by Brian Hodge
“Good.”
“If we survive till tomorrow, we can better fortify this place.”
“Sure.”
“We’ve got water now, by the way.”
“You may actually be useful after all.”
“You want the lights off? Doesn’t matter to me.”
“No, I don’t want them off. Probably better if they are, though.”
He flipped on his flashlight, then extinguished the two lanterns. He knelt next to her, leaned down, and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m sure I’ll be awake the rest of the night. You sleep as much as you can. I’m here with the guns, and you’re safe. Nothing’s going to bother you.”
She gave him a smile tinged with sadness. “Thank you, Russ. But I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep again.”
“Try.”
“If I do, you’ll wake me if Doug and Carolyn get here?”
“Sure.” He rose, went to his chair, and sat down with his rifle propped against the windowsill. He adjusted a few of the slats so he could see out without opening them all the way, then switched off the flashlight. The darkness fell over them like a cerement.
Her voice drifted to his ears. “If you want them, those crackers and caramels are in my coat pocket. You’re welcome to them.”
His stomach felt horribly empty, but the thought of food still made him slightly queasy. “Maybe later,” he said. “Or maybe we can have them for breakfast.”
“Okay.”
He sat back in the rocker, which creaked slightly. To keep from disturbing her, he sat as still as he could, his eyes locked on the narrow gaps in the blinds. His ears, sensitized by his near-total deprivation of sight, picked up her low, regular breathing, and he thought she might have actually drifted right off to sleep. He found himself remarkably comfortable in the old chair, and a couple of times, his own eyes closed and barely opened again when he willed them to.
Damn, he wanted a drink.
He let himself focus on the annoying absence of good scotch rather than anything else. No way could he contemplate the future; not tomorrow, not even the next hour. He didn’t dare think about the lovely young woman lying in the darkness just a few feet away, or about the things that lurked in the evil night, very possibly searching for her, or the fact that their friends had not shown up by now. Only screaming insanity could result from thinking about anything other than how very damn badly he wanted a scotch.
Scotch on the rocks. Scotch with a twist. Scotch with a splash of spring water.
Christ on a bicycle.
Something flashed in the darkness outside the window. Instantly, his heart a jackhammer, he leaned forward, rifle in his hands. He peered desperately through the onyx glass, cocked his ears to catch the faintest noise anywhere in the night. The low breeze still whispered softly past the panes, but not one other sound rose above it.
One of those things in the sky, he thought. A long way off. A long, long way off.
Endless minutes passed, and nothing else appeared. The night remained as empty as the void of outer space, and eventually, he began to relax again. He sat back in his chair, which creaked softly again.
“What’s wrong, Russ?”
He glanced into the darkness in her direction. “Nothing. Nothing at all. Sorry if I disturbed you.”
“You didn’t.”
“Okay.”
Minutes of silence almost convinced him that she had relaxed and maybe drifted off again.
“Russ?”
“Yes?”
“If they come, you won’t be able to stop them.”
“Probably not.”
“Come hold me.”
His heart froze and his stomach fluttered. He propped the rifle against the windowsill again, rose from his chair, and carefully made his way toward her bed. When his foot touched the box springs, he knelt slowly, and he heard her shifting in her sleeping bag. One of her hands touched his arm; he took her hand and let her guide him onto the mattress. He heard her unzipping her sleeping bag, and he took a moment to shed his coat and shoes. Then he carefully maneuvered himself next to her, slipping one arm beneath her head as she made room in the warm sleeping bag for him to slide his legs inside. She pressed herself close to him, wrapping an arm around his chest and one leg around his. He smelled the sweet, citrus scent of her hair and felt the soft caress of her breath on his throat.
They lay in each other’s embrace for several minutes, comfortably warm, his heart still pounding but less troubled than it had been for seemingly forever. Finally, she pulled away from him a little, letting a draft of cool air pass between their bodies. Then her lips touched his, delicately and tentatively. She pressed her body hard against his, and their lips locked together, their tongues exploring each other’s with almost desperate intensity.
