by Tim Curran
Lisa was wondering how he’d look with a guitar case shoved up his back door sideways. “Okay, macho man. Save it. Show me the way out. You can do that can’t you?”
“I can do all sorts of things, woman.”
Though there seemed to be no sexual undercurrent implied, she said, “Spare me, Sarge. You couldn’t get laid in a fucking leper colony.”
He pulled off his watch cap, stroked his bald head, put it back on. “You’d be surprised.”
“No, I’d be disappointed.” Her buzz had peaked now. It would hang around for a time, but already this guy had ruined a good thing. She wasn’t going to let him get away with it.
Johnny took two quick, very quick, steps toward her. She saw his hand come up and was powerless to stop him. She saw her life flash before her eyes like a low-budget movie. His hand stopped inches from her left temple.
His eyes, locked with her own, belonged in the head of wild boar, not a man. Finally, he let out a breath, grinned at her, started giggling. “I like a woman with balls that puts me in my place. You’re okay, rock star. You married?”
“Only to myself.”
“Wanna be? You think you could go for a mutt like me?”
“Doubt it.”
She suddenly felt connected to this guy, antithesis to everything she loved about the male species.
He nodded, shouldered his rifle and pulled a shotgun from its sheath at his back. It was a sleek, nasty-looking piece of hardware with a pistol grip. “Let’s go, rock star.”
Lisa stuck her tongue out behind his back, but followed.
Back out onto the streets. The damp. The cold. The grainy darkness.
Yeah, Rambo here was a real piece of work. It wasn’t so much that he’d insulted her or women in general (she’d been gone over by the best), it was just that she had to wonder what sort of combination of circumstances produced a guy like him. He was rough, sure, about as polished as a rusty nail and liked to give the impression he was an A-number one badass lifetaker. And maybe he was, but she had a pretty good idea he was more than that. Something else entirely. There was warmth under that roughhewn exterior.
Like a coal in a firepot, warm at its center, but covered in ash and dirt.
That was Johnny Davis.
“Follow the leader, rock star.”
Meaning: don’t lag behind.
But she had no intention of doing that. In a situation like this, even a complete asshole like Johnny Davis came in pretty damn handy.
He motioned for her to stop.
He did everything with hand signals like he was humping it up the Ho Chi Minh Trail again. Up ahead, he was studying what lay before them.
He was real careful, real professional.
Good man to have on point, she figured.
Especially when the war came home.
11
Lou Frawley’s world was one of madness and damp and perpetual dark.
It was a compacted microcosm of horror and survival where the worse things not only could happen but did with shocking regularity. His world was Cut River and the madhouse it had become. Pretty little snow-globe town. Shake it up and the snow fell on the quaint little village. Except the quaint little village was haunted by monsters that lived in the skins of men, women, and children.
Quite a change, really.
His was a salesman’s life—town after town, one bad meal piled on another, ulcers, failed relationships, promotions that never materialized, shitty hotel rooms, drunken nights, ass-kissing sales managers, one night stands with painted-up bimbos and the only drama in it being what sort of social disease you might bring home like a sick puppy to care for and feed until it did you in, and the road went on forever.
That was pretty much what it was before Cut River.
All that dark revelation and this in only a few short hours.
Maybe it wasn’t much of a life when you stuck it under the scope like a new microbe, but it was his and he tended it well. Watered it, fed it, and kept it growing.
Now there was only survival.
Stay alive long enough to maybe get out of this godforsaken town or, at the very least, to die knowing the answer to the grim puzzle.
I should’ve stayed in Green Bay, he thought. He almost did. Instead, he drove a couple hundred miles north into this.
Sound thinking, all right.
After his little rendezvous with the Snake Woman (as he now called her), he kept moving, keeping in the shadows, keeping his eyes on the big brick building perched on the hill. It had to serve some official function. He knew that much. But what if it didn’t? What if it was some old condemned rathole waiting for the kiss of the wrecking ball? What then?
That’s what he kept thinking.
He was half a block away from it now and could’ve been there a long time ago if he hadn’t had to hide all the time. No matter, there it was.
He was in the doorway alcove of a little craft shop, pressed up stiffly to the plate glass display window, enclosed in bands of darkness.
Safe?
Yes, about as safe as any other place in this town. And that, of course, wasn’t saying much.
He hadn’t seen any more psychos since the Snake Woman, but that didn’t mean they weren’t out there. He could hear them from time to time—wild shriekings and cries. Sometimes the sounds of shattering glass. Oh yes, they were out there and very active. No doubt about that. But not just them; he could also hear dogs barking and whining…at least he hoped it was dogs. And earlier he could’ve sworn he heard gunfire, but it was too distant to be sure.
He liked to think that it was just that: gunfire.
Sounds of humanity, bugle call of his brothers and sisters in the resistance.
The resistance. That made him smile.
Knowing it was probably a mistake but not giving a ripe shit since he had the gun now, Lou lit up a cigarette. He lit it quickly, then cupped the cherry, waiting to see if it drew any attention.
As badly as he wanted out of this nightmare, he also wanted answers. He needed to know what had happened here. He knew that during the past week or so the area had been nailed by storms and that within the last couple days they’d been severe, bad enough to wipe out telephone poles and their attending lines without mercy.
