Amongst the Dead (28 page)
Her fingers tightened around the brass doorknob and she twisted it gently, twisted it until it stopped turning, and then, taking a deep breath, she hurled the door open and stepped into the room with an incoherent cry, the poker raised above her head.
The young woman with the blond curls was sitting on the bed, staring at her impassively. Her gaze travelled from Sophie’s face, to the poker and then back again, locking on Sophie’s wild eyes. “Hello, Sophie,” she said in a lilting, almost musical voice.
Sophie’s gaze took in the broken carafe at the young woman’s feet. Her arm was beginning to ache with tension and with the effort of holding the heavy poker aloft, but she kept it steady. “Who are you?” she said, immediately infuriated by the pitch of her voice. She sounded like a frightened schoolgirl. She made an effort to adjust it. “What are you doing in my house?” Better—deeper, more mature.
The blond woman’s eyes widened slightly. “Your house? Well that’s an interesting concept. Your house.” She said the words again, seeming to mull them over, to digest them. Finally she said, “How long have you lived here, Sophie? Oh, and you’d better put the poker down. It’s very hot.”
Sophie glanced at the poker. She’d pulled it cold from the hearth and carried it up the stairs, comforted by the icy metal in her hand. So why was the tip now glowing red and the conducted heat from the poker scorching her palm? She cried out and dropped it, letting it clatter to the floor.
“You were saying,” the young woman continued. “Something about this being your house?”
“It is my house. Mine and Mark’s. We’ve lived here two years now.”
“And the people before you, the people before them and before them. They all thought it was their house too.” She looked about the room. “Strange, I remember this house being built and I remember hating it because it was my house they pulled down to make way for it. Oh, it wasn’t much, my house. A hovel. We used to bring the animals inside in the winter to keep them warm…to keep us warm too.” She laughed, a harsh, brittle sound. “Christ, it stank!” The laughter ceased abruptly. “But it was home. This land, the land now occupied by this…this monstrosity, was our land, me and my family’s. We still have rights. We still belong here.”
There was a fervent light in the young woman’s eyes as she spoke.
Mad,
Sophie thought.
Absolutely barking mad.
A small thrill of fear shuddered through her. How was she going to get the woman out of her house?
“Oh, I’ll leave in my own sweet time,” the woman said, reading her thoughts. “But first we’re going to have some fun. Would you like that, Sophie, some fun?”
Sophie nodded slowly, deciding to humor her. “Yes,” she said. “I’d like that.”
The young woman’s gaze swept the floor, alighting on a shard of glass from the carafe. It was about four inches long, curved and wickedly sharp. “Perfect,” she said and picked it up.
In that second, when the young woman was distracted, Sophie could have run, turned and dashed down the stairs and out of the house. But the moment passed and instead she watched, captivated as the woman retrieved the shard of glass from the floor and held it to the light, making it glint and glisten.
“Now, Sophie, I want you to do something for me.”
“What?” Sophie said.
“Take off your clothes. All of them.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sophie said, but at the same time her fingers were fumbling with the button on her jeans. She popped the button and slid the denims down over her thighs, letting them drop to the floor.
“Good girl.” The young woman smiled encouragingly. “That’s good. And now the rest of them.”
As Sophie pulled her shirt over her head, her mind was crying,
I don’t want to do this!
But there wasn’t a damned thing she could do to stop herself.
The young woman moved towards her, the glass shard clasped tightly in her hand, so tightly it had sliced through her palm and fingers. She seemed oblivious to the blood that dribbled from her hand and dripped to the floor where the oak floorboards were sucking it in.
Once Sophie was completely naked and standing shivering, cold and vulnerable, the young woman moved closer still.
Sophie cried out at the first cut, but after that she was silent, unable to do anything but accept her fate.
Amongst the Dead
David Bernstein
Young and alone against the living dead.
Riley has lived alone with her dad in an isolated cabin in New York State for as long as she can remember. It’s just safer. Her dad’s told her about the time before the zombies, but she can only imagine it. Instead of playing with friends, Riley became a crack shot with a rifle. And she’ll need that skill now that her dad’s been bitten. She’ll be forced to leave the cabin and fight off zombies all on her own. She’s twelve years old. There’s a lot she’ll have to learn about the world she’s never really been part of. She already knows how to kill zombies. But now she’ll learn just how dangerous the living can be too.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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Cincinnati OH 45249
Amongst the Dead
Copyright © 2012 by David Bernstein
ISBN: 978-1-61921-077-6
Edited by Don D’Auria
Cover by Angela Waters
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: November 2012
