Chucklers: Laughter is Contagious

by Jeff Brackett

  Ken waved his tire iron at them. “Stay back.” He didn’t know what their intentions were, but they definitely weren’t acting normal. On the other hand, he didn’t want to have to explain to the police why he had accosted two people with a tire iron. He tried again to warn them off. “We don’t want any trouble.”

  The couple didn’t even slow. The man tackled Ken before he could convince himself that he was really going to attack. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the woman jump on Angela. The man on top of him leaned in as if for a kiss, and Ken remembered Angela’s words about a man eating the other woman’s lips.

  “Sorry, buddy.” Ken pushed against the man. “I’m flattered and all, but I’m straight.” He shoved the tire iron against the man’s throat, forcing him back. He heard Angela scream and his protective instinct kicked in. He bucked his hips and jabbed the point of the iron into the man’s shoulder. He shoved as hard as he could and rolled his attacker over. Scrambling to his feet, Ken swung the tire iron against the man’s head and turned to Angela.

  He didn’t hesitate this time. He swung the tire iron again and the woman fell to the ground beside Angela. Ken reached down and helped his passenger to her feet. She had tears in her eyes, but looked more angry than frightened. “Come on.”

  She nodded, stepped past him, and kicked the laughing man behind Ken in the chin as he got to his hands and knees. The man dropped.

  Ken nodded. I like this woman. They started running for the garage again. Ken reflected as they ran how quickly he had gone from being worried about getting in trouble with the police for hitting someone with a tire iron, to just being worried about staying alive. Is that all it takes to strip civilization from a person? He could only hope he got the chance to ponder this philosophical question another day. For now, he couldn’t afford that luxury. He scanned the streets for other potential attackers. He didn’t know for sure who could be trusted, though at this point, it looked like most of the violence was being done by people who were laughing. He shook his head at the thought, but another glance around them only served to reinforce that observation. For whatever reason, people were laughing, and then attacking people who weren’t.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Hobby Center.” He slowed only enough to make sure Angela was keeping up, but she was keeping pace with no trouble. He realized as he watched her easy stride that she was probably in better shape than he was. He could tell she was holding back to stay with him.

  “Any particular reason?” she asked. He noted that she seemed perfectly sober now, and figured what they had seen would sober anyone.

  The sound of a blaring horn from the freeway ahead was followed by the now familiar sounds of squealing rubber, crunching metal, and breaking glass. “The theaters keep armed guards in their parking lots.”

  “Good idea.”

  Screams and laughter fell behind them as they raced down the street. Ken saw the light pouring from the entrance to the underground parking ahead and altered course a bit to cut across the grass. He could only hope they would find help.

  Chapter 50

  Charles Griffe

  Losses

  Charlie followed behind Chris, the two of them leading the group as quietly as they could go. Tabby brought up the rear. He had suggested that she take that position, implying that it was too important a task to leave to any of the newcomers. The truth of the matter was that he honestly wasn't sure if he trusted her. She had, after all, come close to killing him in that stairwell. That wasn't something he was going to just forget.

  Getting a group their size into the stairwell had been a major undertaking, and they'd barely made it inside before hooting and laughter told them they'd been spotted. But with fourteen people, by the time the last of them were in, the leaders were nearly to the exit onto the next deck. It had been a mad dash to get everyone back out of the stairwell and into a nearby cabin. Even then, it had been one of the economy cabins, and barely held all of them.

  But they'd made it, and managed to evade the groups chasing them once again.

  Now, another hour later, they were creeping once again up the hallway, moving as stealthily as a group of fourteen frightened people could move. Less than five nerve-wracking minutes later, Tabby whistled once from behind. It was their prearranged signal for Chris to open a cabin. Two more sharp whistles let them know he needed to hurry.

  Charlie looked back and saw movement in the shadows. He saw Tabby brace herself for a fight in the middle of the corridor, gripping her mirror shard tightly.

