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So it is content to sit here and use the remote control to watch images on the television while Laura prepares for ‘work’. It pushes the channel-up button again and again, flipping rapidly through the full range of images, then repeating the cycle again and again. At first this seemed to annoy the larger women. The one called Kelly even demanded she stop and settle on one channel. It silenced her by reaching into her brain and destroying a small piece of it.
The images make it happy. Scenes of confused and frightened humans. They are powerless to do anything about the decay eating away at their world. The Abby-shell’s facial muscles stretch and do that strange thing called a ‘smile’. Smiling, as near as it could determine, is a uniquely human thing, something they do in moments of pleasure or happiness.
Once it looked into a mirror and made Abby-shell smile just to see what the expression looks like.
Fresh disgust roils within its soul at the memory.
It looks forward to destroying all of humanity, if only so it never again has to gaze upon something so hideous.
The Abby-shell’s smile nonetheless grows broader.
For the time is nearly at hand.
Its pets are coming soon to do its bidding…
* * *
Nashville, TN
6:45 a.m.
Jeff Wheeler poured a cup of coffee from a dispenser in the break room. He dropped a couple of sugar cubes into the swirling black liquid, watched them fizz a moment, then added a dollop of cream. He tasted the concoction, shuddered at the sharp sizzle of hot liquid, and snatched up his clipboard from the counter.
He left the break room, walked through a hallway and out to the Ford dealership’s service area. He approached the nearest service desk and nodded at the man across the counter. “Hey, Dave.”
Dave Lucas gave a tired nod in response. He had a bristly, clean-cut appearance, with sandy blond hair cut down to a length of less than a quarter. But the hair stood straight-up. Why a man who cut his hair that short would use any kind of gel was a mystery to Jeff. Dave’s hair looked like something you could scour a dish with—an insight he chose not to share.
Jeff took another sip of his coffee. “What have you got for me this morning, Dave?”
Dave sighed and rubbed bloodshot eyes. He drank a little too much sometimes, and so often showed up for work with eyes that looked like pink gumballs. He chuckled. “A weird one, Jeff. Old dude out there wants you to look at his Taurus.”
Jeff frowned. “What’s weird about him?”
Now it was Dave’s turn to frown. “I don’t know. He’s just…weird.” He chuckled again and shook his head. “Well, you’ll see. He’s waiting for you now.”
Jeff shrugged. “A buck’s a buck.”
Another tired chuckle from Dave. “I heard that.”
Jeff turned away from the service desk and walked outside to greet the weirdo. It was still semi-dark out here as the sun continued its lazy ascent. There was only one other person in the lot at this early hour and Jeff at first assumed he was some strange homeless person who’d wandered off the street. The dealership was in the very heart of the city, so it happened sometimes.
But the guy was leaning against the only Taurus parked in the row of spaces reserved for service department visitors. Then it came to him. This was the weirdo Dave was talking about. Jeff regarded the man with a growing degree of apprehension. Something about the man made him unaccountably nervous. Jeff felt a sudden desire to retreat back into the service department. To maybe even go hide somewhere deeper within the dealership.
Instead, he gave himself a mental slap. The man might be an oddball, but he was also a paying customer. A buck’s a buck, he reminded himself. So what if the dude was carrying a big wooden staff and wore flowing robes that made him look like some biblical figure out of an old Cecil B. DeMille epic. The bizarre choice of attire didn’t necessarily mean there was anything wrong with him. Maybe he was just dressed for a costume party. The excuse struck him as lame even as he thought of it—who the hell went to a costume party at seven in the morning?—but he decided it likely made as much sense as whatever the truth actually was.
He cleared his throat, pasted a big false smile across his face, and approached his customer. “Howdy there, friend. I’m—”
The man at last turned to face him. The grim expression he leveled at Jeff made him forget whatever else he’d been about to say. Then he spoke in a quiet but somehow stentorian voice, “You are Captain Flash Wheeler. You are the One True God.”
Jeff blinked rapidly. “Uh…”
“Shut up and listen.” The man’s voice crackled with a strange energy. Jeff felt helpless to do anything but obey his every word. Inside, he was panicking, his guts shriveling, his brain turning to mush…
“Calm yourself, Wheeler.”
Jeff relaxed immediately. His gut unclenched and his senses sharpened. He peered at the old man intently, suddenly hanging on his every word.
The old man nodded. “Good. Now listen to me. You are the savior of the new age. You have only been waiting for this moment to arrive.” A disgusted expression momentarily flickered across the man’s face. “My God, I sound like motherfucking Bono. But nevermind. Soon awareness will dawn within you. Until then you must keep yourself safe during the coming storm. I will return to guide you later. Until then, you will internalize what I’ve told you on an unconscious level.”
Jeff nodded numbly. “On an unconscious level. Sure. Got it.”
The old man almost smiled. “Yes. That you do, Captain Wheeler.”
Jeff’s brow creased slightly, a lazy, semi-conscious frown. “I’m a captain.”
