Wormwood Dawn (Episode XI) Read online

  Toni shook her head. “I don’t know mother fucker,” she hissed. “He grabbed the thing and just disappeared.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Dan said, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. “What thing?”

  “The little screamin’ bitch,” Toni growled. “The daisy ho’. That monster thing.”

  Dan stared at her in shock for a moment. His eyes blinked rapidly as he processed the info. He then turned to Grace.

  “What the fuck is she talking about?”

  Grace wasn’t sure, but had an idea, it seemed. “The creature Jake was talking about,” she said. “The one that appears and disappears.”

  “Yeah,” Toni said. “He grabbed it, and then… he was gone.”

  “Show me,” Dan said.

  The whole group stood in a circle around the smoking crater, staring in shock at the emptiness that seemed to embody it. Nobody spoke. Everyone was speechless. Except for Royce, who grunted.

  “Huh,” he said. “Damn.”

  “He’s gone?” Jake asked.

  Toni nodded.

  “Lovely,” he said.

  “There was a smell, like ozone or something.”

  “Like when you burn out a socket?” Royce asked.

  “Yeah, or turn on an old TV or some shit.”

  “Lovely,” Jake said again.

  “What the mother fuck?” Cliff said. “He just up and vanished, then.”

  “Yeah. He gone.”

  “We gotta find him,” Toby said. “Right Dan?”

  Dan looked down at him. “Right. We gotta find him. But how?”

  “Maybe that little bitch will come back,” Jake suggested.

  “I don’t think so,” Toni said. “She would have come back by now. She’s gone, too.”

  “Then we have to figure out where she’ll appear next.” Eric said. “Wherever that is.”

  “Follow the smell, I guess,” Jake said. “Bitches always smell.”

  Everyone looked at him. He shrugged. “Well? Am I wrong?”

  “Shut up, Jake,” Toni said. “Grace, you gotta figure this out. Use that white girl brain of yours and figure out where he went.”

  Grace stared at her blankly. “I… have no idea where he could have gone. He could have been vaporized for all we know.”

  “No,” Toni said, shaking her head. “He’s not mother fuckin’ vaporized. He went somewhere. Jake, you remember that thing, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It was like she was there and then she wasn’t. I smelled toast or something. The same smell my cousin said he smelled when he had his seizures.”

  “Seizures?” Grace asked. “He had seizures?”

  “Epilepsy,” Jake said. “He had electrical shit happen in his brain, and then he blacked out until the shit was over. He felt like he was in limbo or something. Or Hell, more likely.”

  “He’s gone either way,” Toby said. “And we gotta find him. We have to. We owe him.”

  Max was dizzy. He was laying on his back, staring up at the sky. There were no sounds around him except for his own breathing. There were no stars in the sky, either, only red and orange bits of sky poking through a thick layer of black clouds. As he listened, he could hear a slight wind. But there were no crickets, or locusts or anything else.

  There were before, but not now.

  Then, he heard a moan. He sat up, looking around. Everything was dark, with a slight reddish cast to it. But he could see someone crumbled up a few feet away. It was a small figure, lying in the fetal position, moaning and groaning.

  It was a little girl.

  Max scooted over to her, putting his hand on her trembling shoulder.

  “Are you alright?” he asked.

  The little girl jerked upward, turning her horrified face toward him, her eyes ablaze with terror.

  “Get away from me you freak!” she shouted, scrambling to her feet.

  Max jumped up, trying to catch her, but she was faster, stumbling and tripping as she darted away.

  “Wait!” Max shouted, running after her. “Where are you going? Who are you?”

  He stopped, realizing that she was gone. He also had another realization. He was not at the hardware store anymore. All around him there was rubble. There were twisted steel beams, small fires, and piles of broken concrete and asphalt. As he looked up and at the horizon, he realized he was surrounded by a ruined city.

  There were toppled skyscrapers as far as he could see. There were strange-looking cars, twisted trees that didn’t look like trees, and strange-smelling smoke filled the air. He was no longer anywhere he recognized. He was in another place.

