Children of the After: The Complete Series: A Young Adult Postapocalyptic Action and Adventure series (15 page)

Shaking his head away, he dislodged Sam’s hand from the back of his head and the inhaler from his lips. Squaring his shoulders as he balled his hands into fists he let all the anger out in an instant, demanding the asthma attack stop with an angry roar of defiance. A roar. A sound. A sound he couldn’t make without air. Will took a deep breath. This time he had won.

Jack watched his little brother, helplessly anxious, with knots in his stomach. Will couldn’t have an attack now. He simply couldn’t. Sam couldn’t carry him far and Jack doubted he could carry him at all. At least not right now. Looking to his younger brother, he watched as he turned himself away from the life-saving medicine Sam was trying to give him. He watched as Will’s little face turned red while his balled fists turned his knuckles white. Then, like someone had just broken his favorite toy, Will let out a sound that to Jack didn’t even sound human. Something between a growl and a scream, Will set free whatever it was inside him that needed release. Jack watched him as his shoulders slumped once more, the rigidity leaving his small frame as he inhaled a long slow breath, his face and knuckles returning to normal. He was breathing as if nothing had happened.

“OK, then,” Jack said, not comprehending what had just happened with his little brother, but elated that the attack was over before it started. “Feel better?”

“What was that?” Sam asked.

Jack watched as Will nodded to his question then shrugged to Sam’s with a grin spreading across his face. Looking around he could see no sign of the creatures that had been chasing them. Like the rider had said, they hid during the day. All that meant to Jack was that they had about twelve hours, give or take, to put as much distance between them and the creatures as possible.

“You good to walk, little man?” Jack asked Will.

“I’m hungry, but I can walk,” he answered with a shrug and a bob of his head.

Of course he was hungry. He was always hungry. At least they could put some distance between themselves and the creatures before stopping to eat. Or that’s what Jack thought before looking to his exhausted sister.

Fighting a chuckle, Jack grinned as it seemed that Sam had a different opinion altogether. Plopping down on her backside she pulled the dead dolly pack from her back and began reaching down its throat and extracting jars of food. It seemed they were taking a break after all. Carefully seating himself next to Sam, Jack watched as Will selected the preserved foods that would be his meal before selecting his own, and after just a few moments Jack was enjoying some of mom and grandma’s cooking that would have reminded him of good times, if the images of every place he knew hadn’t been tainted within his memory by their current conditions.

It was a sad thought, knowing that everything had been destroyed. At first he had hoped that it was just Chicago, but after finding the first house they had stayed at and then Grandma’s, Jack was certain everything was gone. He didn’t know how all the buildings burned while sparing the forest around them, but if fighting was going on all around the world, and old houses out in the woods were even targets of the weird monkey creatures, then he felt certain that it was all gone. All of them needed to be prepared for what they might find in the days to come. He didn’t want to destroy his siblings’ hopes, but he didn’t want them breaking down when they realized the same as he. They needed to talk.

“We haven’t had any time yet, but I think we should talk about what the rider said,” Jack began. “We know that this was an invasion, and obviously these things aren’t human. The papers mentioned stealth technology, so for all we know their ships could be anywhere. What I don’t get, is the fact that the rider said these things aren’t intelligent. Something isn’t adding up.”

“Maybe they
aren’t
the attackers,” offered Will.

“What do you mean, Will?” Sam asked.

“Maybe they are just pets or something, like attack dogs.”

“You’re a brilliant little man, you know that?” Jack smiled.

“That does kind of make sense,” Sam added. “If you’re gonna destroy a whole planet, why send in your own people? Maybe they’re like weird or something and don’t have bodies, or maybe they can’t breathe our air so they send in the monkey troops.”

“Let’s not guess at too much, but I think Will’s on to something here. What about the rest of what the rider said, though?” Jack added.

“You mean the part about resistance fighters or hiding in insulated places?” Sam questioned.

“Both, I guess. I think we should try and find these fighters and see what they know.”

