The Last Mile (2 page)

The ground groaned beneath his feet, as if the earth itself had suffered some manner of injury. Tiny fissures appeared in the asphalt, like cracks in black ice, and began to widen and spread. The neighborhood dogs began howling then, a high-pitched wail that sounded more feline than canine. Dan looked at the lawns across the street and saw the grass turn white, the blades curling downward like a mass of dying insects drawing in their legs. He sensed movement off to his right, heard a soft
plap
as something hit the street. He turned and saw a robin lying on the asphalt, legs quivering, streams of blood running from where its eyes had been. Another bird—a cardinal—fell from the sky, followed by a second robin, then a sparrow. Dozens more fell out of the wounded sky, all dead or dying, all bleeding from empty eye sockets. Dan covered his head with his arms to protect himself from the rain of dead birds, but the thought of getting back into his car never occurred to him. It was as if he were in the grip of some powerful instinct, a need to stand and bear witness to what was happening.

The dogs’ howling rose in pitch until it sounded as if the animals were screaming with one terrified voice. Still Dan wasn’t afraid…not until the sky opened a million eyes and gazed down upon him with alien hunger.

* * *

Alice shook her head, trying to deny what was happening. Dead birds littered the parking lot around her, the ground beneath her feet trembled, and eyes filled the dark-bruise sky. Dead eyes, insect eyes: cold, calculating, and hungry. Eyes that didn’t blink, that took in everything and gave back nothing. She felt scrutinized in a way she never had before, as if every one of those eyes was fixed on her, analyzing her down to the subatomic level and finding her wanting. She wore a white blouse, black pants, and black shoes—the standard uniform for servers at the Pasta Pavilion. She’d been on her way to work when everything began to change, and while she knew it wasn’t the greatest job in the world, she’d liked it well enough. But now, standing beneath the pitiless gaze of those alien eyes, she understood what a joke she really was. She was a subservient cow in a world full of near-mindless cattle, carrying platters of food to overweight carb-addicts so they could stuff their bloated faces and grow even more obese than they already were.

This realization forced Alice to her knees. Her left knee crushed the head of a dying starling in the process—staining her black pants with blood—but she barely noticed, so overwhelmed was she with despair. She bowed her head as tears ran down her face and deep sobs wracked her body.

“No more…” she pleaded.

But there
was
more. Much.

* * *

Dan spun the steering wheel in a frantic attempt to maintain control of the Olds. Whatever had broadsided them had started the car fishtailing, and while that would’ve been dangerous enough on a smooth road, the broken surface of the Way made correcting for the impact a nightmare—and the woman screaming in the backseat didn’t do anything to help his concentration. The car slid, shuddered, bounced, and at one point threatened to tip over. A loud
chunk!
came from the rear, and Dan was thrown forward as the Olds ground to a stop. His forehead hit the steering wheel, forcing his teeth together with a painful
clack
and catching the tip of his tongue. Sharp pain lanced from the wound down to the root of his tongue, and Dan’s mouth filled with blood as his head jerked back and slammed into the headrest. The Olds’ airbags had been activated months ago, during one of his earliest runs, and without any way to have them reinstalled, he’d simply removed them. In all the time since, he hadn’t had an accident, but now he wished he’d tried harder to find a way to make the airbags work again.

The woman was still screaming, and Dan spun around to glare at her. He tried to tell her to shut up, but what came out was
Thyutt uhh!
along with a spray of blood. It splattered onto the woman’s face and greasy blonde hair, and the shock of it did what perhaps his words wouldn’t have: she stopped screaming.

Before Dan could say or do anything else, a large object collided with the driver’s-side door, spinning the Olds around and sending him crashing back into the steering wheel. Pain blazed between his shoulder blades, and he reached out with both hands and grabbed onto the chicken-wire barrier to steady himself. The woman had been thrown down onto the backseat once more, and while she looked shaken, she appeared uninjured. Dan was relieved; she was worthless to him dead. Still holding tight to the chicken wire, Dan turned to look over his shoulder, ignoring the resultant flare of pain in his back. He wanted to get a look at whatever was attacking them so he’d have some notion of how to fight it. He knew they just couldn’t stay inside the car and hope it would get tired and go away. Everything was a predator of one kind or another in the World After, and none of them ever gave up.

A large form stepped in front of the car—four legs, long neck, narrow head, curved antlers, armored hide… The creature regarded Dan for a moment, its moist black eyes filled with hate, and then it charged.

