Dark Terrors 5 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology]

by Edited By Stephen Jones

  ‘It isn’t that!’ Mary screamed.

  Her cry drew the attention of the guns. They shifted from Jerry to her. The faceless man was shaking his head, perhaps in negation, strengthening his words with the gesture - or perhaps in pity. The second man had come out from behind the canvas and headed for the landing craft. The others were pressing forward, clamouring to get through the gate.

  One of the visored men by the canvas called, ‘What’s the hold-up, Jim? Get them through here!’

  Jim said, ‘Please step back. You’re holding things up ... I don’t want to have to...’ He turned his helmeted head to the side, indicating the line of armed guards. They were quite ready to shoot.

  Mary gasped and moved back from the gates.

  Jerry stepped forward, past her. He faced the faceless man. Jerry’s visage was like brittle glass itself. Had the visored man possessed a human countenance, Jerry might have argued with him, but they just looked at each other. Jerry had lowered his hands. I could tell what he was thinking as clearly as if my mind had been linked to his and the thought pulsing between us. He wanted to draw his gun and kill the faceless man who stood between Mary and safety. But he knew it would do no good - less than good, for he would be shot down in turn and Mary would still be on this side of the fence...without him.

  After a long moment he turned back to us.

  His face had shattered...just like glass.

  * * * *

  XXIV

  Mary was calm, remarkably calm. We stood back from the gates, watching the others go through one by one. None of them were turned back. Mary said, ‘It’s the same decision we faced...talked about facing ... in the jail. If someone should come...’

  ‘It’s not the same,’ Jerry rasped. But it was.

  Then everyone else had gone through and the faceless man was looking at us.

  Mary said, ‘Jerry...please go through.’

  ‘Well, I’m just likely to do that, ain’t I?’ he said.

  Mary gave a little whimpering sigh. It was impossible to tell if it expressed relief or frustration; emotions were blurred in all of us now, our senses confused by anomie. It was worse for Mary, if anything, with an edge of guilt on her disorientation - without her, we could have gone through the gates.

  The visored man said, ‘Anyone else?’ His voice was soft; he didn’t like what he had to do.

  ‘Jack ... no sense in you staying,’ Jerry said.

  I wanted to go. My muscles actually lurched in the direction of the gates and I had to restrain my body. I could feel my bones distinctly within my flesh, the scaffold of my skeleton fixing me in place. I shook my head, refusing my own instincts rather than Jerry’s suggestion.

  ‘Please go,’ Mary said. ‘It will be easier for me...’

  And Jerry said, ‘Our supplies will last longer with just the two of us, Jack...’

  It was so tempting I feared my honour would prove weak.

  ‘No one else!’ I called.

  The visored man regarded us. Then he nodded and turned away. The line of men in uniform began to retreat, keeping formation and closing the crescent in around the pier. They moved as if executing a formal manoeuvre on the parade grounds, functioning exactly in a world gone mad. They had left the canvas shelter where it was; it snapped in the breeze, like a tent abandoned on a holiday in Hell.

  Jerry’s big hand closed on my shoulder in gentle gratitude.

  ‘If it had been your girl...’ he said.

  Maybe, I thought.

  One by one the guards were filtering out of the line and boarding the landing craft. The men in protective clothing were already aboard. The three of us stood there by the gates and a line of faces gazed at us from the boat. It looked like a row of disembodied heads posted around a stockade. The last uniformed man had started up the ramp when a ghoul came loping out of a sidestreet and flung himself onto the fence...

  * * * *

  Like a demented monkey, the ghoul began to scale the barrier. He was moving with purpose and I was reminded of Jerry’s tale of the solitary rat in the bag. His groping hand reached the top and clamped over the barbed wire. Blood ran down his arm. He jerked himself up. The other ghouls watched him, as if impressed by a virtuoso performance and envious of his agility.

  The last guard was halfway up the boarding ramp when he looked back and saw the ghoul. His face set. The others, on board, were calling for him to hurry, but he turned back and sighted his weapon. He took aim as stolidly as if he’d been on the shooting range. I understood it. It was not a human target upon which he sighted. There was no need to kill the ghoul, the guard could have boarded in plenty of time, but he was guided by some instinct older than reason and deeper than logic. He squeezed off a burst from his automatic weapon. Cartridges spun over his shoulder, glinting in the sunlight. Splinters of bone and gore cascaded from the ghoul. Blood hung in a thin mist around him. He jerked; his body heaved up, then dropped back. He hung suspended from the top of the fence, his hand impaled on the barbed wire. Thick drops of blood fell from him and he swayed like some carnal fruit, bursting with red ripeness.

  The guard grimaced - with satisfaction.

  He turned back up the ramp. Spent cartridges were scattered at his feet and he looked down at them for a moment, as if they were runes which he had cast. Then he kicked at them. They spun off the ramp and dropped into the water. The guard went on up the ramp and then the ramp drew up and three of us were alone.

