by Tim Curran
And was that a good thing or a bad thing?
There was a great thud as the things hit the front of the store. It was as if, in those last few feet, they’d decided to rush the building and see if they could simply burst through the front like the car had. They hit the outer sheet metal wall and just began to pound and scratch at it with an almost idiotic glee. Mitch had seen their eyes, had seen what was behind them, and although there was nothing in them remotely human, there was cunning and craft and a cold, almost mechanistic sort of intelligence. He had seen it there like sputtering candlelight in a dim, webby attic. The sense that while these people probably would never write a great sonnet or design a suspension bridge, they understood tactics just fine.
Of course, at that moment, they were not practicing any.
More like pissed-off children trying to force their way into the candy cupboard. To hell with subtlety and logic, let’s try brute strength here.
The sound of those fists hammering on the sheet metal exterior boomed like thunder and in combination with the rain pounding on the roof, the inside of the store was just a hive of echoing noise. But then as quickly as it had started, it stopped.
No more hammering.
No more scratching.
Just the rain and even that had lessened a bit. Somebody let out a gasp of air and somebody else cleared their throat. That silence from outside was not just loud, it was screaming. They could hear the rain dropping into puddles, an occasional finger of wind rattling the roof. Nothing else.
Tommy looked over at Mitch and Mitch just shrugged.
Had they gone? Mitch didn’t think so. They were out there, all right. He could feel them somehow and he thought he could hear one of them breathing with a gurgling sound like backed-up drainpipes. Sure, brute strength had failed, now came subtlety. They were waiting out there with an almost inhuman patience, just waiting for somebody inside to peel back that flap and then they’d grab whoever was fool enough to try it.
Tommy looked like he was considering it, but Mitch shook his head.
“Wait,” he said.
“Is there any other way in here?” Jason Kramer asked.
Hubb told him there was not. Only the locked back door and the front door where the car now had inserted itself. No windows. No nothing.
Mitch tried to swallow, but there was no spit left in his mouth. He was feeling that cold rain blowing in around the car and shivering, thinking about Lily at home and what she would do if some of these things came knocking like trick-or-treaters.
Nobody had relaxed, it was too soon for that, and that was a good thing because the things out there were trying again. A single bare arm pushed aside the flap and began searching around like a blind man looking for his cane. That arm was dripping wet and just as white as tombstone marble, set with tiny round perforations like somebody had been pounding nails into it. As white as it was-and it was white, a bloodless white lacking any pigment-it was also mottled gray in spots with tiny bumps like clusters of minute toadstools and you could clearly see a dark purple vein tracery beneath the skin.
“Shit,” somebody said.
Another arm joined it and another and another, until there were no less than six of those anemic-looking limbs pushing aside the flap, white fingers searching around like albino spiders for something to fasten on to. Mitch could just imagine them pressed up together out there like a bunch of kids reaching through a hole in the fence, trying to find their ball on the other side. Now and again, he caught a glimpse of the bodies they were attached to, saw a distorted blur of a face or the whipping, wet hair of a woman.
A couple more hands joined in the fun now, only these hooked around the flap of sheet metal and began trying to widen the hole. The metal began to groan. If these individuals just stopped and used their beans for a moment, they would have quickly realized that you could have indeed gotten into the store one at a time and very easily. But the hole just wasn’t big enough for seven or eight bodies at once. But there was greed at work here like piglets all trying to squeeze in on the same nipples at the same time.
One of the arms was slit open by the jagged edge of the flap and Mitch saw that no blood came out, just a trickle of something black and watery that the rain instantly washed away.
It was enough, by Christ, it surely was.
Mitch and Tommy in the lead, everyone waded in. People were grunting and swearing and shouting, swinging axes and machetes and clubs at those snaking arms. They recoiled with the impact, but kept coming back, flaying and clawing and scratching. Tommy brought down his axe, caught one of those hands between the car door and his axe-blade and severed three fingers. The hand pulled away, stumps spitting that black goo. The fingers themselves landed on the hood where they wriggled like white worms. Mitch laid open an arm from wrist to elbow and nothing came out but that inky sludge. A spray of it struck Jason Kramer in the face and he screamed like he’d been scalded by acid. He tripped and fell, red welts rising on his cheeks where that liquid had struck him.
Most everyone fell away as more of that blood flew and one grasping hand darted in and grabbed Tommy by the wrist. And with enough force that his own hand flexed open and he dropped his axe.
He tried to pull away, an almost hysterical cry coming from his mouth: “Mitch! Mitch! Get that fucker off me!”
Mitch brought his axe down with an overhead swing as the arm tried to pull Tommy towards the opening. The blade caught the arm right at the bicep and cleanly severed it, the axe head traveling right through it and shattering the driver’s side window of the Intrepid. The arm let go and dropped to the floor and everyone jumped away from it because it was not at all dead.
Tommy fell back, rubbing his wrist and you could see the indentations of those fingermarks.
The arms retracted and then came in again. Mitch and Hubb kept pounding away at them and they were pulled away and then there was just silence out there. Mitch thought he heard those things running off through the puddles, but he could not be sure. The flap was bent wide open, though, and there was nothing out there but the falling rain.
