted to know, and after looking around for a short time, he hadn’t found the gun. It hadn’t upset him much; he wasn’t a fan of firearms.

  After he’d concluded the house was temporarily safe, Shane had raided the kitchen and basement for supplies. Leila’s father had been only a size or two bigger than Shane himself, and the borrowed clothes fit him comfortable, with the pants being cinched by a leather belt and the shirts being double layered. Shane had
also found a Carhartt jacket, which he’d discarded his own soaked coat in favor of. The work boots he’d found fit just fine after Shane had donned a thick pair of insulated socks.

  Baby Leila, dry and snug in her car seat, ready to leave and quickly recovering from her time in the frozen ditch, had watched Shane with equal parts wariness and exhaustion. She’d been sleepy, but she’d also been confused at the lack of familiar individuals in her near vicinity. Shane had wondered how quickly she’d forget the people who’d brought her into the world, and had become full of melancholy at the thought. His whirlwind of survivalist activity had ceased, and he had sat down heavily on the kitchen floor near Leila and surprised himself by crying for a good five minutes.

  After his tears had abated, Shane had discovered that Leila had slipped into sleep. Her head nodded forward, and Shane started thinking about how old she was. Suddenly, it had become very important to him to know that bit of information. He’d locked the door, left her sleeping comfortably and had returned to her room.

  He’d looked all around, and finally had found what he was looking for on one of the three pretty, handmade white shelves on the wall opposite the fountain mural. A glass bottle, inscribed with pink script, spelled out Leila’s full name (middle name Aria, last name Sweers), her birth weight (6lbs, 8oz) and her date of birth (May 9). She was seven months old.

  Shane had handled the bottle like the delicate treasure it was, and had wrapped it in a towel from the nearby linen cabinet for safe-keeping. This would be something of the life she should have had that Leila, when she was older, could keep with her and cherish. Feeling as though he had accomplished what he’d needed to for the baby girl, Shane had exited Leila’s room and closed the door, knowing in his heart that it wouldn’t be opened again for a very long time.

  He’d returned to the kitchen and begun the tedious task of packing all of the supplies in the van he’d decided to commandeer. The family that owned it would obviously not need it anymore. With Leila in hand, Shane had taken the keys from the key ring near the kitchen door, turned off the light and stepped into the garage. He’d set Leila down only momentarily, to lock and close the door, then he had secured her in the car, on the car seat base behind the passenger seat, claimed the driver’s seat for himself and driven away. He’d found a freeway, and had driven on, not really sure where he was heading, but mostly drawn in the direction that simply felt right.