Josh, for his part, explicated his personal theory, buoyed by the story of Kyra’s husband, that there existed a connection, though never disclosed in public, between the Rodent Flu pandemic and the attacks that occurred around the country, and, for all he knew, the world. He finished his tale abruptly, ending at the point where he entered his parents’ home. All inquiries into what came next were disregarded with a wave of his hand. In no way did he want to relive that moment. He didn’t think he could handle it.
He twiddled his thumbs at the silent table while his eyes gawked intently at a spot of dust on the polished tabletop. He knew Kyra was staring at him and he glanced up. Her solemn, tight-lipped expression was made all the more somber in the flickering candlelight. It looked as if she had something to say, but she kept her lips locked.
“So, what’re you kids gonna do now?” asked Frank after a short while.
Josh shrugged. “I don’t know. Stay put, I guess. I thought of heading to Vermont and setting up camp in the mountains, but there’s about forty women and kids sitting at the Stone Church, which is pretty secure and out of the way. And we also have a bit of a transportation problem.”
“How so?”
“We’ve only got one car. The militia took the rest.”
“How’s about in town? There gots to be a bunch just sitting there for the taking. You checked yet?”
“Yup. In town there’s a ton of vehicles that’re completely fucked, but that’s about it. Kye and I saw a few that looked like they were in good shape on the side of the road heading out here, but there weren’t any keys in them. Does anyone know how to hotwire a car?”
Kyra, Colin, and Frank shook their heads.
“Didn’t think so.”
After that came a return to silence. Everyone ignored the alcoholic concoctions sitting before them, except Josh. He was so thirsty. He downed his drink in a single gulp and then poured another. That one went down the hatch, as well.
Upon pouring his third drink, he happened to glance in Colin’s direction. The expression on his friend’s face scared him. He looked defeated. Josh remembered the pact the three friends, including Bobby, had made in their paranoid youth. Part of their mantra was “No one gets left behind”. He supposed this probably had something to do with how Colin now acted, and decided it would be best to get it all out in the open. Josh tipped back the glass and the third drink disappeared. He reached across the table and tugged on Colin’s shirtsleeve.
“Colin, where’s Bobby?”
“He’s dead.”
“Huh?”
“Bobby’s dead, Josh.”
“How do you know?”
Colin rolled his eyes. “Because I found him, dumbass. I showed up at his gramp’s house and waited for him. When he didn’t show, I went to the clearing and set up camp, and then headed back to the house for some food. He was in there, Josh. In the pantry. A place I hadn’t looked before.” He gulped. “His head was fucking gone, man. There was so much blood.” Tears rolled down his cheeks. His voice was hoarse and broken. “The only reason I knew it was him was because of that stupid fucking red flannel he always wore. The one with the huge rips in it.” He swallowed hard then repeated, “There was so much blood.”
Kyra leaned over and rubbed Colin’s back, glancing from him to Josh and back again like a concerned mother. Frank McKinley’s eyes dropped to the table as if he wanted no part in this discussion. Josh’s heart sank, but a newfound drive infused his mind. It was possibly a result of the liquor, but he didn’t care. All he knew was that no matter how much he’d miss Bobby, Colin was there with him now. Kyra had said that earlier, and she was right. That was what counted.
He let Colin continue without interruption while Kyra continued to rub his slender back. “I puked all over the place,” he said, “and just left him there. I didn’t even bury his body. I just ran out to the tent and curled up in a ball. Some friend I am.”
Colin wailed. Josh stood on wobbly knees, pulled his friend up by the shirt collar, and embraced him.
“I know,” said Josh, holding Colin at arm’s length. His friend had never looked so ashamed. “I’m gonna miss him, too,” he said, “Just like I miss Sophia and my mom and dad. It’s all right to cry. I know I have.”
Colin wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve. “So what happened to them?”
