Blood Red Read Online Free PDF

cuts away, leaving that persistent
keening.
    Then there’s a new sound, and it is perhaps
most disturbing of all.
    It’s an organic flutter, a fleshy roiling
sound, and it’s coming directly from Tony’s mouth. It’s far from
the innocent noise of a swallow, or even the movement of tongue
against palate, and indeed she notices no involuntary muscle
movement in his throat or face. No, it’s deeper, and it’s enough to
make Rachel recoil. Grimacing, she leans forward again to look
directly into Tony’s open mouth. Although she can see nothing but
moist flesh and teeth in front of the weird glow, she knows that
something is happening to him, inside him, something unnatural and
unprecedented.
    She reaches up to touch his
forehead— careful! —to test the limits of the facial
structures. The bone doesn’t seem as solid somehow, nor the flesh
as resilient. Or perhaps it’s her imagination. Yet another teardrop
spills down her cheek as her fingers run slowly through his hair
and over his ear. She touches his skull lovingly. Tony feels not
just warm but very warm—hothouse warm—and now the thought of that
warmth, coupled with the lack of heartbeat and respiration, makes
her catch herself again. She wipes away the tear and stands up.
    She has to leave him. She has to go outside
and find someone, someone who is still alive like her, who can help
her. She has to find a way to make sense of this madness.
    “I can’t do it,” she whispers.
    She sits there breathing heavily for several
more minutes, coming to terms with the fact that whatever
impossible thing happened to Susanna isn’t confined to her own
home. It’s much larger than that. She’s coming to the realization
that it’s happening all over the place.
    She has to find out what it is. She has to be
strong. She can hear her dad’s voice in her head, encouraging her
the way he would years ago, before and especially after her mom
died, encouraging her to find the strength to move on after the
loss, and reminding her nearly every day that he would be with her
every step of the way. Where was he now?
    Of course you can do it! he would say. You’re the strongest person I know!
    She has to do this alone. And she knows she
can do it.
    Without looking back, Rachel leaves behind
the splintered destruction of Tony’s doorway and makes her way to
the kitchen. Only after pausing in the kitchen to get her bearings
does she realize that something is amiss. Oh yes, the power is
out.
    “ Think, think, think… ” she
murmurs.
    The next step is to find her dad. Whether
he’s scrambling around like her, trying to understand what has
happened, or lying on the side of the street somewhere, a glowing
redness inhabiting his skull, she’s got to find him. In spite of
the loud, childish voice inside her telling her to hide away inside
this house or her own, to crawl back into her bed—or, yes, even
into Tony’s bed, to cling tightly to his still-warm body—she has to
venture out.
    She has to find answers.
    Where to start? She’s filled with panicked
indecision.
    Not knowing what else to do, Rachel goes to
the bathroom, pushes down her jeans, and relieves a bladder she
didn’t realize was so full. She checks her lower leg and finds that
the splintered wood of the door did manage to barely draw blood,
even through the denim. She flushes the toilet. Standing there with
her jeans pooled at her feet, she finds a hand towel next to the
sink, wets it, and bends to clean her leg. In the mirrored medicine
cabinet, she finds some first-aid cream and massages some into the
wound. The blood isn’t flowing, so she goes without a bandage. She
pulls up her jeans, becoming aware once more of the numbness in her
hand.
    She sits on the toilet again and squirts some
of the first-aid cream into the afflicted palm. With shaking
fingers, she works the stuff laboriously into her skin. Long
minutes pass. She feels herself rocking atop the toilet seat,
actively pushing herself away from the new