Tar

by Taylor Hohulin

  Brendan kept his eyes forward. “You got out before the deadline.”

  “Yeah,” said Tiger Stripe. “Somebody came into the room and woke me up. He said Logan takes his deadline pretty seriously.”

  Brendan nodded. Of course a perfect stranger had felt like lending a helping hand, not even caring that one more salvager meant less salvage to go around.

  “Listen,” Tiger Stripe said. “I thought we could work together today. I mean, after my crew...”

  His voice trailed off, choked with emotion. Brendan didn’t reply immediately. He liked hearing the kid squirm.

  “And you’re by yourself, you know? We could help each other.”

  Gone was the self-confident leader Brendan had encountered at the grocery store. Tiger Stripe was just a kid, asking if he could play, too. Brendan knew the type. Kids like Tiger Stripe were full of bluster and big talk, because they’d faced never faced anything significant. No one stayed that way in Newhaven, though. They either got infected or put in their place, and fast. Tiger Stripe was lucky the latter happened to him. Now that he’d seen his friends die, he understood the uselessness of his expensive mods. Maybe now he’d think before he acted.

  “What do you say?” said Tiger Stripe.

  Brendan looked at the kid. If he played his cards right, Tiger Stripe could be an asset. Sure, Brendan would have to make sure he did nothing stupid, but if he convinced Tiger Stripe he owed Brendan part of his haul from the day, he might even come out ahead. He’d collect whatever he found, plus whatever Tiger Stripe let him claim as commission.

  Brendan narrowed his eyes, trying to decide if it was worth a shot.

  “What the heck,” Brendan said. “Let’s go.”

  12

  Later that morning, they found themselves in front of a vacant house in a row of vacant houses, all abandoned at least a decade ago. Boards covered the windows, and survivors had spray-painted the rotting wood with such inspiring messages as “God save us,” and “No one is safe.”

  “No one’s been here yet?” Tiger Stripe asked.

  Brendan nodded, pointing. “The windows are still boarded up. The door’s still standing.”

  That was the nice thing about Newhaven. The salvagers here weren’t a subtle bunch. They never bothered to hide which houses they’d already turned inside out.

  Tiger Stripe studied the house. “There are still houses the salvagers haven’t touched?”

  Brendan shrugged. “Newhaven’s a big city. And it’s not exactly crawling with survivors.”

  Tiger Stripe stopped talking after that, which was fine by Brendan. He always got nervous salvaging new buildings. The tar might have been hiding anywhere, waiting for a fresh victim to step into range. Brendan needed to focus, not answer questions.

  They approached the front door. The boards nailed across were weak and rotted enough that Brendan didn’t need his mod to tear them away. The doorknob turned freely in his hand, so he led the way inside.

  Whoever lived here had fled in a hurry. There hadn’t been time to hire a moving company, to pack boxes and load up all the knickknacks. If Brendan had to venture a guess, he would’ve said the previous tenants had taken little more than the clothes on their backs. The living room was still perfectly arranged, with a couch and a love seat and a coffee table. Dishes waited in the sink, and a romance novel lay open and face-down on the kitchen counter.

  If not for a few telltale signs, Brendan would’ve guessed the family had only stepped out for a quick errand. But heavy cobwebs stretched across the walls and ceiling. A haze of dust hung in the air, almost as thick as the tangy stench of rotting food coming from the refrigerator.

  Brendan glanced at his new companion. “You ready?”

  “Where do we start?” Tiger Stripe asked.

  “Anywhere. There’s no one here to stop us.”

  Brendan opted to begin with the basement. Judging from the quality of decor, he expected to find some nice tools or even a couple blasters downstairs.

  Tiger Stripe followed him down the creaking staircase in the back of the kitchen, like a lost puppy. Brendan had hoped Tiger Stripe would prefer to divide and conquer, but maybe this way was better. He’d get a second set of hands, and any rooms Tiger Stripe searched would require re-checking, anyway. Brendan didn’t trust the scrawny kid not to miss something vital.

  Together, they descended into the dark of the basement.

