Admist the Ruins - How Love Finds a Way

[Light Ice]

Flanked almost entirely by fields and taking on several sharp turns toward the town’s limits, Route 24 was the most (if not the only) truly dangerous bit of pavement throughout the entire township, and it culminated at what the kids referred to as “Pinball Alley”. Deputy Chris Haley had seen his share of accidents along Route 24’s twisting curves. The road had become a kind of infamous attraction to the teens of Royal Oaks, Michigan and the towns that neighbored it.


One of the rare portions of County Route 54 that didn’t cut through flat farmlands, “Pinball Alley” twisted an alternating set of sharp curves through a grove of trees that marked the end of Royal Oaks’s territory. On the far side, on the Otisko County side, the road straightened out once again through long flat farms and properties. The last turn, which was where Deputy Haley had strategically backed his cruiser that morning, was bordered on one side by a thick grove of elms that perfectly concealed the Ford’s black and tan lines. The opposite side of the road was bordered by a four-foot deep drainage ditch that cut back toward a small creek running along the cornfield.

The niche that Chris sat in had become his choice spot for the month, allowing him to sit almost entirely concealed from the southbound lane of the road. He’d pulled over more than a few heavy-footed out-of-townies on their way into Royal Oaks for the local wineries. Sadly, today had followed in the wake of the previous one, and Chris hadn’t a single incident in the course of his shift. It was 12:11pm, and he’d nearly five more hours that promised to be as long and as tediously boring as the previous four. And it was fourth of July. Motherfucker.

Of course, that was before the burgundy Oldsmobile ripped past him and set his radar gun to twitter excitedly. Chris looked down and watched as the digital display printed “93 mph” in big, angry red letters. He’d barely been able to register “BgDaddy” on the vanity plate before the car was too far along for his eyes to make out the letters.

Chris wanted to reach down and key on his lights and siren. He wanted to pull out and chase down “BgDaddy”, maybe fuck with him a bit out of sheer boredom before pulling him over. There were more than a few things Chris wanted to do but what he –did- do was watch as the Burgundy Oldsmobile drifted recklessly into the northbound lane and then onto the shoulder beyond until its back tires skidded dangerously close to the ditch. It drifted there for a moment, great clouts of dust kicking up as the rear wheels fought for traction, threatening to continue its skid off the road.

And then abruptly the wheels found enough pavement to grip and launched the car directly across the road like an arrow, over the southbound shoulder, and into a thick-trunked elm tree with enough force to shatter the wood and send the tree tumbling backward into the grove of its brethren.

The impact was explosive, glass and fragments of steel and fiberglass were thrown into the air in a massive cloud of debris. A tiny, blonde-haired figure was launched from the back seat and through the vehicle’s windshield as the glass seemed to vaporize. It caught the elm’s splintered stump head-first. The sound of the impact was lost amidst the clamor of the wreck, but in a sickening tangle of tiny arms and legs it went cart-wheeling into the underbrush amidst a cloud of blood.

Holy Shit. That was a little girl.

He barely registered the though as the vehicle’s back end lifted almost six feet off the ground, hung for a moment as if to register the trauma that it had sustained, and then heavily fell back to the grass with an audible thud. There was almost nothing left of the Oldsmobile’s front end. Oil and gasoline sprayed everywhere, soaking the ground and putting the stench of petrol on the air.

Chris stepped out of the cruiser almost immediately, barely able to fight off the urge to empty his stomach on the shoulder of the road. In twelve years of service he had seen many fatal accidents along this stretch of road, mostly teenagers who drove like daredevils in an attempt to show off or prove something to themselves before skidding off the road and into the trees. Twelve years of watching the coroner pull mangled bodies from the road and still Officer Haley could not recall a single scene more horrifying than the one infront of him. The car hadn’t behaved like the driver lost control. It had behaved like the driver had made a sharp turn toward the trees, as if intent to kill himself and anyone inside. He’d never seen anything like it before.

The passengers in the Oldsmobile’s front seats weren’t moving, at least not from what he could see as he approached. A man was behind the wheel, half hidden by the off-white airbag that crushed him against the seat. Brown-haired and pot-bellied, he wore a white golf polo that’s collar was soaked entirely through in blood. His shorts had been blown upward toward his crotch.

The world’s worst wedgie, front –and- back. Crotch –and- Ass. Yeouch.

He had buckled his seat belt, but the air bag’s off-white was stained by a thick and heavy sheet of blood. As Chris neared he could see the man was clearly unconscious or dead, his head hanging crookedly out the shattered window of his car door.

The passenger was a woman, his wife, and had a thick mane of blond hair. Or she had once a thick mane of blonde hair, back before the car had slammed into a tree at ninety miles an hour. Half of her scalp was peeled back to reveal her skull, her shirt soaked heavily in blood. There was more gore in the wreck than he could register, and with each second it got far worse.

She lost her arm…

Chris blinked hard, clearing his eyes, but he wasn’t mistaken. The woman’s right arm had been shorn off at the shoulder by the force of the impact, a heavy streak of blood ran down the crumpled remnants of the car’s front end and arterial spray had splattered on the brush and grass beside the vehicle. He could only guess her arm was sixty, maybe seventy yards further into the brush. Once, in a convention for police in Detroit, he’d heard of collisions so violent that the forces involved actually ripped people apart.

I thought it was bullshit…

Chris had already recognized that nobody could be alive, and certainly didn’t believe it until his eyes betrayed him once more. He could have sworn, sworn to God Almighty, he had seen the driver’s head twitch. It wasn’t a healthy movement, but it was movement.

No way, Jose’. His neck is broke clean through. Even if he was alive he couldn’t move, and I’d bet the boat he’d never twitch his finger again let alone roll his head. The airbag nearly ripped it clean off.

But the driver twitched again, and this time he continued to move. At first his blank staring eyes rolled, and then they blinked rapidly. His entire body gave a hard, convulsive shutter that nearly had Chris convinced that his brain was firing some last message to the muscles in the driver’s body. Death throws, he’d heard them be called that before. But the body continued to shake, a minute, maybe two… before finally it stopped.

And them the driver’s eyes shot wide open, the pupils swiveled onto Chris, and the man in the car screamed.

Or rather, he made –some- ungodly sound. It was hard to accept the cry as human and certainly hard to accept it as a cry. It was high-pitched, feverishly hoarse, and utterly threatening.

“Calm down, sir. I’ll get help here soon.” Chris took a step forward, intent on calming the man before he shook himself so bad something broke.

But the man didn’t calm down. Infact, he seemed to lose his mind at the sound of Chris’ voice. His entire body began to jerk savagely at the seat belt, straining it. Flabby arms lifted and fell, pounding on the airbag as it deflated away, revealing more of the man’s potmarked face. What swelling Chris expected simply didn’t exist, leaving the man’s features harshed only by the sheen of his wife’s blood that soaked them and the speckled burn of the airbag’s powder. His cry became absolutely maddened, turning more and more shrill until it was a feral shriek.

Chris was suddenly terrified. The urge to run struck him so hard that he nearly obeyed it. Everything was telling him to flee, to run. The irrational power of fear sinking deep inside him and taking hold in his balls, especially as the man began to rip at his seat belt. The driver was acting in a way that Chris couldn’t register, slamming himself against the car’s restraints like he was either hopped up on drugs or pumped full of so much adrenaline his injuries didn’t matter.

What the hell is wrong with this guy? His neck looks broken!

And Chris’ eyes weren’t lying to him. The driver’s neck was not only broken, it was ripped out. He saw it as in the driver’s thrashing his head rolled unnaturally far to the left, swiveled back almost 180 degrees, and then was swung back around to face him as if it had been fastened to a rusted hinge. But beyond the fact there should have been no way the man could have twitched his finger, let alone pound his airbag down and yank at his seat belt was the fact his throat was –torn- open. Something had ripped it clean out, revealing the rubbery tube of the man’s Carotid artery.

And not anything in the crash, certainly not glass. Something had done that while he was driving, and that’s why he drove right into the tree. Where’s the dog now?

Chris entertained the thought that he had seen the dog ejected from the car, but he knew with sinking dread that it was otherwise. The thought of that tiny girl careening through the woods was enough to nearly break his heart and could have stolen his thoughts for minutes more had the driver not defied all logic and stepped from the car.

It took a moment for Chris to comprehend what he had just watched. In the back of his mind it played like a movie, over and over, as the driver ripped his seatbelt and slammed the door open with the palm of his hands. He didn’t unbuckle, he didn’t use the car door’s handle. He simply –ripped- the seatbelt apart, and then pounded on the door so hard it jerked open with a harsh whine of twisted metal.

And then the man turned toward Chris and charged him, making that same gut wrenching cry. His face a twisted mask of some kind of intense, mad, desperate rage.

He saved his life out of instinct, some great flash that ripped through his body in a most primal moment of self preservation. Chris had never struck another human being in his life but he struck the driver with enough force to shatter his left hand. The punch was awkward but powerful, a drive from his shoulder that pistoned out and caught the pot-bellied driver square in the chin, popping his head straight back and knocking the four front teeth in his bottom jaw loose.

He expected the man to fall over, to stagger and collapse and cough up blood. He expected the driver to roll onto his back and moan in agony, and to beg for help and snap suddenly from this madness. He desperately wanted for this man to act like he recognized he had just driven his car into a tree at ninety miles an hour and broke his neck, and that he’d been ripped open by a dog or –something- and was probably moments from bleeding to death.

Chris wanted so badly for all of those things to happen, but instead, the man simply stopped in his tracks and took a single, shaky step backward. And then, with an audible crack of broken bones as the head swung freely (like some kind of carnival imitation of a man with a broken neck), the man drove himself into Chris with an incredible amount of force and tackled him to the ground.

All at once Chris was being clawed and pounded on by the driver, his voice now a dangerous, almost hungry snarl. MORE FRIGHTENING however, was the driver’s head as it rolled on the broken stump of his neck, the jaws slamming again and again in an attempt to bite him. It was like he was rabid, clawing and biting furiously in an attempt to sate some kind of madness. The man’s hand pawed down the side of his face and his nails bit in, ripping a thin line down Chris’ cheek and filling his mouth with the coppered taste of his own blood. They were suddenly tangled together now, Chris jamming his hands up into the man’s face in an attempt to push him away only to find it hinged loosely

–because that neck is FUCKING BROKEN-

and fell back. The air smelled of blood, and death, and piss. Chris had a single moment where he realized he’d wet himself, where suddenly his crotch was hot and soaked through. It was that moment that had Chris leaving his hand in reach, and it was all it took for the driver to slam his teeth down on Chris’ ring finger and bite through it.

The pain was sharp and extraordinary, and it was followed by the audible crunch of the man’s teeth biting through his second knuckle. Chris watched as the man’s teeth locked like some kind of animal’s, and in his fear he jerked his hand back. The driver didn’t release him, and instead bit down harder, and Chris jerked against the pain. The movement and the pressure was too much and Chris watched, and felt, as his finger gave and tore from his hand. The bloody stump was pinched between the bloodied, broken teeth of the driver. His face was a horrible mask of insanity and feral hatred, eyes unnaturally pale, and splattered in blood.

Chris thrashed madly, suddenly mimicking the driver as he had convulsed against the car’s seatbelt. Adrenaline coursed through him, and with all of his focus poured into one task, he slammed his hands up into the driver’s shoulders. The impact of his hands into the man’s body sent fresh bolt of pain from Chris’ missing finger… and also managed to throw the driver from him. Chris only now realized he was screaming.

He scrambled madly to his feet, the incessant bolts of pain that leapt from his severed finger had mercifully dulled into a nagging throb. The driver popped to his feet. He didn’t rise, he didn’t roll and sit up. Instead, he simply slapped his palms into the ground beneath him and launched himself into a feral crouch. Chris managed to free the pistol, a heavy .45 automatic that suddenly felt every bit as intimidating as he had been told it was. Despite the shake of his hand, he lifted it, centering the iron sight on the driver.

What if I can’t pull the trigger, what if it sticks?

But the gun –did- fire, a great blast that jerked Chris’ tired arms far too much. The slug whistled wide of the driver and seemed to remind him of where Chris was. He turned his head, that potmarked face soaked in blood and sprayed now with bits of gravel. The driver’s thin, stringy brown hair had lost the neatly-combed part that concealed his receding hairline and now hung in straggled, hap-hazard lines. His lips curled back to reveal blood-stained teeth and he gave an awful shriek.

Chris emptied his magazine, wildly pulling the trigger on the .45 to send six more of the heavy jacketed rounds toward him.

The driver’s chest exploded as four rounds clustered high on his torso, ripping his shirt out in giant, bloodied stars. Raw force lifted him from his feet and knocked him to his back, blood seeping quickly beneath him to form a thick pool. He shook, hard, struggling as bones that once supported his paunchy frame failed to answer the call that was put to them. A visible effort to sit up was mustered, but the man managed only to half-roll himself onto his side. The arms that had so furiously beat down at Chris now pawed at the concrete, nails ripping away as they caught on the cracks.

Chris reloaded, nearly dropping the old magazine as he pushed a new one into place. The driver wasn’t dead and Chris felt it as wet himself for the second time.

He has to be dead. –Has- to be.

Infront of him, soaked in blood and torn by four slugs from Chris’ automatic at point blank range, the Driver finally managed to sit up. He began an unnaturally, disjointed rocking in an effort to get up. His body swayed forward and back, gouts of blood rolling from the great holes in his chest and back.

Chris shot him twice more, both rounds hitting the driver high in the chest and knocking him flat on his back. The teeth kept mashing, that awful shriek grew huskier in its distress but persisted… and the man attempted to rise still. Turning his head, Chris leveled the barrel of his automatic at the man’s head and pulled the trigger. The pot-marked face disappeared, and a great pink-red smear splattered out across the concrete. Chunks of skull and flesh and matter formed a debris trail that followed the smear away from what little was left of the driver’s head. His body gave one last hard jerk and went entirely still.

Chris vomited down the front of his uniform, tattered and bloodstained and soaked in piss.

It was only now that his mind began to work again, slowly coming to life as relief swept through him. He forced himself to ignore his missing finger and look to the shattered remnants of the Oldsmobile. The driver’s wife was now thrashing in her seat, struggling with her remaining arm to rip off her seat belt. He had a minute, at least, before she got free in his mind and bent to take the driver’s wallet from his back pocket.

Timothy Arganna, and his wife Mrs. Arganna, and little Suzy-Q Arganna were tragically killed when Mr. Arganna went absolutely insane and drove their car off the road.

Chris laughed but he hated how it sounded. The fear was too palpable, too real. He forced himself to drop the wallet and walk to the Oldsmobile, thinking suddenly of his own wife and daughter. In his mind he could imagine some stranger putting a bullet in Ally’s head, he could see her beautiful face erased by the force of a .45 caliber pistol.

She was weaker than her husband, but whatever had taken his mind away had claimed her own. Standing beside the door, Chris watched as she suddenly turned her attention from the seatbelt and to him. One of her eyes was missing, or rather it had been popped like a bloody little balloon in the socket. She looked far worse than her husband, her face shattered and hanging in places where fine bones once maintained a feminine structure. She’d been pretty but it was hard to imagine it now.

She was snarling and snapping like an animal out the shattered window, lurching her body against the seatbelt. There was a mindless desperation in her, a compulsion to attack that Chris recognized in the husband. He put a bullet though her forehead, emptying her head on the seat and airbag and leaving her to slump lifelessly in the seat. The pale eyes, so furious a moment before, had the vacant look of the dead about them now. Chris leaned against the car and vomited for a second time, holding his knees and bowing his head forward while wretching forcefully onto the asphalt.

