Should Have Killed The Kid (30 page)

'It's okay, Will, there's nothing to worry about,' Marge called although her voice sounded distracted and not particularly reassuring.

'Is it?' Dave leaned over and whispered, trying to keep his voice down so Will wouldn't hear.

Marge turned and stared at him. Her lips pursed as though she was sizing him up. Dave tried his best not to think she was estimating the volume of red juice currently pumping through his veins.

After a pause that lasted a few seconds too long, she finally continued.

'Yes it is...' she said softly. Then swallowed and returned to her usual brash self. 'Quit fucking worrying. We'll be fine,' she added, and then started edging the car forward once more.

Despite her words, Dave could feel the tension permeate the car like a living, breathing entity as they started down the opposite side of the hill and the growing shadows slowly swallowed up the scenery.

Dave held his breath for nearly a full minute until they were well subsumed and then finally let it out in a harsh gasp when it became apparent that instant death wasn't about to befall them. The shadows seemed completely unconcerned by their presence and, as they bulldozed through the midst, they didn't even seem to notice. They just parted like water across a ship's bow in front of them and flowed around to knit back into a perfect mesh behind. The occasional one flitted up and over the windshield, where Dave assumed it rode the dome all the way clear of the car, but none of the creatures seemed to linger like the other ones on the highway had. He kept waiting for the plink, plink, plink of the claws on the shield but it never eventuated.

'See? Nothing to worry about,' Marge crowed, 'Shield's holding fine.'

The relief in her voice undercut her words though.

'But when Monty did it for–' Dave started but Marge cut him off.

'Monty was a fucking pussy,' she growled and they continued on in silence.

As they drew closer to where Ouyen used to stand, Dave squinted trying to make out their surroundings. After a few blinks, Dave was surprised to find his eyes adjusted to the dark and details started to emerge. Up close, it was still possible to pick out shapes through the mantle of black that draped everything. Not that what he picked out seemed particularly promising. Just more destruction: mounds of shadow-coated rubble and weird, large black rods that crisscrossed the area, confusing him until it dawned on him that they were toppled power lines.

Mercifully, the road ahead was relatively free of debris so it was a straight trip through the remains of the town. It still seemed to take a lifetime though. With the way shapes abruptly reared up out of the shadows, only coming into definition when they were right on top of them, Marge had to putter through, the needle on the speedo barely cresting twenty.

Silence filled the car. Dave fidgeted, his fingers picking at the labels on the jars as he tried to ignore the glittering vista. Looking at it too long made him feel strange. He could feel something bubbling away deep inside. Something that gibbered as it lurked, just waiting for the chance to be unleashed and reduce him to a shattered wreck of a person.

The babble of voices bumped up another notch in his skull.

Once they were out of town and the surrounding rubble disappeared, it really was like a void stretched before them. It took a minute or two of driving before Dave’s eyes adjusted to that alien landscape as well. But once they did, it became quite a bizarre experience.

Scrubby trees grew more and more prominent, silhouetted by the lighter sky as they motored forward, and the road could be determined by the sculpted sides. In fact, the further they progressed the clearer things became until Dave discovered that it was quite easy to distinguish the individual items from out of the dark. The fence posts and wire slung between them. The ever-present power lines that appeared to have been randomly toppled. Street signs that they passed. All of it started to emerge from the mass of darkness until what surrounded him looked like a normal country landscape. Only one that a giant squid had voided its ink sacs over.

It felt like driving through an alien world filled with familiar objects. And there was always the lingering feeling as they motored along and the sun started to dip lower on the horizon that the world was disappearing at the edges. The definition of objects faded with distance. Beyond a hundred metres it was just flat black and Dave could imagine it crumbling away to reveal a void beyond. That if they headed that way they’d just sink on down forever.

It saddened him to think that beneath the shadows lay a coating of strewn and torn bodies. On his previous trip, along with the wheat, livestock had trod the paddocks.

He shuddered to think what had happened to them. In a way it felt more horrifying than what had happened to his fellow men. He couldn’t help thinking that the cows and sheep didn’t even put up a fight. Didn’t even try and move out of the way. Just stood and stared dumbly as the wave of black approached.

Dave swallowed and returned to studying the jars. Though they didn’t really make him feel any better, at least it was something to look at as they moved along, drifting steadily through the black around them. The glittering that occasionally stirred from its depths more reminiscent of starlight than anything else.

Dave did his best to block it out.

The kid whimpering away in the back didn't help matters.

One split second. One split fucking second,
Dave couldn't stop thinking.
If the shield drops, one split second and they'd be on us and tearing us apart.

The idea gnawed away at his brain, bolstered the strength of the boy's whimpers until Dave had nearly peeled the entire label free of the right hand jar.

Dave didn't know how long had passed before Marge finally broke the silence. To him it felt like a lifetime and he latched onto the interruption with gusto, trying his best to keep the conversation going. If only to fill the void that silence left.

'What the fuck are they up to?' Marge muttered, hunched over the wheel while she peered out into the darkness. 'It's like it's right fucking there.' She tapped her temple. 'But I just can't fucking wrap my head around it.'

'I don't know...'

'Well, that fucking surprises me, Dave. Really it does.' Dave chose to ignore the muttered sarcasm.

'I don't understand any of this,' he continued. 'Why the fuck aren't they attacking? Why can't they see us..?' He paused for a second as perversely, now that he had the opportunity to voice some questions, all of them seemed to flee his mind. 'How come we aren't just plowing them down?' He finally managed to dredge one up from the depths.

