My eyes fluttered open and met nothing but darkness.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had the kind of haze on your brain after a long night of drinking, but it’s not a fun experience. The headache can pound and you feel like you’ve been run over by a pile of dogs that decided to use your face as their scratching posts.
I had that going on, and more, but the thing is, I hadn’t been drinking. Not a single drop. Haven’t for years actually. That’s one of the side effects of growing up with a whiskey drunk for a father. You either swing the way he did by inundating yourself with as much booze as you can get hold of or run the other direction and not touch a bit of it. I went the way of avoidance.
So why did I feel like I just had the biggest bender of my life? And where the hell was I, anyhow?
The darkness was not quite absolute, as the waves of dizziness wafted through my skull. I guess you could say there was a bit of ambiance to it, a tinge of dull orange and tan somewhere ahead of me. It wasn’t bright enough to really count for much, but as my eyes adjusted, it was there.
I clawed my way further into consciousness, trying to shrug off the after-effects of whatever had been in me. That’s when I noticed movement.
Not mine, not directly, anyhow, but the sensation of swaying was there. It was subtle, at first, but as I came more into awareness, it seemed to increase. Maybe that’s just because I was waking up. That way became accompanied by a low hum, a rumble just at the edge of my hearing for those first couple of moments. That, too, increased as the seconds grew longer and I started to notice it had the distinct feel of an engine, or what you might hear from the tires as your car goes along a highway.
I cleared my throat a couple of times and smacked my lips, trying to bring up some bit of spit to quell the dryness on my tongue and made to lift my hand to wipe at my eyes.
It wouldn’t move.
Well, more specifically, it twitched inside of whatever had tied it in place to the other hand, a piece of fabric or maybe a rope rubbing along my skin as I tried to get it to shift.
What the hell?
It ached as whatever was moving around me jostled a bit and pulled my arm at a weird angle, but thankfully that pain was small. Compared to my head, it was nothing, really, but it worried me. Not just because it hurt, but because I had no idea how I came to be wherever I was or what was going on.
The anxiety rushed through me and my stomach grumbled with nausea as adrenaline began to surge. I curled my fingers together and pulled at the fabric, twisting them and my wrists around as much as I could to break myself free from the binding, but whoever tied them together had done a good enough job that all I seemed to manage to accomplish was making the cinches tighter.
My legs could move, though, and I managed to get them beneath me enough to sit up straight against a hard surface behind me. My butt was on a cold metal floor of some kind and now that my not really small frame was up, the swaying really increased. It just added to the nausea running rickshaw through my guts as my panic increased.
Where the hell was I? What was going on? The last thing I remember before waking up in this place was John begging me to go out for a bit with him. I didn’t really feel up to it, so I told him no and hung up the phone, getting ready to walk out the front door at work to get to my car.
I squinted my eyes, the weird orange-tan glow shadowing as I did. Was there a bit of pain when I went through the door?
Yea, actually there was. Right along the back side of my neck. A poking sensation like a needle at the doctors office or something. Just real brief, and then the next thing I know I was there in the darkness.
I gasped as I realized someone must have been behind me, maybe coming around that shadowed corner I always told the damn boss he needed to get some lights on. Cheap bastard wouldn’t do anything about it, and now look who’s paying the price for that.
Isn’t that always the way?
When I gasped, it came out as more of a groan, I think, that thickness in the back of my throat just not wanting to clear.
That’s when I heard a low moan coming back into my ears from somewhere else and I realized I was not alone.
I froze, the haze in my head clearing more as I listened hard, trying to glean anything I could out of that dark space. When nothing else came, I raised my voice.
“Who’s there?”
Simple enough question, really, and I almost laughed to myself as a flash of memories of watching horror movies kicked into my head. How many times had I argued with the fool girl on the screen who talked when they should have kept quiet, or stumbled every single time they tried to run from the monster serial killer? And yet here I was, trapped in the darkness moving along in some strange vehicle shouting into the void, giving away my position to whatever might be waiting beyond the shadow’s edge.
