by Jason Offutt
“A person,” Terry said, setting his beer on a nearby end table before it fell from his shaky hand.
“I know it was a person,” Nikki snapped, then looked at Terry, the expression on his face like she’d slapped him. “Sorry. I’m scared.”
Doug stepped to the window, grabbed the drawstring and pulled the curtains shut. “Jenna,” he said. “You still comfortable with that pistol in your purse?” She nodded. He turned toward Terry. “Go into the garage and grab a shotgun.” Terry took a step toward the kitchen; Doug stopped him. “Don’t forget to load it.” Terry nodded and disappeared around the corner.
“What’s the plan, then?” Jenna asked.
Doug raised his hand to silence her. “Let’s wait for Terry,” he said. Terry rounded the corner into the living room with a gun, sliding shells into the chamber. “Terry, Jenna, you guys go out the back door and sneak around each side of the house. Arnold … just stay out of everyone’s way.”
Jenna frowned. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m giving you two minutes to work your way around to the corners, then I’m going out the front door.”
“Are you sure that’s safe?” Nikki asked.
Doug smiled. “What is?”
Jenna rushed up to Doug, pulled his face down to hers and pressed her soft, warm lips against his, ignoring the stubble from days without shaving. Doug grew flush, his knees weak. He gently pulled back. “Wow,” he whispered. “Jenna, honey, I’m going to be okay.” He smiled and brushed his fingertips gently across her cheek. “But I think I want you to get worried about me a lot.”
She forced a smile. “Just be careful,” she said.
He nodded. “Just go, before I lose my nerve. Oh,” he said, stopping them. “Don’t shoot me.”
Jenna pulled the .38 from her purse she’d slung over the back of a kitchen chair and grinned tightly. Doug had wondered why she carried that damned thing around with her everywhere when nothing in it mattered anymore, but after she killed the starving dogs in St. Joseph, he knew. I guess you never really know when you need to shoot something. Terry pulled on the sliding glass door to the back porch, cursed when he realized it was locked, then pulled again, the big glass door glided on silent rollers.
“Good luck,” Nikki said softly.
Doug nodded and stepped to the front door on shaky legs. It wasn’t Jenna’s kiss anymore; it was visions of a shotgun blast at close range spreading his brains over the Marstens’ floral print couch. The death, the strange fungus had made him give up fear, until now, until Jenna. He didn’t want to die.
“If I open this door and get shot,” he whispered to Nikki. “You and Arnold run to the garage and shoot anybody that tries to get in.”
“But …”
“And,” he said over her. “It would probably be smart to throw a couple of guns and some food in the Hummer and drive like hell out of here. It’s facing the garage door, so you don’t even have to open it to tip anybody off what you’re going to do. Just gun it and go.”
Nikki nodded and stepped toward the kitchen. Arnold followed.
Doug exhaled slowly. Showtime. He reached for the handle, gently unlocked it and threw open the door; Nikki shrieked at the bang from the handle slamming into the wall. No shot. No rustle. No movement. Just a moan. To Doug’s right, lay a lump; he bent toward it wishing like hell he’d thought to look for a flashlight.
“Anybody out here?” he yelled. “If you are, it’d be on the nice side if you’d just shoot me now and quit dickin’ around. I’ve got stuff to do tonight.”
Coyotes yipped in the distance, a cow lowed nearby, cicadas filled the chorus. Yep, another beautiful night in God’s country. “Terry, Jenna,” he said. “I think he’s alone. Come and help me get him inside. And it'd be best to put something down, like towels or garbage bags; I think this is going to be messy.”
Inside the house, Doug saw he was right. A gash crossed the man’s temple, leaving a ragged flap hanging over his left eye; the right thigh of his jeans was soaked with blood. Doug sat on the end of the garbage bag-covered couch, wondering what all these people looking at him expected him to do.
“Is he alive?” Jenna asked.
The man’s chest didn’t move much, but it did move in slow shallow breaths. Doug nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t know for how long. Anybody know anything about medicine?”
Nikki raised her hand. “I took a First Aid class in college. But it didn’t cover anything like this.”
Doug stood and pressed his hand lightly on her shoulder. “Then just do your best,” he said. “My medical knowledge has to do with castrating pigs. I don’t think that’s going to come in handy right now.”
