“Come down, Chris! We just want to see you! We just want to touch you!” Derrick began to cry out for help.
“Call it, son!” the General hollered down to Derrick. “Call it like you mean it now!” Derrick saw what he meant and felt his dad’s grip on his throat grow tighter. He saw pure murder in his mother’s eyes. His eyes closed for a second—a lifetime with these two loving people passed through his mind at the speed of thought—then he opened his straining eyes and croaked out:
“Do it, General!” No sooner begun, then done. The last syllable escaped his lips and the bullet passed through his father’s temple. The second caught Mom high up in the right cheek. They both collapsed at Derrick’s feet as the others in the crowd began to draw closer to the house. A short barrage of gunfire took down about half of the remaining crowd and the rest fell back a few yards. They resumed their hovering in a small crowd over by the edge of the yard, never taking their gaze off of the house. The soldiers stood down. The General waited another few minutes and then turned to look me squarely in the eyes.
“Well now, Mr. Michaels. That was a rather peculiar thing indeed for that gentleman to say. That gentleman that I just had to put down along with his loving wife in front of their only son. So, why don’t you take a guess as to why that peculiar thing was uttered on my watch.” I looked out the window and down at Derrick grieving his fallen parents. Thoughts began to swirl around in my head, but I still couldn’t lay a finger on any one in particular that had any bearing on this situation.
“I almost had it, General. A repressed memory or something. I almost had it. It’s gone now. I can’t put my finger on—” I was grabbed rather roughly and thrown against a wall. The General held me by my shirt in his strong fists pressed against the wall and demanded:
“Cut the horseshit, Michaels. What is this all about? That particular boogieman called you out by name and there are a great many—I repeat, a great many more coming this way and me and my men are in between them and you so if you don’t want us to spoon feed you and yours to them and theirs—you’d better think real hard and give me a goddamned answer!” I reached up and casually wiped the spittle from my cheek. He slowly released the grip he had on me and brushed my shirt smooth again. “Now, what were you just thinking about?” I sat down on the chair nearest me.
“When I was a kid…something happened…” I began, but trailed off. “…something…” I said to no one in the corner of the room. To the shadows there, I whispered, “What was it? What happened?” Gina made a move to come to me, but the General held her back nicely.
“Give him a minute. It’ll come to him. Let him grab that thread and pull it on out of there.” He was not curt, but spoke soft and secretive. I continued speaking to the shadows, searching for an answer, any answer to give to him, to them.
“When I was almost seven…” I whispered, “I began to draw. Really well. It was so amazing to everyone… Why?” The soldiers began a mumble that grew louder into overlapping talking. The General turned and hollered down:
“Private Wilson, what’s the situation down there?” The Private hollered something up that made them all stop talking and the hush pulled me back into the room.
“What’s wrong, General?” I asked. He turned to look at me.
“Your little soul search didn’t produce anything, did it?” he asked.
“Not so far, why?” He looked back out the window.
“It may have been too little, too late anyway. We’ve got incoming.” I got up and joined them at the window. Gina took my hand and kissed the fingers, then held my hand to her chest. A black swarm of faded silhouettes was in the very far distance and approaching. It had to be miles away for there was no accompanying sound. The mass of shadows stretched the entire length of the horizon. Nothing could be seen beyond it. Blackness covered the Earth behind the mass.
A small sound came from the other side of the room. “Dad…” Caylee whispered. I moved across to her and looked out the opposite side window down the fields to the valley in the far distance. It was all pitch black and somehow alive, moving as if completely covered by a plague of locusts.
“Is it go time for you yet, Michaels? Is this real enough for you yet? Do you have any misconceived notion that this is going to get better before it gets worse?” The General inquired. I shook my head and sat down hard on the bed.
“How is any of this my fault? I’m just a guy. Just a normal guy. A dad and a husband and a cartoonist.”
“A very gifted cartoonist.” Gina added.
“How can I be responsible for all of this?” I put my head down in my hands and wept. The thought of my family, my very reason for even being alive, could be in this large of a scale of mortal danger… It was all too much. I stood up. “I am going out,” I said.
