Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller (12 page)

     Ray bit into the jerky and a thought that was not his own invaded his mind. Fresh meat was better. Blood and tearing and warm red death. Before he could even swallow the first bite, the visceral imagery playing in his mind caused him such distress that he vomited. With the slightly chewed jerky came thin, yellow bile. Ray found he was no longer very hungry.

     “Ray!” Amy exclaimed worriedly as she put a hand on his back, having stopped walking when he started throwing up. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

     “I guess eating isn’t such a good idea right now,” Ray said as he wiped his mouth. He wasn’t willing to tell Amy what the thing inside him had shown him, or how much it longed for Amy’s flesh to eat instead of dry, smoked jerky. That wouldn’t help the situation in any way. Besides that, it had scared the shit out of him. “Let’s keep going, okay?”

     “Are you sure you’re all right?” Amy asked, keeping both of her hands on his arm to steady him as he straightened back up. Her voice and eyes were both full of deep concern.

     “I’m good,” Ray assured her. “Let’s go.”

     They continued along the freeway, occasionally seeing evidence of what had transpired during the night. Several times, they saw crashed cars, their drivability destroyed by blown tires, crumpled frames or caved-in roofs. Others were flipped or wedged in areas impossible to remove them from without hours of effort.

     Though Ray always wanted to check them for supplies, Amy was too sick at heart for the missing or dead occupants to want to venture too near.

     “Sam will have plenty of supplies,” Amy declared finally. “All we have to do is get there.”

     Thirty minutes into the freeway walk, Ray stopped Amy with a hand on her arm. There was an overpass up ahead. What took seconds in a car would take at least a minute, even if they ran. There were shadowy pockets where an enemy waiting to ambush unwary travelers could lay in wait. It was like a fairy tale about trolls, Ray thought, and he and Amy were the would-be victims.

     “Ray, there’s no one there,” Amy told him, noting the reason for his hesitation to continue.

     “You don’t know that.”

     “I can see, Ray,” Amy countered. “It isn’t night yet. There are shadows, yeah, but not so deep that someone could hide in them.”

     “The shadows themselves are the threat,” Ray said, too quietly for Amy to hear as she walked away from him, closer to the overpass. Raising his voice, he called, “Amy, don’t. We’ll go up and around. It won’t take too long.”

     “Oh, my Lord,” Amy said while rolling her eyes. “Ray, come on. You can’t seriously think someone’s waiting in there to jump us.”

     “I’d just rather be safe,” Ray explained as he took her by the hand and drew her to the right. They could climb up that side, he thought; it wasn’t as steep as the other. “It’s a practice you should get into. Think of it as training.”
     “Whatever makes you happy,” Amy said. Her tone was dubious, but she submitted to Ray’s preference to go around. It wouldn’t take that much longer, she reasoned, and it would make him feel better.

     “Stay out of shadows, even in the daytime,” Ray advised as they scaled the small incline together. “If you absolutely have to go into the dark, have a weapon at the ready. There’s a good chance it won’t help, but it’ll be better than going down without a fight, you know?”

     “Wow, Ray, that’s a really positive thought,” Amy said sarcastically. “Thanks for that. I’ll take it to heart.”

     Not paying as much attention as she should have been to the frozen ground, Amy lost her footing and slipped down. She yelped and instinctively held out a hand, which Ray grabbed securely. He used his height and strength as leverage and pulled, helping Amy to regain her footing without losing his own.

     “Thanks, Ray,” Amy exclaimed with a gasp.

     Ray made it a point to give her a few seconds to affirm she was secure in her footing before he released her hand and gave her a belated, “you’re welcome.”

     “Good reflexes,” Amy continued as she made her way up the last few feet with more caution. “I would’ve been hurting for sure if I took that tumble.”
     “At your service,” Ray joked back as he lifted himself easily over the guardrail, and then held out his hands to help Amy over. She was much shorter than he was and while he could stretch over the low cement wall with little issue, Amy would have more difficulty.

