Until now -frozen by fear and unable to react in the mere seconds that it takes for the entire deed to transpire- the rest of the group finally begins to move. Sam heads for the closest doorway to her –which happens to be Vanessa and Zack’s bedroom- and slams the door shut behind her. The rest try their luck with the front door. That group is met with the same ferocious speed that had moments ago brought Zack’s demise. Onan –who had been surprisingly reserved throughout the entire weekend’s events and despite his size, is the first to reach the door and likewise the first to meet the deranged fury of what he once knew as Vanessa. She is in-between him and the front door before he even knows she has moved. With her husband’s windpipe still in hand, she backhands Onan with one mighty blow that sends his three-hundred plus pounds hurling toward the sofa and leaves him limp upon impact with it. Upon sight of this, Brooke and Vinny stop in their tracks and beat a fast retreat to a nearby bedroom.
When faced with a life-threatening situation, for most it is instinctual to flee, for a few, a more proactive response is the natural tendency. Max falls into the latter of these two groups. Still heading for the front door, Max never breaks stride but instead quickens his vector in Vanessa’s direction and plants a hard right across her jaw with all of his momentum. The blood flows heavier from her lip but overall the strike has surprisingly little effect. Max -realizing how entirely out of his control the situation has become and shocked by his lack of effectiveness- attempts his own hasty retreat toward the same bedroom as Vinny and Brooke. Unfortunately, he never makes it.
Chapter 7 – Captive
Now locked away, and with a shrinking sense of safety Vinny and Brooke are trying desperately to open a window. All of the windows in the cabin were painted shut and the rusty latches of these small portholes are proving uncooperative. Vinny grasps a metal lamp from the nightstand and rips its cord from the wall. He grips the neck of it in his hands and swings the heavy base like a baseball bat at the window. One small square of glass in the divided window shatters but the solid wood latticework between the panes does not budge. Vinny swings and beats the window hysterically until the lamp itself is bent in half.
He turns to Brooke out of breath, “What kind of window doesn’t open? What if there was a fire or something?” After a couple of breaths he continues, “This definitely falls into the ‘or something’ category.”
Brooke –replaying Max’s advance on Vanessa in her mind- says, “We have to see if Max is ok.”
“You’re right. It’s quiet out there. Maybe he got her, or got out.”
The two tiptoe to the door. Vinny turns the lock -taking care not to allow it to click- and then the knob. He cracks the door open just enough for sunlight from the front door to creep in. He peeks through.
“The front door is open. He must have made it. Let’s make a run for it. We’ll jump in the car and pickup Max on our way down the hill.”
Brooke nods and grasps Vinny’s hand. As Vinny throws the door open wide, they prepare to bolt for the front exit as a pair of gazelles fleeing from a hungry cheetah might. As they emerge from their dimly lit room, the macabre scene that unfolds before them horrifies and sickens. Vanessa is crouched down on her hands and feet like a silverback gorilla. Her face is fully enveloped and writhing in Zack’s bloody neck, or at least what remains of it.
Brooke brings a hand to her mouth in order to stifle a scream, but an untimely bark from Cujo raises the head of the Vanessa-beast until -through a bloody mask-, her yellowing eyes come across them. Peripherally Vinny can see Onan’s limp body still sprawled across the couch and is reminded that they are no match for her speed. While they stand motionless, hoping not to excite the ire of the beast Vinny takes a brief survey of the room and sees no one else. He’s still contemplating the best course of action when Vanessa slowly rises in a manner more akin to a predator than a woman in her third trimester. She slinks slowly toward them with the body of her partially eaten husband dragging behind her, a visible six-inch section of his spinal column serving as a makeshift handle.
Brooke’s dread has grown to a fever pitch and is pushed pass breaking when Vanessa smiles at her and says, “Stay for dinner.” That guttural gargling of blood and flesh in her throat had the effect of nails on a chalkboard and set Brooke’s own spine and flesh to tingling and crawling.
