Revelations - 02 (21 page)

Heather jerked her hand away and shoved back from the table. Her footfalls on the stairs didn’t mask the sounds of weeping.

“Idiot,” Cary hissed. He dropped his spoon on the table and took off in pursuit of the heartbroken teenager.

Kevin sat in silence, at an utter loss.
What in the hell just happened?
he thought. He’d just done his best to make the girl feel better. He’d complimented her! Well, he wasn’t gonna let his bowl of soup go to waste. He ate. Alone. And he didn’t hate the silence.



Kevin stared outside at the darkness. Heavy rain pelted the window with ferocity as periodic flashes of lightning lit up the sky. Even though he knew it to be nothing more than an old wive’s tale, he slowly counted.
One…two…three…four…

BOOM.

“Four miles,” he mumbled. He was a big fan of weather. He loved to watch it snow, or when lightning and thunder joined the meteorological symphony. It was soothing. He’d never been frightened of thunder as a child. It was thrilling.

He remembered sitting on the porch at his house in Hampton Roads when he was growing up. He could watch storms roll through and out to sea. Once, he’d seen lightning hit a tree just a half a block away. Kevin smiled at the memory and turned to leave the bathroom he’d been staring out the window of. He could see the road they’d been out on today putting things in place for his big plan.

Heather was standing in the doorway. Her head hanging, allowing her hair to cascade down over her face. It was dark, so all he could really make out was her silhouette. She shifted slightly from one foot to the other, making Kevin a touch uneasy.

“Heather?” he whispered.

Nothing.

“Heather,” a bit more forcefully. The girl’s head popped up, surprising Kevin in its suddenness and causing him to stumble back. The backs of his legs caught the toilet and he fell hard against the wall, hitting his head.

“Kevin!” Heather squealed, dashing into the bathroom. She leaned down to help him to his feet and her eyes locked onto the dark splotch on the wall. A single drip was running down from the circular splatter stain.

“Probably have a nasty headache,” Cary shrugged. “If he has a head injury like a concussion, I think you’re not supposed to let them sleep for more than an hour or so for the first day.”

“How come?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

Kevin moaned softly. Instinctively, Heather rushed in beside him, edging Cary aside. Cary scooped up his flashlight, flicked it off, and slid it in his back pocket.

“Let’s get him to his feet.” Cary straddled the toilet, bent down and slung one of Kevin’s arms over his shoulder. Heather had to stand with one leg in the bathtub, but she got in position on the other side. “C’mon, buddy,” Cary coaxed as he nodded to Heather, indicating he was ready to help their groggy companion to his feet.

“Where to?” Heather asked as they turned sideways to exit the bathroom.

“I say we go for one of the kid’s rooms,” Cary suggested and turned right. A flash of lightning followed almost instantly by thunder made Heather squeal.

“I think it’s one of the Bergmans,” Cary said. Maybe it was time to wean this girl of her Kevin infatuation. “They were the ones that Kevin and Darrin and Mike saved that got abducted by those jerks that keep raiding Heath. The ones Kevin is trying to rescue.”

“Oh,” Heather said with a nod.

Hmm
, Cary thought,
she took that well
. He pushed open the door that led to one of the children’s rooms.

Together, they laid Kevin out on the bed. Heather fussed around him, putting a towel under his head and covering him up to the neck. After, Heather insisted she take first watch. Cary felt something tug in his mind, trying to express why that was a bad idea, but after the day they’d had, he was just too tired. He looked back through the door one last time and watched Heather as she wandered over to the window. Lightning flashed again and he saw her face in the electric-blue light. Heather was smiling.



Cary woke to a dull thud a few feet away from his head. He rubbed his eyes, struggling to wake. It was still dark, but eerily silent.

Thud
.

There it was again. Cary realized he didn’t hear the steady thrum of pouring rain, or the thunder. The storm must’ve passed. Yet, it was still dark so he hadn’t been asleep too long. His eyes scanned the darkness for the source of the noise.

Thud
.

There it was again. Off to his right, even with his head, but down on the floor. Rolling onto his side, Cary peeked over the edge of the bed. Too dark. Grabbing his flashlight from the nightstand where it sat beside the gun that was the identical match to the one under his pillow, Cary flicked it on and shone it to the floor.

“Fuck!” he screamed and rolled away to the other side of the bed. Reaching under his pillow, Cary forced himself to climb off the bed and ignore the voice in his head that warned of the monsters that had taken residence there in his youth.

A pale hand reached up from the other side and came down, clutching at the wadded up sheets and blankets. Another hand joined the first. Then, a head rose slowly. For some strange reason, Cary was reminded of the scene from
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
, when Snoopy’s shadow rose up and caused Linus to faint.

Trying his best to keep his hands steady, Cary saw Mike’s slack, emotionless face in the dull, red beam of his flashlight. The eyes had that tell-tale film of white, shot with the blackness of undeath.

“Oh, Mike,” Cary whispered. Suddenly, he felt Kevin’s pain, reluctance, and sadness.

