by Tim Curran
“Oh really?” Nancy folded her arms across her sizeable bosom, cocked her head, considered it. “No, I don’t think we’re done here. Nope, don’t think so.”
“Hasn’t it gone far enough? Change the record already.”
“You know what, Ben? If you would just discuss things with me, spit out what’s on your mind, we wouldn’t have these problems. But, no, talking with you is like pulling teeth.”
Ben sighed again, thinking that for the past five years since he’d slid that noose…er, that ring on his finger, he’d been doing a lot of sighing. “We’ll discuss this later, okay? We’re making Sam uncomfortable.”
Nancy turned around again. “Are we making you uncomfortable, Sam?”
He kept staring out the window. “Listen, I just wanna go home. I’m tired. I want to hit the sack. A real bed, not a county mat. Jesus.”
Nancy snorted at him, too. “All I’m saying to you, Ben, is that for a man your age, you’re not very responsible. Being eighteen is great, when you’re eighteen. But you’re thirty-five, dear, time to put away the fantasies and what-ifs, live life like a great big man.”
“I think you’re being really impatient,” he told her, trying to sound calm, in control, very rational, so Sam would think she was the crazy, belligerent one and not him. “Every business loses money the first year or so. Ask anyone.”
She kept nodding her head. “Well that’s fine. Problem being it’s my money you’re losing. These past five years, Ben, it’s been one crazy scheme after another. First the trapping business. Lots of money in beaver and raccoon fur, you said. So I put up the money like an idiot. That fell apart. I should’ve known better—people don’t wear real fur anymore. Then the extermination business. Okay, that sounded reasonable. So I put up the money for your licensing, your equipment. What happened? Big fat nothing. All that stuff is out in the garage collecting dust. Then the house painting scheme. Never mind that there were more painters in town than hairs on a dog’s ass. That fell through.” She slapped her knee, laughed without humor. “And now, ah yes, your latest business, striping parking lots. Parking lots have to have those yellow lines, honey, and somebody’s gotta put ‘em down. There went my entire tax refund, right down the old drain. And why? Because all those jobs are contracted out, but you didn’t look into that. Oh well.”
Ben was gripping the steering wheel for dear life now, wondering what was keeping him from punching her head right through the windshield. She was right, in essence. All his schemes, as she’d called them, had fallen through. But not for lack of trying. She was pissed off because their income tax refunds, savings etc. were always dumped into his business ventures.
But, goddammit, at least he tried.
Tapping her hands on her knees, Nancy said, “Listen, baby, all I’m saying is you tried and you failed. Okay. Turn the page. The mill is hiring. You have an uncle there, he’ll get you in. Good pay, good benefits. What’s so bad about that?”
“The minute I walk through those doors, I’ll be there all my life.”
“So fucking what, Ben? I’ve been at the credit union for ten years and I always will be. I’ve accepted that. Each week I bring home a paycheck. And that’s the bottom line. Christ, if not for me, then for the kids.”
That was low. Nancy, a widower, had four kids from her first marriage and Ben loved them like his own. Using them against him…that was bullshit.
“Yeah, well, I’ll think about it,” he said, beaten now.
“Damn right you will.”
White-lipped, teeth gnashing, Ben kept driving, luxuriating in the sudden silence. He could hear the engine humming along, feel the tires bumping along the road. God, what kind of life was it when you took great pleasure in such things?
But the quiet lasted no more than five minutes. “Just where the hell are we?” Nancy demanded to know.
“Short cut.”
She rolled her eyes. “Not another short cut.”
“We’re just going to slip through Cut River, it’ll take twenty minutes off the drive.”
Nancy studied the black farmland, heavy woods encroaching from all sides. “Oh, I’ll just bet.”
“He’s right,” Sam said from the back. “It’s the shortest way.”
Nancy said nothing to that.
“Cut River’s up around the bend,” Ben said.
Nancy giggled deep in her throat. “Sure. Probably be Milwaukee or Altoona, PA knowing you and your short cuts.”