  * * * *

  Mary buried her face in Jerry’s chest, clinging there, as if using his body as a shield against the sight of the dead ghoul. He stroked her hair.

  ‘We’d better get back to the jail,’ he said.

  ‘Again?’ The word was muffled against his chest, carved into his body. ‘Go through them again?’

  ‘It’s the safest place.’

  I said, ‘Jerry...when we left ... I didn’t close the door. I didn’t think...they might be in there now.’

  He winced.

  ‘What about one of the vans?’ Mary said.

  ‘They seem attracted to them...’ I said.

  ‘Still, if we drive around without stopping,’ Jerry said.

  Mary said, ‘I meant to drive back to the jail...’

  ‘Jack left the door open, goddamn it!’ Jerry snapped. Then: ‘Why shouldn’t he have left the door open? How did he know we’d be going back?’

  He spoke as if it were an exercise in logics. He was looking around, standing with his back to the fence. Further down the fence, towards the jail, the dead ghoul was still hanging by his spiked hand ... as if, like the swordfish, he had been suspended there to be weighed and measured and mounted. Blood still dripped from his erupted body, not spraying out - his heart no longer pumped - but falling in heavy globs obedient to gravity. The living ghouls still milled aimlessly about.

  Jerry said, ‘If we drive around they won’t be able to catch us ... as long as the gas holds out. But after that...those vans aren’t as strong as the jail. They could break into a van and we’d be confined, unable to manoeuvre...Damn! If only we knew how long we have to hold out here...how long we’ll be isolated before they...before they do whatever they’re going to do about the island. We have to get to some place we can defend.’

  ‘What about the compound?’ Mary said. ‘Take the van to the compound? The telephone is probably working from there, at least we could be in touch with...the world.’

  Jerry considered that.

  He was bareheaded now. He had lost his hat somewhere along the line. The sea breeze ruffled his fair hair.

  ‘What’s it like in the compound, Jack? Defensible?’

  But I couldn’t remember what the compound was like. I could remember only that small whitewashed room...and the stinking pit. Black smoke rose from that pit, a tower of smoke like ...

  ‘The lighthouse!’ I cried.

  ‘Why...yes. That’s right!’

  Mary was nodding enthusiastically. ‘There’ll even be supplies there. Sam Jasper’s thing
s. We won’t have to go back to the jail. . .’

  ‘The tide?’ I asked.

  ‘We’ll take a boat,’ Jerry said, then paused, glancing out at the harbour, where John Tate had been rammed. The destroyer stood at the approaches, attended by gunboats. It would not be wise to take a boat.

  Mary thought for a moment; said, ‘We can cross by the reef in half an hour.’

  ‘And so can they,’ said Jerry.

  ‘But only one at a time...we can shoot them down one by one, if we have to ... if they come...’

  ‘If they come in daylight.’

  ‘Oh, Christ... I don’t know.’

  ‘But wait!’ Jerry said. ‘They won’t cross water, right? They won’t go into water. That reef is none too solid. There must be a tyre iron or something in one of the vans ... if we could lever a couple of rocks out of place, make a break in the line ... it should work.’

  ‘I think it’s our best bet,’ I said. ‘I’d rather be there than here. And someone might be more inclined to rescue us from there ... in a day or two they must realise we aren’t infected ... a boat or helicopter...’

  ‘Mary?’ the sheriff said.

  ‘I...yes. Anything rather than staying here or going back to the jail...waiting for them to break in. Yes. The lighthouse.’

  I think we all felt greatly cheered at having reached a decision. At least we were still in control of our own options. We moved to the nearest van.

  * * * *

  The keys were in it.

  We all got in the front, Jerry at the wheel and Mary between us. Jerry waited a few moments before he switched on the ignition but, once he did so, he started the van moving immediately.

  We drove towards the ghouls.

  The ghouls watched us come.

  Jerry drove at them in first gear, steadily, and they made no attempt to get out of the way. They seemed fascinated by the van, by a large moving object...something of a magnitude to register on their dimmed perceptions. As we closed on the crowd, I saw Jerry’s hand lift from the wheel and hover for a moment over the horn. It was a reaction from habit and he grinned grimly as he realised he had been about to sound the hooter.

  ‘No way through them,’ he muttered.

  ‘We’ll have to force our way through...’

  Mary, tight-lipped and rigid between us, said, ‘Can’t you drive faster?’

  She yearned for the sanctuary of the lighthouse.

  Jerry said, ‘Afraid to ram them too hard...don’t want a fender jammed into a tyre or to bend the radiator back into the fan...just try to brush them aside...’

  More ghouls were moving towards us. One was hanging on the fence, swinging by one hand, as if he’d discovered a new pleasure. I saw one come out of the open door of the jail and gaze up at the sun. He didn’t blink. I wondered if they would soon be blind? I wondered if that would matter?

  Jerry was saying, ‘Why, there’s Joe Wallace...used to play cards with him...Tim Carver...Ike Stanton...Hell, I know these people! Used to know them when they were people...There’s Mrs Jones. Aw, hell .. . there’s the Carpenter kid .. . he’s only seven years old...’

