Savage (11 page)

Rich shook his head. “No, nothing like this.” He was starting to calm down a bit but still shook his shirt some more just in case.

Cody was really laughing now, and it was taking just about everything Rich had not to go over and smack him, but Sidney was laughing as well, even though she tried to hide it by covering her mouth with her hand.

“Yeah, laugh it up you two,” he said, angrily. “I'd like to see the two of you go down there and . . .”

Sidney was looking around him to the cellar door, and he turned to see that Snowy was pawing at something.

“What have you got, girl?” Sidney asked, going over to the dog to see.

The white shepherd had her nose close to the bottom of the cellar door and had started to whine, backing away with a growl.

“What is it, Snowy?”

There was suddenly a steady flow of insects coming from beneath the door.

“Shit,” Sidney exclaimed, reaching for her dog to pull her away. “Do you see this?”

“I told you,” Rich said, watching in horror as the multitude steadily increased, the floor now writhing with insect life.

Insect life that seemed to have a purpose, crawling across the kitchen floor toward where they stood.

“What the hell is this?” Sidney demanded. It was all so strange she was having a difficult time wrapping her brain around the moment.

She found herself walking around the flow of insects, pushing past Rich, who was busy stomping on the bugs as they advanced, and grabbing hold of the doorknob of the cellar door.

“What are you doing?” Cody asked from where he stood behind the kitchen island.

She needed to see in order to begin to understand the situation. It was one of her more bothersome traits. Even after she'd been summoned to the office and told that her father had been rushed to the hospital, that they suspected that he'd had a stroke, she really hadn't believed a word. She'd needed to see him for herself. What if they were wrong? What if it had been nothing, and he would have been fine? She would have been upset all for naught.

It hadn't been nothing, but what if?

Rich had stopped stomping bugs long enough to spin around just as she started to turn the knob.

“You don't want to—” he called out just as she pulled the door open, wide enough to peer down into the darkness.

She needed to see if this was something.

Sidney's cell phone was in her hand, and she hit the button to turn on the light feature, illuminating the stairs in a harsh white glow.

It was something.

The stairs were invisible, every inch covered in squirming, climbing, skittering bodies, a moving carpet of insect life flowing up from the cellar's dirt floor.

Sidney barely had a moment to move herself from the opening as Rich's shoulder plowed into the door, abruptly slamming it closed.

“Oh my God,” she managed as she stared into her friend's frightened eyes.

“Yeah, oh my God,” he answered.

Cody was coming around the island now, an excited Snowy following him.

“No!” Sidney ordered, holding out her hand to them. “Keep her over there.” Cody instantly grabbed the dog by the collar, peering around the island to see.

The floor was covered in bodies of the living and the dead.

“What the hell?” Cody began, but Sidney was already directing.

“Find something to stick under that door,” she said, on the move, opening kitchen drawers.

Rich continued to stomp on the bugs that squirmed their way out from beneath the door, while Cody began to help Sidney with her search.

Snowy nudged her hand with a cold nose, and she took a moment to connect with the shepherd, making eye contact with her. “Good girl, Snowy,” Sidney said, raising her hand and making the gesture for the dog to sit and stay put. “That's a good dog,” she praised.

“How about this?” Cody asked, holding up a green quilted place mat.

“That might do it,” Sidney said. “Are there any more?”

“Hey, guys, you want to step it up a little? It's getting bad over here,” Rich cried out, and Sidney could hear the beginnings of hysteria in his voice, along with his heavy footfalls and the wet crunch of breaking bug bodies.

Cody approached with a handful of the place mats. “I found five of them,” he said.

Sidney grabbed them and moved toward the cellar door, Snowy beginning to follow.

“Keep her back, would you, Cody?” she said as she stared at the sight of bugs as they wriggled and squirmed for their freedom from the cellar and into kitchen. It seemed to take them a moment to get their bearings—to think of what they'd come up here for—then they made their way toward Rich, and her.

Weird didn't even begin to describe it anymore.

