by Hunter Shea
Wood thumped in the flatbed. “Still here,” West said, pushing himself up from the pile of timber.
“West, are you all right?”
He looked over at the twisted man.
“Better than him.”
West was bleeding from more places than Debi could count. The ragged edges of the wood had torn his flesh and clothes when he fell into it.
He jumped from the flatbed, grunting in some pain. Debi put her arms around him, unable to stop her tears. He rubbed her back, saying over and over, “It’s okay, Mom. It’s okay. We did it.”
It was surreal, all of it, but more so her son comforting her after everything.
She kissed his forehead, tasting salt and copper.
“Now we need to get Faith’s father and whoever else might be in there,” he said.
He was so calm, she worried he was in shock. Odds are, they both were.
That didn’t make him wrong.
“We don’t know how many there are,” she said, looking back at the dead behemoth.
“Yeah, but there’s a way we can find out.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Whatever happened outside didn’t sound good.
Gregory Simmons looked up the stairs pensively. He cocked the gun and pointed it at Matt. “Time is in short supply, old buddy. Get Rayna out of there, now!”
“I can’t.”
He fired a round that whizzed by Matt’s ear. It pinged off the wall behind him, ricocheting into a stack of moldy boxes.
“Wrong answer. The next one goes in your wife’s belly the moment she steps down here.”
Matt moved away from his father. Abraham’s breath was coming in short, shallow gasps. He wouldn’t hold on much longer, even if they were able to get him medical attention.
“He said he has the room rigged with explosives. If we open that door, the whole house is coming down.”
Now Gregory was screaming. “Then ask him how to deactivate the fucking thing! Does he want you all to die? Because that’s exactly what’s about to go down!”
Matt closed his eyes, trying to collect himself.
His father’s confession chilled him to his core. How could he do such a thing?
“He can’t answer me because you shot him, you asshole,” Matt snapped. “He’s out, Gregory. Even you can see that. He can barely breathe, much less talk. So if you’re going to kill us, there’s nothing I can do to stop you, least of all get your daughter out of that room alive.”
Gregory kept stealing glances at the stairs. His face was a writhing mask of indecision.
“Or, we can stop this madness and find somebody who can. Maybe get a bomb squad down here,” Matt said.
“A bomb squad? A bomb squad? What do you think this is, some kind of TV show? Ain’t nobody going to come to the rescue here.”
He suddenly rushed across the basement, grabbing bunches of Abraham’s shirt and pulling him from the floor. “Wake up! Wake up you murderous pig!”
Abraham’s head rolled to the side while Gregory shook him relentlessly. Matt grabbed Gregory’s arm. “Stop it! It’s over! All of it. These sick games our families have been playing are done.”
Gregory pushed him aside, dropping Abraham back onto the ground.
“Where the hell is that boy?”
Matt felt a glimmer of hope. Gregory’s beastly son hadn’t come back, which meant Debi and West could still be free.
“I’m going upstairs out of this little bunker to make a call,” Gregory said. “Pretend you’re Jesus and bring that fuck back from the dead.
The basement door slammed. Matt slumped against Abraham’s body.
The spins were in control now. All the times Matt wished he were dead when they came on like this. Now he was going to get his wish.
“I take it all back,” he muttered.
There was no taking anything back. Not the infidelity of his mother, the killing of his sister, the kidnapping of Gregory’s daughter, or James’s murder. Insanity. All of it.
And all for what? Because an incestuous family had laid claim to this diseased land generations ago? It made no sense.
Perhaps evil didn’t have to make sense. It just was. It festered and survived by its own rules.
And what did that say about his family that chose to live among such evil? Were they monsters themselves? Crazy, or possessing a kind of bravery that Matt would never be able to fathom?
He no longer cared about himself. Debi and West were all that mattered. Not knowing where they were or if they were unharmed ate away at him.
I have to keep Gregory down here, focused on rescuing his daughter.
There was no getting through to his father. Not where he was right now.
“Why, Dad? Why?”
For once, there wasn’t a smartass reply or insult.
There was only one way to go now. He had get on his feet, fight through the vertigo that was tearing his brain in two, and kill Gregory. But how? And with what?
He looked around the basement. It was all boxes and cans, or at least that’s what his jittering eyes could take in. Matt stood, felt his knees threaten to buckle, and willed them to stay locked.
There it was. Just under the stairs, he spied a garden trowel. Or several of them. It was impossible to tell. He weaved his way to the stairs, gripped a step and bent over. Bending when vertigo was at its worst sometimes led to short blackouts.
Not this time. Not this time.
Matt’s hand shook as his fingers probed the cold, gritty floor. The trowel he thought he saw wasn’t the one on the right. He reached to the left, felt the wooden handle, and snatched it up.
Swallowing back his gorge, he tried to settle down. Sweat poured down his face and back.
Now to find the strength to overtake Gregory. If his son came down with him, Matt’s attack would be short lived. He had to make it count.
He crouched under the steps, the only place to hide in the basement.
