Taken World (Book 2): Darkness Read online

  He had also heard the monsters. They sounded like they had come straight from hell, which he supposed they had. In the night, they seemed to get more lively. Some moved quickly up the roads, almost drunkenly, deep growls emitting from their chests. Others were slow and plodding, their mass felt with every step they took. Tyler had once peeked under the metal shutters and saw something that resembled a rather large scorpion, except where a scorpion had one stinger and six legs, this thing had at least eight legs and a stinger that ended in a ball of more deathly-sharp barbs, almost like an oversized medieval mace.

  If he were smart, he would’ve not looked out again until the sun rose, an act of nature that was becoming weaker and weaker with each morning.

  What will we do when the sun is gone completely?

  He had asked himself that question many times, both as a scientist and as a human being, and no matter what, he had come up with the same answer: they would die.

  He was lying below the cash register—still open, still full—eating a candy bar and thinking about his mother and his Nana when he heard the scream. Shrill, pained. In an odd way, it reminded him of the noise Hammond had made when he had birthed a tentacle, except this one was slightly more human. Then came the words; a cry for help.

  Tyler went to the window. His fingers touched the cold, metal shutters. He was going to raise them up and peer out, just when another voice filled his head, this time from his own mind.

  You aren’t going to like what you see out there, Tyler, this voice said. Someone needs help, but this isn’t a helping world anymore, man, you know that. You gotta survive, and to survive, you can’t let anyone else bring you down.

  The screaming again. The sharp snarls of some massive beast.

  You wanna tussle with that thing? Don’t be stupid, the voice continued.

  But another part of Tyler’s mind brought up images of his mother and grandma, the strongest people he had ever met. There were times when his mom and Nana had taken in his friends—friends who would’ve died young without their help. His family gave them a place to sleep, as much food as they could spare, clothes on their back. Even when there was hardly enough food for themselves, Mom and Nana would’ve given their only bite to someone in need. They were the epitome of selfless, and this selflessness had rubbed off on Tyler. The world may have changed, yeah, but Tyler didn’t have to.

  He muted that voice of doubt in his head, grabbed the rifle, lifted the metal shutters up from the storefront, and then went outside.

  It was the scorpion-thing, perched up on its back few legs, its long stinger coiled in the air, the barbs dripping some kind of black ichor. It slammed into the hollowed husk of a minivan. The door buckled, all but shattered. The person inside the van cried out again.

  Tyler flipped off the safety of the rifle, brought the sight up to his right eye and closed his left—as if he’d done this a million times before, as if he’d been a soldier in the military instead of a scientist—and he said, “Hey, ugly!”

  The scorpion-thing whirled around. Its stinger smashed the front end of the van with the movement, almost sent the vehicle toppling over into a ditch. Now it held up two sledgehammer-shaped pincers, opened them, clicked them closed.

  A cold fear filled Tyler. He felt close to freezing up.

  The creature reeled back on its hind legs again, and he saw just how big it actually was. Easily twenty feet high. Much larger than the van it had been trying to pummel.

  Its mouth opened. The monster screeched. A hot, foul-smelling wind burst forth from it. Long fangs lined its mouth in a perfect circle. Six red-tinged eyes—Like the anomaly, he thought—bore into him.

  Then the creature lurched forward, cracking the road beneath its armored legs.

  Tyler pulled the trigger of the rifle, more as a reflex than a deliberate action. The bullets clinked off the creatures chitinous body.

  It moved much too quickly.

  Tyler lunged out of the way, inches from having his head smashed in. Instead, a new pothole appeared in the road.

  They had basically traded spots. Tyler now had his back up against the van, while the scorpion-thing perched in front of the gas station.

  “Run!” Tyler said over his shoulder to the person inside. Whether or not they were still in there, he didn’t know, but he certainly wasn’t going to take his eyes off the creature in front of him.

  Hopelessness overtook Tyler then. It seemed a gun wouldn’t do the trick against the creature. To get through that armor, he thought he would need a jackhammer, or perhaps a bazooka.

