Errant Shot by William Petersen
***
“Tim! Get up!” Tina's panicked voice rocked him out of a deep sleep. “Get up, get up now! We have to go. Something is going on. We have to get back,” she frantically told him, while simultaneously pulling him from beneath the covers and onto the floor by his arm, where he landed with a grunt.
“What, what? What's going on?” he groggily asked.
“Look!” she yelled, pointing at the television set in the center of the room.
Tim's heart rate began to increase in time with each word he heard, “...spreading rapidly... fatal dehydration symptoms... widespread panic...” the clips came to him, and he instantly felt an overpowering dread.
“Where are the phones?” Tina asked, wide-eyed and looking like a trapped animal.
“In the truck. Give me a second to get dressed, and we'll go,” Tim told her. Ignoring all after his first three words, Tina grabbed the keys from the small round table and ran out the door, leaving it open. Tim knew she wanted to check on her kids, and his dread loomed even larger. He was just getting his shoes on when he heard her scream from the parking lot. Tim ran out the door to see her squatting next to the vehicle, her head resting on her knees. He ran down to her as fast as he could and saw that she was holding her phone between both her hands and sobbing.
“The last message was from Charlie, he said they were sick...” she mumbled.
Tim choked up a little but tried to hide it. He knew all three of her children well and adored them. Charlie was the youngest. He reached down and touched her on the shoulder, then moved around to the driver's side of the truck and retrieved his own phone. He didn't expect to have any calls from friends or family, as he really didn't have any, outside of those he knew from the apartment complex, but as he had hoped, there were several calls from the university.
He dialed up his voice mail and began walking back around the vehicle to comfort Tina. She was dialing numbers, but from what he could see, she wasn't getting any kind of connection. He hit a button on the phone, then put it back to his ear to listen to his messages, then stopped at the corner of the truck as all the color drained from his face.
Professor Winston's voice emanated from the phone sounding weary and afraid, “Tim, you've got to call me. Don't come here. It's not a fossil Tim, it's... something else, something made, or engineered. We think it's a weapon, some kind of chemical weapon. The bright side is that it proves that there is intelligent life out there and other water worlds as well, but it also shows that they must have the same propensity for destruction as we do, maybe even more so.”
The next message played through the tiny speaker. The professor's voice was very different in this one, as if he had a severe chest cold, “It wasn't a meteor at all. It was a vessel, a container. We're not sure if it was directed at us or if it was just an errant shot, but once we opened it, it began working right away. It gels water, all types of water. Rivers, streams and lakes, even tap water.”
A deep and wet coughing fit racked the professor, when he had regained his composure, the message continued. “It congeals the water in cells, in our cells, and the water in the air. Wherever you are Tim, just keep going. People are dying, and it isn't pretty. Don't stop, get to the ocean...”
Another fitful coughing spell with a distinct whine of pain following it, “It doesn't seem to like saltwater. That's all we know about it so far, other than it's a self-replicating, inorganic compound. That means we can't kill it, because it's not alive.” Violent coughing, proceeded by the sounds of hacking and spitting. “It's more of a programmed nanobot... but with chemicals, like some type of engineered molecule. Don't touch anything affected, or anyone. It spreads by contact. Get to the ocean, Tim, as fast as you can.”
The message ended. Tim tried to dial the university but was met with the message: 'All circuits are busy, please try your call again later.' Distant pops diverted his gaze from the phone to the direction from which he thought the noise had originated. Several more pops of a slightly different pitch, sounding just like firecrackers, confirmed his suspicions. “We need to get out of here,” he said, looking back down at Tina, who was slumped against the side of the truck and staring blankly at her phone.
Tim realized she was in shock and carefully scooped her up and deposited her into the passenger seat, where she sat quietly, her head leaning against the window. The sun glared into Tim's eyes, and while shielding them, he noticed that there were only two other vehicles left in the lot. One of them looked to have been there for some time. “It seems we were the last to know...” he concluded with a whisper.
