“I might.”
“What are you?”
“Ummm. We’ve touched on this before. I am all things. I’m sure that you, as priest, know I was once an angel. If you don’t, then you were a piss-poor priest. But I found that soooo incredibly boring! Listening to my opposite number bluster about issuing commandments . . . and Michael, what an insufferable prick! You just can’t imagine. He thinks he’s such a brave warrior; you can’t believe what a pain in the ass he is. Constantly waving that damn sword around and threatening to do this and that and the other thing. My opposite number has to speak harshly to him from time to time. Does that answer your question, pukey priest?”
“Not really. I would like to speak to you at length sometime.”
“Well, perhaps, someday. But what I told you will have to do for now. I just learned I have urgent business elsewhere. I really must get cracking. We’ll talk again, you can count on that. Do enjoy your, ah, little excursion. And remember to watch out for things that go bump in the night. Ta-ta, all.”
“Talk about an insufferable ass!” Ruth said.
“Yeah. And that’s his good side.” Cole jerked his head in the direction of the garage—the other vehicles were parked in the back of the house—and the group filed out silently toward the garage. Ruth paused in the doorway for a moment, then smiled ruefully and turned out the lights.
Eleven
There was enough moonlight to drive without headlights, at least for the first few hundred yards. But when they hit the old logging road and the timber swallowed them, that’s when it would start to get hairy.
For the walking dead were waiting for them.
The pickup had a massive grill in front of the factory grill, the outside grill made of heavy expanded metal to protect the headlights and radiator.
“If one of those creatures steps in the way, run over him,” Cole said, just as Ruth turned on the headlights. “Can you do that, Ruth?”
“Watch me,” she replied tersely.
The words had just left her mouth when a man lurched onto the logging road and howled at the truck. Ruth stepped on the gas and was bumping along at about twenty-five miles per hour when she hit the creature and knocked him flat on the ground, both his legs and hips broken. The truck tires missed him and the walking dead grabbed the rear bumper of the second vehicle and hung on. The living dead howled and screamed as he was dragged along.
The third vehicle was being driven by Russ, and he and Jenny were helpless to do anything except watch in horror. Jenny finally grabbed up the CB mic and said, “Gary, that thing is hanging onto your rear bumper!”
Gary started swerving back and forth on the narrow trail. On the fourth swerve, the creature lost its grip and was thrown loose.
Russ ran over it and both he and Jenny almost lost their supper as the tires crunched over the devil’s pawn.
Another of the living dead leaped onto the hood of Cole’s Bronco and hung on, grinning hideously at Katti and Sue. The Chinese girl screamed in terror. Katti yelled, “Hold the wheel, Sue. Damnit, hold the wheel!”
Sue grabbed the steering wheel and Katti jerked up her .38, leaned out the window, and shot the thing in the head. The creature slowly slid off the hood and thumped to the ground.
Then the short caravan was clear of the timber and on the blacktopped main road. Cole had one of Jim’s M-16s with a thirty-round magazine stuck in its belly. He and Ruth spotted the roadblock up ahead at the same time.
It was not a roadblock of cars and trucks, it was a human roadblock of men and women and teenagers. All of them armed and all the guns pointed at the pickup, waiting for a signal to fire.
As the pickup approached, Cole leaned far out of the cab and emptied the magazine into the knot of people. The .223 slugs knocked people spinning in all directions.
“Drive on through!” Cole; shouted, fumbling in a bag for another full clip.
The vehicles of the convoy thumped over living and dead, smashing bones and tearing flesh, the drivers and occupants doing their best to ignore the shrieking of pain.
Then they were through and the road was dark behind them. No one was following that they could detect.
Cole keyed the CB mic. All units were set on channel 39. “Stay in tight,” he told the drivers. “Stay off the air unless absolutely necessary.” He hung the mic on the dash-mounted clip.
Every person had a Tennessee road map, with the route clearly marked. The convoy would head south on the back roads, then turn east, staying on county roads as much as possible.
