Suffer the Children (33 page)

By the time she finished, she’d recovered about a pint and a half in a collection of mugs covered in Saran plastic wrap. The mugs went straight into the fridge. Coupled with Mitch’s blood, she now had three pints.
Six hours.

Now she had to take care of Ross.

She grabbed his ankles and pulled. By the time she’d maneuvered him to the top of the stairs, her clothes were soaked through with blood and sweat.

She stopped to turn on the basement light and yank more of her hair out.

I’M HUNGRY!

Josh’s voice, clear as day. She turned, but he wasn’t there.

“Go back to bed!” she called out. “Mommy’s busy!”

She pulled the body onto the stairs. His head thumped on the first step. The second.

On the third, his eyes popped open.

She reared back and gripped the banister in time to prevent herself from falling.

The body slid past her feet and shot down the stairs, riding the plastic bags. Ramona watched it thud to a halt near the bottom. For a moment, she’d thought he’d woken up. He hadn’t. He was the kind of dead you didn’t come back from. His body lay half-naked in a tangle of limbs and rags. His head had turned farther than it was supposed to. One eye looked at her from beyond. The other had closed in a mischievous wink.

Bile surged in her throat. She swallowed acid.

Then she laughed as if it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen. Laughed until she bowed her head onto her knees and let it all out in a long keening wail.

She was still crying as she dragged him into the storage room. The body left a trail of blood and chunks of brain on the carpet. Another mess to clean up.

Ramona grunted as she pulled him the final distance into the dark cool space and laid him to rest among boxes of baby clothes, books, toys, tax returns. She found an old sheet and covered him with it.

She looked down at the body. “I’m so sorry, Ross. At any other time, you would have been the one.”

Then she fell to her knees and threw up her entire dinner. Mac and cheese and wine rushed out of her mouth and nose in a geyser.

“It’s not you,” she gasped, spitting strands of bile. Then vomited again, another liquid torrent. “It’s me.”

40 days after Resurrection

Nate flew at her with a hiss. She caught his wrists, but he was surprisingly strong.

“If you keep this up, you are going to be in so much trouble, young man.”

She’d given too much blood. He was stronger than her now. His eyes flashed with this sudden knowledge. He looked up at her and grinned.

“Doug, I need your help! Quick!”

Doug stomped down the hall, gripped Nate’s arm, and shoved him into his room. He slammed the door as the boy hurled his body against it. Next door, Megan scrabbled at the wood and screamed to be let out.

“Daddeeeeeeeeee!”

When Doug had brought home four pints of blood, Joan had fallen to her knees and cried. They’d woken the kids four times over four days.

Each time, it was harder to keep them in line.

Today, they were uncontrollable.

The tantrums started when Joan told Nate the ice cream she’d
promised during his last wake-up wasn’t coming. The stores were out of it; she couldn’t find it anywhere. Both kids went absolutely berserk, demanding she find some, and when she said no, they tore the living room apart. Then Nate ripped the throat out of one of Megan’s teddy bears with his teeth. Joan watched him eat a handful of the stuffing with a growl that would have been comical if it weren’t real.

Joan and Doug had no choice but to force them back into their rooms.

Nate now threw himself against the door, which bounced on its hinges.

“IT’S NOT FAIR!” the boy howled. “I’M HUNGRY!”

He hurled his body against the door again. Again. Again.

“I DON’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE!”

“Daddeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

Doug sat in front of Nate’s door with his back against it. Joan did the same with Megan’s. They listened to their kids smash everything in their rooms.

Joan glanced at her watch. Forty minutes to go before the kids returned to sleep.

Something cracked against the door behind her.

Megan: “Let me
out
!”

“We’ll let you out when you kids learn to behave!” she shouted back.

Nate punched and kicked his door in a frenzy.

“FUCK PISS SHIT! FUCK PISS CUNT! YOU LIKE THAT?”

She looked at Doug with hope that he might have some idea what to do next, but he sat with his eyes closed, as if he’d reached some Zen place where the commotion couldn’t bother him. Then she saw the dimple winking on his cheek. She knew it well. He was grinding his teeth in silent rage.

