At the End - a post-apocalyptic novel (The Road to Extinction, Book 1) (4 page)

It looked like any other house I’d seen,
moderately clean, some dirty dishes on the counter, a recycling
pile too tall to ever be taken out in one trip, and in the living
room a spotless jumbo TV bracketed to the wall in front of a
couch.

“There’s one.” Maggy spotted a phone beside
the toaster. She pressed a button then slid her nimble fingers
across the screen to unlock it, finding the voice input button.
“Define cul-de-sac,” she said.

The phone searched for a few seconds before
a woman replied, “A street, lane, or passage closed at one end, a
blind alley.”

“Yes! Ha!” She showed us the spelling.

“Lucky, that’s all,” I said, but there was
no stopping her triumphant, smug grin.

“Shh,” Félix uttered. “I think something
else is in the house.” I listened. Nothing. It was enough to creep
all of us out, as I was the last to bolt over the threshold of the
door. We let up on the gas when we rounded the corner where Birch
forked off into east and west.

“Probably just our nerves,” Maggy said when
her lungs caught up. “Just nerves.”

I cleared my throat a dozen or so times,
downing water like a kitchen drain, but it didn’t matter. Félix
tossed me his inhaler after he finished spraying his throat. I
shook it, counting to thirty. I shot the medicine into my mouth and
held until a cough broke loose. Maggy took it next.

Asthma, I don’t think I had known anyone who
didn’t have it. A plague of the twenty-first century, but medicine
combatted it rigorously, making it little more than a nuisance.

“Ready?” Maggy asked. It didn’t matter,
though, whether or not we were, she took off towards Alabama
Street. We were already over the hump of Alabama Hill, so at least
we had that going for us, well, more for me. I was exhausted, yet
the distance that I had covered was laughable at best.

I stopped when we started past the Lakeview
Condos. “Spooky.” The giant complex of expensive housing emanated a
chill of death. All of the doors within the complex were marked
just as all the neighborhood houses were. Félix tugged at my sleeve
to press on.

Whatcom Lake came into view as we hit
Electric Ave; the habitual ripples of the water from boats and
people were gone, the body of water lay motionless as any fluid
ever could. The stoplight at the cross street still functioned in
its routine, signaling non-existent traffic. Still no birds sang
any jolly tunes, not even seagulls or crows flew in the sky. It was
barren, except for the heavy clouds.

We met North Shore Drive a block or so
north, turning northeast along the shore. We passed about four
houses shielded by trees and bushes, until an empty driveway gave
way to a lone house. Maggy, observant as ever, regarded the mark on
the door. “It’s different.”

We walked down into the drive. “What do you
think that means?” I asked. They both shook their heads. The symbol
only had two lines that pointed upward, colored solely black.
Fearless, Maggy pushed the door open so that we could peer inside.
There was nothing dissimilar from any of the other houses.

“Let’s check it out,” she urged.

Félix slipped in first, bow shaking but
ready to launch. I refilled my water after we concluded nothing
stranger had happened compared to any other home. The residents
were missing, nothing unusual about that.

Carelessly, we marched down the stairs to
the daylight basement.

I heard a few crunches, as if bones were
being crushed under extreme pressure. We rounded the corner.
Indeed, that’s what it was.

Horrorstruck, we all screamed. A
short-haired beast that resembled a lioness was hunched over a
corpse, chewing down a slab of human flesh. Surprised, it jumped up
on all fours, standing two meters at its shoulders. Two more arms
sprang forward from its shoulders, jointed in too many ways to
count. At their ends rotated a hand with four humanlike fingers and
two thumbs.

There was no time.

My arrow flew towards a bookshelf to the
left of it; Félix’s arrow penetrated a tawny foreleg. A roar that
sounded unlike a true lion, as low and ominous as any video-game
dragon, rattled our ribcages. I swallowed a hundred times; no more
saliva existed to scream.

Maggy sprinted for the sliding glass door to
our right, flipped up the lever, and threw the door open. “Hurry!”
she screamed.

Félix crossed the threshold last, stubbing a
foot on the track; he tumbled onto the wet lawn in a crash. A
deadly paw stomped down on his foot. He cried. We turned and saw
the giant mouth, brimming with scything teeth, about to crush his
skull. Maggy pelted the alien with steak knives. I launched the
hunting blade sheathed around my calf. Within moments, the creature
was speckled with our weapons.

