by Tim Curran
He looked at the cross on the wall, mumbled some half-remembered prayer from childhood.
The hairs on the back of his neck were standing erect as if the air were crackling with some strange electrical discharge. Gooseflesh covered his arms, crept up his spine. He could smell something sharp, inexplicable, almost like ozone.
The sheet covering Nancy was trembling slightly. It was barely evident, but there…almost as if something was surging through her body.
Ben was shaking now.
Alone in this church, this huge empty silence, breathing and brooding. Alone with his wife.
He sat there, black horror dawning in him.
He stood up. He had to see, had to see…
The body under the sheet began to thrum with evil force. It writhed and thumped against the table as if were being electrocuted. Then it went still.
The air was heavy.
Nancy’s arms slid out from under the sheet to either side, suddenly snapping stiffly erect. They rose up, the fingers splayed and shuddering as if with exertion. A ragged, hollow breathing came from beneath the sheet. She sat up slowly, wearing the sheet like cerements of the grave.
Her fingers twisted and played in the air.
Ben was shaking his head slowly side to side, telling himself there was an explanation for this, that it didn’t mean she had come back from the dead. All around him he could feel dark shadows crawling like worms.
The sheet slid from Nancy’s gray face.
A low, grating sound like an airless, wolfish growl came from the depths of her lungs and became a hissing, inhuman voice. “Ben…oh Ben…I’m better now, I’m better now…”
Her eyes, which had been closed, snapped open.
They were yellow hunting moons rising in that shadowy, pallid face. Slowly they swept the room, found Ben, fixed on him with a flat hunger. Her lips peeled back from even white teeth. She grinned like a rabid dog, tangles of ooze running from the corners of her lips.
Ben backed away, realizing with a bleak, godless terror that, yes, Nancy was indeed dead.
This thing was not his wife.
It only looked vaguely like her.
He kept moving back and fell over the chair.
Nancy flowed off the table with a smooth fluidic motion, one that a human being would have been incapable of. She found her feet, swayed uneasily for a moment like a heaving ship, then steadied herself.
Ben picked up the carving knife from the floor.
She saw it and snarled, lips pulling away from gnashing teeth. “Ben, Ben, Ben,” she managed and it was slithering, wet sound; awful like the noise from a viper pit. Her face seemed to slide and undulate on the bones beneath, creeping with shadow. Her hands were held out to him, fingers wriggling like earthworms caught in sunlight.
He was on his feet then, ready to use the knife. “Nancy,” he said, his voice more of a dry croaking than anything. “Please…just sit down.”
Her eyes were polished glass, reflective like those of an animal as if some shining and invisible membrane had grown over them. Ben could see twin images of the haunted, broken man he now was in her gleaming saffron eyes.
“Hold me, Ben,” she said with a whisper of lonely places. “Come to me, my lover.”
But he would not.
Knife firm in his grip, he kept backing away.
She did not know him. She might have used his name, retained some instinctive memory that he was a friend, but it was only means to an end. She said his name in a mocking voice like a parrot.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he warned her, “so please, just stay away.”
Nancy abandoned the idea of humanity then.
She made a ghastly hissing sound like water thrown on a hot stove and went down low, stalking now like an animal. Rancid loops of drool hung from her chin, frothed from her lips, swung side to side with her creeping motion. Sounds came from her throat, insane barking noises.
“Nancy!” Ben shouted. “For the love of God, listen to me! I was your husband! Do you understand that? Do you know who I am? Who you are?”
But it was obvious she didn’t and did not care.
Reasoning with her was like reasoning with some loathsome queen wasp, stinger bared. And she was much like that—cold and insectile and predatory, human in form only. Unblinking, her glaring eyes were fixed on him, shimmering with a glacial appetite. They were mirrors reflecting some dark and barren void.
She let out a chilling screech and launched herself at him with a frenzied, spidery motion.
Ben brought the knife down and sank an easy three inches of it into her left shoulder. He might as well have jabbed her with a toothpick. She was on him immediately, throwing him down with an easy flick of one white hand. She pinned him down effortlessly. Her face swam in with a wolfish grin, her breath like moldering canvas.
Ben screamed.
Her tongue was blackened and glistening. It played across his trembling lips, feeling cold and fleshy like wet leather. Clots of sour-smelling mucus rained into his mouth. He felt her slimy, frigid lips at his throat. And then her teeth, biting in deep, penetrating like needles.
And then all he was vanished in a cloistral fog.
All that he had been was no more, lost in a haze of thankful madness.
But from some distant room, he could hear the sound of her cackling.
And feeding.
27
“Pass me another one, baby,” Ruby Sue said, reaching down into the GTO and getting another gas bomb from Joe. It was a simple creation—Blatz bottle filled with gasoline, tampon stuffed in its neck. She upended it, getting the tampon wet. She brought it up close to her nose, sniffed it.
Nothing like a little headrush.
What was it about gas that made you want to sniff it?
She flicked her Bic lighter, got the rag burning. “I see a target coming up.”
They passed by a little video store and she threw it with everything she had at the window. The window shattered and so did the Molotov cocktail. The front of Northern Video went up in flames.
