prologue

prologue

He sat alone at the side of the road as cars whisked past, stirring up the dust around him.  The evening had grown darker, heading toward the deepest part of night, the part that he disliked the most, the part when they came out.

If only he had been able to stay with his brother.  That would have been so simple.  But he had been there for less than a week when it happened.  Of course it happened.  It always happened. He had not been able to go more than a few days without the shaking and the breakdowns in years; why had he believed that he could make it this time?  And the terror on his little niece’s face when she found him shaking and drooling in the hallway, speaking those odd words he always did at those times…  He didn’t blame Joseph for asking him to leave.  He’d have done the same.

The cars kept on moving past.  He really should not have been sitting so near the highway, he knew.  He reached for his pack, shoved the water bottle back into it, and shambled to his feet.  Slowly he slipped down the embankment to the base of the hill, looking for some kind of shelter as the sound of the passing cars receded.  Above he could see stars coming out.  There was danger in stars.  When there were stars, there were others.  No one ever believed him about the others, but he knew they were there, and they were the ones who brought on the attacks.

He cut through some tall prairie grasses, hoping that he would not end up in a swamp of some kind.  The highway sounds were almost gone now, and he had no real idea where he was any more.  On a small patch of low-cut greenery in the middle of the dense grasses he stopped, opened his pack, and removed a tightly rolled up piece of fabric.  Unraveling it, he threw it over himself and lay his head on the pack, listening to the sounds of the deepening night. 

The insects now had risen to the point of a kind of shrieking, blending with the low pitched croaking of frogs somewhere in the reeds and the darker undertones of winds that moved almost silently through the prairie.  And there was something else, too, something that he almost missed.  Something very high up in the aural range, almost beyond the limit of hearing.  A hissing. 

He snapped upright and looked around, hopeless to see anything in the darkness.  They were here.  How they had found him he had no clue, but they had.  And he had no clue also where he could run or in what direction.  The hissing grew louder and more distinct, overwhelming the insects and the other sounds of nature.  Quickly, he shoved his blanket into the pack and tried to stand, but instead, as the hissing grew and something finally came and stood above him, he fell back in the green space, drooling, shaking, broken, finally knowing he truly was as alone as he had always felt.