by Tim Curran
Joe was suddenly aware that Lou was staring at his bare arms.
“I hope you don’t mind me asking…but is that an Outlaws tattoo there?” Lou said.
Joe wished then he’d kept his coat on. He covered it with his hand. “Yeah, I rode with them in the old days. I got out, though. Those boys were getting a little wild for me.”
Lou nodded, seemed satisfied.
Over on the sofa, Nancy was thrashing in her sleep, moaning and bathed with sweat. Ben was at her side, mopping her down with a cool washcloth.
“Poor kid,” Lou said. “It’s been rough on her.”
“Yeah,” Ruby Sue said, “and I don’t think it’s going to get any better.”
Lou thanked her and left the two of them.
“Hate to say it,” he said, seated over near the fireplace now with Lisa and Johnny, “but that Joe fellow, he ain’t the friendliest.”
“I think he’ll be good to have around if the shit starts,” Johnny said.
Lisa nodded. “Christ, he’s a frigging giant.”
Lou said, “You check out his tattoos? He was with the Outlaws. You guys know who they are, don’t you?”
“Outlaw bikers,” Johnny said. “I knew some in Milwaukee.”
“Those guys are bad news. Criminals, I guess. Hooked up pretty tight in the underworld like the Angels and the Pagans and the rest.” Lou saw they weren’t really interested, but pressed on undeterred. “What do you suppose these two came to Cut River for?”
Johnny shrugged. “Maybe nothing. Gypsies, man. They like to move around.”
But Lou didn’t believe that; Ben had told him that Ruby Sue said they’d come to do some work, that they had a lot of guns. But he supposed it didn’t really matter. Right now, they needed every gun freak they could dig up. And then some. Dawn was a long way off yet.
That conversational track was a dead end, so Lou tried to lighten things up. “Hey?” he said. “You ever hear about the guy who walks into the bar with the crocodile?”
Johnny grinned. “No, but I want to. I could handle a joke.”
“Yeah,” Lisa said, warming up, too.
Lou cleared his throat. “Okay. Guy walks into this bar with a crocodile at his side. Right away, of course, people gather. So the guy says: ‘I can put my dick in his mouth, let him close it, and when he opens it, my dick’ll still be there. Untouched.’ The croc’s got its jaws wide now and everyone’s checking out those teeth. Look like they could shred tin cans. ‘Do it then,’ someone says. ‘Fifty bucks up front,’ says the guy. The money appears and the guy unzips his pants and sticks his horn right in the croc’s mouth. He smacks it on the head with a beer bottle and it closes its jaws. People cringe, but the guys still smiling. He smacks the croc with the bottle again and he opens his mouth. The guy’s prick is still there, not so much as a scratch on it. Okay. So he says, ‘Anyone else wanna try?’ This woman walks up and says, ‘Okay,’ getting down on her knees, ‘just don’t hit me in the head with that bottle.’”
Everyone was laughing and it felt really good to laugh.
It almost seemed like a perfectly ordinary function that had somehow been lost in this awful place where nothing was funny at all.
“Hey, man,” Ruby Sue said, waltzing over, “don’t leave me out, I wanna hear it, too.”
Lou started into it again, glad as always to have an audience. Johnny and Lisa sat raptly for the second telling (entertainment being scarce in Cut River). Even Joe came over this time. Lou had just gotten his stride down when he heard it.
“Listen,” he said, not smiling now. “You hear that?”
“What?” Lisa said.
“Listen. The churchies downstairs…”
“They’ve stopped singing,” Johnny said.
“Don’t the natives stop drumming right before they attack in those jungle movies?” Ruby Sue offered, but everyone ignored her.
“You hear that?” Lou said.
They all did. A muted, distant popping.
“Gunfire,” Johnny announced. “Maybe the cavalry’s rolling in. Maybe.”
“Do you think so?” Lisa said hopefully.
But then it was gone. After five minutes of silence, it still had not returned.
The vacuum created by the lack of muted hymns and distant gunfire only lasted a moment or two. Then another sound rose up to take its place. It came from outside.
“Jesus,” Lou said, “what the hell is that?”
