Empty Bodies (Book 2): Adaptation

by Bohannon, Zach

  Rachel crept back up to the body and made her way to the Empty’s right arm. Will assumed she was going to use a criss-cross pattern to unbind the creature so that it would stay somewhat contained. If she went ahead and unstrapped the right leg, the thing would be able to maneuver much easier.

  Just as she got the strap undone, she tried to move back as quickly as she could, but she wasn’t fast enough. The creature grabbed her, and Rachel screamed. Its jaws chomped more rapidly, but it was unable to keep a grasp on her and she backed up until she hit a small table behind her. Will watched as she looked back at the table and saw the array of surgical tools that were lying on it. She stared at the scalpels and other tools for a few moments before David spoke.

  “Don’t even think about it. If you stab that thing, everyone out here is dead, and so are you.”

  Rachel gripped the side of the table and closed her eyes, trying to fight off more oncoming tears from what Will could tell. She took another deep breath and then moved back down to the foot of the bed to undo the other leg.

  The Empty reached for her and Will couldn’t even begin to imagine how terrified she was. Though he didn’t know the woman, he did have an understanding of how sick and twisted David Ellis was, and he felt for Rachel, knowing that anything could happen next.

  Almost as soon as the creature’s leg was released, it kicked and reached for Rachel. The thing looked almost as if it was having a seizure, wanting nothing except to get to Rachel. Because that is all the Empties wanted: to feed on human flesh.

  “She’s never going to get that arm undone,” Will mumbled to himself. Holly apparently heard him, looking over to him with her eyes full of tears.

  Rachel made her way to the bound left hand, but stopped when the creature rolled over and tried to grab her. When it did, it rolled all the way off of the bed. The creature’s arm bent a strange way, and Will heard the snap and saw the hand rip away as the thing disappeared onto the floor.

  Rachel screamed and ran for the door.

  Just as she came through the doorway, David grabbed onto her and threw her back into the room. He pulled the pistol from his holster and fired a shot into her leg. Will couldn’t see where the bullet hit her, but she screamed out and fell to the ground. He watched as David pulled the door shut.

  “David!” Holly screamed, crying.

  “This isn’t who you are, David,” Marcus said. “I know you. Please, let her out. Open the door.”

  David reared back and punched Marcus square in the nose, sending him down to the ground. Without his hands to catch him, Marcus hit his head against the tile floor and then didn’t move.

  “You don’t know shit,” David mumbled.

  Everyone in the group was crying now except for Will and the apparently unconscious Marcus.

  Will looked back into the room when he heard the loud snarl. The Empty was on its feet and free from the restraints. Its arm was bent the wrong way and had torn near the wrist, freeing the beast.

  All the others screamed.

  And as the beast fell down to the ground, Will turned his head, listening to the creature tear into Rachel as her screams slowly trailed off into silence.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  David

  He laughed. For five minutes straight, his eyes never moved from the scene unfolding before his eyes. The thing that finally brought him away from watching the human flesh torn apart in front of him was the radio on his belt.

  “We’ve got it all loaded,” Cody said through the radio.

  “Excellent,” David said.

  “It wasn’t a lot of stuff, but it’ll be a good add-on to what we already got. You guys ready?”

  “Meet Trent and me in the main hallway. And do what you’ve got to do.”

  David turned around and looked at the group. He enjoyed seeing the look of shock on their faces. The only regret he had was that Marcus, the traitor, was knocked out and couldn’t see what he’d done.

  “We’ve gotta get going,” Trent said.

  Across the hall, a door was cracked open. David walked over to the room, keeping the shotgun aimed at the group. He looked toward Brandon, who was at the end of the line closest to him, and signaled him inside the room.

  “Come on, in you go.”

  Brandon slowly walked over to the room and went inside. David had already signaled to Sarah, who Brandon had been standing beside.

  “Come on, everyone, fall in line,” David ordered.

  The others made their way toward the room, and David looked over to Trent.

  “He can stay,” David said, nodding his head toward Will.

  Trent grabbed Will by his arms and kept him in the center of the hallway.

  Holly and Will’s mother stopped, and turned back to Will.

  “No!” Holly cried.

  “Go, it’s fine,” Will told her.

  She ran over to Will and put her head onto his chest. He nestled his head with hers awkwardly, and David could see Holly trying desperately to free her hands so that she could embrace Will. She looked up and kissed Will on his lips.

  “Alright, break it up. Come on, Holly,” David said.

  She pulled away from Will’s lips and turned to David, her cheeks flush and her eyes crimson. She walked toward him, looking back at Will.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you, too.”

  Holly then looked up at David.

  “Aww,” he said.

  Holly stopped right in front of him. “If you hurt him, we will find you, and we will kill you.”

  David laughed, grabbed her arm, and threw her into the room. She fell on the ground face first.

  “You son of a bitch!” Will yelled.

  David Ellis only continued to laugh.

  Now, it was just Will and his mother in the hallway. She wasn’t moving, only standing in the center of the hallway with Will, staring at him.

  “I can’t leave you, son. I can’t do this again.”

  “It’s okay, Mom. Just go.”

