The Hungry Dead (12 page)

Blake Parsons and Spaz Bentley had installed a GPS tracking device on the undercarriage of the big rig, so when it didn't show up at their prearranged rendezvous point, a truck stop fifty miles from Willard, they had a rough idea of where it might have gotten detained. The GPS signal went on the blink somewhere south of Willard, but not fifty miles south, so they could tell that the rig never got very far, and they circled back to try to find it.

“I hope the fuckin' fuzz didn't pull it over,” Spaz said.

“If they did, we're fucked,” Blake said. He noticed that when Spaz grimaced or squinted into the sun while he was driving, his single teardrop tattoo wrinkled up in a strange way, and Blake guessed that his two teardrops must do the same. He figured he would check it out sometime by squinting at himself in a mirror. He was vain about his teardrops and knew that their mere presence helped him intimidate people. He had thought about getting another one tattooed on his cheek just for the hell of it, but the first two were legit and adding a third one would be a kind of dishonesty that he didn't want to commit, even though most kinds of dishonesty were right up his alley.

The two thugs were riding in that same blue van with the Olsen's Grocery Mart sign on it because they didn't know the county cops were wise to it. They knew the route that the big rig was supposed to take, and that's what they followed when they did their backtracking. So it was pretty easy for them to find where the rig had gone off the road and where it had wrecked out in the field.

There they found the partially devoured remains of the two drivers, Luke and Morgan, whom they had known formerly as Dr. Melrose's lab assistants. They had been relied upon to get the big rig and its cargo to the doc's secret lab. But now they were dead and horribly mutilated, their abdominal cavities hollowed out and practically devoid of internal organs. Spaz and Blake knew very well that the undead considered the entrails to be a delicacy, probably because they were easier to chew on than the tougher organs like hearts and livers. Once enough organs were gone, even if the head and body remained mostly intact, it had never been known for a person thus devoured to be still able to rise again.

Spaz and Blake wordlessly drew their guns, sharply scanned everything around them, and spotted nothing and nobody. They knew that the zombies had somehow gotten loose and devoured the two truckers, but they had no idea how.

“Look! Up ahead!” Spaz cried out suddenly.

He had spotted three or four zombies disappearing into the woods.

“Let's track 'em!” Blake said. “We might be able to recapture 'em somehow!”

“Right on, we have our zombie nooses,” Spaz enthused.

“Haw!” Blake guffawed, because he knew that his buddy enjoyed using the “nooses” whenever he could. They were the kind of tool that dog catchers used to capture and restrain mad dogs—long leather-clad poles with leather loops at the ends that could be put around a dog's head like a lariat, then cinched tight. Spaz and Blake had innovated the use of them in Doc Melrose's laboratory as an efficient way to pull zombies out of the cages or back in, or to wherever the doc needed them and for whatever purpose. So they ran back to the van and got their zombie nooses.

They lost some time doing this, but were able to catch up with and track the slow-moving zombies till they ended up in the gravel lot of Saint Willard's Catholic Church and Elementary School.

Quickly casing the place, Blake and Spaz saw the priest and some of the children staring in utter fear from behind boarded-up windows.

“Shit! We can't capture all those zombies!” Blake said. “What're we gonna do, Spaz?”

“We gotta help those kids.”

“How?”

“The law probably doesn't even know they're in danger. Nobody is comin' to save them, but they probably hope somebody is. It's gotta be us, Blake.”

“You sayin' we should risk our lives for a buncha fuckin'
kids
?”

But in spite of his cursing and his wanting to always be a tough guy, Spaz was already weakening. When they were doing jail time, like almost all prisoners, they hated the ones who were in there for raping and killing children. Guys who had murdered, robbed, and even raped adults male and female despised the ones who committed those same crimes against kids. They were labeled “Short Eyes” because when they were outside the prison walls their eyes were always cast downward, checking out and lusting after little kids. Sometimes the authorities knowingly and on purpose had the worst of the Short Eyes, especially those that didn't get the death sentence they deserved, put into the general prison population so the lifers could take care of them in the way that the court system failed to do. Not too many of the Short Eyes lasted to serve out their time, and both Spaz and Blake had participated in some of this kind of rough justice.

“The school is Saint Willard's,” Spaz said. “A drinkin' buddy of mine has a boy and girl on the honor roll in there, and I gave 'em candy and potato chips, and they actually liked me. I can't let 'em die. I'll have nightmares about what those zombies'll do to 'em. If you don't feel the way I do, you can take off, Blake. Don't leave me though. Wait by the van.”

“Aw, fuck, I'm not gonna wimp out on you, man. I guess this is our chance to help some little kids while they're still alive. But how're we gonna handle this?”

“First we gotta go back for more ammo for our handguns. Gotta get our rifles and shotguns too,” Spaz said. “And maybe we make some Molotov cocktails outta the empty beer bottles in that case we didn't toss.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Blake said, trying to summon a vestige of desire to actually do some good in the world. He knew that if he hadn't seen that there were children in there, he would have let all those people die. And he wondered if he was being a sap not to still do it anyhow.