I got an answer, though, in the form of another moan. Whoever it was, they were a little ways from me; it was higher pitched than my own groans and I thought, perhaps, it was a woman.
“Who’s there?” I asked again, this time a little louder. Sweat was pouring down my cheeks now, the cool metal against my butt and back doing nothing to fight against the nerves wracking through me.
“Oh, God,” I heard the voice say. Yeah, it was definitely a woman. “What the hell?”
“Hey, can you hear me?” I didn’t know if her words were meant for me or if she was just coming awake like I had been and was confused.
But I needed answers, and, stranger or not, having another voice in that darkness that seemed to be going through what I was gave me a comfort I can’t really describe.
“Who are you?” she asked, her voice strained. I could hear shuffling now, as I assume she struggled against binds of her own. “What the hell do you want, you bastard?”
Oh man. I realized she must think I am the one that tied her up and drugged her.
“I’m over here,” I offered weakly. “I’m tied up too.”
Another jostle, much bigger this time, seemed to shake the whole place as whatever we were being carted in hit a bump or something. The back of my head slammed into the metal behind me and I’m not ashamed to admit I yelped. It echoed through the chamber and came back to my ears, sounding like a puppy that got thwacked for pissing on the floor or something.
It spun my head around for sure, as if it didn’t already ache enough from whatever got put in me. What had dulled down to a respectable roar spiked to a sledgehammer and for the next few minutes, I was pretty out of it.
When it finally calmed back to an ache I could deal with, the woman was talking. I didn’t catch the first bit of it, because I was too concerned with keeping myself coherent enough to stay conscious.
“… such an idiot. Where am I? What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” I managed to get out. “Some kind of truck, maybe.” I wanted to keep her talking, needed to hear a voice in that swaying darkness, some kind of link to sanity in a world that had gone distinctly around the bend. “Who are you?”
“Janet” she answered, her high-pitched voice carrying through the black pit of a void my surroundings had become. “Janet.”
“Well, Janet,” I said, “I’m Bryan.” I twisted my hands again, trying once more to get the bindings loose, but they were strapped in tight and wouldn’t budge. It was starting to become a little painful, and I had a feeling I was cutting off some of the flow of blood, because there was a worrying numbness beginning in the tips of my fingers. “Are you tied up, too?” I asked, and got the answer I was expecting.
“Yeah,” her voice quietening. “Can’t believe I was so stupid.”
I smacked my lips and cleared my throat again. “What do you mean?”
“You never take your eyes off your drink,” she replied, but it seemed she was talking more to herself than to me.
I’d heard about girls having to learn from their friends that hard lesson.
Another jostle and this time there was a change in the low tone of the hum around me. A shifting sensation happened as the machine carting us slowed and a rumble vibrated through the metal against me. Another jolt as the speed increased again made my heart freeze inside of me. It settled back into a steady rhythm again, but there were frequent bumps lifting me up and putting me back down again as the road beneath us must have turned rougher.
Janet, too, fell into silence as we waited to see what was happening, but when the engine roared back up to speed again, she said, “What’s happening, Bryan?”
I could hear tears in that voice, the strain with which she was holding them back, trying to keep herself calm, and my own broke within me. “I don’t know,” was the only reply I could offer, and it terrified me that I had nothing more to give.
Why me? Why was I here? I was just a guy who tried to do the right thing, going to work every day at a job I couldn’t stand to make sure the bills got paid, and I’d never done anything to hurt anyone. Not intentionally, anyhow. I had no idea why someone would want to stick me in this state. I didn’t have any enemies that I knew of, and I didn’t even know this chick sitting in the dark with me. I’d never even met a Janet before, let alone do something that would wind up having both of us like this.
So why me?
She was crying in full, now, and I wished I could give her some kind of comfort, but I couldn’t even see her, let alone do anything with my damn hands tied behind my back, trussed up like some stuffed pig waiting for the slaughter.
That thought froze my veins again and I gaped my mouth wide.
Why, really, was I there?
Oh God.
