by Rob Horner
“Shit!” Tina swore, hefting her shotgun. “Okay. You guys stay here and watch the doors. I’m going to step right outside and call Bill, see if he can hear me.”
She stepped to the back wall, flipping light switches beside the door. Another set of exterior lights came on, illuminating their side of the house.
Immediately after, something banged against the back door.
Bradley jumped and muttered a soft curse.
“What was that?” Jessica asked.
Tina reached for the dead bolt and doorknob, then reconsidered and settled for parting the curtain.
“Oh God! Bill! No!”
* * * * *
They were trapped.
The nurse practitioner, Tina Maltis.
Her two sons, large boys who smelled of both the mother and the become father in the back yard.
The doctor.
And the nurse who’d given him such a chase.
All were in the basement.
They wouldn’t try to come out the door leading to the yard, not with Tina’s husband, the neighbor girl, and two large dogs ready to tear them apart.
They’d turned on the exterior lights. They could see what waited for them, what even now battered on wood and glass trying to get in at them.
But they couldn’t know about him.
He walked confidently through the house, his bare feet hitting hard enough to thump on the wood floors. He didn’t try to make himself appear to be more than he was, didn’t pitter patter to pretend to be two or three people. He had foresight and he could plan, but the kind of imagination required for subterfuge was beyond him. The man outside had a weapon, though he hadn’t had the chance to use it. It stood to reason there were probably others in the house. And after what the nurse, the doctor, and the nurse practitioner had seen, they’d probably secured those other weapons and had them close at hand.
He followed the trail through the kitchen, empty save for the aroma of coffee and a mug half-full of the cooling liquid.
The scents merged here and led off to the right, through an archway to a short hall. One direction led to a staircase going up, while the other led to a master bedroom. Two doors opened off the hall. One was to a large bathroom and laundry room, currently empty. The other had a strange cast to the light coming from beneath the door. Not foolish enough to test the knob and make a target of himself if someone was on the other side itching for a reason to pull a trigger, the hunter knelt cautiously to peer beneath the barrier. Carpeted stairs ran down and turned out of sight. There didn’t appear to be anyone on the stairs, but he could sense the presence of his prey somewhere around that bend, maybe even waiting for him.
The hunter stood, hand reaching for the knob. Even if it was locked, he should have the strength to force it. If not with a twist, then with a shove.
But for the first time since he’d become, he wasn’t certain of what to do.
If he forced the knob and charged down, he’d be an easy target. No matter how fast he was, he couldn’t dodge bullets. At least, he didn’t think he could. With up to five people armed and waiting, he’d go from hunter to prey. He had no fear of death, but he didn’t like the idea of failing his master or his species.
That’s what they were, regardless of what the uninformed and terrified humans might think. They weren’t simply people who’d died and come back, mindless zombies at the mercy of some unthinking plague. No, they were become. They were more. The…whatever it was…that infected them did something to them, more than merely removing the stain of conscience and the fear of disease. It opened new pathways of thought, activated parts of the mind unreachable by anyone else.
It removed limitations, all those self-imposed impossibilities bred into humanity by morality and societal acceptance, all those physical barriers defined more by concept than actuality.
It freed them to be more, to become what mankind should have become long ago, before the jealous and fearful set themselves above the masses and deigned to tell the people they could never be any better than they already were.
His people needed him to stop the threat of the immune. His master tasked him with seeing this job done.
The hunter didn’t want to fail either.
He’d have to call to others, send them down as a distraction while he struck.
But who?
He had the teenager in the yard, the husband, and the derelict waiting to spring his trap.
Focusing, he reached out, wanting to call only the teenager.
And he found…another mind.
A flicker.
Here then gone.
There was one nearby who was on the verge of becoming.
Startled, he backed away from the door, his footfalls booming hollowly, surely alerting those below to his motions.
He didn’t care.
The one becoming was down there with them.
More carefully this time, he reached. He probed. He cajoled.
He did what Austin did.
He called.
And he was answered.
Chapter 19
“Oh God! Bill! No!” Tina yelled, and suddenly her hands dropped from the curtain over the backdoor and started fumbling with the locks.
Jessica lunged forward, grabbing her friend’s arms and pulling them away. Tina let out another anguished shriek, this one wordless, and tried to pull away.
“Mom!” the younger boy called. “What is it? Is it dad?”
The older one came over.
“Don’t open it!” Jessica panted, struggling to keep Tina from the locks. She wouldn’t have thought it to look at her, but the petite blonde packed a lot of desperate strength in her frame. Maybe growing up with such big boys kept her strong.
The older one, William, moved to the window instead of the door, parting the curtains and peering out. His younger brother joined him, looked, then immediately turned away, gagging and sobbing.
“Let me go!” Tina yelled. “I have to help him.”
