Blood Red (13 page)

“What,
what
?!”

“No—nothing!” Rachel manages, nearly
swallowing her words. “We’re okay.”

She doesn’t want to further unhinge her
friend. She needs her to be functional. She extends her arms in
Jenny’s direction, finding her friend’s shoulders. She pushes
against her, pushes her away from the perspective that will let her
see the woman’s head. The woman on the ground doesn’t seem capable
of anything more than spastic neck movements, so Rachel wants to
keep Jenny as calm as possible and get the hell out of here.

“What? What?!” Jenny is whining.

“Let’s just go.” Rachel is clutching Jenny’s
shoulders now, not wanting to let go as she propels her
forward.

“
Oh god, oh god, oh god.”

Trying to soothe Jenny back to near-calm, she
gets her friend back to her feet once more, but no matter what she
does, she can’t stop Jenny’s uncontrollable trembling. It would
help, of course, if Rachel could stop her own. Not wanting to dwell
on that or anything else, she surges forward with Jenny, left arm
reaching out again into the abyss. After what seems a freefall into
nothingness she finds an endcap stacked with some kind of boxed
merchandise. She stops, makes her best guess about where they are,
then continues forward.

She’s moving down one of the larger aisles,
she believes, feeling her way from endcap to endcap. She pushes off
one, takes two steps, reaches for the next. This one seems to hold
glossy metallic kitchen items; the next one is perhaps a holiday
display; this one is a bathroom theme—no, that doesn’t seem right.
There are more endcaps than she remembers. When are the end
displays going to give way to the next larger aisle, which will
tell her she’s near their destination?

Something’s not right. Did they take a wrong
turn?

The darkness seems to pull at Rachel, seems
to be working in concert with gravity to squash her into the floor.
She tries to force her hand to be nimble, to let her fingers brush
the objects on the shelf, seeking familiarity, but they won’t obey
her: Her hands keep clutching at the shelf to keep her body
upright. She methodically moves down the center aisle, her eyes
straining but seeing nothing.

Jenny is breathing shallowly next to her, her
hand clamped on Rachel’s shoulder. Occasionally the hand also
threatens to pull her down, but Rachel bears the weight, feeling
responsible for her friend being here. After a moment of wheezy
silence, Jenny starts choking out some kind of mumbled prayer.

“Don’t worry,” Rachel whispers, “we’re
fine.”

She brushes her fingers over
objects—bedsheets, bottled items, picture frames, and other things,
things she doesn’t recognize by touch—and Rachel becomes hyperaware
of the shuffling sounds of their feet on the floor. She tries to
focus her other remaining sense on only that and Jenny’s voice, to
latch on to them as constants, as the things she’s touching seem
completely random and start threatening to take her in the wrong
direction. Then Rachel pushes off an endcap, takes her two steps,
and reaches out to—nothingness. She’s reached the end of the row of
endcaps and is left standing in empty space with nothing to hold on
to.

For a split-second, Rachel believes she might
finally begin to scream. To give in. That sensation of being adrift
in darkness is nearly enough to send her over the edge. The
temptation to fall down and begin shrieking and sobbing nearly
consumes her. Then she abruptly pushes backward, arm flailing, and
reacquaints herself with the last endcap. Jenny comes stumbling
with her.

“Oh Jesus, Rachel, Jesus for Chrissakes don’t
do that don’t do that—” Jenny is babbling, clutching at her.

“It’s okay,” Rachel manages, still feeling
the trill of an adrenaline jolt.

She’s sure now that she’s reached the
beginning of a perpendicular center aisle that leads to the
hardware aisles. She strains her eyes and makes out two red glows
in the far distance, partially obscured by something. Racks of
clothing? She’s sure they’re in the direction they need to go.

Rachel lets Jenny’s hand go and begins madly
touching the hanging packages. She comes across what feels like
lightbulbs, then an array of swaying tools and boxes.

“Okay, we’re almost there,” she breathes.

She takes her first step along the aisle, and
at that moment, the clack of wood on metal sounds again, far closer
than Rachel would like it to be, followed by what sounds alarmingly
like something dragging.

“Oh fuck fuck fuck …” Jenny whines.