It roared again. My stomach quaked and
gurgled. I nocked another dart and loosed it. It flew straight for
its shoulder. As it hit, the alien twirled and stepped back. Félix
crawled until he was able to stand. We darted for the lake.

A well-maintained motorboat, powered by the
sun, was moored to a short dock, strangely idle in the creepy
water. Maggy was the first to reach it. She jumped in. “No key,”
she yelled. I helped Félix settle down into a seat. The alien, now
recovered from our startling attack, bolted down the slope of the
lawn in an unimaginable burst of speed, twice as fast as any
cheetah.

Maggy searched for a key. Félix handed me
his hunting knife, and I slashed the cord, then pushed off from the
dock. We slowly drifted away in the calmness of the lake.

Once the alien reached the shore, it
stopped, stamped about for a second, then roared furiously.

“Maybe it’s like that old, old movie, what’s
it called?” Félix said.

“
Signs
,” Maggy replied.

“Yeah, maybe water will kill it.”

As if it heard Félix’s words, it defied his
guess and rushed into the water, paddling hard after the boat.

“Find the key!” Maggy ordered. We scrambled
in haste. Hidden or lost, it could not be found. As the creature
swam, it used one of its humanlike hands to yank the arrow from its
shoulder. Red blood, just like mine, escaped its body and dyed the
water.

“Shoot it,” Félix yelled at me.

But I couldn’t. I was stiff. Dead. Already
dead. Real fear doesn’t exist in video games. I couldn’t handle
facing this opponent.

Félix looked up at me, his glasses still
intact, then quickly snatched the bow and arrow, firing. It missed.
He shot a second and a third, until at last it was upon the
boat.

Maggy leapt forward with her neo-plastic axe
and hacked off one of its human hands. She brought down a giant
swing upon its head. The axe stuck, unable to be freed.

The alien cried as it sank. Bubbles
surfaced: a reminder of its life now taken.

We sat in silence. “Alion,” Maggy said after
a while.

“What?” I asked.

“Alien plus lion, it’s an alion,” she
laughed.

I thought about it for a second. “Nice, very
nice.”

Félix and I laughed, and she smiled. “Let’s
look again for the key,” she said. She found a ring of keys in a
dry box under the captain’s chair. It was a good thing that Lake
Dwellers were so trusting. If it were my boat, I would have kept
the key in a safe, or at least someplace a little more hidden from
thieving hands.

I checked over Félix’s wound; it wasn’t as
bad as his cry had led us to believe.

We reached an expensive, neo-plastic dock on
the northeast side of the lake. “It’s only five thirty, so I think
we’re okay on time,” Maggy said as she climbed out of the boat.
“Moletti’s house is on East North Street, and I think we’re between
Silver Beach and East Connecticut. You remember which house is
his?”

Félix shook his head.

“I remember brick,” I said.

“Brick is better than nothing.” We nodded.
The steps that led up the backyard slope wore me out, more than I
thought a few lousy steps could. At the top, a high deck watched
the sunset to the west, a great view on a clear day, but rainclouds
were strolling south, always the backdrop of Bellingham.

We came again to North Shore Drive. “You
know the area well,” I said to Maggy. She smiled as we passed the
East Connecticut sign. Finally, we stopped at the East North sign:
it stood motionless, just like any other sign, but I had a horrible
feeling that it would be the last street sign that I would ever set
my eyes upon. Three houses up the road, we found an ugly gray house
with brick siding climbing halfway up its walls.

The same symbol with two black lines marked
the door. “I like that sign less than the one on our doors,” I
said. My heart was wild. I didn’t want to go in.

Maggy gazed at us. “We have no other plan.”
She found two knives in her backpack: a butcher’s and a chef’s,
each thick and sharp. I pulled out a handsaw. Félix gripped his
last two hunting knives. Maggy rotated the knob.

A shadowy foyer greeted us, bleak and
chilly. We crept in single file. My foot knocked over a glass
bottle. We paused, silent and scared. The bottle rolled forever; I
don’t think it ever stopped. Maggy continued on. Straight ahead of
the foyer connected a living room with a long curling couch that
boasted seven cushions or more. In the corner of the room there was
a TV fastened to the wall. It relayed nothing but static and
emitted no sound. Bottles were scattered all across the carpet,
coffee table, and the end tables. The house reeked of alcohol.

