BIOHAZARD (32 page)

I turned and saw that Mickey was smiling at me like I’d come to her rescue and I also saw that Janie was steaming. The green-eyed monster was out of its cage.

“Let’s all just settle down here, okay?” I said to them. “We’re not going to accomplish anything like this.”

Gremlin got up, brushing dust off himself. His face was still bruised from the last time we’d tangled. He touched his fingertips to a purple welt under his eye that was slowly fading. “Sure, Nash. I got ya. We got to keep our new girl nice and fresh, eh?” He winked. “Our friend don’t want damaged goods, do he?”

“Here we go again,” Carl said.

“What the hell is he talking about?” Mickey wanted to know.

Texas Slim hooked her by the arm and led her away. “Nothing to worry about, my dear. You see, many years ago, Gremlin’s mother took a large healthy shit and fell quite in love with one of the turds she saw in the bowl. So she nursed it and fed it and brought it up and the result of that you see standing over there.”

Carl burst out laughing.

We all did…except for Janie and Gremlin himself.

Sighing, I led them outside.

It was about that time that I noticed we had an audience. At first, I went for my gun…but then lowered it. There was a man standing not fifteen feet away on the sidewalk. He was naked except for an outrageous cranberry bathrobe that was hanging open, his business on full display. His fingernails and toenails were both painted purple.

“Boy howdy,” Texas said to him. “Join the party?”

The guy just stared at us. He had a brilliant, fluffy head of trailing blonde locks. He also had a beard that was more white than gray.

Texas Slim had no fear of crazy people. He went over to the guy and tied his bathrobe shut for him. “The ladies, you understand,” he said, pressing a hand to his wound.

The guy had a phonebook under his arm. He pointed down the street and said, “They came in silver buses. I saw ‘em. They had orange suits on. They took Reverend Bob and threw him in the bus. I saw it happen. I saw lots of things happen. I wrote all down in my book here.” He showed us the phonebook, shrugged. “I ate my dog because I was hungry.”

Carl laughed in his throat and turned away. “Who’s the fucking Gomer?”

“Pay no attention to Carl,” Texas Slim said. “He hasn’t had a serious romantic encounter since his dear mother passed.”

“Kiss my ass,” Carl said.

Bathrobe wandered away down the street. Texas called to him, but he kept going.

“Want me to grab him?” Carl whispered.

“Why?”

“You know why. It’s almost time.”

“Let him go. I’m tired of this shit.”

I started walking again, Mickey at my side.

“Where are we going?” Janie said.

“To find that Jeep.”

“Tonight?”

“Why not?”

She just shook her head and Mickey grinned. We walked in silence, Texas Slim and Carl out front with their guns keeping an eye on things. I was thinking about everything and trying hard not to. We trudged on, getting closer to the river. In the distance I could see the mills and refineries Gary was famous for. A few birds circled in the sky and sand blew over the roads in a fine spray. We went over a grassy hill, crossed railroad tracks, cut through some wilted thickets and then before us, stretching in all directions, a great blackened pit.

It was full of bodies.

20

Well,
bodies
was not exactly accurate, for the pit was actually filled with skeletons that had once
been
bodies. There was nothing fresh down there. Just what looked like thousands of skeletons heaped and broken, disjointed and blackened. There was ash everywhere. The pit stretched easily for three city blocks in either direction, as far as I could tell.

“Must’ve burned ‘em here,” Mickey said. “I saw a pit like this outside Allentown.”

Texas Slim nodded. “The germs and fallout must have been very bad here. Too close to Chicago. They must have dumped them here and torched them. Judging by the ashes everywhere, I’d say it went on for some time.”

I saw that it wasn’t just bones down there, but the wrecked hulks of cars and trucks. Lots of things had been dumped down there. It was a junkyard.

“You didn’t know this was here?” Janie asked Mickey.

“No…how would I?”

“Well, you led us right to it.”

“So what?”

“So, you’re leading us to that Jeep. You know where it is. You didn’t know this was here?”

“No, I didn’t. I came out here once. But not on foot. We were on the road north of here, on the other side of the river. I-ninety.”

Janie did not look satisfied and I knew I had to get the show rolling again here or another fight would break out. My little group was getting frustrated, tired. They needed something to set their sights on. That’s why I was going after the Jeep now rather than wait until tomorrow. At least, that was one of the reasons. The need to keep moving west was getting very strong, you see.

The sun was hovering just over the horizon now. I saw that there was a trail cut through the pit and up the other side. If we tried to go around, it would probably be dark by the time we hit the river.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“Down
there?”
Gremlin said. “I’m not going down into that cemetery.”

“Then you can stay behind.”

I started down, moving easy so I didn’t go sliding on the sand. Pebbles and loose rocks went rolling into the bone pit. The others fell in behind me without a word. Gremlin, too. It must have been a quarry or sandpit at one time that had been abandoned and then opened back up, enlarged, when thousands were dying by the day and infectious disease was burning hot through the city.

The hillsides were littered with stray skeletons wrapped in threadbare rags. They were rising from the sand, their bones so white they looked luminous. As we neared the bottom, I noticed there were great jagged slabs of slag everywhere along with sections of broken concrete that looked to have been part of sidewalks at one time. Ancient lengths of cement drainage conduits rose from the refuse along with rusted staffs of rebar and old porcelain sewer piping that must have been down there for decades and decades. Sure, first it had been a quarry, then a junk pit, then a body dump.

The shadows grew long and I felt Janie slide her hand in mine and I was glad for the feel of it. I gripped it tightly. Things rustled in pockets of spreading dark. Birds winged from one wrecked vehicle to the next. A rat stood atop a rusting engine block, watching us pass. The trail wound through the wreckage and bones, zig-zagging this way and that. Somebody had beat the trail through so it was definitely in use.

