Authors: KC Klein
Dark Future (2 page)
M
y better-body-double or BBD, as I was calling her, drove my car at a reckless speed along the semi-deserted highway. I sat in the passenger seat, bracing myself against the dashboard and clutching a duffel bag heavy enough to include the kitchen sink. Daybreak was imminent as the dark sky lightened to a blue-black.
My BBD seemed overly concerned with the approaching dawn and kept glancing to the eastern horizon, muttering things like, “running out of time,” and “she’s got to go back.”
“So, the future huh?” I’d been trying to reason with her for the last five minutes, but it wasn’t working. I didn’t believe any of her deranged talk, but playing along seemed the best avenue of getting information. “Your weapon, it doesn’t seem very advanced. The gun you’re toting is pretty standard of what’s on TV. What, there’s no ‘set the laser to stun, Scottie,’ in the future?”
I thought my joke was pretty darn funny considering the circumstances, but my BBD shot me a glance that quelled all humor. I could almost believe that she was my future-self, except for the eyes. They were stone cold and so very callous. Every time she shot me a look, my skin crawled.
“The future, it’s not like that. It’s not . . . better,” she said, focusing back on the road.
“What do you mean?” Her tone of impending doom was starting to wear on me.
“Do you remember our grandfather and how we would go and visit him during the summer?”
I nodded. I’d given up on rationalizing how she knew intimate details about my life. Crazy was a river you just floated along on.
The summers with my grandfather were some of my favorite memories. The days filled with sweet tea, fly fishing, and no one worrying when you stayed out past dark.
“Do you remember how he would talk to us about the end of the world? How we were living in the last days?”
I nodded again, not really understanding where this was leading. Grandpa had been a pastor at the local church. He hadn’t taught brimstone and hellfire, but he was concerned about “Judgment Day,” as he called it.
“Well, it happened, Kris. Armageddon is for real. And the future is
A shudder crawled along my skin. Whatever this was—a delusion, a psychotic episode, a carb-induced nightmare—she believed it. In her mind the end of the world was the absolute truth.
We turned into a deserted parking lot that led to the hiking paths up into the mountain preserve. The trail head was marked with a sign asking dog owners to pick up after their pets, along with a supply of “doggie bags” for the forgetful owner. A copper water fountain and empty horse trough filled in the rest. She parked the car and turned off the ignition, then focused her attention on me.
“I don’t want to tell you too much. I don’t want to bias your decisions. You just need to have more . . . integrity, more trust.” She ran both hands through her hair and slicked back the disheveled mess. “Ah, I wish I knew, but I don’t. This time it has to work.”
“Tell me too much? You haven’t told me jack. What has to work this time?” Wisps of apprehension swirled in my belly. This woman looked too familiar and knew too much for me to keep dismissing her. “Is that what I’m supposed to do? Stop Armageddon from happening?”
“No.” She shook her head. “That’s already happened. You’ll be too late for that.”
She spoke with a conviction that only an eyewitness would have.
“Jesus,” I said.
A bitter laugh flowed from her lips. “Oh, how I wish, but
he’s
already come and gone, so the world will have to make do with you.”
Great. Only a savior fits the job, and instead the world gets a surgical intern.
I unzipped the duffel bag, curious at what she deemed vital for my “do it better this time” quest. A glass jar of pasta sauce, no noodles, a half dozen cans of baked beans, one tuna—no can opener. I dug some more, dental floss, a wad of tissues, a box of Band-Aids, and a lone tampon.
“What am I suppose to do with this?” I lifted the bag to show her the contents.
She seemed as shocked as I about what made it into the duffel.
“Okay, so you never perfect the skipanfect thll of packing under pressure.” She grabbed the bag and threw it into the back seat. “All you really need is what you’ve put in your fanny pack.”
She looked at me as if expecting me to do something.
“Now what?” I asked.
“You go.”
“Go where?” This was insane. Was I really contemplating doing what this woman was telling me?
“Go out there.” She pointed toward the trail head. “Go climb the mountain. Go for a run.”
“And then what?”
“Don’t worry. The ‘what’ will happen. Just go. Dawn is almost here. We don’t have much time.”
I arched my eyebrows in disbelief. “So you’re really going to make me do this?”
“Yes, dammit. Just go already. Are you always this annoying with the questions? Go. For. A. Run. Is that specific enough for you?”
I had enough of her attitude. I opened the car door and slid out.
