by Curran
“What’s that, kid?”
He swallowed, then sighed. “I said it hasn’t changed much. Just older. Decaying.”
Cabot looked over at him. “You been here before?”
Blaine nodded. “This is Mattawan. This is where I came from. This is where we were running from that night our van puked out.”
“Why didn’t you ever say so?”
“Nobody ever asked me.” He shook his head. “Whenever I started talking about it, people shut me up. In Hullville, they all shut me up. You’re here now, they’d say. Where you came from don’t matter. We all came from somewhere.”
Cabot didn’t like this. He was getting a real bad feeling stirring in his guts.
“We hid out in a basement for three years,” Blaine said. “We foraged by day. The dead were in the streets then, too, but not as bad as at night. Ever notice how they’re so sluggish and stupid during the day? But then at night-”
“Kid, you should’ve told someone.”
“Nobody’d listen. Now I’m back. I’m home.”
Cabot was wiping sweat from his own face now. “Sure, kid. But this ain’t home. Not anymore. It’s a graveyard.”
And then Blaine reached over and quickly popped the lock on his door, threw it open and leaped out. Cabot cried out, caught the kid’s elbow, but he pulled free and was gone.
“Shit!”
Cabot hit the brakes and brought the truck to a stop. It rocked back and forth on its leaf springs. He shut the kid’s door, smelling the vile and polluted stink of the mist out there.
Then he jumped out himself, looking around in every direction.
“KID!” he called out. “GET THE HELL BACK HERE! DO YOU HEAR ME? GET THE HELL BACK HERE!”
His voice echoed off into the misty darkness, but there was no reply. Fog filled the headlight beams and brakelights, swirling and steaming. Shadows clustered in warped doorways, the air damp, heavy, and moldering.
Cabot wiped a dew of sweat from his face, his breath coming fast.
Maybe Blaine was naive and just plain stupid, but he was not. He knew this was not just some empty dead town. They were out there and they were out there in numbers. Even now he could feel their malefic eyes crawling over him, sizing him up.
They wanted what was in the back of the truck.
But they would take whatever meat they could get.
Cabot started first this way, then that, stopping each time, daring to go further. There was a park across the way. He could make out the shapes of slides, swingsets, an upended teeter-totter rising up in the fog like a derrick. This more than anything said all that needed saying about the wasteland the town now was, the extinction of the people who’d once lived there.
A little house bordered the park and Cabot wondered if maybe the kid had gone in there, wondered if it could be that simple.
He stepped over the curb into the long yellow grass that climbed up above his calves. His breath would barely come. He could hear the truck idling, a stray breeze in the trees overhead. Shadows were crawling everywhere and death waited in each one. The house was sagging, weathered and gray. A lone monolith wreathed in darkness.
He moved further into the yard, the crackling of dry leaves under his step making something pull up tight inside him. He saw a birdbath in the yard. It was sprouting withered creepers. The front door of the house was hanging from its hinges, the darkness beyond sinister and pooling.
That’s when Cabot saw he was not alone.
From one dusty window above, a white face was staring down at him. Its eyes were black and glistening. He almost fell over backing away. The figure up there began slapping its hands against the window violently.
“Shit,” Cabot said and ran back to the truck.
He got inside and threw the locks, started breathing again.
He was shaking worse than the kid himself now, everything inside him gone loose and watery. He knew how things worked. He knew exactly how they worked. The kid was valuable to Hullville. They needed the young and the strong because they could still bring babies into the world and Hullville needed babies. They needed a next generation or they were done. He would be sixty himself come next birthday and his procreating days were long over. He was just as sterile as the rest. Not as valuable as the kid. He wasn’t old, but it was coming and when you no longer had a use in Hullville you went in the back of the truck.
That’s why the patrols went out.
They needed bodies. They found anyone they could and brought them in. Then the Council decided whether they were useful or not. Lots of them were. People with trades, doctors, carpenters, bricklayers, engineers. But others…alcoholics, drug users, the old, the lazy, criminals, the sick…they were culled off, went into the back of the truck for the trip to the ghost town. That kept the Wormboys happy.
