The Hungry Dead (16 page)

Whirring blades were very loud and up close as a helicopter descended. Large white letters on its sleek black body said
COUNTY POLICE.
And it landed in the field where the Melrose big rig wrecked and Bones and Drake became zombie feed as the result of their foredoomed attempt to hijack the rig's cargo.

A police car was moving across the field and toward the scene of the zombie escape. Deputy Bruce Barnes was driving and Sheriff Paul Harkness was in the front passenger seat.

Two cops armed with rifles and handguns jumped down from the helicopter, its blades still whirring.

Bruce killed the car engine, and he and Harkness got out and started walking toward the van and the jackknifed trailer.

Two zombies, a man and a woman, came out from behind the van once driven by Drake and Bones. The police didn't know it, but these two zombies were Albert and Meg Mathews, still accompanying each other in their undead state, as if they had some dim memory of being man and wife. They had wandered back to the trailer that had been their traveling prison, instinctually hoping that since food had been there once, they might find some there again.

The two chopper cops held their fire till they were sure that the two beings confronting them were not alive in the normal sense of the word. Then they took aim and fired.

The male and the female zombies—Albert and Meg—had what was left of their brains blasted out of them, and they both fell dead in the field.

The cops advanced closer to the empty van and the jackknifed big rig. They found the remains of the truckers who were shot in the head by Drake and Bones, their bodies having been dragged down out of the cab and partially devoured.

Harkness said, “I don't know how these folks got here at the same time or why. But it's pretty clear what they were attacked by.”

Bruce Barnes stared up at the logo on the big rig, and a glimmer of realization spread over his face. He said, “Look at that logo, Sheriff.”

Harkness said, “What of it? An
M
and an
R
.”

“With a rose,” Bruce added.

Then Harkness got it. “Hmmm . . . Doc Melrose had a twisted sense of humor, didn't he? If that trailer truck was full of zombies, and all of them got loose, folks that live around here are in some deep trouble, like Father Hastings said.” He turned to the two chopper cops. “How long ago'd you guys spot the wreckage?”

One of the cops said, “Two hours ago, when we called it in.”

Bruce Barnes said, “We're less than thirty-five miles from the Melrose Medical Center, so the zombies musta got loose early yesterday, and if some of them have been on the move since then . . .”

“Yeah,” said Harkness. “We're gonna have to comb this whole area.” To the chopper cops, he said, “Why don't you two guys get back in your helicopter and see what you can spot? Meantime me and my deputy will start calling up more men.”

“Right, Sheriff,” said one of the chopper cops. “We spot anything weird, we'll radio.” He and his partner headed for the chopper.

The sheriff said, “C'mon, Bruce, let's scout the perimeter, make sure some of those things aren't gonna pop out at us while our backs're turned.”

The chopper lifted into the air, and Sheriff Harkness and Deputy Barnes, with their guns drawn, moved toward the edge of the field, peering into the surrounding foliage.

A sudden noise made Bruce whirl, pointing his gun.

Henry Brinkman, dirty and disheveled, and with blood caked on his forehead, stepped out from behind a tree. Not knowing if he was alive or undead, Bruce yelled, “Halt!”

Henry said, “No! Don't shoot!” He dropped his club and screwdriver to show that he was peaceable.

Bruce did not immediately relax but remained in a tense firing stance. He said, “Who are you, man? I damn near blasted you down.”

Sheriff Harkness came up to them, backing Bruce up by keeping his pistol trained on Henry.

Henry started to explain himself, saying, “I'm Henry Brinkman. I live near here. I own the Hideaway saloon. Two thugs took my daughter and left me to die. They thought those things would finish me, but I got away. I don't remember much after that. I must've passed out in the woods.”

Eyeing Henry warily, the sheriff said, “Were you bitten? Tell me the truth, man.”

“No . . . I almost ran down one of them, and the car hit a tree. My head smacked the windshield. I was okay, I thought, just a little groggy, and I started walking down the road. But maybe I got a concussion or something . . . everything got blurry, and I don't remember what I did next.”

The sheriff and Bruce Barnes glanced at each other, both trying to decide how much of Henry's story could be believed.

