He bared his teeth and snarled before launching himself at her. The door shook and shuddered in its hinges, groaning beneath the weight of the man trying to batter his way through.
“What the hell?” Jasper said, his head turning toward the ruckus.
“Oh, my,” Eleanor gasped, one slender hand fluttering at her throat.
Lucy didn’t hear a word. All she saw was the hunger in the monster man’s eyes. Eyes that wanted to eat her, swallow her whole. Just like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood.
Her lips parted, and a shrill scream burst forth. It shivered through her throat in a non-stop litany of terror, refusing to stop despite her mother’s pleas for her to calm down.
“Lucy, quiet down, please. It’s just a man.”
But Lucy knew what she saw.
“Lucy.”
The scream knew what she saw too.
“Lucy, stop screaming!”
It was death, and there was no stopping it.
Lucy’s Chance - Chapter 2
The monster man mashed his face against the glass door with a deep groan. Silver gobbets of saliva streaked across the surface, tinged pink with blood. Lucy backed away from the awful sight and came to a stop against her mother’s knees. Her mouth was still open, screams issuing forth in sharp peals without her control.
“Oh, Lucy, stop it, please,” her mother cried.
Her entire body trembled and she hardly heard her mother’s pleas.
When Lucy failed to respond, Eleanor swept her up into her arms and onto her hip. “Hush now, dear. That is quite enough.”
The sharp note in her mother’s voice cut through the haze, and she quieted before her mother could administer any further punishment. Even so, she still hiccupped her distress. “S…so…sorry, Mommy.”
“That’s all right, sweetie. Just be quiet while Mr. Burns sorts out the problem.” Eleanor turned her head away from her daughter toward the front where the situation continued to unfold. “I’m sure it’s nothing serious.”
Following her mother’s example, Lucy also turned to watch. She stared with a mixture of fascination and fear as the burly shop owner, Jared Burns, waved a threatening hand toward the man still trying to claw his way inside the store. “Hey, what do you think you’re doing? Go away, or I’ll call the police.”
When the intruder didn’t back away, Jared grabbed a crowbar from the shelf nearest to him and advanced on the door with hulking strides. His brawny shoulders were puffed up with rage, and his face the hue of beetroot. A vein pulsed on his temple, thick and snake-like.
The stranger never stopped or backed away. He didn’t show any of the typical reactions an average person would. No alarm, no fear. Instead, he leered and growled at Mr. Burns, his fingertips digging at the transparent barrier that separated them. Lucy held her breath as the two faced off, barely the length of her arm apart.
“Did you hear what I said?” Mr. Burns shouted. “Bugger off!”
No reaction other than more frenzied clawing.
Mr. Burns reached for the handle and opened the door. Lucy’s mother sucked in a deep breath and backed away further into the store. Her arms tightened around Lucy and squeezed the breath from her lungs, but Lucy didn’t mind. She welcomed the feeling of security in the face of the oncoming threat.
The strange man shoved his way inside and reached for the shop owner with eager hands. Mr. Burns barely had time for a strangled yell before his attacker was on top of him. He raised the crowbar and walloped him on the shoulder, but Monster Man, as Lucy now thought of him, never stopped. He didn’t even seem to feel the blow.
Mr. Burns hit him again, harder this time, and the man stumbled as he lost his balance. His movements were awkward and slower than usual, but he recovered quickly and attacked again.
“What in God’s Name!” Mr. Burns backed away, his expression showing shocked surprise.
Monster Man snapped his teeth together, the clicking sounds hard enough to be heard all the way in the back. Lucy’s fingers knotted in her mother’s jersey as she watched. The horrid feeling of wrongness from before was back, but stronger this time.
She watched as Mr. Burns hit the stranger again and again. Each time he stumbled but came back for more, never showing any signs of pain. Blood from a cut on his scalp spilled across his face, giving him a grizzly look. At that moment, she was more confident than ever that the man was a horrid monster. Some ghoul from the grave, perhaps, like those stories she’d heard of in books.
