Horror Within : 8 Book Boxed Set Read online

  Not that Jamal cared about such things. The other kids were far more wary of the hillbilly locals than they were of Jamal, since most of them had come from urban areas. Jamal had once thought he was lucky to be able to attend the camp, a way out that most of his street-thug pals would never have. If he’d been aware of what had happened to him, he wouldn’t consider himself so lucky now.

  But now he and Benny moved in tandem, driven by a common fever that was blind to race.

  Their limbs and motor system appeared to know what they were doing, but their own conscious thoughts remained simple.Attack. Eat.

  - - -

  The sheriff walked into a cabin with the gun before him gripped in both hands with the flashlight squeezed in between.

  “Nobody move!”

  The bunk beds were empty, the place still. Hightower relaxed a little.

  Something made a noise. He stiffened again. The sound came from one of the lower bunks. A blanket concealed a small, huddled shape and beneath it, someone was whimpering.

  Hightower approached slowly, the floor creaking. His hand shook as he reached out to grab the blanket.

  He whipped it off and a young boy, maybe eleven or twelve, barely moved, curled in a ball facing the wall. He wore cute pajamas with little starfish on them. He was crying.

  “Hey, little guy, it’s going to be okay.”

  The boy shuddered with a sob.

  “I know you’re scared. Trust me.”

  Hightower reached toward the boy to rub his back and the kid rolled over fast, grabbed his hand, and chomped on Hightower’s knuckles with an audible crack. The sheriff squealed and jumped back. The kid held on. Blood smeared his lips. Hightower tried to push him off but the kid’s teeth dug into the meaty pads of his fingers.

  Hightower hesitated a moment before clunking the kid on the head with his gun. It took three hard hits before the kid fell back. Hightower stumbled to the door, his hand throbbing.

  “What’s wrong with you? Nobody ever teach you respect for the law?”

  The kid began to crawl out from the bottom bunk.

  The kid was smiling.

  Hightower pointed the gun. The kid’s face morphed into a cute, wide-eyedWho, me? expression, and that was somehow even worse than the bloody grin. Just like with the Choppy Chop man, Hightower couldn’t pull the trigger when it counted.

  “Okay, but this is going on your permanent record.” Hightower left the kid alone and ran back outside.

  - - -

  The thing that had once been a little boy named Roscoe, who had once set a girl’s hair on fire, licked his lips. It was sweet. He licked again.

  Very sweet.

  He could get used to this.

  - - -

  Fog was rising off the lake like hundreds of ascending ghosts. Eva Dean and Delphus paddled silently, just the gentle push of water. Jenny kept looking around. Maybe those really were ghosts coming off the lake. Maybe Mark was one of them. This was like some horror movie where the innocent people were massacred and their tortured souls came back years later to recreate all the horror. An endless cycle of violence and death.

  That made about as much sense as a virus that threw kids into a murderous rage.

  She looked toward the shore. She could swear she saw—

  “There,” she said and pointed. “More of them. Waiting for us.”

  “Huh,” Delphus said. “Guess we better turn it.”

  Jenny notched an arrow and stood. The boat was surprisingly stable. “Keep it steady. I’ll blaze a trail.”

  - - -

  After several minutes, Max gained control of himself again. What the hell were they doing? Running through the woods so Robert could play white knight and finally nail some twist?

  They broke through the forest into a sandy play area on the shore—a horseshoe pit, a volleyball net, and a few picnic tables. “This is a waste of time,” Max said. “You must never let your emotions—”

  “Shut up.”

  Robert walked to the water’s edge. Something was out there on the lake. A canoe, it looked like. And someone standing up.

  “Think it’s crazy mixed-up kids?” Robert asked.

  “Would they know how to run a boat?”

  “We can head on around the lake to the camp.”

  “And risk the woods? Who knows how many junior woodchucks are waiting to jump out of the trees?”

  “Hey!” Robert shouted across the water, waving his arms. “Over here!”

