The Hungry Dead (11 page)

Darkness came early in the fall, and at dusk two big Harley motorcycles roared down the two-lane highway and out into the field where Drake and Bones caused the big rig to wreck and afterward unwittingly released a horde of zombies. The men on the motorcycles were two skinheads named Slam and Bearcat, both wearing dark glasses, black Nazi helmets, and leathers and chains, the leathers adorned with swastikas and SS insignia. Bearcat's biker chick, Honeybear, was hanging on to him from behind, her nice firm ass in the saddle and her shapely legs straddling it. She was a stunner in her red halter and red hot pants—the epitome of a blond, beautiful “Aryan” woman.

When they got out to where Drake's van and the wrecked trailer truck were, they all dismounted and looked around, taking everything in.

Bearcat said, “How the hell'd you spot Drake's ride way out here, Slam? Him and Bones were s'posed to meet us at the junkyard.”

“Well, I figgered somethin' weird musta happened to 'em on their hijackin' gig, so when I didn't see hide nor hair of 'em around the junkyard shack, I remembered the road they said they was on when they was trackin' the rig full of electronics. I checked out all the side roads one at a time. Took me an hour at least, and I almost gave up. This was the last place I was gonna look.”

Slam and Bearcat walked around, kicking at the tall grass, and suddenly Bearcat stooped and picked up a gun with a silencer. “Hey, looky here!” he called out.

He pulled back the slide and a live round ejected. So he popped out the clip.

“Still loaded?” Slam said.

“Five rounds left in the clip.”

Honeybear sounded off then. “Hey, I found another one!”

She held up the other pistol with a silencer and worked the slide and popped out the clip. Bearcat came over to her, took the clip, and stared at it. “This one's half full too,” he said. “Bones and Drake always kept nine rounds in the clip plus one in the chamber, so they musta run into some big trouble.”

Slam said, “Let me have that one, Honeybear,” and took the pistol she had found away from her. Bearcat gave him the clip, and he shoved it home with a metallic click.

Bearcat thought for a while. Then he said, “If they had their silencers on, they were up to somethin' and thought they had the upper hand. But it musta backfired on them. Let's have another look around.”

Honeybear was already doing that. She worked her way around the van, then let out a little shriek. She was staring down at Drake's mangled, chewed-up remains as Bearcat and Slam came up beside her. “Ugh!” she said. “Is that Drake?”

“Yeah, what's left of him,” Bearcat answered. “I can't believe it.”

Slam said, “What in the world coulda done this to him? We better—”

Just then they heard a rasping, groaning sound—and the skinhead named Bones, mangled and partially devoured, emerged from the surrounding woods. One side of his face was eaten away, and his left arm was missing, ripped off like a drumstick from a roast chicken, with stringy vessels and fibers hanging down from the socket. His body cavity had also been chewed out, exposing coils of white intestine. And he was coming straight toward his former skinhead pals, almost as if he expected to be welcomed by them.

Slam and Honeybear backed away, terrified, but Bearcat stood his ground.

Slam yelled, “C'mon, Bearcat! Let's get the hell outta here!”

The Bones zombie came closer.

“Gotta finish him off,” Bones declared. “He can't do it for hisself, and he wouldn't wanna live like that if he had a choice, Slam.”

Gritting his teeth, Bearcat waited for Bones to get so close he couldn't miss, then got into a firing crouch and took careful two-handed aim and pumped two rapid-fire bullets into Bones's brain. The big, heavy, grotesquely mutilated Bones zombie went down like a ton of bricks.

Bearcat headed for his Harley, climbed on, and kick-started it. Honeybear hopped on behind him.

Slam kick-started his bike too, and the three of them roared back across the bumpy field, then careened onto the road and sped away.

There was a full moon now, and Henry's Hideaway was surrounded by clusters of zombies, about thirty or forty of them in all. They milled around, staring at the place, knowing there was succulent human flesh inside.

In the barroom, which was dimly lit by lantern and candlelight, Henry and Sally were discussing their desperate situation. She got up from her stool and paced in front of the lit fireplace while he remained sitting on a bentwood chair turned backward.

