Waiting for the body to tumble out of the truck, Rick leaned in and felt the ignition. No keys. He bent down beside the body and methodically felt around in the pockets. He felt strange with his hands in another man’s pockets. He found a wallet and pulled out a credit card and a few bills, but it was too dark to see the denominations. “Oh well, time to hotwire.”
He just jumped into the driver’s seat and ripped the plastic away from the underside of the dash.
The arduous task of hotwiring a car by relying on a hazy, alcohol-soaked memory was further complicated by the darkness. The lights around the parking lot supplied plenty of light while outside, but in the cab of the truck, blackness swallowed up everything below the windows. Luck apparently smiled down on the lad; the engine turned over and Rick never once shocked himself. He smiled triumphantly and buckled up. There was no way to tell time since he had lost consciousness, but he knew that they had a good head start on him. Stephanie and Martin, the names made him want to spit. Even mouthing the words to himself made him feel tainted. The only way to wipe away that stain from his memory, the only way to regain his lost sense of control would be to hunt them down and kill them both. His foot tapped the gas and the vehicle rolled forward a little. “It even feels like my truck” he absently whispered before setting off into the night.
***
Bryant sat beside Cara in the semicircle composed of Eric, Father O’Brien, and the two children. Eric had just finished describing his ordeal at the radio station. No one interrupted. The doctor looked too shaken and any hindrance to his narrative might cause him to not continue. When he finished, his eyes were moist and he paused every few words to wipe them with his tattered, dirty sleeve. “I thought I was going to die.”
The priest used a comforting tone when addressing the obviously distressed man. “I think that we’ve all been there at sometime today.”
Bryant stood up and shed his light jacket. “It’s getting hot in here.” He explained. Then he walked to the corner of the room and picked up his backpack. The young man paused and looked directly at Eric. “Once we got in here, we couldn’t leave, Doctor. The things surrounded the place.” He looked down, his face full of lamentation. “I wanted to drive out of town but the open bed of the truck wouldn’t offer our passengers any protection.”
Eric looked at the black nylon, noticing slight movement within. “What’s in the bag?” Somehow, he knew that he didn’t really want find out. He still felt freaked out about his ordeal earlier and didn’t think that he could handle another surprise.
Bryant looked at the bag with a detached smile. “Something that can teach us.”
Cara spoke up trying to postpone what was about to happen. Of course, her words had the opposite effect. “Are you sure? I don’t know if they are ready for this.”
Eric felt dehydrated, but somewhere inside his body mustered up enough moisture to send a bead of sweat down his face. “If it is dangerous, we need to know about it right away.”
The priest calmly interjected. “If it can help us survive this mess, we definitely need to know as soon as possible.”
“Okay.” Bryant spoke with more gravity than his age indicated. “But it may be unsettling.” He gingerly set the bag down and found the black zipper. He pulled back careful not to get his hand too close to the interior. As he spread the opening wider, the entire population of the church strained their necks, trying to peek inside or catch just a glimpse of what he held.
With an unintentional flourish, Bryant jerked the head up by the hair, holding it at arm’s length. It reminded the priest of a painting he once saw, brushed in oil paint and depicting a victorious David holding the head of Goliath. Everyone else let out uncontrolled gasps. Someone had brought the enemy inside with them.
The man huddled in the corner shouted at his children. “Get away from that, now!” Both children erupted in shrieks, but stayed firmly planted with the rest of the group.
Eric jumped to his feet. “Have you lost your damn mind? That thing is still dangerous!” In evidence of this, the disembodied head peered around the room sizing up all the warm flesh in front of it.
The priest shook his head, still not raising his voice. “Have you no respect for the dead?”
Bryant cut his eyes at the religious figure. “When the dead try to eat me, I say screw respect.”
Cara stood up and addressed the group in a reasonable tone. “Bryant’s idea was to try some tests and see if we can learn about the creatures. If we study their physiology, we might stumble upon something that could help us.”
The antisocial father shouted over Cara’s voice. “I said come to me!” His children eyed him suspiciously. Both seemed to know that if they obeyed, he would wrap them both in a paranoid hug bordering on strangulation. The boy held his sister by the wrist and shook his head.
