by Lisa Klink
A female giggle floated out from behind the rocks. Matt saw that Javier was paying close attention to the unseen couple. He didn’t look happy. Matt recalled his earlier impression that Javier and Vanessa knew each other but didn’t want Alex to see it. Maybe he wasn’t imagining things. Maybe they did have a secret relationship. It wasn’t an obvious match between the heavily pierced young Vanessa and the fifty-something, frankly not very attractive Javier. Then again, why not?
Vanessa screamed. Javier’s hand went automatically to his right ankle, but he relaxed as Vanessa scampered from behind the boulder, smiling and letting out another playful scream. Alex came after her with something in his hand. It was a dead, dried-up lizard. He thrust it in her face and she backed away, but not so far that he couldn’t catch her. Alex tugged on the front of her tank top and dropped the lizard inside. Vanessa’s distress turned genuine as she pulled the dead animal out of her shirt and tossed it away. Alex laughed. Matt’s opinion of him did not improve.
He was more intrigued by Javier’s instinctive reaction to Vanessa’s scream, though. It looked very much like he was reaching for a weapon. Matt studied the man’s right ankle, searching for the telltale lump of a holster, but couldn’t be sure either way. If he was hiding a gun, Matt wanted to know.
He asked Javier to bring him the bottle of iced tea. As the older man bent down to give it to him, Matt put a hand on his right ankle. He felt the small holster strapped to Javier’s leg.
Their eyes met. Javier knew he was busted. The man had helped him escape from a burning bus, so Matt would let him explain.
Javier sat next to him, on the side away from Karen and Daniel, and spoke quietly. “I’m a cop,” he said. “Don’t say anything to the others.”
“Why?” asked Matt.
“I’m following a suspect. I don’t want him to find out.”
Matt had no doubt whom he meant. “Alex.”
Javier nodded. Matt wanted to know, “Is he dangerous?”
A pause. “He’s never killed anyone.” This wasn’t very comforting. Javier saw Matt’s concern and assured him, “He’s just a drug courier. I was tailing him to his buyer.”
That explained why Alex was so attached to his backpack. Matt thought about the exchange he’d seen between Javier and Vanessa. “What about his girlfriend? She seemed to know you.” The cop didn’t answer. Matt persisted. “Is she working with you?”
“Look, Mr…” Javier began.
“Cahill.”
“Mr. Cahill, this is a delicate situation. Help me out here and don’t say anything. The last thing I want to do is provoke a conflict.” His hand wandered absently to the wound on his head.
“I don’t, either,” agreed Matt. If Alex got suspicious, things could turn ugly. Fast.
As the shadows in the canyon lengthened, the stranded passengers began to realize they might be here all night. They hadn’t made much effort to conserve water, assuming that help was on the way. Only a half bottle of water and most of the iced tea remained. By now, they were hungry as well. Alex provided dinner in the form of two protein bars. The food, of course, only made people thirstier.
“We should build a signal fire,” said Daniel. “So they can find us.”
Karen hugged him. “That’s a great idea.”
The able-bodied collected firewood and piled it in the flat riverbed. Matt continued his improvised physical therapy. Full sensation had returned to his legs and feet. Movement couldn’t be far behind, could it?
Javier produced a lighter from his pocket and ignited the kindling. Soon, the wood was ablaze. Everyone, including Matt, scooted closer to the fire, feeling comforted by it. Matt kept an eye on Javier, Vanessa, and Alex, looking for any sign of tension. But Alex seemed perfectly content, lounging by the campfire with his girl. They leaned their heads in close, kissing and whispering to each other.
“Sorry about the meltdown,” said Ryan. He was sitting between Matt and Karen, looking embarrassed. “I didn’t know Grandpa’s death was hitting me that hard.”
Karen smiled. “You don’t need to apologize.”
“I was close to my grandfather, too,” Matt told him. “When he died…”
Matt trailed off as Alex pulled away from his beloved. His left eye was gone. There was now a raw, open socket that dribbled pus down his cheek. He’d been touched by the Dark Man.
CHAPTER FOUR
In the back of his mind, Matt could hear the creature’s rusty cackle: You thought things were bad before?
“Matt?” asked Karen.
