Threnody (Book 1) (21 page)

Satisfied with the house, the two men sat down to hash out the plan for hardening the structure.

“I’ll take the ladder back to the wall and head over to get our supplies.  We can leave the ladder there on the ground so it’ll be ready for a quick escape.  It shouldn’t offer too much reason for anyone to investigate our new abode.  Once you’re ready to start on the home improvements I’ll head into the neighborhood to watch for any infected movement and, if need be, create the appropriate distraction,” said John. 

“Appropriate distraction, huh?” said Reams with a questioning look.  “Just don’t do such a good job ‘distracting’ that you bring every rev in the whole county to our new home-away-from-home.”

Chuckling and shaking his head, John bounded off to prepare for his part in the play, while Reams gathered the necessary tools for the renovations.  In the garage, John gathered improvised distractive devices, or IDDs, as he had taken to calling them after learning of the power of such autoschediastic distractions at the airport.  John realized one could use almost anything to create a useful diversion for the revs, as they did not seem to possess the ability to differentiate between a ruse and a sound that truly meant food.  In general, anything that created noise or even movement at a location remote to the revs initial area of interest would typically accomplish this goal.  He gathered a half dozen spray cans, a kite, and an old set of wind chimes.  He laughed to himself when he thought about these items being part of his arsenal for combating the monsters of the apocalypse.  Of course, there was his Tavor and his Glock as well.

Stealthily, John crept out of the garage and edged along the back of the houses, keeping to the shadows as much as possible as he headed toward the two houses on the far side of the neighborhood.  Ideally he wanted to find a position that allowed him to see both the safe-house and the intersection.  He realized such a location would prevent him from seeing any revs approaching the safe-house from the opposite direction. 

Once he found an ideal position for observation, he dropped off some of his equipment, and moved farther to place the spray cans at various positions, all of which were easily visible from his observation point.  As he reached the intersection where he intended to place the last can, John came across an unusual discovery.  There were several clusters of inflated balloons secured at various locations along one of the streets. A group of four balloons was loosely secured around the base of a street sign.  Ten yards away another group dangled from the branches of a tree, swaying lazily with the light breeze.  In the middle of the road was a box resting on its side, four inflated balloons securely nestled inside.  Perplexed, John initially wondered if there might have been some sort of celebration here in the days leading up to the outbreak, but decided that was unlikely.  The latex balloons all seemed fully inflated, which meant they were filled in the last day or two, and if they were placed for celebratory reasons, the random locations of the balloons would certainly represent some of the worst decorating in history.  In addition, there were all sorts of balloons—plain colored balloons, birthday balloons, retirement balloons—with no uniform theme behind them. Certain that the balloons meant someone else had been there recently, they left John feeling dumbfounded and uncertain as to what purpose they served as he tried to get his mind back on task. Returning to his hide spot, John hunkered down and trained his rifle on the surrounding area just as he heard the first, faint sounds of Reams’ labor.

Sweat beaded on John’s brow before trundling down to sting his eyes as he continued dutifully scanning the perimeter for any sign of the infected.  Fortunately, whatever had captured the attention of the infected on the far side of the neighborhood seemed to be more interesting than the noise of Reams’ construction, as he saw no movement from that direction.

Baking under the intense rays of the midday sun, John considered his course of action should the local infected population take an interest in Reams’ handiwork.  If a lone rev took notice he would send a single copper-plated projectile tearing through the thing’s defunct brainstem.  With the suppressor attached to his Tavor the sound signature of the rifle would be severely dampened and tough to localize, making him confident that discharging the weapon would not compromise his location. Should a group of revs feel compelled to check out the activity, he knew his best option would be to redirect their attention rather than try to take them all out.  Such a possibility was the reason for positioning the spray cans along a path between his location and that of the revs on the other side of the neighborhood.  A single, well-placed round fired from the Tavor would cause a loud and rather colorful explosion that should be sufficient to divert the focus of the group.  As a last resort, he planned to hang the kite and chimes from the Dogwood tree near his location to keep the revs interested in the position once he slipped out of sight.