'I reckon it might be because they are getting out of the way, what do you think, Dave?'

'Fuck off. You fucking know what I mean,' Dave spat, his temper flared out of nowhere. His cheeks flushed. The words he forced from between clenched teeth laced with venom.

He regretted the outburst immediately. Marge seemed to find it more amusing than anything. A faint smile crinkled her wrinkled face.

'That's more like it,' she murmured then, before Dave had too much of a chance to ponder what that was supposed to mean, continued on as though his outburst hadn't even happened. 'Well, actually what I was saying's true. Essentially when it comes down to it, they
are
getting out of the way. It's just they're not really aware of it.'

'What–'

'I'm fucking getting to it, Dave. Patience, we still have quite the drive ahead of us. They're not aware of us being here because they're not really here anyway.'

'What–'

'Dave, come on... Okay? Yes, you can hear me alright? They are here but they aren't here too, well at least not like you and me. That's why they can do the things they do. I suppose the best way to think of it is
between dimensions
but even that doesn't really sum it up. Really, I'm not fully fucking convinced a human being
can
understand it. A far smarter man than I tried to explain it once and I still don't get what he meant. It requires an entirely different thought process. Let's just say that shield out there is the equivalent of shunting a mountain in front of you or me. You wouldn't ask why it was there would you? You'd just go around it.'

'But I've seen them scale far worse things than a mountain. Shit they can move through water...' Dave trailed off as he realised the ridicule that emanated from Marge in waves.

'Remember the bit about an entirely different way of thinking being necessary?'

'Yes.' Dave felt the last lingering shreds of his angry outburst dissipate.

'I think you should think about that for awhile.' Marge said, snorted and then lapsed into silence leaving Dave to think as the car slowly churned over the kilometres.

Half an hour later, he was still no closer to an answer. After spending the time peeling and then reapplying the labels, Dave found something happening that as they'd driven into the shadows, he would have thought impossible.

Boredom had set in again.

Marge was staying mute.

The kid in the back had even stopped his whimpering now.

Dave, exhausted from burst after burst of adrenaline and the physical exertion of the last couple of days, found his eyes starting to droop as the hours passed, bringing nothing but more of the strange blackness.

No fucking way,
he thought after he started awake for the third time. He shifted straighter in his seat, shook his head a couple of times but to no avail. Within moments, his eyes started to droop again.

'What's wrong with her?'

Dave's eyes burst back open as the kid chirped up from the backseat, grateful for the interruption.

'What?' he asked, whipping around to peer at Will who stared back open mouthed.

'What's wrong with her?'

'Sorry?' Dave asked, confused.

'What's wrong with her?' This time, Will punctuated his question by pointing forward toward the back of Marge's head.

Instantly, something cold gripped Dave's stomach nice and tight.

'I'm sorry?' he asked again even though by now he knew exactly what the boy had said.

'What's wrong with her?' Will asked once more, his words starting to form a metronome beat.

Dave could put it off no longer.

Time went into slow motion as he spun to face Marge. His turning head took forever to finish its arc.

When it did, he wanted nothing more than to scream and look away.

Marge withered before his eyes. Her face tightened into a leather mask that popped and burst along its seams, the lips shredding and turning ragged as the old lady tried to scream. Something more like a moan came out. A long, low moan while she let go of the wheel and raised her hands up so Dave could see them wither into a mess of bone and fossilised tendon.

'Fuck, fuck, fuck,' Dave swore under his breath. His eyes widened while he stared at the grotesque scene. He couldn't think of anything to do to help though. He sat frozen watching Marge go the way of Monty before her.

'FUCK!' he yelled louder when he caught a glimpse out the windshield and it dawned on him that the fact Marge's hands were no longer on the steering wheel might have some other consequences.

They plunged through the blackened wire of a fence and then the shadowed side of the road dropped away alarmingly into some sort of drainage canal. It loomed up before them and Dave's paralysis finally broke but even as he dove for the wheel he knew it was futile.

Marge's mummified form wrapped him in a hug while he yanked at the wheel. The split and barely recognisable face loomed in close as though she wanted to kiss him. He screamed as it robbed him of the last hope. The extra bit of weight hampered his attempt to spin the wheel. The car slewed...

But not enough.

The thump of impact threw Dave into the dashboard and then abruptly he was weightless, every thing around him spinning, only aware of one thing: that the glowing shield that surrounded the car was blinking out of existence...

'SHIT!' Dave bellowed as his eyes flew wide and he suddenly bolted upright, his head darting from side to side.

'What?' Marge looked across from where she hunched over the steering wheel and Dave collapsed back into the seat with relief. 'Fucking. Shit. Fuck. You nearly sent me off the fucking road.'

Dave didn't answer. Instead he sat panting and waited for his heart to slow. His sleeve came away sodden after he wiped it across his brow and surreptitiously snuck a peek at Marge while he did it.
She does look a little under the weather,
he thought,
or is that just paranoia?
Dave wasn't certain. Marge's face was already pretty lined and wrinkled, he would hardly notice any difference until it was too late.

'Fucking snoring away for hours and then kaboom. Fucking scream. Nearly gave me a fucking heart attack. Fuck!'

At least she didn't sound any worse for wear.

'It's alright... I'm okay.' Dave finally started to rein in his heart beat. He shifted forward in his seat and leant against the dashboard when he saw through the windshield that a strange glow crested the top of the hill ahead.