The Last Mile Read Free

the sky opened a million eyes and gazed down upon him with alien hunger.
    * * *
    Alice shook her head, trying to deny what was happening. Dead birds littered the parking lot around her, the ground beneath her feet trembled, and eyes filled the dark-bruise sky. Dead eyes, insect eyes: cold, calculating, and hungry. Eyes that didn’t blink, that took in everything and gave back nothing. She felt scrutinized in a way she never had before, as if every one of those eyes was fixed on her, analyzing her down to the subatomic level and finding her wanting. She wore a white blouse, black pants, and black shoes—the standard uniform for servers at the Pasta Pavilion. She’d been on her way to work when everything began to change, and while she knew it wasn’t the greatest job in the world, she’d liked it well enough. But now, standing beneath the pitiless gaze of those alien eyes, she understood what a joke she really was. She was a subservient cow in a world full of near-mindless cattle, carrying platters of food to overweight carb-addicts so they could stuff their bloated faces and grow even more obese than they already were.
    This realization forced Alice to her knees. Her left knee crushed the head of a dying starling in the process—staining her black pants with blood—but she barely noticed, so overwhelmed was she with despair. She bowed her head as tears ran down her face and deep sobs wracked her body.
    “No more…” she pleaded.
    But there was more. Much.
    * * *
    Dan spun the steering wheel in a frantic attempt to maintain control of the Olds. Whatever had broadsided them had started the car fishtailing, and while that would’ve been dangerous enough on a smooth road, the broken surface of the Way made correcting for the impact a nightmare—and the woman screaming in the backseat didn’t do anything to help his concentration. The car slid, shuddered, bounced, and at one point threatened to tip over. A loud chunk! came from the rear, and Dan was thrown forward as the Olds ground to a stop. His forehead hit the steering wheel, forcing his teeth together with a painful clack and catching the tip of his tongue. Sharp pain lanced from the wound down to the root of his tongue, and Dan’s mouth filled with blood as his head jerked back and slammed into the headrest. The Olds’ airbags had been activated months ago, during one of his earliest runs, and without any way to have them reinstalled, he’d simply removed them. In all the time since, he hadn’t had an accident, but now he wished he’d tried harder to find a way to make the airbags work again.
    The woman was still screaming, and Dan spun around to glare at her. He tried to tell her to shut up, but what came out was Thyutt uhh! along with a spray of blood. It splattered onto the woman’s face and greasy blonde hair, and the shock of it did what perhaps his words wouldn’t have: she stopped screaming.
    Before Dan could say or do anything else, a large object collided with the driver’s-side door, spinning the Olds around and sending him crashing back into the steering wheel. Pain blazed between his shoulder blades, and he reached out with both hands and grabbed onto the chicken-wire barrier to steady himself. The woman had been thrown down onto the backseat once more, and while she looked shaken, she appeared uninjured. Dan was relieved; she was worthless to him dead. Still holding tight to the chicken wire, Dan turned to look over his shoulder, ignoring the resultant flare of pain in his back. He wanted to get a look at whatever was attacking them so he’d have some notion of how to fight it. He knew they just couldn’t stay inside the car and hope it would get tired and go away. Everything was a predator of one kind or another in the World After, and none of them ever gave up.
    A large form stepped in front of the car—four legs, long neck, narrow head, curved antlers, armored hide… The creature regarded Dan for a moment, its moist black eyes filled