Undead (14 page)

At the top of the cellar stairs, Ben was listening as intently as he could, behind the barricade.

For a long time, he had not been able to hear any helicopter sounds; perhaps it had landed somewhere, or flown away. Ben wished he could have been upstairs, so he could wave to it from the lawn.

Then—from far off—he heard the distinct sound of a dog—barking. He listened for a long time, but heard nothing more. He was tempted to undo the barricade and take his chances on going out there to look around.

When the men worked their way through the narrow belt of trees on the far side of the meadow, they came out into a cemetery, the one Barbara and John had come to with the wreath for their father. The posse continued its advance, threading its way among the grave markers.

Down a dirt road, and up a short grade, the men found Barbara’s car, with the smashed window. The headlight switch was on, but the battery was dead. There were no signs of blood, and the men could not find any corpses anywhere near the car.

“Maybe whoever was in here escaped and got away,” McClellan said, hopefully. “Move on, men! We can’t do any good here!”

The men passed through the cemetery and out onto the two-lane blacktop road, where several squad cars were parked, waiting. There were also one or two motorcycle patrolmen, and one of them dismounted and hailed McClellan.

“Hi, Sheriff! How’s things goin’?”

McClellan advanced, mopping his brow, and stopped to shake hands with the motorcycle patrolman. Meanwhile, the men in the posse began to catch up and regroup.

McClellan said, “Sure glad to see you fellas, Charlie. We been at it damn near all night—but I don’t want to break till we get to the Miller house over there. We might be screwin’ around while somebody needs our help—we’ll see, first, then stop and get some coffee.”

“Sure, Sheriff.”

The two men looked around at the gathering posse, which was beginning to fill up the neck in the blacktop road.

“Get started over that wall and through that field!” George Henderson shouted, with the walkie-talkie on his back. “The Miller farmhouse is over there!”

He took the time to unsling the walkie-talkie and hand it to one of the cops in a squad car. Then, leading a squad of men, he began to move toward the field in front of the Miller house.

Gunshots rang out almost immediately.

“Ghouls! Ghouls—all over the place!” a voice yelled. A bevy of gunshots split the air. More men moved up, running and firing from behind trees.

The police dogs growled and strained at their leashes, hating the scent of the dead things.

The posse advanced in squads, across the field and toward the shed with the gasoline pumps—where several of the flesh-eaters were lurking and trying to get away, but they were gunned down.

Nearer the house, there were still more ghouls, and firing repeatedly, the squads of men moved forward, felling the dead things with a trail of bullets.

There were more of the creatures, trying to hide in and around a burned-out truck—but they were unsuccessful; they tried to run, but the posse gunned them down.

Each time a ghoul fell, one of the men moved forward and hacked at it with a machete, until the head was severed from the body. That way, they knew the ghoul would not get to its feet again.

For better than half an hour, the echo of gunshots was constant in the fields surrounding the old Miller farmhouse.

Still at the top of the cellar stairs, Ben knew for sure now that there were men outside. The gunshots were undeniable. And he even thought he had heard a car engine. But he was afraid to open the door, because some of the creatures might still be in the house. Yet…he knew he was going to have to open the door…

Slowly, quietly, he began undoing the heavy barricades…

McClellan fired, and the dead thing fifty feet in front of him clutched at its face with a convulsive movement and toppled to the earth, like a sack of potatoes, with a dull thud.

More gunshots rang out. And two more of the ghouls fell heavily to the ground.

“Get up here, boys!” McClellan yelled. “There’s three more for the fire!”

The men with machetes moved up and hacking quickly and furiously, severed the heads from the dead ghouls.

The sheriff and his men had advanced to the lawn of the old farmhouse and were crouching and firing repeatedly, blasting down the dead creatures that surrounded the place.

“Shoot for the eyes, boys!” McClellan cried out. “Like I told you before…always aim right for the eyes!”

The flurry of gunfire was constant—crack—crack! crack!—as the posse surrounded the house.

Then there was silence, as all the ghouls had apparently been felled, and the men’s eyes scanned the old place and its environs, looking for a new target to gun down.

Suddenly, from the house—a loud noise. George Henderson had moved up beside McClellan, and the two of them watched and listened, frozen in their tracks.

“There’s something in there,” Henderson said, unnecessarily. “I heard a noise.”

Inside, ready to shoot or swing, Ben had slammed open the cellar door. The force of his shoulder against the door had carried him into the living room, which was empty—there were no ghouls lurking there; there was only the ramshackle destruction from the recent siege. Ben edged his way through the twisted wreckage and overturned furniture toward the front door. There was no light in the place; despite the early morning sunlight, it remained dark under the heavy foliage of the surrounding trees. Some of the barricades partially remained, although weakened and widened for entry by the marauding ghouls. Ben’s hands crept to what was left of a curtain; he pulled it back and started to peek out…but…a shot rang out—and Ben reeled, driven back—a circle of blood on his forehead, right between his eyes.

