Toxic Shadows

13

Described by waxen moonlight, Cut River was a cemetery.

The buildings were leaning headstones and the homes were shadow-crawling crypts and the cars and trucks were caskets and burial vaults, lids sprung open, their cadaverous armies spilled into the night.

Lisa Tabano, her buzz bottoming like a freighter scratching its belly on a shoal, stumbled along behind Johnny Davis, he of the guns and the war that never completely ended. Disillusioned, distrustful, paranoid, but ultimately a good man, she decided. It was just that Uncle Sam had pissed on him so many times, he couldn’t keep his head above the stink.

She was starting to feel the need again.

Not bad yet, but it was coming.

In an hour or so it would be there, all right, nibbling at her insides. And the really bad part was that day by sufferable day, the highs were of shorter duration. She was only snorting heroin right now, but really, how long would it be until she was shooting?

Johnny walked point ahead of her, pausing now and again, crouching down low, then signaling her to continue.

It made her think that he’d probably been waiting for some action since the war ended.

And now he had it.

They crept past a row of blank storefronts and Johnny stopped. “In here,” he said to her.

It was a sporting goods store.

The plate glass door was shattered.

Inside, battery-powered emergency lights lit up the exit in the rear, casting ghoulish, lurching shadows everywhere. Displays were trashed, tipped over. Glass cases were obliterated. Shelves were emptied. It looked like looters had danced a merry destructive dance here.

But that wasn’t the case and she knew it.

“What the hell do we want here?” Lisa asked, setting her guitar case down and stepping over heaps of camouflage hunting clothes that smelled like urine.

Johnny had a Tekna flashlight out, scanning the debris. “They really went through this place, eh? I was in here just before sundown, picking up a few things. They must’ve come since.”

Lisa slid a cigarette in her mouth, lit it up. “Mind?” she said.

“You might draw them in, rock star.”

“But I’ve got you, my own little Rambo. What me worry?”

He chortled deep in his throat as he dug madly through outdoor clothing—hunter’s orange, Carhartt work clothes, waterproof tarps. He pulled a dark rubber poncho from the jumble, held it up, examined it carefully. He threw it at Lisa. “Catch.”

She pulled it off her face. “Are we going on a mission or getting out of here?”

“We’re evading, baby. E and E. Escape and evasion. It’s the name of the game.” He leaped over piles of winter boots, hiking shoes, slid a canoe out of the way. “Here, these’ll look sweet on you.” He tossed a pair of rubber boots at her. “They’re all the rage, baby. I hear Hendrix wore ’em at Monterey.”

She laughed, pulling the boots over her Nikes. “Christ, you are old.”

“You know it.”

“Should I ask why I have to wear boots or is that some mission secret?”

He grinned at her, all teeth and eyes, his face darkened with black camo paint. “I’d tell ya, sweet thing, but then I’d have to fuck ya.”

“Yeah, I’ve always wanted to do it with Al Jolson. Nice makeup. It’s so you.”

Johnny found the freeze-dried backpacker’s food and stuffed some in his pack. He pulled out a pistol, broke it open, snapped it closed and handed it to Lisa. “Know how to use it?”

She held it like it had been dipped in feces. “I don’t like guns.” She looked from it to him. “I don’t approve of them.”

He made a face, said, “Listen, I don’t approve of condoms either. No fun. But if I’m gonna slap skins with a hooker, I wear one. Assures my survival. And if you’re gonna stay alive in this shithole, you’ll need a gun. Maybe not, but maybe so.” He waited for an argument, was surprised, maybe, at how tolerant, how patient he was with her. It had been a long time since he’d been that way with anyone, let alone a female. “It’s a thirty-eight. Revolver, doesn’t jam. Six-shots. Safety is off. Bad guys comin’ down on ya, aim it and pull the trigger.”

Sighing, she accepted his logic and slid the little .38 into her coat pocket, hoping like hell she wouldn’t have to use it on anyone. She wasn’t a pacifist really, but violence was negative and solved nothing… that was, under normal circumstances. But here, in this hellzone where civilization had ground to a halt, all that mattered was who survived, not what sort of principals or moral integrity they possessed.

Somebody (or some thing) came looking for trouble, goddamn if she wasn’t going to give them some (to paraphrase the old Johnny Winters’ tune).

“Put that poncho on,” he said, more of an order than anything else.

She did, not liking the idea too much, but once it was over her head it made her feel warm and protected. She put the .38 in the front pocket.

She walked around.

The phone had been ripped off the wall, the cash register and computer smashed on the floor. She saw the remains of a cell phone.

Whatever these things were, they had a definite hard-on for technology.

Savages, she thought. They worship darkness, hate anything modern.

Johnny was still searching through the mess. He finally held up what looked like a short boat hook and nodded, satisfied.

“We going fishing for big ones?”

“You’ll see. Let’s go.”

Lisa was glad the windows were broken so she didn’t have to catch a reflection of herself, how utterly foolish she must’ve looked in that huge poncho and squeaking boots. She picked up her guitar case and purse and led the way back out onto the sidewalk.

And heard it before she saw it.

Low, guttural growling, the sound of claws scratching concrete.

She froze up tight as cherries in a deep freeze, motionless, helpless, staring at the huge, mangled German Shepherd a few feet away. Its left ear was missing, its coat filthy and stained with blood and bits of clinging leaves, sticks. There were great patches of skin ripped free from its battered skull, one of its eyes a gored hole. Its snout was bloody pulling away from lethal white teeth. Ropes of vile foamy saliva dangled from its mouth. The good ear was flattened against the skull as it made to leap.

Johnny shoved her out of the way as the dog leapt.

It made it maybe three feet before it took a load of buckshot straight on that vaporized its head into bloody mucilage. Its body tumbled out into the road, legs still pistoning.

Johnny took Lisa by the arm. “C’mon, lady, time to march.”

She realized then that she was lost in a dream for nearly a block, Johnny leading her like the good shepherd with a lost lamb. Then she came out of it, thinking that she needed a fix.

But now wasn’t the time.

She’d been lucky so far, way too lucky. First with the woman at her parent’s house, then with the two punks that Johnny had clipped for her, and now with the dog.

How long could it possibly hold? How long?

Johnny stopped on a quiet street. “Way I see it,” he explained to her, “they’re not going to let us just walk out of here. My guess is that by now they’ve got this town closed-up tight. Which means, essentially, we’re prey.”

“Prey?”

He nodded. “We’re the enemy here, baby. Don’t you get it? We’re the weird ones, they’re normal. Normal because they’re the majority. They’ve got two choices with us: make us like them or kill us.”

Lisa thought about it. “And how are they gonna make us like them? What’re they gonna do? Bite our throats?”

“Don’t be too surprised.”

He slung his shotgun over his shoulder and walked a few feet away to a manhole cover. He took his boat hook and inserted the tip into the drain hole. With everything he had, he pulled and the lid came up. He dragged it onto the pavement.

“After you,” he said.

Lisa had been watching him with a mixture of amusement and confusion, now she said, “You’ve got to be out of your mind.”

“Maybe. But down you go.” He handed her the flashlight. “You want out, don’t you? This might be the only way.”

“How about we find a cell phone instead?”

Johnny laughed. “Cell phone? They’ve destroyed every piece of technology they could lay their mitts on. You think they overlooked cell phones?”

“They couldn’t get ’em all, Johnny.”

He shook his head. “Don’t have to. There’s only one provider here. Its base station and transmitting antennas are located at the edge of town. In one of the blacked-out areas. No power, baby. I tried my neighbor’s this afternoon… nothing. Just a dead piece of plastic…”

Man proposes and God disposes, Lisa thought helplessly.

She shined the light down the throat of the sewer.

It was dank and misty below. A built-in ladder led down to the water beneath. She looked back at Johnny. He was smiling, enjoying the hell out of this. Now she knew what he had in mind with the poncho and boots.

She handed him the light. “Keep it on me,” she said.

Setting her guitar case on the street, she lowered herself down.

The rungs were greasy, slicked with mildew. Halfway down, Johnny fed the guitar case to her. It fit, all right. And if it hadn’t, Lisa wasn’t going either. It seemed like a long climb down, holding the guitar case and maneuvering with only one hand. The shaft opened at the bottom into a large central drain. Plenty large enough to walk through without hitting your head.

But the stink, oh God.

Stagnant water, organic rot. Like a brackish swamp.

She dipped one boot into the water, found the bottom, and then went all the way in. It was deep, nearly two feet. And cold. The boots kept her feet dry, but she could feel the chill wetness sucking out her heat.

Johnny dropped the light to her and swung down into the shaft. He pulled the lid closed after them, then moved down the ladder like it was something he’d done many times.

He smiled. “Not so bad, eh?”

“Says who?”

He took the light from her, played it around.

The passage was maybe seven feet in height, little more in width. A brick tunnel, more or less. She was surprised to see graffiti on the walls.

“This is the main drain line,” Johnny explained to her. “It runs beneath the entire length of Chestnut Street. Most of the rainwater sewers in this town are only big enough to crawl through on your hands and knees. Some are a lot smaller. This one feeds to a culvert that empties into the river. That’s where we’re going.”

Lisa lit a cigarette. “Only you would think of something like this.”

“I been down here lots of times.”

“I believe it.”

He seemed surprised. “You grew up here and you never been down in the sewers?”

She shook her head. “Guess I missed out on that. I feel so incomplete.”

He laughed, leading the way through the darkness, splashing just ahead of her. “We used to come down here, get stoned and drunk when we were teenagers. Usually there’s only a trickle of water down here, half a foot, if that. But we’ve had a lot of rain lately, what with the storms and all, so it’s pretty deep.”

