It was eighteen days later that I came upon the road. It was a small road, a little wisp of a thing twisting and turning through the stands of trees, running right through the heart of the forest. When I'd first come upon it, I'd been confused. It wasn't natural. The smell of it, the feel of it, didn't blend seamlessly in with the forest. I didn't know where it came from, what it was doing, or why it was there. So I stood back and watched. I stayed well out of sight, behind the trees, deep within the shadows of the forest. I never thought it would attack, it was obviously part of the landscape, but I knew it was different from the rivers, rocks, and trees I'd encountered roaming the woods.
It wasn't fifteen minutes later that I found out how different it was.
I smelled it, heard it, long before I saw it. The sound was familiar, something from my life before, but I wasn't able to place it at first. It was plugging along, slowly but surely, and I thought about it, pondered, for a good four minutes before it made its appearance. But once I saw it, once it came around the bend, I felt stupid for not realizing sooner. Automobile, vehicle, car. I should have remembered.
I'd been doing a lot of that over the past couple of weeks – chiding myself for not remembering. When my mind would stumble over a memory, over a feeling, I felt stupid, inept, and oh so frustrated. I tried to keep my cool when that happened, I really did, but more often than not I would lose my temper in the worst way. The first few times were harmless enough. I would scream, shriek, cry out at the top of my lungs. That seemed to get rid of much of the tension even it if did silence the forest. Gradually though, as the days went by and more and more questions arose that had no answers, I found that screaming was no longer enough.
The first time I'd truly lost control was the worst. I'd found a man, a camper, alone in the woods, whose smell set my throat on fire. I'd watched him a while before I invaded his campsite, doing my best to resist the urge to charge in and attack, and saw him doing something interesting. He had a battery pack hooked up to something that glowed, illuminating his face in the twilight, while he alternated between tapping away on it and consulting a nearby sheet of paper. I'd struggled then, my normally helpful mind not doing a thing to help me place the object or it's purpose, and after a while the frustration and the burning overtook me. I charged the campsite with a roar that shook the earth, drained the blood from the man tout de suite, tore him limb from limb in my rage, and destroyed the entire campsite and a good amount of forest. I'd had to gather the pieces over a mile wide radius to dispose of him and clear out of the campsite before the blood on the ground made the fire reignite.
I'd realized hours later that it was a computer.
While I was hesitant to expose myself to new things, confusing things, I realized that if I were determined to discover what came before the fire, I wouldn't have much choice. After those first days, those confusing and disorienting days spent wandering aimlessly and cataloging the forest, I'd been working very hard on controlling my emotions, controlling the frustration, controlling my reaction to the fire. I was getting better very slowly and had managed not to tear a camper completely apart in a week. Of course, I had barely met a camper in a week which only served to further my interest in this little road.
A road with cars meant people, of that much I was sure, and people in cars meant blood. Blood I desperately needed to squelch the fire.
It seemed like the fire was never quite gone. It was better when it was doused in blood and felt almost manageable for a while right after. But always, always it burned on, this part of me that had never managed to escape the fire. And there were never enough campers to soothe the burn.
So when I found the road, this little artery through the heart of my forest, I came up with a plan. Surely it wouldn't be hard to get someone to stop for me. And once they'd stopped, I'd eat them. Easy. Or rather, it seemed easy when my throat was on fire and I was desperate for blood. I wasn't so sure when it actually came down to it it'd be easy at all.
It was twenty days from the day I emerged from the fire that I decided to put my plan into motion. I hid high in a tree, lurking, waiting, until the telltale rumbling of an engine met my ears. I sat crouched, listening, watching, until I saw the front of the car round the bend near my vantage point. Then I leaped gracefully from the tree in which I'd perched to the middle of the road and waited to see what happened.
I expected the driver to see me, to slow down, to stop to see why I was there. I expected the driver to see me, to speed up, to drive by without another thought. I never expected the driver to turn the wheel without slowing down and careen through the trees and into the forest.
I stared at the car dumbly as it bounced over logs and cut a path through the underbrush, glancing off trees, until it finally hit a trunk dead on and came to a loud, thudding stop. I stood in the road and stared at the wreckage stunned for three full seconds before the smell hit me and my throat went up in flames. Blood.
