APOCALYCIOUS: Satire of the Dead (16 page)

             
“Mick!” he heard his father yell from outside and that spurred him further into the house in desperation and fear. He turned and looked around the corner into the living room where the couch was soaked in blood and the blood trail led to where Suki lay dead. There was a crash from within the kitchen; Mick almost let go a scream as he swung the shotgun toward the sound, knocking a lamp from one of the teak end tables. It shattered against the floor, sparking as the bulb blew.

             
Jim Claymont crashed through the swinging door that led into the dining room and his glazed eyes looked at Mick hungrily in a milky translucency. Blood covered his chin and the front of his blue button down shirt. Mick thought that Jim might have been smiling as he revealed those perfectly maintained teeth; as he did so, Mick saw pieces of meat stuck between them and their normal white color was stained with blood. Jim’s complexion had taken on an ashen gray compared to his normally dark brown hue. Mick’s mind told him that Jim was sick; maybe sick like his own father was, but his heart told him that Jim was already dead. It was impossible…stupid to think that, but he couldn’t shake it.

“Jim….are you alright?” Mick asked quietly.

              Jim roared and his jaws opened with a pop as they dislocated. Mick had never seen a man’s jaws open that wide, he looked like a snake eating a bird and it made Mick’s blood run cold. It was unnatural, but that was beginning to become par for the course.

             
Mick raised the shotgun again, aiming at Foster’s chest. “Jim…” he warned in a shaky voice, “…don’t….”

             
Jim stepped forward, clawing for him with his powerful arms. Even though Jim was in his late forties he was in better shape than most of the kids that attended the university, including some of those on the wrestling team. He drew nearer; slowly stalking forward.

             
“Jim…please….don’t…” Mick said and thumbed the hammer back.

             
Jim lunged for him, screaming, and Mick pulled the trigger.  The firing pin fell on an empty chamber. In his rush to get out of the trailer he had forgotten to load the shotgun. He staggered backward, barely avoiding Jim’s hooked hands and fell onto the blood soaked sofa; the shotgun slipped from his hand and skittered across the floor to stop in front of Jim’s flat screen television. Jim lunged again and Mick rolled onto the floor and scrambled from behind the coffee table. His heart pounded in his chest from fear and rising blood pressure and could feel his pulse points audibly throbbing in his temples. He had been in countless wrestling matches that had taxed him physically, but he had never been in a tournament for his life. He saw the shotgun that he’d dropped and scrabbled to pick it up. He adjusted his grip and swung it by the barrel like a club. He heard ribs snap as it slammed into Jim’s side. Jim rose as if he had felt nothing. Mick swung again and Jim swatted at the shotgun with his forearm. The two met with a sickening crack as both the bones in Jim’s forearm snapped, and again with sweating palms, Mick lost his grip on the shotgun as it clattered to the floor.

             
Mick backed into the corner as Jim lunged for him again and again, heedless of his broken arm as he swung viciously at him. Jim’s broken arm flapped back and forth and with his other hand he grabbed the front of Mick’s sweatshirt and drew him closer to his mouth. Mick yanked free, but fell again; slipping on the blood he had tracked from the couch. Jim leaned toward him, his jaws opening and snapping and Mick could smell Jim’s breath. He could smell the infection, that putrid stench was rife with it. Teeth cracked as the jaws snapped shut inches from Mick’s nose and then a deafening blast explosively sent Jim sprawling against the wall, leaving only part of his lower jaw attached to the neck as his body fell heavily to the floor. Mick looked up to see his father aiming the shotgun at his head.

             
“Are you bit?”

             
“Whaaa…?””

             
Foster pumped the action of his shotgun, chambering a fresh round as the spent shell hit the floor with a hollow plastic sound and rolled to a stop by a leg of the coffee table. “Are you bit, boy?”

             
Mick ran his hands over himself, patting, “N…no…Dad?”

             
Foster released a long slow exhalation and lowered the shotgun, “Where’s the girls?”

             
“I don’t know…” Mick began, then narrowed his eyes “What’re you gonna…”

             
Foster interrupted him. “Mick I want to make sure they’re alright. That’s all.” He reached down extending his hand to his son. Mick looked at it before accepting it and, Foster pulled his son to his feet. He picked up Mick’s shotgun, handed it to him and said, “You might wanna load that.”

             
Mick took the shotgun and fumbled in his sweatshirt for a shell, broke down the single shot, and with shaking hands finally managed to insert the shell in the breech. He looked back at his dad.

             
“Son, you’ve gotta listen to me,” Foster said, laying a hard calloused hand on his son’s shoulder, “I know you think I shot Karen, but that wasn’t your mom, just like that wasn’t Jim.”

             
Mick was mentally exhausted and felt like he was going to cry. “What’s going on, then?” he asked helplessly.

             
Foster shook his head, “I don’t know, son, but you know I wouldn’t have killed your mom.” Mick could see that his dad was having a hard time keeping his emotions under control.

             
Mick looked down at Jim. The aftermath of the gunshot was gruesome and he felt his mouth begin to salivate and his stomach begin to convulse, so he hastily looked away. Brain, blood, bone, teeth and blood soaked bits of scalp with tufts of hair were strew against the wall as if someone had tossed a charnel house bucket against the ivory painted wall.

             
This was all that remained of his father’s best friend, Jim; a good man who had always treated Mick as if he were a son. He felt a ridiculous laughter rising in his throat. He thought it was like a gore filled piñata, except instead of fun sized Snickers bars and Tootsie Rolls there was only this massacre, this death; this finality.

             
“C’mon, son…where would the girls be hiding?”