Vanessa speaks again, deliberately enunciating every word for the Maximum effect, “You were right Brooke. Nothing to worry about. I’ll provide for my baby.”
Just then, Vanessa’s spandex top stretches outward from her abdomen. Vanessa pulls up the bottom of her shirt to reveal a grossly bruised belly with a clear outline of a tiny hand pushing desperately out from inside.
“Oh my God,” Brooke yells out and tears of horror spring to her cheeks.
The outline of the hand is followed by that of a face, and then a mouth can be seen moving beneath the taut skin of Vanessa’s midsection, masticating as though it intends to chew its way free. Vinny and Brooke stand spellbound, glued in horror to the spot that may soon become their deathbeds as their collective sanity continues to unravel before them.
Vanessa, effortlessly raises her husband’s lifeless body to her stomach and drops her eyes to her mercurial abdominal skin while chanting, “I’ll provide for my baby…I’ll provide for my baby.”
Her skin –stretched to capacity- begins to split just below the navel and a brownish gelatinous fluid spews forth, followed by the distinctive form of the tiny little mouth opening and closing like a fish struggling to breath. She presses the flesh of the baby’s dead father against her abdomen and sobs joyfully, “My baby…My baby… Now your father will provide too.”
Brooke –now dizzy with fear and disgust- is reeling. Vinny’s bone crushing grip on her hand is the only thing keeping her upright. Suddenly they are again in motion toward the door. Her feet and legs are working completely independently from her brain. Entranced by the motherly joy and almost sexual satisfaction of her baby’s first feeding Vanessa does not take notice of Brooke and Vinny’s flight to and through the front door. They don’t bother with the porch steps. They instead make a leap down the lot of them and scramble to Vinny’s car.
They have thrown open both doors and climbed inside before Vinny realizes, “I don’t have the keys.”
“Check your pockets,” Brooke yells at him while franticly reaching across the car to check his pockets for him.
“I left them on the kitchen counter,” admits Vinny with a dumbfounded look.
“Don’t you have a hide-a-key or something?”
“No, I was afraid someone might steal my car,” exclaims Vinny.
Just then, he notices the reflection of the porch light in his side view mirror, apparently triggered by the motion of their escape in the waning light.
He looks across Brooke and through her car window, to find Vanessa standing in the doorway and glaring down at them.
She takes all of the steps at once and is car-side in the blink of an eye with bloody hands pressed against the glass of Brooke’s window. She presses herself into the glass and her belly makes a bloody smear across the window. As Brooke reaches to lock the doors, she sees the tiny tongue of a baby protrude through Vanessa’s reverse Cesarean section and lick a clean streak through the mix of blood and bile on the window separating them.
Vanessa begins to rock the car back and forth while sweetly singing, “Hush little baby, don’t say a word…”
A loud crunching sound halts the sinister melody and Vanessa’s yellow eyes widen in pain and surprise as her knees buckle to reveal a shadowy figure gripping a bloody and dented flashlight behind her. It was Max. Vinny hits the auto unlock button on the door and Max piles into the back.
“What about everyone else,” Brooke asks of Max.
“All dead,” answers Max, “Let’s go.”
“No keys,” responds Vinny urgently.
A bloody hand smacks Brooke’s window making everyone jump, and a discombobulated Vanessa begins to rise
.
“Move!” Max shouts as he dives head first for the leg space beneath the steering wheel.
With a quick jerk of some wires and a few false starts, the Audi is sputtering its familiar song.
“Go!” cries Brooke as a fully upright and presumably more hostile Vanessa reaches for the door handle.
She grips it tightly and appears to be preparing to tear it from its hinges.
Vinny throws the Audi into drive and they speed off with an angry shriek from the tires -momentarily dragging Vanessa with them. Finally, her deadly grip breaks and she tumbles sideways down the street.
Catching a glimpse of Zack’s dog at the side of the cabin as they fly down the road Brooke says, “What about Cujo?”
“Fuck that dog!” answer Max and Vinny angrily and in unison.