  Think, you idiot! his mind barked at him. You’re a scientist. The world may be ending, but you’re still a scientist! Use your brain!

  This part of his mind was right. There had to be a way. A weak spot, like a chink in a knight’s armor.

  But where?

  The creature rose up on its hind legs again, that massive stinger scraping the concrete. The little light from above offered an all-too-clear view of its underbelly.

  There!

  And there it was, the weakness: a beating heart the size of a brick, pulsing through transparent skin.

  Tyler thought about Hammond, how he hadn’t hesitated when he shot the thing that he had become. That made it easier—of course, so did the fact that this creature was mere feet away from crushing Tyler to paste.

  He pulled the trigger, and the gun ripped off a barrage of rounds before the magazine emptied and click-clicked.

  A burst of black blood exploded along with the creature’s heart. From the creature’s mouth came a paralyzing screech. Its face—if you could call the thing below its eyes a face—twisted with pain and rage and confusion, and then the beast fell over with a resounding boom.

  For a while, Tyler could only stand there and look at what he had done. By the time he was able to blink again, a puddle of black had reached the toes of his shoes as it spread across the road. He stepped back with a disgusted look on his face; the smell was like spoiled meat and mud. But the creature wasn’t moving. It was dead. Dead, because Tyler had shot it.

  He suddenly remembered why he had come out here in the first place. There was a person inside the van, a person in need of help.

  He turned around and peered into the vehicle, putting his hands on the ledge of the broken front window. There, lying down on the floor of the backseat, was a woman of maybe twenty. She looked up at him and screamed.

  “No—I’m not gonna hurt you,” he urged.

  But the woman drew a kitchen knife—not much, compared to the gun he had, though it was currently out of ammunition, but it was sharp enough to make him not want to get stabbed anytime soon…or at all.

  He dropped the gun and put his hands up. “I’m not gonna hurt you, I promise.”

  The woman eyed him wildly. He thought she may be crazy, that her sanity had frayed when the monsters came through the anomalies, and had finally snapped when the scorpion attacked her. It had only been a week and some change since the anomalies opened, but he guessed a lot could happen in that time.

  Apparently. Look around, dipshit. The streets are empty. You’ve seen more mutated monsters than people, the cynical part of his mind said.

  The logical part replied with: Well, I haven’t gone very far, have I? Sure, the phones are down and most of the power is out, but that could just be around here. I heard those jets a few days back. That means we’re fighting. And we weren’t the only country that had anomalies, were we?

  Shut up. You know we’re fucked. F-U-C-K-E-D, my friend.

  “No,” Tyler said aloud.

  The woman muttered, “Huh?”

  Tyler shook his head. Jesus, I’m going crazy. Talking to myself. That’s the first sign, isn’t it? Next thing you know, I’m going to be seeing…monsters…

  “Sorry,” Tyler said. “I’m serious. I’m just as lost as you. Not dangerous. Right hand to God.” He raised his right hand.

  Still, the woman eyed him warily. Slowly, never taking her gaze from Tyler, she backed
out of the van, came out on the opposite side. Tyler was almost more shocked by how she looked than how the scorpion-thing did.

  She was dirty, streaks on her face. Her hair was an untidy rat’s nest, matted, stringy, patches of her pale scalp showing through.

  You probably don’t look too good yourself, Tyler, his mind said, neither the logical or cynical side. When’s the last time you had a shower or even brushed your teeth?

  Drastic times, drastic measures. Shut up.

  Her arm was wrapped just above her right elbow and below her shredded blouse sleeve. Blood showed through the bandage, which was spotted with mud and dirt. She looked like she hadn’t had a meal in the better part of a week.

  “Please,” Tyler said, “come in. I’ve got food and drinks. Candy and soda, but that’s better than nothing, right?”

  “How do I know you won’t hurt me?”

