Eaters

by Michelle DePaepe

  The sight made her heart pound even harder. Shooting would be a bad idea, because she’d break the glass, and what if they came in faster than she could hit them?

  “Aidan!” The hammering had stopped. Where was he?

  With the duffel bag on her shoulder and her finger on the gun’s trigger, she watched the fingers fumble, and pull, and scratch in every direction. She was about to yell for Aidan again when a big jagged piece of the windowpane fell onto the floor. A bloated male arm with gray flaking skin and a road map of veins dangled through the opening, groping around, and painting the wall with bloody handprints.

  She ran back towards the bedroom and smacked right into Aidan in the doorway. The collision of their skulls stunned both of them for a moment. Grasping her forehead, Cheryl said, “They’re coming in!”

  “How?”

  “They pried away the wood from around the windows then the glass broke!”

  A hideous moan from the living room shattered any hope that they had a little more time to figure out what to do.

  Aidan unshouldered his gun.

  “No. There’s too many to shoot. We’ve got to get up somewhere high. A tree!”

  The silhouette of a man appeared at the other end of the hallway, beginning to limp towards them as he uttered a deep growling sound.

  Aidan fired once, and the body toppled over. But, another form, and another, appeared just behind it.

  Instead of firing again, he pulled her inside the bedroom and slammed the door, locking it behind them. She didn’t like this. Now, they were trapped.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We’ve got to get to the garage.”

  “How?”

  He hopped over Pete’s body and ran back to the bathroom.

  She realized that the only way out was the little window that he’d just boarded up. How in the world were they going to—

  “Get away from the door. Come here!”

  She followed him as the sound of beating fists began on the door.

  He was already using the backside of the hammer to pry away the boards at the window that he’d just put up.

  This is no good, she thought. They were going to end up trapped in the bathroom and killed right there. They’d never make it out that little window and to the garage alive. Unless…

  …there was some way to keep them at bay just long enough.

  While Aidan frantically pried nails out of the boards, she opened the drawer underneath the sink and found a stack of fluffy towels. She grabbed one then went back into the bedroom, her eyes frantically searching. They lit on the lamp with the twisted bronze base on the nightstand, inches away from Kyle’s corpse.

  She heard something that she really didn’t want to hear. It was a gurgle, coming from Kyle’s torn throat. Then she saw his head begin to twitch with the dead eyes staring forward.

  Sorry, Kyle.

  There was no sense in wasting bullets when she knew that she could take him another way. She strapped her gun to her shoulder, tore off the lampshade, and turned the base around. Kyle’s bloody torso struggled to work its way upright, and she slammed her club into his head, not once, but seven times, until he lay still and literally looked like half the man he used to be.

  Who knew lamps could be so useful?

  She noticed Aidan standing behind her with his shotgun pointed towards the bed.

  “He turned. That’s the first time I’ve seen someone get attacked then turn so quickly.”

  Aidan went back to his task, so she went back to hers. In the closet, she found a leather belt. She used the edge of the bedspread to wipe the blood off the lamp base then she used the belt to strap the towel around it. After a quick glance back to make sure that Kyle and Pete were still dead, she went back to the bathroom.

  “What do you have that’s flammable?”

  He stared at her for a second then seemed to realize that she was holding a makeshift torch in her hand.

  “Under the sink. Way in the back. There’s an old can of wood stain.”

  After a bit of fumbling, she found it. The lid was sealed tight, so she borrowed the hammer claw to pry it open then held the torch over the sink and poured the stain, soaking the towel until it was blackish-brown.

  “Matches?”

  “No worries.” She still had Mark’s lighter that she’d found in his shirt pocket and tucked away safely in a side pocket of her pants before washing the shirt in the fountain. She opened the flap and pulled out the blue Bic, thankful that it was full.

  There were two boards left on the window. When Aidan got down to one, he stopped and looked over his shoulder, taking a deep breath.