  I looked where he was looking and saw the child, its face preternaturally aged by drooling madness. I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. Larsen had been right about that...the kids were the worst. I guessed there were about forty of them on the waterfront, men, women and children. I had no idea how many were in the town or how many had been killed...nor how long they would survive.

  They were still individuals.

  They shared the same mindless countenance, but they moved in different ways, not following a pattern, each affected differently. Some hopped and leaped like frogs, some crept along, some stood upright while others were hunched over, faces downcast as if ashamed of their condition. Most of them seemed to be injured in some way. I saw one youth whose arm had been torn off at the shoulder; perhaps he had torn it off himself, for he held the severed limb in his other hand. A woman had torn her hair out; her glabrous skull was dotted with hundreds of pinpoints of blood. One had no lower jaw. Two were naked. I stared at them in terrible fascination.

  ‘Why, there’s my hat!’ Jerry said, and he brought his hand to his bare head.

  The white Stetson was lying in the street just outside the jail. I thought, for a second, that Jerry was going to halt the van and retrieve it. But he drove steadily on, into them. The ghouls didn’t move out of the way, but they allowed themselves to be brushed aside. They seemed quite passive and docile. I began to hope that the initial frenzy had worn off, that it had been a temporary rage that had burned itself out. That hope burned like acid in my heart.

  Then they attacked the van.

  * * * *

  A ghoulish face loomed up at my window.

  Mary screamed. There was a loud banging on the side of the van, shaking it. Another bang came from the roof. Someone was hammering and pounding at the panels and the windscreen suddenly shattered in a jagged star.

  Jerry cursed. He stepped on the accelerator and the tyres skidded and squealed. For a moment the van did not move; someone was holding the rear bumper. Then there was a screech of metal and the bumper peeled free from the van. We surged forward with a jolt...and the engine stalled.

  Jerry snapped the ignition and it rasped. The engine didn’t catch. I feared it was flooded. I think I was shouting at Jerry, and Mary was screaming over and over. But then the engine caught and we were moving again. As the van lurched forward the door on the driver’s side was jerked completely off. A ghoul held it by the handle and he fell back as the door came free. The door sailed up like a steel kite, floating. Then we were through them and going fast. I looked back. The ghouls were coming, following after us. Jerry was hunched over the wheel and Mary and I were shouting for him to drive faster. He grunted and touched his forehead again. I figured he regretted losing his hat.

  * * * *

  The lighthouse rose up like surging hope.

  It was an ugly grey tower upon which gargoyles might have perched, but it looked beautiful to me. Jerry brought the van to a skidding halt, slewing sideways in the sand, just where the reef began. The tide was going out and the black rocks broke through the surface all the way to the lighthouse. For a moment we just sat there. Time was precious, but we had to sit for an instant as the void of our drained emotions filled.

  Jerry reached into the toolbox behind the seat and came up with a tyre iron.

  He said, ‘This should do it.’

  I was looking out the back, but we had gone beyond the sweep of the island. If the ghouls were still coming, I couldn’t see them. I knew that their span of attention was too feeble to keep them going in pursuit of a vanished prey...but feared that, once headed in our direction, inertia would keep them moving.

  Jerry jumped out from his doorless side and stood, looking back. He had his gun in one hand and the tyre iron in the other. ‘No sign of them,’ he said. ‘I reckon we made it.’

  Then a hand reached down from the top of the van.

  * * * *

  I remembered the bang I’d heard on the roof and my mouth sprang open. I shouted, leaning past Mary. The hand hovered, tilting at the wrist, delicately groping at the air. Then it descended onto Jerry’s shoulder.

  Jerry didn’t react.

  He had heard me shout and must have supposed it was my hand, seeking his attention. He was still looking back along our trail. Mary screamed and the sheriff looked towards us and then he looked up, just as the hand tightened on his shoulder. His face exploded with frenzy; he dropped the tyre iron and started to lift the gun; then the ghoul heaved his big body up and hauled him onto the roof of the van.

  I saw the polished toe of his boot kicking wildly.

  I threw open my door and rolled out, bringing the rifle up, seeming to move in slow motion. On the top of the van they were pressed together like lovers in a terrible embrace. The ghoul loomed over Jerry; Jerry was struggling, trying to throw the creature off. I didn’t fire. In my ho
rror, I did nothing. Jerry pressed his big revolver into the ghoul’s midrift and, as I gaped at them, he began to fire into the thing. The ghoul’s body jerked as the heavy-calibre slugs went into him. Jerry was cocking and firing the gun with terrible deliberation, fast but steady, and I saw the ghoul’s spine unpeel from his back, the bony articulation coming out from his flesh like the backbone of a fish. The spine snapped in the middle and the bloody ends twanged apart. The ghoul’s arms and legs went limp.

  Jerry heaved him away and rolled from the van. The ghoul spread out across the roof, one hand hanging down on either side. His face was turned to me. He was still alive and, broken in half, trying to move.