Devour: Death & Decay Book 1

by R. L. Blalock

  In the living room, Elli sat on the floor and inspected an action figure with Aaron. The boy had brought out several plastic figures that lay sprawled out in front of Elli. He described each figure to her as she picked it up. Liv smiled. For a preteen boy, he was incredibly patient with her.

  Elli noticed Liv standing in the doorway and, to Aaron’s dismay, immediately threw down the action figures. She pushed herself up with practiced ease and ran over as she muttered, “Mum mum mum.” Liv picked her up and hugged the little child tight.

  “Thank you again,” she said over Elli’s shoulder. “For saving us outside and for welcoming us into your home. We truly owe you our lives.”

  “It’s what any decent person would do.” The woman waved her hand dismissively. “My name is Lydia Kellner, by the way.” Elli scrambled out of Liv’s arms and wandered back to Aaron and his toys. “Would you like something to eat? We just finished dinner. It’s nothing fancy, just spaghetti and salad, but I’m sure you must be hungry.” At the mention of food, Liv’s stomach growled. They had eaten earlier with Colin, but her stomach demanded compensation for the energy she had just expended in their flight.

  “That would be wonderful, but do you mind if I make a call first? My husband needs to know where we are.”

  “Of course!” Lydia rattled off the address as Liv pulled her cell phone out of the diaper bag.

  There were several notifications on the Liv’s phone but she ignored them. Instead, she quickly called Colin and brought the phone to her ear.

  “We’re sorry. All circuits are busy now. Please try your call again later.”

  Liv frowned at the phone and instantly punched Colin’s name on the screen to call him again.

  “We’re sorry. All circuits are busy now. Please try your call again later.” After four more calls, the phone finally began to ring and Liv breathed a sigh of relief. But Colin never answered. Instead, the voicemail, a rather bored-sounding recording, picked up.

  “Colin, the lines are all jammed up. I guess everyone is trying to call everyone else right now. We found a place and we’re safe.” Liv relayed the houses address to him. “I don’t know how easy calls will be, but if that doesn’t work try sending me a text or a message through messenger. Maybe that will get through.” Liv sighed. “I love you. I’ll see you soon, Colin.” She tapped the small, red “end call” sign on the screen.

  The home screen of Liv’s phone was cluttered with a number of different apps. She selected the one for a local news station. Though a new screen opened, the page wouldn’t load. Liv killed the app and tried again but only got the same results.

  Servers must be flooded just like the phone lines, Liv thought dismally.

  Liv opened the Facebook messenger app and tapped out a quick message to Colin along with the house’s address and sent it. Once the message went through, Liv opened up the social media site. A notification popped up.

  “You appear to be in the area affected by the St. Louis Riots. Are you safe?” The message made her chest tighten. The safety check feature had only been enabled a few times since its inception. Only in dire situations where communications became difficult and causalities were high. The message gave her two options to respond. “I’m safe” or “I’m not in the affected area.” Below it gave her some information. “67 friends are in the affected area. 5 friends are marked as safe. 62 friends are not marked as safe.”

  Liv couldn’t breathe. Her finger hovered over the icons, not knowing which one to press first. Was she really safe? Who of her friends were safe? Only five? Where were the others?

  Finally, Liv pressed the “I am safe” button and hurriedly mashed the “5 friends are marked as safe” button. She held her breath as the new screen loaded.

  At the top of the list was Jorden’s name and picture. Below it was a coworker, two classmates, and one of her next-door neighbors.

  Colin wasn’t marked as safe.

  Feeling her body begin to tremble, Liv hurried to close the app. She called Colin another dozen times before finally giving up. She tried to call her parents and Jorden, but once again the automated message told her the calls wouldn’t go through. After a few more futile attempts, she reluctantly stood up and went to join Lydia in the kitchen.

  “Nate, could you come in here,” Lydia hollered as she bustled around preparing a heaping plate. “Is Elli hungry?”