  Another world perhaps.

  “What the fuck?” he whispered.

  There was no wind that he could feel, nor any warmth. The air was cold, and the sky was blanketed in thick clouds. Only a tiny bit of moonlight poked through, making a giant glowing disk in the layers. All else was black, and was nothing to stir the silence. It was dead calm.

  “Hello?” he tried to shout, but his nerves only allowed a faint croak. “Damn.”

  Then, there was a distant rumbling, as if a giant boulder was rolling toward him. It was footsteps, he realized; big ones. They were metallic sounding, and heavy like a dinosaur’s might be－or maybe an elephant.

  He turned toward the sound, seeing large scraps of metal being thrown out of the way as a tall, dark figure plowed through the debris. Something was coming, and the hair on the back of Max’s neck stood on end. He was frozen.

  “You better run!” a shout came from nearby. It was a little girl’s voice.

  Max turned toward the voice, seeing nothing but scraps and shadows.

  “Go, dumb ass!” the voice came again.

  Already breathless with fear, Max took off toward what looked like a crashed passenger jet. Its tail was broken off, and against his better judgment, he headed toward the opening. Behind him the sound became louder, followed by a deafening hiss, and the clank of some device being activated. Then, there was a flash, and the ground exploded near him. He was thrown off of his feet and onto the rocky ground.

  “Run!” the voice came again.

  Winded and about to collapse, Max rolled to his feet and sprinted the rest of the way toward the dark opening. Behind him, his pursuer gained ground, and the footsteps increased in speed and ferocity.

  “Jesus Christ!” Max exclaimed, breaking through a thick layer of webs as he fell into the darkened fuselage of the strange object. It smelled like soot, and it was dark, but at least here he could hide. He hoped whatever was chasing him wasn’t small enough to follow him.

  He ducked into the shadows, pressing himself against the metallic walls. There was small portholes he could look through, round but seemingly made of plastic that had aged and weathered. He could only see shadows through them, but that was enough. In the distance, closing in, was his pursuer. Whatever it was had lights on it; red light that shone and scanned the area.

  Some kind of laser scanning device, he reasoned.

  Outside, the moonlight, such as it was, showed the outline of a tall and slim humanoid form. It was at least seven feet in height, and as thin as a rail. It appeared to be wearing some kind of metal suit, with a visor that was opaque like a one-way mirror. In the creature’s hands was a rod-like weapon, capsule shaped at the tip, and with several accessories attached to it.

  “Tacticool.” Max whispered.

  The creature stopped and scanned the area with its red lasers, and Max slowly squatted down to his knees, hiding behind a metal box. He could see the light on the opposite wall as the scanner was pointed in his direction. But, much to his relief, the lasers were turned off or pointed in another direction.

  He seemed to have gotten away.

  For now.

  The footsteps resumed, and Max could feel the ground shake as the creature passed by him outside. He held his breath in terror until they faded into the distance, then turned to look out the porthole. He couldn’t see the creature, or anyt
hing else for that matter. He wondered if the little girl had gotten to safety.

  “Hello?” he called out softly.

  No answer.

  Max crept to the other side of the cylindrical object, looking on the porthole nearest to the jagged opening. He could see nothing outside; only debris, fog, and the faint flashing of a distant blue light.

  Then a long and pointed weapon smashed through the metallic wall, knocking Max aside as it burst through. He crashed to the floor, uninjured but startled. The weapon was withdrawn, and the heavy footsteps sounded again, this time with much more ferocity. The weapon was poked through again, then withdrawn. Max scooted backward across the floor, pressing against a metal crate behind him.

  The footsteps came around to the opening, and he could see two long legs, encased in metal armor. The creature stopped in front of the opening for a moment, then squatted down. Max could see that it wearing bluish armor, a spacesuit, perhaps. The helmet that stared back at him had a mirrored visor that slid back to reveal two black and shining eyes that stared back at him like some insectoid demon.

  “Holy shit,” Max whispered, breathless.

