Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous: Tim Marquitz (2 page)

The reporter was replaced by a concerned-looking anchor
who shuffled papers and did everything she could not to look into the
camera. Amanda watched as the woman rambled on, trying to explain the
cloud in scientific terms that were beyond her.

A chill ran through Amanda as the room seemed to drop
several degrees. She stood and made her way across to the living room
window. The curtains were drawn, and had been since the cloud
appeared.
There was no point staring out at it
, Amanda thought.
It was terrifying enough to know it was
there
, without having
a constant, visual reminder, though she knew she had to look. She
tugged the curtain slowly to the side.

The street was darker than night. The lights framing the
road were all on, tricked by the sudden phenomenon. Amanda looked
towards the deathly cloud, which was moving with unnatural liquidity
across the sky. She had seen things during her life that had scared
her, terrified her even, but the way in which that endless obsidian
sea trickled by overhead intimidated her. She could hardly breathe as
she gazed up into the sheer vastness. Then, she could smell sulphur,
and she rushed across to the front door and slapped a trembling hand
over the keyhole. Beneath her, a slow, murky mist began to appear at
the bottom of the door. She ran to the kitchen and grabbed a towel.
She rushed back and wedged it in place.

How could she have been so stupid? The news had warned
about the sulphur smell, and she had completely forgotten what to do.
She had been too busy standing at the window in awe of the spreading
monstrosity outside.

The smell dissipated, and Amanda slowly made her way
back to the sofa. The truth of it was: she was exhausted. She could
have slept for days, if only that fucking thing wasn’t out
there. She knew there would be no sleep that night. How could
anybody
sleep?

The newsreader was now sticking a finger in her ear,
listening to some faceless producer. Her expression changed once
again, from mild anxiety to downright panic. When she finally managed
to speak, she did so into the wrong camera, such was her
disorientation.

“Erm ... I’ve just been informed that we
have some breaking news,” she said, finally realizing camera
two wasn’t switched on. She hurriedly repositioned herself
before continuing. “There have been reports that something, we
don’t know
what
,
is in the cloud.” She looked off camera, for support, before
apparently realizing the people in the studio knew even less than she
did. The producer in her ear said something else, which she repeated
aloud. “The cloud seems to be making people crazy,” she
said. “We have reports of mass confusion in the middle of the
city, where people ... ” she shook her head as the news was
repeated to her via the tiny earphone. “People are
killing
each other. The police are at the scene, but we can’t show you
any pictures right now. You are all advised to remain indoors, keep
everything locked and await further instructions.”

This was getting worse by the minute. Amanda didn’t
know what was worse: the fact that a toxic cloud the size of Ireland
was hovering over them, or that people were so confused by the whole
thing that they were killing each other.

Amanda perched on the edge of the sofa, trying to slow
her increasing heart-rate, when the female anchor threw back to the
reporter on the roof.

“Daniel, what can you see up there?”

Daniel stood on the edge of the roof, staring out at the
city. He either hadn’t heard the woman’s question, or
there was something there that had him intrigued. The cameraman
whispered his name, which got his attention. Daniel spun and made his
way back to the center of the roof.

“I don’t know what’s going on down
there,” he said, trying to remain calm. “People are
fighting. There has been several beheadings. It’s hard to say
at this moment whether the ash-cloud is in any way to blame for these
acts of random violence, though it would seem to be the case.”
He paused, wiped gray dust from his forehead, and sighed. “There
seems to be ... something ... I feel strange.” He doubled over,
panting, desperately trying to regain some composure. This was going
out live to thousands of concerned citizens, and here he was having a
funny turn on air. He gasped, grabbed at the air with taut hands. It
looked like he was dying.

The cameraman appeared in shot, making his way across
the roof to where Daniel Brown struggled for air. He reached him,
placed a hand on his back, and said something inaudible. The camera
was still rolling, although the gathering miasma up on the roof made
it difficult to see clearly.

