Gina Ranalli - Unearthed

“Go on,” she growled under her breath. “Get in there you sons-of-bitches. Burn.”

In the backseat, Stacy said, “I think I feel it.”

Joe fought to get air into his lungs and rasped, “Pull…it…out.”

Rebecca winced a moment later when Joe let out a piercing scream. “Got it!” Stacy said triumphantly. “Shit! It’s…barbed!”

Catching a glimpse of the stinger in the mirror, Rebecca quickly returned her attention to the road. It was probably two feet long, black and had what appeared to be thorns all along its length. Definitely a nasty bit of work.

Stacy’s triumph was brief. “Now you’re bleeding. Shit !” To Rebecca, she said, “Do you have anything in here we can use to wrap his leg?”

“I don’t know,” she said apologetically. “This isn’t my car. Look around in the back.”

Turning in the seat, Stacy rummaged around but all she came up with was a wool blanket and an old blue and tan flannel shirt. She did the best she could with the shirt, binding Joe’s upper thigh with it before covering him with the blanket. A few hisses of pain escaped through Joe’s clenched teeth, but otherwise he was silent through the process.

“There,” Stacy said when she was finished. “That should help.”

Joe took a long ragged breath and said, “I guess I should mention I’m allergic to bee stings.”

Both women gasped, but he lifted a bloody hand to silence them. “All the Benadryl in the world won’t help this one. It’s a…doozy.”

“Jesus,” Rebecca whispered.

“We need to get him to a hospital,” Stacy said, her voice on the teetering edge of panic. “We need to go now !”

Rebecca licked her lips and shook her head slowly. “I’ve been driving for hours looking for a way out of town. So far, all the roads leading out are gone.”

“What do you mean ‘gone’?”

“I mean… gone . The sinkholes just swallowed them. I haven’t been able to find one completely intact yet and nothing’s been passable.”

Stacy let out a long string of curses then fell silent for a few seconds. “Well..what about that clinic over on Poplar?”

Rebecca thought about it. “I haven’t been down that way yet, but I can try taking the long way around.” She didn’t say what she was really thinking: that it would be a miracle if the clinic was not only standing but operational as well. But, she supposed, what could it hurt to try?

“His face is getting all splotchy!” Stacy said suddenly. “Oh my God, what should I do?” When Rebecca didn’t reply, she yelled, “Drive faster!”

Pressing down slightly on the accelerator, Rebecca said, “I can’t drive too fast or the bees will come.”

“Who cares! Just go!”

“If they come,” Rebecca tried to explain patiently, “then we won’t even be able to get your friend out of the car.”

Joe’s breathing became even more labored and Lou let out a long, low whine. Beside them, Stacy began to cry.

Grim-faced, Rebecca drove on in the direction of the clinic, carefully weaving around abandoned vehicles and the occasional bodies of the dead, both human and otherwise.

Not only was clinic gone, but the entire northwest corner of town had dissolved into mud, absorbed back into the earth from which it came. What lay beyond the hood of the Rover was a vast black field of empty space, a gorge with no bottom to be seen.

“It’s getting worse,” Rebecca said. She felt entirely defeated. If Joe was still breathing in the backseat, she couldn’t hear him over the soft sound of Stacy’s gentle weeping. That fact alone let her know that he probably wasn’t.

She put the Rover in reverse and slowly backed away from that vacant space, not daring to let herself think about the lives that must have been lost in the last twenty-four hours.

“My baby,” Stacy sobbed. “Oh, God, my poor baby.”

Rebecca’s heart broke for the young woman as she turned the Rover back in the direction they’d come from. She was about to ask if Stacy had been married to Joe when she felt the back left side of the Rover sink. Both she and Stacy screamed in terror as the land behind the vehicle began to collapse.

Grimacing, Rebecca stomped on the gas pedal, thanking the powers that be for front-wheel-drive and the Rover lurched forward, the back wheel bumping back up onto solid ground.

Stacy spun around to look out the rear window. “Fuck!” she shouted. “Drive! Drive drive, drive !”

Behind them, the new gorge was growing, ingesting the ground and everything on it with an insatiable appetite. Despite driving as fast as she could, the earth was disintegrating no more than a car length after they passed over it.

“ SHIIIIIITTTTT! ” Rebecca yelled, gripping the steering wheel with all her might. She was dimly aware of the pandemonium happening behind her, the girl screaming, the dog barking, the earth crumpling into nothingness, but she kept her eyes straight ahead, pushing the Rover on, leaning forward towards the dashboard as if it would make them move faster.

They hadn’t gotten far when another crevasse opened up in front of them, smaller than the one behind, but still wide enough to take them down into oblivion.

Rebecca jerked the wheel to the right, going off-road, over a median strip, across a patch of lawn and into a small apartment complex parking lot. Swerving around the building, narrowly avoiding parked cars, they exited the other side onto long abandoned train tracks, the Rover’s engine roaring its protest.

Keeping to the tracks, Rebecca didn’t dare slow down. Parallel to the tracks, the ground was vanishing on one side while the edge of the forest lay on the other.

“We’re so fucking screwed,” Stacy said, sounding almost calm now. “So fucking screwed.”

From the right, where the forest was, came the sound that Rebecca had come to know so well: falling trees. Faraway, but certainly not far enough.

“ Come on !” Rebecca snarled savagely as she saw an opening on the left where there was still a section of ground wide enough to let them pass. The Rover veered that way, its occupants bouncing violently within it, but otherwise silent now.

As soon as she’d made the move, Rebecca saw that it had been a mistake and hit the brakes, causing the Rover to fishtail and throwing both Stacy and the dog forward. They each let out yelps of pain and fear and then the vehicle was still.

Nothing lay in front of them.

Nothing lay behind or to either side.

The Rover sat on an island of earth, perhaps 84 feet wide and 100 feet in length.

Rebecca had no idea what was holding up this scrap of land, but she was grateful for it, knowing it was not likely to last more than a few minutes at most.

Stacy said nothing, but she didn’t cry either. She simply sat looking out the passenger side window, her eyes full of wonder and resignation.

Thinking about Glen, Rebecca sighed and turned to look at her dog. “Come here, Lou,” she said and patted her lap. The dog obliged, hopping over the center console to sit on top of his mistress, panting, wearing much the same expression as Stacy wore.

Burying her face in his fur, Rebecca sniffed and murmured, “You’re a good boy, Lou. A good boy.” She could feel the dog’s heart beating strong and steady in his chest and this gave her comfort. “We’ll see Daddy soon.”

When she lifted her face again, the eastern horizon was blushing the palest shade of gray she’d ever seen and the creatures were buzzing back forth in all directions. Dozens of them, all going about their own mysterious business.

This is their world now , she thought.

She hoped somewhere the earth still belonged to people, but in her heart of hearts she suspected that even if it did, it wouldn’t be for much longer.