Toxic Shadows

19

It was quite a tale.

Such a tale that for sometime nobody said a thing. They didn’t even look at each other. Had it been yesterday or even this afternoon, all concerned would have immediately dismissed it as pure nonsense. But after what they’d all seen, all witnessed… well, they took it in, mulled it over.

It was Lou Frawley who finally broke the silence. “That was in Vietnam, though. How… how could something like that happen here? I mean, shit, I’ll be the first one to admit I don’t know a thing about biological warfare or any of that crap, but why the hell would that stuff get sprayed here?”

Johnny stroked his mustache. “I’ve thought about that a lot.”

“And what did you decide?” Ben said.

“Let’s just look at the facts. Since the war I’ve done some research into this. Not much—there isn’t much you can find out—but some. What I know comes from other vets. A guy at the VA in Iron Mountain told me that the planes doing the spraying were from an Air Force unit called the 57th Tactical Bombadier Group.” He looked around at the worn faces surrounding him. “That probably doesn’t mean jack to any of you. But if I were to say that that particular unit still exists and is based out of Pierce Noolan AFB, it might start making sense.”

Lou shrugged. “Sorry. Still not getting it.”

Ben’s eyes widened, though. “Pierce Noolan Air Force Base is about twenty minutes from here.”

“That’s right,” Lisa said.

Johnny nodded. “What do you folks know about that place?”

“Nothing to know,” Ben said. “It’s high security, I know that much. It’s not open to the public. Cousin of mine’s a plumbing contractor. His firm won a bid to modernize the boilers there. He said you had to go through three gates to get in. There were guys with machine guns at each checkpoint. My cousin and his crew were escorted in and out of the place, were never allowed to wander off by themselves. Said you had to show your ID card just to take a piss.”

Johnny was starting to look satisfied. “It’s right on the fence there, some shit about it being a U.S. Government facility and use of deadly force authorized etc. All that bull. It’d be easier to get into Miss America’s pants than that place.”

“All right, sure,” Lou said. “But that’s the military. They get like that. Hell, you were a SEAL and all. I bet you guys had top level clearances.”

“I could’ve walked right into the Pentagon.”

Lou slapped his hands on his knees. “Well, there you go. That’s how they do shit. But that don’t mean we got some sort of conspiracy here.”

Ruby Sue laughed. “You people just astound me.” She pulled a joint out of her coat, fired it up. Everyone, of course, just stared. “Hey, you smoke yours, I’ll smoke mine.”

“Why not?” Lou said, firing up another cigarette.

“What astounds you about us?” Ben wanted to know.

She coughed, blowing out smoke. “Oh shit, man. This country ain’t nothing but one big conspiracy. Haven’t you heard of Area 51? The JFK thing? Roswell? Shit, man, it’s everywhere. This whole country ain’t nothing but a nest of lies. Right, Nanc?”

Nancy was staring off into space through glazed, fixed eyes. Her lips trembled. She shifted from one position to the next. She hugged herself. She trembled.

“She’s been through a lot,” Ben said, stroking her cheek. It was damp and cool like the underside of a mushroom. But he told no one that.

Nancy squinted her eyes shut, then opened them.

She managed a thin smile which quickly became a frown.

There was something not right with her, but everyone pretended ignorance. Ben was right, they figured: she had been through a lot.

Ruby Sue looked away. “I say Johnny’s one-hundred percent correct. CIA, NSA, DIA… all those secret black budget ops groups, man, they have no respect for human life.” She sucked off her joint, coughed again. “Good shit. Anyone… no? More for me. But like I was saying, those groups, man, they’d spray a town down in an instant.”

Lou sighed. “Whatever. But let’s not digress, people.”

“What I’m saying,” Johnny pointed out, “is that from what I found out, the research on that stuff, on Laughing Man, was carried out many places. But the group that dispersed it is right next door to Cut River. Let me speculate here a minute. Yeah, I think there is a conspiracy here. A conspiracy of silence. Uncle Sam won’t admit he has stuff like this. But he does. And he stores it at certain facilities. My guess is that Pierce Noonan is one of them.”

“But you’re guessing,” Lou pointed out.

Johnny shrugged. “Sure, I am. Facts aren’t exactly plentiful, pal. I’m offering you people an explanation for this fucking nightmare. You think some goddamn virus or something just happened to mutate and cause this? Bullshit. Maybe I’m wrong here, but I don’t think so. I’m not saying for a moment that the Air Force did this on purpose. I’m thinking more like a mistake here. Colossal fuck-up comes to mind. How? I don’t know.”

Lou stared at him through a cloud of cigarette smoke. He decided he was getting pretty good at this Devil’s Advocate thing, so he kept at it. “All right. It’s feasible, I’ll say. And it explains things. I’ll give you that. But don’t you think stuff like this Laughing Man would be stored in a really secure place?”

“Who knows?” Lisa chimed in. “Maybe a container of it broke open, maybe some kind of animal infected with it got out. Maybe it vaporized and came down in that rain. I don’t see the point in arguing here. It happened… or something damn close to it.”

She was right.

They all knew that. The hows and whys really didn’t matter at present… or not too much.

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Lou said, stabbing out his cigarette. “We can sort it out later.”

Ruby Sue laughed. “Sort what out? You guys hear what you’re saying? Christ, I thought I was the one who was baked here! Sort it out? They’re not going to let you do that. On purpose or by accident, people, they’ll never admit to it. They’ll blame this shit on the Libyans or Osama Bin Laden or something. But be sure of one thing, we won’t get answers. Shit, if they find out we saw this and survived, they’ll probably kill us anyway.”

“Christ, you watch too much TV,” Lou said.

“Maybe I do. But they’ll come for us. Black ops troops. Assassins. I saw a movie like that once.” She roached her joint, put the unsmoked end in her pocket. “This plane or train or something full of some chemical warfare crap crashes and infects this whole town. People there go nuts or something. Then the government comes in. Bang! Martial law. Even if you’re not infected, man, you ain’t getting out.”

Lou looked to Joe who just shrugged. “Well, let’s not worry about that. What we gotta think about here, friends and neighbors, is how this stuff spreads. Granted it’s infectious, contagious, whatever you want to call it. But how does that happen?”

“Could be just about any way,” Ben said. “Water, personal contact, animals.”

“Even through the air,” Lisa said. “We might be full of it and not know it. Not yet.”

Lou smiled grimly at that. “Any thoughts, Johnny?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. All I can say is that I was exposed in ’Nam and never got it.”

“If this is that Laughing Man junk, then wouldn’t the military want a germ that was controllable? Something they could stop easy enough but the enemy couldn’t?” Lou asked them.

Johnny shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. One thing I don’t want to do is to get into the minds of the crazy, sadistic pricks who could dream up something like this.”

“And use it,” Lisa said.

“We might all be infected,” Ben said, looking down with desperation at Nancy. Feverish heat was rolling off her clammy skin in waves. As if to show the others that she was just fatigued, he leaned over and kissed her forehead. In a whisper, he said: “If you got it, baby, then I want it, too.”

Joe looked out the window, closed the drapes. “How long, you figure, before those creatures out there, them crazy shits, sniff us out and make an assault?”

Johnny looked grim. “I’d say it could happen anytime. Anytime at all.”

20

Just after midnight, everyone seemed to break up into little groups. Johnny and Lisa hung together, lounging in wing-backed chairs over by the fireplace. The mysterious bikers, Joe and Ruby Sue, stayed together by the window. Lou joined Ben in a little ell off the study. No lights burned that weren’t absolutely necessary.

Nancy was sleeping, but not peacefully.

She tossed and turned and sweated. She didn’t look good at all.

“How you holding up?” Lou asked him.

“Peachy,” Ben said dismally. He was sitting on a little window seat, studying the dark, empty courtyard beyond the glass. “How about you?”

“Nervous. Agitated. So scared, I think I might have kittens pretty soon. Other than that, hey, I’m just fine.” He sat down, pulled a cigarette out, thought better of it and put it away. “I better save what’s left of my throat.”

Ben stroked his closely-trimmed beard apprehensively. “My wife… Nancy… she’s not doing so good. I think she’s on the point of a nervous breakdown. I think she might be in shock or something.”

Lou licked his lips. They felt very dry. “Like you said, she’s been through the mill.”

“So have you. So have I. So have the others.”

“People handle it different ways, Ben. It’s human nature.” Lou thought that sounded pretty good, even if he wasn’t sure he believed it himself. “I knew this guy in Newark, right? Back in the old days when I used to drive truck. This guy—his name was Al DeAmato—owned a string of dry cleaning outfits. Big, tough Italian guy. Honest, hard-working, doing pretty good for himself. But you know what it’s like in Jersey, right? Well, maybe you don’t. Let’s just say that it’s corrupt in spots, lot of mob action there. Had my truck hijacked two, three times in Bayonne by those fucking wops, excuse my French.

“Anyway, my friend had one of his stores in the Down Neck area of Newark. Tough area. Mob-controlled or mostly. One day these hoods show up and tell Al real sweet-like that they want a piece of his operation, that it would be in his best interest to go along with them. Al tells them to go fuck their dogs or mothers or something. Of course, these guys, they turn the heat up. But Al? He won’t bend to them. They turn the heat way up finally. They firebomb his car. The union guys who fixed his machines, they’d never show. One night a couple hardass toughs jumped him and beat him to a pulp with lead pipes. Al? He still won’t give in. Fuck you and the donkey you rode in on. He’s in the hospital almost a month. He gets out, they burn down one of his stores. But Al keeps on plugging. Finally, they let him alone, moved on to easier pickings. He still had trouble with the union guys. And every now and then a gang of street toughs would break some windows, but eventually, even that stopped.

“So, you see what I’m saying, right? Al was tough, determined. Stood up to those guys. Nine out of ten people would’ve crumbled. Hell, ten out of ten people. But not Al. Finally, when things chilled out, Al had a breakdown. He came out of it okay. His nerves one day just said, Hey, enough is enough, man, and right to the rest home he goes. I tell you this story because Al rode the storm when things were tough and gave as good as he got. It wasn’t until the dust settled that he fell to pieces, when he had time to think about how ugly it all was, how close he’d been to getting killed. And I think, Ben, that your wife is like that. She’s a tough broad, right? Tough, capable, knows what she wants and how to get it. But now that the action’s over for the time, now that there’s time to sort it all out, it’s tearing her up. Just like Al. That’s what I’m telling you.”

Ben smiled, looked him in the eye. “Thanks. I guess that makes me feel better.” But the words were barely out of his lips, when a shadow crossed his face again. “I hope that’s all it is. I really do. God knows I do. But if—”

“Don’t even think that. Not yet.”

Ben looked close to tears. “I can’t help myself. She’s in a bad way, Lou. We both know that. If she’s a danger to the others, then, shit, I’ll have to get her away somehow so she won’t infect them. I’m not being pessimistic here, just realistic.”

Lou admired his strength. He nodded, listened to the muted voices singing on in the basement. “Christ, how long can those nuts keep that up? They’re giving me the creeps.”

“Wouldn’t be so bad if they’d just come out and introduce themselves already.”

“Maybe,” Lou said darkly, “they will when they’re ready.”

“I guess that’s what I’m afraid of.”

Lisa sat in her chair by the fireplace, cloaked in shadow. Johnny sat across from her. They’d been staring at each other for nearly ten minutes. Not speaking, not moving, just staring. She had this unsettling feeling that something important, something pertinent, something revelatory was about to be said.

The air between them was hush, yet electric like the atmosphere before an important presidential press conference.

“Well?” she finally said. “Say it.”

“Say what?”

“You know. Whatever you’re thinking.”

She could see his face break into a smile. “Pretty perceptive, aren’t ya?”

“That’s me. They voted me Most Likely to be Perceptive in high school. Cut River High, by the way. Same place you probably went… back in the stone age.”

He was still smiling. “Were you voted Miss Piss-and-Vinegar, too?”

“I was voted so many things, I can’t remember them all. Problem was, I was out in the parking lot getting stoned all the time and I never did show up for those damn awards ceremonies.”

“You got a nice ass,” he said.

“Pardon me?”

“I said you’ve got a nice ass.”

“Yeah, I heard you. I just couldn’t believe you.”

“I speak my mind.”

“Remind me to be impressed.”

“I’ll make a note of it.”

Playful exchange finished, the silence fell again. As completely and thoroughly as if an invisible sheet had dropped over them. But it was still there, Lisa knew, that something that needed to be said.

What was it?

A question? A confession?

She lit a cigarette. In the glow of the flame Johnny’s face was all lines and bony pockets and shifting shadow, his eyes shining and metallic. It was a tough face, a dangerous face, but an intriguing face. Desirable, even, in some way.

Here’s a guy, she found herself thinking, that’s lived the sort of life I’ll only see on TV or read about in books. She wondered what all that fierce, dehumanizing training did to a man. What happened to someone’s soul when they killed people for a living, when they waded through blood and guts and cloak and dagger bureaucratic bullshit for too long? What happened when they saw something they weren’t supposed to see, when they were cut loose from the machine and dropped back into a society that had no practical use for them?

But she knew what happened to them: they became Johnny Davis.

They became disillusioned and hateful and paranoid and angry. The same way she was going to be after this little waltz when the government began denying and she began to look like a fool. How long could you could stare right through the walls of society and see the crawly things that spun the wheels before you rotted inside?

“Must be quite a life,” Johnny said, scratching the side of his bald, fleshy skull. “Living the way you do.”

“Rock and roll, you mean?”

“Sure. Electric Witch, you say? Catchy. I like it.” He looked down at the floor. “Before the war we listened to the Who, the Animals, Hendrix, Beatles, Stones—all the big groups. Some of the crazy, loud shit—Blue Cheer, MC5, Sir Lord Baltimore. Over in ’Nam, you heard a lot of CCR and Motown. A lot of Country Joe and the Fish, Janis Joplin, the Doors. When I got back, it was a lot of heavy shit. But different. They called it acid rock then. Black Sabbath, Led Zepplin, Uriah Heep, Lucifer’s Friend, all that stuff.”

Lisa was pleasantly surprised. “I never pictured you as a music fan.”

“I was once.”

She exhaled a cloud of smoke. “You are a riddle. When I spoke about being in a band, about having hit records, big tours… you didn’t seem to be impressed. In fact, you didn’t seem to care.”

“I’m not easily impressed. Things people say they are or have done or want to do, don’t mean shit to me.”

“I wasn’t bragging,” she said, feeling her cheeks redden.

