~ ~ ~
“So what happened with mom?” John’s question left me speechless. I didn’t want to be around such a private, intimate family moment. But locked inside the rotunda with the rest of the group, I had no option but to sit and watch as the drama unfolded. I examined John’s face—puffy red eyes, and smeared filth on his cheeks. He had been crying.
Jake didn’t answer. He buried his face in his hands, his elbows propped against the guard’s console.
“Dad! What happened with mom?” Anger crept through John’s otherwise calm voice.
“They got her,” came the older man’s mumbled and muffled response.
“How?”
“Because she wanted them to.”
“What?”
Jake shifted in his seat, lifting his face from his hands. The corners of his eyes glistened in the dim light trickling from the windows high above. “She made a choice. We were trying to shore up the back yard when something fell over the back fence. It landed on my back and had me pinned on the ground. Like an idiot, I had left the shotgun leaning against the back door. Your mother ran in to help me. She kicked the damn thing in the head and it rolled off me. While I ran to get the gun, she kept fighting against it. But it bit her. Took a huge chunk out of her arm. She bled so bad, John. I killed the monster that attacked us. It was Mrs. Goodacre from behind us. She had turned several days before and must have seen us out in the back. She leapt from her back deck and made it over our wall. I wanted to bring your mother inside. To get in the car and bring her to the emergency room. But she wouldn’t let me. She told me she would bite me on purpose if I even tried.
“I stood there, staring at her for God knows how long. I didn’t know what to do, John. I knew that my time with her would be limited, but I didn’t realize it would be this short.”
“What do you mean, limited?” John’s question burned like acid.
Jake let out a big sigh, his chest heaving. “Your mother didn’t want you to know until after you finished school. I told her you were a tough kid and could handle the news. But she insisted. You know how she is—was. Once she made up her mind, there was no swaying her. And if you went against her wishes, all holy hell would rain down on you.”
“What are you talking about, dad?”
“Remember last summer when we went to the Jersey Shore and your mom fell on the beach?”
“Yeah. She got dehydrated.”
Jake shook his head. “Not quite. It wasn’t the first or last time it happened to her. After a slew of tests at different doctors, we were referred to a specialist in Oncology. He diagnosed your mom with Hemangioendothelioma, a rare form of cancer that starts in the soft tissues of the body. It spread to her heart. That’s what caused her to collapse on the beach. She’d been undergoing treatments while you were in school.”
“Wait, mom had cancer? And you two never told me?”
Jake paused, tears welling across his lower eyelid. “I’m sorry.”
“How could you do that? I mean, we’re a family! Why wouldn’t you want to tell me?”
“Because, John. Your mother thought it was more important that you finished your college education, than throwing it away sitting and worrying about her. When she saved me, she knew her days were numbered. She wanted me to live so that I could find you again.”
“I can’t believe you!” John shouted at his father. “You keep things from me. You lie to me. And now you sit there and tell me it was for my own good? What the hell is that crap? Don’t you trust me enough to be able to handle something like this? And when were you going to tell me? At her funeral?” He didn’t wait for his father to answer. He slammed a button on the console and stormed off down the prison corridor leading back to the front of the prison.
I got up from my position on the floor and started heading after him.
“Let him go, Dove!” Jake called to me. “He’s a big boy. This is exactly why we—she—didn’t want to tell him. John can be over emotional at times and it distracts him from the important things.”
I balled my fists at my sides and stormed toward Jake. “You may be his father and know him better than I do. But I know people. No matter what your reasons were, what you did was just crappy. It doesn’t show him you think he’s a tough kid. It shows him you don’t trust him to handle the news. You’ve had some time to handle the loss of his mother. He just got hit with that today, and now you unload her having cancer and lying to him about it on top of it? I think he has a perfectly rational response to what you just told him. How dare you sit there and tell me he’s being over emotional. He’s being a damn human. You could take a page out of his book.”
I turned away from the man before he could say anything more and headed down the corridor after John. He hadn’t gotten far and I caught up to him in no time.
I placed a hand on his shoulder and he spun around, glaring at me. His mouth hung open, an unspoken comment dangling from his tongue. I never let him get the opportunity to put voice to it. Slipping my arms around his neck, I pulled him close and crushed the big guy against me. It took several moments for him to finally raise his arms and wrap them around me. We stood there like that for some time, his hot tears soaking into my hair.
“I’m sorry,” I said to him. “I’m so sorry.”
chapter twelve
Moans came from all directions. Windows crashed and doors banged open as bodies emerged from the buildings lining the streets. Goners shambled down Fairmount Avenue, and shuffled along North 23rd. They poured like roaches out of a refrigerator in one of those hoarding reality TV shows, and all of them headed in my direction. I lost count after the first fifty. The Lord’s call had been answered in earnest.
Run of the mill Goners, from what I could see. But I didn’t want to wait around for another Lord to appear. After today’s travails, I did not need to fight another Lord. So far, in my experience, Lords were not common among the undead. In Philly, there seemed to be more than its fair share.
Byron, we should leave. No matter how strong or fast we make you, there is no way to fight so many at one time.
