Kurt turned to see that it was aimed at him – or rather, where he had been.
Was that it? Did that explain the searing pain in his head and the fact that he never felt what it was like for skin to rip?
A mixture of emotions bubbled. On the one hand, he was pissed that a stranger would shoot him for no good reason. What had he done to the guy? He wasn’t someone that Kurt recognised at all. But at the same time, he was thankful to the man for sparing him indescribable pain. In a way, surely this was the lesser of two evils?
“Hello…” Kurt already knew it would be pointless, but he still he tried again. “Hello?”
The statue didn’t move.
He left the man and turned his attention back to the tableaux on the steps. The scene boggled his mind.
How is any of this possible?
As he got closer he could see his own body, racked with fear. But in front of that, the boy that had been the frontrunner for most of the race was suspended in mid-air, hands touching Kurt’s shoulders, tiny droplets of drool hovering just below his mouth. Kurt waved a hand in front of the boy’s eyes and got no response.
But it was the two at the back that really drew Kurt. The man and the woman. For a young boy wouldn’t have been able to free Emily and deal the finishing blow. It was these two that were the culprits. The administers of Emily’s death. And, until now, Kurt hadn’t managed to get a proper look at them. His thoughts at the time occupied with escape.
Who’s got the upper hand now?
The woman was a fraction behind the man. Her snarling mouth was open, her nose raised and her teeth bared. Her hands and her chin were drenched in what was likely Emily’s blood. Her body was strewn with dark lines erupting outwards from her chest, trapped in stasis – the hunger imprinted in her spectral pupils. The blood on her chin was thick and dark like black treacle. A single drop suspended in the air in mid-fall from her mouth. The guy was a mirror reflection, only much wider, and taller.
“You killed her,” Kurt found himself saying, watching them both carefully.
The statues didn’t respond.
He stepped closer, all the way until he could smell the rusty blood billowing out from their lips and teeth.
“You killed her!” It seemed strange to hear his own voice, nothing to slow it down as it exploded around the dark field.
Kurt lifted his hand, balled it into a fist and found himself punching them both. Dealing blows to their stomach, face, chest. He half-expected it to hurt, but he felt nothing. He’d never punched a soul in his life, but their bodies were tough, and there was no satisfaction when his skin met theirs.
With a final grunt, he found himself weeping. He lowered his fists and took a step back. He looked up at the woman, expecting that same expression on her face.
But then an odd thing happened.
When Kurt met her eyes once more, they were looking at him. A moment later, and her eyes suddenly jittered, and then her chin too. Kurt took a step back as her hands began to shake. Then her shoulders, hips, legs. All trembling as if she were glitching.
Kurt turned to the man, then to the boy. All of them were jittering now. All of them that had been affected by the yellow cloud. All of the monsters. They shook and split as if there were two versions of them, and they weren’t in alignment. As if parts of them were trapped between two layers and the graphics couldn’t handle the reality of it. It reminded Kurt of old Playstation games. When he’d found holes in the level designs and found ways to push his character into places they were never designed to go. The bodies would violently shake and pull as the coding broke in real-time.
He heard a faint growl and turned to see the boy behind him was slowly moving. As if his body was stuck in treacle. All the while still glitching.
Movement to his right. The man slowly advancing towards him, the woman’s arms lifting to Kurt as her eyes burned into his. With every passing second, they were getting faster. Kurt had to leave. Now. Behind him, he heard the boy thud as he landed back on the ground.
Panic surged through him. He could hear them now. Their breathing. Growing louder and more violent.
He turned on his heels and was about to run when there came another lightning flash of pain from head to heart. As though the two organs were connected by a single nerve and someone had plucked it like a banjo. Kurt fell to all fours, his hands clawing at the pain he couldn’t reach.
A millisecond in which Kurt felt he was falling. A weight on his shoulders as he was pushed backwards, back hitting the jagged steps behind. Moist air, and the sounds of screeching and roaring.