And now Cabot had fucked up.
He had lost the kid.
The Council wouldn’t like that. He thought about calling it in, but he was afraid to. He could hear Chum now: You lost the kid? Well, that’s a real pisser, Cab. He was set to marry up with Leslie Rule next month. They’d a had some beautiful babies, I’ll bet. Oh well. Shit happens. Dump your load and head in. Council will want to talk to you.
Shit.
Council will want to talk to you.
“Like hell,” Cabot said under his breath.
He pulled a pump shotgun from the rack and filled his pockets with extra shells.
He was going out there.
Out into the graveyard of Mattawan.
He was going to find the kid.
*
Night and fog.
Cabot moved through the mist, having no idea where he was going. It was a fool’s errand and he knew it, but to go back empty-handed…well, that just wouldn’t do. He eased by picket fences spotted with black mold, crossed overgrown yards where children’s plastic toys bleached colorless by the grim roll of years were tangled in weeds. He slipped by rows of rotting houses with broken windows and rooflines fringed with mold.
So far, so good.
He scanned the darkness with a flashlight, the beam reflecting back off the rolling fog. Sometimes he saw shapes out there. Sometimes they were just trees or bushes and sometimes they were something else. He used the flashlight sparingly, turning it on and then clicking it off just as quick. The Wormboys were out there. Mattawan was dark, lit only by the mist and the pale moonlight filtering through it. Light of any sort would draw them right away like moths to a streetlamp. They didn’t like light much, but they knew it meant prey when they saw it.
Cabot tried to focus his mind, tried to come up with some sort of plan.
Where would the kid have gone? He had lived somewhere in this gutter, only he was never particular as to where that had been. And what had happened in the truck? Had he been planning this all along or had the sight of the place just unhinged him?
He couldn’t have known we were going to Mattawan. Nobody calls it that anymore. Ever since it died it’s just been the ghost town.
But there was no time for that.
Cabot decided right then and there that all he could do was sweep around the general area, be quiet about it, then make for the truck before he became lunch. If he couldn’t find the kid-and he was starting to feel pretty sure he wouldn’t-then he’d make up some story, anything to throw him in a good light and shade the kid in a bad one.
Sound thinking.
Cabot moved down a street that was crowded with rusting cars and trucks. Some were smashed up against trees, others had popped the curb and died on lawns. Many had bird-picked skeletons behind the wheels. The town was wild, hedges and bushes consuming lots, ivies engulfing garages, yards lost beneath uprisings of weeds and straw-yellow devil grass. Tree limbs had fallen everywhere.
He kept moving, keeping a wary eye out for anything alive…at least, anything moving. The mist distorted everything. Turned trees into stalking figures, shaped fire hydrants into crouching forms.
He stopped.
&
nbsp; Behind him there were footsteps…slow, measured.
He whirled around, tucking the flashlight into his pocket, both hands on the shotgun now. He waited behind a hedgerow, ready, ready. A warm stench like spoiled pork wafted through the air and sweat ran down his face. He caught a momentary glimpse of a hobbling stick-like shadow melting into the fog.
The footsteps faded into the distance.
Cabot waited another few minutes, then he was moving again. Stealthy, alert, his muscles drawn taut like piano wires, his blood pulsing hot in his veins. He moved over grassy lawns, frost-heaved sidewalks yellow with rain-plastered leaves. The mist was damp and chill about him, moving, swirling, encompassing. His heart was pounding in his throat, his temples.
Off to the left, a branch snapped.
He froze, unsure whether to go forward or go back.
There was a scraping sound now…like something sharp dragged over the hood of a car.
He smelled a sweet and high odor like rotting hay. It grew stronger by the moment. He brushed sweat from his face, licked his paper-dry lips. The world around him was painted gray by the mist. Tree limbs creaked together in the breeze. He looked around, peering through blankets of fog, terrified at what he might see coming at him.
