by Sean Platt
Desmond stepped toward the creature, and turned to Mary, “Cover her eyes.”
Paola buried her face in her mother’s shoulder as Desmond aimed a pistol, a Glock, Mary believed, at the twitcher.
“What are you doing?” John screamed, knocking his hand away.
Desmond lowered the gun, then turned to John with a glare, “You won’t be touching me when I’m aiming a loaded gun.”
“He needs help. You can’t just kill whoever you want. None of us agree to that.”
Desmond raised the Glock and pulled the trigger. Twice. The light in the creature’s body seemed to flicker just before its head exploded in gore. Then, the lights went out, and its body went limp and still.
The shot sounded like a rolling detonation as it caromed across the emptiness.
“This is the Apocalypse, not a democracy,” Desmond said, “Let’s go.”
Desmond got back in the van and drove around the body without another word.
Nothing but silence in the Suburban for several minutes. Mary wondered what Desmond knew that he wasn’t telling anyone else.
Sure, people had vanished, and an entire town wiped off the planet, but who said anything about an Apocalypse? There was no way to know how far spread this event was. No reason not to think that once they reached the Army base, they’d be transported somewhere where everything was still normal.
Apocalypse?
As much as she wanted to believe her hopes, something told her she was wrong, that Desmond was right, and everything had indeed changed. Forever.
She wanted to cry, too, but she had to be strong for Paola. And for Jimmy, to an extent. Though he was practically an adult, so much about him was still a child. An orphan.
“Where do you think everyone is?” Jimmy asked, breaking the silence.
“I dunno,” Mary said. “I’m thinking of some sort of evacuation or something.”
“No,” John said, “I mean, maybe if everyone from the same homes were gone. But my wife is gone, Jimmy’s family is gone. There’s no way the Army or anyone would be able to evacuate half of a family without waking the others. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe they were all Raptured?” Paola offered. “God called all the believers home?”
“That’s all bullshit make believe,” Jimmy said, “And besides, if there was a heaven, no fu ... friggin’ way my dad was on the list. Believe you, me.”
“Maybe aliens?” Paola said.
Jimmy thought on that for a moment. “Now thatI wouldn’t rule out. Though, that would be an awful lot of UFOs to take all those people away.”
“Maybe they didn’t take them away?” Paola countered. “Maybe they just killed everyone.”
Mary flinched, catching a look from John. She made an “I’m sorry” face, and his expression changed from scorn to understanding.
“Let’s change the subject, huh? Why don’t we talk about ... I dunno, you all pick a topic.”
Before they picked a topic, John slowed the Suburban. Desmond had stopped again, in the middle of a bridge, which ran maybe 50 yards, a few hundred feet above ground.
“Why’s he stopping here? We’re nowhere near Fort Leonard Wood.”
Desmond got out of the van and was looking up at the sky. And that’s when they saw them — birds. Lots of them, swarming and diving overhead to the river below. Desmond walked toward the guardrail and looked down, then turned back to the Suburban and held up a hand, telling the others to stay put.
Jimmy ignored the signal and jumped from the car. John followed. Mary looked at Paola and told her to stay put, she’d be right back. Surprisingly, Paola didn’t argue, and Mary stepped out of the car and joined the rest of the gang looking down over the guardrail.
As she drew closer, she noticed an overpowering, sickly-sweet smell that seemed somehow familiar, though she couldn’t quite place it. The sound of a river rushing beneath them was barely audible over the squawking of birds as they continued to circle and dive.
John turned toward her and leaned over, vomiting on the road.
Jimmy and Desmond simply stared. Mary reached the guardrail, looked down below and immediately wished she’d stayed in the car.
Corpses filled the river, in the hundreds, if not thousands, bobbing up and down, floating like logs as birds feasted on their rotting flesh.
“Well, I think we know where all the people went,” Jimmy said, his face ashen.
TO BE CONTINUED …
::Episode 2::
(Second Episode Of Season One)
“DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE”
Thirteen
Charlie Wilkens
Oct. 15, 2011
Early evening
Jacksonville, Florida
It had been two hours, but the girl was still passed out in Charlie’s bed. He started to wonder if she had fallen into a coma — maybe she’d die.
He’d removed her hoodie when they first got home. She was wearing a charcoal tee underneath, and Charlie cut the sleeve from her shirt to dress the wound. It was more bruise than torn flesh, which was good because he didn’t think he’d be able to stitch someone. He didn’t understand why the girl was still out, but he also wasn’t in a hurry for her to wake. Because then he’d have to deal with her reaction to being abducted, which could get violent.
He kept flashing back to that moment when they’d fallen in the shopping plaza parking lot, and he first realized she was a girl and not some dude looking to jack their truck. Something in her eyes said she wasn’t a threat. But what was she doing in the store? The doors were locked when he and Bob arrived, so she must’ve followed them in for some reason. But why?
If her goal was to take the truck, she could have done that without going into the store. Hell, she could’ve taken anything with four wheels; the streets were plenty full. Then again, he guessed she could have entered the store through a side door or service entrance.
