HIGHWATER: a suspense thriller you won't be able to put down by T. J. Brearton

She helped get him all the way into the room; he pushed himself backwards on his ass with his heels as she pulled him from the armpits. Then he kicked the door closed.
    “Jared,” she said. She started to hug him around the neck but stopped. He was bleeding there. A tear in his flesh. Gore. He groped at her, grabbing her shirt and some skin. As he wrenched himself to his feet, Liz cried out in pain.
    He stood, shaky. There was nothing in his hands.
    “Where’s the shotgun?”
    “One of them got it,” he said, “in its mouth.”
    “Oh God,” said Liz. How was this happening? Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she was unconscious outside right now, her guy-loon bobbing under the water and resurfacing, cruising along alone and free in that wombing blackness. Maybe she was sleeping, and this was all a dream. They said a person considered that possibility when they faced something that made no rational sense.
    “What are they?” She was almost shrieking the words.
    Jared shook his head. He smacked his lips, licked them, like he had cottonmouth. His eyes were wide and glistening. He was looking at the bedroom door.
    “Never seen anything like it. I don’t know. They could be rabid. They . . . they just . . . maybe they’re starving, I don’t know. I did hear this once. Gavin Bickford. Out at his camp. He said they were howling, and they were close. He saw one, just like a scout, doing some recon. It came right up onto his porch, growling, head low. Skinny.”
    Liz didn’t understand. She thought of them as people downstairs. Some kind of people. Some deformed form of people, bird heads atop wretched flesh. What was Jared rambling on about? Was he drunk still? Hallucinating?
    “Jared,” she said. “Let’s go.”
    He turned, looking past her, looking at the window.
    “What?”
    “We’re not going to stay here, Jared.”
    “Of course we are. Where are we going to go? Out there?”
    “Jared, you’re not making any sense. I think you’re hurt. I know you’re hurt. Look in the mirror. You’re hurt bad, Jared.” Liz realized she had started to cry.
    Jared stalked off into the bathroom, but not before bending and picking up the rifle she’d been using as a battering ram. He looked at himself in the mirror, lifting his head and turning his jaw this way and that, like a teenager examining a pimple. “Fucker,” was all he said.
    “What happened?”
    “What do you think happened, Liz? Fucking coyote bit me. Went right for my throat.”
    “Jared, will you please stop talking to me like I’m a child?” She was really crying now, no stopping it. Sweat mixed with tears ran down her face and spilled down her neck and she thought of Christopher. “I don’t understand why you’re talking about c-c-c . . .”
    She couldn’t finish.
    He turned. “Coyotes? Because that’s what’s downstairs, Liz. I think you need to lie down. You’re going to get into one of those . . . you know. What you told me about.”
    Jared went to her and hugged her and she felt the rifle press against her back, and he tenderly helped her over to the bed and whispered, “Here, lie down here, Lizzie. It’s okay.”
    She could smell the blood on him. His own sweat. The beer and licorice-y odor of Jagermeister from when he’d been at the bar, when things had been normal.
    “You just need to lie there. It’s okay; they’re gone. The coyotes are gone.”
    He put the rifle down next to the bed. And he was pulling the blankets up and around her, and then he was gone, and out the bedroom door, saying “I’ll be back, just lie there,” over his shoulder.
    Coyotes , she thought. No, no, they weren’t coyotes .
    And she pictured her guy-loon diving through the surface of the pond, down into the depths, its feathers back, its body purling, seeking shelter from the storm.
    And, despite everything, Elizabeth fell unconscious at last.

CHAPTER TWELVE
    “Hey, old man,” said a familiar voice. “Hey, babydoll.”
    Tom opened his eyes. Maddy was