“You are now.” The old man smirked. “Don’t worry, it’ll make sense later. Of a sort. And now I’m going to perform a cheap parlor trick. I’m going to snap my fingers and the conscious level of your mind will forget this encounter. For now.”
The man snapped his fingers.
Jeff blinked and stared at empty air. He grunted. “Huh. Weird, man. What am I even doing out here?”
He shook his head and told himself he needed to start getting to bed at an earlier hour on work nights. He sighed and walked back into the service department.
* * *
The governments of the world held their collective breath for more than two days after the American president’s televised demise. During that time, they kept a nervous eye on the vast black patch of nothing formerly occupied by the nation of Pakistan. A number of radical plans of action were discussed, including a massive use of nuclear weapons. The reasoning put forth by the advocates of this option was based on the assumption that the black space was an opening into another plane of existence. Therefore, any warheads detonated in that other world would have no deleterious effect on earth.
Maybe it even would have worked.
But the governments, led of course by Russia and the U.S., both of whom still possessed the largest nuclear arsenals in the world, waited too long to pull the trigger. And so early in the morning on that day of terrible reckoning, the world was left virtually defenseless when wave upon wave of winged, screeching nightmares came gushing out of all that blackness. Hundreds of thousands of them. Millions, perhaps.
And they were just the advance guard.
* * *
Other creatures emerged individually, and by twos and threes, from smaller rents in the fabric of reality. These smaller waves of attackers seemed to emerge everywhere at once, as if coming forth on some hidden signal.
* * *
It’s early morning somewhere in the heart of America. A group of schoolchildren stand at a rural street corner, awaiting a bus that will take them off to another dreary day of school. One kid, a towheaded blond boy, grows weary of the heavy bookbag strapped to his back. He unslings his burden and lets it fall to the ground.
He frowns. Why was there no thump of the overstuffed bag hitting the sidewalk?
That’s when he glances down and sees the dark hole next to his feet, a ragged patch of bl
ackness where there should be a white concrete slab. He immediately thinks of all the scary things he’s been seeing on television lately and so isn’t terribly surprised when the monster’s head leaps through the hole. The other kids are screaming and running away. He wishes he could go with them, but the monster has taken one of his legs in its mouth and all of a sudden it feels like a thousand gazillion hypodermic needles have been stabbed into him by some crazy, sadistic doctor.
His suffering in these next moments is more than I need to tell you about. Millions of children just like this little boy will soon experience the same pain.
* * *
In Atlanta, Georgia, in the Venture News studio, a creature emerged from a black slash in the air and bit off the head of anchorwoman Maria Delgado. The camera angle shifted as the thing turned its conical head and gave millions of viewers a close-up view of something most of them would be encountering in the flesh very soon. I’m sure some people dropped dead just at the sight of it.
They were the lucky ones.
* * *
The American government scrambled every piece of fighter aircraft at its disposal, sending thousands of pilots on suicide missions. The skies above America and much of Europe and the middle east resounded with the sounds of bone-rattling explosions. Tons of shrapnel rained down, killing many of those watching the show on the ground.
The fighter planes actually managed to wipe out scores of the swooping creatures. But they were vastly outnumbered. The creatures themselves varied wildly in size. Some were the size of birds. Others were twice as large as the planes attempting to destroy them. Often the larger ones would swat the planes out of the sky, as if they were no more threat than a buzzing gnat.
By the time the acting American president finally decided to launch nuclear warheads, it was too late. The military was in a state of disarray. However, a number of missile silos actually did send their nuclear payloads into the air. Inevitably, some of these went off target and missed the space formerly occupied by Pakistan altogether. Many thousands of human beings died in an instant with each errant detonation.
* * *
Throughout the early part of that day, there was still sporadic television news coverage of the rapidly unfolding worldwide disaster.
First came word that the missing nation of Pakistan was no longer the lone great, gaping hole in the world’s topography. Similarly massive patches of blackness swallowed Brazil, Hong Kong, Paris, the Ukraine, and a big chunk of the northwestern portion of the United States. There were more. Many likely went unreported by the news agencies, most of which ceased to function after a few hours. Fresh waves of winged attackers swarmed out of each new rip in our reality’s decaying fabric.
In Rome, a patch of blue sky above the Vatican turned black, as if someone had punched a hole through a painting. More screeching creatures came zooming out of that blackness and soon the streets around that holy center ran red with the blood of thousands of tourists and religious pilgrims.
In Times Square in Manhattan, one of the winged things emerged from an opening in one of the massive television screens ringing the square—which itself had been displaying images of the carnage from other parts of the world—and impaled a young couple with one of its enormous talons. Then it lifted them into the air—with their limbs still twitching—and devoured them like a restaurant patron gnawing food straight off a skewer.
A missile launched from North Korea exploded in the air above Los Angeles. The atomic weapon was not as powerful as the U.S. manufactured nuclear warheads, but knowing that wouldn’t have mattered to those vaporized by the blast. A big section of the city was flattened. Many more thousands of lives extinguished in the time it takes to draw a single breath. A retaliatory strike was launched from U.S. nuclear subs patrolling the waters in that part of the world. Any other time these events would have set off a third world war, but thereafter the governments of the world effectively ceased to function. There were a few more nuclear launches, but it’s believed these were either accidental or the last, defiant acts of a few mad zealots.
