“I’m only going about an hour away,” I said.
“I know, but I wanna…”—she lowered her voice, which I doubt did much good, considering how everyone was focused on us—“I wanna be able to kiss you again, because I like you, Carter. I like you a lot.”
“I like you too.”
There went the butterflies again, flapping their wings so hard I could’ve floated to my destination.
“Oooooo,” Tommy said again, smacking his lips together. I didn’t even turn around, I just showed him my middle finger.
“Can you come back?” Stephanie asked. “Can you come back after you get Clem?”
I nodded. “I can.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Do you still have that pen?”
I had forgotten to leave it at the gas station, so I made a mental note to give it back before pulling it from my pocket and handing it to her.
“Here, give me your arm.”
I did. It was hard to say no to Stephanie. I found that out pretty much immediately.
“This is my parents’ address. Come as soon as you can. As long as it’s safe, we’ll be there.”
“Deal.”
She kissed me again before we left.
The drive proved easy enough—by some divine miracle, I’m assuming. We saw only a handful of cars on the road. No one stopped. No one went too fast. Really, as we passed the other drivers, none of them even looked our way. The faces I saw were pale and shaken. Terrified. I wondered if I looked the same way.
Halfway into the trip, we saw a convoy of abandoned military vehicles clogging an exit ramp. I didn’t like that, and I didn’t know what it meant, but it definitely wasn’t good. I drove the bad thoughts away by thinking of Clem’s smiling face and the way she used to laugh all wheezily when it was time for bed, how she got so tired, she became loopy. It was hilarious.
I smiled.
Julia and Steve’s house was located in a nice neighborhood not far from a big shopping mall. The mall’s parking lot was empty. Loose papers blew across the pavement. I slowed down as we passed a Macy’s, thinking I’d seen a collection of bodies. It wasn’t. They were mannequins that had been blown out of the store windows by the storm. Somehow, seeing that made it worse.
I think I would’ve liked to see bodies. Evidence of an attack. The world was empty, and it was like everyone had just vanished into thin air.
Tommy fell asleep about halfway through the drive. I almost woke him up a few times, mainly because I hated the silence. The radio still offered nothing but occasional static and emptiness.
As we got closer to the house, thoughts of Clem drifted into worse and worse places. I pictured walking up the driveway, knocking on the door, and getting no answer. I pictured going in and finding nothing but an untouched house—no signs of my daughter, my ex, or my ex’s current husband.
Or worst of all, seeing their mutilated corpses.
That was all my mind could bring up at the time. Dark thoughts. Terrible images.
My phone was in the front cup holder on my right side. I grabbed it, forgetting it was long dead, and tapped the screen and got no response. The thread holding my heart together loosened. I wanted to see Clem right then. A picture would’ve held me over, but I couldn’t even get that. She was all I had in this world. If she was gone, if those creatures had taken her, there was nothing left for me.
Tommy leaned forward and rubbed his eyes. “Shit,” he said. “Sorry, dude. I zonked out.”
“You needed it. You feel any better?”
That was dumb question. After the stuff we went through the night before, I doubted we’d ever feel anything close to better again. But one could dream, right?
“Nope.” Tommy peered through the cracked windshield. “We almost there?”
I exhaled shakily before I slowed and flicked on my turn signal—something I no longer needed to do. That was when I felt a twang in my chest as the thread holding my heart together continued to unravel.
“I take that as a yes,” Tommy said.
We approached the house. Besides a few roofs with missing shingles and fallen tree branches scattered here and there, the neighborhood looked the same as I remembered.
I parked in the driveway. Julia’s Chevy Malibu was in front of the garage. I sat there for a moment, staring at the front door before Tommy nudged my arm and said, “C’mon, man, let’s do this.”
“I’m—I’m just worried about what I’ll find. Or that if they’re there, it’ll be a hallucination the creatures put in my head.”
“Not in the daytime.”
We didn’t know that for sure, though.
Tommy reached over to turn the engine off. “Need me to open the door for you too?”
I shook my head and grabbed the handle, my heart hammering like crazy, and opened it myself. I stepped out. When my soles hit the concrete, I felt nothing. It was like I was floating. Twenty feet was all that separated me from the front door, but it seemed so much farther.
I took a deep breath and looked at the grass, still flooded from the storm. I felt a panic attack coming on.
Breathe, Carter. Breathe. You’ll be okay—
Then I heard something.
The creaking of hinges.
“Hey!” Tommy shouted. “Hey! I told you! I freakin’ told you!”
Slowly, I raised my eyes. Standing there halfway behind the door was Clem. She was wearing purple pajamas with unicorns on them. Her lips moved, but the words were muffled.
“Daddy?”
Then: “DADDY!”
She threw the door open with all her might, and behind her I heard Julia yelling “Clem, come back! Come back here right now!” in a shrill, alarmed voice, but Clem ignored her.
I took off toward my daughter, my shoes filling with water and mud, and she jumped into my arms, all smiles.
“Daddy! Daddy! I knew you’d come! I told Mommy you’d be okay! I told her!”
I couldn’t find any words to say. It was impossible, yet here we were. So instead I smothered Clem’s cheeks in kisses and squeezed her so tight, her voice cut out. She didn’t even yell “Ewwwwwey!” like she sometimes did.
Julia came to the porch. There were tears in her eyes as she clamped a hand over her opened mouth.
With Clem in my arms, I walked up the steps on numb legs. “Are you okay?” I asked Julia.
She nodded and then hugged Clem and I.
When we parted, I set Clem down, knelt in front of her, and said, “Bug, I didn’t bring you anything for your birthday. I’m so sorry.”
She wrinkled her brow. “A present? Daddy, you being here is better than anything in the whole entire universe!”
When I heard her say that, it was like an unseen hand had tied the thread laced through my heart into a knot.
“I love you, Clem.”
“I love you too, Daddy!”
Tears filled my eyes, blurring my vision.
Sure, the horror of what we went through remained, and so did the uncertainty of our future…but the fear…
The fear was gone.
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About the Author
Flint Maxwell lives in Ohio with his beautiful wife, daughter, and their four furry best friends.
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The Whispers: A Supernatural Apocalypse Novel Page 13
