The New Night Novels (Book 1): Rippers: A New Night Novel

RIPPERS: A NEW NIGHT NOVEL

FIRST EDITION

This book is a work of fiction. Any characters, places, or events are taken from the author’s imagination and represent no actual individuals, locations, or happenings. Any similarities to persons living or dead is completely coincidental and unintentional.

These works are the copyrighted property of Ashlei Daylen Hawley, not to be redistributed, copied, or pirated in any fashion by any personal or commercial entity without the express permission of the author. ©AshleiHawley2015

Dedication: For my supporters, especially Christy, my treasured reader. My family, as always. The other writers, weird ones, dreamers, and doers. Special thanks to Laura, for your willingness to help last minute. You are fantastic.

Rippers:

A New Night Novel

Ashlei D. Hawley

PART I – THE GRISSOM VIRUS

Chapter One – Phoebe

     Phoebe Woodard read, “Sleep Tight, Silly Bear,” aloud to a group of eight small children. It was naptime at the daycare facility she ran with her mother. Phoebe looked forward to the quiet the next forty-five minutes would bring to The Cozy Caterpillar.

     “Mama and Papa Bear whispered, “Goodnight.” Their Baby Bear snuggled his blanket. He drifted off to sleep with a silly smile still on his face.” Phoebe closed the book and eyed the tiny forms each cuddled under their respective blankets on the plump blue naptime mats. All of them had fallen asleep except Hannah and Eli. They rarely went down for naptime easily.

     Carmen shifted at Phoebe’s feet. Her dark curls splayed out in a soft, silken halo around her small head. She’d been out before the Silly Bear book had even started.

     Hannah sat up and looked with longing toward the large windows. Bright sunlight spilled through the handprint-covered glass. The light through the bright paint created a stained-glass effect and splashed a rainbow over the pale blue carpet. Though the room had been lovingly designed to be cozy as the building’s namesake, sleep still eluded Hannah and Eli.

     “Outside?” Eli whispered from where he laid on his back. “Play?”

     Hannah looked hopefully at Phoebe, who smiled at both of them.

     “You know you have to take your nap,” she chastised.

     “Not sleepy,” Hannah protested.

     Phoebe shook her head, making her wavy chestnut hair shift over her slender shoulders.

     “You’re never sleepy, goof,” Phoebe said with another smile.

     Hannah stood. She kept her eyes on Phoebe as she moved slowly over the other sleeping children. Phoebe didn’t object. They played this game nearly every day Hannah was left at The Cozy Caterpillar. Hannah would look out the window and see Phoebe’s mother, Emily, leading the other children back inside. The four older kids got an extra twenty minutes of play to wear them out enough for a nap. Upon seeing this, Hannah would bounce back to her nap mat and pretend to sleep until either naptime was over or she actually fell asleep.

     Phoebe waited for Hannah’s return to her nap mat. Her mom would let her play on her iPhone or watch movies on her laptop once the kids were all asleep. Phoebe looked forward to that every day she helped her mother out at the daycare.

     “Phoebe,” Hannah said. She didn’t whisper this time, and Phoebe stood, ready to scold the girl. If she spoke too loudly, she’d wake the other children.

     Instead of bouncing back to her nap mat as was her habit, Hannah hurried over to Phoebe and burrowed herself into the older girl’s lap.

     “What’s wrong, sweetie?” Phoebe whispered against the girl’s honey blonde hair. Hannah whimpered against Phoebe’s stomach and shook her head. Phoebe frowned. This wasn’t normal anti-nap behavior. She didn’t know what was wrong with Hannah, but there was more to it than simply not wanting to go to sleep.

     Phoebe stood and silently instructed Hannah to sit on the chair where she’d been reading the Silly Bear book from. Hannah curled up on the seat, looking even tinier than her three years. Phoebe looked out the window from where she stood. Instead of moving forward to examine the scene she saw through the colored glass, she took one involuntary step backward.

     “Get in the back room,” Phoebe ordered Hannah in a quiet voice as she helped Eli to his feet. The four-year-old boy didn’t object. Any excuse to get out of naptime was all right with him.

     The front door of the daycare burst open. Hannah was already on her way to the backroom. She reached for the door handle, but couldn’t quite get her small hand high enough to get a solid hold on the knob.

     Phoebe pushed Eli toward where Hannah worked at the door handle and yelled, “Get the door open, now!”

     Other children shifted upon hearing the panic in Phoebe’s voice, but none of them reached the level of awareness they needed to get up and move.

     What Phoebe had seen outside had looked like a warzone. The play area was covered in blood and body parts, as though whoever had begun an onslaught with no provocation had torn the older children apart. Phoebe had seen three men hovering over two of the more intact bodies. Her mind hadn’t been able to process what they were doing to the bodies, to the flesh they kept bringing to their bloodied mouths, but she knew it was horrific and unnatural.

     One of those men and two of the bloodied children had tumbled through the front door. Phoebe knew they weren’t looking for help. She couldn’t identify what kind of enemy they were, but she knew for a fact that they would do the same profane things to her as they’d done to the kids in the play area if she didn’t get away from them.

     Phoebe grabbed the closest child to her, hefted her up from her nap mat, and darted toward the door Eli had pulled open. Hannah cried; great, heaving sobs that shook her small body. She had tucked herself in the corner of the back room, curled into the smallest ball she could manage. Eli gestured frantically for Phoebe to run.

