As I stepped in the house I saw Tracy standing in the living room, looking at the stairway that led to the upper floors. She seemed frozen in fear. At first I couldn't grasp my mind around what she was seeing—a trail of red that ran up the stairs. I barely noticed Alex's continued satanic-sounding groans behind his gag when Tracy suddenly broke out of her paralysis. "Oh my God, Emily!"
"What?" I asked.
Just then, Emily screamed.
And then I knew.
Heather.
Twenty One
My heart was in my throat as Tracy and I ran up the stairs.
Emily was screaming. It was the most awful, most heart-wrenching scream I'd ever heard. It filled me with terror and despair. It drove me to fury.
As we burst into our wing of the house I saw that trail of red slime traverse the sitting room into our bedroom. Emily was screaming at the top of her lungs.
Tracy entered the bedroom first, but I wasn't far behind.
It was at that moment the floodlights outside went out.
I saw Tracy flip the light switch on. The bedroom light failed to go on.
I cursed under my breath.
Emily continued to scream.
"Emily!" I yelled.
If it hadn't been for the moonlight filtering in through the open window, we wouldn't have had any light to see by. As it was, the sight that greeted us was awful and froze my heart in terror.
Heather had dragged herself into the house and up the stairs by pulling herself along the floor with her remaining arm. Her severed torso left trails of gore along the floor. Her head lolled back on a neck that was partly blown-out from a gunshot wound, partly from rot. How she managed to drag herself this far I have no idea, but she was here, and she'd not only managed to pull herself up on the bed, she was grinning at Emily the way a cat will stare down a mouse. Emily was cowering against the head of the bed, totally oblivious that we were even there. With the way she was positioned, neither Tracy nor I had a clear shot.
I took a quick step to my right, then launched myself at Heather just as she growled and, propelling herself forward with her arm, lunged at Emily.
I knocked Heather off the bed, landing on top of her. I felt a fury of blind rage and hate envelop me as we crashed to the floor. Heather growled, her voice gravelly and evil, and shoved me off. Despite being a rotting corpse, she was strong—obviously the power of the God of the New World was running strong in her. She grabbed the mattress and began pulling herself up on the bed as I saw Tracy rush over and scoop Emily up in her arms.
"Aaaarrrrrrhhhh!" Heather growled as she clambered lizard-like up the bed.
Tracy had a firm grasp on Emily, who was still screaming and trying to escape now. She was in a fight-or-flight mode and was so worked up she didn't know who Tracy was. Tracy hauled her off the bed and crept along the outer wall of the house by the window, circling the bed, trying to stay as far away from Heather as possible. Heather tracked them with her ravaged face and prepared to launch herself at them again.
I heaved myself up and with one swift motion brought the barrel of the M4 down on her back and fired. A volley of shots tore through her. Empty casings pinged off the floor, raining around the room. Tracy dropped her rifle and shielded Emily by covering her head and face with her arms.
And still, Heather kept moving. I circled the bed, getting a better aim at her head, my backstop clear and free now. I shot her again, blowing her head apart. It looked like a bomb blowing up inside a carved out pumpkin. Heather dropped to the bed and I felt the rage of that demon, the God of the New World, swirl around me in its white-hot hate.
Stumbling footsteps pounded up the stairs and a moment later Martin and Wesley were in the room. I raised my hand up to them; I didn't need them shooting into the room indiscriminately. "We're covered."
"Oh my God," Wesley said as he saw the twitching remains of Heather on the bed.
Martin went ashen.
Emily was still screaming. She was crying now, too. She hid her face from us, burying it in the hollow of Tracy's throat. "Is it dead?" Tracy asked.
I took a step forward. What remained of Heather finally stopped moving.
"It is now," I said.
"It'll come back, though," Wesley said. "We need to destroy it for good."
"How are we going to do that?" I asked.
"Give me a hand. We'll throw it outside and into one of those fires."
I was apprehensive, but did it. I don't know how I made it through without throwing up. Touching what was left of Heather was too terrible, so traumatic, that I was on the verge of panic as I helped Wesley carry her remains through the house then into one of four fires that were burning outside.
As we threw Heather's corpse into the flames I was struck by the fact that even though we'd won this battle, the overall fight was not over. There were literally billions of these things left, scattered all over the world. Were some of them even now heading our way in a concerted effort, guided by the God of the New World, set to destroy us?
"We're going to have to get out of here," I said.
"I know," Wesley answered.
There was another volley of gunshots from inside and my heart leaped in my chest again. I started toward the house and then Martin called out from inside. "It's okay. Just taking care of Alex."
Still, the very idea that we were in imminent danger was distressing to me. I entered the house and helped Martin carry Alex's now mutilated remains outside quickly—he'd been decapitated by gunfire and I simply grabbed his head by the hair and carried that part of him out (that wasn't so bad, actually).
"Are there any more out there that aren't burning?" I asked Wesley.
"I don't know," Wesley admitted. "Most of them eventually gathered here in the front, but there are those at the side unaccounted for."
