The Confluence

The Confluence Part XIII

XIII

Night had fallen in its bone deep cold as long dead stars gazed upon the two tiny figures that stumbled out into the woods, both of them taking in huge lungfuls of the crisp air. The larger of the two in dirty clothes, ripped and torn and bloodstained, lumbered behind the smaller figure, wearing overly large black coat over a skinny frame, made their diminutive way to a cherry red Camaro up the road aways, crouched on the side of the road like an abandoned devil.

Suzie unlocked the driver side door, and got in. She leaned over and unlocked the passenger door for the waiting Adrian , and he sighed heavily as he got in, almost seeming to deflate immediately once he sank down into the leather seat. He checked the shotgun that was still in his hands, making sure it was still fully loaded and the safety was on. As he set the gun down in the backseat of the car, he hissed in pain. "What is it?" Whispered Suzie quietly, a slight tremble of fear in her voice. "One of those fucking things got me." Adrian groaned, as he peeked through the clawed tear in his shirt to check the damage. Three slightly curved slices which were lightly bleeding. They were as clean as knife cuts, reminding just how deadly those alien hands were. "Have you got anything? Medical kit or hell, tape?" Suzie nodded, although Adrian was unsure to what exactly she was nodding to. "Check the trunk, there may be some stuff you can use to help close off the wound. I know Johnny used to keep some tools back there as well. Just in case if we find more of those things out here I'd like to have more than one weapon handy." Adrian opened the car door again, leaning his way out, grunting through the pain. He strode around to the back of the car, and opened the trunk. In it, surrounded by crumpled trash and old burger wrappers was a tool box, a spare tire, and on the right side of the trunk was a three foot crowbar. Adrian's eyes glinted at the sight of it, but instead focused on the toolbox. Upon opening it and rummaging through the loose screw drivers, carjack, he found a heavy roll of duct tape. He shrugged to himself, and began to tear off strips of tape. Holding the tatters of his shirt between his teeth, He applied strips of tape over his wounds. After six strips, the wound was covered, and Adrian grabbed the crowbar.

Holding it, it was heavy as hell, and there was virtually no grip to it at all, just cold flat metal. He took the duct tape and wrapped the lower end in a sort of makeshift grip. That done, he walked back to the front of the car, and got in. "Okay." He looked at Suzie. "We need to go up the mountain. It showed up everywhere in images carved into the stone of that old church, and there was what looked like a cave near the top. You've lived here the longest, have you ever hiked up around that area?" Suzie bit her lip as she thought back. There had been a lot of times on weekends when she was younger, her father had taken her family on long trips to wander the trails on the mountain slopes. She had never totally enjoyed those trips. It was always cold in the shadow of the monolithic mountain. It rose above the trees, and when you were close to it it was as if you could feel the crushing weight of it, bearing down on you with the immensity of its time worn peak that clawed its way skyward. Her mind was racing through all the times she had been up there when something wriggled its way into the images surging through her brain. A dim memory, one of the earlier times she had visited the trails around Mt. Wesker. They had been walking most of the day and were nearing the end of the trail that wound its way almost out of the trees and onto the rocky slopes of the mountain.

Suzie's eyes had been drinking in the scene of how the setting sun had turned the rim of the sky pink, with the bare traces of the last of the day's beautiful blue sky. The smell of dirt, flowers, and pine permeated everywhere, along with that clean freshness of air not contaminated with the smell of trains and cars. The ground around her was filled with undergrowth, with the sword like stalks of ferns sprouting around the bases of the pine trees. As she neared the edge of the woods, the change in the scenery was gradual yet intense. The pine trees were replaced with small sparse bush like trees, and the ferns were replaced with massive boulders, and the grass had become thinner, barely covering the hard ground. She had started to wander away from the rest of her family, a small backpack strapped tightly to her, with her then longer blonde hair being blown back by the wind. As she rounded her way around one of the large boulders, she saw something strange. Hewn out of the rocks was what appeared to be stairs. This jolted her, seeing something so man made in the middle of nowhere. The stairs themselves were not strange, but they had bothered her in some unnamable way that she couldn't put her finger on when she was young. But now, thinking back, it hit her. The stairs were too regular in their construction, too perfect to be out there in the chaotic wild. These stone stairs, with their eerily perfect cuts and angles, wound this strange ambling switch back up, and up and up the mountain. Her younger self was suddenly overcome with fear that had no reason, or place to be felt, but the wind instead of blowing began howling, pushing behind her, almost forcing her forward. Up the stairs. The wind screaming in her ears, the feeling of vertigo almost making her stumble her way up the stairs, her cheap old sneakers beginning to tentatively to scrape against the loose rocks that quickly stopped into the first stone step, its aggressively flat surface negating all the nature around it.

