Out of the Dark: An apocalyptic thriller (22 page)

     Trevor had stopped calling him ‘Daddy’ last year, having evolved to simply ‘Dad’ instead. Hearing the word a younger Trevor had used for him in such a shaken voice calmed Sam for some reason, and he pulled the boy back inside, shutting and locking the door behind them before he dropped to his knees and held his son tightly.

     At least he doesn’t know, Sam thought to himself. At least he doesn’t know what he did, what that
thing
had done using his body as the conduit.

     “Laura,” Sam called. He was surprised to hear how hoarse, how strained his voice sounded.

     Laura ran. She’d never heard Sam sound like that, not even when Mel had fallen on the deck last year and broken her wrist. Sam wasn’t the sturdy one, Laura was. Sam was the comforter, the one who panicked when it came to the kids. But she’d never heard Sam sound like that.

     Skidding around the corner to look down the hallway that led to the front door, Laura saw Sam on his knees and Trevor standing in front of him. Sam clung to the boy and Trevor was crying, though it was that confused, startled way that indicated he didn’t quite know what he was crying for.

     “Baby, baby, shh, shh,” Laura said in a calming tone as she came closer to the two of them. She pulled Trevor away from his father and stroked his mussed hair. He buried his face against the curve of his mother’s waist, hunching over so he could wrap his free arm around her. Laura noticed that even though he looked shell-shocked, Sam still held the hand of Trevor’s that was closest to him.

     “What happened?” Laura asked her husband. Her voice was gentle but firm at the same time. Sam could charge into burning buildings without a thought but when it came to his children, Sam had always been more easily shaken than his wife. He needed Laura to be the hard one, in matters of discipline and injuries, and she was fine with that. She tried to draw him back to her with her voice. “Sam?”

     On a shaky breath, Sam said, “Frank and Jenna are dead.”

     Laura’s heart hitched with pain, but she didn’t speak. She knew Sam wasn’t done, that he was trying to build up to something.

     “Trevor killed them.”

     Hating the way that sounded, Sam winced and corrected the statement, “Whatever is
inside
Trevor killed them. That thing, it has this power, a horrible power.”

     As things clarified for him, Sam stood and kept a firm hold on Trevor’s hand. Until whatever was wrong with them was purged, Sam vowed never to lose physical contact with his son again if he could help it.

     “Come on, Trev. Laura, you too.”

Chapter Seventeen

     Austin slept in Trevor’s room, dreaming of his mother. In the dream, she taught him how to dress wounds outside a hospital setting, and every time she wanted to show him something new, she injured herself to do it. Austin kept pleading with her to stop, but she continued to cut, mangle, and break her own body for his gruesome education. When he called for help, there was no one around to offer any kind of assistance. He couldn’t help her. Everything she’d taught him before washed away in a flood of panic and terror and everything new she tried to teach was drowned out by his futile screaming.

     Sam woke the teen by unceremoniously dragging him one-handed from the bed and dumping his ass on the floor.

     Shocked awake, Austin stared up at the obviously pissed-off Sam, the frowning Laura and the terrified-looking Trevor.

     “Sam!” Laura exclaimed admonishingly, but said nothing more.

     “Sam?” Austin echoed Laura with a question in his tone as he shook off the shock of the fall and the remnants of sleep. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

     “You want to know what happened? Come here, I’ll show you.”

     Without waiting for Austin to say anything or pull on his jacket, Sam jerked the teen up and hauled him out of the room. It might have been comical; the large father-figure dragging one stoic little boy and one confused, fighting teen down the hallway and out the front door. Perhaps if he had ended the spectacle by dumping them in the snow and initiating a friendly snowball fight (had there been any snow on the ground and snowsuits and boots on the boys) the illusion of a father trying to force play between his kids would have been complete. However, the journey ended with Sam and Trevor standing on the porch and Austin collapsed to his knees as Sam released his arm and thrust him toward the bodies still leaking red onto the ground.

