They wait, hoping against all hope, hemmed in at all sides by predators of other-worldly origin, hell-bent and determined to destroy them one and all, they wait. Rose wills the chair back to catch fire, but the flames were smothered. Only a small palmful of throbbing, marbled coals remain scattered in the center of a light blanket of ash.
It’s not probable, but the shadows themselves seem to close slowly in, all around the group, from all sides, leaving just the narrowest margin of sickly orange light around them. A faltering halo from small flickering lanterns placed around the perimeter of the group is the last light any of them will likely see.
The structure grows humid. Clammy skin drips with moisture, and the temperature plummets several degrees. Water vapor spouts from open mouths and flaring nostrils. Rose remains huddled in the corner with her head buried behind her knees.
Dr. Valentine has returned to be at her side, an old six-shooter held tight in her trembling hand. “What are they, Rose, do you know what it is we’re dealing with here?”
Rose doesn’t have a chance to reply, before Major Connors, overhearing Valentine, answers.
“Doldrums.” They match the description of the reports from Laughlin Air Force Base, months earlier. “I’d heard about’em. Thought they were a myth. Truthfully, I’m not surprised to be running into another kind of the Turned. God only knows how many different types there are.”
“Lots and lots,” says Rose, looking up to Dr. Valentine. “lots and lots.”
Rumbles and scraping sounds, like claws dragging across the walls, come forth from somewhere in the shadows, mere heartbeats before the moment of the attack. And then it begins.
Clawing hands from all sides, grab at the green men, tearing at them, pulling them from sight, man, after man, after man.
“Open fire!” Connors says.
Weapons fire is unleashed at will, in all directions. The flashes are blinding, the noise deafening. The mission is filled with visions of chaos, the sounds of battle, and the smell of fear, and of blood, and other unspeakable things. Human entrails are slung out from the dominion of the Doldrums.
Rose, her hands clamped over her ears, can still hear Dr. Valentine’s blood-curdling screams. A shiny black hand has taken possession of her, by her leg. She’s firing into the darkness, sending bullets zipping into it, not caring enough to take aim.
Rose takes Dr. Valentine by the arm and pulls with all the strength she has in her tiny body, utterly breaking the no contact rule, but under the circumstance, she thinks it’ll be alright to do so. She pulls at Dr. Valentine, the Doldrum has an unrelenting hold on its prize.
Rose pulls harder, Dr. Valentine falls to the ground kicking her free leg against the dark hand and pushing backward with her free leg. Rose drags her backward, across the floor, and the thing slowly surfaces. The face of a Doldrum breaks into the light of the lanterns.
Tar-black, plucked-goose skin covers the face of the Doldrum. Its large matte-yellow eyes are wide with the anticipation of drawing its prey back into the shadow. Long pointed ears and small sharp teeth, like those of a shark, make up the face of horror, gnashing at Dr. Valentine, but only catching mouthfuls of air with each chomp.
Without warning, the chair back bursts into flames. The fire-light floods the room in a whoosh of gold, red, and orange flames. The Doldrum frees the doctor from its death-grip and crawls away, seething in anger at losing its meal.
The margin of light grows from the pale orange to bright yellow and touches the thick walls of the Alamo. The fight to hold the majestic old structure has begun, for the second time in its majestic history. A dozen Doldrums clamor and try to hug the walls, seeking out any remnant of shadow they can.
“There are so many of them,” says Dr. Valentine.
“Not for long,” says Sergeant Hollander.
The fire is burning hotter and brighter. The shadows are receding as the light increases. The Doldrums are crawling along an ever thinner, more revealing border of the failing protection of darkness. Able to find their targets, the green men go on the attack. Like a nest of angry hornets, bullets fly to find the enemy, turning them into quivering corpses.
Five men were lost to the Doldrums. Rose wonders how many will make it alive to where they’re going. Unable to sleep, she wedges herself into a well-lit corner, next to Nettle, and Dr. Valentine. She begs silently for the intoxicating, morning sun to make its appearance.
Early the next morning, as the sun peaks above the hazy horizon, they waste no time loading the vehicles and moving out of San Antonio. Rose shakes blood clots and dust bunnies from her feet, never to look back again.
The thundering of battle has brought something from the surrounding countryside. An evil no one has seen since before the beginning of the end. A different kind of enemy. This one’s not at all like a Wicked Briar, nor is it like a Doldrum, hiding in the dark like a petty thief waiting for an unsuspecting mark.
This enemy is organized, cold, and calculating, and she watches everything the humans are doing from her perch on a distant hillside. Her drones stand at her back, waiting for her to give them a command to follow. They’ll follow her and do whatever she asks of them. Their own survival means nothing, compared to the greater good and the survival of the hive, and of their queen.
There are more than troublesome humans milling around down there. She can smell Rose’s fertile odor blowing towards her on the changing wind. The small thing isn’t human like the others. She’s a threat to the queen’s rule, a festering boil on the skin of her monarchy. Instincts programmed into her DNA, demands that this new challenger is wiped from the face of her kingdom.
It’s another queen, younger by the immature stink of pheromones, but no less, a risk to everything she has struggled to construct. The order of things as she has laid them, and the future as she has foreseen it to be. Even now the young queen’s chemical markers entice her drones, making them uneasy, confusing their thoughts of loyalty. Only the true queen shall live and rightfully rule this planet. The little queen must die.
Chapter Fifteen
“As a child, I never imagined that all the real monsters in the world would be human…”
The serenity of the Stage Coach Inn graces the long, straight road of Salado, the white-painted face of this unassuming place luminesces in the ruddiness of the sun.
A great, gnarled oak tree grows near the inn’s porch, running the full length of the front of the building. Its trunk has grown since the inn was constructed. Here and there, the girth of the tree pries the deck-boards up like broken teeth. The tree, reaching to the sky, its mammoth limbs bending beneath their own unmeasurable heft, triggers a memory for Rose.
Her full memory hasn’t returned, as Dr. Shaw thought it might, but somewhere in the deepest recesses of what’s left of her mind, she recollects playing in a tree, much like this one. In her memory, a woman was calling to her, “Be careful and come back down from there before you break her neck,” the woman laughed, as she ran around the bottom of the tree, nervous about the possibility of Rose falling. This woman must have loved her to care if Rose fell from the high boughs. Rose wants someone to love her again. The memory is faded, like blue jeans left on the line, it’s color bleaching away in the harsh summer heat.