Extinction Point: The End

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Outside Emily’s apartment window, the dawn sky was a deep fiery red. Emily had half expected to see the streets still crawling with the alien creatures, but as she pulled the curtains apart, she could see the pavement, roads and rooftops below her were once more deserted.

The clouds that had abandoned the sky the previous evening had returned sometime during the night with a vengeance. From horizon to horizon, the sky was quilted in a thick blanket of red-tinged roiling clouds. The red tint looked like simple refraction from the meager light of the early morning sun, but as Emily studied them more closely, she could see the clouds were actually suffused with ribbons of red, layered like strata through the cloud and along each edge. It was a beautiful yet disturbing sight, another piece of the ever-expanding jigsaw puzzle of her world’s transformation from what it once was to what it was rapidly becoming.

She had spent a restless night on the sofa; her sporadic bouts of sleep punctuated by dark dreams of the creatures crawling quietly into her apartment, hundreds of them collecting around her as she slept. She woke from her nightmare when they attacked, soaked in sweat and with a strangled scream caught in her throat.

Finally, she had given up on getting any more rest. Her anxiety level was through the roof and the best cure for that was to just get up and do something… anything. Normally that would have meant an early morning bike ride into the office or a walk along the Hudson to clear her head. Today she decided the best thing to do was simply be on her way.

She could have used a coffee to kick-start the day but she didn’t feel like unpacking the portable cooker, settling instead for a bottle of water she had left out the previous evening. She took a few gulps of the cool water and ran through her to-do-list one final time, mentally checking off each item. When she was sure she had missed nothing, Emily picked up the shotgun from beside the sofa and walked into the hallway where she had left the bergen. She wriggled into the straps and fastened the belt around her waist, clicking the plastic clasp securely into place. She took a final moment to gaze at the apartment she had called home for the past six years. Not exactly how I had planned to leave, she thought. She was going to miss this little place. It had been her refuge from the outside world, leaving it behind was going to be painful not only because of her deep emotional investment but because, when she stepped outside that door for the final time, she was also stepping away from the last remnants of her old life and all the security that came with it.

Emily Baxter, a shotgun in one hand and all that was left of her worldly possessions strapped to her back, opened the door to her apartment, stepped outside, and closed the door on her old life as she began a new journey out into the unknown.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It was a pointless gesture but Emily automatically locked her door behind her. She knew she would never return to the place she called home, in fact, she doubted she would ever see New York again, but it just seemed like the right thing to do.

The corridor outside her apartment looked like it had been the scene of some movie-style shootout. Hundreds of punctures littered the walls and ceiling like bullet holes, the only evidence of the alien exodus she had witnessed the night before. Circular holes, the telltale signs of escaping aliens, had been chewed through doors, ceiling and walls all along the length of the corridor, there were even a couple in the floor where the alien drones, in their frenzy to join the throng gathering outside, had simply chewed down through each consecutive floor.

Emily made sure to carefully avoid the holes in the floor as she made her way towards the stairwell for the final time. She didn’t think there would be any of the creatures left in the building, the thousands she had seen last night were probably just a small portion of the newly awakened hive that had spread throughout the city while she slept. Still, she kept the shotgun ready… just in case.

Emily eased the door to the stairwell open and poked her head inside. It was dark in there, so she pulled her flashlight from the backpack’s side-pouch and switched it on.

The stairwell was even worse than the corridor. Huge chunks of drywall had been pulled off the walls and now hung in tatters and dusty piles on the concrete stairs. She was glad she hadn’t decided to just chance walking down without the flashlight because she could easily have tripped over the debris.

It wasn’t hard to imagine the entire population of the apartment complex, potentially eight-hundred or more residents, awakening from their transformation and, driven by their new alien impulses, tumbling like a waterfall down these walls and steps.

And then of course, there was the baby-thing in apartment #26. So far she had only seen the strange spider-like creatures that she was sure had emerged from single pupas much like the ones she had dealt with at the Tribune’s offices. But what had that mess of melted flesh on the 18^th floor transformed into? It would have been too large to form a single pupa. Could it have just been some aberration, a mutation of some sort, or could there be other, even stranger things walking the streets of New York today?

Emily didn’t intend to stick around to find out.

She pushed through the doors on the ground floor and walked straight over to the security booth where she had left her bike. A quick onceover reassured her none of her precious supplies had been taken, so she wheeled the bike out of the cubby and then through the exit doors of the apartment block and onto the concrete terrace.

Overhead, the sky was a deep crimson and she squinted against the change from dark to this diffused light. The clouds seemed to have thickened into an unmoving mass of gray with an ever-growing volume of red bubbling within.

Emily swung her leg over the bike and shuffled her butt around on the seat until it was comfortable. The extra weight of the clothing in the bergen took some adjusting to. She shrugged a couple of times, wincing at the pain in her right shoulder, until the straps repositioned themselves to a more comfortable position.

Emily began peddling,

The sun could barely force its way through the overcast sky. What little light did make it gave the streets she passed through a washed out, black and white tone. The buildings on either side seemed to loom towards her as she cycled north. It wasn’t hard for Emily to imagine a thousand eyes watching her from the empty windows. Strange, alien eyes that belonged to an inscrutable intelligence that regarded her as what? An insect? The proverbial fly in the ointment of their grand plan set in motion just days earlier?

If she was honest with herself, she doubted her presence had caused any more than the tiniest of blips on the radar of these things. She was a minor problem. Inconsequential. And that was fine by her.

72^nd street was as deserted as the rest of Manhattan. She took the on-ramp up to the raised section of the Henry Hudson Parkway with a head of steam, but she still had to raise her butt up off the bike’s seat, her legs pumping like pistons, to ensure she kept her momentum up the curving on-ramp. When she reached the top of the ramp, she instinctively looked over her left shoulder to check for traffic as she merged out onto the main road, but this stretch of the freeway looked deserted on both sides of its six lanes.

In the distance, off to her left, past the concrete median and southbound lanes, Emily could just make out the New Jersey shoreline on the opposite bank of the dark sluggish Hudson. To her right, the elegant red brick offices and apartment buildings of Manhattan were quickly obscured by rows of trees lining the side of the freeway as she pedaled down the center lane, heading north.

Emily’s plan was to head directly toward Albany. It was about a 145-mile ride and she estimated it would take probably two days or so for her to complete if she could keep up a decent speed. When she reached Albany, she would take either the 87 north or the 90 west; depending on how everything looked out there. She was leaning toward choosing the 87 route, though. It was a longer, more circuitous route, but it would take her through less densely populated areas and reduce her risk of contact with the aliens. It would be a slower but far safer route, she thought, in the long run.

For now, she was going to stay on the Henry Hudson Parkway until she reached 252^nd Street. There she would switch over to Riverdale Avenue and follow that through Yonkers as the road transitioned over to Broadway. Eventually Broadway would intersect with the 87 just outside of Tarrytown and she could cross over the Hudson on the Tappan Zee Bridge and continue her journey north.

Riding down a deserted freeway in the middle of the day was quite possibly the strangest experience for Emily so far. It took her some time to stop glancing nervously over her shoulder, expecting some speeding vehicle to come looming after her, horn blaring, driver leaning from his window and screaming at her to get out of his way as he sped past her. It did not happen, of course. The only thing on this freeway was Emily and the ghosts of a million drivers.

A particularly thick blanket of gray cloud hovered on the horizon ahead of Emily. Sunlight strained to push its way through the dense cloud as best it could, but what made it through was nothing but a diffused blur that pounded Emily’s eyes. She hadn’t thought to grab a pair of sunglasses, but the painful glare was forcing her to stare at the bike’s front tire rather than the road ahead. She had to glance up occasionally to make sure the road was still clear, squinting in the light, and then her eyes were back down again. She’d have to pick up a pair of sunglasses at some point, mentally adding them to her to-do list of items to scavenge.

The miles flowed by and Emily settled into a comfortable rhythm. While she considered herself a competent rider it had been a long time since she had ridden more than twenty miles in a single day, so she kept her speed down, pacing herself for what was going to be a very long ride.

Travelling along the parkway, it was easy to forget that beyond the tree line to her right and across the Hudson lay an entire city empty of all life. Human life at least. Apart from the occasional random empty vehicle stalled in the middle lane or canted awkwardly astride the median divider, there was little to draw Emily’s attention to her surroundings. However, when she finally exited off the parkway, freewheeling down the looping off-ramp onto Riverdale Avenue and into the district that shared the same name, it did not take long for the gnawing feeling of isolation to return.

