The Hell Season (7 page)

My home life had always been good too. My parents had been supportive in anything I chose to do. Maybe to a fault.

Nope, there was nothing from my formative years that should have left any long term emotional scars. Nothing that should have required the levels of self medication to which I was subjecting myself.

The first time I can recall suffering any sort of panic attack was during college. Whenever a big test was coming up or I had to speak in front of the class, I’d have trouble sleeping for nights on end before the event and sometimes it took all of my will to face the test or to stand up in front of the class like that. It’s a wonder I ever got my degree, now that I think back on it. Seems I’m just no good at dealing with certain kinds of pressure. And then came the career, the family, a son and a daughter who depended on me... Sometimes it felt like too much, threatened to overwhelm me.

It was Julia who suggested I see a psychiatrist. The panic attacks had gotten pretty bad. There were times when I had trouble breathing. Light-headedness. A physical checkup said that everything was fine. For my age, I was in pretty good shape. Blood pressure a little high but nothing some small changes in my diet couldn’t set straight. So I started eating better, signed up at a local gym and got some exercise. When these two alterations to my day to day routine did little to nothing regarding the levels of anxiety I continued to experience, I finally gave in and went to see the shrink. He put me on medication, suggested writing about my feelings, the things that worried me, especially the things I felt I had no control over. He told me that alcohol would more than likely only make things worse.

And then Hell came to my town and… Well, if you’ve read this far then you know exactly what happened. I turned to the bottle. And quickly realized that my psychiatrist had been right. The alcohol didn’t help. The anxiety was returning. Intensifying. Even with the aid of the pills it was coming back, fast and furious. As I sat there with Ron and Tanya—those were the names of my rescuers, I came to discover—I could feel the tendrils of panic creeping up my spine and tickling the insides of my guts. And all those snakes, right beyond those walls… God, it was a miracle I didn’t go over the edge, right then and there, just run outside and let those ghastly creatures do what they would to me. Good thing Ron had stepped up and talked me out of leaving that room. That was twice he had saved me. To prevent making it a third time, it was obvious I was going to have to get my head on straight. And in a hurry, too.

No more drinking
, I promised myself over and over.
Whatever happens
.

And for the rest of that awful season in Hell it was a promise I was able to keep.

*

“So where’s it all coming from?” asked Thomas as he ate a granola bar, washed it down with an energy drink Tanya had given him from the duffel bag.

“You haven’t seen it?” she asked.

The three of them were sitting on the floor between the bed and the entrance to the room. There was an oval shaped green and brown carpet covering the wood flooring. The duffel bag had been placed inside the triangle the three of them formed. Thomas was beginning to feel the pain reliever’s healing powers kick in. He and his two companions had been sitting like that for about fifteen or twenty minutes now. Quick introductions had been made.

Ron was all of twenty-five years old. Ex-US Marine. Had gotten a degree and a job in computer programming—all courtesy of the military—had moved to Cleveland two years back and was making a pretty good living as part of a team improving internet security for a national banking chain. He was back in town visiting his folks who he hadn’t seen in over a year, who had now disappeared much as Thomas’s family had. He couldn’t help but wonder, of course, if he’d ever see them again.

Tanya was an EMT working out of the hospital where Thomas had first met Gerald. She too had done a stint in the military, three years with the Army, half that time in Iraq. At thirty years of age, she’d been through enough stressful situations to at least partially inure her to what was currently happening to the town where she now lived and worked. But really, what kind of training could ever prepare anyone for something like that?

She and Ron had nearly collided—Ron in his sporty little Nissan, Tanya driving the ambulance she’d taken from the hospital—during the blood storm at an intersection where the lights were not working. Each of them, like Thomas, had been asleep when the great disappearance had occurred, Ron in the guest room of his parent’s house, Tanya on a couch in the worker’s lounge at the hospital in the middle of a twenty-four hour shift.

“There’s a…
hole
… there?” Thomas wasn’t quite sure what they were getting at.

“And you think that’s where all of this…” Thomas motioned vaguely with his hand. “The rain… the bugs… now, the snakes… is coming from.”

Tanya was shaking her head. “No, we don’t think so.”

“We know so,” finished Ron.

“How could you know such a thing?” Thomas took another swig of his energy drink. A second bottle of the stuff and he might just start to feel human again.

“Because we were there when the bugs came out,” said Tanya.

“Yeah, we had pulled up to it in the ambulance,” Ron chimed in. “There were a few other people there standing at the edge, looking down into it. We were about to get out when there’s this god-awful roaring sound. And up out of the hole comes the swarm.”

“Good thing we were still in the vehicle,” said Tanya, a grave expression on her face. “The poor SOB’s who were standing there... The swarm just tore them apart.”

“We went back there this morning,” said Tanya. “Saw the snakes come out of the hole, drove the hell out of there. Until the ambulance blew a tire, that is. Not far from here. Just down the road. Then we walked. Saw you sleeping out front.” She smiled. “Guess it’s a good thing we came this way, huh?”

Thomas suppressed a shudder. “Yeah, I guess so.”

It was nice sitting there talking like that. Thomas was able to take his mind off of the situation he was in. At least a little bit. For that short while he was almost able to forget about what had happened to Dana and Gerald, about the snakes outside. Almost.

“I guess the question now would be,” said Thomas, “what do we do about all this?”

Ron opened his mouth to say something when there came a loud thumping sound at the door. Quickly, the three of them were on their feet. “What the hell,” said Tanya. The sound came again. Then again. The door shuddered in its frame. Ron and Tanya had their guns out and aimed at the doorway. Thomas followed their lead.

