The Siege (47 page)

Dale went over to Donna, who was pawing around behind the workbench, throwing aside old cans and age-stained cigar boxes. The noise she made was almost deafening in the close cellar as she rummaged through the junk.

“Seek and you shall find,” she said as she straightened up, holding an old ball-peen hammer over her head. “We have the nails and we have the hammer!”

“We can take some of the bedroom doors and the shelving to cover the windows,” Dale said. “So if we finally decide we can’t trust Hocker to get the cruiser for us, we can at least hold out as long as we have to.”

“That won’t be very long, considering how little food there is for all of us,” Donna said.

“We won’t have to worry,” Winfield said, standing up from his inspection of the open tunnel. “I’ve got a hunch Rodgers isn’t going to let things drag along.”

II

A
s Rodgers drove back into town from the farmhouse, his anger grew and blossomed like an evil, black flower. He was positive that the people in the farmhouse had managed to kill the two creations he had sent after them, and that thought disturbed him. He knew his creations weren’t invulnerable, but the fact that those people had “dispatched” them apparently so easily gave him pause.

He felt confident they wouldn’t dare escape from the house, confronting the three he had left on guard, but still he felt a need to hurry back to the funeral home to get the two creations he still had there, then contact Sam Higgins and ask him to “loan” him as many creations as he could spare. He also should pay Mrs. Appleby—and her teenaged boarder—a little visit, maybe in the company of Steven Wayne in his new
condition
!

Rodgers laughed as he considered just how firmly he had things under control. Oh, granted, a few ends had frayed a bit, especially now that that damned cop, Winfield, was involved; but Rodgers had his suspicions about him long before Harmon showed up, asking questions about Larry Cole.

Maybe
, he thought,
in the long run this is all for the better
. He could take care of everything cleanly and completely now that the “frayed ends” were gathered together in the farmhouse. The only other person he needed was just waiting for a visit at Mrs. Appleby’s.
Wouldn’t her father be so pleased to see his daughter again
, Rodgers thought maliciously. “Yes!
…
so pleased!
”

III

M
rs. Appleby left the hospital as soon as Lisa had been found, cleaned up, and put back to bed. She prayed to God to make her forget the way Lisa had looked, squatting in the walk-in, stuffing clumps of raw hamburger into her mouth! Angie had insisted on staying at the hospital, but Mrs. Appleby had suffered enough. Her first thought was to get into bed and try her best to get some sleep before she fell apart entirely. During the drive home, she feared having nightmares of Lisa, eating raw meat.

The gray light of dawn had slowly brightened her bedroom window, but it wasn’t until a beam of sunlight lanced through the curtains and hit her in the eyes that she stirred in her sleep. She pulled her pillow over her head and rolled away from the window, settling back into her thin, dream-disturbed sleep. The
ding-dong
of the doorbell echoed distantly in her dreams, and it was only after the sound had been repeated several times that she woke up, got out of bed, and, tugging on her flannel robe, went downstairs to answer the door.

“Mr. Rodgers?” she said, forcing a sleepy smile, wishing she was still in bed. “What can I do for you?” Her first thought was that something had happened to Lisa during the night:
Maybe she died!
she thought, tensing,
and Rodgers is here to make “arrangements.”

She looked past Rodgers and saw someone else standing on the steps, but he stood with his face turned to one side. She didn’t know who it was at first. After a moment, though, she recognized the young man as the physician’s assistant who had been to see Lisa last night, the one who had insisted he wasn’t a doctor.

“I understand Mr. Harmon’s daughter is staying here,” Rodgers said. His voice was low and mellow, but there was an edge to it that immediately put Mrs. Appleby on guard.

“She and her father are renting a room, yes,” she replied. She was leaning on the open door, and now she started to swing it shut, just a bit. She was telling herself not to worry, that there was nothing wrong, and Rodgers just had some business with Dale… but why would he ask for Angie?

“Is her father here?” Rodgers asked politely.

Mrs. Appleby couldn’t stop staring at the man’s left eye. The dilated pupil, ringed by a thin line of blue iris, seemed to swell and pulsate hypnotically.

“I—actually—I was out quite late last night,” Mrs. Appleby said. She decided that telling a small lie right now wouldn’t hurt anything. “Both he and his daughter are still asleep.” She glanced over her shoulder at the clock in the entryway. “It is still quite early.”

“I really must speak with Mr. Harmon’s daughter,” Rodgers said, his voice suddenly growing cold. “May I?” Mrs. Appleby sensed trouble.
And the way that Stephen Wayne looks! Good Lord
, Mrs. Appleby thought,
he looks like he hasn’t bathed or slept in days!
She eased the door shut a fraction more, leaning her weight onto the doorknob and mentally checking the position of the dead bolt lock.

“I’m sorry,” she said, forcing her voice to stay calm even though she could hear a feathery pulse beat in her ears. “It’s my policy not to disturb my guests when they are sleeping. Bad for business, you understand.”

She smiled to herself with the passing thought that Rodgers couldn’t say the same: nothing was going to disturb his guests.

“Well,” Rodgers drawled, “if you would be so kind as to check their room you’ll see that Mr. Harmon did not come home last night. I have an urgent message for his daughter.”

Maybe it was the man’s strange eye, maybe it was the rather peculiar way Mr. Stephen Wayne lurked on the front steps, or maybe it was simply that she hadn’t had enough rest after the tension of yesterday’s events. Whatever it was, something tripped the alarm in her brain, and Mrs. Appleby was suddenly very resolved that under no circumstances would this man be allowed into her house.

“If there’s been an accident of some kind—” she started to say, but Rodgers cut her off.

