10 Things I've Learned From Horror Movies

 

 

 

1.Never let any part of your body hang off the bed while you’re sleeping. Even if you don’t have a supernatural problem, you could have rats. Or spiders. Or snakes. Or roaches. Or a depraved dog. Or a psycho pretending to be your dog. You get the point: Tuck and Bundle.

2.Never, for any reason at all, go into the basement; especially if you heard a strange noise. The same applies to the attic. I don’t care if you really need that last jar of Granny’s canned peaches. It’s not worth it.

3.Don’t spend the night in a rumored-to-be-haunted building. This is a no-brainer. Avoid going inside if at all possible.

4.If you ignored #3, and thought you’d be safe if you went in a group, don’t ever separate from the damn group! Splitting up is never a good idea. That being said…

5.Don’t trust anyone! Even your best friend could turn against you in a crisis, and there’s a good chance that if Jennifer suggested this little excursion, she didn’t have your best interest at heart from the beginning.

6.Don’t. Trust. Literally. Anyone. I mean, even yourself. You could have some split personality that you’re not even aware of, and that split personality is probably a real asshole.

7.Seeing is not believing. Remember when I mentioned that you couldn’t even trust yourself? That may not be due to a split personality, you could just be crazy.

8.Surround yourself with horror-survival necessities: stupid or unlikeable people, at least one dog (more is better), and a buttload of backup supplies (flashlights, batteries, matches, lighter fluid, bandages, Neosporin, Guns, Ammo, you get the point). The first two serve as a good last line of defense to whatever baddie is after you (I mean, the stupid people and jerks always go first, right? And pets make a lot of noise, which serial killers and spirits both seem to generally dislike), and the third is just good planning. How many times have we seen the flashlight flicker, or the last survivor run out of matches or ammo? These things are preventable, people! That being said, keep the stupid people away from your supplies, unless you want said supplies to “mysteriously disappear” or somehow all get used up.

9.Run, don’t hide. You think that the ghost of a maniacal surgeon can’t see through that cabinet you’re hiding inside, you’re wrong. Just expect them to know everything.

And Finally,

10.Keep the kids out of it. Just realized the house you bought might be haunted? Maybe you’re still in denial after little Johnny got dragged across the ceiling last night? If you’re not going to move, send the kids to Grandma’s. The last thing you need to worry about is a couple of toddlers when the ceiling is imploding and rotting corpses are crawling up from the floorboards. Come on, this stuff is common sense.

Autumn Heart

 

Set for now, Dear Summer sun,

Quiet your waves,

You have had your run.

 

Red, Orange, Brown and Yellow,

The world slows down,

It’s calm and mellow,

 

Harvest wheat and Belgian Ale

The swimming pool,

Growing cold and stale.

 

Fall is here, leaves are dropping,

Till winter brings,

That frosty topping.

 

Pumpkin carvings line the streets,

Pillow cases,

Will be filled with treats.

 

We’ll have a fam’ly dinner,

Before we greet,

The kiss of winter.

 

Autumn brings those golden hues,

To warm us up,

Before the cool blues.

 

All in all, we love the Fall,

Pumpkin Harvests,

And the Carnival.

 

Fun and scares abound outside,

Pointed black hats,

And a broomstick ride.

 

Grab a sweater, scarf and hat,

Take a hay ride,

With a vampire bat.

 

 

Bonfire lit, fire to crackle,

Roasted mallows,

Caramel apples.

 

Autumn scents and pies to munch,

Burning colors,

On leaves that go crunch.

 

Fall, my senses awaken,

Seasonal bliss,

My heart you’ve taken.

Tess and Lidda: Teens facing the apocalypse part 4

Before you read this, be sure to read Part One  Part Two and Part Three first. Enjoy!

 

"Daniel"

**Warning: Graphic Violence and Foul Language**

READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

 

 

We were marched into the woods. The path had been cleared, so it was a lot easier to walk here than it had been near the cemetery. After about fifteen minutes, we stepped out of the woods and into an overgrown backyard, complete with a cement patio and a rusted out grill. The gas tank had long-been removed by scavengers, and the sliding glass door had been busted open. The cool night air clacked the broken blinds together behind the frame. A teddy bear lay slain on the glass fragments, half in and out of the door, his body flat from a loss of stuffing. The man behind me tripped and nudged into my back with the rifle, reminding me of our current situation.

“Careful, big boy. Don’t get too excited there,” I turned back to look at his night-darkened face. Joking kept me from thinking too much about that poor Teddy and his owner. There was the hint of a smile on the man’s face. He wasn’t bad looking, for one of Jefferson’s douchebags, but I wasn’t supposed to flirt with the enemy. Besides, it was hard to think about much other than surviving the next wave of bullshit we would surely face.

We trudged through the overgrown weeds into the front yard, and finally onto a road. This had been a normal suburban neighborhood not long ago. Now it showed no signs of life, save for the rustle of curtains behind broken windows. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched from behind the flowing fabric, but I knew Jefferson would have purged this place of clingers a while back. There wasn’t any way to keep out the See-Thrus though. A chill ran down my spine, and I told myself it was just the cool night air that made me shiver.

The company of armed men marched us towards a cul-de-sac, and then we were making our way through more weedy overgrowth into another backyard. This yard had a broken swing set and a sad looking little sand box. It backed up to a six-foot-high wooden shadowbox fence with a two-foot-wide break in it. The missing piece was leaning haphazardly up against the still-standing portion. The two men in the front picked up the leaning piece of the fence and moved it aside, leaving a gap just large enough for one person to fit through at a time. If we had been trying to escape, we would have done so long before now, but we actually needed to go with these people. We needed Jefferson’s help, unfortunately. My heart beat faster, and my fight-or-flight instincts kicked in as the first two men disappeared through the fence. I suppressed the urge to kick someone or bolt, and stepped through the gap myself. I peered around at the closed-in backyard of a large two-story house with boarded-up windows. This was Jefferson’s house, and my old home.