  “How are we going to do this?” she asked.

  “I’ll look out and shoot anything that moves nearby. Then I’ll throw the bag out and go through quickly. You hand me the torch, then come through.”

  Any ambiguous thoughts that Cheryl had in the past about God evaporated days ago. After the horrors that she had seen, she decided that it was obvious that He did not exist, because a supreme being with unlimited powers would never allow his precious creation to become man-eating beasts and destroy themselves. Nevertheless, she said a silent prayer that went something like…dear God…please let me live through this. I’ll do anything you ask of me…

  Aidan must have seen the faraway look in her eyes, because he said, “We can do this.” Then, he put his arm around the back of her neck, pulled her close and gave her a quick, firm kiss on the mouth.

  She was too numb and full of adrenaline to process the kiss as anything more than a friendly wish for luck as he began to pry off the last board. But the thought did squeak in that it might have been the last kiss she’d ever receive from anyone.

  “Light the torch,” he said, as the board loosened.

  She flicked the lighter then held the torch away from her body and set it on fire. Bright orange and blue flames curled around it as black acrid smoke rose up. She stared at the glow for a moment, mesmerized. Bad memories.

  Aidan began to pry the last board from the window when they heard a loud crash from the bedroom. Cheryl turned around and saw that the bedroom door had been forced open. There were six hunched figures stumbling through.

  “Hurry!” She slammed shut the bathroom door and locked it.

  The last board flew to the floor. He looked at her as she stood there, holding the torch, and they heard the first moans and scratches on the door behind them.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “No choice,” she said.

  “Kill the light.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cheryl flipped the switch, shrouding them in darkness as the fingernails on the other side of the door, just inches from her back, continued to scratch.

  Aidan took his gun, hopped up on top of the toilet seat, and looked out, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light outside.

  She braced herself for his inevitable scream if he found teeth inches away, ready to bite down. Instead, he said, “It’s quiet on this side.”

  A breeze lifted the short blue bloodstained curtains on either side of him.

  “Go!” she whispered.

  He threw their guns out over the window and tossed the duffel bag after them, then he hopped up and hoisted himself through. Going head first, he dropped down, and out of sight, into the black night.

  When he didn’t immediately call for her to come out, she called, “Aidan?”

  “Shhh!”

  She couldn’t see him, but she could see the faintest twinkle of stars above the spear-like shapes of the trees across the clearing behind the cabin. Inside the tiny bathroom, the flames from the torch made shadows flicker over the walls. Her own shadow body looked crooked and gnarled, a caricature from a story by the Brothers Grimm.

  Monsters inside…and monsters out.

  There was a loud SLAM on the door behind her and a quick splintering crack. The door wasn’t going to hold long. She knew she had to get out now, because she’d never make
it out fast enough if the door gave way. They’d pull her back in by her legs.

  She wanted to call for him again, but figured he’d shushed her for a reason. Was he just trying to make sure the coast was clear? Had he seen movement? Or worse, had he been spotted and was afraid to call her out to join him?

  The door creaked and groaned. It was certain that she had just a few minutes, maybe even seconds to get out before the door burst open.

  Standing on the toilet seat, leaning out over the ledge, she whispered this time, “Aidan?”

  “Come on,” he said from below.

  She saw him reaching up, and she handed the torch out to him.

  Before she could leap onto the sill, a thunderous blow sounded behind her. She threw herself up and onto the window ledge, not daring to look back.

  Aidan held a hand out to her. She grabbed it and tried to wiggle out but something was preventing her progress. Her shirt was snagged on something.

  “I’m stuck.”

  “Come on!”

  “I can’t!” She reached back, trying to find the source of the hindrance as a voice in her head told her to leave it.

  No, she said to Mark’s voice. It’s your shirt. It’s the only thing I have left of you.

  She realized that she was caught on the window crank and fumbled to release the corner of the shirt when she felt something cool and clammy grasp her floundering ankle. Cold fingers caressed up her leg. Then, something wet. A tongue?

