Drifters (2 page)

Chapter Two

The car stopped
several feet away, the windshield dropped and young man was on the driver seat. I moved closer to the window and see that there are three men inside. The one in the back was the one that came odd to me since his smell was copper metallic, a smell I know to well; he was looking down resting his body to the black upholster panel of the car holding his stomach.

“Hello boys, where are you heading?”

“We are going to Flagstaff for the weekend.”

“Great.”

“What’s your name and where are you headed Miss?”

“My name is Sara,” I said, “Just wherever will do.”

“We can do that, Miss Sara.” said the man in the driver seat as he twisted his body and moving his hand to unlock and open the door behind him from inside.

Ha pushed the door and I
grab it letting myself inside the car, the odd man at my side with the metallic smell just barley looks at me, as I moved myself jumping between the two front seats looking at both of them and through the rearview mirror in the windshield, I can see the odd one behind me, glaring, his eyes red and a small patch of black around its sockets. I moved my gaze from him.

“So
, tell me, where are you guys from?” I said as the first drops of rain started hitting the windshield of the car with a big thump, big heavy drops.

“Well I am from Highland Michigan,” said the driver.

“I’m from Amarillo Texas,” said the guy on the passenger seat.

T
hey were all wearing the same type of cloths, red long pants with brown belts and shoes, white long sleeved shirt all rolled to their elbows. The car inside was clean; the upholstery was black with beige trims. The roaring sound of the car is heard over the silence as the driver started to move the car away from where it had stopped alongside the road.

“And you?” I said turning my waist left and looking over my shoulder to the man who had taken his gaze away from me and now was loo
king back down.

“None of your damn business.” he said wit
hout looking up.

“Hey Alex,” said the driver, “be cool man.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Alex you jerk, what did we told you when we picked you up?” said the passenger.

“I know, I know.” He said looking up. I could better see his face now and he had droplets of sweat over his face and his eyes were almost looking like the number three ball on a pool table, red. There was something oddly familiar in them and I could not put my finger in what it was.

“So, Alex I presume, since that’s what they called you. Are you okay you looked a little pale?”

“Yes, just stop asking me question, get those chatter boxes over there to talk to you and leave me alone.” He said looking down again.

I mouthed the word ‘okay’ and looked fo
rward when the sign for flagstaff appeared in front of the head lights in a blurry view. I guessed I was close, but not this close.

“Almost there guys.” said the driver with glee on his voice as if he had everything planned for the weekend.

The smell of metallic copper started to get strong and I looked back at Alex he was holding his position, close to the panel and looking down, holding his stomach as if in pain. I sat and patted him on the back; he flinched and struck my hand away.

“Geez and one
is trying to help.”  I said rolling my eyes and I moved to the other side of the back seat crossing my hands over my breasts. The rain is falling harder and the metallic sounds of the drops sounds like someone hitting the roof of the car with its palm, big thumps. Silence has fallen inside the car.

I didn’t ask for their names because I could see them on their shirts, they were e
mbroidered on them. Jane and Max, whom Max I presumed was short for Maxwell. The first letter of their names was arched on a fancy swirl at the upper end, probably a club or from a fraternity. I never have been to collage, but during my trips I’d stopped in one or two campuses.

“Um, Max is it?”

“Yes, how did you know my name?”

“It’s on your shirt
.” I said.

“Oh,” he said as he hit the brakes
slowing the car down as the night outside was filled with blue strobes of light. Cops were to the left stopping traffic and I asked myself what might have happened. Max drives slowly to where a cop with a yellow poncho, drenched from the rain waves him to a stop.

“Good night fellows,” he said as Max fi
nished rolling the window.

“Good night officer what seem to be the problem?”

“Nothing to worry about, just looking for someone, nothing to worry about.” he said as I became alert. I drove myself as deeper as the seat would take me. I tried to stay away from the cops light as he waves it inside putting in the face of everyone in the car.

It can’t be them, not now, after several weeks without hearing or seeing any of them, why here? I know I had covered my tracks quit well and I never knew where I would definitely stop.

“Hello miss,” he said tilting his black cap saluting me.

“Hi.” I said shyly.

“Well guys have a great trip and drive safely the road is wet.” he said as he straightens tapping the hood of the car and shutting the light off. He tilted his hat at Max and I let out a breath of air I was holding.

“Now
, that was weird.”