A voice, accompanied by footsteps. “You’re okay, Kid. You’re going to be alright. Can you hear me?”
The weight eased off him. Kurt opened his eyes.
He was back. Everything now back to its normal speed. The silence disappeared, along with the cold inky shadows. The sun, no more than a ghostly orb in the sky, burned and he found himself squinting. To his left lay the body of the young boy, his brains spilling out of a fresh smoking hole in his head. Just beyond him the man and woman lay slumped on the floor, blood pooling around their bodies. To his right, the bearded man with the gun.
The gun that shot me?
The man offered Kurt his hand. His smile was warm. “Phew. Almost thought I’d lost you. I’ve got you, kid. You’re going to be okay.”
9
The man helped Kurt to his feet. “You need to move quick, kid. I can hold these guys off if you want to hit the bricks. You’re quite the runner, you should make it.”
A screaming monster emerged from the fog and sprinted towards the pair. Lucas raised the gun and shot him in the head. As if it were as simple as pressing the mute button on a TV. The monster went silent and fell flat to the floor.
“I think I’d rather stay with you,” Kurt said.
The man seemed to consider this for a moment, a pained expression on his face. “I don’t think so,” A pause. “Besides, if you’ve got family that you care about, you might want to warn them that this shit is toxic. And by the feel of the wind, it’s going to move south real quick.”
South? Straight to Jamestown. Kurt thought of Linda and Steve’s faces. Imagined them breathing in the fumes and growing wild. He hadn’t been with this family long, but he had certainly grown fond of them already.
He could not let that happen to them.
“I live miles away. How will I get back in time? I don’t drive, I’ve got nothing.”
The man’s brow creased as he struggled with a decision that Kurt couldn’t hear. After a couple more screeches from beyond the fog, he lowered his gun. “Where?”
“Jamestown.”
The man sighed. “C’mon, then. Get your ass in gear.”
Despite all that had happened, Kurt found a small smile play on his lips as they ran back through the Visitor Center. He couldn’t explain it, but the man gave him a sense of calm. That he was going to be okay. That there was a possibility that not everyone in the world had gone mad. They struggled to navigate through the building. Somehow the inside was also full of the golden droplets as if they had wormed their way through every crack and crevice. The outlets on either side of the building had disappeared out of sight. The floor was slick.
It was easy to identify the stranger’s car. Parked at an angle in the middle of the gravel, totally out of line with any other car. The man gave Kurt a gentle nudge, pressed a button on his keys and the headlights flashed a couple times. Kurt pulled the door and jumped in the seat as quickly as he could, wondering if they’d been followed at all. The man hopped in, locked the doors and took a deep breath.
“Ready to get the hell out of dodge?”
Kurt nodded.
“Good lad,” the man muttered, more to himself, as he twisted the ignition. The car roared. The stereo sprang to life, belting out the chorus to Donny Osmond’s ‘Deep Purple’. The man fumbled with a button on the dashboard and turned the music down. “Oops, sorry.”
Kurt held on tightly
as the man kicked the accelerator and skidded out the carpark. And they were away.
“So, kid. You got a name?”
Kurt thought for a second. Did he want a stranger to know who he was? Kurt had always tried to be private about his business. There was no one on Earth that he trusted now, besides Amy. If it hadn’t been for Linda and Steve registering him for Jamestown High School, he might’ve been tempted to change his identity then. Pick a cool name, like ‘Hickory Dalton’, and leave his history in the past.
But he’d never leave Amy. At least, not emotionally. Even now, as they bumped along a dirt road, passing the security booths devoid of any security, his stomach tied in a knot at the thought of wanting to at least hear her voice again.
“Kid?”
“It’s Kurt. Kurt Alder.”
“Well, Kurt Alder. I’m Lucas Dixon. I’d say nice to meet you, but I guess the circumstances aren’t exactly ideal, huh?” He leaned forward, struggling to see the bends ahead as the dirt road weaved between a corridor of ancient trees.
