“Well, it’s kind of hard to…”
“Don’t you mean ‘by whom’?” Casey interrupted.
Yep. That was our girl.
I realized right then if a man out there ever invents an effective cork for seventeen-year-olds, he’ll be an overnight billionaire. I would have paid top dollar.
“Casey,” I murmured out the side of my mouth while laying a hand on her shoulder, “this isn’t the time for…”
“No, this is bullshit,” Miss Charm School snapped. “He didn’t ask ‘by who’ but went straight to ‘by what’. He knows damn well there’s something weird going on. Now he’s being a jackass and slowing us down when we need to get out of here.”
“What I know, Missy,” the voice growled, “is that means one or more of you is packing, and I ain’t in the mood to be taking any chances.”
“Oh really? And you think we’re strolling around out here for the fun…”
“Easy,” Ed soothed, and laid his own hand on her shoulder…which, of course, meant Casey immediately went quiet. Then he turned his attention back to the darkness ahead. “Sir, I think I understand. You’re not alone, are you...”
The darkness went quiet, other than the distant shriek of something that sounded like a thousand pound baboon.
“Sir?” Ed persisted. “If you’re protecting your own, I can certainly understand. I wouldn’t want to take chances in your situation either. But we’re not a danger to you.”
“I’d really like to believe that,” the voice begrudged. “Nothing personal.”
“But you have to realize…” Ed began.
At that moment, the sky chose to give us another flicker of lightning. Like before, it cast a confusing carpet of twisting shadows on the scene below the trees. Yet it still revealed enough for me to get a quick look at what confronted us.
An SUV faced us about fifty feet down the street. A large model—one of the types soccer moms ferried their families around in—it sat like some great, stranded beast in the middle of the street. I’m guessing it must have been going somewhere when all the power failed. Now the shadow of a man rested a rifle on top of the open driver’s side door…pointed straight at us.
Crap. We probably faced a scared guy protecting his family, and there we stood looking like a bad impression of some post-apocalyptic gang.
“Sir,” Ed began again, “think it through. We’re just ordinary people who live here in Coventry Woods. Mark over here is a writer. Casey is a high school student. And I’m retired from the Fire Department. We’re not looters. We’re only trying…”
I heard a murmur of urgent conversation from the direction of the car. It carried on for about fifteen seconds and then the man spoke up again.
“You say you were a firefighter? You know something about medicine?”
“Yes, sir,” Ed frowned in the direction of the voice. “I was a dispatcher, but I’ve also been a paramedic and had full EMT training and certification.”
This sparked another mutter of conversation from the darkness. And this time I definitely pegged the other voice as female, all but confirming my suspicion we dealt with a family.
“Is somebody injured up there?” Ed pressed. “If so, the case Mark’s carrying is a fully stocked first aid kit and I’ll be glad to offer any help I can. I promise, I only want to help and then we’ll be on our way.”
That seemed to settle the issue.
“Okay,” the man agreed with obvious reluctance. “Y’all can come on in…just as soon as I know which one of you is packing. I’m not in the mood for surprises tonight.”
Yeah, like we had been enjoying the hell out of them. This guy’s extreme caution had begun to rub me the wrong way. But at the same time I realized his demand had merit. If I were about to let a group of strangers into my “camp,” I would want to know who carried the gun too.
“That would be me.” Ed limped slowly in their direction, with me and Casey in tow. “I’ve got a nine-millimeter in a waistband holster behind my back. Believe me, nobody will be happier than me if I don’t ever have to draw the thing again.”
“Fair enough.”
The SUV appeared in the light of the lantern in time for me to see the man raise the rifle from where he had it resting on top of the door. I don’t know what I expected, but once I got a good look at him he came as a bit of a surprise.
The man appeared to be in his mid-thirties. He wore mid-length dark hair, a mustache, thick rimmed glasses, and a black T-shirt that read “No. I Will Not Fix Your Computer.” I detected a definite nerdiness to the combination, but at the same time I sensed it as a cultivated nerdiness. The clothes fit well, and the watch he wore looked tastefully expensive as opposed to the technological juggernauts many computer geeks strapped to their wrists.
This guy might know his computers, but he struck me as the type who supervised the real tech heavyweights on the staff.
I could also make out the pale face of a woman through the windshield. I couldn’t tell much about her…other than she looked like the type of attractive soccer mom a lot of guys would feel damn lucky to end up with. At the moment though, she simply looked damned scared.
A dim pair of faces in the back seat completed the ensemble.
“Who’s hurt?” Ed asked as we drew near. “What happened?”
“It’s my daughter,” the woman poked her head out of her open window. “She’s in the seat behind me. We had dropped Toby’s friend off at his house and were heading home when everything went dead. We had decided to walk the rest of the way, but Alice was asleep and when we tried we couldn’t wake her up. She won’t wake up!”
Suddenly, I got a serious case of deja-vu.
“I see.” Ed paused a second, then cast me a meaningful look before returning his attention to the mother. “Had she just fallen asleep, or was she asleep when the lights went out?”
“I think she had been asleep for a while. We were coming back from a hunting ranch in West Texas so it had been a long trip. I woke Toby up when we got to Donald’s house so he could say goodbye to his friend, but let Alice sleep. Does it matter?”