Everyone in the room grew silent, then Gina screamed, “No, you’re not! What kind of solution is that?” Both of our kids were shaking their heads. The General stepped in.
“I’m afraid I’m gonna have to deny that request, soldier.”
I looked him right in the eyes and said, “I’m not one of your soldiers, General! I don’t take orders from you!”
He smiled and said, “Go on out and die so your family can go on and endure, that it, laddie? Well, riddle me this…what if you going out there is exactly what these particular boogeymen and women are after? What if that is the catalyst for something much bigger that you and I cannot in our human minds even begin to fathom? What then? You die so everyone else on Earth can die right along with you? Well, gonna have to nix that for now, son. We will discover the solution, but right now it is not that. Sit down.” I stood looking him in the eyes. He paused and bellowed out, “Sit Down!” I sat back down on the bed. My family gathered around me. We held each other as outside, the approaching doom continued its collision course. I felt as if all hope was lost.
What happened for the next two weeks was simply this: a few more battalions of military men and women arrived. They came in small units and set up a rather impressive base camp all the way around our property. The surviving towns people had all been laid low in one try for advancement or another. None remained. The approaching swarm of black shadows turned out to be a mass exodus of humans on foot. Coming from every direction, they approached. Every few hours, the military would send out a troop of men and women to survey the area. They couldn’t even leave at this point. The mass of people went beyond the reach of their dwindling fuel supplies. No one knew what would happen if they had to land in the swarm of people. Also, they began seeing and reporting other aircraft. Airplanes, helicopters, private and military. Other vehicles in the swarm included everything from tanks and other military crafts to civilian cars and trucks, 4 wheelers and motorcycles, buses. All types were intermingled in the mass. I would say that the ground behind the mass of people was completely pounded down to raw Earth, but the truth is—we never saw the Earth behind the mass. It seemed to have no end. They just kept coming and coming. A few remaining drones and the seven helicopters we now had all brought back the same intel pics. No end to the swarm of people.
Nearing the end of the third week of the siege, we sat in the house, completely isolated from whatever remained of the outside world. We were an island adrift a sea of faces and bodies that went out like an ever-darkening blanket into the very furthest reaches of our vision. The house itself had become a compound. Barbed-wire fencing surrounded us, gun turrets were set up all around the house at windows and all around the highest points of a mostly flat yard. The rest of the yard looked more like the deck of an aircraft carrier. Helicopters lined up in straight rows. A few tanks. A large number of troop transport trucks and half-tracks. Soldiers with guns everywhere. My family and I mostly kept to one bedroom upstairs, but I ventured out every day at some point and Shawn usually came with me. There had been a really bad scene the day after Derrick’s parents were taken down where he lost his grip on his sanity and grabbed a gun. He charged the men that were on duty that morning and in confu
sion, the men shot him down as well. Shawn and I buried him in the back yard with his parents and held a vigil for them that entire week. Bad times had come to the world in monumental scale. I often went to the windows during those final days of the siege and looked out across the sea of faces. It was so unreal, that I felt my sanity trying hard to tear loose. That nearly everyone in the world was trying to get here? To me? And why? Because when I was six, I had touched a meteorite? The world and everything in it and on it came to a grinding halt. I ran through the house, knocking three soldiers out of my way. I found General Davidson talking to Gina.
Panting, I blurted out, “When I was six, I touched a meteorite!” Both of their eyes grew wide at this revelation and I paid it no attention. I continued hurriedly. “I don’t know why that’s important to this mess or even if it is, but it happened and from then on out, I could draw. Like no one in my family ever. I was told that until I was six or seven, I never drew anything better than a stick figure. Then, one day out the clear blue, I drew an entire city skyline with minute details. I had small burn marks on my hands that were tender for some time, but I drew better than anyone I knew.” I looked over at the General. “OK, General Davidson, what does that mean? How does that help? Why is that so damn important?” He looked down at the floor. Nothing was the response that held his tongue. Nothing was the response that never came. He was all out of answers and ideas, he was even out of questions at this point. Three weeks in, he was just as tired as the rest of us. I looked over at my family. They looked back with no answers or help, only support. “OK, then it’s my show from here on out. That meteorite that hit the field here the other day, how could that be relevant to my meteorite? Anyone? General? I assume you and your people have heard it.” He looked back at the window and hesitated. “General? What is it you’re not disclosing to us?” He struck his gaze back upon me and I felt immediately smaller.