     “Do you plan on lifting me over?” Amy asked with a laugh.

     “If you need me to,” Ray answered seriously, making Amy laugh harder.

     “Nah,” she said. “I think I’ve got it covered. If I can use you for balance, we should be good.”

     After Amy was over, they both stood overlooking the long, curving stretch of highway before them. Nothing moved; no cars drove, no people walked. There wasn’t even an animal in sight, which was unusual. Whenever Laura picked Amy up for a weekend, Amy frequently saw deer on the side of the road. With their owners lost to madness or worse, Amy had expected to see several household pets, dog and cats, at least, out and about as they walked. But they had seen no indication of life. It perplexed Amy deeply, and made her think on things she hadn’t wanted to consider.

     “We should open as many doors as we can when we get into town,” Amy suggested in a quiet voice as she and Ray continued to look over the deserted freeway. She spoke in funereal tones, a voice reserved for mourners in a crypt.

     Ray gave her an inquisitive look and asked, “Why?”

     “Well, there are pets that will end up starving if they’re left home alone,” Amy said, and she was embarrassed that the thought was one of the big concerns she had. “Outside in the cold and feral is better than inside starving. They’ll have a better chance if we let them out.”

     “I wouldn’t have thought of that,” Ray mused, but he nodded. “It’s a good idea, I guess. Let nature do with them what it will. No point in letting them suffer from starvation or dehydration.”

     “Right,” Amy concurred, and she sounded relieved. “Thanks for agreeing with me, Ray. I know it’s a stupid thing to think about with everything else going on.”

     “I’ve never thought anything you think is stupid,” Ray said in a chiding voice. “Come on. Our best chance to get you safe before dark is to keep moving.”

     “Ray, look!” Amy exclaimed in an excited voice as she grabbed his arm. Her grip was tight and she nearly bounced with renewed hopeful energy.

     “Someone’s alive,” Ray murmured.

     The economy van was silvery blue, coming down the freeway opposite the way Ray and Amy were heading. The vehicle had only one obvious occupant; a man, Ray saw as the van drew closer to where he and Amy were jumping up and down, waving their arms, hoping to flag the driver down. He slowed the van and stopped on the other side of the overpass. Ray and Amy ran toward the car, which the man put in park before he stepped out of it.

     “Hi, there,” the man called up, and he sounded wary.

     “Hello!” Amy responded. Her voice was almost giddy. “Please don’t drive away! We’re normal, I promise. We’ll be right down!”

     Going down the side of the overpass was much quicker; both due to Amy’s excitement at seeing another person and the fact that it was much steeper than the other. Amy stumbled the last few feet, but managed to regain her footing and avoided face-planting on the pavement in front of the tall, well-muscled male stranger. She saw he was dark as the shadows she was supposed to avoid at all costs, with warm brown eyes strained by recent events. His hair was cut short and was as dark as the rest of him. He had large hands, with clean, broad fingernails. He held one out to Amy and she took it to shake.

     “Hi, I’m Amy,” she said, and she was breathless. Her smile was wide and welcoming, and that put the man ever so slightly at ease.

     “Hi, Amy. Good to meet you. And you are?” he asked as Ray finished his descent and stood protectively near his female charge.

     “Ray. It’s nice to meet you, sir.” He stopped talking after the niceties, giving the man ample opportunity to introduce himself.

     “Well, it’s great to see other people,” the man proclaimed. He held out the same hand Amy had shaken to Ray, who reciprocated the polite gesture out of habit. “My name’s Shane, and let me tell you, I’ve had one hell of a morning.”

