Ping - From the Apocalypse (17 page)

Chapter
Thirty-Two

Laying Down the Law

(May 1st, Year Two, PA)

It was 3:00 am and Ben was crying again. Kate lit the oil lamp and went to his cradle. “It’s okay Ben, mommy’s here,” she whispered, picking him up and taking him back to bed for one of his nightly feedings. She propped up her pillow, lay back and let him latch on. Her eyes closed as he began to suckle.

Though
Jack had refused to leave the resort, his car zipped past them each morning, always returning later. But he hadn’t bothered them. She’d no idea what he was up to — but she kept her gun in the drawer ready for him this time. There was no way he was getting anywhere near her beautiful Ben, who had suddenly begun to cry at her breast, as he suckled harder.

“What’s wrong
precious? Here, let’s try the other side.” She shifted him over and gave him her nipple. He sucked for a few seconds and then began to whimper again. With a sick feeling creeping through her she realized that he wasn’t getting any milk. She was torturing her child and he was only a few weeks old.

T
hat formula they had stashed away at the back of the cupboard expired a few months ago. Even if it was still okay, supplementing him would only make the problem worse, her milk would dry up for certain. And stale formula would surely compromise his health.

“Is he having problems sweetie,” Sarah whispered. She was standing at the door.

“Sarah, I think my milk is drying up. What am I going to do?” Ben was wailing now. She got out of bed and carried him into the other room.

“
Look at you, your breasts are full Kate,” Sarah said. “You’re just worrying too much. You’ve got to get your mind off Jack. That’s the problem.”

While Kate paced around the living room cradling Ben in different positions, hopelessly attempting to comfort him, Sarah disappeared into the kitchen.
She came back with a glass of wine.

“It
’ll relax you,” she said.

Kate was sceptical. Alcohol was
n’t something she wanted in Ben’s system. But he did need to eat and she was getting desperate. She took a sip and began to rock, gently bounce, pat his back, and sing. Sarah gave it a try but he only became more frantic.

They changed his diaper as he
shrieked and then whimpered and then wailed and now Travis was up, offering to help too.

“Go back to bed, hon,” Kate said. “You need your sleep. We think he might be a little bit colicky,
that’s all. It’s perfectly normal.”

Kate walked with him,
back and forth through the living room, lifting him upright and then laying him on his back. She put him on his tummy draped over her arm. While finishing her last swig of wine, just as she was about to sit down and try to nurse him again, his eyes closed. She carefully went back to his cradle and put him down. He murmured slightly and his pouty lips tried to suckle in his sleep for a second but then he was breathing softly.

H
e slept for another three hours and by then her milk flowed properly. But Kate was anxious this was going to be an ongoing problem. She left a package of formula out on the counter.

This was Jack’s fault
for upsetting her and she sent him an angry message — though she knew he wasn’t capable of understanding much telepathically, it was pretty basic and she was certain he would get the gist of it. Anger wasn’t too hard to comprehend. But she soon regretted contacting him that way.

He seemed encouraged. He wanted
her to keep communicating so he could convince her to let him get close to Ben. That part of it wasn’t going to happen. He was a monster.

But
she had been reminded of her feelings for him. Seeing him again, knowing that he was in close proximity, and now, speaking to him telepathically, made her feel desperate for answers. She needed to know what made the father of her child tick.

L
ying in bed that afternoon, just as Ben had fallen back to sleep, she pushed Jack for an explanation. What had made him so evil, or was he just born that way? He didn’t have the capacity to tell her much of anything of course. But she wanted him to try. And as she waited for Jack to give her an explanation, she peered down at Ben weeping.

***

Sarah pulled the bedroom door shut. Kate and the baby were finally napping. While Rose and Travis were out on the veranda enjoying the late afternoon view of the lake with a deck of cards, Sarah snuck around the back of the cottage and slipped behind the wheel of her car. She placed her pistol on the passenger seat. Enough was enough.

