by Siara Brandt
“We’ll have to wait till we get there to find out,” Linwood replied, pausing a moment with his fork in midair as Floris continued to shovel food into her mouth.
“If they don’t know by now,” she said around a mouthful of fried chicken. “They’ll probably never know. Do they even have a doctor in that town?”
Linwood took a sip from his refilled soft drink. He didn’t usually fill his body with so much sugar but it had been a long drive and he needed some extra fortifying to get through the rest of the trip, not to mention another meal with Floris. She didn’t realize how much she put him through when they ate a meal together, how much he had to block out. It took everything in him to pretend he didn’t notice that she was too loud when she chewed or that she talked with her mouth full. Worse than that, the noises she made when she was enjoying her food were enough to drive him up the wall.
Forcing himself to re-focus on his own food, he didn’t reply to her question except with a shrug. He didn’t know if they had a doctor or not. Right now it was taking everything in him to ignore what he privately called his gluttonous wife. He looked up from his own food only when a streak of lightning illuminated the dark cloud masses that were rising up in the distance like smoke from the pits of hell. The sudden, blinding flash silhouetted a dark figure standing in the middle of the parking lot. The man held Linwood’s gaze for a few moments, but Linwood put him out of his mind and reached to the center of the table for another roll.
He tried to go back to thinking about what he would say at the funeral but Floris distracted him by saying, “Mmmm, I was starving.” She crunched into another chicken thigh and greasy crumbs scattered everywhere, a few clinging to the corner of her mouth. More fell unnoticed, at least by her, to her chest and her lap. She then swirled her fork repeatedly in a pile of mashed potatoes and gravy, smacking her lips right before she brought the fork to her mouth. Before she swallowed, she sprayed a few saliva-infused droplets of masticated chicken thigh and mashed potatoes across the table, as she asked. “Did you think of something to say yet?”
Linwood succeeded in tamping down a new wave of irritation, but just barely. Inwardly, he was seething like the clouds in the sky as he stared at the specks of mashed potatoes adhering to the edge of his plate. It was enough to ruin anyone’s appetite. The already-taut muscles beside his mouth twitched slightly as he slowly wiped his plate with a paper napkin. “I’m working on that,” he managed to say without revealing his inner turmoil. And then he did what he always did. He distracted himself.
Over the years, he had found many ways to distract himself. At the moment, the waitress caught his eye as she leaned over one of the tables. She was wiping a table down vigorously with a wash rag. Linwood couldn’t help but notice the smallness of her waist and the contrasting curve of her shapely hips. A familiar tingling sensation started low in his body, the pleasure mounting so swiftly and so intensely that it almost took his breath away.
He drew a slow breath and quickly shifted his gaze away from the young woman’s provocative display. How long had it been? Too long apparently. A man could only go so long without- intimacy. Matters of the flesh, especially lately, and much to his chagrin, were beginning to cause a great deal of havoc in his life. He had been noticing other women at the most inopportune times. Not only that, he had been fantasizing about them hours, even days, later. They weren’t normal fantasies. They were lewd, perverted imaginings. Not that he would act on his abnormal desires. He wouldn’t sink that low. But the fact that he had to deal with them at all was disconcerting to him. Linwood, however, was nothing if not self-possessed. Outwardly, he was able to present a coolness and indifference he was nowhere near feeling, even when his body was betraying him in the worst way.
“Are you going to have dessert?” he asked, despite the tumult that persisted in clawing at his loins. He, himself, without waiting for a reply, further distracted himself by picking up the last roll.
He looked up slowly when Floris laughed out loud. Nails on a chalkboard were pleasant compared to that laugh. It was just one more thing he’d had to endure for more than twenty years. Looking across the table at his wife, he saw that there was malicious enjoyment in the smirk pasted on her face.
“Could she be more obvious? She’s like a cat in heat.”
Linwood dropped his buttered roll on the floor.
Only after a few tense moments had passed, did he dare to look at Floris. Whether his lustful imaginings had found expression on his face or not, and if Floris had correctly read his expression, he didn’t know. He was afraid she had, but he couldn’t know for sure. Not yet. What he was pretty sure about was that she would have something to say about his clumsiness, one way or another. And she did, in fact, open her mouth to say something. But nothing came out. She just sat there with her mouth hanging open. Obviously something was going on behind him. He spun halfway around in his chair to see what had put that look on her face. Then he saw it, too.
The man he had seen earlier was weaving erratically across the parking lot. Drunk probably. Maybe high on drugs. Whatever it was, he definitely wasn’t acting right.
Linwood shook his head while deeper lines furrowed his brow. Obviously the man had chosen the wrong path in life. If that wasn’t enough, there he was, making a spectacle of himself for anyone to see, disrupting everyone’s meal. A danger to himself and to others. He hoped the troublemaker wasn’t going to come in here and cause a disturbance and disrupt his dessert, too. He had already decided on a piece of cheesecake. The picture on the dessert menu had been the deciding factor. Linwood had a weakness for cheesecake of any kind and he found himself wondering if that, too, was homemade.
