Текст книги "The Darkest Place"
Автор книги: James N. Cook
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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 34 страниц)
SEVENTEEN
Hollow Rock, Tennessee
At almost two o’clock in the morning, Miranda finally spoke up.
“Why Tyrel?” she asked.
“Huh?” Caleb replied.
“Why did your father pair you up with Tyrel? Seems to me he should have asked Mike along and left you to look after Sophia and your stepmother.”
Caleb shrugged. “Objectivity.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dad knew nobody would fight harder to protect Sophia—and by default, Lauren—than Mike. And if we paired up, he would spend more time worrying about me than focusing on what he was doing. That’s the kind of thing that could get both of us killed. Besides, he knew I could handle myself, and I was in good hands with Tyrel.”
Miranda traced her fingernails down the ridges of Caleb’s abdomen, raising goosebumps on his skin. “Seems awfully … impersonal.”
“Dad was a pragmatist,” Caleb said defensively. “He knew how to take his emotions out of the equation and think clearly. It was the right call.”
“I don’t know if I could have done that.”
“You don’t have the training my father had.”
“What about you?” Miranda asked, raising up on one elbow and looking Caleb in the eye. For once, despite the fact she wasn’t wearing any clothes, he wasn’t distracted by the view. “Would you have made the same decision in his place?”
It struck Caleb he had never asked himself that question. “I don’t know, honestly.”
Miranda leaned down and kissed his forehead. “I want to hear the rest, but I’m having trouble keeping my eyes open.”
“I’m pretty tired too. I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow. What I have time for, anyway.”
Miranda snuggled her head in the hollow of his shoulder and breathed deeply. “I’ll hold you to that.”
Minutes later, Miranda’s breathing slowed and she became heavy against his side. For Caleb, sleep was much longer in coming.
*****
After breakfast, seated at the little table between the kitchenette and living room amidst the trailer’s 1970s era decor, Caleb asked Miranda what she wanted to do with their day together.
“If it’s all the same to you,” she said, “I’d just as soon stay home.”
“Fine by me,” Caleb replied.
One of the many things Caleb acquired during his travels with the Army was a portable solar charger, weighing less than two pounds, which could be rolled up for easy storage. It didn’t generate a tremendous amount of electricity—12 volts was its max—but it was enough to charge the batteries on small devices, laptops, and tablets.
Things like iPads and smartphones, once more or less considered minor luxury items, were now one of the cheapest things a person could buy. During the Outbreak, after the grid went down, most people left their electronic devices behind. Consequently, a quick search of any abandoned home or residential neighborhood yielded a plentitude of the once-treasured items. Caleb had a sizable collection in his storage unit on the other side of town.
After he and Miranda finished eating and all the dishes were cleaned and put away, they sat together on the couch, perched an iPad on the coffee table, and watched a few episodes of The Sopranos. Caleb had never cared much for television, but found he didn’t mind it with the warmth of Miranda next to him.
Four episodes in, Caleb declared he was hungry and went outside to start a cookfire. Miranda connected the iPad to the charger and followed him to the backyard where there was a small patio table situated beneath the shade of several tall trees. Miranda sat in a chair next to the table, feet outstretched, watching Caleb as he mixed flour with water, eggs, and dried meat while heating a non-stick skillet over a small fire.
“Be nice when Jutaro finishes repairing the grid on this side of town,” Miranda said. “I’d dearly love to cook indoors again.”
“It’s not so bad, cooking outside,” Caleb said. “Least not when the weather’s nice.”
They spoke no more until Caleb brought a stack of soft flatbread and beans to the table. Miranda made small talk about a few goings on around town, but Caleb only half listened. He found his thoughts wandering as he ate, long-repressed memories scuttling across his mind on needle-sharp legs. It wasn’t until he finished eating that he realized Miranda had stopped talking and had been watching him thoughtfully the last few minutes.
“Sorry,” Caleb said.
Miranda’s mouth turned up at one corner. “Where you been, soldier?”
“Outbreak. Stayed away a long time, but it looks like I’m back for a visit.”
Soft fingers settled over his knuckles. “Tell me.”
“You don’t mind? I mean, it’s a nice day and all, and I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“Caleb, there’s nowhere else I would rather be, and no one else I would rather be with. Now come on, out with it.”
A single nod. “All right, then.”