Both of them were overwhelmed with issues of survival while they were also trying to deal with Marsha Brinkman's death. This involved memories that kept churning up in their hearts and minds, plus unspoken fears of what kind of fate, if any, might have been waiting for her beyond her known fate. In other words, was she going to become one of
them
? This fear was stronger in Henry than in Sally because she had had no direct experience of the phenomenon sixteen years ago, while her father had gone out as part of a volunteer posse to rescue people and gun down and burn the undead creatures that were menacing them. He had actually seen a ghoul-bitten person come back to “life” when that person to all intents and purposes shouldn't have been able to move anymore, let alone sit up and try to attack him. That was the third ghoul of seven that he had shot during his six days as a posse member.

Sally said, “We've gotta keep our spirits up, Dad. Mom wouldn't want us to give up.”

“That's one thing we know for sure,” her father agreed. “But I'm glad to hear you say it. I know I can count on you to keep your cool. If we get out of this alive, there'll be time to grieve afterward.”

And he knew he would have plenty of grieving to do. His marriage had had its ups and downs, like all marriages, but although their love for each other had gone through many changes over the years, the basis for it had remained solid. And they had been united in their love and their deep sense of pride in their only daughter.

Henry had worked for twenty-three years running his own construction business, putting in bathrooms, porches, patios, awnings, and other home improvements for people, and he had never stopped using his own hands as well as those of his laborers. He hammered, welded, and poured concrete right along with them, and as a result of all the hard physical work, he was in great shape for his age, and he had the energy and the vitality of a much younger man.

Four years ago, he had sold his business to one of his best workers and had made a bit of money on the sale, and his investments had done well enough over the years that he could afford to buy the roadhouse. He wanted to keep on working, but with a lot less pressure. And up until today he had been content with the way things had turned out for him, and he was glad he was in a position to help his daughter get through her divorce and build a better future for herself.

But now they might not have a future if they couldn't fight their way out of this awful predicament they were in. Henry inwardly thought of himself as a strong and courageous man in most circumstances, even stronger and more courageous than most people, but losing Marsha was already such a terrible blow that he didn't think he would want to live anymore if he also lost his daughter.

But there was no time for despondency. Sally interrupted his thoughts, saying, “If we can get to your truck . . . or even Smokey's car . . .”

“His car doesn't even start half the time without jumper cables,” Henry told her. “We'd better forget that old clunker—we might get stuck in it, surrounded by those things. It's my truck or nothing. But I think maybe we should just sit tight and and hope the power comes back on and we can get some news.”

“About what?”

“About how
bad
it is out there, Sally.”

“We already know how bad it is. We're
surrounded
by those things.”

“Well, about what to
do
then. Last time, the county set up rescue stations and armed patrols.”

“I was only ten years old, but I read about it and heard about it, a lot. Some of the people who didn't try to make it to rescue stations were overrun. I don't think the power is going to come back on either. Somebody was probably attacked and crashed into a transformer pole or something.”

“So if it's happening all over,” Henry said, “if there are armies of those things everywhere, where would we go to, even if we could make it to my truck?”

“Oh God, I don't know!” Sally blurted in despair. She momentarily stopped pacing in front of the fireplace and confronted her father with a tough question. “What makes this happen, Dad? They never found out the first time, did they?”

Henry thought about it, then said, “I think it's like a cancer.”

“But cancer cells are
alive
,” Sally said. “These are people who're supposed to be dead but
aren't.
Right?”

Henry said, “Cancer is a part of us and yet isn't part of us. It destroys us, and in the process it destroys itself. When we die, it dies.”

“But people with cancer can't infect other people,” Sally said. “Those beings out there
can,
Dad.”

“Maybe they're inhabited by some alien force.”

Sally thought about this for a moment or two. “Like from outer space?”

“Maybe,” Henry said. “Some kind of entity we know nothing about. It inhabits the bodies of our dead and turns them against us.”

“That's so sickening to think about,” said Sally. “I don't think I can go out there, make a break for it, I mean, if it's just the two of us.”

“We may end up having no choice,” Henry told her.

“Yeah. I know,” she agreed dolefully.

“We have only two windows, the ones in the kitchen, boarded up, and both of the doors are thick steel with heavy dead bolts. We can probably remain safe here for quite a while.”

