by Lukens, Mark
It was Emma.
Ray made his way slowly into the dining area off of the kitchen.
“Sorry I startled you,” Emma whispered.
“It’s okay,” he told her.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she said. “So I came out here to get some water and sit here for a little while.”
Ray just nodded. He sat down in a chair at the other end of the table.
“How are they doing?” Emma asked.
“They’re out. They need their sleep. Don’t worry, we won’t wake them. Once they’re out, they are out.”
“How about Kim?” Emma asked. “Is she sleeping?”
“Yes,” Ray said. He couldn’t help feeling that Emma wanted to say something to him, that she was leading up to something.
“Kim,” Emma whispered. “She’s infected, isn’t she?”
CHAPTER 24
Emma could tell that she’d caught Ray off guard with her statement. She’d been sitting at the dining room table for a while now, trying to think of the right way to say it. But she couldn’t come up with the right words, so she just decided to spit them out. She imagined Ray would become angry and defensive, perhaps even wondering why she suspected that Kim was infected. He would ask if she had been spying on them, listening to their conversation.
But Ray hadn’t lashed out in anger, and she could sense that deep down inside he already knew the truth.
“She’s just not feeling good,” Ray finally answered.
Emma didn’t try to argue with Ray. She knew that Kim was infected with whatever this disease was, just like she’d known other things in life; she knew it with an unquestioning certainty. Kim was infected. How long before Kim turned violent? How long before she turned into a ripper? How long before she attacked her own children?
Ray was still quiet. She could hear him breathing.
Emma was dependent on Ray right now. There was no way she could survive out there on her own. And there was also no way she would be able to fight Kim off when she invariably turned into a raging animal. Ray loved his wife, there was no denying that. But she needed him to face the truth before he waited too long, before Kim became too wild and strong to fight. And even when Kim turned into a ripper, would Ray be able to kill his wife? Somehow Emma needed to make Ray understand the severity of their situation.
“She’s infected,” Emma said again in a whisper. This wasn’t a suggestion now, but a fact.
Emma waited again for an outburst from Ray, a demand to know how she was so sure of a thing like that. She had always had this “sixth sense” as some called it, but like she’d told Ray earlier, it was even stronger now. She wasn’t sure why it was stronger; maybe the dire situation they were in had increased her awareness somehow.
She had always been able to feel things, sense things, see things in her mind. She hadn’t always been blind; she’d been able to see up until she was eight years old, and she still occasionally saw things in her dreams now. She’d seen Ray and his family in her dreams; she already knew exactly what they looked like. She’d seen them coming to her.
And there were others in her dreams.
In one dream Emma saw a scrawny young man with long hair and a scraggily beard. He had tattoos and wore grungy clothes. He was searching for his sister and his nephew. She didn’t know the man’s name, but she knew that she needed to be with him, and he needed to be with her. And they needed to be with Ray and his family. They all needed to be together.
In another dream she saw a tall, muscular man in his late thirties, a man who had done some terrible things in his life. But he wasn’t totally a bad man, there was some good inside of him; he was a man who could be good if given the chance. He needed to be with them, too. They all needed to be together, and she had a feeling that it was going to happen somehow.
And there was another person she saw in her dreams—the man in the shadows, the dark man with the shining eyes, the evil one, the one who made her quake with fear in her own bed. She would wake up bathed in sweat, breathing hard, feeling like the man was standing in the darkness near her.
But the shadowy man was never in the room with her; he was out there somewhere. He was out there looking for them, looking for each one of them.
For the last few months Emma had a sense of an impending doom of some kind, a doom of such colossal scale. She didn’t know what it was—nuclear war, some kind of natural disaster, an asteroid hitting the Earth—she just knew that it was going to be terrible, some kind of cataclysm of biblical proportions, the end of civilization, the end of humanity’s existence on this planet; this lit-up world in a lonely corner of the galaxy was going to go dark suddenly, winking out without anyone knowing it, a blip on the cosmic radar suddenly snuffed out. It was like God had turned His back on the world, like He had given us every chance, ample time to rise above our petty greed and selfishness and wastefulness, and then He’d had enough. It was the closest Emma could get to describing what she felt in those panicky moments before the horror had actually come.
And now those times were here. She kept hearing a snippet from a song she’d heard a long time ago—Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival, a song about destruction and calamity. Somewhere out there, the man with the long hair and scruffy beard was listening to that song in his mind, the lyrics playing over and over again in his mind.
Knowing that something terrible was coming, but not exactly what it was, Emma had prepared as best she could. She called a company to install the bars on her windows, and then she contacted a handyman who had installed the plywood panels over the windows to block out any light or sounds from inside her condo. She’d had her door locks inspected and upgraded. She had stocked up on food and water during her last three shopping trips with her mother. She had begged her mother to come stay with her at the condo. Emma had suggested that they leave, go somewhere else. But where? When this started, whatever it was going to be, she had a feeling that nowhere was going to be safe.
Her mother had told her she needed to be at home. Emma knew that was true.
Emma had known things needed to be in certain places for a reason, for reasons that she couldn’t see yet, for reasons that she might not ever understand.
