by Sean Platt
“What is that?” Adam cried, his face perplexed with confusion and dread.
“It sounds like . . . ” Callie began.
“CLICKING!” Charlie finished. “The monsters!”
“What the fuck?” Vic said, aiming his rifle at the windows, toward the unseen enemy lurking in the storm.
Something slammed into one of the windows, shattering it as if it had been blasted by a bazooka. Vic trained his scope at the impact site and squeezed off a round that sailed straight through the new opening into the raging whirlwind of rain and debris outside. No kill. No hit. Nothing. Instead, the air pressure vacuum created by the blown-out window channeled flying chunks of glass, dirt, rocks, and other wreckage directly down upon them. The onslaught of winged shrapnel tore at Charlie’s face and eyes, scratching him like a demon-possessed razor with a million blades. The rain joined the debris in drenching him from head to foot. “Find cover!” he bellowed as he pulled his shirt over this face and dove behind a foodstuff display stand.
After a few moments’ reprieve, he pulled his shirt down and looked around, searching for Callie. But shrapnel found his eyes again instantly, stinging his sight and sending him to the ground, wiping his lenses through his shirt as another explosion of glass triggered behind him. Shards of glass and wind lashed his back, and threw him forward into an overturned shopping cart, knocking the wind from his body. Charlie gulped at the air, trying to catch his breath, crawling over the cart and along the ground, body soaked in rain and blood and wracked in pain as if a hundred hammers and knives had struck him.
The storm howled louder as torrents swept into the store with the force of thunder. His eyes closed, he could only hear the damage, but it sounded like the world was being ripped apart. Shopping carts clanged into shelving; shelves fell like dominoes; objects slammed into the front of the store, and all about the interior walls. Charlie felt like he was the unwitting passenger in a hellish amusement park ride, locked into a death chamber where he couldn’t see where the danger was coming from because it was coming from everywhere. He cried out for Callie, but his cry was more of an animalistic wail than an assembly of words.
Please, make it stop!
He stopped in his tracks and balled up on the ground, trying to shrink his moving target. The wind and water, however, had other plans and propelled him forward, sliding him into the dark rain of debris at the velocity of a steep water slide. He didn’t travel far before colliding with something hard, banging his shoulder and hip into an eruption of pain.
He choked on a scream as his shirt slid from his face and water went into his open mouth. The wind and clicking grew louder as another sound emerged from the chaos.
Metal crunching.
Charlie wiped at his eyes, spit out the water, and felt himself slipping again, carried by the wind and river of water now pouring into the store. The sound of metal crunching amplified. He closed his eyes as he tumbled and slid deeper into the store, slamming into overturned shelves and clothing racks, each banging and bruising him, until he stopped with a hard thud, slamming back first into a solid structure midway through the store, a wall, door, or, maybe a changing room station.
The chaos crescendoed: the storm at its most violent, the whistle of wind at its most menacing, the clicking of god-knows-what terrors close at hand, and the sound of crunching metal deafening. He held tight to the wall and door behind him, and managed to stand and look up, searching for the source of the crunching metal.
That’s when he saw it, dark tendrils of storm cloud that looked so solid they could be the curling fingers of some ungodly tornado beast, reaching into a tear in the roof and peeling back the top of the store like the tin of a sardine can.
As the roof tore away in chunks of charred sky, the swirling darkness gathered the debris into itself, feeding itself. Charlie stared in horror as the dark storm sucked items up from the store and swallowed them upward into itself like some kind of unholy vacuum from hell.
“Callie!!” screamed Charlie.
More debris slammed his body from all sides, making his struggle to hold onto the door with one hand while pulling his drenched shirt over his face with the other near-impossible. The moment his shirt was over his face, his fingers were yanked from the door. He flew backward and slammed headfirst into something solid and unmoving.
The last thing he felt was his body flying up and into the terrible storm.