She’d toyed with the thought that maybe they’d gotten a bad batch of blood, but she knew that wasn’t the case. The children had been changing for weeks; it was only now getting worse. Each time they woke up, they were missing a little more of themselves.

They were like jigsaw puzzles that lost a few pieces every time they were put together. After a while, it got hard to tell what the complete picture was supposed to be.

Now they were changing into something else. Something new.

“I’M HUNGRY! I’LL CUT MY THROAT AND REALLY DIE THIS TIME! THEN YOU’LL BE SORRY, MOM!”

Joan started to rise. Doug’s eyes flashed open. He shook his head. She pressed her fingers into her ears and wept.

“YOU PROMISED! YOU PROMISED, AND YOU’LL BE SORRY!”

It seemed to go on forever. At last, she heard a thump as Nate crumpled to the floor. Another as Megan fell. Then all sounds stopped. The house was quiet.

Doug stood and stared at a spot on the floor with frightening intensity.

Joan slowly returned to her feet and waited for the head rush to pass. She felt compelled to whisper, even though she knew she didn’t have to do so. “We should clean—”

Doug reared and punched the wall. A picture toppled from its hook to crash against the floor. He withdrew his fist and eyed the crater it had left behind with something akin to satisfaction.

Joan watched him, too terrified to move or say a word, as he turned and stomped off. She heard his feet pound the stairs.

Only when she heard the TV turn on did she remember to breathe.

She stood still as the shadows around her deepened with the failing light. If she moved, she might disturb her home’s fragile equilibrium. Downstairs, Doug watched a daytime rerun of some old sitcom. She listened to commercials for children’s toys, suicide hotlines, fast food, antidepressants. Her own bedroom was just a few feet away. Bed sounded like a good idea. A nice long nap, maybe ride the sleep train all the way to tomorrow. Then she’d wake up and undo the wreckage the kids had made, if she had the energy.

She crept downstairs instead. Doug sat expressionless in his favorite chair while the sitcom’s laugh track roared on the TV. He sipped at a
can of Miller High Life. Three o’clock in the afternoon, and already well on his way to getting drunk as a skunk. Broken toys and plates and cups and pieces of a broken table lamp littered the carpet around him.

She entered the room cautiously and turned off the TV with the remote he’d tossed onto the coffee table. “Doug?”

He stared at the blank TV screen and drank his beer.

“Doug, we need to talk.”

“I’m right here, babe. Start talking.”

“It’s important.”

He took another sip from his can. “Okay.”

“I think we need to start thinking about letting them go.”

He took a final drink and crushed the can in his fist. “I don’t. Now we’re done talking.”

“This isn’t about us. Whether we love them or not.”

He reached down by the side of the chair and cracked open another beer. “We can handle it.”

“I said it’s not about us. It’s about them.”

“We’re keeping them alive, ain’t we? That’s the job.”

She sat on the couch. “I think they’re dying. I mean, I think their
brains
are dying. I think they’re falling apart.”

“They were tough today,” he conceded. He inspected his hand, patched with a series of Band-Aids, where Megan had bitten him hard enough to draw blood.

“They’re not the same anymore. They’re changing. It’s like they’re turning wild.”

“Let’s not get dramatic. Nate’s frustrated. He knows he has to go back to sleep almost as soon as he wakes up, and he doesn’t like it. He acts out, and Megan follows his lead.”

“It’s more than that, and you know it,” Joan said. “If you count just the time they’re alive, they never sleep, and they eat almost constantly. They barely even know who they are anymore.” She paused to collect her thoughts. “Okay. An example. Did you see Nate wearing his Giants hat today?”

“Nope,” he said. “He hasn’t worn it for a while.”

“About a week ago, I asked him why he wasn’t wearing it. Know what he said? He said he couldn’t remember ever having worn it. His favorite hat. Didn’t even know he was in Little League.”

Doug chewed his mustache. “Anything else?”

“I was trying to remember the end of one of the Harry Potter books and asked him if he remembered. He didn’t remember either. Then I realized he didn’t even know who Harry Potter was. Doug, he’s read every one of those books.”

