The Devil Next Door

42

Ray Hansel was alive.

He staggered down Main to where his patrol car was parked. The streets were silent now, deathly silent. There were bodies strewn about, the carcasses of dogs. Blood and entrails everywhere, a reeking fly-specked stew in the streets and spread over the walks. He was dazed and hurting and half out of his mind. As he walked—staggered, really—the sinking sun still hot on his neck, he tried to put it all together and make sense of something that was utterly senseless. He remembered the insane woman coming in, making for Bob Moreland’s office, how they overpowered her. Moreland said it was his wife and then, and then…

And then you heard the screaming, he reminded himself. The awful torturous screaming and you rushed downstairs right behind Moreland and every other cop that was up there. Remember? Remember how it looked? Men, women, children, and… dogs. Dozens and dozens of people and twice that many dogs.

He seized up right there on the walk, a dead man at his feet, sprawled over the concrete. He had died in battle with a Doberman. The Doberman’s jaws were locked on his throat, the knife in his hand still buried in the animal’s guts. They were both tangled in the dog’s viscera; it was knotted over them in fleshy ropes. Mangled and gutted, a surreal sculpture of human and canine locked in a fearsome and appalling death. Like two wax figures that had melted into one another. They both looked like they’d been dipped in red ink.

Choking on his own bile, Hansel moved past them, past the carnage spread everywhere.

All that blood, all those mutilated bodies.

He wanted to vomit, but there was absolutely nothing left in his stomach. His uniform was in rags. He was cut and bitten and scratched and generally banged-up. There was blood all over him, human blood and dog blood mixed in with his own.

He saw his patrol car and shuffled his way over, only stopping when he was a few feet away.

He looked around, his eyes glazed and his face scratched to the bone.

Are they all dead? Is the entire town dead now?

Logic told him it could not be, yet he’d never felt so terribly alone and terrible vulnerable. He wondered vaguely where his partner was. Where the hell was Paul Mackabee? Dead? Was he dead, too?

Standing there, he was wondering why the dogs had attacked.

Because at first, when they’d first flooded into the police station with that mob of wild-eyed people, they had attacked together, dogs and people. In unison. All shrieking and howling and foaming at the mouth. It had been a slaughter, an absolute slaughter. The cops overwhelmed and buried alive beneath people and dogs.

Those weren’t people, Ray, he told himself. You saw them… many of them were naked like animals, painted up like jungle savages, their hair wild and matted, their faces set, eyes shining with a moist blackness, just staring and staring. There was nothing human about that mob. Savages. Just savages out to rend and kill, bite and slash.

Same as the dogs that ran at their sides.

Yes, that’s how it had been. He remembered pulling his gun as Moreland and the others in front of him had gone down under claws and teeth and fingers and paws. He kept shooting until he’d emptied the clip. He’d brained two women with the butt of his pistol and then ran back upstairs, the pack howling at his heels. He’d been bitten and scratched and nearly taken down by a pair of bird dogs, but he’d escaped.

Barely.

What he remembered most, what he would always see, was not just the blood and bodies, the dogs and crazies dismembering people and biting into throats and tearing open bellies, not just that or the violent, repellent stink or the mist of red that settled over the squad room… no, what he would always remember was that people, human beings, had been running on all fours with the dogs, biting like them, tearing like them, bringing down their prey in packs just like them. And the scariest part was that he honestly couldn’t tell after a few moments which were the dogs and which were the people.

He saw only slaughtering, muscled, slashing red forms.

Dear God, dear God.

Hansel climbed into the cruiser and got on the emergency channel. He didn’t bother with call numbers or police codes. He simply said, “This… this is Trooper Hansel! Do you hear me? Trooper fucking Hansel! I’m in Greenlawn! I need back-up, I need troops! We’ve got bodies everywhere, civil unrest… move it, move it, move it!”

There was nothing but static for a moment or two, then: “Greenlawn! Come in, Greenlawn!”

Hansel brought the mic to his mouth, his hand shaking violently. “This is Greenlawn… do you hear me? This is Greenlawn!”

More static. Then a voice: “How’s the hunting over there?”

The mic fell from Hansel’ fingers.

They’ve all gone fucking mad. God help us, but they’ve all gone mad…

Then he did something that he had not done for six years since his wife passed: he pressed his hands to his face and he sobbed. He could not stop sobbing, his entire body trembling, the tears rolling hot down his cheeks. It all ran through his head, all the awfulness that he’d seen this day culminating with the slaughter at the police station. It all came pouring out of him and he could not stop, could not do anything but shake and sob until there was nothing left.

He was only alive because he’d gotten upstairs, gotten into a closet and stayed there. That’s when the dogs must have turned on the people or vise versa. He remembered them scratching at the door, the dogs and the people, and then the screaming and shouting and growling and snapping. They had hunted side by side until there was no more game, then they’d hunted each another.

They turned on one another.

The fighting and savagery had gone on for some time and then things had grown quiet incrementally. When he finally dared go down there—about fifteen minutes ago—there had been nothing but death. The squad room was a carpet of bodies, human and dog, and parts thereof, a red sea of filth. There were dozens of corpses locked in death throes with the dogs, dog teeth in human throats and human teeth in dog throats. He had not paused to examine any of it. He made his way outside and threw up on the steps of the police station.

And now here he was, crying like a baby.

Well, this wouldn’t do, this wouldn’t do at all.