“No, you weren’t. That’s why I knew you were all right.”

“Oh…”

He was smiling again. “What’s it like playing in front of thousands of people?”

“Nerve-wracking as all hell, if you want the truth. When you start, you play in front of the mirror. Then to your friends. Then to other wanna-bees. Soon enough, if you’re worth a damn, you’re in a band learning. Then you play to a dozen people. First time, you want to piss your pants.”

“But it gets easier?”

She pushed back her thick dark hair from her eyes. “Yes. After awhile, two, three dozen is nothing. Then you play to a hundred and it gets bad again. Then a thousand.”

“How many you up to now?”

“Quarter of a million last June. We headlined a gothfest in Ohio. So many people… it’s scary. You see them out there and know they paid good money to see you, that they expect their money’s worth and your knees get weak. Our drummer, Sandy, she kept puking backstage. We had to dope her up the first night.”

Johnny was nodding. “Sex, drugs, and rock and roll, eh? Must be lots of partying. Must be like one big high.”

Lisa was having trouble looking at him now. The conversation was being steered in a direction she wanted no part of. “Sure, but it’s not all fun and games. It’s grueling, believe it or not, that life. On the road all the time, motel after motel, night after night. Goes on for months. Sometimes you’re not even sure where you are. You can’t remember.”

“If it wasn’t for the booze and drugs, it would be hard to get through it,” Johnny said. “Am I right?”

“If you say so.”

He stuck a plug of Red Man chew into his cheek, started working it. “Before I went in the Navy, late sixties we’re talking here, you could get pot, pills, some hash or acid now and then. But none of the real hard stuff. Not in Cut River. In the war, Southeast Asia and all, drugs were everywhere. I saw them destroy a lot of good people. When I got back, it was different. You could get coke if you knew the right people. Even some junk.”

Lisa felt her face pulling tight. She was beginning to feel nauseous, her nose was running. It was time for another fix. “Drugs are everywhere now.” She started to rise, grabbing for her purse. “I gotta use the can—”

But Johnny forced her back down. He had his big hands locked on her knees, his face swam in uncomfortably close. “How long you been using?”

“What?” Lisa said, without much conviction.

“You heard me. You want me to say it loud enough for everyone to hear?” he asked her. “You’re using H and we both know it. How long?”

“A year, maybe.” She couldn’t believe this. The sonofabitch knew and had probably known all along. She really needed a taste now. Goddammit.

He kept nodding his head, mulling it over. “You snorting or spiking?”

“Snorting,” she sighed.

He released her, sat back. “I’ve been around, Lisa. I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen too many friends fucked by that needle. I’m not judging you, understand, I’m just saying I know it when I see it. You ever think of quitting?”

“It’s not that easy.”

“No, it’s not. It’s hell on earth. I’ve seen guys kick it before. I stayed by their side while they did it. It’s ugly, it’s horrible what that garbage does to you. I know, I know.” He folded his hands in his lap. “When this is over, if this ever ends, you wanna get off, I know all the tricks. I can help you.”

She was starting to shiver. “Why would you want to?”

He smiled thinly. “I am a friend to the friendless. You better go take care of business.”

Lisa did, more and more astounded by Johnny Davis all the time.

Over by the window, Ruby Sue and Joe talked in hush voices. They were crowded together on a love seat, their duffel of guns and odds and ends at their feet.

Joe was said, “Half up front, half up front, babe. We’re locked in and you know it. We can’t back out now. These people… you know these people… they won’t understand us backing out. They aren’t gonna give a fuck what our reasons are. They ain’t gonna give a fuck if somebody dropped the bomb.”

“It won’t be easy now,” Ruby Sue said. “We’re lucky we found her at all in this goddamn mess, man, but it won’t be easy. That guy she’s with, that dude’s gonna be real trouble. He looks bad.”

“He is bad. But we’ll do him, too, if we have to.”

“Just bide our time.”

“That’s it,” Joe said. “The time’ll come. Sooner or later. Now why don’t we go cozy up to them a bit?”

When Lisa got back she looked revitalized.

It truly was a miracle what a little snort of heroin could do for a junkie. She left looking haggard, eyes red as beets, face drawn, nose running, trembling like a sick pup… and came back looking young and pretty and ready to take on the world. Her eyes were bright, she was relaxed, in control, all together easy and smooth.

Johnny saw the change. Had seen such transformations before and was not moved to words. Only in his heart, maybe, was he saddened.

“Better?” he said.

“Yes,” Lisa told him and would say no more on the subject. Instead, she said, “My band, Johnny… Electric Witch… we’re riding high now, but we’re all screwed-up. Everything’s a mess.”

“Drugs?”

“Yeah, and then some. We’re at a stage where we can’t afford to screw up. But all four of us, Christ, we’re hanging on by a thread. Sandy, our drummer, she’s shooting all the time. Our singer’s coked up and drunk ninety percent of the time. Our bass player is so strung-out, we can barely get her on stage. And I’m no better. I’ll admit that.”

Johnny sighed, spat tobacco juice into a paper cup he was holding. “You guys, girls, need to dry out. You need intervention. You need somebody to come in and clean house, get you guys into dry-out before it’s too late.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Nothing is,” he said. “Was it easy getting to where you are now?”

She thought about it. “No.”

“There you go. You worked hard to make it and now you’ve got to work hard to stay there. But you won’t do it this way. Like I said, I’ve seen this plenty of times. First off, you have to confront them, admit to your problem, make them admit to theirs.”

She laughed mirthlessly. “Yeah, right. I tried that. They don’t think they have problems and they don’t think I do either.” She lowered her voice. “They’re afraid, Johnny. We were drugged up getting to where we are now. It’s insulation against reality. Everyone’s afraid we wouldn’t be worth a shit without the stuff, you know?”

“You didn’t get your talent out of a baggie,” he reminded her.

“Maybe not.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “I might be the worst person in the world to be giving advice, Lisa. My life is a total waste and I admit that. I’ve done my share of snorting and shooting. The best thing for your band and you is intervention. A third party. Someone who not only cares about the four of you but has a business interest in this. Someone with something to lose if you guys fuck this up. I don’t know, like a manager or an agent or something. Your mouthpiece.”

“Then we are in trouble,” she said. “Because he’s the one who gets us our drugs.”

Johnny pulled a face. “Shit.”

“Yeah, he’s very much part of it. His name’s Richard Chazz. He’s one of the best in the business, but he’s in way over his head.”

“Money-wise or drug-wise?”

Ah, now there was the question. “Both. In fact, he’s dropped out of sight. Nobody’s heard from him in nearly two weeks.”

“What gives?”

It took some time to tell.

Chazz hadn’t gotten to where he was on his good looks or business acumen, though he was pretty loaded on the latter. Half of the ride to the top had been accomplished through connections and loans. Both were accomplished by the same group of people. The same people that kept upping the interest and kept wanting a bigger chunk of his management company and, ultimately, his bands.

“What? Like the Mafia or something?”

Lisa shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. But they’re heavy people. They’re into the entertainment industry at every conceivable level. He never put a name to them. He always mentioned shit about his silent partners and things like that. When we asked questions, he got nervous. I’m pretty sure he gets our drugs from these people.”

Johnny shook his head. “What the hell was he thinking getting involved with those hoods?”

Lisa sighed. “Richard is good, Johnny. But he’s also hungry all the time. He isn’t above shady deals to promote himself or his product, in this case, us. Electric Witch.”

“And now he’s disappeared?” Johnny asked hesitantly. “You think maybe—”

“No, at least I hope not. All I know is that last month before he took his little powder, he was a nervous wreck. Thought he was being followed. Jumped every time his cell rang. He hired bodyguards. He was coked-up and paranoid.” She let that lay a moment while she sorted it out in her head. “Bottom line is we have trouble right now. We got lawyers and record execs and road managers climbing up our ass. We’ve been so wasted, we don’t know shit about the business side.”

“Get another manager.”

“We have contracts.”

“How about the cops? The feds? Can’t you go to them?”

She shook her head. “You fuck with these people, you’re done. That’s what I’ve been told. I don’t mean they kill you or anything like that. They don’t have to: they just kill your career. Pretty soon the deals aren’t happening. Record execs don’t want you. You have a hell of a time getting studio time. And touring? Forget it, dates are cancelled. Your road crew, which are all union by the way, boycott you. It’s happened before. And if all that isn’t bad enough, we’re so trashed all the time, we can’t make sense of it. And maybe we don’t want to.”

“Shit,” Johnny said.

“All I know is it was getting crazy in LA, so I bailed. Came home. Came home to see my parents… and look what I walked into? I think they might be dead.”

Johnny squeezed her long-fingered hand in his own callused mitt, said in his deep, resonant voice, “Let’s get out of this first, rock star. Then we’ll worry about the next step.”

Lisa attempted a smile. “You need a job, Johnny?” she said to him. “You ever thought about managing a heavy metal band?”

“Put that out for chrissake,” Joe said. “Keep your head clean.”

Ruby Sue roached her joint. “Not like we’re gonna get busted, babe. I think all the cops in this town are running around naked, foaming at the mouth and pissing on hydrants.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”

“I hear you, I hear you.”

Joe sat there, thinking, plotting it out in his mind. There was no going back so it simply had to happen. He couldn’t go back to Detroit unless the deed was done. And if that meant that everyone in the room had to—

“How you two holding up?”

Joe looked up, saw that Lou-guy standing there, the salesman. He wasn’t a bad sort, but he was just another problem in Joe’s mind. Who would ever have dreamed it would get this fucked up? A simple job like this?

“We’re holding,” Ruby Sue said.

Joe nodded.

Lou looked a little uncomfortable. “Hey, I think my lighter puked out on me. Could I borrow yours?”

“Sure, man,” Ruby Sue handed one to him. “Keep it.”

“Thanks.”

Joe was suddenly aware that Lou was staring at his bare arms.

“I hope you don’t mind me asking… but is that an Outlaws tattoo there?” Lou said.

Joe wished then he’d kept his coat on. He covered it with his hand. “Yeah, I rode with them in the old days. I got out, though. Those boys were getting a little wild for me.”

Lou nodded, seemed satisfied.

Over on the sofa, Nancy was thrashing in her sleep, moaning and bathed with sweat. Ben was at her side, mopping her down with a cool washcloth.

“Poor kid,” Lou said. “It’s been rough on her.”

“Yeah,” Ruby Sue said, “and I don’t think it’s going to get any better.”

Lou thanked her and left the two of them.

“Hate to say it,” he said, seated over near the fireplace now with Lisa and Johnny, “but that Joe fellow, he ain’t the friendliest.”

“I think he’ll be good to have around if the shit starts,” Johnny said.

Lisa nodded. “Christ, he’s a frigging giant.”

Lou said, “You check out his tattoos? He was with the Outlaws. You guys know who they are, don’t you?”

“Outlaw bikers,” Johnny said. “I knew some in Milwaukee.”

“Those guys are bad news. Criminals, I guess. Hooked up pretty tight in the underworld like the Angels and the Pagans and the rest.” Lou saw they weren’t really interested, but pressed on undeterred. “What do you suppose these two came to Cut River for?”

Johnny shrugged. “Maybe nothing. Gypsies, man. They like to move around.”

But Lou didn’t believe that; Ben had told him that Ruby Sue said they’d come to do some work, that they had a lot of guns. But he supposed it didn’t really matter. Right now, they needed every gun freak they could dig up. And then some. Dawn was a long way off yet.

That conversational track was a dead end, so Lou tried to lighten things up. “Hey?” he said. “You ever hear about the guy who walks into the bar with the crocodile?”

Johnny grinned. “No, but I want to. I could handle a joke.”

“Yeah,” Lisa said, warming up, too.

Lou cleared his throat. “Okay. Guy walks into this bar with a crocodile at his side. Right away, of course, people gather. So the guy says: ‘I can put my dick in his mouth, let him close it, and when he opens it, my dick’ll still be there. Untouched.’ The croc’s got its jaws wide now and everyone’s checking out those teeth. Look like they could shred tin cans. ‘Do it then,’ someone says. ‘Fifty bucks up front,’ says the guy. The money appears and the guy unzips his pants and sticks his horn right in the croc’s mouth. He smacks it on the head with a beer bottle and it closes its jaws. People cringe, but the guys still smiling. He smacks the croc with the bottle again and he opens his mouth. The guy’s prick is still there, not so much as a scratch on it. Okay. So he says, ‘Anyone else wanna try?’ This woman walks up and says, ‘Okay,’ getting down on her knees, ‘just don’t hit me in the head with that bottle.’”

Everyone was laughing and it felt really good to laugh.

It almost seemed like a perfectly ordinary function that had somehow been lost in this awful place where nothing was funny at all.

“Hey, man,” Ruby Sue said, waltzing over, “don’t leave me out, I wanna hear it, too.”

Lou started into it again, glad as always to have an audience. Johnny and Lisa sat raptly for the second telling (entertainment being scarce in Cut River). Even Joe came over this time. Lou had just gotten his stride down when he heard it.

“Listen,” he said, not smiling now. “You hear that?”

“What?” Lisa said.

“Listen. The churchies downstairs…”

“They’ve stopped singing,” Johnny said.

“Don’t the natives stop drumming right before they attack in those jungle movies?” Ruby Sue offered, but everyone ignored her.

“You hear that?” Lou said.

They all did. A muted, distant popping.

“Gunfire,” Johnny announced. “Maybe the cavalry’s rolling in. Maybe.”

“Do you think so?” Lisa said hopefully.

But then it was gone. After five minutes of silence, it still had not returned.

The vacuum created by the lack of muted hymns and distant gunfire only lasted a moment or two. Then another sound rose up to take its place. It came from outside.

“Jesus,” Lou said, “what the hell is that?”

And that was the question that played at all their minds.

Because they could hear it rising up, getting louder and louder: a mournful baying sound as though dozens of wolves were howling in the night. It was an eerie, discordant melody.

Lou heard and it made the skin at the back of his neck tighten. The flesh at his spine began to crawl.

Someone said, “Dogs, it’s dogs.”

“No,” Ruby Sue said. “It’s not dogs. Listen. It’s them. The rabids. They’re howling…”

They went to the window to look.

Lou crowded there with the others.

Yes, the nocturnal hordes.

The moon was high and full over the town and the rabids had climbed to the peaks of roofs, the tops of cars, shimmied up telephone poles and snaked up trees. He could see them, man and woman and child, staring up at the moon with horrid fascination, baying like mad dogs, held in rapt lunatic fascination by that glowing orb. Like the tides or the weather, the rabids were moved by unseen forces.

