When Martha ran out of shells, heavy smoke hung around the two of them like a fog bank. As the echoes faded along with the smoke, Martha and Tammy looked at the remains of their only defense. The door to the den hung limply by one hinge.
“Get in the closet, Tammy,” her mother whispered.
Martha was on her hands and knees fumbling in the dark, digging through the pockets of her jeans for the remaining shells. She fed them in one at a time, scanning the darkness as Tammy clung to her side.
“Tammy, please.”
“No, Mommy, no,” Tammy whispered. “Come with me, we can hide.”
“Get in that closet now. I’m not going to tell you again,” Martha whispered fiercely. “Do it, Tammy.”
Tammy crawled away crying, her wet breath coming out in sobs. The closet door scraped against the carpet as Tammy opened it and slid inside. With the shotgun loaded Martha moved backwards until her back was against the closet door. She felt Tammy’s little fingers through the wooden slats. Tammy cried softly.
“Mommy, I’m scared, please, stay with me, please.”
Moonlight dimly lit the hall and the edge of the doorframe. There was no sound. Martha raised the shotgun at the doorway and wondered how long she could hold out. The box of shells was empty and she would never be able to find more in the dark. She had to make each one count.
Fingernails scraped across wood and her eyes snapped open in the darkness. Somewhere close she could hear breathing, quick and deep, like the panting of an animal.
“Mom?”
The shotgun blasts sent Sean diving for the ground and froze Jordan standing in place.
“Jordan! Get down!” Sean said.
Jordan hit the ground looking ashen.
“What the hell is going on?” he asked. “Who’s shooting?”
“It came from inside,” Sean said.
“What are they shooting at?”
“I don’t know.”
Sean rose into a crouch and scanned the front of the house.
“What do we do?” asked Jordan, as he belly-crawled closer
to Sean.
“There could be more people in there.”
“No shit,” Jordan said.
“More of his people,” Sean said as he nodded toward Bishop, still lying flat on his back in the snow.
“Oh, Jesus Christ, you never said he had partners,” Jordan said.
“He could have,” Sean said. “I just didn’t see them.”
“We gotta get help then. We gotta—”
“There is no help,” Sean said. “We’re it. There’s only us.”
“I can’t go in,”
“These are your people in there. The Matthews, remember?”
“I don’t even have a gun.”
Sean removed his back-up piece from his ankle holster and gave it to Jordan.
“There.”
Jordan held the snub-nosed .38 tight to his chest and got to his feet.
“You ready?” Sean said.
Jordan nodded, “What about him?”
Sean and Jordan dragged Bishop’s lifeless body to a low, wrought iron fence and secured him to it with Jordan’s cuffs.
Sean took the right side of the house and agreed to meet Jordan in the backyard. Quickly he assessed the extent of the attack on the house. Windows were smashed, deep claw marks gouged the wood trim, and from what he could see through the broken windows, it looked as if a bomb had gone off inside. Furniture was scattered and toppled, plaster hung in chunks from the ceiling.
When they found each other in the backyard, Sean pointed his flashlight into the house and led them through the shredded back door.
Inside, all was still.
“Frank?” he called.
Snow had blown inside, covering the first twenty feet of the floor in a thin blanket of white. Sean listened to the house groan against the force of the wind and the snow outside and then led them deeper into the darkness of the house.
“Frank? Tammy? It’s Sean.”
Sean and Jordan made quick work of the ground floor, sweeping their lights over every surface and into every corner, but there was no sign of anyone.
They were halfway up the stairs when they heard the sound, low and indistinct at first but gradually louder. Sean thought it was the sound of hushed conversation. They moved forward.
Outside, Bishop slowly joined the living once again. Faraway he heard the howl of the freezing wind, and the brittle sound of barren branches shaking against each other. Then came the tactile senses; the bone deep cold of lying prone in the snow, the sharp little daggers of snow and ice hitting his face. Bishop’s eyes slid open.
