Dear Reader

I’ve got something a little different for you this week.

I wanted to share a brand-new, very short story set in the world of When Silence Fell. You don’t need to remember any particular characters or events from the series to read this one. It’s just a brief glimpse at what might have been happening somewhere else while the world was falling apart.

Fair warning, though: this one gets pretty nasty.

There’s blood, some fairly graphic body horror, and more gore than I usually squeeze into such a short story. And I should probably apologize in advance for the swearing. There are a couple of words in here that I normally try not to throw around too much—but given what this poor guy is going through, I decided to let him have them.

Hope you enjoy it.

Well… enjoy might not be the right word.

Here’s DON’T LET ME STAND UP.

— Christopher

DON'T LET ME STAND UP

A When Silence Fell Short Story

"If I stand up, you need to kill me."

Lucy stares at me. She's fourteen, still in the blue sweatshirt she left the house in this morning, though the front of it is dark now and most of that is mine.

"Dad..."

"Listen to me."

"We can clean it. We're in a pharmacy, there's peroxide and bandages, there's probably antibiotics."

I'm sitting against the counter with my left leg stretched out in front of me. Just above the ankle, there are two deep grooves where my sock has been dragged into the meat, and when I flex my foot, something pale shifts at the bottom of them. I couldn't tell you if it's a bite. There isn't enough skin left to show teeth.

Lucy is already on her knees at the first-aid kit, ripping open a package of gauze. My right hand slides across the tile—not by choice. It travels about six inches, and then the fingers spread and curl against the floor one at a time, testing the grout.

The gauze stops tearing.

"Dad?"

I clamp my left hand around my right wrist. The fingers keep going, and under my palm I can feel the tendons hauling against me, steady as a winch.

"Get away from me."

"What?"

"Back up."

She doesn't. She's looking at the hand.

"Lucy, get the fuck away from me!”

That gets her moving. She goes backward on her heels and palms until her spine hits a shelf of cough syrup, and my right hand turns in my grip, slow and deliberate, hunting for the angle that will get it loose. The fingers point at her. She starts to cry.

"Get the tape."

She holds up the roll of medical tape.

"Something stronger."

"There's duct tape in the office,” she says.

"Go."

She runs, and for maybe ten seconds, I'm alone with it. My left knee bends. I watch the heel drag up the tile, and I say "no" out loud like it might listen, then shove the leg flat with my good hand. It comes back up. I lean my whole weight on it, and something in the joint gives with a pop, sending pain up through my thigh and into my hip. The foot plants itself anyway, heel first, then the toes, one at a time.

Lucy comes back with the duct tape and sees the leg.

"Oh, my God."

"Tape my wrists,” I say.

We wind it around them together, again and again, and then around the steel support under the counter. When she stops, I tell her more. When she stops again, I tell her more, and she says it's cutting into me, and I say more. She uses the whole roll.

For a few seconds, nothing happens. Then my right arm pulls, and the tape stretches with a sound like a zipper, and I feel the pressure gather deep in the shoulder.

"Lucy, move."

She takes three steps back, and then the joint comes out. The ball of the bone slides forward under the skin, and the whole arm drops a hand's width. I scream until there's nothing left in my chest to do it with. The arm jerks another inch toward her. The tape holds. It hangs off me like something on a hook, dead weight as far as I'm concerned, and the fingers are still reaching.

~~~~

There are seven of them outside, and they've been there since we locked the doors. A woman in a hospital gown. A man with half his scalp folded down over one ear. A little boy in socks. Four more behind them. They don't hit the glass or scratch at it. They stand close enough to fog it.

Lucy has noticed too.

"Why aren't they coming in?"

My leg lifts off the floor, and I hammer the heel down. The woman in the gown tilts her head, and when the leg lifts again, she smiles.

And I understand.

They're not trying to get in.

They're waiting for me to come out.

"Dad?"

~~~~

Twenty minutes later, I can't feel my left hand. Ten minutes after that, I lose my mouth.

Lucy sits behind the counter with the gun across her knees. I taught her to shoot last summer. She hated every minute of it, and I told her that one day she'd be glad she knew.

My lips peel back from my teeth.

Lucy looks up. My cheeks lift, and the corners of my mouth follow, and I can feel every muscle in my face doing it, and none of them are asking me.

"Dad?"

"That's not me smiling,” I say.

It comes out through my teeth, and the smile doesn't move. It gets wider. Lucy stands, crying again, and tells me to stop, and I push my tongue hard against my teeth and then harder, and when my jaw snaps shut, I feel it go through. Blood floods my mouth. I spit a piece of tongue onto the tile, and the smile stays where it is, and then I'm laughing. It isn't my laugh.

Lucy raises the gun.

"It's not me," I tell her, through the blood. "Lucy. It's not me."

My body leans into the tape until it tears. I stand. The bad knee folds sideways with a crack like a green branch, and I stay up anyway, the dislocated shoulder swinging my right arm behind me. I take a step. Lucy takes one back.

"Shoot."

She shakes her head.

"Shoot me."

"I can't."

My foot drags through the blood, and outside, the seven have come up against the glass. My left hand reaches for her. I fight it with everything I've got, and for one second it stops, and then the fingers close around her throat. I can feel her pulse going under my thumb, fast and small. The gun hits the floor. Her nails dig into my wrist. Her face is turning red, and I throw whatever I have left into the only part of me I can still move, and it's my head. My forehead cracks into hers, and she drops, and the hand lets go.

"Gun," I manage.

She crawls toward it. My body follows on the ruined knee.

"Gun, Lucy."

She gets it and rolls onto her back and points it at me. I can see the barrel, and past it, my daughter's face, and I can feel my mouth smiling at her. That fucking smile.

"Do it."

She closes her eyes.

"Look at me."

She opens them. I try to make my own face. I don't know if it takes.

"Good girl."

The gun goes off.

LUCY

Lucy doesn't know how long she sits there. Her ears are ringing. Her father's blood runs between the tiles and reaches the toe of her shoe, and outside, the seven people turn together and walk off into the ash. She watches until the last one is gone.

Something touches her shoe.

One of his fingers is lying in the blood. It twitches once, then twice, and stops.

She backs away from it. Her forearm itches, and she scratches it through the sleeve of the sweatshirt, and something under her fingers slides away from the pressure. It moves under the skin, not across it. It travels toward her wrist.

Lucy looks up at the doors. Far down the street, the seven have stopped walking. One by one, they turn around.

FREE SCIENCE FICTION EBOOKS

Okay. If you made it through that, you probably deserve something free.

I’ve teamed up with a group of science fiction authors to put together a collection of FREE sci-fi ebooks. There’s a mix of strange worlds, survival, aliens, dystopian futures, and plenty of things going horribly wrong.

One of my own stories is included too.

So if Don’t Let Me Stand Up left you wanting something else to read—or you just want to load up your Kindle without spending anything—take a look below and grab whatever catches your eye.

And just because, I'll share the When Silence Fell Saga for those who haven't had a chance to check it out yet:

Happy reading!