More Bedtime Stories for the Apocalypse (2 page)

He scanned the horizon. Now, even the coyote
had disappeared. He was alone. Abso-fucking-
lutely
alone. He
walked, stopping every once in a while to look around, get his
bearings, and listen. Sometimes he had to backtrack to find the
narrow trail. He stopped and took a drink of water from the plastic
jug. His pack grew heavy, but at least this time he’d thought to
wrap an old t-shirt around the strap so that it wouldn’t bite into
his shoulder.

Despite his caution, he made good time. He
figured he already trekked about two miles from his drop-off point
– about halfway to the Big River.

He checked his smart phone. Two forty-three
a.m. He should easily make the river crossing before dawn. Then it
was another half-mile to meet his contact. After that, it was only
a matter of catching a ride back to his apartment in El Paso, get
some sleep, a shower, some food, and head back to his uncle’s for
the cash.

Simple.

Except…

His foot caught on a clump of dry, hard
earth. He tripped and fell, twisting his ankle and landing hard on
his forearms and knees. When he caught his breath and sat up, blood
trickled from his elbows.

Shit.

He raised his goggles off his eyes.
Okay
. He slung his pack off his back and unzipped it, pawing
through the contents. There. A first-aid kit. See? Prepared.

Wincing, he pried it open and found alcohol
wipes, gauze, and tape. He cleaned off his elbows as best as he
could with his handkerchief dipped in his drinking water, and then
used a couple alcohol wipes on each elbow. His ankle throbbed.

One thing at a time
. He taped patches
of gauze over the scraped and bleeding skin of his elbows and
straightened each arm to make sure the gauze stayed secure.

Now how about that ankle? He took a deep
breath and slowly stood, keeping his weight off it as best as he
could.

Damn, it hurt, but…

But…He took a few steps and realized it
wasn’t as bad as he feared. Just had to walk it off a bit and he’d
be as good as new.

He walked in small circles, and soon the
pain turned to mere annoyance. He could live with that.

Let’s get a move-on.

He checked his compass and oriented himself.
He reached down for his…

Pack?

Where the hell was his pack?

Although his eyes had gotten used to the
starlight, he turned on his phone’s flashlight app and shined it
over salsola and creosote bush, and hard, dry earth.

He’d set his pack down to get out the
first-aid kit and…

He’d taken the first-aid kit out, and…

He’d used the first-aid kit.

And…

Put it back in the pack and zipped it up,
and…

Then he’d gotten up to test his ankle.
Walked in a few small – very small – circles.

Where was the damn pack?

He made a brief grid of the area with the
narrow phone light, crossing the beam back and forth, back and
forth.
Where the hell was it?

Losing it was not an option, because, well –
it contained a shit-load of coke, not to mention his drinking
water.

Where the fuck is my pack?

Okay, calm down. Take a deep breath. It’s
probably right in front of me.

He slowly combed the ground with the light
once again.
You’ll find it. Take your time.

He heard the crack of a bush. He froze. Held
his breath. Carefully lowered his night-vision goggles over his
eyes and turned his head in the direction of the noise.

There was a flash of light, blinding,
painful. Pete ripped the goggles from his face. Something hit the
back of his head, hard.

His face slammed into the dirt, and he got a
mouthful of earth. Blood flowed from his nose. He scrambled to get
up, but someone grabbed him and flipped him onto his back. His eyes
were out of focus from the blinding flash, and he waved his arms in
front of him defensively. He spit out a tooth at whoever it pinned
him to the ground. Man, that fucker was strong.

“
Get off me!” Pete shouted.

His vision sharpened. Stars appeared and
something was silhouetted against them. A head. A face. Something
protruded from the middle and wavered inches from Pete’s own
face.

It blinked.
An eye
. A single eye
hovering in front of him, attached to a foot-long fleshy stalk. The
stalk retreated back into the head, and where a mouth should’ve
been, something else protruded. A tube-like thing. The end of it
opened. It reminded Pete of a lamprey. A tongue slid out and
caressed Pete’s face.

