9 Tales Told in the Dark 6

by 9 Tales Told in the Dark

  Nothing happened. I wait a little longer then slithered around on my belly and entered through the actual tent opening.

  It was near pitch black inside. Things hung from the ceiling in a few places. I smelt blood… hard, metallic blood, like rust after a long rain. I heard something move and backed out quick then rolled around to the backside of the tent where I had parted one of my slits and rolled inside, machetes drawn.

  “You know the rule,” a voice rose from the inky blackness. “Leave now and Father Gordan will not be told. Stay and you become a bigger part of the whole.”

  I stayed put and waited for the voice to move and better reveal its position.

  “As our Heavenly Father living reborn among us speaks, ‘The weak are to inherit the earth as cattle take to the fields so the strong may reap their bounty’.”

  Mess with the weak would he … I’d caught his darker form standing without worry in the middle of the tent and was about to jump him when I heard a soft ‘mmmpphh’ on the ground by the tent’s edge. It could have been my imagination. I wanted to hear it, wanted to so bad. It could be her. Kyla. Please … let me hear it again. I froze better than any rabbit and waited.

  “Leave little sheep,” the man said. “I give you this last chance by God’s grace before I put you in your proper place.”

  The man cocked a gun. It could have been any kind of gun by the sound, any kind. Then I heard the sound at my foot again. Someone was alive there. Please be her. It so needed to be …

  BOOOM went a gun. I nearly jumped to the tent ceiling. In the flash of the gun I saw one of Kyla’s dresses.

  “Who are you?” the man said. I dropped one of my machetes, bent and grabbed her, and threw her mostly limp form toward the tent slit then…

  BOOM. My right leg was pushed straight and I almost hyper-extended it, but managed to dive forward and to the left in a roll all the while picking up the machete I’d dropped.

  BOOM. Hot pain slid across my back as I turned and swung my knife.

  A lot of screaming followed, some of it mine, but there were no more gunshots.

  I turned to where I’d tossed Kyla. She wasn’t there. My leg was turning to wood by the second. My head felt light. I had to stop the bleeding. I pulled off my belt and tied a hard knot above the pain then stumbled to the slit.

  I figured outside would be a rolling mass of pursuers, but I’d figured wrong. Not a soul stirred from their tent, as if gunshots and screams were a common occurrence.

  I couldn’t see Kyla. I risked it.

  “Kyla!” My scream echoed around the valley.

  “Jerol?” It was the sweetest voice in the world, though slurred. They’d drugged her or she was in shock … something.

  The tents emptied like angry bees leaving a hive. Kyla emerged from behind a tent about twenty feet away. My heart thumped like it wanted everybody’s attention. My right leg could have been a peg for how much I felt it. My back hurt.

  I ran, or limp ran, to her. Her eyes were wide like they’d been when she’d told me the bombs had fell. I grabbed her hands. They were tied together. As were her feet. She must have hopped this far.

  That’s when the first attackers came. He stabbed at me with a pointy stick. I twisted to the side and sliced deep into his hand with my machete.

  “I want to go home, Jerol. I miss our house,” Kyla sobbed. I parted the rope holding her feet together then swung my machete out wide to keep the growing crowd of people back.

  “It’s time to run, Kyla. We have to run.” They were closing the lanes of escape quick.

  “I thought she was dead,” one of the men said.

  “Run with me Kyla.” I took her hand with my left and headed right toward the gas well road.

  “We had the old one … the old one,” another of them said over the general uproar.

  A couple more people took a stab at me with their pointy metal sticks before we broke into the greater dark of the trees. One got through my shirt, but I think he just scratched me. None of them tried to get Kyla, which I was very glad of. I had a hard enough time dragging her along and keeping myself alive.

  I didn’t let her stop and rest until we were on top of the rise. Turning back, I saw the house still burning as it had when I’d first saw it. It felt like days ago.

