Storberry

by Dan Padavona

  Reeek. Reeek.

  Gordon Grady raised his head and opened his eyes, his hair ashen gray and his face strangely ageless. But Randy didn't see the timeless countenance of Gordon Grady rocking in the chair. He saw Calvin Marks, dark red pooling across his polo, eyes fixed on his son.

  You didn't really think you could keep me from Benny, did you?

  Randy stood nearest to the man in the rocking chair. As though she sensed the challenge to her husband, Bev Grady’s eyes flicked open from across the room as Randy strode forward with the stake. Randy saw her out of the corner of his eye. He froze in place, seeing not her mannequin face but his mother’s terror-stricken expression.

  Have you come to kill me again, Randy?

  “Do it!” Greg screamed.

  Randy was transfixed, his eyes like those of a deer caught in an 18-wheeler's high beams.

  Look at me when I am talking to you, Boy!

  Gordon Grady stood before his chair, head cocked to the side as though amused by the intruders' presence. Randy raised the stake at him, and Gordon Grady's eyes burned back at him. Bev Grady bolted from her chair in a swift motion that stunned Randy. He turned in her direction but was too slow.

  As the attack fell apart in front of him, Greg held the stake toward the woman. He saw Randy panic, tears running down his cheeks. Gordon Grady lunged at Randy's blind side. He would have torn Randy in two had Greg not stepped between them to force the monster backward with the stake. But the defensive move left Greg open from the right, and he never saw Bev Grady rush him.

  The woman shrieked a banshee's wail. She hurled Greg across the room into the wall. He crumpled to the ground, his back screaming from the force of the blow. Randy turned back to Gordon Grady, but the man gripped the stake with inhuman strength that bellied his decrepit form. He ripped the weapon from Randy's hands and turned it back on him.

  Then Mary was there, smashing against Gordon Grady, thrusting the cross into his chest. Smoke rose off seared flesh like water poured on a hot pan. The room was redolent of burning skin, the shadows of their forms animate across the walls like skittering spiders.

  Renee hurled herself between Greg and Bev Grady to shield the broken police chief. Evan was by Renee’s side, his stake driving the monstrosity backward.

  Gordon Grady bellowed. The cross sank into his chest cavity as though his flesh was gelatinous, acrid smoke pouring out of the bubbling wound. He reached for Mary's neck and gripped it with his hand—all bone and sinew.

  Tom appeared and drove the stake into Gordon Grady's chest. Dark torrents of blood burst out of his chest, splattering across their faces. Mary fell backward, gasping as the air rushed back into her lungs.

  Greg crawled to his feet, while Evan had backed Bev Grady into a corner. Grasping at the air as though she was drowning in a roiling sea, the woman averted her eyes from the holy symbol. She gave them the sense that she was suffocating, the life force draining out of her.

  As she circled to Bev Grady's left, Renee produced her cross. The old woman bolted to her right, but her legs refused to hold her weight, and she fell to the floor. Confused by what was happening, Greg threw himself toward the prone body and buried the stake into her stomach. It seemed not to matter. Bev was already dying.

  The old woman twitched on the wooden protuberance as Renee drove another stake into her back. Stakes jutted out of her like hunters' arrows out of a deer, blood pooling across the floorboards.

  Randy backed into the wall, as though he could melt through the plaster and rid himself of the macabre scene. Mary watched him in anger. She didn't speak, but her eyes screamed, “Coward!”

  As the azure moonlight washed across the bloodied bodies in dappled streaks, the chairs still rocked with unspent momentum in the shadowed corners, as though they awaited the man and woman to return.

  Two

  “Houston, we have a problem.”

  Rory peered through a crack in the blankets hung across the front window of the Grady residence. Evan identified two figures in the backyard, and now Rory spied three more from across the street.

  “How many?” Greg asked.

  “Five that I can see.”

