Jenna smiled at her husband, glad that he rarely argued and the way his silence had always seemed like a form of communication in itself. She squeezed his hand as he let her hair fall, and they walked together to the foyer.
Jenna and Frank were already dressed for winter weather and had been since the night before. They’d slept fully clothed in their living room. All they needed to add were gloves, hats and boots and they were ready to brave December cold.
They locked the door upon leaving. Jenna felt only a small pang of regret at leaving all of their things inside. They took their cell phones, which still weren’t working, and Jenna’s laptop. Why she felt the need to take the thing, she couldn’t say, but it had felt wrong to leave all the family pictures, communications and important documents that existed within. They also gathered all cash they’d had in the house, which had amounted to a little over five hundred dollars. Jenna had suggested to her husband that maybe if neighborly concern didn’t sway Sam and Laura, money would. Jenna thought money would be useful again sometime in the future, or maybe it hadn’t lost its use quite yet. Either way, she and Frank had more, in the bank and in investments. What they had on hand was well worth it if it paid for their integration into a more prepared and peopled group.
Frank took Jenna’s free hand once more on their front porch. They held hands often, and it was with great affection and a lifetime of love that she interlaced their fingers and smiled at him.
They walked the short distance to the Walker home. Their booted feet crunched over frozen blades of grass that were easily crushed under the thick rubber soles. Though frost coated the early morning in a glaze that made everything look candied and glittery, still no snow had fallen. Frank took it in and decided that when the snow did come, it was going to come fast and hard and it would be a bitch.
Knocking on the front door, as he had done many times before, Frank stepped back and waited hopefully for an answer.
The knock at the door came while Sam sat on the couch, marveling over how much it felt like he’d had the shit kicked out of him. Every wound burned like mad. He felt he’d been pummeled, abused, thrown over jagged rocks, and for some reason, every breath he pulled into his lungs seared like he’d inhaled half of a campfire.
The smoke in the house, he thought to himself as he walked gingerly toward the door. He left Trevor sleeping on the couch, deep in thought as he was, as he continued to replay the events of the previous day. He’d been pretty much hyperventilating that smoky shit right into his lungs, he reminded himself. What a drag, he mused, and almost laughed aloud. The comparison to cigarettes in his own mind amused him, as many things within his brain tended to.
He reached the door and looked back at Trevor, hoping the boy was still asleep. He thought perhaps he should go back and wake him so that he could keep an eye and hand on the boy, but decided against it. His peaceful sleep was soon to be a rarity, Sam guessed, and wanted to let his son have what was left of their normal, familiar lives while he could.
Taking a quick glance through the peephole, Sam saw the neighbors, Frank and Jenna. He was pleased to see them alive, and not suffering any of the evidence of full corruption that he’d seen in others. They stood fully in the sun, after all, and looked as normal as he did. Feeling the interest of the malign presence within him directed at the middle-aged couple, Sam reminded himself that looking normal and actually being normal were two different things now. He urged himself to handle the situation as warily as he’d decided to handle everything in the world the way it had become.
Cracking the door, he leaned out a little ways and said, “Hello there, neighbors. Good to see you about and looking no worse for the wear.”
“Glad to see you,” Frank answered as he waved his free hand companionably. “You know what’s happening, I assume?”
“Probably no more than you do,” Sam replied noncommittally as he opened the door a little more and leaned against the jamb. He was sure to face them with the injured side of him, so that his face and shoulder wound were fairly obvious in the soft morning light. He let them see a small slice of the hell he’d been through the day before, in hopes it would make their dealings cautious and also leave them with no harsh feelings should he decide to turn them away. He had a family to protect, after all, and it was obviously a difficult job.
Jenna gasped softly as she came forward, pulling a reluctant Frank with her. There was something wrong with Sam, the same something Frank knew was wrong with him and his wife. The beasts within Frank and Jenna hadn’t lashed out at each other, mainly because the concept of either of them hurting the other was so unfathomable to Frank and Jenna that the creatures couldn’t take hold for malicious action even for a tenth of a second. But what was inside Sam was like those things, those beings of darkness that had taken up residence within Frank and his dear wife, and Frank was sure the entity within Sam felt no qualms against attacking either of the two newcomers.
