The Fractured Earth Read Free

myself.
     
    Mr. D'oh! was attacking the neighbors! Clearly I'd underestimated his crazy level by a few orders of magnitude, or else he'd whacked himself on the head one too many times.
     
    And had a roll of quarters in his hand when he did it.
     
    The scream came from a woman who was half lying on the ground, holding her arm and screaming at Mr. D'oh!, who was clawing at her and, it appeared, biting at a man next to her. Gross. He wasn't screaming or yelling either, which didn't bode well for his chances, I thought.
     
    I hastened my attempts to get into the house. I put a big trash container atop the car in the driveway and leaned it against the house. I pulled myself up on the trash can and tried not to teeter off. There wasn't much purchase on the roof, but I managed to get up with just a scraped knee. I walked over to my window and opened it and got in, taking one last look at the scene down the street.
     
    Someone else had gone over to help and was hitting Mr. D'oh! in the back with what looked a piece of wood, but it didn't seem to be having any effect. As I watched, he hit the crazy man in the head hard enough to remove it from his shoulders! I guess he just staggered him, though, because Mr. D'oh! got up and jumped the guy and, I swear, bit him on the arm! 
     
    If that wasn't crazy enough, the guy he'd had on the ground sat up, reached over, and took a chunk out of the screaming lady.
     
    The Crazy must be catching.
     
    I got the rest of the way in and closed the window. I was wishing I could actually lock it at that point, but I couldn't unless I took the screws out. I opened the bedroom door.
     
    "Mom!" I yelled. "Mom!!" She should be home, her car was there. I didn't really want to call her “Mom,” but she got all sad and whiny if I didn't. And she was okay.
     
    I heard a noise, but it sounded more like a dog or something ... and we didn't have a dog.
     
    "Mom?"
     
    I heard a bang downstairs, and a moaning noise. Down the stairwell, in the dim light in the house, something moved. I saw her, my mom. She fell on the stairs, tripped or something. 
     
    "Mom, are you okay?" I started down the stairs but stopped when I got a closer look. She had some kind of doll's head in her hand, and what looked like paint ... or blood ... on her hands and face, and, well, everywhere. She looked up at me and hissed. I swear, she really hissed at me! She started to climb, and then I realized it wasn't a doll's head…
     
    I screamed and ran up the stairs to my room. There was no lock, so I started piling junk up in front of it—dresser drawers, clothes, my foster sister's banjo. She couldn't play it, but thought she could. Nothing worse than that, unless one of my other foster sisters decided to take up the washboard.
     
    I got a lot of stuff piled up pretty quick before I heard the first THUD against the door, like a head or a shoulder thumping against it. I didn't want to think about which one it was. The room certainly didn't have any weapons, except ... I had a bamboo sword I used for Tae-Kwon-Do, and a baton. They were in my foot locker—the one thing I had in this house that was private.
     
    I was scared out of my wits. Crazies outside, probably one or more inside. No power, no phones, and maybe not for a while if Mr. Poof was to be believed. Go outside and risk being bitten by the rabid Mr. D'oh! and his recent victims, or stay inside this room forever while NotMom tried to bash in the flimsy wooden door with the head of her own child?
     
    I cried. For myself. For my foster mom. For my real parents. For my city.
     
    For the world. My world. My ocean. 
     
    That's what I would do—my ocean, my boat. If I could make it there, I'd be okay.
     
    Maybe.
     
    A scrape and another loud THUD signaled that NotMom was pushing her way in. Her bloody hand grabbed the edge of the door and pushed it open further. I was running out of time.
     
    I opened my locker and started riffling through it for my baton—sort of