by Bryn Roar
It was Ham’s bad luck the Betty Anne hadn’t exploded. That would have been a mercy compared to the consuming flames, surely engulfing the boat by now. Ham’s once lovely wife and Tubby’s folks had nothing to fear from the flames. Their souls had long since departed. Yet at the moment, Bud couldn’t have cared less. Not even for his friend, Tubby Tolson, also at the moment in mortal peril. Bud’s sole concern was for the rightful owner of his heart. The one he’d cheerfully given it to, making her his main reason for living now. For going on even one more minute. You were right, Josie! I never should’ve separated us like that! If anything happens to you I’ll kill myself—
Ham’s voice rumbled in Bud’s head: Hush that selfish noise! This ain’t the time for that! The Living gotta take precedent over the Dead. And that’s just what Josie and that Ralph boy is gonna be if’n you don’t hurry!
Hurry, Bud! Hurry!
Bud decelerated as they came to the end of the service road, and made a left, back towards Main. Tires screaming, Bud hit the curve going too fast, the Goodyears on the right side leaving the ground for three-heart-pounding seconds. The headlights of the pick up illuminated a naked little girl, skittering across the road on all fours, her feral eyes ablaze. She darted behind some overturned garbage cans in front of the Green Grocer and hissed at the truck as it roared by her.
“HOLY SHIT! Did you see that fucking thing?!” Rusty said, holding on to the dashboard for dear life. He wasn’t sure what scared him more: the red-eyed things suddenly roaming the streets of Moon, or the fact that Bud was driving like a loon.
“Yeah,” Bud remarked softly, “it was one of the Portman twins. Kari, I think.”
“Looka there!” Rusty said, pointing excitedly at the smoke coming from behind the Town Hall buildings. “I think the dock’s on fire!”
“Not now, Rusty. Help me figure out where that air horn last sounded.”
“It must’ve been Bidwell’s office,” Rusty said, frowning. His eyes remained focused on the smoke. He wondered: The Betty Anne…Daddy? Is that you?
Bud aimed the pick-up in that direction and floored the accelerator. The headlights caught sight of the dead Mastiff at the foot of the stairs. By the messy headshot, Bud figured it must’ve been rabid, and that Josie O’Hara had put it out of its misery. “Big Red,” he said, nodding his head. He put the truck in park, leaving the engine running, and grabbed the shotgun on his way out the door.
He emptied the box of shells on the tattered bench seat and filled his pockets with them.
He glanced over at Rusty, still fixated on the smoke, billowing into the night sky. Tears filled Gnat’s eyes and spilled down his face. “Rusty…”
“That’s the Betty Anne, isn’t it.”
It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.
“Come on, man. Please. Don’t do this now.”
Rusty glared at him through the fogged lenses of his glasses, the truth passing unspoken between them. Something growled off to their left. Footfalls rushing towards them. Bud turned around in time to see what had become of the other Portman twin. Unlike her sister, Katie still had on her socks. Running right at him in the middle of the street, her tiny hands raised over her head, little pink fingernails curled into claws.
Bud hesitated just long enough to ascertain that something else was coming at them from Rusty’s side. The once barren streets were suddenly crawling with his rabid neighbors. People he’d once claimed to hate.
Now he knew better. If I really hated them, then why’s it so hard to pull the trigger?
Sighing, he emptied one barrel into Katie Portman, point blank, obliterating her from the face of the earth, and then swung the shotgun in the other direction.
“BUD!” Rusty screamed.
Bud didn’t have time to aim. Something that looked like Miss Beasly was rushing straight for his friend. Naked as the day she was born, only more wrinkled and worn. The heavy buckshot caught her right between her drooping breasts and slammed her across the sidewalk, into the Town Hall building, where she left a large brownish smear on the stuccoed wall. Despite the mortal wound, the woman struggled to her feet. She stared stupidly at the ragged hole in her chest. Bud breached the barrels; popping out both spent shells, and slammed in two fresh ones.
He snapped the barrels back into place, all the while walking up to Miss Beasly. He blew her head off her shoulders, pushing down the memory that this had once been one of his mother’s dearest friends.
“JOSIE!” he shouted desperately into the night. All around them were the sounds of bare feet running on pavement. Why are they all naked? What’s that about?
“TITS!” Rusty joined in the chorus. “WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU, GIRL?!?!”
The sound of a window shattering down the street seized their attention. Before they could ascertain its location, sixteen-year-old Ronny Broome leapt out at them from underneath the stairwell.
The shotgun discharged at close range, the shell ripping through the young man’s throat.
Unable to draw a breath through the baseball-sized hole in his neck, the boy spasmed on the road like an epileptic having a grand mal seizure.
Bud quickly reloaded and raced down the street, towards the Firehouse. Rusty caught up to him and pointed at something in the middle of the glass-littered road.
