Hidden

Chapter 8 - Remembering

The first screamer raced toward Desmond from across the living room of his house. He backed up towards the couch, his left hand searching for something to put between him and the creature. All it found was a pillow.

He grabbed the pillow and threw it into the screamer's face while he turned and jumped over the back of the couch and ran towards his parents' room, where he knew he would find the gun safe.

He knocked over the bookcase in the hallway and ran into the room, closing and locking the door behind him. Des could hear the screamer pounding on the door. It would break through any second. He opened the sliding closet door and push his dad's jackets out of the way to reveal the large black gun safe hidden inside.

He pushed the password his dad had made him remember into the keypad and pulled open the door. The only weapon he grabbed before the bedroom door exploded inward was a Beretta M9/92. Without looking towards the door, he leaped backwards onto the large bed that took up most of the space in the room. The screamer crashed into the closet door where he had been crouching a half-second before.

It jumped up immediately and turned towards Des, noticed the firearm in his hands, and looked into his eyes. But before he could pull the trigger, another screamer jumped through the window over the master bed.

Shards of glass rained down, cutting Des's face and arms and tearing dozens of holes in his shirt. A two-inch long shard cut deep into his left arm as he turned toward this new threat. The screamer tackled him off of the bed and onto the carpeted floor below. Its jaws opened and closed quickly, only inches away from his face.

Thinking quickly, Des grabbed a small dumbbell next to him and slammed it into his attacker's head. The momentary opening gave him time to stand and move to the far side of the room. When he had hit the second screamer, he had been lucky enough to hit it towards the first, which had been diving to enter the fray. Both now stood up and looked at him.

Now he recognized the second one. It was his neighbor Dennis Wilfrey, a shy kid only a few years younger than Des. They had never really hung out, but they knew each other. But Des had known who the first screamer was since the moment he saw it.

It was his mother.

Horrified, he watched as both of them screamed and started to sprint towards him. He cringed as he aimed at Dennis and pulled the trigger. Then he took one last look at the creature that used to be his mother. Memories flashed before his eyes. Family dinners, movie nights, school events.

He pulled the trigger.

After a few seconds of shock, Des got up and ran out of the room. His first stop was the bathroom, where he carefully pulled out the glass shard from his arm and bandaged it, along with the other scrapes and cuts from the scuffle. Next, he went to his room and gathered his stuff in a few bags. Loading it into the car, he drove away from the house to the airport, where he had bought a ticket to Virginia. He was going to find out what happened to his dad. Hot tears ran down his face as he walked up the ramp into the plane as he prepared for his journey.

"Are you okay, sir?"

The words snapped Des out of the memory. He had been instinctively running a finger along the scar on his arm from the glass shard. Not a day went by that he didn't remember that day. It was his first encounter with screamers.

He looked at the soldier sitting next to him in the vehicle. "I'm fine. Just thinking about how this all started."

Agent Smith looked back from the passenger seat. "Mr. Black, we have two primary reasons for bringing you on this mission."

Des looked at the man and knew what they were.

"First," said Smith. "You are by far the most elite soldier we have right now. Second, you have a personal connection to this mission."

A moment of silence passed.

"Normally, that is a reason to have an individual removed from a mission. But in this case, it's different. If your father is alive, you know him better than anyone and you are the most likely person to track him down. He is very valuable to us, considering he has been among these things for thirteen years."

"How do you know he's alive?" asked Des.

Smith pulled out a phone and pulled up a picture.

"This was taken about two months ago in Romania."

Des's eyes opened wide. The picture was of his father.

But he was surrounded by screamers, unharmed.