by Bryn Roar
“Where’s Joel?” Josie again demanded to know.
Black eyes blinked heavily in response, the haggard face twisting into what looked like a wondering frown. A slow dribble of froth leaked from her lips, adding to the layers of spittle and blood already coating the kitchen floor.
Confused, the Rabid gurgled:“J-J-Joel?”
Shayna wobbled two feet towards them, and Bud’s finger tightened a little on the trigger of his 12 gauge. He’d known this lady most of his life; at one time he’d even had a crush on the sexy older woman; but this thing standing before him was totally alien to his recall. Just like the wild creature on board the Betty Anne. Again, he wondered if there was more at work here than just the virus.
Bud couldn’t help despairing that anything short of God’s intervention could save his father from such a wicked construction. If only I believed in God, then maybe that would bring me some measure of hope…
Josie, seeing his finger whiten on the trigger, laid her hand on top of the barrel, gently pushing it to the floor. “I need to know what happened to Joel,” she said, looking Bud forcefully in the eye.
“In the pot-pot-pot,” Shayna cackled juicily. She snickered like a naughty little girl holding up her skirt for all the curious boys to see.
Josie spit savagely on her mother, to get her attention: “Tell me where Joel is, or so help me I’ll—”
Nothing could have prepared Josie for what her mother did next. Without the slightest hesitation, Shayna plunged the long kitchen knife into her vagina, thrusting it all the way up to its hilt. In an instant, the blade became a whickering blur in Shayna’s pistoning hand, unleashing a shower of rusty gore between her splayed legs.
Behind Josie, Rusty sprayed the rising tide of blood on the floor with a torrent of hot vomit.
“STOP THAT, MOM!” Josie shrieked.
She tried to run to her mother, but Bud caught her this time. It was a good thing he did. Shayna whipped the knife from between her legs, like a street hood pulling out a switchblade in a rumble, the wet blade whisking inches from her daughter’s stunned face.
Above them the black cat worked double-time. Like a time bomb speeding up, right before it blows.
Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…
“Oh god,” Rusty moaned, over and over again. “Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.”
The situation was hopeless and growing more so with each passing second. Bud knew he had to get Josie out of there. Shayna was beyond reach or reason. A demon possessed of incarnate hate. He had also seen what was on the chopping block behind Shayna, and he wanted to get Josie out of there before she realized what it was, too.
Now Rusty was gibbering like an idiot, his attention and Maglite focused on the kitchen sink’s contents.
“Rusty, help me get her out of here!”
Josie struggled to get away. “TELL ME WHERE JOEL IS, YOU FECKIN’ WITCH! GET YOUR DAMN HANDS OFF ME, BUD! LET GO, YA BASTARD!!!”
Shayna resumed masturbating with the knife. Her other hand went to her large breasts, pulling roughly on her distended nipples.“If you let your boyfriends fuck me,”she croaked in a singsong voice,“then maybe I’ll show yoouu!”
It made the hair on Bud’s arms stand on end. Blood continued to gush from between her legs. He wondered how much longer Shayna O’Hara could stand there before she dropped dead from the loss.
It would be a blessing for all concerned.
“Rusty, did you hear what I said?!” he shouted into his friend’s ear. Gnat didn’t even blink, just kept staring at the overripe contents in the sink.
Bud glanced over at the skull, the shock loosening his grip on Josie. Oh no…No…Not that…
Josie saw it too. Her despair, it filled the night...
*******
Tubby’s eyes shot open. Something had startled him out of a deep and dreamless sleep. He was shocked to find himself in the backseat of an unfamiliar car. A car, which by the sound of it, was idling. Then he remembered Josie helping him into the back seat, right before he’d nodded off.
Josie! Where’s Josie?
He sat bolt upright, his heart hammering inside his chest. What on earth could have scared him awake, so suddenly and so completely? A second wail coming from inside the O’Hara cottage, across from the idling auto provided the answer. In a day where he’d seen much death and destruction, that lamentation frightened him as much as anything else had before. It contained so much anguish it filled his soul with misery. The kind of nightmarish wails he imagined the pits of Hell resounded with evermore.
Tubby gripped the back of the seat, staring at the open front door; that black rectangle of mystery, wondering what he should do. Stay where he was, with the shadows of night all about him, alone in the strange car; or go into the house, where the screams still endured. Where his friends, no doubt, were suffering some fresh new hell. There was Evil in that house; of that there was no doubt.
