madmanic999's fiction

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:: Wednesday, January 9, 2008 by madmanic999

We move quickly into the tees, the sounds of beasts still moving about in the distance fills all three of us with a sense of panicked urgency.  The dark haired woman seems focused, she is not feeling her way around or guessing, she knows where she is going, this keeps me hopeful.  Fisher has his left arm draped over my shoulder for support, clutching his ribs with the other arm, his face expessing his pain with every hurried step.

"Stop," she says in a determined whisper, "here, it's here."  She dropps down on her hands and knees searching through the dried leaves and filth under her with her palms.  She finds what she is looking for, a fist sized metal handle that folds down to make it barely visible.  She grasps it tightly and jerks upward with all her strength.  A large section of forest floor opens up, now revealed to be a door into the earth itself.  "C'mon, hurry."  It leads to what appear to be conctrete steps, the woman rushes down the first few holding the hatch up with two hands, I slowly begin to help Fish into the dark.  "What is this place?" I ask as I pass.  "It's a cellar, it used to under a church, they stored wine and supplies here.  When all this started the church burned but the concrete cellar was intact." she lowers the door plunging us into complete darkness, I feel oddly at home. "Some smart survivors cleared our the wreckage and refashioned the foundation," I here her fumbling, then a scatching sound followed by a steady hiss as the stairway is filled with the orange glow of an oil lantern. "Then they  built a hidden entrance at the stairs so they could hide under ground."  Now that she could see clearly she turned back to the closed cellar door and grabbed another handle.  This one to a sliding dead bolt.  She shoves it to the left inserting the bolt into a waiting latch, then turns back to us with an expression that seems to ask why we are still standing there.  "We had to use it once in a pinch. A survivor we were travelling with showed us the location." She grabs Fishers other side and starts guiding us down the stairs into the darkness.  "I would have tried to head for here had I not been chained," she looks right at Fish and adds, "there was no way in hell I was leading your brother here." Fish's head sinks a little lower.  He doesn't respond.  At the bottom she turns from us and lights another lamp.  Orange light now creeps into the corners of the small cellar revealing dank concrete walls and large wooden racks that had once held wine, but now were converted to supply shelves.  A few empty tin cans, torn sleeping bags and various junk is all that remains.  One has the pieces of what appears to be a broken lantern and a small radio.  At the far end a huge headless depiction of the crusifiction in wood and stone is propped against the wall between the racks that line the left and right of the cellar.  It was probably damaged in the fire, but in the lamp light has a terrible ominus quality.  The smell of dirt, mold and dampness fill the surprisingly cool air.  I slowly lower Fish into a corner and he lets out a pained cry gripping his ribs tightly, but relief quickly comes over his face as he settles  against the wall.  The dark haired woman heads to the wooden racks and starts searching through them.

"We aren't safe, they can find me, sense me... if they want.  I can't stop them." I sound tired, hopless.  I sink down and sit on the bottom step of the concrete stairs.

"If they are looking, but I doubt they are." The women says, " We are doing what they want now, they won't bother." she replies, still digging through shelves, sounding just as tired and just as hopeless.

"What does that mean?  They seemed determined to kill us out there, bent on it." I am confused by her statements. "Why would they just give up?"

"Because, we're hiding... and that's what they want." Fisher says staring at the floor beneath him.

"When all this started they would hunt us down wherever we ran," the women continues, not looking away from her digging, but still not finding anything either, "wherever we would hide, but after they won, as long as we stayed hidden, they were happy to let us rot in our holes and huts.  Content for us to starve of worse."

"After they won?" I am still asking questions, but I think I already know the answers to some of them. Of course they had won.

"If you find cockroaches in your kitchen you stomp their brains out, but if they are in your trash in the backyard, do you ever really give a fuck." Fisher's tone is indignant, he snickers, then winces and holds his sides again.

"You sound like your brother, Fisher." she shoots him an evil eye from over her shoulder. "They send there death squads out to keep the fear alive and kill the foolish and the brave, leaving us hiding in burnt out buildings and makshift shelters, while they infest the cities and towns."  the woman adds, seemingly becoming frustrated either with Fisher's comments or her fruitless search. 

"Maria..." Fish says sheepishly not looking up from where he is sitting, "I'm sorry about all this." his dirt caked hair hides his eyes, but tears are visible dripping down his cheek and chin.

"Save it Fish..." She turns from her search to him again,  now standing on the opposite side of the cellar,  leans her back against the wall behind her next to the racking, and slowly sinks to sit on the cold floor beneath, pulling her knees into her chest.

"You know eachother?" I am half asking, half making a statement of the obvious.

"Fisher was part of our group." she replies.  "We found him and his brother hiding in an abandoned Wal-Mart with a few other survivors."

A dull thumping over head, like feet running, then more... and another... we all sit perfectly still, perfectly quiet, the air turns electric... They will find us for sure, the invisible fingers will reach out... reach out to find me... but the sound fades, and no strange intruders try to penetrate my mind.... maybe they really aren't looking, my attention drifts to the strange events,  the water dream, the little girl, the tall Reaper that did not kill us, events I couldn't explain.

