Upstairs, Neil led Abdul and Jess down the hallway toward the room in which Abdul had been hiding. They could see a body lying motionless toward the opposite end of the hall. Abdul thought about the young woman who had been killed by the creature. She was so pretty and fresh looking, even in death. She was like a flower after a frost.
Abdul stopped in his tracks without a sound. He couldn’t see the girl. She wasn’t there anymore. Neil and Jess stopped too; realizing uncomfortably that something had spooked their new companion.
There wasn’t time to contemplate it. From an open doorway on their right, the young woman burst forth. Her beauty was gone, having been supplanted aggressively by an ugly, predatory rage. Abdul was too terrified to speak and his hands refused to respond to his brain’s pleas to rise up. He felt completely vulnerable.
The roar of a gunshot upstairs rippled through the entire house, rattling floors and walls. Emma stopped what she was doing and backed away from the kitchen’s entrance, never taking her eyes from the open doorway.
William jumped when the echoing crack startled him. Controlling his fear as much as he was able, William brought a glass of cold water over to Gordon, who sipped it slowly.
Despite the fiery pain emanating from his chest like a blast furnace, Gordon asked playfully, “Wouldn’t happen to have a beer and a smoke would you?”
“Let me see what I can find,” William said. “Wait a minute... you smoke?”
Gordon’s smile struggled to remain on his face following another searing jolt of pain.
He looked in the refrigerator, which was still humming and producing electricity. There were no beers on the shelves or in the door. William was about to close the door when he decided to look into the crisper drawers. The first had a variety of vegetables: carrots, celery, broccoli, and asparagus. In the other there were some wedges of deli cheeses, packages of tortillas, and beneath the lodge owner’s layer of subterfuge was a trio of micro beers and a pair of single serving Sutter Home wine bottles filled with white zinfandel.
“I knew Norman wouldn’t let us down.” William stood away from the refrigerator and handed one of the beers to Gordon, but Gordon didn’t reach for it. William was frozen with dread. He looked over at Emma, standing to William’s right and near a cutting block counter with a large assortment of knives.
Emma was frowning in Gordon’s direction but not moving, which only confused William. He slowly stood but maintained the refrigerator door as a barrier between himself and Gordon. “Gordon, I found you your beer. Here man.” William forced himself to take the plunge. He closed the door with his forearm and let out a long, labored sigh. His heart sank and his eyes swelled with sorrowful heat. Gordon was slumped forward in his chair like he had fallen asleep.
When Emma spoke, her voice was stern and direct. “You need to leave the kitchen now.”
“But, he may only…” William’s voice was pleading and soft. He refused to believe that his friend was gone and wasn’t even willing to consider the change that was fated to happen. For that reason, Emma knew she had to act quickly.
She grabbed William’s arm and led him into the hallway. “I need you to watch out for Neil and the others. They should be coming back down any minute.”
William tried to protest, but his words caught in the back of his throat, threatening to choke him. He stood motionless in the hallway, which is what Emma needed from him. She didn’t want him to see what she was going to do.
She walked briskly back into the kitchen, found the wood knife block, and removed a long, sharp knife. She positioned herself behind Gordon and laid her hand on his white scalp. She detected a change in Gordon’s disposition. He moved slightly. She could feel a hint of a vibrating buzz begin to build in his skin.
When his hand jerked, Emma was barely able to control her fear. She placed the knife’s blade against the base of Gordon’s skull. She tried to drive it into his flesh in a single thrust, but it wasn’t as easy as she had anticipated. The flesh didn’t part as she expected. And the blood. There was so much blood. It spilled from the wound like a torrent, drenching her hands in its sticky, oily wetness.
Feeling Gordon start to shudder, Emma worked more urgently and found the right angle to drive the kitchen knife deep into his head, destroying the brain in the process. With that done, Gordon calmed again and became still.
Thinking quickly, Emma grabbed a kitchen towel from the counter and threw it down onto the pool of blood on the floor. The towel was clearly insufficient to clean or even cover the sanguine mess at her feet, but Emma thought doing something was better than doing nothing. She ran the still-functioning faucet over her hand trying to clean the blood from it.
Quietly, like the survivors of the grim battle that they were, the five of them climbed back into the Land Rover waiting outside. William sat in the driver seat. He looked at the keys in the ignition, and found himself lost in his memories. He hadn’t known many of the people in Shotgun Cove well, but he was acquainted with all of them. These were people with whom he had planned to forge a life. He assumed that the same fate had befallen most, if not all of them. He didn’t need to go to any more of the lodges to confirm his dark thoughts. For once, ignorance was preferred to knowledge.
From the passenger seat next to him, Neil asked, “Mind if I drive us back? I’d like to see how this baby handles.”
William nodded slowly but his vacant expression never removed its focus from the keys. Breathing in deeply, William couldn’t make room for anything else. Without a word, he opened his door and let himself out. He walked around to the other side and sat down in the seat Neil had just vacated.
The drive back to William’s lodge was spent in silence. Most of the passengers stared out the windows at the passing landscape. The time was passing by uneventfully until Jess announced, somewhat startled, “Oh my God. There’s another one of those things.”
