by Tim Curran
No man’s land, Ben thought wildly. Clearly marked. Do not pass go. Do not exit. This is the end of the world, their world.
“Turn ‘em off,” Nancy whimpered, “for God’s sake turn those lights off!”
Joe did, speechless, afraid as he’d ever been in a life where his sheer size made terror an impossibility.
He threw the Jeep in reverse, spun it around and headed back the way they came.
“There’s other roads out,” he said in a whisper of a voice. “Other ways.”
He said nothing more and neither did anyone else.
But it was building in Nancy.
Ben could feel her shuddering next to him, not with horror, but with rage. It was only a matter of time.
“Are you—” she sucked in a dry breath “—trying to tell me that fifteen minutes ago when you came through here, you saw none of that?”
Ruby Sue turned in her seat, looked at her, then looked at Joe. “Oh, for chrissake, tell them the truth, babe. What does it matter now?”
He nodded. “We’ve been here for a couple hours.”
Silence.
Nancy licked her lips. “And you lied about it because…”
“Because,” Joe said, “the reason we were here in the first place wasn’t exactly what you’d call legal. Okay? We came to see someone. They weren’t home. So we waited around. They didn’t show, so we took a ride. Then we found you guys.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ben said.
“Hell it doesn’t,” Nancy snapped. “What else are you two lying about?”
Joe sighed. “Listen, lady. Way I see it we’re the only game in town, so why don’t you sit tight and I’ll try to get us out. How’s about that?”
She grumbled under her breath.
Ben didn’t like where any of this was going.
He managed to calm her down, but he knew it wouldn’t last. The silence in the Jeep was thick like honey, dripping with innuendo. They couldn’t afford to piss Joe off. They needed his ride. Like he pointed it out, it was the only game in town.
Through the streets again.
Joe drove slower this time, no theatrics, no NASCAR bullshit. He navigated the roads, taking his time. Maybe he knew now what was at stake here. That if he wiped the Jeep out, the story ended right here.
Nancy was suspicious of the both of them and, dammit, so was Ben now.
What bothered him at first is why they didn’t offer their last names when everyone introduced themselves. It was a small thing, yes, but the smallest of bones could choke a man. And why lie about how long they were in town? They said they were in Cut River for a reason that wasn’t exactly what you’d call legal.
Okay.
Fine.
But how bad could it be?
From the looks of Ruby Sue, Ben was figuring drugs. But from the look of Joe—and it took a while to look at Joe, he was so goddamn big—it could’ve been just about anything.
Ben massaged his temples.
He couldn’t think anymore. He was drained, emptying fast.
Next to him, Nancy was grinding her teeth. It wasn’t a good sign. It could’ve been anxiety or fear or she could’ve been pissed off, simmering like a pot of chili on the back burner.
As they drove, he swept his eyes over what he could see of Cut River.
They were driving through a part of town that had electricity: streetlights were working, shop fronts were lit, squares of light in apartment windows. It all looked so positively normal, so completely average it was frightening.
But six, seven blocks back, in the darkness…Christ, how could things change so quickly?
What bothered him the most was that he knew the psychos were around.
Maybe he didn’t see them, but he definitely felt them. The way a man could feel something hunting him in the black jungle or cold steel about to be pressed to his throat.
Yes, they were out there. Many of them.
The bad part was how they didn’t show themselves.
But then, neither does a tiger until it’s time to sink its fangs into your throat.
Ben licked his lips, his eyes wide and staring now. He had a pretty good idea he knew where Joe was taking them, out to where the country road merged with the town. The very way Nancy and Sam and he had planned coming in. More turns, more little shortcuts, then finally a main road, maybe part of Chestnut (Ben had only been in Cut River once or twice, so he couldn’t be sure).
The electricity had failed here now, lights were patchy, few and far between.
It was going to be bad and he knew it.
