Out of the Shadows (8 page)

As I stared at this creature on its web, I knew that it wasn’t a threat to us. This arachnid was too… normal. I was mesmerized by its exhaustive behavior, fighting for its own survival, creating such a lavishly patterned place to catch its food. It was quite beautiful, but after everything that had happened, I knew I would never be able to consider a spider in the same way again.

I was reminded of my own struggle to stay alive and how exhausted I was. But just like that spider, I had so much to accomplish before the sun rose, when I would be able to crawl back into my dark hole and rest. I stared down the long street and saw the city’s skyline on the horizon.

We were so close.

“Let’s go, Deb.”

She sighed and closed her eyes. “Bear, I’m tired.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Ya know what I mean!”

“And I’m not letting you give up! Get out of the car, and let’s move!”

Mary stirred awake and mumbled, “Mama? What’s going on?”

The weary woman lowered her head in defeat and exited the vehicle. “Nothin’, Sweetie. Have some water.” Deb helped her drink a small amount before she passed out again.

“We’re almost there, Deb,” I said with quiet urgency.

“I can’t go anymore.”

“You can.”

“Bear—.”

“You have to!” I blurted, fighting to hold back a deluge of emotion.

She stared at me in frustrated silence.

I continued, “Every single morning, I’d get off work and come into Gravediggers. And every single morning, I’d think about drinking myself under that counter and never getting up. But it was always you that helped me see that things weren’t as bad as I was making them out to be. You’re the one that sent me home to sleep off the day. You’re the one that listened to my pathetic problems and never seemed disinterested.”

Deb pushed her hair out of her face, waiting to see where I was going with my ramblings.

“Mama,
you
are the one who saved me.”

My words clearly struck a chord with her, because her eyes moistened, and she pointed at little Mary in my arms, saying, “It’s time to pay it forward.”

I nodded. “I plan to. But why do I have to choose which of you to save? Why can’t it be both?” I could see her eyes filling with tears of exhausted frustration, but I was unwilling to give up. “Yesterday morning, you told me not to quit. You told me I didn’t have to go through this alone.”

A single tear rolled down her cheek as her face softened. Placing a delicate hand on my face, she smiled up at me. “Yeah, I did.” She turned and limped, leading the way toward downtown.

We slogged down the street, exhausted and completely tapped but knowing we could not stop. We continued, the city looming ever closer in the distance. I encouraged Deb to carry on, to endure with me despite her tiredness.

As we trekked, I felt Mary’s life slowly slipping away in my arms. I clung to her tightly, convinced that as long as I held on, she would not be able to fly from this world. On and on we went, ever closer, growing more exhausted, parched, and starving, our heavy limbs dragging across the pavement.

The sky grew brighter with every passing minute, a thin aura of pink-orange beginning to fill the void on the horizon. Deb coughed and vomited but continued by my side. One step at a time, we pushed and pushed.

Finally, Deb collapsed against the side of an abandoned mini-van, doubled over and breathing deeply. “Bear. That’s it. You go on and save Mary.”

“Deb,” I began.

“Bear, I really can’t.”

“
Deb
…”

She sighed and braced herself, likely waiting for the slew of reasons I would rattle off in an attempt to convince her to carry on.

But I only needed to say one thing:
“We made it.”

At my words, her eyes widened, and she glanced around at her surroundings for the first time. We were in the center of downtown Franklin, surrounded by tall office buildings, hotels, and banks. “Sweet Jesus!” she exclaimed incredulously.

I smiled. “Police Headquarters is only a few blocks away.”

She grinned and exhaled, relief flooding her face and giving her a renewed drive to push on just a little bit farther.

We turned the corner ahead and saw it: three blocks down the road, on the other side of the bridge that crossed the river, the ten-story police headquarters building loomed into the air, it’s glass walls and metal frame looking more inviting than it ever had before.

Up on its roof rested a green Mi-17 military helicopter.

We picked up our pace, rejuvenated by the sight of rescue. Closer and closer we came to the building. We made it to the bridge, crossing the fifty-foot-wide river, approaching the entrance doors to the station on the other side. And then I froze.

Through the glass walls of the building, I saw that the lobby was crawling with emotionless people,
thousands
of spiders scurrying over the inside of the glass. They were waiting. Waiting for survivors told to come here for rescue.

I wondered if any actual humans remained up on the roof, waiting to take off. Regardless, that chopper was the best plan to get out of this city, and if I had to fly it myself, I would do that.

“Bear,” Deb grabbed my arm. “They saw us.”

Sure enough, the station’s front doors opened and hundreds upon hundreds of people poured out, moseying, spreading to show their great numbers. “Nick Barren,” they all said, slightly out of sync, sending disorienting waves through my ear canals. More people filled the street from the alleyways beside the buildings. From all around, dozens more that I hadn’t even seen slinked out onto the road, filling every escape route on all sides, creeping out of the shadows like…
spiders
.

Armies of arachnids surrounded their feet, some of them crawling up the length of their bodies and back down again, like Man and Spider had become one. Strange moaning noises quietly emanated amongst the crowd, like they desperately yearned for something they had not yet received.

Me.

Suddenly, the alien sea parted, and a woman stepped forward. Disfiguring scars covered her singed body as patches of hair dangled from her scorched scalp. She stared at me coolly, one of her eyes significantly larger than the other due to eyelids that had been burned away. After a moment, I recognized her as their leader – the one at the bar who had warned me not to torch the place.

She came to rest at the head of the mob, and all became quiet.

My palms grew sweaty, and I flexed the fingers of my weapon hand, waiting with anticipation to grab it from the back of my waistband. Mary remained in my arms, unconscious, her breathing shallow, completely unaware that the end was near.