As they rounded the bend in the darkness, thumping over railroad tracks in the process, Ben saw the lights of Cut River. But for one moment, one glaring awful moment, he took his eyes off the road. “You know what, Nancy? I’ve had it right up to here with you and your goddamn mouth. Just keeping running it and see where it gets you. You want me to apply at the mill? Fine, I will. If that’s what it takes to shut you up, God knows I’ll be there with bells on my freaking toes. But right now, how’s about shutting the hell up and letting me drive?”
In the backseat, Sam made a strange stuttering sound. “Hey, hey, hey, you guys—”
“If you could drive worth a damn I’d gladly shut up, Ben. But you have a nasty little habit of getting us lost,” she said, ignoring her brother. “And further more…Jesus Christ, Ben, look out, look out—”
Ben brought his eyes back onto the road long enough to see, not five feet in front of the van, a man standing in the road.
Just standing there.
Shirtless despite the weather, his arms were spread out and, just as Ben saw him, he could’ve sworn this guy was smiling. Ben let out a cry and spun the wheel, hitting the brakes, but it was just too damn late.
He heard the sickening, fleshy thump as the minivan slammed into the guy, tossing him sideways. And then, the wheel spinning crazily in Ben’s hands, the minivan careened off to the left, leaped the culvert and slammed into a tree stump.
And there it died.
Everyone was belted in. Ben always made sure of that.
When he found his voice, was able to drag it up his throat, he said: “Everyone okay?”
“Yeah,” Sam said, his voice shallow. “I think…yeah…Jesus, Ben we hit him.”
Nancy hadn’t said a word.
She just sat there holding her face in her hands as if it would fall off without support. Ben kept calling her name, but she ignored him. Finally she looked up, saw the damage to the van in the glow of the headlights, and looked to her husband. “You ran him down,” she said. “You ran him down…you goddamn moron…oh my God.” She slumped down in her seat, went the color of cheese, and looked like she was going to pass clean out. Ben put a concerned hand on her arm; she batted it away like a pesky fly. “Oh, Ben, oh dear God in Heaven…”
He sat there, staring, thinking, incapable of unbuckling his belt. “This didn’t just happen,” he said. “This couldn’t have just happened.”
All that got him was an evil look from his wife.
Sam popped his belt, slid the side door open. The night came in, cool and damp. “Van’s trashed. We’ll need a wrecker. The…that…the other thing…shit, we better go look…”
Ben nodded, licking his lips with a heavy tongue. All he could smell was the wet foliage. It had a dark, earthy smell of loam and soil and decay.
“You pegged your first one,” Nancy told him, showing no mercy. “Had to happen, right? Way you drive.” She popped her belt and opened her door, stepped out.
Ben smiled grimly. He didn’t even have the energy to tell her to go fuck herself.
He saw her climb out, step into the grass, lean for a time against the van. He could see she was shaking. Every bit of her was shuddering, trembling. After a time she moved on, jumped the culvert and joined her brother out in the road.
The darkness out there was heavy, absolute.
Ben flicked the emergency flashers on.
He got out himself. The headlights illuminated the woods, the flashers turning the road into some crazy, dancing shadow show of yellow strobing lights. He
felt dizzy, disoriented until he realized that he’d been timing his breaths with the rapid flashes of the emergency lights.
He took a deep breath and walked around the front of the van.
It was mashed-in but good. The radiator ruptured, the stink of coolant raw in the air. He could hear other things hissing and dripping in there. The stump they’d hit was all that was left of a huge elm bigger around than a tractor tire. Like some modern version of a druid sacrificial tree, he bet it had claimed a lot of Detroit steel, a lot of flesh and blood. Probably why it was cut down. Good idea, except the fools that did it left about three feet of stump jutting up.
They’d have to walk into town.
He was looking into the woods, thinking how dark and thick they were, impenetrable, like maybe you could wander into them and never find your way out again, just listening to the breeze filtering through the boughs with a sound like someone sighing.