  “I guess you don’t,” Tyler said. “You’ll have to go on blind faith. But seeing as how I just nearly had my head smashed in by that thing over there while trying to save your life, I’d say your chances of not getting killed by me are pretty good.”

  The woman weighed Tyler’s words for a moment. “Give me your gun, then,” she said.

  “Well, how do I know you won’t turn around and shoot me with it?”

  “You don’t.” She smirked. “You’ll just have to go on blind faith.”

  Tyler laughed. “Funny.” He lifted the gun by the strap on his shoulder and slid it across the crumpled hood of the van. She took it and grimaced at the weight of it, like she wasn’t expecting it to be as heavy as it was.

  He figured what the hell; the gun was empty. The most she could do was club him with it, and she didn’t really look like someone who could swing the gun all that hard.

  “Go first,” she said.

  Tyler did. He gave the scorpion monster a wide berth. At least a couple gallons of blood had drained out of it since he’d put a bullet in the thing’s heart—if that pulsing, brick-shaped organ was, in fact, the creature’s heart. With something like this, there was no telling. The flesh and armor seemed papery, too, as if it had caught on fire then been hastily put out. The scientist in him wanted to study it more closely, but that good old logical part of his mind was screaming at him that that wasn’t the smartest idea.

  He opened the gas station door. The lantern light he’d found in the garage, along with a small cache of batteries, flickered on and off. He needed to change out the old batteries for some new ones. The inconsistency gave the inside of the small gas station an unpleasant aura.

  Tyler apologized to the girl, then hit the side of the lantern. The flickering stopped, but the light was weaker than before.

  “I’ve cleaned out the Butterfingers,” he said, pointing to the boxes of candy, “but there’s a lot left. You can have all the Three Musketeers you want. Never been a big fan.”

  The woman’s eyes widened. She wasted no time diving into the candy.

  Tyler stuck out a stick of beef jerky. “Better have one of these. Need some protein, you know?”

  The woman chuckled. Tyler was taken aback by her smile; it was quite beautiful, in a world that drastically needed beauty again.

  “I’m Tyler. What’s your name?”

  She looked at him with caution again. He didn’t like this look. He also didn’t like the fact that her smile had disappeared.

  “You’re eating my food,” Tyler said. “The least you could do is tell me your name.” He laughed after he spoke to let her know he was only joking.

  She didn’t seem like the type of woman who could take a joke…at least not now, after this.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t just say you saved my life. Food,” she waved a hand, “that’s nothing, right? It’s all over the place. The beasts don’t eat Slim Jims and Doritos. No, they eat us.”

  Tyler sat on the counter. With the electric light the only thing illuminating the main area of the gas station, he imagined he looked pretty eerie. “You could’ve just said you didn’t want to tell me your name.”

  He unwrapped a Snickers, his second favorite candy bar. He couldn’t imagine his blood sugar level right now. Off the charts. He could hear his Nana now, hollering about her younger brother—a man Tyler never got to meet, thanks to diabetes. That was okay; he liked hearing his Nana’s voice inside of his head.

  “My name’s May. Nice to meet you,” the woman, May, said.

  Tyler smiled. He felt the chocolate and nougat coating his teeth.

  “And thanks for saving my life.”

  “No problem.”

  “So you’re just here all by yourself?” she asked.

  Tyler nodded, took another bite, chewed and swallowed. “Yeah, been here a few days now. Maybe a week. I’m not entirely sure. This place has metal shutters.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Yeah, I figured it would be a decent place to hole up until this all blows over.” As an aside, he added: “It’s got nothing on my last place,” referring to the tank he’d spent two nights in.

  Then May laughed. It was a manic burst. Tyler looked at her shrewdly. It took him a moment, but he eventually understood.

  “Oh,” he said, “you don’t think this is all going to blow over, do you?”

  “You been living under a rock?” May asked.

  “No, just in a gas station.” He motioned around to the small set up, the dark soda machine, the unlit Coca-Cola cooler, the cash register, the camera in the far right corner that was clearly a fake, covered in cobwebs.

