Moriah

  In the bathroom with the door closed, she urinated in a pan. Looking at herself in the mirror, her eyes swollen from a good night’s sleep, her hair in disarray, Riley smiled. She ran a brush through her hair several times, trying not to think that it had once belonged to the dead woman in the chair, knowing it had. She was going to have to do something about her hair.

  * * *

  When she stepped back into the hallway, the door to Kevin’s bedroom was cracked open and there was something in the air, an odor. Maybe Kevin was up. The sun continued to flood the corridor and Riley thought about closing the blinds. She decided she’d get it later, her back to the brilliant light as she descended the stairs. They creaked under her bare feet.

  “Dee?” Riley stepped into the vestibule. “Kevin?” It smelled like someone was cooking something, and it hadn’t necessarily turned out well. Men in the kitchen, Riley thought and smirked. She’d heard people used to joke about that. The rifles were absent the umbrella stand and no one answered her, which led Riley to believe they were outside where they couldn’t hear her.

  She was going to open the door and step out onto the veranda when her curiosity got the better of her and she decided to see what was cooking in the kitchen. Riley passed through the living room, through the sheeted room with the ladder and paint cans, and into the kitchen. The stink hung heavy in this room, yet there was no evidence of a meal’s preparation.

  Everything was as it had been the day before, their few supplies neatly stacked, the vegetables they’d taken from the garden atop the kitchen island next to a pitcher of water. She’d left the axe here, too, she thought, but wasn’t certain. It wasn’t here now, so Dee or Kevin had probably snagged it.

  Riley considered the veggies and chose a zucchini. She bit into it and found it wasn’t all that bad raw. Not all that good either, but it was fresh food. The kitchen was cooler than the rest of the house, like it had a draft. It’s autumn, Riley told herself. Winter would be here before she knew it. She wondered what winter on an island was like.

  Filling a glass from the pitcher, Riley sipped her water. She circled the granite-topped island, taking another bite from her green squash. The stove and burners looked unused, but still that smell persisted. Looking out the window, Riley almost choked on the vegetable in her mouth.

  The zombie pen was open and empty.

  She forced herself to chew the food in her mouth and swallowed, setting the remainder of the zucchini next to the sink. She’d parted the blinds with her index and middle fingers. As she stared at the pen, her hand reached out to the knives set in the wooden block beside the sink. She moved from handle to handle, seeking out the largest knife in the set, and when her finger brushed against the glass she’d set down and knocked it to the floor the noise it made shattering startled her.

  She yanked her hand back and touched her chest, breathing fast.

  “Wow.”

  Riley laughed at her fear, how easily she’d frightened herself. Dee. He’d really wanted to get rid of all those zombies yesterday. She guessed she hadn’t understood just how much. The largest knife was missing—see, she told herself, Kevin and Dee had cooked something for breakfast—but Riley drew another blade from the block. Just in case.

  She’d asked Dee to wait for her, that they could do it together. After all, he was wounded. How was he going to finish off the remaining four undead? Riley hadn’t heard any shots, which was unusual. Something had woken her, some noise. Not gunshots. Dee was crazy, she decided, if he was out there finishing them off without a gun. Riley almost put the knife back but didn’t.

  “Ow, shit!” She lifted one foot and stepped daintily from the broken glass and pooled water, stepping clear of the mess. She looked down at the sole of her foot. No blood. She hadn’t cut herself. She looked back at the water and shards of glass. She was going to have to clean that up, but first she wanted—needed—to say hello to the two men. She sought reassurance. Gripping the five-and-a-half-inch boning knife, Riley crossed the kitchen, retracing her steps through the empty room that was being refurbished and then the living room.

  She opened the door to the vestibule and the suited zombie was standing right there. It raised its hand, index finger extended, as if accusingly. Riley slammed the door in its face. She pressed her back to the wood, her heart hammering in her chest. The thing outside moaned and pawed at the doors. She set the lock and stepped back, staring at the doors, wide-eyed. The undead had its face pressed against the side window, looking in on her.

