The Resurrected Compendium Read online

  Or more monstrous, maybe.

  She’d decided on the plan immediately after watching Benji inhale the spores. Abbie knew the timeframe, or at least guessed at most of it. Three days or so before he’d be overtaken by whatever was already growing inside him. Spores would explode from his eyes and nose and mouth, and he would be dead but moving. He would be violent and strong. No longer her son.

  Watching him choke on the faint black cloud that surrounded his face, Abbie knew there was no other solution. But she’d been weak. When he’d turned his face to her, mouth damp and lax, eyes cloudy, all she could do was open her arms to him and hold him close.

  “What was that stuff?” Benji had asked, but Abbie had not been able to bear telling him that soon he’d end up like his father and brother.

  Instead, she’d shushed him. “We have to get out of here.”

  But there’d been no time for that, because while she comforted Benji, Jordan staggered upright behind her. She’d seen Benji’s eyes go wide seconds before the pain in her head sent everything else away and the world went dark. When she’d woken on her front porch, she’d been so stiff and sore that at first she’d been unable to move at all. She didn’t know how long she’d been out, but long enough for spiders to have woven their webs in the crooks of her elbows and knees. Long enough for the blood under her head to have formed a stain on the concrete, no longer even sticky.

  Long enough for Benji to have turned.

  Abbie couldn’t recall when she’d decided on setting the traps. Only that the idea that had formed the instant she watched her son inhaling the spores, that she would take him and end his life as lovingly as she’d begun it, could no longer be possible. That she would have to be clever and ruthless and hard. That she would not be able to give up until it had been done.

  She hadn’t counted on how hard it would be to catch them. She’d assumed they would be clumsy and stupid in addition to being angry and murderous. She’d thought, too, that even though they’d become something else, she was still their mother. Still bigger and stronger. Still faster. Even though Jordan had taken her by surprise that first time, she wouldn’t be so careless again.

  She hadn’t counted on them being able to hide, or run. She hadn’t imagined the haunting, taunting sound of their laughter as they ran from her through the woods, leaping or climbing trees to get away from her. It had taken her a full week to accept that she wasn’t going to be able to simply find them and take their lives, then her own. It was going to take more effort than that.

  Coughing so hard her vision blurred and she had to bend over, hands on her knees, until she could see, Abbie forced herself to wake up. All the way. She shook her head when the coughing eased. The backyard had grown wild and out of control, but she heard the shuffle-shush of bare feet in the bushes.

  There was no point in calling out to either of them. They didn’t respond to their names. Whatever part of them remained was not enough for that. Also, it had become impossible to tell them apart. Both filthy and naked, whatever had made them different from each other had become lost.

  Abbie looked up to the sky. Gray clouds scudded. Winter was coming, and what would she do, then? She’d been managing to survive on what she’d found in the pantry here, and the house had a well, so there was still water. She could probably find a way to get into town for supplies, if she wanted to settle in to weather the snows.

  But she didn’t. She was tired. So tired.

  She looked again into the woods, thinking of the times they’d all been out here on the deck for barbecues. Laughing. Back in the days before, when she and Ryan had been happy. Before she’d lost herself in the drink and given up everything she’d ever loved. Before, before, before.

  Determined, Abbie went to the shed and got herself a shovel. She took it into the woods, a softish spot just below where they’d buried all their pets. On the slope of the hill in view of the back of the house, where she could easily watch it while hiding, herself. She dug into the earth and hit rock, the clang of it sending a tremor up her arm and shoulder. So hard it clicked her teeth together, and she bit her tongue.

  From the woods around her, she heard the soft, muttered sound of laughter that had no humor in it. She ignored it and bent back to her task. This time, she would not fail. This time, she would make this work.

  This time, Abbie vowed, she would take care of her children.

  68

  Hot water. Hot, unlimited water and real soap and real shampoo and oh, God, soft, fluffy towels. It was enough to send Kelsey into paroxysms of ecstasy. The food, she thought as she stood in line to pick up a tray, was something rather less than heaven. But it was hot, too. Steaming noodles, salty broth. The bread was hard and the green beans soggy, but she hadn’t had to cook any of it over an open flame, so there was that. Nor would she have to clean it up, after, at least not unless they assigned her to KP duty at some point, as she figured would happen.

  Dennis had already been assigned to some kind of guard duty, which was why he wasn’t with her, now. He was off patrolling the corridors of this enormous place. They hadn’t asked Kelsey to do that. It was pretty sexist, though that wasn’t surprising. She looked around now at the rest of the people here, feeling a little out of place. Everyone had been surprisingly friendly, considering two strangers had shown up with very little to offer other than a couple carts of canned goods. Kelsey had expected a lot more resistance. Dennis had been surprised, too.

  Two days they’d been here, that was all, but already things had fallen into a routine. Being here was much like being in boarding school. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. There were classes in Tai Chi and book club discussions, to which she’d been invited. Meetings about the running of the place, to which she was not, and that was fine.

  Safe or not, warm or not, unlimited hot water or not…Kelsey didn’t think she wanted to stay here. Maybe through the winter. Take advantage of the safety and supplies, but after that, how could she spend the rest of her life in here? Underground, this same group of people. Nothing new. Nothing much changing. And, call her pessimistic, but Kelsey was pretty sure that eventually, sooner rather than later, someone was going to get on someone else’s nerves so much that there’d be trouble.

  “Hi.” This was Maddy, her hair in twin pigtails. She had a broad smile and wore roller skates.

  She kind of gave Kelsey the creeps, though she wasn’t sure why. Something in the kid’s eyes didn’t match the grin. Something in the way she had the run of the place didn’t seem right.

  Something, Kelsey thought suddenly, about this whole place didn’t seem right.

  The people were all too quiet. Too complacent. They all shuffled their feet and didn’t really look anyone else in the eyes.

  “Hi,” Maddy said again when Kelsey didn’t answer. “I’m talking to you.”

  Kelsey dragged a spoon through her soup and brought it to her mouth, blowing on it to cool it. “Hi.”

  “You don’t like me.”

  Kelsey gave the little girl a slow, steady stare. “I don’t even know you.”

  Maddy rolled back and forth a little on her skates and put a hand on her hip. “Everyone knows me. Because I’m Maddy. I’m the boss.”

  “Uh huh.” Kelsey had never been overly fond of children. She’d never planned on having any of her own, even if in that other lifetime she and Tyler had discussed parenting a brood. She sat back in her chair.

  “You know, my dad says that when people join a group, they’re supposed to try to fit in.”

  Kelsey kept her expression neutral. “Your dad’s right, I guess.”

  “So you should try to fit in.” Maddy gave Kelsey another of those broad grins that didn’t seem to be real. “Everyone else here does what I say. So you should do that, too.”

  “Here’s the thing.” Kelsey sat back in her chair with a broad, empty grin of her own. “I’m not much of a joiner…what was your name again?”

  She knew the kid’s name all right. Names had power, and nobo