Chapter 1 #3
The woods thinned and gradually broke, revealing a sprawling farm running alongside the highway. In the middle of an endless field sat a downed fighter plane covered in vines. It was too dark to see if the pilot had survived.
Every few miles, the man checked the highway signs with a flicker of his flashlight to make sure he was still traveling I-95 NORTH TO RICHMOND.
For the first time in a long while, the idea of getting lost was frightening.
He checked his watch with an obsessive regularity, careful to allow himself enough darkness to find a house off the highway, a safe place to rest. Not even forty-eight hours separated him from the cozy confines of the basement bedroom, and already he missed the comfort and security of four walls and a bed frame.
After cutting across the loose gravel shoulder and making his way through an overgrown vineyard, he broke the back window of the nearest house and let himself inside, nicking his elbow on a shard of splintered glass.
With a dinner of canned beans and corn fresh in his belly, he slept on the living room sofa from six in the morning until four in the afternoon.
The handful of hours between waking and nightfall were spent listening to the radio and hunched over the map in flickering candlelight.
He snacked on salted nuts as he plotted his course through Richmond and Fredericksburg and on into the capital city.
Feeling rested, he left just after sunset and, after two hours of walking, arrived in Richmond by way of the interstate.
Progress had been slowed by bumper-to-bumper columns of abandoned cars and trucks.
Errant clusters of pileups. There were no stars out tonight, the sky choked with clouds, offering only fleeting glimpses of a suffocated moon.
With the James River directly ahead, the flashlight was too risky, so he was forced to maneuver by touch and intermittent Bic-light.
It was far from comfortable, but he had scant other choice.
After a while, the metal guardrail bordering the shoulder transitioned into a waist-high concrete barricade as the road began to slope upward.
Easing closer to the barrier, the man snuffed out his flame and leaned over the edge, peering sightlessly into an unwavering shield of darkness.
The sound of running water beneath him immediately grew louder.
Heartbeat quickening, he realized he was standing atop a bridge.
The man ducked down behind the concrete barricade and sucked in his breath. Did they see the flame before I put it out? Could they have seen my silhouette looming above? Are there even any of them submerged down there?
He knew he couldn’t risk it. Shoving the Bic into his pocket, the man scuttled his way between cars and debris like a crab on a crowded beach.
Crouching down, feeling his way through the darkness, he scampered over broken glass and shattered plastic and contorted steel, bumping into open doors and side-view mirrors and rusted out wheel wells.
Before long, he was bleeding from nicks and scrapes all over his arms, legs, and face.
As he made his way around an overturned motorcycle missing its front tire, a bank of clouds drifted clear of the moon. The sudden shower of silvery light revealed a welcome sight: He had nearly reached the end of the bridge.
Taking advantage of the unexpected illumination, the man quickened his pace and—
KHROOOMSPLSH!
He whirled around, nearly stumbling on his ass, hand shooting toward the pistol in his waistband with cowboy speed.
He braced himself for the blinding blue light show to arise from the water…
but nothing came. Nothing he could see, anyway.
That didn’t sound like a Scorpion, he thought.
More like a piece of the bridge sinking, breaking off and splashing into the river.
He saw something then: a vague shadow flitting across the face of the moon. Something huge, towering, like a skyscraper swaying in high winds, standing just beside the bridge.
And then the clouds were back, and the giant shape was gone.
The man rubbed his eyes and then stared into the darkness. Nothing moved.
Had he imagined it? Somewhere behind him, an owl called out, and he idly wondered if it was trying to warn him. Peering over his shoulder one last him, he started to walk again. Just a trick of the light. That’s all. They don’t get that big. Nothing does.
The rest of that third night was traveled without incident.
The unseen owl hooted at the man a few times more, and he soon became convinced that it was following him.
Guiding, perhaps. He thought about taking an exit and finding an apartment building to hole up and wait out daylight in, but then he considered Larry and suicide and decomposition, and he only wanted to get away from all the ghosts but his own. No need to go looking for any more.
A suburb on the northern outskirts of the city served his needs quite nicely.
He stayed up late stirring a stew of last night’s beans and corn and other leftover veggies while studying the road ahead, taking note of the dozens of streams and creeks that the interstate would eventually traverse.