Henry said, “It all started when my wife and daughter were attacked at my house. My wife, Marsha, was killed, but Sally made it to the saloon. Then we were attacked
there
—not just by those dead things, but by the crazy idiots that kidnapped Sally. If we don't rescue her somehow, they're gonna kill her. They think killing's fun.”

Sheriff Harkness said, “Come with us, Henry. Show us the way to your house. We'll start there. First though, Bruce, call up more men, even some volunteers, like last time. We don't know yet how widespread this thing is, so maybe we're gonna need a lot of help getting it under control.”

Henry asked, “You got a gun you can lend me, Sheriff? I wanna be one of your volunteers right here and now. I've got experience with this too. I killed some of them sixteen years ago.”

Driving her father's pickup, Sally pulled into her own driveway, where two zombies happened to be lurking.

Slam barked, “Run the damned things over! It'll save me ammo, and I won't have to deal with 'em later!”

Sally was almost glad to do it because these two undead beings might have been some of the ones who killed her mother. She gritted her teeth, plowed into them, and ran the tires over them. One of their head was crushed, and he was definitely finished. But the other one was crawling, even with its lower body crushed and twisted.

Slam jumped down from the pickup, took out his switchblade, and forced the narrow sharp blade in at the base of the creature's skull and up into the brain. It stopped squirming and lay still as Slam wiped his blade in the grass.

Sally stayed behind the wheel, watching, till Slam ran over to her, yelling and waving his knife and gun. “What the hell you waitin' for, gal? Get out!”

She jumped down from the cab, and he prodded her with the barrel of his gun, pushing her toward the house.

A few zombies were milling around in the yard. Slam eyed them, then ignored them and pushed Sally up onto the porch. The front door was wide open. He warned, “Don't get too far ahead of me, babe. If I get the idea you're gonna try to run out the back door or somethin', I'm gonna drill ya.”

He stepped in behind her, into an empty but totally trashed living room. Taking this in, he turned, closed the front door, and bolted it, then prodded Sally with his knife, saying, “This wouldn't feel too good in your kidneys, would it? So don't cross me. Nice and slow, go and lock the back door if it needs it.”

They found the back door wide open just like the front one, and Sally shut it and bolted it.

Slam muttered, “Gotta do somethin' about this bite. Can't waste any more time, whether we're alone in here or not. If some of them things are in here, I guess I'm just gonna have to shoot 'em. Where're the bandages, the first-aid stuff?”

“Upstairs in the bathroom, but . . .”

“But what? You freakin' out on me? You keepin' somethin' from me, babe?”

“No . . . no . . . it'll be okay. It's just that something is up there that I don't want to look at.”

“What? An unflushed commode?” He giggled half dementedly at his poor attempt at a joke, then he wiped his brow, which was suddenly pouring perspiration, and said, “Shit! I'm startin' to lose it. I can't think straight all of a sudden. I got a bad fever. You better not screw me up, babe, I'm warnin' ya. You seen the way I done Bearcat, and he was my best buddy, not a useless piece of fluff like you. Now, go on, get up there!”

He pushed her toward the stairs, and they both went up.

Entering the bathroom, they found the remains of the electrocuted zombie still in the tub, its shredded flesh tarry and oozing, smelling like a watery cremation. Sally averted her eyes and pulled open a drawer beneath the sink. She pulled out a first-aid kit, a loose roll of gauze, surgical tape, bandages, and ointments, and set it all on the sink cabinet.

Slam was still bossing her around, and he said, “Loosen the tourniquet for me, babe. I'm gettin' delirious, maybe 'cause of the lack of circulation. Don't want it to go to gangrene. And I wanna make it bleed more—shoulda done that when it first happened, but we hadda get the hell outta there.”

Sally untied and loosened the tourniquet. Slam's arm around the wound was turning an ugly greenish purple. “Ugh!” he said. “Never seen anythin' like that. Did you?”

She shook her head no and dropped the tourniquet into a wastebasket. “What'd you toss it fer?” Slam immediately demanded. “I'm gonna need it again.”

“It's filthy. I can make a nice clean one if you cut up a washcloth.”

“Good thinkin', babe.”

Sucking in his lips to steel himself against the pain, he cut into his wound, producing a lavish flow of blood and letting it pour into the sink. “Goddamn, that hurts!” he moaned. “Gotta just let it bleed a spell. Then we'll put on a clean tourniquet, like you said, and hope for the best.”

