Book of the Dead (25 page)

A small victory. A minor success. He told himself to savor that at least. Then he opened his eyes.

Dark shapes swayed before him, looming ever nearer. Shadowed, contorted, vacant faces, shattered slavering mouths tight and shrill with horrific exhilaration.

“NO!!!”

He pressed hard against the pain and gained his feet, spun away from the approaching figures and lunged into something heavy, putrescently soft and yielding.

A grunt of air, not his. Hot, fetid breath pushing against his cheek. He screamed and swung his elbow in a high arc, felt it strike deeply into the soft thing’s substance as it knocked the beast down. He kicked once, futilely, at the wretched face and nearly fell on top of it.

He screamed and ran.

As dawn began to filter through the trackless woods through which he moved, he believed that he was still running.

He was not. His staggering, lurching gait carried him no faster than an old man’s ambling morning walk. It was the best that he could muster. Simply continuing onward demanded the utmost of his effort and his will, but he would not stop to rest.

Eventually he noticed the light growing bright around him. He decided then to leave the cover of the trees for the easier going of the roadside.

Later he heard a sound.

Some portion of his mind believed that he should be able to place that sound. That he should recognize it easily. But he was incapable of that.

Most of his mind was still trapped in the darkness of time, witnessing and reliving the moments when his hands were shoving putrid flesh away from his own face while, behind him, other hands were reaching out to draw him close. He could feel them there, behind him, getting closer, reaching out, about to grab him.

“NO!”

He shuddered.

Then he whimpered, “no.”

He stared a moment at the sun, now well above the horizon, and wondered if it held any meaning for him. Whether there was anything he could learn or deduce from its existence or position. Then the sound came back to him, and he remembered what it meant. It was the distant hum of a car. It was approaching from behind him.

He turned to look down the road just as the vehicle became visible around a distant curve. It was a blue Ford pickup, and it was moving fast.

He stared at it a moment. Then with great effort, and a sense of trepidation he did not fully comprehend, he extended his right arm and opened his palm to it. Beseeching it to stop. Beseeching it to save him.

Within moments it was close enough for him to see clearly the muzzle of a shotgun protruding from the passenger window. It was aimed directly at him. He threw himself upon the ground just as the thunderous sound enveloped him.

Pain jarred him. He wondered if he had it in him to rise again, or if he would simply lie there and slowly bleed to death. Then he realized that the pain was not so localized as it ought to be. It was everywhere at once. He had not been shot, he had simply re-wrenched every injury that he had received when he leapt from the window.

He cursed his assailants, wept for himself and lay there in a heap.

When he finally rose to continue on his way, he was surprised to find—not ten feet beyond the spot where he had flung himself to the ground—a body sprawled across the shoulder of the road. It’s shattered skull oozed fluids that bore only a cursory resemblance to human blood. Its blue-green skin marked it even more clearly for what it was. It had not been there when he had turned to hail the truck, of that Dawson was certain.

He understood then, that he had not been the target. Not of the people in the pickup at least. They had actually saved his life.

He hurried on.

[8]

“Just try to relax. We don’t live far from here. Just out on Pitney Road.

“Oh, but that’s so stupid of me. I mean, you’re not from around here, are you? You wouldn’t know… I mean, Pitney Road doesn’t mean a thing to you, does it?”

Dawson didn’t respond. He could hear the woman beside him, but it stopped there. He was incapable of listening to, or comprehending, her words. Beyond even caring. His mind was shattered, scattered in a million fragments.

The woman was in her early thirties. She looked as if she had once been stunningly attractive, in a pristine sort of way. Perhaps even very recently. But hers was not the sort of face to wear much trial and turmoil gracefully, and recent experiences had left their mark upon her.

Dawson hadn’t even noticed this much. He was absorbed in the kaleidoscopic spectacle of the fragments that had once been his soul. For each fragment he saw a dark hand reaching out, threatening to crush it into even smaller pieces.

