by Ike Hamill
She still felt vulnerable. Jenny spotted the ladder and climbed. It was stuffy in the loft. She crawled over to the rectangular window in the short wall under the eaves. It gave her access to fresh air and a way to spy on the road. She wanted to make sure she could see that thing if it was coming.
There was movement on the road. Jenny held her breath for as long as she could and then let it out as a shiver ran through her.
She kept picturing how her father died.
When the door had slammed shut, separating them, she had run to the side of the house looking for another entrance. She gave up her search when she found the window and saw what was happening inside.
After the loud reports of the guns, her father had thrown one of the weapons at the blood man and missed. When the blood man approached, Jenny watched her father swing at him. It stopped his hand easily. Jenny screamed along with her father as the blood man leaned in and opened his mouth. It kept getting wider and wider, like a snake trying to work its jaws around a mouse.
Jenny covered her eyes as the thing began to ingest her father.
She turned and ran back around to the front of the house, screaming and crying as she stumbled down the driveway.
When the sound thundered behind her, Jenny turned and saw the door crack and swing inwards. The blood man stood in the doorway and regarded the yard.
Jenny had run.
Eventually, in the loft, she blinked as the figures on the road began to resolve themselves in the distance. It was five people walking. One of them looked like Ricky Dunn, so that made the tall man his father. She didn’t recognize the others until they drew closer. Then, she was able to pick out her old teacher and the woman who cleaned Lily’s house.
Jenny began to form a plan. She would wait to see if the five made it down the road okay and then she would follow. If the blood man didn’t get them, she would go find her mother.
Her mom was probably down at Shelly Palange’s house. The two were becoming inseparable.
Jenny caught her breath when she saw the shapes moving down the hill. It was none other than the entitled Lily Hazard and her bestie, Sarah Cormier. They were still riding their bikes, which meant that the blood man hadn’t gotten them. A flash of shameful hope flashed through Jenny’s mind. She wished that maybe the blood man had caught Lily’s parents.
She held perfectly still and watched the silent movie through the camp’s window.
Mr. Dunn was holding his hands up. He looked angry at everyone. Jenny frowned a little at the sight of Lily’s parents coming on their giant bike. Once everyone was together, they split up. Mr. Dunn stayed put and the others kept going.
Jenny saw why.
Tears began to leak from her face as she saw the blood man approach.
She nearly cheered when Mr. Dunn sliced him in half, but then her heart fell again when she spotted the second one. Jenny whipped around and looked behind herself, suddenly convinced that the blood men must be everywhere. She was alone in the dusty loft—alone with her own sweat and fear.
She couldn’t watch. The second blood man was growing. He grew until he was even taller than Mr. Dunn, and it didn’t seem like he was going to stop.
Jenny let out a little whimper as she pulled back from the window. She had already seen her father eaten. She couldn’t bear to see it happen again.
She crawled back to the ladder and climbed down from the loft.
Jenny knew that as soon as she looked towards the door or through one of the windows, the blood man would be there. Tears leaked down her face as she tiptoed to the door on the other side of the camp and turned the handle. The yard was empty. The blood man was on the other side of the camp. She prayed that he was too busy with Mr. Dunn to spot her slipping out of the little camp.
She didn’t look in his direction. Jenny sprinted through the yards of the camps, following the shoreline as it curved away from the main road. Jenny ran until the main road was lost behind buildings and trees. The only way to get to these camps was via a tired gravel road that was only usable in the summer.
She slowed and turned in a slow spin. The shoreline should have been alive with people in lawn chairs and kids playing at the edge of the lake. Boats should have been cutting across the water, pulling wakeboarders and tubers. The world was empty.
Jenny walked slowly with shock written all over her face. Her mission of tracking down her mother was, for the moment, forgotten. She saw a cluster of people between a little camp and its boathouse. Jenny stopped. There was something wrong with the people. They were all standing and facing each other, like they were huddled around a candle and they didn’t want it to go out. Something scurried between their legs. Jenny narrowed her eyes and tried to see what it was, but it moved too quickly and disappeared into the shadows under the camp.
She took a slow step backwards. She couldn’t pin down exactly what was wrong—it was probably that they were too still, or the fact that the only people she had seen were holding some kind of huddled ceremony.
A tiny breath of air came in from the lake and Jenny’s face cleared.
It was their clothes. They were all wearing large shirts and baggy shorts, but the clothes were just hanging off of the people. On one coiffed older woman, the shirt looked like it was supported only by a wire hangar. The man’s shorts looked like they were about to fall off.
She had a terrible thought—what if they weren’t people? What if they were just skeletons wrapped in skin?
She shook her head slowly. The idea didn’t make any sense. Jenny knew she didn’t want to see their faces. Her speed increased as she backed away.
Jenny turned and ran.
She found her way to the gravel road and pounded down the center of it. The road wasn’t exactly familiar, but she knew that it must be a big horseshoe that looped back around to Hulin Road. There was nowhere else for it to go.
Sure enough, she saw it curve to the right up ahead.
Straight in front of her, there were no more camps.
