The Last Bastion [Book 3] Read online

  As a dreary morning dawned, he made his move. Wordlessly communicating to the rest of his herd that they should stay put, he silently crept from the confines of the garage. Then he slinked across the lawn and made his way up to the massive Victorian home’s back door.

  It was cold out. Victor was glad he had extra skin. He wasn’t sure exactly how he’d been so lucky to have it, but the blue colored skin that fit loosely over his body, and of which he had several layers, helped him stay significantly warmer than those without it. He had seen many like himself without such skin, frozen stiff in gullies and ditches. He had found similar such layers of skin along his travels, and he wished he could distribute the material to those like him to help protect them from the cold. And while he had learned that the skin was somehow detachable from his body, he had yet to learn how to don or shed the additional layers. It was yet another item on his list of things he desired to learn and to teach his followers.

  Victor made his way up the porch steps leading to the home’s back door. He stared at a shiny gold-colored knob located halfway down the door. He had watched numerous times as their prey had reached down, grasped the knob in hand, and turned it to gain access to these large dens in which they nested. Sometimes, though, they produced shiny objects and inserted them into small holes below the knobs before turning them. Victor still didn’t understand this additional step or how it related to or affected the act of accessing the den.

  He reached out tremulously, brave but afraid. Instinctual fears shot through his weakened mind, fears that he was unable to process into thoughts or words but were present nonetheless. He grasped the knob, ready to fight or to flee – he wasn’t sure which – at the first sign of trouble. His body would tell him what to do.

  The knob felt cold in his hand, but that was all. It didn’t bite him, or sting him, or burn him, or harm him in any other way. He squeezed tight and twisted the knob in his hand just as he had seen his prey do numerous times. The knob began to turn but then stopped, stuck in place. Victor let go, confused. Maybe this was how the tiny pieces of metal he’d seen his prey produce, came into play. But he didn’t have one of those pieces of metal.

  He tried the knob again. Again, it stuck in place and wouldn’t turn.

  Victor was becoming angry now. He tried the knob again, and again, but always with the same result.

  He stepped back, lowered his shoulder, and rammed the door hard out of frustration. In so doing, he felt the door bend inward, giving slightly, and at the same time there came a cracking sound. It was as if the door was taunting him, which made Victor even angrier. He hit the door with his shoulder again, and then took a long step back, raised a leg, and gave the door a kick, planting his foot squarely in its center. There was a loud cracking noise, the sound of splintering wood, and then the door burst open.

  Victor stood, mouth agape, hideous teeth exposed, stunned that the door was open. He had only been venting his frustration. He hadn’t expected his blows to lead to this.

  He hunched forward, peering inside the darkened den. Then he turned to look back at the garage, proud of his work.

  His companion, the light-skinned woman who had been with him for some time now, was watching from the garage window along with some of his herd. They must have seen what he’d done. But did they understand how and why it had happened? Making them understand was the hard part. Helping them connect the dots from cause to effect. In actuality, Victor was still trying to understand what had happened himself. It was something about hitting the den entrance. The sheer force of his blows had acted to open it. He wondered if it would work with similar den entrances.

  There was only one way to find out.

  * * *

  “We have plenty of food. I just wish we had a gun,” Stuart frowned at his wife Cynthia.

  “I know, I know,” she sighed as she shook her head.

  “‘No guns in the house,’ is what you always said. ‘Not with the kids around’,” he glared at her. “‘That’s what the police are for’. So much for that. Where are the police now?”

  “How was I supposed to know that the world was going to collapse?” Cynthia tried to defend herself.

  “That’s why people have guns!” Stuart huffed. “For situations just like this. Now we have to hide away in here like scared children…with our scared children, I might add.”

  “Keep your voice down or they’ll hear you,” his wife urged, pressing her hands into her lap where she sat on the edge of the bed while her husband paced the room impatiently.

  “So let them hear. Hell, even they’d probably agree that I should have had a gun in the house.”

  “Hey!” Cynthia cried. “You don’t have to be a jerk about this. Things are bad enough.”

  She was scared, angry, frustrated. She hadn’t had a shower in days and felt disgusting. Her hair was a mess. The toilets didn’t work. And it was freezing inside the house. “Don’t you think I know I screwed up? I was only trying to keep the kids safe. Who would have thought that in a place like Riverside, a place where violent crimes are virtually non-existent, and with us living just blocks from the police station, that we’d ever need a firearm?”

  “I know…I’m sorry,” Stuart came over and sat down on the bed beside his wife, wrapping his arm around her and pulling her close as she began to weep. “I’m just taking my frustrations at the situation out on you, and I shouldn’t. I apologize.”

  She nodded and looked at him through the tears. “I’m so scared,” she wept. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this scared. What if we run out of food? Where will we go to get more? What if the army doesn’t come back? Or the National Guard? Or…or…someone to help us?”