Leaning toward her and across Abdul sitting in the middle, Emma asked, “Where?”
It didn’t require much effort for her to spot it because the thing was running toward them from the woods. It was sprinting with complete abandon, its blood smeared face twisted into a devilish sneer.
“What do you want me to do?” Neil asked.
Emma grabbed her rifle and nodded to Neil looking at her in the rear view mirror. Neil stopped the Land Rover and Emma threw open her door. Standing on the seat with her dirty boots, she leaned across the top of the vehicle’s roof to steady her arms. She breathed in deeply, held it, and then let it go as she pulled the trigger on her rifle.
She fired sparingly. Her first bullets skipped and skittered amongst the thin trees but did not find their marks. Getting a little nervous, Neil asked, “Emma? Should we just move on?”
Emma peered down her rifle’s barrel again. She could feel herself anticipating its next move...its next step. She pulled the trigger once again and then dropped back down into her seat.
Staring at the now motionless corpse lying on the forest floor, Neil said, “Nice shot.”
“I know.”
Chapter 54
Using every ounce of its celestial influence and clout, the sun was finally able to negotiate an appearance, even if it was only to bid all a good night at sunset. The warm slivers of light poked themselves through the persistent banks of low hanging gray clouds that clung to the Earth like a foul mood. Hanging defiantly on the distant horizon, the sun melted the creamy orange sherbet sky.
Back at William’s lodge, Neil sat with Jerry on the balcony that looked out over the front door. They sat quietly for a good long while; each had more than enough on his mind to keep his thoughts occupied. The sunset distracted both of them momentarily, offering respite from the tempest threatening to burst in each of their minds.
They watched the sun until the darkness and the clouds conspired against it and returned it once again to its exile. They hadn’t said a word or even shared a look at one another. When it started to snow, neither really noticed.
Th
e snow came down in soft flakes that covered the open pavement of William’s long driveway very quickly. The storm was stifling the flame, which flickered and struggled in the concrete and iron brazier between them. Trying to encourage the little blaze, Jerry stirred it with one of the narrow branches the fire was using for fuel. Little sparks, like fireflies, danced and flittered in the air above as if challenging the snow.
“We should put up some kind of a roof if we plan on having someone up here all the time,” Neil remarked. “No point in being miserable.”
“Is that all it would take?” Jerry asked. “We just put up a roof over our heads and we won’t be miserable? I wish you would have said that earlier.”
Neil knew Jerry was referring to his misery at having lost Claire, but he also knew that he was exceptionally inept at comforting others. His ex-wife used to call him “emotionally distant”. Neil recognized that it was a serious character flaw, which typically doomed any relationship to ultimate limits and usually failure.
He looked over at Jerry. “I wish it was that easy. I’d be a professional roofer if that were the case. Jerry, I don’t know what else to say except that I’m sorry. I know how much Claire meant to you, man. I wish I knew what else to do, but I suck at this kind of thing. Tell me what I can do and it’s done.”
Jerry’s eyes misted and his voice was somewhat choked when he said, “I know, man. I don’t know how you do it. I feel kind of selfish. I mean, what about you? It’s not like you can’t be hurtin’ too. I mean, Meghan? God man...” Jerry trailed off and looked out deeper into the darkening trees around the lodge. “How do you do it?”
It was Neil’s turn to press a branch into the fire. He breathed in deeply and let it out slowly. His head shook and his mouth opened but no words were forthcoming. He honestly didn’t know what to say because the reality was that he didn’t think he was “doing it”. Neil felt numb most of the time but it wasn’t a feeling he wished upon anyone.
He stood abruptly. “You good out here by yourself for a bit? I think I’m gonna go see about something to eat.”
Jerry nodded.
“I’ll talk with William about some kind of cover for out here,” Neil said. “Maybe he’s got something that he uses.”
Stopping just short of the door leading back into the second floor of the lodge, Neil turned and said bluntly, “Ya know, the hardest thing about getting by...for me...the thing that hurts the most...is gettin’ by. Sometimes, I don’t think I should be able to. Ya know? What does that say about me? That I’m able to get by?”
“It says that you make the hard decisions and have the right ideas to keep the rest of us alive and well.”
Neil allowed a pained chuckled to escape. “Sounds like something Meghan used to say to me.”
“Yeah?”
Neil nodded and walked through back inside. “And where is she now?”
Jerry was stunned silent. After the door closed he turned back to his watch, although there wasn’t much point to it. The snow was now coming down in thick, swirling spires. He couldn’t see much detail beyond the front of the house, though the snow was already starting to help define a greater contrast between light and dark...between the trees and the ground around them.
Chapter 55
For Neil, the night was a blur, helped on its way by several glasses of whatever William was pouring. Hoping to find some rest, Neil retreated to a couch in a second floor den. He heard the inconsolable sobbing of Betsy and at least one other person. There were soothing voices intermixed with the tears, but the crying largely drowned out the voices.
