The Dark Trilogy (94 page)

Teddy glanced at the bandages on his father’s hand and dismissed them as well. The gauze looked gross, but not too bad; the wound underneath had stopped bleeding. He doubted the validity of his father’s story. Sure, he had heard stories on the television about all sorts of freaky stuff going on all over the place, but he didn’t pay much attention, figuring it was more of the same overblown crap newscasters were always babbling about.

He made no connection between the news and what had happened to his dad. More than likely, his father had done something stupid—like getting one of his fishing lures stuck in his own skin and, in his drunken state, ripping it out with some pliers. Making up a ridiculous excuse about some nut job biting him just went with the territory with Pops.

Teddy didn’t bother trying to take the bandages off or even looking too closely at the wound. His father looked green around the gills and was probably going to throw up a few more times before it even got dark out. Instead, Teddy grabbed a bucket from under the kitchen sink and set it on the floor close to his father’s head.

Teddy decided to go for a run to clear his head. Exercise allowed him to slow his thoughts when they seemed to be zooming by at a hundred miles an hour. None of his friends liked running, even the ones from the soccer and wrestling teams. So he was typically in far better shape than nearly everyone else at the start of the new seasons of his two chosen sports. In less than one month, soccer practice would begin, and he wanted to make the varsity squad. If he did, he would be the only sophomore. There were enough seniors who had graduated the prior year that there would be room for one sophomore, and his coach was hoping that Teddy would put in the effort to be that one.

Teddy couldn’t imagine not going full bore with every sport he tried. Despite their differences, he knew that he and his father had persistence in common. His father was a talented athlete, but said time and again that no one had given him a God damned thing—he worked his ass off for it all. He claimed he received a scholarship to play baseball in college and did so for one year before he jacked up his knee. And that, according to Teddy’s mother, was when the drinking started. He and Vicky were married by then, and Teddy came along a year later, but Joe was already on the path to oblivion well before his son was born.

Vicky had spotted Teddy’s natural abilities and boundless energy early on, and got him into the peewee soccer leagues. Wrestling was discovered later. He excelled at it as well, but soccer was the boy’s first love. Teddy dreamed of getting a scholarship like his father and leaving his small hometown for good. The conditioning he put his body through would ensure that he didn’t “jack up his knee” like Dad, and maybe someday he would have the chance to play professionally.

So Teddy ran out of his dad’s dingy, broken-down house out in the sticks and down his gravel road to clear his mind and focus on all his big goals for the future.

The other houses in the neighborhood were as cheap and shitty as his dad’s, and were populated mainly by Joe’s lame-ass drinking buddies. Buddies Dad had made after the divorce. All of them seemed as hateful and bitter as Teddy’s father toward women and the world in general. At least he would not have to put up with them tonight, since his father probably wouldn’t be awake to call them over. Hopefully he would stay passed out all damn night and Teddy could head back to Mom’s by noon the following day. It wasn’t like Dad wanted him around when he had a hangover anyway.

After about an hour of running, things started to look strange out on the road. Teddy had followed his typical route of five miles down the road and back again. He was about a mile from his father’s when he noticed a few people stumbling around their overgrown yards.

Must be Miller time. His father was already passed out on the couch, and Teddy hadn’t seen anyone who lived along this back road who ever met a beer they didn’t like. Still, it was only six o’clock. Usually they were just getting started at this point and wouldn’t be fall-on-their-faces drunk until ten if they decided to stay home or a bit later if they headed to the local tavern Joe frequented with many of them.

What was stranger still was the fact that there were at least six or seven people out on their lawns all looking stoned out of their gourds. His best guess was that someone had a booze picnic, and he had to chuckle at the fact that his dad hadn’t been invited. If he weren’t passed out, Joe would’ve been pissed at the snub.

Teddy tried to keep his eyes trained on the ground, setting one foot in front of another, watching his feet kick up dust on the gravel road. And yet, he couldn’t help but notice the people stumbling around.