Lisa caught up to him, stayed at his side. “So we’re going to crawl through a pipe into the river?”

“Got a better idea?”

“Yes. The streets above.”

He shook his head. “No, not a good idea. There’s lots of them up there. Rabids everywhere.”

“Rabids?”

“It’s what I call ’em. They’re crazy, foaming at the mouth. Rabids.” He paused, scanned the light along the walls. “See that?”

There was a crude, ancient pot leaf carved into the discolored face of a brick.

“Nice,” she said.

“Yeah, me and my buddy Tommy did that. Tommy Haynes. I was sixteen. Before the war.”

They splashed along, shoulders touching. “Was it bad?” Lisa said.

“What?”

“The war? Vietnam.”

He rubbed his jaw, sighed. “Yeah.”

Lisa didn’t push it.

“Christ, I hate it down here,” she admitted.

Johnny smiled. “Reminds me of somewhere else, another set of tunnels.”

“The war?”

“Yes.”

Everything echoed in the sewer.

The sound of their boots slopping through the water was like thunder. Water was dripping and running, the sound of it amplified. The entire situation was surreal. It was the sort of place that would have driven a claustrophobe crazy—the stone walls pressing in, the sluicing water, the cloying darkness, and the ripe stench of rot and buried things. And above it all, the seepage from above, dripping and dripping.

Like a cave in an old movie.

They passed another ladder leading to a manhole above.

Lisa looked to Johnny hopefully, but he plodded onward into the subterranean maze.

The dampness was everywhere.

It came from the gently flowing river of rainwater, it came from the air, it bled from the damp stone walls. Lisa hugged herself, trying to keep warm, trying to hear anything but the dripping, the hollow splashing sounds, the noise of rainwater running from outlet pipes.

After awhile, it got on your nerves.

And when you had the need, the habit, things were only magnified as you came down. She tried to keep it out of her head, tried to think about her mom and dad and what the chances were that they had escaped (but that blood, all that goddamn blood, sticky, stinking). It only made things worse, though, so she examined her current situation minutely… unpleasant as it was.

She thought: I came home to see my family after being gone for five years. I came home with a hit record under my belt, a lot of money from a successful yet grueling tour which nearly killed me (nearly killed all of us), and a heroin habit. I came home, not expecting much, but finding that my dad had accepted who and what I was, was maybe even proud of me. That would have been enough. I could have been happy. Maybe it was what I needed all the time, just that. Not the music or the life or the money or the drugs, just acceptance, understanding. Yes, I could have been happy. Except, I wandered into this goddamn nightmare and what the hell is this all about, what—

Johnny concentrated his light on something bobbing in the water. “A dead one,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Just a rat,” he told her. “Lots of ’em down here. Always has been. The heavy rains probably drove most of ’em to higher ground, the rest maybe drowned.”

“Rats. Christ.”

Johnny shrugged. “Not so bad. They won’t bother you. Trust me, rock star, infinitely preferable to what walks above.”

So they kept going and Lisa kept trying to forget about the gnawing in her belly while making concessions about rats being preferable to the rabids, as Johnny called them, haunting the streets above.

It was not easy.

She felt ready to crawl out of her skin.

There was something indefinably eerie about all this.

“Hey, Rambo?” she said, needing badly to hear a voice, even her own. “Before you said that I was naïve. That I didn’t know what this was all about. What did you mean by that? Do you know?”

He looked at her, looked away. “I know some things.”

“And?”

“Take too long.”

Great. Mystery man clutching secrets to his bosom. “It had to happen quick, right? I mean, the whole fucking town? If it took weeks, the authorities would have been involved. They would’ve stopped it or quarantined this place or something. Right?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” He touched her arm, paused. “It depends what they’re up to. Who can say?”

She sighed. “You speak in riddles, white man. I’m just saying whatever this is it went fast. You were here… how fast did it happen?”

“I live outside town. In the woods. I wasn’t here.”

“You were close enough.”

“You wanna know how it happened? I’ll tell you that much. There was a storm. Not the bad one. Just a rainstorm a few days before. I was out of town, didn’t see it. Old guy who lived out by me said it was strange… a black rain. Ink-black.”

Lisa stared at him. “Black rain?”

“Yes.” Johnny shrugged. “That’s what he said. Lasted only for a couple minutes, he said, that blackness. Other than that, it was just a normal rain. Next day, people were getting sick. Flu symptoms. Closed the school, lots of businesses. Nobody thought it was odd, what with all the flu raging around the country. Then we got that bad storm, shut the town down. When it was over…”

“It was like this?”

“Yes.”

“You think there was something in the rain?” she asked.

“Could be,” he said, his tone lifeless. “Could very well be. Like I said, I never go into town much. But I can imagine how it went—everyone calling into work and what not, laying around in their beds, dizzy and weak, puking maybe, not liking the sunlight at all. Sleeping a lot. Maybe when they finally woke up, they weren’t the same anymore. They’d changed. And what happened then? They started seeking out the ones who hadn’t been infected so they could spread it, whatever got to them. A race purge, you know? Eliminate the normal ones, the different ones. Bring ’em into the fold or kill ’em.”

“This is creeping me out,” Lisa admitted. “Like they’re… they’re…”

“Vampires? Is that what you were thinking?”

“I guess.”

“Why not?” Johnny said, finding the comparison acceptable.

He wouldn’t say anything after that, but he really didn’t have to. Oh, Lisa knew he knew more than he was saying. But she honestly didn’t want to know more. Enough was enough.

Whatever happened was evil.

And maybe that was silly and superstitious, but it was the only word that seemed to apply: evil.

Of course, being down here in the sewers wasn’t helping a goddamn thing.

She didn’t feel any safer down here.

It was like wandering through the musty confines of a tomb. In her head, despite her attempts to steel herself, there was that voice telling her there was danger here. No, maybe it wasn’t exactly a voice as such, but, God, it was clear, it’s meaning crystal. She couldn’t do a thing to dissuade it.

Maybe it was instinct.

Logic and reasoning were impotent in its shadow.

It made her heart thud dully like a hammer into a bag of sand, made the breath positively wheeze from her lungs as if her throat had constricted down to a pinhole, her air sacs thick with dust. Her skin was cold, damp, and shivering and it didn’t have shit to do with this sodden, inundated pesthole. It came from within, bled through every swollen pore, every dilated blood vessel. It filled her guts with warm, rolling jelly, snapped her eyes wide and unblinking. The hairs along the back of her neck were straight and taut as wires.

She’d never known such complete and total terror before.

Maybe it had something to do with the monkey on her back, but she honestly didn’t think so. Her adrenaline was high, electric, surging in every cell and for once, the need seemed to be nonexistent.

Is that what it took to go clean?

Either days of agony in some dark room or mindless fear?

“Stop,” Johnny said to her.

“Why? What is it?”

There was an edge to his voice and she didn’t like it at all.

Her heart practically kicked out of her chest like a boot through wet cardboard.

Johnny cocked his head to the side, narrowed his eyes.

He kept playing the light ahead, but the beam made it only fifteen, twenty feet at best before being swallowed by the stygian murk. Fingers of mist curled from the gently sluicing water.

Lisa wiped a sheen of dampness from her face, became very aware of the beat of her heart, her breathing.

She kept watching.

A cigarette butt floated by.

A few leaves.

Water dripped and dripped.

“I thought I heard something,” he whispered. He turned around, flashing the beam behind them. “Maybe I was wrong.”

Yeah, and maybe I’m ready to piss my pants out of sheer imagination, she thought fearfully, but I seriously doubt it.

They moved on wordlessly, communicating their dread silently. It rode on their backs like some black amorphous shadow, one with weight, with awful texture. It slid frozen fingers around their throats, whispered horrid truths in their ears.

And ahead… that tunnel, the burrow of some huge and obscene worm twisting into utter blackness.

“Stop,” Johnny said, this time a frantic whisper.

He had clutched Lisa’s arm, holding it tight and sure, not letting go.

And there it was.

A brief moment after their splashing footfalls ended, so did others.

Johnny swung around, bringing up the shotgun and the flashlight. Yes, behind them. He stood motionless and Lisa stood at his side, formed concrete, the guitar case oddly weightless for a change.

A minute.

Two.

Three.

Splash, splash, splash.

No more cat and mouse, the hunt was on.

Prey had to be brought down with claws and teeth. And it wasn’t only the sounds of approaching feet—many of them, in fact—but worse things now, echoing through the black throat of the sewers. Muted screams, cries, chattering, shrill childlike laughter. And scraping sounds like sticks were being dragged along the bricks… or sharp, bony fingers.

“Get ahead of me,” Johnny told her, afraid, but very much in control. “There’s a manhole up ahead. Run for it!”

Lisa needed no further urging: she ran.

Running, running, running.

No easy matter in two feet of thick, turgid water.

Running with Johnny at her back, the flashlight casting wild, creeping shadows in every direction, knife-edged black phantoms washing over them.

And the echoes—thundering, reverberating. Their own and those of the things that gave chase.

Lisa’s legs were filled with sand as they pumped along, aching, tired, but refusing to give in until the hunters brought them down. Splashing, water spraying in her face, soaking her guitar case which she knew was waterproof but could’ve cared less if it wasn’t. Vintage, expensive guitar? Fuck it, there were others. She planned on beating off her attackers with it if it came to that.

And they were gaining.

She was sure of it.

Maybe she could not hear it with all that echoing noise, but she could feel it just fine. She almost went on her ass half a dozen times, but through luck or pluck she stayed upright and then before her, thank God, there it was.

The ladder.

“Gimme your guitar,” Johnny said, pulling it from her hands and replacing it with the short-barreled shotgun and the flashlight.

Lisa did not argue.