  Brendan fished in his satchel and produced a small, bio-powered flashlight—one of the few items he hadn’t lost the night before. He held the light in his palm for a moment, giving it a chance to draw power, before pressing the button. A yellow circle appeared on the stairs ahead of him.

  If not for the tar, Brendan would’ve moved faster, but he wasn’t stupid enough to rush into an unfamiliar basement. He swept the flashlight’s weak beam along the musty ceiling, along the nearby walls, along the cracked floor, waiting for the first quivering pool of black to show itself.

  Instead, he found a workbench.

  Like the rest of the house, it sported a thick layer of dust, but under that dust was an assortment of tools. No power tools or anything particularly valuable, but a nice start. Brendan motioned for Tiger Stripe to stuff the find into his satchel and moved on.

  “How long has the city been like this?” Tiger Stripe asked, collecting tools with all the delicacy of a man handling volatile explosives.

  “Like what?” Brendan asked.

  “Infected. Empty.”

  “The emptiness didn’t come right away, I’ll tell you that.” Brendan squinted into the dark, plotting his next move. “My parents and I moved here when I was a kid. The tar showed up pretty soon after that, but even after a year, it wasn’t all salvagers and bandits like it is now. There were still regular people, hanging onto their regular lives. It took a long time for everyone to leave or get infected. I think they all hoped the tar would stay in one place. They thought it would hide out in bad neighborhoods and leave them alone.”

  Tiger Stripe sniffed. “But that’s not what happened.”

  “That’s never what happens. As soon as the tar shows up, it’s only a matter of time. It infects somebody, and they infect somebody else, and they all drop patches around town. Those patches infect more people, and the wheels keep turning until you end up with a city like Newhaven.”

  Brendan continued sweeping his flashlight left, right, up, down, all over. Behind him, Tiger Stripe fished out a flashlight of his own. His shone a good deal brighter than Brendan’s—not a high bar to clear, but it was enough to annoy Brendan. Why hadn’t the scrawny kid thought to pull out his perfectly good flashlight the second they plunged into a dark basement?

  Brendan was so lost in his internal critique that he almost didn’t notice the patch of black on the ceiling. His light traced a dim path along its rippling surface, and then moved on. If he’d been paying closer attention, he would’ve noticed instantly. Instead, it took a couple seconds to realize what he’d seen.

  Tar.

  Heart racing, Brendan jerked his flashlight back, holding his beam over the tar. The small, yellow circle hovered over the patch, unmoving except for the tremble of excitement in his hand, magnified by distance.

  They hadn’t come within range yet, and that was lucky. A few steps farther, and the afternoon would have gotten very interesting very fast. An image flashed through his mind: Eagle Eye convulsing while a black tentacle held his mouth open.

  Tiger Stripe must have been looking somewhere else, because a split second after Brendan screeched to a halt, the kid ran into his back, full force. Brendan sprawled across the ground, and the flashlight spun away from him. A carousel of shadows danced around the basement.

  Brendan landed with all his weight on his robotic arm, and whatever had started breaking at the abandoned grocery store went ahead and finished the job. Even without testing, he knew the mod would be useless until Krys
tal fixed it.

  But that wasn’t what concerned him. Tiger Stripe’s clumsiness had sent Brendan closer to the tar’s range.

  Fear settled over Brendan like a weight, something physical and palpable. He thought of the inky tentacle again, thought of the black veins along Eagle Eye’s body. He tried to scramble back the way he’d come, but his mod only twitched and buzzed. His feet slipped and tangled. Nothing he did could contend with the dread pressing down on him.

  He screamed at Tiger Stripe: “The ceiling! Light the ceiling!”

  Tiger Stripe fumbled with his flashlight, and the beam found its target. As Brendan feared, he had fallen into the tar’s range. A tentacle had grown from the dark pool, but, inexplicably, flattened before reaching him. It was as if an invisible shield extended above Brendan, and the tar spread over it, forming a puddle of ink midair. Why didn’t it take him? There was enough gathered overhead to reach him, but something had blocked it.

