Resurrection (72 page)

There was a swishing as of sheets and a form stepped through the doorway.

Miriam looked and looked again.

It was a man, very tall and very unpleasant to look upon. He wore some long, oily looking coat that might have been leather. A graying, dirty shift beneath it that might have been a shroud. His face was pale, blotched with gray, seamed and withered, barely containing the skull beneath. Red worms were feasting upon it. Beetles crawled over it, scurrying madly. But what caught her were those almost luminous yellow eyes set with just a tiny black pinprick of pupil. Those eyes did not just look at you, they
owned
you. They were filled with toxic mists and crawling, lunatic shadows, glimpses of places you would not want to go and things you would never want to see.

“So, you’re him, ain’t you?” Miriam said, her hands greasy on the Remington in her fists. “You’re Death…aren’t you?”

“Yes, Death and Life and all that lies before and beyond,” he said.

That voice was still liquid and enchanting, but what it came from
was simply hideous.

“
You don’t frighten me,”
she said to him. “I knew you’d come one night. I’ve lived a long life and the grave doesn’t scare me.”

“Of course not.”

Miriam’s heart was palpitating, her palms sweating so badly that the Remington slid from her hands and thudded uselessly to the floor. Looking on him, she knew her death would be ugly. It would not be quick and it would not be clean. It would be an atrocity. He would squeeze every last drop of human suffering from her and drink of it, grow giddy and drunk at the taste. And when he was done, he would eat her flesh, gnaw her down to the bone.

But he’d get no satisfaction, she decided, because she was old and stringy and tough as a two-dollar steak. And she’d never beg and she’d never scream.

As he glided forward, perhaps expecting this old woman to piss her bloomers and make a run for it, she stepped towards him to meet him. “Got yourself a town, have you? A town all your own, eh, Mr. Death? Turned our Witcham into a great effing boneyard and now you’re here like a fat rat to lord over the refuse pile? Ha! Fool you are and fool you’ve always been! Go ahead, kill and maim and dismember and call your creeping shades from their graves! See what good it does you! Because low or high, rich or poor, they’ve all known the sunshine, they’ve all walked above the earth and known life! Not like a worming, skulking vermin like you! Feeding in coffins and squirming through the muddy earth…”

The dark man stepped forward and something under that gray, mildewed shift of his was moving, undulating. Something that wanted to get out. Something that needed desperately to reveal itself.

“On your knees,” he said.

“
Ha! I’ll bow and scrape to no graveworm like you! I’ll not

”

But those eyes would not have this defiance. And the mind that lit them would have even less. Miriam felt something give inside her with a wet snapping and she went down to her knees before him. Her bones were rubber and her muscles flaccid and useless. Her nerves idled with flat indifference and her blood became a cooling tar. There was an eruption of blinding pain in her head and she felt her bladder let go, then her bowels. Her left side went numb. Her eyes exploded with broken blood vessels, purple and livid. A trickle of dark arterial blood ran from her nostrils.

The opened wrist was pressed to her parted lips and that black fluid filled her mouth until she wanted to gag. But there was no gagging, only the choking sounds of her throat swallowing.

And she did, the feel of the rancid flesh sliding down her throat making her stomach roll and her heart seize up, darkness taking her finally, thankfully.

That was how Miriam Blake died.

There was mindless, rabid death like that which had burst into her house. And then there was the kind that Miriam suffered, a violation that was bleak and godless and infinitely foul.

26

Crowded, damp, and dark like being buried in a box.

But maybe worse, maybe like being trapped in a black womb, lodged there like something dead, held fast until worms and rot came. This was how it was for Chrissy. She opened her eyes and felt others around her, some alive and some near-dead and most just simply mad. She was bruised and banged-up, but alive and she planned on staying that way.

She pushed a leg off her lap and elbowed a body from her side. She heard moans and groans, felt a warm wetness as someone bled on her. Wherever she was, it was black as pitch and cramped, confined. The air was heavy and saturated with a clinging damp that was hard to breathe. The floor was dirt, but dry dirt. Wherever she was, it was above the water line. A high place, yet one with a floor of earth.

Now what sense did that make?

What possible sense?

She tried to remember. The University, of course. The bio lab. Lisa and Harry and that asshole Jacky. Oh, God. Lisa was dead and so was the pervert Jacky Kripp. The clown. She remembered the clown. It had taken her. Jesus, it seemed impossible, but the clown had flown away with her.

No, no. That wasn’t it exactly,
she told herself.
You didn’t fly. It wasn’t like a bird snatched you up, this was more of a drifting. The clown took her and drifted away into the night with her, floating up above the water, floating and floating and floating…

After that, she could not remember.

She must have blacked out.

Well, wherever this awful, smelling pit of bodies was, she had to get out. She hadn’t been dumped here by accident, that was for sure. She was tucked away here with the others for a reason. She knew that much. Maybe they were to be left for days until they starved to death, so they would reawaken like the dead things, be like them, be one with them.

“Where is this place?” she said under her breath.

And a voice said, “I don’t know, but we’re never getting out alive.”

Chrissy felt tears roll from her eyes. This was it then. A pit with no escape. They would languish here until…until maybe that clown or something worse came to get them. It was unthinkable. She wiped the tears from her eyes. She couldn’t accept a death like that. Maybe it was her youth or her ego or just her innate stubborn streak, but she could not accept any of it. Not without a fight.

She was left alive.

Unlike Lisa, she was still alive and if she was still alive, then there was a chance.

She crawled over bodies, not knowing if they were dead or alive. She found a wall of damp, cobwebbed stone. She crawled in the other direction and found a like wall.

“What’re you doing?” a voice asked her.

“Trying to find a way out.”

