After the Pulse – (something a little darker)
Chapter One
The sounds of banshee screams and blood squishing out of my tennis shoes will undoubtedly haunt my dreams forever.
It started as a buzz. Just a faint humming sound. I never sleep well in strange places, so wasn't at all surprised to find my eyes open at the whisper hiss.
What startled me was the scene. Where was I? In the dark I could make out two large platforms looming overhead, pressing in on me. I threw both arms out to touch them and felt the polyester quilted fabric of hotel bedspreads. Oh, right. We're inMilwaukee, at my sister's softball tournament.
As I listened, the whirring continued to get progressively louder, so I sat up to determine where it was coming from. A static-like crackle filled the air and I looked toward the window where an iridescent light flickered through the opening in the curtains, throwing shadows against the wall. The floor beneath my butt vibrated.
Pop. Darkness.
At first I thought I had gone deaf, the silence was so absolute. Between that and my lack of sight, I felt lost, like I had disappeared. Fallen into a black hole. Gone from the earth. Panic snaked its way up the back of my neck, forming a cold sweat. I moved my legs to kneel and heard the rustling of my blanket.
"Dad?"
Snore, snort, cough. He was sleeping, out cold.
"Dad," I said a little louder, reaching out to feel for him.
He sputtered, clearing his throat. "What? What is it, bud?"
"I think something's wrong."
I heard him sit up, but in the blackness, I couldn't even make out his figure. "What time is it?" he asked groggily.
"I don't know. I think the electricity went out."
"Hang on." He fumbled behind me, searching the nightstand with his hand and grab something. He grunted. "That's weird. My iPhone's not working. I'm sure I charged it last night."
More fumbling, a rattling of various objects on the nightstand. A warm orange flame lit from the end of Dad's ancient Zippo, a hand-me-down from his grandfather. He doesn't even smoke, so I'm not sure why he carries it around with him every day, but it's always a staple in his pocket – along with his wallet and keys.
With the room now dimly lit from the lighter, I was brave enough to walk over to the window. I peeked through the curtains to find nothing. Nothing but an impenetrable blackness. Our room overlooked the pool, which was normally lit with landscape lighting. I knew this because I spent fifteen minutes last night spying on some of the other female athletes staying in the same hotel. But now, the hotel's yard was pitch black, as was the restaurant directly behind it.
"Go back to sleep Shep," Dad said and he flipped the lighter shut, leaving us in darkness again. I heard him roll back over. "I'm sure it will be back on in the morning."
I fumbled my way back to my makeshift bed, trying not to wake the two sleeping girls in the other bed. My head hit the pillow, and I tossed and turned for probably fifteen minutes, listening to the silence.
I don't know when I finally fell asleep, or how long I slept, but I sat straight up at the first scream. It pierced the air so clearly, it sounded like it was in the same room.
But it wasn't just screaming… At first it was one voice, a solitary person in pain or fear. It sounded almost like the desperate cry of a wounded animal, cornered, clinging to life but knowing the end was near. Then it was two voices, three, and then the cries multiplied into a chorus of shrieks. The sound seemed to move, oscillate around us, as some mouths paused to gulp in fresh lungs of air, others would shatter the quiet to replace the wailing. It was a constant hammering of sensory overload.
Banshees. That's what it sounded like. Insane banshees surrounding our room from every angle. The explosion of voices had everyone in the room sitting straight up, alert. Dad's Zippo lit back up, and when I glanced over to my sister's side of the room, the fear on the faces of Liz and her friend was clear. Even in the dark.
"Daddy?" she whispered. "What's going on?"
Liz never called my father "Daddy" unless she was upset, which happened very rarely. My sister's strong, just like my mother. Bold, confident, capable. I don't think I've seen her scared since she was six years old and stranded about twenty feet up in a giant oak tree on our farm.
But now she sat cowering next to Zoe, both of them startled awake by the noise.
I went back to the window. Nothing. Blackness. So I headed for the door, the one leading to the hallway, and peered through the peep hole. Flashes of orange and yellow sped by, faces lit, teeth bared. Fire.
Thump. Crack. I jumped away from the door when I heard the reverberation on the other side. Thump-thump-thwack.
