Suckers

by Z. Rider

  Buddy’s eyes stayed right on him.

  “It’s just a headache,” Dan said. “People get headaches.” Especially when their muscles were tensed up and they had a litany of curses going through their head, all ending with the word “Jamie.”

  He let himself out the front door and breathed deeply. Crisp clumps of snow clung to the dead grass in the yard. The concrete steps were chilly, and he sat on them, hugging his knees. Watching the road. Checking the position of the sun in the sky.

  The door opened behind him.

  “Don’t mean to disturb,” Rich said.

  “It’s okay. I’m just anxious.”

  “They don’t have a lot of time to beat the dark, do they?”

  Dan shook his head.

  “I thought maybe you could show me the fishing gear. It’d be better than dragging you out of bed at the crack of dawn.”

  “Sure.” He patted his pockets, found his keys.

  When he swung open the barn doors, it hurt to see their equipment, the gear they hadn’t taken to Sound Block sitting in shadows, layered with dust.

  “Better stand back,” Rich said. “In case one of those things is taking a nap in there.”

  “Light switch is just inside the door.”

  The bulb snapped on. Nothing stirred.

  “It’s probably in the back.” Dan came in, brushing a speaker cabinet with his fingertips. They should move some of this to the garage. The acoustics sucked, but it’d be fun to play plugged in again. Maybe tomorrow, when it was light out long enough to do it.

  Dry paper sounded, like pages turning, and Dan’s first thought was that Rich was flipping through the fly-fishing book again.

  It came faster.

  “Down,” Rich said, his hand slamming between Dan’s shoulders.

  Rich’s weight knocked him into a wheelbarrow. The two of them stumbled over it together. Dan grabbed for the rough wooden wall to catch himself. His palm caught a nail, skin tearing open.

  The wings—the sound they made as the thing flapped through the barn—turned him cold from the inside.

  Rich’s body on his back made it hard to breathe. Saliva flooded his mouth. He brought his bloody hand under his shoulder, protecting it from Rich, remembering what it felt like to smell blood.

  Wings flapped, frantic, the parasite’s fat body bumping the walls like a moth trying to get out a window.

  He clenched his hand into a fist, hiding the tear in his skin like a secret, and dug his forehead against the floorboards. All of this going wrong—at home. A hard noise broke from his chest as he thought of Ray—God knew what was happening to him. God knew what was happening to any of them.

  The weight came off. Rich dragged him to his feet by the back of his collar. “Get to the house.”

  He aimed himself toward the doors, his boots slipping on the floor, his hand still curled in a fist, held against his stomach. He stumbled when he made it to the dirt, caught himself, kept going. Rich wasn’t following. He spun, stepping backward fast, heart pounding. “What about you?”

  “After I get the rod and tackle and lock this place back up.”

  He slowed, clutching his injured hand.

  “Go on, I’ll be fine. What’s the worst that can happen? I get another set of eggs laid in me? Big whoop! Get the hell out of here.”

  Dan hauled himself around and jogged to the house.

  Jesus. Jesus Jesus Jesus.

  He yanked the door open. When he got to the top of the stairs, Sarah was setting plates on the table. She glanced over her shoulder. “Where’s Dad?” Then she looked again. The plate in her hand crashed to the floor.

  † † †

  “I’m fine. I just cut it on a nail,” he said as his mom dragged him to the sink by his wrist.

  “How could you leave him out there?” Sarah said. She stuffed her foot in a boot.

  The front door swept open.

  “Dad!”

  “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” He came up the steps with two fishing rods and a plastic tackle box. “It didn’t bother with me. It was too busy trying to get out of the sunlight we’d let in.”

  “What happened to it?” Buddy said.

  “It found its way up to the loft, where I guess it found a dark corner to hide in.”

  “Well fuck. Let’s go kill it then.”

  “You stay right here,” Sarah said, adding in a sharp whisper, “And watch your language.” Jane sat on a chair, out of the way of where the plate had broken, walking the one-eared bunny bread across her placemat. Humming to herself.