A scream bubbled up her throat as the two men grappled, each trying to gain the upper hand. Mr. Burns was massive and no doubt strong, but Monster Man was relentless in his assault, never slowing or tiring. His head twisted to the side like a snake’s, and his teeth latched onto Mr. Burns forearm. He pulled back, and the skin stretched, farther than Lucy could have believed possible. Fresh blood welled up from the puncture wounds around each tooth.
With a final yank of Monster Man’s head, a hunk of flesh ripped free from the shopkeeper’s arm. Mr. Burns bellowed in agony and staggered back, one hand covering the gaping wound from which crimson fluid poured like a river.
Eleanor’s arms tightened around Lucy, and a terrified whimper escaped from between her lips. “Oh, my goodness. Jared!”
Jared Burns turned his face towards the terrified mother and child. “Eleanor, get Lucy to safety. Call for help.”
Eleanor’s head bobbed back and forth between the beleaguered man and her daughter who clung to her in fear. Making a decision, she turned and ran to the back of the store.
Over her shoulder, Lucy watched as the crazed intruder chewed and swallowed the chunk of meat in his mouth with gruesome relish. He attacked again, his head dipping in and out of view as he fought to get another bite. She lost sight of the duo when her mother ducked behind a counter and placed her on the ground.
“Mommy,” Lucy cried as her mother pried loose her little fingers from her woolen top. “No.”
“Stay here, Lucy,” Eleanor said.
“No!”
“Lucy.” Her mother’s voice dropped into a fierce whisper. “None of your nonsense now, you hear? Stay here and keep quiet. I’ll be right back.”
Without waiting for an answer, Eleanor spun around and disappeared. Lucy was left on the cold floor, alone. Tears streamed down her face, but she kept quiet as her mother had told her to be.
For a minute, she sat and waited, but the terror that had her in his grip was relentless. After a while, she got to her feet. With timid steps, Lucy made her way to the front where the sounds of fighting continued. She reached a corner and peered around it.
Her eyes went wide when she saw her mother sneaking up on the monster from behind with an ax raised above her head. Her face was white but set. Her hands were fragile but steady. She did not look afraid.
The strange man still had hold of Mr. Burns who kept him at arm’s length with difficulty. Sweat poured from the wounded shop owner’s forehead, his skin pale with either shock or pain. His eyes danced from his attacker to Eleanor with desperate hope, and he gritted out a sentence between clenched teeth. “Hurry, please.”
Eleanor closed the distance and brought the ax down with a solid thump. The blade bit deep into the man’s skull, the steel grating against the bone. Lucy winced, the sound like nails on a chalkboard to her. Her bottom lip was sucked deep into her mouth as she watched the spectacle. Never in her life had she seen so much blood.
The man collapsed, taking the ax with him. Mr. Burns backed away with one hand pressed to the gaping wound on his arm. Eleanor staggered to the counter where she came up with a cloth and duct tape. Neither of the two noticed Lucy watching as they covered up the wound and taped the fabric in place.
Lucy slumped to the floor, and her thoughts winged back to earlier that day. To a happy morning spent watching cartoons with Caramel in her arms while her parents argued as always. Now she wished for that. She wished they were all back home, together. Anywhere but here.
She sank down
to her haunches and hugged her knees to her chest. Everything was different now, and she wished for the comfort of Caramel’s furry body. More than that, she wished for her father.
With numb despair taking hold of her mind, she rocked back and forth. “Daddy, where are you? I need you, Daddy.”
Lucy’s Chance - Chapter 3
A few minutes passed. Minutes during which Lucy neither heard nor registered anything. She merely closed her eyes and begged for her daddy to show up and rescue her. A pair of determined hands plucked her from the spot, though, and she opened her eyes to gaze into her mother’s face. It was not the face she wished to see, and her heart sank. “Where’s Daddy? I want Daddy.”
Eleanor’s face twisted with disapproval, and she answered in a brusque tone. “Your father isn’t here, Lucy. Now stop your bawling and behave.”
