HER BAREFOOTED FEET paced on the pavement of the empty, in the nameless town.

The girl stepped into the front door of the mercantile store with empty racks and shelves, the belled door chimed. She was in a dirty threadbare dress and had not washed herself in years. The twelve-year-old Laura searched around before she eventually stumbled upon them — the hunted children — who grouped together, and foraged for food to survive in that hellhole municipality...

Her entire body trembled when she approached inconspicuously towards the pack of hungry spawns, who were feeding on a corpse. Her knees buckled slightly after seeing the victim was Reeves — she stood horrified behind them — gazing into his half-opened dead eyes that stared into her...

His stomach was cut open — and the children were feeding on his red viscera.

The leader turned her head and looked up at her — it was her own ten-year-old sister Roberta. She held out Reeve’s cut off heart clenched in her palm — and she spoke in an adult’s voice...

“Laura, come — feed on his heart.”

Laura turned away queasy, holding on the rack for support, and threw up. She felt like fainting but, staggered and walked away from the feeding of her own progeny.

Her sister’s voice called back...

“Where are you going, Laura?”

“I am going home…”

“No, you are not, you stay put here with me,” the adult voice echoed.

Laura ignored it and gained the strength — to finally run out the store’s front door. She saw the clusters of the wild women, squatting in groups in the street. She passed them, running and seeing that they were feeding on several headless corpses.

She hollered in fear and reached the post office front — where there were pikes with petrifying human heads displayed up-high of — Troy, Joe and True Bob.

She stood speechless staring at them, backing away slowly in consternation. The ten-year-old Roberta came over and held her trembling hand and smiled. Laura shook her hand off to release the grip. She ran again into the main road of the nameless town. She heard the grown-up voice ringing behind her...

“You are mine, Laura. You are not going anywhere!”

Her bare feet pounded hard on the concrete road — when the terrified Laura ran. Something loud descended from above...

The vast Boeing plane dropped on in the middle of the town and used the main road as its runaway. Its wide wingspan was traversing forward — hitting and crumbling the ageing ramshackle establishments, on both the left and right sides. She ran faster, the enormous plane was catching up from her rear...

Laura dropped down to let the gargantuan plane pass. She peeked up to see her parents — Martha and Herbert looking out of the oval window of the Boeing.

Her hand reached out, calling them...

“Mum! Dad!”

“Come home, Mimi!” Martha called back, from inside the plane.

Laura hoisted herself up and now chased after the tail of the enormous plane. It left a trail of fissures on the tarmac. The Boeing then turned meteoric right to the road —where the dead-end was with the tilted eighteen-wheeler oil tanker.

The plane was far ahead but the young girl pursued from the back...

The massive plane approached towards the fuel tanker and the ground shook by its hefty weight. A huge crater formed and that swallowed the eighteen-wheeler and the surrounding edifices. The gigantic Boeing then nosedived into the dark-hole — creating an enormous storm of sand and dirt that knocked back towards Laura — she was thrown off her feet.

The dust settled down and she peered ahead at a blurry mirage of a small figure standing at the edge of the crater. Laura staggered forward in the sprinkling shower of the settling dust — to attain that the cherubic little girl in red standing over, with one of her hand pointing at the bowel of the black-hole in the ground...

Laura saw the pointing finger of her trembling tiny hand while the child was holding her own throat with her other palm. Her eyes rolled up, her pupils disappeared, exposing the white of her eyeballs. The girl in red was choking before she managed to puke out. Something dropped nearby Laura’s feet...

It was the dead, red Robin.

The small girl collapsed backwards — and she fell into the deep pitched black crater — Laura screamed after her...

“No!”

***

Laura was rudely awakened from her horrendous sleep, with signs of a premonition still alarming all her senses — indicating her presentiment of something ahead...

She sat up dazed for a moment in recollection, of her macabre thoughts in the backseat. The Mustang GT was cleaned — but the pale leather seat was now slightly pinkish with the stained memories of the bloodbath in the nameless cannibal town that happened hours ago — but it still stank of the dead woman’s blood...

It was late afternoon and was raining hard — with flashes of lightning on the darkened road. Joe was driving with the tired True Bob asleep beside him. The wipers were sweeping the rain pellets teeming on the windscreen.

The morbid images of death were still spinning in her head when Laura reached out and clenched Joe’s chubby bicep...

“Stop the car! Joe — stop the car!”

“Why?”

Joe panicked but still kept the gas pedal going. Laura started to tug his jacket collar hard in the moving car. This forced Joe to be alarmed — and he jammed the brakes. True Bob was roused up from the jounce, cranked his neck in confusion...

“Laura, what's wrong?”

The bikes were ahead with Reeves and Troy, who rode in Bob’s place on the chopper bike. The murky Nimbus in the skies was brightened by streaks of lightning. They were not aware that the Mustang had stalled behind.

Laura started to run back with True Bob chasing her in the cold shower. Joe was now driving in reverse, blaring the horn. Reeves and Troy in rain capes then double-backed their bike — they raced towards the car that was moving backwards...

