There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (117 page)

He smirked and pointed at Tubby’s crotch.

“Huh? I don’t get what you’re—”

“Damn,
boy!
When did you hit puberty?” Rusty asked him, trying another tact.

“When I was twelve. I remember asking my daddy what was with all the body hair I was sprouting. Compared to the other boys my age I looked like a dang Wookie! Dad told me not to sweat it—that I’d just hit puberty early.”

Twelve-years-old,
Rusty thought disgustedly.
Ain’t that a bitch!
“Did your, um,
Thing
start to get bigger once you began puberty?”

“Huh? My
thing
? Ohhh
!
You mean my Petey
!”

Rusty rolled his eyes again. “Jesus, Opie. Yeah, your
Petey
. Or was your Kielbasa always that big?”

Tubby tried seeing through the dark, to see if Rusty might be pulling his unbroken extremity. Could they really be having this discussion, while twenty feet above their heads Rabids circled them like wolves? “Big? I wasn’t aware my penis qualified as being
Big
.”

Rusty shuffled his feet in the dirt. “Well, it
is
. If you looked around the locker room…. Say, dude, haven’t you ever been curious to see how you compare to other guys?”

“No,” Tubby replied without guile. “Look, all I want out of gym class is to get through it unscathed. I accomplish that most of the time by keeping my head down and my eyes glued to the floor. Besides, I can barely see my Petey for the roll of blubber covering it.” He cocked his head and looked at Rusty. “Gee whiz, Gnat, you’re saying it’s bigger than most?”

“
Shiiitt!
Bigger than any kid I’ve ever seen! And a helluva lot bigger than my little wang doodle.”

Tubby felt oddly proud. “I’m not sure why it matters, but I guess it got bigger after I hit puberty.”

“I only ask because I haven’t gotten there yet.”

“Puberty? Really? How old are you?”

“Same as you, Op. Seventeen years old.”

“Huh! Well, you’re not missing all that much. Armpit hair, weird body odors, acne, and an obsession with sex. My Petey gets hard at the drop of a hat. I guess some fellows just go through it later in life. Right, Rust?”

“That’s what the fucking books say.”

“Yeah? What’s Bud say about it?”

“I haven’t told Bud; just you and Big Red.”

“
Josie
? You talked to a
Girl
about this?”

“Josie and I talk about everything, Opie.”

Tubby was silent, wondering if Josie had told Rusty about him masturbating in her bathroom.
No
, he decided. Josie had promised him that would always be their secret, and he believed her. Well, I’m flattered you—”

Excitement from above put an end to their surreal conversation. Tubby and Rusty stared up at the twinkling stars. The red eyes were gone now. They could hear the Rabids up there, though, moving something about in the brush. To Rusty it sounded as if they were dragging…

“Shit, Tubby. I think they’ve figured it out.”

The splintered end of a tree inched into view, just over the lip of the sinkhole. They could hear the Rabids grunt as they maneuvered it over the pit.

Tubby could pick out some words here and there between the infected humans. Mostly it sounded like gibberish. Didn’t matter what he thought—it was plain the Rabids understood one another just fine. “How many rounds you got left?” he asked Rusty.

“Enough to take care of those three jokers, and two more besides. Long as I make each shell count. But if we attract any more of those things…”

Rusty didn’t need to spell it out. Tubby knew what was at stake. “Save the last two.”

“Right,” Rusty said. It looked as if he would soon be joining his mother and father. The thought brought neither comfort nor fear. Just a queasy rush of adrenalin.

“It’s my fault,” Tubby said. He watched the trunk inch over the side of the hole. Dirt rained down upon them.

“What’re you talking about, Opie?”

“It’s the blood. They smell the blood from my leg.”

Rusty pulled back the firing pins on the shotgun. The satisfying
clicks
sent a surge of courage through his veins.
Yep. It ain’t nuttin’ but a choice.
“Way I see it, Ralph, that’s as much my fault as it is yours. Seeing as how it was me who broke your leg in the first place.”

Tubby laughed. Content in the company of his friend. The pain stealing whatever fear he might’ve felt in its stead. “Man, I bet you hold that weak ass shit over my head for the rest our lives.”

Rusty didn’t answer; he was fresh out of clever repartee. As gravity took over, the end of the slender pine began to slide down into the sinkhole. He leaned the 12 gauge on the dirt wall and got his hands under Tubby’s swampy armpits, all the while watching the slow descent of the tree coming towards them.

The pine began to pick up speed as more branches broke off against the side of the hole. Rusty was able to determine the jagged end of the trunk’s nearest point of impact:
Right where Tubby’s belly is!

With all his strength, Rusty pulled his friend out of the way, ignoring the tortured screams. He threw himself over Tubby’s writhing body, the branches whipping him with the force of a pool cue in a bar room brawl. He shut his eyes tightly, for fear of the slapping boughs blinding him. Something heavy and sharp cracked him on the side, slicing through his army coat and T-shirt underneath. He felt the salty sting and warm dampness of blood flowing freely from the wound on his back.

The echo left behind by the falling tree filled the sinkhole and reverberated around them for what seemed like an eternity. Then silence…

It didn’t last long. Hearing something scramble down the trunk of the tree, Rusty pried opened his eyes. Pieces of bark, twigs, and pine needles fell on his back and head. Death was fast on the heels of this piney snowfall.