*****
Canyon Lake, Texas
The plan had been to begin searching right away, but after walking outside and seeing the opposite side of the lake, we all stopped and stared in mute shock. Being the first one to recover, I offered to grab the big eyes from one of the Humvees and survey the area before we headed out. Dad nodded absently and waved a hand toward the vehicles, his eyes never leaving the smoke in the distance.
Canyon Lake was, at one time, a popular destination for people from San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and just about every town in between. It had everything you could want: resorts, boating, fishing, watersports, swimming, sandy beaches, golf, small family amusement parks, even helicopter tours. Any other summer, the place would have been crawling with tourists. The roadways would have been clogged with vehicles, parking on the lakefront would have been a nightmare, and boats and jet-skis would have crisscrossed the water in teeming, booze-fueled multitudes.
But by the next morning, Canyon Lake was abandoned.
The massive fires that chased us all the way from Houston reached the eastern side of the lake and spared almost nothing. The Texas hill country for thousands of acres in every direction had become a blasted hellscape. Where once had grown lush, verdant greenery, trees now stood naked and blackened over scorched sand and incinerated brush. The once-blue lake was now a sullen, metallic gray from the tons of ash fallen into it. Thousands of fish of too weak a constitution to survive the water’s increased acidity floated belly up, staining the air with the pungent odor of rot. The cabin cruiser Dad and the others had anchored out last night had gone from white to the color of a cloudy winter sky.
Standing on the roof of Dale’s cabin and scanning the shore with a pair of sixty-power binoculars, I saw only a dozen or so structures still standing to the east. The long rows of buildings past the shoreline—houses, condominiums, vacation rentals, resorts, country clubs, mini-golf, parks, all of it—had been reduced to piles of smoldering ash. The entire peninsula of Canyon Park was a burned-out ruin, only a few soot-covered brick and cinder-block walls remaining as mute testimony to the lake’s former prosperity. The scene reminded me of old videos of Hiroshima after the bomb.
The north side of the lake didn’t fare much better; the fire leapt the Guadalupe River and kept right on trucking. Somehow, though, it missed the tips of a few peninsulas on the northwestern side of the lake. I studied them, but saw no signs of life.
The western shore was mostly gone except for a thin strip of shoreline north of us just below Comal Park Road. Only two houses had cars in their driveways, less than a quarter-mile apart.
I shifted focus westward, trying to find Canyon Lake Golf Club and Biscuit Hill Bed and Breakfast, both places I had visited before with my father. The golf club and accompanying fairways may as well have never existed, and the bed and breakfast was nowhere to be found. As near as I could tell, the fire had crept as close as Bridget Drive on the southern part of the peninsula, but then, by some miracle, stalled out. The fact the fire had gotten so close and we had all slept right through it gave me a case of the shivers.
On the peninsula immediately south of us, it appeared the same thing had happened to the lower half of Village View Drive. Although a good number of houses remained, I saw no more activity there than I had seen to the north. Other than those few untouched areas, not much of anything was still standing for as far as I could see.
I climbed down and gave the others my report. Dad nodded gravely and gestured back and forth between himself and Blake. “We’ll check the peninsula to the north, see if there are any survivors. Tyrel, you and Caleb search this neighborhood, then head south and see what you can find.”
Tyrel gave a thumbs-up. “Roger that.”
“No matter what,” Dad said, “we meet back here before sundown. Agreed?”
He got a round of acknowledgments. We dispersed to our vehicles.
Later that day, Dad and Blake told us how they made contact with three people in the section they searched, two of them an elderly couple in their eighties: Bob and Maureen Kennedy. According to Blake, they were happy to see friendly faces, but didn’t seem terribly bothered by what was going on.
“It’s a shame about those fires,” Bob said. “Last week or so, damn near everyone lives around here took off like scalded dogs. Even the tourists lit out. Can’t say as I blame ‘em, though. Maureen and I were up all night watchin’ the fires, hopin’ they’d miss us. Was a little while there I thought we’s gonna have to go out on the boat. But we got through it all right, thank the good Lord.”
“Are you two going to be okay out here?” Blake asked. “Do you have enough food, water?”
“Well, as far as food goes, we both love to fish,” the old man said, “and I don’t mind saying we’re pretty damn good at it. What you see floatin’ out there ain’t the tip of the iceberg. This lake’s got more fish than a beach got sand. Not to mention we got a vegetable garden here in the backyard and plenty o’ mason jars for cannin’. As for drinkin’ water, we can always filter and boil what we need from the lake. The folks at the dam fixed it so the river can flow just fine before they left. We ought to be all right until the government can get things settled down.”
