Anything Can Be Dangerous (13 page)

The weight on Jacob’s back suddenly
lifted, and he looked up to see the old man standing over him, his
eyes empty black pits, his mouth opened impossibly wide, filled
with a hundred mismatched animal fangs. An inhuman shriek erupted
from the cavern of his throat; then a rifle blast ripped it from
his body sending his severed head rolling through the air, trailing
streams of black ash.

It crashed to the snow and
disintegrated into a dusty heap of crushed bones and black
hair.

Several more gunshots boomed, now
closer, but when Jacob glanced up again all he could see was Kate’s
slumped form laying just out of reach. The heart wrenching sound of
Sadie’s weeping emanated from somewhere nearby.

“
Hang on, baby,” Jacob
called, trying to raise himself high enough to find her. “Daddy’s
coming, baby, just hang on.”

The butchered remains of his damaged
hand reddened the snow when he attempted to push himself upright,
and he screamed in agony when both arms sunk up to his elbows. Ice
crystals stabbed at his wounds.

“
Kate?” he howled. “Oh,
God, Kate, answer me.”

“
Jacob.”

The roar of a snowmobile engine
overpowered his sob of relief at the sound of Kate’s voice, and
within moments he heard the soft crunch of footfalls growing
near.

He faced the sound to see another
group of American Indians rush forward.

One of them lifted Sadie from the
snow, gently wiping her face. Another rushed to Kate with a
multi-tool, using its pliers to trim the arrow shafts. A third
knelt beside her with a first aid kit.

Three others stood watch with rifles
in hand, scanning the landscape with impatient glances.

Suddenly, a pair of hands settled on
Jacob’s shoulders and rolled him onto his back. A broad-faced
Indian stared into his eyes.

Jacob tensed, kicking his feet,
pushing away.

“
Try to relax,” the
tribesman said. “We’ll get you to a hospital but we must
hurry.”

It took a moment for the words to sink
in, but then Jacob detected the tones of warmth and compassion.
Unlike the elder, this man’s breath puffed in the cold.

Jacob tried to speak, failed, then
tried again.

“
My daughter. My
wife.”

“
Are being cared for,” the
man said. He unfolded a cutting tool and quickly snipped the wood
shafts jutting from Jacob’s body, setting off a dozen explosions of
pain. Agony raked its claws along his nerves where the arrowheads
nestled in his flesh.

“
I’m sorry,” the man said.
He pulled Jacob to a stand, hauling him forward. “We don’t have a
choice. Time is running out. The blood makes them
stronger.”

Jacob eyed him across his shoulder.
“They were dead.”

The Indian nodded. “This is cursed
ground, the burial place of a thousand rogue shamans who tried to
stop the settlers from passing into the West. They were the
drinkers of blood, and the eaters of children. They defied the
Great Spirit to gain their power, and now they are trapped here,
immortal but imprisoned.”

He deposited Jacob on the back of a
snowmobile. Every muscle in his body seemed to disconnect from his
bones, and he sagged into the seat. Several feet away Kate and
Sadie were helped onto another sled.

“
They’re coming,” one of
the men shouted.

The broad-faced Indian spun toward the
voice. Jacob followed his gaze to where one of the riflemen pointed
into the black gulf of the valley.

The snow was moving.

“
But you destroyed them!”
Jacob cried.

“
Only the sunlight can do
that,” the man replied. “We must hurry!”

Sixty yards away a swell the size of a
house had raised from the flat landscape, pushed upward from
something beneath.

“
Go,” another man yelled.
The others jumped on their snowmobiles and the engines roared as
the throttles cranked open. They spun and raced for the far tree
line, the icy wind nipping at Jacob’s flesh like a
buzzard.

He clung to his rescuer with all the
strength he had left, glancing back just long enough to see the
huge swell moving closer. The snow spilled away as it shifted and
flexed, revealing the leathery hides of a thousand mummified
corpses surging forth as a single, monstrous mound.

It was a mass-grave come to life.
Chaos made flesh.

The mere sight ripped the breath from
Jacob’s lungs and clawed at his sanity. He saw bone and hair and
muscle and skin, teeth and eyes and dehydrated entrails. It moved
with unearthly speed, closing the gap between them with the
horrific pace of a nightmare.

Then they were past the trees, plowing
into the forest. Evergreen boughs slapped Jacob’s head and body,
folding inward behind him to block his view of the madness pursuing
them. A second later they shot through another barrier of bones.
Shattered skeletons rained to the ground, knocked loose from their
tethers.

The snowmobiles slid to a halt, their
front skis grating on hidden rocks and branches. Jacob shook his
head, thinking
No! Don’t stop!
even as an enormous shadow darkened the thin spaces between
the trees. The forest went black. Even the stars vanished from
sight.

The titanic horror hit the tree line
and exploded into a blizzard of snow. A huge cloud of white filled
the air, blasting through the branches to cover the area with an
additional two feet of powder.

When Jacob looked up again, the
monster was gone. Stars once again dappled the night.

He hauled himself off the snowmobile.
Pain knotted his insides, but he limped to Kate and Sadie, dropping
beside them and clutching them in his arms. Kate’s pants glimmered
with blood, but her grip was strong when she hugged him.

Jacob’s rescuer stepped up beside him,
laying a hand on his shoulder.

“
We’re safe,” the man said.
“The dead cannot pass the barrier.”

No,
Jacob
wanted to say,
the dead can’t get through
it, but the dying still can.

He looked down at his hand and moaned
at the bony claws that had sprouted from where his fingers had been
severed, watching as the muscle and tendons and skin reformed
around the bite marks in his flesh.

