Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller (14 page)

     Trevor came to the mouth of the hallway, and the man’s interest sharpened and found exactly what it was looking for. Trevor looked at Sam, and Sam saw exactly what he didn’t want to see. The boy’s eyes flooded with black.

     “How can you hope to release me if you can’t even get through his house without being detected?” the boy demanded of the intruder, and the derision and authority in his voice chilled Sam. That was not the voice of his son.

     Leaving the man on the floor for the more obvious problem with Trevor, Sam reached him and grabbed the boy’s arm. His eyes cleared. The darkness receded.

     “Stay by me, Trev, but stay out of his reach,” Sam ordered the boy as they both moved back toward the man on the floor.

     “Okay,” Trevor said, and his voice without the previous personality was very small, shaky and scared.

     As soon as Sam and Trevor were back by the stranger, the man began to smirk. Sam was about to ask him what his new deal was when a large shape flung itself from the shadowy entrance to the attic. Sam pushed Trevor out of the way, and took the second man’s full weight on himself.

     When the first man stood, Trevor casually backhanded him. The force of the hit was enough to send him into the wall. The wall cracked, the pretty floral wallpaper tearing around the man-sized indent.

     “You are useless,” Trevor declared, and Sam didn’t have to see his son to know that whatever unique being he had within him had taken possession once more. “How could I complete my purpose saddled with your incompetence?”

     The man whom Sam had injured with the baseball bat wasn’t moving. Said bat had been knocked from Sam’s grasp when the second man had taken him down. As Sam regained his breathing, Trevor hauled the second man up by his dirty blond hair and dragged him away from Sam. Sam didn’t think Trevor was doing it for his father’s benefit.

     “Trev,” Sam called, even though he knew it was useless. It wasn’t Trevor he was addressing. “Trevor, stop!”

     Though an eight year old boy didn’t have the bodily strength to manhandle an adult the way Trevor was doing, the being in control appeared to grant the boy far more physical prowess than his host had without the incorporeal assistance. The man howled his refutation of the boy’s intentions, prying at his small hand and kicking and dragging his feet wherever he hoped they could find purchase. Nothing helped.

     “We came to help!” he blubbered. “We just came to help!” His claims went unheeded by Trevor, who opened the front door and shoved the man outside. The second stranger’s flat gray eyes were wide with fear and surprise. He panted heavily, and wore an expression of nauseated disbelief. Whatever he’d expected, it was not this.

     “Help by sending someone more competent next time,” Trevor spat disgustedly. It was the last thing Sam allowed before he caught up to them and took Trevor by the arm. As expected, the dark dissipated and Trevor turned and clung to Sam, whimpering quietly. He was shaking.

     “Trevor, hold onto me around the waist and don’t let go,” Sam commanded the boy, who immediately complied. This left Sam’s hands free. He had reclaimed the bat.

     “What are you here for?” he asked the second stranger, not worrying about the first man for the time being. He was still very unconscious.

     The man stuttered for an answer, obviously not having expected to have to explain himself.

     “It-it told me to come here,” the man finally said, pressing a hand against his chest. “We needed him. They need him.” He pointed at Trevor, who pressed himself more securely against his father’s waist.

     “Well, tell them and everyone else that he’s off-limits,” Sam ordered, brandishing the baseball bat threateningly. “I’m going to haul your friend out here, and you’re going to leave. You’re not going to come back, and you tell anyone else you see to stay the hell away from here.”

     “They’re not going to,” the man said quietly, shaking his head and shrugging almost apologetically. “They won’t stay away.”

     Figuring that continuing the conversation would be pointless, Sam pulled Trevor back inside the house.

     “I’m going to get your friend,” Sam said again. “And you’re going to go.”

     “Fuck it,” the man replied uneasily. “He ain’t my friend. I don’t even know that dude.”
     Turning, the man fled into the dreary afternoon without another word. Sam watched him go, deeply perplexed.