  “Probably. She eats like she has a black hole in her stomach. She loves spaghetti, but I wouldn’t advise giving her sauce.” Elli was a good eater. Not just a good eater, but a healthy eater. However, at least 50 percent of her food ended up every place but her mouth.

  “Gotcha.” Lydia smiled and put some plain spaghetti in a bowl to cool. “If she isn’t in the mood for spaghetti, though, cereal is in the pantry and fruit is in the fridge or on the counter. Please help yourself to whatever.” Her smile was worried but genuine as she pointed with her spoon around the kitchen.

  In the fridge, Liv found some blueberries, Elli’s favorite. Elli would eat nothing but blueberries if she had her way. Liv took a small bowl of blueberries and another of spaghetti and placed them before the little girl. At the sight of food, Elli once again abandoned her toys and began to shovel alternating hands of blueberries and spaghetti into her mouth.

  When Liv returned to the kitchen, the husband, Nate, had taken a seat on one of the four stools by the island in the center of the kitchen. In front of the other stool sat a steaming plate piled high with spaghetti, California blend vegetables, a couple slices of fluffy French bread, and a bowl of salad. Liv started eating, while Lydia busied herself putting away the leftovers.

  Finally, with Lydia’s back facing Liv as she rinsed out the last few dishes, the question came, the one that had been hanging in the air. “So what is it like out there?”

  Liv finished chewing the bite of broccoli as she thought about what to say next. “It’s not good.” That was stupid, Liv chided herself. Of course they know that much. “Elli and I were just past the Boone Bridge when things got bad. Those…monsters were everywhere. Emergency crews were there, but they were just…overwhelmed.” Liv pushed her food around her plate as she thought back to the bridge and the paramedic pair, her appetite suddenly gone.

  “Monsters? You mean the people outside?”

  Liv shook her head. “They may look like people, but they don’t act like it.” She wanted to say what she really thought they were, but she was afraid of what Lydia and Nate would think of her. “They snarl and growl like animals. Attack anything that moves.” Liv paused before her next words, chewing on her bottom lip as she thought. “Some of them have these terrible injuries. A woman who chased Elli and me from the bridge was missing her entire arm but she didn’t even seem to notice. They just keep moving like nothing is wrong.”

  Nate nodded beside her as he continued to stare at his hands, which were clasped together on the countertop. “By the time I got outside, she had stuck the shovel in the neck of one of them, the one that had been milling around the house since this afternoon, but he just kept moving.”

  Lydia looked, horrorstruck, between her husband and Liv. “What does that mean? What are they?”

  Liv stared down at her plate. She didn’t want to say it. She knew how crazy she had sounded when she spoke with Colin, but he knew her. These people didn’t. “I don’t know.” Her words were helpless. “They get hurt. They fall down. Then they get back up as these monsters.”

  “The news said there were riots going on across the city. They aren’t saying anything like that, though. Some stations say it could be drugs in the water. Or civil disobedience. Terrorist. Rabies. But it’s all just speculation. They get their panel of experts together, but all they do is argue and bicker and conjecture about it.” Lydia collapsed on a stool with an exasperated sigh.

  Liv pulled out her phone, swiping past the notifications and opening the web browser. Google opened just fine but as Liv selected news articles that discussed the events of the day in St. Louis, th
e articles refused to load.

  “I don’t think it’s drugs,” Liv said, shaking her head in frustration. “I can’t get anything to pull up on my phone.” She held up the useless device. “The phone lines are flooded with people trying to make calls and the servers for the new stations must be flooded as well.” She dropped the phone on the counter and returned to the conversation. “Even if it’s just happening in St. Louis, it would take a lot of people with access to massive quantities of the drug to make its presence significant, even in one water source, not to mention so many different water sources across the city. And”—she rubbed her face—“I think it’s contagious. I think it’s a disease.”

  Nate nodded. Liv was beginning to get the sense that the man knew more than he was letting on or had even told his wife. If he was withholding information, that made Liv nervous. What else hadn’t he said?

  “On the highway, when they attacked, they weren’t punching or kicking or pushing. They tried to get ahold of people to bite them. It’s like they have some fucked-up form of rabies.” Lydia drew back from the table as if the words themselves could bite.

