After a long moment, he said, “It’s fine. I can’t stay, Brit, okay? I have to go to my family . . .” He bit his tongue—now he was clean across the other side of the town and he’d have to ride uphill to get back unless she knew some easier way. Maybe around the old fort . . .
“I’m so sorry, Troy,” she moaned, hiding her face in her hands. “I’m so selfish.” She bowed at the waist as if she might cry.
“It’s fine, Brit, it’s fine,” he said and encircled her with his arms, held her against him. It wasn’t fine though. It was shit. Colossal fucking shit. “Can your dad travel?”
“I really don’t think so,” she murmured into his chest, her voice thick with restrained sadness. “What about my sister, Troy? Why isn’t she here?”
“I don’t know, Brit. Don’t you have any friends with a car?”
“No, not really.”
“Neighbors?”
“Maybe.”
“Jesus, Brit. You saw my family. My mom and my sisters went horseback riding . . .”
“Okay, go,” she sighed petulantly, pushing away from him.
“Brit, what the fuck?” he said, throwing his hands up.
“Well, what, Troy? What am I supposed to do? My dad’s here,” she said, a tear rolling down one cheek as she thrust a hand toward the closed door. “I can’t leave him,” she hissed, jaw clenched, those glowing gray eyes trembling but glowering at him.
He shook his head, ran his clawed hands through his hair, and growled, stepped away. “Do you have weapons? You sure you don’t have a gun?”
“No, we don’t have any guns,” she whined, slumping, face pained from knowing she disappointed him.
“Weapons? Anything . . .?”
“In the garage, maybe . . .? Yes, the wood pile. There’s an ax. Behind the garage.”
“Brit,” he said seriously now, pulling her shoulders to steady her. “Who around here has a car? On this street. Think.”
“Across the street, and two on this side. I don’t know, Troy. They go to the mainland, though. Go for work. They’ll be gone . . .”
“Brit, stop, Brit,” he said, giving her a gentle shake and looking in her eyes, getting her attention. “I’m going to get that ax. I’m going to get a car. Okay? I’m taking you and your dad with me—you can’t stay here . . .”
4
Charles
It was retracing their path from town—walking the gravel alongside the retaining wall that fell down a half dozen feet to the beach meeting the lapping waters of Lake Ontario—where he and Evie first saw the two men headed their way. It wasn’t that they appeared menacing, or were homeless or vagrants (people when you worked in the Parks one might worry about meeting), these two guys were appropriately dressed. Looked like tourists, really. What set his alarm bells off was their shambling gait.
It was early—ten in the morning, a little late to be lurching back to your hotel after a night of solid drinking, but that’s what it had to be: these two were drunk. They were young, the guy on the right with a T-shirt, shorts, and emblazoned logo on the front of his shirt that had a skull, maybe some angel wings sprouting out from the sides. He was in his twenties, like his compatriot, this other guy in madras shorts and a black polo shirt. He wore one of those country caps Irish people wear, but his was cotton, not tweed. Another thing of note: the guy with the country cap only wore one shoe. They both did this loping walk, coming across the grass from the main road, and it looked as though their paths would intersect. But he was not in any mood for an interaction with anyone hungover or still drunk, so with a hand on the small of Evie’s back, he tried to walk faster. Evie couldn’t.
“Why are you pushing me?”
“I’m not,” he said, “just offering some guidance.”
“I’m fine,” Evie said, straightening her posture to remove the small of her back from his touch.
The men drew nearer. Now, their features came clearer into focus. Definitely drunk. Or maybe worse: Oxy, Percs, or too much weed, or who-knows-what kids were taking these days. Mind numbed. Eyes blank . . . But while their eyes were blank, it was clear now they intended to approach him and Evie.
He said to Evie, “Are you all right to walk on the grass?—Maybe we can cut up this way . . .” He pointed now at a sixty-degree angle from where the two men were approaching, instead of using the path it would take them over the well-kept grass up a slight hillock toward a gray brick building that looked like it might house public bathrooms. “Evie—come with me this way, I wouldn’t mind getting to the facilities.”