Sidney knelt down, shoving the first of the place mats underneath the space between the door's bottom and the floor. Some of the insects that managed to escape went right for her—a centipede at least eight inches long squirmed onto her hand, wrapping itself around her middle finger before finally making its way to the back of her hand, where it sank its pincers into her flesh.

“Ahhhh! Shit!” she cried out, shaking her hand savagely. She was tempted to take off, to leap back before any more of the bugs could bite her, but she knew that she had to get this done. The first of the cloth mats was in place, and she was starting on the next. She couldn't grasp the number of insects that were coming under the door, never mind the fact that they were all together, hanging out as if they were somehow friends. A big insect block party. It didn't work that way, she thought as a spider and cluster of ants went after her fingers.

Cody crushed the spider with his thumb, pressing its body into the floor with a disgusting sounding pop. He dropped down beside her with another of the place mats, starting to cram it beneath the door next to her last.

“My hero,” she said, and he just grunted, obviously as freaked out as she was by the situation.

“Guys, what the hell is going on?” Rich asked, his dance of bug death finally able to slow down some. He was looking at the soles of his sneakers with disgust.

Sidney got another of the mats shoved beneath the door, which pretty much closed up the opening.

“Are we good?” Cody asked, grimacing as he wiped his arms clean of straggler ants with the last remaining place mat.

“I think so,” she said, standing up, but keeping her eyes riveted to the row of green quilted cloth sticking out from the bottom of the door.

“This is just . . . ,” Rich said, and they looked over to see him staring down at the kitchen floor in front of the door, which was covered and smeared with the crushed bodies and guts of literally hundreds of dead insects. “This is just freaking disgusting. What's happening?” he asked in all seriousness, without a trace of his usual jokey persona that was normally present.

Cody looked to Sidney as Rich did the same.

She realized that they were looking to her for answers.

“You're asking me?” she said, eyes darting to the bottom of the door to make sure that the mats were still holding. They were. “I haven't a clue.” The wind howled outside, the rain upon the windows sounding like the pattering of thousands of tiny feet. “Maybe it has something to do with the storm,” she offered.

“How is that?” Rich asked, finding some bugs still alive and stepping on them with a crunch. “Why would a storm make bugs go crazy?”

“I don't know,” Sidney said, frustrated over the fact that she didn't have a good enough answer. “It was just a friggin' theory.”

“Best one we got, unless you've got something better,” Cody said, his attitude toward Rich rearing its head again.

“I'm not the animal expert,” Rich retorted, having picked up on the attitude. “I've just never seen anything like this before and—”

They all jumped at a thumping sound. Sidney believed, as likely they all did, that something had just been blown against the side of the house, but then it came again.

And again.

“What now?” Rich asked, slipping in the bug guts that covered the floor, but grabbing hold of the island's edge before he actually went down. If things hadn't been so tense at the moment, it almost might've been funny, but right then it just made the situation all the tenser.

There were multiple hits now. Loud thumps and bangs that seemed to be coming from all around the house.

Rich let go of the island and made his way toward the front of the house, careful not to slide. Sidney, Snowy, and Cody followed as the loud sounds continued.

Standing in the entryway, Rich listened.

“Is it just the storm?” he asked them.

The noises continued to pummel the home.

“I have no idea,” Sidney said, eyes traveling to the various points of impact.

“Maybe it's hail,” Cody suggested.

“Seriously?” Rich asked. “Hail? That's the best you could come up with? It's the freakin' summer. I don't think you can even have hail in the summer.”

Something hit off of one of the living room windows, broken glass tinkling to the floor beneath.

“Are you shitting me?” Rich said, heading toward the window where one of the curtains now billowed.

Sidney didn't really know why she reacted the way she did, but she called out, “Rich, no!”

He turned ever so slightly but continued toward the broken window. He grabbed the long, billowing material of the curtain to pull it away, but something was waiting for him behind it.

Rich let out a scream, jumping back as a raccoon, crouched among the broken pieces of glass, sprang at him.