  “Jerol … You found me.” She sounded half asleep. “I must be dead. They got me. They stabbed Ellie. Aunt Jo killed herself … She did. Killed herself because they were gonna… kill me first… right there in that tent. A big guy in a purple robe was so mad when Aunt Jo cut her own… so much blood… blood shooting out.”

  It didn’t look like they were following, though I couldn’t be sure. I had some great big black spots floating around in my eyes and I kept hearing Dad’s laugh, so loud. He’d laugh like that first when I push mowed the yard by myself. He’d called it a belly laugh.

  So, we made it home with Kyla mumbling, my leg a piece of wood, growing black spots in my eyes, and Dad’s belly laughs. I guess he was happy. He just laughed and laughed and laughed …

  Bed was wonderful, so soft and clean, the sound of people doing housework and dishes in the background. Kyla hummed her favorite make believe lullaby somewhere close.

  I jerked and pain erupted like angry volcanoes all over my body, especially my right leg. It felt like how I’d imagine an alligator clamping down on it would feel.

  Kyla’s singing stopped. My head felt stuffed full of leaves. I couldn’t think straight.

  “Pa, Pa, Jerol’s awake. Nan, Jerol’s awake.” Kyla’s voice made me shudder with relief. I tried to cry but no tears would come. My lips were stuck together. My eyelids felt gummy.

  I tried to say I was thirsty but couldn’t get my voice to work. I coughed, but it wouldn’t clear. I just ended up gagging from a dryness that seemed to go all the way to my lungs.

  Pa came in with a glass of well water and a wash cloth. He dunked the cloth in the glass, half rung it out, and stuck it in my mouth.

  “Chew on that for a spell.” He set the glass next to my bed. “When it gets dry re-dip.”

  Nan came in with a thick slab of bread. “When you get tired of chewing on rags soak some bread instead.”

  Kyla started humming again while Nan and Pa kept their wrinkled, worry-filled eyes on me.

  “You Okay?” I asked Kyla after a minute or two.

  “Am I Okay?” She asked in wide eyed astonishment. “Look at you, Jer. You’re the one hurt. I’ve been by your side the whole time.” And she smiled down at me with her chubby cheeks.

  I knitted my eyebrows toward Nan and Pa.

  “Didn’t I Nan? Tell him I’ve been here the whole time.”

  Pa looked to the ground. Nan nodded. “That’s right, Jerol. You’re sister has been here watching out for you the whole time.”

  Nan continued. “Kyla, I left the dough on the counter. It needs kneading for ten minutes. Want to help me?”

  “Sure, Nan.” She ran off like any ten year old kid would.

  Pa shut the door after they left. I tried to sit up better, but it hurt too much.

  “Those monsters must have given her a forgetting drug or it could just be shock. Bless the world for small favors,” he said.

  “She doesn’t remember anything?”

  He shrugged. “I catch her staring at the floor ever so often, sometimes she’ll shake for no reason, but yeah, I think it’s mostly just like snatches of a bad dream.”

  “That’s good.” That was really good.

  I realized I was lying in the bed little Ellie had died in, lying in just the same spot. I wondered what I looked like to Pa. I wondered if I had blood on my teeth.

  “How long I been out?”

  “Three days. Kyla been forcing water down ya.”

  A symbol rang outside and kept ringing. Pa’s eye’s got wide. Nan and Kyla and all the women folk came crowding in the room. It looked just like Ellie’s last moment.

  Kyla and the other girls looked put out. The older women were trying
to laugh and smile. Pa gave me a look.

  “I best be going outside.”

  “It’s another stupid drill,” Kyla said. They’ve been doing them the past couple of days. Stupid.”

  “Kyla,” I said. “Don’t say ‘stupid’. You know better.” She looked immediately sorry and wouldn’t meet my eyes. Well, she did know better.

  “Pa, help me up. I’d like to go with you.”

  Pa gave a small shake of the head. “You don’t look up to it, boy.”

  “I deserve to be there.”