“I hope you aren’t the one they are looking for?” said Jane tilting his head backwards and letting out snort laughter that made him sound like a pig.

“I’m not.” I said a little too fast and my voice cracking a little.

“Hey I did not want to offend you, sorry” he said.

They drove into town; silence filled the car once more, as we entered the exit and down the ramp. They drove straight to a hotel, which I presumed they had reservations, and stopped the car in the parking lot next door. We said our goodbyes and I was hoping not to see them again and to disappear; if they were here I had to leave and right now.

Chapter Three

With my head down and eyes moving everywhere trying to get a view of everyone in front of me, I walked unnoticed. I left the lot not looking back and putting my hands inside my black jeans pockets. As several hours had passed and I walked away from this place not even getting a good look at the town, I started thinking; if they were here they need a command center, but where? Where would they put that green tent I hated so much? Doesn’t matter I just needed to leave and fast.

Behind me
I heard the screeching of tires and I turned, to my surprise the same yellow car the three boys drove me here came hurriedly down the street, behind it several cop cars rushing towards it. I just left those guys several hours ago. What had happened? Were they the ones they were looking for and not me?

As the car came cl
oser I got a glimpse of the man now driving, Alex. He was on the driver seat blood on his face and smiling like if satisfied after eating a big meal and I knew then and there, he is just like me, he lives also with the hunger deep inside of him.

As the car passes
in front of me and as it did, Alex turns his head and looks straight at me. I look in to his eyes and he was enjoying the surge of extra adrenalin from the chase. Was Alex all this time the one they were looking for and not me? Does Alex even know there is another one like him? I needed the answers because Alex could be a time bomb. I had never encountered any other like me. And where are the bodies of his friends if they were dead. I turned around and started walking towards the hotel where they left me, and I was hoping not to see these men again. Since the cops saw me with them, they were surely going to start looking for me. I had no choice, risk it, I told myself. I had to; maybe they were not here anyway.

The walk to the hotel was completely even
tless, but once there I can the cops flooding the entrance of the hotel. In the lot beside it, where I climbed out of the yellow car, was crawling also with cops, like ants on a piece of candy. I came as close as I could and watched. There was a cop in a black suit shouting orders to two uniformed that ran as fast as they could to a car at the end of a long line. Then in to frame came the cop that had stopped us on the road block. I started to walk backwards when I heard a familiar voice.

“Sara, we need your help.”

I stopped cold, they were here looking for me. I was so stupid, I scolded myself. I turned around and yes there he was Jeremy Garber, Director of the lab I escaped so long ago.

He moved fast and grabbed my arms.

“Let me go.” I said and wiggled around like a worm to try and be free of his hold, but his grip was hard and his fingernails were digging in my skin as little scalpels. I did not show my strength since he is a mere human.

“I am not here to take you back.”

“Then why are you here”

“You saw him, right?”

“Saw who?” He let go of the hold and looked up to the scene in the hotel.

“Him he said as he pointed to the hotel”

“Him? Who?” I asked again as I was about to slap some sense on him since he was making none.

“Listen Sara this chase has been long g
oing. To many years after you, we get you, you escape again I am old and weary. I want you to work for us.”

“Just like that you want me to work for you, what is wrong in your head.”

“Listen Sara this way you can stop being a drifter.”

“I like being a drifter I get to meet new people.”

He looks at me with a concern eyes then moves backwards a little inhaling deeply. He turns around and looks at a bench and sits, he patted the other end signaling me to sit beside him. He bends forward putting his forearm on his knees and balling up his hands in front of him. He exhales.

“Sara, we found more like you. You are not the only one.”

“What?”

“We found out there are others that carry the disease some are stable and inactive. Ot
hers, well, you see right there what they can do.” He said as his head moved towards the hotel.

“What do you mean inactive?” I asked thin
king the worst of him as I always did. But his face changed all of a sudden, gloomy, sadness appeared in his eyes as they watered. A time when I cared so much for him caught me by surprise, but I pushed the feeling away.

“I am sorry Sara for everything I have done to you; I really am, but your kind…”

“Okay let me get this straight and I am going on a limb here. You want me to come to work for you, maybe tracking other like me and you think a fucking sorry will make things right between us?” I said and burst of the chair completely infuriated, my hands making hard balls. He put the palms of his hands to his knees and pushed himself to a standing position.

