by John Russo
“Why not?” Bruce said, with a raising of his eyebrows. “He was the kind of doctor who likes to play God. I read a case study on a nutcase named Doctor Mudd who was getting away with one murder after another back in Chicago in 1893 when the World’s Fair was going on there. He was kidnapping people who came to the fair from other parts of the country, killing them, and selling their bodies to a medical college. He was even putting some of the bodies in vats of acid to take all the flesh off, then selling the skeletons.”
“Well, there’s all kinds of nuts in the world,” said the sheriff. “But it’s a good thing that not all of them are homicidal ’cause we’ve got more than enough on our hands as it is.” He took another thoughtful puff on his pipe, then said, “I had to break it to Amy that Jeff is no longer with us, and she went to pieces so bad. I don’t think she was ever intending to divorce him even though he was so worried about it.”
“That’s a shame,” said Bruce. “Everything about it is a shame. They should’ve been able to have a good life together.”
The sheriff shook his head sadly and said, “I hated to tell Amy how he died, but I couldn’t think of a way around it. I asked her to keep the details to herself for now, just say he got killed in the line of duty. I think she’ll cooperate. She understands that we have to downplay everything so we don’t start a mass panic—at least for the time being. I’m thinking that the zombies we killed at the Melrose place must’ve been all that he had out there. But we don’t really know for sure right now.”
Bruce said, “We ought to get in touch with the medical colleges, not just around here, but across the country. Maybe we’ll find out Doc Melrose was buying cadavers from them. Maybe that’s how he was feeding his so-called lab specimens.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” said the sheriff. “I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
Bruce said, “It could be that Melrose didn’t intentionally kill Jeff. Maybe Jeff stepped into something he didn’t understand. He told you he was gonna try to break into one of the buildings out there. If he didn’t know what was in there, and one of those zombies jumped him . . .”
“It could’ve been that way,” the sheriff said before Bruce had to finish his grisly thought. “But no matter how it went down, Melrose is responsible. If he was alive, we’d be prosecuting him for Jeff’s murder and probably a whole host of other crimes we don’t know about right now. Same with his daughters. According to him, they’re on the loose somewhere, and we’ve got to find them.”
“It’s disappointing that our road block didn’t turn up anything,” Bruce said. “But all we really had to go on was the possibility of coming across that van we were told about, the one with the sign that said Olsen’s Grocery Mart.”
CHAPTER 23
Returning from their morning ride, Sally and her mom halted their horses near the open door to the barn. Marsha said, “You can go in and take your bath. I’ll unsaddle the horses.”
“You sure, Mom? I’ve got time to help.”
“I don’t mind a bit. I want to stay out here in the fresh air for a while before I get started with the laundry.”
“All right then. Thanks, Mom.”
They both dismounted, and Sally headed for the house, approaching it by means of the long, winding brick walkway. It was the home she had grown up in, and she still felt more comfortable in it than in any other place. For her, it exuded a warmth that was full of childhood memories. It was over a hundred years old, and her mother and father had bought it before she was born, a large, stately, two-story frame house with a railed and pillared front porch that went the entire width of it, and brick chimneys on both ends of the slate-shingled roof. The house was painted white with red trim for the porch banisters and window frames, and it reminded Sally very much of some of the homes she had visited at historical sites going back to colonial or Civil War times. But it was very modern inside as far as the furniture and fixtures were concerned, although the huge stone fireplaces were treasured by her and her family and would never be gotten rid of in spite of the fact that they were seldom used. Gas heating and air-conditioning were just too convenient, and the Brinkman family, like many people, were addicted to it.
As she pulled open the seldom-locked front door and went into the living room, Sally tugged off her riding jacket and dropped it on a leather armchair so she could pick it up on her way out later, after she had had her bath. Then she skipped upstairs to start filling the tub.
