by Nick Clausen
“I don’t think it has,” Dan cuts him off. “I think they left for something else.”
“Like what?” Liv asks.
“Like something more interesting. We know they can be lured away if they sense something more accessible.”
William throws out his hands. “You think a busload of naked chicks covered in barbeque sauce just rolled by out here? Come on, man. We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere. We’re definitely the closest prey.”
Dan bites his lip. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Yeah, me too,” William says. “I don’t like shit I don’t understand.”
“So, what do we do?” Liv asks again.
Silence for a moment, as they all exchange looks.
“We could check the cameras.”
They all turn towards Dennis. Liv almost forgot the tall, chubby guy was even there. He’s standing as though he needs to pee, moving in place and looking from one to the other.
“Maybe … maybe we can see what made them leave.”
“That’s a great idea,” William says. “You know how to do it?”
Dennis nods. “I think so.”
“Great, go check it out then. We’ll stay here.”
Dennis looks to Birgit, and Liv sees her sending him a nod, as though giving him permission to go. Dennis then runs inside the house.
They begin waiting.
Dan picks up a handful of gravel, letting it fall to the ground one piece at a time. The sound of the pebble falling is swallowed up by the night. It’s not that cold, yet Liv finds herself shaking.
Dan drops the last pebble, then turns to look at the others. “I don’t like this,” he says again. “I think we should go back inside.”
“Why?” William says, looking around. “No one’s here.”
“Is that a car?” Birgit says, pointing towards the road.
Liv turns and sees a pair of headlights a few miles up road. The car is holding still, engine apparently idling.
“It is,” William says. “So what? It’s too far away to have anything to do with it.”
“I agree with Dan,” Liv says, shivering. “Something’s wrong. I think even the dog feels it.”
The German shepherd has raised its hair all the way down the back and seems to be staring at something by Holger’s garage.
“What is it, boy?” William asks, squinting to see if anything is hiding over there.
There’s a sound of gravel crunching. Then a figure moves in the shadows. Ozzy barks as the person comes into view. His raspy voice cuts through the dog’s barking: “You can put down that rifle now, son.”
TWENTY-NINE
Dennis runs all the way down to the bunker.
For some reason, his heart is pounding away, and it’s definitely not just from the running. He feels very tense. Anxious. Even more so than he’s been feeling ever since Mom started doing the ritual.
He opens the metal door and goes into the control room, headed straight for the monitors.
The ones showing the courtyard are all on—one of them is still turned slightly to the side, so that the far corner with the well cover isn’t showing. Dennis forgot to adjust it back into place, so he does it now.
On the other ones, he can see Mom and the rest of them standing around, waiting.
Dennis has been messing around with Holger’s security system a fair bit, getting familiar with it. Despite Dennis not being particularly clever, he’s good at computers, and it takes him less than a minute to navigate to the recent recordings. He pulls them up, goes back an hour, then hits play.
The dead people suddenly appear in the courtyard, clambering at the windows. The film shows him nothing else of interest, though.
He puts it on fast-forward. The minutes glide by in seconds. The zombies move around a little, but other than that, nothing happens.
Then, suddenly, a car appears.
Dennis’s heart jumps, and he fumbles to put the video back at regular speed.
It’s a big, black van, and it has its headlights off, so that it’s hard to see in the darkness. It moves into the courtyard slowly, as though sneaking its way. It moves closer to the zombies until they notice it, then it stops. They begin leaving the house one by one and instead gather around the car. They even come from the other side of the house, as they must sense new prey has arrived.
Then, when all the dead people have turned their attention to the car, it begins to move backwards very slowly. It’s barely visible in the middle of the herd; it looks like someone dropped a piece of candy and ants are crawling all over it.
The van heads out of the courtyard, slowly drawing all of the dead people along with it. It keeps going until it and all of the zombies are out of sight.
Dennis just sits there for several seconds, staring at the video, waiting for what comes next.
Nothing does, though.
Dennis’s brain works very hard to figure out what he just saw. Someone came in a van and used themselves as bait to lure away the zombies. But why? It didn’t make sense. And that van—wasn’t there something familiar about it?
Dennis rolls the video back to the point where the van has just showed up. He hits pause. Leans forward. Stares intently at the van.
There is something familiar about the van.
And then it clicks into place.
Dennis gasps out loud.
THIRTY
A man in a motorized wheelchair comes rolling out of the shadows by the garage. He’s holding a shotgun at hip-level, pointing right at William.
William holds up his hands. “Okay, easy now …”
“I said put it down,” the man repeats. “On the ground, please, son.”
“Okay, I’m doing it …” William crouches down slowly to put the rifle on the ground.
Ozzy barks and growls menacingly.
The old guy turns the shotgun at Ozzy, and for a terrible moment, Dan is certain the man will pull the trigger. He even braces himself for the gunshot. But he doesn’t.
Instead, he tells William: “Get your dog under control, son, or I’ll have to shoot him.”
“Ozzy!” William commands. “Heel!”
Ozzy comes to his side, and William grabs him by the collar.
