“What happened to him?” Cheryl asked.
“He’s buried in our graveyard now. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to find out if his recovery was complete…the family’s house was overcome by Eaters the next week.”
Cheryl flashed back to the day a hoard of Eaters came through that area of Sabre. They parted around Divine Sundaes like it had some sort of invisible shield, and she wouldn’t have believed such a thing could happen if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes. “Except for today, your place has remained untouched. You told us before it was some sort of divine protection…”
“Oh…” Jeremiah chuckled. “I believe it’s partly God’s will that we were untouched before now, and I know O.N.E. knows I’m here. I suspect they’ve spared me from one of their death squads or being attacked by their automated hordes, because they realize there’s nothing I can do to them now, and I’m just not worth their effort.”
“You’re worth every effort to us,” Cheryl said. “If you’ve actually managed to create an antidote, even a partially successful one, that’s priceless!”
Jeremiah smiled and patted Cheryl’s knee. “I’ve always thought it was no accident that you found Hannah and me here. Just because we don’t discern a reason in what seems like a random pattern doesn’t mean that it’s not part of some ultimate plan.”
“I’d like to believe that,” she said. Though, she didn’t think it was true. Everything had seemed like nothing but chaos since last summer. Only O.N.E. seemed to have a blueprint for the chain of events. For the first time since bailing out of Sedona, she saw a disturbing face in her mind. It was Senior Warden, Luke Marshall, the head honcho of O.N.E. in that city. She remembered seeing his face on a gigantic television screen. In between the silvery hair, black eyebrows, and the flash of teeth like a white picket fence, there were the peacock blue irises that seemed to morph and change as if something was living inside of them. A shudder ran through her as she remembered how joyful he had seemed as he delivered his announcement before the unveiling of the Cyclops device…as if he truly believed it was going to do something beneficial for the remnants of mankind that his group had not murdered. She hoped she never had to see his face in person again.
“Come…”
The group craned their heads to the right and saw Kai standing next to the furthest row of pews. His hands were gripped together as his teeth bit down on his knuckles.
“What is it?” Jeremiah asked as he leapt to his feet.
“Cassie. She doesn’t look good.”
At once, everyone rose and ran back to the bedroom.
The change in Cassie’s appearance was startling. Without touching her, it was apparent that her flesh had gone cold, because her creamy complexion had developed a gray tinge. Jeremiah tried to pry Hannah away, so he could examine her, and Cheryl put a hand on the hilt of her gun to reassure herself that it was still there.
With a solemn voice, Kai stated the obvious. “It’s too late. Your antidote didn’t work.”
Jeremiah didn’t seem ready to concede that fact. He watched Cassie’s chest to see if there was any movement, then he put his hand over her open mouth to check for breath. Seeming dissatisfied, he felt the girl’s forehead, then her neck and wrist, checking for a pulse. After gently placing her arm back down on the bed, he remained hunched over the girl with his eyes closed for another few seconds. Then, with pained resignation, he rose up and shook his head.
“Why? Why?” Hannah cried as she twister her body back and forth and tore at her hair. “It’s not fair! Why did she have to go outside? I told her. I told her not to…”
“It was an accident,” Kai said in a futile attempt to comfort her. “She just wandered out there at a bad time.”
“It was my fault,” Cheryl finally confessed. “When I saw her outside, I should have immediately marched her right back in, but I let her linger for a few seconds.” Hannah turned around and glared at her, but Cheryl continued anyway, needing to get the burden out in the open, because it was tearing her up inside. “I didn’t see any Eaters lurking around then. She was enjoying the sunshine, and she was so pale I thought the fresh air would do her good. Then, without warning, they were all around us. I had no idea that one had even touched her. I just thought she was crying because she was scared. She didn’t tell me that she’d been bitten…and I was too stupid to think to check.” She beat her fists on her forehead. “My freaking fault…”
“It was an accident,” Kai said again. “No one is to blame.”
