Savage (10 page)

They were making their way across the uneven surface of the living room when they heard unfamiliar sounds.

Caroline stopped, looking around, attempting to zero in on the rustling noises. They seemed to be coming from all around them.

“Pretty kitties,” she said in a high, squeaky voice. “Is that you?” Again she made the noise that normally brought them to her. “Why are you hiding from Mommy?”

Mrs. Livingstone was the first to appear, her large head emerging from the shadows atop the china cabinet in the corner of the room.

“There you are,” Caroline said happily. The cat just stared at her with large, unblinking eyes, and as Caroline stared back, she noticed something of concern. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but it was something that she was going to need to check once she had the chance.

Is that some kind of a film coating Mrs. Livingstone's right eye?

Binky, Shadow, Cavendish, and Nero were the next to appear, each of them silently emerging from their hiding places.

Are their right eyes looking funny too?

She was about to mention this to her son when she noticed the strangest of things, odd at first and then, as the realization of what she was looking at sank in,
disturbing
.

“Do you see that?” she asked Isaac, wanting to be sure that it wasn't a trick of what little light was being thrown by the candle.

“I do,” he answered, his hand going up again to play with his hearing aid. This time she did not stop him. She was more concerned about what she was seeing.

Her cats were perched atop pieces of furniture, boxes, and years of accumulation, watching her and her boy with unwavering gazes.

Around the cats, in numbers too great to comprehend, were mice.

And the mice were watching them too.

“Did you hear what I said?” Janice Berthold asked her husband, who was lying dead upon the floor. “I hate you.”

Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she could just about make out the shape of her husband's body. She pulled back a foot and kicked him as hard as she could.

It felt surprisingly good, but not as good as the sensation she'd experienced when she'd smashed the statue into his face. She felt a flush of warmth on her cheeks and needles of sweat breaking out over her body.

Janice looked down again at the body before her, searching for any sign of movement, but she saw nothing.

Have I actually done it?
she wondered.

It was something she had dreamed about doing for far longer than she cared to think. There had even been times when driving with him that she'd been tempted to reach across and grab the wheel, to send them careening off into space with the hope that he would die horribly, but she would survive.

She'd never wanted to take the risk that he might survive as well.

Continuing to watch the body at her feet, she still saw no signs of life, but she had to be sure. Janice squatted down to the floor, tentatively reaching a hand out to grab his wrist and check for a pulse. Her hand landed in something warm and thick puddling on the floor beneath her husband and quickly recoiled. She could see the dark, nearly black blood covering the side of her hand and almost cried out in disgust but managed to hold it together.

A little blood was a small price to pay to guarantee that he was actually dead.

Pulling herself together, she reached out again, taking hold of his limp wrist, feeling for a heartbeat. As far as she could tell, there was nothing, but she still didn't trust it. Letting his hand drop back to the floor, she reached up to the collar of his shirt, her fingers searching for his neck, where she would again attempt to verify if he still lived.

And what if he does?

Janice's mind raced. She supposed that she could always hit him again with the statue or maybe just pinch his nostrils closed and cover his mouth. She imagined that would do the trick as well.

His skin was going clammy as she pressed the flesh around his neck for signs that his heart was still pumping. As with his wrist, there was nothing that she could find.

A giddy laughter bubbled up from somewhere deep and dark; she might have actually done it.

But her happiness was short lived, almost immediately replaced with wondering what she was going to do now. Different scenarios began to play within her mind. She could call the police and say that there had been an attempted burglary, and that there had been a struggle and . . . If she used that one she was going to have to be certain to either dispose of the murder weapon or thoroughly wipe it down. She could always dispose of the body, and then report him missing. Disposal possibilities danced through her fevered mind.

Janice had been thinking about these things for a very long time, and now all she had to do was pick the one that guaranteed she would not be suspected of any wrongdoing.

She was trying to remember where Ronald stored their saws and plastic leaf tarp when she experienced the eerie sensation that she was being watched.

Still squatting by her husband's body, Janice slowly turned toward the bedroom doorway.

Alfred sat there, perfectly still, watching her.

“It's all right, baby,” she told the dog. Janice reached out her uninjured hand, trying to coax the Frenchie to come closer. Alfred remained in that spot, large dark eyes fixed upon her.

At first she thought it was just light reflecting unusually off the surface of the dog's right eye, but the longer she stared . . .

“Alfred, is there something wrong with your eye?”

She climbed to her feet, slowly approaching the animal, not wanting him to run.

“Let me see,” she said, focusing on what appeared to be some kind of glistening—almost metallic-looking—film over his right eye.

Looks like another trip to the vet,
she thought, annoyed that this latest ailment hadn't manifested until after his last visit to the veterinarian's office.

Alfred suddenly sprang at her, forty pounds of French bulldog connecting with her midsection and knocking her backward into the room, where she tripped over her own feet and landed upon the corpse of her husband . . .

. . . who turned beneath her with a low, horrible moan and wrapped his arms around her.

Not a corpse at all.

Rich reached the bottom of the wooden steps and stepped onto the dirt floor, his flashlight beam playing over the cellar space.

“Find anything?” Sidney called from the kitchen upstairs.

“Give me a freakin' minute, would you?” he asked, annoyed.

They were all still hungry, even after the Starbursts, and he told them that he thought he remembered seeing some canned goods down in the basement.

Sidney thought it was a great idea for him to look, so what choice did he have? If it had been Cody's idea, he probably would have just told him to choke the last Starburst down or suffer.

But it had been Sidney who'd asked, and he would have gone out into the hurricane to pick her wild berries if she'd asked. Rich had secretly harbored a crush on Sidney for the last two years or so. He had never done anything about it, her being with Cody and all, but now . . .

