The Siege (32 page)

“
What’s been going on up here, for… I have no fuckin’ idea how long… It’s… been checking into it since the day I got up here. I don’t want to say who my first contact was ’cause if they ever get this tape, I don’t want them…
”

Again, the squealing of tires hissed from the tape.

“
I know who’s doing it, though. There’s an undertaker in town, named Franklin Rodgers. What little I could find out about him tells a lot. He studied botany and did some field work in Haiti on different drugs used in voodoo potions. What seems to be going on is this guy, with help from the local hospitals or something, is getting bodies from accident victims and using these drugs on them. The basic drug seems to be some kind of extract from potato plants. I discovered that the potato is a species of deadly nightshade, and it’s been used for witchcraft for years. They’re taking dead people and turning them into… into… zombies!
”

Once again, Larry’s voice broke off into cackling, hysterical laughter; and this time, it didn’t just rise and fall, it kept building higher and higher until it vibrated the tiny speaker of the recorder.

“Please turn it off,” Donna said. Her hand clutched Dale’s forearm, and through the fabric of his jacket, he could feel her fingernails pressing into his skin. “I can’t listen any more!”

Dale stopped the recorder, cutting off Larry’s insane laughter abruptly. He held a fisted hand up to his mouth and bit down hard on his thumb joint as tears stung his eyes and ran down his cheeks. Donna was breathing shallowly, as she stared blankly out at the front of the car.

“I can’t listen to it any more,” she said again, weakly. “That’s
crazy
! He’s talking, like… like he’s lost his mind!”

“I know,” Dale said. He nodded his head and slowly wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. His breath felt like it had condensed into a hot coal caught somewhere deep in his chest. “But it does kind of fit in with what we suspected.”

“What? Are you nuts, too?” Donna shouted, her voice harsh and insistent. She turned and looked at him, asking herself what kind of man she’d hooked up with this time. “You don’t mean to tell me you believe any of this!” Dale took as deep a breath as he could and, running his fingers through his hair, let it out slowly.

“I don’t know what I believe,” he said. He turned and gave Donna a harsh stare. “But I do know a few things. I know Larry’s dead, and I know I wasn’t allowed to see his body, prevented by the same man Larry says was doing something with dead bodies.”

“But
zombies
!” Donna said incredulously. Her voice never even approached the laughter she felt certain was building up inside of her. She took a cigarette and lit it, not even trying to blow the smoke out the window.

This is how you’ll end up if you believe this!
her mind whispered.
You’ll be laughing insanely, like Larry on the tape.

“All right,” Dale said, slapping the steering wheel with the flat of his hand. “Maybe not zombies, but something sure as hell is weird around this town. Come on, Donna. Think for a minute. What did Sherlock Holmes used to say? ‘Eliminate the impossible, and whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.’ Right?”

“You’re talking
zombies
, for God’s sake!
Night of the Living Dead
comes to Aroostock County!” Donna wailed. “What will we call this, ‘Night of the Living Spud?’ Come on, Dale. This is real life, not some crazy movie! Stuff like that just isn’t real!”

“And how do you know that?” Dale said, keeping his voice low and level only by great effort. “How do you know there isn’t some kind of drug that can do that? Maybe Rodgers found something in Haiti: or the basis of something that he adapted for use up here. What Larry said about the potato being in the nightshade family, is that true?”

Donna shrugged. “I don’t know. I think I remember reading something about tomatoes being in that group of plants, and that people thought they were poisonous until, like a century ago.”

“So maybe there’s something to it!” Dale said, hitting the steering wheel again, harder. “Rodgers is concocting something from the potato plants and experimenting on people. He’s got the perfect opportunity here, being an undertaker. I mean, how much does anyone around here know about him? Where’d he come from? Why’d he set up his business way up north here? Winfield didn’t seem to know a whole hell of a lot about him. So who would? Who’d check this guy out?”

