ISSUE # 1
Kitty Hawk, North Carolina
7 months after The Rise
Had anyone seen the blonde woman and the boy together it would have been assumed they were mother and son. But, such as the circumstances were, no set of eyes fell on the pair, and these assumptions never came to pass. In truth, the blonde woman and the boy had been strangers whose fates collided by chance in a world that was no longer their own. They had run for days through the ruins of Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Tar Heel state, stopping and resting only when absolutely necessary. They had run with such urgency they took nothing but the clothes on their back. They had run, and all the while, unbeknownst to them, they were followed.
As the early evening drew to a close, quiet finally settled over the coastline of the Outer Banks. The waves pulled back with the tide. The sun stood across from the ocean, tiptoeing on the horizon, waiting to be swallowed. The stars and the night poked through the purple sky. Even in the dying sun there was ample light and surprising warmth. The shoreline was exquisite, brandishing an array of homes, all perched on stilts overlooking the Atlantic, stenciled across an infinite canvas.
The blonde woman and the boy had taken refuge in a relatively pleasant three level home with two split balconies. It was painted a pastel yellow that seemed to glow in the morning sun. The home’s east wing rested on two massive stilts that dug into the soft sand on the beach below. There was a rickety wooden staircase, its steps stained by water and age, that led down to the beach. The steps were so fragile the woman couldn’t help but hold her breath when she saw the boy bounding down them, arms free, almost flailing. Tonight, however, he was standing peacefully on the sun-bleached balcony, his face upturned, breathing in the sky. “Come outside!” the boy’s voice called to the blonde woman.
“What is it?” the woman called back. She stepped onto the balcony and found him staring beyond the ocean.
The boy smiled at her. “Nice, isn’t it?”
She looked out at the ocean, painted purple by the falling sun. “Yes,” she agreed. “It is.”
“I wish we could see the sunset,” the boy remarked. “East coast sunsets are so boring.”
“We could climb up on the roof,” said the blonde woman.
“Can we?” he asked eagerly.
The woman laughed. “Maybe when you’re older.” She rubbed the top of his head, mussing his sandy blonde hair. “Maybe when we’re both older…” and these words slipped away with a terrible sadness.
The boy was young, but not exceedingly so. He felt as if he’d just celebrated a birthday, but the days blended together like images in a dream—constant, but disconnected—and he was no longer sure when his special day had actually occurred. He was sure, however, that he was fifteen years old. That was not a fact that was not up for debate. He had a small scar running from the corner of his eye to the crest of his cheek bone. To the casual observer the scar was barely noticeable, but there was an abrasiveness to it that seemed fresh, unhealed. The boy didn’t the scar. It gave him age and character. He liked that.
The woman was quite striking, though she’d attained a fragile and lethargic energy over the past few months, as if she had worked eighteen-hour shifts every day for the last ten years. There was also something wistful about her, broken and inconsolable.
The boy looked up at the blonde woman. “What are you thinking about?”
She sighed, but said nothing.
The boy looked away and glanced down the beach. A single blue crab stumbled out of the water like the local drunk leaving its watering hole. It wandered sideways before a foamy wave slid beneath its claws and sucked it back into the ocean.
The boy didn’t know why, but it made him sad.
The sun gave once last shimmering breath before the ocean turned an instant black, erasing the golden waves and purple shades of tide. A cool breeze ran up along the balcony and the two shivered. She held the boy close and he squeezed her arm, reciprocating her reaction.
“Come on,” she said, “it’s getting dark, we’d better get inside.”
“Can we light a fire?” he asked.
“Not tonight,” she told him. “Come on, let’s go.”
Without protest, the boy nodded and followed her inside. He patiently watched as she locked the door and fastened the blinds, and they both wandered off to their beds where they would endure another sleepless night.
* * *
A Volkswagon Gulf sat in the parking lot of the local grocery store. It was the only working working car in the lot, the rest had been abandoned over intervals unknown to the boy and the blonde woman. The boy sat behind the wheel, tapping on the steering console with impatient fingers. Through the Gulf’s windshield he saw the blonde woman exit the store carrying a lone plastic bag filled with bottles of water, canned beans, canned tuna, canned spinach, and jars of preserves. She motioned for him to slide over, and he did so willingly.
When she got in she handed him the bag and he groaned almost instantly. “Same?”
“For now.”
“How was it in there?” he asked, nodding toward the supermarket.
The blonde woman’s face darkened. She looked back at the supermarket with gloomy, distraught eyes. She shook her head and said, “Buckle up.”
The boy strapped himself in and the car pulled away.
* * *
The waves were much louder the next day. They were hostile and relentless. The boy watched from the beach as the white foam settled on the rocks and disappeared into the cracks.
“What are you looking at?” the blonde woman’s voice called from behind him. Her voice was loud and startling, but he didn’t flinch—he rarely did anymore.
“Watching the waves,” he said, not turning around.
“Exciting.” She sat down in the sand next to him.
There was a long silence between them before the boy asked, “Where are we going after this?”
She didn’t respond and, at first, the boy thought she had not heard him. He went to repeat himself, but, before he could, she answered stiffly, “I don’t know.” She tried to offer him a warm smile, but it only came across as odd and disconcerting. “Don’t you like it here?” she asked.
“It’s fine,” said the boy. “It’s not home.”
She hesitated, seeming to have the words to answer, but not necessarily the courage. She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped when she heard the soft rumbling of a vehicle drawing near.
They got to their feet and squinted up the desolate road, but saw no vehicle.
“What is that?” the boy asked.
She put a finger to her lips and motioned for him to follow her. They jogged toward the pastel-painted home, the boy staring up at the blonde woman as they went. He felt she was doing her best not to look panicked, but her efforts were haphazard and shallow.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing’s wrong, let’s just get up to the house.”
They were on the balcony before he had a chance to ask another question. The rumbling grew louder, like a storm brewing in the distance.
“I’m scared,” said the boy.
She looked down, but gave him no comforting eyes. And then she surprised him by saying, “I am, too.” She looked back down the road as the water mirage on the concrete spilled away and seven Humvees sped over the hill, washing away the mirage with one quick brushstroke.
“Who’s that?” the boy asked.
“It’s them.” She grabbed the boy’s hand and pulled him into the house. “Go to your room and get your things,” she ordered. And for the first time since arriving at the Outer Banks, he felt the stabbing pain of fear wretch at his heart.
The boy asked no further questions and made no hesitation; he left quietly, sprinting up the stairs to the room he had called his for the past three days, and returned before he felt he had taken another breath.
The woman fastened the backpack around the boy’s shoulders and absentmindedly fixed his hair, unsure what to do with her quivering hands. He reached up and pulled her hands to her sides. “What’s happening?”
She looked at him with defeated eyes and said, “I’m sorry. I thought it was over…I thought we were away…But it looks like we’re going to have to start running again.”
The Humvees roared up the driveway and screeched to a halt.
The woman grabbed the boy’s hand and they headed out the back, down that rickety, water-stained staircase, and onto the beach. They were four houses down the coastline before the ones in the Humvees had made their way inside the home that was no longer the blonde woman and the boy’s.
* * *
The sky was a rich black by the time they lit the fire. Darkness had always frightened the blonde woman, but the boy paid it little attention. In the days that would follow, however, he would come to mind the darkness very much.
The cove where they had made camp was small, but safe. The rigid rock formations provided them enough camouflage and the slight overhang of cliff would protect them from any inclement weather (there would, however, be no rain in that night).
The blonde woman and the boy were propped up on their packs, staring up at the twinkling stars and the peaceful, wondrous space. “Guess that one,” he said pointing up at the sky.
“Orion’s belt?” the woman asked, not entirely sure of her response.
“No,” the boy laughed, but it seemed disingenuous.
“You know that’s the only one I know!” the woman said. She paused a moment, considering her words. “Everything’s going to be okay; you know that, right?” But there was uncertainty in her voice, an uncertainty both could detect, but neither would admit. “Go to sleep,” she said before he had a chance to respond.
The boy pulled away and settled back onto his pack. His eyes were already closed when he heard the blonde woman stand and walk down to the water. She was alert, and he took solace in that. He opened his eyes one last time and saw her wandering farther down the beach, ready to gather more firewood or, with any luck, snatch a couple blue crabs for breakfast. He watched as the woman became a silhouette, then a shadow, then an outline, and then he saw only darkness.
When he would wake, some hours later, she would still be gone.
It would be three days before he would discover the Variants had come in the night and taken her.
It would be another four until they came for him.
ISSUE #2
Coffeyville, Kansas
Seven months earlier
Day 1 of The Rise
Sarah Morse returned her children’s overdue books to the public library at a quarter past five in the afternoon. Nancy Smith, the librarian for the better part of three decades, had already locked up, but, upon seeing Sarah, offered up a polite smile and reopened the doors. Nancy waved off the overdue fee (a measly sixty cents), news Sarah returned with a wide smile
(smile)
and a shake of the hand.
Sarah was home by 5:45. After she hung her coat and dropped her shoes, she filled a copper pot with water and set it to boil. Dinner was a traditional she loved, and she did it well. The vegetables came next. The market was stocked with fresh carrots, celery, zucchini, cucumbers and green beans. She cut them into a quarter inch dice and placed them in a Pyrex bowl, smiling
(a smile)
as she went. As she readied the garlic, her attention was displaced when her two children came bounding into the kitchen. Josh, the older of the two, was eleven and spoke with a slight stutter. The stutter was more pronounced in his younger years, a trait he countered by barely speaking. Sarah and her husband, Bruce, took Josh to a speech counselor, where he had gone every Tuesday and Thursday for ninety minutes a session. The appointments were tedious and tiresome, but they helped significantly. Josh still found a stutter slip off his tongue from time to time, but the occasions were grossly diminished.
Sam—or “Samantha” as her kindergarten teacher called her—was the youngest. She was short and sweet with a tangled mess of red hair and freckles peppering her face like disconnected raindrops. She was the spitting image of Peppermint Patty from the old Peanuts comic strips. She followed her brother around wherever he went, and they could often be seen walking up Main Street hand in hand. Josh had enacted this particular policy after Sam wandered into the street and was nearly hit by a passing vehicle. He ran to the edge of the sidewalk, snatched her hand into his, and pulled her back to safety. The car, as Josh recalled, passed by without so much as a glance. This incident, however, was something they had kept from their mother ever since. Rightly so.
“Mommy, what’s for dinner?” Sam asked tugging at Sarah’s jeans.
“Pasta,” she said.
“Didn’t we have that last night?” she asked.
“No, sweetie, we had chicken last night.”
Sam put a finger to her lips and scrunched her eyebrows, thinking long and hard. Then, satisfied with her mother’s response, climbed into her chair at the kitchen table and placed a napkin in her lap.
Sarah, in the midst of slicing the garlic, heard Josh rifling through the fridge. She looked and saw his white Nikes in the gap between the floor and the refrigerator door. “Don’t eat anything,” she told him. “Dinner’s in five.”
Josh closed the refrigerator and took the seat across from his sister. They both had full glasses of milk already poured. He leaned forward and took a sip, placing his lips at the edge of the glass and slurping up the topmost layer.
She mimicked him.
He pulled his head back abruptly.
She mimicked him again.
They engaged in a brief game of “Mirror Image” before Josh made Sam laugh with his classic “Bulging Eyes” routine and milk shot out her nose. This made Josh, too, burst into a fit of laughter and the two giggled until they heard the sharp, splendid sizzling sound as Sarah slid the vegetables into the hot skillet. She gave them a quick stir, then went to the pantry to grab the pasta.
The three of them heard the front door open, then close, then footsteps. Seconds later Bruce Morse entered the kitchen dressed smartly in a grey suit and simple black tie. He set his briefcase down on the table, but pulled it back when he caught Sarah’s glare. He smiled his boyish smile—that smile she had fallen in love with twelve years earlier—and then kissed her on the cheek. “Hello, my love,” he said, rubbing the small of her back. “Smells good.”
Bruce walked across the kitchen, kissed his children, then went to the fridge and retrieved a beer. Pabst Blue Ribbon was all he drank, but the mere smell of it when he cracked a fresh can appalled Sarah. In spite of her belief the beer had always turned rancid, she restocked him with a fresh six pack nearly every week.
Love.
(A smile. (A splendid, splendid smile))
Food was on the table by 6:45.
As they ate, Sarah looked out the window above the sink and saw the sun had fallen behind the other houses lining her block. The effect produced a soft, orange glow in their neighborhood.
(Another smile)
What a lovely evening, she thought.
And it had been.
“Do we have any cheese?” Josh asked, his mouth full of zucchini.
“Josh, don’t eat with your mouth full,” Bruce told him.
“Lemme check.” Sarah pulled herself away from the table and went to the fridge. When she inspected the shelves she found the fridge was cheese free. “Doesn’t look like it,” she said, and sat back down.
They ate in silence for the next few minutes before Sarah asked the table, “Do we have any cheese?”
Bruce blinked and he heard his jaw click. “I’m sorry?” he asked, not sure if he had heard her correctly.
“Do we have any cheese?” Sarah asked again.
“You just checked, sweetheart.”
There wasn’t a glint of recognition on her face.
“We don’t have any,” he finally said. He looked at his children who shared the same quizzical expression. “Sarah…” he said quietly. “Sarah, is everything…?” But his words trailed away.
There was a bizarre (smile) on her face; artificial, yet profound and troubling. He couldn’t look away. And, while he wasn’t sure, he thought he saw a small, red flicker in his wife’s eye. The kind of red you see in photographs, though this was far less pronounced, and seemed to only circle the eye—like a faint ring—rather than embody it. But then, as soon as she blinked, he saw her warm, hazel eyes staring back at him.
No more red—if there ever was any, he told himself.
“Oh,” she finally muttered, and went back to her plate of food with that strange (smile) still coloring her face.
“How was school today, Josh?” Bruce asked, one eye still on his wife.
Josh didn’t have a chance to respond when Sarah slid away from the table, stood, went to the fridge, and opened the door.
“Sarah?” Bruce asked.
“Hm?” she responded.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m getting the cheese,” she said promptly
By now Josh and Sam were turned in their chairs, watching their mother as she hunted for the non-existent cheese.
“Honey?” Bruce said.
“Hm?” she said again, still with that same chipper tone.
Bruce left his dinner and went to his wife. Sarah had always had clammy hands. And warm. Oh, God, how they were warm. But when Bruce touched the hands he thought were his wife’s, he nearly shuddered. They felt like blocks of ice. He let go of them, almost startled. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said. And then those beautiful hazel eyes (smiled) back at him. “Would you excuse me?”
“Where are you going?”
“I forgot something.”
“What did you forget?
“I forgot something,” she said again.
“All right.”
That strange (smile) spread across her lips again. It was horrid and rotten, curled up as if two fine strings were yanking at the corners of her mouth. Sarah turned robotically toward the foyer, her joints suddenly stiff and rigid.
Bruce watched as she walked through the foyer and disappeared into the living room. A moment later he heard the garage door open, then close with an abrupt click.
“What’s wrong with Mommy, Daddy?” Sam asked.
Neither of the children were eating by now.
“Nothing, sweetie. Just eat your food,” he told.
But she didn’t.
They heard the door to the garage open again, then close that same abrupt click. Bruce could see the outline of Sarah’s shadow as she made her way through the foyer back into the kitchen. She was holding something, holding it with hands that seemed frighteningly powerful. He squinted to make out the object, but her shadow was much too dark. Bruce wouldn’t have to wait long, however, to see she was gripping his Nosler M48 hunting rifle. The gun had been a gift from Sarah’s father three Christmases earlier. Bruce had even gone hunting with the old man a dozen times since then. But as the seasons passed, the trips became more infrequent, and the rifle had rested comfortably in the Morse family garage for quite some time.
Sarah stepped into the light of the kitchen and her family stared back at her without a gram’s worth of understanding. She pulled the rifle close to her chest as if it was a nursing baby. Her eyes were unblinking and cold, lifeless even.
“Sarah, honey, what are you doing?” Bruce asked.
It’s quite possible that ‘doing’ had been Bruce Morse’s last word. It was hard to tell considering the groans and moans spewing from his bloody mouth. Sarah pointed the rifle at her husband in between the “hon” and “ey,” cocked it when Bruce said “you,” and pulled the trigger an instant after that.
The gun kicked back with such force Sarah’s arms flew up in the air, but her mechanical grip remained true to the gun.
A shower of blood leapt out of Bruce’s back and splattered against the refrigerator door. He slipped down it, a smearing of blood trailing him like some horrible streak of paint. His final expression was that of shock and terror—and there was nothing more understandable than that.
That wasn’t my wife, he thought. And then the light left his eyes forever.
“M-m-m-mom, w-w-w-what are y-y-y—“ But that was all the stuttering Joshua Morse could muster before Sarah turned the gun on her son and fired another shot.
The force of the bullet sent Josh hurtling backward as if yanked by some invisible chain. The chair slid a full six inches before finally toppling over. The bullet had passed through Josh’s skull, tearing bone from the side of his head. When the coroner would arrive some hours later, he would remark that the boy’s face was nearly “unidentifiable.”
Sam was different. Apart from reacting to the earsplitting gunshots, she had remained quite still. Her fork was still in her hand, though she wasn’t eating. The whole thing unfurled before her like some horrid stage play.
Sarah’s eyes hadn’t blinked since she left to retrieve the gun. And they didn’t blink when they shifted to her daughter. Sam stared at the barrel of the gun with this hollow sense of curiosity. Her arms and head were still, but her feet dangled from her chair, rocking back and forth like a metronome.
The third shot got the attention of the neighbors. A few had already wandered into the street trying to decipher where the shots had come from. The third left no doubt: something had happened at the Morse house.
Sam was dead before she hit the floor.
Calmly, Sarah leaned the rifle against the kitchen table and headed for the front door.
When she made it outside she locked the top and bottom locks, stuffed the keys in her pocket, and took a seat on the porch steps.
Maggie Wallace, her neighbor from three doors down, approached Sarah with tentative concern. “Sarah…is everything all right?”
Sarah looked up at Maggie, the hazel in her eyes sparkling in the streetlight that hung over her yard. Night had finally come. That soft, orange glow was gone. There was no more promising light. The world had gone dark.
“Yes.” Sarah said evenly. “Everything’s perfect.” She craned her neck and stared up at the sky. The stars twinkled above her in a symphony of peace. She closed her eyes, soaking in the night that had come on so suddenly.
And then she smiled.
ISSUE #3
Waco, TX
Day 3 of The Rise
Martha Lindgren was a math teacher. Certainly not a spectacular math teacher, but a decent one in her own right. She taught at Texas Christian Academy for thirty-four years, taught solely tenth graders, and taught solely advanced algebra. She never had a complaint filed against her, never a disruptive student she couldn’t handle, and had been nominated (but never won) Teacher of the Year in her district three times.
On the last day before Christmas break, Martha Lindgren retired. She said she wanted to travel, to finally get out of Waco. While they were well aware she had not crossed the state line in over a decade, her colleagues took up a “Martha Fund” in order to chip in a little something extra for her trip to Italy. She and her husband, Hank, were going to fly into Tuscany, drive along the coast of the Mediterranean, hop a boat to Sardegna, find some crummy prop plane to take them over to Rome, and finish up in Emilia-Romagna where they would dine on fresh plates of lasagna and drink countless bottles of Lambrusco. They made no reservations, and hadn’t decided on how long to stay. They were just going.
And they deserved it.
Earlier that month, Martha had made arrangements to meet with the local travel agent, Russ Buckner, before their trip. Russ wanted to go over a few restaurants where they could dine, give them a list of sights to see, and suggest a couple of hotels where they could lay down their troubles for the night.
But there would be no reservations.
“Oh no! No reservations at all!” Martha had told him during their first meeting. “I won’t hear of it.”
No reservations at all? Russ played the thought over and over in his head. How strange.
Martha’s meeting with Russ was at a half past two that day. She was running a tad bit late because she couldn’t find the right shoes to wear. And even though she was the ripe age of sixty-eight she still had the fashion consciousness of a fifteen year old on her first day of school.
“Jus-hro-n-su-choo-n-go!” Hank shouted from the den. He had on the Rangers game and was hard to hear over the color commentary.
“What?” Martha called from upstairs.
“Just throw on some shoes and go!” He yelled, louder this time.
Martha rolled her eyes. “There are specific shoes that go with specific outfits, Hank! But I suppose a fashion maven like you already knew that!”