And that was the question that played at all their minds.
Because they could hear it rising up, getting louder and louder: a mournful baying sound as though dozens of wolves were howling in the night. It was an eerie, discordant melody.
Lou heard and it made the skin at the back of his neck tighten. The flesh at his spine began to crawl.
Someone said, “Dogs, it’s dogs.”
“No,” Ruby Sue said. “It’s not dogs. Listen. It’s them. The rabids. They’re howling…”
They went to the window to look.
Lou crowded there with the others.
Yes, the nocturnal hordes.
The moon was high and full over the town and the rabids had climbed to the peaks of roofs, the tops of cars, shimmied up telephone poles and snaked up trees. He could see them, man and woman and child, staring up at the moon with horrid fascination, baying like mad dogs, held in rapt lunatic fascination by that glowing orb. Like the tides or the weather, the rabids were moved by unseen forces.
“Jesus Christ, that sound,” Lisa said helplessly, “it’s driving me nuts. I…I can’t think…”
It seemed to work some nerve, aggravate some atavistic memory and everyone suddenly got very restless. In fact, it seemed like those baying voices were unlocking some primitive drive of aggression and hatred. Everyone in that room refused to look at one another. Afraid, maybe, that they’d see the faces of beasts.
Lou felt it as strong as any other.
He couldn’t seem to think straight. He wanted to run, to attack, to ravage. His muscles were tensed, his teeth gnashing, his dick hard in his pants.
And they were suddenly all like that.
Circling each other like beasts of prey, refusing to accept what that they were hearing, what it was doing to them. Trying without luck to block out that song, the song of the hunt, the song of some primeval festival of bloodlust and hunger.
And it was about that time that Nancy woke up.
*
She emerged from her frightful sleep like a swimmer breaking the surface of an icy lake. Her throat felt tight, her body felt cold. She sat up and the blanket fell from her. Her hands were hooked and arthritic in her lap. She could see the others. They were walking in circles, breathing heavily. She could smell them, smell something rank and musky coming off them. It made her nipples go hard, made waves of warmth tremble in her groin.
Her mouth was sticky, her lips swollen and parched.
She’d never known such thirst.
She opened her mouth to speak, but her throat was so dry that all that came out was a strangled barking sound.
There was a glass of water on the table before her. Her fingers shaking, she reached out for it, even though the sight of it made her somehow nauseous. She shook her head, trying to free herself of the strange impulses and shattered thoughts that tumbled through her brain. She brought the glass to her lips and drank deeply.
The water was like acid in her belly.
Convulsions ripped through her and she vomited it back up in a warm stew of bile that ran down her chin. She wiped it off with the back of her hand and was not surprised to see a smear of blood.
She tried to stand and fell over, crashing into the table.
She couldn’t seem to draw a breath; it was like trying to breathe through canvas. The air she sucked in felt heavy and wet. The room spun and her head reeled. Black dots swam before her eyes.
Then it seemed to pass.
Drool ran from her lips and her teeth chattered. She pulled herself up, more spasms tre
mbling through her like labor pains. She saw faces staring at her and what remained of her thinking, rational brain tried to put names to the faces, tried to fit together all the images in her mind, and tried desperately to make some lucid connection.
But it was impossible.
Her thoughts were disjointed, confused, and feral.
The people…they were saying things to her.
Moving in closer now. Especially the tall, bearded man.
Threatened.
Yes, she felt threatened.
They were trying to draw her into a trap, tightening their little circle around her. They would get her down…bite, claw, rend, and kill. She snarled at them, trying to frighten them off. Her skin was tight and pebbled with gooseflesh. Hairs on her arms, the back of her neck were standing taut. She remembered speech and tried to use it. Her jaws snapped wildly, her lips pulled back.
Hissing now, she slipped away from them, saw the window and knew it was a way out. But when she got close to escape, they all started to cry out and in the glass she saw a distorted, drooling face capped by a wild pelt of hair and jumped back.
It was her reflection.
Spasms jerked through her, convulsions hit her with the shuddering impact of machine gun fire. The world spun, steadied itself. A low hoarse growling erupted from her throat.
