The Hell Season

by Ray Wallace

  *

  I can recall the day that Robert came home from the hospital with almost perfect clarity. He had been born six weeks premature. Julia and I thought for sure that we were going to lose him in spite of what the doctors had told us. He was so small. Underdeveloped as he was, he was susceptible to any number of airborne infections and so had to spend his first few weeks inside the clear plastic walls of an incubator. When he finally emerged from this second womb and was allowed to come home with us, I remember thinking what a miracle modern medicine was and how we would have certainly lost our son without its seemingly divine intervention.

  That first night home I couldn’t sleep, not a wink. I pulled a chair into the spare bedroom that had been converted into a nursery and sat next to the crib where my son rested through all those long hours of darkness. On occasion, I would stand and lean down into the crib, lightly place my hand upon the chest of his tiny body, make sure that his heart still beat, that he still pulled breath into his lungs. Then I would sit back down in the chair, a book in hand, and try to pass the hours reading until morning finally came. A futile effort, it turned out, for I could not concentrate on the words and found myself repeatedly perusing the same paragraphs. Eventually the sun did rise and with the dawn some of my fears were allayed. My son had survived the night, surely the day would be easier. As I stood there staring down into the crib, I felt a hand alight upon my shoulder. I placed my own hand over it, felt the cold touch of the wedding band on one of the fingers, the ring that I had put there on what was undoubtedly one of the happiest days of my life.

  “Thomas, get some sleep,” my wife told me.

  Just then, Robert’s eyes opened and he looked up at me and a tiny smile crept onto his face. I smiled back, felt the tears well up in my eyes.

  “He’s going to be fine,” Julia told me. “Nothing’s going to happen to him. We won’t let it.”

  He grew into a fine and healthy boy. Our daughter, Jenny, a healthy young girl. But still I worried. Julia and I couldn’t always be there to protect them. What if something totally beyond our control happened to them? What if one of them was hit by a car or taken by some demented stranger in a moment when one of us wasn’t watching? All that silly, pointless worrying. I suppose it’s the kind of thing most parents go through. But as it turns out, I had a right to be worried. We all did. In all my imaginings, though, in all the awful scenarios that came to mind, what ended up happening was not something I had ever considered. How could I have, really? How could I?

  *

  With dawn the storm broke. For Thomas it had been a restless night. He had tried to get some sleep but, not surprisingly, his mind had refused to shut down, just kept churning away at the same unanswerable questions, the same futile suppositions. At first, when he stepped outside for a breath of morning air which was heavy with humidity and the scents of the recently departed storm, he thought his fatigue was clouding his senses, that his eyes must be deceiving him. But he was all too aware of what sort of world he now lived in, of the endlessly strange possibilities it presented.

  The sky was red. Blood red. The sun a raw, burning wound in the heavens.

  “My God. What now?” he heard himself say.

  Then someone else: “I don’t think God has anything to do with it.”

  He turned and looked at the person who had spoken, saw that it was a woman maybe ten or fifteen years his senior. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, the beginnings of crow’s feet visible at the corners of her green eyes. Her nose was thin and long between slightly sunken cheeks, the latter feature no doubt a result of her recent suffering from the plague that had laid Thomas and so many of the others low. She met Thomas’s look with a piercing gaze which held him enthralled for a few moments. He had a strange feeling that she was staring down into his soul, was able to read exactly what sort of person he was there, the triumphs and failures he’d experienced throughout the years, the many fears that had controlled so much of his existence. It was a rather unnerving feeling, to say the least. He’d seen her on any number of occasions over the past weeks but had never formally introduced himself. There had always been something about her that had prompted him to turn away, to find some other pressing piece of business when she was near. Something in the way she looked at people, too directly, too closely.

  “Patricia Beaumont, by the way,” she said and offered him her hand.

  It seemed there would be no escaping this encounter.

  “Thomas Wright,” he said after clearing his throat. As he took her hand he noticed what she held in the other one: a Bible. He certainly hoped that she wasn’t here to preach to him or, worse yet, save the soul he imagined she could read as easily as the holy book she had with her. After they’d released hands she held the book up before her chest, the words “Holy Bible” facing him.

  “You know it’s all within these pages,” she said. “Well, maybe not all of it, but the important stuff. Are you a believer?”

  “Not really,” said Thomas, seeing no reason not to be honest with the woman. “Religion never appealed to me. It always seemed so… unnecessary.”

  “What a strange thing to say.” The look on Patricia’s face let Thomas know that she really was quite perplexed by his response. “Even before all this—“ She waved a hand around, trying to signify everything surrounding them. “—I would have thought it rather obvious that the words of the Good Lord were more necessary in recent years than at any other time in history.”

  Was he really going to have this conversation with this woman, right here, right now, beneath that blood red sky? He was surprised to discover it was exactly what he intended to do. There was something compelling about her, something about those eyes, the way she looked at him with such conviction… He wanted to hear what she had to say. Maybe she did have the answers. How wonderful that would be. To have an explanation for everything that was going on. To have his mind set at ease. To sleep through the night again. To have hope, real hope, of being reunited with his family…

  Patricia was thumbing through her Bible, stopped when she found the page she wanted. “Ah, here we go,” she said.