Unable to further verbally attack Bryant, Eric turned on the stranger. “Shut up or I’ll throw that ugly, fucked up head at you!”
The priest did not bother to correct the man’s language. Sensing an approaching breaking point and hoping to placate, Father O’Brien called out to the couple. “What experiments did you have in mind?”
That simple question silenced everyone. Despite the various stances on whether or not to keep the head, simple curiosity had snagged them; that was the hook. Expectant eyes followed each subtle sway of Bryant’s body as he tried to think. His body tingled nervously under their roving gaze.
“Well, um.” He began unsteadily. “How do they hunt us? I think that is the first question. If we figure out the answer, we’ll know how to hide from them or avoid detection at least.” He sat down and set the decapitated head down on its still dripping neck.
“I haven’t seen it blink yet.” Eric observed, feeling his heart settling back to a slow, steady rhythm.
“So, when a human doesn’t blink what happens?” Bryant uncomfortably asked the audience.
Cara answered him. “It is a reflex that happens at least every ten seconds. If a person has his or her eyes propped open for a length of time (let’s say for a surgery), the eyes have to be regularly hydrated or else it can affect vision.”
“So, that means its vision should be impaired, however it still tries to bite me when I reach for it.” He did not demonstrate and no one asked him to. “Let’s take away its vision completely and see if it can still sense me.”
Bryant reached into the side pocket of his backpack and pulled out a sharpened pencil. Both the writing utensil and his hand wore red smears from the where the leaking head had soaked his book bag. He placed one hand on the creature’s matted hair and pressed down to hold the head in place. Building suspense (though not consciously), Bryant slowly eased the pencil forward wanting to make sure that he punctured the eye and nothing else. The difficulty of that task increased exponentially by his unsteady nerves. The graphite tip of the pencil seemed to dance around an inch away from the wide staring eye. Gradually easing forward, the sharpened end pushed into the tender flesh of the once human eye. It indented slightly before the surface integrity gave, sending the interior of the organ leaking out over the pencil and down the pale cheekbones of the deceased. Shuddering, he pulled the weapon out, hearing a suction noise as it exited the tight puncture. He repeated the process with the second eye, noticing that the butterflies dancing inside his stomach did not abate.
Bryant reached toward its mouth, carefully keeping his distance. The mouth began snapping at him even without sight. He pulled his hand back.
Father O’Brien watched with horrid fascination. “How does it know when we’re close by?”
“Body heat?” Cara offered.
The grown man sitting in the corner away from the group shouted. “This is pointless. We should throw it away and stay put! God is in this place and that thing’s presence is an abomination. God will not let his servants perish after they sought him out.”
The priest turned around to face him. “What is your name, sir?” The voice was controlled but stern.
“What does it matter?” The man screamed back.
“What is your name?” He asked louder.
“Daniel Rogers.” He replied.
“Your children are in out circle trying to understand. Why aren’t you?” The priest motioned at a small boy and a small girl.
“I told them not to get closer. They disobeyed. Not honoring their father, God sees their sin!” The venom in his voice shocked everyone present. Cara noticed the children wince at their father’s words. The girl appeared on the verge of tears.
“Now see here, Mr. Rogers!” The priest stood up, looking down at the man curled into a tight ball. “Children are born with curiosity. Man can reason and discover the world around him and God bestowed those gifts. So, to shut out enlightenment is to deny a gift from God.”
Daniel fell silent and turned his face away. He did not listen to anything the old man had said, but he knew enough to understand that he was out numbered. He cast one last glance at his children and pulled his knees in closer.
Bryant saw that the exchange had ended and continued his lesson. “I’m going to try to talk to it.” He lowered himself onto all fours. “Can you hear me?” The mouth snapped at flesh that was not present. “Okay. Try to speak.” He coaxed it but the mouth only snapped again.
Cara interrupted. “This is pointless. It has no lungs. It couldn’t speak even if it had the mental capacity.