“Russ Buckner don’t care what yer wearing!” he barked.
“I don’t give a holy hell ‘bout Russ Buckner!”
“Ahhh!” Hank scoffed.
“Ahhh yourself!” she shouted back, nose deep in her closet.
They didn’t speak for a few seconds.
“I love you!” he called up to her.
“I love ya more, ya old grouch!”
It took a few minutes more of extensive digging before Martha found the cream-colored Penny Loafers she was so desperately searching for. The shoes were nothing fancy, but against her lemon-colored sundress she found it to be a near perfect match. Russ Buckner—though unsaid—would have thought otherwise.
“Back in an hour,” she told Hank as she took a step into the den.
He looked her up and down then returned his attention to the Ranger game, “You look nice.”
“Thank you,” she said taking a modest courtesy. Martha slung her purse over her shoulder and left. He didn’t watch her go.
* * *
Martha arrived at Russ Buckner’s office at a quarter to three. She hated when people were late and hated even more when she was the culprit. “I’m so sorry I’m late,” Martha said as she entered Russ’s office.
Russ was sitting at his desk eating with a newspaper laid out in front of him. Next to the paper was a Styrofoam container that housed two chili cheese dogs. Russ Buckner was short and squat. He had a round body, shaped much like a pear or a strawberry. The kids would often joke that if Russ fell onto his side you could roll him down the street the way they did with Violet Beaurgard in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” His hair was blonde and thinning and he wrapped it around his head in an unpleasant combover. He had thin spectacles propped on the edge of his nose, which he promptly took off when Martha entered his office. “It’s quite all right, Martha, I was just finishing up the paper,” he said greeting her with a firm handshake. “Did you read about what happened in Kansas last night?”
“No, what?” Martha asked.
“Mother of two shot and killed her kids and her husband during dinner. Cops can’t figure out what possessed her or what set her off. Damndest thing I ever read about.”
“Oh dear…” Martha brought her fingers to her lips and muttered, “How terrible…”
“Husband must notta liked her cass’role,” Russ quipped.
“Oh, Russ, you’re awful,” Martha said playfully slapping his arm.
“I know, I know, I shouldn’t joke. Please, have a seat.”
Russ’s office was decorated in a predictably crass fashion. There were trophies of nearly every animal imaginable plastered against the sheetrock. Bucks, elk, bear, pheasant. There was even a stuffed armadillo in the corner nearest the bathroom. There was a Miller Lite neon beer sign propped on a faux leather sitting chair. And, while the sign was unlit, that did little to diminish its gaudiness. His desk was piled with papers so high they always seemed on the verge of spilling over. But they never did.
Martha took a seat across from Russ. He shifted a few of his precarious papers out of courtesy, but its effect was minimal.
“So, I just wanted to give you this packet.” He handed her a thick, green folder. “In it you’ll find a bunch of places to stop along your route. Now, I know you were specific about no reservations, but I figured it might be wise to have a little research handy while you’re bombing down those Italian roads.”
Martha opened the folder and flipped through it with the same casual disinterest she had displayed when he pressured her about all those precious reservations. She figured it was because he got some sort of commission if they did, but she didn’t mind. Russ was a good guy, and an even better friend to her, Hank, and the community. But this was her trip, and for the first time in her life, she was going to do things exactly how she wanted them done.
“Well thank you, Russ, I really app—“ But she stopped short of finishing when she saw Russ’s head twitched slightly. It was neither vivid nor pronounced, it was just there. At first, she didn’t think she had seen it correctly, and then his head twitched again. His brow furrowed in an expression of pain, and his right eye blinked at twice the speed of his left. After a few seconds, his smile returned and he stared back at her as if nothing had happened.
“Are you all right?”
“‘Course I am,” he said. “Why?”
“Russ…you were twitching,” she said in a low whisper.
“I was what?” he asked, almost incredulously.
“You were twitching, like you were having a stroke or a seizure or something.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I could call Dr. Northman, if you’d like.”
Russ waved her off with a hand of “nonsense” and insisted she keep perusing the packet.
And that packet in her lap was almost enough to distract her from Russ’s third tick. He clenched his fists, turning his knuckles white, and squeeze his eyes shut. When he finally opened them the forest green of his irises was still there, but Russ Buckner was not. He blinked and, when he did, Martha saw a sharp red circle surrounding those green eyes that now seemed so horrible. They pierced Martha with such a viciousness she felt like she were about to tip over in her chair. Russ Buckner had an emotionless grin stretched ear to ear.
“Will you excuse me for a moment?” Russ’s hollow voice asked.
Martha didn’t answer, but Russ pushed back his chair anyway and stood up. His body was stiff and rigid; the muscles in his body seemed suddenly new and unused. He moved into the bathroom behind his desk and shut the door.
Martha considered leaving. She had Russ’s “research,” what more did she need? But what if he was having a stroke? Or a seizure? Or something much worse? She glanced at the exit, but then stood and rounded Russ’s desk.
“Russ?”
There was no answer.
“Russ?” she tried again.
Martha inched closer to the bathroom door, her fingers trembling as she reached for its handle. “Russ, are you all right?” She turned the handle only to discover the door was locked. She took a step back, but found her hands were still trembling.
“Russ, I’m going to call an ambulance." She heard a soft whimpering coming from the other side of the door. It was low at first, but soon amplified into a wailing drone. “Russ?” Martha leaned forward and pressed her ear against the clunky plywood door. “Russ, can you hear me?”
And Russ could hear her. He could hear her very, very well.
Even through the flimsy plywood door, Martha Lindgren didn’t hear the cocking of the .45 semi-automatic Russ kept above his medicine cabinet. Nor could she hear the low chuckle rumbling from Russ’s lungs. But she did hear the sound of the hammer dropping on the gun.
The bullet exploded from the barrel at approximately eight hundred feet per second. If Russ fired the gun from seven feet, how many seconds would it take to travel from the gun into Martha’s skull?
Anybody? Anybody? Nobody in class knows? Nobody has any idea? How very disappointing!
Martha was dead before she hit the floor, and that’s as much detail as the police would provide.
But it was not the end for Russ Buckner that day. After he killed Martha, he exited the bathroom, finished his chilidogs as Martha Lindgren’s blood pooled under his loafers, and left. The mailman, Wally Beerman, saw Russ lock up his office before Russ turned on him and fired a single shot into his head. Wally’s eyes rolled back and he dropped to the ground in a crumpled mess.
Russ crossed the street to where Mrs. Howard was sitting with her dog, Buddy. He fired one shot into her chest and another into her stomach.
He let the dog live.
By now there was panic in the street and people were screaming at Russ to stop. He walked past them with the same mechanical glaze he had shown the late Mrs. Lindgren only minutes previous.
Paul Itna, high school football coach at Texas Christian Academy, stepped out of the Floyd’s barbershop. He still had a towel wrapped around his neck and fresh shaving cream lathered on the left side of his face. “Russ, what the hell you doing?” Paul Itna cried.
Russ fired a shot that entered Paul Itna’s left cheek and exited the back of his neck. The blood mixed with the shaving cream and ran into the street like a spilled strawberry milkshake.
Floyd, the barber, tried to run for cover but Russ fired two shots, one into Floyd’s back, just above the kidney, and the other into his head. The glasses Floyd was wearing spun off of his face and he fell forward onto the sidewalk.
Russ would kill Jolie Daniels, Kyle Nelson, and Luther Gladden before his gun was empty.
When police arrived to the scene Russ was sitting outside Floyd’s having a smoke. His expressionless face juxtaposed against the spinning barber pole was all that was needed to cover their arms in rich layers of gooseflesh.
“Russ?” one of the policeman asked.
But Russ said nothing. He inhaled and exhaled. Inhaled and exhaled.
And then Russ Buckner smiled.
And the wheel turned.
ISSUE #4
Los Angeles, CA
Day 3 of The Rise
The production of Camels to Africa was six weeks past picture-lock, ten million over budget, and the picture’s star, Lila Craven, had locked herself in her dressing room for the third consecutive day. This was the twenty-eighth incident of the kind in her career and her agent, Rachel Greenberg, had had enough.
Lila hadn’t done a picture in over four years and, while she was once a promising young star, a nervous breakdown mixed with Quaaludes and tequila resulted in a court-ordered stint at rehab. Or, as the Hollywood-types spun it: “Lila is taking a much-needed break from the stresses and tribulations of her acting schedule.”
This “much-needed break” lasted thirty months and cost the actress a small fortune.
Rachel had pulled every string and called in every favor she had left in order to get Lila Camels to Africa. When Lila read the script she told Rachel is sounded “trite and far-fetched.”
“It’s Lawrence of Arabia, but with a woman!” Rachel cried in response. “It’s fucking Lila of Arabia and you are doing this picture if I have to drag you on set and deliver you to Ernie myself.”
Ernie was Ernie Roland, the director of the picture. He was hot off his Oscar win for No Sunshine in Brussels and wanted to direct an epic drama with a gritty actress who had the talent and the town’s respect.
What he got was Lila Craven. She lacked tremendously in the respect department, and her level of talent was undoubtedly in question. The New York Times called her portrayal of Mona Lisa in Leonardo’s Game “contrived and a total bore” and The Boston Herald referred to her performance in Kites of Brooklyn as “a true test for a young actress; one that barely gets a passing grade.”
And now Lila was on set for one of the biggest productions in studio history, and she was refusing to come out of her trailer.
“Fuck Ernie! Fuck all of them!” Lila screamed from her bathroom.
Rachel was sitting outside on one of the lumpy couch cushions furiously sending emails from her Blackberry. “You don’t mean that,” she said without looking up. “Ernie’s a great director, he just gets passionate sometimes.”
The accordion-style door to the bathroom slid open and Lila stood there, mascara running down her puffy, red cheeks. “I’m passionate!” she cried. “I defy you to find someone more passionate than me!”
“Lila, listen,” Rachel said, finally setting down her Blackberry. She got to her feet and guided Lila out of the bathroom. “We’re almost there. We only have one more scene and you then you wrap. Please, I’m begging you, for your career…fuck, for my career, please clean yourself up and get back on set. I’ll talk to Ernie in the meantime, but please, please, please, just do this for me.”
“Jesus, fuck,” Lila said pulling away. “Fine, I’ll do it!”
Rachel squealed. “Yay! Okay, wipe that mascara off your face and meet me at makeup in ten.” She snatched up her Blackberry and left, clicking away at those little keys as she did.
“Click. Click. Click,” said the Blackberry.
Lila went back into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. She had purple sacks under her bloodshot eyes and there were thick trails of mascara breaking off into several roots near her jawline. She grabbed a towel from the rack and wiped her face but only managed to rub the mascara deeper into her swollen cheeks.
“Ugh!” Lila grunted.
She rubbed harder, but the color only deepened, embedding into her pores. She looked at herself again, more than ready to have another tantrum, when she was struck with a crippling headache. It was unlike anything she had ever felt before. Her nose crinkled and her jaw clenched, but then the pain promptly vanished.
The incandescent light above the sink accentuated the crow’s feet dotting her eyes and she suddenly looked thirty years older, like the shell of the young temptress she once was. Her skin was frail and bedraggled. As far as actresses went, Lila Craven looked like a monster.
But Lila didn’t groan or scream. She didn’t cry out in a wretched “woe is me” howl. She looked thoughtfully at her features, even taking a moment to touch her swollen cheeks with the tips of her fingers.
And then she smiled. It was a wicked, impish smile.
Lila blinked and heard her lids click against the moisture in her eyes. When she opened them she noticed a faint discoloration, something slight, just around the iris. But when she blinked again, the discoloration vanished
How peculiar? She thought. How very, very peculiar?
The smile morphed into a grin…
* * *
Lila arrived at makeup just how she had been in the bathroom: the mascara was smeared across her face, her lipstick was a splotch away from “clown mouth,” and her hair was a frazzled mess.
“What the fuck happened to you?” Rachel asked taking a clump of Lila’s hair in her hand. She held a few strands close to her face, inspecting it as if she had lice. “Lila, what’s the matter?”
Lila said nothing. She only giggled a schoolgirl’s giggle and plopped down in the chair.
“Are you high or something?” Rachel asked. “Lila, I thought we had this handled. You were clean. Fuck! You are clean. Jesus, what did you take?”
Giggle. Giggle.
“Lila!” Rachel slapped Lila’s cheek, smearing mascara across her palm. “What. Did. You. Take?”
Giggle. Giggle.
“For fuck’s sake!” Rachel pulled out her Blackberry.
“Click. Click. Click,” the Blackberry said to Lila, and she squealed with delight.
“What the hell’s wrong with her,” Ernie Roland asked venturing over to the two.
“Nothing, she’s fine,” Rachel said frantically typing away.
“Click. Click. Click.” More laughter.
“Oh, holy fucking Christ! Shitting shit! She’s stoned as balls, isn’t she?”
“No, of course not,”
“Don’t lie to me, Greenberg,” he cautioned.
“I’m not lying. She’s fine.”
Ernie looked over the wavering Miss Craven. Her eyes never met his. They danced around the soundstage with child-like amazement. He grabbed Rachel’s arm, pulling her away from Lila. “Picture’s up in five. If she’s not ready, I’m shutting this down!” He stormed away without looking back.
Lila was staring at the recently-built set. There were half a dozen straw huts depicting a small village. The huts were scattered across a thin layer of white sand, and a background had been painted on a nylon screen to make it look like a sprawling desert lay beyond the horizon.
The other cast members were milling about the “village”, all of them shooting Lila the same look of contempt.
“Where’s fucking makeup? Makeup!” Rachel typed away at those clunky keys and left in search of the makeup girl. Lila was left alone, fiddling with her hair as she stared at the set that seemed so real. She hopped off the makeup chair and sauntered toward the back of the set. Behind the nylon screen that portrayed the expansive desert Lila found a varying array of art supplies: stacks of oil paints, dirty rags, brushes, thinner, extra nylon, and old bits of wood frame. And while the rest of the cast and crew were busy blocking the next scene, Lila was busy emptying the thinner and oils over every surface in sight. She splashed them on the set’s trusses, giggling every time they slopped on the floor.
“Where’s Lila?” Rachel was yelling from the other side of the set. “Lila!”
Lila held a finger to her lips as if willing herself quiet. She nearly giggled, but gulped the laughter back with a giant swallow of toxic air.
“Lila! Lila!” Others were calling for her now.
Lila started for the back exit. She passed an HMI light on her way and tipped it over with a simple flick of the fingers. The light toppled over so casually, so easily, it was as though Lila Craven had the strength of a body builder.
The light crashed against the oil-soaked rags, igniting them into a smoldering inferno.
Lila’s eyes lit up as a brilliant orange glow streaked up the massive nylon background, the desert scenery disappearing into a fury of flame and ash. It was not long for the rest of the set to catch fire. The huts were set ablaze after the trusses tipped, igniting the straw with a kiss of its flame.
Lila pushed open the back exit, stepped out, and calmly closed the door. She took a vacant security guard’s chair and wedged it beneath the handle.
As smoke filled the set, she could hear the others still inside pushing against the exit, but the door would not give. Their pounding came next, followed by of layers screams that Lila could not stop giggling at.
Later, the LAFD would estimate the soundstage had gone up in less than three minutes. All forty-seven people inside would perish. And Stage 6 would never be used again.
They found Lila sitting on one of the golf carts they had used to shuttle cast around in. She was making gratuitous engine sounds and turning the wheel as if she were running the Indy 500. Smoke was pouring out of stage vents in a black stream so dense it looked like God had twisted a Sharpie across the sky.
“Lila Craven?” one of the firefighters asked.
She looked up at him with those child-like eyes, batting her lashes and smiling that innocent (but hideous) smile.
“Are you Lila Craven?”
“‘Click. Click. Click,’ said the Blackberry!” Lila wailed. She threw back her head and howled a fit of laughter that echoed off the studio walls.
The world was covered in a layer of maniacal gasoline, and Sarah Morse, Russ Buckner, and Lila Craven had all just struck a match.
ISSUE #5
Potawatomi Woods, Wheeling, IL
Four months after The Rise
A group of survivors raced across the desolate terrain, not bothering to stop for what seemed like days. Their legs were tired and their throats dry, but they pressed on. They had passed through abandoned town after abandoned town, picking up food and clean water whenever they could. But they afforded themselves very few rests, running on fumes for quite some time.
Illinois had been just as desolate as Minnesota and Wisconsin, and when they came to a preserve just outside Chicago, things were no different. It was completely deserted, not even the occasional caw of a crow could be heard amongst the eerie ripples of wind and rattling dead leaves. They had fled for the city, desperate for hope, for a savior, for anything. They had fled for safety, but the Variants followed. And they were not far off.
“Hey, Lara—check this out!” Enrique Valenzuala’s words stuttered against his trembling breath. Enrique was short, stout and Mexican, and ever since he was a little boy, he had been self-conscious of all three. His mother preached sermon after sermon about being proud of their heritage, but he did everything he could to divorce himself from it. In one mortifying incident, his mother slapped the Chalupa out of Enrique’s hand after his ultimate defiance: skipping Sunday supper for a quick trip to Taco Bell. He never forgot the look in her eye, and it was the only clear memory of her his mind could muster.
“We ain’t got time for this, Enrique.” Lara stopped next to Enrique, though her voice was calm and maintained.
Enrique’s stomach grumbled as he bent down to retrieve a Hallmark card fluttering in the wind. The card was the only definable object that protruded from a mound of wreckage of what used to be a slew of temporary shacks or huts. Now, however, they were leveled into nothingness. How the destruction had come about was a mystery to them, but they had seen enough wreckage over the past four months to know not to ask any questions. On the cover of the card was a cartoon boy with a football-shaped head. He held a green birthday cake while fireworks exploded behind him. In the upper right hand corner of the card was a peculiar splotch of brown, something that looked like a grease stain, but was most likely dried blood.
“What did I just say?” Lara yelled. “We can’t stop, Enrique!”
Lara Holliday was thin and pale, and her blonde hair only accentuated those traits. Her face was soiled with dirt and her breath smelled of Spam and canned chipotles. At her sides were dual .357 Magnums fastened securely in their holsters.
Enrique ignored her (as he usually did) and freed the birthday card from the wreckage. “Holy fuck!” he cried, stumbling backward and falling onto the pile of tattered shingles and blistered wood.
“What is it?”
“A hand! There’s a goddamn hand under there!”
“What the hell’s going on? Why’d you stop?” a gruff voice came from behind them. “Enrique, quit fuckin’ around.”
“Captain, get over here! You gotta see this,” Enrique said to the older gentleman approaching them.
Captain Richard Blake was old in age, but youthful in personality. His grey stubble had turned a vibrant shade of white over the last few weeks, and he exhibited a thick head of magnificent silver hair. If it weren’t for two tours in Vietnam and a brief stint in Desert Storm, Captain Blake would look ageless.
“What is it?” Captain Blake asked, the annoyance in his voice transitioning to curiosity.
All Enrique could do was point. At the edge of the rubble, protruding from a layer of shingles, was a woman’s hand. It was limp and motionless, an abandoned relic of what used to be. The nails were caked with dirt and a thin layer of dust had settled across the skin making the hand look hollow and waxy.
“Hell! I reckon that’s the strangest thang I seen all week,” Captain Blake remarked.
This was true. True, until the fingers moved, however.
“Strike the last,” he corrected himself.
Enrique nearly toppled over. Lara held back a gasp. The hand flexed, moving stiffly after waking from a deep sleep.
“What do we do?” Enrique croaked.
“What do you reckon we do? Get her the hell outta there!”
Enrique began to dig, heaving up splintered wood and crumbled trusses with marked ease.
“Where’s the Doc?” Lara asked. She stepped behind Captain Blake and stared off into the clearing. It was empty, and painfully quiet, until a deafening scream ripped across the preserve and throttled their eardrums. It was a blitzing scream layered into a nightmarish harmony.
“Is that them?” Enrique asked. A terrified look flashed in his eyes. He had momentarily stopped digging, trembling with fear. “That can’t be them, can it?”
“Doc!” Captain Blake shouted toward the clearing.
Two hundred yards behind them, a man emerged from the tree line. He was running, a visible sense of urgency in his steps.
“Martin, what is it?” Lara asked
“They’re coming,” was all he said.
Captain Blake stepped forward, the first to voice his pessimism. “That ain’t possible, Doc, we still got an hour a daylight lef’!”