Her mother was dead, Emma was sure of that. But her mother didn’t have cancer as she’d told Ray. But Emma was sure that her mother, who had the same psychic ability she had, just not as strong, knew she had an illness. She knew she’d been exposed to this pandemic, that all hope was now lost for her. But her mother had also known that hope wasn’t lost for Ray, and not for all of his family. Not for her, either. Her mother had known that she needed to be with Ray, just like they needed to be with the others she saw in her dreams.
Even though Emma had prepared as best she could for this coming disaster, she still wasn’t ready for it right now. But even with the crushing sense of doom, there had been sparks of hope—like Ray and his family, like the other two men she saw in her dreams. There was hope for them, and maybe that hope was Avalon, whatever that meant. She was telling Ray the truth when she told him she didn’t know what the word meant. She didn’t know if it was a place or an object, or something else entirely. The word had just popped into her mind as something real, as something important, as something to be sought. That’s all she could really explain about it.
“She’s not infected,” Ray mumbled, almost like he was talking to himself, trying his best to convince himself of a truth.
Emma didn’t say anything. She could feel Ray looking at her now in the dark.
“She can’t be,” Ray said, his voice cracking just a bit.
Emma didn’t want to say anything. She could tell that Ray was beginning to see the truth; she could tell that he’d known for a while now.
“I need to go check on her,” Ray said, standing up.
“Of course,” Emma said. But she knew he just wanted to get away from her. She was a freak, she always had been, and she could tell when she unnerved people, when she drove them away.
“You going back to bed?” Ray asked.
“I’m going to stay up for a while longer.”
“If you hear anything outside, you come get me.”
“Yes. Of course.”
Ray stood there for a moment longer, like he wanted to say something else. But whatever it was, he never spoke. He walked away.
Emma took a sip of her warm water and realized that her hand was shaking just a bit. A symptom of the disease? Possibly. But she knew she wasn’t infected. She knew that she was somehow immune to this disease . . . just like Ray was. She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew.
There were a few sounds from outside, but they were far-off sounds: gunshots, emergency sirens, some kind of an explosion, car alarms going off. Earlier she’d heard what sounded like a few low-flying helicopters buzzing right over her building, and every once in a while she heard the sound of fast airplanes, like fighter jets, flying overhead.
An hour ago she’d heard what sounded like someone outside the sliding glass door, footsteps crunching on the dry grass out there in the small strip of grass that constituted her back yard. But the person hadn’t tried to get in, and the person wasn’t out there very long, moving on quickly. Maybe it had been a ripper, or just another person on the run, another person seeking shelter and food.
Emma took another sip of water. She couldn’t get her hand to stop shaking. She had wanted to tell Ray about his wife, that she was infected. He needed to hear that, needed to be prepared for that. They all did.
There was something else she needed to tell Ray, but she hadn’t worked up the nerve yet. Yes, she probably should have told him now, she should have revealed everything just then when they’d been talking, but she hadn’t. She had chickened out. She was worried that Ray might not be able to handle all of it at one time.
Kim wasn’t the only one infected. One of his children was infected, too.
CHAPTER 25
Ray managed to get a few hours of sleep before jumping awake in the darkness, awakened by some terrible dream that he couldn’t remember. It was like he didn’t want to remember the dream. The darkness of the bedroom felt like a crushing weight on him, and he struggled for breath for a moment.
Kim.
He didn’t hear her breathing in bed beside him. He reached out for her. It was a small bed and he should’ve already been able to feel her next to him, feel her breath on him. Before he even reached his hand out, he knew that she wasn’t in bed with him.
He sat up and put his feet on the floor, slipping them into his sneakers. He was still fully-dressed, wanting to be ready if he needed to jump out of bed. It was chilly in the bedroom, but not cold enough to see his own breath yet.
The condo was quiet. Everything outside was quiet.
“Kim?” he whispered.
Ray thought he saw someone standing in the far corner of the room. He thought it might be Kim, but the person in the corner was too big—it was a man. Ray got up and grabbed the small flashlight next to the bed, turning it on and shining it across the room to make sure no one was standing in the room with him.
No one was there.
Kim wasn’t in the bedroom. She must’ve gotten up and gone out to the living room. Maybe the kids were awake, too.
And then Ray’s heart jumped when he thought of what Kim had said last night in bed. She’d told Ray that she hadn’t been feeling well. She’d said that she was worried she was infected. She’d said that she had strange urges that were getting harder and harder to control. And then Emma had told him that Kim was infected.
Well, hell with this. Emma was obviously a crazy woman. He couldn’t let his family stay here with her. He didn’t care what he had promised Helen, or what Emma knew about Avalon, he wasn’t going to keep his family around a woman who thought she was some kind of psychic.
He rushed out into the hallway with the flashlight in his hand. As soon as he stepped out into the living room, shining his flashlight, he froze. Emma was the first one he saw on the living room floor, her pale figure almost luminous in the glow of the flashlight beam, but her pale throat was a dark gory mess now, her throat ripped out, strings of blood and meat dragged from her throat across the carpet.
