by Alan Ryker
“But my wife—”
“Leave, or you’ll be arrested!”
Looking into the young face filled with such fury over what had happened to his friends, Pete felt like he was trying to stare down a brick wall.
“Alright. Let me go.”
They did, and each took a step back with hands on various law-enforcement implements.
Pete ignored them, and started across the pasture towards home.
* * *
The door stood open. Kathy would never waste air conditioning. A few feet into the living room Pete found blood. Not a lot, but more than enough to send him into fight mode.
His shoulders tensed and rode up, and his hands came away from his sides in clenched fists. He walked slowly and steadily through the house. It was empty.
He loaded his shotgun then called 911. But he didn’t wait for help. Instead, he followed bright red drops of blood out the front door, down the porch and onto the gravel. There, it was harder to see as the dusty earth drank it down, but he soon understood where the trail was leading him. Because when he looked up, he saw that the door to his workshop had been split in half.
He prayed to God to not let it be his mother, but he knew it was.
Whatever had turned those people into monsters had gotten his mother, and she’d traded her home for another hoard. His.
Please God, he prayed. Please.
He peered into the dark shop. Nothing seemed to be moving. He reached in and flipped the light switch.
Nothing happened.
He went to the carport and got the flashlight from under the seat of his truck. It was a big one, the kind you carried by a handle on the top. Holding it beneath the barrel of his shotgun, he stepped into the workshop.
Dust particles hovered in the stream of the flashlight. There was a new smell, a moister smell. One of rot.
Pete worked the flashlight beam around the shop. There was little clear space. The amount of large equipment he had in there made the entire room one big blind corner, and he flicked the light back and forth as he worked his way deeper.
“Mom!” he shouted.
Muffled voices cried out in response, and felt certain they were the voices of Kathy and his boys. He abandoned the slow, careful approach and ran to the back of the shop, but stopped short at a structure that he hadn’t put there.
Before him stood some sort of makeshift barricade.
It was a head-high wall built from the antique furniture he’d collected over the past decade. China cabinets, dressers, desks, chests, bureaus, tables, all made of old, thick wood. He pulled the drawer a few inches out of a dresser and stepped up to look over the top of the odd fortress.
Other than finding his family dead, he saw what he’d most feared.
The trash bags full of tin cans and foil had been ripped open, dumped out, and mixed with the moldy stacks of rodent-gnawed magazines, books and newspapers, creating a junk pile several feet deep.
In that pile, his mother had been in the process of burying Kathy, Teddy and Junior. They were bound, gagged and bloody, and squinted into his flashlight beam with terrified faces.
His mother seemed frozen, stuck in the act of covering over the pit she’d placed Kathy in. She didn’t look at him, instead staring into nothing. Small spasms vibrated through her thin body.
“Mom, no…”
“Peter,” she said slowly, working each syllable as if speaking a foreign language. She looked at him, finally, and roared, “Peter!” like a jet engine.
It brought Pete back to himself, and he realized he’d been frozen in place, too. He shoved back the confusion and disgust and—horror. He stopped trying to understand, and simply acted, placing the shotgun and flashlight on top of a wardrobe and then pressing himself up.
Something had been waiting in the darkness for him to do just that, and it slammed into him like a cannonball, riding him to the concrete floor then bouncing away.
Pete managed to get an arm beneath him, and didn’t hit his head. He quickly rolled to his hands and knees and stared in the direction he thought his attacker had gone. His flashlight was strong, but unfortunately still sat atop the wardrobe. Though it faced in the wrong direction, it and the open door at the other end of the shop provided enough ambient light for Pete to make out nearby gray shapes.
He heard the scuff of a foot on concrete to his left, and turned toward it. The man emerged into view like a shark from deep, dark water, giving Pete a fraction of a second to brace against the impact.
The man tried to tackle Pete, but was unable. He pressed, his arms wrapped around Pete’s thick torso in a bear hug. Pete started to slide back, but leaned over, hugged the scrawny man around his back, picked him up and spiked him headfirst into the concrete.
A loud crack announced that the fight was over. The man was probably dead.
Except that he rolled through and lunged for Pete again.
Pete saw the man’s left arm flop backward. He’d gotten it beneath him, and the impact had snapped his upper arm and collarbone.
Pete didn’t see the right hand that connected with his face, spinning him around and dropping him to his knees.
Pete’s skull felt suddenly stuffed full of cotton. His brain screamed at his body to stand, but the message couldn’t get through the soft wadding. His dim vision of his surroundings went black.
Pressing his palms into the ground, Pete tried to stand on violently shaking legs, but before he could get upright, a blow to his back smashed him down to his knees. Then another blow, and another. The man beat on him like he was hammering nails into his spine.
If the thin, filthy freak hadn’t been so incredibly strong, it would have been funny.
Pete reached out, grabbed the man’s ankles and pulled. That time, he was certain the crack he heard was the sound of the man’s skull bouncing off the concrete.
And still the man kicked him in the face and scurried back into the darkness.
“Anna,” he said.
Pete crawled forward. He had the bastard hurt.
“Anna!” the lunatic shouted, telling Pete just where he was. He saw him dimly, crawling away.
