-6-

 

FLAPPING OF WINGS. When Hannah woke up at dawn, she remembered the sound of wings. She might've dreamt them. She hoped she dreamt them. Faint beads of light poked through the sack over their heads. Sable still slept. She roused him. 

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“Time to go,” she whispered.

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She pulled the sack aside, knocking off the four-inch layer of dust, and looked around cautiously. Hannah had gotten them very lost. The streetlights were nowhere in sight. The fact that they’d found asphalt was a small miracle: they were beside what once was a gas station. Maybe she’d taken them down a split in the road at some point. The streetlights had disappeared. The thought came to her that they could backtrack the road and find the streetlights again.

 

“Oh… God,” the thought struck her: I don’t know which way we came from. She should have marked the way they came. Hannah turned around and around like she had the night before, trying to get her bearings. What am I looking for? I couldn't see anything last night! 

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When she finally stilled, she noticed a smell in the air. It was faint, subtle, with just enough strength to pierce through the stench of her old respirator. Salt. Something smelled like salt. She watched the falling dust and noticed that it fell at a slight angle. There was a breeze from somewhere. A coastal breeze. Hannah gasped.

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“We’re close! We’re so close!” 

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She gazed upon the falling dust and found that the breeze was coming from the right of them. Going that way would mean leaving the road and entering the forest… But the man told her to stick to the road. She was already lost, though, wasn’t she? She had little hope of finding her way back to the right road. So… either they could backtrack aimlessly, losing progress in hopes of finding the right road… or they could follow the ocean’s call. 

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Hannah turned to Sable. The boy was covered in muck from neck to shoe. He looked like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, except shorter and thinner. She looked about the same.

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“We’re almost there,” she said. “I promise.”

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She gathered her discarded cans of food and fed Sable on the way into the forest. They moved quickly. Caution didn’t matter. She was so close to the coast she could taste it. And yet a seed of doubt had grown silently within her. The man might have been right. Maybe the dust was everywhere. Maybe the coast wasn't clean and safe from Shrikes. Maybe the water was thick and gray, like the sludge they were covered with. Maybe the trout were all dead. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe.

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I have to know. I have to see it.

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Hannah looked up from her feet. She stopped. 

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There was a woman stepping out from behind a tree. She was just forty feet in front of them, facing away. Her hair was long and wild. She had torn jeans on her legs and nothing at all on top. She turned toward them, revealing her chest. Her skin had been stripped between her ribs so that only slashed holes remained, like a fish’s gills. It was a cage of flesh. A single round hole was just beneath her ribs, big enough for a rodent to crawl through. A beady eye gazed through at Hannah. 

 

She carefully drew her weapon. Her hands shook but she kept the rest of herself absolutely still.

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A voice rose from within the dead. Prettttty.

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The voice reverberated from the slits in the corpse. Hannah looked at the body's face. It looked like she was once someone's grandmother. Hannah set the sack of food down gently. She flicked off the safety of her gun… then chambered a round. 

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The bird burst out of the woman like a missile. Hannah grabbed Sable and they ran to the left, barely dodging the bird’s attack. They sprinted hard. Hannah only had four shots in her gun. Just four. She couldn't waste them. She needed to save them for the exact right moment.

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The bird dove at her face. It clawed at her respirator. She swatted at it and the bird flew off, laughing. They ran hard, pushing through the dust and sludge. The bird dove at her but veered off before it touched her. Its laughter echoed around them. It mocked her. 

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Hannah pressed her back against a tree. She held Sable close and held the gun out. Her whole body shook now. She couldn't see the bird. She couldn't hear it either. It was somewhere in the trees. She imagined its eyes watching her. Where the hell was it?

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A small set of feet climbed up her shoulder. Her body froze. She didn't look over. She didn't dare. 

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I founnnd youuuuuu.

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Hannah turned the gun and fired. The gunshot deafened her, making her ears ring. A little blood splattered on her face. She opened her eyes again and her hearing returned. The bird flew a lopsided course, blood and feathers falling from the wing Hannah had clipped with her bullet. It shrieked as it disappeared into the trees. Hannah was lucky she hadn't shot herself in the head. It had been a clumsy, desperate shot and the gun had a harder kick than she'd been expecting. She trembled.

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"Go. Go."

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Hannah turned to run. She found she couldn't. Her brain wouldn’t let her move. She became entranced at the sight before her. 

