Nobody - Prologue

All Beka wanted to do was to go home, was that too much to ask? Apparently it was, because it was taking forever to do just that. Utah traffic wasn’t exactly rough to Beka, at least compared to the snail-races of California’s highways, but right now Utah seemed to have signed up for it’s own local snail race on the highway Beka was currently driving on. Traffic was at a dead stop, probably a crash ahead, and with that crash the inevitable onlookers, surveying the crash like it was the most recent sitcom on the Disney channel. Slow traffic or no, as long as Beka could get home to Mufasa before tea time, the day wouldn’t be total garbage. At least her ‘99 Toyota’s seats felt a little softer than usual, not to mention the radio was playing some decent music, letting Beka calm enough to put up the I-19’s dead-stop shit for just a little while longer.

You have to wonder why they call it rush hour, Beka thought. It was a no brainer, really, why not call it slow hour? It would definitely fit better, but Beka had to admit rush hour just had a better ring to it, for whatever reason.

As Beka was thinking this she sized herself up in her rearview mirror. She looked good, especially after her most recent haircut. The crew-cut went well with her charcoal skin and purple button up shirt. She didn’t think it was looking good necessarily, but she did think that it gave off a pretty cool and knowledgeable impression. Nice job, you did well girl.

At that moment Beka saw a blur run past her window, accompanied by a shriek. Beka looked down from her rear-view to see someone running full tilt towards the front of traffic, streaming past her window. Beka’s jaw dropped an inch as she turned to watch them run down the traffic. They were both tall and lean, but looked young from what Beka glimpsed before she couldn’t make them out anymore, probably college boys or something. Beka didn’t blame them, she was two seconds away from opening her door and walking too.

Just as the college boys were about to be lost among the traffic, Beka thought she saw one of them full on fly-tackle the other to the ground, but Beka could only look for a few seconds before she heard commotion from behind her. As she put her hand from the steering wheel to the rear-view, Beka thought she saw something out of the corner of her eye, in the car to her right. What the hell is going on?

What Beka saw in the car to her right didn’t fit, didn’t make sense. Was it a couple getting it on? It certainly looked like it, what else would two teenages be doing on top of each other, shaking the car to hell and back-and-forth? But that didn’t make any sense. People didn’t just do that, especially not in full view in the middle of a traffic jam. Maybe Beka just over-estimated people a bit.

Beka put a hand on the passenger seat and turned to look back at the traffic jam behind her, but all she saw was chaos, but the chaos wasn’t registering right with Beka. What the flying fuck where those people doing!?

In the instant she turned around and focused on what was going on outside of her rear window, Beka saw four things. The first was a group of people converging on the truck directly behind Beka’s, all of them screaming. The second, which was going on directly to the right of the truck behind Beka’s, was a man trying to get into a car by using the sunroof, banging his bare hands against it, the skin on his knuckles beginning to fray. The third was what Beka thought was a family of three, a middle aged husband and wife, and presumably their child running down the traffic jam. Why are they running?

The fourth thing she processed was a man hanging over her tailgate, the middle of his body on top of the gate and his head resting on the bed of her truck, except that there wasn’t a head. Just… pink and red.

Beka turned to the passenger seat and threw up, almost choking on her vomit as she picked her head up, and she almost choked again when she saw blood covering the window of the car to her right, the “couple” nowhere to be seen. She didn’t exactly understand what was happening, or why, but she knew, in that instant that something was wrong, something that she couldn’t just sit there and wait to be over. That was when Beka decided to run.

The sound of dozens of screams came rushing at Beka as soon as she opened the door, overwhelming every other noise. Beka could hear every kind of scream she could imagine.

Beka turned and saw a mob of people that had converged on the truck behind her. Beka then made one of the most fatal mistakes she would ever make: She gasped. As soon as the noise escaped Beka every person in the mob simultaneously turned their heads to look at her. Without skipping a beat they all ran for Beka with looks of pure hatred on their faces, Beka not skipping a beat either as she turned and ran as fast as her legs could carry her.

As Beka was running past the traffic ahead of her, she glimpsed people in cars who had no idea that anything was going on. People were giving Beka funny looks as they used their phones or re-applied their hair products.

It was when Beka thought she could get away that she felt a massive weight hit her back, which sent her reeling toward the ground head first. Beka only had time to turn her body sky-up on the pavement before she saw one of the mob crash onto her. Beka felt a splash of liquid go across her face, and then-

***************************************************

Beka woke up. As Beka opened her eyes, it was like waking up from a night’s sleep where you know you’ve had a dream, but you can’t recall anything from that dream except for a few images. She saw herself pinning a child on the ground, both of them screaming, she saw herself running with a bunch of people she didn’t know running towards a massive granite building… but what Beka saw when she first opened her eyes stunned her most of all.

She was standing at the edge of a cliff. Beka was at what her and her friends call the Salt Cliffs, a very large hill made from erosion and decreased sea levels. It was always a cool place to visit with friends, even if it was just to look off the cliff. It was a long fall, at least several hundred feet before you hit the sandy ground below.

For just a moment, Beka let the wind blow around her, took the smell of salt and dirt in, and breathed for just a moment, before the pain knocked the wind out of her. She didn’t see it coming, she didn’t even know what it is, but she did know that it was the worst pain that she had ever felt. She clutched her stomach, fell to the ground, and screamed. While she was on the ground writhing she finally isolated where the pain was coming from: Her fingers and her stomach. She didn’t want to look though, she didn’t want to see what was causing this much pain, all she wanted to do was to stand up and try to find something or someone that could possibly explain what the fuck just happened.

Beka did the hardest thing that she could ever imagine doing: She stood up. Every time she moved her stomach felt like was ripping itself apart from the inside-out, but she managed to move.

As Beka stood up she turned to see what was behind her, but there wasn’t much. All that there was on top of the hill was a large boulder. She remembered that boulder, because it was made up of heavily packed in sand that could easily be chipped away, not to mention that abundance of lizards that lived inside of it’s many nooks and crannies. Beka started to make her way towards it. clutching her stomach and bearing the pain, but before she could take two steps towards the boulder, she saw something move from behind it, a large man, with a bald head and a goatee. He didn’t look like he knew what he was doing there, at least that what Beka thought was going through his head, but why was he mumbling to himself? Beka almost didn’t want to call out to him, but she was so happy to see another face…

“Hey”, she said.

These words killed Beka. As soon as she said them she saw the man’s head dart up, already running for whoever had spoken the words. Beka didn’t even have enough time to recognize the look of pure malice on his face before he reached her and tackled her, but they didn’t hit any ground. Instead the two plummeted to the ground a few hundred feet below.

In the few seconds before the two hit the ground, Beka looked at the man’s eyes. They were full of hatred, twisted in anger, but suddenly they weren’t, like a switch being thrown. In the next instant the man’s face was cleared of rage, replaced with a face full of confusion, and that’s when the two of them hit the ground.