  Dee. Kevin.

  Riley trotted back through the rooms into the kitchen, pausing briefly to look out the window on what appeared an otherwise calm, cheery morning. She stepped over the shattered glass and around the island, out of the kitchen.

  In the mud room, the back door was ajar.

  The draft in the kitchen.

  A trail of blood—smeared across the floor—led into the darkened parlor. The door to the basement was shut. Riley approached the back door slowly, the boning knife raised defensively.

  She stepped out of the house. The porch swing hung still in the fall air.

  “Dee…” She called out weakly, then once more, louder, stronger. “Dee!”

  The zombie came around the corner of the house, hell-bent on devouring her. It ran in its dirtied sundress, arms and legs akimbo, a mix of hunger and animosity writ on its rotted face. It gained the porch and rammed its bonneted-head into the door, which Riley had thrown closed behind her. It bounced back and faced the locked door. Frustrated, it wailed.

  * * *

  Riley stood stock still in the center of the mud room, her hand clenched around the handle of the boning knife. Where was Dee? Where was Kevin? What do I do? What do I do? The zombie outside protested, circling the rear of the house, crying out.

  She looked down at the thick, red blood disappearing into the drawing room. It was dark in there, the curtains drawn against the day. Riley stood in place and concentrated on getting her breathing back under control, listening to the sounds of the house, for any sounds within the house.

  Okay. She had one outside the front door, a slow one. And one outside this door, a fast one. Okay. That accounted for two. But how many zombies were there? Five. There were five, she told herself. No, there had been five, and then yesterday Dee had shot the one. So there were four. There would be four left out there.

  Where were Dee and Kevin?

  Remembering the cellar entrance on the side of the house, Riley turned to the basement door. If she could get out through the basement she could run or at least get into the open and put some distance between herself and the fast little one.

  When she opened the door to the basement the dead thing in its COLLEGE t-shirt was standing on the stairs. It cracked its mouth open through its beard, showing Riley its teeth. Holy shit. Riley latched the door. Holy shit.

  She listened to it climb the stairs and try the door. The knob turned but the door wouldn’t open and then there were no more sounds from the basement stairs. It was standing there, she knew, waiting for her to open the door again.

  The thing outside cawed.

  When she had steadied herself, Riley made her way from the mud room, back through the kitchen into the sheeted room and the living room after that, aware of each room in a way she hadn’t been earlier.

  In the vestibule, she peeked through the side window beside the front door. The undead in its suit and tie was still waiting on the veranda, standing around. It wasn’t going anywhere.

  Riley thought about her options. She could probably take that thing out with the knife, get past it and get away from the house. Then she’d be outside with at least one booker that she knew about. The staircase above and the rooms on the other side of this entranceway were dark. The darkened rooms would lead through the house to the mud room, but the blood on the mud room floor had trailed off into those rooms and Riley had no intention of stepping into the black to find its source. What would she do if it were Dee? Or Kevin? What else could
it be?

  She looked up the stairs. The staircase to the second floor was shrouded in gloom. When she had left her bedroom, the sunlight through the window above the curio had forced her to raise her arm. And when she’d stepped out of the bathroom she’d thought of closing the blinds but hadn’t because she’d been walking away from the sun.

  Now it was dark up there.

  Riley hadn’t shut the blinds and it’d only been a few minutes at most since she’d come down the stairs. The sun couldn’t have moved that much… which left her realizing that someone else upstairs had closed the blinds after her.

  Okay, okay. Have to stay calm.

  The details were what would save her now, Riley thought. The details.

  Think.

  The rifles in the umbrella stand were missing. Her revolver was upstairs on the pillow—why’d she do that? She’d left the hand axe on the kitchen island last night and it wasn’t there now. The stench, like burnt bacon. The vestibule where she stood reeked. Blood all over the mud room floor—

  The second-floor landing creaked and Riley ducked into the darkened library.

