by Bryn Roar
As soon as the lights came on overhead, the red eyes slinked back into the shadows. Rusty could still see them, though. Flickering and feral. “The museum’s open for business,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here before they swarm all over us.”
Josie gave him a sour look, and then returned her focus on the cellar door. She wasn’t going anywhere without Bud. The sound of gunfire and screams coming from below had cranked her imagination into overdrive. One scenario after another raced through her mind.
Her face broke into a smile.
Bud appeared shirtless in the doorway. It was the one conclusion Josie hadn’t been able to imagine. Approaching the Fury, Bud looked from side to side.
Josie cracked her window. “There’s one hiding—”
Bud saw it. He walked right up to its hiding place and put a shell into its diseased head. He looked defeated, though, waiting for Rusty to unlock the car door.
Josie sat behind the wheel, ready for his instructions. In the trunk, a muffled cry.
“EVERYTHING’S OK, BILBO!” Rusty bellowed to the back of his seat. “BUDDY BOY’S BACK…SAFE AND SOUND AND IN ONE PIECE!”
He didn’t mention the absence of the others. He didn’t want to be the one to tell Bill the bad news. He pretended not to hear the muffled return.
Josie put her hand on Bud’s shoulder. “Well?”
“Dead. They’re all dead…” His eyes grew large. “Shit! I almost forgot! Boris! We got to find Boris!”
Rusty added his hand on top of Josie’s. “I’m sorry, man, but Boris didn’t make it, either. I’ll tell you about it someday—how that crazy-ass bird saved my life tonight.”
Bud bared his canines and growled. “Let’s get going then. There’s nothing left for us here now. Head for the lobby doors, Red. We’ll punch through them.”
Josie urged Christine through the tunnel’s exit portal. It was as if Bilbo had made the ride with a ’57 Plymouth Fury in mind. Christine pushed into the lobby, where she idled muscularly underneath the overhead lights.
Right away, they could see where the rest of the Rabids had entered. The front doors of the museum stood agape. Outside, on the sidewalk, the sandbags that had blocked the front entrance were scattered across the walkway. A bright orange glow filled the night sky beyond, flushing the street outside in a hellish hue.
“While we were downstairs talking to Cutter tonight, those stowaways must’ve let the others inside.”
“I wonder how many more are in here,” Rusty said, peering out the back window. He had a sudden vision, the hedge-maze a-crawl with those things, coming for them now. Something told him it wasn’t his imagination, either.
“They’ve ruined this place for me,” Bud said. “Far as I’m concerned, they can have it now. Maybe the fire will catch ‘em in here. I just wish I’d remembered to get those photos from pop’s dark room.”
“Well, you’re not going back!” Josie snapped. She gripped Christine’s steering wheel and put her in drive again. She turned to Bud, and then to Rusty, who was leaning over the seat between them. “Ready?”
“Ready as I’m ever gonna be,” Rusty said, leaning back to put on his seatbelt.
Bud pointed at the row of glass doors, across from them, the full length of the lobby. “Aim Christine between the wall on the right and that center post. And floor it, hear me? Whatever you do, Joe, don’t hit that center beam. I don’t know if she could punch through that post.”
Josie waited until Bud put on his seatbelt, and then she pinned her foot to the floor. Christine hit the glass doors at sixty-six miles an hour, burning rubber and shredding strips of lobby carpet in her screaming wake.
A shower of glass, wood, and sandbags flew into and over the wraparound windshield, starring the safety glass in three separate places. The Fury barely missed hitting the V.W. parked out front.
“LOOK OUT FOR ROBBIE!” Rusty yelled.
The front fender clipped the Tin Man, sending him sprawling headfirst into the street. The glass globe containing all of Bill’s hard work, all of the circuitry and gyros and computer chips, seemed to implode, the quartz glass shattering into a thousand glittering diamonds. Each one a reflection of fire and smoke and feral eyes aglow.
Josie slammed on the brakes before they could plow straight into the storefronts on the opposite side of Main.
Tires wailing, Christine did a 180 on the sandy thoroughfare. They ended up facing Huggins Way.
Bright red eyes darted off the dirt road and into the pine trees on either side, peering out at them through the sanctuary of the dense palmettos.
Christine’s brawny V-8 chugged along indifferently. Despite the abuse they were heaping on her, the big Plymouth Fury was still holding her own.
“Good old Detroit steel,” Rusty said. “They sure don’t make ‘em like this anymore.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Bud said. “What do you think, guys? The West Side or the East Side? The old girl’s already pointed in the easterly direction.”
“Crater Cove?” Josie said. For some reason that course unsettled her. “Why not the South Side beach, Buddy boy? It’s closer. The surf’s less dangerous if we have to retreat into the water.”
