The Dark Trilogy (63 page)

He closed his eyes. Just long enough to try to calm down, to block out the noise around him. Running was suicide, pure and simple, but he had no choice.

“Ben! I’m coming for you, man!” he screamed.

As he rushed forward, expending the last of his energy, there was no time to look at the small crowd of withered figures he bowled over to see if they were surprised by his assault. Whether they were caught off guard or not, Ben was a good fifty feet away, and the bodies were thick between him and the other man.

Jeff ran the gauntlet of cold, numb hands reaching out to grab him. He lowered his shoulder, smashing into them. He heard a roar from Ben that sent a shiver through his body as he pushed himself past what he thought he could endure, his legs pumping as he bashed through stiff carcasses like bowling pins. As the withered forms spun and fell away, Jeff clenched his teeth, throwing himself into another wave.

He cried out Ben’s name again and saw him up ahead, looming over the crowd. It looked like he could almost reach out and touch the tall man, but there was still too much distance between them. Jeff’s feet felt like they were stuck in wet cement, and his arms were numb from crashing into body after body. The frantic tangles of arms and torsos through which he had ripped moments earlier were not parting so easily anymore.

As he slowed, arms attempted to encircle him in a harsh embrace. He continued to struggle, shaking them off and pushing them away, avoiding the snapping teeth and desperate hunger. He couldn’t move closer to Ben and was forced to duck and stab blindly with the corrugated pipe he still held in his bruised and weakened hands. There was a wet crunch as it slid between the ribs of a girl wearing a bloodstained bathing suit. The assault knocked her back, but ripped the weapon free from Jeff’s hands as the metal shaft impaled her.

He threw an awkward punch, his fist crashing into the forehead of a stooped figure whose chest cavity was missing. The blow made the diseased fiend wobble backward. Jeff lashed out again, anger the only thing keeping him upright. The bodies pressed around him, hissing and moaning, reaching for his living flesh.

***

Ben had heard Jeff yelling over the crackle of voices and tensed as he spotted him in the crowd. He marked his position as he moved, charging like a bull elephant through the crowd, knocking bodies aside like blades of grass. Jeff had been moving in his direction, but had slowed to a halt. It was clear his strength was depleted. Ben surged ahead, increasing his speed as he crushed bodies beneath his boots. He could feel claws scratching and teeth tearing at his clothing and did his best to ignore them as he plowed his way to Jeff. Five sets of hands vied to be first to grab hold of the man. He fought them off, though his blows were getting weaker by the second. Ben burst through the group and wrapped an arm around Jeff’s midsection. A loud
oomph
greeted him as he drove his body upward, elevating the smaller survivor and shredding the hands tugging on him. With speed that had the stiffs swiping air, Ben pivoted, returning in the direction from which he had come.

Breaking free of the mob, he caused several ghouls to stumble and collapse to the ground, further slowing the pursuit. The crowd was now behind them, and after a minute of full-tilt speed, Ben was feeling the ache of carrying Jeff over his shoulder.

“Can you walk?”

Ben took the grunted response as a “yes” and unceremoniously dumped Jeff on the ground. He wore a look of confusion on his face.

“What the hell is going on?” Jeff demanded.

He was disoriented and weak, stumbling as he tried to keep his wobbly legs beneath him. And yet, there was a fire in his eyes that told Ben he wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

“We’re going after the others.”

Testing his legs, Jeff discovered he could still walk. At least when there wasn’t a crowd surrounding him, ready to tear him apart.

As they sped around the corner of a building, Jeff could hear both pursuit behind them and howling cries up ahead. The relief at being saved again by Ben disintegrated as he realized that they weren’t out of danger and neither were the others.

“How many of those things were chasing them?”

Ben didn’t bother looking at Jeff. He fought to keep the emotion off his face, but Jeff could see the concern there. They picked up speed, putting more distance between them and the pulsating mass of bodies back at the donut shop.

As the howls to their rear faded, Jeff’s ears picked up noises ahead more clearly. They overrode his own heavy breathing as the pain in his legs and chest diminished. His friends were up ahead, somewhere, possibly dying already. The two men continued to run, dreading what they might see around the next corner, but still moving as fast as they could.