     Austin had come further into the house than Laura and Melissa, and had heard the exchange with the man outside. “I can help you drag the other man out,” Austin offered. “It’ll be hard to do by yourself with Trevor attached to you.”

     “Thanks, Austin,” Sam said, but his tone was one of distraction rather than gratitude. Things around the Walker home were getting stranger by the minute.

     With Trevor holding his non-dominant hand, Sam used his other to take most of the first intruder’s weight. Austin used both arms to support the rest, and they moved clumsily through the house. When they reached the door, the man began to come to.

     “You’re lucky all I’m doing is dumping your ass outside,” Sam declared. Movement caught his eye before he began his second statement, which he’d fully intended to do. There was a vehicle coming down the road.

     “Someone’s alive,” Austin said, and the excitement in his voice was the first positive change in tone Sam had heard since he’d found the teen.

     “We have to be careful, Austin,” Sam warned, and Austin nodded. He knew the new way already. Assume all were enemies first. It was the only way to stay safe.

     “I can’t leave,” the man on the ground growled. “The thing inside, it’s too strong. It wants that boy and I can’t go until I have him.”

     “Then let it claim you fully,” Sam offered. “You failed to get my son. Let’s see if that beast inside can take him.”

     The man laughed, and it sounded wet. He had blood in his throat from the broken nose gifted to him by Sam.

     “You think I’m stupid,” he said.

     “Well, you broke into my house and got your ass beat, so I kind of do,” Sam retorted easily. The van was slowing down, approaching the Walker home.

     “I’ve seen them burn. The day isn’t theirs. If I let it take me over, it dies and I die with it.”

     “Not quite as stupid as you look, then,” Sam agreed. The van had slowed to a stop. Whoever it was either knew them or was so happy to see other people that they planned to interact with them even if they were strangers.

     The doors open, and Sam was distracted by the people disembarking the van. His attention was barely on the man at his feet at all.    

     “Sam!” Amy shrieked as she stumbled around the front of the van and pointed a warning toward her cousin’s husband.

     Sam flinched back, taking Trevor with him, and the knife aimed somewhere higher took him in the hip. The blade didn’t bury itself very deep, but the wound burned and bled immediately. He screamed in agony and jerked back, taking the knife with him as the man on the ground fell forward, his balance compromised by Sam’s movement.

     “Sam, here!” Amy shouted. She tossed him the tire iron she had in hand, the one Ray had taken for her to use from the first car they drove together.

     The throw was good, and Sam caught it easily. He swung it hard, and it cracked down on the head of his opponent hard enough to send the other man’s face slamming down on the pavement. Beneath his hair, brain matter exploded from beneath the broken skull. Blood gushed and gobs of grey matter came away on the tire iron as Sam raised it for another blow. He wanted to be sure.

     When the man was dead on the pavement, the creature beneath became exposed to the light. It suffered a quick death, burning with fire and hatred. It squealed in a caliber so high the next step up would allow only dogs to hear it. As it was, Sam and the others winced at the unnatural voice.

     “Sam,” Austin breathed out the older man’s name in a tone that sounded partly full of wonder and partly full of terror.

     “Bastard stabbed me,” Sam said as a way of justifying his action, gesturing to the knife as he spoke.

     “I wasn’t judging,” Austin assured him quickly. “We have to get that looked at. Sam, you’ve lost too much blood today…”

     Flapping his hand disinterestedly toward the wound, he turned to Amy, who was crying unabashedly as she rushed toward him.

     “Oh, God, Sam. I’m so sorry! I shouldn’t have distracted you! I can’t believe he did that. What can I do? Can I help?” She stopped a few feet away from him, wanting to hug him and at the same time not wanting to touch him for fear of injuring him further. She avoided looking at the burned remains of the dead man on the pavement, but part of her mind working without her permission documented the experience. The thing she’d seen on the sidewalk near her college had been in the same condition. She filed it as what happened when the human shell died in daylight, exposing the cancerous shadow-beast beneath to the sun.