“Fucking yeah!” Ruby Sue screamed. “Fuck the world!”
Behind them, three or four other establishments were burning, flames licking from broken windows, plumes of black smoke rising over the streets.
It was all part of Joe’s new plan.
Originally, what he had in mind was something like a front-end loader to smash their way through the barricade of cars and get the fuck out of Dodge. But they couldn’t be wandering around Cut River on foot seeking it out, no more than a blind man was wise to wander around in a cellar filled with rattlesnakes.
When Joe saw the GTO, he knew he had to have it.
Ruby Sue was against the idea, thinking that driving around in a car would attract too much attention in a town where no one was driving. But after Joe hot-wired it and she heard the purr of that big block 400, she was a believer. Problem was, they couldn’t find any front-end loaders. They found some bulldozers and backhoes at an excavating yard, but no front-end loader.
That’s when Joe got the idea.
What they needed to do was to attract attention.
If they couldn’t get out, then bring the people in. There were four or five gas stations in Cut River. Two of them were wide open and waiting. The others could be opened by the right guy. And if the town was burning…somebody would show up.
Besides, Joe figured they already had, what with those helicopters flying over—twice now—and that shooting coming from the north end.
Something was coming down.
Nothing like a little fire to bring rescue.
The GTO had a sunroof.
Not original equipment, but some crazy sonofabitch had decided to cut a hole in the roof of a classic. Joe showed his respect by tearing it off. It made a good bombing port for Ruby Sue.
“Hey, there’s a credit union,” Ruby Sue said, manning her lookout. “Those bastards turned me down for a loan. Let’s do it.”
Joe popped the
curb, drove right across the lawn and Ruby Sue lit up two bombs and let them fly. The shadows retreated as huge balls of orange and red fire engulfed the side of the building.
“HOO YEAH!” she called out.
A trio of rabids were standing at the entrance of an alley, just watching.
She lit up another and heaved it in their direction.
A canvas of flame erupted mere feet from them and they ducked back into the shadows. She slid back into the car.
They’d hit an Amoco convenience store—wide open and empty—and helped themselves to four cases of Blatz and a few boxes of tampons. They dumped the warm beer out and filled the bottles at the pump. They were on their third case already. She looked out the rear window and saw the flickering glow of flames as the town went up.
“What we need is something quicker,” Joe said, bringing the GTO around in a complete circle, sacrificing rubber.
This time they found a Citgo station.
Like most stations these days they sold everything from beer to broasted chicken. The electricity for the pumps was on, all four tiers of them, some sixteen pumps. Giggling, he turned on the hoses one after another, setting the latches so they would not shut off after he let them go. Before long, gasoline was flooding through the parking lot, into the streets. Oceans of it flowed through the grass flanking the lot, pooled around parked cars, and washed up to the station itself.
But the best thing was the tanker truck parked in back.
With any luck it was full.
Joe ran back to the GTO, splashing through the sea of gas.
Behind the wheel, he said, “Ready for some pyrotechnics, babe? Tonight be the night.”
He brought the GTO out into the street and got within three, four feet of the nearest stream of gasoline.
“Man your position,” he told Ruby Sue.
She did just that. She upended a firebomb and got the wick nice and wet. She lit it with her Bic and let it go. It crashed in the street, flames splashing in all directions. Joe saw the fire moving in a blazing yellow-orange wave towards the station.
“ROCK AND ROLL!” he shouted, stomping down on the accelerator and squealing out of there, the back of the GTO fish-tailing wildly until he got it under control.
They were maybe a block away when night turned into day.
A vivid cloud of fire easily forty feet high rose above the rooftops. The explosion was so intense it actually jarred the GTO nearly off the road. The plate glass windows of storefronts shattered and a great surge of heat passed through the car making the chill September night feel like a July afternoon.
But it didn’t end there.
More explosions followed as parked cars went one after the other.
Ruby Sue was hollering like a cheerleader.
But the really big one came next.
The tanker truck went maybe three, four minutes later. Thousands of gallons of gas went up with a deafening peel of thunder. Fireballs and black, rolling clouds of sooty smoke were sent skyward.
“Let’s see ‘em ignore this,” Joe said.
He figured it was only a matter of time before the underground tanks tasted a flame or spark and went up in a blazing, explosive inferno—no doubt, taking a city block or two with them.
With that in mind, it made good sense to get the hell away from there.
“What now, babe?” Ruby Sue said. “We still got more bombs left.”
Now that they were a good distance from the spreading inferno, Joe slowed down, navigating the dark streets. “No need. Not just yet. Let’s just wait around now and see what develops. Something’s gotta happen pretty soon. Half the county’s gotta be wondering what in fuck just happened.”
And when the underground tanks went up it would sound like Hiroshima all over again.
Ruby Sue was sucking on a cigarette, wishing she had some weed. Sitting sideways on the passenger side of the GTO, she watched the glow of the fire behind them. It painted the treetops red.
“You ever see that movie where those people are trapped in that burning skyscraper, Joe? It was awesome. Fire kept getting closer and closer. Shit, I hope we don’t roast-up, man. That would suck.”