"I'll stand watch while you get some more torches," I said. I reloaded my rifle as I talked. "You and Martin take care of them. I need to check on my family."
Wesley nodded and headed inside for more torches. Martin joined me and I explained to him what was going on. We stood guard on the porch until Wesley came back out bearing two torches. He got one lit, handed the other to Martin, who quickly got his ablaze. Then, they set off.
I did a quick sweep of the ground floor of the house and then darted upstairs.
Tracy had taken Emily to the opposite wing of the house, where Wesley had slept. She sat on Wesley's bed and cradled our daughter in her arms, doing her best to soothe her. Emily was sobbing hoarsely now and she was coughing. Her hair was sweaty, hanging in her eyes in wet tangles. I sat down next to them and felt helpless. "Everything's okay now, honey."
Emily could only cry uncontrollably.
Tracy met my gaze over Emily's small form. Once again, we were on the same wavelength. We not only had to leave this place, we had to draw our circle even tighter. I wasn't sure if Tracy meant we had to cut Martin and Wesley loose, but I knew instinctively that we could no longer trust strangers. As much as Alex had been an innocent victim, he'd led the primitives and the God of the New World directly to our steps. I had a feeling that if we'd killed him the moment he set foot on our property, we would not have attracted the God's attention. It had possessed Naomi, whom we visited and killed—surely she had to be one of the undead hordes of primitives now burning outside. That was all it needed to get our scent.
But if this disease, this virus that flipped the DNA strand, was communicable, then Alex obviously had it.
And he'd probably passed it on to one of us.
"Lori turned," I said quietly. "Martin and I shot her outside."
"That thing on the bed was Heather," Tracy said.
"Yeah," I confirmed. "It was Heather."
Tracy sighed. Still cradling our daughter, she summed everything up quickly. "If it can reanimate the dead it can tap into all the emotions we all carry inside. That's how it found us, through Heather. It used the hatred she had toward us."
"Why isn't this affecting u
s, though?" I asked. "Why hasn't it taken over us the way it did with Alex and Naomi?"
Tracy was silent for a moment. Emily's sobs were growing quieter. She looked up at Tracy, her eyes wide and worried. "Mommy?"
"You're safe," Tracy whispered. She brushed a strand of Emily's hair back and kissed her. "Go to sleep, honey."
Emily turned her head so that she was looking at me. Her eyes focused on me and she smiled. "Daddy!"
I managed a smile. "Hey pumpkin, how you feeling?"
"Better." Her expression seemed to suggest she was bottling her recent trauma up to deal with at another time. I reached out and took her hand, rubbing her fingers. "It's still trying to get in."
"What's still trying to get in?"
"The devil."
"What do you mean, baby?" Tracy asked.
I was now one hundred percent convinced Emily was gifted—or cursed—with some kind of extra-sensory ability. Her predictions of Alex this morning had been dead on.
"It got into Heather and used her," Emily said. "But Heather got too broke up. Like when Eric tore apart one of my dolls that one time and I couldn't play with her anymore. Remember that Mommy?"
"I remember that," Tracy said. I nodded. I remembered that incident well. One of Eric's obsessions as an autistic child was taking things apart—toys, CD Jewel cases, fountain pens—basically anything he could get his hands on. He'd taken Emily's toys apart numerous times to the point that she started getting used to it. Hearing this from Emily confirmed my own theory on how Hanbi took possession of us and how it was able to manipulate the living and the dead.
"So...that thing is trying to get inside us?" I asked gently.
Emily nodded. "It's trying to find other openings, but it can't. It's very angry."
"Do you think it can get into us?" I asked.
Emily looked at me for a moment and appeared to think about this. Finally, she shook her head. "No. It can't. I don't know why but...it can't. And it doesn't like that."
Tracy and I traded a glance over Emily's head. "Emily, why was it able to get into Alex? You said earlier that he was a nice guy. It got into him, too."
"He was open," Emily said. "He and his wife were way open, she more than him. That's who it gets into."
"What do you mean by open?" Tracy asked.
"I don't know!" Emily sounded frustrated. Whatever she was feeling, she was simply describing it the best way she knew how.
"Are Martin and Wesley open?" I asked.
Emily shook her head emphatically. "No. Especially not Martin." She paused, her lips turning downcast as if she was about to cry again. "But Lori...Lori was open a little bit." She looked up at Tracy. "It got her, didn't it?"
Tracy glanced at me quickly, then nodded. "Yes, honey. It got her."
Emily sniffed back her tears and wiped her cheeks. Once again, she suddenly seemed very grown-up to me for a brief instant. "I was afraid that might happen."
Another glance between Tracy and me. How much does Emily know about this thing?
I wondered what Emily meant by being open. Did she mean open to spiritual belief? If that was the case, why hadn't it affected me? Despite my self-proclaimed agnostic beliefs, I always felt there was something out there. I'd always felt the spiritual world was too great for us mere mortals to understand. And what of Tracy, who, in her own terms had a belief in God but, in her words, wasn't a big admirer of His fan club. She was still a believer. So why weren't we affected? "So if everybody here isn't open," I began, thinking aloud, "then we're okay?"
