Streets of Blood

by Barry Napier

  Missy’s route took them away from most of the violence and bloodshed, winding behind the suburban areas and business districts of Steeple on an unmarked road. Somewhere in the distance and over the skeletal treetops, they could see the growing glow of the fire consuming the town.

  At last the houses dwindled away to the occasional cabin, and Matt thought they were free.

  He was wrong.

  “What the hell?” Matt said.

  Ahead of them, roughly twenty people were standing along the side of the road. They were mostly crowding the ditch and staying off the pavement. They looked at the van with pure hatred. In the glare of the headlights, Matt saw the unmistakable signs of decay and rot on their faces.

  “They’re blocking the road to the Varner House,” Ophelia said. “It’s right there behind them.”

  With a grimace, Matt pushed the gas down and blasted forward. The first person he struck folded in half as the van collided with him. The next body, a woman of thirty or so, pinged off the front corner of the van like a basketball. She did not rebound as nicely when she struck the road.

  As the crowd scattered around the van, Matt saw the dirt road beyond them. He turned sharply and directed the van onto the thin dirt track. This one was in better shape than the one he had discovered on the other end of town, but not by much. He heard scrapes and scratches along the side of the van as he escaped the crowd of people and sped deeper into the woods.

  The undercarriage sounded like gunfire as it struck the ground repeatedly. The front end dipped and banged along as he tore through the forest, and the shocks groaned. Even when he could no longer see most of the road, Matt barreled on. Missy and Ophelia cried out on occasion, but he ignored them. He didn’t care if he drove the damned van into a tree. He wanted to get as far away from that horde behind them as he could before leaving the van behind.

  The road evened out as he began to see breaks in the trees. He guided the van roughly down the road and out of the forest. He found himself on the dirt track that wound through the field he had dreamed of—that these women had also apparently dreamed of in the same way.

  Looming ahead of them like a tumor on the countryside was the darkened shape of the Varner House. Matt parked the van by the dilapidated white fence with steam rising from the hood and a violent ticking from underneath. Missy and Ophelia stepped out, while Matt pulled the wheelchair out of the back and lifted Gloria into it. He put the book of incantations in her lap again.

  When he stepped back, he noticed that the Alzheimer’s glaze was gone from her eyes. She was awake and alert and staring at the house. A rasp came from her mouth.

  “They put me in the dark, cold ground. I was still alive but made no sound…”

  With that grim chant planted in his head, Matt walked onto the porch of the Varner House for the second time that night. Behind him, he could hear the furious sounds of the people he had just driven through as they tore through the forest after them.

  19

  Matt gave Missy the flashlight when they entered the house, leaving both his hands free for the ax. When they stepped through the front door, Matt noticed how Missy and Ophelia walked towards the staircase automatically. They wasted no time looking around the house or biding their time with curiosity. They knew why they were here and they were ready to get it over with. Matt was about to bend over the wheelchair and ask if Gloria would like him to carry her up the stairs, but she was already rising shakily to her feet with the book clutched in her bony hands.

  They made their way upstairs, and when they reached the top, Matt ducked into the first room on the right. He ran to the window and peered out. He could see the marching shapes of the crowd as they made their way through the field. Some had flashlights, which allowed him to see that others had weapons. It was hard to tell because of the darkness, but he thought there might be as many as fifty people down there now.

  “We need to get started,” Matt said. “They’re coming fast now. Do what you need to do and do it fast!”

  “If you say so,” Ophelia said. There was a quick hitch and laugh at the end of the comment.

  Matt turned to her just in time to see a long blade slashing at his face. He ducked back, but the knife caught him directly under his left eye. He felt blood pouring from the gash right away. He took a step back and something slammed into the back of his head.

  Staggering, he turned to see Missy raising the gore-slicked bat she had taken from the nursing home for another swing.

  “I guess I do have the strength,” she said. “Physical and moral.”

  Matt ducked as she swung again, but something hard smashed into the backs of his knees and he went down, scrabbling for his ax as it bounced across the floor away from him. Gloria stood over him, raising the fireplace poker she’d hit him with. He rolled out of the way, grabbing his ax and hurling it at her just as she brought the poker down at his head.