  All pretense of stealth gone, Chris ran ahead. "Here, this is one of the luxury suites!" He keyed the door open, and started ushering the group inside. If they moved too slowly, he grabbed them by the arm and shoved.

  Charlie nodded approvingly and moved back to see Tabby still set to make her stand. Past her, a barely-seen mass of movement deep in the shadows of the darkened hallway told him there was a rushing mob heading their way. He ran up and tapped her shoulder. "Let's go!" Chris hissed at them to hurry and they ducked inside well ahead of the laughing troop behind them.

  "Did they see you?" Chris asked.

  Tabby shrugged. "Hard to tell."

  Chris whispered to Shane, signaling him to come listen at the door while they checked the cabin. It was one of the larger affairs, and as they moved into it, sudden movement caught Charlie's eye. One of the latest people to join their group was Scott Ward. They had found him and his wife back on Deck Nine shortly before the near disaster in the stairwell, and Charlie really didn't know much about them.

  But he recognized his balding head and full beard as Tabby whipped the flashlight in the direction of his shout. He spun frantically as a giggling woman dressed in a soiled baby doll nightie, bit and clawed at him from behind. Before anyone could get to them, she plunged a long, polished fingernail through his eye and laughed as she swirled it around. As she and Scott fell to the floor, she leaned forward, latched onto his ear with her teeth and yanked her head back. She grinned and drooled around a bloody earlobe as Charlie dove at her, dragging her off her victim.

  Scott twitched on the cabin floor, blood and something thicker than blood running down his cheek. Charlie and the pajama-clad crazy struggled across the cabin floor, and she turned her nails on him, scratching his face as she sought his eyes. But before she could do more than rake at his face, Tabby stepped in, plunged her mirror shard into the woman’s throat and twisted it. The throat spewed crimson, and the woman dropped to her knees, lips drawn back into a snarl as she reached for Tabby and fell forward. She died within seconds, still crawling toward Tabby.

  The whole attack happened so quickly that both Scott and the crazy woman were dead before Scott’s wife realized what had happened. It was immediately evident when she caught on, though. Her screams pierced the room.

  The old man, Merl, grabbed her and covered her mouth with his hand. “Lady, you gotta stop that! They’ll hear you!” But she was inconsolable and her screams continued. And though they were muffled by the man’s hand, they were too loud to escape notice if there were any crazies in the area.

  Boy, you best do something or she’s gonna get us all killed.

  Dad was right. Charlie looked at everyone else, but none of them seemed ready to do anything but make shushing noises at the woman. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

  He grabbed the woman by the shoulder and spun her out of Merl’s grasp. He winced a bit as the action strained the wound across his chest, but he couldn’t afford to worry about it. He had to shut the grieving woman up. Deciding to start with a minimal action, he smacked his open palm across her face. It wasn’t a gentle slap, by any means, and it rocked the smaller woman back into Merl’s arms. But the important thing was that it was effective. That hand across her cheek brought instant silence, not only from the sobbing woman, but also from everyone else in the cabin. They looked at him as if he had committed an atrocious act. “What?” he hissed. “You want to have more of those crazies pounding down the cabin
door? None of you had the balls to do what needed to be done, so I had to. I could have just knocked her out. Just think about how well you would have liked that.” He fought to keep his voice low, but his anger threatened to override his common sense. “And now you want to make me the bad guy? Well fuck you. All of you!”

  There was shocked silence in the room, except for the grieving Mrs. Ward who still sobbed, albeit much more quietly, as she stepped across the cabin and knelt to cradle the head of her husband. Charlie sat back down on the bed, rubbing his hand gently across the cut across his chest. Tabby approached and he glared at her. “You come to tell me I’m an asshole, or what?”

  She shook her head. “I came to check on your cut.” She knelt on the floor before him and shone the light at where his shirt oozed small dark spots.

  She started to reach for his shirt, but the sight of the wet, crimson streaks on her arm caused Charlie to pull back. “Hang on a minute. Not that I’m not grateful, but I don’t think I want you touching me with that blood all over you. We still don’t know how this shit is being spread, but I’d guess mixing infected blood with my own might be a good way to get sick, don’t you?”