He went up the rungs like a monkey, pulling the guitar case with him. At the top she heard him grunting and exerting, heard a metallic groan, iron scratched over cement. Then light… feeble, but light… spilling in from above.

He pulled himself up and out.

“NOW!” he shouted to her. “COME UP NOW!”

But she didn’t move as fast as she wanted to, almost as if some grim curiosity had to see what could make such sounds.

But then she smelled them, offensive, ripe like wet dogs.

Something kicked into her throat, maybe her heart, maybe a clot of raw terror.

But it got her moving.

She clawed her way up the rungs and she could hear the rabids shrieking and snarling, feel the cold air they brought with them, smell their breath like raw, spoiled meat.

And then Johnny somehow had hold of her and hoisted her out effortlessly.

He held her to him, maybe a moment too long, but it felt good, right, necessary. Then they were on their feet and Johnny was pushing the lid back on the manhole and he almost had it, but it was too late.

A tangle of clawing, clutching hands erupted around the edges of the lid, a mutiny of dead white fingers. The lid went clattering into the street. So many hands, four or five anyway, but small, delicate.

The hands of children.

Somehow, this was worse.

Yes, Lisa thought madly, the kids still hang around down there, Johnny. It’s still their place, even now.

Then they were running again, the feel of the damp night, the chill breeze so beautiful, so refreshing after the cloistered, suffocating underworld. The moon brooded above, huge, round, the color of fresh bone. A lonely, omnipotent killing eye, it described the city in a wan glow.

A harvest moon, a hunter’s moon.

The very thing to hunt and die by, as it was in the ancient world.

Although Lisa was exhausted, her legs rubbery and knotted with pain, she kept going, trying to stay up with Johnny who, despite the fact he was nearly twice her age, was in much better condition. So it wasn’t that surprising that she didn’t see the curb that spilled her to the sidewalk, made her nose kiss the cement, brought blood.

And maybe they smelled it.

The rabids.

Because it brought them, a swarm of them.

They came crawling and leaping out of the shadows like hyenas for fresh meat. They moved with a perverse, slinking motion as if they were more snake than human, boneless and fluid. They crept from behind the hulks of cars, from the mouths of alleys, through broken windows, and, yes, from manholes.

Jesus, so many.

Hissing and slavering, they came. An inhuman throng grinning with cruel mouths slashed in red against clownwhite faces, sinister yellow eyes, huge and unblinking, fingers hooked, matted fright wigs for hair. Naked, clothed, dressed in rags and what might have been the bloodied skins of domestic animals and human beings.

And the sounds.

Chatterings and chitterings and throaty growls. Shrill pipings and congested whisperings as they advanced.

A teenage girl came hopping out on all fours, screaming, teeth snapping.

Johnny cut in her in half with the shotgun, racked it, and killed two others.

In the span of less than thirty seconds there were five bodies on the pavement, limbs still twitching, mouths still chomping, teeth still grinding.

Johnny and Lisa made their break as the rabids set on their fallen comrades.

Lisa, her brain a hive of rushing noise, looked back once and saw them.

Dozens now, tearing and feasting and fighting.

But what really wrecked her was the sight of a little girl, no more than five or six, clad in stained yellow Dr. Denton’s, ripping free a decapitated head from a strand of bloody meat. Tearing it free and clutching it to her bosom like a soccer ball and scuttling off into the shadows with it.

That’s what made Lisa start screaming.

14

Lou Frawley watched the shoes under the stall door.

They did not move, did not do anything. Like a knife in the shadows, they waited for him, waited for his soft neck to get in range.

There was something caught in his throat.

It was cold and slippery. When he swallowed it back down, it landed thick in his belly like a shivering clump of coagulated grease. It could not be digested, could not be voided. It hung there, spreading out tentacles of nausea and making him want to vomit very badly.

Terror. Yes, terror so absolute it physically manifested itself.

How long, he had to wonder, could a person live on a raw diet of such continuous horror? How long before it brought on a coronary or a stroke?

He clutched the .38 tightly in his fist and approached the stall door.

The bathroom lights buzzed overhead as if the fluorescent tubes were full of wasps. A trickle of sweat ran down his spine. Every time he thought he could know no more fear, no more trembling apprehension, this town threw something new at him. Its menu of dread lunacy was inexhaustible.

He paused a few feet away from the stall door.

Far enough back that whoever was in there wouldn’t be able to kick it open and get the jump on him. He stood there, wondering what he should do—get the hell out or look this in the face and kill it if it indeed needed killing.

He stepped around the side of the door so he was out of range.

His palms damp with perspiration, he reached out for the catch on the door.

If it was locked from the inside, he decided right then and there, he wasn’t bothering with it. No way in hell he was going under or over the walls.

Too damn dangerous.

This was bad enough.

He could smell the owner of those shoes just fine. It smelled like he’d just shit his pants. But there was another odor there, too, a sharp, lingering stink that made Lou’s flesh go tight. Eyes bulging, teeth locked together, he took hold of the latch and gave it a little pull.

Unlocked, the door swung noiselessly out.

A man was sitting on the toilet, his eyes glazed like those of a dead fish on a toxic beach, staring sightlessly. He wore a dark blue cop’s uniform, badge in place. There was a shotgun clutched in his hands, the barrel jabbed under his throat. Behind his head there was a great smear of dark, sticky material.

Lou reached out to touch him, his brain screaming, did he do it? Did he do it? Did he—

He touched the man’s arm.

It was stiff and unyielding.

Dead, yes, certainly.

Lou sighed, letting some of the terror run out of him as if somebody had pulled a drain plug somewhere in his soul. It subsided.

He jabbed a finger at the cop’s shoulder.

The shotgun and the hands that held it slid down a few inches and his face fell right off. Not just his face, but the entire front of his head slid free like ice from a roof and landed in his lap with a wet, bloody thud, a few pounds of raw hamburger.

Lou wheeled around, teeth clenched, dry heaves convulsing his belly.

Blew his head off, sure. Nothing to be afraid of.

This cop had balls. When whatever took this town settled into him as well, he’d taken his own life. That took courage, foresight. For even death was better than becoming an animal like those prowling the streets.

Lou could almost picture him coming in here, perhaps even calmly, the infection clawing at his brain. Sitting on the toilet and doing what he knew must be done.

Yes, this guy—his name badge said FRANK CONVERS—was strong.

The weak ones were outside.

Lou closed the stall door, giving Convers the only respect and privacy possible in this convoluted, primeval world that eons ago had been called Cut River. He mumbled some half-remember prayer from his childhood and left the restroom.

Out in the station, he studied the other entrance off the bullpen.

No door, just an arch. But it was dark in there, horrible, forbidding. Like the entrance to the cave of some voracious beast. Such darkness… as if someone had hung a blanket on the other side of the doorway. It bled into the bullpen, tendrils of it, a creeping midnight fungus.

Fuck it.

Lou waltzed right over there, reached inside along the wall. He found a switch right away, turned it on.

It was sort of a duty room, he guessed.

There were more desks, a podium, lockers against the wall. Nothing threatening, only his fevered imagination this time creating monsters out of whole cloth.

But if he didn’t have the right, then who?

There were places for them to hide, of course: under tables, behind cabinets. There were always places. But his sense of perception was getting preternaturally sharp by that point. A tool of instinct reborn in a world of computers and biotechnology gone to ruin.

No, this place was safe.

He made a quick inspection, hoping for something, anything, that might give him a clue to this horror show and how it had happened. But there was nothing. Duty roster on the podium. Scraps of paper here and there with crabbed phone numbers or license plate numbers, addresses, descriptions of vehicles.

No, no answers here. Only more questions.

Beyond the row of lockers, set in a little ell, there was a heavy steel door with a wedge of safety glass in it two-thirds of the way up. There was a red sign to the right of it that said:

WARNING

AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY

CONTAINMENT AREA

Containment area?

Lou went up to it and looked through the glass. It was brightly lit within. There were what appeared to be three or four small holding cells. Probably kept the bad guys here until they were delivered to the county lock-up.

He was about to turn away when he saw a shadow shift in there, in the far cell.

Was he really seeing it?

He pressed his face up to the cool glass. Yes. Someone was in there, hunched in the corner. He kept watching them. They made no aggressive or questionable movements.

What was there to worry about, really?

They were in a cell for chrissake.

Only in movies did maniacs or monsters burst through iron bars.

Lou opened the door and there was a loud buzzing sound from an alarm.

He knew if he went in and let the door close behind him, there would be no getting out; as a safety precaution, he saw, you needed a second party to let you out from the other side.

Good he noticed that.

He let it close and found a chair, dragged it over there. He opened the door, that damn buzzing rattling him again. He put the chair in front of the door. But it was heavy and made to close automatically. It dragged the chair with it, but could not close all the way.

He climbed over the chair and into the containment area.

Cells against one wall, a small desk opposite with a keypad on it. Sure, the buttons opened the cells. If he didn’t touch those he was safe.

He walked to the far cell.

Some guy was hunched up in the corner. He wasn’t moving.

Lou found his voice. “Hey,” he said. “You in there.”

The head snapped around.

Some young guy, unshaven, face slack, eyes darting from his skull. “You… you’re not one of them?” he asked like he couldn’t believe it.

“No, I’m normal. You?”

The guy was on his feet and up to the bars so fast Lou stepped back. “Jesus Christ… oh shit… get me out of here before she comes back. Hurry.” He pressed his face to the bars, looking nervously towards the door. “If she comes back, she’ll kill us both. I’ve been pretending I was dead every time she came in here. Come on, man! Don’t just fucking stand there!”

Lou went over to the desk, to the keypad. He pressed one button after the other. There was a buzzing and the cell doors each made a metallic clicking sound and opened an inch or two.