The streets of Riverdale were lined on both sides with beautiful, expensive-looking older homes and an occasional apartment building. Where Manhattan had seemed deserted by many of its inhabitants and workers as they fled the coming catastrophe, most of the residents of this area had apparently made it back. As she slowly pedaled along the deserted avenue, in the driveway of almost every home, Emily saw a car or a truck neatly parked, waiting for an owner who would never return.

But was she right about that? She was struck by a sudden but overwhelmingly positive thought: She had naturally jumped to the conclusion that this little suburb was as dead as Manhattan and New York, but just because she hadn’t seen any signs of life did not mean there weren’t other survivors hunkered down in their homes. Maybe they were too scared to come out? It was an expensive neighborhood, after all. Maybe, they didn’t know about the creatures roaming the streets and were just waiting for rescue. With so many people making it to their homes there had to be survivors like her. There simply had to be.

Emily slowed to a stop outside a redbrick two-story with a late model Jeep Cherokee parked on the concrete driveway. She dismounted and began climbing the stone steps to the entranceway but stopped just halfway up. In the front door of the house was the all too familiar circular hole, cut, she assumed, by the transformed residents as they escaped from the locked home. Emily looked around at the other homes next door and across the street. Shading her eyes against the glare, she could see the same telltale openings in both of the neighboring homes and, she was sure, if she walked to any of the other houses, she would find more of the same evidence of this sleepy town’s fate. While the tree lined street had the appearance of life, of a lost normality, it was just as dead as the city she had left behind her.

Somewhere close by, if she took the time to search, she knew she would find more of the alien trees she had seen back in Central Park. Probably tucked away in some park where kids used to play or lining the bank of a pond or lake where couples would have strolled hand-in-hand and watched the sunset. The alien structures would be all that remained of the residents of this town now, another piece of the inscrutable puzzle transforming what was left of Emily’s world.

Emily walked back to where she had left her bike and climbed into the saddle. Yesterday, she would probably have simply sunk to her knees and cried in despair, but that was a different Emily. Today’s Emily Baxter was stronger, she told herself. Today’s Emily Baxter could get past all of this. Still, a single tear escaped and trickled down her cheek. She wiped it away with a contemptuous swipe of the back of her hand. She didn’t have time to shed any more tears for this dead world; she had someplace to go and she intended to get there.

She had no clue how the fire had started. Maybe it was from a lightning strike or something as simple as a candle left burning on a night-side table. Whatever the cause, about an hour after passing through the equally dead town of Irvington with its uneasy mixture of sprawling mansions and clapboard homes, Emily caught the unmistakable scent of burning wood blended with an unpleasant undertone of melted plastic.

Thanks to the local topography, it was next to impossible for her to get a good fix on where the fire was burning. Just like most of the other neighborhoods and towns that had sprung up around the northern tip of New York City, rows of trees lined every roadway, effectively limiting her view to the main thoroughfares and side streets she passed.

Emily gave a small cough and wrinkled her nose as a sudden gust delivered a particularly strong burst of fumes to her nostrils. She pulled on the bike’s brakes and slowed her pace a little, stretching her neck to try to catch a glimpse of the direction of the fire through the occasional gap in the trees, but there was no sign of it, even though she knew it must be raging somewhere close by, the trees were just too densely packed together. The smell was growing stronger the further north along the road she travelled, so she was obviously heading towards the source of the fire rather than away, which made her nervous.

As Emily passed the sweeping driveway leading up to the Lyndhurst Museum, she caught her first sight of the leading edge of the fire, revealed by a massive wall of smoke. The smoke was so gray that for the last half-hour she had mistaken it for an extra layer of low-lying cloud. As she mounted a slight rise in the road, she spotted an open space between the trees large enough to give her a view past the museum building and into the distance towards where the Tappan Zee Bridge should be. But, as she looked through the break in the trees, instead of the bridge all Emily could see was smoke billowing up from behind the main building of the Lyndhurst Museum. Adjacent to the museum, according to a sign she could barely make out was a large hotel complex. Emily pulled the bike over to the side of the road and stared. From her vantage point, she could see wisps of smoke rising from the roof of both the museum and the hotel as embers caught by the wind landed on the unprotected buildings. It wouldn’t be long before both of those structures succumbed to the fire.

“Great,” she said aloud, as she watched the flames flickering in the distance. Small frail flecks of gray ash had begun to fall from the sullen sky, settling on the ground around her like snow.

Emily wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure, but it looked like the fire was between her location and the freeway she needed to take to get to the Tappan Zee Bridge, but with her limited view there was no way she could be sure. She would need to get to higher ground to see for sure.

She decided to press ahead, but less than a mile further along the road, Emily had her answer. The way ahead was being gradually devoured by a huge wall of smoke, billowing and creeping along the road like a bank of fog. The smoke stretched skywards, obscuring all view of the bridge she knew lay somewhere beyond it.

Standing on the temporary safety provided by the wide expanse of blacktop, finally with an unobstructed view to the west, Emily could see the fire burning brightly. From behind the pall of gray smoke, a long wall of flickering orange flames stretched northeast for miles, following the outline of the Hudson River. Emily had only ever travelled this far north once before, so she wasn’t that familiar with the area, but she was sure what she was seeing was the demise of Tarrytown and the surrounding area, as it was methodically consumed by this voracious beast made entirely of flame.

There was no way she was going to be able to continue with her original plan, she realized. Crossing the bridge or even continuing north was out of the question now, both the 87 west and all other routes north were cut off by the fire or at the very least obscured by the thick smoke. She wouldn’t be able to see a thing and would quickly succumb to either smoke inhalation or the fire if she stuck with her original plan and tried to travel through the smoke. There was only one way left for her to turn: she would have to head east along the 287 and then tack north when she was clear of the fire.

The fire was huge and moving fast. She estimated that it had already consumed thousands of acres. In the few minutes she had observed the fast approaching flames, Emily had already begun to cough as the smoke had wrapped its wispy tendrils around her. The occasional falling piece of ash had now turned into a blizzard driven by a breeze that was helping to spread the flames even faster. Pushed towards her by the fire, she chose just the wrong moment to breath in a deep raw lungful of the hot smoky air. She choked, doubling over as the fumes seared her nose and lungs.

Emily began running, pushing her bike alongside her, then leaping into the saddle like some Wild West cowboy from a black and white movie. Her feet continued to pedal furiously until she was sure she had built up enough speed to outrun the approaching fire-line.

Emily had no clue what lay in the direction she was heading, her plan had been to travel north and there was no contingency plan.

She was just going to have to wing it.

Emily only slowed her pace when she estimated she had put at least three miles between her and the leading edge of the fire, but it was hard to gauge exactly how far the fire was from her. It was moving so quickly, hidden behind the smoke and pushed by a breeze that was quickly transforming into a wind. If the wind grew stronger, it was going to spread the fire further and faster, making it even more unpredictable.

She pulled the bike over to the breakdown lane, swinging it around until she could get a good look behind her. The horizon was filled with smoke; it was next to impossible to tell where its leading edge was or even how far it had spread. She needed to plot the fire’s progress if she was going to be able to avoid it. The only way to do that was to get to higher ground.

Emily scanned the highway in both directions. There didn’t seem to be any nearby buildings she could see, but up ahead, about another quarter mile or so was an overpass linked to an off-ramp. That might at least give her an inkling of which direction to head. She jumped back on her bike and began riding toward the bridge over the freeway.

Emily reached the overpass, pulling to a stop near one of the bridge’s concrete buttresses. It would be quicker just to climb up the grass-covered embankment to reach the bridge rather than take the curving feeder road, she decided, so she left the bike lying on its side in the grass at the base of the bridge. Emily clambered up the incline of the embankment, grabbing clumps of the sickly yellow grass to help pull her up. She was surprised at how winded she felt when she finally reached the top of the embankment, but then she had been riding for the last couple of hours without a break. It was no surprise she was feeling fatigued. She had managed to tune out the pain in her shoulder, but it too was beginning to become noticeable again, despite her best efforts to ignore it.

The bridge had four lanes for traffic. Lined with low concrete walls, each topped by a five-foot wire-mesh barricade, the bridge had been designed to stop all but the most dedicated suicide from falling or jumping off.

Peering through the mesh back in the direction from which she had come, Emily had a better view of just how far the fire had spread. Judging from the distant flames she could see licking at the sky above the forest of trees that separated her from the blaze, the leading edge of the fire had extended for several miles in a northeast direction now, curving away in a wide arc of orange flame. It looked as though it had already jumped the freeway where she had first seen it, judging by the huge plume of smoke rising from the direction of where the Lyndhurst Museum had stood.

