by Bryn Roar
Bud shuddered at the thought of approaching dusk. The first stars of the evening peeking through the red tinged clouds overhead, twinkling down on an emerging army of Rabids. Pulling themselves out of the clotted earth, hand over fist…
As Bud picked up the pace, he saw another dead squirrel. Fleas were abandoning the carcass in two neat lines. For some reason it reminded him of school.
*******
Josie ended up driving back through town. The fire from last night had petered out, though not before taking half of Main Street with it. The conflagration had somehow spared Peg Leg’s, Moon Man’s and the Wax Museum; the rest had all suffered either total or partial losses. Not that it made any difference. The business district on Moon wasn’t likely to see any more commerce in this lifetime. No one commented on the damage. Not even Bill when they drove by his beloved museum. Josie had chosen this route as a last resort. The Old Oyster Trail sure wasn’t an option—not with a car, anyway. The entrance there looked like the storm drains out on Main Street. Clogged with all manner of debris. For Bilbo’s sake she hoped Cemetery Road was in better shape.
“All that hard work,” Bill said, staring out his open window. His temples had begun to throb, and he rubbed them automatically. Like all before him, he placed no significance on the headache. Ignorance, as they say, is bliss. As slowly as the last car in a funeral procession, they crawled past the remains of Robbie the Robot.
Josie thought it somehow wrong to leave the regal Tin Man that way, sprawled across the road in such an undignified manner. She almost stopped to set him right, but the darkened doorways on either side of the Fury held all sorts of untold menace. She recalled the monsters lurking within the Firehouse, and her foot pressed a little more firmly on the accelerator.
The glass from Robbie’s head crunched underneath the Goodyear whitewalls like shells on the seashore.
Speaking of shells…Main Street was littered with dead bodies. Empty, rotting shells. Black clouds of flies cloaked most of the corpses from view.
Bill rolled up his window.
The ripe carcasses seemed to be everywhere, and Josie had no choice but to run over a few. Bill wondered aloud if his son had killed them all.
“All of Bud’s handiwork is down on Town Hall Lane,” Rusty said, leaning over the front seat. “As I recall, he didn’t shoot anybody on Main Street. My guess is, some of these bodies are either victims of the Rabids, or those that have finally succumbed to the disease.”
Tubby leaned over beside him. “You really think so? If that’s true, then maybe the virus has run its course!”
“Afraid not, son,” Bill said. “Many new victims, like myself, were infected only yesterday. For us, the fun is just beginning.” He looked over at Josie and the two boys. Josie made a right at the end of Main Street and continued on to the service road behind the buildings. “Before we get to this bunker, we need to talk; without Buddy boy being present, I mean. I guess this is as good a time as any.”
“What’s on your mind, Bilbo?” Josie said, trying to keep things light. The look in Bill’s eyes unsettled her. Sweat beaded his furrowed brow.
“You cannot leave it to my son if I begin to show signs of the illness. When I begin to show signs, I mean.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” said Josie, playing it dumb. Josie knew what he was getting at, all right. She just wanted her friends to hear it out of Bill’s own mouth.
“When I start with the symptoms, it’s going to be up to you to…to…”
He didn’t have to finish the thought. By the horrified looks on the boys’ faces, they knew full well what he was saying. Josie sighed wearily.
Rusty looked as if he was going to cry. “Gee, Bill. I-I’m not sure any of us are capable of doing that.” Tubby, his eyes huge, nodded his head at what Rusty said.
Bill turned around in his seat and glared so angrily at them that for the second time that day they thought it was already a foregone conclusion. “If you can’t give me your word that you’ll do the right thing when the time comes, then you might as well pull over right now and let me out!”
Josie looked over at Bill, and nodded her head in resignation.
“Not good enough, Joey.” He glared at her. “I need to hear the words out of your mouth. I don’t want Bud burdened with that responsibility. He shouldn’t have to see me like that! Not after everything he’s been through.”
Josie looked back at her friends in the rearview—the two of them staring back at her expectantly. She realized if the moment did come, it would be up to her and her alone. Then again, this is exactly what she had been complaining to Rusty about earlier—taking some of the load off Bud’s shoulders. She couldn’t renege now.
“All right, Mr. William Beauregard Brown. If you show any signs, I’ll put you down meself. Just like Old Yeller in the corncrib. Is that plain enough for you?”
“A bit more descriptive than I’d like,” Bill chuckled. “But yes, dear; plain enough.” The angry light left his face, and once more he was just good old Bilbo. “Thank you, Joe. Another thing, when we get to this bunker of yours, you’ll need to secure me to something. So I won’t be able to…you know…hurt anyone.”
“Sure, Bilbo. Sure,” Josie sighed. “Now please, if you don’t mind, kindly shut the feck up.”
