Transit Shelter Flyers

The speedometer needle sat trembling at a hundred and forty. The highway was a grey blur cutting through the flat green of the brush. My knee bounced against the glove compartment. The air conditioning was busted. It blew hot, dusty air directly into my face.

Tyler had both hands clamped on the steering wheel. His knuckles were white. He stared straight ahead. He didn't blink. He just drove.

In the back seat, Ben was slumped against the window. He had his headphones around his neck. The volume was bleeding out of them. A tinny, compressed voice was talking about the rent strike.

I reached for the dial on the dashboard radio. I wanted something louder. I wanted music. I twisted the knob. Static cracked through the speakers. Then, a sharp, clean voice cut in.

"Police are currently holding a barricade at Portage and Main. The rent strike organizers have refused to disperse. Tear gas has been deployed."

Tyler flinched. He hit the power button on the radio. The car went silent. The only sound was the engine working too hard and the tires eating asphalt.

"Don't," Tyler said.

"I just want to know what's happening," I said.

"We left so we wouldn't have to know," Tyler said. "Leave it off."

My stomach tightened. My phone was in my pocket. It had four missed calls from my landlord. I had an eviction notice taped to my fridge back in Winnipeg. The strike wasn't just on the news. It was my apartment building. It was my life.

I stared out the window. The trees were a solid wall of dark pine. The sky was bleached white with heat. It was summer, but the air felt dead. It felt heavy.

"Are we even going the right way?" Ben asked from the back.

He sounded exhausted. He sounded like he hadn't slept in a week. None of us had.

"It's off the grid," Tyler said. "My uncle used to come out here. It's an old logging road. No cell service. No people. No cops. No landlords."

"Just bugs," Ben said.

"I'll take the bugs," Tyler said.

He wrenched the steering wheel to the right. The car hit a gravel shoulder. The tires spun, caught, and dragged us down a narrow dirt path. Dust exploded behind us. Rocks hammered the underside of the chassis.

I grabbed the handle above the door. My teeth rattled. The trees closed in over the car. The sunlight vanished. It was instantly darker. The heat didn't drop. It just got wetter. The humidity felt like a wet towel over my face.

"Slow down," I said.

"I want to get there," Tyler said.

He didn't slow down. He drove like something was chasing us. We bounced over deep ruts. The suspension groaned. We drove for twenty minutes into the dark bush. The road kept getting narrower. The branches scraped the side of the car. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

Finally, the road ended. It just stopped. There was a small clearing. Dirt, pine needles, and a rusted-out fire pit.

Tyler killed the engine.

The silence was immediate. It was heavy. It pushed against my eardrums. There were no birds. There was no wind.

We sat in the car for a minute. Nobody moved.

"We're here," Tyler said.

He popped his door open. The heat rushed in. It smelled like dry rot and pine resin. I unbuckled my seatbelt. My shirt was plastered to my back with sweat. I kicked my door open and stepped out into the dirt.

My legs felt weak. I stretched my arms. The air felt thick. Every breath was work.

Ben climbed out of the back. He looked pale. He looked at his phone.

"No service," Ben said.

"Good," Tyler said. "Get the cooler."

We popped the trunk. We started pulling gear out. The tent, the sleeping bags, the cooler, the plastic bin of dry food. Everything felt twice as heavy as it should. The sweat dripped off my nose. It stung my eyes.

I dragged the tent bag toward the flat patch of dirt near the fire pit. I dropped it. The canvas felt hot.

Tyler was struggling with the cooler. He dropped his end. It hit the dirt with a heavy thud.

"Help me with this," Tyler said to Ben.

Ben didn't move. He was just standing there. He was staring into the trees.

"Ben," Tyler said.

"Do you hear that?" Ben asked.

I stopped unzipping the tent. I listened. I heard the blood rushing in my ears. I heard a mosquito buzzing near my neck. Nothing else.

"Hear what?" I asked.

"Static," Ben said. "Like a radio."

