“We checked the guest room and the bathroom. No one was in there.”
Gabriel was staring down the long hallway toward his bedroom when he heard a snarl.
“Did you hear that?” Jessica asked.
They were quiet, and the noise came again. Unable to exactly pinpoint where it had originated from, Gabriel crept toward his bedroom door.
When he was halfway to the door, the noise came again, and this time he saw the door to his bedroom move.
“Oh, shit,” Will said. “Gabriel, hold—”
“Shut the fuck up, Will,” Gabriel said without turning around.
He moved closer to the door and the noises continued from the other side. With every step he took, his heartbeat quickened and his breathing became more shallow. Everything around him went black. If Will or Jessica were still trying to speak to him, he didn’t hear them. All he could think about was what he’d find on the other side of the door.
When he reached the room, the unmistakable snarl of an Empty sounded again, and it slammed against the door a second time. It didn’t even startle Gabriel. He looked to the wall next to him, noticing the crimson handprints for the first time.
His breathing was rapid, and his palms sweaty. He balled one hand into a fist as he used the other to grab onto the knob.
Gabriel screamed as he pushed hard through the door, turning the knob at the same time.
The door opened, and he felt the weight of the creature on the other side. The mindless beast couldn’t think to know he was opening the door, and fell backward. The door swung all the way open, and Gabriel looked into the room.
Blood was everywhere. On the walls, the dresser, and the bathroom door. And when he looked to the bed, he saw a corpse surrounded by and covered in blood. Gabriel’s eyes went wide. That was his wife on the bed—he was sure of it.
He looked to the creature on the ground. The Empty he’d pushed off the door was definitely not his wife or daughter; it had been a man when alive, and was still dressed in a pair of jeans and a button-up shirt. Dry blood covered its face. There was no telling how long the creature had been there.
He breathed heavier as he watched the Empty pushing itself off of the ground. He had both a gun and knife on his hip, but at no point did he think to grab either of them. Instead, he simply balled both fists and screamed.
He picked up his leg and drove his foot into the creature’s face, sending it onto its back. He felt its nose crunch under the sole of his shoe. Gabriel yelled out again and fell onto the creature, and began to pummel it in the face.
Gabriel punched the beast so hard he could feel bones break. He crushed what was left of the Empty’s nose. The thing squealed, almost as if it could feel what Gabriel was doing to it. Maybe it could. Perhaps the demon allowed its prisoner to feel the pain. He kept telling himself that it could—he begged that it felt every blow. Blood sprayed with each strike, and Gabriel couldn’t bring himself to stop.
It took him a moment to realize that he was being pulled off of the beast, and he continued to kick his legs.
“Let me go. I’m gonna kill this thing with my bare fucking hands.”
A gunshot rang through the room, and he finally snapped out of his rage. He looked over to see Jessica holding up a handgun, smoke rising from the barrel. He looked back down to the beast to see it no longer moving, a hole now in its face.
Gabriel jerked and Will let him go.
“I’m sorry, man,” Will said. “I was scared that thing was gonna bite you.”
“And so fucking what if it had?”
He scowled at Will for another moment, and the other man sighed. Gabriel then turned back to look at the body on the bed. Again, he started breathing heavily. For the first time since he’d entered the house, he was fighting tears.
There was almost no light from the outside shining on the bed, so he reached out his hand.
“Give me a flashlight.”
“Are you sure you—”
“Give me a goddamn flashlight.”
Will reached onto his hip and threw the light over to Gabriel, who caught it.
Gabriel clicked on the light, but hesitated to shine it onto the bed. If that was his wife or his daughter lying there, he wasn’t sure how he’d react. It was the nightmare he’d been dreading since waking up after the plane crash.
He breathed heavy and pointed the light toward the bed.
He shuddered, tears still tickling his cheeks. What was left of the body was hardly human at all. Its face had been completely picked apart, mangled and unrecognizable. The arms were nothing but tissue and bone. Blankets covered the rest of the corpse, and Gabriel couldn’t bring himself to pull them down to look at the rest of the body. The long brown hair was still intact on the body’s skull—it looked like his wife’s.
He let go of the flashlight, dropping it onto the ground. Falling to his knees, he buried his face into his arms on the edge of the bed. Tears now flowed from his eyes.
“I failed you,” Gabriel mumbled. “I did this to you.”
He wished he could hold her hand, running his thumb up and down the edge of hers like he’d always done, but there was nothing there to hold. There was no comforting his grief.
“Gabriel?”
He heard Jessica’s voice, but chose to ignore it. What he really wanted was for her and Will to leave. To jump back in the van with Holly and the kids and get the hell out of there. To leave him alone to die next to his wife.
“Shit, Gabriel, look at this.”
This time it was Will, and Gabriel turned around ready to snap at him.
Will held the flashlight, shining it onto a piece of paper in his hand. Gabriel furrowed his brow, and Will handed him the light and paper.
Gabriel wiped his eyes with his forearm and pointed the light at the note.
Gabriel,
If you are reading this note, it means that you’re still alive. I pray every moment that you are. In my heart I believe that you made it and that you will find this letter.