He rolled so that his body covered hers, and one of his hands closed on her breast, soft and firm beneath the ribbed fabric of her sweater. Their hands roved high and low, first tenderly, then more passionately, one’s lips never leaving the other’s. As her pelvis began to thrust against his, he felt himself hardening unmercifully behind the constricting denim. One of her hands slipped between their bodies and unfastened her jeans, and she shifted her hips rhythmically back and forth to work her way out of them. Moving her fingers to his belt, she deftly unbuckled it, and then began to work at his fly. He lowered one hand to her rounded rear end and gently massaged it, slipping his fingers beneath her panties and gradually working them farther between her legs. She moaned softly, breathing into his mouth, and he shifted his head, touching his lips to the soft flesh just beneath her ear and tracing the line of her jaw with his tongue. Now she had worked his jeans down over his hips and was pulling him harder against her, again wrapping her legs around his, entrapping him with her body.
Her lips went to his ear, and with cruel coldness, she said, “If they come for us now, the .38 is right beside me.”
He looked into the dark space that concealed her eyes. “What if we survive another fifty years?”
Her fierce grip on him relaxed and became tender again. “Then we’ll remember this for as long as we live.”
Day Four
Chapter 18
It was still pitch dark when Copeland opened his eyes again. He was holding Debra in a protective embrace, one hand tucked warmly between her legs. She was breathing softly, rhythmically, her head cradled by his shoulder and biceps. He had no idea how long he’d been asleep, what time it was, or how long since he’d moved; his arm had gone numb, so he carefully shifted position, freeing his arm so that blood could begin flowing to his fingers again. Cold air slipped spitefully into the new space between them, and she stirred restlessly but did not wake. He shivered, his body still enervated from their coupling. He would have been content to lie there with her endlessly but for a low scratching sound on the mattress, which he soon realized was the hair on the back of his neck standing on end.
Remaining perfectly still and listening, he heard only Debra’s low breathing and the clamorous thumping of his own heart. Not a speck of light broke the perfect darkness. Except for the insistence of his trusty internal alarm, nothing seemed out of place around them.
The wind. The wind had finally stopped blowing.
Maybe that’s all it was.
He tried to make out Debra’s face just in front of his, but even that was impossible. In spite of his growing disquiet, he could not help feeling exhilarated after having made love to her so fully and completely. He had never experienced such a bonding with any woman; certainly not the lunatic Megan. And her sharing with him…so deep, so passionate.
Was this really love?
Did it matter anymore?
A rustling sound somewhere outside dragged his attention to the window, just above their bed. For a second, he thought he saw the blinds limned with pale blue, but total darkness quickly returned. A trick of his barely awake eyes? He sat up slowly, trying to avoid disturbing Debra, cocking his head to listen further. No new sound.
Hell, even if he had seen a light, it might have been a reflection from many miles away.
Something scraped the wooden wall, close to the window.
In all the time the wind had been blowing so hard, not a single tree branch had struck that part of the house.
Now he wished he had taken the time to rig some sort of trap or alarm downstairs in case an intruder managed to get inside. Unable to stop himself, he slid out of the sleeping bag, felt for his flashlight and Ruger until he found them, then crawled to the window. He lifted one slat of the blinds an inch or so and peered into the darkness, praying to see nothing. At first, that was all he saw.
Then, some distance below, a tiny blue speck appeared and began to drift slowly toward him, like a luminous bubble on a lazy current of air. A second bubble winked into existence a short distance from the first; the two jiggled oddly, then gradually expanded as they drew steadily nearer to his window. His finger tightened on the trigger of his gun, but he realized he was mesmerized, rooted to his spot by an expectant dread, wholly incapable of moving his hands or feet. As the pair of luminous globes came to rest on the other side of the glass, he thought he saw strange, swirling shapes within them, as if they were lenses that revealed a view of some other place: a world so dark and distant as to be beyond the view of any mortal eyes before his. An irresistible power had seized his soul and was dragging it from his body, and before he realized what was happening, the Ruger slipped from his fingers and thunked heavily to the floor.