The guy came running out, grasped Lou happily by the shoulders.

“I’m Steve,” he said.

“Lou.”

“Okay. You got a gun. Good. Might need it.” He kept casting a wary eye towards the door as if he was expecting the Devil to waltz in any moment. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, twenty-three years old, but his eyes were ancient. “Drunk driving. They threw me in for drunk driving. And then that shit happened… oh for Christ’s sake, did the world end? What happened?”

“I don’t know. I got here a few hours ago,” Lou told him, the idea that it had only been a few hours sucking the wind from him, “and, well, everything’s gone crazy here. But, no, the world hasn’t ended. Just Cut River. It’s gone.”

Steve looked like he needed to cry badly. His eyes were wet, his lips trembling. “We have to get out of here, man. We gotta be gone when she comes back.”

“She?”

Steve looked exasperated. “She’s… well, shit, there’s no time for that,” he said, pulling Lou to the door. “I’ll explain later if we make it out.”

Out the door they went into the duty room.

Steve was holding Lou’s arm like a frightened child. He started blabbering about how terrible she was, how she’d slaughtered the prisoners that weren’t infected. How she’d released the ones that were. How he’d played dead every time she came around, mimicking the coma the infected ones went into at the end, right before they woke up—

“How about we just be quiet?” Lou suggested, the guy’s frantic, droning voice getting under his skin.

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Steve said. “You’re right, you’re right.”

Lou figured this woman was probably another psycho and he knew how to deal with them, thank you very much… at least he hoped so. Then he started wondering if guns would stop them. But he put that from his mind. They were flesh and blood (he hoped), they were alive. Sick, contaminated, insane, but still living. Yes, they would die. If you asked them the right way, they would die just fine. He had the .38, but something a little heavier would have been nice.

“Do you know where they keep the guns?” he asked Steve.

“No. I mean, there’s gotta be a weapon’s locker around here somewhere, but it’s not something they tell us convicts about,” he said, half-joking, half-serious.

“Don’t suppose then, you’d know where the keys to those cruisers outside are?”

Steve nodded happily. “Sure. They’re right in the cruisers.”

“They leave the keys in ’em?”

“Small-town, man. Nobody steals too many cars here and especially not a patrol car for chrissake. What would be the point? Kind of obvious aren’t they?”

Lou shrugged.

Well there, at last, was something he could use. If the keys were in them and the radios were working, then he could contact the state police or drive out of town and probably both. It was a plan.

As they eased out into the bullpen, Steve said, “Unless, you know, one of them got to the cars. It’s possible. They’re not stupid, you know. Not at all.”

They made it out of the police station and started down the long, shadowy corridor. Steve was still stuck to Lou like a wart on a witch’s ass. Lou kept trying to give him the hint by trying to gently push him away, but it did no good.

As they moved quietly down the hallway, Lou was struck by the emptiness, that awful pressing, confining sense of claustrophobia that he was a mouse in a maze, every movement being studied, the walls trembling, ready to crush him at any moment.

They made it to the entryway and the front door was standing open, blackness and damp blowing in. And that stopped Lou dead because he was certain he’d closed it behind him. He could’ve sworn he had… hadn’t he? It was all such a muddle in his brain it was really hard to say.

His grip was wet on the .38. He thought the gun might slip from his hand like a greasy banana.

“Okay,” he said to Steve in a whisper, “we’re going to go straight out those doors and then we’re making for the parking lot and one of those cruisers. You lag behind, you fuck up in any way, I leave your ass. You understand me?”

Steve nodded sullenly. “Yes. I know. I know we…”

But his voice faded away as a sound came drifting down the stairs off to their right, a cold inhuman cackling like marbles rattling in a metal can. No more human than that and maybe even less.

“Stay with me… stay here with me.”

Lou wheeled madly about, bringing the gun up.

The stairwell was a well of grainy shadows.

Steve let out a strangled gasp and she came.

One minute there was darkness brooding before them and the next… the next she came out of it, seeping like oil. And maybe had Lou been smart he would have opened up on her, but he didn’t. Whereas the Snake Woman had appalled him, filled him with a sense of crawling horror, this one inspired lust.

She poured out of the darkness, smooth and easy as cream, wearing a gun belt and nothing else, a nightstick in her hand. She was tall with a cap of short spiky black hair, her skin white as marble. Her legs were long and shapely, her breasts jutting like traffic cones. She moved with such a pure animal grace, with such a fluid sweep of muscle, she was on them in seconds, her eyes yellow drowning pools.

Lou took a step backward or maybe forward, because, Jesus, crazy as it was, he wanted her badly. Wanted those taut arms and legs wrapped around him, wanted those full lips on his own. She was a woman from a fantasy, from a skin magazine. And, God help him, he couldn’t keep his eyes off the sliver of pubic hair between her legs.

And then two things happened.

Steve screamed.

And the woman touched Lou… and her hand, cold as refrigerated beef, took his wrist and he saw that she was not beautiful or desirable at all. Streaks of something sticky had dried in slashes across her belly and down her legs like the dark flow of menstrual blood. Her hair was wild and greasy, her teeth gnashing, chattering, begging to be put to use.

And those eyes, those horrible eyes, rimmed in silver, two yellow miasmic holes that looked down into a snakepit.

And she was growling.

Her head darted forward like a viper’s, anxious to bite into his throat.

Steve was yelling something at him, but Lou couldn’t seem to make it out.

“SHOOT HER!” he cried. “SHOOT HER YOU DUMB GODDAMN IDIOT!”

And Lou understood as pale white arms encircled him like the frigid tentacles of some deep-sea squid. She was a monster and he had to kill her. Simple as that.

He pulled the trigger and the chamber explosion rocked him back into reality, but the barrel of the gun was behind the woman and the bullet drilled harmlessly into the paneling.

And then she slapped the .38 from his fist.

Her hand, palm flattened, struck him in the chest and he went down on his ass.Steve made a run for the door and she caught him by the collar and spun him around in a perfect circle, his head slamming into the wall with a hollow thud. His knees went to putty and he collapsed.

Lou was screaming now as he crawled madly on all fours for the gun and actually felt his fingertips brush it as she took hold of one of his ankles and flipped him over effortlessly.

And then she was on him.

He could feel her marble skin sucking the warmth from him as she pinned him down, rode him like a lover, legs to either side, pelvis grinding against him crudely. He clawed and punched at her and she trapped his arms. Her face came in closer, closer, a ribbon of foamy slime hanging from her lips and running down one of his cheeks, cold as Freon. Then her lips brushed over his and her tongue licked his face like a lollipop, leaving a burning trail in its wake and all he could think of was the germs, that pestiferous infection eating into him like acid and that revolting stink like rotting fish.

It was over and he knew it.

She was too strong. He couldn’t fight her.

Her teeth flashed and she made to bite him in the throat… and then there was a clap of thunder and she fell off him.

Steve was on his knees a few feet away with the gun in his hand.

The woman came back up, a bloody hole in her shoulder.

Steve fired again and the bullet pulverized her cheek, leaving a raw bleeding cavity draped by a flap of smoking skin.

He never got another one off.

She launched herself at him and struck him like a freight train exiting a tunnel. They went down in a heap and her teeth sank into his throat and Steve’s screams turned to a watery gurgling and then there was blood everywhere as his jugular painted them both red.

And then Lou had the gun.

She snapped her head in his direction, red ruined face electric with triumph. Her mouth was hanging open, lips drawn away from bloodstained teeth.

Lou put a bullet in her head.

She flopped over, limbs twitching.

He put another slug in her head and she was still.

Making a shrill moaning sound, he ran for the door and was outside into the night, the air so fresh, so welcome, so cleansing.

He nearly fell down the steps and if he had, if he had—

They would have gotten him.

He would have fallen right into their midst.

They were everywhere now. Like locusts swarming a field, they were thronged at the foot of the steps, leering and howling, driven into a rage at the smell of blood coming from inside.

He fired at them until the .38 clicked on an empty chamber.

He threw it and turned, running back inside.

He could hear them coming, hear them screeching and hissing. He went back to where Steve and the woman lay in a spreading ocean of blood. He flipped her over, popped the catch on her gun belt and slid her 9mm semi-auto out of its holster. He worked the slide and put a round in the chamber.

And they were on him.

Two, then three of them.

Snarling and snapping, their hooked fingers tore at him like claws.

He rolled away and brought the 9mm to bear. He gave them each a round that did little more than distract them, buying him time, and then he was sprinting down the corridor and into the police station. He found the door marked EXIT he’d seen before and threw himself out into the night, missing the steps entirely and coming down hard on the sidewalk.

Dazed, he pulled himself up, the gun still—miraculously—in his hand. He’d split his lip on the concrete and his mouth was wet, metallic-tasting.

Not much time now.

But the parking lot was before him, he could see the cars.

Going to make it, a voice in his head was saying. You’re going to make it, by God.

He started running towards the cruisers, his body aching, his lungs raw, but it was just a little further, a little further. Behind him, the EXIT door flew open and they began pouring out, dozens and dozens of them, the citizens of Cut River.

Men, women, and children.

A pack of dogs, shrieking and yelping, an insane sea of white faces and clutching hands. Lou fired a few more rounds in their direction and then he was in the parking lot.

He threw himself behind the wheel of the nearest cruiser, noting the riot gun in its holder, and his fingers sought madly for dangling keys and found them.

Bless you, Steve, God bless you.

He threw the locks on the doors and started the cruiser up, his body thrumming with a mixture of joy and terror. He could hear traffic on the radio and knew that the world still existed. Really, truly existed out there somewhere.

He squealed in reverse and saw the lot was full of them.