Between the summer heat and sheer terror Chris had sweat himself through. It was hard to look down and see himself in such a state and he could only imagine what he looked like to the outside eye. The seat of his cruiser felt infinitely more comfortable than it ever had, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so happy to pick up the radio. Pressing the button down, Chris turned his mouth into it, speaking through a gag as the transceiver began to slowly stink of vomit from his breath.

“844 to Base, come in Base. Marcy, I’ve a fucking mess out here.”

The radio crackled once before a woman’s voice came, and Chris suddenly felt the urge to cry build up in him. A touch of normality at this moment seemed so out of place. “Chris, what happened? You alright?” The concern in her words was real.

“I’m alright,” he said. “I’ve got a collision at Pinball Alley…” he trailed off. Chris was unsure what to say.

“I’ll send EMS.” The radio answered. “How bad is it?”

His words failed him, and Chris answered after a long hesitation. “Two fatalities, possibly a third. There was a passenger in the back who was ejected, I’m about to go see if I can help. And Marcy?”

“Yeah?”

“Call Alan, will you? Get him out here? I think he has to see this.”
Marcy’s patient voice immediately dissolved into concern as it came over the radio. “What’s wrong, Chris? You alright?”

He was crying now. The tears were thick and hot as they ran down his face, and it took every once of strength for Chris to keep it out of his voice. “I’m alright, Marcy. Just get the chief down here, alright? I’ll be in soon to tell you about it.”

“Roger. I’ll call him, Chris. EMS is on their way. Base clear.”

“Clear.” He echoed, and dropped the transceiver. All at once Chris was sobbing. his pistol laid across his lap as he buckled forward in his cruiser and laid his head on the steering wheel.

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Rebecca Arganna had been suffering for hours by the time her panicked father had crossed to Otisco County, laid out in the back seat of her father’s Oldsmobile as it rocketed down Route 54. She had her mother’s blonde hair, and her mother’s build. Her entire life she’d been called beautiful, and at the tender age of eight she had just begun to believe it. Nick Page had bit her on the way home that afternoon, enough to break the skin, and she had only gotten away because she hadn’t drank her milk at lunch and her thermos was full. When she swung her backpack at Nick’s head it’d hit with a dull thud, not a hollow thunk, and she’d managed to get up and run into her yard and close the gate behind her.

Nick had pounded on it for a bit, howling terribly, before taking off down the street to terrorize someone next door. She remembered all this clearly, but it began to get fuzzy after that. One moment she was sitting in the kitchen while her mother washed the bite on her wrist out and covered it so she wouldn’t get blood on her new T-shirt, and then the next she was laying in the back of her daddy’s car while he and mommy argued over where they were going.

It was all fast, and confusing. She felt worse and worse until finally it was easier to keep her eyes closed.

When Rebecca woke up she attacked her mother first, ripping a mouthful from the side of her throat and severing the carotid in a great geyser of blood. The taste wasn’t satisfying and she didn’t contemplate why. She simply obeyed the hunger that drove her on and turned on her father. It was her bite to his wrist that broke his grip on the wheel and sent them out of control.

Now, Rebecca Arganna woke for the second time to the insufferable hunger pawing at her. It was all she knew. One of her eyes couldn’t see but she couldn’t feel why. She didn’t know her name or knew what a name was. It was swinging from her ocular nerve against her cheek, popped out of her little head when it slammed into the tree. There was no memory of Nick or school, of mom or dad… There was nothing but the hunger. She smelled him and heard him first, and then she saw him finally. He was crying on the steering wheel of his cruiser, but Rebecca no longer understood what crying or a steering wheel was. She knew only that the hunger demanded him and that she had to answer.

At fifty-three pounds Rebecca was not a particularly strong girl but at a full run she managed to not only strike Chris with enough force to send his pistol onto the passenger seat’s floor but send him sprawling over the center console.

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He was screaming now and had he anything in his bladder he’d have lost it in that instant. It was the daughter, the realization was all the more terrifying and she’d caught him unaware. Her teeth sunk into his cheek and her head jerked back, and suddenly Chris felt pain lacing through his face. The tiny girl swallowed, only to bite him again, her little fingers driving into his face pushing his chin up with strength he’d not have expected. He felt her fingers close on his tongue and gagged, and then without explanation bit down. Bones ground beneath his teeth and Chris bit harder and the little girl didn’t scream or relent in her attack. She only snarled that animal sound that her father and mother snarled and slammed her other hand into his eye.

He bit her little hand clean off, the taste of her blood unnatural and wrong. It wasn’t the coppery taste of blood, but something fouler. He opened his mouth to scream, but Rebecca’s teeth found his throat and sunk deep. All at once Chris felt his air cut off and his hands fell down to knot in the girl’s blond hair. She was shaking her head like a little pitbull, and Chris felt his throat stretch to its limits and then the skin tear free.

Hot blood fountained in the air, a thick arterial spray that soaked the ceiling and windshield of his cruiser and bathed Rebecca as she sat up on his hips. Eyes wide, Chris lifted his hand and pressed it to the gaping hole in his neck only to feel the rush as blood spilled against his palm, over the stump of his missing finger and between the others. All at once the strength drained from him, and his other hand dragged a futile protest against the front of Rebecca’s shirt.

She tilted her head back and swallowed, a thick chunk of Chris’ throat sliding into her stomach. If her eyes had been beautiful once they weren’t any longer, the deep green color now so pale they hardly registered anything but the most iced of grey. Chris watched as she bent and abruptly took his wrist into her mouth but he couldn’t feel her bite down and take a chunk from him.

She looks just like her mother.

He thought, but there was no serenity now. Chris wanted to scream and thrash but his body would not answer him, he felt trapped and terrified as he watched this little girl take chunk out of chunk from his arm. Every moment slipped by with a prayer for death, and when it finally came he could find no solace in it. The last thing that Deputy Chris Haley saw before he died was the girl (about his daughter’s age) bend down to his face for a moment and sit up amidst a spray of his blood, the stump of his tongue protruded from her split lips as she chewed on it and the tiny ball of her eye watched him as it swung against her cheek from the bloodied nerve.

It would be nearly three hours before little Rebecca Arganna reached Royal Oaks.

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The town was just starting to wake. Just starting to find that hum of excitement that always precipitated the July 4th Celebration. Kids heckled their parents for sparklers and smoke-bombs, illegal fireworks that they knew the teenagers had but wouldn’t share with them nomatter how many pleases they muttered or how many times they threatened to tell mom and dad. The town was just starting to wake up and he was just starting to get tired, hulking over a picnic table after the last seat was mended and the last bunting hung. Six hours and counting of preparation, a great deal of it on his own, the kind of hard diligent trying work that most men and women feel obligated to see to.

But it wasn’t obligation for him. Not at all. The rest of the town sank steadily into excitement, throbbed and pulsed with life and vigor and the contented happiness of all things American while he? He sat there. He watched them. And he got angrier. To say that the rage was making a dent wasn’t fair, not in the least. The anger had been growing so long and so quietly now that there wasn’t any doubt that it’d the ability to turn liquid in order to stay contained. He’d mastered the art of loathing everything and everybody without giving them the scarcest of hints. It curled up through him with the brutality of a snake bite, infecting everything. It’d consumed so much of him that he felt but a shill to what had once been John Shepard’s son, pride of Royal Oaks.

They certainly wouldn’t have loved him if they knew just how desperate he was getting and just how empty he was. The Christian tenants of the church, a literal Hail Mary effort to save himself, had fallen brutally short of their promised salvation. He’d found the church so uncomfortable he’d almost lost his cool, broken the façade, let the stoic face crack and all the darkness slip out of him and spread along infront of the neighbors to whom he was ordered to provide.

Owen Shepard was barely keeping himself cared for. Sure, by the looks of him, you’d never find a healthier man. The lean plane of his body was carved by daily exercises, daily movements. His grooming was meticulous. Each were a part of the daily rituals that helped him navigate the nagging emptiness swirling and growing inside him. Each of those little motions, from flicking the light switches on and off to counting every push-up in time was a connection to the world he was so quickly falling away from.

So many happy faces. A mockery. He loved them and hated them for their ignorance. The purity of partnership and family and peace fell on these people in buckets, drenched them with the kind of fortune he had been unable to obtain. The rottenness came from envy. He wasn’t proud of it. Infact, the cold nature of it all never failed to announced itself to him. The lack of pride often crossed to outright shame, which shred what confidence he could ever manage to gather and spun him right round into the darkness again. Mondays were the easiest days. Friday’s the hardest. And each weekend he’d get in his truck and drive to the only relief he’d let himself have besides the work.

And fuck, did he work.

Six hours. Two barrel cookers. Enough ribs and wings to feed the small army of men and women that’d beset the plaza. The Royal Oaks All-American Independence Day Parade, a joyful little slice of Americana, paraded the Grape Queen and King from George Washington High on the backs of pick-up trucks. Music, food, fireworks and fun. A carnival atmosphere that was supported by the stalls manned by most of the town’s vintners.

It’d started to draw a crowd ten years ago. Back then, of course, Owen had still been a happy man. He was a soldier and a son, a husband. Things made sense and felt real, tangible, achievable. Anyway, Earl Botts had been the first to lay out a table featuring his wines. The others followed. And what had once been a town-wide celebration turned into a wine-lover’s holiday getaway. The tourists rolled in. Old and white, young and rich. They pissed money out of their pockets and into the town and left feeling better for it.

It was a beautiful thing. A little slice of celebrity for a town good enough to deserve it.

Kipper’s Tavern had donated kegs. Owen had set them in big plastic tubs colored in pastel red and blue, buried them in ice. He’d had a couple to calm his nerves, calm the ocean of feelings churning through him. Calm the memories.

“You alright, Shep?” His dad’s nickname. He wore it unwillingly.

But the rest couldn’t know by the way he smiled. Owen gave it his best as he stood up, reclaiming his full height and moping his sweaty brow with the back of a flannel-clad arm.

It was Don “Kipper” Manischevic. The man’s broad face and round nose was distinctly polish and his balding head a consequence of being in his fifties. He clapped Owen’s shoulder.

“Sure.” Owen nodded. “But I should get to taking orders and making up plates.”

Don shook his head and lifted a hand, pointing at Paula. “She’s all over it, Shep. Try and relax. The old man would be proud.”

“Thanks, Don.” He said, managing another smile. It was sincere enough to disarm his father’s friend. “But I have to get to the shop real quick. I had a surprise to set up.”

Fireworks. His dad’s old tricks reborn. He doubted Don had forgotten. When his dad had died Owen had done his best to slip right into his place, keep things going. The fireworks display that he managed every summer had gotten bigger and bigger and with Owen it was no different. If he hurried he’d be finished by seven. That’d give him two hours to have a hotdog and a couple drinks before it was time to set them off.

The world helped him stay balanced. The tight schedules and endless focus on the tasks at hand grounded him from the grief and the loneliness. He knew that. None of it escaped him. Owen was bright enough to understand that he was barely hanging on. The issues were deep rooted. He couldn’t break the cycle.

But he refused to let it make him unproductive. A man could suffer unhappiness. You learned that in the Army. Suffering unhappiness was a life skill, a reality. It was a way of accepting that in so many ways your lot was chosen for you and the fates were cruel.

“I’m sure it’ll be the best one yet, Shep!” Don called. A big smile on his face.

Owen loved Don like an Uncle. Like so many of the townspeople being kind to them was easy, even with his unhappiness, because they were tremendous neighbors. After all, deep down, he knew it wasn’t their fault that thins had turned out this way. Sometimes the world just dealt you a folding hand and waited to see what you’d do.

Owen wasn’t the folding type. He bluffed.

His phone rang before he reached the door to the store, vibrating angrily in his pocket as he struggled to fish them out of his jeans. The haste in his deft hands robbed them of their dexterity, turned them dumb as he pinched them together around the phone’s plastic and struggled to slip it free. It was an old flip-phone that Marla had gotten him before he’d shipped out the second time, a way to try and get ahold of her. Neither of them had known that the phone didn’t work across the ocean without a special calling plan. They couldn’t afford it. He’d kept it with him anyway, a reminder.

By the time he got the phone out of his pants the call was gone. A number blinking in reply.

He unlocked the store and went in, moving past the racks. Outside there were calls, muffled through the glass. A firecracker went off in the street. Owen ignored it, lowered his head and dialed Lara’s number, unaware of the chaos swirling outside. His attention fixed as he stood amidst the racks of his store. Wishing, just wishing, that the day was over and he could make his lonely drive up to Detroit.

( This thread is closed. Readers are invited to send comments through PMs but are encouraged not to post in this thread. )

 

[Alana_]

Lara Wilson.



''I'm almost home....Uh huh...Uh huh..Ok...Ok that sounds good.''

The rear view mirror was vacant of anything only miles and miles of coiling road, and the three head rests of the Mercedes back seat. Indicating to the right, Lara guided her car through the high stone pillars , and took the left fork down to the winery. Her ear piece went silent, and she queried with a

''hey..you still there''

only to have Jason Baxter swear in ear.

Jesus....did you see the news?

''No..why.''

There's people dead everywhere.....or something...No one knows for sure what's happening...but the Mayor is looking for the National Guard to be called in..

''What do you mean there's people.................''

The line went dead, and Lara hit the redial on her steering wheel, listing to the phone clicking but no dial tone in her ear..The powerful car ground to a silent halt out side the barn styled offices , with the shadows of rooftops from the A1 vat and C5's looming lovingly over it. Rows of solid Oak vats ran in military fashion under each roof, for Cabernet's and in the Cblock, a new venture into Champagne. Large German made wooden vats, her father had installed..Lara as a child being told ''The wood is what gives a good wine its flavor. Any decent wine merchant knows that''.

''Hello?...Manuel''?

There were no birds..That was the first thing Lara noticed on getting out of the car..Not a sound..There was a motor running somewhere but that was the only sound. There should have been at least 6 workers in the yard, with the over 40 in the fields.. but there wasn't a sound..No tracters..no hum from the refrigerator units..That worried her instantly, and Lara ran into the office, coming to a startled stop. Maggy wasn't there..Her desk was pristine, tidy as always, but the computer screens were black, and the always lazily spinning fan was off..The power, and back up supply obviously down.

''Maggy..you here?''

She looked behind her back into the yard, before passing Maggy's desk into her own office , where Lara reached for her land line ...It was as she expected dead..She tried her cell, this time not Tom's number, and she was relieved to hear the line chime as it dialed and she waited for a reply..None came only Manuel's voice mail, to which Lara asked him to call in as soon as he got the message. Manuel had worked on the farm for over 45 years..He knew every bolt, every vine, every pillar and post..He was her unofficial Manager, adviser, and most definitely a friend. That he wasn't in the yard to meet her after her meeting with the bank in the city was worrying..That there was no one else around could be perhaps explained, but not Manuel , nor for that matter, Maggy.

Behind the C block, Lara found the motor that was her footsteps only accompaniment. One of the yards flat bed trucks was just sitting there ticking over idly, and she pulled open the passenger door to reach across and pull out the key..It was only when she got out, she saw the blood stain on the cuff of her off white jacket. And even then Lara didn't quiet comprehend what she saw..She stared at it, checked the knees of her matching business pants, and as she walked around the front, she tutted at the red, almost burgundy stain on her cuff..

The roar was inhuman.