“That’s one well-trained dog,” the old man says, sounding almost jovial. “You know, I had a dog like him once.”
“If you’ve come for the house,” William begins.
The man scoffs. “I couldn’t care less about that house, son. Oh, no. I’ve come for something else entirely.”
Ever since the man revealed himself, Dan has been trying to work out who he is and what he’s doing here. It’s somehow clear to him that the man isn’t just some random stranger. Then, as the man swings the rifle over at Birgit, Dan’s suspicion is confirmed as the man’s expression grows darker and he sneers: “Hello again.”
All of their heads turn in unison to stare at Birgit.
“You guys know each other?” William asks.
Birgit doesn’t answer; she just stares at the man in the wheelchair. Dan notices she’s the only one not holding up her hands in a gesture of surrender. Instead, her hands are by her sides.
“Did you bury my brother like you promised me?” the man goes on.
“No,” Birgit says calmly. “I didn’t.”
“I didn’t think you did,” the man says, breaking into a cough, the barrel of the shotgun jumping a little. “Just like you didn’t spare my son’s life. That was also a lie. Instead, you decided to take them both from me.”
“Sounds like something crazy went down here before we came,” William says, addressing the old man. “I just want you to know, we had nothing to do with—”
“If you open that mouth of yours one more time, I’ll have to blow it off your face, son,” the man says in a voice so calm it bears no relations to the words coming out. He doesn’t take his eyes from Birgit one second. “Silas was a bad boy, at least, he could be. He might have deserved what came for him. Hell, h
e probably even brought it on himself. But Jonas …” The man closes his mouth for a moment, and Dan can actually hear his teeth grind. “Jonas never did anything to hurt anybody. He was a good boy. He was my boy. And you killed him.”
Birgit still doesn’t answer the man.
Instead, Dan notices her right hand move ever so discretely to her hip and slide inside her gown.
“Mom!”
Without warning, Dennis comes bursting out of the open front door.
“Mom, it’s them! It’s the people who—”
“Stay back, Dennis!”
Dennis stops dead in his tracks, staring from his mom to the others with a wild expression of fear and confusion. “What’s wrong? Why are you—”
“Hello again, son.”
Dennis spins around and gasps as he sees the old man in the wheelchair. Dennis is standing so that he’s now in the line of fire.
Dan sees Birgit slip out the dagger, keeping it hidden behind her hip. He glances over at William and sees right away that William noticed too. He sends Dan a meaningful look, then shakes his head.
The message is clear to Dan: “Don’t do anything. Don’t get in harm’s way.”
“Good to see you again, son,” the old man says to Dennis.
“Please don’t hurt him,” Birgit says.
The old guy looks at Mom like she’s mad. “I’m not going to hurt him. He didn’t do anything to my boys. You did.”
Then, before anyone else has the time to react, the old guy pulls the trigger.
THIRTY-ONE
Dennis sees the flash.
He hears the shot.
He even feels the air move.
And he sees Mom take a step backwards, then collapse.
But he doesn’t get it. Not really.
He shot Mom, a thought tells him, trying to make him understand.
Someone says something. Dennis can’t make out who. He doesn’t really care, either. He just stands there, staring at his mom lying in the gravel.
A pair of headlights appear as the van comes roaring into the courtyard, breaking hard enough that the gravel goes flying. It honks its horn three times.
Out of the corner of his eye, Dennis sees the old man—the father of Silas and Jonas—roll to the van.
“Dennis …”
Mom’s voice.
Dennis goes to her, kneeling down. And then he finally begins to cry. Once he starts, it’s like a damn breaching within him.
“Oh, Mom … don’t die … please don’t die …”
“I’m so sorry, Dennis … you must forgive me … it’s all my fault … you must understand … I was only trying to help …”
Dennis sobs uncontrollably, he’s barely able to pick up on what Mom is saying. Her face is pale. Her gown is mostly red. She’s shaking all over.
Dennis bends down and grabs hold of her, squeezing her tightly, feeling the warm blood get on his hands.
“I thought I could undo it,” she goes on, talking into his ear, her voice hoarse. “I tried so many times, but … it didn’t work, no matter what I did …”
Dennis just cries and cries as Mom’s final words make their way into his mind.
“Then I finally realized … the only thing that would break the curse … I finally saw it … I should have listened … I should have listened to the doctors …”
A moment goes by before Dennis catches on. He forces himself to stop crying as best he can, and leans back so that he can see Mom’s face through a veil of tears.
“D-doctors?” Dennis croaks. “Wh-what doctors, Mom?”
Mom’s eyes fix on someone behind Dennis. “Make the potion,” she croaks.
Dennis turns his head and looks up at Dan. They’re all standing there, looking at Mom, their expressions ranging from sad to shocked.
Dan nods. “We will. Thank you.”
“It can never be diluted,” Mom says. “Remember that.” Then she looks at Dennis and shakes her head gently as she goes on in a thin voice: “I finally saw it, Dennis … I knew what had to be done … but I couldn’t do it …” Her eyes are like icicles, piercing him. “I couldn’t leave you. I just couldn’t. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”
“I … I forgive you, Mom,” Dennis says, sniffing. “But I don’t know … I don’t know what you mean …”
“You will,” Mom says, reaching up her hand and placing it on his chest. “It’s all in here.” Then her eyes turn from ice to water as they spill over with tears. “I love you, Dennis.”