He found Oliver squatting over him.
“Welcome back, lad,” he said. “Come on now, no rest for the wicked.”
On the second floor, Sean’s light found the study door hanging by a single hinge. Sean and Jordan stepped to the doorway and moved inside. Nearly everything was destroyed.
Hunks of plaster were scattered everywhere as was most of the furniture and a blizzard of glass. Again, deep claw marks gouged the wood floor and the walls, even the ceiling. Wordlessly the pair stepped back out into the hall and made their way to the end of the hall to the master bedroom. Sean felt Jordan behind him, less than a foot back. He hoped that he wouldn’t catch an accidental bullet in the spine from his thoroughly spooked deputy.
As Sean reached for the doorknob to the master bedroom, the buzz of hushed conversation abruptly died. As if someone had thrown a switch, the sound stopped. Sean and Jordan stopped dead. Sean wrapped his gloved hand around the doorknob and Jordan grabbed his arm, shaking his head vehemently, pulling Sean away from the door. But Sean wouldn’t budge. He peeled off Jordan’s hand and motioned for him to be quiet. Jordan took a step backwards into the hall and Sean turned back to the door. The knob turned and the door swung inward.
Sean’s flashlight cut through the gloom of the bedroom and found that all the furniture had been pushed to the far end of the room. Nothing remained, except for the two naked figures that lay curled on the floor. The air wheezed out of Jordan’s lungs, something between a sigh and a groan. Sean stepped into the room, his feet reluctantly sliding across the hardwood. Martha lay curled on her side, facing the door, but it wasn’t Martha. Not anymore. Her skin looked gray and cracked like desert hardpan shot through with intricate networks of black veins. What could only be her daughter Tammy lay partly behind her, curled almost in a fetal position with her knees drawn up to her thin chest.
“Oh, Jesus,” Sean whispered.
Jordan pulled his radio from his belt.
“I’m calling the doc.”
He squeezed the TALK button.
“Kelly, come in,” Jordan whispered.
Nothing but static.
“Kelly, come in, over.”
Sean moved slowly to the shivering form of Martha Matthews. Her eyes were closed but moved rapidly left to right beneath her thin lids. He brushed her once blonde hair that had now gone gray, away from her throat. He pulled off his glove and touched two fingers to her throat to feel for a pulse.
“Don’t touch it.”
Sean and Jordan spun toward the door, guns up and aimed, to find Bishop leaning against the frame.
“Holy fuck!” Jordan said. “What the fuck are you?”
“Hands up! Now! On the ground!” Sean said.
Bishop took a last drag on his cigarette and crushed the butt against the doorframe.
“Jesus, we gonna do this shit again?”
“Tell me what’s going on here,” Sean said. “What did you do?”
“Me?” Bishop replied. “Not enough. Now get up and back away, slowly.”
“These people need help,” Sean said.
Bishop shook his head, “It’s too late.”
“Please,” a voice whispered, “help me.”
Sean turned to where Tammy lay. Jordan and Bishop stepped closer.
A sound like ice breaking came from Tammy’s body. She rolled on
to her back and whipped back her head, her back arched, and her body went rigid, as if she were in the midst of a powerful seizure. Her mouth and eyes snapped open. Her blue eyes stared blindly at the ceiling for a moment and then with the sound of tearing leather, her gray skin ripped down the center of her, from her navel to her throat. Her jaws clamped shut, cracking her teeth and leaving fragments to litter the floor beside her head. A molar rolled toward Jordan’s boot and he scrambled away from it.
“Jesus Christ! What the fuck is happening?” Jordan asked Bishop.
“There’s no time,” Bishop replied. “We have to leave.”
Tammy rolled to her stomach then snapped into a crouch. Her blue eyes faded to a milky white only to be filled from within, as if a viscous black fluid was pumped into her eyes until the solid white orbs darkened to a deep coal-black stare. Black markings moved under her skin, swirling and covering her body with strange, writhing symbols.