Pete stumbled almost to his feet and fell on the man’s back. He drove elbows into the thin ribs and felt them crack. He pounded his fists into the bloody back of the man’s skull.
And yet, the freak rolled over, grabbed Pete with his long legs and started beating him with his one good arm.
They traded blow for blow. Pete felt his own nose break, and felt the other man’s nose break under his own fist. He wrapped his hands around the man’s throat and bounced his broken head off the concrete once, twice, but the man punched his broken nose and the world didn’t just go black, but disappeared.
When Pete came to, he was lying on the man, somehow still fighting despite having blacked out, gripping him to his chest in a bear hug.
“Anna!” the man shrieked.
And then Pete was lying on his back, looking up at his mother.
She hovered over him like a ghost in a child’s nightmare. The fine white hair that wasn’t standing straight up was plastered to her head with black muck. Her lips sank into a toothless mouth that worked noiselessly at some secret, mute language. Her thick-knuckled, clawed hands clenched and unclenched, making muscles that shouldn’t be there knot and ripple in her forearms. But worst were her eyes, huge and round and absolutely mad.
“Kill him,” the freak said from behind her.
She crouched down, and reached for Pete.
“Mom?” he said. But he couldn’t move.
He watched the grimy hand come for him. She stopped, spasming violently, almost in a seizure. She closed her eyes against the pain.
When she opened them again, her expression was more certain, less confused. She ran her fingers along his cheek, then leaned down and kissed him on the forehead.
Then she turned and charged the invader.
Pete couldn’t see him, but he’d apparently made it to his feet. The pair cra
shed through the dark shop, knocking over tools and junk.
Pete stood and went to the furniture barricade, again stepping into the drawer and up. He grabbed the flashlight and shone it down on Kathy and the boys. They started struggling against their bonds.
But the crashing went on behind him. He had to finish it before he could help them.
“I promise I’ll be back,” he said. He turned the beam of the flashlight to the top of the wardrobe on which it had sat.
No shotgun.
He stepped down and scanned the floor, but couldn’t find it. Then his mother screamed, and he turned back to the fight.
He’d finish the freak off with his bare hands if need be.
They froze like wild animals and stared straight into the flashlight beam. His mother’s fingers were wrapped through the man’s hair, yanking his head back. Her face was a wreck, her eyes staring out from a mangled mess. The lower half of the man’s face and his bared teeth were covered in her blood. With only one arm, he’d taken to biting.
Then the moment broke. The man, apparently realizing he was outnumbered, battered frantically at Pete’s mother. He knocked her to her knees, but her hands wouldn’t release. Pete charged him the way he would have a tackle in his high school football days as an offensive lineman, but at the last moment, the man wrenched his head free, most of his scalp coming away in Anna’s hands as she fell to the ground.
The man sidestepped and, with his good arm, sent Pete headfirst into a pile of yard tools.
Pete grabbed the first wooden handle his hand found, turned, and smashed the heavy implement into the man’s face, knocking him to the ground.
The swing had been powerful, but awkward. Pete realized there was a second, loose handle.
His post-hole digger had been the first tool to hand.
He grabbed the second handle.
The man was trying to get to his feet, and failing. The man’s fight with Pete’s mother had taken them to the opposite end of the shop, near the half-open door, and Pete could see him clearly.
His humerus stuck out through his bicep, and his arm hung low from his broken shoulder. Pete had smashed in the center of his face with his fists, and broken his jaw with the post-hole digger. His skull was lop-sided, but somehow he held Pete in a one-eyed gaze as hateful as Pete had ever seen, even as his limbs refused to work properly and he stumbled and skittered across the concrete like a spider missing legs.
At first, Pete assumed that what poured from the man was only blood. Then he noticed the blood continuing to move across the concrete. He saw blood running up the man’s face and body instead of down, and he realized that dark red, long-legged insects were crawling from the man’s veins.
And Pete’s mind snapped.
He smashed the post-hole digger across the man’s face again, knocking him to the ground. Before he could stand, Pete slammed the post-hole digger down into his chest. He put all his weight onto it, breaking the freak’s sternum. Blood and blood-colored bugs poured from the man’s mouth and sprayed through the air as he coughed. And yet he grabbed Pete’s ankle.
Pete stomped his other foot down on the post-hole digger, then closed the blades.
The pale, bloody, grimy man jerked like an insect, until the spasms worked their way out through his extremities, and he calmed. First his body, then his arms and legs, and then his fingers and feet went still. Finally, his one good eye unfocused, just before the blood insects pressed their way through it.
One ran at his boot, and he stomped it. He stomped and stomped the bugs, but more kept emerging. Chills went up his spine and he started scratching himself all over, feeling the bugs on him.
As he backed away from the wrecked corpse, with insects crawling over its skin and a yard tool sprouting from its ribcage, he remembered his mother. He looked for her, but she was no longer in sight.
Pete staggered toward the back corner.
“Mom!” he shouted. The pressure and vibrations in his sinuses made his vision go dark with pain around the edges, brutally reminding him of his mashed nose.
He didn’t shout again, but picked up his flashlight and hurried to the barricade.
