Transformation (9 page)

They switched to single file and walked quickly down the center of the path. The zombies seemed to hiss and moan louder and louder as they passed.

“Where are you leading us?” Cooper asked.

Trevor didn’t answer. He stopped and turned around. “They hate this. They hate this. They hate me for doing this to them.” He looked frightened. Suddenly he held his head in his hands and moaned. “They are attacking me!”

“What?” Both siblings asked simultaneously.

Trevor let out an agonizing yell. The zombies fell back, but then advanced again. “They . . . I can’t explain it. Once I reached out to them, they became aware of me. Now they are attacking me.”

“The zombies?” Cooper asked.

“You two need to run while there’s still time. I will be totally gone in a few minutes.”

“I’m not leaving you.” Ellen grabbed his arm.

“You have to. There is no other option. Don’t forget, they are changing.” With that Trevor closed his eyes and stood still. He was nonresponsive. The zombies were pushing in a bit closer.

“We have to go.” Cooper pulled Ellen along by her arm. She looked back at Trevor, hesitating to leave him, and almost tripped. Cooper kept pulling her along, even after she faced forward and got her legs moving in a straight line.

Hands reached in, getting closer to them. The path was getting narrower by the second and Cooper tried to move faster, but to where he had no idea. He reached down with his free hand and pulled a gun. It wasn’t for the dead. It was in case he needed to use it as a quick way out of a painful death for he and his sister. The gap continued to close.

Cooper felt as if his heart stopped when suddenly he tripped and fell flat on his face. His sister fell on his back. He was pinned down and the zombies were only a few feet from them. Before he could stand, Ellen was screaming and thrashing wildly as she fought for her life. Her screams intensified and he could feel her body getting jerked and pulled about. The only thought running through his mind was
no, no, no, no, no.
He tried to stand but was pushed back down to the ground by the violent struggle on top of him.

Then he felt his sister’s body suddenly lifted from his back. His eyes filled instantly with tears as her bloodcurdling screams tore through him. He was desperate to save her even though he knew she was as good as gone.

Cooper planted his hands flat on the ground and tried to push himself up but he couldn’t stand, he couldn’t even get his chest off the ground. Immediately after his sister’s body left his back, feet were stomping him down. A knee here, a hand there, the dead were surging over his body. They were tripping, falling, and rising again to pursue their kill. His sister’s screams fueled him, and he pushed his muscles to the breaking point but it was no use, the weight of the zombies pressed him flat. It was getting difficult to breathe.

Facedown on the rough tarmac, his sister’s terrified screams suddenly ceased and Cooper wept. He gave up his fight to stand and waited to be torn apart and eaten alive.

8.

“That’s OK Everet. You stay here and I’ll go help them by myself.”

Rachael didn’t argue with Everet. She knew he would follow her into the still-dark woods rather than stay alone in the house.

It was well before sunrise, and Rachael wanted to catch Ben off guard if possible. But by the time they made it to the area where the glade was, the sky was already a pale pink-orange. The woods were still shadowy dark and grey. She planned to kill Willow first, but doubted she had it in her to be able to kill someone. The closer she got the more worried she was about what she was actually going to do.

“It’s there.” Everet whispered as he pointed to the site of the glade. Curls of smoke still rose from their fire. The light seemed to grow by the second.

“Follow me.” Rachael walked ahead of Everet holding a knife she took from the house. After a few steps, she was close enough to sense the stillness of the place. At first she thought they’d all left, but then she stepped on something squishy.

“Shit!” Rachael jumped back and hit Everet. She was looking at an arm.

She ran to the glade and was heartbroken to find a scene of carnage. Half-eaten bodies were scattered about. Body parts and blood filled the spaces between them. She felt on the verge of tears, but she couldn’t quite cry.

“Hey look.” Everet held a long dreadlock up in the air with a stick.

Rachael walked around the glade wondering what she should do. Ben’s van was still parked at the edge of the glade, and she wondered if anyone was inside of it.

“OK, we should go now.” Everet dropped the dread and wiped his hands on his shirt.

“What if someone’s still alive and needs our help?”

Everet shrugged. He wanted to help but had no idea how to go about doing it.

Rachael grabbed a stick. She found the head of one of the girls. She jammed the stick into the ground.

“That’s one.” She found another then and another and placed a stick in the ground for each coven member she could identify. There were a lot of bones with the meat chewed almost completely away. There were also large patches of skin that looked to have been torn off with brute force.

It was grisly business, but they managed to identify ten separate individuals. One person was missing and had either gotten away or was dead. They were pretty sure that person was Ben.