But the cheesecake was forgotten and his attention returned to the man outside, who was lurching around and swinging his arms like an enraged bear and headed straight for the restaurant. He kept coming until there was a loud thud against the glass.
“Did you see that?” someone asked, alarmed as they half rose from their seat.
All the diners were looking at the man now.
“What’s wrong with him?” one of them wanted to know.
“I don’t know.”
“Where did he go?” someone else asked because the man had suddenly dropped from sight.
Before there could be any further comments or speculations, the man came crashing against the window for a second time. It looked, Linwood thought, as if he was trying to get at the people inside the restaurant without realizing there was a barrier between them. What kind of drugs would do that, he wondered.
“Look at his face,” someone gasped.
The man was young with long, unkempt black hair covering half his face. He was wearing a black T-shirt with some kind of logo on it and the word ‘HAVOC’ emblazoned in neon green, wavering letters across his chest. Linwood didn’t know if it was the name of a group or some kind of violent message worn by so many of the misguided youth today.
“Someone should call the police,” Floris said as she leaned forward. “Linwood, call the police.”
He ignored her and got out of his seat as did several other diners, mostly the men. The man had his face pressed up against the glass now and he was looking straight at Linwood. They couldn’t hear any sounds, but his teeth were bared in a hideous snarl. He suddenly threw his head back and everyone in the restaurant could hear his shriek even through the glass. There was no doubt in Linwood’s mind now. It had to be drugs. Human beings didn’t act like that. There was also no doubt that the man should be considered dangerous. Linwood picked up his phone and was about to call the police when the man swung his arms and then charged against the window again, his face slamming even harder into the glass this time.
Linwood was so startled that he slipped on the buttered roll that had been forgotten on the floor. He landed hard on his backside, one side taking the brunt of it. It jarred him, almost knocked the wind out of him. Terribly embarrassed by his clumsy fall, he struggled to get back to his feet and was prying the flatt
ened roll and the smashed butter off the bottom of his shoe when he heard another disturbance, this one from somewhere in the back of the restaurant. A woman’s shrill scream was followed by a cry for “Help!”
Another waitress came backing out of the double doors that led to the kitchen. She was holding both hands against her mouth and babbling a stream of almost hysterical, incoherent words. Linwood could only make out two of them. “ . . . bit me.”
As unbelievable as it was, Linwood could see the bite mark. Blood was running down the woman’s arm so heavily that it was dripping onto the floor. Finally the frantic woman got out, “Help me” again just as something crashed loudly in the kitchen.
Everyone stared at the double doors, expecting something to come through them. Whoever was in there was making a loud commotion. An alarming commotion. Linwood’s attention was divided. He watched as the other waitress shut the front doors firmly and turn the key in the lock. Then she backed up, keeping her eyes on the man in the parking lot who had almost reached the doors by now. Linwood was able to get a good look at the man’s face in the garish red light from the sign outside, the one that said HOMECOOKED FOOD SERVED HERE.
Someone, something was screeching like a wild animal in the kitchen now. Everyone turned and stared, waiting for something to come out of those double doors, human or not.
“Look at him,” someone gasped, drawing everyone’s attention back to the man outside again as his nails scraped down the glass.
They did look. He looked like something straight out of a horror movie, another thing Linwood disapproved of although he did watch them on occasion. Right now, in Linwood’s mind, it was like he was in one of those movies watching something that had just risen up out of the murky depths of hell. Something frightening. Something demonic.
Chapter 7
The ambulance slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road where it finally rolled to a stop.
“What are you doing?” Gillie asked the driver.
“I need to think.” Quincy Lenfield’s hands were still gripping the steering wheel as he sat there unmoving.
Gillie looked over at the other technician who said to Quincy, “We’re in the middle of nowhere, Quin.”
Without turning, Quincy told him, “It doesn’t make sense to keep driving unless we know where we’re going.”
That was true enough. The hospital had not been an option. They were turned away before they even got to the emergency doors. They had been close enough, however, that they had all seen the unmoving body slumped in the hallway and the blood smears on the walls. It had looked like a scene from a war zone with the heavily-armed officers guarding the barricaded door and the frantic-looking medical personnel running around like they were in a blind panic.
Gillie was sitting up in the back of the ambulance with Liam Wright. They were close to the same age and had gone to school together. Both were self-admittedly school nerds, but that was back then and things had changed a lot after high school. Or at least they told themselves that.
“I say we turn this thing around then,” Liam said. “We’ve got to go somewhere. Let’s go home.”
Gillie noddingly added his own opinion. “Whatever is happening, we can’t sit here in the middle of nowhere. I agree with Liam. Let’s go home.”
Quincy was still shaken up and trying to make sense out of all that he had seen during the last two hours. He finally turned in his seat and said, “I’m telling you, that guy at the accident site was dead when I looked him over.”
No one argued with him.
“Why would a hospital turn people away?” Liam asked. “With no explanation.”