  Dan’s mom sat him at the table and went to find a bandage. Rich, he noticed, had a hard time not looking at the blood that seeped through the paper towel. Dan clasped his other hand over it, but he knew the scent lingered, knew it cut right through the stewing beans and baking bread and woke things inside of Rich.

  Rich said, “I think I’ll go upstairs for a bit. See what we’ve got in this box.” He brandished the tackle box as he turned away.

  “Can I come?” Jane asked.

  “Not this time, honey.” He stiff-legged it out of the room.

  “How’d it get in the barn?” Buddy wanted to know. “We’ve gotta tighten this place up. How are the attic vents?”

  “There’s a screen over them,” Dan said.

  “That might not be good enough. Where else can they get through? We need to do a walk-through of this whole damned house. Sorry, Faye—I’m not saying anything against your house. They’re all like that.”

  “All houses have their crannies and crevices,” she said, “and I probably know where most of this one’s are.” She handed the bandages and antiseptic off to Sarah. “I’ll come with you.”

  Dan put his elbow on the table and leaned his eyes against the heel of his hand, the one that wasn’t injured. He clenched his teeth when Sarah splashed the gouge with alcohol, but didn’t mind the pain. It took some of the ache out of the rest of the situation: bat things in the barn, Ray who-the-fuck-knew where.

  His phone rang as she wrapped his hand. He dug it from his pocket. “Jesus, where are you?”

  “Still in Manchester. Jamie wasn’t at the address he gave me.”

  “So come the fuck back.”

  “I’ve got another place I’m gonna try.”

  Goddamnit. “One place. One place, and then get the fuck back here.”

  † † †

  Darkness crept from the trees, reaching like fingers across the driveway. Dan stepped back to let Buddy set the boards against the windows.

  He pulled his phone out and tried Ray again. It rang and rang and went to voicemail. Again.

  He sat on the couch and put his face in his hands.

  After a while, his mom sat next to him, rubbing his back. He silently thanked her for not going on about how it was going to be all right, how Ray was smart and if he had to, he’d hunker down till morning. He was and he would—Dan just hoped nothing happened to him in the meantime.

  He pulled his phone out to check the time, not that the numbers mattered anymore. It was how the sky looked beyond the boards, that’s all that counted.

  “I’m going to feed Jane,” Sarah said.

  Faye nodded.

  Buddy, fresh from a shower, took a seat. “He’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah.”

  From the kitchen came, “I’m tired of beans. Can we have noodles tomorrow? Not with beans!”

  The mantel clock ticked.

  Dan’s chest tightened. The bottoms of his feet itched. He got up, got moving. Needed to burn off a little nervous energy. Halfway down the hall, he dragged out his phone again.

  And got the familiar fast-busy signal of the network not being able to keep up.

  He ended the call and kept trying, but even when it rang, no one picked up. The first time, he hung up as soon as Ray’s voicemail answered. The second time, he let it play for a second. By the fifth time, he put his head against the wall, closed his eyes, and listened to Ray’s voice telling him his phon
e was probably in the other room, buried under a pile of stuff, and he’d return your call as soon as he found it again.

  Ray sounding normal.

  The world sounding normal, if only for twenty seconds.

  “Maybe we should eat, honey,” his mom said from the mouth of the hall. “We can save plates for them.”

  He doubted anyone was all that hungry—for beans and bread again—but it was part of the routine, something to look forward to through the long day. All of them sitting down together for a meal.

  Ray’s empty chair stood out like a casket in the kitchen. They passed the breadbasket in front of it.

  It was a physical manifestation of the hole eating through Dan. Buddy went to work every day, came back fine. Faye still insisted on going in three days a week for a couple hours, just to keep what little there was to do going, though he suspected it was more to get out of the house. She came back fine. But Buddy and Faye didn’t have Jamie in the equation. And they weren’t as hell-fucking-bent on saving people from themselves as Ray. Not being able to save his mother had given him a lifetime complex that annoyed Dan on the best days, and right now it scared the shit out of him.

