Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller (38 page)

     “Why do you think where we’re going will be any safer than where we were?” Austin asked.

     Sam didn’t like the question. He’d have to give some small pieces of information that may or may not be useful to whatever had control of Trevor. Even though he’d wanted the kid to speak, he wished he’d picked a different topic to have a conversation about.

     “No one knows about it,” Sam began in a measured tone. “Not even the kids. It’s not something we ever really talked about because it was one of my ‘crazy conspiracy’ things. It’s remote and isolated. We’ll get the girls there. You and Laura will walk them to the building while I take Trevor in a different direction. After you get Amy and Mel to safety, you two need to keep heading in that direction. Get back in the Aveo and just drive as far as you can away from me and Trevor. Whatever’s in him, that thing can’t know where we’re taking the girls.”

     “You’re talking about leaving your wife with a teenaged kid alone in some remote place? And ditching your cousin and daughter somewhere that might be overtaken in a week or less?” Austin shook his head. “That seems pretty bold considering we don’t even know what the hell this is yet.”

     “I don’t need to know what it is to know how to protect the people I care about from it. I would take the same course of action regardless of what this is. Virus? The more remote the better. Hostile takeover by some kind of alien force? Ditto. The best course of action right now is to get the uncorrupted, or uninfected, or whatever they are to a safe place and wait it out.”

     “You act like this is just some storm that’s going to blow over. What if it never does?” Austin gestured with his head to the still-sleeping Trevor. “What if he stays like that forever? How are you going to make sure you can keep contact with him for the rest of your lives?”

     “You know what? I think I liked it better when you were being surly and silent.”

     Austin shrugged and went back to looking out the window. “Hey, you’re the one who kept trying to make me talk.”

     “It’s going to end,” Sam said as he focused on the storm clouds creeping over them. There would be snow already in the northern part of the state. “Can’t you feel that it won’t be like this for long? Soon, it’ll be over. One way or the other.”

     Austin nodded and then narrowed his eyes as he looked at a blazing spectacle happening not far from them. Fire leapt up, hungry to reach the gray, blue-veined clouds.

     “I don’t think we’re stopping to get gas here.” Though the windows were up and they were on the freeway instead of the exit, Austin whispered his words as though he was afraid of being heard by the corrupted at the gas station.

     Sam couldn’t help that he lowered his speed. The demonstration of corrupted insanity was ghastly, confusing, and made him want to speak with them and ask them
why
whatever they’d experienced had turned them into such horror show freaks.

     Four sturdy pyres had been constructed, with metal shelves taken from the store acting as their bases. Whatever else was around had been used for the backing, where bodies would be tied and held. Sam guessed the pyres had been doused with gasoline from the station. Two of them burned gaily, seeming to take their sporadic, lashing movements from the group of corrupted standing, moving, or fighting around them.

     At the first two pyres, long-burned corpses were lashed to vehicles that had been parked or rolled atop the metal shelves. They were the same color of black, regardless of what they’d start as; both cracked and burnt out metal hulls. Flames licked lazily around the scraps of refuse and whatever else had been used as fuel. Pieces of cooked flesh had been removed from the bodies and any distinguishing features that could have existed had either been stolen away or devoured by the fires.

     The other two pyres, the ones which still burned, had piles of animals atop beds of cinderblocks. The stench of burning flesh had to be choking close to the displays.

     Sam looked closer and saw that both the latter pyres were filled specifically with dogs. He didn’t see a stray cat, no feathers on fire, no forest or farm creatures. Dogs of every shape, size, and color had been rounded up and sentenced to a fiery death. He couldn’t figure it out.

     “Why dogs?” Austin asked. He leaned against the window, pressing his face into the glass as he watched the corrupted mill around the leaping flames.

     Some of them held chunks of cooked meat in their hands. They tore at the hunks with their teeth and snarled at each other when those without the charred flesh tried to take the pieces from the ones who were eating.

     “Maybe they like the taste of dogs the best?” Sam suggested.

     “After the taste of other humans,” Austin said in a solemn tone.

     Sam nodded. “We’re going to have to wait for the next gas station and hope it isn’t like this one.”

     “What is it about fire?” Austin pondered aloud. “The night of the Onset, there were fires all around. I have to assume the corrupted started them, right? Why?”

     Sam hesitated before shrugging. He didn’t like to answer a question he didn’t know the correct answer to. Thinking about the fires made him remember the night of the Onset, and Dennis. He didn’t want his mind to be trapped there again. Not only the flames, but the shadows had something to do with what had happened to their world. Maybe more than something. Maybe shadows had everything to do with the battle the human race currently waged.

     “We’ll try for gas in one of the smaller towns, I think,” Sam said.

     “Like that’ll help.”

     Sam frowned at the kid, but it would be hypocritical to say he wasn’t silently thinking the same thing. The thought of stopping anywhere filled him with powerful dread. Not only because they would likely encounter corrupted individuals, but because Laura would have to be the one doing most of the dangerous work. If only
she
could be the one to act as the lock on the power of the thing residing within their son.

     “I think the negativity is likely to kill us as quickly as any of the corrupted.” Sam pushed play on his radio, hoping that Disturbed would soothe his mood some.

     Trevor shifted in sleep, but didn’t awaken when the music began. Even through the loud instrumentals and throaty, sometimes growling voice of the lead singer, he slept soundly. Stress could partially be blamed, Sam thought, but Trevor had slept peacefully through the same CD a dozen times or more. Sam found himself likewise calmed.

     “Good stuff,” Austin approved with a nod. He turned to stare silently out the window once more.