  The axhead slammed into her chest, nearly chopping her in two. She took two jolting steps backward and crumpled to the ground. The book of incantations fell beside her, dropping from her limp hands.

  Missy and Ophelia stared at him, weapons raised. He felt like a fool.

  “Let me guess,” Matt said. “You don’t want to give the power back at all. You want to keep it. And you need another sacrifice to do it.”

  “Not just a sacrifice,” a girl’s voice behind him whispered. “An innocent sacrifice. But that’s pretty hard to find in Steeple, so they thought naive to the point of stupidity would do just as well.”

  Matt turned his head to see Tara emerging from the darkness. Missy and Ophelia staggered back in terror.

  “That was me once,” Tara said. “Not anymore.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ophelia said.

  Matt looked at her. “I do.”

  Mr. Dark had been leading him along at every step, goading him into helping the women. That was why Mr. Dark had touched the man in the library and reanimated Iris’ corpse. To push Matt along.

  “This was never about restoring your power,” he said. “It was about giving it to her. And to him.”

  “It’s like a Mensa meeting in here,” Gloria croaked, getting to her feet, the axhead still wedged in her breastbone. But it wasn’t her anymore. It was Mr. Dark. “Quick, let’s come up with palindromes.”

  “You promised us,” Ophelia whined to Gloria.

  The thing that until recently was Gloria and was now a vessel for Mr. Dark heaved a sigh so heavy that Matt could hear air escaping from the flesh around the ax in her chest.

  “Okay, maybe not Mensa,” Mr. Dark said. “Is there a club for stupid people? Maybe you all could start one in the few seconds you have before you burn to death.”

  “Burn to death?” Ophelia’s voice was flat with shock.

  There was a noise from outside. Matt backed to the window, then risked a glance away from the women, living and dead.

  The house was surrounded. The mob had doubled—at least—since the last time he’d looked out. An unbroken line snaked across the field to the woods and back to the house, the people leaving empty-handed and returning with sticks, bark, and twigs, all of which was deposited neatly around the foundation.

  Missy had come up next to him. “What is that down there?”

  “Kindling,” Matt said.

  20

  “Isn’t this fun?” Mr. Dark said. “I do love a cookout.”

  Missy dropped to her knees, grabbing the book from the floor and bringing it to her chest like it was a talisman of a childhood she wanted badly to reclaim.

  “We still have time,” she said. “There is one way to make this right, to stop the power from spreading and growing.”

  She glanced at Matt. He understood. So did Ophelia.

  “No!” Ophelia yelled, pointing her finger at Matt. “This bastard was supposed to die and make everything all right, not us. So you can stay here if you like, Missy, but I’m going back to my jet. You can find me at the Four Seasons in Paris.”

/>   Matt made no move to stop her as she ran through the door and down the stairs. After a moment there was a whoosh from outside the window. Seconds later, the first tendrils of smoke began to seep through the gaps in the panes. And the roar of the mob.

  Missy stood by the window, staring out. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “They’ve got her… holding on to her arms and legs… pulling… pulling…”

  Although Matt would have said it was impossible, the grin on the Gloria-thing’s face had gotten even wider. The tips of her mouth reached past her ears, splitting her head in two.

  “Move away from that window,” Matt said, and when Missy didn’t seem to hear, he pulled her back roughly. “Don’t give him the pleasure.”

  “Are you kidding?” the Gloria-thing said. “This is just the curtain raiser. The real pleasure is about to begin.”

  There was a scream from outside and a horrible ripping sound Matt knew he’d never be able to forget. And then the whole house shook as if a tank had rammed into it. Matt grabbed Missy before she was thrown to the floor. The Gloria-thing rode the shaking like a surfer catching a wave.

  “Three down, one to go,” the Gloria-thing said. “You can just feel it busting loose, can’t you?”

  There was something in the air, a restless, pulsing power. It was like standing next to a generator. This was the force that had changed the lives of four women, bringing death and destruction to anyone who got in their way, the force that had blasted out of their control and was driving an entire small town to murder. And the only thing holding it back from spreading out to the whole world was the life of one eighty-six-year-old woman.