He was caught beneath the back wheel of the truck, his body completely compressed, the twin tires having obviously shattered his pelvis, squashing his abdomen flat. His face was almost black..As if blood had rushed from his broken body to his face, and got trapped there with no where to go. Manuel.

His dark eyes bulged in their sockets, his mouth opening at an unnatural angle , his tongue almost bitten off. The sounds he made were god horrendious..Using his hands behind him, he leaned on them, and just pulled..pulled and pulled, and roared and roared..There was a clicking in his throat when he would pause and reposition himself..Actually turning ....esentially twisting his body around, so he leaned on his hands, chest facing the ground. He was, as he stared at Lara, untwisting his upper torso from his shattered pelvis, and all she could think of for a split second was the movie The Ring..and that sound the creature in the TV made climbing out of the screen..

''Jesus Christ!''

He crawled toward her..Completely unaware of the strings of entrails dragging behind him..Manuel howled, his head flung back, his calloused large hands becoming his means of moving. She backed away...then ran..back around the far side of the truck, but Manuel was there...Prempting her, scuttling beneath the truck, his mouth snapping, his teeth grinding, his eyes dead, lifelessly cold, but seeing every move she made ..
Blood was everywhere...It just seemed to sweat from the dripping fabric of his cloths and the bits that dangled from beneath him..One string of intestine got left behind as he lunged forward suddenly on both hands, with only pure surprise allowing Lara to move back as fast.

Then she ran..She tore past him, heading back toward the yard..While running, Lara was acutely aware that the shock of seeing what she'd seen was preserving her fear..She was logically motivated to contact someone..anyone, and to find out what the hell had happened to her people..to Maggy..and to Manuel. She raced inside..back into the office, and unlocked the gun chest. The guns were licensed and used to keep the fields free of rodents that would spoil a crop. She loaded a rifle she'd used a thousand times before, and kicked off her overly high heals, heading out into the yard barefoot..

He was there..Dragging himself along, his shoulders heaving what was left of his body, as Manuel growled and snapped his teeth together, biting air.

''Dear God, forgive me.''

Lara aimed..cocked the gun, and shot him..At close range, the bullet didn't' so much as rip his shoulder apart, rather than explode in it, with Manuel dropping onto the stump and its mangled flesh. It should have stopped him..But no..he clawed away at the ground, doing his best to pull himself along on one hand, with the meat from his shoulder dragging along on the tared surface.

This time Lara was afraid. Her mind over loaded with not understanding what was happening...She backed away, her back pressed against the office wall...Both hands held the rifle tightly, and she lifted it one more time..This time she took aim...she didn't just fire at Manuel..she sighted him..He was her fathers friend...He had been like a surrogate father to her when her Dad was killed..There was a tremor of revulsion as Manuel spit up a clot of blood, his fingers bitting into the solid ground trying to move him along..And she squeezed the trigger, and watched, her face passive as Lara watched how his forehead split open, and the bullet contacted the tissue inside, spewing brain matter like little beads of crimson and white all over the place, right out of his skull.
He stopped then.

Idiotically Lara lowered the rifle, shaking from tip to toe. There was no blind terror, just a fear that was confusing and weighed heavy with not knowing what was happening. Fear of the unknown. She was thinking, functioning, even if it was stupidly to call Manuel's name, her voice fading as it cracked realizing what she'd done and..more to the point..why.

''Manny....Manny?......Oh Jesus ...Oh Jesus.''

~

Changed quickly into working jeans and a white vest, with the western style straw hat on her head against the sun, Lara came out of her house carrying her fathers handgun and the rifle from the office. Her car was parked outside the front door...and she was just about to toss her hat on the passenger seat with the hand gun, when she saw Maggy racing out of the vine rows , her face open in terror, screaming and screaming..Her words were garbles of shrill fear, meaning nothing to Lara..
Lara raced across the lawn toward her, watching her struggling with the electric gate that just refused to open back manually for her..Lara skidded to a halt, seeing two males follow Maggy..But they weren't running and screaming like her..They were stiff..with flesh torn, their bodies ravaged by some horror..One male looked to have only half a face..the other had his throat ripped open, ...but it was the sounds that warned her..Their sounds. They roared..shrieked and clicked like Manuel..And God bless her Maggy turned facing them, knowing what Lara didn't know yet..What was to happen to her! And Maggy and began begging Lara to let her in..

Open the gate...You can't leave me here..Please..Please Lara.. Oh Jesus Christ open the gate!!..

It was done in a second..One minute Lara was aiming, rushing toward the manual release for the gate, and next she buckled when she saw them latching on to Maggy..One on her face, chewing into her horrific scream, the other her belly. They ripped into her with such ease and efficiency it was stunning , and almost riveting to watch..The horror was magnificent in its magnitude as Maggy's screams continued from a face that was no longer a face, gurgling from the fleshy ooze that had been her features, until the chewing from her attackers on her quietened her.

All Lara could do was shoot..and keep shooting...She reloaded, shot again..reloaded maniacally, and shot over and over..One head shot saved Maggy from more of the horror she died experiencing..Her body useless, dropping sideways into the ditch, that supplied the trimmed hedge with water...The two males howled, clawed at the gates, but the smooth bars gave them no grip..She was 6 feet away from them, shooting, her hands shaking so badly she couldn't aim..bullets waisted, she reloading and just firing over and over. They turned to the right, heading toward the hedging, that would only offer temporary protection to Lara..Just then a scream from the midst of the vines distracted them...calling them onto some other poor bastard trying to escape what horrors he'd found in the greenery..So Lara backed back up to her car, and looked at her home..Its prettiness destroyed by the gory enterprise at its gates.. She started the engine, and drove to the gates, realizing too late she'd not opened them..There was no way in hell she was getting out...so she just floored it, the car crippling the metal, the gates curved and useless dangling from their pillars.

Her cell rang once..Then stopped..It was a private number, and she reached for the cell, her ear piece back in the office..The car sped up the long drive, the vines whipping past her until she skidded past the main gates, up onto the road, and headed the car toward town. She thought then of 'him'..Was he ok?....Was he in town..Had he gone to the city? He'd told her...Lara couldn't remember..He'd told her where he was going to be today...Her mind was addled with fright and confusion.
Dialing his number, the powerful car eating up the road way, with other properties whipping by in the scenery she didn't see, as his phone rang...and rang..and rang..

''Answer-Answer-Answer-...Oh dammit answer!''

Voice mail...Fuck!...A car pulled out in front of her, and Lara dropped the phone just as his recorded voice finished his greeting, and the service began recording her silence, Lara's horrible silence with her unseen gaping eyes and stunned shock before she disengaged it with the controls on the steering wheel.

Lara braked, the car skidded, turning in an elegant elongated skid to face the other direction..Her breathing was harsh..her fingers biting into the steering wheel...and Lara had to physically force her fingers to open and work the gear shift..The cell phone rang then..down between her feet, and she fumbled with reaching it while trying to keep the car on its town-ward destination..Between her fingers she finally clutched it, saw with a quick glance the screen..It was him...Oh Sweet Jesus, be safe!

''Owen?!...Are you OK???!
I.....everyone's dead...They're all dead......I shot Manny...Maggy..M..I..Oh Jesus, everyone's dead!''

It took her a minute to see the uniformed male on the middle of the road...It took Lara a split second to break, her phone whipped from her hands by the interior motion of air and speed in her car...She screamed, and Deputy Haley rumbled with a hollow rolling series of thumps over the hood and roof, before the car spun around and halted, tilted sideways on the verge.

This was different than fear...Her body didn't know how to react, her screams were not screams..They were some horrific oral wordless witness to what she was seeing, because Chris Hale stood up, his body pummeled and battered, his throat opened, part of his face ripped with bite-marks, and looked right at her..Both arms looked as if they were too broken to function, he struggled to walk, as if hobbled, but he stumbled on limbs that didn't show signs of pain despite their condition.

Lara revved the car..It's powerful engine pitched high as the tires struggled with the earth beneath them, and she turned the steering wheel roughly from side to side to get a grip..The car wasn't designed for the abuse it was receiving beneath its wheels and the tires skidded, kicking the dry dirt and grass, until finally they found a grip, and it lurched enough to grip the tar of the road, and she screamed at Owen..

''They're all over the place!!....Oh God I killed Manny!''

She hit Chris Hale directly across his pelvis, and he again tumbled over the car...Lara braked, no idea of where he was, and put the car into reverse, and backed the car as fast as she could..She drove over something...She didn't look to see what, but turned the car around , the rubber burnt smell of the tires heavy in the air conditioning..And she still didn't look back..She just drove again toward town...the phone missing, she bit on her lip hard, feeling the sting of her own bite, and tasted her own tiny droplet of blood..Her mind surprisingly calm despite registering her panic, as she spoke clearly to Owen, hoping he was still listening..., still safe..

''Please don't hang up...Please don't.!''

She didn't want to be 'alone'.....She couldn't hear Owen..the ear piece was long lost, but as long as she didn't hang up on the steering column, Owen was there with her inpart...Her face was stained with spoiled traces of her make up..Her hand shook as she tried the radio, the digital numbers finding an all day news station that was based in the city, and Lara heard an announcement that put the fear of God in her..

''Owen.....If you hear me, put on the radio.....Please don't go out...Oh please wait until I get there...I'm so afraid..I'm so afraid.''

It was, she thought then out of the blue, the first time Owen would have heard her as something else other than the Lara he'd always known.. She couldn't remember a time she'd allowed him see her cry..Even when her parents had died..Angry yes, but never weak..When exactly had Lara looked at Owen, the guy she'd grown up around;- who had been been her first crush when she was a teenager fighting spots and wearing braces in her teeth- and found she had to hide what she felt behind a soft smile, a few well chosen words, to save a friendship she didn't want to lose because she felt more than what a friend should feel.
Owen had been, and still was one beautiful example of manhood.. Her memories of him when she was a kid were different to the memories since he'd come back to town years ago, and their friendship began again. There was something in him that Lara didn't understand. They laughed together..She wasn't afraid to touch him, to reach out to him and insist on him hugging her when she was bold enough to dare. But Owen's smile rarely if ever really warmed his eyes..There was a loss there that she wanted to remove..heal...ease from him...But she knew better than to pry..So she'd found her place in being ''just Lara'' for him..Lara that adored him quietly..She wasn't afraid to call him. He was her friend....Sometimes late at night she'd call..just to hear him talk to her when she couldn't sleep..He had the most beautiful voice.

Did she love him?...

It was hard to love a man that kept so much back...But she did..It was easy for Lara..And she didn't press him..Look for more than he could give. She wasn't necessarily happy, but she was happy enough in being his friend.. He was, for her, worth knowing the rumors that Lara conveniently ignored despite them hurting her..
She didn't ask him if they were true..It wasn't her business..not as a friend. And in truth, Lara didn't want to know what he did in the city. She just wanted what he could give..and give her freely with out him feeling pressured, or guilty cause his friend was stupid enough to not just love him, but fall in love with him.

''I'm here....out side.....''

Everything looked so normal....Everything looked so amazingly pretty and untouched..Someone hammered in the distance...Someone was testing the loudspeakers to the strains of the Star Spangled Banner. It was so strange..
She got out of the car, going slowly to the back passenger door her eyes glued to the normality of the town. She took out the guns...Closed the door, and looked across the roof toward Owen's family store...Her eyes then flickered, drawn down to the roof to the strings of blood stains smeared over it..
Lara backed away, stumbling sideways as she rushed around the front of her car..The Mercedes badge was gone..Pulled from its ornate socket, and the front grill was battered and smeared with a black substance that she knew to be 'dead' blood..

She didn't so much as leap up the steps to the shop front, as fall up them, to straighten up and stand staring in the shop window , seeing a place inside that had always been welcoming.
Now it was safe because 'he' was there...Owen..Owen who she tried not to fall to pieces again on..Pushing open the door, Lara leaned against the frame, exhausted with panick...She usually woke from nightmares at the spot just before she was terrified.
But not this time. Her voice tired...almost without emotion now....The fear drained, her tone dull, empty like someone too shocked to care.

''I'm sorry......I had no where else to go''.

 

[Light Ice]

Lara Wilson had always been beautiful to Owen, even when she'd suffered her awkward years behind braces and in hand-me-down clothes that hid the budding softness of her body while other girls had flaunted them. A humble upbringing had kept her grounded, capable, and sweet. The family vineyard had left her wealthy and afforded her the time and the help to avoid backbreaking work. She'd grown into the kind of beauty every man, not just Owen, could appreciate. She'd grown into the kind of beauty men dreamed about and stared at in movies, with longing and aspirations.

And while he certainly took notice, Owen had never liked her for that. Their friendship had grown because in her heart Lara didn't understand just how beautiful she truly was. She didn't understand that if she stood at just the right angle the line of her body took on an almost heavenly arch and that in that instant, that very slight moment, Owen felt things inside of himself that he could not remember and didn't care to try. He felt things more powerfully, more potently, than he ever had for his late wife and her otherwise unfortunate passing.

He adored Lara for how grounded and capable she was. He adored her for being utterly rational. And that was why, as she sobbed and wailed on the phone, Owen felt his stomach twist up in tight knots and the large hand holding his battered old mobile phone give a subtle, distinct shake.

She's lost it. He thought.

And then cast that aside because Lara Wilson, he knew, would not have snapped in an instant. Sanity, in his experience, was a gift more than a right. It could be lost. It could be taken. The former generally prefaced a slow fall from reality. It started with a series of slips. Everything from memory loss to anxiety could be considered a slip so far as Owen was concerned. In the end, really, it was just semantics.

But having your insanity stolen was a sudden break, a sudden snap in which a mind lost everything it had once kept a grip on. He'd heard them in Afghanistan and throughout the world. He'd listened to them. He'd fought them and he knew them well enough to know that Lara Wilson was not the kind of woman to simply lose touch. She was not the kind of woman to break.

She arrived.

He heard the bell and closed the phone, left it there on the counter as he turned to consider the lean shape of her in the door. Fatigue. Listlessness. Her softly-tanned face was unnaturally pale with fright, her bright eyes dull. It frightened him to see her that way. So Owen reached, attempted to stretch his battered hand for her own and take it.

"It's alright, Lara. Come here. What happened?" The questions came even as he meant to claim the slender-fingered hand hanging at her side.

 

[Alana_]

The sound of the empty riffle dropping to the ground was loud and disrespectful of the usually serene calm of the store. Her fingers collided with Owen's as Lara quickly clutched his hand, her fingers tightly gripping his as she looked up at him..Her demeanor despite her grip, was jaded and solemn. She didn't wait to be asked or offered...she just moved in close and lay her cheek in against Owen's shoulder.

She could smell the fabric softener off his shirt, and the always forever scent of 'Owen'. Closing her eyes, she gave herself a minute to gather her thoughts. Thoughts that sounded like they came from a lunatic. Maybe it was one of her nightmares after all..., and she'd just not woken yet..She opened her eyes, and rubbed her cheek against the fabric, her hand gun still in her other hand, and her heart still hurting with fright. She loved him..loved Owen Shepard, and had known in her fear only the primal base instinct to find him, and know he was safe.

It was no dream.

There was no sense to be made of what happened, because it was sensless..There was no logic, no description that could dare explain to Owen or anyone else what had happened.
Letting her head tilt back, her chocolate black brown hair fell in a tossed wave down to the Levi badge on the back pocket of her worn jeans, as Lara tried to speak, but her voice broke beneath a puffy whisper.

''Manny tried to kill me..''

