Walkers

Chapter 21

Friday morning it was hot. Joana and Glen awoke in her bed covered only by a sheet, which they quickly threw off. At the window a curtain billowed inward, and a dry, scorching wind blew into the bedroom. The Santa Ana wind. Several times a year, without pattern and without warning, it blew in off the desert and turned Los Angeles into an oven.

Glen groaned and rolled over on his stomach. "Going to be a hot sonofabitch today."

"Unusual for June," Joana said, then giggled at the triteness of their conversation. "What do you want for breakfast?"

"Surprise me."

Joana kissed him and got out of bed. She pulled on a light lacy robe and went out into the kitchen. She looked through the refrigerator and selected a cantaloupe, which she sliced down the middle. She lay two thick pieces of ham in a frying pan and carefully broke four eggs into a bowl. She heard the bathroom door open and close.

"Over easy?" She called in the direction of the bathroom.

'Terrific," he called back, but his voice lacked enthusiasm.

"Anything wrong?"

"I need a shave."

"Don't worry about it," she told him, "we'll rough it."

The shower hissed, and she went back into the kitchen to get everything ready. In ten minutes Glen padded out wearing a towel around his waist. He rubbed a hand across his chin.

"Seriously, there are some things I should pick up from my place."

"Like what?"

"My razor, fresh underwear, stuff like that."

"I have a razor," Joana told him."

"That sissy little thing? My beard would shatter it.

"Wow, listen to Mister Macho."

"Do you want me to wear your underwear too?"

Joana heard the note of discord in their exchange. Just below the banter was the jagged edge of hostility that so often surfaced when the Santa Ana wind blew. Speaking carefully she said, "Why don't you take a run out to your place after breakfast and pick up what you need?"

"I think I'll do that," he said. "Are you coming along?"

"I don't think so. It will give me a chance to clean things up a little around here. I haven't touched the place in more than a week."

"I don't like leaving you alone."

"It will only be for an hour. Surely I can take care of myself that long."

"If you stay here, promise me you won't open the door for anybody you don't know."

"Are you kidding? After what happened last Sunday night?"

"I mean it, promise me."

"All right, Glen, I promise."

Still he looked doubtful.

"Really, I'm not some fragile, empty-headed little powder puff."

"I know you're not," Glen said. "I just…oh, the hell with it. I'll make it as quick as I can."

They ate breakfast and kidded each other and regained a little of their good humor. Outside, the wind blew and the day grew hotter. When they had stacked the dishes Glen kissed her, giving her an extra rub with his bristly chin, and left for the Marina.

When she was alone in the house Joana felt the heat more than ever. There was no air conditioning in the little house, and her fan was not working. She had promised Glen she would keep the doors closed, and the screened windows provided only a minimum of ventilation. She was restless, her nerves gritty.

It was the wind, she told herself. The effects of the Santa Ana were well known. It blew in out of the east and scraped your nerve ends. Children cried without reason, love affairs ended, people stepped out of high windows, the murder rate jumped, when the Santa Ana wind blew.

Joana started the housecleaning as she had planned, but soon gave it up. It was too hot and she was too edgy for slogging around the house with dust cloth and vacuum. She made herself a glass of iced tea and searched the TV Guide for one of those good old movies that always play in the mornings when nobody is home, or late at night when you're asleep. All that was on today was an old Presley movie, and Joana was in no mood for Presley.

She slumped in a chair, sipped at her iced tea, and tried to read a magazine, but she could not get interested.

The telephone rang. Joana leaped for it eagerly, as though afraid the caller might hang up if she did not answer on the first ring.

"Hello. Is this Joana?" The voice was familiar, but different. It was flat and without timbre.

"Peter?"

"Yes."

"You sound strange."

"An accident. I hurt my throat."

"Where have you been? I've been wondering what happened to you. You said you were coming over Sunday night."

"That's when I hurt my throat. I couldn't come."

"Oh, Peter, so much has happened since I talked to you last. I don't know where to begin telling you about it."

He seemed not to hear. "I have something here that you have to see."

"Where? At your house?"

"Yes. I want you to come here."

"Can't you tell me about it?"

"That's no good. I have to show you."

"All right. Glen will be here in an hour or so. We'll come up then."

"No. That will be too late."

"Peter, are you in some kind of trouble?"