The stink was overpowering now.
He turned, ready to run, ready to give up his position by making a mad dash for the truck and then Someone was standing not ten feet away.
At first, Cabot was not even sure that he was looking at a man. Dressed in a black coat that was feathered with moss, his back twisted and body contorted, he looked like a dead, gnarled tree growing up from the weedy soil, his skeletal hands reaching twigs, his face corded like pine bark. “Please, friend,” he said in a rasping tone. “I am so hungry, so very hungry…”
Wormboy.
Cabot just waited there, the shotgun in his fists. “Get the fuck away from me,” he said.
The Wormboy dragged himself forward, grinning happily. His face split open with it, tissues tearing and tendons popping like dry roots. His eyes were blank and white, rimmed with red, his mouth hanging open to reveal pitted gums and black teeth. A dark slime oozed from his lips like running sap.
Cabot shot him.
He caught him in the belly and nearly tore him in half. But what was left, like stringy pink and gray meat, kept crawling in his direction.
Cabot ran.
Off into the shadows, trying to find that little park but what he found were shapes, long-armed shapes, dozens of them moving at him out of the mist. They were coming from every direction. He was in a nest of them. Grinning faces bloated with putrescence swam out of the fog. Spidery fingers clawed out for him. Gurgling voices called out. They were ringing him in, gliding forward like swarming insects.
Cabot turned and fired, ran to the left, fired, to the right and fired again. Fingers tore at his jacket and he swung the shotgun like a club, felt it smash into something soft and pulpy. More were coming and he needed to reload, but there just wasn’t time.
He dove through a knot of Wormboys, hammered his way clear. He leaped over a hedge, crawled on his hands and knees through the grass. On his feet again, across a yard, around a house, down an alley. Behind him, they were coming, screaming and squealing, the stench of their numbers gaseous and revolting.
He cut through another yard, paused and fumbled shells into the shotgun.
And then a voice said: “Hey, mister! Over here!”
Cabot felt his heart gallop to a stop, lurch painfully, then start beating again. He turned and there was a little girl standing there in what looked like a white dress that had gone dark with filth. It hung in rags. Her face was as pale as the mist, her eyes huge and black and glistening with wetness. She held a finger like a skeleton key to her lips, said, “Sshhh!”
She began backing away between two ruined houses, arching a finger at him to follow. His breath lancing his throat, Cabot listened to the Wormboys gathering out there, sniffing out his trail. The girl could have been one of them and then, maybe not.
“Hurry! Or they’ll get you!” she said.
He followed her, some electric instinct telling him to run, that this was a trap, a trap, but he was too scared to listen.
He followed.
The girl kept backing away, through the grass, around bushes and trees. Without even turning, she vaulted a heap of dead leaves. Cabot went after her, praying under his breath. He stumbled through the leaf pile and there was a sudden, unbelievable explosion of white agony in his ankle.
He went down, screaming, fighting, the shotgun going one way and he going the other.
The girl turned away, made a high whistling sound like a wind blown through catacombs. And as she did so, Cabot saw in his pain that the back of her head was mostly gone. Strands of dirty hair fell over a gaping, rotten chasm that boiled with meat flies.
She whistled again.
Dear God, she’s signaling the others, calling out to them…
Cabot thrashed, trying to break free.
The pain tossed his mind into darkness and then yanked it back out again. His eyes irised open, blinking away tears, and he saw the girl. Just standing there, giggling softly, looking very pleased. Her eyes were larger than ever, oily and moist, filled with a raw-toothed hunger. A fly ran over her threadbare lips and she caught it with a gray tongue, sucked it into her mouth. Then she ate it, gums shriveled away from teeth that were black and overlapping, filed sharp.
As her insane laughter echoed into the night, Cabot reached down to his ankle to see what held it. The pain made white specks flash before his eyes.
A trap, oh yes, a trap.
A bear trap. The spikes were buried in his ankle, buried deep like the jaws of a tiger. He tried to force them apart and he nearly went out cold from the pain. His hands came away dark and dripping.
