“Okay. Well, along the way, we can stop in small towns and break into stores if we have too. Supplies should be abundant, not a problem,” I said. “We need to look for another vehicle that has more gas in it, before this one runs out.”
“That’s a good idea,” Dennis said over his shoulder, still looking through his scope.
“I don’t want to travel during the night. It’s too easy to be spotted and get lost on the backroads, and we can’t see the dead moving our way. Everyone get as comfortable as you can and get some sleep. If you hear or see something, let me know. You might want to crack the windows, so it doesn’t get too steamy in here. I need to be able to see if we have to take off in a hurry.”
Dennis and Isabella had taken my father and me in, given us shelter and food. I owed them for that, and I genuinely liked them. Brian, on the other hand, was not necessarily someone I wanted or needed to have around. For the time being, though, I had to leave things as they were.
In the distance, I watched as the capital city of Lansing burned. The mile or so in front of me was clear, a straight path, so that was good news, in case I had to flee. I tried to stay awake as I sat there, to keep a lookout, but something about the rhythmic flickering of the flames in the distance and the complete quiet outside made that seem impossible. It didn’t help that the others had already dozed off, Brian and Isabella breathing heavily behind me and Dennis’s head constantly bobbing down till his chin hit his chest and he brought it back up again.
Slam!
I bolted upright, and my foot almost hit the brake pedal while my finger grazed the start button. Somehow, it was daylight already, early morning. The sun was up, and the condensation on the windows made it difficult to see. Dennis was sprawled out as much as he could on the passenger seat, still asleep, and in the back, Isabella was still snoozing as well, with her head lying back against the headrest.
Brian? I wondered, because the seat behind me was empty. I rubbed the sweat off the window and watched him relieve himself right next to the car, his urine steaming in the morning air. He stretched his arms and leaned back to relieve a crick in his back, but he stopped abruptly when his body reminded him of his wounds. He fumbled around in his shirt pocket for a cigarette, then pulled his lighter out of another pocket and lit up. The strong stench and the smoke wafted into the car through the cracked windows, and it was a nasty nicotine wake-up call for the two still sleeping.
The farmer and his wife sat up, a bit bewildered and rubbing their bodies in the sore, stiff places. Their hair was unkempt and their faces oily from the night’s sleep, and they had sticky residue in their mouths, as much in need of toothpaste as I was.
I turned on the car and started the fans to clear the front window, then rolled up all the others. “Be right back, folks,” I said, then stepped out into the cool morning air and made my way through the low-lying mist that blanketed the ground.
“I guess Lansing’s the latest casualty,” Brian said, then puffed on his cigarette and flicked the ashes away. “She’s burnt to a crisp.”
I looked in that direction and realized he was right. Miles away, the city was wreathed in smoke, and flames were still licking up at the sky. Lansing wasn’t large and full of skyscrapers and landmarks by any means, but even so, all that remained now were the beaten-down, skeletal remains of the city that once was.
“We may have to take a different route then. “I was hoping to catch I-96 to US 23, but we have to avoid large cities, go the back way. Maybe we can go down to near I-94, then mirror it on the secondary roads till we get closer to Ann Arbor. We’ve got enough gas and plenty of food and water. If nothing stops us, it should take less than two hours.”
“And if your home’s just…gone?” Brian asked before taking another puff.
I sighed, not wanting to consider it, but I had to face the reality. “If that’s true, we’ll probably just keep going. Maybe we’ll head east, hugging the coastline, then go south. I wish the cell towers were still working. It’d be a whole lot easier to navigate with my phone.”
“I guess we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way, with good ol’ memory and a map,” Brian said, stating the obvious in his condescending way.
Before we took off, I encouraged everyone to stretch their legs, relieve themselves, and have a bite to eat. Once the windows were free of fog, we took off. I got off the highway and ran secondary roads until I found one I remembered driving on before, an alternative route I once took to the VA hospital, since I grew tired of going the same way all the time. Just like that, we left Lansing behind and headed south, taking the paved roads through farmland and avoiding any and all large cities.