Everyone was breathing hard and shaking their heads, but they did not speak.
Those fingers had finally stopped wriggling and just looked dead.
The arm was still thrashing, though, fingers waving and scraping, muscles and tendons standing taut beneath that horribly white flesh. It flopped and jumped in a pool of that black filth and then went still.
Hot Tamale looked about as pale as that arm and Gena Kramer looked ready to throw up. She held her husband as he held his face and then she turned and did throw up.
Hubb opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then just closed it again.
Everyone was pulling back into the store wordlessly, giving that arm a very wide berth. There was not a biologist among them, but they did not need any scientific training to tell them that a severed human limb could not live after being cut off. There might be few shudders as its nerve endings pissed the last of their electricity into the muscles, but that was about it. But this particular arm had been alive, very alive. Disconnected or not, if it had found a throat to strangle, it would have done just that.
Tommy lit a cigarette. “Think…think I saw that movie about the living arm,” he said in a dull monotone. “Except it was set in the Arctic.”
“And it was an alien arm,” Hot Tamale said.
“Got ripped off by dogs,” Herb added.
Mitch looked at them and burst out laughing. Not everyone joined him, but most were smiling at the very least. Hubb laughed so hard Mindy had to wheel his oxygen tank over so he could grab a few puffs.
But the good humor, which was really just some hysterical after-effect of the shock and horror, died out when Yellow Hat opened his yap and said, “What the hell is going on in this town?”
Which, Mitch thought, was the first intelligent thing he’d said.
Nobody answered him, so Hot Tamale took the bait. “Just like we saw out at our car,” she
said. “All white and dead-looking…you know what that means, don’t you?”
“What?” Mitch said.
“Zombies. Those things are zombies.”
10
Mitch waited for Tommy to say something smartassed, but he didn’t.
Zombies, for chrissake. Of all things. Mitch wasn’t ready to swallow that one, but then on the other hand, he sure as hell did not have a better explanation. Zombies. Sure, he’d seen the movies. They dragged their dead asses around, munching on people. But they were slow, dull-witted, and almost comical. These things had not been slow nor comical. They had been fast and able to use rudimentary logic. In those movies you just shot them in the head and that was it. Mitch had an uneasy feeling that a bullet to the head would not be enough this time around.
Listen to yourself! You’re acting like those…those people were the walking dead! You can’t honestly believe something like…can you? Well,
CAN YOU?
But he wasn’t sure. Not sure of anything. He walked over to the severed arm, stared down at it. It looked just like a dead arm. It was almost phosphorescent it was so terribly, unnaturally white. He could see the fine black hairs curled on the forearm, the matting of lines on the palm. He kicked it and it flopped over with a slapping sound.
“Be careful,” Hot Tamale said. “It might be alive still.”
Mitch jabbed it with the handle of his axe. The flesh gave like normal flesh. He jabbed it a couple more times and it did not move. Then he prodded the palm and the entire arm flexed obscenely and the hand grabbed the axe handle. Not just grabbed, but held on tightly. He could see the tendons straining at the wrist. He was horrified, yet fascinated. It could not be alive, not really. This was some grotesque reflexive action and nothing more. He tried to shake it loose, but it held. At least for a moment or two, then it relaxed and thudded to the floor.
Mitch just stared at it.
Maybe he needed this, needed to see that this dead arm still had life in it when it couldn’t possibly. Maybe the idea of that unlocked something in him and let him accept the idea that, yes, the rain was falling and the dead were rising. Sure, and the dish ran away with the fucking spoon. Disgusted as he was, he could not look away. He felt like Alice peering through the looking glass and seeing a distorted, impossible world on the other side.
“Fuck this shit,” Tommy said.
He came over with his axe and started swinging it and pretty soon Mitch was joining him. They chopped the arm to white fragments, sweating and grunting, but feeling that it had to be done. The arm was just an arm, just so much meat they had chopped up. It had muscles inside and bone.
When they had finished, all those scattered bits of meat began to move, they trembled and squirmed and the bone thudded against the floor. It was like it wanted to put itself back together again.
Mindy saw the whole thing and just kept shaking her head. “No, no, no, this can’t happen,” she said, her eyes wide and filled with tears. “This can’t happen! This isn’t possible! No, no, no, no, no-”
She went down to her knees, wailing a thin and strident scream. Hot Tamale went to her, pulled her to her feet and shook her roughly, turning her away from the remains.
“Get a hold of yourself!” she shouted in her face. “This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better!”
Hubb had had his fill. He came over with a can of Coleman lantern fluid and liberally drenched the remains. He struck a stick match and tossed it at the mess. There was an eruption of flame and the flesh bubbled and blackened, issued plumes of greasy smoke. The stink of burned meat was nauseating. When the flames died out, there was just a lot of black and crusty remains.
“Somebody get me a cocksucking shovel and a pail,” he said.
Outside the rain had subsided now to a drizzle. Mitch went over to the flap and wrenched it open further. Nothing out there now but the fading light of day and puddles spread over the street several inches deep.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Tommy said.