Suddenly, Daniel grabbed the cameraman’s arm and
sank his teeth into it. The cameraman screamed as his flesh came away
from the bone. With a mouthful of sinewy tendon, Daniel grabbed the
man around the throat and dragged him to the ground, pounding his
skull with such force that the cameraman’s head caved with just
the second blow.

Amanda was on her feet, her hand covering her mouth to
prevent the inevitable scream. She couldn’t take her eyes off
the screen, though. What had she just seen?
What had half of the
city
just fucking seen
?

Daniel Brown punched and elbowed the bloody mess, which
had once been a head, for almost a minute. Eventually, he rolled
across and lay on his back, still gasping for air. His belly rose and
fell, rose and fell, and then suddenly erupted. The reporter gagged
and choked as his mouth filled with blood. He looked down with wide
eyes as something poured out of him. It wasn’t blood, or any
form of fluid. An army of strange creatures clambered out, scuttling
across the roof.

They were spiderlike, but the camera was positioned so
far away it was impossible to tell
what
they were. All of that
was still going on when the camera died. The TV screen was once again
filled with the terrified face of the female anchor. She must have
seen what happened up on the roof, for she was up out of her seat,
tearing the earpiece out, and within a second, the screen was empty
apart from a spinning chair and a rolling banner, which hadn’t
updated for quite some time.

Amanda ran into the kitchen. She didn’t know what
else to do, but getting away from the television screen was
important. She rushed to the sink, drew herself a glass of water and
swallowed it down in three hungry gulps. She hadn’t realized,
but tears were streaming down her face, confused and panicked sobs
racked her entire body. She slammed the empty glass down on the
counter and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, a few
seconds later, she screamed.

A face at the kitchen window, pressed so close that
steamed breath concealed the bottom half, almost sent her flying back
into the table and chairs.

It was Douglas West; the idiot from next door. His eyes
were rolled up into his face so that only the whites were visible.
Amanda could see through the glass that they were unnaturally
bloodshot, as if every blood vessel in his face had exploded. His
neck cords were unnaturally taut, and his hands scraped incessantly
up and down the window, squeaking and scratching until Amanda thought
it might drive her insane.

“What do you want?” she screamed, hoping he
would hear her. “Mister West, go back inside! It’s not
safe out there.”

Amanda noticed that Douglas’s hands were covered
in blood, and that was when she realized it was too late for him. Had
he slaughtered his own wife?
Why
? She thought about the
reporter, the poor bastard up on that roof at the BBC center who had
savaged his cameraman. Did Douglas West have those things inside of
him? Those ... whatever-the-fuck they were?

Douglas scratched and clawed at the glass a few more
times and then, as if resigned to the fact that he couldn’t get
in, slid off the window and disappeared into the darkness.

Amanda couldn’t breathe. Something horrible was
happening, and the cloud had something to do with it. She pushed
herself forward, ignoring her instincts—which were telling
her to run upstairs and hide—and glanced out of the window
just in time to witness Douglas West’s demise.

He was doubled over in the middle of the garden—
her
garden—and was violently trembling, the way a dog
might just before a particularly nasty shit. Amanda stifled her
screams as she watched. Douglas’s mouth opened wide; wider than
was physically possible. His jaw must have dislocated, and it hung
down a few inches below the rest of his face, swinging from
side-to-side as the pain racked him. Then, a torrent of those
things
spewed from his mouth. In that moment, his eyes rolled back into
place, and he seemed to realize something was not right. Hundreds–perhaps thousands—of the
things
hit the grass and scampered away in every direction. Amanda was paralyzed. Her legs
gave out, and she hit the kitchen floor with a meaty
thump
.

She cried. The water that she greedily finished a moment
before threatened to reappear. Where had this nightmare come from?
How could this ...