From her vantage point on the bridge, Emily thought she could feel the wind change direction. She sucked the tip of her left index finger, ignoring the salty taste of her sweat, and raised her arm above her head. Yes, she was right; the wind had changed direction, for the moment anyway. It was pushing the fire away from her now, southwest, back toward Manhattan. That was the break she needed.

She looked around her for any clue that might give her an idea of where she was. At the opposite end of the bridge was a sign on the far side of the road. Emily walked closer to it until she could make out the text.

The sign read VALHALLA 2.5 MILES in large white letters.

Valhalla? Wasn’t that some kind of Viking myth? Strange name for a town but then so was Yonkers or Tenafly or any of the other hundred weird and wonderful names that had attached themselves to spots surrounding New York. But this wasn’t any time to be pondering name choices. Emily looked back to the west, gauging her chances of outrunning the fire if the wind changed again and began driving it in her direction.

Just going to have to risk it, she decided. If the wind stayed on her side she could head due north and get past the worst of the fire.

She jogged back along the bridge and slid down the embankment to where she had left the bike, jumped on and pumped the pedals hard. Following the curve of the on-ramp back up to the top of the bridge, Emily began her ride toward Valhalla.

CHAPTER TWENTY

WELCOME TO THE HAMLET OF VALHALLA, NEW YORK.

Hamlet? Emily had no idea what the difference between a ‘hamlet’ and a village was, but according to the weather-beaten sign on the outskirts of Valhalla, she was about to find out.

It had taken her fifteen minutes to bike the couple of miles down the double lane road to the outskirts of the town… hamlet… whatever. The place had probably been an idyllic spot to live before the red rain, with picturesque colonial style homes built on the side of sweeping, tree lined hills. There couldn’t have been more than a few hundred homes; maybe a couple of thousand residents had lived here, at best. It was beautiful but just like everywhere else Emily had passed through on her journey so far, the place was lifeless. Nothing but a ghost town now, she thought, trying to ignore the growing ache in her tired legs.

The road ahead terminated at a T-junction, guarded by an ancient red brick firehouse that looked old enough to have been there for as long as Valhalla had existed. She hung a left at the firehouse and began heading up a gradual incline. The road led through a high-end neighborhood—if the expensive cars parked in the driveways of most of the houses were any yardstick—then past a school and a mechanic’s shop. The hill topped out and began a gradual drop, winding past more beautiful but deserted homes. Emily allowed the bike to freewheel down the hill and her thoughts to drift.

She was going to need to find somewhere to rest soon. Once the fire was behind her, she was going to pull over and rest for an hour. Grab a bite to eat and maybe—

As Emily rounded a blind corner, she pulled hard on the brakes and brought the bike to a squealing stop.

“Oh!” she said.

The single syllable, half-question half-exclamation, could not begin to do justice to the incredible sight laid out before Emily, but under the circumstances, it was the best she could do.

A hundred feet or so in front of her, blocking the road completely and extending off to the left and right for several miles, was a forest. A forest unlike any that had ever existed on earth before, composed of thousands of the same alien trees she had seen being constructed in Central Park. These were different though, these were the finished article and they were massive, reaching two-hundred feet and more into the sky. Each one of the towering structures must have taken thousands of the spider-things to construct, far more, she was sure, than the couple of thousand residents that had previously occupied Valhalla.

The alien trees were packed together as densely as any earth-raised forest, the curling trunks stretching upwards before opening into a huge canopy of feather-like leafless branches. Each branch was dotted with tubular spikes that curled outwards like huge corkscrews. As Emily, mouth agape at the incredible sight, tried to take it all in, she saw a small eruption of red dust escape from the tips of one of the trees. She watched the dust slowly rise higher and higher into the air before finally melting into the low hanging clouds.

While she continued to watch, a second tree ejected a similar cloud of the red dust high into the air. A third, fourth and fifth tree, quickly did the same, until finally the whole forest seemed to have added to the vast fog of red dust collecting above the canopy of the tree. The dust slowly rose into the air, carried skywards by warm afternoon thermals that made the dust twist and dance, before drifting off, carried by the same slow winds pushing the clouds and stinking pall of smoke sluggishly across the sky.

It wasn’t just the trees that seemed so out of place, though. It was hard to make out from where she was standing, but the ground around the base of the massive tree-like structures seemed different too. Where there should have been nothing but grass and hardtop road was an explosion of colorful foliage and plant life. It was difficult for her to make out from as far away as she was but it surely didn’t look like it belonged in this quaint little town.

The forest reached off to her left and disappeared into the bank of smoke slowly edging ever closer to her location. The opposite end of the forest terminated at the bank of huge lake that stretched away into the distance on her right. The only way to avoid going through the forest was to skirt around the edge of the lake and head east, and that was going to take precious hours that she didn’t want to waste. Besides, she might get around to the other side of the lake and find the forest continued there too and then still have to find a way through or risk being caught out in the open as night fell.

Trapped between the fire on one side and the vast expanse of the lake on the other, she had only two options of escape: go forwards or turn around. She could turn back and try to find another way around, but she wasn’t sure her legs could take having to ride for who knew how long to find a place that was safe to rest-up for the night.

There really was no other choice, she was going to have to find a way through the alien forest and hope she made it out before night or the fire caught up with her. Committed to her course, Emily began pedaling toward the forest.

She was right about the vegetation around the base of the forest, it was as alien as the trees themselves. Giant red fronds sprouted from bulbous spherical stems tipped with beautiful pink flowers that shined and shimmered like oil on water. Spider-web thin blood-red reeds exploded in clumps, while a fine red fur that looked like creeping moss covered the ground, seeming to carpet the entire floor of the forest.

Emily kicked the bike-stand down and dismounted. Dropping to one knee, she lowered her face as close as she dared to the line where the regular earth grass met the creeping red alien moss. On one side of the line was the moss and on the other regular grass, but running down the middle was a thin line of normal grass that was also part red-moss. Emily realized that as surely as the red rain had changed the world’s population into the alien drones that had built this immense forest, so too was the moss converting the grass into this new form of vegetation. As she watched, she thought she could actually see the regular blades of grass slowly submitting to the creeping growth of the moss. It was very, very slow, but it was definitely there; happening right in front of her.

Her whole world, Emily realized, was being slowly but surely replaced before her eyes.

Emily stood and walked to the nearest tree. Back when she had seen that first tree in Central Park she thought it was covered in scales, now the three intertwining trunks were completed it was as smooth as marble and such a deep shade of red it was almost black. Some kind of a hard clear substance coated the exterior of the trunks. It gave them a veneer that glinted like obsidian. Emily gave the tree a quick rap with her knuckles, it was solid but the texture of the material felt almost like plastic beneath her fingers.

She’d seen one of the spider-aliens clamber up that first tree back in Central Park. The creature had added itself to the tree, one tiny piece of the trunk. She’d watched the thing as it melded itself into the structure. The Central Park tree had been tiny in comparison to the ones she walked through now, these were massive and, if she had to hazard a guess at just how many individual creatures it had taken to complete just one, well, it would have to be an easy thousand, probably more.

Not much light made it through the dense matrix of branches above her head so she needed to lean in closer than she was comfortable with to give the tree a more detailed examination. If she had not witnessed the alien adding itself to the tree she would never have known how they sprung up so quickly because there was no sign anywhere that Emily could see of a seam, connection or joint. Each spider-thing had been completely absorbed into the structure.

She had no answers for the questions whirling around her head. There was obviously a far greater intelligence at work here, anything that was able to take the entire population of a planet and turn it into tools of its own desires was unfathomably more advanced than humanity. She might just as well call it God because it seemed equally as inscrutable and unknowable as the big-guy upstairs. These trees were an example of that intelligence exerting its will over who-knew how far a distance. They were another step in the plan of that intelligence and she might just as well be an ant trying to understand how a computer worked. And, like that ant, Emily understood that if she stepped in the wrong place she could wind up fried.

She stood up and stared deep into the forest spread out before her. The spaces between each of the trees were shrouded in the shadow cast by the thick canopy of fronds and branches above, but Emily could see far enough in to know she was going to have to push her bike most of the way through. The tentacle-like roots of the towering trees choked the ground, making it impossible for her to ride in a straight line. She would be better off on foot and carry the bike over any obstacles where she had to.

What she would need to be careful of was getting lost in there. The trees all looked the same to her and stretched so far back there wasn’t any visual reference point she could take a fix on to get her through and out the other side with any certainty. She was just going to have to take it slow and easy.

