Dead Stop

  …as his head tore loose in one wet, gristle popping, rip.

  Holly shrieked anew as the headless corpse geysered blood and fell over against her. Gore fountained from the severed neck, drenching the girl as she fought to get the grisly thing off of her. It wasn’t easy due to the reclining position she was forced into by having her foot on the gas pedal. She kept it jammed to the floor, barely noticing the multiple thuds against the car’s bumper as it rocketed blindly past the truck stop towards the rear of the parking lot.

  With a howl of despair, Holly pushed the corpse back upright…only to have it slump forward now that it had slipped free of the shoulder restraint, and fall forward onto the steering wheel. It turned under the cadaver’s weight, and she felt the car veer sharply to the left.

  Even dead, the jackass was still doing all the driving that mattered.

  Holly fought to push herself up so her head would be above the level of the dashboard and she could see. At the same time her foot groped for the brake pedal, but Gerald’s legs were in the way. In the end it didn’t matter, for she got her head up just in time to see it was too late.

  A wall of corn stalks filled the headlight beams outside the windshield.

  The BMW went off the asphalt and into the soft, deep mud of the plowed furrows at over sixty miles per hour. It was almost like hitting a wall.

  Out of her own shoulder strap due to her efforts with the gas pedal, Holly slammed against the dashboard with bone crunching force as the vehicle smashed into the drenched soil, bounced out, then plowed another long trench into the mud. The airbag deployed after the bounce, almost smacking the slight girl unconscious while sparing her a second impact during the final collision with the soft earth. After another couple of seconds the heavy car bulldozed to a stop…buried up to its axles in the streaming ground.

  Nothing moved for a moment, the hissing of the rain in the corn stalks closing back in as a substitute for silence.

  Holly became aware of the storm hammering the roof in the darkness, unsure if minutes or mere seconds had passed since the crash. She lay, half slid down the seat to the floor. Every part of her body hurt, and she didn’t want to think about the weight now leaning against her from the driver’s side. She knew what it had to be, but this time she felt pretty sure the blood on her face belonged to her…

  …along with assorted fractures, contusions, and god only knew what other damage.

  A feeble attempt to raise one arm sent jagged shards of crystal sharp agony through her back and side. She was hurt…hurt bad. The only reason the girl didn’t scream was because the pain from inhaling almost caused her to black out. She barely clung to consciousness, and the effort to do even that drained her by the second. Her grip on the world was fading. It felt as if her mind circled a black hole at the back of her head, soon to be sucked in by its inexorable pull.

  Some small part of Holly realized with a remote sense of sadness that when that happened there would be no coming back. It would be her final exit. The big goodbye.

  She was dying.

  And she wasn’t even scared.

  Holly lay there in the dark wreckage, barely moved by it all. The thought of dying in a half sunk BMW in the middle of a soggy Texas cornfield only generated a mild sense of bemusement. It sure didn’t live up to the dramatic passings performed by many of the actresses she had aspired to follow. It didn’t appear she would even get the benefit of an audience.

  Then a flare of lightning lit the night, and she saw she wasn’t alone.

  Not even the skeletal face peering in over the edge of the driver’s side window alarmed her. Her only response was to think the pigtails were a sad touch.

  You were somebody’s baby, weren’t you. Her mind did another shallow orbit of that black pit, and she understood the next one would be its last. You know what? When I was your age I wore pigtails, too. I guess compared to you, I got bonus time. No point in complaining…you get what you get. And once you’re dead, what difference does it make?” You just sleep the Big Sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.” Right?

  Paraphrasing the line of Raymond Chandler’s reminded her of Humphrey Bogart, and Holly smiled at the thought she still had control over one last thing in this life. One last thing…even though it would be unwitnessed by any audience that would appreciate it, it would still be hers.

  Her exit line.

  The dim outline of the thing shifted position, as if trying to discern whether somebody inhabited the car or not. In silhouette, it looked like a child peeking over a candy counter. Holly supposed in its own grisly way, it was. She gave it a feeble smile, and summoned the last of her strength.