They found what was left of Willow. She was barely identifiable. If it wasn’t for the three dreadlocks wrapped around her head with shells and ribbons twisted into them, they wouldn’t have been sure it was her. In the growing light, they saw many more of her dreads scattered around her corpse. They assumed Ben had fled on foot and with any luck his bones were scattered all over the forest floor like their friends were.

Once they were sure they accounted for all of their friends, they discussed their next move and it was decided that they would take Ben’s van and head to the city to regroup. Everet wanted to go to his home, if at all possible, to gather a few keepsakes. Rachael thought it was insane but humored him because they needed to gather supplies. But mostly she wanted to eventually get back to the remote luxury homes to stay for the foreseeable future and didn’t want to lead any of the dead, or Ben if he stilled lived, straight back to them. They drove out far from the luxury homes in the opposite direction and headed to Monterey. They’d return when they were sure they weren’t being followed.

Ben lay in the back of the van still riding a delicious high. He had no idea how long he’d been out. He was in no rush to move. After a while he sat up and opened the van’s side door. He stretched and yawned and let his eyes adjust to the intense sunlight. He felt his tender boys. He smirked at the memory of a local boy band named Tea Bag and the Tender Boyz. They played one show, in fact, they only got halfway through the first number when the angry crowd rushed the stage. One of the members had their throat cut in the chaos. The knife was found but the killer slipped away in the crowd and was never caught.

His balls still hurt but he could function. Watching Willow die, his long time travel companion, lover, and partner in crime was already a distant memory. She meant nothing to him. No one did. He was still more upset about losing his knife in the Tender Boyz crowd after he cut that dude’s throat. He wasn’t expecting so much blood and the knife slipped from his grasp.

He examined the large black Victorian house in front of him.

So it wasn’t a dream,
he thought.
The van had been moving.
He found himself standing on the street in front of Zamfir’s house. Whoever drove the van was probably inside. He was trying to decide if he should go in, leave, or a handful of other options.

“Oh shit.” Rachael whispered. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“What is it?” Everet was behind her.

She shushed him. “It’s Ben. How did he get here? Do you think . . . ?”

“He was in the back of the van the entire time?” Everet finished. “Maybe. He looks out of it. Maybe he was so high that he . . . I hope he didn’t hear us talking.”

“No. If he were in the van and conscious he would’ve attacked us.”

“Are you sure Willow’s dead?” Everet looked like he’d seen a ghost.

Rachael rolled her eyes. She pat Everet on the back.

“Do you think Willow could have survived? Maybe she’s in the house already.” Everet was shaking. Willow scared the shit out of him more than Ben did. Ben was crazy but she was evil.

Rachael sighed and patted Everet again. Sometimes she was still surprised at just how infantile he could be. But he was such a nice guy that she felt obligated to stick around and take care of him. He needed her. Sometimes, she needed him. He’d been a great friend to her.

Rachael eyed the window with suspicion. She parted the curtain slightly to take a look at Ben.

“Everet, you know Willow’s dead.”

Everet shrugged and looked at his feet. “I know.” But he shot a glance at the door just to be sure.

“What’s he doing now?” He still cut his eyes towards the door every few seconds. “I don’t think I locked the front door. Should I go . . . ?”

“No. it looks like he might be leaving.”

Ben walked away from the house at a casual pace towards the downtown area. He was in no hurry and didn’t look around nervously. It seemed he was really just going away.

Ben watched the curtain closely. He’d seen it move, or so he thought. Again, it moved ever so slightly. There was no doubt someone was on the third floor at that window. He didn’t know who was in the house, or how many, but he knew he would be finding out soon. He walked away from the house to put the watchers at ease. He’d circle back a bit later and have a look around when their guard was down.

He walked along the empty streets for a few short blocks until he knew he was out of sight. But he was close to downtown where all the downhill running streets met. Zamfir lived on the corner of Van Buren and Jefferson and just a block or two farther and the streets dropped to the same level as the downtown area. He could see a solid mass of standing corpses only blocks ahead. They moved slowly, moaned softly, and smelled horribly. The stench almost took his breath away. He lifted his shirt to his face and turned down a side street. A few of the dead shambled ahead of him. He turned back, crossed the street he’d come down, and walked between houses. He climbed fences and walked on walls until he came out on another street. Ben worked his way uphill from Zamfir’s. He strolled past houses he’d peeped into a few times, even had a target or two lined up. But he refrained from acting on his impulses. He was smart enough not to go after targets right outside his backdoor.