"Maria... I didn't think he would go this far..." Fish finally looks up breaking the silence, tears still flowing. "...we didn't know."

"DON'T..." Maria catches herself speaking too loudly and chokes it back, then continues,"don't give me that shit Fisher, of all of you, you leaving surprised me the most, and I still think that your brother used you and manipulated you, but don't try and paint a picture where Reese didn't know what the Doc was cooking up.  Innocent people got killed." She is visibly agitated, her fists clenched. "What they did was unforgivable, and taking Dwayne with you, how could you."

"Tag convinced him to go Maria... I asked him to stay at the safehouse..." Fishers voice is rising he is sobbing heavily between sentences. "I told him he was better off with you, he didn't understand!... I tried!" 

Maria's eyes soften and start to tear up, she raises a single finger to her lips to signal for Fish too lower his voice, but her eyes tell him she understands.  All at once Fisher's youth is evident, one minute an injured soldier, now just a sobbing boy with a rifle strapped over one shoulder.  Fisher lowers his head into his hands, still crying.  Maria pulls herself up from where she is seated, walks across the cellar grabbing one of the torn sleeping bags.  She unfolds it, moves toward Fish and carefully wraps it around him then sits down on the floor next to him and places an arm around his neck and shoulder.

"It's ok Fish, everything is going to be ok, it wasn't your fault." she whispers into his ear.

"Who are you, how did you get here?" I am whispering now as well.  Whispering, like laughter, or a yawn seems to have that strange contagious nature.

