Dead Moon: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (19 page)

36

“How can a space rock cause half a city block to fall?” Jill asks, mid-stride. The sheer absurdity of the question is just mindboggling. And yet here we are, running for our lives from not only monsters and gun toting lunatics, but now we have
entire buildings
coming down around us.

Hi, Insanity. My name is Reality. Wanna’ get together sometime and have a drink?

“Doesn’t matter why,” I say. “We just need to not be here when the rest of Manhattan crumbles.”

She doesn’t argue and keeps running, but the sidewalk buckles and cracks. Then, it lifts, sending us sprawling into the street. I get thrown head first into a car and slump to the ground, dazed and exhausted.

“Not yet, Frank,” Jill says, having to shout over the grinding of concrete and steel. She picks me up, leaning me against the hood of the car. As I bend over I get a look at the door and see that it’s dented from where my head and shoulder made contact. Warmth envelops the left side of my face as blood runs down it. I’d say I’m starting to resemble John McClane right now with all the injuries starting to pile up.
All I need is the soiled white undershirt and to be running barefoot.
From the numbness surrounding my temple I can tell that there must be a good size gash of some kind, but I pay it no attention. The sight in front of us is just too astounding.

The two blocks on either side of 73rd—between Central Park West and Columbus—fall apart, collapsing in on themselves. Then like a wave of destruction, the debris washes out over the road, consuming the vehicles and anything else in its path, including a mass of Unseen. It reminds me of the various flood and landslide videos I’ve seen on the news, watching as entire neighborhoods get consumed past their rooftops. Only this isn’t mud or water. This is the remains of other apartments and businesses.

Insanity has officially met reality.

We watch the dust settle, looking for movement. Seeing none we go to turn, but stop. The red glow from inside the park has brightened and increased in intensity. It’s now so bright that we can’t even look at it. Then, it grows, looking like a red-colored dome of crackling electricity.

“Run!” It’s all I can say. No witty one-liners or other sarcastic remarks. Just, run.

I pull Jill, but she doesn’t move. She’s frozen in shock. I pull again and this time she listens. And for good reason. The next block closest to us begins to shake apart, in time with the pulsating red light.

As the dome of red hell increases in size, so does the strength of the quakes. Buildings ahead of us start to break apart and we start having to dodge the falling fragments. Fragments may actually be too nice of a word. As evidence, a chunk the size of a Mini Cooper lands and crushes another car of equal size.

I leap atop the closest vehicle, another yellow cab, and take in our surroundings while carefully still moving forward. We are only about a block or so from Riverside Drive. West of that is the dog park at 72nd Street. After that is the water. If we can survive another few minutes of death-defying stunts and other bullshit that reminds me of your run-of-the-mill disaster movie, then we should be able to make it to the public kayak rental place.

I jump off another car and land awkwardly, stumbling yet again. My legs are about to give out and if that happens we’re screwed. Jill isn’t strong enough to carry me.

“Shit, watch out!” Jill yells, shoving me to the side. I go rolling to my left, landing hard on the sidewalk just in front of the intersection at West End Avenue. She then dives on top of me, squeezing her body into me hard just as dust and dirt bloom into the air around us. We lay there for a second, the shaking subsiding for just a moment. It starts up again almost immediately. Like I said,
only a moment
. We go to move, but we can’t. Not easily anyway.

“Can you move?” I ask, trying to shift my weight.

“No,” I hear Jill gasp. “Something…is on top of me… I can’t…breathe.”

Oh God
…

I try to shift again, moving only a fraction of an inch, but it’s enough. Jill gasps for air and coughs, trying to speak again. “What…happened?”

“You tell me,” I say, worming my way forward.
At least I think it’s forward.
“You shoved me to the ground. What did you see?”

She coughs again, but gets her breathing under control enough to speak. “The building next to us was coming down, tipping over like a redwood. We wouldn’t have gotten clear in time so I just reacted.”

Okay then, at least I know where we are.

We’re under what used to be the building on the southeast corner of 73rd and West End and from the dim light around us there seems to be a tunnel of some sort zigzagging through the debris. Far as I can tell, the structure tipped over and fell, cracking low at the base. When it hit it was leaning at a funky angle and didn’t crush us.

“Just keep moving until you see daylight,” I tell her, yelling behind me as we move. “Follow the sound of me crawling.”

I hear what I think is an ‘okay’ and start to squirm forward on my back. It’s such a tight squeeze that I can’t flip over and crawl like Jill should be doing now. I’m literally grabbing whatever hand and footholds I can feel and inching myself along. Every foot or so I crane my neck and look upside-down doing my damndest to gauge the distance.