Simultaneously, McClellan shouted:

“Damn it, what’d you shoot for? I told you to be careful—there might be people in there!”

The posse member who had fired the shot said, “Naw, you can see this place is demolished. Anybody in there’d be dead. And if they’re dead—”

Several men, led by George Henderson, advanced to kick in the front door. They stepped back and peered cautiously inside. Their faces searched the room. A patch of sunlight from the opened door fell partially on Ben. He was dead. The men looked down at him without pity, as they stepped past him to the cellar. They did not know he was a man.

Squads of men began to enter the house, moving cautiously through the rooms in military fashion, checking for possible aggressors lurking inside.

Two men with machetes came forward and began hacking at Ben, severing his head from his body.

“Somebody put up a good fight here,” McClellan said to George Henderson later, when they were sipping black coffee on the front lawn, near a squad car. “It’s a damn shame they couldn’t hold out a while longer.”

“I wonder who it was,” Henderson replied, taking a bite of his sandwich. “It wasn’t Mrs. Miller. We found what was left of her—upstairs in her room. But we didn’t find any trace of her grandson.”

“I guess we ain’t never going to know,” said the sheriff, “but then again there’s lots of things we ain’t going to know about this damned business.”

Ben’s head and body were heaved onto the bonfire with the rest. And the meat-hook was yanked out of his chest, with a hard tug on the part of the gloved hand that was yanking it.

Then the lumber and the dead bodies were drenched in gasoline by still another pair of gloved hands.

And the touch of a flaming torch set the whole thing ablaze.

The men stared into the broiling hot fire, and watched flesh curling and melting from dead bone, much as the paint curls and melts from a burning blackening page of newsprint. They backed away from the heat finally and went to where they could discard their meat-hooks and gloves and wash their hands in sterile alcohol.

But they could not escape the stench of burning flesh.

Think of all the people who have lived and died and will never again see the trees or the grass or the sun.

It all seems so brief, so worth…nothing. To live for a short while and then die. It all seems to add up to so very little. Why do we fight so hard to stay alive, to preserve life, to hang on to that fleeting flicker of something which nobody has been able to define?

It is easy to envy the dead ones.

They are beyond living, and beyond dying.

They are lucky to be dead, to be done with dying and to not have to fear the inevitable. To not have to struggle for life that is threatened. To be under the ground, oblivious. To be oblivious of hurting, oblivious of the fear of dying.

They do not have to live any more. Or feel pain. Or accomplish anything. Or wonder what to do next. Or wonder what it is going to be like to have to go through dying.

Why does life seem so ugly and beautiful and sad and important while you are living it, and so trivial when it is over?

The fire of life smoulders a while and then is extinguished, and the graves wait patiently to be filled. The end of all life is death, and the new life sings happily in the breeze and neither knows nor cares anything about the old life, and then it in turn also dies.

Life is a constant, endless creation of graves. Things live and then die, and sometimes they live well and sometimes poorly, but they always die, and death is the common denominator of all things living; the one thing that sends all things to oblivion.

What is it that makes people afraid of dying?

Not pain. Not always.

Death can be instantaneous and almost painless.

Death itself is an end to pain.

Death can be like falling asleep.

Then why are people afraid to die?

And which of us, once dead, would wish to forsake the peace of death to return to life again?

Dawn is a time of rebirth.

All life senses this, the rising again to face new beginnings. Our story begins at dawn. Or should we say, our story begins again.

Orange light fired the morning, accenting the colors of a green, wooded landscape.

A pick-up truck shuddered through the woods, raising a cloud of dust as it bounced over the ruts in the dusty road between the trees. The people in the truck were in a hurry to get somewhere, and they were late.

Bert Miller, an angry-looking man wearing an old-fashioned suit that looked new because it was worn so seldom, tended to the business of keeping his truck under control, a task he performed with a combination of anger and skill—anger that caused him to drive too fast and would make an accident seem inevitable, and skill that prevented that accident from happening. Bert was about forty years old, with the weathered face and calloused hands of a farmer. He had a shock of straight black hair that refused to stay down, no matter how it had been wetted and parted and combed, although Bert did not wet and comb it too often. A farmer is what he was, and he wanted to be nothing else, even if his farm was not a rich one and he had to work excessively hard every day of his life to scratch out a meager living for himself and his three daughters. His wife was dead. She had died giving birth to their youngest daughter, Karen, who was pregnant herself and was sitting with Bert on the seat of the pick-up truck.

Karen was very tense and scared, clutching her armrest, hoping her father would not see her being frightened and use it as an excuse to yell at her while he continued to drive as fast as possible, negotiating tight, twisting curves and sharp upgrades by what seemed to Karen to be a combination of luck and bullheadedness.

