by Mark Tufo
It sounded kind of random, like it was being made by a something, not a someone. I discovered I was holding my breath again, and my sore jaw reminded me not to clench my teeth so tightly. I checked behind me again, down the hall, looked at the bathroom door. I reached over and tried to turn the knob to the patio door. It was locked. Everything was as it had been just a moment ago, which really shouldn’t have surprised or relieved me, but it did both. I felt with my fingers along the wall of the bedroom, found and flipped the light switch up, and the room came into view. Nobody lay in wait. The metallic banging sound persisted.
Then I looked down and saw them. How could I have missed them? The bloody footprints that led into the bedroom did not appear until they stained this carpeting. The carpeting in the hallway had been a deep brown, and the blood, having dried to a darker color, was not readily visible. But as I looked back behind me, I saw not only the blood on the floor, but the blood on the walls. How could I have missed it? My heart pounded in my chest suddenly, and I could hear it in my ears. It drowned out every other sound and I gripped the revolver with both hands, swinging it to all corners of the room, my eyes falling toward the floor as I stepped after the bloody footprints. They led to the window.
It was open. The sheer curtains were blowing into the room, and the half-open aluminum mini blinds were banging against the wall. The bloody handprints were all around the window, on the sheers, and on the sill. I saw a footprint on the sill and I guessed what had happened.
Trina had slipped into her bedroom closet, or under a bed while running from her mother. Jesse had run into the back room and was trapped when her mother, covered in blood and God knew what kind of gore, came in behind her. Jesse opened the window and scrambled through it, and she had been pursued by something that was no longer her mother, but something . . . something hungry. Something with a hunger that apparently could not be satisfied.
I wanted to turn on the light, but there was no time. If there was any chance – any chance at all that Jesse was alive – that Jamie was not responsible for this and that she was alive, I had to find them. I had wasted enough time.
I pulled the flashlight and pushed the button, lighting the 10 mini LED lights. I stepped through the window and onto the back patio. The hall door would have taken me out to the same area, but I wanted the benefit of following the bloody footprints directly. I didn’t want to have to pick up the trail again.
I shone the light down. They were fading now, but every now and then there was a dark chunk of something on the concrete pool deck, and the trail led toward the dark water of the pool. And then away.
When Jack and Jamie had been discussing putting in a pool, she’d mentioned considering a black-bottomed pool. I’d heard that wasn’t the best idea, because chlorine would fade it in time, but she did it anyway. What it served to do was to make the pool appear as black and murky as a pond when the moon was non-existent. But I could see the bloody footprints stopped on the edge of the water, and then several prints and chunks of gore were centralized on the edge.
Jamie – or what used to be Jamie – stopped here. For a long time. Watching? Waiting?
Fuck. Jesse.
I jammed the gun into my pants and dove into the water. I could see nothing, but I swam hard to the bottom and ran my hands along it at the deepest point, moving side to side until – until my hands fell on cloth. And skin. I screamed underwater, the bubbles escaping my mouth, and I pulled on the child’s body, lifting her out of the watery prison, toward the surface. When I broke through I had her pressed against me, her lifeless, limp body. I paddled with my free arm, struggling up the inclined bottom of the pool until I was in the shallow end and could walk more easily. When I reached the edge, I rested my niece’s body down on the pool deck and leaned over her, pressing my hands on her chest, pumping, pumping, but feeling nothing in response.
I realized with each compression I was saying, “Come on! Come on! Breathe!” but I couldn’t stop myself. It was as if my very words could force this little girl to come back to life. Breathing hard, I finally gave up. I dropped my head down beside hers and I cried, pulling her cheek to mine. Cold. But her body was intact. She was not torn open. She had not been attacked.
She had drowned.
And when I looked up, I saw what was, at one time, my sister staring back at me. She stood just outside of the pool enclosure, her skin pale white, her cap-sleeved tee shirt torn and bloody, her mouth open to reveal gnashing teeth that looked like they were always chewing, chewing, eating, eating.
“Jamie,” I said softly. “Jamie, it’s me, Flex.”