“It is a top-secret project. You have no authorization and…” I cut in.
“General! Look around you. Your superiors are out there!” I pointed at the window. “Top-secret is no longer an option! What do you know about that meteorite?” He smiled over at the window, then shot a nod at a younger soldier a few feet away from him. The soldier stood up and said:
“The meteorite was taken to South Carolina, from there nobody knows. It was never retrieved once this whole ordeal slipped into high gear. It originally infected the soldiers and scientists on the Black Hawk and caused them to crash. This was not discovered until two days ago.” I broke in.
“Wait a minute! Infected? What do you mean? Infected? Infected by what?” The General broke in now.
“Some type of virus, not known nor understood on this planet. At least not so far. The few troops that have arrived since then have re-affirmed that hypothesis from the last men out there still working on this when the rest of the world went belly-up. No one had time to really study it in-depth, it moved and spread far too fast. Now, does that help you any? Can you think of any connection?” Caylee came forward.
“Dad? If you touched a meteorite when you were 6, wouldn’t that have presumably infected you in the same way? Or at least in a similar way?” Shawn stood up beside her. With slightly less enthusiasm after losing his best friend, he added:
“Not necessarily. Maybe it gave him a different bug. One that sharpened his creativity.” We all stood thinking about it. One that sharpened my creativity. Could it have had any other side effects? A deafening droning sound blasted the room and we all ran to the windows. An enormous 7-0-7 came down hard and fast just over the top of the house. The house shook and us along with it. Just beyond the back yard, the plane low-buzzed the outer field and crashed into a line of trees at the perimeter of the massive swarm of people. Hundreds were incinerated in the fireball that rose up from a once-peaceful landscape. The black smoke blew toward the house and, even with the windows closed, we were swallowed up in complete and total darkness. A popcorn popping sound began to emanate from the absence of light. the sound of machine gun bursts. First, they came in short, snapping bursts, then in long rattling blasts. There was a fair amount of screaming from the darkness as we stood at the upstairs windows, guns in hand. The General tried contacting his men on the radio, but got nothing except static. Sidearm drawn, he and the other soldiers in the room gathered near the door. The wind was slow that day and it took a long time for the smoke to begin to clear. Finally, it began to dissipate. The General crept closer to the window. My family and I were still on or around the bed, guns ready for a final stand. I came quietly to his side looking out.
The scene outside was finality. No soldier nor piece of equipment was left in one piece. An eerie calm swept the entire place as every face in the horde glanced up at the two of us in the window. We looked at each other, then back out at the scene.
“This is it, General. This is the end. It can’t go any other way from here. My family all dies or I do. I seem to be what they want. Maybe after that, they’ll all go away and die somewhere.” My family rose up off of the bed and came to me. They held me in a group hug.
“No, dad.” Caylee sniffed. “They can’t have my daddy.” She cried into my shirt and I hugged her and held her tight.
“I love you, baby girl. No matter what happens, I will always be with you. But you have to be around for me to be with you. OK?” I hugged her one more time, then went to her brother. “I love you, Shawn. You’ve always been a good son and I’m terribly proud of you.” Tears stood out in my eyes and a few rolled down my cheeks. “You take good care of your mom and sister if anything happens to me, OK?” He nodded reluctantly and I pulled him in for a tight hug.
“I love you, dad. I’ll be there for them, I swear. Watch your back out there.” I let him go and turned to Gina. She gave me a brave smile that quickly turned into more weeping.
“This isn’t fair, Chris. There has to be another way.” She cried, falling into my arms.
“This is going to be hard, but it has to be done. The sooner we get to it…” I began.
“…the sooner we get through it,” she finished.
“For you, for the kids. Maybe for all of those people out there. I have to try. I love you more than my own life and I would give it freely for you and the kids.” They both came in for another group hug. “I have to go now. I love you all.” Shawn held Gina and Caylee back in his loving embrace as I made my way to the door. I stopped at the General. I looked him in the eye one more time and snapped him off a little salute. “You did good, General. Watch my family. Give me time to do whatever it is I’m supposed to do.” He smiled at me and put his hand out. I put mine in his.
