NORTH PLATTE, NEBRASKA
Dawson Hayes opened his eyes. Plastic tubes shot out of his arms and nose. He startled and gasped and somewhere a machine hissed and gurgled. He’d been dreaming about birds with scalding white eyes perched over him in the tops of the forest’s highest pine trees.
He searched for the woman’s eyes—the soft brown—that held him above the pain and promised not to drop him. Where was she?
His eyelids fluttered despite his panic. He tried to keep them open. A shadow over him said, “I think he’s waking up.”
Two blinks means “yes.”
But Dawson couldn’t blink. He couldn’t hold his eyelids open.
Half a blink was all he could manage but it was enough to see the shadow insert a needle into one of the tubes.
“No, no … not,” he stuttered, his throat suddenly raw and dry. Something was stuck down it. He couldn’t swallow. It hurt to breathe. Unfamiliar hums and beeps assaulted his ears.
Then he saw the fiery red eyes across the dimly lit room. The creature had followed him. How was it possible?
He struggled and strained but couldn’t move. Something clamped him down. He opened his mouth to scream but the contraption in his throat choked him. He tried to open his eyes beyond the half shutters that blurred his vision.
Then he felt it, warm liquid sliding into his veins. But it was pleasant and soothing. Whatever the shadow had injected into the tubes had started to invade his insides. He felt it seeping into his brain and he imagined it racing along his arteries, replacing cold blood with soothing liquid warmth that made his mind fuzzy and his heart stop exploding.
Another shadow stood over him. This one leaned down and he caught the scent of pine needles and river mud mixed with sweat. Dawson felt hot breath on his ear as he heard the shadow whisper, “You’re gonna wish you hadn’t survived.”