Her eyes filled with something like concern for just a split second. Then she started to tear at the screening, trying to get to where we were. The door was right in front of her, but it was closed.
And she spoke as she did this. Not clear. Garbled. But the words I could still make out.
“I’m hungry hungry starving hungry hungry . . .” Her eyes glowed, but there was no light reflecting in them. The pupils were dilated huge, so that no irises were visible, only black. Against her pale white skin, this increased the oddness of it. Her hair, once so shiny and beautiful, was stringy and even beginning to fall out in places. What had happened to her had happened fast. I couldn’t imagine that we’d spoken on the phone just earlier that day.
“Jamie, baby. It’s me, Flex! I’ll help you! You’re sick, sis. Just sick. Sit down there on the grass, and I’ll get someone to help you! Just stay there and –”
I stopped talking. She didn’t hear anything, and her guttural grunts and moans as she continued tearing down the screen mesh just obscured what I was trying to get across. She was making headway through the screen and as it broke through, she began her scramble over the lower crossbar.
I looked at her, then looked at sweet Jesse’s limp body lying on the concrete in front of me, and there was no fucking way I was going to let this . . . this thing get to her. I’d never forgive myself. I pulled Jesse’s soaked body into my arms and back into the water. I carried her to the deep end and let her body slip beneath the surface to the dark bottom again.
As I headed back toward the shallow end, the Jamie-thing had made it through and was staggering toward the pool. I stood about five feet from the edge and watched her. As she reached the edge of the pool again, she stopped and stared down.
Afraid? Unable to judge the water, perhaps even confused as to what it was?
In my mind I kept thinking cure. The gun was in my hand, but I knew I would not be using it on my sister. Whatever she was, whatever she’d become, she was Jamie, my kid sister, and I loved her more than anyone else on this entire planet. She had not killed her daughter directly, though clearly she’d been the cause of her death. But I had to use that logic; she was incapable, even at this strange stage of metamorphosis, or whatever it was, of killing her own child.
And so I had to capture her somehow. Get her to a doctor.
Something.
As I stared at her an idea began to formulate. She stood stock still, staring into the water toward me, her teeth gnashing, gnashing. I was horrified to see her so far gone.
I could not get too near her. Trina was relying on me, and if this was contagious, it wouldn’t do to become infected. If not airborne, it could be transferred by bodily fluids, and Jamie looked to be capable of spreading her share of them right now. She could not be allowed to be too near me or Trina.
I stood there, the idea continuing to take shape. The pool cover was a bubble wrap type material, only thicker. It was rolled up on a long cylinder at the deep end of the pool, operated by a hand crank. If I wanted to pull it out, I had only to grab onto it and start to pull it across the pool. I could safely work in the water, because apparently Jamie did not want to work in the water. I looked at the large roll and felt in the front pocket of my jeans. My pocket knife was there.
I looked at the Jamie-thing again, gauging her reluctance to come in after me, and while I could read nothing in her features, sh
e hadn’t moved. Aside from her mouth, she stood perfectly still. Occasionally she moaned, and the gnashing was constant. Her face did not turn away from me. I can’t say she saw me, but she knew exactly where I was.
I turned and cupped the knife in my hand and swam to the far edge. As I reached it, I leaned out and took the bubble plastic in my hand and pushed off the edge back toward the middle of the pool, unspooling it behind me. When my feet could touch the bottom again, I stood, one eye on Jamie and the other on my work. With my pocket knife, I began cutting the plastic off at about an eight foot length. It was about fourteen feet wide. Still light and easy to work with. I had just finished cutting through the last two feet and had started rolling it up so that the width would become my length. When I glanced back toward Jamie I saw that she was no longer alone.
There was a man walking up behind her.
“Stop!” I shouted. “Stay away from her!” The man didn’t falter. His gait was strange. Unsteady, jerky. Jamie, apparently sensing his presence behind her, turned her body and head to see him, but did not step out of his path. Her movement was enough to allow me to see his face.