     She ran track for school and had adrenaline and fear to aid her speed. When she reached the door, she shoved Eli inside the back room and followed him in. She thrust Carmen out of her arms and used both of her hands to wrench the door closed.

     The first man to hit the door howled like a beast. He snarled and pounded on the wood. He slammed his bloodied hands against the frame, attacking it as though he had no idea how to get through it other than breaking it to splinters. Phoebe held the handle with both hands and made sure the lock button was depressed. She didn’t know how to block it off or if the man would be able to get through by violence alone.

     Her arms began to shake from the strain of holding the door closed and the handle still. The back room was little more than an expanded storage closet. There were no windows, and without the light on, it was pitch black inside. Phoebe felt claustrophobic and trapped.

     She was hesitant to move her hands away from the door handle, but she knew shortly she wouldn’t be able to hold it successfully even if she wanted to. Her arms burned with the strain of pulling the door toward her, and her hands had turned white with the strain of holding the doorknob.

     Easing her fingers back from the handle, Phoebe flexed the abused digits and waited. She held her hands out and waited to see if she needed to return them to holding the door closed. The man kept slamming himself against the wood, but the door was thick and solid. If he kept with that method, he wasn’t going to get through.

     Phoebe thought about what had happened in the last ten minutes and had no words to explain how horribly and terribly her world had just changed. The children huddled together in the corner, no more able to explain or understand what had happened than she was. She sat down against the door and cried.

Chapter Two – Leland

     Leland Norton had to escape his family party, at least for a minute. He loved them and the fact that they took the summer to spend as much time together as possible, but he also got exhausted being one of the only males in a large family dominated by boisterous women. His young nephew, Drayton, would offer him some solidarity eventually. Until the little guy grew up and could hang out with him, though, he needed to take some time away from the imposing women that made up his strong family unit.

     He snuck off to the upstairs bathroom and took out his smart phone. Leland figured he could get ten minutes of playing one of his war games online while the women discussed recipes, the lucrative jewelry business his aunt ran from home, and the fourth husband Grandma had gotten bored with. At that point, they would most likely notice his absence and his mother would summon him back downstairs. Leland sat on top of the toilet seat and loaded his game up.

     Laughter bubbled up from downstairs and permeated the door. Leland wondered how Drayton could possibly sleep through the noise which always accompanied the family parties. Somehow, the young boy napped in the basement bedroom of the two-story house without being perturbed by the loud voices and booming laughter that were ever-present companions of the family get-togethers.

     Leland turned the fan on and opened the window of the bathroom. He could buy himself a few extra minutes if they thought he was having some stomach troubles. When he looked outside, Leland could see two people milling around his Aunt Rose’s expansive front yard. He frowned at them. His phone rested forgotten on the gray tile countertop.

     Something was wrong with those people.

     They moved as though they didn’t know where they were or what they were doing. One of them stumbled into the other and got snapped at by her companion. Leland squinted, trying to make out their features better. He couldn’t pinpoint the wrongness he sensed about them, but it radiated outward from them like a malignant aura.

     They hadn’t been turned toward the house until that point, but someone shrieked with laughter from the downstairs area. Through the open front windows, the sound of amusement poured out and caught the attention of the two trespassers.

     They turned, drawn to the noises of the celebration. Leland saw what was wrong with them; what he couldn’t see when they faced away from him.

     Both of the strangers were coated with blood from their mouths to wherever their clothing was dark enough to disguise the red. The man looked as though a feral creature had ripped a piece of his neck off. Though the wound looked excruciating (and almost assuredly life-threatening) he walked as though he took no notice of the heinous tear in his flesh.

     “Mom,” Leland called out. He wanted to make someone aware of the unwanted visitors out front, but he didn’t know exactly what to say.

     Both of the strangers’ gazes snapped up when they heard Leland’s voice. As though they were wolves drawn to the bleating of previously injured prey, they howled and darted for the house.

     Leland heard the large front windows smash as the intruders barreled through them. Glass shattered, louder than Leland could have imaged it would be. It sounded as though thunder had erupted right in the living room.

     Laughter turned to screams. Leland couldn’t imagine what his family members saw or experienced to make their shrill wails echo with such agonized tones.

     He couldn’t will himself to open the door and look downstairs. He couldn’t force his body to move out and help his family members, who cried and shrieked as though they were being torn apart. The most he could do was take two steps forward and lock the door.

     “Leland, get Dray-” His Aunt Rose’s panicked words ended in a choked gurgle and dissolved into grunts.

     Part of Leland wanted to unlock the door and rush downstairs to follow Rose’s desperate command. Another foreign, irrational part of him hated her for bringing attention to the fact that he was there at all. He didn’t know what had happened downstairs, but he knew for a fact he didn’t want to be involved with it.

     Pushing that part of him far down where he hoped it would never contaminate his thoughts so selfishly again, Leland backed up and moved with as little noise as he could manage for the other door that would let him out of the bathroom. That door, which didn’t lock, led to one of the three upstairs bedrooms. He planned to go out that door, risk the hallway, and enter the second bedroom at the far end of the hall. That bedroom had a window which would allow him to step out onto the roof of the add-on. The add-on was attached to the basement, and was his Aunt Rose’s bedroom, where Drayton slept.