| |
Teresa retrieved a flashlight from home and set out on foot to the site of the accident. The night brought a cold wind. The trees lashed the air. She pulled her coat tighter.
When she found the swerve marks, she climbed down the hill, aiming the flashlight’s beam at the car.
The driver’s side door hung wide open. From a few yards away, she shined the light inside.
Derrick was gone.
Fear boiled up to her throat, and she let out a whimper. He could be anywhere waiting for her to grab the hypo.
Would he chase her like Ruthie and the sheriff?
“Tiffany, where are you? I need you now. I need your strength.”
“Here I am, Mommy.” Tiffany stepped out from behind the tree the car had crashed into. “I’m sorry I disappeared. I was frightened.”
Teresa knelt and opened her arms. Tiffany entered the embrace. A sob burst from Teresa’s mouth.
“It’s okay.” Tiffany stroked her hair. “We don’t need him to be happy, do we?” Tiffany leaned back and met Teresa’s eyes.
Teresa shook her head. No. They would be happier without him and his constant desire to make pancakes for dinner.
Tiffany nodded. She stepped out of Teresa’s arms and led her to the hypo.
Teresa hesitated.
“Pick it up, Mommy.”
“I’m afraid,” Teresa said. She shined the light around the clearing, shooing away the shadows among the trees, but the light only reached so far.
“Ruthie will chase us,” Teresa said.
“She hasn’t caught us yet.”
Teresa took a deep breath and picked up the hypo.
Ruthie’s shriek sounded in the distance. Teresa took Tiffany’s hand, and they jogged up the hill.
Someone stood in the middle of the road, a black smudge against the darkness. Teresa shined the light toward it.
Derrick’s milky-white eyes stared at her. He sniffed the air, then reached toward her with charred fingers. Skin sloughed off of him and hit the ground with a pattering-plop as he took a step in her direction.
Teresa shifted in front of Tiffany.
“He’s not very fast, Mommy. But Ruthie is.” Tiffany’s little hand pointed beyond Derrick, where Ruthie lurched down the street in their direction.
Ruthie lined up next to Derrick and stopped.
Behind them, Sheriff McMichael waddled on bloated feet. He stood on Derrick’s other side.
They’d come from the direction of town. How did they get there so fast?
There was no way Teresa could get past Ruthie. The others, yes, but Ruthie’s vengeance fueled her need to stop Teresa from delivering the zoe.
“What do I do?” She looked down at Tiffany. Tiffany looked up at her with frightened eyes and shook her head. Of course a seven-year-old wouldn’t know what to do. Teresa looked at the hypo in her hand.
It gave Yaldabaoth his power back. Would it make her powerful, too? Powerful enough to run all the way back to town? To outrun Ruthie?
She turned it needle-side up and looked down at Tiffany again, but her daughter was watching the living dead.
“They aren’t moving,” Tiffany said.
Teresa looked up and frowned. “Why are they just standing there like zombies?”
Tiffany giggled. “Or Like zoe-bies.” Her laugh raised in pitch and hysteria.
Ruthie shrieked. Tiffany, suddenly silent, huddled closer to Teresa.
Teresa considered the needle again. Would the zoe kill her? Did she care? The last question surprised her.
Ruthie took a step toward her, then another. Teresa jammed the giant needle into her thigh and pushed the plunger.
At first the only thing she felt was a gouging, stinging pain where the thick needle stabbed into her skin. Then heat. Immense heat.
It coursed down into her calf and foot, and upward, spreading across her pelvis. When it tingled across her womanhood, she cried out and dropped to one knee. She tore off her coat. Her veins glowed red through her skin. The glow slid through her nervous system, and a peace overwhelmed her. Feelings of happiness and sadness all at once. She yearned to laugh, yearned to cry.
And then the feeling left her, frightened away by a hard beating in all of her pulse points. Her ears rushed with the sound of her own heart. She curled into herself. Each beat felt like a lash from a whip, a wallop from a baseball bat. Her head felt like it would explode. Even though it was painful, it was also pleasurable.
This was the pulse of power. Raw and unleashed. Wild. Uncontained.
It boiled in her loins and finally erupted.
She threw her head back and let out a sound so animalistic she couldn’t tell if it was a wild cat’s growl, a woman’s scream, or both.
She crouched without thought, moved by instinct to adopt the attack pose of a predator.
Her breath mixed with the cold night air and formed clouds with each panting exhale.
Tiffany was gone, but no matter. She couldn’t contain the power ripping through her. It was better her baby didn’t see her like this.
With keen night vision lent by the zoe, she stared at Derrick, then Sheriff McMichael.
Finally, her eyes landed on Ruthie. Ruthie let out a shriek, frail in comparison to the roar that had ripped from Teresa’s vocal cords.
In less than a second, Teresa’s muscles coiled and released. She sprang forward into a full sprint, charging straight for Ruthie.
The mummified woman jolted toward her with an enraged shriek. They crashed into each other. Teresa grabbed Ruthie’s shrunken head, forced her fingers into the woman’s mouth, and ripped her jaw off the rest of the way. She tossed it aside.
Ruthie stumbled backward, lost her footing, and fell.
Sheriff McMichael lumbered forward, bulging eyes intent on Teresa. He stepped on Ruthie’s head and crushed it into the ground. The crunching sound distracted him. He looked down and lifted his foot as if to see what he’d stepped in.
Teresa sprinted past him and Derrick before they even knew what had happened to their scrawny leader.
She arrived at the abandoned funeral home in less than five minutes.
The lost souls crowded around her, as if they sensed the zoe inside her. Where they touched her, they left tiny burn marks she couldn’t feel. Her skin was numb from the cold, or from the zoe, she didn’t know. She didn’t care.
She needed to find Yaldabaoth. She bounded up the stairs and through the front door. The house melted. Yaldabaoth stood at his pool, gazing into it.
Teresa took long steps, grabbed him by the arm, and spun him into her. Her lips locked on his. She pulled away for a second.
“I can’t contain this,” she growled.
Yaldabaoth gripped her upper arms and forced her back from him.
“What have you done?”
“I had no choice,” she said. She wanted him. Needed him. The energy inside of her begged for something—it could only be this. Lust seared her insides.
Yaldabaoth pulled her against him and squeezed her so hard she thought her ribs would break. Her body writhed in his grip. He lowered his lips to hers. She hungrily kissed him.
It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t loving or warm like their first time together when he’d tricked her into believing he was Derrick. It was feral, angry, lustful. It was every deadly sin rolled into one blissful moment.
When he finished, his body glowed with the power, and Teresa lay back, drained. The zoe had left her. She was her simple, mortal shell, once again.
Shame replaced the power. She quietly righted her shirt, pulled up her pants.
How could she do such a thing after losing her husband?
Yaldabaoth chuckled. Teresa glared at him. He held up his hands.
“I did not fool you this time.” He grinned. Then his smile dropped. “Don’t steal what’s mine ever again.”
He snapped his fingers, and Tiffany’s pained screams came from the dark passage as they had once before. He snapped again, and the cries stopped.
Teresa said nothing. She walked to the police station to report the accident. Shame or no shame, the town needed to know their beloved doctor was gone.