Jacob's Odyssey (The Berne Project Book 1)

by Melrose, Russ

  "It's all right," I told her.

  "My name's Sarah," she said, suddenly as friendly and cordial as a Jehovah's Witness. "Sarah Josephson. My daughter's name is Becky. Rebecca. But she doesn't like being called Rebecca."

  It appeared we were fast friends now. I thought it odd they both had biblical names. Coincidental too. My mother had named me Jacob. Jacob was the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. A pretty prominent guy in Old Testament days, renowned as a bit of a schemer. Robbed his brother of his birthright, something like that. His name translated means, "he deceives." And while I was no relation to the biblical Jacob, it occurred to me that I was deceiving Sarah with my promise to come to their home tomorrow and bring them food. Of course, my mother didn't name me after the Jacob of Old Testament fame. She named me after one of her high school boyfriends.

  "I'm Jake," I finally told her, reluctantly letting go of my anonymity, though I didn't share my last name with her. "We should probably hang up now," I said. "And just so you know, I'm going to unplug the phones after I hang up. It's nothing to worry about. I'll see you and your daughter tomorrow."

  "Oh, okay," she said, not really sounding as if it were okay. But what else could she say?

  "Goodbye," I whispered. And then I hung up.

  I unplugged the phone. Something I should have done the day I arrived. I wouldn't make that mistake again. If there were any good news, it was that I still hadn't heard any sounds out of the ordinary. Nothing at all. I stood quietly for a couple minutes next to the table, head bent in concentration, listening intently. The air conditioning had gone off some time ago and the house was remarkably quiet, almost coffin-like. I could hear the faint distant hum of the refrigerator upstairs along with the thin whisper of my own breath. But nothing else.

  I felt utterly gassed from a long tedious day of anxiety, most of it of my own making. A little paranoia can do that for you. And then came the phone call. Though the phone call couldn't have lasted more than five minutes, it seemed interminably long. It sapped what was left of my energy. But I knew no matter how fatigued I might feel now, I couldn't give in to my exhaustion.

  I moved quickly across the room. My eyes had adjusted to the shadowy darkness and the soft amber glow from the nightlight gave off enough light for me to see okay. I picked my iPad up off the floor and checked for the time. I was surprised to find it was only 9:30. I'd actually thought I'd been sleeping for hours. Turns out I'd been asleep for less than an hour. I turned the iPad off and packed everything tightly into my backpack as if I were leaving in the next five minutes, which was certainly a possibility.

  I slipped my arms through the backpack straps and adjusted them as I always did for a snug fit, then buckled the front. I headed upstairs, using the guard rail to help propel myself up the stairs two steps at a time. I found taking the steps two at a time lessened the chance of making the stairs creak. It seemed whenever I took the stairs one step at a time, being as cautious as possible, I'd always end up making the wood stairs groan.

  When I reached the top of the stairs, I opened the door quietly and moved into the hallway connecting the kitchen to the living room. The garage door was down the hallway to my left. The main floor wasn't as dark as I thought it would be. A diagonal shaft of moonlight spilled through the kitchen window and lit up the hallway floor all the way to the living room entrance.

  I went into the kitchen first and unlocked the back door, then opened it a crack. I wasn't worried about them coming in the back door. If they came, it would be a frontal assault. And I'd be gone in a heartbeat out the back. But I didn't want the infected to hear me open or close the back door. It would be best if they believed their meal was still in the house.

  The living room was much darker than the kitchen and hallway, but I could still see well enough in the semi-darkness. It was dark enough that I doubted the infected would be able to spot me from outside. But I wouldn't take any chances. The first thing I did was to disconnect the second phone. The phone sat innocent as could be on a mahogany end table next to the couch. Same place it was at when I first arrived at the Josephsons'. I was amazed at my lack of foresight with the landline phones. It never occurred to me that there would be any need to disconnect them. I never saw the danger.