Grabbing her bike by the handlebars and seat, she hefted it over the first set of roots, suppressing a cry of pain as her shoulder injury reminded her it was still there, then stepped over them herself and entered the forest.

Emily expected the air would be cool beneath the shade of the alien canopy. Instead, it was warm with a humidity level that, within minutes of her crossing into the forest, had soaked through her thin tee-shirt to the point where the fabric clung with maddeningly annoying stickiness to her skin. She considered stopping and pulling out a fresh shirt from her backpack, but the idea of unloading the bergen to find the clothes she needed, did not appeal to her. Besides, this place gave her the creeping heebie-jeebies. The sooner she was out of here the better.

Ten minutes into her exploration, she happened to glance back over her shoulder, and realized there really was no way to know which direction she was travelling. The sun, completely hidden by a combination of cloud, smoke and the forest’s dense sprawling canopy, was nothing but a diffused blur overhead. It would be incredibly easy to lose her bearing, wander around for hours and never find a way out. She was confident she wasn’t lost… yet. If she began to suspect otherwise, then she could always turn on the GPS unit she had attached to the bike and use that to find her way through. The only reason she had not done so already was her innate stubbornness to refuse to rely on technology unless she absolutely had to. The GPS and sat-phone were not going to work forever, so the sooner she learned to get by without them the quicker she would become self-sufficient.

Emily pushed through a particularly dense collection of brush, the thin reeds of the plant came up to her head and gave off a puff of the now familiar red dust as she parted the curtain of plants and elbowed her way through. It seemed everything in this strange new world was designed to propagate the alien presence as quickly and efficiently as possible, even down to the simple plant life.

Once through the brush, Emily found herself in a large clearing. The ground was scoured clean of any kind of plant life, earthly or otherwise, exposing the dark brown soil. The circular shaped clearing stretched for about four-hundred feet from edge to edge, but in the center of the space, Emily saw something unlike anything she had witnessed over the past few days.

A huge new structure, similar to the trees she had been walking through but with a trunk twice as thick around and stretching another thirty feet past even the highest tree she had seen. Instead of the fern-like branches of the other trees, this one held a huge cluster of milky pale orbs. Each orb was at least sixty feet in circumference and filled with a translucent pink liquid. At the center of each orb, a dark shadow was curled up within, occupying the majority of the space. As she watched, each of the shadowy silhouettes slowly rotated within their capsules, turning as though pushed by some gentle tide only they could feel.

Whatever was growing inside the orbs was huge, and, as she continued to watch, one of the shadows spasmed, twitching like a dreaming baby.

“Jesus,” Emily said, taking an involuntary step backwards as her eyes roamed over this latest discovery. She counted twenty of the orbs, clustered tightly together like a sprig of berries.

She was tempted to get closer, but this time her instincts told her to stay as far away from the structure as possible. She had been lucky so far in her encounter with the world’s new masters, now was not the time to push her luck. The spider-creatures she had encountered had seemed patently uninterested in confrontation, but there must be a good reason this particular tree was so obviously isolated and alone. Discretion was definitely the better part of valor here, she sensed, and decided to give the orbs as wide a berth as possible.

She began pushing the bike around the edge of the clearing. It was easier said than done because the loose earth grabbed at her sneakers and the tires of her bike, slowing her progress.

As Emily walked she began to feel a sense of unease settle over her like a dark cloud. Whatever was inside the orbs made her very uneasy. It felt like waves of anxiety washing over her, and Emily was sure the cause was the orbs and whatever was growing within them. Try as she might, she simply could not drag her eyes away from the cluster of strange fruit suspended from the alien tree, and the closer she got to them, the stronger her disquiet became.

By the time she had finally crossed the empty space and reached the opposite edge of the clearing, Emily’s nerves were singing with anxiety. She felt ready to explode. It was a miracle she had made it this far. Her instinctual flight-or-fight gauge had quickly fixed firmly on flight soon after she spotted the orbs, and it took all of her self-control not to abandon the bike and her precious supplies and run as fast as she could away from that perplexing, terrifying stretch of open land. She felt like a little kid trapped in a haunted house. She didn’t know why she was so unnerved but she knew the source of it was that bizarre cluster of things in the center of the clearing.

Finally, she reached the opposite side and pushed through the high plants growing along the border of the remainder of the forest. As soon as the clearing was behind her and obscured by the tall vegetation Emily let the bike slip to the ground, leaned one hand against the nearest trunk of a tree and vomited, violently emptying her stomach of the remainder of her breakfast onto a large clump of the red moss and her sneakers. She wiped her mouth with her hand, picked up her bike and immediately began pushing it through the forest again, her desire to place as much space between her and the clearing superseding any thought of cleaning up her shoes.

Thirty minutes later, with her panic now just a tingle in her spine, Emily spotted light breaking through the tree line about a quarter mile ahead of her. She let out a long sigh, slowing her pace a little as her fear was replaced with relief.

That was when she heard something moving through the undergrowth.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The sound of something big moving through the bushes off to her right froze Emily mid-step. Whatever was in there had effectively blocked her route out of this godforsaken place. She lowered the bike as gently to the ground as she could, trying not to make any sudden movements, then slowly reached around with her right hand to unsling the shotgun from her shoulder. She pushed the butt of the gun against her right shoulder and clasped the forestock with her left. The weight of the weapon in her hands made her feel a little more secure as she swung the barrel towards the clump of tall red plants where she last heard the sound of movement. The straps of the bergen pulled tight against her shoulders making it awkward for her to keep the weapon steady, her arms felt as though they wanted to spring apart as the bergen’s straps dug into her shoulder muscles. Of course, that was the least of her concerns because her hands, trembling with either fear or adrenalin, she wasn’t sure which, made the barrel of the Mossberg sway back and forth like a pendulum.

It’s okay, she reassured herself. You don’t have to hit it, you just need to scare the fuck out of it.

Emily sucked in a huge lungful of air and concentrated on calming her nerves. She tried to focus on relaxing her hands; they gripped the shotgun so tightly her knuckles had turned white. She spread her feet wide apart and with the front sight of the shotgun, drew a bead on the spot where she thought the sound was coming from.

The rustle of movement and the sway of a tall clutch of red fronds, about ten feet to the left of where she had first noticed movement, grabbed Emily’s attention. Whatever was moving through the vegetation was circling her, stalking her like a predator eyeing its prey. She swung the shotgun to point in the direction of the still swaying plants as sweat popped on her forehead, trickling down into her eyes. Immediately, her eyes began to sting.

Emily pushed the stock of the shotgun tightly into her shoulder with the hand holding the forestock, using it to support the weight of the weapon. She released the pistol-grip and used her freehand to wipe the sweat from her watering eyes, then across her forehead to halt the rest of the sweat gathering there. Her hand was travelling back to the shotgun’s grip when a huge shape exploded into the air from the grass, landing with a loud crash less than ten feet from her.

She staggered backward in surprise, the heel of her left foot clipped one of the roots of a tree and she stumbled, falling flat on her back. Her arms windmilled as they flailed desperately in a vain effort to try to steady herself, but there was nothing to grab hold of and she dropped hard toward the floor of the forest. The second between her falling and hitting the ground felt like it stretched out into a minute, and in that extended moment, Emily saw the creature that stalked her.

It bore little resemblance to the alien-spider creatures she had already encountered; this thing looked more like a regular animal than an insect. It was six-feet long and walked on four muscular legs. Each leg terminated in a four-toed paw tipped with wicked six-inch long talons. Its body, covered in long spines that stretched backwards from the tip of its neck, looked muscular and powerful, like a tiger. The spines were colored varying shades of red that gave the creature a striped camouflage of sorts and allowed it to blend in with the alien flora sprouting up around her. Instead of a head, there was a mass of articulated blood-red tentacles as long as her arm. Each pencil-thin tentacle moved independently and stretched out towards Emily, writhing and twisting like a pit of snakes, as though sensing the air for her body heat or smell. At the center of the mass of flailing tentacles was a long muzzle that, as Emily watched in terrified astonishment, opened wide to reveal row upon row of serrated teeth. It had no eyes that Emily could see, but the creature’s ‘head’ swung directly at her. It bobbed back and forth excitedly as it tracked her movement while she scrambled backwards across the ground until she felt the bergen connect with the base of one of the tree trunks.

The creature opened its mouth wider and Emily could see a pink tongue flicking back and forth between the rows of teeth. The air was split by a sudden wavering ululation emanating from the creature. It sounded like a high-pitched growl and ended with a trilling warble.