“Stay a little back, darling,” Frank suggested in a gentle tone as he kept Jenna from joining Sam on the porch.
Sam nodded, appreciating Frank’s intuition. “You know that much, at least,” Sam said. “Something’s wrong with a lot of us. I feel it in the two of you, as well. But we have two here who haven’t been touched by it. They’re uncorrupted, and we’re protecting them. I know you’re good people.”
“Good people who’ve always been friendly with you and your family,” Jenna reminded him with a winning smile. “That’s why we were hoping to join up with you. If things keep going the way they are, there’ll be problems, Sam. The cold, food. Snow’s coming, sure as anything.” She hesitated, not knowing whether to get her intentions and thoughts out there immediately or hold off. “We have money, if you’re thinking it’ll be of use to you now or later. We’ll pull weight.”
“It’s not about money, Jenna,” Sam said, and he sounded both scolding and almost embarrassed. “You’re friends. It’s not lack of supplies that I’m considering; it’s those under my protection.”
“More people could help with protection,” Frank suggested in a nonchalant tone.
Sam shivered, finally feeling the cold air against his skin. The bite in the wind was almost as malicious as the thing shifting curiously inside of him, with claws and teeth just as sharp. He’d come out onto the porch so he could be closer to Frank and Jenna for their discussion and was about to hold it open in invitation when someone else came through it.
Trevor was barefoot, but he didn’t seem to feel the cold that radiated up from the porch and fell around him. His hair was tousled from sleep, his cheeks pink with it. Except for his eyes, he looked the picture of a sleepy child on a winter morning. His eyes were fathomless black. The Bringer of Wounds was in possession of the boy’s body, and was ready to make its presence known.
Before Sam could reach out and touch the boy to drive back the presence of the special being that inhabited his son, Wounds had already unleashed the power of its namesake on the two humans who had approached the Walker home seeking companionship and sanctuary.
The process started from the feet up, from the smallest injuries to the largest. Frank and Jenna stood, paralyzed by what the Bringer had done to their bodies. Bruises spread and blossomed, like sickly, time-lapsed flowers blooming to life on their skin. Painful as they were, bruises were just the start. Thousands of tiny cuts, from paper cuts to other shallow wounds, hundreds of different types and positions, sprang up and soaked the skin of Frank and Jenna with bright, startling red.
Jenna cried out and grasped at her arms, but the burning was everywhere. There was no way to ease the ache and sear of almost maddening torture. Frank grunted in pain and surprise. The effect of having countless wounds accrued throughout one’s lifetime revisited at once was excruciating.
Stunned motionless and momentarily numbed in body and mind by what was happening, Sam took a moment to react to Trevor’s presence and the actions of the Bringer. As soon as he gained his composure, he reached out and took a firm hol
d of Trevor’s outstretched hand, jerking the small body of the boy toward him in one shocked, desperate motion.
Cutting off the Bringer’s power at that point was moot. The process had already begun, and would finish it with or without the Bringer of Wounds in possession of Trevor Walker’s small, fragile form.
Sam silently urged Trevor’s eyes to clear as he watched even worse evidence of the Bringer’s power work its way over Frank and Jenna. The older man tore off his winter jacket and screamed. His blue shirt looked black with all the blood that had soaked through it. Having a great love of them, Frank had gotten many tattoos throughout his life. He now felt as though every inch of skin ever touched by the artist’s needle had been drenched in acid and then lit aflame. Having a tattoo done once could be painful, but having to relive them all simultaneously ignited a pain reserved for some of the lower levels of Hell.
Jenna collapsed and wailed in agony. Blood poured from her mouth, from every part of her body and soaked the frosted ground, melting it with the heat. The finale was afoot, and the Bringer smiled with Trevor’s body before being banished by Sam’s touch.