They would stay far south of Nashville, run north of Chattanooga, and south of Knoxville, before entering the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and safety. They hoped.
The convoy headed south, avoiding towns whenever possible, barreling through them when they had to, ignoring traffic lights and stop signs. Every town they went through showed signs of recent conflicts: burned and gutted and looted stores and homes, bullet-pocked outside walls. No one among them had any idea which side had won.
As the dark hours wore on and the miles fell silently behind them, all began to realize one very important thing: they had eluded Satan. No music leaped out of radio speakers, no sarcastic words were spoken out of nothingness. No one knew how they had managed to do that, but they all sensed that, at least for the time being, they had lost the Prince of Darkness. Hank did not want to tell them that it wasn’t Satan they had to fear.
Just as gray light began to silver the eastern sky, Cole pointed to a country home with a For Sale sign in the front yard, near the county road. “There. We’ll rest there. Pull into the rear of the house and I’ll check out the barn. We can stash the vehicles in there and they’ll be out of sight.”
The group gathered, Hank said, “We know there isn’t a house for a couple of miles back the way we came, and the last three or four looked deserted, but how about in the direction we’re heading?”
“I’ll check it out,” Jim said. “See if they’re friendly.”
“Or dead,” Cole added.
“Yeah,” Jim said. “That, too.”
The barn was big enough to hold five vehicles; Cole parked his Bronco in the garage and closed and locked the door. He entered the house through the adjoining door and stood for a moment in the kitchen.
“The utilities were left on, Cole,” Katti said. “But there is no hot water. Would you check the water heater?”
“There’s a butane tank out back.” He pointed toward the stove. “That’s gas, and the water heater is, too, probably. I’ll check.”
Cole lit the water heater, pleased to see it was a fast recovery heater. Back in the kitchen, he said, “No one goes out in front, or parts the drapes in any of the front rooms. The house is carpeted throughout, with a thick pad under it, so with our sleeping bags, we shouldn’t be too uncomfortable sleeping on the floor. As soon as you have something to eat and a bath, get some sleep. We’ll pull out at dusk.”
Cole was getting antsy about Jim when he pulled in the drive and parked his vehicle out of sight. “Nothing down that road for two miles,” he said. “A couple of houses, but they’re deserted. I checked them. But Cole . . . the closest house had blood all over the kitchen floor and the back porch. Table and chairs overturned, glassware busted up, and pots and pans all over the place. Somebody put up a hell of a fight.”
“But lost,” Hank said.
“Looks that way, yeah. But I couldn’t find any bodies.” He paused. “And that bothers me.”
“Cole?” Katti said, leaning up against a kitchen counter, drinking a cup of coffee. “There is something I’ve been meaning to say. It just keeps slipping my mind.” Everybody paused to look at her. “What happened to all the airplanes? There are no planes flying.”
* * *
All major airports were shut down; ordered closed by the government. Mobs of people had attacked the terminals, smashing equipment, overpowering security guards, and gaining access to the control towers. There, they destroyed the equipment, rendering
the airports inoperable.
Many of the nation’s main highways were slowly being shut down due to hundreds of wrecks clogging the on and off ramps, as people were fleeing the larger towns and cities in a blind panic to get away from the violence brought on by ... most didn’t know what was causing the chaos and rioting; many never would. And it wouldn’t matter to the dead.
* * *
The violence was predictable. For years, devil’s covens had been springing up all over North America. Lyrics to what some tin-eared people loosely described as music had increasingly become more violent, urging people to steal and kill and rape and assault. Many movies had glorified violence. During the past two or three decades, morals had sunk to an all-time low. Do your own thing, man. Burn, baby, burn. Tune in, drop out. No justice, no peace. I got rights, man. Let’s fuck, baby. Pull out in front of me and I’ll shoot you, motherfucker! And while God shook His great head in disgust, Satan howled his laughter.
What was now happening was inevitable.