  Tabby pulled her hands back. “True enough. Give me a minute.” She went to the mini-fridge and pulled out a bottle of water. Chris joined her and the two of them took turns washing the blood from where it stained their skin. Then Tabby grabbed one of the mini bottles of whiskey and poured half over her hands before handing it to Chris and walking back to Charlie. “Better?”

  “Yeah, thanks.” He winced a little as she pulled his shirt back from his chest.

  “Looks like you’re bleeding again.” Without turning, she called out in a loud whisper. “Can someone open the balcony drapes? Let's get some air in here.”

  Charlie heard the curtains slide back and the click of the lock. Seconds later the door slid open, letting the cool ocean air in to clear out some of the funk. Tabby called back over her shoulder. “Chris, can you bring me another bottle of whiskey? This cut is looking a little infected.”

  Charlie looked down, nearly going cross-eyed as he tried to see where she pressed on the wound. “Infected?”

  “Don’t worry. It’s just a little inflamed. Should be fine as long as we keep it cleaned.”

  Chris handed her another bottle from the mini-fridge, as well as a wash rag. He looked at Charlie. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” But he hissed and jerked away as Tabby applied the alcohol-soaked rag to his chest.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “It’s all ri—”

  He was interrupted by a shout from the old woman in the group, Celina. “Allison, no!”

  Charlie jerked his head around as Tabby gasped. Chris bolted around the bed, but they were all too late. Allison sat on the balcony rail, looked back at them, and just before Chris got to her, leaned backward. She didn’t scream, didn’t make a sound at all as she fell out of sight. Chris leaned over the rail and his shoulders sagged. He turned back to them and shook his head. “She’s gone.”

  Tabby moved toward the balcony. “Are you sure the fall killed her? Maybe she’s—”

  Chris shook his head. “This cabin is one of the luxury suites. The balcony goes past the jogging track and out over the ocean. She’s gone.”

  They didn’t have much else they could do at that point. They threw the other bodies into the ocean and sat for a while in silence.

  Chapter 51

  Erica Chapman

  Early Black Friday

  The world had obviously gone insane. That was the only way Erica could wrap her mind around the idea of a raging mob of laughing killers chasing her van through the mall parking lot. You wouldn’t ordinarily think that outrunning them would have been too much of a problem, what with her driving a van like a madman. But as she drove up the aisle toward the mall proper, another group of people poured through the entrance and into the parking lot. She did a double take as she noticed a few mostly naked women in the crowd, bare breasts bouncing in the cold November night. “What the hell?” then she noticed the sign above the entrance and understood. Victoria’s Secret Early Black Friday Sale.

  A woman wearing a shimmering red baby doll nightie trimmed in white faux fur tackled another woman, beating her with the pale white arm from a store mannequin. Heart pounding, Erica slowed as the riot spilled into the lane of the parking lot. Then the mob saw the van and began hooting and laughing as they rushed toward it. “Shit!”

  “What’s wrong?” Her pistol-waving benefactor leaned up between the front seats so he could see out the windshield.

  “There’s more of them coming out of the mall.”

  “Punch it!”

  A kid in a leather jacket left the mob. He raced straight at the van, waving the support beam from a chromed metal clothes rack over his head. Several of his companions noticed, and joined him in his attack. As he drew nearer, Erica saw a haunted, out-of-control, insanity in his eyes—the same look she’d seen in the eyes of Mr. This-is-Texas back in the theater.

  “Lady, you’re slowing down!”

  “I don’t have a choice,” Erica yelled back. “He’s running to get in front of us. I’ll hit him.”

  “And if you don’t, they’ll be all over this van in ten seconds. Punch it!” He reached across and pushed her knee down on the gas pedal. She thought only a second about fighting against that pressure, but the reality was that he was right. She allowed the van to accelerate, pretending to herself that she was helpless to stop it—that the hand on her leg was forcing her actions.

