Mad World (Book 2): Sanctuary (7 page)

Chapter Nine

Meanwhile, Tom had led the way out of the house and onto a side path that led to the barn. We didn’t know it at the time, but my Jake and my little Luke were about to face a most horrifying experience. It was nearly 8 p.m., and the sun was just setting. The yard and adjoining fields looked as though they were on fire as they crossed in front of a chicken coop and over to a huge red barn. Luke put his head back to look up at the tall structure.

“Wow, that’s high,” he said. Jacob stared up at it as well.

“That looks higher than two stories, Tom. How high is it?” Jake asked.

Tom stopped and tipped his head back to survey it. “That roof is near forty feet high. I’ve got three levels inside above ground, one more below ground. There’s a cellar for the milk, too,” he said proudly. “Come here, let me show you something.” He walked around to the far side of the building, and they followed him.

“Luke, look at that,” Jake said quietly, pointing through a wooded area behind the barn. Luke’s gaze followed his father’s finger and he saw that there was a young doe about ten feet into the trees. She had paused in her flight to look back at them. Her delicate face was still as she stared at Luke and Jake, and only her ear twitched a little.

Luke slowly stepped a little closer, and Jacob put his hand out on Luke’s shoulder. “No farther, son. Let’s just stay back here,” he said quietly. Suddenly the doe cocked her head an inch and then, without warning, she turned and bounded into the woods as fast she could.

We wouldn’t know it until lat
er, but she was likely startled
by some movement from directly behind Jacob.

From Tom.

The farmer had picked up a heavy wooden mallet and had snuck up on Jacob. He raised the mallet high into the air and brought it down crashing onto Jake’s head. Fortunately, Jacob had seen Tom’s arm swinging down, out of the corner of his eye, at the last minute, and had been able to duck slightly before the heavy mallet made contact with his skull. He let out a short cry, “AHHH!!!!!”

Luke whirled around at the sound of his father’s voice and saw the mallet come crashing down on Jake’s head. “DADDY!!!!!!!!!!” he cried.

Jake staggered, half conscious, as Tom raised the mallet a second time. At the same time, Tom grabbed for Luke. But Luke managed to scamper out of the way and ran into the woods, following the same path the doe had taken.

Jake staggered and grabbed at Tom, hitting him at the waist. Tom’s second blow landed squarely on Jake’s head, and Jake fell to the ground, unconscious. Tom stood over him, panting heavily, then looked off into the woods. Luke was nowhere to be seen, and Stanley seemed to have fled as well, but he thought that he had not seen Stanley since leaving the house and walking across the path leading to the barn.

Tom looked down at Jake’s still form and then ran into the woods after Luke. The farmer searched for about ten minutes, but the boy was nowhere to be found. Cursing under his breath, he returned to where he had left Jake. Checking to make sure Jake was still
breathing;
Tom grabbed him by the feet and tried to drag him around the side of the barn. He only got about five or six feet, Jake was a big man, and Tom was old and fat. He went around to Jake’s other side, grabbing his arms, to try that way. He was able to drag him eight feet that time, before he stopped, out of breath and red-faced. “I shouldn’t’ve eaten so much dinner,” he mumbled. By this time, he had gotten Jake halfway to the far edge of the barn. He had gone along to the far side in order to hide what he was doing, in case anyone came out from the house.

Unbeknownst to Tom, Luke had hid, then doubled back to see what was happening to his father. He hid about 20 feet away, under a bush, well out of sight. He saw and heard everything.

Tom leaned against the side of the barn to rest a minute. He had wanted to get the boy, but his father would do, if he could only drag the big man the rest of the way. But he had only gotten about fourteen feet, and he still had almost 50 feet to go. He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief.

Suddenly, Tom heard pounding from inside the barn, faint but unmistakable. He turned his head toward the sound, a hunted look in his eyes. Looking back to Jake’s still form, he made a decision. Grabbing a nearby piece of canvas tarp, he covered Jake with it, then left him there and proceeded around the corner and into the barn.

Entering the gloomy interior, he looked around. In the fading light from the sunset that came through a high window, dust motes danced in the air. His gazed dropped to a far stall, almost in the middle of the barn. Making his way down the center aisle, he approached it with caution. He looked over the door and down to the floor. Suddenly, more thumping sounded, louder this time. The floor of the stall was covered in old straw, and as the pounding continued a bit more, the straw vibrated and jumped.

