Black Tide, page 17
Nothing but pain, the discordant voice coos. Fish corpses swirl around me in a glittering cyclone. I swear I can feel us all being pulled out, like bits of plankton into the fathomless maw of a leviathan. My head is pounding. I can’t tell if it’s due to that voice, from the relentless beating of the waves above, or from the starved blood surging through my veins, but I’m on the verge of losing consciousness.
“You’re wrong,” I insist. No bubbles rise from my lips this time. “There’s more. I’ve found it. I didn’t think that was possible, but I did.”
You’ll lose her too. You’ll hurt again. Let go. There is no pain in the deep.
“No!” I thrust my hand forward, displaying the key as if it’s some kind of talisman for warding off evil. I have worked too hard for this. I have found something I never thought I’d find again, a reason to keep breathing, to keep fighting. And I am not letting it go this time.
It might be my imagination—hell, all of this is—but I swear the leviathan out there reels away, like a vampire from the sight of a crucifix. Its voice, which has been wrapping around my brain like some kind of parasitic worm, recoils. The pull of that darkness releases its hold, and I start to rise.
There’s a crash above me, something shattering the surface of the water. I look up, and there she is. Her face, glowing like the sun emerging from behind a thunderhead. I reach for her, she finds my hand, laces her fingers through mine, and pulls.
“What are you doing?” Beth scolds as I take great gulps of oxygen. “You didn’t drop the key, did you?” I show it to her. “Good. We need to move!”
I’ve never heard a better idea. Move, yes. Movement is life. Movement will get me back on solid ground, and if I never set foot in the ocean again, it will be much too soon.
The tide discards the queen, angry and hissing, on the beach, coated with dirty foam and tangles of seaweed. She skitters in a disoriented circle, jaws open, worm writhing and spitting. The grass at the top of the dunes shudders and flattens, and the sky begins to shimmer. The others. Coming to Her Majesty’s aid, as if they know through some psychic connection that she’s just had her ass whooped by the sea.
We run for the Subaru as they flood down the dune, a chorus of shrieks heralding their approach. The wind has blown the door shut again, and for one awful second, I imagine that we’ve managed to lock ourselves out. Then I remember that I have the key. The key. I can feel it, radiant and pulsing, like I’m clutching a newborn star in the palm of my hand. A tiny, wild spark that will illuminate a future I never imagined seeing.
Beth flings the passenger-side door open, and I slide in behind the wheel. We’re not a moment too soon; the screams are so loud, it sounds as though the shriekers are already inside the car with us.
I don’t realize it’s Beth screaming until I pull the door shut.
20
BETH
Jake is shoved so far into the corner of the hatch it’s like he’s being absorbed by the upholstery itself. I can’t tell where all the blood is coming from at first. He doesn’t appear mortally wounded. Red splashes on his fur, his muzzle stained from licking at his hind leg, eyes white with stress. That seems to be the source of the problem. The queen must have nicked something major.
That’s when I see she took the whole leg from the knee down.
Mike says something, but I can’t hear him. I can’t hear anything. The sight of Jake’s leg utterly eclipses the world around me. I need to help him. Need to stop the bleeding. Need to do anything but sit here screaming.
I set the pistol aside and turn to pull the door shut, but a bruised-purple shape shoots toward me, wedging its head between the door and frame. It’s my buddy. I guess my sandwich didn’t kill him after all, but the hellvine is certainly working at it. Deep violet cords encircle him like ratty fishnet. Every movement is a struggle against the stuff.
“Mike!” I shout, though I don’t know what he can contribute to the situation. I pull as hard as I can on the door, trying to crush the shrieker’s head. There is a bit of meaty give, and the creature whines in distress. More important, it keeps the thing from being able to open its jaws or get its feet in. From doing to my head what the queen did to Jake’s leg.
But even in this state, the shrieker will eventually overpower me.
“Mike, drive!”
