Suffer the Children Read online

David dropped the phone and retreated until his back met the wall.

  “OH JESUS CHRIST.”

  The boy rasped, “You’re not my daddy.”

  Screams rolled across the recovery ward as Jonathan and about a third of the other children in the room sat up and looked around. The remainder, already cut open, didn’t move.

  “You’re alive,” David said.

  The boy sucked in a rattling lungful of air and said, “Home.”

  Two of the children hopped down from their beds. The rest followed. They formed a grisly parade toward the exit. David saw a pathologist gripping a girl’s wrists and struggling to hold her down, another screaming against the wall, another with his hands in the air as if surrendering. Most stood at their tables in shock, still holding their bloody instruments.

  David couldn’t believe his eyes. The children certainly looked dead. Their bodies were discolored and bloated with gas. They moved stiffly, dark fluid leaking down their bare legs. But they walked. They talked. It defied comprehension.

  They’re alive and woke up to an environment out of a medieval torture chamber.

  “Don’t let them go!” David called out.

  His words unlocked a transformation among the stunned pathologists. Instead of seeing the children as the dead walking, they saw them as David did—sick children about to wander naked and lost in the freezing night.

  Sam shut the doors as the children approached. He blocked it with his body.

  The children didn’t stop.

  “Move,” they said.

  “You’re safe here,” Sam told them. “Everything’s okay—”

  They swarmed against him.

  David watched in horror. Somebody help him!

  They were climbing him.

  Sam brushed them off. He picked up a tiny naked boy, who kicked his legs and swiped at the man’s face with his fingernails, and tossed him away in blind panic. The boy got up immediately and resumed his unblinking advance.

  “Somebody help me!” he screamed. “I can’t do this myself! Shit!”

  The children closed in. They latched on to his arms and legs, scratching and biting. The man howled and backed out through the doors.

  The children followed, ignoring him now. They flooded the hallway and continued their lurching march toward the exit.

  Jonathan Ford turned to give David one last blank stare and then left with the others.

  Going home.

  Doug

  Hour of Resurrection

  Doug stumbled among the mourners at the park.

  The snow rustled to his left. Several people ran past, moaning like cattle, their eyes wild.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” a woman wailed. She clutched her head with her gloved hands, as if fearing her brain might explode at any second.

  Distant screams pierced the dark.

  Doug didn’t care. He was screwed. He could take any amount of pain, but not for long, unlike Joan, who couldn’t take as much as him but had much greater endurance. His strength had drained out of him over the past few days. He had nothing left.

  Everything he’d thought would help him face what had happened had instead undermined him. The loss of his children offered him a million choices, but he wanted none of them. He wanted his family back. The alcohol, which had buoyed him for the past few days, now magnified his grief.

  More people ran past with shouts. Panicked faces flashed by.

  He was ready to give up. He stood blubbering in the dark, hands at his sides, shoulders quaking.

  Somebody ran into him. Doug growled and clenched his fists. The idea of beating somebody with his fists sounded very appealing right now.

  “What’s your problem, buddy?”

  “My kids!” the man yelled back, and ran off into the dark.

  More screams. Screams of genuine terror. Something terrible was happening at the edge of the crowd, where the park met the woods. He saw vague shapes seething in the dark near the gazebo.

  This is how all the kids died. In a blind panic.

  Must be our turn. Old King Herod has come for us all.

  “Good,” he said.

  The idea of dying now didn’t bother him. Dying alone did.

  “Joanie!” he called.

  People collected into a stampede. They flooded out of the dark. Their fear infected him. He felt sick with it. Then the alcohol that had made him sluggish moments ago provided a burst of energy. He shoved into the throng.

  “JOANIE!”

  He searched the frantic faces for his wife. She’d told him to meet her at their favorite sledding hill. He pulled out his cell phone.

  “Doug!”

  He put the phone back. “Joanie?”

  “Doug, I’m here!”