He had to remember what he’d been saying. “Yeah. When my grandfather died, it hit me pretty hard, too.”
But he kept his eyes on Alex rubbing his putrefying face against Vanessa’s. The big man was now a much worse threat to the passengers than heat or dehydration. Anger and hatred would build up within him until, like Frank, he turned murderous. And Matt could do little to stop him. He couldn’t even move. Not yet.
Soon after sunset, they heard the first coyotes moving around in the darkness. Matt dug a flashlight out of his bag. He shone a beam all around the canyon, but the animals avoided the light. He caught a flash of gray fur, disappearing into a side canyon. Vanessa let out a short scream.
“Don’t be afraid,” Javier told her in that deep, soothing tone. “Coyotes aren’t very aggressive. They won’t attack a group of people.”
She wasn’t soothed. “Didn’t you see that movie? With Liam Neeson out in the snow?”
“Those were wolves, weren’t they?” asked Ryan.
Alex threw an arm around her shoulder. “Don’t worry, babe. I won’t let anything eat you.” Matt watched chunks of flesh oozing off the man’s skull. Vanessa had more to fear from her protector than from any wild animal. Javier kept an eye on them both as well.
Matt continued to work his legs. He was making progress. Painfully slow progress, but he would take what he could get. He could bend his knees now, lifting them several inches off the ground. Sometime soon, he’d attempt to stand.
Karen and Ryan resumed talking. She told him about her difficulties getting work. He sympathized. The best he’d been able to find was a hopelessly dull computer sales job. It didn’t help that he wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted to do with his life yet.
“Amanda, my girlfriend, she’s the ambitious one.” His expression lit up as he talked about her. “She’s starting law school next month. Vanderbilt,” he said proudly.
“That’s pretty far. Are you going with her?” Karen asked.
Ryan nodded. “Of course.”
“Your idea or hers?” demanded Alex.
The younger man looked at him. “What?”
“I’ll bet you a hundred bucks…five hundred bucks…that she never asked you to tag along.” He was grinning, firelight glistening on his bare white jawbone.
“She didn’t have to,” said Ryan.
“She didn’t want to,” Alex corrected him. “What the hell does she need with you trailing around after her like some stupid puppy?”
“It’s not like that,” Ryan objected.
Alex stood and approached the kid. He was enjoying this. Matt tensed, really hoping he wouldn’t have to attempt to intervene. At the same time, he heard an odd noise coming from near the wreck, like something ripping. Something wet. He glanced over, but saw only shadows.
“Sure, she’ll keep you around for a while,” said Alex. “To do the housework. Maybe throw you the occasional fuck when you’re a good boy and fold her undies just right.”
“Stop it,” objected Karen.
Alex ignored her. He leered at Ryan, looking for more tears. “How long do you think it will be until she decides to trade up? And you come home to find her riding one of her law school study buddies?”
“She’s not like that,” Ryan insisted.
The corpse leaned in closer. “What makes you so sure?”
Ryan met his gaze and said simply, “I love her.”
Vanessa smiled. She liked that. Matt heard
the strange noises from the wreck again. He turned the flashlight to reveal three coyotes dining on the remains of Frank, the homicidal driver. They looked up at the light, their eyes glinting green, muzzles stained with blood. Karen cried out in alarm.
Alex, already spoiling for a fight, snatched a burning branch from the fire and ran at the coyotes with an incoherent yell. They were hungry and unwilling to surrender their meal. In the orange glow of the fiery branch, they bared their teeth at Alex. He bared his. The largest one snapped at him, which Alex seemed to take as a challenge. He jabbed the branch at the animal, forcing him back. This left an opening for one of the other coyotes to dart forward and snap its jaws around Alex’s arm.
He howled in pain and jammed the flaming end of the branch into the coyote’s side. It released his arm with a pained yelp. But the big coyote was already crouched to spring. As it leaped for Alex’s throat, a gunshot exploded through the canyon. The bullet hit the animal’s side and it collapsed.
The smaller coyotes ran. Alex turned, angry that his battle had been cut short, and saw Javier standing there calmly, gun in hand. “What the fuck?” he demanded.
“You have a gun?” asked Karen.
Javier pulled his badge and ID from his back pocket and showed them to the group. “It’s all right. I’m a cop.”
