"Henry, is that you?" she asked.
There was a deadly pause. Then a voice from the other room said, "Yes Nattie, it's me. Come to me dear. You're safe now."
She was safe; it was Henry. Her pulse quickened and her head swam.
Then she heard it again—scrape, scrape, shuffle, shuffle—a little faster now. It seemed renewed with a different kind of urgency. Nattie was sure of the sound now.
It sounds like a giant spider with its stick-like legs clicking on the hardwood floor.
When she had been in the hospital recovering from her stroke, it was the only time in thirty
-
five years of marriage that Henry had seen her without her makeup or her hair fixed. That was her job: keep a clean house, cook the food, and be beautiful for Henry. Her job as a housekeeper was mainly something to keep her busy while Henry was away. The few dollars she earned was just money she used to buy dresses, get her hair done, or buy a gift. She was a proud woman, but she knew everything she had was due to her husband. He was a good provider.
She raised her hand, letting go of the table to adjust her hair for him. Her legs buckled under. The instant she hit the floor she knew her right leg was broken. She heard the crack on impact and could feel the warmth of her blood seeping out through the compound fracture.
The pungency in the room almost gagged her and it was getting worse.
A wave of relief rushed over Nattie. Henry was there, he'd save her. He was always there when she needed him.
"Henry, Henry I need you. I fell, I'm hurt, hurt bad." She heard how frail her voice sounded.
"I'm here, Nattie," the voice answered.
Something's not right,
she thought.
It doesn't sound like Henry.
She listened more intently and could hear heavy breathing. "Just relax, I'll take care of everything."
A putrefying smell overcame her. No, not urine—something more powerful and tart. The smell was so strong she could taste it on her tongue with every breath.
"Just relax and let it bleed . . ., “ A grating, raspy voice said somewhere from the darkness.
She broke out of her daze—this wasn't Henry. She tried to move; her leg sent out shock waves of pain. She managed to sit up. A strong hand grasped her ankle in a death grip. She flailed her arms trying to find something to pull herself away with.
The hand strengthened its grip. She felt herself being jerked across the floor. She knew she was in trouble—bad trouble. She knew this wasn't Henry; moreover, he wasn't going to save her either. She knew she had to save herself.
With her left hand, she reached out and found a handhold. It was the leg of the sideboard table.
"Stop moving around old woman. You're spilling my precious blood," a voice blasted her ears.
With all the strength of her wasted body, with all her love for Henry, she pulled the leg of the table. The front leg of the waist
-
high sideboard rose off the area rug. She heard things roll off the back, then crash and break onto the floor. There was another sound, something rolling. She instinctively knew it was the flashlight. She picked it up to use as a weapon to fend off her attacker.
She wanted to live. She had to live. Henry needed her as much as she needed him. She tightened her grip on the light, preparing to bludgeon her antagonist. Her palm moved over the switch, and a beam knifed out.
They both shrieked; it in agony, and her in horror.
Nattie was caught in a moment that stretched into an eternity. She could see tribulation in the baleful
-
yellow eyes of the creature; eyes that flashed with vitality and an edgy, nervous hunger. She saw indignation and something more perilous. As she stared at the thing other details became noticeable. The bits of hair, like that of Emma Reese who had undergone chemotherapy for the tumor in her chest, hung from its scaly head. As she looked at the malignant face, she realized that it wasn't scales. It was skin so rough and cracked, it looked like a dried fish. The demon had teeth, a sickly gray and sharpened like fine arrow points.
It grimaced: an expression that was part smile, scowl and snarl. Then its jaws stretched inhumanly wide. Inside its mouth was death; death in the form of daggers.
The thing was swaying side to side with its mouth still open impossibly wide. The gray molted tongue flickered and then lashed in the cavern of his mouth. Then it screamed. The sound wasn't a human thing; it was something more primal than that. It was a sound from a nightmare; from another world, a world filled with misery and distress.
