by Nancy Holder
“Great,” she muttered. “The witching hour has begun. As if this night hasn’t been enough of a drag.”
She began to turn, to start for the street again, but something caught her eye in the moonlight. Up the hill, a cross jutted from the ground, silhouetted in the moonlight. Not a cross, she realized, but a post with a bar nailed near the top.
Her stomach sank and churned and burned. Then went deathly cold. Every muscle in Buffy’s body tensed, as true, rabid fear coursed through her. There had been a scarecrow on that post earlier, she was certain. She had seen it from outside the cemetery. But now . . . Where had it gone? Where could it have gone?
It had rained all day, Halloween rain. And Willow and Xander had warned her about Halloween rain and scarecrows, and not trespassing on the fields they watched over.
Sure, reason enough for a serious wiggins, but not for the fear she felt now. Horrible. Terror like nothing she’d ever known. It was almost enough to make her want to curl up in a ball there in the field. It wasn’t natural. It was some kind of . . .
“. . . magick,” she whispered.
But it didn’t matter. She was terrified. So much so that she didn’t want to walk all the way along the cemetery to get to the street. She was willing, even happy, to make a beeline right through the zombie-shambling-room-only cemetery to get away from this field. Besides, she just realized that she had left her Slayer’s bag somewhere in the cemetery.
Buffy launched herself toward the zombies, toward the stone wall—and slammed into something hard and unyielding. She smacked her forehead against it, had the breath knocked out of her, and was thrown back to the ground.
Now she knew why the zombies weren’t coming into the field. They couldn’t. And whatever was keeping them out was now keeping her in. She was trapped. Her breathing sped up, her terror growing by the instant.
Somewhere up the hill, she heard a low, hissing voice. Please, maybe it’s only the wind!
It called to her.
“Sssslayer!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Willow stared out the passenger window of the Giles-mobile as they raced toward the cemetery. Xander, in the back, scanned through the rear window. Somewhere in the distance thunder rumbled, and the air seemed to fill with moisture again.
Willow shivered, chilled through to her bones. The rain had stopped, but now she wondered if it wasn’t going to start all over again. Still, the chill she felt wasn’t from the weather, but the horrible fear and dread that was creeping over her.
“I don’t think it was an act of nature that interfered with cell reception,” Giles observed as he stepped on the gas.
Willow stirred and shivered harder. “I’m thinking supernature,” she agreed as she glanced in the rearview mirror. “Something didn’t want Buffy to contact you.”
Nervously she played with the frayed edge of Giles’s canvas bag o’ tricks.
“You know,” Willow said hopefully, “one of the vampires at the Bronze told Buffy they had the night off. I wonder if that’s true. We haven’t come across anything diabolical since we three left the school.”
Maybe it was all over because Buffy had killed the pumpkin king, Samhain. Maybe Halloween was over forever.
Xander looked away from the window long enough to drawl, “Yeah, well, he’s the same vampire she dusted for unauthorized snacking not five minutes later. And don’t forget our own private posse, Will. Those being the escapees of the dude ranch from hell who wanted to corral us three.”
“Roy Rogers and Dale Evans,” Giles observed. Willow and Xander looked at him blankly. “Popular American cow-people. I was referring to your Red and Blue Eyes, and their Halloween, um, getups.”
“Cowpeople?” Willow quickly covered her mouth, but she knew Giles saw her quick grin. It amazed her that she could grin at a time like this, but that’s what hanging with Buffy did for—or to—you. You developed a strange sense of humor to keep from going bonkers when confronted by horrors you thought existed only in movies. It was kind of like surviving high school. At least, that was how it was for her.
“Hey, I know about those cowpeople,” Xander piped up. “They had a horse named Trigger that they stuffed after he died.”
“Okay, that’s gross,” Willow said, thinking uncomfortably of the many pets she had had in her life. She couldn’t imagine keeping them around like strange dead trophies. Willow cast Giles a sidelong glance. “Were these people in one of your dusty demon books for mummifying their pony?”