  With his heart pounding and his eyes clenched shut, Max gave up. He knew this was the end. The whirring of a motor of some kind told him that the creature had readied some kind of weapon and had pointed it right at him.

  “Do it!” he shouted. “Just fucking do it!”

  There was an explosion and a blast of heat, and Max reached up to shield himself. He had thought the creature had shot him, but he felt no pain other than the slight singing of his exposed flesh. He dared to open his eyes, and saw that the creature was nothing but a smoldering pile of steaming debris. It had been blown to pieces, and all that was left were the twisted remains of that metal suit.

  And the most grotesque-looking head he had ever seen.

  The slit-like mouth was open, revealing a strange suckered tongue. The eyes, black and hollow stared back at him in death, and the pale skin seemed translucent, with spider-webbed purple veins just under the surface.

  Then, there were light footsteps as several smaller figures walked into his view. They were human from what he could see, some young and some old. They were dressed in rags the color of the landscape around them, and they all carried bizarre rifles; weapons Max had never seen.

  And one of them was pointed right at him.

  “Don’t fuckin’ move,” someone said.

  Chapter Three

  “Grace,” Dan said as they all sat in a circle around the outdoor fire, “you’re probably the smartest one of us left. Do you have any clues as to what happened?”

  Grace shook her head, her gaze locked on the small fire. “No,” she said. “Not my area expertise.”

  “Max was reading Maynard’s journals,” Toby said. “The one you got from his coat. There were things about the girl creature he mentioned.”

  “Like what?” Dan asked.

  Toby shrugged. “Inter-dimensional stuff. Things I didn’t understand. Something about a daisy.”

  “Daisy pattern,” Jake clarified. “The pattern she took when she appeared and disappeared.”

  “Didn’t you and Toni see one of them out on the highway in a house?” Cliff asked him.

  “Yeah,” Jake replied. “Just outside of Bloomington. Right before we saw another stalker.”

  “That shit was fucked up,” Toni said. “She came out of nowhere, but she was right there in the house.”

  “She was there, and then she was gone,” Jake added.

  Dan sighed, sitting back in his padded deck chair. He was dumbfounded. Despite his interest in science, he never really understood the mechanics of it. And when it came to multiple dimensions, well… forget it. He felt like a dumbass.

  “Is there anything here at the store that might have also been at that house?” Nathan asked Jake.

  Jake slowly shook his head as he looked around, assessing the things that were in the parking lot.

  “Not that I can see. Just random stuff.”

  “Magnetic points or something,” Royce said, drawing stares from everyone else.

  He shrugged.

  Grace sat forward and looked at the young man with interest. “That might be something there,” she said. “There are points all around us where the magnetic field is weaker or stronger. I’m not sure what that has to do with parallel dimensions though.”

  “Maybe at the strong points the fabrics of the two dimensions are closer,” Jake offered. “Close enough to cross over with some kind of power or something.”

  Dan pursed his lips. “Well,” he said. “I’m not sure what that could be.”

  “Some kind of magnetic or electrical field the creature generates maybe?” Grace said.

  “What could a human do to produce that kind of field?” Jake asked.

  Grace shrugged. “We don’t even know if she’s a person or what. She could be some kind of illusion.”

  “An illusion that sucks people into a black hole?” Toni asked skeptically. “What kind of shit is that?”

  Royce sat forward suddenly, drawing everyone’s attention. “Damn,” he said, pointing off into the distance. “Check it out.”

  Far behind the nearby McDonald’s, there was the glow of a rapidly approaching light. They all stood, Dan grabbing his rifle and motioning for the others to do the same.

  “Should we hide?” Toby asked. “Or just shoot them?”

  “Wait,” Dan said. “The idea is to rebuild, right? We can’t just go shooting everyone we see.”

  “Our history with other people hasn’t been real great,” Jake reminded him. “I say we shoot ‘em.”

  “It’s just one car,” Cliff said. “Looks like something mid-sized and sitting high. Minivan maybe.”

  “Nigga, how you see that shit from here?” Royce asked.

