Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller (42 page)

     Beginning to scream in earnest, Kimberly tried to roll to her side. She vomited dark blood onto the blankets she’d been sleeping peacefully on only minutes ago. Sobbing, wheezing, and grabbing at her tormented stomach with both hands, Kim started to convulse. Instead of hugging her stomach in agony, she tore at the skin, trying to free whatever was inside of her by gouging her own flesh to release it.

     “Kim!” Eric shouted at her. “Stop! STOP!”

     Kimberly spilled onto her back with the spasms inside her heaving stomach snapping her body up toward the ceiling with each strike.

     “Armani, God damn it, get away from her!” Kirby shouted. “Both of you, get the fuck back!”

     Armani didn’t know about Eric but his thought process was slowed and sluggish by seeing something so hideous play out before him. He barely even heard Kirby’s frantic words over the gut-wrenching sound of Kim being torn apart so the beast within her could be freed from the fleshy prison of her body.

     Eric was closer, so the thing attacked him first. Its sinuous body had a tail tipped with a triangular, metallic appendage that tore through the big man’s left shoulder. Armani pushed Eric out of the way, saving him that crazy, blade-tipped tail through the neck.

     A low hiss crept across Armani’s skin as the creature switched its milky white eyes to the other man. Eric went down, holding onto his injured shoulder, as the tail whipped around again. This time, the blade point was aimed at Armani.

     Kirby hit the creature at a full run and tackled it away from the two uncorrupted men. Though he tried to stab it with the heavy metal pike Eric had given him, the creature had black armor for flesh. The point of the pike slipped right off and impaled the carpet beside the creature.

     Armani reached out to Kirby just as the questing tail of the abomination found its way into the other man’s back. His eyes went wide for a moment and then the awareness and life drained out of them. The tail of the beast sliced upward, cutting through Kirby’s heart before it was jerked out and aimed once again at Armani.

     Eric shot at the creature. He missed with the first bullet, but the second pierced the beast in its mostly unprotected neck. The call of pain it gave was not high enough to be a shriek. It was so low in tone that it actually hurt Armani and Eric to listen.

     “Keys,” Armani said as he followed Eric out the broken window on the patio. “Which one?”

     Eric had the keys to the church van. Though it had been emptied of all the supplies packed into it, the van would be able to get them away safely.

     Eric jumped into the van, shoved the keys in the ignition, and moved to the side to allow Armani in the same way. When the engine grumbled with life, Armani yanked the door shut, locked them all, and kicked the vehicle into gear. They drove away from the church without a single look back.

Chapter Thirty-Five

     The Walker family had made it to the small town near to Sam Walker’s cabin. Dover was mostly devoid of life but they did see one vehicle tearing away from the large building that used to be the old church. The van moved too quickly for Sam to identify it but some part of him insisted he’d seen it before. A local, he assumed. He turned his small caravan the other way. Whatever had the van fleeing in the night, he didn’t want to encounter it.

     “I have gas stored where we’re going,” Sam said to Austin as he made a left turn, passing another gas station without stopping. “During the daytime, maybe you and Laura can come back here and get some more to have on hand.”

     “You say that like we won’t be with you.”

     Sam looked at Trevor, who’d awakened during the last part of the trip. He stared out into the darkness, unresponsive and vacant. It was as though the thing inside of him had put him in a nearly vegetative state.

     Sam didn’t want to know why the monster in residence had practically shut down its host. Knowing the creature had only sinister intentions made Sam keep his hand clasped even tighter with his son’s. His fingers had gone numb hours ago and constant tension had given him a piercing migraine to accompany a stress-tightened back, neck, and shoulders. He’d never felt as old as he did now.

     “I have to keep Trevor away from Amy and Melissa. I don’t know what’s happening or if it’s going to stop. What I do know is that Mel and Amy have to be kept safe no matter what. If this thing gets one of them…”

     Sam couldn’t properly define the supernatural trepidation he felt for the thing in possession of his son. No matter how he’d come by it, the niggling warnings of the new, seemingly psychic sense were not to be ignored. The voice whispering prophecy within his mind said that Melissa and Amy were special; too special to continue being threatened by the entity who’d taken hold of Trevor.

     Each day they were near to him was one day closer to damnation. He couldn’t argue with the voice telling him that everything hinged on them, them and other uncorrupted like them. Sam had to hope those responsible for the safety of the others untouched by the shadows would do everything they could to keep them safe, even if that meant abandoning them as far away from people as possible. Like Sam and the others were about to.

     “Is your fear for them worth separating us?”

     Sam nodded and turned down the road which would lead them to the far off dirt trail indicating their property. Forty acres of forest, rivers, and their small cabin was surrounded by the deeper wilderness of thick, unpopulated woods.

     “When the time comes, tell my wife to take the other path. She’ll know what you mean by that. It’s about time for us to separate.”

     More engaged since before they’d gotten in the truck, Austin shifted in his seat and looked back and forth in between Trevor and Sam.

     “Sam, you can’t leave us alone to do this. What are you going to do?”

     Sam looked at his son. He’d bundled the boy in his warmest sweater, long johns, a thick hoodie, and his high quality winter coat. They hadn’t run the heat while they were driving so even the hat and mittens on the boy didn’t bother him. Of course, Sam didn’t know if Trevor could complain if he was cold. It seemed like he didn’t exist in his own mind at all anymore. Or, that was the
only
place he was now.

     “We’re going to drive until the truck can’t go anymore. If this thing leaves him or whatever it is that’s happening ends, we’ll come back here to you. If it stays…I don’t know. I don’t know what else we can do. I just know that Amy and Melissa are uncorrupted. They have to be kept away from this thing.”

     “And what about us?”

