by Lee Deadkeys
Frank moved over to them, wondering if Rudy would be able to heft it and the boy. His eye found Rhonda, standing uselessly behind her brother. She was staring out the window and making strange hiccupping sounds, gearing up for a meltdown.
“Hey,” Frank whispered as he slowly waved a hand in front of her face. “You need to calm down.” Rhonda’s head snapped to Frank, her eyes wide and terrified. She took a step back.
Frank shook his head and reached for her. She took another quick step away, her foot catching on the splattered remains and went down hard. The whole cabin seemed to shake with the impact. Every head swiveled to the door, sure the sound would bring a hundred shambling infected down on them.
“Rhonda!” Rudy said, louder than he’d intended and lowered his voice. “Stop it. Get over here and help me.”
Jess threw Rhonda a hateful glance and stood slowly. “What’s wrong with them?”
Frank took a tentative step toward the window. Nothing, no reaction from the infected, even though many of them had their yellowed eyes numbly fixed on the window and door. Frank waved a hand in front of them and raised his rifle with the other.
“Oh, this new development can’t be a positive,” Ox said and repositioned Mason. “Do you feel that?”
“That… thrumming?” Frank asked, stepping fully into view of the infected. “It gets faster when they see—” Frank turned back to the group, his face stricken. “We have to go. Now.”
“Let’s go, son,” Rudy said and grabbed up the boy in one arm, the other held a shotgun. Rhonda got to her feet; the fall or her brother’s words seeming to clear her head a bit. “Can you handle the blanket?” Rudy asked.
Rhonda blinked at it, nodded once and tried to lift it. “I’ll have to drag it.”
“Move,” Sam said as he grabbed up the blanket, the weight causing him to teeter to the left. “Get a rifle and cover me.” Rhonda moved to the open bookcase and pulled a slim lever action from the rack.
They moved to the door. Jess cracked it open and waited. The horde made no move to attack, but she could feel it now, the vibration coming off the infected. She swung the door fully open and stepped out, keeping Alex behind her. She waited for about a second, took a deep breath and slowly moved into their bloated midst.
Jess picked her way through the immobile ranks, gagging on their putrid, overwhelming stench. She looked back once and saw Ox directly behind her, Mason slung over his shoulder; his head twitched from side to side, the pain in his knee momentarily forgotten. Rudy was behind Ox and slightly to his right, Rhonda following so close that she was blocked from view. Sam was next, leaving a gap large enough to swing his shotgun. Her heart sunk when she noticed that her father was the last, still on the porch, covering them.
The line of survivors moved quietly through the center of the horde, heads and weapons on a swivel. They’re breathing rapid and shallow, hearts hammering in their chests. Sweat beads swelled and then broke, stinging their eyes.
Frank was four deep amongst the infected when the thrumming increased dramatically, becoming a deep resonating bass-beat he felt in his bones and teeth. Everyone stopped.
Frank looked at the horror closest to him, a mere foot away and found no sign of damage from self-mutilation. His eyes flicked from one to another and found it was the same with all of them. He returned his attention to the first one, the closest one, and let his gaze fall on the pulsating swell of its belly. As he watched, the tremors intensified until the skin above the naval split open, exposing a curdled layer of yellowed fat cells.
A new sound alerted him, a sound on top of a sound, human, like a moan. He met the thing’s eye, a scream scrambling up his throat. It was looking at him, seeing him; the man, not the monster. Huge tears beaded and sprung at the corners of its eyes, its aware and knowing eyes.
In a millisecond, Frank understood two awful truths: that the hosts, against all hope and prayer, were on some level, conscious during their parasitic incubation. Secondly, most terrifyingly, these monsters were relinquishing their hold over their hosts and readying themselves for emergence.
He tore his eyes away from the pitiable creature, searching for his daughter. She was just passing through the boulders, almost to the truck.
Jess turned slowly, her face ashen as their eyes met. “Run!” Frank yelled, pushing Sam toward the truck.
Jess hesitated, eyes locked with his. Frank shook his head, “Get them out of here, Jess!”
“No! Dad!” Jess screamed as she tried to make her way back to him.
Ox shoved her back toward the truck, “The kids, get them to the truck.”
“Give him to me,” Alex yelled and tried to tug her brother from Jess’s arms. Jess held him a moment longer, torn between her father and a promise to a dead mother. She looked to the truck, judging the distance, before relinquishing her hold on the boy.
“Get in the back of the truck and get down.” She turned back to the others, “Ox, put Mason in the back and help me.”
Ox sprinted the final few yards to the truck, Mason protesting loudly, and roughly dumped him in. “Give me your Glock,” Mason said. Ox pulled the gun from his holster, tossed it to him and turned to help the others.