The engine roared again and I felt the whole thing jerk hard as a fast turn was made, pulling me sideways some. I slid across the floor, my back scraping against the metal at least a few feet. Other things slid with me; I could hear crates or boxes shifting as the turn settled back out again.
Incredible pain burst through my hand as my finger was pulled further back than it had a right to, the pinkie nearly breaking in the process. I yelped again as the scrape of a bolt or something sticking out of the wall pried open my skin and hot blood began to ooze. I clenched my hand into a fist and gritted my teeth, hissing through them as I wrenched my eyes shut.
It was a good few minutes before the pain even started to ease and by that time, the vehicle we were in was slowing down.
The rumble of the engine came again as the brakes were hit, gliding us to a stop.
Janet moaned as the engine caterwauled as whoever was driving hit the gas a final time before switching it off.
The quiet of it disturbed me, the vibrations along my body no longer happening though I had almost become accustomed to it. It took a few seconds for me to adjust to not feeling it.
My brain tossed it aside quickly though as the sound of a door opening came to my ears and when the slam of it closing again rattled through the metal I leaned against, my heart pounded anew. It was so hard, I could feel it in my neck and my breath trapped in my lungs. Panic rolled through me like a steam engine, my legs quaking to the point my shoes tapped against the metal floor.
Loud rattles to my right and I shot my eyes in that direction. A second later, bright white light lasered into my pupils and I wrenched my sight away from it as the door there was opened, letting in the high sun.
Janet screamed and I pried my lids open again, adjusting to the blur as more adrenaline surged through me. Instinctively I backed away, edging from whoever was there at the door.
A heartbeat later, the distinct cocking of a shotgun pierced my ears and I stopped moving. Janet, too, fell silent, though her breaths gasped still with tears.
“That’s right,” a deep voice said. “Just keep yourselves calm, now.”
The figure there was shadowed, the bright light behind them blocking out any distinct features, but they were definitely taller than average, their chest wide.
The trees behind them played a nice counterpoint to the shotgun in their hand as they took a step back and became clearer, the lines becoming more distinct.
It was a guy, long beard hanging down nearly past the center of his chest. The baseball cap on top of his head was dirty, looking nearly as old as the man himself. He bore a toothy grin, the pasty skin around it pulled back to show the white and yellow, but they looked strong and sharp.
“Well, now,” he muttered, a subtle southern tinge to his words. “Let’s see what we got here. Two little worms all ready for a nice trip?” His strange question seemed to be amusing to himself, and he laughed a little as he said it.
I stayed quiet, watching this strange man as he took another step back and spat on the ground.
“Yeah, two little worms, all nice and packaged. I bet we’re gonna have some fun!”
He held the shotgun out, a wicked looking thing that had a magazine underneath it. I didn’t know about guns enough to know if it was some kind of custom job or if he bought it that way, the extent of my knowledge of shotguns being what I saw on the Playstation. He tapped the tip of it against the metal frame in front of him.
“Right, out of the truck you go, and mind your step, hear?”
He backed away a few more paces and waited with his left hand resting on the barrel.
A truck? Things made a little more sense now. We had been brought somewhere inside a semi, this creep dragging us who knew how far to do with us whatever he wanted.
I glanced toward the other side of the trailer and saw the figure of what I took to be Janet laying along the other wall. I couldn’t see much more than her legs, though, at first. They were free of rope like mine, but she was still fully on her back.
“I didn’t mean to come for Sunday breakfast,” the guy said, his voice turning dark. “Move your asses.” My eyes flicked to him again and saw him gesturing with the gun for us to come.
I shifted my legs again, trying to find some purchase on the slippery metal surface of the trailer and finally managed to get them underneath me enough to move. It was hard to shift upright, though, and I fell back down again too hard. The ache flared as my rear protested the abuse, but when I looked and saw the guy coming forward with the gun pointed at my head, I moved faster.
Janet, too, was coming to her feet. I could hear her harder soles tapping on the floor as I wormed my way to my own and together we stepped forward toward the bright light of day and the trucker with the gun.