I turned again so he was facing my back; I was thinking what he wanted from me and end this chase. The wind blew up and my hair danced away from my face. The chills crawled on my skin as he stayed silent at my back. The sights of the body bags now coming out of the hotel were like omens of things starting to get worse for me if I said no. I was about to turn when he spoke.

“I don’t have much time left Sara; I want to leave you with a gift of freedom if you work for us.”

“What freedom would I have? I bet you would put some tracker on me and “my kind” just to make yourself save from us?”

“You are wrong the division that I am creating, where I want you to be part off, would be yours to control. You do as you see fit under the circumstances.”

“No more chasing me?”

“Yes.”

“I will do what I want.”

“Yes.”

I turned looked into his eyes and they were still sad, droopy if you may. I was
about to say yes when he said “Just one thing.”

“I knew there was a catch.”

“Don’t get me wrong it’s just a safeguard for your family.”

“I don’t have a family.”

“Well your kind then.”

“What is it?”

“We need you to give us samples from each and every one of your kind you can find.”

“I knew it, for tagging, then the answer is no. I don’t care you chasing me or the others. All I want is to be left alone and in peace.”
I said as his brow arched downward and his lips tighten.

Chapter Four

I looked back at the hotel and it was still lit with strobes of the cop’s cars
red and blue lights. People were gathering outside as the black body bags were coming out, how many did Alex attacked? I thought, and only I knew at the moment the danger that would unfold in just a matter of days, if things are not taken care off now. I looked at Jeremy still with the arched brow and tight lips glaring at me.

“Sara you know what will happen.” He said as he moved to my side, his suit flapping to the winds song, his back straight, tight, and his arms to it embracing the lower part. “If
it were not a matter of urgency I would not offer this. There are two others we could identify. God knows how many others are out there.”

I looked forward and embrace myself reme
mbering the first time I watched one come back, one of my victims, the nurse. Then I heard the shot coming from the back of a locked memory and Jeremy with his military uniform glaring down at the corpse. I jumped as it echoed all over again in my head. Then I moved my head down looking at the asphalt under my feet then forward again.

“Just this once,” I said knowing that this time things are different. There are others like me out there and I would have to protect them from him, I know he is planning something else. I know that since I am not unique as b
efore all he had to do was catch one of us so he can do his experiments all over again. But again, what if the others are just that, experiments that they knowingly have unleashed to the world and the danger they possessed.

I turned around without saying any other word to him he only screamed to the nights wind were to meet the next day as I walked away. The wind distorted his words, but I u
nderstood where to go. I walked with no intention of stopping anywhere, just move forward with no actual direction. I went north through Gregory Street and then back south going towards the forest. I don’t know why I had the urge to go there, maybe because I always have found the solitude of the forest welcoming. At the edge of the forest I looked left and back. My trail is spotless no one had fallowed me; there was no one behind a tree, a car or any other place they could use to hide. I moved inside the forest beside a tree with its trunk carved with a heart and two letters ‘G’ and ‘C’ with a plus sign, I put my finger to the bark of the tree and traced each curve the carving made. I felt that it was just nothing interesting at the time.

I walked on a small grassy path for several minutes inside the forest with the night chi
lly as it was and rustling of night creatures around. I lay on a clearing I found and listened. The night creatures were moving all around me; the flapping of wings was heard in the sky. The wind whistling its magical sonnet with the trees leaves, howling of wolves far in the distance that sounded more like a plea for something I could not understand and the  stomping of some large animals which I did not knew what kind they were. With those sounds inside my ears I put my hands behind my neck and drifted to a worried night sleep.

#

I woke early in the morning; leaves were covering my body as they fell during the night. The morning dew on my skin felt refreshing. I sat grabbing my knees pulling them close to my chest and remembering where Jeremy wanted me to meet him. I heard rustling to my left and turned my head. When a man weighing no more than an old TV set from 20
th
century, a piece of technology where the screen was made from a glassed vacuumed tube, came staggering towards me.

“Please help me.” he said his voice quive
ring

I stood up and ran towards him. My only thought was, if he was bitten by Alex, the source of my new adventure. Where was he? I thought and knelt down besides the man where he was.

“Please he is still out there?” he said

“Who
?”

“That man, he, he had blood all over and was growling like a deranged animal, please help me he was chasing me.”

“Where was this” I said as the hunger started speaking to me. I looked up to the rising sun.

“Please do you have a phone?”

“No.” I said looking from where he had appeared some seconds ago.