Luck seemed to be on their side, as John did not see a single rev so much as turn in their direction. 
What was so interesting in those two houses anyway?
Rivulets of salty sweat streamed down John’s face, as he lay prone and motionless observing the revs in the distance.  He imagined this was what it must feel like to be roasted on a spit as the relentless rays of the sweltering sun mercilessly blazed down upon him. They had estimated the work on the house would take Reams about an hour, after which John would return provided he heard no further noise indicating Reams was still at work.  After waiting a full ninety minutes, John saw no indication that anyone or anything had taken notice of Reams’ renovations, so he packed up, and slinked back toward the house.  He was about eight houses away and eager to get inside, protected from the harsh rays of the sun.

John’s clothes looked more like he just weathered a tsunami than basked under the sun on a nice, clear day.  His shirt was drenched, and he found it difficult to locate any part of his clothing not thoroughly saturated with perspiration with which to wipe the stinging sweat from his eyes.  John pulled a spare shirt from his pack and proceeded to tie it to his head like a bandana as he rounded the corner of the house four down from the safe-house.  With both hands behind his head finishing the knot, he had no way to brace against the sudden impact that sent him sprawling onto his back.

Striking the ground with a resounding thud, all the air was instantly forced out of his lungs.  The pain John felt as his rifle and pack ground deeply into his back was unimaginable, as the additional weight on top of him urged his spine to mold around the items now pinned beneath him.

Completely disoriented and struggling to maintain focus, the speckled darkness of hypoxia slowly tightened its grasp, narrowing his field of vision like a camera’s constricting iris. In that instant, John had the vague understanding that something foul and languid was craning its putrescent head toward him.  Dangling tenaciously from the grisly form, strands of vile, viscous drivel stretched ever so slowly like pestilential tentacles until they congealed in miry pools on John’s face.  The muculent connections seemed to pull the thing toward him—coaxing it toward their eventual union.

After a few tense moments during which John seemed to teeter on a tightrope stretched tautly over the bottomless abyss of oblivion, he managed to suck the tiniest amount of oxygen-rich air into his stagnant, deflated lungs.  Reluctantly, the spasm of his diaphragm eased and more life-sustaining air slowly percolated into his previously vacated alveoli.  Soon his mind began to clear with the sluggishness of a stubborn pugilist desperately trying to recover from a near-knockout punch.

The first thing that registered in John’s mind was a smell so rancid that even the most stalwart stomach would churn in revolt. Despite this, he gasped in earnest wanting nothing more at that moment than to have the noxious smell – a repulsive mix of hydrogen disulfide and ass slathered with a rub of toe cheese and dental plaque – flood his body on the wings of the precious oxygen. John struggled in vain to free his left arm, but it was hopelessly pinned behind his head.  His effort was rewarded with brutally intense pain that ripped through his left shoulder and forearm.  Thankfully, his right arm had not been trapped, and he wedged his forearm firmly under the snapping jaws of the monster desperately trying to devour him.  John’s ears flooded with the rhythmic clicking of the rev’s teeth instinctively snapping together, as droplets of foul fluid and decaying tissue rained down upon his face like water flung from a dog’s coat after a violent rainstorm.

As his faculties slowly returned to their rightful posts, John frantically searched for a way to extricate himself from the current predicament.  Going for his rifle was not an option, and his trapped and injured left arm was out of the equation.  While his right arm functioned normally, it was locked in a necessary defensive role even though his Glock was holstered on his right hip less than a foot away.  The excruciating pain in his back, as well as the dead weight on top of him, made it impossible to squirm out from under the rev pressing down upon him.  Mustering all his energy, John managed to bend his knees and bring his feet toward his buttocks.  With a thrust of his hips he bridged up while simultaneously turning to the side, sending the rev sprawling off of him.  The soft, sucking sound of his left arm tearing free from the stick upon which it was impaled was drowned out by John’s anguished screams. Knowing he was not yet out of danger, he willed the pain away as he struggled to stifle his cries of agony.  Relieved that he saw no significant bleeding from the wound, John assumed no major blood vessels were lacerated.

Almost before the rev landed on the ground, as if working on pure instinct, John’s right hand drew his knife from the sheath on his vest.  The six-inch blade shimmered in the bright sun for an instant before disappearing under the chin of the infected thing writhing on the ground.  The darkness the blade found was in stark contrast to the sun it had just seen, as it twisted and wrenched, scrambling the neural tissue, and forever silencing the malevolent synaptic connections.  As the blade retreated back into the light, the thing that had nearly been John’s demise finally fell slack—completely still and harmless.  Like a proud but battered cage fighter who just went the distance, John struggled to his feet and staggered toward the safe-house.

