Lawrence stared down at the hole in Richard’s forehead. He was turning. Lawrence’s uncertainty made him queasy, made the room around him spin, made his heart feel as though it were being squeezed and about to burst inside him. I know he was turning. He had to be turning. Richard showed the same symptoms as Kyle, in the constant sweating and the eyes rolling back. He had to be turning, Lawrence continued to convince himself. That’s why he wanted to speak to me alone. That’s why he kept saying, “There’s no time.” Even Richard knew he was turning. Richard hadn’t officially turned. Lawrence had panicked and reacted. The turn was like flipping a switch, based on what Lawrence knew, one moment the victim was sweating, the next, the victim starts making nasty gurgling noises and tries to eat your face. If Richard wasn’t turning, then Lawrence would be a murderer and an idiotic moron.
There were screams downstairs. Everyone had heard the gunshot. “Shit,” Lawrence said, hearing the quick rhythm of footsteps moving up the stairs. “Here they come, Lawrence, you stupid fuck.” And here comes some more screams.
Ally was first through the bedroom door. She saw what was on the bed, cupped her mouth in both hands, and screamed.
Charlene followed, saw Richard, and shrieked. No, she didn’t bother covering her mouth.
Every scream made Lawrence cringe. It was like anticipating a punch in the stomach. Therese and Joni entered the room. You’re fucked now, Lawrence.
“No, no.” Therese gripped strands of her hair and shook her head. “NO! RICHARD!” Then the tears came pouring.
Joni made no reaction. There was eeriness in her silence, which made Lawrence sick with guilt. She back stepped out of the room.
“He turned,” Lawrence said. I think. “He turned. I had to do it. I’m sorry.”
Kasey came in and took Therese by the shoulders. “You don’t need to see him like this,” Kasey consoled the crying woman. “It had to be done. You know that.”
“No,” Therese shouted, “he wasn’t bitten, he wasn’t. He wasn’t bitten!” She continued her hysterics. Kasey and Ally led her out the door.
Just as they led Therese out, Sonya came in.
Aw, fuck me, Lawrence thought. I’m in no mood, Sonya.
Sonya didn’t scream, but only winced mildly and covered her mouth.
“Yeah,” said Lawrence, “I know, I know.” He braced himself for a bombardment of cussing and scolding, and some creatively, horrendous name-calling.
“Are you okay, Lawrence?” Sonya said.
Nope. Lawrence thought she’d take the opportunity to yell at him and call him a fucking idiot or any other variations of a fucking idiot. “Yeah. I just need to…I’m okay.”
Tristan and Miles entered.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” said Miles.
“Lawrence…what the fuck?” said Tristan. “You…uh…shot him in the head, dude.”
Lawrence could still hear Therese’s distressed cries from down stairs. “Richard! RICHARD!” she went on.
“You guys,” Lawrence said, “please go away. Just go away for a minute.”
Miles and Sonya complied. Both stepped out of the room.
“Okay,” said Charlene, “I’m going now, too, bye.” She exited.
“Tristan, wait,” said Lawrence, “help me out here, please.”
“Oh, okay.” Though Tristan’s small glances toward the bedroom doorway indicated his desire to leave. “Sure, I’ll help you, man. You just got to promise not to shoot me in the head.”
“No promises. Can you close the door?” Lawrence had known Tristan since third grade, and out of everyone in the house, he trusted Tristan the most.
Tristan shut the door. “All right, so are we gonna toss this bastard out the window or what?”
“You have to help me find the bite,” Lawrence whispered.
“Uh…Say what?”
“I wasn’t sure if he was turning.”
“Uh…That’s fucked up, man.”
“You have to help me find the bite, come on, I need proof. We need to find it.”
Tristan took steps closer to the body. “What if we don’t find the bite?”
“I don’t know. That girl Therese might become a complete psycho and slash my throat while I sleep—or the kid, the kid might do it. I just killed her dad, and that’s got to be traumatic to the innocent child psyche.”
“Let’s just throw him out the window now. That woman and the kid are gonna have to rely on your word if they wanna stay here.”
Lawrence got started and unzipped Richards fishing vest. “Just help me do this.”