  “That’s what happened to Jim, across the street,” Nate chimed in. “Jim got bit by some kid while out running errands. Sue said he got sick really fast and by the time they got home he was like a rabid animal. Sue got out of the van screaming and crying, so Mark, his son, and I went to help. By that time, he was on top of Sue. Mark’s son pulled him off and got bit for his trouble. Mark took his son home and was going to call an ambulance, but I never heard one show up.”

  “Oh God!” Lydia was close to tears. That explained the mess in the driveway across the street.

  “Nine-one-one isn’t working.” Lydia and Nate’s heads snapped around to look at Liv. “I tried calling when we were on the highway. It just rang busy. If this is happening in a lot of places around the city, the call centers are probably flooded with people who need help.” The kitchen fell silent as everyone pondered what had been said. After a moment, Liv shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe they aren’t even at the call centers anymore.”

  “I think,” Liv said slowly, “the real question is what should we do now?” The tension was so thick in the air it could almost be touched.

  “The news says to stay inside and lock the doors,” Lydia finally said. “Clearly it’s not safe out there. Wouldn’t that be the best thing to do?”

  Liv twirled the end of her ponytail nervously. “I don’t think so. This thing spread so fast down the highway. It’s spreading to the neighborhoods. There’s already outbreaks across the city. I don’t think the police will be able to contain it. We need to think about going outside of the city. I know of a farm in the countryside. That’s where Elli and I are headed. They’ll have everything we need to last through…whatever this is. You are welcome to come with us. It would probably even be safer for us to travel together because we could look out for each other.”

  A large crash from outside pulled their attention away from the conversation and to the front of the house. An explosion of noise followed. Shouts, the sound of feet as they pounded against the pavement, followed by a few sporadic pops of gunfire.

  And the moaning.

  The moaning made Liv’s spine tingle. Deep and guttural. The yearning for flesh.

  “Aaron, take Elli and go hide in your closet now!”

  Obeying his mother’s command, the boy, his eyes wide with fear, picked Elli up against her protests and ran off.

  Nate made it to the front door first and threw it open. The bloodied hammer that had remained sentry at the entryway was once again in his hand.

  “Wait!” Lydia grabbed his arm. Outside, in the front yard of the house with the gore-covered steps, a man lay on the front lawn fighting off a woman who clawed at him and screamed in her efforts to reach him. The front window was broken out and shards of glass glittered maliciously in the frame and among the grass.

  Movement at the window caught Liv’s attention. A boy of about fifteen slithered out the window and flopped onto the ground. As the boy stood up, he revealed a fresh gash, ragged from where the glass in the window frame had torn a hole in his stomach.

  He was one of them.

  “What do you mean wait?” Nate barked. “We have to help Mark.” He pulled his arm back from Lydia. Tears now streamed freely down her face as she tried desperately to grab him again.

  “You can’t go out there. We need you here. I need you. Your son needs you. If you go out there, you won’t come back. You’ll become one of them!” She managed to snag the sleeve of his shirt. The monsters were trickling in from the woods and between the houses, dozens of them converging on the man, who fought hopelessly for his life.

  “They need our help! We can’t just abandon them!” Nate shouted. A few of them turned at the sound of his voice as they sensed more prey.

  “Nate, please. They are already dead. We can’t help them.” They were on the front lawn. Their arms swung up and the ones that could started to run as they approached the house. Nate growled and slammed the door closed. Seconds later, a resounding thud hit the door, followed by another. A steady thump reverberated from the door as though it was the heartbeat of the house itself.

  “We should leave as soon as possible,” Liv said as she took a few steps back from the door. “Just gather up a few essentials and—”

  “We will die out there,” Nate growled. “We are staying here.” With that, he turned and walked out of the living room and down the hall.

  “I’ll talk to him.” Lydia fled after her husband.

  Liv sighed and rubbed her hands across her face. She could hardly blame Nate. For now, the house was an oasis in a strange and dangerous land. That couldn’t last, though. They would need food and supplies. As the population of the infected grew, it would become riskier to venture out. They needed someplace secluded from this madness.