“Nothing of the sort,” he said smoothly, the edge disappearing from his voice. He suddenly realized he didn’t have a reasonable lie prepared to get past her defenses, so with a sudden lunge, he shouldered the door open, sending Mrs. Appleby reeling backward.

“In the name of God!” she sputtered as she bounced back hard against the grandfather clock. The impact made a loud gong sound as the heavy door swung open and banged against the wall, rattling the side light windows. Rodgers burst through the doorway, followed slowly by the young man who had attended to Lisa.

“I don’t have time for any games,” Rodgers said, snarling as his eyes quickly scanned the rooms to the left and right. Then he tracked up the stairway.

“If you don’t leave this
instant
!” Mrs. Appleby said, her voice nearly choking with rage. “I’ll call the police.”

In response, Rodgers turned back to Mr. Wayne and, with a quick nod of his head, pointed his forefinger at her and said simply, “Her! She’s yours!”

A scream tried to build in Mrs. Appleby’s chest and find its way out, but not even a faint hiss of air came from her lungs when she looked directly at Mr. Wayne. His face was drawn and pale, and there were heavy, black circles under his eyes. But when she looked at him squarely, she felt all of the gumption drain out of her. His eyes were glazed over, looking more like the blank stare of fake glass eyes than the eyes of a living person. The smile that spread across his face as he moved slowly toward her, his arms stiffly raised, was twisted, exposing his bottom teeth.

“You… you can’t do this!” she shouted, raising her arms to protect herself. “You can’t!” But her voice suddenly cut off when Mr. Wayne’s hands grabbed her throat and steadily began to tighten. She tried to pull away, but the steely strength of the man’s hands drove his fingertips into her throat. Colored starbursts of light exploded across her vision, and then a swirling blackness began to spread inward, clouding over and blocking out the face that loomed closer to her. From far away, as though he was in the next room, she heard Rodgers say, “There you are Stephen
…
your first meal.”

IV

B
y early afternoon, they had the front door and all of the first story windows boarded over. They figured they might need the back kitchen door to get to the barn, so they left that unblocked but guarded by at least two of them at all times. Everyone’s best guess was that Rodgers would send the zombies to the two doors. He wouldn’t try a subtle approach.

Dale and Donna pawed through the junk down in the cellar, and after much searching, they had come up with an assortment of old tools that could be used as weapons. The best was an old axe. The handle was loose, but Dale secured it with a few strategically placed nails. Donna almost threw up when Dale produced a rusty saw and described how they could use it to decapitate the creatures.

They found some lengths of two-by-fours and cut three of them to baseball bat length. Donna set to work, sanding and shaping one end of each into a smooth handgrip. She didn’t like Dale’s suggestion of driving some long nails through the other end to make a spiked club, but after she fashioned one, she decided it was a good idea.

“Maybe we can use this, too.” Dale said. He had found several old gallon cans of paint on the bottom shelf of the workbench. He gave each one a shake, and found five that felt as though they still had something in them. Sitting down on the cellar floor, he pried off the lid of each. Three were almost full; two others were half full. The oil had separated to the top of the can, but by using a headless hammer handle, he broke the rubbery skim and mixed the paint.

“What good would that be?” Donna asked. She was busy shaving the ends of the two-by-fours. Her hair hung down in her face, and a slick of sweat glistened on her face and arms. She barely glanced up, but when she did, she couldn’t help but gasp with surprise.

The light pink paint she recognized from the last time she and her mother had done over her bedroom.
How old was I?
she wondered.
Maybe twelve or thirteen?
Seeing that color, and all the memories it aroused, sent a wave of longing through her as she tried to connect the distant pleasure of her childhood with the terror of their present situation. She couldn’t shake the disorienting feeling that this was someone else’s life, not her own.

“Last minute desperation,” Dale said, forcing a smile. “Throw a bucket of this into their faces, and even if they are already dead, they won’t be able to see.”

Donna shook her head and went back to work fashioning clubs, but her mind continued to replay fragments from her childhood.

Inside, the house was a shambles where they had torn apart cupboards and built-in bookcases, and hacked apart bedroom doors to nail into place. The house was also considerably darker in spite of the bright, late summer sunshine; only a few bars of light made it between the gaps they had left between the boards so they could see outside.

With only one hammer and the butts of the revolvers Winfield and Hocker had, the hammering had been frustrating and sloppy. When they were done, Dale and Winfield had their doubts that their barricade would hold up against even the least-determined assault, but they still had the tunnel to the barn; at least he, Hocker, Tasha, and Donna, if she could get over her fear of the tunnel, could get away if worse came to worst.

“I still think he won’t do anything until after dark,” Dale said. They were all standing by the counter in the kitchen, passing around a cold can of Campbell’s Minestrone soup for lunch. Everyone was tired, and tempers were touchy after spending the morning preparing their defenses.

“I have a hunch these creatures can see better at night,” Dale said. “When Larry was chasing us last night, he moved slowly, but it was very deliberately, as though he could see as clearly as if it was daylight.”

“You said you thought this zombie drug Rodgers is experimenting with is made from potato plants, right?” Donna asked, looking at Winfield.

Winfield nodded. “Yeah, well, it seems pretty likely. You know, potato plants are in the same family as belladonna, deadly nightshade. I know back in the Renaissance, Italian women used a liquid form of belladonna in their eyes, to make the pupils swell. It was considered a sign of great beauty.”

Dale and Donna both looked at Winfield, barely able to suppress their laughter.

“And what,” Donna asked, holding back a chuckle, “makes you such an expert on deadly nightshade?”

Winfield shrugged. “You live up here in potato country, you pick up plenty of interesting facts here and there. I think I learned that in a college literature class.”

“His eye.” Dale said, suddenly astounded. He brought his hand up to cover his mouth as his mind filled with the memory of Rodgers’ left eye, the pupil swirling like a black pool.