Tyler groaned. He grabbed the cooler by himself and dragged it toward the trees to get it in the shade.

"You're hearing things," Tyler said. "You've been listening to too many podcasts. Your brain is fried."

Ben shook his head. He looked confused. He rubbed the side of his head.

"Maybe," Ben said.

He put his phone in his pocket. He picked up a bundle of tent poles. He walked over to me. We started putting the tent together.

The fiberglass poles snapped into place. We threaded them through the canvas sleeves. We didn't talk. We just worked. It felt mechanical. We were going through the motions.

I kept looking over my shoulder. The woods were dense. The shadows between the trees looked solid. It was the middle of the afternoon, but it felt like twilight in the clearing.

The heat was making me dizzy. I felt a sharp ache behind my eyes. I wanted to lie down. I wanted to close my eyes and just sleep. I didn't care about the tent. I didn't care about the food. I just wanted to stop moving.

Tyler walked past us with a hatchet.

"I'm going to find some dry wood," Tyler said.

"Don't go far," I said.

He waved his hand. He didn't look back. He walked into the brush. The branches swallowed him up.

I finished staking down the tent. My hands were shaking. I stood up and wiped my forehead with the back of my arm.

Ben was sitting on a stump. He had his phone out again. He was staring at the black screen.

"I thought you had no service," I said.

"I don't," Ben said.

"Then put it away."

He didn't move. He just sat there. His shoulders were slumped. He looked completely defeated.

"What's the point, Cassie?" Ben asked.

His voice was flat. It had no emotion in it at all.

"The point of what?" I asked.

"Any of it," Ben said. "We drove out here to hide. But we have to go back eventually. The rent is still going to be due. The cops are still going to be at the barricades. Nothing changes. We just delay it."

My chest felt tight. I hated it when he talked like this. It made me feel like I was drowning.

"Stop it," I said. "We just need a break. We need to clear our heads."

Ben didn't answer. He just stared at his black screen.

I looked toward the trees. Tyler had been gone for twenty minutes. It shouldn't take that long to find dead wood.

"Tyler!" I yelled.

My voice sounded tiny. The trees just absorbed it. There was no echo.

I waited.

Nothing.

I walked to the edge of the clearing. I pushed a low branch out of my way.

"Tyler!" I yelled again.

I heard a branch snap deep in the brush. Then I heard footsteps. They were fast.

Tyler pushed through the pine needles. He didn't have any wood. He still had the hatchet in his hand. His face was completely white. He was breathing hard. Sweat was pouring down his neck.

"Tyler, what is it?" I asked.

He stopped. He looked at me. His eyes were wide.

"You need to see this," Tyler said.

"See what?"

"Just come here," he said.

He didn't wait for me. He turned around and walked back into the dark woods. I looked back at Ben. He hadn't moved. He was still staring at his phone.

I swallowed hard. I followed Tyler into the trees.

Nailed to the Pine

The brush was thick. I had to keep my arms up to protect my face from the pine needles. The ground was soft and spongy. It smelled like wet dirt and decay.

Tyler was walking fast. He kept looking over his shoulder to make sure I was following.

"Slow down," I said.

"It's right here," Tyler said.

He stopped in front of a massive pine tree. The trunk was dark. The bark was thick and heavily textured.

Tyler pointed at the trunk with the handle of his hatchet.

I stepped closer. The shadows were deep, but I could see a white square pinned to the dark bark.

It was a piece of paper.

I walked right up to the tree. I stared at the paper. My stomach dropped.

It was a flyer. It was printed on cheap copy paper. It was wrinkled from the humidity. The ink was slightly blurred.

It was stapled to the tree.

I read the words.

RENT STRIKE NOW. PORTAGE AND MAIN. DO NOT COMPLY.

Below the text was a black-and-white graphic of a fist breaking a key.

I knew this flyer. I had a stack of them on my kitchen table in Winnipeg. I had handed them out outside the grocery store two days ago.

"What is this?" I asked.

My voice shook.

"Look around," Tyler said.