  “I know,” Stuart nodded, hugging Cynthia close to him. “I’m not sure. I know that in the past, I’ve usually had the answers, but this…well, this is something you just don’t see coming,” he shook his head. “At least I didn’t. I don’t think most people did. Otherwise, the world wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  Cynthia buried her head in her husband’s chest, sobbing openly. “I’m not so scared for myself,” she sniffed. “We’ve had a good life. But the kids…they’re just starting out…just starting to live. They haven’t even had their proms yet, learned to drive yet, had their first loves yet. They still have so much to live for.”

  “I know, and that’s why we’re staying put. Staying inside the house until help arrives is the best thing we can do to stay safe. Help has to come at some point. There must be people out there, government or military people or someone working to get organized to combat this thing. Whether through a cure to the syndrome or a way to come in militarily and fight the biters or something, they must be coming back.”

  “But when? How long will it be? How long will we have to be here, cooped up in this house? It’s been a week already…I think. I’m already starting to lose track of the days. It’s like every day is the same, just one terrible nightmare after the next in an endless procession.”

  “I hate to break it to you hon’, but there could be a lot more days just like this. A lot more. I know it’s bad, but consider the alternatives. It could be a hell of a lot worse. We could be…out there,” he shifted his gaze toward their bedroom window where a dingy morning light filtered inside.

  “I know,” she pulled back from him, her eyes damp and red, her cheeks streaked with tears. “I just…just…I hate all of this! It’s horrible. The things going on out there. And those…those…beasts! They’re so terrible looking. Those teeth. Ugh,” she cringed and then gave an inadvertent shiver. “Those teeth,” she breathed. “I can’t imagine…”

  She let the sentence go unfinished as Stuart hugged her tight again.

  “Calm down, sweetheart. It’ll be okay. You just wait and see. We’ve got the kids here with us. We’re safely buttoned up in our home. And sure, it’s cold and we don’t have anything other than board games, books, and conversation among ourselves to keep us busy, but that’s not so bad. Heck, in a way, it’s actua
lly kind of nice. I don’t think I’ve talked to the kids so much uninterrupted by cell phones, video games, televisions, sports practices, or the doorbell since they were babies…maybe never!”

  Cynthia looked at him and smiled. “You’re so good at finding the silver lining in things. I wish I could be as…”

  She was interrupted by the sound of glass smashing downstairs.

  “Aaaaannnd there’s one of the disadvantages of being home with the kids all day and not having electronic devices to keep them occupied,” Stuart sighed heavily.

  “How many dishes do you think that was?” Cynthia rolled her eyes.

  “Sounded like a lot,” Stuart shook his head as he dejectedly hefted himself from the bed and the loving embrace of his wife of over 18 years. “I’ll deal with it. You stay here and rest.”

  “Oh yeah, thanks. Like I haven’t gotten enough of that lately,” his wife laughed sarcastically. “Cooped up in this madhouse all day,” she muttered to herself as she watched Stuart leave the bedroom.

  Stuart walked downstairs and hooked a left, heading toward the kitchen. “I thought I said no eating without permission!” he called ahead of him to the kids he figured he’d find quietly trying to clean up their mess when he arrived.

  As he got to the kitchen located at the rear of their Victorian home, Stuart again heard the tinkling of glass.

  “What are you little monsters up to?” he entered the kitchen.

  “Sorry, Dad,” Sally, the oldest of the two at 13 years of age, piped up as he entered. “It was an honest accident. We weren’t eating. We promise.”

  “Yeah,” his eleven-year-old, Jessup, jumped in. “We were trying to be good and surprise you by putting away the dishes that you and Mom cleaned last night.”

  Stuart looked at the shards of broken plates that littered the floor.

  “Jeez. What the heck happened?” he said.

  Jessup suddenly looked nervous. “Well, Sally gave me a stack of dishes to put away,” he explained. “And right when she handed them to me, we heard a big thump at the back door. It scared the heck out of me, and I looked away just as she let go of the dishes and…” he gestured around him dejectedly.

  “It’s all right,” his father smiled at him and nodded understandingly. “If cleaning up some broken dishes is the worst thing to happen today, it won’t be the end of the world.” He looked toward the back door. “Now, about that noise, did you check it out?”

  “Huh uh,” Jessup shook his head.

  “Hmm,” his father frowned. “Guess I should then. You guys keep working on this mess. I’ll go take a look.”

  He walked out of the kitchen and back into the hallway that led from the home’s front door all the way to a sort of mudroom at the very rear of the house. Actually, the mudroom was more of just an open space at the end of the hallway than an actual “room”. The back door there had its upper portion separated into nine small windowpanes that were covered by a thin white privacy curtain.

  Stuart first checked to ensure that the door was still locked. Both the handle lock and bolt lock were secured. Then, with a finger, he tenuously pulled the white privacy curtain aside, just a fraction of an inch at first, then several inches.

