Bits & Pieces (11 page)

He'd struck her once with the heavy cross.

Now he was poised to finish it. To finish her.

David. The last man standing.

David, who had once wanted to be a minister, who'd almost taken a scholarship to a seminary. David, who was the gentlest person she'd ever known.

In that moment he had been every bit as much a monster as the dead who thrashed and moaned around him. The cross raised in his strong hands. The need to end her and this madness written on his face.

She wanted to tell him to do it.

She tried.

She begged him to end her life. No—to end what
this
was. Whatever this was.

Un-life.

She screamed her plea to him.

She was sure of it.

But all that came out of her mouth, all that she could hear, was her voice making a strange, long, low, unutterably desperate moan of bottomless hunger.

That wasn't what stopped him. The moan was no different from the ravenous cries rising from every dead throat in
the chapel. If it had been only that, then even David would have brought the cross down and ended her life. Ended her pain. That was how he would see it, she was certain.

Helping her. Not killing her.

After all, she was already dead.

No.

What stopped David was something else. Something he saw. Something she saw him
see
. Something so . . . so terrible.

He looked into her eyes.

And saw
her
.

Dead, but not gone.

Destroyed, but not chased out of the ruin of her body.

There.

Still there.

Trapped inside the cage of her own stolen flesh. A prisoner who was still chained to the input of all five senses. She could see everything, smell the blood, taste the black poison of whatever lived within the plague, felt the deadness of the dying heart in her chest, and heard David's voice.

“Please,” he said. It was not a plea to have her do something or to get something, or even for help.

Please.

It was a prayer to whatever fractured power still ran the universe, that what he saw in her eyes was a lie.

Only a lie.

But the bride knew that it was not a lie. She was still in there. Her body was not her own, would never again be hers to control. And yet she was still in there. Lost. Trapped.

Aware.

And David saw that. He knew it.

If the world had not already been falling apart, that's when it would have collapsed.

They had been married for less than a minute when the driver of the limo had come blundering in, collapsing against the last row of people. Already bitten, already bleeding.

One minute.

David was her husband, and she was his wife. His bride.

He looked into her dead eyes and saw something, saw the truth that maybe no one else knew. He saw it because it was like him to see those kinds of things. He was always the type who got to know people on a deep level.

It was what made people love him. And trust him.

It was what broke his heart for the second time in minutes. It was what made him drop the cross and stagger back, clamping a hand to his mouth to stifle the scream that he so badly needed to let loose. It was what kept him from killing her.

And it was what drove him from the chapel, the scream finally breaking from him as he burst out into the sunlight of his first day in hell.

Now the bride went where her body went. She fought with it. So hard, so hard. Trying to wrest back one single bit of control. A finger, a step, a turn of the head.

But it was like being buckled into a runaway car. All she could do was experience the horror.

Every moment.

Every hour.

Every bite.

They kissed for so long that her lips hurt.

It was a good hurt.

Tucker could be as forceful as their shared passion permitted; but mostly he was gentle. Talented. Considerate.

Perfect.

The night and the storm had wrapped themselves around the house, but the old timbers kept them safe; and the fire and their closeness kept them warm. Hannahlily kept waiting for the moment when Tucker would make the inevitable guy move. At first she thought that was what she wanted, that if it was what
he
wanted, she would agree.

As the night moved slowly into the depth of the storm, she began dreading it.

The change was subtle.

Never once before in her life had she wanted anyone as much as she wanted Tucker. He was it. All of it. Everything on her checklist. Everything she knew she would ever want. A dream factory.

Which made her begin to wonder if she was simply being stupid.

Was that it? Was she being a girl? No, that was wrong. It really wasn't a girl thing, and her female pride raised its head and shook off that kind of thinking.

No.

This wasn't really about her being female. This was about her wondering if she was mature enough to evaluate
Tucker. To read him and make the right guesses about who he really was.

Hannahlily wasn't even entirely sure that was an age thing. Her aunt Sis was no judge of men. And both of her brothers, Johnny and Al, were fools for any kind of woman, no matter how badly they were treated. Aunt Sis was thirty-two, and her siblings were forty and forty-four.

No. Maybe it was a human thing.

Tucker appeared to be everything that was right about guys. Decent, honest, gorgeous, patient, respectful.

But at the same time she knew—with no possibility of error—that he wanted her. That he wanted to sleep with her.

The question was whether he wanted to hook up with her or make love to her.

For Hannahlily that was the big difference. Every other boy she'd ever dated might as well have had ‘ ”hookup” tattooed on their foreheads. Tucker didn't seem to be like that, but why not?

Was it something about her?

Was it something about him?

Could a guy—especially a seventeen-year-old guy—actually have enough self- control and respect to be able to control his urges?

That sounded as likely as pink unicorns traipsing through the yard.

Maybe less likely.

Guys, after all, were guys. Hannahlily had learned all about the biology of it in health class. The sex drive was a hardwired biochemical impulse to procreate. It was tied
to the lizard brain's basic species survival drive. And guys got reinforcement about sexual conquests in everything from rap songs to commercials for Ford pickup trucks. Her aunt Sis said that even the most civilized man was only a grunt and a short step away from a Neanderthal, especially when they thought they could get some action from a female.

So what was Tucker's deal?

They held each other, and they kissed, and they touched, but they kept their clothes on, and things never got past a certain point.

Hannahlily was grateful.

Hannahlily was also mildly annoyed.

Didn't he
like
her?

Didn't he love her?

What was wrong with him?

