by Howard, Bill
“Daddy.”
The word is followed immediately by a voluminous flow of blood pouring out of her mouth; her words drown in it. Her eyebrows furrow and her eyes darken. She repeats the word through the gurgle of blood being forced up her throat.
“DADDY.”
The knock at the door was soft, but jolted me up in bed as if a plane had crashed into the roof. I was soaked in sweat and my mouth was so dry I could barely open it. I looked to the door just as Ellie was peeking in.
“Oh my god, Denny, are you okay?”
Ellie rushed in and sat on the end of the mattress, laying one hand on my shoulder and looking into my eyes. Her hand was warm, almost burning into my shoulder.
“Yeah, I’m fine. It was just a nightmare. A really weird nightmare.”
“Can I get you anything? Let me get you some water.”
She got up and went into the en suite, the sound of the tap water running into a glass was almost deafening in the silence of the house. She returned and I drank the water fast, my mouth finally returning to its natural state.
“Thanks." I managed. “What are you doing, did something happen?”
“No, I just couldn’t sleep, I wanted to see if you were the same. I guess not. Is it okay if I hang out? I really am not comfortable here. I can’t stop thinking about the kids.”
“Yeah, of course. I’m pretty sure I’m done with sleeping for tonight.”
We sat together on the bed in silence. Ellie eventually dozed off against me and I held her there, hoping that at least one of us could get some rest without being tormented by nightmares.
Laying there with Ellie made me miss Diane even more. It seemed like I might never get home, never see Diane and Jordan again. I shook off the thoughts and tried to focus, get back to the goal in mind. I realized as I was laying there with Ellie in my arms, and with Thom and everyone else downstairs, that I probably wouldn’t have even made it this far if it wasn’t for them. My thoughts of the hopelessness of the situation would have eaten me up a long time ago if it wasn’t for them. I was thankful for everyone here. I leaned my head back against the headboard and closed my eyes. For the rest of that night I did not dream.
CHAPTER 32: DAMAGE CONTROL
We all stood around the kitchen table as Clive cleaned the large wound on Thom’s neck. Stephen was tearing through the bathrooms getting any medical supplies he could find and Ellie was prepping some bandages. Thom had an oval-shaped hole in his neck, encircled by small, jagged teeth marks. The blood was flowing fast. His face had originally gone white as a linen sheet, but now was starting to turn a pale, sickly yellow. He was still lucid and kept staring at me as I sat beside him and held his hand. No one said a word. Isabel was locked in the mudroom at the back door. It had taken some convincing to get Thom to let go of the pole, and there was no way he was going to sit still and let us take care of the wound unless Isabel was secure. Maneuvering her into the room was easy enough with Thom's makeshift control pole.
Clive seemed to think the best way to keep the wound from bleeding out was to cauterize it. The thought of trying to do that in a kitchen scared me. Clive took a long narrow bread knife and laid it on one of the gas burners of the stove. As it heated up and the metal started to turn a glowing autumn orange, Clive held Thom’s hand, looked into his eyes, and very quietly uttered a prayer with him.
“It will be fast." Clive assured Thom. “The pain will come and go quickly, but it will be intense.”
Thom nodded and held tight to the seat of the chair. I stepped beside him and pried one hand off, putting it in my hand instead. Thom looked at me and gave me a very faint smile. He squeezed my hand tight as Clive went to the stove to retrieve the knife. Thom’s grip got tighter the closer Clive got to his neck.
“Okay, here we go." Clive warned.
Clive pressed the long flat side of the scorching knife blade against the cleaned wound. There was an brief, audible sizzle as it burned the flesh, quickly drowned out quickly by Thom’s agonizing scream. Max howled with him, either feeling his pain or just joining in, which one it was hard to tell. Isabel started going crazy, banging her hands on the wooden door into the kitchen every time Thom screamed. Clive moved the knife blade two more times over the wound until the entire surface had been burned and the wound was sealed. Smoke rose from Thom’s neck and the horrible stench of burning flesh filled our nostrils. Thom stopped yelling and had gone limp in the chair, passed out. Clive and I lifted him up and moved him to the couch in the living room. Clive dressed the wound and we covered him up, letting him rest after his ordeal. Max and Isabel both calmed down once Thom was out.
The remaining bunch of us huddled back into the kitchen for an impromptu meeting. For a short while, we just sat in silence. Stephen had found a bottle of Crown Royal and was pouring each of us a glass, walking slowly around the table behind us like a waiter, his hands shaking but still managing to get the whiskey into the glasses. After he was finished pouring, Stephen took his place at the table and we all downed our drinks. Ellie was the first to speak.
“So, do we know what happens now? Do we know how long it takes, or if it will even happen to him?”