The sound jolted him to his senses, and he tried to withdraw from the window, only half-succeeding; but in that moment, he found the strength to lift the flashlight, switch it on, and with shaking hands, aim its beam through the terrible gap in the blinds.
The light fell upon an almost human-looking skull, a yard wide, its tooth-studded jaw half-open in a sardonic grin, its eyes—the electric blue bulbs—nestled within a pair of deep, black cavities. At the touch of the beam, the pulsating, wormlike body began to glow like molten gold, revealing its immense size—easily bigger than a horse. It hovered on broad, moth-like wings that beat dizzyingly, its multitude of long, bony legs twitching erratically beneath the thick, tapered body. In moments, the thing had become a mass of living flame, so brilliant that Copeland’s eyes could barely withstand it. He fell backward onto his buttocks, one hand, by chance, coming to rest on the butt of his gun. He snapped it up and aimed it at the window.
Now Debra was sitting up, still half-draped in the sleeping bag, her face striped with golden light. “What the…”
He pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession. The Venetian blinds danced and the windowpane exploded, and a shrill, ululating screech rang out, louder than the gunshots. The piercing cry quickly dwindled as the wounded horror fled, and soon, darkness once again filled the room, broken only by the quivering beam of the flashlight.
Debra was out of the bed in an instant, pulling on her jeans. “God, they’ve already found us. There’s no place we can hide.”
Copeland cautiously moved toward the window and swept the ruined blinds aside. No hint of light now marred the darkness, but he heard, in the far distance, the faint suggestion of an insect-like chirping.
“I don’t guess there’s any point anymore,” he said. “They know where we are. We know they’re coming. Maybe this is where it all ends.”
She was just fastening her pants when her hands froze; her eyes locked on his and began to blaze. “You’re proposing we go down fighting?”
He took a deep breath and nodded. “We go down fighting.”
She took a few steps toward him, reached out, and clasped his biceps. “Remember what you said. Whatever happens—they can’t take me alive. Please.”
With a sigh, he nodded. “I’m trying not to think about that. But if it comes down to it…I know what I have to do.”
She leaned close to him, and her lips found his, and his arms encircled her body tenderly, protectively. When she drew back, he saw that her eyes were glistening with tears. “We take out as many of them as we can, right?”
“As many as we can.”
He found his own clothes and quickly dressed. Knowing it wouldn’t matter, he lit the lanterns, then made sure all the guns were fully loaded, with extra ammo close at hand. A low breeze again began to whisper outside the window, and now he was certain he heard a distinctive click-click-clack, somewhere not very far away. He went to the window that faced the front of the house, opened the blinds, and tugged the sash up.
Through the trees, perhaps still miles away, a number of brilliant, glowing globes of various colors traced erratic, swirling patterns in the sky.
Incredibly beautiful, in their own way.
“They’re coming, aren’t they?”
He nodded. “They’re coming.”
“What time is it?”
He glanced at his watch. “4:50. Still a good hour to daylight.” As he looked at her, he realized he could see tiny, dancing reflections in her dark eyes. The enormity—the terror—of what they were about to face together suddenly nearly floored him. His feelings for her, the memory of the warmth they had shared, the unequaled fulfillment he had found with her, seized his body like a tidal surge. If, at the very end, they found themselves at the mercy of those creatures, would he be able to save her by committing the unthinkable?
Something downstairs thunked heavily.
“Russ,” she said, her face pale, shadowed with sadness. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”
He nodded, barely able to find his voice. At last, he managed to whisper, “I love you.” But she did not hear him.
