Running back through the plan in his mind, Griffin watched the woman in the passenger seat thrash about under the restraint of her tightly wound seatbelt. Shards of her husband’s flesh hung from her mouth as she lurched forward, shredding the skin along the right side of his body.
Griffin moved to the bed of the truck, and rifling through the couple’s newly purchased camping gear, located a ten-inch cast iron skillet, two ultra-compact waterproof flashlights, a twenty-six inch camper's axe, and a four-person extreme weather easy-pitch tent. He reached for the axe, turned to Cora, and motioned to the opposite side of the road. “Take my gun, if she gets past me… shoot her.”
Shouting over the horn, Cora said, “You want me to do what?”
“We have to get them out of there somehow, and I’m not going to pull him out of the driver’s seat with her trying to rip my face apart.”
“Hey,” Cora said, “It looks like the snow’s slowing down.”
“Yeah, but we’re still taking this car.”
“Okay, but I’m not too sure about—”
“Just stand there and be ready.” Griffin gripped the door handle and paused for a second, the metal cold in his hand. Lifting the handle he quietly slid the door open and stepped back. As the driver’s corpse tilted left, and then dropped face-first into the road, the horn assaulting the entire valley finally died a quick death.
Pacing the shoulder, Cora intermittently checked the treeline at her back for stragglers from the previous accident, listening to the whispers of the forest. Attempting to get a glimpse of his progress, she marched toward the bridge and looked past Griffin. “You okay?”
He didn’t answer. Instead he hooked the axe blade under the man’s right leg and pulled his lower half out onto the asphalt. And with the woman still belted into the passenger’s seat, Griffin stepped over the driver to get a better vantage.
Her face contorting, she growled from the back of her throat and clawed at the seat next to her. She was beautiful, well at least she was before whatever this was happened to her. Griffin quickly spotted the multiple bite marks along her wrists and arms, most having already turned a shade darker than black. However, her face was virtually untouched, save for the trails of dried blood that had run from her chin and disappeared into her destroyed fleece pullover. Continuing to writhe, the woman peered into Griffin’s eyes, and begged to be released.
Stepping back, he turned to Cora. She was momentarily occupied with checking the trees, but quickly spun back, realizing he had been staring at her. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“Almost, but I need you to be ready. Are you ready?”
“Yes, but I think there are a few of them from the bus still out there.”
“That’s why we need to get this done quickly.”
Cora didn’t answer, she instead gave Griffin a thumbs up and then pressed her hand back into her hip. With the barometer rising, the numbness brought on by the arctic temperatures began to subside. She hadn’t yet told him, but the wound along her left flank again began to ooze.
Without the space to take a full swing at the seated passenger, Griffin pushed the door open to its limit and then used the axe to carefully depress the red button on the seatbelt buckle.
As the belt retracted into its housing, the wiry female launched through the driver’s door, as if strapped to a rocket. As Griffin stepped to the left and swung the axe, he missed. Instead, his elbow glanced the left side of her face, sending her into his legs, and both of them to the ground.
Up to her knees, she was much faster than the others. As Griffin scrambled to retrieve the axe, she’d locked onto his scent. Crawling on all fours, she reached for his pant leg and took a boot to the face. As she came again, Griffin attempted to stand, but slipped on a small patch of black ice, and before he could recover, she’d leapt onto his back.
From the edge of the road, Cora ran in, weapon in hand. As the deranged beast pulled at the collar of his jacket, attempting to get to his face and neck, she raised weapon. “Griffin, move.”
From below the woman, he turned to see Cora raise the nine millimeter pistol and extend her arms. Gritting his teeth, Griffin closed his eyes and tensed every muscle from the waist up. As gun exploded, the woman’s face dropped onto the back of his neck. He instinctively rolled to the left, sending the woman back onto the roadway.
Griffin reached for the axe, and standing over his aggressor, drove the blade deep into the charred chasm created by the exit wound in her forehead. Incensed, he stuck her again, and again. He’d driven the stainless steel blade into her face more times than he could count, and as his arms and hands began to cramp, Cora stepped in slowly and laid her hand on his back.
“She’s gone… We have to go, right now.”