She swallowed, looked at Owen's the logo on his shirt, seeing nothing, understanding less...Her head felt numb, ....as if her thoughts were on some kind of cruel replay, ..playing the same scene over and over and ..........

She took a long breath as she saw Manny again , hauling himself along the tared forecourt, and Lara shivered in revulsion,...she honest, but making no sense...The logic of the situation completely farcical and surreal.

''They're all gone.........there's no birds. It's so quiet.''

Closing her eyes tightly, tears welled up beneath the curl of her lashes, as Lara pushed back from Owen, ashamed of how unable she was in explaining..But how in God's name do I tell him, I saw people with broken dead bodies....sounding like animals........sounding awful..And not dead....Or dead but alive.?.
Her mind twisted again, fighting to make sense of something that made no sense..She had run on nothing only instinct, ...fleeing to Owen.
She'd come because he was the world to her..Come because she was terrified alone, and terrified he was in danger...She'd come because he was all she had, and the saddest part was that Owen didn't know that.

She looked at him,...at a face that she'd grown up around, and watched grow more handsome,- that would in time grow sad with its grief-..; attracting the older girls who flirted and were more sophisticated than the bony teenager who turned away rather than watch how they teased and provoked..

''Owen it's not just me, it's on the news...Turn on the radio!''

And she started to cry when she didn't want to, and Lara turned away from him entirely , her left hand covering her mouth, the handgun in the tight clasp of her right hand..

''I got to go back.........It's my home.....and those are my people''

And down the street a single gunshot rang out suddenly, but the loud speakers played on, ...with the strains of a Mexican dance tune the only thing heard after the bang. She pressed her forehead against the glass in the door , and her voice grew quieter, until only her lips moved as her voice drained to less than a whisper, and Lara's fears turned to defeat.

''They're going to be here soon.....Maybe it's in the air.....Maybe we're all going to die.....Maybe there's no way of fighting it. ''

 

[Light Ice]

It took him some time to put it all together. There was simply too much going on.

One moment he registered the rifle in her hands, her father’s Remington. The next it was clattering on the tile of his store, bouncing with a deceptively light clatter on the linoleum while she charged the distance between them. She had the long strides of a runner, a lean profile that for the moment defied the gentle curves of her feminine shape and gave her a more capable, predatory profile. It was strange to see her in that moment. He had never seen her as anything other than that beautiful girl he’d grown up with.

But she was babbling an endless run of hysterics, words that hardly made sense. Owen could hear her desire to cry, hitched and scarcely held back, and felt her drive her little body against his and wrap him up in a hug. He recognized the pistol in her hand, an old Colt Automatic her father had sometimes kept in a holster on his hip like a cowboy.

She was gone before he could gather her up, before her smell could touch his nose and alert him to the softness of her body against his. Desperation wasn’t something he was used to feeling in a woman. Neither was terror. Fear, in his experience, had belonged in the dark and amidst the men he had known and fought with. This place, this girl, had always been free from that.

It was that realization that finally made Owen afraid.

Lara moved to the door and leaned against it, her body profiled by the light spilling in from outside. It wrapped her up in a golden glow, shined off her dark hair, and held the moment in potent and bizarre contrast. The pistol in her hand was a grim reminder of the insanity that she was professing. The tired expression on her face, the softness of her eyes, enough to make him entertain the madness he was hearing.

But he couldn’t speak just yet.

Manny…

She’d killed him in self defense and that was all he was willing to believe.

She’s in shock.

Owen reached for her. His hand, a battered and broad stretch of fingers, gently found the soft hollow of her back and pressed there. It’d been one of the few times he’d ever reached for her and it felt strange, hard somehow. The intimacy of the touch and the responsibility of their friendship suddenly foreign and difficult to get a grasp on. Things had not been the same since he’d returned. He doubted they ever would be and he knew it was not her fault. So he tried, forced his voice to be low and soft instead of startled, and reached for her pistol with his free hand.

“Come on. I’ll drive. We’ll go back together and you can change. We’ll call Ed and get this straightened out.”

Ed Tollison was the Sheriff and had been for nearly twenty years. He had a big heart and a patient mind. In his head Owen could already see how this would play out. He’d take Lara back to her house and let her wash up and change, give her a chance to collect herself while he called Ed. It’d be hard but it’d be calm, steady, and that’s what Lara needed right now. Calm and steady.

 

[Alana_]

She didn't say a word on the drive back in the car..She'd handed over the keys with out a word, and walked outside ahead of Owen, the sun innocently covering the town with an almost unnatural golden spread of cheer. It just hadn't look right for the town to be so pretty, so 'normal'. The music still blared in the distance, some warbling southern tune with banjo picking shrillness.
There had been no-one on the street..not a car, not a person, not a soul. Where everyone was, Lara hadn't dared to guess...Maybe folks had already known there was something dreadfully wrong and were hiding..or just innocently still sitting at their dinner tables before heading out for the fair and celebrations.
Stepping down from the sidewalk, Lara had paused at the front grill of her car, ...the dark dried blood stains almost flaking in the heat...She'd sat into the passenger side, clicked on the safety belt, and just .......sat there.

The country side was in the area always beautiful..winter or summer. The soil was lush and healthy, the vegetation rich and opulent. It was a small farming community, with the farms consisting of a cross between dairy and vinyards..It was a mix that didn't compete with the others, with the flat lands dedicated to the dairy farms, and the rambling rising swell of fields toward the foot hills suitable to the grapes and the harvesting machinery. The tall elegant tree lined ditches passed quickly as the car purred, and it was only when it approached the staining on the middle of the road that Lara reacted to the journey..She froze, her eyes darting from left to right on the dusty verg..There was no one there...just a dragged dry blood stain right over the center white line..He was gone...that young officer..Gone, but where to?

She didn't say anything...not a sound...Just went back to staring right ahead. There was no ease up on the fear in her mind. There was brief moments of panic where she thought she just might be losing her mind......But then she actually smiled a cold stiff smile to herself..If she was nuts, she'd not know it..not be worrying about it.

She unclipped her belt as the car turned into the drive way that served both her house, and the vineyard.., and she nodded toward the turn off down towards the yard. She had to let Owen see what had happened..for him to understand exactly what she had uselessly failed to tell him.

She had the car door open before it fully came to a halt, and felt the sole of her work boot drag on the ground before she stepped out. Again, the first sign of there being something wrong, was the quiet. Not a sound..Nothing....only the hum of the refrigeration units down the back of the vats. She rubbed her hands over the top of her jeans nervously and stepped out in front of the car. Manny's half torso was gone...Not a trace..nothing..but the dreadfully shredded strings of intestines splattered on the ground. He was dead...completely dead, she knew that. Had a predator got to him..what was left of him.?
With that Lara began to run..She raced down the side toward the now silent truck, and skidded to a halt...The bottom half of his torso was still trapped beneath the back tires of the truck, and she leaned over, hands on her thighs and heaved..She gagged, her stomach revolting on the sight, and her eyes teared up beneath the strain of the dry heaving..She turned quickly, tried to speak, but her voice was dry. Slowly, she backed away toward one of the huge wine vats, and turned to find one of the numerous outside taps, and turned it on..She washed her face, and sipped ice cold water from her hand, before standing upright, her mind more collected than seconds before.

''You see what I mean?......I found him here..trapped.......dead but alive, if that makes sense......and he came after me....Oh Jesus Christ.''

Lara leaned against the vat, watching Owen. Her body was surprisingly relaxed now that someone else was exposed to the reality of what just couldn't be real. She wasn't dreaming, ...wasn't insane, wasn't distracted by the fear of what was happening, because now no matter what happened, someone she trusted above all else, knew too.

''Do you think....I mean......do you think..I...''

She closed her eyes tightly, and swore at her own inept ramblings..Taking a long breath, Lara rested her head back against the humming vat, her voice quiet, her words sounding even ridiculous to her.

''Do you think it's something to do with the military..? ''

When she smiled it was an embarrassed smile. The question brought with it the suppositions that movies were made of, and horror novels were based on..It just wasn't real.

''You thought I was nuts, ...admit it..''

Walking slowly to Owen, Lara slipped her hand into his, and stood to Owens side, turning to press her forehead against his upper arm.

''You believe me don't you.....Now?''

And Lara looked up at him, her dark eyes not as full of fear now, not as panicked, ...not as afraid. And she'd been so afraid at first...More afraid than at anytime in her life..More afraid than when her Mother and Father had died, and she was left to run a property she'd not truly wanted, with people depending on her.
They needed to do as Owen had said earlier..go to the main house, and call it in..Call Ed. With that brought the obvious worry of what would happen. The radio had already made its bulletin announcements, but.........it was a small town..Small towns often didn't see the big picture until it was too late.

''Will you stay until Ed comes?...Please don't go....You might talk to him...Make him see I didn't do this..Please Owen?''

 

[Light Ice]

The gravel was stained. Dark. For a moment, just a moment, Owen attempted to pretend it was anything other than blood. It could have been water from the truck’s AC unit. It could have been oil. He told himself it could have been gasoline and that he’d be wise to take Lara by the arm and drag her away from there. All this and more crossed through his mind as he stood amidst the driveway, chilled to the core by the abject silence of the moment. He didn’t listen as his friend of long, long years buried her pretty face against his rugged arm and clung to his side. There was no attempt to acknowledge or recognize the creeping terror welling up inside him.

Because he remembered. Because he knew.

The pale strings of intestine were enough to anchor him to reality. They transcended all argument. Owen had seen them before a few times. Once, years ago, when Tom Alders had stepped on a Land Mine in Somalia. There wasn’t a man amongst them that hadn’t suffered for the memory. One moment Tom was picking his way forward with the rest of them. The next he was a ten-foot streak of blood along the sand and a few patches of tattered flesh and entrails. Owen had been sure to leave that part of the story out when he’d written Tom’s wife, Sally, and told her that her unborn baby was going to grow up without a Daddy.

He believed right away that Lara didn’t do that. Owen knew it with every fiber of his being. It was a sick kind of relief that swept over him and he recognized it as such. He’d expected to find Manny curled up under the truck with a bullet in his belly. He’d anticipated a scene that could have been interpreted a million different ways.

But Manny had been ripped apart and dragged off.

Lara simply wasn’t capable of that. Not as hysterical as she had been.

Owen looked down at her, past her dark hair and into those eyes. They shined with calm for the first time since she’d blown her way through the doors of the store, since she’d dropped her rifle on the floor, and he was glad for it. Unable to help himself, he bent and pressed the thin line of his lips to her brow.

“Ed will do what a Sheriff is supposed to.” Owen assured, his eyes straying to the legs protruding from beneath the truck’s wheels. They were stretched out at awkward angles from the severed torso, dark jeans soaked black with blood. “But I don’t think you did that to Manny and neither will he.”


The house was a big white Victorian, one of the oldest in the area. Lara’s dad had poured money and love into it until every crooked step or cracked foundation stone had been replaced. It’d have been easier to bulldoze it and rebuild it, Owen’s dad had said, but Lara’s father hadn’t thought so. The result was one of the most beautiful manors in Central Michigan and one that Owen had been fortunate enough to run around in back when the pair had been kids.

Ascending the stairs, Owen lead her inside. The floors were a natural dark hardwood and the main stair lay directly infront of them. Nothing was thrown over or a mess, everything was as he’d expected it to be. But still, it was quiet, and despite his own calm Owen quietly moved the safety on Lara’s pistol until it was off. They walked together, ascended the stairs, until they found her bedroom.

“Wash up and change. I’ll call Ed.” He offered, trying to smile and failing.

He left her there, his mind reeling. There was no way a coyote had managed to drag Manny’s upper half away on its own for any distance and there was no way that Manny could have been alive enough to leave his lower half behind and drag himself off.

It’s like he was alive but not. She had said.

Owen picked up the phone in the hall and dialed, listening to the sounds of water from Lara’s bathroom and the creak of her small feet as she moved over the floor. The line rang but didn’t answer and Owen found himself quietly cursing Ed Tollison. There was a good chance the good sheriff was already sampling some of the pies the women had brought out. Edith Garvey’s was one of particular renown. Owen’s favorite.

But he didn’t have an appetite. Not after trying back and still being unable to raise anyone. Owen walked back to Lara’s room and turned inside, half aware that he still carried her father’s pistol in his big hands.

 

[Alana_]

She was alone...but it was a nice alone. Owen was down stairs..she could hear him moving around and it felt normal. Despite all that was happening, she was in love with him enough to feel stupidly happy he was in her home.. It was a shameless admission..a rather selfish one, but.....

She undressed, kicking the jeans free as she stared out the long multi paned window that stood floor to ceiling by her bed..The pristine white net curtains billowed in the warm breeze, as she replayed the day...the day before...and the day before that. And way back..Memories fiddled with reality as she unbuttoned her shirt, her fingers pushing the little pearly blue specks through the holes and she wondered when it happened. When exactly had she been mature enough to know the difference between a girlish crush on Owen and loving him..

She remembered the day he'd first gone away..When he'd enlisted and was gone for too long for her to not have her head turned by one of the Bronson brothers for one summer. They'd dated...she'd thought she'd loved him, and on her birthday he'd booked a room in the city, took her out to dinner, and then back to celebrate alone. She'd not thought of Owen that night..It had been a perfect night made perfect by a nice boy who had been as hopefully in love with Lara as she thought she was with him. They broke up in the fall when he'd gone south to college and she'd gone on to the college she'd chosen more locally.
When she was told by her father, Owen had married, Lara had smiled..but her heart had wept. When his father would speak of his son, Lara always smiled...Always told him to send her best wishes to Owen and his wife.......but her heart had always hurt. When she was 21, he'd gone over seas..Somewhere around then, she admitted she was destined to always compare every guy she dated to an Owen she'd not seen in years..He was her standard..No man could surpass him, or come close. There was a time she believed she was stupid for placing him on a pedestal that was unnatural..But it didn't help.

Then he came home. And Lara knew she'd been wrong and right. Wrong to make him more than he was..he was human after all..But she'd been right too. She did love him..Even when he looked at her and the spark was gone in his eyes..Grief for a lost wife had taken the light from his eyes, and something else had taken the spirit out of Owen and left him a darker man..a loner, a man that in his quiet said more than any words could do. Yeah, she knew for sure then that if she loved him before, she definitely loved him now. He wasn't a man that needed to be protected, so she set aside the natural feelings of wanting to protect and shield him from what ever troubled him, and determined to just give him time...just be his friend...''Just Lara''...always, just Lara.
If she could love him then, she could love him always..It hurt her heart not to see him look at her as she'd have given the world to see. Maybe some day..Maybe never..Did it make her pathetic..? God she hoped not. The last thing she wanted was to be some shriveled up woman who had waited her life away for a man that could never love her the way she'd wanted..hoped he would.
So she got on with her life, ..had lovers that filled the void for a little....and had Owen as a friend. It didn't make her unhappy...it didn't make her happy...but it was manageable. It worked.

