by J. Axbridge
Jax set down his backpack then checked and rechecked the two nine millimeter guns he’d taken from his parent’s gun safe and had strapped to him like he was an Army Ranger.
I was still carrying my aluminum bat that was once a shiny metallic, but was now scuffed from top to bottom. It had become my new world security blanket, although at times doubled as a hiking stick. More importantly though, and deadly, I still carried the shotgun strapped to my back. I figured a girl can never be too safe. Slowly I slid the heavy weapon off my body and set it down carefully afraid it might go off. Instinctively pointing it away from the group before inspecting it, not even sure what I really needed to do to keep it functional but I figured at least drying it was probably important.
My brother Arthur preferred simple he’d said when picking out his weapons of choice back at Jax’s house. He’d decided on a six shooter revolver and a civil war sword which was sheathed on his side giving him the appearance of someone straight out of a cheesy Hollywood movie set. At first I thought this to be a bad choice for him, but as he whirled it during our walk and practiced slicing any item he could find, along with help from the Huntra, Mayumi Gushiken, I hated to admit it but he was getting good at using his sword . . . scary good.
Mayumi carried her own trademark bow and arrows; along with her homemade double arrows she called “darrows” snug against her body. Also hidden on her were small weapons she’d yet to explain to me but apparently she’d learned to use them in Japan and those could definitely help us out of tight spots or so she’d told me more than once. Before sitting down, Mayumi took a variety of deadly looking sharp things out of pockets and holders I never knew existed and set them on a large stone, wiping down each one to a scary glistening sheen.
The twins, Caelyn and Victoria took out their rather large survival knives with compasses on one end and compared their accuracy before unscrewing the compass portion from the knife handle. Flipping their knives upside down, matches, fishing string, mini wire saws and first aid ointment slide out of the hollow handles onto the wet ground. It looked like they were opening presents on Christmas Day the way their faces lit up as they looked over the amount of survival items that could fit into a hollow knife handle.
Ethan still swore by his long fishing spear, perfect for spearing fish he’d repeated on many occasions. But also he made the point that he could use it for protecting himself from a distance in a fight; he chose to go with practical when it came to his weapon of choice for survival in the outdoor elements.
*****
We camped below a small mountain of earth and rubble consisting of past city life mashed together with an array of colors mixed in, which was a change from the dull browns and grays of the earth we’d camped near before. Unfortunately it felt like we were staying in an uncovered, end of the world landfill but thankfully without the putrid, rotting stench that seemed to follow us most days.
With our tents pitched I settled in for a nap, but no matter how hard I tried, the images of the past days came flooding back. I was sure it was the same for each and every one of us as the remains of people we’d seen that had died horribly in the storms were so vivid, and at times unbearable causing the twins to gag and even throw-up on more than one occasion during our long journey. The unimaginable conditions of the bodies that had been crushed, burned alive, mutilated and torn apart among other ways death had come for them was so grotesque that even the worst horror movies couldn’t have duplicated their untimely demise. It was in this silence of the darkness as those images flashed by one after another like a retro slide show projector gone crazy that I knew none of us would be sleeping much and that maybe we’d never be able sleep well again.
Chapter 19 – Separation
Adelaide
It read exactly six pm on the All Element Survival Watch Arthur had given me what seemed ages ago and as the second sun rose, before hiding behind the slowly thickening gray and brown tinged clouds yet again, the limited light it did give off began brightening our tents, magnifying the water droplets that slid off them from the earlier rain. Mayumi and Jax were already wide awake after having taken shorter naps than the rest of us and had begun preparations for the next phase of our trek through and past Chicago.
“Mayumi . . . , do you sense that?” I heard Jax’s gravelly morning voice, “There’s a strange scent floating on top of the morning breeze.”
I heard Mayumi shuffle to her feet; she’d probably been adjusting tension on her bow and darrows again, she was never one to leave her weapons to chance, or rust or dirt, they were inspected, cleaned and seen to any time we had a break. “I see nothing except the same ruins I had seen last sun Jax.” She replied directly.