Losing himself in there didn’t seem bad all of a sudden, especially since he had manslaughter on his mind.
Vehicular manslaughter.
But he’d only had two beers at the casino. That was good. Guy just jumped out, was all. It wasn’t his fault. Maybe he hadn’t been watching the road like he should have been what with the old wenchbag pissing at him, but that guy…shit, he’d jumped out at them.
Ben knew he’d skate the charges.
That made him feel better, at least a little.
“Where is he?” he said to his wife and brother-in-law, both of whom were wandering the road in circles like somebody had dropped a contact.
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t see him. No blood, no nothing.” His pleasant face was drawn with worry. “Couldn’t have walked off.”
“Maybe…maybe I didn’t really hit him,” Ben suggested.
“Oh, no,” Nancy said, “you hit him, bright boy. You ran him down like a dog. Yup, Ben, that was a good idea of yours, this short cut. Good thinking.”
Ben, recovered somewhat now, was about to kick her ass into the culvert, but Sam came between them. “Now’s not the time, Nancy,” he said. “It was an accident and we all know that, so please quit with the recriminations here. I’m not in the mood for it.”
Nancy looked like she’d been slapped. “Well, excuse me all to hell.”
They looked up and down the road, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. If he was out there, then he was surely dead. But it was so damn dark. The only lights were coming from Cut River, less than a mile below in the little valley. But out here…Jesus, nothing but the glow of the headlights, the surreal staccato of the emergency flashers.
“A car should be along pretty soon,” Nancy said. “A truck or something.”
That got Ben to thinking that he hadn’t actually seen a car in some time now.
The old highway swept by Cut River to within maybe three, four miles, the new one farther away yet. So there wouldn’t be a lot of traffic out here and especially not on a Monday night. Yet…there should’ve been something.
A logging truck.
A semi.
Kids out joyriding.
Something.
He tried to remember the last time he’d seen a car and knew it had been before the short cut.
What did that mean exactly?
“Over here,” Sam said. “He’s over here.”
Ben joined him, Nancy dragging at his heels.
The guy had been thrown into the ditch. His head was in the culvert, half under water. He was sprawled in an unnatural position, legs splayed out, arms folded under him.
“We better get him out of there,” Ben said.
As Sam and he got down there, Nancy said, “You’re not supposed to touch an injured man, you idiots. You know that. Never move an injured man.” She shook her head. “Hello.”
They ignored her.
She was right, of course, but leaving him in the cold water wasn’t going to do him any good either. His flesh was clammy, frigid even, as they lifted him up to the shoulder and set him there. Now with the intermittent illumination from the flashers, they could see that the crown of his skull was split open, blood caked in his hair. The water had cleaned the wound thoroughly. Bloodless, they could see his brain in there like some fleshy sponge. His entire left side from armpit to asshole was one huge, livid bruise.
“Oh my God,” Nancy said, turning away.
She began walking in tight little circles, laughing and crying, shaking and gasping. She was hysterical, out of her head now with terror, shock. This was bad for her. But compared to the man with his head split open like a ruptured tire, she was doing all right.
Ben pushed past her, went back to the van.
He popped the hatch, dug a blanket out. It was kept in there for roadside emergencies. This little scenario seemed to fit the bill. He brought the blanket back, spread it over the man.
Nancy was on her hands and knees, vomiting out her dinner into the grass.
“Dead,” Sam said, a statement.
Ben nodded. “We’re gonna have to walk into Cut River, get some help.”
“Nobody on the road tonight.”
“Yeah. Monday night, you know—”
Nancy, finished now, screamed.
“What?”
“He moved,” she said, her voice cracking with panic. “I…I saw him…the blanket moved. He’s alive in there.”
“He’s not alive,” Sam told her.
Ben went to her, put an arm around her shoulders. “He’s dead, honey. You don’t live with a head wound like that. Trust me. When you feel up to it we’re gonna walk into town, get some help.”
Nancy kept shaking her head. She wiped bile from her chin and said, “I’m not freaking out here, Ben. I saw it.”