  Because the Josephsons' home had no upstairs level, the front picture window would have to serve as my lookout. I cursed myself for breaking one of my cardinal rules. The picture window wouldn't afford me as comprehensive a view as the windows to an upstairs level would have. But all I could think of the day I arrived was to get inside and get away from the Swimmer. I had convinced myself I'd be okay without the upstairs level just this one time.

  I sat cross-legged on the floor near the center of the picture window to get the best view down both sides of the street. I kept my backpack on just in case. There were two matching sheer curtain sections with lacy borders that met in the middle of the window. I pulled them apart to get a clearer view of the street. Five houses down to my right was an intersection. There were no street lamps on the street and it was quite dark outside in the neighborhood, just a few random homes with lights on. The only effective source of light came from the moon. I couldn't see anything moving in the darkness and I didn't hear any moans. The street was eerily quiet.

  Was it possible there weren't any infected close enough to have heard the phones ringing? I believed the infected had some kind of inner radar that once they heard a sound, they could easily track its source. They certainly didn't have any problem finding me the day I shot Alex. But I could have been overreacting. Maybe the ringing hadn't been loud enough to be heard outside of the house. If they did come, I'd already decided I'd go over the back fence and head east a block and then north a couple blocks. Three blocks away would probably be a safe distance. I didn't want to go too far in the dark. I didn't feel comfortable traveling at night. If it were at all possible, I preferred staying at the Josephsons' till morning. If I could spend the night here, I could still leave quite early. Maybe five o’clock.

  I began to think about Sarah and Rebecca Josephson. I still wasn't sure if I'd meant what I said about going to their home by tomorrow afternoon. While it wasn't impossible, traveling that far in one day would be difficult and very likely dangerous. I never liked the idea of traveling ten blocks in a day, much less nineteen. The idea of traveling ten blocks had all been about getting to the underpass and getting away from the Swimmer. I wondered how long it would take me to travel nineteen blocks? If it took me three hours to travel ten blocks, and that's if everything went well, it could take me as many as six hours, maybe more, to travel nineteen blocks in a single day.

  I thought about Sarah Josephson and our conversation. And it occurred to me that Sarah was an intelligent woman. Maybe very intelligent. She may have been a bit frazzled on the phone, who wouldn't be under the circumstances, but she still had the wherewithal to tell me their names. And that was smart. She had personalized them in my mind. Sarah and Rebecca. Becky. And if personalizing them in my mind was her intention, it appeared to be working because I was thinking about them—thinking and feeling—and referring to them by their Christian names. And beyond that, feeling an acute sense of responsibility to help them. Of course, the idea of helping them was mostly a romantic notion. It certainly wasn't a realistic one.

  But I was beginning to understand the source of my feelings. This was about Alex. His death weighed heavily on my mind. It haunted me to the core of my being. And I knew if I helped them, I might begin to feel better about what had happened to Alex. The last thing I needed was the fate of two more people on my conscience.

  I wasn't sure if I saw him first or heard him. He was across the street, a couple houses down on my left. A loner. And while his soft rasping moans were muted by the thick glass of the picture window, I could still hear him. I couldn't make out details of his appearance, just a dark figure trudging slowly through a neighbor's front lawn. His steps were labored and clumsy and I could just make out his head nodding err
atically to one side as if he had Tourette's syndrome. The movements were random and miniscule in scope. Every few steps he'd glance to his left or right, head still nodding, always searching.

  The first time he glanced left, I let the curtains fall back together. And though I doubted he could see me through the curtains in the filmy darkness, when he turned his head to the left a second time, I ducked down out of sight.

  I wondered if he had heard the phone ringing and was searching for its source or if he was just wandering around scavenging for a meal. For five minutes I listened to his mumbled, plaintive moans and then he was gone.

  There were times I almost felt compassion for them. It seemed to me their insatiable hunger had to be a painful experience. You could hear the desperate longing woven tightly into the plaintive tenor of their moans. And I couldn't help but wonder if their pain was emotional. Was there some semblance of humanity left in them? All I knew for sure was that they didn't choose for this to happen to them. Someone had done this to them.

