“I was just pointing out that we’ve got it pretty good – considering…”
“You’re right. But next time I bring it up, I expect you to fantasize about it with me. If I can’t have it, at least I can pretend we’re heading that way.”
“Okay. You wanna talk about a delicious steak dinner at my favorite Atlanta restaurant?”
“No. Talking about food just makes me depressed. I like the log cabin idea though. We’ll need to borrow a saw or two.”
“Sure. How hard can it be?”
“Kiss me. I’m going to sleep.”
Jon gave her a deep kiss, which she returned, and they cuddled up for the night. Loons continued to sing out across the dark lake, backed up by crickets and frogs - all of them offering up a call to mate.
“Listen to all of that,” whispered Jon.
“I’m listening.”
“Life goes on.”
“Always has. Goodnight, Jon.”
“Goodnight, Nikki.”
Jerry Halverstrom was a very sick boy. The nine year old, who didn’t listen to the curse-riddled advice of Teddy Costas, had continued to drink from the pool that the Tree Swallows were nesting over. His mother fretted over him and Nurse Hannah grew concerned as the boy’s fever rose to death-defying heights. Aspirin had no effect and they had no ice-water to lay him in. It was decided that they would carry him down to the lake and place his raging hot body in the cool water there.
His parents sat in the water with him, cradling their boy on their laps, cooling his face and lips with a damp rag. It seemed to have a positive effect and the adults visibly relaxed as the boy’s raving nonsensical statements abated. The brightness of the full moon shimmered across a lake, alive with night songs and the adults let their heads bow, sleepiness mixed with the lapping of the water calming them all after such a fright.
An owl called out a questioning hoot, waking Mrs. Halverstrom from the subconscious stroking of her son’s fevered head. “Perhaps it’s enough time in the water,” she whispered.
The child’s shivers and moans had subsided and he seemed to rest in peace for the first time in many hours.
Hannah and Mr. Halverstrom stood up and helped the mother with her boy. As the three adults stopped to look down at him, the boy’s eyes flashed open and he stared from one concerned face to the other.
His mouth split into a gaping grin and his mother smiled back, but with a question on her brow. Her boy had never smiled like that. It was somehow… Fiendish looking.
Nurse Hannah’s head cocked as she sought understanding in the boy’s abrupt transformation, and then her eyes met his and her blood ran cold. Her legs locked in place as though the earth itself had grabbed her ankles and her bowels opened up, sending a cascade of filth down her legs.
“Good Lord, woman! What’s gotten into you?” barked Mr. Halverstrom.
“Jerry?” questioned Mrs. Halverstrom. And that’s when her son bit her. She gasped and tried to pull away, but the boy had a lock on the meat of her upper arm and she screamed as her husband tried to pull the boy off. Nurse Hannah joined too and suddenly all three were rapidly bitten as the child, now a Fiend, tried to feast on them all. The father, in excruciating pain, fell to the ground as the eighty-pound beast bit off part of his ear and then latched onto his cheek. Without even thinking about it, the man took hold of a river rock and began to pound the boy’s skull.
The mother screamed at the murdering of her son and fell upon her husband, clawing at his hands as he continued to beat his nine-year-old’s head to a pulp.
Nurse Hannah pulled the distraught woman back and received a scratch to the face for her efforts.
The boy lay face down on the rock and pebble-strewn shore, his head caved in, blood and brains seeping out into the water. The mother sat in horror at the sight and the father regained his wits, sitting up, aghast at what he’d done.
The nurse, blood coursing down her face and dripping down her bitten arm, just stared at the nightmare before her and then she cried. The realization of her plight washed over her like a wet blanket of dread. She was a dead woman, doomed to become a monster. Her chance for salvation was over. She would become one of Them, the un-saveable, spawn of Lucifer.
