Heartland Junk (Part II): Sanctuary (8 page)

Chapter 13

              I FIGURED the porch roof would break my fall. I was only half right. My body broke through the tinder-dry shingles with a splintery crack, scraping my back from ass to shoulders as the friction of the beam-ends fought gravity for control of my fall. I jerked to a painful stop when my armpits caught the roof. My lower body dangled inside the porch, and the stags moved quick. Heavy hands slapped at my free-swinging legs. I kicked and thrashed, feeling teeth frantically trying to rip through my denim jeans.

              My right shoulder was in agony, but I heaved up on the rickety porch, pushing against the sand-paper shingles. The hole was tight and filled with splinters that clawed as painfully as the stags below. Scraping, grunting, I managed to free everything down to my hips before a heavy weight clamped onto my leg and jerked me back down. My hands slipped, the shingles shredding the skin of my palms, and I dropped back to my armpits, sending another lance of fire through my right shoulder. The muscle must have torn. Figures.

              "Fuck.
You!
" I howled at the dead weight on my leg. I kicked and hit something solid with my socked foot, but the weight held. I kicked again. And again. It was all I could do. Either that or give up and drop through completely. As if to dissuade me from that option, a body plummeted from the window above me and crashed through the roof, leaving a hole the size of a Laz-E-Boy just beside me. Flames spurted from the third-story window. Ashes drifted lazily around me. Another stag dropped. This one hit closer to the house, where there was more support. Instead of breaking through, he bounced like a stuffed doll and rolled past me off the roof. A third zombie fell, clutched the roof, and began crawling toward me. It was only a few feet away when a body impacted it and they both disappeared through the roof. Christ. It was a zombie avalanche.

              "Ray!"

              Everything disappeared at the sound of Abby's voice. The hands dragging me down, the teeth clipping and pinching my skin through the jeans, the fucking zombie hailstorm, all blinked away at that one beautiful, divine, tearful syllable. She was still here.

              "Abby!" I shouted back. "Where are you?"

              "Inside! Hurry!"

              Both of my legs were being pulled down. Somehow, my sock had been tugged off, and something that felt like a buzzsaw tore into my pinky toe.  My right shoulder screamed at me. But so what? Ha! So what? Abby was alive! Adrenaline surged back into my wasted body and I lifted my knees with everything I could muster. Something slammed into the ceiling directly below me, and the weight on my legs was gone. I pressed my hands into the tile and slid out of the breach before another zombie could latch onto me. My right knee cleared the hole. I grounded it on a sagging beam, lifted my left leg. A fat chunk of smoking flesh thumped to the roof beside me and bounced away. My shins were free, my ankles, my toes. I was out. Pink eyes stared at me through the hole. Fuck them, I was free, and Abby was inside.

              Recklessly, willing the roof to hold, I stumbled up the incline and reached the wall of the house. There was a window at the roof's level that led to a second-floor bedroom. It was still dark. The fire must have been sucked up the stairway like a chimney flue, skipping the rooms in between. For a time, at least.

              "Abby!"

              "In here, Ray!" She sounded close. Forgetting my own safety, I dropped my shoulder, covered my face, and barreled through the window. Glass fell in icicle flakes all around me, spraying across the carpeted bedroom. I landed on my torn right shoulder and a shriek of pain fought through my lips. There was blood everywhere. It took me a moment to realize that it was all mine. Shit.

              "Abby!" I called again, desperate. The air in the bedroom was a furnace. Smoke curled under the closed door. The floor could give out at any moment. "Abby," I choked.

              "Here." The voice was weak, and right beside me. The other side of the bed. I lunged over the mattress and saw her, curled up in the narrow space between the bedframe and the wall. If I'd thought I was losing a lot of blood, she was swimming in it.

              I dropped to the floor beside her, my one bare foot squelching deep into the soggy carpet. I lifted Abby's head. "Abby, what happened?
What the hell happened?
Where is everybody."

              "They came," she said. "They found us."

              "They're fucking everywhere," I said. Abby shook her head fervently, swishing damp hair against the wall. It left a wispy paintbrush stroke of crimson.

              "Not Vitala. The others," she whispered. "From before."

              Suddenly, I realized that her mouth wasn't moving. I was hearing her voice clearly, but her lips were frozen in a tight, grim line. She seemed to speak with her eyes, casting the words directly into my soul.

              "How are you...?"

              "Listen to me, Ray. Rivet is dead, and they took Jennie and Theo. You have to find them. It's our only hope. There aren't...there aren't many left."

              "Aren't many
what
left? What the fuck are you talking about? Jesus, Abby, come on. We have to get out of here." I moved to pick her up, but she pushed me off. It must have been a Herculean effort, because she grimaced and gasped. Thin blood bubbles popped between her quivering lips. Something heavy thumped outside the shattered window. The room was growing hotter by the second.

