by Greig Beck
CHAPTER 45
Greenberry, Ohio—the Cartwright Estate
Re-evolution: 1089
The night passed slowly. Emma got very little sleep and when morning finally came, her eyes were dry and crusted and she was still exhausted. She had kept her arms wrapped around her son, who thankfully slept easy.
And why wouldn’t he? she asked of herself. To him, nothing that was going on was abnormal, or even some sort of new normal. To him, it was just the facts of life of everyday living, and always had been.
The thing about the future was it always became the present. But now, the past was also becoming the present. For her and Ben, they were cursed with the sensation of actually registering the changes. They knew that tomorrow would be vastly different to today. But as the re-evolutions occurred, it was as if people’s consciousness, memories, and experiences were the last thing to be altered—like a computer program updating but only in batches and saving the most complex until last.
She carefully eased her arm out from under her son. The light was still on in the basement and she saw that the space that had once been for storage, with a few bottles of Ben’s father’s and grandfather’s wine, old furniture, packed books, and broken toys, was now something so completely different. It was as if it belonged to someone else—there were kitted-out rooms, a kitchen, and well-stocked pantry, and it was spotless, as well as fortified.
It was an entire other house down here, and obviously where they were supposed to sleep now that above ground was too dangerous because of the freaking giant vampire bats that had evolved.
“They can have the night, and we can have the day,” Zach had said about them. We’ve surrendered half our world already, and never even got a chance to fight, she thought.
She stood and walked from one table to the next, looking at maps, a radio, computer equipment, and even a gun and ammunition rack. It was exactly how she imagined some of the doomsday preppers probably lived—except doomsday was real and it was like an approaching storm that was creeping up on them faster every day.
She opened up the computer and also flicked on a bank of external cameras from their upstairs. She saw that inside the house was a mess; that’s what happens, she guessed, when you “forget” to lock doors and pull down the external window shutters; the monsters got in, real monsters. She then flicked to external view and saw the morning light shining down on a mist that snaked through the massive banyan-type forest outside. It looked almost mystical.
A few antlered animals browsed on the dew-covered lawn and seemed more interested in the grass than potential predators—must be safe now, she thought.
Yesterday evening, she had planned to visit her neighbors, Frank and Allie. Now she wanted to speak to them more than ever. She’d have to play dumb, but at least she thought she might learn something that could keep them safe.
Right at this moment, as a parent, she felt she was well out of the loop when it came to defending her family. How could she protect Zach from this world’s dangers, if she didn’t even know what to look out for herself?
“Morning, Mom.” Zach sat up and rubbed his face and eyes. “What time is it?”
“Breakfast time.” She smiled. “Eggs over easy?”
He nodded. “And do the thick toast.”
“You got it.” She headed to the pantry. “I’m going over to Frank and Allie’s later. Do you want to come or do you just want to hang out here?”
“Hang out here if that’s okay,” he replied.
“Will you…be alright by yourself?” She turned to him.
“Sure, why not?” He stood and headed to their bathroom.
“Yeah, why not?” she repeated. She wanted to keep Zach with her, but right now, here was safe, and out there she had no idea what was or wasn’t.
On the way out, she grabbed a holster off a rack with a 9mm handgun already in it and threw it around her waist.
*****
After breakfast and a few hours later, Emma was driving toward her neighbor’s property, but now along a rutted dirt track that she knew was once a fully paved road only a week ago.
Looking out from her windows, she saw what had once been open fields, gently rolling hills, and a few stands of emerald green trees were now like iridescent mountains of gargantuan trees that were punctuated by dark arboreal caves tunneling through them, just like the one she was traveling along now.
Luckily for her, the sky was clear and the sun shone brightly, otherwise, it’d be like night-time underneath the heavy canopies.
She grunted as she hit another pothole—the dirt surface was uneven, pocked and rutted, and in some cases so overgrown; it looked more like a horse trail than a road. It took her nearly two hours to traverse the winding track where it used to only take her a third of that.
At last, Emma came out of the trees and saw Frank and Allie’s friendly little cottage on the hill, and in seconds more, pulled up out front. She stepped out of her car and saw that overhead there looked to be crows or some sort of large birds circling the property.
Oddly, Frank and Allie’s front door was ajar, something she would never think to do now, and given these guys should be more aware of risk than she, it seemed jarring. Perhaps the daytime was safer than she expected and more normal than she gave it credit for.
They can have the night, and we get the day, she remembered.
“Frank? Allie?” She called and walked up the last few dozen feet to the house.
She knocked on the doorframe, and then called again. But there was nothing but silence from inside. She tugged on the partially open screen door that squealed on rusted springs. The heavy wooden door was already pushed right back against the wall, so she stepped inside.
She tried again. “Hey, Frank?” She waited with her head tilted, but after several seconds of empty silence, she decided to head on in.
Wait, she thought. There were sounds—the babble of people talking.
“Frank?” She moved lightly but quickly along the hallway, checked the living room, and found her voices—the television set was on, playing softly.
Emma then checked a small library-sitting room at the front of the house—empty as well. She continued toward the back where she knew the kitchen was.
