by W. J. Lundy
“What are they doing? Damn it, they need to get inside,” Jacob shouted. “The news said to stay in your homes. Did they not see those men? Don’t this know something is wrong. They need to get back inside!”
Laura went to the window to stand beside him and looked out. “We have to warn them Jacob. They don’t understand, they didn’t experience it like we did—”
Jacob looked at the door and considered going back to the street to reason with his neighbors. “No, it’s too dangerous; I don’t know what they are. Bath salt nutters, zombies, crazed maniacs… Laura, I’m afraid—”
He was interrupted by a loud, blood-curdling scream from down the street. Jacob strained and focused through the shade of the trees lining the road. A woman was running barefoot toward them and screaming, her ripped clothing covered in blood. She ran directly into a man standing by the wrecked cars. He tried to hold the frantic woman, but she struggled and pointed back down the road. She broke free of the man and continued to scream as she ran away.
Jacob stared in horror when he saw what the woman had pointed at; the mob was just as the newscasters described—crazy and bloodthirsty. Their black eyes stared straight ahead and they shrieked as they filled the street from curb to curb, charging fast like a herd of bulls. He saw the neighbors around the cars begin to scatter while they fled back to their homes. The mobs broke up and splintered to follow them up onto porches and crash through doors.
Jacob grabbed his wife, pulled her to the floor and out of sight, and then put a hand over her mouth to muffle her cries. He crawled across the floor with his wife in tow and grabbed his daughter. He brought them both into the en suite bathroom and sat them on the floor, holding them tight and urging them to be quiet.
“It’s them they are here aren’t they?” Laura sobbed.
“I don’t know,” Jacob whispered back.
Jacob waited for the noise to stop, the screaming and the pleas for help to fade. He ripped down the shower curtain and, walking low, moved back into the bedroom. He peeked cautiously through the window and saw that the street was clear. The destroyed cars remained, but there was nothing else left. The mob was gone and, with the exception of the dead man still poking through the window, there were no bodies—even the two men he killed were gone. Tattered clothing littered the street and lawns; blood streaks and drag marks showed where victims had been pulled away. The things, whatever they were, seemed to have consumed everything in their path. They recovered their dead and took away the living.
Why leave the man in the car and take the rest? Jacob asked himself.
Searching, he looked at the neighboring houses. Two of them were destroyed, their windows broken and the doors shattered. He then looked at the house across from him. In the second-story window, he could see his neighbor, Smitty, looking back. He waved to Jacob. Jacob returned his gaze and shook his head sadly before stretching the shower curtain across the window to further block out the light.
