The Secret: A Thriller

by David Haywood Young

  “Susie?” I asked. “Can you make a list of things you’ll need? We ought to stay in groups of at least three people, one of them armed—”

  “Dad? Can I get a gun too?”

  I looked at my son. Coming right out and saying I wasn’t sure his judgment was up to it would not go over well. “Robbie…this isn’t the best time to practice. How much shooting have you done?”

  Rachel raised her hand. “Uh—we’ve done some plinking out in the woods. He’s actually pretty good.”

  She and Felicia were both blushing. I hadn’t been expecting that answer. From the expression on Tim’s face, he hadn’t either. “Good to know,” I told her. “We’ll talk about it. Later, after we get our stuff.”

  Robbie’s eyes were shining again, and I saw Rachel’s hand in his. Were they dating? They’d had an on-again, off-again thing for the last four years. And if so, was she being truthful about his marksmanship? Would Felicia back her up in a lie? And regardless: was this situation really bad enough that we needed to trust our lives and futures to the teenage version of decision-making?

  Not…yet, I decided. God, not yet. Hell, maybe not ever. I remembered some things I’d blithely done as a kid, and my stomach hurt.

  “Okay, let’s get moving,” I continued. “Susie, can you work on the list? And…hmm. Tim, I was going to ask if you’d stand guard while I get stuff from the truck, but you should probably help her figure out what you need?”

  Robbie stood up and met my eyes. “I’ll carry stuff in, Dad.”

  “I’ll help!” Rachel threw in.

  I tried not to sigh. “Let’s get to it, then. And Rebecca, can you check out our food situation? See what’s in the fridge?”

  She nodded. “I already tried starting the generator,” she told me. “No go on that.”

  Great. I’d put it in last year, and this was the first time we’d needed it. “Fine. I’ll see if I can fix it later.”

  * * *

  Outside, the rain had stopped. The sky was still gray, but it was moving toward that uniform blandness that meant thunder and lightning—and tornados—were unlikely.

  I saw some of our neighbors milling around out in their yard. Three houses down, and they were new people. I didn’t know them yet.

  We walked to the truck and I unlocked the camper top. “You guys just grab stuff and shuttle it in,” I told them. “I’m old and feeble, so I’ll stay out here.”

  They didn’t argue the point, which made me sigh a little. But it didn’t take them long to get it done.

  Meanwhile one of our unknown neighbors…ponytail, ragged beard, wife-beater, faded jeans…seemed to be watching us closely. I didn’t like it but couldn’t think of anything worth doing about it.

  Chapter Three

  Crash!

  I started awake, then tried to disentangle myself from Rebecca. But her eyes, barely visible in the moonlight streaming through our window, were open.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” I stood up, still dressed in my pants—I hadn’t known what to expect tonight, and the Sullivans were still around—and shrugged on one of Tim’s shoulder holsters. “It sounded like it was on the roof. Like somebody threw a rock?” Only it had been louder than that.

  “The kids!” she said, and climbed out of bed too.

  “Stay here,” I told her. “I’ll see what it is. But somebody needs to watch the downstairs.”

  Tim stuck his head in the door. “On it,” he said. “Susie’s still asleep.”

  As I started up the stairs I heard something that sounded like rapid footsteps—from something large—on the roof. I ran up and opened the door to Abigail’s bedroom, where the girls were all spending the night. It seemed calm. Robbie was sleeping, too, in his room.

  Cautiously, I walked into Robbie’s room and twitched his curtain aside. But I saw nothing unusual. The full moon lit the front yard and the street with a milky glow. Streetlights were still out, and I could see a few stars. So the rain had stopped, anyway.

  I stood quietly. Robbie mumbled something in his sleep and rolled over.

  I went to check the girls’ window. Nothing there either.

  Suddenly, from behind and above me, I heard a loud screeching—it sounded like some sort of primal challenge. But to what, from what? And why was…whatever it was…on top of my house?

