Holiday of the Dead (43 page)

“It’s nice here
,
” she’d said. “Just think of it like going on holiday. Like we used to.”

The sky rumbled. Eric slowed to a stop before the gate. A young man with a rifle slung over his shoulder appeared on the other side. Putting the convertible in park, Eric sat up and shouted his name. “I’m Olivia’s friend!”

The man began to unlock the gate, then stood erect, staring past Eric. Eric looked back and saw two of them, ambling down the road towards his car. They were both men, dressed in blood-spattered t-shirts and jeans, and their movements were slow and jerky as they advanced on the vehicle. One’s neck was bent at an unnatural angle, clearly broken, forcing his eyes skyward; he was hunched over so that he could see Eric. A thin stream of blood and spittle ran from his lips. He almost looked like he was smiling.

Eric had only seen a few of them since leaving the city, lurching along the shoulder of the PCH. This was the last stage of it, whatever it was. Eric glanced back at the gate. The man with the rifle watched impassively. Eric began, “Aren’t you going to–”

The man raised the rifle abruptly. The gun was pointing at Eric – he threw out his hands with a scream–

The round tore past his ear and into the head of the broken-necked man. Eric dropped below the windshield and heard the rifle’s crack a second time. It was answered by a peal of thunder. When Eric sat up, both of the men in the road behind him lay dead.

Dead again.

He lifted a hand in thanks to the man at the gate. “Good shooting,” he breathed. “Good shooting.”

Something lunged out of the trees at his left. An old man seized Eric’s arm. There was no life in his eyes. His mouth opened, revealing a modest collection of brown teeth, and he clamped them down on Eric’s driving glove.

Eric howled and shoved the man back, breaking his grip. He fell across the passenger seat and scrabbled across the floor for his .38. The old man pulled open the driver’s door and clawed at Eric’s thigh. “Maaaaaa.”

Eric’s fingers snagged the butt of the gun, and he fought to get a hold of it while pushing at the old man’s head with his own. “Help!” Eric screamed. The old man’s jagged nails dug into his leg. He kicked hard and the man stumbled back into the open door. Eric sat up and shot him through the cheek.

Eric ripped off his gloves and showed his hands to the man. “He didn’t get me! All right?” He lowered his shaking hands and cast a glance over his shoulder. “Open the gate. Please. Let me in. I’m the professor, Olivia’s friend.”

The man complied. “Salvatore.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Eric stuffed his pistol in the waist of his slacks and turned to go back to the car. The man caught his elbow. “I’m going to drive in,” Eric explained.

“Good point. Okay.” Eric shoved his hands into the pockets of his sport coat, and as they walked up the road toward the villa, cutting through the middle of the vineyard, it began to drizzle.

“Anyone else here?” Eric asked. He eyed the rows of grapevines as he spoke, thinking of the old man’s shadow bursting from the woods. He’d scarcely seen his attacker’s face before his hand was in the bastard’s mouth. “Besides Liv, of course, and the master of the house.”

“No.” Salvatore picked at his coat. “Anselmo is my cousin. So I stay. The others, he send away.”

The villa’s porch was shrouded by olive trees. Eric took shelter from the increasing rain while Salvatore unlocked the entrance. They passed through a small courtyard with a disused fountain – a stone handmaiden looking heavenward, hands clasped – and entered the house proper.

Salvatore took Eric’s coat and left him alone in the front hall. Eric shook the water from his hair. He felt more than a little awkward here, in the home of Olivia’s new lover with a revolver in his pants. His heart was still pounding. I shot a man out there. Jesus, he would have never thought he had that in him. Of course, the man was already dead, but … Nothing to be proud of, he told himself. She wouldn’t be impressed.

Would she?

No, no. He was hardly St. George. She’d called him here because she knew he would have died in the city. Simple as that.

He heard an unfamiliar voice from within the house and tensed. He’d hoped to see Liv first. The winemaker, however, wouldn’t allow that. Eric knew enough about him to know he was always in control. They’d actually crossed paths a few times before, at university functions – the winemaker, the wealthy benefactor, wearing his plastic smile and a young woman on his right arm. A different girl every time, with a different look. Whatever was in fashion. Though Eric and Liv had been over long before she took up with the winemaker, Eric had still tried to talk her out of it – but he was hardly an impartial observer, was he?

“Anselmo Guglielmetti,” the man boomed as he strode into the hall. He caught Eric’s hand in a vice grip. “Sal tells me your trip was eventful.”

Eric had hoped the man would look older and more haggard than he had at those functions. He didn’t. Eric knew Anselmo was in his fifties, at least five years his senior, but he didn’t look it, not even close. They had the same salt-and-pepper hair – more salt than pepper on both accounts – but Anselmo’s hair was thick and his flesh was pink and that smile of his made Eric feel like an underclassman in an ill-fitting suit.

He hadn’t yet spoken a word. “Olivia’s in her room,” Anselmo said. “She’ll be with us shortly. It’s been a hectic morning, as you can imagine. You look as if you could use a drink.”

Eric followed Anselmo into the kitchen. Gesturing to a small table set in a winnowed alcove, Anselmo ducked behind the counter. Eric took a seat. He adjusted the .38, then took it out and set it on the table. “Have anything stronger than wine?” he asked.

Anselmo laughed. “I took you for a Scotch man the moment I saw you.” He filled two tumblers, dropped in a couple of cubes, and brought the drinks to the table. Sitting across from Eric, he moved aside a vase of pink lilies – Liv’s favourite. “I finally turned the TV off,” he said.

“What’s that?” Eric took a sip of his drink. Warmth spread through his belly, and he sighed. Better to come down a little from the chaos outside before he saw Liv.

