Hannahlily
Hannahlily Bryce was pretty sure that Tucker Norton was it.
The actual it. As in the one.
If she had made him from parts she special-ordered, he could not have been more perfect. Six feet tall with straw-colored hair, perfect teeth, and eyes that were a stormy swirl of blue and gray. Like Hannahlily and unlike a lot of other farm kids, Tucker took a good tan that lasted well into the winter. And like her, he was fit. They loved to run together down the country lanes in Coldwater Creek. They rode horses together in the state forest. And they spent a lot of their time laughing.
He was everything her last boyfriend, Kyle Hanrady, wasn’t. Actually, her last three boyfriends combined couldn’t stack up to Tucker. So as far as she was concerned, he really was it.
She wanted to tell him that. Hannahlily wanted to tell Tucker that she loved him.
But . . .
After Kyle, Hannahlily had become very cautious. Kyle had been good-looking and all, and he had a bit of the backcountry bad-boy vibe that Hannahlily knew she was a sucker for. But Kyle was also a bit grabby and seemed to have a difficult time grasping the concept of “no.”
Tucker was a gentleman. Not that he was unromantic, but he respected boundaries. As far as Hannahlily could tell, he was the last of that breed, and she didn’t want to let him get off the reservation. No way, José.
Today was going to be a special day for them. Romantic and dangerous, and Mother Nature was cooperating. The storm was huge, and everyone in town had been going nuts about it. How could they not? The TV weathermen were all but predicting the end of the world with this thing; and storms like this were so rare in central California. Hannahlily figured school would close early and everything would get a little confused after that. She told her mom that she was going to go to her friend Amber’s place if they let them out early. Amber lived near the school, and her house was on high ground. Hannahlily had ridden out a couple of snowstorms there already, and her mother was cool with the arrangement. Amber, of course, was in on everything from the jump. She could lie like a politician, and she was so sweet-natured that everyone always believed her.
Tucker lived with a father who worked two jobs and a mother who was always drunk. Hannahlily knew that sadness was part of what made Tucker so sensitive, and it added a nice layer to his brooding nature. Hannahlily liked brooding guys, especially if they looked like Tucker. She didn’t like that quality about herself, but she was pretty sure she’d date a serial killer if he looked like Tucker. You could crack walnuts on those abs.
The plan was to go to school, swipe their student IDs, wait until the storm emergency got rolling, and then duck out while everyone was heading for the buses. Tucker’s truck could slog through any amount of mud. His uncle Slim had a farm at the edge of town, and Slim was currently in the VA hospital for lung cancer. She felt bad for him, but at the same time, it left the farm empty.
The farm, and the farmhouse.
Outside, the storm hooted and howled and pounded away at the sprawling old house. Shutters banged and timbers creaked. Inside, there was a noisy fire burning brightly in the stone hearth. Pine logs popped and shifted. Firelight glinted on the tall glasses of sweet tea. And in Tucker’s eyes when he smiled at her.
They were wrapped in a huge fleece with a pattern of autumn leaves, pinecones, and acorns. They were still fully clothed, but the option to change that was on the table. Hannahlily’s iPod was playing a moody mix of the kind of slow-groove R & B they played on late-night radio. The iPod and speakers were on batteries now that the power was out.
“Listen to that wind,” she said, snuggling close.
“Fierce,” he agreed. “I like it, though.” He took a lock of her long brunette hair between his fingers, smelled it, smiled, and kissed it.
Hannahlily closed her eyes and smiled. This was exactly the moment she’d painted in her mind. Real romance. Not just grunting and kissing and trying to keep Kyle’s twenty-five hands from pawing her.
Tucker was gentle, and even when they were this close and this alone, it was clear that he respected her. Boundaries meant something to him. Not that he wasn’t standing right there at the edge of the safe zone, but he was waiting with true respect and patience for a signal to cross the line.
Neither of them were in too much of a hurry for that moment. Waiting, drawing it out, taking time somehow made it sweeter. It made it nicer.
So they sat together, her head on his chest, listening to the storm.
The warmth of the blanket, the calm patience of Tucker, and the crackling fire were all pulling her gently down into a semi-sleep.
Three rooms away, unheard by either of the young lovers, the back door opened. The sound was smaller than the groans of the old house and the moans of the line of slow, shambling, hungry intruders.
2
The Bride
The woman in the wedding gown shuffled forward, her dirty white shoes scuffing on the back porch floorboards of the old house. She had lived all her life in Coldwater Creek and had planned to live out the rest of it here on the fringes of Yosemite Park. She wanted to grow old and die here.
That had already been accomplished. Not the growing old part. Just the dying. It hadn’t happened in the way she had imagined through girlhood and young womanhood, through high school, college, and her first years as an apprentice ranger in the big national park.
She had expected to be married that afternoon to another ranger, a big, bearded, gentle man named David. All their friends and family and coworkers were there at the chapel waiting for them.