“I guess…”
“Hardly the day out that anyone was expecting. Ain’t you got anyone back there that… y’know… made it?”
Kurt thought of Emily, lying with her stomach torn apart. Nothing more now than chow for the dark-veined freaks that had been transformed by the mist. According to the clock on the dashboard, it had been less than an hour since the bus had pulled up and dropped off his class. Which meant less than half an hour since Kurt had felt the warmth of Emily’s lips on his own and his heart had cartwheeled in his chest. It had all been so simple then…
Kurt could feel the tears rising and turned to look out the window. “No… no one…”
Lucas sensed he’d touched a nerve and went quiet. He turned on the windscreen wipers and watched as the blades collected the droplets on the window and deposited them at the bottom of the windscreen in an amber puddle of chemical and dirt.
They drove at an average speed. Kurt felt he wanted Lucas to drive faster, but that was all but impossible with only a portion of the road clear ahead. At this point, they both figured that they’d be driving out of the fog by now, but were surprised to find that by the time the wheels left the packed dirt and found smooth tarmac, it was still as difficult to see as before.
They drove through a small town where houses loomed on the edge of sight like icebergs, and more and more frequently cars in front would tap on their break lights and pull over. Or, as they saw a couple cars do as they pulled into the opposite lane of traffic and weaved around, just drive off at an odd angle, crash into a tree, post, or fence, with the driver soon screeching and clutching their heads in the front seats, fighting with their seatbelt.
A few miles further down and they passed a bus stop where a group of people were in the midst of attacking a woman and her dog who growled and strained at the leash, snapping at its assailants.
“I can’t believe how quickly it’s spreading,” Lucas mumbled, more to himself than Kurt.
“What the hell is this stuff?” Kurt asked as one of the group peeled off at the sound of their car and gave chase, soon disappearing in the gloom.
Lucas contemplated his answer. “To be honest, I’m not exactly sure myself, kid. I’d like to give you a straight answer, but at the moment I don’t think that’s possible.”
“The people… are they…” Kurt tried to think of the right word, and only one would spring to mind, “…zombies?”
To his surprise, Lucas began laughing. “Zombies? I don’t know what kind of e-numbers they put in your juice, but we all know that zombies ain’t real. First off, people have to die to become zombies, Kurt. And I can assure you, that these people ain’t dead.”
Kurt felt himself going red. “Well since you seem to know so much, what would you say they are? They’re not exactly normal.”
Lucas considered this. They reached a junction where the red of the traffic lights peered out of the fog like the eyes of some great monster. “I don’t know. I’ve seen some strange shit in my time, believe me. But the most I can say is that the people back there… the people that this fog is changing… they’re certainly not dead. They’re… feral. Like foxes, or badgers, or dogs with a disease. This mist… it’s doing something I ain’t seen before. Something awful.”
Kurt shivered.
“Here,” Lucas said, setting off as the lights turned green and shuffling off his coat. “Put this across you to keep warm. A lot of freaky shit just happened, chances are you might go into a bit of a shock.” He reached across to the glove compartment and opened it. Inside a little light illuminated a series of Donny Osmond CDs, a hip flask, and a couple of foil-wrapped candy bars. He picked out one of the latter and handed it to Kurt. “Despite what all dentists tell you, eat the crap out of this. The sugar will help.”
Kurt greedily ate the candy, only then realising just how hungry he was. It was sweet, gone in seconds.
As they made their way out of the town and through a stretch of fields, Kurt was sure the mist had eased ever-so-slightly. It seemed a strange world in which they journeyed. Kurt felt almost as though they were underwater in a mystic kingdom in which particles of pure gold floated all around them. Or maybe even on a strange planet where the atmosphere was denser than Earth. The monsters they left behind them were nothing more than a primitive alien species. Kurt was co-pilot to the exploration ship, Lucas was Hickory Dalton – the hero with the plan.
