All That Remains Read online

  Copyright © 2015 by Al Barrera

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First Edition

  First Printing, 2015

  ISBN 978-0-9909432-2-8

  www.al-barrera.com

  All That Remains

  Like free books?

  Sign up for Al Barrera’s mailing list for free books and early access to his new material.

  No obligations, no spam, and no sharing your information. Just good reading.

  http://www.al-barrera.com/maillist

  And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

  Revelations- Chapter 13

  Chapter 1- Kyle

  Lightning lit the world, and Kyle watched through the window. Part of the second floor and a pile of rubble kept them hidden from anything outside. It wasn’t much but better than being out in the open. Little remained of the rest of the subdivision, a victim of blight storms and whatever monsters had prowled by in the last thirteen years.

  Sara shifted in her sleep, her stomach rumbling as she did.

  “At least the storm’ll cover the light,” Tim said.

  “I was with a group a few years back that was spotted by crawlers in a storm like this. The man on watch didn’t keep the fire low enough. Only two of us escaped.”

  Tim stared into the flame. They’d covered it with a tarp to block it from any unfriendly eyes passing by. It provided little warmth, but winter hadn’t fully set in yet. What was left of Tennessee wouldn’t turn deadly cold for a few more weeks.

  Tim shifted, still not making eye contact. “You can get some sleep if ya want. I got guard.”

  “I can’t sleep when I’m being tracked.”

  “Gotta have nerves of steel for a job like this.”

  Whether or not this kid had hair on his nuts was up for debate, let alone the composition of his nerves. He couldn’t have been older than nineteen. Young men weren’t known for having an abundance of courage, and three days in, things were growing grim. “Thanks for the words of wisdom, Tex. I’ll make sure and put them on your tombstone.”

  Times like these scared everyone. Trying to play it tough only led to bad decisions.

  “Where’s this cache anyway?” Tim never took his gaze off the fire.

  If he’d asked once that day, he’d asked a dozen times. What should have been an easy run became tenser by the hour. Supply trips bore less and less fruit every month, and this one had turned into a shit show when the sniffer started tracking them. Doubling back wouldn’t help. They had to draw it out and take care of it themselves.

  “I told you, we’re close. We should get there in the morning.”

  “This the only one you got ’round here?”

  “Maybe so, but you’ll never find out.”

  Tim laughed. “Have it your way. I’m tryin’ to be friendly.”

  “If you want to be friendly, keep your voice down.”

  He didn’t speak for five minutes, a record by Kyle’s count. “What’s with the two of you anyway?” Tim cocked his head at Sara. “You an item?”

  Sara snorted back laughter.

  Guess she wasn’t asleep. “Something amusing you?”

  “He doesn’t have the right parts, Tim.” She turned over and faced the fire.

  It might have been Kyle’s imagination, but it looked as though Tim blushed. Hard to tell in the dim light. “I just need a good pack mule. She’s got a lower half like a linebacker.”

  “Or you need someone who can actually read a map.”

  “That’s probably it.” He grinned.

  A flash of lightning stole night vision for a couple of seconds, more than enough time for something to sneak in closer if they weren’t careful. No rain. Nothing to replace the blighted puddles of slop dotting the local landscape with something clean.

  “Are we gonna make it back from this?”

  There it is.

  Kyle had taken a lot of people out on runs. The youngest ones always cracked when the pressure was on. Tough facades became tears; tears became mistakes.

  Sara gave him the same look she always did in these situations. The scowl. The furled eyebrows. These people are expecting things from you, Kyle. They look up to you. There would be a lecture when they got home.

  If they got home. Always if.

  “We have enough silver to take care of anything that might come at us. Sara and I have been in worse than this before.”

  But having the artillery didn’t mean they’d get away. Shooting guns made noise, and making noise meant a quick death in the ruins that dotted the old world. So they’d draw it out. They’d put out the supply caches for just such an occasion.

  “You never can tell.” Kyle stood up, brushing the dirt from his knees.

  Sara leaned against the decayed remains of a changing table on the rest stop wall. “That’s a grim way to look at things.”

  “It’s kept us alive this long.”

  Someone yelled in the distance, pulling him out of his memories. Sara crept closer to the window, peeking out. “What do you think that was?”

  Kyle didn’t move. “Betty mentioned there were signs of other people north of the station. Could be bandits.”

  Tim looked up from the fire. “Bandits? You didn’t say anything!”

  Kyle clenched his jaw and stared him down. Yelling was never excusable.

  He took the hint and continued, quieter, “You didn’t mention it.”

  “There’re bandits everywhere, and we went south. Besides, if they want to draw the sniffer on our tail, they can be my guest.”

  Wishful thinking. Most of the things now roaming the world were animals. Mean animals, sometimes giant animals, but animals nonetheless. Sniffers were different. Sniffers looked for people. They followed you home and brought hell on it. Worse things prowled the night, but sniffers were what kept Kyle awake when he travelled the old roads and highways that had once been the United States.

  Sara had picked up on this one pretty quick, but that didn’t make it easier to deal with. As long as they stayed ahead of it, they’d be fine. If they gave it a chance to lock on though, if it actually saw them and screamed, it would bring the kind of trouble they wouldn’t walk away from.