Entering, she saw that the table was set for dinner, and there were bowls of stone-cold potatoes, carrots, and something green that had dried out and curled. There was also a frying pan with two cooked steaks sitting in it that had been pushed aside, and thankfully, the element had been turned off. Something happened to distract them while they were cooking—enough to stop what they were doing, but perhaps not urgent enough to forget about the heating.
That might be good, she hoped, but warning alarms were still going off in her head.
There was one last place to look, and she saw that the door was cracked open—their pantry. She and Ben had been to Frank and Allie’s for dinner many times, and she had seen the inside of their fair-sized pantry room before. But entering now, she saw that it had changed and was now exactly like their own fortified room—except it was swung wide, and more worrying, there were shotgun shells scattered on the floor.
“Please God, no.” Her hands instinctively went to her hip, drawing the gun and holding it in a two-handed grip with the muzzle pointed down.
“Frank?” Her voice was softer now as caution and a little fear sharpened her senses.
She crab-walked to the back door. It was bolted up and down with several heavy-duty locking mechanisms—no one came in or went out of here in a hurry. There was a heavy diamond-shaped glass panel at head height and she looked out through it. The backyard was empty, and the only movement came from a couple more of the black birds shooting overhead and heading out front.
Crows again, she thought. And then, carrion eaters.
She quickly checked the upper-level rooms and found they were empty. The beds were still made, and thankfully, there was no sign of any sort of struggle. Looking out from one of the upstairs windows, she could
see in the distance that the black birds dotted one of the far fields, and there was a tangled lump of them squabbling at its center…squabbling over some thing.
Her stomach sank and she rushed downstairs, shouldering open the screen door, and quickly crossing the field.
She began to run, her stomach knotting as she could see the large glossy birds worrying something at their center. It took her several minutes to close in and even up close the bodies, wings, and thick plumage of the birds made it impossible to yet make out what was in there at the core of the tangle.
“Heyaa!” she yelled and waved her arms. “Go-on, get.”
The birds turned her way, but then continued to squabble and climb over each other to get at their prize. “Oh, piss off!” she yelled even louder, and then finally drew her gun and fired it into the air.
Its effect was immediate as the birds exploded up and away, revealing what had attracted them and what they had been fighting over. She slowed and then stopped a dozen feet out.
She didn’t need to go any closer to see it had once been two people. The bodies had been obliterated and the bones scattered. Even the skulls were separated from the top of their spines. Shreds of flesh still clung to the bones and tattered gore-stained fabric also hung like wet streamers from the ribs and hips.
“Oh God.” She put the back of her arm over her face, as even though the cool of the morning had contained most of the odors of the kill, she didn’t want to inhale anything up close.
Emma turned about, looking to the forest line, but there was nothing ominous crouching there. She walked in a large loop around the bodies. There were no tracks—whatever attacked them came from overhead, she bet. She looked back to the massive trees, wondering, were hidden in among those mighty boughs the bat-like creatures, roosting now, perhaps sated after their bloody feast? And did they catch Frank and Allie out in the open?
She often wondered about the “remembering,” as Zach put it. When the re-evolution changes flashed through them, it seemed everyone else rapidly had their brains rewired as though it had always been like that.
But she knew it wasn’t. It was fine to think that’s the way the world now worked, but what happened if they were caught out when one or more of the lethal changes occurred? When the way the world worked, safely, one day, suddenly became another way the world worked that was deadly?
Emma remembered the scattered shotgun shells in the pantry and her imagination started to fill in the blanks—she saw Frank being far out in his field as the sun was going down. Then the re-evolution wave change washed over them and re-ordered everything, and suddenly the elderly man was a long way from home when the vampire bats attacked.
She saw Allie, hearing Frank’s distressed calls, rushing to the pantry and fumbling for the gun, hurriedly packing in a few shells and dropping the rest. She would have charged out into the field, knowing it was probably suicide to do so but going anyway. She’d have done the same for Ben.
Emma looked again at the mutilated remains. What happened if Ben was successful? Would all of these changes be reversed, or would there be no more changes from then on? She knew that because Andy had been there that he would have already affected the timeline in some way. But if he had lived on for another few years or even decades, then the changes would be continuing and getting more significant.
She knew from personal experience that the passage of time could make tiny things, big things. So a small ripple in a pond that continues to occur will eventually erode the shoreline. Perhaps this is what Ben and his team could stop before it gets real bad.
“Bad?” she scoffed, disheartened. “It’s already real bad.”
Emma looked back at the obliterated bodies. “I’m so sorry, Frank and Allie.” Her brows rose slightly. “Will you come back from the dead if Ben is successful? And if you do, will I, or you, even know that you were dead once?” she wondered.
She looked up at the huge trees. “And are the vampires now things that have gone from our dark fairy tales to reality now destined to stay that way forever?”
She dropped her gun hand and sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. We truly are in a nightmare, she thought.
Emma started to trudge back to the car. She’d call the sheriff’s office, as there was nothing she could do here.
As she walked through the sunlit field, crickets chirruped and cicadas zummed all around her. The sunshine was warm on her shoulders, and for a moment, it felt like it was the same sane world she had always known.
