Blood and Picket Fences

The Morning After: Gray Chapter 7

Grayson awoke with a start, his body propelling forward an inch before the oversized bean bag chair sucked him back in like quicksand.

He could hear the sounds of screams from the street and then a large boom of impact from outside the window. His dad was sitting in a chair looking out with a more serious look on his face than when he'd caught Gray sneaking out of the bathroom soaked to the skin the night before. His long fingers folded in front of his nose, large dark bags under his eyes. Gray felt a pang of worry, "have you been there all night?" He asked shimming his way out of the bean bag and onto the floor before getting to his feet, his checkered green pajama bottoms soft against his skin. He padded across the carpet in slow anxious steps his eyes staring disbelieving at the scene below. His hands grabbing onto the curtains to steady himself or perhaps to give comfort? He couldn't really say, he was too busy watching the dead swarming an SUV that had plowed into the side of the neighbor's house. It had gone right into their living room. Shattering the large picture window and destroying the manicured lawn. The back tires spun as it tried to get traction, but the mud was too thick or the front was caught on something. This didn't appear to be the first collision it had gotten into the green paint scratched to shit on the sides, the bumper bent inward as if it had hit something large while reversing. A very human shaped something, he thought darkly.

Gray felt stomach bile rise as his once neighbors pounded their heads and hands against the windows of the crashed vehicle. It seemed only right that their mangle corpses would descend upon the driver that had merciless plowed into their house. As if they had some soul crushing vendetta when in fact they were just the closest of the monsters to the wreck. It happened quick. A blur of motion and then Mrs. Turner's head crashed through the driver side window, more screams following as she crawled her way into the full vehicle ignoring the glass that got embedded in her already torn body. Her left leg was no more than mangled bone and sinew. Gray could see tiny hands slap against backseat windows before the back door burst open and a young boy with dark black hair and feverish eyes tumbled out just getting enough time to look up before Mr. Turner and his seven year old daughter Susan descended upon him. Her blonde braids slapped side to side behind her head as she feasted. The only evidence of him below their masses was the puddle of blood draining towards the sidewalk. The screams ending after a torturous minute of anguish.

"Someone needs to be on watch at all times," his father finally whispered, his voice catching in his throat, a hollow look in his deep brown eyes as he looked his son up and down. "Did you sleep?" He asked with concern, letting out a held breath when Grayson nodded. They were both quiet then, staring out the window, watching the morning spring up around the street.

The air was thick between them with unspoken things. Before Gray was the carnage of this new wild world and he stared at it like someone viewing a plane crash or building consuming fire on the 10 o'clock news. It didn't seem real, from up in their safe hideaway above the garage. Yet, he knew deep in his bones that it very much was real.

Gray looked back at Kara, sound asleep on the pullout bed, her chest rising and falling tranquilly under the covers. She'd slept all night, through the loud crash, through the storm, through the screaming on the street, she'd even slept through his own cry out when he'd awoken with a start around 1 am. He felt like a character from the Stand, waking with this undeniable feeling of dread as the man with no face chased them in their dreams. Yet, instead of facing Randall Flag, he had visions of his mother eating him alive. The memory of the nightmare vivid in his mind.

"Mom-" His voice hitched fighting back panic and a desperate sound that swallowed up his voice making him stop before he could get the rest out.

"Sh-" Benzion paused, swallowing hard as he closed his eyes and shook his head as if he could shake away his own fear. "She's fine, I know she's fine, because she has to be," he said simply with conviction Gray couldn't even hope to feel. He'd always been the pessimist, always looking for the possible downfall or reprocussions, Kara was the optimistic one, it's why she got along so well with his dad.