There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (121 page)

             
Josie didn’t argue with him. Bud didn’t need that kind of selfish distraction. Rusty was attempting to guide Ralph headfirst down the rabbit hole with little success.

“He’s out cold,” he told her. “All dead weight!”

              She got behind Tubby’s head and grabbed him underneath his armpits. Behind her, Rusty guided her around the switchback. She looked down at Ralph’s waxen features. The moon was so bright outside, she could still see, even in here. Tubby had held out for as long as he could but the loss of blood had taken its toll. The muscles in his face were slack and corpselike, his breathing not all that much livelier. His blue jeans were soaked with blood, and the raw gaping hole in his leg was oozing more and more of the precious fluid. She wondered how much more time Ralph had left. His wound required immediate attention. Time, they just couldn’t give him right now.

She glanced up and saw that Bud had positioned himself protectively in front of them.

The .45 came alive in his outstretched hand, spewing out death, one copper cartridge at a time. Rusty’s nearly empty .38, and another .45 with a full clip, lay tucked in the waistband of Bud’s Levis, behind his back, within easy reach once his current gun was out of ammo.

There would be no time for reloading.

She saw where the back of his jeans and T-shirt were soppy with Tubby’s blood. Bud painted a heroic picture, standing there, the ejected shells flying off to the side, the hordes of Rabids converging on him like hungry rats to cheese. Bowing their heads, she and Rusty pulled Tubby further down into the rabbit hole.

With Bud lost from view, Josie had a premonition:
I’m never going to see him again...

They got to the edge of the drop, and holding on to each other’s shoulders—Josie and Rusty anyhow—the three of them slipped down the slanted ladder-well, bobsled style, the bone in Tubby’s leg scraping against the concrete wall, all the way down. It sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard. Still, he slept on. Despite his dreadful injury, Josie couldn’t help but envy her friend’s comatose state. Chances were they were all about to die…
or worse
…and Tubby looked as if he might sleep through the whole thing!

As they dropped into the alcove, with Tubby’s weight falling on top of them, Josie thought she heard the barren
click
of Bud’s .45. She grabbed a hold of Rusty and held him still—until once more the echoes of rapid gunfire filled her grateful ears. Bud was down to one clip, maybe three rounds from the .38.

             
“Let’s get him on the sofa,” she said, getting up and jumping to work. They had a lot to do before the Rabids forced Bud’s retreat. They knew the sacrifice Bud was making, risking his life to give them the necessary time to get ready. “Watch out for the bodies, Rusty. There’s three of them between us and the Bunker.”

She didn’t bother telling him that one of them was Bill. If they somehow made it through the night, she would think of a way to break it to him and Ralph tomorrow.

              Bud had had the foresight to light the Coleman the last time he was down here. The light was comforting in its bold luminescence. Bud had cranked it on high, too, and it lit the shelter brighter than she had ever seen it before. Much too bright for a Rabid. At least they had nothing to fear of anything lurking in the shadows. There were
no
shadows! Except for the dead, they were all alone.             

“Oh, dear Lord,” Rusty said, seeing the stiffs.

Bud had also taken time to remove his father from the inside of the Bunker. Bill Brown lay by himself, five feet from the sheriff’s corpse and that of their mystery guest, lying underneath Rupert Henderson.

“Is that Bilbo?” Rusty asked her, not sure of the identity, since most of Bill’s head was missing.

              Josie just grunted as they lifted Tubby onto the sofa. She put some cushions underneath his leg, elevating the wound and making him as comfortable as possible. Josie was attempting to pull the flare gun from Ralph’s stubborn grasp when the gunfire from above suddenly ceased.

             
Dropping Tubby’s clenched hand, Josie sprang into action.
“Come on!”
she said, running the length of the shelter. She snatched up one of the remaining Mossbergs from the gun locker. Racking a live shell into place, she handed it to Rusty. She was grabbing the last shotgun for herself, and cramming as many shells into her pockets as she could, when they heard Bud’s gravelly voice bellow.

