Now the shaky hands began, and he wiggled his fingers while the Canadian boys circled the knocked-over war re-enactors, checking them out and laughing at them. The adrenalin had worn off and was replacing itself with feelings of guilt and anger and humiliation. Wooly got closer, and he said to Wooly: “Thanks a lot.”
Wooly looked to him. “For what?”
“For nothing,” he said.
Wooly shot him a hurt look, but now Craig was pushing Ambrose over onto his back with the toe of his sneaker. Ambrose went willingly, wanting to be on his back, hands beginning to claw at the air. Up close now, Craig could see the face of his sister’s tormentor—whatever that story was—and his young brow furrowed. His eyes narrowed and he studied Ambrose’s face. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Ambrose said nothing, putting one arm out to the side like he wanted to get up, getting down an elbow while the other hand reached toward Craig. Craig pushed him back with the toe of his shoe, saying, “Just stay down,” then studied Ambrose again. “You drunk?
Hunt and Wooly took a few tentative steps forward, and Hunt watched where Ambrose’s hand moved to clutch the inside of Craig’s leg just above his knee. It got Craig stepping back, kicking at Ambrose’s hand. “What the fuck are you doing?—Are you going after my balls, you old pervert?”
Steve and JoJo laughed, but some of the enthusiasm for the moment had faded. It was one thing to taunt these guys in old-timey costumes and make them come down, steal their hat, then stand over them . . . But the men’s nature was pathetic, and it took the fun out of it. Bullies always liked to see fight in their victims, and now since their prey were hapless and helpless, no one knew really what to do anymore. JoJo looked to Steve, Steve looked back to JoJo, then to Craig . . . “What do you think’s wrong with them?”
“They’re drunk,” Craig said. “Probably got themselves a still or something—That right, Ambrose? . . . Such a loser you can’t even buy alcohol, you gotta make it in your bathtub?”
JoJo said, “What’s going on with his mouth?”
Craig has seen it too, and now all three of the Canadian boys had blanker expressions—all the humor and meanness faded and replaced with mild concern.
Steve said, “Is he choking on something?”
Craig got nearer and stooped over, saying, “I can’t see, I don’t want to get too close case this fuck tries to touch my dick again.”
Wooly made to move another step forward, and Hunt took hold of his forearm. Wooly stopped.
Craig said now, “Ew, gross. There’s something black in his mouth.”
Steve: “Is he swallowing it or is he choking on it?”
JoJo: “Is it his tongue?”
Craig said, “Shit, Ambrose, are you having a seizure?”
Now Hunt and Wooly took one more step forward, and then craned their necks. Soft wet sounds clicked in Ambrose’s throat, and his jaw worked up and down. Something moved inside his mouth—but unlike his tongue, it seemed to slither. And it was black and shining wet . . .
12
Troy
He wasn’t going to fail. Not in front of Brit and not in front of her sister—not in front of two girls would he show he was a chump. He could do this . . .
The swing initiated from one toe then torqued through his hips, and the axe as an extension of his long arms on his six-foot-four frame came across like a scythe into the side of Julie’s face with a dull wet slap. The force of the collision vibrated in the shaft of the ax, up through his forearms. A lot less than what he’d expected, but then again, pretty Julie was a light young woman. Or had been. Whatever she was, now she was going to be deader than dead, because blackish blood exploded in his face, splashing his cheeks and his forehead and up against his squinted eyes. Her skull seemed to bend with the force as the ax’s blade sunk in just below her cheekbone, the hard frame of her skull seeming to go soft and curved to accept the metal blade. But then the blade was slicing through, his swing following an arc that sent Julie sideways.
The woman collapsed, screaming, her dead hands clawing at the air.
His legs went weak at the sight.
This once young woman who woke up this morning with a whole bunch of things she had to do, now dead and destroyed on someone’s lawn. Her head had been split open, but remained intact. Her teeth had been smashed, white lugs drenched in blood clung to her cheek and jaw. Her eyes had both popped out of her head. Globes of aqueous fluid dangling from their sockets, jiggling as the woman shrieked and writhed in the grass.
There was a wailing sound, a high-pitched duotone as he stood there frozen. It came to him that it was the two sisters.
“It’s okay,” he told them (though it wasn’t okay, why would he even say that?) And he glanced over his shoulder to see them screaming as frantically as the woman who’d taken the ax in the head. Beck clung to her sister, and Brit clutched her tight. Brit’s face was drawn in horror and he wondered why if they knew he was going to do something as awful as he’d done, why the fuck did they watch?