Karen and Ryan were relieved. Alex was furious. Javier didn’t need to explain why he’d been on the bus. Alex knew.
He walked back to the group, the smoldering branch in his hand an unspoken threat. Javier held the gun loosely at his side, an unspoken response. Alex tossed the branch back into the fire and returned to his place beside Vanessa.
Matt had instinctively tried to stand as soon as Alex picked up the branch. He got his feet under him, but couldn’t quite push himself up. It was incredibly maddening. For the first time, his rapid-healing ability didn’t feel rapid enough.
Vanessa clung to Alex. “You scared me, baby,” she murmured.
“Nothing to worry about,” he told her, and kissed her forehead. His remaining eye popped out of its socket. It fell onto her shoulder and slid off to the ground.
As Javier walked back to the fire, Daniel asked him, “Is it dead?”
“Is what dead?” he wondered.
“The coyote,” said Daniel. The boy had tears in his eyes.
Javier went to look. The coyote was lying where it had fallen. It was still alive, panting heavily, clearly in pain. He fired a single bullet into the animal’s head. Everyone jumped. Javier walked back to the fire, and resumed watching Alex.
Nobody slept. Daniel laid his head on Karen’s lap, but pain kept him awake. Ryan sat quietly, occasionally rubbing his fingers absently over the arrowhead. Matt pulled himself back to the cliff wall. He was going to stand up, damn it. He leaned against the wall and pushed with his legs, his back sliding up the rock. He faltered, almost falling, but recovered his balance and gave one more upward shove. Then he was upright. Matt stood there for a moment, grinning in relief. He swore to himself that he would never take the simple act of standing for granted again.
Feeling bold, he took a shuffling step away from the wall, then another. That’s when Alex ran at him with a flaming branch.
Matt stumbled back, raising an arm to ward off the blow. Alex abruptly stopped. “Shit,” he said. “I thought you were another fucking coyote.”
He looked Matt up and down, realizing that he was on his feet. Before he could comment, he was distracted by a female laugh. It was Vanessa.
He turned to her, annoyed. “You think that’s funny?”
In the firelight, Matt saw that lesions had appeared on Vanessa’s left arm, from shoulder to elbow, swollen with fluid and ready to burst. Evil was eating away at her, too. “You’re funny,” she said, her voice heavy with scorn. “Big man with a big stick.”
She turned to Javier, sitting next to her, and threw her rotting arm around his shoulders. “But you had to save the big man from the coyotes, didn’t you?”
Alex took a step toward her, raising the branch as if to strike. “You stupid, useless bitch.”
Matt got ready to jump Alex if he attacked. He didn’t know how well his legs would hold up in a fight, but he’d just have to find out.
Vanessa was unconcerned. She gave another derisive laugh. “Oh I’m stupid? You had no idea there was a cop right behind you for the past two months. And you certainly had no clue that Detective Beltran here offered me a deal to rat you out.” She turned back to Javier, giving him a friendly squeeze. “You have just about all the evidence you need to put my dear Alex in jail, right?”
“I don’t think this is the best time…” Javier began.
Vanessa reached down to his ankle holster, pulled out the gun, and shot him in the chest.
Karen screamed. She instinctively shielded Daniel, wrapping her body around his, pressing his face into her shoulder so he didn’t have to see. Javier let out a surprised “Oof,” as if he’d been punched in the gut. He looked at Vanessa, then down at the small red hole over his heart. Blood spurted out with each beat. He tried to get up and collapsed.
Vanessa hobbled to Alex. “I couldn’t let him do it, baby.”
He tossed down the branch and pulled her close. They kissed fiercely. Alex’s rotting face seemed to consume hers as putrid flesh oozed down her chin.
Matt shoved himself away from the wall, darted forward, and grabbed the gun out of Vanessa’s hand. Alex tried to grab it back. The two men struggled. Vanessa got an arm around Matt’s throat and began to squeeze. He desperately gasped for breath. When he did get air, the combined stench of the two corpses barely inches away made him gag. He managed to turn the barrel of the gun toward Alex and pull the trigger. A chunk of Alex’s rotting jaw vaporized, but he was unfazed.
