Taken World (Book 2): Darkness Read online

  6

  A Little Trouble in the Big Red House

  It was nearing the fourth month after the Ravaging had begun. That was when things got bad.

  Worse.

  It was Bachman’s turn to empty out the bathroom bucket.

  To perform this chore, you’d go outside in the backyard, as quietly as you could, to a trench he had dug long before the voids burst, and dump the contents of the bucket, and then you’d hose off the bucket in the garage, where the drains would somehow, due to Bachman’s filtration system, recycle the water.

  The day before, Tyler had done this. Before him, May. Had it been a different day, either of them could’ve been the one infected.

  Bachman emptied the bucket into the trench. He could hardly see in the hazy light of the shrouded sun. He was pushing sixty years old, and his eyes had gone bad long before that. As a lifelong reader and a culprit of sitting much too close to the television, this he expected. Even if his eyes had been better, it wouldn’t have mattered much anyway. The monster still would’ve seen him. Still would’ve attacked him. Still would’ve infected him. Because he didn’t see it until it was too late.

  He dumped the bucket, and when he looked up, a thing resembling a crab lunged at him. He saw it as it flew through the air, pincers clacking together hard enough to cause a spark in the darkness. Then a brutal sharpness cut through his middle, and he screamed—loud.

  Tyler heard him in the kitchen, where he was washing dishes. May was in the living room reading a book, hiding behind her hair, which seemed like it had grown half a foot in the span of just four months. Tyler dropped the plate he was washing. It shattered, shards flying everywhere. He could not see out the window over the sink because it had been boarded up. So he ran. He ran across the linoleum, much like Logan, Jane, and Brad had done four months prior, in Brooke Long’s kitchen.

  Tyler’s hands were wet, dripping. He nearly slipped and cracked his head on the defunct refrigerator—everything was kept in an ice box below the ground. He rounded on the back door, threw it open. It was then he realized he didn’t have a weapon. Inside, it seemed pointless to wear a gun on one’s hip. Dangerous, too.

  “May!” he screamed, barely heard over Bachman’s shouts of pain.

  Bachman, a man Tyler had looked up to, a man who had taught him so much in such a short span of time, their meal ticket to survival.

  The crab monster was barely the size of a Yorkie, but God, its pincers were sharp. And they were currently embedded in Bachman’s midsection. A sheen of blood burbled from the wound, drenching the concrete walkway, giving color to the gray, colorless world.

  Even without a weapon, Tyler rushed the small creature. In the forefront of his mind, he knew the possible consequences. If that little gray crab slashed his flesh, or if those razor-blade teeth bit into him, he would be mutating in less than a few hours, gone from the world. Despite this, he didn’t back down. He kicked at the small creature, hit it in the face. It went tumbling off the concrete walkway, down for the moment.

  Didn’t stay that way, though. If anything, the move had just pissed it off more.

  Once it found its feet again—all six of them—it ran at Tyler, who was currently busy trying to lift Bachman, a big man, off the ground, blood pulsing everywhere.

  Tyler looked up in time to see the crab creature coming at him, fangs bared, pincers dripping gore.

  That was when the backdoor banged open, and May emerged holding Bachman’s rifle, an ancient relic of a weapon she had never fired before. But she didn’t hesitate now. In one smooth motion, she flicked the hammer back and squeezed the trigger.

  An eruption of sound shattered their world, drowning out Bachman’s moans of pain and Tyler’s shouts of confusion. The crab took the bullet in the face. The slug tore it apart, and the monster went pinwheeling into the weeds, letting out a wheezing shriek of death.

  Tyler blinked stupidly. He almost couldn’t believe what had just happened. It was a dream. It was a nightmare. None of this was real; it couldn’t be.

  “Leave me,” Bachman croaked. “Just leave me here. I’m done for.”

  Tyler said, “No.”

  May came over, and together they were able to lift the man off the walkway. Blood soaked their clothes. The stench of death hung around them like a cloud.

  Inside the door, they laid Bachman on a bench he’d installed so he could sit when he was putting on or taking off his shoes. The wood creaked beneath his weight. Already, his face had gone the color of the gray sky outside.