  That was when he realized the weight pressing him down wasn’t fear.

  It was tar.

  The more Brendan felt the weight—and the more exhausted he grew lying beneath it—the more he realized he must be the one keeping the tar in check. He didn’t understand it, but there was no other explanation for the herculean effort straining in a deep, previously-undiscovered part of him.

  He wanted to back away, but he couldn’t bring himself to tear his eyes from the floating puddle of black. If he removed any part of his concentration from the tar, it would come crashing down and claim him. He knew this with the same certainty that knew gravity would claim his satchel the instant he opened his hand.

  The longer Brendan stared at the tar, the more he realized he could control it. Something inside him had sunk its fingers into the stuff, turning it into a puppet.

  Only that wasn’t quite right. A puppet would do whatever he asked of it, but Brendan couldn’t ask the tar to go back to its spot on the ceiling leave him alone. Its desire to feed was too powerful. To deny it now, with prey so close, would have disastrous consequences.

  There had to be another option.

  Tiger Stripe stood only a few paces away, flashlight held in limp, trembling fingers, jaw slack with terror. This was not the fierce, cocky leader Brendan encountered in an abandoned grocery store. This was a child who’d plunged headfirst into the deep end, only to realize he couldn’t swim.

  Brendan strained under the tar’s weight and hunger. Whatever held it in place wouldn’t last forever. It would give out, and the tar would fill his body. Tiger Stripe would watch helplessly while the tar hollowed Brendan out, and then when it finished, the new Brendan would turn on Tiger Stripe and consume him, too.

  If Brendan deliberated any longer, they would both end up infected. If he acted now, at least one of them had a chance.

  Brendan turned that deep part of himself toward Tiger Stripe. With great reluctance, the tar changed course. The pool over Brendan gathered into a tentacle, and that tentacle elongated.

  For a moment, Brendan wondered if Tiger Stripe was still beyond the tar’s reach. Brendan would try to direct the tar to the scrawny kid, only to fail, and then the kid would run, leaving Brendan to deal with the nightmare above him. But the tar continued to narrow, continued to stretch, and by the time it reached Tiger Stripe, it was as thin as a strand of twine.

  But that was enough.

  Once the tar touched Tiger Stripe, it latched on. He screamed and tried to run, but the tar had already tripled in width, gorging itself on fresh prey. It yanked him back, and his legs swept out from under him. He landed with a sickening smack, leaving a spatter of blood where his nose hit the floor. He slid backward, closer to the tar’s root on the ceiling. The rough concrete pulled his shirt up to reveal black veins tracing their way up his back.

  The weight left Brendan. Even if he wanted to control the tar, it wouldn’t listen to him. He knew that as instinctively as he’d known he was the one holding it in place. It was feeding now, and nothing could interrupt it.

  So he stood to leave.

  But first, a thought crossed his mind. He stooped at Tiger Stripe’s body and reached for the satchel. Brendan wouldn’t let him ruin another salvage. With a couple yanks, the satchel pulled free. For good measure, Brendan pried the flashlight out of Tiger Stripe’s hand, too.

  As he stood, he looked Tiger Stripe in the eyes. A shred of humanity still glimmered there, though it grew fainter by the second as blackness swirled and blotted it out. What little of Tiger Stripe remained stared out with a heartbroken look of betrayal, even as convulsions wracked his body.

  Brendan had no time for remorse. He simply turned and ran.

  13

  Brendan burst through the front door, his heart in his throat. He bent over with his hands on his knees and panted. He wasn’t finished running yet. There was no telling how long until the tar fully claimed Tiger Stripe. Then he’d become a mobile infection site, and Brendan had no desire to be around when that happened.

  Just as he caught his breath, a gruff voice sounded behind him.

  “I saw what you did.”

  Brendan turned. A man who appeared to be in his early fifties stood in the doorway. Gray hair hung ragged and oily down to his jaw. A short beard of the same color brushed his cheeks. Cool blue eyes stared out of a face creased from age and battle.

  “We need to get out of here,” Brendan said. “If you saw what I did, you know someone’s infected down there. We don’t have long.”

