Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (15 page)

“Grab my hand,”
he said as the battle raged in near silence.

A colorful
sleeve of tattoos reached out, snapping tight on Samuel’s wrist. He pulled
until there was enough for him to grab Kole’s elbow with his other arm. Samuel
dug his heels in and yanked again. Kole’s head emerged, his eyes frantic. With
his free arm, Kole swatted at his attackers as if they were hornets from a
crushed nest. Samuel took another step backward until the resistance dropped,
sending him into the railing of the front porch. The impact knocked the air
from his lungs. Kole landed on top of him. The door swung open, and Major and
Mara each grabbed one of Kole’s arms and dragged him inside the cabin. They
dropped him in a whimpering pile near the fire and went back for Samuel. Major
spun and shut the door. He ran to the window and looked out. The forms involved
in the fight had stopped moving, standing in place as the others halted their
advance on the cabin, as if shut down by a master switch.

“Are you okay?”
Mara asked Kole.

He brushed her
hand aside and grabbed Samuel by the shirt collar. He turned his head to the
side, trying to force the words over his hitching breath.

“Thanks for
nothing, asshole,” said Kole. He reached back and punched Samuel in the nose. Samuel
saw the explosion of color in his field of vision and felt the warm flow of
salty blood starting to ooze down his throat. Before he could wince in pain, he
lost consciousness.

Mara slapped
Kole in the back of the head. He stood, wobbled to one side, and backhanded her
across the face. The sharp slap bounced off the walls of the cramped cabin. She
dropped to one knee, her hand massaging the red mark blooming on her cheek. Major
stepped up, and Kole met him in the middle of the room.

“Back off, old
man,” he said.

“Sit and calm
down.”

Kole looked at
Major and then at Mara. He snickered and slumped down the wall to the floor,
erasing his dust-drawn creations.

“It don’t
matter. Death by zombie or by Reversion. It’s all the same to me.”

***

Samuel winced
as he rolled over and sat up, brushing a lock of hair off his forehead. The
heel of his palm glanced off the bridge of his nose, and he felt the pain
radiate through his entire body. His eyes watered, and he bit his lip. When his
vision cleared, Samuel struggled to see past the swollen mess of his face. Major,
Mara, and Kole sat in a circle on the rickety chairs, Major keeping one eye on
the window and one on the situation in the Barren.

Samuel stood
and swayed, reaching out with both hands to grasp the wall and keep the room
from spinning. Dried blood had caked in the creases of his face and stained his
neck with dark, maroon lines. Samuel touched the bridge of his nose until the pain
begin to blossom. He grabbed a chair and swung it around until it sat between
Kole and Mara.

“Sucker punch,”
he mumbled to Kole.

“Whatever,”
Kole replied.

“Are you okay?”
Mara asked as she touched his forearm. “I mean from them, not your nose. That
looks pretty bad too, though.”

“Isn’t the
first time I broke it. Probably won’t be the last.”

Major glanced
over his shoulder and then turned back to the window.

“What did I
miss while I was bleeding on the floor?”

“More,” said
Mara. “You can barely see anything but the tops of their disgusting heads. Filthy,
stringy hair as far as you can see. They sway back and forth like long grass in
the wind, but none of them move. It’s like they’re filling in the gaps so that
we’re packed in here.”

Samuel stooped
and leaned over Mara to look out the window. He saw countless, empty, dead
faces staring back in the maddening silence. Samuel thought it wouldn’t be so
bad if they made noise, or screamed, or pounded on the door. The silence of the
decaying locality combined with the ominous approach of the cloud overhead sent
a chill up his spine.

“They won’t
move unless one of us tries to leave the cabin. Then their brittle bones
shuffle ahead in one mass.”

“The fuckers
wanted a piece of me,” said Kole, never taking his eyes off the window.

“No,” said
Major. He shook his head. “They were holding you down. I don’t think they were
trying to harm you.”

“Nice to know I
risked my ass and took a sucker punch to the nose for nothing.”

Kole looked at
Samuel’s nose and then at Mara. “Got your pity pussy all worked up. You should
thank me for that.”

