His head was cocked at a weird angle, the same one it was in the last time I’d seen it when he’d been leaning against the monument in the cemetery. Back when he was dead. His mouth was open in a wide smile, the muscles pulling tight against his cheeks. His teeth were black and stained with blood. He reached out to me with his hands, straining across the gap of six feet or so to reach me. But he didn’t move forward at all. His mouth opened and closed as if he were trying to talk. Or, as I realized suddenly with horror, like he was trying to eat us.
He still had on the jeans and shirt he was wearing before, but they were completely coated in mud and dirt and blood, as if he’d dragged himself on the ground for a while before remembering how to walk. His hands were coated with gore and his nails looked broken and jagged. Several were pulled back completely, resting at a 90 degree angle against his fingertip. I was guessing he’d somehow used those to force the door open.
He took a shuffling step toward us, sliding his foot on the floor, making a scraping sound that just set my teeth on edge and made my tongue burn. Then he stopped and sniffed. His eyes opened wider and a low moan came from his throat. And yes, it sounded just like the moans zombies always make in movies.
Then he turned around and shuffled back into the bedroom he’d just come from. A few seconds later I heard the tinkle of breaking glass and a sound that could only be interpreted as a zombie pulling itself through a window. Hard to describe but you know it when you hear it.
I’m guessing it’s just one of those things.
Goosebumps the size of walnuts trailed down my flesh. A line of them started on the back of my neck and traveled down the length of my body. I started shaking, shivering. My teeth chattered so hard that I thought a few would snap in two. Every hair on my body stood on end. I was scared spitless, that is no lie.
Fannie Mae gripped my hand so hard that I thought it would break. I could feel her shivering next to me.
Neither of us spoke.
I forced my legs to unfreeze and did my best to run gimpily down the hallway to the bedroom we’d seen him go into. It was the master. There was only one window in there and it faced the back of the trailer. The curtains billowed silently in the wind. I could see jagged strips of glass still set in the frame. They were covered in globs of blood.
I shone the flashlight around the room and rested it on what was on the bed. What was left of Tamara’s parents. The goosebumps left my flesh in a flash of heat and my body broke out in a quick sheen of sweat. I felt like I was going to throw up. The sound of Fannie Mae retching behind me didn’t help.
Tamara’s parents were strewn around on the bed like sacks of meat. Blood splatter covered the walls and the bed was soaked through with what looked like gallons of it. Great hunks of meat were missing from their bodies. Her father was missing most of his stomach and gray loops of intestines spilled out of the hole looking like roles of sausage links. Hunks of them were randomly missing, too.
Her mother was half on the bed, her top half on the floor. Her arms were splayed out above her head and were somehow still providing support. Her hair was arrayed around her on the floor as if she’d been primped especially for this position. She was nude. I registered that as a side fact as I tried to take in the tableau before me. Tamara had gotten her good looks from her mother, there was no doubt.
But those good looks were not in evidence before me.
Her left breast was just gone. Torn from her body like so much meat. Deep gouges as of teeth scraping the flesh were on practically every inch of her body. Half her neck was gone. Ripped and thrown to the side. Her spine glistened wetly through the wound. Hopefully that was the first hit and she hadn’t felt every other indignity done to her body.
I stood frozen, just taking it all in. I couldn’t stop looking. Every horror imprinted itself on my brain.
Fannie Mae pulled roughly on my arm. “Let’s go, Dukey. Please. Let’s get out of here.”
I let her drag me behind her as we exited the bedroom. My eyes were still drawn to that bed and the massacre of Tamara’s parents. Had they made no sound? I knew the neighbors weren’t that close by but surely someone would have heard the screams coming from this charnel house of death.
Tamara.
Fannie Mae was trying to drag me down the hallway, bypassing the next bedroom completely, heading straight for the front door. I reached out with my hand and gripped the doorframe of the other bedroom tightly, jerking us both to a shuddering stop.
She didn’t notice that we were no longer moving.
I felt like a wishbone, being tugged between her and my own hand on the doorway. I finally reached deep within me and found my voice.
“Fannie Mae. Stop.” She didn’t listen to me. Just tugged relentlessly. I returned her grip, tightening my hand on her own, and pulled gently backwards. Raised my voice a touch and said, “Fannie Mae!”
She looked back at me. Tears glistened down her cheeks. She was sobbing silently. It was only then that I realized that my cheeks were wet as well. I’d been crying this whole time.
“Let’s go, Duke. We need to get out of here.”
I shook my head. “We have to see about Tamara. This has to be her bedroom.”
She shook her head back at me vehemently. “No, Duke. If she was okay she’d be gone or out here already. We don’t want to see what’s in there.”
I jerked my hand out of hers and she opened her mouth in pain. “I need to see. Whatever’s happened here is all my fault. If I hadn’t hurt Mason, hadn’t killed him, then we’d be okay. Everything would be normal. I have to see.”
She didn’t say anything as I went through that darkened doorway.
Tamara could have been sleeping. She looked so peaceful. It was only if you looked closer that you could see a huge hunk of flesh was missing from the leg that was casually tossed out from under the covers. A bite had been taken from her thigh like she was a piece of chicken dinner. Her lips had been savagely ripped off, leaving her face bloody and caked in filth. As if someone had kissed her and then bit down and taken everything off with one savage rip. One arm dangled from the bed, fingertips grazing the floor.
I collapsed to my knees, feeling a rush of emptiness fill my brain. Circuits and synapses were misfiring and shutting down. My eyes were dilating and it was like I was seeing everything from a million miles away. I could feel my breath coming in huge gasps of air. It was all like it was happening to someone else.
Then a huge slap across the back of my head brought me back to myself. The pain brought a grunt from me and I could feel my face burning with the ache of it. I looked at Fannie Mae. She was nursing her hand.
“Had enough?”
I nodded, not able to say the words. She held her hurt hand to me and whispered softly, “Please, Dukey, let’s go.”
I nodded again and wobbled to my feet, not even registering the pain in my thigh. Fannie Mae took my hand and led us from the trailer. I unthinkingly closed and latched the front door behind me. We stumbled slowly through the Acres back to my home, using the flashlight to search every nook, cranny and shadow for Mason. He was nowhere to be found, thankfully.