  Tom peeked between thick drapes over a side window off the dining room. There were two houses—a dark shell bathed in the eerie glow of the moon in front of him and Jen's house beyond. The lights were still on in the Barrows' home, but there was movement in the shadows across the street.

  “Three more,” Tom said.

  “Shit,” said Rory.

  Jen recalled that the Grady family had installed a large sliding glass door off the dining room a few summers ago. Greg checked behind the drawn curtains, and sure enough, the glass doors were there.

  If their presence was noticed, they would not be able to defend the glass entranceway.

  Sullen and dark, Randy sat on the couch away from the other members. Mary wrestled with whether or not to approach him. They needed him, but they also needed to know that they could rely on him. She sensed something else was there, something she couldn't place a finger on. He’s hiding something.

  “How bad is it?” asked Renee.

  As Rory pulled the blanket ends together, he said, “It's not good. That sliding glass door isn't going to hold. The good news is, they haven't figured out that we're here. So far.”

  “We never should have come here. We're surrounded.”

  “Yep. And if we can see eight, you can bet there are at least twice as many that we can't see.”

  “I say we make a break for the truck.”

  “They're too close to the truck. We'd never make it.”

  Evan wiped pulpy gristle off the stake onto the side of the couch

  “Your house is a few doors down, right, Tom?” Evan asked.

  Tom looked at his feet and nodded.

  “He's not going back in there,” said Jen. “My house is just as close anyhow.”

  “What about the doors and windows in your house? Any sliding glass doors that we can't defend?”

  “There's a front window, maybe five feet across.”

  “We can work with that. Does your father keep any tools in the house?”

  Jen’s face contorted, and Mary saw the loss of her parents in the girl’s eyes.

  “He does...or did woodworking in the basement.”

  “So there might be materials that we can use to board the windows?”

  Greg shook his head. “No good. The minute you start pounding nails, they will be all over the house.”

  “But we can't stay here,” Renee said.

  “No. Eventually they will figure out that we are here, and that glass door is going to be their way in.”

  Greg exhaled, and Mary sensed his fear.

  “If we could contain them to groups of two or three, I know we could fight our way through. But there are too many for us to handle. We'll be overwhelmed.”

  “If we can get to her house, we'll only need to defend it until sunrise,” Rory said. “Then we haul ass out of here at first light and determine if we can raise the manpower to handle another run on them.”

  They agreed. It was their best chance for safety through the remaining hours of the night.

  As the others watched the shadowed figures through the windows, Rory grasped Randy as the boy got off the couch. He threw Randy into the corner, his grip like steel about the boy's arm. As the boy faced him, Rory saw something dangerous in his eyes.

  “I don't know what the hell you are trying to pull, but the bullshit stops here and now. If you freeze on us again and someone gets killed because of it, I'll put a bullet in your head myself.”

  Greg pulled the bigger man away. Seething, Randy stalked out of the corner with the dangerous gait of a predator, the dark pits of his eyes centered on Rory.

  As they carefully slid back the sun room's glass door, it moved silently on its hinges, and then their slim protection from the night was gone. Like distress beacons from the heavens, stars flickered overhead. The air was thick wi
th moisture, and the dew soaked through their shoes and chilled them despite the unusual warmth.

  Every shadow threatened. When they passed the Barrows' garage, Evan felt a fear which threatened to overwhelm him. He thought of the impenetrable darkness of the forest and of the unholy wind which had crippled the town’s communications system.

  They safely traversed the backyards to the side door of the Barrows' home and worked in pairs to ensure the house was clear. While the basement was scavenged for tools or supplies which could be used to secure the house, Evan and Greg carried plywood sheets up the stairs.

  Renee located a box of long wood screws and a power drill, which Rory used to secure the plywood across the windows without the banging of a hammer. They cringed with each shrill whir, but their presence was not detected.

  Evan had the sickening sensation that they were preventing their own escape. When they finished they drilled small eye holes through the board. There was no movement on the street, and that strangely troubled them more than seeing the monstrosities.

