Jon Fore - Black Water

“No, you keep it. I’ll hold onto Kayla. In fact, here…” She offered him the other clip and handful after handful of bullets.

“Do either of you know what is going on? Was there a chemical spill or something?” Stan asked with his eyebrows arched high on his forehead.

“You know the Heart House?” Ethan asked.

“Yeah, up on the top of Black Water Mountain, right?”

“Right. There was something inside the mountain. I think it’s loose now.”

“What kind of thing?” Stan asked with incredulousness.

“Well, monsters, actually…”

“Oh,” Stan replied, his face frozen in a that-is-why-you-were-in-the-hospital expression.

“You can believe me or not; up to you. I know what I saw, and this thing here is nothing like what’s up there.”

“This was just a guy, some sick-o…” Stan began, trying to shore up his own sanity.

“How many times did you shoot him before he died?” Ethan asked defensively.

Kayla broke from Shannon’s grasp and ran back into the store. “Kayla, wait!” Shannon shouted as she chased after her.

“Are you talking something like the boogie man?”

“No, more like something from a Japanese horror movie, you know, one of those anime things?” Ethan cut back at him.

“You’re serious about this, huh?”

“Yeah.” Ethan was becoming irritated at everyone asking that.

“Well, what’s your next move then, Ethan?”

“We were looking for food, and then we were going to get the hell out of here.”

“Sounds like a plan to me. Do you know how far this…I don’t know, thing…how far it has spread?” Again, he held one eyebrow higher than the other.

“Not a clue.”

“I listened to my ham radio all night, and no one was talking about it. I am thinking it is just local.”

“Well, we looked all over for a car, but every one we found was vandalized and looked like it’s been sitting for a long time. The strange thing is that there aren’t many of them about, like people did escape.”

“That would be good. Maybe they will send help,” Stan hoped aloud.

Kayla came rushing back from the store carrying a white plastic jug almost too big for her to lift. Shannon came out a short time later with a small first-aid kit.

“What do you have there, sweetie?” Ethan asked the little girl.

She unscrewed the top, pulled the small foil cap off, and spilled some on the bloated body. It immediately began to scream and buck. Kayla screamed and ran back to Shannon as a white smoke began to plume from the corpse. Ethan and Stan backed away in unison, like synchronized swimmers in gray fog-like water.

The thing bucked and screeched in agony as its flesh began to melt away, releasing the badges to surf down and into the parking lot on gore-filled waters.

“What did she pour on it? What was that, Kayla?”

“It was bleach, Mr. Ethan. He was dirty and Mom always said bleach cleans best.”

Ethan looked at Shannon a moment. “Did you know it was going to make all that smoke?” he asked the little girl.

“Uh-huh,” Kayla said while jerking her head up and down. “He was dirty.”

Stan approached the corpse slowly. “He’s pretty much gone.”

“Gone?” Shannon asked.

“Yeah, sort of a puddle now,” Stan replied.

Ethan approached and looked down at the thing. It was bits of gooey flesh and white bone in a mixture of blood and clear fluid. “It looks, you know, more human, less diseased.”

“Yeah, I noticed that. Maybe we could use the bleach as a weapon. I really thought that thing was dead.”

“The girl did not spill much bleach on it,” Ethan mused.

“Got me. What I do know is it took a mag and a half of nine millimeter ammo and whatever Shannon hit it with to kill it, at least to what we saw before the bleach.”

“We should at least carry some bleach with us I guess,” Ethan reasoned.

This decided, both men went back into the store and retrieved a number of jugs of bleach and a couple of large hiking backpacks to carry them.

Shannon was sitting with Kayla just outside the store, waiting for the men to return. “Now what?” she asked as they approached.

“I vote we just get out of here,” Stan suggested. “There are two roads leading out of town: one toward Black Water Mountain, the other towards Interstate 79.”

“I vote away from the mountain,” Ethan voiced.

“Me, too,” Kayla added.

“Either way is fine with me,” Stan said as he turned and began walking away.

“Let’s keep up with him,” Ethan whispered softly. “I don’t think he cares about much more than himself, and he could leave us behind.”

They caught up to Stan and began walking slowly, cautiously searching the buildings almost completely obscured by the smothering fog for any movement, for any threat, for the source of the sounds now echoing around the town. Somewhere, a creature was gnawing on something wet, another was dragging something, and far in the distance, a voice rose in a single heart-wrenching scream before cutting violently short.

“I don’t want to leave the house. You said I could stay for as long as I like,” Madison whined.

“Ah, my young girl… but we have found him, the escaped… and now we must collect him and make him one of us.”

“But I so love it here!” Madison exclaimed as her hands found the more sensitive parts of her body. The gown she wore gave her easy access to these parts just so she could bring herself pleasure whenever desire filled her.

“And you will return… Remember, you are the mistress of the Heart House now… That could never be taken from you…”His voice was sweet and reassuring, like it had been when he gave her communion and brought her to a place she loved so.

Her fingers found pleasure spots between her thighs and her back arched deeply. “Send me the tall one again, and I will go. You know, I don’t even like him, this escaped one, but I did want to fuck him once.”

A large black man came into the dining hall and mounted Madison on the table. She found deep, internal pleasure at the man’s thrusts, and she would have agreed to just about anything at that moment.

“So, you will go now? Or do I need take him away from you?”

“When… I… am… done…” Her breath came in short bursts as she reached her peak and exploded in an avalanche of pure pleasure. She rested a moment, feeling her desire already growing anew. “Now, I will go and bring him.”

They walked for some time in silence, each taking in the dilapidation of the buildings and streets, the aged wood and mortar crumbling and threatening to collapse entirely. The air was still thick with the ash-colored fog. Random strangled screams drifted to them occasionally, the ending of some survivor by some other survivor.

One thing only Ethan seemed to noticed were the puss-colored hanging plants that had begun to grow on just about every horizontal surface, hanging and dripping moisture, engorged and sweating with a yellowish fluid. These were the same as the plants within the cave, but this time they were not as dry, not as dead.

Somehow, what was in the cave was extending, reaching down into this small town, and bringing it ruin. The filthy bum reached up, popped one of the pustule bulbs allowing it to drain into his upturned mouth. He turned and smiled at Ethan, the yellowish fluid dripping from his chin like rancid milk.

“You should give it a try; sweet as rotten baby feet!” His words formed around the stained bone collision that was the bum’s teeth, still wet with the puss of the plant.

Ethan looked away finding the tolerance for his delusional nightmare not as strong as when he was little. He had spent years dealing with this bum as a child, and some of the calluses remained. Not until the bum began to gargle with the plant’s thick juice did Ethan feel nauseated.