I turned my head. I looked at the next tree. There was another piece of white paper stapled to it. I looked deeper into the woods.

White squares. Everywhere.

Nailed to the pines. Stapled to the birch trees. Taped to the deadwood logs.

There were dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. They stretched deep into the dark woods.

I walked over to the nearest tree. I touched the paper. It was damp. The staples were rusted. They looked old. But the flyers were exactly the same as the ones we made last week.

"Who put these here?" I asked.

"Nobody comes out here," Tyler said. "The road was overgrown. You saw it."

"Someone had to put them here, Tyler. They didn't grow on the trees."

I ripped the flyer off the bark. The staples tore through the wet paper. I held it in my hand. It felt gross.

"Are we being messed with?" Tyler asked.

"Who would mess with us? Nobody knows we're here. We didn't even know we were coming here until this morning."

I dropped the paper on the ground. I felt sick. The air felt heavier. The heat was pressing down on my shoulders.

"Let's go back to camp," I said.

We walked back. We walked faster this time. We didn't speak.

When we broke through the brush into the clearing, the sun was dropping behind the tree line. The sky was turning a bruised purple.

Ben was trying to start a fire.

He had piled some small twigs and dry leaves in the rusted fire pit. He had a bottle of lighter fluid in his hand. He was squirting it onto the pile.

We walked up to him.

"Did you find wood?" Ben asked without looking up.

"No," Tyler said.

Ben sighed. He put the lighter fluid down. He struck a long wooden match.

He tossed the match into the pit.

The lighter fluid caught. A bright orange flame flared up. It licked the twigs. It lit up Ben's face. The shadows danced on the dirt.

Then, the fire died.

It didn't flicker. It didn't burn down. It just vanished. It was like someone threw a heavy blanket over it. One second there was a fire, the next second there was nothing but grey smoke.

"What the hell?" Tyler said.

Ben stared at the pit. He didn't look surprised. He just looked tired.

"The wood is damp," Ben said.

"It had lighter fluid on it," I said. "It should have burned."

Ben shrugged. He picked up his phone again. He put his headphones over his ears.

I walked over to him. I grabbed the headphones and pulled them down around his neck.

"Hey," Ben said. "What are you doing?"

"We found something in the woods," I said.

"I don't care," Ben said.

His voice was completely flat.

I stared at him. His eyes were half-open. He looked like he was heavily medicated.

"Ben, listen to me," I said. "There are flyers nailed to the trees. The strike flyers. From the city."

Ben looked at me. He didn't react. He just slowly blinked.

"So?" Ben asked.

"So?" Tyler stepped forward. "So how did they get out here? We are four hours north of the city. We are in the middle of nowhere."

"It doesn't matter," Ben said.

He reached for his headphones. I pushed his hand away.

"Stop it," I said. "What is wrong with you?"

"Nothing," Ben said. "I'm just tired. I'm tired of caring. I'm tired of fighting. I'm tired of pretending that any of this matters. We're screwed. The city is screwed. Our lives are screwed. Why bother?"

He sounded exactly like the guy on the podcast he always listened to. The cynical guy. The guy who always talked about how the system was rigged so you shouldn't even try.

"Ben, snap out of it," I said.

"Just walk away from it all," Ben said.

It wasn't his phrasing. It was the podcaster's catchphrase.

Ben stood up. He didn't look at us. He turned toward the dark tree line.

"Where are you going?" Tyler asked.

"I need to take a leak," Ben said.

He walked away. He didn't take a flashlight. He just walked into the pitch black of the woods.

Tyler and I watched him go.

"He's losing it," Tyler said.

"We're all losing it," I said.

I sat down on the cooler. I rubbed my face. I was so tired. The heat hadn't broken with the sunset. It felt even hotter now. The air was thick and greasy.

I looked at the dead fire pit. I felt a heavy weight pressing down on my chest.

"Maybe he's right," Tyler said quietly.

I looked at Tyler. He was sitting on the ground. He had his knees pulled up to his chest.