“There is no way out?”

“Have you tried?” Chrissy said. “Have you even tried?”

Nobody bothered answering her and she did not care. The world was insane or maybe it was just Witcham and what did it really matter? This was the reality of everyone in that stinking pit. Ugly, impossible, but this was it. You could roll up in a corner like a sick dog or you could go out fighting.

And Chrissy already knew what she was going to do.

Whatever had brought all this about had brought hell into the world and now it was time to repay the favor.

27

After their heroic…or not so heroic…breakout from Miriam Blake’s house that night, Russel Boyne, his mother Margaret, and Lou Darin, ran through the blowing wet blackness, planning on making it to the Russel House. But a horde of pale, dripping people waiting down the street changed their minds. They took the next available house which belonged to the Procton’s. God only knew where the Procton’s were and nobody really cared. Russel led the way and the other two followed. He stood by the door with the Winchester he’d taken from Miriam’s house while they filed in. Then he locked and bolted it.

“Now what?” Lou Darin said in the darkness. “What in the hell now?”

Russel didn’t bother answering that.

His mother in tow, he checked the house, making sure all windows and doors were secure. Upstairs, downstairs. Then he fell into a chair in the living room, Darin’s question echoing in his head.
Now what?
Yeah, that was a good one, all right. What did you do when you were locked in a house and dead people were outside and they wanted to kill you? Being unemployed mostly, Russel had seen a lot of horror flicks. Lots of ‘em had people trapped in houses with zombies outside. He was so dragged-out and worn thin that he couldn’t seem to remember what it was those people did about it.

Did they wait for dawn until the ghouls crawled back into their graves? Or was that strictly for vampires?

Darin had found a gas lantern on the mantel that the Procton’s had left behind. There was a can of fuel for it, too.

“You think it’s a good idea to light that, Mr. Darin?” Margaret said to him.

“Why not? I’m not about to live like a mole in the darkness.”

“Sure, but you might draw them things in.”

Darin just ignored that. He knew what was best and he didn’t care for people like Margaret Boyne to be telling him what to do. Miriam Blake had been bad enough. He scratched a stick match off the fireplace brick and lit the lantern. Both wicks caught, an even illumination filling the living room and chasing away the shadows.

“There,” he said. “That’s better. Don’t you think?”

Neither Margaret or her son commented on it.

“I can tell you right now,” Darin said, “that I don’t care for the idea of us being trapped in here. Shouldn’t we try to find a vehicle? My SUV is sitting in my driveway at this very moment. In ten minutes we can be over there and then out of this stinking city.”

Margaret chuckled in the dark. “Really, Lou. Have you forgotten
what’s
outside at this very moment?”

“Yes, yes, yes, the crazies. We have a gun.”

“They’re more than crazies,” Russel said. “They’re the walking dead. Just like those people said that gave me the
Watchtower
magazine. Foul abominations and stuff that crawled out of the cellar of hell.”

Darin sighed. “Please, let’s not get into that again.”

Russel shrugged. As with most things in life, it mattered not one whit one way or another with him.

“Are you still doubting?” Margaret said. “After what you saw come into Miriam’s house?”

“I saw people. Obviously mad, but still people.”

“Dead people.”

“Disfigured, certainly…but dead?” Darin shook his head. “I think not.”

“Zombies,” Russel said. “I saw that movie where zombies take over the world. You ever seen that, Mr. Darin?
Night of the Living Dead?
That was a good picture.”

Margaret nodded. “Yeah, it was. Did I ever tell you, Russel, that I saw that one out at the Hillview Drive-in with your father? Oh, God, that was years ago.
Years
ago. They showed it with that Japanese picture. The one about the monster with three heads.”

“Ghidrah.
Now that was a good one. I think Ghidrah was my favorite after Godzilla. I always hated Mothra, though. I mean, how tough can a moth be anyway? You ever see any of those pictures, Mr. Darin? Any of those Jap movies? Those were something. Godzilla was the best. Some of ‘em were pretty bad, though. Like the flying turtle…what was his name? Gamera? Yeah, that was it. Gamera movies were stupid. But not as stupid as that one with that squid that walks around on the tips of its tentacles. Man, I mean, how could you believe something like that? Ghidrah’s one thing, but come on.”

“Not all the Godzilla ones were good, though,” Margaret pointed out. “Remember that one? Was it
Son of Godzilla?
The one where Godzilla’s little boy blows smoke rings?”

“Oh yeah, that bit the big one, all right.”

“I always like Rodan, the giant bird.”

“Yeah, Rodan kicked some ass. Remember when he flapped his wings? It made a wind that blew buildings down and stuff. That was awesome.”

Darin just stared at them, perhaps wondering what he’d gotten himself into. The city was besieged by crazies and these two were talking about bad movies. He had a mad desire to slap them both across the face. He tried to be tolerant. Maybe this was how they coped. Maybe that was it. But had these two been students he would have shouted in their faces.

Margaret was obviously enjoying herself. “Ah, I used to stay up all night with Russel, Mr. Darin, while he watched monster movies. I thought he might get scared watching them alone.”

“Was this recently?” Darin said.

They both looked at him, but simply did not comprehend his sarcasm.

“I wasn’t scared. Not of them Jap movies. Some of the others used to bother me, though. I never liked the mummy and the wolfman. I mean, Frankenstein could be mean, but he liked kids and he didn’t kill ‘em much. Dracula? Well, he was greedy and you could talk sense to him, you know? Tell him that if he didn’t kill you, you’d bring him some girls or something. But the mummy didn’t care what you said unless you had some of those Tanna leaves he liked. Mostly, he’d just strangle you. And the wolfman? He’d rip out your throat soon as look at you.”