* * *
Cole deliberately took the last watch so he could wake people before dusk and get the convoy on the way. Several vehicles had driven by the house on the lonely county road during Cole’s watch, but the drivers and occupants had shown no interest in the house, not even slowing down. Most of the cars had contained families; one had four men in the car, and they were not friendly-looking.
Cole had spent some time listening to a portable radio. The President had declared yet another state of emergency, and put a dusk to dawn curfew into effect. But few people were paying any attention to it. For all intents and purposes, the government of the United States was finished. The government of Mexico had collapsed, and the Canadian government was no better off than its neighbor to the immediate south. It just had fewer people.
Hank was the first one up, about an hour before Cole planned to shake the group awake. Hank poured a cup of coffee from the pot Cole had just made and sat down in the breakfast nook.
“You look grim, Cole.”
Cole pointed to the small portable radio. “Nothing but grim news on that thing. Radio stations are slowly going off the air. I couldn’t pick up a single station out of Nashville, and as the crow flies, we’re only about fifty or sixty miles south of there. In another day or so, we’ll be relying solely on shortwave for our news.”
“Cole, Jim tells me there was a pickup parked in the garage next to that house where he found the blood.”
“Yeah? So?”
“I think we ought to take it, and the first country store we come to, load it up with more supplies.”
Cole slowly nodded his head. “That’s a good idea. Katti or Bev can drive it. Yeah. We might be up in those mountains for months. We’ll stop at that house for the truck and anything else we find that we might need. We need some more tarps, for sure. And all the canned food we can find.”
Cole paused for a moment. “You think we’ve shaken loose from . . . you know?”
Hank shrugged his shoulders and said nothing.
“Well, I think we have. For the moment. But I think he’ll find us again. For some reason, this group seems to hold some fascination for him. It. Whatever the hell it is. He’s here on earth, Hank. But where is God? Where is He, Hank?”
The priest shook his head. “I don’t know, Cole. All around us, I suppose. He has not deserted us. He has not. You must believe that.”
“I believe it, Hank. I’m just confused about it all ... everything.”
“So am I, ol’ buddy. In more ways than one.”
Bev wandered into the kitchen, stretching and yawning. She spied the coffeepot and smiled.
“Say nothing to her until she gets her heart started,” Hank said. “She’ll bite your head off.”
“Not true,” Bev said, pouring a mug of coffee. “But I do snarl a lot.” She sat down beside Hank and took a sip. “Now you may talk to me.”
Hank opened his mouth to speak just as the sounds of several cars driving up the road reached them. The vehicles slowed, then the sound of tires crunching on gravel. The vehicle noise stopped and a car door clunking closed was clear.
“Get the others awake,” Cole said, standing up and reaching for his M-14.
A moment later: “The place looks deserted to me.”
Cole cut his eyes. The kitchen window was open, as were all the windows at the rear of the house. They had not wanted to run the air conditioner for fear the noise would alert someone walking past.
“Well, it isn’t,” another voice said. “I smell fresh-brewed coffee.”
Silence for several heartbeats.
“Let’s get out of here, Pete,” another voice spoke. “That might be some of them in there.”
Cole took a chance. “If you’re friendly, come on in and have some breakfast. If you’re hostile, you’re dead. What’s it gonna be, boys?”
Another moment of silence.
“Easy, mister,” a voice called from just outside the back door. “I can’t say that we’re the most perfect Christians in the world, but we try to do right. Most of the time,” he added.
“ ’Cept when you try to cheat on your bowling score,” a woman spoke.
Cole relaxed a bit. “I’m opening the back door.” He cut his eyes to Hank and received a nod of approval. “There are a lot of guns ready to bang in here, people. Let’s not make any real quick moves that will get somebody hurt or dead.”
Bev had moved to the kitchen window, a pistol pointed at a woman’s chest. She said, “Step closer, lady. The breeze is just right for me to get a whiff of you.”
The woman laughed. “We probably don’t smell like roses. We all took a bath in a creek early this morning.”