Charlie woke up choking, gasping for air, face down in a cold puddle of mud. He turned over, afraid to open his eyes and see whatever was left of the store and his companions.
He was soaked to the bone, battered, and his mouth filled with the copper of blood. Around him was nothing but silence, save for a gentle breeze, which seemed a comical cousin to the hell they’d just faced.
There was a comfort in the darkness of keeping his eyes closed. Something urged him to just go to sleep . . . surrender.
No more pain.
No more suffering.
No more bullying, ever again.
No more life in a world of monsters.
Just let go and succumb to the everlasting peace.
The peace seemed so real in his head that a smile cracked his face. His first genuine smile in as long as he could remember. His body felt as if it were rocking gently back and forth in an ocean without a care in the world. He felt that if he kept his eyes closed, and allowed his body to float, it would eventually drift into the everlasting peace that the darkness promised.
So easy. That’s it. Just let go.
He wanted to more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life. Let go. The smile on his face spread and he began to cry, at the thought of everlasting happiness.
Not a care in the world.
Just let go.
He thought of his dad, flashing back to a time when he was really young, sitting with his dad on the couch as he read him a story. Something about a train. A smiling, happy train. He remembered looking up to his dad with such awe. This man was His Daddy! Daddies lived forever. They didn’t die. They didn’t leave you.
Daddy.
Tears streamed from Charlie’s eyes.
Let go, son. I’m here. Be with me. We’re waiting.
“Dad?” he cried.
“Hello?” a man’s cracked voice called out. Not in the darkness, but in the real world, where Charlie lay in a puddle of mud.
“Charlie? Is that you?” It was Vic. He sounded bad.
No, don’t go, Charlie. Stay. Close your eyes. Come back to us.
If Vic were alive, though, perhaps Callie was, too.
Charlie turned away from the calm sea of ghosts and sat up, pain pinching his ribs, chest, back, and head simultaneously. He opened his eyes to the blinding, white light of what was left of the morning. Assuming it was still morning. He had no idea how long he’d been out.
His eyes adjusted to the milky-gray fog hanging thick around him. Wisps of gray thinned, allowing him to see maybe 40 yards in any direction. That’s when he saw that the ground beneath him was all dirt and mud. No grass. No vegetation. No asphalt. No debris, even, as if the storm had lifted the top layer from the ground and delivered it to hell. He looked around, trying to see beyond the fog, but could find nothing to indicate where he’d been dropped. He assumed if Vic was close by, they couldn’t be too far from the store, and maybe Callie and Adam.
“Vic?” he called out as he stood up, triggering an injection of pain throughout his body. He was banged up, but nothing that would keep him from walking.
“Cha-Charlie?” the man said, from somewhere in the fog. His voice sounded pained, but there was something else there, too. Joy that Charlie was there. That he wasn’t alone. So Vic did need others.
“Is anyone else with you?” Charlie called out as he stepped toward the direction of Vic’s voice. “Have you seen Callie or Adam?”
“No, I ain’t seen nothin’,” Vic said. “Please, help me.”
Charlie saw Vic on the ground, sitting up, but holding his left fore
arm, bleeding onto the man’s pants.
“You okay?” Charlie asked as he stepped forward.
Vic looked up, the giant, bald steroid case suddenly seemed fragile, eyes worried. “Something cut me, but I think I’ll be okay. I need to find something to stop the bleeding. You got a knife or something? Can you cut my shirt, tie it around my wound?”
The knife.
Charlie reached into his pocket, felt the blade and pulled it out. “You think that’ll work?”
“Yeah,” Vic said, “I’ve had worse than this. We’ll just need to get home or find a place with equipment, and I’ll show you how to stitch this up.”
“Stitches?” Charlie said, “I don’t know how to do stitches!”
“Don’t be such a pussy, man. Just cut my shirt before I bleed out, okay?”
“Yeah,” Charlie said as he walked behind Vic and leaned down, looking at where the man’s shirt ended and his massive biceps began.