Like human insects they hopped and careened and spread out. They rushed at the cruiser and he drove straight through them, casting them aside as he roared out into the street, the last straggler sliding from the hood.

And then he was in the streets.

Safe. Free.

15

“We ain’t getting out,” Joe said with sobering finality. “None of us are. Not by road, anyway.”

He tooled slowly up the streets, driving nowhere in particular. Just driving and driving and driving. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to go. Not until something occurred to them, some escape route.

Nancy and Ben had both been quiet since Joe plowed through that army of psychos. But inside Nancy’s mind, it was not quiet at all. She didn’t know much about these people, about Joe and Ruby Sue, but what she did know, she did not like.

They had an agenda.

It was illegal and they freely admitted as much. They’d lied about when they arrived in town and for some reason this really ate at Nancy. And what for God’s sake were their last names? Maybe that was a small thing, but it mattered.

Just Joe and Ruby Sue.

She supposed bikers were like that. Christian names. Nicknames. Nothing more. But she was not part of that world and did not want to be part of that world. What it came down to was that she did not trust these people. And the more she didn’t trust them, the more she didn’t like them.

“This is so weird,” Ruby Sue was saying. “Totally wild. I saw this movie once, you know, where this city was, like, taken over by vampires. This guy—he was the last human being left—he lived in this house and hung garlic and crosses and shit on the door. At night they’d come banging on the doors, the vampires would, and he’d sit there and get drunk.”

“I don’t think they’re vampires,” Ben said.

“Yeah, I know. But wouldn’t it be wild if they were?”

Ben and Nancy looked at each other, shook their heads.

Joe kept on driving. “What we need to do people, I think, is find some place to hole up in. What do you think?”

Ben nodded. “Sounds good. It’s obvious they won’t let us leave.”

“Right. So we hole up somewhere for the night, see what day brings. This town can’t just fall off the edge of the planet without somebody noticing. My guess is by morning, people are starting to ask questions. Maybe then the cops or the army or somebody will come in and clean this place out.”

Ruby Sue said, “Right. And, hey, maybe they only come at night. Maybe they’ll hide in the daytime.”

“Oh, would you get off the vampire-thing already?” Nancy said, sterner than she’d meant to.

“It’s just an idea.”

Yeah, right, Nancy thought, like you’ve ever really had one of those.

Any other time, she would have been all over someone like Ruby Sue.

Nancy had a real low tolerance for airheads and dizzy blonde bitches of any variety. Usually by now she would have been tearing into Miss Ruby Sue, jumping on every vacuous remark, every twirl of her hair, but tonight she just didn’t have the strength.

She kept thinking about Sam.

Wondering if it was even remotely possible he was still alive. She decided it probably wasn’t… but she still clung to the possibility. They weren’t that close, really, for a brother and sister. Seldom saw each other, seldom had time to take interest in each others’ lives… but Sam was still her brother. She still felt his loss, kept seeing them playing together as children, saw the good times and the golden moments. She had everything she could do not to start crying.

But that would be for later.

For now, there was this mess… and Ruby Sue.

Joe pulled the Jeep to a stop on Chestnut right before a grocery store, Northland A & P.

“It looks quiet here,” he said. “This is as good a place as any.”

“A grocery store?” Nancy said with amazement.

“Yeah, why not?”

“No, it’s a good idea,” Ben said, warming to it. “Food. Drinks. Everything we need. What could be better?”

“An armory, a police station.”

Ruby Sue laughed. “You guys ever see that movie where this gang attacks the police station? That was wild. There was this one part where—”

“Let’s go,” Joe said.

He popped all their door locks and they got out. He went around back of the Jeep and opened the hatch. He took out a black duffel bag and went to the door of the A & P.

“It’s locked,” Nancy said.

Ruby Sue laughed. “So what?”

Joe took a small leather bag out of his duffel. Using a penlight, he sprayed some lubricant into the lock and began manipulating the tumblers with a little L-wrench. Within five minutes, the lock clicked open. “After you,” he said, holding the door open.

“What if this trips some sort of alarm…” Nancy began to say and then realized how stupid that sounded. “Ignore me. Just ignore me.”

They’d all been looking at her, but now they went in.

Joe locked the door behind them.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Ruby Sue said. “What if we trip some silent alarm, you know? But then I thought, so what? Send in the fucking marines, man. Good to go.”

Nancy squeezed her eyes shut tightly, was truly frightened because she was starting to think like Ruby Sue. And that was a very scary thing. She decided she’d probably rather become like one of those zombies out there than a total airhead. It would be less painful to everyone concerned.

The display cases at the front of the store were lit up and there were occasional fluorescent ceiling panels illuminated throughout. It was dim in spots, but not dark. And the food—snacks, drinks, the deli, bakery. Nancy hadn’t realized how hungry she was until this moment. Now her stomach was growling.

She followed Ruby Sue to the donut case and started chewing on a long john, while Ruby Sue found a Bavarian.

Ben and Joe were eating slabs of ham from the deli case, slugging back beers.

It was a fine, peaceful moment.

Nancy sat there on the counter, eating and thinking this was the most relaxed she’d been since they stumbled into this hellhole. It was funny, she’d only lived an hour or so away from Cut River most of her life, but she’d never once visited before this day. It was all very ironic, she supposed.

Fucked-up, ugly, sadly ironic.

She wondered how the kids were doing. Just fine, no doubt. Watching TV. Playing games. Maybe raising hell. Never for a moment guessing that their Uncle Sam had been murdered or the nightmare their mother and stepfather were wading through.

Better it’s us, she decided. I couldn’t handle this if they were here.

Joe and Ben were eating silently. They hadn’t really warmed to each other beyond small talk. Nancy was wondering exactly what sort of man Joe was. He went through the door like a professional. What did that say exactly? She decided they were damn lucky to have him with them, a guy who knew shit like that. He would probably know other stuff, too.

“We’re going exploring,” Ben announced.

Which left Nancy with Ruby Sue.

Whereupon, Ruby Sue began to ply her with questions about where she was from, how long her and Ben had been married, if they had children, what they did for a living. It went on and on. By the time Ruby Sue took a breath, Nancy’s head was spinning madly.

“There’s an apartment upstairs,” Ben said when he returned maybe five minutes later. “Nobody home. Only way in is up a stairway in the back. Joe says it will be a good place to hide out later on. If… if they try to come after us, we can go up there. They’d have to come up the stairwell to get us, so we could hold ’em off.”

“With what?” Nancy wanted to know. “Loafs of rye bread? Cans of Mini Ravioli?”

“Guns,” Ruby Sue piped up. “We’ll stop ’em with guns.”

Nancy looked at her. “And where, pray tell, will we get those?”

Ruby Sue grinned. “You gotta be prepared, girl. It’s what the Boy Scouts say.” She opened her coat and pulled out a shiny black automatic about the size of a paperback book. “Course, they don’t pack this kind of firepower.”

“Jesus,” Ben said, running a hand through his beard, “is it real?”

Nancy shook her head. “No, it’s a fucking squirt gun, Ben.”

“Yes, it’s real,” Ruby Sue said.

It seemed a reasonable question to her.

She hefted it in the air, taking up a firing stance and mouthing Bang! Bang! soundlessly. She went up to Ben, rubbed against him, pressed the gun into his hand like she was offering her tit—which, Nancy decided, probably would be next—and wrapped his fingers around it. “Take it, Ben. It’s yours. You know how to work it?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

She showed him the safety catch. How to work the slide to jack a round into the chamber. “See? Easy. Easy as pie, honey.”

Nancy sat there, thinking: I can’t believe her. Right in front of me yet.

Nancy was looking her up and down now.

Yeah, she was a slutty little airhead, all right. And that would have been fine except that she had a nice body on her, too. Face wasn’t the best, but cute in a girl-next-door sort of way. Nancy’s skin felt hot. She hadn’t had curves like that since she was nineteen.

“Is this legal? Full auto?” Ben asked.

“Fuck no!” Ruby Sue said, still maintaining body contact with him via hip and arm. “But I won’t tell if you don’t.”

Ben smiled. “You should keep it. In case there’s trouble.”

“Don’t want anything happening to me?” Ruby Sue seethed. “That’s cool. Don’t worry, Joe has others.”

“Others?” Nancy said incredulously.

“What do you think’s in his bag, Nanc? Cookies? We came here to do something. We came prepared,” she said and said no more on the subject. “You keep this one, Ben. I want you to have it.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“Just point it and shoot. Bam! Dick through a donut.”

“You’re definitely handy,” he said and Nancy did not like his tone at all.

“Oh, you’d be surprised how handy I can be.” Ruby Sue’s words dripped with sex.

Nancy hopped off the counter. “Excuse me,” she said. “But I’m right here and I happen to be his wife.”

“Lighten up,” Ruby Sue said. “I won’t break him.”

Nancy stared, eyes gone liquid green.

“Way I’m thinking,” Ruby Sue said, oblivious to it all, “is that these people here are, like, infected with something. But they’re still human… or almost. What we gotta do is shoot ’em in the heads. You know, like zombies? Blow their brains out. Bet that stops ’em.”

“Shut up!” Nancy cried.

“What—”

“Listen,” she said in a haunted voice. “Listen.”

They did.

They had company.

A group of people had assembled out on the sidewalk. They stood stock-still as if waiting for some sign, some command to begin the inevitable. And then apparently, they received it. They pressed in, a tight knot of white faces and leering eyes.

They pushed up against the glass.

Ruby Sue said, “Oh shit.”

Ben started walking towards the front of the store, the automatic in his fist.