  Moron, Max thought.

  - - -

  Jenny’s hand twitched on the bowstring, but she did not release the arrow. “Hey, it’s normal people—”

  Something smacked the boat and Jenny almost toppled into the water. A dark hand reached out of the water.

  A kid who had once been a sweet, though slightly troubled, boy named Jamal popped out of the water like he’d been clinging to the boat the whole time.

  “Diddle me with a fish stick!” Delphus slapped his paddle across the boy’s back. The Jamal-thing grinned and threw himself at the boat. The canoe shook violently and Jenny lost her balance.NoNoNoNoNo.

  She splashed into the lake.

  “Jenny!” Eva Dean screamed.

  - - -

  Robert stormed into the water. “Jenny!” he screamed.

  Damn idiot. Had he not learned anything? Max caught his arm before he could get too far. “Hold on, son. Don’t risk your tail over a piece of tail.” That was a definite Maxim, and he’d shared it many times.

  Robert stared at him with pure fury. “I just resigned—‘Dad.’”

  He pulled out of Max’s grip, tore off his J.C. Penney shirt, and jumped full-on into the water.

  If the “son” line wasn’t going to work, then the goddamn kid really had a misguided sense of what was important. Robert’s real father, whoever he was, would surely agree.

  - - -

  Neither Eva Dean nor Delphus knew how to swim. Delphus never had any interest in the water and Eva Dean didn’t really care, but since opening this camp, her inability to swim had been like a dirty secret, a shameful, embarrassing thing.

  Jenny bobbed to the surface of the water. Before she could take a full breath, the Jamal-thing was on her, clawing at her hair and trying to bite her. He pulled her under the water and they thrashed just beneath the surface.

  “You shoulda taught me how to swim,” Eva Dean said. She tried to paddle the canoe toward Jenny.

  “Yeah,” Delphus said, “but I don’t even like the bathtub.”

  The boat gave another shake, nearly pitching Delphus out. A hand gripped the boat’s bow, little fingers knotting into claws.

  Eva Dean stomped on the fingers and they released, the attacker sliding back into the water. A head bobbed free of the surface and Delphus recognized the Billy-thing. He swung the paddle, but the boy rolled out of the way and the swing went wide and shlushed against the water.

  Out of the fog, another canoe appeared out of the morning mist and came on fast. Two more deranged boys were on it. Eva Dean recognized Boston and Benny, even with their bodies mangled and blood splattered across their faces.

  “Ah, hell,” Delphus said. “These things are swarming like rats.”

  The canoe rammed them and sheared the side. Water gurgled in and quickly flooded the bottom. Delphus was distracted watching the water gush over his feet and when he looked up, Boston and Benny where almost on him, reaching from their canoe.

  Delphus reared the paddle back for a roundhouse swing and another shirtless form squirted out of the water with a roar of rage. This wasn’t a boy. It was a man, nearly crazed, but there was something about him that kept Delphus from braining him.

  The man tipped the other canoe and the two infected boys spilled into the lake.

  Now Delphus recognized him. The asshole who was with that top-dog asshole Max Jenkins when Max had made his first offer on the land. Delphus almost wanted to smack him just on general principle. “You crazy?”

  “Just half—”<
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  Eva Dean reached over the edge and snagged the tipped canoe. She righted it and got in. “Help Jenny!” she yelled at the guy in the water.

  “Where’d she go?” the young man shouted back, and Eva Dean pointed to indicate under the water.

  Eva Dean stood in the second canoe and Delphus stared at her as his canoe swamped, water nearly to his knees. “Jesus, Daddy, get in!”

  He tried to hop in and didn’t quite make it, his lower half falling into the water. He gripped the side of the canoe and Eva Dean tried to help—

  The boy that had been Boston launched himself onto Delphus’s back and wrapped his arms around Delphus’s neck. Eva Dean watched in horror as Boston opened his mouth wide to chomp into her father’s throat.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Jenny thrashed in the water against a boy who was too far gone to realize his intestines were floating next to him, who fought with unnatural fierceness because malicious cells were dividing and multiplying inside him, eating his brain, animating what should have been a corpse.