At this point, Sally was on the same page with Slam in not wanting him to turn into a zombie. Much as she hated to show him any mercy, she had to do it in order to save her own skin. Nevertheless, an eerie thought struck her, and she gave him a funny look as she flushed his blood down the sink. He picked up on this and said, somewhat shakily, “What? What's the matter? Why'd you look at me that way?”

Making unabashed eye contact with him, Sally said, “You killed a zombie with that knife. Maybe you just made your infection worse.”

“Oh, shit!” he swore. “I
told
ya I ain't thinkin' straight! But what could be worse than the bite, hey? You got a snakebite kit?”

“Yes, but the antivenin's out of date.”

“Don't be so fuckin' stupid! I don't need no antivenin—a zombie ain't a snake. Get the kit out and gimme the rubber thing that'll suck out poison. You better hope it works 'cause if it don't, I'm gonna make you do it with them luscious lips of yers.”

Sally grimaced, got out the snakebite kit, and found the rubber suction cup. No way did she want to put her lips on Slam's wound.

 

Meantime, unbeknownst to her, a helicopter was circling above her father's roadhouse. A dozen or so zombies were still clustered around the place, even though the live humans were long gone.

A squad of Sheriff Harkness's posse men trudged toward the zombies from the two-lane road. When they got close enough, they started shooting, aiming for head shots.

Crouching and firing, the men soon advanced into the area by the Dumpster and the wrecked and burned motorcycle. They took note of Honeybear's devoured remains, but they didn't stop to take a close look. They just kept firing their weapons.

They got off a few shots at big old Barney, but he managed to escape into the woods along with a half dozen or more of his zombie followers.

 

Slam and Sally were still in the bathroom. She removed the snakebite suction device from his wound, rinsed it off, then swabbed the swollen purplish wound with alcohol. She eyed the pistol that was tucked in his belt, but she didn't dare make a try for it. He still clutched his switchblade knife in his right hand, a constant menace in case she might make a wrong move.

“Whoa!” he yiped, sucking in his breath. “That burns like a motherfucker!”

She said, “Hopefully it'll burn out whatever poison is still in you.”

She proceeded to bandage his wound with cotton, gauze, and surgical tape.

His eyes went shut for a second, and he weaved woozily. Sally took note of this while pretending not to. She opened a drawer, pulled out a clean white washcloth, and held it toward Slam, stretching its upper edges taut between her hands.

He looked shaky and was pouring sweat. When he spoke, he slurred his words, and his thoughts seemed slow and disconnected. “I . . . am . . . really spaced. Whatcha . . . holdin' that up fer?”

“For you to cut off a strip. I think we should apply a clean, fresh tourniquet, don't you, Slam?”

He nodded his head slowly, took his knife, and rinsed it under the tap.

“I was . . . thinkin' about Bearcat,” he mused. “Almost like dreamin' about him. . . . I hated to off the dude . . . me and him had . . . some really great times. He was the one . . . got me into the Aryan Brotherhood. First time . . . I ever felt . . . like I belonged . . . to anything. If it weren't fer folks . . . like us . . . there wouldn't be no more . . . white people by and by.”

His brain was so spacey that he continued rinsing the knife for a long, long time, all the way through his reminiscences. Sally couldn't help eyeing the knife, wondering how she might get hold of it. She tried for it, saying, “Why don't you let me have that? I'll wipe it down with alcohol for you.”

But he wasn't as spaced out as she hoped. “Haw!” he spat. “Nice try, bitch! My head . . . might be a tenny-weeny bit fogged . . . right now . . . but that don't . . . mean I lost all my . . . fuckin' marbles.”

“Well,” Sally said, “you're gonna have to cut me a strip of this washcloth with it, whether it's sterile enough or not.”

She held up the washcloth again, purposely chest high so that he had to reach up with the knife, his arm bent at an awkward angle. He started slicing—and all of a sudden she pushed hard against the blade with the washcloth, forcing the knife against his throat.

And at the same time she kneed him in the groin as hard as she could.

He doubled up in agony and dropped his knife—it clattered on the tile floor.

