Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller (5 page)

     As soon as he moved, the teen snapped forward, his body jerking like he’d been pulled forth by invisible puppet strings. From somewhere within his center mass, from somewhere Sam couldn’t immediately identify, a shadow shape lunged forward and locked a mouthful of three inch fangs on Sam’s shoulder.

     The creature looked insubstantial-the teeth were not.

     The massive jaws of the shadow beast allowed it to cling like a rabid dog to Sam. His muscles screamed a protest against the pain and agonizing fire spread from the wound as blood gushed from underneath the unnatural blackness.

     “Fuck!” Sam shouted as he tried desperately to detach the alien entity from his shoulder.

     As though snapping himself out of a trance, the younger man jerked back, and the shadow shaped slipped back underneath his skin.

     Already pale, the teen now looked ghastly. Already with a face still slightly rounded by youth, he now looked like a small child facing the wrath of a parent who had caught him in some monstrous wrongdoing.

     “I’m sorry, mister,” the young man said in a whisper. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s happening.”

     Sam dropped to his knees, legs shaking too badly because of the pain for him to continue to stand as he gripped his mauled shoulder. No matter that the shadow thing had been ghostly in form; it had done its damage physically enough. Sam’s skin was deeply lacerated, and blood poured between his fingers as he clasped his hand over the grisly wound. He felt like throwing up or passing out.

     “I got some stuff,” the younger man continued in a rush. “Some bandages and stuff. My mom’s got a first aid kit in the bathroom. Come on, mister, lemme help you up.”

     When Sam didn’t move, the boy hesitantly came forward and tried helping the older man stand.

     “I don’t know what’s going on,” the teen continued as he pulled Sam haltingly to his feet. “My name’s Austin. My dad never came home last night and my mom…” He trailed off, and his hazel-brown eyes clouded with consternation. “My mom wasn’t right. She ran off in the night and I don’t know where she went or what’s happening.”

     “Kid, I don’t know what’s happening, either,” Sam said in a strained voice as he allowed the boy to lead him inside and toward the bathroom. “I got knocked out myself, been to hell and back since last night, it feels like. Have you been watching the TV, listening to the radio? Someone has to know what’s happening.”

     “TV’s been out since early morning,” Austin told Sam as he guided the older man to the toilet to sit down on the closed lid. As he rummaged through the cabinet on Sam’s right he continued, saying, “We don’t have a radio. Stupid, I know. Internet’s been down, too. Now how does that happen, man? How can they shut down the whole system in one damn night, you know?”

     “They?” Sam asked as Austin turned back to him with bandages, wash clothes and medical tape.

     “My mom’s a nurse,” Austin explained when Sam gave the first aid collection a look of appreciation. “Always has stuff like this on hand. And as far as ‘they,’ well, that’s what’s happening, right? Something came, and they’re…doing stuff to us. Isn’t that how it seems to you?”

     Sam pondered the thought as Austin ran water until it was warm and soaked two of the cloths in the stream.

     “That shadow thing,” Sam said slowly. “That’s what you’re talking about? Like we’ve been taken over by something?”

     “Yeah, yeah,” Austin agreed excitedly as he turned back to Sam. “Like aliens. Like we went to sleep and they got inside us, right?”

     Sam nodded, and the movement hurt his shoulder. The thoughts he was entertaining because of the boy hurt his head.

     “Alien invasion. That’s what you think this is?” Sam questioned pointedly as Austin helped him to remove his heavy jacket and slip out of his torn shirt.

     “Sorry,” Austin said as Sam gave a hiss of pain. “Can’t patch it up through the shirt, you know? Anyway, yeah. Yeah, something like aliens. If you were an alien and came to this planet, wouldn’t you take one look at us sorry lot and figure it was better to just kick the shit out of us early on? We’re a sorry species, man. A sorry species.”

     “Maybe,” Sam agreed as Austin began to work on his shoulder. “Something’s not right, that’s for sure.”