  Several minutes passed after the moans had died away before I sat fully upright again. I separated the curtains and checked the street again. It appeared clear. Then I settled in for a lookout vigil. Sitting on the floor with the backpack on felt awkward, so I took the backpack off and set it on the floor next to me.

  It was just past 10:15 when I decided I'd done enough due diligence for the evening. I was exhausted and I could barely keep my eyes open. I figured if they hadn't shown up yet, they weren't likely to. There had only been the one stray infected male, nothing more. I had to admit I was surprised and relieved at the same time.

  I headed downstairs to get some sleep. I would need a good night's sleep if I wanted to get going at five in the morning. But before I settled in, I checked the Josephsons' address in Google Maps. It was easy to find. Once I got to 39th South, I'd take a left and go three blocks to 31st East, then right three blocks to Craig Drive, then left about two to three blocks to their house. It seemed simple. But these days, nothing was simple. But my mind was made up. And even though it might take me all day to get to their house, I was going to help them. Ever since the call, I'd felt a powerful compulsion to help them, though I knew it had little to do with Sarah and Becky. This was about Alex. This was about setting things right, and I knew there would be a price to pay.

  I packed my iPad away in the backpack and grabbed the family photo I'd brought down with me when I'd come back downstairs. I wondered if Sarah and Becky were in the photo. I scanned the faces in the photo and tried to figure out who they might be. I thought Sarah might be estranged from the family, so I looked for someone who didn't seem happy to be there. But they were all smiling radiantly. Faux smiles, perhaps, but smiling nonetheless.

  After several minutes, I gave up. I was too tired to even take my shoes off. I grabbed the bat, nestled my body into the couch and let my mind wander. I thought about Alex for a while and then I thought about Sarah and Becky. I tried to imagine their faces, but their faces kept changing. Then random images began to appear before my mind's eye like a slide show that made no sense. I settled in and smiled. I smiled because the nonsensical images were always a precursor to my drifting off into a deep sleep.

  Chapter 8 – The Long Night

  The voice surrounded me like a wandering echo and I couldn't tell where it was coming from. All I knew for certain was that the voice belonged to Alex. "Help them," he said. "Hurry." I was somewhere in the woods near the cabin. The wind howled and I couldn't tell which direction his voice was coming from. It seemed to ride in synchronicity with the blustery wind. Black leaves rained down from the trees and swirled in eddies on the ground all around me. The leaves crunched loudly under my feet and I was terrified the infected would hear me. A chorus of insistent moans suddenly rose above the sounds of the wind. I knew they had to be close by. I abandoned my cautiousness and began to run as fast as I could. Not knowing which way to run, I followed my instincts.

  "Hurry," Alex shouted, and a gust of wind pushed me from behind and I ran even faster, but the moans spiraled wildly in intensity. Up ahead I could see an opening, a light-filled meadow. I ran with reckless abandon toward the light. When I got there, the light in the meadow turned out to be glistening, feathery white snowflakes, falling ever so casually from the blue sky. There was a stone well in the middle of the meadow, and Alex lay on the ground not far from the well. I ran toward him. He was lying on his back buck-naked in the snow, casually cradling the back of his head with the palms of his hands and gazing up at the sky, smiling blissfully. His body was back to normal other than the three bullet holes in his forehead. He turned his head toward me as I approached. "Help them," he said, nodding his head in the direction of the well.

  I ran to the well and took a peak over the rim. The top of the well was covered in a layer of snow. I brushed the snow aside and found a thick sheet of glass covering the well, embedded into its sides. Just below the glass, a woman desperately clung to a protruding brick and a young girl had her arms draped around the woman's neck and shoulders.

  The desperate crying moans of the infected rose sharply as they drew closer. "Better be careful," Alex said as he yawned and gazed dreamily at the sky.

  I suddenly noticed an oblong rock the size of a half-loaf of bread lying at my feet. I picked it up and showed it to the woman and mimicked bringing the rock down to break the glass. She nodded her head in understanding and pressed her head against the wall of the well. At the same time, the girl buried her face into the woman's back. I lifted the rock high above my head, and just as I brought it down hard, I heard Alex warn, "Hey Jake, you better hurry." The glass shattered into a thousand pieces that hurtled at breakneck speed down the depths of the well. I grabbed the woman's left arm with both of my hands and braced myself to pull her up. But the girl suddenly scaled the woman's back in an instant and screamed like a banshee as she reared her head back before striking and burying her teeth into the soft flesh of my forearm. I screamed in pain and...

