Terror Town (32 page)

She limped now, limped towards him. A living scarecrow wrapped in a corpse’s skin.

A question mark flashed inside his mind: was the girl the walking dead, a zombie, a living corpse? She couldn’t be, could she?

He looked at her chest again, and could see the heart beating beneath her skin, beneath her bones. That meant she was alive, didn’t it?

But oh God
, he thought.
Why can I see that? Why can I see her heart beating right through her skin and her bones? What’s wrong with this picture? And what’s wrong with her teeth? What’s wrong with her enormous razor-like teeth?

There was a voice screaming inside his mind now, screaming and screaming, pleading for him to stop what he was doing, demanding that he run away. But the voice had no control. It was powerless.

She bit his neck. Not in a romantic way. She didn’t leave two flawlessly round incisions in his milky, unblemished skin, like an amorous character from
The Vampire Lestat.
She didn’t have a red and black satin cape fluttering in the wind. She didn’t step from a wooden carriage along the mountainous slopes of the Transylvanian Alps, taste his sweet nectar, turn into a bat, and fly into the night before the backdrop of a full moon.

Drooling, she tore the meat from his neck and he cried out, releasing a scream of agony he never knew existed. She devoured him and the pain was overwhelming. A hot spray of blood spewed into the air, splashing his chin and cheek. It squirted across her face too, then it ran over her lips and down her chest––and he knew, right then and there, that she was killing him. He was about to die in a sea of anguish.

And as she chewed a second helping from his body his arms quivered, he knees became weak and his heart slowed. Then it did the thing that
all
hearts do in moments of extreme physical trauma. It stopped.

Everything stopped.

His eyes rolled back and his life was over; it had been extinguished. She murdered him and he was dead.

Then the impossible happened. His heart started up again, beating faster now, pumping his blood in reverse, causing an internal torture he had never imagined. His organs labored through the unpredictably faulty design and he screamed with a voice that was different, more animal than man, more beast than being.

He felt what she felt: hunger, hatred. Rage.

He was a monster now, but not like her. He was no vampire. He was a zombie, a ghoul, a slave to the Master––a slave to Cameron. His intellect was falling while Cameron’s skills grew greater and greater. And as Cameron devoured him his hunger mounted; his eyes shifted to the bodies on the road. If she allowed him to feed he would. He would rip meat from the bones and drink blood until the human shells had none left to give.

And she
would
allow him to feed. She would.

2

Time passed. Kyle Van Ryan was on the road, alone. His fireman’s jacket was off. His neck and shoulder had been chewed apart. He looked pale and shriveled, a fireman that had been withered rather than burned, with meat ravished from his body. Each eye had turned dark, with a red glowing dot in place of an iris. His body cooled. Muscles contracted. His cheekbones looked like large knuckles in his face. His fingers were twigs. Knees and elbows like doorknobs. Stranger than this, Kyle’s teeth had begun to elongate. A second row of teeth was forming.

He lifted himself to his feet and grunted.

He was not like Cameron, not a true vampire. He was a zombie, but not like the ones he had seen on TV. He was a zombie with a mouthful of daggers, a hybrid zombie-vampire whose blood flowed in reverse, a zombie that needed to avoid sunlight. And although his thoughts slumped along in a thick and dull jumble of disorder, he was a zombie on a mission. He had a job to do. He had a Master.

Kyle put a foot on Mark Croft’s shoulder and yanked the ax from his head. He entered the forest with blood dripping from the blade. He chopped and gathered long, sturdy pieces of wood. There was no need for Kyle to travel far; the woodland was thick and abundant with all that he desired.

But it wasn’t
his
desires he looked to fulfill.

He was following orders, being a good little henchman, a fiend that knew his place.

He gathered six long sticks, straight as he could find, two inches thick and twelve feet long. He brought them to the side of the road and removed the branches and leaves, making the sticks relatively smooth. After sharpening the ends into spears, he returned to the forest and found six more. He sharpened and cleaned them. Laid them in a pile.

The road was hard but the grassy land next to it was soft. The bottom of the ditch was softer still, but he didn’t want that––
she
didn’t want that. He needed the spears to be in a place high enough for all to see.

He lifted a single spear from the pile. With straining muscles, he forced the spear into the soft earth at the side of the road. Just hours ago he would have been lucky to bury the stick an inch, but Kyle was different now. Stronger. Some might say he had the strength of ten men.

He returned to the pile, lifted another stick and repeated the procedure. He did this again and again––and again and again and again. When he was finished his task, four spears pierced the earth on the left side of the road, four more pierced the earth on the right. Another four stabbed the road itself. These last four were the not easily managed, but he handled it.

The spears were separated evenly; not perfectly, but close enough. Each stick was fifteen to twenty feet from the one next to it, enclosing Nicolas Nehalem’s war zone in an oval ring.

Kyle lifted the ax from the ground, returned to the forest, and chopped apart an overturned tree. Once he was done he dropped the ax and returned to the road with a thick log cradled in both arms. He returned to the forest and grabbed another log, and another.

Placing the logs beneath the nearest spear, he created a makeshift stepladder. Then he eyed the bodies of the dead.

For no reason at all he started with Gary Sharpe.

Gary was the fireman with the grey beard and the gigantic black eyebrows. He was the father of three that had taken ax blade square in the face.

Kyle stripped Gary to his underwear, gripped his hands and dragged the man’s heavy frame across the road. Gary’s broken neck allowed his head to flop back and forth without resistance. Blood drained onto the ground. Kyle lifted the man up and threw him over his shoulder like a large bag of grain. Then he walked up his log stepladder, stood on the top, balanced himself carefully and hoisted Gary onto the spear.

