He sped through the kitchen. A brief glance at the door reassured him they were safe for the moment. There were a couple of thick two by fours nailed across the door over a piece of plywood. George could hear the hungry sounds of anticipation from outside and ignored them. There was probably only one of those things out there, but soon there would be others.
“Helen?”
The time for stealth was over. George rocketed through the family room toward the stairs leading to the second floor. He didn’t want to frighten his girls. The noises coming from outside would be upsetting, but the sound of his voice would reassure them everything was okay.
“Roxy! Deb! It’s me! Daddy’s home! I finally made it!”
He didn’t have much time. He had to get to his girls before the kitchen door shattered and a rush of stiffening bodies tumbled in.
As he reached the bottom of the steps, George hesitated, listening. Over the din from outside, there was another noise. Something trickling down from up above. The flashlight fell out of his boneless fingers, and George leaned forward, his hand gripping the banister. He held on tight, his legs weak beneath him.
His heart thundered as he heard the footsteps from up above, and George began to weep. He wiped the wetness from his eyes and tried to speak.
“I made it, baby. I finally made it home. I told you … I promised you. Nothing was going to stop me from making it back to you and the girls.”
George climbed the steps to his family.
***
July 1st
“So how are you going to get out of there?”
George tried to hold on to the residue of warm feelings the conversation with his daughter had given him.
“I’ll figure something out. They won’t be able to keep me here for long. This place isn’t some kind of fortress; it’s a damn high school gym.”
“Don’t curse, George.” The words rolled off of Helen’s tongue robotically, without thought. George’s tried to think of a sharp rebuttal, but his weary mind refused to cooperate.
“Whatever you do, don’t try anything foolish. I would rather you stay there for a day or two instead of getting shot.”
“I won’t do anything foolish, and you know it. Nothing that’s going to get me killed.”
George’s ears turned beet red. He knew he sounded like a petulant child.
“I know. I know, my darling. I just want you to be safe and come home in one piece. We just need you here really bad, George.”
George tried to speak again, but hesitated, thinking about Helen’s words.
“Is everything okay?”
After a few uncomfortable moments of waiting for a response, he knew. Something was wrong.
“Helen?”
“No, George. It’s all right. Everything is fine. Nothing to worry about. I just miss you, and so do the girls. We need you so we can figure out where to go from here. If we should just leave town or …”
The static was getting worse. The signal was fading, and they might have only a few moments left. George could sense that his wife was keeping something from him.
“Helen, please. Just tell me what it is. Quickly. Before I lose you.”
The double meaning of the words was not lost on George as he shifted uncomfortably on his cot.
“Oh, it’s nothing. No big deal.”
He waited. Helen’s words were a delicate lie she was weaving to lessen the blow. It was only making it worse.
“It’s … it’s Roxy, George. She’s not feeling well. She has a fever.” He heard her exhale. “I have her in bed with a cold compress on her head. She took a hot bath, and I made her some soup. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
George’s mind raced. His daughter was sick in bed. It was no big deal; it had happened before. His girls always bounced back rapidly from any minor ailments they picked up.
Still, he did not feel right.
“When did she start feeling sick, hon?”
“I’m not exactly sure.” Helen’s tone was evasive. “Look, it really doesn’t matter. She’ll be okay in another day. As right as rain. I’m taking good care of her.”
George’s headache intensified, spurred by the sizzle and crack of the weak cell connection.
“HELEN!”
Several people near his cot turned to look at George, but every ounce of his attention was focused on the person at the other end of the phone line.
“Please, just tell me. If there’s anything else, I have to know. Before I lose the connection! Please …”
There was more silence on the other end, and every second he waited felt like an eternity.
“Really … it’s nothing. I swear, George. Nothing. It’s just that, well ... before we boarded everything up, Angela and Hank came over one last time to try to convince me to go with them. I told them we were staying to wait for you. They argued with me. I never thought I would get into a fight with Angela, but we did. She told me I was stupid and that we were all going to die if we stayed here.
“George, I have never seen Angela so scared in all my life. She was screaming at me, pleading for me to go with them. Well, I lost it on her. I feel bad for doing it, but I couldn’t help myself. Roxy and Deb were standing there, and she was scaring the daylights out of them. I started screaming back at her! George, I think we would have come to blows if Hank hadn’t stepped in. He told Angela to back off, that they couldn’t force us to go if we wanted to stay. George, he literally picked her up and carried her out of our house. It was crazy …”
George waited. He knew it would be pointless to ask his wife to speed the story along to its conclusion, so he ground his teeth and listened to the rhythmic pounding of blood flowing through his ears.
“We went out on the porch to watch them go back to their house. They were already packed and ready to go. I told the girls to go inside, but of course they didn’t listen. Angela was still screaming, and Hank was trying to put her in their truck. The camper was hooked up, and I think their kids had to be in the back because I didn’t see them … thank God they didn’t see what happened.”