“They’re gone.” Sorrow eddied in the pit of his stomach. “I can’t talk about it right now, but I promise I will later.” He looked at Kyra and said, “Later, I’ll tell you guys everything.”
“Okay,” said Colin, while Kyra smiled. It was somber and kind.
“Just remember,” Josh said, “that I’m here for all you guys. Shit, we’re here for each other. Even you, Mr. McKinley.”
In a show of rare emotion, the corner of Frank’s mouth twitched.
Colin hugged him again. “Thanks, bud.”
Josh winked at Kyra from over Colin’s shoulder. “No,” he said, “thank you…for giving me a reason to live.”
* * *
A faint spark of light was all Josh could distinguish when he opened his eyes. He found himself on the floor with Kyra asleep on his chest. Gently, he lifted her off of him, placed her head on the ground, and sat up. The pile of down blankets covering them had made them both sweat even though his breath created a swirl of frigid mist each time he exhaled.
The candle on the coffee table flickered, leaning to one side as it melted from the inside out. Colin was sprawled out on the sofa while Frank McKinley dozed in his easy chair, his snores sounding like a baritone saxophone blown under water.
I should be asleep, like them, he thought. He rubbed the nape of Kyra’s neck, and when looked down at her in the virtual darkness she was young again, just as she had been during their otherworldly encounter in the loft. He leaned over and kissed the corner of her mouth. She tasted sweet.
“Sorry,” he whispered, “that I never really talked to you until everything went to shit.”
Pain stabbed at his brain, stemming from behind his eyes. He should have known better than to down six glasses of V.O. without so much as watering it down. He stood up and braced for the dizziness sure to follow, which it did. His eyes looked toward the kitchen. All he needed was a drink, he told himself, something non-alcoholic, and he’d feel better.
The cold tile on the kitchen floor made his feet bunch up, which caused his stagger to become more of a buckling lurch. He leaned over the faucet and lifted the handle. The tap sputtered and burped, but no water came out. He sighed, shuffled his way to the fridge, and opened the door. The topography of the refrigerator’s contents, painted in shades of blue and yellow in the soft afterglow of the moon, reminded him of an M.C. Escher painting. He ran his hand over their slick, cool surfaces, but with his mind spinning he couldn’t tell the difference between a month-old milk jug and a gallon of water.
It didn’t seem to matter any longer, however—not his vertigo, not his thirst, nothing. Everything swirled together. He felt like he’d eaten a magical mushroom cap.
Joshua, a familiar voice said.
He smiled, even though the voice was different now than it had been in the loft. It was heaver, more concrete, more real than before. He turned around.
She stood in the doorway that led outside, the sliver of moon alighting her silhouette. Her hair didn’t float around her this time; instead it rested on her shoulders and flowed down in a gentle swoop to her belly. He drew closer to her, feeling weightless. The woman neither backed away nor disappeared.
“Am I dreaming?” he asked.
She replied to him, though her lips didn’t move. You always ask that. You tell me.
“It doesn’t feel like a dream.”
He found himself in front of her now. She was a few inches shorter than him, the top of her head level with his chin. Her characteristics were vague, however. He squinted in an attempt to force clarity onto her blurred features, but it didn’t work. She remained an indistinct phantom in the valley of th
e tangible, with a hint of a mouth, nose, and eyes, but nothing more.
He touched her arm and she didn’t pull away when his fingertips fell upon her. The gown she wore was satin, like the sheets in the make-believe bed he and Kyra had made love in. There was the smell of jasmine in the air.
“Am I going crazy?” he asked.
Not at all, she replied.
“What is all of this?”
I have something I need to show you.
All he felt was calm, and it became clear to him everything that he wasn’t feeling. There was no confusion, no rage, and no anguish. Energy radiated throughout his body, cleansing him of all those futile emotions, leaving only curiosity behind.
“Show me,” he said.