  “Yeah, you do. More than any. You’re worth at least three men’s salt.” He smiled and helped me up. I tried not to scream in front of all the women.

  Once outside he sat me on Uncle Jack’s old rocker. “This is far as you go lessin you can get there on your own. I got to man a bow.”

  “I’m good. Didn’t take them long to attack,” I said.

  “Well,” and he looked sad, like putting down a mad dog sad, “They’re about done. Starvin’ and all. City folk that don’t know how to take care of themselves is all. Went crazy.”

  “How’s Uncle Jack?”

  “The devil awoke in the old boy. Kills every one of them. Even the ones that beg. Nobody blames him for what he’s done.”

  A couple of pitiful yells went up and more than a few crossbow twangs filled the air.

  “Don’t look like they need me this time,” he said. “It’s about done.”

  “They’re attacking in the middle of the day?”

  Pa shook his head and fanned himself with his hat. “Doesn’t matter none. They die just as easy at night. No skill at all.”

  He took a seat next to me. “I never thought people would end up like the zombies on TV, eatin’ people.” He waved his old straw hat in a circle. “I never thought the world would end this way.”

  I thought of Merro leaving the family for who knew what crazy reason and the two deaths he caused, but didn’t mention it to Pa. Mentioning it would only bring to light what we both already knew.

  “It’s not the end, not for all,” I said. “It’s the end for some, though.”

  As soon as I got better I’d find Uncle Merro. A man’s got to live by his principles, do what’s right, no matter what. Dad taught me that.

  THE END

  Still Born by Ryan Neil Falcone

  One bloody clump floating in the toilet was all it took for Lydia Ramsey’s idyllic life to unravel. She stared into the bowl feeling a transfixed sense of panic threaten to hijack her mind as she watched the gelatinous mass disseminated through the water like a diseased ink cloud. Sick with fear about what the acute pain in her swollen midsection might mean for her unborn child, she collapsed alongside the bowl and began to sob.

  She’d spent years focused more on climbing the corporate ladder than family, not slowing down to even get married until after she’d made partner. It wasn’t until after she’d gotten the news from her doctor about her husband, Kyle’s, infertility that she realized that she even wanted children at all.

  This realization provided no comfort as she sprawled ungraciously on the bathroom floor, feeling angry. None of what she’d uncomfortably endured to facilitate the pregnancy in the first place—months of consultations with fertility experts, the regimen of agonizing daily injections, surgical egg harvesting, invasive in vitro implantation, to say nothing of the financial and emotional investment she’d made——seemed worth it anymore. To lose the baby five months into the pregnancy seemed too cruel an outcome to contemplate.

  Forcibly pulling herself together, she left the bathroom and called her husband, feeling a crushing sense of disappointment when the call immediately rolled to voicemail. Even though she knew that the time differential between New York and Hong Kong meant that he was probably asleep, it didn’t seem fair that she’d have to bear this burden alone. She forced herself to leave a composed message urging him to call at the earliest opportunity, but couldn’t bring herself to say aloud what she feared had happened to the baby.

  Hanging up the phone, she left her bedroom and paused outside the nursery she’d finished painting only a few days earlier, suddenly feeling dizzy as the full weight of her predicament collapsed inward upon her.

  Her back ached as she sat in ankle stirrups, legs spread unceremoniously as the attending nurse administered an ultrasound later that afternoon. But the discomfort was nothing compared to the nausea-inducing sense of dread swelling inside her. She took a deep breath to calm down, loathing the sterile smell of hospital antiseptic that filled her nostrils, and instead focused upon the nurse’s face for any positive sign. Her eyes blurred with tears when she saw the nurse’s thin lips curl into a frown.

  “I’m having a difficult time getting a reading, Mrs. Ramsey,” the nurse informed her. “I’m going to go get the doctor.”

  Alone, she stared upward at the ceiling while the room spun. She didn’t need Dr. Taft to confirm what her body was already telling her—the baby was gone. Wiping away her tears, she steeled herself for the bad news she expected when the doctor entered the room, looking away so that she wouldn’t have to look at the fluctuating image on the ultrasound when he crushed her dream. His reaction caught her off guard.