  “Shut up,” Cliff said. “Just look.”

  “Let’s spread out, just in case,” Dan said.

  Everyone crouched and wandered off in different directions. Dan and Jake took opposite sides of the parking lot entrance, hiding behind the fancy brick pillars that marked it. Cliff climbed up to the top of the RV and took a prone position, ready to snipe. Everyone else split up and hid behind various supplies; stacks of potting soil, rolls of fencing, and farm equipment that was underneath the building-wide awning.

  The vehicle slowed and turned onto the road, passing in front of the IGA and stopping there at its entrance. A flashlight was produced, and its bright beam swept the nearby parking lot. From what Dan had seen, the store was mostly looted clean, so whoever these people were wouldn’t score much if they decided to enter it. But the hardware store was still well-stocked with outdoor supplies, tools, and even a good supply of common ammo.

  It would be a good score for anyone, and nowadays it was take or do without.

  “Fuckers,” he heard Jake say. “I bet they come here next.”

  Dan nodded. “Unless they want rotten fake burgers from Mickey D’s.”

  “Mmmm, burgers,” Jake whispered. Dan grinned.

  The light shut off and the minivan began creeping in their direction. The headlights had been turned off, probably to avoid attracting mutant attention, and it looked like the windows were down. Small amounts of smoke billowed out of the driver’s side, telling Dan that whoever was in there was a smoker.

  A cigarette sounded fucking great.

  “Here they come,” Jake whispered.

  Dan checked his safety, flicking it off as he turned around to lean out the other side of the stone pillar. The vehicle turned down the hardware store’s road, speeding up a little as it came. Dan raised his rifle, ready to unleash hell just in case.

  The vehicle stopped a few yards away from the store’s entrance. Dan looked back at Jake, who shrugged. As they watched, an older man in a leather jacket got out. He had a cigarette hanging from his mouth, and his hair was mid length, greasy, and mussed. He wore jeans and an untucked burgundy-colored button up shirt.

&nbs
p; Strange.

  “See anything?” a voice from the car asked.

  The man looked around, took a drag off his cigarette, and shook his head.

  “Just vehicles,” the man said. “RV, couple trucks, a weird little pussy car.”

  The passenger got out, laughing. “Can’t be any less pussy than this piece of shit.”

  The driver grinned, detailing the scar across his cheek. “It’s all we had to haul shit. Joe still hasn’t fixed that fucking truck. Doesn’t matter though. This place looks occupied. Don’t wanna cause any trouble if I can help it. I am a gentleman, after all.”

  Jake snickered.

  Dan stood, keeping his rifle ready. The two men stopped short, reaching but not drawing the pistols they each had at their sides.

  “It’s occupied,” Dan said. “But if you have anything to trade, we’d be willing to share.”

  The driver flicked his cigarette away, smiling as he walked slowly toward them. “Name’s Jeff,” he said. “We were just out looking for supplies. Medical stuff, mostly. We have some people who need medicine.”

  “This is a hardware store,” Dan said. “Nothing but hardware.”

  “I would assume they sold things like scissors, other things like that. We’re also in need of a few tools if you can spare them. We have some things to trade.”

  “What do you got?” Dan asked.

  “Well, first things first. What’s your name, friend?”

  “Dan. And this is Jake. We have more people.”

  “A black guy on the roof with a sniper rifle for one,” Jake added.

  Jeff laughed, holding up his hands. “No need for that, Dan. Nice to meet you gentlemen. This here is Frankie, my little brother. He’s an asshole.”

  “Hey Frankie,” Dan said, nodding.

  “He looks like he could use a smoke,” Frankie said. “And maybe a drink or two.”

  “Yes he does,” Jeff said, reaching into his pocket to produce a pack of smokes.

  Dan lowered his rifle just as Frankie brought out a bottle of liquor. He could hear Jake sling his own rifle over his shoulder, and see him turn to signal Cliff that all was well.

  “Welcome to the hardware store,” Dan said. “Let’s have a drink or three.”