She showered...Let the water and apple shampoo wash the imaginary stink of death from her skin..Her skin was scrubbed with her lufa, ..her hair conditioned and rinsed as she stood beneath the powerful jets and let the cascading water punish her for being a fool..She didn't think of Manny...or Maggy...or the town..She just thought of Owen down stairs, helping her..looking out for her..being a 'friend'.
God she hated that word suddenly. For years it had taunted her, and only now she saw it. 'Friend' meant, he doesn't love you..Or love you in the way you want. 'Friend' meant she would always watch Owen walk away from her..never to her.
She stepped out of the shower, wrapped herself in her towel, and patted her hair over her shoulder in another. Walking into her bedroom, she hummed. It sounded 'normal'. It didn't belie the bitterness surfacing to chase the fright of earlier away. So she'd not be some pathetic woman wishing for a love lost when she got older..She'd end up some bitter woman, hating everything that reminded her of Owen. Lara stood looking at herself in her vanity mirror, and reached for a bottle of moisturizer..Placing one foot on the vanity stool, she squeezed the milky cream from the bottle, and slowly rubbed it into the tanned skin of her calve, and up beneath the rim of her towel to her thigh, and then the other..She didn't pay attention to what she was doing..She was staring into the mirror looking at her reflection. She was too young to give up..Give up on the hope that maybe, just maybe Owen might one day look at her, and see someone that he'd loved, and just hadn't known it. Or...maybe, she'd just fall in love with someone else..Some guy that would finally stand equal to Owen, and make her as happy as she'd always wanted to be. She was a nurturer..She couldn't resist it. She wanted the happy ever after. It didn't make her a bad person...just right now it made her someone on the wrong chapter of someone elses story. Then she saw Owen.

He was behind her, just having walked in to her room, and Lara moved slowly to lower her foot..The towel covered her to her mid thigh, but in its attempt at discretion, it was more than suggestive..Her hair was wet..hanging past the curve of her behind in its dark damp glory, and her hand shook until she lowered the bottle back to the dressing table.

''You ok?....''

And she turned to look at him...She felt awkward..but she smiled for him..She was for the first time that day glad for something..She was glad Owen Shepard was the man that her 'what ifs' were based on..She knew, in the bottom of her heart, she'd never want nor desire another man ..It wasn't perfect....but it was the best perfect she had...

''Um....did you talk to Ed?..''

She took a step closer..She rested her right hand on her left shoulder in a modest attempt to hide her near nudity..She cleared her throat, her stance less than confident, but again she looked at Owen, ...her smile unsure, but lovely..It made her look unwittingly younger;..being nervous..being shy at a time when it was one of the more dangerous days of her life.

''Let me get dressed...., I'm ...kinda cold''.

 

[Light Ice]

Before he’d stepped in, Owen had gathered himself. The house suddenly felt huge and foreign. It was empty, that was the first thing. At any given time he remembered being inside it in the past there had been family or workers migrating through the rooms. He’d come to anticipate and need the bustle at Lara’s home to serve as a grounding contrast to the almost oppressive quiet of his own. Here, now, the fact that her halls were empty served only to echo the sudden dread that ate away at him.

The phone call had unraveled like a nightmare. He had rehearsed his words, chosen them carefully, intent on leaving out as many details as he could manage of Lara’s story. It was an easy decision. He felt the need to protect her and more importantly he felt the need to get Ed down here as quickly as possible without fielding a few million questions over the phone. Ed was a good cop but he was a country cop. The man could talk a long mile on the phone when he felt confused, sometimes forgetting he was only a drive away. Owen had been ready to take this account and give him only what he needed to hear to get him out here. Murder, or death of any kind, was so rare a happening in the town that he’d been confident it’d get a few cars out here in a quick rush.

“Sheriff’s Office, Happy Fourth of July.” Ed had answered, cheerily.

“Ed, it’s Owen.”

“Hey, there, Shep! I just got in from Main Street. Another top notch job on setting up.”

“Thanks, Ed. Look, there’s been an accident at Lara’s place. Manny is dead.” Owen hadn’t managed a smile.

“…Jesus.” The pause was short but potent. Ed had a soft heart. “I’ll be right down. What happened?”

“I don’t know. Lara’s pretty shaken up.”

“Sure, sure. I’ll-“ Owen had heard something in the background, the tinkle of the small brass bell that hung over the door to the office.

And that had been it. The phone had not hung up it had simply stayed on, offering nothing but the sounds of an empty room. That had been what troubled Owen the most, what had shaken him. It was as though one moment Ed was there and the very next he was gone, vanished, like some great invisible hand had plucked him from the world and left the phone to swing from its cord. There was a real good chance that he’d simply run out, that something had taken his attention. For all that Owen knew? Hell, he could have simply jumped into his cruiser and burned on towards Lara’s home.

But in his gut Owen felt something was wrong. It was an instinct he’d learned to trust a long time ago, when he was a boy. Intuition, maybe. It crept up on him and made him feel cold all over, sick with dread. And that’s how he felt right before he walked in on Lara, hands clammy.

Then, of course, he’d walked in on her. One little leg up, dainty foot poised while her lean fingers dragged lotion along her skin. She was backlit by the window, July sun pouring in to wreathe her in bright light and accent the earthy tan and natural beauty she’d grown into. It was a vision potent enough to momentarily erase the dread that Owen felt. For a moment he felt calmed simply by looking at her, admiring with a masculine cut of his eyes along her frame what she’d become. She was younger than him. Not by much in years but in terms of worries and it showed, everywhere, in all the ways that she was soft and sleek and he was rugged and hard.

“I talked to Ed.” He managed to answer her. It was not a lie but it was not the entire truth, a shady place that was unfamiliar to Owen and he felt uncomfortable residing in. His dick was hard, straining furiously against the denim of his jeans. All at once the ache of it made him self-conscious and potently aware that he had not been entirely honest. “I’ll be downstairs, alright?”

It was hard to leave her. Suddenly, Owen had felt the desire to sweep her up in his arms. They would have to return to town and then? Well, he wasn’t certain. Having Ed come out here would have kept Lara from facing her neighbors, Manny’s friends. It would have kept her from telling her story on a long black table in the Sheriff’s Office and let her sit on the porch swing with a cup of tea. It’d have been gentler on her here.

They were past that now.

He left her in her room and found his way downstairs, avoiding the phone with his eyes. The moment that he was away from Lara the dread rushed back into his gut. It made him want to walk back up to her. It made him want to take what he, and every other man in town, had wanted. But the dread reminded him of his times away, dark times where the feeling had made itself known and his instincts had managed to keep him alive but not those beside him. It reminded Owen that parts of him were unfit for the very best woman he knew. And in that moment, Owen wanted to go to Detroit and was glad that he still had the pistol.

 

[Alana_]

Why had he looked at her like that? She wasn't a child, some doe eyed teenager reading into something that wasn't really there..She was a woman, with instincts, and an emotional attachment for Owen, that gave her a sense of always being watchful of her own behavior around him. Of never taking a hug and letting it last too long..never taking a smile and turning it into something more. So she could see that look..a look that she wasn't used to seeing in Owen, no matter her state of undress.

He was sad inside all the time over the last few years..She tried to learn with out asking what was on his mind...., just by watching him...listening to how he spoke, how he said or didn't say things. And she still didn't know the full truth.
Yes he'd been widowed, and that grief was normal, allowed, ...expected.
Yes he'd served overseas..There was no range of 'normal' there. No sense of trying to understand what she had no right to attempt to. Had he seen things that no one aught to see? Seen a side of humanity that should define people from animals, but in war doesn't?.
Lara stood watching Owen leave her room, ..and she above all else wanted to follow her instinct to go after him, ..protect and shield him from what ever had stolen his spark...and make it better..
But it was Owen. You just didn't go to Owen and take his burden from him. It was something Owen Shepard would have to give over himself..Or at least that was what Lara believed. So she did as she'd done always........and waited. And it ate her up.

What do you wear when something unnatural is happening outside in your world. What do you put on when there's people you care about vanishing, and someone you love is down stairs? She stood in front of her closet, and looked at at the hanging rail of designer business suits, and cocktail dresses, ..and to the shelves of folded pressed jeans in every shade of denim blue you can imagine, ..and sweaters , teeshirts and shirts. One half of her life took her to the city twice a week, and to functions most weekends. The other half took Lara down to the fields, where she worked side by side with the laborors.., work gloves protecting her hands, but not preventing her from baring her own burden in labor.
She chose a fresh pair of denims, and a white wife-beater vest, and pale pink over shirt worn at the elbows, with the well known logo worn off the cuff. She felt comfortable in something as old as god knows when. Pulling on the western styled work boots, Lara sat on the edge of her bed and ...waited some more.

She didn't know what to say when she went downstairs. That was a lie!. She knew....she just couldn't say it.
She couldn't walk up to Owen either, and do what she'd always wanted to do....Ask for a needed hug, and let that hug become more...Let it linger to where it wasn't friends that held on anymore.

Today, Lara decided was a bad day. Emotions were raw and tormented , enhanced by fear and the almost forgotten to be unexpressed grief for Manny. What she'd always managed to tuck away into the common sense region of her mind was exposed and unfairly playing with her logic now.
She was Owen's friend. Only that. The rest was going to have to be forgotten, and if not forgotten, denied. She stood, gave her damp hair a couple more sweeps of her brush before tossing it on the beside table, and left the room.

Her room, her home office, the kitchen and one sitting room were all the rooms that were furnished. The rest of the rooms were closed off, ..the furnishings from her parents room sold, gone, ..because anger had her make rash decisions after their death. The rest of the rooms she'd just emptied because Lara had wanted to make the house hers.....not a shrine to her parents. But it was still a work in progress. The long barren empty hall felt almost alien as she passed the closed empty bedroom doors and went back down stairs.
Her sitting room looked welcoming..Its double doors flung open into the hall, its windows bright beneath the fresh white of the crisp lace curtains. It was a relaxing room, with its blend of large over sized soft furnishings and antique bureau's and loungers..It was a room she'd not spent enough time in. Now it felt wrong to find it comforting. Now it felt like didn't belong here.
She closed the doors, and walked on past it into the kitchen ....A kitchen that had been sympathetically restored with its wooden cupboards, and huge pine table standing with its baskets of fresh fruit and vegetables adorning it in the middle of the floor. And Owen.

She tucked her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, and came to a silent rest against the door frame. Seeing him reminded her of some things she didn't need reminding of. That she loved him...and maybe shouldn't....but had to.
And that he was here because of what was happening. What she'd done.
Her mind, around Owen, had the ability to move from what mattered to what didn't. Looking down at the toe of her right boot, Lara exhaled heavily. She was embarrassed now..Embarrassed because she didn't like feeling weak, ...dependant..., ...helpless. She looked at Owen then, ...went into the kitchen proper, .but kept the table between them as she rested her hands on the back of one of the sturdy chairs..

''Owen?....''

There was a yearning that was just unfair. She was afraid; ...she'd put an end to a man that was 'family' and a woman that had worked with her father, and remained on with Lara after his death. She wasn't self contained...., like Owen. She wasn't that strong. She wanted to be held..even if only for a minute...Just by someone that gave a damn about her. She knew Owen did....but ..........

''I'm goin' to put on a pizza''

She left the kitchen quickly to go to the back pantry where the freezer was. She closed the door behind her and heard her heart racing. Everything was way too fucked up for her to get a grip of and control. Closing her eyes, Lara leaned against the door until everything in her head slowed down, and she didn't feel like she was being pulled apart by fear, ..worry.. and trying to be stronger.

The freezer was full. Beneath a frozen home cooked frozen lasagna, she found a pizza and didn't even look at the box to see the contents. She wasn't hungry...couldn't eat if she tried..But it gave her the excuse to leave the..............

The glass shattered in the window and scattered on her and the floor in sharp little shards. The pantry was below floor level, with two narrow long windows over head an a torn arm was punching the glass of one of those windows again, and reaching in until it grabbed her by her hair. Pulling her hard, the pizza box fell to the ground, ..the shrieking scream from the face peering in at her loud and the most frightening thing she'd ever heard..She was pulled by the hair..Pulled until she was against the wall, and literally being hauled up it towards the window above, by her hair. Both her hands flailed at the hand, trying to grip it, trying to support herself as she screamed and screamed and screamed..It felt her hair was about to pull from her scalp by the roots, as the pull continued, and the journey up the wall terrifyingly continued....

OwennnnHelp me!

She clung, kicked fiercely, .her screams equaled by those of the thing that was slowly winning. Her toes left the ground, ...Lara kicking and clawing at the wall, her voice almost unknown to her as the smell of dried blood grew closer the nearer to the window she was being pulled.

''Oh God..Oh God...Nooo..Oh Jesus Help me!''!.

 

[Light Ice]

Screams. Her screams. The sound a shrill, helpless pleading that had ripped Owen from his chair and compelled him to rush headlong into the kitchen. His training nagged at him. It reared its head and demanded he slow down, develop purpose, develop care. But Lara, her terror, inspired his heart to overwhelm it. He rushed past the center island and beyond, aware of the sounds of her feet slamming into the cabinets and utensils and dishes falling from the counter beside her to mark the rustle of her feet with the sharp staccato of impacts along the tile.

Owen watched her kick, saw her foot slam into one of the pantry shelves and clear its supply of cans in a sudden scatter. He felt the pistol in his hands before he realized he'd reached for it, cold in the grip of his strong fingers. The barrel's sights centered on the arm that had punched through the window, pale flesh tainted with dirt, muck, and dried blood. The sleeve was plaid and shredded from the window. There were deep cuts along the bicep that did not bleed.

"Help ME!!!!" Lara screamed.

The Colt barked in his hand, low and menacing. The .45 Caliber Pistol would have been loud anyway but in the confines of the pantry it was beastly, filling the small space with the concussion of the shot. The arm jerked, unhinged as the meat of the bicep evaporated where the bullet struck it and passed straight through the bone. The man dropped Lara, and cried...

No. He -shrieked-. Not in pain, not that Owen could recognize, but in mad rage. It's hand flopped uselessly as it thrashed in the window, chunks of glass breaking off and embedding themselves deeply in the meat of that arm. The man should have pulled back. He should have cried off. But instead, with a snarl that was almost entirely inhuman, he dropped to his belly and crammed his face in the window.

Lara was still screaming. Owen wanted to scream too.

The face was covered in dried blood but it was intact, human even, save the expression on its face. Whoever this man had been, he was something else entirely now. His lips were pulled back to reveal bloodied teeth, gnashing and snapping harmlessly feet above them. His eyes were drained of color.

"I'll kill you." Owen said. Alarmed, but glad, that his voice was clear and weighted with conviction. Some things time could not change.

But the man's reply was another scream, one that -did- frighten Owen. It thrashed violently, as if enraged by Owen's threat, and began crawling its way through the window. Owen thought to warn him again. He wanted to. A part of him demanded that he did while another, more insistent and familiar, worked with him to pull the trigger. The pistol barked again and the man's head evaporated from the upper lip and beyond, exploding against the ceiling and the window frame in a mist of fragmented bone and brain matter. The body went still.

For a moment Owen Shepard sat in silence, blanketed in the strange and anxious quiet of the kitchen. The phone sat beside him on the wall, idle, and he couldn't help but feel some thin veil of anger descend on him. Until this moment he had assumed that a reasonable course of action would lead to predictable and reasonable conclusions. The phone was supposed to serve as his connection to answers and solutions, not a conduit towards further confusion. Fear was a strange thing. It resonated in people differently. It was common, he'd found, for men to get angry when they became confused or afraid. For Owen? He simply became thoughtful. His mind stuck itself on a loop playing over the many decisions that he had yet to make and all their myriad of consequences.

As he had many times before that, Owen lifted himself out of his thoughts and moved. His hand extended, leaving the old man's pistol in his right, and the worn and calloused digits of his left hand offered themselves to the beautiful woman on the pantry floor.

"Come on, Lara. We have to go."

