Blood Red

Soon enough it was done and the bodies were left behind. Jason had expected nothing else. The new ones were too hungry to care and the older ones had awakened enough to want to settle a few scores or just to be with their families.

It was going to be a long night.

Off to the left, he heard the girl from across the street struggling in the woods. He wasn’t alone. The rest of the new ones heard as well, and a few of them seemed to take particular interest: Lister and his wife, her previous employers, as well as a large one from the fraternity.

He watched as they moved toward the woods and the sounds of the struggle.

III

Kelli felt Teddy’s hand grab her shoulder and, as he spun her toward him, she brought the rock into play and cracked him across his face as hard as she could. Teddy’s face broke. So did the rock and two of her fingers.

He staggered back, teeth bared in a feral snarl, and he covered the left side of his face with his hands. She kicked him in the knee as hard as she could and felt the bones of the joint give out and break under the impact.

Teddy fell down and spewed obscenities at her.

Somewhere along the way, her rational thoughts were submerged in white noise. She couldn’t let it get away. This thing, this nasty, vile creature that had been Teddy Lister was a mockery of everything she’d loved about the boy and she would not let it live. She couldn’t, just in case it looked at her again and made her come close enough to think Teddy was still alive.

She took the largest piece of rock and hit it again and again, her fingers throbbing with each strike. He fought back, of course. He pushed at her with his arms and he hit her and clawed her, but she wouldn’t let it go.

“Elli . . . shtob . . . heb me.” Kelli, stop. Help me. She meant to. She intended to help Teddy the only way she could, by ending his misery.

She drew back her arm and hit him again. Again. Again. The motions were almost mechanical. When she finally stopped, there was nothing left of Teddy’s head that she could recognize.

She stood up and shook violently, repulsion washing away the madness that had taken her and grief bringing back her sanity. Her eyes burned from the tears she’d already cried, and she knew that things were only going to get worse. Bill was out there and so was Michelle. She loved them, too, if not in the same way or as intensely.

She would do it for them as well if she could.

Kelli tilted her head and realized that the screams were all gone. She looked at her bloodied hands and shivered as the first of the exquisite pains made themselves known. Her ring finger and her pinky were broken and hung slackly. Both digits were swelling and almost black already.

Her skin was sliced and diced from the rock cutting into her palm and her wrist was aching.

Kelli groaned deep in her chest and shivered as the pain and the grief met and danced across her mind and nerve endings.

She heard noises in the trees behind her and looked just in time to see them coming. The dark shapes did impossible things that left her feeling disoriented. They hopped from tree to tree, suspended sideways, as they landed in complete defiance of gravity’s laws. Some of them once again came out of the sky, dropping like stones only to land gracefully on the heavy branches. Others moved on the ground, a few of them crawled in predatory stances that shouldn’t have been possible for anything that looked human.

All of them looked her way, their eyes burning with cold light and their faces dead, slack things. When they moved again, it was solely for the purpose of hunting her down for killing one of their own.

The mind is an amazing thing; somewhere in the reptilian part of Kelli’s brain, messages were sent off and the body listened to the commands issued. Adrenaline fired into her system again, increasing her alertness and shutting down pain receptors even as she started to run. Her ruined hand became a minor inconvenience and the painful flare that was going off in her side calmed and became a faint whisper.

Kelli Entwhistle ran again, and as never before in her life. Her legs lifted gracefully, her feet falling with a feather’s touch and her eyes alert to every sight around her. She saw the monsters as they came for her, moving through the trees and then dropping to the ground, or soaring into the air as the woods fell away and were replaced by the immense houses of the Cliff Walk. The wind across her face felt like a perfect kiss; her heart surged with blood and her lungs drew in sweet breaths of oxygen that fueled and invigorated. The salty scent of the ocean cleared her senses even more and brought her world into perfect focus. She could see Jason Soulis atop his house, his handsome face bearing his elusive smile. She could taste the fog, the heavy brine of the ocean, and a dull metallic hint of iron from the blood that seemed to be everywhere.