Shaking free from his rage-induced haze, Griffin followed Cora to the truck and climbed into the driver’s seat. She let him take the lead and moved to the passenger side. Sliding in, she shut her door and asked him to do the same.
With one eye on the rearview mirror, Cora watched as another frozen corpse walked out from behind the tall spruce, and then into the road. “Griffin, let’s go.”
Glaring through the windshield, he reached down, felt for the keys. Noticing it was left in drive, he gave the keys a quarter turn, shifted into park, and restarted the truck. Backing away from the end post, he pointed to the sign she’d noticed earlier. “Summer Mill. That’s where we part ways. I’ll get you help, then I’m leaving.”
“Griffin, what are you taking about? I thought—”
“What’d you think? That we’d ride off in the sunset together? Really you? Me? And after you almost blew my head off out here? I somehow don’t see it.”
“You’re kidding right?” Anger beginning to drive the volume in Cora’s voice. “I saved your ass back there. If I’d hadn’t shot her when I did, you be dead right now, or worse, you be lying next to that man with half your face eaten off. And somehow you don’t see that. Well, good luck then.”
As the slow-paced former detainee continued toward the truck, Griffin shifted into drive and started across the bridge. Reaching into the console, he grabbed a hand drawn map and held it on the steering wheel, between his hands. “This is where they were headed. Poor guy probably thought he could get her help.”
“So, that’s it?” Cora said. “We’re done discussing what happened out there? Why, because of what you thought happened?”
Griffin slammed the brake to the floor. “Yes, you got lucky. But the bullet that tore through her head, also came damn close to doing the same exact thing to me. Too damn close. Maybe it’s my fault though, maybe I shouldn’t have even handed you the gun in the first place, and it’s obvious you can’t—”
“Griffin, just drive the damn truck, you’re beginning to sound like an ignorant fool. What you don’t know, not that it matters, is that I’ve had a weapon in my hand since before I could walk. I’ve seen you shoot out there and let’s just say I could show you a thing or two. It’s just too bad you’re throwing me out once we get to town. Oh, and by the way that round, the one that you think came too close… it actually entered her head exactly where I planned.”
Not responding directly to her explanation, Griffin handed her the hand drawn map. “We’re going to Summer Mill Memorial, the same place it looks like he was taking her. I’ll need you to give me directions.”
Cora set the piece of eight and a half by eleven in her lap. “Griffin, you saved my life out there this morning, maybe more than once, and for that I’m eternally grateful. But you also wouldn’t be sitting her right now if I hadn’t taken that shot, so I’d say we’re about even. I think you need to get used to the idea of accepting help from others, because you’re going to need it.”
Sitting alone in the corner of her bedroom, daylight filtering in through the wood shutters, Emma pushed aside the Project Ares file and reached for the brightly colored photo album. This, the only personal possession she’d thought to take in the hasty move to Los Angeles, was now her only connection to the family she so desperately needed.
Emma gazed at the handmade cover, not knowing if she’d ever again get to see the people staring back at her. Her mother, her father, Ethan—they were only two dimensional beings now. The things she remembered, she was likely to someday forget. The way her mother’s baked potato soup tasted after a long hot shower. Her father’s awful jokes. How her big brother always kept one eye on her, but would never admit to it. She wanted to go to them, to see them, to sit with them, to laugh, to cry. But, for now, she could only look through the memories.
Opening the album, she’d flipped to a pair of photos from her freshman year in high school. She stood alongside her mother and father. Three smiles, each bigger and more contrived than the next. Within hours of taking the top spot in the Colorado State Science Fair, the day couldn’t have ended better. A defining moment that led to a string of four consecutive state titles, a moment that would end with acceptance to four Ivy League schools, and define who she’d be as an adult. A special time that almost never happened. Her brother, the only one not pictured, was the reason.
. . .
At exactly sixteen minutes before four o’clock, on September 22nd, 1995, it hit her. Not like a ton of bricks, but more like the eighteen wheeler carrying the bricks. Emma sat in the corner of the conference hall, searching her three plastic bins for the vial containing the homemade anticoagulant. Staring up at her parents who’d just arrived, tears began to roll down her fourteen-year-old face.
Her mother tried to comfort her as best she knew how, and her father only asked why she couldn’t present her findings without the missing vial. She just cried.