Jeremiah shook his head. “I take this as my failure, because I should have been the one to check everyone out for wounds after the attack and tried my antidote immediately if it looked like anyone had been bitten or scratched. I failed.’“
Aidan held up a hand. “Look…we can discuss our mutual stupidity later. Right now, we have a problem to deal with. She could turn at any moment, and we can’t risk someone else getting bit.”
There was a long, painful pause as they all stared at the corpse of the little girl lying on the bed.
“I’ll do it,” Jeremiah said. “It’s my duty. I was her Papa. At the very least, I can be the one to send her to be with the Lord.”
Everyone stepped back as he leaned over Cassie’s body and lifted her up. Before exiting the room, he turned back over his shoulder and looked towards Hannah. “Get my pistol please. Will you, dear?”
Hannah didn’t move.
“It’s in the dresser,” Jeremiah said to no one in particular. “Top drawer.”
Diego was closest, so he reached in and pulled out the gun. He popped the chamber to verify that it was loaded and handed it to Jeremiah.
Like a funeral procession, they walked single file out of the bedroom, following behind the pallbearer. Hannah stayed where she was; only her sobs trailed out of the room.
When Jeremiah went towards the front door, Zach asked, “Where are you going?”
“Outside. Obviously.”
“It’s not safe to…”
Jeremiah barked back. “I can’t do it in here. The last thing my poor wife needs is that girl’s blood all over her floor.”
“We’ll go with you to keep watch,” Aidan said.
After glancing out the window for a few seconds to make sure there were no Eaters hanging out in the parking area, Aidan, Cheryl, Zach, and Diego followed Jeremiah out the door.
Being outside in the dark was unnerving. It was windy, and every tree and shrub branch waved back and forth like something ready to reach out and grab them. Despite the sad occasion, Cheryl reminded herself to remain alert. They were all armed, but that was little comfort when there were so many shadows about that could suddenly grow hands or teeth.
They trailed behind Jeremiah until he came to the graveyard. Cheryl hadn’t been this close to it before. There were roughly fifteen fresh mounds marked with crosses made out of tree branches as thick as her forearm. Seeing the resting places of so many who had recently passed made her draw her gun as an extra precaution against becoming one of the next to be buried.
Standing behind Jeremiah’s still form, they were waiting for him to choose a spot to do the deed, when he cried out, “Leave us!” dismissing them with a thrust of his hand.
Aidan and Cheryl exchanged a glance. Then, Zach and Diego did the same. There was an unspoken acknowledgement that Jeremiah had a gun and could take care of himself. The other unsaid fact was that none of them wanted to watch him put a bullet in the young girl’s head. His order to leave was all they needed to bail out of this miserable event. So, after a moment of hesitation they backed away slowly, taking more than a dozen steps before finally turning and heading back towards the building.
Inside, they found Hannah passed out on the bedroom floor with Kai tending to her. They were inside, silent in their grief for almost twenty minutes before they heard a gunshot. Then, they waited for Jeremiah to return.
They waited ten minutes, then fifteen, twenty. A half hour passed before there was concern that he’d
been out there too long grieving, or was trying to bury the body by himself—an arduous task that they could speed up if he’d let them. Zach and Diego finally went out to look for him. Almost another half hour passed before they came back, saying they’d searched around the perimeter of the property and hadn’t found Jeremiah or Cassie’s body.
“They’re both gone,” Zach said with a completely bewildered look. “It’s like they just vanished.”
Chapter 5
Throughout the night, as Cheryl and Kai tended to Hannah who was in a shell-shocked condition, Aidan, Zach, Jordan, and Diego went out in shifts to look for Jeremiah. Each time they came back with no news to report other than a few kills of Eaters in the area. Eventually, they crashed on the pews, too exhausted to search any more. Nobody seemed to want to discuss what horrible fate could have become of Jeremiah and Cassie’s body, though the unspoken assumption was that Jeremiah had wandered off to some secluded place and taken his own life. Cheryl couldn’t believe that the pastor could have done such a thing, given his spiritual take on things and knowing what it would do to his poor wife. Then again, she was no judge of anyone’s mind these days. Too much tragedy could buckle the strongest of them if it was piled on too deep.