  “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.”

  It was barely more than a whisper, but it was enough.

  The small horror locked its gaze on the source of her voice, and scrabbled frantically at the edge of the window. The scratch of its claws and shoeless feet made a loud, frenzied staccato against the metal of the door. After a few seconds, the little monster’s struggles pulled it over into the car and it immediately launched itself at the still form in the far seat.

  But Holly wasn’t there anymore.

  Behind the gentle smile, the girl had made her final orbit and fallen down that endless hole into nowhere.

  ###

  Back at the truck stop, three horrified pair of eyes stared out the windows at the monster that used to be Buddha Boy Norville. It calmly tore a chunk out of Gerald’s fleshy head with its teeth as it lumbered towards the gas pumps.

  “Oh my God,” Rachel breathed aloud in open disbelief, “the poor little bastard was right.”

  Chapter Eight: Stormbreak

  Stormbreak - Rachel

  “Marisa,” Rachel carefully used one of the last strips of cloth available to wrap the end of the girls foot, “I can’t tell if you have a broken toe or not…not without an X-ray. Truthfully, I don’t think it is. But I can definitely say you aren’t going to be winning any footraces for a while, so keep that in mind. Okay?”

  The dark haired waitress hugged herself and nodded, not bothering to reply. That worried Rachel more than the injury to the girl’s foot.

  It’s getting to us, the doctor reflected as she glanced around the kitchen. We’re all tired, scared, and starting to wear down. And it just keeps getting worse. Every time something happens, it ends up being worse than before.

  “Hey.” She gently shook Marisa’s uninjured foot to catch her attention. “You still with us?”

  “I’m okay,” the girl responded in a distracted voice, “I’m just trying to figure a couple of things out. Have you talked to Harley yet?”

  “Not yet.” She gently worked Marisa’s sock back over her injured foot. “I know he wants to show me something, but first things first. So I’ve got him doing something for me until I’m done here. Somebody’s got to keep you two tough guys patched up, you know.”

  That elicited just the hint of a smile at the corner of the young woman’s mouth.

  “Thanks, doc. So I’m still good to go?”

  Rachel eyed the girl judiciously.

  “Well, I suppose so.” She handed the waitress her shoe, then held up a warning finger as the girl reached to take it. “But you’re going to have to use your own judgment, depending on what you’re doing. I would recommend you avoid situations that require you to run. Even if you can force yourself to do it, you won’t be as fast and you won’t be able to keep it up long. And of course, it’s going to be sore as hell.”

  “Yeah, I noticed.”

  “Just remember,” Rachel held her gaze, “we can be as tough as the guys…or at least some of us can…but we have to be smarter about it.”

  “I know.”

  I bet you do, Rachel surveyed her patient. You’ve been through hell tonight, in more ways than one, but you’re still ticking. And if you’re willing to do what it takes to get us out of this alive, I guess I shouldn’t complain and get on with doing my part.


  “Then you’re ‘good to go.’” She patted the girl on the leg and turned towards the back hallway. “I guess I better go look at what Harley wants to show me.”

  “But you don’t want to see it, do you.”

  Rachel stopped and looked back to see Marisa favoring her with an evaluating look of her own.

  “No,” she admitted. “I’m a veterinarian, not a human doctor. I’m used to the sight of dead animals. But I’m no different about dead human bodies than anybody else. I don’t want to see this. Actually, I’m a little scared.”

  “But what about you at the fire door with your little light?” Marisa cocked her head in curiosity. “You didn’t seem bothered at all then.”

  “Because I stopped viewing those things out there as bodies,” Rachel pursed her lips and thought aloud. “Whatever they were…and no matter what they look like…they aren’t really corpses anymore. They’re…something else.”

  “Something else?”