Kate was doing a terrible jo
b of hiding the pain she was in. Since Jack had arrived she barely slept a wink, except for when she was having nightmares. Sarah had heard her shouting out in the middle of the night; she was becoming too exhausted to handle a newborn. That evil man was becoming a threat to her and Ben’s survival; and Sarah was not going to allow it a minute longer.

Jack
stopped chopping his firewood and glared at her as she approached. She came to a halt in the driveway just a few feet from him and rolled down her window.

“Do you
really care about your son?” she snapped, checking to make sure the door was locked.

“
Well, why do you think I'm here, Sarah?” he retorted, still grasping the axe by the handle and swinging his arm back and forth.

“Whatever,” she
barked. “All you're doing is making Kate ill, and it's beginning to affect the baby.”

He was dripping sweat and out of breath from his work.
“Christ,” he said, “That’s why I need to talk to her.”

“
You need to get your ass out of here, and give my poor sister, and my nephew, a fighting chance.”

“You
know what Sarah?” he said in a deep voice, “The five of you are not going to make it without me. I’m a doctor for Christ’s sake.” He swung the axe into a log and split it in half.

Sarah's
fingers wrapped around the handle of her pistol. “I’m warning you Jack.”

He gazed off into the woods.
“You’re being really stupid about this Sarah. Kate’s glad I’m here, she just won’t admit it.”

“
You slimy maggot! Go back to the cesspit you came from.” She pointed the gun through the window at him. “She can barely bring herself to eat!”

He looked up the sky
, clenched his fists and growled. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Don’t make me use this again Jack.”

He glared at her with a look that made Sarah’s hair stand on end. She aimed the gun steady on him.

H
e hurled his axe at a tree, where it ricocheted and fell into the shrubs. “Good luck to all of you,” he sneered, striding back to his cabin.

Chapter
Thirty-Three

Nightmare
Resort

(
June 29th, Year Two, PA)

Kate
glanced back at Travis, who was finishing his breakfast on the picnic table. It was awfully cold out for the end of June. She carried Ben into the cottage and lay him down on his diaper table. Two-and-a-half months old already, and his features had changed, his hair almost black, his eyes dark brown, like coffee. Like Jack’s.

Sarah
and Rose were down the road planting more vegetables; the garden was getting larger, the plants higher by the day, they’d told her. She could have taken Ben with her and helped; but she was feeling so strange. How could she ever forget that Jack was out there all alone — and what he was capable of doing?

Someone like that can’t possibly change. That kind of sickness doesn’t get cured.
The fact that she wanted to understand — even to find a reason to forgive him — made her frightened of who she was, deep down.

What kind of a mother was she goi
ng to be? Since she’d allowed Jack into her head, everything felt so terribly wrong. She was afraid. The nightmares haunted her; the worst of which she’d had last night. Her hands trembled as she fastened Ben’s diaper.

An evil presence had been watching her as she slept last night. From the woods, a beastly-looking animal glared at her, its eyes, fiery with malicious intent, searing through the shadows into her room. But, thrusting her fear back inside her, she had stretched her arm through the window towards it, her fingers reaching out. She could see the vicious face, the contorting snout at her appeasing hand, the dangerous teeth with sharp fangs revealed, as the lips curled away from them and snapped at her!

Kate
had jumped up in her bed, shaking inside and remained awake for at least an hour, terrified. Why had she ignored her own instincts? She had seen, clearly, that it was evil, and yet, despite the fear screaming out the truth to her soul, foolishly, she’d tried to change it.

Ben
was suckling in his sleep. She had allowed herself to be vulnerable, to trust something that she knew couldn’t be more untrustworthy. She wiped the sweat from her brow. But the beast didn’t represent Jack; that would have made perfect sense — yet it wasn’t him — she just knew that it wasn’t.

Falling
back asleep, she was soon in another nightmare feeling eternally trapped in it, her body that of a child; smaller than Travis. And something too terrible for words was hiding in her closet disguised as a man. There was nowhere to run.

