The Siege (57 page)

“Satisfied?” Dale asked, turning to look after Hocker.

Rocker’s face was rippling in the light of the flames. He was smiling, and his eyes were almost perfect circles, trying to take it all in. “Never,” he said softly.

“Well, I am,” Dale said. He put the cruiser into gear and took off for town. His only thought was that he had to find Angie right away. Nothing else mattered.

“Where to first?” Donna asked as the few lights of town came into view. She felt drained. What she wanted was to go to sleep, but she also was terrified at the thought of what dreams might come, and earnestly wished she could first get about a thousand miles away from Dyer.

“Gotta go to Mrs. A’s,” Dale said grimly.

As he drove past the police station, he wondered if anyone would notice the battered cruiser. He had begun trying to frame his story in the mind, but he knew that as soon as he and the rest of them started relating what they had been through, the authorities would be getting the nets ready to throw on them. He knew that as soon as he had found Angie and made sure she was all right, they would have to decide how much of what they had seen even
they
could accept.

When Dale saw Mrs. Appleby’s house up ahead on the right, his stomach did a cold flip. Sitting on the hill, well back from the road, what had once looked like a cozy, happy Victorian house suddenly took on the scary aspect of a haunted house. All of the windows were dark, reflecting the night back like polished marble. The glow from the streetlight washed the front of the house with a powdery glaze.

“It doesn’t look like anyone’s at home,” Dale said, his voice tight in his chest.

Donna let out a sigh, shifting her gaze rapidly back and forth between Dale and the house. “Maybe they’ve gone out for the evening,” she offered.

Dale rapidly shook his head and gritted his teeth as he turned the cruiser into the driveway. “I’ve been missing for a whole day,” he said. “They’ve got to be wondering what’s happened to me. If Angie’s…” But he let the rest of the thought remain unspoken as he pulled to a stop in the driveway.

“The car’s still in the garage,” Hocker said.

“I don’t know if I can go in there.” Dale said after stepping out of the car and looking up at the silent and empty house. He dropped the cruiser’s keys into his pocket and waited for Donna to get out and join him.

The night air was chilly, and he put an arm over Donna’s shoulders as they started up toward the house. They were a few steps from the cruiser when they heard a loud thump that made them stop in their tracks. They turned, expecting to see Tasha or Hocker getting out of the car to go up to the house with them, but neither had left the car. Dale was just opening his mouth to ask them what that noise had been when the sound came again another loud thump.

“I think it was at the back of the car,” Donna said, taking a tentative step forward.

“Maybe the bumper finally fell off,” Dale said. What they had heard was muffled, as though coming from inside the cruiser.

Dale and Donna went to the rear of the cruiser and stopped, looking down at the closed trunk lid. Suddenly a question hit Dale that he had not allowed into his conscious mind until now.

“The trunk lid…” he said, thinking back to when he and Hocker had first climbed through the tunnel to the barn. They had gotten the gas and flares from the trunk easily because the trunk had been left open from the night before, when Hocker had rummaged through it.

“The trunk!! I don’t remember closing it. Hey, Hocker?”

“Yeah?” Hocker said. He had been waiting tensely the cruiser, counting the time until Dale and Donna were in the house so he could make good his escape. With or without Tasha, he had a hefty bankroll in his pocket, and he intended to strike out on his own.

“In the barn,” Dale said. “Did you close the car trunk?”

Hocker turned and looked at him, wrinkling up his nose. “What the fuck? I don’t remember. I thought you did.”

Dale was staring down at the trunk lid as if his eyes were lasers and could cut clear through the metal. He was searching his memory, trying to replay exactly what had happened. As best he could remember, Hocker had started into the tunnel first. So, if Hocker hadn’t shut the trunk, and unless he himself had done it so automatically he had forgotten about it… who had shut the trunk?

Both he and Donna jumped, and Donna made a tight little noise in her throat when the thump came again from inside the trunk.

“You going to take a look?” Donna asked. She didn’t know whether to pull closer or to back off and let Dale handle it.