The moment that the beast was immobilized by the scream passed as quickly as it began. A cacophony of sounds and moving limbs erupted as it sprung into action. With a speed Nattie could not believe possible, it was up and behind the chair. She tried in vain to follow its movements with the flashlight. She flipped back on her stomach. Her leg was aching like a cop car siren, sending out rhythmic, noisy paralyzing pain. She started to crawl, her right leg dangling behind her; more a useless weight than a viable appendage. She was using her arms to drag herself across the floor. She was making headway—until the easychair came crashing down upon her.
The air left her body in a puff. She instinctively curled into a fetal position. Her insides felt crushed. She didn't move or try to get away again. She waited for the inevitable to come. The wait wasn't a long one.
A feeling was flooding over her and she welcomed it. All her life she had feared death and now as she was racing toward it, she longed for the trip to end. Thoughts about death and dying had come to her often lately. She wasn't quite sure there was a God, but prayed that there wasn't a hell. Yet, as skeptical as she was about God, she couldn't face the other alternative that all that awaited her in the end was a void, a giant, fat, black sea of nothing.
Death was easy for her to ignore. It hurt to think that one day she would cease to exist. It was something beyond her comprehension. Times when thoughts of death closed in on her, almost suffocating her with its perplexity, it would usually result in a trip to the medicine cabinet for a sleeping pill. Except the times that death had hit close to home—it was a subject she tried to forget.
She slept very little in the month following the death of her son, Scott. She thought about little Scott now and yearned to be with him. She remembered looking at him lying in his sad, inexpensive, little coffin.
"Just perfect for a six
-
year old, wouldn't you say Mrs. Pigott? Doesn't he look happy?" the mortician had asked.
No
, she had thought,
he only looks dead
. If there was a God how could he let such a thing happen, to her, or to Scotty? Part of the calm she was now feeling, she realized, was the knowledge that she'd soon be with her baby boy again. He needed her too, as much or more than Henry.
"Mommy I need you. I'm hurt. I'm so—so cold," a voice said.
She raised her head and focused her eyes. There was her son Scott, twenty years dead, at her side. Instead of being frightened, she tried to move her wrecked body to comfort him.
"Mommy I need you," the child said. It was a dreamy voice, not much more than a whisper.
Nattie could see the child looking hungrily at the crimson leaking from her leg.
I was a good mother. I took care of him then, and if he needs me, I'll take care of him now.
The finely boned—almost frail—boy pushed back the well
-
worn print dress, fully exposing her overly
-
plump thigh. The compound break created quite a gruesome injury to her leg. With the deliberate effort of a young child, he deliciously started to feast. She was impervious to the pain; instead, she threw loving glances in his direction. She could see for certain Scott needed her now, even more than her husband did.
A warm, motherly smile crossed her lips as the boy hungrily devoured her life-force. She repressed a giggle as a bright droplet of blood spattered on the end of his nose. It caused him to blink both eyes before reaching up to wipe it into his mouth .
Joy flashed across his adolescent face as he indulged in the bountiful harvest. Nattie had never felt more maternal as when the child bent forward and fed to the pulsating beat of her heart. He adjusted her leg and as he turned he gazed into her eyes.
His eyes were yellow!
The creature clamped down just an instant before Nattie screamed, "Wait!"
Her protest was to no avail as the thing attached itself to her leg, sucking out her vitality. Consciousness began to race away as the thing commenced to drain her.
The creature moaned loudly with pleasure, spilling blood over its face. It thought that it always tasted better when they go willingly. Soon, it knew, the old woman's heart would quit pumping nourishment. After It took care of the old man she had called Henry, the house would be ready to begin the plans. This particular house was needed to prepare, and soon all the efforts would come together like a symphony of chaos.
The creature knew Nattie was aware of the plans running through its mind, it was just part of the sharing process. The creature’s thoughts became clearer, as her world retreated further. The last images the creature had of Nattie in this existence were of the vacancy this would create in Henry's life. If there was a way, and it could feel she knew there was, she'd come back to her husband.