Ally
Ally watched Therese weep. Her daughter Joni sat with her on the living room couch. Little Joni seemed calm, yet an air of sorrow remained. The young girl must’ve ran out of tears. Ally knew the feeling.
Ally’s family was gone now. All dead.
Ally could still hear those monsters grunting and banging on the wooden boards outside. Therese and Joni didn’t appear troubled by the sounds anymore. It had taken Ally days to adjust to the noises and to realize that the house’s defenses were solid against unrelenting threats. It was Lawrence’s idea to board up the windows on the outside as well as the inside. The dead things lacked the logic and strength to pull apart the barriers covering the windows. Lawrence was the reason why everyone in the house was safe. He was a selfless person, willing to risk his life for any of them. He had proved it when he went to find the guns at Ian David’s house. Ally loved him for it. She loved him deeply.
“The man had to do it, Therese,” Joni told her mother, or stepmother. It was unlikely a child would call a parent by their first name, and Ally had noticed that the mother and daughter shared no resemblance. “When it happened to Caitlyn…Daddy had to do it.”
“Who’s Caitlyn?” Ally asked.
“My daughter,” Therese said. She seemed to have mellowed from her earlier hysteria. “She was so young.”
Ally sat beside Therese and rested a hand on her shoulder. The woman was still a stranger to her, but Ally sincerely wanted Therese not to suffer. “Therese…” Ally began, but wasn’t sure what to say next. “Everyone here has lost someone. Don’t think that you’re alone in this. In this house, we look out for each other and take care of each other. Please don’t hate Lawrence for what he had to do. I know it really hurts him now. He had to do it to my brother, too.”
“And to my husband.” Kasey added. She came over from behind the couch where the three sat and took a seat on the coffee table to face Therese. “I was never able to have kids. My husband Darren and I so badly wanted to, but doctors said I couldn’t. The man was everything to me. He was all I had in this world, but he’s gone now. I still live on though, because I got Ally, and Sonya, and Lawrence, and everyone else here. These folk care about me. I haven’t even known some of them for a year, but I thank the Lord for all of them.”
Therese’s head was down, but her weeping had stopped.
“Now look at me, girly.” Kasey tilted her head closer to Therese.
Therese looked up.
“You still got your child, this beautiful little lady next to you, and I know that she’s gonna want you to keep going. You got me, girly?”
Therese looked at Joni and ran her fingers through the girl’s blonde hair. Joni moved closer to Therese and rested her head on her stepmother’s shoulder.
“Like Ally said,” Kasey went on, “we all look out for each other.”
Lawrence
“I’m not seeing it, Lawrence,” Tristan said, “his fucking skin looks completely clean to me.”
By now, Lawrence and Tristan had stripped dead Richard to his boxer shorts. Lawrence examined the body’s thighs, legs, and feet, while Tristan examined all parts from the waist up.
“Try his scalp,” said Lawrence, “maybe his hair’s covering it.”
Tristan got started on the scalp.
This poor guy, Lawrence thought. This poor fucking guy was a heroic firefighter, now he’s dead and in his underwear, and two guys ar
e pretty much fondling his corpse. He lifted one of Richard’s legs and searched the back thigh and calves for the fourth time. “Oh fuck me, oh fuck me. I don’t see it. I don’t fucking see it anywhere.”
“Maybe he got some of the diseased blood in his mouth,” Tristan started to sound just as frantic. “That had to be what happened. Lawrence were you fucking positive he was turning?”
“Fuck, man, I don’t know anymore.” Lawrence dropped the leg, lifted the other leg, and examined it again. “Maybe this fucker was bitten on the cock, I don’t know.”
“If your plan is to check his cock, you’re on your own.”
3
Rule Number One
Lawrence
The bite was on Richard’s ass cheek.
“Thank God,” said Lawrence. He lay on the bed, mentally exhausted yet relieved. Two feet away from him, dead Richard was on his stomach with his boxers down to his ankles. “I came close to shitting my pants.”
“I did shit my pants, Lawrence.” Tristan was on his feet, bent over slightly, clutching his stomach. There was too much pressure…I just…”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“You shit your pants? That’s fucking disgusting. Why are you standing there? Go and clean your ass!”