“Jesus Christ, Nancy,” Sam finally said, sick of this night, sick of his sister, sick of all the bullshit and just wanting it to end. “He’s dead. He’s fucking dead, all right?” He stooped over, clutched the blanket, pulled it back. “See? He’s dead. He can’t move.”
And he did look pretty dead with that nasty gash in his head, the bruising. His face looked pale, discolored…or was that just the flashers bathing him in yellow light? Didn’t matter. Sam started to pull the blanket back over him…and hesitated. There was something about him, something that had changed. He wasn’t sure what.
Then the guy’s eyes snapped open.
They were shining, the eyes of a stag transfixed by headlights.
Nancy made a choking, screaming sound.
“Easy,” Sam said. “Just take it easy. We’ll get you some help.”
But the guy didn’t care.
Run down, head sheared open, he still sat up, one cold hand grabbing Sam by the hair, pulling him forward. Before Sam could do much more than protest, the guy’s mouth was at his throat, teeth digging in through skin, finding the carotid and severing it.
Sam let go with a scream—high, despairing, and hopeless.
There was suddenly blood everywhere, pooling, fountaining, and spraying. Nancy was screaming and maybe Ben was, too. Sam, however, wasn’t doing anything now but bleeding to death.
Ben moved quickly, coming up fast and giving the guy’s head a punt to get him off Sam. He rolled to the side, making gurgling sounds, his face black with fresh blood. Incredible. Impossible. It just couldn’t be, none of it could be.
Sam was curled up on the pavement, his body wracked with awful spasms. Ben went to him, pulled him up, but his brother-in-law was either dead or close to it. He was limp in his arms.
The guy was on his feet now, going for Nancy.
“BEN!” she cried. “JESUS H. CHRIST, BEN! GET HIM OFF ME!”
She was backing away as the crazy bastard came on, grinning and gnashing his teeth, his hands clutching wildly at the air before him. Nancy kicked at him, ducked by him, kept screaming and shouting for Ben to come to her aid.
Ben let Sam slide from his arms, his brain full of alarm bells.
His wife was being attacked, but he was suddenly powerless. Tapped
. That man…Jesus…dead, but walking…no, maybe not dead, but surely not alive in the traditional sense. His gait was jerky, more of a shambling than anything else. Like seeing a scarecrow pull itself from its bracket, limbs spindly, face lifeless, straw and rags imbued with ghastly life.
That’s what this was like.
Not a man, but an effigy almost. Jaws snapping open, inhuman gibbers and glottals coming from his throat as slimy, bloody foam bubbled from his lips.
Ben got to his feet, got his hands on the guy’s shoulders, pulled him back.
The guy spat something cold and gelatinous into his face, took hold of Ben by the arm and flung him away. Ben tumbled across the pavement. Nancy helped him up and they began running towards Cut River.
The dead/living man did not follow.
He watched their retreat and turned to Sam’s body. Still making those horrible sounds, he dragged Sam off into the woods and the night went deathly silent again.
5
Some streets were lit, Lou Frawley saw, while others were completely dark.
Parts of Cut River still had no power. He kept away from these areas. He wanted some shadows, enough to conceal himself in, but not enough to drown him in a sea of clutching white hands.
The farther he went down Chestnut Street, the more he realized how total all this was, how the entire town must have been infected with…with whatever the hell this was.
And it was oh-so-perfect, wasn’t it?
The storm.
The power outage.
Then this.
Almost like it was planned or something.
He saw people from time to time, alone or in groups, but he did not approach them; he didn’t like the way they moved, the aura of menace coming off them.
Wait.
He paused there on the sidewalk. Yes, he could hear them. They were coming.
He dashed into the black mouth of an alley. So dark in there. Maybe they were drawing him in. But he didn’t have a choice—he could see the crazy ones coming now, five or six of them, their eyes shining with evil influence.
He ducked into the alley, crouched behind a dumpster.
He sat there, trembling, his heart doing a drum solo, his face wet with mist.