Here’s a little teaser for the upcoming novel written by the dudes in the image.

They were safe. Sarah, Duane, and their three kids had evaded all human contact as they escaped the city and headed north to the family summer home on the edge of the lake. A miracle happened, and their gas had lasted, though the car coasted up the dusty dirt road with a sputter, and a cough. They’d never be able to drive away again, not with the fuel going so fast, but that was a problem for another day.

No one had touched another person, or touched anything that anyone had touched.

There was no way any of them could get sick, and change. No way anyone in their family would grow spasmodic, twitch and start to… melt.
No way.
Sarah sat down in on the old plaid couch that held onto the scent of expensive cigars in the way a kid might hug a teddy bear. She put her elbow down on the leather armrest. Her legs ached from sitting in the front of their Volvo SUV with the seat pulled all the way forward so they could store more of Duane’s shit in the back. Shit he swore they’d need if the sickness kept spreading, and if people kept mutating into monsters straight out a madman’s nightmare. Things like golf clubs.

He collapsed next to her on the couch and looked for the glass of wine he’d poured. He’d left it in the kitchen.

“Kids down?” she asked him.

He nodded, and sighed. “They’re scared, and whining, but they’ll be just fine. They love do this place, and there’s no social media for them to obsess over out here. No news to hear will help them forget about the world.”

“I feel like I’m gonna go crazy not knowing what’s going on,” she said. “If we hike to the top of that ridge near here, we get a bar of service right? Enough to at least check the news? We should call your mom, too.”

“My mother can take care of herself. Last thing I want is to hear her talking about her hair stylist having died, or how her landscaper stole her BMV to make his break for the country,” he said, leaning over and putting his head in her lap. The weight of him on her thigh felt good, even if he was sweaty, and hot, and being a dick.

“I’m so glad you keep all those supplies from the hospital at home. Without all those rubber gloves and masks I think we would’ve been goners,” she said.

“Well I am a doctor, Sarah. What can I say?” he said. “I’m sure Chad brought home all of his client’s file cabinets.”

Chad was their accountant, and Duane’s golf buddy. Duane shivered after finishing his bad joke. It wasn’t cold in the house.

“You cold? You just shivered and it is not cold in here,” she asked him. A pin prick of dread piercing the lining in her stomach.

“Drank too much wine in the kitchen before coming in here. Today sure has been a day.” He opened his eyes, and looked up at her. Bright blue, his eyes were. The first thing she noticed about him when they met at grad school eight years ago. The school she dropped out of when she got pregnant.”I love you.,” he lied. “We’re gonna get through this.”

“I know, and I love you too. Sleep. Get some rest.”

He was already snoring. He still shivered.

Sarah caressed Duane’s temples like she knew he liked, and smiled at her husband who she barely still loved, were it not for their children, and all the life she had tied together. She was too invested to leave him, and a divorce was too terrifying a prospect to put the kids through.

That’s why she ignored the softness of his skull as she rubbed his temple. She looked down, and pressed lightly on his skin with her thumb. The red-nailed digit sunk into the flesh until the edge of her nail threatened to disappear into the human taffy her husband was becoming. He had an hour, maybe two before he melted into an amorphous, boneless thing. An hour after that, the flesh he once was would reform into something else. Something new, and something frightening.

She started to cry as she got to her feet. She had to check the kids for the melting, and if they were still well, they had to flee.

One of a billion apocalypses unfolded again, at the speed the Bleed wished.
///

There is nowhere to run.

Nowhere to hide.

There is only blood.

December.