The Black Seas of Infinity (20 page)

As I charge through the brush I lose my right
headlight in a jarring sideswipe. The truck careens awkwardly, a
throng of cordwood snaring the undercarriage. It pauses uneasily
for a moment, then plunges down the embankment and into the
river.

Water flares up the sides and pours in the
door wells. I roll down the riverbank, the translucent shallows
quickly mutating into a murky green. Propelling myself out the open
door, I gyrate into a swimming position. Something strikes my leg
forcefully, pulling me down. It’s the Humvee, dragging me along as
it sinks to the bottom. The water slows both of us into a sluggish
ballet, the stage a steady descent through darkening waters. Things
blur into dusty silhouettes as I fall. The vehicle tilts sideways
and angles downward. One tire strikes the river floor, and the
whole truck rotates forward, drifting onto its roof and agitating
the mire into a cloudy squall. I kick my legs and swim upwards.

As the gloom starts to lighten, I hear a
whistling noise. Several others follow it. There must be soldiers
firing into the water! They probably don’t trust that I perished,
seeing as how even a rocket blast didn’t stop me earlier. I spin
forward, stopping my ascent, and follow the flow of the river.
Small schools of fish flow around me in a murky fog. The water
seems polluted. I’m registering traces of chemical compounds. I was
never an expert on this stuff, and I’m not receiving any clear
breakdown. I don’t think the readings are even in a human
dialect.

After what seems like hours, the heaving mass
is becoming oppressive. I’m starting to feel lost and a little
claustrophobic. I swim toward the light, the shifting levels
growing more translucent as I ascend. Finally, they fall away in a
taut spurt as my head breaks the surface.

I’m in a huge lake. The choppy waves obscure
my vision with an undulating horizon of crests and troughs. A weak
mist peppers my face.

I can make out the distant forms of a few
smaller ships, pale gray shapes bobbing up and down amongst the
waves. One looks like a decent-sized barge, mostly a rust color
with what appears to be a tire dangling over the edge. A few people
mill about the deck, the afternoon sun beating down mercilessly,
giving the whites of their clothes a reflected sheen. If I remember
correctly this is Sabine Lake. My best chances are to make it down
to the marshes bordering the Gulf of Mexico. It might not be worth
it to risk procuring a vehicle right now. I’m still too close to
that army blockade, and I would bet more of Texas is bound together
in an antagonistic mentality than most northern states. This lake
leads into the Sabine River, which should take me to a more
desolate area. It’ll be much slower traveling than in a vehicle,
but it should throw off any pursuit. Sinking back into the depths,
I resume swimming.

Time drags by. Larger forms pass below me in
the shadows. I wonder what else is down here. On a whim I propel
myself lower, the darkness increasing as I descend. Even with my
enhanced vision, the gloom is almost impenetrable. Black shapes
writhe by, their contours barely visible in the twilight. An
unnaturally straight silhouette juts up, its lattice of dim bars
rising from the abyss below. It’s probably the girders of some
antique oilrig, its limbs clutching in vain for rescue. I’ll bet
there are bodies down here as well. Wasn’t there a Civil War battle
not far from here? At Sabine Pass, I think. Most of Texas has been
embroiled in some conflict or other until the recent century. The
current quickens its pace. It must be the end of the lake, the
water bottling up as it flows back into the river. I’ll need to
surface soon.

The dark forms of massive underwater piles
loom in front, supports for what must be a bridge overhead. That
would be my gateway to the marshes, and freedom from this
waterlogged tedium.

The concrete struts drift closer, their
algae-encrusted flanks materializing out of the dark. I angle
toward the one on the right. It’s a giant stone pillar, its edges a
tattered veil of clinging seaweed. Swimming past the column, I
break the surface for a quick reconnaissance. There are the docks
of an island—or possibly peninsula—in the distance. Just a little
farther. I sink back under the waves and keep swimming.

After a few minutes, I pop my head up above
the waves. Signs of civilization have disappeared. Churning water
surrounds me, wispy tracks of grass dotting a distant shoreline on
both sides. The two riverbanks look the same—devoid of trees and
populated by scraggly plots of yellowed grass. No houses, nothing
industrial. Just a blue sky and gently billowing vegetation. Much
better.