“Wait!” she shouted, before I closed the car door. “One more thing.”
I hunched over so I could peer at her through the opening.
“Don’t tell ConRad that you saw me. Or anyone else for that matter. He doesn’t believe in The Prophesy. When you first meet him, he’s very suspicious and very . . . um . . . angry. So if he believes you’re a spy—he’ll kill you.”
And this was the man I am supposed to save? The whole story was nuts. I mean, she kills him and then he possibly kills me. This made no sense. Of course, that’s the definition of insanity.
I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. I always had a tender spot for crazy people, my mother for one. It might not be pretty, but hey, insanity happens.
“Let’s talk?” I said. “We can make our way over to th siy over e hospital. Get you a nice warm shower and a hot meal.” And then whatever colored pill that would make you uncrazy.
In one quick move she pulled out her weapon, and I was staring down the barrel of a gun for the
second
time in my life.
“Don’t make me put a hole in your arm.”
But this time I wasn’t scared. Twisted logic traveled both ways on this mentally unstable freeway. “You wouldn’t shoot me. It would be like shooting yourself. And how stupid is that?”
Yeah, right back atcha, babe.
“I’ve lived through worse. The question is—have you?” Her voice back to command mode.
In that second I believed her. She oozed of hard core. But me? Nope, I didn’t do pain well. I slammed the door. “You’re crazy, Lady! Absolutely nuts. You belong in a padded room where they give you drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.”
She opened her car door and barreled toward me, gun waving. I froze, second-guessing my impeccable logic that she wasn’t going to kill me.
The gun cocked with a sickening click. She aimed, then shot the ground by my feet. I screamed, threw my arms over my head, and did the one-legged dance.
“I’ll give you a five-minute head start, and then I’m coming after you. And so help me God, if you’re not half way up the mountain, I’ll make you dig our grave, and I’ll p
ut us both in there myself.”
B
oth feet hit the ground in a clumsy sprint up the rocky path. After about five minutes, the death threat of oxygen deprivation and a gunshot to the arm were neck and neck.
I braced my hands on my knees and sucked wind. Blood started flowing to my brain again and rational thought returned. I’d been up this trail numerous times. I used to run this every other day after work, and I knew two things for sure: There was a parking lot on the other side of the mountain, and the mobile phone in my fanny pack was useless until I left the preserve. I just had to keep ahead of hecomr . . . and pray she wouldn’t commit her suicide and my murder.
My breathing slowed to a more normal rate, and I continued up the trail at a less death-defying pace. The moon had set, but the stars were bright enough that I could make out the dirt trail and was able to avoid tripping over the majority of the rocks.
It was a few miles up the mountain and down to the other parking lot, so I settled in for long run. The landscape was in deep shadow, but I knew this place. This was home.
The desert was an acquired taste like that of strong coffee or an aged whiskey. Ancient cactus and enduring mesquite trees made their home in a hostile and thirsty ground. I had a sort of hard-earned respect for a land that held fast to the heat of the sun like a mother would her newborn baby. Because despite the cover of night, the temperature still kissed the nineties.
A tingling of goose bumps trailed along my arms, spreading to the thin skin over my skull. Endorphins flowed to my brain and aligned my thoughts like a completed puzzle. Either time travel was possible and everything my BBD said was true, or something way more plausible—I was off my rocker.
Yeah, there was no escaping; crazy ran strong along hereditary lines. Some families are bent. They’re just made that way. There are things a Freudian couch and a handful of antidepressants couldn’t fix—though a bottle of vodka usually made a damn good attempt. After all, it had been my mother’s favorite form of therapy.
The toe of my shoe caught, and for one second I was suspended in air, the next sprawled across the dirt trail. My knee stung as I turned and sat on my butt to pick out the pebbles digging into my skin. My ankle throbbed. I flexed my foot and winced. No broken bones, but possibly a pulled tendon. It would be smarter to wait and finish the trail in daylight, but a crazy woman with a gun was as good of motivation as any.
The sun was trying to peek over the distant mountain range, throwing pinks and purples across the sky. Twenty feet away, in a shallow ravine, a mesquite stretched wide, offering protection from the coming heat. A joke of shelter really—more of a tease, but I pushed to my feet and limped closer.
Black spots obscured my vision. I rubbed my eyes with the heel of my dirty palm. Instead of dissipating, the spots grew and multiplied. The edges around the holes crinkled like fire, burning gaps in the atmosphere, like cigarette holes to paper.