     Grunting around the pain as Austin pressed down with the wet cloth to clear off some of the blood, Sam considered the boy’s alien invasion theory. It wasn’t anything like he’d anticipated it would be, were they ever to experience alien contact, but had he really ever thought about it too hard before now? A hostile alien race would certainly be dissimilar enough from humanity that their warfare itself would be so completely unlike our own that we wouldn’t even realize what we were fighting at first. The thought was not a comforting one. Sam doubted there would be many entering his mind for the time being.

     “We’ll bandage it, and then wrap it,” Austin said as he pulled out a roll of the type of fabric Sam had used in the past to wrap a bum ankle or sprained wrist. “That should keep the bandages in place. They’re puncture wounds, so they can’t be stitched but the bleeding has slowed a lot. I think if you take it easy, there shouldn’t be any kind of permanent damage.”

     The boy talked like he knew something about medical situations, and Sam liked him more for it.

     “You’re good at this,” Sam said as a way of attempting to lessen Austin’s guilt over having put him in the current, bloody position.

     Austin blushed to the roots of his pale blood hair and said, “I want to be a nurse, like my mom. She’s good at what she does, even though she hates it. I like the work, and I’d like to help people. It’s what I chose as my major for college.”

     Sam wasn’t surprised by the boy’s admission. After he’d lost the stiffness in his behavior from the embarrassment and guilt over what had happened, he’d revealed a kind of sweetness of nature that most children-especially boys-sadly grew out of when their teen years hit. Sam was hoping his own boy wouldn’t lose what he now saw in Austin by time he hit those years.

     Thinking of Trevor made Sam’s heart pound painfully. He had to get home, and fast. Whatever was happening, his family’s well-being was still his top priority.

     “I have to get to my family,” Sam told Austin as the teen patted the wound dry in order to bandage and tape it. “Is there a car here that I can borrow?”

     “Yeah, yeah,” Austin said distractedly as he focused on not giving Sam more pain during the bandaging. “My mom’s car is still in the garage. She went totally nuts and just ran outside, you know? I don’t know where she went, or if she’s coming back…” Trailing off, Austin tried to hide the bleak fear and sadness that entered his dark hazel eyes.

     “She’ll be back,” Sam assured Austin as the teen finished securing the bandage and the wrap around Sam’s shoulder, though he probably sounded as unconvinced as he felt. “She won’t leave you alone, kid.”

     “Yeah, I know. I know. I just…” The boy trailed off again, and he seemed much younger again. He continued quickly, forcing out the words as though he feared he might lose the nerve to say them. “Could I go with you, maybe? Just for a while. I could leave her a note, you know? And maybe she can meet us somewhere. You’re a firefighter. Do you think more of you guys will be teaming up? Like, maybe a bunch of police and stuff are going to hole up at a station or something, you know? I could tell her in the note that I’m going with a firefighter and trying to get to a place where people are going to be together. Just for safety. She wouldn’t worry then.”

     The words poured out of Austin in a rush, not giving Sam any time to interject either a positive or negative response. The boy was scared shitless, Sam thought with extreme sympathy. Though he disliked separating family in a time of emergency, he would also not forgive himself for leaving the teen alone without protection.

     “Sure, kid,” Sam agreed. “Sooner the better, though. Write your note, grab some stuff and we’ll hit the road, okay?”
     Austin’s eyes filled with relief and something that had been absent from them since Sam had first seen them from the cracked door: hope. He didn’t believe his parents were coming back, that’s what his expression told Sam. And he supposed with how willing he was to take the teen along, Sam really didn’t believe it either. It was a sobering thought, but it was not something Sam was going to dwell on.

     “Come on, kid,” Sam said as he stood. “I’ll help you pack.”