“No! The East Side! It’s perfect,” Rusty crowed. “Think about it, Tits! The beacon from the lighthouse washes right across the cove at night! The sand burrs’ll be a pain in the ass, but fuck a damn duck! Who’s gonna be able to sleep, anyway?” Tubby snorted in his slumber. “Besides Opie, I mean. Motherfucker slept through all that shit.”
Rusty’s neck felt warm and he looked over his shoulder to study the orange glow. “The fire is spreading from the docks,” he said, to his disinterested friends. He sighed. Even in death, his old man was fighting the good fight. “The Firehouse and Town Hall are blazing away like a dried up ol’ Christmas tree in January.”
“Good. I only hope it takes the rest of this town with it,” said Bud. “Come on, Red. Let’s get out of here.”
The island of Moon had been their home for as long as they could recall. The roads and streets like arteries to their hearts. But Moon was a dark place now. The dirt road ahead, spotlighted in Christine’s halogens, was a byway none were familiar with anymore. The stygian night seemed to have swallowed up their old dusty dirt road, leaving nothing beyond its midnight margins.
Christine rolled slowly by the Academy, her finely tuned engine burbling like a contented big cat. Josie saw someone looking out the window of the front entrance. A spectral face outlined in the steel-mesh rectangular portal. She was about to point it out to the others when it vanished from view, darting off, perhaps, to a classroom where Josie had spent many a tedious day. Nobody said a word as their 50’s relic passed the silent and empty lot of the Moonlite Drive-In. Tubby moaned in his sleep.
Bud rolled his window down a crack and listened to the what the dark had to say. Anticipating widespread chaos, screams and lamentations, all he got was a night supernaturally still and silent. Could it be they were the last uninfected people left on the island?
Approaching the lighthouse, Josie eased off the gas some more. The emergency batteries were now operating the lighthouse’s beacon high above them. Without anyone to fire up the generator, the batteries would last one evening at most. Rusty was right. The sweeping light—at least for this night—would make an excellent deterrent. Still, something about returning home had Josie on edge. Much more so than back at the museum. She parked in front of her house and kept the engine running, Christine’s headlights on the front door and the living room window.
Somebody had removed the plywood board from the window. Now that’s weird…
The curtain moved.
Bud saw it, too. “Someone’s in there, Red. Are you sure Shayna and Joel left for the mainland?”
Josie nodded slowly. “Shayna left a note on the fridge for me. Although, this might explain why the house has been creeping me out so much lately.” She shivered involuntarily. “Looks like something uninvited has taken up r
esidence in there.”
Bud put the empty .38 in Christine’s glove compartment and made sure the shotgun was loaded. He turned in his seat and faced Rusty. “Have you got some flashlights in your house, Gnat, maybe another gun?”
“At least the flashlights. We’ve got granddaddy Jesse’s old single shot bird-gun over the fireplace, but it doesn’t shoot anymore.” He saw the determined look on Bud’s face and knew what it meant. “Look, why don’t we head on down to the beach like we said we’re going to do? I mean, what’s one more Rabid going to matter right now?”
Bud looked over at Josie. “It’s up to you, Big Red. You care if one of those things is crashing in your house?”
The answer was out of Josie’s mouth before she knew it—and the answer surprised her. “As a matter of fact, I do mind. That’s me father’s house. He loved that old cottage and he wouldn’t want one of those nasty things stinking it up to high heaven!”
“There it is, then. You stay in the car and point those hi-beams at Gnat’s front porch. We’ll be in and out.”
For once Josie didn’t argue with him. She backed up and followed her friends across the lot, all the while trying to ignore the sinking feeling in her gut. Something bad was about to happen. No…Something bad had already happened! She dreaded its revelation—though at the same time felt compelled to face it.
Before she knew it, Bud and Rusty were back.
Bud had retrieved one of Ham’s flannel shirts and was putting it on with one hand, while in his other he carried a four-cell flashlight. Rusty was leading the way over to Josie’s house with his dad’s weathered Maglite.
Josie backed up again and repositioned the hi-beams on her living room window. The curtain didn’t rustle this time. She left the engine running and the lights blazing.
“Maybe you should stay here with Tubs,” Bud said.
Josie just gave him a look. She took the flashlight from Bud’s hand, purposely locking the car door behind her. Either Tubby would have to wake up to let them back in, or it was going to be necessary to break one of Christine’s windows.
Exasperated, Bud hawked a loogey and stepped up onto the porch. The door was unlocked and creaked noisily. An annoying cliché, considering the circumstances.
Christine’s headlights cut right through the sheer curtains, creating gauzy shadows on the walls.
As they entered the room, the smell hit them full in the face. The syrupy stink of rot, mixed in with the ammonia stench of a full-blown Rabid.