No one at the table had an answer. This was new to all of us; we didn’t have the experience or knowledge of this new phenomenon to know what we had to do.
“There’s no way to know how to handle this,” I said. “We just have to play this one out and see what happens. But we have to be prepared for any possible outcome. ”
With that, dramatically, I laid my handgun on the table. Thom was my best friend. The last thing I want to do was shoot him, but if that was what I had to do to save him, I would. We then moved forward and devised our plan from this point. We would get some rest, taking turns watching over Thom and the house. In the morning, assuming Thom was better, we would head back out. If Thom was not up to it, we would determine at that time who would stay and watch him until he either got better, help came, or the other eventuality that we didn’t care to discuss right then. We would also leave Isabel where she was for now, as we didn’t know how Thom would react if we got rid of her. She didn’t pose a threat as long as she was contained.
Stephen volunteered to take the first watch, sitting in a large armchair across from Thom with a Colt Government Model 45 tensely laid in his palm. The remainder of us split up into separate rooms around the house and tried to get some rest.
I layed in Thom’s bed staring at the ceiling. I thought about my life up to this point and the relationship I had with Thom. I thought about Nicole and Sam, about how happy they had made Thom and how devastated he had been after the accident. It wasn’t fair that someone should go through trauma like that and have to end up where Thom was now. Life was assuredly a bitch; there was no doubt about that. My thoughts then turned to Diane and Jordan. It felt like I hadn’t seen them in years. I wondered what they were doing right now. Were they sleeping? Were they safe? Was Jordan scared? It tore my heart apart that I didn’t know the answers. My eyelids grew heavy while their images still lingered in my mind. The air was humid, the room dark. I could feel the air pressing against me as I drifted off, the strong smell of dirt and grass in my nose from the open window. I was walking down a street I remembered from my childhood. My parents and I lived on a quiet family street during my pre-teen years. As I walked, I could still smell the dirt and grass. I could hear kids playing in the neighborhood, cars on adjacent streets, parents yelling at their kids somewhere in the distance. As I got to the end of the street, I came to an abandoned lot with an old building that used to be a school many years before. It was old enough that it was gender separated, a stone brick with ‘Boys’ over one door, and on the opposite side of the building, an identical door with ‘Girls’ over it. The lot was concrete and overgrown, weeds as tall as I was breaking through the man-made earth and having their way with the property. The windows and doors on the ground level were all boarded up, but the ones on the second and third floors were not. Most of the glass in t
hese windows had been shattered by rocks, thrown by boys who had the inexplicable desire to see something break. Above the third floor was presumably some sort of attic or storage area. On either side of the building there was a small roof peak with a window below it, these ones still intact thanks to their height. As I walked past the lot, I always debated with myself as to whether or not to look at these attic windows. Something about the windows told me not to, when I had looked at them in the past; something about them terrified me. I could never place why. It was almost as if I could hear some child left behind in that attic years before, calling out for someone to help him, to get him out. This time as I walked by I stopped. I hadn’t looked yet, but something was calling to me, something was pulling me to the window. I decided I was a big boy, that I could handle a stupid window. I turned towards the old school with my eyes closed and angled my head to where I knew that window was. I stood there for a second, my eyes closed; double-checking with myself that this was what I wanted to do. I opened my eyes and looked at the window. It was dark and empty. At first, I didn’t even get the creepy feeling. I was victorious; I had triumphed over the window. But just then the feeling started to crawl up my back. When it reached my neck, I shut my eyes tight. I stood there for a moment in a cold sweat and turned away from the school. After catching my breath, I opened my eyes again. I was looking down from somewhere high, disoriented as to why I was not standing on the sidewalk anymore. I could see a small boy standing by a chain link fence on a sidewalk, his back to me, just standing there, alone. I was looking at him through an old window that warped my view of him, made it rippled like I was looking through water. I looked around below me and recognized it as the abandoned schoolyard. That would mean that I was …no. I couldn’t be. I turned slowly on my heels, my body cold yet feverish, my hair damp on my forehead. As I turned in the room, I looked at the walls; they were old, dusty, covered in cobwebs. Once I’m fully turned around, I bring my eyes up and look into the room. It is dark, but the light through the two peaked windows provides enough illumination for me to make out a girl just slightly smaller than myself. She is crouched on the floor just off to the side of the opposite window. Her back is to me and she seems to be weeping, her shoulders shuddering. I step closer and ask if she is okay, but I get no response. There is nothing else in the attic, just the girl and I. I am standing right behind her now and I place my hand on her shoulder; I can feel it shaking. Her head starts to turn towards me. It is Jordan. She has been crying. She opens her mouth and starts to form a word.
“Daddy.”
The word is followed immediately by a voluminous flow of blood pouring out of her mouth; her words drown in it. Her eyebrows furrow and her eyes darken. She repeats the word through the gurgle of blood being forced up her throat.