Dale was fishing in his pants pocket for the keys. The only thought in his mind was the question:
Who closed the trunk?
His fingers closed onto the key ring, and he drew it out slowly. It made a faint jingling sound that startled Donna.

With a sudden exhalation of his breath, Dale looked at her and smiled. “For crying out loud,” he said. “We’re just getting ourselves worked up about nothing.” He slid the key into the trunk lock and gave it a twist. The trunk popped and swung upward.

“Holy Mother of God,” Dale said, taking an involuntary step backward.

Donna let out a strangled cry that instantly brought both Hocker and Tasha scrambling out of the car. They both got to the back of the car just as Dale was backpedalling away from the opened trunk.

“Jesus H.,” Hocker said with a whistling breath.

On the floor of the trunk, his legs curled up, clasped by his arms into a fetal position, was Jeff Winfield. One side of his face had been sheered away, exposing the milky-white bone of his skull. The dim light gave his face a cold, pale cast; his eyes were closed, and even at a safe distance, Dale knew there was no warm breath stirring.

“Well,” Dale said, “that answers one of the questions I still had,” he said, sadly regarding the corpse of the man who, in a short time, he had come to consider a good friend. Donna stared silently.

Hocker let the faintest of smiles cross his face. He was thinking it served the cop right! With Winfield out of the way, and the roll of bills in his pocket, he was starting to feel free and clear all the way. He glanced down at the road and at the woods behind the house, wondering which way would be easiest and fastest to get away. Certainly, none of these people were going to bother chasing after him. The only thing that held him back was the pain in his shoulder. He would have been fine if Tasha hadn’t hit him and reopened the wound. Now it was throbbing worse than it had when he first got it!

“What are you going to do with him?” Donna asked tightly. “You can’t just leave him there.”

Dale glanced at Hocker and then nodded toward Winfield’s body. “Come on. Help me get him up to the house at least. We’re going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

Hocker spit onto the ground, then stepped forward and reached into the trunk along with Dale. “This is it, though,” he said as he wedged his hands up under Winfield’s shoulders. “I’ll help you lug his sorry ass up to the house, but then I’m splitting.”

“Hocker,” Tasha said, almost a whine. “You’ve got to stick around until we explain what happened.”

“I’m sure you guys can handle it without me,” Hocker said. He snorted and spit again, aiming carefully over his shoulder.

Dale winced as he took hold of Winfield’s cold, stiff legs. He was surprised how thin the man’s ankles were, for such a hefty man. He was bending down, bracing himself for the lift when a scream suddenly ripped the night, shattering his nerves.

In a second of blinding panic, Dale let go of his grip and straightened up. His head slammed into the opened trunk lid, sending a jolt of pain along his nerves to complement the fear.

As soon as Hocker shifted Winfield’s body upward, he saw a subtle motion on the dead man’s face. Hocker had a fraction of a second to wonder if it had been a trick of light, but then the dead man’s eyes snapped open and, before he could react, Winfield’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the throat.

Both Donna and Tasha screamed, scrambling to get away from the cruiser as Winfield lurched upward, swung his arm around, and clamped it solidly down onto Hocker’s wounded shoulder. The scream that ripped from Hocker’s throat was a blend of perfect pain and horror as the dead man opened his mouth and started to pull him down.

“No! No!” Hocker wailed as he stared down at the gaping mouth. Wide teeth gleamed like knife blades in the night as they chomped up and down, coming closer to Hocker’s face. He could smell the man’s sickly sour breath, reeking with decay.

In the first instant of surprise, Dale reeled backward, tripping on his own foot and almost falling. He regained his balance and dove forward, not exactly sure what he could do. From experience, he knew these things of Rodgers’ were much stronger than they had been in life, and Dale was sure Winfield was no lightweight when he had been alive.

Rodgers’ last shot
, Dale thought as he tried not to imagine the full strength and fury animating this corpse.

