“You really should eat something.”
She turned around to see him standing in the doorway. His reddish-blond hair stood on end and his white t-shirt was smeared with gun cleaning solution. He pushed his dark-framed glasses up on his nose and forced a smile.
“I found some canned food in the pantry.”
Her stomach was so used to starving that she didn’t feel hungry anymore. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
He shrugged. “It’s not like it’s going to get cold.”
She could see he was put off that she wouldn’t go with him. His footsteps trailed down the hardwood stairs and she held back her tears. The approaching darkness of the first night without her parents made the fresh memories all the more painful. She couldn’t close her eyes without seeing them, not how they were in life, but what had become of them in those final moments.
She dried her eyes and headed down to the kitchen.
A plate of canned peaches and potted meat smeared on crackers sat on the table. Foster opened a bottle of red wine, though a half-glass of dark whiskey sat next to his plate.
Penny sat down and picked up a fork. She turned it over in her hand and was unable to look him in the eyes.
“I meant it when I said I was sorry.” He pushed aside a half-empty cartridge and a pile of bullets yet to be loaded. “All ten times.” He set a cracker on her plate and sighed.
“I know,” she said, crying again when it was the last thing she wanted to do. The repeated apologies solidified his guilt, whether or not there was another option.
She lifted a cracker to her lips and forced herself to eat.
The meal was a reminder, as everything before it that day had been, that something had changed. No more rationing. No more family.
The cracker drew the moisture from her mouth and she sipped the wine she wasn’t used to drinking to get the food down. One sip turned to one glass, then one refill, and before she knew it, she felt dizzy and somehow sadder.
Foster, who hadn’t talked the whole time they sat there, stood up and pushed his chair in. “We have to seal up the first floor for the night. I could use your help.” He went into the living room where an expansive fireplace provided the only light and heat in the house, leaving behind a half-eaten plate of food and an empty glass.
Penny’s stomach, unused to food, churned. The wine sloshed inside of her as she went out to help him. “What do you need me to do?”
Foster lifted a piece of plywood into place over the front window. “Can you hold this end up a minute?”
Splintered wood poked her fingers as she held the end of the board in place. Foster tightened down the screws, tucked the screwdriver into the back pocket of his jeans, and went to the next window.
“What’s the matter?” he asked when she didn’t follow.
“I can’t live like this.” She slumped down on the couch. She couldn’t keep boarding herself up in this house or that, and she couldn’t stand the tension or her anger with him.
“What are you saying?”
The wine made the words come too easily and without thinking. “I’m saying maybe I’m better off on my own.”
“This isn’t an alone world, anymore, Penny. Do you know how many nights I watched your house? What I had to do to keep you safe or how hard it was to do by myself? How long do you think you’ll last out there?”
“What are you talking about? Watching my house? Why would you do that?” She grew angrier by the minute.
“Do you really need to ask? Isn’t it obvious how I feel about you?” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I risked my life for you. I can’t stand the thought of you out there, defenseless, and me not knowing that you’re all right.”
“I know how to shoot, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“There’s more to surviving than handling a gun, Penny. I’m sorry about what happened. I don’t know how many times I can say that, but it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t get your parents bit. I just kept them from living in that undead hell and infecting others. I was there that night for you. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since we left the Nixon Center, and I thought that if we had some time, once you were away from that goddamned nightmare, that we could have something, together. I knew how important home was to you, and I did everything in my power to keep your family safe.”
She huffed out an annoyed breath. “We see how well that turned out.”
CHAPTER 22
Reid moved the infant to one of the basement labs and stood over him with his fingers in his ears. The boy had been crying for hours and refused to eat what was left of his previous meal now that the flesh had gone rancid. His hands shook, his fused fingers frantically fanning the air, and his eyes had become whiter and more opaque.
The infection appeared to be winning.
“Please, for the love of God, shut-up.” Reid shook the bassinette, hard, and the boy stopped crying, but only for a second. All Reid wanted to do was to kill.