“With that damn perfumed soap of yours,” a man standing close to her said. “We all smell like Saturday night in a honky-tonk.”
Cole chuckled and slowly opened the back door. He came eyeball to eyeball with a man about his age and size. “How about some coffee?” he asked.
The man smiled. “How about lettin’ me take a shower so I can stop smellin’ like a field of lilacs? It’s embarrassin’!”
Twelve
James and Alice Mercer, Pete and Jane King, Al and Denise Winfield, and their kids. Anne Mercer, sixteen. Pat Winfield, seventeen. Bob King, seventeen. “We were neighbors just outside of Nashville” Pete said. “We’ve all known each other since grade school. Built our homes at the same time. We all go to the same church. Just . . . regular people, I guess you’d call us. I’m an accountant, Jane’s a legal secretary. James is in real estate; Alice teaches school. Al runs a string of small convenience stores, and Denise just opened a ladies’ shop in a nearby mall. The kids are in high school . . .”
Anne Mercer was a very pretty and polite girl. Cole was reserving judgment on Pat Winfield; he couldn’t get a reading on him. But Bob King raised the cop hackles on the back of his neck. Young Bob was pure punk.
And Cole knew from the quick glances he’d received that Jim felt the same way. Punks emit a certain odor that only experienced and streetwise cops can smell. But it comes on as strong as a skunk’s scent.
“. . . Then Nashville blew up,” James said. “We’ve heard all sorts of wild stories about what happened. Do any of you know the truth?”
“We have our theories,” Hank said, a guarded tone to his voice. Cole could tell that Hank had taken an instant dislike to Bob King.
“Damn pigs shot two friends of mine,” Bob spoke for the first time.
“Bob—” his father said patiently.
“Well, they did!” the young man said. “Shot them down without no warning.”
“Any warning,” his mother automatically corrected.
“Get off my case,” the son told the mother.
Cole stood up and walked away from the group, who were all standing near the kitchen counter. He had this nearly overwhelming urge to beat the shit out of Young Bob.
Anne Mercer followed Cole with her eyes. She could sense that the rough-looking man did not l
ike Bob. She understood the feeling. There wasn’t that much about Bob to like.
“... We knew people all up and down our block,” James said. “Not good friends, but more than acquaintances. I’d guess, oh, seventy-five or eighty percent of them just went nuts. Running wild. Looting, burning, and finally killing. We pulled out three days ago. Just couldn’t take it anymore.”
“The CIA’s doin’ it,” Bob spoke. “You can bet on that.”
Gary sighed, shook his head in disgust, picked up his rifle, and went outside to stand guard.
“Any of you men had any military service?” Jim asked.
The men shook their heads. “No. But we’re all good campers. That’s how we spend our vacations.”
“Borin’ as shit!” Bob said.
The father turned hot eyes to the son. “Boy, I’ve just about had it with you. You watch that vulgar mouth.”
The young man gave his father a very dirty look, then whirled around and walked outside.
Jane sighed. “I just don’t know what’s happened to him.”
“The hell you don’t,” her husband said. “The problem is, we don’t know what to do about it.”
Cole did. But he curbed his tongue. He knew from long years of experience that only a small percentage of parents would readily admit their kids were just plain no good. Only cops—and not all of them—knew that the bad seed theory was no theory; all one had to do was read reports and case histories to understand it was solid fact. Cole knew all the excuses by heart: The punk’s behavior was always the fault of someone or something else. The cops picked on them. People were always telling lies about them. Oh, he’ll outgrow it.
Problem was, they almost never did.
“You people look well organized,” James said. “You’re not like us, running without a place in mind.”
“No,” Cole replied. “We’re heading for the mountains to sit this thing out. The Smokies.” He looked at each of the new people. “You want to join us?”
Pete King stared at Cole for a few heartbeats. “You’re a cop, aren’t you?”
“Retired deputy sheriff out of Louisiana. I retired last year. Why did the police shoot Bob’s friends?”
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