He leaned to one side, bringing one leg under himself, then slowly rose to his feet. Backing up a few steps, he looked at them once more. “Don’t forget ol’ Damien, okay? I won’t forget you, and I’ll be watching you. Sarah, you take care of Jason and Olivia, okay? Phillip, look after your sister.” He grinned as he looked at Aaron before continuing. “Aaron will help you. Richard, go easy, old timer. These folks need both your wisdom and skill.” Turning to face Serrano, he took a deep breath before speaking again. “Chili, I ain’t never met anyone like you. You’re like an action hero or something, but chill at the same time.” He shrugged. “Plus, you don’t do the cheesy one-liners like they do in the movies.”
Looking away, his eyes came to rest on the car on the road up ahead, where he saw Jason and Olivia watching them from where they sat in the backseat of the car. Tears formed in his eyes as he looked away. “Watch after those kids, too, okay?”
Serrano nodded. “Okay, big guy.”
“Aren’t you gonna stop him?” Jennifer asked, stepping forward until she was face to face with the SEAL.
“Gotta be safe.” Serrano replied, meeting her gaze with his hard, emotionless one.
Damien backed away slowly. “Look, Imma go over there - ” he pointed toward the edge of the road, where a barrier sat at its edge, looking over a steep seaside cliff, “and sit for a while. If it turns out I’m immune, I’ll continue on.” He shrugged, drawing his big neck and shoulders upward, making his chin disappear into the rolls of his neck. “Heck, maybe I’ll see you guys there.”
“We’ll wait,” Jennifer said, still crying. She turned to Serrano, her eyes filled with fire. “We’ll wait, you hear me? We’ll wait!”
Phillip intervened. “Sis, it’s okay,” he said, bringing his arms up to draw her into a hug.
“We’ve got to wait!” She buried her head into her brother’s shoulder as her tears took over. The man wrapped his arms around her in response, saying nothing more as he looked towards Serrano, his eyes pleading.
Serrano nodded. “Of course. We’ll wait.”
Damien turned and walked away from them, kicking small rocks on the pavement as he made his way to the edge of the road.
‘Shoot, just when I found some nice people,’ he thought to himself as he struggled to contain his emotions.
None of them had teased him about his weight the way so many others had during his life. None of them had complained about how much space he took or how much food he ate. They hadn’t complained about his body odor, which he knew was strong, a product of his body’s futile effort to cool three hundred and fifty pounds with sweat. They hadn’t even complained when he’d slowed them down when they had to walk.
They’d simply welcomed him with open arms, treated him like part of their group.
Like family.
Reaching the barrier, he managed to work his way around the edge, stepping carefully along the three-foot wide edge of the cliff until he was centered over a wide opening. Holding onto the railing with one hand, he leaned slightly over and looked down. Seventy feet below, waves crashed over huge rocks, sending sea spray high into the air at every collision.
Sighing, he found one of the wide wooden posts that supported the railing and sat down on it awkwardly, carefully balancing his weight on its surface.
‘Now, we wait,’ he thought, looking at the ocean. The sun was low in the sky, working its way towards the horizon, sending rays of light toward the clouds. The sky was a beautiful portrait of pinks and purples, with long streaks of soft peach cutting through the brilliant tapestry of color.
‘At least I get to see one last beautiful sunset.’
He smiled slightly as he wondered what it would feel like when he turned from being himself to one of those...things.
Would it hurt?
Would he be able to fight it?
Would he even know it was happening?
Grimacing, he tried to put the thoughts out of his mind as he focused on the sunset again.
‘Why does it have to end like this?’ he asked himself, suddenly feeling his heart race as he considered his death.
‘What did I do to deserve this?’
Shaking his head, confused by his thoughts, he turned and looked back towards where the others were, he saw them leaning against the vehicles as they watched him. Jennifer raised her hand and waved, smiling as she did so.
Damien brought his hand up and waved back before turning away. He didn’t want her to see him cry.
‘Even though it’s her fault,’ he thought suddenly.
‘What?’ he asked himself, taken off-guard by his thought.
It wasn’t her fault. Not at all. He’d been the one who’d chosen to protect her.
His heart pounded in his chest as he felt his blood pressure rise.
‘Stupid bitch.’
‘“Damien, that’s not right,” he said aloud, shaking his head, “not at all.”
‘Fucking whore, it’s all her fault. She should be the one here, ready to die.’
“No, Damien…” he said to himself as he felt the anger welling up inside his body, making his face and ears burn.
‘She should pay for this! It’s not fair! It’s all her fault!’
“Oh, God…” he moaned, feeling tears form in his eyes.
‘Fucking bitch should die. Fucking bitch should die. Kill her. Make her pay.’
Unable to stop himself, Damien felt his body rising for where he sat.
“No….”
He felt his mouth open, baring his teeth as he snarled.
‘Kill her!’
With one last desperate effort, Damien’s consciousness forced its way back into the forefront of his mind, struggling to take control. Reaching for the railing, he pressed his hand against its metal edge.
And pushed.