 

[Alana_]

It was gone..that thing...that ruthless thing that had pulled her fiercely. The shots had had almost as earpiercing a sound as its screams, but the shots were barely heard by Lara above the more unique sounds the 'thing' made..Ugly great horrific sounds..And then she fell...and there was a silence that was louder.
She heard Owen then..looked up..She was disjointed..disconnected in way that was like being outside herself and looking in..His hand was out stretched to her,and she reached automatically with one of her own..Her other she pressed against the floor, only to feel it squelch against something . Looking down, tissue,- exploded vile tissue - oozed between her fingers, and she swallowed against a reflective heave , and shook the dead brain tissue from between her fingers.

She stood...her hand tightly holding Owen's, and Lara followed. She didn't care where they were going. This home, was no longer 'home' now. It had a soiled feeling to it. It had been spoiled and tainted with a fright that she'd never have associated with being in her parents house. Quickly she washed her hands...Washed the gunk away, watching the diluted stain circle down the plug hole, and Lara backed away..It reviled her to have been touched by something so unnatural. It surpassed fear, and was so numb terror didn't even fall into the description of what she felt. At that point she felt nothing. Not even the thumping pain in her scalp, nor the sensation of relief that Owen had come. She was just blank.

The car journey was automatic. It just happened. She knew the road, knew each tree that passed, each sign, each new temporary one inviting visitors to the town for the festivities. She knew each ripple of tar beneath on road, and each turn that led them away from 'home'. Had Owen said where they were going? She didn't know..couldn't remember...Didn't want to..Didn't care to ask..She just wanted to go..escape..flee...hide...Seek safety somewhere else, until her brain absorbed the unnaturalness of it all. If that could happen.

The streets were quiet...Not a strange thing, giving the town was often quiet at times, but the quiet was eery because there was people..quiet people. There were a few people standing, huddled in small groups in doorways, dressed for the fair, but not celebrating..Others were heading towards the center of town to where it was all to happen........but quietly. The music was muffled behind the glass of the car, but the towns speakers still played on ..and on...and on. The car traveled slowly...She watched, and knew they were watched. The quiet in the car seemed to travel..it gripped and intensified, and still she didn't want to say a word. It just felt wrong...or inappropriate to say a thing. What do you say? Everything would sound ...stupid..Give away that she understood so little. It didn't matter that she probably wasn't the only one...but for her to voice it, was like giving up.

The car stopped..And it began curling again..That fear..That dread of stepping out, and something..one of those things just .........appearing.
Her hands felt tired..her head thumped...She looked at her hands, and could still 'see' the stain between her fingers, even though washed, and Lara folded her hands into balled tight fists. Pressing her head against the plush soft suede of the head rest, she stared ahead blankly and tried to find that spot within herself that would calm her down..That spot that warmed her..warmed her and had the power to lull her into a sense of strength. It of course all connected back to Owen. Silly little whimsical memories of crushes, and wishes, and their friendship. He was connected to her life in every aspect, from her family, to their business, to her school, to her acceptance that no man could ever be to her, what Lara needed..because of Owen.

Stupid thoughts.! Inappropriate thoughts..Bad timing..Daft ways to keep fright at bay, or at least make it manageable. She was ashamed of herself for allowing herself drift, and become absorbed in the ''what ifs'' of her life. It would never happen. She had to get used to that. She an Owen were friends.***** long friends....Only friends. But she'd do everything she could to maintain that, protect it, and not allow anything to threaten it..Including the heady day dreams that needed to be put to rest once and for all.

The seat belt eased back off her shoulders with a lazy ease, coiling around the coupling as she saw how people were approaching one another..Not many, but there was enough people on the street to gain some insight by their movements that they knew something was happening..or had happened. There should ideally be more people around for the festival.....The town should have been bustling..Instead those that were around, were uneasy...Not knowing why,...but they 'knew' there was something in the air..

She opened her door finally..Stepping outside, the afternoon heat dry, and she closed the door, ..and watched. It was a necessity. It was the only way to learn..just to watch. The air was filled with the sweet smell of bbq sauce, and the summer smell of coal burning on a grill. The speakers had graduated from playing elevator music, to now playing more current tunes...She couldn't absorb what the music was, only that it was playing...over the quiet.

Her eyes turned to Owen...Lara didn't even know where they'd parked..Didn't look to see..Didn't care...She was a business woman..someone successful, someone that had promoted her inherited vineyard and made it work..Made it flourish. She didn't like the feeling of not being in control..of being weak..of him seeing her lacking.

''Wh...do...Shouldn't we tell them?...To go home...To..To...Just tell them, that........you know.''

But how?...How do you tell people that.....dead things..creatures that shouldn't be creatures were .............Her thoughts just failed..Flailing aimlessly in her head, and Lara's confusion supported the lack of reason in what was developing. There was no logic..There was no fact..no fact that made sense anyway....and her voice was drained and jaded...

''What are we goin' to do''?]

 

[Light Ice]

The pistol had suddenly become a comfort and he was aware of the weight of it on his lap. For a moment, Lara’s question went unanswered. A part of him meant to reach for her, to draw her close and assure her, but it was stifled by the need to think. The town stretched on in both directions, a deserted vision of Americana. He remembered his father asserting to him the pride that he should take in this place, this tiny town, and in the look and manner of the store. It was a community that had prided itself on its throwback look and old-time feel. Owen couldn’t help but acknowledge how strange it felt to see the streets empty and hear the place quiet. It reminded him of his impression of Lara’s vineyard when they’d arrived.

He didn’t revisit the events of the kitchen. For all the importance those few seconds held his mind dwelled elsewhere, turning instead to the image of her lean body in the morning light. A towel about her hips and her long leg lifted, slender fingers smoothing lotion along the curve of her calf. It was a calming image. He didn’t mind the ache that it awakened in him, the masculine cord of want that stirred as his body became suddenly and acutely aware of her next to him. There was something familiar and grounding in wanting Lara. There was a power in it that reminded him that she was waiting for an answer.

“You’re going to take this and go inside the store. Pull the security gate down until it clicks. I’m going to go find Ed and see if he knows what’s gong on. I’ll be right back.” He said, looking to her, aware that in her eyes he saw hope.

The pistol her father had brought home form the war was heavy, a .45 Caliber Colt that had always suited him. In a community where most people carried firearms he had found one that suited his personality. Old. Dependable. Proven.

Owen pushed it into Lara’s slender fingers, suddenly aware of how soft her hands were. He felt her curl a grip around it. Understanding, he realized, what he was doing and why. She was a solid woman, a good girl, and he trusted her not to argue or make it difficult. Already reaching for the keys, he glanced up into the soft green of her eyes and managed a smile.

“You have five rounds left, Lara, and remember to pull the gate down until it clicks. Take these.” He said as he tugged the keys from the ignition of his truck and dropped them into her free hand. “Just incase.”

It was ominous but necessary. Owen had to be thorough. He had to make sure that he was giving her, and them, the best chance. The Sheriff’s Station was on the same side of the street as his store, two blocks down. He’d made the walk a few dozen times before, delivering lunch or coffee to Ed before the few shared words. Ed had served in Vietnam. He’d been SOG. He was the one man that Owen could talk to without feeling out of place.

Owen and Ed did not drink together. It was something they had never spoken about but both understood. The one night they had, however, had been the instance of a conversation that seemed eerily appropriate to Owen now.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The Dead End was just that. A Dead End. A dive of a pub that had been in the Garris’ family for as long as Owen had been alive and longer. It was the smaller, and darker, of the two places that their town had to drink. The Dead End was the bar of choice for Alan Turner, their only local drunk, and home to the weekly dart league that a few of the town’s more lonely and older sorts took up as recreation. It was not a place Owen would have frequented otherwise but Ed had asked him here.

“You know why I’m a Sheriff?” Ed asked him.

“Good pension, I imagine.” Owen had replied.

And Ed had smiled a smile that hadn’t reached his eyes and shook his head, graying hair now quickly thinning. It wasn’t hard to see that Ed had once been a handsome man. The world had moved on since then. He smoked religiously, chaining one Marlboro Red into another. Most smokers had terrible breath, a consequence of the craft, but Ed had always been conscious of it. He was never without a small tin of mints, always leaned back some when he spoke to someone. He was a soft-hearted and considerate son of a bitch if there ever was one.

But tonight he leaned in close and spoke with a pointed, direct urgency that took Owen offguard.

“Stop fucking around and talk to me.” He said without malice.

“I don’t want to hold a gun again, Ed, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“It wasn’t.” The older man assured him. “But I did. After the war, I came back here, and realized that I felt like I fit in the war. You know what I mean, don’t you, Shep?”

It was the first time that anyone had called Owen “Shep”, the name they’d used for his father. It could have been the Killian’s but he didn’t bristle, only nodded, aware that he had never seen or heard Ed like this before. Aware, that suddenly, he was glad of it.

“Looking after the law here is an easy job but it comforts me, son. That’s all I’m trying to say. You have to do what you can be at peace with. If that means you have to let go the store, you do it. Don’t think twice about it. Just do it.”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The rest of the night had become a blur after that. They had laughed shortly after, slipped out of that tone and that moment and back into the life in town that they had both embraced. Owen had gotten so drunk that night that he had slept in his truck out infront of the store, woken up with an ache in his neck so badly that it almost eclipsed the ache in his head. He and Ed would later laugh about that night, about how much of it was gone and never could come back. That conversation, however, never left Owen. The memory of it seemed even more potent as he left Lara to go inside his father’s store and realized that they were going to do just what Ed had suggested.

They were leaving. He wouldn’t think twice about it.

 

[Alana_]

The gate was heavy..it groaned in its tracks as it cranked downward behind her and connected with a snapping click into its coupling at ground level. She watched through the slits in the hinged metal, ...watched Owen leave, and she backed away inside closing the shop door..The shop was dark in side, the security gate robbing it of sunlight , but for the ribbons of light that filtered through the slits she was still watching him through. The gun felt heavy, her hands tired still, but it gave her some form of nervous comfort.

Outside felt so alien. Inside, in a store that she'd been in literally thousands of times in her life, it felt a little more secure. She knew the smells, knew the hum of the refrigeration units, ..the sounds of flickering lights over head as she turned them on. She sat for a moment on a display of stacked caned tomatoes, sealed in blocks of six, on special offer. She felt nothing. There was a lack of anything in the dazed focus of her eyes, as she gave in , and allowed fright exhaust her body of energy.

Looking around, the shop was as always spotless. Nothing had been modernized, spoiled, or drained of its charm by the coldness of the 21st century. It still retained its stained shelves behind the huge lengthy solid oak counter surface, that carried the till, the jars of homemade produce with their red and white checked fabric covers, that Owen stocked from locals. And in front of the counter stood two tall worn stools that had always been there, and were necessary for the regulars to sit on, and chat from on their morning rounds from shop to shop.

It wasn't a large store. But it was the hub of the town, where everyone called in, and was one of the rare old fashioned stores, where candy could be still bought by the weight, and cheese was sliced into blocks depending on the customers needs.
It was charming..And because of its retained charm, it was prosperous in charisma. You couldn't by its uniqueness in the chain stores as they didn't have the ambiance with their huge bright colored tiled floors, with endless lines of produce on sterile shelving, that got moved around every few months, just when you were getting used to it.
In Owen's store, everything stayed put. You found the bags of flour where they'd always been kept, and light bulbs were always stacked opposite the cereal boxes, ...and........

She closed her eyes, and remembered coming in when she was a kid heading home from school, and Mr. Sheppard always gave her stick of candy to nibble on, making her promise she'd brush her teeth when she got home. Some evenings Owen would be there, and they'd hang out, listening to music while he'd run though her math homework with her...Some evenings he was out on deliverys...and his father always knew of her disappointment, but never said a thing, only had her promise to call in the next day. He never teased her..never appeared tired of her hanging around when work needed to be done. He was a sweet man..a good man that worked hard, and had loved his son dearly.

Owen..! Lara stood quickly, and rushed to the door, squinting out between the slits on the gate, trying to see him..But.....nothing.
There was no sign, and she backed away slowly, the gun suddenly reminding her of its presence in her hand. She looked down at it, and then the keys of his truck. She didn't like the reason behind why he'd left her those keys..They were very final..She looked up again, ..wanted to see him coming back...but......Nothing.

Turning, she squeezed the keys into her front jeans pocket, and drifted further down the store, past the stand of sweeping brushes, and down to the soda fridge..She took a can of Pepsi, and opened it, and only on the first sip did she realize she was thirsty. She shivered, ..burped on the gas as she tossed the empty can into a small bin behind the empty deli fridge.., and turned looking back up the length of the store toward the gate, before turning away.

Suddenly there was one single scream. High pitched, coming from someone with a lung full of air, because it lasted for so long. She raced back toward the front, pressing her left hand to the glass on the front door, peering out, searching, trying to see just where the sound came from..
It was quiet..But further up the street out of view, she could hear the sounds of footsteps racing. Two men skidded to a halt, looked at the shop front, and she recognized them as the Bailey brothers, Josh and Paul. Both men were single, fond of women, in the late 20's early 30's. Josh pulled at Paul..She couldn't hear what he said, but Paul refused to budge., pointing to Owens truck, then banging on the gate loudly.

''Shepard, open the gate!!''

He banged again., and Lara opened the front door..

''Hold on...''

Her voice was clipped, urgent, as she dropped down and pulled on the gate. The two brothers dropped down instantly too, pulling , but no damn way would the gate budge.

''Fucks sake Lara , open the goddamn thing''!

''I didn't lock it!!''

She looked at him defensively, and pulled again. Josh barked at Paul to leave it...to run..

''Some shits goin' down Lara...There's a guy...he's...he's..''

''I know Josh..I know...I've seen them''

He pulled at Paul, but Paul again shoved him away, and snapped at Lara..

''Open the fucking gate.....''

He was drunk..She could smell it on his breath. Josh apologized to her, and Paul took a swing at him, swearing at him , cussing him out crudely. He turned again on Lara, and kicked the gate, it rattling, but unmoving as his voice raised and Lara backed away a step.

''Fuckin' bitch..You think you own the whole fuckin' town?. Open ...the ...motherfuckin' gate an' let us in''.

Josh did his best..he kept apologizing, she kept coming back to the gate, and trying.....but no way could she get it to rise..She checked for a switch....some power device she'd never noticed before, but there was nothing she could find that helped.

There was another scream then....and another one....and then more...But the others didn't sound like screams of fear. Josh looked down the street...his face paled in shock, and he grabbed Paul roughly..

''Move it Pauly...Move it now, cause I ain't waitin' ''

He looked at Lara, tried the gate one last time with her help...and then whispered to her though the gate..

''You sure the backs locked up?''

Her eyes widened in shock, and she shook her head unsure..

''Go check it Lara....and for fucks sake don't try open the gate again.''

He turned to Paul, who was staring down the street, trying to focus on what was approaching..and grabbed him, yelling at his brother.

''For fucks sake Paul...run''!

Josh ran...Paul ran....Lara closed the door fast, the glass vibrating in it as she turned the key, and then she ran.
Ran toward the back of the store, out past a small back hall to the back delivery door. It was locked..No key...Even the security bar dropped across it was locked down. She checked around, and any ground floor window she could find was protected by security grates..Back in the shop, she was about to check the wash area beneath the stairs, when she heard sounds that stilled her heart beat..
Screams..pleading horrific screams that made mens voices sound ......sound....so afraid. So simply afraid.
Backing into the wash area, she saw the one tiny window over head was unprotected..
But...it was tiny...Not big enough for even a small child to get through..Tiny...Just about to leave, she noticed two things..A folded stack of hand towels on the cistern, and the door to the unit beneath the sink was cracked open..It just caught her attention. There in the midst of liquid soaps, was a box of unopened bullets.