That’s where Jenny ran—straight into the woods.
[ Searching ]
A branch slipped from between her fingers and whipped back to hit her in the face.
She touched her cheek gingerly—the hand came away with blood.
Jenny pressed her face into her hands and cried silently for herself. This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t be lost in the woods after watching some blood man eat her father. It had to be a bad dream.
When she pulled her hands away from her face, her blood was mixed with tears. She hitched in a deep breath and then let it out with a groan as she turned around to regard the trees. Her father would call these “trash trees.” They were the stubby growth that popped up in a lot that had been clearcut and then left unattended. Her father claimed that Maine would take back a pasture in mere hours if nobody was paying attention.
Jenny corrected herself—her father used to claim that. He wouldn’t be making claims anymore. He was eaten. Her tears started to flow fast. She kept her eyes open and let them roll down her cheeks. The monster was still out there somewhere, and it might get her mom too if she didn’t do something about it.
Jenny blinked at the green prison of leaves around her. She couldn’t be lost. She was in a small triangle of woods between 270, the lake, and the Point Road. As long as she walked in a straight line, she should be able to get out in maybe fifteen minutes. How long had she been walking?
Jenny wiped her face. The scratch on her cheek stung from the tears and sweat.
If she could just figure out which direction was which, she could find her way to the Point Road. Shelly Palange’s house was on the Point Road. That’s where her mom probably was. She pictured her mom and Shelly Palange out on the back deck with a bottle of wine on the table between them. They would be halfway through drinking back all those calories they had just walked off.
That’s where Jenny had to go.
Her father always said that a good plan right now was best. He had always sa
id that.
Uphill—the Point Road would be uphill. Eventually, the Point Road ran all the way down to the lake, but that’s not the part where Shelly’s new house was. She was on the lousy part of the Point Road, and that lousy part was uphill.
Jenny pushed apart the trashy trees and took a big step over tangled branches.
[ Discovery ]
She worked her way through the trash trees and came to a section that was much easier walking. Jenny spotted a line through the ferns and recognized the trail. In the winter, it was a snowmobile trail. In the summer, the cross country team used it as part of their network. Jenny had quit the team, but she still remembered the designations. The red blaze on the tree meant that this was part of the twelve-mile loop. She stopped and looked up while gently wiping her scraped cheek. She pictured where the trail came out on the Point Road. It should be less than a mile from Shelly’s house. With that settled, Jenny picked up her pace.
Jenny dodged through the trees when she saw the first house. She didn’t remember it. After her experience with the deflated people down near the boathouse, she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of encountering strangers.
The trail skirted the yards of several places. They ranged from great big cabins to dirty trailers. Jenny walked even faster—she was on the right path. When she saw the road up ahead, she paused. Jenny crept slowly towards it, trying to get a good look in each direction before she stepped out of the woods. Every shadow seemed like it would be one of the blood men, still searching for her. When she stepped out to the cracked asphalt, Jenny whipped her head east and west, scanning for movement. There was nobody.
According to her memory, she needed to go to the right. She moved slowly at first, but picked up speed when she saw the mailbox up ahead. On this part of the road, the houses were far apart, and Shelly Palange’s new house was tucked back from the road in a shady spot.
Jenny trotted up the drive, scanning the windows for anyone inside.
After a moment’s deliberation, she walked up to the door and knocked. Shelly and her daughter had lived in a tiny house before she had married Mr. Jankovic. This new place was a palace by comparison. Jenny’s father didn’t approve. He hadn’t approved. It was one of those new places made up to look like a log cabin. Her father hated those. Had hated those.
Jenny knocked again. She shook her head to clear the thoughts about her father.
“Mom!” she yelled up at the place. Her voice echoed in the woods. She reached out and tried the knob—it was locked.
Jenny realized the problem. Her mom and Shelly would be around back, drinking wine on the deck. It was practically all they ever did anymore. She trotted down the path and circled the house. Jenny nearly tripped over a hose and kicked at the stupid sprinkler it was hooked up to. She came around the corner and found that part of her didn’t want to look. She didn’t want to be disappointed when she saw that her mother wasn’t there.
Jenny forced herself to look. She couldn’t believe what she saw. Her mother was there. She was sitting on one of the wooden chairs with the foam cushion that Shelly had to take inside every time it rained. There was no wine next to her, and Shelly wasn’t even present, but her mom was right there.
“Mom!” she cried as she ran up the steps. Her mother turned and smiled at her. Jenny ran up and leaned in for a hug. Her mother didn’t move, but Jenny hugged her anyway. She knelt next to the chair.
“Mom, you won’t believe what happened.” Her throat felt thick, but she forced the words out. “Dad and I were going to go into town to find you. The car wouldn’t work and the phones don’t work. There was a woman screaming from the A-frame. Dad went to go see what happened and then there was this guy who was all bloody. It was so awful. I saw through the window. The guy… I think he ate dad.”
As she recalled the incident, Jenny felt like she was going to throw up. She turned her head away from her smiling mother and tried to swallow the lump in her throat. Her mouth went dry when she felt her mother’s hand on hers.
