Dead in Bed by Bailey Simms, The Complete First Book (7 page)

“So, what does this
mean?” I asked, keeping my voice low. “What’s going on, then?”

“All I can say is that
I’m sure there’s a lot more going on than we know at this point.”

This time, I did start
to cry. I couldn’t hold it back anymore. Ian didn’t try to comfort me, which I
was thankful for. He just sat there as the tears spilled down my cheeks and I
tried to process everything he was telling me. I still didn’t understand what
all of this meant, but for some reason it made me feel even more guilty about
cheating on Shawn. It felt like such a small and stupid thing to have done,
especially now. And I was worried that Ian knew more than he was telling me.

“I blacked out last
night,” I confessed at last. “There are a lot of hours I don’t remember at all.
The truth is I don’t remember much of anything after the bar.” I turned to look
at him. “But I found your stuff in my car.”

Ian searched my eyes.
There was something in his look that told me he definitely
did
know more than he was saying, but he also looked relieved when
I told him I'd blacked out.

“You don’t remember
anything at all?” he asked.

“I’m so stupid.” I
tried to dry my eyes. "I haven’t drunk that much since high school.
Everything’s pretty much a complete blank.”

“I went out looking
for you after you disappeared from the bar,” Ian said. “I couldn’t find you
anywhere. To be honest, I think I was even more worried than Shawn.”

He wouldn’t look at
me. Ian just kept folding and unfolding his hands and staring at them. He
cleared his throat.

“After they started
evacuating everyone,” he whispered, “I was worried about you. Really worried.
You know? I didn’t have time to go to the motel, so I looked for your car in
the lot.” He shrugged. “I figured eventually you’d make it back there. I didn’t
want you to be cold. And I wanted to make sure you'd be safe. You still have
the gun, right?”

I nodded.

“Good.”

Ian's phone rang while
he nodded back distractedly.

I was used to Ian
getting lots of calls, but this time when the ringer chimed, it really startled
me.

I saw the name of the
incoming call flash on the screen before he picked up.

It was Morgan.

She was screaming. She
was screaming so loud I could hear her voice as soon as Ian answered. She was
screaming for help.

* * *

We
jumped into my little car. It was blocking all the other cars in, so we had no
choice but to use mine.

I got into the
passenger’s seat to let Ian drive, which was a good thing, because he flew
around the dirt-road corners way faster than I’d ever be able go without losing
control and rolling.

I had to hold tight to
the handle grip around every turn all the way there. Still, I managed to pull
Ian’s gun from where I’d stashed it between the seats. I had no idea if the
safety was on or off, but I held on to the gun as tightly as I held onto the
car.

Somehow, in the middle
of all of this, I realized what he’d just said to me on the porch swing.

He’d said he stashed
the gun in my car because he
didn’t have
time to go to the motel
.

“How did you know I
was at the motel?” I asked as he skidded onto the long driveway leading to
Morgan’s house.

“What?”

“You said you
didn’t have time to go to the motel
before leaving the gun in my car,” I yelled over the sound of the gravel
hitting the wheel wells.

“Ashley, I didn’t know
where you were. I said I couldn’t find you.”

“You said something
about a motel!”

He was racing toward
Morgan’s house, and we were almost there, but he took his eyes off the road
just long enough to give me a hard look.

“Listen to me,” he
said decisively. “I don’t care what I may have said. I don’t know anything
about any motel.”

* * *

We
skidded right up to Morgan’s gate. We both leapt out of the car and raced up
the front steps. The house lights were on. I didn’t loosen my grip on the gun
for a second.

Morgan was still
screaming. But her cries were more ragged now, more tired and defeated.

As we passed through
the living room, I made sure the gun’s safety was off. I knew that I would have
to shoot whoever was making my best friend wail with such an awful, suffering
sound. I couldn’t even let myself wonder what exactly was happening to her. I
just knew I was prepared to kill whoever was causing her to make that sound.

She was in the
bedroom. We could hear her crying out from behind the door, but it was locked.

Ian slammed his
shoulder into the door, and the wood splintered but stayed shut. He backed up
and slammed into it again, even harder this time, and the handle broke out of
the frame.