In order to keep the child fed, he knew he might have to.
He closed the lab door, climbed out of the basement, and took a deep breath. Silence never sounded so good. He dragged the extension ladder out of the hole and carried it to his F250, which he left parked in front of the main entrance. He checked under the driver’s seat for the bottle of chloroform and the Nixon Center towel he carried “just in case.”
Months of being hunted had prepared him.
He climbed in, turned the key, and cracked open his window. Cool air poured in and mitigated the gas smell from the most recent run. Fumes from the siphoning hose curled up on the passenger’s side floor magnified his already pounding headache.
Miles passed between the secluded hospital and anything residential. This was a run he didn’t want to make twice. The easy solution to his problem was to find and dispatch a survivor. Easy was a relative term because he hadn’t seen another sign of life for months, other than the men Nixon sent after him. He suddenly wished he’d take at least one of them prisoner. It was a mistake he wouldn’t make twice.
He looked through the house’s windows and prayed for a single lantern to guide him. His shoulders tensed and his mind raced with the worry of losing the one thing that might get him off of Nixon’s radar: the infant.
Farmhouses and trailers lined the roads, many of them overgrown and with damage too severe to be a good hide-out. The windows of the school were black with darkness and St. Margaret’s Church was all but destroyed.
He turned a sharp corner into the outskirts of downtown and the ladder slid to the far side of the truck’s bed. The houses, in better repair and closer together, formed a suburban utopia. This is where people with money had lived. A familiar, red Jeep caught his eye and he slammed on his breaks. The ladder crashed into the bed liner loud enough that he prayed no one had heard. Unlike the surrounding houses, this one’s first floor windows were boarded up. There was no way of telling how many people were inside, only that one of them was Brian Foster.
Reid took a lap around the block and calculated his next move.
CHAPTER 23
Paul’s slicked-back hair shined in the lantern light as he held the cabin door open for Joe, whose sharp features were cast in shadows.
Ben lifted his aching head, fighting the weight of the heavy chains wrapped around his neck, wrists, and feet to see what lied ahead.
Nixon appeared behind Paul, a blurry figure in the requisite white lab coat who clucked his tongue in disappointment.
Ben squinted to make out what was dangling from his right hand.
“Get him in here.” Nixon propped the door with his foot and pulled on a pair of thick, fire-resistant gloves.
Ben groaned at the sharp pain from Joe and Paul each lifting one of his arms. “Please, help me,” he whispered to Paul, the less maniacal of the two.
Joe yanked harder and snickered when Ben’s shoulder snapped. Ben screamed out in pain. The weight of the heavy chains dragging along the rustic, ha
rdwood floor strained the injured joint and gave a fiery quality to the pain.
“Wayne, please do something.” Ben prayed the enormous cook, to whom he’d never been cruel, would intervene.
Wayne tended the stock pot and kept his gaze averted.
Nixon pushed Wayne aside and unlatched the woodstove handle. The metal hinge creaked as the door opened. Red, yellow, and blue flames danced in the cast iron belly. Nixon shifted the positioning of the half-burnt logs and reached beneath them with what Ben could now see were a pair of metal pincers.
“String him up.”
“No!” Ben’s heart beat faster and he fought harder to get free.
Joe tore a piece off of a roll of duct tape and covered his mouth, running his hand across it until it was sealed air-tight.
Ben struggled to breathe through his blood-crusted nose, broken from his struggle with Joe.
Paul lowered an old farm-style pulley hook, which was suspended from chains to the ceiling. He turned up the wick on the oil lamp for more light and gave way to Joe. Beneath the pulley, sat a plastic drainage basin stained from years of hunters’ butchering.
Ben’s eyes went wide, his begging muffled and useless.
