by Joe Augustyn
“Listen, miss. You have to stay calm. I can’t get inside right now, the gate is locked.”
“Locked? No, it can’t be. That’s impossible. We just drove through it, not half an hour ago. You can see our car inside the cemetery, parked in front of the building. The old Ford.”
“Yes, I see it. But somebody must have locked the gate after you drove through it. There’s a chain on it with a padlock.”
Emma heard him rattling it and her throat closed up. “Oh my God, this can’t be happening.”
“Calm down, miss. I called my deputy. He’s on his way with a pair of bolt cutters, he’ll be here any minute. But you’re not safe in that building. If I can’t see you, I can’t protect you. I’m going to train my spotlight toward the building. I need you to come out and run toward the light.”
“No! It isn’t safe out there. They’re out there. Waiting for me.”
“I’m looking at the building right now, miss. There is no one outside anywhere that I can see. Come on now, you have to trust me. Come on out. I’ve got you covered. If I see anyone coming to hurt you I’ll start shooting, I promise. I’m an expert shot.”
“Please, Sheriff, don’t make me. I can’t. They’re hiding out there. Waiting. They know I’m in here and they’re just waiting for me to come out. You have to come get me. Please.”
“I need you to trust me, miss. I’ve got my spotlight on the building and there isn’t anyone out there. But they might have gone around back to get in through another door. There is another door in the back. Did you check to make sure it’s locked?”
Emma was silent. A surge of fear rushed through her. She looked at the chair blocking the inner door and knew it wouldn’t hold for very long.
“You need to come out, miss, and hurry. I can’t protect you where you are,” the Sheriff pleaded. “You’ll be safe out here by the gate until we get it open. I have a twelve gauge shotgun and my service revolver. That’ll take care of anyone trying to harm you, I guarantee it.”
“Shoot the lock then,” Emma said. “Shoot the lock off the gate!”
“Missy, this isn’t the movies. Thing’s aren’t quite that easy. I’m more likely to seal that lock with hot lead than to open it with my guns. Now get your fanny in gear and get out here and do it fast. Get your head together and make a run for it, before it’s too late. Otherwise I’m leaving. I don’t see anyone out here and I’m not wasting any more ti—”
The line went dead in mid-word.
“Hello?” Emma waited a few seconds, then hung up, hoping he’d call back. But he didn’t, and now she couldn’t even get a dial tone.
A second later the desk lamp died, plunging the room into darkness. Someone had cut the electricity. Emma’s bladder drained into her jeans.
Glass shattered in the darkness. An arm reached through the broken window. Someone was coming in.
“Sheriff… ?” Emma croaked hopefully.
There was no reply, but even in the darkness she could see that whoever was climbing over the windowsill was not any lawman. And the smell of rotted flesh that rolled in with the cold night air confirmed it.
Emma gagged and nearly threw up, as much from her frazzled nerves as from the stench of death. She quickly considered her options and grabbed the lamp from the desk, yanking its cord from the wall. With its long brass neck and heavy marble base it would make an effective bludgeon. Hurrying to the door she quietly drew the latch and slowly opened the door.
A single bleak silhouette shambled along the near side of the Honda, less than ten feet away. There was shadowy movement on the other side, but too far away to be an imminent threat.
Emma gauged her chances and felt confident she could outrun them. Behind her in the building she heard the thump of a falling body. Treading as lightly as possible she moved out onto the top doorstep, clutching the heavy lamp by its neck.
In the distance she could see the Sheriff waiting behind the gate, framed in the hot white glare of his spotlight, as big and round as a bear with his Stetson hat planted squarely on his head, a shotgun cradled in his arms.
A floorboard creaked behind her and the thing in the building lurched through the doorway. Its fingers brushed Emma’s arm as it tried to grab her. Shrieking in terror she leaped off the steps and ran for the blazing spotlight.
She flew past the shambling zombie and her path looked blissfully clear—but as she ran past the Ford a man stumbled out of the fog, blocking her path. Emma froze for half a second—staring at his bloody ravaged face illuminated by the spotlight. Half the flesh was missing, including his lips and most of his cheeks.
She swung the lamp with all her might. Its marble base cracked the zombie’s skull, knocking his head sideways, dislodging it from its supporting vertebrae. The thing staggered dizzily, then lumbered towards her, its head dangling awkwardly, rolling on damaged ligaments like a sack of rotten onions.
“Run, girl, run!” the Sheriff’s voice was calm but tense.
But Emma could barely move, half-paralyzed with fear. Her knees felt like waterlogged sponges as she crept past the staggering corpse, her eyes locked uncertainly on its impossibly dangling head. As it stepped into the beam of the spotlight she recognized its clothing.