He grabbed the top of the wardrobe and pulled hard. As it tipped onto its front legs, its rear legs lifted into trash, and it seemed for a moment that it would stick. Pete grabbed the ornate wood at the top and hung from it, then stumbled out of the way as the wardrobe crashed to the floor. The flashlight again illuminated the scene, now even more nightmarish.
Teddy and Kathy were still half-buried, but Pete’s mother cradled Junior in her arms, muttering something out of which Pete could only understand the word “Victor”.
At first, Kathy stared up at Pete, but when she turned to look at his mother, now illuminated by the flashlight, she began to scream through her gag and struggle at her bonds. As bad as she’d looked before, she looked worse now, with the blood insects crawling out of her ruined face.
Kathy’s screams seemed to snap Anna back to the moment. She crawled backward, still clutching Junior to her chest with one arm, though he was nearly as big as her.
“Mom,” Pete said. “That’s not Victor. That’s Peter Junior.”
She looked at him with such rage that he almost felt her gaze punch physically into him.
“Mom, you’re sick and badly hurt. We’re going to go to the hospital. Help is almost here.”
“No,” she said. Her eyes glazed over for a moment then she burst into motion. She ran to the highest point of the pile, against the wall, and then jumped, hurdling the barricade, carrying Junior in one arm and hurling herself forward with the other.
The scene played out before Pete in slow motion, but he could only respond in even slower motion. Like a drying golem he reached out to Junior, whose eyes were huge and terrified as his monster of a grandmother carried him through the air, across the shop, over the junk in the doorway and out of sight. Junior watched Pete the whole way, crying out to him with his eyes, but Pete had only made it a few steps before they were gone.
* * *
Though they were only one property over, Pete was helping Kathy and Teddy clean up in the bath by the time the deputies arrived.
The two grim men were clearly exhausted, but listened carefully to Pete and Kathy’s story, taking notes.
“We have to find them before she infects Junior.”
“We’re going to do our best, sir.” But the way he said it…It wasn’t that he didn’t care, but that he had little hope, and though the case was a missing little boy, things had gotten so crazy that nothing could move him to the level of intensity Pete wanted to see.
“She left on foot. Can you bring in dogs?”
“We’ll try that, but the trail is probably gone, with the rain.”
Pete looked to the window. He was so distraught that he hadn’t even noticed the rain. And it wasn’t just a sprinkling, but a steady downfall. Under any other circumstances he would have been ecstatic about it.
“Goddamn it,” he said. “Goddamn it!” And the rain came down even harder.
There was a knock at the door. Pete started to rise, but one of the deputies opened it.
Three men in hazmat suits entered.
“I know you’re scared, but we’re going to do our best. Now that we know what’s going on, we’ll have a much better chance of finding your son. But we need to get you folks to a hospital. If you want some books or necessities, get them now.”
Peter had been so focused on Junior that he hadn’t considered that Kathy and Teddy should be checked out. He’d made certain they weren’t seriously injured, but it was a good idea to have a doctor look at them. “You guys probably won’t be there long enough to need much.”
“Mr. Grish, you’ll be going with them. You’re all to be quarantined. The third floor of the Lockton City Hospital has been cleared for anyone exposed to the parasite.”
Pete stood. “I’m fine. I haven’t been infected. You need me to find Junior.”
The deputies
each stepped closer. Pete could see how instinctive it was for them. He should stop. He shouldn’t argue.
“Mr. Grish, there’s nothing you can do here that you can’t do from the hospital. Finding your son is top priority, and if we need any information from you, we’ll contact you. Right now, you need to go with your family.”
The part of Pete that always listened to authority figures wanted desperately for him to sit back down and be quiet. It was the loud part of his brain. But some older, quieter, but stronger part told him that he goddamn needed to find his son. Strangers weren’t going to do it any better, even with their flat tops and their mustaches.
“I know my mother and this area better than you. I need to help. The bugs didn’t touch me.”
“Mr. Grish, this isn’t up for—”
“No! You listen to me. I’m going to find my son.” Pete stepped forward until he was nose to nose with the officer. The muscles in his shoulders tensed, and he leaned over the younger man. Though he was only an inch taller, he was twice as wide.
“Peter!” Kathy said. But it was fear in her voice, not reprimand.
The deputy spoke very quietly. “Mr. Grish, you’re scaring your son. Sit down.”
The other deputy didn’t remain so calm, but reached out and grabbed Pete’s arm. Pete threw it off. Both deputies tackled him. He started to push them away, but then the men in the hazmat suits joined in. They rolled him onto his stomach and cuffed his hands behind his back.
They tried to lift him. Pete wanted nothing more than to get his hands free and on their throats, until he heard Teddy shouting. He looked through the men’s legs and saw his little son pounding on one of them furiously before Kathy snatched him up.
“It’s okay, Teddy. Daddy’s okay.” Then, “I can walk on my own. Get the hell off of me.”
He shook his shoulders to make space, got his feet beneath him and stood. “Get these fucking cuffs off of me.”
The deputy snorted. “If you behave, I’ll take them off at the hospital.”
For Teddy’s sake, Pete allowed himself to be led out to the ambulance.