Pete recoiled, but the tongue kept up with
him.

The tongue (
was
it a tongue?) was
warm. It tingled, and numbed whatever it touched.

It touched Pete’s lips.

It rubbed back and forth over the line where
his lips came together.

Pete pressed them tight, but they grew numb,
too...

What the fuck happened?

Pete shivered, despite the rising desert
heat. He checked his phone. No power. The thing was
fried
.
What time was it? The sun wasn’t high enough to be noon. Ten,
maybe? Nine?

He felt his skin, pressed his hands all over
his body. He tried to ignore the tiny pinpricks, but it was hard.
They were everywhere, and each time he pressed a spot on his flesh
it tingled, as if it had fallen asleep.

He didn’t want to know what that meant. Not
now.
Now
he had to concentrate on getting home. Should he
make the crossing during the day? Hike back to his uncle’s? It
would be a long hike, and he only knew the general direction.

He rummaged through his pack for his map,
and spread it out on the dry earth. The wind made it hard to hold
still, the edges curling up into the middle, so he put a chunk of
dirt on each corner and held the middle with the heel of his
palm.

There – the Rio Grande. He was close to it,
but where? Something wasn’t quite right. He glanced at the sun
again.

He was supposed to cross the river, walk
half a mile, and hand off the goods to a couple dudes in a green
pick-up truck. They expected him hours ago, and they wouldn’t stick
around too long. At least not
this
long. He had their cell
number, but what good was it with a fried-to-shit phone?

He glanced at the sun again. Something…

He figured it out. The sun. Rises in the
east, sets in the west.

Then why is it rising in the west?

Unless…

Unless it
is
rising in the east and
I’m already on the north side of the river.

What in the hell? That couldn’t be.

He picked up the map, shook it off, slung
his knapsack over his shoulder and walked toward the Rio
Grande.

His skin itched. The swelling was worse. A
sign of dehydration? He took another sip from his water jug. Still
at least a third full. He took a long drink.

He could see the river from where he stood.
He watched it flow, and unless the river had changed direction all
of a sudden, he was definitely on the north side of the river.

Texas.

That was a good thing, wasn’t it? But you
think you’d remember something like crossing the fucking Rio
Grande.

Instead, Pete remembered the thing with the
protruding eye and the lamprey-like mouth coming toward him, its
tongue sliding out and forcing its way through his clenched
lips.

It touched the tip of his tongue, and he
clamped down on it hard with his teeth. A spurt of warm fluid
filled Pete’s mouth. His mouth went numb.

He tried to spit it out, but couldn’t feel
if it worked. Even his throat grew numb.

He was afraid to look up, afraid to face the
thing that had knocked him to the ground, that had forced
its…
tongue
…into his mouth.

He lost the feeling in his neck, his nose,
his checks.

He forced himself to look at it.

The eye –
its
eye – protruded from
its stalk and hovered over Pete’s chest as if examining it. Its
snout moved slightly, jerking from the wound Pete had given it, but
then a new tongue popped out, the spot Pete had clamped down on
with his teeth whole again. It snaked out of the creature’s snout
and hung in the air briefly before slipping beneath the collar of
Pete’s shirt.

He couldn’t feel it until it reached his
chest, between his nipples, sliding warmly, numbingly over his
breastbone and stopping just above his belly button. There was a
sharp pain. Brief. Very brief, like the prick of a hypodermic
needle, and then there was the warmth and numbness.

God. What is it doing?

He tried to scream, but couldn’t move his
tongue and lips. He felt his drool fall into the crook of his
arm.

The tongue slid up and out of Pete’s shirt,
and then slid over Pete’s neck and back under the collar, over his
shoulder, stopping at his deltoid.

Again, a sharp, brief prick followed by
warmth and numbness.

The creature repeated this process again and
again all over Pete’s body, until he felt nothing; there was only
the sensation of floating in a warm, salty sea.

