Resurrection (86 page)

Chrissy looked around.

Just those stripped trees everywhere. Some had fallen against one another and overhead their branches were woven tightly together. Stumps, logs, piles of leaves. Patches of mist. Water dripping from tree limbs.

A branch snapped in the distance.

“What now?” Chrissy said.

“We…we should move.”

They got up and hopped over the tree. They tried to move soundlessly, placing their feet down carefully, but all those leaves made every step crackle and crunch. They held hands, terrified, exhausted, subsisting on raw adrenaline now. They could hear branches snapping and leaves crunching and they seemed to be coming from every direction.

“He’s coming,” Gail said, her eyes wide and alert like those of a hunted animal.

Chrissy didn’t know.

Yet she did. Maybe it wasn’t Grimshanks looking for her, but somebody definitely was. There were more than one and they were getting closer. There were shapes coming out of the mist, long-armed shapes
moving through the trees. Gail looked this way, then that
.

Dead, anemic faces were watching them from the foliage. Gail screamed and ran, disappearing into the fog and cover. Chrissy started after her, stopped, looked around and saw nothing. But, oh, they were there, tightening the noose, springing the trap and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

There was a sighing sibilance behind her as something had flown past.

She turned and saw what it was.

Had time to scream as those huge white hands reached out for Gail, seizing her and holding her up in the air by the throat. Gail made a gurgling sound as Grimshanks squeezed her throat and her neck snapped.

“See how pretty the lady is, Chrissy?”
the clown said.
“See how she dances?”
He shook Gail’s corpse around, dancing with it in a circle, pirouetting and dipping and twisting. Blood ran from Gail’s mouth, her head flopped bonelessly on her snapped neck.
“See how she likes to dance, Chrissy? You’ll like it, too! Just as they all liked it when Grimshanks made them dance!”

Chrissy tried to scream and she just couldn’t. She was just screamed out.

An abomination, that’s what he was. An absolute abomination. Grimshanks was a clown from a mortuary. As he danced around, the bells on his jester’s cap jingled and jingled. And the fact that he was dressed in that silly clown’s outfit with the green pom-poms made it all that much more ludicrous and perverse.

Remember,
a voice told her,
he wants you to be afraid. He wants you to scream and carry on. Don’t give him the satisfaction.

But how could she not? He had her and he knew it. There was nowhere to run, no way to fight him. Nothing, nothing. This is how it ended. Right here. In these goddamn woods with this fucking obscene clown making a sick game of her death.

Grimshanks roared with laughter. Behind those swollen black lips, his teeth were long and yellow and sharp. He sank them into Gail’s throat and started to chew and tear and gulp.

“There he is!” someone said. “Get him!”

Chrissy felt herself swoon. She went right down to her knees as the cavalry came charging in. It was led by Alona. She had six or seven people with her brandishing clubs and spears made from fenceposts of all things.

Grimshanks hissed at them and barred his bloody teeth. Flies came out of his mouth in droning, black clouds. He tossed Gail’s corpse aside and his fingers became hooks. He made an impressive and chilling show of it, growling and snapping and shrieking at Alona and the others in a weird, shrilling voice that made the hairs stand up on the back of Chrissy’s neck.

But it was all bluff.

The cavalry was coming on, charging through the drizzle.

Grimshanks had tormented them, belittled them, made light of their most private secrets, and boasted on how he would slaughter them all. Not only them but their wives and husbands, children and parents. They were pissed. Beyond pissed. They wanted payback. They wanted their pound of flesh and they planned on having it.

Chrissy could feel their simmering, animalistic rage as they pounded forward in a tribal line. She thought Grimshanks could, too. Because suddenly he did not look so big and scary and omnipotent. In fact, he looked small and nervous and, yes, maybe even afraid.

“They’re coming for you,” Chrissy told him, wiping sweat and rain from her face. “And when they catch you, they’ll pull you apart! They’ll rip you to pieces! Do you hear me, you silly fucking clown? They’ll rip you to pieces!”