  Missy turned to face Matt. “Please.”

  “You can’t kill a sweet old lady in cold blood,” the Gloria-thing prattled. “What kind of person would you be? An evil, hateful, horrible person. Remind you of anyone you know?”

  “You can do this,” Missy said to Matt. “I killed Tara. I tried to kill you. I’m responsible for all the blood on those streets. I’m a shriveled-up old murderer. What are you waiting for?”

  Matt took a quick step to Gloria and seized the ax, tearing it through her sternum. Ribs popped and organs drooped to the floor as her skin tore away, revealing her twisted backbone.

  The Gloria-thing remained standing. “Ouch.”

  Matt raised the ax for the kill. Missy closed her eyes.

  “Wait,” Tara pleaded and pointed to the book still clutched in Missy’s hands. “I deserve to have a life, the one that she took from me. At least say the incantation from the book so that her sacrifice will mean something.”

  “It will,” Matt said and swung the ax, lopping off Missy’s head.

  The Gloria-thing caught Missy’s head and juggled it like a Harlem Globetrotter with a basketball. “I’m surprised at you, Matt. You’ve become positively cold-blooded. There’s hope for you yet.”

  But Matt wasn’t listening. He wheeled around and brought his ax down with all his might on the leather cover of that ancient book and split it in half.

  “No!” Tara shrieked.

  He picked up the two chunks and hurled them out the window, watching as they fell down into the middle of the bonfire below and were devoured by flames. No one would summon this power ever again.

  Matt turned and saw Gloria on the floor, a mangled corpse. Tara had disappeared. But something else had changed. At first he couldn’t understand what it was, but then he knew.

  For the first time since he’d arrived in Steeple, he couldn’t feel the evil in the air.

  It was gone.

  21

  The countryside of Steeple, Virginia, was bathed in an eerie light a few hours before dawn touched it. If someone had been standing on the fourth floor of Steeple Assisted Living and looked out through Missy Crowder’s large picture window, they would have seen the first alien-like glow of blue and red lights as police and ambulances made their way to the Varner property shortly after three thirty.

  No one saw such a thing, though. In fact, no one ever stood in front of any window in Steeple Assisted Living again.

  Shortly after midnight, just as Matt Cahill had walked up the Varner House stairs with three elderly women, someone had set fire to the nursing home. Most of the residents that had survived the catastrophic violence of the night made it out alive. Due to the heroic efforts of the fire department and the police who had not been touched by the odd forces at work that night, the fire that brought Steeple Assisted Living to the ground killed only six people.

  Roughly an hour and a half later, when the police and fire departments got calls alerting them that the old Varner House was in flames, they didn’t act with the same kind of speed and precision they had used in their attempt to save the nursing home. The authorities just stood there with the crowd and watched the house collapse.

  By then, Matt was already miles away from Steeple, driving the van he’d taken to the Varner House. He’d abandon it once he put some distance between him and the damned town.

  Getting out of the house had turned out to be easier than Matt had thought. Apparently, kill-crazed zombies were much better with bats, blades, and guns than with strategic planning, and they had failed to continue the line of kindling around the back of the house, where there was a door.

  As he’d left, he could see people wandering off in the distance, freed from free-flowing evil and heading back to Steeple. Matt wondered what they’d think when they found what was waiting for them. Would they remember the rage that had spurred them to burn and kill? Would they understand that they had done this to themselves? Or would the whole night be gone from their minds, and would they be going home to unexpected loss and horror?

  Matt didn’t much care. Steeple was someone else’s problem now.

  “Beheading old ladies,” Mr. Dark said, sitting beside him in the van, one arm out the open window. He was dressed in a flannel shirt, jeans, and a John Deere cap, sipping a Bud. “That’s mighty heroic, Matthew. What are you going to do for an encore?”

  “Figure out a way to behead you.”

  “That’ll be the day.”

  “It’s coming,” Matt said.

  About the Author

  Barry has had more than 40 short stories and poems published online and print, including a spot in Norton’s Hint Fiction Anthology. He’s had novels and poetry collections published through small press outlets and have six books available through Amazon. Barry enjoys minimalist electronic music, coffee, and irony.