by Bryn Roar
At least that’s what Bilbo always said.
Rusty hadn’t minded the changes anyway. To him, the word doo-doo was hilarious. Like Cucamonga or titmouse. Far more giggleishous than “Shit.”
Doo-doo, like the proverbial banana peel, was what you stepped in when the laugh track was running. Shit, was what you found yourself in when things turned to…well…shit. Rusty Huggins was in a world of shit.
The audio loop wasn’t so bad the first time around, but when the track re-played the conversation for the tenth time, Rusty thought he might go Postal.
He disconnected the wires, pulling them free of their terminals, silencing the ghosts, forever and amen.
Resuming his station at the knothole, he wondered how long he would have to stay up here. Already the four pine walls were closing in on him. As if in reply, he heard the sound of faint footfalls coming from inside the tunnel.
The slap, slap, slap of bare feet…
*******
Bud Brown checked his watch. His dad had been gone for almost ten minutes now. “You think we should go see what’s taking him so long?” Josie asked him.
“I don’t know,” Bud said, frowning. “Pop’s right about keeping an eye on this door. We have to keep the Rabids from getting at the generator again. Then at first light outside, we can safely make tracks for The Bunker.”
The front door of the Overlook kicked open and Bud’s heart clenched like a fist. His dad stumbled out, carrying a portly figure in his arms, covered by a quilt. A white hand dangled limply from underneath the coverlet.
Josie whimpered at the sight.
Bill loped across the Overlook’s artificial lawn, looking down the tunnel as he crossed the tracks. As if a train was due any second now. He gently laid Tubby on the ground. “Whew,” he groaned. “That boy’s an armload.”
Bewildered by the offhand comment, Josie and Bud looked at each other. Bud pulled the quilt aside. Ralph Tolson’s face was slack, his lips pale. An angry red knot rose up like an anthill on his forehead. There was no rise and fall of the chest. Nothing to indicate life.
Tubby coughed and gasped. His eyes sprang open.
“Ralphie!” Josie cried, ecstatic. She fell to her knees and hugged his round, Charlie Brown head to her breasts, smothering him from ear-to-ear. “Oh, Ralphie!”
“Ease up, Joe,” Bud laughed. “Give him some air!”
Tubby peered up at Bud over the ample flesh pressed into his face. The feeling in the air was euphoric. It was as if their friend had come back from the dead. In a good way, though—not the tragic Pet Sematary kind of ending Rusty had been envisioning just a little while ago.
Tubby disentangled himself from Josie’s death grip. “Jeepers,” he said, his fingers tenderly exploring the extrusion on his forehead. “What the blurb hit me?”
“Sorry,” Bill said, shrugging, “but that would be me.” He helped Tubby to his feet. “I was checking out what I thought was a corpse on my Lazy Boy, when up you popped from behind the sofa! Scared me so silly I slugged you right in the forehead. Sorry I hit you so hard, son.”
“S’okay, Bill. I was scared, too.”
“So what was with the couch cushions underneath the quilt? You really had me going in there.”
Tubby grinned. “That was the point, sir. Only I was trying to fool the Rabid, not you. In case it came back, you know? I was lucky, I guess. I slid off the chair right before she pounced on me. Gee, Bill, I’m not sure, but I think that Rabid was almost blind! Her eyes barely glowed at all. Not like the others. She was fumbling around, searching for me. Crashing into things. Cussing in that creepy language of theirs. I snuck right past her at one point, on my way to Bud’s room. I hid in his closet until all the lights scared it away a few minutes later.”
“That was real smart. The way you turned on all the lights, so when the power kicked back on it would—”
“Oh, I didn’t realize the power was off until I tried the third or fourth light switch! That was just a lucky break.”
“Ralphie,” Josie broke in, “where’s Rusty?” Her concern for her missing friend tempered the relief she felt at finding Tubby alive and whole.
“I have no idea, Josie. He screamed when that thing jumped on my chair.” Tubby frowned, thinking back. “Or that might’ve been me screaming. Anyway, Rusty must’ve thought I was a goner. I sure as heck did.”
“You keep saying ‘She.’ Don’t you mean ‘He’?”
“No, sir.” Tubby blushed bright red, remembering the big breasts pressed against him, right before he rolled off the chair. “It was a girl, all right.”
“So what were you doing, hiding behind the couch?” Bud asked his friend.
“I was gonna ambush her if she decided to come back for me. I found a gun on your bed and I—” It suddenly hit him, how he’d nearly shot Bill back in there. “Jeepers!” He gaped at Bud’s dad. “If you hadn’t slugged me when you did…”
“Where’s the gun now?” Bud asked, not caring to contemplate that tragic outcome.