What was—?

There was a sound.

And they both froze.

“What was that?” she said, her voice thin and breathless.

He raised his head and listened. “What was what?”

“I heard something.”

She saw the brightness of his smile in the firelight. “The whole place sounds like it's about to fall down.”

They listened. The wind was a banshee shriek. The bones of the old house creaked and complained. Water dripped somewhere inside.

“It's just the storm,” he said.

“No, I
heard
something.”

“Hey,”
he said gently, brushing hair from her face with a gentle sweep of his fingers, “it's okay. We're good here. It's just the—”

He stopped.

She didn't have to ask why.

They both heard it.

It wasn't the creak of old timbers. It wasn't the banging of loose shutters or the rattle of glass in loose panes.

It was a different kind of sound. The kind of sound houses don't make unless they're haunted houses in horror movies.

It was a human sound.

A moan.

Low, but not sneaky.

No, whatever made that sound was not some imp trying to hide. This wasn't a poltergeist. This was something else.

An empty sound. Mostly empty. Not a voice calling out. Nothing like that. This wasn't someone trying to warn the lovers that someone was about to enter their firelit nest.

No.

This was a moan.

And in its near emptiness it was directed in no particular direction. Yet it filled the house with meaning.

Without words, without articulation, it spoke of a need greater than anything Hannahlily had ever felt. Greater than Tucker felt. Greater than the need that had brought them here. More insistent than the needs that locked them together in their secret and private darkness.

It was a hungry moan.

And it came from the other side of the kitchen door.

There was a muscular pickup truck parked by the back door, and the downstairs front windows of the old house glowed with the golden light of a fireplace. The bride did not even glance at it as she approached the house and went to the back door. A dozen others followed her from the wedding along with six more who had begun walking with her along the rain-swept roads. Strangers, but now part of something.

A family?

A horde?

A swarm?

The bride did not know which word fit. Maybe there was no word in the dictionary that explained this.

Her hand reached out to turn the doorknob, but it was a clumsy motion, and even as she did it, the woman inside could feel herself drifting backward from the action as if the one had nothing to do with the other. A reflex action, but not any choice of hers.

The kitchen door opened and her body went inside, taking her consciousness with it. As if whatever was about to happen in the old house required a witness.

The kitchen was dark, but light came from under the door. Warm light that moved and flowed. Firelight, not lamplight.

The body—the bride no longer considered it hers—stopped for a moment as if confused by this light. Or by the second door. Whatever reflex had allowed it to turn one
doorknob was already fading, as if there were only a little rational thought or motor memory left and it was already draining away. Besides, there was no knob here. Only the flat wood and decorative trim of the door.

As wind blew in from the open doorway to the outside, it brushed against the inner door and made it sway. As if the door wanted to open and was trembling with anticipation.

The bride moved forward as the other wedding guests and the roadside strangers crowded in behind her. They milled, pushing forward. Pushing her forward.

Beyond the door there were voices.

Two.

Male and female. Young. Whispering.

“It's okay,” said a boy's voice. “We're good here. It's just the—”

He stopped speaking as the hand that the bride had once owned reached out and pushed on the door.

The door opened at her touch.

She moved into the next room. A big room that was part dining room and part den. A fire crackled in the stone hearth. And on the floor, wrapped in a thick blanket, with hair and clothes tousled and faces flushed, were the owners of those voices.

A pretty girl.

A handsome boy.

Just the two of them, caught in a moment of shock that had not yet turned to horror.

It would, though.

The bride knew that much.

Horror was what she had brought to this house. It was
the only gift she had received at her wedding, and it was all she was allowed to share.

Horror, and all that the horror promised.

Every dark thing.

She spoke that horror in a voice of hunger and of need. The others behind her raised their voices in chorus.

She led the silent procession from the kitchen into the den.

The silence was torn out of the moment as screams filled the air.

The shocked silence that gripped Hannahlily Bryce exploded into a shriek of absolute horror. There were people all around her. Strangers. Muddy and bloody and wrong. White faces with red mouths and black eyes. Plucking at the blanket and at her clothes, her hair, her skin.

“Tucker!”

But Tucker was frozen into the moment for one heartbeat longer than her. One heartbeat too long, his whole body locked into rigid stupefaction. His mouth worked as he tried to say something, ask something that would make sense of this; and the movement mirrored the movements of the hungry mouths around him.

Time suddenly seemed to slow down for Hannahlily. She saw the creatures huddled around her, she saw Tucker—muscular, powerful, capable, and totally frozen in fear—and she glimpsed the impossible future. Blood and pain and
death. She didn't even know how she understood the nature of this attack. It wasn't a gang beating. This was death of a different kind, a nightmare kind. She saw the red mouths and she knew that.

We're dead.

The thought was as clear in her mind as if she had spent hours contemplating this very incident.

And then suddenly time jumped back to normal as the mouths descended toward her flesh.

Hannahlily screamed as loud as she could, shoved Tucker away from her, rolled backward onto her shoulders and kicked upward at the creatures. She was slender, but she was strong. Cheerleading, gymnastics, dance. Fear. Her legs shot upward and her bare feet caught two of them under the chins. One foot sent a man with wire-frame glasses flying backward; the other caught the jaw of a woman with frizzy brown hair, and at that angle the woman's head spun on the neck and there was a huge, wet
crack!

As the woman fell backward, Hannahlily was moving. She bashed aside the white hands and scrambled toward Tucker, shoving and punching him until he suddenly snapped out of his stupor.