“Probably,” Sally said doubtfully.

“Well, honey, we're sort of short of weapons,” Henry said. “All we've got are a couple of butcher knives and a meat cleaver.”

“We could have our own electricity,” Sally pointed out, “if we could make it to the shed and turn on the generator.”

“Yeah, but what good would that do?” said Henry.

“I don't know,” Sally answered dispiritedly.

Suddenly she brightened up and reached toward the black-powder rifle above the mantel. “Hey, how about this, Dad? Got any bullets for it?”

She took the musket down and hefted it in her hands.

“It takes lead balls and black powder,” Henry said. “And flint, or caps, I forget which. The instruction book and all that stuff are in a box under the sink—if it's still there. I haven't looked for a long time.”

“Let's look!” Sally said.

“All right, but even if you could make it work, that old gun only shoots one lead ball at a time, and it takes forever to prime and reload, so it's not like you could use it to shoot your way through those things. You'd be better off with just a torch. They're afraid of fire, and they burn easily. We learned that last time.”

“Maybe we could go up on the roof and pick some of them off one at a time,” Sally said. “Maybe if we dropped a few, the rest would back off . . . and hopefully even go away.”

Henry got to his feet to go and look for black gunpowder, lead balls, flints, and bore-cleaning solvent. But he stopped and said, “They don't have much fear in them—they're too mindless. As for the roof, how're we gonna get the ladder out of the shed and climb up there without those things swarming all over us?”

“I don't exactly know,” Sally said. “But if we could get up there, at least we could have a look around and see if there might be some way to make it to your truck. So let's look for the bullets and stuff.”

Jed Terance, a rugged thirty-five-year-old telephone company lineman, shinnied up a telephone pole, wearing hobnailed boots and a harness strap for safety. He also wore a wide leather belt with a leather pouch full of tools, a plaid flannel shirt, denim jeans and jacket, and a cap with the logo of the Willard Power Company. His SUV bearing the same logo was parked near the base of the pole.

As he climbed higher, he gazed at a line of telephone poles laden with wires that stretched one after another through the grassy, hilly right-of-way. His job was to figure out where the break was that had caused a power outage.

When he got himself situated up there, he scraped off insulation, then used his test meter. It registered zero. He muttered to himself, “No wonder the parochial school doesn't have any power.”

Meanwhile three zombies came out of the woods, approached Jed's van, and silently stared up at him, hungering for live human flesh. He was so high up that he didn't hear their approach and was totally unaware of their presence.

But Jed's dog, a golden lab named Casey, was sleeping on the passenger seat of the SUV, and his ears pricked up, and he awakened when he smelled the approaching ghouls. He started barking and jumping all around in the cab.

The three zombies picked up rocks and started smashing at the SUV's windows.

Startled by all the commotion, Jed quickly started shinnying down the pole.

The side windows of the SUV were pulverized, and zombie hands were reaching for the dog. Casey managed to bite into a ghoulish hand, snarling viciously and hanging on. Refusing to let go, when the ghoul pulled away, Casey was yanked out of the vehicle through the shattered window.

Casey and the ghoul both tumbled to the ground.

Jed yelled in panic, “Casey!”

One of the ghouls smashed a rock at Casey's head. The dog howled. The ghoul smashed him with the rock again and again. His head a bloody mess, the dog died.

Jed was down from the pole now, his harness strap dangling from his waist. He pulled the best weapons he had on him—a big screwdriver and a claw hammer—from his leather tool pouch. Consumed with rage over the death of his dog, he advanced upon the three flesh-hungry zombies.

He tried to bash one of them in the head with his hammer, but he missed, dealing only a glancing blow to the dead creature's shoulder. The other two started closing in, and Jed knew he was in big trouble. He felt like a gazelle being circled and hemmed in by hungry coyotes.

He jabbed his screwdriver at one of the zombie's eyes, and that one backed away. But the other two, drooling and hissing, were unfazed. They hovered right by the SUV, blocking the doors.

