The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

  Chavez had already left for the day. The rest of us trained our weapons on those bozos.

  “Yer makin’ a mistake with that kid,” the leader said. “He’s infected.”

  I recognized his voice and realized it was Travis Golightly, the racist owner of the Beehive and first lieutenant to Ormand Ferry. These guys were Red Militia.

  “Is that why you’re trying to shoot them?” Holly said.

  “They’re brother and sister. Most likely both infected,” he said.

  “You should leave,” Holly said. She looked at Warnick and Quigs, who seemed to agree.

  “You know what?” Travis said. For some reason he thought better of it. Then he muttered something to the others, and they lowered their weapons. “Your funeral,” he said, and they walked off down the driveway.

  We watched them go, then took the girl and boy into the house. Other than the bloody ear, the boy didn’t appear to be suffering in any way. In fact, he acted normal. We took them into the kitchen. Holly cleaned and bandaged the boy’s ear while the girl watched intently. They did, in fact, resemble each other.

  “The cut’s pretty clean,” Holly said to the boy. “Please tell me a dragger didn’t do this.”

  “I got into a fight is all.”

  “It’s why we ran away,” the girl said.

  “We can’t take any chances,” Landry said. “The boy can’t stay in the house.”

  “Hang on,” Holly said, and got them a couple of sodas from the refrigerator. “What are your names?”

  “I’m Griffin Sparrow,” the girl said. “This is my brother Kyle.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Holly said, and introduced the rest of us. “How old are you, Kyle?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “Why did you run away?” Landry said.

  “That guy you talked to outside?” Griffin said. “He’s our stepdad.”

  “Travis Golightly is your stepfather?” I said.

  “So you were running away from him?” Holly said.

  “Wait a second,” Ben said. “How did you get all the way out here?”

  “We were riding with those men,” Griffin said. “Kyle and I said we had to pee. When we got out, we ran into the forest. We didn’t know there was a house up here.”

  “And they chased you?” Landry said.

  “It’s lucky the draggers didn’t get you,” Holly said.

  “All that talk about being infected,” Griffin said. “He cut Kyle’s ear with a razor to give himself an excuse.”

  “An excuse?” I said.

  “To kill us,” she said without emotion.

  “Dear God,” Ben said.

  “He hates us,” Kyle said. “Always has.”

  “Where’s your mom?” Holly said.

  “Dead,” Griffin said, not looking at anyone. “One of the dead people got her. After she died, I guess Travis thought he could do whatever he wanted.”

  “I see,” Holly said. Then to Griffin, “Listen, I want to check you to make sure you’re okay. Come on, there’s a bathroom around the corner.”

  They left for a few minutes. When they returned, Holly looked concerned.

  “Well?” I said.

  “She’s fine. No bites.” Then to the kids, “We need to give you both tetanus shots just in case. Okay?”

  Griffin looked at her brother. “Sure, I guess.”

  “Can you get the medical kit?” Holly said to Warnick.

  Warnick injected them both. Then Holly turned to Kyle, who was watching her look after his sister. “I’m sorry, Kyle, but Irwin is right. You’re prob’ly telling the truth, but we have to be sure.” She turned to me and said, “Let’s take him out to the generator building.”

  We decided to let Griffin stay with us in the house. Looking into their eyes, I wanted to believe their story, crazy as it was. But with Kyle we couldn’t take any chances.

  We walked Kyle over the generator building and left him inside with food, water and a sleeping bag.

  “There are cameras in here so we can see you,” Holly said, sounding maternal. “You don’t need to worry about the draggers or anyone else. This building is secure.”

  “How long do I have to stay here?”

  She looked at me, then at Kyle. “We’re not sure. But it shouldn’t be more than a day or so.”

  “I don’t want to be in here by myself,” Kyle said.

  I could tell the kid was scared. “I’m sorry, Kyle. We have to be sure.”

  “Whatever.”

  We closed and locked the door without looking back.

  * * *

  When I came into our room, Holly was sitting on the bed a million miles away. I put a hand on her shoulder, and for the first time in days, she touched me.

  “There’s something those kids aren’t telling us,” she said.

  “I have the same feeling. Why would a man try to murder his own stepkids?”

  “I found bruises on Griffin when I examined her,” Holly said. “I don’t think she got those recently either.”

  “What about the boy?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You think Travis beats her?”

  “I think it’s worse. Those bruises weren’t just on her arms and legs. They were on her inner thighs.”

  “You mean that big guy on top of …” I couldn’t even finish the sentence. “That ripe, sick bastard.”

  “I’m almost sure of it,” she said. “I think their mother might have been trying to protect her. Maybe Kyle tried to stop it as well.”

  “But isn’t he younger?”

  “Yeah, she’s fifteen.”

  “How are we going to manage with two kids?”

  “I’m not turning them over to that monster,” she said, and left me sitting on the bed.

  * * *

  Twenty-four hours had passed and Kyle didn’t exhibit any telltale signs. Several of us stood around the monitors in the basement watching the boy pace back and forth. He looked up at the video cameras, exasperated. He kept repeating something.

