There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (103 page)

             
Bud tried to go to him but Bill shook his head. “I’m gonna get you that vaccine, Pop.”

             
“Son, you know there’s no—

             
“Don’t you say it, Dad! Don’t you
dare
say it!”

             
“Yeah, put a cork in it, Bilbo,” Rusty said. “We ain’t losing any more parents today. Someone’s gotta finish raising us, you know!” He removed the hunters cap and let it fall to the floor. For the life of him he couldn’t recall why he’d put it on his head in the first place. Like taking the shovel out of Ed Gein’s hands, it had just seemed like a good idea at the time. Like girding his loins for battle. He’d needed to be a little bit crazy to go after Tansy the way he did, and old Eddie had provided the wherewithal to get the job done. Bud was so grateful he looked as if he was about to cry. Rusty looked away in embarrassment. Not for a second did he consider it unfair that Bill should get the vaccine when Fate had denied it to his own father. Bilbo had always been like a father to him, anyway.

“That
said
…just where the hell are we going to get a vaccine, Buddy boy?”

             
“That’s right; you haven’t met John Cutter.”

             
“John
Who
?”

             
“I’ll explain later.” Bud shook his head again to clear out the cobwebs. It was as if they were stuck in the corners of his mind like the real things.

             
“Son, I think you might have a concussion, too,” Bill said, putting a little more distance between himself and the boys. His missing finger itched as if it was still there, and the scratches on his face burned with a strange burrowing heat. It was the bite on his throat, though, that hurt the most. Slimy with saliva, it felt decidedly unclean.

             
“
Too?”
Rusty said, looking around for his friend. “Is Josie hurt? In fact, where is my girl?”

“Taking Tubby to the cellar,” Bud said.

              “Tubby’s dead,” Rusty said, shaking his head.

             
Bill managed a weary wan smile “No, son. Other than a possible concussion, he’s fine.”

“No way!” Rusty gaped. “I saw that fucking thing jump right on top of him!”

              “He…” Bill paused, cocking his head to one side. “Is that what I think it is?” Suddenly the lights went out, throwing them into complete darkness. Ted Bundy’s girlish squeals warbled off into oblivion.

Panicked, Rusty screamed.

              “It’s okay, son,” Bill said, though he too felt like screaming. Only out of frustration.

The Rabids have gotten to the generator again!
Oh, dear God! Josie’s down there by now!

The unmistakable roar of an automobile engine interrupted Bill Brown’s prayer for the people still down in the cellar.
“What the hell?!”
Bud exclaimed.

             
Before they could react, a terrific crash shook the very ground they were standing on—the exit to th
e
Retributio
n
exhibit! Out of nowhere a car was coming right at them, its familiar highbeams growing larger by the second.
“Christine!”
Bud shouted.

He jumped in the middle of the track, waving his arms wildly in the bright wash that engulfed him.

Christine’s brakes screeched on the brick floor, the mangled bumper stopping a foot away from his knocking knees. The car door opened and Josie O’Hara stepped out...

Buddy boy smiled.
“Just like in my dreams.”

Chapter Seventee
n
:

This Long and Livid Night

They wasted little time. After assuring Josie he was all right, and explaining what had happened to his father, Bud told them to spread out and look for the shotgun. They found it underneath Ted Bundy’s electric chair, as if the notorious serial killer had been in cahoots with Tansy, hiding the weapon from her intended prey.
Twice that night Bud had lost his weapon at the worst possible moment.
By God, it won’t happen again,
he vowed to himself.

After giving his son the .38, Bill said to pop the trunk; he was hitching a ride in back.

“Fuck that shit, old man! We’re not putting you in the trunk like some fucking flat tire!”

             
Standing in front of Christine’s hi-beams (miraculously still intact after the head-on with the brick wall), Bill held up his bleeding hand. “See that, boy? That
blood
? Every drop of that is poisonous. I won’t put everyone at risk just to soothe your fragile sensibilities. So shut the hell up and open the trunk like I told you!

“
NOW, BOY! NOW!
”

             
Bud snatched the keys from the ignition and popped the trunk, muttering expletives under his breath. Josie and Rusty stood off to the side, silent and still. Being in the presence of Bud’s bad temper was scary enough, but seeing both of the Browns in that awful state was downright petrifying. In a heartbeat the tone changed. Bill got in and looked up at his son, standing by the trunk, tears filling his blue eyes. Bill flashed back to that bright October morning, nine years ago. His wife’s keys in his hand, the blood still tacky. Sprinting through the eerily still house, screaming out his loved ones’ names. Following the bloody footprints to his son’s room. Finding the gore-spattered boy sitting up in the bed, clutching that…that…
thing
in his hands, rocking back and forth, his mouth open impossibly wide. The veins in his little throat straining, standing out like blue ropes, screaming for his mommy…again, and again, and again. Only no words emerged from his gaping mouth. Just the bloody sputum from his ruptured vocal cords.

And yet it was the loudest, most heart-wrenching wail Bill Brown had ever had the misfortune of hearing.

But it was the eyes Bill remembered most. Those wide-open blue eyes. So huge. So scared. So damaged. It was as if the boy had fallen into his own frightened eyes.

