We Are Monsters (35 page)

Final Chapter

He can hear them talking. It is distracting and he wants it to go away. He focuses on his breathing—
in and out, in and out
—and that helps a little.

They are worried about him, but they don't need to be. Part of him wants to tell them that, but it would mean he would have to return. And he doesn't want to. The fire here is too beautiful. The singing too important. Here, death and rebirth is happening all at once.

“It is not so serious,” the man beside him says. He is smiling, as always. “Go. Stay. It's all the same.”

Eli does not contemplate how the man can read his mind, or his enigmatic words. He just nods his head.

The parade of spirits emerging from the fire has stopped. They have all moved on.

But, then, he sees another walking his way. Tall and slender, with a graceful gait. The figure is backlit by the amber fire, so he cannot see its face.

Rajamadja titters as the figure draws closer.

“Look-ee, look-ee,” he says like a child.

Heat waves are undulating up from its shadowed form. It walks straight, with undeterred purpose. It takes another step forward and starlight illuminates its features.

And it's her. His beloved wife, Lacy. The way she was before she got sick. Before she put on the veil.

She stops and they consider each other without words. She reaches out her hand, and he takes it. Their hands clasp together in an embrace that feels like a hug. She tugs gently, but she doesn't need to. He wants to go, and doesn't hesitate.

He can still hear the voices. Will they ever stop? If not, that's okay. He's lived with them for this long. He can make do as long as he must.

The heat from the blazing funeral pyre feels good. A comforting warmth, a bit like a womb. His skin begins to tighten as he walks towards it, but that doesn't stop him. He squeezes Lacy's hand and she squeezes back.

They are close now. The singing is much louder. Everyone here is so happy.

There's no turning back. He wouldn't, even if he could. And so they keep walking, hand in hand. The fire before them looms large. Together, they walk into the flames.

And the sound of voices goes silent.

Acknowledgements

No act of creation is ever performed by a single person. As the sage Carl Sagan once said, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

Right, so we need help. And I was fortunate to receive the aid of some amazing folks that helped bring this book to you. I would first like to thank my wife, Anne. I quit my salaried job to devote more time to writing, soon after we learned we were pregnant with identical twins. I could not have done this without her constant support, and her critical eye. I don't know what I did to deserve her love, but I'd gladly do it again.

I want to thank my close friends and writing companions, James Herndon and Desirina Boskovich Frew, whose early input helped shape the book into what it has become. I hope to make their acknowledgment pages one day. I met these two through the Lonely Universe writer's group in Atlanta. I owe a special thanks to everyone there as well. They helped me remember that I'm not the only one crazy enough to write this stuff. If you're in the area, check them out.

I owe an enormous thank you to the wise and wonderful Curt Mueller, who helped in more ways than one. Often by just lending an ear.

I am grateful to the folks at Samhain, and Don D'Auria in particular. Thank you for letting me spend an evening with my friend in Portland, and for making this dream come true.

Finally, I would like to thank my family. My sweet grandmother, Honey, for connecting me with people who helped me understand the inner workings of mental hospitals. My parents for their encouragement, and for understanding my strange impulse to bring weirdness to the world. I love you all.

About the Author

Brian Kirk's sixth grade science teacher told him he would grow up to become a horror writer. His mother always hoped this man was wrong. The lesson here? Sorry Mom, you can't argue with science.

Brian lives in Atlanta with his wife and rambunctious identical twin boys. He works as a freelance writer in addition to writing fiction, and is currently working on the second book in a planned trilogy. Feel free to connect with him through one of the following channels. Don't worry, he only kills his characters.

Website:
www.briankirkfiction.com

Twitter:
@Brian_Kirk

Epidemic!

Q Island

© 2015 Russell James

An ancient virus has surfaced on Long Island, NY, turning its victims into black-veined, infectious, psychopathic killers. Chaos and madness rule.

In desperation, the military quarantines the island, trapping Melanie Bailey and her autistic son, Aiden. Somehow Aiden survives infection. He could be the key to a cure…if Melanie can get him to the mainland.