Vanessa can no longer be seen through the back window, perhaps due to the inability of the setting sun’s rays to penetrate through the dense forest canopy. But, more likely she and her half-born child have turned their sights on less gamely prey.
Feeling that the danger has finally past, Vinny speaks, “I thought you were dead,” Vinny’s voice is gleeful and a little teary.
“So did I,” responds Max with a little hesitation.
“Well what happened?”
“After she blocked the door I figured that was my chance to get a lick in. So I clocked her across her jaw. She didn’t even flinch when I hit her. I’ve knocked out grown men with less. It was crazy… As soon as I saw she wasn’t going down, I tried to catch up to you two, but she was too quick for me. Before I could reach the door, she was on me again. Just as I was sure she was about to snap my neck, a door opens and Sam comes out. I guess she was gonna’ make a run for it, but before she could take one step out of the room, Vanessa whipped around and flung her back. She flew back into the room and out of sight.”
He stops momentarily to gather himself before continuing, “I ran to the kitchen to find a knife or something and then I remembered something I saw in the cabinet. There was a little ring down in the floor. I found it when I was looking for the phone. It turned out to be a latch for a trap door that led to the crawlspace under the cabin. As soon as I heard Sam’s screams I figured running at Vanessa with a steak knife was too little too late. So I opened the trap door and dove in. Once through, I closed the cabinet and the door behind me. A little while later, I guess after she was done with Sam, I could hear her sniffing around the kitchen like a dog. She was trying to find me but had no idea where I’d gone. I hid down there like a little bitch until I heard something dragging across the floor. When I looked out the crawlspace vent on the front of the cabin, I saw you two running out to the car. That’s when I came out, grabbed my flashlight and snuck up on her. She was so worried about you, she never even heard me coming.”
“You’re a lucky bastard. Now can somebody please explain to me what the fuck just happened?” Vinny’s confusion is reflected in the eyes of his friends as he looks around the car at them.
Chapter 8 – Civilization
The winding road is surprisingly free of traffic as they descend the mountain. After a whiplash forty-five minute drive with the Audi giving all it had, they arrive in town and find that it too is ghostly free of movement. They drive the streets slowly, looking for signs of life but nothing stirs; not one cat on the road, not a whisper of a distant dog’s bark on the cool night’s breeze, no couples looking for a romantic place to dine. Nothing but silence waits, silence and unnerving calm. It is as if time has stopped and they are the only ones left moving in this temporal-still.
Every house has the curtains drawn and every business appears to be closed at this early hour. Even an ice-cream shop -that should presumably be bustling with teenagers looking for love or a sugar fix at this time of night in a small town such as this- is ominously free of patronage.
“There’s the sheriff station on the left. We have to stop,” says Max from the rear seat.
Vinny pulls the Audi into the parking lot, dimly lit by one amber streetlamp, and exits the vehicle, “Looks pretty quiet. I’ll see if I can find anyone inside. Be right back”
“Wait, I’m coming with you,” yells Brooke.
Max exits the car to aid Brooke with the broken door handle. As he rounds his open door, he notices the gold Mercedes rental two cars over in the parking lot with the driver’s side door ajar.
“Hey look, there’s Lisa’s car.”
Vinny turns to see the vehicle and answers, “She must be inside. I’ll go find her.”
Feeling something more than a bit off kilter Max calls out to Vinny, “See if you can get my grandmother on the phone.”
Vinny gives the thumbs up sign and continues inside.
Max turns to Brooke, “Why don’t you stay here with me, something feels wrong?”
Brooke complies and the two stay by the car watching the Sheriff station’s double doors swing shut behind Vinny.
***
Vinny approaches the high counter in the sheriff station’s lobby.
“Hello, anybody here?”
His voice echoes through the conspicuously vacant front office. He persists toward the counter and peers over.
Again he cries out, “Anybody? We need help.”
