Dead River, page 21
Dominic refused to listen to reason. He didn’t care what anyone else had to say because he’d been followed everyone else’s orders this whole time and didn’t say a word.
“Wait for me.” Colin said.
Abandoned houses were as safe as the cars littering the highways of America. You could hide inside of them all you wanted to but like a victim in a horror movie, you couldn’t see your attacker until it was too late.
The man just wanted to rest for a few minutes.
Or two.
Or maybe even three.
As much as he didn’t want to interfere in Dominic’s reverie, all he could think about was getting back to Alicia.
His fist still tightening around the .22’s checkered black grip, Colin hurried over to the front of the line and stopped at the front of the house. He stretched his left arm across Dominic’s chest, raised his right hand in a protesting manner and stopped everyone dead in their tracks. First Dominic, then Pixie, Teresa and the kids.
The place looked rustic and peaceful and had been built in a time when Life was tolerable. It was a database of both good and bad memories, each one pages in a book too perfect not to have been preserved.
The first and second front porch steps were splintered and bowed in a few places. The windows were shattered, their toothy grins jutting up from the cracked pane glinting like jagged teeth. The tall oak tree rooted six feet away from the left side of the house provided plenty of shelter from the harsh rays of the sun and brushed gently across the roof.
“What the—”
“Wait here.” Colin said.
“You’re not thinking about going in there, are you?” Teresa said.
She rolled her eyes and peered over his shoulder to check on the first horde’s progress. If there were more coming, they would have to keep running no matter how tired they were.
“I’ve got to check and–”
“The hell you will.” Teresa said.
“It’s okay.”
“You’re not going.”
Colin brushed her hand away and slunk back to Teresa. He tried to say something to her but she turned her back and gave him the cold shoulder.
“Why should you have to go, too?” Teresa asked.
“We need to know if anyone’s inside.” Dominic said.
Colin said, “If anything happens to me, you have a better chance of getting them out of here than I do.”
“What are you going to do when you get in there?”
“I’ll send Dominic back out here to come and get you.”
Teresa opened her mouth to say something, then thought better about it. No one knew what she was going to say it but Colin had guessed that it was somewhere between “be careful” and “please come back”.
She wiped a tear away from her face before anyone could see it and make them think otherwise about her. She wanted to remain tough but everyone has chinks in their armor. Her chink just happened to have been Colin’s welfare and not because he was the only person capable of getting them out of here.
He followed the gravel driveway toward the big wraparound porch. They skulked up the staircase and avoided the big, jagged splinter that used to be the middle step. Dominic clutched the top of the railing and, grunting under his breath, heaved himself up and over the top step.
A thick putrid stench stung their nostrils and made them wince. Colin’s stomach churned.
They crossed, their feet crunching slowly against the mess of dirt and dry twigs scattered about. When they rounded the corner, a wooden weather-beaten porch swing swayed gently in the breeze; the two rusted-metal chains gave a small canine squeak. Beyond the swing, a large double-sided window was shrouded in a mix of white lace curtains and thick planks of wood.
He held up his hand and pointed past the right side of the swing. Dominic nodded, only pretending to understand what Colin had meant and waited for him to move. His boots crunching against the dirt-covered porch, he snuck past the swing when something slipped past the corner of his left eye.
His skin prickling with fear, he turned and aimed the pistol at the window. In the reflection of the window, they’d stood side by side as if posing for the poster of a cheap action flick. He breathed a sigh of relief and felt his heart beat subside.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Dominic said. “At least I think I am.”
They crept around to the corner and stared beyond the porch railing. The meadow stretched upward for three miles before connecting to a wall of gnarled oaks and shaggy pines. A blood-covered tire swing hung down from a nearby tree branch and rocked back and forth in the soft cool breeze beyond the tailgate of a gray Dodge pickup truck with a Harley Davidson air-freshener hanging down from behind the rearview mirror.
When they cleared the corner, a deep depressing sigh caressed his right ear. He froze and, his heart stuttering in his chest, took a large gulp of air deep into his lungs. His head grew light and his vision grew blurry; his muscles went slack as his knees carried him toward the ground.
