Hopi Springs: A Dystopian Horror Short Story

Short story | Horror, Science Fiction

“Are we close, Daddy?” Janet asked him as they looked out over the wasteland of crumbling brick and bitumen.

“Yeah, honeybee,” said John, loading the pistol, “I guess we’re only a few hours away now.”

His head throbbed in his skull. Not the usual dull ache - the pulse at his temple actually throbbed. His eyes hurt. He could not remember the last time he had had a full swallow of water. John gave his daughter a bone-tired smile.

“Hopi Springs? That’s the place on Danny’s locket, right?”

He returned her gaze levelly. She was little more than a ragged stick figure, all elbows and knees. Her skin, like his own, was sallow and tacky. Despite giving her most of his own water rations, she was not much better off than himself.

“Yep,” he said, “That’s it.”

If he died, he thought, she would be unlikely to last more than a few hours. She would slip on some debris and hurt herself or alert a blood scalper. Or she’d just dry out. That would be infinitely worse.

“Come on,” he said, “It’s time to go.”

Aside from the clothes she wore, Janet carried nothing with her except a flask slung over her shoulder, a walkie-talkie, and the golden heart-shaped locket that hung perennially around her neck. The locket that had the co-ordinates of a place called Hopi Springs scratched on a note inside it.

Danny, the man travelling with them, had told them he had found the locket with the strange name and co-ordinates inside it and was sure there was a freshwater pool there. Since his death, brutal and untimely, Janet had kept it as a talisman. She carried the locket with her everywhere, would not even take it off to sleep.

All John brought with him was his own walkie-talkie, the GPS unit and his gun.

He dragged the makeshift door aside and slowly eased himself out. With as much dexterity as his desiccated hands could muster, he descended the red brick of the shattered tenement, down two storeys. Two storeys had been enough to keep out of view of the scalpers.

So far.

When he reached the ground he let out two sharp clicks on the walkie, the signal that she was to follow. Janet scampered down with an agility that he always found alarming, landing silently next to him. Off in the distance, he heard a tenebrous rumbling. Three years ago he would have thought of that as thunder. Now he knew better.

All around them lay the remnants of the fallen metropolis. There were rusted out cars and motorbikes, some torn in two. Buildings were in ruins, their windows shattered. And the bodies. There weren’t as many as there had once been but those that remained were far worse. They looked like mummies: gaunt skin stretched hard over bones. The eyes were all empty sockets. Always empty. ‘Eyeballs are the juiciest plums on the tree’ he had once overheard a scalper say and he shuddered at the memory. He hoped Janet was not looking at them.

The air was filled with drydust and a couple of times he had to swallow hard to stop himself from coughing. Dust devils swept up the streets, whipping into his eyes and he had to raise his arm to shield them.

He rounded the corner of what had once been a bank, and sent two quick bursts of static over the walkie to let Janet know it was safe to follow. Then he slid down against a wall. He brought out the flask, considered taking a sip, thought better of it, and returned it to his pocket. Plenty of time for drinking when they reached Hopi Springs. If they reached it.

He waited for about a minute. Dark thoughts began to encroach upon his mind. What if she hadn’t made it? What if she’d been snatched up by a scalper. They were quiet, God knows they were quiet. One could have easily swept down and taken her, just like that. He would never even know. The things those people were capable of, it was hard to believe they were human. He was about to radio again when she rounded the corner, blue eyes huge in her skinny face.

“I…” she swallowed “I saw one. In the rubble past the big street.”

“Did he see you?”

“I don’t know, maybe? He was looking my way.” Her eyes shone with helpless fear.

“Ok,” he said, “It’s ok, sweetheart. Daddy’s going to fix this, yeah? You just… stay here for now. And remember, if I click three times, you go. You don’t look back, you just go.”

She nodded but looked away.

“Say it for me,” he said patiently.

“If you click three times,” her voice was barely a squeak, “I just go.”

“Good girl.” He squeezed her hand.

John trailed the wall, stalking along the edge. He kept low to the ground.

He felt the bullet’s force before he heard it. It ruptured the brick just above his head, sending a puff of drydust shooting out over the top of him. Instinctively, he dove behind a nearby car. He couldn’t be sure exactly where it had come from, but from the angle he knew he should be out of the line of sight.

Now though, he was trapped. His mind raced through the options. He could wait for the bloodsucker to come and find him and hope he was quicker on the draw. But the thing might have friends.

Besides it could be a long time, and he didn’t trust Janet’s nerve to hold out that long. She might click through and give the scalper a bead on his position. Or worse, come looking for him herself.

Acting on impulse, he kicked a rock to the left of the car and dashed to the right. As he had hoped, the ensuing shot tracked the trajectory of the stone, giving him enough time to run into a snarl of permanently gridlocked cars on the road ahead. He chanced looking up through one of the windows and caught a glimpse of the thing.

