Jon Fore - Black Water

He began walking, the others shuffling along behind him. The roads looked dryer, more aged than the day before. They were cracked and pot-holed just about everywhere, and the foliage along the length, decorating the lawns of collapsing houses, lay dead and rotting. The cave plants were here as well, but now in more quantity in more places. The screams of the day before seemed to have fallen silent, which meant to Ethan there were no more survivors to seek out or return to rescue. To his greatest relief, the screeching had stopped at some point during the night, which meant he could hold on a bit longer to his sanity—that is, if he still had a grip on it.

Brook Street sloped upwards and then eased down into a valley of housing and small strip malls. Gas stations and convenience stores seemed to have found a union amongst themselves and cohabitated in many places. Where these small stores were not, housing stood in communities of cul-de-sacs and roads, small and large houses, community centers and parks. All of this now hidden under the oppressive smog, obscuring their finer details, thieving them of their normalcy and warmth. To Ethan, it was the very definition of a modern ghost town, sans the tumbleweeds.

The small bridge was barely visible, only noticeable when the light breeze pushed the fog about. Just beyond was the turn, but it was still roughly a mile away. They continued down into the suburbia valley and towards the bridge. The town had fallen into an eerie silence. The mist hissing like poured soda around them and an occasional mechanized whine were the only sounds.

The bodies lining the streets, now almost two days old, had begun to lose water to the dry air and rot under the unnatural aging that had taken to dilapidating the buildings and roads. To their relief, the corpses had quickly passed the stages of stifling stench, but their appearances were all the worst because of it: they looked much like the bog bodies of Ireland, unnaturally preserved and slightly glossy-looking.

They reached the bridge without incident, and Shannon looked over the railing at where water used to rush by. It was now still, stagnant, and shallow to the point of making scattered muddy puddles. Dead water creatures littered the shores in the same rotten way as the human corpses on the street above. All along the banks of the one-time river, the foliage and plant life had given to the death and decay saturating the water and soil, killing everything.

“This town will never be the same, Ethan,” Shannon said sadly. “It was such a nice place to live…”

“There’s a truck over there, stopped in the middle of the road. Maybe it still works. Come on,” Ethan said as he began to walk towards it.

Shannon turned to find a dirty yellow truck, rusted along the edges of the sides, those bulbous puss plants growing over most of it. She urged Kayla ahead of her with her hand while fighting the feeling something was dreadfully wrong. “Ethan, I don’t like this…”

Ethan stopped at her voice and stared at the vehicle, waiting for it to make a sign of its intent, to give away some secret danger. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. It just feels wrong—like a trap,” Shannon explained as she caught up with him.

They both watched the vehicle for a time, but the cab appeared empty. There were obvious bloodstains along the bed and a couple of corpses nearby, but nothing moved or made a threat. “Should we just walk away from it? It’s a truck; we might be able to drive out of here.”

“Just be careful; there is something wrong here. Feels like we are being watched, doesn’t it?”

Ethan led with the barrel of the shotgun, moving slowly and stealthily. He made it to the bed of the pickup and began to skirt along the sides, much too close for Shannon, but she did not want to call out to him; the silence seemed to forbid it.

Ethan jammed the barrel through the open window of the cab, and then eased it back out and turned to Shannon. “It’s empty!”

Shannon saw something rising from the bed of the truck, a small black triangle moving towards Ethan. “Look out! There is something—”

A dog leapt from the bed of the truck right into Ethan’s chest. It was a large dog, mostly coated in blood and missing large sections of its hide. Ribs and muscle showed in the windows left by the torn skin and fur. Shannon and Kayla screamed a chorus at the dog and clutched each other instinctively.

Ethan fell backwards, but back peddled enough to stay out from under the dog before falling flat on his back. The dog charged him, seeing its prey lying prone before it. Just before it pounced on Ethan, the collar holding it to the truck pulled tight, and the dog did an acrobatic flip of hind-under-head and fell on his back with a yelp. Ethan crab walked quickly away from the animal as it lunged at him again, still held at bay by the thick collar and chain leash.

Ethan scrambled to his feet and brought the shotgun up. “You son-of-a-bitch!” he screamed at the dog before blowing it into three large pieces, all of which struck the truck then fell wetly to the road’s surface. He stood there, half bent over, and panted at the decimated corpse before him.

Shannon lifted Kayla and ran to Ethan, throwing her arms around him. “We stay together from now on, right? No more going off on your own. We have to trust our bad feelings from now on, right?” She sounded close to tears.

“I’m fine, really,” Ethan assured into her shoulder.

“You’re not going to leave me here in this fucked-up place, you hear me?” she shouted at him.

“I won’t, I promise!”

Ethan brought her with him to the cab of the truck, being careful not to step close to the large pieces of dog. He opened the door, reached in, and turned the key. The engine did not even sputter. The battery was beyond dead, and Ethan screamed at it, “Fuck!”

“Come on, let’s keep walking. We don’t have much left of the day,” Shannon encouraged.

“Yeah. Shit, I thought that was it. I thought we were going to drive out of here.”

“Please don’t say bad words,” Kayla requested from under Shannon’s arm.

This simple call for morality brought both Ethan and Shannon quickly back into focus. “Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. Those were bad words, weren’t they?” Ethan put his hand on her cheek.

“Yes,” Kayla said sheepishly.

“I promise to try and not do that ever again, alright?”

“Thank you,” she replied with a tiny smile.

They continued a few more yards down the road and made the left turn where they were supposed to, and the road vanished under a wall of the thick smog. Ethan walked a bit further, found the snotty membrane again, and backed away quickly. “It’s blocked, also,” he informed the girls.

“Well, great! Now what do we do?” Shannon’s irritation was clear in her voice.

“I don’t know. We could try skirting the wall; see if there are any breaks in it. I know I can get us through the woods, if we need to.”

“What about up there?” Kayla asked as she pointed up the foot of Black Water Mountain where a path was utterly clear in the moving fog.

“Is that Black Water Mountain?” Ethan asked as he looked up the sides and along the opening in the dense smog.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Shannon replied softly.

“I’m not sure we want to go up there.”

“Maybe the fog is thinner near the top, and we can skirt around the edge of the mountain and come down the other side. Route 27 will be there, and it will take about ten miles off of our walk.” Shannon did not sound comforted by the idea.

“The problem with this town started up there…” Ethan trailed off deep in thought and worry.

“I know, Ethan, but what else can we do? We can look for another break in the fog wall, try this path, or find a place to hide until all of this is over.”