In the back of the truck, bouncing and sliding, were Karen’s two sisters, Ann and Sue Ellen. They were more scared than Karen, and had reason to be. Their seat in the back of the careening truck was a low wooden bench on which they had to sit to keep their dresses clean. Sitting in the bed of the truck would doubtless have been safer, for the bench was unanchored and bounced and vibrated terribly with each lurch of the truck. They had known what sort of ride they were in for, and were not at all surprised by it, considering how angry their father was that morning after the argument at home.

It was Karen’s fault that they were late. In her eighth month of pregnancy, she had gotten up that morning complaining of nausea and weakness. That had been enough to set Bert to yelling. He accused Karen of faking morning sickness to get out of doing her Christian duty with the rest of the family, and had gone on shouting that it wasn’t enough she had to disgrace him by giving birth to a child without being married, but she also didn’t have any respect for anybody dead or living and had lost her religion, and it was enough to cause her poor dead mother to turn over in her grave.

Bert had insisted Karen get dressed and come along with the rest of the family, ignoring her protests that she was sick. But, in deference to her pregnancy, he had made her climb into the front seat of the truck while his other two daughters sat in the back. Then, because they were going to be late and because Bert needed very little provocation to bring his anger over Karen’s illegitimate pregnancy bursting to the surface, Bert had gunned the truck out, grinding gears and spewing gravel, and they had lurched toward their destination.

“It’s going to be
our
funeral if he doesn’t slow down,” Sue Ellen said, as she and Ann hung onto the sides of the bench as if it would offer them any stability and protection during the bone-shaking ride. Ann did not reply. Even though the noise of the truck on the dirt and gravel road was deafening, she was afraid her father would hear them talking.

“He can’t hear from up there,” Sue Ellen said, reading her sister’s thoughts. But still Ann said nothing. The dirt road straightened out a bit and became smoother for a stretch of about half a mile that was relatively safe to take at high speed, as long as there wasn’t any oncoming traffic. But at least the wooden bench stopped bouncing and the two girls relaxed ever so slightly. There was only one more set of curves and another straightaway, where they would come up on the Dorsey farmhouse.

Bert Miller gunned the truck a little, braked it for the curves, scaring his daughters, and slowed when he got into the straightaway and saw it lined, as expected, with all the cars and trucks of the farmers who lived in the valley. Some people had been able to park in a field near the side of the Dorsey house, and when the field had filled up, the rest had just squeezed their vehicles over to one side, as far off the narrow dirt road as possible. Bert Miller did the same, slamming his pick-up truck to a halt and getting out and banging the door shut without so much as a glance over his shoulder at any of his daughters. He would have treated them that way even if he had not been angry. He expected them to fend for themselves.

Ann and Sue Ellen climbed down from the bed of the truck, being careful not to soil their clean print dresses, and came around to help Karen get down from the cab. Bert Miller had already advanced twenty or thirty paces toward the Dorsey farmhouse. Nobody was standing on the porch, and he assumed that meant the services were in progress. Bert pulled at the knot of his tie and made an attempt to flatten a stubborn cowlick with the palm of his hand, as he continued walking.

Karen stepped tentatively and awkwardly off the running board, helped by her two sisters, then straightened up and tugged her maternity blouse down over her belly. She felt embarrassed and undignified, and was aware that all the people inside the Dorsey house would know she was pregnant without being married.

“I didn’t want to come,” she said. “They’re all going to gossip.”

“You’re gonna have to face it sooner or later,” Ann said. “If not now after the baby’s—”

She cut herself off, having seen their father staring at them angrily, waiting for them to come along. He was on the porch, having halted there so they could enter together as a family.

As they approached the house, the girls could hear people crying inside. Bert Miller opened the screen door and entered, with his daughters behind him.

The living room was jammed with people, some filling all the sofas and chairs, the rest standing. The coffin was against a wall on the far side of the room, resting on what looked like a low table or some sawhorses and boards which had been draped with a white sheet and then surmounted with flowers. In the coffin was the body of a child, a nine-year-old girl, the youngest Dorsey daughter. She had died of rheumatic fever.

There was a stirring among the congregation as the Miller family entered the room, a self-conscious stirring because a prayer had been about to begin and nobody knew whether to interrupt the prayer to greet the latecomers. Also, there was the sight of Karen’s obvious pregnancy.

Over by the coffin, Reverend Michaels continued to thumb through his prayer book, seemingly unaware of any interruption. The parents of the dead child were standing next to the Reverend, staring into the small coffin with faces full of helpless, dumb-stricken grief. Having found the appropriate prayer, Reverend Michaels turned toward his congregation and saw that Bert Miller and his three daughters had arrived.