  May was crying silently. Tears streaking down her face.

  “Don’t cry, pretty,” Bachman said. “D-don’t cry for me.” He lifted a hand, a movement that seemed more difficult than anything he’d ever done before, and wiped May’s tears away, leaving a pink smear of blood on her porcelain skin.

  “You’re gonna be okay, man,” Tyler said.

  Tyler looked down at the man’s sliced stomach. The creature may have been little, but damn, it tore Bachman’s midsection to ribbons. The checkered shirt—Bachman always wore a checkered shirt—was shredded, blood soaking through the material. Beyond the shirt, Tyler could see the pulsing gore, the pale, white flesh of Bachman’s belly, the hair, the fat.

  “I’m not gonna be okay. You know that. I know that. You’re gonna have to kill me, Tyler,” Bachman said. “I already feel it coming…the sickness.”

  The world stalled. Everything in the room dimmed; the sounds of labored breathing, the whirring of the air purifier, the hum of the freezer downstairs… all of that stopped.

  “You hear me?” Bachman said. “It’s burning bad, my friend. Only cure for this is death. It’s my fault. I was stupid, wasn’t paying attention.”

  “No, I-I can’t kill you,” Tyler replied. May squeezed his shoulder.

  “If you don’t kill me, I’m gonna turn into a fuckin’ freak—excuse my language, May—and I don’t wanna be a fuckin’ freakshow like half the world is now. Kill me because I can’t do it myself. I’ll never get the gun up high enough. Please, Tyler.”

  Tyler looked at the rifle. It leaned against the wall beneath the pegs, which held three coats, one for each of them. Despite its age, the iron barrel gleamed, almost mockingly.

  “You kill me, and then you gotta go,” Bachman said. “Take the emergency packs and get as far from this hellhole as you can. They’re coming.”

  How Bachman was so calm, Tyler couldn’t comprehend. He himself felt like he was descending into an incurable madness. He thought of praying, thought of calling out for God, but what good would that do? God hadn’t helped him much in the past.

  “Tyler!” Bachman shouted.

  Tyler jerked back to the present.

  “You have to do it,” Bachman insisted firmly. “Please do it. It burns. And they’re coming, the monsters. I see the sons of bitches now.”

  Bachman’s eyes went blank, almost like he was already dead, but he was only looking at something else; something neither Tyler or May would ever understand, unless they themselves became infected with whatever disease the monsters passed off onto humans.

  “Okay,” Tyler said. “Okay, okay, okay. I’ll do it.”

  “Good. Thank you. You’re a good man, Tyler. I’ve always liked you, and you, May. If you two had never found me, I don’t think I’d be alive now. I would’ve swallowed a bullet a long time ago.”

  “Don’t say that,” May said.

  “I’m sorry, honey. It’s the truth.” Bachman’s eyes had seemed like they were filled with life again, but now they were drifting back off into the same emptiness as before.

  “Where do you want to do it?” Tyler asked.

  “Does it matter?” Bachman laughed. “Killing is killing. Death is death. I don’t c—”

  The walls shook with a violent force. Tyler almost lost his balance, had to reach out and grab onto May, who was able to support him easily. Both of them had lost weight, but both of them had gained a good amount of muscle, thanks to Bachman’s endles
s tasks. From somewhere in the living room came the sound of glass breaking. What sounded like the television fell over and shattered.

  “Almost here,” Bachman said. “They’re almost here! Do it now and get the hell out!”

  Then his body rippled. He clutched the wound, and blood spurted between his clenched fingers, slapping wetly on the hardwood floor.

  Still Tyler couldn’t do it. Kill a man? Not only a man, but a friend?

  “Do it!” Bachman yelled. “Oh please the pain the pain the pain—”

  The wound began fizzling. More of the flesh burned away. Whatever poison had been on the crab’s pincers was now working its black magic.

  Tyler grabbed the gun. Mostly because he didn’t want to see Bachman in pain. Bachman was a man who had always projected himself as being strong and immune to any kind of pain, mental or physical, but he’d been reduced to tears and blood, now begging for death.

  “Yes. Please. Yes.”