  “Anyone read lips?” I said.

  We agreed to go see the kid.

  “Hello?” he said from behind the door. “Still not undead.”

  Laughing, we unlocked the door and brought him back inside the house. The cut on his ear had closed and the blood dried. What we had noticed with the undead was nothing healed. Whatever damage to their body they sustained stayed with them.

  Holly cleaned his wound in the bathroom. “You’re fine,” she said. “Let’s get you something to eat.”

  She brought him into the kitchen and told everyone what she thought. Ram looked skeptical as Warnick examined him. Though he didn’t have a lot of experience with the undead, Warnick pretty much knew what to look for. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a small, worn Bible. He flipped to one of the many dog-eared pages and handed the book to Kyle, pointing to a passage.

  “Read that,” he said. The boy squinted at it. “Out loud.”

  Kyle became embarrassed and looked at his sister, who nodded. He ran his finger along the small print and began, stumbling at first. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I’ve since looked it up. It’s from Psalm 79.

  O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps.

  The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth.

  Their blood have they shed like water round about Jerusalem; and there was none to bury them.

  “He’s fine,” Warnick said and took his book back.

  “I don’t get it,” Aaron said. “What did that prove?”

  “One of the first things to go is speech,” I said, remembering Jim. “And I don’t think a dragger could ever read.”

  “So I’m okay, right?” Kyle said.

  “Yes,” Holly said, smiling and giving him a hug. Was she falling for this lanky, unkempt kid?

  Kyle tu
rned red from the attention. To make things worse, Holly tousled his hair. Then he gave in. I think somewhere in him he craved a mother’s touch. I noticed Griffin looking away, trying not to show any emotion. I guessed her brother was everything to her.

  I wanted to savor this moment. It was a rare bright spot in what had become a hellish struggle for survival. None of us—not even the soldiers—were prepared for this. And in the coming days, things would get worse.

  Knife-in-the-gut worse.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Woods Are Full of Them

  It’s not Death I’m afraid of. It’s what comes after—being undead and blindly harming the ones closest to me. Acting out of hunger and rage. Let’s face it—losing control. Back there at the compound it’s what we feared and what we knew was coming.

  Holly lay in bed restless and unable to sleep, wanting me there but not wanting me with her. I could no longer be close to her, so I slept in the chair across from the bed. All feelings of love and passion seemed to have left me. When I looked at Holly, I saw a photograph of someone I once knew.

  Now that she and I were soldiers instead of lovers, we directed any emotion and caring that remained towards the kids. I became protective of Griffin, and Holly acted the same with Kyle. I don’t know when this happened, but having those two around seemed good and natural. At least it was a way for Holly and me to connect. These were our kids, and we were raising them together. Pathetic, I know. But I took what I could get in the emotion department.

  No one knew how long the outbreak would last. Originally, one Black Dragon battalion had deployed to Tres Marias. According to Chavez, they were successful in quarantining the town but at a great cost. Many soldiers had been lost. More died at the hands of the Red Militia. And I’m not talking about amateurs. Most of these men and women had seen combat. Still, they’d never encountered anything like this.

  At first we received regular updates on television. Some of the infected had gotten out prior to the quarantine. We saw news footage of violent attacks as far north as Monterey and as far south as Bakersfield. But the government didn’t talk about how they planned to stop the disease from spreading. For all we knew, it would be years—or decades.

  The intrepid Evie Champagne pressed on, following up on rumors of hit squads in major cities going after those who had gotten out in order to eliminate them before the disease could spread further. At some point the reporter and her faithful cameraman, Jeff, were caught in a melee between nailheads with guns and a massive dragger horde. After that we never heard from her again. Were the two of them out there somewhere? Evie in her signature blazer and stilettos, and Jeff in his stretched-out polo shirt? Hungering not for a story but for warm, living flesh?

  As Holly lay in bed and I sat in the chair, we talked about the uncertain future and about Griffin and Kyle.

  “If I become a dragger,” I said, “you’ll have no problem ending it, right?”

  “Please, Dave. I don’t want to think about this.”

  “You have to. Just say ‘yes.’”

  “All right, yes. And what about me?”

  “I couldn’t let you become one of those things. What about Griffin and Kyle?”

  “They don’t deserve that either,” she said.

  “Okay, so we’re agreed.”

  She sat up and stared at me. “We need to train them to survive.”

  “You mean guns?”

  “Yes, and making the right choices so they don’t end up …”

  “Okay. I think Warnick would be on board with that.”

  The next morning after breakfast, Warnick and I took Griffin and Kyle to the shooting range. We spent a long time in the armory selecting the right weapon for each of them. These kids were skinny and kind of small, so the weapons couldn’t be too heavy. Kyle settled on a Glock 19 with a fifteen-round magazine, and Griffin chose a Ruger LCP. Warnick had to talk her into the Glock because the Ruger held just six rounds and was meant for very close range. The last thing we wanted was for the girl to be within stench distance of a dragger.