“Me too,” added Will. “Maybe they know what happened in... other parts of the world.”

Jack knew that Will was speaking of Europe, wondering if their mother could still be alive. Even though he doubted it, this was one hope he wasn’t going to dash.

“Maybe, buddy. We’ll just have to go and see,” he answered. “A lot more things are making sense now too, though,” he added, though he didn’t wait before he elaborated. “The whole insulated bit makes a lot of sense.  If you have thermal vision…”

“What’s thermal vision?” Will interrupted.

“It’s like you can see how hot things are,” Sam answered. “So people will always look different from trees no matter what they are wearing. You can’t just hide in a dark place ’cause they can still see you.”

“OK,” Will said.

“Anyhow, if you have thermal vision and want to find your enemy, you destroy every place they have to hide. Burning all the cities and houses makes sense. Walls have insulation, so they would never know how many people were hiding in a building. That is not completely unintelligent. We’ve been lucky so far. Sleeping in coolers and below ground keeps us hidden from them. We’ll have to be careful from now on to choose a safe location where they can’t see us.”

* * * * *

Sam’s imagination was running wild. The possibilities were endless. If these creatures weren’t the enemy, and were more or less just pawns used by their attackers, then who were the enemy? What did they look like? What did they want? Was it like all the movies she had seen over the years where they had come for resources? Had they come in response to some unknown offence earth had committed against them? What was the purpose of a whole world’s destruction?

Reaching down to tighten the laces on her completely inappropriate boots, she wished she had chosen tennis shoes instead, but there was no help for it now. Untying and retying her boots, she tuned out the conversation Jack and Will were having about aliens and monsters, and troubled herself with another question. Why were the creatures chasing them? Three kids with no weapons who in a global conflict were irrelevant, yet hundreds of the things had chased them all night. What would they do to her and her brothers if they were caught? Eat them? Take them back to the mother ship or whatever? The whole thing seemed preposterous, and yet here they were.

Looking to her brothers once more, she found them packing up their things in preparation for a full day of walking. Walking to get away from aliens that had destroyed their planet. Sam wondered if she would wake up soon and realize it was all a nightmare. When she was little she had night terrors. Maybe they were back and more complex than ever? She knew it wasn’t true though. This couldn’t be a nightmare. People in nightmares didn’t wish they were in a nightmare. The world was the nightmare. This
was
her life. Or at least what was left of it. Zipping the teeth of her pack’s mouth closed, she climbed unsteadily to her feet as her knees threatened to give beneath her. Nope. She wasn’t going to wake up.

The day was uneventful, more or less. They walked hour after hour, putting as much distance as was possible between themselves and the monsters. Cars were abandoned and burned here and there, looking like the burned carcasses of giant bugs littering the road and ditches to either side. The remains of houses began appearing early in the afternoon and more regularly throughout the day but all were destroyed. Every one. Following the road, they traveled south all day between the two opposing tree lines of the woods to either side of them. It was late afternoon when the scenery finally changed. Sam doubted that the change could bode anything positive.

Like they had crossed some invisible barrier, the walls of thick trees with rainbow colored autumn leaves vanished. In its place lay black devastation as far as the eye could see. The ground was a thick carpet of ash where from its surface scorched and charred trunks of once magnificent trees thrust up from the ground, devoid of life or color. Most had burned all the way to the ground but some remained standing tall as if in defiance, all their limbs destroyed, singular pinnacles reaching towards the sky as if in an effort to ask forgiveness. Sam shuddered at the sight and found that she had stopped walking. Something felt wrong here.

Exhausted from a full night of running and day of walking, she shook her head in an effort to remove the fog in her mind, and rubbing her eyes she looked around again. Ash and stumps with a road in between. Nothing else could be seen ahead, and it was getting late. They only had a few hours of daylight left, and there was no sign that anywhere ahead would be a place to hide. Jack and Will were still trudging ahead and, willing her legs to obey, she shuffled forward again. Crossing the line into what she felt was somehow the point of no return, she put her head down and sighed, hoping they could soon stop and rest. She couldn’t take much more.