Then the world tilted enough to let everything that mattered slide off the edge. Her dreams and hopes, her expectations.
Her plans.
Her life.
The last memory she’d had before the plague took her was of David standing over her, eyes streaming tears, body streaked with blood that was not his. Nor hers. A big wooden cross in his hands, raised above him, poised to smash down.
Ready to kill her.
To end her.
As he had ended others as the madness swept through the congregants and guests and sanity devoured the world.
But as the darkness closed around the bride’s mind, David had paused on the very brink of commission. Horror and grief and shock and pain and ten thousand other emotions warred on his face.
It was clear that he had wanted to kill her, needed to. Had to.
This was the plague, and it took only a few moments for anyone to understand its rules. The infected bite people. The bitten die. The dead rise. The cycle continues until no one’s left alive. They’d all heard the news stories about this, but those stories were all back East. In Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. In New York and Atlanta.
Not here.
Not in California.
Not in Coldwater Creek.
Not in this little church.
Not today.
Not now.
Not . . .
God.
David had knocked her down after she’d bitten her own mother. After she’d bitten David’s sister.
He’d struck her once with the heavy cross.
Now he was poised to finish it. To finish her.
David. The last man standing.
David, who had once wanted to be a minister, who’d almost taken a scholarship to a seminary. David, who was the gentlest person she’d ever known.
In that moment he had been every bit as much a monster as the dead who thrashed and moaned around him. The cross raised in his strong hands. The need to end her and this madness written on his face.
She wanted to tell him to do it.
She tried.
She begged him to end her life. No—to end what this was. Whatever this was.
Un-life.
She screamed her plea to him.
She was sure of it.
But all that came out of her mouth, all that she could hear, was her voice making a strange, long, low, unutterably desperate moan of bottomless hunger.
Tha
t wasn’t what stopped him. The moan was no different from the ravenous cries rising from every dead throat in the chapel. If it had been only that, then even David would have brought the cross down and ended her life. Ended her pain. That was how he would see it, she was certain.
Helping her. Not killing her.
After all, she was already dead.
No.
What stopped David was something else. Something he saw. Something she saw him see. Something so . . . so terrible.
He looked into her eyes.
And saw her.
Dead, but not gone.
Destroyed, but not chased out of the ruin of her body.
There.
Still there.
Trapped inside the cage of her own stolen flesh. A prisoner who was still chained to the input of all five senses. She could see everything, smell the blood, taste the black poison of whatever lived within the plague, felt the deadness of the dying heart in her chest, and heard David’s voice.
“Please,” he said. It was not a plea to have her do something or to get something, or even for help.
Please.
It was a prayer to whatever fractured power still ran the universe, that what he saw in her eyes was a lie.
Only a lie.
But the bride knew that it was not a lie. She was still in there. Her body was not her own, would never again be hers to control. And yet she was still in there. Lost. Trapped.
Aware.
And David saw that. He knew it.
If the world had not already been falling apart, that’s when it would have collapsed.
They had been married for less than a minute when the driver of the limo had come blundering in, collapsing against the last row of people. Already bitten, already bleeding.
One minute.
David was her husband, and she was his wife. His bride.
He looked into her dead eyes and saw something, saw the truth that maybe no one else knew. He saw it because it was like him to see those kinds of things. He was always the type who got to know people on a deep level.
It was what made people love him. And trust him.
It was what broke his heart for the second time in minutes. It was what made him drop the cross and stagger back, clamping a hand to his mouth to stifle the scream that he so badly needed to let loose. It was what kept him from killing her.
And it was what drove him from the chapel, the scream finally breaking from him as he burst out into the sunlight of his first day in hell.
Now the bride went where her body went. She fought with it. So hard, so hard. Trying to wrest back one single bit of control. A finger, a step, a turn of the head.
But it was like being buckled into a runaway car. All she could do was experience the horror.
Every moment.
Every hour.
Every bite.
3
Hannahlily
They kissed for so long that her lips hurt.
It was a good hurt.
Tucker could be as forceful as their shared passion permitted; but mostly he was gentle. Talented. Considerate.
Perfect.
The night and the storm had wrapped themselves around the house, but the old timbers kept them safe; and the fire and their closeness kept them warm. Hannahlily kept waiting for the moment when Tucker would make the inevitable guy move. At first she thought that was what she wanted, that if it was what he wanted, she would agree.
As the night moved slowly into the depth of the storm, she began dreading it.
The change was subtle.
Never once before in her life had she wanted anyone as much as she wanted Tucker. He was it. All of it. Everything on her checklist. Everything she knew she would ever want. A dream factory.
Which made her begin to wonder if she was simply being stupid.
Was that it? Was she being a girl? No, that was wrong. It really wasn’t a girl thing, and her female pride raised its head and shook off that kind of thinking.
No.