He was her. They were the same. My God, he had the disease too, and he seemed more determined. Chills shot so fast down my spine I was surprised the pool didn’t ripple as they sped past the water line. I pocketed the knife and pulled the gun out of the back of my pants, then shook what water I could from it. The man-creature walked around Jamie as though he didn’t see her, his eyes on me. He walked to the pool’s edge, just opposite where I stood. Jamie had remained at the corner, eyes on me, but had never walked the edge to be closer.
He may have been hungrier than even she was. His teeth and jaws also gnashed and worked at chewing nothing, and he had the same eyes. His feet now hung over the edge of the pool’s coping, and he looked from my face to the surface of the water.
“Hey, you fuck! You’re not coming in here,” I yelled, my voice tremulous. “Get out of here, or I’ll put a bullet –”
And it was as if he dared me to do it. Suddenly he was falling forward, his body stiff as a board, his eyes staring through me as he plummeted toward the dark water and into my sanctuary. His eyes were somehow black, yet aglow with an internal light of their own. His jaws working back and forth, up and down, anticipating my flesh. Mid-fall, I jerked my arm up and pulled the trigger hard, shooting him square in the forehead. Two more quick pulls of the trigger and his left eye was blown out of the socket and his right cheekbone disintegrated.
The booming sound shook me to the bone as I gripped the bubble wrap in my hands and pushed back away from where his body splashed into the water. I scrambled to the opposite side and pressed myself against the pool wall. Jamie still had not moved, or even seemed to have noticed the encounter at all. As the thing’s body floated toward me, now motionless, I nudged it away from me with the now rolled up bubble wrap. When I was sure it was floating away – and to the shallow end of the pool, for I did not want it to sink down anywhere near my Jesse – I scrambled out of the water. I still didn’t know whether this horror was transmitted via air, fluid, or what, but I didn’t want to be in any water this thing might secrete his fluids into.
Once I was out, Jamie started toward me. It was the water she was afraid of, this woman who was once a hell of a swimmer. But now I was out, and she was still hungry, because her guttural words came again, and she stepped slowly, erratically toward me. Not fast, but steady. I tucked my gun back into the back of my pants and hefted the roll of bubble wrap. It was rolled up like a rug, long and stiff enough for me to use as a tool to push her away.
If I could push her down, then I would execute my plan.
Or try, at least.
Starting around the back side of the pool, I hurried around it and soon was in the middle of the yard, between the pool and the patio. Jamie’s eyes stayed on me, and she jerked steadily toward me.
“Hungry hungry hungry . . .”
But it sounded like “ungy ungy ungy.”
Suddenly I was overwhelmed. My sister was fucked up, majorly fucked up, and I started to cry. I backed up as she staggered toward me, and it broke my heart to know she would kill me against her will, that she loved me and she would fucking kill me and never even have any conscious awareness she’d done it. I prodded her with the bubble wrap, and she staggered backward. When she was off balance, I pushed her with it again.
I spun around to her side and pushed her toward the side yard fence with the roll, and this time she did fall over. As she moaned out loud, and her newfound lack of coordination made it a struggle to roll onto her stomach so she could pull her knees under her and get up, I stood over her and flipped open the roll of bubble wrap like an evacuation slide on an airplane. Like a lizard’s tongue, it uncoiled on her opposite side, all fourteen feet of it. Her prone body was parallel to the eight foot length, and I kicked her square in the center of her back, push-rolling her onto the sheeting. Another kick and she was far enough on the sheeting that I could grab the edge, which I pulled over her flailing arms. I then rolled her over onto her stomach again. Her arms were forced down to her sides, and I gained more confidence as I rolled her further and further along the fourteen foot length of the plastic, tighter and tighter. By the time I got to the end, she was a mummy entombed in the roll, unable to move, and unable to bite or get to me with mouth or hands.
Her moans grew more frantic, but were muffled now.
I lay on top of the roll, feeling her struggling beneath me, but to no avail; my breath heaved and my heart pounded. I was still crying, but now most of it was with relief. I had no idea what I’d do with her, but I had her. I had her.
