“I want to make love, Ethan, like it is going to be our last time. The way this is going, it just may be.”
The erection that had begun to subside came racing back. “What about, well, you know… Won’t it hurt?”
“God I hope so,” Shannon said as she hugged his head against his lower stomach. “Take me, Ethan; let me show you what I can do for you with my body, and not just my mouth.”
Ethan took her there, in the failing firelight, and brought her to many climaxes, each one almost loud enough to awaken the girl still sleeping in the tent, each one a standard of resolve for them both to continue, to not give in to the pressure of the evil around them.
Chapter 33
Kayla woke to the bland sunlight filtering down through the smog and the cobalt blue of the tent’s walls. She rolled herself out of her sleeping bag and noticed that Ms. Shannon was gone. She had gone to sleep next to her, but now she as missing. Fear ran a jagged course through her and she stood motionless, listening, seeking a noise that would prove to her that she was not alone. What came to her was a soft growling, almost gentle, like what she would imagine a baby lion would make when playing.
She worked up enough nerve to gently unzip the tent’s door, but found it already opened. She peeked out a small hole between the doors and saw the woman and the man, lying next to a dead fire, too near the smog. They were wrapped in each other’s arms and sleeping. The woman was snoring lightly, like that baby lion.
She went to the man and knelt next to him. He was almost completely underneath the sleeping bag, but he was the one who knew where the food was and Kayla was hungry. She shook him gently. “Mister?”
“Yeah, I’m awake,” Ethan said dreamily.
“I’m hungry.”
The memories of the past few days rushed him and crowded the forefront of his thoughts. He had allowed himself to become lost in Shannon’s lust, which allowed him to escape, if for only a little while, the horror they were now living. He sat bolt upright. “What?” he asked just a bit too loud.
Kayla took a tentative step back, “I’m hungry…and I have to pee.”
“Oh, sorry, sweetie; you scared me. You can go behind the tent to pee—you know how to in the woods, right?”
“Yeah,” she answered as she headed for the back of the tent.
“I’ll go with her,” Shannon announced as she climbed from the sleeping bag and followed the little girl.
Ethan watched her go, trying to memorize the shape of her bottom as it moved her away. When he could no longer see her, he fished some foil- and cellophane-wrapped foods from his pack. The two jugs of bleach had smashed the Twinkies somewhat, but they were still edible—just a bit difficult to handle.
When the two girls returned, Shannon was holding Kayla’s hand. She led her over to Ethan, and Kayla sat to have a quick breakfast while Shannon got dressed.
“What do we do now?” Shannon asked Ethan around a mouth full of granola bar.
“Well, we could try making it through the fog or we can wait and see if it goes away.”
“I don’t want to go in the smoke,” Kayla said flatly. “The monsters are in there.”
She sounded so adult but looked so young and helpless. It was an odd contradiction for Ethan.
“I’m with her; I say we—”
A building sound cut her short, the sound of an old man inhaling, an old man that should have given up his life to his nicotine addiction long ago. Chills ran down Ethan’s spine.
They all at once looked towards the source of the sound, and found the smog rushing away into a single focus, drawing tight into a single spot. The sound began to rise in tone as the smog cleared away from the opening of a shallow cave, and Ethan felt his stomach sink into a frozen ball of dread. It was the very cave he had escaped from, the opening not more than twenty feet away. Then the cave seemed to exhale the smog back into the clearing, washing them all with its fetid breath before the fog broke, leaving them in the same clearing, but with the cave’s mouth, squat and agape at one end.
Ethan stood, drawing the rifle up with him, leveling its killing end at the stone opening.
“Ethan, what is it?”
“This is where we came out, me and Abby. This was where we escaped.”
Shannon turned towards the hole and stared, drawing Kayla closer to her. They stood like this for what seemed an eternity before anyone spoke.
“What did Madison want from you last night?” Shannon asked, not breaking her stare on the cave.
“She wanted me to join her with something she called The Culture—some being that she claimed has been around for thousands of years.”
Shannon immediately pictured a Petri dish, a fungus-like bacteria growing across the clean pinkish gel like a video fast forwarding. She suddenly became nauseous. “I’m not going in that cave.”
“No, you won’t be going in that cave…just me,” Ethan replied thoughtfully.
“No you won’t,” Shannon commanded.
“They want me, only me.”
“You don’t know that!” Shannon shouted angrily. “How could you know that? Let’s try the fog, Ethan!”
Ethan began to walk slowly towards the cave mouth, “Just me… I can make them let you go… Just me…” His conviction of self-sacrifice became stronger with each step. If he offered to join them willingly, he hoped they would let the girls go alone.
Kayla began to cry softly.
“Ethan! No!” Shannon screamed as she began to stand.
A trail of jet-black mist began to trace its way out of the opening of the cave. The three of them froze where they were, transfixed by the seeping blackness.
It began to grow, become more substantial, stretching forth in many directions now and infecting even the rotting forest floor with its inky blackness. It did not rise, but fell to cover the ground. Then a head began to raise, a greasy, longhaired head followed by a soot-coated and torn blue uniform. Ethan knew it was Captain Black, the thing he had fled from while in the prison. The creature still wore the glowing cinders, each embedded deeply in its flesh. In its one hand, it held a rusted cutlass, in the other, a cinder stick.
It hauled itself out of the opening and stood, its head dangling to one side, the greasy hair reaching into the black mist obscuring the ground.
Another head came out, this one with the same matted hair and filthy rotting flesh. When it stood, its head fell to one side limply, its hand clutching a crosier with a single large ember smoking at the top, hidden just under his grip.
They parted sloppily, in a stumbling gait, to allow room for Ethan to continue towards the cave, but he remained frozen, transfixed by the tortured corpses before him. They waited patiently for Ethan to regain his composure as best as he could. Somewhere, back in the still-Ethan parts of his mind, he heard Shannon screaming the doom of the world.
“Let these two go!” Ethan screamed at the smoldering monstrosities. “I will come willingly, if you let these two go.”
“No…” the pair hissed together. Their voices were wet and gravelly but dry at the same time, a disembodied voice of ruined throats. It made Ethan’s skin crawl.
“Then I will not come!” Ethan shouted. His voice was becoming excited, almost too highly pitched to be the voice of a man. His hands were shaking violently, and he would have bolted right then had it not been for the oppressive gray fog surrounding them.
“Come…” they beckoned in unison.
“No!” Ethan yelled again. His mind snapped back to him like an over-stretched rubber band. Everything came into sharp focus, and he raised the shotgun again.