Toxic Shadows

by Tim Curran

  Yes, he looked like a little boy, but he was not a little boy.

  Some atavistic nightmare from the dawn of the race when people were predatory things that lived only to hunt and kill.

  He smiled down at her, drool running from his lips.

  His hair was wild, leaves stuck in it, his face was the color of fresh cream, but mottled and streaked with grime.

  Not a boy, just a thing from a grave.

  Nancy drew herself slowly to her feet. “Please,” she said, close to tears, very aware of the weight of the rolling pin in her hand. “I know you’re sick…you can’t help what you are, but I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t make me.”

  He kept smiling, but came no closer. “Please,” he mocked in a choking voice thick with phlegm. “I don’t wanna hurt you, don’t make me.” Then he started to laugh, cold, baying laughter like the shrieking of a maniac.

  Nancy took a step back, the flesh crawling on her bones, and he leapt.

  She swung the rolling pin at him, but missed as he rammed into her, spilling the both of them to the floor. He was wild in her arms, fingers clawing, legs kicking, head thrashing, teeth snapping. Alive and deadly like a sack of copperheads, contorting and twisting in every direction as Nancy tried to keep his teeth from her. The feel of him…hideous, like living, breathing meat. She managed to hook a foot under him and launch him backwards.

  He slammed into the counter with a sickly, fleshy thud.

  He came again, a macabre grin slitting open his pallid face.

  Nancy brought the rolling pin down and it crashed into the crown of his head. She heard a soft cracking sound. He pulled himself up and she kept bringing the rolling pin down until blood spattered her face and his head was caved-in like a rotting pumpkin. Until his skull was opened like a can, the contents running to the floor. And even then, she had to peel his cold fingers from her ankles where they were seized in a death grip. The back of his hands were gray and flaking.

  Nancy staggered off, felt the wind being sucked from her lungs.

  She went down to her knees, whimpering and shuddering, finally vomiting.

  She only wanted to die then.

  She’d killed a little boy.

  That’s what this fucking town had done to her. Maybe it hadn’t acted like a boy or even looked too much like a boy, but once, yes, once it had been. An innocent child corrupted by this place, polluted. Cut River had done that to him and she’d supplied the final unspeakable denouement to his lamentable existence.

  Again, totally numb, the part of her that had been human and hopeful just a windblown memory, Nancy got to her feet.

  She started towards the back of the store to find the stairs, knowing it was where she had to go. Dragging her feet, she continued on.

  She saw the stairs now, the door that hid them nearly ripped from its hinges. There was a tumble of bodies on the steps, great sections of their anatomies blown away. A scene from some medieval hell. Bodies heaped like jackstraw.

  She would have to climb over them.

  No other way.

  Then she heard motion behind her.

  She turned and brought up the rolling pin limply, no longer noticing that it was caked with blood and brains and tangles of hair.

  Sam was standing there.

  Something like October moonlight filled his eyes. They were a brilliant yellow, yes, the yellow of a pumpkin skull lit by a candle, but they seemed almost silvery, reflective like the surface of mirrors. She could see herself quite plainly in them. His flesh was colorless and he stank like death.

  Nancy felt something wet tickle her lips and realized it was her tongue.

  She took it all in and something in her shut down completely, refused to accept this. She could see the grisly wound on his neck, swollen purple, blackening at the edges, dried blood everywhere like rust.

  He was dead.

  He had to be dead.

  No one could live with their throat laid open like that.

  Sam grinned at her, a broad toothy smile of shining white teeth that was as evil and vicious as anything she’d ever seen. A baboon’s grin. He was no more human than that. There was nothing but desolation in those shining eyes, a ravening insanity.

  “Nancy,” he said and it sounded like water dumped on a hot stove lid. “It doesn’t hurt at all, it just feels good.”

  “Sam…”

  But he was already too close, pulling her in with those terrible lies, a beast spinning half-truths, luring children into a dark wood. And Nancy went because she simply couldn’t help herself and she was tired of fighting and she just wanted to sleep now.