Tristan let go of his stomach and stood up straight. “Nope, just kidding.” He laughed.
Lawrence joined him. It wasn’t an appropriate time to laugh and joke while a guy lay dead with a bullet through the brain, naked, with boxers down to his ankles, and his wife and daughter crying and mourning him downstairs. But Lawrence knew laughter was necessary to have in the house, a blessing, a part of survival…Wait! I shouldn’t be laughing!
“Hey asshole,” said Lawrence, “you shouldn’t be laughing.”
Tristan stopped laughing. His face straightened. “I’m trying to make light of the situation here.”
“His wife and daughter are downstairs crying and mourning him, so don’t laugh and make jokes.”
“All right, okay. So what next?”
“We let Therese and the kid know about this, about the bite. We should ask them if they need a moment with Richard over here.” Lawrence sat up from the bed. “We’ll have to get rid of these covers, the comforter, and even the sheets beneath. Maybe we should throw them out the window.”
“Why, because Kyle and Sonya used to screw in those blankets?”
“No, dumbass. This guy’s infected blood is all over them. It’s not because Kyle and Sonya—Oh! Gross! I slept on this bed last week—had blankets over me and everything. Ugh. The blankets were over my face.”
Lawrence told Therese and Joni about the bite. Therese, all cried out, went upstairs with Joni and spent a few minutes with Richard’s body. Perhaps to say a prayer or some personal words that would help them come to terms, or perhaps, just to say goodbye to the husband and father. Afterwards, Lawrence, Tristan, and Miles carried Richard’s body, said a small prayer, and dropped the body off the balcony of the master bedroom. When it hit the backyard ground, six of the dead swarmed it. They tore it apart with fingers and teeth, devoured parts of Richard greedily and wildly, and within minutes, Richard’s body was a mishmash of blood, organs, bones, and skin. Lawrence forced himself to watch the gruesome scene. It was to motivate him, strengthen his will and stomach, and give him the drive, the need to protect everyone close to him.
He didn’t want anyone else in the house to die that way.
Kasey
That night, Kasey sat with Miles and Helena at the dining table to give Therese a briefing on house rules and the current living situation. Kasey didn’t trust Lawrence or Sonya to conduct it. Lawrence was, at times, hard to take seriously and Sonya was pushy and seemingly unfriendly.
“I know you got that pistol your husband gave you,” Kasey said to Therese. “You should only use it for emergencies, for desperate situations. There are a lot of tools here to use as weapons, if the time comes.”
“I know,” Therese said. “The gun’s loud, it attracts them. I know nothing about firearms other than how to shoot, but Lawrence and Richard had the same type—well, those guns looked the same to me. Richard did keep spare bullets in his pack, maybe Lawrence could use some.”
“That’s some luck for us,” said Miles, “though we haven’t had need for guns here until today. I hope it stays that way.”
“Food must be rationed,” Kasey continued, “so everyone gets three spoonfuls per meal. One in the morning, one in the afternoon, and one in the evening. You’re gonna lose a whole lot of weight, but we got to eat sparingly. As for water, we have tons of bottles around the house, but still, everyone only gets three and a half glasses per day. One with each meal and the half you can drink on your own time. If you feel the need to bathe, you can only do so once a month with a half-gallon bottle, soap, and a sponge.”
Therese nodded. “Okay.”
“Now, if those things outside don’t kill you, boredom will.” Before, Kasey didn’t feel entertainment was necessary for survival. Lawrence had explained to her that keeping busy meant distractions from grief and insanity. “We got lots of batteries here, and we got radios and portable CD players. There’s a whole lot of music to listen to. The collection is upstairs in the storage room. We also got tons of books, magazines—outdated of course—we got board games, puzzles, paper and pens if you wanna draw or keep a journal of your thoughts. We also got DVDs, but ain’t no place to watch them, so you can just look at the cover if you want.”
Therese smiled. It was a beautiful smile. The first one Kasey had seen on the girl’s face. Therese was indeed a beauty. Plump, heart-shaped lips, and eyes that appeared lost in an endearing way. Kasey knew that soon, Lawrence and Tristan would be after this woman, this newly made widow. Girl, you better watch out for those boys, Kasey wanted to tell her. Those two haven’t got any pussy in months—maybe years or not at all for that Tristan fella. Kasey laughed quietly to herself.