Ray panned his flashlight beam to the couch. Kim and Vanessa were there, Kim growling as she hovered over Vanessa’s dead body, feeding on her, biting down on her flesh, tearing a piece away, slurping up the blood.
“Dad?” Mike whimpered.
Ray turned his flashlight beam towards the kitchen and saw Mike standing there with a shadowy man right behind him, the man’s hands resting on Mike’s shoulders. The features of the man’s face were hidden in shadows . . . except his eyes. They were shining.
Ray couldn’t breathe and then he was . . .
. . . awake. He sat up in bed. The room was murky, but it was daytime. Light seeped in around the edges of the plywood panels, enough so he could see. It was cold, but he tore the blanket off of him. He was fully-dressed, just like in the dream.
Kim wasn’t in bed with him.
Just like in the dream.
For a moment his heart froze, and he wondered if the dream had been a premonition, if he was going to go out to the living room and see what he’d seen in the nightmare, Kim feeding on Vanessa and Emma.
But no, he heard someone whispering from across the room.
The shadowy man with the shining eyes? For just a second Ray thought the man had followed him out of the dream and into the bedroom. But then he saw Kim in the corner, huddled up, facing the wall, squatted down and rocking back and forth a little. She was saying something to herself, rapid words whispered over and over again.
Ray sat at the edge of the bed and slipped his socked feet into his sneakers.
Just like in the dream.
He walked over to Kim, standing right behind her as she faced the corner, still rocking back and forth, still whispering, not noticing that he had gotten out of bed and approached her.
“Kim?”
She didn’t turn around or acknowledge that he was there. She kept on whispering words that didn’t make sense now that Ray could hear them.
“. . . the people on the stairs, and when were they going to tell any of us about the rivers . . . coming back to the front . . . back to the front where the wires are burning . . .”
“Kim,” he said, touching her shoulder. “What are you talking about?”
She jumped when he touched her, spinning around with a wild look in her eyes, but not a wild look of fear, an expression of hatred and rage for just a moment. But then her features softened, her eyebrows shooting up in concern. She looked like someone who had just been roused from sleep, roused from a disturbing dream.
“Ray,” she said, almost like she was proving to herself that she knew his name, proving that she could remember it.
“Kim, are you okay?”
She just nodded, her mouth closed tight, eyes still wide.
“What are you doing here in the corner? What were you talking about?”
Kim looked a little confused. She just shook her head a little. “I don’t remember saying anything.”
Ray felt the shivers run through his body again, and his head swam just a little. For a moment he felt a little unstable, like everything had tilted just enough to knock him off balance. But he swallowed and forced himself to smile at her. He offered a hand. “Come on, let’s get back to bed.”
She nodded and allowed him to help her up from the floor. They walked to the bed together and she crawled under the covers, shivering now. Her eyes were still wide, but she had a blank look in them now.
“You okay now?” he asked, whispering to her.
She nodded and looked at him. Her blank look was replaced with horror. “I don’t remember getting up and going to the corner.”
“I know. You were just sleepwalking. We’re all tired. We’re all beyond tired. Exhausted.”
“It’s happening.”
Her words froze Ray for a moment, the certainty of h
er statement. The realization hit him that he couldn’t pretend anymore. Kim wasn’t going to pretend, and he couldn’t pretend either.
“No,” was all Ray said. It wasn’t a challenge to her statement, but more of a plea.
“It’s going to happen soon, Ray. You have to help me. I don’t want the kids to see me like this. I don’t want them to see me turn into one of those . . . those things out there.”
Ray felt the tears. He tried to hold them back, but he couldn’t.
Kim swallowed hard, licking her lips. “I’ve got these . . .” She paused and seemed to be struggling to find the right words. “I’ve got these bad thoughts. Bad things I want to do.”
He held her close. She was trembling even more now.
“See if Emma has something I can take,” Kim whispered into his ear. “Please. Some kind of medication. Sleeping pills or something. Something that will let me fall asleep and slip away.”
“No,” Ray said. It was an automatic reaction. He pulled away from her, the tears falling now.
“I’m sorry,” Kim said, reaching out for Ray’s hand, taking it, holding it, gripping it hard. “I’m so sorry for everything I did. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I love you. I’ve always loved you. Never stopped loving you.”
Ray was crying harder. He wasn’t ready for this. He couldn’t lose Kim, but he knew he was going to. He didn’t want to go ask Emma if she had some kind of pills that could end his wife’s life, but he also didn’t want to watch her turn into a ripper.
“Please, Ray. I don’t have a lot of time. I can feel it coming. Things . . . things aren’t making sense. There’s a bad . . . there are bad . . . a bad moon is rising.” Then she giggled, and her eyes shifted away, her expression suddenly so different.
Ray backed away a little, wiping at his tears. The woman in the bed was Kim, but at the same time she wasn’t the woman he’d known all these years, the woman he’d loved all these years. She was slipping away, being taken over by some kind of virus that was changing the chemicals in her brain, re-forming it, stripping away her humanity and leaving a raging animal behind.