  Sam had her hands in his own, his fingers like icicles.

  The rolling pin clattered uselessly to the floor.

  Before she could do so much as protest, he yanked her left arm up and sank his teeth into her wrist. And he lied, for it hurt. It hurt bad. His teeth were sharp, his tongue so cold, the foaming slime from his mouth thick and burning. She felt it snake its way into her bloodstream, a malignancy taking her cell by cell.

  Then the world exploded and exploded.

  Sam jerked and jerked, stumbled away from her. He let out a high, piercing scream of utter rage and utter suffering and then his face blew apart. He pitched over, striking the floor face first, his bullet-ridden body twitching.

  “Nancy?” she heard a voice say. “Nancy?”

  Then blackness, sweet and welcoming as the confines of the womb.

  16

  Lou Frawley drove mindlessly through the streets of the dead city.

  He had half a tank of gas, deciding morosely that he would continue driving until he either passed-out or the needle hit empty. Regardless, he was surely not going to stop.

  They would not have him.

  In the thirty-odd minutes he’d been driving, he’d come to the same realization that Ben and Nancy Eklind and company had come to: there was no way out. He’d run into the same barricades they had, seen the same horrors, knew that Cut River was a cage, a maze, and that the psychos out there were just waiting for him to fuck up so they could have him.

  So he drove and thought about the life he’d once had and wished to God Steve had survived so he could at least have some human company. Because being alone was the very worst thing. Nothing in creation compared to the phobia of solitude.

  Though Lou had never been a religious man—he thought most churches were the theological version of pawnshops—he sincerely believed now that men and women had souls. After seeing the things that had once been the people of Cut River he was convinced of this.

  Because they had no souls.

  They were animals, monsters, walking deadwood, but not human beings.

  Not like him.

  And he realized after seeing the lack of souls in Cut River how precious a commodity the soul was. And his was decaying. From terror. From solitude.

  As he drove, he saw the good citizens of the town going about their wicked business. He saw white faces leering from behind parked cars, trees, and shrubs. Saw them lurking in shadowy doorways and cul-de-sacs. Saw them peering from darkened windows and storefronts. They watched him pass, but did not attack. Not yet.

  He saw an old lady wearing nothing but a scarf and a blanket standing guard at a stop sign with a double-edged axe.

  He saw a throng of vile children dragging the butchered body of an obese woman into a side yard.

  He saw a young yuppie couple standing on the curb, hand in hand, their naked bodies painted up with what almost looked to be runic symbols.

  He saw a naked teenage girl digging a hole in a lawn and pushing a body down into it, burying it for later…and then urinating on the spot as if marking it with her scent.

  And he saw others crawling over sloping roofs like cats, leering down from the high branches of trees. Many of them were doing this, as if seeking some high perch like human raptors.

  Yeah, the town was gone.

  There was no point in fighting.

  The battle—if there had
been one at all, which Lou doubted—was waged and lost. The enemy had won. They seemed to be somewhat intelligent, many of them. At least, he thought, intelligent enough to erect barricades of automobiles at all the roads leading out. And if they were smart enough to remember how to drive, to position those cars and trucks, then they were smart enough to use advanced weapons and technologies. It stood to reason. Sure, maybe they’d just pushed the cars in place, but that meant they knew enough to manipulate the keys and put transmissions in neutral so the vehicles could be moved.

  But for some reason, he thought they’d probably driven them in place.

  And that was a scary thought. But if that was true, then why weren’t they hunting him down in cars and trucks?

  Why weren’t they using guns?

  There were plenty of guns in this part of the state. Prime hunting country, guns were everywhere. But these people didn’t use them. They carried knives and clubs and hatchets and cleavers and had even fashioned spears (he had seen this). Maybe they didn’t use these objects because at some base level they shunned civilization. Maybe this is why they ripped phones from walls, shattered TVs and computers, crushed cell phones underfoot. And as far as guns went, they were too impersonal; you couldn’t feel your victims writhing flesh, their warm blood, taste their fear. Guns were for civilized peoples; barbarians preferred something more personal.

