The 5000 Fingers of Bob, pt XVI
"It's the screams again," I heard him say. He seemed dazed as he reached out to it.
"No!" I yelled at him, grabbing him by the wrist and pressing him against the wall. I felt the electric hum coming off that cord when I got near it; felt like it could have lifted me off the ground and thrown me.
We stood frozen in our places until the generator finally died. It was a while, breathing the air choked with burning flesh, our eyes blinded by smoke, but we stayed. Ed was the first through the door, unable to hold the contents of his stomach and I stumbled out after him. I was surprised at the light, thinking it was sometime around three o'clock in the morning. The sun was already high up, but as I turned my eyes skyward I felt completely disoriented, as if the sun were wrong somehow.
I felt myself in a violent spin like I was in a whirlpool when a voice called out to me.
"What are you doin' way over there?" Jack called. I looked down and saw him, Ed and Howie all standing by the rusty shed about a hundred yards from where I was. I wretched on my empty stomach twice and collapsed.
Bob had been cooked thoroughly. His corpse was almost half the size it'd been when he was alive, the remains of his skin as black and shiny as an eight ball. Howie and Jack buried him outside the shed and later on we all buried Glenn in his back yard next to his dog, just on the outskirts of town.
As we drove back, there was an abnormal amount of hustle and bustle in the streets. People moved frantically from neighbor to neighbor, checking on each other. Jack stopped outside the Woods' and asked what was going on.
"My husband didn't come home last night," Mrs. Woods said. "Walter's never late, but he never came home at all! Please help me look for him."
We all sympathized with her, but the need to get home to our own loved ones pressed in. As we rode, we heard bits and pieces from others. People had been attacked, windows smashed in, jewelry stolen. We drove by, seeing Norm Townsend cradling his wife's too still body and weeping openly.
Ed leapt out the truck once Jack stopped, running down the street.
"Keep going," he yelled. "I'll catch up later!"
We didn't stop by Howie's house because where it should have been was nothing but a pile of smoldering ashes. He looked on, shocked as he stepped out. Jack pulled off again, racing to his house and five minutes later we were there. He dashed out and ran inside.
Before I'd stepped through the door I heard Jack scream, "Noooooooo!" I ran to where I heard him and saw him standing over Jenny's empty bed. The room was undisturbed except for the fist-sized spot of blood on her pillow.
"Glenn said that— "
"Don't you say it. Don't you dare, don't you dare say it!" Jack's voice whined as he picked up the pillow and cradled it to his chest. "My little girl's in New York City." Blood in a streaming trail oozed out of it, like it had been used for a sponge. Jack dropped the pillow in horror and fell to his knees, chanting, "Yes, she is, yes she is, yes she is," his face buried in the pillow.
