Chapter 15 - Vignetting

Chapter 15

Vignetting

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My ears were ringing with the muffled sound of the news broadcast through the car radio, and my eyelids refused to open. A panic set through me. I tried to squirm, but I couldn’t move whatsoever, trapped between the seat and the deflated airbag. My legs, they felt numb. I could only rely on my nose to guide me. It smelled of diesel and charred metal. In it, the faint stench of alcohol.

I couldn’t recall how I had gotten into this situation. Everything was fuzzy. A horn, a loud horn, was a sound I remembered.

“Help,” I gasped in a croaky voice. I coughed, choking on the smoke around me. My mouth tasted of metal. Blood rolled off my lips and into my lap. “Help,” I groaned.

My vision came back in blurry gasps. I was struggling not to surrender. Around me was a mush of colors: black, red, orange, and gray. There was a singular sliver of green—a piece of fabric melting into the dashboard of the car. I recognized it.

I turned my head to the side. With it came a strong flare of pain through my cheek, a burning pain. I tried to reach up and grab it, but my arm was snapped. The bone protruded out of my elbow. I cried, the pain being realized. Tears rolled off my cheek onto the console next to me. They fizzled into smoke.

Beside me I could make out the bent roof. It had collapsed, covering the passenger seat. With my reorientation I could smell an acrid, putrid stench: burning flesh.

“No!” I yelled with all the strength I had left.

It all faded. The corners of white in my vision expanded until the scene around me dissipated into an empty, colorless expanse.

My heart slowed. I felt calm again. Whatever painful memory had just been relived was slowly fading to the back of my mind. I was nestled within the silence around me.

I felt a tingle down my spine, originating from the hum of a voice I had heard before. I could hear her relief in the vibrations. Her figure was visible as pink strands in the vague form of a body.

“That could’ve been bad,” I replied, yet I didn’t know what we were talking about. I could feel it, though.

She hummed back. This time in a humorous tune.

I laughed, but I didn’t know what was so funny about what she had said. I wasn’t confused, though. It felt natural coming out of me. I wanted to laugh more with the disembodied hum. She was so inviting, so familiar.

The hum came again, this time with a question. It seemed sincere.

This time, my voice hesitated. I knew my answer, but my voice stuttered like there was something holding it back. “Y-yes,” I finally spoke.

I had taken too long. I could feel that its presence was no longer with me, the strands of pink fading into the background. It felt lonely, and even the soothing nature of the white expanse didn’t fix it.

It shattered with a sharp, irritating sound, splinters of red cracking through the whiteness. I went to grab my ears, but there was nothing to grab and nothing to grab with. It was then I realized that in the emptiness I floated in, I was a part of as my own vague figure of pink strands. It caught me off guard, but it didn’t frighten me.

What did frighten me was the return of the ringing sound. The white vision broke apart, opening up and revealing the reality behind it.

“Cade!” A voice called in a broken shout.

I startled awake, staring into a pair of brown eyes perpendicular to mine. “Hannah,” I muttered, blinking back my vision. “What—” I started, but everything returned to me in a snap.

I was dizzy and nauseous but well enough to move. I reached for my seatbelt and grabbed onto my headrest as I slipped down to my feet. Shards of glass rolled off my head. They clattered against the ground.

It was tight. Hannah’s body was pushed up against mine, her face up to my chest. I could feel every one of her quick breaths. I looked up through the thin layer of remnant smoke in the air. The window above us was broken, though shards of glass still stuck out of the frame.

“Can you reach it?” Hannah asked.

I reached up and tried to find a safe hold. I snagged the upper lip of the window and began to heave myself out. My body felt weak, but the lingering adrenaline was able to help me hold my weight. Hannah pushed up my feet as I pulled myself up. I peered around first for any lingering Meganeura before lifting myself out and onto the side of the truck. The metal warped underneath me, but it seemed it would hold.

I saw that the other door had been opened. I glanced down into it. There was no sign of Almond or our driver. I looked out into the swamp. There were two sets of footprints and a trail of blood headed out.

“Hey, I'm still in here,” Hannah called to me with a cough.

I turned my attention down towards her and reached my arm down through the window frame. Hannah’s gloved hand grabbed mine. I pulled her up, and she kicked herself around the shards around her. One piece chipped off an armor padding in her shoulder.

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She sat up on the opposite side of the window, taking a moment to catch her breath. “You smell like shit, by the way.” She coughed.

“Did you see Almond get out?” I asked.

“No,” Hannah replied. “I must’ve passed out too.”

“Did you have any kind of weird dream?”

Hannah looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “No. I don’t think you’re supposed to dream when you’re unconscious, right? Why? You?”

“I guess not then,” I replied. “Thought maybe I did.”

It didn’t take very long to start feeling better, a consequence of the oxidized air of the Carboniferous period.

“Should we follow them?” I questioned, pointing off to the trail in front of me.

Hannah looked at it. “Why should we?” She turned around, looking down the road.

“Verona was in the truck in front of us, right?” Hannah questioned.

