She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,243

responsible for the deaths of those people?”

Without hesitation, the single word flowed this time, unhampered by David’s former instruction of silence. Trumped by this new command.

“No,” Dunk said.

His eyes met mine, and I knew he was telling the truth.

He always had been.

I knew I had been wrong.

Dunk said, “My friends, my true friends, are the only family I’ve ever really known. Those people were my friends. I’d do anything to bring them back.”

Stella buckled over again. This time, she did collapse. She fell to the ground, clutching her stomach. She let out a horrible shriek, and the radios screamed with her, a choir of pain.

When it was over, David said to her, “You need to feed, Stella.”

Stella nodded and slowly got back to her feet, only inches from Latrese Oliver.

Again, I tried to go to her.

Again, she told me to stay back. “Like the lake,” she forced out through clenched teeth.

At her hands, not only did the weeds die and crumble away, the concrete grew dark, cracked, aged. When she was finally able to stand again, the concrete surrounding her looked to be a dozen or more years older than the rest, an age spot on the neglected pavement.

The whites of Stella’s eyes were lined with red, her skin like snow. She reached for Latrese Oliver, her fingers stopping less than an inch from her ruined face, quivering in the air.

The temperature had dropped considerably after the sun went down, and Oliver’s breath hung in the air, a tiny white cloud. “David Pickford is for you, Stella. I led him here for you. So much evil there, perhaps enough to satisfy your appetite, perhaps not. Duncan Bellino, too. Between the two, you can stem the tide on your need. I can only imagine your pain, five days late. It’s a wonder you’re still with us. Take them, take me, if you must. I willingly give myself to you. I will gladly die if my sacrifice means you will live. My life will become part of yours, and that is how I will live on. Take us all, take everyone, take—”

Stella collapsed again, her face drained of color. She fell to the ground beside Oliver, and rather than scramble away, the old woman nudged closer. She reached for Stella’s limp arm, took her hand in hers, and pressed Stella’s fingers to her good cheek. “For you, Stella! For you!”

Oliver let out the most horrible cackle of a laugh as the skin beneath Stella’s fingers grew black and gray, smoldering in the hottest of white. That laugh turned to a scream. The scream turned to a shriek as the blackness spread all over her, eating around her dead flesh, finding every ounce of life until none remained. Burned, but not burned.

I watched Latrese Oliver die, her body dropping to the ground beside Stella. Stella nearly fell on top of her, hyperventilating, each gasp of air harsher than the last. She put a palm to the concrete to steady herself, and the concrete dried and crumbled under her fingertips.

“That is fantastic!” David shouted out, his burn scar stretched taut with his growing smile. “Who wants to go next? Do we have another volunteer?”

Stella twisted her head, her bloodshot eyes finding mine. “Not…enough…”

Unlike before, when the concrete simply aged, this time the cement crumbled beneath her. The cement chipped and cracked and turned to dust under her fingers, her palm. The whitish gray color gave way to powder.

Stella said. “I can’t…stop it…”

We all saw it, the growing circle beneath her.

Preacher tried to stand, could not.

Cammie and my father couldn’t move either.

David took a step back, eyeing the concrete curiously.

“We can’t move,” my father said. “David told us we can’t move.”

“Let them go, David. We need to run,” I said, watching the circle grow larger.

“Nobody’s running,” David replied. He looked at them and pointed. “None of you. You might as well be made of stone.”

David took another step back.

Stella gulped down air. Her eyes pinched shut. She shook her head in defiance, but it did little good. Whatever was happening, it was increasing in intensity rather than slowing down. Growing stronger. “Can’t…stop…”

The circle expanded, weeds and grass shriveling away, concrete aging a hundred years in only moments, dying.

When the circle grew wide enough to reach one of the people in white, a man of about thirty years, this circle of death spread beneath his feet like the expanding waters of a puddle. His eyes went wide, his mouth fell open, and he screamed. From the