Out of the Shadows (7 page)

“Deb,” Yoshi said calmly, unable to move as the mass of spiders headed toward his mouth. “Go with Nick.”

Her face was pale as she looked at the bloody wound on her arm. I reached for her shaking hand and led her along, past her lost friend. We continued on our way as the giant fire spider finally crumbled to pieces on the forest ground while the rest of them began spinning Yoshi into a preservative cocoon, saving him as a snack for later.

We fled farther into the forest, farther away from the busy spiders, farther away from the flaming inferno, and farther away from lost friends and fading memories.

*     *     *

When we had traveled as far as our weary feet would allow, we ended up in a decrepit neighborhood a few miles away from downtown Franklin. Having lost track of time long ago, I figured we had about three or four hours left of twilight before the sun would rear its ugly head and escape would become improbable. Deb was growing pale and sweaty, sickness beginning to take over. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about it, nor had Deb asked me to leave her behind. Mary was slipping in and out of sleep on my shoulder as I continued to carry her.

While we were walking, we had come across some abandoned cars. One had had a window open. I had retrieved a T-shirt from within and had torn strips of fabric to wrap Deb’s arm. Now, the blood soaked through, and there was really nothing more to be done.

“Bear,” Deb panted, her exhaustion and infection both contributing to her loss of breath. “Mama needs to sit down a minute.” Her southern drawl was slow and thick, and in different circumstances, I would have smiled.

I saw a simple church with a tall steeple up ahead on the corner and decided to check it out as a possible resting place. Perhaps it was old-fashioned of me, but in my mind the church was a safe-haven, a sanctuary where no evil could touch you.

As we approached the building made up of huge stone blocks, Deb collapsed onto the front steps, using the railing to assist her decline. I rustled Mary awake and sat her down next to Deb, explaining to her that we were going to go inside the church to rest.

“Don’t leave us, Bear!” Mary pleaded, placing her small hand on my arm.

I smiled softly at the girl. “I’m not going anywhere. You guys are coming with me.” I kissed her on the top of her head and helped Deb to her tired feet. We proceeded up the steps, and I cautiously pulled open the heavy, oak door.

Inside was a small entrance vestibule that led into a modest sanctuary with wooden pews. The outside aisles were lined with simple marble angels, and a few stained-glass windows lined the stone walls. As we trekked slowly through the space, I trembled; the last time I had been inside a church had been for Annie’s funeral. I had sat in the front pew next to Sarah, who sobbed quietly most of the service. When I’d tried to place my hand on hers to comfort her, she’d recoiled. It was then that I knew the end of us had begun.

At the front of the calming sanctuary, some of the prayer candles on either side of the pulpit were lit, their soft unwavering glow dimly illuminating the church. The ceiling was high with wooden rafters, and our quiet footsteps echoed on the tiled floor.

I listened intently as we proceeded down the length of the center aisle, but I heard nothing out of the ordinary.

“Bear,” came Mama’s voice from behind me.

I turned and saw her leaning against a pew, barely able to stand, staring at me with pleading eyes. I nodded to her, so she sat down to rest.

“Mary,” she called to the little girl. “Come lay down next to Mama and get some sleep while Bear stands guard.” I saw her wink slightly at me and knew that it was her silent way of letting me know her motives: she didn’t want Mary to be awake for what might come next.

The girl curled up on the cushioned pew and fell asleep almost immediately.

Minutes of silence passed between us before I felt secure that we were alone in the sanctuary, and I sat down in the row in front of Deb. I looked around and remembered how comforted I used to feel coming to church as a kid. That comfort was no longer with me.

“Candles are lit,” she said of the rows of prayer candles at the front.

I wasn’t sure how she expected me to respond, so I said, “Yeah.”

After some thought, she continued, “Why ya s’pose that is?”

“Each one that’s lit represents someone’s prayer.”

“Is that so?”

I nodded.

In my mind, I heard remnants of echoed hymns reverberate from the walls, ghosts of Sunday mornings haunting the air. I felt shame in losing my religion, but I had reached a point in life where I found it too difficult to trust in an all-powerful benevolence. It was easier for me to be ashamed than to put my energy into things like faith and hope.

“Ya think God hears prayers from people that don’t go to church?” she asked after another minute had passed.

