Ravenous

by John Inman

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  More from John Inman

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  About the Author

  By John Inman

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  Copyright

  Ravenous

  By John Inman

  Terrible things have started happening in the tiny town of Spangle, California. Creatures never before seen on the planet explode from the shadows. What was hunter, becomes prey. What was man, becomes… food.

  Seeing his lover torn apart before his eyes, Terry Jones sets out with his little pug, Bruce, to escape the mayhem. Secluding himself in a mountain cabin, he lays low, expecting death at every moment. So lonely he almost welcomes it.

  To his amazement, from the dreadful emptiness of this terrifying new world, where Terry’s every breath might very well be his last, a stranger appears. And beyond all hope, beyond all imagining, love enters the picture yet again.

  With someone at last to hold, and to hold him in return, Terry rediscovers not only his joy for life, but also his fear of death.

  And beyond even that, with Jonas James at his side, he discovers the courage to fight back.

  For my readers who asked for horror… enjoy!

  Chapter One

  TERRY JONES opened his eyes to a bombardment of gentle crystal sounds, clearly orchestrated by Mother Nature herself. The noises were so musical, so unexpected and sweet, they yanked Terry upright in the bed and left him sitting there with an insipid grin on his face. He could sense his eyes bulging out as big as melon balls, and there was some sort of weird little shiver of pleasure crawling up his naked back, which made him wiggle around and damn near laugh out loud.

  Holy crap! The sounds on the air were beautiful! No car horns, no wailing ambulances, no beeping garbage trucks warning toddlers on tricycles to get the hell out of the way before they got smashed flat. No earsplitting rumble of skateboards or atonal rap crap blasting from passing automobiles. Not even any kids screaming to high heaven on their way to school. Just the sweet cacophony of birds and the lazy rush and scrape of shifting tree limbs swaying merrily in the morning breeze, tickling the cabin walls. Above his head, a plunk and then a gentle rumble scrambling from left to right told him a pine cone had been knocked loose from the tree outside and sent bouncing across the cabin’s roof before tumbling over the edge in what was no doubt a graceful swan dive, to land with a muted thud in the dirt below.

  Terry took a second to dig through the blankets to find his sleeping pug, Bruce. Named for Bruce Willis because the dog thought he was hot shit too—and like the real Bruce, sometimes actually was. Bruce was apparently immune to the glorious songs of nature. Terry pulled his limp body out into the morning light and held him up in front of his face to give him a smooch on the belly. Bruce wagged his tail, yawned, snorted a few times in bliss, as pugs are prone to do, then promptly fell fast asleep dangling there in midair.

  “Pitiful old guy,” Terry crooned, tucking the dog carefully back under the covers.

  He gazed around the room, and the second he took in where he was, Terry froze. Memories came flooding back, pelting him like hail. Sharp and icy cold. Horrible memories. Bloody memories.

  His gaze shot up to the ceiling, and he thought back to the sound he had heard only moments before. The pine cone striking the roof and rolling to the ground. Or had it been a pine cone at all?

  He shook the covers off his bare legs and stepped onto the cold floor. His cock, which had been standing at morning attention only moments before, was now shriveled and limp. Warily, holding his breath, Terry walked to the upstairs cabin window and pressed his nose against the glass.

  The forest surrounding his acre of land was in a furious state of motion—tree branches large and small twitching and swaying in the wind. Tall weeds were bowing to one another on the banks of the ditch that bordered Terry’s property in the back. Most of the trees were pine and hickory, with a few towering bridges of honeysuckle draping from one tree to another. Their flowers had not blossomed yet, but the twining vines and leaves of the honeysuckle, as green and vibrant as in high summer, still trembled in the breeze and dripped with morning dew.

  Terry stood stock-still at the window. The chilly air seeping through the glass in front of him laid icy fingers across his bare chest and belly. Someday he would have to put in storm windows, but not today. Or anytime soon more than likely. Not while his little neck of the woods was still under siege.

  And not when every heartbeat might be his last. As that thought struck him, Terry gazed down at himself. At his long fuzzy legs, coated with ginger hair, neatly muscled from years of jogging. At the furry expanse of his chest and abdomen, as lean as his legs, with an added trail of red fuzz leaking down from his navel to lose itself in his nest of coppery pubic hair. His sleeping cock nestled there, one eye peering out at the world as if leery of facing the day.

  That little stroke of whimsy almost made him smile. But the smile was short-lived.

  Terry held his hands up and surveyed his arms and fingers. Checked around his fingernails for torn skin. He slid those same fingers across his face, up and over his beard to his cheekbones, down his neck, along toward the back of his head. Every couple of seconds, drawing his hands back and studying his fingertips for smears of blood in case he might have scratched himself while he slept.

  Nothing. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  He gazed back at the bed, where Bruce had poked his nose out of the covers. He was watching Terry for any signs of movement. Preferably movement toward the kitchen where Bruce might find himself being served breakfast.

