“I don’t know,” Crosby said, gesturing out the window. “Maybe the Chinese—or the North Koreans or the Arabs or someone—finally went off their nut and bombed the fuck out of Nevada, hoping to spread nuclear fallout. It made people sick and crazy. The National Guard lost control of the situation. The fact that we’re under martial law goes to prove something big is going on, but real live… dead fucking zombies? Give me a break. That’s impossible, Sheriff. And if you believe it’s real, then all I can say is that you’ve been watching too much cable TV.”
His bravado was infectious. The three men in the cell next to Miller chuckled softly. That asshole Martin made kissing noises under his breath. Miller wanted to reach through the bars and strangle his sorry ass. She continued to focus on Crosby instead. She remembered that first terrible night back in Flat Rock. How hard it had been to get her head around what was really going on.
“I didn’t believe it either, Crosby,” she said. “I can still remember when my deputy called to tell me what was happening. It seems ridiculous. But when you actually see one, a real zombie, see what it can do, well, by then it may already be too late. You need to warn your people,” Miller continued. “Tell them to arm themselves, board up their homes. And if anyone dies mysteriously, under any circumstances, the best thing you can do is to shoot them in the head, just to make sure. It’s the only way you can kill these things.”
Martin snickered. So did one of the other two men.
Crosby closed the door between them again. The conversation was over. He turned to the gun cabinet and began loading a bolt action Remington. Miller heard something, and she turned to look at the three prisoners. Martin and his buddies were grinning at her. At least they were still on their side of the bars.
A noise came from outside. They all heard it at once: Someone shouting, feet running. Crosby lifted the rifle and pointed it at the door. Miller pounded on the bars.
“Crosby, give me a weapon, damn you!”
A moment later someone hit the office door—they banged on it with their shoulder, almost as if they were expecting it to open—and whoever it was tried the lock several times. Zombies didn’t think that fast. Those were people outside. Scared people asking for help. They began pounding on the wood.
“Calm down!” shouted Crosby, stepping up to the door. He cycled the bolt. “Stand back from the door.”
“Carter, it’s Michelle and Jim. Quick. Open up!”
Scratch was outside. Miller sagged with relief.
Crosby went to the door, and unlocked it.
Scratch and Michelle burst in… and stopped dead when they saw Crosby was pointing the rifle at them.
Scratch stepped forward. “Right idea, wrong target, Carter.” He reached out for the barrel of the rifle—to push it down, Miller presumed—but Crosby jerked it away. Miller winced, suddenly worried the weapon might discharge.
“What are you doing here, Jim?”
“What are we doing here? You got zombies roaming the streets of Hope Springs, and you want to know why we’re here?”
Miller sagged.
“Carter,” said Michelle, “I’ve seen them myself. It’s the real deal!”
“Carter, I’m no good to you locked up. Let me out.”
“You’re not going anywhere, Sheriff.” Crosby turned to Michelle. “And I can’t believe they put you up to this, Michelle. You and I are friends. I expected more from you than to join in this hysteria.”
“Let us show you, Carter,” said Scratch. “They’re out by Harrison Lake right now.”
Crosby shook his head. “You can keep repeating that lie as much as you like, but I’m not going to buy into it.” He let the barrel of the rifle droop like a spent cock.
“Carter,” said Miller. “Let’s go have a look. What if they are telling you the truth? What if there are zombies out in the woods and you do nothing? You have a duty to protect your people. The least you can do is to go and check this out. If Scratch says he’s found proof, believe it.”
Michelle took a step forward, ignoring the rifle pointing at her legs. “Come on, Carter. Take a look. You gotta believe your own eyes.”
“All right. I’ll have a look. Just to prove you wrong.”
“Good. Now please, go let Sheriff Miller out, and we can all go bag us some zombies.”
“Hey,” Martin called, “what about us?”
“Nobody is going anywhere,” Crosby said. “Jim, you can show me what you want to show me, but Sheriff Miller stays put until I figure this thing out.”
“Now wait a minute, Carter,” Scratch said. “We need her with us.”
