It was a big house, three stories, the main homeplace set off from the rest of the acreage by what had once been a long fence. Much of the fence had failed, the rest racing to catch up. The planks had buckled and snapped, hanging onto the support posts by a thread. It looked like the stripped skeletal remains of a great beast that had wandered these plains millennia before.
“We’ll look around outside first,” she said.
He nodded.
They began a clockwise loop of the house, Rachel using the wall for support. Somehow it made her feel a bit better, not leaning against her eleven-year-old son. The HK was cradled under her left arm, her finger curled gently on the trigger.
Abandoned equipment and junk and littered this side of the property. A couple of oil barrels, a bandsaw, a pair of axes, some not terribly rusted. A large tarp bearing a large dark stain. Faded soda cans. Rachel paused at the corner of the house, peering toward the large clearing that ran toward a meandering creek about fifty yards distant.
A large fire pit, about twelve feet in diameter, had been scooped out of the land. It was about twenty-four inches deep and stacked with the remains of long-burned firewood. Spanning the length of the pit was a crude spit bearing a long cut of raw meat, still dripping onto the cold kindling underneath. Ash blanketed the sooty fire-blackened edges of the pit. Scattered haphazardly about the area were several bones, the sight of which made Rachel’s stomach flip. There was a haunting familiarity to the remains, a splinter in her soul.
“See anything?” Will whispered behind her.
“Shh,” she replied, her response coming out choppy and breathy.
She swept her gaze wide, beyond the fire pit, down toward the creek, looking for any sign of activity, her trigger finger itchy now.
“Binoculars.”
He handed them to her.
She scanned the area again, taking her time, sweeping from west to east, on high alert. The sensation that they weren’t alone began niggling at her, frosting her insides, making her shiver.
Then: a cough, a quick sharp hack.
The sound was unmistakable, coming from inside the house.
Someone was in there.
25
Rachel looked over her shoulder and pressed a finger to her lips.
Will nodded, his eyes wide.
Quickly she took stock of their location. There were four windows on this side of the house, two on each level. It was difficult to tell how exposed they were here. Her brain cycled through their options, what steps they would have to take to survive the latest fastball from their terrible world. As it was, they had probably already pushed their luck to the limit by not being spotted. Unless they already had been, and they were too naïve to know it, unless they were already in a terrible trap they could not see.
Flight was out. Her ankle was simply too injured. They were here now, and she doubted the occupants of the property would be welcoming them with open arms. She glanced back at the fire pit, telling herself she wasn’t seeing what she was seeing, wondering if by sunset she or Will might be roasting on that spit.
You don’t know for sure.
That could be a deer or a boar, maybe one of those bobcats like the one that killed Charlotte.
The sound of footsteps clomping on wood drew her attention back to the front of the house. Someone was coming out, out on the porch, the metronomic thump, thump, thump of feet descending stairs. She slithered around Will, putting herself between him and the front of the house. Coin flip here. If this stranger came around this way, she would open fire without asking any questions. There was too much at stake.
Then the sound slipped away from them, the susurration of boots on gravel retreating into the silent void of the afternoon. She motioned again to Will to stay quiet, and he nodded. Her back to the wall, her arm around Will, she edged back toward the yard, her heart up in her throat. There was evil here, pure evil, something dark and ancient. You could feel it crawling on your skin, up your nostrils, down into your lungs.
A lot of variables were in play here, leaving her body tight with stress, like her skin didn’t fit her frame anymore. Who lived here, what were they up to, were she and Will already trapped, were they the proverbial frog in the slowly warming pot of water. She felt naked here in the long shadow of the house, sitting isolated on this barren stretch of land.
Will’s body tensed against hers and she froze. His young ears had picked up on something, and she primed her own as she tried to play catch-up. The soft crunch of gravel again as the footsteps drew closer once again. She inched her way toward the corner, risking the slightest glance toward the yard. From the other side of the house emerged a very tall, very thin man wearing a butcher’s apron carrying something in his arms, covered with a blanket. A shadow of stubble graced his narrow face. His pants were filthy. His eyes were red and puffy.
He set his load down at the edge of the fire pit before taking a seat on the ground, his legs crisscrossed underneath him. He sat there for a while, staring into the center of the fire pit. As she studied the peculiar scene, she became aware of a faint sound, a whimpering or neighing sound, maybe a cat or dog. The man glanced over his shoulder at the house but did not appear particularly troubled by it.
After a very long while, he rose to his feet and peeled back the tarp from the item he’d been carrying. At first, Rachel couldn’t see what it was, the man blocking her view. Then he stepped around to the side and began working the fire pit, stoking the kindling, giving her a clear line of sight. She gagged instantly, and it took every atom of willpower not to vomit.
It was a human torso.
The shock of it froze her where she stood.
The ghost stories, the rumors, the whispers in the dark she’d heard over the years, the things she knew to be true but didn’t want to admit were now laid bare before her. The nadir of humanity on display now. This was where their humanity had ended, where it had morphed into something base, something twisted, something that transcended any plane of existence with which she was familiar. Heat spiked up her back as she watched the man work, lighting the blaze in the pit, the blackened chunks of wood.