Giles shook his head. “No. They were quite famous, in their day. Which clearly is not your day. As for the stuffing, they put the horse in their museum, I believe.” He pushed up his glasses. “They had a famous theme song. It began, ‘Happy trails to you . . .’”
Giles stopped, apparently distracted.
“He trailed off,” Willow said. “Don’t abandon us now, Giles, we were just reveling in your magnificent tenor.”
Giles sniffed, stared out past the windshield. “Let me tell you what we must do to help the Slayer. To begin . . .”
“He trailed off again,” Xander said.
“What’s wrong, Giles?” Willow asked, peering at him as he put a foot on the brake.
“Mr. Rupert, sir?” Xander queried.
Wordlessly, Giles raised a hand and pointed through the windshield.
The wrought-iron entrance to the cemetery rose like a strange flower in the moonlit sky. A broken tree drooped behind it.
From the tree hung a human body.
“No,” Willow groaned. “It can’t be.” She swallowed down her terror and wrenched open the car door.
“Willow, wait,” Giles called, but she was out of the car before he had completely stopped it. She stumbled, kept running. Her chest was so tight she could hardly move. Certainly, she had been afraid for Buffy before, but it had never really sunk in that Buffy might actually be killed. That they could go on with their lives minus the best friend she had ever had. That the forces of evil might win.
How could she go on without Buffy? How could any of them go on knowing that the Slayer had . . . had lost?
“Buffy,” she cried, and ran through the open gates.
She stumbled to a stop and burst into quick tears of relief. It wasn’t Buffy. It was Mr. O’Leary.
Or what was left of him.
Willow stared at his corpse a moment, then tore her gaze away. Priorities.
“Buffy?” Willow called.
By the time she got hold of herself, Giles and Xander had caught up with her. Giles carried his sack and Xander had the crossbow. Both of them stared up at the dead man.
“Oh my God,” Xander said. His face was chalk white.
“It gets worse,” Willow said, and tugged on Xander’s hand.
“I hate worse,” Xander grumbled, and turned to peer into the darkness across the cemetery where Willow was pointing. “What, are the headstones moving?”
“Those aren’t headstones,” Giles said. “Those are zombies. The walking dead.”
Suddenly, as if someone had given the zombies their cue, they began to moan. It was a horrible, starving, desperate sound that hit Willow like a fist. She staggered under the grief and despair, almost unable to remain standing. There were dozens of them, maybe hundreds, all making the same awful noise.
They were crowded together at the far end of the cemetery. Willow was relieved to see that they didn’t even seem aware that she, Giles, and Xander were nearby.
Then it was as if they had heard her thoughts. A cluster off to the right pivoted slowly to look at the newly arrived alive people. Some of the dead guys began to stumble toward them. The rest were like a writhing, rotten wall of flesh as they stood facing outward, lined up against the back wall as they stared and moaned.
“Isn’t that Mr. Flutie?” Willow asked, first staring and then purposely turning away from the half-chewed-up corpse shambling toward them.
“They’re stuck in here,” Xander shouted, covering his ears. “It must be bumming th
em out. That’s why they’re moaning.”
“No. They’ve gotten out at the back,” Giles shouted, pointing, but Willow was too short to see whatever it was he saw. “They’re grouping along the perimeter of that field.”
“Field?” Willow and Xander cried at the same time.
“But they’re not going in,” Giles mused. “Odd.”
“Is there a scarecrow? Do you see a scarecrow?” Willow demanded anxiously.
“I don’t see one,” Giles said loudly after a minute. “But clearly they can’t go into the field.”
Xander tapped Willow on the shoulder. “What?” she asked, craning to see. “Is there one? Xander?”
He tapped her again.
“Xander, just tell me.”
She began to turn, then realized Xander was standing slightly in front of her to the right. He couldn’t be tapping her shoulder. She whirled around.