* * * * *

Cresting a small rise in the road as the sun’s light faded rapidly from the sky, Will looked out across the devastated expanse of ash and scorched earth that they had walked through for hours. Ahead, perhaps a hundred yards, something out of place stood out among the burned stumps of trees that littered the landscape in all directions. Something inside of him sprang back to life, pulling him out of the zombie-like state he had been in for hours, half-awake as his mind tried to rest. Leaving his similarly entranced siblings behind, he ran full tilt down the gentle slope of the road to the pipe that stood thrust down into the ash and soil beside the road. To the pole was affixed what had once been a stop sign, though the red enamel and white lettering had been burned away, and attached to the larger sign were pieces of others. Cut to use the letters of different words, pieces of street signs still hinting at a shade of blue had been attached in such a way as to create three words. Looking at the thing, Will was oddly reminded of Scrabble, a game he had never really cared for. Wiping away the film of black greasy ash, he read the words as his body began to tremble and his heart began to hammer.
Safe house ahead.
He had watched enough cop shows with Mom to know what a safe house was.

Tears streamed down his cheeks washing away the stains from hours of walking over the ash-covered street. Sobbing, he turned as Sam rushed towards him and Jack limped with renewed effort to join them as well. Caught up in the arms of his big sister, Will hugged her tightly. He didn’t know why he was crying. Maybe because he was tired. Maybe because the sign meant that at least one house might still be standing. Maybe a million different reasons that he couldn’t even sort out in his mind, but he steadied himself in Sam’s arms and pulled himself together. He couldn’t keep acting like a baby. Not anymore.

“Oh. My. God,” Sam said over Will’s head.

“What is it?” asked Jack, hobbling to their side.

“A sign. It’s a sign. Look. It says ‘safe house ahead’. There must be people!” Sam nearly shouted.

“It’s almost dark and we are moving very slow compared to those creatures back there. If we don’t find a place to hide soon, we’re in trouble.”

Will nodded in response to his older brother’s words. Jack was right. The alien monsters were going to come after dark and
they
were rested. They didn’t have any choice but to keep going. Pulling himself out of Sam’s arms he turned back to the south and began walking, taking bigger and faster steps than before. Jack and Sam walked faster too and together they trudged down the ash-covered road as the sun set beneath the horizon and darkness swallowed them all.

Three hours. It was about three hours later when the full moon rose into a sky filled with stars and the first call sounded in the distance, sending a shiver up Will’s spine. They were already catching up. Will had walked all day, and the monsters were already catching up after just three hours. They were fast. Too fast.

Picking up their own pace, Will watched Jack struggle to keep up, jogging with a limp that kept getting worse and worse. He needed a doctor and Will knew it. But were there any doctors left? What if there weren’t? If Jack’s ankle got worse and there weren’t any doctors, what would happen to him? Will ran faster. They needed to get to people and find out if there were any more doctors.

Pain and fear were the icy tendrils running down Jack’s spine over and over as they raced down the moonlit street. Though every step made him nauseous, pain exploding up his leg, he fought the urge to vomit, clenched his jaw, and took another stride. Fighting to keep up with Will and Sam, Jack stumbled again and again as his ankle gave out beneath his weight, but thus far he had managed to keep his feet under him.

With the moon looming above like a giant cat watching the mice scatter below, Jack struggled on through the pain as sweat poured down his face. Breathing in through his nose, he exhaled through clenched teeth fighting to control his breathing and heart rate, but it was getting away from him. It had been two hours since they began hearing the creatures behind them, and now, like the night before, they were getting close enough to distinguish their sounds. He didn’t know how much further he could run. Even now he was struggling, but he dared not leave Will and Sam alone, sending them ahead. Even so, he knew they were slowing for him, putting themselves in danger.