First, know that that is not me or Sarah in the bed. I was able to kill that one. The other person died in the room, and we left before it turned. It’s a long story, and I promise I’ll explain when I see you.
What’s important for you to know is that Sarah and I are leaving. We are driving to my parents’ cabin.
If you see this, please come there. I know we will make it. I’m not going to let anything happen to our daughter. But it’s just not safe around here anymore. Don’t try to go into D.C. I’ve heard it’s nothing but hell. Come straight to the cabin.
Sarah asks about you all the time. She misses you so much. I don’t know what I’ll do if you don’t get to us. I can’t raise our little girl alone in a place like this.
Please find us.
I love you so much, Gabriel. WE love you SO much!
Katie
All Gabriel could do was stare at the note. He read through it three more times, hearing his wife’s voice in his head. When he was finished, he clutched the paper and pressed it to his chest.
With glassy eyes, he looked up to Will and Jessica from his knees.
“They’re alive.”
Chapter 23
“You find anything, Jessica?” Gabriel asked.
Jessica was in the kitchen, shuffling through drawers and trying to find anything of use.
“Nothing but expired coupons and bread ties,” Jessica said.
“There’s nothing here,” Will said. “Let’s just leave.”
“Let me just go grab one thing,” Gabriel said.
He hurried from the living room to the downstairs guest bedroom. All the linens and pillows had been stripped clean from the bed, and the dresser drawers were either open or had been pulled completely out and thrown onto the ground.
Gabriel rummaged through the drawers.
“Come on, damn it.”
He kneeled on the ground and flipped over one of the upside down drawers, and he smiled when he found it. Reaching down, G
abriel grabbed the photo album.
There were several others in the house, but this one was the most important. It was the one he couldn’t leave without. They’d kept it in the guest room for visitors, such as their parents, to look through when they stayed there. He opened the album, passing the first few pages by to see a picture of he and Katie swapping cake on their wedding day. The photo on the next page showed them laughing, both now with white icing all over their faces.
Gabriel flipped to the middle of the book and came across one of his favorite pictures. It had been taken in the hospital, just hours after Sarah had been born. When she had come into the world, Sarah had only been with Gabriel and Katie for a few minutes before she’d been taken away from them. Katie had been able to hold her the second after she was born, but after they’d cut the umbilical cord and weighed her, Sarah had begun having breathing problems. Several nurses came into the room and gathered around her as the doctor calmly explained to Gabriel and Katie that their newborn daughter had taken in some fluid on her way out, but he assured them she would be fine. Gabriel couldn’t see his daughter through the crowd of nurses, but later found out that they had administered CPR on her.
Sarah spent the next eight hours in a section of the NICU called Transition with tubes going into her, helping her breathe. Gabriel spent a couple of hours down there while Katie rested. When the nurses assured him everything would be fine within a few hours, he went back up to the room and slept himself for a while.
That night, Gabriel picked up a pizza from a place nearby and he sat with Katie, who’d requested pizza after not eating for over thirty hours, and waited for the call that Sarah had been cleared. Eventually, they gave in and decided to get some sleep.
But the phone rang just as Gabriel dozed off, and they were ecstatic to find out that a nurse would be bringing Sarah up to them immediately.
Gabriel’s heart raced as the nurse knocked on the door and then entered. There, lying on the nursery cart, was his daughter, no tubes present. A tear came to his eye as the smiling nurse stopped in front of the bed.
She handed Sarah to Katie, who snuggled with her daughter, holding her close to her bare chest. She was about to try feeding her for the first time when she looked over to Gabriel and her eyes went big.
“Oh, God. You haven’t held her yet.”
Gabriel smiled and shook his head.
“Here,” Katie said.
Gabriel went to the bed and cradled his daughter into his arms, taking her from Katie. He smiled as he looked into a reflection of his own face.
He sat down in the rocking chair, and this was when Katie had snapped the photograph he was looking at now.
“Gabe,” Jessica said, pulling him out of his thoughts.
He looked up.
“Come on. There’s nothing here.”
He looked down at the photograph once more.
“I’m coming to get you, sweetheart.”
When they walked out of the house, they saw there were two creatures gathered around the vehicle. Several more were heading down the street toward the house.
“No guns,” Will said.
Gabriel pulled the knife from his waist and whistled, drawing the attention of the two creatures. They turned their attention away from Holly and the kids inside the vehicle as they saw fresh meat out in the open.
Gabriel rushed to the nearest creature, driving the knife into its skull. He looked over to see Will doing the same with another, taking out the Empty closest to him.
Holly unlocked the car from the inside and Jessica was the first to jump in.
“I’ll drive,” Will said to Gabriel. “I need you to navigate.”
Gabriel turned and looked at the monsters coming down the street as Will loaded into the driver’s side. Taking a couple of steps away from the vehicle, Gabriel looked into the faces of the Empties, trying to see if he recognized any of them as his neighbors. With as many creatures as there were heading down the road—perhaps as many as two dozen—it hit Gabriel just how lucky he was. How the hell had the core of this group survived? Especially with all the other stuff they’d been through. For whatever reason, none of them had been ‘chosen’ for The Fall. Then they had survived all the atrocities that had followed.