     “Trevor,” Austin said numbly, and Sam’s fury reached its pinnacle. He rounded on Austin, making sure to keep in contact with his son.

     “‘Trevor.’ That’s your first response to this? Of fucking
course
it is, because you
knew
. You knew what that son of a bitch could do and the only thing you tell me is to keep touching him however I could. How the fuck was I to know what you meant by that, what you
really
meant, Austin?”

     He grabbed the teen’s arm, the one that had been bleeding after the one and only encounter where Austin and Trevor were alone. Austin winced, but didn’t fight to release himself from Sam’s vice-like grasp.

     “That thing did this,” Sam said, shaking Austin a little to make his point. The teen went paler by the minute. Laura stood slightly inside the door, watching. She was ready to jump in if need be.

     “Yes,” Austin said, even though Sam hadn’t been looking for an answer. “I didn’t know how to tell you what happened. I didn’t know what to do about it, Sam. It scared the shit out of me.”

     “Fucking
tell me
!” Sam screamed in a blind rage. “Tell me what the fuck happened so I could know exactly why I should have done what you said. When I looked at him before now, I didn’t see the threat inside him. I saw my boy. I still see my boy. But now I see what my boy can do, I’ll piggyback him. I’ll fucking duct tape him to my chest if I have to.
I needed to know, Austin
!”

     Both Austin and Sam were panting; Sam with fury and Austin with mortal terror. He’d never seen anyone so furious. His parents weren’t screamers and he didn’t have siblings. No one had ever yelled at him like that. At sixteen, being yelled at with such rage unexpectedly made him cry. Amy pushed through Laura and knelt down beside Austin, putting her arms around him and touching Sam’s hand, which still gripped Austin’s wounded limb.

     “Enough, Sam,” she begged quietly. “You’re terrifying him.”

     “He deserves to be terrified,” Sam said, but he dropped Austin’s arm. “He deserves more than that.”

     Backing away from Sam, Austin sat on the cold porch with Amy clasping him to her protectively. The tears were hot and thick on his face, burning his cheeks even as the cold air slicked them like thin sheets of ice to his skin.

     Amy didn’t look at the bodies in the road. God, she’d seen enough of bodies already. She knew enough about the situation to agree that Sam was in the right, but that wouldn’t stop her from protecting the teen several years her junior. She’d seen Sam’s temper before, and knew that it had to be restrained before what was right and what was acceptable in the face of his anger became the same thing to him.

     “He made a mistake,” Laura said insistently, joining Amy’s team as she pulled Trevor into the house. Because Sam refused to let go of the boy, ever again if need be, he followed inside without a fight.

     Amy helped Austin stand, and they went in, as well. Because tensions and emotions were too high in everyone else, Amy was the one with the sense enough to close and lock the door.

     “Mel, sweet pea, go back to bed,” Laura insisted gently as the girl entered the hallway, rubbing her eyes sleepily.

     “But why’s Daddy yelling?” she asked in a baby-like voice. Laura scooped the child up, hugging her and kissing her soundly before she carried her back to the bedroom she shared with Sam. Laura and Melissa had been sleeping on the big bed so Amy could sleep in the girl’s room.

     “Don’t worry about Daddy,” Laura said in a calming tone. “You know how he gets. You need more sleep, beautiful girl. Were you dreaming?”

     Dutifully, Melissa began to recount her dreams, sporadic and childish things that jumped around from fairies to a day at the beach. Laura placed her daughter back in the bed she shared with Sam and listened to her talk until she fell asleep, knowing that Amy would handle Sam while his wife wasn’t in the room.

     Amy was indeed trying to handle Sam as he scolded, berated, and screamed at Austin for how wrong he’d been, how much he’d risked by not telling Sam exactly what the thing inside Trevor was capable of.

     “I thought it was the same thing inside of us that hurt you,” Sam snarled as he gestured to the shoulder the shadow creature inside of Austin had injured. “Teeth and claws, those fuckers have both. Why would I assume anything else had happened, Austin?”