“I’ll hold on to this,” Bill said, pulling the revolver from his pants pocket. It’s not too different from my own service piece. Too bad I didn’t keep that one when I retired. We need all the firepower we can get. You have ammo for this .38 in your bunker, son?”
“And then some.”
“Good deal. Then let’s find Rusty before he runs all the way to Florida. Then we’ll gather up the others and get the hell outta here.”
“I thought we were going to hole up for the night,” Bud said. He couldn’t imagine trying to find their way through the Pines in the dark. Especially since the hurricane had knocked over so many trees and in all likelihood made the old forest trails impassable.
“I’ve changed my mind,” his father said. “The Rabid that attacked us was male. Ralph’s attacker was female. That means we’ve got at least two of those monsters inside the museum with us! And even if we did manage to find and kill ‘em both, we couldn’t be sure there weren’t any more lurking about in here. As soon as we lock ourselves in the cellar, they could open up the front doors for the rest of their slobbering pals. In such an event, we’d never get out of that basement alive.”
“Jaysus,” Josie said, shuddering.
“So let’s get out while the getting’s good. The VW is out front—I think we can all fit in if we squeeze. Taking the truck would leave anyone sitting in the back exposed. Robby will run interference until we’re safely on our way.”
“It won’t work, Pop. It’ll be impossible to drive through that mess out there! And if I’ve learned nothing else from my dreams over the years, the one imperative once all this begins is: Don't let them catch you in the woods after dark! No, sir. We’ll have to wait until dawn.”
“I hear what you’re saying, son, but just trust me on this, okay? Something Garfield said earlier gave me an idea. I’ll explain later. First thing’s first. Let’s find Rusty!
*******
Rusty Huggins watched last year’s Homecoming Queen stalk out into the open, her entrance much less graceful than that long ago night. That Tubby’s killer should turn out to be Tansy Wilky didn’t seem all that surprising to Rusty. As promiscuous as that girl was, it was no wonder she’d caught the disease early on.
Still, it was a wonder he recognized her at all!
Tansy Wilky was naked and covered in dried blood and other less identifiable filth. The dim blue light inside the tunnel made the blood look black as tar. Foam dribbled from one corner of her dangling lip and splattered on the brick floor by her bare feet. One side of her face was gone entirely, from her scalp line to her missing chin, the jawbone on that side devoid of any teeth.
Rusty could see into the side of her head, the grinning skull gleaming white. Her swollen tongue looked like the straining muscle inside a conch shell. Like a separate, pink entity, alive and aware, desperate to be away from its putrid host. It lolled out the side of her head, the way a dog’s will on a hot summer’s day.
Rusty turned
his head and threw up on the pine wood floor. Fuck a damn duck! Somebody must’ve hit that girl upside the head with a running chainsaw!
And yet Tansy didn’t appear to be in any distress. Having not heard John Cutter’s dubious explanation earlier, Rusty could only assume Evil was at work here. His mind did not rebel at the notion, but accepted it as a matter of course. As his dad had said earlier: ‘It is what it is.’
Tansy’s once beautiful blonde mane was now a tangled rat’s nest, sticking out in all directions, a Blair Witch hair-do. Bugs crawled unmolested all about her person. Spiders, slugs, and centipedes. Her body a haven for all things creepy and crawly. Rusty heard an odd clicking and realized it was the remains of Tansy’s teeth chattering together. Even from where he was, he could smell the stink coming off her body. It was worse than any stink he’d ever encountered, far worse than Lester Noonan’s sweaty jock strap, with which Rusty was unfortunately familiar. The bully having routinely shoved it in his face, back in the days before Big Bad Bud Brown.
Oblivious to her eye-watering aroma, Tansy snuffled the air like a bloodhound seeking out its quarry. She stopped in the middle of the tracks and looked around—her strangely sputtering eyes darting back and forth from within the depths of her savaged skull. Her swollen breasts swung freely about.
Rusty’s hiding place, which at first had seemed so clever, now seemed more like a death trap to him. Unless you counted the lone window, there was only the one egress: the trap door on the floor. A set of wooden rungs nailed to the trunk of the fake elm tree led straight to it.
Rusty watched in horror as the Rabid left the brick floor of the tunnel and lurched over to the weed covered set. She’s got my scent! Rusty’s mind reeled. Ohhh, kiss my skinny ass goodbye! She’s got my fucking scent!
She stumbled her way across the lot, her hands held out before her like a blind woman. Rusty stared down at those sputtering eyes again, his curiosity for the moment subduing his fear. Can she even see? It hit him then, the difference between this Rabid and the rest…
Her eyes! Something’s wrong with her eyes!