They were closing in on her.
She sighted on their throats, knowing it was where she must sink her teeth.
Her brain raging with hallucination and nightmare imagery, she stood her ground, ready to disembowel the first that came within reach.
*
Ben was the first to try to get within reach of her.
When he was within a few feet, she snarled and spit at him. Using her fingers like claws she tore at his face. Ben stepped back, realizing with terror that she’d been going for his eyes.
Like an animal, an animal, she’s not even human now…
Lou approached cautiously from one side, Johnny and Lisa from the other.
“Don’t get too close,” Lou said to Ben. “Talk to her. Try to soothe her.”
Ben was trying. Speaking in low, hushed tones like the sort you’d use to calm a child who’d awoken terrified from a bad dream, he tried to reason with her. He told her who he was. He told her who she was. He spoke about things only she would remember, hoping to trigger some memory. He spoke of their children. How much she loved them. How they loved her. He kept speaking, tears running down his cheeks now, knowing that Nancy was dead and this thing was not her.
Lou knew it was bad, the worst-case scenario.
But if nothing else it had snapped them out of whatever had possessed them. A problem had presented itself. A problem that took human minds to solve, one that required sensitivity, care, and logic—human traits.
Nancy’s eyes were wide and unblinking.
They looked oddly hollow and empty, but they glistened wetly.
Canine eyes.
Lou didn’t dare get too close. She was no more human now than a rabid pit bull. Her eyes were stark and mad, completely insane. She was…obscene. No other word seemed to fit as she snarled and snapped and clawed at them. Snotty tangles of blood and mucus swung from her lips.
Johnny worked his way silently behind her.
Lisa and Lou slowly closed from either side to distract her. Nancy looked directly at Lou and he felt his guts go to sauce. He’d never seen such vile, mindless hatred before. A high, moaning sound came from deep in her throat.
Then Johnny had her, locking her arms behind her.
Ben darted in, “Don’t hurt her! Don’t hurt her!” he was crying, but that didn’t seem to be a worry, because she writhed and undulated in Johnny’s arms like she was made of jelly. Her face was pulled into a bestial grimace of rage.
Lou tried to get in close and her left foot kicked out and caught him in the chest. It was like being struck by a sledgehammer. He stumbled back and fell over a chair.
Joe was there now, too. As he tried to take hold of her clawing hands, her fingers scraped over his face, opening bleeding ruts.
Lisa was back-handed and dropped violently to the floor.
Ben caught her around the waist, her hands pounding at his head with meaty thuds. Strips of skin and clots of hair were torn from his scalp. But he held on and so did Johnny, trying to pull back on her with everything he had so she wouldn’t be able to bite her husband. She squirmed in their arms like a sack of vipers, contorting and slithering, moving with greased, repulsive gyrations.
Finally, she broke free from Johnny and went straight for Ben.
Johnny quickly brought the ball of his right hand down on the nape of her neck with a thud. Her eyes rolled back and she folded up limply like a lawn chair.
They all stood around staring at each other, panting, sweating.
“Un-fucking-real,” Ruby Sue said.
Ben cradled his unconscious wife in his arms. His face was wet with tears. Rioting with emotions, he stared at her, seeing blood running from the corners of her mouth. “What did you do?” he said to Johnny. “What in fuck’s name did you do to her?”
“I just put her out,” he explained, his face white. “She was going to bite you.”
Ben sat there on his knees, rocking her slack form. One of her arms fell from her lap and struck the floor, knuckles rapping.
Joe crouched down. Felt for a pulse at her wrist, her throat. He checked her eyes, put an ear to her chest. He stood up, his face striped with red welts. He shook his head. “She’s dead, man,” he muttered. “She’s gone.”
Ben covered her with his weeping form, crying out insults at Johnny. Lisa managed to insert herself, telling him it was only the disease, the germ, whatever the hell it was. That it was nobody’s fault.
But Ben shoved her out of the way.
He picked up his wife and carried her over to the dining room table in the next room. He whispered things to her and placed a blanket over her after he kissed her.