Joe shoved Ben forward and threaded the old hook through a link chain around his neck. The chain tightened down on Ben’s neck, enough to make it hard for him to swallow, as he was hoisted to near-choking. Joe secured the chain to a cleat on the wall.
Ben scrambled to keep his feet under him, determined not to be hung.
Paul watched quietly.
Joe laughed.
Nixon appeared in Ben’s periphery, brandishing a burning hot coal. “The most important thing about science, Ben, is control. Take the constant out of the experiment and it skews all of the data.” He shook his head with disappointment. “I know you know this.” He nodded for Joe to lift him a bit higher.
Sweat rolled down Ben’s balding head and stung his eyes. The pulley squealed and clunked. Rust and an imperfectly round wheel caused the lift to be painfully slow.
“That’s far enough,” Nixon said.
Ben stood almost on tiptoes, stretched far enough that the virus-induced shivers made him squirm like a fish on a hook.
Nixon moved closer, close enough that Ben could see him clearly and smell the chicken shit on his boots. “I have to go back to square one, thanks to you, and I just don’t have that kind of time.” He adjusted his grip on the pliers, the ember still glowing red. “I trusted you and this is my repayment?”
Ben braced himself and squeezed his eyes shut in order to avoid seeing what was undoubtedly coming.
“You’ll look at me when I’m talking to you. Hold him!”
Joe steadied Ben like a trainer holding a heavy bag.
Ben squirmed, but it only made Joe hold on tighter. He told himself to open his eyes, but as the radiant heat moved closer to his face, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The smell of ash and fire filled his clogged nose.
“I said ‘open your eyes’.” Nixon pressed a fiery ember to Ben’s right eyelid. The thin covering of skin sizzled and bubbled. Ben lost his breath.
A bright red light preceded total blindness and forced his other eye open. He watched in distorted, monocular vision as Nixon twisted the dying ember. Hot, wet vitreous fluid ran down his cheek and he fainted.
* * * * *
The hot air smelled of boiling chicken, sweat, and burning flesh. Allison changed from her sweat-soaked gown to a pair of scrubs Ben had left for her. A tear rolled down her cheek as she listened to his muffled cries coming through her door. She had never heard more pure screams of pain, and she knew that if she didn’t escape, she was next.
The wood floor was rough on her bare feet. She sat down and pulled on a pair of slipper socks, which were the closest things she had to shoes. Her weak legs shook as she eased herself up.
A single beam of moonlight through the dusty window highlighted a ridge of fingerprints just above the sill. She tiptoed across the room, pressed her fingertips into the weathered wood, and lifted. Her arms shook under the weight of the glass and a cold breeze washed over her.
She wedged Nixon’s binder to hold the window open and breathed a sigh of temporary relief.
“Wake him up!” Nixon’s voice boomed through the door.
She heard the sound of ripping tape. Ben screamed. Joe kept laughing. Time was running out.
Allison went headfirst out the window, the pain in her stomach nearly unbearable as she doubled-over, half-in and half-out of the room. Her breath hung in the cold night air as she huffed and braced for the inevitable fall.
“1-2-3.”
She tumbled out into the darkness, leaving Ben’s screams behind her. Cold mud soaked through her cotton pants and the pebbles scraped her palms. She held still for a minute to get her bearings.
White pinpoints of light dotted the night’s sky.
A hen strutted over and pecked at the feed by her feet.
She rolled onto her hands and knees and pushed herself onto her feet. A bone-deep chill took hold and she shivered. The mud froze her feet, and by the time she reached the gate, she began losing feeling in them.
She unlatched the hasp and headed toward the sound of rushing water in the distance. Following the stream would lead her to safety, or if not, if Ben was right and the treatment was the only think keeping her alive, it would lead her to someplace else to die, alone and on her own terms.