This thing could have been stalking her the entire time she was walking through the forest, Emily realized through a mind hazy with fear. It was too small to have come from one of the red orbs she had seen growing in the clearing, so this must be something else again. Maybe something created to protect whatever was gestating in the orbs?

The creature moved closer to her, its head dipping low then back up again in a shoveling movement with each step it took. Emily’s feet refused to move. This time, she knew she was going to die. There was no escape, nowhere to run, and even if she did manage to command her legs to move, this thing looked more than capable of running her to ground in a heartbeat.

This was it, she thought, as the creature stalked closer. Game over. The end.

And then she realized she still held the shotgun in her left hand. Blinded by her fear she had forgotten the weapon, but now she grabbed hold of the pistol grip and swung the muzzle of the weapon to point directly at the advancing animal. It must have sensed her aggression because the spines covering its body vibrated loudly, giving off a threatening rattle as it dropped back on its haunches and launched itself at her, jaws wide open, tentacles striking as it soared through the air.

Emily closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger.

She heard the boom of the shot and felt the butt of the weapon buck violently back into her still recovering shoulder, sending searing pain down her arm. She heard the creature let out a grunt that turned into a squeal of pain. There was a heavy thump as the creature hit the ground.

When she finally opened her eyes, she saw the creature lying on its side at her feet. It was still alive; the round from the shotgun had caught it just above the right shoulder blade. A gaping wound leaked green fluid and the thing’s right leg hung loosely at its side while the remaining three legs spasmed as the monster—and that was what this thing was—tried to right itself. The creature’s jaws were inches from her feet, snapping angrily at her as its tentacles writhed and jerked. Emily knew that if she didn’t force herself to get up and finish this thing right now, it was still more than capable of killing her even in its debilitated state.

Pulling her toes clear of the snapping jaws, Emily pushed herself to her feet, careful to stay out of range of the tentacles and teeth of the creature. She racked another round into the shotgun’s chamber and aimed at the monster’s head. It must have sensed its own demise because as her finger tightened on the trigger, the creature let out another of its mesmerizing ululations, only to fall silent as the shotgun blast splattered its head into mush.

Emily stood over the motionless body of the dead creature, her chest heaving as she sucked in huge gulps of wet air. As the boom of the shotgun blast finally faded from her ears, she heard first one, then another and another trilling ululation, as somewhere off in the dense undergrowth of the forest, more creatures answered the call of their dead comrade.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The three alien creatures appeared within a few seconds of Emily hearing their answering calls.

She was already running towards the edge of the forest when she heard their approach as they crashed through the canopy overhead like a troop of monkeys. She risked a glance over her shoulder; two were already on the ground, closing in on the corpse of the animal Emily had killed. A third was clambering down the side of a tree trunk, the muscles in its legs bulging as it swiftly lowered its body down step by step till it almost reached the ground. It leapt the last fifteen feet and joined the two others, their tentacles playing over the body of the dead creature. As one, all three of the creatures let out one of their startling cries, then turned in her direction and began pounding after her.

“Shit,” Emily hissed, and continued sprinting as fast as she could towards the edge of the forest, pushing her bike alongside her. Behind her, she heard the pounding of the aliens’ feet as they chased her down like foxes after a rabbit.

A very, very slow rabbit, she thought.

If she could just make it out into the open field beyond the tree line, she was sure she would stand a chance. She just needed to get out of here and on her bike, then she could put some space between herself and those things. She doubted they would follow her outside the perimeter of the forest… she hoped she was right.

Through the spaces between the trees, Emily could see the green of a field beyond the perimeter of the forest, and she decided to just run in a straight line for the closest gap, choosing to clamber over the tangles of tree roots where she could rather than skirting around them.

Emily’s heart pounded in her ears, a counterpoint to the rapid breathing and grunts of exertion she made as she sprinted towards the opening, leaping over the outcropping roots of trees, her momentum pulling the bike over with her. Just thirty feet remained between her and freedom when one of the creatures leaped from the trunk of a tree in front of her.

These things were faster than she had given them credit for. How the hell had one of them managed to get in front of her? Emily’s brain had time to think before she dug her heels deep into the ground and released her grip on the bike, which clattered unceremoniously away to her left. Emily hoped nothing on the bike or in the panniers was damaged as it crashed to the ground, but she would worry about that once she was out of this situation… if she made it out alive, that was.

In one smooth motion, Emily unslung the Mossberg from her shoulder, aimed at the creature and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

“Shit! Fuck! Shit!” she hissed as she realized she hadn’t racked a new round into the shotgun. She quickly rectified her mistake and pumped a shell into the chamber with a satisfying cha-chink, aimed again at the creature in front of her and squeezed the trigger. The shotgun blast caught it square in the neck just as it began to advance toward her, sending the head spiraling into the air trailed by a spray of green liquid. The tentacles on the beast’s severed head flailed limply. It landed with a wet thump and rolled into a clump of red grass about the same time the decapitated body hit the ground.

One down, she thought, and spun around to face the remaining two attackers as she automatically ratcheted another round into the shotgun’s chamber.

They were gone, disappeared back into the foliage and trees.

Emily swept the barrel of the shotgun back and forth, looking for any sign of the remaining attackers. She was soaked through with sweat and covered in dirt from her mad scramble. Red juice from the plants she had crushed as she rushed headlong through the forest smeared her clothes and skin. It stank of ammonia.

Sweat once again trickled down to sting her eyes but she resisted wiping it away, blinking rapidly and shaking her head instead to try to clear her blurred vision. She decided to leave the bike where it was for now, she couldn’t risk dropping the weapon or her guard until she was absolutely sure she was clear of these creatures. If that meant leaving her bike and coming back for it later when the coast was clear, so be it.

There was a rustle in the long grass off to her left and Emily spun to face it, loosing off a shot that severed a wide swath of the grass but didn’t seem to have hit anything else. She’d have to check her shots now. The shotgun only held a total of eight rounds, she’d used four already so she only had four more left in the magazine with no chance to reload; she’d left her spare ammo in one of the panniers of the bike.

Emily turned and faced back into the forest, her back to her exit as she started to edge carefully backwards towards freedom while blindly feeling her way over the remaining few feet of tree trunks and uneven ground. With each tentative step she swung the barrel of the shotgun left to right to cover her retreat.

There was a sudden blur of motion in her peripheral vision and Emily instinctively dropped to the ground, just in time to avoid losing her own head to the massive paw of one of the remaining two creatures. Emily felt the hair on the top of her head fly up as claws sliced through the air where her head had been a millisecond earlier. She rolled to her right and brought the weapon up to where she thought the creature should be but it was already gone, leaping off the ground to land on the trunk of a nearby tree. It stopped for a second and stared at Emily, spines vibrating in anger and its mouth wide open in a vicious snarl. As she brought the shotgun to bear on the alien, it began climbing in swift graceful leaps up the tree trunk. Emily tracked it with the shotgun as it used its claws to pull itself up the tree before finally disappearing into the dense canopy, well out of range of her weapon. The feathery branches shook as it leaped from tree to tree above her head. It seemed to be heading towards the edge of the forest as if it knew that direction was her only escape route.

The bastard’s trying to cut me off.

The second creature melted into view from behind a tree to her right. Leaping over twisting roots it ran between her and the path she had already come, blocking any chance she had to retreat into the forest. The creature’s tentacles undulated and the spines on its body vibrated angrily, but it seemed to understand the shotgun represented almost certain death if it got within range. It slinked back and forth as Emily tried to get a bead on it but it moved too quickly for her to risk another missed shot.

She began backing away towards the edge of the forest. The creature on the ground in front of her matched her pace but kept its distance never stopping its evasive dance. With each backward step she took, Emily risked taking her eyes off the alien for a second to glance up and over her shoulder, searching the canopy, ground, and trees for any sign of the second monster that had moved to block her exit from the forest.

Each step took her closer to freedom and she began mentally counting down the remaining distance between her and the edge of the forest. She could feel the air begin to cool the closer she got to freedom, stirred by a light breeze seeping in from outside, but it didn’t slow the continuous river of perspiration that coated her body like early morning dew.

Emily had managed to count down to the final seven feet when she heard the creature dropping from the canopy above her. At the same time, she saw the second creature on the ground drop back on its haunches and begin to launch itself into the air towards her in a beautifully synchronized joint attack. The next few seconds stretched out into a dreamy slow-motion movie played out frame by frame. She observed everything from a distance, disconnected from the reality of the situation as her sympathetic nervous system took control of her body and forced her conscious mind into the passenger seat.