Dominic’s face crumpled under the mingled weight of shock and fear. He snatched a quick breath, his mouth twisting into a large lopsided grin.
His heart lurching, the back of Colin’s head rapped against a hard surface. Pain pulsated across his skull as he plunged him into a pitch-black oblivion.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Danielle let out a terrified squeal, gripped both arms of the chair inside of her trembling pale hands and sobbed. The gun barrel glinted in the overhead light.
“Answer my question, Colin.” Alicia said. “Did she fuck you good? Did she fuck you better than I used to? Did she?”
She grimaced, tears streaming down her face. She’d hoped she wouldn’t cry and become sidetracked from the original plan. If she couldn’t see, she’d probably fire blindly and strike the wall or the window behind Danielle’s head.
She could’ve hit them both from this range and leave a good splatter pattern after she’d taken herself out, which had been her plan all along. All he wanted to do was take the gun from her hand and discuss this like a rational adult. He wished things had gone down differently, wished he’d have pulled his hand away from hers and thanked her for her concern for his well-being and done his fucking job.
He should’ve stuck by Alicia’s side and consoled her like a good husband should but he didn’t. Instead, he did what he thought was best for him and not for the both of them.
He tried to say something, anything that could convince her to put the gun down when he heard a loud commotion outside the motel. The piercing screech of brakes followed by the banshee shriek metal rubbing against metal. They heard a deep heavy thud, followed by a bone-jarring vibration spreading across the floor under their feet that caused the lights to flicker, sent the digital alarm clock sliding off the bedside table crashing onto the floor and once reduced Roman arenas to piles of rubble.
Colin glanced out the window, his face creased with a mixture of shock and confusion. A tower of black smoke rose from a great distance and drifted across the sky in a thin black haze. Something tugged on the back of his brain, a phantom reminder that he could still wrestle the gun out of Alicia’s hand while he still had the chance.
Cars screeched to a halt in front of the motel, their chrome bumpers glinting under the mid-afternoon sun. People burst out from the strip of brand-name stores and restaurants and peered down the other end of the street, their faces twisted under a mixture of curiosity and puzzlement.
The driver-side door of a red SUV flew open. A tall heavyset man in a black-tee shirt and jeans climbed out and glanced down the street. Confusion etched tiny creases along the corners of his mouth and squeezed his eyes into dark narrow slits.
If it hadn’t been for the tall grassy hill on the right side of the parking lot, Colin would’ve been able to see whatever he was staring at. Car doors opened in perfect unison and people spilled out with one foot or both feet planted on the ground; the masks of curiosity on their faces shifted into fell into one of both horror and panic.
His lips quivering with fear, the bearded man backpedaled away from his SUV, spun around and ran in the opposite direction. He reached the gunmetal gray Ford Taurus sitting three cars behind him when the passenger-side door of the red SUV flung open. A middle-aged heavyset woman with shoulder-length blonde hair wearing a bright purple tee-shirt and black stirrup pants leaped out peered in the same direction he was running.
She waved her arms over her head. “Where the hell are going? Get the–”
Before she could finish, an odd black figure staggered across the road, wrapped its arms around her waist and pinned her in place. She peered at it from the corner of her eye, shock registering across her face. He was tall, his withered gray skin pulled taut across his bones, dressed in a ratty blue tee-shirt, torn blue jeans and purple socks with tiny orange clocks on them.
She screamed when he reared his head back, buried his face into the right side of her neck and clamped its rotten black teeth onto her collarbone. He jerked his head back, tearing a large chunk of flesh from the meaty part of her shoulder; blood sprayed the, dripped down the front of his chin, down the side of her face and spread sporadic red bibs across the front of her shirt.
Her eyes wide with pain, she flung her arms out from her side and gave a loud panicked scream that raked at the air. Her head lolled to the side as he clamped his teeth onto her right ear and lowered her onto the street in a lover’s embrace behind a red pickup.