Despite his exhaustion, he slept fitfully.
It was the nightmares, of course. Dreams of the corpse he’d left to rot in a Florida bathtub. The novel sensation of a gun firing to life in his hands. The bunker in the backyard that nearly became his own tomb.
The next night—the fourth since the man had returned to his walking ways—while traveling with the radio turned low and pressed up against his ear, static began to infringe upon the music.
It started during a stretch of early rock ’n’ roll.
Chuck Berry’s voice grappled with the annoying buzz, beating back the void, but in the end, it was no use.
He’d gone too far and was losing the signal. But he couldn’t stop walking. Not now.
Perhaps someday, he thought, the world would sit still long enough for him to resurrect the music himself. He mostly doubted it, but it was nice to imagine.
On the fifth night after leaving the house with the basement bedroom, just past three in the morning, the man abandoned the highway and wandered down a winding exit ramp.
He felt oddly relaxed. Almost tranquil. The only sounds he could hear were the crickets chirping in the tall grass around him and the tired shuffling of his own footsteps.
His friend the owl had yet to make a return appearance.
Up ahead, a family of deer scampered across the road, their eyes blinking red in the darkness, and disappeared into a stand of trees.
That’s the closest I’ll get to a good omen.
Not long after, less than half a mile off the interstate, the man stumbled upon a picket-fence neighborhood with plenty of open space and clear sight lines.
The spacious homes and attached garages were practically begging for a guest. He knew he couldn’t afford to take a day off, but goddammit he needed a good night’s rest. And this looked like just the place to—
Clink-clink-gash.
What?!
His eyes grew wide in alarm.
Clink-clink-gash.
They’re awake? Now? In the middle of the night?
Clink-clink-gash.
Terror metastasized throughout his brain. His body, like that of a frightened rabbit that smells the stalking fox too late, seized up and froze. Now he was the deer caught in the gaze of that metallic blue light.
The man, gooseflesh spreading over his bare skin like an icy rash, slowly peered over his shoulder. Like a child peeking out from beneath the covers to face the boogeyman in the back of the closet.
Emerging around a long bend in the road was a shimmering blue so deep with current and turmoil that the man believed, in that moment of fearful awe, that he was staring into an ocean storm. A tsunami of glowing devastation.
Clink-clink-gash.
Why the hell is it awake?
Clink-clink-gash.
Jesus. Just. Leave. Me. The. Fuck. Alone.
He sidestepped into the grass to muffle his footsteps and dropped to his hands and knees, clambering behind a row of overgrown chest-high shrubbery. Pulling his knees to his chest, he held his breath, waiting.
Clink-clink-gash.
It was taking its goddamn time. If the beast had already spotted him, it hadn’t let on.
Clink-clink-gash.
Or maybe it was playing a game. Prolonging the hunt. A cat toying with a mouse.
Clink-clink-gash.
The man cursed himself for taking a shower earlier and for failing to procure more animal droppings. Stupid and lazy. Such indulgences had to be beneath him now. Above him. Behind him.
The Scorpion spiraled closer. CLINK! Its javelin legs shaking the earth with each powerful stride. A slat-thin fox erupted from the nearby brush and sprinted past the man’s hiding place, paying the human no mind at all.
CLINK!
The man’s chest felt like it was going to explode. His legs braced themselves to flee.
GRRASH!
Twenty feet away, the stretch of pavement on the other side of the shrubs suddenly splintered and gave way to the Scorpion’s dredging anchor.
Up close, the sound was even more hideous, like church bells being dragged through the dirt.
A shower of pebbles and small asphalt chunks rained down upon the man in the bushes.
As the blue storm swallowed the world, he peered through a gap.
The creature was taller than any house in sight.
All six of its eyes were wide open, drowning the road in that labyrinthian blue.
It was alone, moving at an almost leisurely pace.
Yet it didn’t seem tired. More than anything, with its head sunken into its body and its eyes focused straight ahead, the Scorpion appeared… determined. Thoughtful, even.
As the man watched from the shadows, the alien spun itself down the road and out of sight, taking its glowing blue hurricane with it. The crickets seemed to wait a moment to resume their night song, and only then did the man breathe a sigh of relief.