Nancy called to him to come back, but he didn’t. Maybe the gun had given him courage, had turned his balls to drop-forged steel. But maybe he just wanted to see, needed to see what the hell this was all about. Get a good look at these savages, prove to himself that, yes, it was okay to kill them because they weren’t men and women (and children) anymore, just berserkers wearing the skins of the same.

They started beating on the plate glass windows.

A tall man, his chest infibulated with numerous gashes and lesions, pressed his hands flat against the glass door. He seemed to be weighing the possibility of gaining entrance. He tried the door, rattled it violently in its frame, then decided to do things the hard way. He let out a maniacal, blood-curdling scream like someone being roasted over a bed of coals.

It went right up Nancy’s spine like fingernails.

Grinning and foaming at the mouth, he began slamming his face into the glass. Not his fists. Not his feet. His face. He pounded it savagely against the glass, leaving a sticky smear of blood and slime with each impact. With each passing second, he put more and more force behind it until the glass began to bulge with each collision and the pounding reverberation of it rang out like the dirge of a funeral bell.

Then a series of tiny cracks fanned-out, met, and the glass shattered, exploded inward in a rain of jagged spikes.

The tall man stumbled in, his face a bloody ruin, his eyes bright and yellow like a stalking wolf’s. Bathed in blood, he seemed no worse for wear.

A dozen others followed him in.

One, a teenage girl wearing a stained pair of cranberry sweatpants and nothing more, stooped down and scooped up a blade of glass. She held it in her hands, seemed fascinated by it. Then she drew it in a straight line between her breasts down to her navel, slitting open the flesh. Then repeating the process with a transverse cut across her sternum, fashioning a crude, bleeding crucifix.

The blood ran.

She dipped her fingers into it and licked them clean.

Ben stood there, rooted to the spot like an old elm, just watching.

Nancy screamed to him and it seemed to break his trance.

He brought the automatic up and started shooting. He put four slugs into the tall man before it slowed him down. He shot an elderly woman in the head and she fell back, fountaining blood. Next came a set of twin boys, no more than ten or eleven. Only remotely human by this point, they scrambled forward on all fours.

Ben put more bullets in them.

He kept shooting until he used up his ammunition, then he turned and ran, shouting to Nancy to get upstairs, get upstairs.

Nancy turned and saw that Ruby Sue was gone.

No, not gone.

At the deli.

A cadaverous man in a Carhartt jacket had her by the hair and was dragging her back. She stomped on the instep of his work booted-foot, pivoted and kneed him in the groin. He released her, more out of surprise than anything else.

In that brief respite, she snatched up a plastic knife from a tray of them and sank it into his left eye. Then she ducked away and Nancy saw no more of her. Just her retreating form and a naked man with an eagle tattooed on his chest who brandished a severed arm, his penis obscenely erect like a missile.

None of the savages had taken notice of Nancy yet.

Five or six of them were in hot pursuit of Ben.

In the center of a cereal aisle, they boxed him in and lunged forward for the kill. Ben climbed right up the shelves, an avalanche of Cheerios and Frosted Flakes in his wake. He made it to the top of the shelves and stayed there.

A few followed him.

The smarter ones ran to catch him in the next aisle.

But he didn’t jump down, he ran straight down the flat top of the shelves kicking displays and signs out of his way, ducking the ceiling. At the end he dove off, straight at the man in the Carhart jacket, the guy who carried the plastic knife in his gored eye without concern. Ben slammed him flat and rolled off him, making for the rear of the store.

The savages were all loping in that direction now, howling and screeching and making horrible congested sounds.

Nancy flipped herself over the bakery counter, knowing there was no way she could join her husband or the others. She heard gunfire and peered over the lip of the counter and heard Ben shouting her name madly, saw him disappear in a clutching profusion of white hands. Then more gunfire.

She was thinking about those zombies from Night of the Living Dead… but they were nothing like these animals. Cinematic deadheads, crafty as rusty coat hangers, all the cunning of petrified rabbit shit, but these… these things, they were smart… and fast. Whatever contagion had consumed the population of Cut River, it had only amplified their cunning.

She pressed herself under the counter, her body rigid and jumping with terror.

A weapon. She needed a weapon. Something.

She looked around. Deep fryers. Cake pans. Pie tins. Bins of flour, sugar. A rolling pin. Her hand snaked out and grabbed it. Better than nothing. She could still hear them, gibbering and hissing, so very inhuman.

There was more gunfire. Moanings. Wet sounds. Thuds. Then… silence. She waited under the counter, her heart too large for her chest, banging like drum.

Were they all dead?

Everyone?

Even Ben? Joe? Ruby Sue? Lying dead with their attackers? Is that what happened?

Nancy needed badly to cry, to scream, to do anything but lay there, trembling like some frightened animal. The sense of loss—Sam and now possibly Ben—was huge and overwhelming, a feeling of violation. As if all the rules of normalcy had been set on their heads by some lunatic, giggling god. She couldn’t take it, couldn’t take anymore.

She pulled herself up gradually.

Slow, shuffling footsteps.

She froze, fear clinging to her like a sheet of ice. She lay under its weight, shivering, her brain desperately seeking the peace of blackness, of oblivion.

But she wouldn’t allow it.

She bit down on her lower lip, bringing pain bright and real.

The silence was heavy, filled with ominous potential or the lack of it. Someone was near. She knew that much. She could hear them breathing. Drawing in low, rattling breaths. Louder now.

And then a smell… Christ, like rotting meat.

Although herbrain demanded she hide, that she be still and silent, she could not be. She raised herself up careful inches, brought her face up over the lip of the counter to look, to see what form her death would take—

And something struck her square in the face.

She fell back, black dots before her eyes.

She never passed out, but it was close. Blood ran from her nose. She could taste it on her lips. Reality swam back in completely.

Whatever had struck her brought pain, but she was unaware of it, her mind locked now in battle mode, ready to fight to the death. She still had the rolling pin. Her fist was wrapped stiffly around it. As she moved, something rolled off her lap.

A softball.

Softball?

Yes, of course. That’s what had hit her. That’s what—

There was a little boy standing before her dressed in a muddy, rumpled blue suit. Looked like maybe he’d just come from choir practice. Seven, eight years old. No more. Nancy made to smile at him, but she saw his eyes, leering and yellow like full moons, filled with a total, unflinching hatred. A blind hate that was not human, not animal, but something feral and rabid.

Yes, he looked like a little boy, but he was not a little boy.

Some atavistic nightmare from the dawn of the race when people were predatory things that lived only to hunt and kill.

He smiled down at her, drool running from his lips.

His hair was wild, leaves stuck in it, his face was the color of fresh cream, but mottled and streaked with grime.

Not a boy, just a thing from a grave.

Nancy drew herself slowly to her feet. “Please,” she said, close to tears, very aware of the weight of the rolling pin in her hand. “I know you’re sick… you can’t help what you are, but I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t make me.”

He kept smiling, but came no closer. “Please,” he mocked in a choking voice thick with phlegm. “I don’t wanna hurt you, don’t make me.” Then he started to laugh, cold, baying laughter like the shrieking of a maniac.

Nancy took a step back, the flesh crawling on her bones, and he leapt.

She swung the rolling pin at him, but missed as he rammed into her, spilling the both of them to the floor. He was wild in her arms, fingers clawing, legs kicking, head thrashing, teeth snapping. Alive and deadly like a sack of copperheads, contorting and twisting in every direction as Nancy tried to keep his teeth from her. The feel of him… hideous, like living, breathing meat. She managed to hook a foot under him and launch him backwards.

He slammed into the counter with a sickly, fleshy thud.

He came again, a macabre grin slitting open his pallid face.

Nancy brought the rolling pin down and it crashed into the crown of his head. She heard a soft cracking sound. He pulled himself up and she kept bringing the rolling pin down until blood spattered her face and his head was caved-in like a rotting pumpkin. Until his skull was opened like a can, the contents running to the floor. And even then, she had to peel his cold fingers from her ankles where they were seized in a death grip. The back of his hands were gray and flaking.

Nancy staggered off, felt the wind being sucked from her lungs.

She went down to her knees, whimpering and shuddering, finally vomiting.

She only wanted to die then.

She’d killed a little boy.

That’s what this fucking town had done to her. Maybe it hadn’t acted like a boy or even looked too much like a boy, but once, yes, once it had been. An innocent child corrupted by this place, polluted. Cut River had done that to him and she’d supplied the final unspeakable denouement to his lamentable existence.

Again, totally numb, the part of her that had been human and hopeful just a windblown memory, Nancy got to her feet.

She started towards the back of the store to find the stairs, knowing it was where she had to go. Dragging her feet, she continued on.

She saw the stairs now, the door that hid them nearly ripped from its hinges. There was a tumble of bodies on the steps, great sections of their anatomies blown away. A scene from some medieval hell. Bodies heaped like jackstraw.

She would have to climb over them.

No other way.

Then she heard motion behind her.

She turned and brought up the rolling pin limply, no longer noticing that it was caked with blood and brains and tangles of hair.

Sam was standing there.

Something like October moonlight filled his eyes. They were a brilliant yellow, yes, the yellow of a pumpkin skull lit by a candle, but they seemed almost silvery, reflective like the surface of mirrors. She could see herself quite plainly in them. His flesh was colorless and he stank like death.

Nancy felt something wet tickle her lips and realized it was her tongue.

She took it all in and something in her shut down completely, refused to accept this. She could see the grisly wound on his neck, swollen purple, blackening at the edges, dried blood everywhere like rust.

He was dead.

He had to be dead.

No one could live with their throat laid open like that.

Sam grinned at her, a broad toothy smile of shining white teeth that was as evil and vicious as anything she’d ever seen. A baboon’s grin. He was no more human than that. There was nothing but desolation in those shining eyes, a ravening insanity.