  Another screech answered it from down the street, and footsteps came over the crown of the house. Right in front of me, a naked man jumped from above the window.

  I gaped. What the hell? The guy dropped two stories and I lost sight of him…but then he scuttled forward toward the street. His head went back, his arms shot toward the sky in some sort of display, and he screeched again.

  Slowly, I backed up from the window. I didn’t think he could see me, but I didn’t want to take any chances. But his head whipped around and I froze.

  He screeched again, looking right at me, and my gut clenched. I was no longer sure he was human. Though…I was certain he was male. And in a mood to prove it.

  But an answering screech came from down the street. The…creature…took two quick steps and jumped up onto a neighbor’s roof, then from there to the next house, and was gone.

  “Hon?” Rebecca called from downstairs. “Is everything all right?”

  * * *

  Kids are amazing animals. Through all that, they slept. None of us adults did—the screeching had woken Susie too.

  I told the others about the naked man on the roof…but I didn’t mention the jumping. Or the creature’s face. It had been twisted with rage, barely recognizable as human. If it was human.

  Because: I saw fangs. Monstrous canines, curved and jutting so far out I suspected they would be visible even if the creature closed its—his—mouth. Unless I had imagined them, and I didn’t see how I could have, we were living in a nightmare.

  “Ash?” That was Tim. “I’m going upstairs to…well, if this guy keeps climbing on the roof I want to be close by. Can you watch down here?”

  “Sure,” I told him. “Good idea. Rebecca? Want to—”

  “Like I could sleep? Sure, I’ll help you down here. Let me grab the shotgun.”

  Susie seemed out of it. Tim glanced at her as he went up the stairs, then caught my eye and shrugged.

  “Suze?” I asked. “Think you could go back to sleep? We’re all going to have to crash eventually.”

  She shuddered. “Really, Ash. Sleep isn’t happening.” She turned and went upstairs behind Tim.

  Rebecca touched my arm as soon as they were out of sight. I turned.

  She looked scared. “You saw, didn’t you?” she asked.

  I studied her. “The face? The…teeth?”

  She nodded, and buried her face against my chest. “I didn’t want to say anything. I thought I might be going crazy.”

  “Shh,” I told her. “You’re fine. It’s the world out there that’s crazy. Um. Also, the…thing…out there jumped onto the Conways’ roof. From the street.”

  Rebecca put her arms around me. “What’s happening, Ash? What are these things?”

  “Beats me,” I said, then had a thought I couldn’t keep from saying aloud. “I don’t think Google would help, even if we could get online.”

  She shook her head, her face still against me. “Maybe not.”

  “I’ve got two ideas,” I said. “No, three. Tomorrow I want to see if I can get online somehow, see what the rest of the world thinks is going on here. And if I can’t do that, I think we should pack up and leave Henge forever. A town with no internet access is not worth living in.”

  This is part of why I love my wife: she laughed. “No shit, Ash. There are basic standards. Running water’s nice, but I gotta have my Pandora. And Facebook.”

  I grinned down at her, then got serious again. “Here’s the third thing. We’re going to have to tell Tim and Susie, maybe the kids too, everything we saw.”

  She nodded against me. “Definitely the kids too.”


  We stood, together.

  For about a minute. Then we heard what sounded like breaking glass and splintering wood upstairs.

  * * *

  “Stay down here! Watch the windows!” I yelled to Rebecca as I ran.

  “What the hell?” Tim roared from upstairs. I heard a shotgun go off twice as I reached the second floor.

  Tim stood in the girls’ room, his back to me. I ran in, .45 in hand, and one of the girls screamed. Then there was another—louder—crash out on the roof.

  “No!” Tim yelled, and ran to where the bedroom window used to be.

  “Tim?” I yelled. “What happened?”

  He climbed out onto the roof, still holding his shotgun.

  “Buckshot,” he said over his shoulder. “Right in the chest.”

  I glanced at him—but he was wearing a white T-shirt. And standing. “Whose chest?”