“Jesus Christ, that sound,” Lisa said helplessly, “it’s driving me nuts. I… I can’t think…”

It seemed to work some nerve, aggravate some atavistic memory and everyone suddenly got very restless. In fact, it seemed like those baying voices were unlocking some primitive drive of aggression and hatred. Everyone in that room refused to look at one another. Afraid, maybe, that they’d see the faces of beasts.

Lou felt it as strong as any other.

He couldn’t seem to think straight. He wanted to run, to attack, to ravage. His muscles were tensed, his teeth gnashing, his dick hard in his pants.

And they were suddenly all like that.

Circling each other like beasts of prey, refusing to accept what that they were hearing, what it was doing to them. Trying without luck to block out that song, the song of the hunt, the song of some primeval festival of bloodlust and hunger.

And it was about that time that Nancy woke up.

She emerged from her frightful sleep like a swimmer breaking the surface of an icy lake. Her throat felt tight, her body felt cold. She sat up and the blanket fell from her. Her hands were hooked and arthritic in her lap. She could see the others. They were walking in circles, breathing heavily. She could smell them, smell something rank and musky coming off them. It made her nipples go hard, made waves of warmth tremble in her groin.

Her mouth was sticky, her lips swollen and parched.

She’d never known such thirst.

She opened her mouth to speak, but her throat was so dry that all that came out was a strangled barking sound.

There was a glass of water on the table before her. Her fingers shaking, she reached out for it, even though the sight of it made her somehow nauseous. She shook her head, trying to free herself of the strange impulses and shattered thoughts that tumbled through her brain. She brought the glass to her lips and drank deeply.

The water was like acid in her belly.

Convulsions ripped through her and she vomited it back up in a warm stew of bile that ran down her chin. She wiped it off with the back of her hand and was not surprised to see a smear of blood.

She tried to stand and fell over, crashing into the table.

She couldn’t seem to draw a breath; it was like trying to breathe through canvas. The air she sucked in felt heavy and wet. The room spun and her head reeled. Black dots swam before her eyes.

Then it seemed to pass.

Drool ran from her lips and her teeth chattered. She pulled herself up, more spasms trembling through her like labor pains. She saw faces staring at her and what remained of her thinking, rational brain tried to put names to the faces, tried to fit together all the images in her mind, and tried desperately to make some lucid connection.

But it was impossible.

Her thoughts were disjointed, confused, and feral.

The people… they were saying things to her.

Moving in closer now. Especially the tall, bearded man.

Threatened.

Yes, she felt threatened.

They were trying to draw her into a trap, tightening their little circle around her. They would get her down… bite, claw, rend, and kill. She snarled at them, trying to frighten them off. Her skin was tight and pebbled with gooseflesh. Hairs on her arms, the back of her neck were standing taut. She remembered speech and tried to use it. Her jaws snapped wildly, her lips pulled back.

Hissing now, she slipped away from them, saw the window and knew it was a way out. But when she got close to escape, they all started to cry out and in the glass she saw a distorted, drooling face capped by a wild pelt of hair and jumped back.

It was her reflection.

Spasms jerked through her, convulsions hit her with the shuddering impact of machine gun fire. The world spun, steadied itself. A low hoarse growling erupted from her throat.

They were closing in on her.

She sighted on their throats, knowing it was where she must sink her teeth.

Her brain raging with hallucination and nightmare imagery, she stood her ground, ready to disembowel the first that came within reach.

Ben was the first to try to get within reach of her.

When he was within a few feet, she snarled and spit at him. Using her fingers like claws she tore at his face. Ben stepped back, realizing with terror that she’d been going for his eyes.

Like an animal, an animal, she’s not even human now…

Lou approached cautiously from one side, Johnny and Lisa from the other.

“Don’t get too close,” Lou said to Ben. “Talk to her. Try to soothe her.”

Ben was trying. Speaking in low, hushed tones like the sort you’d use to calm a child who’d awoken terrified from a bad dream, he tried to reason with her. He told her who he was. He told her who she was. He spoke about things only she would remember, hoping to trigger some memory. He spoke of their children. How much she loved them. How they loved her. He kept speaking, tears running down his cheeks now, knowing that Nancy was dead and this thing was not her.

Lou knew it was bad, the worst-case scenario.

But if nothing else it had snapped them out of whatever had possessed them. A problem had presented itself. A problem that took human minds to solve, one that required sensitivity, care, and logic—human traits.

Nancy’s eyes were wide and unblinking.

They looked oddly hollow and empty, but they glistened wetly.

Canine eyes.

Lou didn’t dare get too close. She was no more human now than a rabid pit bull. Her eyes were stark and mad, completely insane. She was… obscene. No other word seemed to fit as she snarled and snapped and clawed at them. Snotty tangles of blood and mucus swung from her lips.

Johnny worked his way silently behind her.

Lisa and Lou slowly closed from either side to distract her. Nancy looked directly at Lou and he felt his guts go to sauce. He’d never seen such vile, mindless hatred before. A high, moaning sound came from deep in her throat.

Then Johnny had her, locking her arms behind her.

Ben darted in, “Don’t hurt her! Don’t hurt her!” he was crying, but that didn’t seem to be a worry, because she writhed and undulated in Johnny’s arms like she was made of jelly. Her face was pulled into a bestial grimace of rage.

Lou tried to get in close and her left foot kicked out and caught him in the chest. It was like being struck by a sledgehammer. He stumbled back and fell over a chair.

Joe was there now, too. As he tried to take hold of her clawing hands, her fingers scraped over his face, opening bleeding ruts.

Lisa was back-handed and dropped violently to the floor.

Ben caught her around the waist, her hands pounding at his head with meaty thuds. Strips of skin and clots of hair were torn from his scalp. But he held on and so did Johnny, trying to pull back on her with everything he had so she wouldn’t be able to bite her husband. She squirmed in their arms like a sack of vipers, contorting and slithering, moving with greased, repulsive gyrations.

Finally, she broke free from Johnny and went straight for Ben.

Johnny quickly brought the ball of his right hand down on the nape of her neck with a thud. Her eyes rolled back and she folded up limply like a lawn chair.

They all stood around staring at each other, panting, sweating.

“Un-fucking-real,” Ruby Sue said.

Ben cradled his unconscious wife in his arms. His face was wet with tears. Rioting with emotions, he stared at her, seeing blood running from the corners of her mouth. “What did you do?” he said to Johnny. “What in fuck’s name did you do to her?”

“I just put her out,” he explained, his face white. “She was going to bite you.”

Ben sat there on his knees, rocking her slack form. One of her arms fell from her lap and struck the floor, knuckles rapping.

Joe crouched down. Felt for a pulse at her wrist, her throat. He checked her eyes, put an ear to her chest. He stood up, his face striped with red welts. He shook his head. “She’s dead, man,” he muttered. “She’s gone.”

Ben covered her with his weeping form, crying out insults at Johnny. Lisa managed to insert herself, telling him it was only the disease, the germ, whatever the hell it was. That it was nobody’s fault.

But Ben shoved her out of the way.

He picked up his wife and carried her over to the dining room table in the next room. He whispered things to her and placed a blanket over her after he kissed her.

The others just stood around stupidly, wordlessly.

That’s when the door was thrown in.

21

First thing they saw was an overweight man, cradling a shotgun in his arms, step through the door. “Evening,” he said. “Name’s Earl Rawley. Pleased to meet you.”

Lou stared at him incredulously. “You don’t say?”

Rawley nodded, brought the shotgun up. “And if you make one wrong move, as they say in the cowboy flicks, I’ll spray you all over the room. Promise.”

He wasn’t alone.

A thin, sparse man with a shock of silver hair and even white teeth trailed him as did two other men, one woman, and a young girl. All dressed to kill in their Sunday finest, they carried clubs made from table legs, kitchen knives. They looked crazy.

“What the fuck is this about?” Joe said, stepping forward.

Rawley moved back a bit, intimidated by Joe’s sheer bulk. “This is about living and dying, about right and wrong,” he said, grinning with bad teeth. “It’s about doing what I say or dying.”

He was round like a barrel and not much taller, barely over five feet. He wore a straw cowboy hat with a green plastic band around it. His beady eyes were framed by black Coke bottle glasses and he looked crazier than a rat in a blender.

Johnny, of course, was carefully considering his options. As was Joe.

Ruby Sue and Lisa stood there next to Ben.

“Let’s just relax here,” Lou said. “Way I see it, the real enemy are those outside. If we join forces—”

“We will join forces.” Rawley nodded. “Yes sir, we surely will. See I came into this town with a truck full of frozen meat bound for the A&P. All the way from Texas. Just another stop. What I strolled into was this bullshit. Those crazies attacked my truck, ripped the goddamn doors off. If it wasn’t for my shotgun here, I’d be like them now. Preacher here heard me shooting, came to my rescue.”

The preacher nodded, knowing it was all too true. “Yes. The righteous are few in number now. Had we—” he swept his hand to include his little flock “—not been away the past few days, we would be among the evil ones.”

“They’re not evil,” Lou pointed out. “Not really. Just… infected.”

“Like you soon will be, friend,” Rawley said.

“What’re you, fucking nuts?” Lou heard himself ask.

“Maybe. All I know is that I intend to live.”

Johnny moved forward. “I don’t know about you folks, but I’ve had my fill of this redneck cocksucker.”

“Not one step closer, son,” Rawley said. “I swear to God I kill you plain dead.”

Johnny and Joe looked at each other and something passed between them. They both seemed to know that all that was saving Rawley’s pitiful ass was the shotgun.

“What you all dressed-up for, soldier boy?” Rawley asked him.

“The end. Armageddon. Don’t you recognize me, you peckerwood sonofabitch?” Johnny said. “How about you preacher? I’m Death riding a pale horse, motherfucker. I got the keys of hell and death and I’m gonna ram ’em up your worthless ass.”

“You blaspheme,” the preacher said.

“No, you do. Look at this guy here—you’re aligning yourself with him? The guy’s a psycho,” Johnny said.

“Easy,” Rawley said.

The preacher looked at him, looked away. Like what remained of his congregation, he desperately needed to be led. By anyone or anything. Without leadership, divine or earthly, he was without substance.

Rawley stroked the trigger of the shotgun. “Don’t listen to him, preacher. That sonofabitch’ll slit your throat quicker than a teenager fucks. And that’s the Gospel according to Earl Rawley.”

Ben said, “My wife’s dead. Now I’m dead, too,” he said and meant it, moving forward past Lou. “When he shoots me, take him down.”

Lou grabbed a shoulder, stopped him. “No, if you do that your death means nothing. Stay back.”

Rawley nodded happily. “That’s right, friend. You see, maybe I am crazy. Crazy enough that I’ve had my fill of Yankees for one lifetime. I’ll kill as many as I got to. To protect myself… and the congregation, of course.”

Lisa came forward now. “Yankees? Yankees?” she said, lit up like a flare now. “In case you haven’t noticed, you hayseed fucking yahoo, the Civil War’s been over 130 years and counting. Yankees? For the love of God, you ignorant moron. What barnyard did your mama conceive your sorry ass in?”

Rawley was flushed red now. “You just settle down, snatch. You’re real close right now. Real close.”

“Don’t you be calling her that,” Ruby Sue said. “Way I hear it, man, only thing big in Texas is your mother’s hole.”

Rawley stared. He looked for a moment like he might snap, then his face seemed to relax. “Might be some truth to that, sweet thing, so I won’t attempt a debate. You do know how to push a man’s buttons, I’ll give you that.” He made a show of tipping his hat to her. But his finger never left the trigger of his shotgun. He looked at the preacher. “While I keep these folks honest, preacher, have your boys see what they can find.”

Rawley had managed to corral them together now. Even Johnny had allowed himself to be worked. Mainly because he feared for Lisa’s life.

The preacher’s boys were both in their twenties. They found Johnny’s guns right away and then Joe’s duffel. They also found Lisa’s purse, her guitar, assorted personals.

The congregation were getting antsy. They wanted to do whatever it was they’d come to do.

Rawley had stopped smiling long ago. “Listen up. This is how it works. We need a diversion to get out of this place. Those goddamn Yankee crazies are lining up outside in case you didn’t notice. And—”

“And we’re it?” Ben said incredulously. “You feed us to them and you walk right out?”

“You catch on quick for a Northerner, son.”

“And if we don’t care for that plan?” Lou said.

Rawley aimed the shotgun at Lisa. “Then I kill the snatch.”

Johnny looked at Joe who looked to Lou who, in turn, looked to Ben. Then they all looked at Ruby Sue and Lisa. This was it, then. This was the big one. No more fucking around here, death had arrived. They’d spent most of the evening fighting to stay alive, to stay uninfected… and now this crazy bastard Rawley was throwing them to the wolves. The irony, if that’s what it was, was numbing.

Johnny accepted it, as did Joe. Both were fighters, yes, but both were experienced enough to know that you didn’t attack an armed man until all possible hope was vanquished. Besides, it wasn’t just Rawley now; they all had guns.

“Bring her to me,” Rawley said, staring at Lisa with unabashed hunger.

One of the preacher’s minions made to do just that, but Lisa pulled back.

“You either come over here, snatch,” he said, “or I drop you right now.”

Lisa allowed herself to be pulled forward.

Rawley was happy now. “This little girl, you see, is our insurance policy. Any of you fucks try to play hero, she gets it first. Understand?”

They did.

Rawley formed them up into ranks. Ben was in front, Rawley decided, because he didn’t give two shits for his own skin. Next was Joe and Johnny. Ruby Sue and Lou were in the back. Directly behind them were the preacher’s boys. They marched their little group up the aisle between the pews towards the front of the church. Outside, there was the night and all it contained.

“It isn’t too late to become a human being,” Lou said.

Well behind them, the shotgun pressed into the small of Lisa’s back, Rawley said, “But I am a human being. And I plan on staying that way. Wish I could say the same for you, friend.”

The preacher unlocked the front door.

And the shit hit the fan.

It was as if some predestined moment of attack had arrived. Without bugles blaring or so much as a rebel yell, the stained glass windows began to shatter and the siege began. Dozens of rabids began pouring into the church. Their pallid faces were cut and bleeding but it did nothing to erase their zeal. Like an insane hive, they thronged over the pews. Countless others came from beyond the altar. And, of course, before anyone could possibly register their horror or shock, the front door exploded in.

And pandemonium began.