“Look!” Maggy cried. She ran to the couch
where a sprawled body slept.

“It’s Jacob,” I said. “Is he alive?”

She put two fingers to his pale throat.
“Yeah, just passed out, I guess.”

“Look at this place,” Félix gasped. He
stared at me. “I’ve never seen so many bottles of alcohol, not even
at your parents’ New Year’s parties.”

“You think he’ll get alcohol poisoning?” I
asked, though I’m not sure why either of them would have known.
They both shrugged. I walked into the kitchen with Félix not far
behind. The counters were lined with unopened bottles. A dozen or
more little green propane bottles glared at us from the floor.

“You think he wanted to blow himself up?”
Félix’s voice quivered.

“Don’t know. IQ, come here.” Maggy bounded
up to us and gasped.

We all shuddered.

“Should we look for the telescope?” I asked.
I didn’t know what else to do.

“I guess so,” Maggy answered. We searched
the house for a while, until about six thirty; night crept upon us
with about an hour before sunset.

We gathered by the couch. “Anything?” she
asked.

“No telescope,” Félix replied. “But I found
an Apocalypse Room; it has a metal door, pretty thick too.”

“That is good to know.” She turned to
me.

I shook my head.

“Well, I don’t know what to do now; I guess
we can look outside for it . . .”

“Uhrm. I’m not going out there now, no way.
Uhrm. Forget it.”

The backyard: a motion light turned on
abruptly. We all hit the floor, crushing bottles and all. Curses,
it was all curses after that. “They’re here. They’re here.
What—what now,” Félix stuttered, beyond panic.

“The propane,” Maggy whispered.

“Huh?” he said.

“We blow the house with the propane while we
hide in the Apocalypse Room; they’re built to withstand bombs, so
we’ll be safe. You two line the house, and I’ll put one in the
oven.” No one argued. She always had the plans, and we always
listened.

A window broke somewhere in the house.

More curses sputtered forth.

Finished with the plan, we hastily lugged
Jacob down to the metal room, and as we pulled on the door, a furry
arm reached into the crack. Maggy picked up the handsaw.

The massive bone was as solid as
neo-plastic, and it fought against the saw, but the alion finally
withdrew its limb, cut halfway through. Blood splashed on the cold
floor. When the door shut, no light illuminated the cramped space.
Such complete darkness.

Claws, powered by tough, strong muscle,
struck the door. No one screamed like on TV. I guess when fear is
thick and real, they just didn’t come out. My throat was so dry, so
terribly dry.

“It will only take about a minute for the
oven to get hot enough,” Maggy said while stroke after stroke fell
upon the door.

Silence overtook the room on our side of the
door. My body quaked worse than a 9.0. I reached into my backpack
and grabbed the goggles. I thought sight would calm me.

I looked upon a black and white world, with
some gray, some cold gray. I saw Jacob’s body in the back, still
and lifeless. He had certainly had the right idea; there was no
fear coursing through him now, no stomach pains, no nausea, nothing
but blackness. I scanned the room until my eyes fell upon Félix and
Maggy. They huddled together across from me, cozy and tender. I
spotted their interlocked hands.

I had never felt so sick. So hot. So
enraged. If ever an all time low existed, this was it. I cleared my
throat over and over again.

The first tank exploded. The chain followed.
I closed my eyes to peer at the darkness that blackened my
thoughts. I waited, filled with hope that my tormented heart would
cease, at the end now. At the end.

Maggy

T
ortilla was holding
me tight, his grip comforted and hurt at the same time. That’s how
hard he held me.

My head rested against his chest. For a
while, I just listened to the
ba-bump-ba-bump
of his heart.
This was my first time hearing it: it was the best sound in the
world. It was so dark, and I was so relaxed, I wanted to fall
asleep, but my mind jumped around as if I had had three cups of
coffee.

I looked up at Tortilla. He was so peaceful,
so incredibly peaceful. Well, I don’t know if I saw him, or if I
saw what I wanted to see. I couldn’t see Jelly across from us. I
was glad. I was glad he couldn’t see us together. He would hate
it.