George clenched his teeth tighter and squeezed the phone. He could feel it cutting into his palm.
“George, I … oh, God George, it was awful!”
“It’s okay. Take it easy, hon. Just tell me. You can do it.”
“I don’t know where he came from. He was just there, next to them. Maybe from between the houses or from behind the camper. I don’t know. But he attacked Hank.”
“Who, Helen? Who attacked Hank?”
“I don’t know! Just some man! Some ragged, filthy man. He was covered in dirt and … blood. My God, I think it was blood. That’s all I know.” George could hear the pain in Helen’s voice. He wanted to tell her she could stop, she didn’t have to keep speaking, but he couldn’t.
“Hank dropped Angela on the ground and wrestled with the man. I ran over … I don’t know what I was thinking, as if I could do anything to help. But, George, the screams! Hank was screaming like I have never heard before!
“I was getting closer as Angela got up. She was screaming along with Hank, and then I saw it. The man had bitten Hank! And he was still biting him, chewing on his arm like some pit bull. It was terrible.”
George could feel his stomach churning. He had waited long enough, had been incredibly patient. He took a breath and held it in for a moment.
“Honey. Please. Just tell me what happened to Roxy.”
Helen paused again.
“She tried to help them. I tried to stop her, George. I really did. But she grabbed her tennis racket. You remember the one she got for Christmas? She started beating on the man. I grabbed at her, but she had gone crazy.”
George tried to breathe. It wasn’t hard to believe Roxy would be the one to grab the most convenient weapon available and begin beating on some psychopath who had just attacked their neighbor. The girl knew no fear.
“What happened, Helen?”
George was losing his grip on reality. Th
e gym and all the people inside it swam before his eyes. Helen was trying to tell him every last detail when all he wanted to know was what had happened to his daughter.
“Hank was able to pull the man off his arm. He was beating on him with everything he had. So was Angela. It was hard to see …”
“WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MY DAUGHTER?”
“It’s nothing, George. Really. Just a little tiny scratch on her wrist. Hank pulled the man away, and she was fine. It barely broke the skin.”
***
August 13th
“I made it, baby. I finally made it home. I told you … I promised you. Nothing was going to stop me from making it back to you and the girls.”
The stairs creaked beneath George’s feet. He looked up, breathless and excited. There were shadows coming down the hall.
The noises outside were growing. Other ghouls had joined the first, its moans alerting them. They were at the door, and soon they would break it down to get inside.
“How is Roxy, baby? Is she okay? Are you and Deb okay? I missed you all so much.”
George reached the top of the stairs, and as he looked across the landing, he saw his wife walking toward him. His two girls were trailing behind her.
He smiled and opened his arms. Their arms were thrown wide as well, ready to embrace him. There were ugly welts on Roxy’s arms and legs where she had been tied up. The gag they had shoved in her mouth hung loosely around her neck, stained black in the slivers of moonlight that trickled through the windows. There were bite marks on Helen and Deb’s arms and necks, but George didn’t notice them. He didn’t see the tint of corruption on their skin or smell the decay surrounding them. All he could see was his family: the three reasons he had fought to stay alive for as long as it had taken to get back to them, just as he had promised.
George felt a profound comfort as his beautiful red-haired wife fell into his arms. His daughters enclosed him in their embrace as well, and he closed his eyes, at peace.
“I’m home. I’m finally home.”
*
Ten minutes later, the banging on the kitchen door slowed and then stopped altogether. Confused, the first ghoul that had come to the door sniffed the air and stood there, baffled. The others bounced off of her as they left, fading back into the shadows of George’s yard. His neighbor raised her arm and scratched sadly at the door one last time. A few minutes later, she also turned to walk away. There was no longer anything inside the house that she wanted.
Dark Stories
Table of Contents:
Megan
George and Jason
Jason, Alone
Fred and Bobby
Michael, Frank and Cindy
Michael and Cindy
Ray and Teddy
Ben
Sadie
Michael, Alone
Introduction
Well, you’ve gotten this far.
I want to thank you for reading my trilogy. When this story, and by story, I mean the entire trilogy, was written, it was huge. As in half a million words huge. I think I wrote and wrote and wrote until I had poured out every idea, every back story, every detail that I could about these characters.
The story changed with time and with edits, as all stories do. At first I realized that I was wandering a bit far afield, and did my best to rein myself in by cutting out a lot of Jeff’s inner dialogue. After that, it was the revelation that some of the flashbacks and back stories were taking away from the flow of the action and pacing of the books. The fact of the matter was that I had more than one main character going at that point, or so it seemed. It wasn’t just a story about Jeff; it was a story about Jeff, Megan, George, and Jason. Then it was a story about those four, plus everyone they meet in the RV camp. The consensus among those whom I asked to read the rough cuts was that the story needed to be centered around Jeff and his experiences and not as much on the other characters. They were important, but their back stories were distracting in many ways. So after some inner deliberation, I decided to shave all of that away. In other words, I removed the “baggage” and the clutter that might detract from the main storyline involving Jeff. I did leave the epilogue in place, because it felt unfair to leave George hanging when it was perfectly clear to me that his story had an ending, for better or for worse. I suspected that the readers wanted to know what that ending would be, so I left it alone.