  “The whole country basically went dark,” May said. She leaned her head on the wall, unwrapped a Slim Jim. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Tyler was satisfied that she was taking his advice about the protein. “As soon as the—well, I guess monsters is the best way to describe them—came through, they wasted no time in claiming the country. Probably the world.”

  Tyler told her about the jets.

  “Yeah, I heard them, too, but that doesn’t mean anything. If I had to bet, I’d say it was a few smart people, trying to see if they could fly right off this rock.” She laughed again, but the way she did it made it seem, to Tyler at least, that she didn’t find the idea a bit humorous.

  “No, don’t say that,” he said.

  She shrugged, took another bite of the Slim Jim.

  “What’s your story, then? What are you doing out there by yourself at night?” he asked.

  “Night?” She laughed again. “Night? Is it really night? Have you looked at the sky recently? Something is happening. Something unexplainable.”

  “Everything is explainable,” Tyler said.

  “Is it? Can you explain it? Are you, like, a scientist or something?”

  Tyler raised a finger, about to say ‘Why, yes, I am a scientist, in fact’…but was he still? Was this woman right…was it unexplainable? It had been over a week, and he hadn’t heard so much as a peep from a gathered resistance. Jets, yeah, but no military troops flushing the monsters out. Granted, this was the middle of nowhere, practically. Woodhaven and Stone Park, Ohio weren’t exactly anyone’s top vacation destinations.

  But there’s an anomaly right here, Tyler. If they were going to put up a fight, it would be right here at the anomaly, the cynical part of his mind said.

  He didn’t even argue. It was right. If the United States military hadn’t been overrun—or killed—they would’ve sent as many men and women as they could spare to fight at the anomalies, Stone Park included.

  “That’s what I thought,” May said.

  All Tyler could say was, “Damn.”

  4

  Journeying Again

  It was well into the early morning hours, at a time when the sky was supposed to be pitch-black. Tyler was in the garage, trying to find sleep, with a few folded towels as pillows. He gave May the main part of the station; he’d also let her keep the rifle, which was empty, though she didn’t know it, while he kept the shotgun he’d found under the register.

  It may not have be
en the kindest thing to do—May was a guest, after all—but it was the smartest. He certainly didn’t trust a stranger with a loaded shotgun, and he wouldn’t have been able to get any sleep, knowing she was in the other room with it.

  But it wasn’t like he was going to get any sleep anyway. It hadn’t come easily over the past week. He would doze here and there, have nightmares about the things he saw spilling forth from the anomaly the day they were going to send that soldier in—Christ, I can’t even remember his name, he thought bitterly—and then he would struggle for the rest of the night.

  The door to the garage crept open, hinges squeaking.

  “Tyler,” May said in a whisper. “You up?”

  “Yeah.”

  In the dark, he could just make out the shape of her figure.

  “I can’t sleep in there. Not by myself. I hear them outside,” May said.

  “Me too,” Tyler said.

  “Can I try to sleep here?”

  “Be my guest.”

  Tyler handed her a few of his towel-pillows. She laid not far from him, at a friendly distance. For a while, they lay in silence, the monsters bellowing and shrieking outside. Terrible noises. The stuff of nightmares; the stuff of Hell. May spoke up a few minutes later.

  “You want to know my story?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I was with my little brother and my mom. We live—well, lived—in Northington. The military evacuated us. But before we could get out of town, we were attacked like everyone else.” Her voice was strained now, choked up like she was about to cry. “I saw my mom get run down by a monster. I saw her speared by its silver horn. I saw her bleed all over. My brother and I made it a bit farther. We had a car then, but I’d never driven. Twenty-one years old, and I’d never even bothered getting my learner’s permit, let alone my license. So I didn’t know what the hell I was doing behind the wheel, and there were cars and buses and military trucks all around. The ground was cracked in places, too.”

  She started crying, face in her hands. Tyler waited patiently. He thought of scooting closer and putting an arm around her.