He walked away from the Rio Grande, heading
north. His ankle throbbed. His elbows, too. And everywhere, every
part of him, itched like hell. He’d tried scratching, but instead
of providing relief, it sent pain shooting through his body. Where
was his Benadryl when he needed it? He stopped, remembering the
joint he’d stashed a week ago in a hidden pocket of his pack. He
found it, lit it and sucked in deeply. He waited a moment and took
another big hit. And another. Finally, he felt a little calmer.

The eye on the stalk. The snout. The
tongue.

A dream. It had to be.

He took another hit off his joint. That was
better. He laughed to himself. One crazy fucking dream.

Time to get going. Find someone with a
phone. Make the delivery. Get back to his apartment. Maybe a long,
hot shower would make all this itching go away.

He found the drop off area, a lonely, dusty
back road bordered by cactus. He followed it, listening carefully
for vehicles or helicopters. Not a good time to be found by border
patrol. His American citizenship wouldn’t do him jack shit if they
dug through his pack.

He walked two miles, three. His water was
almost gone. He ate his last protein bar. He wanted to tear his
skin off. It felt like his blood had turned to highly carbonated
soda.

He heard a vehicle approaching. He dashed
off the road and hid behind the vegetation. The vehicle moved
slowly, and as it neared, Pete saw that it was a green pick-up. He
recognized the driver. He stepped out onto the road and waved.

Two hours later, Pete stumbled into the
emergency room of the Las Palmas Medical Center of El Paso. His
eyes blurred with matter. His skin felt like it was on fire, felt
like it was boiling right off of him.

He tried to speak to the person behind the
receiving desk, but instead he collapsed onto the floor.

A nurse hovered over him, talking, but Pete
couldn’t make out the words. They sounded garbled. Pete opened his
mouth to talk, tried to say, “I’m on fire, man!” but his tongue
wouldn’t work. He thought his mouth was full of ants.

A second nurse hovered over him. A third. He
barely realized what they were doing as they lifted him onto a
gurney. He could barely keep his eyes open. As he blinked, he
noticed one of the nurse’s scream something at him and back away.
Another nurse disappeared from his line of vision.

The last nurse at his side – the one who’d
first come to his aid – looked terrified. The last thing Pete saw
before he could no longer keep his eyes open was something – a
bunch of somethings – burst from his skin like popping corn and
attach to the nurse’s face.

It was such a relief – like how scratching
an itch was
supposed
to feel.

His skin popped off of him in small chunks,
sending the first wave of the invasion to spread throughout the
emergency room and beyond.

* * * * *

* * * * *

A figure sits beneath the large, leafy apple
tree in the distance. A woman, judging by the sundress and floppy
hat, but Jackson stays back, studying her, just to make sure. The
woman fans herself with an old, red Frisbee, and the movement of
her hand and wrist seems too smooth, too human to be one of
them
.

Jackson swallows. He hasn’t seen a woman, a
real woman, for so long. His jaw drops at the sight of her calves,
feminine and lovely. Definitely human. But to be safe, he stays in
place behind the thick, fragrant lilac bush he’s using for cover,
only straightening up enough so that she can see his face.

“
Hey!” He waves.

She slowly turns her head.

Definitely human – he can see that from
here.

She looks terrified.

“
It’s okay,” he calls. “I’m not one of
them.” Isn’t it obvious? He holds up his hands to show her he’s not
armed, and steps out from behind the lilacs. He glances around the
open field, making sure there’s no one else – no
thing
else
– coming.

As he nears, he notices dozens of fallen
apples, shriveled and rotting, surrounding her. She slowly shakes
her head as he approaches.

Jackson smiles. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t
hurt you.” He studies her carefully. Her cheeks are flush, eyes
clear, the hand waving the Frisbee intact, the skin supple,
fingernails clean and trimmed. “What’s your name?”

She doesn’t answer.

He steps closer, breathing in the sickly
sweet apple smell. “My name’s Kenneth Jackson. I promise I won’t
hurt you.”

She waves the Frisbee faster and closes her
eyes.

She’s terrified
, Jackson thinks.
Maybe I should just let her be
. But doesn’t she know how
much danger she’s in? Just sitting there all alone?