Tom entered the stall and closed the door behind him. He slowly made his way to the center area and kicked the straw aside to reveal a wooden door in the floor. It was padlocked shut. With the movement of his foot across the wood floor, the pounding stopped and everything was still. Tom waited a few minutes, and when no sound issued forth, he peered down through a crack between the door and the adjoining floorboards. He seemed to reach a decision. Taking a key out of his pocket, he leaned down and unlocked the padlock. He was as quiet as he could be. Withdrawing the lock, he set it aside and slowly drew the hasp over, gingerly lifting the door upwards.

Luke, meanwhile, had crept out of his hiding place and followed Tom into the barn, keeping to the shadows. First he hid behind a wheelbarrow filled with tarps; then, when Tom had entered the stall and closed the door, Luke had snuck into the open stall next to Tom, crawling behind some old hay. Trying not to sneeze, Luke had found a knothole and had settled in to watch.

Looking inside the hole, Tom was confronted with only darkness and a set of wooden stairs leading downward. He paused, as if listening for any sound. Nothing. He then appeared to make a decision. He would go down and look, check things out. He took the mallet he had hit Jake with. Slowly, quietly, he laid the door down open and began to descend into the darkness below.

Before Tom had gone down more than half a dozen steps, there was a low growling sound.

The skin on the back of Luke’s neck rose in goose pimples. He knew that sound.

Suddenly, he heard a loud scream, “AIEEEEE!!!!!!!!” and saw Tom scramble back up the stairs as fast as he could, clutching his arm, which dripped blood. Hot on his heels was a zombie. Its skin was such a dark grey it looked almost black. Its eyes were so opaque they looked milky. Its teeth were covered in black goo, and its leg had a chunk missing. This did not slow the creature down one bit, and it caught Tom before he could exit the stall. Tom screamed loudly again, the sound filling the barn: “AAAAAIEEEEE!!!!!!!” as the zombie pulled him backwards and they both fell to the ground.

Luke watched through the knothole, mesmerized. He had seen zombie attacks before, but never this close. He was only about five feet away from the horrible sight.

The zombie held Tom down and lowered its mouth to Tom’s neck. Tom tried to fight it, but it was lightning fast, clamping its mouth down hard and growling. Tom let out another,
feebler
scream, “Aaaiieeeee….!” that gurgled down to a frantic anguish.

Before even a minute had passed, Tom’s motions became feeble, as the blood drained out of him and pooled on the stall floor. The zombie tore off pieces of Tom’s neck and face and began eating them.

Luke observed all of this with a mixture of horror and fascination. But he realized that the zombie might come after him next, so he decided to creep out the way he had come. Crawling out from under the hay, he tried to be as quiet as he could, and tiptoed out of the stall. On his way out, in the nearly complete dark barn, he brushed against a shovel that was propped up against the wall next to the stall door, and it fell to the ground with a huge crash. Luke glanced back at the zombie; he could see the creature through the half-open stall door. The thing’s head came up abruptly at the sound and swung toward him blindly. As the clattering sounds faded, the zombie slowly rose from its haunches to its feet, swinging its head around, trying to locate the source of the sounds. It left the corpse of Farmer Tom and shambled a few steps toward the stall door.

Luke was frozen, watching this through the open door. He noticed the zombie did not seem to focus on him, but rather at the sounds of the shovel falling. Luke took several more steps, backward this time, all the while looking to see whether the beast had noticed him. As his foot scraped against the floor, the zombie’s head cocked, listening. Its dark grey face dripped blood from its mouth, its milky white eyes stared toward Luke, unseeing. But it was clear it was now hunting Luke by sound. And its brain was deadly focused on consuming any human he could. Luke told me later he felt sweat running down his back, and the hairs on the back of his neck stand upright in sheer terror. You might not think a boy of 5 would remember such things, but children are more impressionable than anyone else … and there are some things you just don’t forget. This was one of them.

Without a second thought, Luke turned and took off like a shot.