Mara sent a glare
of disgust toward him.

Major pushed
back on his chair until the front two legs came off the floor. “I don’t know
how we’re supposed to fight through so many of those things, but I do know that
if we don’t, the cloud will reach this cabin soon, and the Reversion will take
us with it. If there is any hope of survival, we have to get out of here.”

Mara reached
out again and placed a hand on Samuel’s arm, while Kole shook his head and
snickered under his breath.

***

The fire
smoldered over the coals, the heat failing to dispel the chill from the cabin
as if the flame itself was losing its will to exist in the locality. Mara
stirred a wooden ladle inside an iron pot with a steady, mindless motion while
staring at the wall. Kole and Major sat next to each other on their respective
chairs, shoulder to shoulder, casting long gazes across the undead landscape. Samuel
walked over and stood next to Mara. He inhaled and recognized scent of her hair,
and thought that when the Reversion dulled the rest of his senses, he might
lose his mind. A chuckle escaped his lips as the term “cabin fever” rolled
around in his head.

“What?” she
asked.

“Nothing.”

“So you laugh
at random times about nothing? Are you psychotic?”

“I remembered a
phrase that made me laugh, that’s all,” replied Samuel.

Kole stole a
glance over one shoulder and decided that the rotten horde was more interesting
than Samuel and Mara’s conversation.

“Do you
remember stuff?” Samuel asked.

Mara stopped
stirring and let the ladle rest against the side. “More than I care to,” she
replied.

“I get
snapshots. I see a picture from my past, and the story fills in around it. One
second, my past doesn’t exist, and the next, an image brings back a chunk of
it.”

Mara shrugged. “If
this Reversion is really the end, and those things aren’t letting us out, I’m
not sure it really matters. Not sure anything does.”

“I agree,” he
replied.

“I don’t think
this . . .,” said Mara, with an arm spinning to unfold the cabin, the Barren,
the locality, the entire situation. “I don’t think this matters. It’s not in
our control.”

“Kind of
depressing.”

“Kind of true,”
she replied.

Major and Kole
remained seated and silent, their eyes following the swaying bodies.

Samuel felt a
desire for privacy, a need to have Mara’s conversation all to himself. He
looked about the cabin and its four menacing walls, which seemed to creep in further
toward the center. He remembered his dream and the conversation with Kole.

“I think I need
to rest,” he said to Mara.

She nodded. Samuel
balled a rucksack for a pillow and curled up in the corner, while the heat from
the fire did little to comfort him.

***

He opened
his eyes to a bustle of activity. Glowing orbs of glass hung from a silver
cable, warming the room with incandescent light. The strong, bitter aroma of
roasted coffee filled every crevice. Burlap sacks that once held beans hung
from the walls, decorated with stamps from their countries of origin. A
behemoth, silver beast sat in one corner, rumbling as it kept the gourmet ice
cream frozen. The machine on the counter whistled, and a barista coaxed the hot
air into a frothy mix.

A man with a
black fedora sat in the corner, perched atop a three-legged stool like a pigeon
on a skyscraper. He wore a maple-bodied acoustic guitar strapped across his
torso, and his fingers moved across the frets, spilling blue notes and minor chords
into the swirling mix of muted conversation and clanking dishes. Samuel
recognized the melody, an old delta blues standard, but he could not place the
song. A microphone jutted from the top of a stand, but the guitarist ignored
its existence, his head down and swaying along with the swinging beat created
by his right hand above the sound hole.

Samuel
looked down at a white mug on a table. A book and a folded newspaper sat askew,
the newspaper dangling from the edge as if trying to escape. He could see the
dark swirls in his chai latte as the steam climbed through the air. He noticed
a half dozen other people involved in various solitary acts together. One woman
bounced her head in rhythm to the song confined to her ear buds, ignoring the
guitarist pouring his soul forth from the guitar. One man sat in the corner, a
single chair at a small table facing the wall. He thumbed through a crumpled, dog-eared
book. A young couple sat at a table across the room. They both wore safety pins
for earrings and patches on their black leather jackets, declaring allegiance
to long-dead punk bands. The man had his hands on the table face up, while the
woman had hers inside of his, facedown. They gazed into each other’s faces,
oblivious to everyone else in the room.