Just don’t grab anything loose enough to come down on top of you.

“You still…with me?” I ask, coughing inbetween words. The dust is thick and will be lodged in our lungs for a while.

Again, I only get a moan out of Jill, but I can hear the sound of her body scraping along behind me. I’m assuming she’s hurt and that’s why she’s being so quiet—maybe even a broken rib or two from being semi-crushed by a building.

The tunnel shakes and the world around us cracks and snaps. The only thing going through my head now is,
holy shit!

“Move Jill! Move now!”

I claw and grip at anything and everything, feeling the serrated edges of steel and the coarse surface of concrete destroy my fingers. I’m not leaving here with anything less than hamburger meat for hands, that’s for damn sure.

Just before I’m about to succumb to a panic attack, my right hand reaches and finds nothing. I was so focused on not getting squished that I didn’t even realize that I made it to the end. I yank myself up and out of the quickly crumbling hole, lay on my stomach and grab Jill’s outstretched wrist—just as the entire thing starts its final death throes.

Her feet clear the tons upon tons of building just in time as I pull her with all my might. My left hand is bleeding badly and hurts like hell as I squeeze and yank. She lands hard on top of me, knocking the wind out of me again. My bruised ribs protest and I shout out in pain, but the noise is little more than a whimper as we both start to cough uncontrollably.

She screams, her voice piercing my ears. I look up, still seeing the world upside-down. But I recognize the thing shambling towards us. It’s a Goblin and he’s close.

We both react on instinct and draw our guns. She yanks hers from the waistband around her back—just as I do the same with the Glock in my shoulder holster. She sits up on my stomach and fires two shots in time with me and the creature falls, landing ten feet from us, four clean holes in its chest and stomach.

Jill rocks back forward, exhausted and beat, landing on top of me again. Her deadweight, once again knocks the wind from my lungs, but thankfully she’s coherent enough to quickly climb off and roll to the ground beside me groaning.

She breathes heavily, laying a hand across my chest. “Sorry…didn’t mean…to…”

I wave her off and try to sit up. The world around me is a warzone and my head is woozy. The newest knock to the skull from the car door has really dazed me, not to mention whatever hit me when
a fucking building fell on me
. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I try to sit up. The blood rushing back up to my head definitely reminds me though.

“Ugh,” I mumble, holding my good hand to my head. “Feels like I got in a fistfight after a night of heavy drinking.”

Jill gets to her feet first and then helps me to mine. She takes care of avoiding my bleeding left hand, grimacing at the sight of it.

“Can you move it?” she asks, looking it over.

I try to bend it, but cringe. It flexes slightly, almost forming a fist, but the pain is too much and I stop. “If I have to, yes.”

She nods and looks around. “We’re halfway down West End. If we keep going and then turn right at 72nd, we can still make it to the river.”

I nod. “Okay. Let’s get moving before another building falls on us.”

Jill cracks up and laughs a little, which makes me laugh a little too…which makes me wince in pain. The leap for life from the seventh floor fire escape has certainly taken its toll on my body, especially with what else I’ve personally gone through.

“Oh, sorry.”

I shake her off. “It’s not you, it was the swan dive from the seventh story…”

Oops.

I look up and see her face. I just remembered I neglected to tell her about that part for this exact reason.

Her eyebrows furrow in anger. “The what?”

37

Lucky for us the next set of buildings fell as we ran, interrupting Jill’s tirade about jumping from fire escapes and the obvious dangers of it. I’m tired and broken and regret letting that doozy of an escape slip. It’s really the last thing I wanted to discuss. But in the end, she just shook her head and ran.

The south side of 72 extends for a full block while the north side of the street ends halfway as it meets Riverside Drive. Riverside then continues north along the Hudson River’s western bank. Between it and the roadway is an array of beautiful waterfront parks and other recreational areas, including the dog park we’re headed towards now.

Dogs... Son of a bitch!

I keep the revelation to myself, hoping the dog park is empty. But knowing how nice the day was—besides the low temperature of course—I’m sure we’re bound to run into a couple Cujo-looking pups.

I look back and watch as the rest of the block east of West End collapses in on itself. Then I see the ones to either side do the same. Then more. What must be six square blocks running back to Central Park fall to pieces, forced to the ground by the ever increasing earthquakes.

Our block, the one we are running next to, starts to do the same as the red dome of light expands again, literally eating the city. If it’s a complete circle like most domes are, then everything on the other side is gone too. I’m not exactly sure if the light is actually causing any of the damage or not either, or if it’s just a byproduct of the energy Abaddon is giving off at the moment.

