Two uniformed policemen pushed past them, heading into the club. A police car, lights flashing but siren silent, pulled into the parking lot. Two more cops got out. By unspoken agreement, the four of them edged away from the police and moved along a curving sidewalk imprinted with what looked like skulls-and-crossbones. Out here, the air was cooler and Doug paused to tug his sweatshirt from around his waist. He didn’t put it on though, instead eyeing her bare shoulders. He held it out.
Kathleen shook her head. “I’m ok.”
“You sure?”
Her ears were still ringing from the music, and it was strange to hear his voice at a normal level, but his smile hadn’t changed. She shook her head again, even though the truth was, the night air had raised gooseflesh on her arms and her teeth were trying to chatter. His sweatshirt would be soft and warm, and it would probably smell like him.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m good.”
Slightly behind them, Molly and Doug’s friend, whose named turned out to be Steve, were talking and laughing, a little loud and raucous, but not as out of control as most of the people in the parking lot. Another cop car pulled into the lot, followed this time by an ambulance. It wasn’t an uncommon site in Ocean City — Saturday nights were rife with alcohol poisoning and bar fights. But it did seem a little ominous that the lights were on, while the sirens were not.
“Doesn’t that mean something?” Kathleen asked, pointing, and looked at Doug. “I mean, when just the lights are on? That someone’s dead?”
He gave her a funny look and she realized she sounded like a dork, but what else was new? He’d already seen her Running Man. She laughed. Shrugged.
Doug laughed too, but he sounded a little strange. He looked back at the club. “I hope not.”
She hoped not too, but as they watched the EMTs and more police enter the club, all she really wanted to do was get out of there. Two a.m. wasn’t her hour any longer, even though she wasn’t tired. Not one bit.
“Maybe it’s true, what they were saying on the TV,” Molly said.
Kathleen had seen the stories, watched her tweetstream fill up with jokes about the evangelical preacher who’d been claiming he’d come back from the dead. She hadn’t paid much attention — there was too much of that stuff, too much access to the stupidity of men who thought texting pictures of their junk was a good idea or women who were pregnant by another woman’s husband bemoaning how the world thought they were whores. If you’d poked her hard enough with something sharp, she’d have admitted she consumed this sort of trashy news because the other kind about children dying, natural disasters, the national debt, made her too anxious. There was nothing she could do about any of it except get through her life as best she could, and sure, that made her an ostrich with her head in the sand. She could own it.
“What was on the TV?” Steve’s toe caught the edge of a concrete curb and he stumbled, but caught himself. Grinned at Molly, his hands up. “I’m good!”
He wasn’t that good, he was pretty drunk. What hadn’t mattered much on the dance floor was less charming now that the night was working its way toward morning and the four of them were wandering somewhat aimlessly toward the beach. Kathleen didn’t think Molly’d told him where they were staying…but she couldn’t be sure.
“The guy says he was dead for three days, and then he came back.” Molly grabbed at Steve’s arm to steady him, and the pair hopped another curb, this time more successfully.
“Bullshit.” Doug snorted and took Katy’s elbow to help her around a spray of broken glass glittering under the streetlamp. He didn’t let go, either, and she discovered she didn’t mind. “It’s made up.”
Kathleen shivered, not just from the cold. Doug pulled her a little closer to his side as they walked, and she was glad for the warmth. “He had witnesses.”
“Yeah, from his followers.” Molly and Steve had gone on ahead, crossing the street, but Doug held her back for a second as the light changed and the traffic moved.
Her foot had already been off the curb, stepping onto the white lines painted on the asphalt, but at his tug Kathleen stepped back. She watched her friend pointing toward the apartment building where they were staying. The wind lifted, bringing the sound of their voices but scattering the words so Kathleen could only hear a few of them. It sounded like Molly was inviting Steve to sit on the balcony, but then the traffic, snarled and thick with all the cars leaving the parking lot, cut them off from each other.
