Hissers (13 page)

The front window cracked, a jagged stitch running down the very center. The faces outside didn’t even seem to notice, just went on hissing and beating the pane. A few more direct blows and it would break.

Amanita pointed with her poker. “Look, it’s the guy with the gun.”

Indeed the man who’d come to their rescue just minutes ago was up and baring his teeth at them through the glass. His neck had been bitten into crimson threads.

“He’s still got the gun,” Seth said.

“If he shoots the window we’re dead.”

As if on cue, the window broke, falling in three deadly sheets of glass to the living room floor. Amanita backed up, trying to keep her bare feet from the razor sharp shards.

The first hissing man threw his arms over the sill and flailed as he hauled himself up. Tiny daggers of glass still set in the sill sliced into his arm, spilling blood down to the living room’s baseboards.

“No!” Amanita shouted. “Do something!”

Seth stepped forward and swung the sword, but in his fear did not put enough power behind it. The blade hit the man’s hands but only left a thin dark line of blood across them.

“Again. Hit him again!”

This time Seth put his shoulders into it. The sword came down and lopped off the man’s hands. He did not seem to mind, other than he lost his grip and fell back into the attacking mob of creatures.

Seth shrieked and leapt backwards toward the couch, exposing Amanita to the next wave of hissers pulling themselves into the house. With a string of expletives, Amanita jabbed her poker at the first one inside, a teenage girl she recognized from the high school, someone she would have seen in the halls on Monday, maybe even at Jason’s party earlier. The poker pierced the girl’s eye, caught it on the poker’s barb and pushed it backwards into the brain.

The girl fell down on her back, twitching and grasping at her face, the poker jutting up from her eye like a victory flag.

Three more creatures scaled their way inside. Their hands grasped wildly for their prey, mouths open and tongues flicking like snakes.

Headlights came out of nowhere, backlighting the mob at the window. The car screeched up the lawn, tossing bodies to the side, sped up and slammed into the house, rocking it on its foundation, pinning the hissers to the vinyl siding and bursting their bodies like bugs squashed under a shoe.

Seth, who had flung himself into the hallway, peered around the corner. “Where are you, Amanita? What’s going on? What the hell was that?”

“Over here.” Amanita lay half in the fireplace, curled in a ball, only her legs sticking out. “Who’s in the car?”

Seth leaned out, saw a handful of the monsters still pinned to the front of the house, waving their arms in a struggle to free themselves. They spit at the car that had them wedged tight.

The car horn sounded. Twice. Three times. Voices yelled from inside the vehicle.

Covered in soot, her pantlegs soaked in blood, Amanita rolled out of the fireplace and studied the car. “You gotta be kidding me. It’s Connor.”

“And Nicole,” Seth added. “That’s Connor’s mom’s car.”

From the street a dozen more creatures ran full speed at the Camry. They tried to tackle the vehicle but bounced off of it, then tried a new tactic and started climbing on it, pounding on its surface.

“He’s saying something,” Amanita said. “Sounds like…back door!
Back door!
”

“This way. C’mon!”

Saturday, 9:54

So many creatures were on the car Connor and Nicole could see nothing out the windows except arms, legs and torsos with gaping wounds and copious amounts of viscera; they had almost no way of knowing whether or not Seth and Amanita even saw them waving.

Connor reversed, releasing the monsters who were pinned between the car’s hood and the front of the house. They fell forward with crushed bones and burst stomachs, their entrails dangling like ropes, still reaching for the fresh meat inside.

The monsters on top of the vehicle rolled off and landed on the ground near the tires. The car bounced up, rolled over them, and spit them out the front again where when they went flipping across the lawn like ragdolls. Connor shuddered and thought of his mother, the way he’d heard her bones breaking under the tires, but suppressed the images. It was more important to get around to the garage, which was to his right. He hoped Seth and Amanita had understood his direction to exit out the side of the house.

Grass and soil kicked up into the air, the wheels barely finding traction. Yet it seemed to glide slowly and gracefully to the driveway.

“Where are they!” Nicole screamed.

“I can’t see anything out the windows.”

Behind them on the front lawn, any creatures whose legs hadn’t been broken under the car were righting themselves again. The rest were pulling themselves forward on hands and elbows, their mangled useless legs sliding behind them. The first and only one to hit the car placed two hands on Nicole’s window and head-butted the glass. He wore a Boston Red Sox shirt and had a crew cut. A shard of jagged sternum stuck straight out from his chest.

He’s really dead,
Connor thought.
This confirms it. How is it happening?

“Open the door! Open the door!” Amanita came running down the walkway on the side of the house. Seth was close behind.
Thank God they got the message,
Connor thought.

Nicole leaned back over her seat, grabbed the handle of the back door and opened it to show them it was unlocked. Amanita yanked it open further and threw herself into the car. Seth leapt in next, his sword stabbing across the car’s interior just inches from Amanita’s face.

The creature in the Red Sox hat saw them through the window and head-butted it again.

“Lock it lock it lock it!” Nicole yelled.

Connor hit the power locks just as three more undead body-checked the car and hissed at them through the windows. They raged and threw fists and kicked but the vehicle held together. He backed the car up onto the road, where it shot backwards as the tires finally caught on the asphalt.

He turned and looked out the back window just in time to see a red Hyundai speeding by them on the street. A thunderous boom filled the interior and all four passengers were slammed back into their seats as the Camry plowed into the side of the Hyundai. Metal wailed in protest. Tires squealed. The sword flipped up and struck Amanita in the forehead, opening up a gash that flicked blood onto the seats. “Fuck!”

The engine died.