  I turned to check out the kids, and heard Tim sob behind me.

  “Susie,” he said. “She came in here and opened the curtains.”

  The kids were awake, but shocked silent.

  “Daddy?” Abigail asked me. “What happened to Miss Susie?”

  “Dad?” Felicia asked Tim.

  He stood there on the roof, facing away from us. Then he turned around. His face streamed tears. “I can’t…I can’t see where he took her.”

  “Dad?” Robbie was behind me. I turned, and his face was dead white. “What happened?”

  “Robbie, go downstairs,” I said. “Let’s all—”

  Tim interrupted. “Ash. Did you know? Did you know what he could do? Did you…” he trailed off.

  “Girls,” I said. “Follow Robbie. We’ll be down right behind you.”

  They left.

  * * *

  “Tim,” I said, “I’m sorry. I knew they could jump. I saw fangs. Rebecca and I had just agreed we would tell you—”

  “No,” he said. “Stop.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “It’s not your fault. Rebecca said he jumped right off the roof earlier. And I guess, if I’d seen something like…him…I’d want some time to figure out how to talk about it. The thing is? Now I want to know. Are you coming with me to get her? The way he was moving, she could be…anywhere…but I’ve got to—”

  “Tim, it’s worse than that.” A loud screeching started up outside…from two directions. “I’m pretty sure there’s more than one of them. Maybe a lot more.”

  We stared at each other.

  “I have to go, man,” he told me finally. “Can you…can you stay with the kids? And take care of them?” He broke open the shotgun and reloaded from his pants pocket, then met my eyes. “If. You know.”

  * * *

  We dragged mattresses and couch cushions to set up makeshift beds in my office downstairs—it was the only room in the house without windows. I didn’t know if any of us would sleep, though.

  Felicia sat on her pallet, crying quietly. Rachel slumped next to her. Robbie clearly didn’t know whether to try to comfort them or leave them alone. He settled on sitting a couple of feet away, staring at the wall.

  Of the kids, only Abigail seemed to be able to lie down comfortably. Stretched out in a corner next to an oil lantern, a book in her face, she looked almost normal—except that the book was One Fish, Two Fish by Dr. Seuss. An old favorite, but she hadn’t read it in at least three years.

  Rebecca settled next to her.

  Taking the first watch in the hall, I set up a bean bag chair for myself—and a .45, and a shotgun—and closed the door.

  Slowly, my eyes adjusted. Enough moonlight crept in from the first-floor windows that I could see to navigate—once I blocked the light escaping from under my office door with a towel, anyway.

  I stared into the night, listening to our hundred-year-old house…the one my extended family still called “new.” It creaked and groaned, and occasionally a tree brushed against it. All were more familiar to me than my own heartbeat. But this was no longer the quiet little town I’d known. And—I knew this was ridiculous—but I was accustomed to getting information online at seconds’ notice. I spent my working days navigating the internet, not browsing the web but actually working to design systems. Not that I was completely convinced my company was on the side of the angels…

  Anyway. I felt crippled to be cut off like this. And even more, I felt stupid to be so bothered by it just now. When my family was in danger.

  Maybe it was just easier to think about losing the flow of information than to dwell on what I’d seen tonight? Cowardly of me, if true.

  And then there was Tim…out in the storm, searching for his wife. On one hand, if he hadn’t found her immediately, there was a somewhat better chance she was still alive. On the other…maybe he had found her. Maybe even right away, right outside our door. Maybe he—or what was left of him—was lying there with pieces of her, and we’d find their bones in the morning.

  Was I doing the right thing, sitting here? Should I be out in the night with Tim?

  My eyes burned. But I didn’t expect to have trouble staying awake.

  I figured I’d wait till dawn, however long that was, and trade places with Rebecca then. If Tim didn’t come back first.