Hocker’s feet were scuffing the driveway; his screams were muffled inside the trunk as the thing that had been Winfield pulled him closer and closer. He felt the steely fingers of one hand dig like hooks into his torn flesh; the other hand clutched the side of his neck, just missing the windpipe, as it yanked him down.

“Do…
something
!” Hocker managed to cry out. There was an intense hammering in his ears, and his vision spun wildly.

Suddenly, out of the night, there came a huge explosion that filled his mind with thunder and lightning. Thick fumes of spent gunpowder entered his lungs, choking him; but even in his thunderstruck confusion, he sensed a slackening of the hold on his throat and shoulder. With a moaning shout, he leaned back with what little strength he had left and fell backward. He was unconscious when he hit the pavement.

Dale was almost as surprised as Hocker was by the sudden report of the gun. He thought for an instant that he himself had been shot. He believed his body just needed another second or two to register the lead that had ripped through it, then he would drop to the ground, a lifeless heap. After another second, though, his mind registered what had happened: Tasha had fired point-blank into Winfield’s face.

The zombie hadn’t been hurt. He
couldn’t
be hurt. Maybe the shock of the gunshot startled him for an instant; maybe because he had just recently been transformed into one of Rodgers’ zombies, he still had a living reflex and remembered that bullets could hurt him. Regardless, in the instant the thing that had been Winfield cringed back and released his hold on Hocker, Dale acted. His hand clamped down on the tire jack, then he raised it over his head and brought it down as hard as he could onto Winfield’s upturned face.

The first impact sent a bone-deep shudder through Dale’s arms, but Dale knew one hit wouldn’t be enough. He knew he had to disconnect the brain from the body, so body and brain could die alone.

Dale was surprised by the power he felt zinging through him as he repeatedly raised the jack up and brought it down on Winfield’s head again and again. Each hit made a sickening thumping sound. The creature that had been Winfield scrambled to protect itself, as a low, pained moan issued from its throat. Dale had to tell himself, over and over, that the man he had known as Winfield was already dead: he was putting an unnatural and ungodly thing to rest.

In spite of Winfield’s superior strength, Dale had the advantage. Unable to stand or even to avoid the successive hits, Winfield thrashed on the trunk floor as Dale hacked away at him. Finally, with a fortunately placed shot, the metal edge of the jack split the creature’s spine. All strength went out of the creature’s limbs, and with one feeble grunt, the zombie collapsed back into the trunk, truly dead.

Dale dropped the jack, oddly bloodless, to the ground. When it hit, it rang like a bell. Until now, killing these things hadn’t been easy, but it certainly was necessary, even when he had had to
disconnect
Larry Cole’s brain from his zombie body. But having to do this to Winfield left Dale feeling weak and hollow himself, as if
he
, now, was nothing more than a re-animated corpse. All feeling and emotion had been twisted so horribly out of shape, he wondered if he could ever feel truly human again. His stomach suddenly revolted, and before he knew what was happening, he was on his knees beside the cruiser, vomiting. He dimly suspected that once he found Angie, he would be all right, but right now, all he could think was:
You can only take so much death before you start feeling dead yourself!

III

A
s it turned out, there had been no one in Mrs. Appleby’s house, and no message left behind to let him know where anyone was. Dale and Donna loaded the unconscious Hocker into the cruiser and, with Winfield’s body still in the trunk, drove back to the police station. There they had found Chief Bates, and after showing him the body and giving only the briefest of explanations, enough so Bates could dispatch an ambulance and a fire truck to the accident site, they drove to the hospital in Houlton where Bates assured Dale he would find his daughter safe and sound. Still, before they left the station, Dale called the hospital just to hear Angie’s voice to confirm it.

Tasha rode in the ambulance with Hocker, whose torn shoulder, seen in the harsh glare of the ambulance, looked more like raw hamburger than human flesh. Dale and Donna accompanied Bates in his cruiser, thankful for small things, such as car windows that rolled up to shut out the cold night air and two headlights, clearly illuminating the road ahead.