              "
Pay attention.
I can...show you the way, but that's all. You have to accept this. You already have, you know you have. You've seen my daughters, Ray. See this now."

              "I don't know what you want me to do, Abby. You're hurt. Let me get you out of here." There must have been more smoke in the room than I thought, because my eyes were moist. Abby shook her head again, more feebly than before. Damn her, why was she giving up?

              "Close your eyes, Ray. See what I can show you." I did as she said. What else could I do? The second my eyelids closed, the room was gone. I was moving along the ground at great speed. Something small clutched my hand. It was Theo, his face terrified, glitching with speed. Day turned to night, and still we moved. None of the images made sense to me. We traveled down road after road, through an empty town, the scenery flicking by as if someone had stuck the world on fast-forward. Another day, another night, and the railroad tracks north of Joshuah Hill flashed past, and I was huddled in the darkness with Theo, watching candlelight creep around the edges of the boarded windows of River House, watching people move around through the windows of the second floor. Watching
us
move around. Me and Jennie and Rivet.

              Then the images reversed and the same scenery flashed past again, moving backward. Past the railroad tracks, into a town farther north, past it, empty roads, up a mountain, to a small grouping of houses on a rocky plateau. Filled with people, frantic, angry people. And I was chained up, and the people were laughing at me, spitting in my face. They were missing teeth, huge empty chunks, and their breath reeked, and I couldn't move, I was chained to a bed. And one by one, the men climbed on top of me. One by one, they raped me, jeering in my face, breath like sewage, and I couldn't scream because my tongue was a wormy stump. Sometimes I was terrified, sometimes I gnashed out with my teeth to eat them until eventually they'd prick me with a needle and I'd be terrified again. Always, they laughed, and before they fucked me, they waved the needles in front of me. Mocking me with them. Just out of reach, until the darkness came and I became an animal. And then they fucked me. While I was savage and writhing and inhuman, they fucked me. Then they brought me back with a pinprick jab and did it all again.

              The horrible images faded and I gasped and jerked back, again in the bedroom at River House. The heat was suffocating. White smoke streamed under the door through the glowing orange crack.

              "Abby...oh my God, Abby," I mourned, leaning forward again. But she didn't hear me. Her glazed eyes stared past me, at the ceiling. I hoped she found her daughters.

Chapter 14

              I sat on the roof of the house across the street and watched River House burn. Titan dozed on the shingles beside me. I glanced down at the cat, jealous of its apparent nirvana. Personally, I was coming apart at the seams. My shoulder ached, my chest ached, my foot and legs and back ached. Dozens of cuts and scratches all over my body stung, and despite the warm night, I began to shiver. I was still only wearing one shoe. My shirt was lacerated to shit and the threads in my jeans were fraying and pulling apart.

              Everything we'd worked up to in the past few weeks was turning to ash before my eyes. Floating away, scattered. Like us. Jennie and Theo were gone, caught in the clutches of a tribe of madmen. Abby's body burned with the house. Rivet's might be in there, too, but I had no way of knowing. Abby had said only that he was dead, not where or how it had happened. All I knew at that moment was why: For all the shit this town had gone through, there were still fucking assholes out there who wanted to smear even more shit on top. Smear it on so thick and so deep it became part of the very firmament. Fuck them. Fuck them and fuck their petty, selfish bullshit. Maybe the zombies really should wipe us out. Let the planet start clean.

              I shivered again, clutched my knees up to my shoulders. My head felt faint and the dirty alcohol buzz was starting to make my stomach jittery. River House became an inferno with flames so high they scorched the stars. The front porch collapsed, decades-old wood succumbing to the ancient strength of fire. All around the yard and the street below, stags milled aimlessly, some watching the bonfire, others ignoring it completely. I saw several try to shamble over the smouldering porch only to drop as their clothes caught fire and their flesh began to melt. A southern wind swept through the blaze and washed me with heat. I thought I might be getting a fever.

              The zombies ignored my presence as long as I ignored them, but if I stared down at them too long, they invariably turned their heads toward me. It was uncanny, as if they were able to catch onto the fact that I was thinking about them. Yet every time I looked away, they seemed to forget about me again.

              They had a queer sort of intelligence that I couldn't figure out, some inner guidance that led them to seek out those still living.

              Vitala. Abominations. Consume the flesh. Live as one.

              Snatches and fragments were all I knew of what lived inside these things, just the echoes that I could remember from falling into the pit myself. Yet I'd always been brought back. Abby had been pushed over the edge time and again, and she'd been brought back, too. How deep could someone go? What kind of evil waits at the far edge of infinity?

              I had no way of knowing it at the time, but I would soon find out.

Heartland Junk Part II: Sanctuary

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Thank you for joining me on this journey.

THE
DREAMS OF FEAR
SERIES CONTINUES

in Heartland Junk Part III:

VITALA RISING