Grimshanks screeched in her face with a hot blast of fetid meat and then he made to grab her, but he wasn’t quick enough. She darted under his hands and came back up, just filled with anger and attitude. Her nails were long and she slashed at his face, cutting furrows in that pulpy white flesh, shearing open one blood-veined eyeball and making him cry out, making him fall back.

And then the others were there.

Clubs were in motion, pummeling the clown. Alona took a sharpened fencepost and rammed it right into his side. Black blood poured forth in a torrent, splashing out and steaming. Beetles and flies and maggots rained out. A club smashed his head, another snapped his wrist. They were getting the better of him. They were actually getting the better of him. He screamed and roared and howled as those clubs rose and fell, rose and fell…and then he just collapsed. He hit the ground, broken and bleeding that vile black sap, insects pouring from him and great red worms foaming from his shattered skull.

And then he was not moving.

A gray and foul steam rose from him and everyone just stood around, breathing and staring and hating.

“There,” Alona said. “That does it for that fucking pedophile.”

Everyone just stood there. Chrissy looked from Gail’s corpse to the remains of Grimshanks. She found she could say nothing. She could not believe he was dead. It had seemed too…
easy.
Things like him did not just die like that. You could not simply beat them to death and wipe your hands clean and say,
there, that’s that.

“Goddamn piece of shit,” Alona said. “I should squat and piss all over him.”

“No, don’t get too close,” Chrissy said.

“Why? He’s dead.”

The others mumbled that it was true.

But then Grimshanks began to move. Oh, Chrissy had felt it building like an electrical charge in the air. Shadows seemed to crawl and slither over the clown’s body, rippling and spreading, gathering and shifting.

“What the hell?” somebody said.

His flesh began to move like liquid white rubber. You could hear things rearranging themselves, bones popping back into place. His skull sealed itself and his face smoothed out, those eyes rising out of the mess. He was breathing. Breathing and living, cells dividing, flesh pulsing and repairing and regenerating and nobody did a thing. Nobody could bring themselves to do a damn thing.

“Oh no,” Chrissy said.

Those eyes blazed with malignant life and those yellow teeth slid from their gums. And so quickly nobody could do anything but gasp.

Grimshanks said, “Silly cunts.”

His head darted out with amazing speed like a rattlesnake striking and his jaws fastened on a woman’s ankle, biting right through it. Then he was up, moving and slashing with claws that opened bellies and spitting black acidic juices into faces that liquefied instantly.

Everyone scattered.

Those that were capable, anyway.

The others fell to the grass, bleeding and sizzling and moaning.

Alona and Chrissy fell back and away.

Grimshanks rose up before them and drifted up and up, above their heads, spinning around and around, cackling madly the whole while. As he passed above the treetops, they heard his voice echoing out:
“Oh, you’ll pay now! You’ll all fucking pay now and in ways you cannot imagine! ALL OF YOU! PAY! PAY! PAY!”

Then he was gone.

25

The question was: where were they?

Harry Teal didn’t believe for one flipping minute that the waters of Witcham were not crawling…or swimming…with zombies and maybe even things much worse. He was not so naïve to think otherwise.

Mitch and Tommy and Deke had been gone over an hour now and night couldn’t be too far away. But there was hope, oh yes, there was certainly hope. A helicopter had passed overhead not twenty minutes before, circled, then flown away. But a voice had announced over the loudspeaker that they would be back. To just wait. It wouldn’t be long.

So they had that going for them.

Wanda had Rita and Rhonda on either side of her. The cat on her lap. The three of them had their backs up against the chimney, were cuddling together under the blankets. Chuck was pretty much keeping lookout with Harry. And what that meant for the most part was swatting at flies and keeping an eye on the water for anything suspicious.

Harry had not known any of them twenty-four hours ago, but now they were like family to him. That might have sounded odd, but after doing time and then being thrust into the madhouse of Witcham, he had bonded to them very quickly. Mitch and Tommy had trusted him with their lives and that’s all he saw now. His duty. Maybe he hadn’t been real strong on duty thus far in his life, but now he saw it and understood it and would not let it go. Like the girls were his nieces, Chuck his kid brother, and old Wanda was maybe his grandma.