  But was he giving them too much credit?

  He didn’t think so.

  Because, if you studied them (and God knew he had had plenty of opportunity for that) you saw that they were organized. Loosely, perhaps, tribal units maybe, hunting clans and no more. Not yet. But they didn’t wage war on one another, they seemed to coexist peacefully, cooperatively. Only the normal ones were their prey.

  Yes, right now they were formed into small bands perhaps, but what if this raged on unchecked for months or years? Would they group together under a central leader?

  Lou had his doubts because such a thing smacked of culture, of enlightenment, and these creatures had degenerated to a primitive, feral level and seemed to like it there just fine.

  He was wondering why they only watched him and didn’t attack.

  He was thinking this very thing when two of them ran out into the street ahead, madly waving their arms. He slowed down to draw them in. Maybe he couldn’t kill them all, but he could tag a few. It was better than nothing.

  He slowed to a crawl.

  C’mon, you crazy bastards, come to daddy.

  They jogged up closer and as they got within range of the headlights he saw that one of them carried a shotgun. His worst fear realized, he was about to jam down the accelerator when he noticed that their eyes did not shine. Everywhere he went in Cut River, the headlights picked out their eyes shining in the dark.

  These two did not have eyes like that.

  And the way they moved…Jesus Christ in Heaven, they were human!

  Lou threw open his door as they came up closer. A woman and a man. The woman was small, thin, dressed in a rain poncho and carried a guitar case of all things. The guy was outfitted like the cover of Soldier of Fortune.

  “You’re human,” was all Lou could say.

  “Yes, yes,” the woman said, sounding close to tears.

  The man pushed her towards the rear door of the cruiser. “We better get the fuck out of here,” he said. “The natives are getting restless.”

  Lou looked and saw them slinking in the shadows like cats ready to pounce.

  He got behind the wheel, thinking it was funny how your priorities changed. A week ago, nothing less than winning the lotto would have satisfied him…now he was simply happy that he wouldn’t have to die alone.

  Life…and death…were funny.

  17

  Schoolcraft County Sheriff’s Department—Transcription

  September 26—11:20-11:59 P.M.

  11:20

  Dispatcher: Twelve, what’s your twenty?

  Unit Twelve: Ten miles outside Blaney Park on seventy-seven. Returning.

  Dispatcher: Negative. Request you go to Cut River vicinity.

  Unit Twelve: Come again?

  Dispatcher: Cut River. No radio activity from Cut River P.D. in fourteen hours.

  Unit Twelve: Power’s still out in that area…or most of it.

  Dispatcher: Should be…some activity. Received a call for assistance earlier.

  Unit Twelve: P.D.?

  Dispatcher: Negative. Civilian, possibly. Might be a crank.

  Unit Twelve: Probably. Ten-forty-nine. En route to Cut River. E.T.A. fifteen minutes.

  Dispatcher: Ten-four.

  11:39

  Unit Twelve: Outside Cut River location on Junction Twenty-Three. Will advise.

  Dispatcher: Ten-four.

  Unit Twelve: We’ve got an abandoned vehicle here. Possible accident. Two miles outside location on twenty-three. Vehicle is a late-model Plymouth van…license ADAM-DAVID-FRANK two-oh-seven. Repeat.

  Dispatcher: ADF two-oh-seven.

  Unit Twelve: Standby.

  Dispatcher: Vehicle registered to a Benjamin Thomas Eklind.

  Unit Twelve: Ten-four. We’re going to need crime scene assistance here…front end of vehicle bashed in. Possible hit-and-run.

  Dispatcher: Message relayed.

  Unit Twelve: Leaving scene. Occupants missing. Seems to be…can see a fire burning in Cut River direction. Investigating.

  Dispatcher: Exercise caution, Twelve.

  Unit Twelve: Will do. Ten-four.

  11:53

  Unit Twelve: Dispatch? Requesting back-up…possible civil disturbance. We’ve got a situation here.

  Dispatcher: What’s the Twenty?