  “You think it’ll go after them?” Tim asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What if it’s not bandits? What if it’s just folk passing through?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Tim pursed his lips and went back to staring at the fire.

  “Whoever it was,” Sara said, “They’re quiet now.”

  I swear this is the last time I take some greenhorn out with us. It wasn’t the first time he’d sworn that and, luck willing, it wouldn’t be the last. “If none of us are going to sleep, we should press on. We’re only a few hours away. It’s out in the woods a bit.”

  “We should’ve just gone back.” Tim’s voice rose as he spoke. “We shouldn’t have let it chase us out this far.”

  Sara stood, dropping the tarp and smothering the fire. “It’ll be fine. You’ll be telling everyone the story when we get back in a few days. Make yourself sound like a big hero and you’ll feel better.”

  If they made it back.

  Always if.

  ---

  They walked through the wreckage of the subdivision, three more ghosts in a sea of them. A reminder of what came before, of a world now gone. Hulking wreckages of cars and houses surrounded them as they made their way down the road. They crept off
to one side. Quick, quiet, and small; the only way anyone could get around anymore.

  The occasional bolt of lightning streaked overhead. Thunder cracked, but the dry storms that brought this kind of light show seldom came with rain.

  They left the subdivision, cutting through a backyard. The orange tinted blight-water that filled the pool they passed rippled in the wind. The woods on the far side of the subdivision were dark, but it didn’t take Kyle long to pick up the trail they were looking for.

  All three paused at the sound of gunshots behind them. Kyle gestured for everyone to crouch and scanned back the way they’d come. The ground slanted steadily upward, and from where they stood on the trail, he could see the subdivision they’d passed through and the remains of the small town beyond it. More gunshots joined the first. Automatic weapons of some kind.

  “Whoever they are, they’re well-armed,” Sara said behind him.

  And they were all going to die. Firing weapons at any time in one of the old population centers was stupid. Doing it at night was suicide.

  The rata-tat-tat of four weapons firing continued. Two fell silent at the same time, then a third. The fourth kept shooting sporadically. The telltale pause to reload stilled the night for a moment, then firing began again before it cut off suddenly.

  None of them moved as Kyle stared into the night. Wherever it came from, he couldn’t see it.

  “Do you think that sniffer got them?” Kyle glanced at the kid. His eyes were as wide as saucers. “Do you think it’ll keep coming after us?”

  “There wasn’t a screech. Whatever they were shooting at wasn’t a sniffer. Even if it was, it’ll realize that wasn’t what it’s looking for.” They were bloodhounds, dogs hunting for their masters. Proof positive something with a keen intelligence ran the show. “We need to keep moving.”

  They pressed on up the trail. The blight that fell in the occasional storms hadn’t killed all the plant life. Over the last thirteen years, Mother Nature had adapted in a way humanity hadn’t. Some trees thrived in it. They grew huge and gnarly, their bark hard as stone and warm to the touch. The grass grew over Kyle’s head. Five-foot-ten if it was an inch. A guy Kyle had wandered with for a few months when it all started called it devil grass. It didn’t burn well enough for a decent fire even when dry, and the smoke burned the throat.

  Lightning traced a blue finger through the sky. Long stretches of normal trees intersected with blighted ones. Devil grass lined the path, sometimes growing over it. He avoided it when possible. The air around it took his breath away, thick and rotten. Animals grew deformed and rabid.

  Whatever the blight was, it did more than bring monsters. It changed everything.

  “Why would you hide it this far out in the woods?” Tim whispered.

  Stay quiet at night. It was something you learned fast or died. How did this idiot last this long? “You’ll see when we get there.”

  “Just seems foolish to put somethin’ this far from—”

  “You need to be quiet,” Sara said. Tim closed his mouth without another word.

  With any luck, the gunshots would draw anything that might be living in the woods.

  They walked in silence. Branches sometimes broke nearby, and everyone dropped low. Tim reached for the handgun at his hip. A 9mm wouldn’t do much but get them all killed. Sara put her hand on the bow hanging on the side of her pack. Kyle grabbed the machete sheathed at his hip. Scars and nicks covered the blade, and old electrical tape wrapped around the handle.

  But nothing approached, and they pressed on.

  The woods thinned into a clearing. A lone cabin shrouded in darkness loomed out of the night. It might have been a ranger station or a hunting lodge once. Now it was just a reminder of what the world used to be.

  Kyle glanced at Sara as they stopped at the edge of the clearing. She shook her head, but he searched the area anyway. When he found nothing, he returned. “I want you two to wait here. I’m going to go make sure it’s clear.”

  Sara fixed him with firm stare. “It’s clear.”

  Tim glanced between them, lost.

  “I’d rather be safe than sorry.” Kyle stalked across the clearing without incident, moving as quickly as he could while out in the open.

  The cabin looked worse for wear. It leaned to one side, standing empty except for cobwebs and broken furniture. He entered the room furthest from the entrance, dropped to his belly, and reached into the hole in the floor where they’d hidden the cache. His hand brushed the knapsack, and he pulled it out. Satisfied the building was empty, he went out to the porch and signaled the others to join him.