William dropped the curtain and pulled Tina free of Jessica’s hands. When she tried to break free of him, he forced her to turn and pulled her close. “Mom,” he said, his voice the gentle rumble of a boulder settling, “you can’t. That’s not Dad.”
Bradley continued to sob, gasping, but he’d managed not to throw up. “What the hell was that? It looked like Dad, but his throat… What the hell’s going on?”
“You should’ve told them,” Dr. Crews muttered from his spot next to the fireplace. It was the first thing he’d said since getting out of the van. “I should’ve told Libby. Maybe if I had—” He trailed off, his head bowed, looking at the carpet through his knees.
With William’s pronouncement, the strength left Tina’s body. She sagged against her oldest son, sobbing into his chest. “It’s not fair. It’s just not… It shouldn’t be him!”
Jessica moved to the light curtain over the door and pulled on the sides.
A fist swung, striking the glass an inch away from her nose. She jumped back, but it was more out of instinct than necessity. The glass was double-paned, not unbreakable by any means but strong enough to withstand a half-hearted swing like that.
Two people stood revealed in the high-wattage outdoor lights. One was a man easily as large as the two boys in the room. Rugged and good looking, he shared enough features with the teenagers that he had to be their father. Something had ripped away most of his throat, just torn it out like one of those scenes in a werewolf movie, where a strong jaw and long teeth clamped, squeezed, and wrenched sideways.
The other form was of a teenage girl, most of the skin of her stomach peeled away and the wet organs beneath slithering with light-shine. She moved forward, raising hands to thump them against the single window, causing Bradley to recoil farther into the room.
“If I didn’t know better,” William said, his voice still pitched low, “I’d say those looked like zombies. But that’s not possible, right? So maybe you can tell me what’s going on.”
* * * * *
The noises outside made conversation difficult, all the growling and banging, and that suited Adam just fine.
Huddled in the back of Tina’s basement with the nurse practitioner, her sons, and Jessica, the doctor listened to them shout and yell, watched them pivot from door to window to other door, guns swinging back and forth. If anything breached their sanctum, it would be dealt with quickly.
At least until the ammo ran out.
Adam couldn’t shake the feeling that his ammo had already run out. He was useless, just like a gun with no bullets.
What happened at the hospital was separate. He didn’t own that, just as he didn’t own the deaths of those who came in by EMS in full cardiac arrest.
But his wife. His sons.
He tried to tell himself the boys weren’t his fault. He hadn’t known about the sleepover. They were already gone when he and Libby arrived at the Carpenters’.
That didn’t change the yawning maw of grief and despair threatening to swallow him.
No amount of blame-placing or avoidance would replace his children or allow him to see again their cherubic smiles or feel their exuberant hugs as he left for work in the evening. And no amount of wallowing in their loss could ameliorate his responsibility for Libby’s death.
Smiling, he lowered his face to hers, indulging in a lingering kiss.
“See,” she said, “it’s not that hard to do this occasionally. Maybe we can add a third—”
He shook his head, banishing the recent memory. He’d been scared to death, rushing into the house after hours of terror in the hospital. He’d feared for his kids and wanted them at home with him and his wife.
If he’d listened to her, pushed aside the worry for the boys, maybe she’d still be alive.
Hell, if he hadn’t let her rush into the house, had grabbed her and pulled her away…
Simply put, he hadn’t been able to save her, them, or anyone else.
Rose sported a long gash on the left side of her face that bled freely, a product of the man’s swinging fists.
No, he’d let Libby rush ahead, despite what he knew about the strange craziness and how it spread. Then came the dog, and he’d barely managed to escape that.
All I’m good for is saving myself.
At first, while Jessica drove them to Tina’s house, all he could think about was the abrasion on his leg, where the dog had bitten and chewed. The existential threat of having been bitten by one of those…creatures…was enough to override his grief, though only temporarily.
Since getting out of the van and coming inside, he’d allowed the pants leg to roll back down. It didn’t hurt, and he didn’t care.
The tall young men, Tina’s sons, scanned this way and that while he sat propped against the basement hearth. Rather than check on his leg, which had taken on a decidedly heated feeling—not hot like touching a lit burner on a stove, but warm like hanging an elbow out a car window—he watched the drama playing out around him.
The basement was huge, encompassing a space easily as large as the floorplan of the house. Every floor surface was carpeted, and not with the cheap stuff. Soft, thick, and beige, the carpet looked new, even in the high traffic areas around the stairs. There was some nice furniture down here as well—couches, recliners, and a television perfect for watching a football game with family and friends.
The Maltis’ had themselves a nice set up at the ass end of the county.
The ceiling was the only bad spot in the whole situation. Square tiles set in crisscross bracing didn’t provide the same kind of sound cover that he was used to. Every step of the person above echoed dully to those below. The hollow booms of ineffectual fists banging on the doors likewise reverberated, though the people out there didn’t seem to have the strength to break in.
