Consumption (23 page)

Riley looked at Izzy with astonishment and still, somehow, complete love before dropping her, his arms falling uselessly to his sides as he sank to the floor.

“Ighz…hy” Riley managed his daughter's name despite the windpipe, the sound coming out of him guttural and bruised.

Izzy fell into a crouch on the floor and arched her tiny back, facing the rest of the room before saying, in perfect, unbroken English:

“We will feed on you, and your bones will succor my children.”

Then, with the quickness of a chased spider, Izzy scampered on all fours, her sweet toddler's body twisted into an unnatural form as it headed for the door to the stairs and out of the basement.

If Bunny's death had been complete chaos, Riley's took place amidst utter calm. John saw Erma turn to him and say two words:

“Catch her.”

Without a word of protest, John squeezed Erma's hand, dropped it, and ran toward the stairs. Behind him, Javier followed without needing to be asked.

Pill, Erma, and Star all ran to Riley. The man lay with his hands to his spurting neck, and even as Pill tied the remains of a couch pillow's cover around the wound, Riley's head fell limply to the floor. John saw all of this seemingly in slow motion, but he did not stop running.

Behind him, he felt a presence even before he heard Javier's voice. “I got your back, man.”

John didn't answer. He was already growing winded, taking the stairs two at a time. He didn't answer, but he did have the briefest of moments to think,
I hope you don't have my back like you had Bunny's, hombre,
before arriving at the top of the stairs.

He pushed through the door with a rush, not bothering to check the other side.

She'd been waiting for him. He felt her soft and spindly body as it lunged itself through the air and collided with his own, knocking them to the floor.

“Izzy, stop!” he yelled to her. In response she only growled into his ear and scratched at his face. He tried to throw her off of him, but she was so strong.

“Javier!” John yelled, fighting with the weight on top of him, managing just barely to roll over with her, onto his side. He looked into her face as they rolled and saw that her teeth were bared like a wild animal. Where was the boy? He'd been just behind him coming up the stairs, hadn't he? And now, when he needed help the most, the kid was nowhere to be found.

John felt something pressing against his teeth. A hand. A small baby hand with something in it, trying to push open his mouth.

“Open!” Izzy said, her voice still that of the sweet girl on the sidewalk whom he'd met earlier. “Open your mouth, you fugger!” The sweet baby lisp skewed her words at the end.

John turned his head away. And saw Javier. The boy had come up the stairs all right, but now he sat crouched against the living room wall, a shiny metal ax held on his lap and his eyes bright and vacant. He watched, but John didn't think he saw.

“Javier! Javier, I need you! Snap out of it, man!”

Javier didn't move, and that tiny hand slapped against John again, hitting his mouth and clawing at his lips. John felt his skin break as a baby fingernail sliced into it.

Javier's mind was playing tricks on him. As soon as he had understood the situation (and it was hard not to, what with the baby chomping into her
padre
's neck like that), Javier had taken off after her. His guilt from earlier, his replaying of his final words before helping to kill Bunny, had vanished. His mind became completely and utterly empty.

“I got your back!” he shouted up to John, the only dude in the whole mix Javier thought was worth a damn. John hadn't even hesitated, had just taken off up the stairs after the demon-baby, and Javier followed. The man had the right idea. They had to catch her, and they had to kill her.

Except, now…

He saw John screaming in front of him. He saw the little girl on top of him, her figure writhing and gnashing at the air. And everything had been fine, right until she looked at him.

And then. Well, she'd changed. There was no other explanation for it. Right before his eyes, the little girl's blond curls melted away, became thin, dark locks, and the ice blue of her eyes melted away into a deep, dark brown. The thing looked at him, and it smiled, and he knew it. It was his sister. Not the cop's daughter, Izzy, but his sister.

“Gabriela,” he moaned. “No. God, no.”

Javier pulled his legs closer to his chest, but he could not turn his head away. He heard John calling for him, but it was as if she had him pinned there, pinned with that stare. His sister.

His little Gabriela.

“Javier!” The boy didn't answer, but on the other side of the basement door, he heard barking.

His lips were opening. She was so strong. So strong, and he couldn't fight it. “Javier!” he yelled again, but now his teeth were open and he felt the tiny finger pressing against his tongue…and there was nothing on it.

More barking and then a few feet away John heard a crash as Maxie, his dearest and most faithful friend, pushed through the door. From his place on the floor, John could see Javier still against the wall but having moved closer to the door, where he must have found the strength to turn the handle and allow Maxie through. His ax lay unused on the carpet.