The air around her erupted in a plume of white flame. The brightness illuminated her, and for the briefest of moments he was able to see her fully. She was beautiful, with high-arching cheekbones and sky blue eyes. Her skin was deeply tanned, but her hair—the same hair that had danced for him earlier and now lay still—was strawberry-blonde.
The intensity of the light emanating from her became more than he could bear. He closed his eyes, but still the brightness persisted. A piercing screech emerged, threatening to burst his eardrums. Despite this, he felt no panic. He simply closed his eyes, hunched over, covered his ears, and waited.
A sensation of weightlessness overcame him, and soon wind licked his flesh and he felt very cold. He imagined himself rising above the treetops, reaching high into the atmosphere until he ascended into the blackness of space. Never once did he open his eyes to see what was happening. A knowledge buried deep within him knew that his fragile mind couldn’t endure the sight.
The shrill whine suddenly stopped, and he was on solid ground again. Soft fingers brushed the back of his hand. He opened his eyes.
The lady stood beside him in a field. Fires smoldered all around them, spewing from ruined automobiles and a tank whose turret had been rendered a twisted husk. The lady turned her back to him and walked away, forging a twisting path through the wreckage. Her feet appeared to hover inches above the ground. Josh followed her.
“I know this place,” he said.
Of course you do.
James came to mind, as well as Roger, Kyra’s friend’s husband. He shook his head to rid it of the vision. “I don’t want to be here,” he whispered. “Take me back.”
No.
She walked onward, Josh staying on her heels. He tried to grab her arm, to spin her around and tell her to stop, but unlike before, his hand passed right through her. There was a moment where he thought he saw her shake her head in disgust. The act seemed peculiarly familiar, but he couldn’t place where he’d seen it.
When they crested the next hill a wasteland of corpses appeared. The bodies were strewn about and piled on top of each other like discarded rubbish. Josh felt dizzy from the sight and started to hold his breath to save his nostrils from the reek of decay, but when he sucked the air in, there were no scents at all, save for that constant whiff of jasmine.
“Oh my God,” he said. “They were massacred.”
Yes, they were.
They progressed through the minefield of carnage and entered the forest. It was there, between the first rows of evergreens, that Josh noticed a man squatting against a tree. His skin had cracked and peeled and his hands were twisted into claws. He was a virtual twin of the creatures he, Colin, and Kyra had fled from earlier that day. The monster, who held a machine gun in those deformed hands, suddenly peered around the trunk of the tree and faced the approaching pair. Josh wanted to run away, but the lady shook her head and gestured for him to wait. The creature then leapt up and held its gun at the ready. Its head swung from side to side and its eyes looked right at Josh, stained yellow with streaks of red and burning with rage. Josh jumped back and held his arms over his face while panic raced through him.
“No!” he shouted. “Don’t come any closer!”
Calm yourself, said the lady. Look.
Josh fanned his fingers and peeked between them. The disfigured man had withdrawn. He sat back down at his post with the gun again resting in his lap. Josh walked up to him gingerly and waved in its face. The thing acted as if he wasn’t there.
“What’s going on here?” he asked, facing the lady.
Her vaguely featured head nodded. This realm exists on the outskirts of the physical plane. We cannot affect anything and nothing can affect us. We can observe, and nothing more.
“This is unreal,” Josh replied. “Say I believe you on this. Why did that thing act like it did when we got close to it?”
His children carry a piece of Him within them.
“Who’s ‘He’?”
He who walks with a foot in both worlds. We must hurry, now.
“But wait, what does he want?”
In time. Come.
She pressed further into the woods. Josh’s mind raced as he followed her. Everything he saw seemed so real, so substantial, and yet the skeptical part of him wasn’t so sure. This part wanted to pick up something solid, like a stone, and bash it into her blurred face while screaming, “This is reality!” He shuddered and brushed that feeling aside.
At the cusp of a clearing deep in the forest, the lady paused. She turned to him ever so slightly and once again her beauty was clear to him.