This time, my passengers perked up a bit because we saw no signs of any dead, alien spacecraft, or burning cities. Miles and miles we drove, and it seemed like a perfect fall day in Michigan. It was sunny and warm, not too humid, so beautiful out that we nearly forgot the tumultuous condition the world was in.
While we passed no other cars, there was still an unnerving silence all around us. No one seemed to occupy the houses, and no birds or planes populated the sky. There was only static on the radio when I checked, so I quickly turned it off, fearful that it might remind us of just how alone we were and spoil everyone’s slightly improved moods.
In little more than an hour, we were twenty minutes outside of Ann Arbor, shadowing the city as best as we could. I stayed on a major road that ran east and west through the state. There was a glut of cars and trucks piled on the freeway, but nothing moved among the wreckage. Sadly, we saw many rotting corpses there.
I turned onto a tertiary road. Most of those who tried to evacuate clogged the highways and interstates, and they only found chaos and death; they became prey and met their deaths on concrete, asphalt, and steel. On the other hand, the tree-lined gravel road we traveled seemed as if no one had used it in ages. It was a peaceful place, usually used by bicyclists and runners, so we didn’t have to look upon any human or automobile casualties there.
We slowly and carefully neared Ann Arbor, and I was anxious as I waited for the first part of the city to come into view. I wondered what had become of those low-lying houses and the taller buildings beyond them. I wondered if any of them were still standing. Ann Arbor was a city built around a small hill, and within moments, I realized that it was now little more than ruins.
“Nothing,” I muttered, shocked as I saw the gutted houses and burning buildings, a wasteland. “My wife, my family… They’re all just…gone.” I stopped the car and let my head fall against my hands on the steering wheel. A second later, I felt a warm touch on my back, followed by a rub as I silently wept, tears streaming down my face and falling to my shirt.
“I’m sorry,” Isabella said softly.
“Uh-oh!” Brian said.
I heard a loud clanging noise behind me and felt Isabella’s hand lift off my back. “What the…?” I asked as I turned and looked behind me.
The rod in Brian’s hand snapped back and forth, as if trying to force it way through the car roof, toward a large crackle of energy outside the car. In the next second, a dark breach of energy appeared right before our eyes.
I threw the car into reverse, surprised that I was able to summon the reflexes in the midst of my heartbreak, thankful for my adrenaline. Somehow, Sue, my wife, was a distant thought, and I wanted nothing more than to live, to survive, if only to spite the things that took her from me.
Suddenly, seemingly of its own volition, the station wagon spun, kicking up gravel and shuddering as it left the road and moved into the field.
“Let it go! Put it down!” Isabella shrieked at Brian, smacking him and trying to pry his hands from the alien rod that still beat at the roof.
“No! We can still use it, and… Ah! Ow!”
The rod smashed Brian’s hands mercilessly, with almost maniacal energy, desperate to leave the car, even if it meant punching a hole through the metal roof.
Dennis swung his shotgun past me, and I ducked, not
icing the cold, dead, stony, homicidal look in his eyes. He didn’t really like Brian much in the first place, and he despised him even more when his wife exposed the man’s fraud. He pointed the two barrels at Mr. Wilson’s head, but he was interrupted before he could blow his brains all over our back seat.
Suddenly, the car engine died, but I used the forward momentum to turn it down the road. As I did, I noticed that the ground beneath us was wreathed in shadow, a perfect circle, the telltale sign of a hovering alien ship.
The steering wheel came off in my hands, and as we continued to move around thirty miles an hour, the entire vehicle began to deconstruct, each piece losing its grip on what held it together. Soon, it was nothing but thousands of car parts, flying down the road and us with it, carried by the inertia of movement. Fluids left their dissected containers, oil and antifreeze and gasoline spilling all over the pavement. The seat I was on even crumbled away, and I hit the ground hard and tumbled end over end. I heard my fellow passengers groan as their bodies contacted with the hard ground as well, and they rolled into the weeds on the roadside, spinning end over end. Meanwhile, the rod floated up to the alien craft and disappeared.
