B. Johnson - Deadgirl

Just B-movie post-apocalypse fare and a crap-ton of grey lifeless countryside.

I knew the response I’d get before I even bothered.

“HELLO!”

My voice stopped at the edge of my lips. Again. I sighed and tucked my free hand into my pocket, a ward against the cold if nothing else. The empty bullet casing touched my fingertips.

I rolled the shell-casing around in my fingers. It felt even colder than usual, like a cylinder of ice. I pressed my skin against the sharp edge of the hole where the bullet used to be.

“HELLO!”

The ground rumbled underneath me. I sucked in a gasp and tried not to tumble down the slope. It shook again, and the sand rolled under my bare feet. I looked around, trying to find the source of the sound, but it came from every direction, every pore in the sand.

I turned.

A dot on the horizon. A ball of white on the ocean. Bigger. Growing larger.

I pivoted and booked down toward the highway. I came down the slope too fast, track star that I am, and my ankle twisted and shot hot sparks of pain up my leg. I vaulted the low guardrail with one hand and landed on the blacktop with a crunch, one that unfortunately took place in my ankle. I tumbled to the ground, my ankle dunked in molten lava.

Son of a bitch that hurt, Lucy. But don’t stop running.

The ground bucked again but with less power—more like an impact than an earthquake. A deep-seated fear welled up within me, uncontrollable, unexplainable. I hobbled across the three empty lanes, crawled over the center divider, and dropped to my hands and knees. The highway shook, and a bright light lanced over the divider, illuminating the grey countryside with unnatural glow. My heart raced, my lungs billowed, and my ankle shouted obscenities at me. I was shaking all over, like I’d just been pulled out of a frozen lake.

I couldn’t hear anything—whatever thing that had come from the ocean, whatever thing that now stabbed the area with a bright white searchlight, was as silent as the grave. Not a footstep, nothing.

Another flash of light—the shadow of the center divider stood out sharply against the blacktop for a moment. Two white circles of light stood out in the shadow, and I turned my head to see the two holes bored through the cement on either side. Ignoring a shrill, naggy caution-voice in my head that sounded more like me than I cared for, I crawled to the closest hole. I took a deep, slow breath, trying to clear my gut of the rampaging butterflies, and peeked through the hole.

Light burned my eyes—it was impossible to make out any of the thing’s features. He looked to be made of light—just sunshine sculpted with arms and legs. His head seemed to be turned away from me, but it was impossible to tell. It wasn’t until a searing beam of light erupted from his face and swept the highway to the left of me that I was sure.

It flashed toward me, and I threw myself away from the hole. I looked behind me—the same clear-cut shadow of the center divider, with two perfectly circular holes. I let out another whoosh of breath and tried not to move. Unless the thing had Superman eyes, I might be safe .

When the light moved on, I took another peek to make sure. It hadn’t seen me. It swept the highway to my right with slow, even strokes.

After what felt like an eternity, the white-thing turned and disappeared over the sand ridge.

I counted to one-hundred, and then I stood up.

Empty again. Just a dead highway snaking through a grey wasteland.

I crossed the center divider and ran across the blacktop. I had to know if it was gone. I jumped over the guard rail and ran full tilt up the gravel and sand slope, ignoring the glass-grinding scream in my ankle.

A boom. The ground jerked beneath me and threw me onto my butt.

“What the hell?” I said.

Again, the not-an-echo. Just muffled silence.

I half-ran half-slid down the rest of the sandy hill until I found my bare feet slapping the wet charcoal-colored sand. I stopped at the edge, the first tickle of frigid water kissing my toes. I bent over and stretched my fingers toward the tide.

The ocean pulled away from me, as if taking a breath. A wave gathered along the breakers and swung toward the shore. It peaked long before reaching me, spilling out across the beach and pushing a foot of water towards my legs. It touched my hand first, then sluiced over my battered ankle and up to my knees.

It could have been acid.

The wave of searing agony, so powerful and unexpected, imparted by the water’s touch, locked my entire body. Paralyzed me, freezing me helpless and screaming as the angry tide slid up to my waist, then to my neck. My muscles wouldn’t respond, and I realized with deep horror that my legs couldn’t withstand the assault. My knees buckled, plunging my face into the scalding liquid. It flooded up my nostrils, rushed into my shrieking mouth… oh God… oh God…

The world went black.

The sound cut out. The hollow hiss of an open microphone with no one behind it.

Lights flickered. My eyes didn’t have to open—they already were. But they sort of turned on again. The blackness disappeared like I’d flipped a switch.

An acoustic ceiling above me.The flash of TV-light.

Then touch—A hard floor beneath me. Moisture.

Sound—A bad sitcom, an aghast 20-something rambling.The gentle click of my mother’s grandfather clock. The rattle-clank noise of pots and pans.

Smell—Garlic. Baked chicken, a single open beer, roasted tomatoes. More than I should smell, I realized. The reality ship had thrown me overboard, and dragged me back onto the deck with equal violence. I gasped for breath, my tongue still wet with salt water.

I looked down. My clothes were soaked through, and the barely-decent date attire was now entirely not-decent. Scandalous, even. Though my wet-rat look was less noticeable than the fact that I was drenched in sea water. A small pool of it collected on the floor beneath me. The idea of it all being a dream died in a briny grave.

“Shit,” I whispered. I didn’t have a better word. I was becoming quite the little sailor.

“Luce?”

Mom . I rolled to my knees to look over the couch. I wasn’t unaware of how similar my all-fours, soggy, terror-filled position was from just moments ago on the cold empty highway, hiding from the White-Thing. I didn’t enjoy the reminder.

“Nothing,” I said. “I’m gonna go change. And shower.”

“Good idea,” Mom said, her voice drifting in from the kitchen. “Dinner’s in thirty.”

“Gotcha,” I said, hoping to disguise my panic. “Won’t take long.”

I glanced around, then back down at the spreading pool of saltwater on the living room floor. I felt a strange sense of vertigo—the room stretched out like taffy. The Persian-looking gold and red throw rug swirled in strange patterns. I closed my eyes and waited for the dizziness to pass. I half-expected the water to be gone when my eyes popped open again.

No such luck. The pool, spreading across the hard-wood floor, began to kiss the tassels of the rug. I turned around, searching for something, anything. My grandma’s hand-sewn gold afghan stretched across the back of the couch. Sorry, Grandma. I tugged it off the couch and tried to soak up the pool as best I could. It wasn’t terribly absorbent, but after enough tries it did the job.

The floor still shined, but the majority of the water clung to the blanket. I spun the afghan into a ball, clutched it tight to me to minimize dripping, and shuffled down the hall. My weakened ankle almost gave out as I ran up the stairs, but I threw myself up the final steps to the top landing. I half-crawled, half-scrambled to my room, ripped open the door, and slammed it behind me.