by Bryn Roar
“That’s where they came and went to dump the bodies,” Rusty pointed out. He felt Tubby poke him in the ribs. He looked over to see Josie silently crying.
“He’s in there, you know,” she said, letting the tears fall unchecked. “Bud, I mean. I didn’t think I wanted to see his body after all this time, but now…I don’t know. I never got to say goodbye.” It hit her that, like her father, she wouldn’t be able to give her Bud a decent burial.
That train…it took everything I ever cared about. Everything I ever loved. Aye, it can have me too, now.
They stood there for a while longer, staring at the final resting spot of so many of their friends and neighbors. People they knew and loved. Some they didn’t like at all. And not one of them deserving of this fate. Like the old black and white pictures of the open ovens at the Nazi Death Camps, it all seemed so unreal. The smoke was coming from deep within the pile of ashes.
Rusty pointed out that the last fire set could have been days ago. “It’s not putting out much heat anymore,” he said, testing the air in front of the pyre with his hands. “The military must’ve moved on up the coast.” He turned to Josie, now wiping her face dry. “All right there, Joe?”
It was a question Rusty and Bud must have put to Josie a thousand times before, and always she’d replied in the same affirmative manner: Aye! All right!
Not so, this time. “No,” Josie said, shaking her head. “No, Rusty. I’m not all right.”
They left the smoldering ashes behind them and continued up the beach without further discussion. It was an unspoken decision among the three. An instinctive choice on their part, for it was in that direction which their homes lie. Why they’d chosen the beach to get there seemed unimportant, even though Huggins Way would’ve been the quicker route. After being stuck underground for two months, they were in no hurry to leave the great outdoors. In single file, they walked alongside a tall wooden fence, blocking their view of the other side.
In the middle of the fence-line, four great big poles rose nakedly up into the sky, stripped forever of their glorious movie screen. Tubby stopped to peek through a knothole in the fence. The grass had once again overtaken the empty lot. It was as if he and his family had never even lived there. The pretty yellow house peeking over the fence looked so forlorn and empty. Storm shutters still covered the windows, reflecting the suns rays, reminding Tubby of a dead man with shiny coins on his eyes. To keep the eyes of the corpse from popping open. This was one particular corpse they’d let lie in peace. They would not be taking up residence here, or lifting the coins from its eyes.
He rejoined his friends and they resumed their slow journey. They were in for a surprise when they rounded the bend, and started down the crescent shaped beach of Crater Cove. Josie looked up at the high bluff and gasped.
The O’Hara cottage was gone, scorched to the earth. Nothing remained of it, not even the chimney.
Josie felt relief wash through her. She hadn’t realized until then just how much she’d been dreading the sight of that cottage. Of entering its dark heart again. It was enough to make her smile. To lighten her heart a bit.
Rusty pointed up at the red-striped lighthouse, its top half rising up from the bluff, its bottom half obscured from view, and noted how the lamp had ceased turning. “That’s funny,” he said. “I thought the lighthouse’s operation would’ve been at the top of the Coast Guards’ Moon Island To-Do list.”
Josie searched the sandy beach, half-expecting to see Bud’s doodle in the sand; their names bound together in a cursive valentine’s heart. But the merciless tides had of course long ago erased his declaration of love.
They left the firm footing and joined the steep trail, rising up the sandy bluff towards their final destination: the Huggins’ log cabin would be their home now.
Josie was helping Tubby over the top of the bluff when she ran into Rusty, staring at something by the lighthouse door. “What’s with you, Gna—”
The rest of his name got caught in her throat.
There. Flapping in the breeze. A red T-shirt. Dingy white socks and underwear. Fresh wash on the clothesline.
A tanned, shirtless figure, wearing sunglasses and blue-jean shorts stepped out of the lighthouse door. He had a mouthful of clothespins and an armful of wet wash.
Josie ran at him full tilt, crying harder and louder than she ever had in her whole tumultuous life. She fell twice; sprawling facedown, but her legs and feet kept right on running, gouging out huge ditches in the sand.
“NO, JOSIE! NO!!!” Tubby shouted, too late.
He raised his shotgun and leveled it at the impossible figure standing before them, tossing his laundry now into the air. Spitting out the clothespins. Tubby’s finger tightened on the trigger—just as Rusty Huggins knocked it skyward. The resounding thunderclap echoed and rumbled for miles around.
Tubby gaped at Rusty, who just stood there grinning like an idiot. “Rusty! He’s infected! The sunglasses! For God’s sake, man! THE SUNGLASSES!”
Rusty’s smile just grew and grew. That contented, beautiful smile that made Tubby wonder if his friend hadn’t lost his mind. They watched Bud and Josie roll around like little kids in the sand, seemingly unaware of all the sand burrs covering them. Bud’s sunglasses finally flew free from his face, revealing a pair of familiar blue eyes.