Joe coasted slowly up a blacked-out street. “We’re okay, we’re…what the fuck was that?”
Something had thudded against the car.
“Something hit us,” Ruby Sue said.
Thud.
“What—”
Then another thud right on top of the roof.
And then there was no time to discuss as a white arm snaked in through the sunroof and took hold of Ruby Sue by the hair, pulling her up towards the opening. She started screaming and thrashing, kicking out wildly and accidentally catching Joe in the ribs.
The GTO swerved crazily, thumped over a curb, barely missed a tree, and came back down in the street only to sideswipe a parked pickup truck in an eruption of sparks.
Ruby Sue was still shrieking, shoulders nearly drawn through the sunroof now, legs bicycling madly and striking the dashboard, popping open the glove compartment, and spinning the wheel from Joe’s hands more than once.
“Joe, help me for god’s sake! Help me they got me oh shit oh shit—”
Joe had hold of one leg and pulled with everything he had, yanking Ruby Sue maybe a foot or so back into the car so that he could just see her chin, but then, as if attached to a bungi cord, she sprang back up again.
“Cocksucker!” Joe spat, trying to reach behind him for the guns they’d lifted from the sporting goods joint. No dice. He got his hand on the butt of the Remington pump and then it fell behind his seat.
They were at the verge of a lighted neighborhood now.
He made it into the light and stamped on the brakes.
The GTO squealed to a halt, going sideways in the middle of the street, coughed and died.
Ruby Sue let go with a bellowing cry and dropped back into the car.
Her assailant—a thin man with a face white as putty, wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else, his bleached torso dark with what looked like ritual symbols panted in dried blood—slid down onto the hood, clinging there like some huge, bloodless beetle and started slamming his fists into the windshield. A few hairline cracks appeared almost instantly.
Joe tried in vain to get the engine to catch and smelled gas.
Jesus, I flooded her, I flooded her.
The rabid pressed his face to the cracked windshield, staring in at them with vapid eyes, the pupils dilated obscenely and glittering with a demonic yellow shine. He made a hissing, angry sound…or maybe it wasn’t angry, because he knew he had them.
“Sonofabitch,” Ruby Sue said as he leaped off the hood and landed in the street.
Joe threw his door open and the rabid was on him.
His fingers hooked into claws, he slashed at Joe’s face. Joe sidestepped him and smashed him in the mouth with one meaty, broad fist. The rabid stumbled back in a daze, but did not go down.
Ruby Sue was out by then, on the other side of the GTO. “Hey, shit-fer-brains,” she called out. “Over here.”
The rabid turned towards her, a black grin on his dead white features.
She brought up the Browning .380 and pumped two rounds into him.
The first struck him squarely in the chest and spun him around in a complete circle. The second opened up a third eye in his forehead. Dark blood bubbled over his snarling face.
He screamed at her, bleeding profusely, but still on his feet.
He took one stumbling, drunken step forward, his hungry eyes scanning her like a cut of beef.
She shot him in the mouth and he went over stiffly, slamming flatly against the pavement. He twitched and flopped, making horrible gurgling sounds and going still.
Ruby Sue said, “Well, ain’t that just the shits?”
Joe started laughing, amazed as always by her choice of words and her incredible durability in the worst possible situations. “We better let the car rest a minute,” he managed. He turned and opened the back
door to get his guns.
“Yeah, I’m for that,” Ruby Sue said, studying the orange horizon as the fire spread. She sat on the curb, gun in her lap.
Joe turned his head slightly, hearing a roar, thinking maybe it was the fire.
But then knowing with a dread certainty it was not.
A car raced out of the darkness at them.
Lights off, it was on him before he could do much more than move a foot or two. Ruby Sue was on her feet, up against the GTO, mouth open, attempting to say something, but it was too damn late.
Joe saw a radiator grill winking at him like a silver eye.
And beyond it, a few white, grinning faces pressed to the windshield.
The impact was sudden and irresistible, the black Lincoln traveling at well over seventy miles an hour. Joe was sandwiched momentarily between the front end of the Lincoln and the open door of the GTO.
But only momentarily.
The hinges snapped free and Joe and the driver’s side door were dragged fifty feet in a shower of sparks and smoking flesh before they went tumbling across the pavement.
The Lincoln continued along, swerving frantically from side to side, seeming to pick up speed. It crossed an intersection and leaped a curb, slamming into a stout oak with a screech of twisted metal and shattering glass.
It came to rest there, nearly ripped in half, the front end crushed back into the driver’s compartment. The hood was detached and driven through the windshield. There was a stink of gas and it went up in flames. Not a dramatic movie explosion this, but a gentle, almost casual engulfment by flame.
The impact of the Lincoln striking the GTO had sent Ruby Sue careening to the street. Her head smacked the curb and her left wrist was twisted sickly beneath her body. Moments laterher face smeared with red from a gash in her head and her left arm clutched limply at her sideshe was on her feet, stumbling up the road.
Joe was lying in a tangled heap, blood pooling out from him.
The air was ripe with the stench of scorched metal and flesh.
He was moaning.