     “Sam,” Amy interjected, trying to keep her voice as soft as she could so that she could counter Sam’s terrible fury. “Sam, it’s done. You know now. You know better than anyone. We can prepare for it now. We can take action, right? That’s what you’re all about is action, so let’s take action to protect all of us, including Trevor. Just calm down. Nothing you’re doing is helping right now.”

     “Two people are dead because of what he did,” Sam gritted out from between clenched teeth. “Two people I’ve known a hell of a lot longer and cared for a hell of a lot more.”

     “I’m sorry,” Austin whispered, but Sam didn’t hear him.

     “I brought you here because you needed help, you were alone. I thought you wouldn’t be a threat to my family. Was I wrong?”

     Unable to defend himself, because he felt as much loathing and guilt as Sam had infused into his voice, Austin lowered his head and murmured heartbrokenly, “I guess so.”

     “Sam,” Amy said in a warning tone, feeling defensive for Austin now. Sam was being harsh. How terrifying had it been for Austin, seeing evidence of the Bringer’s power, and not even at its full? How could he have worded something so alien? “He tried the best he could to tell you,” she offered.

     “So this is my fault?” Sam asked, rounding on Amy with the same fire in his eyes he had given to Austin. “It’s my fault they’re dead, my fault for not listening to Austin when all he offered me was, ‘tie him to your back or something.’ That wasn’t
enough
, damn it! I needed more information!”

     “I’m not saying it’s your fault, Sam,” Amy said patiently, and her calming tone had his fury spiking to its breaking point.

     “Don’t fucking placate me,” he snapped at her, and she glared. Amy could only stay calm and helpful for so long.

     “The stop acting like a fucking child and I’ll stop talking to you like a kid throwing a tantrum,” she retorted. Sometimes, anger thrown back at him cooled Sam better than soothing tones and logical words.

     It helped. Amy rarely swore, so hearing it from her mouth made him realize she was truly upset. He was acting like an ass. It wasn’t Austin’s fault or Trevor’s or his or any human in this room that Frank and Jenna were dead. They were partially accountable, perhaps, in some way, but it was the alien being inside his son that had committed the atrocity that resulted in the deaths of his well-liked neighbors. Even if Sam himself felt the guilt burning inside his gut for what had transpired, it wasn’t right to force more of it onto Austin, who undoubtedly felt his involvement in the deaths in a stinging heat of culpability. Sam breathed deep, and tried to calm himself.

     “I’m sorry,” Sam told Austin, but the words were hard to come out. “I am. I’m upset. They were my friends, and they died right in front of my fucking porch and I couldn’t do anything. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

     Shivering, with tears still on his face, Austin shook his head. It wasn’t that he couldn’t accept Sam’s apology; he couldn’t accept anything. He felt the need to back away from the entire situation; feeling like none of what had happened until that point could truly be possible. It was a bad dream, a nightmare, or it was a trip of some kind. Hadn’t people at school been offering him drugs now and again? Maybe he’d finally given in and taken a hit, or a pill. Maybe he was dead and this was limbo, a hellish, horrible limbo that he would be trapped in until the sins of his life were burned away. No matter what, he had decided it wasn’t real. Nothing that had happened was acceptable within his reality, and he was done with it.

     “I’m going home,” Austin declared quietly as he stood.

     “No,” Sam and Amy objected simultaneously.

     “It isn’t safe out there,” Amy said pleadingly as she followed him into Trevor’s room. Sam stayed behind, letting her take the lead with the teen.

     “I’m going home,” Austin repeated in a careless tone as he reclaimed his heavy shirt and pulled it over his head. He continued with his jacket, his thick winter socks and the boots that he’d brought into the room with him in case he’d needed to dress quickly. He hadn’t wanted to be without footwear.

     “Austin, please,” Amy begged desperately. She saw the detachment beginning to claim him, the defense mechanism enacted to preserve his mind. It was too dangerous to let it happen.