Disappointed, Reba lowered her shotgun.
Pitchfork in hand, Halverson clambered out of his cart. He angled toward the figure to confront it, his weapon poised.
As Halverson came closer to the creature, he could make it out more clearly—though after doing so he wished he hadn’t been able to. At least half of its flesh had disintegrated from its body, leaving the skeleton with its internal decomposing organs visible to the naked eye.
Halverson gagged. The fuggy odor of the decomposing corpse hit him like a wall of heat from an open furnace.
The creature’s teeth seemed to be chattering in its gaping maw. On closer inspection, Halverson observed that the teeth were in reality writhing maggots.
He tried to figure out how to dispatch the creature with the pitchfork. Stalling for time he jabbed the pitchfork’s tines into the creature’s half-exposed rib cage. The tines sank smoothly into the decaying organs. The thrust stymied the creature’s advance as Halverson staved the thing off and decided on a method of extermination.
The creature squirmed and thrashed its decomposing arms while the pitchfork impaled it.
“What are you waiting for?” called Becker.
Idiot, Halverson thought, but didn’t turn around to face him.
Halverson figured the only way to kill the thing was by jamming the pitchfork through its eyes and into its reanimated brain. He wasn’t sure the pitchfork’s tines would penetrate the creature’s skull. He would soon find out.
He shoved the pitchfork farther into the creature’s chest then hoicked the tool back, dislodging it from the creature. The creature stumbled backward a few steps courtesy of Halverson’s shove. Halverson took the opportunity to advance on the creature and thrust the pitchfork into the thing’s poor excuse for a head, determined to direct one of the tines into the thing’s eyes.
He felt the tines make contact with the skull. He heard it crack. He felt it give under the impetus of the pitchfork. A small sphere popped out of the creature’s head like a cork from the neck of a champagne bottle. The sphere must have been the creature’s decaying eye, decided Halverson.
In any case, the pitchfork proved a much better weapon than Halverson had expected. The tines penetrated the skull with relative ease, given enough thrust behind them.
The creature dropped to the ground. The pitchfork still embedded in the creature’s skull dragged Halverson toward the cadaver in its descent to the ground. Resisting the pull of the tool’s haft, Halverson wrested the pitchfork out of the skull. He retreated from the stiff.
He heard a booming noise. He started, instantly alert.
He squinted in the direction of the clamor.
The fence near the bonfire was collapsing. A horde of creatures was trampling it to the ground as they stormed into the graveyard.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Halverson felt his mind fogging up. Faced with overwhelming odds his mind seemed to be seizing up. He knew he had to do something, though. Staying here meant certain death.
Once the creatures started spilling into the graveyard, they would be impossible to stop, he knew. There appeared to be thousands of them stumbling and falling all over each other in their dogged attempts to enter the graveyard.
Throngs of hungry, flaming zombies trampled the chain-link fence into the ground and lumbered into the cemetery, bent on consumption.
The creatures in the foremost ranks were still ablaze. The ones in the subsequent ranks remained unscathed by the bonfire. It made no difference whether the creatures were burning or not, Halverson saw. They all just kept pouring through the breach in the fence willy-nilly.
The severity of his and his companions’ plight finally got through to Halverson’s misting mind.
He kicked himself into action.
He pelted for his vehicle. He clambered into the driver’s seat of the motor cart.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Felix from his cart.
“We don’t have time,” said Halverson.
“You’ll be interested in hearing what I have to say.”
“We can talk about it later.”
“That’ll be too late.”
“Those creatures are coming our way.” Halverson didn’t know what Felix was getting at, but he figured it could wait.
“There’s six million bucks in that armored truck I was driving.”
“Six million?” said Reba beside Felix. Her eyes grew bigger.
“There’s no way we can get that truck out of the traffic jam it’s stuck in,” said Halverson.
“And you have the keys?” Becker asked Felix with interest.
“I do,” answered Felix.
“We don’t have to move the truck. All we need to do is open the truck and grab the bags of money.”
“These carts can’t hold much,” said Halverson.
“We’ll take whatever we can.”
“There’s one thing you’re forgetting,” said Victoria.
“What’s that?” asked Becker.
“It’s not our money.”
“If we don’t take it, somebody else will,” said Felix. “We have as much right to it as anybody else.”
“What good’s money gonna do us if everybody’s dead?” pointed out Halverson.
“If everybody’s dead, then the owners of that money are dead,” said Becker. “Finders keepers, is what I always say. It’s ours.”
“You miss the point. We don’t need money anymore if everybody’s dead. We can take whatever we want without paying for it.”
“We don’t know for sure that everybody’s dead. Fifty miles from here, it could be just a normal day for everybody else.”
“I doubt it.”
“It’s always good to have money, no matter what.”
“What about those creatures that are coming after us?” said Victoria. “Do you think they’re just gonna let us sashay over to that truck and empty it while they politely watch?”
“We’ll take as much out of the truck as we can before the creatures reach us,” said Becker.
Worked up, Felix said, “I’ve spent my whole career guarding somebody else’s money. It’s about time I got some of my own.”
