The Last Mile Read online

  The woman was still screaming, and Dan spun around to glare at her. He tried to tell her to shut up, but what came out was Thyutt uhh! along with a spray of blood. It splattered onto the woman’s face and greasy blonde hair, and the shock of it did what perhaps his words wouldn’t have: she stopped screaming.

  Before Dan could say or do anything else, a large object collided with the driver’s-side door, spinning the Olds around and sending him crashing back into the steering wheel. Pain blazed between his shoulder blades, and he reached out with both hands and grabbed onto the chicken-wire barrier to steady himself. The woman had been thrown down onto the backseat once more, and while she looked shaken, she appeared uninjured. Dan was relieved; she was worthless to him dead. Still holding tight to the chicken wire, Dan turned to look over his shoulder, ignoring the resultant flare of pain in his back. He wanted to get a look at whatever was attacking them so he’d have some notion of how to fight it. He knew they just couldn’t stay inside the car and hope it would get tired and go away. Everything was a predator of one kind or another in the World After, and none of them ever gave up.

  A large form stepped in front of the car—four legs, long neck, narrow head, curved antlers, armored hide… The creature regarded Dan for a moment, its moist black eyes filled with hate, and then it charged.

  “Fuck!” Dan shouted, misting the inside of the windshield with blood. He let go of the chicken wire and reached for one of his weapons, but his hand found the passenger seat empty. His gun and blades must’ve gotten knocked onto the floor during one of the creature’s previous attacks. With no other recourse, Dan threw himself down onto the passenger seat as the antlered beast mounted the hood and lowered its head at the windshield.

  Another impact and the muffled sound of safety glass cracking. Antler points white as bone protruded through the glass, but the windshield remained in place. But then the creature hauled its head back, taking the panel of safety glass with it, and cold air rushed in through the space where the windshield had been. Dan knew it would only take the beast a few seconds to shake free the remains of the windshield, then it would attack again, and this time there would be no barrier to stop it from skewering him.

  Dan reached for the front passenger door, hoping it wasn’t too damaged to work. He gripped the handle, pulled, and for a terrifying instant it seemed as if the door wasn’t going to budge, but then it sprung open. Dan gripped the seat and pulled himself forward, and half-fell, half-rolled out of the car. He looked back in time to see the creature’s antlers spear through the open windshield and pierce the fabric of the front seat.

  “Don’t leave me!” the woman in the backseat shouted, her voice panicked and more than a little accusatory.

  Dan didn’t have time to reassure her. The beast had attacked with such force that the tips of its antlers were stuck in the car seat’s upholstery. But strong as the thing was, Dan knew it would only take a moment to free itself. He reached back into the car, keeping his eyes on the creature as he felt around on the floor of the passenger seat for a weapon, any weapon. His fingers closed around the hilt of the machete, and he was about to lunge forward and strike at the rough, pebbly hide of the beast’s neck when he felt something brush his pants leg. Without thinking he spun around and sliced the blade through the thorn-stalk that had been rubbing against his jeans. Thick crimson gore spurted from both halves of the stalk, and Dan sensed more than heard a high-pitched sound, as if the plant had shrieked a death cry. He turned back to the car and saw that the antlered creature was no longer stuck in the upholstery.

  Dan leaped to his feet and spun around. There, standing amidst a mass of waving thorn-stalks and regarding him with black-marble eyes, was the deer.

