The Dark Trilogy (84 page)

So what the hell have you done since then, George Montgomery? A whole lot of covering your ass, that’s what.

Taking a deep breath, George grabbed Jason’s hands and held them tight, bringing his full strength to bear in an effort to control the erratic kid. Looking him in the eyes, he smiled at the twelve year old.

“Okay, let’s do it.”

He nearly laughed at the surprised look on Jason’s face.

Jason’s shock turned to joy, and he tried to move away, but George pulled him back until they were facing each other once again.

“But we do this my way, okay?”

George peered into Jason’s brown eyes with a steely glare, and an understanding passed between them. After a moment, Jason nodded vigorously. George smiled at him and winked, which elicited a confused grin from the boy.

The run out onto the street felt liberating this time. For the first time since that horrible night long ago, he was doing something. It was rash, and there was a good chance it would be fatal, but this was the choice George had made: opting for a dangerous risk rather than slowly dying with only dust and despair to mark his final resting place.

When it came right down to it, there it had been no real choice at all.

He told Jason to sit tight while he ran across the street. He would make a break for the water tower as the attention of the horde was directed toward the people in the van. Hopefully the effort—along with the screaming and yelling he would do once he got to the tower—would lure enough of the mob in his direction and give the van a chance to break free and Jason a chance to either flag them down or escape into the woods behind the church.

After that, the plan was for George to run away from the tower before it was surrounded, or for him climb the sucker if he had to. He didn’t want to think too much about what would happen if he were forced to choose the latter option.

The first part of his plan went off without a hitch. There were some stragglers still roaming on the street as he ran across, but George only had to bowl over a couple. The rest were far too slow to react before he made it to the fence.

As he ran, he could see the woods beyond the tower, and a twisted urge to keep on running raced through his mind, but the temptation passed as quickly as it came. Far too many people had already died as George stood by doing nothing. He increased his speed and hit the chain link fence a second later.

As he climbed the fence, he realized that getting up the water tower would be next to impossible. There were X-shaped struts running between the metal stems of the tower, but no ladder to be seen.

George bit his tongue as nervous laughter almost escaped his lips. It was far too late to turn back. He reached the top of the fence and balanced there, one leg tossed over as he twisted his body around so he faced the mass of dead bodies surrounding the van. The few he’d passed were moving in his direction, though most remained focused on the van. He glanced over at the woods one last time.

Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes. The buzzing noise he’d discovered a few weeks back had returned, bringing with it memories of that terrible night. The soldier on top of the truck, bodies being torn to pieces everywhere he looked, Al bleeding to death on the asphalt, and Jennifer’s last words.

Feeling dizzy, George opened his eyes again, fighting to maintain his precarious balance atop his narrow perch. He focused on the van and took another deep breath.

He screamed. It was a long, howling wail contorted with pain and a rage that George didn’t realize he’d been holding in all that time. He clenched a fist and raised it high, shaking it at the demons spread out before him.

In that moment, it came to him. The prayer he’d forgotten on THAT night—the one he thought he’d never memorized, but must have, years before. It thundered out of him, billowing forth as if he were an avenging angel:

“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me. Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever!”

As he shouted, they turned. As he continued, his voice rising, more came forward as they forgot the van. They moved as one, drawn forward, it seemed, not by the promise of new prey, but by his words. It felt like that even as the rational part of his brain told George they were only coming to him because he was food, food that was screaming like a lunatic for all the world to see.

He didn’t care. What he did care about was how it felt to finally curse the monsters that had caused all this. All his emotions—the rage, the fear, the helplessness—were funneled into the words he spat out. As he shook his fists, it was as if he were calling thunderbolts down from heaven at the heaving mass of death dragging itself toward him.

In truth, his words bounced off his impassive congregation like everything else the human race had thrown at them. But at least they were coming for him; that much was certain.

Jumping down into the small compound, he watched as the first of the raggedy monsters slammed into the fence. George stepped back, getting the first daylight close-up of one of the creeps, as Jason called them. He had seen enough of them in the dark, but now was getting a full Technicolor display of the dead soldiers and refugees with whom he’d shared the high school gymnasium.

As gruesome as the crowd was, George was still relieved. He didn’t recognize anyone. He doubted he could handle facing Al or Jennifer as they surely were now. But if they were in the crowd, they were indistinguishable from the rest of the rotting mass of corpses, which was a small blessing.

The fence appeared to be strong enough to keep the army of slavering maniacs at bay for at least a few minutes. The rust on it didn’t inspire confidence, but at least the monsters pounding on the chain link didn’t appear to have much in the way of climbing skills. All they could do was press their swelling, overheated carcasses up against the fence as they bashed at it and hissed at George. They seemed almost insulted that the meat so tantalizingly close was not willingly sacrificing itself.

More and more corpses crowded up against the fence, drawing the attention of others. It was a domino effect: even those that could not possibly have seen or heard him were moving in his direction, away from the van.

Looking through the gaps in the crowd, George could see that there were fewer bodies pressed up against the Odyssey. It wasn’t rocking back and forth anymore, though many persistent attackers were still engaged in an effort to crack into it.

George frowned, his frustration with the driver of the minivan surfacing. Why hadn’t they tried moving yet?

The path was clear, or so it seemed, though it was getting harder for him to see over the bodies tugging at the fence. He did see a smaller group of the infected splitting off from the main force to lumber in his direction. They were on the opposite side of the street, still near the van, but moving toward the church.