“Yeah,” I replied, whirling around. About 100 yards up the road through the heavy mist sat another one of the trucks. This one was still upright.

“Think they have room for two more?” I questioned.

Hannah scoffed and nudged me with her elbow. “At least that means I won’t have to spend the rest of my days with you.”

“You really have become meaner,” I replied, with a laugh. It caused my chest to ache, but it felt good to joke.

My smile faded as I heard a bloodcurdling scream from the swamp in front of us. We both jolted to it.

“Should we do something?” I asked again.

“No,” Hannah replied. “Let’s go.” She hopped down and off the truck, splashing down into the mud.

I followed her to the flipped truck bed where cases of supplies had slipped out onto the ground.

Hannah searched through it, securing three things: a launcher from the case marked with her gun, Demo V2, glitch ammo for the weapon, and a gun sling, which she strapped over her uniform.

I did the same, grabbing a gun. I read the case: Dodech 12. It was one of the guns that I requested. I opened a large case of freeze hedrons, assorting the ammo among my uniform pouches and into a small sack I tied to my gun sling.

In the distance was the splatter of mud under footsteps, getting louder and louder. “Help! Please!” Almond’s voice called. He broke from the trees and looked at both of us as we loaded hedrons into our guns.

“You guys need to help. It's Guard Gutierrez,” he said.

“Sorry,” Hannah replied. “We’ve got other places to be.”

Almond huffed and raised his own gun at us. “No, you will help.”

“That truck will leave before we can,” Hannah replied, pointing back. “Besides, you don’t have anything in that gun.”

Almond shuddered, realizing his bluff had been called. “But he’s going to die if we don’t help.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Hannah said, clicking her ammo hatch closed.

“You are all so ungrateful,” he growled, lowering his gun.

Another scream came from the woods. Almond quickly approached the trunk of the vehicle, searching around for a reload.

“Let’s go.” Hannah turned.

My eyes lingered on the vegetation in front of us a moment longer before I nodded.

I followed Hannah around the truck. The other still sat in the dense mist. It didn’t appear to be running, no idle smoke cloud buzzing with Meganeura. We began to make our way over to it.

“Hey, Hannah?” I questioned. “Where is everyone?”

She came to a stop. “Shit.”

A creature flew down between our heads. I ducked out of instinct moments after it had already whooshed by. Zig-zagging through the sky was another Meganeura. Hannah raised her gun.

I pushed it down. There was no chance we could hit the small creature with our launchers. “Keep going.”

We began to sprint down the highway. It was difficult not to stumble on the uneven terrain. Blocks of asphalt were displaced and folded by the root systems and plants that grew under them.

The dragonfly zipped by a couple more times, causing my hair to fly with the gusts it drew. It was not very accurate. I didn’t blame the creature, though. It made the attack on the truck all the more impressive.

The other truck drew near, and Hannah positioned herself into a slide, slipping underneath it.

I did the same.

The dragonfly buzzed around the truck, then landed on the ground in front of us. Its several different white eyes melted into each other, creating the two glowing orbs on its face. Hannah turned her launcher to the still creature. Before she could fire, the dragonfly became frantic and flew off. I held my breath until I couldn’t hear it anymore.

“Holy fuck,” I muttered.

“I don’t fuck with this fracture at all,” Hannah said.

The panic dissipated, and the ailments I had procured started to set in. My head rang and my stomach fluttered. With each of my distorted heartbeats came an ache through my muscles. Yet I couldn’t help but feel we had been lucky: no broken bones, no large wounds, and we were awake.

My left pant leg was soaked. It was something I must’ve rolled in when I slid under the vehicle. I turned to the side and looked back to see the puddle underneath me. It was an oily red color.

I attempted to stand but was knocked by the underbelly of the truck and fell back down. “Fuck,” I muttered.

“Jesus, Cade,” Hannah gasped.

“There’s blood,” I replied.

Hannah looked over my back at the liquid. It was streaming down into an impression in the concrete from the front left wheel.

A bloody hand was dipping down below the running board. It was dripping with it, collecting into the puddle by my side.

An uneasiness overtook me, and I began to crawl my way out of the vehicle.

“Cade?” Hannah questioned.

I ignored her and got to my feet. I wrapped around the hood of the vehicle and looked at the doorway that was propped open from the arm. It was unrecognizable, covered in red, still warm blood.

I took a deep breath and gradually opened it. I was scared to see who it belonged to. As the sunlight peeked into the vehicle, I could see the hair of the person, brown. I sighed and closed the door. No one else was in the vehicle. I slid down the metal of the truck onto the ground and held my head back against it.

“Cade?” Hannah questioned, pulling herself out from the bottom of the truck. She looked at the doorway. “It's not—?” She started.

I shook my head.

Hannah nodded. “Thank God.”

I then noticed a trail of blood leading out from the side of the vehicle and into the vegetation on the other side of the street. It was smeared against the concrete, as if a body had been dragged.

I stood back up, and without saying a thing to Hannah, I started to follow the bloody trail in hopes it wasn’t who I thought it was.