  He told himself to relax, that Ray was smart, that he wouldn’t take chances if he didn’t have to.

  Which only made it worse: Ray was smart. He’d have come home by now, if he could.

  He couldn’t stop picturing some infected lumbering after Ray, dragging him out of his car—leaving him bloody in the street.

  “Excuse me.” He pushed his chair back, taking his plate to the counter to wrap it and put it in the fridge. He unplugged the radio in the living room and carried it to his room, knocking the door closed behind him with his heel.

  He turned the volume low, so Jane wouldn’t hear what it had to say, and so he could listen over it—for the sound of tires on gravel, the rumble of an engine. He tuned to a Manchester station, hoping for a news report.

  Ad buyers weren’t showing up for work, advertising funds weren’t getting released, and in the hour he lay on his back on the bed, keenly aware of the empty mattress on the floor that might now never be used, he didn’t hear a single commercial. Instead, the music was cut every fifteen minutes for recorded public announcements—about the curfew, about food pick-up points, about medical care. Anyone bitten should proceed immediately to the nearest hospital. If you suspect someone of having been infected with the parasite, contact the police. Do not try to handle the situation yourself. If you need shelter…

  Seven o’clock came without a live news broadcast, the station’s scheduling on autopilot. Seven thirty. Eight o’clock.

  A soft knock came at his door. He sat up. “Yeah.”

  His mom peeked in. “Jane’s going down for bed. Do you want to bring that out to the living room?”

  He nodded, his head feeling like it weighed forty pounds. He dropped his feet on the floor and pushed himself up. He knew his mom was biting back an It’s going to be okay.

  He clutched the radio and cord in one hand and started for the door.

  And stopped, turning his ear toward the boarded window.

  His mother picked it up too, tilting her head.

  The swish of tires grew louder.

  His heart kicked. He dropped the radio on his bed and pushed past her.

  The others were in the living room, Rich about to settle in the rocking chair.

  “He back?” Buddy asked.

  “Yeah. Gonna unlock the garage.”

  “Is that a good idea?” Rich said.

  Buddy said, “We just sealed the place up so those fucking things wouldn’t get in here. Now you’re gonna throw open a door.”

  Shit. Dan called Ray’s number. While it rang, his heart thudded—he realized he had no idea who’d actually pulled up outside. He’d just assumed.

  Buddy was up and moving around, heading for his coat.

  Dan chewed his lip.

  Ray picked up halfway through the third ring.

  “Are you okay?” Dan asked.

  “Yeah, we’re fine.” We. Well, at least the trip was a success, he thought sourly.

  Buddy flipped up his collar. “What’s his plan?”

  “Got any ideas on how to get into the house without letting bats in?” Dan asked.

  “We were thinking of camping out in the car. At least we made it to the house.”

  “I’ll take that.” Dan’s fingertips vibrated with the flood of relief. “What happened?”

  “It just took a while to get Jamie and get out of there. Wish I’d brought a bottle of water or something with me. All I’ve got is cigarettes, and they’re not helping my thirst.”

  In the car, Jamie said something about having to take a piss, and Ray, his voice turned from the phone said, “Use a soda cup.”

  Over the line came the thud of a fat body against a car window. He pushed his hand over his face, trying not to picture what that was like, being surrounded on four sides by glass. “Are you going to be okay out there all night?”

  “Ain’t got no choice, do we?”

  “Yeah. Well. We’ll see if we can come up with an alternative here. Hang tight.” He turned off the phone, everyone watching him.

  “So he’s just gonna stay out there?” Buddy said, still with his coat on.

  “Have they eaten?” Faye asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I could get stuff out to them—” Rich started.

  “Dad!”

  “—but I don’t know how we get it into the car without one of those things getting in, and I can’t guarantee any wouldn’t get into the garage when I opened the door to go out myself.”