Doctor Martin Knight was dressed handsomely in black slacks and a white button down. Both articles of clothing were a bit dingy and dust-stained, but, otherwise, in perfect condition. When he finally reached them his breaths were heavy and plodding, and his shirt was rich with perspiration. He stepped to Enrique who was still knee deep rubble. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Check this out, Doc! There’s a goddamn woman under here!”
Another scream split across the preserve, this one more intense than the last.
“They’re gettin’ closer, Doc,” Captain Blake said, the southern twang in his voice suddenly more pronounced.
“Pull her up!” Martin said. He crouched down, helping Enrique sift through the debris.
“Are you crazy? They’re almost on us!” Lara’s protest was warranted, yet ignored.
Enrique lifted the last fragment of wood and cast it aside. He and Martin peered into the crater and saw the face of middle-aged woman within the hollow. Apart from a minor scratch on her cheek and a small bruise on her forehead, she appeared to be in reasonably good condition.
Enrique reached into the crater and the woman’s eyes suddenly opened. He jumped back, a small scream escaping from his lips. “Holy fuck shit!”
The woman opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words came out.
Another scream in the distance. A rumbling. They were very near…
Martin and Enrique reached under the woman’s arms and pulled her up. Her hair was littered with soot and grime, and her fingernails were cracked and brittle. Her eyes darted back and forth between the four, unsure of what to do or say. Understandably so.
“Are you all right?” Martin asked hastily.
The woman could only blink at them.
“What’s your name?”
Another scream tore across the preserve.
“Can you understand me?”
The woman blinked again, but, this time, she seemed to grasp some semblance of comprehension.
“What’s your name?” Martin repeated.
“Annie,” the woman’s voice croaked. “Annie Walker.”
Martin took her by the shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes. “Mrs. Walker, I’m afraid I don’t have time to explain what’s about to happen. All I can tell you is that we’re going to have to run; run as fast as we can’t. I don’t want you to look back and I don’t want you to ask any questions. All I want you to do is run. Do you understand me?”
There was a blatant look of pandemonium in her eyes. She didn’t answer. She gaped in awe at the shotguns in Captain Blake and Enrique’s hands, the Magnums stuck against Lara’s thighs, and the rifle strapped across Martin’s back.
“Mrs. Walker!” Martin snapped. “Do you understand?”
“Yes…” she mumbled. “Yes, I understand.” Though, truthfully, she didn’t.
A final piercing scream and they all turned to face the tree line. In the distance, a hundred bodies emerged from the wood, their features indistinguishable from the survivors’ distance. The figures were lined up in a meticulous row, like an army in attack position.
“What is that?” Annie asked.
“The Variants,” Captain Blake said cocking his shotgun in an absurd moment of surrealism.
“The what?” Annie asked.
“Jesus, honey, what’d Martin just say?” Lara barked. “No fucking questions!”
Martin interlocked his fingers with Annie’s and the five were off and running. “Get to that cluster of trees!” Martin shouted, pointing to a broad acreage of firry pines. Their trunks were as thick as Cadillacs and their branches were low and dense.
Their feet pounded on the dry grass, but the sound was drowned out by the pursuing Variants.
The survivors reached the tree line and traversed their way through the crowded wood. Annie glanced up at the tall pines as Martin pulled her along, his pace quickening.
“There! Up ahead!” The four followed as Lara made a slight left on a faux trail and emerged into another clearing, this one twice the size of the last. It was open, exposed.
They were sitting ducks.
On the far end of the clearing stood a small cottage, recently built considering the glimmering shingles and unfinished wood. Its unnatural location looked like a bizarre construct haphazardly placed inside an Edward Hopper painting.
“Get to the cottage!” Martin shouted, now leading the way. Annie was close behind him, her hand still firmly clasped in his.
They hustled up the porch steps and tried the front door.
Locked. Quack, quack, went the sitting ducks.
“Enrique!” Martin called him to the door.
Enrique knelt down and removed a lock-pick set from his back pocket. Within seconds the pick took and the latch lifted. He pushed the door open and a shotgun blast landed next to his head, the sound piercing his ears. Wood exploded off the frame, unhinging the door. Splinters skipped into Enrique’s cheek, but he avoided the shell’s BBs. He toppled backward, gun in hand, and instinctively fired a shot into the house. A soft groan was audible from just inside the doorway.
“Shit! Oh shit!” Enrique was on his feet and the first one inside.
“Get inside!” Captain Blake ordered,
Lara and Martin looked back at the pines wavering in the breeze. At the edge of the clearing, four-dozen bodies emerged from the wooded darkness.
“Come on!” Martin grabbed Lara by her tank top and yanked her inside.
“I’m sorry man, I’m so sorry.” Enrique was sobbing over the body of an older gentleman. By the look of his wrinkled skin and fragile bones he couldn’t have been younger than seventy-five. A single gunshot wound stood out on his tattered white t-shirt. His chest was expanding and contracting with such difficulty Martin was sure the BBs had lodged in his lungs. Enrique had the old man’s head propped up on his thigh and was applying pressure to the wound as best he could.
“Lara, secure the door!” Martin knelt down next to the old man.
Lara grabbed hold of a stained, blue couch, spun it around, and wedged it against the unhinged door. She toppled a nearby dresser onto the sofa, the drawers regurgitating out as she did. Inside the drawers were articles of clothing, both male and female, both young and old.
Martin lifted Enrique’s hand from the wound and saw a deep hole three inches above his floating rib. The blood was fantastically dark and seemed unusually thick for an unclotted wound. “How you holding up?” he asked the old man.
“He shot me,” the old man coughed. His teeth were stained with blood. “The son of a bitch shot me.”
“I didn’t mean to, man, I’m sorry.” Enrique wiped the tears from his eyes.
“Enrique, go help Lara.”
He left reluctantly, his sobs continuing to fill the small cottage.
“They’re coming, aren’t they? The Variants?” the old man asked. He mustered a defeated laugh, then coughed again. Blood ran out the side of his mouth and collected on the unfinished wood floor. “Those goddamn Variants. I thought I’d be able to stay here forever. Goddamned fool, that’s what I was.” His breaths were becoming shorter and more constricted.
Outside the sunlight was diminishing and the remaining rays projected the Variants’ shadows against the cottage walls. They were long and daunting and stretched like something out of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
Lara peered through the cottage’s lone window. “Jesus, they’re everywhere.”
“Listen…” The old man’s voice was now barely a whisper. “Under the rug…there’s a door…you can hide down there…until…” His words trailed away and his eyes fluttered.
“Lara, check under the rug.”
Lara snatched up a Moroccan rug exposing a small door cut in the floorboards. She pulled it open and the fantastic stench of death wafted up at her. Lara recoiled, dropping the door with a thud.
“Shhh!” Captain Blake hissed.
“Fucking smells down there!”
“Just go,” Martin told them.
Enrique and Lara were already in the cellar by the time Captain Blake had led Annie down. Martin put his hands under the old man’s armpits and dragged him toward the door in the floor.
“Let go a me,” said the old man
The front door shook suddenly. The couch blocking the door slid forward. The Variants would be inside soon.
“We have to get downstairs,” Martin pleaded.
“Let ‘em come! I ain’t scared!” The madness in the old man’s eyes was dreadful.
Martin tried again to slide him to the cellar door, but the old man continued to struggle.
The dresser on the worn blue couch rattled. Hands were reaching inside. It wouldn’t hold much longer.
The old man reached for his shotgun. Martin tried to intervene but the old man knocked him away. Martin fell back, tumbling through the cellar opening before landing six feet below the cottage floor. The air rushed from Martin’s lungs and he gasped for a breath.
Upstairs they heard the couch slide another foot, its legs skidding across the brittle wood.
Captain Blake jumped up, grabbed hold of the door in the floor, and slammed it shut, enveloping them in darkness.
Martin heaved in his first true breath and the rich smell of decomposition ran up his nostrils. It was a familiar scent, something he had grown accustomed to during his semester of Gross Anatomy. Only this smell was of rotting corpses. No special care was taken, no embalming fluid had been used, no preservation of any kind. There had only been the summer’s heat to keep death’s company.
The front door exploded open sending the dresser clattering to the floor. Martin pictured the poor old man above him, staring in awe as the Variants hogged his doorway, paralyzed by fear and pain. “You filthy Variants!” he heard the old man yell. “Get outta my house!”
There was the unmistakable crack of a shotgun blast exploding out of the barrel followed by the futile attempt of the old man trying to reload. Footsteps thundered into the house. Tearing flesh and crunching bone was all they could hear from the cellar before the old man gurgled a final breath and was no more.
Martin’s eyes adjusted to the cellar’s darkness and he glanced over to see Captain Blake covering Annie’s mouth with his hand. Tears were streaking down her face and settling on his wedding band, but Captain Blake seemed not to notice.
Lara hung from the cellar door, using every ounce of her thin frame to hold it shut.
The Variants lumbered around upstairs, pacing and breathing with ghostly depth. Then the footsteps turned and made their way out of the house.
They waited several minutes before anyone spoke. When Lara did, she said, “At least it wasn’t as bad as last time.”
Annie broke down in an uncontrollable wave of sobs. It was the only sound any of them made until the rain mercifully came and drowned everything out.
ISSUE #6
Potawatomi Woods, Wheeling, IL
Four months after The Rise
The cellar’s light fixture was an old-fashioned incandescent that took Captain Blake only a few seconds to find after he felt the fraying yellow string tickle the side of his face. Once the room was illuminated they saw the horror they had previously only smelt. Three bodies, all neatly stacked, lay rotting in the corner of the room. A woman, no more than thirty-five, and two small children, ten and twelve, were the victims. The woman’s decomposition was the worst of them. Maggots had claimed the left side of her face and her cheek hung over her lower jaw like a thinly cut piece of steak. The children didn’t look nearly as bad. Their faces were cold and grey, but their eyes were closed in such a way that they looked surprisingly peaceful.
“Mary and Joseph!” Captain Blake removed a black handkerchief from his back pocket and covered his mouth and nose.
“Everybody upstairs,” Martin said.
There was no protest.
Martin came up a few minutes after the rest. He told them the three had died of shotgun wounds to the chest, most likely, the old man’s shotgun.
“Did he know them?” Annie asked.
“I don’t know,” replied Martin. “I guess it doesn’t matter.” It did matter, but no one wanted to admit such a chilling reality. Maybe they were unlucky souls who stumbled onto the cottage. Maybe they had turned to Variants. Or maybe the old timer had just gone mad.
“What should we do with them?” Annie asked.
“We ain’t doing nothin’ with ‘em,” Captain Blake answered.
“We can’t just leave them down there,” she protested.
“Honey, if we stopped and buried every poor soul we came across we’d be as dead as him,” said Lara, pointing to the old man’s body.
Annie looked down and saw the old man’s chest cavity had been caved in, his right rib section lay next to him. His abdomen had been completely hollowed out, the organs carelessly discarded near his feet. Annie’s eyes floated over the grisliness and she turned her head and heaved. There was no food or water in her system, only pockets of air that painfully lurched up her esophagus and dropped to the floor. It was a wretched, cruel feeling that consumed every ounce of her. “What did that to him?”
“The Variants, honey,” Captain Blake muttered. “It’s always the Variants.”
“Somebody get him out of here,” he said, pointing to the old man.
“I’ll do it.” Enrique was staring solemnly at the body, his bottom lip quivering in a state of shock. He didn’t say a word as he gathered up what was left of the old man and carried him down to the cellar.
Lara crossed to the other side of the room where Captain Blake was preparing a fire. She handed him some kindle and they spoke in murmurs as the flame grew before their eyes.
Martin knelt beside Annie whose dry heaves had finally settled to staggered whimpers. She stared off into one of the corners of the cottage, her gaze a mad combination of disconnect and vacancy. Anyone observing her would have thought she was on the verge of hysteria—and, in truth, she probably was.
“Let me take a look at you,” Martin said taking the bottom of her chin in his hands. He held one of her eyelids open and saw a large, dilated pupil staring back at him, a haunting island of black surrounded by a thin, pale green ring.
“You have hazel eyes,” he remarked.
“Yes,” she said quietly, “always have had.”
He smiled, pleased she was responding.
“What are you, a doctor or something?” she asked.
“Something.”
“Something?”
“Neurologist,” he said. “Well…I guess I was a neurologist.” He put his fingers on her pulse, silently counting the beats.
“Please,” she said, lowering his hand away from her neck. “I need to know what’s going on.”
Martin sighed. “There’s a lot to cover.”
“Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
He sighed again. “Then let’s start with our cast of characters:” That’s Lara Holliday.” He pointed toward Lara, but her eyes were fixed on the fire. “And the pleasant curmudgeon next to her is Richard Blake.”
“Captain Richard Blake,” the curmudgeon corrected. “Retired, of course.”
“Of course,” Martin said, “and downstairs is Enrique Valenzuela.”
“And you?” Annie asked.
“My name’s Martin…Martin Knight.”
“Doctor Martin Knight,” she corrected, a restrained smile finding its way onto her lips.
Martin nodded pleasantly. “And we, Miss Walker, are part of the three percent of humans who haven’t been affected by whatever those things are out there.”
“The Variants?”
He nodded, his features sullen.
“Why do you call them Variants?”
“Because, as far as we can tell, they’re human.” He paused, letting it sink in. But her reaction showed neither acceptance nor confusion. “Or at least a slight variation of them,” he continued. “We were only able to study them for a few days, to understand their variance, but it wasn’t enough time. We were overrun and had to abandon the hospital. They had brought me in to study the brain and spine variations, but I couldn’t find any. We also monitored its trait behaviors. At first they exhibited intense rage, and possessed minimal speech and motor skills, but, as the days wore on, they began to talk, and act, like us. They adapted at an incredible rate. It would be like an ape had evolved into man in a matter of hours.”
“But they’re human?”
“Super humans,” Enrique interjected. He trudged up the cellar steps, his shirt and pants covered in a dense layer of blood and gore. “They’re unlike anything you’ve seen before. Their speed, their strength…it’s unbelievable.”
“So they’re like zombies?” Annie asked.
She heard Captain Blake and Lara share a laugh and she immediately resented them.
“No, not exactly,” Martin said calmly. “Zombies are the living dead, as in, they’re here by some supernatural force. Variants breathe like us, they eat like us, and their circulatory and nervous systems are identical to ours. They have tremendous communication and organization skills. Frankly, there’s nothing even remotely supernatural about them.“
“But that old man was hollowed out,” Annie said, shuddering at the thought.
“His organs weren’t taken or harvested,” he said. “They were only discarded.”
“Basically they just rip ya to shreds,” Captain Blake said. He removed a worn corncob pipe from his bag and packed the bowl with a handful of thick tobacco leaves.
“The Variants possess only behavioral differences, their lack of morality and remorse the two most notable.”
Enrique sat down next to Martin, crossing his legs and staring up at the doctor as if he were telling some fireside ghost story. Annie noticed his hands were trembling.
“Things started slow. I think all of us had seen it coming, though nobody wanted to admit it. People were getting shot in movie theaters and stabbed in line at the Post Office. It was ugly. And then all at once, the world just quit functioning.”
“Normally, that is,” Lara said.
“It didn’t affect everyone the same. While some turned into these maniacs, others went into cardiac arrest, or had seizures, or quit breathing. It was as if their bodies couldn’t adapt at the rate their brain wanted to. So while some became these monsters—the monsters that did that to the other man—others simply perished. And then there are those of us who…well…well, we hope are still human.”
“Hope?”
“We’re still not sure what any of us are.”
“But we’re gonna fight until we find out,” Captain Blake said, exhaling a steady stream of smoke.
“And take down every last Variant that we can.” Lara grinned and Captain Blake, and he returned the smile as he took another drag off the pipe.
“I remember,” said Annie, and the others exchanged looks in such a fury she barely noticed it had happened. “I remember people dying in the streets. The National Guard…I remember the National Guard. And then…” but her words trailed away as the memory struggled in her mind.
“It’s all right,” said Martin, though his words rang untrue.
Nobody said anything for a long while. The fire popped and crackled and Annie could feel its warmth on her back. Lara stoked at it, her gaze mesmerized by the soothing orange glow.
“Mrs. Walker--”
“Miss,” she interrupted.
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s Miss Walker, not Mrs.”
He sighed, but said nothing to acknowledge an interest. “Miss Walker, I’m afraid it’s our turn to posit a few questions.”
She first looked at Enrique, whose eyes, normally kind and amiable, were now accusatory and untrusting. Annie noticed the others shared the same sentiment.
“What kind of questions?”
“What’s the last thing you remember?” The question was so staggeringly simple she hesitated to answer.
“I was going to mail my son’s birthday card,” the words escaped from her mouth. “That’s when it started…I mean truly started…It was bad, and I think I noticed before…like you said…but didn’t want to admit the world had gone mad. But I needed to mail that birthday card…You see…I haven’t seen my son in several months and…I wasn’t really sure what to say…so…” Her words were clunky and fragmented, so she stopped in frustration.
Martin nodded, but she couldn’t tell if he understood or not. “And when’s your son’s birthday?”
“May 28th.”
The others exchanged a grave look. Then, all at once, their eyes fell on her.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
“Miss Walker, to be honest, for a person to buried under that amount of rubble—the rubble we found you under—and emerge with only superficial injuries is a miracle in and of itself. But, to answer your question, we’re looking at you like this because this event we speak of—The Rise of the Variants—happened over four months ago.”
Annie stared back at him with disbelieving eyes.
“Now how is it, Miss Walker, that a woman of your size and stature could be buried, without food or water, for that amount of time, and come out seemingly unharmed?”
“It certainly is peculiar,” Lara added.
“Are you saying I’m one of them?” she asked incredulously.
“We’re not saying anything,” Martin told her. “We’re just trying to figure out what’s going on.”
“I’m not one of them!” she cried. “I can’t be!”
They were sitting around her like a tribunal deciding her fate. The fire flickered against their faces and the once pleasant glow was suddenly harsh and ominous.
“I couldn’t be one of them…right?”
Again, nobody answered.
“Right?” Annie asked, though, now even she was unsure.
“Of course not,” Martin finally replied. But she could tell the others didn’t share his opinion. “Don’t worry, we’ll know more tomorrow.”
“What’s tomorrow?”
“Last we heard there was a FEMA camp near downtown Chicago,” Captain Blake said. “Figure if we can get down there, we won’t be in such a hot pickle.”
“And maybe there will be other survivors,” Enrique said helplessly.
“We should get some rest,” said Martin.
They silently accepted his suggestion and moved about the room in preparation for sleep.
There was a standard blue cot in the corner of the cottage. The fabric was worn and frayed. Lara staggered over and fell back on the thin layer of blue. She would be asleep in a matter of seconds.
Enrique wandered over to a small closet adjacent to the cot and rifled through its contents. He removed a green flannel shirt that was two sizes too small for him. When he put it on, the bottom of his belly danced below the hem. He took a vacant spot on the floor and curled up, blanketless.
“I’ll take first watch,” Captain Blake said. He picked up the old man’s shotgun and threw it over his shoulder.
“Here,” Annie heard Martin say. She turned to him. “This belongs to you.” Annie looked down and saw her son’s birthday card in his hands. The boy with the football shaped head smiled up at her as the fireworks erupted behind him. “We found it shortly before we found you. I figured you’d like to have it back.” He crossed behind her and took a seat in front of the fire.
“Did you read it?” she asked.
At first, he didn’t respond. He sat in front of the fire’s light, transfixed. She considered asking him again, but then he said, “No. I didn’t read it.”
“Thank you.”
He nodded, but never turned to look at her.
Annie brought her knees to her chest, clutching the four month old clothes draped across her body. Outside, she heard the rain intensify, battering the side of the house in shallow musical notes. She listened to them as long as she could, and then sleep took her.
ISSUE #7
Georgia
Day 21 of The Rise
The chaos was in full effect. Nearly half the city of Savannah had either fled or been killed. The ones who stayed were caught in a perpetual state of denial. They would not last long. People were dying. Or they were going mad. Between madness and death, the line was fine over the more desirable outcome.
Things in Atlanta weren’t nearly as dire. The city limits had been quarantined by the National Guard, but the flow of information had stalled. Those inside the quarantine zone hadn’t a clue as to why they were being held. This did not bode well for the National Guard. As reports came in from other states that the National Guard was quarantining every major city, the panic evolved into universal cabin fever.