Dad and Blake exchanged a glance at that, but didn’t argue with the old man. Instead, they gave the couple a flare and told them to send up a signal if they needed help. Bob accepted it with a smile and said they would be sure to do that.
The man living down the street from them was a different sort entirely. Blake caught sight of him through a window moving around in his house, but he refused to answer his door. Dad used the loudspeaker connected to the CB radio in his truck to announce who he and Blake were, and that while they meant the man no harm, they intended to search the surrounding houses for supplies. At that point, an upstairs window opened and the man shouted down to them.
“What gives you the right to do that?”
Dad said, “You see any cops around here, fella?”
The man came closer to the window. He was in his late forties, bald, shaved head, several days’ growth of beard on his face, pale and haggard, fleshy cheeks shot through with veins under sunken eyes. “That don’t make it right.”
“You’re welcome to come with us,” Dad said. “Load as much as you can carry and bring it back with you.”
The man thought about it for a few seconds, then said, “How about you just leave the houses on this block alone? There’s plenty of others to root through, and a housing development not three miles from here. If it ain’t burned down, it’s probably just as empty as this place.”
Dad looked at Blake, who shrugged. “Don’t see why not.”
“Okay,” Dad said. “You got a deal. I’m going to leave a flare on your porch. You run into trouble, pop it. One of us will see you, and we’ll help if we can.”
The man nodded. “Fair enough.”
He was about to shut the window when Dad spoke up again. “Hey, you got a name?”
“Phil Cary. Nice to meet you.” With that, he shut the window. Dad and Blake took it as their cue to leave.
Tyrel and I located two other holdouts, the first one only six houses down from us. He must have seen us pass by the night before because he was standing in his yard with a civilian model M-4 slung around his neck as if to make a statement. He kept his weapon low as the two of us rolled closer, but Tyrel wasn’t taking any chances. He drew his pistol and held it across his lap, out of sight, barrel pointed so he could shoot the man through the door if need be.
“Morning,” Tyrel greeted him.
The man inclined his head. He was tall, maybe six foot four, lean, strongly put together, graying brown hair in a tight crew cut, clean-shaven, dressed in a simple t-shirt, jeans, and sensible work boots. His alert gaze and erect posture said either ex-military or law enforcement.
“Good morning,” the man replied. He took in Tyrel’s dark beard and longish hair tied back under a headscarf, expression saying not impressed.
“Tyrel Jennings. This here’s Caleb Hicks.”
I leaned forward so the man could see me better and waved. He nodded to me, then shifted his attention back to Tyrel. “Name’s Lance Morton. Saw you folks come in last night. Some trucks, a jeep, couple of Humvees.”
Tyrel nodded. “Yep. That was us.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Friend of ours knows a guy owns a cabin up here. Had a key. Figured it would be a good place to hole up for a while.”
“What’s the guy’s name owns the cabin?”
“Dale Forester.”
Morton seemed to relax a bit. “I know Dale. Good fella. What’s his friend’s name?”
“Joe Hicks.”
“You don’t say. Dale mentioned him a few times.” Morton stepped closer to get a better look at me. “Say, you Joe Hicks’ son? I seem to recognize you.”
“Yes sir,” I said. “We come down about once a year or so, go fishing.”
“I’ve seen the two of you around before. Don’t believe we’ve met.”
Now that I thought about it, Morton did look vaguely familiar. “I think I might have seen you at the bait shop a time or two,” I said.
“I remember that. Your father around?”
“Farther north up the lake,” Tyrel said. “He’ll be back sometime this afternoon.
“Where are you two headed?”
“Recon. Getting ready to round up supplies.” Tyrel said it casually, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I was worried Morton might take umbrage, but he surprised me by simply nodding.
“Figured. Was thinking about doing the same thing myself.”
“You’re more than welcome to come with us.”
Morton shook his head. “I’m just fine on my own. If we happen to show up at the same place, should I expect trouble?”
There was no challenge in his voice, but I could feel the tension in Tyrel as he replied. “We’re open to negotiation, no need to fight over things. With all these houses, seems there’ll be plenty to go around.”
“Agreed,” Morton said. “Guess I’ll be seeing you.”
Tyrel nodded once. “Take care. Come see us sometime.”
“I might do that.”
We spent most of the rest of the day searching what remained of the peninsula south of us. By four in the afternoon, we had almost given up on finding anyone else alive. As we were just about to leave the last neighborhood on our part of the map, I spotted a curtain moving in an upstairs window of a house on a flat portion of the lakefront. We had tried the house before—there was a BMW sedan in the front yard—but no one answered. I pointed it out to Tyrel.