It wasn’t just how they walked. That would have been enough for Teddy to think it somewhat funny. But as he glanced even closer, he realized they looked messed up. Really messed up. They all looked like they had thrown up all over themselves, and not just with normal vomit—there was blood and other gunk all over their clothes.

After a few more moments of jogging, Teddy dared to look at one of the drunks head on. He figured he could divert his eyes just as quickly if the person saw him staring and took offense. Teddy had learned that it was usually wise to keep his eyes averted from his father’s “friends.” They wouldn’t necessarily leave you alone because of that, but it kept them from pushing too hard when they were three sheets to the wind.

When he glanced at Mrs. Chilton, it was the first time Teddy suspected that these people weren’t just drunk.

Marge Chilton was a widower who was probably ten years older than Teddy’s father, and Teddy unfortunately also knew from his dad that she was easy, which was grosser than just about anything. Most of the men in the area had taken a “whack” at ol’ Marge, and if what Dad said was true, he had ridden her a time or two as well. That was far more than Teddy needed or wanted to know about his father’s sex life, though Joe thought it was hilarious when his uptight son turned beet red and ran out of the room after several graphic descriptions of his conquests.

At the sight of Mrs. Chilton, Teddy stumbled and fell hard to his hands and knees on the gravel. The pain was intense, though he barely noticed it as his eyes never left the woman stumbling toward him.

Marge Chilton’s left cheek was gone. Teddy’s eyes were glued to the hole where he saw her jaw working underneath. It was a bloody mess, with the white of her teeth and pale gums clearly outlined. Part of the skin that had been ripped free remained behind and jiggled as she opened her mouth and moaned. It was like nothing Teddy had ever heard before. A ball of what looked like phlegm landed with an audible plop in front of her as her jaws split wide.

Her housecoat exposed a small and tight-fitting nightgown beneath. In the lunacy of the moment, Teddy could tell it was silk. His mother had one just like it. It clung to the middle-aged woman’s body.

Mrs. Chilton had been an attractive, if rather trashy, woman, and her forty-five-year-old figure still garnered its share of looks. Teddy was not sure how trashy she really was, but she had been at his father’s house with all the guys and a few other women on occasion, and was hanging on a different man each time. She smoked like a chimney and even tried flirting with Teddy once, which had ended with a horrified look on his face and her cackling like some insane witch at how funny she thought she was being.

The silk nightgown was covered in a brown fluid that Teddy guessed was a mixture of blood and something else he didn’t want to know anything about. More importantly, she was shambling toward him across her small front yard.

“Mrs. Chilton? Are you okay?” Teddy winced as pushed himself up on hands that had a thousand shards of gravel jammed into them.

She responded with another moan, this one even higher in pitch than the one before, as if his voice excited her. Teddy’s gut clenched as he got to his feet and inched backward. He was afraid he was going to throw up as he imagined this horny old bag, ripped up cheek and all, wanting to screw him right here on the gravel road that ran in front of her house. It was insane, but no more so than any of the other thoughts running through the boy’s mind at the moment.

As he backpedaled and repeated “Mrs. Chilton?” one more time, Teddy spied something out of the corner of his eye.

There were several other people moving toward him. The same ones who’d been stumbling around their yards like Mrs. Chilton.

They were walking just as slowly as the woman who was now only about ten feet from where the teenager stood. As Teddy looked a bit closer at the one nearest, he recognized Phil Gomez. Phil was one of the few people who Teddy liked in his father’s neighborhood. He drank like all the rest, yet never acted drunk. While he hung out with the other folks when they got together, he seemed to be the only one with a level head. He always had something nice to say to the boy and didn’t mock him for playing soccer like his father encouraged everyone to do.

Phil looked just as screwed-up as Marge. Even more so. There was a big chunk of meat missing from his right arm and a great deal of dried blood around the wound. Teddy couldn’t see Phil’s eyes all that well, but he thought they looked more cloudy than usual. But what really stood out about the man was the fact that his midsection was a ragged mess.