  “That’s strange,” Dr. Taft observed as he painfully probed her abdomen

  Even though she feared what his response would be, she couldn’t bear not to know. “What?”

  “I’m not detecting a heartbeat,” he replied after a lengthy pause. “But the baby is clearly moving.”

  Wide eyed, she turned toward the monitor, feeling hope blossom for the first time since that morning. “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not sure,” Dr. Taft admitted. “Could just be an equipment glitch.” But after a hand-held ultrasound unit produced a similar result, the doctor removed his glasses, looking puzzled. “Mrs. Ramsey, I’m at a bit of a loss to explain this.”

  She sat up, clutching her swollen belly protectively, suddenly feeling frantic as she watched him study the confusing data on the monitor. “What’s wrong with my baby?”

  “I don’t know that anything’s wrong,” he replied. “The heartbeat reading could be blocked by subcutaneous interference, but the baby appears to be active and moving normally—that’s a good sign.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The apologetic look on the doctor’s face suggested that he didn’t have the answers she was looking for. “We’re going to need to monitor the baby frequently, just to be on the safe side. In the meantime, I want you to take it easy—stay in bed and rest as much as possible. And I’d like you to come back in two days so that we can run some more tests.”

  She took this information in, feeling helpless and confused. “Is my baby going to be all right?”

  The doctor smiled reassuringly. “We’re going to do everything in our power to ensure that, Mrs. Ramsey. I’m going to prescribe you a mild sedative to dull the pain you described.” Noting her alarmed reaction, he added: “Don’t worry—it’s not strong enough to harm the baby.”

  The conversation she’d dreaded having with her husband that morning turned out to be far less emotional than she’d anticipated as she relayed the information from Dr. Taft.

  “And you’re sure the baby’s all right?” Kyle asked.

  Her hand descended to her midsection, feeling a prickly sense of relief wash over her when the warm flesh of her stomach noticeably distended. “I think so—he’s kicking now.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “A little queasy,” she admitted. “It’s been a stressful day.”

  “Do you want me to come home? I can be on a flight back to the States tonight if—“

  “Don’t be silly,” she interrupted, more attuned to the importance of his business trip than most wives would be. “I’m fine, the baby’s fine—we’ll see you this weekend.”

  Setting the phone aside, she switched on the television and positioned herself on her bed with her laptop to begin sifting through the mountain of w
ork related e-mails that had piled up since she’d been offline that morning. While she typed, her attention was distracted by a grisly news story about a grandmother who’d killed and partially eaten her three grandchildren. The cannibalistic killings had taken place after the old woman had allegedly suffered a massive heart attack, while the distracted parents were waiting downstairs for the ambulance to arrive.

  Suddenly feeling nauseous, Lydia reached for the remote lying on her nightstand to turn the TV off. She was completely unprepared when a sharp pain unexpectedly rippled through her abdomen. Drawing in a sharp breath, she waited for the discomfort to pass. When it didn’t, she stumbled into the bathroom, and was barely able to lift the toilet seat before a jet of stinging bile involuntarily bubbled up her throat. Clutching the vanity to steady herself, she regurgitated into the toilet, lungs burning for air while hot liquid sprayed up her esophagus in the opposite direction. Just when it seemed that she might choke to death, the contents of her lurching stomach finally emptied. As she struggled to catch her breath, her gaze fell upon the bottle of sedatives she’d procured from the pharmacy after her doctor’s appointment. Twisting the bottle open with an unsteady hand, she poured a tablet into her palm and swallowed it dry.

  It took awhile for the sedative to take effect, and by the time the burning sensation in her stomach subsided to a tolerable discomfort, she could barely keep her eyes open. Overcome with exhaustion, she collapsed onto the bed and shut her eyes, quickly falling into a fitful slumber after her nausea dissipated.