Frank lifted his shirt, feeling a pain not quite like any other he’d ever experienced. It stood away from the others, both in unfamiliarity and brutality. With horror, he noted that the incision from his open heart surgery, which had just happened last year and had left an ugly scar he was ashamed of, was reopening. In the few seconds it took for the wound to spill his heart and other viscera onto the street, Frank came to the conclusion that he’d never feel ashamed of anything again. As he died, he had a thought for his wife, whom he knew without question was dying as well, and then he had no others.
While Frank slumped over onto the ground (Dead. God, Sam knew he was dead.) Jenna gave one last piercing scream of agony and then lay still as well. From the area of her hips and waist, blood pooled out in a greater quantity than any other location. They were dead, both dead. Bled out on the ground in front of Sam’s home and nothing he did could have stopped it, nothing he had done had saved them.
Wondering at all that blood, blood that had taken Jenna Coleman’s life in the final red wash, Sam thought back to if he knew what kind of injury could have caused that. With a sickly feeling in his stomach, he remembered that when they’d been discussing Mel’s birth, which had resulted in an emergency c-section, that Jenna had had her last child that way, as well. Sam guessed that was where the finishing flood of blood had come from to soak the pavement in front of his porch.
“Oh, God. Oh, God,” Sam whispered as he wheezed burning, disbelieving breaths in one after another. He was hyperventilating, he thought, having a panic attack at having two people opened from the inside up just by being looked at, by being noticed by that singular evil that had possession of his boy and being thought at. The Bringer had killed with nothing more than a thought!
“Daddy,” Trevor said softly, in an almost mewling voice. “Daddy, Daddy, what happened?”
Trevor had stopped calling him ‘Daddy’ last year, having evolved to simply ‘Dad’ instead. Hearing the word a younger Trevor had used for him in such a shaken voice calmed Sam for some reason, and he pulled the boy back inside, shutting and locking the door behind them before he dropped to his knees and held his son tightly.
At least he doesn’t know, Sam thought to himself. At least he doesn’t know what he did, what that thing had done using his body as the conduit.
“Laura,” Sam called. He was surprised to hear how hoarse, how strained his voice sounded.
Laura ran. She’d never heard Sam sound like that, not even when Mel had fallen on the deck last year and broken her wrist. Sam wasn’t the sturdy one, Laura was. Sam was the comforter, the one who panicked when it came to the kids. But she’d never heard Sam sound like that.
Skidding around the corner to look down the hallway that led to the front door, Laura saw Sam on his knees and Trevor standing in front of him. Sam clung to the boy and Trevor was crying, though it was that confused, startled way that indicated he didn’t quite know what he was crying for.
“Baby, baby, shh, shh,” Laura said in a calming tone as she came closer to the two of them. She pulled Trevor away from his father and stroked his mussed hair. He buried his face against the curve of his mother’s waist, hunching over so he could wrap his free arm around her. Laura noticed that even though he looked shell-shocked, Sam still held the hand of Trevor’s that was closest to him.
“What happened?” Laura asked her husband. Her voice was gentle but firm at the same time. Sam could charge into burning buildings without a thought but when it came to his children, Sam had always been more easily shaken than his wife. He needed Laura to be the hard one, in matters of discipline and injuries, and she was fine with that. She tried to draw him back to her with her voice. “Sam?”
On a shaky breath, Sam said, “Frank and Jenna are dead.”
Laura’s heart hitched with pain, but she didn’t speak. She knew Sam wasn’t done, that he was trying to build up to something.
“Trevor killed them.”
Hating the way that sounded, Sam winced and corrected the statement, “Whatever is inside Trevor killed them. That thing, it has this power, a horrible power.”
As things clarified for him, Sam stood and kept a firm hold on Trevor’s hand. Until whatever was wrong with them was purged, Sam vowed never to lose physical contact with his son again if he could help it.
“Come on, Trev. Laura, you too.”
