Previous Episode 

Next Episode

“Hear me!
And if I close my mind in fear,
Please pry it open.
See me!
And if my face becomes sincere,
Beware.
Hold me!
And when I start to come undone,
Stitch me together.
Save me!
And when you see me strut,
remind me of what left this outlaw torn.”

                                Metallica, Outlaw Torn

                Climbing into a pile of bodies is always an act of desperation. It’s never anything that requires thought or planning. You never give much thought to the best way to do it, or to what the consequences might be. Climbing out is another matter all together.

                I’m almost hesitant to shift the bodies as I stand up. I try to move quickly, but the realization that I’m disturbing the dead is a thought I just can’t shake. Nor is the thought of all the blood I casually and haphazardly smeared over me. What if I’ve got an STD now? Do blood-born viruses die upon death, or do they linger? As I stand up, I start comparing the likelihood of AIDS dying instantly to the fact that hair and nails still grow for a day or two after death.

                I decide that I’ve got bigger things to worry about.

                I head over to the car that’s lodged in the side of the road. I take a good, long look around, making sure I’m as alone as is possible, then I open the door. The light comes on, which gives me hope. But when I shut the door and sit down inside, I see the front end of the car wrapped around a heavy tree. My heart sinks.

                I feel for the keys in the ignition and I feel something. I turn the keys and the car’s display comes to laugh.

                A 2003 Chevrolet Monte Carlo.

                I switch play around with the controls, only to realize that the radio is on. I try switch the stations, but I can’t find anything. I turn it off. The only thing worse than bad music coming out of a radio is no music.

                I look around the car, settling on the glove box. I open it up and pull out the folder marked ‘driver’s information’. I open it up and look through the documents. I see the same thing over and over again.

                ‘Ever-After Project’.

                ‘New Mexico’.

                I sigh and slide the folder back inside. I look around at the trees and something starts to hit me. The green trees that surround me are full of lush, healthy leaves. And the grass beneath the car is as thick as I’ve ever seen.

                “This isn’t New Mexico.” I say. It occurs to me that I’ve never been to New Mexico, but I’ve been to California. This doesn’t look like California. This looks more like paradise than anywhere close to a desert.

                I look around in the back of the car, seeing nothing worthwhile. I step out with the keys and pop the trunk. I see some news equipment like a video camera and tripod, but nothing that looks useful or worth carrying.

                I look back at the bodies in the road, then in the direction the monsters rushed off. I glance down the road the car had come from. I look at the brick wall I had gotten over and the facility I can’t see but know is beyond it.

                I sigh.

                It seems like a bad idea to jog in the middle of the night when you know that flesh-eating monsters are on the prowl. But I can’t seem to justify walking calmly when I’m scared out of my mind. So I try to alleviate some of my fears by at least pretending I’m getting farther away from the monsters. I might be, but given how fast I’ve seen them run, I know that my running won’t do me much good.

                Still, I jog.

                I try to keep up a good pace, slowly moving towards the distant light. I’ve lost sight of the light itself, but I know the direction it was. Around me, a forested path opens up. Like jogging in almost pitch darkness, I can barely see anything ahead of me. But as my eyes have gotten adjusted to the light, I can see what seems to be an almost-picturesque road of arching green trees and a pleasant ravel path that winds on forever.

                After about twenty minutes of jogging, I stop.

                This doesn’t seem to be getting me anywhere.

                I look into the trees and consider them for a moment. Suddenly, childhood fears appear, leaving me wondering if the boogeyman might actually be inside the dark barrier that is those trees. I look up at the sky, trying to figure out why there isn’t some kind of starlight or something.

                I drive my fears deep down and push into the darkness. The trees here are older and reach up out of sight. They’re spaced far enough apart for me to not have to duck and bend, but they’re close enough together that I can’t see far at all.

                As I walk, I come across a squirrel lying on the ground. Three more squirrels are around it. I step up close to it, looking down at the three squirrels. It takes me a second but I can slowly tell that one of them doesn’t have a hind leg.

                And it’s eating the lying squirrel.

                The three don’t seem to notice me as they eat. All of them showing horrible, life-ending wounds, they continue to comp away at the sacrificed squirrel. Until I see something that truly shakes me.

                The squirrel continues to move.

                It’s alive.

                The three squirrels are eating it alive.

                I lose it.

                I fall over, losing every fragment of snickers and M&Ms I had in me. I lose my entire insides as these three monsters, tiny and injured, eat away at one of their own. I loose all vestiges of control and everything empties out.

                When I compose myself, their gone. The body that remains is almost completely cleaned. I don’t have the heart to see if it’s still moving. I just pray that it’s not and move on.

                I make my way on into the darkness, dizzy and sick to my stomach. I don’t think about the darkness or what could conceivably be around me. I just stumble on, ignoring the scratches of tree branches or the uneven ground that I walk upon.

                I finally see something up ahead. My attention picks up as I look out through the forest and see an end to the trees. I step on, walking quickly through the ground, driving back the branches that impede me. I can see a shimmering form, almost like a reflection. And once I’m within a few tree rows of the form, I realize what it is.

                It’s me.

                I stare at my reflection, smiling. A mirror, or at least something that’s mirror-like. Civilization.

                I push through the last of the trees and rush up to the reflective surface, slamming my hands against it. I bang on the surface, not hearing a sound. But I gasp against, sighing. I press myself against it, relieved merely by the feeling of such a wall.

                I look down to my right, trying to see the end. But I don’t see anything.

                I look to my left, trying to see. Again, I see nothing.

                I turn my head time and again. I keep my hands against the metal as I walk towards my right. I never see anything that passes for an edge. It keeps going and going and going and going and going and going.

                I stop and look at the surface. For the first time I look up. The surface goes up into darkness.

                I take a deep breath and move close to the surface. I breathe out, my breath spreading out over the metal-like substance.

                And then it hits me. It’s not metal. It’s some type of glass.

                I lean forward to the glass, getting as close as I can, pressing my eye to see through the darkness. The darkness inside with me makes it hard to see, but I can make out something on the other side of the thick glass.

                Mountains.

                Valleys.

                And the sky.

                I step back from the glass.

                And I look up. And for the first time, I strain.

                And I see, through the darkness, where the glass seems to meet the metal roof high above.

Next Episode