by Tim Curran
It was an easy hundred feet of open, deep water.
He wasn’t much of a swimmer. There was no way he would be able to make it across with the shotgun. Far in the distance he could see the black hulk of the bridge. See dying fires smoldering away over there. Dark, still shapes waiting. He could smell the stink of wood smoke and worse odors.
You can’t go over there, dip shit, so get going.
Night birds called out in the sky.
He moved in further, feet slipping and sliding on the loose rocks and muddy bottom. The entire surface was like a mirror reflecting the bright moonlight. He looked up. The moon was fringed by a shaggy beard of gray clouds. The light would be gone soon. And was that better or worse?
His legs were getting numb.
The water was up to his waist now.
He wasn’t even a dozen feet into it yet. His breath was coming in short, sharp gulps, his body trembling violently from the chill wetness.
There was a splashing somewhere. The sound of something heavy being dropped or thrown in.
A fish?
A goddamn big one by the sound.
Shivering, the shotgun tight in his grip, Lou listened.
He heard the sound of water slowing rushing past, lapping at the banks and the dock. There was another splash off to his right.
He swallowed.
The river was getting deeper. Pretty soon, he’d have to dive in, swim for the opposite bank. The water was heavy in his nostrils with a dank, dark odor.
He didn’t like it at all.
Something brushed against him.
He almost screamed, stumbling back, nearly going under. He held the shotgun out. Yes, he could see it now. A large, long shape just beneath the surface. He got closer. He reached out, brushed it with his fingertips and felt flesh, cold and stiff like rubber. A body. A corpse. In the liquid darkness, there was no way to tell if it was male or female. The current carried it away sluggishly.
Lou let out a breath.
Nothing to be afraid of.
The body count in this town was going to be through the roof.
Nothing to worry about.
Of course, his brain began to wonder if that poor bastard had been trying to cross, too, and—
Another splash. Just off to his right now.
Ahead of him, there was something else.
Something floating.
Something round.
It had black filaments streaming around it like weeds. A head. Yes, the top of a head, hair swimming around it like deep-sea snakes. It rose up, breaking the surface.
Lou let out a muffled cry.
It was a woman, her face white as bleached flour. Her eyes were yellow dying stars, her grin was like needles in the moonlight.
Lou felt a scream building in his throat and he swallowed it down.
“Get away,” he heard his voice say. “Get away or I swear to God I’ll kill you.”
She didn’t move.
She just waited there with her face just above the sluicing water. He could hear her breathing with a rattling, diseased sound. She licked her lips. When her voice came it was clotted and thick as though she were speaking through a mouthful of seaweed: “Hide and seek,” she said.
And then her face disappeared slowly back down into the water like a sinking ship.
Lou waited.
A moment, then two.
Like a shark, she’s like a shark, showing her dorsal before going under for the attack…
With that in mind, he wheeled around wildly, trying to see movement, anything.
The water before him exploded with motion. Hands took his ankles, pulled his feet out from under him. He went down into the foul blackness, fought back to the surface.
She came at him from behind.
This time, as he fell, he brought the butt of the 12-gauge down with everything he had. He felt it strike something, something that gave. The hands were gone. When he pulled himself up this time he was farther out in the river. The water was up to his chest now.
And that had been her plan…to get him out in the deep water.
He started rushing to shore and she vaulted out of the water, her head catching him in the belly and tossing him back further. Swinging the shotgun underwater to keep her off him, but with little force, he broke the surface again, gulping for air. The water was nearly to the top of his shoulders now.
She was succeeding, his raging mind told him, pushing him out further and further.
He had to make it to the shore.
The water went calm and she was nowhere to be seen.
Lou made his break for it and then she came up again right in front of him.
She clawed wildly at his face. He felt her nails dig furrows in his cheek. She smelled like rotting fish. Her bloodless face was plastered with stringy hair, lit by a vicious grin.
He saw something catch the pale moonlight in her right hand.
He lurched back, felt a blade slice open his nose, then rip through his shirt into his shoulder. He brought the shotgun around and knocked her arm away as it made for a killing blow. He stumbled back and went underwater again.
Drop-off.
He plunged down into the deep blackness, felt his shoes brush tangled weeds. He was out of breath and needed air badly, but he would not submit. He’d play her game. Instead of making for the surface, he pushed himself along underwater with powerful kicking strokes and kept going until he sensed the river bottom beneath him. He came up again, the water just beneath his chest now. His heart was hammering, hitching painfully as it skipped beats.
The moon slid behind a wall of dark, boiling clouds.
She came up again, the knife flaying at his face. He knocked it away, ducked under it, and cracked her alongside the head with the butt of the 12-gauge. She made an almost canine yelping-sound and fell backward with a resounding splash.
He went right over the top of her, feeling his shoes come down on her soft belly, then on the ball of her head. He pitched forward and was half-dog paddling, half-crawling through the violently thrashing water.
He fell back on his ass and he was only in a few feet of water now, the shadows of the willows on the riverbank falling over him with a dark chill. He could feel the sticky, warm oozing of his own blood running down his face and chest.