But what else had happened?
What took possession of this town when the light failed? Was it a plague or a contagion and, if so, what kind? Was it in the soil? The air? The water? And better yet, was he already contaminated?
Jesus, it was all such madness.
He kept watching the big building up ahead.
Very gothic with the moon washing it down in a ghostly ambiance. It sat on a low, sloping hill, surrounded by denuded elms and craggy oaks. Three rambling stories of stone and brick, domed belfries, widow’s walks, drooping eaves, gabled roof dormers, all capped by a jutting expanse of sheer-pitched roofs and rusting weather vanes. It had lots of scrollwork, a marble-cut frieze wrapping around it like a scarf, too many oblong and oval windows that glared out, dead eyes in a stone face. There was a huge clock set in the facade of a rectangular tower, telling him it was nearly half past nine.
Quite a place. About as inviting as mausoleum at midnight.
He thought maybe he saw some lights on in there…but couldn’t be sure with moonlight the color of cornsilk turning the windows to somber reflecting pools. He dragged from his cigarette, knowing that now, this moment, more than ever before in his life, was not the time for impulsive action. Whatever he did had to be plotted out carefully.
He looked around.
Nothing but the town everywhere he looked—buildings and homes and church spires and leaning chimneys painted the color of coal dust, all frosted by the moon. Black, patchy clouds above and cold, mean streets below.
Or maybe not.
To the right of the big building was an open expanse like a park and beyond that what looked to be a cemetery. Same one he saw earlier, but from a different perspective now. A mutiny of stones and marble
vaults…and beyond, nothing but dark woods, empty meadows.
So there it was.
He could either take his chance with the building or he could just do the smart thing and slip out of town. Through the boneyard and into the fields beyond. Easier than promises in the dark. Maybe they were out there, too, but probably very few, he figured, the best hunting being here in Cut River.
Grinding his cigarette beneath his heel, he moved out.
Across the street, past the monolithic building, into the park. He didn’t like it there too much, either: too many dark hiding places, dank little holes where the monsters could spring out at him like trapdoor spiders from their webby lairs. He hid behind a war monument, listened, watched, kept the .38 in his hand. Okay.
Go!
Through a perimeter of stout pines and across a winding dirt drive.
So far, so good.
The cemetery was right before him now. Low stone wall, irregular and mounded, encircling it. He hopped over it, nearly flipping himself into the dirt. Just inside the wall, he crouched down, panned the night, looked for anything that reeked of danger.
Nothing.
The cemetery was laid out over hilly, grassy turf crowded with manicured shrubs and ancient oaks. The tombstones seemed to glow under the eye of the moon. Silent, jutting sepulchers trimmed in dead ivy were cut from charnel shadow. This was worse than he thought, more places to hide than he could’ve imagined—everywhere gravestones, markers, biers, marble shafts, leaning funerary crosses. A maze of stone and foliage and knife-edged shadow.
Lou darted forward, his legs pumped with concrete from all the unaccustomed exertion.
Headstone to headstone to headstone.
Silence, waiting and pregnant with sinister possibility.
He was thinking that he was perfectly safe. Chances were he was wasting his time with these cat-and-mouse evasion tactics. Too many old movies coming home to roost in the rotting rafters of his panicked brain. Yeah, it was cool, it was—
Up ahead, movement.
He stayed put, the gun trembling in his sweaty grip.
Shadows were everywhere out there, throngs and multitudes created by the moon, the trees, and the stones.
But then he saw, yes, they were here, too.
Dim forms threading slowly through the monuments in his direction. His heart skipped a beat, skipped another, kicked with a sharp pain in his chest.
Why here?
Were they waiting for him? Were they part of some group consciousness, knowing and thinking and acting as a single entity, but composed of hundreds of parts? Ridiculous. Again, too many late night movies vomiting drivel into his head. No, not that, but something, something…
He could hear muted thuddings now, muffled clangings.
Terror then, flooding through him like icy creek water, horror. The revelation was grisly. They weren’t out here looking for the living, they were out here after the dead. Rooting through graves and burial vaults and crypts like grave robbers, hungry ghouls.
But maybe they did know he was here.
Some of them were getting closer, moving in his direction with less than casual interest. He could see their eyes now, flat and yellow like the eyes of rabid dogs.
They were spreading out now, six or seven of them. He could hear the wet sounds of their breathing, the chattering of teeth.
Lou’s heart was literally in his throat, flabby and fibrillating uneasily, choking off his air and squirting sour bile onto his tongue. He sprang from his crouch and ran with everything he had out of the cemetery and into the little park and away until he was in the cyclopean shadow of the building.
Behind him, it was quiet.
They hadn’t followed. He fell to his knees in the wet grass.
After a time, his panic lessened. He saw a sign.
CUT RIVER MUNICIPAL COMPLEX
City Hall Offices
Hall of Records
Public Safety Department
Bingo!
And, yes, he saw, studying the recessed windows, that there were lights on in there. Not all of them, but some. He licked his lips, calming himself. He could see a parking lot now in the back with a couple police cruisers and a few city trucks. If there was still law here, why weren’t they doing something?
