Insomnia and Seven More Short Stories Read online

  Forgetting the splashing sound, Willard dove down, knowing that if he had any hope of surviving and saving Robert and Connelly, he needed that equipment. He kicked his way down and clawed past the fragments of endless dead bodies.

  As he moved closer to his goal, something nagged at his mind. Something fought for his attention. A sensation he hadn't realized was building began to scream and pound at his intellect.

  He was hot.

  He was burning.

  Willard took another look around. The bodies that littered the bottom were awash with tiny bubbles. The liquid seemed to grow hotter…or more acidic the further down he swam. It had become hot enough outside his suit that the cooling system could no longer compensate. Willard wondered at what temperature the suit would reach its limit. If it got much hotter, the PMS would boil him like lobster meat in its shell.

  Gritting his teeth, he pushed for the bottom. Every surge brought him closer to his equipment and nearer to death. As his arms and legs slid against the inside of the PMS, it felt as though a hot iron were being gently grazed across his skin. The sweat oozing from his pores stung his eyes and obscured his vision. His vision was all but obscured when he reached the bottom, but his aim had remained true. He felt the hard surface of the equipment strike his hand.

  Moving as quickly as he could, feeling that the suit would soon fail him, Willard strapped the propulsion unit to his back, grasped the controls and set the throttle to full. Body parts were liquefied as the propulsion unit burst to life, dragging Willard up. After bashing through a few flimsy bodies, Willard broke the surface. He was exhausted and terrified, but alive and beginning to cool down. Laying on his back and hugging the rescued equipment to his chest, Willard caught his breath.

  In the silence that followed his near broiling, he heard the same splashing. He scanned the area for the source of the noise. A ripple of liquid came from behind a large carcass that looked like a whale with a vertical mouth. Its skin was clear, but Willard wasn't sure if that was normal or caused by the digestive process. Willard eased himself toward the body.

  As he closed in, the splashing grew louder, more desperate.

  "Help me," a voice said.

  Willard flinched. Had someone else been swallowed?

  "Help me!" The voice was terrified.

  As Willard prepared to aid whoever else had become victim to the beast, he realized that the voice was his own…inside his mind.

  "Please," it said, "do not be afraid."

  Willard felt strangely at ease as he moved around the whale-like creature. On the other side he found another body. It was built like a fish, but its skin was translucent and its internal organs glowed a dull blue. The fish flapped on top of the water, spinning in odd circles—twitching as death slowly claimed it. But what held Willard's attention was a small organism attached to the side of the animal. It had the same shape and size of a Europhid but was blue.

  The blue Europhid was limp and motionless. With a final twitch, the dying creature passed away. Willard moved in closer.

  "Save me," the voice said. "Save me and I will give you a gift in return."

  "Are you…are you the fish?" Willard said.

  Silence followed.

  "Show me who you are."

  The Europhid glowed a gentle blue and then faded.

  Willard set his confusion aside. Something…or someone had asked for his aid. As his instincts took over, he responded the only way he knew how. "What do I need to do?"

  "Touch me."

  Willard felt a stab of distrust. He squinted and said, "And what will you give me in return?"

  "Hope," the voice said. "Life."

  The last word was weak, fading. Willard reached out with his hand before he could weigh his options. He could sense the creature fading. His finger brushed up against the Europhid and a shock, like electricity ripped through his body. He shook as though claimed by an epileptic seizure and felt his mind, his very thoughts, merge with another's.

  When the shaking subsided and his mind cleared, Willard looked back to the blue Europhid. It was withered and colorless—dead. With a hard heart, Willard knew he had failed. But then a new emotion filled his body.

  Hope.

  "Are you there?" he asked.

  No response came. Other than the bubbling of rising digestive gases, not a sound could be heard. Willard wondered if he had had a hallucination brought on by stress.

  It felt so real, he thought. But the voice was inside his head, which only supported the idea that his experience had been a delusion. The blue Europhid, which shimmered lightly with life only moments ago now looked decomposed and long dead. Willard concluded without a doubt that the Europhid had not communicated with him.

  It was just a damn plant anyway!

  Willard focused his thought on the task at hand, escaping from the gargantuan bowels. The feeling Willard couldn't shake, even after determining he'd hallucinated the talking Europhid, was the nagging sense of hope—the knowledge that he knew what to do. Without questioning why, Willard turned to the far wall and gunned the propulsion unit forward. He sped through the digestive fluid, not being able to see any exit, but believing, knowing, it lay ahead.

  ###

  —SAMPLE—

  TORMENT by JEREMY BISHOP

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  DESCRIPTION:

  Small town reporter, Mia Durante, finds herself having brunch with the President of the United States on the day civilization comes to an end. An electromagnetic pulse blinds the U.S. Cars crash. Planes fall. Chaos reigns. Power is restored within minutes, but it’s already too late. Russian nukes are falling. U.S. allies around the world are all ready wiped out. The United States will cease to exist inside of five minutes.

