York opened his eyes to complete darkness, unsure what had woken him. His room was pitch-black, darker than he’d ever seen it; not even a single streetlight sent its orange glow into his bedroom. Rolling over onto his side, he peered blearily at the clock on the bedside table, but the familiar glowing red numbers weren’t there. At his side, Oz stirred and muttered a sleepy question, then poked him in the ribs when he didn’t respond. York swatted his hand away and got up, feeling his way over to the window.
The lights lining the street outside were dead and no lights shone in the windows of the big houses to either side or across the street either. The moon was only a sliver of silver in the cloudy sky, providing just enough illumination to turn familiar surroundings into shadowy and ominous lumps. It was still raining and he heard a few mutters of thunder. For just a moment he thought he saw movement outside but the strain of trying to focus on it in such dim light made his eyes ache and he soon turned away.
“York?” Oz slipped an arm around his waist. “What is it?”
“Power outage in the storm, I guess.” York leaned on the sill to look up at the sky again. “I have a flashlight around here somewhere.” He turned back into the room again, brushing a kiss across Oz’s forehead before going to dig through his desk drawer for a flashlight. Once he found it he turned it on, casting a small circle of light on the messy floor of his room.
“Why don’t we just go back to bed?” Oz yawned and held his watch under the flashlight’s beam. “It’s... huh, it’s dead.”
“Told you to get new batteries for it.”
“No, you told me you were going to buy me new batteries for it, and I told you to fuck off because I’m not taking charity.”
“Oh, shut up. I’m thirsty.” York headed out into the hallway, the beam of the flashlight bobbing ahead of him. He heard Oz’s footsteps behind him and glanced back to make a comment about being afraid of the dark.
The person behind him was too tall and too broad across the shoulders to be Oz. Spinning on his heel, York flicked the flashlight up to see who it was. The face in the flashlight’s beam was missing the flesh along the left side, revealing the blood-streaked bone underneath. Gobbets of flesh dangled underneath its chin and the eyeball on that side bulged from its socket; the white had gone nearly completely red with blood and the pupil had shrunk to a black pinpoint. Blood soaked the blue chambray workshirt the apparition was wearing, turning it nearly purple.
A fist the size of a brick hit him across the face, knocking him flat and sending the flashlight spinning away from his hand across the polished wooden floor. It hit the wall and went out. Dizzy, York spit out a mouthful of blood and tried to get up but a heavy weight landed on his chest and knocked the air out of his lungs. Hands closed around his throat and the stench of rotting meat filled his nose.
He dimly heard Oz yelling his name but all his attention was focused on the struggle to draw air into his lungs. Warm droplets hit his forehead and cheeks, sliding slowly down his skin. His chest burned and black spots began to creep across his vision. In a last-ditch desperate effort to free himself, he raked his fingers across the face looming above him. His nails tore flesh and skidded across wet bone, until one hit the bulging eyeball and popped it, showering him with fluid.
The man reared back, his grip loosening on York’s throat, and Oz hit him with the baseball bat from York’s room. The man’s skull caved in with a wet crunch and he tumbled to the side, his flailing hand scraping across York’s cheek. York made a low whining noise of disgust and scrambled away, using the wall to pull himself to his feet. His lungs burned as he gasped in cool air and it hurt to swallow, but he’d never tasted anything so sweet.
“Jesus Christ, York, Jesus.” Oz sounded like he was crying, panic underlining his words. Still holding onto the wall, York shuffled past the body to Oz’s side. Oz dropped the baseball bat with a clatter and pulled York into his arms, and they clung to each other until the shudders wracking their bodies subsided.
“You okay?” York asked finally, unable to raise his voice higher than a whisper.
“Am I okay? I’m not the one he was choking.” Oz’s fingers ghosted across York’s throat. “Let me get the flashlight and have a look.”
Holding hands they walked together down the hall until Oz could stoop down and pick up the flashlight. The impact had only knocked the casing loose and it came back on once Oz tightened it. Holding it out in front of him, Oz led the way down to the bathroom and played the light around to make sure it was empty before pushing York in and locking the door behind them. He sat York down on the edge of the spacious bath and inspected his neck.