He thought of her beautiful eyes again. He only knew a handful of black girls, and none with blue eyes. Bob searched her for ID, but came up empty. While he had thought she was close to his age, closer inspection put her closer to 20.
“Who are you?” Charlie asked, neither expecting, nor getting, a response.
The light outside, bleeding through the thick and slightly-parted curtain, was starting to dim. It would be night soon. It wouldn’t be long before they’d have to switch to some of the battery-operated lamps they’d lifted from the store. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if she didn’t wake soon. If he went to sleep and wasn’t awake when she came to, she might freak. He wasn’t worried that she’d hurt him, even though it was a distinct possibility. His main concern was that Bob would see her as a threat and put a bullet in her before Charlie could calm the situation.
Charlie stared at the shape of her breasts beneath her T-shirt. They were on the small side, but still quite nice. He had resisted the urge to “accidentally” brush against them when they were carrying her to his bed, then again when he was dressing her wounds, even though Bob made some sort of joke about Charlie keeping himself a “little, chocolate sex slave.”
What an asshole.
As he kept watch over the girl, Bob stayed in the living room drinking his beer. Not Natty-Light, either. He’d looted good shit. Beside him, on the couch, a shotgun. Usually, he’d watch TV as he got good and drunk. Without TV, Charlie wondered what Bob would do for entertainment. He didn’t strike Charlie as much of a reader.
He hoped Bob didn’t plan to continue using him as a dartboard for his amusement. He didn’t mind pretending to drink and burp to keep Bob in good humor, but he wasn’t Bob’s court jester, and wasn’t willing to play one in front of a girl. But if Charlie’s history with bullies had taught him anything, it was that bullies loved to humiliate others. An audience was just fuel to a fire.
Bob was originally going to abandon the girl to die in the parking lot, but Charlie begged him to show compassion. They couldn’t just leave someone — especially a girl — behind to d
ie.
“Well, she’s your responsibility,” Bob said as if she were a stray mutt. “But if she gets outta line, I’m putting her to sleep again, and she ain’t waking up.”
Charlie hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He had no idea what they’d do with the girl once she came to. Obviously, he’d see if she had any friends or family. If not, he’d probably invite her to stay until things got sorted. Whether Bob would go for that was another story.
He stared as she slept. Her eyes were rolling beneath their lids, deep in dreams. The room grew colder as the sun started to set. He pulled a blanket over her and lay on the floor to rest his eyes.
“Where am I?” the girl groaned.
Charlie’s eyes snapped open, and he sat up. The room was pitch-black. He’d slept too long. Why the hell hadn’t Bob woken him?
Must be passed out drunk again.
Charlie fumbled in the dark until his hands found the portable lamp and clicked it on. She was crouched on the bed, ready to pounce but blinded by the light. Charlie pulled the lamp back and lit his face.
“It’s okay; you were hurt.”
Her eyes darted to the closed door then back at Charlie, weighing her next move. He stepped between her and the door, praying she wouldn’t run, wake Bob, and end up with a bullet or two inside her head.
“Please, hear me out,” Charlie whispered, “My drunken stepdad thought you were a thief and hit you with the crowbar before seeing you were a girl. I’m so sorry.”
“A girl can’t be a thief?” she said, eyes blazing, almost challenging him.
“No, I mean, yeah, they can be, but … ”
“It’s okay,” she said, relaxing a bit and sitting on the bed. “Did you do this?” she asked, running a hand over her bandaged right shoulder.
“Yeah, though I’m not sure I helped much.”
She pulled the bandage aside without flinching, then looked at Charlie. “Where am I? How long was I out?”
“My house; on Charleston Street. We didn’t want to leave you alone. And I’m not sure what time it is, but it’s been at least five or six hours.”
She closed her eyes and looked like she was going to add an encore to her original fade to black. But she took a deep breath and steadied herself, then opened her eyes again.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, “You okay?”
“I dunno,” she said. “I have these horrible headaches that make me black out every now and then. Doctors don’t know why. They think it’s probably migraines.”
“I thought you were in a coma,” Charlie said.
“Where’s the dude that hit me?”
“I’m guessing he’s passed out, drunk.”
“Okay,” she said, standing, flinching a bit as she did. “I need to get out of here before he comes to.”
“Why?” Charlie asked, “He’s not gonna hurt you again. I told him to back off.”
She stared at him, “Was that before or after he knocked me out?”
“After,” Charlie said, looking down, “But you’re safe now.”
“No, I’m not. And neither are you.”
“What?” Charlie asked.
“You’re not safe here. Neither of us are. We need to get the hell out of here before they come.”
“Who?”
“The ones that took everyone away,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“We weren’t supposed to survive,” she said, “They’re gonna come back for us. Just like they came for my neighbor.”
“Wait, you saw them? Who took the people away?”
“Not when it happened, no. But I saw them today. They attacked my neighbor right in front of me.”