  After giving the order to launch a full-scale retaliation, dooming the planet, the president, White House staff, Secret Service and those lucky enough to be visiting the white house, are whisked below ground where they board several Earth Escape Pods. As the EEPs launch into Earth orbit, missiles descend.

  Less than forty survive the end of the world. When they return, they’re greeted by survivors of a different sort. The bloodbath that follows leaves Durante and nine other survivors on the run. They find themselves fighting for survival in a world in which only torment remains and where death is the only escape.

  EXCERPT:

  20

  “Stay here,” Mia whispered to Liz. She’d quickly checked the second floor bedrooms and deposited Liz in a closet. The girl shuffled back into the closest, hidden behind a rack of hanging suits that must have come from a Big n’ Tall store.

  The stairs to the third floor were at the center of the hall and ended at a closed door. A thick, beige carpet covered the steps and concealed her approach. She paused at the top of the stairs, trying to remember how police officers breached a room, but then realized every image she had of the maneuver was from a TV show.

  With her left hand on the door knob and the gun in her right, she slowly turned the handle and nudged the door open. Other than the bottom of the door brushing against the carpet, she managed complete silence.

  The third floor was one large room. Four skylights above and a large, front looking window filled the room with the tangerine glow of the setting sun. She searched the long room for any sign of the person she’d heard and found nothing. There were two arcade games; the screens blank. A mini-bar filled the back corner accompanied by a card table and dart board on the wall. The front half of the room held two plush couches and a TV screen that looked big enough to service a stadium theater. But the centerpiece of the room was a pool table. Ornately carved from red oak, the table sat at the center of the space. A large stained glass fixture hung above it.

  The most interesting thing about the pool table was what lay on the side.

  A bullet.

  Her bullet.

  She walked toward the round, staring at it. “Austin?”

  “Didn’t want yo
u to shoot me.” Austin’s voice came from behind her. A small bathroom was hidden behind the stairs. He stepped out, wiping off his face with a hand towel.

  She wanted to leap at the man and hug him. Having written him off as dead, she felt glad to see him. She lowered her gun.

  He walked to the pool table and picked up the round. “Thanks for the message. I came in through the fire escape after checking out the backyard.”

  “How did you get here so fast?” she asked.

  He took out a pool ball and rolled it across the table, bouncing it off the cushion. “I wasn’t that far behind. Wanted to make sure you weren’t being followed.”

  “You were watching us?”

  He nodded. “I was in the woods behind the house.”

  “Could’a told me.”

  “Worried?” he asked with a grin.

  “Asshole.”

  Austin laughed and looked beyond her. Liz was standing there. He stopped smiling.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Austin. We decided that curse words weren’t offensive anymore,” Liz said as she entered the room and sat on a couch.

  “I told you to wait,” Mia said, a touch of anger in her voice.

  Liz shrugged. “I thought it was safe to come out with them.” She thumbed over her shoulder as Mark arrived, carrying a novel. Paul and Chang followed him, also carrying novels.

  “There a book club I don’t know about?” Austin asked.

  “Only form of entertainment that’s not going to get us killed,” Mark said.

  “Running for your life isn’t entertaining enough?” Mia asked.

  “Food’s here,” Collins announced as he entered carrying two brown bags full of non-perishable food.

  White and Vanderwarf followed, hands empty. Garbarino was last. He closed and locked the door at the bottom of the stairs then joined them at the top. He looked honestly pleased to see Austin. “You made it.”

  Austin stopped the rolling pool ball. “One almost got me. Snuck up behind me while I was distracted.”

  “Were they armed?” Garbarino asked.

  Austin shook his head. “They were...insane. No weapons. Came at me with hands and teeth. Like animals. A few of them weren’t any trouble. But if I wasn’t armed...or if the rest of them showed up.” He shook his head again, this time looking at the floor. “Wouldn’t have turned out the same.”

  After a moment of silence, he moved to the end of the pool table and reached under it. He motioned to Garbarino. “Help me on this end. Vanderwarf. White. Get the other side.”

  Together, the four of them moved the heavy table in front of the fire escape door on the side of the house. With the downstairs sealed, the second floor door locked and the pool table blocking the only other exit, they were sealed in tight.

  As night settled, the group ate boxes of Hostess comfort food, spoke little, and one by one dropped off to sleep. Vanderwarf and White lay down behind the bar. No one could see them, everyone knew the two were dealing with the destruction of the world in their own, primal way.

  “Going to have to start repopulating the planet sooner or later,” Paul had whispered to Mark, but the priest wasn’t laughing. Despite his normally humorous personality, he had fallen more serious as the sun descended and the sunset turned blood red. But if darkness filled his thoughts, he kept it to himself and eventually nodded off. Paul slept on one of the couches, snoring lightly. Chang had found a bean bag chair and fell asleep halfway on, lying on her back with her head cocked back and her mouth wide open. Collins fell asleep as he often did in the Oval Office, head down on the table. He’d started playing solitaire, but wasn’t having any luck.

  Liz fell asleep on Mia’s lap while she sat in a comfortable chair to the side of the front window. Had it not been pitch black outside, it would have offered her a view of half the neighborhood for nearly a mile. Austin sat on a stool across from her, arms folded across his chest keeping watch in the other direction.

