Clio and Cy: The Apocalypse (5 page)

“I am born here among the monsters;
 
if I have to survive I must act like one
of them.”

― M.F. Moonzajer

Clio pulled up her pants and ran to the end of the tunnel,
sloshing through creature guts. She slipped her way up the incline and heard
the thing coming like a locomotive through the cave behind her. Like a ravenous
bobsled, the creature raced on all fours desiring to taste human meat. Clawing
and banking down the snake’s belly, the creature smelled girl-flesh when it
entered the whale section. Rounding the corner, it saw Clio’s ankles fading
into the light.

Bursting out of the tunnel, Clio was born into the blinding
light.

Cool early morning air announced the rising sun, glinting
insensitive, depriving her eyes of sight. She rubbed her lids with one hand,
frantic to see the world around her as she pushed ahead and cleared the hole. Clio
imagined that monsters were surrounding her, and as if keeping them at bay, she
held her hand out while clutching her weapon. She stumbled forward and moved
away from the hellish cave with blind intent.

Balance lost, she tried to keep her voice quiet while
careening face first and smacking her head against the ground. Clio’s sight
partially returned as she rolled over and looked back. Frantic, she sat up and
scanned for the tunnel, scooting her feet across the forest ground. Still
blurry, she caught its shape coming out of the hole. As if she was staring
through Transylvanian fog, she witnessed the demon creature vault out like a
vampire from its catacomb.

No sense in running,
her instincts told her.
Stand your ground
girl!

Without warning,
Clio’s
eyes flashed white. She went blind, as if her eyes were glued to night vision
goggles staring into an instant sun. She readied her pistol in visionless
panic. Muddled, Clio blinked hard, willing her sight back. Mercifully the fog
lifted from her retinas. The creature crawled a few steps away from the cave.
Standing on its hind legs, sniffing the air around it, balancing like a trained
bear but resembling something part human.

Clio sobbed and trembled as she saw it looking at her,
towering. “Leave me alone… I hate you!” she shouted, aiming her weapon in
crying anger.

The beast dropped back down on all fours, coiled, and
launched, hurdling the open ground toward her.

She fired. “Zzzzzzwhhhap!” Piercing its shoulder, the
monster was knocked it in a diagonal summersault.

The creature stopped and regained its balance. Reset, it
lurched and ran harder than before. Wounded and bleeding, it came at her
enraged, driven by pain and the smell of girl-flesh.

“Ahhhhh!” she screamed over her firing pistol.
“Zzzzzzwhhhap,” the pistol sang, nailing the creature in the head, dropping it
dead, and sending it sliding at her feet.

With her chest rising and falling, she sucked in oxygen and
noticed the trees around her.
Is it dead?
Afraid to run, Clio continued aiming her pistol. She looked out and saw the
forest in sharp vision.

The smell of wood and leaves and luscious palm root were
distinct. Clio breathed deeply, detecting all of nature, as if it were under
her nose. Slowly, she rose to her feet. The sap was sticky and sweet as it
rolled down a pine in smooth amber streams, tasting it on her tongue. Clio
broke fear’s grip and pushed off an oak tree, feeling the coarse bark and
noticing the sun’s minute ascension. Blazing a path, she raced toward the
horizon.

Are they after me?
Clio suddenly halted, turning in every direction and holding her weapon like an
African warrior child. She looked through the trees for signs of danger.
Nothing was after her.
This way’s as good
as any,
she thought, turning and running with one destination in mind
.
Forward!
Clio cursed the dry leaves crackling under her feet; they rang like dinner
bells through the crisp air.

She was a young girl and her body was at the ledge of
falling off - falling into womanhood. Over the last few months she was
experiencing new feelings - she was changing out of a young girl. Emotions came
knocking… They called with curious desires from inside her body. Clio acted the
way most girls act through puberty; she kept things secret.
Maybe there’s something wrong with me
, a
thought she had days ago seemed to pale in comparison to what she now felt.
Over the course of the last three days, Clio didn’t recognize herself.
Unfairly, the free-fall of puberty was now being experienced along with her
fight for survival.

Clio felt like an alien creature walking on a distant
planet. Her mind raced, flooded with new emotions. The thought of her mother
being dead wasn’t something she could handle. Her defenses would not allow such
a wretched thought to permeate her mind. She wouldn’t allow the idea to come
close to her, not even the distance of the heat that permeated off her skin.

My mother is out there
was the only admittance that was permitted through her mind – that, too, barely
existing as a real thought. Tired from running, now, all she knew was to walk.
The girl covered the length of almost five miles…

Thirsty, she realized it was break time, one she’d earned.
Clio tilted her shoulder down, letting the strap of her rucksack fall before
grabbing it and slinging it off.
 
She pulled
out a water bottle and drank, kneeling and keeping her eyes open - never
tilting her head too far back, losing
sight.
That’s it; tilt the bottle up, not your head
.
She paused, noticing the ground was different below her.