“JOSIE! GRAB THE HURRICANE LANTERN!
HURRY, JOSIE! HURRY!”

             
Despite the urgency in his voice, Josie felt relief wash over her.
!!!HE’S ALIVE!!!

She snatched the full lantern on her way out of the storage room, Rusty right behind her. They went as far as the end of the sofa, keeping Tubby behind them, before standing their ground.

Rusty’s arm touched hers. Josie felt him tremble beside her. “I’m scared, Josie,” he said. “I thought I was past all that shit, but I’m not. I’m scared of dying.”

             
“So am I, Rusty. So am I.”

Then giving her best friend the bravest smile she could muster, Josie turned her attention to the gaping black hole at the bottom of the ladder-well.

Bud’s legs shot into view. He sprang out of the hole, somersaulted over the dead bodies, and landed neatly beside them.
“
THEY’RE COMING
!”
he roared.

Josie could hear the garbled hate/speak echoing excitedly down the ladder-well. The Rabids, seeing the bright light, had hesitated up top. Giving Bud just enough time to evade their desperate clutches. So many were pushing from the outside to get in, though, that the ones up front had no choice but to surge ahead.

Josie found Bud’s blue eyes, and in them she saw fear.
Real
fear
. Recognizing it, she herself felt a level of dread that surpassed all the terror she had thus far experienced. Ashamed of his transparent emotions, Bud looked away. He saw the lantern Josie had set down on the coffee table and almost made a grab for it.

Too soon,
he thought.
Wait for the right juncture,
praying that that promised moment hadn’t long since passed. And as the first of the Rabids fell naked out of the hole, like some nightmarish rock in a Tolkien tale giving birth to the damned, Bud grabbed Rusty and shoved him over to the bomb shelter door, propped open on the wall.

“LIGHT ‘EM UP, JOE,”
he said to Josie over his shoulder,
“AND SEND THOSE ASSHOLES TO HELL!”
             

Josie obliged, filling the Bunker with sound and fury. She tried to imagine herself at the Beaufort County Fair, popping off the startled Rabids one by one, like tin-plated ducks in a shooting gallery. The racked shells fell to her feet. Hollow husks of death. Each one a conclusion to somebody’s life. She knew it could have been much worse. The narrow entry was all that was saving them from being overwhelmed—that and the Rabids sudden emergence into the bright light. Her shoulder ached where the hard plastic stock drove into the crook of her arm with each bellowing discharge. Her hearing had taken on a high-pitched ringing as well, which even the Mossberg had trouble penetrating.

The pile of shells at her feet grew, while the ones in her pockets began to dwindle.

The Rabids, unable to get more than a step or two from the ladder before Josie dispatched them, began to clog the only access into the Bunker.
This is why Bud obsessed over this pitiless dungeon!
It was the one place where the Rabids couldn’t immediately overrun them!

The sodden stench of wet copper began to override the acrid gun smoke. Blood flowed like a rain-swollen stream on the alcove floor, where a drain, set in the middle, began to back up with the thick body fluids.

The hammer on her shotgun clicked on an empty chamber, and Josie picked up the loaded gun Rusty had set aside. She started where she’d left off…numb with the hate and the death. The Mossberg, it began to roar…

Rusty thought it a lost cause. After moving aside the cinderblocks, propping it open, he and Bud squeezed between the door and the wall, and began pushing, using the wall behind them as leverage. The big steel portal, however, refused to budge. Josie was doing her best, keeping the tide at bay, but Rusty knew she had to be running low on shells by now.
“Bud!” he shouted above the clamorous din. “Maybe I should get some more shells from the back—Josie’s about out!”

             
Bud gave the door a furious look. “One more time,” he said, gritting his teeth. They laid it all out, one last time, Bud’s face turning beet red, his arteries popping out like ropes along the surface of his temples and neck. Sweat poured from their faces in dust-filled rivulets. Just as Rusty felt he would expire, the great door jolted a foot ahead!