Oh my God… Buddy!
“Come on, girl! Hurry up, I’ve got you covered!”
The Sheriff’s words finally cut through her crippling terror. Dropping the heavy lamp, she sobbed out a muffled cry and ran towards the gate. She made it halfway there—then her foot sank into a hole and she flopped down hard on the damp sandy soil.
She lay in a daze for a moment, gazing up at the dazzling spotlight, and wondered if maybe she was only dreaming. This can’t be real. It’s just a really bad nightmare. Wake up!
“Get up, girl!” the Sheriff called. “Come on now! Move!”
Emma looked up at the Sheriff silhouetted behind the gate, shotgun poking through the iron bars. The spotlight of his SUV burned through the fog like a beam straight from heaven.
“Come on, girl! Get up, you can make it!”
My God this is real. Get up!
Pulling herself to her feet, she completed the final stretch to the gate in seconds, to find the portly lawman aiming his shotgun through the bars, covering her just like he’d promised.
“Oh my God, get me out of here, Sheriff! Please!”
“Calm down, you’re safe now. I’ve got you covered.”
“No, they’re coming for me! Look, over there! It’s coming!” She backed against the iron gate, eyes wide as she watched a dim black shape shuffle slowly towards her through the rows of timeworn headstones. “What’s going on? What are they?”
She started to move away towards the open marshland on one side of the gate, but after taking two steps her foot sank into wet mushy soil.
“Stay by the gate!” the Sheriff warned. “This place is surrounded by swampland.”
Emma heard an engine growing close and the crunch of tires on gravel. Headlights flashed through the gate. A police cruiser jerked to a halt behind the Sheriff’s SUV.
A deputy, tall and a bit gawky, emerged from the vehicle. In his hands was a pair of bolt-cutters. “What the hell’s goin’ on out here, Sheriff?”
“Just get your ass over here, Zack. You got the cutters?”
“Yes, sir.” He held them up.
“Well get them up here fast. We need to cut this damn chain off. Something weird’s going on here.”
“Hurry!” Emma pleaded.
“Just relax now, sweetie, we’ll have you out in two shakes of a monkey’s tail.”
Emma turned to check the cemetery grounds.
A thin black shape plodded toward her through the fog, hobbling into the glare of the spotlight. In an instant it went from shadowy specter to fully illuminated zombie—the remains of a frail old woman, stutter-stepping on bony legs. She wore a tattered black dress, once floor-length, now ragged and coated with mud. Both of her hands were missing. Rotted away to stumps.
Emma stared at the woman
’s skull-like face, with its jaw hanging low on withered ligaments. Her eyes were milky, the irises clouded. They bulged slightly, framed by skeletal shadows.
“Oh my God… Shoot it, Sheriff. Shoot it!”
“Just calm down. Don’t look at it.”
“Calm down!?” Emma backed against the gate, drumming up her courage for a run if she had to. “Hurry, Sheriff, hurry! Cut that chain and get me out of here!”
The corpse doddered closer, just ten feet away.
Emma’s heart was pounding as she heard the chain rattle behind her. She turned, flooded with relief as she saw the deputy wielding the hefty cutters. The chain fell free and the Sheriff pushed the gate open. The wretched groan of its hinges sounded like a chorus of angels to Emma’s ears.
She dashed for the opening, and the Sheriff reached out to pull her through. But his touch was jolting, as hot and painful as a hornet sting. Her mouth opened to cry out—but her tongue froze and her throat clenched tightly. Her knees turned to jelly and suddenly she was falling, tumbling helplessly onto her back.
Only then did she see what the Sheriff was holding in his hand. A stun gun, with black plastic casing and two metal probes.
Her eyes fluttered in disbelief. She attempted to speak but her mouth was numb. She couldn’t move a muscle.
The deputy stepped up next to the Sheriff. Staring at Emma blankly, they pulled the heavy gate closed and reattached the chain, snapping the large padlock shut.
“Sorry, honey,” the Sheriff spoke gently. “But granny has to eat.” He triggered the stun gun, grinning as an arc of electricity zapped mockingly across its probes.
The gawky young deputy gave Emma a regretful look, and both men turned away. She lay frozen on the ground, her muscles paralyzed, unable to even turn her head to follow. She heard the hurried crunching of their footsteps on loose gravel and the slamming of their car doors and then their engines roaring and fading, zooming away in reverse as if the snaky access road was tattooed on their brains.
Now there was deathly silence, broken only by the rhythmic squishing of the old woman’s footsteps. Limping closer and closer. Six inches at a time.
Emma twitched—a reflexive spasm that caused her head to loll sideways, facing the old woman—who was slowly descending to her knees beside her.