     Sam parked the truck and waited for Laura to drive up next to him. The two-lane dirt road was barren except for their two vehicles, so she parked in the lane for oncoming traffic.

     “You and Laura will have everything you need. Stay here. No one should come here. We’re the only people who know about this place. Stay quiet, stay alert and you shouldn’t have any problems. There’s game to hunt and food stored. You’ll be fine until the winter passes, if that’s what it comes down to.”

     Laura knocked on the truck’s driver window and motioned for Sam to roll his down.

     “We’re coming out,” he said through the glass.

     Laura nodded and stepped back. Sam nodded at Austin, who opened the passenger door and stepped out. Keeping Trevor’s hand in his, Sam opened his door and slid onto the hard dirt of the road.

     “Something happened,” Sam said as soon as he looked at Laura’s face.

     “Yeah, but I didn’t see it.” She gestured Amy forward.

     Melissa sat in the car, hugging herself and staring at the back of the seat in front of her. Sam ached to hold his daughter and comfort her. He wondered if he could offer more than empty promises and half-truths. Because he couldn’t think of anything truly positive that wasn’t a lie, he instead waited for Amy to talk.

     She told him about what had happened with the video game. The thing that claimed itself to be Trevor, the name it gave itself.

     “The Bringer of Wounds,” Sam repeated. Supernatural terror slid down his spine and nested in his belly as he said the words.

     “It wants the uncorrupted,” Amy continued. “I think…I’m sure there are more like it. These Bringers, they’re special. Don’t you think?”

     Sam nodded. His tone was grim when he said, “It’s what I feel, yeah.”

     He remembered the Colemans, what had happened to them. Wounds. The thing inside of Trevor had resurrected every injury the two had ever endured. Was that its terrible power? The name it called itself seemed to indicate the assumption was true.

     “These Bringers, they have to have uncorrupted souls offered to them. Some kind of payment. A type of penance?” Sam wrinkled his brow and shook his head in frustration. “It doesn’t matter right now. We don’t have time to sit and wax philosophy about this bastard. All we need to know is what it wants and that we damn sure aren’t going to let it have that. Right?”

     Laura and Austin nodded. The teen seemed surer of himself in Amy’s presence and stayed close to her. He exuded a hesitant kind of protective intent toward the older girl. Sam preferred it from his moroseness.

     A branch snapped in the woods.

     Sam silenced everyone with a firm look. Amy and Laura crept back toward the Aveo. While Sam searched the shadows for whatever they’d heard moving, Amy slid into the passenger seat and eased her door closed. She didn’t slam it or even close it all the way but at least she was inside the vehicle.

     Instead of getting to safety, Laura simply guarded one side of the road with her gun. She swept the barrel back and forth and followed the same path with her eyes.

     Sam squinted, trying harder to see any shape in the darkness. Austin hefted the crowbar he’d taken to be his main weapon and prepared himself to fight, as well.

     “I don’t see anything,” Sam said.

     As though his voice alone had summoned them, shapes burst from the trees. They dashed through the vehicles’ headlights, appearing to be strobe light images in the open night. Their movements were jerky and uncoordinated and they hissed or snarled with every step.

     Sam saw Melissa fling herself to the floor of the Aveo.

     Laura evaluated the situation and decided in less than a second that there were too many for them to fight. She jerked her door open and threw herself into the Aveo.

     “With them!” Sam bellowed at Austin.

     The teen didn’t hesitate to follow the command. He threw himself into the backseat where Melissa’s booster was. Even before he slammed the door shut, Laura pressed down on the accelerator and the Aveo lurched forward. The spinning tires flung mud and harder pieces of dirt out from behind it but the tire treads caught and the vehicle surged forward.

     Several of the creatures bounced off of the Aveo’s exterior as it hit them. Luckily, none of them wound up beneath the wheels.

     Sam hoped Austin would remember to tell his wife where to go.

     The few seconds that it took the others to get in their vehicle left Sam blocked off from his own. He cursed as he turned with Trevor and began to run.

     The boy either couldn’t or wouldn’t keep up. The things on their heels snapped their teeth together and chattered or howled at them; freezing Sam’s blood more surely than the bitingly cold winter night. He scooped Trevor up into his arms and ran faster.

     Corrupted flowed out from between the trees, bursting through the leave as though they were elemental beasts summoned by the presence of man in their forest. These were no mere nymphs or fairies. The monsters pouring out around them were tentacled or clawed, fanged and ravenous. Some of them were missing limbs which had been replaced with the macabre remnants of Dr. Frankenstein’s chest of inhuman body parts. Wings, talons, furred limbs, even things that looked like fins, fungus, or plant roots waved or reached for them. Heads had been replaced by gushing mycological tumors, torsos missing their interiors had ribs woven together with entrails or glowing flames cooking the bodies from within.

     Amazed at his own endurance, Sam was able to keep himself and Trevor out of the reach of the monstrosities coming for them. He could feel himself beginning to weaken. Air burned his lungs instead of soothing the strained organs. His legs became more wobbly with each step. His arms felt as though they would tear out at the shoulder sockets from bearing the burden of Trevor’s weight on them. The little food he’d put into his stomach threatened to push up and make him gag. He fought against his body’s desire to heave and pressed on.

     Now back into the town of Dover, Sam weaved between buildings and cars parked on the streets. He’d lost most of the things pursuing them but he knew Dover would shortly be filled with the dead but not gone bodies of the residents who’d lived there just days past. He imagined those were who’d chased them out of the trees: the corrupted and turned people of the tiny town.

     “Trev,” Sam said. His ragged voice could barely press out around the gulping breaths he took. “Trev, can you run?” His arms couldn’t handle it anymore. If Trevor couldn’t start moving on his own, Sam would drop him soon.