A zombie with one eye lunged at her. It grabbed her arm and pulled her toward itself; its mouth opened wide and a worm slithered out.
“Willow!” Giles shouted. He yanked her away and swung the sack at the zombie’s head.
As the three looked on, the sack crushed the zombie’s skull and it sank to the ground.
“Back up,” Giles ordered as three more zombies lurched toward them.
The zombies split up, one coming for each of them. The undead buddy system.
Xander said, “Okay, the plan is modified to?”
“Oh, dear,” Giles said. “Back up.”
“We need a plan B, Giles,” Willow cried.
“That is plan B!” Giles said in frustration.
Somehow, in the short time the three had spent inside the cemetery gates, zombies had completely surrounded them. Over their awful groans came a strangely soft but audible hiss.
“Sssslayer.”
The sound made the hair stand up on Willow’s neck. It spoke of pure evil and hatred and death.
“It came from the field,” Xander said into her ear as he darted a glance over his shoulder toward the back of the cemetery.
One of the zombies swiped at Willow. She jumped back, then spun around to see that more of the zombies who had been standing along the back wall were turning in the direction of those present and accounted for with living, pulsing brains.
“Buffy might be in that field,” Xander went on. “Will, it’s been raining, and Buffy may be in a field.”
Then Xander made a face. He said, “Um, incoming info fact: The bar has just been raised on the possibility of Buffy’s presence in that field.”
He pointed at something.
“Why do you think that she—,” Willow began, then saw Buffy’s Slayer’s bag next to a headstone near the wall.
“Isn’t it great to have twenty-twenty?” Xander asked, not happily.
Willow bellowed, “Giles, we have to get to her.”
“Getting to her. There’s plan B,” Xander agreed as he dogged his zombie dance partner. “But a notion here. Getting to her alive with our brains still in our heads is even better. And the way we do that is?”
No answer.
“Come on, Giles!” Willow said frantically. “It’s shambling room only in here.”
“There are too many of them for us to fight,” Giles observed, swinging at his zombie. His fist connected and the zombie tumbled to the ground. Its legs and feet still moved as if it were walking. “We’ve got to fend them off until I can figure something out.”
“What?” Willow made a fist and grimaced as a zombie in moldy black priest’s garb stumbled in her direction. Its mouth opened and closed, making its jaw do the Rice Krispies snap-crackle-pop. There was nothing in its sightless gaze to suggest it had a mind, and that made it all the more frightening. Vampires and werewolves could be talked to, possibly outwitted. But these witless wonders would keep coming until they were physically stopped. And the Three Musketeers did not have the physics to make that happen.
“Buffy!” Willow called as loudly as she could. Her voice shook. “Buffy, we’re coming as soon as we can!”
“Buffy!”
It was Willow’s voice. Coming from the cemetery. Where the zombies were. Not good.
“Willow, are you okay?” Buffy shouted back. “Is Giles with you? Is Xander okay?”
“There are so many of them!” Willow called. “We’re trying to get to you. We found your Slayer’s bag and Giles has some things he thinks will help you!”
“No, stay away!” Buffy ordered her, waving her hands in case they could see her. “I can’t get to you, but stay out of here.”
Buffy pushed against the invisible barrier, way wigged. Hordes of moaning zombies pushed on the other side. If it should give way when she didn’t expect it, she’d be a nice midnight snack. The zombie equivalent of raiding the fridge. But what was happening to her friends?
“Get out of there!” she cried frantically.
“We can’t. We’ve been boxed in,” Willow said.
Then Willow screamed.
“Willow? Willow! Xander? Giles?” Buffy threw herself at the barrier. She had been terrified moments earlier by the voice she had heard, by the presence she had felt there in the field with her. Now that terror was overwhelmed by her fear for her friends. She kicked and pounded, getting nowhere. All she heard was moaning.
Then Giles said loudly, “Buffy, stay where you are. I’m working on the problem.”
“Which one?” she called. “The barrier, or the zombies, or—”
“Ssslayer.”
