Yesterday evening, she had planned to visit her neighbors, Frank and Allie. Now she wanted to speak to them more than ever. She’d have to play dumb, but at least she thought she might learn something that could keep them safe.
Right at this moment, as a parent, she felt she was well out of the loop when it came to defending her family. How could she protect Zach from this world’s dangers, if she didn’t even know what to look out for herself?
“Morning, Mom.” Zach sat up and rubbed his face and eyes. “What time is it?”
“Breakfast time.” She smiled. “Eggs over easy?”
He nodded. “And do the thick toast.”
“You got it.” She headed to the pantry. “I’m going over to Frank and Allie’s later. Do you want to come or do you just want to hang out here?”
“Hang out here if that’s okay,” he replied.
“Will you… be alright by yourself?” She turned to him.
“Sure, why not?” He stood and headed to their bathroom.
“Yeah, why not?” she repeated. She wanted to keep Zach with her, but right now, here was safe, and out there she had no idea what was or wasn’t.
On the way out, she grabbed a holster off a rack with a 9mm handgun already in it and threw it around her waist.
After breakfast and a few hours later, Emma was driving toward her neighbor’s property, but now along a rutted dirt track that she knew was once a fully paved road only a week ago.
Looking out from her windows, she saw what had once been open fields, gently rolling hills, and a few stands of emerald green trees were now like iridescent mountains of gargantuan trees that were punctuated by dark arboreal caves tunneling through them, just like the one she was traveling along now.
Luckily for her, the sky was clear and the sun shone brightly, otherwise, it’d be like night-time underneath the heavy canopies.
She grunted as she hit another pothole — the dirt surface was uneven, pocked and rutted, and in some cases so overgrown; it looked more like a horse trail than a road. It took her nearly two hours to traverse the winding track where it used to only take her a third of that.
At last, Emma came out of the trees and saw Frank and Allie’s friendly little cottage on the hill, and in seconds more, pulled up out front. She stepped out of her car and saw that overhead there looked to be crows or some sort of large birds circling the property.
Oddly, Frank and Allie’s front door was ajar, something she would never think to do now, and given these guys should be more aware of risk than she, it seemed jarring. Perhaps the daytime was safer than she expected and more normal than she gave it credit for.
They can have the night, and we get the day, she remembered.
“Frank? Allie?” She called and walked up the last few dozen feet to the house.
She knocked on the doorframe, and then called again. But there was nothing but silence from inside. She tugged on the partially open screen door that squealed on rusted springs. The heavy wooden door was already pushed right back against the wall, so she stepped inside.
She tried again. “Hey, Frank?” She waited with her head tilted, but after several seconds of empty silence, she decided to head on in.
Wait, she thought. There were sounds — the babble of people talking.
“Frank?” She moved lightly but quickly along the hallway, checked the living room, and found her voices — the television set was on, playing softly.
Emma then checked a small library-sitting room at the front of the house — empty as well. She continued toward the back where she knew the kitchen was.
Entering, she saw that the table was set for dinner, and there were bowls of stone-cold potatoes, carrots, and something green that had dried out and curled. There was also a frying pan with two cooked steaks sitting in it that had been pushed aside, and thankfully, the element had been turned off. Something happened to distract them while they were cooking — enough to stop what they were doing, but perhaps not urgent enough to forget about the heating.
That might be good, she hoped, but warning alarms were still going off in her head.
There was one last place to look, and she saw that the door was cracked open — their pantry. She and Ben had been to Frank and Allie’s for dinner many times, and she had seen the inside of their fair-sized pantry room before. But entering now, she saw that it had changed and was now exactly like their own fortified room — except it was swung wide, and more worrying, there were shotgun shells scattered on the floor.
“Please God, no.” Her hands instinctively went to her hip, drawing the gun and holding it in a two-handed grip with the muzzle pointed down.
“Frank?” Her voice was softer now as caution and a little fear sharpened her senses.
She crab-walked to the back door. It was bolted up and down with several heavy-duty locking mechanisms — no one came in or went out of here in a hurry. There was a heavy diamond-shaped glass panel at head height and she looked out through it. The backyard was empty, and the only movement came from a couple more of the black birds shooting overhead and heading out front.
Crows again, she thought. And then, carrion eaters.
She quickly checked the upper-level rooms and found they were empty. The beds were still made, and thankfully, there was no sign of any sort of struggle. Looking out from one of the upstairs windows, she could see in the distance that the black birds dotted one of the far fields, and there was a tangled lump of them squabbling at its center… squabbling over some thing.
Her stomach sank and she rushed downstairs, shouldering open the screen door, and quickly crossing the field.
She began to run, her stomach knotting as she could see the large glossy birds worrying something at their center. It took her several minutes to close in and even up close the bodies, wings, and thick plumage of the birds made it impossible to yet make out what was in there at the core of the tangle.
“Heyaa!” she yelled and waved her arms. “Go-on, get.”
The birds turned her way, but then continued to squabble and climb over each other to get at their prize. “Oh, piss off!” she yelled even louder, and then finally drew her gun and fired it into the air.
Its effect was immediate as the birds exploded up and away, revealing what had attracted them and what they had been fighting over. She slowed and then stopped a dozen feet out.
She didn’t need to go any closer to see it had once been two people. The bodies had been obliterated and the bones scattered. Even the skulls were separated from the top of their spines. Shreds of flesh still clung to the bones and tattered gore-stained fabric also hung like wet streamers from the ribs and hips.
“Oh God.” She put the back of her arm over her face, as even though the cool of the morning had contained most of the odors of the kill, she didn’t want to inhale anything up close.
Emma turned about, looking to the forest line, but there was nothing ominous crouching there. She walked in a large loop around the bodies. There were no tracks — whatever attacked them came from overhead, she bet. She looked back to the massive trees, wondering, were hidden in among those mighty boughs the bat-like creatures, roosting now, perhaps sated after their bloody feast? And did they catch Frank and Allie out in the open?
She often wondered about the “remembering,” as Zach put it. When the re-evolution changes flashed through them, it seemed everyone else rapidly had their brains rewired as though it had always been like that.