Sally ran out of the bathroom toward the stairs.

The cut she made into Slam's throat was deep but not fatal, even though it bled a lot. He slowly straightened up and pulled himself together, drawing his gun.

Sally hit the landing and darted toward the kitchen doorway, but suddenly stopped short.

A zombie confronted her! It must have been in the house all along, and now it was facing her, drooling. She pivoted and yanked open another door, one that led down into the basement.

Slam came after her from upstairs, more woozy and sweaty than ever, but still pointing his gun ahead of himself, ready to shoot.

She slammed the basement door shut.

Reaching the landing that led to the kitchen, Slam poked his head around the corner—and the zombie that had confronted Sally pounced on Slam from behind and sank his teeth into Slam's trapezius. Both Slam and the zombie fell, crashing onto the living room floor.

Slam rolled and got his gun up. Lying on his back, he fired and missed. The slug plowed into a wall. The zombie rasped and drooled, lunging toward Slam, but he managed to get his gun up in time and shot the zombie in its face, knocking it back.

It fell dead.

Slam got to his feet, his legs wobbly. He was now dripping blood not only from the knife wound in his neck but also from the fresh zombie bite in his trapezius. But he had seen where Sally had gone, so he pulled open the door to the basement. Weaving, he started down the semidark stairs, holding on to the railing, sweeping the muzzle of his pistol ahead of him as he descended, but seeing nothing to shoot at.

Sally had run into the laundry room, where she hurriedly unhooked the hot-water hose from the washer. She turned the hot-water spigot on all the way, then flattened herself against the concrete-block wall and waited for the gush of water to turn to steam.

At the foot of the basement stairs, Slam heard the water running and headed toward the gushing noise. He prowled through the cluttered basement and rounded the corner of the laundry area, crying, “Haw!
Gotcha,
bitch!”

He poked his gun toward Sally even before he actually could see her—and she sprayed him in the face with steaming hot water! He backed up, screaming loudly from the scalding pain, and she stayed with him and kept on hosing him in the face.

He dropped his pistol, his face red, blistering and peeling.

But Sally went too many steps forward with the hose, and it pulled off the spigot. The hot steaming water now gushed harmlessly into the stationary tub.

Slam, with his ugly blistered face, sneered hideously at Sally and stopped backing away from her.

She dove for his dropped pistol, but he stepped on it before she could grab it, then kicked her in the face. She scrambled to her feet and ran as he stooped slowly to pick the pistol up.

She dashed into the garage.

He came after her, dripping blood and looking weaker than ever.

She hit the button for the garage-door opener, and the door started to lift with an agonizingly slow, grinding sound. She couldn't wait to get out of there, and when the door had only risen a couple of feet, she stooped to duck under it—

That's when Slam fired at her, and the bullet tore into her shoulder, its impact knocking her down onto the concrete. She rolled just in time to make Slam's second shot miss, then he fired again but got only a click
.

The grinding pulleys stopped, and the garage door came to a halt all the way up.

Sally was on her feet again now, but she didn't manage to dart outside, for Slam was upon her, choking her and pressing her against a concrete-block wall. Because of her shoulder wound she wasn't much of a match for him even in his weakened state. His sweaty, blistering, and peeling face was inches from hers as she tried to pull his hands away by digging her nails into them before he could strangle her to death. He started banging her head against the wall and knocked her hands loose—and one of her groping hands hit against something that made a metallic clatter. She was almost losing consciousness by now, but she recognized the feel of what her hand had struck, and she reached out for it as far as she could stretch and got a grip on its handle.

It was a sickle, hanging on a tool rack that also held dangling rakes, brooms, and shovels.

Sally pulled it off the rack and swung it hard, like an uppercut to Slam's solar plexus, plunging the long curved blade deep into his stomach. He screamed and reeled this way and that, letting go of Sally's throat and trying to pull the sickle out, but his hands got slippery with his own blood, and he slowly sank to his knees, fell onto his side, and rolled over . . . dead.

Sally sagged against the concrete-block wall, panting and holding her throat, which bore the sore, reddened imprint of Slam's fingers. She struggled to pull herself together, and gradually her breathing slowed and she stopped trembling. But a sudden groan made her jump, and her eyes darted to Slam's body.