A black couple were standing outside of a blue Cadillac Escalade when four zombies appeared from behind them. The woman standing beside the front quarter panel in a pink crop-top tee shirt and a knee-length skirt was tackled to the ground. She gave a loud panicked scream as one of them thrust their fingers into the middle of her stomach and pulled her intestines from her body like a magician plucking colored scarves from their sleeves.
Her husband spun around, grasped his cell phone in his right hand and stared down at his wife’s gruesome demise with wide terrified eyes. Before he could move toward her, the other two pinned him against the door and sunk their teeth deep into his thighs. His panic-stricken cries were short lived, reduced a series of incoherent gurgling; blood burst from his quivering lips and soaked the front of his gray sleeveless tee-shirt.
A heavyset brunette in a white Looney-Tunes tee-shirt and sweatpants raced across the street as fast as her short stubby legs could carry her. She peered over her shoulder, oblivious to the trio of fiends closing in around her. When she shifted her attention back to the street in front of her, she was greeted by a dead blonde girl in a dirty bright-pink prom dress; the other two surrounding her was a boy wearing a soiled light-blue tuxedo and a second blonde girl wearing a skin-tight blue dress with a mud-stained corsage fixed around her right wrist.
She gasped and, her eyes wide with insane horror, tumbled back onto the hood of a dark-blue sports car before going any further. The dead girl sunk her teeth into her woman’s throat as her tuxedoed allies dug their withered gray fingers into her cottage cheese thighs, tore the flesh from her bones and stuffed it inside of their decaying black teeth.
Blood spurted across the hood, her screams adding to the fluctuating chorus of other screams blaring across the street. When her body gave its final spasmodic twitch, her screams died to make room for new ones.
It wasn’t about them anymore.
Not for the past five minutes.
No, it couldn’t be. He knew that all things were possible but not this.
He remembered having heard something on the news a year ago about the four teenagers who just attacked the woman. They’d been driving back from their Senior Prom when the driver lost control of the car and drove it through the guardrail along Kraus-McGregor Road and rolled down the hill nineteen times before exploding.
And yet there they were, tearing this woman apart, scooping chunks of pulpy red flesh into their rotten black mouths. These kinds of things only happen in movies or in books. The people who believed in this kind of thing were either horror movie fans or just plain fucking crazy.
No matter how much he wanted to tell himself that, no matter how scared and logical he sounded to himself, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was wrong. Out of all the days on the calendar, it had to happen today when he was about to get a bullet he deserved.
Colin heard a loud breathy moan from behind him and spun away from the window. He peered past the crown of his right shoulder and glanced across the room. Danielle’s face cracked under the mingled pressure of shock and terror. She clamped her hand across the front of her chin as a fresh set of tears brimmed in the corners of her eyes and slid down her cheeks.
Something floated across his left eye, drawing his attention away from her. Alicia’s ball cap had flew off her head, slid down the front of her tee-shirt and rolled across the floor. The front door opened the rest of the way, its hinges creaking like old joints and struck the wall hard enough to rattle the windows inside of their panes. He peered over his left shoulder as a male zombie shuffled up behind her.
It wore a bright green mechanic’s uniform and a bright yellow bandana covered in large bibs of wet dirt and dried blood. Its lips had been stripped clean off his face, revealing two rows of rotten black teeth and a wide crescent-shaped gash looped around his left hip to expose a wide smirk of pulpy-red flesh.
It grasped the tops of Alicia’s shoulders with its withered gray fingers and held her in place. Alicia peered over her right shoulder, her face creasing with a mixture of fear and confusion, and muttered something under her breath.
It pressed its face against her right cheek and bit down. Her body petrified from shock, she gave off a loud keening wail of panic that sent rivers of cold fear coursing through Colin’s blood. The gun fell from her hand and leapt across the floor, throwing pinpricks of light across the room.
The thing sunk its teeth inside and tore off a chunk of pulpy red flesh. Blood burst from between its teeth in a wind-blown geyser, poured out of Alicia’s ears, slid down the right side of her face and stained the front of her tee-shirt.
