Dead Of Winter (The Rift Book II) (3 page)

Marisa always stayed firm, however. She always said no. She did not wish to be a trophy on the arm of a talking monkey. She was strong. She knew what she wanted, or so I thought at the time.

On the Monday following our encounter, the police found her bruised and battered corpse in a dumpster. I heard the story of that evening from her fellow students: Marisa, in a state of depression because of my rejection, agreed to dinner with the Calhoun boy. During that dinner, the brute became drunken and disorderly. He advanced on her. She declined. He became angry. The two of them left the restaurant with a barrage of poisoned words.

The balance of the story remained shrouded in mystery, but I was able to put the pieces together without much trouble. Eric Calhoun obviously could not stand being thwarted, made to look a fool in public by some petite Latino girl. I became convinced that in his inebriated state he beat her beyond recognition and choked her until that pure heart within her chest ceased beating.

To say I was despondent would be the understatement of the century. I cancelled all of my classes for the following week and concealed myself in my office. I ignored all visitors. The constant thought ran through my mind that if I had only given in to my desires, or perhaps even been only slightly more kind in my dismissal, that her preciousness would still be roaming the earth, alive and free. In that way, I was more than partially responsible for her death. I set the whole event in motion.

The Calhoun boy was arrested the day after the authorities discovered the body of my Marisa. I followed his trial very closely. His family hired the best lawyer their money could buy, who succeeded in obtaining a solid alibi for his client. The fingerprints that littered the neck, arms, and face of Marisa were stricken from evidence due to either shoddy police practices or stacks of inherited
Connecticut
money. With no witnesses and no concrete evidence at their disposal, the prosecution was picked apart. The public cried out for justice, but those cries fell on deaf ears. The case became hopeless. The defense stated that the poor girl had obviously been attacked by a mugger on her way home that night while Eric was passed out in his off-campus apartment. It could have been a conceivable story had it not been for the smug grin pasted on the face of that privileged boy during the entirety of the proceedings. No, that told me all I needed to know. The boy was guilty.

Guilty as sin.

On the final day I went to the courtroom and watched as the jury exited their chambers after only forty-five minutes of deliberation. I held out for a miracle but deep down knew none would come. The forewoman stood in front of the microphone and uttered those two tragic words.

“Not guilty.”

I watched the Calhoun clan cheer as if they had won the lottery. The boy beat his chest and hugged his parents and council. With the show over, the crowd inside the courtroom rapidly dispersed. It was as if the air had been collectively let out of all those in attendance. I was the last one sitting when the family left.

I exited the building and moved through the media throng that waited outside, my hands in my pockets. The newly freed young man was being interviewed, television cameras all around, and the words of he and his lawyer still echo in my head to this day. “I am just happy my name has been cleared…I feel sorry for the poor girl…you have to watch out nowadays…there are a lot of crazies out there…I hope the police catch whoever did this…”

The whole thing made me sick.

I went to my car, which I had parked by the curb outside the front steps, and reached beneath the seat. I pulled out the thirty-eight-caliber handgun I had purchased the week before in anticipation of this moment. I walked back through the swarm with the gun dangling loosely in my hand. I never attempted to conceal it, and yet no one paid me any mind. It was as if I did not exist. This struck me as ironic. For the first time since my childhood, I was of the shadows, invisible. I would not be for much longer.

I pushed my way to the front of the mob until I stood face to face with young Eric Calhoun. He appeared confused at first, and I imagined his thoughts.
Who is this nigger? What does he want?
This only lasted for a moment before that pompous smile reemerged. I grinned in return and raised the weapon until its barrel rested on the bridge of his nose. His arrogance melted away, but he didn’t move. His eyes crossed as they stared at the gleaming metal cylinder

I squeezed the trigger. The head of Eric Calhoun snapped back from the force of the blow. His body collapsed. Those to his rear, his family and friends, were bathed in red. It dripped from their faces and clung to their neatly pressed suits and dresses. Onlookers screamed and scurried about. I opened my hand and allowed the pistol to drop. It clinked twice when it struck the pavement. Police officers surrounded me and forced me to the ground. They cuffed my hands behind my back and screamed for me to stay still. My body should have ached as they pummeled me into submission, but it did not. The entirety of my being was dead. I felt no more remorse for my actions than if I had stepped on an ant.

The officers shoved me into a cruiser. Photographers snapped pictures. Spectators gawked with stunned, wide eyes. The officer who sat in the front seat told me that I was finished. He said I would be going away for a very long time, most likely the rest of my life, if the judge did not decide I deserved execution.

To be honest, I could not have cared less.

Chapter 3

Brotherhood, Baseball, and

the
Art of Survival

i

“Ouch!” yelped Corky Ludlow. “What the fuck was that for?”