     Nothing followed them onto the highway as they passed the flame-surrounded gas station. Either the rabid revelers were too distracted by their offerings of charred meat or they knew that it would be too difficult to pursue two moving vehicles through the quickly-strengthening winter storm.

     Sam hoped they were just absorbed in the dancing flames and burning bodies. He didn’t want them to be logically assessing probabilities of catching prey before they went after them. He wanted them mindless, thoughtless, so that he and his thinking family could make their way to safety and stay safe simply by staying out of sight. If the corrupted maintained their logic centers, chances were they were not as dumbed down as Sam wanted them to be.

     Austin asked, “How much longer?”

     “If the snow doesn’t screw us, we’ll be to the town near where we’re going in about twenty-five minutes. If the storm really starts shitting on us, it’ll probably take us up to forty-five, maybe an hour.”

    
What will we see in that time?
Austin thought.
Will we even last another sixty minutes? Will we even last another twenty?

Chapter Thirty-Two

     In the Aveo, following Sam’s black truck, Melissa had awakened from sleep. Laura had agreed to let her unbuckle herself and play with one of the handheld games they’d brought along to keep the girl distracted from what was happening.

     Melissa slipped the child-sized earbuds into her ears and accepted a warm soda and some cheese crackers from Amy. The older girl smiled wide at Melissa and squeezed her hand once before returning her attention to the long, open road ahead of them.

     Seeing the storm clouds surrounding the vehicle, Melissa shivered. She didn’t like any kind of storm.

     The game opened as it always did; with bright colors and a catchy instrumental tune. After finishing off her snack and letting her soda sit in the door’s cup holder, she logged onto her game file and set her character off on a run to explore a forested area of the game. Occasionally, monsters leapt out at her, but they were sweet and tamable. As soon as she gained their trust, the followed along with her, fighting beside her to tame or destroy other larger beasts.

     Melissa wished her brother was in the car with her. If he had his system, they could play together. He was much further along in the game and had a wider variety of powerful monsters. If Melissa sweet-talked him, she knew he would trade her some for her lower-level creatures and allow her to progress through the game more easily.

     She missed Trevor. It seemed like she hadn’t been able to spend any time with him since the monsters from fairy stories and dreams had come to life and attacked the people around them. Though the actual event had a hazy and undefined presence in her mind, Melissa knew well enough, even at the tender age of six, that something terrible and profound had happened.

     Her character in-game succumbed to a monster attack, losing her gold and a level. Melissa pouted at the screen and wished once more for her brother’s help. It wasn’t much fun to play a game where she died multiple times in a row and had such a hard time progressing.

     Her character loaded up at her next checkpoint and Melissa was surprised to see a second adventurer beside her avatar. The music had changed, also. The new tune had a whining, breathy feel that bothered her on some subconscious level. She almost turned the game off because of the change in the music. When it softened and faded into the background, she felt a little bit better about sending her character off through the trees once more.

     The new character who’d joined her own felt wrong to Melissa but she couldn’t point out exactly why. It wasn’t just because she’d never had another personal avatar join her team. She was too young to do any gaming online and had never invited other players into her world except Trevor. Even when he did play with her, his character didn’t come into her world to go around and explore. They traded monsters and he sometimes gave her a bit of gold. He couldn’t help her with travel or battles.

     Even though she’d never had anyone join her in her game, Melissa thought the other avatar looked familiar. The spill of dark hair and lanky form did remind her of her brother. Perhaps it was a glitch in the game, passed along from the last time they’d connected to trade.

     Melissa didn’t know what a glitch was, nor did she try very hard to figure out why there was a foreign figure beside her own avatar. She played along as usual and fought more monsters in the forest. After her third battle, she died again. She lost the one monster she’d just collected, another level, and more gold.

     She pouted again at the screen. The game was too hard to play without Trevor to help her along. He would often coach her on what to do when they were playing together. He helped her figure out locks and puzzles, and provided experience points to help her level or combine her monsters with others. The game just wasn’t fun without him helping her along.

     Before she decided to turn it off because she wasn’t enjoying playing alone, Melissa saw another new thing on the screen. A tall shape, formless and shadowy, had appeared almost on top of the avatar she’d come to think of as Trevor. She squinted at the screen, trying to get a look at the shapeless black blob. It moved like smoke. Most of the trees and plants, buildings and characters were blocky and undefined in the game. When something moved, it did not happen continuously. Even ocean waves only occurred when her character road along on the back of one of the monsters and the water spread out in bulky circles, moving only when touching the character and going right back to stillness once she’d passed.

     The smoky figure moved like a sneaky shadow. It pulsed and churned in on itself, at once seeming more undefined yet sharper and more realistic than anything else in the game.

     From the front seat, Amy turned around to check on how the girl was doing. She could see Melissa’s brow furrowed in confusion; her hands were still on the gaming device. Wondering if she’d come to a point where she needed help, Amy undid her own seatbelt and climbed over the center console.

     When she popped the earbud out of Melissa’s right ear, the girl reacted with a start.

     “Hey, kiddo. You looked like you were having a hard time. Do you mind if I try to help you play?”

     “Something’s wrong,” Melissa replied. “I think it’s broken.”

     “Well, let’s take a look.”

     Amy had played the game before. Not much, but she knew her way around the map. When Melissa held it closer so Amy could see it, she saw what was wrong. She frowned and studied the new character and his freaky shadow. It seemed without form and then a face would appear, manifesting and dissolving almost in the same second. Occasionally within the moving darkness, Amy would spot a talon, a beak, claws, or mouths with an uncomfortable number of teeth.