“Megan . . . can’t remember who Major was,” Doug said. “She didn’t even know we’d had a dog.”

“And the anger . . . Doug, that anger they’re showing is more than just tantrums. Their personalities are changing. The way they look at us sometimes . . . you know?”

“Yeah.” He took a long pull on his beer.

“And the biting . . . I think they’re trying to
feed
, Doug.”

This revelation surprised even her as she said it, but it made sense.

“They’re changing,” he said. “Okay, you win. So what do you want to do about it?”

“I don’t know! I think . . . I think we need to start thinking about letting them sleep.”

“
Sleep
,” he said with a wince. “You mean
die
.”

She didn’t back down. “Yes. Die.”

“Just like that, huh?”

“
No
, Doug,” she said, pissed off. “
Not
just like that. Nothing about this is
just like that
.”

“I don’t care if the kids are changing,” Doug said. “They can grow gills for all I care. They’re my kids, Joanie. Got it? We’re in this now. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“I
do
get it. They’re
my
kids too.” She closed her eyes and expelled her anger in a loud sigh. “Doug. Doug, listen to me. There’s no more blood anyway. What else can we do?”

“I’ll take care of it, babe.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He turned and looked her directly in the eye for the first time. “It means I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Joan thought of the women at the supermarket, crouching over their victim like a pack of jackals. Doug had already robbed a blood bank and told her the story of how his four pints could have saved a life. She remembered what he’d done to Major.

“Whatever you do, leave me out of it,” she told him. “I think I’m finished.”

“Then we’re done here,” he said with maddening calm. He finished his beer. “Don’t worry about a thing, babe. I’ll take it from here.”

The ties of blood are strong. Others less so.

She’d fought and suffered for her children for over a month, and so had Doug. She’d given up her blood and her health. They’d gone to hell and back.

But right at this moment, their marriage was crushed with the ease of Doug squeezing one of his beer cans.

40 days after Resurrection

After Joan tramped upstairs for a nap, Doug lit a cigarette and made a phone call.

“Russell?”

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“It’s Doug Cooper. You said to call you if, uh, I needed to, uh . . .” He didn’t know how to put it.

“Glad you did.” Russell gave him an address. “How soon can you get there?”

“Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty.”

“You own a gun, right?”

“I own several.”

“Good. Bring your favorite,” Russell said, and disconnected the call.

Doug hung up with a sense of having done something big. This was what he wanted—to find like-minded people and team up with them to get what they needed.

It sure beat the alternative, which was to walk next door, ring Art Foley’s doorbell, and hit the old guy over the head with a claw hammer.

The third option, listening to Joan and letting the kids stay asleep, didn’t deserve any consideration. His wife sounded just like her old man, saying the kids were better off dead.

Dead is dead.
Anything
is better than dead.

Every instinct screamed at him to protect them. It was his only real task in life, if one thought about it. Without that, what was he?

Joan had an easier time letting go because she believed the kids would wake up in Heaven. Doug believed in God but thought an afterlife of endless happiness sounded too good to be true. Like just another rip-off. If it was that great, why didn’t everybody just kill themselves?

There was only one type of life after death he felt certain about. Only one he could count on. One day, he’d die, and all that would be left of him on this earth would be his children. By protecting them, he was safeguarding his one crack at immortality.

Empties spilled onto the floor as he stood, adding to a mess he didn’t care about. He walked to the bottom of the stairs. Joan was sleeping. He could hear her rapid, shallow breaths. She’d said she was
done
, and she meant it. His wife was at the end of her rope.

He wasn’t. Not by a long shot. He went into the den and unlocked the cabinet where he kept his guns. If Russell wanted firepower, Doug would bring it. He opted for the Mossberg 500, a camouflage-painted, twenty-gauge, pump-action repeater he used to hunt pheasants.

Knowing its purpose, the gun felt right in his hands.

I’ll take it from here
, he’d said. Damn straight.

He opened a box of shells and loaded the Mossberg. He pocketed
the rest. Then he put on his L
OVIN’
L
ANSDOWNE
cap and jacket and went into the garage to start up his truck.