I heeded my Symbiots’ advice and pumped my legs as fast as I could, swinging both swords out by my sides, hacking and slashing at hapless zombies as I ran. On my way back to the prison, I severed the heads from quite a number of Goners. But these represented just the tip of the iceberg. For every one that fell, three took its place.
The prison walls drew close, looming like a promise of salvation by the almighty himself.
There is trouble. We sense something large close by.
“Where is it?” I whipped my head around, not breaking stride. “Does it know how to form a golem?”
We cannot tell. And how would we know what it is capable of?
“Fair enough.” The beast’s deep, guttural roar rattled the windows of nearby houses. The Goners all stood still, scanning their surroundings. If a dead, expressionless face could show fear, I am sure that it would at this very moment. The Goners scrambled back toward shelter, clambering over each other in search of a place to hide.
Whereas they were willing to heed the bio-chemical call of the last lord, they scattered like rats from a great predator.
They’re scared. We can sense the hormonal levels in the colonized. Whatever it is coming this way scares them. We didn’t realize that could happen.
My gut sank. If something scared the unfeeling, shuffling dead, then it had to be something bad. Mind reeling, I racked my imagination for whatever could do that. After all, a massive, destructive flesh golem energized these things. What could scare them?
Another guttural roar shook the ground.
A lid erupted from a nearby manhole, soaring at least thirty feet into the air and spinning end over end like a tossed coin. Two more popped, as the sound amplified, rising to insane levels.
My feet froze to the pavement as I spun, searching for the source of that noise. The ground continued to quake under my feet. The asphalt below me buckled, rising up like
the shell of some great tortoise surfacing at sea. I hunkered low to maintain my balance. Another blast of that throaty, phlegm-filled roar erupted beneath me and I watched the decorative plantings along Fairmount avenue dance from the mighty breath of the creature prairie-dogging below.
I leaped for the nearest prison tower.
Get away, Byron. This is no Lord. Its power is beyond anything we have yet to experience. We know this horror; it is something far worse.
My feet touched down on the top of the corner tower and I spun in time to watch the Abyssinian monstrosity push itself out of its tunnel. Barely anthropomorphic, the creature possessed a torso, head, and two thick trunk-like legs. Five arms protruded from it in irrational directions and locations. One arm stemmed from the center of its back, while two emerged from the left side and one from the right. The fifth arm projected from the center of what could be the creature’s sternum. Black, oily skin covered it from head to toe with no openings or pores. None, that is except for the thousands of myriad shaped and polychromatic eyes which blinked and observed, watched and rolled.
Another roar filled the air again and I noticed that indeed, another opening did adorn its nearly perfect ebony skin. At the apex of the thing’s head, a circular hole undulated with hundreds of rows of razor-sharp teeth. From the center of this opening, not unlike the stamen of a plant, writhed thousands of elastic protuberances, each in the likeness of a human head with its own eyes, mouth, and nose. The sheer vision of this thing represented an absolute madness and irrationality that never seemed to exist in nature.
“What the hell is that?” My voice trembled.
Byron, your fear receptors are elevated.
“No kidding. Don’t you see this thing?”
One of the stamen stretched out like an octopus’ tentacle and wrapped itself around a Goner, carrying it toward the undulating maw where it shredded the zombie in its rotating teeth. I ducked low on the tower rooftop, afraid to draw the beast’s attention.
“What kind of nightmare did that thing crawl out of?” I breathed the words almost without a sound in fear of alerting the beast to my presence.
You must get out of here, Byron. This is not something we can combat. This is no mere lord. The neurotoxin signatures we are receiving suggest this is a parent host of ours—the thing from which our colonies emerged. It carried us here.
“This Cthonic nightmare is your what? Parent host?” I couldn’t help my voice rising in pitch or force. My hands shook, and not from the constant rumble I felt beneath my feet. My Symbiots were not lying when they said my fear receptors rose. I could feel it coursing through me. But, fear? No, not fear—terror. This thing terrified me.
More tentacles shot off in different directions, snatching up Goners and carrying them to the creature’s gnashing maw. It roared, sending fragments of shredded flesh, bone, and bits of clothing into the air. The fluid-filled guttural sound reminded me of a giant bathtub drain sucking down the last bits of water swirling toward it.
A tentacle shot over my head, scanning the inside of the prison courtyard below. With a grunt, I hopped up and leaped over the side of the tower, dropping close to the Rover and sprinting for the closed prison doors.
~ ~ ~
“I can’t believe that she’s gone.” His voice reminded me of a child lost in a supermarket. Fear, anguish, despair. Pitiful, but not in the sense that I thought less of him or anything. Pitiful in that I had never heard a sadder voice in my life. His words broke my heart.
“My dad was not around much when I was young. He worked odd shifts at the prisons. And there was always that fear he wouldn’t come home. So when it came to him, I remained detached. But mom—she was the center of my universe. She cooked, cleaned, taught, disciplined. She did it all. If I got hurt, she picked up the pieces. She put the bandages on my wounds. Dad won the bread. Mom was my rock—always there when I needed her.”
