Wrath White - Scabs

My lungs were burning and felt as if they would explode under the tremendous exertion. Still I maintained my fanatic pace. For the ninth day in a row I put in miles that would have awed the most dedicated ultra-marathoner. There were still at least another three hours left before daylight and already I’d run twice the distance of the average marathon. But now my body was starting to rebel.

I was perhaps a day or two away from organ failure. I was losing fluids far too rapidly. And there was so little fat left on my body that my muscles were starting to consume themselves for fuel. Spots began to dance in front of my eyes as the oxygen in my blood continued to decrease, my lungs unable to keep up with the demand. But once again I could feel them expand a little farther to accommodate the strain and allow a few more breaths inside. The cramps in my legs and calves were getting worse. The blisters on my feet burst two days ago and the raw skin now rubbed against the synthetic leather of my broken down Tuned Air Max running shoes, aggravating the tender flesh. Soon the sores would be infected and I wouldn’t be able to run. I’d have to fight. But that was days away. Hopefully by then I’d be deep in the desert. Safe from the night things.

I jogged up the freeway entrance ramp dodging in between cars. As soon as I hit the freeway I knew that this had been a bad idea. The smell of death choked me and scalded my throat, churning a tidal wave of bile in my stomach. Even worse, the cars were too close together. If there were something inside waiting to lunge out at me, I had only inches to avoid it. But then again, if I managed to reach open highway where the traffic gridlock thinned out enough to allow a vehicle to pass through fast enough to avoid being attacked, I might be able to borrow one of the cars and give my legs a rest for awhile. I decided it was worth the risk. I kept running down the freeway, between the cars.

There were more lights on the freeway. There were hardly any gaps between the road lights. But where there were gaps, they were great expanses where the darkness seemed to stretch on for almost a mile before the light resumed. The pain in my calves, thighs, and feet was starting to slow me down, affecting my stride, and my lungs were starting to cramp again. I couldn’t keep that pace up for long. I knew I had to make it to the end of the freeway.

I hadn’t been awake during the day in nearly a week. I was too exhausted from running all night. If I could get a car and drive some during the night, then maybe I could wake up a little earlier and find out if anyone was still alive. Besides, I’d almost overslept two nights ago. By the time I woke up, the sun had already begun to set and the things had started crawling out of whatever dark pits they slept in. They were slithering into the apartment I’d slept in that morning, surrounding me. Luckily, I’d had the foresight to pick a ground-level apartment. I leapt out through the window with a herd of the things scratching at my heels and ran screaming down the street. I ran four city blocks before I could get my panic back under control and regain control over my breathing.

I was nearing the end of a long row of streetlights and there was about a quarter of a mile of solid darkness, pregnant with those voracious creatures, before I would reach the next light. I could see what looked like hundreds of the phantoms seething in the night that stretched out endlessly in between.

“The way out is not around but through.” I could hear my counselor telling me after my first failed attempt at detoxification.

“There are no shortcuts.”

“No shortcuts.” I repeated to myself as I picked up speed and hurtled into the night.

Claws raked my flesh as the things tried to latch onto me. The sharpness of their fangs and talons worked against them now because it sliced right through my skin like a hot knife through butter and didn’t allow them to grab hold and pull me down. I felt my skin shred as they slashed at me but I kept running harder and faster, Olympian strides, until I could barely see them anymore. They were just blurs of dark flesh and fangs. I reached the next series of lights covered in blood and sweat, exhausted.

I had taken up running during rehab. The more health and body-conscious I became, the easier it got to stay away from the rock. I was only two months sober when I did my first 5k race, a month later I did my first 10k. I had been off the rock for six months when I finished my first marathon. Then the screams had started coming in the night. The blood and dismembered bodies piling up in the morning. It had gotten harder and harder not to use.

My body was shutting down, failing. I could feel it. I was losing too much blood, exerting myself too hard. I had to stop. I stood beneath the light staring into the darkness, at the terrible things slithering and crawling around just beyond the light. This was the first time I had ever taken the time to look at them.

At first all I saw were the claws and the teeth, the flaming yellow eyes, then faces slowly swam into focus, familiar faces.

A shiver raced up my back as I recognized the face of the first kid I’d ever sold crack to. The thing’s flaming yellow orbs began to soften and resolve themselves into those same big trusting eyes that I had taken advantage of all those years ago. Its fangs melted into a big dopey grin. Coiled beside him was a snakelike phantom that had once been a teenaged girl that I’d gotten hooked on crack so that I could have sex with her. She had only been sixteen years old. A church girl who thought she was too good for us street thugs. I had turned her into a crack whore in less than a month. I didn’t even attend her funeral when she eventually died of AIDS. I had already moved on to the next innocent life.

One tiny creature was hurling itself at the cone of light as if it was an invisible force field that it could break through. The light would immediately scald its oily midnight flesh and it would shrink back squealing in agony only to attack again. I knew what and who it was even before I saw its face. I hadn’t seen his face the night he died, not until I picked up the newspaper the next day. I had been driving too fast when I leaned out the driver’s side window with the Tech-nine and let the Black Talons fly into the crowd of gangbangers. There was no way to see who I had hit, if anyone. The next day when I read that only one person had been killed, a six-year-old kid named Devon who’d been playing hide-and-go-seek with some friends when he’d been struck by one of my errant bullets, I didn’t even cry. I smoked the largest rock I could find and went out again to find those fools I had missed.

There were larger creatures that began to push their way in closer to the light. They were more brazen and they got so close that their inky black skin began to blister and burn as they huddled in close. They knew that they couldn’t get me as long as I stayed under the light, but they seemed determined that I should see them. They wanted to be recognized.

I looked past the gnarled and twisted horns and fangs and immediately began to put names to the faces. Donny, Tank, Warlock, Bean, Eddie, Malik. All rival drug dealers that I had murdered. There were other faces huddling in close to the light but I didn’t recognize most of them. How could I? I’d never met half of the people whose lives had been ruined by what I sold.

Blood was starting to pool in my sneakers. I could feel myself getting light-headed from the blood loss. I had to get moving again before I went into shock. I had to find some open highway and a car.

There were six streetlights in a row and then beyond it another quarter mile of darkness. More of the things had amassed around the perimeter of the light. I would have to go through them again. I began to run.