He ran for t
he barn door. H
e was so frightened
, he couldn’t think
. I had always told him that if he was in danger, he was to run, run like the wind, away from the danger. He could hear the zombie lurch out of the stall and come after him, following the sound of his running footsteps. Luke was terrified. His eyes were wide with fright as he ran. He wasn’t thinking at all, he was just running. He ran back the way he had come, through the woods, and kept running. The sun was almost gone and the long shadows scared him even more. He ran through the woods for several hundred yards, and then came out at a field of tall wild grasses. Without giving it a second thought, he ran. Through the field and beyond. He did not stop until well past sunset, he ran until it was pitch black and he had found a good hiding place.

Chapter Ten

While all this was happening, we were on the second story of the farmhouse, at the far other end. Julie was showing us some nice tatted doilies. They looked like snowflakes.

We studied the delicate lacey objects, marveling at how they were made. Julie showed us her tatting board and her current work-in-progress.

“I think I might want to learn this, after things settle down for us,” Caitlyn said, marveling at the intricate patterns. In addition to painting, Caitlyn loved all sorts of crafty things. She loved creating art.

“Beautiful,” I murmured.

“Wait till you see the other samplers,” Julie said, turning to go out of the room. The needlework tour was in full swing at the Summers house.

Julie showed us up to the third floor, into a room at the rear of the house, closer to the barn. It was painted a pale blue, and had three more antique samplers hanging on its walls, as well as an antique spinning wheel set up in the corner. The back wall had a large window, which was opened for the breeze. White curtains fluttered gently against the frame.

“Oh, I love this one especially,” Caitlyn said, pointing to a large schoolgirl sampler that dated to 1825. We gathered around it and admired the state it was in, nearly undamaged and unstained after nearly 200 years. As we studied the stitching, we heard Tom’s first cry: “AIEEEEE!!!!!!!!” The sound came faintly through the third-floor open window. Shocked, we turned toward the window, our mouths open. Quickly on the heels of the first yell came Tom’s second, fainter cry: “Aaaiieeeee….!”

At this second scream, we ran out of the room without a word and down two flights of stairs. DeAndre’s feet hit the first-floor landing, and he sprinted down the hallway and out the front door we had come through. Caitlyn, Risa and I were hot on his heels, and Julie brought up the rear.

“Wait!” she said. “Wait a minute!” she wrung her hands in anguish. No one stopped.

We all emerged at a run from the house and ran out to the center area, which was deserted. In the dying light of sunset, the front yard was bathed in a reddish-yellow glow.

DeAndre looked around wildly. “Where is everyone?” he said.

Risa ran toward the fields and paddock, looking.

Caitlyn turned to Julie. “Where is your husband?”

Julie’s face was filled with anguish and regret. She was panting hard from the run down two flights of stairs. Her apron was a crumpled mess, and she was wringing her hands obsessively in the white cloth.

“Ohhhh…” she said.

I turned and took a step toward her and grabbed both her forearms firmly. “Julie, WHERE IS YOUR HUSBAND? What is going on?” She just looked at the ground and began crying.

“Oh my God,” I said, letting her go and straightening up.

Risa jogged up to us. “There’s nobody in the fields that I can see, just the horses.

DeAndre said, “I’m going to go search the buildings,” and took off.

“I’m going with you,” I said, running after him.

“Me too,” said Caitlyn and Risa almost simultaneously. We all jogged toward the buildings

“Wait! You can’t go,” Julie said, calling after us with tears in her eyes. She picked up the front of her skirt and began to follow us at a slower pace.

“We can’t go WHERE, Julie?” I asked her over my shoulder as I jogged. We all stopped momentarily to look at her.

“We had to, we had no choice,” she mumbled, looking at the ground again, unable to meet our eyes.

“What?!?” said Caitlyn.

“To hell with this,” DeAndre said, shaking his head and taking off again at a jog toward the paddock house. Caitlyn, Risa and I followed him.

“Jake!” I called as I ran. “Lu-uke!”

Caitlyn ran into the little garden house, saying, “I’ll check here.”

I ran around behind the corral and into the tack room.

Risa ran back behind the house and into the woods, calling.

DeAndre ran to the front of the barn and tried the big doors. They were locked. He ran around the side.