Ben and the others seemed to literally disappear in sea of clutching, clawing white hands. The preacher’s boys started shooting. And that’s the way it was—screams and shrieking, gunfire and shouting, all punctuated by the inhuman gibberings of the rabids as they sought out the last few healthy cells of Cut River, attempting to absorb them into the cancerous body of the new order.

Rawley said, “I’ll be dipped in shit.” He shoved Lisa to the floor and started popping off rounds from his shotgun.

Lisa had barely even hit the carpet when three of the rabids ringed in Rawley. She realized that the crazy redneck hadn’t been trying to save her, but had been trying to shove her at them to buy himself time. Thanks to her own natural clumsiness, she tripped over her own feet and went down. And maybe that’s what saved her. The trio of rabids had no interest in her—they went right at Rawley.

She brought her face up in time to see the head of a bald man get blasted to shrapnel. He staggered backward drunkenly, fountaining blood and collapsed in a heap.

A hugely overweight woman took two blasts to the abdomen before she, too, went down.

The third, a naked teenage boy launched himself at Rawley, spraying foam and slime. Rawley swung the empty shotgun like a bat and cracked his head open. The boy went down to his knees a few feet from Lisa, head split like a cantaloupe, blood oozing down his white face in crimson rivers. He didn’t seem to comprehend that he was mortally wounded. Beyond the mask of blood, his yellow eyes blazed like headlights in a dark tunnel.

He pulled himself to his feet and staggered on after Rawley who was running back the way they’d come, swinging the shotgun in wild arcs.

The preacher dropped his empty weapon—Johnny’s little .38 snubby—and simply began to pray. The sound of his voice droning monotonously seemed to drive the rabids into a white-hot rage. As the 23rd Psalm tumbled from his lips, he was struck by a wave of them. A few of which were children which hung on like ticks, biting and tearing at his face, throat, belly and legs as the adults hammered him to his knees. Beneath their lunatic attentions, he came apart like a ragdoll.

Lisa crawled away on all fours.

The church was a huge echoing drum of noise. There were bodies everywhere—tumbled, heaped, crawling, screeching.

She couldn’t see any of her new friends, but she did see what was left of the preacher’s congregation. One of the young men with him was being ritually dismembered by a group of children. She saw two rabids fighting over the head of the other man.

The young girl that had been with them (who couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven) was encircled by four or five teenagers, girls and boys. All naked and streaked with grime. They were visibly excited at the sight of their helpless prey. As she tried to stand, they shoved her down. As she tried to crab-crawl to safety, they rained kicks down upon her. Bleeding and bruised and whimpering, they tossed her back and forth like a ball. They were like cats sharing the torments of a mouse. The girl kept screaming and screaming.

The rabids were all grinning, foaming at the mouth, their eyes glassy and reptilian. They closed in tighter, mocking the child’s screams, howling in her face.

Lisa searched frantically around for a weapon.

She found her feet and a hand locked onto her shoulder, spun her around.

She cocked back her fist… and saw it was Johnny. He was banged-up and bleeding, but his battle-scarred face was the best thing she could imagine.

“Oh… Jesus, Johnny,” she heard herself weep. “Lookit them… oh Christ… this place—”

“Fuck it!” Johnny shouted over the din. “Let’s save our own asses here!”

By luck or pluck, he had some of his weapons back—the Winchester and his .357. Pried from dead fingers, no doubt.

He stuck the .357 in her hand, shoved her towards the back of the church. There were more rabids now gathering outside the front door. Oddly enough, they weren’t attacking; they were just standing on the steps looking in with almost puzzled expressions.

Nothing about them, Lisa decided, fit any conceivable pattern.

The young girl was being pulled apart now. A teenage girl was lapping at blood from her neck like a kitty with a bowl of warm milk. One of the boys was pushing his penis into her mouth.

Lisa turned away, unable to look anymore.

She could not sup on any more horrors. She was full now like a barrel, overflowing.

The woman who’d been with the congregation had her own troubles.

Two rabids—an elderly woman in a windsuit and a bearded man wearing only a flannel shirt were pulling at her from either side, teeth bared. They were growling and snapping and drooling. Like lover’s playfully sharing a joint of beef, they began taking turns with her, each biting chunks of meat from the woman’s face and neck. There was such primitive, barbaric pleasure to their actions it was literally unspeakable.

Lisa and Johnny ran up the aisle.

Behind them, the deranged throng from outside began to rush in. There was no more time to witness the fall of civilization as such.

“They’re not people!” Johnny shouted, as if to convince himself of the same. “Not people…”

From the altar, more rabids came.

The initial offensive consisted of three adults, all men. An unlikely threesome they were—a business man in a soiled three-piece suit, barefoot, wielding a broom handle; a gangly farmer-brown type in bib overalls and a greasy Case cap, Junior Samples from Hell; and lastly, a huge, lolling fat man wearing the uniform pants of a cop with a badge pinned to his rolling fish-white belly.

If they hadn’t been so positively sinister in intent, it might have been laughable.

Johnny shouldered the .30-06, sighted, and blew the cop’s head to fragments. He did the same with the farmer. They fell into one another, dead, but their limbs continued to jump and twitch. The businessman with the broom handle vaulted over them and came on, his club held above his head for a deathblow.

He got within four feet of Johnny and Lisa.

Before Johnny could pull the trigger, Lisa brought up the .357 and shot him in the face. The back of his head exploded with a spray of meat and bone. The impact threw him up against a pew and over it.

Johnny took her by the hand, led her forward.

They weren’t far from the doorway that led to the rectory. It was just beyond the altar. Twenty feet at most. But in their situation, it might have been miles.

Behind them, the rabids were swarming like hornets. The church was filled with their screechings and howlings.

The door to the rectory suddenly slammed open and two more showed themselves.

Two twin girls, naked and scrawny, their ashen flesh black with streaks and blotches of oil and dirt like they’d been crawling around in a mechanic’s bay. Their blonde hair was matted with leaves and sticks, stringy strands of it hung limply over their faces. They could’ve been a set of porcelain dolls, so white, so perfect… except for their eyes—liquid yellow and fixed with a wolfish hunger.

They came on, arms extended, fingers clutching and clawing.

“God forgive me,” Johnny said.

And killed them both.

After that, both Lisa and he were finished.

They shambled forward, through the rectory and out into the night. They met no resistance and that was a good thing because, by that point, there wouldn’t have been much they could’ve done about it.

They made it out into the courtyard, out into the misting, damp night.

Holding each other, they fell behind a wall of cedars and trembled. Lisa sobbed and Johnny did, too, realizing it was the first time he had cried in thirty years. It went against the grain of who and what he was, but the tears felt good.

They proved he was still human.

22

Lou was armed and dangerous and pretty much out of his head.

Like Johnny, he’d survived the initial onslaught when the rabids poured through the front door of the church by simply being overwhelmed. The rabids bowled down first Ben then Joe and Johnny. The latter slammed into Lou and pitched him on his ass. The rabids went right over the top of them, trampling them to the floor.

Maybe it was sheer momentum.

Maybe they saw the men behind them with the guns and knew they were the ones who had to go first.

Regardless, Lou, bruised and banged-up from being used as a welcome mat, managed to crawl out the front door.

Scrambling away on all fours, something struck him in the back—a shotgun. It must’ve been tossed aside by one of the rabids as they fell on its owner. And now he had it. It was sawed-off right in front of the pump and he knew without a doubt it was Johnny’s.

And now, here he was, back on the streets of Cut River once again.

Alone.

A voice in his head kept telling him he had to hang on until dawn… but that was hours and hours away. He pretty much accepted the fact that the others had to be dead. Maybe by sunrise he’d run into one or more of them again… and have to kill them. He wasn’t sure he was ready for that. His tank was empty and everything seemed gray and hopeless.

But something in him told him to fight on.

If they were going to get him—and by virtue of their sheer numbers it seemed very likely—then he was going to make them pay for it.

A block from the main drag, Chestnut, he collapsed behind a parked Tony’s Pizza truck and weighed his options. He thought of getting in a car again and driving all night. If the tank was full and it was an economical job, he could cruise around until first light.

But he dismissed that idea; it would only draw attention.

He considered walking out of town again.

It seemed the only rational choice.

It didn’t seem conceivable to him that they could have every avenue of escape covered. Maybe the roads… but, Christ, Cut River wasn’t that big. It was bordered by woods and fields to all sides and where it wasn’t, there was the river. There had to be an opening somewhere. The only alternative to that was finding yet another (supposedly) defensible position and waiting out the night.

Fuck that noise, he thought. You don’t know how many rounds you have. Do the sensible thing and get the hell out.

Okay, then. Which way?

Chestnut slit right through the center of town. Main arteries fed off of it in either direction. Those were out. To the east, the town was flanked by the river. To the west, the cemetery, the trainyards, some warehouses, and what had looked to be a trailer court. Beyond that was open country.

He’d already tried the cemetery and that was no good. Those ghouls were thick in there.

The river?

Why the hell not? Maybe if he got in the water, cold as it would be, he could quietly follow the riverbank out of town. Regardless, it was better than dying on the streets.

Staying in the shadows, he crept up to Chestnut, pressing himself to the brick façade of a jewelry store. He was stunned to see that he was only a block or so away from where he’d parked his Pontiac. It was still there, he saw, across from the Town Tap. He felt a hollow yearning in his belly. The car had brought him to this graveyard. It was his only true connection with the real world.

He wiped a hand across his mouth. Chewed his fingernails.

He felt like he was on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

Sighing, he shook his head. He couldn’t let himself weaken like that.

As he squinted his eyes, he could see shadowy forms moving not far from his Grand Am.

He thought: Cocksuckers, dirty, vile inhuman cocksuckers! Reducing me to this! I should go down there and kill ’em all! Waste those godless pricks!

He wiped dampness from his brow, part mist, part sweat. He had to keep it together. He couldn’t afford to lose it now. This was his last chance. No doubt about that.

Steeling himself, he held the 12-gauge out before him and, crouching down low, jogged soundlessly across Chestnut. On the other side, he ducked into a dark alley and waited. Five minutes. Ten. Safe. They would’ve shown themselves by now if they were going to.

It took him maybe twenty minutes to maneuver the darkened streets.

The moon was still riding high, bloated and wide like a dead man’s eyeball. It created threatening shadows and illuminated the terrain. Bad and good. He saw no one, heard no one.

The only thing that stopped him was the sound of gunfire far in the distance.

Then it was gone—just a muted series of poppings, then nothing.

He wasn’t even sure he’d heard it. It was so vague that there was no way he could judge its direction. Maybe some of the normal ones were still alive and battling it out.

No matter, because he wasn’t going back.

If he got out, he’d bring the Marines back with him.

The houses began to be separated by vacant, weedy lots, industrial sites. Black windows reflected the moon, reflected the lone hunted man, but nothing more.

In the distance, he saw the river.

It wound like a black, glistening snake through the countryside. There was mostly open country bordering it on either side. Lou saw what he thought might be a pumping station off to the far left and a schoolhouse to the right. In-between there was a public access road and a boat dock.

But he saw no boats.

He saw only the moon riding the dark waters.

Okay, tough guy, he told himself, this is it. You wanted to go for a swim? Now’s your chance.

There was a fringe of trees near the dock. It would be the best point of entry.

He darted across the grass to the trees. Once in their shadows, he allowed himself to breathe again. He could smell the river now—wet and fishy. A cold mist blew off it. Its current was slow, but steady. The waters were dark and looked very deep.

He slid off the grassy bank.

The water was like ice, sluicing around his legs. He had to bite down on his lower lip to suppress the yelp of shock that twisted in his throat. Good Christ. If he stayed in too long, he’d be looking at serious hypothermia. Following the riverbank was out of the question now—he’d have to make a quick crossing.

It was an easy hundred feet of open, deep water.

He wasn’t much of a swimmer. There was no way he would be able to make it across with the shotgun. Far in the distance he could see the black hulk of the bridge. See dying fires smoldering away over there. Dark, still shapes waiting. He could smell the stink of wood smoke and worse odors.

You can’t go over there, dip shit, so get going.

Night birds called out in the sky.

He moved in further, feet slipping and sliding on the loose rocks and muddy bottom. The entire surface was like a mirror reflecting the bright moonlight. He looked up. The moon was fringed by a shaggy beard of gray clouds. The light would be gone soon. And was that better or worse?

His legs were getting numb.

The water was up to his waist now.

He wasn’t even a dozen feet into it yet. His breath was coming in short, sharp gulps, his body trembling violently from the chill wetness.

There was a splashing somewhere. The sound of something heavy being dropped or thrown in.

A fish?

A goddamn big one by the sound.

Shivering, the shotgun tight in his grip, Lou listened.

He heard the sound of water slowing rushing past, lapping at the banks and the dock. There was another splash off to his right.

He swallowed.

The river was getting deeper. Pretty soon, he’d have to dive in, swim for the opposite bank. The water was heavy in his nostrils with a dank, dark odor.

He didn’t like it at all.

Something brushed against him.

He almost screamed, stumbling back, nearly going under. He held the shotgun out. Yes, he could see it now. A large, long shape just beneath the surface. He got closer. He reached out, brushed it with his fingertips and felt flesh, cold and stiff like rubber. A body. A corpse. In the liquid darkness, there was no way to tell if it was male or female. The current carried it away sluggishly.

Lou let out a breath.

Nothing to be afraid of.

The body count in this town was going to be through the roof.

Nothing to worry about.

Of course, his brain began to wonder if that poor bastard had been trying to cross, too, and—

Another splash. Just off to his right now.

Ahead of him, there was something else.

Something floating.

Something round.

It had black filaments streaming around it like weeds. A head. Yes, the top of a head, hair swimming around it like deep-sea snakes. It rose up, breaking the surface.

Lou let out a muffled cry.

It was a woman, her face white as bleached flour. Her eyes were yellow dying stars, her grin was like needles in the moonlight.

Lou felt a scream building in his throat and he swallowed it down.

“Get away,” he heard his voice say. “Get away or I swear to God I’ll kill you.”

She didn’t move.

She just waited there with her face just above the sluicing water. He could hear her breathing with a rattling, diseased sound. She licked her lips. When her voice came it was clotted and thick as though she were speaking through a mouthful of seaweed: “Hide and seek,” she said.

And then her face disappeared slowly back down into the water like a sinking ship.

Lou waited.

A moment, then two.

Like a shark, she’s like a shark, showing her dorsal before going under for the attack…

With that in mind, he wheeled around wildly, trying to see movement, anything.

