by Rob Horner
The breathless anticipation of the house wouldn’t leave her.
Jessica revised her plan.
It wouldn’t be enough to lock the door, batten down the hatches, and try to ride out whatever storm had fallen over Gaffney. She couldn’t explain it, but some inner sense told her it wasn’t a good idea. She needed to get out. Get back in the van. Maybe go back to Tina’s place.
But first, she needed a gun.
Moving faster now that she had a plan, Jessica skirted the foot of the bed and approached the large walk-in. The bedroom light was bright enough to show the general contents of the space but not enough to provide detail. A single bulb mounted above the door inside the closet came to life with another flick of a switch, turning dark grays into blues and reds on her side, and laying out a bichromic pattern of khaki work shirts and blue jeans on his. Small wooden shelves made of parallel dowel rods lined the sides and back of the closet. They wouldn’t support her weight if she were to pull on them but were sturdy enough for the small lock boxes Johnny kept, each one holding a single handgun, a couple of magazines, and a box or two of ammunition.
Strangely, Jessica couldn’t recall a time when she’d seen Johnny take one of his guns out for more than a routine cleaning. He kept hunting rifles in the spare bedroom, and she assumed he took a pistol with him as a sidearm. But as far as she knew, he never frequented a gun range in town, never took the weapons anywhere to target practice. She knew what types of pistols he had because he loved to talk about them. Usually when he was cleaning them. His voice would be deep and soft, almost loving, as he disassembled the handguns, oiled the barrel, or buffed the metal. It was the same voice he used with her, in the good times, and it reminded her of his softer side. Sometimes, sitting at the small kitchen table, watching as he worked, Jessica allowed herself to dream of what could be, what a marriage to this man might be like.
Her eyes burned and she reached up to rub them, surprised to find tears welling, spilling onto her cheeks.
Damn it, he’s not…one of them. He’s just out. That’s all. He’s not dead!
Her hands shook as she reached for one of the small, black boxes. Its weight surprised her; she almost dropped the lockbox and hurriedly cradled it to her chest. Backing out of the closet, Jessica placed the box on one side of the double bed.
Johnny never locked the boxes. He promised he would, if they ever had a kid in the house. But for now, he said it made no sense to have a gun you couldn’t get to when you needed it.
Inside, nestled on gray foam, was a jet-black CZ 75 SP-01 Phantom. The Czech handgun was second hand, like most of Johnny’s guns, but shone with the dark luster of a brand-new weapon. It wasn’t loaded, but two long magazines lay next to the pistol, on top of what she knew was a full box of ammunition.
Check this out, Jessie. Eighteen round magazine! Shoots 9mm ammunition, cheapest stuff on the market, even with Obama trying to take our guns away. This thing holds double what my .380 does. It’s called a Phantom. Isn’t that a cool name for a gun?
Stifling a sob, Jessica grabbed one of the magazines and slid it into the gun. The second went into the back pocket of her scrub pants. She’d left her purse at the hospital, so she didn’t have a ready way to transport the box of ammunition. But her scrub top had pockets in the front. Opening the box, she slid the Styrofoam liner out and dumped the spare rounds into a pocket.
Racking the slide felt like passing a test. So many times, she’d watched him work. So many times, she’d listened to him talk as he cleaned and polished. She flipped the safety off with her left thumb.
If she was attacked, there wouldn’t be one of those moments of stupidity where she pointed a gun and tried to squeeze a locked trigger.
A sudden thump made her jump, almost dropping the gun.
It could have been anything. The AC kicking on. A car door slamming outside.
But it wasn’t either of those, and she knew it.
The sound came from the house, either a fist striking a wall.
Or a doorknob.
Heavy footfalls clumped along a hardwood floor. Boots. In the living room.
“Johnny?” Jessica whispered, too fearful to speak any louder.
The footsteps changed tone, coming closer, no longer ringing hollowly as the person transitioned from the open living room to the narrow hallway.