  She screamed and kicked her feet back, swimming through the air.

  Aidan yanked her arm hard. The edge of the shirt ripped and came loose, and she landed in the dirt below with a painful thud.

  For half a second, she lay there, crumpled and feeling like she couldn’t move, wondering if the impact had snapped vertebrae and paralyzed her. Aidan didn’t give her any time to ponder it.

  “Let’s go!” he said, yanking her to her feet.

  She wrenched her sore neck back and saw a ghoulish face looking out the window. It looked silvery in the moonlight, an oval shape with dark sunken eyes, not seeing anything. Its hands seemed to function like its eyes as it floundered out, reaching for her. She stared at it, thinking how alien it looked. This thing had once been alive, but now, with its rotting flesh barely intact and its bony fingers grasping like crab’s claws, it was something neither alive nor dead. It was an automaton. A creature without a soul. A death machine.

  “Cheryl,” Aidan thrust her gun into her hands. “Come on!”

  The cold metal in her hands woke her up. She looked up at him, standing with a gun in one hand, the torch in the other, and the bag over his shoulder. Yes, to the garage. To the truck. We have to get to Aidan’s truck and get out of here. Go somewhere else. Somewhere safe.

  He held the torch out in front as he walked towards the back corner of the cabin. She followed, her finger ready on the trigger.

  They’d gone about ten feet when it became obvious that there would be no easy escape. There was a loud thud behind them—the first Eater dropping out of the bathroom window. And worse, on the far side of the cabin, near the entrance to the garage, there was the sickening sound of shuffling feet and deep moans.

  Fire or firepower? She wondered which would be more likely to protect them and if either would be enough. She decided that it depended on how many they encountered before they made it to the garage.

  The answer came far too quickly when they rounded the corner. Twenty? Thirty? Fifty? Cheryl couldn’t tell for sure how far back the crowd went. The stench was worse than a feedlot, and it looked as if a graveyard had been raided by a mad scientist and all its inhabitants had been brought back to life from all stages of decay. A few of them were naked, shreds of white breasts and appendages, highlighted by the moon’s glow as they advanced. Others were clothed in bloodstained t-shirts with microbrewery or sports team logos, torn skirts, or underwear. Some had sunken-in gelled eyes, while others had opaque orbs, or nothing but empty black eye sockets. They moved together like one organism, arms outstretched, moaning the same hollow tune, composed of discordant notes of agony.

  Aidan swung the torch in an arc, but the bright flame did not make them hesitate. They kept relentlessly advancing.

  “Get back!” Aidan yelled, swinging the torch furiously like he meant to beat them with it.

  When they still seemed to have no fear, Cheryl flanked to his right and opened fire. Aiming for heads, she sprayed a shower of bullets through the group. Some fell, some simply flinched as if they’d been slapped, and far too many didn’t seem affected at all.

  She saw Aidan struggling with the decision of whether to hold on to the torch or abandon it to have two hands for his gun. Just then she heard a piercing wail just a few feet behind her. She whipped around and saw more Eaters closing in.

  In the narrow space, just a few feet wide between the cabin and the garage, they were trapped.

  Her gun quickly knocked out a third of them, but, just as she’d discovered with Barry, anything less than a direct hit to the brainpan had little effect. She blasted them again, knocking out a couple more, but the Eater in front—a creature who had once been a young woman but was now a walking corpse with a jerking head a nest of snake-like intestines hanging out above her bloody bikini bottom—seemed impervious to the gunfire.

  Cheryl heard Aidan’s hoarse screams behind her right before she fired another round into the woman’s body. The gunshots made pockmarks in her bare flesh as she danced like a marionette, but they didn’t knock her down. Her bony fingers came closer, aiming for Cheryl’s neck, grabbing the air like they were already scooping up fistfuls of flesh.