  “I don’t know!” Rachel looked at the ceiling in despair. “It’s like they’re organisms of some kind now. But they don’t make any sense! Gerald said it might be something contagious, but I mocked him for it and treated him like an ass. Now it turns out he was right! And he got killed by something I promised him couldn’t happen.”

  Marisa pulled herself to her feet and gripped Rachel’s shoulder.

  “Gerald was an ass,” her voice was low and fierce. “He wasn’t right about anything, Doc. He just shot off his mouth without knowing what he was talking about, and things happened to turn out that way. You may know science, but I know people. Gerald was an idiot who got himself killed, and even worse he killed the only person who stuck up for him at the same time. On the other hand, you’re actually trying to understand this thing. And when you told him that, it was because you believed it. That’s different.”

  “I know,” she conceded. “It just doesn’t make it feel much better.”

  “That’s because you’re not Gerald. Hey, look…believe me, I know what it’s like to be scared. Do you want me to come with you?”

  Yeah, and even scared you followed Harley into store with a killer corpse and did what needed doing. This is starting to get embarrassing.

  “No, it’s okay,” Rachel assured her. “I’ll be fine. Besides, I won’t be alone.”

  “You sure?” Marisa queried, “I don’t mind. After all, I already cried all over your shoulder tonight. And since I’m sure I look like a drowned raccoon now, it’s not like you’re going to be doing me any damage.”

  “Thanks, Marisa,” Rachel laughed. “I won’t forget it. But I’ll be fine. Besides, now that the bathrooms are open, I think Stacey wants a little company so she can go before she pops.”

  “Seriously!” the little waitress chimed in while carefully pulling herself up from her place beside Deke, “And while we’re there, we’ll see if we can de-raccoonify you.”

  “That bad, huh?” Marisa groaned and fell in step beside her fellow waitress as they headed down the back hallway towards the door to the store.

  “Actually, it sort of gives you that wild and tousled look so many guys seem to find sexy.”

  “Really?”

  “Nope, not really. Sorry, but you pretty much look like a rabid raccoon.”

  Marisa gave a long suffering sigh as she pulled the door open, and rolled her eyes at Rachel who had been following behind. She gave Stacey a friendly shove through the door before making a mock throttling motion behind her back, then followed the smaller girl into the darkened store beyond. The pair of them laughed about something before pushing their way into the girl’s bathroom.

  This left Rachel standing at the hallway door, trying to see into the gloom of the unlighted store.

  All alone.

  She knew it was supposedly empty and safe now, yet couldn’t help but feel vulnerable while standing at the edge of the darkened area. Tonight just wasn’t the night for dark rooms. Harley had come back in here earlier to make sure everything was still dead, but the gloomy store still filled her with unease.

  “Harley?” she called in a soft voice. “Hey, Harley? You in here?”

  The door to the men’s bathroom cracked open, spilling light into the short back hallway of the store.

  “I’m in here, Doc.”

  Now it was Rachel’s turn to roll her eyes.

  “You want to ‘show me something’ in the men’s bathroom?”

  “Yeah.” The irony of her remark seemed to be lost on him. “I drug the thing in here so you would have light to see by.”

  Well, that made sense.

  She knew she might as well get it over with. Steeling her nerve, Rachel took a deep breath and marched over to the door. She pushed through with firm resolve, then stopped and sized up the scene in front of her.

  Harley knelt on the tile floor by what must have been the creature in question. It wasn’t immediately obvious since he had covered it with a vinyl tarp he must have found somewhere in the store. It appeared she would be spared her encounter with a corpse for a moment longer. Still, her eyes were drawn to the blue square of vinyl like reluctant magnets. The tarp was a considerate idea on his part, but it just meant there was one more grisly “reveal” she had to get through.

  “Let’s just get this over with.” She nodded at the covered figure.

  “You sure?” Harley asked. “Marisa told you how I killed this thing, right?”

  “Yes, she did. She said you beat its brains out with her bat. I understand this won’t be pretty, so let’s get on with it.”