He’d been lying in the snow, with his big belly pressed into the thick white stuff, when a sharp pain introduced itself to his bicep. The stick figure outline he’d been busy creating on the ground before him, of a couple engaged in compromising sexual positions, was wiped clean in his surprise. He glared through tresses of his long red hair.

The expression on the face of the young Marine sprawled out beside him remained stoic. His right eye was pressed against the scope of his rifle. Corky opened his mouth again, but the kid raised a finger to his lips and stopped him mid-complaint.

“Dougie, what is it?” Corky whispered.

Doug sighed and gestured for his large compatriot to pick up his binoculars. He pointed towards the base of the hill on which they lay.

Corky obliged. He peered through the binoculars’ twin lenses and fiddled with the focus. An image came clear. Below them were six individuals, slogging their way across the snow-covered valley. Two of them, one old man and one young, appeared to be normal, while the other four, whose disintegrating, rag-like clothing hung off their shoulders like molting skin, were most certainly not. They had distended jowls, slouching gaits, and automatic weapons clutched tight in their clawed hands.

“Fuck,” moaned Corky.
“Fleshies.”

“Uh-huh,” replied Doug.

“What’re we gonna do?”

“Nothing.”

Corky’s mouth plummeted. “What?
Why the fuck not?”

Doug pulled back from the eyepiece. His normally terse expression was replaced by an irritated frown. “That’s not what we’re here for,” he said.

“That so, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, fuck me with a two-by-four.” Corky shoved his partner, which caused Doug to slide down the hill a couple of inches. “I thought we
was
supposed to be
helping people
.”

The young marine rolled towards him and took a swing. With a feat of quickness that surprised even him, Corky jacked up his arm and caught the kid’s fist in his massive right hand.
You might be in better shape than me, boy
, he thought,
but when push comes to shove, I’ll knock your puny ass into next fucking week.

They remained locked in their horizontal tango for a few uncomfortable moments before Doug muttered, “Listen, we can’t compromise the safety of the group. We don’t know if there’s more of those things close by, now do we? Do you wanna put our friends in any more danger than we have to?”

“No,” grumbled Corky.

“Then can I have my hand back now?”

Corky loosened his grip. Doug withdrew. He jiggled his fingers like a dead fish. The large redhead grunted, rose to his knees, and brought the binoculars back to his eyes. From the corner of his vision, he noticed Doug shake his head.

The action below had evolved during their stalemate. The older of the two prisoners had fallen. His captors stood over him, their mouths opened wide, exposing rows of jagged teeth and flopping, serpentine tongues. The one in the lead lowered its rifle as if to fire, only to be stopped by its three brothers, who in turn dropped their weapons. Another grabbed the old man by his thinning hair and lifted him off the ground. The three who’d interrupted the leader threw their heads back as if laughing. The lone creature who didn’t seem to want to play their game snarled.

The younger hostage rushed up from behind and tackled the objector. He took the beast to the ground, fists flying. The brave soul’s brown hair flailed about him like the tentacles of a sea anemone as he pummeled his subjugator’s misshapen face time and time again. Much to Corky’s chagrin, his efforts proved useless. He was outnumbered and under prepared. A monstrosity snatched him by the back of his shirt and tossed him to the side. The creature he’d assailed stood up and screeched at its compatriots. It lifted the barrel of its rifle in a swift, purposeful motion, and pulled the trigger.

The discharge echoed through the valley. Corky covered one ear with his free hand and kept on watching. Down below, the brave young man’s face imploded. It became a hollow wreath of flesh and disintegrated bone. His body crumpled into a heap while his limbs quivered in their final death throes. The four tyrants passed a few interested glances between each other. A moment later they descended on the moldering corpse like a school of rabid piranha. Blood and streams of viscous danced in the air above them. Corky’s stomach cramped, much the way it used to after a night of drowning his sorrows in a sea of way too much tequila.

He veered the binoculars to the side and saw the old man trying to scurry away on his hands and knees while his fellow prisoner’s body was devoured. Corky’s breathing picked up its pace.
We can’t just let him die out there
, he thought.
Shit, man, that ain’t
no
way to go.

He peered at Doug. The kid was still concentrating on the events in the valley, seemingly oblivious to him. Corky slowly rose to his feet. For a moment, the weight of his beer gut threatened to topple him over on the uneven footing. He steadied himself, picked up the binoculars again, and noticed that one of the busily feeding creatures had craned its head around. It spotted the fleeing old guy and seemed to giggle before turning back to its meal. Corky reached under his bundle of jackets and scarves and removed the gun tucked into his belt.

“Fuck this,” he proclaimed, and took off down the hill.

*
 
 
*
 
 
*

Doug Lockenshaw closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see what came next. He’d watched scenes much like this one play themselves out way too many times over the last two months.