“How’d he find us?” Terry asked, his face ashen.
“The light was on. If we were all asleep, we’d have found him tomorrow, bled out in the street.”
Jenna stood next to Doug and wrapped her fingers around his. “What do you think happened to him?”
“Car wreck, I suppose. Looks like his head hit the safety glass and lost pretty good, and something on the steering column could have snapped and gouged his leg.”
Nikki let out a loud moan. “What if there’s someone else in the car?”
Jenna squeezed Doug’s hand tighter.
Aw, hell. Doug nodded and pointed his free hand at Terry. “We have to go check,” he said. “We have to make sure he’s alone. Terry?”
“What?”
“Grab your shotgun,” Doug said, then nodded toward Nikki. “Do you know where these Marstens kept their flashlights?”
She shook her head. “No, but everybody keeps them in about the same place; bedside table, under the sink, in the junk drawer. I’ll go look.”
“Uh, hey, Doug,” Terry sputtered. “What are you saying, man?”
“We’re going out there.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Look, last time you didn’t give me enough time to think about it. I, uh, I don’t want to go out there at night. No tellin’ what’s waiting around for us.”
Nikki brought two flashlights from the kitchen, big heavy Maglites. Doug flicked both on, the beams shone brightly. In the Marsten house, he wasn’t surprised. He handed a flashlight to Terry. “The woods ain’t crawling with monsters. If there is anything out there, it’s somebody hurt worse than Herman Munster over there. Now, are you coming with me?”
Terry shook his head.
“Tough shit, you’re coming.” Doug pulled his hand out of Jenna’s tight grasp and cupped it around the gentle curve of her face. “It’s my turn,” he said, and kissed her deeply.
Doug’s Maglite cut harsh swaths through the night as he and Terry walked down Main Street of Barton; Terry held a shotgun with both hands, Doug rested his aluminum bat over one shoulder. It didn’t take a Middle Earth ranger to track Herman Munster far. Bloody footprints showed few true steps and mostly shuffled feet down the center of the street.
“How far you figure?” Terry asked, his hush voice sounding unnaturally loud in the night.
“How the hell should I know?” Doug said. “We couldn’t hear the crash over your damned dancing game. It could be just down the street, or miles away.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s that far.”
Doug shrugged. “Probably not. I don’t think that poor bastard would have made it more than a mile.”
The bloody footsteps grew stronger the farther they walked. “Herman Munster was banged up pretty good. I didn’t think he’d have gone this far,” Terry said, then whistled. “Hey, Doug, point your flashlight over by those trees.”
The bright beam moved from the pavement near their feet to a streak of black about twenty feet away that suddenly turned from the road into a deep ditch. Doug lowered the light; the footprints came from there.
“Bingo,” Terry said.
The car, a pretty red Mustang, lay on its side, the safety glass of the front windshield lay on the grass next to the car at the bottom of the ditch. Doug nodded to Terry, and they we
nt down. Terry’s foot slipped, maybe on Herman Munster’s blood, and he almost skidded down the slope.
“That was a heck of a deal for him to crawl up that embankment,” Terry said, wheezing when he reached the bottom. “That’s damned steep.”
“But he did it,” Doug said, kneeling in front of the car, scanning the interior with the light. “Looks like Herman was alone, and...” He touched the car hood. “And this accident happened a while ago. Long enough the car’s gone cold.”
“He got knocked in the head. He don’t know where he is. Probably don’t know who he is.”
Doug reached into the car, pulled out a beer, and handed it to Terry. “Thanks for coming with me, buddy.”
“Don’t worry about …” Terry popped the tab on the beer can, foam shot across his face. “Aw, fucking great.”
When Doug and Terry walked into the house, Herman’s pants lay in a bloody pile on one of the black plastic trash bags that now covered the couch and the living room rug. Nikki tied a tourniquet around the man’s thigh to stop the bleeding and taped gauze across his head like a turban.
“I got the bleeding to stop,” she said. “That’s the good news. The bad news is I don’t know anything about head injuries. This guy might go to sleep and never wake up.”
“Has he said anything?” Doug asked.
Jenna put her arm around his waist and pulled him tight. “Yeah,” she said. “Crazy stuff.”
“Like what?”
