The Hell Season by Ray Wallace Read Free Book Online Page B

unnaturally loud in the surrounding silence, the only other noise the low rumble of his idling vehicle. His head felt as though it might explode. He knew he should search for another way out. No way the barrier could surround the entire town. Could it? Instead, what he did was get back in his car and drive away from the barrier in the direction from which he’d just come. He knew there was a liquor store nearby. A few minutes later and he was there.
    Someone else had saved him the effort of having to break in through the front door of the place. He had no idea who it may have been and right then it didn’t seem all that important. A drink was all that mattered. Flashlight in one hand, pistol in the other, he walked into the dark interior, calling out, “Hello? Anybody in here?”
    No response.
    Feeling just a wee bit guilty for his thievery, he pulled down a bottle of whiskey from one of the shelves, a whole fifth of eighty proof oblivion. There were some warm two liters of Coke in a nonfunctioning electric cooler behind the store’s front counter. Armed with his newfound provisions, he walked back outside, sat down and put his back against the brick wall of the storefront. And there he drank, surrounded by the warmth and the silence of that summer evening until the thousand senseless thoughts and memories swirling through his mind were washed away by the booze and the welcoming embrace of sleep.
     
     
    CHAPTER 3
     
    Wednesday, June 23
     
    When he awoke he wasn’t sure where he was. Actually, it took him a few moments to remember who he was. When he did, when he remembered that his wife, Julia, and his children, Robert and Jenny, had been taken from him, he moaned.
    “Quiet,” said a voice from nearby.
    Thomas’s eyes were still closed so he didn’t have any idea who had spoken. The voice wasn’t familiar. He opened his eyes and moaned again at the tiny bit of light that pierced his brain like a sword. Another day another hangover …
    “I said, quiet.”
    He still couldn’t see the person who possessed the voice. It was undoubtedly male, not particularly deep, the words spoken in a gruff tone barely above a whisper.
    Thomas sat up. The pain in his head intensified but this time he was able to suppress the third moan that threatened to escape him. He was sitting on a bed. The room around him was unfamiliar, filled with vague shapes in the wan lighting. To his right, just a few steps away, was a window with its blinds pulled open. Two people were crouched down near the window, a man and a woman, with their backs to him, gazing out above its lower edge as if they were trying to remain unseen by something outside. The darkness beyond the window was fading but it wouldn’t be full daylight for another half an hour or so, judging by the quality of light coming in through the glass. Thomas realized that he was wearing the same clothes as the night before. How had he gotten here, wherever here was? His need for answers overrode his discomfort and any trepidation he might feel in the presence of these strangers—if they meant him harm surely they would have gone through with it by now—and so he rolled off the bed and practically crawled the short distance to where the two strangers were looking out through the closed window.
    Oh, God, what now? Thomas wondered.
    Whatever it was, it couldn’t be as bad as the bugs the day before or the blood that fell from the sky the day before that, now could it? But of course it could, he realized as he took a look for himself. Just as bad if not worse.
    At first his brain refused to believe what his eyes were telling him.
    He was looking down from the second floor of a building and what he saw down below was…
    Snakes.
    Everywhere.
    Writhing masses of them, in some places so thick that you couldn’t even see the ground over which they crawled. That last moan Thomas had managed to suppress made its presences known. He felt an elbow in his ribs and fell silent. He and his two