Above him, Izzy screamed as Maxie brought her down, knocking her off John and pinning her to the floor. John wasted no time; he stood up and then fell upon the girl. She struggled, and he knew he couldn't hold her that way for long, even with Maxie's help as she darted in and out of the scramble, nipping at the girl to keep her in place. It was Izzy's fear of the dog more than anything John was doing that kept her there.

“Javier! Bring me your ax. Javier!” John looked toward the wall and now, finally, the boy moved. He looked to John as if seeing him for the first time since Izzy's attack.

“John?”

“The ax, Javier! Bring it to me. I've got her pinned down.” Beneath him, he felt Izzy struggling, writhing and bucking her hips in a manner that was disturbingly sexual.

“You like thme, Johnny?” she lisped. “I a
big
girl, isn't I?”

“Hurry!” John yelled, forcing himself to stay on top of her despite his revulsion at what she was doing beneath him.

Maxie barked at the girl again, circling her, nipping at her face without actually biting her. Maxie knew there was danger, John could tell, but all her years as a companion to humans, her training to serve and not hurt them, kept her from doing so now. She barked again and Izzy screamed.

Finally, Javier moved. Slowly, he stood up, bringing the ax with him, and walked toward John, one shambling step at a time. When he arrived to where John crouched over the girl, his skin glistened, coated with sweat, and he was trembling. Despite all of this, Javier lifted the ax above his head.

“Javier, no!” John yelled. Beneath him, the girl stilled, as if to watch the show. “Give me the ax, Javier,” John said. “Hand it over now. You've been through enough. I'll do this.”

Javier hesitated, the ax still raised above his head. “My sister,” he mumbled. “I…she…”

“Give it to me, Javier,” John whispered. “I'll do it. Please.”

Slowly, Javier lowered his arm and handed the ax to John. When John took it, he could feel the tremble in the boy's hand. “Thank you,” John said. “You were very brave.”

“I wasn't!” said Javier, and John saw that there were tears in his eyes. “Goddammit, I wasn't, but she…my sister was her age and I just…” He broke off in a sob.

“Shhh. It's all right,” John said. Izzy remained beneath him, and he had the sudden, uncomfortable feeling that she was
letting
him hold her down. “Listen to me, Javier. I want you to go downstairs while I do this, all right?”

“No way, man.”

“Go downstairs,” John said. “Make sure the girls are okay. You got it? I need you with them.”

Javier didn't move.

“Please,” John said. “I can take care of this, but I want to make sure Erma's okay. Please?”

“All right, man. Sure,” Javier said. He turned, but then quickly turned back. “But I'm gonna leave the door open, okay? If you need anything just yell, and I'll be up quick as hell. Got it?”

“I got it,” said John. “Now go.”

Javier left, and John turned his attention to the small body beneath him. Her face, when he looked at it, had lost all its anger and looked as sweet as he could ever imagine a child's face being. Maxie sat behind her head, her canine body rigid, waiting for a command.

Izzy spoke. “Don't hurt me, John. Please? Don't hurt me. I'm scared.”

“You're not Izzy,” John said, raising the ax above his head.

“John, no!” her little body trembled beneath him, and every fiber in his being ached to reach out and pull her close to him. “Please!” she screamed. She was sobbing now, and how could he be sure she wasn't a little girl? “Help me,” she whispered. “Please. You can still help me, John.”

He brought the ax up higher. Higher and higher above that fragile, egg-like head.

“Help,” she whispered. And a phrase, an earlier phrase whispered in just such baby pleading, came to him.
Kiss it? Kiss it and make it better?
The taste of iron on his lips.

“No,” John whispered. “Oh, God, no.”

“Yes.” Izzy writhed beneath him, pushing her hips into the air. “YES, YES, oh, GOD, YEEEEEEES, John.” She giggled.

“You're not a little girl,” John said, his teeth gritted. “You're a goddamned monster.”

The girl's eyes shifted then, the pupils growing wide, wide, wider, until they consumed her entire eyes, turning them black. And when she spoke now, all pretense at being a child was gone.

“Join us, John,” she said. “You're already one of us. You've consumed. You know it. You've drank of me and you will Become. There isn't any need to fight it now. You'll only regret it later. You're one of us.”

“I'm not!”

“You are. One of us, and the changes will start soon, and then you'll be hungry. So hungry.” She smiled up at him, and John saw that her front teeth were longer than her others and a dark brown in color. “Who will you eat first, John? Hmmm? That little girl downstairs? That teenaged cunt? She's practically begging for it, isn't she?”

“Shut up!”