Miller called out from the jail cell. “I’m safe, Scratch. I’ll be fine until you come back for me. Just make sure you do come back for me.”
“You know we will,” said Scratch. “Hang tight.”
Scratch backed away from the jailhouse steps. He waved his arm uphill, towards the lodge. “Let’s go.”
Crosby slammed and locked the door, leaving Miller alone in the cell with her thoughts.
The jail went silent. The air thickened and the atmosphere turned gloomy. A cloud crossed the sun outside. Miller turned away from the bars and sat down heavily on her cot. The springs complained beneath her. She dropped her head into her hands, exhausted.
“It looks like we got you all to ourselves, sweetheart.”
Martin.
Oh, shit, thought Miller. What am I going to do about these dumb assholes?
“Honey? I’m thinking we’ve got us some unfinished business.”
Miller was not happy. She wasn’t used to being on this side of the bars, but she knew the rules. She had no idea how long Crosby would have her locked up, so she was kind of the new fish in this jail. Martin was instinctively proving his status to the others. He’d clearly been inside before. Miller figured she was better off making a strong impression without wasting any more precious time.
“What do you want?” Miller didn’t look at Martin or his boys. She let herself look beaten down and humbled.
“I just want to talk. Why don’t you come over here, and we’ll get to know each other a little better.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Come on, sweet thing. If the world is going to hell and we’re all going to get munched on, we may as well live it up first.”
Miller didn’t respond.
“Let’s have us a chat.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” said Miller. She sat up, composing herself, and smiled coyly. Martin looked surprised. She stood up and waltzed over to the bars that separated the two small cells. She was counting on his macho overpowering his common sense. “Come a little closer, handsome. I got something I want to whisper to you.”
“Whoa!” said the other bozo. The youngest one looked scared.
Miller stared back with a sly smile. Martin couldn’t back down to a woman. He came closer.
Without warning, Miller reached through the bars, grabbed Martin by the lapels of his filthy jacket, and pulled as hard as she could. His forehead slammed into the bars. The sound of the impact was dull and low, and reminded her of the ringing of a church bell far away. Martin grunted. His eyes rolled back.
She let him go.
Martin fell backwards with a thud. He landed like a man trying to make a snow angel, nearly cracking his skull open on the hard concrete floor. Martin stayed down. Miller stepped back and surveyed the damage with satisfaction. She looked up at the other two men with her eyes blazing.
“Well?”
“Hey,” said the youngest man. “You didn’t have to do that. You might have killed him.”
“What the fuck is your problem, bitch?” demanded the older guy.
“Shut up,” Miller said calmly, “or I’ll come in there and kick your ass too.”
The men picked up Martin and lifted him onto the cot. They seemed to be doing some rudimentary first aid. Their attention was on their fallen comrade, but the older one kept glaring back at Miller.
She yawned d
ramatically. She went to the far corner of her own cell and sat on the bunk. “That’s better. Now, silence is golden, gentlemen. I don’t want to hear another word out of either one of you.”
She didn’t.
Miller lay down and closed her eyes. She was dog-tired. At first she only pretended to rest, but after a few minutes she managed to fall asleep.
CHAPTER TEN
Scratch, driving Michelle’s SUV, took every turn on the road up to the lodge like a madman. It was clear that he was desperate to get this over with and return to rescue Miller from the jail. Constable Crosby drove steadily behind them, falling back a ways, playing it safer. Winter was upon the mountain in earnest and the lodge was white with snow. They all rushed to meet his vehicle when he arrived and took him straight upstairs to the second floor east window.
“There.”
They handed Crosby the binoculars. He adjusted the focus, followed Scratch’s aim, and trained them on the three filthy-looking people stumbling around over on the far side of the lake. His jaw dropped open. Crosby saw gory, shattered figures in the broad, cold winter daylight. He swallowed dryly. The people he was looking at sure as hell looked like zombies from the movies, but Crosby had been around long enough to know that you couldn’t always trust your eyes. His mind kept working, seeking a rational explanation. Maybe it was a hoax of some kind.
“Yeah, what’s that prove?” The skepticism sounded hollow, even to Crosby’s own ears. Jesus, was this all really happening?