“Nancy,” he said and it sounded like water dumped on a hot stove lid. “It doesn’t hurt at all, it just feels good.”

“Sam…”

But he was already too close, pulling her in with those terrible lies, a beast spinning half-truths, luring children into a dark wood. And Nancy went because she simply couldn’t help herself and she was tired of fighting and she just wanted to sleep now.

Sam had her hands in his own, his fingers like icicles.

The rolling pin clattered uselessly to the floor.

Before she could do so much as protest, he yanked her left arm up and sank his teeth into her wrist. And he lied, for it hurt. It hurt bad. His teeth were sharp, his tongue so cold, the foaming slime from his mouth thick and burning. She felt it snake its way into her bloodstream, a malignancy taking her cell by cell.

Then the world exploded and exploded.

Sam jerked and jerked, stumbled away from her. He let out a high, piercing scream of utter rage and utter suffering and then his face blew apart. He pitched over, striking the floor face first, his bullet-ridden body twitching.

“Nancy?” she heard a voice say. “Nancy?”

Then blackness, sweet and welcoming as the confines of the womb.

16

Lou Frawley drove mindlessly through the streets of the dead city.

He had half a tank of gas, deciding morosely that he would continue driving until he either passed-out or the needle hit empty. Regardless, he was surely not going to stop.

They would not have him.

In the thirty-odd minutes he’d been driving, he’d come to the same realization that Ben and Nancy Eklind and company had come to: there was no way out. He’d run into the same barricades they had, seen the same horrors, knew that Cut River was a cage, a maze, and that the psychos out there were just waiting for him to fuck up so they could have him.

So he drove and thought about the life he’d once had and wished to God Steve had survived so he could at least have some human company. Because being alone was the very worst thing. Nothing in creation compared to the phobia of solitude.

Though Lou had never been a religious man—he thought most churches were the theological version of pawnshops—he sincerely believed now that men and women had souls. After seeing the things that had once been the people of Cut River he was convinced of this.

Because they had no souls.

They were animals, monsters, walking deadwood, but not human beings.

Not like him.

And he realized after seeing the lack of souls in Cut River how precious a commodity the soul was. And his was decaying. From terror. From solitude.

As he drove, he saw the good citizens of the town going about their wicked business. He saw white faces leering from behind parked cars, trees, and shrubs. Saw them lurking in shadowy doorways and cul-de-sacs. Saw them peering from darkened windows and storefronts. They watched him pass, but did not attack. Not yet.

He saw an old lady wearing nothing but a scarf and a blanket standing guard at a stop sign with a double-edged axe.

He saw a throng of vile children dragging the butchered body of an obese woman into a side yard.

He saw a young yuppie couple standing on the curb, hand in hand, their naked bodies painted up with what almost looked to be runic symbols.

He saw a naked teenage girl digging a hole in a lawn and pushing a body down into it, burying it for later… and then urinating on the spot as if marking it with her scent.

And he saw others crawling over sloping roofs like cats, leering down from the high branches of trees. Many of them were doing this, as if seeking some high perch like human raptors.

Yeah, the town was gone.

There was no point in fighting.

The battle—if there had been one at all, which Lou doubted—was waged and lost. The enemy had won. They seemed to be somewhat intelligent, many of them. At least, he thought, intelligent enough to erect barricades of automobiles at all the roads leading out. And if they were smart enough to remember how to drive, to position those cars and trucks, then they were smart enough to use advanced weapons and technologies. It stood to reason. Sure, maybe they’d just pushed the cars in place, but that meant they knew enough to manipulate the keys and put transmissions in neutral so the vehicles could be moved.

But for some reason, he thought they’d probably driven them in place.

And that was a scary thought. But if that was true, then why weren’t they hunting him down in cars and trucks?

Why weren’t they using guns?

There were plenty of guns in this part of the state. Prime hunting country, guns were everywhere. But these people didn’t use them. They carried knives and clubs and hatchets and cleavers and had even fashioned spears (he had seen this). Maybe they didn’t use these objects because at some base level they shunned civilization. Maybe this is why they ripped phones from walls, shattered TVs and computers, crushed cell phones underfoot. And as far as guns went, they were too impersonal; you couldn’t feel your victims writhing flesh, their warm blood, taste their fear. Guns were for civilized peoples; barbarians preferred something more personal.

But was he giving them too much credit?

He didn’t think so.

Because, if you studied them (and God knew he had had plenty of opportunity for that) you saw that they were organized. Loosely, perhaps, tribal units maybe, hunting clans and no more. Not yet. But they didn’t wage war on one another, they seemed to coexist peacefully, cooperatively. Only the normal ones were their prey.

Yes, right now they were formed into small bands perhaps, but what if this raged on unchecked for months or years? Would they group together under a central leader?

Lou had his doubts because such a thing smacked of culture, of enlightenment, and these creatures had degenerated to a primitive, feral level and seemed to like it there just fine.

He was wondering why they only watched him and didn’t attack.

He was thinking this very thing when two of them ran out into the street ahead, madly waving their arms. He slowed down to draw them in. Maybe he couldn’t kill them all, but he could tag a few. It was better than nothing.

He slowed to a crawl.

C’mon, you crazy bastards, come to daddy.

They jogged up closer and as they got within range of the headlights he saw that one of them carried a shotgun. His worst fear realized, he was about to jam down the accelerator when he noticed that their eyes did not shine. Everywhere he went in Cut River, the headlights picked out their eyes shining in the dark.

These two did not have eyes like that.

And the way they moved… Jesus Christ in Heaven, they were human!

Lou threw open his door as they came up closer. A woman and a man. The woman was small, thin, dressed in a rain poncho and carried a guitar case of all things. The guy was outfitted like the cover of Soldier of Fortune.

“You’re human,” was all Lou could say.

“Yes, yes,” the woman said, sounding close to tears.

The man pushed her towards the rear door of the cruiser. “We better get the fuck out of here,” he said. “The natives are getting restless.”

Lou looked and saw them slinking in the shadows like cats ready to pounce.

He got behind the wheel, thinking it was funny how your priorities changed. A week ago, nothing less than winning the lotto would have satisfied him… now he was simply happy that he wouldn’t have to die alone.

Life… and death… were funny.

17

Schoolcraft County Sheriff’s Department—Transcription

September 26—11:20-11:59 P.M.

11:20

Dispatcher: Twelve, what’s your twenty?

Unit Twelve: Ten miles outside Blaney Park on seventy-seven. Returning.

Dispatcher: Negative. Request you go to Cut River vicinity.

Unit Twelve: Come again?

Dispatcher: Cut River. No radio activity from Cut River P.D. in fourteen hours.

Unit Twelve: Power’s still out in that area… or most of it.

Dispatcher: Should be… some activity. Received a call for assistance earlier.

Unit Twelve: P.D.?

Dispatcher: Negative. Civilian, possibly. Might be a crank.

Unit Twelve: Probably. Ten-forty-nine. En route to Cut River. E.T.A. fifteen minutes.

Dispatcher: Ten-four.

11:39

Unit Twelve: Outside Cut River location on Junction Twenty-Three. Will advise.

Dispatcher: Ten-four.

Unit Twelve: We’ve got an abandoned vehicle here. Possible accident. Two miles outside location on twenty-three. Vehicle is a late-model Plymouth van… license ADAM-DAVID-FRANK two-oh-seven. Repeat.

Dispatcher: ADF two-oh-seven.

Unit Twelve: Standby.

Dispatcher: Vehicle registered to a Benjamin Thomas Eklind.

Unit Twelve: Ten-four. We’re going to need crime scene assistance here… front end of vehicle bashed in. Possible hit-and-run.

Dispatcher: Message relayed.

Unit Twelve: Leaving scene. Occupants missing. Seems to be… can see a fire burning in Cut River direction. Investigating.

Dispatcher: Exercise caution, Twelve.

Unit Twelve: Will do. Ten-four.

11:53

Unit Twelve: Dispatch? Requesting back-up… possible civil disturbance. We’ve got a situation here.

Dispatcher: What’s the Twenty?

Unit Twelve: Cut River… we’ve got vehicles piled up here, wreckage. Road is blocked. Fires burning… scarecrows. Something strange here… I…

Dispatcher: Repeat last, Twelve.

Unit Twelve: Code Twenty here, dispatch. Need immediate assistance.

Dispatcher: On the way, Twelve.

Unit Twelve: It’s a mess… Jesus. Looks like vehicles were driven into each other to block exit or entrance. Fires burning… a group of individuals spotted. Standby.

Dispatcher: Proceed with caution, Twelve.

Unit Twelve: CODE THIRTY! CODE THIRTY! OFFICER NEEDS ASSISTANCE! EMERGENCY! ALL UNITS! PLEASE… OH MY GOD…

Dispatcher: Twelve? Twelve? Repeat, Twelve!

Dispatcher: All available units respond Cut River location! Officer needs assistance!

Unit Seventeen: En route location, dispatch. E.T.A. five minutes. Jesus, looks like fires burning down there…

When Nancy woke, she was in pain.

It felt like she’d been pumping iron. Her muscles were sore, her fingers numb. A headache throbbed just behind her eyes.

And she was not alone.

In fact, she was in a room full of people and she decided right then and there, as her eyelids fluttered open and closed and then open again, that she was dreaming. Had to be. Unless this had all been some seriously nasty nightmare, the last thing she could remember was the A & P. Those things attacking them. Her alone. The little boy from hell.

And then… oh Jesus, Sam.

Sam biting her.

She was on a sofa in what looked like somebody’s living room, a blanket thrown over her. She brought her hand up, brought it up slowly. Yes, her wrist was bandaged. Sam had bitten her. Yes. Not attacked her, not really. All he wanted to do was bite her.

