Mississippi DEAD (2 page)

Molly quickly snapped her head around. Covered from the nose down in a red sheen of blood and torn flesh, she looked at her grandfather with eyes that were like a wild animal and not the loving young eyes of adolescence. Growling, Molly got up to her knees. Lying beneath her was Luke. Blood covered his neck and chest. His lifeless eyes stared toward the night sky.

“My God! What happened?” Jack asked Molly. “Are you hurt?”

Molly didn’t reply in tears or sobs. She slowly got to her feet, revealing more blood covering the front of her gown. Molly raised her arms toward Jack. And all he saw was the little granddaughter he loved. His reaction was simple. Lifting his arms, Jack wanted nothing more than too comfort his granddaughter. Comfort her from the pain of whatever had taken her father.

Molly stepped from her father’s lifeless body. Her first step was staggering as was the next. Then in a flash, she crossed into Jack’s open arms. Crushing Molly to his chest, Jack hugged her tight. He heard her mew inconsolably and growl as she started to beat her fists on his shoulders and tried to thrash her head back and forth.

“Honey, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?” he asked.

Grabbing Molly by the shoulders, Jack pulled his granddaughter back. Covered in blood, Molly snapped at him, her teeth gnashing hard, missing his cheek by a fraction of an inch.

“Get away from her!” a voice called from the darkness as the last train car passed by, leaving the area coated in pulses of the red warning lights.

From the cover of the trees, Suzie appeared. In her hands she carried a broken branch. Running toward them, Suzie raised the branch and swung. Unprepared for the attack, Jack was shocked as the branch missed his head by a fraction of an inch, but connected with the side of Molly’s face. Knocked to the ground by the force of the blow, Molly collapsed.

“Suzie?” Jack yel
led.

“S
he attacked Luke,” Suzie said between shuddering breaths. “They’re all dead.”

Jack looked at his distraught daughter-in-law. There were no marks on her from her white tennis shoes to her blue jean shorts and matching tank top. The only thing that looked out of place was the stray strand of blonde hair that had come loose from the ponytail she wore, drifting down the side of her face.

Dropping the branch, Suzie looked at her daughter’s still form and finally began to cry. She took a step forward. Avoiding Jack’s confused look, and his outstretched hands to comfort her, Suzie fell to her knees by Molly’s side. Tears started to flow as something burst inside the house, sending a mushroom of fire out the living room’s picture window.

Ducking in reaction as heat rushed up the driveway and into the sky. Jack looked back toward his cabin.

Crying into her hands, Suzie mourned the shocking death of her family. She never saw Molly move until her little girl was upon her. With her cries cut short, Molly tackled her mother, biting into her shoulder, ripping the strap to her tank top as she jerked her head to the right, tearing off a mouthful of flesh and cloth.

Suzie crashed into Jack’s legs and looked down in time to witness his granddaughter’s attack. As if she had given up trying to survive. Suzie didn’t fight back as Molly bit down on the nape of her mother’s neck. A warm spray of arterial blood shot from Suzie’s neck coating Jack’s legs. Stunned, Jack stepped back. Sensing his movement, Molly looked up from her mother. Cold eyes looked at him. Instantly Jack felt like prey and the urge to flee raced through his body.

“Run...” Suzie gurgled.

Hearing her mother’s voice, Molly turned her attention away from Jack. With a guttural growl, she ripped into her mother’s jawline, tearing a ragged fold from ear to mouth, exposing muscle, teeth, and bone.

As the final crossing light pulsed, dropping the area back into darkness. Its last chime hung in the air. Jack ran back down the driveway as another crash from the cabin sent flames reeling up a nearby tree turning it into a torch that lit up the night sky. Turning, Jack ran by the front of the cabin, giving it a wide birth. Then from the front door, through the yellow flaming wall, stepped Kelly.

Though she was cast in fire from h
ead to toe, Jack knew it was her.  Hearing the crackle of fire on his wife’s body and the smell of her flesh charring down to the bone, Jack went numb. As if she could see through the melted bubbling mass where her eyes had been, Kelly, arms outstretched as if waiting for an embrace, came right toward Jack.