But I bet they don’t go down here after dark.

I kept going as night settled in. There were things jutting from the shadows everywhere. I tripped over a curled piece of rebar and almost went down. I dug a flashlight from my back. Working batteries were getting scarce now, but I didn’t like the idea of gutting myself on jagged metal.

“Nice place,” Texas Slim said.

“Yeah, nice place to die,” Gremlin added.

I fanned my flashlight around, picking out old refrigerators and heaps of tires, the rusted and pitted remains of an old swingset rising from the sand. And bones, of course. They were everywhere. The light glanced off ribcages and femurs and spinal columns. And skulls. Dozens and dozens of jawless skulls that had been picked clean. Bones rose up in great ramparts through which rats scurried.

When we hit dead center of the pit there was really nothing but skeletons. Some still dressed in rags and articulated, but most blackened and broken and tossed around. I started seeing a lot of small bones and skulls which must have belonged to kids. As we cut around some termite-pitted dock pilings, there was a little baby buggy with weeds growing up through it. I put the light on it out of some ghoulish curiosity and saw that the carriage was all rusted and black, the bonnet burned to flaps. Inside there was a tiny skeleton with jaws wide in a scream.

“Oh God,” Mickey said.

More derelict cars and piping, bones and shattered hills of concrete. I was moving everyone along faster now, needing to get out of there. Maybe it was nerves and maybe it was something else but I was getting very apprehensive. It felt like there were needles in my belly. I was sweating. I could feel the beat of my heart at my temples. Rats squeaked and bats winged overhead.

But her words were cut right off…for somewhere out in the shivering darkness that filled the pit like the blackest oil, there rose up a roaring which sounded positively primeval.

“I’m guessing we’re fucked here,” Texas Slim said.

21

The roaring came again and this time it was closer.

And there was a smell on the night breeze: sharp and vile like rotting hides piled in heaps.

It became a matter then of making a run for it or standing and fighting. The beast was out there and I figured it was the same one we’d heard last night. I had the most unpleasant feeling that it had been following us, scenting us across the city. Maybe that was just my imagination working overtime, but I had the strangest feeling that it was right.

“What do you think, boss?” Carl said.

“Let’s go,” Janie said. “Please, Nash.”

There were a few other mutterings on the subject, but the one person who seemed to have no opinion was Gremlin. The first to complain, the first to bitch, the first to interject his opinion on any subject…but now he had nothing to say. Sure, maybe he was scared but I was not so sure.

“Let’s draw it in and fucking waste it,” Mickey said.

And that’s what I was leaning towards. I just didn’t like the idea of making a run for it with that thing…whatever it was…at our backs. It was stalking us. And only now had it announced its presence because it had us here in this pit and it knew we were not going to escape.

“C’mon, Nash, this is crazy,” Janie said, just riven with fear. “Let’s just—”

“Sshhh,” I told her.

Nobody spoke; they just listened now.

The beast was coming. We could all hear it picking its way towards us in the darkness. The crackling of leaves and sticks, the crunch of bones, the thudding footsteps of something very large like an ogre in a fairy story coming out of a dark wood to eat children.

Another sound now…a grunting, sniffing sound like a rooting hog.

I didn’t bother using the flashlight. Not yet. It knew where we were and it was coming. I’d wait until it got in close, close enough to shoot. I motioned the others forward to some concrete pilings. They got behind them and spread out, guns held in sweating, shaking fingers. And there we waited as that monstrosity out there edged in closer, stealthy like a jungle cat hunting its prey. There was so much junk and refuse in the pit that there were dark shapes rising all around us. Everyone watched, waiting for one that moved. I thought more than once that I saw some hunched-over shaggy form of immense proportions.

Maybe it was my imagination.

We waited for five minutes, then ten, sweating bullets. Everyone was tense. There was nothing but the sound of our breathing, the distant sound of wild dogs barking, tiny creatures rustling amongst the wreckage.

I kept my .30.06 up and ready. Janie was trembling next to me only I didn’t feel it so much because I was trembling myself.

“Anybody in the mood for a nice quiet ghost story?” Texas Slim said.

“Shut up.” I sighed. “I think someone should go have a look. How about you, Gremlin?”

“Fuck that. I ain’t going out there.”

“You afraid?” Texas Slim said. “You didn’t seem afraid of that thing last night.”

And it would have been interesting to hear Gremlin’s rebuttal to that, but a wild screeching noise came scraping out of the darkness and it sounded almost like laughter…shrill, hysterical laughter. The laughter of something that grew fat on fear and sharpened its teeth on human bones. The stink was overbearing…high and hot. I thought I saw two huge eyes shaped like crescent moons reflected out there.

“It’s coming and we’re going to kill it,” I said.

I tried to swallow but my throat was so dry that my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Something moved out there. Something made a hoarse guttural noise that became a slobbering sound like the beast was drooling.

“Get ready,” I whispered.

I couldn’t have imagined a more tense, threatening situation. That ugly bastard out there, whatever in the Christ it was, had our number. It had been following our trail and now it had us right where it wanted us. Yet…it was hesitating out there. It could have jumped out at us at any time and started killing, but it didn’t. It was cautious. Careful. Predators were like that. They wanted the upper hand. Even a tiger in the jungle or a great white shark in the surf aren’t as gutsy as most people think. They want to take their prey,
yes
, but they want to do as easy as possible without harming themselves. And like them, this creature wanted a sure thing, a clean kill, the upper hand. I could almost sense its hesitation out there.