The light was dying, and I was becoming frantic. Where were they? I quickly searched the tack room, calling, and then ran back to Julie. Just as I got to her, I heard DeAndre yell.

“Over here! Alyssa! Caitlyn! Risa! HERE!” he cried.

I turned and ran around the side of the barn, Caitlyn and Risa quickly joined me. I saw DeAndre kneeling before what looked like a pile of tarps. As I ran up to him, he stood up and pulled the canvas away from the still form of my Jacob. I let out an involuntary cry, “No!!!!!!”

I skidded to a halt in a kneeling position and put my hand on Jake’s chest.

“He’s alive. I think he’s been knocked out,” said DeAndre, indicating a bloody goose egg toward the back of Jake’s head.

Caitlyn brushed Jake’s hair away on the side of his head. It was bloody. Wiping her hand, she stood up. “Where’s Luke and Stanley?” she asked, her eyes scanning the area.

I put my hand to the side of Jake’s neck to feel for a pulse. I found it. Relieved, I scanned his body quickly, checking for any other injuries. “Jake,” I moaned, rubbing his chest, “Wake up.”

DeAndre scanned the area, peering into the woods. It was almost dark and it was nearly impossible to see very far beyond the first line of trees. He glanced back to Jake’s still form and then to the outside wall of the barn a few yards away. Looking again on the ground, he said, “It looks like he was dragged. See the marks in the dirt?” He pointed to several places where the grass was sparse enough to see drag marks in the soil.

I stood up, looking down at the marks on the ground. It looked like Jacob had been dragged four or five yards. I looked in the direction the drag marks seemed to indicate. “I think whoever dragged Jake was aiming for that direction,” I said, pointing to the corner of the barn, “but maybe they were interrupted or stopped for some reason.” I looked back down at Jacob’s still form.

Caitlyn was now trying to wake Jake by gentle patting his cheeks. “So, someone knocked him out, and then tried to drag him around the side of the barn and around the corner. What’s around that corner?” I took a step in that direction and then stepped back to Jake’s form. I was torn. I didn’t want to leave him, but I wanted, needed, to find out what was around the corner. Was it some kind of danger? It was so close. Just a couple dozen feet away.

Just then, DeAndre came forward with his cupped hands full of water. He had found a spigot a few yards away. He splashed the water onto Jacob’s face and then patted his shoulder. “C’mon buddy, wake up,” he said.

Jake groaned and slowly began to stir. Opening his eyes, he struggled to sit up. I knelt by him once more, putting a hand at his back. “Jake, how do you feel?” I asked.

Groaning, he put his hand on the back of his head. I rubbed his back. “Jacob, I love you,” I said, kissing the top of his head. He looked up at me with a slight smile on his face, then closed his eyes in a twinge, “Oh!” and held his head again. Then he seemed to remember, and his head shot up again.

“Where is that sonofa …
ohhhhh” he said as he struggled to get to his feet. He stumbled but then kept trying, he was very determined.

As he struggled to stand, I put my arm around him and with Caitlyn and DeAndre’s help we got him to his feet. He promptly bent forward and threw up. I held his arm as his middle heaved. After a minute he straightened, wiping his mouth. “Ergh,” he mumbled.

“He’s got a concussion,” I said, helping him straighten.

Caitlyn skipped over to the spigot and bent to wash the blood from Jake’s hair off her hands. “Bring him over here. Let’s get him cleaned up.”

We helped Jacob walk the few yards to the water, and he bent down and washed his mouth out and splashed his face and head. Straightening up, he looked around with pain filled eyes. “Where is Luke?
Where are
Tom and Stanley?” He looked around. “It’s almost dark? How long was I out?”

“It’s been about half an hour since you guys left the house with Tom,” DeAndre said, looking around. “Luke, Stanley and Tom are missing. But I think she knows what’s going on,” He turned to look at Julie, “Don’t you, Julie?”

I stepped up to the older woman. “What in the hell is going on?” I demanded, looking at her unblinkingly. I grabbed her forearms again. “What do you know? WHERE IS MY SON?” I said, giving her a shake.

“I … I think he may be in th-the barn…” she said, looking toward the ground again.

“Did your husband do this to Jake?” I demanded.

Julie was silent, but after a moment she nodded, “I th-think s-so.”