     “I’m fine, Ames. Calm down. Get inside and reassure Laura that you’re okay.” He smiled at her. “You know, kiddo, I was just about to come get you.”

     Amy smiled back, but her eyes were still filling and spilling over with tears. “I had your fine influence to help me get here, Sam.” She gestured to the bag she still had slung around her shoulder. “And Ray,” she gestured the tall young man, whom Sam assumed was a friend of hers, over from where he stood near the parked vehicle.

     “Nice to meet you, sir,” Ray said respectfully, holding out a hand for a shake as he approached. Sam wasn’t surprised a friend of Amy’s was well-mannered. She was a girl with standards.

     “Thanks for your help,” Sam said. “And nice to meet you.”

     Sam found the final man with his eyes. He was the driver of the van. The clothes he wore were slightly big on him, and didn’t quite look like the man’s personal style. His skin was so dark that the whites of his very clean teeth and equally well-maintained fingernails stood out very prominently. His eyes were warm brown, open and friendly. Sam immediately liked the man, if for no other reason than that he radiated ‘good guy’ charm. On top of that, Shane was uninfected. The blight wasn’t obvious beneath his dark skin, and that made Sam feel even more positive about him.

     Holding a baby in a car seat in one hand and a baby bag in the other, the man gave Sam a respectful nod and said, “I’m Shane and this is Leila. We’ve only been with Ray and Amy for a while, but we’ve heard a lot about you and your family, Sam. It’s good to meet you.”

     Sam’s eyes flicked downwards to Leila, back up to Shane. He decided to be blunt. “She’s not yours. Neither are the clothes. No offense, but why should I trust you?”

     “Sam!” Amy said in a chastising, disbelieving way. Shane simply smiled.

     “It’s understandable,” Shane said easily. “You have no reason to trust me or what I say but I jumped into frozen water to save this baby after she was thrown in. the clothes belonged to her father. He’s dead.”

     Sam sensed nothing but truth from Shane’s story. He asked, “Who threw her in?”

     “Her mother,” Shane answered. “She’s dead, too.” As he started toward the house, he gestured toward the knife sticking out of Sam’s hip with the car seat. “You really should get that taken care of,” he suggested calmly.

     Looking down at it, Sam winced. He hadn’t exactly forgotten about it, but he had been ignoring it. The wound throbbed like a son of a bitch.

     “Have any experience with this kind of thing?” Sam asked Austin, who hesitated before responding.

     “Kind of. I guess,” the teen said as he followed Sam back toward the front door, where Laura and Melissa waited. The girl was huddled behind her mother. Laura was both horrified by the dead man on the ground and fiercely happy to see her cousin and to know her husband wasn’t going to die from the knife injury. She couldn’t decide between tears or a smile, so her face was unnaturally neutral.

     “Mel, go to the living room, sweetheart,” Laura told her daughter, giving her a gentle push toward the inside of the house. “I’m going to help bring some of this stuff in.”

     Melissa obeyed immediately, and Sam, Austin and Trevor followed the girl inside. After hugging Laura, Amy went with her cousin to unload, trailed by Ray. Shane, carrying Leila, made his way into the house after the rest of them.

     “I have something to ask you,” Sam said, pointing at Shane, but Austin pushed him none-too-gently toward a worn wicker chair in the corner and ordered, “Sit.”

     Sam sat and when he opened his mouth to continue, Austin covered it with his hand. “Sam, I want you to be quiet and let me figure this out. I had a puncture wound sophomore year so I know the basics of what needs to be done, but first I have to figure out the best way to remove the knife, okay?”

     Shane smiled down at Austin, who knelt near Sam. The firefighter had turned an ashy white with the pain of sitting. Sam nodded. Shane wondered if Trevor’s hand was going numb from how hard Sam was squeezing it. Shane sat Leila’s car seat down and clapped his hands together.

     “I’m an EMT,” he said. “What can I do to help?”

     “Do you have any first aid supplies with you?” Austin asked.

     “Only what Ray and Amy found.”