Jessica backed away from the bed, almost to the wall, putting as much distance between herself and the bedroom door as possible. She cursed herself for turning on the lights, for needing the lights, because there’d be no way to hide.
The footsteps came closer.
She raised the pistol, aiming at the door to the hallway. Her right finger rested on the trigger guard…
Don’t put a finger on the trigger unless you mean to fire.
…and Johnny turned the corner.
* * * * *
Up one street and down the next, the hunter followed the scent. The other targets hadn’t been forgotten, but the drive to find these two took precedence. The hunter didn’t question the priority; he accepted it. Something about Buck demanded attention. He was a problem to be solved. Caitlin, too, but only because she’d proven exceedingly effective at killing the become.
Both carried the special something in their blood which rendered them incapable of becoming, yet Buck was different. Something about his scent drove all others away. It was…wrong…to the hunter’s nose. Wrong in the way cancerous cells are wrong, a mutation, something which should not be and whose presence threatened the hunter and every other become. None of the others had that wrongness to their scent.
A left on Lockhart Lane led to another left onto Providence Creek Road, and the scent of the hybrid remained strong. It helped that very few people were out this late at night, and even less with the scourge of become roaming the streets.
The hunter could sense them, lesser beings mindlessly roaming among the locked and shuttered houses. None had the presence of mind to break a window or crash through a door. They were like crooks high on pot, with no motivation to create trouble. All they cared about was a pantry door left open and a bag of potato chips ready to munch on.
He could change that. He wouldn’t be as powerful as Austin, but he could…what? Light a fire under them?
As he ran, he pulled.
He pulled on the collective consciousness of the wandering, aimless become.
And they responded.
First one, then another. Like birds wheeling to the unheard cry of a flock leader, or like dogs heeling to the piercing whine of a whistle, they stopped their meandering, turned toward him, and began to run. They weren’t as fast as him, but they didn’t need to be. They were coming, and that was enough.
The scent of the hybrid led him further down Providence Creek Road and, amazingly, the smell was no longer diminishing. Become flocked to his call, some staggering on broken legs or moving awkwardly with heads hanging at odd angles on broken necks, while others moved as fluidly as he did, the only sign of injury a bite or scratch with the ubiquitous dark tunnels carrying their dusky blood creeping up their skin. They came from Oakwood Drive and Muscot Drive. A veritable horde shambled out of the Gateway Creek Mobile Home Community, men, women, and children dressed for bed, undressed for sleep, or caught somewhere in between, all moving to act on his orders.
The hunter slowed as he passed Conner Drive, allowing the rushing mass to close the distance.
Somewhere in his brain was an understanding of tactics, though whether it remained from his previous life or was a gift of his becoming, he couldn’t say.
The horde should precede him onto the final street. With his orders guiding them, their presence would wreak havoc on the sleeping community of houses. Perhaps they could catch the Buck-Caitlin pair unawares, trapped in a home or out in the open between vehicle and building.
Smiling, he urged his forces forward. Flapping shirt tails and lacy nighties raced past. Barefoot children in PJ Masks and Frozen pajama sets padded quietly along the
grassy curbs. Scrapes and shuffles heralded the less agile but no less deadly become shambling along with leg injuries, some dragging nerveless feet on the asphalt.
Go, he ordered. Break down their doors. Smash their windows. Take them in their beds.
The leading become turned right onto General Drive and moved to the first house.
No. Split up.
Two peeled away, smashing through front windows and setting a security alarm blaring. The frantic yapping of a small dog accompanied their entrance, then ended with a piercing shriek of canine pain.
The rest continued along the side of the street.
Yes, two by two, take them all.
The hybrid was ahead, a dozen houses down on the left.
There. Go there.
And there was something else. A strangeness in the air, both familiar and different.
Different because the hunter had never encountered it on another become.
Familiar because it resonated with his sense of self.
A second hunter.