*******
Bud broke free of the Pines and ran into the clearing surrounding Lizard Lake. The smell of smoke, he’d noticed earlier, was more pungent in the open field. He sniffed the air and looked around. He had assumed the smoke was a lingering memory of yesterday’s fire, set by Ham, out by the docks, but the acrid scent seemed to be coming from somewhere nearby. “Probably a lightning strike in the woods,” he said, dismissing it from his mind.
A little smoke was the least of his worries. He paused for a moment to enjoy the sight before him.
The Bunker!
It occurred to him that his underground fort would make an ideal place for the Rabid to bed down—even if his visions had never suggested that. He picked up a rock and tossed it down into the rabbit hole—it echoed hollowly before coming to rest. If something was hiding down there, it was cunning enough not to let Bud fool it so easily.
He rummaged in his pocket for his trusty Zippo, and withdrawing it, spun the flint wheel with his thumb.
Bud crawled underneath the overhang and saw something curious stamped into the dusty soil, kept dry from the recent rains. “What the hell,” he muttered, staring at the ground. He knew his and his friends’ tracks at a glance. And these…these aren’t them.
A pair of bare feet. Almost as large as his own, only these belonged to someone with arched insoles. Bud had flat feet. So did Tubby. Size 9 tennis shoes, the Ked’s logo embossed clearly in the dirt. Too big to be Rusty or Josie. Too small to be Tubby’s. And last of all, Cat’s Paw boot prints. The brand usually favored by the island fisherman.
Curiouser and curiouser. Three sets of strange tracks, all leading down into my rabbit hole…
*******
Josie slowed as they drew alongside the Moon Island Cemetery. The Fury’s front end was more than a little crumpled from last night’s adventure, and a heavy steam hissed forth from the mangled grill. Christine’s dying gasps. The Pines wouldn’t allow the big auto to go much further anyway. It was a miracle she’d gotten them this far.
“Radiator’s cracked,” Bill said, patting the dashboard affectionately. “Too bad she can’t regenerate herself like the Car in the book.”
Josie slowed long enough to catch a glimpse of her father’s headstone, and then goosed the shuddering car towards the end of the small clearing. She was able to drive Christine all the way to the ten-foot high chain-link fence, surrounding the water treatment plant at the western edge of the woods. That was as far as the Pines would allow. She turned off the car and pocketed the rabbit’s-foot keychain. Christine hissed and groaned, as if bidding them farewell.
The treatment plant stood silent and empty, sitting in what was the dividing line bet
ween the Pines and the prestigious West End. From theCreeps many excursions into this part of the bracken, Josie knew that Lizard Lake lay off to their right, just a few miles or so, but to get there they would have to pass through the thickest part of the woods, not to mention the most checkered. Sinkholes corrupted the ground here, like craters in a lunar landscape. Keeping to any sort of a straight line would be impossible.
“This isn’t far from where Bud and I ran into that rabid chimp,” Tubby noted grimly. He looked over Josie’s shoulder. “How far is the lake from here?”
Josie pointed at a matted wall of palmetto brush and scrub pines. “About three miles yonder.” She began to second-guess her decision to bypass the Oyster Trail. Even if it was three times as long that way.
Bill climbed out of the car and shut his door. “Let’s get started then,” he said, more eager than he felt.
Josie and the boys followed suit, hoisting their knapsacks onto their backs. Right away they noticed the eerie silence. “Look,” Rusty said, pointing out a trio of ebony crows, pecking away at a dead squirrel. “Those damn undertakers are the first birds I’ve seen all day.”
The crows looked back at them with imperial impunity. Josie shivered. The crows’ oil drop eyes reminded her of that Rabid back in the museum, the one with the hypnotic headlamps—what used to be Lester. And Shayna, too, for that matter.
“No crickets or cicadas either,” Bill said.
“The Pines are dead now,” Josie said. “Just like the rest of Moon Island.”
“So explain to me again why we’re going in there?” Tubby wanted to know. “I mean, wouldn’t it be better if we just camped out on the beach until—”
“The Bunker, “Josie said, taking up Bud’s familiar refrain. “The Bunker will save us all.”
She was a true believer now.
“Besides, Bud’s expecting us there,” Rusty said. He glanced at the 12 gauge in Josie’s hand. “Wouldn’t it be better, Joe, if you let Sgt. Brown carry that popgun?”
“NO!” Bill snapped. He saw the frightened look on Rusty’s face, and exhaled wearily. “I’m sorry, Short Round. I don’t mean to keep shouting at you like that. It’s just not a good idea for me to be in possession of any weapons…you know…just in case.”
“Come on, Bilbo, even if you did get sick, Rabids don’t use weapons or operate heavy machinery,” said Rusty, trying to make light of a dark subject. “They’re not bright enough.”