Adrift and all alone, in that vast cerulean ocean…

Once Bill took that cold, dead weight from his son’s lap, and removed him from the house, the boy never again looked so vulnerable, so lost. So scared.

What emerged in Bud, and shined through his blue eyes ever since, was an implacable steel, forged and hardened in the searing fires of a madman’s barbarity. Never again would that boy be so helpless or misplaced!

It was the main reason Bill had allowed his son to go his own way since his mother’s death. That stone cold look in his eyes. It said,
“Tread on me at your own peril.” 

             
For the first time in eight years that steely look was gone, replaced with the wide-open eyes of a lost and scared little boy. “Daddy…”

             
“It’s okay, Bud. Everything’s gonna be all right. You’ll see. You can let me out as soon as we get to the beach. First we need to pick up the others from the cellar.”

             
Josie joined Bud at the trunk, taking hold of his hand. “The beach?” She looked down at Bill. “I thought we were going to the Bunker.”

             
“Bud’s right. We can’t get through the Pines at night. We’ll have to wait at the shore till first light.”

             
“Because the Rabids won’t go near the water!” Rusty said, joining his friends at the trunk. “
Especially
that pounding surf by Crater Cove!”

             
“That’s right,” Bill said, coughing. Instantly his face lost all color. Feeling faint he shoved the stump of his finger on the floorboard. A cruel light filled his head. The three kids peered down at him, their eyes wet and anxious. Bill grimaced. “We can build a bonfire close to the waterline. That way, if any of those things make a run at us, we’ll see them coming from across the beach. Then all we’ll have to do is go for a little swim until they get lost.”

             
Remembering the gray’s trepidation at Lizard Lake, Josie nodded her head. “You know, that just might work.”

             
“Then let’s bounce on outta here,” Rusty said, eager to leave the darkness.

             
“What do you say, Bud?” By the light of the open trunk, Bill could see his son close his eyes, as if praying. When he opened them again, the scared little boy was gone, the blue eyes once again filled with steel and ice.

Father and son smiled at each other. Bud nodded his head and without a word slammed shut the trunk.

              Bud stared at the back end of the Fury for a moment more and then got into the car. He inserted the key into Christine’s ignition, and turned to Josie sitting beside him. Rusty was in the back seat, staring down in wonder at his snoring friend. “Thanks for coming to get us, Red. Getting Christine was brilliant, by the way.” He didn’t mention the blood on the Fury’s hood, nor the section of gut still stuck in the mangled grill. It spoke for itself.

             
“She saved me life,” Josie said, patting the dash. She saw the worried look on Bud’s face. “He’s going to be all right, love. You’ll see.”

             
Bud said nothing to this bright encouragement. His heart was telling him that Josie was right. His head, however, kept reminding him that not once in his dreams had his father ever appeared in the Bunker.
No. Not once…

             
                            *******

Getting Christine turned around had been problematic. By the time they returned to the cellar, more than twenty minutes had elapsed since the lights had gone out.

When Christine rounded the last curve in the tunnel, and her highbeams ran across the opened doorway, they knew they were too late. A myriad of bloody footprints led in and out of the cellar door.

             
“Did y’all leave the door open like that?” Rusty asked them. On the ride back, Josie had told him all about John Cutter, that Clint Bidwell was dead. Rusty understood what they were up against now. He also knew what the bloody footprints meant for the men downstairs. 

             
“No,” Bud said, tightly. “It was locked.” He knew it was pointless to go down those stairs. He also knew he could never live with himself if he didn’t.

“I’ll be right back.”

              “Buddy boy, you can’t—”

             
“Joe…you know I have to go.”

             
Josie nodded her head. They had to at least try.

             
Rusty didn’t share their conviction. “You don’t even have a flashlight, man!”

             
“If someone is still alive down there, I’ve got to give him a chance to get out. Besides, John Cutter saved my dad’s life. I owe that man a debt.”

             
“I’m coming with you,” said Josie, steeling herself against Bud’s certain response.

             
“Josie, if something happens to me, you’re my dad’s best chance at getting that vaccine. There’s still the Center, you know. Remember what John Cutter said about the vaccine samples in his fridge?”

Josie fumed. “In the checkerboard lunchbox.”

“That’s right. Six plus seven equals RS13.”

             
“You screwy bastard,” Josie said, giving in to her anger at last. It infuriated her that Bud would use his dad for leverage like that. “Why do you always have to play the feckin’ hero?” she said, jabbing her finger into Bud’s chest. “Who do you think you are, tough guy? Rambo?”

             
“Yo, Adrian, I gotta do what I gotta do.”

             
Josie wasn’t amused. “That’s Rocky, you arse.”

             
“Come on, Red. Not now, okay?” He rubbed his bruised pectoral. The girl was stronger than she realized.

             
“All right, you feckin’
arsehole
!
”
Josie raged. “As always, have it your own feckin’ way! But just so you know…if you’re not outta there in ten minutes I’m coming down after you! And by the way,
Sly
…your impressions really suck arse!”

             
Bud blinked before the gale force wind that was Josie’s full Irish wrath. He knew when he was licked. Truth was, he’d rather tangle with a mad Rabid, than a mad Josie, any old day. He meekly nodded his head.