The National Guard did the best they could, sending out troops during the day to bring back civilians by night. On one particular occasion, a team of six was sent out in the early afternoon. It was close to sundown, but distress calls suddenly came pouring in from Newnan and Peachtree City. The team was dispatched, almost at once, with very little hesitation from the commanding officer. It did not take long before the evening sun slipped below the horizon and the bright sky transformed into a dank grey. The team leader, Higgins or Hodgkins (something like that, though now irrelevant), radioed to base they had thirty civilians and were en route back to base. Three minutes later there was radio silence.
It was nearly midnight when Higgins or Hodgkins wandered back to the quarantine zone. The ones there to see it said it was the most horrific scene they’d ever laid eyes on. Though the stories became muddled and exaggerated, the horror remained constant. When the perimeter guards saw Higgins or Hodgkins wandering through the night, he was holding his severed left arm with his right, his pale face a ghostly vision in what seemed like the blackest of nights. His screams were said to be more agonizing than the image, though many found this hard to believe. He ranted of the Variants cutting through the darkness, murdering the others, then vanishing like a cloud of smoke. He would be dead by dawn.
The doctors claimed it was blood loss, though the terror in his eyes suggested otherwise. Fear took him from this world, and Higgins, or Hodgkins, or whatever the hell his name was, was said to be more than willing to go.
Two hundred fifty miles away, at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Savannah, Captain Richard Blake woke with a start.
ISSUE #8
Savannah, GA
Day 21 of The Rise
The room was listless and dark. Captain Blake could hear the gentle hum of a fluorescent light above him.
Why is it dark, he thought?
And then he remembered: his eyes.
He felt his hands were numb, the way they are so many mornings, as he fumbled for the bandages over his eyes. He patted the gauze and felt a soft stinging in his eyes. He wondered whether it was safe to remove them. How long had it been since the operation? His mind tried tallying off the days, but he got lost along the way. His concept of time was lost, but, hopefully, his sight had not met the same fate.
“Hello?” Captain Blake called.
Hmmmmmm, said the fluorescent light.
“Hello?” he called again, this time a little more urgently.
Hmmmmmm, responded the fluorescent light again.
Captain Blake’s tongue was dry and parched. He licked his cracked lips and felt a brief tinge of pain sear the outside of his mouth. His throat was so arid he suspected he must have been bedridden for days, maybe even weeks. He tried to swallow, but only the uninvited rush of hot, stale air clung to his larynx.
“Can anybody hear me?” he called.
He knew he was in a hospital, so shouldn’t there be traffic in the halls, or a nurse to check on him, or, at the very least, an occasional whir of an ambulance siren? But there was only his breathing and that torturous fluorescent light.
Captain Blake reached up and carefully removed the first layer of bandage, but no light came.
How much goddamn gauze did they wrap me up in? he thought, a bit annoyed.
He discarded the first layer of gauze then pulled another away. Then another. And, finally, there it was: a soft hue of white streaming through the remaining bandages. The excitement swelled up in his heart and he pulled with greater urgency. He clenched his eyes shut, wanting to savor the first time he saw the world—at least the first time in twenty years. The gauze around his head loosened. The time was close.
Captain Blake felt the bandages give. The smell of dried blood passed by his nose as the gauze fell. He snapped open his eyes and was met by a ray of brilliant white. But then the white morphed into flashing colors, bombarding his psyche like a violent lava lamp. The flashing colors quickly subsided and he was nestled in a blanket of black. Though, this was no ordinary blanket. This one left him lonely and helpless.
“Hello?” his voice cracked. “Is anybody there?”
Hmmmmm, the fluorescent light replied mockingly.
His heart sank. Was nobody coming for him? Was he left to die blind and dumb?
But the darkness began to dissipate. The thick black transformed into a subtle grey. Ten more seconds and the grey became a mundane yellow. The yellow expanded, then contracted. And then, all at once, he could see. He could see that listless room he was in. He could see the dull wallpaper peeling from the walls. He could see the window in the corner, and the streak of yellow along the horizon, the morning sun returning to its post. And it was positively brilliant.
“Well ain’t that gorgeous?” he murmured. “Ain’t that gorgeous indeed?”
* * *
By the time Captain Blake sat up in bed the sun was already hanging proudly in the sky. His sight had completely returned, apart from a slight blur in his peripherals. He swung his legs around the side of the bed and pushed up off the mattress. His bones creaked, but he managed to straighten his back and stand upright.
“Helen?” he called, hoping his wife would return his query.
His last memory of Helen was faint and dream-like. He remembered her holding his hand as he was wheeled into surgery. She hung over him like this wandering angel and told him she’d be there when he got out.
“Helen?” Captain Blake called again, working his way toward the door. But, still, there was no answer.
He felt along the side of the bed, blindly reaching for the nurse’s button. He stopped and laughed heartily. He could see for Christ’s sake! The need to feel around a room, carefully maneuvering along sidewalks, searching for hand railings, none of it was necessary anymore.
There, at the edge of the bed, hung a fantastically vivid red remote. Captain Blake snatched it up and pressed the round, white button. Above his bed, a small red light began to blink.
He waited.
Nobody came.
“What’n the hell’s goin’ on?” he muttered.
Only silence responded.
Captain Blake pushed aside the thin blue curtain separating the two beds and made his way to the door. When he pushed on it, though, the thing barely budged. It felt as if somebody had welded it shut.
“Goddamn it,” he cursed. He slammed against the door again, but it had little effect. Perspiration was seeping through his hospital gown making him feel sour and old.
Captain Blake went back to his hospital bed and wheeled it around so it faced the door. After a few deep breaths and silent Hail Mary’s, he produced a running start and crashed into the door. The hinges gave as screws ripped from the wall, wood particles dissipating into the air. On the other side of the door, three hospital beds, stacked one on top of the other, crashed to the floor. The ringing of metal on tile rippled through the empty hallway.
Captain Blake climbed over the hospital beds to find a hallway cloaked in black, save for two flickering fluorescent lights at its far end. There were no doctors, no nurses, no patients, there was only Captain Blake. The floors were littered with empty prescription bottles, blank script pads, bedpans, bed sheets, and blood. Deep, dark brown patches of dried blood smeared across the floor in zig-zagging patterns. But, as far as Captain Blake could tell, there wasn’t a single corpse in sight. There were no limbs, no organs, no heads; absolutely zero sign of death, apart from the faint smell of decay.
Captain Blake looked around. Where the hell was everybody? This was, after all, a hospital, was it not? And who, for that matter, had barricaded him in his room? And more importantly: why?
At the end of the hall, Captain Blake could see the red outline of the Exit sign hanging from the ceiling. The letters were a hazy blur, but it was unmistakable.
He started for it with lumbering steps. The first three steps were of no significance, but the fourth made him yearn for blindness. Along the east corridor, stretching for several yards, were the bodies; dozens and dozens of them. Fifty or so, Captain Blake guessed, though the severed limbs and pools of blood made it difficult to be sure. Nurses, doctors, patients, visitors, stacked on top of one another just as the hospital beds had been. They were young, old, black, white, their killer working without discrimination or remorse. Captain Blake had a strong stomach, he always had had, but the sight before him churned his insides like fresh butter.
“Christ.” The word hung in the air, but Christ provided little support.
Boom! The exit at the far end of the hall slammed shut. Captain Blake looked up, but saw nothing through the darkness.
“Is somebody there?” he asked. His voice cracked, having not done so since the age of thirteen. But there he stood, a sixty-two year old man, stripped down to his skivvies, ready to shit himself.
“Hello?” he asked the darkness.
And then the footsteps came. Slow at first, as if the thing at the end of the hall was playing its own game of red light/green light.
“Who’s there?”
The footsteps stopped.
Captain Blake squinted through the black and saw the outline of a shadow standing under the Exit sign. He could hear its quick, rasping breaths.
“Please, I need your help. These people…they’re dead…”
Breathing.
“…Say something, goddamn it!”
But the thing said nothing. There were only the short, feverish breaths.
Captain Blake reached over the counter into the nurse’s station and caught hold of a stainless-steel letter opener. It had an orange rubber handle with a smooth, rounded tip.
“Stay away from me! I’ve got a…” Captain Blake considered the object, “…knife!”
More breathing and then the thing at the end of the hall started toward him. The sound of its feet skipped across the tile at a tremendous rate. Captain Blake had never heard anything move so fast. It sounded more like a puma than a person. There was a flash of the thing’s face as it passed under the first fluorescent light, but Captain Blake only remembered the eyes, maniacal and deranged.
He gripped the letter opener with white knuckles.
The thing passed under the second fluorescent. The eyes. Those wild, demented eyes appeared again and, this time, Captain Blake noticed random, jagged streaks of blood running up and down the thing’s face—the face of a human. Or so it seemed. The thing appeared to be a man, no more than thirty years old, dressed in tattered slacks and a stained polo. But its face was not that of a civilized man. Its face was soulless and possessed.
“Stay back!” Captain Blake threatened again.
The thing leapt, arms outstretched, ready to strike, ready to pull arms from sockets and eyes from cavities. It wailed and howled and struck Captain Blake in the sternum. They stumbled backward. The letter opener nearly slipped from Captain Blake’s hand, but he held tight. They landed on tile with a thud, the thing thrashing with wild ferocity.
He brought the letter opener up in one swift motion, jabbing it into the thing’s jugular. Blood exploded from its neck. He twisted the orange rubber handle and pulled down on the opener. The thing’s throat opened up, swaying back and forth like a mud flap on a big rig. Blood sprayed on Captain Blake in a shower of red. The thing gurgled a final breath before falling over into a motionless heap.
Captain Blake sat up and spotted a drinking fountain just down the hall. He got to his feet, legs wobbling, and wandered over to it. He splashed a handful of water on his face and blood ran down the drain in a river of pink.
A psychopath had snapped and killed nearly fifty people, Captain Blake thought as he headed toward the exit.
But the logic of that theory didn’t sit well with him. He hadn’t witnessed a horror like that since his days in the jungle of Khe Sanh. But this was beyond the reason of war.
This was something else entirely.
ISSUE #9
Potawatomi Woods, Wheeling, IL
Four months after The Rise
Annie Walker’s eyes opened as a ray of morning light shone through the cottage’s eastern window. She had slept through the night, remembering very little of her dreams. The creaking of the wood floors roused her, though she moved very little upon waking, still consumed by fatigue.
“How can we trust her?” she heard Lara’s whispering voice ask.
Annie made a move to roll over, but braced her body when the severity of the words sunk in. They were talking about her. They were questioning her. She remained motionless, praying her thumping heart would fall on deaf ears.
“What do you mean ‘can we trust her?’” she heard Martin ask.
“Are you dense?” Lara hissed. “We find this woman who claims she’s been sleeping for what, four months? Underground no less! And you just buy it?”
“You gotta admit, Doc, what ain’t sittin’ right with us ain’t sittin’ right with you either,” Captain Blake said.
Now it was Enrique’s turn to chime in: “Maybe you should just give her The Test.”
Annie blinked. The Test?
“And where do you suggest I do that?” Martin asked. “Here? Is that what you’re saying, Enrique? Maybe there’s a microscope in the armoire or slides in the cellar.”
“We’re not getting anywhere,” Captain Blake snapped.
Silence filled the room before Enrique said, “Can we just agree that when we get to Chicago, if there’s a facility there, you’ll test her?”
It took Martin a long time to respond. Annie could hear him sigh. She could almost feel the eyes on him, the eyes that were looking through him. “Fine,” he said. “When we get to Chicago I’ll administer The Test.” She heard Martin stand and leave the cabin, his heavy boots dragging across the floor as he went.
After he left, the others continued to speak, but only in muddled whispers too quiet for Annie to hear. Outside, she heard Martin pacing along the porch, a torturous wave of discontent prodding away at his thoughts.
ISSUE #10
Potawatomi Woods, Wheeling, IL
Four months after The Rise
Lara found a decent sized backpack in the bottom drawer of the cottage’s armoire. She also found a pair of pants, two shirts, and a .38 revolver. She took everything unabashedly and stuffed the contents into Annie’s arms. Lara moved off with a disgruntled grunt.
“Ready?” Captain Blake asked the cottage.
“Just about,” Martin said. He opened Annie’s pack, placed the contents inside, and strapped the bag around her shoulders. “You okay?”
She nodded, but was shaking.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s move out.
They headed southeast through the woods. By the time Annie finally looked back, the cottage was nothing but a distant speck, a fading memory she would never return to again. Four corpses had been left inside. Maybe the wolves would get them, maybe they wouldn’t. Either way, things were different now. Nobody rested in peace.
“You’re quiet,” Martin said.
She shrugged. “This all feels like a bad dream.”
“That feeling never goes away,” he said. And judging by the weariness in his eyes, she assumed he was right.
“If I’m one of those things—a Variant—then why wouldn’t I just kill all of you?” She asked the question with such simplicity Martin nearly lost his breath. It was so frank, yet so warranted.
“I’m not sure.”
“Clearly.”
Martin drew a long, methodical breath. “The simplest way I can put it is: Variants come in all shapes and sizes. They vary in personality, behavior, mood, everything. Some can be aggressive, while others are sneaky…like hunters. No two Variants are exactly alike.”
“Do you think I’m a ‘hunter?’” she asked.
“Frankly, Miss Walker, we have no idea what you are. It’s quite possible that you’re like us. But until we can get some place where I can administer The Test…”
(The Test)
“…we’re all going to have to live in the dark a little while longer.”
Annie stuffed her hands in her pockets and slumped her shoulders. “So how did you all come about?”
“Well…” he sighed, “…That’s a long story.”
“It’s a good thing we’ve both got time.”
Martin smiled. “I happened upon Captain Blake, Enrique, and Lara some time in Wisconsin. Got them out of a pickle.”
“How do you mean?”
“Their plane crashed,” he said, glancing up at his three companions. “I just happened to be there.”
Annie didn’t know what to say, but she spoke anyway, clumsily, “Well, that wasn’t too long of a story.”
He sighed and wiped the sleep from his eyes. “Come on,” he told her. “We should catch up with the others.” He quickened his pace and walked on ahead.
They continued on their way, reaching Park Ridge by midday. The neighborhood was the poster child of suburbia. A never-ending sea of ramblers lined the abandoned blocks. Windows were broken in and some houses were now only broken trusses and old ash, casualties of some horrific fire and blast.
The morning was hot and the air was thick. Fatigue was setting in even though they hadn’t walked more than ten miles.
“Can we take a break?” Annie asked.
“Sure, princess!” Lara quipped.
“Break would be good,” said Martin.
They stopped near a small, green house. Modest, but nice. Paint peeled from its siding and a dozen or so shingles were scattered on the front lawn. The roof was a skeleton of itself. The white picket fence in the back had lost nearly half its planks, making it look like scattered matchsticks standing on end.
“What’s happened here?” Annie asked scanning the neighborhood’s broken homes. It was a suburban graveyard, shells of what used to be.
He handed her a bottle of water. “A few weeks back, the President ordered airstrikes. He said it was so they could ‘contain the problem.’”
“Created a goddamn panic, that’s what it did!” Captain Blake shouted. “President’s why we’re in this damn mess!”
“Oh, get off it old man,” Enrique muttered.
“Air strikes! What kind of a goddamn fool thinks that’ll solve anything? Killed some of the only survivors we had left!”
“They just killed everyone?” Annie asked.
“A couple days after the strike they said that civilian casualties were at a minimum,” Martin said taking a sip of water. “Though there’s really no way of knowing. We lost radio contact eighteen hours later. Ever since…nothing but static.”
“Thirty-eight stations of pure white noise,” Captain Blake said. He took out his pipe and stuffed it with tobacco. There wasn’t a droplet of sweat on him, and while the others gasped for air, he inhaled a smooth stream of smoke as though it were fresh oxygen.
“You haven’t gotten in touch with anybody?” she asked.
The others shook their heads. It was a miserable reminder to their current predicament. They hung their heads and drank silently for the next several minutes.
“Everyone finish up. If we keep our pace we can be to the United Center by sundown,” said Martin, tightening the cap on his water.
“If we don’t, we’re as good as dead!” added Captain Blake, a bit more cheerful than the others would have liked.
They were all busy securing their packs and finishing their waters that Annie was the only one to spot the fast approaching Variant. She originally thought she’d seen one of the matchstick fence posts move. But that was impossible. Another pocket of movement between the two posts. She got to her feet, her eyes never breaking from the posts.
“Christ, sweetie, whatcho lookin’ at?” Captain Blake asked as she pushed past him.
Annie offered no recognition she had heard him. She stepped toward the posts, her eyes stern and transfixed.
“Um…Doc…” Captain Blake said.
Martin looked up and saw a hypnotized Annie floating toward the broken fence.
“Annie?” Martin called to her.
But the world was drowned out.
“Annie, we need to stay together!” Martin shouted, louder this time.
A plank suddenly exploded off the fence as a Variant erupted through its opening. The Variant, seven feet tall with pulsating muscles, charged at Annie. Its mouth was foaming and its eyes bulged with encompassed rage.
Annie tried to move out of the way but the Variant shoulder checked her across the sternum. She toppled over, an intense ripple of pressure crossing across her ribs.
The Variant reached down to grab her but suddenly went still as the sound of a gunshot vibrated through the air. A bullet hole blasted through the Variant’s torso and blood spattered across Annie’s chest and neck.
The Variant turned to face its assailant. Lara stood there, poised and pleased, her .357 wafting smoke.
“You fu—“ Lara started, but the Variant lashed out at her. His beefy arm caught her throat and she flew backward as if yanked by a string.
The Variant lowered its head and charged. Lara brought her hands to her face, refusing to witness the horror that was about to reign down on her. The Variant let out a wail, a thunderous howl that undulated through the empty streets. The others fumbled with their weapons. The Variant reached for Lara’s arm when a single gunshot cracked through the madness. It was just one shot at first, followed by five consecutive bursts.
The Variant wavered, its legs unsteady and fleeting. The others watched as blood seeped through its weathered grey shirt, the small bullet holes looking like indentations in a soda can. The Variant turned, its massive chest heaving, a glazed look in its eye. It stumbled backward and then fell over. When it fell, the ground shook and Captain Blake could have sworn the wooden fence rattled from its vibration. The Variant was dead.
The others turned around to see the last whiffs of smoke curling out of Annie’s .38. Though they were shaking, the gun was still clasped in her hands. She dropped the gun and her shoulders sunk.
Martin was the first to go to her and take her in his arms. He hugged her and she began to cry. It was a quiet, whimpering cry.
When he pulled away she wiped the tracks from her cheeks and steadied her quivering lip.
“You okay?” Martin asked.
She nodded fervently. She was okay. A combination of shock, adrenaline, and relief surged through her heart and she felt nothing but exhilaration. The Variant was dead, and the others were safe. That was all that mattered. And that was all that would matter from there on out.
ISSUE #11
Buffalo Grove, IL
Day 18 of The Rise
Crime had tripled in the last ten days. Karl Rose, a father of three, walked into Ace Hardware and shot the cashier.
So it goes…
Neighbors were breaking and entering each other’s homes, not to rob, but to kill. Carl Bard woke to find his neighbor Aaron Kohn standing over him as he slept. Before he had a chance to ask Aaron what he was doing, Aaron stabbed him in the chest with a gardening spade. Carl’s wife woke, saw the horror, and screamed so loud it’s a miracle her lungs didn’t explode. Aaron Kohn wrapped his hands around Mrs. Bard’s throat and crushed her larynx with his fingers. She drowned a dry death less than a minute later.
So it goes…
There was a heat wave that week. And, during so many heat waves, news anchors and journalists chalked the recent behavior up to “extreme reactions to heat stroke.” This was nonsense. There are always signs of change, one just had to be patient enough to recognize them. One thing was true: the world was becoming a startling place.
Annie Walker woke on the 18th Day of The Rise to the sound of a Cardinal outside her window. It danced on the sill and pecked lightly on the glass. She had had the air conditioner on and Annie supposed the bird felt the cool of the window and was hoping to stop in. Just to say hi, perhaps, or maybe steal a glass of lemonade. It was, after all, that sort of day.
She awoke that day, like so many days, a minute before her alarm was set to go off. She hadn’t slept well for many nights, and she supposed her diagnosis had been the culprit. Her diagnosis came three weeks after her husband left; left and took her son with him. It was an aggressive form of cancer that started in her Lymph nodes and eventually spread to her breasts, stomach, liver, and pancreas. The doctors were optimistic (they gave her six weeks). Though, in her heart of hearts, she knew she wouldn’t make it to the end of the month. If she made it to her son’s birthday, she'd be happy; content to leave the world celebrating his birth.
