Bryan Smith: Soultaker

Jake realized what was about to happen an instant before it did.

There was no time to get out of the way.

He closed his eyes and hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much.

Then the thing that had been Jordan crashed into him and the world went black.

The first thing he felt when he woke up was pain. Pain all over. He wondered for a moment whether he was paralyzed, but then realized he wouldn’t feel this all-over pain if he’d been paralyzed. He carefully tested his arms and legs, rolled his neck from one side to the other. It hurt like hell, but nothing seemed to be broken. A miracle. Now he’d just have to hope he hadn’t been hit quite hard enough to trigger some kind of internal bleeding.

He drew in a deep breath, braced his palms against the slick floor, and pushed himself up to a sitting position. He held his breath as he surveyed the carnage around him. Kristen sat slumped against a bank of lockers, unconscious but breathing. She looked okay otherwise, with the exception of a bruised face and a bloody nose. Then he saw Kelsey and felt a pang at the center of his chest. The boy was facedown on the floor. His neck had been snapped during the monster melee. He wasn’t breathing. Jake considered a CPR attempt, but knew it would be useless. The floor was littered with pieces of Bridget Flanagan’s exploded body.

He frowned.

They were gone.

There was no sign of Jordan. No sign of the thing she’d become. No sign of Lamia in Godzilla mode. All the animals were gone, too.

What the fuck happened?

Kristen groaned and her eyes fluttered open. She blinked slowly and in a few moments was able to focus on Jake. “Jake…what…happened?”

He sighed. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

He got to his feet and went to her. He took her outstretched hand and pulled her gingerly to her feet. They walked out of the school and she held tightly to him as they made their way to the Camry. He got her settled into the front passenger seat and said, “I have to go back inside for a minute.”

Some of the bleariness drained from her eyes then. “No. Jake…please…”

“I have to. I won’t be long, I promise. You stay here. I just have to check on something.”

He turned away from her and left without another word. Back inside the school, he moved quickly past the bodies in the hallway and stepped through the open door leading to the auditorium. In the backstage area, he stopped and stared for a moment at the bullet-riddled bodies of the adults. These were the people Lamia had recruited to assist her in arranging the Harvest. All dead. Good. Fuck them. He moved past them, found his way to the stage, and felt the strength drain from his body as he saw what had happened in the auditorium.

They were all dead. Just as he’d feared. Every last one of them. If Trey’s body was out there somewhere, he would never be able to identify it. The withered corpses barely looked human.

He dropped to his knees and just stared at the horror for a long, long time.

Then he heard footsteps behind him.

A moment later, a soft hand on his shoulder.

“Jake…let’s go.”

He looked up at her through eyes wet with tears. “Okay.”

He took Kristen’s hand and she helped him to his feet.

Then they left that slaughterhouse and never returned.

Their first stop after leaving Rockville High was his mother’s house in the Zone. He kept his mind a blank as he kicked open the front door, not wanting to acknowledge any notion of his brother having remained safe at home. There was no point in hope by then.

They did find Trey at the house.

But there was no miracle.

He was dead.

And so was Jolene.

Their bodies had been torn apart. They found arms, legs, fingers, and genitals in different parts of the house. He found Trey’s head floating in the toilet bowl. His mother’s head was in the microwave oven. Lengths of intestine were spread out on the table. Some of them had been cooked and gnawed on. There was an eyeball on a toothpick. Just one. Jake didn’t care to guess what had happened to the others. He grabbed an unopened twelve-pack of Old Milwaukee from the fridge; then they got the hell out of there.

They left town.

What else was there to do?

Kristen drove as he drank beer after beer, crumpling the empties and tossing them into the back. After six of them, Jake had her pull over. He threw the door open and heaved his guts out and listened to cars whiz by on the interstate. He sat there with his head hanging out the door for several more minutes, sweat pouring down his face as his body continued to spasm long after his stomach had been emptied of its contents.

Then he pulled himself back inside and shut the door.

“You okay?”

“Yeah…” He was still working to get his breathing under control. “I’ll be fine. Just go.”

Kristen stared at him a moment. Then she shrugged and put the car back in gear.

Jake started in on the rest of the beer.

They drove and drove, with only brief convenience store pit stops. Jake would empty his bladder and buy more beer while Kristen pumped gas. This continued all the way through to the next day, when they stopped in Austin, Texas. By then Jake was running on fumes. He didn’t want to sleep, fearing the nightmares that would come. But sleep was coming. There was nothing he could do about it. They found a cheap motel and Jake used his debit card to pay for a week’s stay. He slept deeply that night and did not dream.

The next day they explored the town. Jake didn’t feel much like sightseeing, but it was better than just sitting in that gray, depressing room all day. Austin was a funky college town, a bastion of liberalism and creativity in the heart of conservative Texas. Under other circumstances, he might have found it a fascinating place. But he was still too numb to care. Too numb to have even begun a proper grieving process.

That night they ventured back out to a bar they’d stopped by earlier in the day. It had a long wooden porch with benches. The front door was open and music spilled out. There was loud talk and laughter. As Jake stepped through the door with Kristen, he knew this was what he needed. To be surrounded by people. To hear their boozy, carefree conversations. To feel their normality. Maybe if he soaked in enough of it, he could forget about the monster he knew was out there somewhere.

The jukebox was playing “Stagger Lee,” some version he didn’t recognize. A very attractive brunette in tight denim shorts gyrated in front of the jukebox. A table beside her was filled with other extremely attractive women. They were talking and laughing. Their table was littered with empty beer bottles and shot glasses. One of the women, a leggy black chick, spotted his roving eye and winked at him.

Jake smiled and followed Kristen to the bar. There they ordered two pints of Shiner Bock and watched the television bolted to the wall behind the bar. The news was on. Coverage of the mysterious massacre at Rockville High was still nonstop.

Jake felt a deep melancholy settle over him. There were answers he wanted. Questions he could never ask. He sipped his beer and looked at Kristen. “Do you think she did it on purpose?”

Kristen frowned. “Did what?”

He cleared his throat, looked at the television again, and frowned. “At my mom’s house. Do you think she did what she did to Mom and Trey knowing I’d be back there to see it at some point?”

Kristen shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe she just did it for the sheer evil thrill of it. She’s a demon, remember.” She touched his knee. “Best not to think about it, really.”

Jake nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

They sat there and drank several more beers. Then they staggered out of the bar and picked up another twelve-pack on the way back to the motel. Back in their room, they sat on the bed, conversing intermittently while they drank beer and watched TV. At some point Kristen took charge of the remote and dialed up a pay-per-view porno movie. As the first sex scene began, she nibbled on his ear and kissed his neck.