I was at the driver's side door in a second, wrenching it off its hinges and pulling the driver from the wreckage. It was a young woman, blonde hair stained with her blood, and I barely spared her a glance before plunging my teeth into her neck and drinking deeply. I was interrupted by a shrill chirping coming from her pocket.
I drank until she was empty and then went for her pocket, using a finger in the opening to pull it clear off her pants. Out tumbled some change, a circle in a foil wrapper, and something I recognized, knew intimately, it seemed – a phone. I tucked the young woman back into the car, doing my best to jam the door back on so she wouldn't fall out, and turned my attention to the little phone.
It was tiny, black, and very delicate.
I discovered weeks ago when rifling through a camper's gear that I didn't know my strength. Things that seemed easy enough to touch, to pick up, crumbled under my grasp. I'd gotten the hang of grabbing and gripping eventually, but I had to be careful. Any more pressure than the tiniest amount would destroy anything and everything I laid a finger on.
With that in mind, I plucked the phone off the ground with little more pressure than a butterfly's wing.
I turned the phone over in my hand, running my finger gently over the front, the back, the number keys. This was something I remembered clearly from my previous life, the life before the fire, and to see it here in middle of the woods with me was almost eerie.
The memories had started coming a week after I'd escaped the fire. The first was a face, just a flash, that came to me one night when I was running in the woods. A man with a mustache and kind, guarded eyes. The image shocked me so much I'd skidded to a stop right then and there.
There had been a dozen or so memories since the first, all coming randomly, all just fragments. I'd gotten in the habit of thinking of the things from that life as a dream. Be it a face, a word, an action - these people, these things were fantasy, a fable, always existing somewhere, sometime, but never in my reality.
However, it was hard to argue fantasy when I had the object from my dreams solidly in my hand. But fantasy or not, I knew just what to do with it.
I turned the phone over again - once, twice - then ghosted my fingers over the keys, pressing in an order that was so familiar yet felt so strange. I didn't know where the number came from, but it was a number I knew, apparently by heart.
The phone range once, twice, three times, then four, and then someone picked up.
"Hello?" The voice that came through the line was deep, male and startled me so much I almost crushed the fragile case to dust in my hand. But I acted quickly, forcing my fingers to relax, and dropped the phone to the ground instead. I crouched down next to it, peering at the little screen. The number I'd dialed was still displayed prominently.
The voice came again, a little louder this time. "Hello? Are you there? Who is this?" He sounded angry, urgent, upset, and I cocked my head, thinking. The voice was familiar, but I couldn't even begin to place it. "Hey! Who the hell is –"
"Who are you?" I asked, without lowering my face to the phone. "I know you."
"Bella?" came the strangled reply. I cocked my head again and thought for a moment. It didn't sound right for him, it didn't sound familiar.
"No?" It was more of a question than anything. I could swear that I knew him. I knew his number, at least. I wondered if he was the mustached man.
He breathed out in a great big whoosh. "Bella, tell me where you are. I'll come and get you, everything will be fine. I promise."
"I'm . . ." I glanced around, as if I didn't already know the answer, "in the woods."
"Okay. Okay, we can work with that. Do you know what woods you're in? How did you get the phone? Are you hurt?" His questions came fast one after another, and while my mind could keep up with them, I felt overwhelmed. His voice brought forth almost memories, half memories, echoes that my mind couldn't seem to chase down. I felt torn, scattered, conflicted.
I gathered my thoughts, focused up, and answered his closest question truthfully. "It only hurts when it burns." The silence that stretched out after that was deafening.
The sound of an engine tore my attention from the phone and had my head perking up and turning toward the road. A car pulled to the side, no doubt investigating the signs of an accident, and I was torn. Half of me wanted to charge the road and attack whoever stopped; the other half wanted to hide my kill and hope I wasn't discovered. I thought for a second, vacillating between the two, before pulling the driver's side door from the wreckage for a second time, grabbing the girl, and charging off into the woods.
As I melted into the shadows, nothing more than a shadow myself, I looked back toward the place I'd dropped the phone only to find it crushed to smithereens under the mangled car door, plastic bits scattered around the wreckage.