Adam wondered why they bothered.
Why do anything?
Why sit here surrounded by plush carpet, nice furniture, and deadly firearms when the end was a foregone conclusion? Nothing they did mattered. Eventually they would all become.
Adam’s brows contracted and he sat forward, pulling away from the hearth.
Where had that word come from, “become?”
Become what?
Why would he use such a term?
The heat in his leg subsided, its loss as astonishing as a sudden pain. One minute it was hot, and the next…not. Pulling his attention from the situation around him, not that anyone was paying him any mind, he reached down and pulled at his left pant leg.
The small abrasion and mild contusion surrounding it were no longer visible, buried beneath a writhing snakes’ nest of blue and black lines, which ran up and under his scrubs, presumably on their way to his crotch. He hissed in shock and surged to his feet, but no one heard him; no one paid any attention to the grieving man in the corner. The two young men were busily holding onto their mother, trying to prevent her from opening the door leading directly to the back yard. Jessica was over there with them, a third voice advising caution.
After the initial fright, all concern dissipated.
He was becoming, and it was all right.
There was that word again.
What was he becoming, and why was any of this all right?
He didn’t want to become like the people in the emergency room, out of control, attacking everyone.
And yet, a loss of control had a certain appeal.
Especially if it came with a loss of grief, relief from the unrelenting waves of pain and despair.
There was nothing left for him. Not as Adam Crews.
But if he became someone else, something else, maybe he could leave that behind.
But I can’t attack my friends. I can’t do that. They don’t deserve that.
Libby didn’t deserve it either, but it happened. Chris and Carlton certainly hadn’t deserved it.
But if I become like them, maybe we can be together again.
And with that thought, the infection found its way past Adam’s defenses. Slowly, almost like a ballet dancer folding to the ground, Adam sank back to the carpet. His eyes closed. His heart went from trip-hammering to a regular double-beat.
The beat slowed as a darkness called from within, something blacker than the blackest night, but peaceful for its welcome embrace and absence of pain.
A moment passed, and in that moment, everything changed, and nothing was different.
William and Bradley still argued with their mother, the older of the two boys with one hand pressed firmly to the outside door, preventing her from opening it. Jessica continued to add her voice to the cacophony, though her eyes roved to the stairs leading up into the house every few seconds.
Adam’s eyes opened, and before him weren’t two friends and the children of one, but four unbecome, three of whom could not become.
A part of him wanted to engage them, just rush out and attack, maybe grab the one young man who could become and infect him.
But a voice intruded on his thoughts, providing insight and instruction.
Adam found himself powerless to resist.
Rising slowly, he moved along the wall to the stairs.
“Dr. Crews?” Jessica called. “Where’re you going?”
* * * * *
Tina felt herself rocked by her oldest son, a gentle swaying motion, something he no doubt remembered her doing to him when he was younger and hurt. And just as it had on him, the soothing worked, dragging her down from the screaming heights of hysteria. She still ached to open the door, rush out and…what? She’d seen what Bill had become. It only took a brief flash to know he was beyond saving, his throat a ruined mess no one could survive.
Yet he was surviving, still upright, walking, and banging on the door.
No sound came through the portal except the thumps of hands on glass.
There were no animal noises, either. Not at first. Tina wondered at that. Shouldn’t the dogs be out there barking their fool heads off? Shouldn’t there be some visceral animal reaction to such
a perversion of nature? Or was that only what the gap-toothed soothsayers on the National Geographic specials wanted you to think? All those white-fringed crazies saying how intuitive animals were, how in tune with the spiritual realm and how able they were to warn against the supernatural.
But then, if what Bill reported was true, if this could be traced to something man-made, did it count as supernatural? Maybe it was just a new front in some crazy-ass biological warfare, an agent cooked up to do precisely this, only accidentally released here instead of in some far-off corner of the world like Afghanistan or Turkey.
She shook her head, which William took for another gesture of denial.
A door opened above them; a set of heavy footfalls echoed in the open space of the basement.
Jessica went back to the curtains. “Still two people out here,” she reported.
Tina winced and wanted to argue, “My husband,” but held her tongue. He wasn’t. Not anymore. She had to think about him as though he was gone. Anything else might leave her incapable of protecting her sons.
Get real. All you’ve managed to do so far is bring this shit home.
That wasn’t fair but telling herself that and believing it were two very different things.
The steps thudded through the halls above and every eye followed their path, as though the five people in the basement all had Superman’s X-Ray vision. Tina’s sobs stopped, and William relaxed his hold, though his hands stayed on her shoulders, ready to restrain her if she tried to open the door again. She could have told him she was okay, that she wasn’t going to do anything like that, but he might not believe her.
Truthfully, she wasn’t sure she believed herself.
The footsteps stopped in the hall above the staircase. Tina held her breath and felt William do the same, ears straining for the sound of someone trying the knob.