Two more figures came out of the darkness.
They stank like tombs.
Cabot screamed, but a pulpy, moist hand squeezed his mouth shut. Somewhere during the process, he fainted.
*
He woke later to the sound of humming.
Humming.
A woman’s voice, but cracked and dry-sounding like her throat was packed with dirt and dead leaves. His eyes opened, shut, opened again. He was in a room that stank of old blood and rancid meat, a shocking rank odor. Candles were flickering on a mantle throwing greasy, wavering shadows in every direction.
The humming went on and on.
Beneath it was the near steady drone of flies.
Something crawled over his face but he dared not move.
He tried to remember, to make sense of it. There were only fleeting, maroon-tinged images of the fog, the things hunting in it. Then that evil little girl. The bear trap. Then…Jesus, just some distorted nightmare of him being dragged through the mist, dragged by the trap that snared his ankle, the agony throwing him into darkness.
You’re in their lair, he thought then. They’ve got you good.
His leg was numb from the knee down and he didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. But he knew the trap was gone. Without moving, without daring to give indication that he was even alive, he peered around. It looked like he was in a living room…or what had once been a living room. Stainless steel traps hung from chains on the walls. Old blood was spattered everywhere in loops and whorls. It looked black in the dirty light.
What the hell is this?
But by degrees, he began to understand.
He was dumped on the floor, resting in a pool of blood gone sticky and cold. All around him were hunched shapes, silent, stinking, netted with flies. Gutted torsos, gnawed limbs, sightless faces peeled to the bone. He was in a litter pile of human remains. He felt something inside him run wet and warm as he realized it. Not just the mantraps on the walls, but tables gleaming with cutlery, saws and axes. Candlelight was reflected off puddles of dried blood clotted with tissue and hair. Flies filled the air in clouds, rising and descending to feed. They investigated his lip
s, his nostrils, dozens of them crawling over his wounded ankle. A maggoty head was at his left elbow, a cleaver sank in its skull.
A slaughterhouse.
He would have screamed, but what was the point? He had never been alone in his life as he was now. That humming. He craned his head precious inches. He saw a woman in the guttering light. Her hair was long and colorless, matted with tallow and dried blood. Her face was an obscenity. There was a skullish hollow where her nose had been, some cancerous ulceration chewing it away and spreading, leaving a gaping fleshless pit in the center of her face. A black chasm in which carrion beetles spawned. Her eyes were dark and glossy, her teeth jutting from a lipless maw.
She was humming.
Working on something.
Cabot craned his head a bit more and saw. She was kneeling before a cadaver, working it with a knife like a woman preparing a chicken for Sunday dinner. Sawing, cutting. She yanked out moist loops of bowel and glistening lumps of organ, separating them, threw a snakelike ribbon of entrails over her shoulder. Flies covered her, covered what she was working on. She hummed happily. Now she was reaching into cloth bags, sprinkling things into the hollowed belly. Seasoning it. Now stitching the gut closed with needle and thread.
Dear God.
Cabot was trembling. He couldn’t help it. Then through the door came a man in the same shapeless, shroud-like rags the woman wore. His face was white and pulpy, threaded with segmented green worms. They didn’t seem to bother him. He looped a rope around the cadaver’s ankles, threw the other end over a roughhewn beam overhead. Together, they pulled and pulled until the body was dangling in the air, fingertips just brushing the floor.
They tied the rope off.
And that’s when Cabot saw its face: Blaine.
It was the kid. Stupid, dumbass fucking kid. This is how it ended for him in this cannibal’s lair, as meat. The knowledge of this made things unwind in Cabot until he felt hopeless, calm, senseless. The kid was just livestock to be slaughtered, dressed out and seasoned, aged for the dinner table.
Cabot knew he would be next.
The girl that had trapped him came hopping through the door on all fours. She went right over to him, pressing her vile flyblown face into his own. She licked his cheek with a scabrous tongue. Nibbled at his throat, his exposed belly, then downwards towards his ankle.