“What
is
that?” Rachel whispers,
unable to stop herself.

She grabs at her friend, and they embrace
desperately for a long moment, not moving.
Jesus Christ what
have I done? Why are we in here? This is the stupidest thing I’ve
ever done! We’re going to die in here!
She begins to
hyperventilate and can feel her heart trip-hammering in her chest.
Stop, stop!
she demands of herself, closing her eyes for a
moment.

The sound returns—definitely a dragging
sound, probably forty feet in the distance—and her eyes are open
again immediately, uselessly. The sound is coming from the
direction of the indistinct glows. She focuses on them intently,
trying to be still despite Jenny’s full-body quaking.

“Wait, wait, shhhh—” she tries, but Jenny
can’t stop.

Nevertheless, Rachel is sure that at least
one of the red glows is moving. Not dragging but twitching. And now
the sound reveals itself to be more of a prolonged shudder.
Something is happening over there.

“We have to move,” Rachel says. “Let’s
go!”

“But—”

“Go!”

She pulls herself from Jenny’s sweaty embrace
and begins hurriedly pulling them along the aisle. The aisle is a
long display of cleaning supplies, exactly as she remembered. She
shuffles them along it, her eyes locked on the glowing jitter. A
steady, almost rhythmic rattle is coming from there now, growing
louder as they approach. She can feel Jenny resisting Rachel’s
forward motion, and a terrified, almost animal sound is escaping
her mouth.

“Stop it!” Rachel whispers hotly, shoving her
friend forward.

Now they’re practically running headlong into
darkness, Rachel’s hand flitting along the endless bottles and
boxes at her left. She knows that about halfway along this aisle,
she’ll need to cross the big aisle and find the hardware aisle she
needs. She stops at what she believes is the midpoint and steadies
herself against what feels like a desk.

“What?” Jenny mewls.

Rachel is looking at the jittering glow
that’s about ten feet away now. Even in pitch darkness, it remains
a subtle illumination. It doesn’t cast light on anything around it,
save for a small section of the floor. This close, she can see that
the skull containing it is facedown, jerking atop its neck.

“Oh Jesus, Rachel, what is it doing?” Jenny
doesn’t even sound like herself; her voice is quavery and pitched
ridiculously high.

Rachel chooses to ignore the question,
looking away from the body. “We need to cross the aisle. Here we
go.”

“No …” Jenny cries, the sound meandering into
a wet groan.

She forces them out into nothingness again,
her left arm reaching out blindly, wildly. Together, they stagger
across the aisle, adrift, and after what seems an eternity, Rachel
locks her grip onto another endcap shelf. She explores it blindly
and finds that it holds batteries.

“Here!” she cries. “Batteries! I know where
we are!”

Rachel moves her hands along the packages,
finally landing on a bulky package of D batteries. She yanks it
from its moorings and tries tearing at the packaging to open it. It
won’t open; the plastic is too hard. Savagely, she clamps her teeth
on the plastic and pulls at it. It tears open reluctantly, and her
teeth feel nearly wrenched from their gums. With shaking hands, she
removes four cells and drops them deftly into her pockets. She
tosses the remainder of the package onto the floor, where it lands
with a jarring impact. Jenny lets out a miserable shriek.

“Wait here!” Rachel says, taking Jenny’s arm
and forcibly attaching it to the endcap shelf.

“
RACHEL!”
Jenny blasts into her ear,
“DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE LEAVE ME, DON’T YOU FUCKING LEAVE ME
HERE, YOU FUCKING BITCH!”

Rachel staggers under the sting of the
shouted words, but she quickly rounds the endcap and feels her way
into the aisle, her arms sweeping over the hanging electronics
merchandise. Her heart is in her throat. She touches all kinds of
small packages and bulky, strangely shaped items, nothing like a
flashlight, and for at least a full moment her mind is whirling in
despair.
They aren’t here!

Finally, while Jenny continues to scream
obscenities, Rachel’s hand falls on an obvious Magnum flashlight,
partially concealed in plastic.

“I got it! I got it!”

She plucks it from its mooring and tears
savagely at its plastic. Her nervous and sweaty hands fumble at the
packaging but finally the light is free. She blindly unscrews the
end of the flashlight and forces herself to insert one battery at a
time, feeling for the positive end of each cell as she feeds it
into the light. She fastens the end and thumbs the power on.