The father put two and two together pretty fast as well. He looked at his son and wife and then at the distraught nurse. He said to his wife, “They mustn’t know. Our boy was not a minion of the devil. They mustn’t know.” With that, he picked the rock back up and smashed it across Nurse Hannah’s skull. The woman stood stunned for a moment and then sank to her knees. Mr. Halverstrom followed with another blow, and his wife flinched at the dull wet cracking sound of shattering living bone. One more thwack finished the deed and the nurse’s worries were over forever.
More rocks were displaced around the bodies of Nurse Hannah and the dead boy, further evidence of a struggle. The shocked parents washed their wounds and talked of the bear that had swum ashore, surprising them all as they had tried to reduce their son’s fever. The hungry beast had attacked them voraciously before the father had scared it off with a thumb jammed into the eye. The congregation would be none the wiser and the legacy of their son, an angel now with Jesus, would be intact.
The parents were quickly convinced of their lie and in moments it had become their truth. A bear had done this. They would go back and report the incident and get on with grieving for their son.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Boiling Point
The night before Jerry Halverstrom had his infected head caved in by his now very infected father, the Halverstrom family had been at KP duty – it was their turn to help prepare the night’s communal meal. Jerry, who at that point was suffering from a severe runny nose, a sore throat and the beginnings of a fever, was placed in front of the soup pot and told to stir. The boy found that sipping from the pot as he stirred helped sooth his throat. The soup was set on simmer to keep it from overcooking, and so through the simple act of non-sanitary meal preparation, the FND-z bacterium was introduced to that night’s soup du jour – beef barley. The mega-shot of nutrients and just the right amount of heat sent the nasty germs into a fit of reproduction. Billions of dividing cells settled into a microscopic feeding frenzy. Nearly the entire congregation enjoyed the soup that night.
As a neighborly gesture and a chance for the congregation to once again offer them salvation, it had been decided that Jon and Nikki should be invited to the burial. Deciding that it would make relations with the neighbors worse to ignore a little boy’s memorial, Jon and Nikki agreed to come. So on the morning of the funeral, they had coffee, grabbed their guns and trundled off toward the main camp to enjoy some better food at what was supposed to be a prayer breakfast before the ceremony.
About six hundred yards from the settlement they came upon Ham Unger digging the second of two graves by himself while Ben Watson, the militia leader, approached hauling the canvas wrapped bodies of Nurse Hannah and Jerry Halverstrom on a makeshift cart. Watson was assisted by Teddy Costas who put the weight of his eleven-year-old body behind one of the wheels.
Jon called out, “Morning, there. Where’s the rest of your help? No procession?”
Ben stopped pushing. “Seems a flu has hit pretty much the whole congregation. Had to skip the breakfast, some cold vittles is all if you’re hungry.”
Nikki put her hand in front of Jon and they both stopped. “Flu? What kind of flu?”
“You know, headache, sore throat, fever, the works.”
“How can you be sure it’s the flu?”
“I guess we can’t, but it’s not that demon virus.”
Jon asked, “How do you know that?”
“Cause the only folks around here that have been near any demons is you two, and you seem pretty fine. Nikki, you came down with a little something, but you’re okay now, right? There’s still other diseases in this world.”
Jon said, “Who else is healthy?”
Ham stuck his head out of the grave. “My wife Kelly and
Katherine, the reverend’s assistant. They’re both tending to the sick. The two babies seem fine.”
“That’s it?” Nikki asked.
Teddy said, “My dad and my sister are okay. Lots of folks weren’t making sense though. Some couldn’t speak right at all. My dad kept us inside all day yesterday”.
“What do you mean they couldn’t speak right?”
“Fever talk,” said Teddy. “Jerry Halverstrom had the same kind of thing before his parents took him to the water to cool him down.”
“You don’t know that,” said Ben. “Don’t talk out of turn. There’s adults speaking here.”
“I do too know it. Their house is next to ours. I could hear Jerry calling out, not making sense. It woke us all up. I saw it when Nurse Hannah came out with Jerry’s mom and dad and helped carry him.”
Nikki turned to Ben. “We were told that the boy and the nurse died from a bear mauling.”
“That’s what they said.”
