In the Aftermath: Burning of the Dawn Read online

  “I don’t know; she was probably just scared.”

  “Yeah, but what if there’re other people here – people we should really be afraid of… or something worse.”

  “The monsters?” fretted Sophie.

  “No!” Her father immediately replied. “I stayed up all night last night and it was as quiet as can be. There are no monsters here.”

  “She said we should leave though.” Joseph responded with both confusion and concern.

  “She also pointed a gun at us and threatened to kill us. She’s obviously not in her right mind. The woman was just afraid is all, all right?”

  Joseph, again, made no reply. What his father said made some sense, yet he still had apprehensions. She might have been startled by their presence, but to Joseph, Clarissa seemed pretty well in control. She had rage in her, that much was obvious, but her fear was not of them. Something else had spooked her.

  Louis beckoned his son to return to the dryer confines of the furniture shop once again. This time he did so after giving the quiet town one final glance. The old shop was filled with old couches, daybeds, chairs, tables, and other living-room friendly appliances. These items had little use in modern times, so very little of it was pillaged by scavengers. The store did, however, provide a comfortable setting for a bit of quiescence. The Doniphans had arrived the day before and spent the night here. Even though there were plenty of options for decent sleeping arrangements, this place was a little musty and it lacked the feel of a familial home that the Doniphans were accustom to. There were plenty of abandoned homes throughout the town, all of them in fact, so Louis and his daughter thought it best to stay in one of them for the night instead of the old furniture shop; Joseph had no opinion on the matter.

  Their vehicle, a medium-sized, gray, hybrid sedan, was parked behind an old Baptist church a short distance from the furniture shop. The family retrieved their car and drove leisurely around the neighborhood prospecting potential houses for a short-time stay. Father and daughter enjoyed this humble pastime. Louis did this partially in an attempt to lighten their spirits after the ordeal they had endured earlier. It worked well in his daughter’s case, as she enjoyed shopping around for the house that they would be spending the night in. Joseph, however, showed little interesting in much of anything at this time; he only sat silently in the backseat. None of them took any notice of the skinned pine trees scattered intermittently around the town.

  “Hey, hey, how ‘bout that one?!” Sophie inquired excitedly. She was looking out her window at an old, stone, two-story house. It was at the edge of town and behind it was a field of rye that now grew wild and tall. Louis could see why his daughter liked the place: it possessed a familiar look to their old house, though this one had a slightly creepier tone to its appearance. Nevertheless, he agreed that it should be their home for the night.

  Louis parked the car in front of the house. He and his family departed from the vehicle and observed the place thoroughly. Little Sophie ran up the porch to the front door and tried the doorknob – it was locked. She was a bit disappointed, but was also more determined. She ran around to the backside of the house to look for another door. Her father followed her trail to find her struggling with the backdoor now.

  “It’s locked, too!” Sophie declared.

  “I figured it would be,” Her father spoke as he approached. “That’s why I brought this!” Louis removed a wallet-looking object.”

  “What’s that?” Sophie asked.

  “It’s my special keys that can open any door.” Her father replied. What he possessed was a set of lock-picking tools. The backdoor only had a simple turn-style knob-lock which Louis easily bypassed. After he and his daughter entered, they made their way to the front door and unlocked it from the inside.

  Sophie wanted to stay inside and explore the house. Her father allowed it, but forbid her from going near the cellar. He had noticed the cellar door, which had a broken handle, when he made his way through the house. He wanted to investigate it further before allowing his children to go down. Joseph was standing by the car looking aimlessly to the soggy ground below. Louis soon joined his son.

  “It’s not a bad place,” Louis said. “Mostly furnished and in pretty good shape. I think it’ll be comfy for the night.”

  “Yeah…” was Joseph’s halfhearted reply.

  “Oh come on, there might be some cool things in there, you never know.”

  “We just take what we want now?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Louis spoke as he walked to the back of the car. “We take what we can use if no one else is using it, and there’s no one using anything in that house.” Louis unlocked the car’s trunk and opened it. “Come help me with this stuff, will ya?”