  And that’s when the great worm growled.

  It was a low pitched, deafening sound, like a foghorn amplified tenfold. Everyone present clapped their hands over their ears—including Patricia who, without thinking, let the book she held fall to the ground—and turned in the direction of the sound. The worm was thrashing about, its movements felt in the ground beneath Thomas’s feet. The sound went on and on, a punishing wave that rolled through Thomas’s body, set the bones within his skin vibrating, threatened to alter the rhythm of his heart. As everyone watched, the pinkish-gray flesh along the side of the beast ruptured and a gush of murky fluids poured forth onto the street where the creature lay. Its convulsions escalated as did the force of its cry. When Thomas pulled in a shuddering breath he inhaled the stench that had escaped the worm along with the liquid which was quickly drying into a thick paste covering the black surface of the road. Finally, the roaring of the monster subsided as did its thrashing movements until it lay still and silent, its massive bulk deflated like a hot air balloon left to cool and wither.

  As Thomas pulled his hands away from his ears he realized what must have occurred, a theory confirmed by the sight of the squirming, humanoid figures struggling to free themselves from the viscous substance that held them—for the moment, it seemed—to the street like so many insects stuck to a piece of flypaper.

  “It’s given birth,” he muttered, making an effort to breathe in through his mouth so as not to be overwhelmed by the foul odor of the dead beast.

  “Yes, I’m afraid it has,” said Patricia from where she stood beside him.

  Then someone shouted, “Out of the way!” and pushed past Thomas before running across the parking lot, toward the street where the worm’s demonic offspring were attempting to rise to their feet. It was Ron. Thomas took off running after him, filled with concern for what the o
ther man might be planning. Between the parking lot and the road was a stretch of grass where Ron stopped, Thomas coming up next to him. The two of them stood near the roadside mere feet from the curb against which the thick substance from inside the worm had pooled. The demonic figures were maybe ten yards away. They were doing a strange flickering thing, becoming momentarily invisible before reappearing again. It was a disorienting effect, like watching somebody move through a pitch black room where a randomly timed strobe light had been activated. A few of the creatures were on their knees now, the rest in sitting positions, struggling to rise. It was clear that they would all be standing within the next few minutes. Then they would be walking. And after that? Thomas felt a sickness rise inside of him at the very thought of it.

  Down here, this close to the giant corpse, the stench was nearly overwhelming. Cupping a hand over the lower half of his face, Thomas asked Ron in a muffled voice, “What are you going to do?”

  Ron didn’t say anything, showed Thomas the handgun he was holding, took aim at one of the creatures nearest them and squeezed off a shot. The demon, which had nearly risen to a standing position, disappeared for a fraction of a second just as Ron fired. When it reappeared it seemed to be unharmed in anyway. The next shot was equally ineffective. Same with the one after that. As Thomas watched, the hellish creature opened its mouth, revealed rows of long, pointed teeth and a black, barbed tongue which it used to lick the air like a snake before emitting a rough, barking sound. The noise was echoed by its twelve brethren.

  Laughter, Thomas realized. They’re laughing at him.

  Ron let loose with a cry of rage and fired off round after round. When the clip was empty, all those bullets having done nothing to harm the demons at all, he reached into a pocket of his camouflage pants and pulled out another, reloaded and began firing off more shots. The demons kept laughing and flickering as they all reached standing positions, started their slow, inexorable march toward the two men waiting in the grass and the ineffective weapon one of them so angrily wielded. How many shots were fired? Thomas wasn’t sure. Twenty? Thirty? When Ron went to reload again, Thomas placed a hand on his arm and said, “We’ve got to go. Now.”

  Ron turned and looked at him. “Go?” he asked. “Go where?” His eyes were wide and crazed. “You go. I’ll do what I can to hold them back.”

  “No way. Come on!” Thomas pulled on the other man’s arm but Ron just shrugged him off, finished reloading, and started firing again.

  “Get the fuck out of here, man!” he yelled.

  Reluctantly, Thomas complied.

  He turned and jogged back toward the parking lot. The gunshots and the laughter continued. Then there was a shriek, a human cry of pain. Not wanting to but knowing that he had no choice in the matter, Thomas looked back over his shoulder to see what was happening to his friend. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

  Once free of the viscous substance the demons must have moved faster than Ron was anticipating. Already, three of them were on him, tearing at his clothes and flesh with their long, wicked looking claws and teeth. They weren’t flickering now, were solidly entrenched in this reality for the moment. The screaming didn’t last long. With a quick motion, one of the creatures ripped out Ron’s throat. And that, as they say, was that.

  Turning back toward the store at the far side of the lot, Thomas ran for all he was worth. With every step he feared he might be taken down and mauled like his friend had been. The front of the store seemed so far away and his feet felt as though they were moving in nightmare-speed, much too slow to ever carry him away from harm. He ran past the cars parked randomly in the lot and finally approached the store’s entrance.