  She crossed the room, the ambient light from the vestibule guiding her to a place beside a bookshelf. She stood stock-still and forced herself to remain in place. Her eyes were adjusting to the lack of light when another creak sounded, the stairs protesting beneath someone’s weight.

  She heard scraping on the stairs and held her breath, listening.

  It was coming down.

  Who…?

  She knew without having to be told. That mutant thing. Chase. They’d written it off, believing it had perished in the flame. It had survived. It had survived and it had found them. It had tracked them from the burning pier to this island and was after each of them, exacting its revenge. She’d thought it dead: the zombies, the fire. The fire would explain the stink.

  A final stair creaked as it stepped to the vestibule floor. Riley stood in the shadows. If it turned into the doorway, she would see it before it saw her. Maybe, she thought, if she stood perfectly still like she was now, it would walk past her. Riley remembered the boning knife in her sweaty palm and looked down at it. She didn’t move, listening, trying to discern anything she could, but only silence came from the vestibule.

  The glass in the kitchen crunched and Riley forced herself from her hiding spot, back through the darkened library and into the entranceway. Resting on the first stair was the stuffed cat Fred Turner had carried, its hair singed, confirming Riley’s suspicions. She refused to allow herself to shriek.

  A noise sounded from a room closer than the kitchen and Riley—abandoning stealth and silence—raced headlong up the stairwell, around the landing and up the remaining steps, into the corridor. She passed the first doors on either side, choosing the second door on her right, shutting herself inside a bedroom, locking herself in.

  She’d been right. It had closed the window above the curio.

  Riley backed away from the bedroom door, thinking of her revolver in the other room across the hall. She crossed the bedroom, searching for a suitable hiding spot. She considered climbing under the bed and pictured being dragged back out into the room by her ankles. Riley stepped into the bathroom that connected this bedroom to the next and pulled back the shower curtain, stepping up into the cast iron tub. She drew the curtain back into place and waited, the boning knife raised, feeling vulnerable in a way she never had before.

  Dee and Kev were dead. She had to assume they were dead. The blood on the floor…The thing had killed them.

  Now it was going to kill her.

  No, it was going to try and kill her. It was going to pursue her through this house and find her and when it did…And when it did, Riley resolved, she would fight it until either she or it was dead.

  Stop thinking of it as an it, she admonished herself. It was a man. A man with a name.

  Chase.

  Different than other men she’d known, yes. The nature of its birth and its circumstances had elevated it to little more than a wild animal. Yet it was human, like her. It could feel pain. It could die.

  She made herself breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth. There were no sounds from the house, though the pounding of her own heart was nearly deafening to her.

  Dee had refused to recognize its humanity. For him, Chase was some kind of creature, an it. Riley granted that Chase’s actions—his family’s actions, too—were inhuman. But disallowing Chase’s humanity elevated him in an unhealthy way, in a manner that threatened enervation and hopelessness on their part.

  No, Chase was human. Tough like his brothers, but human. And, Riley knew, her fear was understandable, so long as it did not paralyze her. She’d been frightened sitting with Anthony’s body, frightened when the old man, Thomas, and the other man—Dalton—had walked up to her. Frightened, yes, much as she was frightened now. But she’d killed them both. Like she was going to kill Chase.

  The tub was cool under her feet.

  * * *

  For the moment she had to outthink him, outthink Chase until she had the upper hand. Hiding behind a shower curtain in a claw-footed bathtub, she was painfully aware that she did not command the upper hand. She’d fight him hand to hand if she had to, but she’d rather not.

  The boning knife gripped in her palm didn’t seem like much.

  The shadow passed on the other side of the shower curtain. Riley wasn’t breathing. She heard him leave the bathroom, stepping into the connecting bedroom. Riley waited another moment before stepping from the tub, locking the door to the bedroom behind Chase.