Eyes as clear as the heavens above them.
Tubby dropped the shotgun at his feet. Incredulous and ashamed, he said: “How, Rusty? How did you know?”
Rusty pointed over at Bud’s favorite red T-shirt, flapping on the clothesline. He laughed as if the last few months had all been a bad dream. “Because Rabids don’t hang their fucking wash!”
Chapter Twenty-Two:
On the Beach
Josie sat staring at the tall man sitting beside her on the sand dune. She still couldn’t believe he was really there. Alive and well. That is, of course, except for the missing hand and forearm. She knew she shouldn’t be all that surprised. After all, there was just something about Big Bad Bud Brown. Something invulnerable.
She touched the sleeve of his faded red Famous Monsters of Filmland T-shirt, the same one he’d had hanging on his clothesline. The same one she’d set adrift on the emerald ceiling, oh, so long ago.
“What was it you said about this shirt?” she teased him. She took on his trademark growl: “‘It’s halfway to Bermuda by now!’ is how I think you put it.”
Bud smiled, his white teeth shining brightly from within his tanned face. Josie felt like a ghost sitting next to him. “I found it one day down by the fire pit, half-buried in the sand.” He looked over at her, his face serious now. “It came back to me, Josie. Just like you.” A comfortable silence ensued, and then the floodgates opened.
“You know,” Bud said, staring out to sea, “I think there was a reason we were chosen to fight this thing, to survive this horror like we did.”
Josie brushed the hair from Bud’s face so she could see into his eyes. His hair had grown long again. Nearly blonde from the sun. He had never been more handsome. His eyes so friggin blue. “That doesn’t sound like the Bud Brown I know. In fact, it sounds suspiciously like someone who believes in God—or at least Fate.”
“You’re right. It does. And I do. Both, I mean.”
“Really?”
“I sure can’t explain it any other way, Joe. Believe me, I’ve tried. I just don’t think all this was an accident. Think about it…we all had one passion in common from the very beginning.”
“A love of all things Horror.”
“We’ve been preparing for this Horror ever since we were knee-high to a gremlin. Watching Karloff and Lugosi on the late, late show. Those Famous Monsters of Filmland magazines. The Stephen King novels. The EC comics. They may as well have been textbooks on how to cope with the unknown, the unnamed, and the unspeakable. The museum was our classroom and my dreams were the lesson plan. We tried telling Cutter that something else was at play here, other than his virus, something Evil, bu
t his adult mind couldn’t wrap around it. Not like ours could.”
“They couldn’t adapt to the Evil they had loosed.”
“That’s right. Then there was you and I. Losing the parent each of us was closest to. My mom. Your dad.”
“On the very same day. Strange coincidence.”
“Too strange, if you ask me. We were ready for this, Big Red! You and I! Because of our shared traumatic past, we were able to get Rusty and Tubby through the same awful ordeal. Otherwise, those guys never would’ve listened to us, followed us, like they did.”
“We would’ve died if it hadn’t been for you, Bud.”
“It wasn’t just me, Red. Erase one of us from the equation, and none of us would’ve survived. Rusty saved Tubby’s life in the sinkhole, and the little squirt saved my life back in the museum. Tubby saved you at your house, and you saved him back at the Sheriff’s Office. If you hadn’t, then Tubby wouldn’t have been there to save all our asses with his damn flare gun! And don’t forget, Joe…you got both those boys through the Pines that day.”
“But I didn’t get them through! They fell—”
“Yeah, but Josie, it was you who got them to keep their heads! You, who insisted on looking for them, far beyond the point of reason that night. It was you who stood her ground in the bunker while Rusty and I closed the door. It was you who saved me, by giving me something to live for! To really fight for! Don’t sell yourself short, Josie. You’re the heart and soul of this family. And while I’m at it, stop beating yourself up about Joel. That wasn’t your fault. Like my parents, the Tolsons’, Betty Anne and Ham—there are times when God allows bad things to happen to good people. I don’t pretend to know why, and it still pisses me off. Especially when there are so many assholes in the world deserving of His wrath. But I believe now that every death, as in every life, suits some great purpose in the end. We may never find out what that purpose is, but I no longer believe they died in vain.”
Josie gazed at him in wonder. “You really think that’s true, don’t you, Buddy boy?”
Bud Brown had a faraway, peaceful look on his face. “I know it’s true, Joe. For you see, I understand now that something better awaits us in the end.”
Josie nodded her head, even though she knew it wasn’t that easy. That simple. She would always blame herself for Joel’s death. Some grief you just have to own to. “You’ve turned into quite the philosopher, haven’t you?”