  Randy watched Rory board the windows, anger burgeoning out of his eyes. The need to escape with Benny grew, but as he thought of ways to slip away unnoticed, his head began to throb.

  His head was clouded, as though a cold encroached upon him. Worse, though, was the child's voice he swore he heard calling him from the backyard. The voice seemed to come from a great distance, and each time he heard the child, he felt his heart jump as though electrocuted. But everyone around him carried on with their work, oblivious to the voice.

  Three

  There was no sleep for Jeff Branyan. The pain in his ribcage had diminished, but now he itched beneath the bandages. The itching started as a tickle, and then the skin under the tape began to tingle as though a colony of ants crawled underneath.

  He tried to itch through the tape, but it was impossible. Just touching his ribs fired rockets of pain through his body. Honestly, he almost preferred the pain to the infernal itching. How long do the doctors intend for me to wear these bandages? Days? Weeks?

  But something else disturbed him. A residential property bordered the hospital grounds. Just beyond the parking lot, bathed in the light of the moon, crouched a wooden shed in disrepair. Skewed sideways as though it would fall at any moment, the shed sat in the grass on the residential side of the property line.

  There were noises coming from it.

  Through the thick glass of the hospital windows he heard the smash of metal and sometimes glass shattering. It was quiet now, but the noise would come again just as it had every few minutes during the last half hour.

  Whatever was in the shed, it wasn't a bear. A bear would have moved on by now. Something else was inside the shed, big, angry, and biding its time. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

  Bending over until his hands found the leather bag under his hospital bed, he tried to ignore the agony in his ribs. Three magazines (two sports and a girly), a change of clothes that he wouldn't need for a few weeks yet, a bottle of pop, and a beer his buddy had smuggled in for him. The gun was hidden at the bottom of the pile.

  Fishing the weapon out of the bag, he slipped it under his bed sheet. At exactly midnight, he gingerly slid the bag under the bed. He was bent over, away from the window, just as a dark figure slipped out of the shed and walked unseen toward the hospital entrance.

  As his eyes returned to the disheveled shed, Jeff leaned back against the pillow.

  The pretty desk clerk at the hospital entrance was bent under her desk, filing paperwork into a sliding cabinet drawer, when the figure passed her by. She felt the breeze of his passing touch her shoulder like the cold breath of January. It made her shudder. Her instinct told her to stay beneath the desk, and she did so. It was the only thing that saved her.

  The figure didn't care who saw him, for there was nothing within these walls that he had to fear. Yet the halls remained empty in advance of him, as though the fates had sounded an evacuation alarm upon his arrival. As he slipped through the stairwell door, his footsteps echoed hollow against the white walls like distant drums.

  Second floor. Room 208. He remembered.

  Two nurses were stationed on the second floor. The blonde girl with the ponytail had eschewed her novel for a newspaper. Wondering what the other girl did to deserve her pay, a middle-aged nurse with long brown hair who wasn't nearly as pretty shook her head as she tended to patients at the end of the wing. The rotund orderly had not shown up for work, which put him in league with the other third of the hospital staff that seemed to have vanished into thin air.

  Jeff hadn't heard the sounds from the shed for several minutes. He decided the danger had passed and closed his eyes, when the first scream echoed from the end of the hallway. The gun was back in his hand when the pretty girl from behind the desk ran past his room with a walkie-talkie, frantically calling for security. He heard her squeal, and then somewhere beyond his vision, her neck snapped like the crunch of potato chips.

  Panicking, he threw his legs over the side of the bed, his ribcage screaming in agony. He felt his ribs bend unnaturally and knew he had done further damage. But the gun was cocked and aimed at the doorway. He believed he was ready for whatever came for his door.

  He wasn't.

  Nothing could have prepared him for the sight of Dell Lawrence, clown-skin pallid with eyes as red as a foreboding sunrise. Jeff was so stunned that it took him several seconds before he pulled the trigger. The bullet struck Dell squarely in his stomach.