Donna shrugged again. “Hey, people die everywhere. Even up in the County, they need an undertaker or two.”

“Yeah, but there’s something about Rodgers that I just don’t trust.”

“You told me so yourself,” Donna said. “It’s his weird eye that bugs you. Look, Dale, I still think you’re creating some paranoid fantasy out of all of this because you just can’t accept that Larry’s dead.” She suddenly cut herself off and lowered her gaze.

“And because I still can’t accept that Natalie’s dead, too. Isn’t that what you were going to say?”

Donna took a drag of her cigarette and exhaled a transparent stream of smoke. Looking at him, her heart ached. She admitted to herself that she liked this guy a lot! But this business he was wrapping himself up in was so incredibly
insane
!

“I didn’t want to say that,” she said, huskily, “because I don’t want to hurt you, but yeah. I think you still haven’t really gotten over your grief.”

Dale was shaking his head. “No, it’s not that simple,” he said. “Was that car that tried to run us off the road part of my paranoid fantasy? Was it?”

He suddenly froze when his mind recalled the old man they had seen in the cemetery the night before. Suddenly, it was very clear to him why the man had seemed so empty! He pictured how the man had moved so slowly, as if he had no will of his own.

And if he was already dead
, Dale’s mind whispered,
that would explain how even if I did run him over with the car, he wouldn’t have been there in the morning! He would have gotten up and walked away, because he was already dead!

“What?” Donna asked. The concern she felt for him bubbled up like a warm gush of water. She crushed her cigarette out in the ashtray and shifted closer to him.

“I was just… no!” Dale said, shaking his head. “Nothing. Just let me hear the rest of the tape. If you really don’t think you can handle it, why don’t you go back to the drug store? I’ll come and get you when I’ve finished.”

Donna considered for a moment, then she shook her head. “No,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I think I can handle the rest of it now.”

Dale nodded and pressed reverse for a second, then play. After a second or two of Larry’s crazy laughter, he started to speak again.

“
They’re turning them into zombies and then he’s selling them to a couple of the local landowners who use them for harvesting. Brilliant, huh? Cheap labor that doesn’t need to sleep or eat or anything. Just mindlessly work out there in the fields, day and night, when you have to get the harvest in. I don’t know for a fact, but I suspect they send them south to rake blueberries in July and August, and to pick apples before the potato harvest. It’s just so… so fucking wild! I can’t believe it myself… but my contact says he’s positive of it, and oh, shit!
”

Larry’s voice suddenly cut off. The car’s engine whined, and there was a dull
thump
that rattled the speaker. After a blast of static, there was a loud crashing sound.

“That must be when he dropped the tape recorder out the car window,” Donna said.

“Or
threw
it out,” Dale said softly. “More likely, he pitched it out the window, hoping someone would find it in case he didn’t survive.”

“You think he knew he was going to die?” Donna asked.

Dale looked at her and frowned. “Come on, Donna. If the same car that chased us was chasing him, then, yeah, I think he knew he had to get away but if he couldn’t, at least to try to save his report so someone might find it.”

Donna’s teeth were a pearly white as she ran them over her lower lip. She jumped when the static on the tape suddenly cleared, and they heard a tremendous explosion. Dale quickly spun the volume down.

“That—” he said, but his voice choked off.

“—was the car, hitting the rock on Casey’s Curve,” Donna finished for him.

They had no doubt they had heard the fatal crash, but as the tape played, they suddenly became aware of some other sounds on the tape. Though faint with distance, Dale and Donna clearly heard another car, the car that had been chasing Larry and caused the accident, skid to a stop. There was a harsh, skidding sound as the tires ran off the road into the gravel. Then they heard the sound of three car doors opening and slamming shut.

“
Hold it there! Not so fast!
”

The voice spoke on the tape recorder so clearly Dale had the fleeting impression there was someone else in the car with them.

“Tell me that didn’t sound like Rodgers!” Dale said, nailing Donna with a glance.

