The Hand That Feeds: A Horror Novel

by Garza, Michael W.

  “I’m okay,” he said.

  “John?”

  “Stay in the hallway and keep your head down,” he paused, “first close this damn window.”

  She said something between sobs, but he couldn’t make it out.

  “Just close the window.”

  He didn’t wait to see if she would do it. He slid his back along the wall, reached the edge of the house opposite the carport, and listened. The wind picked up and he swore he heard someone step on a twig, but after several tense seconds, he told himself it was all in his head. He took a quick peek and rushed around the corner of the house with the gun at the ready, and found nothing there but the dying bushes near the storm cellar doors. He could hear them now, gathered near the front of the house.

  “That son of a bitch shot me,” one man said.

  “Stop your belly aching,” another said.

  They continued to talk, but lower than John could make out. The fear in his heart kept him from looking around the corner; sure, he would catch a bullet directly in the face. Not sure what he could do outside, he headed around to the back of the house and as he expected, found the bathroom window still wide open. He tucked the gun in his pocket and pulled himself up.

  He was suspended with half of his body through the window when the screams started. The shriek which he identified at once to be Angela was followed quickly by a barrage of punches. She’d struck him several times in the back of the head before he could get a word out.

  “It’s me,” he said, screaming, “stop hitting me.”

  Angela let two more fists fly before she recognized the voice enough to stop. “What the hell are you doing climbing through the window?”

  John stood up and brushed himself off. “I live here, remember?” He peered out into the living room from the bathroom doorway to take in the destruction. “At least I used to.”

  “Don’t leave me in here.”

  He brushed her off with a wave of his hand and looked down the hall at Alex’s room. The door was ajar and instantly he felt a shiver run up his spine. The low light in the house only reached the middle of the hall and left the rest cloaked in darkness. He listened to the men outside arguing whether they should kick in the door, but he couldn’t pull himself from the hall.

  He stepped out onto the hardwood floor at a deathly slow pace focused on Alex’s room. His hands shook as he reached out ahead of his steps, anticipating the bedroom doorknob. Thoughts of his decomposing son grabbing him filled his mind, but he did not stop. A few steps away and the sound of the low guttural moans crept out through the open door.

  His fingers wrapped around the cold knob and John could see into the room. His eyes went to the floor as a slow, but steady movement drew his attention. The light from the cracks in the window revealed the boy lying face down, arms stretched out as he tried to move. His deaths speak increased as his father became visible and he reached out with one hand and tried to drag his body toward the door.

  John slid the door closed, but kept his hand on the knob. For a moment, he forgot about the men outside and his wife looking out through the bathroom door behind him. He was struck by the fear he’d lost in the past few days and the epidemic of the walking dead weighed on him like never before. He was not afraid for himself, but more so afraid of what he might do in the days ahead.

  “John.” Angela’s voice was calm and measured. “What do we do?”

  He took a slow, deep breath before turning around. Removing the gun from his pocket, he checked the clip.

  “We have to get out of here,” he said.

  “How do we do that?”

  He headed toward the end of the hall, stopped for a second to kiss her, and then positioned himself against the wall. “We have to get rid of them first. Go and lie down in the bathtub and don’t get up until I come and get you.”

  She tried to ask another question, but the look he gave her froze her dead in her tracks. Angela closed the bathroom door and John heard her pull back the shower curtain. He peeked out from the hall and keyed in on an ongoing conversation outside.

  “Try them again,” one man said.

  “What do you think I’m doing?”

  John could see shadows moving near the door, but nothing else. He focused on something near the camper truck in the driveway. The man behind the truck was tall enough to reach up and touch the top of the camper without trying. He was holding something to the side of his face.

  “There’s no damn signal anywhere out here,” the tall man said.

  “Keep trying,” another man replied.

  John knew his only chance of getting away depended on getting out of the current predicament. If he meant to take the old hunting trail into Nebraska, he would have to do it without anyone ever knowing. He took aim at the end of the camper and waited. The tall figure swayed in and out of sight as he worked at getting reception on the cell phone. John held his aim and waited until the tall man took a step away from the truck, and then he fired.

  The bullet flew straight and true, and in the second that followed the shot, the tall man stumbled once and fell to the ground. A long minute of stunned silence followed. John stood at the edge of the hall not sure how to react. A sudden explosion of gunfire gave him the direction he needed. The house shook under an onslaught of bullets and John imagined he would discover most of the walls gone.

  The shooting stopped and John picked himself up off the floor. He risked a look at the front door and found it wasn’t far off from what he imagined. The door itself was gone, missing from the middle to its top. The front wall was still in place, but there wasn’t much holding it together.

  He could see out into the yard and thought they might burst in at any moment. He couldn’t remember how many rounds he had left in his gun, but he planned to unload the rest on the first silhouette he saw, but the silhouette never came. John kept close to the floor and waddled away from the hall until he was behind the remains of the love seat. He rose up until his eyes were even with the sizeable hole through the cushions and saw clearly out through the shattered bay window. The cars on the road were alive with activity. The remaining government men were throwing someone in the back seat and before John could grasp what he’d done, they started the engine and peeled off down the road, leaving the other two cars behind.

