Dez breathed as silent as a ghost while she waited for the dead to come for her, to take her, to devour her.
She didn’t have her gun. Saunders had taken it. If they got to her, if they infected her, there was not going to be a way out. No exit strategy. No fast ride on the night train. She would die, and be consumed, and …
The rain hammered down and the wind blew.
And she waited to die.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
“This is Magic Marti at the mike and we are in a world of hurt out there. The storm is parked over Stebbins County and we’re seeing torrential rains and gale-force winds. Small and moderate streams are flooding, and we’re getting reports of road washouts. Telephone and cell lines are taking a beating from the storm, which seems to have knocked out communication with local police and fire. That’s the bad news, and I wish I had some good news to throw at you, campers. If you can hear my voice, then get to high ground, lock your doors, and we’ll ride this out together.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Selma Conroy said nothing as Homer Gibbon paced back and forth across the dining room floor. He was agitated, his eyes jumpy, his fingers twitching. Every step was an awkward lurch as he fought the increasing stiffness in his muscles.
“He lied to me,” Homer snarled. “He lied to me. To
He turned and swept his arm across the table, knocking dishes and stacks of magazines and a week’s worth of mail onto the floor with a crash. Homer slammed his fists down on the tabletop and leaned on them, shaking his head slowly back and forth.
“I thought he understood.”
Selma said nothing. Magazines and unpaid bills littered the floor around her like fallen leaves.
Homer stopped moving and looked down at his hands. They were caked with blood. They were cold hands, pale and …
… dead.
That’s what Volker had told him.
He held his right hand up to his eye, studying it. The flesh did not look right. Even apart from the scratches and blood, it looked wrong. On a deeper, more troubling level.
Wrong.
His skin …
Like that. Only … not like that at all.
It rippled. As if something were moving just below the surface.
He could barely feel it, though. His arms and legs were stiff and sore. Everything hurt. It was all he could do not to scream with each step.
The doctor had done something to him. Volker had admitted it. He’d thrown some scientific bullshit at him. Parasites and crap like that. The doctor had actually tried to hit with some shit about vodou.
Homer pressed his left forefinger to the back of his right hand. The flesh trembled with a sensation like squirming.
“Oh God fuck me,” whispered Homer. “What the fuck did you do to me?”
“Yeah, well fuck that, Doc.” Homer’s voice was hoarse. “I already know. I’ve known all my life. The Black Eye shows me everything. The Red Mouth tells me everything I need to know. Maybe you fooled it, you cocksucker, but the Red Mouth will whisper to you. Oh, hell yes and no doubt about it. Ain’t that right, Auntie?”
Selma said nothing.
“But what did you do to me, you Frankenstein fuck?”
He pressed thumbnail against his skin. Below the surface it felt like something popped. Something wet and small. Setting his teeth in a grin that was wired in place by pain and hatred, Homer pressed his nail into the skin, rubbing it back and forth until it made a pale groove. Not a red welt, but a pale trench. That only made him madder. He pressed the thumbnail in, finding a cracked section and using that like a plow to cut the flesh, constantly rubbing back and forth, squeezing his fist to force the blood out.
Only it wasn’t blood. It was a black muck, thicker than oil and filled with white threads. No, not threads. Worms. Or maggots. They wriggled and twisted in each black drop that rolled outward from the cut.
Homer Gibbon stared at the goo … and what swarmed and thrived inside of it. Inside of him.
“No,” whispered Homer. The truth of it — what Volker had told him over the phone and the proof crawling from his veins — staggered him. He backpedaled drunkenly until his back crunched into the wall. He slid down to the floor, his mouth opening and closing as a scream kept leaping up from inside his chest to rip loose and break the world.
“Auntie?”
That word, small and plaintive, was the only sound he made. It was faint, nearly a child’s voice. A lost voice.
Aunt Selma did not answer.
She could not.
She had no mouth with which to speak. No lips. No tongue.
She sat amid the debris from the table, her robe soaked scarlet from the blood that flowed from all the red mouths Homer Gibbon had opened on her skin.
Homer stared blankly at her, and it took him almost a minute to understand what he was seeing. There were black spots in his mind, obscuring memories both recent and old. But not Dr. Volker’s words. No, each and every one of them were as clear as if he were crouched behind Homer and whispering in his ear, but Selma…?
Homer knew what had happened to her.
He could feel the weight of meat in his stomach. He understood what that meant. It’s just that he had no memory at all of having done it.
Homer had not wanted to do this. Not to Selma. Not to her.