“That’s right,” he said, “just walk slow. There you go.”
We reached the edge, and spared a glance at each other. Her long, brown hair was matted in some places, though it did not look too bad for the wear against the floor of the trailer. She was young, perhaps a few years younger than my own mid-twenties, and had a pretty face, though it was marred by a scar that went across her left cheek. I had no time to wonder how she might have gotten it, though, more concerned with whether or not I was going to make it through the next few minutes.
I was only a couple of feet from the edge, the man giving us a wider berth to be able to get down without being within reach of him. There were a ton of trees behind him, along either side of a dirt road that went straight on for quite a while in the distance. It was bright, the shining sun hot with the midsummer day and, if it weren’t for the trucker pointing the weapon at us, it might be one of those perfect kind of places to just get away to.
Secluded and alone.
Perfect for whatever this guy had in mind, too, I guess.
He gestured again with the gun, pointing it down toward the ground to indicate for us to get out of the trailer. I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage it with my hands tied. It looked like a good few feet of a drop and the slight vertigo looking down at the gravel gave me didn’t help matters any. Janet seemed to have a better time of it, though. She hopped down with more athleticism than I expected from her slight frame.
The crunch of the gravel beneath my soles was loud, but at least there wasn’t the crackle of a bone breaking to accompany it. My teeth rattled in my head on the landing and I bit the inner part of my lip a little, but that was nothing compared to the pound it made in my head, still swimming from the drug this guy must have injected into me.
The nearest part of the trees was some distance away, maybe fifty yards or so. I thought I was surreptitious in my glance toward them, wondering if I would be able to make a break for it before the guy had a chance to level his gun at me, but the shaking of his head told me he had noticed.
“Nah, son,” he growled. “You’re not gonna make it. If you wanna try, that’s your life.” He laughed that strange cackle of his again. “I wouldn’t bet on it, though.”
He stared down the two of us for what must have been at least a couple of minutes, and I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to antagonize the situation any more than it already was. Janet, however, kept spouting out questions and demands, all of which he ignored.
“What’s going on? Why are we here? You’re not going to get away with this!”
The guy barely even glanced at her, though. There seemed to be something almost distant in his eyes, as if he was listening to music or something in his head instead of holding a gun on two strangers in front of him. I can’t really explain it, but it was like he wasn’t fully… there.
Perhaps it was part of his madness. He had to be mad, right? After all, he pulled two strangers off of the streets, seemingly at random, and dragged them off to the hell knows where. Why, unless he was crazy?
I mean, if someone is angry or upset about something, you can deal with that, right? You can come to some kind of terms with them and work it out. You can find some kind of common ground and walk away from each other without animosity.
This guy, though, was something else, entirely, and unless you’ve come face to face with true insanity, it’s hard to describe what it’s like. A disconnect is there, something missing from their humanity, maybe, and trying to reach into that and come away from it untouched is impossible.
She was trying to get something rational out of an irrational situation, and I didn’t know if that was something even possible to do. I certainly couldn’t see how in those few moments there in the middle of nowhere with nothing but trees and dirt for company.
“We’re gonna play a little game,” he said, finally breaking the silence. Janet fell quiet, almost surprised when he spoke. “We’re gonna see what you’re really made of, deep inside.”
“Just let us go, man,” I said, hoping now that the guy was back from wherever he was in his head I could maybe get something out of him. “I won’t tell anyone. I just want to go home, okay?”
The laugh again as he looked into my face. “Why would you want to do that, when you’ve got all the world to see?” He spun around, a strange little dance of sorts with the gun held above his head. A husky ballerina doing a quick pirouette or something.
“Nah, boy” he continued as he brought the gun back down again. “We’re gonna make something of you you never thought you’d be!”
“What’s that?” I asked, pulling my wrists apart a bit to get the numbness under control.
“A survivor!” He cackled and danced again.
When he told us to turn around, I was sure that was the moment. It was the time of my death. When he made us get on out knees, I knew the last sight I would see in this life was the back end of a filthy semi truck and a bumper sticker that read, “How’s my driving? Call 1-800-EAT-CRAP.”