He looked in the direction of the highway, less than a mile away, and he could see that it was packed with vehicles that were going nowhere. Upon closer inspection, he could see small puffs of black smoke billowing up in places, not the smoke of exhaust, but of fires. Tim climbed into the truck and looked over at the slumped form of Tina and said, “We can't risk the highways, I'm going to try to get out of here using side roads.”
There was no response or movement from her. He put the truck in gear and left their belongings in the hotel room. Tim wanted to get out as fast as possible and away from the exposed feeling he had at that moment. After several miles, Tina sat up, looked around and behind her, then craned her neck as a sign denoting a southern state road sped by on their right.
“Stop!” she yelled abruptly.
Tim looked at her and was about ask why, when she began smacking the dashboard and passenger door, screaming for him to stop. “What the Hell?” he asked her, after they had pulled onto the shoulder of the road.
“I have to get back to my kids,” she said, and without looking at him, opened the passenger door slightly.
“You can't, there's nothing to go back to, weren't you listening?” Tim pleaded.
“Yeah, I was. And this is all your fault. I want to get away from you and go help my kids,” she said through angry, tear-filled eyes.
“I didn't do anything. What are you talking about?” Tim countered, not wanting to say out loud what they both already knew: the kids were already gone.
“You let it out... whatever it is,” she said, as she exited the vehicle and slammed the door behind her.
Tim was temporarily dumbstruck and struggled to comprehend what had just transpired, then looked behind him to see that Tina had taken off running down the road in the direction they had just come. He fumbled with the seat belt, and then, realizing he could never catch her on foot anyway, started the SUV and turned it around to follow her.
Tim saw her look back in his direction when he was about fifty feet behind her, the burning anger in her eyes convinced him to just coast along and hope she would come to her senses soon. Movement caught his eye from a driveway extending into the treeline to his right. A figure was running down a gravel driveway at a frantic pace. Tim's heartbeat quickened as he wondered if the person was coming to ask for help or try to rob them, thinking back to the pops he had heard in the motel parking lot.
The figure didn't look quite right to Tim. It was sort of limping as it ran and, for a few long moments, he couldn't understand why there was no dust kicking up from around its feet. That's when Tim noticed the person had no shoes on and was leaving contrasting red footprints on the white, gravel drive. His stare moved upward to the person's face, he could see it was a male from the build, to the sticky, thick trail of red streaking off its face and around the side of the head.
Tim hit the horn, and as Tina turned to look back at him she noticed the man approaching. She looked back at Tim, and he could clearly see the panic on her face, even from his current distance. She screamed, and before he could react at all, the figure was upon her, knocking her to the ground and pouncing on her like a wild animal. Tina was screaming, and the man seemed to be biting at her, though it didn't look like he was doing it very well. He seemed to be sucking on her, trying to get at her face, but she fought hard. He must have gotten frustrated, because his hands began raining a rapid succession of blows down on her
Tim opened his door and put one leg out when again movement from his peripheral vision stopped him cold. Another person, or thing, had emerged from the same driveway, laboriously limping up to the scene, dragging an unmoving leg as it went. The second one began moving in to get at Tina as well, and a small scuffle ensued. While the two things postured and squared off, Tina had unsteadily gotten to her feet, blood dripping down from her swollen face. Her movement brought them both back to her in an instant, and both attacked with a renewed fervor, biting deep and clawing away at exposed skin, then lapping at the wounds.
Tim retracted his leg and closed the door, just as a third thing, obviously female and without any clothing at all, its skin a pale, almost yellow, joined in the macabre spectacle. He put the SUV into reverse and backed up about one-hundred feet, then stopped. Tim slammed the transmission into drive and stomped on the gas, squealing his tires and producing a large, white cloud of acrid smoke. The things didn't seem to pay it any attention, distracted by their feeding, until the speeding vehicle was just a few feet away.
Tim impacted the four bodies at nearly fifty miles per hour, but there was only one real thud, and that was caused by Tina's body. The things erupted into a mess of coagulated bio-debris, as if an explosive charge had been detonated from within their bodies. A thick, slimy goo coated the front of the SUV. He continued to accelerate for several hundred feet, until he blew enough of it off with the wind to get the wipers working. He stopped for a moment and took several deep breaths,then turned the truck around and began heading south again. He tried not to think about it as the tires crunched over the mangled mess in the road.
