Free Dead Hunger V: The Road To California by Eric A. Shelman

whispered, my ear against the door.  “Hurry.”
    Lisa, crying again, got to work following my instructions.  I heard scratching through the hollow core door and with my hand against it, I could feel whatever was on the other side … moving. 
    What I can only describe as wet sounds accompanied an unmistakable presence on the other side of the door, and I pictured Matt Rowe out there, looking just like all the others, gnashing or doing whatever it is they do when nobody’s looking.
    Then I thought to myself that perhaps Lisa had gotten it all wrong, and what was on the other side of this veneer and cardboard barrier was my mother.  Tammy Rowe, hungry and ready to eat her children, come hell or high water.
    I looked at Lisa.  If it came to that, it would be hell for her, and a different kind of hell for her daughter and me.
    A living hell.  I think we were already there.
    “I got it,” she said, standing again.”
    “Okay,” I said.  “It’s here.  I don’t know what or who, but it’s right on the other side of the door.”
    “Dad?” Lisa called, rushing forward and knocking on the door.  I held the .45 in one hand and pulled her away from the door by her shoulder.
    “If either one of them were out there,” I said, “one of them would answer.  Whoever it is, they’re not the same anymore.”
    “I need to see him before you do anything!” she shouted, and as she was mid-sentence, the door strained in its frame as something pushed it, slamming it and testing its strength.  We could hear moans over the scratching and pounding.
    I pressed the gun barrel up to the door, and Lisa said, “No, David!”
    “Lisa!” I shouted, then forced myself to calm.
    People always told me I had a soft, soothing voice and a way to break tension with stupid jokes and an easy tone, but right now I wasn’t finding any of those qualities. 
    “Leese,” I said, “we can’t do this all night.  We have to find out what the situation is, deal with it, and get out of here.  I’m opening the door.”
    She stepped back to the far wall, the .22 in her hands.  She kept the barrel pointed toward the ground, but as I stepped aside, my .45 aimed toward the door, she raised the smaller gun.
    I unlocked the door.  Very slowly, with my left hand, I turned the knob.  The wet noises continued from beyond our line of sight, but the scratching and banging had stopped.
    I stepped back, the knob in my hand, and let the door open inward, silent and revealing.
    Revealing a gray-faced, pink-eyed Matt Rowe.  He was holding my mother’s hand.  More accurately, he was eating it, tearing at it with his bloody teeth as he gripped onto her severed arm.  I knew it was hers at first glance.
    “No!” croaked Lisa, her voice barely audible as she stared at the monster that had been her father, wearing his pajama bottoms and his shirt, the buttons all popped open. 
    His skin was as pocked and heavily veined as any of the things I’d seen, and he clutched the horrifyingly familiar extremity in both of his destroyed hands, gnawing and biting into the fleshy part of the wrist.
    He was quite involved and had not seen the door open just half a foot away from him – which is probably a terrible way to word that, but since I’m writing this longhand, it’s going to have to stay that way.
    As he worked his way up to the fingers, both of us watching in sheer terror, he tore the second finger from its socket with his bared teeth and turned his head up to allow it to fall deeper into his ghastly throat.  Before this happened though, the gold and diamond ring that had once been on that finger dropped, clinked against the tile floor and rolled across the room straight toward Lisa, as though it were meant to convince my sister that it was all true.
    Lisa stared down at the ring that lay just a few inches from her feet.  It was our mother’s wedding ring. 
    She looked at what was once her father again, then at me.  “ Kill it, Dave !” she