I glanced over at Janet who had tears streaming down her face and was mumbling a prayer under her breath, hoping I would be the one to go first so I wouldn’t have to watch what happens when a shotgun shell goes through someone’s brain.
Just make it quick, and don’t miss, if you’re going to do it, I thought. Don’t leave me half-dead in this hot sun.
A jerking at my wrists, though, flared new pain in my nearly broken pinkie as the snick of a knife cut the rope binding them together and I gasped as the blood instantly began to flow back into them. The pins and needles started in and I brought them to my front and rubbed them together near my chest.
I looked to my side and saw him using a pocket knife to release Janet, as well, and wondered what the hell this guy’s game was.
“Now, don’t you two move,” he said, backing away again. The crackle of the gravel under his thick boots was loud and he stopped about ten feet from us. “The next few minutes, we’re gonna see whether you’re good enough,” he said, his serious tone different than the half-joking manner he had before.
“For what?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder. The stones beneath my knees were cutting into my skin a little and I had to shift to get it to stop.
“To survive,” he intoned, and then threw the gun as hard as he could behind him. I heard it skitter across the dirt path.
“The hell?” I asked, shock giving me the push. My heart pounded as I thought I might have the chance to actually get out of this. He was unarmed now; I could take him!
“It was never even loaded,” he said, the laugh coming again, but this time it was punctuated by something else entirely. A low, rumbling growl skittered across the end of the cackle, and that was when my eyes flared wide, the sunlight above reflecting off of his white teeth.
Those teeth grew longer as his face changed, his skin becoming darker and the length of his beard thickening in a strange way. He bent a little, then, and a crackling sound echoed through his bones as they, too, lengthened, his hands extending outward, flaring wide. At the tips of his fingers, two inch claws sharpened to a fine pinpoint arced through the air.
It took only a moment for the change to occur, as the strange man turned into a horror I could have only imagined in my deepest nightmare, something out of the legends passed down from my ancestors as they huddled around a fire, praying to the gods they would be safe for another fall of the dark.
I couldn’t tell you if it was a vampire, or a werewolf, or if it was something else entirely, then, but I knew, in that moment, whatever else you might call it, it was death incarnate.
And it had it’s eyes on my throat.
I screamed. I lost it, then and there, urine streaming down my pants and into the dust covered gravel on the ground, the pain in my head and my hands and my knees gone as I stared into that terror. His maw opened and rows of teeth glinted in the sun as his body grew larger, the shadow coming over me like an eclipse.
“Ten…”
The word was guttural, barely audible as coherent. My mouth opened as the scream continued.
“Nine…”
It clicked in my mind, somewhere deep within, that the words were not merely a growl, but a countdown.
To what?
“Eight…”
Run you fool! Get off your knees and effing *run!
My body started to move.
“Seven…”
I pushed myself to my feet and skidded across the gravel, my legs carrying me ahead without a thought of where to go. Just get moving!
Janet seemed to do the same, her own feet, leaner than my own, forced up and shifting hurriedly.
The creature behind me laughed, and it carried somewhat of the same tone as it had before, but growling, unnatural and drooling, underscored it.
“Six…”
I heard it almost as a shout as my legs hauled below me, carrying me toward the nearest trees. Janet’s own body was beside me, limbs flailing as she kept pace, her breath loud already.
“Five…”
How was I still able to hear the thing? The voice was so loud, almost like it was in my own head, but a quick glance behind me showed he was still there, standing near the truck with his legs bent down and claws extended, readying his own body to pursue us.
I passed through into the first stand of trees and prayed I could find some way through all of this.
“Four…”
This time he shouted it, his voice carrying over the distance as I picked up the pace. My own breathing was already flagging and I wished I had taken better care of myself before all of this. I hoped I wouldn’t get the same stitch I always seemed to get in my side whenever I ran. It’s why I avoided it to begin with.
I couldn’t hear the thing anymore, but I was sure it was still behind me, somewhere on that road counting down the numbers until it was able to come for us, following the rules of some sick game that insane mind had come up with.