He just wished that helicopter would come back.

But there were probably dozens if not hundreds of people waiting on rooftops to be plucked off. They would just have to wait their turn, that was all.

Harry squatted there, the four-ten on his lap, waiting for something. Something good or something bad, whatever shape it might take.

There was a thumping from beneath the waterline.

Muffled, sure, but he heard it and so did the others.

“Oh, no,” Rhonda said. “Oh, no.”

“Hush,” Wanda told her.

Chuck made ready with the salt.

Mr. Cheese growled.

“We’re okay,” Harry said to them. “We’re all okay.”

Wanda looked over at him, didn’t seem to believe it for a minute.

And then he saw her eyes, staring at something behind him, her lips attempting to say something. He swung around, bringing up Tommy’s shotgun. A yellow, leprous hand was reaching from the water, fingers clutching madly. And then another hand and still another. They clawed along the lip of the roof, trying to find something they could pull themselves up with.

Rita or Rhonda, or maybe both of them, let out a muted scream. He took up the shotgun. The hands were everywhere now, some bloated and fleshy, others scabrous and decayed, scratching at the roof and yanking off shingles. He saw faces emerging from the black water. Ruined and wrecked faces, collapsed from going to soft rot in the water.

Harry started shooting.

All there was was the sound of Rita and Rhonda whimpering and Harry jerking that trigger. He kept shooting until he had no more shells left. He blasted faces from skulls and fingers from hands and still they kept coming, the legions of the grave.

And then Wanda said, “The salt, boy! The salt!”

Chuck seemed to remember then.

He took up the five-pound bag of Morton’s and fumbled it in his hands, nearly dropping it. Then he had it open. He dug out handfuls and tossed them at the advancing dead. They began to smoke and blister, screaming as the salt burned into them. Chuck kept throwing and they slid back into the water.

One of the things had come over the other side of the roof. It had Rita by the hair with a gray, flaking hand. Rhonda was punching at the thing, but with little effect. Harry went over there and threw salt in the zombie’s face. Right away, it began to steam, the flesh going to wax. It lost its balance and tumbled down the roof incline and into the water, losing pieces of itself in the process.

But they weren’t gone.

They were still out there. Harry could see them just under the surface, maybe a dozen or more. Just watching and watching with those black, watery eyes.

Those that had eyes.

26

Here’s what Chrissy said to Alona: “That’s a stupid idea. I’m sorry, but that’s just stupid.”

“Listen, honey, and listen good. Because we don’t have much time,” Alona said after they had left Gail’s corpse in the clearing and the newly-resurrected Grimshanks had drifted away like a balloon. “This hill, Crooked Hill, do you know what it is now? It’s an island. A stinking, pissing little island. What’s here? The orphanage. A falling-down church. A little old graveyard. Some woods and fields. Not squat else, honey. Those other idiots ran off and this after I had a hell
of a time corralling
them together in the first place. Now it’s just me and you. Again, I say, Crooked Hill is an island now. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. That fucking clown will hunt us like rabbits out in the open. We have to use our heads. We have to hide somewhere defensible, all right? We have hide in plain sight.”

“But the orphanage?”

“Yes, the orphanage for chrissake.”

Chrissy didn’t bother arguing after that, because, really, what was there to argue about? Alona was right. Alona was not Gail who wandered in circles out of sheer panic. She was different. She was tough. She had attitude and balls. People like her made a habit of surviving because they were essentially militaristic by nature.

“Okay, okay.”

Alona grabbed her and they broke from the treeline and made for the orphanage, which looked like the mother of all haunted houses. The prototype that artists used when they painted spook houses for Halloween decorations: tall and dark and craggy, a rambling pile of brick that seemed to lean out over the overgrown lawn at you like it wanted to catch you in its shadow. It must have had a hundred boarded windows, jagged gables, lots of tall crumbling chimneys and towers and crooked weathervanes. Weathered and water-stained and sagging, you could not get past the idea that there was something impossibly sinister about it.