“Something is out there; I can smell it,” Jax whispered back. “It has a unique scent, one I’ve never encountered before . . . I don’t know; this may not be a good sign.”
The curiosity was getting the best of me and I sat up in my tent as my stomach began to churn with worry. Not able to sit still or rest any longer I zippered open the cool damp door and stuck my head out to get a sense of what exactly was going on. I jerked with shock and my heart jumped as droplets of cool water slid off the tarp, running down my neck and back.
Agitated, I craned my neck around to look for Mayumi and Jax. Almost instantly I spotted Mayumi climbing a pile of broken and contorted concrete similar to giant steps found in front of ancient pyramids, then one level under Jax she stretched her right arm upwards. Jax reached down and lifter her easily and together I watched them turn and survey our surroundings from an even higher vantage point.
Now I needed to know what was going on and crawled gingerly out of my zipper door, my muscles still tight and not quite ready to face the new day. I cracked my stiff neck left, then right and climbed up the huge gray blocks ignoring the popping in my knees and shoulders. It was like I’d aged 40 years in a span of weeks.
As I climbed nearer my two friends, I saw that Mayumi was in Huntra mode but did not seem too concerned with anything unusual about the morning as she stared into the distant dirty sun rise searching for any hint of danger.
Having finally made it to the top myself, without any help, I stood watching Mayumi and Jax closely as they scanned the area in silence; my hairs standing on edge knowing that if either one of them felt something was off, then surely it was.
“Jax,” I uttered from behind, “I trust and believe in your abilities enough to know something about this morning may not be quite right. Go wake the others!” I ordered, yawning incessantly.
Jax stared at me curiously, his muscular frame silhouetted by the bright clouds behind him before a sly smile spread across his stone face, “Is that an order, Addie?” He spoke slowly in a low sexy morning voice, or at least that’s how I’d heard it.
“Um, NO . . . I didn’t mean to sound pushy, I just figured you could get down the quickest seeing you’re the most limber, I didn’t mean—”
“No, don’t doubt yourself,” Jax cut me off mid sentence. “I like the way you give orders and take control. It suits you,” he smiled again then bounded down the piles of junk, debris and giant concrete steps without another word, leaving me speechless, warm and blushing in the cool morning sun rise.
“Seems like Hottie Wolf has the Hots for you Addie-san?” Mayumi said, her mischievous smile returning.
“Shut up Yu! It’s not like we’re in high school anymore.”
“Yes . . . but you can still crush on someone. I hope you realize that, because there are not many people to crush on these days if you have not noticed. Unless you are into blood sucking vampires?”
“Everyone wake up,” I heard Jax say, tapping gently on the tents below taking my attention from Mayumi, “Get up and get ready, we need to move out of this area right now.”
It was our fastest pack-up yet, within five minutes everyone was awake, weapons within reach and tents being taken down and folded away. Within ten minutes we were already moving up mounds of uneven, shifting, dirty rubble and da
rk sludgy mud continuing through the second half of the city, this half looking far worse than the first.
It wasn’t long before we ran into mountains of broken concrete slabs that we’d have to maneuver around mixed with charred furniture, destroyed automobiles, rotting garbage, downed trees, dirt, mud, dead bodies and unrecognizable stuff that at one time must have sat proudly in someone’s high rise apartment. Although the piles of destruction reached high into the sky at times, more noticeably were the deep craters left by the meteorites that pockmarked the area leaving absolutely nothing in their wakes except for deep crevices of scorched earth.
“Again I hate to say it,” Arthur breathed out, “But this looks just like a scene from an apocalyptic movie I’ve seen on late night TV,” He said as we stood atop another large mountain of newly formed earth facing north looking down into a maze of debris and crater holes intricately intertwined with twisted metal and what looked like miles of downed power lines running in all directions forming giant spider webs. We had to get through that before the path we were taking even started heading up and out of the city area. Lake Michigan still sat quietly to our east filling in the gaps between the mountains of steel and debris, while pockets of water and more never-ending mazes of destruction now sat to our immediate west. We were now in the middle and entering what only could be described as a corridor of death, there was no turning back.