Click-click-clack…click-click-clack…
It was right outside the rear window. He didn’t see anything yet, but he could feel the nearby, unearthly presence like a frigid draft. More chattering, chirping sounds clambered in through the front window, and then a pale, golden light danced off the nearby tree trunks. He pressed himself against the wall, rifle at the ready, while Debra positioned herself between the rear window and the door to the downstairs. He had tucked the Ruger into his belt, and he touched its handle, finding it both reassuring and dreadful. She glanced at him, her eyes as defiant and determined as ever, and he knew that their assailants would pay dearly before the end came.
Another heavy bang thundered up from the downstairs; Copeland moved to the door and placed his ear against the wood to listen. At first, he heard nothing, but then—overhead—something clattered loudly like hail on shingles, and several streaks of light zoomed past the rear window.
CLICK-CLICK-CLACK!
With a sharp crash, the remaining glass in the rear window shattered and rained over the floor, and both Copeland and Debra swung their gun muzzles toward the dark abyss. He could see nothing, no movement at all, and he swore softly in frustration. Better the creatures should rush in and reveal themselves rather than toy with them.
Another crash, and something smashed the front window, ripping the Venetian blinds, leaving their tattered remains to dangle suggestively in front of the open portal. Now Copeland fired blindly into the darkness, the report hammering his eardrums in the enclosed space. A fiery orange light flickered mockingly on the trees for a few seconds, then all went dark again.
For a full minute, nothing happened. Not a single sound, not a glittering spark outside the house. The stillness grew steadily more burdensome, more taxing on his nerves, for he knew that relaxing his guard would likely spell instant death. The Lumeras were playing them, preying on their terror as sadistically as any depraved human.
Then, his internal alarm shrieking in his brain, Copeland felt something hot on the back of his neck; spinning toward the rear window, he saw two glowing blue bubbles within their deep black sockets, and something red and frothing began dribbling over the windowsill. As the gooey substance streamed to the floor, smoke began to curl from the wooden planks. A scrabbling sound alerted him to something at the front window; he spun and saw two bony, clawed appendages grasping t
he sill. A moment later, a knobby, oversized skull began to push its way slowly through the tattered blinds. He called to Debra, “I’ve got the one at the front. Shoot the other one!”
The gunshots simultaneously ripped through room, the smoke from the muzzle briefly obscuring his view. He thought he heard a sudden metallic crash, but with the ringing in his ears, he could not be certain. Then, at the corner of his eye, through a veil of smoke, he saw a distinct movement; before he could swing the Remington around to meet it, something hit him solidly in the temple, and he staggered backward, watching in disbelief as the room began to whirl madly around him. He threw out an arm to catch himself, and after a few seconds, his vision began to clear; but as it did, his spirits immediately plummeted, for the door to the stairwell had burst open, and two figures were moving boldly, rapidly toward them.
Levi Barrow held a shotgun up before him, the butt of which he had used to club Copeland in the head. A second, hideously ugly figure was trying to wrest Debra’s rifle from her hands, using his weight to throw her off balance. With a single turn of his wrists, he ripped the gun away from her, and she sagged to her knees with a bitter sob. Joshua reached down quickly, plucked the .38 from Debra’s pocket, and tossed it across the room. Before Copeland could move a finger, he found himself facing the muzzle of Levi’s double-barreled 12-gauge.
A glance at the windows showed them vacant, as if the Lumeras had never existed.
“You the sumbitch that likes to come uninvited to where he don’t belong,” Levi growled, taking a menacing step forward, forcing Copeland back a step. “Lessee how you like it, what say? Now, how about you drop that rifle there. Don’t do nothing funny cause I’ll splatter your head on the wall there before you can move that barrel an inch.”
Copeland’s first impulse was to accept the challenge—to kill Levi where he stood or die in the attempt. But his preservation instincts won the brief struggle, and he slowly lowered the rifle to the floor, never taking his eyes off his aggressor.