“Bud! That’s my dad’s gun! The .38! Josie must’ve thrown it through that plate glass window up there!”
A pair of shadows staggered towards them, in the middle of the road, side by side; two pairs of scarlet eyes burning bright and hot. Bud brought the walnut stock to the crook of his arm and took aim. The fiery rush of double-aught, not having a chance to disperse, took out parts of both heads at once. Reloading, Bud was moving past the two bodies before they even hit the ground.
“JOSIE!” he croaked hoarsely. “CAN YOU HEAR ME?!” His voice, never the same after that long-ago night, was almost done in by all the shouting.
Bright red eyes glowed from every corner. Closing in now. Those who weren’t so far along in the illness stayed in the shadows. Watching. Biding their time.
“BUDDY BOY!”
The voice was Josie’s, coming from the second tier. Bud looked up to see the broken window. “Rusty,” he said, pointing to the breezeway above them.
“WE’RE UP HERE! IN THE JAIL!”
“WE’RE COMING, JOE!”
“WATCH OUT! TWO OF ‘EM ARE UP HERE!”
“Behind us, Bud!” Rusty cried.
Bud spun around and Rusty ducked underneath the smoking barrels of the 12-gauge shotgun.
Barely even aiming, Bud put one shell directly into the chest of Jessica Soffit, one of Tansy Wilky’s nasty protégés at the Moon River Academy.
Jessica had always been a self-involved, know-it-all-bitch, but Bud took no pleasure in killing her. And yet her messy death served a purpose. The other encroaching Rabids beat a hasty retreat, leaving the side street once again empty. Bud’s deadly efficiency with the shotgun had at last sent them packing to parts unknown.
“How did this thing spread so fast?” he said, taking the steps four at a time. Rusty, right behind him, didn’t have an answer. In fact, he was wondering the same thing. The front door stood open and Bud ran in without thinking.
“LOOK OUT, BUD!” Josie screamed, just as Ted Tousant crashed into him.
They fell outside the office door on the walkway beyond, with Bud on the bottom of the heap.
Rusty stood ten feet away, rooted in place on the breezeway, not knowing what to do, too scared to help.
Bud brought the shotgun barrel up lengthwise into Tousant’s throat. Pushing the Rabid’s head up and away from him. Spittle from Ted’s writhing mouth dripped on either side of Bud’s head. Splattering his forehead.
Closing in on my eyes! Fuck this shit!
Bud brought up both of his boots into Ted Tousant’s belly and flipped the surprised man over him. Ted’s back hit the top of the railing, and then gravity took over, pulling him over the side. Tousant dove headf
irst into the pavement below, his skull cracking open like a pumpkin thrown into the street by punk kids on Halloween.
Rusty rushed over and helped Bud to his feet. From inside the jail, Josie wailed, “BUUUUUUDDDDD!!”
Jumbo Colt had never left the cell; he was still trying to push his way in. Bud tapped him on the shoulder with his shotgun, but Jumbo paid him no mind. Just kept yanking on the cell door. It seemed the illness had left some of the Rabids with more thought processes than others. There didn't seem to be any reason to it, either. Some were slow and stupid. Others, calculating and quick. It was a tiny blessing in a sea of strife.
Bud raised the shotgun and was about to put the barrels to Jumbo’s head, when he realized the spray of brain matter might very well hit Josie and Tubby.
He looked around and saw the fire ax on the wall.
“Get back!” he warned his friends. He watched them turn away, and then he cleaved Jumbo’s head in two.
As soon as Tubby got the cell door open, Josie rushed into Bud’s arms.
“I’m okay, Red. Just a little bruised and battered. He didn’t bite me, though. How ‘bout you guys?”
“We’re fine,” she said, looking Bud over for serious injuries all the same.
“That was real smart, Tits, ducking into the cell like that,” Rusty said, taking his turn embracing her. They grinned happily at each other.
“Was that you shooting up the place down there?” Tubby asked Bud.
Bud hawked a loogey on the dead Rabid at his feet. “Yeah. The island’s gone crazy with these damn things. We need to get back to the museum and batten down the doors. Then maybe think of a way to get to the Bunker.”
“What about the vaccine?” Tubby said. “If we wait till morning—”
“Our fathers are dead, Ralph,” said Rusty. His voice held steady but Josie could see the awful grief lurking behind the Coke bottle lenses.
As if to underline what Rusty was saying, an explosion rocked the town. The fuel tank at the Marina igniting. Across from where Rusty had docked the Betty Anne. “No,” Josie said, sobbing. “Oh, dear God, no!”
“I don’t understand,” Tubby said. “The vaccine—”
“I’m sorry,” Bud said, shaking his head. “But your dad…Rusty’s too…they’re gone.”
Tubby looked from one to another. Seeing this wasn’t some horrible joke, he took off for the open doorway. Bud caught him and wrapped him up in a Half- Nelson. “LET GO OF ME, BUD! YOU COCKSUCKER!”