  All the doors in the hallway off the living room were closed, but it wasn’t hard to guess what each of the four doors led to. The first door on the right was the bathroom. The second door had the name AARON painted across the top in big block letters. The last two doors were a toss-up. One had to be the master bedroom. The other was a spare bedroom or an office perhaps.

  “Aaron,” Liv gently called as she opened the door. There was no response but she could hear Elli fussing from the closet. She walked over and slowly pulled the door open.

  “You can come out now.” She crouched down and held out her arms to Elli.

  The boy looked up at her with red eyes and tear-stained cheeks, the fear making him look even younger than he was. “What’s going on?”

  “I honestly don’t know, honey.” She wasn’t sure how much to say. Certainly, she didn’t want to scare him any more than he was. Some information, just being included, might put his mind at ease, but Lydia and Nate clearly did not want him to be privy to the events that were unfolding outside.

  Aaron huffed. “No one will tell me anything. I’m not a little kid.” Liv held back a smile, as the comment was almost always said by a child too young to get what they wanted. “I know something bad has happened. Jacob and I were playing together when Jim and Sue came home. Why did Jim…do that to Jacob?”

  Liv reached out and pulled Aaron into a hug as tears slid down his cheeks. “Oh, honey. I think…I think Jim was sick. He didn’t mean to.”

  “Does that mean that Jacob is sick now too?”

  Liv bit her lip, Aaron was smart and she’d have to be more careful about what she said. “Yes, but we have some of the best scientists in the world. I’m sure one of them will figure out how to make Jim and Jacob better.” The words were nothing but lies. How could their broken bodies ever be mended?

  Elli squirmed away from Liv’s arms. She shifted from Liv to Aaron and snuggled her way under his arm.

  “I think she likes you.”

  Aaron smiled a bit. “I like her too. For a girl, she’s pretty cool. She likes dinosaurs!” He leaned over to pick up the green, plastic T
yrannosaurus rex figure Elli had been playing with earlier.

  “Well, you have done a wonderful job helping me watch her.” Aaron chest puffed out with pride at the compliment.

  “I always wanted a little brother or sister.”

  “Well, I’m sure Elli would love to pretend you’re her big brother while we’re together.” A big grin spread across his face. “Now come on, let’s go see if we can gather up some stuff we’ll need so we know exactly where it all is.”

  “Come on, little girl!” Aaron jumped up, but when he took Elli’s hand he was gentle and let her set their pace.

  Lydia was back in the living room when they emerged from Aaron’s bedroom. Worry was written plainly across her furrowed brow, but her expression changed quickly. A strained smile replaced the frown.

  “Who wants dessert?” she asked, her voice a bit too cheerful.

  “Nini?” Elli inquired. It was her word for candy.

  “Does Elli like Fudgsicles?” Aaron asked, his face lit up and the worries of the day gone with the promise of a treat.

  “I’m not really sure.” Liv shrugged. “She’s never had one.” Aaron stared back at her in horror, as if this fact was the worst thing he had ever heard.

  “Can we have one, Mom?”

  “Sure. Why don’t you grab two from the freezer and show Elli the toys you have in your room?” Aaron bolted for the refrigerator almost before Lydia finished speaking and snatched two white, plastic packages out of the freezer. With the sweets in hand, he coaxed Elli back to the bedroom.

  “They should probably come in here,” Liv said. “Elli can be a bit sloppy. She might get chocolate on the furniture.”

  Lydia waved her hand dismissively. “In a world where people are eating each other, ice cream on the furniture is hardly something to worry over.” She plopped down onto the sofa.

  For a moment, Lydia stared at the television. “Riots spreading across St. Louis area” the headline read across the bottom. The picture was a bird’s-eye view from a news helicopter focused on a small strip mall.

  “It’s on every channel,” Lydia murmured, her eyes fixed on the screen. “I had to turn the volume off. I couldn’t stand the sound of those things.”