After this, deer hunting would never be the same, that was for sure.
Ben reached the top of the stairs. Setting the rifle down, he eased the crossbars from the cellar door, trying to make as little noise as possible. He couldn’t hear the dead in the house anymore, hadn’t heard them for a while, but that didn’t mean they weren’t still out there, waiting for him.
Another dead male went down, clutching at its face as the bullet bore into the back of its head and exited through its nose. It was an almost-human reaction to the injury, but McClelland knew better — he had seen what these things did to real people, and knew not to attribute any humanity to them at all.
The Chief rushed forward to confirm the kill, his posse on his heels, then nodded in satisfaction. "He’s a dead one." He shouted to those who had fallen behind to take care of a few dead stragglers. "Get up here!"
The group converged.
McClelland considered the number of dead they had just put down, then shouted more orders. "Nick, Tony, Steve ... you wanna get out in that field an’ build me a bonfire!"
Ben opened the cellar door just an inch at first. Then, when the dead did not pour over him like a flood from Hell, he opened it further and peered out into the room beyond.
The place was in a shambles, but there was not a dead man or woman in sight.
Treading softly, he emerged from the cellar. The door and walls were a mess, and the floor was littered with flotsam from all over the house. The dead had moved a lot of stuff around — sometimes to use as a tool to pound at the cellar door, other times to ... to what? To study it? Remember it?
But now the house was empty, with only the lingering smell of decay to suggest the dead had ever been here. Even the front door — what remained of it, anyway — had swung back into a closed position.
Then Ben thought he heard muffled voices from the front of the house.
Circling around to the window, he crept forward, holding the rifle at ready without even realizing he was doing it.
He wanted to see his saviors first, before announcing himself. He wanted to be sure.
"You," McClelland ordered, then pointed at their latest kill, "drag that outta here and throw it on the fire."
Two men returned from checking the other side of the house. "Nothing down here."
"All right, go ahead down and give ‘em a hand." He turned back to his lieutenant and said, "Let’s go ahead and check out the house."
But Vince was already at attention, his focus on the broken front window. "There’s something in there," he told the Chief. "I heard a noise."
His breathing shallow, his heart pounding, Ben edged toward the window, his finger on the trigger in case the dead should pop up like a sick Jack-in-the-Box. He could see people out there now, but his eyes were still adjusting from the darkness of the cellar. He just wanted to be sure...
Yes, yes! He could see them moving with a purpose. And he could hear them talking, something the dead never did.
They were real people. Living, breathing people.
He was saved.
Vince raised his rifle, lined up the sights.
"All right, Vince," McClelland encouraged him, "hit ‘em in the head. Right between the eyes."
The thing in the house stepped far enough into the light for Vince to see it better, which helped his aim. That was great — he really wanted to impress the Chief, maybe turn this deputization into a permanent job when this was all over.
Bang!
The bullet struck the thing in the forehead and it went over backward.
Funny — for a second there, it had looked like the dead man was carrying his own rifle, but that couldn’t be. These things were too stupid to use guns. Unless ...
"Good shot!" McClelland declared, and Vince’s pride swelled to eclipse any doubt that other rifle might have instilled, crushed any lessons that might have been learned that morning at the farmhouse.
"Okay, he’s dead," McClelland continued, "let’s go get ‘im — that’s another one for the fire!"
* * *
Perhaps it was a blessing in disguise that Ben was struck down that morning. Had he survived, had he called out and saved himself from Vince’s bullet, he would have served witness to a world that would have turned his stomach.
Ben could not, of course, see how the hunters approached his corpse, not with respectful hands, but with meat hooks. He could not see the hooks driven savagely into his chest and abdomen, nor the way he was dragged from the house, down the porch steps and across the grass; the way they doused him with gasoline and tossed him onto a pile of wood, some of which was the very same lumber he had used to board up the house, to try to protect himself and those within; how the bonfire was lit, sending black, noxious smoke into the morning sky.
It wasn’t the naked fact of these actions that would have disturbed Ben. Ever the pragmatist, he would have been among the first to argue that it needed to be done, would have shared his own experiences in the farmhouse as evidence of that belief.
No, what would have troubled Ben, would have left him feeling chilled and sickened, was the carelessness with which these actions were carried out, the callous and neglectful manner of his hurried cremation — treating it with the same dignity given to burning compost or old tires.
For while expedience was necessary, would it have harmed the men or their mission to have a moment of silence? For one or two of them to have said a small prayer, even just one or two words? And was that really, truly delight in their eyes when the next dead man or woman staggered over the ridge only to be riddled by bullets from every angle, or perhaps even captured and strung up for target practice?
The cold detachment the men embraced so readily, so willfully, would have shocked the school teacher, made him question whether the human race deserved what was happening to them, to reflect over the ultimate reason for the night of the living dead.
Ben had been skeptical of the so-called "radiation theory" before, and after witnessing this atrocious behavior, that skepticism would have evolved.
Maybe it wasn’t radiation at all, he would have suggested, or a chemical weapon, or a germ or virus, or aliens from outer space, or any of the other popular theories.
Maybe, Ben would have suggested, there was simply no more room in Hell.
About the Author
Christopher Andrews lives in California with his wife, Yvonne Isaak-Andrews, and their Pug, PJ. He is working on his next novels, and continues to work as an actor and screenwriter. He and his wife are expecting their first child at the end of this year.
Excerpts from all of Christopher’s novels can be found at www.ChristopherAndrews.com.
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Table o
f Contents
BARBRA
BEN
TOM AND JUDY
THE COOPERS
NIGHT
DAWN
About the Author
Night of the Living Dead Page 19