Gang leader Jimmy Wade also survives the virus, but he's acquired a hunger for human flesh. Believing consuming Aiden will make him all-powerful, he and his gang hunt the boy. Melanie and Aiden must evade both Wade's tightening grip and the growing army of the infected in an impossible escape from what all call Q Island.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Q Island:

Dr. Samuel Bradshaw preferred morning rounds at St. Luke's, the earlier the better. The hospital was calmer. The staff was at the start of their day. Best of all, the patients were less cranky since they hadn't waited all day to see their physicians. He had learned something after practicing medicine for over forty years.

Another reason he preferred the a.m. was that he was already awake. Sleep had become more elusive over the last few years. Five seemed to be the magic number of hours his body had determined he needed, way down from the seven and a half that had worked ever since the end of his internship. His wife, Brenda, claimed that was an indicator it was time to retire, but he thought it meant just the opposite. What would he do with all the extra waking hours?

Besides, he didn't feel old enough to retire. Maybe he had a little stiffness in his lower back each morning before he stretched it, but other than that, he looked years younger than he was. He still had a full head of hair that modern chemistry kept a chestnut brown, and a regimen of cycling and rowing-machine workouts kept him as fit as ever. Well, as fit as forty, perhaps, if he was going to be realistic.

He greeted the ward clerk at the station on the eighth floor, his last stop. He didn't recognize the slight twenty-something nurse with the pixie haircut. That didn't surprise him. Every year there were more new faces than old, and more faces that looked like they still belonged in high school. In addition, the current generation of nurses had lost the site loyalty he'd grown up with. RNs swapped locations on a whim for different hours or slight changes in benefits. He'd given up keeping track of them and thanked God for the name tag this one wore that read
Bethany
.

“How's Gwen Albritton doing?” he asked.

Bethany shook her head in wonder. “She was up all night, filling up a notebook with poetry. The fever she had yesterday broke. She woke up feeling fine, vitals all normal. Then she grabbed a notebook from her bag and started writing. She didn't quit until about two hours ago.”

“Well, good for her,” Samuel said. “When she was younger, she was a published poet. She told me that after she got married and had children, the muse departed her. She must be feeling better if she's taken up writing again. What about her physical symptoms?”

“No change there, Doctor.”

That tamped down his relief about her rebound. She'd presented yesterday with what looked like symptoms of sepsis, or blood poisoning to the layman. Fever, bloodshot eyes, pounding headache, red streaking along ashy skin, and bulging, darkened veins. He couldn't identify a specific infection, but had prescribed antibiotics Rocephin and Levaquin until he could come up with something concrete. It appeared that part or all of the chemical cocktail had worked.

Samuel strode into Gwen's room. The diminutive woman lay fast asleep, her silver hair fanned across the pillow behind her. Her face looked calm, though a bit drawn, but at seventy, people didn't have a lot of facial fat left. The red striations and the darkened veins remained. He looked up at the monitors. Blood pressure, oxygen and pulse registered all damn near perfect. By lunch, perhaps the other symptoms would pass as well, and he'd be able to send her home. Decades in, it still felt great to make someone healthy.

Samuel picked up the notebook by her bedside, a tattered, spiral-bound volume with a blue cover. Shafts of paper shreds lay inside the steel coil, linear tombstones for the failed pages torn out and tossed away.

He flipped it open to the first page. Gwen's elegant handwriting hearkened back to the time when penmanship was a graded school exercise. Perfect sweeping loops kissed the page's blue, horizontal lines. The dot of every letter
I
fell dead center. The page contained a single poem written with no corrections.

Gwen always said she was proud of her past as a poet. If she was inspired to write something so lovely lying in a hospital bed, she had to be feeling much better.

Gwen's eyes snapped open. Samuel jumped back. Her irises, which he remembered as pale blue, were a wholly unnatural dark red. Though her eyelids were wide open, she was not awake.

He whipped out a penlight and checked her eyes. No reaction at all. That was odd. When she woke up she'd be seeing the world with a decidedly reddish hue and would want an explanation. Her eyelids slid closed on their own. The monitors continued their steady backbeat of pulse and oxygen levels.