The fence was in surprisingly good condition, considering what it had been through. The last time I had seen this place, Coyote and I were making a run for it. The place was being attacked by clingers, and we managed to escape during the excitement.

I looked back to see Lidda being forced through the fence with some effort. She was fighting every step she took. I rolled my eyes. There was no need for the drama, she just wanted to be a bitch to our captors. I couldn’t really blame her, but she was going to tire herself out before we even made it to Jefferson.

“Lidda!” I hiss-whispered.

She glared at me in response. My good-looking guard was still between Lidda and I, so I couldn’t exactly explain to her what I wanted without him overhearing. I settled for telling her to, “Calm the fuck down.”

Lidda’s glare deepened, furrowing her brow, and she pursed her lips at me. I just know she wanted to cross her arms, but she didn’t. She kept marching forward, without fighting now, and we stepped onto the covered back porch of my old house. The screens were all busted out, but the frame was still there, along with the same set of porch furniture that had been there as long as I could remember. New boards had been nailed to the door where the glass used to be, but it still opened and closed with that suction-sliding sound that it had always made. The tile floor was exactly the same. The granite countertops and the swiveling barstools hadn’t changed either. It even still smelled like home. Aside from the utter quiet and darkness, the house looked almost exactly as it had before. The familiarity made my stomach do little flip-flops. I swallowed down a feeling of nausea that crept up with the bitter memories and the fear of seeing my father for the first time in four years.

It was hard to believe I had been fourteen, Lidda’s age, when I had fled this place with my life. A lot had happened in that first year. So much had changed that my Dad had become my enemy, and left me to die at the hands of clingers. Coyote had been my only ally then, helping me get out of here in one piece. Back then, Coyote was still going by “Daniel”, and Jefferson had only just stopped being “Dad” to me.

Daniel was a friend of my brother, Brayden, so he used to come over often. Before the dead stopped staying dead, Daniel and Brayden would stay up all night playing video games in the living room, talking about sports and girls. I always thought Daniel was kind of an asshole, but things changed one night when I sat in the kitchen doing my homework.

“What’s up, Tess?” Daniel’s voice startled me from behind my seat at the bar.

“Oh, hey, Daniel,” I muttered, tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear as he opened the refrigerator door. He was comfortable enough in our home that this was a regular occurrence.

I don’t remember what he said next. It was probably something about my homework being easy or some other smartass comment, but I do remember that my heart was beating faster the longer he stood there talking to me. He’d been looking at me differently for a while before that, and I had noticed how his t-shirts were getting tighter around his arms and chest. His hair was growing out a little bit, and it curled a little around his ears and around the bottom of his neck. I suddenly wanted to know what it felt like to run my fingers through those little curls.

“Tess?” he said, waking me from my fantasy.

Crap, I thought, How long had I been staring at him, thinking about running my hands through his hair?

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, “I kind of zoned out for a minute there.”

“What were you thinking about?” A little grin was spreading across his face.

“Um,” I had to think of something fast, so I said, “Homework, of course.”

“Right,” he grinned even more. It was really cute when he grinned in that mischievous way.

I straightened nervously in my seat, and I felt the heat flush up into my cheeks.

“Well,” he said, coming around the bar to stand next to me, “when you’re done thinking about homework,” he leaned in, lowering his voice to speak into my ear, “why don’t you try daydreaming about something a little more fun?”

I turned my head to respond, and our lips brushed against each other for the briefest of moments. He grinned triumphantly as I pulled away from him. Although I hadn’t known what to expect when he had first walked into the kitchen, it all became clear when he pressed his lips harder into mine. He tasted like Coca Cola and Twizzlers, and he smelled like Old Spice. It was all boy. I breathed him in, closing my eyes, relishing in the moment. I wrapped my arms tightly around his neck, turning my head to deepen the kiss. His hands slid around my waist, fitting us together like a pair of those magnetic kissing teddy bears.  

“Dude!” Brayden’s voice knocked me back into reality like a fist to the face.

“Sorry, bro,” Daniel shrugged, pulling away from me. The hint of a grin still remained on his face, and I knew that he wasn’t really sorry. I was relieved and ashamed at the same time. My face flushed beat red in an instant. My brother had just caught me making out with his best friend in our kitchen.

“That’s my little sister…” Brayden’s face was pure horror, his voice was pure rage, and he shook his head, trying to rid his mind of the image of us kissing.

“You don’t have to talk like I’m not in the room, Brayden,” I said, crossing my arms as I swiveled around in the barstool.

“You shut up, Tess. You’re just a kid. He knows better,” he said, pointing to Daniel.

“Aww, Bray, she’s a big girl,” Daniel said, “Just look at her. I don’t know how you stand living under the same roof with such a hottie, even if she is your sister.”

That was when things got bad in a hurry. Brayden had closed the distance between himself and Daniel in less than a second, and Daniel was suddenly on the ground. His nose was bleeding from where Brayden had punched him, and Brayden was standing over him, trying desperately to hold back from punching him again. I watched in horror, not knowing how to react from the suddenness of it all.

“Get out!” Brayden shouted, pointing towards the door.

“Stop it, Brayden! Look what you did!” I shouted, dropping from the barstool in a hurry. I crept protectively over Daniel, lowering my voice to talk to him, “Daniel, be still, I’m going to put some ice on it.”

I felt myself being yanked backwards at the shoulder, and looked up to see Brayden’s rage-filled eyes behind me.

Brayden’s voice was deceptively calm when he spoke, “Tess, you better get the hell out of my way. I don’t want to hurt you, but he’s going. Now.”