Marsha led her horse Perky into a stall, then got her uncinched, unsaddled, and unbridled. She was about to do the same for Sparky when she heard the palomino whinnying and snorting as if something had made him scared. So she hurried out of the barn and was pounced on by a huge beast of a man—or at least she thought it was a man. And it sort of was one! It was the undead behemoth named Barney who had escaped from the big rig that had wrecked into a cell phone tower, thanks to the attempted hijacking by Bones and Drake.
Marsha screamed as Barney seized her roughly and tried to sink his teeth into her neck.
Sparky, tethered to a steel ring in the barn door, whinnied in fear and yanked hard against his reins.
Marsha kicked Barney in his groin and managed to wrench herself out from under his big arms, which of course were exceptionally powerful when he was alive but were not as strong now that he had been undead for a long time. Like all of the undead, his movements were single-minded, but slow and stiff as if still under a semiadvanced stage of rigor mortis.
Marsha whirled and glanced toward the house, thinking to run in that direction, but Barney was coming at her again, blocking her way, so she ran back into the barn.
Sparky whinnied again and reared up violently, tearing loose from his reins. And when the big stallion’s hooves came down, they landed partially against Barney’s legs, knocking him down. Then Sparky reared up again and trampled on Barney—so hard that maybe Barney would have been killed, especially if the horse had landed his steel-shod hooves on the big zombie’s head—but instead of doing that, Sparky ran in panic out into the field.
Barney groaned and slowly pulled himself to his feet. Then he headed into the barn after Marsha. Limping and breathing hoarsly, he passed by the swung-open barn door into a dimly lit, cavernous place of hay bales and animal stalls.
Marsha cowered behind a hay bale.
Barney stopped and looked around, moving his big head slowly and stiffly.
Then three more zombies came into the barn, as if they were a pack of animals who knew the smell of human flesh. One of them was the serial killer named Chub, now zombified, who was so used to hunting humans when he was alive. And perhaps he retained some of his guile and cunning now that he was undead.
The other two zombies were a man and a woman, both dressed in plain clothing, the woman in a blouse and shorts, the man in a T-shirt and faded jeans, and both of them wearing snaeakers. If they were alive they would probably have been wearing warmer clothes because of the October chill. But now they were undead and didn’t, or couldn’t, care less. Both of them had the greenish flesh often exhibited by corpses, and they were not so much vicious-looking but mute and dumb. And that was somehow scarier than diabolical slyness or fiendish intelligence because they exuded the single-minded intention of not being stopped by anyone or anything until they could tear apart and feast upon a victim. Any victim would do, so long as he or she was still alive.
Marsha risked peeping out from her hiding place, and when she saw around the side of the bale, she gave an involuntary gasp, recognizing that she was now facing not just one zombie, but four! And they were closing in on her, drooling and moaning hungrily.
She darted her eyes around frantically, looking for an avenue of escape. But she was hemmed in by the windowless plank wall of a section of stalls. She grabbed the only thing in sight that she thought might help her defend herself—a two-by-four leaning against a corner.
Perky was whinnying fearfully now—whinnying and whinnying in desperate terror.
T
he zombies came closer to Marsha. They were slow-moving dead things, but relentless in pursuit, except for Chub, who hung back a little, perhaps instinctively retaining the self-protective, cowardly impulse not to risk himself so readily if he could let others put themselves in danger, then reap the benefits.
Marsha bravely stepped out from behind the bale to give herself room to swing the two-by-four. And when the female zombie got close enough, she swung the lengthy piece of lumber hard against the zombie’s kneecaps, knocking her legs out from under her. She went down with a hiss that sounded almost painful, and the male that was right behind her stumbled over her thrashing body.
With another hard swing, Marsha clobbered the stumbling male over his head, cracking his skull, and he grunted and went down like a sack of potatoes.
Marsha swung at Barney, clubbing him in his barrellike chest and knocking him back a step or two, but the impact jarred the two-by-four out of her hands, and when she scrambled for it, the female zombie still thrashing on the ground got hold of the other end of it. They both yanked on it in a tug-of-war. Then Barney pushed Marsha as hard as he could, and she stumbled backward, hitting her head against the side of something hard—she didn’t know what.