             
Mick thought for a moment then replied “The stables…I’d guess the stables.” It had been a common meeting place for him and Jim’s oldest daughter, Mia. They had spent many afternoons in the hay loft above the horse stables, meeting in secret and loving each other. “…but what are we going to tell them?”

             
“I don’t know, son. Let’s find them before they find this, though.”

             
“OK, Pop.”

             
Foster squeezed the back of Mick’s neck, “Good boy…you’ve always been a good boy,” he said, “C’mon, let’s go find the girls.” 

             
They turned toward the foyer to exit the house. Suki stood in the hallway, her eyes locked directly upon them. Foster removed his hand from his son’s neck and grasped the stock of his shotgun and brought it up into his shoulder. He peered down the barrel at her, the bead centered between her eyes. Suki took one lurching step forward as her lower jaw swung open, the joint popping beneath the strain. She took another faltering step.

             
Mick looked at his father with uncertainty. “Pop?”

             
Suki stepped forward again and Mick thought she looked like she was beginning to limber up. He glanced back at his father and noticed the shotgun was shaking. So far, this morning Foster Oswald had blown the heads off his wife and his best friend, now he was confronted with repeating the violence to his best friend’s wife. Suki was a woman who had been fiercely loyal and kind-hearted, almost to a fault.

             
She stepped again, then again. She glared at the two men and clamped her jaw shut, her teeth cracking together with so much force that Mick found it hard to believe that it hadn’t broken them.

             
“Pop?” Mick asked again, his voice tremulous.

             
Foster cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Suki,” he said as she took another step and squeezed the trigger. Mick watched as if in slow motion as his father’s finger slowly coiled around the trigger and constricted it. He jumped when the 12 gauge roared, breathing fire from the end of the barrel and filling his nostrils with the sulfuric smell of cordite. Mick didn’t look when he heard Suki’s body collapse to the hard wood floor. He didn’t look when he heard something wet dripping or when he heard the sound of something soft, heavy and wet hit the floor with a smack. Mick didn’t have to look to see the grisly scene; he had already seen it transpire twice this morning and his mind put together a ghastly collage that was just as bad as any scene he could have witnessed.

             
Foster pumped the shotgun, ejecting the spent shell and chambering a fresh one. He lowered it, resting the smoking barrel in the crook of his arm. Foster noticed that Mick refused to look at the dead woman and couldn’t blame him.

             
“Maybe you should go out the back door, Mick. I’ll go lock up the front, so the girls won’t find her like that.”

             
Mick nodded; he felt as if he were in a nightmare where he wanted to run, but his legs felt like jelly and he forced himself to march to the back of the house through the dining room.

Foster shut the door behind him and waited on the walk before the porch for Mick. When Mick came around the side of the house he still looked haunted but he walked toward the stables with his father where Suki’s prized show horses were kept with the hope of seeing Mia alive.

The Barn was nicer than many of the houses and trailers of most of the residents of Rollins, West Virginia; it was even heated by an outdoor wood burning furnace. Mick grew more and more anxious as they approached the large wood and steel structure. Its green metal roof matched the roof of the house and it was sided in vinyl in the same sand color as well. He silently prayed that Mia was not torn and bitten like her mother, but he was sure that if Mia was alive then her younger sister Nan would be too. Mia would never leave without her.

             
Foster slid the hanging barn door to the side and it slid smoothly on well-oiled wheels within their overhead tracks. As always the stables were immaculately kept and the smell of manure was light.

             
Mia was twenty years old and had more of the look of her father’s African traits while Nan who was seventeen had more of the look of her mother’s Japanese, but despite their differences both were beautiful with symmetrical faces. Mia had a more athletic build while Nan was curvier and had many of the local boys stopping by on their four wheelers asking Jim if they could take his daughter for a ride. Jim would favor them with a dour expression and tell them to go home. Nan, however, was more interested in books. She was a sponge for information and knowledge; she knew she would have plenty of time for boys later, so for now she preferred to read. Mia shared her mother’s love of horses and she had taught Mick to ride three years ago. When Mia wasn’t riding she was grooming them for shows. She had received a degree in veterinary science in only two years due to her strong work ethic and planned on opening her own practice in Kentucky, but she had told Mick that she would stay at her father’s farm until Mick graduated from college with his degree in sports science. They had planned their life together and Mick worried that those dreams might now have been stolen away.

             
“Mia?” Mick said, nervously pausing to listen. He heard a horse moving and rustling the hay in one of the stalls but Foster heard the click of a revolver being cocked and stopped Mick from advancing farther.

             
“Girls? It’s Uncle Fosie…”

             
More rustling

             
“Mia…it’s me, Mick….we’ve come to keep you safe,” Mick said, and listened again.

             
“Mickey?” asked a scared female voice.

             
“It’s me, Mia. Come on now, it’s safe.”

             
“What about Daddy?” asked another voice, timid with fear; it was Nan.

              Foster and Mick looked at each other uncertainly, not knowing how to answer, and then Foster said “No one can hurt you now.”

They heard the girls begin to cry and waited patiently by the open door. Soon Mia emerged from the shadows, still holding a chrome-plated .357 magnum snub-nosed revolver.
Nan had both her hands clutched firmly around Mia’s left arm and held it tight to her chest walking almost sideways. They walked slowly toward them, studying the Oswald’s for any sign of infection. Foster laid down his shotgun and held his arms out toward them.

             
Nan ran to Foster and threw her arms around his waist and he wrapped his long thin arms around her shoulders “It’s alright now, darlin’,” he whispered soothingly.

             
With Nan gone, Mia ran to Mick and he gently rocked her trying to comfort her as she cried. He ran his hand over her long smooth black hair and kissed her forehead.