I had never seen my brother this way, and I was suddenly afraid. I stood up and moved, cowardly I know, but this was new territory. Even through the blood and the forceful dragging by Brayden through the house, Daniel’s eyes were twinkling wildly with some unreadable emotion. I couldn’t tell if he was pissed off, or giddy with delight. I followed them to the front door as Brayden tossed Daniel outside. Daniel gave Brayden the finger, and gave me a wink. My mouth hung open like one of those creepy wooden dummies throughout the whole thing. Daniel turned and jogged off to his car parked on the curb, punching our mailbox as he passed it. To this day, there’s still a dent in the mailbox.

Mom and Dad suddenly appeared behind us, wearing pajamas and dreamy looks on their faces.

“What happened, son,” my dad asked. Typically that wouldn’t have annoyed me, but I was sick of feeling like a lesser person just because I was younger and a girl.

I turned, fuming, and spat out a response, “Your idiot son just threw his best friend out of the house for no reason.”

“Tess!” My mom gasped at me disapprovingly.

“Brayden, what happened?” My dad continued to ignore me. I stormed down the hallway, still listening.

I caught the first part of Brayden’s response before I was out of earshot. He said, “Daniel and I aren’t friends anymore, he…” and I didn’t stay to hear the rest. I stormed upstairs, forgetting to finish my homework, and put on my headphones. I fell asleep listening to the most angst-ridden emo garbage I had on my iPod.

Things didn’t get better between me and my family after that. I got caught sneaking out to see Daniel more than once, my grades went to shit, and the male-half of my family continued to ignore me other than to yell at me for fucking up all the time. Mom was the only one I could talk to, and even she didn’t understand why I was acting out, because I couldn’t tell her about Daniel. Something told me that seeing him was a bad idea, but I didn’t care. I thought I was in love.  

Then, people started coming back from the dead. It was on the news first, then it was from the mouths of people we knew, and after that, clingers were eating people and making more clingers. At first, we didn’t understand why not everyone turned into a clinger, then See-Thrus started making their existence known. The ghost stories just sounded like mass paranoia at first, due to all the other shit that was going on, then the black clouds with their red eyes were caught on video.

Mom was suddenly gone all the time with work, and Dad was absent in other ways. Brayden could hardly stand to look at me. I had never felt so alone. Most of my friends had left or gone missing, but we stayed in our stupid house, on our stupid street, with our stupid fence and our stupid cars. The only way it was bearable was by having secret visits with Daniel every night. It wasn’t long before we were doing more than just kissing, and I felt our secret weighing even more heavily on my shoulders. Every time I saw him, I felt a thrill because I knew what we were doing was wrong, and it came with a heavy serving of shame.

Not long after Daniel became my first everything, Mom was killed in a botched robbery at the research center where she worked. People were stealing everything from bottled water to televisions, and nobody felt safe anymore. Dad kept a couple of guns in the house, but he came home with more that same afternoon. I started crying when he told me about Mom. He slapped me hard across the face and told me to get a grip, that there wasn’t time for crying anymore. He sent me to my room while he and Brayden boarded up the house to the sounds of my stifled sobs.

I lost my shit after that. I packed everything I thought I would need in my school backpack; clothes, my stuffed Mickey Mouse, toiletries, and a hair straightener. Then, I climbed out my window, which was on the second floor. The drop from the patio roof jolted my legs, but I kept moving, creeping against the side of the house to where the gate led out of the backyard. I clicked the latch open as quietly as I could, slowly easing the gate open so it wouldn’t creek, but it did anyway.

“Did you hear that?” Brayden’s voice was just on the other side of the wall. Shit, I thought, I didn’t think this through very well.

“What?” Dad’s voice was farther away but still too close.

“Shh,” Brayden shushed my dad, and I could hear his footsteps approaching. I didn’t wait to get caught. I bolted forward, running as fast as my legs would let me.

Brayden was faster. He had me by the backpack in a matter of seconds, and was yanking me into his arms. I tried to shake free of the bag, but it was too late. I was caught.

“Tess, where the hell do you think you're going?” his voice wasn’t gentle as he turned me to face him. Dad was running to catch up to us.

“I’m getting the hell away from you two psychos. Y’all can’t even talk to me like a normal person. I can’t stand to be around you anymore. I don’t have any reason to stay.”

“You aren’t acting like any daughter of mine,” My dad’s stern voice overpowered my own.

“Get her back inside the house and keep her there, I don’t care how you do it,” he ordered Brayden, and Brayden obeyed. I was dragged, kicking and screaming, back inside the house, and aggressively tied to a chair with a pair of Mom’s scarves. I started crying then, realizing that things really had changed. Brayden continued his task with cold calculation, not looking at me once during the whole event. I could hear my dad hammering away outside over the loud sobs coming from my own throat, and then Brayden slammed the door on my parents’ bedroom without looking back. I don’t know where they slept that night, and I don’t care. I didn’t sleep at all. I sat in my soft shackles, perfumed by my mother’s lingering scent, plotting all sorts of horrible vengeance scenarios in my dark mind.

I started to drift to sleep in the early hours of the morning, when I was shocked wide awake by a noise outside. What I would soon learn to associate with the sound of approaching clingers was coming from outside the nearby window. No light permeated the boarded window, but the sound was undeniable. A dry groan followed what I can only imagine was brittle fingernails against the glass. I screamed. Stupid, I know, but I was a kid, tied up alone in a room, with the sound of something horrible trying to break in through the window.

I kept screaming until my dad burst in the room and backhanded me across the face. I tasted blood in my mouth, and felt hot tears running down my cheeks.