Then, groggily, she saw that it was the ladder leading up to the loft, and there were streaks of sunlight up there, filled with dancing dust-motes that almost seemed to whisper “salvation.” Marsha scrambled up the ladder, hoping desperately that those dead things could not climb.
Anxiously she knelt in shreds of old hay up there in the loft and peered down, then shuddered—because one of the zombies was starting to climb! It wasn’t Chub, and it wasn’t Barney. It was the female.
Marsha tried shaking the ladder to make the female zombie fall, but it wouldn’t budge. It was anchored up there by a pair of metal cleats.
Marsha scrambled deeper into the loft, not knowing what she was going to do next to try to save herself.
The female zombie climbed stiffly and laboriously till she reached the point where she could crawl into the loft. Then she raised herself up, turning her head this way and that—and with a victorious scream Marsha plunged a pitchfork into the zombie’s chest.
The zombie fell fifteen feet backward and down, pitchfork and all. She lay flat on her back, hissing and writhing, trying to pull the tines of the pitchfork out of her wretched body. The other two zombies stood around staring at this spectacle, awed and backing away from it.
In what seemed to be a state of confusion among the dead beings, Marsha scrambled out of the loft, jumping the final four feet off the ladder, plowing into Chub and knocking him down, then darting for the wide-open sunlit doorway of the barn.
Barney turned, dumbly peering after her.
And just as she got almost to freedom, three more zombies appeared, blocking her way.
She stopped in her tracks, backing up and whimpering, “No . . . no . . .”
Now all the remaining zombies closed in on her from all sides. They clawed at her and pulled her down onto the patch of ground in front of the barn, right where she almost made it to freedom. Their yellowish drooling teeth glimmered in the sunlight.
She struggled for a while, her screams muffled because Barney and Chub pressed their forearms into her throat while the others pinned down her arms and legs.
Six more zombies arrived on the scene, with rasping breath and shuffling footsteps. Two of them started toward the “meal in progress,” but the ones who got there first gave them fierce looks, glowering and growling like lions guarding their kill.
The two backed off, then moved with the rest of the newly arrived pack toward the house.
Sally had not heard the sounds of her mother’s fight with the marauding ghouls, partly because the barn was a good distance from the house and partly because she was filling the bathtub with loudly gushing water for her bath.
She tested the warmth of the water with her fingertips, sprinkled in some pink, nice-smelling bubble-bath crystals, then she went to her bedroom to get her robe and slippers.
Meanwhile, zombies were starting to surround the house.
Three of them, a male and two females, were standing in the front yard, gazing at the front porch as if contemplating an approach, but for some reason they were hanging back for now.
Two others circled around back, both males. One of them was about twenty-five years old and probably used to look pretty dapper in his blue blazer and tan slacks, which were now wrinkled and torn and smeared with muddy grass stains. The other one was about in his twenties also, but wore a wifebeater undershirt and ragged denim cutoffs, with tattoos all over his legs and arms and rings in his lips and nostrils. In ordinary life they likely would not have hung out together, but they were united in a common goal now that they were undead.
In the upstairs of the house, Sally came down the hall carrying her robe, slippers, and a hair dryer, and went into the bathroom, where the water was still gushing. She set down her slippers, hung her robe on a hook behind the door, laid the hair dryer on the sink counter, and plugged it in. Then she shut the bathroom door and tested the water in the tub again, swirling it around with her hand, maximizing the bubbles, and letting the tub completely fill up before turning off the spigot.
She dried her hands on a little towel on the sink rack, then started to unbutton her blouse, but stopped when she heard footsteps, followed by a bump on the door.
She listened.
More footsteps.
Then bump . . . bump-bump.
“Mom?” Sally called out.
She listened at the door.
Then she opened it.