  Kill her with the lamp.

  She didn’t question Mark’s voice—she knew what he meant.

  Turning the gun around, she held onto the searing hot barrel. When the Eater was two feet away, she swung it like a baseball bat, smashing into her skull with all her might. The body crashed to the ground, twitched for a second, then began to get back up. Cheryl jumped up in the air and slammed down on the Eater’s head with Mark’s oversized combat boots, and every ounce of her hundred and twenty-six pounds.

  The head collapsed like a rotten watermelon, spraying an oil-like slick of dark blood in all directions.

  There were still more coming at her. Realizing that she didn’t have the strength to take them all one by one in the same manner, she turned the gun around and fired again. This time, she carefully aimed right between their eyes (or the center of their faces where their eyes used to be). To her relief, they fell in succession like ducks in a carnival game, but her sense of accomplishment evaporated when she saw more filling in the ranks of those who’d fallen.

  The situation looked even worse when she turned back around and saw Aidan’s predicament.

  Two of that pack were on fire, flailing around with waving arms. They didn’t scream in pain or try to put out the flames. Instead, they were still reaching for Aidan and trying to grab him. He backed up, still holding the torch, and fumbling to maneuver his gun with one hand.

  Realizing that the fire was doing little good to keep them at bay, she yelled, “Put it down!”

  Aidan turned towards her; his bright green eyes were wild with fear and had tiny dancing flames reflected in each.

  “The torch. Put it down!”

  He tossed it to the ground, and they both opened fire. A shower of blood, brain, and bone fragments filled the air, illuminated by flashes of gunfire. With each body that fell, they advanced a few more inches, warily stepping over corpses that were uncertain to stay dead.

  Close calls came in succession as ghouls flanked them on the left and right, somehow avoiding direct hits. In between shots, they used their boots, elbows, and gun barrels to knock them back, slamming heads into the walls of the cabin and garage, and even kicking a couple of bodies into the fire that the torch had started—the fire that was now spreading and threatening to cut them off from the garage.

  Cheryl didn’t know how they were going to get around t
he flames that now licked up from the ground, waist high, fueled by the dry grass. The area near the cabin was blocked, and there was less than two feet of clearance between the fire and the garage wall.

  It had been her idea to throw the torch down. Now, she realized that it may have been a fatal mistake.

  Aidan began moving towards their only escape route. She knew they only had a couple of seconds to get through that hole before it was completely choked off. A hulking Eater, a man with an enormous belly and a bloodstained beard, began to stumble into the narrow opening. If they shot him, he might take too long to fall or block their path with his enormous body when he keeled over.

  Her pounding heart skipped a beat when she saw Aidan hunch over and realized what he was planning to do; he was going to try to charge the man like a bull and knock him back. If he failed, the Eater would likely grab him by the head and gouge out his first bite as the flames consumed them both.

  There was only a second for her to worry before Aidan shouldered his rifle and shot off head first like a rocket towards the man’s belly.

  They connected, and the Eater stumbled backwards two steps, but didn’t lose his balance. The flames were just inches away from Aidan’s boots as infected hands reached for him and he backed up.

  Cheryl raised her gun and shot a volley of shots at the Eater’s head, praying that Aidan kept low enough to avoid them. Pieces of the giant’s skull flew off and he began to wobble. Aidan saw him teetering in his direction and tried to kick out a leg to deflect him, but he wasn’t strong enough to push him back. The lumbering corpse fell forward, pinning Aidan against the garage wall, as flames curled up its huge thighs.

  “Aidan!”

  Hearing a moan right behind her shoulder, she whipped around and butted a rotten jawbone with her gun barrel. When she turned back around, there was a ball of fire covering the dead man’s body, and she couldn’t see Aidan at all.

  There was a surge of nausea in the pit of her stomach as she realized that she was all alone. She turned and shot a couple more Eaters coming up from behind and seriously considered turning the gun on herself.