As the man stoked the fire, the sound emanating from the house ramped up in intensity, from a whimper to a full-throated groan, unquestionably human. This time he paid it no mind at all, focusing his attention on the fire before him. After a few moments, perhaps a minute, the fire took hold, rippling to life in the belly of the pit, the waves of heat shimmering and dancing above its corona.
She glanced back toward the front of the house, back toward the highway. They could slip away now while this barbecue from the depths of hell unfolded, away from this living horror show, even if they carried with them an abscess of darkness on their souls. Her ankle throbbed but running for your life had a funny way of curing what ailed you.
Another moan.
Someone was in there right now, someone for whom the arrow of fate pointed at that roasting spit, and it wasn’t her problem, really, now was it, it was every woman for herself out here. She had a responsibility to take care of Will and injecting herself into this equation meant abdicating that responsibility in favor of something else.
But did it?
Keeping Will alive, while the most important piece, wasn’t the only piece of the puzzle of her life. What would she be telling him if they walked away and left that poor soul inside to become this thing’s dinner? There had to be more.
Justice.
That was what was wrong with their world.
No one was held accountable anymore.
If she walked away now, this man would continue to snare unsuspecting travelers off the road because that was what the world had become. By simple dint of untold horrors happening over and over in every possible way, they had become used to it, and becoming used to it had facilitated a de facto acceptance of it.
No more.
There had to be justice.
As quietly as she could, she checked the HK’s readiness.
“Stay right behind me,” she whispered.
He nodded his understanding.
She limped around the corner, the HK’s muzzle up. Will hung back off her left flank. Her eyes darted from side to side while keeping her quarry in view. A rusted tractor sat by an equally rusted propane tank on the far side of the clearing. In front of it sat a pile of bones, which caused her to shiver with rage. How many? How many, she could not help but wonder. The more she thought about it, the angrier she became.
She cleared her throat as loudly as she could.
The man froze, his spine stiffening and straightening. He turned around on his haunches. She tightened her grip on her rifle when she spotted the long, curved knife in his right hand. He was maybe fifteen feet away from her, twenty at the most.
“Who’s inside?” she asked.
He didn’t reply. He simply stared at them, not unlike the way the bobcat had before attacking Will.
“Who’s inside?” she asked again.
A flutter of movement to her right, drawing her eye away from the man for the splittest of seconds. He charged at them, the blade high and ready to strike. She squeezed off a burst, catching him squarely in the chest, knocking him backward a handful of steps before he fell directly into the fire.
She turned to see a large woman wearing a dirty housecoat lumbering toward her. She fired again, missing this time. The woman was deceptively quick, or maybe it was because Rachel was too slow. As the man howled while he burned alive, Rachel fired off another burst, this one catching the woman in her meaty legs. She was close enough that the blood spattered against the cuffs of Rachel’s pants. She tumbled to the ground in a heap, grabbing at her mangled shins. Rachel stepped forward and fired a final burst into the woman’s head.
She glanced back at the fire pit, where the man was now fully engulfed in flames. If he were not dead yet, he would be shortly. She turned back toward the house, which sat quietly now, not as haunting, like something had been exorcised from it.
It was over.
Rachel felt her bladder let go, a warmth spreading through her midsection and down her thighs. Her legs gave out under her and she sank to her knees, feeling the cold, damp earth under her. The rage drained away, a storm front losing its punch.
What had she done?
She glanced up at Will, who had wandered over toward the fire pit, watching the fire consume the cannibal’s body. He stood there, watching it burn, and she was sorry, sorrier than she had ever been in her life. There was nothing left to hide from him; he now knew it all, he now had seen all there was to see. It was more than any eleven-year-old, more than any human being should ever have to see, but you couldn’t fix something until you saw what was broken.
“You OK, Spoon?”
Without turning away from the fire, he gave her a shaky thumbs up.
“You know why I did this?”
An almost imperceptible nod of his head.
“There may be people trapped inside.”
Another nod.
“We need to try and save them.”
He nodded.
“I know.”
“It could be very bad in there.”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“I know.”
#
They slowly made their way toward the house, Rachel gingerly moving on her wounded ankle. The back door hung open like a broken wing. As they neared the threshold, the moaning started up again, and now she could hear someone calling for help.
“Is someone there?”
Rachel looked back at Will and pressed a finger to her lips.
They stepped inside the small country kitchen, dim in the weak light of the gray afternoon. The smell of decay and mustiness was almost overpowering. Behind her, Will retched and then threw up on the floor.
“You all right?”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice shaky but firm.
A series of meathooks retrofitted into the ceiling swung gently in the breeze flowing in through the door. Mercifully, the hooks were bare. On the counter, however, was a horror to counterbalance that – a human head, desiccated. There was no point in telling Will not to look. If anything, it was counterproductive, it hurt him not to see the world for the way it was.
They moved into a small corridor, darker here away from the ambient light of the day. To the right was a small sitting room jammed full of junk and debris. Old magazines and books, knick-knacks and piles of trash stacked above her head. The walls might have been a pleasant yellow once upon a time; now the color was inscrutable.