“Because whatever this is, it’s bad,” Quincy said. “Maybe we’re in the middle of some kind of epidemic that’s just starting. I mean, more than what was already making people sick.”
“I don’t know what else would explain everything we’ve seen,” Liam said as he nodded thoughtfully.
Both Gillie and Liam noticed at the same time that Quincy was visibly shaking. They looked at each other.
“Quin, you all right?” Liam asked.
“They told us that if we got our shots, we would be fine,” Quin said. “So, yeah, I should be fine.”
“I didn’t get my shot,” Liam said. “I was sick and I wasn’t there the day they were giving them.”
Gillie shook his head. “I didn’t get one, either. With work and school I never got around to it.”
“If this is an epidemic, you think it’s just here, or- everywhere?” Liam wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” Quin answered him. After a silence, he added, “Whatever it is, we need to make a decision.” He turned to Gillie. “Normally I would say you should go get checked out at the hospital. But- ” He let his words trail off. No one was going back to the hospital.
After a silence, Quin said over his shoulder, “I heard someone say there was something going on over in Oakwood, too.”
Gillie and Liam looked at each other. If that was true, this was the first they were hearing about it. Oakwood was where the next hospital was. They had both also noticed, even with the fading daylight that Quin’s face looked a lot paler than it had looked earlier.
“What do you think, Gil?” Liam asked.
“Me? I’m with you. I think we need to think about getting home to our families.”
In the driver’s seat, Quin also nodded agreement. He started the ambulance and then did a slow U-turn. He was still accelerating when he slammed on the brakes without warning. Hard, like with-two-feet hard. He wasn’t the only one whose heart leapt into his throat as two kids came running out of the woods, straight into the path of the ambulance.
Lise could hear men arguing in the other room.
“Of course he’s not in his right mind. Who would be?”
There came a far-away, lingering peal of thunder and the voices silenced for a moment until it died away. There was only a handful of people left in the funeral home. Almost everyone else had left. The remaining mourners had closed and locked the double doors which had led to the argument in the first place.
What if her brother returned and found the doors locked? Erna had wanted to know.
But what if he returned in the same state he had left in? the rest of them were wondering though they didn’t say this out loud.
It wasn’t the only thing they had argued about. They were still debating if enough was being done to find Alford Cagle who had been missing for almost two hours by now, who had been lost out there somewhere during the worst the storm. Phones were barely working. No one could get any kind of lasting, decent reception. They assumed it was because of the storm although the rain had all but ended by now. On top of that, they kept hearing sirens going off. Without their phones, they had no way of knowing what that was all about.
Erna, who had been glued to the window for most of the two hours, heaved a sigh of relief right before she said, “Linwood is here.”
She marched across the room, past the overturned casket that was still lying on its side on the floor and threw open the double doors. Her action was followed by a startled murmur of protest. No one knew what might be out there. And sitting for two hours in a funeral home? Not something that was going to put anyone at ease.
“Where have you been?” an anxious Erna asked her son.
Linwood answered her question with a question of his own. “What’s going on?” he wanted to know as he looked from face to face. Right away he could tell that something bad had happened here. Where were the mourners? Why was the casket lying on its side on the floor? And if the casket was empty, where was Uncle Alford?
There were a dozen immediate answers to his question.
“All hell’s broke loose. That’s what.”
“Damned if we know.”
“I never saw anything like it.”
And finally: “Your uncle is missing.”
This last statement drew a startled look from Linwood. After all, how many times did you hear of a
corpse that had gone missing?
Erna held up her hands to quiet them all. “What they’re trying to tell you, Linwood, is that your uncle wasn’t really dead.”
At this Linwood’s eyes grew even bigger. “He what?” He looked around for clarification and since nobody denied the statement, or offered any further explanation, he looked to his mother again.
“There was a horrible mistake,” Erna explained. “He ran out of here after he woke up in the coffin. He’s out there somewhere. Confused. Scared. Headed where we don’t know. We have to find him.”
After compressing his lips for several silent seconds, not sure this wasn’t some sick, elaborate joke at his expense, Linwood finally asked the only question that came to mind. “Don’t you have a competent doctor in this town?”
“That remains to be seen,” Erna said ominously.
“What I don’t understand is, if he was able to walk out of here, why no one stopped him,”
“They tried,” someone told Linwood. “He bit one of the men.”
“Yes, it was a bad bite.”
Linwood was frowning now, remembering the waitress who had been bitten at the restaurant. Something was going on, something he didn’t understand at all. Could the two incidents be connected somehow?
“Why would he run away like that in the first place?” he asked.
Erna offered the only plausible explanation. “I suppose he was disoriented.” Tearfully, she turned and looked at the rain-streaked window. “All I know is he’s out there somewhere waiting for us to find him.”
“What about the police?” Linwood asked. “Have they been notified?”
“They said they would get here as soon as possible.”
“How long ago did this happen?”
“Maybe two hours.”
“Two hours,” Linwood huffed in disbelief. “And the police haven’t done anything yet?”