Gripping the trowel with both hands, he focused on his father’s still body.
The house suddenly shook. It sounded as if a bomb had gone off.
And it wasn’t the one rigged up to Rayna’s prison.
***
West knew he had years, maybe decades, of therapy ahead of him.
If he survived.
With his mother’s help, they managed to lift the broken giant’s body onto the dented hood of the truck. When they were done, after dropping him several times, they were both covered in the man’s blood. Now he knew what people meant when they talked about something making their skin crawl.
A steady stream of white steam boiled out from under the truck’s hood.
His mother said, “Must have cracked the radiator. I’m not sure how much longer this truck is going to work.”
West wiped his slick hands on his pants. “Hopefully, we only need it for another couple of minutes.”
“Honey, I can take it from here. I want you to go find help. They’ll be so distracted, no one will follow you. I’ll make sure of it.”
He shook her off. “I’m not leaving without you and dad.”
His mother looked like she was about to argue, but sighed in resignation instead. They were both too tired and hurt to debate. And time wasn’t on their side.
She reached into the truck and laid down on the horn again. West held onto the heavy rock he’d found in the field.
“Hey, we have something for you!” his mother shouted.
The dead man was a gory hood ornament, impossible not to see thanks to his mother shining a flashlight on the body. They needed Gregory Simmons to view their handiwork.
Most of all, they wanted him mad. Reckless.
“Come on, asshole!” West screamed.
The back door kicked open. And because they had moved the truck closer to the house, they could plainly see Gregory Simmons. He took one look at the truck and started to wail. West had never seen someone so angry before, not even when his parents were at their worst.
“What did you do?” he shouted, his voice heavy with anguish.
A second later, he was taking shots at them. West and his mother dove into the truck, keeping their heads low. Bullets shattered glass and pinged through steel.
“Put the rock on the pedal,” she said, barely able to contain the fear in her voice. West dropped the heavy rock on the accelerator. The truck felt like a horse wanting to break free from its stable.
“Hand me that wood.”
They had found an old plank that would be the perfect size to hold the steering wheel in place. His mother jammed it through the wheel, making sure the bottom end was securely on the floor.
Each thunk of a bullet made West jump. He had to be careful to keep his head down low, or one of those shots would find him.
Gregory Simmons was shouting something above the shooting and blaring of the engine, but he couldn’t make out a single word. It wasn’t so much he was saying anything specific, but speaking in tongues, a hidden language of mourning and rage.
His mother locked her eyes on his. “As soon as I put it in drive, I want you to slip out the door and stay low. You hear me?”
“Yes. Mom, I’m scared.”
His mind was a tumble of what ifs. What if the truck stalled? What if the board didn’t work and it veered from its target? What if Gregory Simmons managed to sidestep it and came straight toward them?
The last was the one that scared him the most. The moment the truck took off, they would lose any cover.
His mother poked her head up. A shot just missed her.
“He’s right there, maybe thirty yards away. You ready?”
West nodded.
His mother shifted the truck into drive.
“Go!”
They leapt out of the open doors just as the truck shot forward. West tumbled in the dirt and high grass. He settled on his chest, slightly winded.
He looked up just in time to see Gregory Simmons running from the truck and into the house. He wasn’t shooting anymore.
His foot just touched the bottom step into the kitchen when the truck barreled into him. It demolished the back of the house, cutting through the rotting structure as if it were made of balsa wood. The door, the wall, the entire kitchen exploded. The wood from the flatbed flew like dozens of arrows, impaling the walls and even the refrigerator.
“Holy shit.”
West couldn’t believe the damage. It looked like something out of a war movie.
His mother startled him when she touched his back. “Are you all right?”
He dusted himself off. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Did it get him? I got an eyeful of dust. I can barely see.”
West saw Gregory’s Simmons’s back a split second before the truck overtook him. If he wasn’t crushed it meant he had to have been beamed aboard a starship.
“I’m pretty sure it did. It was right on top of him.”
They cautiously walked to the ruined house. It groaned like a living thing – a wounded animal warning anyone near not to touch it. Plaster and dust rained through the gaping hole. The truck sputtered and died.
“We have to be very careful,” his mother said. “It sounds like it could collapse any minute.”
“We have to get dad out of there.”
She held onto his shoulder. “I know, I know. Stay close to me and be ready to run like hell when I tell you.”
Stepping into the kitchen was like walking into raw carnage. Everything in the kitchen was destroyed. Amidst the rubble were copious splashes of blood. The stench was unreal. West gagged.
It looked as if the big man and Gregory Simmons had exploded. There was no way to tell where one ended and the other began. They were a heap of meat and blood splattered against the far wall. His mother grabbed onto his hand, hard, as they stepped over the debris.
Thankfully, the basement door wasn’t blocked.
West took a quick look down the hall, the floor warped upward as if a giant gopher had just tunneled underneath it. He saw James by the front door.
“Mom.” He pointed to James.
“Stay here.”
She ran over, tripping on the bunched up runner. She knelt by James, put her fingers on his neck. She covered her mouth to stifle a cry, got up, and came back to the kitchen. “He’s gone.”