York sat quietly, though he winced a little despite how gentle Oz’s hands were. “How bad?”
“Bruised but I think you’ll be okay. Are you bleeding anywhere? There’s blood on your face.”
“Not mine, I think.” York followed the light with his eyes as Oz went to wet a washcloth and brought it back to wipe the blood away.
“What the hell was that?”
“Carl, I’m pretty sure.” York found he was trembling again and swallowed hard at the memory of the man’s eyeball popping, flinching as the movement brought a flare of pain through his throat.
“The gardener? We need to call the cops.” Oz ran his fingers through York’s dark hair. “Did he lose his fucking mind?”
York thought of the flesh hanging off the gardener’s face and lunged for the toilet to throw up. Something tore in his throat, sending a line of fire down his neck and filling his mouth with the taste of coppery blood. He hadn’t eaten much the night before—thankfully—and his stomach emptied itself quickly. When he was done he sat back on his heels and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, grimacing at the taste of blood on his lips.
“We’ll go to the hospital and tell the cops.” Oz rubbed York’s back. “Up to walking yet?”
“No,” York said, but got to his feet anyway with Oz’s help. He leaned heavily on him as they made their way towards the stairs, avoiding the body still lying on the floor. The flashlight’s beam bounced ahead of them as they went down the stairs, showing nothing but the empty first floor as Oz swept it around.
York grabbed his cell phone off the kitchen counter and turned it on, frowning when it showed no reception. He moved over to the door, where the signal was usually stronger, but his cell phone remained stubbornly out of range. A quick check of the house phones showed the lines were dead as well.
“Nothing.” York sighed and shoved the phone into his pocket. “We’ll have to drive.”
“Take this and wait here.” Oz handed him a butcher’s knife from the knife caddy by the sink. “I’ll get our clothes.” He ran upstairs and soon returned with the clothes they’d been wearing the night before and just dumped on York’s floor. They dressed in silence, then Oz grabbed the keys to the Jeep from the hook by the door and led the way into the garage.
The Jeep was closest to the door, and to York’s surprise, his parents’ Lexus was beside it. They had left a few nights before for a two-week getaway to work on their marriage, and the car hadn’t been there when York and Oz had come back to the house after dinner. York and Oz exchanged a look and York read the same thought in Oz’s eyes as was going through his own mind: did they know Oz was in the house? York didn’t think so, or they would have been yanked out of bed before this, possibly by the police.
“Do you... think they’re okay?” Oz asked, glancing nervously back at the house.
“They probably went out with friends. You know how they are.” York gave Oz’s hand a squeeze and slid into the Jeep’s passenger seat. Oz got into the driver’s side and started the engine easily, but the automatic door opener clipped to the visor refused to open the door. With a sigh Oz got out to haul it open by hand and got back into the car. As he did York caught a whiff of something bitter and rotten in the rainy air, and wrinkled his nose in disgust.
They pulled out of the garage, the Jeep’s headlights playing across the dark street and the houses across the road. York thought he saw the house directly across from his was missing its door, but Oz turned onto the road before York could take a better look. The entire neighbourhood was dark and he couldn’t even see the glow of lights in the distance. At the end of the street someone had crashed into a lamppost, totalling their car, but there were no police or ambulance on the scene, and no sirens broke the night’s silence.
“Where is everyone?” Oz asked softly as he took a careful turn onto the highway. “Look, there’s tons of cars in the ditch. Where are the cops?”
“I don’t know.” York turned to squint out the window. “Just get to the hospital, maybe we can find out what’s going on then.”
“I hope so.” Oz put his foot down on the gas, inching the car up above the speed limit. The rain began to fall harder, blurring the windshield despite the rapidly flicking wipers but Oz didn’t let his speed drop. York wanted to ask him to slow down but instead he just held onto the bar on the door, pulling his seatbelt tight around him.
The semi loomed up out of the darkness between one blink and the next, parked horizontally across the road. Oz slammed on the brakes but the wheels just locked on the slick road and sent them skidding sideways towards the body of the truck. York let go of the door bar and covered his head with both arms in an instinctive, futile gesture of protection.