I duck under and bear toward the shoreline,
the sea floor rising up to greet me as I draw in. Slowing down, I
drop my feet and start walking, breaking up out of the waves like a
rising sea monster. I probably even look the part, blanketed by
weeds.

The small stretch of sand flows into a
rippling nest of tall marsh grass. I tromp up the strand and into
the thicket.

The ground rises and sinks in small
embankments of root-choked soil, radiating out for an elevated
stretch before falling back down into swampy ravines of muddy
water. I tread lightly, curling up the ends of my feet in an
attempt to avoid getting entangled in the roots. Bugs skim by on
the waterlogged surface, clustering in swarms of flickering black
specks around my buried legs. I glance around, surveying the
landscape. Wide fields of waving grass flow all around, a misty
tree line far in the distance. Thick cumulonimbus clouds roll
lazily through the darkening blue sky. The trailing vestiges of
last night’s storm. The sun has sunk low, the fading yellow light
casting the remote treetops into a ragged profile.

Night has arrived by the time I reach the
woods. The vestiges of reflected light play off the edges of the
clouds. I step out of the high grass and onto rocky soil. Tall
columns of oak cast the landscape into a shaded maze. As I walk in,
the ambient light fluctuates with the flow of clouds, degrading the
wide corridors into a complex labyrinth.

I nearly topple over as I ram my knee into a
fallen trunk. A slight breach in the cloud cover offers me a
glimpse as I’m recovering my balance. Absolute blackness sweeps in.
There’s no reflected city light for me to feed off of, and I keep
bumping into trees.

The overhanging shelter thins out, the
columns falling away as a road emerges. A worn river of asphalt
weaves out of a far off huddle of trees, flowing through in a long
arch and crossing my path as it rolls by. I cross, the stars eerie
and silent in their isolation, and am swallowed up by the clutching
darkness once again.

The cover doesn’t last long, giving way to a
grassy pasture of hardy weeds and brackish water. Dusky pools
glisten in the moonlight, small eddies and ripples casting strings
of silver across the surface. I feel a slight pressure on my ankle
and hear a brittle crunch. I’ve just been bitten by a snake! A dark
form slithers off into the maze of stalks. I wonder what kind of
snake that was? Not that it matters. It won’t make it very long
without any teeth.

I keep walking, tramping through a prairie of
high grass. The blades gently wave with the breeze, the tips a pale
blue in the starlight. A distant forest dominates the horizon, the
base hazy in the rolling fog. Frogs croak and marsh rats squirm
through the underbrush, their furtive movements a baneful chorus. A
gloomy presence emanates from the bog. It feels as if I’ve fallen
into some lost sinkhole of time.

I realize that I’ve never felt so alone. A
twinge of regret gnaws at me. Will I ever love a woman again? Have
a home base or anything vaguely resembling a normal life? Probably
not. How do you make friends and associates when you can’t even
talk? I think of all those old monster movies, the kind they made
before special effects trumped storytelling. The forlorn creatures
always had a love interest, and it always ended badly, usually
involving an endemic domicile that was ultimately invaded and
exploited. Ancient stories are based off oral traditions, which
more often than not have a grain of truth, and the tale is probably
timeless. It’s the nature of man, who fears what he doesn’t
understand and blindly lashes out, feeling only a hint of remorse
as he sanctimoniously rewrites history. Unfortunately, it might be
a fixed bout, but as Bill Jones said, “It’s the only game in
town.”

I don’t miss my former self, but having no
contact with humanity is a hard pill to swallow. I trudge on toward
Mexico.

The sun has risen, casting a sharp, early
morning light over the savanna. I plod on through a watery sludge.
Far off to one side I can make out the shadows of what appear to be
manmade structures, the stiff contours contrasting sharply with the
willowy grass. I don’t know whether or not to investigate. If I
could steal a vehicle, this whole trip would be much quicker. Fuck
it. I pick up my pace.