The door whipped open.

Only twenty-four hours
earlier, I’d helped Ian carry a dead body whose penis had been gruesomely
mutilated. But what I saw in Morgan’s room was more horrifying than that. It
was horrifying on so many levels that at first my brain kind of shut down and I
didn’t understand what I was seeing.

Morgan was on her back
atop her tiny writing desk, bent backward in what looked like an excruciatingly
painful position.

She was completely
naked. And she was bleeding. Her nose was covered in blood and her eyebrow was
split. Patches of smeared blood ran from her face down over her breasts, all
the way to her pubic hair.

And standing over her
was Mr. Hershel.

I could barely
comprehend that this was the same man who my mom always called the “gentle
cowboy”; who had been my closest neighbor throughout my childhood; who had once
taught me how to ride his old graying mare.

He too was completely
naked.
Or, almost completely naked.
As he spun around
to see who had just crashed through the door, I saw he was wearing just an old,
leather holster. The belt was fastened around his otherwise bare hips. Inside
the holster pouch, which dangled down against his thigh, was no six-shooter but
a very modern-looking handgun.

Morgan’s blood soaked
his tanned, weathered face and his bare white chest. And his penis was erect.
It was standing upright so that its
pointy head
hovered just in front of his belt buckle.

I gagged, but didn’t
drop the gun.

Morgan was still
crying out in agony, which I hoped was a good sign because she hadn’t been
beaten unconscious. But there was absolutely no question that Mr. Hershel had
been raping her.

He planted a leathery
hand between her breasts, holding her down, and Morgan screamed again. Mr.
Hershel was fast, but his movements were feverishly stilted. It was almost as
though someone were controlling him with strings. He kept fiercely twitching
his head to one side and stamping his heel as though his entire body were
itching.

But with his free
hand, he drew his gun and pointed it right my face.

Ian dove at him.

Before Ian’s shoulder
reached Mr. Hershel’s chest, Mr. Hershel fired his gun.

For a moment I was
sure he’d shot Ian in the head, but he must have missed, because as he toppled
backward under the weight of Ian’s body, Ian immediately tried to wrestle the
gun from his blood-soaked hand.

Mr. Hershel didn’t
utter a word. He just kept breathing at the pace of a dog’s panting, without
stopping. His whole body was heaving with every breath.

Before Ian was able to
pry the gun from his fingers, Mr. Hershel pulled away and brought the butt of
his gun down hard right behind Ian’s ear.

Ian tumbled backward,
dazed, and fell at my feet.

I knew this was it:
this was the moment I had to pull the trigger. I was already aiming right
between Mr. Hershel’s eyes.

But I couldn’t do it.
Whatever strength I’d summoned to help Ian carry the mutilated body from the
locker room without vomiting was all the strength I possessed. This was
different. This was too much.

Mr. Hershel grabbed
onto Morgan’s ankle and pulled her off the table. She made a muted, coughing
cry as she hit the floor, landing awkwardly on her shoulder. Mr. Hershel held
tightly to her foot, twisting her leg up and away from her body like he was
dragging a club.

And, still, I couldn’t
pull the trigger.

I was so ashamed. As
certain as I’d been a moment earlier that I was going to kill whoever I found
hurting Morgan, now I was just as certain that I couldn’t bring myself to end
the life of the man I’d grown up next door to, no matter what he was doing.

I let out a sob.

I heard the heavy
blast of Mr. Hershel’s gun.

I was sure, in the
next moment, I was dead. Everything was black. I was lying on the floor.

But I hadn’t been
shot. Mr. Hershel hadn’t even fired his gun. This fact dawned on me slowly as I
opened my eyes.

Ian had grabbed the
gun from my hand, knocking me over in the process, and shot Mr. Hershel.

A massive wound had
opened up on his shoulder. But—as if nothing had happened to him at all—Mr.
Hershel lunged at Ian, toppling him over. Now he held Ian down, pinning him on
his back. Mr. Hershel raised his gun once more, this time with a new urgency
and rage.