The man - if he was human at all, and John had his doubts - was dressed in what looked like a black leather kimono with high rubber boots and a gas mask. The mask had a conical beak like thing attached to the end of the filter, giving him the visage of a plague doctor.

He was adorned in all manner of draperies, one part kitschy chic, one part tribal warrior. A red feather boa shared real estate with what appeared to be a rudely constructed chainmail of chicken bones. At least, John told himself they were chicken bones.

The blood scalper was looking away, scanning the street for his prey. John slid up through the broken window of the car he was leaning against and shot twice. The first bullet went wide, missing by a foot. The scalper’s head jerked towards the direction of the gunfire but too late; the second bullet passed right through his stomach. The blood scalper let out a guttural yell and his body went limp as he fell back.

John hurried forward to check the corpse for water. The man had a flask and a rifle on him. Kicking the rifle away, John opened the flask and peered inside. The smell that greeted him was strong and ferrous and as he poured it on the ground, red trickled out of the top. John’s lip curled in disgust and he dropped the thing on the ground.

Then he clicked twice on the walkie, the sign that Janet was to join him. Soon he could see her lithe frame clambering over the rubble. As he made to walk towards her, he heard a chuckle from behind. John whirled around and aimed his pistol at the dying man.

“It doesn’ exiss…” the man said. His voice sounded choked and slurred through the gas mask, like a drunkard, “You tryna find the... sssprings. Like me. Butcha won’t. It doesn’ exiss. You’ll juss wind up suckin’ down the red like the ress of us,” he laughed again, culminating in a gurgling cough.

“Bull shit,” John said, biting the words off, “You’re barely human anymore. I’m not like you.”

“No? And what happess when the water runs out?” the man cocked his head at the little girl scrambling towards them. Sprawled there, arms akimbo and masked he looked like a gigantic downed bird, “What happess to her then?”

“We’ll be ok.”

The man grunted, whether from pain or in dissent John could not be sure. “Maybe it’d be…” he croaked out, “Be kinder to-”

All at once John was filled with insensate rage.

“Shut up!” he yelled at the man, “Shut up, you monster!” Before he knew what he was doing he had unloaded three rounds into the man’s head. The blood splashed up onto his hands.

He sat there on his knees, his breath heaving. Slowly John turned to look at his daughter. At the sound of the gunshots she had frozen. Even at this distance, he could see her eyes, huge and fearful. He turned away. Clicked twice on the walkie.

Soon they were travelling again towards Hopi Springs. At this rate it would only be another hour. The rumble came again, louder and the sound made him sick. The movement was making him dizzy and he allowed himself the tiniest sip of water. Muddy and brackish though it was, the water still tasted sweet and cool. Soon now, he told himself. Prayed. Soon.

The GPS unit blipped. They were close now.

He stashed Janet in an empty building. ‘Mam’s Bakery' the sign out the front said.

“Wait here, honey,” he said, “I’m gonna check it out. Listen for the clicks.” He walked out and took the blipping GPS from his pocket. A green dot radiated out from the screen, displaying his position. A red dot delineated the location of Hopi Springs. He walked towards it like a man in a trance, no longer concerned with concealing himself.

He had to know if it was real. It had to be. He continued forward down the narrow street.

One hundred meters. Eighty meters. Fifty meters. Twenty.

A large building, no doubt once a set of apartments, was all that obscured his view of Hopi Springs now. Just around the corner. He walked. He was only ten meters away now the red brick on his left falling away slowly in front of him. He turned the corner and looked.

In front of him was a broad concrete cavity. Roughly bean shaped. Perhaps once a swimming pool. Or a skate park.

He moved toward it. Perhaps the spring was hidden nearby. As he walked closer to it he saw the words scrawled into the concrete, as though with a chisel:

‘HOPI SPRINGS ETERNAL’

John stared at the words, as though they were some runic script that he could not read. Then he laughed. It was a hollow, ugly sound. Hopi springs eternal.

“Dad?”

He turned around to see the narrow frame of Janet silhouetted against the fading light of sundown. He had not sent the signal for her to follow but she had anyway, like a stray dog.

“Is this it?” she said, and her voice was tremulous with the hope of childhood as she looked out over the empty swimming pool, “Is this Hopi Springs?”

He looked at her. Then he looked down at his gun. He thought of the blood scalper, in his mask and kimono splayed out like some hideous bird of prey. John turned full to face her. He walked over, his hand rising as he did so.

It fell lightly upon her shoulder. “No honeybee,” he said, “This isn’t it. We have to keep going.” He turned her around before she could read the words scrawled in the concrete.