Lucy shook her head and continued to cry. A smack against her ear prompted fresh tears, and her hearing took on the sound of buzzing bees.
“I mean it, Lucy. Stop this foolishness right now. Jared needs help, and I can’t stand here all day coddling you.”
Her mother’s voice cut like a knife, but the thought that Mr. Burns was hurt caused Lucy to swallow her sobs and wipe her face. Through the thickness in her throat, she managed a mumbled, “Okay, Mommy.”
“Good. Now come with me.”
Lucy stood up on wobbly legs and followed her mother to the front of the store. The Monster Man still lay where he had fallen, but the ax was gone, and a tarp covered his body.
“Is…is he dead?” Lucy asked, thankful for the material that covered the corpse. Her eyes crept to the side of the tarp, though, where she spotted the edge of a thick pool of blood. Her stomach churned, but she dared not be sick in front of her mother, the one person who had no time for weakness.
“Yes, Lucy. The man is dead,” her mother answered. “Now, I want you to sit here in a corner, and be quiet, please. It’s imperative.”
Lucy managed a nod and sat down on the low bench her mother indicated. She wasn’t sure what imperative meant but guessed it was nothing good from her mother’s tone of voice.
Her eyes went wide when she saw Mr. Burns nursing his arm against his chest. He was pale, and the rag that covered his wound had bled through. Eleanor fussed over him as she tightened the makeshift bandage and added another layer. “You need a doctor, Jared. The wound is deep, and it won’t stop bleeding.”
“I know. The son of a…he got me good.” Jared looked down at the body then shook his head. “What in God’s name possessed him?”
“I don’t know, but now is not the time for that.” In typical fashion, Lucy’s mother took charge, her tone brooking no nonsense. “We need to get you medical attention, and we need to call the police.”
“The police…” he mumbled, a worried look overtaking his features. He pointed toward the bloody ax that lay a small distance away. “What about that? We killed him. They’ll arrest us.”
“It was self-defense, but don’t worry about that for now. I’ll handle this.” Eleanor turned away from the wounded shopkeeper and fumbled in her bag for her cell phone. She pushed a few buttons then waited for the call to patch through.
After a few seconds, she said, “Hello? Is this the police station? We’ve got a situation here. A man just attacked us, and he injured someone quite badly. We need an ambulance here right away.”
A tinny voice spoke on the other end, the words not discernible to Lucy’s ears.
Eleanor frowned as she listened. “What do you mean you can’t help us right now?”
Mr. Burns’s head popped up in surprise.
“But we need help. Jared is seriously hurt,” she protested.
The voice babbled something more.
“Yes, I tried to stop the bleeding, and no, we’re not in immediate danger anymore.”
A quick reply.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but we need the police right now.” Eleanor’s voice rose as her displeasure made itself known. “I killed a man, for God’s sake. Don’t you care about that?”
Her mouth dropped open as the dispatcher replied, the answer clearly not what she expected to hear. Before she could respond, the line died. This left her staring at her phone with an expression of total disbelief. “What in the world is going on?”
“What did they say?” Mr. Burns asked.
Eleanor glanced at Lucy who had watched the entire time with a sense of growing horror. Her earlier feeling that something was wrong, now intensified. But not wrong in the sense that she was used to, like when her parents fought, or when she got caught being naughty. No, this was much worse. This was the kind of wrong you experienced when your beloved grandmother died like hers had the previous year. Lucy could still feel the intense grief and sorrow she’d felt then. It was always there, a ball of ice knotted in her chest that never melted or went away.
Now her mother hesitated, as if unsure whether she should say more in front of her daughter. That was strange in itself because Eleanor rarely stopped to consider her words. Realizing that her mother was hesitant, Lucy sat upright and lifted her chin. “It’s okay, Mommy. I’m strong.”
Eleanor gave a curt nod, but a slight smile spoke of pride at Lucy’s actions. She turned to Jared. “The stupid woman said we had to wait here until somebody came, but it might not be for quite some time. Apparently, we are not a high priority at the moment.”
