by Sam Sisavath
He spent the next few minutes trying to recall the map of the surrounding area in his head. If he knew where everything was, he could better formulate a plan of action. Right now, his priority was figuring out what the hell had happened last night, and that meant gathering information. He needed cell reception for that. The Internet, a news channel, even a working radio station would be a boon at the moment.
Bentley was the closest town that he knew of, and that was only because he had stumbled across it while looking for a place to eat a late lunch yesterday. That was where he had found Garrity’s bar and inside, Delia. Seeing her across the room, with her spectacular figure, long blonde hair, and large brown eyes, he was almost tempted to believe in love at first sight. Or at least lust at first sight. Either/or.
Crunch-crunch.
Keo slowly turned his head toward the back of the bathroom.
Crunch-crunch.
His eyes settled on the bathtub and the crumpled shower curtain spread over it. Underneath the shiny vinyl fabric was Delia.
Dead Delia.
So why was the fabric moving?
Crunch-crunch.
Keo stood up as the shower curtain was pushed aside by a long and frail (and darkened) hand. She slowly peered out at him with a pair of black eyes, like tar. Her nose had changed and it was sharper, upturned—and her lips were gone. Soft lips, he recalled. Perfect for kissing.
Delia…
He didn’t believe in love at first sight, but if he did, she would have been the one.
Delia…
She stood up slowly, bones clacking against the tub. Her bra had become too big for her shrunken and slightly hunched over figure, and it hung off breasts that no longer existed. Her hips were narrower and the white panties could no longer be held in place, and they slid down impossibly thin legs. It reminded him of a perverse striptease, except here the purpose wasn’t to tantalize, but to disgust.
“Delia?”
She cocked her head to one side and stared at him, strands of blonde hair falling wistfully off a smooth skull, the skin painfully taut and pink. She looked like a newborn, climbing out of some dark womb and now trying to adjust to a new existence.
“Delia, are you in there?”
Her eyes shifted to the rod in his hand before returning to his face. There was an alertness there in the dark pits. Some kind of awareness of him. But as what?
Food, maybe.
“Delia?”
It looked so much like the creature he had fought last night, the one that kept coming even after he had smashed its skull in with a lamp. But this wasn’t the same one. No, this was the waitress from Garrity’s. Was that thing last night also like Delia once upon a time? Had something bitten it, too?
They bite you, you die…and you become this.
Whatever the hell this is.
He remembered the screams last night. The gunshots. The men in the trucks being pursued by a horde of the creatures. Were they all like Delia now? Skeletal and blackened, all traces of humanity stripped away?
“Delia, can you hear me?”
Of course she could hear him. There was nothing wrong with her ears that he could see. There was a lot wrong with her mouth and eyes and body, but those ears looked fine. Was she listening, though? Could she even understand him anymore? Those were the real questions.
She stepped out of the tub, one foot at a time. There was a surprising gracefulness to the way she moved despite her painfully brittle appearance or the grinding noises that her joints made with the slightest movements. In the pooling morning light she looked surreal, like something out of a dream.
Or a nightmare.
Keo took a step back toward the door behind him.
“Delia, stop.”
She took another step forward.
“Can you hear me in there? Is that still you? If it is, stop now. Don’t take another—”
She took another step.
Aw hell.
She jumped at him. So fast. He wasn’t prepared for the speed, even though memories of fighting the other creature were still fresh in his mind. One second she was moving toward him as if she had all the time in the world, one foot at a time, and the next she was in the air and coming fast—
He swung the rod on instinct and caught her full in the side of the face. Her entire body jerked sideways and she flew the short distance over the sink counter and slammed into the medicine cabinet, smashing the mirror. She fell into the sink in a pile of bones and flesh, glass raining down on top of her.
Keo’s arms were still vibrating from the blow when she snapped back up to her feet on the sink counter. A large piece of glass jutted out of one side of her face, black blood oozing along the jagged edges. She didn’t seem to notice it or the collapsed side of her face where the steel rod had impacted. He couldn’t even tell if it was a face anymore that looked back at him, though he had no trouble seeing those dead eyes.
“Delia,” he said, when she leaped at him again.
He backed up, but it was too late to cock his arms for another swing, so Keo struck upward instead, spearing her through the chest as she was almost on top of him. Her torso had become weak and there was nothing to stop the steel instrument from easily punching completely through the front of her body and out the back.
Keo dropped at the last second and let go of his only weapon. She flew over and past him as his entire body was still sinking to the floor. The sight of it flashing by over him would have been comical if not for the fact that he had just shoved a bathroom implement through a woman whom he had just spent last night with.
By the time he was back on his feet and turning around, Delia was already rising from the floor, having landed somewhere at the foot of the bed inside the room. Nearly the entire length of the rod had gone through her body, with one foot jutting out of her back and another foot in front of her, the remaining third foot buried within her torso. Heavy clumps of blood oozed from both sides of her face.
Then she grabbed the part of the metal sticking out of her chest and began to pull.
