The Living and the Dead

by Greg F. Gifune

  “To see you die, old man. To kill you myself if need be.”

  “I swear to you I’m sorry for what I done, son.”

  “I’m my mother’s son, not yours.”

  “I’m so tired, I…so tired of running. All those nights running, I…”

  Dempsey closed his eyes; saw Lucille hanging from that tree, jaw snapping at him. He coughed, tasted blood in the back of his throat.

  Duck swallowed back the feelings bucking through him. Old Dempsey had been his friend from the first days Duck had wandered into this forsaken town. They had seen in each other men that knew pain, sorrow, guilt and regret on intimate terms, men that had managed to fool themselves for all these years that they had outrun the demons of their pasts, somehow staying just a step ahead. And now when he looked at the remains of this devastated old man he realized he saw himself again, a damned soul that paid the piper in furious torment every second of every minute of every day of every year.

  But if what Chris alleged was true then Dempsey deserved his fate. Maybe they both did.

  And it had only just begun.

  “Dempsey,” he finally managed, “how do we stop this?”

  The old man’s bloodshot eyes came to rest on him. He smiled a sad little smile, telling his old friend everything both needed to hear and feel with that single long look. “If I’m right, I can end it.”

  “And if you’re wrong?”

  The storm surged, throttling the cottage.

  “Then there won’t be no difference between us and them. Maybe there never was.”

  Slumped against the doorframe, Dempsey closed his eyes, pressed the .38 to his temple and pulled the trigger.

  31

  Before, there had been a kind of silent countdown to morning, as if daylight might somehow save them and shine a beacon of reason across a world gone mad in the night. Now, time served little purpose and offered even less promise. Though several minutes had passed since the deafening boom, Duck remained on the floor, clutching Dempsey’s limp body in his arms, rocking him slowly despite the blood and mess. He instinctually pressed a hand against the wound, but even with strong pressure the blood kept pumping out of Dempsey’s head. Gushing bright red at first, then in darker hues thick as syrup, it pulsed free between his fingers, ran along his arm and coated the floor around them in a widening pool of slick and sticky crimson. “Easy now,” he whispered. The same as he had years before to countless men dying in the jungles of Vietnam. “Easy now, it’s—it’s all right now.”

  Stunned, Lennox watched them, uncertain if she’d truly witnessed what had just happened. A man had literally blown his brains out right before her eyes. Gore had sprayed her as his head burst to pieces, yet it still didn’t seem real. She hadn’t screamed, she didn’t think—if she had she didn’t remember—but she’d jumped at the sound, she remembered that much. From there her mind went numb—clicked off as if an internal switch had been thrown much like earlier in the bedroom—and she again began to feel decidedly less human. No emotion, she told herself. Just function. Like a machine coldly and efficiently executing its tasks. No longer organism, but mechanism, she turned her back on the carnage and considered the dark windows over the kitchen sink. Much as she had initially wanted to stay in the cottage and take her chances there, she now knew they’d soon be out in that darkness too.

  At first, Lana had backed away, hands covering her mouth to stifle a scream. But then she’d doubled over and vomited into the sink, hanging on the counter and crying for what seemed a very long time, her muffled coughs and sobs rising now and then above the volume of the storm. Eventually she returned from wherever she’d gone, moving sullenly but resolutely as she forced herself toward the body and the man cradling it in his arms. There was so much blood it looked as if Duck had been hit, too. “You have to let him go,” she said softly, leaning in and touching Duck’s shoulder, gripping it with a touch she could only hope felt tender and assured. “You have to let him go now, OK? We…We have to decide what to do, do you understand?”

  His teary eyes found her. “He was my friend.”

  “He was a sick and cruel man who deserves neither your tears nor your sympathy,” Chris corrected him. He hadn’t moved a muscle since his father had shot himself, and although his face and neck were sprayed with blood, he’d made no move to wipe it off. “Nothing but a coward right until the end.”

  “There’s nothing you can do for him now,” Lana told Duck, ignoring him.

  Anita, who had turned away, remained with her back to the others, overcome with emotion and no longer able to contain it.