Then the sun went out.
She froze as the tingling washed over her from toes to scalp. Seconds passed and then even more seconds, and she knew why—the more complex and significant the changes, the more nature needed time to reset.
When everything blinked back into focus, it seemed the same, but she knew that was just wishful thinking. Something had changed, something big. She suddenly had a terrible thought.
“Zach,” she gasped, and then started to run.
CHAPTER 46
Ben pulled a boot from the sucking mud with a wet fart-like blurt. Every step here was the same, and the next footstep the ooze separated around it as he sunk again to the ankle, and then held on tight when he pulled it out.
The same noises were coming from behind him, with the occasional curse from Francis, Chess, and Shawna. Drake eased up beside his left shoulder.
“We sound like a herd of elephants.”
“Yep; a herd of elephants with gas.” Ben looked around. “I don’t remember this bog being here. And I’m sure I traveled through this area before.”
“Ten years ago; things change. Maybe last time it was some sort of dry season,” Drake said.
“Yeah maybe. But if I had known, I’d have skirted it. Don’t like swamps.” He looked up at the canopy cover overhead. There was almost no light coming down on them, and at the ground, or rather, water level, there was moss, algae, and slime upon slime. He’d been in jungles that had swamps and bogs as miasmic as this before, and they were places that rotted the flesh inside your boots, had water-borne parasites and diseases, and sucked the energy from your bones as quickly as they did the state of mind. Bottom line: they were shit places to be stuck in.
“We need to be out of here,” Helen whispered.
“No kidding,” Ben replied.
She squelched up to his right shoulder. “I know, I know. But seeing that frog a while back got me thinking about these swamps.”
Ben glanced at her, waiting.
She looked around warily. “The dinosaurs filled every eco-niche on the planet for many tens of millions of years. After them of course came the mammals and birds.” Helen seemed to be gathering her thoughts. “And before them, the very early life on the planet was crustacean and bony fish. But there was another biological group that is overlooked because of the dinosaurs, and they flourished in the primordial swamps—the amphibians.”
Ben grunted. “I’m guessing you’re about to tell me that the hell-frog we encountered isn’t the worst thing that could be in here.”
“Not by a million miles,” she responded.
The bog was becoming deeper by the step. The slime was still on the bottom and algae on the surface, but now it came to just below their knees.
“Okay, give it to me.” Ben sighed. “What should we look out for?”
Drake sloshed up next to them as Helen cast a glance around. “In this part of the world?” She bobbed her head. “The last holdouts of the Eryops; a six-foot amphibian with a bear trap for a mouth.”
“Six feet?” Drake snorted. “A tadpole.”
Helen scowled at him. “Or we might run into the last of the Metoposaurus species. A 10-foot salamander with interlocking razor teeth.”
“We can deal with those too,” Drake said and winked at her.
“Only if you see them coming.” Helen turned back to Ben. “Also, we might have the misfortune to run into a Mastodonsaurus. They grew to about 15 feet. That thing was like a slimy tank with row after row of
teeth like a great white shark.”
“Okay, we’ll avoid that one,” Drake scoffed and then faced Ben. “Hey, how did you survive in this hell for 10 years?”
Ben half turned to his friend. “Pro tip number one, stay out of the damn swamps.”
“Ugh.” Helen sank into a hole to her groin. “Could have been worse. Down in Australia and Antarctica was something called a Koolasuchus; that amphibian grew to about 20 feet and was basically all shovel-shaped head and mouth.”
“Lucky Aussies,” Ben said.
Ben held up a hand and the group halted. Light beams waved out over the reeking water where a heavy green mist curled around moss-covered tree trunks, roots lifting like tentacles from the bog, and interspersed with bubbles of methane popping to the surface.
“Getting too deep,” Ben said.
“Gotta be coming to an end soon. Place isn’t that big,” Drake said.
“We’re at a disadvantage and our blind spots are getting bigger every inch that water rises.” Ben put a scope to his eye and turned it slowly. “We give it another 10 minutes, and if it doesn’t begin to shallow out, we back up and go around. Okay?”
“We’ll lose a lot of time,” Helen protested, but then: “And I agree with you 100 percent.”
A large bubble of gas rose beside them and then popped with a shitty vegetable smell. “Nice,” Drake said and waved it away.
“Okay, stay tight. Chess, bring up the rear. Francis and Shawna, take the left and right flank. And everyone keep your eyes open, we may pick up some interested critters along the way.” Ben shook his head. “And Shawna, carry your own damn gear.”
Nicolás seemed to be now carrying some of Shawna’s pack.
“I don’t mind.” The kid shrugged.
“Whatever.” Ben turned away. “Let’s go.”
*****
Just a hundred feet out to their right side, bubbles of methane came to the surface and popped. Some were Alka-Seltzer size and others were the size of tennis balls.
In an area devoid of trees, two large bubbles came to the surface, close together, and instead of popping, they blinked open. More of the creature surfaced, hanging in the water like a smooth-skinned crocodile, its mud-colored skin almost invisible in the murky, brackish water.