The impact tossed him against the door with a jolt, smacking his head off the window. He heard a loud crunch and Oz’s yelp, and his seatbelt tightened hard enough and fast enough to make him grunt. The silence that followed was broken only by the sound of their harsh, fast breathing. Reaching out blindly York took Oz’s hand, then opened his eyes and cast a wide-eyed look out the unbroken windshield.
The body of the truck had bowed in around the impact in a roughly circular shape, leaving the car untouched. He couldn’t even see a scratch on the Jeep’s hood, though the headlights showed the truck’s body bore deep, jagged gouges in the metal. Oz was staring out at the damage with wide brown eyes, his face pale and his mouth hanging open; the hand that York hadn’t claimed gripped the steering wheel hard enough to turn his knuckles white.
“What...?” York managed.
“I don’t...” Oz laughed suddenly, though the sound was slightly hysterical. “It was like this giant soap bubble around the car. It just... protected it.”
“You must have been seeing things. Panic does that.”
“Come on, York, look at the damn truck.”
York shook his head, purposely looking away. “There’s some sort of reasonable explanation for it. Some sort of breakaway material, designed to cut down on fatalities in crashes.”
“Bullshit and you know it. There’s nothing on Earth that could do that.”
“Of course, you’re right. It must’ve been aliens. It’s an alien truck. A disguise for their spaceship.” York rolled his eyes, unable to keep the biting tone out of his voice. “They’re all disguised as semis and sitting in the middle of the highway.”
“Go fuck yourself, asshole.” Oz slammed the Jeep into reverse and backed out.
York bit his lip against a sharp reply and after a moment said, “I’m sorry.”
“Uh-huh.” Oz swung the Jeep around the truck and started down the highway again, keeping his speed down this time. Beyond the truck the road was littered with other cars, smashed together and overturned. Oz navigated around them carefully and they both breathed a sigh of relief as the Jeep turned off the highway towards the hospital.
The big hospital was as dark as the rest of the city and Oz drove slowly as he searched for a parking spot. There was a space near the entrance, but Oz only pulled into it and didn’t kill the engine right away, looking up at the shadowy building. The rain pattered down on the car, heavy enough to bounce from the metal. York could see the apprehension on his face and knew they were both reluctant to leave the safety and warmth of the car to cross the dark stretch of pathway between them and the entrance.
“York?” Oz’s voice made him jump and he glanced over with wide eyes.
“My throat feels better. I don’t need to be checked out. Switch spots with me, I’ll drive.”
“Drive where?”
“My Nana’s place. They have that reinforced bunker for a basement, remember? It’ll be safe there.”
“Safe from what?”
“I don’t know, okay? Something. Whatever’s wrong here, ‘cause something is really wrong.”
Oz nodded after a moment and pulled off his seatbelt. York opened his own door and slid out at the same time as Oz did, and they hurried around the front of the car to switch seats. The bitter smell was thick in the air, enhanced by the pouring rain, and as he reached for the driver’s side handle, he was sure he heard harsh, snuffly breathing somewhere behind him. For an instant he froze, then he yanked the door open and threw himself into his seat, slamming the door shut again behind him. The slam was echoed by Oz’s door and they exchanged a frightened look before York put the Jeep into reverse and pulled out.
Neither of them spoke as York got back onto the highway, but after a half-hour of silence, Oz leaned forward to turn the radio on. Nothing but static hissed out of the car’s speakers and after going through the band twice, Oz turned it off again. York barely noticed, all his attention focused on getting them safely around all the obstacles in their path. A drive that should’ve taken twenty minutes at most took him just over an hour and by the time he turned onto the gravel road leading to his grandparents’ house, he had a stress headache pounding behind his eyes. Gravel pinged against the undercarriage of the Jeep as he went down the road, aggravating his headache and forcing him to slow down to avoid skidding in the wet mush the road always became in the rain.