Since the SUV was his only means of escape, Jed came at those two zombies, swinging his hammer and jabbing with his screwdriver. But then the third one sneaked up and tackled him from behind. He fell, dropping his screwdriver but somehow managing to hang on to his claw hammer. He thrashed and struggled, trying to get back up, but the zombie who tackled him was lying heavily across his legs. He tried to crawl away as best he could, dragging the zombie with him, and now the zombie had him by the ankles. But Jed was stronger, so he managed to get halfway up, and then he smashed his hammer down on top of the clutching zombie's head. That zombie was done for, its dead eyes staring straight up into the sun and its cracked head oozing black blood.

But the other two zombies fell on Jed, pushing him all the way down to the ground and knocking his hammer out of his hand. They bit into him, tearing bloody chunks of flesh out of his face and neck. In the midst of this attack, five or six more hungry zombies shuffled out of the woods. They were more than anxious to help devour Jed, and they readily joined in. He died a slow, horrible death, terribly weakened by blood loss, and at the end, when he succumbed, he was almost glad it was over, and he came to reluctantly accept his own hideous fate.

After the zombies satiated themselves on Jed's remains, some of them wandered into the woods till they stumbled onto the grounds of Saint Willard's Catholic Church and Elementary School, which was already surrounded by more than a dozen ghouls. Some of them carried dismembered, partially devoured body parts, and one of them, an obese, greasy-haired female about sixty years old, in a dress as big as a tent, sat under a tree, gnawing on a hand and forearm. The meat of it had been mostly stripped away, down to the nearly naked bones, which were held together by only a few stringy ligaments. The greedy zombie burped. She used her big yellowish teeth to pull off one last string of flesh from the arm bone. Then she dropped the bone onto the ground.

 

Father Ed Hastings, the pastor of the church and principal of the school, stared in despair from one of the boarded-up windows. His little domain had been under siege since about two hours after the pack of zombies was inadvertently released from the big rig that wrecked in the nearby field. First the power went out, then the cell phones. But first, before he even knew about the zombies, Father Ed had put in a call to the Willard Power Company. Of course he didn't know that the lineman had been killed and devoured just a little while ago, and he was still entertaining a desperate hope that the electricity would come back on and the county police would arrive—but he didn't even know if or how they could be aware of his situation.

Father Ed's church and parochial school were combined in one small building, not in the kind of large stone edifice that might be found in a highly populated town or city. Instead it was a modest wood-frame building doing double duty and serving poor country folk. The evenly spaced windows were tall and narrow, of ordinary glass, not stained glass, and most of them had already been smashed in, the glass shattered, the windows hastily boarded up against the onslaught, which so far had not occurred in full force.

The priest, a nun, and a teacher's aide were holed up in there with two dozen children age six to twelve. After a thirteen-year-old boy had been killed and devoured while going outside to fetch logs for the potbellied stove, the survivors in the little schoolroom had panicked—they had seen the boy being mauled and ripped apart by five or six ghoulish marauders. Father Ed had rallied them and had gotten everyone to work, barricading the windows with wood torn from broken-up desks and benches. Still desperate to make the place more secure, he had a hammer and nails and was trying to hold a chunk of desk in place over a window frame and pound a nail in at the same time. He turned and called out to twelve-year-old Annie Kimble. “Annie, will you give me a hand, please?”

Annie, a bright and winsome child, jumped up and helped hold the board in place while Father Ed drove in some nails. He felt that he should keep all the children as fully occupied as possible with their own defense because it would help them feel useful, even hopeful, and might chase away some of their fear.

Janice Kimble, the volunteer teacher's aide, was Annie's mom, and the teacher of the one-room school was Sister Hillary. They were both capable and resourceful and adept at handling children. Bertie Samuels, a spoiled, pampered nine-year-old, was being coddled in Sister Hillary's lap, his perpetual tears of anguish soaking into her black skirt. He kept bawling for his daddy, as if Daddy could somehow get there through an army of ravenous ghouls.

Father Ed nearly got sick when he peered through the boarded-up windows and saw the zombies feasting on gory body parts. He kept praying that someone would come and save the children. And he kept telling God to do with him as He would. He hoped that his own life and the lives of the other adults would not have to be sacrificed for the sake of the young Catholic students, but if it came to that, he wanted to believe that he could be as willing to accept his fate as were the Christians of Roman times, martyrs who had to uphold their faith by dying in the pagan arena under the fangs and claws of wild beasts.