He didn’t think they’d be able to get out this way either. Just a feeling, but it persisted like a nasty itch. When Nancy and he had come into town earlier they had taken a footbridge up river that led into a little park. They hadn’t gone over the main bridge. Maybe that was a good thing.
As they sped down the final stretch of road and Cut River fell behind them, dread thick as tar settled into Ben’s belly.
The moon lit up the countryside pretty good.
He could see the bridge up ahead, other things, but he couldn’t be exactly sure what. Joe must’ve seen them, too, because he started slowing down, clicking his brights on.
“Whoa,” Ruby Sue said expectantly, “don’t look good, people.”
And it didn’t.
Ben and Nancy were sitting forward in their seats now, mutually shaking.
The bridge was blocked with more cars.
No real surprise. There were clearings to either side of it, meandering open meadows.
Ben could see shapes out there, indistinct but there, all right.
As Joe backed up and swung the Jeep around, the headlights turned the clearing on the left to day. Ben kept looking, so did Nancy. He felt a serious necessity to scream, but he couldn’t. His lungs were empty. He sat on the edge of his seat, that cold, gnawing feeling in his guts.
Nancy kept shaking her head. “My God,” she whispered, defeated now. “My God.”
The meadow was full of scarecrows mounted up tight and secure on crossbars, except, of course, they weren’t scarecrows at all. They were people, maybe too hideous to even be called that. Corpses, really. Some recent, others decayed and withered into gray husks. And not just a few, but fifteen or twenty within the range of the headlights and many more hunched in the darkness beyond. Some were little more than skeletons dressed in the moldering cerements of the grave. They were not crucified as such, but lashed with wire, with ropes.
Joe idled there maybe two, three minutes, enough for the morbid impact of it to take root in their minds, to find soil and grow to ghastly fruition. When he pulled away, the fleshless skulls and cadaver faces faded, but were still livid and hurtful in their minds.
Nancy started sobbing.
Ruby Sue kept shaking her head as if it was beyond belief.
It was.
“Those people,” she said bleakly, “those people…oh, man, they must’ve dug ‘em up or something. You think they dug ‘em up?”
“Shut up,” Ben told her.
There was no argument on that and no time for one.
The townspeople were making their appearance.
They walked straight up the road en masse towards the Jeep. Mostly men and women, a few children. There had to be thirty or more, marching in unison, although it was more of an inhuman shambling. They were organized and fixed of purpose. A wall of humanity, a throng of white faces and glaring unblinking eyes.
“I’m going through them,” Joe announced coldly. “I’m fucking plowing through them sonsabitches.”
Ben felt Nancy slump against him as the Jeep picked up speed.
He felt his flesh crawl in undulating waves as reality spun wickedly out of control, as his mind narrowed and squealed with white noise.
When the Jeep started hitting them, his brain fell into darkness.
-DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN-
13
Described by waxen moonlight, Cut River was a cemetery.
/> The buildings were leaning headstones and the homes were shadow-crawling crypts and the cars and trucks were caskets and burial vaults, lids sprung open, their cadaverous armies spilled into the night.
Lisa Tabano, her buzz bottoming like a freighter scratching its belly on a shoal, stumbled along behind Johnny Davis, he of the guns and the war that never completely ended. Disillusioned, distrustful, paranoid, but ultimately a good man, she decided. It was just that Uncle Sam had pissed on him so many times, he couldn’t keep his head above the stink.
She was starting to feel the need again.
Not bad yet, but it was coming.
In an hour or so it would be there, all right, nibbling at her insides. And the really bad part was that day by sufferable day, the highs were of shorter duration. She was only snorting heroin right now, but really, how long would it be until she was shooting?
Johnny walked point ahead of her, pausing now and again, crouching down low, then signaling her to continue.
It made her think that he’d probably been waiting for some action since the war ended.
And now he had it.
They crept past a row of blank storefronts and Johnny stopped. “In here,” he said to her.
It was a sporting goods store.
The plate glass door was shattered.