And thank goodness, Evie was into it as well. “All right,” she said, and the fact that she was agreeable had him assuming she had to go to the can as well.
“Would you want to take my hand?”
“It’s all right,” she said, shuffling onto the grass, her voice low and surly. Her expression had shrunk to a look of irritation. Same old Evie.
But after walking only a couple dozen yards, he could see the two young guys had changed their vector so they’d still intersect, all of them probably coming together about two-thirds of the way to the bathroom. “You sure you can’t walk faster?”
“What—you have to go that bad? Go . . . Go on ahead if it’s so urgent.”
“It’s not urgent,” he said, this awkward exchange starting to feel like the lesser of the two evils. “We’ll go together.”
They continued on, and now he prepared himself for the interaction. Would they ask for money—what would it be that they could want?
As they grew closer still, it became apparent they were more than drunk or stoned. Both of them had unhinged jaws, mouths hanging open; the one with the country cap and one shoe had saliva spilling from his lower lip and down his chin; the other one, the one with the skull on his shirt, his right hand—which had been dark from a distance, making him think of a golf glove—seemed darkened by drying blood. They were looking for trouble. Both of them. Probably got in a fight outside one of the island’s less family-oriented drinking establishments. The island surely had a seedier section, he imagined—a place where the locals might gather and complain about tourists, get too drunk, settle old grievances.
“You okay, Evie?”
“Coming,” she said, her voice low still, at least the frustration gone, sounding more enervated or resigned.
Could it be a mugging? He didn’t even think he had cash on him. No more than ten dollars. Who carried cash anymore? What were these kids going to do, roll him for his wallet? He’d just cancel the cards. He didn’t even have a cell phone. Neither did Evie.
As a heads up, letting them know he was aware, maybe not quite the doddering old man they might’ve thought from a distance, he called out in a confident tone: “Hey guys, what’s up?”
No response, still lumbering his way. But it wasn’t trouble they were looking for, now he thought. He was back to thinking they were stoned out of their minds. They looked at him and Evie dumbly, definitely heading toward them.
He walked ahead, putting a few paces between him and Evie, getting himself between her and them. Evie may be a bitter piece of old fruit, but he wouldn’t let harm come to her. Now he said to the approaching guys, “Long night, huh—you guys just coming home?”
The one with the country cap’s eyes rolled horse-like in their sockets, and he looked skyward for a moment, like his ears were growing accustomed to hearing sounds in a new way. Like he detected an old man’s voice, but couldn’t understand what language was, hearing those sounds in vowels and syllables and trying to piece together what it meant. With his face looking up, the guy stopped his path, drew a snorting inhale, and then let go a jittering exhale, chuffing then chittering—almost bug-like. Then he drew in no more breath.
But his skull-shirt friend continued on, walking an uneasy but straight line toward him and Evie, now the two parties just fifteen to twenty feet apart. He put himself forward, getting his left shoulder in the lead, his right drifting back, his hand ready to form a fist and swing a punch.
It had been roughly thirty years since the last time he’d thrown one—but there was something about these guys that was off and he knew this wasn’t going to end well.
As the distance closed from fifteen feet to ten, the guy with the skull on his T-shirt looked up dumbly, his pupils gray and blotted and unseeing, raising his hands as if he would hug him instead of harm him. It got Charles doing a two-step, looking to find balance, because now he was sure he was going to have to knock this kid down. But the kid did all the work for him, stumbling his way on the downgrade and tumbling forward, pitching face first into the grass at Charles’s feet. He jumped back, and Evie made a shrill sound behind him.
With his eyes still on this fallen idiot, he waved a hand behind to Evie, telling her to stay back.
What was weird was when the guy’d fallen he made no expulsion of air you’d expect. He’d fallen a few times himself, the same way: face down, arms out . . . and he would have grunted. But the guy just hit the dirt like heavy luggage.
“Hey,” he said to the other guy who was coming in now, “your friend here—what’s wrong with him? . . .”
