Resurrection (65 page)

Neiderhauser mumbled something and started up the stairs. He climbed them on all fours like some sort of half-ass monkey until Oates told him to stand up and act like a goddamn man…if such a thing were possible. Had he the time, he would have kicked him in the ass and kept kicking him until his rectum was under his tongue, but there was no time for that.

Long Tall Sally was coming and she was in the need of male companionship.

Oates followed Neiderhauser up the stairs, listening to Neiderhauser whining out some prayer he’d learned in Sunday school. Behind them, the dead whore was saying something about little boys tasting like snails and puppy dog tails. They made it up to the top and Neiderhauser was the first one into that dim hallway.

And that was a lucky thing for Oates.

For Neiderhauser waltzed right into a carefully prepared booby trap.

When Oates was with the 101
^st
, he’d attended a little seminar on booby traps, learned all about the amazing variety of anti-personnel devices the enemy can fashion from just about anything

unexploded ammunitions to household items. Everything from grenades and bullets to wooden stakes and tin cans. Ingenuity being the mother of invention and all. And people got real inventive when it came to killing other people. But the people that engineered the apparatus that took out Neiderhauser had not been schooled by any army this side of the grave and their idea of raw materials was a little more than shocking.

Oates saw Neiderhauser get it.

About ten feet into the corridor, he tripped some kind of wire and something huge and dark that had been tied off to the ceiling came swinging down on a cord and hit him, impaling him instantly.

Oates went down to his knees at the sight of it.

Somebody

and he could pretty much guess who or what

had taken the time to build a graveyard version of a man trap. What it was, was a carefully erected cage of human bones tied together with sinew and what might have been ligament. For weight, two corpses were tied to the back of the thing so it would swing down with devastating impact. So there you had it: a sort of Malayan Gate but not made of jungle vines and bent-back saplings, but the raw materials of the grave. The two stiffs tied to the back of the bone cage gave it weight, the bones

leg bones and arm bones and the slats of ribcages

gave it a framework and then in the very front, a dozen human femurs were wedged in there, the ends snapped off so that they were sharp, jagged, and lethal.

Amazing.

Lurid and unthinkable, but effective.

It hit Neiderhauser with a wet thudding sound, impaling him easily, and then, with him in tow, it continued to swing back and forth on the cord that tied it off overhead. Oates just sat there on his knees, prostrate and gibbering madly, watching it swing to and fro like a pendulum, Neiderhauser’s blood spraying evenly over the floor and walls.

He died very quickly.

Oates finally found his feet, realized he had pissed himself, but did not care. He just stared at Neiderhauser. “What the fuck you go and do, boy? What kind of horseshitty business you get yourself into?”

But Neiderhauser just swung back and forth like Tarzan.

Long Tall Sally was coming up the stairs with a slopping, juicy sound, humming some profane melody under her breath…if she indeed had any. Oates made a funny sound in his throat and moved up the hallway at a crouch. The fear and shock had drained away now and Henry T. Oates was back, talking to himself and singing songs by the Turtles and The Righteous Brothers…or what he could remember of them.

Again, he saw the humor in it all.

“Hey, you zombies!” he shouted into the stillness. “It’s yer lucky day ‘cause here comes Henry T. Oates! And I’m coming for you, sure as shit! So drop ‘em and grin, pucker up yer A-holes and make ready, ‘cause here comes the loving!”

The hallway veered to the left and Oates was glad to leave Neiderhauser back there, dripping and swinging. Long Tall Sally had gotten up the stairs and she was cooing over Neiderhauser’s corpse, saying how glad she was his penis was intact. Last thing Oates heard back there was the sound of chewing and slurping.

At the end of the hallway, something came padding out of the darkness.

A dog.

Oates caught it in the beam of his flashlight and that stopped it.

Except this dog was in a bad way, its back leg broken, its side smashed in, and its head crushed, a slop of brains hanging out and solidifying there. It had been a collie once before a car knocked it into the gutter and before resurrection, but now it was just a mess. Its coat was black and muddy, things crawling in it. One eye was gone, the other just red and oily. Its viscera dragged along the floor after it from its exploded belly.

