THE RESURRECTED PART TWO EXCERPT

The men met each other halfway like two charging bulls, both of them with their hands out and faces twisted with fury. The taller guy was…growling, actually growling, the noise revving up and up like the sound of an engine stuck in gear. Cal made no sound, and Abbie found that scarier, that he could move forward with such violence and in such silence.
Cal’s ex-wife was laughing, that bitch, no simpering “tee-hee” but a full-on guffaw. Her hilarity sounded forced, each laugh a raspy bark that sounded like it would hurt. She clung to the porch railing like the effort of it was enough to knock her over, and Abbie suddenly wished it would.
The crack of flesh on flesh jerked her attention back to Cal and Tony. Cal had swung first, his fist connecting squarely with Tony’s jaw and sending him stumbling back a step or two with his fist still curled in the front of Cal’s shirt. Blood flew, along with clotted chunks of…something…Abbie couldn’t see what it was, but took a revolted step back anyway.

She clapped a hand over her mouth at the sight of Tony’s head, bashed in so deeply on one side that his scalp hung flapping, the white bone of his skull flashing. And worse, a hint of something gray and red inside, down deep.
Still growling, Tony kept his feet and faced Cal again. Without letting go of Cal’s shirt, Tony punched with his other hand. Cal’s head rocked back so far Abbie was sure he was going to end up flat on his back, but Tony’s grip kept him upright. He swung again. And again.
Abbie screamed Cal’s name and leaped at the two men, but stopped herself. Neither of them even glanced in her direction. As Cal came up after Tony knocked him back, his fist connected under Tony’s jaw so hard that as they both stumbled in Abbie’s direction. Several of Tony’s teeth pattered into the dirt at her feet.
They were going to kill each other.

THE RESURRECTED – Part Three Excerpt

Three days in darkness. That’s how long I spent with nothing to hold me up, nothing to reach for but my father’s hand. I remember spinning, spinning, no stars, no earth, no heaven. No hell. And then something pulled me up and out, yanked me so hard my teeth cut the tip of my tongue, and I woke with a scream so loud it left my voice too raw to speak. It echoed off the ceramic walls and floor and the metal gurney under my naked flesh.
I screamed when I woke.
So did the doctor bent over me with his scalpel. He’d never had a dead man sit up in front of him before. He took several stumbling steps back. Slipped and fell. His outflung hand clattered against a tray of instruments, and they hit the floor. His body struck a gurney like mine, and that body, not alive, still dead, not brought back by the hand of our fathergod, rocked and tipped and fell onto the floor in a sprawling jumble of arms and legs. I can still hear the rotten pumpkin sound of its skull hitting the floor, but there wasn’t any blood. Corpses don’t bleed. Or breathe. But they can break open.
After that, there were a lot of people and a lot of tests. They took blood, they tapped my knees, checked my eyes, ears, nose, throat. Blood pressure. They checked me from top to toe and back again, but in the end the only thing that mattered to them and to me was that I had died, and I’d returned.
Resurrected.

Part Four Excerpt

“Sheila? Honey?”

Duane bent over her, a hand on her shoulder. His fingers sank into the purpled flesh and may or may not have made a squelching sound. Kelsey clapped her hands over her ears a moment too late not to hear it. Duane pulled on Sheila’s shoulder, and her entire arm separated with a low purring sound.

It wasn’t enough. There was more. Too much more. Sheila rolled onto her back, mouth open, tongue lolling, her remaining arm slamming like a club into the side of Duane’s head hard enough to knock him down. She was on him in the next moment, straddling him, her teeth sunk deep into his throat. She tore it free like a dog thrown a hunk of meat, snapping and slobbering and gobbling.

Was she…eating him? The bites of flesh went in and came back out, so Kelsey couldn’t be sure if Sheila was indeed trying to consume her boyfriend or just using her teeth as a weapon. And really, did it freaking matter? Kelsey pushed against the bench with her bad foot, ignoring the pain, and crawled as fast and as far as she could around the front of the boat while Duane’s screams edged off into gasping sobs and then…nothing.

There was no place to go except around, and this took her to within an arm’s length of Ty. If she hadn’t strapped his hands together behind him with duct tape, he’d have grabbed her, she saw that in his eyes, but Kelsey was beyond caring about his stupid jealousy or how much he hated her.

“The fuck’s going on?”

“Sheila,” she managed to say, and that was all before Jeremy’s voice rose in a scream that went higher and higher until it became ear-piercing and broke off abruptly.

The sounds of a struggle prompted Kelsey to creep past Ty, who snapped his teeth at her like a dog on a chain trying to threaten the postman. She peered around the edge of the cabin, but couldn’t get a good look at the front of the boat. She heard the wet slap of flesh, the crack of bone. The boat rocked. Something splashed into the water, and in the next moment she saw it was Sheila, floundering. She went under the water, came up, went under again. She didn’t break the surface that time.

Grunting. The squeak of something on the deck, more slapping, more breaking. Kelsey took a chance and inched forward to see around the edge of the cabin. Jeremy and Duane were locked together like sumo wrestlers, pushing and shoving. As she watched, Jeremy shoved Duane hard enough to knock him backwards. Duane hit his head on the bench and went still.