“Hey.” Ethan appeared from the opposite end of the hall. Fresh from football practice, and wearing his best pair of slacks, his grin began to fall as he saw her face. “Did you lose already?” His jokes were usually well received. This one wasn’t.
Her father turned and shook his head. “She’s missing something, says she can’t even present without it.”
Looking to his mother and then to Emma, he said, “What is it and why can’t you get another one?”
Fishing through her bins yet again, hoping for the missing item to somehow reappear, she looked back at her brother. “I had this. My research could have actually helped people, you know someday. Now I’m done. Mrs. Amhurst is going to kill me. I told her about it, but never showed her the actual results. I have no proof this even works.”
“Can’t you just show her tomorrow?” Ethan was trying, but it just wasn’t enough.
“No, I’ll probably fail the class, and she has a few friends here from the university that are expecting to see my presentation. I’m going to make her look bad too.”
Her mother began digging through the third bin, not even knowing what she was looking for. “You didn’t have any extra?”
“Yes, mom. But it’s in the cooler in my bedroom, and my bedroom is at home. With the snow, it would take way too long to drive there and back. I’m already supposed to be—”
Ethan interrupted. “That nasty red cooler in the corner of your bedroom?”
“Yes, but—”
Turning and running toward the rear of the auditorium, Ethan said, “Start setting up, I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
Her brother, in his senior year of high school, gave her a gift that she would remember every day for the rest of her life. He ran through miles of snow, half the time carrying a three-pound cooler, and arrived back at the convention center in just under thirty minutes.
Realizing there wasn’t enough time for his father to safely navigate the snowy five-mile route in the family car, Ethan reacted. He left through the rear of the auditorium, ran across the school yard, the snow-covered football field, and then leaping the rear wall, made quick work of the next six blocks.
The jog back was a different story. Not knowing the fragility of the cooler’s contents, he slowed his pace, as not to add to the horrific day his sister was already amassing. Keeping the red rectangle upright, he matched nearly two-thirds of his original pace on the return trip, only once coming close to losing it all.
Marching into the auditorium, his sister again in tears and his mother nearly as angry as worried, he walked onto the stage and set the container by Emma’s feet. He then leaned over, put his frozen, bright pink face next to her ear and said, “You’re my sister. I love you. Please win this thing.”
And she did.
Walking down the set of four steps and away from the presentation area, Ethan moved to the front row. Dripping ice cold beads of water out onto the grey linoleum floor, he sat and watched as his sister began to create her place in this world. Her ultimate contribution wouldn’t be seen for another nineteen years, although as she replayed it, that day more than any, was the happiest she could recall.
. . .
Tracing her index finger over each of her family members, Emma closed her eyes and tried to imagine that they were somewhere safe. That they weren’t scared and that they weren’t alone. She prayed that she’d see them again and that they’d never be apart. She also hoped that a little part of Ethan’s former self still existed. With everything that was happening out there, she knew he’d need it.
Setting the album atop the Project Ares file, Emma reached for her phone. Pressing the home button, the charge read ninety-seven percent. Sliding it open, she moved to the messages app and waiting for it to load, stared at her closed bedroom door.
Two new text messages. Both from her mother. As she went to open the first, her phone rang.
Major Richard Daniels.
With her phone still connected to the charger, Emma moved up onto her bed. “Hello?”
“Emma, you need to be ready to move in the next five minutes. I have someone in the area that will bring you here tonight.”
“Major Daniels, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but given the fact that we’ve never met and today is the first time I’ve ever even spoken to you, can you tell me where it is you want to take me?”
“I don’t have much time to explain, but let’s just say that this is a place that you would have ended up at someday. Your special skill set has all but assured that. Where you are going isn’t what’s important. What is important is that we get you here in one piece. And just to put your mind at ease, this place is going to survive what’s out there, and once you’re behind these walls, you’ll be able to breathe easy.”
“But—”
“Listen, I haven’t called to beg. If you’ve got a better offer, just say so. If not, take only what you can carry and go to your garage. My men will be pulling into your driveway within minutes. They’ll come around to the side door and knock twice. You’ll want to let them in.” Major Daniels paused. “You still want to do this on your own?”
“No,” Emma’s hand began to shake. “I’ll be ready to go.”