A Gray Life: a novel (16 page)

As the creature ran with the car, it made wet huffing sighs. Juniper wanted to cover her eyes with her hands, but
her hands were far too busy in helping to save their lives.

The garage had a total of five levels. Their car cleared four of them. With all of the winding turns they had taken, the dog
slid back and forth on the leather seat. They were near the last ramp leading to the ground floor.

“That thing is still following us, isn’t it?” Christopher yell
ed his question to be heard over the squeal of the tires.

“Yes!
”

“Why hasn’t it come inside?”

“I think it’s too big!”

“Oh!
”

They arrived at
the exit to the parking lot. A large stick hindered their way out, meant to be brought up electrically by a lot attendant. Only, there was no lot attendant.

“Hit the gas!’ Juniper said.

“We’re already going fast.” Christopher said.

“We need to go faster if we want to get past the stick-gate-thing.”

Christopher understood. Slowly, he increased their speed to 45 miles per hour, too fast for the predator. It followed a few feet behind the car as opposed to right next to it. When Juniper turned her attention back to the front, the car was inches from the stick-gate-thing. She had a premonition the gate would be unyielding. The car would crash into it and stall, with the front-end totaled. And it would be the end of them because the creature would find a way inside of the car.

Juniper’s premonition was wrong.
Fortunately, the gate was made out of plastic and not metal as she had assumed. The pole snapped in half from the impact with the car. One half of the stick rebounded off of the car, and the other half whipped back like a supple tree branch. A yelp, and Juniper risked another glance behind the car. The broken half of the pole impaled the monster through the neck. It hung from the pole, limp, back end in the air. Juniper tried to feel happy, but she feared there would be more like it. Not quite like that, though. Monsters all looked different, didn’t they?

October 18
th

It’s late and really time for me to find the land of
zzz’s, but tonight was a doozy and I want to get it all down.

Michael and I were out back. I was rewarding myself with a few laps in the newly cleaned pool (
whoo, finally free of slime!) and Michael was piling up wood in the fire pit. It was almost dinner time. Michael was getting ready to roast the mean mother he’d caught earlier that day.

Before he cut it up, I saw what it looked like, and I really wish I
hadn’t been so curious. At first, I saw a large beak (naturally thinking he’d killed a bird, extinct or not). Then, when I saw the rest, I saw that it wasn’t any kind of bird indigenous to these parts, or even this planet. Its body was almost like a dog’s body, except that the tail wasn’t a tail; it was a spike that looked venomous.

Michael’s shin’s displayed two semi-deep slashes. Other than that, he was wh
istling as he gutted the animal here at home.

Hmm.

Home.

Anyway, if he hadn’t needed to go around the front of the property for more wood, he never would have seen them. Later, Michael gave us a description of what happened, but it was loaded with holes. With my keen writer’s mind, I think I can fill in the gaps.

While he stacked the wood, Michael probably realized,
shoot, I need a lot more kindling for that fat hog, at least another tree’s worth
. Axe in hand, he went to the front yard, where the trees were dry and came apart easily. The perfect tree was a hundred yards from the house, along with the wheelbarrow he had forgotten.
Oh well, get it when I’m through
, he thought.

Swing! Chop! Swing! Chop! Swing---

But there he must’ve stopped. Between chops, he was certain he had heard something. Hearing anything Outside was worth noting since there were no more animals to speak of. Either they had all been hunted into extinction, or they had been scared off by the other ‘animals’ in the area. As for the beasts, they were smart in the way that they only made noise when they were a few feet from their prey.

A quick 360
and Michael saw that he was still alone. There were no stalkers waiting to pounce. Satisfied, he swung again---and again, he stopped. Now that he knew to listen, he heard it more clearly. It was coming from the gate. From where Michael was, he couldn’t see what was there, especially with the sunlight reflecting off of the metal bars.

“Help!”
Faint, but there.

He dropped his axe and ran to the gate. The closer he got, the more he could make out the two shapes screaming for aid. One was tall, and the other was slight, a child’s height. Ten feet from the gate, he saw a woman with a young girl at her side.