  Tyler aimed the gun at Bachman’s head.

  The house shook again. The wood covering the kitchen window came free, and an eerie light filtered in through the murky glass, giving the scene a rainy-day quality that might be found in a funeral home, a cemetery.

  “Wait!” Bachman said between sobs of pain. “Wait!”

  Tyler lowered the weapon. Outside, a massive beast stomped toward the house. Trees broke, crackled, and fell over, uprooted.

  “There’s a picture in my bedroom. In my nightstand. Get it for me. Please. I just want to look at it one last time.”

  May was gone before he even finished speaking.

  Tyler felt numb. The gun weighed a thousand pounds in his hands. He felt like he could barely hold it up.

  May rushed back into the foyer holding a small picture frame. In it was a picture of a beautiful redheaded woman wearing a wedding dress.

  “There she is,” Bachman whispered. “There she is.”

  “Who is it?” Tyler found himself asking.

  “My wife. My Cynthia,” Bachman replied.

  Then another bout of pain took him. Something squirmed beneath the flesh of his exposed belly, something tentacular. Time was short. Whatever was growing inside of him would soon burst forth like the monsters had from the anomaly.

  Kill the host, and you kill the disease. Simple science, Tyler thought.

  “I never knew you were married,” he said, mostly to himself than to Bachman, but Bachman replied nonetheless.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me. Now shoot me in the fuckin’ head.”

  Tyler looked at May. Her eyes were a runny, wet mess. Her silent sobs turned to loud ones that could be heard over the constant boom-boom-boom of whatever beast was currently descending on the house.

  “Do it! Look away and p-pull the trigger!”

  Tyler pressed the barrel of the rifle against Bachman’s forehead. The skin there was so sweaty that the gun nearly slipped.

  He pulled the hammer back. Finger on the trigger. And—

  He couldn’t do it. All the strength had gone out of him.

  Something that sounded like a Tyrannosaurus Rex from Jurassic Park roared outside, and Tyler’s legs turned to gravy. He felt like collapsing. They’d lost Bachman. They’d lost the house. What else could they lose besides their own lives?

  He thought now of the list he’d made while listening to broadcasts all over the country. At the top of the list: Cleveland. Forty five miles away.

  Might as well be light years.

  “Oh God do it please oh God it burns it’s ripping up my insides please please please kill me!” Bachman shouted. His voice had dropped lower, sounded watery, as if his lungs had been flooded.

  He hadn’t been able to move earlier, but his body writhed on the bench, creaking the wood, sending puffs of dust up from the bolts in the floor.

  “PLEASE PLEASE PLEASSSSEEEEEEE!”

  All Tyler could do was look at the man. Couldn’t take his eyes off him.

  Suddenly, the gun was ripped from his hand; at the same time, the back door exploded inward, the metal bulging. Tyler involuntarily took a stutter-step to the side and lost his balance. The floor came up to meet him. As he landed, he craned his head to see that May had kept her footing. She had the rifle. She wasn’t aiming it at the door, either…no, she was aiming it at Bachman’s skull.

  The writhing man, already in the throes of transformation, let go of the picture of his redheaded wife, so beautiful. The glass shattered as it hit the floor, but none of them heard it because of the pounding on the door, the hinges squealing, the creatures growling.

  This is crazy. This is so fucking crazy, Tyler’s mind whirled.

  Then—

  A concussive blast that sounded like a bomb going off in a metal room.

  Tyler’s ears beeeeeeped. He jammed his eyes closed. Something wet sprayed him. When he opened his eyes, he saw it was red and maybe a little too dark. Blood. Bachman’s blood.

  May wailed. She dropped the gun. The back door split open.

  Tyler didn’t hear it, but he saw it—the void-black of a clawed hand, almost human-like, save for the color and texture of the flesh: scaly. Dagger-sharp nails at the end of each finger, which opened and closed, opened and closed. Nails dug into the steel. Ripped.

  This time, Tyler heard it. He heard it too well. It was the sound of a train wreck, metal colliding with metal, pulverizing the passengers, their screams on top of it all.