"Yes. I can't talk about it. Please come, Joana."

She hesitated. Glen would not approve of her leaving the house. But Glen did not make the rules for her. People had been going out of their way in the past week to help her. Peter included. It was time she started paying some of her debts. Also, it would be a great relief to get out of the stifling house for a while.

"All right, Peter, I'll come. Is there anything I should bring?"

"No. Just hurry," he said in the odd new voice. Then the line clicked dead.

Joana sat down at the kitchen table and wrote a note to Glen:

I've gone to Peter's house. He's in some kind of trouble. Back soon.

Love, J

She tacked the note to the outside of the door as she left the house.

Before locking the door behind her, Joana looked carefully around the brushy yard that lay between her and the street. This was no time to get careless. Nothing moved in the heat. Even Bandido lay, prostrate and panting in the shade of an oleander bush.

Overhead the sky was a relentless blue-white. The heat was a palpable weight on her head and shoulders. On a day like this no one would expect to see dead men walk.

She hurried down the path to the street and got into the Datsun. It was like a furnace, but when she got both front windows lowered and the car moving, that provided some ventilation.

She drove up Laurel Canyon to Peter's street and found it deserted. Sheltered by the hills from the desert wind, the trees there hung limp and dejected in the stagnant heat.

Joana parked the Datsun and got out. She stood for a moment on the sidewalk looking up at Peter's house. It was closed up tight, the blinds drawn down on the windows. She felt a tiny pang of apprehension. The empty, airless street oppressed her.

Then the door of the house opened and Peter stood there looking down at her. He did not come forward, but stayed in the shadows. Nevertheless, Joana recognized that it was Peter. He seemed to have something around his neck. A bandage, she guessed, over the injury he told her about.

"Hi," she called.

Peter said nothing, but beckoned her to him.

Joana started up the rickety flight of wooden stairs. Peter vanished back into the house. She continued up onto the porch, then paused at the doorway.

"Peter?"

"In here," his queer, flat voice called to her from somewhere inside.

Joana stepped over the threshold into the dim living room. A blast of stale, sweltering air hit her like a physical blow. Unlike the arid heat outside, the interior of the house was damp and steamy. It felt as though the windows had not been opened for days. Even worse than the soggy heat was the overpowering sweet smell of incense. When Joana was here before she had detected a trace of strawberry in the air, but nothing like this. The haze of gray smoke made her gag.

"Peter, where are you? What's the matter here?"

She walked across the carpet to the beaded curtain that hung between the living room and the small dining room. Beyond it she could see the kitchen and a short hallway that would lead to the bedrooms and bath. The beads of the curtain had an unpleasant clammy feel.

Something was wrong. Something was most terribly wrong in this house. Under the heavy smell of incense there was another odor. It reminded Joana of the dead rat Bandido had dragged behind the refrigerator and left. It had taken her three days to find the rotting corpse.

She felt a powerful need to get out of there. Letting the bead3 rattle back into place, she turned toward the front door. It slammed shut. Peter stood facing her with his back pressed against the panel.

Joana stared at him through the gloom and the layers of smoke from the incense. He wore an open-collared shirt, but there was a necktie knotted around his throat. It was too tight. Much too tight. And his face. Oh, God!

Peter's eyes were dusty and lifeless. The swollen flesh of his face was mottled purple. The tip of his tongue protruded from between cracked lips. His body gave off putrescence in waves.

"You're one of them!" she said.

Peter made no reply, but raised his arms and came toward her.

Joana whirled and fought her way through the bead curtain and ran toward the rear of the house. There had to be another way out.

She ran down the hallway to a bedroom. A king-size bed, freshly made and unslept-in, took up most of the floor space. There was a window, but steel burglar bars on the outside made escape that way impossible. Out in the dining room beads clattered and bounced on the floor as Peter tore through the curtain.

Joana flew out of the bedroom and almost ran into Peter in the hall. He reached for her, and she felt the cold, doughy touch of his hand on her bare arm before she pulled free.

The next door she came to was the bathroom. Without hesitating, Joana flung herself inside, slammed the door, and rolled the bolt into place. There was a soft thump as Peter hit the door on the outside.

For a moment she cowered back against the wall, breathing hard, staring fearfully at the locked door. As she watched, the panel shook under a booming blow from the other side. Joana flinched. She looked wildly about the room for a means of escape.