Phil’s t-shirt was shredded, as if someone had tried to tear it off him like he was some sort of rock star. The collar and sleeves were still intact, but the lower half was completely gone. So were most of his internal organs below the ribcage. Bits of gristle and whatever dark tubing that was supposed to be inside him dangled down to his jeans. Thankfully the denim was holding up, along with his spine.

When he moaned like the woman closing in on Teddy, the boy nearly fell again. He felt woozy, but managed to stay on his feet. His knees were weak, though the pain from where he’d fallen on them was already forgotten. Behind Phil were at least three other people who looked as messed up as he did.

Marge was getting closer.

Teddy panicked, not sure what to do. He turned to face the direction he had been running, figuring he was faster than any of these people even when they had been … been what? Normal?
What the hell is wrong with these people? What did this to them?

It still didn’t occur to Teddy that the things he heard on the television were somehow related to this. That was the kind of crap you saw in those sensational magazines his mother got a kick out of at the checkout stands in supermarkets. This was real. It was here and now. This was happening to people he knew.

He didn’t remember the rest of the roughly three quarters of a mile to his father’s house, except when dodging a few grasping hands. Teddy thought he had felt some fingers swipe the back of his shirt, but wasn’t quite sure. He didn’t bother trying to speak to anyone after Mrs. Chilton, although he thought he saw Rodney Williams, the African American guy who lived two doors down from his dad. Teddy always remembered that Rodney seemed blacker than black, his skin almost charcoal in color. All his father could think to say about the man was something nonsensical like “He sure as hell ain’t high yella,” before laughing like a loon. Teddy had no idea what it meant, but was sure it was offensive.

Rodney was the only black man in the area, and some of the other neighbors didn’t seem to like him all that much for that reason, but Joe Schmidts had no issues with anyone as long as they brought beer with them when they visited, and Rodney always did. He was as much of a lush as the rest of them.

Teddy got to the door without a scratch, although he was drenched in sweat and panting. He opened the front door and slammed it shut behind him, locking it.

Teddy saw that the couch situated next to the front door was empty before he even got the door locked. He screaming for his father, and his heart nearly exploded when Joe stumbled out of the kitchen.

He didn’t look as bad as the others outside, but it was clear that he’d picked up whatever illness they had. Joe’s skin had a grayish hue to it, and his eyes looked strange in the thin slivers of light trickling through the broken blinds on the front window. But it was the sound emanating from Joe’s mouth that confirmed it for Teddy. It was the same haunted, keening noise that he’d heard outside, as if some great sadness gripped his father.

“Dad?” was all Teddy managed to ask before Joe lunged at him. Perhaps it was the adrenaline, or the realization that it was pointless to try to break through whatever fever had claimed his father’s mind, but Teddy managed to dodge the sloppy attack and make a run for the bedroom before Joe could do much more than growl in frustration.

Teddy rushed into his father’s bedroom and locked the door. It didn’t take long for him to hear banging on the front door over the sound of his own heavy breathing. But it wasn’t until his father’s fists slammed into the bedroom door that a startled yelp burst from Teddy’s lips.

Looking around the room, Teddy moved to the small window that faced the back side of the house. He could see several people moving toward the house across the sprawling back lawn. It took only a moment to confirm that they were in the same shape as the others. Tugging on the pull cord, Teddy let the blinds drop across the window so they wouldn’t spot him.

He heard glass shatter from across the house and knew that someone had broken into the back door. The pounding on the front door continued, but he could already hear footsteps moving through the kitchen. It didn’t take much to deduce that whichever neighbors were inside the house would be joining his father at the bedroom door within seconds.

Teddy rushed to the beat-up dresser near the door and pushed against it. It didn’t budge at first, but as he let out a grunt of frustration, he felt it slide an inch or two across the ratty carpet. The sound of the effort acted as an incentive to his father, who increased his pounding on the door. The cheap wood of the door wouldn’t hold up long, and that was all the motivation Teddy needed to continue straining until he managed to slide the dresser in front of it. The frame continued to rattle, but the heavy piece of furniture would at least give him a few minutes to think of an escape plan.