“Shut the fuck up, Tess!” My dad hissed unnecessarily. Brayden followed close behind him, glancing at my bloody mouth with some unreadable expression on his face. Up until that point, my dad had never hit me save for a spanking or two when I was little. The shock was more than I could bear.

A few moments of silence passed, then another groan came from outside, followed by more farther off. The groans began to increase, and even I could tell that the house was surrounded. I started screaming again.

“Shut her up, Brayden, I don’t care how,” Jefferson said, stepping out of the room. He was too much of a coward to deal with me himself, leaving the chore to his seventeen-year-old son. Even then, I couldn’t believe how cowardly that was. That was the moment I started hating him.

Brayden grabbed another one of Mom’s scarves and wrapped it around my mouth, tying it behind my head. His eyes were apologetic, but he didn’t speak to me. I mumbled my last plea through the cloth, but he closed the door on me once again, leaving me alone to listen to the rising sound outside.

I heard a tearing sound at the window, followed by breaking glass. The clingers were climbing inside. I was panicking in silence, trying to break free from my restraints, my face soaked with tears.

I leaned forward, trying to put my weight on my feet, but I was too short. My toes just barely touched the floor, so I started rocking back and forth, trying to fall forward on to my feet. All I managed to do was fall onto my left side. The fall caused my neck to jerk violently to the side, and my arm took a lot of the weight. I ended up just being bruised. From the ground, I kicked my left leg against the carpet, trying to inch the chair and myself towards the door. The dry groans were coming from inside the room now, and I could just see some dark round shape inside the white curtain. It was the head of a clinger; my neighbor, Mr. Porter, from the looks of it. He was staring blankly in my direction, but his lips were curled back in a snarl, and one of those horrible dry groans leaked out of his throat.

I was making very little progress when the door flew open. I was expecting Brayden or Dad, and instead I got a pleasant surprise. Daniel stood in the doorway holding the biggest gun I had ever seen. I had never been so happy to see anyone in my whole life. He coolly fired two shots into the clinger version of Mr. Porter, whose body blocked other clingers from coming in the window. I watched the body jerk violently as other clingers tried to get around him to get inside. Daniel dropped down beside me, untying the scarves from around my wrists and then my mouth. I thanked him as he pulled me to my feet, then I picked up my backpack from the floor nearby the door. I asked where my dad and Brayden were as we crept through the house.

“They left,” was all he said.

“What?”

“I know, Tess. I can’t believe they would leave family behind like that either, but I came back for you.”

We stepped over a body in the hallway, and even though they had left me for dead, I was relieved it wasn’t Brayden or Jefferson.

“How did you know to come get me?” I asked, my mind surprisingly clear for the situation.

“Coincidence. I was already planning on taking you with me to the city while everyone was asleep. When I got here, I saw your Dad and… Brayden,” he said my brother’s name as if it tasted bad in his mouth, “running out the front door shooting, and the house was covered in those undead fuckers.”

“Clingers?”

“Is that what you’re calling them?”

“Well that’s what they do, isn’t it?”

“Sure, Tess. Let’s get you out of here,” he said, grabbing me by the hand and pulling me through the front door.

His car was parked in its usual spot at the curb, with the engine running. He led me to the door but didn’t open it for me as he ran to the driver side. I looked back to see that we had just run past a disturbing amount of monsters. I didn’t want to think about what it would have felt like to be embraced by one of them, but eventually I would find out. I locked the car door behind me as a clinger slammed hard against the glass. Coyote floored it and we were out of there. I watched the house get smaller through the back window until we turned off my old street.

That was the last time, until this day, that I had looked at my old house. Now I was standing in the dark kitchen where I had first kissed Daniel, aka Coyote, under the bright halogen lighting. Lidda’s shoulder was pressed against mine, and a man stood at each of our backs. The men reached up and held our arms, I guessed to keep us from killing anyone. I was actually happy they were giving us our due respect. We were two dangerous people, and it felt good not to be underestimated for once, especially by my Dad’s people, when he himself had looked down on me for so long. I just hoped that not everyone we encountered was this smart. It was a lot easier to kill our enemies if they took our girlish forms for granted.

Someone lit a match, and used it to bring a candle to life. The room suddenly seemed crowded with the orange-lit faces of our captors, and two extra faces that hadn’t been with us earlier.

“Hello, Daddy,” I said, “and Big Brother.”

Tess and Lidda: Teens facing the apocalypse part 3

Before you read this, be sure to read Part One and Part Two first. Enjoy!

 

"See-Thru"

**Warning: Graphic Violence and Foul Language**

READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

“There are so many, Tess,” Lidda gulped, reaching for my hand.

“It’s ok, Lidda. They may not want to hurt us. They might just be checking us out.”

“I don’t want to wait and find out.”

“Come on,” I grabbed her by the hand and led her down the other side of the hill and into the woods.

We set off in a run through the forest, scratching our arms all to hell and only stopping to untangle our clothes from the thick brambles. I knew we would hit a road sooner or later if we kept going in the same direction, so we pushed forward without speaking.

Pop. A See-Thru appeared in front of me like a wall, and I burrowed through it with the horrible sliding sensation of passing through something thicker than water.

Pop. Pop. Two more waited for me on the other side. I tried going between them instead of passing through, but traded slime for thorns and scratches. Lidda met me with an outstretched hand to grab ahold of. I took it, and she yanked me from the patch of thorns, leaving my skin behind.

Pop… Pop… Pop… the sounds continued all around us. Everywhere we turned in the forest, more See-thrus awaited. They were faster than we were, with their ability to appear wherever their faded consciousness desired. We hopped over a fallen tree, and darted through an opening, only to be cut off by another “Pop” sound and the appearance of a red-eyed shadow. We fell through the See-thru before we could avoid it. Cold, tingly, wet, and sick all described how I felt, but I couldn’t dwell on it. All I really knew of See-thrus was what I had heard, which wasn’t much. This was my first real interaction with one, other than the times I’d seen them from afar, and now I was getting a first-hand look at a cluster-fuck of them. I wasn’t exactly excited about it. I imagined Lidda felt the same. This was one big day of shit for us, and we needed to catch a break. We fell over the next fallen tree. This time, it wasn’t as easy to get up.

Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

“What do you want?” I shouted into the air in complete frustration. I couldn’t count all of the red eyes now. They floated in a semi-organized circle around us; their bodiless forms shifting with each lift in the breeze.

There was no answer, but I hadn’t expected one. See-thrus can’t speak, but they can definitely express themselves in other ways. Usually, they were sort of malevolent, but sometimes they were really fucking mad that they were still stuck here. I had a feeling that these were the second kind, based on the creepy coordinated surround tactics. This sort of thing was unheard of. Usually they stayed to themselves or haunted a living relative or friend, but I hadn’t seen a lot of graveyards since the world changed. Maybe this was a regular kind of thing, for the late bloomers or the ones that had no family to cling to. My mind was whirling.

Lidda backed up to me, pulling out her kitchen knife in a defensive gesture. Back-to-back we faced the surrounding spirits, slowly stepping in a circle in unison. It was a subconscious gesture in an attempt to confront all of the see-thrus at the same time. It didn’t work. There were too many for us to see them all at once, and they kept popping in and out of our view at random.

After a few minutes of the same, my legs began to tire from the tension in my stance. I knew Lidda was going to be feeling it soon if not already. We wouldn’t be able to keep this defensive stance up for much longer. The popping in and out of existence had seemed to slow from a regular sound, to one that came only every few seconds. I was twisting my mind around and over the fact that these see-thrus were working together and wondering what it all could mean. As my mind wandered in circles, a collective sigh rose from the surrounding spirits, breaking me from my thoughts with a snap like a cracked bone. All outside sounds seemed to fade away as the loud breathy cry rang out from the see-thrus. They weren’t supposed to be able to make any noise, not even a breath. I held my own without realizing I was doing it.

“Fuck this,” Lidda shouted in her most annoyed voice, which I knew meant that she was truly afraid. I could feel her body shaking slightly through her spine as she pressed her back more closely to mine. She grabbed a tight hold onto my wrist, and the next bit happened in flurry of motion. I heard a pop, then I felt a hard tug on my wrist as I was yanked violently around. There was an opening in the circle of see-thrus and Lidda was dragging me at full speed through the short break in their ranks.

We fucking ran like our lives depended on it, and they probably did. Speed was our only friend tonight, and we used the shit out of it until it didn’t like us anymore. My leg muscles burned and my feet felt like they were sinking further into the soil with each step, but we didn’t dare slow down. We fell out onto the blacktop with the last stores of our energy running out. I scraped my elbows badly when I hit the pavement, and tore a hole in the front of my jeans. The night wasn’t looking up.

I rolled over onto my butt, trying not to whimper at my burning elbows. As if to remind me of its existence, the bite on my neck began stinging from my own sweat. Whoever said that you could only hurt in one place at a time was a fucking liar. I hurt everywhere. Three feet from where I sat, Lidda wasn’t faring any better than me. Her right forearm was skinned from palm to elbow, and she was actively bleeding onto the asphalt.

After we spent a few moments silently crying and cursing the night, I pulled a bottle of alcohol from my pack and poured it over Lidda’s arm before she had a chance to realize what I was up to. She actually tried to bite me.

I gave her a minute to recover, and I handed her the bottle, gesturing to my own wounds. She grinned viciously as she snatched the bottle from me.

“Burn, bitch,” she giggled, pouring alcohol on my open flesh. I gritted my teeth together in pain.

We each whimpered a little more, and I wrapped some gauze around her arm. She put a Band-Aid on my elbow and we bumped fists.

“Two badass bitches,” I smirked.

She grinned, and pretended like she was shooting a gun while holding her hand sideways.

“Boom, boom, boom,” she said.

I shook my head at her, and we started walking again.

“What a crazy fucking day, right?” she said, walking backwards to face me while she talked.

“Yep,” I said, “sure as hell was.”

“Those see-thru bastards, man. Seriously, what the fuck just happened?”

“I have no clue.”

“I didn’t think they could talk to anybody, not even each other. I mean, what the hell?”

“My mind is just as blown as yours is, Lids. It was like they wanted something from us.”

“Well, whatever. That was totes creepy.”

“Fo sho,” I said as light-heartedly as I could manage, forcing a smile.

Lidda grinned brightly, “You gonna teach me how to shoot that Glock sometime?”

“Really?” I said sarcastically, “You’re so gangsta, Lids. You sure that kind of thing doesn’t come natural for you?”

“It prolly does, gurl. I’d just be letting you pretend to teach me so you can feel good about yourself.”

“Smartass,” I grumbled, but I wasn’t actually mad at her. I was glad she was in a good mood.

“So, Tess,” Lidda said, kicking a rock across the pavement.

“Yes…” I raised an eyebrow at her, waiting for some stupid comment to be vomited from her mouth.

“Which would you rather be, a clinger, or a see-thru?”

I had to think about it. Then I said, “I guess a see-thru, because it seems more likely that I’d still get to act like myself that way. Like I wouldn’t be completely lost to the need to feed, you know. Plus, clingers are super fucking gross.”

She nodded her head, “Good answer. Solid.”

“What about you?” I asked.

“Neither,” she replied.

“I didn’t know that was an option.”

“Well you just told me it was.”

“Look, Lidda, we don’t even know if that stuff works, or how it works. There might be side effects. Even if it does what Coyote said it does, it may take years for the kinks to get worked out. We may not live to see it ever work.”

