Hissers (11 page)

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

“No. I mean, maybe. If it’s like a video game I think I can get it.”

He put the key in the ignition and turned it. The car roared to life, sending goosebumps up his arms. He felt so small behind the wheel, staring down the car’s hood to the garage. All the times he’d sat in the passenger seat he’d never been able to register the sheer power of what it felt like to drive. “Lights,” he whispered, searching frantically for the knob.

“It’s usually on the stick near the wheel,” Nicole said.

He grasped the stick to the left of the wheel and pushed it. The high beams flashed on and then off. He pulled it and the same thing happened.

Above them, the bedroom window exploded outward, raining shards of glass onto the car’s windshield.

“Turn it!” Nicole screamed.

Connor spun the stick and the lights came on and stayed on. “Got it.”

One of the rabid men was crawling out onto the overhang, mouth dripping fresh blood.

Connor grabbed the shift and tried to look at the letters written beside it. “One back is reverse. Right?”

“Just go!”

He stepped on the brake and yanked the gear stick back one notch, felt the car buck. Nicole threw her hands against the dashboard as the savage man leapt off the overhang and landed on the hood of the car.

“Connor!”

“Hang on!”

He stepped hard on the gas pedal, throwing the car backward into the street at such a rate he and Nicole nearly banged their heads on the steering wheel and dashboard respectively. The man rolled off the hood and landed on his back in the driveway.

The front door of the house opened and Mr. Prudhome came racing out on all fours, the skin on his face completely missing, his clothing now in rags. He started hissing at the car and charged for it.

From the bedroom window the second savage man jumped out, followed closely by Connor’s mother, each one landing on the grass of the front lawn. Mrs. Prudhome was up in a flash, her lips and nose bitten off, her yellow eyes feral and mad.

“Don’t look, Connor. Just drive. Just drive!”

Connor shook his head no. He could not believe what he was seeing. His mother and father, their faces nothing but scraps of sinewy flesh coated in ichor, running for him, intent on killing him. The two people he needed most in the world.

“The pedal. Step on the pedal.”

“I can’t.”

“Do it! Please!”

Connor stepped on the gas pedal, backing the car into an out of control turn that moved them twenty feet further down the road. Knowing he could not control the car in reverse, he shifted to drive and hit the gas.

The car picked up speed and raced by his own driveway just as his mother and one of the savage men sprinted into the street. The car hit them both, throwing the hissing man into the bushes of his neighbor’s house and dragging his mother under the hood. The car lurched up and down as it rolled over her body.

Connor screamed, an incoherent wail that locked every muscle in his body, a sickening cry of sadness and rage.

In the rearview mirror he watched as his mother’s body flipped and tumbled out from the back tires and rolled to the side of the road.

He put his hand over his mouth, tears streaking down his cheeks. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God-”

The car slowed. Mr. Prudhome smashed his face against passenger side glass, leaving a face print of thick blood. Nicole screamed and tried to crawl across the seat into Connor’s lap but the belt restrained her. With her head in Connor’s lap she screamed as Mr. Prudhome hit the glass again, his amber eyes staring at her through the smears of gore. The second madman ran on top of the car, beating the roof with his hands.

“Go go go!” Nicole urged.

“My mother…” Connor looked at this father, met his yellow eyes. “Please, Dad, it’s me.”

The roof of the car dented inward under the force of a pounding fist. Mr. Prudhome swung his arm back to punch the window.

Connor hit the gas, spinning the tires, watching his father’s bloody fist cocked and loaded. The tires caught and the car bucked forward, the velocity pinning Connor to the seat. His father’s punch landed on the trunk. The man on top fell to the street but got up and started running after them at an amazing speed. Mr. Prudhome came after them as well, both men running as fast as humanly possible. For a split second Connor thought the car might not even outrun them, but the engine shifted and the car hit 30 miles per hour and began to widen the gap.

He took a right turn onto Asheford without braking and the car skidded sideways, hit a telephone pole on the driver’s side. Connor smashed his head against the side window hard enough to see stars. Thankfully, the seatbelts pulled tight across himself and Nicole, holding them in place. The car straightened out, decreasing speed.

Nicole shook her head and looked behind them. The two men were still running, still intent on catching them and tearing their flesh off.

“Just go,” she said. “They’re getting closer.”

Connor hit the gas again, this time easing the pedal down to avoid a spin out, and did his best to steer the car down the residential street until Mr. Prudhome and the other savage man were lost by distance and darkness.

Saturday, 9:31

The streets were filled with the susurrations of treetops blowing in the summer night breeze. At least Seth hoped to God it was just the leaves making that sound. The alternative was too scary to think about. He and Amanita had left her house almost ten minutes ago, sticking to the front lawns of the neighborhood houses, staying in the shadows. Each house they passed was as dark and ominous as a tomb. Seth imagined himself shrunk down to action figure size and placed in the scenery of the train sets they displayed at the mall each Christmas, only the power had been turned off in this satanic Dickens’ Village.

“What was that?” Amanita ducked down behind a freestanding trellis supporting a rose bush.

Seth cocked an ear and felt a shiver run through him. From the end of the street he heard running footsteps and labored hissing. In the darkness they could not see who it was.

“Don’t even breathe,” he whispered.

“No shit.”

The footsteps continued on to another block and were gone.

“Sounds like there are more and more of them.”

“You think the people in these houses are home?” Amanita asked.

“Don’t know, and I’m not knocking to find out. We were in your house long enough for this shit to get over here, obviously.”

“How much farther is your house? I need to piss.”