Bishop raised his gun and fired, obliterating the left side of Tammy’s head. She was thrown backward where she landed in a heap. Her limbs shuddered against the floor as her life drained away.
Bishop took aim at Martha slowly getting to her feet.
“No,” Sean said, as he stepped into the line of fire.
“Look at her, Sean,” Bishop said. “They are not the people you knew. They’re not your friends. We have no time to fuck around here.”
Behind Sean, behind Martha, lay the large bay window of the master bedroom. Bishop saw them a moment too late. Fists cocked, mouths open, the Zijin smashed through the window and flooded the bedroom in a blizzard of thrashing limbs, glass and shrieks.
27
The Rolling Stones were just finishing up “Brown Sugar” as Violet added the last of the chocolate chips to the batter. Violet’s feet tapped but she didn’t sing along. Classic rock and baking high- calorie treats was how she got through things. That and a box of tissue about every ten feet.
She had just finished mixing the last of the ingredients when the power went out.
“Shit.”
Kevin could hear Violet rummaging through drawers and slamming cabinet doors. Finally a ray of light shot into the living room. She spent the next few minutes searching for matches with the assistance of her new-found flashlight.
“Violet?” Kevin asked from the darkened living room.
“It’s okay, honey,” she said, “power’s out.”
Violet peered out through the new snow down the length of Main Street. The whole town was dark.
If this kept up for any length of time they would start ringing the bell for everyone to come to the church. Violet didn’t want to risk it. Not with Kevin. The winters here could be brutal and with no power the temperature inside her little storefront house would drop like a rock.
Up the street near Mabel’s, something dashed across the street. She pressed her cheek to the window to get a better look but it was gone. Fast, she thought. Too big to be a dog. Dog wouldn’t last very long out there tonight. Not much would. Weatherman said the temperature would fall to about -39, without the windchill, before the night was through. Violet took another look down both ends of the street and then set about to look for candles and matches.
“Looks like no cookies tonight, Kev.”
“That’s okay,” he said, “but now what are we gonna do?” “We’re gonna pack your stuff and I’m gonna pack a bag and then we’re gonna head over to the church.”
“What are we gonna do there?”
“You play Monopoly?”
“No one beats me at Monopoly.”
Violet laughed. “Oh, is that right?”
“It’s a fact.”
“Sounds like a challenge.”
“Bring it.”
“You wait right there,” Violet said. She tossed the dishtowel at Kevin and then whirled away, disappearing with a long blue candle clenched in her fist.
Kevin threw his things into his backpack. He didn’t have much; his PSP, a few scattered games. All his clothes had been packed already in anticipation of the power outage, so after a few quick looks around the general area to see if he’d missed anything, he was good to go. He couldn’t wait to beat Violet at Monopoly. His smile returned at the prospect. She had no idea what she was up against.
He moved to the long windows and scanned the eerily darkened Main Street. The street looked like a view to another world, empty and desolate. He cupped his hands around his face to see more clearly and stared into the face of what lay curled and ready to pounce just beyond the windowpane.
Before he could scream, the pale creature drove its fist through the thin barrier between them. Kevin leapt backward, stumbled over his own feet and dropped to the floor. Long black talons eager for flesh snapped at Kevin’s face and chased him backward. Kevin scrambled to his feet and backpedaled as fast as his feet would take him, never taking his eyes from the window. He slammed hard into Violet as she hurried into the room, brought by the sound of shattering glass. Her scream caught in her throat.
At the window the beast struggled to pull its arm free. Finally, it wrenched the arm out through the jagged hole, shredding its pale flesh and splashing the hardwood with its blood. The creature roared and then slammed itself bodily through the window in a blizzard of broken glass.
