Then, without trying to be too circumspect about it, she ducked into an underground tunnel. It was a two-way road, with each lane just large enough to handle a Mack truck. The parking lot it served was more than two hundred yards away, below the other side of the well-groomed field. There were no doors, no emergency exits. The only way in or out was at either side.
Buffy hesitated, thought of something, then dashed back out into the street. Sure enough, the zombies showed every sign of missing her, of wandering by. She put two fingers to her lips and whistled loudly. She waved. “Hey! Adoring masses! This way!”
She went back into the tunnel, pausing until she saw that the zombies were following her this time. Then she ran. The zombies’ growls echoed eerily throughout the tunnel; they rang in her ears like curses. The farther she went into the tunnel, the narrower and darker it seemed. It was all Buffy could do to refrain from running full-tilt to put as much distance between her and the zombies as possible. When she saw the guard in the booth up ahead, she knew she had to slow down.
Slow down and try to think of a way to save him.
Perhaps the best approach, she thought, would be an honest one. “Hey, mister!” she called out.
Uh-oh! The “mister” was a woman. A police woman. She got out of the booth, where she’d been reading a paperback novel. On one side of her belt hung a nightstick, while on the other hung a holster heavy with the biggest sidearm Buffy had ever seen. The officer was in the process of pulling her gun from its holster when she saw that she had been startled by a teenager.
“Girl!” exclaimed the officer. “What are you doing out on a night like this?”
“I’m being followed. May I borrow that?” Without waiting for an answer, she freed the nightstick from the officer’s belt.
“Hey!” she cried at Buffy.
“Relax,” said Buffy, pointing the nightstick down the tunnel. “I just need to make a point.”
The zombies shuffled into view, their zombieness further distorted by the parking lot’s lights. The policewoman gasped in disbelief. Buffy got the balance of the nightstick and then threw it briskly, just like a butter knife, at the foremost zombie.
The stick went through its forehead like a hot blowtorch through a gallon of ice cream.
Still the zombie approached. The fact that most of its brains had been pushed out of its ears had no effect whatsoever on its overall performance.
The officer screamed, and Buffy didn’t blame her; most people went about their daily business unprepared for confrontations with formerly dead people dropping body parts. “Better run,” Buffy suggested. “I’ll be right behind you.”
They backed up into a heavily fenced parking lot.
Buffy quickly scoped out the situation. She stood at the border of the lot where the police and guards kept their civilian vehicles. Buffy knew the place would soon be swarming with cops, thanks to the officer’s continuous screaming.
Buffy smiled to herself. Life could be good, after all.
She turned to the approaching zombies—the one with the big hole in its forehead now brandished the nightstick awkwardly, but no less threateningly—and whistled at them again. “Hi, boys, new in town?” she called out. “My name’s Buffy, and I know how to show you a real good time.”
The zombie with the hole in its forehead still had two good dead eyes. It growled so deeply parts of its neck fluttered out and hit the blacktop with a sickening plop! Another zombie nearby scooped up the debris and stuffed it into its mouth, swallowing several of its own teeth in the process. Even though all the zombies weren’t out of the tunnel yet, their leaders—that is, the ones who happened to be at the front or close to it—advanced toward Buffy.
Buffy backed up some more. The idea was to lure the zombies as far as possible into the parking lot, an idea which, now that she thought about it, was working better and faster than she’d ever anticipated. All the zombies were now inside, and she had no choice but to slow down, because the zombies were trying to maneuver her back against the wall.
Buffy tried to circle around using a couple of parked automobiles for interference, but while they couldn’t exactly taste flesh and blood, the zombies were becoming excited, in their own detached way, about the prospect of soon feasting on the meal that had thus far eluded them.
Buffy slammed back against a van. Zombies approached to the front of her. To the right of her. To the left. She looked down to see a blackened hand reaching out from beneath the van, groping for her. She ground her heel on the hand with all the might she could muster, turned, jumped, grabbed the luggage rack, and swung onto the top of the van.
A zombie was already crawling up to greet her. She kicked it under the chin. The head lifted completely from the torso with a rip that echoed throughout the underground lot. She turned and kicked another zombie in the chest.
Oops! My fault!
This time when her foot went into a zombie’s chest, this one helped keep it there by grabbing her ankle with both hands and twisting it. Buffy had to twist her entire body to keep her leg from being broken. Her greatest fear at the moment was that she would fall off the van, but she managed to stay on the top, landing face-first with her outstretched palms absorbing most of the impact. She drew in both her knees, then kicked with both feet, sending the zombie flying into three zombies scrambling over one another in their efforts to get to the top.
The four zombies fell in a heap. At that moment Officer McCrumski entered the area ready for the night shift. He saw a young woman clinging to the top of his partner’s minivan. “Hey, what are you …” He trailed off, his breakfast sandwich falling to the pavement. He fumbled for his gun.
The zombies didn’t care. Those who weren’t climbing up the van simply turned toward the thin blue line.
Uh-oh! Buffy rolled off the van, on the opposite side of the policeman, the moment he began firing. This gave her protection from the bullets but not from the zombies who happened to be on the other side. They caught her before she hit the ground and immediately tried to pull her apart or eat her, whichever was easier.