“Jesus, Gabriel, come on.”
Snapping out of his thoughts, Gabriel turned around to see Will, eyes narrowed and yelling at him.
“We’ve gotta go, now.”
Gabriel gave one last glance to the oncoming horde and then turned around.
He was around the hood of the car when he heard his name again, this time not coming from the inside of the vehicle.
Glancing around, he saw someone waving from the front porch across the street. It was Tiffany Brooks, the forty-five-year-old banker and wife of Pierce Brooks. They had moved into the house about six months after Gabriel and Katie had bought theirs.
“Shit,” Gabriel said, moving back around to the side of the vehicle.
“Gabriel, we have to go,” Will said.
“But what if they need help?” Gabriel asked.
“Your family needs your help.”
Gabriel considered it for a moment. “You’re right.”
He turned around again.
“Gabriel, wait!” Tiffany shouted.
When he turned around again, Gabriel’s eyes went wide.
The woman had moved from her porch and was walking through her yard, still yelling and waving her arms. Many Empties in the pack had turned their attention to her. What was worse was that she seemed oblivious to it. She kept shouting and waving, only further drawing the attention of the creatures.
“What the hell is she doing?” Holly asked.
Gabriel took off running.
“Gabriel!” Will shouted.
The woman fell in the middle of the yard, crying and screaming. It didn’t look like she’d hurt herself or tripped over anything; she was just exhausted. The Empties continued toward her.
“Tiffany, get up and move!” Gabriel yelled, but the woman did nothing.
One of the Empties was about to reach her, and Gabriel drew his sidearm, firing and hitting the creature in the head. Another Empty came up beside him and he kicked it, knocking it into another one of the creatures and sending them both to the ground.
Tiffany stood up and yelled Gabriel’s name as two creatures pounced on her. She screamed as they ripped out her throat.
Gabriel screamed at them in anger, and turned when he heard a snarl and saw another one of the creatures coming at him. He was about to draw his gun when the thing’s head disappeared following a blast. A hand grabbed him by the arm and he turned to see Will.
“Come on.”
Will pulled a stunned Gabriel away, firing at the pack of creatures again and taking down one more. They ran back to the SUV, and when they got there, Will made sure that Gabriel got into the passenger seat, leading him there and pushing him inside. He then shut the door and ran around to the driver’s side.
Gabriel looked across the street as the beasts gathered around Tiffany. In the back seat, Jessica and Holly worked to keep the children calm.
The tires squealed as Will threw the car into reverse and shot out of the driveway, running over at least two Empties. He shot the car forward, speeding away from Gabriel’s house. It was more than likely the last time Gabriel would ever see his home, but he couldn’t help but watch the Empties tear apart Tiffany Brooks until they were around the corner and she was out of sight.
Chapter 24
When they were out of Gabriel’s neighborhood and had made it down the street, Will pulled over in the parking lot of a small shopping center.
He took a deep breath and sighed as he threw the SUV into park.
“I didn’t know if we were gonna make it out of there,” Will said.
“What was wrong with your neighbor, Gabriel?” Holly asked.
“I don’t know,” Gabriel mumbled.
“She looked like she’d just gone crazy,” Holly
said.
Will glanced over to Gabriel and saw the blank stare on his face as he stared out the windshield. Without looking over to Will, he opened the door and stepped out of the SUV, slamming the door behind him.
Turning around, Will looked at Holly.
“I didn’t mean to upset him,” she said.
“I know,” Will said. “He’s just really sensitive right now.”
“Want me to go talk to him?” Jessica asked.
“I’ll go,” Will said.
He got out of the SUV and walked around the front of it.
They had parked at the edge of the parking lot. Empties walked in front of the stores, at least a hundred yards away from where they were. The immediate area was clear, and Gabriel paced back and forth between two abandoned vehicles.
“Everything all right, man?”
Gabriel looked up for a moment before staring back down at the ground. His hands trembled, something Will hadn’t noticed when they were in the car.
“I don’t know,” Gabriel said.
“Talk to me then.”
“Tiffany—my neighbor—what was she doing? Why would she just walk out in the middle of the road like that when there were Empties around? Could she really have not seen them?”
“I don’t know,” Will said, thinking for what to say. “What if she was the only one in that house and she’s been there the whole time? Maybe she hasn’t seen any living people in a while. I have to think, if I were in that situation, that I might be in a similar mental state.”
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Gabriel said.
“Nothing makes sense anymore, man.”
Gabriel stopped pacing and stared ahead, past the trees at the edge of the parking lot.
“This whole time, I thought all I’d have to do was get home and my journey would be over. That Katie and Sarah would be there waiting for me.” He looked down and scoffed. “How stupid was I for thinking that? With all the shit we’ve seen and been through, what made me think that they’d be in the house, just hanging around until I showed up, like nothing happened?”
Empty Bodies Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 98