He’d tried to fight her on it.
He was bigger. Stronger. All those years of jujutsu and karate. She was a middle-aged housewife. He could have forced her out. Could have gone to face the horror that was beating on the bedroom door. The thing that wore Dad’s face but had such a hungry, bloody mouth.
Tom could have pulled Mom out of there.
But Mom had one kind of strength, one bit of power that neither black belts nor biceps could hope to fight. It was there on her arm, hidden in that last moment by her white sleeve.
No.
That was a lie he wanted to tell himself.
Not white.
The sleeve was red, and getting redder with every beat of her heart.
That sleeve was her power, and he could not defeat it.
That sleeve and what it hid.
The mark. The wound.
The bite.
It amazed Tom that Dad’s teeth could fit that shape. That it was so perfect a match in an otherwise imperfect tumble of events. That it was possible at all.
Benny struggled in his arms. Wailing for Mom.
Tom clutched his little brother to his chest and bathed his face with tears. They stood like that until the last of the screams from inside had faded, faded, and . . .
Even now Tom could not finish that sentence. There was no dictionary in his head that contained the words that would make sense of this.
The screams faded.
Not into silence.
Into moans.
Such hungry, hungry moans.
He had lingered there because it seemed a true sin to leave Mom to this without even a witness. Without mourners.
Mom and Dad.
Inside the house now.
Moaning. Both of them.
Tom Imura staggered to the front door and nearly committed the sin of entry. But Benny was a squirming reminder of all the ways this would kill them both. Body and soul.
Truly. Body and soul.
So Tom reached out and pulled the door closed.
He fumbled in his pocket for the key. He didn’t know why. The TV and the Internet said that they couldn’t think, that something as simple and ordinary as a doorknob could stop them. Locks weren’t necessary.
He locked the door anyway.
And put the key safely in his pocket. It jangled against his own.