The water before him exploded with motion. Hands took his ankles, pulled his feet out from under him. He went down into the foul blackness, fought back to the surface.

She came at him from behind.

This time, as he fell, he brought the butt of the 12-gauge down with everything he had. He felt it strike something, something that gave. The hands were gone. When he pulled himself up this time he was farther out in the river. The water was up to his chest now.

And that had been her plan… to get him out in the deep water.

He started rushing to shore and she vaulted out of the water, her head catching him in the belly and tossing him back further. Swinging the shotgun underwater to keep her off him, but with little force, he broke the surface again, gulping for air. The water was nearly to the top of his shoulders now.

She was succeeding, his raging mind told him, pushing him out further and further.

He had to make it to the shore.

The water went calm and she was nowhere to be seen.

Lou made his break for it and then she came up again right in front of him.

She clawed wildly at his face. He felt her nails dig furrows in his cheek. She smelled like rotting fish. Her bloodless face was plastered with stringy hair, lit by a vicious grin.

He saw something catch the pale moonlight in her right hand.

He lurched back, felt a blade slice open his nose, then rip through his shirt into his shoulder. He brought the shotgun around and knocked her arm away as it made for a killing blow. He stumbled back and went underwater again.

Drop-off.

He plunged down into the deep blackness, felt his shoes brush tangled weeds. He was out of breath and needed air badly, but he would not submit. He’d play her game. Instead of making for the surface, he pushed himself along underwater with powerful kicking strokes and kept going until he sensed the river bottom beneath him. He came up again, the water just beneath his chest now. His heart was hammering, hitching painfully as it skipped beats.

The moon slid behind a wall of dark, boiling clouds.

She came up again, the knife flaying at his face. He knocked it away, ducked under it, and cracked her alongside the head with the butt of the 12-gauge. She made an almost canine yelping-sound and fell backward with a resounding splash.

He went right over the top of her, feeling his shoes come down on her soft belly, then on the ball of her head. He pitched forward and was half-dog paddling, half-crawling through the violently thrashing water.

He fell back on his ass and he was only in a few feet of water now, the shadows of the willows on the riverbank falling over him with a dark chill. He could feel the sticky, warm oozing of his own blood running down his face and chest.

The woman came out of the water about seven, eight feet away.

She was small and frail, pathetically thin. She’d lost her knife, but was coming on anyway. Making a low growling sound, she fought through the water, her jaws snapping open and closed.

“Come and get it, bitch,” Lou gasped.

He brought the shotgun up, aimed generally for her chest, and pulled the trigger. The chamber explosion was like thunder. Buckshot vaporized her neck, her sternum, meat spraying out over the surface of the water.

She was thrown back into the deep.

She fought free one more time, the hole in her upper chest big enough to toss a softball into. She screamed and writhed and sank beneath the water.

Lou made it to shore.

Panting, he watched and waited.

Nothing. He figured with that hole in her, she had filled up with water like an empty can and sank to the bottom, down into that loathsome blackness. In his fatigued, frazzled mind, he could see the currents dragging her along the muddy bottom, easing her past the drop-off where she would submerge into the depths, her clown-white face caressed by river weeds.

He pulled himself wearily to his feet.

Jesus, he was running on batteries here; he couldn’t take much more. Dawn was still hours away. The river had turned into a nightmare. What next?

He looked and saw the schoolhouse.

And then he knew.

23

Joe was a large man and he was not designed for running.

Powerful and menacing, you didn’t want to go one on one with him. He’d crush you, pull your arms off, and use your skull for an ashtray. In his checkered career, he’d ridden with both the Outlaws and Satan’s Choice up in Canada.

He’d fought with them.

Killed with them.

Done time with them.

He was a tough man and a good guy to have at your side.

But he was not a runner.

Two blocks of steady pounding after they’d evacuated the church and his legs felt like they’d been pumped with gelatin. He grabbed Ruby Sue by the shoulder, pulled her to a stop.

“Can’t, babe,” he panted. “Can’t run… no more.”

She looked around desperately.

She was winded, too, but, then again, she weighed 115 pounds and not 350 like Joe. That was one hell of a wagon of meat to be pulling around.

“Over there,” she said, indicating a narrow passage between two Quonset huts.

Joe nodded, dragging his ass over there, squeezing in and collapsing. “Damn,” he said.

“Easy, baby, easy,” Ruby Sue said, stroking his huge forearm. She peered around the corner of the hut. Wet streets reflected moonlight. Leaves were heaped in gutters. Storefronts were silent and staring.

“It’s cool, babe. It’s cool. They must’ve found easier pickings.”

Joe suddenly looked up. “You hear that?”

Ruby Sue cocked her head. “What?”

“That,” Joe said, narrowing his eyes. “Gunfire. You hear it?”

She nodded. “Oh yeah. Somebody’s bustin’ some caps.”

“Big time.”

Joe was jealous, if anything.

They’d rolled into this shithole with enough artillery to start World War III and look where they were now—unarmed, desperate, in a world of serious hurt. About all they had were their wits and that wasn’t gonna slay the beast.

Joe figured he could probably take one of the rabids out with his bare hands. Had they been people, he could’ve done three or four of them without working up a sweat. He’d done it before.

But these things, damn, they were wild. Vicious. And strong, too. They fought like animals.

Ruby Sue and he had barely made it out of the church alive.

As it was, he had two of those pricks hanging off him like remoras on a shark’s belly. He’d tossed them—one into the bushes, the other right through the windshield of a parked car—but it had been close. Real close.

They’d scratched him, but he hadn’t been bitten and that was the important thing. He figured the others got killed.

And if Lisa was among them, all the better.

Rested now, he crawled out and checked the scene. Looked cool. He had some ideas here. One of them was to get some kind of earthmover, maybe a front-end loader, a big nasty piece of iron, and plow right through the car barricade. That was a possibility.

Then he looked up the street. “You check that?” he said to Ruby Sue.

“What’s that, babe?”

“Right there.”

She saw it, nodded, started to smile. “We on the same page?”

“Sure as shit,” he said.

There was a sporting goods store just up the block. It looked like maybe it had been ransacked—the plate glass windows were shattered, the door was hanging off its hinges… but if they were really lucky, they might find some guns there. And ammo. Then they could get a car, find themselves a big piece of iron and they’d be good to go.

Silently, cautiously, they moved up the sidewalk.

“We gonna leave without her?” Ruby Sue asked.

“We gotta, babe,” he said. “No choice in the matter. I think she’s done anyway.”

“Yeah, sure.”

He put his arm around her, held her tight. She felt good. “But I ain’t taking any chances. We can’t go back to Detroit empty-handed. That’s why we’re going to Utah.”

She stopped. “Utah?”

“Sure. Remember Brooker? Glen Brook? Rode with the Angels? He’s retired now. Got hisself a big place out in Utah—horses, cattle, bikes. Big old ranch. That’s where we’re going. Nobody’ll find us there. We get out of here, we quick clean out our place, and head west. Fuck the rest.”

The inside of the sporting good’s store looked very much like a cyclone had done its thing there. Shelves were emptied, display cases broken. Everything from rubber waders to fishing poles, hunting vests to basketballs was heaped and piled on the floor.

They had to wade through the mess.

The gun cases were shattered, too, but the guns themselves, for the most part, had not been disturbed. Joe got a nice piece for himself: a Colt Python .357 Mag and some speedloaders. He found Ruby Sue a Browning .380 semi-auto. He took a 12-gauge Remington pump off the rack and filled a duffel with boxes of ammo. The guns all had trigger locks, but the keys were in a drawer beneath the cash register.

“Now we’re ready,” he said.

Ruby Sue went to use the head and he kept an eye out. A thief most of his life, the desire to back a truck up and empty the place was overwhelming. Overwhelming, just not exactly practical. Or smart.

He turned around, smiling at the idea, and there was an elderly man standing a few feet away.

Joe started, took two or three uneasy steps back.

There wasn’t a man in the world that truly frightened Joe.

Even in prison where there’d been some truly malicious, degenerate sadists who’d slit your throat for a cigarette, he’d never known fear. But at this moment, staring down at this little old man with his yellow, crocodilian eyes, Joe was frightened.

The guy was just standing there, scrawny pencil arms extended, palms up, fingers wiggling crazily like maybe they were full of electricity. Great dripping gouts of foam and mucus ran from his mouth.

“How about it?” he said with a voice like a gurgling drainpipe.

Joe had the .357 on him. “How about what, asshole?”

“How about it?” he said again and then said something else, but a rancid clot of mucus slopped from his lips and it became unintelligible.

Joe kept watching him, figuring what an amusing, harmless creature this guy must have been before the germ did him—probably sat on the porch telling war stories, bounced babies on his lap, fished trout in the creeks (knew the best spots, too, like all the old timers). Someone’s grandpa for sure.

But now… now the damage was done and this old man was dangerous.

He took a step forward and it wasn’t the step of an elderly man; there was a smooth cat-like grace to it.

“Take a walk,” Joe told him.

He came on.

Joe pulled the trigger and the muzzle flash turned the shadowy shop to daylight.

The old man caught a round square in the chest.

It flung him back four feet, right into an unmolested rack of baseball bats. He and the bats went clattering to the floor. He moaned and writhed and then went still.

Joe figured he’d blown his heart right across the fucking street.

“Nothing personal, old man,” he said.

Ruby Sue came rushing out, Browning in hand.

“Get your ass wet?” Joe said.

“Fucking right,” she said and saw the dead man. “Let’s go. Place is giving me the creeps.”

Outside, they moved up Chestnut, armed to the teeth and ready to do some damage. There was a sudden loud whooshing sound overhead and both of them went down low automatically.

“What the fuck was that?” Ruby Sue said.

“I think it was a helicopter.”

And a fast one at that.

It got him to thinking.

A helicopter with no lights on it. Was that legal? He’d be the first to admit that he knew as much about choppers as he knew about tampons, but there had to be laws, right? For civilians, anyway. And this chopper was no civilian model. It had been jet-black and sleek-looking, definitely a military model.

Which made him start to wonder just what sort of people were about to crash this little party.

24

Lisa found it almost funny in some pathetic way how, during the action back at the church, she’d had no interest in shoveling any powder up her nose. But now that things had cooled off relatively… the need was back. It had been maybe two hours or so since her last fix and she was burning down like a pile of dry kindling. Her nose was running, her head was aching, and her guts wanted to crawl up the back of her throat.

She needed a taste and she wasn’t going to get one.

That was not only depressing, it was downright criminal.

And if all that wasn’t bad enough, Johnny was acting strange. The twins back at the church… it had been bad. Lisa decided she was lucky, maybe, that she had the junk habit. Go without it long enough and pretty soon, the monkey started jumping on your back, clawing at your brain, pretty much blotting out everything else. It got so she didn’t even care about the guitar she’d left at the church.

Addiction, true addiction, fucked you that perfectly.

But Johnny didn’t have even that.

They were walking again. She didn’t ask where. She was simply overloaded by it all; functioning completely on auto-pilot. She saw the faces of her mother and father. She saw the faces of those she’d come to know in these past few hours. And she saw the faces of the residents of Cut River. The only thing they all had in common was that they were all dead.

All dead.

Yes, all of them.

Just like me.

Johnny was walking ahead of her. He paused, stuffed a plug of tobacco into his jaw. He chewed it, spat. “I’m going to get you out of here. I told you I would and I will or die trying. That’s that.”

“How?”

“We’re not taking the roads. We’re just going to walk out, through the woods, the fields. It’s the only way.”

“But Lou said he tried that. He said—”

“I don’t care what he said. He’s dead. They’re all dead.”

Lisa didn’t have the strength to argue. The weight of the .357 in her fist was like a brick. Her own body weighed only slightly more. Her eyes were blank and her belly was sick and she had the shakes. If she didn’t a get a taste pretty soon, she was afraid of what might happen.

Afraid that she’d run off and make for the church and her stash.

Use your head. There’s too many of them—they’ll get you, make you like them. You don’t want that, do you?

She started wondering if it would really be all that bad.

Then she started thinking about Nancy, what it had done to her before she died. Horrible. Far worse than withdrawal… wasn’t it? At least Nancy was dead now, though, and didn’t feel the pain.

Or was she?

Lisa kept wondering that, too.

She’d looked dead… but maybe she wasn’t, maybe she’d be waking up soon.

Thinking these things only made the shivering worse.

“Listen,” Johnny said to her in a whisper.

She sighed, thinking maybe he was hearing gunfire and helicopters again. She’d heard the first, but not the second. He, however, swore he’d heard it. It seemed to worry him much more than the rabids or what they could do. Maybe he was ready to have a breakdown. Maybe the war was coming back—

No, not gunfire or helicopters.

This sound sent chills up her spine, yanked her mind out of the fog. It was a baby crying. Wailing pitifully. It woke some maternal instinct in her she hadn’t known existed… and it also, for reasons she couldn’t explain, filled her with a gnawing, relentless terror.

Johnny shrugged, spat. “Some kid,” he said.

“Who needs help,” Lisa said angrily, tired of apathy.

He laughed. “You think kids haven’t been affected by this, rock star? Is that what you think?” he said, eyes bulging. “What is it you think I shot back there at the church? What do you think that was?”

Lisa stared at him. “I’m going to find that kid. Help her or him. You can go fuck yourself for all I care.”

She stalked off into the darkness, zeroing in on the crying. The closer she got to it, the more her habit withdrew its clutches. She was pumped with adrenalin now, on a mission from God here, and nothing was going to stand in her way.

She found herself on a block of houses.

A few were lit up, but most were dark. Odd as it seemed, the darkness was gradually holding less and less threat for her. Maybe it was the gun. Maybe it was that she knew those bastards could die now. And maybe it was just experience. After awhile, they said, you could get used to anything.

She stopped before a simple two-story frame house.

A working streetlight on the boulevard washed it down in pale illumination. It had bad windows, old cedar siding. The lawn was overgrown and there was a Ford pickup in the driveway with a flat tire. The body of a woman was twisted-up in the grass, a swath of darkness where her face had been. The sight of her didn’t even faze Lisa.

There was another body in the street.

Another swung from the limb of a tree next door.

So what?

The child was still crying. Very loud, very insistent. It could thank its lucky stars that its cries had brought Lisa and not someone or something else. The porch was screened-in and she let herself in. There was a recliner, an old card table in there. A few boxes of toys, a bag of empties. She saw a pack of cigarettes on the arm of the recliner. Winston. Not her brand, but, hey, they were free.