“Ferals…”
“Hmmm?” Lucas said.
Kurt hadn’t realised the words left his lips. He turned and saw Lucas watching him, eyes glancing to where Kurt’s neck met his collar.
“How you feeling, kid?”
Kurt yawned. “Okay, I think. I just hope that we can beat this stuff back home…”
“Worried about your mum and dad, huh? Ain’t you got a cell you can use?”
Of course! Why hadn’t Kurt thought of that?
He fumbled beneath the coat for his cell phone, tapped a few buttons, and put the phone to his ear. It rang a couple of times before the automated voice for voicemail answered. He hung up, tried again. Same response.
“No luck?”
Kurt shook his head and placed the phone in his lap.
“I’m sure they’re fine,” Lucas said, but Kurt found him entirely unconvincing. “Hey, we’ve still got a little while before we get back. Why don’t you shut your eyes and try to get some kip? It’ll make the journey quicker. Donny’s seats even recline, here.”
He pulled a lever and the chair fell backwards. Kurt turned on his side and closed his eyes. For a few minutes, all he could see were ferals. The vacant looks in their eyes, the way they moved, their hands in Emily. What started as a day in paradise had fast turned to a freak show, and Kurt wondered if home was really going to be salvation for him, or if the mist was spreading too quickly for them to ever catch up. If Linda was breathing in the chemical right this second, unaware of the effects the bomb would have on her system. Steve would be at work. Unless the news had reported the blast and the fog, and Steve would have the sense to drive back to check on Linda.
Maybe they’d both be okay either way? The chemical didn’t seem to affect everyone. Here was Kurt, a kid who could still smell the acrid smell of the explosion, who had taken in lungfuls of the stuff in his dash from the ferals, and he felt fine. Exhausted, perhaps. But otherwise fine. He peeked one eye open. Lucas had his elbow rested on the window, his face leaning on his palm as he drove painfully slow to avoid any cars that might sneak up out of the mist.
He seemed fine…
Better than fine. He knew something about the stuff.
Well, not all the stuff. Kurt thought back to the strange ink world he had visited. The greyscale land in which time stood still and the ferals glitched. Lucas had no clue of Kurt’s excursion. It was a dream, and nothing more…
Kurt took a final cursory glance at Lucas’ own neck, half-expecting to see the tell-tale sign of the black veins poking out the top of his s
hirt.
But there were none. Only stray hairs and a couple of moles.
10
Lucas dropped Kurt off at the corner around the end of his street. Sleep had come easily enough, and it seemed only seconds before he had been gently shaken awake. Lucas had said his goodbyes. Kurt had wanted to ask Lucas if he’d wait a while to see if the house was safe first. But he didn’t want to appear like a scared little kid. And besides, Lucas had his own stuff to deal with.
“Be sure to take care, kid.”
“Where are you headed?” Kurt asked through the open car window.
“To get some answers. I’ve got a friend not too far from here that I’m long due a visit. So, who knows, maybe I’ll see you around.”
And with that Lucas and Donny were gone.
Kurt rounded the corner into Faversham Crescent, expecting to see a suburbia awash with people pruning gardens, kids throwing balls and riding bikes, and maybe even Abbie – a black Labrador, who was often sniffing and peeing around the hedges – running around the gardens. But instead, all he saw was emptiness and the God-awful fog.
At first, when he had stepped out of the car it seemed that it had almost thinned into nothing. But whether the wind was still blowing the cloud this way, or it was some strange feature of the chemical to slowly expand, it had definitely thickened again. From where he was standing now he couldn’t see his own house. The furthest he could see was only three or four houses ahead.
Kurt spared a glance back in the direction Lucas had left, hoping maybe he could still hear the car’s roar. But there was nothing, just an eery quiet. He began to walk, noting odd sights that made him feel incredibly exposed.
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