At truck blew past her, lifting the edge of her skirt, and though she wasn’t truly in any danger of being hit, Doug pulled her a little more firmly away from the street. Right up against him. It was different than it had been in the club,when music was an excuse to get up tight and close. Now she really had no reason other than she wanted to, and that was going to lead to trouble. She couldn’t quite manage to care enough to push away from him.
“Hey,” he said, looking down at her.
Kathleen smiled. “Hey.”
The traffic cleared. They broke apart and crossed the street, but anticipation had crackled there between them and it wasn’t going away. On the other side of the highway, Molly and Steve had already gone up a block. Their laughter carried on another gust of that same wind, and Kathleen closed her eyes for a minute as she did every single time she approached the ocean. She breathed it in.
“I love the ocean,” she said aloud, and the next words came out tasting like salt. Gritty like sand. “I love the smell of it, I love the feeling of the sand, I love walking in the water. I fucking love everything about it.”
“Your friend and my friend are going somewhere.”
She looked at him, then past the apartment building to where the sand spilled into the parking lot. There was a dune there, a wooden fence leaning slantways. Sea grass shuddered in the wind. Beyond that was the beach, and past that, the ocean.
“She’s taking him up to our place, I guess.” Kathleen looked up. They were in Unit 1699, close to the top floor. She thought about going after them, but paused when she heard the scrape of an aluminum chair on concrete and the low burble of laughter. She caught a glimpse of one of the towels they’d hung over the railing earlier. Dark shapes. They were on the balcony. She looked at Doug. “Let’s walk down by the water.”
Nothing was truly dark in Ocean City — except for the ocean itself. Light from the parking lot bathed the edges of the sand, and if she turned to look back toward the towering buildings there’d be lights there too. But she didn’t look back, she looked forward, out across the dark sand and out across the black water. No moon or stars to reflect, nothing but the steady and constant shushing of the sea as it crashed and crept up on the sand.
Kathleen paused to take her shoes off, her hand on his shoulder to steady herself. The sand was cold on her toes, and it would be colder down by the water. Suddenly she couldn’t wait for it. She tossed her shoes, not even noting where they landed.
She ran.
She couldn’t judge the water’s edge and so just headed for the sound. She caught a glimpse of white as a wave crashed. She might’ve only imagined the spray, but she didn’t think so. She breathed in again and flung out her arms, laughing with the pleasure of running into the water.
She didn’t get that far. The first icy splash hit her toes, and she gasped. She turned, still laughing, and saw Doug. Her laughter left her like it had been slapped out of her, because for a moment she was convinced it wasn’t him. That it was someone else. Something else.
In the next moment a hint of light caught on his glasses, and she let out a breath though her heart was still pounding and the pulse was throbbing in her wrists and at the base of her throat. When he took her hand, that seemed natural enough. When he pulled her close again, that seemed all right too. Her life at home was frustrating, boring, tedious; she got through her days just waiting for the time when she could crawl into bed and close her eyes and dream of things she wanted and didn’t have. Her life at home was gratifying, satisfying, full of joy
and laughter and almost anything she could ask for. Her life was mundane brilliance, just like anyone’s.
Yet here she was, standing in another man’s arms and ready to cross a line she hadn’t even known she had.
In books, the kiss would’ve gone on and on. The press of lip on lip, maybe even the sweet slip of tongue. Heat would rise, hearts beating faster. Magic would happen.
As it was, it was over so fast she couldn’t be sure it had happened at all, because before she could do more than taste him, something grabbed her ankle.
It pulled her so hard and so fast, backwards into the water, that Kathleen didn’t have time to even scream before the cold water closed over her head. She struggled to get on her feet, a thousand memories of being hit by waves and tumbled reminding her to keep her mouth shut, to not breathe. But those times had all happened when the water was at least passably warm and the sun was shining, so she could know which way was up.