  She ran into his arms. He held on for dear life. “I’m sorry.” He felt her warm body against his and remembered how much he loved her. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  She struggled against his embrace. “The children, Doug! The kids!”

  “I’m sorry. I love you. I just wanted you to know.”

  Now I’m ready. Do it. Take us all.

  “Doug, the children are back!”

  He held her at arm’s length. “What?”

  “The children are coming back. I saw them!”

  Doug wiped his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  Then he saw.

  He and Joan stood on a path cutting through the park, illuminated by light poles. Around them, people swirled and ran.

  Children streamed through the crowd, walking stiffly with their arms at their sides, like sleepwalkers.

  “Holy shit,” Doug said.

  “It’s a miracle,” Joan murmured.

  The sight filled him with primitive fear. Fear and awe.

  The crowd began to thin, leaving clumps of bodies—sobbing parents hugging their children.

  Joan pushed Doug away and ran into the dark, calling for Nate and Megan. Doug caught up to her and grabbed her arm.

  “Let go of me!”

  “Joanie—”

  She squirmed in his grip. “I need to find them!”

  “They’re not here!”

  “Where?” Her eyes blazed at him. “Where are my kids?!”

  “There are two burial grounds. One is close to here; that’s where these kids are coming from. They’re heading into town through the park.”

  “Where, Doug?”

  “The other site! I’ll take us there.”

  Joan looked around. “Wait, Mom and Dad are—”

  “They’ll find their own way. Come on!”

  They ran through the snow.

  The parking lot had snarled with honking cars and shrieking people. The children marched across the beams of the headlights, calling for their mommies and daddies.

  “We’ll never get out of here,” Joan told him as they got into the truck.

  Doug started the engine. “Yeah, we will.”

  He’d parked on the side of the narrow roadway leading into the parking lot, where traffic had created a choke point. He threw the transmission into gear and stepped on the gas. The truck roared onto the snowy field next to the road.

  “We’re going to get stuck!”

  “We’ll make it,” Doug said, praying they would.

  A wave of other drivers had followed his lead and was now gaining on him.

  They just had to cross the field and navigate the drainage ditch to get onto Stuyvesant Road.

  We might make this.

  He swerved to avoid a tree. They reached the road. He stomped the gas, hoping they had enough momentum to jump the drainage ditch. The truck lurched across the gap and slammed into the other side. The tires pulled them up onto the road.

  A small girl appeared in his headlights. He yanked the wheel just in time.

  “Jesus, Doug!” said Joan. “Careful!”

  He handed her his pack of Winstons. “Light one for me, will you?”

  “Where’s this other site?”

  “The other side of—shit!”r />
  He wrenched the wheel, missing a crowd of children walking hand in hand in the glow of the streetlights. The sight put a shudder through him. Dead people were not supposed to walk. Just what the hell was going on here?

  They flew through the downtown commercial district, ignoring the red lights.

  “Why is the truck shaking like this?” she asked him.

  “Must have hit something in that field,” he shouted over the rattle. He didn’t feel like explaining the problem with the alignment.

  “Well, is it going to get us there? It feels like it’s falling apart!”

  “Yeah,” Doug told her. “We’ll get there.”

  The truck’s lighter ejected. Joan lit his cigarette and took a deep drag before passing it over. They drove in silence for several minutes.

  “Doug? Is this really happening?”

  “Yeah. As far as I can tell.”

  “Those kids we saw. How did they dig themselves out?”

  “They didn’t. They weren’t buried yet.”

  “Were Nate and Megan . . . ?”

  “No. I know exactly where they—”

  “Watch it!”

  A minivan skidded around the corner ahead as a speeding car plowed into it, sending both spinning into a storefront with a crash of glass. A piece of metal banged off Doug’s windshield and cobwebbed it. He leaned on the horn and flew past the wreckage. It didn’t even occur to him to stop and help.

  He took a quick swig from his flask and cranked the wheel. The truck fishtailed before rocketing onto the highway ramp. A police cruiser caught up to him. Its siren blared as it passed at incredible speed.

