The Mimics

Chapter 12

Aurora POV

The gate to the safe zone hung off its hinges, swaying with a mournful, metallic creak that was the only sound in the suffocating stillness. It looked exactly like the camp we’d fled, a sea of canvas tents and supply crates, but the life had been sucked out of it.

"Stay close, Theo," I whispered, my hand instinctively dropping to the grip of the 9mm at my waist. "Keep your eyes open. If something moves, you tell me."

We stepped over the threshold, our boots crunching on a layer of rime ice that coated everything. At first, it just looked like people were sleeping. A soldier sat propped against a humvee, his rifle across his lap; a woman sat on a crate with her head bowed. But as we got closer, I saw the truth. Their skin was a pale, translucent blue, marbled with white frost. They hadn't died fighting. They had been frozen where they sat.

"Don't look, Theo," I said, my voice cracking. I tried to steer him toward the center of the lane, but the bodies were everywhere. It got worse the deeper we went. We passed a family huddled together under a thin tarp, a father and mother with their arms wrapped tightly around two small children, a futile attempt to share warmth against a weapon that turned the very air into a blade of ice.

I paused at the flap of a nearby medical tent, a sliver of hope still flickering in my chest that someone might have made it. I peeked inside and immediately felt my heart turn to stone. A woman was slumped on a cot, her frozen fingers curled protectively around an infant. They looked like a statue carved from salt.

Theo started to push past me, his curiosity overriding his fear. "Is someone in—"

"No," I barked, shoving him back with more force than I intended. "There’s nothing in there, Theo. Keep moving." I couldn't let him see that. I couldn't let that image be the last thing he remembered of a mother's love.

We turned a corner between two large supply tents when a sound stopped us cold—a wet, rhythmic rustling followed by a low, guttural snap of bone.

"Get behind me," I breathed, my lungs burning. I drew my handgun, the cold metal biting into my palm. I edged toward the tent flap and peered through the gap.

A pack of seven wolves was inside. They weren't interested in us; they were frantic, tearing at the frozen remains of the soldiers who had died guarding the rations. Their fur was matted with frost and dried blood, their eyes wild with a hunger that the winter had made desperate.

I backed away an inch at a time, my eyes locked on the alpha. I caught Theo’s gaze and pressed a finger to my lips, signaling for absolute silence. We retreated with agonizing slowness, our breath hitching in our throats until we were clear of the wolves' scent.

"We can't stay here," I whispered once we were far enough away. "The camp is gone."

My eyes swept the perimeter, searching for any scrap of hope. In the dead center of the camp stood a small, cinderblock building—the command center. That’s where the maps would be. That’s where the Intel lived.

I led Theo across the open plaza, checking every shadow. I peeked through the reinforced glass of the building's single window. It was clear. I jiggled the handle, found it unlocked, and pulled Theo inside, slamming the heavy door behind us and sliding the bolt home.

The air inside was stale and freezing. A single soldier sat at a long metal table, his head slumped forward as if he had fallen asleep mid-sentence. Spread out before him was a massive, laminated map of the United States. It was a graveyard of red 'X' marks over safe zones that had fallen, but a few green circles remained.

My finger traced the lines of the highway. The closest active circle was the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth.

I looked at the scale at the bottom of the map. From our current location on the outskirts of Austin to Fort Worth was roughly 190 miles. On foot, dragging a seven-year-old through a world of flash-freezes and predators, that was a ten to twelve-day trek if we were lucky—and we hadn't been lucky in a very long time.

I sighed, the sound echoing in the hollow room. We were walking into a freezer, and I didn't know if we had enough fire left in us to make it.

The 190-mile trek felt less like a journey and more like a slow crawl through a graveyard. We became ghosts, moving only when the light was grey and the shadows were long. I learned the rhythm of the new world: approximately every forty-eight hours, the sky would bruise into that sickly, metallic violet, signaling the Ice cloud was descending.

Survival became a cycle of frantic searching. We didn't look for food first; we looked for insulation. I became an expert at judging the seal on basement doors and the thickness of brick walls. Every second day, we’d huddle in crawlspaces or abandoned walk-in freezers, the small fire I built being the only thing keeping our blood from turning to ice.