He and Bud stopped in surprise, staring at each other.
“Again!”
Bud implored him. The mammoth hinges, securing the door to the shelter’s tubular steel structure, squealed grittily as it began to move, inch by inch.

             
“It’s working!” Rusty laughed. Then a cloud passed over his face. He and Bud had moved the door to the halfway point, where they stopped to catch their breath. “What if it won’t open when we’re ready to leave?”

             
Bud shouted over the righteous roar of Joe’s shotgun:
“It will, don’t worry! But if you don’t latch that lock from inside, you’re all gonna die down here! I carved the combination on the bottom of the table! The TABLE, Rusty! No matter what happens, don’t let Joe open this door!”

A hugely fat Rabid was stuck fast in the ladder-well, his chunky legs kicking ludicrously in the air. Josie took the opportunity to lower the gun from her throbbing shoulder. She had one shell left in her pocket, and with trembling fingers she slid it into the slot, praying there were still more in the chamber. She raised the shotgun to her weary shoulder again, and took aim between the fat man’s legs, pulling the trigger almost at once.

A meaty explosion followed.

The bottom half of the Rabid’s torso rained down into the alcove, leaving the top half still wedged tight. Buckets of blood flushed out of the ladder-well all at once, drenching everything directly underneath.

Josie waited for the torso to drop free, for the Rabids to resume their death march, but the intestines dangling from the hole didn’t so much as twitch.

They can’t get past the fat man!

At least for the time being.

She grinned at the sight of the steel door slowly swinging towards her.
Finally! Something’s going our way!

A furtive movement caught her eye, hurtling her heart to the depths of her gut. A pair of thrusting, searching hands had appeared at the dripping lip of the ladder-well, having shoved the corked torso out of the way.

The gruesome object landed on the untidy hill of bodies and rolled to the bottom, coming to rest in front of Josie. The top of the fat man’s head rested between her sneakers. Cloudy eyes stared up at her.

She kicked it apathetically out of the way.

Josie aimed at the Rabid dropping out of the ladder-well and pulled the trigger.

The impotent click was somehow deafening.

             
“Hurry, Bud! I’m out of shells!!”

             
Bud appeared from the other side of the door, shoving Rusty into Josie’s arms. He snatched the hurricane lantern off the table, and in one fell-motion threw it at the Rabid’s head. The heavy leaded glass shattered between its eyes, spraying the flammable contents all over the alcove.

The Rabid, stunned by the blow, dropped to the floor, where it stumbled blindly about, trying to regain its feet. A dagger of glass protruded from one of its eyes. The other eye dangled free of its socket. It rolled to and fro on the Rabid’s swarthy cheek, held in place by the long optic nerve. Seeing it as hardly a threat, Bud turned to his friends.
“As soon as I light that spill, y’all start pulling on the door! I’ll push from this side!”

             
Josie didn’t think to argue. Besides, the door was too heavy to pull all the way shut; someone needed to give it extra momentum from the other side. One thought but occupied her mind:
We’re gonna make it! We’re gonna make it! By God, WE’RE GONNA MAKE IT!

Bud reached into his coat pocket for his trusty Zippo, but it wasn’t there. Of course it wasn’t. It was on the floor of the alcove, where he’d dropped it earlier, along with the hatchet.
Remember…Remember…Remember…

Was this the
Thing
his mother had tried to impart upon him? His grandfather’s beat up old Zippo? Such a little detail and yet his whole future had hinged upon it!

He spun around, scanning the floor, spying the ax where he’d dropped it last. His Zippo, however, lay buried beneath a tangled pile of dead and dying Rabids.
You blew it, Buddy boy! You fucking blew it!
The last reel was running out, the end now no longer in doubt.

Her euphoria dashed on the cold, jagged rocks of reality, Josie at once understood what was happening. She looked around wildly for the pack of matches they always kept on the coffee table—
There! On the floor by the sofa!