Boom!

She swept aside the shower curtain. There was a window at eye level, but it was only eight inches from top to bottom. She could never get through that.

Boom! Something gave in the door with a loud crack.

Joana tore open the wall cabinet, searching for anything that could help her. A weapon. Anything. Electric shaver, talc, cologne, aspirin, toothpaste, hair spray. No good. Nothing she could use. And what good were weapons against the walkers, anyway? She remembered Glen hitting and hitting the man back behind her house until his skull was jellied, and still he came on.

Boom! A long vertical crack split the door panel.

Joana dropped to her knees and yanked open the door to the cabinet under the sink. Toilet paper, cleanser, brushes, a sponge, a bottle of pills, rubbing alcohol.

Boom! The crack widened. Splinters of wood peppered the bathroom floor.

Joana seized the bottle of alcohol. On the label in black capitals was printed flammable. Would fire mean anything to a walker? Effective or not, it was the only thing available to her, and it might distract the creature long enough for her to get past it and out of the house.

Boom! A big chunk of the door smashed inward. For an instant Joana was frozen where she stood. As she watched, the panel shuddered again, more wood broke away, and a fist came through. The flesh of the hand, pulpy from decay, hung loose and torn from the battering. Bones and wire like tendons were clearly visible.

Boom! The hole in the door grew. The swollen, mindless face that had been Peter Landau's was there looking at her. The ruined hand reached in through the broken door and fumbled for the bolt.

Fighting for control, Joana unscrewed the cap from the bottle of alcohol. She took a drinking glass from a holder next to the sink and poured it full of the clear liquid. The pungent odor of the alcohol squeezed tears from her eyes.

Peter had found the bolt now, but the mangled hand could not manipulate it. The hand withdrew, and the other, the good one, came through the hole.

Joana set the bottle and the glass of alcohol down long enough to search through her pockets.

Dear God, let there be matches.

At the instant Peter rattled the bolt back into the door Joana's fingers closed over a book of paper matches. The doorknob turned. The shattered door was knocked inward. For a fraction of a second the dead creature was framed in the doorway. Joana took up the full glass and dashed the alcohol into the purpled face, wetting down the front of the shirt at the same time. She dropped the glass and, as it crashed on the tile floor, struck a match. She threw the match at Peter. It bounced off his shoulder and went out.

A scream rose in Joana's throat. She fought it down. The thing was in the bathroom with her now with its hands reaching for her, one of them whole, the other a shattered wreck of bone and tendon. The reek of alcohol was strong, but the odor of death was stronger. Joana struck another match. Gripping it between thumb and forefinger, she reached out and forced herself to hold the flame against the alcohol-soaked shirt.

She held it there one second, two seconds. Abruptly the shirt and the swollen head whopped into light blue flame. The creature reacted with what remained of human instinct. It staggered backward, arms beating at the flames that licked across the chest.

Joana ran past Peter into the hallway. Behind her, there was a whimpering cry as Peter lurched out of the bathroom and came after her.

She made it through the front door and flew down the steps, taking them two and three at a time. The inhuman voice wailed behind her. When she reached the street she turned to see the flaming figure of a man stumble out of the house, the arms still reaching for her.

A car coming up the street from Laurel Canyon jammed to a stop as the driver caught sight of the fleeing girl and the burning man. Someone across the way, hearing the commotion, came out of his house. Then someone else. And another. The people ran into the street, gathering into a small crowd at the foot of Peter's stairs.

Above them, the thing that had been Peter Landau, the decaying flesh crisped and splitting under the flames, stumbled at the stop of the stairs, fell, and bounced in a tumbling fiery mass all the way to the street. Several people tried to approach the burning figure, but could not get close in the intense heat.

"Get a blanket!" someone shouted.

"Never mind," said somebody else. "Nothing can help him now."

Joana sagged against the side of the Datsun. The flames crackled merrily. Peter's flesh sizzled and split. The viscera steamed. Joana turned her head away.

As the flames subsided, one of the neighbors came down with a garden hose and sprayed water over the body. Much of the face was burned away, leaving a grisly smile of exposed jawbone and strong white teeth.

Joana braced herself and walked over to look down at the steaming remains. Later she would think about Peter Landau, remember him as he had been, and grieve for him. Right now all she could think was, There lies number four. It's over. I've won.