He was shivering. Staring out the open window of the car. A car that he had not even beckoned to, but had merely withdrawn from along the roadside to watch warily as it passed. It had stopped anyway. But the moving fragments, and the moving hands, they did not stop. They were all that he could see. They required his full attention.

“It’s a nice area… I mean, it was. It’s set off a bit, and we’ve got it secured real good. I did it myself, and though I’ve never exactly been a wizard with tools and all, I can guarantee that it is safe. George would be real proud of me… I mean, he will be real proud of me when he sees it.”

There was a brief silence.

“We have guns, too. George was always big on hunting, so we had some guns around the house. I’ve gotten pretty good with them, I practiced alot right away and… well, since then I’ve had a couple of occasions when I needed to use them, so I know that I can handle them if the need arises.”

Another pause as she spares a glance at Dawson’s vacant face.

“What I’m trying to say is that it’s safe there. I mean, you’d be safe, you know, if you decided that you wanted to stay with us awhile. I mean, until you’re recovered or whatever. I mean, it’s safer than being out on the road like I found you, and you look like you could use some time to recuperate. It really wouldn’t be any trouble. Would it, Kirsten?”

The six-year-old girl, blond like her mother, sat silently in the backseat sucking her thumb and staring intently at the back of the stranger’s head.

Her mother hadn’t expected a response and didn’t wait for one.

“It gets kind of lonely, just the two of us up there waiting for her Daddy to come home. It’d be kind of nice to have a visitor for awhile. It’d be nice to have another grown-up to talk to for a change. You know what I mean?”

Again the woman looked at Dawson, then turned back to her driving, biting her lip.

“It’s just… you know… I mean I don’t pick up hitchhikers, that is, I never did until now, because… well, things are different now. I could tell you were alive and I just thought: what if George was walking down some road trying to get home, would I want somebody to pass him by just because they didn’t know him? No. I’d want them to stop and help him out if they could.

“I mean, with all of the people that have died, and the way everyone else seems to have gotten themselves all scattered out, if you have to wait for someone you know to come along and help you, you’ll be waiting an awful long time. Just being alive has come to mean so much. It means that we’re in the same situation and all, so we should be able to help each other out. Should at least be willing to try, don’t you think?”

Tears welled in her eyes as she turned toward him, her ace bunched tightly.

“Dammit!” she spat. “Why don’t you say something?”

Dawson turned to look at her and blinked.

She looked back at the road, her own eyes blinking rapidly, the fingers of her right hand coming up to swipe roughly at her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and though his voice sounded hollow, it somehow managed to convey sincere and deep regret.

“No, no it’s me,” she countered, “it’s just that… oh… I don’t know.”

“We’re here.”

She set the emergency brake, then leaned across the car toward Dawson. He pressed back into his seat nervously, perplexed by her movement. When she popped open the glove compartment and withdrew a pistol, he understood and relaxed.

She peered around the car.

“I don’t see any signs of them now, but you never know. We’ll have to be careful when we go in. I always leave the front door unlocked when we go out for supplies like this.”

She turned toward Dawson.

“Does that seem dreadfully foolish of me?”

Dawson shook his head once, uncertain if it was the correct response but wanting to give her something.

“I just figure that if Kirsten and I aren’t there, then there’s nothing to draw them in. Don’t you think that’s true? That somehow they sense us and pursue us, and if we’re not there to sense, they’ll leave the place alone?

“And I keep thinking: What if George does come back and he doesn’t have his key—I mean, a man can hardly be expected to hang onto his house key at a time like this— and what if he finds the house all locked up and he thinks we’re gone or dead, and he gives up and goes away forever?

“Or, what if they’re after him and he needs to get into the house right away, but it’s locked and…”

She let her voice trail off as she gazed once more at the world surrounding the car.

“And I don’t want to leave a note on the door. That seems too dangerous. I don’t think they can read, but… others can. The others that are still alive, and I know that some of them…”

She looked at Dawson.

“Well, I don’t trust everyone is what I mean. I can’t.”