  John waited in the silence, his eyes darting between the holes in the couch, trying to see in every direction at once. “Did they really leave,” he asked himself. It was another several minutes before he dared to stand up and skulk toward the remains of the bay window. There was little to see in the front yard. The cars left behind sat silent, one on the road in front of the house and the other mid-way down the driveway.

  John jumped out through the remains of the window and landed solid on the broken glass atop the small patio. He held his gun out like a bank robber and did a quick search of the exterior. Except for the blood on the driveway behind the camper truck, there wasn’t much to examine. A pale morning light rose on the eastern horizon and he decided the time was now or never. He leapt back through the bay window into the living room and headed for the hall. He tried the bathroom door, but found it locked. He heard Angela fumbling around inside and he tried the knob again with force.

  “Honey, it’s me,” he said. “Open the door; we have a lot to do and not much time to get it done.”

  25

  There was another two hours left of darkness and John knew they would have to be gone by the time the sun came up. He figured, with all the damage he’d done to the government agents, they probably had less time than that. There was no denying that they would be back in force. John leaned against the back of the camper truck and lit his last cigarette. He took a long drag and took pleasure from the feeling in his lungs. The addiction was something he’d tried to break many times, but failed. The truth was, he deserved a cigarette and for the moment, he was going to enjoy it.

  Angela was moving frantically in the house and he didn’t have the strength to deal with
her at the moment. She’d been carrying on about how Alex was never going to make it up into Nebraska. The boy needed to feed, that was easy to see. She said it was John’s fault for not figuring out a way to keep one of those agents alive long enough to sustain the boy.

  John smoked the cigarette down to the filter before considering whether to go back in the house. He pulled open what was left of the front door and listened to the chaos from the back bedroom. The house was dark except for the light from the master bedroom. Angela was crying and talking to herself; whispering at times mixed between screams. John turned the corner in the hall and saw his wife piling clothes on top of a bag on the bed.

  “What am I supposed to do?” she asked as she pushed down on the top of the bag trying to get it closed enough to zip it shut. “He can’t make it.” She threw her head down on the top of the bag and cried.

  John tiptoed in behind her and looked around for his bag. His stuff was on the floor and she’d made no attempt to pack it.

  “You have to keep it together,” he said.

  Angela snapped up and spun around. Her eyes were wide like she’d been caught in oncoming headlights. She had a feral look on her face and her stare was blank for several seconds.

  “We’re going to make a run for it just like we talked about,” John said. “We’ll use the camper for Alex and hopefully we can get outside of the cordoned area.”

  She studied him as if this was the first time she’d heard the plan. Her eyes were red and her cheeks stained with lines of black eye makeup. She looked back down at her hands before glancing over her shoulder at the bag.

  John wasn’t sure what she was doing. “We’re going to have to go now,” he said.

  “Have you seen him?” she asked as her eyes met his. “He’s going to die.”

  He wanted to remind her that their son was already dead, but he didn’t. Her face was hard as he approached her slowly. He put his hands on her shoulders and tried to pull her toward him. She resisted.

  “We don’t have any other choice,” he said.

  She pushed him away and he stumbled back against the wall. “There are always choices,” she said in a distant voice. Angela walked out of the room and down the hall.

  John started throwing his clothes in the other bag on the floor. He heard Alex’s bedroom door open and he stopped, looking back in time to see Angela step into the boy’s room and close the door behind her. He went about his work quickly, deciding to pick up as much of the clothes as he could and shove it into the bag without looking. He managed to zip it shut and throw the bag up on the bed.

  It took five paces to reach Alex’s door. John stopped and listened. The sounds within were confusing at first. Angela was humming, a song he didn’t recognize, but it was the sound that followed her tune that took him another minute to figure out. He turned the knob and slowly cracked the door. Angela was on her knees with Alex spread out on the floor reaching out for her. The boy’s mouth was open and from the dark orifice, his death moan harmonized with his mother’s tune.

  Angela reached down and rubbed Alex’s head. She slipped her hand across his face and strands of hair pulled away from the skin with each pass of her fingers. The grey, dead flesh moved like clay under her touch, tearing in small splits across the top of his forehead. The boy continued to claw for her, but he lacked the strength to get a hold.

  John rushed back to his bedroom, grabbed both bags, went out into the front yard, and tossed them in the truck’s cab. He fumbled through his pockets and found the key to the camper door, unlocked it, and pulled it open. The inside was in shambles, but salvageable. He went back in the house and made for the kitchen. Several minutes later, he emerged with a paper bag full of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the better part of a gallon of milk.