Of all the places on earth, that was the one place he’d least like to go. And yet go there, he must…
*******
The gleaming skull, sitting atop a jumble of bones and half-eaten flesh in the sink, looked as if a large animal had been gnawing at it. The once gorgeous green eyes had days ago been plucked from their sockets. Save for the hair and scalp, little flesh remained on the gouged and chewed upon bone. The bushy red hair was the give-away. The familiar O’Hara coif, which had caused Josie to scream out in such agony. Flies crawled fat and lazy over Joel’s sad remains. Newly hatched maggots worked away at the shreds of remaining tissue. The sink and countertop were alive with them, the surface seeming to undulate and move.
Josie’s eyes flew to the vile beast that had killed her little brother—that’s when she saw what Shayna O’Hara had really been slicing and dicing, preparing for supper. Those weren’t carrots scattered across the cutting board. They were little freckled fingers and toes. Six in all.
Josie imagined that the rest were in the pot-pot-pot.
“SHREE-HEE-HEE!” Shayna cackled insanely.
“RUSTY, GET JOE OUT OF HERE!” Bud roared.
But Rusty Huggins had seen one horror too many that day. His mind couldn’t wrap around the notion that the bits and pieces in the kitchen sink once made up a spunky little kid named Joel Samuel O’Hara. No! Couldn’t be! Why, just the other day he was cheating at cards!
He heard the far away echo of his best friend’s screams...Bud’s pleas for him to snap out of it…but he just couldn’t tear his mind from the contents in that sink…
Josie fought Bud like a wildcat as he struggled to shepherd both her and Rusty out of the kitchen. He slipped in Rusty’s vomit, and as he fell, he lost his grip on Josie.
With dawning horror, he realized she was going to throw herself at the demon. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. “NO, JOSIE! NO!”
It was the berth on the Betty Anne all over again. Only this time, Josie was the one who was going to die.
Above them, the black cat’s second hand went triple time. The smile on its painted face appearing to grow, its feral eyes widening, the clock coming to life…
Tick!!!Tick!!!Tick!!!Tick!!!Tick!!!
Regaining his feet, Bud aimed the 12 gauge at Shayna, but Josie was in the way now.
The old witch shrieked in delight, holding her arms out to collect her charging daughter...
Suddenly a fat shadow burst out of the living room behind Bud! He watched in disbelief as Ralph Tolson tackled Josie to the floor, rolling with her underneath the kitchen table, where the linoleum was relatively clean.
Josie O’Hara let fly with the expletives, but Tubby paid them and her pounding fists no mind. “Kill it, Bud!” he implored his friend. “KILL IT NOW!”
Shayna fell to her scabby knees and whipped her knife blindly back and forth. It clattered against one of the table’s steel legs, inches from Tubby’s bowed head.
“She’s mine!” the demon raged. “Get your own heifer to fuck,
fat boy! This sow belongs to meeeeeeeeeeee!!!!”
Bud walked over to it and laid the barrel on top of its writhing skull. “Turn away,” he instructed Tubby and Josie. A pull of the trigger and the dirty deed was done.
As if its battery was running down, the clock above them slowed perceptibly. Its inner workings groaned. And that smile on its face? That was just a trick of the light…right? Bud spat on the floor, looked up at the fucking black cat, reloaded, and blew it to kingdomcome.
*******
After leading his friends down to the crescent shaped cove below the lighthouse, Bud turned to Rusty. The poor kid was still rattled, damn near catatonic. “Gnat?”
Rusty blinked repeatedly, staring up into the pale face of his big friend. Josie had collapsed on the sand at his feet, sobbing her heart out. It seemed they were all taking turns grieving, on this long and livid night. Whose turn would it be next? “Y-yeah, Bud?”
“I need you to get your shit together, man.” Tubby stood behind Bud; his eyes alight with fear. He kept touching the bump on his forehead. “Tubby and I are going back for my dad. Maybe get a few things from your house. I need you to take care of Joe. Can you handle that?”
Rusty took a deep breath and nodded, shaking off the awful images in his mind. He lifted Josie’s head from the sand and laid it gently on his lap. The beacon from the lighthouse washed over them in five-second intervals. The bright light and the close proximity of the crashing surf made him feel safer than he had all night. He felt his mind get right. The world had changed and there wasn’t a doggone thing he could do about it but get used to it. “It is what it is,” he said to the blood red moon above him.
*******
Bud opened the trunk of the Plymouth and stared down at what looked like a dead man. Bill’s face was gray and slack. Totally bloodless. His eyes closed. “Dad? DAD!!”
Despite the plaintive cry, Bilbo’s eyes remained shut. Tubby placed a hand on Bud’s shoulder. He lifted his flashlight and shined it directly on Bill’s face.