She peeked right and left and saw no one in the hall. But she was startled by some rasping and shuffling noises coming from her bedroom.
“Mom?” she called out once again. Then, “Dad?”
She slowly crossed the hall and went a couple steps into her room—and what she saw caused her to gasp and freeze in her tracks. She caught a horrifying glimpse of an image reflected in her dresser mirror, and her mind was partially paralyzed by what she could not comprehend—a depraved-looking thing with the flesh ripped out of his face and maggots crawling in his hair!
She tried to back up and run—but too late—the zombie was already lunging at her. He grabbed her by the throat from behind and pulled her to the floor, almost making her pass out from sheer fright and the rancid odor that instantly overwhelmed her. She landed with a bone-wrenching thud, her body twisted and her legs half under the bed. The putrid zombie was kneeling over her head, trying to choke her and get close enough to take a bite out of her face.
When he was almost biting into her cheek, she grabbed his long, greasy, maggot-ridden hair—her fingers slippery with crushed maggots—and pulled hard, slamming his forehead against the steel bed frame . . . once . . . twice . . . three times. It made him loosen his grip on her throat, and she managed to slide her feet out from under the bed, kicking hard at the zombie’s body and punching her fist into his Adam’s apple. He reeled and spluttered, emitting a rasping, choking sound, and Sally scrambled to her feet.
But the zombie came after her, growling and drooling.
She ran into the bathroom, then tried to slam the door shut and lock it, but the zombie barged in on her before she could slam the bolt home. He clawed at her, and she backed herself into a corner.
She groped frantically, trying to grab on to something she could use to defend herself. Soap, a soap dish, and bottles of shampoo and conditioner clattered to the floor. Still groping, Sally latched onto the hair dryer, but in his wild, mindless thrashing the zombie knocked it out of her hand, and it landed in the sink. She had the crazy thought that she could’ve held on to it if her hands weren’t still slippery from those filthy maggots.
The zombie was on her once again, seizing her by her shoulders in a life and death wrestling match, a grapple in which Sally’s goal was not only to get away but to somehow avoid being bitten. Like everyone else, she had heard plenty of stories of what had gone o
n around here sixteen years ago, and it was clear in her mind now exactly what she was facing. She and the flesh-hungry zombie had hold of each other’s clothing and were pulling and twisting.
Then the zombie stepped on a wet bar of soap.
His legs whooshed out from under him, and Sally used his own weight and momentum against him, as she had learned in her jujitsu classes, to spin and shove him down, splashing him backward into the bathtub.
He grunted and groaned, his dead, stiff hands slipping on the walls of the tub as he tried to pull himself up, still growling viciously at Sally.
He managed to sit up, got one foot out of the tub and onto the floor, and started to arise . . .
Sally backed into the corner again. Then her eyes fell upon the hair dryer. She snatched it up and turned it on.
The zombie was halfway up now.
She dropped the hair dryer into the tub, and electricity sparked and sizzled.
The zombie screamed—a horrid sound that was not quite like anything human. He fell all the way back into the tub, and the current zapped through him.
As he burned up, Sally bravely—and she knew crazily—took a fleeting moment to run hot water over her maggoty hands and dry them on her jeans. Then she stepped gingerly around the electrocuted zombie who was still sizzling and burning, and ran from the bathroom.
But now two more zombies were in the hall.
At first, they seemed as stunned to see her as she was to see them. They hissed and reeled back, but then they came at her.
She couldn’t make it to the stairs because they were blocking the way. So she pivoted, ran into her room, and slammed the door, bolting it just in time. Hastily, breathing hard and scared out of her wits, she pushed her nightstand against the door, sending the telephone, lamp, and other stuff flying to the floor.
The two zombies were now pounding at her locked door, and it was starting to give way under the frenzied onslaught. It was the kind of door with a largely hollow, wood-framed interior, built for privacy rather than strength. A hard-punching fist could crash all the way through it. And the screws that were holding the bolt were starting to rip loose.