So it goes…
Annie threw the covers off her legs and got out of bed. Her abdomen felt cramped and tender, the vomiting had kept her up most of the night.
The C word hadn’t come up with anyone else in her life. She kept her illness private and if she ever felt the need to upchuck at work, she would politely excuse herself, yack, and return to the grind. Yack! She sounded like her son. “A kid at school yacked all over his Pumas today, Mom!” he announced one afternoon. “Actually, he yacked all over Jenny Malloy’s desk. It just dripped down on his shoes…hers too! It was wild!” Annie smiled at the memory of her son. She longed for a touch of that energy now. Just a nip of energy to take the edge off, right?
Cancer. The word was dirty and tainted. Of course it was tainted. It was, after all, Cancer. Cancer with a capital “C.” But it was more than that. It was her life now. And, soon, it would be her death.
So it goes…
She had spoken to her husband a few times since he left and they were amicable enough, though there was an emptiness in his voice; a sort of vacancy that seemed eager to get off the phone as soon as they started talking. In all of their conversations, Annie couldn’t muster the courage to say those three little words: “I. Have. Cancer.” Her first thought was that he would blame her; blame her for not taking care of herself or blame her for not getting checked. He played the blame game and she was always the loser. Her ex-husband wasn’t a bad man, just a selfish one. And a selfish man surely would do no good for a long lasting marriage. He was, however, a key player in their short-lived one.
Her alarm went off while she was staring out the window. It was set to 94.7 WLS-FM Detroit. The Detroit morning guy was named Dave Cash, and even though Annie found him a trifle obnoxious, his voice was soothing enough. When Dave had moved from Chicago to Detroit, Annie had even gone out and bought one of those nifty universal radios just so she could retain her audible relationship with Mr. Cash.
She used to joke with her friends that Dave was more suited for 100.3 The Wave, where people call in and dedicate love songs. 100.3 was DJ’d by a woman named Michon Harris. Her voice was a calming, emblematic purr with a subtle note of sexiness. “This song goes out to Jonathan. Jonathan, Olivia says she can’t stop thinking about you, and she wants you to know she’s truly found her best friend and soul mate. If you can find it in your heart to forgive her, she’ll spend the rest of her life making you happy. Jonathan, if you’re out there, this one’s for you.” Usually it was the same trite dedication that made you roll your eyes, but, after a while, Annie would find herself invested in these invisible characters. “Are you kidding me? She doesn’t love you! She cheated on you,” she would yell while pounding on her steering wheel. Most mornings, though, were dedicated to Dave Cash.
“Good morning all you 94 FM super fans! And what a beautiful morning it is. It’s a balmy 92 degrees out there in downtown Detroit, but the sun is shining and the lake’s a calling, so get on out there and enjoy your beautiful Friday morning!”
Annie turned down the radio’s volume and switched on the television; the local news was wrapping up. Oren Hill and Sasha Guitierez sat next to each other, the Channel 11 logo displayed proudly behind them.
While they spoke, Annie went to her nightstand and opened the top shelf. Inside, tucked inside the flap of a red envelope, was a birthday card. A cartoon boy with a football shaped head smiled up at her. Fireworks exploded behind him.
“We thank you for joining us this morning on Channel 11 Chicago,” said Oren Hill.
“We hope to see you back here again, tomorrow,” Sasha Guitierez said.
The television anchors faded away and an episode of “General Hospital” started. Some woman had just gotten facial reconstruction surgery and when they took off the bandages she looked exactly like the doctor’s wife who had died in a fiery car crash two episodes earlier. But she was in love with his brother…who had been dead for ten years!!!
So it goes…
Annie took a seat at the edge of the bed and opened the card. She held the eraser end of the pencil to her lips and furrowed her brow. The words were not coming to her. How could they? She hadn’t seen her son in seven weeks and, even then, it was transient and soulless. He had kept his iPod on and his expressions were unrecognizable to her. He seemed annoyed, bitter. She couldn’t blame him. The divorce had been difficult on him, much more than the separation. With the separation, there was at least the small hope of reconciliation. But the word ‘divorce’ offered nothing but absolute finality.
She wrote the first word: KYLE
The word hung on the page. She wrote the letters, all in caps and regretted it as soon as she did. Now she would have to write the entire card in caps otherwise his name would look positively silly. She continued:
Kyle,
You have been my special guy since day one. Your father and I love you very much, and we’re so proud of the boy you turned out to be. I’ve struggled with how I should tell you this, but now the time has come since I don’t know how much time I have left. I have cancer. And it’s the kind of cancer that doesn’t get any better. It’s The kind that has no rhyme or reason IN life. I wish, so much, I could be around to love and protect you forever, but
The words suddenly stopped. There were so many things she wanted to see him do: get his driver’s license, come back from his first date, scold him for breaking curfew, graduate from high school, get his first college acceptance letter. Her heart felt ready to burst.
Annie stared at the words on the left side of the card. Particularly, the C word. That muddy, muddy word surround by a block of text she hoped Kyle would get through before tossing it in the trash. Kyle didn’t like to read much, he was one of those “postmodern babies” you hear the old folk whine about. The kids who spent most of their days with earbuds in and most of their nights downloading porn.
The television flickered and “General Hospital” suddenly disappeared. A quick “Breaking News” graphic flashed on the screen and then Oren Hill and Sasha Guitierez returned. While they both shared a look of mutual stress, Sasha Guitierez looked genuinely frightened. While Oren spoke, it appeared as though she was looking over her shoulder or glancing at the nearest exits.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt your currently scheduled program to bring you this breaking news report: The National Guard is ordering citizens of Chicago and nearby cities to be evacuated immediately. There have been terrible incidents at Northwestern Memorial and Children’s Memorial hospitals. We’re still getting details on what is actually happening. Whether it’s an outbreak or a terrorist attack, we’re not exactly sure. But, for now, citizens of Chicago, Lincolnwood, North Shore, Buffalo Grove, Oak Park, please follow the National Guard and evacuate!” Oren Hill’s speech was unwavering, but rushed. “I repeat, there has been some sort of attack on local hospitals that is spreading to the outer city limits and we need to evacuate immediately!” He was shouting now, and, in the background of the studio, a loud pounding was audible. It sounded as if somebody was slamming a sledgehammer against brass metal door.
Sasha Guitierez screamed and a loud commotion ripped through the studio.
“Ladies and gentlemen, get out now! Get out now!” Oren was removing his microphone around the same time a Variant entered frame and ripped his throat from his neck. There was an explosion of blood that sprayed over the news desk and Oren Hill fell flat on his face, his body slumping in front of Sasha Guitierez.
Her scream curdled the blood of listeners all over the Chicagoland area. There were splotches of red on her dress and face. Her bladder let loose.
A Variant, teeth gritted and eyes wild, ran up behind her and twisted her neck clear around. The microphone, still attached to her dress, produced a dreadful crunch.
The camera tipped over and the image disappeared into a cloudy grey screen followed by:
We are experiencing technical difficulties.
Please standby.
It had all happened so fast. Annie hadn’t moved. She watched the horror unfold, believing, at first, it was some sort of grotesque prank.
Annie grabbed the phone, but there was no dial tone. The service was busy. No outgoing calls. No incoming calls.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please evacuate!” a voice came from the street, resonating over a megaphone.
Annie ran to the window and saw a man standing on the back of a Humvee, the National Guard decal stuck to the driver’s side door. “Always Ready, Always There” the insignia read.
“Please evacuate now. We are here to help!”
Across the street, Annie watched as her neighbor, Mr. Veverka, ran out of his house. Even from her distance she could see the crazy in his eyes. Veverka wore a blood-stained undershirt that hung loosely from his hefty exterior and was holding a nine inch butcher knife in his left hand. He ran at the Humvee with such purpose—as if his only goal in life was chasing that vehicle down.
The man on the back of the Humvee removed his sidearm and fired a single shot into Veverka’s head. Mr. Veverka, a man who had come by so many time to shovel off Annie’s sidewalk, or help mow her lawn, was suddenly dead.
The man on the back of the Humvee returned the sidearm to his holster and brought the megaphone back to his mouth, genuinely unfazed. Veverka was gone and he hadn’t batted an eyelash.
“Please, ladies and gentlemen, you are not safe. You must leave your homes. We are here to help!”
Annie was out the door before she had time to lace her shoes.
“Here! Over here!” Annie called.
The man in the Humvee turned around, the megaphone still pushed against his lips.
“Stop!” he yelled to the driver. “Hurry!” He called back to her. “They’re coming.”
Annie glanced over her shoulder and saw a herd of people running up the street. It was a surreal and menacing sight. She didn’t know which ones were bad and which ones were good. But, more importantly, she didn’t care.
The man on the Humvee helped her into the back, pounded on the roof, and the vehicle sped away. The figures behind her grew smaller and smaller. The man on the Humvee continued to call people out of their homes, but realized his attempts were lost when a man named Crowley and his daughter, Laura, were the only other survivors they managed to pick up. After a while, he put the megaphone down and took a seat next to Annie.
“That’s it,” he called up to the driver. “Head back to camp.” He dropped his head in his hands. Sweat dripped from his greasy black hair. When he finally looked up at them he managed a small smile, but it slowly faded and she never saw it again.
Crowley held his daughter close. She began to cry over the roar of the Humvee’s engine.
Annie looked down at her hands and noticed she still had her son’s birthday card clutched between her fingers. She hadn’t taken a jacket, she hadn’t taken a sweater, she hadn’t taken a phone, but she had taken the birthday card.
She leaned back against the Humvee’s metal frame and closed her eyes. The world has gone mad, she thought, the world has gone completely mad.
So it goes…
ISSUE #12
Potawatomi Woods, Wheeling, IL
Day 18 of The Rise
Annie, Crowley, Laura, and the National Guard soldiers arrived at base camp 45 minutes after Veverka had dropped dead. The scene was dismal and bleak: four nomadic huts had been set up just inside the Potawatomi Woods. They were the size of old schoolhouses, but could be be put up and taken down in less than an hour. Soldiers used them during their service in the Middle East, and now the National Guard was using them to defend against the Variants.
The Humvee parked in front of the second hut. Annie noticed four National Guard soldiers standing in a semi-circle near a poorly engineered fire pit. All but one were smoking. The one who wasn’t smoking was a sickly-looking boy, no more than 19 years old. He looked terribly pale and shell-shocked. Annie could sympathize. Jesus, wouldn’t anyone?
“Everybody off,” the man on the Humvee ordered.
Annie helped Crowley and Laura down from the be and led them inside the hut.
“My god…” Crowley muttered upon entering.
The hut was crammed with dozens of survivors. It looked like a refugee hut, packed to the gills with broken, disparaged souls. Mothers held their children while fathers paced feverishly next to them. Some of the survivors had dried blood stained across their clothes. Others seemed to be in a catatonic state, rocking back and forth like laughing maniacs.
“This looks like a cattle cage,” Crowley remarked. He picked up Laura and propped her on the inside of his elbow.
“Who are these people, Daddy?” she asked.
“These are people who need help, sweetie.”
“Do we need help, Daddy?” she asked.
Crowley looked at his daughter and cupped her left hand in his. He kissed her little fingers as tears formed on the inside of his eyes. “No, sweetie, we’re okay,” he told her.
“Is Mommy meeting us here?” Laura asked.
Annie saw the tears that had welled in the pits of his eyes fall down his cheeks. It broke her heart. Crowley couldn’t formulate a response, all he could do was bury his face in his daughter’s neck and cry.
“I’m going to find out what’s going on,” Annie said. “Try and find a place where she can rest.”
Crowley nodded, wiped the tears from his eyes, and went off with Laura.
Outside, Annie saw the man on the Humvee speaking to the four soldiers by the fire pit. He, too, was smoking a cigarette, and, as she approached them, she could see the burning white stick quivering in his hand.
“Excuse me,” Annie said.
The man on the Humvee turned to her, a grim look in his eyes. “Yes, ma’am?” She could tell the man’s patience was fading, and probably had been for some time. He tried to put on his best reassuring smile, but all that came out was a slight part of the lips and a gap where she could see his bottom teeth.
“I was wondering if somebody could tell me what’s going on.”
The man inhaled, but said nothing.
“Please, I’d really like to know what’s happening.”
“So would I,” the man said.
“These people need information,” said Annie. “They deserve information.”
The man looked at the four other soldiers, all of whom gave him the same noncommittal grunt.
“Look, I just saw you gun down my neighbor in the place I call home—“
“—Called home,” one of them interrupted.
“Shut your yap,” the man snapped. He turned back to Annie. “Nobody knows what the hell is going on, sister. It’s like some outbreak. Only nobody can figure it out.”
“Is there anything they do know?” She took a step closer to him and dropped her tone.
“Listen, you shouldn’t worry,” he told her. “The best thing you can do now is to go back inside and try and help out with the others.”
“You’re not getting rid of me until you start giving me some answers, Mr…”
The man smiled. He placed the cigarette at the corner of his mouth and held out his hand. “Name’s Porter,” he said. “Pleasure.” He looked around at their surroundings and shrugged. “Well, I guess it’s only sort of a pleasure.”
She took his hand in hers. “Annie Walker.” Then she, too, looked around and shrugged. “Now please, Mr. Porter, I’d really like to know what’s going on.”
He sighed. She thought he might tell her to scram or get lost, but was surprised when he put his arm inside her elbow and led her away from the others. He stuffed out his cigarette and leaned so close to Annie she could smell the terrible smokiness on his breath. “The CDC is denying any sort of outbreak or epidemic. When all this started, they did a few atmospheric tests but didn’t find any irregularities.”
“When did this all start?” she asked.
“On the record, a week ago. Off the record? Who fucking knows? All we do know is, people started dying—and people started dying fast. The murders caught CDC’s eye first, but what they’re not telling the public is that there has been a tremendous spike in aneurism deaths ever since the attacks started. They’re not sure how the aneurisms and the attacks are related, but they do know they are related. That’s what they’re trying to weed through now.”
“So they’re still working on it? Is there a cure?”
Porter took another cigarette from his pack and she saw that his hands were still quivering. He went to put the smoke in his mouth, but it fell from his fingers and hit the ground. “I don’t know, Ms. Walker. And that’s the god’s-honest-truth.”
Annie glanced back at the huts. “So what now?”
“We wait for the military to tell us what to do. Or the DOD. Or the CDC. Hell, we’ll listen to just about anybody at this point. Frankly, Ms. Walker, everybody’s scared shitless. We’ve never seen anything of this magnitude and nobody knows how we can fix it.” He bent down and picked up his cigarette. “One thing’s for sure though: things are fixin’ to get a lot worse, before they get better. I ain’t never been so goddamn scared.”
She looked deep into his eyes, but saw only small, black marbles staring back at her. The Hell Porter had seen over the last hour had snatched the soul from his body. He lit the cigarette with those awful, trembling hands.
If the cigarettes didn’t get him, Annie thought, the Hell surely would.
The cigarettes would be of little concern, however, because Porter and the other Potawatomi survivors would be dead by nightfall.
And on and on it goes…
ISSUE #13
Potawatomi Woods, Wheeling, IL
Day 18 of The Rise
It would not be the commotion that would startle Annie Walker awake. She had fallen asleep an hour before sundown. The rest of the hut was still milling about, but exhaustion finally took her. There were no dreams to speak of, no night terrors, just darkness. The darkness, though, was interrupted when she felt a hot, putrid breath tickling the side of her face. She opened her eyes, curious of the source.
When her eyes adjusted, she saw the demonic gaze of Crowley staring down at her. His fingers were caked in blood, with continuing splotches on his neck and chest. There was no longer any warmth in his eyes. He looked as though somebody had replaced his heart with a couple of double A batteries.
“Crowley?” she said. But the Crowley she had met on that Humvee was no longer there.
The sound of her voice set him off like a branded horse. He yanked at her arms and lifted her from the cot in one swift motion.
She let out a shrill scream and he slammed the back of her head against the wall. The room spun and a steady stream of blood ran down the back of her neck. The haze from her eyes lifted and she saw, behind Crowley, two dozen dead bodies scattered throughout the hut. Some victims had limbs that were torn clean off. Others were missing throats, chins, and eyeballs. Near the door, Annie saw Crowley’s daughter, Lauren, lying amongst the corpses. Her eyes were closed and her hands were resting on her chest. Death came quickly for her.
Next to her was Porter. He had not been as lucky. His right arm had been ripped from its socket and his jawbone was lying eighteen inches in front of him. He looked like some ghastly painting that had not yet been finished.
Always Ready, Always There? Sadly, no more, Mr. National Guard.
Though it was missing three of its fingers, there was a CB radio still clutched in Porter’s left hand.
“Crowley, what did you do?”
He grunted and slammed her against the wall again. He let out a long, deep gasp of air and Annie felt the stink of it. She tried to turn her head away, but he grabbed hold of her chin and snatched her back, gazing at her with curious eyes. Crowley somehow seemed different now, almost inquisitive. It was as if he had just been asked a riddle and couldn’t construct an answer.
Two coins add up to twenty-five cents. One of them is not a nickel. What are these two coins?
He tilted his head to the right, didn’t like what he saw, then tilted his head to the left. His curiosity went on for days.
Two coins add up to twenty-five cents, damn it, and one of those coins is not a nickel. What are these two coins? WHAT ARE THESE TWO COINS, YOU SON OF A BITCH?
“Crowley, listen, I don’t know what you did—“
He hit her across the face, splitting her lower lip. The blood was minimal, but it hurt like hell. He hit her again, this time just for good measure.
Don’t interrupt me while I’m trying to solve you, his eyes screamed. WHAT ARE THESE TWO COINS?
In Annie’s back pocket she could feel the stiff cardboard of her son’s birthday card pressing against her buttocks. She slid her hand behind her, hoping Crowley wouldn’t notice. He didn’t. His eyes were unblinking on hers. She slipped the card out of her pocket.
“What are you?” Crowley finally asked. His words were staggered, but clear. “What…Are…You?”
She stared back at him uncomprehendingly. What am I? She hadn’t the slightest idea what he meant. He seemed repulsed by her, yet, strangely captivated.
“Air strike commencing in thirty seconds. Porter, you get those people out of there, copy?” The words echoed out of Porter’s CB radio with such a graveness Annie momentarily forgot about the birthday card in her hand.
“Twenty-five seconds! Porter, status?”
Annie squeezed the card with her thumb against the base of her index finger and raised it up. Crowley didn’t notice, his attention was fixed on her eyes.
“What are you?” he demanded. “What are you? What are you? What are you?” Crowley was screaming. He blinked and Annie saw two red rings form around his eyes.
“Air strike in twenty seconds,” the voice boomed.
Annie swung the birthday card through the air. The corner of it sliced through Crowley’s right eye producing a quick squishing sound.
SPPPPPLOSCH! Crowley’s red-ringed eye screamed.
He fell back, tripping over one of the bodies. Though, he didn’t screamed. He clutched his socket as the sclera dissolved into a mixture of blood and puss. Crowley writhed on the ground, kicking his feet against one of the bodies, but, still, he didn’t scream.
“Ten seconds.” The voice turned ominous. “Porter, do you read me?”
Annie jumped over Crowley, the birthday card dripping blood. He reached for her, but the laces of her untied shoes slipped through his fingers.
“Five seconds!”
She looked back in time to see Crowley getting to his feet. What are the coins, for the love of God? His eyes were desperate, longing for answers. But Crowley made no move to run after her, he only stood there, stoic and calm.
“Three, two…”
Annie threw open the door and heard the jets fly over. There was the quick surge of air as the missiles disengaged and shot through the night sky. Then, the hut caved in around her like a dying star. Its brittle beams thudded against the fragile sheetrock and her last thought was of Crowley. She imagined the roof as it turned him into splatters of gore. She thought of the way he looked at her with such child-like curiosity. She thought of the frustration in his eyes.
A nickel and a dime, she thought as the darkness consumed her.
A nickel and a dime.
When she would wake, four months later, Annie would be met by the panicked eyes of Enrique Valenzuela, Captain Richard Blake, Lara Holliday, and Martin Knight.
The Variants would chase them into the clearing all wondering the same question. What are you, Ms. Walker. What. Are. You?
ISSUE #14
Park Ridge, IL
Four months after The Rise
The survivors lingered around the Variant’s body longer than any of them wanted. Annie was the only one who didn’t. She rested against the splintered picket fence hugging her legs against her chest. Tear tracks were visible along her dust-caked face.