This wasn’t really about her being female. This was about her wondering if she was mature enough to evaluate Tucker. To read him and make the right guesses about who he really was.
Hannahlily wasn’t even entirely sure that was an age thing. Her aunt Sis was no judge of men. And both of her brothers, Johnny and Al, were fools for any kind of woman, no matter how badly they were treated. Aunt Sis was thirty-two, and her siblings were forty and forty-four.
No. Maybe it was a human thing.
Tucker appeared to be everything that was right about guys. Decent, honest, gorgeous, patient, respectful.
But at the same time she knew—with no possibility of error—that he wanted her. That he wanted to sleep with her.
The question was whether he wanted to hook up with her or make love to her.
For Hannahlily that was the big difference. Every other boy she’d ever dated might as well have had ‘ ”hookup” tattooed on their foreheads. Tucker didn’t seem to be like that, but why not?
Was it something about her?
Was it something about him?
Could a guy—especially a seventeen-year-old guy—actually have enough self- control and respect to be able to control his urges?
That sounded as likely as pink unicorns traipsing through the yard.
Maybe less likely.
Guys, after all, were guys. Hannahlily had learned all about the biology of it in health class. The sex drive was a hardwired biochemical impulse to procreate. It was tied to the lizard brain’s basic species survival drive. And guys got reinforcement about sexual conquests in everything from rap songs to commercials for Ford pickup trucks. Her aunt Sis said that even the most civilized man was only a grunt and a short step away from a Neanderthal, especially when they thought they could get some action from a female.
So what was Tucker’s deal?
They held each other, and they kissed, and they touched, but they kept their clothes on, and things never got past a certain point.
Hannahlily was grateful.
Hannahlily was also mildly annoyed.
Didn’t he like her?
Didn’t he love her?
What was wrong with him?
What was—?
There was a sound.
And they both froze.
“What was that?” she said, her voice thin and breathless.
He raised his head and listened. “What was what?”
“I heard something.”
She saw the brightness of his smile in the firelight. “The whole place sounds like it’s about to fall down.”
They listened. The wind was a banshee shriek. The bones of the old house creaked and complained. Water dripped somewhere inside.
“It’s just the storm,” he said.
“No, I heard something.”
“Hey,” he said gently, brushing hair from her face with a gentle sweep of his fingers, “it’s okay. We’re good here. It’s just the—”
He stopped.
She didn’t have to ask why.
They both heard it.
It wasn’t the creak of old timbers. It wasn’t the banging of loose shutters or the rattle of glass in loose panes.
It was a different kind of sound. The kind of sound houses don’t make unless they’re haunted houses in horror movies.
It was a human sound.
A moan.
Low, but not sneaky.
No, whatever made that sound was not some imp trying to hide. This wasn’t a poltergeist. This was something else.
An empty sound. Mostly empty. Not a voice calling out. Nothing like that. This wasn’t someone trying to warn the lovers that someone was about to enter their firelit nest.
No.
This was a moan.
And in its near emptiness it was directed in no particular direction. Yet it filled the house with meaning.
Without words, without articulation, it spoke of a need greater than anything Hannahlily had ever felt. Greater than Tucker felt
. Greater than the need that had brought them here. More insistent than the needs that locked them together in their secret and private darkness.
It was a hungry moan.
And it came from the other side of the kitchen door.
4
The Bride
There was a muscular pickup truck parked by the back door, and the downstairs front windows of the old house glowed with the golden light of a fireplace. The bride did not even glance at it as she approached the house and went to the back door. A dozen others followed her from the wedding along with six more who had begun walking with her along the rain-swept roads. Strangers, but now part of something.
A family?
A horde?
A swarm?
The bride did not know which word fit. Maybe there was no word in the dictionary that explained this.
Her hand reached out to turn the doorknob, but it was a clumsy motion, and even as she did it, the woman inside could feel herself drifting backward from the action as if the one had nothing to do with the other. A reflex action, but not any choice of hers.
The kitchen door opened and her body went inside, taking her consciousness with it. As if whatever was about to happen in the old house required a witness.
The kitchen was dark, but light came from under the door. Warm light that moved and flowed. Firelight, not lamplight.
The body—the bride no longer considered it hers—stopped for a moment as if confused by this light. Or by the second door. Whatever reflex had allowed it to turn one doorknob was already fading, as if there were only a little rational thought or motor memory left and it was already draining away. Besides, there was no knob here. Only the flat wood and decorative trim of the door.
As wind blew in from the open doorway to the outside, it brushed against the inner door and made it sway. As if the door wanted to open and was trembling with anticipation.
The bride moved forward as the other wedding guests and the roadside strangers crowded in behind her. They milled, pushing forward. Pushing her forward.
Beyond the door there were voices.
Two.
Male and female. Young. Whispering.
“It’s okay,” said a boy’s voice. “We’re good here. It’s just the—”