Looking over at his old hideout, George groaned. The kid had done it. He’d disobeyed the order to sit tight and wait. When all the attention was drawn away from the church, Jason would have had his chance to take off. Until then, he was supposed to remain safe behind the closed doors.

Now that was shot to hell.

George watched in stunned silence as the twelve year old whipped a clunky textbook out one of the second-floor windows at the crowd of onlookers gathered around the front of the church. The book spun like an oversized shuriken and sideswiped what may have been an elderly woman. The only hints at its gender were its cloud of messy white hair and the tattered remains of a flower-print dress. The book spun the creature around, but didn’t knock it over. The blow did serve to draw its attention, and moments later, it was clawing and beating at the church doors.

Where the hell did he get the book? It didn’t matter much, but George surmised that Jason must have done some exploring in the classrooms and found a few teaching manuals. More rectangular missiles flew out of the window, smashing into the heads of the ghouls down below. Though it was hard to tell from a distance, it looked to George as if Jason were enjoying himself.

“Get out of there now, dammit. GET OUT!”

It was pointless; the kid couldn’t hear him. The maddening drone was too loud, vibrating every bone in George’s body. He could barely hear himself.

Resisting the temptation to launch his body at a part of the fence still bare of smashed bodies, George paced behind the walls of his prison as more stiffened corpses made the pilgrimage to the church. His movements were spreading the ghouls out around the perimeter of the fence. As they tried to follow him, more blocked his view of the van and the church. He wanted to signal for Jason to just cut and run, but it was fast becoming clear that, for the moment anyway, the boy’s fate was entirely out of his hands.

The crowd beyond the fence continued to shift, moving to the side of the compound to which George was closest—at least most of them did. There were more than enough to spread around, and those pressed up against the chain link appeared unwilling to give up their prime spots along the fence line.

George knew he would have to make a break for it soon. The fence was starting to sway as more bodies pressed against it. It wouldn’t be long before it collapsed.

He was still sizing things up when he heard the roar of the van’s engine. Finally! At least the people in the van would be able to escape this nightmare, even if he and Jason were screwed.

Even as he thought about how futile this whole rescue effort had been, George had to smile. It beat sitting on his ass until he starved to death.

Moments later, George’s eyes widened as the sound of metal crunching against metal jolted him out of his reverie and he saw the blue prow of the minivan heading in his direction.

He dove out of the way as the Odyssey plowed through the fence, smashing at least five stiffs into its grill.

George wobbled to his feet, still in a daze, as he finally got a good view of the scraggly driver when he rolled his window down. At the same time, the cargo door on the minivan slowly opened. A thin, haggard-looking woman stood behind the door, a massive revolver in her tiny hands.

He was still staring at these ragged people, trying to comprehend what had just happened, when he heard one of them shout, “Get in!”

Jason, Alone

Author’s note: This particular story takes place before Jason ever meets up with George. I realize it is out of place chronologically, but feel that as an explanation of who Jason is, it fits better after his story with George has been read.

Everything had been screwed up since Momma dragged him out of school up in Detroit and moved him down to this white bread hillbilly paradise. They sure as heck hadn’t been rich up in Dearborn, but he’d gotten to see his father every now and then, and they had a nice apartment. Jason didn’t want a house, even if Momma insisted that they needed a place where they weren’t crammed in next to twenty other families. He didn’t want to leave his school either. It wasn’t like he had lots of friends there, but he was comfortable with his teachers and knew what was expected of him. Here, he stood out like a sore thumb. They had gotten a house like Momma had always wanted, but there were even more trailer parks in their new town than he’d ever seen back home. That Momma somehow thought moving to Gallatin, Ohio was a step up from Dearborn, Michigan was beyond Jason’s ability to understand.

After they’d lived in the small town for a while, things leveled out, though they still sucked. The kids in Gallatin more or less ignored him. There was a good share of white trash, but most of the kids were nice enough. There were only a few black families in town, so it was almost like most of the white kids had no idea of how to act around him. He could tell that they’d been taught that racism was bad, yet they were still uncomfortable being around someone who wasn’t the same color as they were. The school was okay. Jason had always been smart, and adjusting academically wasn’t too much of a challenge. His mother insisted he was getting a better education here, though he kind of doubted it.

He was getting used to things in Ohio, even though his father hadn’t called or written since the move. He didn’t like the nasty things Momma said about Dad, but didn’t argue with her about it. With as many times as she called him worthless, it didn’t seem all that surprising that Jason’s father chose to forget about his son once they moved away.

Momma never accepted any blame for anything in regard to Jason’s father, even after deciding to pick up and move almost three hundred miles away from him. She insisted that it was her ex-husband’s fault he couldn’t pick up a phone or arrange to have Jason go back up to Detroit for a week during the holidays or in the summer. She didn’t accept any blame, but Jason silently affixed much of it on her. But as with everything else, he suffered quietly and didn’t act out or complain. He was her good son, well behaved and shy. He loved his momma, and even if he wished she hadn’t made some of the choices she did, he was smart enough to know that she was the one person in the world who would always be there for him, no matter what. He still loved his dad, but he’d known for years that the man was unreliable. That was just the way it was. Momma could always be counted on.

That was, until the world fell apart.