Martin knelt next to the Variant’s body and opened one of its eyelids. The pupil was small and black and the iris was a supple green. There was, however, a thin, discolored red ring around the pupil. Martin released the eyelid and opened his pack. From inside he produced a small syringe. He stuck the needle in the Variant’s neck, just below the jaw, and extracted a small sample of blood. Martin extracted the needle and held the vile to the sun. The blood was a vibrant red, almost shimmering, against the late morning sun. The blood almost glowed. When Martin pulled it away it transformed back into the dark, rich matter so often seen when someone pricks their finger or skins their knee.
Out of the light, the blood looked completely normal.
But why shouldn’t it? Annie thought.
Because it’s a Variant, the other side of her brain countered. It’s a rotten Variant that doesn’t deserve the same blood as a human. It deserves black in its veins. Dirty black blood. As black as oil. Black, to accompany its black beating heart. Black like the…
“Did you say something?” Martin asked.
Annie looked up, a little startled. Had she said something? No, no, surely not. “No,” she said. “I didn’t say anything.”
Martin nodded, but kept his unsure eyes on her. “Let’s get going, we’ve been here too long.”
Without a word of protest, the others gathered up their packs and headed east along Birchwood Avenue. They would be to Chicago in a matter of hours and the sun would not wait for them.
ISSUE #15
Chicago, IL
Four months after The Rise
It wasn’t until the survivors reached the shore of Lake Michigan that Chicago’s skyline finally came into view. Fog had rolled in, making the skyline look skeletal and morose. There was no more bustling energy, no vibrancy. There was only a cluster of buildings that had been forsaken by the world of tomorrow—The World of the Variants.
The survivors no longer walked in cliques. Instead, they trudged along single-file like some melancholy game of Follow The Leader. Martin was in the back, Annie a few feet in front of him. He watched her ponytail bounce back and forth with hypnotic rhythm. She hadn’t said a word since they left the Variant’s body in Park Ridge.
They arrived at Lower Wacker Drive a touch after 6:00 p.m. Lower Wacker: built in 1926 at the cost of eight million dollars and named after chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission, Charles H. Wacker. The design was meant to alleviate traffic congestion at River Street and Rush Street and the double-decked roadway design was an architectural revolution at the time. Now, however, Lower Wacker was nothing more than an underground graveyard without the appropriate headstones.
As they made their way past the decaying bodies—some still in their cars, some in the street, others hanging over the concrete barrier—Martin handed Annie a handkerchief to cover her mouth and nose. It was hard to tell through the eternal gridlock, but Martin thought there were anywhere between five hundred and six hundred souls who perished down on Wacker. It was a traffic jam of the foulest things he had ever seen.
“Fucking stinks!” Lara said stuffing her nose into the crux of her elbow.
“What do you expect?” Captain Blake shook out his own handkerchief and cupped it around his nose.
Enrique didn’t use a handkerchief. He stepped through the lawn of bodies with a solemn respect. He never looked into their eyes, regarding each of them in his own right. It was this sort of quiet reverence his mother taught him when he was a child. A quiet reminder as to the gentle soul Enrique really was.
“Ain’t there no other way we can go?” Lara asked.
“This is the best way,” Martin said. “Lower Wacker takes us directly under the city all the way to Lake Street. From there we should be able to make it to the United Center undetected.”
“Undetected?” Lara questioned with her usual skepticism.
“Sun’s going down soon. If we can’t make it to the United Center by then, at least Lower Wicker will give us some sort of camouflage.”
“And if the Variants are down here waiting for us?” Lara asked.
“Then we’re already dead,” said Enrique. He was staring down at the body of a pregnant woman. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old. Her skin was pallid and looked like freshly cut leather, drawn taut.
“Let’s just keep moving,” Martin said.
Nobody moved.
“I said ‘move out!’” he shouted with an anger Annie hadn’t expected.
“Come on,” Captain Blake told the others. “You heard the Doc.” He climbed over a battered blue Cadillac leading the way for them to follow.
They traversed their way over the first cluster of automobiles, silence their only companion. Sunlight spilled through the north end of Lower Wacker. It was a soft, dying sunlight that meant only one thing: nightfall was upon them. The Variants would be coming soon…
“Heeeeeellllllppppppp…” came a small voice from behind them.
Annie was the first to turn around. “Did you hear that?”
“Heeeeeellllllppppppppppp…” the voice waned.
“I sure as shit did,” Lara said, unholstering her .357.
“Hello?” Enrique called down the tunnel.
“Are you nuts?” Captain Blake stepped forward and slapped the back of Enrique’s head.
“Oww! Watch it, yo!” Enrique cried.
Annie pulled herself onto the hood of an F-150 and climbed onto the cabin. She peered through the crippling darkness and saw, no more than a hundred yards back, the outline of a young girl. “I see somebody!”
“Annie, wait!” Martin called. But it was no use. Annie’s motherly instincts kicked in and she was going back for the girl. Martin slid past the F-150 and followed after her.
“It’s all right,” she called to the girl. “We’re here, everything’s okay.”
The girl was wearing a dingy white blouse and khaki capris. Her hair was greasy and black as if it had been dunked into a bucket of tar, then glossed in a layer of canola oil.
And then there was the smile. That decrepit, ghastly smile of a girl who was no longer a girl. A girl who had been left to navigate the wastelands of the world without hope of returning to the innocence she once had. But a Variant like this little girl couldn’t help but smile at the trap she had set.
“Annie, stop!” Martin yelled.
But Annie had already met the girl, and now she could see the cracked, yellow teeth leering back at her.
“God…” was all she could muster before the girl leapt at her.
The girl’s mouth foamed as she threw punches into Annie’s chest and abdomen. Annie screamed and felt a chunk of flesh tear away from her collarbone. The girl grabbed a tire iron under a nearby car and raised it up, ready to strike, when her eye exploded out the back of her skull.
Annie looked back and saw Martin jump down from a nearby Toyota, his Desert Eagle leaving a trail of smoke as he did.
“Come on,” he said helping her to her feet.
There was a thundering of footsteps farther down Lower Wacker and Martin watched as a band of Variants emerged from the darkness. There must have been 200 large. The sun bounced off a nearby building and illuminated them for a brief moment. The Variants cringed at the star’s burning light, but didn’t waver.
They’re adapting, Martin thought. Christ almighty, they’re adapting.
“Go back,” Martin said and gave Annie a little push over the Toyota.
The Variants gave chase, their feet pounding over the paralyzed automobiles with thundering effect. The herd trampled over the windshields and sunroofs and emitted a rumbling battle cry like something out of a 50s war film. The ringing echoed off the tunnel walls and Annie suddenly felt entombed.
The survivors’ bullets came next, whizzing past Annie and Martin. Lara, Captain Blake, and Enrique were dropping Variants, but not nearly fast enough. The ones in front fell back and were immediately trampled by the other ravenous warriors.
“Keep moving!” Martin ordered and didn’t stop to wait for the others.
Enrique was the first to turn and follow. Lara and Captain Blake unloaded a few more rounds then scampered after them.
Lara turned back every so often, dropping the frontline of Variants. She would turn and run, turn and run, like some modern dance she had created for this new age.
She and Captain Blake passed an abandoned garbage truck. The driver in the front was dead, a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the temple. The name “Earl” was stitched on his navy blue jumpsuit and the glass on the driver’s side door had been blown out. Whether it was from the bullet or the Variants trying to break their way in, it didn’t really matter. Either way, old Earl got off easy.
Well done, Earl. Godspeed. We should all be so lucky.
Captain Blake and Lara took cover behind the truck’s massive wheels. Lara reached under the truck’s frame and fired off a single shot. She howled with pleasure as the bullet split through a small opening between a Jeep and a battered Lincoln and lodged in the brain of a front-running Variant. The race was over for that poor bastard.
Captain Blake flipped open the top of his bag and reached inside. Lara’s eyes filled with mischievous wonderment when he produced two exquisite looking grenades. The webbed green exterior was like a beautiful sculpture and they shared a smile as Captain Blake pulled each of their pins.
“Fire in the hole!” he called and Lara howled like a wolf at the moon.
Captain Blake stuffed the two grenades under the garbage truck’s wheels and he and Lara took off, their legs kicking wildly at the pavement beneath them.
“Get down!” Martin called.
He, Annie, and Enrique dropped next to an empty city bus, wrapping their arms around each other in a faux group hug.
Captain Blake and Lara, now thirty yards away, leapt into the cab of a brand new Dodge Ram. Damn thing didn’t even have its license plates yet. Crying shame for that missing owner.
The Variants trampled over a small red Kia—its frame giving way to their tremendous weight—and rounded the garbage truck. The leader of the Variants was smiling when the grenades went off. The explosion ripped the skin from his face and his teeth exploded out the side of his mouth.
The truck flipped onto its side crushing a cluster of Variants. The explosion propelled another pack of Variants over the side of Lower Wacker only to be swallowed up by the depths of the Chicago River.
When the dust and smoke settled, the dump truck and a few automobiles had been rotated in such a way that Lower Wacker was completely blocked. The scream of the surviving Variants was still audible, but their threat was no longer real. They were trapped in a tunnel of death, with only the entrance as a way out.
“Hot damn that was good shit!” Lara said hopping out of the truck.
When they reached the others, they noticed a foolish looking smile on Enrique’s face.
“What are ya grinnin’ at ya goof?” Lara asked, also smiling.
“Just glad we’re all still alive,” he said.
Captain Blake and Lara had let them live to see another day. Which, they supposed, was both a blessing and a curse.
ISSUE #16
Chicago, IL
Four months after The Rise
They ascended the tunnel to Lake Street and were met by a marvelous orange glow. Night hadn’t yet come. They surely should have time. At most, though, there would only be twenty minutes of sunlight, so the survivors quickened their pace.
The United Center was less than a mile away, but the Variants would soon be out in droves. Daylight had always meant the absence of Variants. At night the Variants moved in packs that were fantastically dense. Now, however, they were testing the waters, feeling out the boundaries of dusk and dawn.
Adaptation, Martin continued to wonder. They must be adapting.
They made it to the corner of Warner and Wood Street by 8:38pm. Night was beginning to drown out the day. The air was becoming dank and cool.
Adjacent to where they stood, across a sprawling parking lot, was the United Center. Behind them was William H. Brown Junior High School. Its cracked brick and broken windows made it look like an abandoned insane asylum. There were abandoned cars all around them, but the landscape was void of any military or relief vehicles.
“Don’t look like no FEMA camp to me,” Enrique said.
“Where are all the people?” asked Annie.
Her question was met with only silence.
They could see a FEMA banner tied carelessly to the United Center’s marquee board. The top corner, having pulled free, was now whipping back and forth against the concrete. A series of metal barricades lined the stadium’s perimeter, though some of them were tipped on their sides or had crumbled to pieces, cast aside like old stones.
A large, ancient-looking crow hopped down from the roof of the Center, swooped in front of the north entrance before perching on a downed power line. It cawed and flapped its massive wings. The sound swooped through the parking lot before disappearing into the empty city.
“I don’t understand,” said Martin.
“What do you mean: ‘you don’t understand?’ We got had, Martin.” Captain Blake’s gruff voice was bordering on dejection. “We’re as screwed as screwed can get out here.”
“Well, this is just fuckin’ great!” Lara cried.
“What do we do now?” Enrique asked. “Sun’s goin’ down and we ain’t got too many options, ya know?” He mindlessly rolled his St. Christopher necklace through his fingers.
“Maybe there’s something inside the stadium,” Martin said.
“Like what?” Lara challenged.
“Like supplies.”
“We don’t need supplies! We need fucking help! We need fucking answers!”
“Either way, I reckon we get outta the dark. And get outta the dark fast,” Captain Blake added surveying the night sky.
Had they not stood around and argued for the next thirty seconds, things may have turned out differently for Enrique. Maybe if they had agreed on where to go or what to do sooner, he may have avoided the bullet that ripped through his pectoral muscle, just below his collarbone, and exited his back with a “pffftt” of crackling bone and shredded tissue. Sadly, though, that was not the case for Enrique Valenzuela on that muggy evening in Chicago.
The bullet had barely made a sound. By the time they made it to safety, Captain Blake estimated the bullet came from the barrel of a Barrett M82 sniper rifle somewhere on the roof of the United Center.
“Either the M82 or the M107,” he would tell them. “At that range though, either of ‘em could blow a man’s head into a flurry of brain paste. So I guess it don’t really matter.”
That goddamn bird, Lara would later realizee. That goddamn crow swooped down cause some asshole climbed up on that roof and shot at us. Goddamn bird…
“Let’s just go inside. If we can’t find anything, we’ll stay here for the night and head out in the morning,” Martin said.
“I’m done taking orders from you. It’s only led us to one dead end after another,” Lara shouted. “Fucking miracle we’re still alive!”
“Lara, calm down,” said Captain Blake.
“It’s true! We’re better off on our own!”
And that was the last of the argument.
There was a quick puff of air, sharp and quick. They saw the blood next. It sprayed across the asphalt in a fabulous mist. Enrique’s body went taut. He looked like how a person does when they get jolted by a police taser. Enrique stiffened and then fell forward into that misty blood cloud.
A second bullet flicked off the concrete just next to Lara’s feet.
“Sniper!” Captain Blake yelled.
What happened next had to have been the perfect recipe of adrenaline, luck, and frantic lust for survival. A teaspoon more of one or the other surely would have resulted in all of their deaths.
Martin crouched and grabbed hold of Enrique’s collar. He felt the smooth rush of air lick his spine as a third bullet barely missed him. Enrique cried out in agony as Martin dragged him behind an abandoned school bus haphazardly parked on Warren Boulevard. A fourth bullet exploded through the bus’s rubber tire and shot a ghastly burst of old air into Martin’s face.
Captain Blake grabbed Annie’s hand and spun her toward him. The motion—had the tension not been so great—would have been considered a fancy dance move. A fifth bullet skipped past their feet. They rolled under the school bus and hugged the base of the curb.
“Variants?” Annie screamed.
“That ain’t Variants, sweeting,” Captain Blake said. “That’s human.”
Lara’s survival was nothing but luck. She had stood flat-footed for most of the ordeal. The whole scenario played out with such an inauthentic quality. But when she saw Enrique’s blood careening its way down the sidewalk her mind finally assessed the situation. She took an instinctual step backward as the sixth bullet exploded next to her feet. There was no urgency in her movements, just wise, calculated steps. A seventh bullet was a near millimeter miss. Later, she would recall the scorching heat of that bullet as it tickled past her neck. Lara took another step backward and did a half somersault over the curb and behind the front tire. She found herself next to Enrique. The blood was pooling around his head into a morbid sort of halo.
He looked up at her, his skin colorless and his eyes glistening. A tear rolled town his cheek and she wiped it away as quickly as it had fallen.
“We can’t stay here!” Captain Blake shouted as another bullet blew out a second bus tire.
“Let’s get him to the school!” Martin ordered. He and Lara picked Enrique up and made their way to the front door. The sniper bullets momentarily ceased. Perhaps they were finding a better angle. Perhaps they were out of bullets. Perhaps they were just biding their time.
Captain Blake shot the lock off the chain wrapped around the school’s front door and yanked it off in one swift motion. The others raced into the school, Captain Blake following close behind.
The last sound was the reverberating “ping” of the ninth sniper bullet splitting through the bus window and lodging into the school’s front door. If one looked closely, a small indentation could be seen where the bullet had struck. None of did, however, and the school’s recent renovation would go unnoticed.
The pain in Enrique’s voice shot out of him in a gurgling rage and wandered down the empty halls like a lost child.
Lara was near tears as she watched Martin go to work. Annie offered her a comforting shoulder, but Lara promptly brushed it aside and crossed to the other side of the room. Annie watched her go, but made no move to follow.
Martin and Captain Blake placed Enrique on one of the wooden benches, the kind with wide slats usually reserved for those waiting for the principal. Blood dripped through the slats, collecting on the tile in a dense oval. Enrique cried out in another fit of pain as Martin applied more pressure.
“Break that and give it to me,” Martin said, referring to a moldy mop propped against one of the lockers.
Captain Blake snapped the wooden handle over his knee and handed the smaller of the two halves to Martin.
“Open your mouth,” he instructed.
Enrique did as he was told and Martin stuck the water-stained slab of wood between his teeth. He bit down with such intensity Martin could hear the dry sound of wood particles grinding against the enamel. He ripped open Enrique’s shirt and saw the blood loss was so severe, and the blood density was so great, it took Martin a moment to find the bullet’s point of entry.
Enrique’s breathing became strained and gurgled, the inhales and exhales painfully desperate. He pointed at his neck as if to indicate he was choking.
“What’s wrong with him?” Lara screamed.
“His lung’s punctured,” Martin said. “I need to alleviate the pressure.”
“How?” Lara asked, now on the verge of hysteria.
“We have to get him to the United Center,” Martin said. And he said it so quietly, at first he thought nobody had heard him. Then he felt a gentle tugging at the back of his shirt. He turned and found Lara, eyes harboring heavy pockets of tears, but cautiously calm.
“Are you nuts?” she asked in a harsh whisper. “I don’t know if you noticed, Doc, but a fucking sniper is raining caps down on us, and it’s another four hundred yards to the front entrance…At least!”
“I know how far it is,” Martin said, grabbing hold of her wrist and leading her away from Enrique.
Lara ripped her arm away and stepped as close as she could to him. “Listen, if we go out there, then we’re all dead. The sun’s down which means the Variants’ll be coming. And if the Variants don’t get us, then that cheesedick with the rifle surely will.” She wiped the tears from the shallows of her eyes. “You’re just gonna have to fix him here.”
“And I’m telling you, if we don’t get him out of here, then he’ll die. I can’t fix him here. That might not be a FEMA camp anymore, but it was at one time. And that means they’ll have medical supplies, a lab, maybe even an operating facility. I’m not asking for your opinion. We’re going. If you’d like to stay here, be my guest, but don’t expect any of us to come back for you.” The icy contempt in his voice was staggering. He turned his attention to Captain Blake. “Captain, you think you can hot wire that bus out front?”
“Ain’t a question of if I can, Doc, it’s a question of how fast I can.”
Martin nodded his appreciation.
“Lara, c’m here,” Captain Blake instructed her.
She did without a moment’s protest.
Martin opened his pack and removed a soft linen towel. He placed the towel on Enrique’s wound, took Lara’s hand, and placed it on top. “Apply this amount of pressure,” he said showing her with his touch. Enrique groaned slightly. “If he tries to move, or push you away, gently push him back on the other shoulder and increase the pressure. Don’t lift the towel to check for saturation or even for your own curiosity, it’ll do more harm than good. Do you understand?”
Lara nodded.
The five minutes previous were hazy for Enrique. It was a kaleidoscope of disconnected pictures skipping in his memory like a scratched vinyl record. He remembered Captain Blake and Martin carrying him inside and setting him on an uncomfortable bench, a broom (or something like that), and the distant outline of Annie Walker as she disappeared down a hallway.
Nobody noticed her, Enrique thought. Where was she going?
“I know this place…” Enrique thought he heard her say. “I know this place,” she had said again. But nobody seemed to hear her except Enrique.
His pain returned in a violent jolt, and the image of Annie Walker disappearing into the quiet dark of William H. Brown Junior High faded away like that last reel of a movie.
ISSUE #17
Sweetwater Creek State Park
Lithia Springs, GA
Day 39 of The Rise
The basecamp where Higgins or Hodgkins or Whatever-The-Hell-His-Name-Was had returned holding his severed arm was made up of three separate barracks: the first for families, the second for survivors whose families were lost, and the third for military personnel. There was a small landing strip on the north end of the base where a Boeing C-17 Globemaster sat parked. While the runway was only 3,500 feet long, under normal circumstances it was more than enough length for the Globemaster to get off the ground.
The night the Variants overtook the basecamp at Sweetwater Creek State Park was the night Enrique Valenzuala arrived. It was also the night the Globemaster made its final takeoff from that narrow, uneven runway. While the takeoff would be successful, it would not have the luxury of landing.
The Army had marked off the base camp with temporary wire fencing. It was the kind that could be constructed in a day and taken down at a moment’s notice. There were four main lookout points with at least two Corporals stationed at those towers at all times. Each tower had 360-degree views of the camp, as well as the surrounding park and reserve.
The Variants would storm Tower One at a quarter past eleven that evening and kill the two Corporals.