She had to call her mother. She clambered to her feet,
angry with herself for being so weak. Although it was almost
impossible to get her legs to work in tandem, she staggered to the
telephone and snatched up the handset. For a moment, the number
evaded her. It was ridiculous for she had called that same fucking
number every day for the last three years. She took a deep breath,
allowed the temporary amnesia to pass, and sighed as she keyed in the
number. Pushing the handset to her ear, she prayed for the voice of
her mother to appear.

Two rings ...

Three ...

“Hello?”

Amanda could have burst into another bout of hysterics,
but it was not the time. “Mom, thank God. Are you okay? Is the
door locked?”

The silence that followed was enough to send Amanda over
the edge, and she leaned forward as her stomach, full of water, gushed into her mouth,
which she opened to let the clear vomit hit the
tiles. In her ear, her mother said something about the garage;
something about being stuck in the garage with another man.

Amanda wiped the spittle from her lips and chin before
attempting to speak. “Mom, who is that? Where did he
come
from?”

“He was stuck, out on the road,” her mother
replied. “He looked like he needed help. He doesn’t look
well, Amanda. Not well, at all.”

Amanda screamed down the phone. “Mom, you have to
get away from him. Get into the house and lock the fucking door!”

A muted voice said something, and then she heard the
sound of her mother responding. It sounded, to Amanda, like “Stay
back
,
” or, “Get back
,
” though it was
muffled and incoherent.

“Mom, get to the house. Leave the sick man where
he is and get—”

The phone went dead, leaving Amanda screaming to
herself. Her head pounded with the beginnings of a violent migraine.
She dropped the phone and watched as it swung left and right,
clattering against the wall. In the background, the television
reiterated the importance of remaining indoors, and that the cloud
had something to do with everything that was happening.

No shit!
Amanda thought.

She stumbled into the living room and fell to her knees
in front of the TV. The empty studio had been replaced with a
darkened room. It looked like the entire production team had
gathered, though obviously it was too much of a good story to stop
filming. The camera was capturing everything, and although it was
gloomy in the room, several figures could be seen moving around,
hastily blockading doors. At the far end of the room, the female
anchor was being soothed by an elderly man. A face suddenly filled
the screen. It was so close to the camera that Amanda could make out
a thick arrangement of nasal-hairs, despite the darkness. The face
started to whisper.

“We have confirmation that the cloud is carrying
something ... some sort of ... of
microparasite
.
I don’t even know what the fuck that
is
,
but ... but that’s what appears to be happening.” The
face glanced across his shoulder at the shuffling figures before
continuing. “In truth, I have no idea
what’s
happening, but we’re going off air for a while. Just please,
everybody, stay the fuck away from the cloud. Stay
inside
... and stay safe.”

The camera switched off, leaving a test-screen of
parallel colored bars.

Microparasite
? That was what the man said. The
word made Amanda want to scream. Those things breaking out of people
were somehow coming from the cloud, using their hosts for a few
minutes before emerging. Even Amanda knew that was pretty rapid
evolution, even for a fucking parasite.

She stood, her legs still bandy and unreliable. A
terrible thought danced into her mind. She had smelt the sulphur, had
been exposed to the cloud, or at least its pungent virulence.

Was she infected? Were those fucking parasites growing
inside of her? The mere thought brought bile up into her throat. She
coughed and spluttered, trying to push the ghastly inference out of
her mind. She tried to reassure herself that, from what she had seen,
it didn’t take long for the parasite to evolve, and she was not
feeling any signs of affliction, so she must—

A knock sounded at the door. Amanda almost fell back into the
television.
Bang, bang, bang
. Violent, somebody was trying
desperately to get in. Her heart was in her mouth. She bit her tongue
in an attempt not to scream, and tasted iron as her mouth filled with
blood.

“Amanda!” a voice bellowed. She knew
straight away who it was, though that failed to alleviate her
concerns. “Amanda,
please
!
I know you’re in there. I need some help!” He finished
the sentence with three more bashes on the door.