"Don't start," I said.

"I'm serious, Cassie," Tyler said. "Look at us. We ran away. We ran away because we couldn't handle it. And now we're sitting in the dark, in the heat, waiting for what? Nothing. There's nothing out here. There's nothing back there."

His voice was getting monotonous. It was losing its pitch. It sounded flat, just like Ben's.

"Tyler, shut up," I said.

"It's just static," Tyler said. "Everything is just static."

My eyelids felt incredibly heavy. I wanted to argue with him. I wanted to yell at him. But it took too much energy.

I leaned back against the cooler. I closed my eyes.

Just for a second.

Just to rest them.

I could hear the blood in my ears. I could hear the faint, distant sound of radio static. It sounded like it was coming from the trees.

I let the darkness pull me under.

None of it Matters

I woke up gasping.

The air was cold. Not cool. Freezing.

I opened my eyes. It was pitch black. I was lying in the dirt next to the cooler. I pushed myself up. My muscles were stiff. My neck ached.

I patted my pockets. I found my phone. I hit the screen. The harsh blue light blinded me for a second.

It was 3:14 AM.

I shined the phone's flashlight around the clearing. The tent was still there. The dead fire pit was still there.

Tyler was asleep in the dirt a few feet away. He was curled into a tight ball.

I stood up. I looked around.

"Ben?" I whispered.

Silence.

I walked over to the tent. I unzipped the flap. I shined the light inside.

Two empty sleeping bags. Ben wasn't in the tent.

Panic flared in my chest. It cut through the heavy exhaustion.

I turned around and kicked Tyler's shoe.

"Tyler. Get up."

He groaned. He didn't move.

I kicked him harder.

"Tyler! Get up! Ben is gone."

Tyler rolled over. He shielded his eyes from my light.

"What?"

"Ben is gone. He never came back."

Tyler sat up. He rubbed his face. He looked confused.

"What time is it?"

"Past three," I said. "Get your flashlight. We have to find him."

Tyler grunted. He stood up slowly. He moved like he was underwater. He grabbed his heavy maglite from the top of the cooler. He clicked it on. A thick beam of yellow light cut through the dark.

We walked to the edge of the clearing. We stood exactly where Ben had walked into the brush hours ago.

"Ben!" Tyler yelled.

His voice didn't carry. The trees seemed to swallow the sound immediately.

We stepped into the brush.

The temperature dropped another ten degrees. I shivered. My sweaty shirt was freezing against my skin.

We walked slowly. We swept the flashlights back and forth. The beams illuminated the trunks of the pines. Every time the light hit one of those white flyers, my heart skipped a beat.

RENT STRIKE NOW.

DO NOT COMPLY.

They were everywhere. They looked like glowing white squares floating in the dark.

"Ben!" I screamed.

I listened.

Nothing.

We pushed deeper into the woods. The ground got uneven. Roots tripped us. Low branches whipped our faces.

Then, I heard it.

It was faint at first. It sounded like a voice.

I grabbed Tyler's arm. I squeezed hard.

"Stop," I said. "Listen."

Tyler stopped moving. He held his breath.

We listened.

It was a voice. It was coming from straight ahead. It was low and repetitive.

"It doesn't matter," the voice said. "None of it matters."

It was Ben's voice.

But it didn't sound right. It sounded metallic. It sounded like it was coming through a bad speaker. It had a weird, digital distortion to it.

"Ben?" Tyler called out.

"It doesn't matter, none of it matters," the voice repeated.

Exactly the same cadence. Exactly the same pitch.

It was an audio loop.

We walked toward the sound. Our flashlight beams crisscrossed in the dark.

We broke through a thick patch of ferns. There was a small clearing ahead. In the center of the clearing was a massive, dead tree stump.

Sitting perfectly in the center of the stump was Ben's phone.

The screen was glowing. The audio was playing out of the tiny speaker.

"It doesn't matter, none of it matters."

I walked up to the stump. I stared at the phone. The screen was cracked. The voice memo app was open. The audio bar was looping.