It doesn’t hurt at all, it just feels good…

Oh, Jesus, did that mean, did that mean—

“How you doing, baby?” It was Ben, leaning over her. He looked very tired, very… used-up. But his eyes were bright. “I was worried. Christ, I was worried.”

She managed a smile. “I’m okay. I… what happened? I don’t remember.”

He sat on the sofa near her and told her how he’d been separated from her in the grocery store, thought she’d been killed. Then the crazies started their attack. Joe and Ruby Sue were armed to the teeth. He didn’t know why, but was simply glad. They spent maybe fifty rounds on the crazies, as he called them.

“It was like nothing you ever seen before,” he told her. “You can shoot ’em five, six times, and it only slows them down. You gotta get ’em in the head.

“Ruby Sue was right,” she said in a dry voice.

He nodded.

He himself owed his life to Joe. The crazies had swarmed over him and Joe ran right into their midst, shooting and fighting. Ruby Sue—a crack shot, believe it or not—had backed him up, popping those bastards right in the heads. They’d knocked Ben senseless and Joe had dragged him up the stairs, took care of him. It was also Joe who—

“He shot Sam,” Nancy said.

Ben stroked her hair. “It wasn’t Sam, baby. Not anymore.”

She licked her lips. “He looked like he was dead.”

Ben didn’t say anything to that. “Joe bandaged your arm. You cut yourself or what?”

Nancy went into a bullshit story about how one of them had stuck a roasting fork in her arm, how she’d beat him off with a rolling pin. It was important to her that Ben didn’t know, that any of them didn’t know, about the bite. Laying there, Ben’s voice droning on and on about how they’d come here to this church because they’d seen a police cruiser parked out front that hadn’t been there before.

That’s how they ended up with this bunch.

Ben introduced them all.

Beyond Joe and Ruby Sue, there was a stocky, balding man with a friendly smile named Lou Frawley. Lou was a salesman. The muscular, capable guy in the corner with the bald head and black mustache was named Johnny Davis. He was a citizen of Cut River and, Nancy decided, possibly a mercenary by the way he was dressed and armed. Near to him was a thin, slight brunette with huge dark eyes and jutting cheekbones. She was Lisa Tabano. She looked haunted, trembled badly, and was some sort of rock performer. Even had a guitar with her.

Joe had positioned himself at the window, was studying the night between a part in the curtains.

“Any activity?” Johnny asked him.

“Nada.”

“Not yet, anyway.”

They were in the rectory of St. Thomas’ Catholic Church. In the priest’s living room. It was large but cozy with a fireplace, shelves lined with old books, overstuffed furniture, and impressionist paintings on the walls. It smelled like leather and pipe tobacco.

Of course, Lisa and Lou were heavy smokers and there was a haze gathering in the air now. There was only one light on and it was turned down dim. Nancy thought that was for the best; she didn’t think she could handle bright lights just yet.

“Hi,” Lisa said to her. “How you feeling?”

Nancy looked at her, thought that though she was a pretty girl and everything that Nancy was not—petite, thin, fine-boned—she didn’t look well. Sick? Yes, like maybe she’d come off a lengthy illness. Not good at all. Dark hollows under her eyes, her bones lying tight just under her skin. Rock star? Yes, looked like one of those stick figures with all the hair, on the verge of death.

She thought: Looks like I feel.

She sipped from a glass of water Ben brought her. It tasted good. On her lips, on her throat, but when it hit her stomach she felt nauseous. “What band are you with?” she asked the girl.

“Electric Witch,” Lisa said, as if she didn’t believe it somehow. “It seems so far away now.”

“You guys are good.”

Lisa seemed surprised. “You know us?”

“Yeah. My son has your CD. Loves it.”

“Sweet.”

“What brought you here of all things?”

“My mom and dad. I’m from here. I don’t know where they are.”

Lisa explained to her that they’d come to the church because it’s where Johnny had decided to ride out the storm, watch the city go to shit.

“You could’ve done something,” Nancy found herself saying, her head pounding so badly now she thought she might pass out.

He shook his head, had a look on his stern face like he wanted to hurt somebody. “Nobody could stop this. It was inevitable.” Everyone was looking at him, but he paid them no mind. “This town’s fucked. Maybe the country.”

“I think it’s localized,” Lou said.

“You sure about that?”

“Could be spreading,” Ruby Sue said. “You know? I mean, shit, maybe town by town like some kind of plague. Think I saw a movie like that once. Anybody see that?”

Ben chimed in, “Listen, everything was fine before we got here. I’m sure it still is.”

Johnny shrugged. “Could be.”

“C’mon, Johnny,” Lou said. “When we were in the cruiser you could hear traffic on the radio. Cops calling in plate numbers, responding to calls. It sounded perfectly normal out there.”

“Did you call for help?” Nancy asked.

“Yeah. I tried. I hope I got through. I told ’em to get their fucking dead asses to this shithole on the double.”

Nancy thought that was good. If he got through help would arrive. Sooner or later, the cops would investigate. She was certain of that.

Ben was sitting by her on the couch, his face cradled in his hands. “Johnny? You live… or lived here, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. Just outside town.”

“Well, what the hell happened?”

“About five days ago—I was out of town—we got this rain. It went on all day and night. No big deal, right? Except that in the afternoon, guy told me, it looked like ink.” He had their attention now if he hadn’t before. “After that, well, everyone started getting sick. Started staying inside, calling into school and work. People were saying we had a flu outbreak. No big deal. Half of the country was going through it, too. Nobody gave it a second thought. By Saturday, there wasn’t anyone around. Like a fucking ghost town. But Saturday night—”

“They started coming out of their holes?” Ben said.

“Yeah, you got it. Not a lot, but some. Sunday night, it was half the town… and tonight, well, you know what it’s like now.”

“I can’t believe somebody didn’t notice something,” Nancy said.

Johnny looked at her. “What’s to notice? The flu? Shit, it’s everywhere. Schools closing, businesses not opening. Think anybody’s gonna freak out about just another town coming down with it? You know how it is in the fall, winter, and spring… there’s always a lot of it around. They even talk about it on TV. No biggie. By the time somebody might have noticed, the phone lines were down and we were cut off. Who knows, maybe nobody wanted help. Maybe they didn’t want to admit that there was a problem in the first place. So they crawled under the covers, went to sleep. Except when they woke up that night… they didn’t see things the same way anymore.”

It was a chilling hypothesis, but it made a certain amount of sense.

It could’ve worked that way. People thought they had the flu. Even if they went to a doctor or the emergency room of a hospital with flu symptoms, they would’ve been sent home, told to drink lots of fluids and get some sleep.

Nancy closed her eyes for a moment.

The darkness felt good.

Her limbs were aching now, a tight ball of nausea jumping in her belly. She kept her hands hidden beneath the blanket though she was too warm, her scalp tight and itchy, sweat at her temples.

Flu? She wanted to laugh at that. But her body hurt too much.

Lou sat there, nodding. “All right. Say there was something in that rain. It couldn’t have gotten everyone. Am I right?”

“Maybe it spread person to person after that.”

“Could be,” Johnny said. “By the time I realized something was really fucked-up, it was too late.”

But they’d all gotten a taste of his nihilism by that point and they didn’t exactly believe him. They pretty much figured he liked all this.

Lou lit another cigarette. “Your husband tell you we’re not alone? There’s some people in the basement. Got themselves locked in. Johnny found ’em before. They won’t come out.”

“They think we’re… what do you call ’em, Johnny?”

“Rabids.”

“Yeah, rabids.”

Lou shook his head. “Bunch of Jesus freaks by the sound of ’em,” he said, like the idea disgusted him. “They got it into their heads that it’s the fucking Rapture or some crap. Rapture, my white ass.”

“They’re singing hymns, man,” Ruby Sue said. “And they sound like shit. Why don’t you go give ’em some pointers, Lisa?”

“I’ll pass.” She got up and left the room, taking her purse with her.

“Say the word, people, and I go clean ’em out,” Johnny suggested to them.

Joe laughed at that. “Few less pests knocking at people’s doors.”

“They’re scared,” Lou said. “You can’t blame ’em.”

No, Nancy thought, you can’t blame them.

There was a strange tingling where Sam had bitten her. It throbbed dully. She felt very… restless. Sore, tired. But she’d been through a lot and that had to be normal… right? Because she couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but something felt wrong. And it wasn’t just the pain or nausea or numbness in her hands. There was no one word she could put to it, just a sense that something in her wasn’t exactly right.

Lisa came back in about five minutes later.

Nancy thought she looked much better.

“What time is it?” Nancy asked Ben.

“Almost midnight.”

Midnight. Christ in Heaven. Is that all? Another six, seven hours to dawn? That much time… might as well have been a week. What time had Sam bitten her? Ten? Ten-thirty? Yes, no more than that. And already she could feel it creeping through her, that malignancy.

She jerked stiffly under the blankets as a convulsion ripped through her.

“You okay?” Ben asked.

“Cramp,” she lied. “Ow.”

“All we gotta do here, people, is wait for dawn,” Johnny told them in a low voice. “When the sun comes up, they’ll crawl back in their holes. At least until the sun goes down again.”

Lou sat there staring at him, cigarette hanging from his lips. “What are you saying? We got vampires here?”

“No, not exactly.”

Joe turned away from the window. “If you know something, buddy, maybe you should spill it.”

Lou stood up now. It was pretty plain he’d had his fill. “Yeah, c’mon. If you know what this is about, for chrissake tell us.”

They were all watching him.

Johnny looked at them each in turn. A dark species of dread crossed his face. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll tell you a story. I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anyone. You see, I’ve seen this before. But it was a long time ago and a world away…”