What would Old Charlie do?
Fuck that; what will New Charlie do?
He pushed the small button on the knife, and the blade popped out with an inviting click.
“Come on, man, hurry! I’m gonna bleed out,” Vic said, turning back and looking up at Charlie.
Charlie dropped to a knee, grabbed Vic under the chin with his left hand, and twisted Vic’s head back, exposing his neck.
Vic tried to escape, but he was too late.
Charlie dug the blade deep into the man’s Adam’s apple, and then jerked the blade sideways, as hot blood shot all over his hand.
“Wha . . . ” was all Vic could manage as he slumped forward clutching the blade.
Charlie let go, stood up, and stepped back, afraid he’d not mortally wounded the man - that Vic would pull the blade out, stand up, and come after him like some kinda Terminator or something.
Oh shit, what did I do?!
Vic pulled the blade out, choking up blood, then looked up to Charlie, eyes filled with anger and confusion.
He tried to say something but all that fell from his mouth was more blood.
Then Vic stopped moving.
Charlie leaned down, grabbed his blade, and wiped the blood off on the dead man’s shirt. He wanted to say something like fuck you, take that you steroid fuck, or any of the other million, rage-filled thoughts running through his head. But instead, he said nothing. He was simply taking out the trash.
You didn’t do victory dances for taking out the trash.
Something screamed out in the distance, veiled by the fog.
Callie!
And then another sound. A truck.
Charlie’s heart pounded hard in his chest as adrenaline coursed through his system, pushing him forward despite the aches and invisible path before him.
“No!” she cried.
“Callie!” he screamed, not caring if whatever she was scared of heard him. “Callie!”
Another scream, and then the truck revved its engine and took off.
Fuck this fog!
Then silence.
“Callie!”
Charlie raced further forward through the fog as the truck’s engine faded into the distance, direction unknown. As he ran forward, the ground unveiled itself, 30 yards at a time through the fog. He prayed he wouldn’t find her dead on the ground.
“Callie!” he cried again, as something took form in the fog ahead.
He raced forward, blindly, hand on his blade and heart in his throat, dread coursing through him.
“Charlie?” a voice said from the shadows ahead.
Adam!
Charlie closed the distance and found Adam stumbling toward him, just as bruised and bloodied as Charlie.
“What happened?” Charlie asked.
“They took Callie!”
Thirty-One
Ryan Olson
Brookdale, Tennessee
Feb. 17
Nighttime
Ryan woke to an explosion of loud, yet muffled music, which seemed to be drifting in from a nearby apartment.
“What the … ?” he bolted up in his sleeping bag, momentarily disoriented, feeling around for his rifle, then finding it on the floor beside him in the darkness. He pulled it toward him and slipped his finger over the trigger.
“What is that?” Carmine whispered, stepping into the room, though Ryan could barely see him in the dim light bleeding from the moon.
“What’s going on?” Joe called out, way too loud. The clank of his wheelchair clattered across the apartment. Both his voice and noises were loud, even above the riot of the music.
There was a second explosion of music, this time from another nearby apartment. “Stereos!” Ryan said, as he realized with sick dread what was happening.
“What’s going on?” Joe said, wheeling himself into the living room.
“Shh,” Ryan said, moving in a crouch toward the windows, then peering out at the parking lot below. Sure enough, the music had achieved the desired effect. No fewer than six of the creatures were moving toward the apartment building, targeting the source of the music.
Red Jacket, you sonofabitch!
“He’s luring them here,” Ryan explained to Carmine, who ran to the window and gasped.
“Who’s leading what here?” Joe asked, annoyed and nervous. Maybe afraid, but unwilling to show it in front of his grandson.
“The thug we ran into earlier; the one who got away. I think he came back here and is using the music to lure the monsters to us.”
“Monsters?” Joe asked.
That’s when Ryan caught Carmine staring at him, trying to throw him a look he wasn’t catching. He remembered too late that the boy had not told his gramps of the real danger lurking out there.