Inside, battery-powered emergency lights lit up the exit in the rear, casting ghoulish, lurching shadows everywhere. Displays were trashed, tipped over. Glass cases were obliterated. Shelves were emptied. It looked like looters had danced a merry destructive dance here.
But that wasn’t the case and she knew it.
“What the hell do we want here?” Lisa asked, setting her guitar case down and stepping over heaps of camouflage hunting clothes that smelled like urine.
Johnny had a Tekna flashlight out, scanning the debris. “They really went through this place, eh? I was in here just before sundown, picking up a few things. They must’ve come since.”
Lisa slid a cigarette in her mouth, lit it up. “Mind?” she said.
“You might draw them in, rock star.”
“But I’ve got you, my own little Rambo. What me worry?”
He chortled deep in his throat as he dug madly through outdoor clothing—hunter’s orange, Carhartt work clothes, waterproof tarps. He pulled a dark rubber poncho from the jumble, held it up, examined it carefully. He threw it at Lisa. “Catch.”
She pulled it off her face. “Are we going on a mission or getting out of here?”
“We’re evading, baby. E and E. Escape and evasion. It’s the name of the game.” He leaped over piles of winter boots, hiking shoes, slid a canoe out of the way. “Here, these’ll look sweet on you.” He tossed a pair of rubber boots at her. “They’re all the rage, baby. I hear Hendrix wore ‘em at Monterey.”
She laughed, pulling the boots over her Nikes. “Christ, you are old.”
“You know it.”
“Should I ask why I have to wear boots or is that some mission secret?”
He grinned at her, all teeth and eyes, his face darkened with black camo paint. “I’d tell ya, sweet thing, but then I’d have to fuck ya.”
“Yeah, I’ve always wanted to do it with Al Jolson. Nice makeup. It’s so you.”
Johnny found the freeze-dried backpacker’s food and stuffed some in his pack. He pulled out a pistol, broke it open, snapped it closed and handed it to Lisa. “Know how to use it?”
She held it like it had been dipped in feces. “I don’t like guns.” She looked from it to him. “I don’t approve of them.”
He made a face, said, “Listen, I don’t approve of condoms either. No fun. But if I’m gonna slap skins with a hooker, I wear one. Assures my survival. And if you’re gonna stay alive in this shithole, you’ll need a gun. Maybe not, but maybe so.” He waited for an argument, was surprised, maybe, at how tolerant, how patient he was with her. It had been a long time since he’d been that way with anyone, let alone a female. “It’s a thirty-eight. Revolver, doesn’t jam. Six-shots. Safety is off. Bad guys comin’ down on ya, aim it and pull the trigger.”
Sighing, she accepted his logic and slid the little .38 into her coat pocket, hoping like hell she wouldn’t have to use it on anyone. She wasn’t a pacifist really, but violence was negative and solved nothing…that was, under normal circumstances. But here, in this hellzone where civilization had ground to a halt, all that mattered was who survived, not what sort of principals or moral integrity they possessed.
Somebody (or some thing) came looking for trouble, goddamn if she wasn’t going to give them some (to paraphrase the old Johnny Winters’ tune).
“Put that poncho on,” he said, more of an order than anything else.
She did, not liking the idea too much, but once it was over her head it made her feel warm and protected. She put the .38 in the front pocket.
She walked around.
The phone had been ripped off the wall, the cash register and computer smashed on the floor. She saw the remains of a cell phone.
Whatever these things were, they had a definite hard-on for technology.
Savages, she thought. They worship darkness, hate anything modern.
Johnny was still searching through the mess. He finally held up what looked like a short boat hook and nodded, satisfied.
“We going fishing for big ones?”
“You’ll see. Let’s go.”
Lisa was glad the windows were broken so she didn’t have to catch a reflection of herself, how utterly foolish she must’ve looked in that huge poncho and squeaking boots. She picked up her guitar case and purse and led the way back out onto the sidewalk.
And heard it before she saw it.