  Joseph met his father at the back of the car. Louis handed his son a gallon-sized jug of water and a red, heavy duty, utility flashlight. Also in the trunk were two large boxes of compressed ration bars. High in energy and a long shelf-life made these concentrated packets of food invaluable. Louis did not like leaving them alone for extended amounts of time. He hoisted up both boxes in his arms and carried them into the house; Joseph followed. Louis returned to the vehicle to retrieve some clothing for him and his kids. He shut the car’s trunk and doors, locked them up, and then returned to the house for the night’s stay. The car had a built-in security system, but Louis did not activate it. This was done intentionally as the racket the alarm would make would likely cause more problems than it would solve. Even though the alarm was not armed, it still had a subtle way of displaying its presence: a small, intermittently blinking, red light was mounted on the dashboard just under the window. In the light of day this tiny, red light was barely noticeable. Nevertheless, it blinked consistently.

  Once everyone was in the house, Louis relocked both the front and back entrances. He then set off to explore the cellar; the door to which was in the kitchen on the backside of the house. The first thing he had noticed about the cellar door was the broken handle. It was bent at a downward and outward angle and the wood around it was splintered, as if something had struck it in a descending motion from the other side. The door itself was slightly ajar and creaked subtly as Louis opened it further. A set of stairs waited before him. Somewhere within the cellar was a window to the outside world, but the light of the day was little—like the window itself—so Louis could not see very well from his spot at the top of the staircase. He was now in possession of the red flashlight, which he switched on as he descended the stairs. The aroma of the cellar was not much different than any other cellar Louis had ever been in. That was a relief to him as he half expected there to a pile of rotting corpses at the bottom. There were no corpses to be seen, but there were shards of clothing and a torn up pair of shoes. Many shelves lined the cellar interior with numerous items strewn about them; most of which were tools and various home repair and gardening paraphernalia. On the floor, amongst the clothing scraps, was a flashlight similar to the one Louis was currently holding. He tried the flashlight, but its battery was long dead. Louis then took notice of something else on the floor nearby. It was a small, metallic object with a wiry tube protruding from one side – a pacemaker. Even though this item was a little strange, Louis did not feel it was something to get worked up about (so he told himself). He walked away to examine the rest of the cellar to see if there were any items that could prove to be more useful than they were creepy. As he scanned around the cellar, an item in one of the corners grabbed his attention: it was a broken shovel. The blade was bent and the shaft had been snapped in half. As Louis walked towards the mangled tool, he briefly looked to the small cellar window, but failed to notice any of the ominous warning signs that it possessed. Something cracked beneath his foot as he approached. He shined his light to the floor to discover that he’d stepped on and broke a pair of dentures. At that point, he decided to end his inspection of the cellar and promptly left.

  The examination of the rest of the house proved much less cryptic. There were tw
o bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. One bedroom was mostly empty save for a small desk with an old lamp on it and a pair of pallets lying in the floor that had not seen any recent use. A large bay window was opposite to the bedroom entrance. It possessed an open drape which let a decent amount of light into the dreary room. The other room was much different. It had no bay window, only one much smaller one on the wall adjacent to the entryway, but it was colorfully decorated all around. Pictures and paintings adorned much of the wall space; most of them consisted of landscapes, but one was of an elderly couple standing with two younger men, likely their children. There was a comfy looking queen-sized bed in the middle of the room with an old, impressively designed, oak trunk sitting on the floor at its end. In it was handmade quilts; Louis resolved to put them to good use while he stayed there. It was decided that the whole family would stay together in the other bedroom for the night. Sophie wanted to sleep in the big bed in the sweeter room, but her father feared the possibility that something else might have taken up residence within the mattress, such as black widow or brown recluse spiders. Despite her initial dissatisfaction with the sleeping arrangements, Sophie soon dozed off atop her bed of quilts shortly after eating a small feast of chips and crackers. After he and his son had finished their portions, Louis returned once more to the cellar to hide his boxes of food beneath the staircase. If he and his family had to leave in a hurry, his valuable stash should be safe enough down in the cellar, and then possibly retrieved at later, safer, time. He returned to his son and sleeping daughter as the twilight of the outside world had slowly begun to fade into darkness.