“Let’s go,” Jax exhaled motioning for us to follow as he took the lead. “We’re in too deep to even think of turning back, so everyone stick closely together.”
Walking down the steep slope careful not to trip on jagged edges of concrete, our feet slipping and sliding, we kept our balance as best we could cautiously entering the path which was supposed take us through the city unscathed. The trek turned out to be not as straight forward as we’d hoped; at times it led us in zigzags under the disorganized metal maze we’d seen from above but at least from my calculations and Ethan’s compass we were still heading north most of the time. The twists and turns we’d had to make to stay on course only heightened our senses and unfortunately our fear for what may have been waiting around each blind corner. In less than twenty minutes we were deep into the apocalyptic maze when my heart stopped; we’d heard noises and knew for the first time, we weren’t alone in the decimated city.
At first it sounded like a bunch of jumbled voices coming from ahead but we soon realized the voices were coming not just from ahead but from all directions, like we were being surrounded. It wasn’t spoken words we’d heard too; these were more eerily similar to grunting and groaning, like that of wild animals. As the sounds continued to come nearer we began hearing debris fall over, sending our already heightened imaginations into hyper drive as to what possibly could be making that ruckus.
“What are those sounds Addie?” Caelyn asked, holding her survival knife close to her body in her right hand, grabbing a fistful of my shirt tightly with her left.
“This may be crazy, but it sounds like . . . gorillas?” I answered Caelyn patting her shoulder reassuringly. “It’ll be alright, just stay close and remember . . . we have guns.” I said, sliding my shotgun around to the front, preparing to shoot anything that jumped out at me. I figured no matter who or what it was, if it was going to jump out and scare me then it definitely deserved to be shot – no questions asked.
“What would gorillas be doing here?” Arthur said as we scooted through a thin passageway pushing past the back of a refrigerator stuck into the side of the maze wall.
“From zoos dummy, maybe the gorillas are from the city zoo and have escaped,” Victoria whispered.
We continued discussing the strange noises as we pressed on at an even faster pace. We suddenly found ourselves going through puddles of water we once stepped around while stepping on, instead of over decaying and mutilated bodies. Stumbling over bricks, wires, cables and all sorts of gross debris, our pace naturally quickened to a slow frantic jog as panic took over every nerve cell in our bodies and set them on high alert.
Ethan having been passed by everyone was now in the rear only feet behind me as we jogged in a straight line through the maze. The dirt walls on either side of us were overfull of debris and earth growing taller as we went, easily over 50 to 100 feet high at times.
Glancing behind I worried, finding Ethan was lagging even further back and then began to stumble before tripping and landing on a large rock, knocking the wind out of him. How had he fallen so far back so quickly, I wondered?
Looking up from his stomach, I could see him try to yell but couldn’t quite get it out while he fought to catch his breath. At that moment it didn’t matter how he’d fallen so far behind, I slid my shotgun back over my back and returned to help him. I wanted to yell for the others to stop and wait but was afraid that raising my voice would only attract even more attention to us from whatever was out there.
Rolling onto his back and sitting up quickly, Ethan saw what I’d seen an instant earlier, a man with blood red eyes staring back at him moving closer and I pushed myself to run harder. As I approached Ethan, I noticed the man’s eyes were gone, replaced by marble orbs of red causing my little brother to freeze in fear.
The once human thing was shuffling ever nearer as I tried to pull Ethan to his feet and it began reaching out menacingly towards us. Ethan reluctantly raised his spear for protection as I continued to pull him up. Our group still moving away hadn’t realized Ethan had tripped or that I had turned around at all until Caelyn screamed.