Halfway there, just as he was beginning to relax, he caught movement from the corner of his eye. A shadow darted out into the road, causing him to slam on the brakes. The car fishtailed a little but stopped short of the woman picked out in the high beams. She was barefoot and soaked to the skin, her dark brown hair plastered to her skull and her dirty blue dress clinging to her frame. She ran to the driver’s side as soon as the car stopped and began to pound on the window, so hard York was afraid she might crack it. He hesitantly rolled the window down, remembering Carl the gardener, but she was only dirty and wild-eyed, not bloody.
“Please, you have to take me somewhere safe. Before they find me again. Please, you have to help me. Let me in, please.” She glanced quickly at Oz in the passenger seat, then turned her pleading gaze back to York. “Please.”
York exchanged a glance with Oz, then unlocked the doors. The woman made a sobbing noise of relief and clambered into the back seat, thanking them profusely and introducing herself as Sarah Craig.
“We’re headed to my grandparents,” York told her, watching her in the rearview mirror. “The Fitzpatricks. Do you know them?”
“I-I’ve seen them around.” Sarah’s hand crept up to tug at a lock of tangled wet hair. “Are they at home?”
“I hope so.” York fought off a distinct feeling of unease. His grandparents’ house appeared on the right, only just visible in the shadows of a stand of trees; it was as dark as everything else around them. Pulling into the driveway, York parked as close to the house as he dared and switched off the engine.
Sarah threw the back door open and got out, gesturing for them to follow her up onto the front porch. York and Oz exchanged a glance then followed her, bumping their shoulders together as they walked. The front door was locked but York found the spare key underneath the welcome mat and let them in, calling a hello. There was no answer, even when Oz yelled as loud as he could. After a moment York went into the kitchen and found a lighter, lighting the kerosene lamp on the kitchen table and turning it up so it illuminated the room. He looked around but saw no note explaining where his grandparents had gone; but when he checked the garage he saw their car wasn’t in its usual place. Wondering if they'd gone out with his parents—unlikely, but this was a night for strange things—he went back into the kitchen.
Oz had already set out three mugs on the counter and put the kettle to boiling. Leah had sat down at the table, shivering, and gratefully accepted the towel York fetched for her. Finished with the tea, Oz brought their mugs over to them then pulled the kitchen stool up to the table to sit on. York took the other chair and wrapped his hands around the warm mug, breathing in the tea-scented steam rising from it.
“What were you doing out in the rain?” York asked once he’d had a chance to drink some of his tea.
She was silent for a moment, warming her hands. “I rented the old Thompson place a few weeks ago, just me and my dog.” Her lip trembled for a moment and she took a deep breath. “You heard about the volcano?” When they shook their heads she gave them the rundown on the eruption of the supervolcano on Toba Lake, then continued. “I went to bed early because I got sick of the doom and gloom of the news. I left Ellie, my dog, downstairs. She woke me up a little later, barking like she does when there’s a stranger at the door. I hadn’t heard the doorbell but I got up anyway, ‘cause maybe it was someone who needed help.
“Ellie stopped barking while I was throwing this dress on but then she started yelping like she’d hurt herself.” Sarah wiped absently at the tears rolling down her cheeks. So I went running downstairs. The side door was wide open—it’s never shut properly—and this... man had come in. He’d... he’d killed Ellie and he was... eating her.” She took a deep breath. “I screamed and he came after me. I’ve never seen anyone move so fast. I somehow managed to avoid him and then I ran. Kept running until I heard your car.”
“I’m sorry,” York said after a moment of silence. He almost told Sarah about Carl’s attack on him in the house, but after a quick shared look with Oz, he decided not to. “We’ll be safe here until morning. When it’s daylight we can go to the cops.”
He drained the last of his tea and gathered up the mugs to put in the sink, then picked up the kerosene lamp and led the way down into the basement, closing and locking the door behind them. With Oz’s help he pulled out the couch-bed and set it up while Sarah took a shower, leaving a pair of his old sweatpants and a T-shirt for her to change into when she was done. Taking Oz’s hand, he led the way into the back bedroom and they changed and settled into bed. York thought he might stay awake a long time, replaying the past few hours over and over in his mind, but instead he fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.
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