“Where?” she asked as she began to jog toward him. “Is she hurt?”
“I can show you her insides…” the bum offered in a kind voice.
Ethan ran to the next aisle and disappeared behind the shelves. Shannon turned down the first aisle and rushed to the end. She could hear Ethan moving with her down the adjoining aisle. He was calling to the girl, coaxing her not to run away.
Shannon reached the end of the row at the same time as the little girl. She was no more than nine, wearing blue jeans, a t-shirt, and a bright pink jacket. Her face was a clay mask of fright, and she brandished a squirt bottle of some type of all-purpose cleaner like a gun. When she saw Shannon, her face twisted a bit tighter, and she released a sob of pure terror.
“Sweetie, we won’t hurt you. Ethan, slow down; you’re scaring her!” She stuffed the pistol back into her pocket, squatted down to the girl’s height, and offered her a hand. “It’s alright. Are you hurt?
“Leave me alone!” the girl screamed desperately.
“What’s your name, sweetie, huh? My name is Shannon. My friend over there is Ethan. We want to help you.”
The girl just stared at Shannon, her eyes impossibly large, her face quivering with fear.
“Please, sweetie, come here; I promise I won’t hurt you.”
The girl looked at Ethan once, then back to Shannon. She was so terribly scared, so innocence-shattered that Shannon felt a tear slip from her own eye. This poor little girl had survived a night that almost drove her insane. Shannon suddenly wondered if the brutal animals had raped the girl, raped as she was, and her heart twisted painfully. She no longer cared what was happening to her or to Ethan, what had happened to this town, or what evil had flooded into her life. All she cared about now was getting this little flower out of here and to some safe place, to wash away the horrors she must have survived last night, to ease them into those memories forgotten. She would do anything to keep this town from having her, and she began to weep softly her conviction.
The small child watched her a moment longer, unsure until the tears began to fall from the pretty woman’s eyes. The simple expression of emotion was well beyond the monstrosities she had seen and she ran to her. She fell into her arms, into her soft, warm chest, and cried in a way she had never cried before.
A second set of arms embraced her gently, but with more strength than the woman, and Kayla knew it was the man. He was there, enveloping both her and the woman in a protective way, as her father would have if he were still alive. Kayla sobbed for the relief, wept for the comfort of strangers, and cried for her lost parents.
"I can show you her liver, if ya want…"
Ethan realized that unlike before, the homeless man’s breath smelled horrible and he could feel it wash over his neck from behind.
Chapter 25
Stan climbed from the hammock and stood in the small room which he called the berthing compartment. The TV burst white static soundlessly, sparkling and jittering down the screen, a slow roll shattering the chaos of white noise. It had been less than a day, but he already felt so completely cut off, so starkly alone that he wanted to go to town and look for survivors.
He sat at the laptop, disrupted the screen saver, and called up the image from the telescope hidden on the roof. The thick bluish-gray fog still shielded his view of the town, keeping him from seeing the finer details. The orange glow was gone, so he reasoned the fires had burned themselves out or were put out by the volunteer fire department. The second was a much more comforting idea than the first.
Stan reasoned, though, that if the fire department had fought the fires, then they should be on the radio, or maybe even the cops. He lifted the small scanner and stared at its blank screen. Hope battled with loathing; Stan knew what he would hear if he turned the radio on, but he could not be sure. After many long moments, he turned the volume knob until it clicked. The numbers began to run through the preprogrammed channels without stopping. He watched this for many long moments before turning the volume up slowly. To his relief, the numbers did not stop indicating a channel.
He placed the radio on the counter next to the laptop and retrieved a pack of crackers from the cupboard. He opened them and began munching absent-mindedly, worrying over whether he should escape his self-imposed imprisonment and find out what really happened last night, see if this truly was the end of the world. The taste of mold grabbed the inside of his mouth and it squeezed his empty stomach violently. He spit the half-chewed crackers to the stainless steel counter and let the rest simply fall out of his opened mouth.
The packet of crackers was molded over, green, furry, and dark. He dropped the pack and worked the remains out of his mouth with a finger. As he did so, he opened the cabinet again and found most of the food had gone bad, either moldy or milky black. He had just stocked this food no more than a few months ago, and it should have lasted a number of years.
He opened the small refrigerator under the counter and drew out a bottle of water to rinse his mouth. Then he headed for the galley, another small room where cooking could be done as needed. In the large freezer, everything seemed covered in frost, as if frozen for years. The cupboards here proved molded and decayed as well. He began to grow angry. This food should have lasted him over a year with a bit of budgeting. Now there was nothing.
He tore open a wax-coated box of milk, which immediately proved sour even though it was irradiated so as to not contain any bacteria and should have lasted months without even refrigeration. Stan began collecting all of his food stores, searching for anything still good. It all came down to some Twinkies and hard candy. It was not nearly enough to sustain him for any length of time.
Stan had planned for this eventuality, but it was suppose to be months after the end of the world, not the day after. Something would have survived, some animals or fish or something. He had weapons and fishing gear and knew what was edible and what was not. He would just have to forage and hunt his food, only earlier than he had hoped.
This lent itself to an excuse to go into town, satisfy his curiosity about the events of last night, and bring back food. The voice on the radio had gone away, so regardless of the ominous fog, there was nothing holding him here inside his little hidey-hole.
He woofed down two packs of Twinkies, a bottle of water, and gathered an extensive number of firearms, pistols, and rifles with enough ammunition to fight a small war. He even clipped to his tactical vest a few grenades he had purchased on the black market. Once everything hung from him as it needed, he inserted the level-three ballistic plates and belted everything tight.
After checking the telescope once more, he climbed the ladder to his shelter and checked the small periscope to make sure nothing was waiting for him above. He then lifted the hatch and immediately, a stench of the dead and rotting assailed him. The odor was sweet and rancid, not unlike the milk, but more like bad bacon. It made Stan cough a bit before he climbed from the hole.
It seemed as though whatever had taken his food stores had gone to work on the corpses piled in the mantrap. The AK was gone, the sandbags turned over and torn. New corpses lay around the hole as if they had fought for the right to invade his shelter. The violence was so awesome that Stan found it all very disturbing regardless of his preparation and training.
He worked his way among the corpses, torn and battered, ripped and desiccated. Something had torn them apart in a fit of unimaginable rage. After some searching, Stan concluded whoever had torn these bodies apart also had the missing rifle. If it still lived, he could have a bit of a fight on his hands. He chambered a round in his own Vepr assault rifle in anticipation of a shootout.