It took a minute or two for me to regain my bearings, but I was the first to manage my way to my feet again. All around me, the road was now covered in car parts. Dennis and Isabella sat up and looked at one another, their wounds reopened and bleeding again, but Brian’s body was still somersaulting, covered in automotive liquids. Even though he was much younger than Dennis and Isabella, he was in terrible shape, a heavy smoker who did little more than watch television. The stressful ordeal of the last few days likely knocked years off his life, and as he rubbed his hands together, cursing and complaining, it became clear that they were broken and bloody.
A few feet from us, the rift pulsated with power, but thankfully, nothing emerged from it. Above us, the ship hovered quietly and powerfully.
Since I wasn’t sure what else to do, I walked over to help Isabella up. Her gray hair was matted with blood, and her clothes were torn and tattered. She was obviously in shock, disoriented and muttering words that had no meaning, talking about some doll she’d left in her house. I looked at our car, that wonderful station wagon that almost had a full tank, now nothing but a deconstructed assembly line, strewn all over the place.
Dennis’s weapons were still intact, much to our relief, and he slung them both over his shoulders. He then took his wife into his arms and rubbed her back to console her, just as she tried to do for me just moments earlier. “It’s gonna be all right, darlin’,” he said, but we all knew it wasn’t.
I glanced up the saucer above and saw that it had not moved. When I tried to help Brian get up, I saw that her eyes were vacant and dazed, and I assumed he hit his head during his impromptu gymnastics attempt. “Brian, c’mon, man. Get up! We have to get out of here, before something comes out of that rift. We’re sitting ducks here. We have to find another car,” I said as I grabbed his shoulders and gave them a yank.
It was no use, because he was dead weight, not willing to help me at all. “Leave me. I-I can’t go on,” he whined. “I don’t wanna live in this world anymore anyway,” he told me, rolling over on his back. His eyes were clear and focused again, but every breath was labored and required great effort.
I heard a strange sound and turned just in time to see Isabella falling to the ground again. Her head fell against her chest as she sat there, surrounded by car parts.
“Isabella!” Dennis called, the knelt down beside her and held her close. He rubbed his hands over her body as she shut down, trying to bring her back. When she didn’t respond to him, he hurriedly took the shotgun and rifle off his shoulders and laid them on the ground beside his failing wife. He whispered something in her ear, pleading with her to wake up and speak to him.
In great pain, Brian started to rise up on his right shoulder, moaning and groaning. He pointed back at Dennis, his eyes wide.
I turned to look at the farmer again and saw him lifting the rifle toward the great ship that hovered over us.
“No! Don’t do it!” Brian yelled. “They’ll—”
Blam! Blam!
The rifle discharged once, then twice, each shot heading up to the disc over us, none of them hitting their mark or doing anything to our enemies. After the second discharge, Dennis was enveloped in a field of blue fire, and in an instant, his entire body was nothing but a pile of ashes, falling to the ground.
Dozens of feet away, the rift crackled with power, and something dead came through it, something that was human and alive just seconds before. It was a man once, a mate, and now its soul, its essence was held back from its promised journey. It was different now, its worldly life forgotten, like a butterfly being pulled back to its muddy, common cocoon when all it wanted to do was fly away. That thing looked at the tired, wounded woman sitting in the grass near it and didn’t see a wife. It didn’t see the life they’d shared for decades because it was too enraged. It was denied the next step toward perfection, and it was confused, looking at everything through the slanted view of dead eyes.
With a bellow of hate, the thing launched itself toward Isabella, its claws extended. I looked away, as I did not want to see the thing that had been Dennis moments ago attack and kill her. Instinctively, I ran a couple steps toward her, but I stopped quickly; I was hurt, my body bleeding, and I had no weapons to fight such a strong thing that was armed with claws to rip me to pieces. Horrified, all I could do was stand there, helplessly unmoving, wondering what to do next.