I took a deep breath and allowed her question to ruminate in my mind. “I believe that if you take the time to pray, then God will take the time to listen.” It wasn’t a lie; that’s what I believed. I just stopped taking the time to pray, so God stopped listening to me.

She coughed, her breathing becoming more like deep wheezes of air trying to be pushed from her throat.

I thought about what may happen to this world in a matter of days if something weren’t done to stop this invasion. There would be no surviving. Mankind was being exterminated, like a bug infestation, ironically enough. As I stared at the painting of Jesus Christ on the wall at the front of the church, I vowed to kill as many of the spider creatures as I could before I went down.

Behind me I heard Deb’s pew creak and groan as she fought to rise to her feet. I stood up to help her, but she waved her hand at me to step back. “Let me do this myself!”

I stood back as she limped forward down the center aisle toward the pulpit. I saw her sides expand and contract slowly as she breathed heavily to keep herself alive. She approached a row of candles, reached into her pocket, and pulled out a pack of matches from the bar. After a few attempts, the wooden stick finally struck properly, and a tiny flame flared into existence from her fingertips. I saw her mouth move with silent words as she touched the flame to the wick of one of the unlit candles.

A deep emotion welled within me, and my eyes began to sting with wetness. She eventually blew the match out and headed back to the pew, collapsing once more to rest.

I stared at her for many moments before gathering the courage to say, “Mama, you know that won’t save you.”

She took as deep a breath as she could muster before responding, “That ain’t what I prayed for.” She looked down at Mary, peacefully sleeping beside her, and she brushed a strand of hair from the girl’s face.

I felt my cheeks flush, ashamed by my assumption that she would pray for something so selfish as her own survival when, in fact, she had prayed for Mary’s.

Many minutes of silence passed between the two of us, neither willing to talk about the night, neither ready to say goodbye. I decided to rest my eyes, but just as I closed them, Deb spoke softly, a quaver in her voice.

“Bear,” she began. “You know what I’m gonna need ya to do, right?”

Yes. I knew. The same thing Sarah had wanted.

“I want it to be you, Bear. Ya hear me?”

My chest clenched and a knot of air clumped into my throat. I wasn’t sure how much more of this I could take. “I hear you,” I responded.

“You know how long I got?”

I shook my head. “Sarah got bit. She stayed alive for hours before…”

There was no reason to finish the sentence. Deb knew what I meant.

“Your bite is worse than hers, though,” I continued. “So, I don’t know.”

I didn’t enjoy discussing the death of my friends with them like it had become so commonplace that I should follow it up with, “So, how are the kids?” I wanted so badly to sleep. And perhaps never to wake up. Or maybe when I woke up, the world would be right again, and this would all have been a massively awful nightmare brought on by the whiskey. If that were the case, I would swear to God right now that I would never drink again.

“I saw ‘em get inside,” she finally said.

I turned to look at her, my brow furrowed.

“The spiders. When she bit me, I saw a couple spiders crawl out of her mouth and into the wound.” She looked down at the bloody bandage that was wrapped around her arm, examining it, as if it held mysteries that she fought to solve. “I think that’s how it works. They jus’ need to get in, and the bites make it easier.”

I nodded softly. Her explanation made sense of the biting – nothing more than a way for an infected host to latch securely onto its target so the alien creatures could enter, but it was just a guess; we simply couldn’t know for sure how any of it worked.

At the front of the church, a door creaked open. I leapt to my feet, my gun in my hand and ready for action. A middle-aged man entered the sanctuary wearing black dress slacks, a black button-down dress shirt, and a white collar. He paused at the sight of us and said, “You are trespassing in a house of God.”

I put up a hand to calm him. “We just needed to rest for a few minutes. My friend is wounded, and the little girl needed to sleep.”

The reverend approached us now, probably because my voice hadn’t been emotionless, and because I hadn’t asked him to join my creepy community cult.

“You must leave this church,” he commanded.

I was shocked by his anger. “I’m sorry?”

“You must leave before you lead the demons here!”

“Sir, we weren’t followed. I promise we’ll be gone the minute—.”

“The demons are
everywhere
. They’re walking the streets. They’re in the walls. They’re all around us!”

Mary stirred awake from the sudden voice, loud and unconcerned that there had been a child sleeping on a pew.

