The dogs’ howling rose in pitch until it sounded as if the animals were screaming with one terrified voice. Still Dan wasn’t afraid… not until the sky opened a million eyes and gazed down upon him with alien hunger.
Alice shook her head, trying to deny what was happening. Dead birds littered the parking lot around her, the ground beneath her feet trembled, and eyes filled the dark-bruise sky. Dead eyes, insect eyes: cold, calculating, and hungry. Eyes that didn’t blink, that took in everything and gave back nothing. She felt scrutinized in a way she never had before, as if every one of those eyes was fixed on her, analyzing her down to the subatomic level and finding her wanting. She wore a white blouse, black pants, and black shoes—the standard uniform for servers at the Pasta Pavilion. She’d been on her way to work when everything began to change, and while she knew it wasn’t the greatest job in the world, she’d liked it well enough. But now, standing beneath the pitiless gaze of those alien eyes, she understood what a joke she really was. She was a subservient cow in a world full of near-mindless cattle, carrying platters of food to overweight carb-addicts so they could stuff their bloated faces and grow even more obese than they already were.
This realization forced Alice to her knees. Her left knee crushed the head of a dying starling in the process—staining her black pants with blood—but she barely noticed, so overwhelmed was she with despair. She bowed her head as tears ran down her face and deep sobs wracked her body.
“No more…” she pleaded.
But there was more. Much.
Dan spun the steering wheel in a frantic attempt to maintain control of the Olds. Whatever had broadsided them had started the car fishtailing, and while that would’ve been dangerous enough on a smooth road, the broken surface of the Way made correcting for the impact a nightmare—and the woman screaming in the backseat didn’t do anything to help his concentration. The car slid, shuddered, bounced, and at one point threatened to tip over. A loud chunk! came from the rear, and Dan was thrown forward as the Olds ground to a stop. His forehead hit the steering wheel, forcing his teeth together with a painful clack and catching the tip of his tongue. Sharp pain lanced from the wound down to the root of his tongue, and Dan’s mouth filled with blood as his head jerked back and slammed into the headrest. The Olds’ airbags had been activated months ago, during one of his earliest runs, and without any way to have them reinstalled, he’d simply removed them. In all the time since, he hadn’t had an accident, but now he wished he’d tried harder to find a way to make the airbags work again.
The woman was still screaming, and Dan spun around to glare at her. He tried to tell her to shut up, but what came out was Thyutt uhh! along with a spray of blood. It splattered onto the woman’s face and greasy blonde hair, and the shock of it did what perhaps his words wouldn’t have: she stopped screaming.
Before Dan could say or do anything else, a large object collided with the driver’s-side door, spinning the Olds around and sending him crashing back into the steering wheel. Pain blazed between his shoulder blades, and he reached out with both hands and grabbed onto the chicken-wire barrier to steady himself. The woman had been thrown down onto the backseat once more, and while she looked shaken, she appeared uninjured. Dan was relieved; she was worthless to him dead. Still holding tight to the chicken wire, Dan turned to look over his shoulder, ignoring the resultant flare of pain in his back. He wanted to get a look at whatever was attacking them so he’d have some notion of how to fight it. He knew they just couldn’t stay inside the car and hope it would get tired and go away. Everything was a predator of one kind or another in the World After, and none of them ever gave up.
A large form stepped in front of the car—four legs, long neck, narrow head, curved antlers, armored hide… The creature regarded Dan for a moment, its moist black eyes filled with hate, and then it charged.
“Fuck!” Dan shouted, misting the inside of the windshield with blood. He let go of the chicken wire and reached for one of his weapons, but his hand found the passenger seat empty. His gun and blades must’ve gotten knocked onto the floor during one of the creature’s previous attacks. With no other recourse, Dan threw himself down onto the passenger seat as the antlered beast mounted the hood and lowered its head at the windshield.
Another impact and the muffled sound of safety glass cracking. Antler points white as bone protruded through the glass, but the windshield remained in place. But then the creature hauled its head back, taking the panel of safety glass with it, and cold air rushed in through the space where the windshield had been. Dan knew it would only take the beast a few seconds to shake free the remains of the windshield, then it would attack again, and this time there would be no barrier to stop it from skewering him.
Dan reached for the front passenger door, hoping it wasn’t too damaged to work. He gripped the handle, pulled, and for a terrifying instant it seemed as if the door wasn’t going to budge, but then it sprung open. Dan gripped the seat and pulled himself forward, and half-fell, half-rolled out of the car. He looked back in time to see the creature’s antlers spear through the open windshield and pierce the fabric of the front seat.
“Don’t leave me!” the woman in the backseat shouted, her voice panicked and more than a little accusatory.
Dan didn’t have time to reassure her. The beast had attacked with such force that the tips of its antlers were stuck in the car seat’s upholstery. But strong as the thing was, Dan knew it would only take a moment to free itself. He reached back into the car, keeping his eyes on the creature as he felt around on the floor of the passenger seat for a weapon, any weapon. His fingers closed around the hilt of the machete, and he was about to lunge forward and strike at the rough, pebbly hide of the beast’s neck when he felt something brush his pants leg. Without thinking he spun around and sliced the blade through the thorn-stalk that had been rubbing against his jeans. Thick crimson gore spurted from both halves of the stalk, and Dan sensed more than heard a high-pitched sound, as if the plant had shrieked a death cry. He turned back to the car and saw that the antlered creature was no longer stuck in the upholstery.
Dan leaped to his feet and spun around. There, standing amidst a mass of waving thorn-stalks and regarding him with black-marble eyes, was the deer.
At least, that was the name the animal had gone by in the World Before; as far as Dan knew, it had no name in the World After. It still possessed the general shape of a deer, though it was larger and more muscular, like an elk. Its multipronged antlers were fashioned from thick bone, the tips needle-sharp and angled forward, obviously designed—make that redesigned—for impaling prey. Its mouth was larger and filled with triangular, serrated teeth that resembled those of a shark. A long black tongue that reminded Dan of a giraffe’s emerged from the mouth and moistened its rough-hided snout, as if the creature was so eager to taste its prey that it couldn’t wait and had to taste something, even if only itself. But perhaps the most striking change was its skin. Instead of a deer’s tawny coat, the beast’s hide resembled that of a rhinoceros: gray, thick, wrinkled. Dan had seen the creatures before, of course, standing alongside the Way and watching with baleful, hungry gazes as he drove past, but he’d never seen one step into the road before. He’d assumed they were afraid of the thorn-stalks, but now he saw that he’d been mistaken. The stalks brushed against the beast’s flanks, caressing and stroking its gray skin, smearing thorn poison on its rough flesh. But the thorns, sharp as they were, could not penetrate the creature’s tough hide. This deer-thing was perfectly adapted for traversing the Way.