Bud led the way, following Josie’s flashlight beam, while Rusty dispelled the shadows everywhere else with his quivering Maglite. “It’s here!” he said, unnecessarily.
Josie remained mute, the feeling of dread intensifying with each step she took; the same foreboding malaise she’d experienced the last time she was in this house—only magnified now. Shuddering, she realized that even then one of the Rabid had been hiding in her home, probably in Shayna’s room. Sleeping on her daddy’s bed.
Despite her earlier misgivings, Josie silently thanked her mother. For once, Shayna O’Hara had done the right thing! At least Joel was out of harm’s way.
“Let’s check the bedroom—”
The unmistakable sound of cutlery chopping through a vegetable of some sort. Carrots, maybe. Thunk!—Thunk!—Thunk!—Thunk!—Thunk!—Thunk!
In the background, humming. A sad, slow refrain. Disturbingly haunting. The theme from Summer of ’42, it sounded like to Bud. His mother’s favorite piano piece.
He looked at Josie with a questioning frown on his face—she could only shrug in response.
An alien voice floated out of the darkness.
“I hope you’re hungry, Josie. There’s still a lot of meat left, and I’m afraid it may be going bad. Did you and your friends remember to wipe your feet before coming in?”
Josie felt a grief so sudden and so raw that she nearly passed out from the emotion’s callous wake.
The voice was different, changed in a way that suggested evil at work. Still her mother, though. Shayna O’Hara. No mistake about it. One of Them now.
The chopping resumed. Despite its mundane quality, or maybe because it sounded so mundane (mundane and Rabid just didn’t go together), the thunk-thunk-thunking sound jarred Josie’s senses.
Like glass shattering in the dead of night. A child pleading for mercy. Or thePlip! Plip! Plop! of dripping blood. A wretched noise that made you want to shriek while yanking out clumps of your hair. If she had gone down into the cellar with Bud, she would have likened it to the wet work coming from Bill’s workshop. An abomination to the ears of any decent human being.
“Shayna?”
“Dinner will be ready soon. You and your friends wash up. Rusty can set the table, while Bud eats out my cunt.”
Josie felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. Her wind was gone, her vision trebled. She shook her head, refusing to let herself faint. Bud was trying to pull her away, to push her and Rusty back out the front door.
But it was too late for that.
“Let’s get out of here! Go down to the beach—”
She stared at Bud in disbelief. “You think I could leave here while my mother and bro…it hit her then. Joel. “JOEL! OH GOD! WHERE’S JOEL!!!”
The sound of something (carrots?) sliding off a cutting board and into an empty pot echoed from the kitchen. The humming resumed and so did the whisking cutlery. Thunk!—Thunk!—Thunk!—Thunk!—Thunk!
Josie tore herself from Bud’s grasp and ran into the kitchen. Her friends right behind her. They ran into her halfway there, their flashlights illuminating the strange unearthly scene before them…
Josie was weeping softly, staring helplessly at her mother’s naked back. Flies crawled sluggishly over Shayna’s body. A bristly, black carpet. Their buzzing, a lover’s wicked whisper.
Overhead, the black cat kept watch and time. Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick
Its slitted eyes malevolent and merry. To Bud it was too alike the sound of dripping. His anger grew with each audible tick, his shoulders flinching in time with the clock.
“Rusty, get Josie out of here!”
“NOT WITHOUT MY LITTLE BROTHER!”
The rage coming from Josie was so unexpected that even Shayna O’Hara spun around to face her daughter.
Shayna stood there in the dual beams without blinking. RS13 had worked overtime on her alcohol-ravaged system, leaving behind a withered old crone in its place. She smiled at them, her teeth crusty and green with human flesh. Bud was at first taken aback by her disregard for the light—until he saw her eyes.
Shayna’s eyes were two vacant windows. Black as deep space, and just as cold and infinite. Bud felt the pull of those ebony whirlpools and looked away.
Licking her cracked lips, Shayna sniffed the air hungrily. In her right hand she clutched a knife, dripping gore on the linoleum floor. Chunks of what looked like pale carrots lay scattered on the countertop behind her, next to a cook pot, sitting atop one of the electric burners on the stove. The power was still off, of course, but that didn’t make any difference to the insane creature before them. This kitchen act was just an evil mimic again, meant to terrorize and devastate. Josie understood this and more—as if the damnable clock above her head had slowed down time, just to further torment her. She noticed, too, that just below the ammonia reek was the sickly sweet scent of putrefying flesh. Through the corner of her eye, she saw the kitchen sink, overflowing with rotting refuse. A mass of flies buzzed maternally around this tottering mound, as if it was giving birth to their dark lord.