He continued, pointing an accusatory finger at me. “This has happened because of people like you! You are sinners and blasphemers! And God has allowed the demons to come here and punish you! Leave now before you lead them here!”

Deb coughed, a small bit of blood escaping her lips. “Bear, let’s just go and—.”

The reverend’s eyes widened at the sight of her injured arm. “Has she been bitten?!”

I clutched my gun a little tighter now, holding up my other hand in an attempt to subdue his rising emotions. “Ok, calm down. We’re leaving.”

“She’s been bitten!”

Mary began to cry, and Deb put an arm around her for comfort. “Quit scarin’ the girl!”

“
Demon!
She has been possessed! You’ve brought the demons into my church! They must be exorcised!” The reverend pulled a handgun from the back of his waistband, pointing it directly at Deb.

Both hands on my gun now, I aimed squarely at him. “Sir, take it easy!”

“The demons must be expelled!”

“I am a police officer!” I lied. “Put down your weapon!”

Mary screamed, and Deb yelled, “Bear, just do it now! Shoot me!”

“Demon!”

“I said drop it!”

“Shoot me, Bear!”

“Demon!”

“Shoot me!”

“Drop the damn gun, now!”

Milliseconds ticked past ever so slowly, my eyes darting from the hysterical reverend to the sobbing girl to the pleading woman. My senses were hyperaware of the passage of time. Time, which prevents all things from taking place at once. It felt as though hours passed in mere seconds, my brain overloading with well-thought arguments for each action I could take.

If I listened to Deb, if I were to be the one to end her life, then little Mary would be horrified and not likely to voluntarily follow me to safety. If I ended the immediate threat by shooting the reverend, then I would be killing a frightened but innocent man. And being afraid was no crime.

From Mama to the reverend, my gun’s aim danced forcefully, a passionate tango of indecision waiting to hold on its finishing pose. Deb, reverend, Deb, reverend, Deb…

I raised the gun into the air and fired a shot into the wooden rafters above, hoping to command the attention of everyone in the room for an attempt at reasoning with all involved. The blast echoed in the cavernous sanctuary, briefly deafening the group, my eardrums ringing loudly in my head.

For a few seconds, all was calm and quiet. The lingering echo of my shot vanished into the night when I noticed the reverend’s eyes grow huge with shock. He dropped his gun and slowly shuffled backward. “I… I… oh, dear… I didn’t mean to…” he stammered. He pointed a finger at me, tripping backward over his own feet, trying desperately to flee. “Your shot… it scared me, and my gun… Oh, no… no, no, no…”

“Bear!” Mama desperately cried out, commanding my attention as I turned to make sure she was all right.

It has been said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. The muses were surely watching over us now, boisterously laughing at the turn of events as I saw the abundance of blood draining from the gunshot wound in Mary’s chest, the front of her pink hoodie now stained crimson.

I froze, images of my daughter Annie sweeping through my brain in great gusts, a storm of emotion taking over my body. My newfound strength was unraveling now, the knotted rope that encompassed my constitution fraying in defeat. I wanted to drown myself in whiskey, numb the pain and hide within a cloud of stench and self-pity.

“Bear!” Mama yelled again with urgency, snapping me back to the crisis at-hand.

“What did you do?!” I demanded of the reverend, gripping my gun so tightly the skin on my knuckles threatened to split open.

My eyes surely burned with fiery rage, because the reverend’s terror was absolute. “It wasn’t my fault!” he tried to rationalize, still stumbling backward yet unable to look away from the tragedy. “Your shot scared me! It was
you
that did this!”

If fury were a tangible object, he would have seen it pouring from my nostrils and blasting from my ears.

“Yes!” he continued, pleased with his scapegoat. “This is
your
fault! Not mine! God is punishing you for bringing the demons to this sacred place!”

“Bear!”
Mama’s shrill scream diffused my anger and turned me toward the dying girl. “Help me!” she pleaded, begging me to leave the tragic man to his own devices.

I ran to Deb and the girl, lifting the child into my arms and delicately placing her on the marbled tile in the center aisle, hurriedly placing my gray hoodie behind her head for comfort. I quickly unzipped her sweatshirt and pulled it back, revealing the gruesome, bloody hole. When I joined the Force, we had been required to take an eight-hour-long CPR and First Aid class, but that was years ago, and this wound was far beyond my recollected abilities.