Hell would follow shortly after.
Enrique arrived to camp by bus, as so many of them had. He sat in the very back even thought there were only six other passengers.
When the bus dropped them inside the gate it was half past six in the evening. The six passengers filed toward the barracks in a single line. The survivors already at camp watched the new mess of “inmates” file in and Enrique felt a sudden tinge of nostalgic pain.
When Enrique was thirteen he was caught shoplifting at the local stop-n-shop on the edge of Decora, the town he grew up in. Decora, Georgia was so small that when Sergeant Matthews asked the storeowner to describe the suspect he simply said, “Well…It was Enrique.”
Enrique’s lack of remorse for the petit crime only agitated the judge presiding over the case, and he ordered him to remain at a juvenile delinquent center for no less than six months.
He remembered what it was like when he arrived. Filing in with ten other delinquents, their heads hanging low. Ain’t so tough now, were they? The other troubled youths stared at them from their barren, whitewashed cells, gritting their fragile, yellow teeth. It was a hell unlike anything he had ever seen.
Now he was a 29 year old Mexican, having just witnessed some of the foulest shit anybody could ever see, filing off the bus like the naïve thirteen year old he once was. Hell had returned.
There were looks of hope in the other survivors’ eyes, anticipating the arrival of lost loved ones. But there was no such hope to be found. “My daughter’s still missing, and this dirty wetback gets a pass,” one survivor muttered as Enrique passed him by. The man’s bludgeoning contempt almost knocked Enrique off his feet. He dropped his head and made his way to the sleeping quarters.
Enrique would manage a few hours of rest before the mayhem would begin.
ISSUE #18
Sweetwater Creek State Park
Lithia Springs, GA
Day 39 of The Rise
Captain Blake and Lara had arrived (separately, of course) to Sweetwater Creek basecamp three days before Enrique. They hadn’t said a word to one another. As far as Captain Blake recalled, Lara hadn’t said a thing to anybody. If you asked Lara, all she remembered of Captain Blake was “an old, wrinkly guy who kept muttering about his missing wife Hilary or Heidi or some shit like that.”
You didn’t have friends in the barracks. You had comrades. People would share a knowing nod or a tip of the cap, but that was the extent of it. There were no stories. No jokes. No “sit-around-the-fire” chit-chat. It was a murky reality and those who survived acted as if they were better off dead.
When the alarm sounded signaling the breach on the north end of base, Enrique was lying in his cot reading the only book he managed to grab when he fled, Travels with Charley. He hadn’t gotten far in the story, and found himself reading the same page over and over. His mind was elsewhere. Whether his thoughts were on the whereabouts of his mother, the current state of the nation, or the way the Variant looked when Enrique pushed him out of a twelve-story window, he didn’t really know. All he knew was that his journey led him to the barracks with a book he didn’t particularly care for, and an alarm so shrill it rattled his eardrums.
Enrique popped up along with the 83 other souls in the surrounding cots. Next-door, the family barracks erupted in mass conversations of panic; 150 men, women, and children shouting over one another in incomprehensible tones. Enrique could see their shadows moving back and forth like spastic ragtime dancers.
“Any idea what that alarm is?” Enrique asked the burly man next to him. The man had a thick with veins popping out like water-swollen roots. Enrique never did end up getting the man’s name. But, in the end, it was probably better that way.
“Never heard it before,” the burly man said.
The loudspeaker crackled a momentary hiss and then an authoritative voice sounded over the camp, “This is Colonel Jackson. We have had a breach. I repeat: We have had a breach. All persons need to report to the military barracks immediately.” And then Colonel Jackson was gone.
Screams and shrieks ripped through the camp. Cots were tipped over, people were trampled as they made their way to the exit, one man even punched another in the jaw when they simultaneously reached the door. Enrique stupidly watched this unfold, unmoving, until a hand wrapped around his forearm. The grip was tight, but cold. His muscles twinged against the grasp.
“Don’t just stand there ya dumb fuck!” And there was Lara Holliday, her dirty bleached hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. A dingy white tank clung to her body like wet paper and her already short shorts were rolled an inch higher than necessary. She pulled him toward the exit as the herd of frantic pedestrians pushed their way through the door.
Outside, they saw no Variants. Though the acreage of the state park was sprawling and massive, Enrique figured they’d see something…anything. But all appeared quiet in the night.
They hustled to the military barracks and piled inside. Within minutes there were over 300 people jammed in a room that was only meant to hold a hundred.
“Listen up!” Colonel Jackson yelled as he stepped up on a chair. “There’s been a breach on the north wall. Now, while there were only six Variants reported inside before we lost contact, it is our belief more will come. We need to evacuate immediately. Only problem is…” His words hung in the air. “Only problem is…” he said again, “…is that the plane only holds 230. What we got amongst us is over 300.”
The murmurs of realization tore through the room and soon the murmurs morphed into shouts of protest. “Who would go?” “How will you choose?” and, “You have to take the children,” were just some of the things Enrique heard.
“We don’t have time to debate who goes and who stays,” said Colonel Jackson. “My men are passing out cards as we speak and that will determine who goes.”
More protest.
“The louder you yell, the sooner the Variants find us!” Colonel Jackson yelled.
The shouting softened to a low rumble.
“Now, if anybody else wants to yell they can consider themselves excluded from the flight out of here.”
There wasn’t a sound.
“We’re passing out two cards at random: a green card and a red card. You get a green card, you’re on the plane, you get a red card…” his voice trailed off again, “…well then I’m sorry.”
Enrique’s eyes flitted around the room until he saw one of the officers holding a small burlap sack. The soldier approached Enrique, sack open. He stared at Enrique with his marble black eyes and motioned for him to reach inside. “Take one.” The soldier’s voice echoed no notes of sympathy or remorse. Enrique clammed up.
“You hear me boy?” the solider asked.
Boy? Boy? The soldier couldn’t have been a year or two older than Enrique. He was just a boy himself. He was a boy who was passing out the fate of several hundred people.
Red light. Green light.
“Hey! You hear me? I don’t got all day, boy!”
Enrique lifted a trembling hand and placed it in the burlap sack. Rigid construction paper slipped through his fingers and he thought he could detect the color of the paper by touch. This thought was quickly crushed when he grabbed at a piece of paper and pulled it out. He kept his eyes on the solider, studying his licorice skin with plain curiosity, anything to distract him from the destiny in his hands.
The soldier’s eyes fell on the paper first and then came back to Enrique’s. His facial expression was constant, but he held out his arm and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said and then stepped away.
Enrique looked down at the paper and the flash of red danced like a maniacal bull. The devil had come to Georgia and his team color painted Enrique’s palm with mocking disinterest. He looked around and saw they had finished passing out the cards. A vague sense of mourning crippled the room. Enrique saw Lara had a green card tucked away in her hand. She seemed almost embarrassed that she had been chosen, but also relieved. She offered him a sad smile and lowered her head.
“For those of you with red cards, I’m terribly sorry. We’ll leave all the weapons we can spare so you can defend yourselves.” Colonel Jackson’s voice cracked. “I wish we could have done more. May God be with you. May God be with all of us.” He stepped down from the chair and whispered something to the officer next to him. His name was Lieutenant Cole and he had a brooding, arrogant way about him. There was a small scar under his right eye and his skin was so rough you could rub his hands across a couple of 2x4s and have a table by dinner time.
Lieutenant Cole stepped up on the chair Colonel Jackson had just descended from and held his hands behind his back as he spoke, very military-like. “Those of you with green cards, you’ll have three minutes to collect your belongings before we make our way to the runway. If you aren’t outside the barracks in three minutes we will leave you behind. Is that understood?”
There were whispers of understanding, and then everyone filed out. The C-17 Globemaster was waiting. But so were the Variants.
* * *
When they got back to the barracks it was bedlam at its best. Those who had picked the green cards were hustling about, stuffing anything they could into bags whether it belonged to them or not. Those with the red cards sat on their cots, staring at their hands in mock reflection. Enrique neither sat nor hustled. He stood in the middle of the room as people passed by him without so much as a look.
“Sorry ‘bout that, brother,” he heard a voice say.
Enrique turned and saw the burly man he had spoken to earlier. He was stuffing an oversized shirt into his pack. The green piece of construction paper was still firmly gripped in his hand.
“Huh?” Enrique grunted.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
Enrique waved him off and stuffed his hands in his pockets.
“You’re goin’ be all right now,” the burly man said. “Ya hear?”
Enrique nodded, but lowered his head. He had never been so sure in his life that he would not be all right. The Variants were coming. Lots of them. Did he really expect to fight them off with a military rifle and a few smoke bombs? He wouldn’t even have the luxury of retreating, the Variants would get him before that, and the burly man knew it.
“Hey,” the burly man said lifting his head, “kill some of those sons a bitches for me, will ya?”
“Sure,” Enrique sighed.
“Attaboy!” The burly man slapped him on the back. “Hey, watch my stuff for me while I hit the head, yeah? Don’t wanna be ten-thousand feet up, stuffed ‘gether like cattle and I gotta drain my lizard on some broad’s anklet, know whatta mean?”
Enrique nodded and the burly man headed toward the back.
“Two minutes!” Lieutenant Cole yelled. He was standing near the entrance, his arms tucked behind his back, looking as constipated as ever. “Hurry the fuck up!”
Enrique looked at the burly man’s pack. It was neatly propped on the cot. In spite of how the burly man looked, he was very meticulous and well organized. Enrique glanced back at the bathroom. He chewed on his lip, contemplation getting the best of him. Finally, he grabbed a long, cotton towel from under his bed. It was what they had provided him when he arrived. The towel was a brilliant shade of white, but the material was flimsy and cheap. God bless the United States Government. He balled up the towel and headed for the bathroom.
“Hey, where ya headed?” came Lara’s voice.
“What?”
Lara was standing behind him. “I asked where you were headed.”
“Bathroom.” He continued on.
“I’m sorry you gotta stay behind,” she called after him.
Enrique stopped and turned, his eyes offering a small pocket of tears. He nodded.
“Well…good luck,” she said clumsily.
“You too,” he said and then he made his way to the bathroom.
Military personnel kept the bathroom spotless. The walls were lined with immaculate blue tile and the floors were so pristine it was impossible to believe a hundred people used it on a regular basis. There were two stalls and three urinals made of polished white porcelain, and four sinks adjacent to the urinals that were polished to a glaring shine.
When Enrique entered he noticed one of the fluorescent lights was out. A rare oddity in the world of the bathroom, he thought. He could hear the burly man still taking a leak. He was humming some tune Enrique didn’t recognize.
The door hadn’t made a sound when it opened or closed, and Enrique was thankful for that. He took off one of his shoes and wedged it under the door. He tested to make sure it wouldn’t open. It didn’t. So far, so good.
Enrique rounded the set of stalls and saw the burly man at the middle urinal, a steady stream still running between his legs. He took a step toward him and the burly man flinched. Enrique stopped, his feet locked to the ground as if stuck in mud. But when the burly man didn’t turn, he took another step closer. Then another. And another. Soon he was so close he was sure the burly man could feel his breath on the back of his neck.
The stream ceased and the burly man zipped up. Enrique wrapped the towel around his fingers and pulled it taut. He raised the towel and, just as he did, the fluorescent light near the entrance flickered back on. There was a momentary buzz and it illuminated.
The burly man looked up and, in his peripheral vision, saw Enrique standing behind him. “The hell you doing, Rico?” the burly man asked, more than a little peeved.
Enrique didn’t answer. He brought the towel up and over the burly man’s head and wrapped it around his thick neck. The burly man grabbed at the towel, trying to get his fingers between his neck and the fabric, but Enrique was too fast. Enrique tightened the noose and the burly man’s eyes bulged. He spun around and Enrique went with him.
There was a brief moment when they caught each other’s eyes in the mirror. The reality right there before them. The burly man’s eyes turned red and glossy and a vein popped out on his forehead. His cheeks turned a violent shade of crimson then transformed into a dense purple.
He reached back, trying to swat Enrique off. Enrique was momentarily lifted off the ground, but he held the ends of the towel as if riding a bull.
The burly man ran backwards and slammed Enrique into one of the urinals. He could feel the stainless steel handle click down as it jammed into his lower back. A rush of water cascaded down the porcelain as the burly man slammed him back again. Enrique pulled hard on the noose and he felt the fabric start to tear. Flimsy fucking fabric. Fuck you, United States Government!
He nearly lost his grip on the towel, but managed to hold on by pushing his feet off the urinal and throwing them both forward. Enrique spilled over the burly man’s body and the towel twisted in such a way he could hear his neck crack. And then the fabric tore in half.
Enrique sat up and rolled the burly man over. His eyes were still bulging and the dead pupils stared up at him with haunting clarity. His short, thick tongue was hanging to one side and had swelled to nearly double its original size.
Enrique was surprised at how quickly he managed to drag the burly man to the second stall, prop him up on the toilet, and remove the green piece of construction paper from his back pocket. He stared at the emerald-colored paper with a genuine mixture of fascination, regret, and relief.
Death and life. Red light and green light.
Enrique nearly dropped the green ticket into the toilet when the pounding on the bathroom door started. He folded the burly man’s legs back, making it look like no one was inside, and left the stall.
Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock!
He turned on the faucet, splashed water on his face, and put a cool hand on the back of his neck.
Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock!
“Open up!” came the thundering voice of Lieutenant Cole.
On the floor lay the torn cotton towel. Enrique gathered it up and threw it in the trash.
“Open up, I said!”
He gave one last look around the bathroom, removed his shoe from its perfectly wedged placement, and opened the door.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Enrique said.
“What in the hell you doing in here, boy?” Lieutenant Cole asked, his brow furrowed into a look of suspicion.
“Just going to the bathroom, sir.”
The fluorescent light flickered.
“Takes you a helluva long time to go to the bathroom, don’t it?”
“It was an emergency, sir.”
Lieutenant Cole glared at him. “You think I’m stupid, boy?”
“No, sir, of course not.”
Lieutenant Cole cocked his head to the left, inspecting Enrique’s eyes. Enrique looked anywhere but at the Lieutenant, trying not to quiver.
“Listen,” Lieutenant Cole whispered, “you gettin’ sick before a flight, especially one as rocky as this one’s gonna be, is understandable, but we gotta move, boy. Variants are right on our ass.”
The muscles along Enrique’s jawline relaxed and he couldn’t believe he found himself half smiling. “You’re right, sir, you’re absolutely right, I’m sorry.”
“You ready to go?”
Enrique held up his green piece of gold and said, “You bet, sir!”
“Good man!”
Lieutenant Cole stepped aside and let Enrique pass. “Let’s move out!” he shouted and headed for the entrance.
The only eyes that met Enrique’s as everyone was headed toward the exit were Lara’s. Her eyes saw that green piece of paper stuck between his fingers.
Enrique grabbed the burly man’s bag without breaking stride and continued toward the exit. Lara gathered up her own pack and sidled up alongside him.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“You had a red card…” she whispered. “…You had a red card…and now you have a green card…What the fuck?”
“I didn’t have a red card,” was all he could muster.
“Where is he?” she asked, and Enrique knew he was caught. But he didn’t matter anymore. He was part of the past. He didn’t make it. A lot of people didn’t make it. So it goes…
“There is no he,” Enrique responded.
The burly man was dead. There were no two ways about it. His body was abandoned in the cleanest stall this side of the Mississippi. His tongue was curled up against the outside of his cheek and his lips were two purple crescents that were forever unmoving. People died every day. That’s just how it was. And the burly man was one of those unlucky to join their company. Being a religious man, Enrique hoped the burly man was a good man, the kind who donated to churches, who volunteered at schools, who gave twenty-five fucking cents a day to some scrawny refugee so she could eat a fucking bowl of fucking rice. Anything! Everything! Enrique’s thoughts pounded against his skull with such guilt he thought his legs might give out. He felt Lara’s arm tuck under his bicep and when he looked at her he knew he was safe. She knew he had done wrong. She knew he had killed a man, but that didn’t matter, at least not to her. The world was over, so they’d best get a move on.
ISSUE #19
Sweetwater Creek State Park
Lithia Springs, GA
Day 39 of The Rise
The basecamp survivors were no more than a hundred yards from the plane when the Variants descended upon them.
“Move!” Lieutenant Cole was out in front, waving his arm like a sputtering propeller, an AK-47 clutched in his free hand. The people followed, emitting soft cries of panic as their feed pounded across the preserve. The Variants were waging war, but this herd was set on survival.
The first shots were fired when they were nearly to the plane. For one silly moment, Enrique thought they would make it without any bloodshed.
Silly Enrique, happy endings are for kids.
Enrique noticed Lara had two .357’s fastened in two holsters and he wondered where she had gotten them. That thought was quickly erased when he saw her discharge them on two approaching Variants. Their heads exploded in a flurry of blood and they dropped to the ground without a further ounce of movement.
The four engines of the Globemaster coughed and sputtered before finally catching. They whipped with such fierceness Enrique thought he’d be sucked into the blade. Lara pulled on his arm and he was thrust back to reality. “We’re almost there!” she called over the engines.
Enrique was near the back of the pack. Those in front quickened their pace. They curled into the aft of the plane and Enrique had an ephemeral moment of hope. He was going to make it.
Green light!
He couldn’t have been more than fifty yards away when a Variant grabbed his ankle. Enrique fell forward and when his chin hit the runway stars illuminated his vision. He barely remembered turning over and spitting out one of his molars.
The Variant was on top of him. Enrique saw a red flicker in the Variant’s eye and rage foamed at the sides of its mouth. The Variant tore Enrique’s right sleeve clean off and was clawing at his skin like a wolf.
There was a gunshot and a shower of blood spurted from the Variant’s chest. The Variant cocked its head forward and stared at Enrique in stifled confusion. It fell forward, collapsing on his sternum with a dull thud. Enrique heaved a dry breath and rolled the Variant onto the tarmac.
“Get up!” he heard a gruff voice say. Enrique’s mind was still spinning when he realized he was being yanked from the ground. “Y’all right?” he heard a man ask.
Enrique’s eyes clicked shut, then opened again in a haze of bewilderment. There, standing before him, was an astonishingly svelte old man. His hair and beard were white but his body was chiseled and youthful. There was an M-16 hanging loosely from his arm. He looked almost cartoonish.
“Go!” the old man called pushing Enrique toward the plane.
Enrique was off, but his heart dropped when he saw the plane heading down the runway, picking up speed as it went. The faster Enrique ran, the farther away the plane seemed to get. The cargo load door was still down and sparks were spewing from the end in a glorious blaze. He could see the other survivors calling for him to run faster and he heard the engine groan another thunderous rush of power.
The plane was leaving. The Variants were coming. Death was imminent. Those were the only guarantees in life at that point.
Enrique had never remembered running that fast. His thirty-year old potbelly bounced up and down, his pudgy legs almost flailing.
Lara stood at the end of the cargo door with her hand out. “Come on!”
Red light, green light, the plane said. Or, Hurry up, motherfucker! Either way, Enrique got the message.
His strides lengthened and he felt his foot hit the base of the loading door. The jolt was so jarring he momentarily lost his balance. Lara reached out, grabbed hold of his dingy brown shirt, and pulled him forward. They tumbled to the ground, him on top of her.
“Thanks,” Enrique grunted.
“Get…off…” she said, her words strained by Enrique’s weight.
“Come on, old man!” Enrique heard Lieutenant Cole yelling.
He sat up and saw the lieutenant standing at the edge of the loading door. Sparks continued to spit up. The plane picked up speed. Enrique looked into the darkness and saw the old man who had saved him. A platoon of Variants ensued, and the plane that would make or break him was still ten yards away. The old man turned the M-16 around, fired off a couple shots, and then threw it to the tarmac.
Red Light, Green Light.
The old man leapt forward through a shower of sparks and grabbed hold of Lieutenant Cole’s arm. They fell to the ground and the loading door began to close. Those inside watched as the Variants sprinted toward the plane with abandoned regard. The loading door had barely closed by the time the plane lifted off the ground. The Globemaster banked left, shook through a patch of turbulence, then steadied.
Throughout the plane, handshakes and hugs of congratulations were exchanged. Enrique, however, didn’t move. He lay with one leg cocked and his elbows stuck to the plane floor. He stared at the loading door half-expecting the Variants to pry it open and crawl inside.
“Helluva night, huh?” Enrique looked to his right and saw the old man lying next to him. “Captain Richard Blake,” he said extending his hand. “Retired, of course.”