  “They got blankets or anything?” Buddy asked. “They can’t sit in the car like that, those things banging at the windows all night, the two of them exposed on all sides.”

  Dan paced, trying to think of any kind of workable plan. The only things Ray was likely to have in the Fury were fast food trash and junk mail.

  “Maybe blankets could get them in here,” Rich said.

  “They don’t have blankets,” Dan said absentmindedly.

  “We do,” Rich said.

  “Dad…” Sarah pulled forward on the couch.

  “Shh. I’ve already been bitten. I can get them out to them. I’m thinking two layers of blankets each. Tell them to get that car as close to the garage door as possible. They just have to crack a window enough for me to feed the blankets through one by one. Once they’re bundled up, I’ll run them each to the house—”

  “That’s crazy!” Sarah said.

  “And let those fucking things get in the garage,” Buddy said. “And then what? The three of you are stuck there with ’em in there.”

  Dan chewed his cheek. There had to be something. There had to be.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Buddy said. “That’s my brother out there, and I want him the fuck in here. But we’ve gotta be smart about this.”

  Dan was still half lost in his own thoughts. “We can’t handle three infected people. There’s not enough of us.” He was still hoping there were enough of them to take care of just the one. So far so good, but…

  Faye looked up. Looked at each one of them. “We could distract them.”

  “What?” Sarah said.

  “We can uncover the windows in my bedroom, turn on the lights, turn on the TV. We can shut the bedroom door in case anything breaks through. They might be drawn to it.” She looked at each of them again. “It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

  Her bedroom, like Dan’s, was right above the garage. It might work.

  “No,” Sarah said. “No, we can’t do this.” She looked at her dad. “You can’t do this.”

  “Who else then?” he said. “We’ve got two people out there, and we need to get them in here. And I’m already infected.”

  “I’ll get blankets,” Faye said.

  “We can use some from my room.” Dan went after her, leaving Rich and Sarah to hash it out. Hoping like fuck this worked, an
d that they weren’t just about to fuck themselves in the ass with this stupid plan.

  † † †

  Outside the door to the garage, he pulled up Ray’s number again.

  “Are you sure about this?” Buddy asked, piling the blankets into Rich’s arms.

  Rich said, “As sure as I am about anything anymore.”

  “If any of those things get in the garage…”

  “We’re screwed pooches.” He clutched the blankets to his chest.

  Ray answered, and Dan told him the plan. Ray only had two comments: “Seriously?” and a quiet “Okay.” Ray wanted to be out of the car as much as Dan wanted him out of there.

  Dan nodded at the others.

  “Jesus,” Buddy said. “We’re out of our fucking minds.” He stepped to the bottom of the stairs, cupped his hands to his mouth, and yelled up for Faye to go ahead.

  Feet bounced on the floor above. The murmur of the TV sifted down. The bedroom door banged shut.

  “Well then,” Rich said.

  Buddy clapped him on the arm. “Take care, man.”

  Rich gave a nod, and Buddy swept the door open for him.

  The garage lights came on.

  Buddy shut the door and leaned against it with his eyes closed. “You think this’ll work?”

  “I sure as fuck hope so.”

  “We could be making the biggest strategic mistake possible. We could be a house full of suckers by morning, eating each other’s faces off.”

  “Do you want to call it off?” Dan asked.

  “No. I want my fucking brother in here where it’s safe.”

  “Me too.” Me fucking too.

  In the garage, the lights clicked back off. The door to the outside opened, then closed quickly. It was out of their hands now.

  Dan strained for any sign one of those things had slipped in while it’d had a chance.

  The waiting took forever. He leaned on the wall, his legs shaky with adrenaline.

  In the finished part of the basement, on the other side of a closed door, Jane’s voice asked a question. They couldn’t hear Sarah’s response, but Dan pictured her smoothing the girl’s hair in the dark and whispering, “Shh, it’s all right.”

  He said to Buddy, in that little hallway between the garage, laundry room, and family room, “Do you believe in God?”