“Mary, can you hear me?” I asked the girl, trying desperately to come up with a plan.

Her eyes rolled toward me, and her lips silently moved. It was as if she were imploring for me to help her, to save her.
Don’t let me die like you did your little girl
, her eyes said to me, even though she couldn’t possibly know of my tortured past.

“This isn’t my fault!” the reverend continued behind me, approaching the pulpit, still stammering and trying to rationalize this great tragedy as the act of a vengeful deity. “God has spoken, and He will—.”

“You shut the hell up!” Mama blazed forth with fury, a newfound energy rising within her sick and dying body.

I heard a loud clattering as the reverend called out in surprise, and I turned just in time to see him trip backward over the rack of prayer candles, knocking their stand over. He landed on top of them, and his clothes quickly caught fire, engulfing his body in the scorching flames of Hell. His tortured screeches of panicked pain echoed through the peaceful church, sending chills up the length of my spine.

After a few short moments, his howling ceased, and his body lay across the steps in front of the pulpit, a smoldering mass of flesh and bone, still crackling with small embers. With nothing more to be done for the misguided man of faith, I turned my attention back to Mary, thinking to myself:
You’re right, Reverend. God has spoken.

“Mama, can you walk?”

She looked at me with her usual southern disgust. “Course I can walk! I ain’t dead yet!”

“I need you to go find a first aid kit. And maybe some water and rubbing alcohol.”

As Deb limped painfully away, headed to the doors at either side behind the pulpit, she muttered, “You best save this girl, Bear.”

Hands shaking, I took a deep breath, focusing my recollections on the training I received years ago.
A, B, C, D, E
, I thought.
Open the airway, check for breathing, assist with circulation, check for disabilities, expose the victim’s wounds.
I had already opened her sweatshirt to expose the wound, and she was bleeding a little too much to risk raising her legs to force circulation.

“Mary, can you move your feet for me?” I asked her delicately.

Slowly, she forced them to twitch back and forth.

“That’s great!” I encouraged her. Good – the bullet did no spinal damage. I carefully reached my hand under her back, trying to assess other damage. I discovered a tiny hole, which was probably the best news so far: a low-velocity bullet that cleanly went through her body.

I placed my ear to her mouth. Her breathing was quick, but it didn’t sound stilted with gasps or wheezes. I exhaled deeply, my eyes flooding with tears of relief. There was almost zero chance that her lungs, aorta, trachea,
and
vertebrae had all been missed by the bullet, and yet…

My eyes instinctively raised and rested upon the painting of Jesus Christ at the front of the church, and I remembered Deb’s quiet prayer as she had lit a candle a few minutes ago.
Thank you
, I whispered quietly to Him, using the back of my forearm to dry the corners of my eyes.

“I found this small thing,” came Deb’s voice from behind me, carrying a small blue box with a red plus sign on it. She had a bottle of water in her other hand.

“Her chest wall is torn, but the bullet seems to have made a clean tear through the body, missing all her vital organs. She might have a bruised lung or broken rib.”

“So, she’s gonna be fine?” Deb asked with hope.

I shook my head as I explained, “She needs real medical attention. If she has a bruised lung, she could die in a few hours.” I looked back down at the fragile girl focusing intently on me. “And she’s losing a lot of blood,” I frowned.

I grabbed the kit from Deb as she collapsed onto a pew to rest, her skin looking gray and clammy. As I opened the bottle of water, I leaned into Mary and said, “Don’t you worry. I’m going to make sure you get help.” I smiled in an attempt to calm her, but I knew she was in a lot of pain.

After tearing the girl’s shirt open, I used a bit of water to wash some of the blood away from her wound. The growing pool seeping from under her was a cause for huge concern, but I wasn’t a paramedic; I was doing the best I could. I handed the bottle of water to Deb and said, “Try to get her to drink.”

I immediately dug into the kit’s supplies, finding the antiseptics, the bandages, the surgical tape, the gauze pads – everything I could think of to save the child. Deb painfully sat on the floor by Mary’s head, softly caressing her forehead and talking soothingly, attempting to get her to take a drink of water.

As I dressed the bleeding chest wound, I heard the child quietly cry to Deb, “It hurts, Mama.”

I focused on my task, trying to ignore the heart-wrenching exchange.