Chapter Six

     As the survivalist he fancied himself to be, Sam’s home was already well-stocked with provisions and equipment; he just needed to get back there. With this in mind, he indeed helped Austin pack, and the items he included were minimal. Two changes of clothes, the rest of the contents of his mother’s first aid kit, simple things like a toothbrush, other sanitary supplies including deodorant and a very few miscellaneous items Austin packed for himself without Sam’s direction or input.

     The last thing Sam saw Austin grab was a framed photo from the wall, a picture of his family together. Sam didn’t debate the necessity for Austin taking it, nor did he say anything about the photo at all. Austin didn’t say anything about it, either, merely slipped it into the bag he had previously used for school supplies along with all the other things he planned to take with him.

     “Car keys?” Sam questioned after they had everything prepared to leave.

     “They’re on a rack by the garage door,” Austin answered. “Or at least they should be. Mom’s bad about putting things where they go.”

     The comment made Sam think about his own wife. Laura was the opposite in that respect. It seemed she knew where everything you needed to know was, even if she didn’t see where you put it. Organized was putting it lightly for Laura.

     He wanted to get back to her, and to their kids. Every thought that concerned them made the desire stronger.

     The keys were on the rack as they should be. Austin made sure to leave his note in a prominent place on the kitchen table, though Sam got a good sense of how futile the boy thought the measure was.

     “You put my address on there,” Sam reminded the boy as a way of reassuring him as they entered the garage. “Best case scenario is we never have to leave my place until all of this blows over and they’ll meet us there in a couple of days. A week at most.”

     Austin nodded, but didn’t otherwise respond to Sam’s attempt at reassurance. His lost little boy expression softened Sam’s heart toward him even further.

     “Well, hop in,” Sam said as he clicked the automatic lock button to unlock the doors. “It’s not far to my place but I’m definitely glad I don’t have to walk it.”

     Austin put his pack in the backseat and silently buckled himself into the front passenger. The look he gave the garage as Sam opened the door with the automatic opener was so morose and full of loss that Sam couldn’t focus on the kid without beginning to feel desolate and hopeless himself. 

     In that moment, Sam began to understand the new darkness in a way he hadn’t before. It was not a simple lack of light, it was lack of hope. Not the dark of a quiet night, but the shadows that filled a widower’s empty room at midnight. It was the darkness of not only losing, but also of forgetting good things altogether. The thoughts were frightening to Sam, and he shivered because of them as he put the car in gear and backed out of the garage.

     Sam backed the silver Aveo out from the garage and was grateful his large black truck with its extended cab and four wheel drive was waiting for him at home. Driving through whatever sort of catastrophe was happening in the tiny Aveo didn’t seem merely unsafe, but completely emasculating, as well.

     Out of innate courtesy, Sam pushed the button to close the garage door of Austin’s family’s home. The falling of the door seemed to seal the home in a forgotten dimension, one Sam and Austin would never be able to return to.

     Hoping the boy didn’t feel that same bleak sense of loss and abandonment, Sam checked the street before he reversed into it. Clear, as he knew it would be. The Aveo slid smoothly into the street and they drove away.

     Less than three minutes into the drive, when Sam was now hoping they wouldn’t see anyone else and would therefore be allowed to proceed to his home without incident, Sam encountered the second living person of the day. To Sam’s discomfort, this one seemed in much worse condition.

     With a deepening sense of disquiet weaving itself around him, Sam slowed the Aveo and rolled down his window as the panic-stricken young woman approached the vehicle. She was carrying a small, soft-looking blanket that from the dry tip she clenched in a death grip used to be predominantly the color of butter. The rest seemed to have been dipped in brick-red paint that had dried to a tacky stiffness.

     “I-I-I…” the young woman stammered as she stopped beside the car.

     Sam took a quick inventory of her; her pale blue eyes were wide with and probably paler than their normal hue, her blond hair was disheveled, her bed clothes were wrinkled and had obviously been worn the night before. She moved jerkily and couldn’t seem to form her words into sentences. Sam recognized the symptoms of deep shock, and spoke soothingly as he checked his mirrors now and again to see if anyone was coming up behind them.