  Just around the corner from me, in our living room, stood an ancient grandfather clock. Aside from Felicia’s cell phone, which we’d shut down to save its battery, that clock was probably the only working timepiece in the house. But it was silent. Its ticking, which I’d grown up listening to and had soothed me after many a childish nightmare, bothered Rebecca when she tried to sleep. And tonight I hadn’t thought of winding it.

  Right then I’d have given a lot to hear it.

  * * *

  Eventually Rebecca came out of my office and sat with me. The moon had gone down by then and I could barely make out her features, but it was nice to have the company. We sat in silence, holding hands. Occasionally even staging a thumb war.

  When the light started to come back she gave me a little shove and I went into the office to see if I could sleep.

  * * *

  I woke to a sound like…more thunder? But it went on for too long, and I felt my house tremble.

  I found Rebecca standing a couple of feet from a living room window. “Any idea what that was?” I asked her.

  “No. Well…it came from the east,” she said. “If it was an explosion…”

  “The prison.” I put an arm around her shoulders. Not much else in that direction. Though it could have been out in the woods, or on somebody’s farm, for all I knew. Or maybe it was a whole bunch of naked hairy cannibals with fangs, jumping up and down. Somewhere close.

  “Ash? What do we do now? I don’t…have a clue.”

  I shook my head. “Any sign of Tim? Or Susie? Or—those things?”

  * * *

  The kids started to wake up about an hour—it felt like an hour—later. We still had running water, and an old-style gas water heater with a pilot light, so we took some time and got everybody cleaned up.

  Meanwhile I found enough working pieces from various machines to assemble a computer that would boot up, and installed some software I might need. I’d have preferred a laptop, but no luck. We didn’t have internet access from the house anymore, of course, but I had an idea about that.

  I got Robbie to go out with me and stored the computer in my truck’s toolbox so it’d be handy later. Maybe I could find out what the outside world thought was happening. I also wanted to get out of town as quickly as possible…but could we really leave without hearing from Tim? Or Susie? Not that I had much faith either one of them would come back.

  But I couldn’t just leave them behind. Could I?

  Not easily, it turned out.

  Chapter Four

  “DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOMES. THIS AREA HAS BEEN CONTAMINATED BY TERRORIST ATTACK. IT IS NOT SAFE. HOMELAND SECURITY AND THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL HAVE QUARANTINED THE AREA, WITH THE SUPPORT OF THE NATIONAL GUARD. REPEAT. DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOMES. STAY INDOORS. WE WILL LET YOU K
NOW WHEN IT IS SAFE TO COME OUT.”

  We’d been hearing variations on this all morning. Police cars were apparently canvassing the area with loudspeakers…but what area? The whole town? The county? Just our neighborhood?

  A couple of times, we heard gunshots. And a wail, quickly cut off.

  But this time the car was on our street. From my position a few feet inside the window, I could see there were two men in it. The one in the passenger seat was visibly ready to help spread the message of caution—with some sort of long gun. Probably a shotgun.

  “Kids…Rebecca. Please get back into the office.”

  Our road was a cul-de-sac, and less than an eighth of a mile long. Behind it were acres of scrub wood. If they were coming this way, they wanted something specific. Unless they were new to town and didn’t know where they were. Which I very much doubted.

  Sure enough, the car parked outside the Sullivans’ house next door. The officers got out of the car—I could see uniforms, so that part was legit, but they weren’t wearing any masks or protective gear. Stay inside, huh? Quarantine?

  I lost sight of them when they walked up to the door to Tim’s house. I figured they wanted him because he was a doctor…but I didn’t see any reason to speak to them. Especially when they were probably lying to everybody within earshot, with their guns out.

  Several minutes later I saw them again.

  “Jesus,” one of them said from the sidewalk in front of my house. “Look at that window. There might be a whole nest of them critters in there.”

  “Yeah, or dead bodies. Either way, this is the Ashton place. They might know where the doc is, if they’re here.”

  One of them pounded on the door. I’d have tried ignoring them, but one of the girls shrieked.