  “Well, that’s just it.” He stared down at the covered form and readjusted his hat. “I beat something out of it, but a lot of it wasn’t brains.”

  “What?” Rachel frowned at the man, then down at the figure under the tarp, “What do you mean?”

  “Okay, I’ll show you. Maybe you can tell me what this stuff is. By the way, there’s a trash can under the sink there if you get sick.”

  Rachel waved the suggestion off with a grimace and bent to look as he slowly pulled the tarp back.

  It wasn’t pretty.

  The thing lay there with what was left of its skull turned to the side. Its head had been beaten down, almost flat, to a level about even with where its ears used to be. Shards of stained bone stuck up through shreds of flaking grey scalp, and a large section of skull had split off from the back and now hung loose by a flap of leathery skin. If it had been dead before…it was deader than dead now.

  It was at the hole created by the loose piece of skull that Harley pointed.

  “See that?” He indicated a fibrous white material protruding from the wound. “That’s not brain. What is it?”

  “Well,” she winced at the intensified smell caused by him lifting the tarp, “it’s an old corpse, Harley. It could be a lot of things…like a product of plain old ordinary decay.”

  “I don’t think so,” he muttered. “I finished off the other zombie I had disabled earlier tonight. Its head is full of the same stuff. Two bodies, that must have come from different coffins, and yet the same stuff in both of their heads. What are the odds of that?”

  She thought about it for a second and realized he had a point.

  “Hmmm,” Rachel scowled and bent lower for a better look. “I can’t argue with that. It’s still probably nothing, but let’s see what we have here. You have a stick, or screwdriver, or something?”

  “I’ve got my pocket knife.”

  “Even better,” the veterinarian grunted got down on her knees beside the body. She pulled the tarp from the rest of it while Harley fished in his pocket for the knife. The sight of the full cadaver didn’t bother her as much as she feared. As a matter of fact, the doctor started to feel that the filthy clothes hanging off the thing were the only reminders of its former humanity. She gave it a long slow look from head to foot and realized she had just started the same type of cursory examination she would give if about to perform a necropsy.

  And why not? Like you told Marisa
, this isn’t a person and it isn’t exactly a corpse anymore either. It’s like some kind of organism, and here is your chance to figure this thing out.

  “Okay then,” She took the proffered knife and bent to the task, “I guess I get to be the first person in history to perform an autopsy to figure out why something wasn’t dead. We might as well start with the area in question.”

  “We?”

  “Yep, you killed it, Mister…you get to help me cut it up.” Rachel severed the flap of skin holding the hanging piece of skull. “You aren’t going to go squeamish on me now, are you? Oh, and get me a roll of toilet paper, please. My operating gloves are out in the truck so I’m going to have to improvise.”

  “Nah, it ain’t squeamishness.” Harley stood and went into the nearest of the toilet stalls. “I just don’t like staying where I can’t see what’s going on outside.”

  He returned with the requested roll, which she took and set beside her. Tearing off a piece, Rachel used it to move the piece of cranium aside. She considered the ruined skull before her then used another piece of tissue to hold a bone fragment as she began to cut that free as well.

  The pieces came off easier than she expected.

  “Well,” she continued talking while she worked; the monster’s head was a wreck and pieces came off easily, “I don’t think this thing is going to get back up, but I’m not confident enough in that to sit here in a bathroom all alone with it. So I’d appreciate it if you hung around till I’m done. You can stand over there and look out the door if you want but…well, well, well, check this out.”

  “What is it?” Harley leaned over to look at her handiwork.

  Rachel had now removed the side of the cadaver’s skull facing upwards, revealing a side view of the brainpan’s contents.

  “This,” she indicated a squashed, grayish area in the rear half of the head, “is brain.” It filled about half to two thirds of the skull. “This…” she now indicated the white fibers filling the rest of the cranium, “isn’t brain. But you knew that. Have you had medical training, Harley?”