VamZombie WereWitch Girl and Demon Boy ✓

17 - Our Darkest Hour

So dang long!  Well here is the longest chapter yet, and thus why it took so long to post it.  Enjoy.  If you like the story please do consider voting or leaving a comment.  Just to let you know this story is actually going to end when they get to their destination, and that could be within two or three chapters.

- December 21, Alaska Highway 1, YT -

I blink slowly and watch the dark shadows float around us in a dream world.  I glance over, I don’t know how but still after all this time Clarine is driving, and she’s still right behind that truck trudging along.  The shadows, there are thousands of them, so many even I can see them speed along the darkness, occasionally getting just too close to the light from the headlights and being seen.  Fifteen hours, fifteen long hours of driving, all of it Clarine for fear I’d doze off at the wheel. 

For someone that slept the entire day off when we left the bar the first night she sure seems to have the stamina of a race horse, showing no signs of weakening.  Two gas stops at stations where only the pumps worked and removing the chains after descending the mountains and arriving on more flat ground and the shadows have yet to make their move. 

I look wearily at the mess on the dashboard.  I only gagged looking at it the first time.  She had me use two bolts to pin the brain on the dash, I then had to cover it with sugar, use the sticky end of a piece of tape to create a ring of salt around it, she carved four symbols into the cloth’s which are now spread out around the vehicle, one in each of the four corners, and she had the tooth in her pocket and roots in her lap.  After an hour the brain began to smell and we put plastic wrap over it to try and mask the stench.  But it’s been there, sitting on the dashboard, ever since. 

She expected the shadows to make their move right away but instead they’ve just followed and watched.  I think I know what the plan is, they keep drivers going, keep them awake—they keep the drivers awake so long they fall asleep at the wheel.  So long that they crash and their sleeping bodies are dragged away without much resistance.  The shadows don’t seem to let either of us sleep and every time I close my eyes for a short name something slams into the car or threatens to, waking me. 

I blink slowly and look down at the tin can between the seats, an energy drink, the last one we bought in Kamloops.  Every gas station we’ve stopped since was closed except for the pumps.  We literally haven’t seen another soul out here except the truckers and I think we’re both starting to doubt their humanity.

I close my eyes for a second and a loud thud on the window causes me to wake up again.  I turn to see what hit the car but Clarine doesn’t even bother, she already knows what it is—those monsters, the ones she can clearly see surrounding us and charging around the truck in circles.  I look over at the clock, eight am.  Last I remember the news said that sunrise up here was close to eleven am and sunset at three making today the shortest day of the year, our darkest hour.  Three more hours and we’ll sunlight, a beacon of safety much stronger than one we could manufacture with a lamb’s brain or whatever the fuck she has in mind. 

I look over to the needles that indicated our speed and gas, the gas one was near the E again, we will have to stop for gas soon.  I hope to God at eight am the next station we come across is actually open, food would be nice, a coffee maybe, hell the warmth and safety of a modern convenience store may be enough to convince me everything is going to be okay.  Twenty-eight hours on the road, non-stop, no sleep, and nearly all of it in darkness.  I just want to see life, to see something.

We pass a blue sign indicating a gas stop four kilometers ahead.  Clarine doesn’t even bother contacting the truck that’s leading us to our doom.  They haven’t spoken since we let them pass us last night.  They haven’t gotten out of the truck since the two with zombie-like glazed over eyes got out to remove their chains after safely descending the mountain.  Every stop we made the truck would be found pulled over some ways passed the station as if it was waiting for us.