“I know it does, Sweetie,” said Deb, pushing hair from the girl’s sweaty face. “I got a lot of pain right now too, so I think we should jus’ be strong for each other ‘til it all passes. How does that sound?”

A minute had gone by without words when Mary finally broke the silence with, “Am I going to die?”

I worked diligently to clean the wound through the girl’s cries of pain as Deb responded firmly. “No, ya ain’t. Bear here’s gonna fix ya up as best he can, and then he’s gonna find some help for ya.”

Mary’s bottom lip quivered as she asked, “What about you, Mama? Are you going to die?”

Deb glanced back at me, sorrow in her eyes now, and then her gaze returned to the child. “Well… ya know what, Honey?” she began, nodding slowly. “I’m pretty sure that I’ll be dyin’ real soon.”

“No!” the girl cried.

“It’s ok,” Deb grabbed the girl’s hand and squeezed, as much for her own comfort as for Mary’s. “I’ve had a very long and happy life, and there ain’t a thing I regret. And that’s what’s important.”

The conversation was clenching my throat and digging a pit within the depths of my stomach. Examining the bandaged chest wound, I said, “We need to sit her up so I can bandage her back too.”

As we carefully did so, the girl cringed in pain and then admitted, “I’m really sleepy.”

“No, Mary,” I said. “You can’t sleep right now. You have to stay awake for me.”

“But why?” she wondered groggily.

“We have to get you out of here first, and then you can rest.”

Deb poured more water into Mary’s mouth as I said quietly, “If we get going, we can probably be downtown in about two hours. Do you think you can keep up with me?”

She looked me in the eyes and bluntly said, “I won’t be the reason that girl don’t get saved. So, if I slow ya down, ya gotta leave me behind.”

I knew there was no sense in arguing with the stubborn woman, so I agreed.

“But jus’ so ya know, we ain’t got two hours,” she added.

As I placed my gun into the waistline of my pants, covered Mary’s bare torso with my own hoodie, and lifted her into my arms, I asked, “What do you mean?”

Deb glanced down at her silver watch and replied, “It’s a little before five. We got maybe an hour and a half ‘fore sunrise and that chopper says
sayonara
to Franklin.”

This news smashed into my gut like a wrecking ball. I had seriously misjudged the passage of time this evening, thinking it couldn’t possibly be any later than three in the morning. When I had been in top physical shape, I could run an eight-minute mile, which would get me from here to downtown in a little over thirty minutes. But that was years ago, and I hadn’t been carrying a seventy-pound injured girl and trailing a dying woman back then.

“Ok,” I took a breath, calming myself before I could fall into hysterics. “Let’s get moving, and try not to stop. We can check a few cars along the way – see if any have keys in them.”

We walked quickly down the center aisle and out the heavy front doors, leaving the once-safe sanctuary behind, a pool of blood on the tile and a scorched corpse at the pulpit.

*     *     *

The black sky had already shifted to dark blue, pushing slowly but surely toward gray, the period of time directly before the sun peeked the rim of its head over the horizon, and when our ticket to safety would vanish forever.

Exhaustion consumed us as we pushed as hard as we dared down the barren streets, stopping only as often as we needed. Mary was slipping in and out of consciousness in my arms, her life slowly draining from the two wounds in her body. After shattering a car window with the butt of my gun, Deb searched inside for anything useful but came up with nothing.

We came across a car with its keys still in the ignition, but the gas tank was empty, presumably from its owner abandoning it with the engine running as the ensuing chaos of the invasion had begun.

“Dammit!” Deb said, frustrated, pounding a weak fist against the steering wheel. She looked up at me from the driver’s seat, a rim of wetness forming on her bottom eyelids. “Bear, I don’t think I can go much further.”

She looked bad. Her skin was pale and ashen, and she’d consumed most of the water that had been meant for Mary, just to keep her going. Her pallid skin dulled the crystalline nature of her eyes, and she coughed frequently in a horribly raspy way. Truth be told, I’d been going much slower than I was able in order to keep pace with Deb.

I didn’t want to leave her behind.

In my mind, I thought maybe there was a cure. Maybe if we made it to the helicopter, they would be able to save her. My eyes floated up to a hanging neon sign on the storefront before us. It wasn’t turned on, but under it was an intricate, silky spider web connected to the side of the brick building. In the center of the creation, a small spider worked busily, spinning a few tiny bugs into cocoons.