She was directly between him and the door, which left Keo with only one path. He fled back into the bathroom. He could already hear her coming even before he darted back inside and scrambled to find a weapon.
Any weapon.
Instead, all he saw were bloody pieces of glass in the sink and what looked like torn flesh splattered across the countertop. A useless shower curtain in the bathtub. The lowered toilet seat and the tank lid behind it—
Why the hell not?
Keo grabbed the lid—the damn thing was made of porcelain ceramic and it was like lifting a boulder—and pried it free. He spun around just as Delia, or the thing that used to be a bar waitress named Delia, came into the bathroom. She was dripping thick clumps of blood out of the hole in her chest with every step.
He had just enough time to set his feet when she came straight at him, her mouth opening, revealing grotesque teeth and caverns of bleeding gums. Keo swung for the fences and the heavy porcelain lid shattered instantly against her head.
She crumpled to the floor in a hail of white ceramic.
The tank lid had disintegrated completely in Keo’s hands on impact, so it didn’t take much time for him to realize he wasn’t holding onto anything anymore. He leaped over her already moving body, turned, and backpedaled through the open door, watching as Delia picked herself up from the floor—though this time she wasn’t nearly as quick.
She’s hurt. I’ve hurt her.
Hurt it.
Or had he? Caving in one side of her face hadn’t worked, and spearing her with a rod through the chest had only temporarily slowed her down, so there was very little chance that breaking a toilet tank lid over her head was going to be the magic bullet. At least, he didn’t wait around to find out.
Instead, Keo turned and ran.
He ignored the chaotic, bloodied state of the room in the morning light and ran straight for the door. He grabbed the doorknob with one hand, pulled at th
e chain with the other, and jerked the door open, lunging outside into the hot sun.
Then Keo prepared himself for the inevitable attack. He spun around once, twice, waiting for more of the creatures to come out of the rooms around him the way they had last night. This was where they would surround him and finish the job. He knew without an ounce of doubt that they would be out here, waiting for a victim, an idiot like him to come out of a perfectly good hiding spot—
But there was nothing in the parking lot except for the same cars from last night.
The Ford rental was twenty meters from where he was standing, because he hadn’t bothered to move the car once the manager had given him the key. There had been plenty of parking spaces, but Keo had been lazy and didn’t want to waste those precious minutes when Delia was already inside the motel room waiting for him.
He was digging out the car keys to the Ford now when he felt her presence.
He whirled around and looked through the open door of room #11. Delia stood inside, peering after him. Bloodied, bleeding, a shriveled husk of the vivacious woman who had demanded his and every man’s attention at Garrity’s last night.
Keo gripped the keys tighter, his legs already in motion. Twenty meters to the Ford. He could make it, even though she was fast. They all were. But twenty meters was a cakewalk, and he could make it—
But he hadn’t moved. He didn’t know why he was still standing at the exact same spot outside room #11 where he had come out seconds ago.
The Ford. Run to the Ford!
Except he didn’t have to, because Delia hadn’t taken a single step toward the door. She seemed content to watch him from the shadows inside the motel room, standing just beyond a splash of sunlight that flooded through the window.
He stared back at her. It was a trick. This was some kind of trick.
Wasn’t it?
Then, finally, she did move: She took a step back, leaking (black) blood from her head and chest and God knew where else. Then she was gone, having somehow merged into the part of the room that was all quivering darkness.
Keo thought he could still feel her presence somewhere in the blackness, lifeless eyes ogling him. He imagined her in there, waiting for something to happen.
Patient. Eternally patient.
And waiting…
CHAPTER 4
The Rearview Motel had twenty rooms, not including the manager’s office on the east end. It was every bit a roadside establishment, resting along a mostly deserted state highway with the much more well-traveled Interstate 20 somewhere in the background. The closest town was Bentley, five kilometers down the road.
Keo went through the motel rooms one by one looking for survivors, but after the fourth room it became apparent he was really scavenging for supplies. Most of the rooms yielded very little, and the first three cell phones he found couldn’t get reception. The power grid, as he had expected, was down and so were the towers.
He kept Delia’s iPhone and an Android smartphone from room #8 and tossed the rest.
He encountered another one of the creatures in the manager’s office. It was hiding in the back, away from the sunlight. When it heard him entering, it appeared in the back doorway and watched him curiously from the shadows. He waited for it to attack, but like Delia in room #11, it never strayed into the light.
The sunlight. It’s staying out of the sunlight.
Why?
He spent ten minutes trying to lure it out of the back room in order to test his theory. But the damn thing wouldn’t budge. It stood silently, unmoving, watching with lifeless black eyes. He found a broom on the floor and began prodding it with the handle. It was like poking a jellyfish, the wood sinking into yielding flesh. He could tell that it wanted to react. Its eyes followed his every step and he could almost see its limbs twitching with need. Like the one that had attacked and turned Delia (and then Delia herself), this one looked infirm, its chest sunken, arms like twigs unmoving at its sides. Pruned black skin glistened in the shadows, hairless scalp reflecting the sun.
Direct sunlight. It’s afraid of direct contact with sunlight.