Then the convulsions came in waves of red. They clouded over her consciousness in a deep, soundless vibration of troubled sleep and the creature’s thoughts were once again its own.
CHAPTER 3
ETHAN AND WILD BILL
From somewhere in the next block over a shriek broke the heavy, preternatural silence of the night. The scream started as a high-pitched squeal then took on lower, more guttural octaves. It sounded much too loud to be a human. The sound made him think of an entire building moving across a street.
"What the hell was that?" Ethan asked.
"I really don't have any idea . . . but I think it sounded like a woman." Bill said as he shoved the 44
-
magnum cartridges into the gun.
“A woman?” Ethan said and then noticed the bullets and the gun. “What are you doing that for? I didn't know that you could shoot them?"
"Hey maybe you can't, but let me put it this way, it makes me feel my bag is somewhat covered. In case you haven't noticed the responses of human beings vary greatly under dangerous circumstances. The strong man advances boldly to meet them head on. But the superior man stands up to fate, and the odds of me hitting what I aim at with this are pretty damn good."
"Let me guess. I Ching?"
"Yeah, you got that one, have you been doing some reading?” Bill said smiling and holstering the pistol.
“Not as much as you are starting to repeat yourself. Damn I wish you would have told me you were bringing that, I'd have brought one."
"Here Ethan, old buddy, catch." Bill threw an enormous knife that tumbled end
-
over
-
end. It reflected shards of bright moonlight on its long metal blade as it sliced through the air. Ethan calmly caught it by the handle and stuck the grip through a belt loop. Weapons were their thing.
"I see you're just as quick as you were in the good old days. There is no greater misfortune than underestimating the enemy." Bill laughed.
"Next time, just hand it to me. Enough with the Eastern Philosophy and this shit about the good ole days. If you ask me the good old days sucked."
Another shriek broke the calm of the summer's eve like a banshee's wail. Both men swung to their left.
"What do you get Ethan?" Bill questioned, his voice barely a whisper.
Ethan placed his hands at his temples and his eyes narrowed. "It's a woman all right, but something's just not kosher about it."
Both men respected the other's inexplicable talents: Bill's ability to sense and locate impending danger, and Ethan's exceptional eyesight. In addition, both men were linked to each other in a way that neither could explain. They could always sense the other's feelings and intentions. Neither of them understood the proficiencies, the military hadn’t either though, but that didn't stop the army from exploiting it.
"You know what the problem is," Bill said taking a practice aim, "she's one of them."
"I know what you're thinking, to hell with it right? Just because she's got the virus we're supposed to turn our heads?"
"Hey I didn't say anything about that."
"You don't have to. Remember?" Ethan said touching a finger to his forehead.
"Yeah I know . . .but listen man. We were just going to come down here and scope the place out. Why all of a sudden are you so gung
-
ho about mixing it up with these things?"
"The same reason you are—it's this underdog thing. Hey, we're here right? We might as well go take a gander."
"All right,” Bill said begrudgingly, "but I just want you to know I'm not getting good vibes on this."
"Great. As I see it, we have three ways we can go at this thing. One, we go straight at them."
"Bad idea."
"Two, we go a couple of blocks and slink in from the neighborhood."
"And the third?"
"The bay!” They both said and simultaneously moved toward the water.
They were in an area of Norfolk called Oceanview on the Chesapeake Bay. They had crossed the police barricades set up at the Little Creek Navy Base. This was a seedy part of town in the best of times. Now the streets and buildings were deserted after the evacuation the afternoon before.
They crested a small dune on a public easement next to a house that led out to the water . They could see the gentle waves of the Chesapeake lapping on the sandy shore. A large freighter making its way from the Port of Hampton Roads slid quietly by in the distance on the moon-streaked water. Its wake made the otherwise placid surface dance with light. Ethan felt the same way inside.