  “So much violence and blood,” he muttered, “so much shame and sorrow. For what? For what?”

  “Duck, listen to me.” Lana took his chin in her hand and slowly raised his head until their eyes met. “You have to let him go. We need you.”

  This time her words seemed to register, and as she moved away, he gently wiped Dempsey’s face clear of blood as best he could then carefully laid him back on the floor. He ran the back of his arm across his eyes, clearing his own vision, then retrieved the shotgun and rose to his feet. The blood had changed him as well, awakened something in him he’d thought asleep for a very long time.

  He vanished into the bedroom then returned with a blanket and covered the body, kneeling and wrapping it as best he could.

  Lennox moved closer to him. “Perry,” she said softly, “we should…I mean, shouldn’t we…it’s not right to just leave him out there.”

  “We can’t risk going into those woods,” Lana said.

  “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  Duck rose to his feet and gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “There’s nothing we can do for him now,” he told her. “We’ll come back for him.”

  Lennox conceded with a nod then looked away.

  Chris began to cry, quietly, though the tears were not for his father.

  “If Dempsey was right then killing himself put an end to this,” Duck said. “But we won’t know for sure until we’re out there.”

  Lana grabbed the 9mm from the table and nodded. “Then I say we go.”

  “Lennox?”

  “Fine.”

  After extricating the .38 from the grisly puddle on the floor, Duck offered it to her. “Go on then, take it.”

  “It’s covered in blood,” she said dully.

  “They almost always are.”

  Lightning flashed. The windows blinked blue and again fell dark.

  She raised the combat knife.

  “You may need more than that.”

  With a sigh, Lennox accepted the weapon.

  Duck turned to Chris and Anita. “What about you two?”

  She faced the others. “I want to get the fuck out of here.”

  “Chris?”

  Still in tears, he stared at his father’s bloody body without response.

  “Chris!” Duck snapped.

  “I didn’t…I didn’t want to hurt her.” His face twisted into a grimace of barely contained horror and panic. “I wouldn’t hurt her for all the money in the world, I—I didn’t know what to do, I…I loved my sister.”

  “We’ve all got the whole goddamn world crashing down on us tonight, and you worse than the rest of us, but stay with me if you can. Stay with me.”

  He blinked and seemed to slowly come up out of the haze he’d drifted into. “Yes,” he said, clearing his throat and assuming a more controlled and professional demeanor. At least that was his intention. “I’m here.”

  “In or out?”

  “We don’t know how far-reaching this is,” he said.

  “That’s true,” Lennox agreed. “What if what’s happening isn’t just happening here in Tall Tree Junction? What if it’s everywhere?”

  They all remained silent a while, considering the possibilities.

  “No TV, no radio, no phone signals, nothing,” Lennox added. “What if—”

  “We can’t go on what-ifs,” Lana said, stepping forward, “staying here
means continuing to be cut off from the rest of the world. The only way to know for sure what’s really going on and how far it reaches is to go find out.”

  “I’m not gonna force anyone,” Duck said. “We’re all in but you, Doc. What’s it gonna be?”

  Chris finally reached up and wiped the blood from his face. “I’m in.”

  Duck strode to the windows over the sink and had a final look at the cat’s house. I’ll see you soon, Striper, he thought. You and your babies lay low, girl, stay put and you’ll be safe. “I’ve done some good in this waste of a life,” he muttered. “Haven’t I?”

  In a narrow utility closet next to the refrigerator Duck found a heavy duty flashlight, checked to make sure the batteries were functioning then turned back to the others. “Stay close, stay quiet and follow my lead. We head for the car slow and steady, watching all sides as best we can, and we don’t stop. No matter what, got it? We don’t stop. And if anything moves out there, kill it.” He motioned to the table. “Snuff out that candle.”

  With a final look at the others, Lana licked her fingers, coating the tips of her thumb and index finger with saliva, then pinched the flame and plunged the cottage into darkness.