As if taking offense, Bill glared at Rusty. “Yeah? Well, tell that to the one who drove my wife’s fucking car.”
*******
The smell assaulted Bud’s senses. The stench, so wet and thick it drove him back into the sunlight, gasping for fresh air, his eyes tearing from the ammonia, the vile taste coating his nose and throat. The offending odor seemed to be coming from something long dead. Rotting into goo. He heard the sound of buzzing flies down in the darkness. There was a certain quality to the pitch of their wings that gave Bud the impression of a feeding-frenzy taking place. Thousands of tiny flying sharks, their raisin-like bodies bloated and black, a hairy host of proboscises, stabbing, sucking, and slurping. A cacophony of consumption.
Taking a deep breath through his mouth, Bud pulled the hatchet free from his jeans. Clutching the hickory handle, he could feel Ham’s hand impression, worn smooth into the wood, after years of chopping stove lengths and kindling. Their large palms matched up perfectly, and this shocked Bud, for he never equated his size and strength with that of Ham Huggins. A bear sized man, in both body and spirit. He drew confidence from this knowledge, and dove once more into the noxious rabbit hole.
He slid down into the antechamber below, nearly into the decomposing body.
Bud’s Zippo went out, plunging him into darkness. The last thing he saw was a pair of Ked’s shoes, loosely attached to a corpse’s feet. Ankles stripped to the bones.
Something skittered away, deeper into the Bunker, spitting mad. Bud dropped the lighter trying to get it thumbed back on. He fell to his knees, searching the floor around his feet, trying to avoid the putrefying body, hoping like hell the Zippo hadn’t landed in that. He’d caught a glimpse of the corpse before the lighter had gone out, and damn it was a gruesome sight. Despite the maggots writhing all over the body—making those squirmy, squishy sounds—Bud could tell that something had recently been feeding on the stiff. Something besides maggots.
He was reminded of what John Cutter had said about the virus, how it drove some of its victims to cannibalism. Shayna O’Hara had proven that grim theory correct. Now a cannibalistic Rabid was between Bud and his cache of firearms. Maybe more than one, Buddy boy.
Disturbed from their feeding, the buzzing flies rose up in mass and soon engulfed Bud, searching out his nose, mouth, and eyes. Bud swatted at the clotted air, swiping at the engorged parasites on his head, frantic to be free of the filthy things. His hands and face were soon covered in their bristly viscera, a digestive soup from their last meal.
If Bud could have screamed without the fucking things flying into his open mouth he would’ve done so.
He ignored the flies as best he could—there were simply too many of them to disburse—and focused again on locating the Zippo. If he could find it, then make his way past the rotting carcass and into the bomb shelter, there was a propane lantern sitting on the coffee table, not sixteen feet from where he was standing.
As soon as he stopped agitating the buzzing horde, the flies began to return to their festering feast on the floor, leaving Bud Brown for the most part in peace.
Now if only I can find that damn—
His hand fumbled over the warm surface of the lighter and tightened in vicious relief around it, the three etched words so familiar against his palm: Never Say Die!
*******
Two miles into their journey and Josie heard it.
Something stalking them.
It ran noisily within the deepest shadows, several feet out, not bothering at all with a stealthy approach.
Despite their adversary’s pursuit, Josie wasn’t overly worried about an attack. Thus far, the day had been especially bright and hot. Unseasonably so, even for Moon Island. Her exposed skin was already smarting from sunburn. If I’m uncomfortable, it must be a thousand times worse for the Rabid! As long as she kept her group within the sun’s ultra violet rays, they would probably be all right.
“D-D-Did’ja hear t-t-that?” Rusty asked her, his voice doing that scared thing again. Sounded like Don Knotts in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.
“Keep moving and stay out of the deeper shadows,” Josie said, her grip tightening on the shotgun. She rattled the remaining shells in the pocket of her shorts. Including the two in the barrels, she was down to five rounds.
“Easier said than done,” Tubby panted. He climbed over a small deadfall, careful not to snag his army coat on any branches. He was lagging behind Rusty and Josie, and Bill was even further behind him. “Wait a second, guys,” he called out to them. “Let Mr. Brown catch up with us.”
Bill squinted, the sun’s rays piercing into his throbbing brain. The sun, why is it so fucking bright today? God, it must be a hundred degrees, out! These clothes, so heavy and hot and itchy. “Don’t wait for me,” he said, waving them on. “I’ll be all right. Just keep moving!”
Josie took the time to look around; to get her bearings straight, and give all concerned a breather. Unfortunately all of the familiar landmarks were either gone or altered. A disquieting thought occurred to her: Are we lost? Surely not! The Pines, while dense and wild, inhabited only a portion of Moon Island’s forty-two square miles—albeit, the largest portion.