"Suzie! Get the fuck back here!" Her fathers gravelly voice tore her out of whatever spell she had fallen under. "Coming!" She immediately called back, and before returning, cast one last look at the staircase.

"That's fucking it. It has to be." She muttered to herself. "What? What is?" Adrian questioned, leaning forward, waiting for her answer with bated breath. He was practically shivering. His hunger for answers had only been ramping up as Suzie was recollecting, and he was ready to get going before he let his fear overtake him. He knew he was basically running on fumes at this point, with new and old wounds hurting him with almost every movement. He knew he was in over his head, but the amount of people those things had eaten, and the bizarre dream that some ancient carving had almost exactly mirrored, he had to know. He had to know what the fuck was happening. Suzie breathed out, her lower lips red and little puffy from how hard she had been biting it while she remembered. "I saw something weird up there when I was a kid. I found a staircase." Adrian's brow furrowed at that, a small frown tugging his mouth down. "Wait, come on, hear me out man." Suzie said slightly annoyed by the face he was making. She recounted her memories to him, and his quizzical expression soon morphed into a face she had seen him make almost the entire time since she had caught up with him in the cavern. A look of determination, an angry and exhausted look. The look of a man who wants answers and nothing left to lose. Whatever end, she knew he was going to see this thing through. But would she? Suzie knew whatever the hell she was now wrapped up in, it was easy to die. Far, far too easy. Yet, despite this knowledge, that death could sweep everything away from her, snuff her out like an insignificant candle, would it be better than going back to the daily nightmare of her home life. Here she was in a dead man's coat, sitting in her dead friends car, next to a fucking cop who she didn't know anything about with a gun the backseat and crowbar in his stiff hands. Setting her teeth, she found it was an easy decision to make. "Before I tell you where we need to-"

"Wait. We? I'm the only one who's gonna do this." Adrian interrupted her. "I'm the one who's gonna go. You just drop me off and go back home kid."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Suzie almost snarled at him. "The one friend I had had his head torn off by a fucking monster, a monster I had a fucking dream about, and you're gonna sit there tell me to go home?" Adrian tried interjecting again, but she cut him off. "Fuck you. I can't fucking go home because my dad is just as likely to kill me as the rest of those freaks. I can't go back dumbass, and believe me, all I want is this night to end but I know it's not. I want answers too, you selfish prick." Adrian glowered at her, but then responded calmly. "You dreamed of them too?"

"Yes. And trust me, I don't get it, but when your own damn nightmares start eating people, and the way back is just as dangerous as the path ahead... I think I'd rather know what was happening than just getting my jaw broken at home. So I'm fucking going with you." Adrian sighed, and lowered his eyes. "Okay. Okay kid. Have it your way." He leaned back into his seat, and closed his eyes. "Let's just get to wherever we need to go. I need to sleep, but wake me up if we run into any problems." Before she started the car, Suzie said to Adrian "The place we're going to is a staircase carved into the rock of the mountain. If what you said about the cave at the top of the mountain is right, I think that's the way there."

"Lead the way then." mumbled Adrian, already drifting off, exhaustion overtaking him. Suzie started the car, it's engine roaring to life. It's headlights flaring on, bathing the towering trees surrounding them driving back the dark. Suzie pressed the gas, and with another growl, the red Camaro pulled its great weight forward, crossing the black asphalt with increasing speed as the two made their way to the mountain, looming in the distance, stabbing the void between the stars.