He brought the barrel
level with Ian’s eyes, but at the same instant Ian stabbed his own gun up under
Mr. Hershel’s chin and fired.

There was an abrupt,
compacted explosion. A piece of Mr. Hershel’s skull leapt up into the air and
landed wetly on Morgan’s bed.

Mr. Hershel slumped.
Ian pushed the now-limp body away, and it fell in a semi-sitting position
against the desk.

Ian slid to Morgan’s
side.

“You’re okay,” he
said. “You’re okay. Everything’s going to be okay now. Everything’s all over.”

Morgan stared blankly
around the room, never quite meeting Ian’s eyes and looking utterly confused.
She seemed in too much pain to cry or to even try to speak.

Ian pulled the
comforter from her bed, shaking off the piece of Mr. Hershel’s skull in the
process, and wrapped it around her bloodied body. One of her eyes was almost
swollen shut, and she was starting to shiver. He picked her up and carried her
toward my car while I followed close behind.

He turned to me as he
eased Morgan out the front door, careful not to let her head bump the doorframe.

“Can you get her some
clothes?” he asked me. I stared at him dumbly—it was hard to comprehend
such a practical request right now. “We’ll take her back to your parents’ house,
but she’ll need some clothes.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes. I
can”

I hurried back through
the house and stepped once again into Morgan’s room.

Mr. Hershel’s body lay
partly propped up with its back against the writing desk. I tried not to look
at it, but I couldn’t help it.

I especially couldn’t
help but notice Mr. Hershel's penis.

It was still strangely
erect. It hadn’t subsided at all—not throughout the entire fight with Ian,
and not even after he’d been shot in the head.

And his testicles, I
noticed only now, were swollen and blackened.

Just like the corpse
in the locker room.

His head was pitched
forward over one shoulder. I tried not to look at the gaping wound. I didn’t think
I could handle actually seeing the brain matter.

But it wasn’t exactly
brain matter that I glimpsed inside his shattered skull. Just as I was about to
force myself to look away, I saw…movement. There was something happening—some
kind of slow
churning
—inside Mr.
Hershel's head.

I took half a step
closer.

Inside the skull
cavity was a mass of larvae.

Hundreds,
thousands
,maybe
more, were
spinning and twisting around in a thick bunch. Each larva was pale white,
almost translucent, and about the width of a fingernail. A few had started to
spill out of the gunshot wound, plinking down onto the blood-soaked carpet and
writhing there.

“Ian!” I yelled. I
tried to take a breath, but I couldn’t breathe. “Ian!”

I realized I wasn’t
calling out at all, but whispering. I couldn’t speak. Another pair of larvae
fell from Mr. Hershel’s head and landed softly on the carpet.

I turned away from the
body. I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe. I just had to get Morgan’s
clothes, and then I could leave.

I jerked open all of
her drawers. I grabbed a few pairs of underwear, socks, and the first tops I
could find. All she needed was something to cover up with; it didn’t matter
what. As soon as I found a couple pairs of jeans, I wrapped everything up in an
oversize T-shirt.

Morgan’s phone was on
the dresser, so I grabbed that, too, and left the room as quickly as possible.

Just as I stepped out
onto the porch, the phone rang in my hand.

ASHLEY
flashed
on the screen. Someone was calling Morgan from
my
phone.

I answer immediately. “Who
is this?” I snapped in an irrational mixture of overflowing confusion and fear.

“Whoa!” said a male
voice. “Everything okay? Is this Morgan?”

“Who
is
this?” I repeated. “This is Ashley.
You have my phone.”

“It’s Bryce! Ashley,
it’s Bryce. I ended up grabbing your phone after last night. I’m so sorry. It’s
the same model as mine. I wanted to get it back to you.”

I’d been approaching
my car but stopped short at the front gate.

Even after everything
I’d just witnessed, what I saw now was even
more
surprising.

I had no idea what to
think. I dropped the phone.

In my car’s front
seat, dimly lit by the overhead light, Ian was holding Morgan tightly in the
comforter.

But she had placed
both of her hands, gently, on either side of his face.