  “Strange, isn’t it?” he said quietly.

  “What is?” she replied.

  “That sound.”

  She listened, but could only hear the breathing of several sleeping people and Paul’s snoring. “I can’t hear anything.”

  Austin picked up a pillow from the arm of the couch and tossed it at Paul. The man snorted, rolled over and fell quiet. “Outside,” Austin said.

  She reached forward slowly and opened the small window. She held her breath and listened. At first she heard nothing. But after a few moments she heard...something. High pitched. Reverberating. Very distant. “What is it?” she asked.

  “Screaming,” he said.

  Goose bumps sprung up on her arms. He was right. Once he identified the sound, she could hear it for what it was—screaming, from hundreds, if not thousands of people. “What’s going on out there?” she asked.

  As though in reply, a light outside clicked on.

  Austin sprang up.

  Mia gasped.

  “Motion sensitive light in the driveway,” he said. “Must have a battery backup.”

  She heard nothing but “motion sensitive.” Someone lurked outside. She shifted for a view of the driveway and saw a man. He moved quickly, but not in a single direction. Like a squirrel in the road, unsure of which way to run from an approaching car, he leaped one way and then the other. She could hear his panicked breathing, squeaking with fear.

  “Should we help him?” she asked.

  Austin shook his head, no. Instead, he whispered, “Close your window.”

  She did so, quickly and quietly, careful not to jostle Liz and wake her up.

  “I don’t think he could have heard us.”

  “It’s not him I’m worried about.” He motioned to the others. “It’s them. I don’t want them to wake up. I don’t want them to see.”

  “See what?”

  “You didn’t hear the voices?”

  She shook her head, wondering if her hearing sucked or if Austin just had really good ears.

  “The people who attacked me. Who attacked Reggie. They all shouted warnings first. Apologies. Like they didn’t want to be doing what they were about to do. Like it horrified them. I could hear them coming.” He motioned out the window. “And so can he.”

  The man was still running in circles. Then, through the closed windows, Mia did hear another voice. A woman’s. Then a man’s. She couldn’t make out the words, but she could see them. Running shadows. Three of them.

  The panicked man finally saw them coming. Or maybe heard them. And turned to run in the opposite direction. But he was so out of his head with fright that he turned and sprinted into a tree. The three descended on top of him before he could stand. The woman went for his neck with her teeth, cutting off his scream. The two men tore at his stomach. Blood pooled around him as they slaughtered the man.

  From beginning to end, the attack lasted only fifteen seconds. The two men and the woman stood above the body, wailing. Crying like children. They disappeared into the night again, leaving the dead man behind, his entrails looping over the driveway, his blood glowing bright red under the halogen glow of the motion sensitive light.

  Mia and Austin stared down at the body in silence.

  When the light blinked out again, Austin whispered, “We’ll go out the back in the morning. Get some sleep.”

  She thought sleep would be impossible, but she sat back, closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, the view of stars outside had been replaced by blue sky. For a moment, lost in the comfortable place between sleep and reality, she forgot everything that had happened.

  That’s when Liz started screaming.

  21

  Mia launched from her chair, wrapped her hand around Liz’s open mouth and turned her away from the large window. She thought the girl had seen the mauled body in the driveway. Why didn’t we cover the window last night?

  As Liz filled her lungs to scream again, Austin knelt in front of her, ready to talk her down from her panic. But he quickly realized what was hap
pening. “She’s still asleep.”

  “Someone shut her up!” Garbarino hissed. He jumped to his feet, holding his weapon. The screaming got his hackles up.

  Mia shook her arm. “Elizabeth! Wake up! Liz!”

  The girl screamed again.

  “They’re going to hear her!” Garbarino said.

  Mia knew he was right. Her high pitched squeal could probably be heard for blocks, even with the windows shut. And who’s to say the killers she and Austin saw the night before weren’t waiting outside already?

  White and Vanderwarf emerged from behind the bar, weapons at the ready. “What’s happening?” Vanderwarf asked.

  “Kid’s having a nightmare,” Collins answered as he stood up and approached Mia. He knelt down in front of Liz, next to Austin and before anyone grasped his intentions, he reached out and slapped the girl across the face.

  “Hey!” Austin shouted, shoving his former boss away. Collins fell back, unhurt.

  The scream didn’t come again. A gentle crying took its place. “My face hurts,” Liz said.

  Mia glared at Collins for a moment before picking up her niece.

  He held his hands up. “It worked, didn’t it? And it sure as hell beats him—” He motioned to Garbarino, “—putting a bullet in her.”

  Austin saw Garbarino’s weapon lower. Had he been bringing it up to fire? There was no way to be sure, so he let it go. He didn’t chastise Collins any further, either. The slap wasn’t hard enough to break the girl’s jaw and she did stop screaming. But was it too late already?

  Austin moved to the window and looked out over the neighborhood. The houses, all various shades of beige, glowed yellow in the morning sun. When his gaze turned to the driveway, his heart hammered in his chest.