“Then what’s the point?”

“If it can help people, even a hundred years from now, then we have to make that happen.”

“Why don’t we just take it for ourselves? There’s gotta be enough for the both of us. Then we could move on and it wouldn’t fucking matter anymore.”

“I’ve thought about it, trust me, but that wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the survivors. What about all the little kids that have nothing to grow up for, just to die and turn into a clinger, or a see-thru. It’s bullshit. I don’t want that for any kids I might have.”

“You want kids? I didn’t know that about you.”

“Well not right now. Jesus. I just mean, you know, like a billion years from now or something. When I really do lose my mind.”

“Fine, I’ll help you do this for your future-maybe-someday-kids,” she grinned.

“Thanks, Lidda,” I said, putting my arm across her shoulder, “you’re a good starter kid.”

She tried to shove me off, smiling, but I squeezed her tighter. We walked on in the moonlight with my arm over her shoulder. She was the closest thing to a little sister I had ever had, and I loved her like one. She even kind of looked like me. That was why I stepped in front of her when the armed men marched out of the woods onto the street in front of us.

“We can’t catch a break today, Lids,” I groaned.

“You want me to get your Glock out?”

“Not unless you want them to shoot us right now.”

“K, I’ll wait then,” she whispered as one of the men approached us.

“Hands up!” he barked.

We raised our hands like good girls. The man kept the gun pointed at us as two other men took our backpacks and pointed guns into our backs.

“Here we go,” I said to Lidda.

Tess and Lidda: Teens facing the apocalypse part 2

Before you read this, be sure to check out Part One.

"Yum-Yum"

 

**Warning: Graphic Violence and Foul Language**

READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

 

 

“Get your ass up here, Lidda! Hurry!”

Three more clingers were headed our way, groaning in excitement as they gained on their next meal.

She turned and began climbing up the wall. My heart was pounding in my ears as she climbed as fast as she could. The clingers were hot on her heals the whole time, and just as she neared the top, one of them grabbed her ankle. She yelped in pain as it clamped its fingers tightly around her leg, pulling her foot towards its mouth. I climbed down beside Lidda and kicked at the creature’s wrists, feeling the bones snap beneath my heel. I kept kicking, but the others were gaining. I had to climb lower, which went against all my instincts. I clung to the wall, and as I got closer, bony gray fingers grasped for me from below. I strained my fingers holding onto the wall, and used my other hand to hack at the arms of the clinger that had Lidda. One, two, three, four… five whacks it took to separate the monster from its own hands. It fell to the wet floor with a groan and a splash. The others didn’t even look down, they just kept climbing. I pulled myself back up to the top of the wall and helped Lidda get the clinging fingers to let go of her leg.

Shaking the amputated hands free of her, Lidda climbed through the hole. I followed her. The other side was promising. There was light up ahead, making the tunnel much brighter than the rest of the sewer had been, and I could see a way up. I hoped it led out, and I was rewarded with a clear path to the surface. Both of us let out a sigh of relief and collapsed on the ground when we reached the open air on street level.

We were in a closed off alleyway surrounded by buildings and a pileup of busted cars that had been moved from the main road. I wondered briefly what could have caused the street to cave in here, and when I looked back down into the tunnel, I could see the remnants of an explosion. There was what looked like pieces of a vehicle down there along with lots of other things that were so mangled I couldn’t figure out what they were.

Taking stock of the street we were on, the explosion had been enough to cave in one of the walls of the building across from us. There were still blackened marks on the exterior bricks where the blast had reached up to the second floor. I was suddenly glad the violence had slowed down so much since the beginning. Things were still bad, but I remembered the panic that had ravaged the streets. Even our quaint home in suburbia had been effected, just not as bad. That was where we were headed now, towards the suburbs, and Jefferson. If he wasn’t the one that was after us, maybe he would help us against Coyote.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” I said out loud.

“What?” Lidda raised one eyebrow and crinkled her chin, looking at me as if I had lost my mind.

“It’s some old saying. I dunno. I guess I thought out loud,” I reached over and turned off her flashlight, then I did mine.

“Whatever,” she shrugged, “You sure you haven’t hit your head at any point since we left the apartment? You’ve been doing some pretty crazy stuff.”

“I’m just trying to get us out of this alive, Lidda. I promise, I haven’t lost my mind. At least… no more so than before,” I nudged her with my elbow, ”Hey, Lids, you mind pouring some alcohol on this bite?”

“Sure,” she said, digging in my bag for a large Band-Aid and some alcohol, “She got you good, Tess.”

“Yeah, I know. Ouch!” I exclaimed as she poured alcohol over the open wound.

“Sorry,” she said, meaning it as she gently stuck the Band-Aid to my shoulder.

“You all finished with me? We kinda need to keep moving,” I said.

“Boo. Party pooper.”

“Yeah, ’cause we’re having so much fun here…” I gestured around as I helped her up.

“I was totally thinking about playing loud music and hooking up with some hot guys here. This is a way fun party spot,” she replied sarcastically.

“Now I think you might have hit your head.”

“Shut up,” she said, putting her hands on her hips.

“Let’s go,” I laughed, smiling as I led her towards the broken building.

It was slow going around the huge hole in the street, but we made it across with ease and entered the building. The sun was high overhead, providing us with much needed light through the broken windows. Dust motes floated in the air around us as we entered the hallway of what used to be an apartment building. There were probably still some people living in the rooms upstairs, so we stepped lightly across the old carpet and debris. Lots of people had lost their minds since the world went bad, and you never knew if someone was your friend or the kind of person who would kill you for a can of food. They usually turned out to be the latter.

