alive with the sound of hungry howls.
This time the engine turned over and she peeled out towards the main road, laughing hysterically as the van lurched over a speed bump, onto the interstate.
Despite the wreckage and abandoned cars littering the roadway, Amy found her foot getting heavier and heavier on the accelerator. Adrenaline rushed through her exhausted body as she swerved this way and that, dodging obstacles. She felt free, as if she were losing her mind, and it was okay. It would have been so easy to just keep going faster and faster until her reflexes couldn’t keep up and she died in a fiery crash. It would be a better death than being ripped apart like Katherine.
Amy reached to click on the radio, knowing she would only find static across the dial, but something flickered in the rearview mirror and caught her eye. The van almost collided with what was left of an overturned eighteen wheeler as she jerked upright in her seat.
Slowing down, Amy studied the police car that had come up an exit ramp behind her to give chase.
“What the hell?” She knew it wasn’t possible. Everyone in the world was either crazy from the effects of the wave, dead, or on the run like she was. Yet seeing the car’s flashing lights brought back feelings of hope. Maybe her flight was over and the officers would look out for her and take her somewhere safe. Maybe somehow in this city people had survived and organized.
She brought the van to a stop as the police car pulled up beside her. Amy was in the process of rolling down her window as she glanced into the car. A man in a tattered uniform with yellow-tinted eyes stuck a .38 out his window and aimed for her head.
“Oh God!” Amy snapped around to the steering wheel and rammed the gas pedal to the floor. The officer’s shot slammed into the van’s side just behind her door.
“Oh God, oh God, they’re not supposed to be able to drive!”
In the rearview, she saw the thing’s partner trying to lean out the passenger-side window to shoot at her.
Making sure her seatbelt was fastened, she hit the brakes. Tires squealed as the van came to a halt—and the police car smashed into its rear.
Despite her seatbelt, Amy was thrown forward. Her forehead struck the steering wheel and her world faded to black.
She came to with a start. Something wet trickled down her face. Amy wiped at it and her hand came away covered in a warm, wet red. Her head was pounding, but otherwise she seemed okay. She reached over and dug a .45 from the glove box and unsnapped her seatbelt. When she opened the door, she sprawled out onto the road, unable to keep her balance.
The police car was still there, a mass of broken metal wedged into the van’s rear. The driver was clearly dead; pieces of windshield glass jutted from his face, and his head dangled at an unnatural angle.
Amy pulled herself to her feet and stumbled closer, holding the pistol ready. When she got close enough to see inside the car, she noticed the other officer’s bottom half resting in the blood-soaked passenger seat. The top half of his body was nowhere to be seen.
She slumped to the ground beside the car. It was only a matter of time until more of the creatures came out of the night around her, but both the van and the car were totaled. She needed a plan. She couldn’t just sit there and wait to die, regardless of how much she hurt or how tired she was. Her eyes were heavy with sleep and it fought to wrap her in its embrace. She shook herself awake, and her head throbbed from a fresh burst of pain. Her only chance was to find a working car with the keys still inside.
She got to her feet once more and walked down the interstate to start her search.
11
Geoff lay back against the tree trunk, perched high above the ground on a narrow branch, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. He massaged the corners of his tired eyes with his finger, then blinked several times to clear his vision.
Below him, a kid moved slowly up the mountain trail. Normally Geoff would have radioed the base to let them know and to get orders on what to do. Fuck that:
He hoisted his rifle to his shoulder and peered through its scope. The kid was in his later twenties and was dressed like a punk in ratty jeans and a T-shirt of some stupid rock band. Geoff could have dropped him right then and there, problem solved, but something kept his finger away from the trigger.
The last few days hadn’t been a cakewalk, even for him. He wondered how the punk had managed to survive, much less come so close to finding the base. Maybe Geoff had seen enough death over the last few days, or maybe he was just getting old; either way, the kid got to keep breathing.
He carefully took the cigarette from his lips and slipped it back inside the pack, then stuffed the whole thing into his jacket pocket. “Ah… shit,” he whispered to himself and started down the tree.
The birds were singing in the forest and the sky above was a bright blue filled with sunlight. The world went on as normal, oblivious to the hell mankind was going through. Geoff found that funny.
He reached the bottom of the tree and vanished into the woods without a trace.
Jeremy paused on his way up the trail. He shrugged off his backpack and opened it, hunting for the map he’d picked up from the remains of a local tourist trap. He knew the base wouldn’t be on the map, even if it did exist, but he wanted to check the other landmarks to make sure he was still headed in what he believed to be the right direction.
He didn’t hear his stalker step onto the path behind him until an arm snaked about his neck.
Jeremy choked and fought against his attacker’s grip until he heard the gun cock beside his ear.
“Stop it, kid, if you want to live to see the sun set.”
Jeremy stopped squirming. “Look, mister—”
“Shut up, kid.” The man released his hold and shoved him forward. Jeremy whirled around and almost broke into a smile when he saw the man’s green camouflage uniform.
“I’d tell you to go home,” the man continued, “but I guess none of us really have one anymore…”
The man, Geoff, was in his later fifties, and gray hair covered his head. His eyes were bloodshot and it looked as if he hadn’t shaved in days.
With cat-like grace, he scooped up Jeremy’s backpack and slipped it onto his own shoulder. Muscles rippled and bulged beneath his uniform. “So I suppose I’ll have to take you back with me.”
“To the base?”
“To what’s left of it, kid.”
As they made their way together through the woods, Geoff told Jeremy what he knew about the wave and about what had happened at the base, which he referred to as Def-Con IV.
Apparently, the energy had been some kind of shockwave from somewhere far beyond the space known to mankind, perhaps from some interstellar war, or from an alien species’ failed experiments with dark matter. It didn’t really matter where it came from.
The light was merely a side effect of the energy reacting with Earth’s atmosphere. A portion of the wave’s main body had been trapped in greenhouse gasses, and like a super and perpetual EMP on a global scale, the wave and its lingering remnants caused technological failures throughout the world, dampened or disrupted to the point of uselessness. Only basic things worked now; things like electricity and nuclear energy were out of the question until the field dispersed, which it was continuing to do a bit more every day.
The alien energy field also produced a type of ambient radiation, which scientists believed would still be there in a thousand years unless they found a way to deal with it. This radiation was what caused the rampant