A cackle sounded from the hallway just outside, followed by a screeching voice, mostly unintelligible. "Eeenybuddeee hoooome?" It was garbled, almost as if whoever spoke had a mouthful of food. Or blood.
I put my eye back to the door for another peek. A dirty face, bloodshot eyeball, distorted by the glass hole, blinked back at me. The doorknob rattled and I took three quick hops back, running smack into my father.
"Who is it?" he asked.
"I don't know," I whispered back. "I don't recognize the face, and he's carrying a torch. He doesn't look, um… friendly."
"A torch?"
"They've all got them, whoever is running the halls. Do you think they cut the power?"
"I don't know, son."
The screaming flooded the halls, accompanied by the sounds of pounding feet on the floor and fists banging against the doors and walls. We stood there, stone still, until eventually it began to fade. It was almost as if the ruckus was moving away.
I walked over to the window again, to look outside. People were pouring out of the main floor, trampling each other in their haste to escape. Bodies were being shoved into the pool, the sound of splashing being added to the chorus of chaos. Although dawn was starting to show signs of orange-gray light in the distance, my best sense of what was happening came from my ears.
"Okay guys," Dad's voice cut through the air, making us all jump. "Everybody get dressed, get your things together as quickly as you can."
"Daddy, I can't see anything." Liz had a tremor in her voice as she flicked the lamp on and off, on and off, in a futile effort to light the room. I heard her shuffle her feet toward me and reach for the curtains.
"No! Liz, don't," I shouted, grabbing her arm. I realized too late how loud I was and hoped I didn't alert anyone to our location.
"Why not?" she asked, almost silently.
I lowered my voice as well. "They can't know we're in here."
"Who? Who are they?"
"I don't know, but they're dangerous. Listen…"
She leaned toward the window. The screeching was all but gone, replaced by what sounded like moans and whimpers. Injured people, left behind. Probably to die.
"Just do as Dad said. Get your stuff together," I said and shut the curtains securely. The room filled with muffled sounds of feet shuffling and hands fumbling, trying to find clothes, bags, shoes. I looked up at Zoe, Liz's team mate who had come with us on our trip. I had forgotten about her. She hadn't spoken a word. I suddenly understood that not only were we – my family – in apparent danger, but we also had to protect another teenage girl as well. The realization weighed down on me, my shoulders literally sagged.
Dad must have had the same thought. "Zoe? You okay?"
She nodded, but only slightly. "Yeah. What's going on, Mr. Adams?"
"I don't know, but I don't think it's good. I'd like to try and get us out of here."
It took us about ten minutes to get our bags packed. By the time everyone was dressed and ready to go, the sun was finally coming up and peeking through the shades. Still no electricity. Already Dad had tried to call my mom – we all had, unsuccessfully. None of our cell phones worked. Against my better judgment, but out of moment of sheer frustration, I even picked up the land line in the hotel room. It was dead as well.
I picked up my duffel, but instead of turning toward the door, my curiosity got the better of me. I slid the curtain open, just a little, to see the grounds now that daylight had finally surfaced. What I saw was beyond any carnage I could have ever imagined.
The pool, once crystal blue and filled with lively guests, was now crimson liquid and still. The only sign of life, or lack thereof, was the five bodies floating face down around the perimeter. Blood trailed in smears and spatters along the concrete and patio furniture, and more corpses lay lifeless, strewn along the lot.
The restaurant across the parking lot was a blaze on one end, and I could see looters darting in and out, taking whatever they could carry from the building. Some seemed to be working in groups of three or four, never more than five. Every once in a while you'd see one drop a package and run after another with a knife or makeshift club.
"Shep, what do you see?" I was awakened from my trance at the sound of my father's voice. He came up behind me to peer through the curtains and I heard him suck in a quick breath of air when he saw what I was looking at.
"Nothing, Dad. Nothing." I desperately hoped he'd understand my subliminal message – don't alert the girls to this.
Although my sister is just a year younger, at fifteen she's really fairly smart and grounded. Her friend Zoe, on the other hand, has a tendency for drama. The last thing I wanted was to have to drag a frantic girl out of here with us. We needed to keep our wits about us.