  “No,” David said. They looked over to him just as he turned around and shut the door, Holly’s sobbing still resonating from inside the room. “She can stay.”

  There was no emotion on Will’s face, but from where David stood, he could see him swallow hard. He made his way over to Will, who wasn’t putting up any kind of a fight with Trent. To an extent, David did admire Will. The look on his face was that of a man who wasn’t scared and who had accepted his fate.

  David smiled as he moved within inches of Will’s face. “I’m sorry, but this is going to be extremely painful. A pain like you’ve never experienced or could ever imagine.”

  Will scoffed. “You’re not sorry.”

  David chuckled. “No, I’m really not.”

  As soon as the words came out, David took the butt of the shotgun and jammed it into Will’s stomach.

  Will bent over and coughed, unable to clutch his stomach. He gasped for air.

  “Will!” his mother yelled. She tried to go to him, but David held her back. “Let me go!”

  But, the old woman was no match for his strength.

  “Bring him,” David told Trent, and he walked Will’s mother over toward the room where the Empty was still feasting on the flesh of Rachel. The sound of it was music to David Ellis’ ears, but Will’s mother turned away and was writhing in his arms, trying to escape. Preoccupied with its meal, the creature never looked back at them.

  David let the woman go, and she ran to her son, burying her head into his chest just like Holly had done. Now, Will was crying, and it brought a new sensation into David’s blood to see the man distraught.

  With his mother soaking his shirt, Will looked at David, gritting his teeth, and said, “You do what you’ve gotta do.”

  David nodded and opened the door. The snarl of the beast got louder, but it surprisingly didn’t look back at them. He left the door open and walked over to Will.

  When he reached Will, he smiled at him again. “You really sho
uldn’t have left me for dead. We could still be back at my building, thriving. But no, you had to go and fuck everything up. Now, I’m going to make you feel every bit of pain I felt.”

  “Fuck you,” Will said, his eyes beginning to redden from the tears.

  David scoffed. “No, fuck you, kid.”

  Will gasped as his mom continued to cry and yell into his chest, and he waited for David to grab him and throw him into the room.

  “Hold him tight,” David said, looking to Trent.

  Will cocked his head.

  David grabbed onto Will’s mother’s arm, and pulled her away from her son. She started to fight him and scream louder, so he dropped the shotgun and picked her up around the waist with both his hands.

  “No!” Will screamed.

  David was in front of the open door now, and he saw the Empty inside the room finally look up from Rachel’s mangled and unrecognizable body.

  Will was bucking Trent, who kept a tight hold on him.

  David looked over to Will and said, “Yes.”

  He threw Will’s mother into the room and shut the door.

  Then, he hurried over to Will and moved Trent out of the way, taking Will and throwing him against the window.

  “Watch!” David told him.

  The window was fogging up from where Will was breathing heavily into it, and his eyes were wetting the glass as they were pressed up against it.

  Inside the room, his mother didn’t stand a chance.

  The Empty was on its feet, and it only took moments for it to pounce on the old woman. She screamed as she fell to the ground, the creature over her and sinking its decrepit teeth into her left shoulder.

  Will became limp in David’s arms, as if every ounce of hope had left his body. All David could do was smile, and he felt a tingle inside from watching the young man in so much agony.

  “You son of a bitch!” Will cried with his face pressed against the glass. “You son of a bitch, I’m gonna kill you!”

  Without responding, David pulled back Will’s head by his hair, and slammed his face against the glass. He let Will go, letting his listless body hit the floor, leaving a bloodstain on the window.

  And when he looked to the blood dripping down the glass, he saw Will’s mother’s hand stop moving, as the creature ripped out her throat, looking into the air and growling as it chewed.

  ***

  Jessica

  The tiny closet had just enough space for Jessica to sit down and tuck her knees to her chest. The silence had become nearly deafening as she was surrounded by the darkness. All she’d thought about since Will had left the room was her own exit, but she decided to listen to what he’d demanded of her and stay inside the closet.

  After an extended drought of any sound, she finally heard something. Jessica held in her breath so as not to try and make an ounce of noise. The footsteps stopped in front of her room, and she heard a man clear his throat.

  About thirty seconds had passed when more footsteps echoed from further down the hall. Jessica shuddered as her heart thumped inside her chest.

  “Glad you all could make it,” the voice right outside of her room said.

  The other footsteps were almost to her room now, and she could tell from the rhythm that it was more than one person. They came to a stop in front of her room.

  “You got everything loaded up?” The voice sounded slightly familiar to Jessica, but she couldn’t quite picture the face.

  “Yeah, we’re good to go.”

  “Where’s the guy that helped you?” This was a different voice than the other two, but sounded uneducated, like the man who’d originally been standing at the door.

  Jessica heard one of the men rustling with something on his body, then one of the more ignorant men said, “Woooo, God damn. You gut ‘em?”

  “Slit his fuckin’ throat, I did.”

  The man with the more articulate voice spoke next. “Now that I’ve, hopefully, gained your trust and shown you where my allegiance lies, where is your camp that we’re going to?”

