Caught in the Web Read online

  As he fell back, he knew he was falling off the porch. As a kid, he had jumped and ran around that porch so many times, he knew every centimeter of it. He knew how much of it there was to run across and take a flying leap, and he knew he had stumbled backwards far enough to know that when he fell, he was going to land flat on his back. What he didn’t know was if he was over far enough to crash into the rose bush, or if he was going to fall onto the hard ground.

  He wasn’t sure and he didn’t care. He was still focused on his sister, his little baby sister, and her body as it broke through the glass. He hadn’t wondered too much about how she broke through. The glass window had been thick and would be hard to break, but Jason remembered the BB holes that were hidden towards the edges. The ones he and his cousin had done years ago, the ones his mom still didn’t know about. He was sure that if she ever found out, she would still put him over her knee and tan his ass. Well, not anymore. Not after all that was happening. It was nice to think she would get upset over something so small and, in a way, it was a comforting thought to get punished over something so superficial. However, he knew she would never find out about the window and, now, it paled in comparison to everything else. It paled in comparison to his failure as a big brother to protect his little sis.

  The world around him came back. He remembered that face, what had once been his sister’s face, tearing through the window. Then he landed hard into the side of the rose bushes. The thorns of the thick, stiff branches tore into his flesh, and he could feel his back as it was pricked from the side branches as the force from his fall was pushing him away from the bushes.

  He didn’t have time to register it, as he was past the bush and landing on the large rocks that made up the bedding around the front porch. His body rolled and continued down the little embankment until he could finally catch himself.

  His back and arms had thousands of little fires of agony, and he could see the red lines already starting on his hands from the thorns. His head felt like a hammer had crushed into one side, and his cheek felt like it was swelling fast. He didn’t think there was any part of him that didn’t hurt.

  He brought his knee up under him as he worked to stand. He needed to see just what the hell was going on. Up on the porch, he heard the scraping and shattering of glass and he knew that his sister was still pulling herself out of the window. He turned back and caught himself reaching for her. She must be trying to get away from someone. He must have gotten there at the right time. Maybe she would be okay.

  She was lying on the cement just outside the window, her pale face looking at him. Her eyes were a dead gray and her mouth hung open, her tongue hanging out. He could see that, at some point, she had bitten through most of it and it was limply hanging there. There were scrapes and cuts on her face and along her arms, one cut jutting down from the right edge of her eye, exposing the side where her eye should have been.

  He took a step back, noticing there was no blood coming out of any of her wounds. He could see the flesh was peeled back, and could see what looked like blood underneath, but it didn’t pour out of her.

  She reached an arm towards him, and he instinctively took a step back, then another, his hand dropping down to the bush around him, and he used it to push himself farther back. Her arm reached out for him, then it came down to the cement and she used it to push herself up and inched closer to him. He took another step back, freeing himself from the bush.

  “Lisa?” he said. His voice sounded alien to himself. It was strained and he could hear that it was ready to crack and break into sobbing tears.

  Oh, Lisa, what happened?

  He heard rustling and saw another one, a man he vaguely remembered, rustling through the rose bushes and coming towards him.

  The man was stumbling, looking like what Jason could only think of to describe as something from a zombie movie. They both did. He couldn’t help but react and started moving away from both of these things. He needed to get away from them, to run and hide, do whatever it took. Those things weren’t right.

  But he couldn’t leave his sister. He couldn’t just leave her behind. He needed to do something, but what? She was messed up, maybe even sick. Maybe that was all it was. Some kind of virus. If it was, maybe she could get better. She just needed a doctor.

  No, she was in no shape for a doctor to come for her. She was not mentally fit right now. Even if it was just a sickness, she was out of her mind.

  He needed to get more than just a doctor. What other kind of help could he get? This was a small town. A small, pissant town that barely even had any kind of decent cell service. What backwards place didn’t allow for decent cell ser-

  Yes! That’s what he needed to do! He needed to go and get help. He needed to run and get someone…or could he call them on his cell phone?

  He probably could, right? Emergency services could help.

  He reached down towards the pocket in his pants and was frustrated when he didn’t feel the bulge of his phone.

  Shit, it must still be in the car.

  He turned and ran back to his car. It wasn’t a long run, and it was in the opposite direction of both of them. He got in, and slammed the door, quickly hitting the locking mechanism. His eyes darted around. He felt like he couldn’t breathe and wasn’t getting enough oxygen. The windows around him were fogging up, and his chest heaved as it was trying to force air in and out faster than he could process it. Everything around him seemed to be shaking. No, he was shaking. Everything around him seemed like it was in a haze. He felt like there was a darkness threatening to push itself over him.

  What was he going to do? Oh, that’s right. He was going to call for help. He needed to call 911. He needed to get someone there to help his sister.

  He saw his phone sitting in its cradle. He grabbed it and quickly started punching in numbers. He hit the SEND button, then looked in the rearview mirror. He could see his sister pulling herself to the edge of the porch. What was wrong with her, with them? They both didn’t act right. Was it some form of shock from all the trauma they had experienced? They looked like they were torn up pretty badly and needed medical attention.

