Dark Future

Chapter 4

Pain. God, there was pain. Every joint ached. Every muscle seemed stretched beyond its limit. And cold. When had it gotten this cold? I opened my eyes. Where was I?

And then like an animal sensing fear, I knew something was wrong. Black. There was nothing but oily blackness. Was I still outside? Had I been passed out that long? I turned my head toward the sky expecting the soft glow of stars and the moon, nothing.

I struggled to a sitting position, stiff from the cold ground. I fanned my hands out groping in the dark like a twisted game of blind man's bluff. The tips of my fingers brushed against a dirt wall. I scotched and placed my back against the rough coolness. At least my butt was safe.

Something wasn't right. Every cell in my body seemed to beat out one message—run. But I couldn't see my hand in front of my face, much less run away.

It was as if the blackness sucked out all light and sound. There were no low hum of passing cars, no blare of sirens. Even a quiet desert was never this silent. No chirping crickets or rustling leaves. No scurry of life. Just my harsh panting—loud even to my own ears.

And the smell. I drew a deep breath of air trying to identify the scent. No sage or rosemary, or even the metallic smells of the city, but something off, foul, like...decay?

Panic wrapped around my heart and squeezed. As a doctor I'd smelled this before. It was an odor that came with the job as much as the scrubs and pagers. Death.

Only decomposing flesh could emit such a foul stench.

The rancid smell grew and burned my nostrils. I slapped my hand over my nose and struggled to swallow the taste of rot, as it slicked down my throat.

God, let it be a dead animal and not some corpse lying here next to me.

The thought shot me to my feet—scraping my back along the rocky wall. I stood legs apart, hands fisted and ready to do battle. The body might have fallen here and died of natural causes... or something else might've killed it.

Darkness chipped away at what little courage I had. I shook so bad, my legs could barely support my weight. But there was something I was missing, something that my muddled brain had forgotten.

"My phone," I cried with relief. I'd thrown my phone in my fanny pack before I'd left the house. And maybe, just maybe I could get service. Cold and numb, my fingers grappled with the zipper and finally won. I recognized the smooth plastic, but fumbled and dropped my lifeline with a sickening thud.

"Crap," I sobbed.

I fell to my knees and did the universal hand-pat-sweep in complete darkness. Moving in wider and wider circles, I crawled forward. But the phone evaded me, as if the darkness had devoured the small black rectangle for breakfast.

Good God, where is it?

My imagination ran rampant with the image of a decayed body, complete with missing limbs and only half a face. I was certain I was within a hair-span of sticking my hand into a pile of squishy flesh.

A breeze blew past my ear—a mere shift in the wind? Then, a touch to my shoulder, not hard, more like a brush or a... lick?

I stopped my frantic search, and slammed myself back. My hands braced against the rock behind me, nails trying to find purchase in the hard dirt. Frenzied, I wiped my shoulder and my fingers came away wet and sticky.

I turned my head from side to side, desperate for any source of light when a heated, moist gust of air blew into my face. My hair fluttered around my face as my chilled body warmed. I sucked in and drank the smell of the fetid air as it washed over me. Gagging, I tasted remnants of last night's cookies, and swallowed them... a second time.

Adrenaline levels spiked. I froze and did the only thing I could think of—I prayed.

God please let this tacky moist stuff be from the only mature pine tree in all of Scottsdale, growing in the only deep crater on this mountain preserve because God, if I'm not here alone, I'm truly going to piss my pants and pass straight away from sheer terror.

I didn't get an answer. Prayers didn't work that way, just the sound of me hyperventilating in the dark.

In the distance, a circle of neon-blue light appeared and crept steadily toward me. The light skimmed across the red-packed ground, gliding over jagged rocks and shallow furrows. The harsh florescent glow surrounded me, turning my skin an unnatural blue. Then slowly, the circle widened, revealing the ugliest, most terrifying creature I'd ever seen.

I screamed.

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