Shards of glass fell inward as the creature stepped into the living room. Violet yanked Kevin into her arms and started for the stairs. She took them two at a time. At the top of the stairs Violet’s wheezing sounded like the high, thin scream of a boiling kettle. She nearly slipped on the area rug at the top of the steps, but stumbling, she managed to get to the only room with a lock, the bathroom.
She deposited Kevin into the clawfoot tub and slammed the door behind them slipping the bolt through the cradle. She dragged over a high armoire and wedged it between the door and the sink. The piece was her mother’s and made of oak, but it wasn’t exactly a butcher’s block. She prayed that it would hold. She searched for a weapon when the first attack came. The lock was torn from the wall and the door swung inward about three inches before the armoire stopped it.
In the tub, with his thin arms wrapped around his knees,
Kevin was as silent as a statue. Violet swept through items kept in boxes beneath the sink and came out with a curling iron and a small pair of scissors.
The door shook and splintered with each attack. Hinges pulled out of the wall. The armoire cracked, the tiny spindles snapped like toothpicks.
Violet slipped into the tub behind Kevin, wrapped her arms around him and prayed.
Gertie arrived at the church feeling deflated and physically gutted by what she had seen at the Walters’ house. Normally a free thinker and an even freer speaker, her silence and reticence were duly noted. She endured polite jabs and then later heartfelt enquiries as to her health or some other dreaded secret that kept her tongue silenced the entire afternoon. There were reasons why she kept quiet, but those were her own. Everyone didn’t have to know everything. Besides, she just didn’t want to talk about it. To even think about it brought the taste of fresh bile to the back of her throat. She just wanted to keep busy, to be doing something instead of sitting home doing crosswords or watching some old movie. She wanted to be here. Doing. And she was. Presently she stirred a huge pot of chicken noodle soup. She added a little salt and kept stirring.
For a while she was worried that she had made the wrong decision. That was until the power went out. It went out every year, but never for this long. Father Callahan had waited for a couple of hours to pass before he had rung the emergency siren. Now he rang it once an hour.
She had heard a crew had been sent. It was usually Kelly
Dugan, or John Carney, the local electricians, and a few of their buddies to help them drink along the way out to the power station, but they left hours ago. No one asked where they had gotten to, or why it was taking so long. They were used to everything taking a little longer out here in the sticks, and even longer still during a storm. That was why no
one panicked except for Gertie. That was why she was scared like she had never been before. Her stomach churned like an angry sea.
“Soup about ready?” a voice asked.
Gertie turned and found Hazel Klens’ smiling face a couple of inches from her own. Hazel’s left eye was punctured and smeared across her face like so much egg yolk. Her gray tweed suit was shredded, ripped up the front, and her pale, fish- belly skin was exposed, splattered with dark crimson. Organs spilled to the floor between broken ribs, skittering across the worn linoleum.
“Gertie?” Hazel asked, “Everything all right?”
Gertie’s vision swam for a moment and then focused on Hazel’s face. She wore too much foundation, and her eyebrows were in need of a good plucking, but other than that her face was as complete and as benign as it always was.
Hazel’s pinched expression of concern dissolved into a smile as Gertie spoke.
“Sorry, Hazel,” she said. “Daydreaming, I guess.”
“Well, there’s no time for that today,” Hazel announced. “We have a few more hungry mouths to feed out there.”
“More?”
Hazel nodded happily as if she were the owner of a new restaurant enjoying a packed house on opening night.
“The Larkins, the Shabos, and the Frys just arrived, hungry of course. That brings the total to fifty-four.”
“Any word on Kelly’s crew?” Gertie asked.
“I think so,” Hazel replied. “I think Mr. Tremblay was talking to him on one of them walkie-talkie thingies.”
“So,” Gertie asked, “what’s the status? When will the power be back on?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Gertie,” Hazel said. “I’m not good with the technical hullaballoo.”
Gertie stepped out of her way as she brought down a few more bowls from a cupboard and set them on a serving tray.
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