“I don’t know yet,” Ed replied in a calming voice. “I’m just trying to get all the details at the moment. Does she have any conditions like epilepsy, diabetes, or is she taking any form of medication?”
“No. She’s healthy as a horse. She’s on the junior varsity basketball team!”
“Okay,” he nodded. “Mark, give Casey the first aid kit and we’ll take a look at Alice. Why don’t you and Mr…”
“Sawyer,” the man answered. “Roland Sawyer.”
“…Mr. Sawyer put your heads together and see what y’all can figure out while we’re at it.”
I nodded and waited for Casey to hand the lantern over to Ed before giving her the case. Having done so, they went around to the passenger side of the big vehicle. This left me to play social liaison with the guy who had been pointing a gun at us.
Great.
People don’t seem to get the concept that some of us become writers because we aren’t people persons. Oh well…
“Hi,” I came around to the driver’s side of the vehicle, hand extended, ‘I’m Mark Garrett.”
That’s when I realized I still gripped the tire iron in my other hand…probably not the best way to approach a man armed with a rifle. I stopped, started to lay the iron on the hood of the vehicle, and then noticed the high polish of the paint job. I floundered in indecision for a second before finally leaning it against the front tire instead.
At that point he visibly relaxed.
“So,” he asked, “do you have any idea what’s going on tonight? Nothing works, and we’ve heard some damn weird stuff out there in the dark.”
“Have you actually seen anything yet?” I asked.
“Not me. My wife said she thought something was lurking around the truck earlier, but then it took off when y’all came around the corner.”
“Oh, really?”
I did an urgent scan of the darkness aroun
d us. That would have been nice to know a little bit sooner. I didn’t like the idea of another predator so nearby, and apparently this one had more mobility than what we had encountered so far.
“Yeah, Carol said she heard it snuffling around out there. I didn’t hear it but she’s the one with the open window.”
I looked over to see the woman twisted in her seat and watching Ed at work. She must have had her window down while they drove because of it being such a warm night. Being a power window, she now had no way to roll it back up.
“Did she see it? Did she see anything at all?”
“Nah,” he shrugged dismissively. “Nothing. It was probably a dog running loose. Now, you want to tell me what you guys were shooting at?”
Which brought us back to the question I dreaded.
The idea of telling him we had been shooting at a woman wearing glowing flowers didn’t really appeal, mainly because it would sound like we were executing a hippie or something. At the same time, I really didn’t want to get caught in a lie by this guy.
“I…” I shrugged, lifting my hands palm upward, “…I’m…not sure how to describe it…other than to call it a zombie.”
“You mean like in the movies?”
“Not really. This one was covered in vines, and glowing flowers. And I think she was more of a puppet than a creature in her own right.”
“Wait a second,” he said with a frown. “You mean to tell me you were shooting at a woman wearing glowing flowers?”
Yep. That didn’t take long at all. Another masterful job in communication by Yours Truly, Mark Garrett. They ought to make me an ambassador or something.
“Believe me,” I insisted, “those vines had already killed her and eaten her from the inside out. They were just using her body for a vehicle. If you see anything glowing tonight, stay the hell away from it.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Yeah, there was nothing but flowers inside her when the monster in the storm drain tore her open.”
“The…monster…in the…storm drain…”
Gawd.
“Look,” I lowered my voice and looked him straight in the eye, “I know how crazy this all sounds, but at the same time you’ve gotta know there is something weird going on tonight. There’s no way you can’t. You’ve heard some of the things out there, even if you haven’t seen anything yet. You’re sitting here in this car for a reason. I’m betting you haven’t gotten out to go knocking on doors yet, have you.”
He stared at me hard for a second, then turned his head to scan the darkness himself.
“Okay, I’ve heard some stuff…”
“Exactly. And we’ve seen some of the stuff you’ve heard. Believe me, we wish we hadn’t. The world is going insane out here.”
“Alright, fine,” he refocused back on me. “So what are you three doing walking around out here? Shouldn’t you be holed up in your house?”
“Something’s gotten into Ed’s house, and mine is too close to where this whole thing started.”
“Where this whole thing started? You know where this started?”
“Yeah. I think ground zero was on Addison and Coventry…the house with the little Dutch windmill in the front yard. There were cops surrounding the place and then we heard shooting, screaming, and that’s when everything went nuts…”
“Roger Chandra’s house?” he interrupted with a surprised look.
“Wait. You know him? You know the guy who lives there?”
“Well, not really.” He frowned. “He transferred from some college up north…Muskagee?…Miskatonic?…Michigan University?... to teach at Rice University in South Houston. Somehow he got roped into teaching a class once a week at North Houston Community College back when I ran the Tech Support department there. He bought that house to stay at over the weekend and save the commute. I remember because a bunch of us in IT helped him move in. But that was seven years ago.”
“He owns two houses? What kind of college prof has two houses?”
“Beats me. But he quit North Houston four years ago. I can’t promise you he owns the house anymore.”
“Oh.”
Dammit. For a moment there I thought I would finally get lucky and have some kind of clue regarding tonight’s craziness fall in my lap.