N
obody to run to.

No way to fight
it off of her while it slithered, like cold decay, over her, holding her there helplessly forever, enjoying her fear more than anything, feeding on her vulnerability and tears.

Kate pulled on Ben’s clothes and lifted him from the diaper table. “There you go sweetie. Nice and clean again.” She smiled at him. Travis was waiting for his lesson.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Cinnamon Buns

(July 1st, Year Two, PA
)

Slipping the dishes into a plastic tub filled with the warm sudsy water Rose had prepared, Travis inhaled the aromas wafting from the pans of bread and cinnamon rolls she’d set on the counter to cool. She had let him knead his own loaf earlier.

After rinsing, drying, and returning the dishes to the kitchen cupboards,
he peered over at her. “Can we go swimming now?”

“Well
, let's just walk down and see. It’s been freezing all week. Imagine, weather so cold at this time of year.”

“But it’s hot today,” Travis insisted.

“I know, but the water is still like ice,” Rose contended cheerfully.

“No it isn’t
.”

Stepping around the rock garden, they descended
the steps to the sandy beach beside the dock. “Ooh, it
is
cold. I told you so,” Rose said as the water slurped over her toes.

“I can handle it,” Travis said.

“Well okay. I'll sit while you get your suit and a towel. Will you bring my book from the porch? And don't forget the suntan lotion my dear.”

Travis was up the hil
l already. “Okay,” he yelled back to Rose, and then he went inside. Kate appeared to be dozing with the baby. He crept around her carefully, went to his bedroom and changed, grabbed his towel, the suntan lotion, and attempted once again to pass without disturbing her.

He turned back to see that she’d opened
an eye. “Going for a swim?” she muttered.

“Yep, Rose is watching me.”

“Well, I'll come down and sit with you in a bit.”

“Okay,” Travis said, rushing out the door with one eye on Snowy
, who was playing with some string on the kitchen table. “Bye Snowy.”

He
skipped up the steps to Rose’s veranda, singing like a bird. Her book was on the wide arm of a bright yellow chair, along with her sunglasses. Grabbing them both, he raced back down to the dock, where Rose was relaxing.

Travis dropped his towel and handed Rose her things.

“Oh good, my dear,” she said. “I was hoping you'd see the glasses. Here, let me rub some lotion on you. Close your eyes now.”

She was being far too thorough. He was going to be in the water anyway.
“Okay!” he finally protested, running down to the water.

He splashed into the shallow part near the beginning of the dock where it was sandy, trying to ignore the cold.
Soon, he saw Kate coming down with Ben in his carrier. She sat down beside Rose with a sigh.

“Travis is crazy,” Rose chuckled.
“That water feels like ice.”

“No
, I am not crazy,” he giggled. He bravely waded out until he was knee-deep and stood listening to the women.

“Everything okay?”
Rose said.

“Oh
… yeah. It’s just the lack of sleep, I guess.”

“Did he keep you up much?”

“A bit.”

“
Well, that stage will pass soon enough, my dear.” Rose suddenly had a wide smile as she turned her head to great Sarah. “Well now, what have you brought us?” she said.

“Sorry
Rose,” Sarah said, “but I was afraid I would eat them all myself.”

“But those
are my cinnamon rolls. They were for dessert,” Rose declared, her brows high on her head.

“
Oh Rose, don’t you know that we should always eat our dessert first. Because, you never know, right Kate?” Sarah teased.

“
You’re incorrigible, Sarah,” Rose sighed, appearing mildly disgusted. She reluctantly bit into one. “Ummm… They are good though.”

“
And you, are a genius,” Sarah exclaimed, blissfully chewing away.

Travis
couldn’t be left out. He waded to shore, danced over to his towel, which he wrapped around his shoulders, and said, “Me too please.”

“Will yo
u watch Ben a minute?” Kate asked him, as he took a bite.

“
Okay.” Travis watched her walk up the hill towards their cottage. “I’ll save one for you Kate,” he called.