“Or the old man? I think he'd be a bit tough, but maybe you'll turn him. Would you like to turn him? We could turn them all, John. Together. Bring them to me willingly, and I'll spare them. I'll make them a part of my family—our family, John—and they shall be saved. They shall be immortal.”

“Never!”

“Tell them. This is my offer. Tell them it. Either they come willingly and Become, or I kill them all. I eat their flesh.”

“I won't!” The ax trembled in his hand, its weight more than he could bear.

“If you don't, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to save your wife for you. Keep her alive until you turn, and then I'm going to watch as you eat her face!”

“No…” He could hardly breathe and the ax was crushing him. He'd never be able to bring it down.

“Why not? You want to, don't you, John? You've thought about it. She's just a baby killer, isn't that right? Just a baby killer cunt, and you'll eat her face, chew the flesh from her bones, and you'll like it. You'll like it, John!” Izzy laughed, the laughter a deep baritone too large for a child's frame. “You'll devour her and you will love it!” she screeched, her voice rising. “Love it!”

John brought the ax down with a fury and watched as it cut deeply into the little girl's flesh. Her eyes shot open wide, the black receding and leaving them just eyes again, terrified eyes.

Maxie barked, and John unwedged the ax free, gagging at the sucking sound it made as the metal worked loose from the flesh and blood rushed to fill the hole. He raised it again and brought it back down, cutting out the sight of those eyes forever.

Maxie barked again and then began to run around the body in circles, howling. She ran through the living room and to the windows, jumping onto the couch beneath them and knocking at the glass. Her barking became frenzied.

John looked up and saw glowing pairs of eyes through each of the windows. Feeders pressed their faces against the glass, peering inside. Maxie barked again, and John ran to her, checking the lock on the door, checking and rechecking the chains.

At the entrance to the basement, Izzy's body lay, its own eyes now unseeing. John ran toward the windows, his fists raised. “Leave us alone!” he yelled. “Never!” he screamed. “I will never EVER be one of you!”

He pounded at the glass, beating against the encroaching darkness outside, but already the windows were empty. John pressed his own face to the glass, cupping his palms and peering through it. Figures, dozens of them, shambled away into the night, across the street and away from Bunny's house. John beat against the window and then ran to the door, flipping the bolts. He stepped into the street and raised his fist, bloody from violence, and shook it.

“Never!” he screamed. “I will never be one of you!”

We'll see…
The voice came into his head, and it was so clear that he knew it could not be his own.
We'll see, John Scott. Soon you'll be begging me.

“Never,” John whispered.

Soon.

“Everything. If Izzy heard it, they all heard it. All the Feeders will know,” Pill said.

They huddled together, contemplating what of their plan the little girl had heard. The answer arrived to each of them: all of it. She'd heard all of it.

Pill stood, but leaned heavily against the armchair in which he'd been sitting. “There isn't any hope now. That was our last chance, the factory. That's it. It's all we had.”

“No! Not after all the shit we've been through,” Javier said. His glance darted to the darkened door behind him. “Not after
that.
”

They were upstairs now, John having told what he'd seen with the retreating figures. He did not tell them about the creature's words to them.

There were now three bodies in the basement: Riley's, Bunny's, and Izzy's. John had covered them with blankets that he'd found in a closet, one of them a quilt that he bet Bunny had made, perhaps planning to pass it on to one of her children. The three of them, lumps beneath the fabric, lay in a single row, and it hit John for the first time that they were all part of the same family. Aunt, nephew, and great-niece, all dead.

“It doesn't matter,” Erma said.

When she'd seen her husband come down the stairs covered in blood only minutes ago, her first reaction had surprised even her.

She'd laughed.

“Erma, you okay?” John asked, coming toward her and pulling her close. In one hand, he held an ax, no doubt covered with the little girl's blood. He thought his wife had gone crazy, Erma knew that. But she also knew when she saw him and laughed, knew for the first time since Bunny had been killed, really, that she was okay. She, Erma, was okay.

Now, upstairs, everyone turned to listen to her. Probably the rest of them still thought she was crazy, and maybe she was. But she had to say what she had to say. She opened her mouth to speak, and a laugh escaped her again. Javier frowned at her and Star rolled her eyes in disgust.

“I'm sorry,” Erma said, catching her breath again. “I'm fine. Really. It's just…funny. Not the little girl dying or turning or any of that. I can't explain it.” John looked at her and tried to smile. There was still blood smeared across his cheek like someone wearing lipstick had kissed him.

Erma paused, and tried to process her thoughts, tried to distill them to a concrete idea that would make sense to the rest of them.