I reached out to grab it.

"Don't touch it," Tyler said.

His voice was a harsh whisper.

I looked at him. Tyler was staring past the stump. He was staring into the darkness behind the dead tree.

He was shaking.

I slowly moved my flashlight beam to where he was looking.

The beam hit something tall.

It wasn't a tree.

It was a figure. It was at least eight feet tall. It was incredibly thin. It looked emaciated. Its skin was pale grey, stretched tight over jagged bones. Its arms hung down past its knees. Its fingers were long, thin, and ended in sharp, dirty points.

But its face.

I couldn't process its face. It didn't have eyes or a mouth. It was just a blur of grey and white. It looked like static on a broken television screen. It was shifting and moving.

The air around the creature hummed. It sounded like a dial-up modem grinding against a high-voltage wire.

I froze. My lungs locked up. I couldn't breathe.

The creature stepped forward.

It didn't make a sound when it walked. It just glided over the dead leaves.

It tilted its head. The static on its face shifted.

Then, it spoke.

It didn't use Ben's voice. It used the voice of the podcaster Ben listened to. The cynical, smooth, arrogant voice.

"Why fight it?" the creature said. The voice projected directly into my head. "It's already over. Just give up."

The creature raised one of its long, jagged arms.

Tyler dropped his flashlight. He fell to his knees.

"Tyler, get up!" I screamed.

Tyler pulled his knees to his chest. He covered his head with his arms.

"Don't engage," Tyler whispered. "If we don't engage, it won't see us. Just ignore it. Tune it out."

He was doing exactly what we did in the car. He was doing exactly what we did in the city. He was shutting down.

The creature's static face snapped toward Tyler.

It moved incredibly fast. One second it was ten feet away, the next second it was standing directly over Tyler.

I screamed.

The creature reached down. Its long fingers wrapped around Tyler's ankle.

Tyler didn't fight back. He didn't even scream. He just stayed curled in a ball.

The creature pulled.

Tyler was dragged across the dirt. He slid over the pine needles. The creature dragged him backward into the deep brush.

"Tyler!" I yelled.

I ran forward. I reached for him.

The creature vanished into the darkness, pulling Tyler with it.

I stopped at the edge of the ferns. I shined my light into the black trees.

There was nothing. Just the thick, silent woods.

And the sound of Ben's phone on the stump, still looping.

"It doesn't matter, none of it matters."

Shredded News

I was completely alone.

The cold air bit into my skin. My chest heaved. I stared into the black gap in the trees where Tyler had vanished.

My instinct was to drop the flashlight. My instinct was to sit down in the dirt, curl up, and wait to die. It would be so easy. I was so tired. The eviction notice. The broken car. The heat. The strike. The monster. It was too much.

I felt the apathy washing over me like a heavy, warm blanket. My eyelids drooped. The flashlight trembled in my hand.

Then, I remembered Tyler. I remembered how he just curled up. He gave up. And the creature immediately went for him.

It ignored me when I was screaming at Tyler.

It fed on the quiet. It fed on the withdrawal. It was a predator that hunted the ghosts in the machine. It hunted people who had checked out.

If I shut down, I was dead.

I tightened my grip on the flashlight. I forced my eyes open wide.

I had to care. I had to be present. I had to be as loud and angry as I actually was.

I took a deep breath. I filled my lungs with the freezing air.

"Hey!" I screamed.

My voice tore through the dead silence. It echoed off the tree trunks.

"I am right here!" I yelled.

I stepped into the brush. I stomped my boots into the dead leaves. I made as much noise as possible.

"I am angry!" I screamed. "I am completely broke! My landlord is a parasite! I can't afford groceries! I am furious!"

I yelled every real, terrifying thing in my life. I didn't hide behind irony. I didn't hide behind a screen. I just screamed the truth.

I heard a loud hiss ahead of me. It sounded like radio static violently changing frequencies.

I pushed through a thick wall of branches. My flashlight beam hit a wall of trash.