“What are you doing?” he said his face di
storted with fear and weirdness as he looks as I stood and started walking towards the bushes he had appeared some moments ago.

“You’ll be okay” I said as I knew he was not bitten and I disappeared in the bushes tracking Alex not minding the meet with Jer
emy. I did not care I had to find Alex fast and then deal with the corpses he had left behind if Jeremy had not done away with them by now.

I heard the screams of the man from the clearing I had left telling me I was crazy, this man was not human he had screamed, If o
nly he knew.

I walked for hours looking for the place this man had come from but found nothing. I backed tracked back to the clearing when the faint smell of metal caught my nostrils and I stopped. I looked left and right as the smell came closer. I traded the trail carefully
, the idea of been surprised by Alex was overwhelming me. How strong is he? I thought. Another rustling in the bushes this one to my right, the bushes moved, swayed left and right, up and down. The silence was over this new place in the forest, no flapping of wings in the sky no chirping of birds and it was weird the forest is always covered in sound, yet this silence was unnatural for me. I waited. Holding my breath from time to time when in front of me jumped a fawn, a small animal with its brownish fur coat. He looked at me and moved its head down. I let out a breath of relief.

Extending my hand I lured him towards me. It reluctantly came slowly and liked my hand. The hunger started churning inside, growling telling me it’s time for a meal. I looked down towards my stomach and up at the fawn. It blinked with those black beady eyes telling me he was not scared.

“I’m Sorry” I said as I lunged forward sticking my teeth to its necked the blood flowed from my mouth down my throat and the feeling of satisfaction started rising in me. I grabbed the animal by its neck pushing him down, I fought the animal as he kicked and tried to get away, yet there was no sound coming from it. I tore the flesh and in hand full put them in my mouth, eating its meat on a frenzy of satisfaction. I have not taken any flesh for a while now, not since Canyon Diablo. I thought about my last time in Oregon where I had taken down a cult of murderers for a god they believed in as my meal ticket to let the hunger subside.

The baby deer didn’t moved anymore, it took four seconds for its death to come and I ate. The hunger does not affect animals as it does humans, only monkeys, chimps seemed
affected by it and I guessed it was cause of the similar genetics we possessed, still I had to make sure he would not come back, just in case. I tore the head of the animal and put my hand inside from its neck moving inside, like a worm to get to its brain. When I grabbed it in my hand it was a small thing almost as big as my baseball. I clasped my finger and yanked it out. I stood up relief, in satisfaction that I had a meal and I would not have to fight the hunger for a time now. I was all covered in the fawns’ blood. I needed to get clean and meet Jeremy, but how was I going to get clothes since the events of Canyon Diablo left me with only what I had on. I knew there had to be a river close by yet I had no time to spend. I turned around after covering the fawn’s body with leaves and broken branches. I knelt down and said a small prayer.

I walked for another hour in the forest looking around as the blood dried on my cloths. I knew if someone saw me I would look like a murderer that had just finished an evil deed and was going back for another victim.  When I had an idea, I looked at the ground were the morning dew had created a wet floor. I grabbed mud and put it all over my body, over the blood stained cloths to hide the crimson red that was turning brown. The metal smell arose in the air as I put the mud and I looked up. The birds now were chirping the m
usic of the forest had just started all over again. I looked left when Alex appeared.

“Well, well
. I see you have the lust for blood and meat too.” he said with glean on his face

“Alex, you don’t understand.”

“O, but I do.”

“No you don’t.” I said and stood up.

“Well then explain it to me.” he said still smiling showing stained red teeth.

“You and I are alike, we both have the hu
nger crawling at us and fighting it takes a toll.” I said looking at his face when his brow arched downward his eyes sliced and his smile disappeared.

“But I like eating.” he said and lunged forward hands open trying to grab me by the throat. I moved right and he missed.

“Alex, fight it.”

“I am hungry.”

“You can fight the hunger.”

“No.”

I looked at him, he side steps left circling me like a predator does its victim, assessing when the best moment to attack is. He smiled again as he kept side stepping moving left with every stride, I stayed fallowing him with my eyes, turning my head and body as he kept moving and waiting for his next attack. He turned around and started running away from me. I ran after him trying to catch up, but he was faster and disappeared in the woods. I grabbed a hand full of my hair and made a bun of it and walked to the skirt of the forest, to the carved tree and towards the road.