He drove on through the rest of the day and night, not wanting to stop or risk getting out, even though he had not seen a single functioning car or truck on any of the roads, which only added to his sense of foreboding. He urinated into water bottles and ate what junk food littered the floor of the SUV. The lack of sleep and building stress had him talking to himself, trying to cope and reason out what was happening. “Almost there,” Tim said to the empty vehicle, “We just gotta make it to the ocean,” he whispered.
Another hour passed, and the signs denoting the way to the beach were starting to appear more frequently. He picked one at random and followed it to an empty parking lot overlooking a pier and an endless expanse of beach to the right, while left led back to houses and eventually, a town. He reached down and hit the button to recline his seat all the way back, then carefully took out a cigarette and lit it, drawing long and deep. “They weren't trying to eat her,” he said, staring ahead through the windshield, “They were trying to drink her. They were trying to get the water out of her, since theirs was turning into a gel inside them,” he concluded as the bluish-gray smoke drifting out of his mouth curled and danced around his head.
He rolled down his window to let his ears partake in the spectacle that his eyes could barely process, as the wispy cloud inside the vehicle was sucked out and washed away. A low-pitched slapping sound, both rhythmic and completely alien, filled the truck and Tim's ears. He took another long, deep drag from his cigarette and leaned down a little farther into his seat. “I guess they were wrong about saltwater,” he said, gazing out at the thickening, gelatinous ocean before him. For as far as his eyes could see, the waters were filled with the bodies of sea creatures suspended in the gel, rolling lifelessly as the wave action moved them around.
He could see that it was moving up and out of the water too, climbing up the beach through the moisture in the sand. Something wet hit his left cheek, and he snapped up in the seat, instinctively wiping at it. His hand came away with a patch of clear, sticky goo adhered to it, sporting a small tint of red in the very center. His cheek and fingers were already tingling, and when he looked into the mirror, he could see, as well as feel, the dramatic process of the substance spreading across his face. It started to sting, then burn. The vision in his left eye gave way to a beige world of dancing shadows, then it was gone completely. Tim looked up into the mirror to see that his left eye had clouded over with a milky haze, and it seemed to be sagging down within its socket.
He stumbled out of the vehicle, holding on to the side for support. His body was starting hurt all over now, and he was more thirsty than he had ever been, so thirsty it was painful. Tim felt a building pressure from inside his head and he heard a 'bloop' sound, then felt warm liquid running down the left side of his face. So this is how the world ends, he thought with a healthy dose of cynicism, ...not with a bang or a catastrophic impact but with a cold, wet slap.
He lurched away from the SUV and stumbled as he attempted to walk among the thickening tendrils of clear ooze massing up and across the beach. The substance immediately entangled his feet and deposited him face-down in the deadly mire with a resounding smack. The instinct to breathe quickly took over, and he tried inhaling through the thick slime to no avail. The effort only succeeded in drawing the deadly substance deep into his nostrils and throat, where it attacked his body from within as mercilessly as it did the exterior. Tim attempted to raise his head enough to draw in some air, but long, quivering strands of red-tinted gel connected his face to the goo, and his nose and lips were rapidly and painfully dissolving.
Out of the corner of his remaining eye, he caught sight of the pulsating mass of gelled sea water undulating just a few inches from his face. The muscles and tendons in his hands succumbed to the attack, and he was no longer able to resist. Water... can't live with out it, Tim thought as his body relaxed and slid down into the translucent slime, first contorting and writing, then twitching for several minutes until finally still. The sun cast a kaleidoscope of colors reflecting off of, and refracted by, the new composition of the water. Displaying different hues of red, yellow and orange, the shimmering luminescence resembled that of the aurora as it danced across the empty sky and barren land, accompanied by the dull, wet slaps of a dead ocean.
The End
*****
“I write because I'm terribly unhappy if I don't...” - W.P.
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