Matt’s eyes briefly met Karen’s. She clung to her crying son as if he were the only thing keeping her from complete hysteria. Her gaze shifted as she saw Ryan picking up the smoldering branch that Alex had dropped. He swung it hard into the back of Alex’s head. The big man pitched forward, taking Matt and Vanessa down with him. The gun fell to the ground.
Ryan got ready to hit him again. Then he saw Frank, walking calmly toward him as if he hadn’t spent most of the day decomposing in the sun, only to have chunks of his flesh later torn out by coyotes. His abdomen had been chewed open, and the tasty organs eaten first. Ryan blinked. He truly couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
Matt got to the gun first. As Vanessa reached for his eyes with her black claws, he shot her in the head. She fell onto her back bonelessly. The lesions on her arm faded away, leaving her skin as perfectly porcelain as before.
“You fuck!” Alex threw a furious punch, which would have broken Matt’s cheekbone if he hadn’t twisted out of the way. The man’s bulky muscles weren’t just for show. Matt pressed the gun to Alex’s skull and fired. The chamber clicked empty. Shit! He tossed away the useless gun. Alex drove his elbow into Matt’s temple. His vision went black for a moment and he fell to his knees.
Matt lunged for his duffel bag and pulled out his trusty ax, which had never run out of ammo at the crucial moment. He swung the blade at Alex’s neck. The big man deflected the blow with one meaty arm. Matt buried it in his thigh instead. Alex looked down at the wound, annoyed that Matt had scored a hit, then slugged him in the kidney. The intense pain made Matt gasp.
Then he saw Frank, closing in on Karen and Daniel. She had her head bent down over her son’s and didn’t see the walking corpse. Frank staggered right past them, intent on his real target: Ryan. The kid just stared at the approaching danger, dazed. He was going to get torn to pieces unless Matt moved fast. Which meant getting past Alex.
Ryan snapped out of it as Frank got close enough to smell. He remembered the weapon in his hand, and swung the fiery branch into the side of the walking corpse’s head as hard as he could. Frank’s spine cracked as his head tilted sharply to the left. He staggered a few steps sideways, recovered his footing, and continued to approach.
>
Ryan took another swing at Frank’s mostly attached head in an effort to knock it off completely. Frank caught the burning end of the branch with a hiss of fried skin. He yanked it out of Ryan’s hands and tossed it aside. No more weapon. No more defense. Frank leaped on him.
Matt landed some good strikes with the ax, and a solid punch to Alex’s nose, which tore it off his increasingly skeletonized face. But Alex never flinched. He simply absorbed the damage and struck back at Matt.
The next time Matt went down, he stayed down. Alex drew back his foot to deliver a kick to Matt’s ribs. Matt swept his ax behind the knee of his opponent’s supporting leg and jerked it forward. Alex’s knee buckled and he fell. Matt brought the ax blade around and buried it in Alex’s head. The man tried to sit up, and for a nightmarish moment, Matt thought he would shake this off, too. Then he fell back and was still. Flesh rematerialized on his skull. He was dead.
Matt quickly yanked out the ax and hurried to help Ryan. The undead thing had him pinned. Frank closed one partially chewed hand around Ryan’s throat as he leaned in closer, teeth snapping inches from the young man’s face. As Matt closed the half-dozen steps between them, Ryan grabbed the arrowhead around his neck, yanked it free of the chain, and drove it into Frank’s eye.
Frank let out an unearthly wail. Thick black sludge oozed from the wound. Acrid smoke, hard to see in the firelight, floated like escaping steam out of the gaping tears in his flesh. Tiny particles danced in the rising heat of the fire, then dissipated into the night air.
Matt had seen this before. The smoke seemed to be the physical manifestation of whatever animating force Mr. Dark used to control human bodies. When the smoke left, so did Dark. But in Matt’s experience, it usually took a hell of a lot more damage to “re-kill” the body. In this case, a single stab to the eye had done it. Something about the arrowhead, or Ryan, or both, had driven the Dark Man out. Frank’s body collapsed. Ryan shoved it off and scrambled away. “You okay?” Matt asked him.
The kid nodded rapidly, his nerves clearly still on high alert. “We have to destroy the brain,” he told Matt, “to be sure.”