Paul Jones - Exodus

Thor wasn’t the problem, though. It had quickly become apparent to Emily that cycling the forty-five hundred miles to reach the Stockton Islands and the group waiting for her there was going to be a next to impossible undertaking. She was utterly exhausted by the end of each day. She had been lucky so far and not had any accidents, although she had come close on a couple of occasions. But she knew her luck wouldn’t hold out forever, and the odds were stacked well and truly against her traveling that kind of distance and not hitting a pothole or letting her attention slip momentarily and ending up lying in some ditch with a broken arm, leg, or worse.

And then, of course, there were the alien creatures she had encountered. Who knew what strangeness was wandering around the world ahead of her? It was like living in some crazy zoo where she was the prey.

Emily glanced down at Thor sitting patiently at her feet, his ears alert, tongue lolling from his mouth as he panted gently in the warmth of the afternoon sun.

“Coming?” she asked the dog, but he seemed quite happy to stay where he was. “All right,” she said after a second. “You guard our things. I’ll be right back out.” She picked up the almost empty backpack from where she had set it down and walked toward the store.

The door was unlocked. Surprisingly, the shelves looked untouched and almost fully stocked, unlike the majority of shops Emily had stopped at on her trip so far. The unmistakable chaos of panic buyers and thieves marked virtually every location she had tried to look for food.

Sunlight cut through the glass window and illuminated the two middle rows of shelves. The rest of the small room was shrouded in shadow. She paused for a moment, listening for any sound of movement that might indicate that she was not alone. Motes of dust floated gently through the shaft of light; just regular dust, not the weird semi-sentient stuff she had witnessed in Manhattan.

As she walked to the nearest aisle, she began running through a mental checklist of the items she would need. Soup and fruit, maybe some cans of meat if she could find it; it would still be good. She’d also need to grab a bag of dog food for Thor. He was running low.

A shadow to Emily’s left shifted. She stopped midstep, her breath catching in her throat. Instinctively, she reached for the Mossberg shotgun she kept strapped around her shoulder, but it wasn’t there.

“Damn it,” she cursed under her breath as she took a step backward. She could have sworn that she had brought it in with her, but she must have left it with the bike.

Emily took another slow step backward and reached behind her as she searched for the exit she knew was just a few feet away. If she could just get to the door, she could alert Thor and make a run for—

The shadow separated from the darkness surrounding it and moved into the dim light.

It was a spider-alien. Its eight articulated scimitar-clawed legs clicked across the tiled floor of the store. As she watched, first another and then two more joined it from the shadows. One climbed over the nearest set of shelving, perching on the top boxes of instant potato, its two eyestalks swaying back and forth as it focused on her.

She took another step backward. As she did so, the leading spider matched her.

A glass jar of preserves smashed against the floor to her right, the sound like a thunderclap in that enclosed space. Emily yelped. Another creature was climbing over the nearest shelf. More of the freaks were emerging from the darkness, edging toward her across the floor.

She counted seven, then eight, then twelve. Her chest felt heavy as the air she had sucked into her lungs seemed to turn into a dense fog.

Emily could hear Thor barking ferociously from the other side of the door and the frantic scrape of his claws against the glass as he tried to get to her. But the door opened outward, so there was no way he was going to be able to reach her.

She took another step back, too afraid to take her eyes from the ruin of monsters advancing on her. It was some kind of a nest; she had stumbled into a rally point where these things collected and waited to move on to become a part of one of those huge alien trees, or who knew what else.

Her encounters in Manhattan, when one of the ugly bastards had fallen into her room and she had almost been run over by another in Central Park, had taught her that the things seemed mostly harmless, unwilling to attack her while they were gripped by whatever deep motivation drove them. But these were reacting differently; they seemed pissed, and by the way the eyestalks flicked and wavered like an agitated cat’s tail, she was pretty sure they weren’t in a mood to share their newfound home with her.

Emily kept moving back, one slow careful step at a time, until, finally, her hand closed around the door handle. Thor was still growling and whining his frustration and anger outside, his paws batting against the door so hard that she was afraid to open it; he might slip in and go straight for the nearest creature. She was sure he could easily dispatch one or two of them, but there were at least twenty stalking her now, and he would surely be overwhelmed if he tried to take them all on.

“Thor,” she hissed, “be quiet, boy.”

At the sound of her voice, the gathered creatures’ serrated lower jaws jittered up and down so fast she could barely see them. They sounded like dry autumn leaves blown over pavement.

Thor’s agitated scratching at the door stopped, and his barking dropped to a low growl.

She chanced a glance over her shoulder; Thor had stepped back a few paces and was now sitting, staring at her, his tail moving back and forth across the flagstone pavement in either agitation or anticipation. But she could not see any new threat behind him.

When she looked back, the creatures had advanced on her again—the walls and ceiling were covered with them, and every featureless black bulbous head and eyestalk was turned and focused squarely on her. As she watched, a barely noticeable ripple of movement flowed through the creatures.

One after another the creatures launched themselves at her.

Spinning around, she pulled the door toward her and slipped through the crack, pulling the door back into place behind her. Black bodies flung themselves against the glass, smacking against it before dropping to the floor. She clung to the handle, leaning back and pulling it against the jamb as wave upon wave of the creatures tried to get to her. The weight of the mass of flailing aliens kept the door closed.

As more and more of the creatures sank to the floor, they began to form a drift of twig-like flailing legs, writhing eyestalks, and chattering jaws that soon became indistinguishable as individual creatures.

At a mental count of three, she let the door handle go and stepped away. For a second she stood and stared at the monsters as they mindlessly tried to reach her.

“Fuck you!” she yelled eventually, then flipped them the bird, grabbed her bike, and hurtled away from the swarm.

The next afternoon Emily found herself in the rustic town of Stockport. It had taken her almost that long to shake off the encounter at the store. Thoughts of the creatures had even invaded her sleep when she had finally pulled over for the night.

Until she had stumbled into their lair, she hadn’t seen any sign of the spider-aliens for days, and to come across so many of them concentrated in one location was a disconcerting new development in an already surreal week. The more she thought about it, the more it was as if they had been congregating in the store, like troops awaiting fresh orders. Maybe that was exactly what was happening; maybe they were waiting to be given new directions by whatever was orchestrating this strange overthrow of her world.