He could just make out the two dying embers, smoldering deep within their sockets. Flickering, and oh, so dim. Not the usual, angry red glow that burned so hot in their heads. That crazy bitch is going blind! Praise be, she might even be dying! The idea gave him hope and fed his will to survive. He couldn’t see Tansy anymore. He could smell her, though. Could hear her, too. Moving underneath him now. He heard something creak below him.
Then another, then another.
Tansy Wilky, climbing up the rungs…
*******
“Clear Christine,” Bill instructed his son. His training as a police officer wouldn’t allow him to blindly forge ahead without clearing a room first of any possible threats. Even if it was to the side, and soon behind them.
Bud ran over and peered through the Plymouth’s windows. He checked the rest of the alleyway and nodded his head. “All clear here, Pop.”
They moved on, four abreast, Bill and Bud at either end. Cujo’s barn was next. The Saint Bernard’s shining red eyes made them think twice before walking past the shaggy dog. The Browns’ had filled the barn with the leftovers from their busy lives. The kind of junk most people seldom throw away. The barn made for an excellent catchall. Christmas and Halloween decorations abounded everywhere. The overhead loft held Dottie’s things, in hopes she might someday return for them. A refugee from the Grand Opening, a fully articulated skeleton, dangled from the rafters, cobwebs filling in the spaces between its ribs. Old toys and unmarked boxes formed random corrugated pyramids across the dusty floor.
A hundred possible hiding places in here.
“Rusty?” Josie called out in the cluttered barn. Her eyes were drawn to the leering skeleton overhead. It swayed to and fro, on some nebulous air current. After a hasty look around, they hurried back to the tunnel.
Josie was chafing at the bit, irritated with the slow pace Bill was enforcing. They’d been searching for twenty minutes now and had covered very little ground. “Hey, Bilbo, can’t we speed this shite up? At this rate it’ll take us all night to find Rusty!”
“Yeah, Dad. Like you said, Rusty could be halfway to Tampa by now.”
Bill stared into the dark tunnel ahead. “I hear what you’re saying, guys. I just hate the idea of rushing recklessly ahead. I suppose you’re right, though. The poor kid must be so scared out there. You know, he’s never even been in here by himself before.”
Josie turned to Tubby, silent since their search began. “Ralphie?”
Tubby looked up at her and blinked sleepily. “Say somethin’, Joe?”
“We were just saying it’s about time we started calling out to our old pal Gnat.”
“R-Rusty? He’s aseep on the…the…the sofa…”
Bill leaned over and snapped his fingers right in the boy’s face. Tubby didn’t bat an eye. “I think Ralphie’s in shock,” he said. “He might have a concussion—”
“Only Josie O’Hara calls me Ralphie,” Tubby muttered indignantly.
Bill chuckled. “I think that conk I gave him on the forehead rattled his marbles some. One of us needs to take him back to the cellar. We can’t look after him and search for Rusty at the same time.”
“I’ll do it,” Josie volunteered.
She took Tubby by the arm. He just goggled at her.
“No,” Bud said. “I’ll take him.”
“You can’t do it all, Buddy boy. Just find Rusty, will ya? I’ll take care of tiger here. Besides, those Rabids are in front of us, not behind us, where the light’s the brightest. The cellar door is only a hundred yards back down the tracks. We’ll be all right.”
“One of them could still be hiding back there,” Bud said. He knew she was right, though. The alternative wouldn’t have brought him any peace of mind, either. It was a no-win situation. Giving a sigh, he relented. “Okay, but holler if you get into any trouble. We’ll come running!”
*******
Rusty threw his leg over the open window ledge and straddled the pine board sill. He watched the trap door, waiting for it to swing open. If he timed it right, he thought he might get a good head start before Tansy realized he was getting away again. He could hear her right below the trapdoor now, sniffing the edges for his scent.
He swung his other leg to the outside of the window and held on to the ledge. He glanced down at the ground and regret ensued. It can’t be more than a twelve-foot drop, but it sure looks a lot further than—
The trapdoor popped open with a bang.
Rusty let go of the ledge.
*******
Pulling Tubby along by his hand, Josie got as far as Christine’s alleyway when she smelled it. A Rabid, somewhere nearby. The stench was obscene and seemed to be coming from down the tunnel. Right in front of them. Tubby must have caught a whiff, too, because he began to moan. “Shhh,” Josie hushed him.
She looked back the way they’d come—Bill and Bud were long gone now, making up for lost time. Josie scanned the alleyway, searching for a suitable hiding place. Maybe behind those dented trash cans Bill used as atmosphere. Her eyes fell on the Plymouth Fury…
Josie O’Hara smiled. Well, hello there, love.
*******
Rusty’s feet hit the ground with an audibleTHUD!