When I heard Isabella yell and saw a shower of her blood and scraps of her flesh fill the air, I found the strength to run again. I cursed myself for being so weak, for being a coward, a man I did not want to be. Even so, I made my way past Brian. As cruel as it was, I thought he might serve as a distraction, that if the thing quickly dispatched Isabella and chased me, it would come upon the bloody man lying in the grass and descend on him instead. Maybe that will buy me enough precious time to find a car, a weapon…anything, I thought.
As I passed over Brian, he looked into my eyes. He was a smart man, and he knew what I was doing, but his body was so torn and bloody that he could do nothing but lie there and be the bait.
Blam! Blam!
One shotgun blast followed the other, and I turned to see Isabella still sitting upright in the grass, surrounded by an aura of gunpowder and smoke and pieces of the shattered thing that tried to kill her. As the remains rained down, the grass around her became dark and filthy, stained by the death of her husband, his second death. She could only keep her body erect by leaning on the shotgun, avoiding the smoking barrels. Her clothing was covered with blood, hers and his, and her round, plump face was overrun with several very deep gashes. Her old glasses were gone, ripped from her face, and she blinked her eyes several times as she looked at me, as if she was trying to decipher what was happening.
I couldn’t imagine what was going through her head. After all, her husband had come back and attacked her, using his strength to rip her apart. The man she loved did not recognize her, and now, there she sat, her Dennis dead, an alien craft above her, and a glowing slit in the universe shimmering dozens of feet away. I could tell by the look in her eyes that she didn’t want to die, mostly because she knew if she perished, she would come right back as one of those things. With her small hand and thin arm, she hung on to the steel barrel of the shotgun, its touch the only thing that made sense to her in the world.
“Isabella, are you all right? Can I…” I asked, the words gentle in the air.
She turned and looked at me; even without her glasses, I felt her gaze on me.
I turned my face away, ashamed that I did not help her. The woman and the dead man around her had taken my father and me in, fed and clothed us. They did so with no questions asked, simply out of kindness, because of the goodness of their souls.
“Peter, I-I don’t have much time left,” she said, gasping for air. “Please do me a f-favor.”
“Take that worthless man over there and figure this stuff out. He might be a jackass, but was right all along. Strike back somehow, if you can. Or…” She stopped then, and her voice softened and slowed. “Bring back our race, Peter. Heaven.”
“Heaven?”
“You go on now. Get away from me, far as y’all can. I’ll try to hang on, but—”
“But I don’t know what you mean, Isabella,” I said, confused by her words. I held her tight, trying to stop the bleeding, but I was surprised she was still alive with the number of gaping wounds she had. I should have paid attention to Sue, when she was bandaging all those boo-boos, I thought, recalling that I always let her administer medical care to our children. God, I miss her. Even as I held Dennis’s dying wife, I cried a tear for my own. We had been together since high school, and I missed her touch, her tiny body, and her beautiful face. I even managed a half-chuckle as I remembered that her feet and hands were always cold; with great mirth, she loved to place them on my body, just another fond memory of a good life I would never live again.
“They ruined it for me, for us, those aliens.”
“Ruined what, Isabella?”
“D-Death,” she stuttered. “They stole heaven, Peter. We lived, but all that’s gone now, and where we will go? Will Dennis and I ever reach it now? No, because of them. That lowlife over there, he figured it all out. If there’s a way, he knows it. He’s way ahead of everyone, and…” She doubled over in pain, and great rivers of blood left her body. Her face went ashen, and her hand lost its will to hold on, sliding down the shotgun shaft.
I touched her face and gave her a friendly kiss there. Then, without looking back, I ran to where Brian sat. I was surprised to find him upright, clumsily trying to light another cigarette with his smashed fingers. “Not now!” I said, knocking it out of his bloody hands. I grabbed him and lifted, and I heard a sharp intake of air as he gasped in pain. “Brian, c’mon, man! You gotta help me out here. We have to find another car or something. Isabella’s going to die in a minute, and she’ll come back through that rift.”
They came for our dead Page 9