He fumbles with the key, like it, too, is of alien design. Then he drops it on the floor between his feet. If I wasn’t busy trying to keep the shrieker out, I’d kill him myself.
The infected shrieker thrashes and shreds the side of the car with its feet. It gets its jaws open enough that I can just see the tongue-worm. The new vines are wrapped around the plump, fleshy bastard like constrictors. A few of the tongue-worm’s eyes have burst like cherry tomatoes left in the sun. The others all seem to be looking in different directions at once as the worm writhes to escape the hellvine’s grasp. I’m not even sure it’s trying to get into the car to kill us. It might not know what it’s doing at all at this point, besides going in any direction that might get it away from the things choking the life out of it.
The pistol is behind me, barrel-down in the cup holder, but I can’t grab it without taking one of my hands off the door, and I really, really do not want to do that. I could ask Mike to do the shooting, but I’ve had more than my fill of that, thank you very much. No, it’s better that we start moving. The shrieker won’t last long being dragged down the beach.
But Mike is still trying to remember how keys work, telling me to hold on like I need telling, while staring bug-eyed at the shrieker. What’s the matter with him? Did he suffer some brain damage out there in the water? He wasn’t under for that long.
The tide comes in and rocks the Subaru. The shrieker recoils from this unexpected shock of cold. Not much, but until Mike’s systems start functioning again, it’s the best I’m going to get.
I let go, grab the pistol, and spin back around. Sensing a sudden lack of resistance, the shrieker’s jaws stretch wide open, like curtains parting for the tongue-worm’s grand arrival. Those wild eyes all focus on me, for a moment seeming to forget its nasty predicament, eager to make my acquaintance at last.
Pleasure’s all mine.
I honestly don’t expect the gun to fire. I don’t even register the bang, the ringing ears, the pain of my bandaged wrist absorbing the kick, until that little worm explodes like a rotten pumpkin, sticky strings of black goo spraying the window. The hellvines inside flail wildly, looking for something new to grab hold of. Before they can find me, though, the shrieker’s body seizes, jerks backward violently, and lands on the sand. Motionless and—finally!—silent.
“Aaaaah-hahahaha!” I bellow, then slam the door shut. I did it! I killed one of the miserable hellspawn sons of bitches. I can’t believe it! I want to beat my fists against the ceiling and kick my feet in the air and howl until my throat bleeds.
But first we need to go!
“Mike!”
“Got it!” he cries victoriously, jamming the key into the ignition and giving it a twist. But our streak of luck has run dry.
Just like the battery.
* * *
Maybe he just didn’t turn the key fully. The instrument panel is lit up, showing us a half-full gas gauge and an outside temperature of sixty-eight degrees, while the radio spits some static. I really see no reason for the engine not to turn over. But when Mike tries again, the starter just whines and clicks pathetically.
“I don’t understand,” he says, dumbfounded, staring at the spread of electronic displays before him like it’s all part of some vast puzzle.
“Shut it off and try again,” I tell him, even though I know it’s not going to work. The radio and gauges can draw enough juice from the battery to operate. The starter, on the other hand … But I’m not ready to accept that yet. “Turn off the radio and AC too.”
I squeeze into the back seat and crawl to Jake and reach for his leg. Anything to distract myself from the whine of the engine coldly refusing to do as it’s asked. Jake pulls away from me, doing his best to dissolve through the hatch and out into the wind and blow away.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I lie. “Let me help.” I brush sand away from the wound, which does precious little except make the truth painfully clear: if he doesn’t receive actual medical attention, beyond Mike and Beth’s Discount Field Hospital, he is going to die.
Mike powers everything down, even takes the key completely out and wipes it on his pants, then tries again. The results do not improve.
“Why is this not working?” he asks. The defeat in his voice breaks me all over again. In his mind, we were already free, we’d hit a point where any other outcome was simply no longer tangible. But the Subaru sat in that garage for just a little too long, and then it sat on this beach a little bit longer. Just like us, it’s never going to move again. Facts, cold as they come.