  Terry chuckled watching him, made a motion for the dog to follow, then set off toward the staircase leading down from the cabin’s loft where he kept his bed. Bruce flew out from under the blankets in hot pursuit, bright-eyed now but still yawning. His stubby tail wagged in anticipatory bliss while the toenails on his four little feet tippy-tapped across the icy floor.

  With a grunt as stiff muscles stretched, Terry poured a bowl of kibbles from the fifty-pound bag under the kitchen sink. He set the bowl on Bruce’s blue blankie by the kitchen stove, then refilled Bruce’s water dish while the pug burrowed his snout into his food and all but inhaled it to extinction.

  With his roomie taken care of, Terry filled a teakettle for instant coffee and placed it on the gas stove, then set about preparing his own breakfast. Eggs over easy and bacon, fried in a skillet on the burner next to the teakettle. He would have liked a baked potato nuked in the microwave and smothered with butter, but he was too lazy to fix it. Instead he made do with cold cereal buried beneath half a cup of sugar for dessert. Terry had a sweet tooth, and donuts were a little hard to
come by these days.

  While he ate he listened to the mockingbirds who always perched on the chimney above his hearth, sending their voices spilling out across the grate to fill the cabin with song. Of course, the song was one step short of caterwauling, but Terry was used to it. Once in a while, Bruce growled at the racket coming through the flue, but on the whole, Terry figured he was used to it too.

  His gaze wandered to the stack of galvanized fence posts piled clumsily against the cabin wall by the back kitchen door. The posts had been glommed from a now defunct home improvement store down the mountain, not too far from the city limits of Spangle, California. Terry’s hometown. Since the invasion came, since the beasts had spewed up from the guts of the earth or spilled out of the depths of somebody’s fucking nightmare—wherever the hell they came from—Spangle had become little more than a deathtrap. A deathtrap Terry Jones had been lucky to escape. So far.

  But he wouldn’t think about that now.

  He nibbled on bacon and soaked up the egg yolk from his plate with the last of the stale bread before returning his gaze to the fence posts in the corner.

  The posts were metal, six feet long, perhaps three inches wide and a quarter inch thick. Strong and unbendable. They were pierced with countless holes, intended for the convenient attachment of fencing wire. But Terry wasn’t interested in fencing wire. Fencing wire wouldn’t fill his needs at all. No, Terry was in the process of using the heavy metal posts to reinforce the outside of the cabin. This included the windows and doors, where he placed the posts like security bars, nailing them two inches apart so he could still see outside but close enough that nothing outside could make its way in. When he was finished with the outside, he would line the walls and ceiling inside as well.

  As a second line of defense should the first line fail, Terry was using the metal posts to reinforce the walls downstairs in what he had come to call the blood room. The blood room had once been a fruit cellar, but those days were long gone, Terry told himself with a nasty little smirk aimed at the fence posts in the corner. The blood room was there as a last retreat. A final chance at survival. Sort of like a last-ditch bomb shelter, except nuclear bombs were actually the least of his worries. His and everybody else’s in and around Spangle. These days they were more concerned with flying beasts with fangs and claws and an unquenchable thirst for human blood. And who could ever have seen that coming?

  Terry checked the calendar on the wall beside his chair. He reached over and filled yesterday’s square—August 2—with a fat black X, using the Sharpie hanging beside it on a string. There. It was official. He had survived another day and night. Ruffling through the pages of past months, he counted back to May 3. Exactly three months ago. That was the day he hightailed it out of Spangle and entrenched himself here in his and Bobby’s vacation cabin on this measly little mountain in the backcountry, three miles out of town. It had always been a refuge before, this cabin. A place for them to relax. Where they could get away from work and spend quality time together, just the two of them. Plus Bruce.

  Now, of course, Bobby was no more. He had been taken only hours after they fled the town, as so many fellow residents before them had been taken. On that day, when Bobby was wrenched from Terry’s side and swept away in the horror, Terry knew he would never go back to their house in town. Not as long as the horror kept escalating. He had no choice but to carry through with the plans he and Bobby had made to escape the slaughter. So with little more than a broken heart, the clothes on his back, and his beloved little dog, Terry slunk off into oblivion. And now, three months later, here he still was. Hiding out. Cowering, to be more precise. Aching not to be alone anymore, but unable to leave his tiny mountain, the only place he felt safe enough now to call home, and the last place in the world he should really be at all.

  He had burglarized a few out-of-business clothing stores since leaving town, sneaking back to replenish his wardrobe. He had looted abandoned grocery stores for canned goods to keep himself alive. But there was little he could do about his broken heart. With time, it had healed a bit. But there were still days—and nights—when Terry all but crumbled under the grief, the weight of missing Bobby. There were so many things he missed. The sound of Bobby’s voice across the breakfast table. His gentle snores in the bed at night. The way Bobby inevitably rolled into Terry’s arms in the wee hours of each and every morning, his mouth and hands seeking comfort, his sleep-warm skin nestling close until Terry, his own hunger awakened, sought Bobby’s warmth as well.

