parents were not the only ones that had fought, and they were not the only parents that had killed one or the other of themselves.
Her parents had always been good about keeping bad things away from Kayla, but occasional news updates or accident scenes or those pro-life billboards slipped past the defensive duo now lying dead in her bedroom. However, to see it everywhere at once, at just about every house, all the blood… Kayla’s fear swamped out her sorrow and urgency to help her father.
Kayla made the shale stone pillars marking the entrance to the exclusive community in which she lived and turned down the wood-lined street towards her school. She could hear things moving in the trees, but the lack of streetlights made it impossible to see what they were. Even without the sight of them, Kayla knew they were cruel and evil things and she had to get away.
She pumped her legs hard, her breath coming in short gusts, her thighs burning painfully beneath her. Soon, she would have to stop, rest a bit. With all of this running, school was still far away. More things moved in the trees, seemingly towards her as she ran past, and she refused to stop until they were gone.
Light glimmered over the trees to her right. Kayla immediately knew that it was the sterile neon lights of the Sir Speedy Convenience drug store. It was near the middle of town, but also at the base of the hill. If she could cut through the trees, she could be there in just a few minutes, and there was a doctor guy behind the counter—maybe he could help her.
Disregarding the things hiding in the trees, Kayla made a sharp right-handed turn and spilled down the slope. It was hazardous and noisy going, but she could not let those tree things grab her, whatever they were, and so she continued at break-neck speed.
When she made the parking lot, she sprinted to the building and around the side towards the front. There she found Mr. Roy, still in his white lab coat, up on a ladder, nailing a person’s head upside down above the automatic doors. There were four others there as well, pinned unevenly to the stucco above the doors. Mr. Roy’s lab coat was red with blood, and he seemed to be humming softly to himself, as though what he was doing was normal. Kayla felt her mouth fill with wet and she backed around the side of the building before he saw her.
She let herself slide down to the cement sidewalk and vomited between her knees. A shot rang out, one much bigger than her daddy’s, and she raced to look around the corner again. Some woman was there in a torn flannel shirt and no pants, a shotgun trailing smoke as she walked toward the pharmacy. There, Mr. Roy lay torn almost completely in half and still squirming from his wounds.
The woman leaned over him a bit and fired again, this time into Mr. Roy’s chest. The shot sent blood, bone, and sidewalk in every direction. The woman then calmly knelt down and removed Mr. Roy’s scalp with a large knife. She lifted her shirt, under which she wore nothing but a thick leather belt and a number of other bloody scalps tucked underneath it like some horrible fur skirt.
Kayla had become so scared now she could not think straight. She ran to the back of the store, looking for a place to hide. The first thing she found was a large green dumpster with a cartoon rendering of a frog. She climbed in quickly and hid herself beneath rancid, sweating garbage and wept until she slept, slept until the sky began to lighten into a gloomy gray day.
Chapter 21
Stan had always been a loner. He had a deep seeded hatred of people in general. They were always out for themselves, never interested in each other’s problems. Every day, on the news, he could see the proof of this, the evil of man, and wanted no part of it. He worked his job down at the post office, sorting mail for the some thirteen hundred citizens of the town of Black Water, and then spent his time alone, at home, preparing for the end of humanity, something he knew was coming, forced on those like him by the endlessly greedy masses. Now it was actually happening.
His house, offset from the small town and some distance into the woods, was fortified in many ways. The walls had been reinforced with a surrounding of boles and the floor lowered somewhat to give him ducking space when the bullets started flying. Below the house was a rather complex network of tunnels, doors, and rooms. He had stocked them full of food and water, and even a small well if his supplies began to run low. This network he reinforced with metal plating and pillars capable of withstanding the house’s collapse if it ever came to that—at least he hoped.
It was coming on nine o’clock when he realized the faint popping sounds he heard were actually gunshots. Someone down in the town had begun shooting, and this seemed to set off a chain reaction. By then, it sounded like a war zone filled with rifle and small arms fire from just about every corner. Even with all of his preparations, it still surprised him when it happened, and it took him a moment to remember what it was he was suppose to do.
Now he sat behind his barricade, the front door opened to the world gone mad, waiting for people to fill the mantrap he had configured. Normally, he would have just locked himself in the shelter, but he had to know what was going on. The TV still worked, and some channels were on the air, but the only local news channel was unmanned. He had watched this for near an hour, the empty anchor’s desk, the complete lack of movement or sound before giving up. Even the radio stations were silent, save one. It droned on some best-of talk show rehashing quirky little jibes to callers’ beliefs in government or politics, all some weeks old.
It did not really matter to Stan now; the end had come. The shooting continued below, and occasional explosions or some such thing punctuated the gunfire. The town was tearing itself apart, and everyone seemed to have forgotten good ole Stan-the-man Clark, the gun crazed nut in his cabin in the woods. From the Meade telescope he had fixed to his roof, he could see on the monitor that a number of fires were burning, not exactly out of control, but unchallenged by the stark red flashing lights of the missing volunteer fire trucks.
Occasionally, in the soft glow of his laptop computer, the telescope revealed people in the streets, running this way and that, policed by no one. There were bodies, too, scattered about: some smashed by cars or beaten almost flat with cudgels, others burning or dismembered with hatchet or knife. Disgust rose in Stan’s throat as bile, and to his surprise, he found it mildly difficult to fight an urge to go and help, to try to bring the tattered remains of those still sane together and muster some form of defense or response. Still, all of them had made their fun of him and his hermit lifestyle. He decided they could all just rot in Hell.
He turned to his portable shortwave radio and began tuning through different frequencies. He hit on a number of different conversations and paused at each. The happenings here in Black Water appeared to be only happening in Black Water. None of the ham radio operators talked about it and the topics they did discuss where mundane and nerdy at best. This had to be a localized situation, but Stan reasoned that Black Water could be ground zero for a global event. It would be best if he just holed up here, protected himself, and waited it out. The shooting down there had to stop at some point.
The police and fire scanner had gone quiet some time ago. The last thing he heard was dispatch screaming to a patrol officer about Bill going crazy or something. It did not surprise Stan. Everyone knew Billy was a bit off kilter; not quit right in the head. It was bound to happen. Stan was surprised they even let him drive the big snowplow; the guy was so utterly stupid. However, in this crazy world, everyone seemed to have a place, even the borderline retarded. Stan was certain someone somewhere was benefiting from the dullard’s labor, probably that rotund mother of his. Someone had to feed that thing.
A sound came from the woods beyond the open door. Something large had entered the forest or come down from the mountain. It was most likely a white tailed buck looking for love, or even a bear seeking out the happenings below. Stan gripped the mounted AK-47 and trained it towards the mantrap. If it, whatever it was, happened in, it would not get far. As he readied himself, his scanner began to crackle softly, distantly, as if his squelch was set wrong and the volume was much too low.
The scanner eventually gave up on the signal and moved forward through the channels again. It paused for a second on dead air, and Stan picked it up to read the dial. It was the police band. Someone had opened their microphone and was saying nothing. Stan began to feel a dread pour over him, perhaps someone was playing with the radio of a dead cop, maybe a child.
“Is anyone there?” a voice whispered over the radio. It was strained and whispered but clearly masculine. Then the voice snickered lightly, “Anyone? Can anyone hear me?”
Movement sounded just near the door, and Stan put the radio down to return to his vigilance on the rifle.