Man-made and covered with fallen limbs and dead foliage,
Clio was standing on the edge of a road. Cracked and lopsided as a blind man’s
porch, it had more than a few sizable trees growing out of its faded asphalt.
Saplings broke through the road’s shell like hatchlings. It hadn’t seen a
working vehicle in years, one of which she saw abandoned with its back bumper
still on the road, the car’s grill
nosed
off down the shoulder. The highway was a shabby mess, but still, it was
something humans built and it made her feel a bit more secure.

She stepped on and instantly welcomed the quiet surface,
where it wasn’t covered in plants and debris. Clio easily traversed the
decaying obstacles and wondered who owned the car just ahead;
I wonder what happened to them… what were
they like?

North Carolina:

Russ was in his late sixties and a grump. Crusty, he was a
grizzled cockroach, a survivor. He was perceived as a mean old bastard, even
before the war; even before losing his entire family.

“I thought you were the biggest asshole I’d ever met, till I
got to know you,” was a phrase Russ heard often. Most people never came to
enjoy his brand of personality though; he didn’t give a shit either.

People without filters, like Russ, tended to do that to others,
especially after their feathers got ruffled and buttons got pushed within the
first few seconds of meeting him. Without even trying, fast and first, Rusty
Tucker would call you out.

“You don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground do you?”
he’d ask of more than a few people while running construction jobs for Fortune
& Brassfield, where he was a foreman for over thirty years. His
subordinates mocked him for many of his famous quotes. If they didn’t fear him,
they respected him.

“You better get your shit together son, or find yourself
another place to work,” was another phrase he was famous for. If they saw him
coming, people hid from the old man. Mostly because they knew they couldn’t get
away with their bullshit.

Rusty Tucker carried that attitude from his time in the Army
right into his first construction site. Like most hard-nose, no-nonsense,
take-charge people, he was born that way. He never called in sick either,
believing that a limb better be falling off to do such a wimpy thing. He
despised sandbagging.

He lived in a rural farmhouse in North Carolina, complete
with all manner of livestock, relatively unharmed from the war, so far. The Ker
hadn’t made it to many of the less populated areas; not yet, but they would…
one day soon
, he figured.

The demon creatures were another story. Originally created
in Dr. Pavlov’s basement laboratory off the coast of Jekyll Island, Georgia,
they were slowly spreading throughout the South East. Mating and multiplying,
they decimated the indigenous. Although part human, the flesh-eaters weren’t
social. They didn’t hunt in packs and the only time they came together was to
mate, killing each other sometimes in the process.

Always keeping his dog close, Lady was a Husky that kept him
company and let him know when any of those bastards were near. She’d bark so
loud you could feel it in your chest, going berserk when she caught their
scent.

“Fucking things,” Russ would say before going on his daily
patrol, refusing to be trapped in his own home.

A bit of a gun nut, Russ maintained a decent armory he’d
collected over the years. He preferred weapons that fired bullets to the modern
photon blasters and plasma rifles. Modern weapons got the job done but they
didn’t feel right to him. Like a fly-by-wire control system on a car, they were
too flawless, disconnected; he didn’t like that he couldn’t feel the machine
working. Energized weapons were too perfect; he wanted to feel the bolt
slamming home and smell the gunpowder hanging in the air, the same way he liked
feeling the road through a vehicle’s steering wheel and hearing a truck’s motor
rumble through the exhaust.

Russ would strap on his worn boots and look at a picture of
his wife and daughter, the only one he kept out. He’d pass the photo carrying
his assault rifle and say “goddamn things,” walking out the door with Lady at
his side. Hatred for the creatures kept him going. For what they did to his
family, Russ was motivated to kill as many as he could.

***

It came one night while he was off helping his neighbor a
few miles away. “I’ll be back hun…” were the last words that Russ Tucker ever
said to his wife.

“I love you. Be careful,” were the last words he ever heard
from his wife, Sue Tucker. He used to get playfully annoyed at his wife for
saying it, and she said it every time he left to go somewhere. Always, even
before the war, she said it anytime Russ was leaving without her. “Be careful.”

‘
Be careful’
…
I can handle myself…
He thought walking
out, waving his hand at her as if saying:
get
the hell out of here with that ridiculous warning
.
Hell, all I’m doing is helping dumbass Benny down the road; dumb shit
can’t even fix a lock on his own goddamn door.
Sadly, after the war
started, he knew it wasn’t a ridiculous warning anymore. How he longed to hear
her say those words again.

During the war, it was a bad time for anyone who wasn’t
handy. You couldn’t just call someone on the phone to come fix things. Other
than satellite phones, there weren’t any, no working lines anyway.
Things
started breaking down, like door
locks, generators, and an assortment of items that most people took for
granted. Deep down, Russ liked helping people because it made him feel useful.
He felt like his old self and more importantly, he felt like a man.

