Monsters on the Road

• History
• Short story
• Fiction

								
We used to tell Elijah there were no monsters in the night. The world proved us wrong.
There are monsters everywhere now, waiting to catch us up and part us. So I carry Elijah though at five he is too big to be carried and my arms ache. I’m fourteen now and since Father was taken away, Mother says I have to be the man of the family.
“The girls and I will come right after you,” Mother said before I left the apartment, sneaking out the back escape.
Now Mother isn’t here, Father isn’t here, and it is just me and Elijah. The moon casts a desolate light over the road in front of me and adds a shimmery sheen to branches in the woods off to the left. Maybe Mother will find us in the woods or maybe the monsters dragged her away. If that were true, she’d go wherever Father went and people don’t come back from that. Not people like us. Not Jews.
The road leads out toward the farmland to the East. Father used to have friends out there, but I don’t know if I can trust them now. It’s hard to tell who is a monster—they hide in human skin and stare out at us with cold blue eyes.
Elijah mutters and buries his face in my shoulder. His little body is shivering. The night air bites with cold, and his freezing fingers dig into my neck. I only have one glove. I forgot one of them. Father would never have forgotten his gloves. 
Mother would lecture me if she were present.
My own hands are still warm, encased in leather. Guilt bites with just as much strength as the cold. My gloves won’t fit his little hands. 
“The little ones suffer the most,” Mother had said a few nights before. We’d had a broth with fresh matzah balls and vegetables and challah for dinner. The fancy bread had made the night feel important and the gravity of the soft flesh made the events of that evening stick in my head.
I wonder if she knew then how soon they’d come for us. The night was meant as one last treat, a last act of motherly love.
“We may as well live before we die,” she’d said.
“We could run, Mama,” Gertie said. She was the oldest of the children at seventeen. Before all this started, she was talking about getting married, there was even a boy. She hadn’t mentioned that for months. Not since the boy disappeared. Her face looked older than it should. Her brown eyes spoke of monsters.
Mine probably did too.
Elijah’s weight in my arms kept me tied to the present and the dark road stretching out in front of us. I should probably leave the security of the road and make my way through the woods, but the thought of carrying my brother over uneven ground with the added dark of the trees’ canopy was too much to bear yet.
But by the time I heard the monsters coming behind me, it would be too late.
My steps slowed; Elijah felt impossibly heavy.
I had to put him down.
“You need to walk,” I said softly.
Elijah clung to my neck giving a little cry. He rarely spoke anymore; his wide brown eyes did all the speaking for him. Even in the dark, when their warm color was hidden, I knew what those eyes said. They spoke of monsters, and he was still innocent enough to believe that my arms might be a safe place to hide.
“It’ll be an adventure. Remember that time we found the old shack in the woods? Let’s look for that.”
“But Mama,” Elijah said. Two words like two blows.
Mother wasn’t coming. I knew that. And if she did, we hadn’t set a place to meet. How would she find us? But unlike Elijah, I couldn’t worry about that. First I needed to get through the night and hope that monsters are easier to spot in the day.
Elijah was right about my fanciful notion to go looking in the woods. It wasn’t logical. That was a child’s plan, and I was a man. We’d have to try one of the farms. This road led to our future, but it was up to us to pick the path. Some choices would be deadly wrong, I knew that.
I set Elijah carefully down and took his cold hand in mine. We veered off into the woods but didn’t go far away from the road. Part of me still hoped I’d see Mother come running down it with Gertie and Jeanie.
The monsters came instead. Only a few of them, I counted five, but I didn’t stay long enough to count, instead pulling back further into the woods. Tears wetted my cheeks and I hoped Elijah couldn’t see. I had to be the man of the family, there was no one else left.
No one remained but Elijah and me.
In the night, their green uniforms appeared black and only the white patch with that horrid symbol on the arm blazed into the night. But as long as I could see them, they could see me. Opting for stillness, I hunkered down against a tree, pulling Elijah’s shaking body against me.
Elijah sucked on his fist, the whites of his eyes clearly visible in the dark.
The monsters passed by. They weren’t looking hard for us yet. Maybe they wouldn’t. They knew we couldn’t make it out here alone. I would prove them wrong somehow.
I went through the list of farmers that Father used to be friends with. A few had openly joined their fates with the monsters.
Once I thought being a monster was a genetic condition, something one was born with. That wasn’t true either. Monsters did exist, and they could be created.
On the other hand, a few of the farmers had dared commiserations with Mother when Father first disappeared. Those would be my best bet.
Once the road was clear, I pulled Elijah to his feet and picked up my pace, walking through the woods until we came out on a dirt road. In the distance the windows of the farmhouse glowed.
I pulled off my gloves and shoved them onto Elijah’s hands. He looked slightly incredulous but said nothing, just folded the huge things in his fists. If we’d been at home in the light, it would have been cute, the kid playing dress up.
“Come on,” I said. “We’ll be safe ahead.”
Elijah’s eyes expressed their doubt. He saw monsters everywhere.
What other choice did we have? Maybe this way we could even get word back to Mother somehow, find out if she was all right. My arms still ached from carrying Elijah so long and my legs and feet weren’t doing so hot either.
We hurried up the edge of the road toward the farmhouse. I kept us to the dark edges as much as possible. So much was in the eyes—if I could get a look at their eyes before they knew I was there, I’d know if I needed to run.
I told myself that was true. It had to be true, because otherwise everything was just a gamble.
By the time we reached the door, I realized the error of my thoughts. How would I ever see their eyes without alerting them I was there?
Mother and Father both used to tell us to have faith. Even after the monsters came, they said, “Have faith in people. Most are good. Things will get better if we just continue to have faith.”
Faith was long gone. All I had now was hope—a dry kernel of hope tucked deep within me. I gathered my courage and climbed onto the porch. The wood door stood between me and the future. The road stretched out behind us. There were more futures on that road, but the more time passed, the less likely they were to be good futures.

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