She didn't check them..hadn't the time..There was an unmercifully loud beating bang , with a screaming form launching itself on the gate. She grabbed the box, ran half way up the store, and came to a sickening faltering halt as she recognized Josh's face being beaten ...literelly beaten, and squashed into the gate, ...blood dripping between the slits, his face contorted, his eyes bulging as the shadows of others behind him pummeled him from behind...digging pieces of his flesh from his back, as he looked right at Lara....She dropped the box...and the gun..backed away, totally transfixed on watching him being shredded against the gate..

''Help me''.

She didn't so much hear his strangled gasp, as felt it in the unblinking shock in his eyes..Again his head was pulled back...and splattered against the gate...and again he screamed.....and screamed...and the sounds behind him of his flesh and skin being dragged from his body almost surpassed the greedy slathering sounds of those shadows that were blocked by him and the gate.

Lara squatted...reached the gun, and aimed. She walked toward him, ..gun pointed at him, and Josh in a brief moment saw her before his face was again dragged across the front of the gate, he screaming at her..

''Plllease...''!

She shot him..Didn't wait...didn't think...Didn't judge...couldn't. She shot him once, into the temple as his head was jammed again into the gate, and he stopped making sounds. But then they knew she was there. Those things.
They attacked the gate..White faces, half devoured, and half stained in blood, with white vacant eyes, and snarling teeth..One man's jaw was missing..even his top lip was eaten..bitten off....exposing his top teeth that were stripped of gums to the roots..Thick globs of blood congealed on his tongue as he licked the gate..licked Josh's blood, and the others just beat and beat...and beat the gate.

She shot him. Right between the two eyes..The safety glass in the door collapsed in an elegant twinkling fall to the floor, and the bullet also blew a small hole in the gate.., but pretty much blew the things head right off his shoulders.
They stopped mauling the gate..They clicked and began screeching again...Heads raised, screeching and dragging their bits of broken bodies back toward the center of town..Lara looked out..Josh was in bits..face down, his skin, his flesh, gone right through to the bone. Even to his thighs..his legs had been gnawed right though from the back of his knees, his shoulders ripped open, and the back of his head savaged, resembling nothing like a head.

She looked to the right..There was no sign of Paul..No sign of blood, no sign of anyone at all. She disconnected herself from Josh..From his body, ....from the thing that was sprawled close to him, with his head spilling its bone and brain tissue out onto the street. It gave her the grace of coldness...almost indifference to what had happened. Lara didn't process, didn't think...she just functioned as she listened, and checked her bullets..The box of bullets was behind her on the floor where it had been dropped..

To the left she could hear their shrieks..Great hungry shrieks and shrieks of some unfathomable hunger. Then their sounds were joined with other sounds..Screams. Terrified, cornered screams, ...

They'd found someone else. She turned away from the door. She couldn't get out, and no one could get in..Down stairs limited her. She needed to go up..Up to where she could open a window, lean out, watch...Watch out for Owen...and keep those things away from the store, away from her....and maybe, just maybe from there, she could help someone.....not just watch them like she'd watched Josh.

 

[Light Ice]

Owen stood with his back to the building’s double doors, focusing his pale eyes across the neat trio of desks to his left and towards the reception’s desk. The Sheriff’s Office was a small building and through the years it had slowly taken on the unhurried, pleasantly scattered nature of its Sheriff. The officer’s desks were panel-wood and pale, their surfaces a gray-green plastic. He could see papers strewn haphazardly across the surfaces, odds and ends, pictures. Ed had held his officers to strict standards in the field and allowed them the same casual disorder he lived in.

And then he’d taken on Marcy Legett. There were few people in town as capable as Marcy Legett. Her husband, Bob, had been a good cop before he’d retired and a good neighbor before lung cancer took him in ’03. But Marcy? She was a town legend. A tiny woman with big round-frame glasses and short, curled white hair, she was apple-shaped and wore big, knit sweaters and high-waist pants. By any and all means she looked very much the part of a small town grandmother.

That was often what gave her the element of surprise.

Marcy had a big voice, a big laugh, and a bigger heart. She was also one tough woman. She was organized to a fault and razor sharp. Whether it was handling the CB Radio or sorting through the ruinous mess of the other officer’s desks, Marcy didn’t miss anything. To know her was to love her. She never missed work and she never slacked.

And that last bit was what bothered Owen as he stood in the lobby. Marcy wasn’t at her desk.

The radio on one side hissed static, the microphone dangling from its cord instead of set neatly in its cradle. Owen could hear the soft plastic “thunk” as it hit the leg of the desk before swinging free again. Her coffee cup had been turned over and there was black coffee sloshed across the left-hand side of the desk and a dark, wet stain on the carpet.

He was aware that there were a million logical explanations for Marcy’s absence. If she’d spilled the cup and burned herself she probably would have abandoned her post to clean up, or maybe whatever had pulled Ed from the phone had been an emergency. He knew of all the things running through his head he could most likely discount his fear as the irrational one. Still, aware or not, Owen could not turn away from his fears. He found them horrifically natural.

The station had been a wonderland when he was a boy. The radio, the badges, the officers and their firearms had all helped Owen feel like he was in some terribly important place. He had always felt lucky to walk around. It had been one memorable thrill in his life when Ed had locked him in one of the holding cells while he was young. Owen did not feel that wide-eyed wonder now as he walked past Marcy’s desk and onward.

Creeping, gut-wrenching fear churned through him. He felt as though he were at war, in combat, anticipating horrors before they had happened. Those horrors, like this one, had always struggled to be reconciled with his rational mind. The part of him that naturally asked “why” or “how” was stuck on a loop, left incomplete without a suitable answer. The rest of him, the part of his mind that could be trained, functioned out of necessity. The fear, however, never really left.

When he reached the end of the room and the start of the hallway, Owen heard something and froze. Back where the cells were, sounds slowly came. They reminded Owen of the sound cars made on slush, a buzzing wet slosh. He turned into the hall, towards the cells and the noise.

At the top of the short stairs leading down into the cell area, Owen froze. Marcy lay on her back, her legs kicked at odd angles, with a thick pool of blood surrounding her. A man that Owen did not recognize sat atop her. It did not straddle her. He simply sat atop her, her face buried in the lean cheeks of his jean-clad ass. He wore a pumpkin-orange collared shirt that was splattered with blood and white tennis shoes, his hands were slick with blood and bits of flesh were stuck under his short, nails.

He was pulling Marcy’s intestines out of a gaping hole in her middle and eating them.

A Beretta lay beside her, soaked in blood. The pistol had a single round pinched between the slide and the ejection port. It’d jammed on her, she’d never had time to clear the stovepipe and defend herself. The man had been on her too quickly. It had not noticed Owen, yet.

“Owen. Run!”

The voice belonged to Ed but he almost did not recognize it. The words were wet and heavy, forced out with so much effort that they were more a gurgled growl then an exclamation. In the middle cell, laying on the floor, Ed was disarmed. Bleeding. His thick fingers clutched to his throat, slowing the steady spill of blood from the wound he covered.

The man ontop of Marcy looked up when Ed spoke, his eyes were gray and cold. Lifeless. His face, streaked with blood, had a feral and inhuman quality to it. Owen watched it, frozen, suddenly convinced that it was not a man at all but something different. It lifted its hands and wiped them on its shirt, dragging them back and forth in some vaguely human and altogether terrifying gesture.

And then it shrieked.

It did not moan like the creatures in the movies. It did not growl like an animal. It shrieked. A piercing sound that ripped through him, shook him to the core, and then it was up. Owen did not remember seeing it stand. It simply had been seated and then had been up, sprinting at him, hands outstretched.

Owen charged it, as well. Raw instinct taking over as the distance closed in a heartbeat. He lifted his right foot and kicked out, planting the step of his boot into the man’s narrow chest with as much force as he could muster. In his mind, Owen imagined kicking right through it, punching a hole clean through.

The impact sent sparks of pain from his heel to his hip, acknowledging that the two had collided with crushing force. The man in orange, maybe 170 pounds soaking wet, backpedaled and nearly fell over. His open mouth failing to wheeze air, failing to acknowledge what Owen knew the kick should have done. The man should have been wheezing, sucking air. Instead, the man simply gathered his balance and threw himself at Owen again.

Owen’s hands closed on the man’s wrists, kept the orange-shirt wearing monster from getting a grip of him. The collision was solid this time and he took the worse of it, stumbling back and over. The man came with him, attempting to crawl ontop of him, to bend down and sink his teeth into Owen’s face. The first he was able to avoid. The next was much closer.

“Owen!” Ed rasped from somewhere beside him.

Owen recognized that his shirt was soaked through in Marcy’s blood. It was warm and sticky, stinking like the creature atop him. He was aware that he was tiring and the creature was not, that despite his training and his size the endless well of energy that the creature was drawing from was taking its toll. It shrugged his hands off its wrists, finally, and took hold of his shirt with both fists as it brought its head down to tear out his throat. He barely got his left hand up and on the man’s throat in time, keeping the teeth away from him while the monster thrashed atop him.

His right hand flailed, attempted to find something to use as a weapon, struggling desperately until he felt his fingers touch something cold and hard. He close his grip on it and swung it, driving it with all the force he could muster into the side of the man’s head.

The Beretta made a brutal “thunk” as it hit the man’s jaw, knocking him back. It gave Owen enough space, just enough, to release the man’s throat and use his hand to wrack the Beretta’s slide, freeing the jammed up shell. His hand brought the pistol up between the man and his body. Owen jabbed it into the soft flesh under the man’s chin, its jawbones clicking as it snapped its jaws.

And then he closed his eyes and fired.

The room went still.

 

[Alana_]

How long had Owen been gone? An hour...more...less? Time had done something strange too..It seemed to just hang. Stand still, and just.....hang.
It felt like she'd not seen him forever...Too long...Far too long. Was he ok? Lara was tired.. Drained...The events of only a few hours had soaked energy from her that left her leaning against the window frame staring out at those things. They didn't come near the store..They banged on cars, beat windows across the street, ...but didn't come near the store. They traveled in groups...but they didn't work as one. There was no structure to their attacks on houses..Where was everyone now? Were they holed up safely? Or were they all.....................

She'd filled in time by working out how to load the clip for the handgun. Lara let herself slip to sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, and just played around with the clip until she'd mastered it. She was slow, she knew that....but it was for now the best she could do. She was used to the riffle...not a hand gun..but, it was hers now to use, and.......

Thump

She looked up...What was that? Thump..Thump

There it was again..Standing quickly, she looked out the window..Down to the shop front...No one was there..Thump! It wasn't coming from outside. Lara looked up and down the street quickly...There were four of those things further down, still beating on cars..windows....doors.., so she turned and rushed towards the upper hall, and stood on the top step of the stairs.

Thump.................Thump..............Thump.

It sounded muffled...but yeah...it was coming from down stairs. She checked the clip of the gun, and went down the steps slowly, the box of bullets in one hand, and gun raised to shoot. The store was fine...Walking across the back of the aisles, Lara could see everything looked fine..
There it was again. She cocked her head, and listened.. ..Then looked down. It was coming from below.

''Oh Christ''

Her whisper scared the life out of her. Suddenly she was breathing fast, her heart racing. The town was old...One of the first settlements from the last century..And until the building of the reservoir two miles out, it had flooded regularly...But when each of the side streets of the town had been built, each house, each building had been built with a flood drain running beneath the foundations, draining the flood waters away to the reservoir. And those things had found it..found the drain, and were trying to access the basement though the trap door.

She was down the stairs into the basement store room before she thought clearly about it. The over head light string smacked her right in the face and terrified her so much Lara dropped the bullets, the little metal shells scattering on the cement floor. She grabbed the string, the lights flooding the room with light, and Lara looked quickly around. There were stacks of supplies everywhere , stacked tidily on pallets, or on shelving.

Thump...Thump..

One of the pallets bounced. It was on top of the cover to the trap door. There were heavy bags of animal feed on top of it, rising and falling about two inches up and down. They smelled her then..The shrieking began, almost beneath where she stood, and pallet bounced, and bounced..Lara tucked the gun into her waist band, and did the only thing she could..She started grabbing more sacks...hauling them across the floor, and lifted each sack up onto the pallet..Each sack added more weight..She didn't feel how heavy they were..Fear drove her adrenalin, ..her heart racing, ...her body sweating, her manicured nails breaking as she grabbed the sacks and just dragged and pulled. Eight more sacks, and the bouncing stopped..It didn't quieten them though..Those things kept on screeching...shrieking...Dreadful animalistic sounds from bodies that had been people she'd known. She backed away...Almost fell over a drum of paraffin..

Maybe if she poured it down the man hole and set it on fire they'd..............

No no no ...To do that she'd have to remove all the sacks...Everyone...even from the original pallet. No no..Her mind kept playing with the images of them burning..Of dead arms and hands flailing in flames..Bodies stinking of burning flesh...Flesh that would still try to climb through the man hole..Damn, she'd burn the entire town down if........
She backed back more towards the steps...and kicked a bullet. It distracted her enough that she dropped to her knees and gathered them all up, back into the box. Her hands shook, fingers felt numb. She could hear her own heart thumping...Thumping..thumping..Jesus if they'd only shut the fuck up!

Stumbling back up the stairs, she huddled on the top step , the box of bullets between her booted feet, her hands covering her ears..Shut up..Shut up..Shut up..

''Shut up...SHUT UP...SHUT UP''!!

She pulled the gun out, and shot down the stairs , still screaming. Useless bullets, bouncing on the cement floor, ineffective, totally waisted. But it vented her anger..her fear....her toxic fear.

They still shrieked..She sat with her back to the wall for a few minutes, listening to them. But she grew calm..The bouncing had stopped...the thumping too..She could hear them clawing ...dragging bony fingertips on their side of the trap door. Getting no where, and too fucking dead to realize it.

She went back to the store...grabbed a bottle of coke, and drained it, her hands still shaking, her entire body freezing with a cold that wasn't just cold. She was shivering...teeth clattering....her skin goose bumped. Tossing the bottle aside, she felt for her cell phone, but hadn't a clue where it was. Going to the till, Lara opened it, and took out some coins..There was a pay phone..Popping in the money, she dialed Owen's number. Where the hell was he? Was he ok? Why wasn't he back?...

It rang..and rang...and rang...then his voice mail kicked it..She hung up...dialed again..and it rang...and rang..

'' Answer the fucking phone Owen!''

She hated him then...Absolutely hated him for leaving her behind..What if he was dead? What if he was one of them now? She imagined seeing him...coming at her...face drained, eyes white...no color..his face..his beautiful face theirs now..Yeah she'd shoot him...Blow his head clean off..and do it gladly for not being here right now!

It was still ringing..and ringing...Oh God was he ok? She felt panicked..guilty.. terrified for him.Please be ok...Oh please be ok.....She hung up before it got to his voicemail..She hadn't enough coins to ring again if it connected..She dialed again...one more time...If he didn't answer, she was going to have to try climbing out from the top window...Had to find him..Had to see if he was ok..

''OWEN...answer the God damned phone''!

 

[Light Ice]

For a moment there was only stillness and the stench of death. Owen was vaguely aware of warm, sticky, heavy wet against his cheek and the sudden unmoving weight atop him. The Beretta had done for him what it had failed to do for Marcy and felt like a brick in his hand. He shoved the body away, glad to be out from beneath it, and rose with a free hand already pawing congealed blood and black ichor from his face. He was terrified of getting it in his mouth or eyes, terrified of somehow getting it inside of him. He was terrified in general.