Wonder if Prince Ashton predicted this, Buffy thought sardonically as she kicked off the face of a zombie trying to bite her ankle. She twisted and jabbed her elbow into another one. It got stuck between the creature’s ribs. She hooked her elbow in deeper and then yanked with all her might; her fist struck another zombie on the sternum with such force that it pressed against the spine and all the organs in between squished out the other side.
Only to be caught and eaten by other zombies.
Buffy and the zombies holding her fell down in a heap. She fought herself free and grabbed a headless, legless torso and tried to use it as a shield against the other zombies. That part of the idea was good, but the fact that the arms were still attached and quite active made for a bad complication. The arms reached backward and tried to pull her hair out. Buffy wound up bumping the torso against attacking zombies as she tried to pull off the arms and hide behind the car parked next to the van.
Meanwhile, the zombies advancing on Officer McCrumski were literally cut into pieces by the bullets. One dropped a shoulder. One chest was hit hard enough that it split in half, right down the middle.
McCrumski emptied his revolver without thinking. Now he held a smoking gun against an invasion of … Mutants, he thought. Probably rejects from a drug research program.
He took another look at the advancing perps, threw his empty gun at them, and bolted for the station house.
Buffy half-crawled, half-ran behind the line of parked cars, heading for the nearby access road to Route 13. She needed to lead them away from the station before anybody got a good look at them. Once she did that, she had to disappear herself. Without a quarry they should return to the cemetery. Brain-dead lemmings, she thought.
The manhole ahead presented some interesting possibilities.
With what felt like the last of her strength she whirled and threw the torso she’d been using for protection at a zombie who
’d so far managed to gain on her. The zombie caught the torso and began nibbling at what was left of the neck. Meanwhile, Buffy summoned just enough energy to lift the manhole cover and push it away.
She crawled into pitch darkness, into the sewer. She closed the cover behind her.
The sewer tunnel was tall enough to permit her to stand as she walked. Since she couldn’t see anything, she simply picked a direction.
After a while her gag reflex kicked in to such a degree that she was afraid she would vomit everything she’d eaten since the age of six. Her only consolation was a sliver of light in the distance, an indication, perhaps, of another manhole leading out of this tunnel.
She hoped it was still raining. Right now she smelled worse than all those zombies put together, and getting drenched yet again would be a blessing.
CHAPTER TEN
It was your average manhole cover. It filled in the hole leading to the sewer, and didn’t collapse whenever a car, truck, or what-have-you ran over it. At the moment it lay there in the rain, doing its job, while not far away a steady barrage of gunfire testified to the ferocity of the zombie attack on the police force.
A couple of fingers, whose nails desperately needed to be redone, poked through the holes in the manhole cover. They slipped back down the moment before they were run over by a passing automobile.
A few more moments passed, and then the fingers poked through again, more gingerly this time. They pressed down, hard.
The manhole cover moved with a sudden jerk. It lay in the middle of the street while Buffy Summers stuck her head through the hole and made sure no more traffic was coming. Then she crawled out on her hands and knees and, with a weakness she found frightening, pushed the manhole cover back into place.
It lay there, once again doing its job, while Buffy dashed to the sidewalk and tried to ignore the fact that right now she was the only source of the incredible stench causing her to gag. She fell onto her knees, tried to catch her breath, and spent a few luxurious moments feeling the rain wash away the grease and grime from her clothing.
Well, she hoped no one at the police station had gotten hurt—no one who was still alive, anyway. And while it might have been bad heroine form to desert the police, she really hadn’t been in much of a position to help. Her main concerns were her mom and the prophecy. In that order.
Next to the underpass was a popular truck stop called Billy Bob’s Steak House, famous for having, as its slogan said, “the fastest food in the West.” But hardly ever in the way Billy Bob intended, Xander was fond of saying.
Even so, in the storm the Steak House’s neon lights promised temporary shelter. She wondered how much they charged for a cup of coffee.
Buffy had never eaten there—it didn’t exactly cater to the social ambitions of high school students—but judging from how packed the parking lot was, the food must be popular with people passing through town. Especially truckers—for several semis, some with their engines still running so the drivers wouldn’t have to waste time warming them up, sat in the largest wing of the parking lot.
Another wing was filled with approximately forty less specialized vehicles, plus about ten motorcycles belonging to members of a local club. Buffy slowed, forgetting for the moment she was in the middle of a thunderstorm, when she noticed a familiar Hummer. The Churches’ Hummer.
Parked right beside it was the van with the raining frogs logo painted on the side. The Churches and the crew of Charles Fort’s Peculiar World were evidently having a bite to eat here.
Buffy scowled. Could it be that Cotton Mather, in the body of Darryl MacGovern, and with a certain purloined statue fashioned from moonrock in tow, was sampling modern cuisine in the company of Judge Danforth, Sheriff Corwin, and Heather Putnam?
Buffy had to contact Willow at the library and find out if she could confirm that the showdown was fated to happen here, at a country steak house.