The cataclysmic changes in the shape of the world inevitably triggered enormous natural repercussions. Dramatic atmospheric shifts caused typhoons that wiped out several island nations and significantly reduced the above-water land mass of many others. The numerous nuclear detonations sent a vast amount of ash and debris into the air and set great, roiling black clouds adrift. A degree of nuclear winter would eventually affect much of the globe. The strangest aspect of it all was that the earth kept spinning on its axis, that it didn’t implode or go hurtling into the sun. Perhaps the hand of God Himself kept the world in place throughout these wrenching changes. But I am not a scientist. Nor am I a religious scholar. These things are beyond my ken.
Of course…these natural and man-made catastrophes would later seem as nothing compared to the effects of the creeping rot that would soon infect this Deadworld.
But we didn’t know that yet.
* * *
By about noon of that day the few still functioning television sets were picking up nothing other than sporadic EAS signals.
Then those stopped as well, displaced by a ceaseless static buzz.
* * *
When this time of hell on earth came to an end, a development occurred that seemed to indicate the worst was over. The small pockets of survivors would soon gain a degree of false confidence, which would encourage them to emerge from their various hiding places and attempt to pick up the pieces of their shattered world. I wish I could journey back in time to warn my fellow survivors, to tell them that this period of relative quiet was but a lull.
Alas, of course, I cannot.
CHAPTER FIVE
Nashville, TN
September 27
4:20 p.m.
Something heavy struck the roof of the car and rolled off, hitting the ground with a dead-weight sound. The jarring impact made Aaron Harris squeal with terror and curl into an even tighter fetal ball in the trunk of the Lexus, where he’d been hiding from the relentless onslaught of the flying demons most of the day.
He’d chosen the trunk as a hiding place out of pure necessity. He’d been examining the contents of the trunk as he stood in the gray, early morning light. In it were several lengths of rope, a box of large black garbage bags, a roll of duct tape, a hunting knife, and a nail gun, all purchased while shopping at the neighborhood hardware store the night before. And all of which he’d planned to put to good use soon after breaking into Emily Sinclair’s apartment.
Finding out where she lived hadn’t been difficult. In fact, it’d been ridiculously easy. He knew she walked to work, and he’d heard her tell more than a few people at the bar that she lived on Fairfax, which was just a few blocks west of the Villager Pub. So he’d simply walked up and down Fairfax, pretending to be just another Joe scouting the densely populated neighborhood for a new apartment. He knew he’d found the right building because she’d helpfully placed a strip of masking tape on her mailbox, upon which she’d written in ink, “E. Sinclair.”
But his plans for Emily were forgotten soon after he filled a burlap bag with his new toys. The sky above him darkened and the air filled with a high, hideous sound, a sound prehistoric beasts might have made millions of years ago. He looked up and saw a black mass of nightmare creatures. Great, winged things with glowing red eyes, thick, snake-like bodies, and talons the size of machetes. When the things dropped en masse toward the city, instinct made Aaron hop into the trunk and pull it shut.
And there he’d remained for hours, listening to the soundtrack of a seemingly endless horror film play out around him. The awful screeches grew almost unbearably loud as the creatures neared the ground. Then came the first screams of human beings caught out in the open. He heard cars crashing into each other. Then the wail of sirens. Then gunfire. But the human resistance didn’t last long. Soon the gunfire ended and all Aaron heard was more screeching and screaming.
It went on for an eternity.
/> Or so it felt closed up in that tight, dark space all those hours.
Gradually, he began to realize the screaming of humans had ended. And the screeches of the demon-things were only occasional disruptions in an otherwise oppressive silence. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stand it much longer in the trunk. As much as he loathed the idea of leaving his safe place and moving around outside, where’d he be exposed and defenseless, he knew he couldn’t remain here forever.
Still—he thought maybe he’d hold tight just a little longer.
For the first time in a good while, his thoughts turned back to Emily. He wondered where she’d been during the attack. Given the early hour, she’d probably been asleep in her bed. Would she have been safe just by staying inside? Maybe. But maybe not. He remembered the oft-replayed tape of the president’s death. Obviously, if the president was vulnerable in the Oval Office, then no one was safe anywhere.
Not even here, in the trunk of this car.
The thought triggered a new surge of claustrophobia and for a moment he reached out in the darkness, meaning to push the seat forward and climb into the back seat of the car. Then he heard another impact, something that dropped out of the air and landed with a dead thump somewhere in the street nearby. He heard a sound that was somewhere between a hiss and a wail. He knew at once it was not a human sound. But it was a sick sound. The sound of something dying.
He listened more intently and soon heard more big impacts. Some nearby, loud crashes. Still others were dim thuds in the distance. When ten minutes passed without hearing another of the impacts, he drew a deep breath and pushed the seat forward. He climbed into the car, then crawled down to the floorboard. Until he had an at least marginally better sense of things outside the enclosed environment of his car, he wanted to stay hunkered down, out of sight.