“I will not let anything happen to her,” BT said. “I promise you.”
Ron nodded once, emotions choking his thoughts. Words would have pooled with tears if he had tried to speak.
Ten minutes later the SUV was packed and ready to go. Meredith climbed into the driver’s seat before BT could protest.
“You remember to call me every night. Do you understand?” Ron asked leaning into the driver’s side window.
“We will, Dad,” Meredith answered impatiently.
“BT?”
“Yes Dad,” BT answered.
“Two smart asses, fantastic,” Ron said as he stood back up.
“You’re letting her go?” Nancy, Ron’s wife asked incredulously.
“I tried to stop her, I did. You know how strong-willed she is.”
Nancy could only nod. Even from an early age Meredith had been an independent soul. Nancy had never won an argument with her daughter, but they had from time to time come to a mutual agreement that they would stop fighting. Nancy placed her head on Ron’s shoulder as she watched her daughter prepare to leave.
Meredith waved to her assembled family and placed the truck in gear. She looked over to BT and kept staring.
“What?” BT asked.
“Seatbelt.”
“What about it?”
“I’m not going anywhere until you put yours on,” she said stubbornly.
“Are you kidding me?”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
BT stared at her long and hard. When he realized intimidation wasn’t going to work, he reached behind him and grabbed the buckle. He pulled it across his chest and down towards the locking mechanism; it came up 4” short of its goal. “Can’t,” he said triumphantly.
“Suck your gut in,” Meredith told him.
“I’m not forcing this thing, it’ll cut off my circulation!”
“Then you might as well get out now.”
“Something wrong honey?” Nancy asked.
“Yeah, apparently someone liked home cooking a little bit more than they should have, Mom!” Meredith yelled back.
“Fine!” BT said, driving the buckle into the lock.
“You look like you’re wearing dental floss,” Meredith chuckled. “Don’t you feel safer now?” “Just drive,” BT said through gritted teeth.
“You’re no fun,” Meredith said as she took her foot off the brake. She could not help but feel that they were the cavalry and they would get there in the nick of time. She hoped h istory would prove she was right.
Eliza and Tomas - Interlude
Tommy sat alone in the dark. The room was preternaturally cold; the radiator he was chained to gave forth no heat. Blood and snot intermingled on his top lip, pooling before running into his mouth. The thick liquid did little to quench his insatiable thirst. Fear pressed in from every angle, insidiously worming its way into every exposed crevice in his unnaturally strong mental armor.
“Hello Tomas,” a dark voice issued forth from a darker recess in the room.
He knew he was slipping, he had not even noticed when his sister had entered the room. Tomas had stopped pleading with her days ago when he realized the entity that looked like his sister carried none of her legacy traits.
“It is time,” Eliza told him.
“God is mad, Lizzie,” Tommy sputtered.
When Eliza laughed, a cruel thin metallic sound issued forth. Tommy did not fight when she gripped the top of his head and forced it to the side. As she leaned down, Tommy’s screams filled the night.
CHAPTER SIX – Alex, Paul and Company
“Marta, are you alright?” Alex asked his wife with concern. She had been tossing and turning for hours and now moans of despair where coming from deep within her chest.
“NO I WILL NOT!” She said forcibly, sitting straight up.
“Honey it’s me. Mi amor.”
Eyes wide open, lips pulled back, teeth clenched; terror strained her features. Marta took a half-hearted swipe at Alex before realizing who he was. She stiffened when he hugged her.
“Are you alright?” Alex asked, breaking the embrace to look into her eyes.
Marta’s head sagged down. “My head hurts Alex,” she said, rubbing her temples.
“Do you want me to get some aspirin Marta?”
“It’s a deeper pain than that Alex, I don’t know how to explain it. I used to have migraines when I was a teenager, those don’t even compare. I feel like something deep in my mind has decided it wants out and it is going to crack my head wide open to do it.” Alex was alarmed. Marta sometimes had a flair for the dramatic but he was not picking that vibe up right now. That she was in immense pain was clearly evident, the whites of her eyes were filled with red lines and he felt powerless to do anything about it. Paul had come up to the doorway of the room the Carbonaras were staying in. The abandoned school that they had sought refuge in had been a perfect fit. Plenty of room and plenty of canned goods in the cafeteria, although there was a reason school food was so horrible, it was of extremely low quality. The words ‘Grade E but edible’ adorned more than one label.
Paul wore a look of concern. Marta’s headaches had become more frequent and more intense. His initial thought was ‘tumor’ but he didn’t think their chances of finding a neurologist were so good.
Much like a migraine, all that seemed to help Marta was extreme dark and extreme quiet. Alex met Paul at the doorway and closed it behind him. Before they had walked more than a pace, Marta’s voice floated out to them and froze them both in place. “The darkness matches the void where her soul should be.” Paul could not contain the shiver that started at the base of his spine and like an insidious spider crawled all the way up to his brain stem, all eight legs caressing his creep factor.
“She does not know what she is talking about,” Alex told Paul, an insincere smile splashed across his face.
Paul thought otherwise.
CHAPTER SEVEN – Talbot Journal Entry 5
“Honey I’m sorry,” I told Tracy for the fifth time. Dammit, I hate groveling, well maybe I actually love it, I put myself in enough of these situations where it’s my only avenue of escape. “Hon, look at me. I feel for these kids, I really do, that’s why I don’t want to take them with us.” Tracy did finally look at me. “You’re right.”
She could have punched me square in the gut and not gotten the same effect. We had been married twenty something years and I could count on one finger how many times she had told me I was right. “Wait, what? Could you maybe say that again?” “Don’t push it Mike,” she snapped.
Gary was nodding behind her.
“They need to go to Ron’s,” she said triumphantly.
It was a brilliant idea. Ron would take them in without even blinking. “Hey, which of you guys has a driver’s license?” I asked the three boys hopefully.
“I have a permit,” Dizz answered, obviously feeling self-important.
“Mike, that’s not what I meant. How much have you driven, Dizz?” Tracy asked.
“I pulled out of the driveway once. Clipped the mailbox and then my dad made me get out, he was not happy,” Dizz answered, his inflated importance quickly deflating.
“Dad!” Justin yelled from the front doors.
“Company?” I asked.
He nodded in return.
Gary grabbed his gear and ran to the front. “Fifteen, nope sixteen.” I could see him doing quick calculations in his head. “Scratch that, eighteen, oh where’d that one come from, nineteen. Does a crawler count, because that would make it twenty,” “I get it, there’s a bunch,”
“Yeah, ‘bunch’ will work,” Gary said, staring out the window intently.
“Couple of speeders, mostly deaders though,” Justin clarified.