23.
Author's Note: In addition to today's chapter we have some treats for your viewing pleasure! Directly below is my new video "The Evolution of Horror". Please feel free to link to it on your own site, or to send the URL to as many people as you please: the more people who see this, the better.
After the chapter we have the trailer for Scott Sigler's book, Ancestor. Scott's been a big friend to me and my books--check out the video and if you like it, be sure to comment on YouTube.
After about two hundred yards the trees thinned out a little, then ended abruptly in a broad clearing where a massive, ancient farmhouse stood in the middle of a lawn gone over to weeds and tall grass. A gravel road circled the house and stood littered with dozens of cars and light trucks. The house itself was dark, all its windows covered over with sheets of plywood, but Tim could tell it wasn’t deserted. A thin piping sound warbled out through the shutters and a heavier thumping rhythm like a massive heartbeat set the whole place vibrating. Occasionally he could hear a scrap of human voice raised above the beat, though he couldn’t make out any words.
His attention was focused more on the house’s sentinels, anyway. Fifty or maybe more human skeletons stood guard in a ring around the building, standing no more than ten feet apart from each other. They were pale and slightly shiny in the starlight, their eye sockets staring outward as if they were searching for oncoming threats. He fought down his fear and noticed they were wired in place or hanging from thin metal stands anchored to the ground. They weren’t undead guardians, just replicas of human anatomy.
“Jesus,” Buzzard said. “If those are supposed to scare me off, they’re doing a hell of a job.”
Sasha smiled at the two of them, but said nothing.
Tim moved closer. He knew where the skeletons had come from, at least. Vashon Island had been the home to the largest manufacturer of anatomical models and prosthetics in the Pacific Northwest, a place locals called the Bone Factory. He doubted the skeletons were made of real bones—most likely they were plastic resin, dyed white or yellow as the customer desired. He moved closer to one and saw that it had been modified from its factory standards. Electrical wires looped around the ribs and the jawbones, and electronic boxes had been mounted inside the rib cages as if someone had tried to turn them into robots. That seemed unlikely. He reached out to touch one but Sasha made a curt noise that warned him off.
“You finger that, boy, you’re gonna have about a hundred bullets in you before you let go,” she told him.
Tim dropped his hand quickly.
“What’s this?” Tim asked, pointing at a circuit board hot-glued to the sternum of one of the skeletons.
“Car alarm,” Sasha told him. “Ain’t no shortage of those.”
Tim followed the wires down the leg of the skeleton to where they hooked into a dry cell battery. “Very nice. Very smart.”
“You care to fill me in?” Buzzard asked.
“If a drooler attacks one of these, it’ll set off the car alarm. That gives the people inside plenty of warning they have a threat to take care of.”
“Why would they attack some old bones?” Buzzard asked.
“Stereotyped behavior,” Tim said. “Just like Helena told us about. Any drooler coming this way will go for the first humanoid thing it sees that doesn’t smell like it’s infected.” He turned to Sasha. “Skeletons, though? Is that enough to fool one of them?”
She shrugged amiably. “We’ve had two alarms go off since we set this up. The droolers go right for ‘em. Saves us having somebody on watch twenty-four seven.”
Tim chewed on his lip. Maybe the skeletons looked just human enough. Droolers didn’t have a lot of brainpower to waste on making that kind of distinction. He wondered, though. The Bone Factory turned out much more realistic models of human bodies. The looters must have picked skeletons for a reason. Either the fleshed models were too creepy—or they just thought the skeletons looked cool.
“Come on, we’re wasting darkness,” Sasha said, and lead them up onto the house’s porch. She unlocked the front door with a key she kept on a string around her neck. The door opened abruptly, yanked out of her hand, and the barrel of a twelve gauge shotgun rammed out into the night air at the same time the music playing inside flooded over the three of them.
“Cut that shit out, Mikey,” Sasha said, and pushed the shotgun barrel out of her face. “You know it’s me, man. You two,” she said, looking at Tim and Buzzard, “this is Mikey. He’s the guy who’s going to shoot you if you try anything funny.”
Tim nodded politely at the man behind the door. Mikey was probably six foot five and most of that wide. He looked like a body-builder and he wore a magenta running suit with leather patches and stripes. He had tattoos on his face, cobwebs and guns and knives and naked women that crawled up over his shaved head.
"Any trouble?" he asked Sasha. "I heard shots."
She nodded. "Nothing I couldn't handle. Now be nice and say hello to our guests."
“Pleased to meet you,” he said. “By all means, do come on in.”
Tim and Buzzard followed Sasha inside the house, into a wide living room. The music was almost deafening—loud enough to make Tim wonder how they could hear the car alarmed-skeletons outside if they did go off. The room was brilliantly lit, with table and floor lamps supplementing very expensive-looking recessed lighting in the ceiling. It was also full of well-dressed people.
On a couch near a sixty-inch plasma television two young men were playing a video game about heavily-armored soldiers shooting pasty-faced aliens. One of them wore a three-piece suit and tie, while the other was dressed in silk pajamas. Across the room a trio of teenagers in polo shirts and designer jeans were playing quarters with a bottle of Jose Cuervo 1800. Between the three of them they must have worn a king’s ransom in jewelry—rings, necklaces, earrings and chains. At the back of the room a man wearing an immaculate Sonics jersey with a hologram patch on the sleeve was laughing into a cell phone. Tim saw right away that this guy was the one he wanted to talk to. He had a girl on his arm dressed in a ball gown and brown-tinted sunglasses, while a bodyguard in well-oiled biker leathers squatted next to him cradling a Mac-10 machine pistol in his gloved hands.
Buzzard just turned around and around in circles, taking it all in. Tim didn’t blame him—this was the last thing he’d really expected to find on Vashon Island. He was too busy sizing the place up to waste time on astonishment, himself.
Having identified the leader Tim’s eyes went to the walls, where dozens of rifles and shotguns were propped up behind the furniture. Next he saw the piles of DVD players, video game systems, and computer parts still wrapped in plastic. At the back of the room he saw a doorway that looked like the entrance to a walk-in closet. It had been sealed off with a bike chain and a Krypton lock. A very stoned-looking girl, maybe fifteen years old, sat on the floor next to the door, giggling to herself. Every once in a while she rapped on the door with her knuckles. In response the door shook and jumped as if someone behind it were trying to get out.
“That’s Tony over there, he’s kind of our—” Sasha said, tilting her head at the man in the basketball jersey.
“Yo, yo, fuck that,” Tony shouted, obliterating anything else she might have said. “I told you so many times you fucking speed freak.” Without warning he drew a massive pistol from under his jersey and swung it around the room. Everyone, even Mikey with the tattooed face, ducked in horror.
The gun came around and blasted a hole through the plaster right next to the face of the stoned girl sitting by the closet door. She closed her eyes and stopped giggling but she didn’t seem to notice that a piece of exploding plaster had cut her cheek.
Tony stormed over to her and grabbed her hard by the shoulders. He shook her violently as he screamed into her face. “That’s my mother-fucking brother in there,” he said. “You do not fucking bug him, you got it?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, Tony, sure,” the girl said, her eyes wide but not with fear.
Tony dropped her back to the floor.
“Yo, Tone,” the girl in the ball gown said. “Over here.”
The big man turned slowly, looking irritated, until he was facing Tim and Buzzard. Then his face went through a complete transformation. His eyes lit up, his face fell and then climbed back upward in a friendly smile. “Oh, hey,” he said, raising his arms as if he would hug them both. He was big enough to do it. “Yeah, hey, wow, it’s you guys. Awesome!”
And now... without further ado: ANCESTOR!