“Have you looked at the bodies?”
Ben glanced at the wheelbarrow, “Yup. Pretty nasty.” The bodies were wrapped in old canvas in lieu of coffins. It wasn’t a fancy way to send off the departed, but it made sense given the thin resources of the community.
“Besides moving them on that cart, did you handle the bodies? Get near any blood?”
“Nope. Lukei did that. She washed them and wrapped them as well as she could.”
Jon asked, “So where’s Lukei?”
“Sick like the rest of them.”
Suddenly, the air crackled with a shrill scream of a woman in terror, sending solitary birds flapping haphazardly into the morning sky.
Ham launched himself out of the grave. “That’s Kelly!” He ran as fast as he could back toward the camp.
“Ham, wait!” yelled Nikki. “Shit.” She looked at Teddy. “Stay put. And if anyone comes running back this way, including us, you run away until they’ve verbally convinced you that they aren’t sick or bitten.”
Several human howls echoed through the woods. Jon, unconsciously felt the Smith & Wesson holstered to his hip.
“Jesus wept!” cried Ben. He picked up his shotgun and the three of them ran off.
Teddy found himself trembling with uncontrollable shaking. The primal, uncontrollable part of his nervous system remembered running from the Fiends - hearing his mother being torn to bits. It took all he had to move his legs and climb into the shallower of the two graves. His eyes stared over the dirt mound back toward camp and then they rested on the bodies lying in the wheelbarrow. As tunnel vision overtook him, his sight blurred with welled-up tears.
Ham intercepted Kelly as she was running through brambles, her skin immune to the reach and scratch of branches and twigs. Blood poured down her face where her right cheek had been and she screamed at being held fast by a husband unrecognized. Ham yelled in her face to make her stop and look at him. Her huge eyes filled up with recognition, but her face remained rigid with terror. She could only point back the way she came and then scream again at the sight of Jon, Nikki and Ben running toward them.
“It’s okay, it’s okay!” Ham attempted to sooth.
The three others stopped in their tracks at the sight of the poor woman.
“Oh no.” said Ben. “Oh my Lord no.”
Her speech was thick and slurred from her wound, but Kelly blurted out, “The wrevren bhit meee. He khilled Khathlerine. Others. Khilling. Khilling the bhabiess. Coming.” Then she stopped and felt her own face, the jagged edges flapped about under her fingertips and she burst into tears.
Ben turned to Jon and Nikki. “What do we do?”
Jon said, “Ham, your wife is infected. You have to step away from her.”
“What?” asked the young new husband. Kelly appeared even more stricken and looked back and forth between them.
“I’m sorry. There’s nothing you can do for her. You have to carefully clean that blood off or you will get infected too. Her breath is not contagious yet, but when the fever is done it will be.”
“What? No!” Hamm's eyes scanned all over his bride as though she had become strange to him.
Nikki tugged on Jon’s sleeve and said, “Jon, we should go. There isn’t time for this.”
Kelly’s tears came in earnest and she fell to her knees in fear and agony, her young husband holding her tight.
Nikki grabbed Jon’s arm, pulling him away from the scene. “Listen. We know how it ends. We have to go, now! Ben, you can follow us or go your own way. Your community is either dead or infected.”
Jon said, “We have to go back and get the boy.”
The crack of breaking twigs, thundering feet and deranged human voices echoed through the forest. Fiends were coming. They had to run.
Nikki flipped off the safety on her SCAR. Jon un-holstered his pistol and slapped Ben on the back. No more time for talk. They ran.
Ham sat with his stricken wife and listened as the Fiends grew closer.
“Gho,” she said.
“I, I can’t.”
“Gho or yhou’ll dhie.”
“Can’t.”
“Jusht end iht fhor me.” She reached out for a heavy piece of tree limb lying on the forest floor. “Uhse this.”
“I can’t.”
“Plhease.”