  32

  Duck opened the door, let the night slip through. Rain fell across the frame, trickled down into tiny streams near their feet. Lana and Lennox positioned themselves just behind and on either side of him, weapons at the ready while Chris and Anita pulled up the rear. Duck slowly panned the flashlight beam back and forth, hoping to reach the tree line but coming up just shy. No ghosts, no inhuman red eyes, just a dark and inhospitable night.

  He gave the signal to proceed, and together they slipped out the front door and into the night, hurrying across the muddy lawn in a graceless shuffle, their backs touching to form a triangulated entity hustling through the darkness. The moon had fallen behind cloud cover, and the fog had all but vanished, leaving behind a few wisps of ghostly vapors hanging in the air like smoke. Duck aimed the flashlight out in front of them, the beam carving a path that illuminated the dirt and rain and glimpses of nearby trees and night sky. The rain fell angrily as ever in large fat drops, reducing visibility even with the light to no more than three or four feet. Duck shook his head and rapidly blinked his eyes to keep his vision clear as possible, but the rain just kept coming. Though no one spoke, their anxious breathing offered some counter to the hissing rain and outlying sounds of thunder.

  They had nearly made it to Chris’s Audi when Duck caught a flash of something. At first he thought it was more fallen trees, just more victims of the storm, as all he could make out was something bulky and relatively large and dark on the far side of the road. He slowed the group’s speed and swung the light around toward the muddy roadside, and realized it wasn’t trees at all. The group came to a halt and he felt the others stiffen. They’d seen it, too.

  The pavement ran slick with water and was littered with bark and broken tree branches of various sizes and shapes, torn loose in the storm and scattered about like discarded bones. There had been no lightning strikes since they left the cottage, and though there was still an occasional rumble of thunder, it was quite distant and sounded as if it were moving away from them, retreating back to wherever it had come from. Duck zeroed in closer with the flashlight and the shape emerged from the otherwise level darkness.

  A pickup truck smashed into an enormous tree on the side of the road.

  The flashlight revealed a battered vehicle with blown out windows, a great deal of debris and numerous spent beer cans scattered about the pavement around it. “I’m gonna get a better look,” Duck said. “Watch my back.”

  The others stayed where they were while he approached the truck.

  The cab and bed were covered with debris, shredded pieces of clothing, and blood. Duck stepped on something, nearly turning his ankle, and quickly moved back. The flashlight shone on a crudely severed arm on the road just below the driver’s side window, the bloody hand still clutched a hunting rifle. The man it had once been attached to was a bloody mess slumped over the wheel and long dead.

  Duck swallowed bile and moved around to the rear of the vehicle.

  Another body lay draped over the tailgate, face-up. The young man’s back was obviously broken and his corpse left dangling, arms hanging out and nearly touching the pavement, torso bent over the raised tailgate at an impossible and horrific angle. His face was sallow and drawn, cheeks sunken tight to the bone and eyes hollowed out as if something had sucked them back up into his skull with tremendous force. His mouth was open, twisted and frozen in place. He’d been screaming when he died.

  Duck recognized both men. Locals he’d seen around now and then but had little traffic with, they’d been part of the posse from the day before he’d seen tearing through town in search of what Chief Hopps had assured them was a renegade bear.

  Had they simply crashed in the storm, drunk and going at tremendous speed? Or had they been running from something when they’d lost control of the truck?

  Duck rejoined the others, and without comment, ushered them to the Audi, determined to keep everyone moving. They asked no questions and he offered no explanation. There seemed little point in either. Hopefully the monster in their closet was gone, and hopefully it had taken the dead with it, but there was no telling how far-reaching the carnage it had left behind was.

  The sooner they could get to town or find other living human beings, the better. Duck brought the flashlight around to the Audi, shining it in the windows to make certain the car was empty. He held his hand out to Chris. “I’m thinking maybe all things considered, it’d be best if I drive.”

  Chris handed over the keys without protest.