  At least, that was the name the animal had gone by in the World Before; as far as Dan knew, it had no name in the World After. It still possessed the general shape of a deer, though it was larger and more muscular, like an elk. Its multipronged antlers were fashioned from thick bone, the tips needle-sharp and angled forward, obviously designed—make that redesigned—for impaling prey. Its mouth was larger and filled with triangular, serrated teeth that resembled those of a shark. A long black tongue that reminded Dan of a giraffe’s emerged from the mouth and moistened its rough-hided snout, as if the creature was so eager to taste its prey that it couldn’t wait and had to taste something, even if only itself. But perhaps the most striking change was its skin. Instead of a deer’s tawny coat, the beast’s hide resembled that of a rhinoceros: gray, thick, wrinkled. Dan had seen the creatures before, of course, standing alongside the Way and watching with baleful, hungry gazes as he drove past, but he’d never seen one step into the road before. He’d assumed they were afraid of the thorn-stalks, but now he saw that he’d been mistaken. The stalks brushed against the beast’s flanks, caressing and stroking its gray skin, smearing thorn poison on its rough flesh. But the thorns, sharp as they were, could not penetrate the creature’s tough hide. This deer-thing was perfectly adapted for traversing the Way.

  Dan wondered then why none of the other deer-things he’d seen had ever tried to attack him before. Maybe he’d been traveling too fast to make good prey on his other runs, and his Olds had finally gotten so beat-up and slow to attract this one’s attention today. Or perhaps there was no reason at all. There often wasn’t in the World After. Things—almost always bad things—just happened because they happened.

  Dan’s thrall-mark still blazed with the heat of his Master’s summons, and he stood still, allowing the deer-thing to see the brand on his forehead. It was impossible to say how intelligent the creature was, but the deer-thing didn’t have to be a thinking beast to recognize a thrall-mark. The question was whether it would be deterred by the sight, or if it were hungry enough to try to kill him anyway and risk a Master’s wrath.

  “I’m not worth the trouble,” Dan said. His voice was distorted by his injured tongue, and blood dribbled past his lips as he spoke, but that didn’t matter. The bulk of the message would be carried by his thrall-mark.

  The deer-thing cocked its mutated head as if considering Dan’s words. But then from the backseat of the Olds the woman, who had managed to pull herself into a sitting position again and was staring at the deer-thing with wide, disbelieving eyes, said, “What the fuck is that?”

  The deer-thing looked at Dan and gray-hide lips pulled back from its shark teeth in an obscene parody of a smile. The creature might be willing to forego one meal to keep from angering a Master, but two? The hell of it was, Dan understood. If their places had been reversed, he’d have made the same decision. The creature let out a cry that sounded like a baby’s scream, its fetid breath misting on the cold air. Then it lowered its antlers and came rushing toward Dan.

  Dan stood close to the open passenger door, and as the creature ran at him, he feinted right, then moved left. The deer-thing was moving too fast to correct its trajectory, and it plunged antlers first through the open passenger door. The sharp prongs sliced into the upholstery of the seat, and the woman’s shriek rose to an ear-splitting pitch. Dan didn’t wait for the deer-thing to begin freeing itself from the upholstery; he slammed his shoulder into the door, smashing it into the creature’s side. The deer-thing howled in pain. Tough as its hide might be, but armored it wasn’t. Dan shoved his weight against the car door again, putting even more muscle into it this time, and the antlered monstrosity gave forth a cry that matched Dan’s captive for sheer volume. Dan was about to slam the car door into the creature again, but the sound of ripping fabric warned him that the deer-thing had freed itself. He moved out of the way as the beast extricated itself, the door swinging violently outward as the deer-thing backed away from the car.

  Dan didn’t know if he’d injured the creature or merely annoyed it, but either way, he couldn’t afford to give it another chance to attack. As the thing rushed backward, Dan lifted his machete high and swung it back down with all the force he could muster. The blade bit into the beast’s right flank, but the thick pebbly
hide prevented it from penetrating more than an inch. Even so, the impact sent pain jolting up through Dan’s arm and into his shoulder, but he didn’t release his grip on the machete’s handle. He leaned forward, pressing down on the weapon, hoping to cut farther into the deer-thing’s leathery gray skin. Dan knew he needed to do more than just hurt the creature if he wanted to survive; he had to hurt it bad.

  The deer-thing reared up onto its hind legs, the motion yanking the machete from Dan’s hand. The blade remained stuck in the creature’s hide for a second before dislodging and falling to the broken asphalt with a metallic clatter. Dan was gratified to see the blade was smeared with blood—a normal red, surprisingly enough. He only wished there was more of it.