  His phone was still silent. He looked down at it, wondering why it wasn’t ringing on the other end. He saw the red icon up where the signal strength should be. No bars. Worse than no bars. Absolutely no signal! That was bad. He couldn’t remember the last time he had absolutely no signal in Hammond. Sure, they weren’t going to be getting 4G anytime soon, but they had always had at least some signal. Why was there no service now?

  He looked back over his shoulder and watched as his sister fell off the side of the porch. She hadn’t tried to climb down or go over to the stairs that were only a couple of feet from her. She had just continued straight on her path and, in the end, had fallen over at the same spot he had.

  He couldn’t see her too well now. She was partially hidden behind the cement stairs and the front bush. He could see the vague shape of her moving, though. She looked like a black mass as her dark-colored hair was all that he really saw. Then her hand emerged, and she was again pulling herself up, fighting to get free from the bush.

  She pulled herself free, her head emerging. She looked up, lifting her head, and looked at him. Her dead, hungry eyes were staring, and he didn’t see anything left of Lisa in them. His sister was gone.

  No! No! He had to get help. If he couldn’t call anybody, he would go find someone. The Rowplex! He had to go there. He didn’t know why the cop had been there, but if he could get him, they could radio for an ambulance. Then they could come and help her.

  I have to find a way to save Lisa, he thought to himself as he threw the car into drive.

  * * * *

  Denise slowly pulled herself out of the car. A stillness hung in the air. There was something not right, but she just couldn’t put her finger on what it was. It wasn’t something tangible. She didn't know how she knew, but she did. It was something else, like a menace. There was something wrong, and all her
senses screamed at her, telling her she needed to run away.

  Where would she go? She needed to find her brother, and his car was right there. There were a bunch of cars there. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought the store was open. The only way she knew it wasn’t was when she looked at the front door and saw the broken glass and the lack of people.

  She stood outside her car, listening to the quiet idle of her little four-cylinder engine as it hummed. There should be some sound around her. It was the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday. There should be a lot more people around shopping, driving, or even trying to leave town to go fishing or camping. The town was nearly silent, like it was dead.

  There were no people. How many times did she have to think about just how abandoned the town looked before it really dawned on her? How much did she have to listen to the silence before she admitted she needed to get out of there? If everyone else hadn’t already left or are leaving, then something had already happened to them. She didn’t know how it was spreading so fast, but she had seen it. She knew what was going on. When would she admit it to herself and get the hell out of there?

  She didn’t want to think about it.

  She was parked in the parking lot of the largest department store in the Rowplex shopping complex. She didn’t typically shop there, but she knew it was where many of the people in town went for their office supplies and computers. It should be open. She should see people there.

  She counted fifteen cars. Five of them were police cars. There were the two local squad cars, the two “weekend warrior” officers who had driven their own cars, and then a state trooper who must have been in town at the time. The cop cars were all positioned in a line out in front of the store, blocking off a perimeter around the entrance. The rest of the cars were all parked in parking spaces.

  Denise had stopped close to the nearest cop car that had been at an angle across the little entry road that was in front of all the stores. That little road people would always cross as they went in to spend away all their hard-earned money. She had no idea what to call it and didn’t care. She also didn’t care that she was stopped in the middle of it.

  Where was everyone?

  She looked around. She had seen maybe two cars pass by the shopping center. She couldn’t hear any other car traffic on any of the neighboring streets. As she listened, she realized that some of the police cars were still running. Why wasn’t there an officer out there? There should be at least one to two officers standing with the squad cars.

  She shifted her weight to step around her open door and the sound of the little bit of loose stone was loud to her ears. When she closed it, the sound of the door echoed like a hand clapping in a canyon, then dying away.

  She walked to the squad car, her stomach in knots as it tried to scream at her not to go. She ignored it and reached the closest car. Her footfalls were loud, and she stayed low. She only made it a couple of steps along the cars when she saw a leg sticking out from behind one of them. She hurried for it, stopping when she saw all the blood.

  * * * *

  The Rowplex had once been a strip mall packed with stores. Large chain stores would try to get in there because, even though it was a small town, Hammond was large in comparison to those towns around it. It had a large parking lot that would be full of cars as families would come in to do their grocery, gift, and whatever other shopping they would need. There were toy stores for the kids, clothing stores for the moms, and the general everything stores and hardware stores for the dads. It had something for the whole family. It even had an auto parts store, which was uncommon to see in a strip mall.

  It was tucked back a little bit off the main street, having to take a little driveway back to it, but the wide open parking lot could be seen from the road. It wouldn’t be strange to see a line of cars going in and out of the shopping complex, sometimes being held up by the traffic light.

  However, over the last ten years, stores closed. Larger chains had invaded the towns to the north of Hammond, and as the factories started to go out of business, less people came there to do their shopping. The mall slowly became more and more desolate. After a while, it became a ghost town, with the exception of the one remaining office supply store and a few other smaller chains. Many questioned how they even kept in business with the very few customers they still received.