The marsh underfoot sucks at my footfalls,
conspiring to slow me down. The moor rolls up over a slight
incline, and as I descend I spy a sunken queue in the weeds. A few
more steps and the opening comes into view. It’s a badly maintained
dirt road, essentially two tire tracks of sand, the bumpy ruts
carving through a clearing of trampled grass. The right one trails
off into the endless plains whereas the left heads toward a small
town in the distance. A thick barrier of grass chokes off the
opposite side, but beyond lies a larger road. Further scrutiny
reveals it’s paved. I’ll stick to the service road. I break out of
the swampland and head left, toward the distant village.

The twin tracks widen into a sandy trail, and
the wall of grass dwindles into a slender hedge. The day takes
shape, becoming clear and warm, the clouds having been burned out
of the sky by the blaze of an imperious sun.

The landscape is bathed in a torrent of
light. If I were human, I would need sunglasses to fend off the
glare.

Materializing on the horizon are the
gray-painted cubes of what looks like a small electric power plant.
The dull metal drums spout beady antennas, the tops a sweeping
bundle of wires trailing away toward distant wooden telephone
poles. A chain link fence encloses the lot, the gates locked tight.
A small paved road cuts in front, accompanying the poles on the
left as they flow into a nest of trees. The trail continues on the
right, stopping short at the highway and restarting on the opposite
side.

There wouldn’t be a road here if it didn’t
lead somewhere. To the left is where I saw those domestic forms. If
there is no small town, there might at least be some monitoring
station or small facility. If they have a vehicle, the more
secluded they are, the better. Turning left, I trod down the dusty
road. An ocean breeze carrying the aromas of salt and brine whips
through the treetops.

The trail dips momentarily into the shadow of
a small cluster of trees before emerging again into the bright
Texas sunlight. Small dust devils rise up and then slowly die out
in the dusty ruts. The sides fall away into a crumbled maze of root
and sand. The wilderness I just came from stretches out on the
left, but the right—that looks a little more cultivated. Neatly
trimmed trees in a small grove, with the silvery glimpse of a pond
beyond.

The thicket falls away as I walk, the meadow
of grass stretching out to a cluster of bushes, the unmistakable
forms of houses beyond.

A half-hour later, and the road has followed
a semi-circular path around the settlement. Another utility outpost
pops up on my left. To my right is a two-level house of dark wood.
The white form of a silo, or possibly a water tower, rises beyond.
A late model SUV is parked in front.

The car is a Chevy Suburban, the sunlight
bouncing off its black frame. The house looks empty, its drawn
curtains divulging a vacant interior. I approach the truck.

As I near the driver’s side window something
pelts me right between the eyes and with enough force to stop me in
mid step. I glance up. The slender barrel of a rifle gleams from a
second- storey window. I can make out the shadowed form of a person
behind the scope, but no details. The gun looks small, probably a
.223, but high impact. That was actually really good shooting.
Another slug hits me directly in the eye. I’m blinded for a minute,
staggering back as I’m enveloped by a momentary sensation of panic.
I hear the bolt sliding back and duck forward just as another round
ricochets off the top of my head. Fuck this!

I start running at the silo, another bullet
striking my shoulder. A quick turn to the right, and I’m around the
corner of the house and headed out toward an open field. Just
beyond it are scattered trees, a red brick house in the distance.
This might have been a bad decision. I’m out in the open, and at
least one person has noticed my presence. If he notifies the right
people, it’s going to be difficult to hide. Where should I go?

I look around. There are walls of trees, but
I have no idea how deep the woods are. A shallow grove would just
make my entrapment all the easier. I saw some ponds on the way in.
They might be deep enough. I could wade into them and hide. Unless
they’re onto that, in which case they’ll prove a restraining watery
mess. I stumble through the trees and out into another open field,
the brick three-storey house not far away. I just hope the last guy
didn’t call this villager and warn him to be on the lookout. He
shot first, no questions asked, and it was a kill shot. These
people are in such an agitated state that I wouldn’t put anything
past them. I bet they’re all Jesus freaks around here. Holders of a
world view in which there is no room for monsters that walk the
Earth. Especially during what they might see as the end times.

As I burst through a second row of trees, I
see a slender white guy dressed in well pressed jeans, red flannel,
and a white baseball cap. He looks young, probably barely in his
twenties. He’s opening the driver’s side door to a gold Toyota
Tacoma pickup, his back to me. I charge.