A car came rolling down the street then and they saw it was a police cruiser with the emblem of the Witcham force on the doors. It passed right by the store, then braked and backed-up.
“Well, it’s about fucking time,” Hubb said.
The cruiser stopped in the middle of the street and two cops got out wearing blue rain slickers and plastic bonnets over their caps. They just stood there in the flooded street looking at each other and the car jutting from the front of Sadler Brother’s Army/Navy Surplus.
“Well, how are we going to explain this mess?” Jason Kramer said. His face was red from where he’d been struck by the black goo, but his wife had swabbed it with burn cream from the first aid kit. He looked like he’d be all right.
“In here,” Mitch called out through the wide-open flap.
The cops started over and that’s when Mitch noticed that the sky was looking funny. Strange. Something. That peculiar ochre haze was hanging above the town just as it had after that explosion out at the Army base. And at that moment, the rain started coming down again.
“Oh shit,” Tommy said.
The rain that was falling now was not normal rain. It was yellowish and sparkling and as it struck the two cops out in the street, they began to dance around like they were standing on a hot plate. They jerked about like marionettes, trying to cover their faces as if a swarm of hornets had descended on them. One of them cried out and fell right in the street. The other tried to make it to the cruiser and fell against it.
Mitch saw his face.
He clearly saw it.
That rain was no ordinary rain, it was more like some kind of toxic acid rain. For as it struck the cop’s face, it actually burned holes in it and the flesh went almost liquid like hot wax. The cop’s outstretched fingers were…were melting, the skin hanging off in strings.
He slid down into the puddles and stopped moving.
And as quickly as it had come, that bizarre yellow rain stopped. You could see it sparkling in the puddles for a moment or two and then it dissipated. Just the drizzle falling now. It had come with a sharp, acrid stench and now that was gone, too. Nothing else.
“Don’t go out there!” Hot Tamale said.
But Mitch did and Tommy followed him. The drizzle falling was just a drizzle, chill water and nothing else. They went over to the cops and they were both dead. Their faces were pitted from the rain, contorted and misshapen like they’d spent the night in a tent full of hungry mosquitoes.
“Hell is going on in this town?” Mitch said.
But Tommy just shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’m thinking were in some very deep shit.”
11
There was no sense in rationalizing what they had been through as they drove away in Tommy’s Dodge Ram. Rational thinking seemed to have no place in Witcham now. In the past few days, it seemed, the city had suffered some sort of cataclysmic nervous breakdown and there really was nothing left to do but cross your fingers and hope it regained its sanity.
And with what Mitch and Tommy had just witnessed, it didn’t seem like that was going to come to pass. Insane things had happened and they both had the nasty, unsettling feeling that they were going to continue happening.
On the drive over to Mitch’s house, Witcham bore no signs of the abnormal psychology it had so freely exhibited at Sadler Brothers. And maybe “exhibited” wasn’t the right word here, maybe flaunted was more like it. Sure, the streets were steadily flooding and the sewers were backing up and the rain continued to fall, but it had not been reduced to a graveyard. Bodies were not bobbing in puddles nor corpses splayed wetly on the walks. There seemed to be many more abandoned cars then there had been when Mitch set out from home earlier that day, some left deserted right in the lanes with their doors open, but that did not necessarily mean anything. People-living people-were in the streets, walking around, viewing the rising water.
But they did not seem panicked.
“I don’t get it,” Mitch finall
y said. “If that yellow rain fell all over town, there should be some evidence of it…am I right?”
“Maybe it wasn’t all over town. Maybe it was spotty.” Tommy suggested, seeming to like the idea. “You know how it is, you’re in the middle of a downpour and three streets over its bone-dry.”
That had to be it. Because if that rain had hit the entire town, there should have been bodies. And the people in the streets would not be strolling about in rainboots, with kids in tow. They would have been hiding or driving out of town to beat hell.
Tommy lit a cigarette, turning onto Ames Boulevard and navigating through about two feet of standing water. “You think there’s any chance that what we saw today…that any of that could have been an isolated incident?”
“I’m thinking not.”
Tommy pulled off his cigarette and sighed.
But that was it, wasn’t it? The bottom line to this whole mess: if insane shit like that had happened once, then surely it would happen again, Mitch figured. It was a little hard to swallow the idea that all that horrible business had been some kind of nightmarish fluke. That wasn’t just stretching reality, it was tying it in knots. Whatever those things had been, they had come out in the heaviest rain. Hot Tamale had said something about when the rain started to hammer down they came out like earthworms. And the kid who had driven his car into Sadler Bothers said he’d been over in River Town and those things had come out of the water when they grabbed his mother.
What was that saying? These things were in the water? They only came out in downpours?
All Mitch knew was that those things had shown in Crandon which was very wet, but not truly flooded yet. And what about River Town and Bethany, places that hugged the river? Places that had as much as five feet of standing water in the streets or were almost entirely drowned? What was it going to be like there tonight when the lights went out? How many doors would be knocked on in the dead of night and, better, what would be doing the knocking?