“Think we ought to try that one again?”
“Probably best to. Pull on up.”
I parked the truck in the driveway and got out. Tyrel motioned me to stay put and approached the front door. He knocked several times, calling out that we had seen someone in there and just wanted to talk. Several minutes passed with no response.
“Listen,” he said, irritation in his voice. “If we meant you any harm, we could have busted down the door by now. Can you just come talk to us for a minute, please?”
More time passed. Finally, Tyrel threw up his hands. “Fuck it. Can’t say we didn’t try.”
As he was walking back to the truck, I heard the latch click on the front door and a squeak as someone pulled it open a few inches.
“Hello?”
The voice was soft, definitely female. Tyrel turned around slowly, hands upraised in a non-threatening gesture. “Hi there,” he said. “Name’s Tyrel. The kid over there is Caleb. We’re new around here.”
The door opened a little further, and I saw a slender, unmistakably feminine silhouette in the doorway. It was too dark inside the house to make out any of her features. “I’m Lola,” she said. “Lola Torrance.”
“Pleased to meet you, Lola Torrance,” Tyrel said, putting his hands down.
Lola stepped out the rest of the way. She was petite, maybe five foot two, brown hair, glasses, early thirties, not especially pretty, but not unattractive either. She kept one hand out of sight behind the door. It probably says something about my upbringing that I could tell by the angle of her arm and the set of her shoulder she was holding a gun.
“You said you wanted to talk. So talk.”
By Tyrel’s body language, he also knew she was armed. Honestly, I couldn’t say I blamed her. I would have done the same thing.
“We got in yesterday,” Tyrel said. “We’re planning to gather supplies from the empty houses in the neighborhood. Figured we’d offer you a chance to come along, take what you need.”
Silence stretched for several seconds. “That’s stealing,” Lola said.
“No ma’am, it’s harvesting. Things back east are pretty bad. Houston’s gone. I doubt anyone is coming back here any time soon. No sense in letting perfectly good supplies go to waste. Seeing as you were here first, we figured you got a right to your share, but you should start gathering it pretty soon. No telling who might come through here looking for food.”
Lola hesitated. I had a feeling none of what Tyrel said had occurred to her.
Peering closer, I noticed she looked exhausted. Not just road weary and sleepy like my group, but the kind of tired where your cheeks hollow out and your clothes hang loose from your bones. She obviously had not been sleeping or eating very much for a long time. As she stood watching us, her eyes clouded over with warring thoughts, apprehension written plainly on her face. Finally, she seemed to come to a decision.
“I’m going to step outside,” she said. “Just so you know, I’m armed.”
“I know,” Tyrel said.
This gave her a moment’s pause. Gingerly, she stepped out on the porch, a massive .44 magnum revolver in her hand. I almost laughed—that much gun would have broken her wrist if she had tried to shoot it.
“Do either of you have any medical training?” she asked.
Tyrel and I exchanged a glance. “We both have extensive first responder training, ma’am. Is someone injured inside?”
She nodded, her shoulders beginning to shake. When she spoke, her voice came out in a tremulous whisper. “My husband, there’s something wrong with him. He’s … not right.”
Tyrel stepped slowly closer. “Ma’am, we’d be glad to help, but I’m going to have to ask you to put the gun down first, okay?”
She looked at him with eyes like a hunted thing. Her hand slowly came up, offering Tyrel the gun. He plucked it gently from her grip, unloaded it, stuffed the cartridges in his pocket, and held a hand toward the house.
“Lead the way, please.”
We followed her inside.
EIGHTEEN
The house must have been nice, once.
Tasteful decorations on the walls and over the fireplace, Monet and Rembrandt prints, plush expensive-looking furniture, rich cherry and rosewood coffee table and bookshelves, hardwood floors, gorgeously intricate rugs in burgundy and black, and a collection of vases that probably cost more than both the Humvees back at the cabin. People who lived on the lake were not known for being impoverished.
The house had an empty, lost feeling about it. Our feet scraped and echoed a little too loudly on the floor, the rustle of our clothes grating and garish as we entered the foyer. Empty wine bottles occupied nearly every tabletop, the redolent scent of sour grapes heavy in the air. Dust covered everything, even Lola’s clothes. It looked like she had not changed them in a while. Despite the lush décor, I felt like a sane person walking into a rundown asylum.