The wave receded and she blinked, coughing, as her fingers burrowed into the wet, cold sand. Strong fingers dug into her arm and yanked her upright. She fought the grip before she saw it was Doug. He was drenched. She couldn’t move, not at first. Her sodden skirt had tangled around her thighs, and something still had hold of her ankle. She looked down, expected the clinging grip of seaweed. Maybe even a piece of driftwood, based on how strongly it had hit her before.
But it was neither of those things. It was a woman, clad in the shreds of what looked like a sundress, her hair wild and tangled. Her fingers bit at Kathleen’s ankle, digging deep into the skin with sharp points. Not her fingernails, Kathleen realized with horror, but the protruding tips of her bones. The woman lay in the broken edges of the waves, her face tipped up to the faint light, her eyes and mouth nothing but dark and hollow spaces. For a heartbeat or two Kathleen thought the grinding sound was from the crashing waves, but as the woman grabbed Kathleen’s thigh with her other hand and the sound rose and rose, she realized it was coming from the woman’s throat.
Kathleen did the only thing she could think to do; she kicked the woman in the face as hard as she could. Her heel connected with something soft and doughy but hard beneath. The woman’s skull. The grinding noise became a shriek, but those bone-tipped fingers let go. Kathleen stumbled back a step or two, gasping at the fresh sting as a new wave slapped at the wounds.
Fuck — she was bleeding? Doug had hold of her arm, pulling her back and up onto the dry sand. Kathleen thought she heard him tell her again to run, but she was too focused on what was coming out of the water. Not just the woman in the ragged sundress, who’d somehow managed to get to her feet, but two men, one in torn bathing trunks, the other naked.
Kathleen couldn’t see much, but the smell hit her. Hard. The rotten stink of fish and something worse, so thick and foul not even the smell of salt and sand could take it away. She gagged on it, choking, as she backed up the swell of the beach, away from the water and the things that had come out of it.
She ran.
She’d spent her last two years of high school running cross-country, not really for the love of it but because running had meant she could eat whatever she wanted and still fit into her bikini. Her days of bikinis and running had long passed, but she remembered the rhythm of one foot in front of the other. The sand slipped out from beneath her, and Kathleen went to one knee but only for the time it took her to push off with her hands and get to her feet again.
The sound of sirens grew louder. As she crested the small dune right behind Doug, the red/blue flashing lights of at least four police cars would normally have made her pause, except that the sand shifted and her bad ankle twisted. She went down with the swipe of something sharp against her back and the sound of cloth ripping. More pain, this time in her back, as she rolled over and felt the cold, harsh press of sand on suddenly bare skin.
Whatever those people in the water had been, they were something else now. It was not the first time she’d looked down to see a naked man leering at her, but it was the first time half his jaw had been eaten away to show the bunching muscles of his tongue, the jutting leer of his teeth. He snapped them at her like a dog.
His tongue fell out of the hole in his cheek.
Kathleen would’ve screamed if there’d been breath left in her to make a noise. Instead, all she could do was watch the play of red/blue/red/blue across this thing’s face as it dove toward her belly with its mouth open wide. Hands clawing. Her only protection was her wet and clinging skirt, and that did little to keep the thing’s fingers from raking her legs. When it dug both hands into her thighs, Kathleen found her voice with a scream.
She twisted to try and kick it off her, smash its face with her foot the way she’d done the woman in the water, but it was already scrabbling up her body. The pressure of it, the stink of it, overwhelmed her. She wrenched herself to the side as it dove toward her again, and it went face first into the sand.
In the next moment, the crack of wood split her ears along with another of those horrid, grinding screams. Doug had it over the head with a piece of wooden fencing, but the thin plank had splintered on the thing’s head without deterring it. That’s when Doug took the broken, pointed end and drove it into the back of the thing’s neck.
It pitched forward onto the sand as Kathleen twisted again, barely getting out of the way. The weight of it still pinned her legs, though it had unhooked its fingers from her thighs. Thick fluid gushed over her. Blood? Bile? She pushed against it as Doug got his hands under shoulders and helped her out from under the thing.