Faintly, they could hear the sound of heavy, trudging footsteps sounding like several people walking away from the tape recorder, dragging their feet in the roadside gravel with long, shuffling strides.

“
Don’t touch him! I have
…”

There was a low, mean-sounding laugh that faded with distance. And sounding even further away, a chorus of heavy, grunting noise was audible sounding like something out of one of those horror movies Donna had mentioned not so long ago. The throaty growls rose sharply in intensity, filling the car with unworldly noise and sending waves of chills through both Dale and Donna. But the voice assumed a deep, commanding shout. It had to be Rodgers, Dale was sure.

“
Don’t touch him. You can feed later! I have a special little treat in store for this one!
”

The small speaker in the tape recorder rattled with the rush of sounds that split the lonely quiet of the night like a hatchet blade. Insane hoots and guttural grunts, wild, winding laughter and low, animal snorts, issued from the tape recorder. Then the noises moved away from the microphone.

What do these sounds mean?
Dale wondered.
Anger? Joy? Pain? Fear?

He closed his eyes, trying to imagine himself there, on that stretch of road last Friday night: Larry’s car is crumpled in the woods more than thirty feet off the road. Larry, probably already dead from the impact, but maybe… just maybe still alive, is hanging through his smashed front window, his body tattered and bleeding. Smoke is rising from the crumpled hood; diamonds of glass are scattered all over the ground, sparkling in the bright headlights; and six or more hulking figures are chattering and gibbering as they shamble toward Larry’s lifeless body. Their arms are raised stiffly as their cold, dead fingers reach for him, eager to peel him off the car’s hood and tear him apart!

This isn’t real!
his mind screamed, and he looked frantically at Donna for some kind of anchor to pull him back to reality.
This couldn’t really have happened!

“It is real,” he whispered, his voice so constricted it sounded like someone was speaking from outside the car.

Donna was as freaked out as Dale was, and she looked at him with a silent pleading to say something to make everything just go away, to make it all a dream.
We can wake up now—please
. What she wanted was for them to have a chance to see if what had started could develop into the kind of relationship she hadn’t expected ever to find again.

Dale stiffened. The fingers of his hand holding the tape recorder were starting to ache. He took a long, shuddering breath and eased back into the car seat, bringing one hand up to his forehead. He was slick with sweat.

“I know what we’ve got to do,” he said hoarsely.

Donna looked at him, pleading silently that he couldn’t say what she most feared.

“Did you pick up what Larry said earlier in the tape?” he rewound the tape and played it. Larry’s voice on the tape would soon be lost in insane laughter, and then, seconds later, be silenced forever. As the tape played, Larry’s frantic tone chilled the interior of the car.

“
… ’cause I was at the home between eleven and eleven thirty.
”

Dale pressed stop and looked at Donna, waiting for her reaction. His breath was rasping as loud as metal scraping metal.

“I know what we have to do,” she said after a moment of silence. “We have to take this tape to the police. Turn it over to Winfield.”

“And tell him what?” Dale said angrily. “What are the cops gonna do?”

“Maybe it’ll be enough for them to I don’t know, start an investigation or something. What do they do in a situation like this? Christ, Dale, I’m just a friggin’ secretary! I don’t want to get involved in anything like this!”

“So you believe at least some of it? Enough so you’re scared, right?”

“Sure I’m scared. Christ! Who wouldn’t be?” Donna shouted, pounding her clenched fist on the dashboard. “There’s something weird going on, all right, but I don’t think we should get involved any deeper than we already are. This is something for the cops to handle.”

Dale snorted and shook his head. “You just don’t get it, do you? For all we know, the cops, Winfield and all of ’em, for miles around here, are up to their fucking eyebrows in this! Rodgers, if he is doing something with these dead people, even if it isn’t turning them into zombies, he’s gotta be getting help from some other people. Larry said as much on the tape! If we go to the cops with this, we could both end up like Larry.”