She lit up, wondering if the flickering flame would draw any unfriendlies in.

But it didn’t.

It didn’t even draw Johnny in. And the fact that he’d actually allowed her to run off like that… well, it both pissed her off and scared her. She dragged off her cigarette, exhaled.

The child had stopped crying now.

She couldn’t be entirely certain she was in the right house.

Sighing, she tried the door.

It whispered in without even a hint of a creak. A mild rain began to fall, tapping on the windows. Wind rattled a loose rain gutter against the siding. She was in a living room—TV, couch, sofa piled with dirty clothes. All terribly ordinary, really, except for the smell in the air of death and pain.

And an empty house.

There was something terrifying about a dark, deserted house, wasn’t there? Empty, echoing, a parade of clutching shadows where only stillness and silence walked.

And this was especially true of Cut River, she knew. The town the devil built.

There was a nightlight on the stairs.

Lisa started up, still smoking, clutching the .357 with renewed vigor now. Near the top, she heard movement. A quick, faint pattering like the fall of tiny footsteps. She could feel fear settle into her again, thick as molasses. If you would have asked her at that particular moment if she had a drug habit, she couldn’t have told you. All that seemed worlds away now. There was only her, three or four steps from the top, and whatever waited in the gloom above.

She tried to swallow, but her throat was full of sand.

Do what you gotta do, then get out. Just do what you gotta do.

She exhaled, her pulse drumming at her temples.

She stepped up into the hallway.

It went a short way, then turned off to the left like an L. She stopped there, listening. She could hear her own breathing, the rush of blood in her head. Outside, the wind played along the eaves, rain dropping on the roof. Her senses were electric, her muscles taut and flexed.

She navigated the bend in the hallway.

A pale radiance bathed the walls from the streetlight outside. There were doors standing open. Bedrooms, she figured. But she was only interested in the one at the end. It was halfway open and beyond was the summation of mankind’s oldest fear: the unknown.

Maybe a terrified child waited. Maybe something far worse.

But she had the gun. Yes, she did have that.

You sonofabitch, Johnny… how could you make me face this alone?

Through the doorway, she could just make out a suggestion of a form. A gray half-shape, a partial outline that looked oddly human. But small.

A child?

She moved further, her own steps like feathers brushing silk.

She dropped her cigarette and pushed the door open.

This one creaked.

The streetlight fed in through a threadbare curtain. The bed was unmade. The body of a woman was stretched out on it, naked from the waist up. Her breasts were mutilated, ravaged by dark gashes and scratching. But were nothing compared to the ruin of her throat.

A child stood on the other side of the bed, its face black with blood.

Lisa, an odd buzzing in ears, found the light switch and flicked it on.

The room exploded with brilliance.

The child… a toddler… screamed at the intrusion of light. Just a little girl, caked with blood, her eyes blazing with that malign pestilence. She cowered from the light. She tottered uneasily back and forth, a child who’d just learned the fine art of walking.

Lisa knew she should shoot her, but she didn’t have the stomach for it.

The child was no real threat. Very small. Insane as all the others, but trapped in a far worse darkness somehow. A darkness the child could never hope to understand. The woman must have been her mother. The woman’s breasts were riddled with teeth marks. The girl must have been breastfeeding in life… and in this living hell, she still was.

Lisa turned off the light and backed carefully from the room, shut the door behind her.

She heard the girl claw madly at the door, wrestling with the knob in futility. Then she began wailing again. Lisa knew she’d never forget that awful, pathetic sound. It rattled through her skull. She heard the little girl pad across the floor, heard the squeaking of bed springs… and then a congested sucking sound as she sought comfort at her dead mother’s breast.

It wasn’t until she was outside that Lisa began to cry.

And then Johnny was coming through the yard.

25

Lou approached the schoolyard carefully.

He still had the shotgun, but he didn’t really know if it had any shot left. The idea of pausing and finding out was unthinkable.

As he moved around the chain-link fence and into the schoolyard itself, he kept an eye cast towards the river, watching for the woman, almost expecting she’d drag her blasted, dripping body after him. In his mind he could see her cadaverous face, the stagnant river water running from her wounds.

Enough.

He pressed himself up against the brick façade of the building.

It was damp and cool.

The school was single-story, spread out over the dark grounds like a spider, wings extending in every direction like limbs. He was in the back, facing the river the town was named for.

He could hear the flagpole rope out front dinging against the pole.

The entire rear of the school was enclosed by a high storm fence. Kept the kids away from the river, he supposed, and off the ice in the wintertime. He thought the school was probably newer—built in the last twenty, thirty years or so—and had probably replaced some ancient, stone monstrosity of the sort he’d attended back in the bronze age.

That made him think of his teachers and, soon enough, he thought about his third wife, Mara. Mara had been a schoolteacher. She was real good with oral exams… unfortunately, she wasn’t real picky about who she gave them to.

But Lou didn’t blame her. Not really.

He thought about all the women that had passed through his life. Not a single relationship had stuck for more than a few years. He was on the road all the time, but that wasn’t the real problem: he was. He was the only constant in all those relationships, the only thing that could possibly be at blame.

It was funny how it took a situation like this, one of constant danger and stress, to make you finally see your life and the numerous holes you’d dug in it. What was murky and metaphysical before, now was crystal clear.

And didn’t that just beat all?

He started moving again, considering his latest plan of action.

Johnny had said to wait for the sunrise and those things would slink back into their holes. That sounded like a plan.

Lou decided he needed to get up on the roof somehow.

He could wait it out up there. Maybe it was stupid and crazy and suicidal, but if he didn’t rest soon… well, he was no kid anymore.

He kept going.

The dark windows looked at him like sullen, blind eyes. He saw no movement in them and didn’t wait to see any. He made it to the end of the building, sucked in a breath and rounded the corner. He was in the playground now.

Feeling relieved, he walked right out into it.

And right into a nest of them.

And, of course, it made sense, didn’t it?

Where else would they go but the playground? Not human, not anymore, but still the most basal of imperatives held: the need to play. Even beasts of the forests had that.

And so did the children of Cut River.

Lou felt hope and energy run out of him like water through a colander.

They were everywhere.

Their dark, waiting shapes were snipped from black paper. They were perched like vultures atop the jungle gym. Crowded on the merry-go-round and sitting on the swings—not swinging, just sitting there almost as if they’d been waiting for him.

And maybe they were.

Maybe they heard him coming, smelled him perhaps. Animals could do that and these children were animals now, weren’t they?

As if satisfied by his presence, they began to play.

They started swinging, the chains holding the swing seats rattling against their crossbars. The merry-go-round began to turn. The teeter-totter began to move up and down, groaning and creaking in the night. It was surreal, like falling into a dream… or a nightmare.

He sensed motion behind him.

A small hand grasped his wrist. Its grip was surprisingly powerful. The flesh was cold, damp, feeling much like the pebbly skin of a freshly-plucked chicken.

With a cry, Lou turned, pulling his hand free.

There was a little girl standing there.

She was no more than seven, wearing a cute little party dress that was bunched up and stained with dirt. Her face was pallid, eyes like living yellow marbles. She leered at him, lips pulling away from teeth in a depraved grin. She pulled up her skirt. She wore nothing beneath. “Hey, mister,” she seethed with that hissing voice, “you wanna fuck?”

And Lou, maybe terrified and maybe struck by the sheer profanity of it all, brought his hand back and slapped her across the face. She yelped like a kicked dog and fell over.

And that was the signal.

The others were coming now, sliding off their perches like crocodiles from the muddy banks of a jungle river.

And Lou was running.

He moved with a speed he thought had abandoned him in his twenties.

He sprinted around the front of the school and the first thing he saw were three yellow school buses parked at the curb. He turned and saw a boy making good time on him. He was older boy, maybe a sixth grader.

Without remorse, Lou went down on one knee and pulled the trigger of his shotgun. The buckshot nearly tore the kid in half.

As Lou got back to his feet, he saw that it had done just that. The kid was mewling like a sick cat. Divorced of his legs and pelvis, he was dragging his upper body across the grass, teeth still snapping.

Lou tried the door of the first bus.

Locked.

Their footfalls were pounding through the grass now.

The second bus.

Locked.

He turned and saw their ashen faces coming through the darkness.

A dead man now, he went to try the third bus and the door was standing wide open. He fell through it onto the small, mat-covered steps. He hauled himself in and threw himself towards the chrome lever by the driver’s seat. He pulled it with everything he had and the folding door snapped shut.

And then they were all around the bus, howling and shrieking, the bus rocking as they threw themselves at it.

Lou was crouched on the floor, trembling.

It was about that time that he saw the guy in the driver’s seat.

26

Ben was still alive, contrary to popular opinion.

He was still alive and he was still at the church. Yes, he was in bad shape—the rabids hadn’t gone easy on him. He was bitten, clawed, scratched, his body a map of bruises and contusions and swollen cuts.

But he was very much alive.

Soon after the final members of Rawley’s gang had been murdered, the rabids, leaving Ben for dead, had slipped back out into the night like shadows, back to the hunting grounds of Cut River.

Ben accepted certain things now.

They had bitten him and the germ, or whatever it was, was inside him now, too. He could feel it beginning to work. It didn’t waste any time.

Maybe there was a certain clarity that came with knowing your end was imminent, but he believed everything Johnny had said. He hadn’t been certain before—not one-hundred percent, even though, crazy as it sounded, it made perfect sense—but now, yes, he believed.

And conversion of faith had come at an expensive price.

This disease or what not was simply too insidious to be of natural origin or freakish mutation, it had been designed to do what it was doing… by assholes in white lab coats with no more compassion or respect for human life than terrorists planting a bomb in a hospital.

Maybe he was being too hard on them, but he didn’t think so.

Like Johnny, he had lost all respect for the power brokers of this country.

But that was over now. Soon, it wouldn’t be his problem.

He was in the dining room of the rectory of St. Thomas’ Catholic Church. On the dining table, shrouded by a white sheet, was the form of his dead wife.

It was the result of a short cut. A quicker way home from the casino. It had cost the life of his brother-in-law Sam and now his wife, too. And before long, Ben himself.

He was alone.

The rabids had abandoned the church, dragging off the dead with them.

The church was silent.

Ben sat in a chair in the corner, the chandelier burning at a low setting. It had to be that way—Ben had an aversion now to bright light. A voice of optimism kept telling him he was just tired, but he knew better. There was a numbness in his fingertips. His limbs were trembling. Spastic convulsions ripped through him now and again. He was nauseous, feverish, his head aching. His throat was dry and constricted… but the idea of water made him violently ill.

He had the germ.

He was infected with Laughing Man.

It was inside him, working its malignant magic. Soon, soon…

He went to the table, drew the sheet from Nancy’s still body.

Dear sweet Jesus my wife my wife oh God oh God oh—

He tightened his jaw, pressed his lips together. There was no time for emotional outbursts now. He would keep watch over her body until dawn, then he would kill himself. He had a big carving knife from the kitchen drawer.

Nancy’s face looked compressed, eyes sunk deep into their sockets. She had a gray, mottled pallor, lips bloodless and flaccid. He lifted her again, checking for lividity. If she was truly dead, then her blood should have settled—but it hadn’t. Rigor had not set in, either. Her limbs were supple and limp. But he could find no pulse, no heartbeat, no evidence of respiration.

And her flesh was cold.

Terribly cold like a body pulled from a frozen lake.

What did it all mean?

Is this how it happened? Some near-death coma, some bastard form of suspended animation or metabolic suspension occurred and then… and then…

He covered her.

She was dead. She had to be dead.

He sat back down, maintaining his deathwatch. There was a painting of the Last Supper on the wall. Nearby, a simple wooden crucifix. It made him think of horror movies he’d seen. Cadavers rising from the mist of death, being held at bay with religious symbols. But that was fiction, dark fantasy channeled with religious myth.

He sat in his chair, slumped forward.

Fatigue swept over him.

He kept drifting off, his limbs aching, his eyes heavy. The only thing that kept him from passing out were the convulsions that ripped through him at irregular intervals. Sweat poured in rivers from him… icy, sweet-smelling perspiration.

He drifted off again… then his eyes snapped open.

Something had changed.

He wasn’t sure what, but something. Was it cooler in the room? And what was that smell, that whisper of raw decay? Maybe it was all in his imagination, maybe it was only in his dreaming brain.

He looked at the cross on the wall, mumbled some half-remembered prayer from childhood.

The hairs on the back of his neck were standing erect as if the air were crackling with some strange electrical discharge. Gooseflesh covered his arms, crept up his spine. He could smell something sharp, inexplicable, almost like ozone.

The sheet covering Nancy was trembling slightly. It was barely evident, but there… almost as if something was surging through her body.

Ben was shaking now.

Alone in this church, this huge empty silence, breathing and brooding. Alone with his wife.

He sat there, black horror dawning in him.

He stood up. He had to see, had to see…

The body under the sheet began to thrum with evil force. It writhed and thumped against the table as if were being electrocuted. Then it went still.

The air was heavy.

Nancy’s arms slid out from under the sheet to either side, suddenly snapping stiffly erect. They rose up, the fingers splayed and shuddering as if with exertion. A ragged, hollow breathing came from beneath the sheet. She sat up slowly, wearing the sheet like cerements of the grave.

Her fingers twisted and played in the air.

Ben was shaking his head slowly side to side, telling himself there was an explanation for this, that it didn’t mean she had come back from the dead. All around him he could feel dark shadows crawling like worms.

The sheet slid from Nancy’s gray face.

A low, grating sound like an airless, wolfish growl came from the depths of her lungs and became a hissing, inhuman voice. “Ben… oh Ben… I’m better now, I’m better now…”

Her eyes, which had been closed, snapped open.

They were yellow hunting moons rising in that shadowy, pallid face. Slowly they swept the room, found Ben, fixed on him with a flat hunger. Her lips peeled back from even white teeth. She grinned like a rabid dog, tangles of ooze running from the corners of her lips.

Ben backed away, realizing with a bleak, godless terror that, yes, Nancy was indeed dead.

This thing was not his wife.

It only looked vaguely like her.

He kept moving back and fell over the chair.

Nancy flowed off the table with a smooth fluidic motion, one that a human being would have been incapable of. She found her feet, swayed uneasily for a moment like a heaving ship, then steadied herself.

Ben picked up the carving knife from the floor.

She saw it and snarled, lips pulling away from gnashing teeth. “Ben, Ben, Ben,” she managed and it was slithering, wet sound; awful like the noise from a viper pit. Her face seemed to slide and undulate on the bones beneath, creeping with shadow. Her hands were held out to him, fingers wriggling like earthworms caught in sunlight.