When dawn came, she was the first to notice that Hannah hadn’t appeared for her normal routine in the kitchen to start making their meager breakfast rations.
“It was a rough night,” Aidan told her. “She’s probably still sleeping.”
“I’ll check on her,” Cheryl said.
“Are you going to tell her about Jeremiah?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “It depends on how she’s doing. Losing Cassie was hard enough on her. I’m afraid she might completely lose it when she finds out Jeremiah is missing.”
Alarm bells rang in her head as she walked gingerly towards the bedroom. She knocked on the door, and wasn’t surprised when Hannah didn’t answer, but she was startled to see that the bed was still made, with no evidence of anyone having lain there except for the impression of Cassie’s petite body still indenting the comforter. When she noticed the laboratory door cracked open, she froze in place for a moment before taking a step towards it. Filled with dread, she walked over and pulled it open in one swift motion. “Hannah? Hannah…are you in there?”
The room was dark, and she couldn’t see anything more than shadows past a couple feet in. After pulling the door open wider, she saw the lantern on the table and turned the knob on its base. The room illuminated in a dim, golden glow. All of the glass test tubes and paraphernalia reflected the light, distracting her gaze before she took in the rest of the room. There was a tall wood cabinet in the right corner. Its doors were ajar, and inside it she could see a jumble of flasks, a scale, and jars of herbs or some other type of plant material. Just beyond it, there was a generator whose cord snaked across the room towards a small refrigerator next to the table. Her gaze went to the far side of the room. In the back left corner, she could see an amorphous mass that looked like a large sack of potatoes. She picked up the lantern and took it with her as she began to skirt around the table corner, edging closer to the unidentifiable lump.
When she was within a few feet, she recognized Hannah’s tan, cotton dress that she’d taken for burlap before she saw it in better light. Her body was scrunched into the corner with her face buried in the wall. Her slender frame looked frail, like she’d shrunk overnight, simply withering away from her grief.
“Hannah…are you all right? We’ve all been worried about you.”
The woman didn’t move. Could she have fallen asleep in such an awkward position? Or was she still grieving so much that she resented the intrusion and just wanted to be left alone?
Cheryl leaned down and set the lantern on the ground. In the pool of light on the linoleum floor, she saw dark pellets that looked like mouse droppings. Amongst them, there were dried spots of blood and a long slender object that looked like a tail.
Ignoring the filth, she put a hand on Hannah’s back. “Please…will you talk to me for just a minute? Then, I’ll leave you alone.”
She didn’t move, and Cheryl thought she heard a sob. “Oh…Hannah,” she said as she sunk down to the floor, ready to put her arms around her.
With one explosive movement, Hannah whirled around and knocked her to the ground. Then, she leapt upon her, straddling her and lunging for her throat. The creature, who was no longer a frail, grieving woman, seemed to have gained supernatural strength. Unable to use her legs to kick her off, Cheryl fumbled for the lantern while holding the woman’s snarling head back with a fistful of hair from her crown. When her hand finally clamped down on the metal handle, she swung it, bashing it into Hannah’s head with a hard thunk. The impact caused the lantern to slip from her hand and crash to the ground. It shattered, plunging them into darkness, but it dislodged the Hannah’s stance just enough for Cheryl to get a knee up and give a hard shove.
She was almost to her feet when Hannah recovered and attacked again, her gaping mouth coming close enough to the flesh on Cheryl’s arms and hands during the scuffle that she could feel the sharpness of teeth. After a few more seconds, she found herself backed up against the right wall and lost her balance as she tried to skirt around the generator. As she fell on top of it, she heard a gunshot. Hannah loomed over her with her hands still grasping the front of Cheryl’s t-shirt. Then, she crumpled to the floor at her feet.