“Why’s that?” he asked.
“It seems…it seems this man is not alone.” She indicated the corpse on the floor. “There are other individuals with the same affliction. They’re attacking people wherever they go. An illness. The police are responding only to those in immediate danger.”
“What?” His face spoke of disbelief. “Like a virus?”
“I don’t know.” Eleanor dropped the phone back into her bag and paced up and down. Her blonde hair gleamed under the fluorescent lights, immaculate as ever. “She even spoke of cannibalism.”
“Well, he did take a chunk out of me, and I swear I saw him swallow it.”
“The whole thing is ridiculous. The fantasy of overwrought minds. It can’t be true.”
“What if it is? Why would she tell you something like that if it wasn’t true?”
She shook her head, lips set into a thin line. “Let’s see for ourselves, shall we?”
With those words, she strode toward the shop front and peered through the glass. She tut-tutted in disapproval. “You really should clean these windows, Jared. They’re filthy.”
His cheeks colored, bright against the paleness that had set in after his injury. “Sorry.”
She continued to stare outward, twisting her neck to get a better view through the grime. “I see…I see people running. There appears to be someone chasing them.”
“Shit,” Jared mumbled.
Eleanor tossed him a sharp look over her shoulder. “Do not use that kind of language in front of Lucy.”
“Sorry.”
She sighed, her expression taut. “It seems there might be some truth to the dispatcher’s fantastical story. Either way, we can’t just sit here waiting for help. You need medicine, and I need to get Lucy home where she’ll be safe.”
Jared Burns nodded, his burly shoulders taking on a determined set. “Right, how about this? I’ll take the ax there, and you arm yourself with something from the shop. Together, we’ll make a run for the pharmacy across the street.”
Eleanor straightened up “What do we do there?”
“Old Cairns can fix up my arm, maybe even call the police again. After that, I’ll make sure you two get back into your car so you can get home. How’s that?”
“All right. It’s a plan, at least. Better than sitting around here doing nothing.” Eleanor turned away from the door and armed herself with a short length of steel piping. “This should do.”
She walked toward Lucy, pausing only to sling her bag across her shoulder. “Lucy, I need you to be strong now, okay?”
; Lucy shook her head, frantic at the thought of going outside toward the monsters. It was safer inside. “No, Mommy. We can’t.”
“Lucy…”
Hot tears blinded Lucy and poured down her cheeks without pause. “No, no, no. I want Daddy. Call Daddy. He’ll save us.”
Eleanor paused, a helpless expression crossing her features. “Lucy, please. Your dad’s at work. You know that.”
“No, call Daddy!” Her breaths came in shortened gasps, each tighter than the other until it felt as if she were smothering. Her mother’s iron grip closed on her upper arms, and the pain cut through the haze of terror surrounding her. “Mommy, you’re hurting me.”
“Lucy, listen to me. No one is coming to save us. Not the police, not the ambulance, and most certainly not your useless father.” Lucy shook her head in denial, but Eleanor was relentless. “You will listen to me. The only way you’ll get to see your home again, is if you listen.”
“Eleanor, maybe you should wait here with her. I can go and get help,” Jared interjected.
Eleanor cast him a sharp glance over her shoulder. “No, we’re going together. Whether she likes it or not.”
“She’s just a little girl,” he protested.
“Do not tell me how to raise my daughter, Mr. Burns.” Eleanor’s voice rose several octaves, the chords cutting into the hapless Jared in much the same fashion they did to Lucy’s father. “I will not have her be a weakling like I was. Just a stupid little girl without the backbone to make the right decisions.”
Lucy quailed, shrinking back as far as she could when her mother turned toward her again. Her fierce gaze cut deep into Lucy’s soul, stripping away all resistance. “Now listen to me, Lucy. You will stand up, you will dry your tears, and you will follow me outside without complaint. Got that?”
When Lucy didn’t answer straight away, Eleanor shook her hard enough for her teeth to rattle. “Got that?”
Children of the Apocalypse: Mega Boxed Set Page 99
