The blood in Devon’s veins seemed to freeze as the man, who should by all rights be laying dead on the floor, pushed open the bathroom door and stumbled into the bedroom. “Holy hell!” Devon shouted as he rushed to position himself between the bleeding freak and his wife.

Glossy eyes meet his and a string of red drool leaked from the man’s mouth when he opened his jaws in a growl.

Devon reply was to kick the man in the chest. The blow proved hard enough to send the madman once again back into their bathroom.

“Make sure he’s locked in there this time!” Tracy yelled.

“Screw that. I’m killing this fucker,” Devon said, as he grabbed up his baseball bat. The man hadn’t regained his footing before the bat cracked down on the center of his head. But Devon didn’t stop there. He kept hitting him on the head again and again until Tracy begged him to stop.

“Oh Devon, you just killed someone.”

“At least he won’t be getting up again,” but even as he said these words, he half expected him too. A moment stretched where he just stood watching the shattered form of the man while single drops of blood dripped from his bat and stained the grey carpet below.

“What should we do now?” Her voice stayed soft, as if she worried about his outburst of violence.

“I guess we need to figure out what’s going on,” he said, while slipping into a pair of jeans. His boots went on next and as he laced them, he said, “You might want to get dressed. One way or another we might see more action tonight.” He stood up. “Now show me where you saw the fighting.”

Walking to the western window, she said, “It was just over there in that parking lot.”

Devon looked, but saw nothing there. Some thin strings of what could have been smoke spread through the night sky and in the distance the wail of an ambulance could be heard.

He scratched at the back of his head. “Doesn’t seem like too much is going on out there, right now.”

“But what should we do?” she asked. “Should we maybe hide the body or something?”

“I don’t think it’s illegal to kill a person that has been trying to kill you in your own house for fifteen minutes.”

“Yeah, but you’ll have to go to court and hire a lawyer and deal with so much crap.”

“Yeah, but covering up a killing certainly would be illegal.”

Tracy was about to say something when a loud, piercing screamed echoed through the night. “Maybe things aren’t over,” she said.

“Yeah, it sounds like other people are in trouble.”

“Maybe an accident happened.”

“Yeah, but what sort of accident causes people to go crazy?”

She had no answer for that and rushed into his arms when another scream broke the building silence.

“Maybe we should try to help them,” he said.

“No, don’t leave me.”

He smiled and moved out of her arms, but maintained the hold on her hand. “I won’t leave you, but let’s go out on the front porch. If something weird happens we can retreat inside. I just want to see if we can figure out what’s up.”

He could tell she wasn’t keen on the idea, but she followed him to the front door and then onto the porch. Dawn remained hours away and at first nothing unusual was evident. Then he spied movement.

A man wearing hospital scrubs was chasing two young women across an apartment parking lot. They made it to a car and rushed in. The man slapped his hands twice against the windows before the car tore out of the parking lot.

He felt Tracy tense when the man’s turned toward them and began to stumble in their direction.



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