  May was sitting on the floor, too. Tyler looked at her, then he looked at Bachman, his forehead caved in, his brains leaking out onto the floor to mix with the gore that had already spilled from his belly. It was a terrible mess.

  Gonna take a long time to clean this up and fix the door, Tyler’s mind said, delirium settling in. Oh man, is it gonna take a long time. Bachman isn’t gonna be too pleased about that...

  Then a different voice took hold of his brain, filled his head. It was crystal clear, as if the owner of the voice was sitting right next to him and whispering into his ear.

  Bachman’s dead, honey, but you ain’t. Not yet. But you will be if you don’t get a move on and get that nice, pretty girl to safety. C’mon, sugar.

  “Nana?”

  There was no response, but hearing her voice was a kick in the ass. May needed him like he’d needed her to do what she did to Bachman, and he wouldn’t let her down. No, in some odd way, she was like family to him, just as Bachman had been. Bachman was gone. His mom and his grandmother were gone. He wouldn’t lose May, too.

  He pushed himself up. No easy task, his legs felt like they were made of lead. In one quick motion, he ripped the gun up from the floor and put his arm around May’s waist, pulling her to her feet.

  “We have to go,” he said. “Get to the emergency packs.”

  “I killed him,” May said. “I killed him.”

  “I know. It’s what he wanted. It’s what needed to be done.”

  The door split wider, curls of jagged metal sprouting around the opening like a blossoming flower. Now two black clawed hands came through the opening, digging their nails in for a better grip.

  “I killed him. I’m a murderer,” May babbled. Bachman’s blood dotted her face. The tears streaking down her cheeks mingled with the red drops and made them run.

  “You helped him,” Tyler said. “Now let’s go!”

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her through the kitchen. As they were going down the hallway toward the war room, the door finally gave.

  A creature roared. Footsteps rattled the very foundation of the house.

  All this because of a stupid fucking crab. If the world ever goes back to normal, I’m eating Red Lobster every night, he thought and almost burst out laughing, though humor was the furthest thing from his tired and petrified mind.

  Tyler heard skittering along the kitchen linoleum.

  He grabbed the three packs from the war room. Each had to weigh at least twenty pounds, maybe more. He wore one on his back, one on his front, and gave the third one to
May. She just held it.

  “Put it on!” he barked.

  He didn’t mean to be rude, but she was still in her post-killing haze. He had to snap her out of it, or they would be the next ones to die.

  Startled, she began shrugging the pack over her shoulders.

  “Let’s go!”

  They went back to the hall, Tyler in the lead. One of the crab monsters, this one bigger and slightly more transparent than the first—Oh God, I can see its insides, Tyler thought with revulsion—click-clacked toward them. Tyler didn’t hesitate to aim the rifle. This wasn’t the same as shooting a human being; now he had no problem.

  The crab creature took the bullet in its fanged face. Half of its hard outer shell exploded from the top of its head like a hat lost in the wind. Jelly-like brains pulsed from the wound, and the creature fell on its back, its many sharp-ridged legs sticking straight up into the air. Tyler resisted the urge to kick it down the hall, as far away from them as his waning strength could muster.

  He might have, had he not seen the owner of the black claws that had come through the metal of the back door.

  The thing resembled nothing and was much too big to fit in the house. Standing hunched over on two, many-jointed legs, a disc-shaped shell on its back, the creature faced them, its attention brought on by the thunderous boom of the gunshot. Two large red eyes stared at them. Its mouth opened, revealing teeth as long as the barrel of the rifle. They, too, were red, but not by nature.

  May screamed. Tyler would’ve screamed too, had he been able to find his voice, but right then, it was long gone. In the grip of the creature’s large fangs was a dangling arm—a human arm, Bachman’s arm.

  It ate him already. It ate him it ate him it ate him—

  Tyler, his arms shaking so badly he couldn’t have drawn a straight line if you’d paid him a million dollars, raised the rifle. In his frantic mind, he figured there was no way he could miss, the creature was just too big. Another part of his mind told him it was pointless, that the rifle’s slugs would never penetrate the thing’s carapace; it looked to be made out of steel. Still, he was going to try. By God, he was—