  He laid the food down on the dining room table and recovered Alex’s makeshift muzzle from the living room floor. He headed toward the hall prepared to do whatever he had to do to get Alex in the back of the camper. He reached the entrance to the hall and froze in his tracks. The hair on the back of his neck stood up as his eyes found a lone figure slithering on the ground toward him. The light from the living room revealed only enough of the hall to show an outline, but John knew what it was.

  Alex’s door was wide open and the dark room beyond was frightening. It was the boy, John knew, crawling across the floor. John held the pole connected to the makeshift muzzle out in front of him. Alex was moving slowly, but he was moving, creeping across the floor like a spider with its legs broken. John called his wife and waited.

  “Angela?”

  Silence filled the house like a veil of smoke. His fear heightened and he started back toward the kitchen. His mind was set on getting a weapon; he’d left his gun in the truck. He turned away from the hall and was shocked by Angela standing in the kitchen doorway. Her eyes were dark and the look on her face was one he’d never seen. She was blocking the way and in her hand, she held a hammer. They did not speak until she took a step forward.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “We both know Alex can’t survive much longer.”

  “We’ll deal with it,” he said.

  “I won’t put his life in danger,” she responded then took another step. “He’s a growing boy, John, and every growing boy has to eat.”

  He took a step back, but the moans of his dead son crawling toward him caused him to stop. “What the hell do you think you’re going to do about it?”

  Angela held the hammer up to her shoulder and smiled. “Use your imagination.”

  She moved quicker than John had ever seen, closing on him in a few strides. He put his hands up in defense, dropping the muzzle, but his mind was frozen as to what was happening. The first swing was hard and the claw end of the hammer stuck into his shoulder with solid impact. John screamed before the reality caught up with him. He stumbled backwards as Angela raised the hammer for another strike. John tripped over his feet and landed on his backside as she brought the hammer down in a vicious arch. He threw himself back and it missed him by an inch, slamming into the hardwood floor.

  “Hold still, damn it,” she said. “Can’t you do anything right?”

  John got up on his hands and feet, but came to an abrupt stop when he felt the cold dead hand of his son reach out and grab his arm.

  “Don’t fight it, John,” Angela said.

  She rushed forward for a swing at his head. John let himself fall back and roll at the same time. His move yanked his arm away from Alex before he could take a chunk out of it and brought a leg up to catch Angela square in the stomach. She folded over like a chair as the air in her lungs was forced out of her. The hammer slid across the dining room floor as she fell on top of him.

  They wrestled with one another as Alex swiped at them each time they neared, never managing to get a hold of any skin. The boy laid prone on the floor, the stains of torn skin and blackened blood smeared on the hallway behind him. He lacked the strength to pull himself forward, but the feeding lust brought a climax of desire to his decayed face.

  “Get off me,” John said.

  One good elbow to the face broke him free. He got up on his hands and knees as Angela fell off him. He crawled across the floor and grabbed a hold of the hammer. She was on his back before he could turn around, her weight slamming him to the floor. She grabbed a hand full of his hair and smashed his face against the hardwood. Twice more and John felt blood spurt from a gash over his right eye.

  He clutched the hammer and swung it over his head. He missed several times, but finally felt a solid strike. Angela let go of his hair and he used the moment to force himself up. She attempted to hang on, but he felt her fall back. He got up to his knees, and then to his feet. The shots to his head, courtesy of the hardwood floors, left him dizzy. He grabbed the back of a dining room chair to keep himself upright. Angela was down, but moving. He had time to wipe the blood from his face before she ran towards him. He maneuvered around the table and shifted from side to side a
s she tried to come after him.

  “This is crazy,” he said, “look what you did to me.”

  “It’s not crazy,” she said. “This is love.” Her eyes went toward Alex and back to him. “We are responsible for him. You were supposed to provide for us.”

  She jumped up on the table and stood there looking down at him with a wild, untamed stare. John was awestruck by the madness on her face. She growled some unintelligible ramble and held her arms out from her body. She leapt like an animal reaching for its prey. Her body struck John with full force and they fell backwards, catching the rear of the couch and flipping over onto the living room floor. John was on top of her by chance and used all his strength to keep her arms pressed against the floor. The blood from the cut over his eye ran down his face and dripped on to hers.

  “Just wait a damn minute,” he said.

  Angela fought for a few seconds and appeared to give up for a time. He wanted to reason with her. He wanted to tell her that there was a way this was going to work out, but if there truly was, he couldn’t figure out how they would do it. He looked into her eyes and found nothing of the woman he was in love with looking back at him. The dark pools staring at him were void of any emotion he could name.

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do about Alex,” he said, and shook his head refusing to look back at her eyes. “I don’t know what I’m going to do about any of this. Everything’s out of control.” He could hear Alex moaning, but couldn’t see him. “My boy’s gone; my wife’s freaking lost her mind…”

  Angela roared like an animal beneath him, and then turned her hips and snatched an arm free. She sliced into his cheek with her fingernails and tried to push her way into his mouth, through his skin. John punched her in the face as hard as he could. His knuckles smashed into her nose and he felt her body go limp for a split second.