She looked back toward the house.

“So I left a note on the refrigerator, so he’ll be sure to wait for us if he comes back while we’re gone.”

She cast her eyes down to the gun lying in her lap and began, again, to blink back tears.

Dawson’s eyes had not left her face for a long time. But it was at this moment that suddenly, as if with the throwing of a switch in some long disused chamber of his being, he first saw her. Despite the ravaged weariness of her features, she was instantly very beautiful to him. He wanted to reach out to her, or speak, but found that he could do neither.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I must sound like an idiot babbling on like this. It’s just that…” She cut herself off.

“We’d better go in.”

She got out of the car, watching all around her for any sign of movement. Dawson and Kirsten did the same.

They moved to the back of the car and gathered up several packages that had been stowed in the trunk.

“We’ll have to make a room-to-room check, once we get in and put these down,” she told him, “that’s always the worst part. Though I haven’t found any surprises yet.”

Dawson followed the woman mutely into the kitchen and set his parcels down on the counter. Kirsten lagged behind, taking a seat on the living-room couch where she could still be seen by the two adults. Her movement and posture gave Dawson the impression that it was all part of a familiar and unvarying procedure. Once seated the child remained very still, sucking her thumb and watching her mother and the stranger.

“It seems like no one’s been here,” the woman’s eyes scanned the kitchen methodically, coming to rest on a note held to the refrigerator by a magnetic banana.

“Neither friend, nor foe.” She sighed at this, but smiled wanly at Dawson. He noticed that her shoulders did not slump, as he had expected. If anything, her stance seemed more confident, more self-assured and determined than before. She was home now. She was safe. Ready to recharge and to do whatever needed to be done.

Dawson was amazed, both by the change in her and its apparent source. He wondered when it had last occurred to him that the concept of home could have any real meaning to anyone. He watched her closely as her tensions unwound, as her face took on a less drawn and haggard appearance, and she became beautiful to him again. More so than before.

As she heaved a deeper sigh, he felt himself breathe with her. He felt his own tensions relaxing under her sterling example. Felt the dark hands recede a bit, and the strange inner workings of an arcane reconstruction going on within his deepest and most private places.

She looked upon him, her eyes both solemn and bright.

“I still have to check the other rooms. Will you come with me?”

Staring into her eyes, he nodded.

She smiled. “Thank you.”

He dropped his gaze and saw the pistol in her hand. He shuddered, thinking of the frightening state the world had come to. It was several moments before he could raise his eyes to meet hers again.

A heavy sound from the top of the staircase, like someone dropping a five-pound bag of sugar, was followed immediately by Kirsten’s inane scream of incomprehensible glee.

“Daaaddeeee…!!”

“Kirsten! Wait!”

Dawson turned in time to see the child bolt off the sofa and streak out of sight in the direction of the stairs. Then the woman shot past him in pursuit of her child. Dawson followed her, but after three quick strides was forced to halt just inside the living room, to avoid colliding with her. The woman’s body had gone rigid. He followed her gaze to the staircase.

The ensuing moments passed like hours, giving Dawson the unwanted opportunity to absorb every detail.

On the staircase stood a thing that had once been a man. Its hands were closed upon the shoulders of the child. Kirsten, overwhelmed by the fear of realization, kicked and screamed, struggling vainly to be free as the ghoul hoisted her toward its grotesquely twisted mouth.

The woman raised the pistol with both hands, trembling violently.

“Stop!” her voice hysterical. “For God’s sake, stop!”

Teeth ripped into the soft whiteness of the girl’s neck. A spray of crimson pulsed across the ghoul’s face and splashed onto the wall beside it. The child’s scream gurgled to a halt just as the first shot sounded.

A deep burgundy rose opened on the ghoul’s forehead, jerking its face away from its prey, forcing the thing to stand erect. A look of dumb puzzled shock leapt from its eyes in the moment before they rolled back to show only whites.

The pistol sounded again. Chunks of cheekflesh and bone splattered against the wall.