He’d only made it a few feet from the truck when the first infected blew, setting off a small chain reaction.
Sam reacted first, stepping in front of Rudy and Rhonda and blowing one of the intact Bloaties into fleshy chunks. He bashed another with the butt of his shotgun. It burst on impact, hurling its occupant, teeth-first, into his chest.
He dropped his shotgun and grabbed it by its slimy neck. The thing wrapped around his torso, twisting its head twice, its teeth grinding through bone and heart. Sam grunted once and fell, dead before he hit the dirt.
Rudy yelled as he unloaded into the closest one, working his way forward, shoving them back while reloading. He blasted the thing working in Sam’s chest cavity and kicked it aside.
Jess sidestepped what was left of Sam, shoved Rhonda aside and reached for the boy in Rudy’s arms. “Give him to me!” Rudy threw the boy to her and turned back for his sister.
Rhonda’s scream lasted only a moment before her head disappeared into a newly born maw, her body thudding to the ground. Rudy brought his boot down on the giant leech head, grinding his heel in even as the last strands of his sister’s hair slipped away.
He screamed his sister’s name over and over, firing wildly. His single-minded fury was cut short as Ox grabbed him by the back of his shirt and dragged him toward the truck. Ox bent and took up the blanket of supplies as Rudy continued to fire.
Frank shot two of the things as they snaked toward Rudy. Mason yelled for them to look out as Jess handed off the other boy to Alex. Ox tossed the blanket in, grabbed Rudy by the seat of his pants and threw him in on top of it.
“Hurry, Dad!” Jess yelled and took a step toward him. Mason grabbed her arm, “He’s coming, get in.”
Ox turned to see that Frank was a little more than halfway to them, backing toward the truck, fighting for every step. Three of the things closed in on Frank’s left and Ox fired, killing two of them. Mason fired one-handed at the third, hitting it in its midsection. More of the things moved in from all sides.
Frank’s peripheral vision was a blur of black movement. He risked a look back at the truck and felt his heart sink at the distance.
Jess fought against Mason’s hold, desperate to reach Frank. Ox moved forward.
“Go, Go!” Frank yelled, trying to wave Ox back. The big man was undaunted and came on with a vengeance, shoving and stomping his way forward.
Something hit Frank in the shoulder, the force of the impact spinning him around, the weight dragging him to the ground.
Ox took another step forward. Frank tried to pry the thing free of his shoulder, hooking his fingers into its serrated mouth. He felt a slight sting and drew away a bloody stump.
Frank raised his eyes to Ox. “Please, Ox, go. Save my daughter.”
“No!” Jess
screamed and broke free of Mason’s desperate hold. She ran for her father, but Ox had her tightly in his arms.
“I’m sorry, Frank. God, I’m so sorry,” Ox moaned, pulling Jess away.
Frank felt a tug at his thigh and a wave of embarrassment as warm wetness spread across his groin. I’ve pissed myself, he thought. Another tug at his legs. He flipped and bent forward to look down at his lower half, but there was nothing left to see.
The world dimmed as Jess’s screams chased him into oblivion.
* * *
Rudy leaned against the tailgate, firing maniacally at the dozen or so Gordians pursuing the truck as it sped away from the cabin.
“You’re empty, Rudy,” Mason said, a boy under each arm. Rudy looked at the gun in his hand as if it had betrayed him.
“Look, they’re going home,” Alex said from her corner of the pickup bed.
“Holy shit!” Rudy said. “Are you seeing this, Mason?”
They watched in horror-struck silence as wave upon wave of Gordians disappeared into the depths of the lake. As they bumped over the rise, heading for open desert, the last of the pursuers turned and snaked toward the lake to join their brethren.
“Jess, slow down,” Ox said beside her. “You’re going to wreck us.”
Jess maneuvered around a large Saguaro, the roof of the truck snagging an arm and nearly dumping it into the bed with the passengers.
“Really, Jess, you’ve got to pull over. You’re banging the hell out of the others and I don’t know how much more Mason can take.”
Jess let the truck slow and idle to a stop on a slight rise. Ox reached over and gently levered it into Park. Jess gripped the wheel twice and then rested her head upon it.
“Where are we going?” Ox asked. “I mean, other than away from here?”
There was shifting in the bed and a stifled moan from Mason. Rudy knocked on the sliding window and Ox opened it.
“Those bastards went into the water,” Rudy said. “Why did we stop?”
They let the question hang for a few minutes and then Jess lifted her head from the steering wheel. “All of them?”
Ox and Rudy shared a glance and then Rudy understood. “Some chased us, but then they went into the water, too.”