He looked into Tubby’s blank eyes. His friend had fallen unconscious again. Maybe that was for the best. At least for Ralphie. Besides, Tubby’s consciousness would hardly make Rusty’s dying any easier. The truth was revealed, as it is to all of us in the end. No matter how many people are with you when you pass on, holding your hand, kissing your brow, everyone must die alone…

             
              *******

Finding Josie’s trail blaze wasn’t so easy in the lengthening shadows. Despite the remaining daylight left, Bud and Josie soon had to break out their flashlights. They shined them on the passing pines, searching desperately for Josie’s lost markers. As they hurried along, Bud slashed his own arrows, waist-high on the trees, so as not to confuse them with Joe’s eye-level blazes.

“Does any of this look familiar to you, Red?”

             
Josie shook her head. “We need to get further away from the Oyster Trail. I think I went past that heavy stand of bamboo over there.”

They traveled that way until the sun fell below the broken treetops, Josie crying softly beside Bud. The sound brought a bitter lump to his throat. There’s nothing more heartbreaking than unselfish tears. And that’s what Josie was shedding. She was weeping for their friends, lost out there in the forest of the night.

Bud brought his Mickey Mouse watch up to his face. The last birthday present his mother had ever given him. “It’s after six, Red. We better get back to the Bunker.”

             
“Just a few more minutes, Bud! They’re somewhere nearby! I can
feel
it!”

             
“I know you want to find them. So do I. But we can’t help them by getting ourselves killed. Believe me, they’re better off tucked away in that deep sinkhole you were telling me about.
We’re
the ones in danger,” he said, pointing up at the night sky for emphasis. “Running around out here in the damn dark like this. It’s crazy!”

             
Josie knew he was right. She’d seen what a little shade could do for these monsters. How it emboldened them. With the sun going down, she and Bud were in terrible danger. Still, she couldn’t abandon her friends to the night’s not so tender mercies.

“Bud, please. Just a little longer.
Please!”

             
Bud took her face in his hands, forcing her to look into his eyes, to calm down. “They’re not gonna be alone much longer if we keep up this racket. For all we know, those things might be watching us
right
now
. Hoping we’ll lead them to our friends.” He released her face and the two of them looked around the now pitch black forest.

And yet despite the silent and dark woods all about them, the mute crickets, Bud didn’t feel as if they were under surveillance. If there were any Rabids about, they weren’t aware of Bud and Josie just yet.

It wasn’t at all what he’d been expecting.

             
Josie stifled a sob and grudgingly nodded her head.

             
“All right,” he said, pointing in the direction they needed to go. “Stay close behind me and watch our backs.”

             
They hadn’t traveled ten paces, when somewhere behind them in the green depths the sound of a tree splintering broke apart the stagnant night.             

“Probably just a storm-ravaged tree finally falling down,” Bud theorized. There were certainly several like that, wind-blown timber, leaning against their more studier neighbors, waiting for gravity to bring them down.

              They listened for a few moments more. Josie was about to agree, when the blast of a shotgun made her jump. A scream followed the blast. They couldn’t tell who it was, but there was little doubt as to who’d pulled that trigger. The other barrel went off before Bud could roust himself into action. Any hopes that their friends might be able to ride out the night in the sinkhole had vanished with the telling reports of the shotgun.

             
“Stay beside me!”
he ordered Josie.

             
Despite Bud’s furious pace, Josie had no trouble keeping up with him. Her legs were long and strong, her wind even stronger, never having taken up Bud’s smoking habit. Her coltish legs ate up the distance right alongside his, their feet pounding the pine needles in even strides, the harsh glow from their Maglites spearing through the dark void. Nor did they make any effort to mask their rough approach. By the thrashing and crashing, somewhere up ahead, it was apparent the Red Eyes were too intent on Rusty and Tubby to notice Bud and Josie’s valiant charge.

Whipping by, her flashlight finally caught sight of one of her blazes…then another. They were close!
Real close!
By sheer happenstance, they had stumbled not a hundred yards from the sinkhole! The only things separating them from their friends were the broken sentinels of the forest and a few clusters of ground palmettos blocking the fastest route.

Another desperate blast of the Remington, lighting the way. “Over there!” she cried. Unless he’d used them earlier, Rusty was down to his last two shells. And Josie didn’t think he would waste them on the Rabids…

                            *******

The tree trunk stabbed deep into the middle of the pit, three feet into the loamy underbelly. Its lowest branch being the culprit of Rusty’s side wound. He could feel the blood oozing down his cargo pants. Sticky and warm. Probably needed stitching, too. Between his and Tubby’s spilt blood, it had driven the Rabids above them into a frenzy.

Like Great Whites homing in on a hemorrhaging seal, the Red Eyes crowded around the improvised ladder, fighting for a turn to descend it.

The first Rabid, a female, attempted to slide down the tree as if it were a firehouse pole; the broken branches along the trunk shredding her all the way down. Eerily enough, she didn’t cry out in pain. In fact, she didn’t seem to feel any pain! The sharp and stubby branches only served to slow her descent—enough for Rusty to crawl around to the other side of the trunk, where his shotgun lay waiting. With tree litter raining down on him, Rusty grabbed the double barrel and pulled it to his lap, careful not to discharge the weapon. The hammers were still cocked and locked. The naked foot of the Rabid rested on the stump of a branch, inches above his head. She clenched her toes like a fist. He looked up to see the pink glitter polish adorning the finely manicured toenails.

Such a dainty little foot seemed out of place, attached to a frothing, red-eyed beast.

The young girl, unrecognizable in her lunacy, was on the other side of the tree, her rapacious focus on Tubby Tolson. Rusty felt his face burn, realizing the girl was masturbating. She landed nimbly on the floor of the sinkhole, like a cat on the midnight prowl. The blood from the countless scratches and cuts left red-running welts over every inch of her naked body. She looked like she’d been rolling around in a bed of barbwire.

Rusty settled the walnut stock of the shotgun into his shoulder; felt the smooth, cool wood against his cheek, and took careful aim…