  “Get inside!” he shouted at those standing there, increasingly surprised with every passing moment that he was still alive. As the doors were pulled open and the people began to file into the store, Thomas looked back once again, wondering why the demons had not taken him down. They had not given chase. All thirteen of them were still over by the grassy area where Ron had been killed, their backs to the Wal-Mart and the people there as if none of it interested them very much. Despite the horror and anger and sadness he felt at his friend’s death, Thomas was curious as to what held their attention.

  Once everyone else had passed through the entranceway, Thomas let himself in then went over toward the sporting goods section. After a few minutes he returned to the front of the store, stood just outside the doors, lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes and trained them on the crowd of demons. The creatures were slowly walking through the worm’s drying fluids, back to the deflated carcass of the worm itself, the place from which they had so recently emerged.

  “What the hell?” muttered Thomas.

  When the demons reached the desiccated corpse, they began tearing at its thick hide as if searching for something hidden within.

  “What are they doing?” It was Patricia who had spoken from beside him, eyes wide with alarm, her Bible held tightly to her chest.

  Thomas said nothing and went back to watching the demons. They were working at removing the spine from the worm’s fleshy confines. After they had freed a long section of it—a good sixty or seventy feet, Thomas figured—they began unraveling the ropy, intestine-like organ wrapped around it. Then it was broken into smaller sections about five feet in length, repeatedly bent and twisted until it eventually separated between two vertebrae. When each demon had its own piece of the spine, they all knelt down and rolled the lengths of bone in the thick, tarry substance that coated the road.

  Enlightenment dawned on Thomas. “I think they’re making weapons.”

  When they were done with this process, the demons slowly crossed over toward the grassy area at the edge of the parking lot once more and stood there staring in Thomas’s direction. He looked back, the binoculars pressed to his face. There the demons stood for a long while, the sound of their guttural laughter drifting across the still, hot air of the lot accompanied by an occasional, grating howl.

  “What are they waiting for?” asked Patricia after several minutes had passed.

  By then, Thomas had seen enough. He lowered the binoculars and looked at her and said, “Your guess is as good as mine.” Then he led Patricia back into the building trying to figure out what he should do, what he could do. He felt lost without Ron there, was caught a little bit off guard by how much he had come to rely on his friend’s decisiveness and leadership. He went in search of Gerald and Dana and Tanya. Tanya, he thought with a sinking feeling. He could only imagine what she was feeling right now.

  More than likely Ron will be back, he found himself thinking. Whether or not the idea pleased him he wasn’t sure.

  He needed to have his friends—or the closest things he had to them in this strange new world—around him. He needed their support and their advice. And hopefully, with their aid, he might be able to come up with some course of action. Because right now he had nothing. Should they stay? Barricade themselves in and hope that they could keep this new threat at bay? It seemed like a dubious strategy at best. Or should they go, just like Ron had wanted them to? Should they just grab what supplies they could and head out one of the building’s back exits, hope that the demons remained unaware of their departure until they were away? But where would they go? Where could they hide? One of the other stores he and Ron had recently scouted? Eventually, inevitably, they would be discovered. There was only so far they could go; the invisible barricade surrounding the town saw to that. But staying would be worse, wouldn’t it?

  His head spinning, he made his way over toward the area where the previously comatose patients had been cared for, were still mostly being cared for by Angie and her helpers who gave so freely of their time, doing what they could to nurse those in need back to health. That’s where he found them, the people he needed right then: Gerald, Dana, and Tanya, standing there in silence, Dana with her arm around Tanya’s shoulders, obviously comforting her.

  “She saw?” asked Thomas.

  Gerald pu
rsed his lips and nodded his head. “We all did. A terrible thing. But as I was only just reminding Tanya, death is not necessarily the end anymore.”

  Thomas gave Dana a look prompting her to lead Tanya a short distance away. Satisfied that the women were out of earshot, he told Gerald, “We have to get out of here.”

  “Oh?” The look on Gerald’s face seemed to be one of genuine surprise. “Where do you suggest we go?”

  “I… I’m not sure. I was hoping you might be able to help me with that. Somewhere more easily defended. The police station, maybe.”

  “And why would we want to do that?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? To prevent those… things… outside from doing to us what they did to Ron.”

  “They did Ron a favor.”

  Thomas could only stare at Gerald in mute astonishment.

  “As I tried to explain to Tanya… Now he can be reborn. Now he can be remade, his body fresh and whole, as full of life as the day he first came into the world. Now he can live forever.”

  “Forever?”

  “Yes. Why else were we brought back? Why were we made young again? The other night it was made clear to me. I saw it all in a dream. Not only were we healed, made whole again, we were immortalized. It’s all part of the plan. The world, so full of sin… It needed remade. A fresh start was in order. So here we are. The chosen. Given new bodies, new flesh. Never growing old. The perfect humans. The inheritors of the Earth. We will repopulate the planet, design it as we see fit. It will be a wonderful, glorious place, an everlasting paradise, a return to the Garden of Eden.” The smile on Gerald’s face was beginning to worry Thomas.

  “And the bloodstorm? The swarm of insects? The snakes? The worm and the demons? What of all that?”