“I love you too, Mom.”
The words have only just left Dennis’s lips before Mom closes her eyes and exhales deeply, her last warm breath caressing his cheeks, warming the trail of tears flowing from his eyes and dripping from his chin.
“Please don’t go, Mom,” Dennis tries to say, but the words come out as nothing but a sobbing mumble, and instead of telling Mom to stay he grips her even tighter, squeezing her into him with all his force, willing her not to leave.
But she has.
THIRTY-TWO
“They just … they just left,” William hears himself say as he stares out of the driveway after the van has disappeared from sight, leaving the night quiet around them.
“We need to hurry,” Dan says, his tone urgent, and William turns to see him run into the house.
Liv is just standing there, hands to her mouth.
Birgit is lying in the gravel, bleeding from the crater in her gut. Dennis is huddled over her, sobbing. She’s obviously already gone, judging from the way her eyes are staring into nothing, her mouth slightly open.
“They fucked it all up,” he mutters, feeling the last, tiny piece of hope still in his heart evaporate. “She’s gone, and now we’ll never get the cure.”
Liv shakes her head. “I can’t … I can’t believe it … he just … shot her.”
“Oh, Mom …” Dennis cries.
Dan comes running out again, carrying the bowl of water.
“What are you doing?” William asks, thinking for a crazy moment that Dan will attempt to pull Birgit back from death using the not-even-ready potion. “She’s gone, dude. There’s nothing we can—”
William cuts himself short as Dan places the bowl in the gravel next to Birgit and puts her hand over it. It finally dawns on William what Dan is attempting.
“She will be the sacrifice,” Liv says, as it apparently also falls into place for her.
“I’m sorry, Dennis,” Dan says, picking up Birgit’s dagger. “But I have to do this. You might want to look away.”
Dennis barely seems to register what Dan is saying, but he turns his head in the other direction nonetheless.
William has never seen Dan move with such confidence before. He turns Birgit’s wrist up, then places the blade against it, his hands not shaking at all. As he applies even a little pressure, the blade punctures the skin with no difficulty and slides it open. The blood spills out and into the water.
William swallows and wants to look away, but if Dan can be such a tough guy about it, who’s he to pussy out?
“How much you think we need?” Dan says, looking up at William and Liv. “Any idea?”
Liv—still wide-eyed—shakes her head. “She didn’t say.”
“It can’t be all of it,” William says, clearing his throat and struggling to sound unaffected. “Maybe that’s enough now.”
The water in the bowl has already turned thick and red and has almost reached the top.
Dan removes Birgit’s hand and places it gently on the ground. He then places his own hand on Dennis’s shoulder. “I’m very sorry, Dennis.”
Dennis looks up briefly, his face wet from tears and snot. “She’s dead …”
“I know. We’ll try and make sure she didn’t die for nothing.”
Dennis looks down at the bowl, apparently only now realizing what Dan has been doing.
Suddenly, Ozzy starts barking.
“They’re coming back!” Liv shouts.
William jolts
back into action, running instinctively for the rifle.
“Get back inside!” Dan says, getting up while carrying the bowl carefully. “Liv, get Dennis!”
William picks up the rifle and spins around towards the driveway, expecting to see the van come rolling back into the courtyard. Instead he sees a horde of zombies.
“Oh, shit!”
Dan is already headed for the front door. Dennis lingers by his Mom, Liv tugging at him. “Come on, Dennis! We need to go!”
William runs over to them, kicking Dennis’s leg. It turns out a lot harder than he intended, but it works; Dennis is pulled from his stupor and looks up at him, then over at the approaching undead.
Liv drags him up, and William follows them into the house, slamming the door and twisting the lock before any of the zombies can reach them.
THIRTY-THREE
Dan puts the bowl on the kitchen table, careful not to spill any of the potion. He lets out a breath, then looks at the others.
William and Liv both look back at him, William holding the rifle, Ozzy by his side. Dennis staggers to the wall, leans up against it, then glides down to the floor as though his legs melt below him. His expression is blank. The tears have stopped flowing, at least for now. Dan can’t help but feel a deep sympathy for the poor guy; he knows all too well what losing a parent feels like.
Dennis looks up, meeting Dan’s eyes. “I feel funny,” he mutters.
“You’re okay,” Dan assures him. “You’ll feel that way for some time.”
Dennis looks at him for a bit longer, then lowers his gaze.
Outside, the zombies gather in front of the windows, resuming their endless clawing and pushing against the glass. Through the window where William removed the board, they can see their dead faces staring in at them.
“Well, we got what we needed,” William says, putting the rifle on the table and running a hand through his hair. “Only question is now, does it work?”
They all look at each other for a moment.
“We still have our test subject,” Liv says, pointing to the living room.
Dan nods. “We’ll give it a try.”