But I realized that those additional stories still had merit. They may not have fit into the trilogy, but they certainly fit into the world I had created, and they added additional dimension to all the characters I had created to interact with Jeff. So I started posting them on my blog in conjunction with the release of the books in the trilogy. When my publisher and I agreed that we would offer the trilogy as one Kindle and Smashwords download once the final book in the trilogy was released, it seemed natural to post those Dark Stories as a fourth book in the same download.
So what you have beyond this point are what I would describe as addendums to the trilogy you just read. They are back stories on characters such as Megan, George, Jason, Michael, Ben, and several of the other characters in Jeff’s story of survival. Consider that before you read any further. If you like the characters just as they are, and whatever mystery they have to them is satisfying to you as a reader, then perhaps these stories won’t be of much interest. But if you feel that getting to know them better might be fun or interesting, then by all means, read on.
I hope you enjoy these various little dark tales, and if reading them enhances your enjoyment of the trilogy, then all the better. But if these characters turn into something different than your original conception because of the little light I have shed on them with these minor tales, don’t say that I didn’t warn you!
Patrick D’Orazio
February 2011
Megan, Part 1
Megan rolled over and stared at the wall. The bedroom, with its closed drapes and lack of light, was the only place that gave her any peace anymore, if you could call it that. At least sleep still came with relative ease. When she drifted off was the only time that she could sever the tenuous link to reality that she hated so much.
Certainly, there were nightmares, but they were tame compared to her waking reality. All Megan did was drift along like some raft on a meandering river, floating through one horrific experience to the next, never sure if she was awake or asleep as she did.
Despite whatever demons her mind dredged up when her eyes were closed, Megan still craved the sweet release of sleep. Nightmares felt real, but so did the occasional pleasant dream. Those rare moments when she was able to get lost in a dream were the only times she could forget.
That little bit of joy was her drug, so when she woke, Megan would bury herself in blankets and pillows and grasp at those fleeting images of happiness. But it never worked; once they were gone, they were gone for good.
No matter how bad or good her dreams became, Megan never made a sound in her sleep—or when she woke up. There was just too much of a chance that her voice would carry beyond the walls of her house.
Megan kept staring at her bedroom wall. She’d been working on memorizing the pattern of the wallpaper border over the past few days. It was a floral print Dalton hated, and it consisted of an assortment of red flowers repeating on the six-inch border all the way around the room. Memorizing the pattern wasn’t much of a challenge, since there were only about ten different flowers on the paper, but the exercises passed the time until she was able to drift off to sleep.
The rich color of the flowers matched the comforter and drapes, as well as the pillowcases and bed ruffle. Dalton faked nausea the first time he saw the entire set, but as a husband, he had learned how to pick his battles and bowed to his wife’s evil glare rather quickly when it came to such minor things.
Megan was proud of the decorative choices she’d made in the bedroom. It was the first room they’d finished in the house. The rest of the place was a work in progress, and had been since they�
�d moved in a little over a year ago.
This was their second place together, and purchasing the house had been the start of their “serious” stage. They bought a house that cost too much, picked out furnishings that maxed out their credit cards, and made plans to have a baby.
Megan and Dalton had been together for five years, married for three, and Megan had been feeling the itch to start a family for at least a year. This house out in the suburbs was going to be the place where they really got going as a couple … and having the bedroom finished and tastefully decorated was the first step in that process.
Now the bedroom was going to be her mausoleum.
It wasn’t as if the food had run out. Megan had never been a big eater, and she lost what little appetite she had when the world fell apart.
She could feel her muscles being devoured by her desperate body as she ate less and less. It was fighting her, resisting her desire to fade away. For some reason, Megan’s body wasn’t ready to give up on her just yet.
Before everything started, Megan had barely topped “a buck five” as Dalton would say. She was sure that if she checked her current weight, it would be a miracle if it were above ninety pounds.
“A strong wind’s going to blow you away if you’re not careful, honey.”
Megan grinned at the memory of her husband’s words. If she lost any more weight, she might test that theory. Floating away might not be a bad idea.
Megan spent the rare occasion when she wasn’t lying in bed trying to read old magazines and books, but as she was never a big reader, that didn’t last long. So instead, she dug up an old cookbook and flipped through it for hours on end, staring at pictures of recipes that would never be made again.
The Dark Trilogy Page 54