"When this all started, I was a school teacher in the city.  Highschool, I taught creative writing and music classes.  My husband had died five years earlier, just after our daughter Ellaina was born.... an aneurysm."  Her eyes fill again, this time she can not hold back the flow of tears. "It was hard, and now I lived for two things, Ellaina, and teaching.  I was so wrapped up in my grief that I buried myself in my work and motherhood. I completley sheltered myself from everyone but Ellaina and my students. I was one of those people that was afraid to even watch the news, scared they would tell me something terrible.  I can't express to you how I felt that first night, I had closed myself off, shut myself down for so long, that I could not cope with what I had seen.  Ellaina woke me in the middle of the night.  She said she had heard a loud noise.  At first I kissed her forehead and asked her to go back to her room, I told her if she was a good girl I would take a sick day the next day and we could pick flowers in the park. She refused and held her ground, as she often did. She had such a strong will for such a little girl. She loved to sing, loved to laugh and she loved flowers. I must have had a million crayon drawings all over my classroom, apartment and stored away. All of her beautiful flowers." Her eyes drift away as if she is no longer speaking to me, but reliving painful memories on her own.  She smiles a painful smile and continues. "Then I heard it.  A huge boom, then another, far off but loud like thunder in the distance and then the rising of sirens.  I rushed to my bedroom window, we were on the sixth floor of our complex so I had a good view of downtown.  There were several large fires, and the flashing colors of police and emergency vehicles everywhere.  In the sky above I could see this red steak  falling toward down town.  My mind raced, were we under attack, was it terrorists.  I grabbed Ellaina, we had to get somewhere safe, I didn't know where I was going or why I left the apartment but I grabbed what I could and rushed to the elevator on my way to the parking lot.  When we exited the front of our building a huge explosion rocked the  law office across the street from us.  The building was destroyed, and the impact threw me to the ground and for a moment I was almost deaf from the sound, and blind from the smoke and ash.  All I knew for sure was Ellaina was still in my arms, and I could feel her crying against me, she was ok.... Once I knew she was alright, I just sort of let go, passed out, or was knocked unconscious, I'm not sure.  The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital and wondering why I was on a gurney in a corridor still holding Ellaina.  People were rushing past us, the emergency lights seemed to be the only ones on.  I still thought it was some kind of terrorist attack, that some mad suicide bomber was on a holy mission, and that was the first time I saw THEM.  I heard a women scream and when I looked toward the sound I saw a man in a checkered plaid shirt grabbing at a nurse.  His skin was that sick yellow color, and it looked like he had been tearing his own hair out in clumps.  It seemed like his flesh was moving, pulsating, and the sound he let out was not human, I doubt any person alive on this planet will ever forget the first time they heard that sound.  She was flailing her arms and legs trying to keep him away, but he pulled her in close, opened his mouth and coughed blood and fluids into her face.  Then she just went completely still and fell to the floor.  Several bystanders rushed to grab the man in the checkered shirt and to help the nurse.  I couldn't understand what I was seeing.  Terrified, I grabbed Ellaina in my arms, she was limp. Oh god no, she was hurt I thought, but I had no time to think clearly, so I just headed down the hall in opposite direction searching for a doctor.  I heard more screams and looked back for a moment, long enough to see the nurse was now back on her feet and had one of the men who came to her aid by his throat.  This was insanity I remember thinking, I'm losing my mind.  We fumbled our way through the corridors, but every nurse and doctor was either rushing away, or with some terribly injured patient.  I yelled out a few times for someone to help my little girl when more screams wrang out, awful screams.  That is when I decided we had to get out.  We kept moving through the congested halls until we reached an exit leading to the back of the hospital, Ellaina's weight was becoming unbearable, but I would not put her down, I would not let her go.  I had to get out of this mad building, so I rushed through the exit to the street, not realizing what I was doing.  I remember the cool air, the orange hue the sky took from all the structures that were burning that night, and right in front of me was one of them... it was a huge fat man, in mid change.  His teeth were chattering together and made a terrible snapping sound.  He had lost most of his hair and torn his shirt to rags revealing that his skin was yellowed and looked as though the muscles and tissue beneath were rearranging themselves.  For the first time, I found myself looking into those dead black eyes. I clutched Ellaina tight against my chest, I wouldn't let him take her... I wouldn't.  The thing let out that sound, that terrible sound that froze me where I stood.  It took one step toward us, when the headlights were on it.  An ambulence ripped through the back lot smashing into the huge thing sending it flying and shattering it's head and body into the pavement.  The back doors of the vehicle swung open and three or four strangers rushed out.  I remember a blonde women trying to grab Ellaina from me, while two men restrained me.  I was screaming, screaming for them to let me go, screaming for her to let may baby go, unable to understand that they had just saved my life, and were only trying to help us.  I was too weak and the blonde wrestled my little girl from me. Her and a man in a red coat carried Ellaina into the back of the ambulence. I started swinging, clawing and slapping at the strangers holding me as they tried to force me around to the passengers side of the ambulence.  The driver was an old man with a heavily bandaged right ear.  He swung the passenger door wide and the men pushed me inside. The larger of the two, a very tanned man in a rescue workers uniform slid in beside me holding my arms against my sides, while the other unkown man jumped in back.  The driver quickly pulled out into the cowded street, I don't even think he knew where he was going, much like I hadn't when Ellaina and i left our apartment. The rescue worker was still holding tight and kept repeating over and over that it was ok, that I would be alright, while through the wire mesh window that seperated the cab of the ambulence from the back, I listened to the strangers struggle to revive my daughter. The women that had snatched her from me was barking orders at the others, her tone was frantic... and then... everything went quiet..." She is clutching Fish tightly now, the pain of what she is telling me increaseing with every word.  "I don't know how I knew... I just felt it... the way a mother can sense something has gone terribly wrong with her child... I broke free of the man next to me and turned to the mesh barrier slipping my fingers into the holes,  I began to pull at it frantically, the driver tried to calm me with a free hand, but I slapped it away... I just kept screaming for them to give me my baby, and I could see her lying there, still so pretty, like she was sleeping in her little flowered night dress.  I can't remember who else was in the back of that ambulence, just sad eyes looking at me, wanting, but unable to help.  Later I realized that she had died sometime after they had found us in the parking lot of our apartment, on the way to the hospital, or some time shortly after we arrived.  In all the chaos, no one had known.  The exlosion had thrown us to the ground so hard one of her ribs had shattered and a sharp piece of bone had severed an artery.  She died of internal bleeding in my arms, running for our lives."  She pauses briefly, wipes the tears from her eyes, then looks at me in a very matter of fact manner.  " Everything after that is a blur, while the war against those things raged on around me, I moved from camp to camp, shelter to shelter, completly dead inside.  I didn't even get the names of the people who tried to save us, I didn't care.  I just drifted where the military and authorities led us to supposedly keep us safe, until there were no military or authorities left.  I just followed the other sheep waiting to finally be attacked and die like everyone else.  It seemed hopeless, we would hear stories of their night time raids, infecting and killing everything, we would hear how they were attacking and destroying any vehicles or machines they encountered, blowing up our gas stations and power plants, cutting us off from our inventions, our precious technologies.  It was mind boggling how quickly our governments and social structures collapsed.  They destroyed us, and everything that made up what we were.  Breaking us down to what we are now, scared helpless pityful creatures that no longer are in charge.  We have become guests in our own home.  Within months safehouses and camps were becoming harder to find, and hope was non existant.  For the refugee groups I travelled in it was a miserable life, always afraid, always waiting to die.  Whatever sickness, hunger or the Reapers did not kill, mass suicides soon took care of.  After the first twelve months we were a shadow of the human race, and I was a shadow of who I once was, but that was all about to change."

"Change how?" I interupt.

"Andrew, It all changed with Andrew.  When he found us, we found hope." She smiles and for the first time I realise that she is very beautiful.

"Who is he?"

"A leader, a good man, the man who found me, and the man who found you John.  He and his people have been travelling across the country rescuing refugee camps on the verge of disaster and adding to their numbers.  Teaching people that it is not over, that as long as we are alive, then hope is alive."

"But Fisher said that Reese and Decker had found me..." I am lost again. Fish looks up at me through his mass of dirty hair.

"They did," she continues, " they were with Andrew when he spotted you, on a supply raid on the outskirts of the city... and I'm sorry to say a lot of what come's next has to do with you John, has to do with who and what you are." 

next... Maria's story (Part 2)