He took Captain Blake’s hand. Enrique thought he gave his name, too, but couldn’t say for sure.
The plane continued north, flying through the night sky with more safety than any of them had felt in weeks. There was only hope aboard that plane.
Splendid, profound hope.
And for the next three hours, those aboard the Boeing C-17 Globemaster felt as if they were going to make it.
Green Light, the plane screamed. Glorious, glorious Green Light!
At precisely 2:17am, the Boeing C-17 Globemaster would be shot down and crash in Castle Rock Lake, just outside of Madison, Wisconsin. Of the two hundred thirty on board, only twelve would survive.
Red Light.
ISSUE #20
Chicago, IL
Four months after The Rise
Enrique was dying. That much was clear. His skin had turned an ashen white and his hands trembled in shock. He would go in and out of consciousness, and, even when lucid, could only say through chattering breaths how cold he was.
“You sure you can do this? It’s not going to be easy,” Martin said to Captain Blake, leading him back to the schools’ entrance.
“Doc, I reckon we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t thrive in situations involving high probabilities of death and little chance of success,” Captain Blake said.
Martin nodded. He turned toward Annie, but only an empty hallway met his eyes. “Where’s Annie?”
“I…I don’t know. She was here a minute ago.”
“Well she’s not here now.”
“I can see that, Martin.”
“Did anybody see her?”
They shrugged.
Martin gnawed on his lower lip. He was tense, and the others could sense every ounce of it. “Get out to the bus and pull it around back,” he said, his words echoing their usual notes of calm. “We’ll drive it to the north entrance and hope no sniper bullets clip us in the process. Lara, I need you to take Enrique to the south exit and wait for Captain Blake.”
“What are you gonna do?” she asked.
“I’m gonna go find Annie. If I’m not to the bus in five minutes, just go, I’ll find some other way to the stadium.”
“We’re not leaving you,” Lara insisted.
“Yes. You are.”
“But—“
“This isn’t a discussion!” And that was the end of it.
“Roger that, Doc,” Captain Blake said. “See you guys on the other side.” He threw the front door open spilling in a small amount of dying light. Martin and Lara barely had time to shield their eyes before the door shut and the latch caught. There was the faint sound of a single sniper bullet ricocheting off the crumbling brick, but then silence followed.
All was calm.
“What happened?” Lara asked. “Did they get him?”
“I don’t know.”
Calm.
And then they heard the comforting roar of the bus’s engine cough to life and relief poured over them in an awesome wave.
“Get Enrique up and help him to the back, I’ll meet you there!” Martin disappeared down the hall before Lara had a chance to respond.
Along the school’s east corridor, adjacent to the gym, Annie Walker found herself standing in front of a glass display case. Half a dozen basketball trophies, along with the photos of their respective teams, rested proudly inside. Fine layers of dust collected along the chrome coatings, but, otherwise, seemed to be in decent condition. In the corner of the case there was a small bronze trophy, lined with cheap, poorly stained plywood. A meager gold-plated basketball rested on its dusty top. Engraved in the base was:
KYLE WALKER – MOST VALUABLE PLAYER
Behind the trophy was a picture of a young boy, thirteen or fourteen at most. He had a messy mop of dirty blonde hair and his blue eyes popped against the bright red jersey. He wasn’t smiling; he stared intently at the camera like so many athletes do: looking serious, tough. But the eyes wouldn’t lie. This was a happy boy, full of life.
Annie drew her fingers across the display, her greasy hands smudging the immaculate glass. The edges of her eyes took turns dropping tears like a metronome of sorrow.
“Annie?”
Annie turned and saw Martin standing at one end of the hallway.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “You shouldn’t go off alone.”
“I…” she began, but her attention returned to the photo before a set of words could satisfy his inquiry.
“What is it?” he said.
“My son…” she said pointing to the picture. “My son went here. It was only for a year. Before…before his father took him.” Her voice dropped. She sighed heavily. “This was his school. I had forgotten. I don’t know how or why, but…I just did. But then we got inside, and like some miracle, here he is. Like some sick, cruel miracle!” Her words pierced the silent hallways. “Goddamn it!”
Annie snatched up the garbage bin next to the display case and threw it into the glass. The shards erupted into the air in a cacophony of clings and clangs.
Martin hadn’t jumped, as if half-expecting it. Annie’s breathing was deep, but controlled. She reached into the case and ripped down the picture of her son in one, aggravated motion. She held it thoughtfully in her hands, stroking the edges as though it had the fragility of a newborn.
“I wasn’t able to grab any pictures of him when…when it happened.”
Martin nodded.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have gone off like that.”
“We should go,” was all he said.
Annie nodded in agreement, but didn’t move. “It’s just that—“
The double doors behind her exploded open. Running toward them in a surge of violent lust were fifty Variants. Behind the Variants, hanging in the night sky, was a freshly painted yellow moon. Night had come and so had the Variants.
Martin grabbed Annie’s wrist and yanked her in the other direction. They rounded a corner in time to see a second herd of Variants running toward them. They were cornered. The Variants had executed their plan marvelously. Clever devils.
“Go back!” Martin veered her to the left and they crashed through a set of double doors into the gymnasium. Annie lost her balance and she slid to the floor. Her head snapped around and she saw him throw his shoulder into doors, slamming them shut. Before it latched, she saw a Variant’s arm thrust through the narrow opening, just above the lock; its wild fingers straining to grab any piece of Martin. He threw his weight against the door and the arm snapped, producing the most horrendous sound of crunching bone and twisting cartilage. The Variant screamed and hissed as its arm bent in a horrid direction. The veins turned a pale blue, pounding and pulsating. The Variant managed to pull the arm from the opening and Martin latched the door. The Variants pounded the other side of the door. The hinges squeaked ominously.
Annie got to her feet. “What do we do?”
“I don’t know.”
“How are we going to—?”
“I don’t know!”
There was an exit on the other side of the gym, but that only led back out to the street, where they would surely become sniper bait. They could wait and try their hands at the Variants, but there would be too many of them.
The noise outside intensified as the number of Variants grew. Martin and Annie were trapped, and the door would not hold for long.
* * *
On the south end of the school, Lara was making her way toward the exit, Enrique’s arm slung over her neck. Apart from a stifled groan or two, Enrique was mercifully silent.
They had not heard Annie’s tantrum near the display case. They had not heard the Variants inside the school. For all they knew, everything was going according to plan. Oh, how terribly wrong they were.
Lara kicked open the exit and they were met by a ripple of crisp, night air. Propped against the night sky Lara saw Captain Blake leaning against the side of the bus, his pipe lit, smoke pouring from his nose. “Taking a break?” she asked, her question coming out in little heaves as she steadied her weight against Enrique’s.
Captain Blake smiled and a cloud of smoke escaped out his nostrils. He bit down on the end of the pipe, sauntered over, and helped Lara carry Enrique onto the bus.
Captain Blake checked his watch. “It’s been seven minutes.”
“He’ll be here.”
“Doc told us to leave.”
“I don’t care what he said; we’re staying.”
They waited another agonizing minute, but still no Martin or Annie. Lara pulled away from Captain Blake and headed for the entrance. He grabbed hold of her wrist. “Sweetheart, if something’s wrong—like some Variants clawed their way in—the last thing I reckon we do is go traipsing back in there like a couple’a wanderin’ cattle.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?”
“If the Doc and his lil’ girlfriend won’t come to us, then we’ll go to him in style.” He took a long drag and tapped the side of his pipe against the rusty, yellow school bus.
ISSUE #21
The United Center
Chicago, IL
Four months after The Rise
The gymnasium was disproportionately large for a junior high school. There were banners on the walls proclaiming things like “Colts Are #1!” and “William H. Brown High Rules!” Martin supposed the gym had been rented out for some high school games. There were sets of pompoms on the floor and empty paper Coke cups scattered forlornly amongst the open bleacher seats. It was as if a mass exodus had happened in the middle of a game.
The Variants continued to urge their weight through the door and, a few times, Martin thought it would give. It didn’t, though he knew the inevitable was waiting around the corner.
“We need to take our chances with that,” Annie said, pointing to the Emergency Exit behind them.
“We won’t be more than three steps outside the door before our brains are on the pavement.”
“If we stay here we’re dead anyway. At least if we go outside we have a chance. No matter how small…”
She was right. Martin knew that much. He took Annie’s hand and they crossed to the Emergency Exit.
“If we don’t make it through this, I’m sorry I wandered off,” she said. He smiled, grabbed the door’s broad, metal handle, and pushed down. “Wait!” Annie said suddenly.
“What?”
“Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“Listen.”
They pushed their ears against the cool metal. On the other side of the door they heard the undeniable sound of a bus blaring its horn.
“Captain Blake, you gorgeous, gorgeous man,” said Martin.
The doors on the other side of the gym burst open. The latch exploded off the frame and bounced across the glossy, waxed floor. Variants surged into the gym like a cloud of angry bees.
The horn outside grew louder. The bus was nearing.
Martin threw open the Emergency Exit and saw the bus hurtling toward them. It swerved slightly to the right before Captain Blake regained control. They broke for the bus.
Pfft! A sniper shot whizzed past Martin’s ear.
Captain Blake spun the wheel and the tail of the bus skidded sideways. Rubber shredded and melted, and the thick smell sprang into the night air. The bus turned ninety degrees to the left and came to a screeching halt.
Another sniper shot ripped through one of the bus windows just as Martin and Annie took cover behind the its back wheel.
“Uh oh,” Captain Blake said.
“What is it?” said Lara.
Captain Blake pointed at the Variants spilling through the gymnasium’s Emergency Exit and into the street. He stuck his head out the driver’s side window, “You guys mind hurrying yer little keesters up!”
Martin and Annie made a break for the bus’ back exit. Lara threw up the emergency latch and kicked open the door, cracking the base of glass with her foot.
A Variant rounded the bus just as Martin was helping Annie in. It grabbed Martin’s arm and he felt his elbow hyperextend. An extreme jolt of pain ran up to his arm and he cried out in pain. The Variant twisted again and just when he thought his elbow would pop from his joint, a sniper bullet tore through the Variants skull. It convulsed, then toppled over. Suddenly the sniper bullets shifted and were raining down on the Variants. Lara held out her hand and pulled Martin inside.
“Go!” she yelled.
“Aye Aye,” Captain Blake called back in a mock salute. He threw the bus in reverse and gunned the engine. The vehicle rattled up and down as it crushed a handful of Variants. Other Variants clanked against the yellow siding like massive chunks of hail. He shifted gears and let loose on the accelerator. The tires spun and the muffler choked up a plume of smoke. They rocked briefly as the bus fishtailed to one side and then hopped a curb. Enrique cried out in a fit pain.
Out the back window they could see a hundred Variants, maybe more, all tearing after the bus. They all replicated the same unwavering look, their incensed expressions perfect copies of one another.
The bus crashed through the chain link fence surrounding the United Center parking lot and slammed into the side of a Chicago police cruiser. The car spun to one side before coming to rest in a crumpled heap.
Captain Blake let out a little roar of delight.
“You want to focus?” Martin yelled to him.
“Doc, this is the most focused I’ve been in weeks!” He upshifted and they all jolted back in their seats. “Hold on!”
Martin had just enough time to peer through the windshield, see the north entrance of United Center growing before them, and dive on top of Annie.
The bus crashed through the doors in a masterpiece of destruction. They were surrounded by a violent sonata of shattered glass, screeching tires, and crippled metal. Some of the bus windows exploded in, shards raining down on them. The thick frames of the United Center doors grabbed hold of the bus and held it hostage in its entryway. The back half of the bus was protruding outside the United Center while the front half was lodged inside.
The Variants descended on the bus’ back exit.
Captain Blake yanked the accordion-style door open and a cloud of concrete dust floated down from the ceiling. Chunks of the United Center rattled against the hubcaps and layers of insulation blanketed the bus’ hood. There were still Chicago Bulls jerseys stacked clumsily on wire racks in front of the bus. Now, they were covered in a thin layer of debris that made them look tired and old.
“Last stop!” Captain Blake shouted.
Annie and Martin pulled Enrique from the back seat and dragged him toward the front of the bus. Lara and Captain Blake were already off by the time they were out.
The Variants rocked the massive vehicle back and forth, the wheels squeaking violently on its axis.
“Watch this,” Captain Blake said to Lara. The corners of his mouth curled up like a deranged Cheshire cat. He reached into his backpack and removed his four remaining grenades. He pulled their pins and tossed them toward the back of the bus. “We should probably take cover.”
They did, alarmingly fast.
When the bombs went off nearly 100 Variants had surrounded the bus. They pounded on its yellow sides as if hoping the unwanted obstruction would magically disappear. It was a haunting moment (as to be expected) when their screams suddenly vanished, cut off by a deafening blast. Most of the explosion ripped through the sides and rear of the bus. Concrete crumbled from the ceiling, landing on the bus and clogging up the United Center’s entryway. The moonlight on the survivors’ faces suddenly evaporated and they were cloaked in an abrupt world of darkness.
For a while, the only sound was Annie Walker coughing against the freshly fallen asbestos.
“Everyone all right?” Martin finally asked.
“Fresh as knickers.” Captain Blake shook a mess of dust from his silver hair.
“Well…we…made…it…” Enrique croaked.
They all turned to look at him. He was on his feet, leaning heavily on Lara’s body. His skin was so pale it seemed as if they no longer needed the moon for light.
Enrique was up. He was struggling, yes, and it looked as though he aged thirty years over the course of that parking lot. But he was up. They had hope again. The Variants were blocked from the entrance and they had shelter. Nightfall had come, sure, but it hardly mattered, they could move on in the morning.
“We’re all right now,” Martin said.
“Goddamn, Doc, I swear we jus’ keep cuttin’ things closer and closer.”
“Don’t you fuckin’ move!” a booming, authoritative voice came from the darkness.
“And…of course,” muttered Captain Blake.
It was either the voice or the cocking of a gun that came first. Later, everyone would have different accounts.
ISSUE #22
The United Center
Chicago, IL
Four months after The Rise
Martin turned to look for the source of that alarming, booming voice, but stiffened when he heard, “Don’t you dare turn around or I’ll clip that head of yers clean off!”
“All right,” he said. “It’s all right. We’re just here to—“
“Shut the fuck up, pretty boy!” the voice interrupted.
Martin raised his hands above his head (the voice didn’t need to ask). Everyone else followed suit, except Enrique who looked as if he was ready to puke.
“You in a world a shit now, sunshine” the voice said. “Turn around so I can see ya’s faces.”
“Great,” said Lara. “We survive an all out Variant attack only to be murdered by some unhinged Chicago Bulls fan.”
“I told you to shut ya mouth,” the voice hissed. They heard the crack of knuckles as he tightened his grip around the gun. “Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re doing here?”
“That’s a very long and very complicated story,” Martin said. “I’m going to turn around now.” He waited for the voice to respond, but when it didn’t, he said, “If that’s all right.” Still, the voice said nothing. Slowly, Martin turned toward it, half-expecting a gunshot to ring out and to fall dead in a pile of Scottie Pippin paraphernalia. But when he got fully turned he was startled to find the owner of that voice was closer than he initially thought. Standing before him was a tall and broad African American man. His shoulders would rival a Volkswagon and his features were sharp and jarring. He held the gun (which looked cartoonishly small against his massive shoulder) close to his eye, Martin’s forehead pinned in his sights.
“Long story?” he questioned. “Something tells me we all got time.” The man lowered the gun to his side. “I take it you ain’t Variants then.”
“No shit, Sherlock!” Lara spouted.
“Thank fucking God for that,” said the black man, ignoring her.
“You the one firing at us from the rooftop?” she demanded.
“No…” he said softly. “No, I wasn’t.”
“Musta known who it was, though,” Captain Blake said gruffly. “You clipped our boy here!”
The black man’s eyes came to rest on Enrique. He was still propped up on Lara’s shoulder, his shirt a blurry mess of clotted blood.
“I see,” the black man said steadily. “Let’s get him upstairs.”
“What’s upstairs?” Lara asked.
“This man’s last chance for hope.”
“We’re not going anywhere with you!”
“Lara, calm down,” Martin told her.
“I didn’t shoot yer friend. You can believe that. Now, if you want to save his life, I suggest you follow me.”
The black man turned around and Captain Blake noticed the pale green Air Force fatigues he was wearing. Though, they were not American military. They were rumpled and filthy, and ripped in several places, but they were fatigues nonetheless.
“What’s yer name, solider?” Captain Blake asked.
The black man stopped and peered up at Captain Blake. His eyes were dark and alarming. He stood there with his back arched and attention ready. “Lieutenant Hughes,” he answered. “Lieutenant Russell Hughes, Canadian Royal Air Force.”
“Goddamn pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant,” Captain Blake said holding out his hand. “I’m Captain Richard Blake, United States Army. Retired, of course.”
“‘Course.” Russell took Captain Blake’s hand in his. “Now let’s get him upstairs. I’d hate for him to die on my watch.” He paused, surveying his audience. “Or by our hands.”
“Are there others upstairs?” Annie asked.
“Yeh,” he grunted. “Four more. C’mon, I think we all got a lot to talk about.” Russell waved his massive hand and led them to the elevators.
By the time the elevators started moving, Enrique had passed out. Lara had managed to slow the bleeding, but life continued to pour out of him at a snail’s pace. The purple bags under his eyes made his sockets seem hollow and old.
When the elevators opened on the second floor, Russell led them to one of the luxury suites overlooking the basketball court. Inside the suite were three exam tables, a cabinet full of antibiotics, syringes, bandages, and antiseptics. On the far wall were half a dozen microscopes, hundreds of slides and petri dishes, and a computerized display chart for testing. Everything inside had the blue and white CDC sticker plastered to its side.
“Help me get him on the table,” Martin said. He and Captain Blake propped Enrique up and tilted him back.
“Can you help him?” Lara asked.
“I don’t know,” Martin said. “Lieutenant Hughes—“
“Russell,” he interrupted.
“Russell, I need you to bring me any bandages you have, any gauze, peroxides, antiseptics, things like that.”
Russell nodded and, while Martin was cutting off Enrique’s shirt, he went about the room retrieving anything he could find.
“What the fuck is this, Russell?” a woman’s voice came from behind them.
Lara spun around, her .357s cocked and readied. Across the barrel of the guns was a striking young woman, twenty-one or twenty-two. Her blonde hair was recently shampooed and brushed, and her skin possessed no traces of dirt or grime. The clothes on her body were freshly washed and pressed. And from where Lara was standing, she could faintly smell the woman’s anti-perspirant. Slung over the woman’s shoulder was a Barrett M82 sniper rifle.
Behind the young woman was a young man, seemingly the same age as her. They had similar features and their hair was nearly identical in color. He had broad shoulders and a thin, goose-like neck. His blue eyes fell to the floor and he stood behind the young woman the way a child does when their parents introduce them to an adult for the first time.
“You’re the one who shot Enrique,” Lara said.
The young man stepped in front of the young woman and removed his sidearm with the quickest of draws. Lara barely had a chance to blink by the time his gun was pinned on her.
“This your muscle?”
“He’s my brother,” the woman said, noticing Enrique on the exam table.
“Harry, put that away!” Russell yelled, handing Martin a first-aid kit. “And Hannah, how many times do I gotta tell ya to shut the fuck up?”
Hannah’s eyes widened in humiliation. Harry looked to his sister who nodded at him with her eyes, and he holstered his sidearm.
“I thought you were Variants,” Hannah said.
“Well, we’re not, you twat!” Lara snapped.
“I saved your lives!”
“We wouldn’t have needed savin’ if your dumb ass hadn’t sent a hollow point through my friend here!”
“Lara, please! I need to focus!” Martin snapped.
Lara looked over and saw Martin start to work on Enrique. His wound bubbled as he poured fresh peroxide on it. The white foam mounded up like stiff peaks of meringue then transformed into a mountain of pink bubbles.
“Why don’t we go next door?” Russell suggested. “We’ll grab a drink. You all right in here, Doc?”
Martin nodded, but never looked up. Russell headed out of the suite. Hannah and Harry followed after him.
“I don’t like this, Martin,” said Lara.
“Just go hear what they have to say,” he instructed.
“I don’t trust them!”
“I said, ‘go!’”
Nobody wanted to be the first to move. But, eventually, Annie stepped around Captain Blake and left the room. He and Lara followed silently, casting one final glance back at their fallen compatriot.
The survivors’ world was changing. They were in the hands of the others now.
END OF BOOK ONE
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