He’d been stationed in
Richmond
,
Virginia
, when the first wave of murderous Wraiths (or
fleshies
, as Corky so affably dubbed them) descended upon the city. They spread like a plague, working from inside out, taking all by surprise. The people his comrades had been assigned to protect turned on them in a matter of seconds. The conflict was violent, bloody, and futile. At the end of a four-day siege in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the city, only Doug and three other soldiers from a platoon of eighty remained. Then
came
silence.

A week later, when the ongoing quiet had reached the point where he and his fellow survivors began to take their relative safety for granted, another wave, smaller but deadlier and more focused, swooped down on them. Doug’s three companions lost their lives in the scuffle, torn apart by the homicidal horde of perverted humanity.

Doug fled the scene and spent the next month on the run. Guilt and relief washed over him with equal aplomb. Around every darkened corner, in every hushed nook, the nightmares of past events and failures haunted him. He was alone and afraid. Snow fell and showed no sign of letting up, casting an icy serenity over all he saw. Nothing in his rugged Marine training had prepared him for this.

While stalking through the northern
Virginia
wilderness two weeks prior to the scene that now unfolded in the valley below, he stumbled upon the diverse assembly of men that included Corky, his massive Nordic sidekick. They were as he, afraid and on the run, but they possessed a sense of community, of brotherhood, that seemed to ease his frazzled nerves. Despite the fact they were much older than he, they accepted him as one of their own. He found that being in the company of others was just what he needed to get by. Isolation had worn down on him like a thousand-pound weight.

The last thing Doug wanted was to put his new friends’ lives in jeopardy. This was why he’d told Corky no when the behemoth wanted to intervene on behalf of the old man in the valley. He knew Corky didn’t like it – how many older men like being given orders by nineteen-year-olds? –
but
hoped he would understand. Their collective safety mattered above all else. They had to hold on to it as long as they could, because deep down he knew it all would be taken from him in a moment, just like it always had been.

He shifted on his belly, opened his eyes, and peered again through the looking glass. The melee below him continued, but the feast was in the process of winding down. One of the creatures leaned
back,
exposing the picked-clean shoulder of what had been a living, breathing person only minutes before. Tendrils of flayed meat dangled below its chin. Doug stifled the urge to vomit.

A flash of red appeared to his left. Doug shifted the barrel of his rifle in that direction and placed the source of this new blast of color in his crosshairs. What he saw was a crimson-haired giant, barreling down the slope on a pair of tree trunk legs with the speed of a Viking who wanted nothing more than to hit the brothel after a long day of pillaging. Doug jumped to his knees and glanced at the matted patch of white beside him, hoping this vision was nothing but an illusion, hoping Corky would still be lying there, as lewd and scruffy as ever. Of course he wasn’t.

“Oh, shit.”

*
 
 
*
 
 
*

Corky ran as fast as he could. Gravity was his constant enemy, thrusting his upper body forward while his feet lagged behind. He pumped his legs like mad, trudging through knee-high piles of snow, trying to keep from tumbling head over foot. Somehow, he managed to stay upright.

The ground leveled out and he pushed himself even harder. A peek to the right informed him the fleshies were still busy with their mid-day snack; to his left, the old man plugged away, on his hands and knees, hollowing out a trench in the frozen land.

With Corky only five feet away from him, the old man spun around. He threw his hands up in front of his face and screamed. Corky stopped dead in his tracks. This time he
did
fall over. He careened into the snow like a leaping whale and whacked his head on something hard. A surprised breath squeezed from his lungs. The pistol flew from his hand.

He rose up on all fours when the ringing in his cranium subsided. The old man was scurrying away again. He glanced in the opposite direction. The scream of the old timer, along with his clumsiness, must have alerted the fleshies. They all stood over the stripped-clean carcass and stared at him with their burning, yellow eyes. Corky slowly backed away.

“C’mon, dude,” whispered Corky to the retreating detainee. Even moving at a crawl he gained on the old man. “I don’t wanna hurt you.” The elderly gentleman tried to scamper away even faster, but ended up spinning his wheels in sludge. Corky threw caution to the wind, leapt towards the old guy, and grabbed the back of his mangled shirt.

“Just…get…over…here!” he screamed. “We don’t…have…time for this!”

A crack split the air, followed by a whine that breezed past his ear. Corky let go of the old guy’s shirt and wheeled around. The bastards had raised their weapons. Smoke wafted from the barrel of the one in front.

“Fucking fleshies,” he muttered. He dropped to his knees in a panic and plunged his hands into the shifting mush, trying in vain to find his gun. His tension reached levels he’d only dreamed of. He could actually feel the flesh on his neck turn bright pink. Once more he glanced up to find the four monsters even closer than before. They approached him with calm, measured steps.
          

“Why don’t you just
FUCK OFF!”
he barked. Spittle erupted from his lips.