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The pale figures moved and moved. It was hard to see them take their steps, but with each flash of lightning they were closer.
Always closer.
All around.
Dad screaming.
Roger screaming.
And . . . Jill.
Jill screaming.
Jack was running without remembering wanting to, or starting to. His boots splashed down hard, and water geysered up around him. The mud tried to snatch his boots off his feet. Tried and then did, and suddenly he was running in bare feet. Moving faster, but the cold was like knife blades on his skin.
Something stepped out of shadows and rainfall right in front of him. A man Jack had never seen before. Wearing a business suit that was torn to rags, revealing a naked chest and . . .
. . . and nothing. Below the man’s chest was a gaping hole. No stomach. No skin. Nothing. In the flickering light, Jack could see dripping strings of meat and . . .
. . . and . . .
. . . was that the man’s spine?
That was stupid. That was impossible.
The man reached for him.
There was a blur of movement and a smashed-melon crunch and then the man was falling away and Dad was there, ho
lding the shotgun like a club. His eyes were completely wild.
“Jack—for God’s sake, get back into the house.”
Jack tried to say something, to ask one of the questions that burned like embers in his mind. Simple questions. Like, what was happening? Why did nothing make sense?
Where was Mom?
Where was Jill?
But Jack’s mouth would not work.
Another figure came out of the rain. Mrs. Suzuki, the lady who owned the soy farm next door. She came over for Sunday dinners almost every week. Mrs. Suzuki was all naked.
Naked.
Jack had only ever seen naked people on the Internet, at sites where he wasn’t allowed to go. Sites that Mom thought she’d blocked.
But Mrs. Suzuki was naked. Not a stitch on her.
She wasn’t built like any of the women on the Internet. She wasn’t sexy.
She wasn’t whole.
There were pieces of her missing. Big chunks of her arms and stomach and face. Mrs. Suzuki had black blood dripping from between her lips, and her eyes were as empty as holes.
She opened her mouth and spoke to him.
Not in words.