He looks down and sees a phone partially visible beneath a confetti of papers that have been scattered on the desk behind the counter. He reaches down and lifts the receiver only to find the cord jaggedly torn between the receiver and base. That gets him looking around with a little more urgency and he realizes that the entire office is in disarray. He intermittently searches and calls out for anything or anyone that might be useful. He is having little luck finding either. He travels from office to office checking phones and looking for signs of life. Every phone either has been destroyed or produces no dial tone. He pauses in a brown well-used desk chair in one of the offices to decide a course of action.
Suddenly, tap-tap-tap, the sound of rapid footsteps raises his attention. He moves to the office door and pokes his head out into the hall where he hears the footsteps again –tap-tap-tap, this time moving down the dark corridor and away from him. Feeling naked in the face of the unknown, he surveys the office looking for a suitable weapon with which to defend his self, but can find none.
Vinny calls out again, “Anybody here?”
He waits silently for an answer but again receives none. He moves slowly down the hall and into the next office, again searching for any kind of weapon; a gun, pepper spray, hell even a nightstick would do. Whatever is running around isn’t keen on talking and Vinny’s had enough surprises for one day. It is probably just a scared kid but he is determined not to enter into a possible altercation empty handed.
Tap-tap-tap, the sound of footsteps breaks the silence once more, this time sounding closer than before. Vinny instinctively retreats back further from the door and deeper into the office. In his haste, he bumps into a file cabinet and sends it falling to the tile floor with a metallic clank. The sharp sound in the quiet space startles him even further and he finds himself tripping over the cabinet and into the adjacent wall. When he finally comes to rest in the gap created by the wall and the fallen file cabinet he notices keys taped to the back of it. He reaches over and peels them free. He tilts them into the little light that remains in the office and written on a small red label on one of the keys are the words, ‘gun locker’.
A quiet, “That’s what I’m talking about,” is the only jubilation he allows himself upon this fortuitous find. Now all he needs is to find the gun locker. Against his own will and better judgment, Vinny leaves the office and turns down the hall in the direction of the footsteps and the remaining unexplored sections of the building.
***
Outside and securely locked in the front two seats of the Audi, Brooke and Max scrutinize the street looking for signs of life, but the roads remain vacant.
Max asks, “What the hell is happening around here?” but is unsure from where he expects an answer.
Unexpectedly Brooke offers one, “Start up the car again. Maybe we can find a local radio station. If they’re in a town hall meeting or something they might be broadcasting it.”
Max complies and they search the dial for anything other than prerecorded shows and stations in Spanish. What they find is KWHY. It’s a college news station out of San Louis Obispo just north of their current location. They come in on the middle of a special bulletin that appears to be a playback of an interview. Max turns up the volume and they both listen intently to news that would have been laughable and far-fetched only a day earlier, but now -given recent events- sounds unmistakably familiar.
“If you’re just joining us, I’m Fillmore Bentley and in the studio with me today is Doctor Robert Vandburgh from the Center for Disease Control. We were just about to get into the possible origin of the disease.”
“Yes, by now I’m sure you’ve heard about the earthquake in the valley and the subsequent break in the gas main that lead to an explosion in the archaeology building at CSUN. What you probably don’t know is that a biologist there was working on something that could be connected. The working theory is that specimens that were kept at a temperature well below freezing were mushroomed into the lower atmosphere over the valley. Their frozen state could have kept them from being vaporized by the blast and allowed them to float back to earth infecting those with whom it made contact. Since the original mummified hosts did not survive the explosion and fire, we are unable to verify the link. We can only surmise at this point.”
Doctor Vandburgh, do we know yet how the disease is transmitted?”
“We know that it can be communicated through a bite and that there have been recent reports of infection through open wounds in the flesh or possibly any wound deep enough to bleed. What we are unsure of is if the virus is airborne or not. Given that the infection is not respiratory in nature we would assume that it isn’t airborne but so far this virus has done anything but conform to our preconceived notions of how a transmittable disease should behave. In addition, the rapidity at which it has spread keeps us from ruling out any method of transmission.”
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