With barks and the wicked whooping sounds coming at regular intervals behind him, Jack looked up from the road, where he carefully selected his footfalls to avoid another injury. There, maybe a mile ahead was something he had not expected to see. Amongst the stars nearest the horizon were a cluster of rooftops, silhouetted against the night sky. There was a town, and from here it seemed to be still standing. Maybe that’s why the monsters chased so vigorously. They didn’t want Jack and his siblings to reach the community and find allies and be safe.

Brushing the sweat from his stinging eyes, Jack leaned forward and clenched his jaw harder.

“C’mon guys, we’re almost there,” he nearly growled as he began to run faster.

If he could get them to the town they could find a place to hide. A place to heal. Even now, he knew it would be close. Risking tripping, he turned his head to look back over his shoulder and could see the bounding forms in the darkness behind them.

A mile passed and then another as the gap between them and the alien things closed. Jack didn’t bother counting his paces to track the distance, choosing instead to count the markers along the road. It was an oddity that he didn’t share with anyone, he supposed, but counting helped him breathe when he ran. Looking ahead, he estimated they had another mile, or maybe two.

Weaving through a pile up of cars, they crossed an intersection without so much as slowing and Jack led them as he heard the creatures behind leaping atop the cars and bounding from one to another. They were close. Scary close. Two hundred yards.

Pushing himself and groaning out the pain, he reached down and grabbed Will’s hand to guide him. Ahead, surrounding the small town, was a ring of concrete barriers, the kind used in road construction. There were gaps between some of them, but only one directly ahead and they couldn’t slow to pass through one at a time.

“Sam, you’re gonna have to jump over,” Jack shouted above the commotion growing behind them.

There wasn’t enough time for her to respond. Shoving Will towards the gap, Jack leapt and noted in his peripheral vision as Sam made the jump on the other side. Landing, Jack’s world turned to chaos as his leg gave under the impact, unable to handle such abuse. With no way to control his fall as he twisted, smashing into the remains of a burned car before his head bounced off the pavement, sending shards of glass scattering in all directions as he slid to a stop. Within an instant both of his hands were grasped and both Sam and Will began pulling on him, dragging him down the road. With both his thoughts and vision swimming, he tried to make sense of the upside down buildings when it occurred to him what he was seeing.

Rolling to his stomach he pushed himself up as Sam helped him to his feet. Placing his arm around her shoulder they followed Will down the road as bile rose into Jack’s throat. The buildings were standing because they were brick. The insides were burned out hulls with shattered windows staring blankly back at him. Just like everywhere else, the town had been destroyed.

Will vanished from sight ahead, ducking around a corner, only to be revealed once more when Jack and Sam rounded the same building. Darting down the narrow alley, Jack leaned on Sam heavily as the sounds of the beasts behind seemed to now be coming from all directions. Above, a shadow leapt from one building to the next, to quickly be followed by another. The things could scale the buildings?

Turning another corner, Will motioned to them from behind an old truck, and ducking down they joined him in hiding.

“Look up there,” Will said, pointing.

Turning his gaze to the brick wall up ahead, Jack could faintly see the image painted there in the pale moonlight. Between two windows of the second story of the brick building a large arrow was painted, pointing to their left. It was a sign left by someone. Maybe they still had a chance.

* * * * *

Rising with renewed hope, Sam pulled her larger brother to his feet just as one of the ape creatures rounded the corner they had just turned a moment before. Meeting its gaze, she hauled Jack up and began running with him down the street. The creature did not follow immediately, as if it were enjoying the chase. Instead it paused several moments, sniffing loudly behind them before it gave a shriek into the night then began following. It had called its friends.

Trying to move faster, Sam could feel the adrenaline coursing through her veins as her heart hammered. Will ran ahead, his head swiveling this way and that, looking upon the walls of the buildings for another clue as to where they were going. Two blocks passed, and as he raised his hand to point at another sign, Sam watched her small sibling dart around another corner and noted the second arrow before rounding the corner herself. Hearing the creature slide through the glass behind her, she knew it was nearly upon them. Ahead, Will froze in his tracks and turned, brandishing the toy they had seen so often over the last few days.