At last, his eyelids fluttered. Bill held his hand over his eyes and peered out from between his fingers. “Bud? That you, son?” he said, weakly.
“Yeah, Pop. It’s me,” Bud sighed. “Tubby’s going to take you down to the cove. Get you set up for the night. ”
He tried to help his father out of the trunk but Bill shooed him away. There was a makeshift bandage on his injured hand, dark with blood. It seemed to have staunched the once steady flow.
Bill swayed there on his feet. “Aren’t you coming with us, Buddy boy?”
“Not yet, Dad. I’m going to fetch us a few things first to get us through the night.”
Bill slammed shut the trunk. “No,” he said, leaning against the car for support.
Bud glanced over at Tubby, then back to his dad. “What do you mean: No?”
“You heard me, boy. I’m already infected. They won’t bother me now.”
“You don’t know that,” Bud said.
Seeing it was just the three of them, Bill spun around, looking for the others, nearly falling over from the effort. “Where is everybody? Josie and Rusty? Garfield and Mr. Pete? Where are they, Bud?”
Bud wasn’t ready to tell his dad the truth just yet. “Down there,” he said, pointing down at the beach. “They’re on the cove.” He looked at Tubby. “Go ahead. Take him—”
“Ralph’s not taking me anywhere,” Bill shot back. “Now before you boys shag your asses down to the cove, what is it you were looking to collect from the cabin?”
Bud gave him a list and watched his old man limp towards the cabin. “I don’t care what he says, Tubs. Let’s stand watch until he comes out of there.”
“Gee whiz, Bud. Won’t he be mad?”
“What’s he gonna do, ground me?”
*******
Rusty kept looking up towards the bluff, where the O’Hara cottage stood crouched underneath the lighthouse’s looming shadow. He’d convinced himself that the thing in the O’Hara kitchen was coming after him. Like something out of his EC comic books. He imagined Shayna crawling down the Crater Cove trail, half her head gone, the butcher blade still shoved up her bloody cooze. The light and the nearby surf couldn't frighten away something that far gone.
Something that evil wouldn’t have any fears at all!
Except maybe of God.
Where are they? He wondered of his friends. It shouldn’t take this long to get a few odds and ends.
He looked down at Josie, assuming by her silence that she’d fallen asleep. Her eyes were open, though. Staring at a light, far off shore. Feeling foolish and fraternal at the same time, he clumsily stroked her hair, humming the same Irish lullaby she’d cooed in his ear earlier that evening. Josie’s voice startled him.
“Do you suppose that’s the Coast Guard out there, still keeping tabs on us?”
“I guess they’re the same ships. Is it true what y’all said earlier—that they won’t let anybody off the island?”
Josie lifted herself off Rusty’s lap and scootched beside him on the sand. “Afraid so. They’ve quarantined Moon, it seems…whether we’re infected or not.”
“I wonder if they’ll ever let us leave.”
“Of course they will,” she said. “Once the crisis has passed, they’ll have no choice but to let us go.”
“If they do, there’s gonna be a helluva shitstorm. Once it becomes public knowledge of what went on here, and the government’s complicity, they’ll have a lot to answer for. Heads will roll like never before. I wonder if the powers that be will allow such a thing to happen.”
“Right now, love, I just couldn’t care less.”
Rusty nodded. It was hard to worry about something like that, so far off in the future. Right now, their only concern was in getting through this interminable night. And more importantly, the safe return of their friends.
“What do you suppose is taking them so long?” Josie said, drying her face on his sleeve.
“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking the same—”
“Shhh! Someone’s coming!”
“Why aren’t they using the Maglite?” Rusty whispered, ready to turn on the more powerful flashlight Bud had left behind. Josie stilled his hand.
“Josie? Rusty?” a husky voice called out softly in the darkness. “Where the hell are you guys?”
The sweeping beam from the lighthouse washed over Bud and Tubby, illuminating Bilbo Brown, who was held up between them, the trio slowly making their way down the beach. Tubby and Bud had their free hands full of things they’d collected from Rusty’s house. Josie got up and went over to help with the load.
“Why didn’t you use the Maglite?” Rusty asked.
Bud gestured over at Tubby, who was grinning sheepishly. “Cause the hammer of Thor, over here, smashed it on top of some dillhole’s head.”
Bill laughed weakly as they helped him down to the sand. “You should’ve seen it, Short Round. One of those Rabids came at us from behind a sand dune, and Ralphie made like Babe Ruth and hit for the fences. Right on the ‘ol sweet spot, eh, Ralphie boy?”