He was on his feet then, ready to use the knife. “Nancy,” he said, his voice more of a dry croaking than anything. “Please… just sit down.”

Her eyes were polished glass, reflective like those of an animal as if some shining and invisible membrane had grown over them. Ben could see twin images of the haunted, broken man he now was in her gleaming saffron eyes.

“Hold me, Ben,” she said with a whisper of lonely places. “Come to me, my lover.”

But he would not.

Knife firm in his grip, he kept backing away.

She did not know him. She might have used his name, retained some instinctive memory that he was a friend, but it was only means to an end. She said his name in a mocking voice like a parrot.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he warned her, “so please, just stay away.”

Nancy abandoned the idea of humanity then.

She made a ghastly hissing sound like water thrown on a hot stove and went down low, stalking now like an animal. Rancid loops of drool hung from her chin, frothed from her lips, swung side to side with her creeping motion. Sounds came from her throat, insane barking noises.

“Nancy!” Ben shouted. “For the love of God, listen to me! I was your husband! Do you understand that? Do you know who I am? Who you are?”

But it was obvious she didn’t and did not care.

Reasoning with her was like reasoning with some loathsome queen wasp, stinger bared. And she was much like that—cold and insectile and predatory, human in form only. Unblinking, her glaring eyes were fixed on him, shimmering with a glacial appetite. They were mirrors reflecting some dark and barren void.

She let out a chilling screech and launched herself at him with a frenzied, spidery motion.

Ben brought the knife down and sank an easy three inches of it into her left shoulder. He might as well have jabbed her with a toothpick. She was on him immediately, throwing him down with an easy flick of one white hand. She pinned him down effortlessly. Her face swam in with a wolfish grin, her breath like moldering canvas.

Ben screamed.

Her tongue was blackened and glistening. It played across his trembling lips, feeling cold and fleshy like wet leather. Clots of sour-smelling mucus rained into his mouth. He felt her slimy, frigid lips at his throat. And then her teeth, biting in deep, penetrating like needles.

And then all he was vanished in a cloistral fog.

All that he had been was no more, lost in a haze of thankful madness.

But from some distant room, he could hear the sound of her cackling.

And feeding.

27

“Pass me another one, baby,” Ruby Sue said, reaching down into the GTO and getting another gas bomb from Joe. It was a simple creation—Blatz bottle filled with gasoline, tampon stuffed in its neck. She upended it, getting the tampon wet. She brought it up close to her nose, sniffed it.

Nothing like a little headrush.

What was it about gas that made you want to sniff it?

She flicked her Bic lighter, got the rag burning. “I see a target coming up.”

They passed by a little video store and she threw it with everything she had at the window. The window shattered and so did the Molotov cocktail. The front of Northern Video went up in flames.

“Fucking yeah!” Ruby Sue screamed. “Fuck the world!”

Behind them, three or four other establishments were burning, flames licking from broken windows, plumes of black smoke rising over the streets.

It was all part of Joe’s new plan.

Originally, what he had in mind was something like a front-end loader to smash their way through the barricade of cars and get the fuck out of Dodge. But they couldn’t be wandering around Cut River on foot seeking it out, no more than a blind man was wise to wander around in a cellar filled with rattlesnakes.

When Joe saw the GTO, he knew he had to have it.

Ruby Sue was against the idea, thinking that driving around in a car would attract too much attention in a town where no one was driving. But after Joe hot-wired it and she heard the purr of that big block 400, she was a believer. Problem was, they couldn’t find any front-end loaders. They found some bulldozers and backhoes at an excavating yard, but no front-end loader.

That’s when Joe got the idea.

What they needed to do was to attract attention.

If they couldn’t get out, then bring the people in. There were four or five gas stations in Cut River. Two of them were wide open and waiting. The others could be opened by the right guy. And if the town was burning… somebody would show up.

Besides, Joe figured they already had, what with those helicopters flying over—twice now—and that shooting coming from the north end.

Something was coming down.

Nothing like a little fire to bring rescue.

The GTO had a sunroof.

Not original equipment, but some crazy sonofabitch had decided to cut a hole in the roof of a classic. Joe showed his respect by tearing it off. It made a good bombing port for Ruby Sue.

“Hey, there’s a credit union,” Ruby Sue said, manning her lookout. “Those bastards turned me down for a loan. Let’s do it.”

Joe popped the curb, drove right across the lawn and Ruby Sue lit up two bombs and let them fly. The shadows retreated as huge balls of orange and red fire engulfed the side of the building.

“HOO YEAH!” she called out.

A trio of rabids were standing at the entrance of an alley, just watching.

She lit up another and heaved it in their direction.

A canvas of flame erupted mere feet from them and they ducked back into the shadows. She slid back into the car.

They’d hit an Amoco convenience store—wide open and empty—and helped themselves to four cases of Blatz and a few boxes of tampons. They dumped the warm beer out and filled the bottles at the pump. They were on their third case already. She looked out the rear window and saw the flickering glow of flames as the town went up.

“What we need is something quicker,” Joe said, bringing the GTO around in a complete circle, sacrificing rubber.

This time they found a Citgo station.

Like most stations these days they sold everything from beer to broasted chicken. The electricity for the pumps was on, all four tiers of them, some sixteen pumps. Giggling, he turned on the hoses one after another, setting the latches so they would not shut off after he let them go. Before long, gasoline was flooding through the parking lot, into the streets. Oceans of it flowed through the grass flanking the lot, pooled around parked cars, and washed up to the station itself.

But the best thing was the tanker truck parked in back.

With any luck it was full.

Joe ran back to the GTO, splashing through the sea of gas.

Behind the wheel, he said, “Ready for some pyrotechnics, babe? Tonight be the night.”

He brought the GTO out into the street and got within three, four feet of the nearest stream of gasoline.

“Man your position,” he told Ruby Sue.

She did just that. She upended a firebomb and got the wick nice and wet. She lit it with her Bic and let it go. It crashed in the street, flames splashing in all directions. Joe saw the fire moving in a blazing yellow-orange wave towards the station.

“ROCK AND ROLL!” he shouted, stomping down on the accelerator and squealing out of there, the back of the GTO fish-tailing wildly until he got it under control.

They were maybe a block away when night turned into day.

A vivid cloud of fire easily forty feet high rose above the rooftops. The explosion was so intense it actually jarred the GTO nearly off the road. The plate glass windows of storefronts shattered and a great surge of heat passed through the car making the chill September night feel like a July afternoon.

But it didn’t end there.

More explosions followed as parked cars went one after the other.

Ruby Sue was hollering like a cheerleader.

But the really big one came next.

The tanker truck went maybe three, four minutes later. Thousands of gallons of gas went up with a deafening peel of thunder. Fireballs and black, rolling clouds of sooty smoke were sent skyward.

“Let’s see ’em ignore this,” Joe said.

He figured it was only a matter of time before the underground tanks tasted a flame or spark and went up in a blazing, explosive inferno—no doubt, taking a city block or two with them.

With that in mind, it made good sense to get the hell away from there.

“What now, babe?” Ruby Sue said. “We still got more bombs left.”

Now that they were a good distance from the spreading inferno, Joe slowed down, navigating the dark streets. “No need. Not just yet. Let’s just wait around now and see what develops. Something’s gotta happen pretty soon. Half the county’s gotta be wondering what in fuck just happened.”

And when the underground tanks went up it would sound like Hiroshima all over again.

Ruby Sue was sucking on a cigarette, wishing she had some weed. Sitting sideways on the passenger side of the GTO, she watched the glow of the fire behind them. It painted the treetops red.

“You ever see that movie where those people are trapped in that burning skyscraper, Joe? It was awesome. Fire kept getting closer and closer. Shit, I hope we don’t roast-up, man. That would suck.”

Joe coasted slowly up a blacked-out street. “We’re okay, we’re… what the fuck was that?”

Something had thudded against the car.

“Something hit us,” Ruby Sue said.

Thud.

“What—”

Then another thud right on top of the roof.

And then there was no time to discuss as a white arm snaked in through the sunroof and took hold of Ruby Sue by the hair, pulling her up towards the opening. She started screaming and thrashing, kicking out wildly and accidentally catching Joe in the ribs.

The GTO swerved crazily, thumped over a curb, barely missed a tree, and came back down in the street only to sideswipe a parked pickup truck in an eruption of sparks.

Ruby Sue was still shrieking, shoulders nearly drawn through the sunroof now, legs bicycling madly and striking the dashboard, popping open the glove compartment, and spinning the wheel from Joe’s hands more than once.

“Joe, help me for god’s sake! Help me they got me oh shit oh shit—”

Joe had hold of one leg and pulled with everything he had, yanking Ruby Sue maybe a foot or so back into the car so that he could just see her chin, but then, as if attached to a bungi cord, she sprang back up again.

“Cocksucker!” Joe spat, trying to reach behind him for the guns they’d lifted from the sporting goods joint. No dice. He got his hand on the butt of the Remington pump and then it fell behind his seat.

They were at the verge of a lighted neighborhood now.

He made it into the light and stamped on the brakes.

The GTO squealed to a halt, going sideways in the middle of the street, coughed and died.

Ruby Sue let go with a bellowing cry and dropped back into the car.

Her assailant—a thin man with a face white as putty, wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else, his bleached torso dark with what looked like ritual symbols panted in dried blood—slid down onto the hood, clinging there like some huge, bloodless beetle and started slamming his fists into the windshield. A few hairline cracks appeared almost instantly.

Joe tried in vain to get the engine to catch and smelled gas.

Jesus, I flooded her, I flooded her.

The rabid pressed his face to the cracked windshield, staring in at them with vapid eyes, the pupils dilated obscenely and glittering with a demonic yellow shine. He made a hissing, angry sound… or maybe it wasn’t angry, because he knew he had them.

“Sonofabitch,” Ruby Sue said as he leaped off the hood and landed in the street.

Joe threw his door open and the rabid was on him.

His fingers hooked into claws, he slashed at Joe’s face. Joe sidestepped him and smashed him in the mouth with one meaty, broad fist. The rabid stumbled back in a daze, but did not go down.

Ruby Sue was out by then, on the other side of the GTO. “Hey, shit-fer-brains,” she called out. “Over here.”

The rabid turned towards her, a black grin on his dead white features.

She brought up the Browning .380 and pumped two rounds into him.

The first struck him squarely in the chest and spun him around in a complete circle. The second opened up a third eye in his forehead. Dark blood bubbled over his snarling face.

He screamed at her, bleeding profusely, but still on his feet.

He took one stumbling, drunken step forward, his hungry eyes scanning her like a cut of beef.

She shot him in the mouth and he went over stiffly, slamming flatly against the pavement. He twitched and flopped, making horrible gurgling sounds and going still.

Ruby Sue said, “Well, ain’t that just the shits?”

Joe started laughing, amazed as always by her choice of words and her incredible durability in the worst possible situations. “We better let the car rest a minute,” he managed. He turned and opened the back door to get his guns.

“Yeah, I’m for that,” Ruby Sue said, studying the orange horizon as the fire spread. She sat on the curb, gun in her lap.

Joe turned his head slightly, hearing a roar, thinking maybe it was the fire.

But then knowing with a dread certainty it was not.

A car raced out of the darkness at them.

Lights off, it was on him before he could do much more than move a foot or two. Ruby Sue was on her feet, up against the GTO, mouth open, attempting to say something, but it was too damn late.

Joe saw a radiator grill winking at him like a silver eye.

And beyond it, a few white, grinning faces pressed to the windshield.

The impact was sudden and irresistible, the black Lincoln traveling at well over seventy miles an hour. Joe was sandwiched momentarily between the front end of the Lincoln and the open door of the GTO.

But only momentarily.

The hinges snapped free and Joe and the driver’s side door were dragged fifty feet in a shower of sparks and smoking flesh before they went tumbling across the pavement.

The Lincoln continued along, swerving frantically from side to side, seeming to pick up speed. It crossed an intersection and leaped a curb, slamming into a stout oak with a screech of twisted metal and shattering glass.

It came to rest there, nearly ripped in half, the front end crushed back into the driver’s compartment. The hood was detached and driven through the windshield. There was a stink of gas and it went up in flames. Not a dramatic movie explosion this, but a gentle, almost casual engulfment by flame.

The impact of the Lincoln striking the GTO had sent Ruby Sue careening to the street. Her head smacked the curb and her left wrist was twisted sickly beneath her body. Moments later—her face smeared with red from a gash in her head and her left arm clutched limply at her side—she was on her feet, stumbling up the road.

Joe was lying in a tangled heap, blood pooling out from him.

The air was ripe with the stench of scorched metal and flesh.

He was moaning.

Alive, but just.

28

They were throwing themselves against the bus.

The progeny of Cut River, the children of the night.

But with the bi-fold door safely locked down and the emergency hatch in the back only accessible from the inside, Lou wasn’t worrying about them. Not yet. When the evil bastards started busting through the windows, yes, but not right now.

He was staring at the guy in the driver’s seat.

He felt a wave of gooseflesh go up his back. If he’d have been a cat, he would’ve raised his hackles. He’d made a good run of it, found safety here… and now this.

Shit.

He kneeled there on the floor of the rocking bus, breathing, trembling, waiting for the moonish face of the driver to turn towards him, look at him with hollow eyes.

But it did not happen.

Because the guy was dead.

Lou prodded him with the barrel of the shotgun and he slid down further in the seat.

Dead, all right.

Lou muttered something about it not being personal and pulled him unceremoniously from behind the wheel. He slumped over and fell onto the steps, his face mashing against the door window. This drove the children outside into a veritable feeding frenzy. They began fighting for space at the door, licking and biting at the glass, trying to dig through it with their fingers.

The keys were in the ignition.

The seat and wheel were sticky with what Lou figured was old blood. The driver must have slit his wrists or throat.

Sweating profusely, barely able to keep his fingers steady, Lou turned the key.

The bus roared into life.

The gauges lit up and told him he had half a tank. He pushed down on the clutch and threw the shift lever into gear, pressing down gently on the accelerator and easing off the clutch. Last thing he needed was for the bus to stall.

It began to move.

He gave it some gas and most of the rabids fell away from it.

Others clung like leeches and still others (he could hear) were clinging to the roof.

No matter now.

He kept shifting gears until he was doing an easy forty-five miles an hour, speeding through what passed for an industrial sector in Cut River. He veered wildly from side to side, throwing off the little monsters. But there were still more on the roof, banging and screeching.

