Love + Family: The Birthday by Ashley Barron (read after txt) 📕

made it to a chain-link fence at the other end of the property likely owned by the city garage. He scaled it quickly and landed on the other side. It wasn’t that high, probably six feet. When he turned back, Alex was helping Stephanie over, and Roman was waiting for her. Then the guys followed her over. They retreated into a dense tree line where it was darker.

“What do we do?” Roman whispered.

“Shh,” Tristan said and stood half behind a tree. He watched as the others did the same.

It was difficult not to open fire on the things coming toward them. There were three. Two stopped at the dead body of the one he’d just killed. One stooped and smelled it, which he found odd. Then it let out a scream that surely would break all the glass out of the windows in nearby homes. Beside him, Stephanie stepped back as if she were about to bolt. Alex grabbed her arm and pulled her up against him.

“Shh,” he whispered.

The other two monsters ran off in a different direction. The third ran in theirs. When it came to the chain-link fencing, it slammed into it and fell down as if it if hadn’t seen any fencing at all. Tristan held his ground and waited. When it realized what it had done, it growled psychotically, pounded on the fence with its fists, and stood again. Then it surprised him again and stuck its nose in the air like a dog would when trying to catch a scent. It was so creepy that he had a hard time looking at it. Fortunately, it didn’t try to scale the fence but lumbered off towards the garage and then up the other road.

He tapped Roman’s shoulder, who nodded. They moved out again, and he didn’t remind anyone to be careful.

“1322,” he told them the address number as they came into a neighborhood at the top of the hill. “Two-story. Gray.”

Somewhere a dog barked. Then it whined. He hoped those things weren’t hurting it, but it sounded more distressed than in pain. It grew quiet again as they walked down the street toward the house. The house was supposed to be on the right-hand side. The neighborhood was old, and Jeff told him it was near the former high school, the one that was converted into a rec center and office space for the city workers after the new schools were built.

The road was sloshy as if people around here had been driving on it more frequently than out near their properties away from town. That bothered Tristan. Traffic down this road could indicate men were coming here for those girls. It could portend that many people were currently at the house of horrors he was about to bust into. He tried to cool his temper and quell his nerves.

“There it is,” Alex announced quietly.

They stopped a few houses away and knelt behind a full-size van with a flat rear tire.

“Alex, pair up with Stephanie and come in through the rear,” he ordered and didn’t get any guff. “Roman will come with me through the front. I don’t know if we’ll get in or have to kick in the door or what. We’ll play it by ear.”

“No lights are on,” Stephanie whispered, the nerves in her voice exposed by the slight quiver.

“I know,” he said. “Could just be doing that so they don’t bring in the sick ones, same as we do.” He couldn’t imagine anyone would use lights at night anymore. Not if they valued living.

They nodded in agreement.

“Try a back door, a window, whatever,” he instructed. “Just be aware that we’re coming in from the front. Don’t shoot us.”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “Us either.”

They rose in unison, and Tristan crept forward slightly bent over and at a slower pace than running this time. Roman mimicked him, which he did often. The kid was a fast learner, and that was good. He easily took direction and followed his orders well, too. However, Stephanie was right. The house was not lit at all, which made their job a lot harder. No boards were on the windows. The house was dark, and no cars were parked at the curb or in the driveway, which surprised him. The traffic lines in the snow on the road went right past the house as if they hadn’t stopped here. For all intents and purposes, it looked abandoned. There was a slim possibility that Jeff had lied to him. It was slim because Tristan had beat the shit out of him, tortured him to talk. Once people broke from that, they didn’t tend to lean toward deception.

He stepped carefully, the snow crunching under his combat boots. Mindful of being silent, Tristan stepped up to the front door and tried the handle, which seemed flimsy. This didn’t seem like a particularly expensive area, mostly older homes from the sixties or so. Roman was already trying a nearby window.

Suddenly, the front door opened, and Alex was standing there.

“Back door was wide open,” he whispered and stood aside to let him and Roman inside. Tristan gave a nod and suggested they split up by using hand signals he hoped Alex would understand.

The old hardwood floors creaked every now and then underfoot, but they pressed on. After a search of the first floor, he suggested Alex and Stephanie should go to the basement while he and Roman checked the second floor. Then they separated again.

The stairs were squeakier than the first-floor hardwoods, and it made him cringe every time they did so. A disgusting odor lingered in the air like death and moldy newspapers. On the second-floor landing, it opened up into a wide hallway with three doors and a corner that went to the right down another hall.

Tristan pushed open the first door and didn’t find anything, just a bathroom. It was filthy and smelled stale and foul like an old porta-potty, so he pulled the door shut again.

The second room proved to be a