Reams spotted the figure stumbling toward the back porch and shouldered his suppressed rifle, poised to take out the approaching rev. The trigger pressure slowly and steadily increased as Reams’ index finger pressed rearward.  A split second before the trigger broke, he realized he was not looking at a rev at all, but rather it was John. 
What the hell happened to him? He looked perfectly fine when he left here less than an hour ago!
  Reams rushed to the edge of the porch and, reaching down with his oversized hand, grabbed John by the vest, hoisting him onto the deck as effortlessly as if he was helping a child onto a playset.

“Damn, John, you smell like shit and look even worse!  What the hell happened to you?  You get bit?” asked Reams tentatively.

Shaking his head breathlessly, John replied, “I don’t think so.  The damn thing caught me off guard…I killed the bastard.”

Reams helped the injured man out of his clothes and, like a dermatologist meticulously searching for signs of skin cancer, proceeded to scrutinize every inch of his integument to ensure he had sustained no bites.  Relieved, Reams said, “You’re clean.  Well actually not clean at all, but there are no bites.  You should go wash off; I’ll gladly give up my share of the water if it means I won’t have to smell your nasty ass anymore.”

“You’re starting to give me a complex, buddy,” replied John with a forced grin that looked more like a grimace. 

Clean and sporting new clothes courtesy of the home’s former occupant, John inspected and bandaged the wound on his forearm.  He was relieved to see that he suffered no apparent functional deficits from the puncture, but he knew that such an injury could be a death sentence in this new world, even with his medical knowledge.  He found some antibiotics in the medicine cabinet of the upstairs bathroom of the safe-house.  He tried to recall when he last had a tetanus shot, but gave up realizing it didn’t much matter, as he did not have access to a booster vaccine anyway. 
I’ll keep my eye out next time we are near a medical clinic.

Reams mercifully agreed to take the majority of the watch that night, a gesture for which John was eternally grateful.  Even though his encounter with the rev earlier that day lasted only a few minutes, he felt thoroughly exhausted.  Finding a clean, comfortable bed on the second floor, John wanted nothing more than to collapse into a deep, blissful sleep, far away from the horrors of his new day-to-day reality.

Chapter 22

October 17, 2015

Hordes of exquisitely dressed people milled about the lavish room adorned with ornate marble floors and red velvet walls draped with intricate golden tapestries.  From the right side of the room, John heard a slow mournful dirge emanating from a peculiar man playing an even more peculiar instrument with unrivaled virtuosity. Beautifully simplistic in its rhythmic and melodic structure, the song served as a sort of metronome for the shambling partygoers who ambled and swayed monotonously under its spell.  John always hated attending this sort of affair, with its self-inflated, and seemingly self-important atmosphere.  Venturing farther into the room, a waiter carrying a fine silver platter approached him with an offering of hors d'oeuvres.  Famished and feeling more than a little ravenous, John’s eyes greedily perused the morsels strewn across the platter in a remarkable display, before settling on a fancy iteration of a finger sandwich.  After partaking rather wolfishly, John looked up to see another guest immediately opposite him voraciously devouring meat that hung loosely from a rib bone.  His impeccable tuxedo was in stark contrast to his face that was slathered in the food’s juices, making him look more like he had been slurping from a feedbag rather than eating in any civilized manner.

Mouth watering and stomach rumbling, John watched with a slight tinge of jealousy as the guest flagged down the waiter who, to John’s horror, promptly brought over a full tray of unmistakably human ribs.  Sensing his gaze upon him, but never slowing the violent gnashing of his gluttonous maw, the guest turned to regard John, with his cold blank eyes that possessed the unequivocal reptilian detachment of the infected. Transfixed, John’s eyes were immediately drawn to the guest’s avulsed left cheek that hung from his lower jaw and flapped feverishly with every bite, like the triceps meat on a blue-haired grandma in a bingo hall after the caller produced her last needed number. Stunned and frightened, John frantically scanned the rest of the room, and was horrified to find that all of the elegant revelers were without a doubt
infected
revelers. Each bore the irrefutable evidence of their demise and infection in the form of myriad hideous wounds, missing limbs, and mangled bodies.
How did I fail to notice this before? How the hell did I allow myself to become surrounded by this sea of revs?