Shit.
“There’s something I didn’t tell you, Gramps,” Carmine said, his voice on the verge of breaking. “There are monsters out there.” He gestured out the window. “Big, black things that look like aliens or something, with lights under their skin and giant teeth and claws.”
Joe laughed, but only until he realized no one else was.
“Wait . . . you’re serious?”
Carmine nodded.
“I want you both to go in Joe’s room and lock the door,” Ryan said. “Don’t make a peep!”
“What are you gonna do?” Joe asked.
“We’ve got two problems: the monsters and whoever turned on the radios. I need to take care of the latter first, then try to lure the monsters away.”
“No,” Joe said, “You two go. You can run, get away. Go to the roof, bar the door or something.”
“No, Gramps, we’re not leaving you!” Carmine said.
Ryan stared at the man. Wheelchair or not, this man had balls of steel, willing to sacrifice himself to save his grandson.
Ryan hoped it wouldn’t come to that. “I’ve got a plan,” he said, lying like a motherfucker. If he had a plan, his brain had better inform his body what the hell it was. “Go in there. Lock the door. Move the bed to block it, if you can do it quickly. And then stay quiet. You still have the gun I gave you, Carmine?”
Joe’s eyes widened, but he didn’t protest.
“Yeah, I put it in my room,” Carmine said.
“Good. Give it to Joe.”
“Remember,” Ryan said, “Not a peep.”
“Be careful,” Joe said. He and Carmine retreated to his room.
Ryan confirmed his rifle was loaded, then slid a box of bullets into his pocket and approached the front door at a creep, hoping like hell Red Jacket wasn’t on the other side, waiting to take him out. Ryan figured his odds were good; Red Jacket probably wouldn’t hang around too long after rolling out the sonic red carpet for the monsters. Odds are he either holed up in another apartment on one of the higher levels, or he’d gone to the roof. If he were really quick, and had a car, he might have already made it back downstairs and took off to who knows where before the place was overrun.
Pussy. Couldn’t fight his own fight, had to get the monsters to do it for him.
Ryan held his breath, forced himself to step into the hall, then let out his breath at the silence of no shots fired. The sound of music, loud rock he didn’t recognize, came from either direction: two different sources, two different songs blasting.
Though his ankle was still mostly fire, he limped as quickly as he could to the apartment nearest the stairway. He tried the doorknob. Surprisingly, it wasn’t locked. If Ryan were baiting this trap, he would’ve locked the door to delay entry. Give the monsters more time to find them.
Inside the room, Ryan found a large boom box sitting on top of the dining room table, with a front panel lit up in bright blue. He searched desperately for the off button in the darkness, but with the bright light of the display screen, it was hard to see details of the buttons on top of the device.
“Fuck!” he yelled, turning the radio around with one hand, while the other stayed on the rifle, “Where the hell is it?”
He found the button, small and lit green, on the top, where he should’ve seen it before, and pressed down hard. The light, and music died, but music from the other end of the hall continued to scream.
He limped into the hall, praying none of the monsters had made it up the stairs yet. They didn’t seem terribly bright or fast in his limited experience with them, so he hoped he had another few minutes to throw them off his trail. The hall clear, Ryan pushed himself as fast as he could to the second apartment, then turned the knob. Also unlocked. He slipped into the dark, scanning the darkness for the radio. Judging from the sound, it was in one of the bedrooms. He navigated past furniture toward the back of the apartment, and stumbled into the creeping feeling that he wasn’t alone.
He turned and saw a shadow among shadows, flickering in the kitchen. Though he couldn’t make out the man’s features, he knew who it was. Red Jacket. Waiting.
Ryan raised his rifle — too late.
Red Jacket fired his pistol, the gunshot thundering over the sound of the music.
Ryan stumbled back, then fell against the wall feeling as if someone had hit him in the gut with a baseball bat.
So, this is what it feels like to be shot.