The Devil Next Door

46

Okay, Hero, what now? Louis asked himself. What you gonna do now? You gonna hang around this fucking graveyard in vain hope that the cavalry will ride in or are you gonna make like a sheep and get the flock out of here?

Standing there by the car, he was uncertain. Inside, a voice was telling him to run, to get out of town already, but it was not that simple and he knew it. Where were they? Where was everyone? Were they all dead? He could almost believe it, standing there on that deserted street, the shadows growing long, night coming, filling itself with a darkness that would soon fall over the town like a shroud. He could imagine them all, in their houses and garages and cars, just everywhere, all dead from something that was as inexplicable as the regression itself.

He looked around, seeing the bodies and the devastated police station. The buildings and storefronts of Main were just empty and dead like the entire population had been evacuated and somebody forgot to tell him about it. Everything was still, motionless and eerie. Like ground zero at an A-bomb test or a city in one of those post-apocalyptic movies.

Louis stood there, feeling the town around him, and was certain it was not empty. He could almost feel others out there as he had before. Hiding behind those storefronts, maybe waiting for dark like a bunch of ghouls. The idea of that made his flesh crawl.

Yes, he could drive out of town and leave this mess for someone else. But there was still Michelle. There was still his wife and he could not just abandon her. Maybe she was dead, but until he saw her corpse he couldn’t bring himself to believe that.

What then?

And then he knew. The most basic mechanism of survival was defense and all he had was the lockblade knife in his pocket. He needed something better. A gun. There were guns in the police station, but that would mean wading through those bodies, looting around through them and pulling a bloody gun from an equally bloody holster. The idea of that was repellent, but he didn’t really have a choice.

And then he saw, down the middle of the block, a State Police cruiser parked out front of Dick’s Sporting Goods. Cop cars always had shotguns in those racks. He would just borrow one, that’s all. He looked at Macy sleeping in the car. She’d be safe for a few minutes.

Louis turned and jogged down the sidewalk to the State Police cruiser. The windows were open, but there was no shotgun in a rack. In fact, there was no rack, just a lot of electronic stuff and a radar gun. So much for that. He turned to leave and then he caught something out of the corner of his eye. Something that made him freeze-up. Through the glass windows of Shelly’s Café, he could see forms.

People.

There were people in there.

People sitting in booths. They were not moving, just sitting. Louis felt sweat run down his spine. He made ready to bolt. Surely those people had seen him. Surely they would come after him… but they didn’t. He glanced quickly down the block at his car. It looked very far away. Swallowing, he went up to the café, being very careful. Those people sitting in there still paid him no mind. He went up to the door, peered through the plate glass. Yes, there were people in booths and people at the counter. Some at tables. Maybe a dozen at most. All unmoving, just sitting and sitting.

This is where you leave well enough alone, Louis.

Sure, he knew that. He knew that very well. So, ignoring that voice of reason and common sense, he pushed through the door and stepped inside. He could smell the coffee, the burgers, the deep-fat fryers. Hunger actually wormed in his belly for a split second, but it did not last. Because there was another smell: a stench of blood and shit, a death smell that made his belly curl in on itself.

The people were not moving.

Many had fallen over in their booths or right off their stools. Trembling, fighting back a scream, Louis moved amongst them, knowing he had to. They were mannequins and wax figures, sideshow dummies and straw-stuffed effigies. At least that’s what his mind was telling him. But the truth was much darker. They were not wax or wood or thermoformed plastic, they were flesh and blood and every last one was dead.

Their throats had been slit.

Yes, the fat man and his obese wife in the booth; the two grimy men in coveralls sitting behind them; the pretty woman in shorts and her cute red-headed daughter; the two guys and the state cop at the counter. All of them had their throats slit. There were a few other bodies on the floor, people that had fallen from their seats. Blood was pooled on the green tiles. It had coagulated on the counter. Run in rivers down the back of the brown plastic seats of the booths themselves where the fat man and his wife’s heads hung back. All those throats were laid open as was that of a waitress on the floor behind the counter and a fry cook slumped in the corner by a stainless steel cooler.

Jesus.

It was bad. Just morbid and loathsome and frightening. But what was even worse was that it looked like they had slit their own throats. Using steak knives and carving knives from the café’s own wares, they had slit their own throats and testament to that was the fact that most of them still gripped the knives in their bloody, stiff fists. Other knives had fallen to the floor. Even the little girl had opened her own throat… if the paring knife in her chubby, dead little fist was any indication.

It hit Louis like it had at the police station, the shock which was huge and physically heavy, overwhelming. He almost went down, but gripped the edge of the counter and clenched his teeth until it passed.

No, they hadn’t needed dogs or mad killers here, they’d done the work themselves just as Jillian had. Louis found himself wondering how it had gone down, how it had worked. Had it hit them all at once? The urge to destroy themselves? Was it some kind of unspoken, unconscious decision to avoid regression, to die while they were still human? The same thing, perhaps, that had gotten inside of Jillian?

He stared at the carnage and was almost certain of it.

He could almost see it in his mind, all these people in the café, in their own little world, separated from the raw stench of primeval degeneration that blew through the streets in a hot, rank animal smell. Whatever was human in them rising to the surface like a swimmer desperate for one last gulp of clean air before sinking into the primal waters of race memory. It must have clicked in all their heads at roughly the same time: a complete rejection of that infectious, ancient evil rising from within. The need to preserve something human while they still were human and not slavering beasts running naked, killing and fucking in the streets.

There really was no other explanation for it.

The waitress must have passed out the knives and then, in unison, they’d slit their throats. Some had made a clean, almost professional job of it, while others had been very messy, sawing through their throats not once, but two and three times, their necks hacked and gouged and carved. But they’d done it. They’d all done it.

Louis thought: Get out of here. The rest of it is bad enough, but this is infinitely worse and you goddamn well know it.

But he didn’t leave.

He couldn’t bring himself to.

There were horrors and then there were horrors and some of them simply demanded examination, regardless of how sickened and terrified you were. Maybe the human mind needed reasons, needed explanations. Maybe it could not look on this without out demanding to know: why? Maybe the human mind could not just turn away from something so senseless and gruesome without understanding the design of it. Louis leaned against the counter, his head thick with the stink of blood, hearing flies buzz and the clock tick up on the wall. It scared him. This whole thing scared him. And the very worst thing was that all those corpses were grinning. Their faces were pale, their throats and chests dyed red, and they were all grinning, just grinning the most hideous smiles imaginable.

And their eyes were wide open…