He walked a few blocks uphill until the air was sweeter. He hadn’t seen a person living or dead since he left Zamfir’s. He found a house to chill in for a bit and wait for sundown. His nads were aching when he started walking, now they were hurting. He started feeling sharp stabs of pain that took his breath away. He had foreseen the return of the pain and took a good pile of pills from Willow’s baggie stash. There was still about half of it left on the floor of the van. He popped a few more pills and fell asleep on the sofa of a small bungalow.

Ben woke with a start and grabbed his abdomen. He winced as he gently rolled to a sitting in the darkness. It was cold in the bungalow and it helped with the ball pain. He groped around until he found his shirt on the ground and dug some pills out of the top pocket. He rolled back on the sofa and waited for the pills to kick in.

A short time later Ben was cursing the dark until he could light a candle. He finally found a book of matches and lit them up. He found a box of stale cereal and a bottle of some rank shit. He downed the bottle and ate the cereal as he walked out the door. The moon was out and Ben could see clearly as he dragged himself down the street, still groggy from the long sleep. He dropped the bag of cereal as he approached the old dark house. He stopped at the corner across the street from Zamfir’s place. The van was still parked in front.

He’d had time to think and decided to move on and now he was anxious to get on the road. He didn’t know where to yet but without Willow he was aimless. He figured he would head up the coast, and look for some fun on the way. Maybe he’d head to Seattle to see if any of his old friends survived.

As Ben approached the house in the dark of the night, he heard an engine start. The van had no lights, but he knew the sound of the engine. Then the van pulled away from the curb. He looked around and saw a few slow moving corpses making their way towards the noise. The van went down the street, and he heard the horn blow. Whoever was driving must know that would attract every zombie in the city. However, before he finished that thought, he was smiling for he realized that the driver was probably leading the dead away from the house because they planned on returning or someone was still home. He had no idea how many of the coven may have escaped not to mention he let Zamfir and that bitch go. In any case he would go inside and surprise anyone there or wait in ambush.

Ben approached the house in the darkness, melting into the shadows. He’d done this a million times and was on automatic pilot. He was an expert at breaking into houses and doing it silently. There were numerous ways into the old place, but he wanted the element of surprise. All was quiet as he tested the old wooden trellis with his weight. It was surprisingly solid. Hand over hand, foot after foot, he made his way silently upwards. He paused every so often to listen. He avoided the husk of a long dead vine. He passed the second floor and kept going.

As he ascended the ancient wooden lattice, Ben ran through the floor plan of the house in his head. Zamfir had used the smaller third floor as his apartment as it had several rooms and two bathrooms. Rachael had a room up there too. The bottom floor was where everything else happened. Living, eating, bathing, sleeping—it was a very big house.

Ben had to switch from the trellis to a pipe in order to get to the third floor. Finally, he was at a window that was left wide open. It looked down a hallway that ended at an identical window on the other side of the house. The stairs came up in the middle of the hall and there were several closed doors. He stepped silently onto the carpeted floor and walked step by careful step down the side of the hall. He discovered through experience that old wooden floors squeak less when you walk near the walls instead of down the middle. He paused to listen. He thought he heard something, downstairs. He felt a thrill pass through his body.

Ben was in very familiar territory. He’d grown up in Portland breaking and entering; robbing and groping, eventually escalating to raping and killing. He was sure his DNA was in many rape kits up and down the west coast. He tried to keep things clean, but they always ended up messy. He didn’t get the feeling anyone was on the third floor but he checked it out anyway.

Ben was as silent as a ghost, thought of himself as a ninja. He felt as if he were a spirit moving through space and he believed deep down that he would never get caught. That gave him the confidence to be calm and do everything without panic. He descended to the second floor. He circled it once. All the doors were closed and he sensed that he was alone in the dark.

As he drew closer to the first floor, near the bottom of the steps by the front door, Ben heard the faint noises he thought he’d heard earlier. He could hear the sounds of a human trying to be stealthy as they worked in the kitchen. He heard the faint clink of a dish, the scrape of a chair, even the slightest of footfalls, and soon he saw a petite female figure in the darkness walking back toward the counter. One lone bitch.

He made his move and strode quickly and quietly across the large foyer in seconds. He was going to jump her and tie her up and have some real fun until whoever the others were returned. He would deal with them easily enough.

Ben entered the kitchen like a ghost, sliding up behind the female. He had her in a chokehold before she knew what was happening. She started fighting but Ben had the advantage; he was taller, stronger, and had her in a hold she could never break out of.