Blood Ever After

4

They sat out front of the Oldston Lunch Bar. Tyler held a sandwich, while Nelson a cold sausage roll. Charlotte chewed on a Twinkie.

Pain burnt in Tyler's forehead. In the distance, cows bellowed. Ahead, the road simply sank into white darkness. To the left stood a long forest, but it was mostly painted in dim white.

"The thing is," Nelson said, staring at the forest as he chewed, "some of them are still alive. Some of the ... Called, as everyone was callin em." He shook his head. "But they're losing their power. They're—"

"Dying," Tyler said, looking to the man. "Just like everything in this world."

He looked at the flashing, blinking shop sign. "But why? Why did this ... this thing come, killing everything like this? Why are we still alive? How did it do that?" He recalled the moment he had felt something unusual enter his brain when he'd been playing football. Had that been what had entered everyone else at some point also? And why had he evaded its full effects? And why had apparently Nelson and Charlotte too? What made them so ... special?

Nelson pulled some burnt pastry off his sausage roll, shrugging. "Dude, I got a D-plus for my last ever science exam, and it ain't like I finished grade twelve or nothin'." Staring ahead he added, "I can bench seventy kilos with one arm, lift a mower onto the back of my truck with my dick, kid, but ask me the ... dang scientific formula for a ... experiment or some shit, and ya might as well be talking to a tree trunk, kid."

Nelson shook his head, placing a long, muscled arm around Tyler's shoulder, like they'd been friends for years. "Whatever it is, death has come, and it won't stop till it gets us as well." He once more shook his head, then jammed then rest of his pastry into his moth. "Man dis is nice!"

***

As the chill pressed in, Nelson, leading the small party, began to grow quiet.

"Nelson. Everything okay?" Up till then, Nelson had been humming, or calling out now and then. Currently though, as he walked, he didn't even glance behind to check on Charlotte. Tyler staggered up to him. "How long to Swinton?" A hollowness streamed throughout Tyler, as well as a vicious pang of anxiety.

A small grin sat upon the man's face. He ignored Tyler's question. "I got a story for you, kiddo ... something that happened to me when I was younger." Nelson reached out and flicked Tyler on the stomach three times: Thwack, thwack, thwack. Felt to Tyler like he had been shot three times.

Shadows covered his face, those long lines curved with his slight grin. "Happened when I was just a kid ... five ... six ... something like that." Tyler looked back. Charlotte walked in the shadows, cackling, cackling like an angry old woman ten times her age.

He turned back around. Nelson stared straight ahead, his mind elsewhere. "Was my birthday ... and I remember ..." He reached out. A chilly breeze swept from the forest; a sheep bleated far away. "... I had a small truck." The grin rose. He gazed at Tyler. Dark hair swept down his neck. Dry, scruffy dark hair that may have never been washed. "I got it for my birthday, and so I took it out to the bush to play with it, you know ...."

A horrid cackling from behind. Tyler looked back, shivering when he saw it appeared like long strands of grey hair ran down Charlotte's face. Her skin had a moldy green hue. Old wrinkles marred a once nice, tanned face. Or so it appeared in the shadows. "I ran out through the trees searchin' for the river." A chill ran through Tyler. Nelson's face beamed with recognition and nostalgia.

More cackles behind. "Then something terrible happened, kid, something that left me...." He looked to Tyler. They passed a foggy streetlight, and those lines down the man's face shone as though age-old battle scars. "I saw a figure, kid, in the gloom."