Emily thought about that for a moment, then shook her head. "It will find others that are close by. And it'll use what it got from Heather and come back to find us here."
That told me all I needed to know. There would definitely be more of them.
"Do you know when this might happen, honey?" Tracy asked.
Emily said nothing again; she had a blank stare, as if she were in a trance. As suddenly as she went into it, she was out of it. "Soon," she said.
"So we should leave now?"
Emily nodded.
That decided it for me. I got up. "Get some things together. I'm going to tell Martin and Wesley and help them gather essentials. We should leave inside the next hour."
Tracy nodded and then Wesley's voice interrupted us.
"We got a radio broadcast! David, come down!"
Tracy gestured at me to go and I left the room to join Wesley.
Twenty Two
Through all the excitement and the adrenaline rush, my injured arm had gone to sleep. Now it was awake and screaming as I tore down the stairs and made my way to the radio room.
As I crossed the threshold I saw Wesley seated at the console. Martin wasn't anywhere to be seen. "Where's Martin?"
"Outside standing guard," Wesley said. He turned a knob on the control board. "Listen to this."
The pain in my upper left arm was growing enormous now. I gritted my teeth. "Let me take care of my arm first." I hustled out of the room.
"You okay?" Wesley asked. I could hear a voice coming over the radio, but I couldn't make out what was being said. It definitely wasn't Stuart's. Wesley followed me out. "Need help?"
"I just want to patch this up," I said. I made my way into the kitchen. The lights were still off and the kitchen was dark. I turned on a battery-powered flashlight and found the first aid kit. As I rummaged through it, Wesley got a look at my arm. I heard him draw in a breath. "One of them bit me," I explained.
"No shit," Wesley said. "This one looks worse than the one from earlier." Great, just what I needed to hear.
With his help, I got my chambray shirt off and Wesley helped me tend to the wound. By the light of the flashlight I saw that it was pretty damn ugly. Using the pail of water Tracy had drawn earlier, Wesley cleaned the wound with a washcloth. It stung, and the area around the wound felt hot. I hoped it wasn't infected. "You're gonna need stitches, David."
"I'll get Tracy to stitch me up later," I said. "Right now, I really think the first order of business is to pull up stakes and get the hell out of here."
"I agree, but you've got to hear what this guy is saying." Wesley poured some peroxide onto a clean compress and prepared to wash the bite wound with it. "Okay, hold steady. This is gonna hurt worse than a motherfuck."
When he applied the compress it felt like firecrackers were exploding in the wound. I hissed, almost cried out. I forced myself to stay where I was and not move as Wesley applied the compress on my arm. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!"
"I know," Wesley said. His features looked grim. "But bite wounds from normal humans are nasty enough. No telling what kind of diseases these primitives are carrying. It wasn't a dead one that bit you, was it?"
"No," I said, the incident of the primitive barreling into me flashing before my eyes. "It wasn't."
"This thing has to be sewn up," Wesley said again. He withdrew the compress and rummaged in the first aid kit for a bandage. He found a large one, got it out of its packaging and applied it. "Does it hurt a lot when you move your arm?"
"It does now."
"This guy broadcasting," Wesley said as he applied the bandage. "It isn't Stuart, and he isn't broadcasting Stuart's call sign. He did give his location, though. He's in Chicago, top floor of a high rise. I think he's commandeered a really big radio or television station from the sound of it. There's at least two, maybe three other people with him."
"What's he saying?"
For the first time Wesley's eyes held a glimmer of hope. "He's calling this thing by the same goddamned name you called it, David. Hanbi. That was the exact words he used. I don't know how he made the connection, but he did. Or the people he's with made the connection. Whatever...get this. He's saying that Hanbi represents the father of various demons from ancient civilizations and that he's probably the oldest deity known to mankind. He has a theory that Hanbi was worshipped by primitive man well before the written word, during the Stone Age, and that the tradition was passed orally through the years. Anyway
...he says he believes that as man advanced, belief in Hanbi died. This is pretty fucking obvious from what little you found in those books you brought back, but get this." Wesley leaned close to me and his hope was now obvious. It even lit a spark within me. "This guy is saying that when we reverted back to our primitive state it reawakened belief in Hanbi again. And because there's more primitives—the human population of primitive man is greater now than it has ever been before in the history of the World—Hanbi is stronger than he's ever been. And it's the primitives collective belief in Hanbi that has not only made him this strong, but is sustaining him."
I finished what Wesley was about to say. "So diminishing Hanbi's power means killing as many primitives as possible."
"Well...yeah." That spark died down a bit as the implications of trying to accomplish something this grand became obvious. Wesley stepped back.
I quickly stood up, favoring my left arm a bit. "I want to hear what he has to say," I said.
Wesley led me to the radio room. As we crossed the threshold, I heard the guy's transmission. "—kill them whenever you see them. The more you kill, the more you lessen Hanbi's power."
I nodded at the console. "Can we reach this guy?"
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