“ETHAN, ADDIE,” She’d yelled, causing everyone to stop including the crazed red-eyed man who looked up for a second, and that’s all it took. Jax sprinted without hesitation around the group changing into a werewolf in one leap and five giant leaps later flew by me and was on top of the man as I ripped Ethan back to a safer distance.
The red eyed man fought inhumanly hard, pulling Jax’s fur and biting at his ears grunting unafraid. Jax was holding the man back before he had enough and grabbed the man’s head in his razor teeth and turned until he heard a snap, but even that didn’t kill the man or once human thing. It kept moving, kicking, fighting, biting and tearing at Jax’s skin. It shouldn’t have been possible but it was happening.
A moment later three more men with blood red eyes rounded the corner grunting loudly and moved towards Jax. He knew he was left with no choice and ripped the first man’s head completely off in one swift shake of the neck, and the body finally went limp spilling blood over the ground as it collapsed in convulsions.
The next three red eyed men continued without a hint of fear in their movements, oblivious to the first’s death. I now had my gun raised ready to shoot, “Don’t move Ethan,” I said and aimed, shooting the first one in the head blowing half of it off and he stumbled into the side of a debris wall before collapsing dead. Arthur having made it back to us jumped in to finish off the second red eyed man with his sword, swiftly slicing through its neck and the second body collapsed to the ground in a grotesque heap.
The last crazed man didn’t give up so easily; he continued his advance moving unlike the others. He was seemingly faster, running side to side like a wild animal preparing to corner its prey. I suddenly realized he was hunting us and had experience in this maneuver.
“THEY’RE SMART, THEY’RE NOT MINDLESS ZOMBIES!” Jax yelled back. “BE CAREFUL!” He added, deadly focused as the last red eyed man-thing approached.
“ADDIE – HE’S MINE!” I heard Mayumi shout from somewhere behind. Swiveling, I saw she had the last red eyed man in the sights of her bow. Calculating his next move with precision I watched Mayumi sway slightly to her left then let go of her Razor Two Darrow. This weapon by far was her favorite of choice, two aluminum fiber arrows she called a ‘Darrow’ which was simply two double metallic arrows attached a foot apart by a razor thin, razor sharp wire.
The Darrow whistled with fury as it flew closely over my head causing me to duck. As each arrow passed by the red eyed man, one arrow on the left of his neck, the other on th
e right, they wrapped around quickly pulling the razor wire so tight that it sliced his head off the way a sharp knife cuts through a ripe tomato, a quick and silent motion. The crazed man’s body fell to the ground without a sound, its head tumbling to a gruesome stop near Jax’s feet, its red orbs blankly staring up at him.
“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?” Jax shouted out as he ducked and spun around on one knee to see where the arrows came from.
“UP HERE WEREWOLF BOY,” Mayumi yelled down, a grin plastered on her sweaty face.
On top of what was left of an overturned ice cream truck Mayumi smiled before wiping her long sweat soaked strands of black hair out of her eyes.
“You’re welcome! Could you please grab my Darrow, it may come in handy again,” she said to Jax who stood in complete awe staring at her.
“Sure . . . sure, I’ll get it,” shaking his head Jax walked over and picked up the Darrow lying next to the lifeless decapitated body.
Although the red eyed men had been killed, Ethan continued to sit frozen on the ground until I grabbed his arm and yanked him up, “There’s no time to just sit Ethan, we’ve got to get moving.” I began pulling him along with me, his legs jelly-like at first, wobbling as he put one foot in front of the other.
Slowly though we began running as he found his balance and we ran past the others taking the lead. One by one each member of our group fell in line behind us and we continued through the maze, this time more conscious of our deadly surroundings. It was a relief to be moving again, this time so close it was as if we were a snake slithering through tall grass. With a quick glance back I found Mayumi had taken up the rear position keeping an eye out for any unwanted visitors. I couldn’t help but smile knowing whoever tried to sneak up on her would be met with a quick death.