* * * * *
Jacob might be only nine, but he stood almost to Buck’s shoulder and packed a good bit of muscle in his stocky frame. When he grabbed Buck’s hand and pulled, it was either allow himself to be dragged into the house or have to put up a serious fight to avoid it.
“What? Jacob?”
“Just come on, Dad!”
He should have heard it from outside. Probably would have, if he and Caitlin hadn’t been so caught up in their conversation.
Once across the threshold, the noise became something he couldn’t ignore.
It was a moaning like an old woman lost in the throes of dementia, every exhale a mournful wail of sound. A thumping accompanied the moan. It wasn’t rhythmic, but rather a random striking of fists against the door and the walls.
“What happened?” Buck asked.
His son’s dark eyes glanced up, then back down, the look of a young man who thought he’d done the hard thing but wasn’t sure it was the right thing.
“Mrs. Hudson called last night, said Tommy was sick, some kind of stomach bug. She asked if Mom would come help. So, she went.”
Through the living room, with its soft, light blue sectional couch, and to the small dining room and kitchen, everywhere was evidence of destruction. The television screen was shattered, pieces of glass scattered over a small throw rug. The orderly kitchen was a disaster area. The pantry door, one of those flimsy accordion things, lay sideways on the floor, ripped off its track. The boxes of food inside had been opened and strewn everywhere—dry macaroni and Frosted Flakes littered the cool tile. More broken glass dotted the counter, a casualty of whatever hurricane swept through and knocked the small panes out of the cabinet doors.
“She wasn’t gone long, Dad, and I was fine. Played a little Fortnite, you know?”
The thumping resumed, a rapid tattoo beat on the walls somewhere in the house. Like a set of toms, the tone changed, progressing from high to low as it increased in volume.
“She’s upstairs?” Buck asked, turning from the kitchen to the small hallway leading to the bedrooms.
There were three rooms and five doors leading off the small hallway. The master bedroom lay to the left, sharing a wall with the dining room. A small full bathroom followed, then two rooms facing each other. Jacob had his room in the larger of the two, on the right. Their “study,” a small room with a grandiose name, lay across from Jacob’s room.
That left the single door in the middle of the right wall, which didn’t open into a room but rather onto a carpeted staircase leading to a bonus room over the garage. Unlike every other door inside the home, this one locked from the outside; apparently the people who built the development thought a room over the garage had the same potential for invasion as the garage itself. The door was steel-core—outdoor quality rather than indoor—and featured a deadbolt in addition to the twisty metal piece on the knob.
“Listen, Dad,” Jacob said, grabbing Buck’s arm before he could enter the hall, “she said Tommy was really sick and in so much pain that he didn’t know what he was doing.”
Images of Austin Wallace, the sick man from the outlet mall parking lot, flared in Buck’s mind.
“He scratched Mom on the arm while they were loading him in the car. Mrs. Hudson wanted to take him to Spartanburg, where they have the kid’s hospital, you know? It wasn’t nothing, just a little scratch.”
“Wasn’t anything,” Buck corrected automatically.
“Right, not anything.”
“But it got ugly, didn’t it?”
“Yeah… Hey! How’d you know?”
Danny’s arm. Tonya’s head. James, the poor nurse practitioner bitten by the crazy mother of the diabetic girl.
When Buck didn’t answer, Jacob continued. “The scratch got infected super quick, like one of those time-lapse things they show us in school. But instead of turning red and angry, it got—”
Black. Pulsing, raised runnels of black ichor, radiating out from the wounds and racing toward the head. The lines were the first sign. But they didn’t give much warning. Once they appeared, insanity followed.
Were they going crazy? Some of them appeared to be. But Danny was cool and calculating. Tina said they didn’t have heartbeats.
“—and a couple of hours later, while I was getting a bath ready for her, she just…she tried to—”
“What?” Buck asked.