Her eyes were wet, as if she might cry, but she continued.
“My neighbor Tom was outside loading his car with supplies. We were gonna drive until we found other survivors. I was in his living room, filling the last of the duffel bags with supplies when I heard him scream. I looked out the window and that’s when I saw them. These … things. They were like people, but like … undone or something. One of them was missing eyes, and the other was missing a mouth. And they just started attacking him, and … one was eating him while the one without a mouth was shoving Tom’s guts all over the front of his face where his mouth should’ve been.”
She paused, “Did you hear that?”
Charlie looked around, “What?”
She leaped on him, falling on top of him. At first, he thought she was attacking him, but she was after the lantern. She clicked it off, threw the room into darkness, and slapped a cool hand over his warm mouth.
“Shhh. Can you hear that?”
He did — a clicking sound, faint, but constant, just outside his bedroom window. He glanced at the curtain, but it was closed, mercifully.
“They’re here,” she whispered.
Fourteen
Brent Foster
Oct. 15, 2011
Afternoon
New York City
Brent couldn’t stop watching the video.
One minute the couple was in bed, sound asleep. The next, an impossible, smoky-looking liquid cloud appeared from nowhere, killed the video and filled the screen with static. And then the sleepers disappeared — vanished, vaporized, gone.
Stan, as requested, showed him three other videos they’d recorded in their neighbors’ apartments. Each video showed the same song, different tune.
“What is it?” Brent asked.
“We have no idea,” Melora said. “Though we suspect it’s extraterrestrial, and that the dreams we’ve shared the past few decades were some sort of alien broadcast meant for us.”
Brent shook his head, trying to shake the thought of the black, liquid cloud hovering above his wife and child, desperately wanting to ignore the lunacy. Yet, without a better explanation for where everyone except them had evaporated to at 2:15 a.m. the night before, he clearly had little choice but to play along.
“Why us? Why didn’t they take us?” Brent asked. “Why would they take a ... ” he wanted to finish the sentence, but fell short at the word child, as though murdering the word would take the reality with it. He HAD to believe Gina and Ben were out there, somewhere.
“There have to be others,” Brent said, glancing at the self-proclaimed 215 Society. “I mean, you all had the dreams, so yeah, you’re still here. But I didn’t. And I’m here, too. So there must be something else which kept me around. Something which may have kept others, too?”
“You probably don’t remember your dreams,” Melora said, the professor’s tone starting to piss off Brent. “In fact, most people only remember a small percentage of their actual dreams. Isn’t it possible you had the dreams and don’t remember?”
“Nah,” Luis said, “He’d have to remember at least one of them, right? Maybe there are others out there like he says. Makes sense.”
Brent nodded as if endorsement built the road to reality.
“Even if there are others,” Melora said, in her parochial voice, “it’s safe to assume his family isn’t among them, or else they would have been in his house this morning.”
Brent stared at her. Her face was blank, clinically detached from her words. He was pretty good at guessing people’s histories, what made them the way they were. Melora, however, was beyond him. He felt like punching some color into the pasty white of her face.
Brent suddenly remembered seeing one of them on the street. “Wait a second. Was one of you out on the street earlier? Wearing a dark jacket and a hat?”
“Yeah,” Luis said, “why?”
“You saw something. I saw you looking north with your binoculars, then you ran. What was it; what did you see?”
“You don’t want to know,” Luis said, taking a sudden interest in his boots.
“We may as well tell him,” Melora said, “He’s going to find out sooner or later.”
Luis shook his head, as if delivering this news was more painful to him than it would be to Brent. The sensitivity seemed a bit odd
coming from such a muscle-bound tough guy.
“Tell me,” Brent asked more than said.
“You sure you wanna know? I mean, you might have a wife and child out there and when I tell you this, you’re gonna wanna go after them.”
“Tell me.”
“You’re right on one thing ... we’re not alone. There’s something else out there. These ... things. Not quite human, but not quite anything I’ve ever seen either. Maybe aliens, I dunno. I saw a few of them when I was driving around the city before the sun came up. They look like people, if you stretched them out and burned them black, then dumped them in some kinda gel. And they move all weird and shit. When I drove past, a few of them chased after me. And they were faster than any human I ever saw.”
“And you saw one out on our street?” Brent asked, shaking his head, as if it would help him digest the impossible.
“More than one,” Luis said, “A whole mess of ‘em. They looked like they were searching for something or someone. Maybe to come and get the ones who had been left behind.”
Brent stared at Luis, his mind reeling.
“I’ve gotta go out there. I will find my family. I feel it in my gut.”
“That’s hope you’re feeling,” Melora said, “but it’s not informed by fact. And chasing hope is an empty pursuit.”
Brent glared at her, wondering if it was still never okay to hit a woman, even at the end of the world.
“So, what? I’m just supposed to give up? Hole away in an apartment and hide day and night while my family might be out there and in danger? Then what? What’s the plan after that, huh?”
“We don’t have one,” Luis said.