He had to get a grip, he had to get a set on him and start acting like a cop. Goddamn Greenlawn was a fucking warzone and somebody had to start setting things right and that somebody just happened to be Ray goddamn Hansel. Just because you got kicked in the nuts didn’t mean you had to fold up and have a good cry, squat to piss the rest of your life.

No, sir, that wouldn’t do at all.

Some kind of ugly door had been thrown open on this world, all the dark and crawly things creeping out and having themselves a real old fashioned slash-and-burn hoo-ha, and it was going to take some serious ass-kicking professionals to slam that door shut.

Hansel knew that he had to get ready.

But… shit… it was spreading everywhere. He couldn’t fight alone, it just wasn’t possible. What in the hell could this possibly be about?

He started up the car and pulled away down Main, taking the first corner he saw and making for the south side. He’d grab the county road outside town and make for the highway, find people, normal people, start marshalling the fucking troops like Patton hitting the Rhine with the Third Army. Kick ass and take names, holy Jesus K. Christ.

As he drove down Providence Street, one of the main thoroughfares that ran from one end of town to the other, he saw wrecked cars, bodies in the streets, burned houses and abandoned city vehicles. He even saw a firetruck, doors hanging open, hoses unrolled and attached to a nearby fire hydrant, but not a soul around to work them.

This will be the biggest, ugliest clusterfuck this world has ever seen. Years from now, they’ll still be trying to figure this out.

If there’s anybody left to do the figuring, that is.

If the madness isn’t permanent.

If I live to see it.

If this whole goddamn country isn’t a slaughterhouse by then.

If…

If…

If…

If civilization could survive this fever, the whole goddamn country, the whole goddamn world, would be like ripe meat and the media were the buzzards that would pick it clean. The stain of this day and what was yet to come would never wash off for a hundred years.

He kept driving and then he slowed… slowed right down because something was not right. In his head… something was just not right. It felt like a swarm of black flies had been loosed in there, buzzing and crowding and filling his skull. He hit the brakes and skidded to a halt. He couldn’t seem to remember what he was doing or even who he was for a moment or two. It was like there was some devastating influence taking his mind, some invasion that was stripping away who and what he was.

He sat behind the wheel, his mouth hanging open and his eyes glazed.

He caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror and what he saw looking back at him made him want to scream. A stranger. A perverse caricature of himself… something lunatic and twisted.

It’s happening, a very tiny voice in his head informed him. It’s happening to you right now, Ray. This is what it feels like when the cellar door of your mind swings open and all the black, shuddery, forgotten things come loping out…

And that was what he thought.

But he did not think it or even understand the train of thought for long, because suddenly he was gone. There was something else and someone else and there was no more rational thought as such.

He threw the cruiser in park very calmly.

He took the shotgun from the rack and stepped out into the sunlight. He could feel its warmth, the dying day and its final gasp of hot breath.

From deep inside, a voice was shouting at him, but he did not listen.

He gasped. He drooled. He shook and sweated and his heart raced. A wetness spread at his crotch. There was a shotgun in his hands and he brought the barrel up to his mouth, fingers on the trigger.

Goddammit, Ray, don’t let this happen. Fight, fight.

He would not do that, he could not do that. Putting a gun in his mouth was against everything he was. Yes, fight, he must fight. So he strained his muscles, but they were soft and pliable like putty. He had no more control over them than he did his bladder. He fought, but it was hopeless. His hands brought the gun up and the barrel rose, leveling out and dropping until it was in his face. His mouth opened to receive it. A long, strangled moan came from somewhere deep inside him.

The barrel of that twelve-gauge pump slid into his mouth, cool and metallic and tasting of machine oil.

The barrel slid further into Hansel’s mouth until the business end brushed the back of his throat and he gagged. He was powerless, weak, empty. He was nothing. He did not exist. He was just doing what he’d always wanted to do, always needed to do on some subconscious level. He’d known other cops that had eaten the gun and he wondered if this is what it had been like for them in their final moments before they sprayed their brains over the ceiling. Did they feel like this? Overcome, crushed down, broken, violated?

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

It was his own will making him do this, yet it felt like someone else was in charge of him. Making him do things that were against everything he stood for.

His fingers started putting pressure on the trigger.

Then he just lost all strength. Whatever it was, faded and fell apart.

The gun slid out of his mouth and Hansel was overwhelmed with dry heaves. He fell, the riotgun clattering to the pavement. On his hands and knees, wringing wet now with sweat and piss, the smell of blood and dead animals thick on him, he began to sob.

Then a voice, “Hell you doing, Ray?”

He looked up. Paul Mackabee was standing there. His uniform blouse was torn, buttons missing. There was blood all over his hands, streaked across his face. His eyes were filled with shadows. And, worse, he had the bloody pelt of a dog slung over one shoulder.

“Paul… Jesus, Paul… the whole fucking town…”

Mackabee kneeled down by him. He stank like oily carcasses. “Sure, whole town, Ray. Whole fucking world. Quit fighting it. Just… relax… and let it happen…”

Hansel thought he was crazy, no better than the rest. But he was tired, drained dry from what he’d seen. There was no fight left. He closed his eyes and let the darkness well up inside him until it spilled out of his eyes in ribbons of night. When he opened them, Huckabee was still squatting there.

Hansel grinned at him. The bloody pelt over his shoulder exuded a rank odor. It smelled delicious…