“Perry, my husband, he’s in the basement,” Lola said. “I can’t … I can’t go back there.”
“Why not?” Tyrel asked. “What’s wrong with him?”
She shook her head, arms crossed tightly under her chest. “I don’t know. He went to Houston last week, said he was going to find his parents and bring them back here.”
“Did he?” I asked.
“No. He came back alone. Said he couldn’t get to them, there was too much rioting. There was a bandage on his arm, bleeding through. I tried to get him to change it, but he acted funny about it. Wouldn’t let me touch it.”
“Anything else wrong with him?” Tyrel asked.
“He was upset about his parents, but otherwise, he seemed fine. Then a few hours later, he started feeling sick.”
“What were his symptoms?”
“Fever, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, runny nose, coughing. Like he all of a sudden came down with a bad case of the flu. Started shaking really bad and talking funny, kind of delirious. I wanted to drive him to the hospital, but he said that was a bad idea. Said the hospitals were overrun with those things.”
As Lola talked, a low sinking feeling began to weigh in my stomach. I remembered the newscasts and the emergency bulletins about the infected, and what to do if someone was bitten by one of them. Tyrel and I looked at each other, and I could tell he was thinking the same thing.
“Ma’am,” Tyrel said. “did your husband happen to mention how he got the wound on his arm?”
“No. I asked him, but he told me not to worry about it. Said it was nothing.”
“Mrs. Torrance-”
“Lola,” she interrupted. “Please, just call me Lola. Not ma’am or Mrs. Torrance. It makes me feel like an old woman.”
Tyrel held up a hand in apology. “All right then, Lola. Can you tell me how your husband ended up in the basement?”
Her bottom lip began to tremble. “He sealed himself down there, said he had to do it before it was too late. Went out back and got some old boards and a hammer and nails from the tool shed. I heard him hammering, putting planks over the door. He told me where to find his gun.”
At that point, she put her hands over her face, slumped to the floor, and began wailing like a child with a skinned knee. Tyrel hesitated a moment, then knelt beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. For a while, he whispered gently to her, trying to calm her down. Pity and more than a little embarrassment drove me from the room.
In the kitchen, a few steps past the doorway, I heard a sound that had not been audible from the living room. It was coming from a door on the opposite side of the kitchen next to what I assumed was the entrance to the garage. I stepped closer, straining my ears.
Thump-scraaaape. Thump-scraaaape.
“Hello?” I said, voice pitched low. When I spoke, the noise stopped abruptly.
“Hello? Mr. Torrance?” A little louder this time.
A low moan came from behind the door, making the hair on my neck stand on end. It reminded me of a sound my father once made in his sleep in the grip of a nightmare. I had been very young then, but the plaintive, agonized, un-self-conscious raggedness of it never left me.
My instincts told me to back away, but instead, I raised a hand and knocked gently. “Mr. Torrance, can you hear me?”
There was a moment of silence, then a tremendous THUMP that rattled the door on its hinges and sent shockwaves along the kitchen wall. Dishes rattled in a cupboard somewhere to my right. I stepped quickly back in surprise, my right heel catching the corner of a chair leg. I tried to catch my balance but wasn’t fast enough and sat down hard on the ceramic tile floor. At some point, my right hand drew my pistol and leveled it at the door, but I don’t remember consciously doing so. A second or two after the THUMP, I heard the same wailing sound as before, but louder now, anguished, enraged, and unmistakably predatory. The noise continued in ululating waves, punctuated by continued crashes against the door. THUMP … THUMP … THUMP …
Footsteps sounded to my right. I looked over to see Tyrel standing in the doorway, rifle leveled, finger not yet on the trigger. “The fuck was that?”
I kept my aim steady on the basement door as I stood up. “I’m guessing it’s Mr. Torrance.”
Tyrel approached slowly, eyes wide, but not in fear. His gaze was swift and calculating, absorbing and processing information for split-second decisions. His gait was even and steady, hands firm on his carbine, the barrel steady as a rock as he walked. I had a strange moment of pity for the people he had faced in combat, or at least their families. I doubted the combatants themselves were still among the living.
Lola followed close behind him, one hand on his broad back to steady herself, cheeks streaked with tears, the skin of her face pale and sickly looking. I did not think it was a good idea for her to be in the kitchen with us, but then again, it was her house.
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
Tyrel took a couple of deep breaths, watching the door. The thumping was loud, but the door seemed to be withstanding it. He lowered his carbine and stood up straight.
“Doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere. Lola, is there another entrance to the basement?”