I tie my discarded T-shirt tightly around Jake’s thigh. I have no clue how to make a tourniquet, but the blood flow does seem to slow. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
I lift the leg as high as Jake will allow me, trying to ignore his yelps of protest. It seems like the thing to do, but I don’t know. My dad taught me to drive, and a guy whose name I’ve long forgotten showed me how to shoot a gun, but I was never educated in caring for a dog whose leg was just bitten off by an alien monster.
Jake licks my hand, hopeful that the smart human can fix him. I’ve done everything else. Fed him, watered him, walked him, cuddled him. It stands to reason that when he hurts, I should be able to make him better. But I’m not magic—I don’t think anything has ever been more evident, even to a dog. I might have made it back from hell, but that was a fluke at best, and really, what difference did it make? Hell just followed me, as usual. Were some of those who disappeared spared this fate? Is a universe that births such monstrosities as shriekers and cloudfish also capable of showing mercy to those it deems righteous by some unknowable standard? I suppose it’s not impossible. But for those of us who didn’t make the cut, we’ve got nobody to count on but each other. Unfortunately for Jake and Mike, that means me.
“It’s the battery, Mike,” I say quietly. “We didn’t drive enough this morning to charge it up. It’s not going to start.” The last word catches in my throat, and I have to bite my lip to keep from crying. If those floodgates open now, they won’t close until I’m dead.
“No,” he protests, turning the key so hard I find myself waiting for it to just snap off.
I pull Jake into an embrace. He doesn’t fight back, just sighs heavily against my skin, his wet nose leaving a sticky, cold trail across my neck.
I’m done. With all of it. Done with invisible monsters and creeping hellvines, done with keys and dead batteries. The sheer weight of it all is just too much to carry another inch. I want to go to sleep. I want to shut down.
“Come on!” Mike screams as another wave hits us, smashing into the front of the car and spraying clear over the roof. The dead shrieker bumps against the door.
Mike punches the steering wheel again and again, accenting each hit with a new curse and revealing an impressive repertoire. He slumps back in the seat, staring out at the ocean, and laughs. “There has to be something else. There has got to be another way.”
If there is, I don’t know it.
“How long until the car starts to fill?” I ask.
“Not long,” Mike says, not meeting my eyes. There’s a bleak certainty in his words. A doctor adjusting his grim prognosis from months down to mere hours. “We’ll probably drift for a bit. But then…” He trails off, focusing on the horizon.
I scratch Jake’s head gently. He lets me, giving me a big old doggy grin, even as his eyes are white and desperate. His whole body trembles like he’s freezing, so I squeeze him tighter. I want to hug him until we’re both safely on the other side. I made a promise to look after him. I’m going to keep it to the best of my ability.
“Do you think it hurts?” I ask. “Drowning?”
“Yes,” Mike answers so confidently that I almost ask him how he knows. But he knows lots of random, weird, unhelpful things, so it doesn’t come as a surprise. And it doesn’t matter. There are still bullets in that pistol. I’m not going to let Jake die in agony, sucking water into his lungs, and I don’t much care to go that way myself. Why should that shrieker be the only one who gets off easy?
“It’s not like we ever had anything to get back to anyway,” I say. The words leave a bitterness on my lips, like the juice of poisonous berries. “We were being naïve to ever believe there was something beyond this beach, Mike. It’s been over since it began. We lost.”
He looks at me. “At least we’ll get one last sunset,” he says. And I can’t disagree with that.
21
MIKE
The water outside is nearly to the door handles, the floor squishy beneath my feet, puddles oozing from the saturated carpet. It seems that no matter what I do, I won’t be escaping this watery fate. What a cruel trick. I can almost hear the darkness beneath the waves, laughing at me.
I finish securing the gauze pads with duct tape. It took almost all our remaining bandages to get Jake’s bleeding down to a stubborn ooze, and the rest of our drinking water to clean the sand and filth from the wound. It feels a bit pointless, given none of us will be alive in an hour, one way or the other. But Beth insisted. Grasping on to whatever semblance of control she can find, here at the end.