  “It’s not too bad, is it?” Louis spoke to his son concerning the housing arrangements.

  “It’s okay, I guess.” Joseph answered lethargically, but not from tiredness.

  “What’s wrong, Jo? Our run-in with that woman earlier still bothering you? Because I seriously doubt we’ll ever see her again.”

  Joseph hesitated for a moment before speaking, “You think that maybe… we should’ve followed them?”

  Louis cracked a faint laugh at the question, thinking that perhaps his son was joking. It was obvious, however, that his son was still his usual, serious self. “No, Jo,” he answered. “I don’t think we should’ve followed them.”

  “Well, why not? I mean, you said it yourself – she was just scared is all. She didn’t mean us any harm.”

  “She probably didn’t, but that woman was unhinged. I didn’t want to upset Sophie earlier, but you were right when you said she would’ve killed us if her daughters hadn’t been there. She probably would’ve murdered us all right there on that sidewalk.”

  “But she didn’t,” Joseph replied. “And she’s still out there and she probably needs supplies, for her and her daughters.”

  “We can’t spare any of our supplies;” his father asserted. “I don’t care how needy they are… or how pretty they are.”

  “It’s not like that, those girls were way older than me, but we could’ve helped each other. They probably came to this town looking for food.”

  “That is for you, me, and your sister – not strangers. If that woman knew we had those boxes of food she probably would’ve killed us for them. You know why? So she and her daughters could survive.”

  “Why did we even go looking for other people if you didn’t plan on helping any of them?”

  “I don’t mind helping out decent folks if they help us out a little in return, but I don’t think that woman had any intentions of helping out anybody. What would she have given us in return? Our lives?”

  “We could’ve stayed together and worked together; the more of us there are the better we can defend ourselves and survive.”

  “That’s too many mouths to feed; we can’t take the risk of…”

  “Did you not see what she was carrying, dad?” Joseph interjected. “She had a gun! One of her daughters had a gun! The other one had a knife that was bigger than Sophie. We can’t protect ourselves, and that crazy woman proved it.”

  “I remember her gun, son.” His father calmly replied. “She had it pointed right at me – at all of us. It was stupid of me to try and talk to her. I saw a lone woman with her two daughters and figured maybe she was exactly what we were looking for; that, along with everything you’re thinking now, but I was wrong. I’m sorry I put you and your sister through that ordeal. I’ll be more careful when dealing with people from here on out; that’s a promise.”

  “I still think we should look for them. They know us now; they know we’re not dangerous; we could help each other.”

  “That woman wouldn’t protect us. She would toss us out without a second’s hesitation to defend her own children… and if it’s those monsters you’re worried about, then well, she’s gonna need a bigger gun.”

  Joseph stayed quiet at that point. The monsters—The Sayona—were usually an off limit topic as Sophie was especially frightened of them. No one in the family had had any encounters with any Sayona, but they had all heard the stories. Horror stories of demon children with dragon skin, hyena heads, and scorpion tails hunting people in the dead of night. The stories were not that far off. It wasn’t just Sophie that feared them, they terrified Joseph as well. What frightened him the most was an allegation held by many that the beasts could not be killed. Louis, realizing he had broken their unwritten rule, tried to mitigate what he had said.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Louis attempted to placate the situation with his son. “Sayona only live in the big cities now and we’re a hundred miles away from either Pittsburg or Cleveland. We don’t have to worry about them, but we do have to worry about people.”

  “They scout,” Joseph spoke enigmatically. “When the food runs out in the cities they head into the smaller towns to look for more.”