Low, guttural growling, the sound of claws scratching concrete.
She froze up tight as cherries in a deep freeze, motionless, helpless, staring at the huge, mangled German Shepherd a few feet away. Its left ear was missing, its coat filthy and stained with blood and bits of clinging leaves, sticks. There were great patches of skin ripped free from its battered skull, one of its eyes a gored hole. Its snout was bloody pulling away from lethal white teeth. Ropes of vile foamy saliva dangled from its mouth. The good ear was flattened against the skull as it made to leap.
Johnny shoved her out of the way as the dog leapt.
It made it maybe three feet before it took a load of buckshot straight on that vaporized its head into bloody mucilage. Its body tumbled out into the road, legs still pistoning.
Johnny took Lisa by the arm. “C’mon, lady, time to march.”
She realized then that she was lost in a dream for nearly a block, Johnny leading her like the good shepherd with a lost lamb. Then she came out of it, thinking that she needed a fix.
But now wasn’t the time.
She’d been lucky so far, way too lucky. First with the woman at her parent’s house, then with the two punks that Johnny had clipped for her, and now with the dog.
How long could it possibly hold? How long?
Johnny stopped on a quiet street. “Way I see it,” he explained to her, “they’re not going to let us just walk out of here. My guess is that by now they’ve got this town closed-up tight. Which means, essentially, we’re prey.”
“Prey?”
He nodded. “We’re the enemy here, baby. Don’t you get it? We’re the weird ones, they’re normal. Normal because they’re the majority. They’ve got two choices with us: make us like them or kill us.”
Lisa thought about it. “And how are they gonna make us like them? What’re they gonna do? Bite our throats?”
“Don’t be too surprised.”
He slung his shotgun over his shoulder and walked a few feet away to a manhole cover. He took his boat hook and inserted the tip into the drain hole. With everything he had, he pulled and the lid came up. He dragged it onto the pavement.
“After you,” he said.
Lisa had been watching him with a mixture of amusement and confusion, now she said, “You’ve got to be out of
your mind.”
“Maybe. But down you go.” He handed her the flashlight. “You want out, don’t you? This might be the only way.”
“How about we find a cell phone instead?”
Johnny laughed. “Cell phone? They’ve destroyed every piece of technology they could lay their mitts on. You think they overlooked cell phones?”
“They couldn’t get ‘em all, Johnny.”
He shook his head. “Don’t have to. There’s only one provider here. Its base station and transmitting antennas are located at the edge of town. In one of the blacked-out areas. No power, baby. I tried my neighbor’s this afternoon…nothing. Just a dead piece of plastic...”
Man proposes and God disposes, Lisa thought helplessly.
She shined the light down the throat of the sewer.
It was dank and misty below. A built-in ladder led down to the water beneath. She looked back at Johnny. He was smiling, enjoying the hell out of this. Now she knew what he had in mind with the poncho and boots.
She handed him the light. “Keep it on me,” she said.
Setting her guitar case on the street, she lowered herself down.
The rungs were greasy, slicked with mildew. Halfway down, Johnny fed the guitar case to her. It fit, all right. And if it hadn’t, Lisa wasn’t going either. It seemed like a long climb down, holding the guitar case and maneuvering with only one hand. The shaft opened at the bottom into a large central drain. Plenty large enough to walk through without hitting your head.
But the stink, oh God.
Stagnant water, organic rot. Like a brackish swamp.
She dipped one boot into the water, found the bottom, and then went all the way in. It was deep, nearly two feet. And cold. The boots kept her feet dry, but she could feel the chill wetness sucking out her heat.
Johnny dropped the light to her and swung down into the shaft. He pulled the lid closed after them, then moved down the ladder like it was something he’d done many times.
He smiled. “Not so bad, eh?”
“Says who?”
He took the light from her, played it around.
The passage was maybe seven feet in height, little more in width. A brick tunnel, more or less. She was surprised to see graffiti on the walls.