“Since when have you ever cared about this us thing you talk about?” I asked.
“We have a moral dilemma,” Avery said.
“No, we have a dickhead dilemma,” I said.
Avery snapped his fingers while saying, “But Titouan makes a valid point. If we stay, we might all die. If we leave Tom, we could very well escape and live.”
“This isn’t a classroom, Avery. We don’t get to flex our creative minds while exploring fucking existentialism in the abstract. Tom is as real as that seat your ass is planted in. We’re not leaving him. Drop it.”
Titouan glanced at Avery before saying, “This is just the way it is. You may not like it, but if we take Tom, more of us might die.”
“Titouan, if you were in the same predicament as Tom, I wouldn’t leave you behind either. I don’t know what’s going on, but we,” I pointed at each one of them, “are all we’ve got right now. We’ve got to stick together.”
Titouan shrugged and focused his attention elsewhere.
“What’s that noise?” Tish said, breaking the silence that had settled into the room.
Avery slowly turned his head towards me, his eyes big as half dollars.
There was a rhythmic tapping coming from the bedroom adjoining the living room. I quietly walked over to Tish and said, “I’m going see what the hell that is. I need you to try to get Tom up and, if possible, ready to leave.”
She nodded.
I took a quick glance out the living room window. For whatever reason the things had become agitated.
“Take the rifle,” Sam said.
“No. Keep it in here.” I flicked my chin in the direction where the things were outside. “You at least know how to use it.”
With the snow having almost completely abated, and with the full moon casting its light through the bedroom window, I saw it as soon as I entered the bedroom. First on the floor, as a long shadow, and finally in the window as a large, human-shaped silhouette. “Mother of God,” I uttered. Paralyzed with fear, I moved no further than the steps I’d already taken.
The person kept an eerie beat as he tapped his forehead against the window pane, over and over again. Without warning, the tapping stopped. The man pressed his face against the glass, his nose facing in the direction where I stood. He sniffed several times, grunted before restarting the tapping.
“William, you gonna want ta come in ’ere,” Sam said.
Again, the man stopped. “Shh!” I hissed. He sniffed and then snorted, loudly, and began banging his head again. Except this time, he banged harder, to the point I knew the windowpane would soon break.
A cacophony of noise erupted in the living room, punctuated with Sam yelling for me to get my ass in there. Sam’s cry further invigorated head banger.
I ran out of the bedroom, nearly tripping over a rug as I entered the living room. Upon regaining my balance, I saw Tom standing roughly where he’d been lying. He was doubled over, his arms cinched hard around his stomach, and his face was contorted in a mixture of terror and pain. He moaned a gurgling, sickly noise, a frothy dark mixture seeping from the corners of his mouth.
Tish backed away from Tom. His torturous moans subsided as he tracked her movement away from him. His face softened slightly. The look of confusion and hurt partially obscured the pain and fear so vividly on display seconds earlier. For a scant second, they locked glances. Tish sobbed. Tom closed his eyes. He seemed to savor those moments of calm, but they were short-lived. Avery cried out, as he pointed towards something outside the living room window. His mouth moved, but he wasn’t saying anything, not anything that resembled recognizable speech, anyway. There were now fists pounding on the front door.
The window gave way in the bedroom. The sound of shards of glass falling to the floor and further shattering on impact resonated loudly in the small house. The old floor boards groaned under the weight of heavy feet. Headbanger was in the bedroom. It wasn’t just him, though. There was another crash from one of the other bedrooms, followed by the thuds of bodies hitting the floor. The house was filling with the bastards.
In a primal wail I barely recognized as my own, I called out to Tom. As if his head was suddenly uncoiled, he violently turned to face me. In the dim light, I saw his eyes, changed and inhuman. He tilted his head slightly to the side and sniffed. His head jerked towards the kitchen before facing me once more. He seemed out of control of his own body. His eyes seemed to remain focused on me, but his head, as a vehicle, wanted to take him somewhere else: towards the kitchen. He never looked back at me.
“Dear Jesus,” Sam said.
My mind raced in an infinite loop of uncertainty. Nothing made sense. Tom’s eyes weren’t supposed to look like that. The eyes I knew were full of life. The ones I saw then were alien. A loud noise broke my trance.
The front door gave way and more bodies filled the house. Without a weapon, I was powerless to stop the mass of bodies flooding through the living room. The slow, unsure footsteps coming from the bedroom became fast and deliberate as the crazed man ran past, knocking me hard to the ground in the process. The side of my face bore most of the impact. I momentarily lost consciousness. The last thing I saw before blacking out was headbanger guy running past.
I wearily maneuvered myself to a seated position. I blinked and squinted, trying feebly to see in the low-light condition of the living room. I reached for the switch on my headlamp, but my fine motor movements seemed to have been affected by my brain smashing into my skull as my face pounded the floor. I flicked my fingers and flexed my hand before trying again. Success, I could see again.
I scanned the room. Avery remained in the chair in front of the window. He was frozen in fear but had all his pieces. Tish had apparently been knocked down in the carnage as well, and Sam was at her side making sure she was okay. Everyone was accounted for except Titouan. I flicked my head around the room wildly, looking for him. He was just a few feet away from me. Like a statue frozen in time, he stood locked in a trance, as he watched the events taking place in the kitchen.
In the mad press of things, my mind began racing, trying to neutralize the information my senses fed it, but my mind finally relented. The information it was getting was correct. The grotesque sounds assaulted my ears. The monsters, the Grays, were eating the woman in the kitchen. Her muffled screams bore that fact. And if they were eating her, they would also eat us, if we gave them the opportunity.
I looked at Sam and said, “We have to get the hell out of here.”
Sam took a couple quick steps towards the door before stopping. “What ’bout Tom?” he asked.
“Sam, we have to go,” I said.
Avery whimpered something as he peered into the kitchen. Without being prompted, he began to help me hastily gather our belongings.
“Sam,” I said, as I tossed my backpack over my shoulder. “Grab your shit, now.”
He blinked, shook his head, growled, and began scooping up some of his and Tish’s things before moving towards the exit, Tish in tow, Avery was on his heels, things falling out of his haphazardly packed bag, as he stumbled his way outside.
I gathered what I could and began my own retreat when it occurred to me Titouan hadn’t moved. I ran to his side. His gaze was locked on the goings on in the kitchen. I cast my headlamp towards the source of his morbid fixation. Hearing it was bad enough.
“Titouan,” I whispered. “Let’s go.”
There was a marked decrease in noise level after I shined my light into the kitchen. I called to him again. Nothing. A fight broke out in the kitchen. One of the rooted-out Grays turned his blood-soaked face towards us. Words weren’t working. I grabbed his arm and dragged him through the house.