Glued to the spot, Jack watched Kelly’s fiery approach. Stumbling over the glass and rubble from the burning house, she collapsed on the ground before him.

From behind, something grab onto his leg. Frightened, Jack reflexively kicked out. Hearing a “Humph,” he looked down to see Steven lying on the ground. Though disheveled with leaves scattered in his hair, his youngest grandson looked unharmed, but something told Jack not to take any chances.

Back stepping from Steven, he watched as the three-year-old got up onto his tiny legs and best as he could, he charged Jack. Teeth gnashing, Steve tried to grab Jack’s leg and bite, but his grandfather was faster and pulled himself away. From the side of his vision, Jack caught movement by the burning cabin. Looking toward it, he saw Molly approach. The hot yellow flames illuminated her, showing the large amount of blood from her parent’s that covered her.

Though the heat was intense from where Jack stood, Molly did not register that the flames were so close. Fingers of fire reached out and blistered her skin. Her hair started to spark like a lit fuse as the fire made the air around her move. Not knowing what else to do, Jack ran down the small hill toward the dock. With each step across its boards, the dock seemed to propel him along by the buoyancy of the barrels underneath.

Grabbing the mooring rope from the post, Jack jumped aboard and made his way to the driver’s seat. Taking the key that was always in the ignition, he cranked the motor to life and let out a sigh of relief when it started.
Turning the wheel toward the river and pushing the throttle down as far as it could go, the houseboat surged forward and to the left. The aft of the houseboat struck the dock hard snapping boards off as water flew up into the air.

Driving himself toward the center of the river, Jack watched as Molly, silhouetted by the fire, came to the dock. He could feel her eyes on him and as she walked onto the rocking boards. Nothing distracted her. Her flaming hair had died out, leaving only prickly stubble behind except for a long lock of hair, caked in her mother’s blood, hanging down the side of her face.

So he could get a better look at the burning cabin. Jack pulled up on the throttle and cut the ignition. As the blades stopped spinning he coasted on momentum alone. With a few quick turns of the steering wheel the houseboat rotated toward the shore.

From his position, Jack watched as Molly reached the end of the dock and fell into the water. Knowing that Molly was a good swimmer, Jack stared at the spot where she had fallen in, but as the seconds passed, she didn’t rise to the surface.

Unable to keep standing, Jack sat heavily on the driver’s seat. The strong Mississippi current started to pull the houseboat down the river. Without thinking on it, Jack hit the toggle switch activating the anchor to lower at the bow. He heard the chain run through the casing that contained the heavy chain and the anchor plopped into the dark water. A loud crack crossed the distance from the cabin to the houseboat as a large branch from the flaming tree fell onto the roof of the house, sending flaming shingles into the sky as it broke through.

Near the shore, Jack saw Steven walking aimlessly about. Then another form appeared. The flaming cabin highlighted her blood-soaked clothes and blonde hair. Even from the distance he was at, Jack could see the ragged chunk that was missing from her neck and jaw line. With her posture as straight as a board, Suzie walked past her son.

While the current pulled him toward the middle of the river, Jack could feel Suzie’s dead eyes staring straight at him. She walked down the dock, only stopping when she ran out of wood to continue. From behind, Steven lost his balance and tumbled into the water. Jack rose from his seat and yelled Steven’s name, but his grandson only flailed for a moment against the shore, and then was gone.

Jack called Steven’s name again. Suzie responded by raising her arms in the direction of the houseboat as if beckoning Jack to come back to the dock. It pulled at his heart and he almost turned over the ignition to go back.

A large explosion roared into the night about a half a mile down the railroad tracks. The cry of metal on metal echoed down the waters of the Mississippi. A fiery mushroom cloud ballooned into the sky as he watched the trees lite up like candles.

Turning the ignition halfway, so that the houseboats batteries came to life, Jack reached over and turned on the radio. At first all he got was static. Pressing each preset button, he got the same static from each station, until the last, where Chuck Berry’s Twist came out of the small speakers at the top of the control panel in a fuzzy patch that was merging with a competing station from Iowa. Jack turned the dial to the right and Chuck Berry faded away to a solemn, but clearly confused, deep baritone voice.