Russ’s daughter, Bell, was all that was left of his blood.
The machines took care of the rest. Ker killed Russ’s sister and her husband.
He couldn’t get in touch with his other family members that were scattered
throughout the continental U.S.

They were all dead.

Sue and Bell did their routine at home while Russ drove to
Dumb Shit’s
, hauling a bag of tools.

Bell wrote in her journal in her bedroom. “Sweetie, you want
something to eat?” her mom shouted.

“Ok, mom,” Bell said, yelling through her door.

“Lady! Knock it off!” Sue Tucker finally realized the dog
had been going berserk on the front lawn for five minutes straight, or however
long. The same way she sometimes realized her daughter was beating something
against the coffee table over and over.
That
barking nonsense has been going on forever
, her brain finally announced to
her. Lady hated being tied up, but this was ridiculous.

The dog kept barking, seemingly harder, irritating Sue past
the point of ignorance.
What the hell has
gotten into that animal?
She flung the front door open and lost her grip,
sending it flying. It smacked the wall and bounced back half shut while she
battled her way through the next barrier, a rickety aluminum framed screen.

Sue race-walked off the front porch, yelling. “Lady! What
are you…” stopping in mid-sentence, she dropped the fly swatter from her hand.

Rising up on its hind legs, the monster stood over seven
feet before dropping down on all fours. It looked at her, coiling and hissing.
“Ssshhhhaaa.”

Lady stretched to the end of her chain, barking and wanting
to get at the creature, which ignored the dog after getting the scent of human
flesh.

Sue froze for what seemed an eternity, trembling while the
monster peered deep into her eyes. She broke through her fear and ran to the
porch, feeling as if her legs were dragging shackles. She tripped over the last
board and spiked her chin on the wood, smashing her teeth together with the
sound of porcelain breaking on metal. The woman was dazed and dripping blood on
the deck from a deep gash opened on the tip of her wrinkled chin. Sue was
afraid to look back while she crawled for the blurry image of her front door.

Charging like a brahma bull, the monster tackled her with
force. They both slid and crashed into the house near the entrance. The
creature didn’t waste time tearing her flesh and scoring her open. Sue moaned,
pleading, “Please, no!”

It began eating her stomach, pulling out her intestines
while holding her down with the strength of a tiger. Her voice grew faint.
“Stop… please… don’t do this...” Sue placed her hand on the creature’s head and
another on its shoulder, trying to push it off of her, feeling its leathery
skin and coarse hair. In her mind, Sue was yelling, but nothing came out of her
open mouth, not even one molecule of air. Lady’s barks were raspy and faint,
like the distant squawks of a high-flying bird.

Thinking of her daughter inside her bedroom, unable to alert
her, she screamed silently. As if she was trying to move block wall, pushing
the monster off her was impossible. Pain roared like fire, burning her body,
scorching from her insides out. Sue Tucker began drifting away… Suddenly, the
monster pulled off her and stopped eating. With her head resting against the
house, Sue watched the beast observe her. It cocked its head and appeared to
think, looking into her eyes. “Sssshhhhaaa,” it hissed with blood dripping off
its fangs.

Numb malaise spread throughout her body as her skin grew
cold. In a feeble attempt at protecting herself, Sue held her marshmallow arms
out. The demonic beast knocked them out of the way and went in for more. The
creature ate what it always ate after eating the stomach first, devouring the
liver and other vital organs.

“Mom...”

The monster’s ears perked from the sound of a girl’s voice,
calling from behind the door.

The front door slowly creaked open. “Mom,” the girl said
again, in a low voice.

“Sssshhhhaaaa,” it hissed, excited about the new virgin
meal. Bell saw the creature’s distorted shape through the screen door. She
witnessed the blood soaked wood that surrounded her mother’s legs. Crying, Bell
began to quiver. “Mom! No!”

The creature rose up and then coiled low, its body tense for
take-off. Bell cried harder while standing on the other side of the flimsy
barrier, frozen. Before she could close the main, the monster launched forward
and smashed halfway through the screen, its hind claws digging for traction
while it reached its claws inside the house. Screeching, the girl clutched her
journal and turned away.

The creature kicked its razor talons and etched dozens of
white lines through the planks of the stained deck. Finally, the demonic beast
made it inside.

Russ found what was left of his family. Only pieces
remained. The evidence of what killed them was left in tracks through blood.
Lady barked while he dropped to his knees, looking at the prints that lead
through the house and down the porch. The old man would never forget that day.
He hated those goddamn things.

***

Russ walked off the front porch with his rifle slung over his
shoulder. “Come on girl,” the old man said to his dog. As if all were right
with the world, Lady wagged her tail high in the air.

Maybe I’ll go out a
little farther today,
he thought.