was clutching Shannon’s leg tightly as if she were about to fall from a cliff, her face twisted with fright.
“You guys can go whichever way you want; I’m going down Route 79,” Stan scolded as he withdrew his arm and began tearing the foggy flesh open with his hands. The internal roiling smog began to seep from the wound and spill across the ground in a semblance of fluid.
“But you can’t even see in that!” Shannon spit at him. “We should stay together!” she pleaded.
“Hey, I don’t know any of you people, the world’s gone fucking insane, and Stan is out for Stan, got me? Now you people can tag along if you like, but I am going this way.” With that, Stan stepped through the tear and into the undulating, seeping fog.
“I’m not going in there, Ethan; I don’t care where he goes, but I am not going in there,” Shannon said sternly.
“Me neither!” Kayla added.
Ethan stared back into the fog for a moment, looking deep into the rolling waves of ashen gray. He could still hear the faint foot falls of Stan working his way deeper into the fog.
“Please don’t make me go in there,” Kayla sobbed.
“We won’t, sweetie; I think I’m with you on this,” Ethan said as he stroked the girl’s back. “Stan, are you alright?” Ethan shouted into the fog. He did not particularly like Stan and his out-for-himself attitude, but they were less than a mile from 79, less than a mile until they were free.
“The smog is pretty thick—smells bad, too—but I’m fine!” Stan voice wafted through the stagnant smog. “Is that you?” Stan added.
Ethan thought for a second, “No! We are still out here!”
“You didn’t just bump into me?” Stan shouted, his voice gripped by fear.
“No, Stan. Come back out here!”
“Yeah, ah, I can’t see where I am going…”
“Just follow my voice!” Ethan shouted a bit louder.
“Keep shouting! There is something in… Oh fuck!” Stan screamed and began firing.
“Stan!” Ethan shouted, his voice almost as high as Stan’s, and then began to step through the opening into the fog, his handgun leading the way.
“Ethan! No! Stay with us!” Shannon cried.
Kayla had given herself over to outright bawling.
The smog fell over Ethan’s hands and forearms like a cold ocean spray from a dead and decaying ocean. The feeling of it made him shudder. The bum began to chuckle somewhere behind him in that maniacal, high-pitched squeal, and then Stan screamed—not the frightful scream of one simply afraid, but the scream of one fearing for the sanctity of their very soul.
“Stan! Run!” Shannon screamed which pushed Kayla into a screaming fit of her own.
Something grabbed Ethan’s cuff and pulled hard, almost yanking him into the sightless swirling. Instinctively, Ethan fired into the nothing. His shirt, suddenly released, caused him to stumble backwards and out of the fog.
A train whistle of a scream came from everywhere at once. It pierced their minds, painfully jabbing inside their ears. Kayla screamed in pain, and Shannon moved her hands from her ears to Kayla.
“Stan!” Ethan yelled. His heart raged against the confines of his ribs and his stomach clenched into an icy ball. “Stan!” His voice broke through the boundaries of multiple octaves.
A thin twig of a thing shot from the tear in the membrane and landed between Ethan and the clutching girls. It looked like an impossibly long stick, still sheathed in bark, but with a claw-like hand with too many fingers. The length of the thing segmented like some insanely long insect, and it twitched spasmodically. Shannon screamed again as it landed and she jerked Kayla away as it began to drag white lines in the cement of the sidewalk.
“Stan!” Ethan screamed, backing away from the wound in the smog wall. There was no answer.
“He’s gone, Ethan. Come on!” Shannon yelled at him as she lifted the young girl into her arms and rushing back towards the drugstore.
“Stan!” Ethan screamed once more, his throat a rasping harp of fear, before catching up with Shannon. He withdrew backwards, holding the gun before him.
Kayla continued to sob as they reached the end of the block. They stopped for a moment for the girls to cry and for Ethan to bring his breathing back under his control. He looked into Shannon’s eyes. They were wild, not the wild of being frightened, but the wild of an animal whose young were threatened, who strived against overwhelming odds to survive. Ethan wondered if perhaps she was beginning to slide into that comfortable insanity he had longed for as a child.
Ethan retuned his attention to the tear Stan had made and huffed breath towards it like venom. Whatever came from that smoke, Ethan reasoned, was not human, dead or otherwise. Something else had begun to hunt in the milky gray storm and it had gotten Stan.
Something came through the hole and plopped down on the sidewalk wetly. It quivered a bit then rested lazily on the edge of the curb. “Stay here,” Ethan said softly as he headed back towards the smog-wall.
“Ethan, no!” Shannon hissed at his back, but he continued, stalking the now motionless mass. He walked a wide berth as he got closer to the glistening red thing, but no matter how close he got to it, there was simply no sense to be made of it. When he got as close as he dared, he stopped, trying desperately to make something out of the shapeless mass. It was almost like a shiny red ceramic bowl with a mostly white marble to one side, but that made no sense either.
The bum came from behind him and walked right up to the bowl thing. He hooked the tip of his toeless shoe beneath the edge and lifted it slightly, showing Ethan the entire thing. In a sinfully wicked voice, he chuckled, “When was the last time you saw the back of someone’s eye?”
Chapter 28
Ethan bit back the surge from his stomach, the sudden need to evacuate the junk food he had eaten at the drug store. He spit the excess saliva from his mouth and turned away from the bum. Shannon and Kayla were still at the end of the block watching him, clutching each other desperately. The elegant form of Shannon’s body, the parental way she held Kayla helped ease the nausea and fortify for him a reason to continue, to seek out a way to escape this living nightmare. He began walking back to them, hoping that Shannon knew how to get to the other road that would lead them out of town.
“What was it?” Shannon asked when Ethan was close enough for her not to shout.
“Nothing. We should head to the other road, see if it is clear or not.”
“It’s going to be blocked like this one,” Shannon replied hopelessly.
“We should try at least,” Ethan said. “Let’s get there and see what’s going on. It’s coming on mid-afternoon, and I don’t want to be caught here at night again, at least walking the streets, you know?”
“And Stan?” Shannon asked, already knowing the answer.
“He’s not coming with us,” Ethan replied vaguely for Kayla’s benefit and began walking back the way they had come.
Shannon watched him a moment before following him. Kayla was still thoroughly upset and clung to her like the lost child she was. It made walking difficult, so Shannon lifted the girl into her arms and carried her along with the bottle of bleach cleaner the child did not seem to want to let go.
“Do you know what time it is?” Ethan asked. “Here, I’ll carry her.”
“No, I don’t have a watch.” Shannon replied as she handed Kayla to Ethan.
The young girl took hold of Ethan around his neck and embraced him tightly. It was the first rush of pleasure he had felt in days. The tender girl in all her fear knew only to embrace and hold tightly to an adult. This pushed at the hearts of those adults, reaffirming their need to protect the child. A small side-effect to this was the adults usually fell in love with them. Ethan, even with everything that had happened in the past week, was still capable of emotional attachment, and needed only this simple invitation. He felt this love, this caring, this overwhelming need to protect the girl, and it almost manifested itself in tears.
“I got you, Kayla. Nothing bad is going to happen to you, I promise.”
Shannon smiled weakly at the pair; she too had fallen victim to this instinctual love, this parental bond, but