Blessed, bright light floods the aisle, and
Rachel feels sudden tears of relief dripping down her cheeks. She
coughs out a sob, catches herself, then coughs out another one. The
sobs turn into a weeping that she can’t stop for a full minute.

Jenny’s tirade has come to an end.

Rachel widens the aperture of the flashlight
so that it illuminates a broad area. Jenny is clutching the endcap,
practically embracing it. Rachel goes to her and lays a hand on her
shoulder.

She directs the flashlight in the direction
of the two red glows. The light reveals the motionless bodies of a
man and a woman, perhaps in their thirties. They are apparently
Target stockers in plain clothes. The woman is nearest, and as
Rachel looks closer, she sees that her body is not entirely
motionless. There’s no movement in the lower body, but at the neck
the muscles appear to be straining, trying to lift the head.

It’s the man who was the source of the noise.
He is sprawled across several scattered shovels, his head balanced
at the edge of one of them. Rachel imagines that he was in the act
of stocking them when his world ended. When his head rears back,
the shovel handle is repeatedly clattering to the tiled floor.

She swings the flashlight around in a wide
arc, sweeping the entire area.

They’re safe.

Rachel ducks back into the electronics aisle
and opens another flashlight package, filling it with batteries,
giving Jenny a little time to recover. Screwing its end back on,
she takes it to Jenny and hands it to her gently. Her friend takes
it awkwardly, numb.

“Sorry to bring you in here,” Rachel says.
“You okay?”

For a long moment, Jenny doesn’t respond.
Finally she glances up, her red face ravaged by tears, and she
nods. “I’m okay,” she says. “And I didn’t mean to call you a
fucking bitch.”

“I know.”

A pause.

“Well, maybe a little.”

Rachel and Jenny use their twin flashlights
liberally, fanning out to illuminate the widest possible area.
Heart rates calming, they make their way through the silent store,
their cones of light darting this way and that. Extra batteries
bulge in Rachel’s jean pockets. She considers raiding the store for
other essential items, but figures that can wait for daytime.
Target’s typically bright, red-and-white exuberance has been
replaced by a ghostly shadow play—not the ideal conditions for
shopping.

Jenny is tearfully silent for a few minutes,
then, “Rachel?”

“Yeah?”

“Really, I’m sorry about that—turning into an
absolute child.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it.”

“No, I just…I guess I have a thing about the
dark. And dead bodies glowing fucking red.”

Despite herself, Rachel manages a humorless
laugh. “Yeah, I think I do too now.”

Before long, they’re approaching the woman
who is lying folded around the edge of the aisle, both flashlights
illuminating her as they make their way cautiously forward. In the
beam of light, Rachel can see that the young woman on the ground
was attractive, a college student from the looks of her Colorado
State University tee-shirt. Tanned, blond, wearing tight black
athletic shorts, she might have come to work after a morning run.
She’s the after-image of a picture of health. Once beautiful but
lying here on the ground unresponsive and, for all intents and
purposes, dead.

Rachel slows to study her for a moment. Just
like the woman near the hardware aisle, there’s no movement in the
lower body, but the neck muscles appear to be straining. Rachel can
partially see the woman’s face, the expression dead-eyed except for
minute movements of the cheek muscles, like a paralyzed person
discovering some minor capability in long-unused musculature.
Rachel finds herself avoiding those dead eyes, wary that, like the
destroyed motorcyclist’s, they’ll swivel flatly in her
direction.

“Look at this, Jenny.”

Jenny comes to Rachel’s side, looking
uncomfortable. “Is that the woman I…stepped on?”

“Yeah.”

They watch the movement of the neck. It’s
like a muscle spasm; a relentless, involuntary muscle spasm. The
sight fills Rachel with a helpless revulsion. A single glance at
the eyes, or even at the flat pallor of the skin, tells her that
this woman is dead. This is a corpse.

And yet it’s moving.

“What would cause that?” Jenny asks, a
grimace curling her lip. “I mean …”

Rachel cautiously reaches over with her left
hand toward the woman’s neck to feel for a pulse.