Bud blushed. “Ever since my mother died, I’ve been obsessed with my dreams, what they might mean. Obsessed with the Red Eyed Man and where he came from. Obsessed with getting us ready in time. Obsessed with that fucking bunker! Until you kissed me, Red, that’s all I ever thought about! But now that we’ve made it…my mind has been throwing aside all that fear and fixation. I’m a free man now and it feels great! I know it may sound trite, but I’m thankful, you know?”
Josie smiled and nodded. She knew. “And now that it’s over, Buddy boy, what of our beloved Genre? Do we need it anymore? All that macabre Intel.”
The smile on Bud’s face vanished. “Who says it’s over? Who knows what the hell’s going on over there?” he said, gesturing contemptuously at the mainland. “Sooner or later, we’ll have to find out. But if you mean, do I still crave the unknown, the unnamed, and the unspeakable? Not so much. That knowledge isn’t going anywhere, though. It’ll still be there for us if we need it again.”
They were sitting atop a tall sand dune, amongst the swaying sea oats, watching Rusty and Tubby fishing in the surf. Laughing together like old times. So far, little mention had been made of the world outside their island. Bud told them he’d heard the same reports as they—that he’d seen not a single sign of life. No boats. No planes. Moon Island had become their very own Gilligan’s Island. Without the Laugh Track or coconut radio, of course. Then again, as Bud had so eloquently stated, when the question was first put to him over an hour ago: “I don’t give a shit about what’s going on across the water! As far as I’m concerned, everybody that’s important to me is right here on this island. It was the adults who fucked us over! Took our families from us, made the world what it is. Ugly and uninhabitable. From now on this island is my entire world, and you guys are all the family I need.”
He was only voicing what every one of them felt.
At least for the time being.
There was his sister on the mainland. Despite how Bud felt about Dottie, he knew he’d have to go look for her. Find out if she survived. Help her, if at all possible. After all, when he’d heard those three words in his mind: I love you—just before Bill Brown put a bullet in his diseased brain—Bud knew his father hadn’t meant those words just for him. He’d also been reaching out to Dorothy Brown. Reaching out to the daughter who had rejected him.
It was up to Bud to make sure she knew it, too. Whether she gave a damn or not. But this wasn’t the time or place to discuss all that. This moment belonged to Josie. This moment belonged to them. Bud was the one responsible for cleaning Moon of its dead. Clearing the Old Oyster Trail of its refuse—human and otherwise. And razing that cottage of horrors to the ground. So it would never remind Josie of that awful night again.
She’d cried in his arms when he told her how he’d buried her brother’s remains inside her father’s empty grave. Wrapping the bones in hisCreeps jacket. Fulfilling the kid’s single greatest wish, posthumously.
Joel Samuel O’Hara: ACreep, if ever there was one.
And even though he’d told them his story before—from the moment the last Rabid bit him; to the inspired notion he’d had to cut off the infected limb; to his fight and flight through the Pines; to his holding up in the lighthouse at nights—Josie asked to hear it all over again. “How’d you know cutting off half your arm would save you?”
She gently stroked the scarred stump at his left elbow, recalling that large strong hand, so conspicuously missing now. She mourned its loss.
“I didn’t. It wasn’t like I had other options, though. Do you remember what Cutter said that night in the cellar?”
Josie frowned in thought.
“After my dad told us how Cutter got infected, you asked John: ‘Isn’t there anything you could have done?’”
“That’s right!” Josie said, recalling the conversation. “He said: ‘Short of cutting off the limb above the wound…’ Then he made that throat cutting gesture.” Josie shook her head in wonder. “So you remembered! But the blood! Jaysus, Bud! I don’t see how you could’ve gotten past all those Rabids, bleeding like you were.”
Bud lifted up the scarred stump and pointed out the burns, recalling the exact moment when his mother’s final warning popped bright and hot in his head.
“Remember,” she had said. “Remember…”
And by God, so he had.
“After I pushed the door closed I picked up the hatchet to defend myself, once the fire died down, you know? That's when I remembered what Cutter said. Before I could change my mind, I chopped off the infected limb and stuck my elbow right into the fire until it cauterized the wound. I’m surprised you didn’t hear me howling.”
“If I had, I would’ve clawed me way through that feckin’ door.”
“Rusty did the right thing, Red.”
“I know. I know.”
“Anyway, to my surprise, once the fire did die down, I discovered the Rabids had all moved on. When they smelled their own kind roasting in the flames, they must’ve assumed the fire had taken out the four of us as well. Still, I had an interesting night, getting out of the Pines and safely into the lighthouse.”
He cleared his throat and shrugged. “Compared to what we’d been through, though, it was a walk in the park.”
Josie gave him a look. She knew he was sugarcoating the ordeal for her sake. Telling half-truths again. That was okay. At least for now. He was here, sitting right beside her, breathing in and breathing out. Alive!