  “Jesus,” said Joan. “Oh, Jesus. It’s really happening.”

  They passed a billboard that read, SPANKY’S PLAY AND STAY 3 MILES, showing a giant photo of laughing kids over which somebody had sprayed RIP in black paint. For Doug, it was an important landmark. The burial ground was just ahead.

  He jerked the wheel again. The truck roared onto the dirt road and passed the National Guard checkpoint. They saw taillights ahead, other parents come to find their children.

  They topped the rise. The sprawling burial ground, lit up with work lights, spilled into view.

  “Oh my God,” she said, taking it all in. “I didn’t know it was so big.”

  “There are thousands of kids out there.”

  He drove the truck onto the frozen fields.

  “How are we going to find Nate and Megan?”

  “I brought them here. I know where they are.”

  He stopped in front of a line of body bags laid out along the lip of a trench.

  “This is it.”

  For several moments, they sat in the warm interior of the cab while the truck idled.

  He cut the engine. His nerves tingled. He pulled a flashlight out of the glove compartment and gave it to Joan.

  The digging machines had ground to a halt across the barren field. Men in hazmat suits ran between the trenches. Tiny figures wandered across the scarred landscape.

  Doug left the headlights on as he got out of the truck. Joan knelt in front of the body bags.

  The bodies squirmed in the bags like larvae trying to hatch.

  “They’re in this row here,” he said.

  “Which ones?”

  Doug frowned. He couldn’t think. “I’m not sure.”

  “Let’s start from the outside in,” Joan told him. “We’re going to let all the kids out.”

  They moved to opposite ends of the row. Doug opened the first bag and recoiled from the stench.

  Eyes clicked open on the dead face and regarded him with a flat stare.

  “I don’t know you,” the girl said.

  Doug fell on his ass in utter shock. He yelped and crab-walked away from her. The girl sat up and finished unzipping the bag. For the first time, he wondered if they were doing the right thing letting these kids out.

  “Thank you, mister.” The girl stood and marched stiffly into the dark like a wind-up doll.

  This can’t be happening. You’ve gone off the deep end, brother.

  “So be it,” he said. He moved on to the next bag and unzipped it.

  “Daddy?” the little boy said.

  “Sorry, kid,” Doug said. “You’ll see your folks again soon, I promise.”

  Police cruisers and ambulances roared onto the works. More children wandered past. Doug unzipped a third bag and found another little girl who wasn’t his.

  “Hurry!” he barked at Joan.

  “Dad?”

  Next.

  “Daddy!”

  “Megan?” Doug fell to his knees, taking long shuddering breaths, trying to keep control. He didn’t know what he would do if he lost it right now and didn’t want to find out. He became aware of his sanity as a separate, fragile thing. “Hey. Hey, princess.”

  It was his Megan looking up at him from an open bag that reeked of rot and decay. The same face. The same eyes. The same voice. The same little girl, dressed in her Sunday best.

  Could it really be her? His daughter was dead.

  He saw the jagged pattern on the side of her head from when she’d cut her own hair a week ago.

  He leaned away and threw up onto the snow. His eyes flooded with hot tears.

  “It can’t be,” he sobbed. “It’s not happening.”

  Joan yelled, “I found him!”

  Then he heard her scream.

  “Nate?” he groaned. He heaved again, producing a single ropey strand of foul-smelling fluid.

  Megan stood next to him. She touched his shoulder. “I want to go home now, Daddy.”

  “Oh, God.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve. “All right, princess. Come on.”

  He took off his coat and wrapped it around her. He rubbed her arms.

  Nate climbed out of his bag.

  “Thank you, Daddy,” said Megan.

  “Warm you right up,” he said without thinking.

  He picked her up and brought her to Joan. She felt like a frozen block of wood. Joan was kissing Nate’s cold hard face and whispering to him. Doug wanted to laugh; she was using a scolding tone, the tone she used when the boy did something dangerous that worried her.