As we continue our escape, I suddenly hear someone screaming for help. Jill and I both stop and quickly turn, looking for the voice, but don’t immediately see anyone.

Finally, Jill spots him as he shambles over the broken rubble. It’s a younger man, maybe twenty, and he’s covered in blood. I’d say he just survived one of the falling buildings and was now emerging, but the way he’s running is like he’s being chased by something. I can’t see exactly what from our lower vantage point.

It’s only until
they
clear the hill made of wreckage that I get a good look at what’s pursuing the guy. Three Goblins of massive size launch themselves over an enormous pile of concrete and steel. It’s the same heap belonging to the building that Jill and I got buried under.

They must be eight or maybe even nine feet tall, but built like an anorexic basketball player. They can’t weigh much more than me, but are easily two-to-three feet taller, giving them an almost extraterrestrial look.

“What the…” Jill says, astonished by the sudden appearance of the newest monstrosities. “How?”

I don’t get a chance to answer, instead we get a live show.

The red dome of light spreads further, increases its girth, reaching out to the younger man. Once it kisses his body he pauses his escape, instantly rising into the air. It’s like he’s just levitating off the ground or something, arms and legs outspread, a look of abject horror on his face. I can’t hear the scream. I’m not even sure if it’s audible or one of silence, but it’s for damn sure hurting him.

Then, he changes.

First his bones snap like a thunderclap, breaking and healing, breaking and healing, until they continue to lengthen. With every change he starts to take on more and more of the same characteristics of the other ones, the Greys. It’s an appropriate name considering they have an eerie resemblance to the famous Grey alien popular in Hollywood. Tall, extremely lean, and from above.

As the energy field, fully engulfs him his eyes simply burst with a chorus of sickening pops, making Jill and I flinch in terror and disgust.

He falls from his two foot flight and lands, collapsing onto one knee. It’s when he looks up towards us that I start to pull Jill back the other way.

“Oh, damn… Shoot it!” I yell, drawing my gun and aiming for the one nearest us.

Jill joins in and we quickly take down two of the four.

The newly turned Grey leaps into motion, scaling the building’s remains like a spider monkey, making it hard for me to get a clean shot off. My shotgun is gone too, buried and lost.

It pauses and flexes, ready to leap into the air, giving me the moment I need to readjust and steady my aim. I put two in its chest and another in its head, dropping it in a gangly pile of limbs.

The one Jill was shooting at is limping, but still coming. It doesn’t get far though once I add the rest of my clip into it.

“Holy shit,” she says, breathing hard. “Note to self… Don’t get touched by the light.”

“Blinded by the light…” I mumble, repeating the lyrics to the Manfred Mann’s Earth Band song.

I get a look from Jill and shrug. “Sorry, but it seemed appropriate considering it’s how they changed to begin with.”

“It’s not that…” she then releases her clip from her gun, checking it over. “I’m almost out.” She then slams it home. “Three left.”

I nod, reloading my own gun with the last of my ammo. “Hopefully we’ll get to the water before you need to use the rest.”

We turn and haul ass, praying we don’t need those bullets.

Riverside Drive appears and instead of continuing down 72nd, we bank diagonally across the intersection and head down one of the footpaths instead, towards the dog park. My mumbling of, “Please no dogs, please no dogs, please no dogs,” must be heard because Jill reacts.

“What are you saying?”

I stop and catch my breath, not seeing any large structures that can come down on us. The only damage I could see coming is from the trees surrounding us, but I’ll take that chance. I can’t see how dodging a falling tree could be harder than a damn building.

“We’re about to get to the
West 72nd Street Dog Run
,” I say, trying to explain without coming out and saying it.

“So,” she says, shrugging.

Her eyebrows raise, but not in understanding. I’m facing the road, watching the last of the block’s buildings come down, which has her facing the water…and the dog park.

“Cujo’s right behind me, isn’t he?”

Surprisingly she shakes her head, no.

What then?

I turn, my mouth hanging open at the sight. There isn’t
a
Cujo behind me… There are six of them. All hungry. All snarling and ready to pounce. They range in breed and size, but luckily I know something ninety-nine-percent of all dogs suck at…

“Up the trees, now!”

I go right and leap onto the first tree I see, doing my best Curious George impression. Thankfully, like most young boys, when I was a kid this was where we spent most of our time. Outside was the playground, not video games or television. Florida has year-round outside weather too, giving a child no excuse for staying indoors. The only time you couldn’t was during a bad storm.