We avoided everyone. If I saw a silhouette on the horizon, we hit the dirt. If I heard a branch snap that wasn't caused by the wind, we changed course. We saw Changelings—twitching, grey-skinned husks of people—wandering the highway shoulders, and we gave them a wide berth. The animals were harder to track; the wolves were getting bolder, their howls sounding closer every night.

On the fifth day, a lucky break found us. We were scouting the outskirts of a residential area when a man and woman, probably in their fifties, emerged from a storm cellar built beneath their garage. They looked at us with wary, tired eyes, but when they saw Theo—small, shivering, and covered in soot—the woman’s face softened.

They let us stay. Their bunker was well-stocked and vented perfectly. For the first time in weeks, I didn't have to sleep with one eye open, clutching the 9mm. They shared their canned goods and told us stories of their own kids who had made it to the coast before the first EMP. It was a reminder that the world hadn't completely rotted yet; there were still pockets of decency left in the cracks of the apocalypse. They sent us off the next morning with extra wool blankets and a gallon of clean water.

As we pushed further north toward Fort Worth, I realized Theo couldn't just be a passenger anymore. If I went down, he had to know how to bite back.

When we found a secluded ravine far from the main road, I pulled out the spare pistol. "Look at the sights, Theo," I whispered, standing behind him and guiding his small hands. "Smooth pull, don't jerk it. Respect the kick."

I taught him everything Dad had drilled into me: how to check the chamber, how to clear a jam, and how to breathe through the adrenaline. Watching his small finger rest against the trigger guard made a piece of me wither away. He was seven. He should have been learning how to ride a bike, not how to put a bullet in a skull.

"I hope you never have to use this, Theo," I said, kissing the top of his head as he lowered the weapon. "I hope to God you never do."

But as the sky began to darken for the next freeze, I knew the world didn't care about my hopes. It only cared if you were fast enough to survive.

The skyline of Fort Worth loomed ahead, a jagged silhouette of cold steel and shattered glass against a bruised sky. It was a ghost town now, the silence so heavy it felt like it was pressing against my eardrums. Every street corner pulled at a memory I didn't want to have. I remembered being five years old, my father’s hand engulfing mine as we walked through the Water Gardens, the roar of the falls drowning out everything else. I remembered Mom laughing at the zoo when a giraffe tried to eat her sunhat.

Most of all, I remembered the Speedway. Dad was a fanatic; he’d take me there for the big races, the air thick with the smell of burning rubber and high-octane fuel. Now, the only thing in the air was the scent of dry rot and the metallic tang of the coming frost.

We were moving through the empty streets, the Speedway's massive grandstands finally visible in the distance, when the wind shifted.

Sniff. Sniff-sniff.

The sound was wet, animalistic. I froze, my heart dropping into my stomach. I grabbed the scruff of Theo’s jacket and yanked him down behind a rusted-out SUV. Through the jagged hole where the passenger window used to be, I peeked out.

They were in the middle of the intersection. Changelings. Their grey, leathery skin was pulled tight over their bones, and their heads were twitching in rhythmic, unnatural jerks as they sampled the air. I counted five... eight... ten. I ducked back down before I could see the rest of the pack. There were too many to fight, and we were caught in the open.

I looked at the Speedway. It was maybe three hundred yards away. If we stayed here, they’d catch our scent eventually. If we ran, we’d be targets.

I looked at Theo. His face was ghostly pale, his small hands shaking so hard he could barely keep them balled into fists. I reached into the back of my waistband and pulled out the spare 9mm I’d taken from the man in the cellar. I pressed it into Theo’s hands, wrapping his fingers around the grip.

"Theodore, look at me," I whispered, my voice hard as flint. I forced him to meet my eyes. "You stay on my heels. Do not stop. Do not look back. If I fall, you keep running until you reach those gates. You understand me?"

He swallowed hard, his knuckles white as he gripped the pistol. He gave me a single, jerky nod.

I shifted the shotgun, checking the safety one last time, and felt the familiar, cold weight of the metal. My pulse was a frantic drumbeat in my ears. I reached out, squeezed his shoulder once, and began the count.

"One... two..."

On three, we broke cover and ran.