“I’m sorry,” he said to them, though it was to dead Julie he really had to apologize.
As he turned, he saw the young woman on the ground in horrible screeching pain, and he knew he had to finish the job now. “God, he told her, I’m so sorry . . .”
He sidestepped, keeping his distance, the contents of his stomach wanting to gush forward—but he wouldn’t do this woman the indignity of also vomiting on her.
“Sorry,” he told her again, “I had to do it,” shaking his head and wondering now why on earth this zombie would be screaming. What if he was wrong? What if he just killed somebody who could have been saved? Doubt crept back in as he stood over her body thrashing like a dying snake in the grass.
Ax held overhead like he was splitting wood for the winter, he wondered what it would take to save her if she wasn’t undead. Could they take her to a hospital? Was there an infirmary on the island? Could she survive the damage of his ax?—her face had been destroyed . . .
The bizarre request for hospital directions were on his lips, the strange impulse to ask Brit where they would take this woman if it was still possible to save her, when he was interrupted as the woman in the grass began to stiffen then jerk. The jerks came in short bursts, her hands turned to claws as she arched her back over and over, her legs kicking.
This was the end, the death throes.
That’s what he thought, before she began gulping, then making retching noises, too—wet hacking coughs like she sought just as he did to loose the contents of his stomach to provide some relief. Her mangled face contorted, that torn open orifice of a ruined mouth began working open and closed, and he saw the slug-like shape of her tongue undulating in that gory mass of ruined flesh. Black blood squirted from her mouth, the insides of her body beginning to lurch out.
Brit’s sister’s screams renewed, going higher in pitch and higher in terror, and he knew the feeling.
“What the fuck,” he said—if you killed a zombie he thought it would go down. You just kill the brain, and boom, you’re done. But Julie wasn’t done.
Brackish water sputtered from her throat, more teeth flitted from her mouth and landed in the grass. Then, what he thought had been the propulsion of black blood from her veins and arteries, became clearer to him: They were black threads. Not blood, but thin shiny tentacles—almost as thin as spaghetti, just as soft and pliable as cooked spaghetti, like squid ink spaghetti—flailing, thrashing . . . pushing back the top part of her head and coming straight up out of her body.
“Ho-ly shit,” he shouted, and jumped back.
Brit yelled at him: “The ax, the ax!”
And now it was like Brit had control of his body, because autonomously he leapt forward, took a woodcutting stance and brought the ax down on Julie’s neck. It took three tries, but he decapitated the woman.
It ended the screams. But it didn’t end the horror.
The top part of her mushy head lay askew in the grass. One of the eyeballs had fl
ung free and lay staring up at the sun. He’d severed those spaghetti tentacles, and they shimmied like skinny worms in the grass.
Now from her neck, coming up from the severed tube that would be her esophagus, more of those black worms appeared, spilling into daylight and wriggling in Brit’s ragged lawn . . .
The tentacles wove through the grass, squiggled downward like real earthworms burrowing into the dirt. They pulled taut, became straight lines that jiggled like black elastics from her neck hole into the unkempt lawn. Then they pulled tighter, and he swore he could hear them stretch and sing with tension. Now Julie’s body began to tug forward in the grass, severed neck first, her torso curling like an inchworm, and then her arms moving again, crawling to assist her body’s movement.
The spectacle was gruesome and terrifying; the ax fell from his hand, and his legs went to water. He collapsed to sit in the grass as Julie’s decapitated body now performed a clumsy and ugly headstand.
Her hands clutched at the grass so tight they made tearing sounds as the blades’ tugged from the earth. Her neck hole got sucked to the grass by the pull of the tentacles, her body went up, legs lazily hoisting up then curling over, trying to find her balance, doing a split, then lazily straightening.
Once balanced, this upside down creature—someone he’d thought was undead zombie—steadied itself . . .
His hand searched the grass, found the shaft of the ax and gripped it tight. He shimmied backward, scooting on his butt, eyes wide. The girls screamed behind him. He rose, hoisted the ax in a batter stance again, waiting to see where this new and horrifying development would lead . . .
Julie’s body bowed, knees bent, her legs hanging toward him bent like a scorpion’s tail.
“Get in the house,” he said, hoarse but strong. His body trembled with fear, but his muscles were tight and ready for action . . .
Afterword
I hope you enjoyed reading this episode as much as I enjoyed writing it!
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About the Author
Shane McRory lives on a haunted farm in the woods with a bunch of animals.
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The Walker Family Vacation (Episode 3) Page 5