The spear perforated both skin and muscle, traveling two inches into the dead man’s belly before it became stuck. Kyle grabbed Gary by the hair and the beard and stepped off the log, pulling the corpse to the earth. The spear traveled through Gary’s intestines and spleen quickly; it came through his back with a POP.

He removed his uniform and split him in half with the ax. He put his groin and his legs on one spear and his torso and head on another. It was easier that way. Smaller pieces were easier to work with.

He found little Mandy in the backseat of Mr. Burton’s car.

He stripped her naked, chopped off her head, and placed it on a spear. He slid her twelve-year-old body onto a different spear, upside down. The stake entered the stump of her neck, traveled through her lungs and intestines and exited the place she was saving for her wedding day. Her arms hung straight down. Her legs were opened in a ‘Y’.

He did the baby’s next, impaling her mouth first. After he was done with the baby he impaled the child’s mother on the same spike.

An hour and fifty minutes later he was done. He had twelve bodies skewered across fifteen sticks. The sixteenth stick was in his hand.

Covered in dirt and blood, he walked.

He walked away from the dead bodies, the abandoned vehicles, the bloodstained road. He walked away from the spikes and the clothing, which he left lying carelessly on the ground. He walked––not towards Nicolas Nehalem, Daniel McGee, and Patrick Love, not towards the pit in Daniel’s basement. He walked towards town.

For the first twenty minutes he saw nothing but the moon in the sky, its glare upon the road, the fields at his sides. He listened to the earth crunching beneath his feet and the insects in the grass. He didn’t know what the sounds were, or what they meant, or where they came from. They just were.

A row of houses came into view on the left side of the road. A row of houses came into view on the right. He walked past them, towards St. Peter’s cemetery. He saw the church that sat next to it. And like all small-town churches, it looked abandoned in the darkness. He couldn’t see the windmill or the wooden bridge that sat behind the graveyard; the night was too dark for that. But he could see the fence that surrounded the necropolis, an outline of the forest in the distance, and the one thing that his eyes were focused on––

Light.

The light was glowing dimly, not from any of the houses that were lined up in a neat little row, and not from inside the church. The light was coming from the humble residence that sat beside the church: Father Galloway’s place.

Kyle stumbled towards the light with his body cooling. One hand was raised and one hand hung limp. He looked at the cross sitting high upon the tall steeple, the sea of tombstones, the scattered trees. His thin, dry lips pressed together. A crow flew overhead. Looking at it, he tightened his grip on the spear.

His mind was consumed with hunger and rage.

3

Father Mort Galloway opened his eyes, staggered out of bed and lifted his housecoat from an antique hook. The housecoat was white. The hook was made of wood.

He put the housecoat on and yawned.

On his way to the bathroom he flicked several light switches. After a squirt and a flush he wandered into the kitchen. He poured a drink of water, swallowed it down, and wiped his mouth with his hand.

On the wall was a crucifix. He looked at it and looked away.

With his dehydration somewhat relieved, he opened the cupboard beneath the sink, removed a half-empty bottle of gin, unscrewed the cap and poured himself a shot. Not a big shot; just a small one, a mouthful. He only wanted to wet his whistle, nothing more.

He drank the gin straight, squinting his eyes as it went down his throat. His chest burned. He looked at the crucifix again, took a deep breath and poured another shot, lying to himself about quitting his nasty habit:
I can quit. It won’t be hard.

He swallowed the shot and poured a third.

Then he heard a dull THUUMP, THUUMP on the door.

He sat the glass on the counter, next to several candles and a vase full of flowers. He wiped his lips with his hand and walked towards the sound, not wanting to open the door. After all, he
had
been drinking––not much, but some. And that was no way for a Catholic priest to present himself. He was a man of God, not a sales rep from Budweiser. In a town like Cloven Rock these things mattered.

But then, doesn’t a man of God help a brother in need?

A hymn:

When I was hungry you gave to eat,

When I was thirsty you gave me to drink,

Now enter into the home of my father
...

Damn,
he thought.
I need to open that door.

He certainly didn’t want to open it, didn’t want to do anything but swallow another shot or two of
London Dry
, crawl under the covers and wait for morning. Besides, it was late.
Real
late. Who comes knocking at this hour?

Someone in need
, he thought.
Now enter into the home of my father
.

THUUMP.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m coming.”

He scooted into his bedroom and threw on a pair of pants and a shirt. Then he returned to the door, unlocked it and opened it up.

“Hellooooo––”

Father Galloway’s eyes widened and color drained from his face.

Kyle Van Ryan was there, dead but not dead, blood pumping in reverse. His shoulders and neck was gnarled; the blood on his shirt was soaking. His eyes shimmered and glowed like a cat caught in the headlights while his nose sniffed the air like a dog.

He grinned; he growled.

He dropped the spear and attacked.

Father Mort Galloway stepped back and Kyle was on him, grabbing his shoulders with his hands. They crashed against the floor. A statuette of the Virgin Mary fell from a shelf and snapped into three pieces. Kyle slammed a palm beneath the priest’s chin, causing his teeth to smash together. A little section of Galloway’s tongue was chomped off and pain shot through his body. His eyes bulged. His nostrils flared.

Kyle chewed a chunk from Galloway’s neck while clawing at his face.

Galloway tried to push the attacker away and dispute the situation. “Son,” he begged, “Son!” Blood ran into his throat. “Stop it! Stop this!”

Kyle lifted a clawed hand, straightened and flexed his index finger, and rammed the finger into Galloway’s bugling eye.

“Son!”

The conversation ended with a scream. Galloway swung his arms madly while kicking his heels against the dark hardwood floor. He thrashed his head left and right. Little spots of red speckled the freshly painted walls around him. A painting of St. Christopher slipped from the wall and smashed against the floor.