  Robert swam to her, screaming for her between slobbering breaths. Jenny heard him shouting, but it couldn’t be Robert. Robert was too sweet to play hero. He’d taken her to a nice restaurant and kissed her gently but hadn’t pressured her for anything else. She’d been so shocked she’d been afraid to accept his offer for a second date—afraid of herself.

  But right now she couldn’t think about sexual politics, she was more concerned with getting this mutant killer off her back before it dragged her down to the bottom or tore a chunk out of her face. She wasn’t sure the boy-thing—Jamal, his name was Jamal—needed to breathe or if he was like a zombie, something already dead, although bubbles seemed to stream out of his mouth whenever he tried to bite.

  She kicked him hard in the stomach and broke free of his grasp, lifting her head out of the water and sucking in a sweet lungful of mountain air, and then he was on her again. She took a gulp, grit and algae against her teeth, and held her breath as his desperate hands ravaged her body.

  - - -

  Delphus kicked his legs furiously and thrashed his body, rocking the canoe and almost pitching Eva Dean over the side. The boy-creature on his back tore at his neck and blood splashed into the water.

  The water roiled and splashed and the apparition-like fog twirled toward the dusky sky, as if the ghosts were too frightened to stay.

  And on the shore, Maximilian Jenkins stood at the water’s edge watching his protégée-turned-hero swim toward some girl he probably wasn’t even porking. As soon as Robert got his heart ripped out, he’d be the next chapter in Max’s little instruction guide.

  Max felt exposed here on the shore, but where was he supposed to go? God knew how far away his Beemer was. He could lock himself in one of the bunkhouses, but then he’d be waiting for help to arrive, and these wild-eyed monsters seemed to be multiplying.

  Something stirred in the woods behind him. Maybe the wind. Maybe not.

  - - -

  Jenny caught a flash of Robert swimming toward her, splashing through the water, drops flying from his hair, and she thought it had to be a mirage. She fought against Jamal, who yanked her hair and tried to bite into her shoulder. She rammed her head back as violently as she could and felt his nose shatter against her skull.

  He loosened his grip and she broke surface again.

  “Help!” she screamed.

  Jamal pulled her under, blood blooming up around his face, and she felt his mouth nudging against her breasts, seeking purchase. And she was about to scream, even though water would rush into the void afterward, but then Jamal was mercifully gone.

  Robert snagged Jamal around the waist and pulled him down into the murky depths of the lake.

  - - -

  Delphus wasn’t doing so well.

  Even if he wasn’t wrestling with a wiry little brat that seemed to have seven mouths and sixteen arms, he would have had a devil of a time staying afloat.

  The kid on his back was pulling him down, choking him. Eva Dean stood tall in the canoe and raised the paddle high over her head. “Watch out, Daddy!”

  She swung down fast and Delphus used what was left of his energy to pull his head forward and lift the young attacker farther up out of the water. The paddle swooped down and chopped into Boston’s head like an axe. The kid’s skull cracked like an egg that spewed black brains across the water’s surface. He released Delphus and slipped into the lake’s dark belly, one large bubble of air popping to the surface.

  “I didn’t teach you to swim, but at least I taught you how to split firewood,” Delphus said with a weak grin.

  Eva Dean wrangled her father into the canoe without tipping it, gawked for a second at the wound on his neck, and then paddled fast toward Jenny, who was trying desperately to stay above the water. They got her into the canoe, panting and gasping. Her shirt was in tatters, streaks of blood trailing across her chest.

  “You bit?” Eva Dean asked her.

  Jenny shook her head, flinging water from her hair. “I don’t think so.”

  Robert and Jamal were somewhere under the water. Benny, his guts bobbing next to him, grunted and swam toward them. Black muck poured from his nostrils.