Their frightful thoughts were shattered as they heard an ear-piercing scream up ahead.

Chapter 20

Jeff sped up, passing Ben. As he got closer, his heart pounding hard inside his chest, he had to stop short, his mouth agape and his eyes trying to register the scene in front of him.

There were only two words to describe it: utter chaos. George was grappling with a ghoul while two others attempted to join in the action, snatching at him, grabbing at his clothing. He still had the large piece of wood and was using it to push them back, with only minor success. Jason was next to him, swinging his good arm erratically in a wide circle. He lashed out with his feet as well, kicking and screaming, panic and rage taking over as five more ratty figures closed on him. More were behind them, a widely spaced group of perhaps eight to ten stiffs. But it was not the man and boy on whom Jeff had his eyes. Instead it was the other group of survivors only a few feet from where he stood.

It was almost too much to bear looking at. Nathan and Joey were on the ground, having been dragged down and swarmed over. Nathan, the boy with flaming red hair, was screaming as two ghouls played tug of war with him. They were not only pulling on his arms, but had already devoured several of his fingers. There was a sickening pop as his left arm jittered and the flesh ripped free. Jeff could see the arm tearing from the socket, the white bone barely visible before a geyser of blood spurted out, saturating the woman who somehow had the strength to pull the child’s arm off. She slumped to the ground, satisfied with the small morsel while the other fiend, a teenage boy, continued his feast on the boy’s other arm, working his way closer to Nathan’s scrawny body. As for the boy, the screaming stopped as he choked on the torrent of vomit coming out of his mouth.

Joey had fared no better, though he had only one attacker. The naked, sexless ghoul had one arm wrapped protectively around the sandy-haired boy’s neck as it gnawed on the skin above his ribcage. The other hand had found Joey’s guts, ripping straight through the button-down shirt he was wearing and was knuckle-deep in the child’s abdominal cavity. Joey’s shirt and jeans were so saturated with blood that it was hard to guess what color they were. His face, thankfully, was slack, eyes open but staring straight up, arms flat at his sides. Joey was in shock, his mind shut down from the unbearable pain. Jeff blinked away the sting of tears as the monster on top of the innocent child wrenched several dark tube-like objects free from his abdomen.

Jeff’s eyes were on the two boys for an instant, but as he ran up, he searched for someone else. When he spotted Megan nearby, he felt all the heat go out of his body. It took a few moments to comprehend what was happening. She was there, on the ground, her slight frame contorted as she wrestled with some blood-soaked harpy that was ignoring her. The gray-haired creature had its back to Jeff and appeared to have its arms wrapped around something tiny. For a wild moment, as he stumbled closer, he thought it was a puppy or kitten. The lunatic image passed as he inched forward, watching Megan ineffectually smash her fists against the woman as she screamed. It was not clear at first, but then he realized that Megan was not just screaming, she was speaking to the ghoul, repeating several words over and over again. Jeff’s vision swam, and he felt faint when he realized what the monster was holding, cradled gently in its arms. At the same time he understood what Megan was saying.

He didn’t hear Ben cry out from behind him or feel the slight breeze as the bulldozer of a man flew past, charging into battle. The weakened tendrils of Jeff’s sanity that had been fraying all day were ready to snap. Megan was not weakly beating on just any ghoul; she was wrestling with Lydia, who appeared to have Sadie wrapped in a loving embrace. Megan screamed the woman’s name, pleaded with her, begged Lydia to let Sadie go. But the disfigured woman was too busy trying to bite down on the girl’s skull with her shattered jaw as the tiny blond girl screamed and thrashed within her grasp.

Megan’s head whipped around and she replaced Lydia’s name with Jeff’s, pleading for him to do something, anything to save Mary … because it was Mary, his baby girl, in the monster’s grasp, not Sadie. She hadn’t died back in his house, she was here, still alive. Frankie, his son, was just a few feet away, his intestines being ripped from his body. The woman screaming at him was no longer Megan, but Ellen, his wife, pleading with him.

Megan felt a hand grip her arm and yank her out of the way. She gave a surprised yelp as she tripped over her feet and fell on her ass. Jeff had almost pulled her arm out of its socket in his rush to get at Lydia.