Jenny looked at her hand, covered by her mother’s. There was something unnatural about the feeling of her skin. It was too dry or something. Jenny raised her eyes to her mother’s face.
Jenny screamed and tried to pull back. When she did, her mother’s hand clamped down, holding her there. Jenny’s feet slipped and she fell back, but her mother’s grip was iron. Jenny couldn’t take her eyes off of what had made her scream. In the center of her mother’s forehead, just under the skin, she saw a triangle of yellow lights shining. Those lights seemed to show more intelligence than her mother’s eyes. Her eyes were like foggy glass—there was no life inside.
Her mother stood, taking Jenny’s hand with her.
Jenny’s shoulder twisted and clicked as Jenny struggled to find her feet.
“Ow! Mom!” she yelled. “You’re going to pull my arm off!”
Her mother began walking across the deck towards the yard. Jenny ducked and spun to straighten out her arm and pulled against her mother’s grip. The bones in her wrist rubbed together and Jenny screamed again with the pain. In her anger, Jenny drove herself forward, intending to knock her mother off her feet.
Her impact did nothing. Jenny plowed her shoulder into her mother’s back, but she couldn’t generate enough force to even change her mother’s pace. As they moved across the yard and into the woods, Jenny wrapped her arm around a tree and hugged it to her body. Jenny immediately regretted the move. As her mother pulled, Jenny felt the architecture of her arm being dismantled, fiber by fiber. She cried out with another sob and fell in behind her mother.
In her mother’s grip, Jenny’s fingers were turning purple.
Chapter 47 : Dunn
[ Capture ]
GEORGE PUT HIS FINGER to his lips to tell Lori to stay quiet. She reached out and tried to take his hand. He pulled back and scowled at her. They crested the hill. He could hear his mother on the other side, grunting and screaming as she attacked the machines. She had told him to run, but a deeper instinct told him to stay. He should help his mother, regardless of what she said.
He moved another step and saw her.
She had been swarmed by the things and she had at least three or four on her. His mother, Mary, swung her stick with one hand at a bug that was coming across the leaves. Her other hand was holding back a machine that was waving it’s little claws at her face. George saw tubes stretching from the machine to his mother’s shoulder.
George started to run forward. Lori caught his shirt. He turned to extract himself.
“Don’t go, George,” Lori said. “She said not to.”
George took a breath and looked back at his mom. She had said that. His mom was patient, but when she gave an order, she expected it to be carried out. This was different. She was in trouble.
He only got halfway there when his mother stopped fighting.
George stopped as she dropped her stick and the little bug robots started to fall away from her. As they hit the leaves, they scurried back north. George tensed his legs, ready to run, but they didn’t seem to want to come after him anymore.
His mother straightened up to her full height and then turned towards him.
“Mom?” he asked.
A strange smile crossed her face.
George didn’t wait any longer. He spun and ran. He dodged between the trees. Lori’s eyes went wide and she ran too. She was faster than George and began to pull away from him.
George chanced a look over his shoulder. He expected to see his mother limping after him. What he saw was her outstretched arm, trying to grab him. George yelled and ran even faster. Now that he knew that she was there, he could hear her pounding footsteps trying to run him down. She was much too fast. Even on her best day, she had never been that fast and her ankle should have made running out of the question. George didn’t understand it, but he didn’t intend to stand around asking questions. He veered right, ducking under low branches.
He heard the satisfying crunch as the thing chasing
him hit the limbs. He stopped thinking of the thing as his mother. One look at her eyes had planted the seed, and the relentless way she was running him down had driven the idea home. The machines had done something to her.
George saw Lori up ahead. She had started fast but she was slowing down.
“Faster!” George yelled. She saw him and found her speed again.
George heard the thing’s pounding footsteps peel off to the left and he knew that it had changed its target. It was chasing Lori now. Self-preservation trumped sympathy. A part of him was glad. They were playing tag with the thing and George knew how to play tag. He didn’t have to be the fastest, he just had to not be the slowest.
George put even more distance between himself and Lori. He lost some speed as he steered into a tight stand of trees. When he looked to see Lori’s fate, he realized his mistake. The thing hadn’t given up on him, it had simply chosen a better route for its size. While he had turned and slowed, the thing had looped around and was closing back in on his position.
George turned from it and struggled through the tightly-packed trees. He squeezed between the little trunks and pushed past elastic branches. They pulled at him, impeding his progress. Up ahead, the woods were dark with dense leaves. His only hope was to get so deep into the thicket that the thing wouldn’t be able to chase him. Its bigger size would make navigation even harder.
A hot ball of worry blossomed in his stomach as he heard the thing attack the woods. It was pushing the trees aside easily as it stomped after him. George could see where the underbrush thinned out up ahead. He could imagine how it would feel when he burst out from the dense trunks and was finally able to run.
The trees around him shook as the thing moved even closer. His lead was gone. If he had just kept running, he might have stayed ahead. It was too late to second-guess himself. George was within arm’s length of the clear woods. He dove forward and wriggled between two trees. His torso was through. He only needed to push his hips through the gap and he would be okay.