But it was futile. This guy was coming his way looking to do the same thing, arms out like he wanted to hug or grapple clumsily. Now Charles stepped rearward, moving closer to Evie, hand out behind him, feeling Evie’s hand put fingers between his fingers.
“You guys just go on and fuck off,” he said, “go bother someone else . . . sleep it off under a bridge or something,” getting Evie behind him, putting himself in between the approaching hugger, sidestepping. The guy with the country cap didn’t care about his fallen friend at all, heading right his way now . . .
5
Christian
There’d been a chance at freedom and he’d squandered it. Just having to see with his own eyes—what made that noise, Christian? You knew, you knew . . . And, sure enough, it was what he suspected.
Now awash in overwhelming unreality, he found himself back to the very first flutters of this nightmare; naked, engaged hand-to-hand with an undead man looking to sink his teeth into flesh. Only now, given the horror revealed behind the curtain he’d parted, there was no doubt to the masseuse’s intention—and thusly no restraint to his own action.
As he reeled from the gruesome feast discovered in the spa’s storage room—stumbling back, wetting himself, spinning—he ran, colliding with the very man he’d originally fled. Now he was in the masseuse’s grip again, face-to-face. The man clutched him, arms encircling his naked but struggling body, the side of his neck, from jaw to shoulder, completely exposed and vulnerable to the man’s open, bloodied maw.
In that instant, as his body seized with the shock of some adrenal cocktail injecting his systems like nitrous, he was attuned to the vectors of his survival. Behind him, the spa’s waiting lounge; to his left, the door outside to the grounds of the inn; to the right, certain death at the bites of the elderly couple currently consuming the attendant; and behind the masseuse, the hallway leading to the private rooms, including the one that held his clothing, and most importantly, his phone.
Blood pumped through his veins like jet fuel and he roared, pupils dilated and narrowing fierce focus on the creature intent on killing him. Eating him. Nose smashed and pushed aside, upper lip torn, chin split; dark blood splashed his cheeks, dribbled from the line of his jaw. His mouth overflowed with a spate of scarlet as his teeth opened and clacked, lunging to sink into his throat. Christian’s hands grabbed fistfuls of the masseuse’s white cotton top, falling back with the zombie’s forward momentum, yanking him, twisting; they stumbled together a few steps in an awkward dance, getting between the couches, then Christian kicked his heels up and together they fell, Christian on top.
The lounge was small but bright, one wall, where the vestibule and entrance was, entirely glass, outside bright and sunny. Two opposing couches sitting on polished maple flooring, between them a low table with a circular sheet of glass sitting on a heavy, sawn yet intact tree trunk gleaming with polish. And that was where they landed. The two of them crashing on top of the glass top, tipping it, falling to the floor; the circle banged on its edge, sending a splitting crack through it but staying in one piece, and while Christian grabbed a hold of the masseuse’s lapels, his knees planted on either side of the man’s chest, the glass rolled in a grinding circle completely around the tree trunk three-hundred-and-sixty degrees before it toppled to the hard floor and burst in an explosion of shards.
He punched the masseuse in the mouth. Left then right, bringing his hands far behind him, thrashing fists in arcs. The man’s lips split and burst, no life in them to set them swelling, no heart to pump blood, blackish stew merely seeped from the open wounds. Punching him was futile; he was tiring himself, hurting his hands ...
The masseuse continued to hiss, his teeth gnashed and clacked; diseased nails scratched at Christian’s flesh, dragging down his chest and stomach, too well-manicured to tear his skin away. While his genitals had shrunken significantly, his bareness left him profoundly vulnerable. And the big man had surprising strength for someone who had died; his writhing came close to toppling Christian off of him. It provoked a panic the adrenalin couldn’t quash, and he got off the man’s chest, feet still bestride him, hunched over him, fending off the man’s grabbing hands held in claws.
With the palm of his hand pressed into the creature’s cold forehead, he pushed his face back and it exposed the man’s throat. The thoughts of a permanent solution came to him.