Bryant’s cheeks flushed red. “Stupid” he muttered under his breath. “We did learn something though.” He added as if to make up for his foolish idea of speaking with a zombie. “It responds to audio stimuli. It tried to bite at any sound. Let’s puncture the ear drums and see if it still attacks.”
Bryant slowly pushed the same eye encrusted pencil into the ear canal, being careful not to move too deep. The pencil kept sinking in, encountering resistance but still penetrating. A trickle of sanguine fluid dripped from the lobe, spilling over the contours and down the neck. After both ears were rendered useless, he tried speaking again. “Hello. Can you hear me?” The mouth moved slightly but not in the same manner as before.
Eric spoke this time. “It might be responding to the vibration. That is the case with some deaf people. They can’t hear but they can sense the beat of a song through the vibration of the sound waves.” Though he looked calmer than before, his eyes still darted around wildly.
Cara nodded. “That sounds reasonable.”
Slowly, Bryant stretched his hand out toward the mouth. As the distance closed, the mouth remained stationary. His trembling fingers stopped almost touching the gray, cracked lips. The teeth snapped shut with unexpected force and a quickness that sent Bryant reeling back and looking at his still intact hand. “It almost had me” he thought.
“That was close.” He tried to laugh it off as he stood up. “Now for the acid test. How much damage to the head can it withstand? As we have seen, it survived dismemberment. It has attacked without sight or hearing. It has also not bled to death.” In a grandiose manner, he scooped up a pencil and a fistful of hair. Lifting the head in one hand and thrusting with the other, he sent the sharpened cylinder of wood through the destroyed eye and into the brain. The mouth slackened and an odd tension left the facial muscles. Bryant set it back down and repeated his taunting with his hand. They waited but it did not strike. “Congratulations. We know exactly what to do to kill it.”
“Good.” Daniel shouted at him. “Take a pencil and go out the front door! I want to see you save us.”
Everyone, even the man’s own children, shouted in unison. “Shut up!”
Eric pulled Bryant to the side. “I’ve got a theory I’d like to run by you.”
Bryant patted him on the arm. “Let me get my girlfriend in on this. I think she may be a little smarter than me.”
Eric stood dumbfounded as the young man stepped away and came back with the petite young girl he thought he recognized. “I remember you” he whispered to himself. This was definitely the girl who met him in the parking lot on a day that seemed a million years ago. He shrugged it off and spoke to them in hushed tones. “We shouldn’t have killed the head. We need to know what specific part of the brain is essential.” He leaned in even closer and both teenagers could smell the dried sweat from his exertions. “My idea is that the reptilian brain is what is active. The frontal lobes are dead, useless fat, but the lower brain, the primal instinct is still alive. That explains the mindless, animalistic behavior.” Excitement crept into his voice.
Bryant glanced at Cara and she nodded, adding, “That sounds like what we’ve seen.”
Bryant turned back to the doctor. “What else does that reptilian brain control?”
The doctor began speaking like the text of a medical book without realizing it. “It is composed of the brainstem and is the smallest region of the brain. It determines the general level of alertness and regulates the vegetative processes.”
“What is a vegetative process?” Bryant asked.
“Breathing and heartbeat.” He quickly answered. “It also controls the fight or flight mechanism. It lacks language and complex memory and concerns itself mainly with survival, physical maintenance, hoarding, dominance, preening, and mating.”
“What the hell is preening?” Bryant interrupted.
Cara cut in. “It means ‘dressing up’, like when animals clean themselves.”
Eric smiled. “Yes, that’s it.” He turned his attention back to his explanation. “It is generally accepted that the lower brains is also where love, hate, fear, lust, and contentment come from.”
A small child’s voice ended the conversation. “Daddy, I’m hungry.”
The trio turned and looked in the direction of the speaker. The little girl pulled at Daniel Roger’s arm. He still sat facing the corner, ignoring everyone. Cara reached out and gently pulled the girl away from the unmoving man.
“Come here sweetie.” She directed at the girl, and then turned to the group. “Does anyone know where the kitchen is?” Cara looked around for a response.
The girl’s brother raised his hand, unsure of why he used a gesture from school on the teenager. “We go to this church, Miss.”