Samuel
turned back to the bluesman. He saw the alabaster skin on his hands and
chuckled. Purists claimed the white man could never play the blues like the originators,
but he wasn’t a purist. Samuel closed his eyes and let the familiar, twelve-bar
pattern soothe his nerves.

“Is this
seat taken?”

The question
ripped him from his thoughts, and he opened his eyes to find a woman standing
before him, holding a steaming mug and a Danish on a plate. The corner of the
wax paper beneath the pastry stuck out at Samuel like a preschooler’s tongue.

“No,” he
replied.

Samuel felt
an immediate sense of connection with the woman, or more accurately the girl. But
he also felt a deep sadness. She appeared to be on the verge of womanhood,
sparkling eyes, slight hips, and an optimism about love and life that she would
share with everyone she knew.

She wore her
jet-black hair below the shoulder in wavy patterns that reflected deep, purple
hues in the light of the coffee shop. Samuel loved the way it framed her oval
face. The woman’s skin shone with a brilliance punctuated by dark eye shadow
and glistening, maroon lips. She shed her bulky winter coat to reveal a lithe
form beneath. Faded, black jeans clung to her shapely legs and rode low on slender
hips. She wore a ragged, gray sweater over a black, nylon top that held her
breasts upright. Samuel guessed her to be in her early twenties, but with a
vulnerability that made her appear even younger. He made eye contact, trying to
avoid being hypnotized by her blue eyes.

“I’m Mara,”
she said, extending her hand outward while placing her coffee on the table with
the other.

“Samuel,” he
replied.

“I never
approach guys. Even at the bar. Sorry if this is a bit awkward.”

He smiled
and waved off the fumbling attempt at ice-breaking. “It’s fine.”

Mara paused
and took a long look. She gazed at Samuel, and he saw electricity pass through
her face.

“Oh my god,”
she whispered.

Samuel sat
still. He lifted his mug to his lips until the coffee singed his bottom lip.

“What am I
doing here?” she asked.

Without
waiting to confirm her revelation, Samuel explained. “I know I’m asleep. Dreaming.
Maybe you are, too. Even if you’re not, I think we can communicate this way. I
did with Kole.”

She froze,
as if that name had slapped her across the face. She looked around at the
bluesman, the punk lovers, the bustling barista.

“I don’t
know,” she said. Mara looked at her hands, holding shiny, red nails up to her
face. “It feels so real.”

“Most dreams
do, until you wake up.”

She nodded
in agreement. “How can we— What should—”

Samuel
laughed as Mara’s brain struggled to process what was happening. “I don’t know.
The dream scenario I had with Kole was, well, not quite as comfortable as this
one. Why don’t we enjoy our gourmet coffees and talk?”

Mara looked
over each shoulder as if the authorities were about to break down the door in an
FBI raid.

“I think
we’re good until I wake up. Scone?”

She smiled
and leaned back in the chair. “I miss this,” she said, twirling a strand of
hair around her slim fingers. “I miss my hair, the fragrance of my body wash, insignificant
things.”

“Funny how
life’s little pleasures escape your notice until you lose it all,” Samuel
replied. “I miss my music.”

He turned to
face the man in the fedora. The melody had changed. The key had changed. However,
the faceless guitar slinger continued to jam those comfortable, familiar
chords.

“Tell me
about you,” Samuel said.

Mara blushed
and passed a hand in front of her face.

“Sorry. That
sounded so bad. Didn’t mean to embarrass you.” He shuffled in his seat and
moved his mug from one hand to the other.

“It’s okay. I’m
not very good around guys.”

“What do you
mean?” he asked, leaning forward. “Guys at your school must be tripping over
you.”

Mara shook
her head. “Dropped out second semester sophomore year and never went back. I
commuted, anyways. Didn’t really buy into the whole college experience.”

Samuel left
it at that, sensing the scab on that wound had never entirely healed. “I get
it.”

“What was
college like for you, you know, back in the day?” she asked with a wide smile.