Around them, scattered in shimmering shards, lay strewn the jagged remains of the glass table top. He could picture slitting the man’s throat—knew he could do it; it was life and death for him, and could you really kill someone who had already died? But slitting the masseuse’s throat when he had no pulse of life would do nothing to stop him.
Now he had the man by the throat, his soft business man hands only tested for virility by the pull of the weekend lawnmower’s starter squeezed tighter than he predicted, fingertips closing tightly around the mans wide neck, feeling the Adam’s apple between his thumb and forefinger. Christian had heft, almost two-hundred pounds, and with his surprisingly satisfactory grip he leaned that weight to pin the man to the floor, other hand sweeping out to find something he’d spied.
Fingers tracing its edges, he got a grip on it, wielded it above the masseuse’s face. A shard of glass almost the exact size and shape of a frozen pizza slice. The curved crust the tempered and sanded edge of the coffee table glass, the point a nasty and uneven jag that he dipped now toward the man’s open eye. The zombie struggled and Christian rode the efforts, working a knee up to press into the masseuse’s shoulder. The man’s other hand however was still free, and it found the soft flesh of his waist and squeezed, trying to tear off a hunk.
Christian howled and lunged the blade of glass down. Their wrestling misdirected his aim and the point of the slice pressed down into his open mouth, his teeth squeaking and scraping on its surface. Though broken, his weapon was a sturdy half-inch thick, and he continued its forward path, angling it upward hoping to pierce the man’s brain stem. Teeth continued to clack on the glass as he sunk it deeper, a foul and ghoulish odor emitting, its hissing and rasping making wet sounds as the glass pierced its palette and black ooze filled its maw till it overflowed, running his cheeks in rivers. Something slithered along the glass’s face; the severed end of its tongue.
“Ah, fuck,” Christian moaned, but resumed his focus, angling the shard higher up into its skull, wrestling his elbow against the zombie’s grip on his love handle and heaving forward. There was a gushing crunch, and the base slipped deeply, the masseuse’s eyes rolling now in their sockets. The grip he had on his flesh released. He withdrew the glass with a grating wet sound and the man still groaned mildly, his body still seeking escape from under him.
“Die for good,” he breathed, worried that piercing its brain still wouldn’t stop it.
Its eyes fluttered and its head rocked from side to side, blood bubbling i
n its mouth; it clacked its teeth once more. He took the point of the glass and grimaced at what he would do; point wavering above one of its open eyes, he squinted and plunged. The sound was abrupt, wet, and slick. Something splashed up to his wrist and he tried to push away the image of the man’s eyeball bursting like a plump grape.
6
Stacy
While Lana Del Rey sung a sad and wonderful song in her headphones, Stacy watched as her Aunt April’s horse drifted nearer the back of the posse. Up front of the six-horse pack was Randy, the big burly Lavallée guy from the horse place, and Randy’s wife, Nessa, stayed mid-pack, keeping an eye on the younger riders, Becca and Tabby. Stacy hung back—way back—bringing up the rear.
Earbuds plucked from under her hair, she tucked them in with her phone in the pouch of her sweatshirt, figuring if April was dragging behind, she was coming in for a conversation. Sure enough, April slowed almost to a stop until their horses were side-by-side. April giddied her horse and kept pace with her.
April said, “How’s it going, kiddo?”
“Fine,” she said.
“You’re so quiet this trip.”
“I know.”
“How’s wrestling going?”
“Good.”
April looked away, looked up and down, both of them swaying on their horse’s backs, saying nothing for a long moment. They’d been on the trail fifteen minutes, clopping out of the village side streets, up a winding hill, and now heading into the heart of the island where it was quiet and wooded. Bright blue sky peeked in on them through the verdant canopy, sometimes bathing them for short stretches in sunshine strong enough to get her squinting.
April drifted closer again, saying, “So it’s going good? Wrestling, I mean? You’re looking pretty strong. I wouldn’t want to mess with you . . .”
The Walker Family Vacation (Episode 3) Page 2