  Neither of the kids had handled a weapon before. Warnick took his time with them, showing them what the weapons looked like taken apart as well as teaching them how to reassemble them. After a while, both Griffin and Kyle became enthusiastic. Later, in the shooting range, they were surprised by the recoil. Griffin howled the first time she fired her weapon. Hearing them both laugh was a comfort.

  The kids practiced half an hour each day. By the end of the week, they could hit the target every time. Holly and I knew that eventually they would have to go out on patrol with us for some real-world experience. Landry was a huge fan of this. After watching them shoot, he thought they would do fine.

  * * *

  Over those next weeks, Chavez came around less and less. We knew he was struggling against the hordes of undead that were moving through the town and the surrounding forest, not to mention the constant skirmishes with the nailheads. He was also struggling with soldiers going AWOL out of fear of becoming undead themselves or defecting to the Red Militia, which was further proof of the persuasiveness of Ormand Ferry.

  Who could blame them? They saw their friends being eaten. The last time we saw Chavez was at dinner, during which he talked about the current situation.

  “I’ve tried everything,” he said. “These guys are trained soldiers. A lot of them served in Afghanistan like Warnick here. But this is different. When you kill an insurgent, he doesn’t get up again. Our guys are so freaked out, they’re becoming unhinged.”

  “What are your superiors saying?” Holly said.

  Chavez looked at her and laughed in a way that made me nervous. “Nothing,” he said. “It looks like we’re on our own.”

  “Strange how they haven’t sent in reinforcements. We need to get to the bottom of it,” Landry said.

  “You can’t,” Chavez said. “There is no bottom.”

  He didn’t care that Griffin and Kyle were with us at the table. He probably figured they might as well know what their chances were.

  “So what are we supposed to do?” Warnick said.

  “Survive,” he said. “That’s priority number one.”

  * * *

  It was late August, and Holly and I had been in the fortress for six weeks. When Chavez and his men first arrived, our provisions were replenished. Towards the end, though, Chavez no longer came around and the regular supplies of food and ammo stopped.

  Warnick and Quigs tried to reach the supervisor, both by radio and cell phone. After days of trying, we assumed he was no longer among the living. We were on our own.

  We watched the outside world via satellite TV, and what we noticed over time was that the national and international channels continued to broadcast the news with no mention of Northern California. The local stations switched to recorded programming, reruns of old sitcoms mostly. It seemed we had fallen off the radar.

  Warnick and Quigs drove into town to learn what was happening. They took my truck instead of the Humvee to be less conspicuous. When they didn’t return by sunset, we began to worry. We spent the evening watching the front gate via the monitors. Around eleven, my truck rolled up and we let them in.

  Griffin and Kyle had gone to bed. The rest of us gathered in the kitchen for coffee and sandwiches.

  “So did you find Chavez?” Landry said.

  Warnick and Quigs looked at each other. “No,” Warnick said.

  “What happened out there?” I said.

  “We’re not sure who’s in charge,” Quigs said.

  “It looks like the rest of the troops have gone off the reservation,” Warnick said.

  I looked at Landry. “You said this might happen.”

  Warnick and Quigs decided they were now part of our “survival family,” as Warnick liked to call us. We were happy to have them.

  We continued our daily patrols, though we never went out at night. Too easy to get lost. We got to know the forest pretty well, and we put markers on trees using
luminescent paint. That way, if we were separated from the group, we could find our way back alone.

  I’d gotten over my fear of letting Holly go out with us, and she always took her turn. I insisted on staying with her, though, so I ended up going out every time she did in addition to going out on my assigned days.

  One day Holly and I explored an area we hadn’t covered before. As we made our way towards a clearing, a flock of crows cawed shrilly at us from high in the trees. Up ahead, we saw something. It was dark and round, sitting on top of a long, wooden pole that had been hammered into the ground.

  I didn’t like the looks of it as we moved closer. We both raised our weapons and slowed our approach. Then Holly screamed. Warnick and Quigs appeared in the clearing, and we stood staring at the grisly, familiar object.

  Yang’s head.

  It was stuck on a pike. The crows had pecked out the eyes, and the skin was ripped everywhere. The dark hair fluttered in the wind, and maggots feasted on the flesh.

  “I don’t understand,” Holly said. “How did …”

  I remembered finding Chavez the day Yang died. I recalled the black bag he threw into the back of his Humvee and the body burning in the pit. We never bothered to see if the corpse was headless.

  “It was Chavez,” I said.

  Quigs looked at me, bug-eyed. “What? No way.”

  “I need a shovel,” Warnick said. “Let’s get back.”

  We walked most of the way in silence. Warnick and Quigs returned to bury the head. Holly and I retreated to our room.

  She lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. I sat in the chair, looking at her.

  “What would make him do something like that?” she said.

  “This place got to him. I’m surprised we haven’t all gone crazy. I mean, look at what’s happened to us.”

  “Warnick and Quigs seem fine.”

  “On the outside.”

  “I’m glad he isn’t staying with us anymore.”