  ...sat up in a state of panic on the couch. I searched frantically for the bite wound on my arm but all I could find was smooth skin. There was no bite mark, even though I was certain I had been bitten. And I became aware of a puzzling anomaly in my transition to a waking state. I could still hear the moans. And that's when I realized the moans weren't coming from my dream but were coming from inside the room. I turned to see a shadowy, writhing figure trying to squeeze his broad girth through the window above the nightlight—an impossible task. An average-sized man could have easily fit through the window, but the infected man was huge.

  I couldn't get over his being there in the window. It was an eerie sight, more dreamlike than the dream itself. He looked as if he were trying to crawl out of a wall painting. And the amber glow from the nightlight turned his ghoulish face a surreal shade of yellow.

  He had somehow managed to get one arm along with his shoulders through the opening, but his other arm and the trunk of his body were jammed tightly into the frame of the window, irretrievably stuck. He reached toward me with his free arm in a futile gesture, moaning pitifully. Several dark lines of blood trickled down the wall from where his torso had been ripped by the remnants of broken glass still embedded in the window frame.

  Somewhere in the vague background of reality, I could hear a distant murmuring of moans, restless and insistent. But I couldn't discern if they were coming from the backyard or perhaps my dream. It occurred to me that I should have been in a state of panic, but I wasn't. Not yet. The feelings I experienced in the dream still infringed upon my reality. And I was still trying to make sense of the dream. It had been more frightening, more real to me than the macabre specter of the infected man stuck in the window.

  For just a moment, I wondered if I was even awake yet. Could it be this was just another layer of the dream I was having? But as I tried to rationalize how the infected man could have gotten into the backyard, I knew I was awake. My dreams had always been made up of feelings and experiences and vivid colo
rs but rarely rationalizing. I left rationalizing for my waking hours. I swung my body around and planted my feet firmly on the floor in an attempt to get myself oriented.

  And that's when I became aware of a jumbled mosaic of sounds. And I wondered if the sounds had been there the whole time. Maybe the sounds had been masked by the strident moans of the infected man stuck in the window or maybe my mind had simply incorporated them into my dream. A sudden sharp knocking sound came from the area of the escape window. Had it been there before? In the dim lighting, I couldn't make out who was bashing their head into my escape window.

  I could still hear the muffled moans which I was now certain were coming from the backyard. And there was a more subtle sound coming from somewhere off in the distance. A muted banging. A hollow sound like someone pounding on thick glass.

  A creaking sound above me jarred me fully awake. It was a muffled creaking as if it had come from a small person. The sound seemed to come from the kitchen area or maybe the hallway. I straightened up and listened intently. I sat with my spine perfectly straight, the way an animal does when it hears an unexpected sound. My senses were sharp and finely tuned. And then I realized the sound had to have come from the hallway since the hallway had a wood floor and the kitchen floor was tiled. I couldn't understand how they could have gotten inside the house. Then I heard another soft creak. I reached for the backpack and unzipped the pouch where I kept the Glock. I set the gun down next to me on the couch and put my backpack on. And that's when I realized I had forgotten to shut the back door to the kitchen. One of them must have found the back door ajar and was now in the house. Others would follow. I knew I had to move fast.

  I leapt up the stairs two steps at a time not worrying about whether I made any noise or not. They would likely have heard me anyway. The subtle sounds I'd heard earlier were less subtle now. I could clearly hear the infected pounding on the thick picture window in the living room. When I reached the top of the stairs, I depressed the trigger safety lock flush with the trigger as I reached for the doorknob. I wouldn't hesitate to fire if I had to. I knew the door to the garage was no more than six feet away from the basement door. As long as I could get to the garage, I'd have a chance to get away.