“What’s so funny, Kasey?” Helena said.
“Nothing. What was I saying now? Oh, yeah, I wanted to mention that we’ve been able to catch rainwater. We set about thirty empty bottles out in the balcony, and it should be raining again soon. It’s November, leaves are falling and the sun ain’t gonna stay. The rainwater we use to wash dishes and brush our teeth—we got toothpaste, lots of it. You got any questions, Therese?”
“Yeah,” said Therese, “I do. I know that the toilets don’t work. So, how or where do you use the bathroom?”
“We have a lot of toilet paper,” said Miles. “It’s a necessity.”
“Miles,” said Helena, “I don’t think that answers her question. We have a bucket in each of the three bathrooms, Therese. I know it’s not a five-star hotel, but it’s better than pooping in the middle of the kitchen.”
Kasey giggled. “We got a bucket in each of the three bathrooms. After each use, I repeat, Therese, after…each…use, fling that sucker out from the upstairs window, the one facing the side of the house. Not the one facing the front of the house, because we still plan on going out the front someday. You got that, girly?”
Therese smiled again. “Yes, I do.”
Kasey gave Miles a hard look. “You got that, Miles?”
“It wasn’t me that one time,” said Miles.
“It was more than just once, dear,” said Helena. “You have to empty it out after each use, and don’t try to blame it on Charlene again.”
“What?” Miles’s eyes went wide, as he attempted to feign the look of surprise and confusion. “It was Charlene that time. She forgot to empty the poo bucket”
“Miles, I heard your grunting that night in the bathroom. At first, I thought it came from one of those things—I thought one of those things found its way into the house—I was so frightened.”
“Um…No, it must’ve been Charlene. I don’t know what you’re talking about, woman, and we’re getting quite far from the topic right now.” He looked to Therese. “So Therese, have you chosen a roo
m here yet?”
Therese shook her head. “Not yet.”
“There are five rooms in this house,” said Miles. “Helena and France occupy the room at the end of the hall upstairs, the rest of the girls sleep in the downstairs room, and Lawrence, Tristan, and I each take a couch down here. One room you’ll recognize as a storage room, so you don’t wanna take that, not a lot of space. You and Joni can take the other room, or the master bedroom even, no one uses that one either.”
“I’ll have to think about it with Joni.”
“Do you have any other questions?” said Kasey.
“I do.” Therese folded her arms on the table, to Kasey it looked like an uneasy fidget. “What’s going to happen when all the food runs out?”
Joni
Joni sat in the corner of one of the upstairs bedrooms, in between a bed and a shelf that held numerous graphic novels and a few books on history and psychology. The room was unlit, but she didn’t mind the dark anymore. She was on the carpet with her knees to her chest and arms wrapped around her legs, pretending she was a snail in its shell. She wasn’t sure how long she was in that position, staring at the wall and forgetting to blink occasionally. It must’ve been an hour or two. She was no longer upset about what had happened today, but she felt like hiding. She would disappear if that were possible. Her stepmother Therese was downstairs talking to the black lady and the married couple. Earlier, Charlene and France had invited Joni to play some game that involved stacking small blocks of wood and taking them apart one by one until it fell apart. Joni had politely told them “I don’t want to be bothered right now.” Charlene then offered Joni a can of fruit cocktail. Joni had no appetite, yet she would’ve loved to eat the fruit cocktail anyway. She refused the treat, feeling too shy to accept it from Charlene. She liked Charlene, the teenaged girl was funny and friendly and reminded Joni of a cartoon character. The other girl France looked mean at first because she didn’t smile, or never seemed to smile, but she was also friendly. Everyone in the house was nice to Joni, and she knew it was because they felt sorry for her. The man who shot her dad hadn’t spoken to her yet, hadn’t even apologized for what he did. Charlene had told Joni, “It’s because he’s scared of you.” That made Joni think. Why is he scared of me? I’m just a little girl.
Flesh Ravenous (Book 1) Page 3