You must be ready for this, she said.
“I think I am,” he replied, though in truth he wasn’t so sure.
She crossed the breach. Josh trailed her.
He wished he hadn’t.
At least a thousand of the deformed monstrosities were packed together in the clearing, virtually shoulder-to-shoulder with each other. They still wore the varied costumes of their former lives: fatigues, flannels, smocks, jeans, knit caps, halter tops, all tattered and frayed like the dead skin of a molting snake.
The swarm knelt as one and gazed at the sky with their feral eyes, their mouths moving in unison. Josh weaved through them, keeping his gaze on the lady, who was still ahead of him, and her image flickered. He feared that she would disappear and leave him alone and vulnerable in the midst of this pack of wild beasts. But she didn’t fade away; instead her likeness thickened, and she escorted him to the edge of the clearing as if nothing had happened.
There, the action was constant. One group of beasties (Josh suddenly couldn’t remember the name the General had called them) huddled in a circle beside a large military carrier, engaged in a violent feeding frenzy. Arms and legs thrashed about, spilling trails of blood and flesh into the air. Josh covered his mouth. It seemed that even in this other realm his gag reflex worked just fine. Then, from the corner of his eye, he noticed movement in the darkness beneath the military carrier’s canvas-covered rear end. He drew closer and peered inside.
There were people in the vehicle. Real people, some of whom he knew, packed in like sardines, looking absolutely terrified while blood leaked from their wounds.
He tried to peel back the canvas flap, but his hand passed through it, just as it had with the lady. He screamed as loud as he could, “Get out of here! Now!” but they didn’t move. His terror reached its apex just as the lady appeared beside him.
That is enough.
At the sound of those words, his surroundings went hazy and the world spun. He again felt that sensation of flying, only this time it was out of control, like he was on an airplane without a pilot. He opened his mouth to cry out, but the wind snatched all sound away. A barrage of horrible thoughts hammered away at the inside of his skull. I don’t wanna die…I want my mommy…please, God, no…take him, not me…we did this to ourselves. He felt his consciousness start to slip away from him and fought to stay awake.
Open your eyes, said the lady.
The torment ceased the moment he did so. He found himself surrounded by a white mist that stretched for as far as the eye could see. When he glanced down, he saw his feet standing on shifting wisps of cotton. The peaceful phenomenon from earlier returned. He looked at t
he lady, whose body shimmered at a distance that could have been as close as an inch away or as far as a mile.
I am sorry, she said. I had to show you.
“They were helpless,” he said. “I should have done something.”
You could not have. As I told you, we could not interfere.
“But why? What’s the point of this? Why did you have to show me that?”
You need to understand what faces you. You must know the consequences.
“What consequences?”
Those that will befall you should you stay where you are.
A picture flashed through his brain. In it he saw an army of those twisted horrors trudging through the cold New Hampshire night, tearing through homes, killing all who still hid inside them.
“They’re looking for…me?”
Yes.
“Why?”
Because you are important.
He shook his head. “You’re talking gibberish, lady. I’m important? Yeah, right.”
It is true. A great many people are depending on you. You must protect them.
“You obviously haven’t seen how well I’ve done that lately.”
I have seen what I needed to. As have you, Joshua.
Josh stepped back on the cloud and crossed his arms over his chest. Defiance took over despite his calm. “Okay, now. How do you know my name? Shit, lady, how did you know how to find me in the first place?”
I know everything about you. I know how your life has been stunted by fear. It is this same fear that has stopped you from moving forward. This same fear has caused you to turn away the ones who might love you. She paused, and then said, The same fear that you were able to hold at bay when you ended the torment that afflicted Sophia.
“Hold on there. Time out. I didn’t kill her. You did.”
Untrue. I did guide your hand, but I did not force you. I cannot command your actions, Joshua. All I can do is present to you the correct choice. It is up to you to follow. I cannot make you do what you do not have within yourself already.