“Yeah,” said Reba. “Opportunity knocks. Let’s go for it.”
“People would kill to get their hands on this kind of money.”
Halverson needed money as much as the next man. But this didn’t seem to be the time or the place, not with all these creatures swarming around them. “Is it worth dying for?”
“Who said anything about dying?” said Becker. “We take what we can get then scram before the things overrun us.”
Halverson shrugged. “It’s your neck.”
“Does that mean you’re not coming with us?”
“I don’t think it’s worth the risk.”
“Then count you out?”
Halverson thought it over. “We need to stick together. I’m with you for now. As soon as I see too many creatures coming toward us, though, I’m splitting.”
“Fair enough. We’ll all be splitting.”
The commotion caused by the fence’s collapse seemed to agitate the creatures roaming outside the gate. They gazed with their thousand-yard stares at the flaming zombies that were stampeding into the north end of the cemetery.
“Time to go,” said Halverson, sliding into his motor cart’s driver’s seat beside Victoria.
He laid the pitchfork on the center console alongside a spade and a shovel.
“I’m going first,” he told the others.
“Why you?” said Becker.
“Because I’ve got the NVGs.”
“Why do you get them?”
Halverson didn’t feel like arguing with Becker. Instead, Halverson waved dismissively at him.
Becker waved in disgust back at him.
Becker had a spade and two shovels in his cart, Halverson saw.
In the third cart, Felix was driving and Reba was riding shotgun. They had a spade, a shovel, and a pitchfork in their v
ehicle, along with Felix’s Glock and Reba’s Mossberg shotgun.
“I’m going second,” said Becker.
“Remember,” said Halverson. “No lights. And no guns unless it’s an emergency.”
He donned the night-vision goggles on his head.
“What’s causing this to happen?” asked Victoria at her wit’s end, checking out the creatures swarming over the crushed fence and heading their way.
The steady tramping shuffling of their dead feet multiplied by their countless numbers sent a chill down her spine.
“Plague,” answered Halverson.
“But why is this plague happening now?”
“Good question. I need you to open the gate for us.”
She glued her eyes on what she could see of his through his night-vision goggles. “Three of those things are standing in front of it.”
“Just do it quickly. Those things stumble around like drunks. I’ll drive up to you and you hop in.”
“We need to get the show on the road,” said Becker in the second cart.
The legions of creatures encroaching on the cemetery were spreading irresistibly toward Halverson and his group.
Victoria leapt out of Halverson’s cart and dashed to the gate. She unfastened the metal latch on the gate. Alerted by the clang of the latch rising against the metal gatepost, the three nearby creatures spotted her and gawked at her. They flailed their diseased, withered arms and stumbled toward her.
Victoria swung the gate open.
She sprinted back to the cart as Halverson drove up to meet her. She climbed into her seat.
“Grab a weapon,” said Halverson.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked, glancing at the tools gathered on the console.
“Just get something to push the things away when they get near us.”
Victoria snagged a shovel. She manhandled it awkwardly in the tiny cart. She all but clubbed Halverson in the head as she maneuvered the shovel in her hands. Halverson ducked in the nick of time.
“Sorry,” she said. “There’s not much room in here.”
He revved the motor cart’s engine. He drove out the gate, ramming into the knees of one of the creatures. The cart didn’t have a windshield. It didn’t have much weight either, not enough to shove the creature out of the way. Instead, the creature’s torso ended up crashing over the hood of the cart toward Halverson.
Through his night-vision goggles Halverson beheld an unearthly green image of the creature as it tumbled toward him.
The creature levered itself up from the hood with its arms. Its mouth gaping, the creature grimaced at Halverson.
Halverson snapped up a spade at his right and thrust it at the creature’s chest. The spade’s blade hit home.
Holding onto the steering wheel with his left hand, Halverson shoved the creature off the cart’s hood with the spade embedded in its ruined chest. The creature toppled to the side of the cart and hit the road on its side, transfixed on the spade.
Once on the asphalt, the creature kept moving, kicking its legs and rotating like an uncoordinated break-dancer.
Halverson could care less. As long as the thing was out of his way. Staying on the sidewalk he drove past the wretched creature, the other two carts in tow.
An eerie electric green and black landscape unfolded before Halverson as he peered through the goggles casting around for Felix’s armored truck.
He discerned isolated zombies scattered in the distance. They couldn’t see him and they seemed oblivious to the motor carts approaching them. Several of the creatures were mooching through the maze of wrecked vehicles parked on the road. Still others roamed on the sidewalk that skirted the fence.
Where the hell was the armored truck? wondered Halverson. It should be nearby.
“Where’s the truck?” asked Becker behind him, as if reading Halverson’s mind.
Halverson clapped eyes on it. “There it is.”
“Let’s go, then.”
“There’s a problem.”
“What?”
“There’s not enough room on the road for us to use these carts to reach the truck.”
“So what?” said Felix, overhearing Halverson and Becker. “We park on the sidewalk, walk over to the truck, unload it, and bring the moneybags over here.”