Chapter Seventeen
Austin slept in Trevor’s room, dreaming of his mother. In the dream, she taught him how to dress wounds outside a hospital setting, and every time she wanted to show him something new, she injured herself to do it. Austin kept pleading with her to stop, but she continued to cut, mangle, and break her own body for his gruesome education. When he called for help, there was no one around to offer any kind of assistance. He couldn’t help her. Everything she’d taught him before washed away in a flood of panic and terror and everything new she tried to teach was drowned out by his futile screaming.
Sam woke the teen by unceremoniously dragging him one-handed from the bed and dumping his ass on the floor.
Shocked awake, Austin stared up at the obviously pissed-off Sam, the frowning Laura and the terrified-looking Trevor.
“Sam!” Laura exclaimed admonishingly, but said nothing more.
“Sam?” Austin echoed Laura with a question in his tone as he shook off the shock of the fall and the remnants of sleep. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
“You want to know what happened? Come here, I’ll show you.”
Without waiting for Austin to say anything or pull on his jacket, Sam jerked the teen up and hauled him out of the room. It might have been comical; the large father-figure dragging one stoic little boy and one confused, fighting teen down the hallway and out the front door. Perhaps if he had ended the spectacle by dumping them in the snow and initiating a friendly snowball fight (had there been any snow on the ground and snowsuits and boots on the boys) the illusion of a father trying to force play between his kids would have been complete. However, the journey ended with Sam and Trevor standing on the porch and Austin collapsed to his knees as Sam released his arm and thrust him toward the bodies still leaking red onto the ground.
“Trevor,” Austin said numbly, and Sam’s fury reached its pinnacle. He rounded on Austin, making sure to keep in contact with his son.
“‘Trevor.’ That’s your first response to this? Of fucking course it is, because you knew. You knew what that son of a bitch could do and the only thing you tell me is to keep touching him however I could. How the fuck was I to know what you meant by that, what you really meant, Austin?”
He grabbed the teen’s arm, the one that had been bleeding after the one and only encounter where Austin and Trevor were alone. Austin winced, but didn’t fight to release himself from Sam’s vice-like grasp.
“That thing did this,” Sam said, shaking Austin a little to make his poin
t. The teen went paler by the minute. Laura stood slightly inside the door, watching. She was ready to jump in if need be.
“Yes,” Austin said, even though Sam hadn’t been looking for an answer. “I didn’t know how to tell you what happened. I didn’t know what to do about it, Sam. It scared the shit out of me.”
“Fucking tell me!” Sam screamed in a blind rage. “Tell me what the fuck happened so I could know exactly why I should have done what you said. When I looked at him before now, I didn’t see the threat inside him. I saw my boy. I still see my boy. But now I see what my boy can do, I’ll piggyback him. I’ll fucking duct tape him to my chest if I have to. I needed to know, Austin!”
Both Austin and Sam were panting; Sam with fury and Austin with mortal terror. He’d never seen anyone so furious. His parents weren’t screamers and he didn’t have siblings. No one had ever yelled at him like that. At sixteen, being yelled at with such rage unexpectedly made him cry. Amy pushed through Laura and knelt down beside Austin, putting her arms around him and touching Sam’s hand, which still gripped Austin’s wounded limb.
“Enough, Sam,” she begged quietly. “You’re terrifying him.”
“He deserves to be terrified,” Sam said, but he dropped Austin’s arm. “He deserves more than that.”
Backing away from Sam, Austin sat on the cold porch with Amy clasping him to her protectively. The tears were hot and thick on his face, burning his cheeks even as the cold air slicked them like thin sheets of ice to his skin.
Amy didn’t look at the bodies in the road. God, she’d seen enough of bodies already. She knew enough about the situation to agree that Sam was in the right, but that wouldn’t stop her from protecting the teen several years her junior. She’d seen Sam’s temper before, and knew that it had to be restrained before what was right and what was acceptable in the face of his anger became the same thing to him.
“He made a mistake,” Laura said insistently, joining Amy’s team as she pulled Trevor into the house. Because Sam refused to let go of the boy, ever again if need be, he followed inside without a fight.
Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller Page 16