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There were bodies in the trees. Human corpses, impaled by sharpened tree limbs, hung in the air. They looked like they'd died yesterday. There were dozens of them, their feet dangling above her head. A Shrike’s nesting ground.

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Hannah watched in horror as the little Shrike walked along one of the limbs and settled upon a dead man's head. It was a heavy corpse. A giant corpse. A soldier’s corpse. As the bird perched on the body's shoulder, the corpse opened its gray eyes. The corpse lifted itself off of the limb it was impaled on and gently climbed down to the ground. The Shrike crawled into the hole where the corpse was impaled and peered through the gill-like slits. Then it chirped.

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Hannah yanked Sable away from the trees and the corpses. They bolted through the sludge. The sound of clumsy footfalls came after them. The Shrike's corpse gave chase. Hannah dashed through the trees as the soldier gained.

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Sable slipped from Hannah's grasp. He fell into the dust. Hannah stopped and reached for him but the soldier was almost there--his massive form reaching out to snag them. Hannah gave a small cry and lifted the gun. She held it as steady as she could. She fired a shot. Missed. Missed completely. The bullet thundered through the air and vanished without touching its mark. 

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The soldier threw Hannah back, knocking her against a tree and pinning her to it. The soldier dragged her up by her arms so that her feet weren't touching the ground. Hannah fought but the dead man was strong. She couldn't break his grasp. 

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She tilted the weapon just slightly. She fired her third round and it struck the corpse in the side of the head. The shock loosened the corpse’s grip for only a second before it pinned her to the tree again. Now her face was nearly against the soldier’s stinking ribs. 

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The wounded bird lashed out from the safety of its nest, biting at her respirator. It wanted to inflict pain. It wanted vengeance. Hannah squirmed and tried to keep the bird away from her face. She twisted her hand, trying to aim the gun at the bird. The Shrike noticed. The corpse threw her aside. She cradled the gun to herself and landed hard. She skidded across the sludge. The impact knocked the breath out of her and she gasped for air.

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She lifted herself and turned. To her horror, everything was blurry. She reached up. Her glasses were gone. She could see a hulking mass approaching: the soldier's corpse stepped toward her. She searched for her glasses desperately. She pulled rocks and sticks and bones out of the sludge. No glasses. She was helpless. 

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“Sable!” she stood and spun around, trying to find him. She tore off her respirator to shout: “Sable! Sable!” 

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She couldn’t see him. Maybe he was hiding. 

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Hannah kept backing up as the soldier neared. She squinted her eyes but it didn’t help. She couldn’t see the Shrike inside the body. Hannah held the gun but she didn’t know where to point it. She couldn’t kill the corpse. She had to kill the bird. She was so blind that she didn’t know where to aim. She needed another pair of eyes. She needed someone else to pull the trigger.

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“Sable, goddammit!” she screamed. The soldier sloshed forward, its body gaining speed as it ran. Hannah shook all over but held out the gun. She held fast, waiting for the body to get close enough that she could see the beady little brown eyes.

 

Then Sable stepped forward. He stood in between her and the impending collision. Sable met her gaze. For a moment he was the only thing she could see. Everything else was a distant, dreamy haze. He turned away from her and looked out at the incoming corpse. Sable charged toward the undead Goliath, blocking the shot Hannah was already afraid to make.

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She shouted the boy's name. 

 

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The two blurs merged into one. 

 

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She heard small wings beating violently. She heard the Shrike cry out.

 

The charge was followed by a miserable, wretched silence. Hannah was in shock. She still held the gun but could no longer see the dark blur in front of her. She was paralyzed with fear. What happened? Where's Sable?

 

She willed herself to take a step. It felt like the world moved instead of her. She walked straight and approached a dark spot in the dust. The soldier’s corpse was on its back. 

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Hannah timidly stepped closer and closer and her vision became clear. The Shrike hung out of the hole in the corpse’s chest. The little bird had been mangled, its neck broken. Something had torn it open. Hannah saw motion out of the corner of her eye. 

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Sable entered her field of vision slowly. He held out a muddied pair of glasses to her. Hannah snatched them away and held them to her chest as though a child retrieving a beloved lost toy. Her body relaxed a little.

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Hannah was forming a sentence. It was a question. It was many questions. She tried to comprehend what she'd heard and what had happened. Sable walked away and Hannah followed. She wiped the gunk from her glasses as best she could. She placed her glasses on. Her good lens was cracked.