Janice cried out in a mixture of rage and absolute disgust, thrashing wildly atop the body of her husband as he attempted to put his arms around her.

His movements were weak, spastic, flailing, giving her the opportunity that she needed to escape his clutches. She would rather not have remembered, but the memory was suddenly there in her mind, a time when she actually welcomed Ronald's strong arms around her. But that was a long time ago, before the hate and revulsion.

Janice drove her boney elbows into her husband's ribs with all her might to break his hold on her, and to drive the disgusting memory away. An awful moan escaped the man, and all she could think of was a ghost roaming the halls of some ancient English castle.

Rolling off the thrashing man, she scrambled to her knees and began to stand. The fact that her husband still lived was a problem, and she at once began to formulate how she would finish what she had started. The pain in her hand was incredible, each rapid-fire beat of her heart like somebody taking a hot poker and driving it into the meat of her palm. She held the bandaged hand to her chest as she rose, keeping her distance from the man who twitched and flopped upon the floor of their bedroom. Perhaps he would still die, she thought as she watched him there in the darkness. Maybe he just needed a little more time.

The smell was instantly revolting, but familiar. A smell that she'd grown used to since purchasing Alfred, the pungent and incredibly strong smell of French bulldog farts.

Janice turned in the black of the bedroom to find the dog standing behind her, staring at her intensely. She again noticed the strange glassy shine over his right eye.

“Who wants a cookie?” she asked in the calmest of voices, not wanting the dog to pick up on her tension. There wasn't much that the dog wouldn't do for a snack. She figured that was all she needed to distract him from what she had done.

Alfred continued to stare at her intensely.

“Do you?” she asked him, again with little reaction.

She noticed that Ronald had gone completely silent and turned her attention from the dog to see that her husband now lay perfectly still.

Dead,
she hoped.

Janice could not stop the smile from coming, her spirits lifted by the possibility of her husband's demise.

But her happiness was short lived. As she turned back to her dog, she found that he was right there in front of her, mere inches away, having silently come closer.

She actually gasped as she found the French bulldog looking up into her eyes.

“Let's go get that cook—” she started, but never finished. The dog silently lunged, his sharp, crooked teeth sinking into the flesh of her thigh.

Janice cried out, pulling away from Alfred's attack but tripping over the body of her husband and falling to the floor once more. The dog continued to come at her, powerful jaws widening for another bite. Janice kicked with her legs, attempting to drive the bulldog away, but it had little effect. Alfred snapped crazily, willing to bite at anything near his mouth. She tried to get up, to run away, but he kept at it, keeping her down at his level. Alfred dove at her side, going for the flesh of her stomach. She tried to grab hold, to wrestle and perhaps immobilize him, but the dog was too fast and strong, squirming from her grasp before lunging and snapping again.

Janice tried to get him to listen, screaming out commands, but her attempts at authority were falling on deaf ears.

Arms flailing, she managed to grab hold of some of the looser flesh and fur on the side of Alfred's face, yanking him back and holding him at bay. The dog silently twisted in her grasp, seemingly unaware of the pain that he must be causing himself as he tried to bite her. He brought one of his paws up as he twisted, trying to scratch her with his claws. With her bandaged hand she batted the paw away, but it still managed to dig bleeding furrows into her wrist. Her arm was getting weaker, and the dog seemingly stronger. Janice knew that it wouldn't be long before the dog grew so incensed and twisted so violently that he would cause the furry flesh on the side of his face to tear, and Alfred would again be free to bite at her.

Holding the dog at a distance as it thrashed in her grasp, she looked around the room for some sort of solution. In a flash of lightning followed by a nearly deafening crash of thunder, she saw the bathroom across from the bedroom and made her decision. Janice didn't waste any time and began to drag the struggling dog across the room toward the door. His movements were getting more wild and frantic, and she could feel the sides of his chomping teeth now rubbing against her hand furiously as he continued to fight and shake in her grasp in an attempt to bite her.