“And Bing-O was his name-O,” Oates heard himself say.

It growled at him, showing its teeth which were remarkably white and long and untouched by the trauma that had killed it.

“What’s the matter with you, old boy?” Oates asked it. “What’s yer name? Old Red? Sure, that’s your name. What’s that, Old Red? You trying to tell me something? You want me to follow you? Right down into hell?”
Oates giggled and sprayed it down with his M-16. About all he did was make a bigger mess of the poor animal, dropping it to the floor where it growled and panted, snapping at lengths of its own intestine.

Oates moved on.

He came to a door marked PRIVATE and that was the one he wanted. He blew the lock off and found himself in a wide maintenance shaft. A ladder climbed right up to the roof overhead.

A few minutes later, Oates was up there, free at last.

He howled his triumph into the black, wet night, dancing around and jumping up and down, shaking his weapon. But after a time, he just sat down and told himself how goddamn funny it all was. He told Neiderhauser, too, forgetting sometimes that he was dead.

But what did that mean anyway?

Death in Witcham wasn’t like death other places.

So with that in mind, Henry T. Oates put the barrel of his pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

18

Maybe Chrissy was fifteen, but she was hardly naïve.

When Jacky Kripp and Harry Teal took her and Lisa for a ride, she knew what they had in mind. At least, Jacky. He was an animal and you could read him just fine. But Harry? She didn’t know what to make of him, yet she got the idea he wasn’t liking any of this.

So maybe there was a chance.

They drove in circles for awhile and the whole time, Jack Kripp explained to them what it was all about. How he and Harry were from the prison and for years they’d been dreaming of fucking some sweet stuff and just guess who that sweet stuff was going to be? He kept grabbing both Lisa’s and Chrissy’s breasts roughly. Chrissy fought, but the man was strong. Lisa did not fight. It was all too much for her and she had shut down now. Lisa was not strong on the best of days and this night had just been too much for her.

“We gonna find us a place to go,” Kripp told them. “Then we’ll get to it, know what I mean?”

Oh, Chrissy knew, all right.

And it wouldn’t be a simple grab of tit through a shirt, it would be much more intimate and much more offensive. And when it was done? He would kill them both. Chrissy had no doubt of this. Kripp was a monster, an animal that belonged in a cage, and now he was out, showing his teeth. The future was bleak indeed.

Despite popular belief at school that Chrissy was wild and experienced, it was not true. She had never had sex, though there had been times with Deke Ericksen that it had come pretty close. But it hadn’t happened. Sitting there, feeling hopeless, she decided it would not happen this time either. Her first experience would not be being mounted by this slimy, dirty pig sonofabitch. She had already decided that. She would slit her wrists first.

But it would not happen.

Harry kept driving and then apparently Jacky Kripp saw what he was looking for. He told Harry to pull through the gates of the University. He did and parked out front of the looming, four-story Natural Sciences building. The parking lot was deserted and Jacky got out with Harry, then Chrissy and Lisa followed. Chrissy could have run. Harry was leading her by the arm and despite being very strong and well-muscled, his grip was limp. Jacky had Lisa, though, had a knife to her back and if Chrissy ran, Lisa’s death would be very unpleasant indeed.

The front doors were locked, but Jacky took care of that with a tire iron.

Using lanterns they had scavenged somewhere, the convicts led them down a winding corridor, past the administration offices and to a wing of classrooms at the back of the building. Then through a door to where the ugliness would happen.

It was some kind of biology lab.

There were long tables with chairs pulled up to them, sinks and laboratory apparatus along one wall and glass cases along the other. Harry walked over there with his lantern, checking out the selection. Inside, were stuffed birds and mammals, huge snakeskins and petrified eggs, bones of every description. But most of the cases were filled with jars and glass vessels containing preserved specimens. Everything from snakes to rats to squids, as well as a lot of human organs and tissue samples.