Cheryl looked towards the doorway and saw Aidan standing there with the others peering around him. Unable to breath, she sat there gasping as she looked down at the shadowed form of Hannah’s corpse, weary of any sign of movement. Aidan came in and helped her to her feet.
“You okay?”
“I think so. Just a little shaken…”
When she was able to walk, he led her out to the sanctuary where she slumped down on one of the front pews, trying to get some air and recover her composure. Kai sat next to her, immediately asking questions about whether she’d been bitten or scratched.
She tuned him out as she stared at the wood cross mounted on the wall. “It’s not fair,” she said out loud, not knowing if she was ranting to God or anyone in particular. “Cassie, Jeremiah, Hannah…and I was supposed to be next?” She buried her hands in her face, and shook Kai off as he tried to comfort her.
###
Later that afternoon, Diego volunteered to dig the grave for Hannah and made light of the grim fact that he’d dug so many lately that it had been keeping him in shape. Despite his continued efforts to lighten things up, none of his banter seemed to lift the dour mood that hovered over all of them like a dark cloud.
After the body of the creature that had once been Hannah was tucked into the ground, they filed solemnly back inside.
“We know Cassie was bitten, but how did Hannah get sick?” Kai asked. “Was it something she ate? Did she let Jeremiah perform experiments on her with the virus? Or was it something else?”
Aidan shook his head along with the others. “I don’t know.”
“I saw mouse droppings and body parts back in the lab,” Cheryl said. “Maybe she was eating mice that were infected. The mice could have scavenged body parts or eaten contaminated plant material. It could be that she was eating mice to save food for the rest of us and took the risk out of guilt.”
“That’s really gross,” Jordan said, uttering the first of what would be only a few sentences that day.
Diego pulled his sweaty hair together in the back and corralled it into a pony tail. “Or…she could have eaten them after she turned.”
“I guess that’s more likely,” Cheryl agreed. “Because the blood drops I saw in there were dry.”
“Does it really matter now how she got it?” Aidan asked. “You heard Jeremiah talking about all the methods of infection they discovered in the lab. It’s in the damn soil! It could be in the air. On our clothes. We’re probably all carriers, even if we aren’t showing signs of it.”
“You’re right,” Zach said. “It’
s probably not smart for us all to be sleeping so close together in the sanctuary. What if one of us turned overnight? If it happened to Hannah, it could happen to any of us.”
The conversation turned into a melee of arguments about how they could each sleep safely without worrying that one of their companions would take a bite out of them in the middle of the night. Sleeping in shifts was discussed along with security measures like staying a certain distance apart and rigging a warning system with string and cans.
“Guys…” Cheryl said, getting frustrated with the number of silly ideas that were being tossed out and the lack of consensus. “We’ve got another problem to figure out. There are still a lot of unburied corpses outside, and the stink of them is going to draw more Eaters down on us if we don’t get rid of them soon. Either we need to get a plan together to haul the rest of them off, or we need to consider…” She paused for a moment, not really wanting to say the words out loud.
“You think we need to leave,” Aidan said. “I know what you’re saying. With Jeremiah and Hannah gone, I don’t feel right staying here. I can’t explain it, but I feel like it’s more dangerous here without them.”
“You think without Jeremiah and Hannah here, we’re less safe?” Diego asked. “That doesn’t make any sense. We’ve got a good roof over our heads. We’ve still got guns and a little ammo. I know that game is scarce, but we could go out in pairs and start hunting to bring in some meat.”
Cheryl didn’t want to concede that she thought Jeremiah and Hannah’s absence lifted some sort of supernatural protection from Divine Sundaes, but, whatever the cause of her edginess, she certainly felt more uneasy without the pastor and his wife around. She figured a vote was in order. “How many of you agree with him? Do you want to stay here? I’m not keen on the idea of packing up and moving out, but there are certainly a number of reasons to consider it: we know the garden is contaminated; Hannah got sick by some unknown method, and there are more than enough Eaters around to cause us problems. They’re easy picking from the roof when we’ve got firepower, but when the ammunition runs out, what then?”
Eaters: Resurrection Page 6