“Please be seated or stand quietly,” the Reverend admonished them. “The service is about to begin.” He stared at Bert Miller, letting the man know that his tardiness was noticed, then allowed his disapproving eyes to fasten on Karen and linger there, staring into her eyes until she averted them by bowing her head in shame and embarrassment. Mr. and Mrs. Dorsey continued to stare at the coffin all the while, not sure how to act or what to say, and almost beyond caring about the formalities of the service in their anguish over the death of their young daughter.

“I ask each and all of you to join me in prayer,” Reverend Michaels said, and after a short pause he began the funeral prayer that each member of the congregation was expected to know by heart:

“May the soul rest in peace.

May the soul leave her body.

May the body remain.

May the body turn to dust as the Lord has spoken.

May the body never rise again.

Release the soul unto Heaven and all else turn to dust.”

During the prayer, several of the mourners readjusted their seating to make room for Karen, while her father and sisters remained standing in the rear of the room.

The prayer finished, Reverend Michaels closed his prayer book. The congregation remained very still and silent, not shuffling and stirring as often happens at the conclusion of group prayer. There was no sound in the room except for quiet weeping.

Reverend Michaels looked toward the rear of the room, as if expecting something for which he did not have to ask. The service was clearly not over. The parents of the dead child, the mother sobbing quietly, the father silently showing the strain of his grief in his eyes, continued to stand arm in arm by the open casket.

The grief and sadness in the room was suddenly accompanied by an undercurrent of tension. The Reverend continued to look to the back of the room. Pairs of eyes, previously focused on the faces of the distraught parents, began to turn in the direction of the door. After a few moments, the mother, too, stopped sobbing and looked up, joining her husband’s gaze as he looked over the heads of the congregants. Now, all weeping had ceased, and no one seemed to be breathing. All was still, as if the dozens of eyes were willing something to happen. A man in the far corner of the room stood up and all the eyes stared at what he held in his hands.

The man was tall, lean, and wearing a worn brown suit. He walked across the rear of the room, and came down a path cleared for him by the mourners. All eyes stared at the large wooden mallet he carried. He walked slowly through the room, looking hard at the father of the dead child. He approached the coffin and gave the mallet to Mr. Dorsey. At the same time, placing his left hand sympathetically on the grieved father’s shoulder, Reverend Michaels produced in his right hand a large metal spike similar to the kind that are used in the construction of railroads.

The Reverend handed the spike to Mr. Dorsey.

The faces of the assembled mourners were tense and expectant as they all looked in the direction of the coffin. There was no sound now but a few shuffling footsteps. The dim light in the room seemed to accentuate the silence.

As most of the congregation watched, Mr. Dorsey placed the spike to his dead child’s forehead, and then, with the reverberating sound of wood against metal, the father pounded the spike deep into the skull of his daughter.

Tears streamed down the man’s stolid, silent face.

Mrs. Dorsey screamed, unable to control herself, and continued to sob in anguish in the arms of several of the women who rushed forward to comfort her.

Suddenly the screen door burst open and slammed against the farmhouse wall with a crash. A small boy stood in the doorway, excited and out of breath, his eyes on Reverend Michaels as the symbol of authority. “It fell!” he cried. “The bus! It rolled over and over! I was right there! It went right over the hill…everybody…a-all of them dead, I think!”

Everyone in the congregation began shouting questions at once. A man in the back of the room near the door began shaking the boy to get more information out of him. “Where did it happen? When?” he demanded.

“At the crossroads. A few minutes ago. The bus wrecked and fell,” the boy repeated, trying to catch his breath.

Reverend Michaels became stern. He shouted for the attention of his congregation. They faced him, waiting for his instructions. They needed the authority of his voice, though they all could have predicted what he would say. If there were dead people on the bus and if some would die later as the result of injuries, the spikes needed to be driven into their skulls to ensure that the peace of death would be final and complete as the Lord had intended.

“You all know what needs to be done,” Reverend Michaels intoned solemnly. “But, we must hurry. There is not much time.”

The congregation began to move, people scrambling, hurrying out of the room. Several men had bags of spikes, and mallets, which had become symbols of death and were often brought to funerals. Others always carried these items with them in their cars.

Bert Miller turned to face his daughters. Ann, terribly frightened, had buried her face in her hands. She backed against the wall as her father moved toward her. “I don’t want to go!” she yelled desperately, cringing from her father.

Bert seized Ann by the wrists and shook her to bring her face up so he could stare into her eyes. “You’re
going
! And so’s Sue Ellen. The only one who ain’t goin’ is Karen, because she’s pregnant. She can stay here and wait for us till we get back.”

The rest of the people had already piled out of the room as Ann and Sue Ellen were shoved out ahead of their father. Karen watched, scared and shaking.