He put his hand on my shoulder and closed the curtains with his other. "Let's see if we can get to the car."
I nodded and picked my bag up from the floor where I had dropped it in shock. "Keep the girls between us," I said, though I figured he already knew that.
The hallway was dark, except for the natural light that filtered in through the windows at each end of the building. The long shadows left a menacing view of what was left of the once beautifully-decorated walls. Broken pictures and shards of glass littered the carpet. Deep gashes and dark stains marred the drywall. I couldn't tell if it was mud splatters or blood. The thick scent of iron in the air lent me to assume it was blood.
We hurried past the elevator bay and straight to the staircase at the end of the hall. The stairwell was bright with sunlight, which gave Liz and Zoe their first glimpse of what we were running from. I heard my sister gasp as she took in the carnage.
Dismembered body parts were strewn across the stairs and each landing below us. It wasn't just arms, legs, hands, feet – like you see in slasher movies… It was ragged chunks of flesh, almost as if they had been shredded from the body. Dead or alive? I couldn't possibly tell, but there was enough blood pooled up on the floor, I knew many of these people had bled to death in agony. The white industrial tile on the floor was now flooded with thick, scarlet pools of liquid.
"What happened, Daddy?" my sister whispered as she clung to him. "Who did this?"
"I don't know, Lizzie, but we're going to get out of here as fast as we can."
"Shep, did you see them?" she asked me. "When you looked out the door?"
"Barely. It was dark, and I couldn't see much." I decided to leave it at that.
Our room was on the thirteenth floor, so our trek down to the main level was long. Add to that the slippery conditions of the floor, and we were struggling to stay on our feet.
Dad was leading the line of us and I could see him kicking debris out of our path to clear a way for us to walk. Liz was right behind him, one hand clinging to the back of his belt, the other gripping the handrail.
Blood was not something new to my family. We live on about two hundred acres of land in rural Wisconsin. Dad operates a modest-sized cattle business, trading in both dairy and beef. Between helping him around the farm and butcher shop, and hunting and fishing in the woods, we've seen our share of life and death, blood and flesh – but never in the sense of human carnage.
Zoe, however, was from the city. I watched her shiver ahead of me, clinging to the stair railing with both her hands, shuffling her feet slowly without raising them. The rubber treads of her running shoes slid easily along the slick of the wet floor. Every so often she would make a whimper that sounded like half-hiccup, half-sob. Other than that, the place was silent.
I watched as, almost in slow-motion, her feet began to slide out from underneath her. Her knees buckled, and instinctively I reached forward with my free arm and wrapped it around her waist, pinning her weight solidly between me and the railing. She caught her balance and righted herself quickly.
"You okay?" I asked.
She just nodded. And hiccupped.
We kept moving forward, inch by slippery inch, trying to keep pace with Dad who was hell-bent on getting us out of here.
I kept my hand firmly on Zoe's right hip, helping support her as best I could. A guttural moan escaped her lips and I looked down to see the vacant eyes of a bodiless head lying in the corner of the landing on the seventh floor. My stomach churned.
"Keep your eyes on the railing," I told her, after catching my breath. "Don't look down."
Don't look down… Isn't that always the advice they give? In any other circumstance, I might have found this funny, that I'd be giving this cliché advice. But I was having a hard time finding any humor in this catastrophe.
Zoe stopped abruptly, causing me to run into the back of her. We both stumbled, gripping fiercely to keep our feet under us.
"What? Zoe, what is it?"
She nodded her head towards the wall, signaling an emergency case with a fire hose coiled inside. I didn't get it at first, and since she still wasn't talking, I had no clue what she meant. She hiccupped again and her shaky fingers reached to open the door.
That's when I saw what had caught her eye. Tucked inside the hinge was the red handle of a fireman's axe. She grabbed it and handed it to me, and for the first time since I had known her, I saw a glint of fire light up in her eyes.
I gripped the axe under the blade. "I can't carry this and you, too. Do you think you could follow me, hold onto the back of my jeans for stability?"
She nodded and let me take the lead.
"Let me know if you hear anything behind you," I said. But the only sound to be heard was the sloshing of liquid seeping out of the holes in our tennis shoes each time we took a step.