I give Jake a deep scratch behind the ears, and he moans his approval. His injured leg twitches involuntarily toward his snout, and his tongue flips out to explore the fuzzy cast.
“No,” Beth orders, and he flops over, defeated.
The queen is still on the beach. Rendered partially visible by the salt and seaweed coating her. She’s not moving much. Maybe she sucked down a bunch of water and hasn’t fully recovered. Maybe Beth’s shots connected better than she thought. A protective entourage shimmers around her. We aren’t the only ones refusing to give up without a fight. I suppose, in a strange way, I have to respect that.
Beth slips away from Jake long enough to turn the key.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I can’t die in silence.” With what little juice the battery has left, the electrical system pumps life into the radio. She scans through station after station of static, passing a few useless emergency alert tones, but there’s no music. Nothing still going on auto-play. Not even an advertisement or bellowing preacher ranting about End Times to an audience of ghosts.
Then a voice crackles into clarity. But it’s not a singer. It isn’t a preacher, either, at least not as far as I can tell.
“—coming to you from Vernonia, Oregon,” the man booms with optimistic energy that’s so out of place in this new world that it startles me. “Home of the famous Friendship Jamboree and Logging Show. That could be the reason these bastards are keeping their distance. They took one look at what our lumberjacks can do to a Doug fir and decided to just keep on moving. Whatever the case, they haven’t broken us yet. And they aren’t gonna get a chance. We’ve fortified our good town. Got food, supplies, and patrols keeping watch around the clock. We should be safe until a better plan materializes. And you better believe folks are working on one. Across the pond, they even…” He fades out.
Is this for real? Is it some kind of horrific joke? The man’s cheerfulness and faux country charm make my brain itch. I look at Beth for a second opinion. She stares dubiously at the radio.
“We’re doing what we can to keep the way in clear,” the voice fades back in. “We see you coming, we’ll let you in. Just, if you can, try not to bring hell with you.”
A wave smacks the car. The voice disappears into static, and then the electrical system zaps off. Beth turns the key a few times, but it’s no use.
“Vernonia,” she says. “Never been there.”
“It’s about sixty miles from here. Even if we could walk, it would take us a full day, and that’s at a good hustle.” I don’t know why I feel the need to dash any hopes the radio phantom may have given her. To avoid any further heartbreak, I guess. We aren’t walking anywhere. Whatever safe harbor Vernonia might promise, it’s not in our future. There’s nothing for us but the tide.
“Do you think that’s all that’s left of the entire North Coast?” Beth asks. “Or is he just the only person still broadcasting?”
“Hard to say. I can’t imagine that it all fell, especially since the two of us are still alive. It isn’t like people have no way to fight back. But then again, you’d think we’d have seen some sign of resistance. Helicopters, fighter jets.”
“Or maybe they’ve just found more important places to protect than this empty, depressing stretch of nowhere,” she scoffs. “We’ve been off the grid for so long now, Mike, there’s no telling what’s happening out there. People are working on a plan, you heard him say that.”
“I did. I also find it mighty convenient that we turned on the radio just as he was making the announcement.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean, that was probably a recording. Playing on a loop. It could be hours old, for all we know. Everybody there could be dead, nothing left but a generator and a radio pumping out false promises.”
“Goddamn, Mike.” It’s all she says.
I hate making her feel that way, but I can’t let hope in again. Every time I do, it turns on me, and I’m done. Maybe the darkness was right. Maybe there’s nothing here but pain. I don’t want to believe that again. I want to believe that magic is still out there, in some form other than a set of keys, but I simply see no evidence of it. I see only teeth, and the tide.
Beth leaves the key in the ignition and crawls back with me and Jake. I reach for her hand to give it a comforting squeeze, but she jerks it away. Not because she’s mad, though. She’s in pain. Her other hand falls on her bandaged wrist and scratches.