  He scanned the backyard from right to left. He saw the fence dividing their yard from their neighbors, neighbors they hadn’t seen nor heard from in over a week. He saw the shrubberies that lined the fence. He saw the snow along the fence line that remained un-melted due to the shadow the fence cast in the afternoon sun. He saw the birdbath, its water still frozen. He saw the kids’ play set with its castle-like fortress that he remembered building with his brother-in-law. It had taken them an entire Memorial Day weekend. How long ago was that? Almost ten years. The kids hardly acknowledged the play set’s existence these days. They were growing too old for such things. Soon they’d be bugging him to take the car rather than swing on the monkey bars – at least if the world ever got back to normal. He saw the driveway, the garage, their vehicles parked inside to avoid luring prospective looters. He wished he could load up the family and drive them away from all this, but he knew that was impossible. They’d watched the final news reports together before the power went out – scenes of multi-mile-long rows of vehicles sitting bumper-to-bumper, stagnant on the highway. Most of the vehicles were abandoned. Some had been on fire or were burned out after they’d overheated.

  Everything appeared to be in place outside.

  Stuart tilted his head to get a side-on angle.

  Still he saw nothing.

  But something wasn’t registering right on Stuart’s radar, something he had missed in his scan of the back yard.

  He did another slow scan – driveway, garage, doors shut and vehicles inside, play set. Wait! The garage! Something wasn’t right with the garage.

  He looked back.

  He re-scanned the area, slower this time, searching for something he might have missed.

  Garage door shut – check.

  Garage window, shut and undamaged – check.

  Garage side door closed – check – wait, no. It was shut, but not closed completely. It was cracked open, maybe half an inch, an inch at most.

  The wind had probably just blown the door open, Stuart theorized. Maybe a voracious raccoon or possum, detecting the scent of rotting garbage, had pushed its way inside in search of food. The door had a history of not latching securely, and it was possible that in his haste to make it back to the security of their home the last time Stuart was out, he hadn’t double-checked to ensure that it was properly secured.

  A gust of wind suddenly blew the door open wider, and then it closed again with a soft bang as the gust subsided.

  “Just the wind,” Stuart nodded to himself with a slight smile of relief.

  He turned his head back to the right, scanning through the yard again. Then he saw it – something at the play set. It looked as though someone or something was inside the lower level of the two-story, castle-like portion of the play set. Stuart pulled the window curtain farther aside to allow him a better view. As he squinted at this section of the play set, the front of which was framed with several tiny windows, he thought he could detect movement inside.

  As he squinted at the spot, he caught a glint of something reflected in the morning sun through one of the castle windows. Concentrating, he almost thought he could detect eyes peering back at him. It sent chills up his spine.

  Then the eyes disappeared.

  Stuart stood frozen, wondering for an instant if he had indeed seen what he thought he’d just seen.

  Then suddenly, there was movement at the play set and someone emerged from behind the little castle. At first, Stuart thought it might be someone taking shelter in the play set who was in need of help. It could be a neighbor or someone who had been caught out by the biters and unable to make it back home. He looked down to the bolt lock and grabbed hold of it, ready to open the door and offer the wayward traveler assistance. But as the man, dressed in a blue work outfit, moved across the lawn and toward the rear of the house, Stuart saw them – the teeth. They were those hideous, awful, horrifying teeth that accompanied the biters.

  Stuart flinched, pulling his head back from the door and letting the window curtain flip back into place, hoping he hadn’t been seen. But then he relaxed, looking down at the locks on the door. Biters didn’t know how to get inside a locked door, but he twisted the handle again in his hand just to verify it was indeed locked. It was.

  Stuart walked back to the kitchen. He found the kids almost finished with their cleanup of the broken dishware.

  “Everything okay, Dad?” Sally asked from where she knelt on the floor, dustpan in one hand, broom in the other, sweeping remnants into the pan.

  “Biter in the backyard,” Stuart gave a half frown.

  Stuart didn’t like to scare the kids. But he’d decided early on in the situation that had befallen the world that honesty was going to be the best policy. He wanted to protect and shelter his kids from wh
at was going on outside, but they also needed to know the truth. Unlike his wife, Stuart had few illusions regarding the severity of their predicament. And while he would go along with her delusions regarding a source of aid arriving in the coming days, he had a strong sense that no such help would be forthcoming. Things had broken down too quickly and too severely for any sort of real response to be developed. And he figured, if the government had a plan of any kind, it would have been enacted by now. But he wasn’t about to go that far in his assessment of the situation in front of his wife and kids. To hold the family together, he knew he had to maintain some semblance of hope for their salvation.

  “Was the biter alone?” Jessup asked with the furrowed brow of a concerned eleven-year-old.

  “From what I could see. Looked like he was having some fun,” Stuart tried to add a little levity to the situation. “Playing in your old castle.”

  “Silly biter,” Jessup laughed, set at ease by his father’s apparent indifference toward the situation. “Hope he doesn’t drag someone in there to eat. I don’t want to have body parts scattered around the next time I want to play in there.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Sally wrinkled her nose in distaste at the thought.

  “Maybe I could hit you with an arm this spring,” Jessup taunted his sister.

  “Maybe I could hit you with a leg,” she taunted back.

  “Maybe I could hit you with a big jelly butt, oozing full of poop,” he shot back.

  “Maybe I could hit you with a…” Sally began, but she was cut short by a loud bang at the back door followed by the sound of tinkling glass.

  “What the heck was that?” Stuart shot a confused look to the hallway.

  Both the kids just shrugged and stayed silent.