“Fuck!” Dan shouted, misting the inside of the windshield with blood. He let go of the chicken wire and reached for one of his weapons, but his hand found the passenger seat empty. His gun and blades must’ve gotten knocked onto the floor during one of the creature’s previous attacks. With no other recourse, Dan threw himself down onto the passenger seat as the antlered beast mounted the hood and lowered its head at the windshield.

Another impact and the muffled sound of safety glass cracking. Antler points white as bone protruded through the glass, but the windshield remained in place. But then the creature hauled its head back, taking the panel of safety glass with it, and cold air rushed in through the space where the windshield had been. Dan knew it would only take the beast a few seconds to shake free the remains of the windshield, then it would attack again, and this time there would be no barrier to stop it from skewering him.

Dan reached for the front passenger door, hoping it wasn’t too damaged to work. He gripped the handle, pulled, and for a terrifying instant it seemed as if the door wasn’t going to budge, but then it sprung open. Dan gripped the seat and pulled himself forward, and half-fell, half-rolled out of the car. He looked back in time to see the creature’s antlers spear through the open windshield and pierce the fabric of the front seat.

“Don’t leave me!” the woman in the backseat shouted, her voice panicked and more than a little accusatory.

Dan didn’t have time to reassure her. The beast had attacked with such force that the tips of its antlers were stuck in the car seat’s upholstery. But strong as the thing was, Dan knew it would only take a moment to free itself. He reached back into the car, keeping his eyes on the creature as he felt around on the floor of the passenger seat for a weapon, any weapon. His fingers closed around the hilt of the machete, and he was about to lunge forward and strike at the rough, pebbly hide of the beast’s neck when he felt something brush his pants leg. Without thinking he spun around and sliced the blade through the thorn-stalk that had been rubbing against his jeans. Thick crimson gore spurted from both halves of the stalk, and Dan sensed more than heard a high-pitched sound, as if the plant had shrieked a death cry. He turned back to the car and saw that the antlered creature was no longer stuck in the upholstery.

Dan leaped to his feet and spun around. There, standing amidst a mass of waving thorn-stalks and regarding him with black-marble eyes, was the deer.

At least, that was the name the animal had gone by in the World Before; as far as Dan knew, it had no name in the World After. It still possessed the general shape of a deer, though it was larger and more muscular, like an elk. Its multipronged antlers were fashioned from thick bone, the tips needle-sharp and angled forward, obviously designed—make that
re
designed—for impaling prey. Its mouth was larger and filled with triangular, serrated teeth that resembled those of a shark. A long black tongue that reminded Dan of a giraffe’s emerged from the mouth and moistened its rough-hided snout, as if the creature was so eager to taste its prey that it couldn’t wait and had to taste
something
, even if only itself. But perhaps the most striking change was its skin. Instead of a deer’s tawny coat, the beast’s hide resembled that of a rhinoceros: gray, thick, wrinkled. Dan had seen the creatures before, of course, standing alongside the Way and watching with baleful, hungry gazes as he drove past, but he’d never seen one step into the road before. He’d assumed they were afraid of the thorn-stalks, but now he saw that he’d been mistaken. The stalks brushed against the beast’s flanks, caressing and stroking its gray skin, smearing thorn poison on its rough flesh. But the thorns, sharp as they were, could not penetrate the creature’s tough hide. This deer-thing was perfectly adapted for traversing the Way.

Dan wondered then why none of the other deer-things he’d seen had ever tried to attack him before. Maybe he’d been traveling too fast to make good prey on his other runs, and his Olds had finally gotten so beat-up and slow to attract this one’s attention today. Or perhaps there was no reason at all. There often wasn’t in the World After. Things—almost always bad things—just happened because they happened.

Dan’s thrall-mark still blazed with the heat of his Master’s summons, and he stood still, allowing the deer-thing to see the brand on his forehead. It was impossible to say how intelligent the creature was, but the deer-thing didn’t have to be a thinking beast to recognize a thrall-mark. The question was whether it would be deterred by the sight, or if it were hungry enough to try to kill him anyway and risk a Master’s wrath.

“I’m not worth the trouble,” Dan said. His voice was distorted by his injured tongue, and blood dribbled past his lips as he spoke, but that didn’t matter. The bulk of the message would be carried by his thrall-mark.