Bud applied pressure to Tubby’s carotid until the big kid collapsed unconscious in his arms.
Rusty sobbed at the pathetic sight. “That’s the first time I ever heard ol’ Opie cuss.”
“Guys…you better take a look at this,” Josie whispered urgently from the doorway. She was peering cautiously over the railing to the street below.
Bud gently laid Tubby down on the floor and joined his other friends at the railing. The street below was once again full of the red-eyed things. He recognized most of them, the rest were so far along they were indistinguishable from wild animals. Milling about the pick up truck, drawn by its running engine, no doubt. He drew in a sharp breath as one of them leaned into the cab and turned off the headlights. It was just a matter of time now before they figured out he and his friends were up on the second floor.
“How we gonna get past them?” Josie whispered.
Bud pulled her back into the office and softly closed the door. “Guess we’ll have to shoot our way past them.”
Rusty paled. “With one shotgun? They’ll be all over us as soon as you have to reload.”
Bud shrugged, not knowing what to say.
“There’s a gun locker over there.” Josie pointed across the room. “Ralph and I couldn’t get past the lock.”
Bud checked out the stand-up gun cabinet for himself, yanking futilely on the door handles. “We’ll have to blast it open,” he said. “Be prepared to select a firearm fast. We’ll have to load them quickly, too. The gunfire will be like ringing the damn dinner bell up here.” He leveled the 12 gauge and pointed both barrels at the intersection between the two steel handles. “Get back, this is liable to—
“What now,” he said, hearing a clanking commotion outside. He lowered the gun and frowned. “It sounds like something…like something…”
Josie found the right word for him. “Like something mechanical. It sounds like something mechanical.”
They tiptoed over to the open window and looked down into the street below, where the red-eyed things were once again in panic mode. It was almost comical, the way most of them were scattering, while others looked like scared rabbits caught in headlights, not sure which way to run. And that’s exactly what they are! Headlights!
Bud couldn’t see what was behind the twin bright lights, moving steadily up the street. They were spaced too close together to be a car, too far apart for a motorcycle. The clank-clank noise it was making, as it advanced unhurriedly down the street, sounded hauntingly familiar…
Josie looked over at Bud, who was starting to grin. “If I didn’t know better,” she said, “I’d swear that was a…”
“A damn robot walking down the street?”
“The Tin Man,” Rusty gasped.
Chapter Fifteen:
Furious Fireflies
Tubby awoke to find himself on the floor of the Sheriff’s Office, dizzy and disoriented. Where is everybody? he wondered woozily. He sat up and nearly passed out again, the blood rushing from his head like a flushed toilet.
I attacked Bud, and then they left me here to…
Seeing Bud and the rest gathered at the broken window, Tubby gasped in relief. “Hey! What’s going on?”
Josie knelt by his side. “We’ve got company outside. You all right there, tiger?”
Despite his feelings of profound gratitude, Tubby couldn’t stem the flow of sarcasm spewing forth. “Considering that my parents are probably floating face down in the stinking harbor right now—yeah, I’m just swell, Josie. Gee…thank you for asking.”
Bud yanked Tubby to his feet and shoved him beside Rusty, pointing his finger in their pop-eyed faces. “Look,” he said, grinding his teeth. “I know ya’ll are in hell right now. I’m one of the few people who can honestly say I know just how you feel. Josie can sure as hell relate, too. And some day if you want a shoulder to cry on, she and I are at your disposal. But not today, guys. Not today! We just can’t afford the distraction of your grief right now.
“Besides, your parents wouldn’t want—”
“How would you know what our parents would want?” Rusty shot back, slapping Bud’s finger aside. He resented Bud trying to quantify their grief, to equate it with his own loss—no matter the eerie similarities. If Bud knew how he and Tubby felt, then he should’ve known to can that trite bullshit.
“Because your dad told me before he died.”
Like the look on his face, Rusty’s resentment crumbled. “What do you mean…before he died? I don’t understand, Bud. How could you possibly know that?”
“Ham set that fire himself after we left, Rusty. I tried to talk him out of it, but…well, you know your dad.” The determined glint in Bud’s eyes faltered a little. Unable to look Rusty in the eye, he stared down at the floor. “That’s just how he wanted it, and there was no arguing with him. You heard the man! That strange, croaking voice.” Bud shuddered. He took a deep breath and looked up again. “He was sick, and getting sicker by the second down there. He knew that so-called vaccine wasn’t going to save him. He was having bad thoughts, Rust.” Bud’s eyes shifted over to Josie for a second before finding Rusty again. “So don’t you go blaming him, you hear me? If you need to blame somebody, blame me. I helped him do it, and by God I’d do it again! He saw a threat to those he loved, and he took care of it.” Bud smiled in admiration. “Really, did you expect anything less from your old man?”