Arnold suddenly shot up from the Marsten’s La-Z-Boy. “Oh, you think you're bad, huh? You're a fucking choirboy compared to me. A CHOIR BOY.”
“What the hell’s that?” Doug spat.
“It’s from ‘End of Days,’” Terry said. “Not some of the Governor’s best work.”
“No, I mean …”
“Arnold’s right,” Nikki said. “He talked about somebody reading his mind, fucking his brains out, and killing some guy at a gas station. Then there was something about a cowboy.”
“Yes,” Jenna said. “And apparently, Nikki is a Tanya Smithmeyer, my name’s Bossie, and the Devil Woman is coming to kill us all. It’s been fun.”
What the fuck? “Did he respond to anything?”
Nikki shook her head. “No, but he did cry when he told us this devil woman killed some old guy at a ball park. He kept saying the guy just wanted to watch the ballgame.”
Doug felt like someone had punched him. Johnnyball? Was he talking about Johnnyball? Visions ran through Doug’s head of the white-haired old man sitting at Kauffman Stadium watching the Kansas City Royals’ 1985 World Series season while cancer ate away his insides. Doug, Terry, and Jenna ate the man’s nachos and popcorn, and drank his beer. Then they just left him because he wanted to watch the Royals win the World Series again before he died.
“You think he was talking about Johnnyball?” Jenna asked. “Or just talking crazy?”
Doug looked into her deep, green eyes. He knew he could get lost in those eyes, and wanted to. He wanted to soon, but not here. “I don’t know. Sounds like it, but what the hell are the chances?”
Herman Munster suddenly jerked, his arms thrashed like he fought with something. Doug knelt next to the couch, his knee soaking with Herman’s cold, spent blood that pooled on a trash bag, and grabbed the man, trying to hold him still.
“There are probably some bungee cords or something in the garage to tie this guy down,” he shouted. “Get something.”
They used duct tape. Herman Munster lay on the couch in his silver bonds, relaxed now, his breath coming slowly, but steadily. The girls and Terry had gone to bed in the three bedrooms; Arnold curled up on the love seat, snoring. They had decided to watch Herman in shifts; Doug took the first one. He sat back in the brown La-Z-Boy and flipped through the seemingly endless list of programs on the Marstens DVR, and turned on “Top Gear.” Five minutes later, sleep pulled him under. He never heard Herman Munster stir.
“Devil woman want me,” Herman mumbled to no one. “Devil woman get me. Waiting. Waiting. She’s got a big gun and a pretty flower. She’s going to take us all.”
July 15: Allenville, Missouri
Chapter 31
The afternoon sun soaked warmth into Craig’s face. He loved summer, especially this summer. Grass in the yards that surrounded his house on Mulberry Street grew tall, disgraceful. They would go to seed in a month or so, but Craig didn’t care. The lawn he battled that old fucker Posey over (hey, bitch. My yard looks like a goddamned golf course. Yours looks like the hair on my ass – with thistles), was now filled with dandelions. Proper lawn maintenance didn’t matter anymore; the crazy bitch did. Craig sat in a canvas lawn chair on the sidewalk; his back to what was once Posey’s house, now a black pile in its own foundation. He cracked open another warm Budweiser, took a sip, and smiled. He’d been this happy before, he supposed; maybe as a kid who didn’t know how shitty the world was. But once high school rolled over him like a madman in a short bus, the words, “You can achieve anything. You can be president,” blew out of his head like he’d been shot. That had all changed now, Craig might as well be president, or at least the mayor; he was the only person in town still alive. The neighbors were dead. No street party anymore, no forty-year-old fat women shuffling down his sidewalk in jogging clothes walking dogs that shit in his yard, no kids throwing footballs. Dead. Everyone was dead, even Pork Chop Man. If it weren’t for Posey hanging on, Craig’s world would be his favorite “Twilight Zone” episode. He’d be alone, forever.
He wanted that bad.
“I’m never leaving you, shithead,” Posey said from across the lawn, the worthless old man calling from the concrete steps of his ruined house. Craig didn’t move. He knew Posey wasn’t there. He couldn’t be there. Posey was dead, along with his fat wife. The fungus took them, and for good measure Craig set their corpses on fire. But the thought burned in Craig’s head, if he turned around, toward Posey’s house, that crazy old man would be sitting on the porch in his KC Royals ball cap, grinning through a fleshless face, and giving him the finger.