“We are not exactly sure at this moment. Governor Longview has not announced that we are in a state of emergency, but to recap the events that are now happening. It seems as if a biological terrorist attack has happened at the St. Louis International Airport where a 747  crashed while trying to land on the runway, just a half hour ago. There are no reported survivors and medical teams. As well as the National Guard are on the scene. In Washington the President has been advised of the incident. But no response has been forthcoming.

“In local news…” Unable to listen any further, Jack turned the radio off.

Getting up, Jack scrambled around the deck and entered the kitchen. Grabbing his cell phone off of the small kitchen table, Jack flipped up the cover and saw that he had full bars out here in the middle of the river, unlike when he was at the shore, where the rocky bluffs blocked a lot of phone and radio signals.

Hitting 911, he was met by the sound of a busy signal. “What the hell?” Jack swore as he pressed the disconnect button and redialed.

This time he heard the connection and a recorded voice said, “All lines are busy.”

In frustration Jack tossed the phone to the couch where it bounced off a cushion and smacked down onto the floor, disappearing in the darkness under the table.

Stepping back out onto the deck, Jack looked toward the cabin and saw the glow of fire behind the trees. Part of him told him to head back and see what he could do to help, but the terror of what he’d seen made his shoes stick to the floor, not allowing him to step to the helm and turn the motor on.

Allowing
the houseboat to be pulled down the Mississippi’s by its strong current. Jack sat in a lawn chair on the rear deck of his houseboat with an almost empty bottle of Red Dog beer in his hand. Locked into clamps on either side of his chair two fishing poles stood at the ready with their lines cast out into the great Mississippi trying to catch whatever would bite. He desperately needed to fry up a meal and try to forget the terror that had ravaged his family.

Lifting the amber bottle, Jack took the last of the beer in one long slow gulp, smacking his lips as the malted barley beverage burned down his throat. Jack hefted the empty bottle in his hand and then chucked it with all of his might off toward the shore on his left.

Surprised by his accuracy the bottle arced over the water. With a wet, hollow thunk, the bottle smacked alongside the head of the dead man who’d been following his progress down the river all morning. The bottle didn’t break as it gashed into the dead man’s head. Blocking its only remaining eye, for the other was a ragged hole, a large flap of his scalp free and flopping over the side of his face. Stunned momentarily, the dead man swung its arms in front of itself to keep upright. He grabbed the hunk of hair and flesh and ripped it from his skull, tearing even more skin and hair away.

As if ravished, the dead man shoved the flesh into its mouth and began to chew a large hunk of hair. Not stopping, the dead man continued to follow Jack. Long grasses along the shore line and stones made progress slow and he stumbled every few steps.

Shoe catching between two rocks, the dead man lost his balance and fell face first into the river. Splashing down, the dead man tried to regain his footing. Arms flailing against the reeds and mud, he was unsuccessful and slowly sank into the cold water.

“Drown, you ugly bastard!” Jack shouted.

Getting up from the light green chair, Jack walked back into the small kitchen and pulled open the large red cooler. Inside the last bottle of Red Dog called out to him as the amber bottle sat in two gallons of melted ice water. The bag that had contained ice, now floated to the side partially bloated with air. Grabbing the bottle, he twisted off the bottle cap and took a long drink. Letting the top of the cooler fall shut. Jack walked back to his chair.

Looking toward the shore where the dead man had been flailing, Jack lifted the bottle in salute and took a drink. Glad that the dead man had taken his advice and sunk to the bottom of the river.

“To yer watery grave,” Jack said as he lifted his bottle again and then took a seat back in the lawn chair.

Setting the bottle on the deck, he grabbed the pole to his left and started too real the line back in to recast. Suddenly the line snagged. Feeling the sharp jolt, Jack’s first thought was that something had finally taken his bait. But as he released the line to let the fish run and tire itself out. The line went slack and he knew that it must’ve snagged on the bottom.