I sat with John in the long, dark cell block corridor, my arm draped over his shoulder and fighting the urge to counsel and reassure him. I wanted him to get it all out. To let his healing begin.
“How could she not tell me about this? I mean—cancer! I can’t imagine what she’d been going through all those months. And she kept it from me. To protect me?”
He turned his face toward me, then looked away again. Tears glistened at the corners of his eyes. The ground rumbled beneath us, but John didn’t seem to notice.
“She sacrificed herself to save him? She let herself get bit to make sure he could escape?”
He shook his head. “I wish she were here. I want to talk to her. To tell her everything. And to think, she’s not even really dead. I mean, she’s one of those things. She doesn’t remember who or what she is.”
He turned to me again. “Do you think her soul went to heaven, yet? Or is she still locked in there? Trapped inside the hellish madness of some monster?”
My jaw worked up and down. What could I say?
“I want to believe that it did.” I knew I lied to him. The encounter with the nuns beneath the convent returned to my mind. They had fought the sickness—had maintained their strength, even for the slightest instant. “Your mother sounds like a strong willed person, John. If she had an ounce of herself still present within her body, she would have fought this thing with all she had.”
“You know, I never really thought of Byron as a strong person. He would never rise to challenge. He always took the shortcut, or found some way to shirk his responsibility. And to think that he fought these things for control of his own body, and won! I can’t believe that he is stronger than my mom!”
“Don’t think of it that way!” A voice called from the darkness.
A flurry of emotions rushed into my chest. “You idiot!” I screamed, leaping from my perch on the floor next to John. I stabbed my finger at Byron. John’s problems melted from my consciousness, replaced by seething anger. “After everything I went through to restore you to health! You go and do something stupid like that? What the hell were you thinking? You’re an idiot!”
“Hello to you, too.” Something about the tone of his voice tugged at my mind. He sounded worried. “What’s going on here?”
John looked up for a brief instant, then studied the floor at Byron’s feet as he wiped tears from his eyes and cheeks. “Nothing, boss. What happened out there?”
“Where are the others?” Byron avoided the question.
I jabbed my thumb over my shoulder. “They’re in the rotunda. Why?”
“We need to get the hell out of here. Now. We don’t have time for me to explain a dozen times, so let’s go find them.” He didn’t even wait for John to get up before he headed off down the corridor at a trot.
I offered John my hand. “What do you think that’s about?”
John shrugged as he brushed the dirt off the back of his pants. “I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound good.”
Without another word, we followed Byron down the hall.
“Took you long enough,” he accused as we entered the well-lit rotunda. He stood behind the main console, staring at a security screen. “Everyone here?” He didn’t even look up. “Good. We have a serious situation.”
“Yeah, I know,” Aunt E interrupted, “there’s a big flesh-thingy outside.”
“Not anymore. We have bigger fish to fry than that.”
Her eyes flashed wide. “What? How is that even possible?”
“Look at this,” Byron pointed to the screen in front of him and took a few steps back.
The ground rumbled beneath our feet as we all one-by-one walked around the console to see what he pointed at. Gasps and expletives released from each person as they looked at the screen. Aunt E crossed herself and prayed to the Virgin Mary. As my eyes absorbed the images on the screen, I couldn’t help but think that my sanity had finally cracked from all of today’s stresses. The creature filling up the monitor defied any form or logic or sense.
“What is that?” My voice cracked.
“Accordi
ng to my Symbiots, what we are looking at is one of the things that brought them here. They call it a parent host—it is one of the creatures that brought the first of their colonies here. It has been lying dormant underground.”
“So what? Your colonies are some alien species?” Evan’s face pinched tight with anger.
“It would appear that is the case. Aliens that have been here on earth for a very long time.”
“How long is a very long time?” Sammy blurted.
“I don’t know, and neither do my Symbiots.”
“That’s just friggin’ wonderful,” Jake shouted, throwing his hands in the air. “Zombie apocalypse—Alien invasion. What next? Are the dinosaurs going to make a return also? Add a Jurassic nightmare on top? What about vampires? Werewolves? Bigfoot?” His voice grew louder and louder with each new question. The thing in the monitor stopped in its tracks. Tentacles, or something like them, dangling from its mouth all turned in the direction of the camera. They shot like rockets toward the prison, passing by the camera.
Glass shattered overhead, several distinct crashes followed by more.
“Why not just add mummies or inter-dimensional beings to the mix?”
A head floated into one of the cell blocks from above, attached to one of the tentacles. It blinked as its mouth worked open and close.
Byron slapped his hand over Jake’s mouth and pointed out at the thing, signaling everyone to remain quiet and duck down behind the console.
~ ~ ~
Dammit, Jake! Shut up! I hoped my eyes spoke the message to some effect as I stared him down. His rant may have just cost us the only chance of survival we could hope for under the circumstances.
It is coming, Byron.
Yeah, no kidding. I wanted to say something snarky, like Thanks, Captain Obvious, but knew this was no time for it. Any noise could alert those things to our presence and worse, our location.
Dove: A Zombie Tale (Byron: A Zombie Tale Book 2) Page 12
