Free Out of the Shadows by Timothy Boyd Page A

surviving. Mankind was being exterminated, like a bug infestation, ironically enough. As I stared at the painting of Jesus Christ on the wall at the front of the church, I vowed to kill as many of the spider creatures as I could before I went down.
    Behind me I heard Deb’s pew creak and groan as she fought to rise to her feet. I stood up to help her, but she waved her hand at me to step back. “Let me do this myself!”
    I stood back as she limped forward down the center aisle toward the pulpit. I saw her sides expand and contract slowly as she breathed heavily to keep herself alive. She approached a row of candles, reached into her pocket, and pulled out a pack of matches from the bar. After a few attempts, the wooden stick finally struck properly, and a tiny flame flared into existence from her fingertips. I saw her mouth move with silent words as she touched the flame to the wick of one of the unlit candles.
    A deep emotion welled within me, and my eyes began to sting with wetness. She eventually blew the match out and headed back to the pew, collapsing once more to rest.
    I stared at her for many moments before gathering the courage to say, “Mama, you know that won’t save you.”
    She took as deep a breath as she could muster before responding, “That ain’t what I prayed for.” She looked down at Mary, peacefully sleeping beside her, and she brushed a strand of hair from the girl’s face.
    I felt my cheeks flush, ashamed by my assumption that she would pray for something so selfish as her own survival when, in fact, she had prayed for Mary’s.
    Many minutes of silence passed between the two of us, neither willing to talk about the night, neither ready to say goodbye. I decided to rest my eyes, but just as I closed them, Deb spoke softly, a quaver in her voice.
    “Bear,” she began. “You know what I’m gonna need ya to do, right?”
    Yes. I knew. The same thing Sarah had wanted.
    “I want it to be you, Bear. Ya hear me?”
    My chest clenched and a knot of air clumped into my throat. I wasn’t sure how much more of this I could take. “I hear you,” I responded.
    “You know how long I got?”
    I shook my head. “Sarah got bit. She stayed alive for hours before…”
    There was no reason to finish the sentence. Deb knew what I meant.
    “Your bite is worse than hers, though,” I continued. “So, I don’t know.”
    I didn’t enjoy discussing the death of my friends with them like it had become so commonplace that I should follow it up with, “So, how are the kids?” I wanted so badly to sleep. And perhaps never to wake up. Or maybe when I woke up, the world would be right again, and this would all have been a massively awful nightmare brought on by the whiskey. If that were the case, I would swear to God right now that I would never drink again.
    “I saw ‘em get inside,” she finally said.
    I turned to look at her, my brow furrowed.
    “The spiders. When she bit me, I saw a couple spiders crawl out of her mouth and into the wound.” She looked down at the bloody bandage that was wrapped around her arm, examining it, as if it held mysteries that she fought to solve. “I think that’s how it works. They jus’ need to get in, and the bites make it easier.”
    I nodded softly. Her explanation made sense of the biting – nothing more than a way for an infected host to latch securely onto its target so the alien creatures could enter, but it was just a guess; we simply couldn’t know for sure how any of it worked.
    At the front of the church, a door creaked open. I leapt to my feet, my gun in my hand and ready for action. A middle-aged man entered the sanctuary wearing black dress slacks, a black button-down dress shirt, and a white collar. He paused at the sight of us and said, “You are trespassing in a house of God.”
    I put up a hand to calm him. “We just needed to rest for a few minutes. My friend is wounded, and the little girl needed to sleep.”
    The reverend approached us now,