Laura stopped to look down on the steep canyon below, her both hands gripping on the mangled railing. True Bob reached her first before the rest of the Intersexuals scuttled behind her...

“What's wrong, Laura?”

She stood and stared senselessly below.

Reeves came over and held her from behind, with concerned looks...

“Mimi, are you okay?”

She then recalled holding the lurching Buick’s door. The car plunged down with her shrieking mother inside. She was thrown off halfway on the ledge while her parents in the vehicle were jarred towards the base of the cliff.

“Reeves — it happened here. My dad's car dropped off from here.”

Everyone saw the lugubrious Laura bending down slowly — and was crying...

Reeves genuflected and hugged her while the rain teemed down on them. She turned to Reeves — with her pensive and pleading eyes, and hugged him hard...

“Please Reeves, I only ask this one favour from you. I want to give my parents a proper burial. Please, Reeves, help me...”

“Okay, Mimi — we will do it.”

Reeves stood Laura up on her feet. Troy then took her away to the Mustang. Reeves peeked down at the deluged, dark terrains — and thunder flashed above, illuminating the proximate — he saw the metal wreckage below at the bottom of the cliff. True Bob stood beside him, he too was gazing below.

Joe approached with an umbrella and remarked...

“Are you serious, Reeves? It is way below there — and you want to risk your life and go down?”

Joe had warned, and Reeves did not respond.

He had to do it — it was Laura’s parents — and his own deceased grandparents who were below there — the family kin that he was hoping to discover — ever since he grew up as an orphan in Wesleyan...

He was then into much deeper discerning — this was where it all happened, the place his mother went into a coma before he was born. Those were the few other things which he pondered along with the identity of who his father really was.

The only sketchy information he had known was during the Wesleyan’s racial segregation in the auditorium — was that, he was half-Hispanic. He never asked Laura about this — because she was in a coma back then, and she would not have known.

True Bob spoke up, “I am coming with you.”

“No, you stay back, Bob.”

“I am coming, I will grab the gear.”

***

The patchy clouds cleared, the rain had subsided to a drizzle, Troy was in the poncho, and Joe was still holding an umbrella — both looking down at Reeves and True Bob cautiously scaling down the steep rocky walls without any use of ropes.

Laura sat now in the car — now fearing for their lives, and the danger she had put the two of them into.

The old Buick had not actually totally plunged to the cliff base, it nestled among the boulders. Reeves was the first to reach the turn-turtle wreckage, with the four flat tires, baring the rusted rims. Reeves came to the driver's side interior and he discovered the cracked skull male skeletal remains, sprawled on the car's ceiling filled with a pool of rainwater. The inside of the car had also been weathered by the elements in those eighteen years. The passenger's seat was empty...

Martha Jensen remains were not there.

He saw a weather-beaten photo frame with badly faded images of two small children beside the male skeleton. True Bob reached over the other side of the window, and he looked in into the deteriorated interior. Reeves notified him, “Martha's missing.”

Bob looked over his shoulder — to beyond the boulders that had wedged the car from plunging further down. He made an assumption...

“She may have probably been thrown out of the car — I will go further down, and look.”

***

Reeves climbed back with a bulging rolled blanket tied to his back, and True Bob was keeping up the pace to his friend who was a more agile rock climber. Reeves waited for Bob to catch up halfway. “We have searched till the base — where could she have gone, Bob?”

“Maybe some wild animal could have dragged her somewhere — wolves can do that in a pack.” True Bob made another postulation — but Reeves was not very convinced...

‘Why didn’t those wild beasts drag and devour Herbert too?’

The rain stopped, Joe was abeyance with boredom and decided to make coffee near the Mustang.

Troy stood alone at the mangled railing. He saw them ascending, and he called out for Laura. Joe ran over too. They saw Reeves with a load on his back. The insensitive Joe mumbled...

“Oh shit, bones again.”

Troy nudged his side. “Shut up, Fat fuck.”

Laura came from behind while Reeves was helped up by outreaching hands. He collapsed in exhaustion on his sides while he removed the load off from his back. True Bob came up next and rested his tired back on the railing post.

***

True Bob's hands began to untie the string knotted on the rolled blanket. Laura kneeled beside him and started to sob. True Bob commenced chanting a Native Indian prayer for the Dead...

The load was unfolded, and Laura was crying aloud, saddened to see her father's fractured skeleton bones. Reeves pacified her by holding her close, True Bob continued his chants — and he began to wrap the bones back onto the cerement blanket. He lifted the bundle and took it to the car’s open trunk.

Laura looked at Reeves in the eyes. “Where is my mother?”

Reeves looked at the hushed True Bob staring back at him. “We searched around, we could not find her.”

“Can there be a possibility that she may have survived — and she wandered off, don't you think so, Reeves?” Laura responded back with a child-like optimism.

“Yes, Mimi — she may have survived.”

He did not want to dash her hopefulness — with any wild beast theories.

Reeves kissed her forehead before they walked towards to their vehicles — and they continued their journey, minutes later after the coffee break.