  They had been good for each other, him and Bobby. Their love had been real. As real as the creatures that tore Bobby away three months back on this very day. As real as the creatures that would tear Terry away today if he wasn’t careful. If he wasn’t diligent.

  Once again, Terry searched his hands for any little cut or tear. Any seepage of blood, no matter how minute. He touched his face and checked his fingertips for smears of blood. His beard was getting long, he noticed, since he had stopped shaving. No sense asking for trouble if shaving wasn’t necessary. One slip of the razor and they would be on him in a flash. He didn’t doubt it for a minute.

  Them. Terry shuddered, thinking back. Out of nowhere, filling Terry’s mind, was the sound of Bobby’s final scream as he was torn to pieces in front of him.

  Terry’s fork clattered to the floor, and he closed his eyes, trying to squeeze the memory away, to head it off before it took hold of him completely.

  It refused to budge, of course. It always did. The memory stayed lodged right behind his eyes, where it always lay in wait. Lurking. Hoping to catch him off guard.

  As it just had.

  God, Terry missed his old life. And oh sweet Jesus, how he hated that fucking memory!

  So he plucked it from behind his eyes with trembling fingers and placed it on a dark shelf at the back of his mind. Tucking it away. Burying it among the flotsam, back where the shadows were deepest. It took every ounce of willpower he possessed, but he managed it.

  For now.

  Chapter Two

  IT WASN’T that cold—this wasn’t the Sierras after all. It was only a small 2500-foot peak in the backcountry of San Diego County. But cold was the least of Terry’s worries anyway.

  While he had only seen the creatures from great distances, swarming high in the sky, since he moved to the mountain three months earlier, it didn’t mean they weren’t a threat. So he took precautions, as he always did when going outside.

  He donned leather gloves to protect his hands and pulled on a thick leather jacket, supple with age, to shield his arms and torso from any accidental scratch or skin tear. To go along with the biker’s jacket, he wore heavy blue jeans and boots below the belt. Despite the low temperature, he smeared bug repellant over his face and neck. For all he knew, it would take nothing more than a mosquito bite or a beesting to release into the air the scent of his pheromones or his DNA or whatever the hell the beasts were attracted to in human blood. The simple fact was this: once your scent was out there, once they whiffed your blood and zeroed in on your location, you were as good as dead.

  Funny thing, though. Animal blood didn’t draw them. He learned that interesting fact on a day shortly after he came to the mountain when Bruce tore his side on a protruding nail. As soon as Terry noticed, he had rushed them both into the fruit cellar, now the blood room—or would be when he finished reinforcing it. He had cowered there waiting for the attack he was sure would come. He sat in the corner in the dark, cradling a terrified Bruce and aiming a shotgun at the stairway leading to the cabin above, hoping to at least blow a few of the fuckers to smithereens before they swarmed through the trapdoor and ripped them to shreds.

  Strangely enough, the attack never came.

  Terry tried other traps then, other baits, testing to see what blood the beasts found yummy. He shot a squirrel and left its bloody carcass in the yard. Nothing. Back in the days when he could still find fresh meat in the markets in town, he had thrown out raw hamburger to see if that attr
acted them. It didn’t. Once, when the weather was warmer, he ran across a rattlesnake and chopped its head off with a hoe. Nothing.

  He thought back to all the attacks he had witnessed in Spangle before he fled. Horrible attacks. Mind-wrenching terror. Violent, bloody moments he knew he would never, ever forget. But not one of them involved any living creature other than a human being. Be it man, woman, or child.

  The women between puberty and menopause had the worst of it. For it was those women whose very bodies betrayed them, their menstrual cycles acting like dinner bells.

  The creatures had risen up almost six months earlier. As soon as it was understood what triggered the creatures’ hunger, women had stayed hidden, aided by their spouses or friends. Safely locked away in basements and windowless garrets, in cupboards, closets, or honest-to-God bomb shelters—what few there were. But now, months later, most of those women—the ones who had not already fled the area completely—had been snatched away. Snatched away because given enough time, the creatures always found a way in. Once they knew where you were, and once they smelled your blood, they never gave up. Ever.

  They were large enough and determined enough to burst through glass windows. If swarming in great enough numbers, they could tear and claw and batter their way through doors or ceilings or even walls. If a structure had a weakness, they would sniff it out.

  And their hunger never abated. Their fury never calmed. They were endlessly ravenous.

  Yet with all their need to feed, with all their endless seeking of human blood, the creatures had their weaknesses too.

  For one thing, sound did not attract them. No matter how loud or how strident the noise, it did not draw them. Perhaps they had no organs for hearing at all. Terry didn’t know. He had never had a dead specimen to examine, and even if he had, he wouldn’t know what to look for. He had no medical training. He wasn’t a veterinarian or a zoologist. He was a notary public and a substitute grade-school teacher, for pity’s sake. That was his area of expertise. What did he know about impossible creatures from God knows where? How could he be expected to understand what might turn out to be the key to the survival or the extinction of the human race?