“DADDY.”
The knock at the door was soft, but jolted me up in bed as if a plane had crashed into the roof. I was soaked in sweat and my mouth was so dry I could barely open it. I looked to the door just as Ellie was peeking in.
“Oh my god, Denny, are you okay?”
Ellie rushed in and sat on the end of the mattress, laying one hand on my shoulder and looking into my eyes. Her hand was warm, almost burning into my shoulder.
“Yeah, I’m fine. It was just a nightmare. A really weird nightmare.”
“Can I get you anything? Let me get you some water.”
She got up and went into the en suite, the sound of the tap water running into a glass was almost deafening in the silence of the house. She returned and I drank the water fast, my mouth finally returning to its natural state.
“Thanks." I managed. “What are you doing, did something happen?”
“No, I just couldn’t sleep, I wanted to see if you were the same. I guess not. Is it okay if I hang out? I really am not comfortable here. I can’t stop thinking about the kids.”
“Yeah, of course. I’m pretty sure I’m done with sleeping for tonight.”
We sat together on the bed in silence. Ellie eventually dozed off against me and I held her there, hoping that at least one of us could get some rest without being tormented by nightmares.
Laying there with Ellie made me miss Diane even more. It seemed like I might never get home, never see Diane and Jordan again. I shook off the thoughts and tried to focus, get back to the goal in mind. I realized as I was laying there with Ellie in my arms, and with Thom and everyone else downstairs, that I probably wouldn’t have even made it this far if it wasn’t for them. My thoughts of the hopelessness of the situation would have eaten me up a long time ago if it wasn’t for them. I was thankful for everyone here. I leaned my head back against the headboard and closed my eyes. For the rest of that night I did not dream.
Titles from:
BOOKS of the DEAD
BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES (Vol. 1)
BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES (Vol. 2)
BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES (Vol. 3)
BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES TRILOGY
BEST NEW WEREWOLF TALES (VOL. 1)
BEST NEW VAMPIRE TALES (Vol. 1)
CLASSIC VAMPIRE TALES
GARY BRANDNER - THE HOWLING
GARY BRANDNER - THE HOWLING II
GARY BRANDNER - THE HOWLING III
GARY BRANDNER - THE HOWLING TRILOGY
JAMES ROY DALEY - INTO HELL
JAMES ROY DALEY - TERROR TOWN
JAMES ROY DALEY - 13 DROPS OF BLOOD
JAMES ROY DALEY - THE DEAD PARADE
JAMES ROY DALEY - ZOMBIE KONG
JOHN F.D. TAFF - LITTLE DEATHS
JOHN L. FRENCH – PARADISE DENIED
MATT HULTS - ANYTHING CAN BE DANGEROUS
TONIA BROWN - BADASS ZOMBIE ROAD TRIP
MATT HULTS - HUSK
TIM LEBBON - BERSERK
PAUL KANE - PAIN CAGES
ZOMBIE KONG ANTHOLOGY
* * *
Thank you for reading!
Titles from:
BOOKS of the DEAD
BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES (Vol. 1)
BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES (Vol. 2)
BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES (Vol. 3)
BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES TRILOGY
BEST NEW WEREWOLF TALES (VOL. 1)
BEST NEW VAMPIRE TALES (Vol. 1)
CLASSIC VAMPIRE TALES
GARY BRANDNER - THE HOWLING
GARY BRANDNER - THE HOWLING II
GARY BRANDNER - THE HOWLING III
GARY BRANDNER - THE HOWLING TRILOGY
JAMES ROY DALEY - INTO HELL
JAMES ROY DALEY - TERROR TOWN
JAMES ROY DALEY - 13 DROPS OF BLOOD
JAMES ROY DALEY - THE DEAD PARADE
JAMES ROY DALEY - ZOMBIE KONG
JOHN F.D. TAFF - LITTLE DEATHS
JOHN L. FRENCH – PARADISE DENIED
MATT HULTS - ANYTHING CAN BE DANGEROUS
TONIA BROWN - BADASS ZOMBIE ROAD TRIP
MATT HULTS - HUSK
TIM LEBBON - BERSERK
PAUL KANE - PAIN CAGES
ZOMBIE KONG ANTHOLOGY
* * *
Thank you for reading!
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 29: FAMILY TIES
CHAPTER 30: STEPHEN JEFFREY WINTERS
CHAPTER 31: WHERE THE HEART IS
CHAPTER 32: DAMAGE CONTROL
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 29: FAMILY TIES
CHAPTER 30: STEPHEN JEFFREY WINTERS
CHAPTER 31: WHERE THE HEART IS
CHAPTER 32: DAMAGE CONTROL