They got themselves ready, and while they were doing so, they laid out a scheme.

First they trundled their rifles, pistols, ammo, and the beer case of gasoline-filled bottles with cloth wicks through the patch of woods and onto the perimeter of the church and school. Then they split up, each taking some Molotov cocktails plus their firearms and ammo to opposite corners of the gravel lot.

They moved quickly and quietly so as not to alarm the hungrily milling zombies too much. Then they each lighted the cloth fuses one at a time and tossed four flaming cocktails apiece into the clusters of zombies that were nearest to them, and those unlucky zombies went up in flames, staggering and moaning and falling down in separate pyres.

Then they opened fire, an all-out fusillade.

They scurried and fired, scurried and fired.

Maybe it was easier than they imagined it would be. They were expert shooters, and they scored plenty of head shots on the first try.

They caught glimpses of children and adults watching their attack on the zombies through the boarded-up windows. They even heard cheers from the people inside.

At last there were no zombies still standing, and they held their fire.

“Time to cut and run!” Blake yelled.

“Yeah, buddy!”

They hotfooted it out of there before any of the people inside could dare open the barricaded door. They didn't want to be thanked. They didn't want to be appreciated, or worse, recognized.

In case they might be surprised by any roving zombies they had not gotten to deal with, they kept their guns at the ready as they backtracked on foot through the woods and made it back to their van. They put their weapons in the cab, then got in and peeled out of there.

But their luck ran out almost as soon as they got back onto the main road.

 

Deputies Jerry Flanagan and Bruce Barnes, cruising in their patrol car, spotted the blue van and saw the sign on it: O
LSEN'S
G
ROCERY
M
ART.
So they turned on their siren and pursued. While Jerry drove, Bruce used the police-band radio to call for backup, and they found themselves in a hellishly dangerous high-speed chase.

A roadblock was set up, and Blake and Spaz tried to crash it.

Their van overturned, and Bruce and Jerry almost crashed right into it. But they were able to screech the patrol car to a stop, scramble out of it, and take up firing positions using the car and its wide-open doors as a shield.

Though Blake had a bloody head gash, and Spaz had a busted knee and a twisted, obviously broken left arm, they somehow got out of the overturned van and started firing at the cops. They kept coming, out in the open, as if they thought they were invincible—or as if they wanted to die and get it over with.

Bruce and Jerry and the four other cops whose vehicles formed the roadblock had no chance to call for the two men to drop their weapons and put their hands up. The thugs were running at them, guns blazing.

Trying to remain calm under fire, Bruce Barnes squeezed off two well-placed rounds, one in Spaz Bentley's chest and one in his head, and Spaz fell dead in the dust.

Screaming like a banzai warrior, Blake Parsons managed to kill a patrolman who had a wife and two kids and had only been on the job less than a year. Then Jerry blasted Blake down with two bullets in the groin and one in the chest.

After the two thugs were confirmed dead and the dead patrolman's body was covered up with a blanket, Bruce phoned a report in to Sheriff Harkness, who by this time had gotten into his uniform and was ready to hustle out of his house as fast as he could to join in the pursuit of the blue van or back up the roadblock team. “There's a lot of carnage here, Sheriff,” Bruce said. “It's all over. But you'll want to be here to take charge of crime-scene control and the collection of evidence.”

“I guess there was no chance of taking the bastards alive,” the sheriff said.

“No, I'm sorry,” said Bruce. “They came out firing. I'm tempted to say it was suicide by cop. Can't say what was in their heads. But if they wanted to die, they didn't need to shoot one of us.”

“Bastards like that don't give a shit,” Harkness said. “Don't really give a shit about anybody or anything. Too bad we couldn't know in advance how they were gonna turn out, so we could smother them in their cradles.”

“I agree with you,” Bruce said. “But I'm not like Dr. Melrose. I don't have any wish to play God, at least I don't think I do.” But even as he said this, he knew that he sometimes had to fight the urge to administer quick and sure punishment to some of the people he had to arrest.

He also knew that the sheriff had wanted Spaz and Blake to be taken alive so they could be questioned, but things didn't turn out that way. But it wasn't his fault that there had never been a chance to get a handle on the whereabouts of Tiffany and Victoria Melrose.

Henry and Sally were trying to figure out how to load the musket from over the fireplace when they were jolted by the noise of motorcycles.

Slam, Bearcat, and Honeybear roared into the lot on their Harleys, churning up clouds of dust and gravel, then whirling and spinning on the bikes, shooting down zombies in the bright moonlight. Slam and Bearcat yeehawed and fired their pistols while Honeybear hung on, giggling.

Then they wheeled up to the front door of the roadhouse, jumped off their bikes, and started pounding and yelling.

Inside, Henry and Sally were rooted in their tracks, frightened.

Bearcat yelled, “Let us in! We're
people
!”

By this time, two live zombies had managed to shuffle up close to him and Slam, who whirled and took both zombies down with perfectly planted head shots. Both zombies fell heavily.