No time for that, no time for reasoning and analysis. That was the province of civilized men and civilization had now become something of an abstract concept here in the Devil’s backyard.
Wiping a sheen of icy sweat from his brow, Lou got to his feet.
Move!
He was running again, galloping through the courtyard of the municipal building like a fox with a pack of slavering hounds at his tail. Through the wet grass, over glistening pavement, ducking into shadows, becoming shadows. And above, always, that huge and full moon, that hunter’s moon, brushed by dark clouds like scars across a blind eyeball.
Lou’s breath was misting sludge in his aching lungs, his brain raging with storm clouds.
He jogged up the steps to the entrance.
Huge double doors. He turned the knob, pushed, his heart going off like a cluster bomb, and then he was inside. Dark corridors, stairs climbing off to the left, a bank of elevators. A few panels of overhead lights were on, enough to see and navigate by. There were doors studding the hall, windows set in them. CITY TREASURER. CITY MANAGER. COUNTY CLERK. UTILITIES DEPT. There was a directory on the wall. Lou studied it, seeing that what he wanted was on this floor.
So far, so good.
He would’ve liked every light in the place to be burning, but at least it was warm. He hadn’t realized how cold he’d been until the warmth touched his hands, his face.
God, he was numb.
A corridor wound off to his left, very dim, and that was the way he needed to go. He started off, the shadows alive with secret threat.
The police offices were all lit up.
But empty.
There was a bullpen securing a few desks and filing cabinets, stiff plastic chairs for visitors, safety posters on the wall, wanted bulletins tacked to a corkboard. All illuminated by buzzing fluorescent lights overhead.
Lou entered carefully, moved into the bullpen, holding the swinging gate so it wouldn’t make any noise.
And his heart fell.
It looked like a tornado had howled through the place.
The floor was heaped with papers and folders as if someone had cleared the desktops with a broom. Computers were smashed under desks, keyboards jammed into their screens. Drawers were empty, their contents strewn about. Wastepaper cans kicked aside, a coffee maker and its attendant pot smashed in the corner. A letter opener was imbedded nearly two inches into the wall.
Yeah, the crazies had been here, too.
They’d made a thorough job of it by the looks of things. Probably the worse thing was the smell—like old piss. As if the crazies, monsters—whatever in fuck’s name they were—had urinated all over everything to mark their territory.
Lou went to the first phone he found, picked it up.
Dead.
Even the cops didn’t have working phones. There was a radio, but the microphone was missing, wires ripped out of the back.
Don’t you see? a voice said to him. Don’t you see what’s going on here? You’re completely cut off from the real world. It’s what they want. You’re normal and they can’t have that. This is a mousetrap, and you’re the mouse, my friend. No way out. The storm took care of the phones, they did the rest. And moment by moment, the noose is tightening.
Lou slumped against a desk, a crude mockery of a smile etched into his face like somebody had slashed it there with a knife. Okay. All right. Yes, indeedy. This is what it was like to go insane, eh? Worse than he thought. Maybe it would be easier if he just surrendered.
No.
He plugged a cigarette into his mouth, lit it, drew hard off it. The nicotine woke up his brain, parted the mists of bullshit. Like a worn-out TV set that needed to be slapped on the side, it started working aga
in. The picture rolled a bit at first, sure, but it was receiving and processing again.
There was a door off the bullpen, another entrance leading into darkness.
He chose the door, a restroom.
He walked right in there, gun raised. He was feeling like Dirty Harry or the guy in High Plains Drifter, a man with a gun and a past and a serious need to kill some people…or, in Lou’s case, things that looked like people but were people like a rubber glove is a human hand.
Typical bathroom. A few urinals with rust stains against one wall, sinks against the other. Above them a mirror. It was spattered with water stains, flaking in the corners. But none of that caught Lou’s attention. He only saw what was scrawled across it:
GOD HELP US ALL
By this time, it took quite a bit to unnerve him. Two days ago, had he walked into an empty, vandalized police station and saw something like this he would’ve pissed in his shoes. Now, as ominous and menacing as it indeed was, he only studied the message, wondering vaguely what that crusty, dark stuff was.
Blood?
Lipstick?
He turned away, his brain still asking the same shopworn question: What exactly happened here?
He paused before the sink, dragging slowly off his cigarette. A long gray ash dropped away. He let the butt fall with it into the basin. Setting his gun aside, he turned on the faucet. That still worked. His cigarette butt sizzled out, ashes sucked down the drain. He splashed water on his face, wetted his lips. Oh Lord, it felt so good, so—
Jesus H. Christ, you fucking idiot!
He pulled away like it was acid…or he’d been splashing water from a urinal in his face. Only this was much worse. The water. Something happened here. Something had gotten these people and had gotten them bad. Too fast, he figured to be strictly from body contact, had to be airborne, maybe, or in the water. His imagination shifted into high gear. He could almost feel whatever it was coming through his pores, oozing into him like cold syrup, settling into his cells.
Fuck it.
He went to the sink and started gulping water.
Yeah, better. Goddamn right it was better! Ha, ha!