West really liked James. He didn’t have to come here and be a part of this. But he had. He was a good man, something that was in short supply. West wasn’t sure how much a human heart or mind could take in one night.
He could contemplate all of that later. He tugged his mother’s hand. “Let’s find dad.”
It took some effort to get the door open. The frame was warping as the weight of the house pressed downward on the shattered foundation. The sound of wood creaking and cracking was alarming. They only had minutes, if not seconds.
“I’ll go first,” his mother said, holding him back. She clicked on the flashlight.
There was a smell coming from the basement hauntingly similar to the one hovering over the bodies of the giant man and Gregory Simmons. West readied himself for the worst.
Chapter Thirty-Five
West’s mother made it to the bottom of the stairs and groaned. He was about to ask her what she saw when a dark shadow darted from beneath the stairs. It tackled his mother, driving her to the ground. He jumped at the crack of bone on cement.
Without thinking, he ran down the stairs, unarmed and unsure how many more people were in the basement waiting for him.
He reeled back in horror when he saw it was his father who had attacked his mother.
“Dad!”
His father turned around, his eyes glassy, far away. His body wavered, ready to collapse.
“West?”
And then his father slid off his mother’s body. West’s heart stopped.
The handle of a trowel stuck straight out of his mother’s chest. Her eyes were wide open, already starting to film over with the mists of gray death.
“No! Mom! No!”
West fell to her side, scooping her head in his arms and resting it on his lap.
His father struggled to sit up. “Oh God. What did I do?”
The wail that came from his father’s throat made his blood run cold. It was the sound of a man on the brink of madness. He pulled himself across the floor, burying his face in her hair.
“I’m sorry, Debi. I’m so sorry!”
He and West openly wept over her cooling body, oblivious to the sounds of the house coming apart above them.
“West, I didn’t know. I thought she was Gregory. I didn’t know. You have to believe me.”
West couldn’t reply. The hurt was too much to bear. Of course he believed his father. But deep down, he knew nothing he said would ever help. There was no coming back from this. Not ever.
“Is that short stuff?”
For the first time, West noticed Grandpa Abraham laying on the floor. He looked and sounded as if he and the house were intertwined, both with very little time left.
He gently laid his mother down, his father draping his body over her. There was a lot of blood around Grandpa Abraham.
This man murdered his only daughter, West thought.
His actions had taken so many other lives tonight. Was it wrong to want to watch him die?
“What more can you want?” he said, standing over his dying grandfather.
Without opening his eyes, he replied, “The key. Get the key from your father. You can let the girl out.”
West had forgotten about Rayna.
He went to his father. “Where’s the key, Dad?”
His father wouldn’t look up or answer him. West shook him as hard as he could. “I need the key! Hurry!”
He fumbled in his pocket and handed over a lone key.
West ran to the door and stopped from putting it in the lock. “What about the booby traps, Grandpa Abraham?” Calling him Grandpa felt wrong. There was nothing grandfatherly about the man before. Now, he turned West’s stomach.
<
br /> The old man shook his head and spluttered out a laugh. “There are no traps. No bombs. Sometimes… when you’re good… noone calls your bluff.”
He opened the door. The animal stench of urine, feces, and old sweat swept over him in a nauseating tide.
There was Rayna, unconscious on a thin, stained mattress.
Miraculously, she was still breathing. The same key that unlocked the door also unlocked the shackles. He scooped her into his arms, feeling her bones dig into his skin.
Her eyelids fluttered open, then closed. “Who… who are you?”
He carried her out of the room. “No one. Just rest for now.”
Exiting the prison room, one of the overhead wooden beams cracked. West nearly dropped Rayna.
“Did you get them all?” Grandpa Abraham asked.
West tightened his hold on the birdlike girl. “Yes. No thanks to you.”
Grandpa Abraham smiled, blood leaking from the corners of his mouth. “I thought you would. Told you… you’re a lot like me. We… survive.”
He took a shuddering breath, then a long exhale, crimson froth bubbling up from the deepest recesses of his lungs.
The man died with a smile on his face.
This is what made him happy, West thought with revulsion. He stepped over his grandfather, careful not to slip in his blood.
“Come on, Dad, we have to get out of here. The whole house is gonna come down.”
“I can’t leave your mother.”
West wished he could carry his father, too, but the man had his arms wrapped around his mother in an embrace that would take the Jaws of Life to break. “You can’t leave me, either.”
The tears came and rolled freely, a torrent of sorrow that threatened to break him into a million little pieces.
“Please, Dad, I need you to get up and get outside.”
It sounded as if looters were tearing the house apart above them.
His father finally looked up at him. “Go, West, and get her out of here. I’ll be right behind you.”
West took a step, then paused.
“You can’t stay here, Dad.”
“I know, West. I love you. You know that, right? I love you more than anything in the world. And I’ve always loved your mother. Even when things were bad, I never stopped loving her. Always remember that. Now, go.”