“The hell was that!” Seth screamed, unaware he’d cut Amanita.

As one, they turned and looked out the back window. The red Hyundai sedan was pushed into the yard of the house across from Seth’s, its car horn now blaring incessantly. The driver’s side door was crumpled in and the window was blown out. Steam was billowing out from under the hood.

“We hit that car,” Connor said, stating the obvious. “I didn’t see it coming until—”

“
Goddamit!
You almost cut my head off!” Amanita put a hand to her forehead and then held it up. It was coated in blood. “My head. Oh my God, is it bad?”

“You’ll live,” Nicole said, grimacing. “But that woman looks bad.”

Through the blood-smeared back window they watched a young woman with bleached blonde hair sit up in the Hyundai. Her face was lacerated and she was crying. She gave them a cursory glance then frantically tried to restart her car, unconcerned with the accident, but the engine wouldn’t turn over. The more she turned the key and got no response the more her obvious anxiety grew. Her faint,
“No no no,”
transferred the panic to the four teens watching her.

“Oh my God,” Nicole said. “She’s real. She’s not one of them. She’s speaking.”

“We have to get her,” Connor said. “Seth, tell her to get in. Tell her to—”

The sound and force of the undead running over the top of the car cut him off. In an instant the pack of hissers jumped off the battered Camry and zeroed in on the crying woman.

“No!” Nicole cried. “Leave her alone!”

The pack of raging undead yanked the blonde woman through the broken window, pulling her arms and legs in different directions at once as if she were a wishbone, her body now the focus of a bloodthirsty tug-o-war. Her screams of terror were so shrill Connor thought they would shatter all the glass in the neighborhood. She finally went down under a storm of slashing fingernails and buzz saw teeth, her legs still kicking.

“Start the car,” Nicole said. “She’s gone. We can’t help her. Just get us out of here while they’re busy. Please, hurry.”

The words were almost sinister in their disregard for human life but Connor could not disagree with them. The innate need to survive overrode all thoughts of heroism. He turned the key and the engine rolled over and caught. As he put it in drive, he heard the sounds of a baby crying. They all did.

Nicole grabbed the steering wheel. “Wait. That’s a baby. We can’t…”

They all turned and watched through the back window, wondering where it was and how to save it, but what unfolded next nearly sent them into shock.

The blonde woman rose up, her eyes dark yellow, her face a mess of ragged flesh. She wore only a bra now, and large divots of flesh had been gouged out of her torso. Striated muscle and gray ropes of intestine hung loose from her abdomen. The other undead backed off her and were momentarily confused by the baby’s cries. With a snarl the blonde woman pushed her way through the ravenous monsters and lunged inside the broken Hyundai car window. She slid over the front seat into the back. The entire car began to shake. The baby’s cries cut out right before a gout of blood splashed up against the inside of the back window.

The rest of the hissers tried to pile in through the broken window as well but only managed to bunch themselves up. Then, the blonde woman must have accidentally opened the back door because she fell out onto the street with her baby in her mouth, the car seat still wrapped around its tiny feet. It wasn’t moving as she tore her head away from the infant’s neck, chewing up a mouthful of meat. The baby’s head fell over its back, dangling on a strip of gristle.

Seeing the fresh kill, the pack of undead converged on the blonde woman, fighting for scraps.

Except one. The man who’d had the gun on Seth’s lawn. He was staring in at Amanita, his bloodied mouth showing ruined gums where teeth had been torn out. He still held the gun. It was over his head now, coming down.

The window smashed and Amanita screamed.

Saturday, 10:03

They drove in a daze. Red, sticky goo coated the car.

“I never realized how dark the streets get without power. The houses look creepy.” Nicole was looking out of the passenger side window as the car turned onto Spring Lane.

“Anyone could be hiding in any of these yards and we wouldn’t even see them,” Amanita added. She was wedged between Connor and Nicole in the front seat, doing her best to keep her knees from bumping into the steering wheel. The tiny car was not made to sit three across and they were scrunched shoulder to shoulder.

“I don’t think they hide in shadows,” Connor said. “They don’t seem to care a whole hell of a lot about staying hidden. We’ll see ‘em if they make a run for us.”

“And then what?” Amanita asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.”

Nicole spun around and gave a quick look at Seth in the backseat. He was huddled up behind the driver’s seat, doing his best to stay away from the broken window across from him. The side he’d been sitting on was tacky with drying blood. “How you doing?” she asked.

Seth gave her a slight nod but remained quiet.

Nicole exchanged glances with Connor, let the implied thoughts about Seth remain unspoken. The boy was retreating into himself. “Haven’t seen anyone in the last few streets,” she said, doing her best to stay positive. “Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe they didn’t make it down this far.”

“They’re everywhere,” Connor replied. “They may have come here and moved on already.” He regretted saying it but he knew the reality of the situation better than any of them so far. His mother and father were dead, torn apart by people he’d once called neighbors. There was no hope for a happy ending to any of this. All they could hope for now was to get to safety, find someone who could come in and wipe out every one of the savage monsters that had taken his family. But even
that
hope felt hollow when one considered the nature of the curse that had befallen Castor. Whatever was making these…things…behave in such a violent manner was spreading too fast to outrun.

“Well I haven’t seen any signs of struggle anywhere,” Nicole responded. “It may be okay. Turn here.”

Connor took a right onto Jasmine Road, slowed the car while he scanned the street. Ahead of them, the quaint residential road was illuminated only by moonlight. Cars sat parked on both sides all the way down, obscuring the majority of lawns, creating numerous hiding spaces. Anybody could be behind them, Connor thought,
living or dead or…changed.