At the end of the hallway was an exit sign. We were far enough now from where we had started that I thought the streets would be safe, so I followed it around and found a door that led out to an empty parking garage. It was dark, so we were quick but quiet heading towards the light of the exit gate. The gate was down. There was a door to the right and a tire iron on the ground. A large dry blood stain spread out around the spot where the tire iron lay. I guessed whoever had last held it had been too slow. There were scrapes all around the door where the person had struggled frantically to get it open.

“Um, Tess,” Lidda whispered as she tapped my shoulder.

“I know. I’ll be fast. Just keep a lookout,” I said as I began to work on the door.

Lidda put her back to me and pulled out her knife as I tried to wedge the door open.

Things were quiet except for the scraping sound of my tool against the metal door, and then Lidda frantically tapped against my arm with her open palm.

I turned to see what she was pointing at. It was hard to make anything out deeper in the parking garage, but there was definitely some movement. The one thing to our advantage was that clingers were light-sensitive, and we were so close to the gate, but I wasn’t sure it was a clinger.  It could have been one of the apartment residents. I feared they wouldn’t be friendly if they were.

Something was dragging against the ground with a loud scraping sound. A sure sign it wasn’t a clinger. Clinger’s didn’t pick up anything they couldn’t eat.

“Hey, little girlies,” came the raspy voice of an older woman, “are you all lost?”

“We’re fine, thanks,” Lidda snapped at the still invisible figure.

“Aw, they look sweet, Maw. Can I keep ‘em?” came a male voice with a deep southern drawl.

I kept working on the door, really fighting with it now. The dragging sound was getting louder, which meant that whoever carried it was much closer than they had been.

“Hurry, Tess!” Lidda whispered almost as loud as she would have spoken.

I started beating at the handle with the tire iron. The old woman and her son were visible in the light now, and there was something terribly wrong with the man. His head hung wrong on his shoulders and he lugged a lead pipe behind him. He looked sickly and weak, but I didn’t want to test his strength. I kept beating at the handle, lifting and dropping the tire iron as quickly as I could swing my arms around. I didn’t want to have to kill an old woman, no matter how psychotic she might be. Her short white hair and wrinkled face reminded me too much of my grandma.

Finally the handle broke off and I shoved the iron through the opening. This forced the opposite handle to fall off outside and light poured in through the hole. I stuck my fingers inside and messed with it, managing to get the door open in time to yank Lidda away from the outstretched fingers of the man. He was slow, and so was the old woman, but I didn’t chance it. I slammed the door in his face and put my back against it, using my feet for leverage.

“Lidda! I need something to wedge against the door! Hurry!”

She scrambled and came back with a chair that was missing the seat cushion. There was no handle to wedge it up under anymore, so I grabbed the broken piece of the handle off the ground and wedged it through the hole at an angle. It would have to do. Lidda rammed the chair up under the piece of handle, and I stood up in hopes that it would hold. It didn’t. The man burst out into the street, knocking the chair out of the way. Grandma was right behind him. The bitch even had a walker. I couldn’t believe it. She looked like she hadn’t been going without food. Both of them had grease and blood stains on their shirts, and a horrible thought crossed my mind. These fuckers were going to try and eat us.

Not wanting Lidda to freak out, I kept the realization to myself and kept running. This day had really sucked so far. I was ready for it to end.

“I was saving this for a rainy day, but it looks like I’m going to have to use it now,” I muttered, not pausing as I pulled my backpack off my shoulders.

“What is it?” Lidda asked through breaths.

I removed a Glock 33 from my backpack.

“Holy shit!” she said, “I didn’t know you had that!”

“I told you, I was saving it.”

“Is it loaded?”

“Yep,” I said, and I stopped in the middle of the street, keeping the gun hidden as I turned to face our attackers. They weren’t behind us anymore. I nervously slid my backpack back onto my shoulders as I scanned the street for the odd pair.

“Fuck, where’d they go?” asked Lidda.

Just then, the man popped out from a side alley. I had no idea how he’d gotten up there so fast. There must have been another way through. I stepped between him and Lidda, still keeping the gun hidden behind my back. I walked towards him.

“That’s right, cutie. Come this way. I’ll take care of you,” he motioned me towards him with one hand, keeping the pipe dangling from the other. Yeah, he looked real friendly.

I smiled sweetly and said, “You gonna keep me safe, mister?” I even batted my eyelashes.

“Yeah, honey. I sure will,” he chuckled.

I swung the gun around in front of me, stabilizing it with both hands. His grin vanished, and with a bang, so did the rest of his face. He fell to the ground with a thud.

We didn’t know where Grandma was, but both of us decided it was best to keep moving instead of waiting for her and having to waste more bullets. A few minutes later we hear her loud mournful cries from the direction of where we had left her son. No matter how horrible the two of them were, I still felt guilty for taking him from her. I wondered if she’d be able to survive without his help, and I had to stop thinking about it. They were both cannibals after all. Jesus, that was sick. I shook my head in disgust as we wove through debris in the streets.

Finally, I could see the buildings thinning out, marking the outskirts of the city. The sun was much lower in the sky by the time I could see the green of actual trees. I didn’t realize how long it had been since the last time I saw a real plant until just then. Sure, weeds grew through the cracks in the city, and maybe some grass had survived, but there weren’t any more trees or bushes around. The forest was a welcome sight. It somehow gave me comfort; as if not all things from before were gone, and that there was hope that things could someday go back to the way they were.

We followed the main road out of town, but stuck to the sides, where we wouldn’t be in plain view of anyone with a pair of binoculars or a sniper rifle. We didn’t want to make ourselves easy practice shots for the crazies, or let any of Coyote’s lackeys know which way we had gone. It was better to play it safe until we reached the cover of the trees, so that’s what we did, even if it made our progression slower.

By the time we reached the woods, it was twilight. The undergrowth was thick, but out of practicality, we both wore pants. I used the machete to clear the worst of it, and we managed to make it to a clearing with only a few scratches to our arms.