I shook my head and tried to clear my vision, but the black holes metastasized, eating away the sky like a cancer.
Then vision faded altogether. Nothing. Darkness.
I bent over and lowered my hands to my knees. Dizziness rolled through my stomach in a wave. I reached out to steady myself against the trunk, but instead of rough bark, my hand flailed wildly around, meeting nothing but air.
I lost my bal
ance, tipped forward, and fell into darkness.
P
ain. God, there was pain. Every joint ached. Every muscle seemed stretched beyond its limit. And cold. When had it gotten this cold? I opened my eyes. Where was I?
And then like an animal sensing fear, I knew something was wrong. Black. There was nothing but oily blackness. Was I still outside? Had I been passed out that long? I turned my head toward the sky expecting the soft glow of stars and the moon, nothing.
I struggled to a sitting position, stiff from the cold ground. I fanned my hands out groping in the dark like a twisted game of blindman’s bluff. The tips of my fingers brushed against a dirt wall. I scootched and placed my back against the rough coolness. At least my butt was safe.
Something wasn’t right. Every cell in my body seemed to beat out one message—run. But I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, much less run away.
It was as if the blackness sucked out all light and sound. There were no low hum of passing cars, no blare of sirens. Even a quiet desert was never this silent. No chirping crickets or rustling leaves. No scurry of life. Just my harsh panting—loud even to my own ears.
And the smell. I drew a deep breath of air trying to identify the scent. No sage or rosemary, or even the metallic smells of the city, but something off, foul, like . . . decay?
Panic wrapped around my heart and squeezed. As a doctor I’d smelled this before. It was an odor that came with the job as much as the scrubs and pagers. Death.
Only decomposing flesh could emit such a foul stench.
The rancid smell grew and burned my nostrils. I slapped my hand over my nose and struggled to swallot sw the taste of rot, as it slicked down my throat.
God, let it be a dead animal and not some corpse lying here next to me.
The thought shot me to my feet—scraping my back along the rocky wall. I stood legs apart, hands fisted and ready to do battle. The body might have fallen here and died of natural causes . . . or something else might’ve killed it.
Darkness chipped away at what little courage I had. I shook so bad, my legs could barely support my weight. But there was something I was missing, something that my muddled brain had forgotten.
“My phone,” I cried with relief. I’d thrown my phone in my fanny pack before I’d left the house. And maybe, just maybe, I could get service. Cold and numb, my fingers grappled with the zipper and finally won. I recognized the smooth plastic, but fumbled and dropped my lifeline with a sickening thud.
“Crap,” I sobbed.
I fell to my knees and did the universal hand-pat-sweep in complete darkness. Moving in wider and wider circles, I crawled forward. But the phone evaded me, as if the darkness had devoured the small black rectangle for breakfast.
Good God, where is it?
My imagination ran rampant with the image of a decayed body, complete with missing limbs and only half a face. I was certain I was within a hair-span of sticking my hand into a pile of squishy flesh.
A breeze blew past my ear—a mere shift in the wind? Then, a touch to my shoulder, not hard, more like a brush or a . . . lick?
I stopped my frantic search, and slammed myself back. My hands braced against the rock behind me, nails trying to find purchase in the hard dirt. Frenzied, I wiped my shoulder and my fingers came away wet and sticky.
I turned my head from side to side, desperate for any source of light, when a heated, moist gust of air blew into my face. My hair fluttered around my face as my chilled body warmed. I sucked in and drank the smell of the fetid air as it washed over me. Gagging, I tasted remnants of last night’s cookies, and swallowed them . . . a second time.
Adrenaline levels spiked. I froze and did the only thing I could think of—I prayed.
God please let this tacky moist stuff be from the only mature pine tree in all of Scottsdale, growing in the only deep crater on this mountain preserve because God, if I’m not here alone, I’m truly going to piss my pants and pass straight away from sheer terror.
I didn’t get an answer. Prayers didn’t work that way, just the sound of me hyperventilating in the dark.
In the distance, a circle of neon-blue light appeared and crept steadily toward me. The light skimmed across the red-packed ground, gliding over jagged rocks and shallow furrows. The harsh florescent glow surrounded me, turning my skin an unnatural blue. Then slowly, the circle widened, revealing the ugliest, most terrifying creature I’d ever seen.
I screamed.