With great blasts of blinding light, the strobe light on Will’s light momentarily blinded Sam, but had even greater effect on their pursuer. Screaming as if injured, the creature scrambled to slow its momentum, tripping itself and rolling across the glass-covered ground. Rising again with various cuts and scrapes, the creature covered its face and fled back around the corner.

“The rider said they didn’t like light,” Will yelled triumphantly.

His victory was cut short, however, as two more of the creatures bounded down from the rooftops above. Landing a dozen paces away, they shielded their eyes but did not flee before Will’s already failing light. Try as he might, Sam watched Will begin shaking the light but the strobes were draining the power faster than he could replenish it. The creatures began inching closer as two more rounded the corner their ally had fled around.

“Run!” Sam screamed, and again they were off.

Ahead the flashing of the light was slowing and growing more dim, though Will shook it with all his might as he ran. Behind them, she could hear the creatures’ ragged breathing and their every footfall. Not knowing if he was just trying to lose their pursuers or still following signs, Will led them around a third corner and then a forth before ducking into an old building. Following their younger brother through the wreckage, they exited the back of the building and immediately turned down an alley before rushing back to the same street they had just been on. He was small, but he was smart.

With Jack slowing again, groaning and panting at her side, Sam pulled him around yet another corner and found them alone. Will was missing. Gone. Turning her head this way and that, she could not find him. Bile rose in her throat. They had gotten Will. She spun, looking in all directions. Panic took her. Sam screamed.

* * * * *

With a hand clamped firmly over his mouth, Will was yanked off his feet, backwards. Dragged in the blink of an eye, through a steel doorway, he was cast into darkness, struggling to escape. Kicking and flailing his arms, he tried to scream but the tight grasp over his mouth prevented it. Pressed against what he presumed was a wall, the arm around his waist was removed as a face pressed dangerously close to his own.

Feeling the hot breath on his skin, Will looked into the almost yellow eyes of his abductor. With one finger raised to its mouth, he noted the gesture and complied. Then the figure vanished again into the darkness. They had found help. They were saved.

Watching, he could see as the door opened opposite him, and heard the scream of panic outside. Rushing towards the door, he was stopped short as both Sam and Jack were yanked into the room, a small figure appearing in the light of the door before vanishing again as it closed. Darkness. All that remained was darkness.

Will blinked his eyes again and again trying to get them to adjust to the new surroundings but it was too dark. There was no light. His own had gone dead, but he dared not light it now. If they were safe, he didn’t want to ruin their hiding spot by turning on his light. That’s how the rider had found them, and he wasn’t about to make the same mistake again.

“Will?” Sam whispered cautiously in the darkness.

“I’m here,” Will answered cautiously. “We have to be quiet.”

“So long as you’re OK,” she said, choking back obvious tears.

He couldn’t see her, but he could feel the pain in her voice. She had been frightened beyond measure.

“I’m OK,” he answered simply.

There was nothing left to do in the darkness but be quiet and wait. He didn’t know who else was in the room. He didn’t know if it was unsafe to walk around, like it had been in their own apartment. He didn’t know where he was. Heck, he didn’t even know where in the room Sam and Jack were, though he could tell their direction by the heavy breathing across from him. It didn’t matter that he knew others were in the room with him, he felt awfully alone in the dark.

Keeping his back to the wall, fearful of moving, Will slid down to the floor and wrapped his arms around his knees. Laying his head back against the cool wall, he listened to the sounds of his siblings’ breathing as it slowed and calmed, returning to normal after many long minutes. He had run a long way, and his lungs didn’t hurt. His throat didn’t close. There were no hiccups. Pondering this new occurrence, his mind drifted off. In the impenetrable darkness of the room, he didn’t even realize it when his eyes closed and, exhausted, he fell asleep.