Why?
When it wouldn’t bite despite everything he tried, Keo gave up and left the manager’s office. He had hoped to find a gun or some kind of weapon under the counter, but there had been nothing.
He found more of the creatures in four other rooms, hiding in the darkness in the back, sometimes watching him, other times ignoring him completely. Keo took what he could find, including the keys inside room #16 to a blue Lancer truck. There was blood on the bed of #16 and splashed across the carpeting and walls. It was a hell of a mess, signs that the Lancer’s owner had fought to the bitter end. The bathroom door was closed and Keo weighed the pros and cons of finding out if anyone (anything) was inside, but decided against it.
The Lancer had almost a full tank of gas and was a major upgrade over the smaller Ford sedan. He climbed in, then took a moment to unclip his beeper and checked it again. No messages. Keo tossed it out the window, then started the truck and drove out of the parking lot. It was 7:34 a.m. by the time he turned left at the highway and pointed the Lancer back toward Bentley. If there were other survivors, he would find them there.
He switched on the radio, expecting to hear the Emergency Broadcast System with its long uninterrupted beeping signal, followed by a soothing male voice reading a pre-recorded set of instructions on what to do and not to do.
Instead, there was just static.
Keo turned the dial slowly, searching for a local channel, with one hand on the steering wheel. He had dropped the truck’s speed to less than twenty. Not that he really had to. There wasn’t another car on the road in either direction, and the only sound was the static from the radio and the Lancer’s smooth engine.
When he couldn’t get anything on the radio after a few minutes, he switched over to AM and searched again. There was no way the Federal Emergency Management Agency wouldn’t have co-opted the airwaves by now.
If FEMA was even still around…
*
He was halfway back to Bentley when he saw a white Lexus parked along the shoulder of the road at an odd angle. Keo drove the Lancer up alongside it before realizing the car looked awkward because it had crashed into the guardrail. That was definitely not how a Japanese luxury car was supposed to look like.
He parked the truck and climbed out, but not before reaching into the backseat and grabbing the tire iron he had put back there. It wasn’t a knife or a gun, and it was shorter than the shower rod, but it was hard finding an effective bludgeoning object these days. His other best option was the broom from the manager’s office, but Keo preferred the strength and durability of a tire iron.
The Lexus’s side windows were rolled up and tinted, so seeing through them was nearly impossible. He got a better look from the front windshield, which was spiderwebbed, likely from impact with the guardrail. There was blood on the dashboard and more across the front upholstery and steering wheel. When he touched the hood, the engine was cool. The vehicle had been sitting there for a while, probably since last night.
Keo walked around the car and tried the driver side door. It was locked. He stared at his own reflection for a moment before breaking the window with the tire iron. It took two tries—the first time only cracked the glass, but the second blow scattered it into a few hundred pieces along the highway. He reached inside, popped the lock, and pulled the door open.
He heard it almost right away—a scratching noise from the back.
Keo took an involuntary step away from the door, expecting to see something lunging out of the vehicle at him. He was surprised when it didn’t happen, though instead of relief, it only made him more anxious.
When had he gotten so skittish? Oh, right; there was that thing with Delia in the bathroom…
He moved to the rear driver side door and broke that window with two more swings. As the glass pelted the backseat, he saw it right away—another one of the creatures huddled on the f
loor behind the front passenger seat. It was curled up like a ball, bony legs and arms folded impossibly tight around its body. Glassy black eyes peered out at him from within the tangled limbs.
It was hiding. Not from him, but from the sun’s rays splashing across the upholstery through the suddenly open windows. Keo couldn’t tell what it used to be—a man or a woman, or maybe even a child. It had the small frame of a kid, but it was difficult to tell without hair or distinguishable features. If he didn’t know better, this thing could have been the one that bit Delia last night, or even Delia herself.
How the hell had it ended up locked inside the Lexus? It couldn’t have locked itself in. No. That didn’t make any sense. It was more likely that someone had managed to imprison it somehow and fled. Maybe the vehicle’s missing owner. Someone with a key fob. Did that mean the creature couldn’t figure out how to unlock the doors from the inside? Maybe. The ones he had seen last night seemed to be acting on almost basic instincts.
Eat, attack, and avoid the sunlight.
It didn’t take a smart animal to grasp those simple concepts. What about a brain? He remembered smashing the lamp into the skull of one of the things last night…
He had so many questions, but the answers all belonged to a creature that shouldn’t possibly exist, but did, and was staring back at him from the floor of a car.
“What do you have to say for yourself?”
It glared at him. Maybe it knew he was mocking it. Or maybe it just saw him as food.
“Nothing? Can you even talk?”
It looked suddenly agitated. Or was that fear? Annoyance? He couldn’t be sure. It was hard to read its face. Maybe he was subscribing emotions to those lifeless black eyes when there were none to be had. But he knew for a fact it wasn’t scared of him. And why should it be? Could he even kill it if he tried?
Keo held up the tire iron for it to see. Hollowed black eyes remained focused on his face.