They hadn't come together as a group the way she'd seen in all those survival movies, the horror films or apocalyptic flicks where the world was ending and everyone came together as one to fight it. All else was forgotten in these movies as people struggled to stay alive. Each understood the other, enemies became friends.

It wasn't like that at all now. It was…it was
messy.
Just look at John's face. Messy not just in the physical sense, but messy with all their relationships. The group members hardly seemed to like one another. They wasted time bickering among themselves despite the knowledge of the incredible horror occurring outside. Violence and turmoil hadn't brought them all together. Star, a girl Erma had been so eager to find, seemed almost to despise her. She would only pay attention to the boy, Javier, just like they were in high school together and ignoring the ridiculous grown-ups. Even the adults had acted like children, Riley beginning an adolescent vie for power against Pill almost as soon as the old man opened his mouth.

And it was funny. Funny because…

“We're a family.” She spoke the words that she'd spoken to so many women in the Portland shelter, and for the first time, she believed them. Pill, who'd just sunk back down into the living room armchair in defeat, perked his head, and the two teens, although still with surly expressions on their faces, were listening. John was, too. She wasn't watching him, but she knew.

“This, all of this right here, in this living room, is what matters. Any of us could have left at any time.” She looked at the others to confirm this and saw Javier nod his head. “We didn't, though. We stayed together. That's what makes us different from Them. The Feeders. Don't you see? We are a family. Each of us. We are a family because we do what families do. Sacrifice.”

Star opened her mouth as if to speak, a snarl across her lips, but Erma hurried on, not letting her. “Not that we're always doing the right things. We fuck up.” Now it was Star who nodded. “A lot. We fuck up, and we don't get along, but we…we matter. We give a shit. Even if not all the time, most of it. Or some of it. Or every once in a while. It doesn't really matter, because what I'm trying to say, basically, is that we will help one another out. If we can. Even if we do it incorrectly, or piss one another off, we will help one another out because in the end we can see ourselves in one another. In the end, we are a family because we cannot escape one another, not even in our deaths. We're bound.”

Erma jerked her hand toward the window. “Not them. They're nothing to one another. Not a thing. They can live and die and eat and breathe and not a single action of it will ever matter to another one of them. It won't matter because they can't feel like we can feel. It won't matter because, as ridiculous as it sounds, they can't love.”

“Oh, come
on,
” said Javier, rolling his eyes. “Give me a break.”

“Hush!” John said. “Let her finish. Go on, Erma.”

“No, you're right, Javier.” She surprised herself by laughing again. “That's exactly right! More than loving, which we don't always do, you're right, we have to choose to do it, but it's
our
choice. We're ridiculous! We have the right to be ridiculous!” She laughed again.

Pill sat straighter in his chair and cleared his throat. “Lady, I don't know about everyone else, but you certainly are.”

The comment hung on the air, a strained silence enveloping it. “And thank God for it,” said Pill. “My wife, Jessi, she was pretty ridiculous, too. It's what I loved about her.”

“Maybe you're right,” said Star. “Probably you're right. But so what? We're gonna be ridiculous and dead in just a second. So what are we supposed to do?”

“We try,” said Erma. “That's all we can do, isn't it? Just like we've always done. Even if they know we're coming—”

“They do,” Pill cut in. “You can bet your ass they do, because of Izzy. They share a mind, like.”

“Fine. They know we're coming. Good. But that won't stop us. We go to the factory.” She thought again of her father. Of the kindness of his that she'd forgotten amidst the darkness. “They know we're coming and that's exactly right. We'll stand against them because we can. Even if we fail, we can stand.”

Pill once again pushed himself forward and then stood, leaning against the arm of the chair as he tottered. “It ain't so easy for some of us.” He grinned. “But there you go. I'll get the truck started and the dynamite out and ready.”

Erma nodded at him and then looked at the teens. Hesitantly, Star stood, and in her best snotty teenager imitation said, “Like, okay, I'm standing. Now what, Mom?”

John answered for her. “Now we work on your attitude.” He tossed Javier's ax, which he was still holding, toward the pair. “You and your brother both. Clean that off, boy, and get your sister a weapon. Nobody ever said you wouldn't have to work for a living in this family.”

As Erma stepped toward the door to help Pill outside, she felt her mouth stretching into a smile, which stopped halfway across her face. It stopped because she wondered if it might be the last chance she ever had to wear it, and she didn't want it to disappear just yet. She wore it trembling upon her lips into the night air of Cavus and let a ghost of it linger even as they all tumbled into the truck and backed down the driveway and toward the end of something she could not name.

She wore it even as they drove directly into the belly of the beast.