  There was a moment of silence before one of the men answered. “It’s at an old farm and slaughterhouse. Hopkins Farm. Just outside of the city.”

  “They take that boy there?” the well-spoken man asked.

  “Yeah, I reckon they did.”

  “These people gonna be lookin’ for him,” the other hillbilly said.

  “They’ll never find him.”

  The two men shared a laugh until Jessica heard two gunshots, followed by consecutive thumps. She had to cover her mouth to keep herself from screaming.

  “Idiots,” the man with the articulate voice said. And when he spoke this time, the face finally creeped into her head. Something about how soft he had said the word jarred her memory. She remembered walking down the hall and seeing the man with the cold eyes sitting on the bed. Then later, he’d spoken to her in the kitchen and she’d read him to be someone dangerous. She saw his dark curly blonde hair, and his bright eyes that somehow reflected his darkness.

  “Hello? Hello? Are you there? Over.” There was a tremble in the man’s voice that hadn’t been there before. He sounded scared.

  “Trent? Cody?” This voice came through what sounded like a two-way radio.

  “This is David.”

  “What’s your position, David?”

  “I’m just now getting out of the hospital. I’ve got some of the weapons with me. But, Trent and Cody… they didn’t make it. The bastards here shot them.”

  There was silence. Jessica’s mouth was wide open and she could hear David chuckle to himself as he waited for a response from the person on the other end.

  “Get your ass back here and we’ll figure out what we’re going to do. Head on I-40 West and take the Waverly Road exit. That’s the exit where that gas station was we found you at earlier. Head another two miles down that road and you’ll see us waiting on you.”

  “Al-alright, I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

  And as she heard his footsteps begin to fade away and a door open in the distance, the face of a man who’d been saved and brought here, just like her, was now etched into her mind as a killer. She finally stood, opened the closet, and walked through the door, out into the hallway.

  ***

  Jessica knew there was only one place the group could be. She ran down the main hallway, through the double doors, and then down the dark hallway that led back to where the creature was.

  As she approached, she slowed to a walk when she heard people shouting, and she picked up her pace again.

  When she came around the corner, she stopped. On the floor, Will was curled up, crying with his cheek pressed against the tile. She could also see Marcus, who was sitting up against a wall, not moving. She focused her attention back to Will and ran to his side.

  “Oh, my God. What happened?”

  Will didn’t answer. He only continued to sob onto the floor. She noticed his hands were bound and Jessica tried to console him by putting her hand on him, but he didn’t react. It was as if he didn’t even know she was there. Behind her, she could hear what sounded like the rest of the group calling for help inside of a small room.

  When she stood up to go help them, she was facing the lit room where the creature had been. Before turning around, her eyes naturally looked into the room, and Jessica saw her.

  Melissa.

  The creature was hollowing out Melissa Kessler’s stomach, while the woman lay motionless with her wide-open eyes looking to the ceiling. Her throat had been ripped open, but her face was still intact. The tears came pouring from Jessica’s eyes, and she immediately crumbled to the ground next to Will.

  She lay next to him on her stomach, not even concerned with her injured shoulder. Even with the people yelling out from inside the room behind her, Jessica couldn’t block out the sound of the monster inside the room feasting on her friend. But, next to her, Will Kessler’s words were becoming clear.

  “I’ll fucking kill him. I’ll fucking
kill him. I’ll fucking kill him!”

  ***

  EPILOGUE

  Dylan

  When the trunk opened, there were three men and a woman waiting to pull him out. He recognized only one of the men from the gas station they’d abducted him from. He’d screamed so loud all the way here that he was too hoarse to even cry out, and his hand hurt from repeatedly pounding the inside of the trunk.

  “Come’on you little shit,” one of the men said as he reached down toward Dylan.

  “No, wait,” the woman said, grabbing onto the man’s arm.

  She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a bandana. She folded it to where it was long and rectangular.

  “Hold him,” she said.

  Two of the men reached down and pinned Dylan as he tried to break free, yelling out. His hands were restrained, but he still had a lot of fight in him, especially for a child. The woman managed to get the bandana around his eyes as a makeshift blindfold, and then the men lifted him up and out of the trunk of the car.

  “Where are you taking me?” Dylan asked as they dragged him through grass.

  None of the people responded.

  “Please, where are—“

  He felt a hand hit him in the back of the head.

  “Shut the fuck up!” one of the men demanded.

  Dylan cried harder now, and he fell down onto the ground.

  “Get his ass up,” the woman said.

  He felt hands under his arms and he was on his feet again. Then one of the people grabbed his shoulders and he could feel their warm, stank breath hit his face.

  One of the men spoke. “You pull that shit again, I’ll start cuttin’ them little God damn fingers off, you understand me, boy?”

  As he trembled, Dylan nodded.

  They continued to walk until they finally stopped, and Dylan heard the protracted squeak of what sounded like a large door opening.

  “Come on,” one of the male voices instructed.

  They started walking again, presumably entering the door that had just opened. Dylan listened carefully and heard the muffled cries of others.

  “Well, hello again,” one of the male voices said. When he did, the indistinct cries became louder.