“Let us in sir, please.” The woman said.

Her hair was stringy to match her dirty face. In another world, she might have been pretty, but here in this one, she looked haggard. Her young companion was dirty as well, but the perks of greater youth had left her looking less
used up than the woman.

Michael wanted to help them over the gate, but he knew better. They could be bait for a bigger trap, one with a greedy group of men behind it. So he stood there and didn’t answer.

“Sir?” The woman understood his hesitation. “We’re not dangerous. It’s just me and my daughter.” Her thin arm drew the girl to her side.

Without a word, Michael walked away and out of sight.

“What? No! Come back!” But he didn’t come back. One minute. Two minutes. “God damnit!”

Anot
her minute. Both girls turned from the gate until they heard leaves crunching in their direction. They turned back around to see Michael there, setting a large piece of metal on the ground.

“Had to get a ladder.”
He said.

What he didn’t say was that he had also gotten his shotgun from the shed. It was tucked into the back of his pants.

“I’m gonna pass the ladder to you underneath the gate.”

Using one foot, Michael slid the ladder towards the women underneath the bars of the gate. The older woman took it and set it against the gate.

“Honey, you go first.”

Even though her mother told her to go, the girl stood where she was with no intention of moving. She seemed catatonic.

“Climb the ladder, sweetie. I’ll be right behind you.”

Nope, she still wasn’t going.
She shook her head no. 

Her mother sighed and gave Michael a look
that said,
kids never listen
. She cupped one hand on the girl’s ear to whisper into it. Michael couldn’t hear much, but he caught “You
better
.” He didn’t know why, but when he heard that, he hand flew to the back of his waistband and settled on the shotgun. Until both women cleared the fence, he wouldn’t relax.

After a few minutes
and not a helping hand from Michael, they were over the gate. Both women stayed at the gate, probably knowing why one hand was behind Michael’s back.

“Knock the ladder over, and pull it under the gate.” He said.

The woman did as he said. Every few seconds, she peeked over her shoulder at him. Her daughter was a wax statue, not even staring his way. Once the ladder was back inside the perimeter, Michael gestured towards the house. 

“Ladies first.”

They looked apprehensive at his invitation. Though he wasn’t about to lead them with a gun to their backs, he wasn’t going to turn
his
back on them either. When it became clear that they were to go first or not at all, the two women trekked up the hill to the house. Michael followed a few feet behind.

His hand never left his gun.

* * * *

October 18
th

“Well, hello.” I heard Louise say.

She was in the kitchen taking inventory of the remaining food while I was drying off in the bathroom nearest the den. Instead of Michael replying, I heard another
female’s
voice.

“Hello.”

Who in the world could it be? I tried hopping into my pants, but only succeeded in falling to the floor. My fall was loud and Louise called to me,

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah!” I yelled.

Murmurs from the stranger followed my answer. Dressed and flustered, I hurried into the kitchen. What I saw when I got there were two women. They were dirty, tired, and
scared, the three things we must have looked like after escaping The Basement. In the older woman’s eyes, there was fear and another emotion I didn’t know. Seeing the strange shift in her eyes made me feel uneasy.

The second, shorter woman wasn’t a woman at all. She was a girl, but I couldn’t guess her true age
as she stared at the floor.

“Wow, how many people do you have here?” the woman asked Louise.

“Me, Michael, and the boy.” Louise looked at our new arrivals. “Well, and now you two.”

The woman smiled. Even through the dirt, her smile was pretty. That was, until she pulled her lips back to reveal a set of yellowed teeth. I recoiled as much from her ugly teeth as from the demeanor she emitted.

To cover up the awkward moment, she said, “Hello. This is my daughter, True. And I’m Gloria.”

Thankfully, she didn’t hold out
her hand for me to shake because I wouldn’t have taken it. She could sense that, I think.

I focused on her daughter. “Hi, True.”

She ignored me as I had done to her mother.

Louise glossed over the silence. “I’m sure you two ladies would li
ke to clean up before joining us for dinner. I can take you to the bathroom and get you some clean clothes.”