Janet was in better shape than I, barely out of breath and keeping stride without much issue, or at least so it seemed in that moment. My own terror wouldn’t let me pay much attention, though, and my eyes roved everywhere I could see, trying to find some kind of shelter I could use to get away from this whole effed up mess.
How far was it to zero? How much longer before those teeth clamped down into my flesh and I was consumed by the monster? Two seconds? Three?
How fast could it be? Those legs looked like they were made for running, made for the hunt by some evolution.
“Come on!” I gasped at Janet as I spotted a heavy line of trees ahead. I sprinted in that direction, hoping she would follow as I made my way there. If I could get into the thick of it, maybe there would be a better chance to hide. I couldn’t keep up this pace for a lot longer, I knew, and if I could get us to a place we could rest, even for a moment, it might make all the difference.
She followed as I broke through the thicket there, the brambles pulling at the denim of my jeans, but thankfully it did not trip me up.
I went further in, and stopped short, my feet skidding across the detritus of leaves and branches on the forest floor as a ditch appeared in front of me. Janet stopped, as well, her hands on her hips as she bent over, breath huffing in and out at the same pace as my own.
The sound of crunching branches somewhere behind us impelled us forward again, diving into the ditch quickly.
There was a lot of cover here, and I held my breath down as much as I could, hoping the ears on the creature would not be sensitive enough to hear from a distance. Janet seemed to take the same cue, huffing through her nose as sweat poured down her face.
“Little rabbits,” I heard the creature groan loudly, the voice echoing through the trees and into the ravine we were in. “Where are you, little rabbits? I’m hungry!”
The way the human voice came out of the monster was horrifying and it terrorized me in ways I cannot really describe. It was like some electronic disturbance interfering with music, causing it to be jumbled and distorted, yet still, if you listened close enough, you could catch the melody.
I reached out and took Janet’s clammy hand, and she grabbed it back hard, both of us seeking some kind of comfort away from the dread cycling through us.
The sound of crunching seemed to filter away from us, heading in another direction than the one we had come and I felt a deep relief as the creature sought us elsewhere.
My eyes flicked to Janet, her thick sweat suit dampened by the effort of her exertion and gave her a wan smile. I didn’t say anything, but I could tell we both hoped the monstrous trucker going another way might mean we were safe at last. If we could hide long enough, perhaps the thing would think we managed to escape to another road or something and thumbed out way out of the situation, or maybe even gotten to a house and called the cops.
Or the Army.
When five minutes passed without the creature coming back, my smile was more genuine and I squeezed her hand gently.
“I think we’re going to be okay,” I offered, my heart relaxing for the first time since I woke up to this nightmare.
“I think so too,” she said, her voice lilting in the shade of the trees, the scent of damp earth and decaying plants heavy in our noses.
“Me too,” came a voice from behind us.
I spun, releasing Janet’s hand as I squealed, my voice caught in my throat.
The trucker stood at the top of the deep ditch, his body back to normal again as he stared down at the two of us, the toothy grin on his bearded face.
“I like him,” he said, his eyes on my own.
“Me too,” Janet answered and I ripped my eyes from the trucker and watched the smile wash across her face.
I tried to back away, scrambling with my back against the dirt, my legs kicking out to find purchase to bring me over the top.
She grabbed my left foot, though, gripping it tighter than I could fight.
I screamed again and kicked out, but I couldn’t find enough purchase to make any headway against her tight hold.
“Congratulations, boy,” the heinous voice of the trucker said. “You’re a survivor.”
“He’ll do just fine, Dad,” Janet said as her face warped into a toothy grin, her skin darkening as the long claws extended out from her fingers. They dug deep into my flesh as she pounced and bit into my neck.
My new family might be strange, but, you know, as the years have passed and we’ve added a few more here and there, I’ve gotten used to the way things are done. There aren’t a lot of us, but the ones we have are great people. We take care of each other, always looking out for what is best for our little community.
We may be few, but we are, after all, survivors, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