“Fuck you, Posey.” Craig shoved his fist into the air. “Your shit’s stale. I’m done with you.” He drained his beer, crushed the can in his hand and dropped it, the can hitting the concrete with a clank.
The box on the porch, the last box he would carry the four blocks to the courthouse, held the last part of his life he never wanted to remember. A photo album, an old work shirt, his father’s name stitched onto the left breast, his mother’s wedding veil, a lock of blond hair in an Alligator sandwich bag, the yellowed twist tie keeping the hair prisoner forever. He knew the contents of the box, every picture, every stain on the shirt, and he never wanted to open it again.
“You’re soft, McAllister,” Posey called from across the yard.
Shut up, Posey. Shut up, Posey. Shut up, Posey.
“You gonna start crying now?”
Craig finished his beer and threw it into the street. This was it. He picked up the box, tucked it under his arm and walked up the sidewalk and away from his house on Mulberry Street, the house he’d lived in since moving to Allenville. Good-bye house, good-bye Posey. Craig had work to do; the Devil Woman was coming.
A slight breeze rippled through the prairie-like grass in neighboring yards as Craig made his way up Forest Street and took a right on George to Cunningham. Blank windows stared at him from silent homes. He’d have to break into those homes at some point, when the stores ran out of food. By then the fungus would have eaten people to the point they would be no more than bizarre decorations on the floor. After winter, the fungus would be gone, too. But the death didn’t bother Craig; it was the smell. Hard to eat tuna out of the can with a rotting corpse across the table from you. A hawk cried from somewhere overhead. Now the people were gone, all those pesky noisy people, the silence was brilliant. That hawk could have been a mile away for all he knew, but it sounded like it was right overhead. A black cloud of sparrows suddenly spun from somewhere in the south shopping district, just a f
ew blocks from the square. What the hell caused that? Two more steps and he knew – a car engine.
Craig froze. The corner of Cunningham and First Street lay half a block ahead, then two more blocks to the county courthouse, his new home, and more importantly his guns. The growl of the engine grew closer. This wasn’t the hum of some little Japanese or Korean POS, this was the grumbling of a big American engine. Shit. He dropped his box of childhood memories into a weedy lawn and took off in as much of a sprint as he could muster. The stitch in his side came quickly, and jabbed at his innards.
“Too many cans of beer and not enough walks, McAllister,” Posey said in his ear. “You’re fat and lazy.”
Craig swatted wildly around his head like he was attacked by bees and hit Main Street, almost losing his balance when he jumped off the curb. The grumbling grew closer, and Craig knew he wouldn’t make it to the courthouse. He ducked into an alley that separated a row of houses from the businesses that lined Main Street and dropped into the shadow of a Dumpster, his breaths came fast. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
“Try the door, McAllister,” Posey said. Craig could almost feel the old man standing next to him. “They might just drive down this alley, then where would you be? At the corner of Shit Street and Butt Fuck Boulevard.”
Craig craned his neck to his right, as far away from the sound, and the feeling of Posey as he could. A metal door with a simple knob was moored in a brick wall about ten feet away. He pushed himself up onto weak legs and walked like the Frankenstein monster to the door, wrapped his hand around the knob and pulled. It was locked.
“Damn it.”
“Just break off the door knob, dickless,” Posey taunted. “It’s a simple knob. Won’t be a thing to a big pussy like you.”
“I… I…” Craig stuttered.
“Jesus, McAllister, do I have to do everything for you.” Posey was close to him now, too close. Craig could feel his breath on his ear. “Break it.”
Craig looked around the alley. A chunk of concrete about the size of a human skull sat amongst the weeds that grew on the edge of what used to be somebody’s lawn. He grabbed the concrete in two hands and crossed the alley, the sound of the big engine coming closer. Posey was right, goddamn him. That car, carrying who? the Devil woman? was coming up Butt Fuck Boulevard. Craig raised the lump of fused sand and gravel over his head and brought it down hard on the cheap metal knob. The knob bent downward. He raised the concrete again, sweat rolling down his skin began to soak his underwear. He slammed the heavy mass onto the knob again. The knob dropped onto the gravel of the alley. The car turned onto First Street. Craig dropped the concrete, threw open the door and jumped inside the building, pulling the door shut behind him.