Tamara Drake entered the room. He welcomed the familiar face. He'd worked with the nurse for years, and liked her professionalism and skill. She wore an open long, blue cardigan over her scrubs and carried a saline IV bag in her hand.

“Tamara, I haven't seen you in a while. Where have you been hiding?”

“Swung over to nights for a while for the pay bump. Everything okay here?”

“Amazingly okay,” Samuel said. “Except for her irises and the skin discoloration. Can you draw a new 10 cc blood sample from Ms. Albritton for a culture?”

“Absolutely.”

She stepped to the treatment cart and pulled out a butterfly needle and a blood vial. Samuel returned to the nurses' station.

“Didn't I tell you she was doing better?” Bethany said.

Behind Samuel, the elevator doors opened to reveal a nursing assistant named Manny and a sleeping man on a gurney. The orderly, a well-muscled black man in a set of scrubs one size too small, maneuvered the gurney into the hall with one hand. Samuel went to the medical-records terminal and called up Gwen's records.

A scream pierced the air.

Tamara staggered backwards out of Gwen's room. The nurse stumbled and fell on her back. Her hands covered her face. The blood sampling needle protruded from her left eye and between her fingers. Blood ran down from under her palm.

Gwen Albritton stood in the doorway, though Samuel wouldn't have recognized her as the woman he'd checked in the day before. Her eyes burned a solid, bright red. Rage contorted her face into a gargoyle's visage. Her bony legs stood spread shoulder-width apart, knees flexed like a sumo wrestler before a bout. The hospital gown, wide open at the back, hung in front of her like some reverse cape. The morning sun backlit the shadow of her frail body. Her white knuckles gripped the IV stand like a medieval battle ax. Her IV bag lay on the floor behind her, bleeding its clear contents across the floor.

“I said don't touch me, bitch!” Gwen screamed.

Tamara pointed up with her free hand. Blood covered her index finger. “She's gone crazy!”

Bethany slammed an alarm button at the nurses' station and bolted toward Gwen. Three steps behind her, Manny came around the hallway corner at a run, like a wide receiver on the way to the end zone,. They filled the narrow hall like a wave of blue-cotton scrubs.

Together, they outweighed Gwen three to one. She didn't flinch. Instead, she charged.

Gwen spun the IV stand in her hand like a Texas baton twirler. She snapped it to a stop with the top pointing forward. Gwen lunged and drove the stand into Bethany's gut. The stand ripped through flesh and organs until the tip punched through her back.

Samuel froze in shock. Gwen lifted the impaled nurse like a pitchfork full of hay and slammed her through the false ceiling. Tiles exploded in a fibrous dust storm, and the light above her flashed and popped. A sadistic, victorious grin grew on Gwen's face.

Manny swept in from her side, curled an arm around her waist and threw her back down the hallway toward her room. Bethany fell to the floor with a lifeless thud and the clatter of the IV stand on tile.

Normally, Gwen's ninety-two pounds would have smashed into the wall after Manny launched her across the floor. But nothing here was normal. Gwen crouched and dug her bare feet in as she slid backwards. At the wall, she skidded to a stop and stood straight up. Her eyes narrowed.

“Is that all you've got, sonny?” she said.

Samuel joined the orderly, and the two charged Gwen. Each grabbed one of her arms.

Gwen nearly lifted him off the ground with the arm he'd clamped under his armpit. Her muscles felt like steel cables across his chest.

“Get her to the floor,” he ordered.

Manny swept one leg under Gwen's in some kind of martial arts move, and the two men followed her down to the ground. Gwen snarled. Her head darted at the orderly. She clamped her teeth on his ear, bit away a chunk and spit it out.

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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.

11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B

Cincinnati OH 45249

We Are Monsters

Copyright © 2015 by Brian Kirk

ISBN: 978-1-61922-591-6

Edited by Don D'Auria

Cover by Scott Carpenter

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: July 2015

www.samhainpublishing.com