  He set Megan on the ground. “Look who I found, Joanie.”

  Joanie hugged her daughter with a loud cry.

  “Hi, Dad,” said Nate.

  Doug gaped at him. “Hey, sport.”

  Nate, exasperated: “What took you guys so long?”

  Doug laughed, and Joan joined in. It felt good to laugh. They laughed long and hard.

  From insanity or joy, he didn’t know or care.

  “Yup,” said Doug. “That’s definitely my boy.”

  Nate grinned with gray teeth.

  Ramona

  1 hour after Resurrection

  Ramona lay in the back of Ross’s car with her arms wrapped tight around Josh’s body. He stank like the grave. Holding him was like hugging a large, thawing, rotten steak.

  She’d never been happier.

  Ross leaned on the horn and tossed his hands in frustration. “This is going to take forever. People are going nuts. There are cars everywhere.”

  She couldn’t see anything except the red glow of brake lights. She pulled her coat tighter over her and Josh to create a private nest.

  Ross rolled down the window. Cold air and the blare of sirens flooded the car.

  “Put the window back up,” she said.

  “It smells like something d—” He glanced behind him. “Like something really bad in here.”

  “He’s freezing, Ross. His skin feels like ice. Crank the heat as high as it’ll go.”

  He winced at the stink but did as she asked. Ross was fighting to keep it together, she knew. The world had stopped making sense entirely.

  “I don’t feel anything,” Josh whispered.

  “Do you know what happened to you?”

  “I woke up in a hole. There were a lot of other kids coming out of sleeping bags. We tried to get out. A
boy reached down and grabbed my hand and helped me climb.”

  He only breathed when he wanted to talk.

  Ross slammed the steering wheel. “Come on! Learn how to drive, buddy!”

  “It was my fault,” Ramona whispered near Josh’s ear. “I’m so sorry.”

  Josh shook his head slowly. “No, Mommy.”

  She thought of all the regrets she’d voiced to Ross.

  Seeing you come out of me, I felt like I’d been born to love you. But it was hard raising you by myself. You have no idea. How could you? It wasn’t always just about getting us what we needed. I missed having choices. I wanted more than I had. There was a time when I thought I could have it all. A great career. A man like Ross to love. I gave so much to you. I thought the world owed me something back, and in the dark times, deep down, I thought my life would have been better if you hadn’t been born.

  “You came back for a reason,” she breathed.

  A second chance to make things right.

  The car built up speed. She listened to the hum of the engine, the smooth roll of the car’s tires on the road. She closed her eyes.

  “My little miracle,” she murmured. Tonight, they were both reborn.

  “I’m hungry,” Josh growled.

  Ramona’s eyes flashed open. Ross grimaced in the front seat. He glanced at them before returning his eyes to the road with a shake of his head.

  “I’ll make you something when we get home,” she said, studying his pale little face.

  The air whistled out of Josh’s lungs.

  She remembered how, one night, her stepmother had agreed to pick up Josh at day care and watch him for a few hours so Ramona could have dinner with an eye doctor she’d met through a mutual friend. She’d left work excited about the date, gotten into her car, and next thing she knew, she’d driven to the day care center. Her brain had blanked out, and her body had taken over, executing its normal routine.

  Body memory, they called it.

  Is he real or a copy? A fleeting echo of his former personality? Something of a ghost?

  “Are you here to stay, Josh?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  A little louder: “Josh?”

  Not all miracles are good. She wondered if this one carried a price.

  The car stopped. She sat up. They were in her driveway. Home.

  Ross leaped out and walked away from the car.

  Ramona opened her door and waited as she normally would, but Josh didn’t move. She leaned in and pulled her boy out of the car. His body left an oily black smear on the seat. Dogs barked all over the neighborhood. A car skidded on screeching tires in the distance. Several houses down, a screen door slammed, and a woman screamed. Ross started at the sound.