Emily felt herself drop to the ground and roll over onto her back, positioning her body to face the direction of the creature falling toward her from above. The shotgun traversed an agonizingly slow arc toward the creature as it hit the ground with a grunt just a few feet from her prone body, its muscles tensing as it raised one of its paws, the talons catching the sunlight that filtered through the tree line just a few feet away. The thing’s spines rustled in anticipation of the kill and she watched the tentacles flicker excitedly back and forth towards her like snakes readying to strike. Its jaws opened wide and she could smell the fetid breathe from way down in its stomach as it washed over her. And that was where she aimed the shotgun; she heard the boom echoing through the strange alien trees and watched as the buckshot tore through the mouth obliterating the tentacles into a fine red mist and exiting through the back of the creature’s skull. Globs of whatever amounted to a brain went spinning into the air behind it. The alien fell dead at her feet, its pink tongue lolling from what was left of its mouth as the dead creatures legs gave a final few kicks then became still.

Good shot. Good shot, her distant self cheered, as she flipped herself over onto her front and began to push herself up to her feet. Now there’s just one last one to—

The thought was pounded from her mind as the third creature landed on her back, its weight smashing her down into the ground and forcing the air from her lungs. Emily heard herself scream in pain as its claws found their way under the backpack and sank into her flesh just below her right shoulder. The force of the impact sent the shotgun spinning from her hands.

Her ears filled with the sound of shredding and ripping. She was sure it was the thing slicing the skin from her body, but then she realized with relief that it was her bergen tearing as the creature tried to get through it to her.

Emily began thrashing as hard as she could, but she was pinned firmly to the ground by the monster’s one paw while the other relentlessly tore at her backpack. The thing was just too strong and heavy for her to stand a chance of turning over to face the creature, not that it would do any good if she could because the shotgun now lay just outside of her reach. It was just a matter of time before the monster slashed its way through the layers of the backpack and snapped her spine or decided to take a bite from her throat. As if it sensed her thoughts, the monster dipped its head towards Emily’s face and she felt the wet slathering of its tentacles brush over her skin, probing into her mouth, nostrils and ears. She screamed in terror as it brought its mouth down to her eye level and opened wide, giving Emily a perfect view of the black rows of teeth lining its mouth. Emily felt the tongue, rough and scaly, against her face as it tasted her, savoring its moment of glory before it delivered the final coup de grâce.

It wasn’t so bad, she thought from the solitude of her inner mind. The pain was a distant distraction, the weight of the creature on top of her more disconcerting to her as she was finding it harder and harder to breath. Darkness was already starting to close in around the periphery of her vision as her oxygen-starved brain slowly began to shut down.

Through her blurred vision, Emily could see something advancing rapidly toward her from the direction of the field beyond the forest. The shape was just a silhouette of motion, backlit by the afternoon sun as it darted swiftly between the trees, leaping over the roots. It was another of the creatures, she supposed, come to join in the kill.

The shadow vaulted over a particularly large root, using it as a springboard to launch itself through the air towards her. She closed her eyes and waited for the end to come.

Instead, the weight of the creature suddenly lifted from her as she felt rather than heard something heavy collide with the creature on her back, knocking it away from her and tearing its claws from the backpack and her shoulder. The relief was instant and she sucked in a huge gasp of air. The blackness began to recede and pain flooded in its place as she found herself once again in the driving seat of her own body.

“Oh, good God,” she moaned, through teeth gritted so tightly in pain she could feel the enamel beginning to buckle.

The dirt was cool against her cheek and she was tempted to simply lay there, close her eyes again and sleep, but she couldn’t do that, not if she wanted to live.

And she did want to live.

So, instead, she rolled over onto her back, ignoring the pain in her shoulder and ribs, and turned her head in the direction she thought her attacker had been knocked.

The creature was still there, crouched low as it sidestepped around the trunk of a tree, its lipless mouth bared in a snarl, tentacles quivering, muscles tensed and ready to leap. But the beast’s anger was no longer focused on Emily. Its attention was squarely on the thing that had saved her.

The dog, a male, was almost as large as the alien creature it now faced down. Its dense light-gray fur shot through with stripes of darker gray, and its broad chest was a tabard of white stretching from its throat under its belly back to its muscled haunches. The dog’s head was also gray, broken only by a mask of white fur around his eyes that stretched down his muzzle to his jet-black nose, while a thick gray tail curled proudly in a question mark above his back.

He was the most beautiful thing Emily had ever seen.

Emily recognized the breed as an Alaskan Malamute. Her uncle had owned two on his farm when she was child. It looked kind of like a Husky but it was bigger and far stronger. Originally bred as sled dogs, Malamutes were incredibly powerful and highly intelligent. Where it had come from and how it had survived the red rain, Emily had no idea, but she owed this dog her life and she’d be damned if she was simply going to lie there and let him take on the alien bastard on his own.

The dog was crouched low to the ground between Emily and the alien, his lips pulled back in a silent snarl as he eyed the creature while it continued to circle around, unsure of how to deal with the dog.

While the Malamute and the alien faced off against each other, Emily sat up and rolled over onto her knees. She had to find the shotgun. It had fallen somewhere nearby, but in the struggle that followed, the alien must have knocked it away because it wasn’t where she had last seen it. Flipping back onto her butt, Emily scanned the other direction and spotted the stock of the shotgun protruding from beneath the root of a tree. She willed her shaking legs to stand but they just would not obey. The best she could do was to get on all fours and crawl towards the weapon.

The alien must have figured out what she was going for because it let out an ear-piercing shriek, leaping toward her.

The dog leaped too. Emily saw his jaws open wide, his white fangs flashed as he collided in mid air with the alien, sinking his teeth deep into where the throat would have been if the thing had had a neck. The momentum of the dog bowled the creature over and the two entangled animals rolled off into the underbrush, both snarling at the other as they tried to land a killing bite.

It was now or never, Emily decided and pushed herself to her feet, ignoring the tingling pain that ran from her shoulders all the way down into her legs. Limping the final few feet to where the shotgun lay, she pulled it from between the tree’s roots. She quickly checked to make sure the barrel was clear of any debris then racked another round into the chamber, ejecting the spent shell.

She turned back towards where the two animals were fighting in time to see the alien erupt from the underbrush, closely followed by the dog. The Malamute snapped ferociously at the monsters hindquarters as they both raced toward her, the dog’s ears flat against his head, white froth coating his muzzle and flying from his mouth as he pounded after her attacker.

Emily drew a bead on the rapidly advancing monster and eased her finger onto the trigger… then released the pressure. If she fired now she risked hitting the dog following so closely behind the charging alien, and she would be damned if she was going to be the one who risked killing what very well may be the last specimen of humanity’s best friend. Instead, as the advancing monster ate up the final few feet between its quarry, Emily breathed in what felt like the deepest breath of her life but in reality must have been the shortest intake of air she ever made and then yelled…

“Down, boy. Get down.”

The Malamute instantly obeyed, dropping to the ground and forcing the flat of its jaw tight against the earth while tucking its tail around its flank. It only took a second for her to issue her command and the dog to obey, but that was all she needed to ensure sufficient space between the dog and the charging monster. The creature’s butt-ugly face seemed to take up her entire vision as she squeezed the trigger on the Mossberg and then it disappeared in a spray of green gore, as the 12-gauge buckshot obliterated it. Momentum carried the body of the alien past Emily and she felt the spray of green arterial blood splash over her as the dead body sailed past and crashed into the undergrowth behind her.

The dog was still lying where she had commanded it to stop. Its mouth was open as it panted hard, its tongue lolling between its front canines. Its left flank was smeared with dirt and stained with red blood, but the dog’s eyes were bright and clear and fixed directly on her as she limped her way over to it.

A wave of gratitude washed through her as she noticed the dog’s tail begin gently swooshing back and forth, sending a small cloud of dusty soil into the air. Emily knelt down on one knee, using the butt of the shotgun shoved into the ground to help steady her.

“Come here, boy,” she called quietly. The dog immediately jumped to its feet and ran to the woman he had just saved, ramming his head under her arm and almost bowling her over while his tail swished back and forth with joy. Emily threw her arms around the dog and pulled him to her, burying her face in the thick ruff of fur around his neck.

Oh! He smelled so damn good.

She pulled back and planted a kiss on his muzzle. The Malamute responded by covering her face in wet slobber as he licked at her, bouncing back and forth excitedly.