  At the last second, she swerved away from the kid, popping up over a parking block and scraping down the length of a convertible. The van bounced enough that the hand on her knee released its grip, opting instead to use its powers for good—namely to grab the back of her seat to brace her passenger as the van bounded wildly for a few seconds while they sped past the rest of the crowd. She looked ahead and saw more people rushing out of the various mall exits. Some of them laughed, some of them screamed in panic. Most of those screaming were quickly overrun by the pursuing horde.

  She yanked the wheel to the right at the first chance, steering away from the exit ahead, heading instead to the outskirts of the parking lot in an effort to put as much distance between herself and the mall as was possible. She looked once more into the rearview mirror, saw it was working.

  “You’re going the wrong way! The exit’s the other direction!”

  “It’s a mall, damn it! They generally have more than one way out, you know.” Her passenger shut up at that and she glanced again in the mirror. They were finally putting some real distance between themselves and their pursuers. Another thirty seconds, and it began to look like they were in the clear. She looked in the rearview mirror and saw that the mob seemed to have lost interest in pursuit and was busily milling about the parking lot and beating on parked cars. Hands trembling, Erica reached into her purse and withdrew her cell phone. Taking care not to drop it, she dialed 911 on the keypad. “Nine, one, one. Please state the nature of your emergency.”

  It wasn’t until she opened her mouth to speak that she realized she had no idea what to say. “I… there were people at the theater… they all started laughing… and they killed a man…”

  “Ma’am, did you say they killed someone?”

  Erica found her eyes blurring and knuckled back the tears with the back of her hand. She sniffed. “Yes, they killed a man. And one of them started to eat his face!” There was silence on the line for a second.

  “Ma’am, are you all right?”

  Erica took her eyes off the road for a second and stared at her cell phone in disbelief. “Am I all right?” She put the phone back to her ear. “Of course I’m not all right! There’s at least a dozen people dead back there at the movie theater!

  “Wow. That must have been a really bad movie!” And the voice on the other end began to laugh.

  Erica really didn’t handle it well. She screamed and threw the phone. It bounc
ed off the passenger side door and landed back in the passenger’s seat beside her. She beat her fist against the steering wheel. She evidently reacted badly enough that the poor man in the back seat started to yell.

  “Hey, lady! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Watch where you’re going!”

  Looking up through teary eyes, she saw she had veered toward the hedges surrounding the parking lot. Only the fact that there were hardly any cars this far out in the parking area her from turning them into a traffic statistic. She jerked the wheel back to the right and slammed on the brakes, coming to a full stop.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Not trusting herself to speak, she simply pointed to where her phone lay on the passenger’s seat.

  “What? Something wrong with your pho…” but he went silent as the sound of laughter and gunfire sounded from it.

  More pops sounded from the phone, and she stared at it as if it were a rattlesnake waiting to strike. After several more gunshots and a lot of shouting, they heard the laughter of several people. Then one voice got closer than the others. It was a woman’s voice, and she shrieked at something she seemed to find absolutely hilarious. It was the creepiest laugh Erica had ever heard in her life, and she shivered at the rustling sound of someone moving the phone or headset coming through the speaker. Then a freakishly cheerful voice came across the line. “I’m sorry, but the number you have dialed is not a working number.” The voice giggled again before screaming into the line, “So hang up the damn phone! Hee, hee, hee…” The line went silent, and the screen on the phone lit up. Call ended.

  Erica knuckled the tears back and took a deep, shuddering breath, then turned to look at the man in the back. His eyes were wide as she picked up the phone and placed it in the console. She looked in the mirror again and saw that the mob in the parking lot was spreading and a small splinter of them were running toward the van again. She took one more calming breath and put the van back into drive. A few hundred yards later, she saw the back exit just ahead on the left. Speeding past the hedge row that bordered the parking area, she breathed a quick sigh of relief, daring to think they were safe.