Pre-Hell Dimension, Louise’s hostess abilities would have been the norm. However, we live in a new world, a harsher world, and the two women took Louise’s words as if they were
Gospel.

“Bathroom?
Clean clothes? Dinner?” For each question the woman asked of her, Louise gave a nod. “You have running water?”

“Uh-huh.
And electricity. Thanks to our solar-powered generator.” Louise showed off by switching on the kitchen light.

Even the mute girl was impressed, and raised her head to stare at the light. With her face in view, I could see that she was beautiful. And not
Ashley Heard beautiful or Jennifer Connolly beautiful (I had looked at the cover of the movie “Labyrinth” to find out the actress’s name) but freakin’ gorgeous. Her eyes were big and blue, the same as the swimming pool in daylight. Covered in dirt as she was, she was even more beautiful. No amount of mud could conceal her soft pink lips or perfect skin. The one flaw she had was her mop of tangled dark hair. It was out of place with the rest of her. True caught me staring at her and looked down at the floor again.

“…Stay in the guest room.” Louise’s voice came through to me slowly.

Gloria and True followed her out of the kitchen.

I turned to Michael. “Where did they come from?”

He shrugged.

* * * *

Still October 18
th

After a dinner of roasted bird/dog, Louise told
True and I to excuse ourselves so all the adults could ‘talk’. True disappeared, but I hoped to catch up with her. However, the den was dark and empty when I got to it. In the interest of not seeming like a creep, I decided to let the girl be. Outright looking for her would appear strange at so early a juncture.

I popped in a DVD (if you must know, it was
Watchmen
) and sat down on the couch. While the opening scenes rolled to the tune of “The Time’s They are a Changin’”, I heard other notes interrupting Dylan’s song. The tinkling sounds were coming from the sitting room. I got up and headed to the source of the melody.

Dun
Dun Dun.

A piano.
I’d forgotten there was a piano in the house. Sitting behind the black monstrosity was True. She had finally found something to do. The song she was playing wasn’t “Taps” either. Her song of choice was more complex than that. Some classical number I didn’t know the name of.

Since her shower, True had become more beautiful. Her mop of hair was clean and combed. Mop isn’t the way I would describe her hair now; it’s a tumble of blonde ringlets. They look soft and I’m fascinated at the thought of twisting my finger around one of her curls. Goodness, do I have some sort of hair fetish? Wonder if there’s a formal term for something like that.

Feeling bold, I sat on the piano bench alongside my newest crush. She didn’t acknowledge that I was there.

“What song are you playing?”
Plink, plink, plink.

No answer.

I was about to ask her another question. Thankfully, I was spared the further embarrassment of talking to myself because from the adjacent dining room, I heard Michael ask Gloria,

“What’s your story?”

“Well, a few months back, True and I went from a family of four to just two.”

Louise: “I’m sorry.

“It’s okay. We’ve all lost someone, but I suppose what your husband want to know is how that came about for True and me. How we came to be knocking on your front gate.”

Michael cleared his throat.
“If you don’t mind, ma’am.”

“Please, call me Gloria.” I envisioned
her stained smile and cringed.

I looked to see if True was listening as well, but she was getting up from the bench and walking away. Maybe she didn’t want to rehash bad memories. However, I wasn’t too proud to continue eavesdropping. I wanted to know their story as much as Michael did.

Gloria clinked her silverware around on her plate and went on: “We had a nice apartment in the city, uptown you know.”

“Yea, we
can imagine.” Louise said, probably thinking back to her and Michael’s uptown lifestyle.

“Well then, you know we couldn’t stay there after things turned…ugly.”

Ugly, huh. That’s a good word for it as any.

“We were able to get away in our summer home. It’s
about a hundred miles from here. Everything was great, for a few days. One night, four men broke into our house. They killed my husband and fifteen-year-old son, Greg. True and I were lucky in the scheme of things; all they did was rape and beat us, and then they left. Once we’d recovered, we resolved to move on. Our home wasn’t secure, and those men or more men like them could have come later.