  The knob turned.

  HHHe was on the other side—Riley could picture him—trying the knob, and when he found it locked he started punching the door. She stared in fascinated horror as it shook violently, the stench of burned flesh rank here in the bathroom where the man had passed.

  When the blade of the knife—the largest kitchen knife—splintered through the wood, Riley raced from the bathroom to the bedroom and into the hallway. She heard a door open as she darted past and Chase was behind her on the stairs as she tore down to the vestibule. She ran through the house, overturning a lamp and ladder and paint cans, Chase grunting and cursing as he crashed over and through them, after her.

  * * *

  She put the island between herself and Chase and turned to face him as he came into the kitchen. He was naked, his body singed, charred in places. His face gleamed pink from the heat, all of his hair seared off. Still there was no mistaking him: the size of him, the bend to his torso, one arm larger than the other, the foot crooked beneath him, a club belying the speed of which he was capable.

  He gripped the kitchen knife in one hand and Riley’s fourteen-inch axe in the other. “You gonna keep runnin’?”

  “Go to hell!” She screamed back at him, her voice quavering.

  “Run, little girl!” Chase launched himself across the island, swatting at her with the axe, missing. He came close to clearing the island but did not, stranding himself belly-down upon it. Riley waded in, stabbing down on his outstretched form. The five-and-a-half inch boning knife sunk into his back. He cursed and swung at her again with the axe, the back of his hand knocking her clear.

  Riley rebounded off the kitchen counter, tearing down the nearest object at hand, a stainless steel pot. She threw it at him and Chase—shimmying back the way he’d come—blocked it with an arm. As the pot clattered across the floor, Chase rolled from the island, regaining his feet. They faced one another with the island between them once more, Riley’s hands wrapped around the handle of a fourteen-inch stainless steel frying pan.

  “This gonna be fun. You want to play?”

  His burnt lips pulled back on raw gums and crooked teeth—he was grinning at her—and Chase vaulted onto the island, windmilling his arms, the axe clanging against the frying pan she brought up, the knife tearing through her shirt and the flesh of her shoulder. Riley took his leg out from under him with the side of her knifed hand and Chase fl
opped down on the island in a seated position, thrusting the kitchen knife he welded like a rapier.

  Riley side stepped and drove the palm of her hand at his throat, but Chase tucked in his chin and took the blow on the face. It laid him out on the island and she leaned in to bludgeon him with the frying pan but he had slid from the granite-top like a snake, the pan bouncing harmlessly off the island’s surface.

  From the floor where he squatted, Chase lashed out at Riley with the axe. She deflected the blow with the pan and tried to step away, to put some room between herself and the murderous freak, but there was nowhere to go and Riley backed immediately into the kitchen cabinets.

  They were stuck here together, between the cabinets and the island.

  Chase made to his feet, taller than her, stabbing at Riley’s face with the knife. She dodged her head and it buried itself in the cabinet behind them. Riley catapulted her elbow up from its position next to her ribs, catching Chase in the mouth, knocking him back. She hit him with the frying pan and he went down. Before he could recover she was over him, bringing the frying pan up and down repeatedly. Chase tried to block her with his arms, grunting with each blow, his blood spattering the floor, the axe lost from his grip.

  Riley crouched over him and raised the frying pan, intent on bringing it down and crushing his head to a—

  He punched her squarely in the face and Riley stumbled back a step, tasting blood in her mouth. She threw the frying pan in his general direction and missed, the pan rebounding off the island. Riley ran, putting the kitchen and Chase behind her, hearing him slipping in the water and broken glass, regaining his feet.

  She threw the mud room door open and screamed at the top of her lungs, “Come on!”

  She had just opened the door to the basement—the slacker zombie stood on the top step waiting, a blank look in its eyes—when the axe blade cleaved the air and lodged itself in the doorframe. Riley screamed and backed away from the blade and the seared hand that clasped its haft, a burnt claw.