The woman came out of the water about seven, eight feet away.
She was small and frail, pathetically thin. She’d lost her knife, but was coming on anyway. Making a low growling sound, she fought through the water, her jaws snapping open and closed.
“Come and get it, bitch,” Lou gasped.
He brought the shotgun up, aimed generally for her chest, and pulled the trigger. The chamber explosion was like thunder. Buckshot vaporized her neck, her sternum, meat spraying out over the surface of the water.
She was thrown back into the deep.
She fought free one more time, the hole in her upper chest big enough to toss a softball into. She screamed and writhed and sank beneath the water.
Lou made it to shore.
Panting, he watched and waited.
Nothing. He figured with that hole in her, she had filled up with water like an empty can and sank to the bottom, down into that loathsome blackness. In his fatigued, frazzled mind, he could see the currents dragging her along the muddy bottom, easing her past the drop-off where she would submerge into the depths, her clown-white face caressed by river weeds.
He pulled himself wearily to his feet.
Jesus, he was running on batteries here; he couldn’t take much more. Dawn was still hours away. The river had turned into a nightmare. What next?
He looked and saw the schoolhouse.
And then he knew.
23
Joe was a large man and he was not designed for running.
Powerful and menacing, you didn’t want to go one on one with him. He’d crush you, pull your arms off, and use your skull for an ashtray. In his checkered career, he’d ridden with both the Outlaws and Sata
n’s Choice up in Canada.
He’d fought with them.
Killed with them.
Done time with them.
He was a tough man and a good guy to have at your side.
But he was not a runner.
Two blocks of steady pounding after they’d evacuated the church and his legs felt like they’d been pumped with gelatin. He grabbed Ruby Sue by the shoulder, pulled her to a stop.
“Can’t, babe,” he panted. “Can’t run…no more.”
She looked around desperately.
She was winded, too, but, then again, she weighed 115 pounds and not 350 like Joe. That was one hell of a wagon of meat to be pulling around.
“Over there,” she said, indicating a narrow passage between two Quonset huts.
Joe nodded, dragging his ass over there, squeezing in and collapsing. “Damn,” he said.
“Easy, baby, easy,” Ruby Sue said, stroking his huge forearm. She peered around the corner of the hut. Wet streets reflected moonlight. Leaves were heaped in gutters. Storefronts were silent and staring.
“It’s cool, babe. It’s cool. They must’ve found easier pickings.”
Joe suddenly looked up. “You hear that?”
Ruby Sue cocked her head. “What?”
“That,” Joe said, narrowing his eyes. “Gunfire. You hear it?”
She nodded. “Oh yeah. Somebody’s bustin’ some caps.”
“Big time.”
Joe was jealous, if anything.
They’d rolled into this shithole with enough artillery to start World War III and look where they were now—unarmed, desperate, in a world of serious hurt. About all they had were their wits and that wasn’t gonna slay the beast.
Joe figured he could probably take one of the rabids out with his bare hands. Had they been people, he could’ve done three or four of them without working up a sweat. He’d done it before.
But these things, damn, they were wild. Vicious. And strong, too. They fought like animals.
Ruby Sue and he had barely made it out of the church alive.
As it was, he had two of those pricks hanging off him like remoras on a shark’s belly. He’d tossed them—one into the bushes, the other right through the windshield of a parked car—but it had been close. Real close.
They’d scratched him, but he hadn’t been bitten and that was the important thing. He figured the others got killed.
And if Lisa was among them, all the better.
Rested now, he crawled out and checked the scene. Looked cool. He had some ideas here. One of them was to get some kind of earthmover, maybe a front-end loader, a big nasty piece of iron, and plow right through the car barricade. That was a possibility.
Then he looked up the street. “You check that?” he said to Ruby Sue.
“What’s that, babe?”
“Right there.”
She saw it, nodded, started to smile. “We on the same page?”
“Sure as shit,” he said.
There was a sporting goods store just up the block. It looked like maybe it had been ransacked—the plate glass windows were shattered, the door was hanging off its hinges…but if they were really lucky, they might find some guns there. And ammo. Then they could get a car, find themselves a big piece of iron and they’d be good to go.
Silently, cautiously, they moved up the sidewalk.
“We gonna leave without her?” Ruby Sue asked.
“We gotta, babe,” he said. “No choice in the matter. I think she’s done anyway.”
“Yeah, sure.”
He put his arm around her, held her tight. She felt good. “But I ain’t taking any chances. We can’t go back to Detroit empty-handed. That’s why we’re going to Utah.”
She stopped. “Utah?”
“Sure. Remember Brooker? Glen Brook? Rode with the Angels? He’s retired now. Got hisself a big place out in Utah—horses, cattle, bikes. Big old ranch. That’s where we’re going. Nobody’ll find us there. We get out of here, we quick clean out our place, and head west. Fuck the rest.”
The inside of the sporting good’s store looked very much like a cyclone had done its thing there. Shelves were emptied, display cases broken. Everything from rubber waders to fishing poles, hunting vests to basketballs was heaped and piled on the floor.