Panicked, John saw no means of escape and he felt the room pressing in on him from all sides. From every direction, more of the infected seemed to pack the room as if someone just rang the dinner bell in a refugee camp. Frantically seeking a way out, he looked down and was confused to see that the surface upon which he stood was made of shiny, reflective silver, instead of the marble he had previously admired. Scattered throughout the ever-encroaching tide of revs, he saw several gargantuan hors d'oeuvres comprised of miscellaneous oversized human parts.  A finger the size of a man was sandwiched between two colossal pieces of bread.  An imposing pair of eyes the size of basketballs were skewered on toothpicks idly bobbing in a martini glass, their severed, tendrilous optic nerves draped over the rim of the glass. Enormous ears encrusted with a red, gelatinous goo adorned delicate party crackers. At that moment, it dawned on him that what he was standing on was in fact a large serving tray.

Terror-stricken, John found himself unable to move, unable to run from the horror closing in all around him. He strained in a futile attempt to free his legs that were tightly and inexplicably wrapped in rice paper, making him a veritable human spring roll. Just then his attention shifted back to the morsel still cradled in his own hand. The shock that seared through his body felt like the full 360 joules of a defibrillator on high, as he saw the clear, unmistakable remnants of a severed human hand in his grasp. With unrivaled horror, he realized his cannibalistic jaws were still working feverishly to tear and devour the fetid hors d'oeuvre.

Looking up from his meal, he gazed at a mirror on the far wall and saw his own cold, blank eyes staring back at him with grim satisfaction, as he sloppily consumed the flesh, blood, and tissue that slid down his gullet and dribbled over his chin. The slow, sad coronach he heard when he first arrived at the lurid party continued in an ever-quickening tempo, effectively exciting the revs with it escalating energy. The song, which could now be more accurately described as a romp, still carried a clear, mournful tone, and was no less mesmerizing to John’s ear despite its frenzied tempo. He glanced over to the strange musician sitting on the far side of the room, as if pleading for help as thousands of searching hands clawed and pulled at him, eager for a taste of the delicacy.  John could barely see the musician’s hands now, moving with the frenetic speed of an old-time fiddler at a hoedown as he played the bizarre instrument that looked like an evil incarnation of a wheel fiddle. Despite being totally embedded in the breakneck tune that he played with unnatural accuracy, the musician slowly raised his head, and fixed his gaze on John without so much as a hint of change in the rancorous tune.  With eyes that looked neither dead nor alive, the old man seemed to stare straight through John’s soul as he uttered two words in his gravelly voice.

“Join me.”

John tried to scream, but no sound escaped his mouth as he struggled to draw his breath.  He heard a new voice calling his name as he fought against the hands trying to choke and devour him.  Renewed pain raged through his injured left arm as he struggled to bring it into the fray.  The force gripping and controlling his wrists was far stronger than that typically possessed by any rev John had previously encountered.  In a bold attempt to escape, John increased his effort to free his left hand in spite of the agony this caused.  Sensing the futility in his action, he pulled in hard with his left arm while simultaneously thrusting his head forward into that of his attacker.  A profuse stream of profanity immediately followed the plangent thud that resulted from the collision of two solid objects.  John felt the restrictive weight leave his body.  As the startled disorientation besieging John’s mind sluggishly lifted, he recognized Reams’ large form cursing in the faint light cast by the moon shining in through the window.

“Dammit, John!  What the hell! You were making all kinds of noise, and we got company outside so I came to check on you.  What the hell’s with the head-butt
?
  I think you broke my nose,” said Reams, more than a little angry.

“Sorry, it was this party…never mind.  What do you mean company?  What’s going on, Reams?” asked John, his mind once again free from the impenetrable fog of sleep.

Still pissed about the head-butt, Reams responded tersely, “Oh, it’s just the neighbors, they’re coming over for dinner tonight, and the house is a wreck.  Who the hell do you think I’m talking about
?
”

“Easy there, big guy, I said I was sorry.  Remember my ribs?  Anyway, how many are we talking about?” asked John in an attempt to ease the tension.

“Three out front, and a half of one working its way down the street behind them,” answered Reams.