Maybe I could find someone to help her.
*****
Cinching the sheeting together where I ran out of length, I struggled to drag the bundle containing my sister toward the house. An old garden hose lay coiled there, and I picked it up to test it for usefulness. The rubber was still soft enough to use for my purposes, so I cut an 8’ length of it and split it lengthwise with my pocketknife. Now I had two pieces pliable enough to tie like a rope. I sat on the roll with Jamie’s body inside it, and tied one length tightly around the end where her head was, and repeated the procedure where her feet were.
I took note that she was quiet now. But I felt her shifting within, so could tell she was still alive – if that was even a word I could use to describe her anymore. At the time, I really didn’t know.
As I did this, I kept my eye on the pool and on the yard beyond where I sat working, because if there had been one curious zombie-neighbor, there could be more. And I wasn’t comfortable anymore with just the .38 and three more rounds of ammo. I needed way more firepower if this was as widespread as I had begun to fear.
Trina was on my mind. She was locked in the truck, and should be safe if she just stayed put, but she was six years old and not extremely logical. I felt a sudden sense of dread and urgency even greater than what had seemed to become the new normal.
I stood and looked down at the roll containing Jamie. Slight movement. No insane struggling, no screaming. Stillness. Silence. I could take a moment and go check on Trina.
My gun was in my hand as I opened the screen door and walked around the corner to the side yard. The rear of the Suburban was visible, and looked okay. I broke into a slight jog and seconds later I was at the truck. I knocked softly on the window so as not to frighten Trina. A second later I saw her little face appear before mine behind the glass. She waved her little hand back and forth, her mouth unsmiling. I pointed at the lock, and she pulled it up.
I opened the door. “Hey, baby. Good girl.”
“Did you find Jesse and mommy?” she asked.
I didn’t want to have this conversation, so I lied to her, the way adults are supposed to lie to kids when what they’ve got to tell them would shatter their worlds.
“No, baby. I think maybe your mommy felt better and they went and hid. I’m hoping they took your daddy’s car and drove to Jackson
ville.” This was a lot of bullshit that she’d likely have trouble sorting through. I was just talking off the top of my head so had no idea what I’d said the moment it was out of my mouth. I hoped she wouldn’t ask any questions and test my powers of recall, and I got lucky.
She nodded. “I hope she’s better. Maybe she was pretending, like at Halloween.”
“I think you’re right, honey. Just play-scary, like Halloween. Now I have something to do that’s going to take me about an hour. But first I’ve got to hook your daddy’s trailer up my car so we can bring some stuff with us. I want you to stay right here, just like you were, and if you feel the car bouncing and stuff, it’s just me. Get back on the floor and see if you can go to sleep for awhile, okay?”
She nodded. I looked at her for a moment. “Baby, wait right here, okay? Just a sec.”
She nodded. I locked and closed the door again, and ran back inside the house. I ran right by the scene in the entry and to the girls’ bedroom. I grabbed the two twin sized Disney Princess comforters from the beds and ran back to the truck. I unlocked it with my key and pulled the door open. Her head popped up.
“Here, Trinie,” I said, using my pet name for her. “I know it’s warm out, but I want you out of sight. Cover yourself with this and stay on the floor, okay?”
She nodded, her blonde hair bouncing with her cute little head. “Okay, Uncle Flexy.” That was her pet name for me.
“On the floor,” I said. I pushed the lock knob down again and closed the door tight.
The trailer was parked up against the side of the house. I didn’t want to start the truck’s engine because of the noise, so I lifted the tongue of the trailer and walked backward, rolling it over the uneven ground toward my Suburban. I passed the truck and spun the trailer slowly around, then dropped it down onto the tow ball, snapping the latch into place. I plugged in the electrical connector just to be safe. Hauling what I planned to haul, it wouldn’t be smart to get pulled over, though I kind of doubted that dead running lights were something the police would be concerned with right now. They’d be more likely to take you for a criminal if you were hunched over somebody sawing the top of their skull off with a steak knife.