“Except for one other thing,” said Halverson.
“Now what?” said Becker.
“I count five of those things wandering around the truck.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Let’s just forget it,” said Victoria beside Halverson.
Halverson slowed his vehicle to a halt.
“No,” said Felix. “We can still do it. We’ll take our weapons with us.”
“Hold down your voice,” whispered Halverson. “Those things will hear us and come over here.”
Felix halted his vehicle and dismounted from it. He hauled a pitchfork from the cart.
“I’m going,” he said. “Are any of you coming?”
“I’m coming,” said Reba.
She withdrew a spade, knocking it loudly against the cart.
Halverson shushed her. He surveyed the area to see if any of the creatures had heard the banging.
He didn’t see any of the creatures responding to the sound.
“It would be easier if we could use our guns,” said Felix.
“No way,” said Halverson. “Those things hear a gunshot, they’ll be here in droves.”
A shovel in his hand, Becker angled toward Felix and Reba.
Halverson snatched up a pitchfork from his cart and joined the trio.
“I’ll stay here in case one of those creatures gets too close to the vehicles,” said Victoria.
“Where’s the truck?” Felix asked, unable to distinguish its shape in the darkness.
Halverson took point. He guided them silently through the hodgepodge of dented vehicles.
He balked when he encountered the first creature. It was shambling approximately two yards away from him. He didn’t think it could see him in the gloom. He doubted the creature’s clouded eyes could see very well in the dark—or in the light, for that matter.
Felix bumped into Halverson from behind.
Halverson wheeled around and held his forefinger to his lips to silence the others. Once he had their attention, he pointed at the ghoul. He didn’t know if they could see the thing without night-vision goggles.
He raised his pitchfork and stole toward the creature. The thirtysomething creature was wearing the dark blue livery of a paramedic. Grimacing, the creature shuffled into a car’s mangled back bumper and banged its knees against the metal. Other than changing its course, the ghoul didn’t flinch or display any reaction on its putrid face to its knee’s impact with the metal.
Halverson advanced on the creature, lunged forward, and thrust his pitchfork into its temple. The steel tines hit their mark, pierced the skull, and penetrated the brain. Halverson jiggled the tines back and forth and up and down several times to make sure the brain was obliterated.
The creature collapsed against the car and slid down its fender.
Halverson yanked the pitchfork out of the creature’s skull. Dollops of brain matter splattered the pitchfork’s tines.
One down, four to go, thought Halverson.
He noticed Felix was edging forward holding his hands out in front of him like a blind man groping trying to find his way in the pitch-black night.
“You’re almost at the truck,” Halverson whispered.
Felix nodded. Soon he felt the side of the truck with his hands as he continued to grip a pitchfork in one of them.
A huge female ghoul that must have stood six foot four at the very least and had broad shoulders was trudging toward Felix’s back. Halverson could not tell if the creature could see Felix or not. One thing Halverson was sure of: Felix didn’t see the creature.
The ghoul had blonde hair piled on top of its head in a beehive. Clad in blue Capri pants and a white blouse, the creature wa
s threading its way sluggishly through the junkyard of cars toward Felix.
Halverson stole toward the creature. The pitchfork in his hands, Halverson closed the gap between him and the ghoul.
Its grimacing, sneering face in the advanced stages of putrefaction, the creature presented a hideous aspect. At six four and over three hundred pounds the creature could have subbed as a linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers. On closer inspection, Halverson could see that half the creature’s mouth was eaten away by plague revealing suppurating, shredded blue gums and broken, rotting teeth.
Fixed in a grimace worthy of a jackal, the creature’s visage elicited an involuntary gasp of horror from Halverson. He had never seen anything so appalling in his life.
He knew the monster must be destroyed before it reached Felix, who remained unaware of its presence as he felt his way toward the back door of the armored truck.
Halverson brought the pitchfork to bear on the creature’s head. He thrust the pitchfork forward.
At the last moment, the creature stumbled backward on account of its poor coordination. The stumble threw off Halverson’s aim.
As a result, the pitchfork penetrated the back of the creature’s head lower than he had intended for it, into the neck and jawline, and angled upward but missed the brain. He felt the creature struggling at the end of the pitchfork. The wooden helve shook in his hands as the creature tried to free itself from the steel prongs embedded in the back of its neck and jaw.
Halverson fought to retain his grasp of the pitchfork’s handle. Impaled on the pitchfork, the creature could not turn around to face him.
Halverson knew he had no other choice but to withdraw the trembling pitchfork from the creature’s neck and try once again to transfix its brain. Halverson braced himself. He rent the pitchfork from the creature’s neck. The prongs squelched as they slid out of the putrid flesh and cartilage.
The creature stumbled around to breast Halverson. The lower half of its decomposing face now had three gaping holes in it where the prongs had run it through.
Halverson could not stand the sight of the thing any longer. Sweating, he reared back then thrust the pitchfork into the creature’s head at eye level. The creature reeled back, its face impaled on the tines.
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