Jess nodded, “We’ll rest for a few hours. And then I’m going back to bury my father.”
No one protested.
* * *
It was near dusk when they returned to the cabin, the scene a grisly spectacle, a wreckage of human ruin.
Jessica made it a few feet from the vehicle, caught sight of her father’s torn flesh and fell apart. Ox maneuvered her to the back of the truck and when she had regained at least partial composure, put her to the task of fitting Mason with a more than rudimentary splint.
Ox and Rudy made a sweep of the area and the interior of the cabin with little concern. It was obvious that the monsters had indeed fled to the safety of the water and neither thought it likely they’d be returning any time soon.
On his sweep of the bunker, Ox quickly loaded a bag with medical supplies, painkillers, and four clean blankets from the linen shelf. The bag he gave to Jess, the blankets he used to cover the bodies of their friends and family as Jess tended to Mason in pained silence.
Rudy and Ox worked quickly and quietly, using shovels to move the brittle bodies of the dead infected into a pile at the edge of the yard.
When that was done, they tended to their dead. Rudy retrieved Annie’s shrouded remains from behind the cabin while Ox laid Sam and Rhonda next to Frank, then set about collecting wood and brush.
An hour later and it was full dark as they gathered together around the funeral pyre, exhausted and heartbroken.
Ox asked if anyone wanted to say any words and when no one spoke, he bent and struck fire to tinder. For a long while, the only sound heard was the crackle of the consuming fire. Then quietly, almost inaudibly, Jessica began the first soft words of Amazing Grace. She stood there resilient, at the edge of everything, her song a delicate tribute, open and undisguised. One by one, they lent their voices to hers, the melody rising upwards like mist and memories.
And they mourned and remembered their dead.
EPILOGUE:
24 Hours Later
In every body of water around the globe, billions of the alien underlings descended into the depths, feeding on aquatic life both large and small, much like an earth-born creature preparing for a lengthy hibernation.
Once nestled in silt, they began secreting a parrotfish-like mucus bag, encasing themselves in an embryonic shield. Only a few hours later, the bags, which now resembled gelatinous cocoons, were complete and the creatures within began their slow metamorphosis.
And there they wait, the scattered guts of a great and powerful machine, readying themselves for assembly. Readying for the next Event.
Three Months Later
The pigeon landed on the rim of the dead box, its lid resting against the front fender of an abandoned cab. Its once-polished and impenetrable exterior was now dull and muted with decay. Another pigeon lighted next to the first, strutting back and forth, cooing softly, and cutting trident-shaped tracks into the disintegrating surface.
The flirting pair froze, a slight tremor passing through their legs as the box collapsed into a heap beneath them. The pair clamored into panicked flight, sailing high over the city’s rotting husk, leaving behind countless mounds of sand to be scattered by the winds and time.
Approximately One Year Later
The two figures moved through the debris-littered streets.
“What time do you think it is?” The woman asked. The man scanned the heavens, “Maybe four, four thirty.”
The woman dropped a pair of tattered pants back onto the heap of picked-through clothing outside a shattered store window. “We should start heading back to the others soon, don’t you think?”
“A few more minutes,” the man said as he looked down the road.
“Okay, but only a few. Jess’ll give us hell if we’re late.”
The man chuckled and nodded sagely before stiffening. “Someone up the road.”
The woman studied the lone figure for a moment. “Think he’s crazy?”
The man checked that the safety was off on his rifle. “Only one way to find out.”
Within minutes, they’d reached the rat-like figure hunched near a body.
“Whatcha doing there, fella?” The man asked, his voice soft, his body ready.
“Not looting the dead! Not me!” the hunched man howled.
“Yeah, he’s not coming with us,” the woman said.
The man nodded, “Carry on, Nutball.”
A sound like the sky being ripped apart froze them in place. The noise intensified, seemed to come from all around them. The man and woman hunkered down, rifles at the ready, while the hunched man stood straight up.
The clouds roiled, churning over one another, a bloody glow smoldering within. The sound was thunderous, colliding, becoming a single constant roar.
A fiery ball exploded from the clouds.
“The sun is done! Poof!” The hunched man screamed gleefully.
They tracked its raging progress until it began to slow. The smell of charred ozone hung thick in the air as the massive hulk of a ship broke free of the burning sky.
“It’s not the sun, you idiot,” the man said.
The woman turned to the man, “Is it the next Event?”
“The what? The who? Cumquat!” the hunched man grabbed up the dead body, hugging it like a cherished teddy. “Who, who is it?”
“Well, we’re not saying it’s aliens….” Sergeant West said.
“But it’s aliens,” Angel Walker finished.
THE END
Thank you for reading The Gordian Event
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Book 2
The Hellbender Event
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