The creature that had once been Mike opened its mouth and moaned. It began to rise, unsteadily gaining its feet. It reached for Cary and its legs bumped into the bed causing it to stagger. The Mike-zombie looked down at the bed, cocking its head to the side, then, it turned, in slow halting steps and began to shamble alongside the obstacle. A commotion at the door caused it to stop, its head jerked up and to the right at the dark shadow that filled the doorway.



It’d been a couple hours now. Heather walked over to the bed where Kevin lay snoring softly. She brushed one lock of hair away from his forehead. He’d been sleeping peacefully since Cary’d left. Twice she went to the bed and knelt, laying her head on the pillow inches away from his. Once, she worked up the nerve to kiss him gently on the lips. Kevin had mumbled something in his sleep, but she hadn’t been able to tell what it was.

The time had come to wake him for a minute. Cary hadn’t been able to tell her why, but he made it sound important. Sitting beside him, she took one of his hands in hers and patted it gently.

“Kevin,” she whispered, “you need to wake up for a minute.”

He stirred slightly and she repeated herself. She felt his hand close on hers. He muttered something unintelligible again. She leaned down by his face and whispered his name once more.

“Ruth?” he breathed.

That name again,
Heather fumed. Who the hell was this person? She became aware that Kevin was pulling her hand trying to bring her close. She looked closely. He wasn’t awake, but he wasn’t
technically
asleep. Glancing over her shoulder towards the door like she expected Cary or Mike to burst in at any moment and ruin everything, Heather felt her heart start racing.

She felt Kevin’s other arm move weakly, reaching for her. She moved in to his embrace and softly brushed his lips with hers. His mouth opened slightly and she coaxed his tongue to hers. Nestling close, she could feel him kiss her back, second by precious second becoming more assertive. She also felt him begin to stir…against the inside of her thigh. She began to shift her hips slightly.

“Fuck!” a voice yelled from down the hall towards the room they normally all shared. It sounded like Cary.

Heather had started at the sudden sound. Her eyes opened, and even in the dim light, she could see Kevin’s eyes open, not quite focused. He looked confused, then shocked.
Dammit
, Heather thought just before she felt Kevin’s hands tighten on her arms. For a brief second, she thought he might finally give in. She could feel him against her and knew he was excited. Then, unexpectedly, he pushed her away. Heather landed on the floor in an unceremonious heap.

A noise like a strangled cry sounded from down the hall.

In a flash, Heather was on her feet. She didn’t know what was wrong in the other bedroom, but she did know she needed to get away from Kevin right this very second. She dashed out the door, hearing her name called, hearing Kevin’s confusion and distress. Still, she had to get away from him. She reached the doorway and halted.

The smell
.

It hit her like a wall. The stench of death was in that room, filling it to overflowing and rolling out into the hall through the open door she stood in. Stumbling in her direction, but looking across the bed was what, at least by the shadow’s outline, was Mike. She heard, then felt Kevin come up behind her, still unsteady on his feet as he collided with her back, causing her to trip forward a step. The figure stopped and turned towards her and Kevin. It was Mike…only…not.

The zombie stopped moving, its head bobbing and going slowly back and forth between the two. It opened its mouth and made a gurgling, mewling noise that sounded nothing like Mike.

“How is this possible?” Kevin slurred, shaking his head and trying desperately to clear it.

The Mike-zombie’s head focused on Kevin, apparently looking over Heather. It began to stumble towards the doorway. Its arms came up, reaching for its intended prey. The two backed out of the entry and into the dark hallway. A pale glow was just starting to paint the room in shades of gray as the sun was struggling to burn through the lingering clouds from the previous night’s storm as it rose.

“Heather,” Kevin eased the girl to his left, then guided her back so he could put himself between her and the hideous caricature of his long-time friend, “give me one of your blades.”

“Huh?” she breathed, unable to take her eyes off somebody she’d been talking to a few hours ago.

“A blade,” Kevin insisted.

“Oh…yeah,” she said as her hand went to her hip. She drew a large, black-handled, stainless steel blade from its leather sheath and handed it to Kevin.

He tested the weight in his hand and looked into the terrible, unblinking eyes of somebody he’d know for as long as he could really remember. In the blink of an eye, the entire scene with Cary back at the truckstop replayed in his mind.
This time
, he thought,
it’s different. He’s very clearly one of the walking dead.

“Rest in peace, Mike,” Kevin said as the thing stepped into the hallway. He brought the heavy blade up, driving it through the bottom of it chin, punching through the roof of the mouth, and up into the skull.

The creature dropped, Kevin let go of the knife handle as the zombie collapsed at his feet. Cary stepped into the doorway just as the body landed with a thud.

“How could he
not
tell us?” Cary spat.

The trio sat in silence as the sun continued to make headway in its battle to burn through the clouds. A pale, pinkish-yellow glow began to fill the room. Without a word, Cary knelt beside Mike and began removing his clothes. Kevin removed the shoes, then the socks. In moments, Mike’s nude, greyish-blue corpse lay stretched out before them. Heather walked to a nearby window and stared out at what was promising to be a beautiful morning, weatherwise at least. Her mind rewound to yesterday, trying to see events as they occurred. Behind her, the two men were going over every inch of skin.