“Whatever comes through that door,” said Ron, “be ready to give it all you got.”

For a moment, Thomas thought about running to the door and bracing it, much as he and Dana had against the bugs the previous day. But it was obvious that the thing seeking entrance to this room was much more physically powerful than some mere insects, no matter how diabolical they may have been. Maybe if all three of them held the door, or if they pushed the bed over…

And then it was too late to contemplate any such action as the door, unable to withstand the pounding from the other side, burst inward and a sight that sucked the air from Thomas’s lungs presented itself to his unbelieving eyes.

It was a snake, of course, but one the likes of which the world had undoubtedly never seen before. It was huge, as big around as a tree trunk, its scales a deep and shimmering scarlet. In the middle of its head, directly between the eyes, was a curved, wicked looking black horn. A forked tongue nearly a foot long jutted from its mouth, wiggling about, tasting the air. Then the mouth opened wide revealing yellow fangs easily as long as Thomas’s hand.

Nobody moved for a moment, shocked by the sight of the reptilian monstrosity. As they watched, the snake reared up, its head high enough to touch the top of the entranceway, ready to strike. The rest of its body trailed away down the staircase that descended to the liquor store below. Thomas was paralyzed with terror. Here it was, the hideous serpent of his nightmares made flesh, a monster sent to squeeze the life from his body and devour him whole. Or maybe not. This one looked capable of simply burying its fangs into his heart or deep into his neck or torso, flooding his circulatory system with a poison so lethal he’d be dead before he even had time to collapse to the floor in a twitching heap.

It was Tanya’s cry that spurred her two male companions into action, a wordless, primal screech, an expression of horror torn from the depths of her being. As one, all three of them opened fire on the towering, menacing creature before them.

Bullets ripped into that scarlet flesh and the monster screamed as its body was chewed and shredded by the destructive power wielded by the humans it had come to destroy. The sound of gunfire was deafening in that enclosed space, so loud that Thomas could not hear himself shouting even as he felt the air escaping his throat. The snake fell backward, out through the doorway. Thomas experienced a wild joy at this victory but it was short lived as he saw the smaller but equally vicious looking serpents that came to take the place of their fallen brother. Some of them were as thick as Thomas’s arm, others as big around as his leg. Only a few came through at first; they were quickly dispatched with bursts of gunfire. Then there were more, so many more, a veritable flood of them pouring through the doorway. Thomas, Ron and Tanya backed away in unison, stepped up onto the bed where the two ex-soldiers continued to fire as Thomas ran out of ammunition. Dozens of snakes were torn apart but there were more to take their place, so many more. And eventually Ron and Tanya ran out of ammo too.

“Shit!” said Ron in the sudden, relative silence filled with the hissing of the snakes.

“What now?” asked Thomas as he contemplated turning and jumping through the window, maybe trying to go head first so he’d break his neck or skull on the sidewalk below. The sound of shattering glass made him turn and look toward the window and what he saw there did little to lift his spirits. Snakes were entering now through a large hole in the glass. How had they scaled the outside wall of the building? Thomas wondered. How had they broken the window? With their fangs? Had they slammed their heads against it? Obviously, much as the storm of two days past had been no ordinary storm, and as the bugs of the day before had been no ordinary bugs, these were no ordinary snakes. The sheer absurdity of it all nearly sent Thomas into a fit of laughter. But not quite. The fear was too thick, too real. He looked at Ron and Tanya, took in the grim expressions on their faces.

“Now we die,” said Ron.

The snakes continued to pour into the room. It wasn’t much longer before they slithered up onto the bed. Then Thomas was bitten once, twice, again and again through his jeans. The pain was an awful thing. What came next was even more awful still.

*

As I write this I have to force myself to breathe slowly and deeply in an attempt to calm my nerves. To this day, of all my experiences throughout that terrible season, these are some of the memories that stick with me the most vividly. There is little effort needed on my part to revisit them. I have already conveyed my deep and abiding fear of snakes and no doubt this has something to do with why these recollections are still so clear to me. Even as I try to suppress the images, they rise unbidden, hissing and writhing, often at the most inopportune moments. The act of putting these memories into words has caused a light sweat to break out under my hairline. I can feel my heart beating heavily in my chest. And when I think about it, what a miracle this seems, the fact that my heart is still beating. After all that I went through, all that I survived... A miracle, yes. Or maybe just pure, blind luck.

*

Thomas didn’t die. Not in the usual sense of the word. No, he was transformed.

As he stood there, snake venom racing through his arteries, burning throughout the length of his body, he tried to scream but all that emerged was a rattling, gurgling sound from somewhere down inside his throat. Already he was changing, he could feel it, a rearranging of what he was on a deep and fundamental level. Or was he only imagining it, hallucinating like he had the previous day when he was high on insect dust? He didn’t think so. What he was experiencing here seemed too real. He felt grounded in the here and now, was altogether convinced that it was reality warping around him this time.

Ron and Tanya were changing too. He could see it. The exposed skin of their faces and arms was changing color, darkening, turning gray then even darker shades, streaks of red and yellow and touches of blue making appearances. He looked at his own hands and saw the same thing happening there, a rapid shifting of colors that outwardly conveyed what it was he felt going on inside his body. Vital organs were rearranging themselves, he knew; he could feel them sliding past one another. He was afraid, of course he was afraid, but more than the fear there was the pain and the horror he felt at what was happening to him.