Bits & Pieces by Jonathan Maberry Page A

good here. It’s just the—”
    He stopped speaking as the hand that the bride had once owned reached out and pushed on the door.
    The door opened at her touch.
    She moved into the next room. A big room that was part dining room and part den. A fire crackled in the stone hearth. And on the floor, wrapped in a thick blanket, with hair and clothes tousled and faces flushed, were the owners of those voices.
    A pretty girl.
    A handsome boy.
    Just the two of them, caught in a moment of shock that had not yet turned to horror.
    It would, though.
    The bride knew that much.
    Horror was what she had brought to this house. It wasthe only gift she had received at her wedding, and it was all she was allowed to share.
    Horror, and all that the horror promised.
    Every dark thing.
    She spoke that horror in a voice of hunger and of need. The others behind her raised their voices in chorus.
    She led the silent procession from the kitchen into the den.
    The silence was torn out of the moment as screams filled the air.

5
Hannahlily
    The shocked silence that gripped Hannahlily Bryce exploded into a shriek of absolute horror. There were people all around her. Strangers. Muddy and bloody and wrong. White faces with red mouths and black eyes. Plucking at the blanket and at her clothes, her hair, her skin.
    â€œTucker!”
    But Tucker was frozen into the moment for one heartbeat longer than her. One heartbeat too long, his whole body locked into rigid stupefaction. His mouth worked as he tried to say something, ask something that would make sense of this; and the movement mirrored the movements of the hungry mouths around him.
    Time suddenly seemed to slow down for Hannahlily. She saw the creatures huddled around her, she saw Tucker—muscular, powerful, capable, and totally frozen in fear—and she glimpsed the impossible future. Blood and pain anddeath. She didn’t even know how she understood the nature of this attack. It wasn’t a gang beating. This was death of a different kind, a nightmare kind. She saw the red mouths and she knew that.
    We’re dead.
    The thought was as clear in her mind as if she had spent hours contemplating this very incident.
    And then suddenly time jumped back to normal as the mouths descended toward her flesh.
    Hannahlily screamed as loud as she could, shoved Tucker away from her, rolled backward onto her shoulders and kicked upward at the creatures. She was slender, but she was strong. Cheerleading, gymnastics, dance. Fear. Her legs shot upward and her bare feet caught two of them under the chins. One foot sent a man with wire-frame glasses flying backward; the other caught the jaw of a woman with frizzy brown hair, and at that angle the woman’s head spun on the neck and there was a huge, wet crack!
    As the woman fell backward, Hannahlily was moving. She bashed aside the white hands and scrambled toward Tucker, shoving and punching him until he suddenly snapped out of his stupor.
    â€œGod!” he yelled, and then he was on his feet, pulling Hannahlily up. Tucker punched one of the things in the face, smashing its nose with an overhand right that would have put most strong men down on their knees. The creature, a National Guardsman in the remains of a hazmat suit, merely staggered back from the force of the blow.
    Two more of the things flung themselves at Tucker, and he went crazy on them. He was fast and powerful, kicking,head-butting, using every trick he’d learned in boxing and mixed martial arts, and he hit everything he tried to hit.
    It just did no good.
    â€œRun!” screamed Hannahlily. She grabbed the back of Tucker’s sweater and yanked him away from the grasping, biting, scratching knot of attackers. He stumbled backward and almost fell, but she pulled him back to his feet. Then he turned and shoved her, and they were running through the dining room into the kitchen and out through the open back door.
    â€œThe truck . . . the