Safely
a good six feet or so off the ground, I reach back to Jill and almost get my hand taken off. One of the Cujo-dogs jumped up after me and tried to have a nibble.

“Gah!” I incoherently yell, kicking the thing in the face.

“Frank!”

I look across the path and see Jill barely out of reach of another bigger dog. The German Shepherd
might
be able to get to her eventually, but I don’t intend for that to happen. I draw my gun and try to shoot the thing in the back, but the ground under us starts to shake and bounce again. The dogs whimper, but keep up with their attack.

CRACK.

I watch as Jill’s tree gets uprooted a little by the latest quake and starts to list to the right. If it falls, it will come tipping into me.

Think damnit, think.
The only thing that might work is if her tree tips over and hits my thicker, stronger tree, it might just absorb the impact and hold steady. I quickly glance down and see that my tree’s roots are still intact and underground, holding strong.

I decide that it’s worth a shot and relay the plan to Jill.

“Climb as high as you can and hold tight. Your tree is coming this way. I need you to grab hold of a branch or something when it comes crashing over.”

She scrambles higher, indicating that she heard me, just as a big bastard nips the branch I’m sitting on. The thing almost took a bite out of my ass.
Time to move higher.

I stand and grab for a higher handhold, but can’t as the ground shakes again. It’s as violent a quake as we’ve seen so far, causing the ground—paved walkways included—to crack. Decade-old trees uproot next, causing the others around me to fall.

Including Jill’s.

The splitting wood sounds like a gunshot and startles a couple of the dogs off. Three of the six remain however, enough savagery to do us both in. With the ground shaking as bad as it is, neither one of us will be able to get a clean shot off without it zinging wide. Ammo is already in short supply. We don’t need to add to the scarcity by shooting wildly.

Worry about that after Jill gets clear.

I grab onto a limb above me and pull, ascending quickly now. The lower branches are farther apart and thicker, making them a little tougher to reach and maneuver. Once I get to the next level of branches, it becomes ten times easier.

“Ready?” I yell over to her, while paying attention to my own task.

“As ready as I can—”

With a thunderclap of splitting wood, the tree falls…fast. It slams into my perch with such a force, that I’m almost knocked off. It’s a twenty-plus foot drop and would have easily broken something…or killed me.

I feel a hand grip mine and open my eyes. I didn’t even realize I closed them. Jill is looking at me from around the trunk of my tree. She’s only inches from my face and is bleeding heavily from a gash on her forehead. Blood pulsates down her nose and into her mouth, but she doesn’t react. She just stays there her eyes wide in shock. She’s trying to process what just happened.

“You okay?” I ask inbetween quakes.

She nods, staring off into the distance.

“I mean besides the cut on your head.”

She nods again, one-hundred-percent space cadet at the moment.

“Babe?”

Her eyes dart to mine and I see them focus just a little. Then, they dilate and blink. She was definitely in a form of shock and far be it for me to try and diagnose her. I’m not one to check
WebMD
every time something hurts when I fart or sneeze.

“We’re almost done,” I say, gripping her hand. “The water is right there,” I point to the west, being able to see it over the nearby highway, “but we need to keep moving.”

She nods again and takes in her new tree.

While she gets acclimated, I look around for our four-legged friends. One is dead, crushed by the trunk of Jill’s tree. The two remaining are still circling us, but are confused by the rumbling ground beneath their paws. Dogs are hypersensitive to stuff like this and now with Abaddon’s upgrades, their sensory systems are probably being overloaded.

“Better for us,” I mumble.

“What?” Jill asks, hearing me.

“The dogs,” I reply, motioning to the area below us. “They’re waiting, but are having problems with the quakes. The Unseen hunt with scent and sound, but a dog can feel things that people can’t. I think we can make a break for it during the next set of quakes.”

She bites her lip, thinking it over. “You’re the expert.”

I try to argue the fact that I’m not, but then again… Who knows more about these things than me right now? I think the answer is pretty obvious…

Another tree to our right snaps as the shaking starts up again.

I look into my wife’s beautiful eyes and nod. “Let’s go.”

She starts her descent, with me quickly catching up. We reach the bottom portion of branches and stop. With a violent upheaval, I get jarred from my footing and slip.
No better time than the present to make my dismount, I guess.

“Go!”

She jumps and I fall. I take the impact on my good shoulder, attempting to roll at the same moment. This time the ground stirring actually helps redistribute the force so I’m not dying from the blow when I try to stand.

Until a dog leaps for my throat…