In his last moments, he used every bit of his will to block out the evil, violent thoughts that fought to take over his mind, instead using his remaining consciousness to marvel at the wonderful feeling of weightlessness as gravity pulled him towards the surface of the rocks beneath the cliff.
Nothing hurt.
His joints felt better than they had in seemingly forever.
His body’s pressure points that hurt even when he laid in bed were magically non-existent.
The wind carried his sweat and odor away from his body, cooling him blissfully.
He felt -
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Fresno, California
The white exterior of the big, modern home glistened beautifully in the early evening light. Still fully lit, thanks to solar panels mounted on the roof, and, more importantly, power walls that stored the electricity for use when the sun wasn’t visible, the home stood like a beacon of hope in the middle of desolation. Giant windows, which gave the owner unobstructed views of the grounds surrounding the property and the San Joaquin River that stood just one hundred and thirty-five feet behind the home, reflected the setting sun, even though their surfaces were covered with a layer of dust. It’d been over a week since the maintenance crew had been there, so along with the windows, the house and yard were in desperate need of attention.
Looking out through a second floor window at the rear of the home, Darren Miller looked down at the three rectangular plots in the yard where he’d buried his parents and grandfather. It was still hard to process, but at least he’d given them a proper burial. He’d even prayed for them, something he knew would have meant more to them than it did to him.
Coming home to find his eighty-three year old grandfather dying in the driveway from a gunshot wound, covered in the blood of Darren’s parents, had been worse than anything he could imagine, and when combined with the distressing call he’d received from his sister earlier that day, it was nearly more than he could handle.
“Chad’s gone crazy!”
“What are you talking about?” Darren asked, gripping his cell phone so hard the buttons on the side dug into the flesh of his palm.
“He was
in the yard, trying to start the lawnmower, when he just...lost it.” His sister cried into the phone, her voice cracking as she spoke. “I think he killed the mailman.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes! One minute he was bent over the lawnmower, trying to get it to start, the next he was on top of Mister Ugliano, slamming his head into the sidewalk!”
“Oh shit,” Darren replied, his mind racing as he tried to consider what to do. Being nearly eighteen hundred miles away from where his sister lived in Houston, there wasn’t much. “Did you call the police?”
“Yes! There’s no answer!”
“What do you mean, no answer? You called nine one one?”
“Of course, dammit! It just rings and rings.”
Darren’s mind raced as he tried to process her words. “That’s...impossible.”
A crashing sound came from the other side of the phone, followed by his sister’s hushed voice. “Oh my God,” she whispered.
“What is it, Jackie?”
“He’s in the house.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in the guest bathroom.”
“Okay, just stay quiet. I’ll think of something.”
Darren’s panicked mind sped a thousand miles an hour as he tried to come up with some way to help his younger sister. “I forget, is there a window in there?”
“Yes…”
“Okay, can you climb out?”
His sister sniffled into the phone.
Darren raised his voice, practically yelling into his phone as he sat in the driver’s seat of his car. “Jackie! Can you climb out?”
“I’m scared, Darren…”
Trying to calm her, he softened his tone. “I know, sis, me, too. Just listen to me, I want to try to get you out of there, okay?”
“Okay…”
“Can you climb out through the window?”
“I - I think so.”
“Okay, open it and tell me what you see. Be quiet, though.”
“Okay.”
Through the phone, he heard his sister’s soft footsteps as she moved across the room, then the sliding sound of the window moving in its frame.
“Okay, it’s open.”
“What do you see?”
“There’s a screen, then the roof, which has about ten feet of space.” There was a pause, then she continued. “To the left, it gets wider, so there’s more room before it reaches the edge, where the chimney is.”
“Okay, see the little black tabs on the frame of the screen?”
“Yeah…”
“Pull them away from the edge, toward the middle of the screen, and you should be able to take the screen out.”
“Okay…”
Darren heard a slight grunt as his sister struggled with the screen. Finally, he heard a scraping sound, then his sister exhaling. “Okay, I got it.” She said, before asking, “What should I do with it?”
“Toss it.”
A clattering sound came from the other side of the phone as his sister discarded the screen.
“Good job, now, can you climb out?”
“Yeah, I just gotta - ”
A loud banging sound came from the other end of the phone, along with a scream.
“Ohmygod!”
“Get out, sis!”
“He’s - he’s - ”
“Jackie! GET OUT!”
He heard his sister set the phone aside, then heard a grunt as she climbed up onto the windowsill.
Then a massive crashing sound.
Another scream.
Loud footsteps, accompanied by an animalistic snarling sound.
More screaming. “Chad, don’t!”
“Jackie?”
Cloth tearing.
His sister screaming.
The sound of repeated impacts.
His sister pleading as she cried. “No, please Chad, no….”
“Jackie!”
The loud smashing sound of porcelain breaking, followed by a rush of water.
His sister gurgling.
More snarling, then only Chad’s heaving breathing.
After a short while, he heard the sound of fading footsteps.
Only the slight sound of water running followed that.
He’d kept the connection active for a while, listening to it occasionally, calling his sister’s name, but no response came.
