Induction

Jake started to pry the bottom shutter but stopped immediately when the sound of metal on metal echoed around us. “The noise is too loud. It’s going to draw too much attention to us,” he said. I pulled my rain soaked sweatshirt over my head and handed it to him.

“Wrap this around the crowbar. Maybe it’ll muffle the sound a bit.” The noise was still noticeable, but the sound of the storm drowned out the worst of it. The shutters were about a foot high each so we only needed to pull two off the window. I peered inside the house and saw Kat’s face looking back at me. She was a mess. Her eyes were red and puffy, and streaks of dried tears lined her face. She kept looking over her shoulder at the door and made panicked motions at us. I mouthed open the window to her and she started fiddling with the lock.

Jake was working on the second shutter, the last barrier in our way, when the window cracked open and Kat began pushing it up. It stopped after a few inches and wouldn’t budge. The shutter popped free and Jake threw it to the side.

“The window’s jammed,” said Kat. “It won’t budge.”

Jake and I added our efforts to the window to no avail. I pulled on the window with such strain that my nose, which had finally stopped gushing, started to bleed again, and the blood dripped into my mouth.

“Kat, listen to me. The window isn’t going to cooperate. We need to close it and break out the glass for you to get through.” As the last of the words exited my mouth, I heard the sound of a heavy object slide across the wooden floor.

Kat looked over her shoulder into the darkness of the room. “Oh God, they’re getting in.”

Jake hammered the glass with the crowbar, and it shattered into the room. “Now, Kat! Give me your hands and jump up.” Her head and shoulder fit through with ease, but as her torso came through she screamed in pain.

“Stop! The glass is cutting me.” I heard the desk slide against the floor again. The open doorway bathed the room in a dull light, and I saw first the hands, then arms, and heads of Kat’s husband and daughters as they made easy work of the blocking desk. We gave another hard tug on Kat. She screamed in pain as the jagged glass of the window dug into her skin. I could see the blood starting to pool on the window sill as the glass dug deeper with every pull. “We can’t stop! There’s no other way.”

Tears stung my eyes and threatened to spill over when I realized we were fighting a losing battle. Lilly, the smallest of her family, had made it through the opening of the door and was making her way across the room. Our ongoing attempts to free Kat were gutting her like a fish. I raised the gun and took aim at Lilly. Kat, realizing what I was about to do, batted the gun from my hand. Unable to come to terms with the knowledge that her daughter was gone and something else animated her corpse, she sealed her own fate with one final act of protecting her child.

Kat looked at me and she saw her fate in my eyes. “Help me. Please, Emma, help me. Don’t let me die like this.” That unspoken accusation was the last thing Kat said to me as her daughter bit into her foot, severing two of her toes at the same time. Jake was still pulling to no avail, and Kat’s screams of pain cut through the very fiber of my being. I began pulling at Kat’s shirt and torso wildly as I watched her daughter, now joined by her sister and father, gorge on her flesh.

Kat’s body convulsed as she lost consciousness and Jake pulled me away. “Em, it’s too late. There’s nothing we can do for her now. She’s gone.” Her head was dangling out of the window, blood sliding down the wall like dripping paint.

I fell to my knees and cried for the loss of my friend. Minutes passed as I knelt there in despair. I could hear the wet slurping sound coming from Kat’s bottom half as they ate her. This would be my nightmare for the rest of my life, no doubt to be a short one. I stared at Kat’s lifeless body and remembered all the times we shared. Just twenty-four hours ago we were trading gossip at the salon, discussing our futures. A future she would never get to live. “I’m sorry, Kat. I will never forget you.” I rose to my feet and retrieved the gun. I felt the weight in my hand and knew that I couldn’t leave her like that.

I aimed the gun at her head and exhaled a long breath. I closed my eyes in silent prayer, and when I opened them again, I saw that Kat’s had also opened and were trained on me. Gone were those kind eyes of hers, now replaced with the opaque empty abyss of death. I said a mental goodbye and pulled the trigger before Jake could yell at me for firing a gun with a barrel full of mud.

Chapter 08 Dutch Oven