She sneezed. Suddenly Buffy saw her own future, all by herself: She was going to spend the next three or four days in bed, nursing a cold of Olympian proportions. If she lived through tonight, that is.
She looked through the Hummer’s windows. She saw an unfolded map of Stonehenge in the backseat, lying right next to one of the gallery’s notebooks with the picture of V.V. Vivaldi’s Moonman statue on the cover.
Buffy moved to the van and looked through the rear window, where she saw something definitely exceptional: the cameraman and the soundman sitting in the back trussed up like turkeys, gagged, blindfolded, and lying amid their scattered equipment. It was easy to see what had happened, even if they, as Buffy suspected, did not. Possessed by one of the loose spirits, Eric Frank had overcome them.
And had gone inside. Every sense Buffy had rang like a bell. This was it. Everything was going to happen again. The manipulator of events was going to rise, just as the Despised One had attempted three hundred years ago. Truly a case of a living rerun.
Only people usually know in advance how a rerun turns out, Buffy thought. But not tonight. Tonight it’s going to be him or me, but not both!
Buffy grimaced. She took off her raincoat, wrapped it around her fist, and pulled back, aiming for the window. She knew she had no choice but to start the festivities by freeing the crew.
Or maybe she did have a choice. Sure, she was obligated to free them, but nothing in the prophecy said anything about people standing around taking pictures.
She could free them later.
Good. The fewer distractions, the better. Looked like the crowd was up to capacity inside, which amounted to approximately one hundred and fifty other distractions.
Billy Bob’s was boomerang-shaped, like an urban bus stop, but with one wing, that of the restaurant itself, vastly lengthened. That wing had three long, wide picture windows providing Buffy with a pretty good view of the layout despite the distance between them. There were booths, all filled, at the windows, a long bar at the rear where the truckers ate, and round, wooden tables in between. Part of the kitchen extended into the wing, and the chefs handed the busy waitresses their meals through a large portal.
Neither Frank nor the Churches were in view, and neither were, come to think of it, Darryl MacGovern and The Moonman. But not all booths were visible. They undoubtedly sat in one of those.
She couldn’t help noticing the portions were huge. Her mouth watered at the odors that not even the storm could wash away. She made a mental note to have lunch at this place after it was rebuilt.
Glancing at the short wing, which comprised a huge filling station and some facilities the truckers could use to tune up their vehicles, Buffy marched for the front doors. She kept a lookout for stray zombies on the way. Those creatures had been as singleminded as it was possible for a dead organism to be.
She slowed down as she stepped under an awning—at last, relief from the rain!—and assumed the demeanor of a distressed girl who’d been caught in the storm. She wrung out her hair, but since she was soaked from head to toe, that hardly made a dent in her overall dampness.
She walked to the swinging doors and was about to push one open when someone on the other side opened it before she did.
“Honey, are you okay?” drawled a waitress with a pile of red hair that reached out to Jupiter. She wore a canary yellow uniform, and had clearly been on her way outside for a cigarette break. “I didn’t see you coming.”
“That’s all right,” said Buffy cheerfully, but still acting distressed. “I didn’t see you either.”
“Honey, what happened to you?” the waitress asked.
“You know. Bicycle. Rain. The Weather Channel.”
“That’s a shame, honey.”
“Is there a place where I can dry off?”
“Better than that, there’s a place where we can put you in a waitress uniform while your clothes dry. How’s that?”
Buffy grinned. “Perfect.”
The waitress’s name turned out to be Edith. She took Buffy to a dressing room to the side of the kitchen opposite
the serving portal. There the waitresses changed in and out of their “civvies.” While the uniforms were perfectly presentable to the general public, they had a certain tackiness that made the waitress want to wear them in the world beyond Billy Bob’s as little as possible.
Buffy understood how they felt the moment she put on one of the uniforms. The big white apron with its cartoonishly large bows on the back made her feel like she was dressed like a doll at a costume party. The fact that the yellow uniform’s “small” size was still too large for her made the feeling worse.
And don’t even talk to me about the hairnet. Way not!
But at least wearing the uniform might allow her to snoop around without being noticed. Furthermore, she had to make a call. After throwing her clothes in the washing machine with a bunch of clothes that looked as filthy as anything she’d seen in the sewer, she headed back toward the front door to make a call.
She still couldn’t see in all the booths. Whoever was in the booth all the way to the end of the wing was in Edith’s territory, and they seemed to be demanding a lot of attention from her. Buffy wondered what she could say to Edith that would make sense and would induce her to split this scene as quickly as possible.
Well, she’d think of something. First, she had to check in.
“Willow! What do you have for me?”
“Nothing!” came the slightly desperate reply. “What do you have for me?”
“I’m going to treat you to steak after all this is over!” said Buffy.
“Why? Save it for the vampires.” Her voice was distant and distracted on the other end of the line.
“No, no, I mean steak as in Billy Bob’s Country Steak House. That’s where I am, and I have to tell you, I’m coming back when I have time to eat. Anyway, I think MacGovern and the three missing souls are seriously chowing down here, but I haven’t seen them yet. Even so, this is where the prophecy’s going to go down. I can feel it. Did you say you haven’t found out anything?”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer 1 Page 22