  Dell looked down at the wound, perplexed that the boy had shot him. A bubble of black oozed outward. As wicked smile spread across his face, he raised his eyes to the boy. An alarm sounded, piercing the hospital with an incessant waaaa waaaa waaaa that made Jeff's teeth jingle.

  Jeff fired two more shots. The first missed. The second tore through Dell's cheek bone, removing a hunk of flesh the size of a fist, leaving behind a row of fangs as sharp as nails. The sound of shouts and footsteps echoed from the end of the hallway.

  “I told you I wasn't finished with you, boy.”

  A scream was poised behind Jeff's lips as he fired the gun. Appearing to float on air, Dell leaped from the threshold of the door to the hospital bed. The last thing Jeff saw were teeth, Dell's ghastly fangs dripping with need. Dell bit into Jeff’s neck, tearing through flesh and cartilage.

  Two security guards pushed through the door to find the hideous thing leaning over Jeff Branyan's body. The monster’s lips smacked as an inundation of red spurted out of a main artery. The first guard, a skinny young pup in his first month on the job, bent over and vomited against the wall. The second guard was a burly man in his early fifties who thought he had seen everything. The gun shook in his hands as though he was holding a jackhammer, and it was all he could do to yell freeze! as the thing catapulted over the bed and crashed through the glass window.

  The pallid monster vanished into the night air.

  The guard ran to the window, trying hard not to look at the remains of the massacred boy. But it was impossible not to see the shreds of flesh hanging off his neck, the blood spurting forth like a cone geyser and the sheets which appeared to have been dipped in spaghetti sauce. He would see the image in its horrific clarity for the rest of his life whenever he closed his eyes, as though the image had been painted to the back of his eyelids.

  As he pointed the gun out the window between the broken shards, the warm night breeze tickled at his face, taunting him. Dell Lawrence was gone.

  Four

  The moon above Storberry shone down upon the Barrows' home in apathetic blue tones. Downstairs, Rory Dickson moved anxiously between the front and back of the house.

  He had taken the first shift while Greg sprawled out on the floor, willing himself to sleep.

  Battling through various states of semi-sleep, the rest of the group spread across the house. It was 1:50 a.m. Five hours remained until sunrise, and the minutes ticked past like weeks.

  Jen lay curled on her bed within Tom
's arms, the door shut and the hook-and-eye latched. As her body submitted to smothering fatigue, her mind refused to let her eyes stay closed.

  “Tom?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Do you think we are going to make it to sunrise?”

  “Yeah. We'll make it. I promise.”

  As she peered through the window into the night, he snuggled behind her. Her hair was soft against his face, like silk.

  Stars filled the sky, brighter than Tom could ever remember. The moon filtered through the window in an azure glow, as though its light was submerged in ocean waters.

  “There's too many of them, Tom.”

  “I know.”

  “What if they...spread. What if they get to the next town, and then the town after that? Jesus, what if they already have and we are the last in line?”

  “Don't think that way.”

  Tom was always thinking, but now the gears turned in double time. He knew there was a way for them to survive—every predator had a weakness, nature always found a way.

  “When we killed Mr. Grady, do you remember how Mrs. Grady appeared to be dying before we got to her?”

  Jen shivered.

  “Yes.”

  “I've been thinking about what happened. What if they are somehow tied to each other? Like if you hurt one, you hurt the other?”

  “Because they are family?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. It might not have anything to do with if they are related or not. Maybe one's life is tied to the other, based on who infected whom.”

  Jen turned to face him.

  “So, like, if Mr. Grady infected Mrs. Grady, she is tied to him. So if you kill him—”

  “You kill her, too.”

  “That would explain what happened to her. Have you told this to anybody?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Tom, you have to.”

  “It might have been a fluke, or a coincidence. What if I'm wrong?”

  But Tom didn't think he was wrong. He had stumbled upon the predator's biggest weakness.