Then the steel door unbolted and Honeybear went in first, past a wary Henry Brinkman. Bearcat and Slam pushed past him immediately, pushing their motorcycles inside with them and knocking aside tables and chairs in the process.

Henry shut the steel door and rebolted it, noticing that Slam was staring at Sally in a way that looked kind of hungry and lecherous. Sally was obviously scared and nervous, standing there still cradling the black-powder rifle.

Bearcat said, faking a heavy drawl, ”By golly, Miss Molly, does that weepon work agin' them goldern Injuns out there?”

Slam and Honeybear tittered and guffawed.

To Henry and Sally, Bearcat said, “My name be Bearcat, and this here's muh saddle-sore sidekick, Slam, and muh soul mate name of Honeybear. Who be you folks?”

“I'm Henry Brinkman. I own this place. This is my daughter Sally. We've already been through a lot, and we're glad you fellows are armed and can help us defend ourselves.”

Still drawling excessively, Bearcat intoned, “Yuh mean y'all ain't got no weepons?”

Slam let out a bark of laughter.

Sally moved closer to her father. Eyeing the newcomers, she bit her lip. Henry fidgeted nervously. They were both realizing that they may have stepped out of the frying pan and into the fire where these new arrivals were concerned.

Slam said, “Ahm hongry, Bearcat. What say we ask the purty leetle lady o' the house here to cook us up some vittles?”

“Why shore, Slam,” said Bearcat, continuing the charade. “We'll git ourselves all refreshed and revitalized with some hot vittles and strong spirits, then mebbe we'll feel like venturin' outside agin and gunnin' down a passle more o' them thar Injuns.”

Honeybear giggled at this.

Slam drawled, “These here newfangled Injuns is a dern sight more troublesome than the ol' kind, ya noticed that, Bearcat? They hanker to take a lot more from a feller than jest his scalp.”

“They're powerful uppity 'n persnickety all right, 'n they shore ain't a mite perticular over which part 'o ya they git. They'll gobble up innards jest as well as legs 'n thighs.”

Slam and Bearcat cracked up over this.

Grimacing in distaste, Sally spun on her heels, leaned the black-powder musket in a corner, and headed for the kitchen.

Slam stepped in front of her. “Hey, where you be headed, gal?”

“To the kitchen to cook some burgers and fries,” she said sharply. “That's what you want, isn't it?”

“I wants that much, sure 'nough. But it might not be
all
I wants from a purty leetle gal like you.”

“Well, it's all you're getting,” Sally snapped back.

And Slam made a move toward her—till Henry confronted him, saying, “Look here, my daughter's a decent young lady, and I'd appreciate it if you'd treat her with more respect.” He said this in a no-nonsense voice, not kowtowing, but holding back in light of the fact that these were obviously very rough and unscrupulous men, and right now they had the advantage.

Slam's eyes went wide in a pose of exaggerated and meanspirited amusement.

“Whale, tar 'n feather me 'n call me a banty rooster! I'd shore like to take time to court yer purty leetle offspring good 'n proper like, Mista Henry—but we is in whachoo might call a despert sitchamitation, with a pack 'o flesh-thirsty Injuns out thar that don't want us to live to see sunup. People has a tendency to wanna do what comes natcherly under sech terrible circumstances. Right, Honeybear?”

“You mean like me and Bearcat,” she said coyly.

“Right on, babe,” Slam said, dropping his exaggerated drawl. “You was all bent outta shape at first, but now you're so tight with us you don't wanna split no more. Same thing happened to whatsername, that rich bitch that was captured 'n brainwashed by them freakin' commie radicals back in the seventies.”

Since he had dropped out of his drawl, Bearcat did likewise for this part of the conversation, which was “serious” to them because it had to do with “commies”—who were the archenemies of Hitler and thus anathema to these skinheads also. “You're talkin' about the so-called Symbionese Liberation Army, Slam. Buncha white chicks, blacks, 'n lezzies all humpin' each other. They were all gunned down 'n burned by the pigs in Los Angeles.”

“Pigs'd love to do the same to us,” Slam said. “They don't realize their chains're bein' pulled by the pinko traitors in the gov'ment who want this country to go commie.”

Honeybear said, “Don't get yourself on a rant, Slam. Right now we're not facing commies. We're facing zombies. That's what we've gotta protect ourselves from.”

“
And
from the pigs!” said Bearcat. “ 'Cause if they come here to shoot 'n burn up the zombies, they're gonna shoot 'n burn
us
up too, no doubt about it!”

Henry muted the sharp look he almost threw at these intruders whom he had at first regarded as saviors. They had arrived shooting down the undead creatures that had the roadhouse surrounded, but they weren't saviors at all—they were clearly outlaws.

They were probably as indifferent about shooting innocent people as they were about gunning down zombies. They didn't even have enough sense to be scared of the undead. They treated it all as a lark, a perfectly fine adventure as long as they got what they wanted. And Henry knew that at any instant one of the men might want Sally. And if push came to shove, what was he going to do about it? What
could
he do? He was unarmed, and he was in the presence of three strangers with ominous intentions.