  * * *

  The farther they drove, the more troublesome the desolation became. The country road they followed was completely deserted, which was to be expected under the best circumstances this time of night, but they’d encountered no signs of life or other vehicles, and several electrical and telephone wires had fallen during the storm. At one point they came upon an entire pole that had cracked and partially collapsed. The lone wire dangling free one would normally expect to find flopping about like a snake and spitting fiery sparks from its frayed end instead lay dead in the road like everything else. Duck maneuvered around it anyway, doing his best to negotiate the debris-strewn pavement and avoid the muddy and rain-filled embankments on either side of the road. The forest on both sides of them was denser here, the trees taller, more ominous and eerily silhouetted against the darkness.

  As they moved on, they noticed a cluster of rundown shacks. Lana recognized them as those she’d seen when she’d first arrived. All were dark, quiet and showed no signs of life.

  By the time they reached the final one, the rain had begun to weaken.

  “The rain,” Lana said hopefully, “it’s slowing.”

  Duck pulled to the side of the road, took up the flashlight again and aimed it at the last shack. “That’s Rae’s place,” he said, sliding the beam along the muddy yard, past the huge pile of belongings Rae and her children had assembled there prior, then brought the light back around until it fell across the face of the otherwise dark shack. The front door was open.

  “Looks deserted,” Lennox said.

  “I need to be sure. Rae’s a friend, and she’s got two little ones.” Duck turned to Lana, who had taken the other front seat while Lennox, Chris and Anita had loaded into the back. “Stay put, keep an eye on the road in case somebody comes along.” He handed her his lighter. “Shouldn’t be any reason, but if you need to get out of the car or the headlights fail or something, this’ll at least give you some light. Anybody comes you call out to me good and loud, all right?”

  “Even if they are here, there’s no more room in the car,” Anita reminded him. “We can’t take them with us anyway, why not—”

  “Did you hear what he said?” Lana snapped, looking back at her. “There could be children in there.”

  Anita looked aw
ay, the glistening tears in her eyes catching the moonlight.

  “I thought we were supposed to stay quiet,” Lennox said flatly.

  “Not a bad idea regardless,” Lana said, “but think about it. We haven’t seen anything since Dempsey took his life.”

  “Do you think it’s over?” Anita asked.

  Duck answered before she could. “Could be, but it’s too early to bank on.” He dropped the window and looked up past the drizzle at the night sky, hoping to find solace, or perhaps confirmation, in the heavens. “Even if it is, we’ll still have to concern ourselves with the aftermath”

  “Maybe I should come with you,” Chris offered.

  “I’ve got this. But if I’m not out in five minutes, don’t come in after me, understand? Leave me behind and get the hell out of here.”

  “Be careful,” Lana said as he stepped from the car.

  He looked to the shack, gave a distant nod, and headed for the open door.

  33

  The cabin smelled horribly. He’d been inside several times in the past, but now, with the front door having been open for God knows how long, outdoorsy smells of forest and nature had invaded the small space, giving it the feel of a barn or a dwelling long abandoned rather than a building people lived in. An intense sewage smell wafted from the rear of the shack, mixing with the other raw smells to form a pungent stench. Duck could only assume the toilet had backed up or overflowed. Nearly all the furniture Rae owned had been broken up and tossed on the pile in the yard, which left the place strangely barren. Rainwater blown in through the open door had formed a slick sheet on the floors and soaked nearly everything else. He knew she wouldn’t have left the door open, so either that thing had gotten to them, or she and the kids had managed to flee beforehand. “Rae?” His voice echoed through the empty house. “Rae, are you here?” With the shotgun pointed at the floor, he angled the flashlight and moved it in a slow arc across the back wall. He knew the kids slept in the bedroom out back, and that Rae slept in the main room on a couch with a pull-out bed. He’d slept on it with her a few times in the past, and in the darkness of what remained of her home, Duck thought of Rae, of the two of them together and what they’d almost had. In the end it hadn’t worked, he’d brought too much baggage to the relationship and wasn’t able to commit the way she needed and deserved him to. He knew even though she’d always played it cool that deep down she’d never forgiven him for giving up on their relationship before it even had the chance to get fully started. Too many goddamn demons nipping at our heels, he thought. Christ, if we’d only known.