  The man stepped outside, walking toward Brendan. The rotting floor groaned under his booted feet. He wore a black T-shirt and faded jeans. His arms were bone thin, but rippled with lean muscle. In other circumstances, Brendan would’ve wondered how long the stranger had been in the house, and why Brendan hadn’t noticed him. But warning bells reverberated in his mind. A mental voice screamed to run, run away now. He’d been focused on more pressing issues than a lurker.

  The man said, “You directed the blight.”

  Blight. That was a new name for it.

  “There are not many people the blight obeys,” the man said.

  “I don’t think you heard me,” Brendan said, casting a glance over the man’s shoulder. “Any second now, that guy who got infected will come out here looking for food. We need to put as much ground between us and this house as possible.”

  Then why was he waiting? Brendan didn’t owe this man conversation. If he didn’t get to safety soon, he’d find himself face to face with an infected for the second time in as many days.

  The fact was, something about the stranger kept Brendan still. Something about the way he looked at Brendan, about the indefinable, deep-in-his-gut sense Brendan got from the man wouldn’t let him leave, no matter what his instincts screamed.

  “This is the first time you’ve done it, isn’t it?” said the man. “The first time you’ve spoken to the blight.”

  There was an odd quality to his speech. It was as if he’d practiced the words for years, but they felt strange to him. Like he only understood their meaning in theory. Like the language wasn’t a part of him, just a tool for getting by.

  Brendan didn’t respond, so the man continued.

  “You have a great power. I can help you develop it. I can help you use it for good.”

  “What makes you think I want any of that?” Brendan said.

  The man’s eyes flashed. “What are you making of your life here? What service are you doing the world stealing from its dead? You could be so much more.”

  Brendan huffed. “All I’m interested in is living through sundown. I don’t know if you’ve looked around, but that’s about all anyone has anymore.”

  The man drew closer. “It does not have to be that way,” he said. “I am on a journey to visit an old friend who can help us rid the world of the blight.”

  Brendan backed away. “Whatever you’re trying to get out of me, it won’t work. Let’s go. We’
re running out of time.”

  “You have never wondered what a world without blight could be?” asked the old man. There was no disbelief in his tone. More than anything, his voice was accusatory. Like he thought Brendan was committing a terrible sin.

  “Listen,” Brendan said, “With that attitude, I’m even less interested in—”

  Brendan stopped mid-sentence. He’d waited too long. While they jabbered about saving the world, the tar had fed on everything inside Tiger Stripe and replaced his blood with infection. Now the scrawny salvager appeared in the doorway, mere feet behind the man. His eyes were marbles, dark as a moonless night. Thick, black cords stood out on his neck, crawled up his chin, and wormed into his mouth. He lumbered forward, an apparition of terror.

  The man noticed Brendan’s eyes widening in fear, and he whirled to face Tiger Stripe.

  As he turned, Brendan noticed the weapon slung across his back. It was a gun, but not one of the bio-powered blasters like most people carried. It was an old fashioned, gunpowder-operated number. A short-barreled shotgun. Brendan had never seen one in person; he only knew they phased out when bio-power became readily available.

  The stranger drew his relic of a weapon. Brendan didn’t even have time to shout a warning. He couldn’t explain that shooting an infected only made it more dangerous, only opened more exit holes for the tar. By the time Brendan found his voice, the gray-haired man had already pulled the trigger. The bullet caught Tiger Stripe in the chest, just above his heart. The impact sent him staggering backward, but he didn’t fall.

  Now the carnage would begin. Now the tentacles would explode from Tiger Stripe’s fresh wound, and Brendan would run once again.

  Only that didn’t happen.

  Tiger Stripe slumped forward. As he dropped to his knees, Brendan had to do a double-take. The black veins tracing their way up his neck were fading. They shrank in size, and the black color faded so quickly it was impossible not to miss. As the black vanished, Tiger Stripe’s skin took on a sallow, bluish hue.

  He hit the ground, and he didn’t move. Tiger Stripe was dead, and so was the tar inside him.