“What do you mean, numbnuts?” demanded Scratch. “Now you’ve seen some of them your own self.”
“So maybe it’s a couple of people with makeup on,” Crosby said. “This doesn’t prove anything.”
Scratch and Terrill Lee exchanged looks.
Terrill Lee spoke for the first time. “I’m thinking this guy needs a proper introduction.”
“It does appear that way.”
Terrill Lee sighed. He turned to the Crosby. “Sir, can you shoot that thing?” He studied the rifle that Crosby carried. “Can you handle yourself? Because if we go down there and you choke you might get one of us killed.”
Crosby cocked his head. He seemed to figure they were trying to get a rise out of him. If it was all for real, well… he needed to know, had to know for sure.
“Okay, you’re on,” said Crosby. “Let’s go take a look.”
Michelle stayed behind with her children, so it was Crosby, Scratch, Terrill Lee, and another man who introduced himself as Karl Sheppard. Crosby was impressed by that one. He looked ex-military for sure, soft spoken and very tired. The men led Crosby down the stairs and out through a service door and into the snow. They went on foot, trudging across the frosted ground. The whole thing seemed so surreal. If all this turned out to be true, then he had the village to protect. On the other hand, if this was a hoax, they were going to have a hell of a time explaining why.
The walk around the lake took a little over ten minutes. No one spoke. Scratch, Terrill Lee, and Karl seemed to know what they were going to do without speaking about it. They’d clearly worked together before. They were a smooth unit, grim and determined, and that observation made him feel even more nervous. Crosby fought the urge to chat. Crosby was tough enough, but this situation had him baffled. Zombies didn’t exist. They couldn’t exist. That was physiologically impossible, wasn’t it? Scratch—Crosby had finally gotten used to using Jim’s nickname—and all of his friends sure took the whole idea seriously. No one had mentioned anyone else in their party who could possibly be out there playing the part of the zombies. Most importantly, Crosby had seen pretty clearly that one of the people in the snow was missing an arm below the elbow. No one in the village was missing half an arm like that, so they hadn’t recruited any locals. This whole thing didn’t add up. And if it did, Crosby knew the entire world was very seriously fucked.
“Constable?” Sheppard put his hand lightly on Crosby’s shoulder. “We’re close enough. Take another peek at them through your scope. You should be able to see what you need from back here.”
“What’s that smell?” Crosby put the scope to his eye. His stomach heaved. The odor was overpowering. It was a rotting, putrid smell that came to him in wafts. As a hunter and a lawman for years, he knew very well what it had to be. He didn’t want to accept the truth.
“That would be our friends over there,” Sheppard said.
Crosby looked at Sheppard for a long moment. The soldier’s expression was dead serious, like a teacher waiting for his pupil to get wise.
Crosby returned his attention to the scope and the looming figures.
“My God!”
“God has nothing to do with any of this,” said Sheppard.
The scope brought the zombies up to his nose. There was no way what Crosby saw had been accomplished with movie makeup. The one with the missing arm was also missing a significant portion of his left side. A long rope of purple intestine flopped loosely from the gaping hole, and Crosby could even see a shaft of sunlight coming through from behind its belly button. The thing’s exposed skin looked like worn leather. As if he’d been dead for weeks. The eyes weren’t focused on anything. The expression was weirdly bland, yet savage. The face was drawn, exposing cracked, red-stained teeth.
Nauseated, Crosby turned his attention to the next creature. Its skin looked like it had been subjected to third-degree burns. It wore no clothing and Crosby could see every wound in perfect detail. The zombie—the word did apply after all—looked like it had been in a terrible car accident, and yet somehow made it out anyway, starving and undead. Crosby could sense the other men studying him. He felt weirdly fascinated and repulsed at the same time. He simply could not stop looking.
“Damn.”
The third zombie—even Crosby couldn’t deny the truth any longer—was still relatively intact. It wore a big cowboy hat, a clean but torn black t-shirt, and mud-stained jeans with a big TEXAS belt buckle. The man’s face looked vaguely familiar, but this was certainly not someone from the village. Crosby thought maybe a truck driver he’d met, or service provider from another village. It was someone who’d driven through. Crosby couldn’t bring himself to figure out who it was or had once been. He didn’t want to remember.