He’d rushed home after that, leaving work without bothering to tell his coworkers, only to find his grandfather crawling along the driveway, leaving a wide trail of blood in his wake.
Screeching to a stop near the middle of the two hundred yard paved drive, Darren jumped out of the car and rushed towards his grandfather, determined to help the man. Whatever had happened had been terrible, but if the man was still alive, there was a chance he could be saved.
Ten feet from the white-haired, thin-framed man, Darren stopped.
His grandfather’s face was drawn back in a rictus, a fixed grimace of anger and determination. Stepping to the side, Darren looked at the man, then followed the man’s gaze.
It was fixed on the end of the driveway.
Darren had assumed the man was crawling towards him, trying to get help, but that wasn’t the case.
The man was trying to leave.
“Grandpa?”
The man’s head swung to the side, violently, coming around to look towards the sound of Darren’s voice.
The man’s teeth snapped in his mouth as they came together in a biting motion, followed by a deep growl. As Darren watched, his grandfather maneuvered his body as he crawled, changing direction.
Towards him.
Backing away from the man, Darren brought his hands up.
“Easy Grandpa, calm down, okay?”
His grandfather barked a vicious, dry sound, spitting blood outward as he did, spraying the pavement in front of him. Darren stepped back further, feeling a sudden urge to stay clear of the man. Something wasn’t right.
Darren’s grandfather lunged forward, reaching for Darren’s leg.
He jumped backward, easily avoiding the man’s attempt to grab him.
The old man’s strength was completely expended by his final, desperate attempt to get to Darren. He slumped forward, his face smacking softly on the pavement as his body gave out and his bladder let go. Urine left the man’s body, flowing outward to mix with the trail of blood he’d left along the drive.
Darren stared down at the man, trying to process what he’d just seen. Slowly, he raised his head, bringing his gaze upward until it rested on the house.
“Oh no…”
He broke into a run, racing towards the massive oak front doors, which stood open at the top of the steps. The trail of blood led into the home. Flying up the steps without stepping on the wide swath of blood, he entered the home.
“Mom? Dad?”
Nothing.
Looking down, he saw the blood extended into the rear of the home, towards the kitchen, the sitting area, and the home office. Walking next to the trail of blood, he followed it along the marble tiled floor, into the office his parents shared.
His father’s body was in the corner of the room, next to an overturned lamp. His father’s Ed Brown Special Forces Carry 1911 pistol, the twin to the one Darren had been given when he’d received his commission in the Marines, lay near his outstretched hand. Darren’s eyes traveled up his father’s body until his gaze settled on the man’s throat. Long scratches ran across his neck at an angle, leaving exposed raw flesh along their length. Near the center, the scratches had severed some of the smaller veins, causing blood to seep out. Alone, they wouldn’t have been enough to kill the man. It was the missing part of his throat where his Adam’s apple would normally be that had ended his father’s life, allowing blood to flow from the wound freely, soaking the front of the man’s yellow silk tie and white-striped blue button-up shirt.
Backing out of the room, Darren turned in the hallway and headed towards the kitchen, following a trail of bloody foo
tprints on the that led from there to the office.
“Mom?”
Feeling as if he were in a dream, Darren walked past overturned chairs near the dining table, carefully stepping around broken plates and glasses, and stepped around the edge of the kitchen counter.
His mother’s prone form lay face down on the floor on the opposite end of the kitchen, unmoving and surrounded by a pool of blood.
“Mom?” He slowly walked closer as his eyes registered the cast-iron skillet that lay on the floor near his mother. Its edge was covered in blood, hair, and bits of bone. When his eyes found the back of his mother’s head, he knew the bone was from her skull. The back of her head was obscenely caved in, leaving grey matter that he recognized as her brain exposed.
Looking away, Darren stumbled backwards until the back of his thighs met one of the chairs that surrounded the breakfast table. He dropped down into the chair as he felt his will break. Tears flowed from his eyes as he sobbed. Faced with the reality of suddenly being alone, he wondered how fate could be so unkind. He’d started the day with loving parents, a grandfather he loved and admired, a sister he adored, and a brother-in-law that had come to be a great friend.
Suddenly, he had nothing.
No one.
That had been a week ago.
Unable to face the scene at the front of the house and on the home’s first level, he’d gone upstairs to his room and fallen into bed, where he spent the remainder of the day and night before finally finding the strength to confront the necessity of removing the bodies and cleaning the house.
Though he didn’t understand what had made his grandfather go crazy, it didn’t take much to figure out that something similar had happened to his brother-in-law. Being that they were separated by such a large distance and hadn’t seen each other since Christmas, Darren reasoned that it was some kind of virus, so he donned latex gloves under dishwashing gloves before touching the bodies.
Using the wheelbarrow the maintenance crew kept in the shed, he carefully moved the bodies of his parents and grandfather to the backyard, setting them down between the two oak trees that were strategically separated to avoid blocking the view of the river from the house. Over the next four and a half hours, he dug graves for each of them, grateful for the moisture in the soil that kept it relatively soft.
Surviving Rage | Book 3 Page 34