Jacob turned and buried his face in Buck’s chest. An anguished sob vibrated through the fabric of his work shirt. It was quiet, that sob. Jacob was a tough, brave kid who hadn’t cried when he broke his arm the year before. Yet here he was, sobbing against Buck.
“She said…I couldn’t become like her. I’d—” He paused, pushing himself away.
“It’s all right,” Buck said, though it wasn’t and probably never would be ‘all right’ for the child. Not for a long time. He tried to pull Jacob back to him, wanting comfort as much as he wanted to offer it.
“She said people like me had to be destroyed.”
“She used those words?” Buck asked.
Jacob nodded. “She grabbed me. I think…I think she wanted to scratch my throat and make me bleed.” He tipped his chin, and Buck noticed angry abrasions along the soft skin, a lighter shade than that on the boy’s face. One or two oozed blood, not enough to run, but sufficient to have created a few areas of hardening scab. He turned Jacob’s head left and right, following the lines of red excoriation.
It took him a minute to realize there were only the scratches. No black lines like living worms pushing up from just below the skin.
Jacob couldn’t become.
Become what?
And if Jacob couldn’t become, was that something specific to him, or was it inherited from Buck?
The house shook with a double slam of fists on the thick door to the loft stairs.
“I had to hit her, Daddy. I’m sorry. I had to hit her to stop her from hurting me.”
* * * * *
Johnny Winston was every girl’s dream, every mother’s nightmare, and every father’s worst enemy, all rolled into one.
He was tall with broad shoulders that made a nice V down to his waist. His hair was thick and dark, and he kept it neat. He liked to be clean-shaven, but he could skip a day or two of the razor and sprout a short coat of dark growth which only made him sexier. He had a deep voice that couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but which sent shivers down her spine on the phone.
He was controlling, but not in the classic sociopath description. He didn’t force her to share a bank account with him, didn’t demand his name on every card or question every expenditure. He’d been sweet during their first year. If her mother wanted to do something, go away somewhere, he found ways to keep her home. It was insidious and slow, but eventually, with his encouragement, she pushed away everyone who meant anything to her, except him.
He’d shown flashes of temper during the first twelve months, but it was of the general kind, the
Wow, he can get mad variety, but it never made her worry for her safety. No, he waited to lay a hand on her until she had nowhere she could run, until their lives were so intertwined that leaving became more frightening than staying.
She’d found herself wanting to please him, believing, on occasion, that she deserved the punishment he meted out. He got angry but he was never irrational; there didn’t seem to be any malicious desire to harm her, just an earnest belief that she needed correction. Whether that was her ignorance or her fear didn’t matter. She didn’t hate him, and she’d never wished for his death.
No matter how bad it got, Jessica knew he wouldn’t really hurt her.
That Johnny was gone. The face turning into the doorway of their small bedroom belonged to a dead man.
His dark hair was missing, large hunks yanked away leaving bald spots crusted with dried blood.
His mouth was set in a firm line. Funny, she couldn’t remember a time when his lips didn’t give away his mood.
Only his eyes were alive, if it could be called that. Like the eyes of the crazy people in the hospital. They didn’t reflect death, or the fleeing of a soul, as the philosophers of old called it.
Having worked in an emergency room her entire nursing career, Jessica had seen life leave a body. She’d witnessed the last dilation of the pupils as the rushing darkness of death filled a man’s vision. She’d seen sockets fill with blood as capillaries burst under the mounting pressure of a woman struggling to breathe.
But not Johnny. His eyes twinkled with reflected light from the ceiling fan. And if they looked a little darker than usual, well, that was all right, wasn’t it?
He was dead, after all.
One look at the torn and shredded flesh of his neck gave proof of that.
He didn’t pause in the doorway. This wasn’t some thrilling moment from a Stephen King novel, where the insane person stops to savor the fear of his prey before calling out, “Here’s Johnny.” That would require an awareness of the moment and a sadistic desire to cause fear.