Every part of her stung and ached, her heart pounded, she couldn’t quite manage to catch her breath. Her eyes had gone wide and staring, gritty with sand. In the parking lot, just a few yards away, she could see the cop cars, doors open, lights flashing, but empty of any cops.
“There should be cops,” Doug said. “Where the hell are the cops?”
More sirens from the highway. The muffled sounds of what her ears told her had to be gunshots, but her mind insisted had to be something else. The screams were louder, closer, and there was nothing she could to convince herself they were of anything but terror. And behind her, across the sand, entering the band of light, were three more of those things that had once been people.
At her feet, the broken and bloodied monster that had once been a man moved. It lifted its head. Its jaw had come completely unhinged, the tongue a lolling, sand-coated horror. Its eyes flashed, and it reached for her, but Kathleen danced just out of the way. Her bad ankle gave out again, but this time Doug kept her upright.
“Hands up! Don’t move!” This came from a cop who’d come from nowhere. A young kid, eyes wide but gun fisted tight and pointed right at them.
Doug moved forward. “It’s not us! We’re not —”
The cop shot him in the leg.
This could not be happening. This was not happening. Doug went to the ground, first to his hands and knees, then his side, fingers covering the small black hole in his skin where the blood had started to come out. It was Kathleen’s turn to try to get him to his feet, because now the cop was closer, still shouting, though Katy’s ears had gone fuzzy and she couldn’t make out a single word he was saying.
The cop ignored them both and stood over the thing in the sand. He shot it three times, each shot making the body jerk and twitch and spasm, bare flesh tearing but nothing coming out. No blood, not like Doug, whose entire calf was coated with crimson. The cop shot again, this time in the head.
The thing stopped moving at last.
“I said don’t move,” the cop who was really just a kid shouted, gaze dropping to Doug on the ground. “Shit, dude. Shit —”
Before he could scold further or apologize, whatever he meant to say was choked off by the woman in the sundress who’d launched herself onto his back, her arms around his neck and her legs around his torso. The cop’s arms came up, the gun still in one hand, but he didn’t break her grip. He stumbled backwards, and the soft sand betrayed his steps. He went down with the
woman underneath him, but instead of landing on her, he moved at the last second and hit the ground on his side.
The sound of her arm breaking was very loud, but she didn’t let go. She rolled as the cop did, entwining with him like a lover to straddle his waist. He hit her shoulder with the butt of his gun, but she didn’t move.
She bent over him and bit off half his face.
She came up with his cheek and his eyeball, the nerve bundle still attached, dangling from her lips. Both hands went to the mess in her mouth; her fingers shoved in the flesh and gore like a greedy toddler stuffing its face with birthday cake. Her throat distended as she swallowed. Her mouth opened. She dove back onto the screaming cop, who stopped screaming a heartbeat after that when she gobbled out his tongue.
Doug had managed to get to his feet, though his face had gone white under the glare of the parking lot lights and he left a wide splash of blood behind on the sand. He hopped on his good leg, reaching for her, and Kathleen slid her shoulder under his arm. His fingers clutched her. For a moment they were front to front again, pressed up close to each other. It was nothing like it had been before, yet somehow more intimate with the wheeze of his breath in her ear and the heat of his blood on her skin.
“We have to get inside,” he told her. “Get upstairs, I think I can make it.”
The thing in the bathing suit was coming more slowly than its siblings; this was because the sea’d done more damage to him. He walked on two bony stumps where his feet had been. The woman was still crawling, the mangled mess of her abdomen leaving bits and pieces behind on the sand.
Still, they were coming, and Kathleen shifted herself to take more of Doug’s weight. “Let’s go.”
They hobbled the last few feet of sandy path and hit the concrete. Still no sign of the other cops. More sirens, more screaming. Incredibly, the air split with the thumpa-thump of a helicopter overhead. Kathleen couldn’t see it, but she felt the air press and move with the noise of it and saw the stabbing glare of a spotlight from above.