  “Told ya.” Sara walked past him into the cabin.

  Kyle didn’t rise to the bait. “Tim, you’re on watch.”

  Tim stood near what at one time had been a big window facing the way they’d come; now it was nothing more than shattered glass and a broken frame. From there, they could see out the back of the cabin and to both sides through the windows. Not the best defensive position in the world, but better than being in the woods.

  Kyle grabbed the cache. Two MREs, five jars of fruit, and an entire magazine of .45 caliber bullets with silver tips. The water and bullets would be good nearly forever, but the food was hit or miss.

  Tim stared at the magazine of silver rounds as if they were gold. They were, in a way. Better. “How’d you find so much of it?”

  “We’ve been doing this a long time.” Kyle checked the rounds to make sure they hadn’t gotten wet.

  “Do ya know how much you could get tradin’ that much silver?”

  Of course he knew, but people to trade with had become less and less common as the years wore on.

  “Man. I’ve met people who’d kill for that.”

  “You and me both.” Kyle placed the silver rounds into his pack with the ones he already had.

  “I thought silver killin’ them things was a myth until I saw it. My old man kept a knife coated in it on’im all the time. It didn’t slice worth a shit, but I saw him stab an infected guy with it once. Melted him like it weren’t nothin’.”

  “You aren’t going to cut me down while I’m sleeping and run off with my stuff are you, Tim?” Kyle gave him a sidelong glance, and Sara rolled her eyes.

  Tim’s mouth dropped open. “No!” The word dripped with a teenager’s righteous indignation.

  Sara read the kid clean, and Kyle wouldn’t have agreed to take him out and show him the ropes if he thought he’d end up with a knife in his back or a smile on his neck.

  “Relax. I’m just busting your balls.” Kyle broken open one of the MREs and divvied up the contents. “Make sure you keep watch while you eat.” He passed a can of fruit to Tim with his share. The food disappeared as quickly as they could shove it into their mouths.

  Kyle scanned the woods as he ate. City centers were dangerous, but the forests held their own perils. “Alright, here’s the plan. I want to draw it toward the cabin. We’ll leave all our gear in here, douse ourselves with vinegar, and wait for it to follow the smell. Once I can get a shot, I’ll go for it. If anything goes wrong, the two of you book it out of here back down the trail.” Running wouldn’t get them far if the plan failed, but it always paid to have a backup.

  Sara nodded. Tim looked at his food without saying a word. Kyle slapped him. Not hard, but not soft either. “And keep your damn eyes up.”

  A brief flash of defiance flickered across his face, there and gone as quickly as the lightning in the sky.

  The next three hours passed quietly, and the sun rose over the ruined world. Light didn’t make anything better. All the monsters were out of the closet now.

  None of them could sleep, and Kyle preferred it that way. The more eyes out, the better. Sara would let him know when it was getting close, but you never could tell.

  After what felt like an eternity, she did. “It’s coming. Fast.”

  Their bags were already stacked in the center of the room. Tim popped the cap off the bottle of vinegar.

/>   Kyle grabbed his arm. “Not in here. If you get it on the gear, it might end up on one of us.”

  They stepped outside and poured the vinegar on themselves. Kyle took his place near where the trail to the subdivision entered the clearing. Tim’s hand shook as he and Sara walked to the back of the cabin.

  I’ll kill him myself if he fucks this up.

  Brush broke a little way down the trail. Kyle unfastened his machete and squeezed the grip so hard it hurt.

  Just one swing and it’s over.

  It strode into sight; tall, and scrawny to the point of emaciation. Its shape was mostly human, but its face was too long, and its nose just two gaping slits. Its black eyes, two orbs set deep into its skull, swept the woods around it. Sickly pale skin hung loose on its body. It wore no clothing and lacked any sort of gender. Only the ridges on its arms and legs adorned it.

  Dozens of them picking through what was left of the city, looking for survivors. They had a plan. They weren’t animals. The radio was wrong if—

  Kyle shook his head, chasing away the ghosts as the thing walked into the clearing the same as every sniffer; head forward, crouching, and moving with a speed that belied its odd shape.

  It slowed as it passed him, only ten feet from his hiding spot. Its sniffing deepened. Homing in on them. Knowing they were close.

  Now or never, do or die. He wouldn’t get another shot.

  He dashed without a sound. The thing took another deep whiff of the air, its nostril holes flaring to the size of baseballs. Still three feet away, it turned to look at him so quickly that Kyle tripped in surprise. Its mouth fell open, impossibly huge and full of teeth from back to front.

  “I love you.”

  She looked up at him from the grass, the starlight reflected in her eyes. “I love you too.”

  The opening notes of the creature’s screech, the air raid siren that would deafen him, poured from its mouth.

  Sara’s arrow pierced its neck before it could finish, and it’s cry became a gurgle.

  Kyle swung his machete at neck level, and the blade embedded into its neck, black ooze flying in every direction. It tried to scream, its gangly arms reaching to grab Kyle and pull him into its mouth even as the light faded from its eyes.