“You convinced yet?” Scratch asked impatiently. “Penny’s waiting.”
“I… I don’t…” stammered Crosby. “Jesus.”
“Constable,” Sheppard said, “I want you to try an experiment. Pick one, say the one with the missing arm, and shoot it. Aim for the center of mass, and don’t miss. You’ll never forget what you see next, we promise.”
“These people are sick. They’ve been injured. We have to get them medical attention.”
“Carter, you’re smarter than this,” said Scratch. “Stop pretending. Snap the fuck out of it. You know we’re right. Just shoot.”
They all watched. He kept the scope to his eye. Crosby took the shot.
They were right. He was wrong.
He could clearly see the puff where the shot struck the torso. The bullet went through cleanly. The zombie didn’t even flinch from the bullet, but the impact did get its attention. It grunted and the sound carried. The creatures looked up and suddenly discovered them. The zombies were close enough for Crosby to hear. A faint sound raced the echo back to their ears.
Uhh-hunnh!
“What the fuck is that?” Crosby whispered.
“A sound you never want to hear again,” said Terrill Lee. “But you’ll probably be hearing it a lot real soon. It’s the happy zombie song.”
Sheppard spoke softly. “Take the shot again. This time, hit the same one in the forehead. They can survive with just about any injury except one right between the eyes. As Sheriff Miller always says, aim for the brain.”
His jacket felt stiff and cold. It cracked with frost as Crosby raised the rifle and aimed. His skin was wriggling and crawling and his pulse slammed like a bass drum. He focused in on the creature’s face. He squeezed the trigger, and the rifle jumpe
d in his hands. The round found its mark. The headshot zombie bent over backwards. It collapsed downward like a bundle of old clothes. The difference was astonishing.
“May as well take out the other two while you’re at it,” Scratch drawled. His breath blew out in a cloud. He stomped his feet to stay warm. “Ain’t no sense leaving the others to keep wandering around biting folks.”
“You’re telling me that I can shoot them as much as I want anywhere else but in the head, and they’ll keep on coming?”
“And chomping,” offered Terrill Lee
“Not the head, per se,” Sheppard said. “The brain. No brain, no zombie.”
Crosby blinked. “This is the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“You have no idea,” commented Terrill Lee, almost as an aside.
Crosby focused on Cowboy Hat, who was coming their way. He lined up on the spot between its eyes and squeezed. The thing’s hat flew off, and the zombie had just enough time to look surprised before it collapsed.
“Almost there.”
Crosby aimed at the third zombie. The wind changed and the smell of the thing became so strong that Crosby gagged. He pulled the trigger, but jerked his aim, and this shot hit it in the throat. No response—it kept coming and making that awful unhhh hunhhh sound. It closed the distance, picking up speed, hands extended, fingers crooked. Crosby lined up again, and this time hit it in the head. A broad cloud of red and grey mist puffed out behind the skull. It fell to the ground. There wasn’t much blood though. Just gore from inside its head and brain. The echo died down and the woods were silent.
“Good job,” said Scratch. “Let’s go take a look.”
“Go over there? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Carter,” Scratch said, with a razor edge to his voice, “you put my best friend in jail and held us all back for an hour or more, probably exposing us and the entire village to grave danger. Let’s be sure you get it this time. We need to stop jerking off. You’ve got to know exactly what we’re dealing with.”
Terrill Lee said, “Scratch…”
But Scratch was already leading the way. They covered the remaining yards quickly. The three zombies lay right where Crosby had shot them. Up close the stench was unbelievable. Crosby made it within ten feet of the zombies before he couldn’t stand it anymore. He turned, bent at the waist, and vomited violently onto the frosty ground. The other men waited patiently as he emptied himself. It took a long time before Crosby managed to even stand upright. Sheppard, Scratch, and Terrill Lee exchanged satisfied looks.
The Hungry 3: At the End of the World Page 10