Jeff latched onto the gore-stained mop of Lydia’s hair and yanked her head back violently. There was a gurgling sound and a stream of tainted blood shot out of the woman’s throat and sprayed Sadie. Lydia’s skull was wrenched all the way to her backbone. Without missing a beat, Jeff grasped her loose jawbone and tore it free from its moorings. Megan, too stunned to turn away, watched as the remnants of Lydia’s tongue squirmed and wriggled like a writhing snake in the open air. Before Lydia could relinquish her grasp of Sadie to deal with this new distraction, Jeff slammed the edge of the jawbone into one of her eye sockets. It was not a swift effort, but calm and precise. A single arm came up and pawed at him. Jeff swatted it aside and maneuvered the edge of the bone through the socket, rupturing the orb as he worked it around, twisting and digging. Megan’s gorge rose as she heard a muffled pop, and Jeff’s hand jittered as the bone slid past whatever resistance there was and moved into Lydia’s brain. As he continued digging with the improvised weapon, the ghoul’s arm convulsed. Lydia twitched one last time, and Megan gave in to the urge to vomit.

Jeff released his grip on Lydia’s bloody mane and let the woman who had cut his hair that morning drop, boneless, to the ground. He could barely hear Sadie crying or the loud chewing noises going on directly behind him. The echoes of George and Ben’s battle a few feet away did not register either as he turned his attention to the other ghouls.

There Frankie lay, on the dirty ground, his eyes staring blankly as the ghoul on top of him dug around in the child’s abdomen and shoved handfuls of dark muck into its mouth. The smell of viscera was thick in the air as Jeff approached.

The monster did not notice the man standing behind it. It was far too engrossed in its meal to pay attention. Even when the hand landed on top of its head, it didn’t react.

*

Megan gave her mouth a rough swipe with the back of her hand. She crawled over to Sadie, hoping against hope that the girl was still alive. Lydia had only taken hold of the child for a few seconds, but that was more than enough for the damage to be done. She shoved away the horrifying image of Jeff jamming the jawbone into Lydia’s eye and his cold, distant expression as he did so. Instead, she focused on the little girl slumped on the ground next to the corpse of the woman she had considered a friend, though she barely knew her.

Megan gagged once more, fighting the desire to dry heave at the smell of fresh death surrounding her. She saw Ben, George, and Jason moving, twisting, and fighting several yards away, but she ignored them as well. All that mattered was Sadie.

She could hear the little girl whimpering. There was some relief at that. She was still alive. But if Lydia had bitten or scratched her … Megan trembled as she got close enough to look down at the girl.

“Goodbye, Nanna Ly-Ly. I love you.”

Megan felt the sting of tears at the quiet words and saw Sadie, stained with dirt and darker substances, gently holding Lydia’s hand to her cheek. The child did not see a monster, but the caring and selfless woman whom she loved dearly.

Megan felt as though she were hanging on by the thinnest of threads. Lydia was dead, Teddy was dead, and poor little Nathan and Joey … but Sadie was still alive, and she latched desperately onto that fact to keep from losing her mind.

She opened her arms to the little girl when Sadie looked up. She came to Megan, and her warm body pressed up against the frail woman. Closing her eyes, Megan let her tears mingle with Sadie’s. With all the blood and muck covering the girl, it was hard to tell but she thought the child was okay. Lydia hadn’t managed to bite her with her mangled jaw.

As she held her close, Megan heard a low keening noise rising up somewhere nearby. Only after she started shaking uncontrollably and found it hard to breathe did she realize the noise was coming from her own throat.

*

Jeff made quick work of the androgynous eating machine that had attacked Joey, driving his thumbs through its ocular cavities as he gripped its face. The wet mush that squirted out around his fingers was cold and runny, but he persisted, driving the tips of his thumbs into the rotten brain behind them. He was forced to slap away a hand that came up once or twice, but his task took only moments. Then it was time to move on to the next ghoul.

He advanced on the two ghouls ravaging Nathan. They were both busy feasting on various parts of the boy, their faces smeared with his blood. The pulped mess bore little resemblance to the redheaded kid anymore. One of the attackers had pulled the boy’s upper lip until the nose and the flesh around both eyes were ripped free, leaving only the gleam of bare bone behind.