The deer-thing cocked its mutated head as if considering Dan’s words. But then from the backseat of the Olds the woman, who had managed to pull herself into a sitting position again and was staring at the deer-thing with wide, disbelieving eyes, said, “What the fuck is
that
?”

The deer-thing looked at Dan and gray-hide lips pulled back from its shark teeth in an obscene parody of a smile. The creature might be willing to forego one meal to keep from angering a Master, but
two
? The hell of it was, Dan understood. If their places had been reversed, he’d have made the same decision. The creature let out a cry that sounded like a baby’s scream, its fetid breath misting on the cold air. Then it lowered its antlers and came rushing toward Dan.

Dan stood close to the open passenger door, and as the creature ran at him, he feinted right, then moved left. The deer-thing was moving too fast to correct its trajectory, and it plunged antlers first through the open passenger door. The sharp prongs sliced into the upholstery of the seat, and the woman’s shriek rose to an ear-splitting pitch. Dan didn’t wait for the deer-thing to begin freeing itself from the upholstery; he slammed his shoulder into the door, smashing it into the creature’s side. The deer-thing howled in pain. Tough as its hide might be, but armored it wasn’t. Dan shoved his weight against the car door again, putting even more muscle into it this time, and the antlered monstrosity gave forth a cry that matched Dan’s captive for sheer volume. Dan was about to slam the car door into the creature again, but the sound of ripping fabric warned him that the deer-thing had freed itself. He moved out of the way as the beast extricated itself, the door swinging violently outward as the deer-thing backed away from the car.

Dan didn’t know if he’d injured the creature or merely annoyed it, but either way, he couldn’t afford to give it another chance to attack. As the thing rushed backward, Dan lifted his machete high and swung it back down with all the force he could muster. The blade bit into the beast’s right flank, but the thick pebbly hide prevented it from penetrating more than an inch. Even so, the impact sent pain jolting up through Dan’s arm and into his shoulder, but he didn’t release his grip on the machete’s handle. He leaned forward, pressing down on the weapon, hoping to cut farther into the deer-thing’s leathery gray skin. Dan knew he needed to do more than just hurt the creature if he wanted to survive; he had to hurt it
bad
.

The deer-thing reared up onto its hind legs, the motion yanking the machete from Dan’s hand. The blade remained stuck in the creature’s hide for a second before dislodging and falling to the broken asphalt with a metallic clatter. Dan was gratified to see the blade was smeared with blood—a normal red, surprisingly enough. He only wished there was more of it.

The beast came down on its front legs once more and whirled to face him. Its eyes were still an emotionless dead-black, but its chest heaved with a combination of exertion and fury, and mad froth dripped in thick white gobs from its muzzle. It stood for a moment, regarding him, as if to say,
I WAS gonna make it quick, asshole, but not anymore. Now I’m gonna do you as slow and nasty as I can.

Blood dripped from the machete wound on the deer-thing’s flank, but the cut wasn’t deep enough to slow it down, let alone stop it. Dan considered making a grab for the machete, or maybe trying to get back into the car so he could snag one of his other weapons. But he knew he was just indulging in the last wishful fantasies of a soon-to-be-dead man. There was no way in hell he could hope to move fast enough to avoid becoming a post-apocalyptic shish kebab.

Then Dan noticed the thorn-stalks around the deer-thing were quivering, as if something had excited them. The deer-thing noticed, too. It moved its head first right, then left, then back again, and it pawed the broken surface of the road with one of its front hooves in a way that Dan could only perceive as nervous. The deer-thing seemed to hesitate and a shiver ran along its body. Dan thought the creature was going to bolt, and maybe it would have, but before it could take a step, one of the thorn-stalks shot toward it with the speed of a striking viper. The stalk slithered into the wound on the deer-thing’s flank, turning as it invaded the creature’s body, thorns acting like a miniature rotary saw and widening the hole as it sank deeper into its victim’s flesh. Blood sprayed from the growing wound, and the deer-thing threw back its head and opened its mouth wide to release an agonized bellow. But as soon as the sound left its throat, another thorn-stalk attacked, this one lengthening as it stretched toward the deer-thing’s open mouth, wriggled past its shark teeth, and continuing on down its gullet, spinning thorns shredding the beast’s insides into hamburger. Dark blood gushed from the deer-thing’s ruined mouth as its legs buckled, and then it fell with a heavy dull smack onto the broken asphalt of the road.