A white hand snaked down from over the driver’s cabin and took hold of a wiper blade, snapping it off like a twig.

In five minutes, Lou made Chestnut, the main drag.

He took the corner barely bothering to slow down until he was into the turn, then riding the brake for all it was worth. He popped a curb, smashed a little Ford Escort out of the way, knocked a STOP sign over, and thudded back into the street, the bus careening unpleasantly to one side like maybe it was going to roll over. But it didn’t.

In the rearview, he could see that he’d shed the remaining children.

He could see them crab-crawling off into the darkness.

Breathing a sigh of relief, he slowed down.

Shotgun at his side, he felt kind of like Dirty Harry in that one movie, plowing through the streets in his bus. Rabids popped out from behind parked cars from time to time, but scattered when he veered towards him. After awhile, he saw none, so he turned onto a side street looking for victims like a teenager trying to run down dogs or squirrels.

It was about that time that he heard a series of explosions and saw the eastern side of town light up with fireballs rolling above the treeline. Whether it was to his benefit or not, he let out a battle cry as the glow of flames not only didn’t die down, but raged with new life.

He’d heard gunfire off and on for some time now.

But what was this?

Had the Marines landed and called in an airstrike? The image of canisters of napalm incinerating Cut River made him grin ferociously.

That’ll put those rabids on the run.

His hi-beams illuminating the blackened streets, he saw rabids everywhere, hiding and skulking and sticking to the shadows. Only a few dared cross his path. Maybe it was the bus they were afraid of and maybe it was just the headlights.

He heard more explosions as he tooled around an avenue of brooding, dark houses and that’s when he saw two figures coming right up the middle of the street, waving their arms wildly.

Jesus, it couldn’t be.

Not again.

He slowed down and yes it was!

He skidded to a halt.

Johnny Davis and Lisa Tabano.

They came up to the folding door, weapons drawn. He took a good look at them before he pulled the lever and opened the door. He wanted to be sure their eyes were normal.

They were.

He opened the door.

Johnny leapt in, sticking a .30-06 in his face, then withdrawing it. “You?” he said, dumbfounded. “What in the hell are you doing alive?”

Lou shook his head. “I’m too pretty to die.”

Lisa dragged herself in and Lou shut the door behind her.

“We gotta stop meeting like this,” he told her.

She laughed or tried to… but hell, she looked like ten miles of bad road. She smiled grimly and tossed him a pack of cigarettes, then collapsed into a rear seat.

Lou took them, lighting one up, wondering, though, if she’d been infected.

Johnny and he looked at each other and Johnny shook his head. “No,” he said, reading his mind, “it’s not that.”

Lou saw figures creeping from the shadows and got the bus going again. And while he did that, Johnny told him yet another story. Except this one was about a certain rock star with a particularly bad habit.

Lou exhaled a column of smoke, keeping the bus under twenty-five to save fuel. “You mean… you mean like a… a…”

“Junkie,” Lisa said in a croaking, broken voice. “That’s me.”

He supposed it didn’t matter.

It wasn’t any of his damn business… except, Christ, she looked rough. A bag of bones topped by tangled mess of long, dark hair. Even her breathing seemed ragged. She hugged herself back there, rocking back and forth. He had to wonder if infection by the Laughing Man germ could really be any worse than heroin withdrawal.

He searched for words, finally found them. “If we can get our asses out of here, Lisa, we can get you to a hospital. They have things, I bet, that would make it easier.”

She said nothing. Her chin was resting on the seat before her, her eyes shining dimly in the dark.

Johnny said, “First we have to get out.”

Lou nodded. “Exactly what I’ve been thinking about. You know that barricade of cars? What do you say the chances are of us ramming through it with this rig?”

Johnny considered it. The green dash lights winked off his bald head. “I’d say maybe it’ll work.” He shrugged. “And if not, beats the living shit out of sitting here doing nothing.”

“How about you, Lisa?” Lou asked. “You concur?”

She mumbled in assent.

That was that then.

Lou pulled a U-turn, plowing through a few yards and taking out some rose bushes and a few withering flowerbeds. Off in the darkness, he could see the ever-present eyes of their silent witnesses. A few minutes later, he was moving up Chestnut.

“I suggest everyone hang on now,” he told them.

Lisa crouched down between the seats.

Johnny stayed next to Lou, putting down his rifle and clutching the chrome handbar with everything he had.

“There’s gonna be a jailbreak,” Lisa said in a low, tortured voice, an old Thin Lizzy song echoing in her brain.

“Lot of steel in this bitch. But she’s light, rolls easy,” Johnny said, more to himself than the others.

Lou navigated his way up Chestnut, leaving the way he’d originally come in. The bus was doing fifty by the time he passed his little Grand Am parked at the curb, doors wide open. At sixty the bus started to rattle a bit. The steel floor plating began to vibrate and it went right through their feet and up into their bones.

“Keep it there,” Johnny said over the noise of the engine. “She ain’t made for too much speed. Fifty, sixty’s plenty. If there’s no heavy metal in that barricade—big trucks, heavy equipment and the like—we’ll smash right through. Those sonsofbitches’ll never stop us.”

Half a block from the barricade, they could see lights.

But these were not the flickering, burning lights of bodies being roasted. These were electric lights—from vehicles, from searchlights. Closer they got, they could see now that the barricade had been pushed aside.

“What the hell is this?” Lou said. “The army?”

“Slow down,” Johnny said with an air of urgency.

“What—”

“Slow the fuck down!” Johnny snapped. “Now!”

He was up at the dash, face to the windshield, checking out what they were driving into and not liking it one bit. Beams from searchlights played over the bus, blinding him.

Lou downshifted and brought the bus to a crawl.

“Turn around,” Johnny said. “Right now.”

Lou was going to ask him why in the hell he should do that when he heard the popping of automatic weapons. The front of the bus was grazed by bullets. Two or three holes appeared in the windshield.

“Sonofbitch!” he said, wheeling the bus around in a huge, rocking circle and coming back onto the street again.

The bus was filled with light now.

A vehicle was coming up fast behind them. It looked to be some sort of assault vehicle. More bullets slammed into the back of the bus. There was a gun mounted on the approaching vehicle.

Lou saw fire belching from it.

The rounds that struck the bus didn’t ricochet off this time, they ripped right through the metal. Suddenly, the bus was full of flying lead and shattering glass, bits of metal spraying around like shrapnel. They were firing a machine gun at them. There was no doubt of that. Slugs were ripping through the seats, tearing into the dashboard. The windshield took a volley and collapsed into itself, a sheet of safety glass fell into Lou’s lap.

He got the bus going—forty, fifty.

The bullets still rained down on them. One of them burst through his shoulder, another grazed his leg.

He cried out and pushed down on the accelerator.

The pursuing vehicle fell behind.

“We’re losing ’em!” Johnny called out.

The vehicle—Lou was pretty sure it was a Hummer, like the troops had used in Iraq—was falling behind now. He figured it was on purpose, as if the troops weren’t allowed to chase them beyond a certain point.

He was driving with one hand now, his left arm numb from shoulder to wrist.

He was bleeding profusely.

More searchlights played over them now. These from above.

“Helicopter!” Johnny said.

Lou could heard the rapid thunk-thunk of its rotors as if it were right on top of them. There was a sudden flash of light and the street ahead of them exploded, air-to-surface rockets blowing great chunks of road into fragments.

He knew what came next.

He saw the plate glass front of a department store and spun the wheel.

The bus rocked over the curb, took out two parking meters in a spray of pennies, and went right through the front of the store. Shards of glass and wood exploded in the air. Mannequins were dismembered. Lawn furniture was turned to kindling. A display of gas grills was sent airborne. The bus rammed through a counter, coughed, jerked, and died.

Lou was hurting.

Not only his shoulder and leg now, but his face and arms which were a mass of tiny, innumerable cuts from flying bits of glass. He’d managed to shield his eyes, though. And they were about the only thing that didn’t hurt.

Johnny pulled himself from the floor, scraps of glass and wood rained off him. “Everyone okay?” he said.

“Yeah, I’ll live,” Lisa sighed.

Lou dragged himself from behind the wheel, a mannequin arm wearing a cheap, flashy bracelet slid from his lap. “I’m hit,” he said to them.

Johnny said, “How bad?”

Lou told him.

“You’ll survive.”

“Gas,” Lisa said. “I smell gas.”

They all did. It was getting stronger by the moment.

Johnny helped Lisa to her feet. “They must’ve got the tank. Everybody out. Right fucking now!” He found his rifle and Lou’s shotgun, took them with.

Bruised and battered and bleeding, they helped each other from the bus, wading through the wreckage of the department store. Carefully, quiet as they could be with glass crunching under foot, they stepped out into the street. The chill night air stank not only of gasoline, but of cordite and smoke.

They could see the glow of the expanding fire in the east.

They hobbled up the block

They ducked into an alley and collapsed there, waiting.

The helicopter did not return. The pilot must’ve figured (wrongly) that he’d hit the bus, sent it careening into the storefront. They could still hear gunfire, occasional booming explosions.

“What the fuck’s wrong with those bastards?” Lou wanted to know. He slipped a cigarette between his lips and Lisa lit it with badly trembling hands.

She shook violently, pulled in a ragged breath. “Maybe… they think we’re rabids.”

Johnny was watching the streets. “I don’t think it matters to them by this point,” he said grimly. “I don’t think those boys are from a conventional unit. Some sort of emergency response group, a containment unit, NBC. Sort of troopers that are trained to crush and quarantine an area in the wake of a biological or chemical attack.”

“So we’re fucked?” Lou said.

“Maybe. As far as they’re concerned, we’re all infected. Whether this whole clusterfuck was on purpose or by accident doesn’t matter now. Nobody’s coming out of here. They can’t have that.”

Lou shook his head. “They can’t get away with that.”

“Sure they can. They’ve been planning and preparing for an emergency like this for years.”

“The media, though,” Lisa said. “If they get a hold of this…”

Johnny smiled. “And they will, but they’ll only learn what the feds want them to know. Cut River? Attacked by terrorists, maybe. Militias. Some bullshit like that. We can only be sure of one thing—they’ll have every eventuality covered.”

“They can’t. It’s too big.”

Johnny shook his head. “They do it every day, Lisa. Every time you hear about a a political scandal or an act of terrorism… you can be sure that what you are told and what really happened are not the same thing. Perception management. That’s why nine out of ten people surveyed prefer bullshit. It makes it easier to sleep at night.”

Lou grunted. “Johnny is like our own Jesse Ventura.”

“It must be spooky in your head,” Lisa said.

“You have no idea,” Johnny said. “I’ve seen things that would turn your hair white. If we had the time, I’d tell you what really was behind Watergate.”

Lou found it easy enough by this point to accept everything Johnny said. He didn’t argue. “We have to contact the outside world,” he said. “That’s what we have to do.”

Johnny shook his head. “No phones. Even if some were working, they’d cut the lines. They’ve isolated us, people. They won’t let us out. Even CBs and Ham radios will be jammed, I bet.”

Then Lou thought of it. “The municipal building. The police cruisers there. They have radios.”

Johnny was going to object, but didn’t. “Damn straight,” he said. “Even if we don’t make it out, we can broadcast, tell the world what’s going on here.” He seemed very happy suddenly. After all these years, he’d finally found a way to fuck the government that had fucked him.

They made their way out into the streets.

The municipal building was about a half mile from them, they could see its cyclopean girth squatting on the hill, overseeing the entire town. It was a long way in a warzone, but it was the only way.

“Let’s do it,” Johnny said.

29

“Oh my God… oh Christ…”

Ruby Sue was kneeling next to Joe.

A bloody smear marked his progress to this unremarkable spot on the street, his deathbed. His face had been scraped clean of meat from the friction. He had died only a few moments before, living long enough to tell her he was sorry about it all, bringing her here.

And now, he was dead. Crushed and broken.

She trembled in the night. First with terror and loss and violation, then with rage. “I’ll get ’em, baby,” she told Joe’s raw face. “I’ll make those sonsofbitches pay for this.”

His corpse was unconcerned.

Warmth bled from it into the cool September air. He had finally found a way out of the asylum that was Cut River. He was at peace.

Ruby Sue kissed his dead face, her own washed by tears.

Something in her had died with Joe.

What was left was hard and mean and pissed-off. Her left wrist was sprained, she figured, but her right was just fine. She was scraped and bleeding, but very much alive. Back at the car, she got her Browning .380 and stuck it in her coat pocket. She took Joe’s Colt Python and left the shotgun behind.

Then she went to kick some ass.

She walked towards Chestnut. A pair of rabids—teenage boys, hideous imitations of the same—came at her slithering and snapping their jaws. She killed both of them and continued on.

The town was burning, gunfire everywhere.

Much of it was very close now.

She hid behind a row of bushes as a group passed.

But they weren’t rabids.

Soldiers dressed out in white hooded suits. The sort guys wore on TV when there was a nuclear accident or something. They looked like invaders from Mars. They were all carrying M-16s except for the guy in the back who had tanks strapped to him, a short pipe in his grip.

She was just willing to bet it was a flamethrower or something.

She let them pass and continued on.

The air was thick and acrid with rolling black smoke now as the fires she and Joe had set ate up the town.

Gunshots.

Just ahead.

She cut between two houses and saw a group of rabids (ten or more) assault a squad of soldiers. Lead was flying in every direction, but still the rabids came on, smothering the soldiers with their superior numbers. She saw white suits being shredded, heard screaming and enjoyed it all maybe too much.

A lone solider, weaponless now, was encircled by rabids, mostly women. He was pressed against a brick wall, a solid line of them approaching him. He tried to climb the wall, ran to the left, the right.

Slowly, inexorably, they pressed in, making awful hissing sounds, hands held out before them.

Ruby Sue watched until his screams subsided and then slipped away into the night.

A pack of rabids found her on Chestnut.

She faced them fearlessly.

They tried to ring her in and she squeezed off shots with the Browning semi-auto until they were all down. Then she used the .357 on them. Most were dead, but a few were only gutshot, crawling at her through tangles of their own viscera.

She left them like that. Let them suffer.

In the distance, she saw the municipal building.

She remembered Lou telling her that was where the police were headquartered. She had one speedloader left for the Colt, about eight rounds for the Browning. She would need more ammo before she was done.

Eyes fixed and determined, she made her way towards the towering building.

The night was still young.

Plenty of darkness to kill by.