The man that had attempted to eat him was still on the cell floor, not far from Marcy’s ruined remains. His orange shirt, already splashed with Marcy’s (and perhaps someone else’s) blood, was soaking steadily through from his own. The back of his head had a hole the size of a tennis ball in it. It was an ugly and terrible thing that Owen could have gone without seeing. You never got used to it.

Of course, in war, the dead were not a threat. They were ruined like these dead and certainly maimed like these dead but they did not, could not, walk or run like these dead. In war the dead were horrors in that they had once been friends, brothers, or even unknown boys and girls of ages indeterminable. They were horrors in that they had once been alive and they weren’t any longer. They were horrors in that the means in which life had been taken from them had been ugly and unnatural and remorseless.

This did not make them any different from the dead that Owen had seen today. What made them different was that the dead today were up and walking. They were running. They were shrieking inhuman sounds from snarl-curled lips and sprinting like attack dogs down a concrete corridor. These dead were hurling themselves at you like soulless monsters, attempting to rip chunks out of you with blood-stained teeth, and staring at you with nothing but hunger in the otherwise dead void of their eyes. These dead were not dead at all until you put a bullet in their brain.

“Lil’ Shep…” That horrible weakness in Ed’s voice.

These dead killed their neighbors and friends. These dead killed Ed.

Owen Shepard had been called “LiL’ Shep” only a few times in his life. They were, almost exclusively, all from the mouth of the older man in the middle cell. Ed sat on the floor now, his back against the cot, with one gnarl-fingered hand pressed to a wound against his neck. He pulled that hand free long enough for Owen to see what the creature had done to him, the grisly tear where it’d gotten its teeth into soft, senior flesh and ripped it free. Still, he was glad to see it, because Owen recognized immediately that Ed’s neck was the kind of wound that would heal.

“Lucky I dropped by, Ed, otherwise you would be stuck in that cell.” He said, bending to Marcy’s body. Owen pointedly did not look to her face, did not look to anything of her that would remind him that this was the same woman who brought him coffee everytime he came to see Ed. He pretended that it was not the woman who wrapped him up in her arms at his father’s funeral when everyone else had gone and the one person, in all of town, who had seen him cry.

The keys were attached to the belt she’d bought at the State Fair several years ago from one of the Native American booths. It had blue and orange leather cord woven together and a large, squared silver buckle on the front. It took a great deal of focus not to start mourning her now, a glance to Ed as he felt the keys in his fingers and retrieved them.

“Don’t unlock that door, boy.”

That surprised him.

“It’s not that bad, Ed. I’ll get it clean and-“

“I’m done for and time is short, stop arguing and start listening.”

There was a gravity in Ed’s tone that drew Owen’s eyes to the older man’s, forced him to search that familiar face. Ed was not a man prone to panic and he certainly was not the kind of man to feel sorry for himself. The clarity that Owen saw in his eyes was matched only by his severity. He had Owen’s attention.

Ed only started speaking when he saw it.

“The bites are what does it. You get bit and you get dead. That man right there was in this very cell yesterday with a couple bites on his arm, none too deep. We found him at the county line standing over his wife with a revolver in his hand. We were going to hold him until after the holiday and the troopers were going to take him. Last night he caught ill, real ill, and died on us.

We couldn’t make sense of it. Doctor couldn’t either. It was like his body just up and quit on him for no real reason. The only marks on him were the bites. Chris was worried he had HIV or something but the Doctor didn’t think so.”

Ed swallowed and looked down to the body, past Owen and the cell bars that divided them.

“Anyway, Marcy was going down to start detailing the scene and jot down her statement when you called. I heard her scream and dropped the phone. By the time I got here he was on her, she shot him once before that rin-tin-tin piece of shit jammed on her. I pulled him off her but he wheeled on me, tried to rip my throat out. If I hadn’t had both hands up this would have killed me right there, not that it makes much a difference. I fell back and got a good boot on him, closed the cell door.”

Ed’s faced drew pained as he reached up and touched his throat again. The grimace the contact provoked was enough to make Owen fashion one of his own.

“I left my piece in my desk.” He frowned. “Stupid.”

“You can’t be sure it’s the bites he had.” Owen said simply.

“No.” Ed conceded. “But I am, regardless. Now’s your chance to find out. Listen to me, boy.”

“Ed-“

“NO!” Ed suddenly stood, pushing up with his free hand on the cell’s cot. The metal-frame creaked under the older man’s weight as he rose, eyes suddenly sharp and clear on Owen’s own. “You listen, boy. I’ve been feeling worse and worse as things have gone on and I’m feeling the worse I have right this moment. I don’t think I have long left and I’m not going to be handled like a damned toddler if that’s the case. The third key on that ring is for the gun lockers. Use it. Take what you need and take a lot of it. If I’m wrong, we’ll need it to get out of town. The radio and phone went wild when you called and it’s gotten damned quiet now. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.

And if I’m right?” He sat back down on the cot. “Then you’ll know what you’re up against.”


It was strange leaving Ed in the cell. Owen couldn’t shake that feeling. It was like terror and reservation weaving together as he cut through the halls of the police station, thinking of Ed seated on that tiny cot with his hand pressed to his neck. Thinking of the bodies outside of that cell and the way one had leapt at him. Owen tightened his grip on the pistol in his hands, kept it infront of him, but the station was quiet and empty.

There was no situation like this one upon which he could relate. The experience was new and all-together awful. So far, through everything, the driving force in his actions had been simple and civilian in nature. He had called the police. He had sought them out. These were things that the average man might do and they were things, twice now, that had nearly gotten he and Lara killed.

Owen knew that if he was to continue with her that his mind would have to begin to function on a different level, that he’d have to allow his drive to be survival. He’d have to understand that even if Ed was wrong about his condition he was right about one thing, the guns were more important right now. Owen and Lara would have to be armed, and armed fairly well, if they were to stand a chance.

Royal Oaks had no need for a large armory. Owen had for a moment allowed himself to hope that the gun lockers would be stuffed with tactical gear and high-powered weapons, tools of a trade he had put down a long time ago but never really forgotten. Instead, and as he’d expected, the Royal Oaks armory was nothing more than a tiny, closet-sized room flanked in black stainless steel lockers. Each locker was secured with a solitary padlock.

Marcy’s key released them one at a time.

While expected, the reality of the armory suddenly made Owen feel powerfully overwhelmed. It made him think about how quickly his day had gone from serene and celebratory, regular and routine, to some awful nightmare from which he could not wake himself.

There were six pistols in all, two Beretta’s like Marcy’s own, and four Glock’s. It was a pitiful haul. He did not find a single rifle, semi-automatic or otherwise, and only one Remington shotgun. A duffle bag hung in one of the lockers and he took it, spreading it out on the floor of the tiny room and beginning to set things inside it. He set Marcy’s pistol with the other Berettas after unloading it and took the Glock pistols. They were in .40 caliber and, mercifully, presented the only real good news of the day when he saw that they were given high-capacity magazines. Boxes of bullets were stacked in the back of one locker and he loaded those into the bag as well, taking what little 12 gauge shells the station had for the Remington.

The last thing he took was a thigh holster for his pistol.


Satisfied with the haul, Owen stood and left the room with the dufflebag and shotgun on his shoulder. He made a stop at Ed’s desk and gathered himself before going down into the cells.


Ed was not dead. He saw that right away. The older man was seated on the cot with his hands on his lap now, watching the door as Owen came through. Owen didn’t hesitate as he neared, only bent to the door’s great lock and pushed a key in. There wasn’t time for Ed to protest before he’d swung it open, tossing the older man’s large-framed revolver onto the cot beside him. It was bundled up in the man’s holster as he’d left it.

“What’s this? I told you-“ The old man begin to protest, his face tense.

“You did. I’m telling you, now. You’ve time left here and you’re going to use it by helping me, Ed, rather than waste it in a cell. Come on. Let’s go.”

Ed was moving, but protesting still. His eyes found Owen’s even as he put on his holster, belting the leather around his hips and under his broad belly.

“You’re taking a risk.” He said to Owen.

“Better risk this then risk my peace of mind. I’d never feel right leaving you here and you’d never leave me here, besides, so you’re coming.”

He didn’t wait to hear the Old Man’s answer but left, turned and made his way back out of the cell block. For a moment he debated turning, paying one last look to Marcy, but decided against it. The sooner he forgot the way her body had been torn apart, stretched on that cell floor, the better. That was not how Owen wanted to remember one of Royal Oak’s kindest hearts. He wanted to remember her coffee and the way she’d hugged him after his dad was gone.

Some memories weren’t worth keeping.

There was no conversation when they pushed out of the station’s doors. Just a look. For a moment the two had stood beside one another, eyes locked, and then they’d gone out through the doors. It reminded Owen of the last scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He’d been ready to empty his Glock into anything outside.

But the streets were empty.

Or, rather, they were devoid of people. Dead or living. Instead, they were filled with debris. Cars were abandoned, eerily left in the streets still-running and doors open. There were papers and decorations and confetti across the road, pushed by the wind, lazily tumbling down the street. There were also screams. Lots of screams. They came from the buildings and houses that flanked the street, from the alleyways behind them.

Neither man hesitated, though. Owen was glad for that. His legs had started moving with quick, quiet steps from the moment his eyes had taken in the road. He looked back and saw that Ed was with him with that massive Ruger in his hands, looking younger than Owen could remember. The danger had brought out the soldier in the Sheriff, bent knees and swift steps. There was a way of movement that was unlike anything a civilian would attempt. It was the kind of movement that was drilled into a man until it became second nature and reinforced the first time he saw a war up close.

It did not take them long to get to the store. Owen could see two bodies crumpled at the security gate and blood, jesus so much blood, splashed everywhere. He didn’t linger there, didn’t stare. Moving into the alleyway, Owen lead Ed towards the back. The backdoor had two locks, a dead-bolt and the emergency bar, and he had both keys with him. Going in the back was safer, and faster, than bothering with the cage in the front. They were home free.

And then his phone went off. That high-pitched, tinkling electronic ring. He juggled the Glock to his left hand and pawed into his pants with the other, fishing out the phone. Ignoring Ed’s wide-eyed look, Owen tried to hang up the phone. It went to voicemail, suddenly silent, and he looked around. Nothing, but things were suddenly quiet, and he didn’t like that. Throwing the bag down, he fetched out his keys and pocketed his phone.

It started to ring again. Loud. Insistent.

“Open the fucking door, Shep!” Ed said suddenly.

He was trying. The back door hadn’t been used much, if at all, and the locks were sticky and resistant. Owen had worked open the dead bolt when he heard the massive roar of the old man’s revolver.

There were six in the alley behind the neighboring building. Owen hadn’t seen where they’d come from but knew that they had heard his phone. Ed’s shot hit one in the throat and threw it down. If Owen had made that shot with his Glock the creature would have been up and charging. The Ruger, however, nearly blew the thing’s head clean off and absolutely severed the spinal column, dropping it, with its head bobbing like a grotesque pez-dispenser and its jaws snapping.

The others broke into a sprint.

Owen got the other lock open, but not quickly enough. Ed’s pistol roared before suddenly Owen heard the sound of impacts behind him and Ed’s hoarse, weakened shout.

They were on the old man, biting deep with blood-stained teeth. Owen drew his Glock free, centered the barrel on one, then another, but they were moving as they tore at his friend.

Ed was dead. He saw it then when his eyes met the man’s own. He’d been killed quickly, mercifully, when one bite had found the wound on his neck and gotten meat rather than skin. Ed’s blood pulsed out in hot gushes before slowing, his eyes vacant. Owen shot him in the top of the head, felt the Glock buck once in his hands before bending to get ahold of the dufflebag.

He tossed it in the store as the first one of the creatures looked up from Ed’s body, their eyes meeting, and then stepped in himself. The door thudded solidly behind him and he locked it. He was not relieved to be back.

 

[Alana_]

The sound of a shot ringing out close to the store had Lara slam the receiver down with both fright and frustration.
She swung around, and quickly rushed half way down the store before stopping to listen. There was someone somewhere trying to open a door. A door to the building.
Automatically - despite knowing the sound was traveling from somewhere else - Lara turned and looked back up to the front of the store, but saw no one was at the grilled security gate.

Slowly she faced the back of the store, and walked quietly towards the back store.
The steps ran from it down to the basement below, and the trap door that she'd weighted down with sacks.

There were more shots..More sounds of a door being worked on. And them. Those things. They were outside!

Owen!

She raced upstairs as fast as she could, and after a confusing moment of finding her sense of direction, she found the lone gable window that overlooked the alley to the side.
It opened freely upwards on its cords, but she cried out as she came face to face with the vertical security bars fitted to the secluded window.
There wasn't a hope of her being of any use from there. She couldn't see down to the alley with their restriction, and couldn't do more than swear at the uselessness of how she felt.
She was stuck inside, the building secure, but so secure she was less than useless.

Oh God Jesus be alright!
Her boots skidded on the bottom two steps of the stairs, bringing her to her knees before she stumbled back up to her feet, and came to a quick stop. The sounds outside were of a ravenous ugliness.
Briefly she could hear the sounds clearly...as a door opened. The gap in time for those seconds afforded her to hear the rendered shredding of teeth on flesh and the gurgling thirst as mouths slurped on wet blood soaked flesh.

Then the door closed , but it didn't block out the gnarling shredding of the skin and fabric on who ever it was outside..
With her pistol raised in her left hand, safety off, and the butt of her rifle resting securely against her hip, she went cautiously into the storeroom.

There was blood on his clothing. It seemed as if it had either exploded from him, or was drooled onto his chest. There were smeared traces of it on his throat where it had been hastily wiped away.
And Owen looked ...he looked empty.

It frightened her at first. She wasn't sure if he'd been hurt. Hurt enough to be......

That thought was pushed from her mind instantly. There was a thump to the door behind him...and then a pummeling encore. Who ever they'd killed outside wasn't enough. The pumping fisting on the door was almost a welcome noise however to Lara after the quiet of not knowing where Owen was, and how worry festered fantasies.

She stood looking at him, assuring herself Owen was unharmed , before putting the safety on on the pistol and tucking it into her waist band. The rifle dipped towards the floor safely, and she stepped a little closer to him. He was ok. No marks, no bites. He was ok.

Just as she was about to lift her hand to him , it started again below in the basement.
Lara closed her eyes; her jaw clenching in furious fear and contemptuous frustration as she bit out harshly lowering her hand; rejecting offering comfort to hold the cold steal of the rifle's chamber.

''Do they ever fuckin' stop!''

It got ridiculously louder as both the door and the cellar trap door were berated for their stubborn refusal to open. Looking behind her quickly towards the downward dark stairwell in the corner, Lara moved a little closer to Owen, and looked towards the holdall he'd tossed in ahead of him.
Guns, and ammunition. The sounds outside seemed to dissipate. Down below too. Someone else must have attracted them. It was a sickening source of relief to feel.

Owen had gone to find the sheriff . He had come back with ammunition and some firearms. No sheriff, but someone had been brutalized outside. She knew then of course who had come back with him. She also knew Owen had a fondness for the older gentleman, and Lara felt the sickness of knowing someone else they knew,..someone else who had played a part in lots of lives in town, was gone. Gone and no one could tell them why.

''That was Ed wasn't it? Outside?''

Stupid question! You really are useless.

''Owen...I'm sorry''.