Kai (unfinished)

Chapter Eleven - Free

Kai - Chapter Eleven - Free

It wasn't right to leave Dante back up there on that hill, I was feeling a terrible pain in my head as we walked over the hills of Byholt. All I wanted now, strangely, was to be back in Melbourne with my friends; what would the people in Gormanston think, that we were crazy, perhaps they might think we escaped from the asylum. We didn't look too good, Nathan had a thick coat of sweat, his shirt stained in the blood of his partner; his breathing was rapid, and his eyes were possessed, it looked like he was dead inside, I would be too if I was in the same place. What was I going to tell work, that I saw Ernie ripped apart by a seven foot anthropormothic scorpion monster, no fucking way, I was going to have problems; I will never sleep again because of what I've seen here. 

"There's a clearing up ahead! The road into Gormanston." Nathan yelled and pushed through the underbrush, we came onto the side of the highway. Breathlessly as the sun beamed down, a blaring nusiscance, then we realised the empty cars and scattered belongings. "No! God-fucking-damnit!" Nathan fell to his knees, in rage he threw his fists down onto the bitumen; cutting them badly. My legs ached as I rushed to comfort him, holding his neck as he blubbered into my arms. Then it dawned on us, what if it wasn't just Byholt, or Tasmania? What if it was the whole planet? We broke down like that, on the highway; in each others arms, just crying and praying. Praying we weren't the last sane people on Earth, and as I felt the sun sting my back, all I could see was Dante's face staring back at me that one last time; those tears in his eyes, that's how I knew I wasn't going to die here. 

"We have to try getting into the town, we don't know, there could be survivors!" I stood up and cast my eyes down the stretch of highway; the hills on either side of us were dead quiet. Since we came to Byholt I had never heard any birds, no birdsong that one would expect, just the eeriness of a silent night and abrupt phases of cricket chirps. 
"Amanda this is it, we are the last fucking ones!" Nathan was becoming aggressive, he kicked out at a dusty abandoned Toyota before slouching to the ground and crying. "This is it now, we're dead."
"But Dante..." I stuttered, he flashed me a depressing and melancholic look of desertion. 
"Dante's dead too! Don't you fucking get it, this is the end of the road for us!" His voice was pulling at me and I felt cold inside because of it, I didn't want to believe him. 
"It could just be a nightmare, just a really long vivid painful..." Nathan stood up and took a step towards me, his face purple and caked in Mick's blood; his eyes reflecting my fearful face of runny mascara and dried up tears. 
"We're dead!" He screamed right in my face, and almost like that, a low yet steady sound of helicopter blades came cutting across the hill.

Everything stopped when that surreal bird of black twisted metal landed ahead of us, Nathan's face was alight; his eyes hopeful, he actually chuckled, then he laughed and eventually he was rolling around like a madman crying tears of happiness. But I just couldn't believe it, I just kept staring at the helicopter, the men who ran out in their suits of camo and masks; so alien to me, to what I had seen. For a second I felt like hugging them, and I could hear my breaths one by one, and then my beating heart. Was I dying? Then the light encompassed me, and I was at peace. 

"...-manda? She's waking up." The voice was female, and slightly annoying, my eyes blinked a few times and the faces of nurses and doctors appeared from the white blaring lights above my bed, had I passed out? I watched as the doctor ushered them all out, or at least I think he was a doctor. Without any warning, my eyes flashed all around, it seemed I was in a hospital room; but which hospital? 
"Don't strain yourself, the dilation has proven deadly..." The doctor was obviously a male, but something about the way he said that made me shiver. 
"W-Where am I?" My voice quivered. "Where's Nathan?" 
"He's safe, as are the others." Relief, something I had been waiting for. 
"It's quite funny, your little town has drawn quite a lot of attention to itself." He chuckled, the sound of hospital chatter and brief conversations comforted me but still I felt dead inside and out. 
"Not my town." I sighed, sitting up, there was a deep throbbing pain in my head; I realised I had been hooked up to some type of futuristic machine, but now the tube was no longer embedded in my arm. 
"Oh that's right, you were the reporter caught up in the mix of things; we failed to find two other males uhh..." He stood, his hands clutched out and grabbed some pad of a sort and he turned it to face me; there were two pictures, one of Mick and one of Ernie. "...Billy Andrews, or as his coworkers called him; Ernie. We couldn't quite locate him or this Mick, but we did manage to find Kai and Dante Brown."