“I mean I’ve been watching TV all night and morning,” said Anselmo. “She doesn’t care to see it. But I can barely look away. Saw footage of them staggering through Times Square, all stiff-legged and white. Some of them had awful wounds. Mortal wounds. But they just keep going. Anyhow, she wouldn’t come out of her room so I shut it off.” Anselmo drained his glass. “You’re a professor of what, again?”

“Astronomy,” Eric answered, knowing damn well that Anselmo knew it.

The other man nodded and clinked the ice in his glass. “My, looks like I need a refill already.” He got up and walked back behind the counter. “So where do you think it came from, Professor? The stars, maybe?”

Eric ignored the jibe and said, “More likely our own people made it. I’m sure they didn’t intend this, but …” He took another drink and decided to humour the winemaker, wax poetic a little. “Everything outside this world is Creation yet unfolding. We seem to search for the means to undo it.”

“Hmm.” Anselmo returned to the table. “Never known a stargazer to be so cynical. Not like Liv. But she’s young yet.” He tilted back his glass and swallowed down its contents. Anselmo’s face flushed. He set the glass on the table with a bang. Eric jumped in his seat.

Anselmo’s wet eyes narrowed. Eric realized the man had been drinking long before he got there. Anselmo’s hands curled into beefy fists, and he said softly, “She was your student. Do you really think you’re better than me?”

Eric stared at him, searching for words, for some sort of exit strategy. His back was against the windows. Anselmo was between him and the front hall. The winemaker had a peculiar smile on his face, and it wasn’t the one he wore to parties. The revolver sat on the table in front of Eric … they both looked at it, and Eric’s stomach turned. His hands twitched in his lap. What did this maniac want him to do?

The lilies’ petals moved ever so gently. Anselmo frowned, and his hands relaxed upon the table. “Do you feel a draft?”

He barked into the front hall. “Sal! Check on Olivia!”

Eric’s hand took the .38 from the table and stuffed it into his pants pocket. He barely noticed. His heart was pounding again, and he was rising, willing his legs not to break into a run as he went into the front hall. Anselmo followed after him. There, they heard Salvatore’s cry.

Anselmo raced ahead of Eric, down the hall and into the rear of the house, through the last doorway. He stopped beside Salvatore, both of them looking at something in the room; Eric broke through the pair and let out a strangled yell.

It had been a month since he last saw her. They’d run into each other in the city – he couldn’t remember where just now, couldn’t remember anything but the way she had looked, and how kind she had been, and how it had stirred him just to make her laugh again. Now she was pale and lifeless on the floor beneath an open window. Raindrops pattered on the carpet and drew tears on her face. She was wearing no makeup, and her dark brown hair was damp and matted to her brow and neck and shoulders. She wore a thin dress with a floral print. She was beautiful.

(She’s dead)

Eric vomited on his shoes.

Salvatore pulled him back as Anselmo knelt beside the body. “Why are you – let me go!” Eric shook Salvatore off and fell beside Anselmo. Liv’s eyes were closed, lips parted slightly. She smelled like the rain. Eric’s stomach heaved again, and he let Salvatore draw him back.

Anselmo rose and went to the window. He caught the fluttering curtains in his hands and ripped them away, looking out and down the hillside. “They got in,” he said quietly.

Salvatore released Eric and went to shut the window. Eric and Anselmo stood on either side of the body. Eric didn’t know how to feel. He wanted to rage, to sob, but she had not been his in the moment of her death. It was Anselmo who needed to break the silence. But he didn’t.

“She called me three hours ago,” Eric breathed. “She was alive.” His eyes lit upon the phone beside the four-poster bed, and he went to it. When he touched the receiver to his ear, a hollow clicking filled his head.

Eric had seen so few vehicles out on the highway. People were staying home, where they felt safe. He had come here – not because of the remoteness of the villa, nor the great stone walls that surrounded it – but because of her. She’d always made him feel safe. And she’d known that.

“She still loved me,” he breathed.

Eric realized what he’d said aloud and looked up with a start. Anselmo was gone. There was only the body. He went to her and stood over the bed sheet. He knelt, one last time, and pulled the cover back to see her. He studied the lashes of her eyes, the curve of her jaw, her slightly opened mouth. He smelled lavender. She often bathed in lavender-scented water. He knelt closer, sniffing at her mouth.

Something struck the window, rattling it in its frame. Eric spun to see an amorphous silhouette moving behind the curtains. The pane rattled again. Thunder sounded. Glass exploded into the room, and a pair of mottled gray hands tore through the curtains like they were wet paper.

“They did get in,” Anselmo mumbled.

Eric barrelled into the winemaker, sending him tumbling head over heels into the hallway. Eric clambered over him and raced into the front hall, where his shoulder connected with Salvatore’s chest with such force it threw the young man into the wall. Eric slipped, righted himself, and plunged through the door into the courtyard. Through the rain, past the stone maiden, through the outer door – Eric came at last to a halt and stared into the vineyard. It seemed to be alive, moving with the rhythm of the falling rain. He looked from row to row. There could be dead men lurking in any one of them, waiting to pounce on him as he ran for the gate. Then he remembered the gun, and shoved his hand into his pocket – found nothing.

Where had he lost it? The hall? The courtyard? Eric looked back at the villa and saw Salvatore taking aim. The sky roared. A rifle round whizzed past his head.

Eric broke right, down the hillside. He heard yelling. Anselmo, giving orders. The man was a coward. He must have killed her in a rage. Now Anselmo was back in control, clear-headed, and he wouldn’t dirty his hands again. Eric ran around the side of an enormous barn and skidded through a slick of mud. He banged against the barn wall and splashed down. Filthy water entered his mouth and eyes. Anselmo had drowned her in the bath. She’d been utterly exposed, completely helpless. She’d trusted him. Eric’s blood ran hot.