“I’m happy to see you too, boy,” she said between a fit of giggles.

A blue dirt-stained leather collar hung around the dog’s neck and she heard the tell tale jangle of identity tags lost somewhere in the mass of fur. “Keep still for a second, would you, you big oaf.” she laughed as she felt around until she found the metal tag. She tugged on the collar until she was able to read the information engraved on it.

“Thor?” she said, reading the name aloud. At the sound of his name the dog’s tail wagged even faster, sending a cool waft of air across Emily’s face. Someone had obviously taken living in Valhalla to heart, naming him after the Norse god of thunder.

She took the dog’s head in both hands and stared deep into his brown eyes: “Hello Thor,” she said. “Thank you for saving my life. Now, what do you say we blow this joint?”

Judging by the dog’s single excited bark, he was as ready to leave as she was.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Emily limped back to where she had dropped her bike. Thor followed obediently by her side, stopping only to sniff at the dead aliens and occasionally to nibble at the wound on his side.

“We’ll get both of us fixed-up as soon as we’re out of here,” Emily told the dog. He glanced up at her, his tail wagged in understanding.

Other than a few scratches to the paint work, there didn’t appear to be any damage to the bike, the panniers or their contents, from what Emily could tell by her quick inspection. The bergen was another matter though. She unlocked the belt buckle and let the backpack slip to the ground, wincing as the strap rubbed across her wounded shoulder. She was going to have to deal with that injury but not now, not here. The chance that there were more of those creatures roaming the forest outweighed her chance of contracting an infection right now. So, it would have to wait. Besides, the first thing she needed to do was secure her supplies so she and her new companion could go find somewhere safe to lay-up for the night. Then she could treat their wounds, eat, and hopefully, get some rest.

Emily gave Thor a pat on the head as he sat down next to her, watching intently while she inspected the damaged bergen. The back pouches were sliced clean through and were now useless, hanging limply from the main body of the backpack. They had been empty, so she hadn’t lost anything. The creature’s claws had however punctured through the pack’s reinforced material and into the clothing stored inside. She could make out tufts of white thermal wadding sticking out from the ragged puncture holes and slits. That could only mean her cold weather gear was damaged. Better her clothing than her skin. She shuddered as her imagination summoned up an image of what she would have looked like if she hadn’t been wearing the backpack. She forced the bloody image from her mind.

There was no way she was going to stay here a moment longer than necessary, and no way was she going to start unpacking her kit now. She would double check the contents when she could. At least the bergen was still serviceable. She would have to perform some cosmetic surgery on it at some point, just to shore-up the damage and make certain it remained waterproof.

There was one thing she was going to do, though.

She unzipped the pouch where she had stored her extra shells for the shotgun—mercifully untouched by the creature’s frenzied attack— and pulled out enough to refill the magazine. She slid them one after the other into the loading port of the shotgun until it was full, then added a final round into the main chamber.

Emily slung the bergen back onto her shoulders, fastened up her belt, picked the bike up from the ground and walked the short distance to the break in the forest.

She kept the shotgun in her hands… just in case.

Stepping out of the forest and into the familiar green of a field full of normal grass immediately helped lift Emily’s spirits. That feeling quickly evaporated though as she spotted the fire still raging off to the west. The fire line looked to have advanced several miles closer to where she was now.

Good, she thought. With any luck, the fire will rip through that demented forest and kill every last thing in it.

While thoughts of the forest’s potential destruction were all very satisfying, Emily knew she still needed to put some distance between her, the fire and any other beasts that might decide she and Thor would make a nice bedtime snack, and she needed to do it as quickly as possible. Ahead of her was a wooden fence bordering the furthest edge of the field. Beyond the fence, Emily could see a red STOP sign, which meant there was a road. It was as good a direction to head for as any other, so she began pushing the bike toward it.

The fence had definitely seen better days. The occasional fleck of white was all that remained of the original paint job, the aged wood was rotten and flakey after exposure to the elements for many years. In several places Emily saw wooden struts were missing, leaving a gap large enough she could lift her bike through and Thor easily jumped over.

The dog sat patiently next to Emily as she stopped to look up the road. She had no idea what might lie up there, but it was at least heading in the right direction, one that would take her away from both the fire and the forest. “Well, what do you think?” Emily asked, glancing at the dog. “Want to tag along with me?” she asked.

Thor’s tail fanned the dusty surface of the road.

“Okay,” said Emily, a smile crossing her face despite the pain of her wounds and the aching in her muscles. “I guess we should get going.” She swung her leg over the bike and, once she was comfortable, began peddling up the road. Thor trotted alongside the bike, easily keeping pace, his lolling tongue alternating first one side of his open mouth and then the other, as his claws clicked against the road’s surface.

Three miles further up the winding road, Emily saw the first signs of civilization: a small cluster of houses off to the right.

She pulled the bike over to the side of the road and looked back in the direction she had just ridden from. The fire was a good five or six miles distant now, and judging by the direction the smoke was blowing, it was heading away from her at last. She hadn’t put as much distance between it as she would have liked, but there was no way she could go on any longer. Exhausted, and with the rush of adrenalin finally beginning to wear off, the pain in Emily’s shoulder and her ribs was making itself known. She had to stop and it had to be soon.

This would have to do.

She chose a gray clapboard two-story with a chimney. A chimney meant a fireplace, which meant warmth, light, and heat to cook with. She pulled up outside the house and dismounted, wheeling her bike around the side of the building. She left the bike behind a large privet hedge, hiding it from any prying eyes, no matter how unlikely that scenario might be. She had no idea whether there were any other survivors close by, or how they might react if they found a stranger in their town. She would sleep better knowing her bike was safe until she had a chance to scout out the area.

The door to the house was ajar. She prodded it open with the barrel of the shotgun and leaned inside. “Hello? Is anyone home?” she called out. Emily already knew there would be no reply but it didn’t feel right simply walking into someone’s home without at least announcing her presence. It would also alert anything else that might have taken up residence in the days since the red rain that it had company. Between the Mossberg and Thor, Emily felt confident she could take care of potential threats from any alien lodger that might have taken up residence in the owner’s absence. As she had predicted, there was no reply. The place was empty.

Thor didn’t seem anxious as he followed her into the house, which was a good sign the two of them were truly alone, but she still did a quick sweep of every room, just to make sure they really were alone. The last thing she needed after the kind of day she’d had was any surprises.

There were no signs anything untoward had happened in the home. There wasn’t even any remnant of the alien cocoons, which, coupled with the open door and the empty garage she found while searching the house, meant the owners had probably left in a hurry.

Only to die somewhere out there in their car.

The living room had a large fireplace with three neatly chopped logs waiting in the grate. A coalscuttle full of extra wood sat nearby. There was enough wood to last them through the night, she estimated. Emily left her bergen leaning against the back of the sofa closest to the fireplace, then, after a few minutes searching the kitchen cupboards she found a packet of firelighters and a box of extra-long matches in a drawer next to the sink. Within minutes, she had a fire lit and giving off more than enough light to fight back the rapidly approaching shadows escorting in the evening. The small room would warm up quickly, and as long as she kept the fire stoked and fed, it should stay toasty all night long.

Her stomach had been complaining to her since she exited the forest, now it was screaming for food. Her head and body ached from the beating she had taken, and the lack of food was not helping, but before she could prepare something to eat, she had to deal with the wounds the creature had inflicted on both her and her new companion.

Thor had curled up in front of the fireplace, already asleep, but he raised his head when he heard Emily’s grunt of pain as she stripped off her grimy tee-shirt. “It’s okay, boy,” she said, reassuring the dog as best as she could. Removing her jeans proved more difficult—and painful—than the tee-shirt. She made the mistake of trying to take them off as she normally would and had to bite her lip to stifle a scream as she felt a shooting pain stab at her ribs. God, she hoped none of them were broken.

Two more painful attempts and several cuss words later and Emily was convinced there was no way she was going to get the jeans off without a little ingenuity. Finally, she had to resort to lying flat on the floor and pushing on the waist band of the jeans until they were over her butt, then wriggling slowly out of them using the carpet for traction. By the time she had finished she was even more exhausted and lay there panting until she recovered.

She looked over at Thor sound asleep next to her on the rug. “A lot of good you are,” she whispered. The dog opened one eye, gave a half-hearted wag of his tail before letting out a contented hiss of breath as he settled down again.