  “Maybe that’s true, but like I said, we’re far away from them.” Louis had never seen the Sayona before, but he’d heard them once in an audio file he had found on an abandoned tablet computer. The sound the Sayona made was a cross between the purring of a cat and the growl of some unholy beast. It was frightening. Louis spoke again, “All right, we’ll probably never find them, but if Sophie’s okay with the idea, then we’ll go look for that woman and her daughters tomorrow. Like I said though, we probably won’t find them, and if by some miracle we do, that woman isn’t likely to want anything to do with us.”

  “But at least we would’ve tried.” Joseph added.

  “Yeah, and that’s all we can do… c’mon, let’s get some sleep.”

  Louis went to the bay window and pulled down the large shade as the darkness of night quelled the waning moments of twilight. Joseph laid down in the pallet made for him and his father did the same in a pallet of his own. Louis had the red flashlight with him, but dared not switch it on after dark. Despite his vows that they were nowhere near any Sayona, he knew better than to switch on any kind of light after nightfall; anybody left alive in the world knew better than that. The Sayonas’ eyes were wrought for darkness; their extreme sensitivity to light enabled them to detect the slightest glimmers of illumination from miles away.

  “I think they’ll like me,” Joseph spoke softly. “That lady’s daughters, I know they’re older than me, but I think they’ll like me okay.”

  “They’d be fools if they didn’t,” his father replied. “Now let’s get some rest.”

  “Okay,” Joseph spoke. “Goodnight, dad.”

  About an hour had passed and Louis was still awake. The events of the day still weighed on him and he replayed them over and over again in his head. How could he have handled it differently? Would any of the other outcomes have been any better? That woman who had pointed a gun at him and his children: he hated her for what she did, yet she intrigued him as well. Her beauty equaled her madness. Louis’s wife, Marie, had died nearly two years ago, but even before that, intimacy between the two was rare. She was a sociology major and had been offered a teaching position at Syracuse University, which she immediately accepted. Louis was hap
py for her, but also a little jealous. She was killed on Christmas Eve while at a seminar in New York City – one of the first places hit by the alien aggressors’ initial strike. He loved and missed his wife, but she looked nothing like the woman who’d held him under her gun earlier that day. Of course, she didn’t act like that crazy woman either, being that his wife was still sane the last time he had seen her. Louis didn’t know if he should hate that mysterious, angry woman, pity her, or adore her. He did a little of all three. What he really wanted at that moment was to get her out of his head so he could get some proper rest.

  His endeavor of clearing his mind of Clarissa was unsuccessful at first; however, something else soon captured his attention. Louis heard a low rumble in the distance. He glanced back at the covered bay window. The moon was practically full and the light from it could still be seen through the window shade. The storm had passed on a while back, but thunder was the primary suspect for the origin of the strange sound. Louis listened attentively, moving from his pallet closer to the window. The sound came again… it was not thunder. Louis put his hand to his mouth to quiet his escalating gasps for air. He then bit down upon his finger in an attempt to wake himself from the nightmare he hoped he was dreaming. He was not dreaming; the Sayona were closing in.

  They were somewhere in the rye field out behind the house. Louis could hear their low-rumbling purrs nearby, but not from directly behind the home in which he and his family were currently occupying. He peered cautious behind the window shade, deathly fearing what he might see. The moonlight illuminated the rye field just enough to make out the locations of the Sayona. He could not see them yet, but he could detect three of them moving around in the field. A moment later he caught a glimpse of one of their tails; a moment more and one of them finally appeared. She was smaller than what Louis was expecting, yet still a dreadful sight. She emerged from the field a few houses down and quickly disappeared into the shadows of the nearby homes. The other two Sayona soon emerged as well; they, too, were just as hideous as their sister. From a distance they looked almost human, except for the long tails and the walking on all fours. They moved like insects—their movements quick and deliberate—and they acted like animals. When the second and third Sayona emerged from the field, they came out sparring playfully with one another. Despite being hunters of the night, they were not in the least bit stealthy. Their bright, glowing-green eyes were easy to spot, and the Sayona were very noisy: constantly purring to each other and making an assortment of other strange sounds. Louis surmised that the Sayona either did not think there was anything in this town worth pursuing, or that they were extremely confident in their hunting abilities. He prayed it was the former.