Finally, the torched woman spoke. “I do not understand humans,” she began, the complete lack of emotion or subtext in her voice unsettling. “Emotions cloud your judgment. Stop you from logically considering the big picture. Your feelings make you weak. Make you vulnerable. Make you…
stupid.
”

Deb and I slowly stepped backward, unsure of what to do.

“I was told that we needed you, Nick Barren. That you were a remarkable man. But that was a long time ago, wasn’t it, Nick Barren?”

I felt my heartbeat begin to race, and nervous trembles took over my body, making my muscles weak.

“You gave up. You became self-destructive,” she continued, her words slow and calculated. “Instead of fleeing town today, you ran to your ex-wife, who had already moved on without you.”

Exhaustion flooded over me as tears threatened to escape my eyes, perhaps because the grotesque woman spoke words of truth.

“After that, you still did not flee. You went to save the old woman that facilitated your downfall into alcoholism. The woman who cares for nothing more than the money you pay for your drinks.”

Deb stepped forward, pointing a weak but angry finger at the burned leader. “That’s a damn lie!”

But the alien ignored her, her gaze never leaving me. “And now, you would risk
everything
in a foolish attempt to save that same old woman – whose crossover to our community is inevitable – and a frail child you do not even know.”

I glanced down at Deb with great sadness in my heart, knowing that the alien was right. Soon, Deb would be gone, and there was nothing I could do about it.

“It is this human emotion of love that will be the end of your civilization. It is what makes us stronger than you. It is why in a few short days, we will spread, and your world will belong to us. We are doing you a favor, Nick Barren. We are ending the weakness of humanity.”

I was done listening to this lady spout her nonsense. I slowly reached behind me and grabbed my weapon, saying, “Love isn’t the only emotion humans are capable of. We have another one that’s just as strong, and you’re underestimating it.”

The woman smirked slightly, the first hint of feelings I’d seen from these guys. “And that would be what?”

My grip tensed around my gun as I raised it toward her.
“Anger.”

Before I could pull the trigger, a hand grabbed me from behind, spinning me around, catching me off guard. With wide eyes, I stared at an Asian man, his hair pulled back in a braided ponytail, arms covered with sleeves of tattoos denoting a great battle between heaven and hell.

It was Yoshi.

Deb gasped and covered her mouth, her hands trembling.

“Hello, Nick Barren,” he said, staring at me. I watched in horror as a few black specks scurried past the white of his eyes, and then spiders poured from his ears and nose, circling around his unmoving face before fleeing back into his mouth again.

I felt a wave of guilt rise within me, knowing that I could have prevented this fate from taking place. “I shouldn’t have let this happen to you.” I slowly raised the gun and aimed it at Yoshi’s forehead.

“Bear,” Deb interrupted. “We got problems.”

I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the army of aliens was slowly creeping toward us, waiting for the moment to surround us and strike. I steeled my jaw and exhaled, ready to do what needed to be done. “It’s your call, Deb.”

She looked at the nasty wound on her arm and then back up at me, her eyes moist but certain of her decision. “There’s plenty of fight in you for the both of us.”

Our eyes met, and I nodded. Turning to Yoshi, I said sincerely, “I’m sorry, man.” And I pulled the trigger.

The shot echoed through the silent sky, reverberating from the surrounding office buildings, startling the aliens into halting their advance.

We ran.

Behind us, I heard the alien woman bellow,
“Nick Barren must be ours!”
And they gave chase.

As fast as we could, we fled down the street past the headquarters building, past the alley full of creatures, past the first building next to the station, past the next alleyway. Every crevice was full of people that wanted to inhabit our bodies, and I didn’t have enough bullets for them all.

I glanced back and saw the population of Franklin chasing after us, a swarm of spiders in tow, leaving me wishing I had another Molotov cocktail to lob into them (not that it had worked terribly well the first time). We dodged quickly around abandoned cars, leapt over bicycles, swept past unused parking meters. Eventually, Mary stirred awake from the jostling. “What’s happening?”

“It’s ok, Honey,” I said in an attempt to keep her calm.

“Here, Bear!” Deb called out.

She pointed at the glass storefront display of a five-story department store. Quickly, I fired a few rounds into it, shattering the windows and allowing us entry. Mary clutched her arms around my neck and trembled as we fled through the dark aisles, knocking over clothing racks and mannequins to block the path behind us.

“Back there!” Deb saw the door marked “stairs” and hobbled to it. I could barely breathe. I needed to rest but knew I could not. We barreled through the door and quickly climbed the stairs, not really knowing where to go or what to do. Up and up we went, gasping desperately for oxygen to fill our lungs.

Mary sobbed in fear now, hearing the people pour into the stairwell’s first floor below. “They’re coming!” she screamed.

Finally, when I didn’t think I could go any farther, there were no more stairs. We blasted out the door and onto the roof of the retail building. Yellow caution tape, orange cones, and long two-by-fours filled the construction area on the roof where renovations were currently taking place.

The police headquarters towered in front of us, only two buildings away. I ran to the edge and looked over to find every inch of the alley below swarming with people reaching up at us,
needing
what we had to offer. The building directly across was the same height, but the gap between them was at least eight feet wide.

My mind raced with options, knowing that the mobs from the street were on their way up the stairwell to the roof. Jumping would be risky, especially while holding an injured girl. And I wasn’t sure Deb would be able to make it, much less in her current condition.

I looked around frantically, seeing nothing but construction materials and tools. The nauseating utterances of my name from the alley below filtered up to the roof, making me feel more like I was dinner than someone who they wanted to be part of their community.