Chapter Ten

           Several hours before, after a wayward Escalade had totaled his ambulance in the night, Shane Harris had found himself walking along a back road in one of Michigan’s many small towns. He’d been on call around ten the night before, when everything had started. He was one of three EMTs that had been in the ambulance when it crashed. The driver had died instantly, and his two co-workers had suffered some shared madness, both devolving into murderous freaks in the blink of an eye. Shane had escaped the wreck, and the other EMTs had gone at each other. All Shane had needed to see was the splash of blood against the cracked back window to convince him to hightail it the hell away from there.

     He’d walked through the trees as often as he could. Being a country boy, he knew his way around a forest, and he’d known he didn’t want to be on the roads. He’d figured correctly that his chances had been good he wouldn’t encounter any other people if he stuck to the trees, and avoiding human-or what currently passed for human-contact had seemed like a good idea to him at the time.

     When dawn had broken, he’d come upon a big, two-story house tucked back in the woods. The driveway was long and winding, and the home was surrounded on all sides by thick copses of trees. It was a nice place, and Shane had decided it would be the first home he would venture into in order to attempt to reinstate human contact. He was a helper at heart, and if something bad was happening, he’d known he couldn’t go too long without offering his assistance.

     As he’d walked through the backyard toward the large house, Shane had seen a young woman leave the house through the open garage door. Though it was an incredibly chilly winter morning, the plump but pretty brunette had been barefoot, dressed in a short-sleeved pajama set. She was holding something in her arms, but Shane hadn’t been close enough to identify what it was at first.

     She hadn’t noticed him at all, so Shane had discreetly followed the woman all the way down the driveway, cringing at the thought of how cold she must have been. Just as he was about to call out to her, to offer her his jacket or to escort her back up to the house, she had reached the culvert at the end of the driveway.

     The culvert was wide and tall, nearly eight feet from where the young woman stood to the icy water that flowed sluggishly from the cement tunnel. There were rocks and old pieces of concrete in the ditch, and Shane had imagined that in the summer, the water rose high and had all sorts of fish, frogs and crawfish in residence within it.

     As he’d pondered these things, the bundle in the woman’s arms had begun to stir, and issued a tiny cry. It was an infant. She’d held it out for the space of a few seconds, and then had dropped it into the icy water.

     Shane had been frozen by pure shock for all of three seconds. As the woman let herself drop into the ditch, facedown, after the baby, Shane had raced to the edge and plunged into the water. It had been maybe two and a half feet of arctic chill, but Shane had hardly felt it as he went for the baby.

     Luckily, the infant had missed any of the rocks or concrete that could have easily killed it from that high of a drop. Even more luckily, Shane had reacted with speed and experience, pulling the child from the freezing water and wrapping it in his coat, against the heat of his body.

     The woman Shane presumed was the baby’s mother had not been so lucky; blood had already begun to blossom in a frozen flower around her outspread brown hair. She had landed on one of the pieces of concrete, and definitely had a head injury. Thinking only of how he would always react in such a situation, Shane had turned her over so she wouldn’t drown, then had taken hold of her by the back of her neck and dragged her up. The school of thought to not move someone who’d suffered a head injury had to bend a little when the injured party was scantily clad in below zero water.

     Once they were on the ground away from the ditch, Shane had placed the woman on her side, hoping she would last long enough for him to administer care to the infant, who was Shane’s primary concern at the time. He’d pulled the tiny creature from beneath his coat, handling her gingerly as he slipped his coat off, spread it on the ground and placed the baby atop it. Shane had decided upon seeing the infant that she was either a girl or the world’s prettiest boy, and she’d been breathing, having immediately spat up any water she’d swallowed. She’d begun shivering violently, though; little arms trembling forcefully and tiny fists clenching in apparent pain. Her lips had quickly begun turning blue.

     Shane had decided he would attempt CPR on the mother, and then get them both back up to the house as quickly as possible. He’d intended to leave the woman there first, covering her with his coat as he got the baby to a warmer environment.

     Course of action decided, Shane had turned back to the woman on the ground. What he’d seen would give him nightmares the next time he was able to sleep, and every time after that.