The pain in his gut intensified. He
could feel his bodily fluids turn to dust, his organs shrivel
inside him. He gagged as his throat became a cracked desert and
winced as sharp fangs burst from his gums.

He gazed at his rescuers and would
have wept if he could.

They’d risked their lives to save his
family.

Now he only hoped they’d be enough to
sate the centuries-long hunger that was boiling inside him, at
least long enough for Kate and Sadie to get away.

* * *

THE FINGER

This story can be found in the
anthology:

BEST
NEW ZOMBIE TALES (Vol. 2)

1.

T
hrough some ironic twist
of fate,
the phone call from the morgue came while Jim
Cooley sat watching Frankenstein on one of the cable
channels.

“
It’s me,” Stuart said when
Jimmy picked up the receiver. “I got one. How fast can you get down
here?”

Jimmy straightened up in his seat,
letting the half-eaten bag of Crispy Pork Bits fall to the
trailer’s floor. “Hot damn, Stu, are you serious?” he asked.
“When’d he come in? Where’d they find him—”

“
I’ll fill you in on the
goddamn details when you get here,” Stuart interrupted. “Harrington
just went out to lunch, so we have less than an hour to do
this.”

Jimmy grinned. “We’re really going
through with it?”

“
I guess so. Meet me at the
back loading dock by twelve-thirty or the deal is off!”

He hung up.

Outside thunder rumbled across the sky
like the footsteps of an angry god.

Jimmy continued to smile as he
replaced the handset, then slapped his hands together with a jovial
whoop of delight. “Hot shit!” he cheered. “The little bastard did
it!” He jumped up from the couch and grabbed his jean jacket off
the wall hook as he hurried out the door.

2.

Three inches of rainwater sloshed
along the gutters and burbled around the storm drains as Jimmy
guided his rusty Mustang down the alley that serviced the back side
of the Hewitt County Municipal Building. The parking area at this
end of the lot boasted twenty spaces, but only two other vehicles
currently occupied the asphalt; Stuart Wyllie’s dented red Honda
and a 1988 Ford that made up the third unit in the HCPD’s trio of
squad cars.

Jimmy parked next to the sunken
driveway that gave access to the lower loading bay of the building
and got out. The rain continued to come down like a busted water
main, soaking his shoulders and hair as he ran to the back
door.

He rapped on the steel. “Yo, Stu? Open
up, man!”

He knocked again when no one answered,
letting his gaze flick to the old squad car as he waited. A smile
crept onto his face when he thought of when he’d etched his
initials in the vinyl on the rear of the driver’s seat back when
the car had been new.

The door clicked and flew
open.

“
What the hell?” Stuart
asked. “I never told you to knock!”

The kid glanced around like a mouse in
a cat kennel as Jimmy stepped past him, into a green-tiled hallway
outside the morgue office.

“
I’m due back at the
hospital as soon as Doctor Harrington returns,” Stuart reminded
him. “We don’t have much time!”

“
Don’t shit yourself,”
Jimmy told him. “Now, what do you got for me?”

Stuart eased the door into its frame
before speaking, and when he did, he kept his voice low. “Mexican
male, no ID. Sheriff Picket said a trucker found the body under the
I-30 overpass around four o’clock yesterday morning. He’s guessing
the guy’s an illegal thumbing his way north.”

“
Kick ass!” Jimmy
cheered.

“
Keep your voice down!”
Stuart whispered, glancing up and down the corridor.

“
Yeah, yeah—what
else?”

Stuart ushered him inside the empty
office, toward a door across the room. “We got him fresh,” he said,
snatching a manila folder off the desk as they passed it.
“Harrington pronounced the cause of death as heart failure two
hours after they brought him in, and we just got the toxicology and
blood work reports back from HCMC: negative across the board; aside
from being dead, he’s as healthy as a horse.”

“
Ah, man, this is
friggin’
perfect
!” Jimmy
agreed.

Stuart pushed through the door of the
autopsy room and led the way past the central operating table and
body hoist. Jimmy shivered as the first drops of adrenaline hit his
veins. His neck hairs prickled on end the way they did in his
childhood, when his mother would drag him to the doctor’s office
with an ear infection or pneumonia. Cold sweat sheathed his palms
as his eyes drifted over the various items in the room: the table,
the scales, the shiny stainless steel containers. The drive over
had been easy enough—even a bit exciting—but now his emotions
sobered as the reality of what awaited him began to sink
in.

Stuart unlocked another door, and they
stepped into the cooler. Six stainless steel storage lockers took
up the far wall, but only one displayed an information card in the
holder on the exterior of the door.

“
This him?” Jimmy
asked.

Stuart gestured to the locker’s
handle. “Be my guest.”

Jimmy reached for the handle but
stopped short before his fingers touched the metal. He glanced to
Stuart, to the purple latex gloves he wore, and with a smirk of
self-admiration, he slipped the cuff of his jacket over his hand.
“Can’t be too careful.”

He opened the door and rolled out the
retractable table.

The corpse had already been packaged
in a black body bag for its trip to the Hewitt County Medical
Center, where it would await cremation if nothing came up on a
fingerprint check, or if nobody claimed the body.

Still using his jacket cuff, Jimmy
took hold of the zipper and opened the top third. With a final
glance at Stuart, he reached up with both hands and parted the two
halves of the bag to reveal a bloodless stump where the man’s head
should’ve been.

“
Holy Christ!” he
yelled.

He snapped his hands back and leapt
away.

“
Son of a
bitch!”

When Jimmy looked up, he saw that
Stuart had cracked a grin for the first time since their
meeting.

“
Real hilarious, asshole! I
thought you said his ticker crapped out?”

“
It did,” Stuart laughed.
“After he got hit by a truck.”