“Jesus,” Harry said, “there’s babies in here…babies in jars. This one’s got two heads it looks like.”

“We ain’t here for that.”

Jacky made Chrissy sit on the floor and hopped Lisa up on one of the tables. Barely concealing his lust, he ran his fingers up and down Lisa’s body. She was completely unaware of it.

“Which one you want?” Jacky said. “I’m taking the brunette first. I’ll show you how to make her squeal. You wanna start with this blonde?”

Chrissy saw a ghost of a chance now. Harry might help them or he might just stand aside and watch it happen. There was no way to know. He was hard-looking, looked like he might be capable of being very violent, but he did not have that look about him that Jacky Kripp had: that predator look.

Jacky lit a cigarette. “Fuck’s wrong with you?”

Harry said, “They put me in Slayhoke because I stole cars. They didn’t put me there for rape and when they put me back, ain’t gonna be no rape on my record. You hear?”

“You’re starting to piss me off, Harry.”

“Tough shit.”

“I’ll fucking deal with you later.” He looked down at Chrissy. “I’m gonna take you, you hot little bitch, you know that, don’t you? But I want you to give it to me. I don’t want to have to beat it out of you.”

Chrissy’s lips trembled. “You’ll have to.”

“You see that, Harry? She’s feisty. Brunettes are always feisty. And when they’re feisty that means they like to fuck. You like to fuck, sweetheart?”

Chrissy wouldn’t look at him.

“Sure she does, Harry. Just look at her. Born to want cock. Nothing wrong with that.” Jacky kissed Lisa, drew his tongue over her lips. “Nothing wrong with this blonde here, Harry. Nice big tits. You like big tits, don’t you?”

“Sure,” Harry said.

Jacky looked back at Chrissy. “I’m thinking you either give it up for free, honey, or I’m going to rape your friend here right in front of you. What do you say to that? You wanna watch me hurt her? You wanna watch her scream? Is that what you want me to do with your friend?”

“Fuck off,” Chrissy said.

She wasn’t sure where it was coming from, but she wasn’t exactly afraid. After what she saw out in that rain, she knew there were far worse things than cheap hoods like Jacky Kripp.

He laughed, spit out his cigarette, and tore Lisa’s blouse open. With his knife, he cut away her bra. He studied her round, perky breasts, liking what he saw. But Lisa was oblivious. Jacky didn’t like that. He gripped her breasts roughly, squeezing and fingering them, pinching her nipples. Lisa trembled, but that was about it. Jacky put his mouth to her breasts and began to lick and suck them.

Either Harry found some decency and stood up to Kripp or he cowered away and they both got raped and murdered. What was it going to be? Already, Chrissy was eyeing up that chemical glassware. You shattered one of those beakers or flasks and you could get a nice piece of glass to fight with…or to slit your wrists with.

Jacky brought up the knife, looked like he was ready to swing into action, but sounds out in the hallway stopped him. There were people out there and quite a few by the sounds of it. Both Jacky and Harry froze, looking at each other and those dragging sounds coming down the corridor. A revolting stink of bad meat came wafting through the partially-opened door. You could see by the looks on their faces that they were not liking this.

Chrissy stood up and pulled Lisa down from the table, she brought her around the front of the classroom, forced her to hide behind a long, low counter with her. Then she peeked around the corner, waiting for it, whatever this was going to be. She had seen those things out in the rain, out in the water, but never close up.

And now that was about to change.

Jacky and Harry ran over to the counter and ducked behind it, too, dousing one of the lanterns. The other still burned brightly over near the specimen cases. The door slammed open and the dead came in. The first two were bad enough. One was a dark-haired girl that could have been Chrissy after a couple days in the ground. She was thin and wraithlike, dressed in a dirty Aeropostle sweatshirt, her eyes black and shining, standing out in great contrast to the pale gray skin of her face. There was an older guy with her, middle-aged when he died, his face the color of fresh cream and blotched with open sores. The third one was barely human. He was naked and bloated, his face so distended with gas that you could barely see his eyes.