They had to wade through the mess.
The gun cases were shattered, too, but the guns themselves, for the most part, had not been disturbed. Joe got a nice piece for himself: a Colt Python .357 Mag and some speedloaders. He found Ruby Sue a Browning .380 semi-auto. He took a 12-gauge Remington pump off the rack and filled a duffel with boxes of ammo. The guns all had trigger locks, but the keys were in a drawer beneath the cash register.
“Now we’re ready,” he said.
Ruby Sue went to use the head and he kept an eye out. A thief most of his life, the desire to back a truck up and empty the place was overwhelming. Overwhelming, just not exactly practical. Or smart.
He turned around, smiling at the idea, and there was an elderly man standing a few feet away.
Joe started, took two or three uneasy steps back.
There wasn’t a man in the world that truly frightened Joe.
Even in prison where there’d been some truly malicious, degenerate sadists who’d slit your throat for a cigarette, he’d never known fear. But at this moment, staring down at this little old man with his yellow, crocodilian eyes, Joe was frightened.
The guy was just standing there, scrawny pencil arms extended, palms up, fingers wiggling crazily like maybe they were full of electricity. Great dripping gouts of foam and mucus ran from his mouth.
“How about it?” he said with a voice like a gurgling drainpipe.
Joe had the .357 on him. “How about what, asshole?”
“How about it?” he said again and then said something else, but a rancid clot of mucus slopped from his lips and it became unintelligible.
Joe kept watching him, figuring what an amusing, harmless creature this guy must have been before the germ did him—probably sat on the porch telling war stories, bounced babies on his lap, fished trout in the creeks (knew the best spots, too, like all the old timers). Someone’s grandpa for sure.
But now…now the damage was done and this old man was dangerous.
He took a step forward and it wasn’t the step of an elderly man; there was a smooth cat-like grace to it.
“Take a walk,” Joe told him.
He came on.
Joe pulled the trigger and the muzzle flash turned the shadowy shop to daylight.
The old man caught a round square in the chest.
It flung him back four feet, right into an unmolested rack of baseball bats. He and the bats went clattering to the floor. He moaned and writhed and then went still.
Joe figured he’d blown his heart right across the fucking street.
“Nothing personal, old man,” he said.
Ruby Sue came rushing out, Browning in hand.
“Get your ass wet?” Joe said.
“Fucking right,” she said and saw the dead man. “Let’s go. Place is giving me the creeps.”
Outside, they moved up Chestnut, armed to the teeth and ready to do some damage. There was a sudden loud whooshing sound overhead and both of them went down low automatically.
“What the fuck was that?” Ruby Sue said.
“I think it was a helicopter.”
And a fast one at that.
It got him to thinking.
A helicopter with no lights on it. Was that legal? He’d be the first to admit that he knew as much about choppers as he knew about tampons, but there had to be laws, right? For civilians, anyway. And this chopper was no civilian model. It had been jet-black and sleek-looking, definitely a military model.
Which made him start to wonder just what sort of people were about to crash this little party.
24
Lisa found it almost funny in some pathetic way how, during the action back at the church, she’d had no interest in
shoveling any powder up her nose. But now that things had cooled off relatively…the need was back. It had been maybe two hours or so since her last fix and she was burning down like a pile of dry kindling. Her nose was running, her head was aching, and her guts wanted to crawl up the back of her throat.
She needed a taste and she wasn’t going to get one.
That was not only depressing, it was downright criminal.
And if all that wasn’t bad enough, Johnny was acting strange. The twins back at the church…it had been bad. Lisa decided she was lucky, maybe, that she had the junk habit. Go without it long enough and pretty soon, the monkey started jumping on your back, clawing at your brain, pretty much blotting out everything else. It got so she didn’t even care about the guitar she’d left at the church.
Addiction, true addiction, fucked you that perfectly.
But Johnny didn’t have even that.
They were walking again. She didn’t ask where. She was simply overloaded by it all; functioning completely on auto-pilot. She saw the faces of her mother and father. She saw the faces of those she’d come to know in these past few hours. And she saw the faces of the residents of Cut River. The only thing they all had in common was that they were all dead.
All dead.
Yes, all of them.
Just like me.
Johnny was walking ahead of her. He paused, stuffed a plug of tobacco into his jaw. He chewed it, spat. “I’m going to get you out of here. I told you I would and I will or die trying. That’s that.”
“How?”
“We’re not taking the roads. We’re just going to walk out, through the woods, the fields. It’s the only way.”
“But Lou said he tried that. He said—”
“I don’t care what he said. He’s dead. They’re all dead.”
Lisa didn’t have the strength to argue. The weight of the .357 in her fist was like a brick. Her own body weighed only slightly more. Her eyes were blank and her belly was sick and she had the shakes. If she didn’t a get a taste pretty soon, she was afraid of what might happen.
Afraid that she’d run off and make for the church and her stash.
Use your head. There’s too many of them—they’ll get you, make you like them. You don’t want that, do you?