With a sound of disgust I dropped her arms and ran around her, down the rest of the length of the barn and around the corner. Risa and Jake were hot on my heels.

I could hear DeAndre behind me. “Oh, no you don’t. You’re coming with us.” He said. Julie had probably tried to take off the second I let her go. Glancing back, we saw Caitlyn come around the corner, and then DeAndre, dragging Julie after him by the arm. She reluctantly came, but she was crying again.

I turned and trotted into the open back door of the barn. Once inside, it was nearly pitch dark. “Where’s the light switch, Julie?” I demanded in a harsh tone.

Wordlessly, she moved to the side and fumbled with the wall. The barn was suddenly flooded with light. Blinking at the sudden brightness, I slowly moved forward. Walking in the middle, I saw there were stalls on the left. “Let’s check every one.” Caitlyn nodded beside me.

I checked the first one, Caitlyn took the second. After a minute, I moved on to the third, which I learned later was the one Luke had hidden in. Risa went into the fourth stall.

“Ewwwww! I found Tom!” Risa called over her shoulder. We all ran into that stall, including Julie.

“Tom!” she shrieked, and ran forward to kneel beside the body of her husband. It looked like whatever had attacked him - and I’d seen enough zombie attacks to know that this was probably what had ripped Tom’s throat out - had hit the carotid artery in the front of his throat. He had bled out. The body was still warm, and it lay in a large pool of its own blood. The man was definitely dead. His eyes stared up at us sightlessly as his wife bent her head over his chest and cried.

Standing back up, I looked around the stall, and my eyes fell on the trap door in the floor. “Julie, where does that lead?” I asked, again, harshly. “JULIE,” I said again when she didn’t look up. This time, she glanced up from Tom’s body.

“That leads to the old wine cellar. That’s where we kept our son Ethan after he … turned,” she said in a small voice.

“WHAT?!?” I said. “YOU KEPT A ZOMBIE LOCKED IN THERE?” I looked at her, disbelievingly. I was astounded at the stupidity of that decision. Looking down at Tom, it was plain to see that no good had come from holding a zombie captive, like a zoo animal in a cage. Apparently, Ethan hadn’t been in Afghanistan, after all.

DeAndre went past me and peered down into the hole in the ground. “Is there a light switch for that room?”

“N-no. We just used flashlights,” Julie mumbled, her face still on Tom’s chest. Looking down at her, I saw that she was kneeling in the pool of his blood, and her dress was slowly soaking it up. This was some kind of messed-up family. I shook my head in disgust.

DeAndre looked around and saw a large floodlight flashlight on a shelf.

“I don’t hear anything down there. I’m going to go check it out,” said DeAndre before slowly descended into the hole.

I’m going to go search the rest of the barn,” said Jake. Risa went with him.

“So Julie, how long have you two kept Ethan the zombie in that room?” I asked.

“I d-don’t know for sure, I think it’s been a few m-months,” Julie answered.

I was incredulous. Looking at her form crouched over her husband, blood everywhere, I was just speechless. What an incredibly stupid thing to do. For them to even suppose they could handle a
caged zombie! The superhuman strength zombies possessed and the way they were known to attack with complete disregard for their own safety made them extremely dangerous and formidable.

Just then, DeAndre came back up, brushing off his hands.

“It’s empty, but there are bones down there. Human bones, from the looks of them.” He looked pointedly at Julie. “Want to tell us what’s been going on here?”

“Um…,” Julie trailed off.

Jacob and Risa came back into the stall then.

“There are half a dozen cars stashed in stalls toward the front of the barn,” Jake said. “I think I want to know exactly what you and Tom were doing, Julie. And I want to know where my son is. And Stanley.”

Julie sat up, wiping her eyes. Tom’s blood was smeared everywhere, on her skirt, her hands, her face - it was just everywhere.

“Come on, get up. Let’s get out of this stall, this is disgusting,” I said. We all walked out of the barn into the fresh night air. It was a beautiful night. Out here in the country there were so few city lights that it seemed an entire galaxy full of stars winked down at us. A light breeze ruffled through the trees. A dozen or so feet from the barn door, some bales of straw were stacked up, and we all sat there to hear Julie’s story.