Emily had spotted a full-length mirror hanging on the wall in the hallway when she entered. It was too far from the light of the fire for her to see very well, so she lifted it from its hook then carried it back into the living room, resting it on the cushions of the couch. She angled her body until she could see her back as clearly as possible and twisted her head over her right shoulder until she could make out the four puncture marks just below her right shoulder blade. They didn’t look as bad or as deep as they felt, she decided with some relief. Blood had already congealed in the wounds but the skin around the edges of each puncture was puffy and had turned an angry looking red. The punctures were directly below the curve of her shoulder blade, so every time she moved her arm the bone and muscle would agitate the wound, which hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. She’d been lucky this time, the wounds weren’t life threatening, as long as it wasn’t already infected.

Emily examined the rest of her body in the mirror. Scratches and dried blood—both hers and that of the monsters she had killed—covered her hands and face. Just below her left breast was a nasty looking bruise that covered the flat of her abdomen and extended around her side and onto her back. Emily gently probed around the area checking each rib. Nothing was broken, thank God, but it was going to be sore as hell for a while.

She was tempted to use some of her precious water to clean off; she felt like she hadn’t showered in months. Instead she reverted to her supply of Wet Wipes, spending the next ten minutes gently wiping away the grime and blood, first from her feet, then making her way up her legs and finally her remaining upper half. By the time she was finished she looked almost presentable… she smelled strongly of lemons, but certainly passed for human again.

Emily had unpacked the first-aid kit from the bergen already. She had a tube of antiseptic cream and some clean gauze ready and waiting. She cleaned the wounds with a couple of iodine soaked pads making sure she pulled out any bits of dirt that had collected in the wound. She twisted the top off the tube of antiseptic cream and applied the pungent smelling cream to her wounds, stretching to reach the furthest hole with the tips of her fingers. The remaining cuts and scratches received similar treatment.

By the time she finished Emily was beginning to feel a little better. No way was she going to win a beauty pageant anytime soon, but at least she was clean and patched up. The gauze she had intended to cover her injuries wasn’t going to work though, she had no way to reach back there and accurately position it to cover all the wounds, so instead, she opted to simply put on a clean tee-shirt.

Emily looked down at Thor. The dog was still fast asleep on the rug in front of the fireplace, as though saving a random stranger’s life from alien invaders was something he did every day. She walked over as quietly as she could and knelt down next to the dog. He didn’t open his eyes when she started stroking him along his spine, but his tail beat a gentle rhythm against the hearth of the fireplace and he stretched all four legs out and gave a rumble of contentment.

“Have I told you what a good boy you are?” she whispered in one cocked ear. His tail beat a little faster as he graciously accepted the praise, but his eyes still stayed closed. She ran her hands down his side and over his flank, searching for the wound she had seen him nibbling at earlier. Her fingers ran across the cut an inch or two below his ribs. She probed around the area as gently as possible; the only indication of discomfort the dog gave was a slowing of his tail wagging. She parted the fur to one side and leaned in to examine the dog’s wound. It looked nasty: a six-inch long tear that, if it had gone any deeper would probably have taken stitches to fix properly. She unscrewed the antiseptic tube and applied some of the cream to her fingers, then, as gently as she could, Emily spread the cream over her new friend’s wound, working it in past the fur until she was sure the entirety of the cut was covered.

Thor gave a low whimper.

“Stings, I know,” she said, “but it’s for your own good.” The dog’s tail thumped the floor with renewed vigor. “Okay, big boy,” she said, when she was finished and confident that was the only wound the dog had received during the fight. “How about I fix us some dinner? You hungry, boy?”

The mention of food seemed to get Thor’s attention because he instantly flipped over onto his front, fixed his eyes on her and let out a half-yawn half-whine that clearly conveyed that he thought food was a really, really good idea.

“Okay, let’s go see what we can find to eat.”

Emily pushed herself to her feet, wincing at the pain in her shoulder as the t-shirt rubbed against the cuts on her back. “I think I have something you may like,” she cooed to the dog padding alongside her while she walked over to where she had left the bergen.

Her poor backpack looked like it had been through a shredder. Several pouches had split open and slashes crisscrossed the back of it where the creature had attacked her. She would deal with that later, what was more important was getting some food inside them both.

Emily untied the top flap of the pack and rooted around inside until she found what she was looking for. She pulled out the bag of jerky strips.

“Perfect,” she said. Thor was now sitting obediently next to her staring at the bag in Emily’s hand. She tore the top strip from the bag and instantly smelled the astoundingly delicious aroma of the dried meat. Her stomach began doing cartwheels. Thor began drooling.

She fed the dog several pieces at a time. He devoured them without even bothering to chew, gulping down six pieces before Emily had even finished one. “Jeez!” she said, laughing as she handed him more of the jerky. “When was the last time you ate anything?”

That was a good question. There didn’t seem to be any food source around the area for the dog. She hadn’t seen any rabbits or squirrels. In fact, when she thought about it, she hadn’t seen any other life at all. Not even so much as a bee or moth since the red rain first fell.

“Okay! Okay! Just slow down.”

They shared the packet of jerky between them, but it was obvious by the time Emily showed Thor the empty bag that neither of them were satiated. “I’ve got an idea,” she said, checking through the bergen again.

“This should do the trick,” she said, pulling four square cans of corned beef from the pack which she then took into the kitchen.

She placed the cans on the counter and used the integrated opener to open the first. Thor sat obediently next to her, but he did not take his eyes from the food for one second. In one of the kitchen cabinets she found two soup bowls. She mashed the entire contents of one of the tins of beef and fat into smaller pieces, breaking the meat apart until it became a soft mush and placed it in one of the bowls. The other bowl she filled with water and added a large glass for her.

“There you go,” she said and placed the two bowls on the floor next to the dog.

Thor looked at the food then back to Emily then back at the food again. He gave a small whine of frustration. Emily looked at him, confused for a moment before she understood what was wrong: this was a well-trained dog. He was starving but he wasn’t going to touch the food until he was told he could. Like a soldier, he stood obediently waiting for the go-ahead from his new mistress.

“Eat, you silly dog,” she said and patted him on the head.

The dog must have been a magician in another life because he made the food disappear in a second. Ignoring the water, Thor stared at the now empty food bowl. He sat back down and looked up at Emily, who had managed barely make a dent in her own dinner in the time it had taken him to devour his in its entirety.

“Wow,” she said, impressed. “Okay. You get one more can, doggy. I don’t want you being sick.” She picked up the bowl, opened a second can for the dog, and placed it back on the floor. It took just a nod from Emily before he began eating, this time at a slightly more leisurely pace.

Apparently satisfied with his dinner, Thor took a few deep gulps of water then cleaned the final few morsels of meat from the bowl with his tongue before curling up at Emily’s feet, letting out a contented sigh and closing his eyes once again.

Emily finished her own meal and washed it down with a few swigs of water from her bottle. Her shoulder hurt sufficiently that she decided it warranted a painkillers that she swallowed with a few more gulps of water. Walking over to the fireplace, she warmed her hands on the orange flames as they danced in the hearth.

She smothered a yawn with her hand and realized how incredibly exhausted she was. It was definitely time for sleep.

There was a perfectly serviceable bed in the master bedroom on the second floor, but Emily didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in someone else’s bed. Besides, sleeping next to the light and warmth of the fireplace was far more appealing. She pulled her flashlight from the bergen and climbed the stairs, after telling Thor to stay put.

In the linen closet on the second floor landing Emily found a spare pillow and a thick blanket. She took them both downstairs, throwing them on the sofa, then pushed the sofa closer to the fire but not so close that it might singe.

Emily climbed into her makeshift nest while Thor slowly circled twice around the rug and then curled up with his head resting on one paw between her and the fire, his eyes never leaving his new mistress until they finally closed in sleep.

Emily Baxter lay silently on the sofa, watching flames dance in the fireplace, basking in the warmth of the fire and the presence of her new friend.

Within minutes, her eyes closed and she too was asleep.

Emily awoke momentarily in the middle of the night to the sound of Thor whimpering. The fire was still burning brightly enough she could see the dog lying next to the fireplace, sound asleep but obviously dreaming. His legs were jerking uncontrollably, his chest rising and falling in short, rapid bursts, his jaws drawn back in a muffled growl as his head moved up and down as if he was running from something.

“Shhhhhhhh!” Emily whispered. “It’s okay boy. You’re safe now. I promise I won’t let anything happen to you. I’m right here.”

The sound of her voice seemed to sooth the dog. Emily could see the tension leave his body and his breathing become slow and deep again. “Good boy,” she whispered.

Her final thought, as she allowed herself to succumb to sleep again, was that she hoped she could follow through with that promise.