“There’s a storm access on the other side of the house, but we keep it locked.”
“Do you have a key?”
She walked over to a decorative set of key hooks on the wall beside the back door and came back with two keys on an aluminum ring. She held them out to Tyrel, then stopped and pulled her hand close to her chest. “What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Take a look at your husband and see if there’s anything I can do for him.”
“Do you think you can?” The desperate hope in her voice made my chest tighten.
“I don’t know,” Tyrel said. “But I can try.” He held out a hand for the keys. Lola hesitated before handing them over.
“You might want to stay in the house until this is over, Lola.”
She nodded and shuffled back to the living room. When she was gone, Tyrel turned to me and jerked his head toward the back door. “Come on.”
The backyard was spacious, boasting a large brick patio, top-of-the-line grill, outdoor fireplace, wooden terrace strung with party lights, and a pool and a hot tub to my left. Both had a thin layer of algae across the surface along with several weeks’ worth of leaves and enough ashes to color the water gray. The lawn had been left untended and un-watered, the longish grass brown and yellow interspersed with a few surviving islands of green. There was a sprinkler system, but it looked like no one had turned it on in a while. Without water, the lawn had dried and withered in the baking Texas sun. The dying lawn led down to a narrow strip of sandy beach as wide as the property, with the carefully crafted lines of something manmade. Soft waves lapped lazily at the rocks along the edge of the shore.
“Over there,” Tyrel said.
I looked where he pointed and saw slanted wooden shutters butting up against the exposed portion of the house’s foundation. It looked like a tornado shelter only smaller, barely enough for one person to fit through.
“Too narrow for stairs,” I said. “Must have a ladder.”
“Probably right.” Tyrel walked over and inserted the key in the padlock holding the shutters closed. A quick twist, and he set the lock aside.
“You ready?” he asked.
I took position beside him and aimed my pistol down at the center of the entrance. “Ready.”
He tossed the shutters open and stepped back, hand going to his pistol. I peered down, but couldn’t see more than a few feet. The entrance led straight down, lined on two sides with painted white cinder blocks. I reasoned we must have been standing at the corner of the basement. There was a ladder leading down, but I could only see the top four or five rungs.
From my vest, I produced a tactical light, pressed the switch, and shined the light downward. Other than dust motes and a few dead bugs, I didn’t see anything. All was quiet for a few moments.
Then the shuffling began.
“You hear that?” I asked Tyrel.
“Yeah. I think he’s coming our way.”
We waited, feet braced, weapons aimed. The shuffling increased in volume until the top of a man’s head came into view. He was tall, about my height, dark hair, a bald spot beginning to form in the back. He did not walk with the smooth rolling stride of a healthy, able-bodied person. It was not the carefully coordinated series of controlled falls that normally comprise human locomotion. His feet dragged, as if he had to keep them in contact with the floor or he would fall over. His head bobbed back in forth in jerky, unsteady movements, arms stiff at his sides, hands clasping and unclasping.
“Mr. Torrance?” I said.
His head snapped up, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Tyrel whispered.
His face was gray. Not pale like he hadn’t had enough sun, or the light pallor of someone who is very ill, but a different color entirely. It was the gray of hurricane clouds over the Gulf of Mexico, the color of the ashes that settled on my car the day my family and I fled our home, the leaden pewter shade of oil refinery smoke arcing toward the sky. I had never seen that particular tone on a human being before, but I knew instantly what it meant. It was as though some dim, forgotten part of me remembered that color, the same as it knew to fear the night and find comfort in the brightness of the sun. If not for Tyrel standing next to me that day, I might well have turned and fled. As it was, I shifted my aim, finger tight over the trigger.
“Tyrel, wh-”
Whatever I was going to say died on my lips when the thing that was once Perry Torrance let out a shrieking, hungry wail. It was loud enough I felt it rattling in my chest. The dead man’s voice went ragged as he cried out, the vocal cords in his neck rupturing from the force of the scream. No living person could ever have made a sound like that unless they were in the grip of indescribable agony. It was primal, animal, but at the same time, all too human.
Fear coursed up my spine and made my bowels clench. The urge to shoot the thing squarely between the eyes was almost overwhelming, a physical force that made my face burn and my hands tremble. I watched in horror as the man-thing slammed against the wall hard enough to dislodge a tooth. It showed no sign of pain as it scraped and clawed at the wall, desperately trying to reach us. Tyrel reached out and laid a steadying hand on my shoulder.