But it was too late anyway. The Reverend, or what had once been the reverend, appeared, standing on a granite boulder above them. The jolly Saint Nick was now an obese monster - its once white beard smeared with blood and bits of flesh. Other former congregants quickly joined it. Their mouths and hands were covered in gore.
The flight instinct took over Ham’s legs and he turned to run, only to be cut off by Big Alan Garber, now a Fiend, who grabbed him by the throat. With one swift jerk of his muscled fist, he tore the young newlywed’s larynx partially from his neck.
The reverend threw his obese weight on top of Kelly, who cried out in fear. Several others held her down. The reverend got his face close to hers and sniffed her wound, sniffed her gasping breath and then turned his face away. She wasn’t fresh any longer; the infection had already taken hold. The instinct to kill and gorge was replaced by an instinct to preserve, if only by not killing the host. Kelly would live. She would lose her mind, and if she didn’t die of a secondary infection due to her horrific wound, she would join the legions of other Fiends - only to die of starvation on a lonely island in Maine.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Wall
Jon, Nikki and Ben were quickly back to the gravesite. At first they thought that Teddy had run, but then found him in a fetal position at the bottom of the shallow grave, thumb in his mouth. Nikki, who had only in the past few days let her heart feel open again, felt it suddenly slam shut. Jon was almost overwhelmed with this horrible turn of events. For a week they had found solace. For a week they had found happiness. For a week, they could almost let go of the horror that surrounded them.
Both of these people, these strong people, who had survived when so many others hadn’t, looked at the terrified boy and became nearly catatonic as well. Fear and exhaustion left them with a paralysis of indecision - the primal part of them wanting to crawl in there with him.
Then Ben spoke up. As a paramedic he had seen lots of folks with too much pain or trauma to process, move into a default mode of submission. Some folks let themselves float along, letting others decide life or death for them. Others simply gave up the ghost once and for all. Ben was a master at snapping people out of such temporary weakness. It was this personality trait that got him the militia leader job.
“Eye’s on me!” he hissed. “You, boy with your thumb in your mouth, get up! Quit being a baby and get out of that hole!”
Jon and Nikki snapped out of it.
Jon chimed in, “Teddy, we have to move now.”
Teddy stirred and looked up at them.
“At-a-boy” said Ben, and he reached into the hole and grabbed the boy’s jacket yanking him up. Teddy reached out and Jon and Nikki grabbed
hold as well. They didn’t have to say more. They could hear the Fiends crashing through the woods.
Ben said, "We’ve got to somehow circle around to the boats. They’re all stocked with gear in the event of an emergency evacuation. I say we run north; the river side of the lake and let the current sweep us back down toward the boat inlet."
“What about my dad and Amanda?” asked Teddy.
They all hesitated. Nikki moved to speak but was interrupted by Ben. “If we’re lucky, we’ll see ‘em at the dock or on the water. Everyone knows to go to the boats if demons come ashore.”
They all assumed that the lie appeased the boy. No one wanted to contemplate telling him that the rest of his family was gone as well. They underestimated him: “Don't call them demons.” Billy said. “It's regular people infected with a disease. I have to save my dad and sister.” With that he started running back toward the camp.
Jon grabbed a fistful of his jacket and hauled him back. “Not that way.” Jon paused, letting the Fiends in the woods echo his statement. “They’ll kill you as sure as they’ll kill the rest of us.”
Tears filled the boy’s eyes and his mouth twisted from anger to hatred. Then just as quickly the anguish was replaced by resolve. He wiped his eyes, listened to the movement among the trees and turned, getting his bearings. “I know the best way. Follow me.”
Jon let him run. He, Nikki and Ben followed as best they could.
They reached a natural granite wall that subdivided much of the eastern part of the island and had been used as the demarcation line between the settlement and Jon and Nikki's space. It had natural steps cut into it, offering purchase for small trees and damp mossy outcroppings. The peak was perhaps forty feet high, making it impractical to take the long way around.
Teddy was already halfway up when the others reached the base. They all began to climb at different points. It was slick going and Jon found himself at a steep dead-end when only half way up.
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