“Why didn’t you do it at your house?”

“Because I just wanted to leave, okay. Don’t mention my house again.”

Seth dropped the subject. Ever since leaving Amanita’s house she’d been growing angrier. They’d stuck around for a few minutes and still could find no trace of her parents. The only logical explanation was that they’d run down to the plane crash to be lookie-loos. It had been Amanita who finally suggested they go to Seth’s house.

“It’s not much farther. Can you hold it?”

“No, I’m gonna piss my pants right here in front of you. Of course I’m gonna hold it. Why do you think I asked, Einstein?”

“I dunno, because my mom always goes to the bathroom like every twenty minutes. She says girls can’t hold it like boys.”

“Well I can. Can we go now?”

They detached themselves from the trellis, waited behind a parked car for a few seconds, then ran to the next house. They kept up that pattern for a couple more blocks.

“That’s my house. Right there.”

“Wait!” Amanita grabbed Seth and yanked him down flat to the ground. “Look.”

In the yard across the street from Seth’s house, two twitchy adults were huddled over what looked like a pair of legs wearing black and white Chuck Taylor sneakers. The top half of the body was missing. The two men tore at their prize with slashing, bloodied nails. When they flipped their head’s back and grunted into the air, their teeth were stained with darkness, strips of fresh,
human
meat dangling like spaghetti down their chins.

“I’m gonna puke,” Amanita said.

“I think that’s Mr. Farrell. He always wears those sneakers. He thinks he’s still living in the sixties.”

Amanita put her head down and spoke into the grass. “Who’s that? Who’s Mr. Farrell?”

“Just my neighbor. Oh jeez, he’s…he’s dead.”

“Ya think! Where the hell are his head and arms?”

“They’re really eating him. I mean look, their swallowing the…Oh, man, this is bad. Oh, man, I need to get home. I can’t do this. I need my Mom and Dad. This isn’t happening. This doesn’t happen in real life. I have to go.”

Without looking up, Amanita gripped a fistful of his hair and pulled him so close to her he could feel the heat of her breath. “No. We’re going back to my place.”

“Like hell. My mom and dad are right there. My dad has a gun.”

“What kind of gun?”

“Um…well it’s a B.B. gun but—”

“Seth, we can’t make it to your house without being seen.”

“We’re like, one hundred feet away! I’m not leaving my Mom and Dad. They just got me that PSP. They just bought it this summer.”

“I don’t care about the frigging PSP!”

“But I have to get them.”

“Seth, what if these things see you? What if they’re inside your house?”

From behind them came the sounds of stampeding feet on hot summer cement. More than two, more than three, maybe even more than five. Seth peeked over his shoulder just in time to see a loping group of bloodied men and women charging up the lawn for him.

Where he found the strength or speed to get up and run was beyond him. But he was up and screaming bloody murder before he knew what he was doing, racing for the front door of his parent’s house.

“Fucker!” Amanita was up and racing beside him, the footfalls of their attackers gaining behind them, almost on her heels.

Seth hit the front door and pushed it open. Amanita flung herself in under his arm, knowing instinctively that in his terrified state he had forgotten she was even there. Seth slammed the door and threw his body against it as the group of hissers slammed into it like a battering ram. The door snapped open and three different arms reached in and waved like snakes, looking for anything to drag outside. As much as Seth was overweight he wasn’t big enough to fight off this group of mad men and the door began to slide open.

“Push!” Amanita threw herself against the door as well. It opened even further, shoving the two teens toward the wall. Both were screaming, both were trying to dig their feet into the rug to get enough traction to force their weight backwards.

“Get away from there!” The voice came from the street. Old and gruff like someone who’d been swallowing gravel for the last decade. “That’s right! I said get the hell away from that house!”

BANG!
Something small ripped through the door right between Seth and Amanita, spitting splinters into their cheeks. Whatever it was hit the ceramic lamp across the room and made it explode into fine dust.

“What the hell are you freaks? What the hell is your problem? Help!”

Bang! Bang! Bang!
A second small hole punched through the door next to Seth’s head, close enough that he felt it move the hair above his ear. This time the mirror above the recliner spider-webbed and fell in daggers to the ground.

The door finally fell back into its jamb and closed. Seth flipped the deadbolt.

“Who’s that yelling?” Amanita knuckled the tears from her eyes, fighting to catch her breath.

Seth stood on his tip toes and looked through the peep hole in the door. “No idea. Some guy with a gun. They’re pulling him down. They’re—Oh geez.”

He spun around and put his hand over his mouth. Before Amanita could ask what was wrong the sounds of one human being torn to shreds by a group of others sang out into the night. There were no more shots from the gun.

“I need to find my dad. I need to find my mom and dad. Mom!”

“Shh! They’ll hear.”

“Anybody!”

“I don’t think they’re home either. They would have heard all that. They definitely would have heard the gun. That frigging guy almost shot us. He almost killed us. Hey, are you listening to me?”

Seth took a couple of steps forward and sat on the couch. He stared through Amanita, as if trying to see out the door. “They’re really not here. The door was unlocked.”

“Get up! We can’t rest!”

“But the door was unlocked.”

“So what. Who cares. We have to get out of here. Those…things…are right out there.” She pointed through the door. “They’re gonna come back any second.”

“That door is never unlocked. None of them are. If I leave one unlocked my Dad…well I just can’t leave it unlocked. Can’t happen here.”

“Well thank fucking Christ it was.”

“My mom and dad don’t leave it unlocked. You don’t understand. Not since Joana.”