The Hell Season (19 page)

He took in a deep breath, let it out slowly. All this thinking and worrying, what good was it doing? It wasn’t bringing him closer to any answers. And it sure as hell wasn’t making the night any easier to endure. Julia had always said he worried too much.

“Why do you do this to yourself?” she would ask when she found him in one of his moods, drinking and brooding about things beyond his control. War. Terrorism. Economic recession. The looming threat of overpopulation. Mankind’s place in a vast and seemingly uncaring universe... These were the types of things that he would obsess over, usually triggered by the evening news or some political or environmental website. The drinking only made things worse. No wonder she had threatened to leave him a few years back.

“You need help.” He could recall the words as clearly as the day she’d spoken them. “Professional help. Get some or you’re going to end up losing me and the kids. I can’t keep going through this and I’m certainly not going to put the children through it.” He’d gone to Alcoholics Anonymous, ended up seeing a psychiatrist. For the most part, it had helped as far as the drinking was concerned and the way he handled his fears. But as for the fears themselves, they never really went away. He’d just found different ways of dealing with them. Eventually he came to realize that the fears might never would go away, that they were part of who he was and would be with him until the day he died. Unless, that is, he was brought back, Reborn and possibly immortal—who knew?—and was forced to live with his fears until the end of time.

*

I can recall the day that Robert came home from the hospital with almost perfect clarity. He had been born six weeks premature. Julia and I thought for sure that we were going to lose him in spite of what the doctors had told us. He was so small. Underdeveloped as he was, he was susceptible to any number of airborne infections and so had to spend his first few weeks inside the clear plastic walls of an incubator. When he finally emerged from this second womb and was allowed to come home with us, I remember thinking what a miracle modern medicine was and how we would have certainly lost our son without its seemingly divine intervention.

That first night home I couldn’t sleep, not a wink. I pulled a chair into the spare bedroom that had been converted into a nursery and sat next to the crib where my son rested through all those long hours of darkness. On occasion, I would stand and lean down into the crib, lightly place my hand upon the chest of his tiny body, make sure that his heart still beat, that he still pulled breath into his lungs. Then I would sit back down in the chair, a book in hand, and try to pass the hours reading until morning finally came. A futile effort, it turned out, for I could not concentrate on the words and found myself repeatedly perusing the same paragraphs. Eventually the sun did rise and with the dawn some of my fears were allayed. My son had survived the night, surely the day would be easier. As I stood there staring down into the crib, I felt a hand alight upon my shoulder. I placed my own hand over it, felt the cold touch of the wedding band on one of the fingers, the ring that I had put there on what was undoubtedly one of the happiest days of my life.

“Thomas, get some sleep,” my wife told me.

Just then, Robert’s eyes opened and he looked up at me and a tiny smile crept onto his face. I smiled back, felt the tears well up in my eyes.

“He’s going to be fine,” Julia told me. “Nothing’s going to happen to him. We won’t let it.”

He grew into a fine and healthy boy. Our daughter, Jenny, a healthy young girl. But still I worried. Julia and I couldn’t always be there to protect them. What if something totally beyond our control happened to them? What if one of them was hit by a car or taken by some demented stranger in a moment when one of us wasn’t watching? All that silly, pointless worrying. I suppose it’s the kind of thing most parents go through. But as it turns out, I had a right to be worried. We all did. In all my imaginings, though, in all the awful scenarios that came to mind, what ended up happening was not something I had ever considered. How could I have, really? How could I?

*

With dawn the storm broke. For Thomas it had been a restless night. He had tried to get some sleep but, not surprisingly, his mind had refused to shut down, just kept churning away at the same unanswerable questions, the same futile suppositions. At first, when he stepped outside for a breath of morning air which was heavy with humidity and the scents of the recently departed storm, he thought his fatigue was clouding his senses, that his eyes must be deceiving him. But he was all too aware of what sort of world he now lived in, of the endlessly strange possibilities it presented.

He turned and looked at the person who had spoken, saw that it was a woman maybe ten or fifteen years his senior. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, the beginnings of crow’s feet visible at the corners of her green eyes. Her nose was thin and long between slightly sunken cheeks, the latter feature no doubt a result of her recent suffering from the plague that had laid Thomas and so many of the others low. She met Thomas’s look with a piercing gaze which held him enthralled for a few moments. He had a strange feeling that she was staring down into his soul, was able to read exactly what sort of person he was there, the triumphs and failures he’d experienced throughout the years, the many fears that had controlled so much of his existence. It was a rather unnerving feeling, to say the least. He’d seen her on any number of occasions over the past weeks but had never formally introduced himself. There had always been something about her that had prompted him to turn away, to find some other pressing piece of business when she was near. Something in the way she looked at people, too directly, too closely.

“Patricia Beaumont, by the way,” she said and offered him her hand.

It seemed there would be no escaping this encounter.

“Thomas Wright,” he said after clearing his throat. As he took her hand he noticed what she held in the other one: a Bible. He certainly hoped that she wasn’t here to preach to him or, worse yet, save the soul he imagined she could read as easily as the holy book she had with her. After they’d released hands she held the book up before her chest, the words “Holy Bible” facing him.

“You know it’s all within these pages,” she said. “Well, maybe not all of it, but the important stuff. Are you a believer?”

“Not really,” said Thomas, seeing no reason not to be honest with the woman. “Religion never appealed to me. It always seemed so… unnecessary.”

“What a strange thing to say.” The look on Patricia’s face let Thomas know that she really was quite perplexed by his response. “Even before all this—“ She waved a hand around, trying to signify everything surrounding them. “—I would have thought it rather obvious that the words of the Good Lord were more necessary in recent years than at any other time in history.”