The sound made the pit of Colin’s stomach churn. A sharp acidic aftertaste tickled the back of his throat. Alicia screamed through her now lopsided mouth, clamped a hand across her face and glanced up at him and slumped over across the doorway
He watched in cold paralyzing terror as blood pumped from Alicia’s gaping red mouth. It reached its hand into her mouth, grasped the middle of her tongue, jerked its hand back and cupped its hand across its mouth. It turned and glanced at Colin and Danielle, held Alicia’s long pink tongue between its teeth and gnashed it between its teeth, squeezing a thin river of blood from the corner of its mouth.
His body flooded with shock and panic, Colin’s chest tightened and his cheeks flushed.
She glanced up at him, her face pale and bug-eyed.
He felt a mixture of anger and shock washing over him. Anger at the fact that he’d actually betrayed her in a way that was not only inexcusable and permanent, but a sure sign of cowardice. Shock at the fact that he’d actually gone through with it, knowing all that she’d done for him because she loved him with all of her heart and this was how he treated her, how he was going to thank her for seven wonderful years by pressing her close to him while he buried the knife deep into the middle of her back between her ribs to pierce her heart.
A loud growling sound pulled him back into reality. He glanced across the room and met the zombie’s gaze, his mouth set in a hard line. It rose up from the floor and shambled toward him, pinning him to the wall with its milky blue eyes.
His chest tightening with sadness, anger and guilt, Colin snatched the wooden chair next to the left side of the table in both hands and swung it in a whistling arc. The chair collided with the zombie’s left jaw, knocking Alicia’s half-eaten tongue from its gaping black maw.
It stumbled back, spun around on intoxicated legs and plopped down face first across the doorway. The chair burst apart, pouring a mist of jagged splinters of various sizes onto the floor.
Colin hurried across the room, snatched a long jagged stake from the floor. His body flooded with self-hatred and anger, he grasped it in both hands, raised it high above his head and drove it into the back of the thing’s skull.
A geyser of thick black blood shot into the air and splashed across the back of its uniform. The sound of yielding flesh filling the room as he drove the stake deeper inside. He grasped the stake in both hands until his knuckles ached and turned it in a counter clockwise motion, churning through shattered bone and soft gray brain matter.
He clenched his teeth together and hissed. His muscles burned with exhaustion, his tight-knuckled fists were the color of bleached bone. He leaped away from it, kicking it twice along the way and scrambled backward across the floor.
Danielle leapt out of her chair and scrambled into the bathroom, her pound-cake ass jiggling behind her. He clamped both hands across his mouth as a river of hot lucid tears brimming in his eyes. A bank of memories came flooding back at him, little reminders in still motionless frames that said more than a thousand words.
Alicia standing on the edge of the hill overlooking Lake Michelle in a strapless white dress and matching white pumps, her boyish-cut red hair accentuated by the blood-orange sunset streaking across the sky, her face split by a wide thousand-watt smile. Them lying under a cool white sheet the night they made love just before the first time she got pregnant, their polished oak headboard lined with a long strand of tiny white Christmas lights that glinted in their eyes when they looked at each other, their cool naked bodies pressed together in an unbroken union of beating hearts and soft caresses. She kneeling down beside of him as he sat in front of his mother’s tombstone with his face buried in his hands, their bodies quaking with each sob as if the pain and grief inside of his soul had been absorbed into her own, strengthening the bond between them.
Through all of the ups and downs, good times and bad, she’d never once thought of herself. She never threw in the towel, never lost hope that even after three miscarriages that their marriage had run its course. She always peeled back the layers of negativity, looked past the scuffs and dings that Life left behind and saw the beautiful positivity glowing inside his soul. He’d taken it for granted, every tiny little grain of her passion, her dedication, her loyalty and their marriage and threw it away without a care in the world. For that, he didn’t deserve to be called a man; didn’t deserve to love anyone else not even himself, an act that he thought would never be possible.