“Well that took forever,” muttered Lidda as she picked a string of thorns out of her jeans.

“I’ll check you for ticks later,” I teased, looking back to see her response.

“What the fuck is a tick?”

I laughed, “A bloodsucker from before the clingers came along.”

“What? I never heard about those.”

“You weren’t much into the outdoors before, were you?”

“Why would I be?”

“Forget about it. I was just teasing you. It’s just a little bug, nothing to really worry about. We’ve got to keep moving.”

“You’ve said that like a million times today. Can’t we take a break?” She whined.

I thought about it for a moment, and finally sighed a resigned breath, “Fine, but we can’t sleep here. Look where we are, Lidda.”

She stopped picking thorns out of her pants and slowly scanned the clearing. It was an old cemetery, from back when people actually made an effort to treat their dead with some respect. Some of the headstones couldn’t have been more than five years old. Their newness made me shudder. There could still be some see-thrus hanging around the old graves.

“What is this place?” She asked.

“It’s a cemetery, Lidda. Don’t you remember cemeteries?”

“Vaguely.”

“Nice word.”

“Thanks, I’ve been reading that dictionary you gave me.”

“You’re already to ‘V’?”

“I skipped ahead.”

I chuckled.

“I brought it. I’ll look up ‘cemetery’. You spell that with an ‘S’?”

“No, with a ‘C’.”

She read the entry and looked around the cemetery with new fear on her face.

“Why the fuck are we still standing here, Tess?”

“I think we’re ok for now, Lidda. I just don’t want to be here all night.”

“It gives me the creeps! Let’s go!”

“I thought you wanted a break…” I taunted.

“We can break later! Jesus, Tess. You trying to give me a panic attack?” Her southern accent was getting thicker with each word. It always did when she got angry.

“No, Lidda. You wanted a break. You’re right, we need a few minutes rest. This just isn’t the ideal place for it. The thing is, I don’t know that we’re going to find anything better. We’re probably going to have to walk for a few more hours before we get to Jefferson’s.”

“That’s where we’re going? Are you fucking kidding me, Tess?” Her shock and disappointment in me was obvious. She certainly thought I had lost my mind now if she didn’t before.

“We don’t have any other options. I’ve got to at least try to talk to him. He’s the only person who might be able to protect us from Coyote, and I honestly don’t know anybody else who has that kind of firepower. Do you?”

“But you always told me your dad was batshit crazy! Either you’ve been lying to me all along, or you’re walking us straight into hell.”

“I wasn’t lying, Lidda. Jefferson is a real bastard, but he’s our only chance right now. You think this is what I want to be doing?”

I put my hands on my hips indignantly. Lidda paced silently back and forth in front of me.

“You’re going to wear a hole in the ground,” I said, crossing my arms.

She stopped pacing to glare at me.

“Goddammit, Tess,” she said, flinging her balled fists down by her sides, “You know I go where you go. I wouldn’t make it a minute out here without you, but you really fucked us good this time.”

“I know, Lidda. I’m sorry. This is actually all my fault. You’re more right than I think you meant to be,” I breathed deeply, preparing to tell her the real depth of our problem.

She waited for me to speak.

“Coyote sent those headhunters after us because I stole something from him a few years back.”

“Oh this just gets better and better, Tess. Just fucking swell. You steal from Coyote and we both end up dead. Yippee.”

“Look, we’re both exhausted, and you don’t understand. This thing I stole, is fucking important. I mean, so important that it could get us out of all this mess.”

“What are you talking about? Is it like, worth a lot of money or something?”

“Oh yeah, but its more than that, Lidda. It could fix everything in the right hands.”

“Now I know for sure you’ve lost your fucking goddamned mind.”

“No, listen. It’s medicine, medicine that can cure people. It can make them die. Like really die, not just come back as some fucking clinger or a see-thru. It can send you to the next plane.”

“You know I don’t believe in all that shit, Tess.”

“Well it doesn’t matter. Coyote had this stuff under lock and key. He kept bragging about it, so I fucking took it and hid it at my place. I thought he’d given up looking for it, but I guess not.”

“How did he find out you had it?”

“I’m guessing he’s killed everyone else it could have been.”

“He always had a thing for you, Tess,” she winked at me.

“A lot of good that does us now, Lids,” I said, pouting my lip at her.

“Man, we are really fucked,” she shook her head at me, smiling. At least she wasn’t still pissed.

“Thanks, Oh-stater-of-the-obvious.”

“No prob, now let’s seriously get the fuck out of here,” she said. I nodded and we started walking up the hill between the headstones.

“We’ve got to work on our potty mouths. Jefferson might shoot us in the face for saying, ‘fuck’,” I said as we passed a headstone with a pretty angel on top of it.

“Then I’ll make sure it’s the first word out of my mouth when I see him,” she said, a mischievous grin spreading across her face in the moonlight.

“No really, Lids. I’m serious. He might shoot you in the fucking face. Jesus! I can’t stop saying that word. We’re really fucked.”

We both laughed. It was an exaggerated sound, probably because we were both scared shitless walking through the graveyard by the bright moonlight. I was just happy we weren’t yelling at each other anymore or being chased.

The wind picked up at the top of the hill, rustling my hair, making it tickle my neck. Somewhere in the nearby trees, an owl hooted loudly. We both froze.

“Well that was fucking creepy,” Lidda announced after a moment.

“There you go being obvious again,” but my voice had lost its earlier playfulness. All the hairs on my arms were standing straight up.

I looked back down into the cemetery, and noticed a lite fog creeping amongst the headstones. Among the fog were about six sets of red eyes.

My breath rushed out in a whisper, “See-thrus.”

 

Part Three