  Unit Twelve: Cut River…we’ve got vehicles piled up here, wreckage. Road is blocked. Fires burning…scarecrows. Something strange here…I…

  Dispatcher: Repeat last, Twelve.

  Unit Twelve: Code Twenty here, dispatch. Need immediate assistance.

  Dispatcher: On the way, Twelve.

  Unit Twelve: It’s a mess…Jesus. Looks like vehicles were driven into each other to block exit or entrance. Fires burning…a group of individuals spotted. Standby.

  Dispatcher: Proceed with caution, Twelve.

  Unit Twelve: CODE THIRTY! CODE THIRTY! OFFICER NEEDS ASSISTANCE! EMERGENCY! ALL UNITS! PLEASE…OH MY GOD…

  Dispatcher: Twelve? Twelve? Repeat, Twelve!

  Dispatcher: All available units respond Cut River location! Officer needs assistance!

  Unit Seventeen: En route location, dispatch. E.T.A. five minutes. Jesus, looks like fires burning down there…

  When Nancy woke, she was in pain.

  It felt like she’d been pumping iron. Her muscles were sore, her fingers numb. A headache throbbed just behind her eyes.

  And she was not alone.

  In fact, she was in a room full of people and she decided right then and there, as her eyelids fluttered open and closed and then open again, that she was dreaming. Had to be. Unless this had all been some seriously nasty nightmare, the last thing she could remember was the A & P. Those things attacking them. Her alone. The little boy from hell.

  And then…oh Jesus, Sam.

  Sam biting her.

  She was on a sofa in what looked like somebody’s living room, a blanket thrown over her. She brought her hand up, brought it up slowly. Yes, her wrist was bandaged. Sam had bitten her. Yes. Not attacked her, not really. All he wanted to do was bite her.

  It doesn’t hurt at all, it just feels good…

  Oh, Jesus, did that mean, did that mean—

  “How you doing, baby?” It was Ben, leaning over her. He looked very tired, very…used-up. But his eyes were bright. “I was worried. Christ, I was worried.”

  She managed a smile. “I’m okay. I…what happened? I don’t remember.”

  He sat on the sofa near her and told her how he’d been separated from her in the grocery store, thought she’d been killed. Then the crazies started their attack. Joe and Ruby Sue were armed to
the teeth. He didn’t know why, but was simply glad. They spent maybe fifty rounds on the crazies, as he called them.

  “It was like nothing you ever seen before,” he told her. “You can shoot ‘em five, six times, and it only slows them down. You gotta get ‘em in the head.

  “Ruby Sue was right,” she said in a dry voice.

  He nodded.

  He himself owed his life to Joe. The crazies had swarmed over him and Joe ran right into their midst, shooting and fighting. Ruby Sue—a crack shot, believe it or not—had backed him up, popping those bastards right in the heads. They’d knocked Ben senseless and Joe had dragged him up the stairs, took care of him. It was also Joe who—

  “He shot Sam,” Nancy said.

  Ben stroked her hair. “It wasn’t Sam, baby. Not anymore.”

  She licked her lips. “He looked like he was dead.”

  Ben didn’t say anything to that. “Joe bandaged your arm. You cut yourself or what?”

  Nancy went into a bullshit story about how one of them had stuck a roasting fork in her arm, how she’d beat him off with a rolling pin. It was important to her that Ben didn’t know, that any of them didn’t know, about the bite. Laying there, Ben’s voice droning on and on about how they’d come here to this church because they’d seen a police cruiser parked out front that hadn’t been there before.

  That’s how they ended up with this bunch.

  Ben introduced them all.

  Beyond Joe and Ruby Sue, there was a stocky, balding man with a friendly smile named Lou Frawley. Lou was a salesman. The muscular, capable guy in the corner with the bald head and black mustache was named Johnny Davis. He was a citizen of Cut River and, Nancy decided, possibly a mercenary by the way he was dressed and armed. Near to him was a thin, slight brunette with huge dark eyes and jutting cheekbones. She was Lisa Tabano. She looked haunted, trembled badly, and was some sort of rock performer. Even had a guitar with her.