Jeremy turned.

“Kelsey.” It didn’t sound like him. His voice had gone thick and raw, like he had a throat full of blood or snot, like he spoke through a mouth full of meat. He took a step toward her, one hand reaching out. His mouth yawned wide.

Something jittered inside, behind his teeth and tongue, toward the back. Something black and writhing, also glimpsed in the caverns of his nostrils, and Kelsey had time to think that maybe she was wrong, maybe there were flies out here, before Jeremy’s head erupted in a black cloud. He coughed and bent at the waist, his hands on his knees. Black goo shot out of him in thick ropy spurts. He spasmed, going upright and then further, bowing back so he faced the sky.  A plume of something like…dandelion seeds, that’s all she could think of, spewed from his mouth and nose. They weren’t attached to fluffy white  puffs and they didn’t float on the air. More like they hurtled, like minuscule bullets. Most hit the deck or went over the side into the water. A few hit her arm where they clung like hot tar, burning.

Revolted, Kelsey scraped at them with her fingernails. On the deck behind Jeremy, Duane stirred. He didn’t get to his feet, but his body convulsed furiously. His heels drummed the deck, and he let out a guttering, wretched cry.

* * *

PART FIVE EXCERPT

Slightly behind them, Molly and Doug’s friend, whose named turned out to be Steve, were talking and laughing, a little loud and raucous, but not as out of control as most of the people in the parking lot.
Another cop car pulled into the lot, followed this time by an ambulance. It wasn’t an uncommon site in Ocean City — Saturday nights were rife with alcohol poisoning and bar fights. But it did seem a little ominous that the lights were on, while the sirens were not.

“Doesn’t that mean something?” Katy asked, pointing, and looked at Doug. “I mean, when just the lights are on? That someone’s dead?”

He gave her a funny look and she realized she sounded like a dork, but what else was new? He’d already seen her Running Man. She laughed. Shrugged.

Doug laughed too, but he sounded a little strange. He looked back at the club. “I hope not.”

She hoped not too, but as they watched the EMTs and more police enter the club, all she really wanted to do was get out of there. Two a.m. wasn’t her hour any longer, even though she wasn’t tired. Not one bit.

“Maybe it’s true, what they were saying on the TV,” Molly said.

Katy had seen the stories, watched her tweetstream fill up with jokes about the evangelical preacher who’d been claiming he’d come back from the dead. She hadn’t paid much attention — there was too much of that stuff, too much access to the stupidity of men who thought texting pictures of their junk was a good idea or women who were pregnant by another woman’s husband bemoaning how the world thought they were whores. If you’d poked her hard enough with something sharp, she’d have admitted she consumed this sort of trashy news because the other kind about children dying, natural disasters, the national debt, made her too anxious. There was nothing she could do about any of it except get through her life as best she could, and sure, that made her an ostrich with her head in the sand. She could own it.

“What was on the TV?” Steve’s toe caught the edge of a concrete curb and he stumbled, but caught himself. Grinned at Molly, his hands up. “I’m good!”

He wasn’t that good, he was pretty drunk. What hadn’t mattered much on the dance floor was less charming now that the night was working its way toward morning and the four of them were wandering somewhat aimlessly toward the beach. Katy didn’t think Molly’d told him where they were staying…but she couldn’t be sure.

“The guy says he was dead for three days, and then he came back.”

Molly grabbed at Steve’s arm to steady him, and the pair hopped another curb, this time more successfully.

“Bullshit.” Doug snorted and took Katy’s elbow to help her around a spray of broken glass glittering under the streetlamp. He didn’t let go, either, and she discovered she didn’t mind. “It’s made up.”

Katy shivered, not just from the cold. Doug pulled her a little closer to his side as they walked, and she was glad for the warmth. “He had witnesses.”

“Yeah, from his followers.” Molly and Steve had gone on ahead, crossing the street, but Doug held her back for a second as the light changed and the traffic moved.

Her foot had already been off the curb, stepping onto the white lines painted on the asphalt, but at his tug Katy stepped back. She watched her friend pointing toward the apartment building where they were staying. The wind lifted, bringing the sound of their voices but scattering the words so Katy could only hear a few of them. It sounded like Molly was inviting Steve to sit on the balcony, but then the traffic, snarled and thick with all the cars leaving the parking lot, cut them off from each other.

At truck blew past her, lifting the edge of her skirt, and though she wasn’t truly in any danger of being hit, Doug pulled her a little more firmly away from the street. Right up against him. It was different than it had been in the club,when music was an excuse to get up tight and close. Now she really had no reason other than she wanted to, and that was going to lead to trouble. She couldn’t quite manage to care enough to push away from him.

“Hey,” he said, looking down at her.

Katy smiled. “Hey.”

The traffic cleared. They broke apart and crossed the street, but anticipation had crackled there between them and it wasn’t going away. On the other side of the highway, Molly and Steve had already gone up a block. Their laughter carried on another gust of that same wind, and Katy closed her eyes for a minute as she did every single time she approached the ocean. She breathed it in.

“I love the ocean,” she said aloud, and the next words came out tasting like salt. Gritty like sand. “I love the smell of it, I love the feeling of the sand, I love walking in the water. I fucking love everything about it.”

* * *