CHAPTER 24
Penny lay in the double-bed of one of the children’s bedrooms, which was more the size she was used to sleeping in. She rolled from her back, to her side, and then finally onto her stomach. Her eyelids fluttered, and as tired as she was, she couldn’t force sleep. Every time she closed her eyes she heard the smacking sound of her father’s mouth tearing chunks from her mother’s flesh as clear as if she were back there with them. The nagging fear of nightmares unsettled her, and guilt for treating Foster the way she had, made her want to apologize.
The sheets twisted around her legs like a cocoon. She wrestled her feet free, pushed the blankets aside, and headed downstairs.
The fire had died down, but the air was much warmer than in the rest of the house. A silver mp3 player on the last of its battery glistened in the dim lighting and Foster lay, stretched out on the couch and sleeping to the sound of whatever was loaded on it. The pistol in his lap, and the fact that he was still wearing his glasses, said he hadn’t intended more than to rest his eyes.
Penny moved the metal fireplace screen and tossed a knotty piece of wood onto the charred pile. A draft rolled along the hardwood as the damp pine smoked and finally caught. She sat down and pulled her knees to her chest, basking in the radiant warmth as the flame grew.
She waited for him to hear her and to wake up, but even through the thick lenses she could see the bags under his eyes. She had no idea how long it had been since his last good night’s sleep.
He snored loudly and she couldn’t help smiling.
She pulled a crocheted afghan up to his chin and settled in the oversized, leather recliner across from him.
Her eyes had barely closed when she heard the first metallic clang outside. A thud came at the side of the house and when she heard it again, she tried to wake Foster up.
“Brian?” She shook his hand. “Brian, answer me.” She pulled out one of the earbuds. He swatted at his ear, but didn’t wake up.
She picked up the pistol, which rested heavy and uneven in her hand, not at all like the .22 caliber rifle she was used to, and reluctantly checked the noise out.
The lantern flames flickered and a cold breeze drifted down the stairway.
“Shit.” She steeled her nerves, knowing that if she couldn’t handle going upstairs alone, she’d never make it outside of a house whose first floor was boarded up and where the draft was most certainly a window she forgot to close while cleaning. “You can do this.”
She climbed the stairs and paused when she thought she heard footsteps. The light from
the fireplace diminished by the halfway point and she strained her eyes, telling herself the shapes in the shadows were figments of her fertile imagination.
“Hello?” Her voice echoed in the hallway. She tightened her grip on the pistol and held it out at arm’s length, unable to stop her hands from shaking. “Is anyone here?”
The wind picked up at the top of the landing, the draft clearly coming from the master bedroom.
She kept her back to the wall and pivoted into the empty room the way she’d seen done many times on television. The lined, floor-length drapes flapped in the breeze. The window was more than half open. She looked around the room, able to see the outlines of the furniture in the moonlight, and checked for signs of an intruder.
A thumping sound, a bare tree branch against the house, resonated.
“Friggin’ wind.”
She exhaled a sigh of relief, set the gun on the bed, and went to close the window. By the time she saw the ladder propped against the side of the house, it was too late.
A muscular man wearing a black ski mask came from behind the drapes. He grabbed her, turned her around so that she couldn’t fight him, and held a damp rag to her face. She squirmed and threw her elbows, trying to get free while holding her breath, but his grip was too strong. Her hands and feet began tingling and she knew she had to get away fast. She tried to pry a space between them, but he pushed her forward into the bed, slamming his weight into her. She went for the gun, which was just out of reach on the bedspread. She gasped and the sweet, pungent smell of the sedating liquid filled her nostrils and mouth. Her vision fogged and her ears felt plugged as though she were under water. Her whole body twitched and when she grabbed at the man’s sleeve, she saw the crucifix tattoo that told her the man was Max Reid.
CHAPTER 25
Frank lifted his knees and trudged through the foot-tall grass toward the crash site he’d seen from the upstairs bedroom window. The heels of his boots sunk in the mud and made it harder to walk. He gripped the pistol handle and tried not to fall.
Afterbirth: A Strandville Zombie Novel #2 Page 8