  The beast came down on its front legs once more and whirled to face him. Its eyes were still an emotionless dead-black, but its chest heaved with a combination of exertion and fury, and mad froth dripped in thick white gobs from its muzzle. It stood for a moment, regarding him, as if to say, I WAS gonna make it quick, asshole, but not anymore. Now I’m gonna do you as slow and nasty as I can.

  Blood dripped from the machete wound on the deer-thing’s flank, but the cut wasn’t deep enough to slow it down, let alone stop it. Dan considered making a grab for the machete, or maybe trying to get back into the car so he could snag one of his other weapons. But he knew he was just indulging in the last wishful fantasies of a soon-to-be-dead man. There was no way in hell he could hope to move fast enough to avoid becoming a post-apocalyptic shish kebab.

  Then Dan noticed the thorn-stalks around the deer-thing were quivering, as if something had excited them. The deer-thing noticed, too. It moved its head first right, then left, then back again, and it pawed the broken surface of the road with one of its front hooves in a way that Dan could only perceive as nervous. The deer-thing seemed to hesitate and a shiver ran along its body. Dan thought the creature was going to bolt, and maybe it would have, but before it could take a step, one of the thorn-stalks shot toward it with the speed of a striking viper. The stalk slithered into the wound on the deer-thing’s flank, turning as it invaded the creature’s body, thorns acting like a miniature rotary saw and widening the hole as it sank deeper into its victim’s flesh. Blood sprayed from the growing wound, and the deer-thing threw back its head and opened its mouth wide to release an agonized bellow. But as soon as the sound left its throat, another thorn-stalk attacked, this one lengthening as it stretched toward the deer-thing’s open mouth, wriggled past its shark teeth, and continuing on down its gullet, spinning thorns shredding the beast’s insides into hamburger. Dark blood gushed from the deer-thing’s ruined mouth as its legs buckled, and then it fell with a heavy dull smack onto the broken asphalt of the road.

  The thorn-stalks’ poison began to go to work immediately. The deer-thing’s gray hide become mottled black, as if the creature were afflicted with rapidly accelerated gangrene. Its sides swelled like a balloon attached to a helium tank with the nozzle turned wide open. The deer-thing wasn’t dead, though, not yet. Its glossy black eyes darted back and forth in confusion, as if it couldn’t bring itself to believe what was happening. And then the creature’s gaze focused on Dan, and there was no mistaking the utter hatred that now blazed from those previously dead eyes.

  Dan smiled grimly. “Fuck you, too.”

  And then the deer-thing’s sides burst open as it popped like a red, wet piñata.

  Instantly, scores of thorn-stalks writhed forward and covered the grisly remains of the deer-thing, so numerous and so tightly woven that they made a domelike covering over the carcass. And then loud, greedy slurping sounds filled the air as the thorn-stalks began to feed.

  “Jesus Christ, are they eating that thing?”

  Startled, Dan turned to look back at the Olds. For a moment, he’d forgotten about the woman. He walked toward the passenger-side back door, moving slowly so as not to excite any more of the thorn-stalks. Those stalks surrounding the car that hadn’t joined the others in feasting on the deer-thing’s corpse quivered with what seemed to Dan to be excitement, as if they were eager to get in on the fun, and he didn’t want to draw their attention. He leaned in the front and saw the hunting knife and the 9mm on the floor of the car. He grabbed both, sliding the gun into the back of his pants barrel-first and holding on to the hunting knife with his left hand. He turned and cast a longing gaze at the machete, but it lay too close to the mound of feasting thorn-stalks, and he wasn’t about to risk retrieving it. He’d make do with what he could salvage.

  He unlocked the back door, opened it, then stepped back just in case the woman should get any cute ideas about trying to attack him. But she just sat there, staring up at him with an expression that was equal parts fear and irritation.