The others just stood around stupidly, wordlessly.
That’s when the door was thrown in.
21
First thing they saw was an overweight man, cradling a shotgun in his arms, step through the door. “Evening,” he said. “Name’s Earl Rawley. Pleased to meet you.”
Lou stared at him incredulously. “You don’t say?”
Rawley nodded, brought the shotgun up. “And if you make one wrong move, as they say in the cowboy flicks, I’ll spray you all over the room. Promise.”
He wasn’t alone.
A thin, sparse man with a shock of silver hair and even white teeth trailed him as did two other men, one woman, and a young girl. All dressed to kill in their Sunday finest, they carried clubs made from table legs, kitchen knives. They looked crazy.
“What the fuck is this about?” Joe said, stepping forward.
Rawley moved back a bit, intimidated by Joe’s sheer bulk. “This is about living and dying, about right and wrong,” he said, grinning with bad teeth. “It’s about doing what I say or dying.”
He was round like a barrel and not much taller, barely over five feet. He wore a straw cowboy hat with a green plastic band around it. His beady eyes were framed by black Coke bottle glasses and he looked crazier than a rat in a blender.
Johnny, of course, was carefully considering his options. As was Joe.
Ruby Sue and Lisa stood there next to Ben.
“Let’s just relax here,” Lou said. “Way I see it, the real enemy are those outside. If we join forces—”
“We will join forces.” Rawley nodded. “Yes sir, we surely will. See I came into this town with a truck full of frozen meat bound for the A&P. All the way from Texas. Just another stop. What I strolled into was this bullshit. Those crazies attacked my truck, ripped the goddamn doors off. If it wasn’t for my shotgun here, I’d be like them now. Preacher here heard me shooting, came to my rescue.”
The preacher nodded, knowing it was all too true. “Yes. The righteous are few in number now. Had we�
��” he swept his hand to include his little flock “—not been away the past few days, we would be among the evil ones.”
“They’re not evil,” Lou pointed out. “Not really. Just…infected.”
“Like you soon will be, friend,” Rawley said.
“What’re you, fucking nuts?” Lou heard himself ask.
“Maybe. All I know is that I intend to live.”
Johnny moved forward. “I don’t know about you folks, but I’ve had my fill of this redneck cocksucker.”
“Not one step closer, son,” Rawley said. “I swear to God I kill you plain dead.”
Johnny and Joe looked at each other and something passed between them. They both seemed to know that all that was saving Rawley’s pitiful ass was the shotgun.
“What you all dressed-up for, soldier boy?” Rawley asked him.
“The end. Armageddon. Don’t you recognize me, you peckerwood sonofabitch?” Johnny said. “How about you preacher? I’m Death riding a pale horse, motherfucker. I got the keys of hell and death and I’m gonna ram ‘em up your worthless ass.”
“You blaspheme,” the preacher said.
“No, you do. Look at this guy here—you’re aligning yourself with him? The guy’s a psycho,” Johnny said.
“Easy,” Rawley said.
The preacher looked at him, looked away. Like what remained of his congregation, he desperately needed to be led. By anyone or anything. Without leadership, divine or earthly, he was without substance.
Rawley stroked the trigger of the shotgun. “Don’t listen to him, preacher. That sonofabitch’ll slit your throat quicker than a teenager fucks. And that’s the Gospel according to Earl Rawley.”
Ben said, “My wife’s dead. Now I’m dead, too,” he said and meant it, moving forward past Lou. “When he shoots me, take him down.”
Lou grabbed a shoulder, stopped him. “No, if you do that your death means nothing. Stay back.”
Rawley nodded happily. “That’s right, friend. You see, maybe I am crazy. Crazy enough that I’ve had my fill of Yankees for one lifetime. I’ll kill as many as I got to. To protect myself…and the congregation, of course.”
Lisa came forward now. “Yankees? Yankees?” she said, lit up like a flare now. “In case you haven’t noticed, you hayseed fucking yahoo, the Civil War’s been over 130 years and counting. Yankees? For the love of God, you ignorant moron. What barnyard did your mama conceive your sorry ass in?”