“I guess it doesn’t matter…” I began.
“Excuse me, Mr. Sawyer?”
We both stopped and turned to see Ed looking at us over the roof of the SUV.
“Yeah?”
“I need you to come around here so I can talk to you and your wife.”
Ed’s voice sounded as serious as I had ever heard it, and I saw the color drain from Sawyer’s face as he guessed what the subject of that talk had to be. I couldn’t help but feel sick for the poor guy right then. He might have rubbed me the wrong way, but he was a father apparently about to hear bad news about his child.
He nodded without answering, and did a slow walk around the front of his vehicle to where Ed waited.
At the same time, I noticed Casey quietly come around the rear of the SUV. She joined me, solemn faced, in the gloom.
“What is it?” I whispered as we turned our backs to the vehicle. “What’s the matter with her?”
“Uncle Ed says it’s the same thing as Mr. Franzetti. Her pupils are fixed and dilated, and she has no corneal reflex.”
“You mean she’s….”
“Yeah. She’s alive, if you want to call it that. She’s breathing, and her heart is beating, but she’s not really there. She’s brain dead.”
I can’t say it really surprised me. I had suspected something like this and now it had been confirmed. When I heard earlier she wouldn’t wake up, and then Ed asked if she had been asleep when the lights went out, that’s when I put two and two together for a certainty.
Now I knew what inhabited the dark houses around us. They were all occupied by living corpses, dreamlessly lying in their beds. And many of them contained worse. Coventry Woods was a cemetery, and Death still roamed the mausoleums.
I saw Casey scanning the silent homes and knew she had come to the same conclusion.
“So what’s the plan now?” I murmured.
“Ed’s going to break it to them the best he can. Then he’s gonna try and get them to come with us.”
“Oh man…”
“Yeah.”
I looked back over my shoulder to see Ed earnestly explaining something to the pair, but even with my limited view I could see he wouldn’t accomplish much. The woman covered her face in her hands and Mr. Sawyer had his arms folded in a decisively negative fashion. I suppose if somebody told me my unconscious child in the back seat had actually died and I should leave her behind, I wouldn’t be terribly receptive either.
I also couldn’t help but notice the little pale face of a boy looking out the back window at me and Casey. It made me wonder what he saw…two dim figures on the dark side of his car, talking with their back to him; his mom crying, his Dad angry, and his big sister asleep and not waking up. And don’t forget the scary old man with a strange leg saying things that were upsetting his parents.
He probably felt small and trapped in a situation way beyond his ability to control. I can only imagine how frightened he would have been to know every adult there felt the same way. Grown-ups, as kids imagine them, are more mythological creatures than they can ever realize.
The conversation on the other side ended quickly, and pretty much as I expected.
“I understand,” Ed spoke quietly. “The minute we reach anybody who can help, we’ll be sure and give them your position and situation. Good luck.”
“Yeah,” Roland Sawyer answered in a toneless voice, “you too.”
Casey and I moved to the rear of the SUV to meet Ed there, while the other man tromped around to his door. He got back in without a word, then slammed it shut.
Ed joined us at the back, and none of us spoke more than necessary as we sorted out who carried what again.
Still, as
we set forth I couldn’t help but spare a thought for the Sawyers…sitting back there, alone in the darkness, with their daughter who would never wake up. I tried to imagine them passing the night like that. What could they talk about? What could they do?
I guess in the end it really didn’t matter…
…because ten seconds later they were dead.
Chapter Six: The Pack
We had just set off again, maybe gaining twenty feet into the oppressive blackness.
“Chambers Circle,” Casey announced, pointing at the street sign emerging from the dark. “We were right on top of it…”
And then the night behind us exploded in a thunderous crash.
At the same time, something let loose an almost metallic shriek and we whirled to see the Sawyer’s SUV rocking wildly at the dim edge of our lantern light. A flare of crimson caught my eye and drew my attention to the front passenger side window where a large reptilian tail protruded and thrashed against the sides of the vehicle. The light came from the tips of dagger like spines running the length of the appendage.
Then I remembered the woman’s window remained down and she couldn’t roll it up. And that changed everything. With the window down, the SUV they expected to protect them didn’t qualify as a shelter at all…it was a deathtrap.
The monster must have already pushed its way mostly into the cab during its initial attack for a chorus of cries and curses erupted. A second later the fire-limned tail disappeared into the window as well. Then the metallic shrieks of the monster were joined by screams of agony.
A single gunshot went off but it blasted out the glass in the driver’s side window, meaning the firearm had probably been pushed back on the man when he tried to bring it to bear. A hunting rifle is hardly a good close quarter weapon, and I doubt he ever had a chance. The vehicle shook violently, and even in the faint light I thought I could see blood splashing on the windows.
Whatever this thing was, it now tore through the Sawyer family like a buzz-saw.
I stood rooted in horror at the slaughter, utterly helpless to do anything about it. My tire iron suddenly felt puny in my hand. I couldn’t imagine taking it up against something like this, and it hadn’t done me a hell of a lot of good up till now anyway. But as it turned out, I wouldn’t be getting a choice in that.
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