It was a nest.

It was built into the hollow base of a massive, dead oak tree. The nest was made of shredded newspapers, broken circuit boards, tangled black wires, and hundreds of ripped rent strike flyers. It looked like a landfill had been woven together by a giant spider.

In the center of the nest, Tyler was lying on his back. He was covered in shredded paper. His eyes were open, but they were glazed over. He wasn't moving.

Next to him was Ben. Ben looked the same. Totally catatonic.

The creature was standing over them.

It turned its static face toward me. The humming noise spiked. It sounded like a screeching microphone feedback loop.

It raised its long, jagged arm and pointed at me.

"Just walk away," it projected into my head. The voice was deafening. "It's too hard. Just rest."

The apathy hit me like a physical punch. My knees buckled. I fell to the dirt. The flashlight rolled out of my hand.

I wanted to sleep. I wanted it to end.

"No," I whispered.

I dug my fingernails into the dirt. I grabbed a handful of sharp pine needles and squeezed until my palms bled. The sharp pain cut through the fog in my brain.

I forced myself to my feet.

I reached into my back pocket. I pulled out the orange plastic emergency flare gun I always kept in the camping bin.

"I'm not walking away!" I screamed at the top of my lungs.

I aimed the flare gun directly at the creature's chest.

I pulled the trigger.

A blinding red light exploded from the barrel. The recoil snapped my wrist back.

The flare hit the creature dead in the center of its ribs. It hissed loudly. The flare dropped into the nest of shredded newspaper and dry wires.

The nest ignited instantly.

Flames shot up into the dark. The heat was immediate and intense.

The creature let out a sound that wasn't human and wasn't digital. It was pure, raw agony. Its static face violently scrambled into white noise. It thrashed backward, tearing through the brush, trying to get away from the fire and the bright red light.

I dropped the gun. I ran to the nest.

The fire was spreading fast. The smoke stung my eyes.

I grabbed Tyler by the collar of his jacket. I pulled hard. He was dead weight.

"Get up!" I screamed.

I slapped his face. Hard.

He blinked. He gasped for air. The fire seemed to snap him out of the trance.

"Cassie?" he choked out.

"Help me with Ben!" I yelled.

Tyler scrambled to his feet. We grabbed Ben by the arms. We dragged him out of the burning nest. The heat was blistering our backs.

We didn't look back to see if the creature was following. We just ran.

We dragged Ben through the brush. We crashed through the ferns. We followed the glow of our dropped flashlights until we hit the clearing.

We threw Ben into the back seat of the car. Tyler jumped into the driver's seat. I jumped into the shotgun seat.

Tyler slammed the key into the ignition. The engine roared to life.

He threw it into reverse. The tires spun, kicking up dirt and rocks. He slammed on the brakes, threw it into drive, and hit the gas.

We flew down the dark, rutted logging road. The car bounced violently. The trees scraped the sides.

We hit the gravel shoulder of the highway. Tyler overcorrected, the car swerved, and then we were on the smooth asphalt.

He floored it. The speedometer climbed. Eighty. A hundred. A hundred and twenty.

We were driving south. Back toward the city.

The sky in the east was starting to turn a bruised, pale grey. Morning was coming.

My chest was heaving. My hands were shaking uncontrollably. I looked over at Tyler. His face was covered in dirt and soot. He was staring at the road, completely focused.

Suddenly, the dashboard lit up.

The radio clicked on by itself.

Static hissed through the speakers.

Tyler immediately reached over to turn it off.

I grabbed his wrist. I squeezed hard.

He looked at me.

"Leave it," I said.

He slowly pulled his hand back.

I reached for the dial. I tuned it through the static. I turned it until the signal caught.

The sharp, clean voice of the news anchor filled the car.

"Sunrise approaches in Winnipeg. The barricades hold. The strike continues into its third day."

I leaned back in my seat. I kept my eyes on the road ahead. I didn't look away. I let the words fill the car. I let myself hear them. I let myself feel them.