  Eva Dean paddled frantically for the shore.

  “We can’t leave Robert!” Jenny cried.

  “He never come up,” Delphus said slowly. “Not even Houdini could hold his breath that long.”

  Behind Benny, Boston broke the surface. His skull sagged open like a split cantaloupe, but somehow he was still swimming toward them.

  “How is this possible?” Jenny said.

  “Maybe we’re in Hell,” Eva Dean said between furious strokes.

  “If I’da known this would happen, I might have gone to church more,” Delphus said.

  - - -

  Lewis stopped the sedan in the middle of the camp. Nothing was going on, which was weird because kids didn’t like to sit still.

  “Looks pretty dead,” Lewis said, with some relief. He’d been picturing the little kids menaced by a wild dog, Cujo crossed with Friday the 13th.

  Samantha pointed. “Literally.”

  A mauled human corpse was sprawled in the dirt. They approached slowly. Something had really done a number on it. Blood was splattered all around and organs stretched out like knitting yarn. A gory tableau.

  “Still going with the infection theory?” he asked.

  “What if it’s like the shepherd? It might, you know…come back to life.”

  “We’re pretending that never happened, remember?”

  Samantha nodded. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

  Lewis knelt and checked the boy’s pulse out of instinct, although it was clear his corpse was pale and cool. “This kid’s a goner.”

  Samantha looked around. “Where is everybody?”

  “We can either poke around like good citizens, or we can get back in the car, go home, and have a martini or ten . . .”

  “Yeah. Being out here makes me realize how much I like locked doors.”

  “Best thing to do is go alert the authorities. We’ll let the state handle this.”

  They nodded at each other and headed back to the car.

  - - -

  Cells multiplying at extraordinary rates stirred something in a deceased mind. What had once been a kid named Todd—whose crime against the state had been sneaking painkillers from his aunt’s medicine cabinet—opened his eyes and grinned.

  He didn’t know why he was smiling. Actually, for all Todd knew, he was dead and this was a dream of the afterlife.

  It made as much sense as anything else.

  And it was better than pills.

  - - -

  Max turned toward the woods. He definitely heard something back there. “This is my turf,” he said just to hear his own voice. It was a little too wobbly for his liking.

  People were out on the lake screaming and thrashing around, a game of water polo descended into madness. And Robert was out there. Hard to be
lieve Max had once considered him a worthy asset for Cloudland Development.

  The path back to camp waited for him. He hesitated. Twigs snapped to his right and someone stepped out of the woods. The guy hidden in the shadow of dusk.

  “Mr. Fruh-fraley?” Max hated the tremor. This was his chance to buy on the cheap, hit him while the old farmer was off balance. Why, Max was practically providing charity by being willing to take over all the problems waiting ahead. A load off his mind. But he couldn’t pull his Closer Face, not while he was so scared.

  The figure stopped. Daybreak pierced the canopy of clouds and trees to reveal his son, Wallace Jenkins. The kid was bloody and beat-up and covered in some kind of mud but he didn’t look crazed. No more than usual, anyway.

  “Son? What have they done to you?” Of course, in the ensuing civil suit, poor Wallace would be portrayed as psychologically damaged due the events of the camp, requiring severe compensation for pain and suffering. But that was for later.

  Max stepped forward and paused. He might be a ruthless businessman and a pretty careless human being, but he suffered moments of fatherly compassion. After all, he’d bred the little booger and perhaps the kid would one day ascend to the top. Even so, he couldn’t let concern for his son determine his actions. Emotions interfered and screwed up everything. A definite Maxim.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Max said. “Some kind of infection is going around.”

  Wallace stepped forward unevenly. Max awkwardly extended his arms in welcome.

  Wallace grinned, a red-and-green thing, and then launched into an awkward but rapid run. Max was too surprised to move and by the time he began backpedaling, his son was on him, the boy’s eyes crazed and bloodshot.