“Give them hell, son. Tell ’em I sent ya.” He smiled and walked over to the window. I took one last look back and left the room. I got down the steps and found a few remaining soldiers there in the living room. They were huddled together in a corner, guns ready. I walked over to them.
“Gonna need one of those repeaters.” I said with an attempt at my own brave smile. A young man, not much older than Shawn handed me his and said:
“Please help us. I don’t want to die.” I put a hand on his shoulder.
“I’ll see what I can do, my friend. Stay here and hold onto this for me.” I handed him the 870 Sam sold me and the few shells I still had. “Gotta go now. Stay low, stay hidden.” I turned and left those boys together and walked to the front door. I grabbed the handle and paused, taking a few quick deep breaths. Off to meet my maker then. So be it. I threw open the door and raised the machine gun. I pointed it at the crowd, this way and that way. They all stood, stony-faced and unmoving. “Back up now, you hear? All of you just back up! Back—” One man in the crowd approached me.
A few feet away, he hissed, “We needed to see you. To see you…”
“To see you…” others repeated.
“…to see you,” he continued. “To touch you.”
“We needed to touch you…” Other voices rising in chorus.
“To touch you…touch…
to touch you, Chris.” I slowly lowered the machine gun until it was pointing at the front porch. I don’t know what I had expected when I came through the front door, but this wasn’t it. They all of a sudden seemed peaceful and docile. I began to extend my hand toward their out-stretched hands. I looked up and saw the General and Gina looking down at me with real concern in their eyes. I looked back at the crowd in front of me and with a lunging leap, I threw myself into their waiting arms. They took me, held me up, floated me along on top of the crowd. It was like being afloat on a sea of warmth. Their hands on me. Portions of my clothing were torn and my legs and arms were now exposed. I closed my eyes and felt the true relief of letting go. I floated above their bodies, gliding on their open palms for what felt like hours, in all directions, in no direction. I was lost and found again. I was reborn into their loving care. Not one single harm befell me as I moved gracefully along. My life, my family, my worries were for the moment utterly gone. I never really knew the feeling that people describe as Zen until that very moment. I have no idea just how long I was adrift above this sea of sick people. And that was really what they were, sick people. I was no messiah, but I did feel connected to every single individual on the entire planet. That feeling cannot be described, no matter how hard or long I tried. The sensation of pure happiness. A very fine, non-painful sense of electricity buzzing through my entire body. I was elated. Paradise. Shangri-La. Nirvana. I blacked out.
****
An unknown amount of time later, I awoke on a hillside just outside of south-eastern Kentucky. I slowly opened my eyes and turned my head from side to side. The grass was green and the leaves were rustling beside me. I could hear birds tweeting in the trees. A trickling brook was somewhere nearby, I could hear the water. I followed my ears to the best of my ability and after a short while, I found it. I took a few small handfuls of water to slake my thirst. I groggily got to my feet. I gave a long satisfying stretch and cracked my back. I’d just about kill for a cup of coffee. I made my way back to where I had woken up and I beheld an amazing sight. The meteorite from town that the military confiscated was next to my body indent in the grass. There you are, you dodgy little bugger, I thought. A bunch of folks are looking for you. I walked over and sat down cross-legged beside it. Running purely on instinct now, I began to dig in the dirt. When I had a hole dug that was about three feet deep, I picked up the meteorite and with a pang of regret, tossed it into the hole. I covered it back over, packed the dirt down with my hands and placed a large stone over the top of the spot. I got up and dusted myself off. I searched what was left of my pockets. Empty. No cellphone. Who cares? Cells have been dead since just after this began anyway. I walked through the wilderness until I found a road, then I walked the road until I found the first deserted car. I still had no idea what the outcome of our situation had been, just that I felt more alive than I had ever felt before. Like I had truly done something that mattered. I drove until I saw a road sign that said: FONDE, KY—5 MILES. I pulled over and thought, Kentucky? That’s a good distance from northern Illinois. I put the car in drive and began north to find my family.
Individually Wrapped Horrors Page 23