“Please help me!” The voice echoed pitifully through the house.
“Where are you?” Will called out.
She grimaced at Will’s impertinence. She didn’t think there were any hostiles left but there was no way to be sure. The graveyard of history was full of men and women better than her, smarter than her, faster than her, nevertheless felled by good motivations fueling bad decisions.
“Downstairs!”
“Who else is here?”
“Please don’t hurt me. Please, God, don’t hurt me!”
“You’re safe now.”
“No,” came the reply. “Nooooooooooo. No, no, no. Please hurry before they come back.”
The wailing continued, filling the house with a dreary, mournful cry; her skin rippled and tightened with gooseflesh. Part of her screamed at her to turn tail and run, put as much distance between this place and Will as she could. She didn’t know what he was screaming at, whether someone was down there now, carving him up or some memory that had broken free.
They came to a closed door at the end of the hallway.
“Will.”
“Yeah?”
“Open the door. Slowly.”
His hand trembled as his fingers curled around the knob and twisted it. The door squealed on its hinges as it swung open, revealing a dark stairwell beyond. The stairs descended to a basement, out of sight.
“Who’s there? Is someone there? Please don’t hurt me.”
“Stay right behind me,” she whispered.
She leaned up against the wall of the stairwell, mindful of her throbbing ankle, taking one step at a time. It was hot in here; sweat slicked her body and the air tasted rank and stuffy. Each step was an eternity, each one a nightmare unto itself. The only light came from the upstairs hallway, and that was weak at best.
She flicked on the flashlight in her pocket; the beam of light was dim, a reflection of the weak batteries at their disposal. Another dozen steps to the bottom. Then six. Then three. It was cooler down here, damp. The smell of metal hung thickly in the air.
“Is someone there? Who’s there?”
She swept the flashlight across the cellar. It was bigger than she thought, perhaps equivalent to the entire square footage of the house. A large trough sat in the middle of the room. There was a work table built into the wall to her right, on which sat four human heads staring back at her. The beam continued its trip across the room, freezing when Rachel came across the room’s sole occupant.
She stood frozen, her mouth agape. A thin man stood against the wall, his arms chained above his head. He wore dirty khaki shorts but no shirt, revealing a bare torso stained with blood and only God knew what else. His body trembled in the damp cold of the basement. Rachel couldn’t tell if he was awake, as his head was drooping down toward his chest.
“Are you OK?”
He started at the sound of her voice, his head popping up, his body recoiling away from her. He began to sob as she watched him. It was an ugly cry, tears and mucus dripping from his face and nose.
“It’s OK,” she said.
He trembled violently as he wept.
“We’re going to get you out of here.”
She let him be while he cried, studying his shackles. Each of his wrists bore a cuff, connected to a short chain mounted in the drywall.
“Hey, what’s your name?”
“Alec,” he said in between teary gasps.
&
nbsp; “Listen to me, Alec, I’ve gotta break you out of these cuffs, but I’m going to have to shoot out the anchor.”
“Will, stand right behind me.”
When Will was in position, she raised the muzzle to the eyebolt restraining his left hand and squeezed off a shot. The drywall crumbled, releasing the anchor from the wall. She repeated the step with his right hand, freeing him from his shackles. His arms swung down heavily, the chains scraping across the ground. He crumpled to the ground.
“We have to get out of here.”
He pushed himself to his feet, but he was unsteady, like a baby giraffe taking its first steps. Together they staggered toward the stairs. Rachel’s ankle throbbed as they ascended, each step pure agony as she bore not only her weight but a good bit of Alec’s as well. The number of stairs seemed infinite; they would spend eternity climbing and never reach the top. She stole a glance at Will, grimacing and grunting from one step to the next, his skinny arm wrapped around Alec’s waist, and this galvanized her. As the landing drew closer, she shifted the HK, sliding the stock under her arm, snaking her finger around the trigger.
“Can you hold yourself up for a second?” she asked Alec.
“Yeah,” came the reply, raspy and shaky.
On the landing, he leaned back against the wall and let out a sigh. Rachel’s arm burned with fatigue, which left the gun a bit wobblier than she would have liked. She hazarded a peek down the corridor, first to her left, back toward the kitchen, and then to her right. It was clear in both directions.
“Let’s go.”
As they lurched down the hallway, she reflected on the abject stupidity of what they were doing. So much risk, so much danger, and for what? Was it worth her life? Was it worth Will’s? They’d been lucky enough to survive the encounter outside, and she’d gone on and pressed their luck even farther. Why? To feel good about herself? To show off to Will?
The door was still ajar, as it had been when they’d first laid eyes on it, what, thirty minutes ago? What horrors had swum past them in that time, evil seen and unseen, here and there and everywhere. As they stood here, saving this man, elsewhere terrible things were happening to good people and there was nothing she could do about it. And that was the answer to the question. There was something she could do here. She could help this man who could not help himself. The simple act of doing something was what mattered.
The Immune Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 76