They were separated. Broken in three. Benedict, paralyzed with fear, left behind on the lawn as the others fled. Maureen, alive in wrath, lingering to fire her pistol. And the remainder, devoted entirely to saving the girl.
Why should these three things be? Why should the child absorb them, the killing distract them, the horror freeze them?
It would be answered, when the night had passed.
Benedict screamed as the creatures crawled over him, an orgy of rending and fondling. Each part of him was caressed, cherished bloodily and taken to possession. They fought for his pieces. They divided him like treasure, loved in meat, anointed in blood.
Maureen faltered for Benedict, considered going back, and in that moment was undone. A hand from shadow took her wrist, snapped it upwards, broke the bone. She jerked and fell against the water fountain. The ulna snapped, then the elbow, the humerus and clavicle. The limb was separated and left to sag inside its flesh. And as she howled she was embraced, a hot and sopping press that pushed impaling ribs through her vitals.
Carnage reigned behind. Yet in front was only darker, quieter terror. Lindy, Crispin and Sonoma, a trio linked by bone-pale hands, spilled up the steps and through the hotel entrance, to be pressed into a hallway of metal and rot. Their recoiling was instant. At the hallway's end the stairway was gone, leaving gaping darkness where bodies twitched. David, the first who had run, screamed behind a wire cocoon, suspended in his death throes on a metal pike.
Sonoma blanketed the child. Crispin spun. He had no time to scream. A creature was in the doorway, and her porcelain nails were in his eyes. They forced the eyeballs up into liquefaction and the tips came out through the lining of the mouth, hooking the upper jaw. He was pulled into a kiss, ruinous and shattering, and then was gone.
Sonoma whispered... words without thought, comfort without hope - the soft and sobbing noise of the end. And Lindy seemed to nod, to concur as her body curled into hers.
The siren grew louder.
Nails dragged across Sonoma's shoulders.
The light went out.
Lindy was tugged away.
Silence fell.
Part Two
ROADKILL
The light was pale, like after-sickness. With a squeak of old leather Sonoma stirred and gazed across the hotel lobby. A grandfather clock kept time, assuring motion in contrast with the stillness. And as a yawn escaped it sent the dust motes dancing.
Behind the window of the reception office the shadow of the hotel manager was busying itself. He was a quiet character, forgettable and self-distracted, though happy to let his guests nap in the lobby as they did now. Near the front desk the grandfather clock read eleven. Sonoma's father would be here soon, to collect her for the funeral.
She adjusted herself again and looked down at Lindy, whose head was resting on her chest as she slept. They were sharing the couch and mingling their warmth. Did she know this girl?
Yes.
"Wake up, boy."
The feel of tile was unmistakeable: smooth cold with grit debris, rough grout under fingertips, a smell of disinfectant long denied. Others shapes, pressed to his back and knees were familiar, as friends he could recognize with just a little thought. The long plastic siding of the bathtub in front of him. The smooth curve of the toilet base on his spine.
He had been here before.
Crispin opened his eyes and turned his head between the bathroom appliances. His father was in the doorway, a giant at this angle, black and sharp amongst the white. Leant on the doorframe, Arthur Hale rolled his lucky coin through his knuckles. He still had that old coin.
"I hoped you would make the funeral without piss on your clothes. Shows what I know." The man's voice was like the coin, rolling, jumping from point to point. A voice for the stage, apt to cross the spectrum of drama. It had faded only slightly with the ruin of age and alcoholism.
"Get up." Their flesh connected as father kicked son. Not a violent kick - not like the ones he gave to mother. But fierce enough. Clear enough.
The coin went away and Arthur drew cigarettes from his waistcoat, lighting up as he watched his son find handholds on the bathtub. "And take my advice, boy. Stay away from Officer Moore. That cunt has enough in her head without you adding to it. Just concentrate on walking straight. Can you do that, Crispin?"
Smoke made mist with the sunlight and billowed through the bathroom.
"My poor girl."
Maureen rolled in the bedsheets and pulled her arm away. The pillows received her gladly. She could smell mother's hair, that honeyblossom shampoo, and felt her weight on the edge of the bed. Hands pawed at her again and she rolled once more onto her back, where her wrist was taken a second time.
"Lie still, dear. You'll get an infection." Something cold and cotton-like dabbed her wrist, pricking pain and soreness. Maureen heard her mother sigh. "It's not like you to trip on stairs. You were never clumsy. At least you brought your first aid kit."