He figured he should probably intervene and offer to help, but he couldn’t bring himself to get up from the couch. Instead, he chose to finish his drink. It was some kind of scotch with a fancy Scottish name. He felt the alcohol in his lips, his cheeks, and his eyes all at once. His legs too felt as if they weighed thousands of pounds each. He wasn’t going anywhere and he knew it. He had no choice but surrender his consciousness to Hypnos’ will.
Neil drifted in and out of sleep, always waking to feel more tired than when he had originally closed his eyes. He couldn’t shut his lids without visiting some horrible image from his memory. The sad reality for him was that even his recent happy memories were tormenting to him.
At one point, he opened his eyes to see William walking away from him. Neil looked around and saw that his glass was full again. Like a good patient taking his medication, Neil rose up and emptied the glass. The liquor was smooth with an after-burn that reminded Neil of summer. It must have been tequila. Returning the empty glass to the table, Neil rested his head against the pillow again.
The next moment he recalled was when he noticed he had a blanket covering him. He could also smell the warm air wafting up to him from the wood stove burning on the level below him. He was about to go back to sleep when he realized he heard someone else breathing in the room.
Neil propped himself up on his arm and tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness. There was someone asleep on the floor. Neil couldn’t see the person’s face but as he looked he realized it could only be one person.
“Danny? Danny is that you?”
Rolling over, Danny answered, not a hint of sleep in his voice, “Yeah. You looked cold, so I brought you a blanket and made them put more wood on the fire.”
“Thanks, Danny. You can’t be comfortable down there. This is a big couch. If you want to move onto the other end, I’m sure I could make room for you.”
Danny didn’t even think about it. He hopped up and curled up like a puppy at the far end of the couch. Neil watched him get comfortable and close his eyes. Neil laid his head back down but this time his eyes didn’t close. He stared for a long while at the ceiling but couldn’t fully grasp on any specific trail of thought. They were all rabbit holes, which only led to more trails and darkness. He found some comfort in Danny’s restful snoring, which bordered on squeaking.
Neil was caught off guard by the smile spreading across his face. How could he not smile? For that brief moment, Neil was content watching Danny enjoy his peaceful slumber. The house was quiet but alert. It wasn’t a house that had fully embraced the night’s calm but it had settled into a nearly silent vigil.
After a few moments, Neil carefully rose and stepped away quietly in his bare feet. Creaking down the cold wooden stairs, Neil was abundantly aware that he was still feeling his drinks. His legs felt weak and rubbery with each step.
When he heard the voices coming from the kitchen, he stopped and listened for a moment, trying to decide if he wanted to be involved. It sounded like several others were planning. He thought for a second that he would join them but decided that the others had things well in hand.
He turned on the balls of his feet and walked slowly back upstairs. He crept into the den and found his place once again on the couch. At the opposite end, Danny hardly stirred in his slumber.
Neil conceded that perhaps the boy was on to something and went in search of it himself. Knowing that the world would turn without him involved in it, Neil felt much more at ease, as if a ton of weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He eased into sleep without realizing it had happened.
In no time at all, there was a duet of snoring filling the room, like a pair of dueling banjos playing over one another.
Chapter 56
“What did the Colonel say he wanted us to look for?” asked Stuart “Town” Townley.
Having already answered this question before, his partner, Foley Armstrong, looked over at Town to make certain he was both heard and understood. He said impatiently, “We’re looking for any evidence of the murderers. The ones that killed Sullivan and sent all them skins against us back at Skyview.”
Town wasn’t stupid and he wasn’t trying to be difficult; he just wanted clarification. “No. I mean what exactly are we looking for? We don’t know what they look like, how many of them there are, or even if they came this way at all. We’re just goin’ offa’ what that kid said when he was being
questioned. How will we know?”
“Will it matter?” Armstrong asked. “If we find some unlucky folks here in Whittier, we’ll just pretend that it was them that killed Sullivan. And we’ll take everything those people got, including their women.”
Town understood what they had been told, but he didn’t understand how they were to go about finding people, well, living ones anyway. They’d already almost run headlong into two different groups of zombies but had thankfully avoided any direct contact. They were everywhere. Living people, on the other hand, were in very short supply.
Town had never tracked anything or anyone in his life. He’d been hunting a couple of times in his life but those occasions were usually drinking trips more so than hunting trips. To his knowledge, Armstrong wasn’t much better equipped than Town was to find a trail and follow it, especially with the day fading quickly and an eager evening trying to express itself. Trying not to sound like a complete idiot, he asked again, “But what are we looking for? Do you know?”
There were several seconds of quiet before Armstrong looked over at Town and admitted, “I don’t know, but we aren’t going back there until we find something. Where do you think we should start?” He was worried about the gathering darkness as well. He didn’t want to be out here any longer than he needed to be. He didn’t like the dark and never had.
They were standing in an alley between two small buildings. There was a chain link fence at one end and a closed dumpster, behind which they were standing, at the other end. They looked into an empty street lined with forgotten, dormant buildings. Down the street a bit, in front of a drugstore, there was a pile of skin bodies, which seemed slightly out of place, like they had been dispatched and left there recently. Despite the darkness, it was easy to see that the bodies were those of the flesh eaters.
Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution Page 31