“Anything?” Sidney called playfully to him again.

“Will you shut it?” he said as he walked across the unfinished cellar to where his parents had set up some shelving to store emergency items for times very much like this. The storm was still going pretty fast and furious outside, and he hadn't a clue how long they might be holed up there, so he hoped that there was something on the shelves even remotely appetizing, or they were screwed.

Rich navigated the cramped space. The place had pretty much become storage for junk; stacks of old patio furniture, boat cleaning supplies, and boxes of beach toys were scattered about the room, placed upon wooden pallets to keep them up from the damp dirt floor.

The edge of his flashlight beam caught movement, and he shined it down to the floor to see the segmented body of a good-size centipede disappearing beneath a pile of garden tools. A shudder of revulsion went through his body as he reached the shelves.

“Bingo,” he said, finding that there were more cans on display than he expected. He shined the flashlight beam onto the cans to read the contents. There were lots of vegetables—peas and green beans making up the majority—but he doubted that was what Sidney had a hankering for.

And that had been the problem for years.

He'd wanted to talk to her about how he felt, but he was never quite sure how she would react. There were times when he thought he was getting a clear message and would psyche himself up to tell her his feelings, but then she'd say something about Cody and her relationship, and the wind would get totally taken out of his sails. That was just how it had been, and he'd pretty much given up on anything ever happening, until this afternoon in the marina parking lot when things suddenly changed.

“You'd better not be eating all the good stuff,” Sidney warned from the kitchen.

He ignored her, reaching for more cans and hoping for something other than vegetables. On the shelf below the veggies he found a can of SpaghettiOs with meatballs and felt as though he'd hit the lottery.

“Oh yes,” he said, taking the can, discovering that there were other delectable meals on the shelf as well—cans of cheese ravioli and corned beef hash. He tried to take them all into his arms while still holding the flashlight, which resulted in the SpaghettiOs falling to the ground.

“Shit,” he muttered, bending down carefully so as not to cause the other cans to tumble, and felt around for the wayward canned feast. His fingers touched it but also something else—something that tickled the flesh of his hand before the incredible sting of pain.

“Yarrrah!” Rich screamed, dropping all the cans as he pulled his hand away and held it up before the light. The skin had already started to redden and swell.

Something had bitten him.

The image of that centipede crawling beneath the tools filled his head, and he shuddered. Whatever it was that had bitten him, it hurt like hell.

“What's going on down there?” Sidney called out.

“Nothing,” Rich said, feeling embarrassed. “I'm coming up with a feast fit for royalty.”

He shined his light around the fallen cans and saw that there was nothing in their immediate area. But as he squatted down to retrieve them, the dirt seemed to come alive.

“What the f . . . ,” he began, the beam of his flashlight still illuminating the ground.

There were bugs coming up out of the dirt. Not just one or two, but lots, hundreds, and it wasn't even just one particular kind. He saw carpenter ants, centipedes, earwigs, and some kind of beetle that he wasn't at all familiar with.

There were all coming up out of the damp earth of the cellar floor and crawling toward him.

Rich backed up, deciding to leave the cans, and felt a sudden pain beneath the collar of his shirt.

“Ahhh!” He slapped his hand to his neck and felt something crunch and squirt with the impact. Bringing his hand away from his neck, he shined the light on his fingers and saw the remains of a pretty large spider.

“That's it,” he said, turning for the stairs. The beam of his light briefly touched the floor, where in every inch of dirt crawled some kind of disgusting bug.

He didn't understand what it was that he was seeing, telling himself that maybe the storm had something to do with it, the foul weather somehow stirring up the bugs that lived beneath his house. Before reaching the stairs, he glanced up to the ceiling and saw that it wasn't just the floor that was crawling with life.

Spiders. There were spiders everywhere that the light of the flashlight touched, and they all seemed to be heading toward him.

Rich ran for the stairs. He could feel the bodies of the harder-shelled insects crunching beneath his sneakers as he ran across them, but that was nothing compared to the absolute horror that he experienced as he saw the spiders dropping down on their silken lines, some landing upon him and crawling up toward his face at incredible speeds.

Crying out, he flailed his arms crazily, slapping at his body, diving for the first step, and nearly smashing his face as he fell, sprawling across the ascending stairs.

“What's going on?” Sidney asked, appearing in the doorway above. He had dropped the flashlight and had no intention of looking for it.

“Get out of the way,” he said, trying to keep the panic from his voice as he got his feet beneath him and sprinted up the steps.

“Rich, what is it?” she asked, obviously concerned. He gripped her by the shoulders and moved her out of the way as he slammed the cellar door closed.

Cody was smiling nervously by the granite island. “What?” he asked. “I thought you said you found food?”

He was about to tell Cody what he could do with the food when he felt movement just beneath his hairline, followed by sudden pain.

“Damn it!” he screamed, slapping at the back of his neck.

“What the hell is going on?” Sidney asked.

A spider the size of a quarter landed on the floor and started to crawl toward Rich's sneakered foot. He stomped on it, grinding it into the tile floor.

“Gross,” Sidney said. “That was huge.”

“They're all over the cellar,” he managed, his voice sounding raspy and out of breath.

“Spiders?” Cody asked.

“Everything!” Rich shouted.

He thought he felt more movement and reacted violently, tearing his shirt up and over his head and shaking it out.

“Are you all right?” Sidney asked.

He could see that she was smiling, trying not to laugh.

Cody didn't have that willpower. “Dude, you should see yourself.”

“You should see what it's like down there,” Rich said. “The place is infested.”

“Infested?” Sidney asked. “Did you ever have a bug problem before?”