Finally she opened her eyes into the auburn halo of her mother's presence. The woman was sitting over her and disinfecting a gash on her wrist. Where had that wound come from? It look like splinters. Beyond the bed her jacket hung upon the desk chair and the bulge of the pistol barely noticeable. A flutter of relief ran through her.
"We'll go somewhere after the funeral, okay?" Amelia Sanders smiled down at her daughter. "Brahms or Ashfield Heights. Just you and me. Would you like that?" Her other hand brushed Maureen's cheek.
When the question went unanswered she followed with another. It was mantra to her. It was prayer. "Oh, you still have your braid. That's good. Your father would have wanted..." Amelia stopped, dabbed the wound silently, then smiled again at her daughter. "I'm sorry... about everything... you know that don't you, Maureen?"
Suddenly the motion stopped. Amelia looked fully at her daughter and took both her shoulders. "Tell me, please. Tell me you don't hate me, Maureen."
"Davey, Davey, Davey."
The tutting sound of daddy dearest delivered him from darkness. David jolted up from the writing desk, blinking as light struck through the hotel window. It was agony, pale and numb, a vision of the lake and slow-waving trees. He had fallen asleep by the hotel brochure.
"What am I going to do with you, boy?"
In the reflection he saw his father. Gregory Henderson was a bull of a man, solidly built like his son but polished off with beard and work boots. Even at his wife's funeral he dressed like a land-worker; and spoke like one too. His was a voice of earth and hardship. He was a root, gnarled and twisted in the earth.
"Your momma's the lucky one, ain't she? Cos she ain't gotta look at you now. Messy son of a bitch."
David turned in his seat, squinting, about to find words for his father, but the chair went out from under him. It tipped straight back on the floor and took David with it. And he was held there with his father stooping over him. A breath of red meat and soil was all that accompanied his words. "I got your attention now, boy? You gonna rise and shine for your momma's funeral? Get the hell up, you know what's good for you."
He shoved his son then stepped away, leaving him to untangle from the chair. The floorboards shook as Gregory paced and gave a glance to the furnishings. Everything screamed that David's father did not want to be here.
"Fucking faggot room," he muttered under his breath, then peered over his shoulder at David. "Time's a-wasting, Davey. We gotta put your momma in the ground now."
"Mother..."
Benedict sat up in the bed, coiling like an insect, the covers tightening around him. By the window he fixed on Deidre Karova in her finest dress suit, tight with padded shoulders. She had her arms folded as she regarded her son. "The car will be here soon, Benedict. You need to get ready."
He wrapped his arms around his knees. "You came."
"Of course I came. He was your father. This is what we do."
"I never knew you cared."
"Enough." Deidre's eyes were ice queen sharp, her posture unbreakable. "You will get ready now, you will join in me in the car and you will hold your tongue. Am I understood?"
"I always understood..."
"ENOUGH!" Her hands fell limp and she lurched to the edge of the bed, as if to strike him. But they each saw the folly, the inference in that act. She didn't want to be like
him. Pulling away again, she let the silence settle. "He only left for a moment," Deidre murmured, as if to the hotel walls. "He went to pay for gas and I was sitting in the car for five minutes till I realized. The attendant didn't speak a word of English, of course. The police said the murderer must have taken him in the alley."
"How did he die?"
"What should that matter?"
"Open casket?"
She turned again, re-crossed her arms. "Impossible, if you must know. There was no face left to speak of."
Again, silence. Deidre hovered and kept her eyes on the paintings, on the flourish of architecture, the pattern of china - anything tasteless and regrettable.
"I had a bad dream, Mother."
"Get ready, Benedict. The ceremony is at 12. The Balkan Church. We can't be late."
"Do you have a kiss... for your son?"
Benedict's eyes were calculating, watching her all the while. She felt it. Her eyes flickered. Then one hand came to the bedpost. She leaned in, slowly, and her shadow swallowed him. He closed his eyes. And felt her lips upon his cheek, at the side of his mouth.
She has my curiosity, and then she has my attention. 
She paused by the bedpost, which cut her face in two with its wooden shaft. Yet each eye fixed him. And Benedict, nervous, clutching the bedsheets, struggled again for words till his quivering mouth became a smile. "I would have used a hammer." He laughed breathlessly. 
Bartley LaFleur had a father's smile - the smile of the old times, when people smiled for other reasons, for pride and legacy, patronage and tradition. 