The oblong cement shelter, probably used for storing road salt or sand, sat open to the elements, its windows and doors long gone. They hurried in, pushing the people in front of them, pushed by the people behind them. Had any more refugees escaped the savage dragging force of the cyclone when it touched down on the highway, they likely would have been trampled or smothered. As it was, the crowd cut out less than a dozen behind them as the vortex swept past, close enough to grab the last two figures at the door and one trying to enter through a window into its deadly caress.
The mother pulled the older daughter close, unaware that the middle child was no longer with them, and together they shielded the youngest girl between their bodies. The vortex tugged at their backs, pulled at their hair. The mother smelled the synthetic compound on the youngest girl, strong enough to make the soft lining of her nostrils burn.
The cyclone passed by, turning the woods at the side of the highway into ragged nubs. When it was gone from sight, they saw that it had taken the rest of the crowd with it. So, too, the men with their guns, their vehicles and, presumably, the Town of Bedford, Population: 0.
They continued forward, the three that had once been four, surrounded by a sparse collection of stragglers that had once been a crowd. Smoke stained the horizon at their backs; ahead of them, at the roadside, they reached a campfire. A hunter who had killed, butchered, and roasted a deer offered to share as far as the meat would go. It was their first solid meal in days.
Following the cyclone, the youngest girl had difficulty walking, and the chemical smell she exuded intensified. For the next day, a day that ran together into all the other ones before it in the mother’s mind, the child complained of terrible stomach pains. At first, the mother blamed it on the venison and the polluted water they were forced to drink from puddles as the weather grew stifling with humidity.
Until the following day, when the little girl twice vomited viscous blue, and the mother caught her staring at them with malice in her eyes. The girl didn’t speak after that, and with the chemical stink came another, underlying smell, a putrid odor of rot.
Rabid, that’s how the little girl looked.
The mother, who really wasn’t the girl’s mother, and the other daughter, stopped in place, paralyzed by the image that greeted them: the youngest girl, staggering away from them, blue liquid running from her mouth, ears, and the splits in the flesh at her throat. The girl’s chest swelled and contracted, as though the child’s lungs had doubled in size. Tripled. Only…
Somewhere in the thinned-out crowd, a woman screamed, “Dear God, don’t you get it? That’s how they plan to send their soldiers through!”
“Mommy,” the oldest girl said, mentally devolving to an age younger than the youngest.
“Don’t you see?” the same woman shrieked, and the mother did, pulling her oldest daughter closer. “They softened us up from space… now, they’re readying for the ground invasion. They’ve seeded their soldiers inside our children!”
The child’s body contorted at an awkward stance, not quite standing, tilting under the effort of those greedy, swooping breaths. Each repetition stretched skin and clothing to their limits. A sound like celery stalks being snapped in half tore through the terrible, sudden silence.
And then, as they watched, unable to blink or scream, the transformation was completed, and the thing emerged, grub-like, from the husk that had once been human.
About the Authors
Alexander Tobey
Tobey Alexander has always suffered from an overactive imagination. Having decided to commit his imagination to paper in hope of inspiring his own children to embrace their creativity it has been an enlightening journey, to say the least. A full-time worker, husband and father to three finding time to write has always been the challenge. Tobey’s only hope is that his overactive imagination can be enjoyed by others and provide an escape from the mundane and every day.
Marvin Brown
Marvin Brown is the author of suspense novels Jigsaw Man and Covet, as well as the nonfiction work The House the Lord Built. He is a regular contributor to Insomnia & Obsession magazine. Brown lives in Akron, Ohio, with his wife and two daughters. Brown’s film reviews are available on the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com).
Jessica Clem
Jessica Clem is a writer, marathon runner, and Stephen King fanatic currently based in Omaha, Nebraska. She holds a B.A. in English and a M.S. in Urban Studies, and works as a content strategist for a marketing agency. In her free time, she can be found hogging all the good books at the library, running on the local trails, and adding new spirits to her home bar collection. She has been published in Ms. Magazine, and various local publications in Omaha. She is happily single and spends her days with a beloved Yaris named Egg.
Jordon Greene
Jordon Greene is the Award-Winning & Amazon Bestselling Horror Author of To Watch You Bleed and They’ll Call It Treason. He is a full stack web developer for the nation’s largest privately owned shoe retailer and a graduate of UNC Charlotte. Jordon spends his time building web applications, attempting to sing along to his favorite rock songs, driving way too fast, and reading. He lives in Concord, NC just close enough and just far enough away from Charlotte.
Mary Victoria Johnson
Mary Victoria Johnson is the author several published novels, including The Other Horizons Trilogy, The Ashes and the Sparks, and The Inventress, as well as an upcoming novella series from EPIC/ABDO. She normally writes young adult stories, but branched out to the other side for her story Heathfolk. Mary is a student at the University of Victoria and lives in British Columbia, Canada.
Hekter Kaztro
Hekter Kaztro is a young storyteller striving to revive the world’s childhood nightmares. Inspired horror masterminds from throughout the ages, from H.P. Lovecraft to Wes Craven, he writes to exploit man’s most profound fears and remind you of the monsters lurking in the dark. Born in Anaheim, California, he now studies Film at Florida College of Jacksonville. This is his first published story.
Garrett Kirby
A lover of all things horror, Garrett Kirby writes his bone-chilling tales with a sense of glee. His goaclass="underline" to scare his readers, and have one heck of a time doing it. A newcomer to the writing scene, Garrett introduces himself with his first piece of literary work, The Other.
Jack Lothian
Jack Lothian is a scriptwriter for film and television. Currently he is showrunner and lead writer on ‘Strike Back’ for HBO/Cinemax. His fiction has appeared in Helios Magazine Quarterly and Parsec Ink’s Triangulation: Appetites, as well as the graphic novels Tomorrow and Laptop Guy for BHP Comics.
Jeremy Megargee
Jeremy Megargee has always loved dark fiction. He cut his teeth on R.L Stine’s Goosebumps series as a child and a fascination with Stephen King’s work followed later in life. Jeremy weaves his tales of personal horror from Martinsburg, West Virginia with his cat Lazarus acting as his muse/familiar.
Gregory L. Norris