Moving to the window, John saw the revs Reams mentioned as well as about a dozen others slowly gaining ground on the crawler a block and a half away.  “Shit, there are even more behind them!” hissed John as he stared out the window.  “Probably time to think about checking out of here for now.  If we wait until sunrise, we might be surrounded.  We have to risk travelling at night.”

“Agreed,” said Reams, just as several faints pops erupted from the direction of the approaching revs.  Though they didn’t sound quite like gunshots per se, neither of them knew exactly what the sounds were. 

When John returned with his gear, Reams, who was standing sentry and glancing nervously out the window, exclaimed, “Let’s move now!  There are several out front, and I don’t think any are behind the house yet. The larger group you saw heading our way seems to have taken a detour for some reason.  We probably won’t get a better chance.”

Moving swiftly with the efficiency of a fire team clearing an insurgent’s house, John and Reams moved to the back porch of the safe-house, clearing every corner and doorway along the way.  Bathed in the pale light of the half moon, the still, dark backyard of the house would have looked peaceful under any other circumstances.

The men crouched tentatively in the safety afforded by the elevated porch, scrutinizing every inch of the darkened landscape for any sign of predators lying in wait.  Hearing only the relentless banging of the three revs at the front of the house and sound of the crawler’s metal buckle and car keys scraping and jingling along the ground, John decided to make his move from the porch toward the ladder by the brick wall.  Reams provided cover to the best of his ability in the low light, neither man daring to switch on his light for fear of attracting more of the infected.  Alternating movement and cover, the two men quickly and quietly moved away from the safe-house that now seemed anything but safe. 

Closing to within fifty feet of the wall, John maneuvered through the labyrinth of tentacular chains and beams comprising the playset in the next-door neighbor’s yard.  He nearly dropped to his knees as a jolt of pain erupted from his nose upon colliding with the trapeze bar that had undoubtedly been a source of joy for innumerable kids on countless long, summer afternoons.  With eyes watering and chains jangling, he cursed with the restrained fury of a sailor who just got very pissed off in a library, as he squatted down trying to regain his composure.  Amidst the commotion, John didn’t notice the small hand stretching longingly out of the shadows or the edacious mouth trailing closely behind.  Reams, on the other hand, saw not only the infected child, but also several other revs nearby. It appeared that only the child realized there was food close by, as the others had not yet shown any sign of movement.

Momentarily plagued by indecision, Reams knew that if he shouted a warning to John the other revs would be on top of them immediately.  On the other hand, the wretched thing only inches away from John’s lowered head left little doubt as to what would happen if he did nothing.  The scene unfolding at the swing set seemed to move in slow motion as he decided on his next course of action.

The young rev’s slender, reaching fingers began to curl, closing their grip on John’s shirt, as he knelt oblivious to the anguish he was about to endure.  Reams saw the feral snarl adorning the thing’s malign face as it moved into the moonlight, pulling itself closer to the warm flesh on the back of John’s neck.

The furious blur of activity that transpired over the next three seconds saw the abominable scene shift into double-time, as if controlled by a bipolar projectionist.  John was not the only one who was unaware of what was about to happen, as the swing the young rev had unknowingly walked into ensnared it like the tendrils of a vine.  As the rev reached the maximum extent allowed by the swing, the taut chains pulled the thing’s legs back, and it found itself falling away from the prey that had literally been in its grasp.  The sudden commotion caused John to raise his head in time to see a huge boot crash down on the neck of what looked like the most lifelike doll John had ever seen.  Its left hand was slightly raised off the ground in a tight fist that quickly went limp as the horrible realization washed over John like a tsunami.

Reams large hand shot out to cover John’s mouth as it fell open, more from shock and disbelief than any real intention to speak. The big man’s stifling effort was unnecessary as John was physically incapable of making a sound as he knelt aghast beside the thing that had been less than a second away from ending his life.

Wasting no time, Reams shot John a look that said, ‘snap out of it and get your head in the game,’ as he directed John’s attention toward the small group of revs standing nearby.  The two men moved stealthily with renewed purpose, neither of them possessing enough gumption at that moment to endure another encounter with the infected.  John hastily placed the ladder on the wall as Reams covered their position.  The sun was just starting to peek up from beyond the horizon as the two men climbed up and over the wall to what they hoped would be relative safety outside the walls of Hermitage Estates.