Was he really going to have this conversation with this woman, right here, right now, beneath that blood red sky? He was surprised to discover it was exactly what he intended to do. There was something compelling about her, something about those eyes, the way she looked at him with such conviction… He wanted to hear what she had to say. Maybe she
did
have the answers. How wonderful that would be. To have an explanation for everything that was going on. To have his mind set at ease. To sleep through the night again. To have hope, real hope, of being reunited with his family…

Patricia was thumbing through her Bible, stopped when she found the page she wanted. “Ah, here we go,” she said.

And that’s when the great worm growled.

It was a low pitched, deafening sound, like a foghorn amplified tenfold. Everyone present clapped their hands over their ears—including Patricia who, without thinking, let the book she held fall to the ground—and turned in the direction of the sound. The worm was thrashing about, its movements felt in the ground beneath Thomas’s feet. The sound went on and on, a punishing wave that rolled through Thomas’s body, set the bones within his skin vibrating, threatened to alter the rhythm of his heart. As everyone watched, the pinkish-gray flesh along the side of the beast ruptured and a gush of murky fluids poured forth onto the street where the creature lay. Its convulsions escalated as did the force of its cry. When Thomas pulled in a shuddering breath he inhaled the stench that had escaped the worm along with the liquid which was quickly drying into a thick paste covering the black surface of the road. Finally, the roaring of the monster subsided as did its thrashing movements until it lay still and silent, its massive bulk deflated like a hot air balloon left to cool and wither.

As Thomas pulled his hands away from his ears he realized what must have occurred, a theory confirmed by the sight of the squirming, humanoid figures struggling to free themselves from the viscous substance that held them—for the moment, it seemed—to the street like so many insects stuck to a piece of flypaper.

“It’s given birth,” he muttered, making an effort to breathe in through his mouth so as not to be overwhelmed by the foul odor of the dead beast.

“Yes, I’m afraid it has,” said Patricia from where she stood beside him.

Then someone shouted, “Out of the way!” and pushed past Thomas before running across the parking lot, toward the street where the worm’s demonic offspring were attempting to rise to their feet. It was Ron. Thomas took off running after him, filled with concern for what the other man might be planning. Between the parking lot and the road was a stretch of grass where Ron stopped, Thomas coming up next to him. The two of them stood near the roadside mere feet from the curb against which the thick substance from inside the worm had pooled. The demonic figures were maybe ten yards away. They were doing a strange flickering thing, becoming momentarily invisible before reappearing again. It was a disorienting effect, like watching somebody move through a pitch black room where a randomly timed strobe light had been activated. A few of the creatures were on their knees now, the rest in sitting positions, struggling to rise. It was clear that they would all be standing within the next few minutes. Then they would be walking. And after that? Thomas felt a sickness rise inside of him at the very thought of it.

Down here, this close to the giant corpse, the stench was nearly overwhelming. Cupping a hand over the lower half of his face, Thomas asked Ron in a muffled voice, “What are you going to do?”

Ron didn’t say anything, showed Thomas the handgun he was holding, took aim at one of the creatures nearest them and squeezed off a shot. The demon, which had nearly risen to a standing position, disappeared for a fraction of a second just as Ron fired. When it reappeared it seemed to be unharmed in anyway. The next shot was equally ineffective. Same with the one after that. As Thomas watched, the hellish creature opened its mouth, revealed rows of long, pointed teeth and a black, barbed tongue which it used to lick the air like a snake before emitting a rough, barking sound. The noise was echoed by its twelve brethren.

Laughter
, Thomas realized.
They’re laughing at him
.

Ron let loose with a cry of rage and fired off round after round. When the clip was empty, all those bullets having done nothing to harm the demons at all, he reached into a pocket of his camouflage pants and pulled out another, reloaded and began firing off more shots. The demons kept laughing and flickering as they all reached standing positions, started their slow, inexorable march toward the two men waiting in the grass and the ineffective weapon one of them so angrily wielded. How many shots were fired? Thomas wasn’t sure. Twenty? Thirty? When Ron went to reload again, Thomas placed a hand on his arm and said, “We’ve got to go. Now.”

Ron turned and looked at him. “Go?” he asked. “Go where?” His eyes were wide and crazed. “You go. I’ll do what I can to hold them back.”

“No way. Come on!” Thomas pulled on the other man’s arm but Ron just shrugged him off, finished reloading, and started firing again.

“Get the fuck out of here, man!” he yelled.

Reluctantly, Thomas complied.

He turned and jogged back toward the parking lot. The gunshots and the laughter continued. Then there was a shriek, a human cry of pain. Not wanting to but knowing that he had no choice in the matter, Thomas looked back over his shoulder to see what was happening to his friend. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

Once free of the viscous substance the demons must have moved faster than Ron was anticipating. Already, three of them were on him, tearing at his clothes and flesh with their long, wicked looking claws and teeth. They weren’t flickering now, were solidly entrenched in this reality for the moment. The screaming didn’t last long. With a quick motion, one of the creatures ripped out Ron’s throat. And that, as they say, was that.

Turning back toward the store at the far side of the lot, Thomas ran for all he was worth. With every step he feared he might be taken down and mauled like his friend had been. The front of the store seemed so far away and his feet felt as though they were moving in nightmare-speed, much too slow to ever carry him away from harm. He ran past the cars parked randomly in the lot and finally approached the store’s entrance.

“Get inside!” he shouted at those standing there, increasingly surprised with every passing moment that he was still alive. As the doors were pulled open and the people began to file into the store, Thomas looked back once again, wondering why the demons had not taken him down. They had not given chase. All thirteen of them were still over by the grassy area where Ron had been killed, their backs to the Wal-Mart and the people there as if none of it interested them very much. Despite the horror and anger and sadness he felt at his friend’s death, Thomas was curious as to what held their attention.