  Around the corner on the side of the strip mall, there was the remaining auto parts store, kept in business probably because they were the only auto parts store still in town, and the China Buffet. What would a strip mall be without a Chinese restaurant that didn’t accept credit cards?

  Jason wasn’t thinking about it as he raced into the parking lot, but when he was a kid, his mom would often bring him there. He would be tortured by her taking him to the fashion place. Of course, his mom probably felt more like he was the one torturing her with how he would disappear while she shopped, only to later be found amongst the center of the large clothing racks.

  That was back when he was not that much younger than what his sister was now. Lisa, his little sister, the one he played with whenever he came home from college. The one he could still lift up and swing around when he could get enough momentum. Not that he did that much with her anymore, but they still did other things. She loved to talk books with him. He still fancied the occasional young adult book, and he was so ecstatic over Lisa getting into reading. She would get so excited when she found a new series that she enjoyed and, when he came home, he would listen to her as she told him all the reasons he just had to start reading it. And he did the same for her when he came across a new series of books that he thought she would enjoy.

  Just yesterday, he had been telling her how much he thought she would love the Scott Lynch series he had started reading. While it wasn’t quite young adult, he couldn’t think of anything in the books that was too questionable, and she would love the witty charm of the series.

  That had been yesterday. Was it only just last night that he had been talking to her about it? It didn’t seem like it. She had looked at him. Her eyes had always been such a beautiful brown. He often enjoyed how they were able to look on with so much wonder. Her eyes…

  The cold, dead eyes that blankly looked in his direction flashed in his mind, not the eyes of the child who had looked up to him, a sparkle at the edge as she’d listen to him talk about the books. He saw the ones that somehow followed him, while not being completely there. That blank stare, a face that didn’t register emotion, yet moved, jaw opening and closing as though seeking something to bite into.

  Even when he closed his eyes, he still saw her looking at him…not as his baby sister, but as that sick girl. She was sick. He didn’t know what had happened to her, but she needed help.

  He nearly missed his turn because he was going too fast and hadn’t realized he was at the light. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to get into an accident. He hadn’t seen any other cars around, but that could just be because he wasn’t paying attention. There could have been in a crowd of people around and he wouldn’t have noticed. That wasn’t a good thing.

  Why wasn’t his cell phone working? Why couldn’t he just call for help? Of all times for his damn carrier to be blocking his calls, now was not the time. He was certain he had paid the bill, so there should be no reason for his service to be cut off. He was sure he had paid it before he had come home, largely because he was afraid of his service getting turned off on his drive. He had a paranoia of driving large distances without cell service. He had been stranded too many times out on back roads while living around there, and he never went anywhere without his cell phone to call for help now because his car was not the most reliable.

  Like many of the turns he had taken since he had run from his house, his tires squealed. This time, he felt the other side of the car rise up, threatening to roll over. There wasn’t any gravel for him to slide onto, so the car kept its grip on the firm surface. It wobbled, trying to push him further up, the car wanting to fini
sh spinning. He was turning the wheel, straightening it out and letting the vehicle come down on all four wheels. This wasn’t the way he wanted to get the attention of the cops. The last thing he needed was to be fighting them over a reckless driving ticket when he was trying to get them to call for emergency services.

  At least the cars were still there. In the back of his mind, he had been worried they would all be gone by the time he got there. He was grateful when he saw them still parked in front of the retail store, but why were they blocking it off? It would be just his luck if someone was robbing the damn place and taking hostages on a day like today. What the hell else could be going on? It sure did look like something out of a movie.

  Yeah, there were the cars, but where were the people? Other than the main squad car in town, and a couple others that he knew belonged to the local part-timers, there was only a couple of other cars parked in the lot. The cop cars were in a block formation, but the rest of them were just in regular parking spots. There weren’t any people, though. Where was everybody?

  The Rowplex had long since developed a deserted feel to it. Even when there was a decent amount of cars in the lot, it still felt empty. Cars without people, parked in such an obvious, attention-grabbing way, made it feel even more isolated. He accelerated towards the group of cars in the center of the parking lot.

  He neared them and barely saw a woman staggering out. She didn’t look up. He swerved hard and eased down on the brake, somehow keeping enough control over himself to keep from slamming his foot down. The car fought against him, but he kept control. Too many years of driving too fast told him that if he had done it any differently, he would have lost it. The car just missed clipping her.

  The car stopped, the engine ticking. He hadn’t turned the key. It just decided to die on its own. The damned thing was complaining about all the abuse he had put it through for the last hour or so, but now was not the time for the damned beast to act up on him. She was a stubborn old pain in the ass that he often cursed at and accused of being alive because she had a personality all her own. Currently, that personality was pissed. He would have to deal with her later because he saw the woman he had nearly hit looking at him, her eyes locked on him through the side mirrors of his car.