  “Well, what are you waiting for? Cut me loose and let’s get the hell out of here before something else tries to kill us!”

  * * *

  “Daddy…is it still out there?”

  Dan knelt on the couch and pushed the blinds open a crack so he could peer through the picture window. All that remained of his lawn were scattered patches of dead grass; otherwise, the ground was bare and lifeless, the soil gray as potter’s clay. The yard was far from empty, though. Bone shards, tufts of fur, and bits of rotting flesh were scattered across the ground, the remains of those animals that had died during the Arrival—birds, cats, dogs, rabbits, squirrels…It had only been a few days, but little was left, thanks to the predators that inhabited what Dan was already coming to think of as the World After. Predators like the misshapen thing standing on the other side of the picture window, watching him with eyes that shone with far too much intelligence.

  It was part bovine, part human, a woman’s head hanging upside down where an udder should’ve been, her tongue lolling, matted black hair dragging the ground. It possessed a long serpent in place of a tail, the head curled underneath the main part of the creature’s body so its forked tongue could taste the udder-head’s ear. The cow body was scrawny, its dry, leathery brown hide stretched tight across bone, so tight that the flesh had torn in numerous place, revealing glimpses of the yellowed skeleton beneath. The cow head looked as if it had been dipped in acid, for it was nothing but a skull—except for the eyes. They remained untouched, and they stared at Dan with what he interpreted as malign amusement.

  He took his trembling hands away from the blinds and let them fall back into place. It did no good, though; he could still feel the creature’s gaze upon him whether he could see it or not.

  “I’m afraid so, honey.” He got off the couch and walked over to the chair where his daughter was sitting. He sat on the arm and looked at her. Lindsey was almost twelve, and she resembled her mother so much that it brought a lump to his throat whenever he saw her. Curly black hair, round face, full lips, lean torso, long arms and legs, a heartbreaker in waiting for sure. She sat with her legs drawn to her chest, arms wrapped around them, gently rocking back and forth for whatever slight comfort the motion might bring. She wore the same clothes she had on during the Arrival: black soccer shorts and an Eeyore T-shirt. Yesterday, he’d suggested she might want to change into clean clothes, but that had set her to screaming at the top of her lungs for the better part of an hour. After that, Dan had decided to let her go grubby for as long as she wanted.

  “I’m glad you didn’t lie to me,” Lindsey said. She stared straight ahead, not looking at him. She hadn’t made eye contact since the Arrival. “Adults always lie to kids to try and protect them. I’m glad you’re not like that.”

  Dan wished he could lie to her, but how could he possibly convince her that everything was going to be okay? They had no electricity or water, but he could come up with any number of lies to explain that. But how could he ever explain what Lindsey could see for herself simply by looking out the goddamned window? How could he explain what had happened to her mother? He didn’t tell Lindsey the truth out of any moral principle; he didn’t have any other options.

  “How are you doing, honey?” he aske
d. “You hungry or thirsty?” His daughter had barely taken any nourishment since the Arrival, and what little she did eat or drink, she did so only because Dan forced her.

  She shook her head. “No. But even if I was, it’s not like we have anything.”

  “We have food.” But even as he said it, he knew it was, if not exactly a lie, a refusal to acknowledge the complete truth. They’d been in need of a grocery run before the Arrival, and since…well, once Dan had made it back to his house, he hadn’t unlocked any of the doors, let alone set foot outside. He doubted any of the stores were open anymore, or ever would be again, but even if they were, he knew he wouldn’t survive long enough to cross his yard, not with that abomination standing out there watching. For the foreseeable future, they’d have to make do with what they had, and that wasn’t much. Some stuff in cans that they couldn’t heat up and a couple liters of diet soda that they couldn’t chill. And once that was gone…How long could a person survive without eating or drinking? A couple weeks without food, but only a few days without water. He planned to ration the soda, but even if they could survive on a drop apiece each day, he knew it wouldn’t last long enough.