The single word sizzled across the back of Buffy’s neck like a piece of dry ice. She began shivering so hard she thought she might be sick. She couldn’t explain it, but there was something in that voice that frightened her more than any horror she had ever faced.
“Ssslayer, come.”
Buffy whirled around and scanned the horizon. To the left was the rise of the hill and the empty cross shape that had once held a scarecrow. To her right, the ground was dotted with rows of trees. Then the hill fell away into a valley, and there was a box shape at the bottom. A building of some sort.
Black clouds began to tumble one over the other, threatening to cover the pale moon. Buffy had the distinct feeling she was being watched, by someone besides her peanut gallery of reanimated corpses. She swallowed down the knot in her throat and glanced from side to side. She could hardly breathe.
“Sorry, I’ll pass on that invite,” she called out as firmly as she could, but her voice shook.
The answer was a low, cruel laugh that seemed to slither up toward her from the valley. She peered into the night. The field was gloomy and dark, and the ground was soaked from the earlier rains.
There were pumpkins everywhere. She was in a pumpkin field.
Xander and Willow had warned her not to walk in any fields. By coming in here, she had set them up for chowtime and landed herself in a trap.
“Come, or they die.”
She could think of nothing to say. No clever retort sprang to mind. No silly remark. It was as if everything was sliding away from her and she was balancing at the edge of a cliff. She took a step forward and tripped over something stretched across the earth. Before she could catch herself, she fell to her hands and knees into thick mud and tangles of vines.
The sense of being watched grew even stronger. As she lifted her head, the vines between her fingers seemed to tighten. She peered down at the earth.
A small, round pumpkin swiveled as she moved her head. She blinked, lurched forward, raised her fist, and crashed it down on the pumpkin. It caved in and began to roll down the hill.
Laughter filled Buffy’s ears, low and cunning and eager.
“Come.”
“Willow, can you hear me?” Buffy called, ignoring the voice.
There was no answer.
Then Buffy realized she no longer heard the moaning of the zombies. She heard nothing but her heartbeat. Struggling, she got to her feet.
“Giles?” she called.
No answer. The
voice had told her, essentially, to follow the bouncing pumpkin. Down into a valley. Where she couldn’t see a thing. Instead, she turned left and started climbing the hill.
Suddenly, like huge plumes of smoke, more clouds raced across the moon. They were gigantic, more like a thick web than clouds, and before she realized what was happening, Buffy was plunged into complete blackness.
She took a breath and kept walking. She thought of her Slayer’s bag back in the cemetery, and all the goodies it contained—stakes, matches, candles—and realized that she was basically defenseless except for her strength and her reflexes. At least the others might be able to make use of the things in her bag, she thought. At least they weren’t as defense less as she was.
“So not defenseless,” she muttered. “I’m the Slayer.”
Something crackled behind her. She whirled around in an attack stance. She could see nothing. She moved her hands in front of herself, to each side, waved them behind herself. She felt nothing.
A bolt of lightning cracked across the sky, lighting up the field.
A dozen pumpkins were fanned in a semicircle behind her. She didn’t know if they had actually moved or if they had lain in the field that way, but she slammed as many as she could down the hill as the light faded.
Another crack of lightning spiked through the blackness.
Buffy spun to face the hill.
At the crest, in the brilliance, a figure loomed. The way he stood, the flash of light gave her just a glimpse of his body, his head still blanketed by darkness. He wore overalls and a dark, ragged shirt. His hands were on his hips and his feet were encased in cast-off work boots. His hands were made of straw.
She took a step backward.
Lightning cracked a third time.
She saw his face.
She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound would come out.
His head was a huge, rotting pumpkin. Green flame licked out of jagged carved eyes, which shifted and squinted as he looked down on her. A nightmare jack-o’-lantern, the pumpkin head leered at her, hideous and savage. Its mouth—lined with horrible fangs—was pulled into a broad smile so wide it disappeared around the sides of the blistered gourd.