4 to 8.
2. "You drive."
"Sure," Jesse replies. "I was planning on it."
You walk around to the passenger side and hop in. Jesse starts the car.
The hills roll by. A strange sense of calm comes over you. You feel nice and warm in the sunlight. Everything else begins to bleed away. Jesse says something, but you're not able to make it out. When you don't reply, she glances over at you, but then looks back to the road.
Your eyes slip down. The sunlight is making you drowsy. You close your eyes all the way.
A hand shakes you back to wakefulness. "Hey," Jesse says. "Stay awake."
You sit up and blink several times, yawning. "Yeah. Sorry, don't know what came over me."
"We're almost there. Don't need to be taking a nap now," Jesse says.
The road takes a sharp turn around a hillside, and slopes down.
"Limestone is in a sort of bowl, like a valley almost," Jesse says. "It's not completely level, but it's more flat there than anywhere else around." As she talks her eyes keep checking her side and rear view mirrors.
"What's up?" you ask.
"Eh?"
"You keep checking your mirrors."
"Oh," Jesse says, frowning a bit. "It's nothing. I thought I saw someone following us."
"Really?" you ask, craning your neck around to look out the back. "I don't see anything."
"Yeah, it was probably just a glitch," Jesse says.
"Well, let me know if you see anything again," you say.
Jesse doesn't reply. Her eyes continue to go to her mirrors.
"What did you see, exact --"
Your question is cut off by a sudden thwak against the front windshield. You jump in your seat and your eyes shift from Jesse to the front.
A crawler is stuck to the windshield, vines extending around the sides to hold it in place. A tiny crack appears under the ball of flesh in the glass.
Jesse slams the brakes and the thing shoots off the front of your car like some kind of monstrous ping pong ball, tentacles trailing between you and it like the roots from an uprooted plant. It lands on the pavement in front of you and rolls in a small circle, coming back around toward you.
"What the fuck is that!?" Jesse screams.
"A crawler! Quick, hit the gas! There may be more of them!"
Just as you finish talking something catches the corner of your eye. You turn your head to watch a crawler come barreling down the hillside toward the passenger door. The stationary car makes an easy target as it launches itself at you, cracking against the window as the car begins to move again. You flinch away from the crawler as the vines flail and grasp looking for purchase.
As you accelerate once more, the crawler in front of you jumps like a cat onto the hood, and then rolls up against the windshield. The car begins to pick up speed and the crawler against your door falls away.
You look behind you to see at least four more of them rolling down the road toward you. Luckily the car seems to be faster.
"What should we do about that one?!" Jesse says, motioning toward the crawler a few feet in front of both of you. Its vines are pulling it toward Jesse's side.
"We can't stop now! There's a shitload right behind us! Keep driving!"
Jesse's eyes widen and the car surges forward as she presses down the gas. The tires squeal as she rounds another turn, barely staying on the road.
"Shit, slow down!" you yell.
The road dips and your eyes go beyond the crawler on your hood for a moment.
Ahead of you is a wall of gray.
"What the fuck --"
The car presses through the outer layer, and the shock of cold and damp through the open vents tells you that you have driven into a fog bank.
For a moment you can't see anything. The fog is too thick. Then it clears a bit. You're able to see about twenty feet in front of you or so. The road keeps going on. Jesse has not slowed down.
"Fuck!" you say, and reach over to grab the wheel. Jesse's eyes are wide and panicked. She stares at you and you tighten your grip.
"Slow the fuck down! We can't see ahead of us!"
Finally your words sink in and Jesse presses the brake. The car slows.
The crawler begins to move faster over to Jesse's door. Vines snake and move like veins against the glass.
"Keep going, but slowly! I'll deal with the crawler!"
Jesse shakes her head. "Take the wheel!"
Before you can protest, she releases her grip and flips out a long hunting knife from somewhere as she rolls the window down with her other hand.
"What the fuck are you --"
"Motherfucker, take this!" Jesse yells as she brings her arm out of the car and around.
The knife stabs right into the center of the crawler with a burst of greenish blood, and it shrieks and falls away, vines shriveling.
Jesse pulls her arm back into the car and takes the wheel again.
"I'm alright, you can let go," she says.
You slowly shift back into your seat. The fog is continuing to thin. You can see maybe thirty feet now.
"Nice knife," you comment.
Jesse only stares at the road in front of her. You pass a wrecked car, then another. Then another.
Jesse swerves to avoid a truck blocking most of the road. All four tires have been blown out. Up ahead you can start to see the vague outlines of buildings.
"We're coming up on the city," you say. Jesse just nods. Her concentration is focused on driving.
"This is the main road through town," she says.
You pass by several stores, a few outlaying buildings. A large billboard looms ahead of you suddenly like a television screen in the dark. It's completely covered in what looks to be graffiti.
Welcome to Limestone
The color is exactly like blood. Jesse does not seem to notice it. She drives through the middle of two more derelicts on the road. Old skid marks lead to a car that has slammed into a telephone pole, the front of the vehicle smashed like an accordion.
Another billboard, on the left this time.
How's your mom?
and under it:
I bet she misses you
You pass a Burger King. There is blood covering all the windows. From inside, a face peers out at you as you glide by, eyes open wide.
"Are you seeing this shit?" you ask.
Jesse swerves again to avoid a fallen streetlight. She doesn't reply.
You look back out the window, this time on your side.
A faceless woman with her head smashed in on the left turns toward you and steps off the sidewalk. She falls behind.
Another billboard. This one seems to be clean. You make out something about low interest rates.
"We're coming up on the main junction of highways in the center of town," Jesse says.
The buildings are taller now. You pass by a strip mall. The windows in every store have been shattered. The cars in the parking lot likewise. The fog makes it hard to make out, but you think you see figures moving inside the stores.
You turn to face the front again. The fog is thinner, or your eyes have adjusted. You can see ahead of you a good bit now.
"If we can get through this, my dad's friend is on the other side of town," Jesse says.
A stop sign passes by on the right. The red is very loud against the gray of everything else.
Up ahead you see a stoplight. A major intersection. Against your own belief, the stoplight is on. The lights are flashing red, green, yellow, red. A large pileup of cars, trucks, and other vehicles are blocking the intersection. A Chevron gas station looks fairly intact on the far right side. You don't have time to look at anything else.
Your eyes are locked in place on the figure standing in front of the pile up, in the center of the road, drawing closer as Jesse drives. It is a small figure, one arm extended, pointing at you. Specifically, you, through the windshield. Long, dark hair falls past either shoulder. Shreds of mist drift past, obscuring your vision.
"Nicole?" you say softly.
You blink.
The figure is taller. Business suit.
No-Face is pointing at you. His red fingernail stands out against everything else. The stoplights all go red, and stay steady.
The mist lifts all around you like a veil, to reveal teeth on all sides, reaching up into the sky like obscene obelisks. They are rusty and bloodstained. A thousand crawlers fall from above like rain.
Jesse screams and spins the wheel. "Hang on!" she yells, and slams the brake.
No-Face cocks his head and you smile at him.
Welcome, a voice not unlike your own says in your head. We've been waiting for you.
Your smile breaks like glass as a sudden, intense pain flares in your mind.
Everything goes black.
End of Act 2
To be continued
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Topic: The Ends (Read 59178 times)