Emma smelled her foul corpse odor before she saw her hideous face, moving closer and closer to her own. She tried to summon the strength to roll away, but her muscles wouldn’t respond.
As sheer terror washed over her, Emma could only stare at the woman’s delicate skull, covered with papery gray flesh and strands of snowy hair. Her withered lips were locked open, framing shrunken gums and primitive dentures, sealed in place by clots of blood.
Then the stinking breath descended like a poison cloud and Emma could only whimper and close her eyes, as the thin white hair brushed her cheek and the ancient dentures closed gently over her nose.
4
With an ear-splitting crack like a home run off a hickory bat, the old woman’s head was suddenly gone.
Emma lay still as a statue, frozen with fear and confusion and the lingering effects of the stun gun. The black-draped twig of a once human body dropped to the ground beside her, torn tendons and veins and windpipe jutting from its gaping neck-hole.
“Emma, get up! Let’s go!”
Emma’s heart danced as she saw Russell standing over her, holding the old brass lamp. Bits of snowy white hair clung to its marble base. She tried to raise her arms but was still too weak, her muscles a rubbery mess.
Russell grabbed her wrists and yanked her to her feet. “We have to get out here. Come on.”
Emma took a step and nearly fell to her knees. Russell caught her by the waist and held her up, then placing a strong arm around her he half-dragged her towards the Ford.
“Buddy… he’s…” She barely managed to wheeze out the words.
“I know,” said Russell softly. “He’s gone. And we will be too if we don’t get the hell out of here.”
A lanky figure staggered towards them. It was the man in black who Emma first saw when they arrived at the unholy place. His emaciated frame was covered by a loose-fitting suit, its old-fashioned lapels encrusted with burnt umber splotches of blood. His cheekbones were visible through holes in his mold-covered skin.
Russell swung the lamp overhead, like a roustabout driving a railroad spike. The man’s head flattened like a stomped egg. He stood wobbling for a moment, his skull collapsed to half its size. Russell kicked him over, dropped the lamp, then scooped up Emma and carried her the last ten yards to the car. He helped her into the passenger seat and hurried around to the driver’s side.
A zombie lurched out of the darkness but Russell kicked it away and jumped into the car and slammed the door. Emma breathed a sigh of relief as the Ford’s V-8 roared to life and they peeled out around the idling Honda.
“Jesus!” Russell exclaimed. He cut the wheel sharply to avoid running into a throng of reanimated corpses lumbering towards them. The Ford swerved off the road, clipping a few tombstones before Russell jerked the wheel and got it back on the road, mowing down a handful of ghouls at the back of the pack.
Emma sobbed hysterically as the horrors of the night collided with a wave of relief. Her muscles were finally loosening, her strength slowly returning.
“This road must lead out up ahead there,” Russell murmured, half to himself. He switched on his high beams. The bright lights revealed several more zombies plodding through the graveyard and beyond them, another gate. “Yeah, baby. We’re good to go.”
As they sped towards the gate he saw that it was locked with a massive chain. “Get down!”
When Emma didn’t promptly obey he grabbed her head and shoved her down in her seat. Shielding his face he floored the gas. The sturdy steel car blasted through the fence with no problem—the chain snapped and the iron gates flew open.
The secluded clearing where the cemetery sat gave way to a scraggly forest, bisected by a long neglected road that seemed to be equal parts dirt and loose gravel.
Russell drove slowly down the twisting, fog-choked road. Only one headlight had survived the crash and the trees drooping over the road blocked all but a ribbon of moonlight. After driving a quarter-mile he eased off the gas and coasted to a halt. Emma sat hunched beside him, weeping uncontrollably.
“Hey,” Russell whispered, his usually gruff voice now soft and soothing. “We’re safe now, babe. We’re safe. Are you alright?”
Emma didn’t look up. Gently he cupped her chin and turned her face towards his. “You okay?” he asked again. “You didn’t get bit, did you?”
Emma looked suddenly alarmed. She reached for the rearview mirror and angled it towards her face, breathing a sigh of relief when she saw her nose intact. Unbitten.
“You look beautiful, baby,” Russell said with a wistful smile. “You always look beautiful.”
Emma finally began accepting that she was safe and physically unharmed. Burying her face against Russell’s shoulder she sobbed quietly, shoulders twitching, letting the tension out.
Russell stroked her hair tenderly, and gently raised her face up. “Let’s get you to a hospital,” he said, his voice an anemic whisper. “Just to be on the safe side.” He reached for the shifter, but winced and doubled over.
“Russ?” Emma finally spoke, in a voice that was barely a peep. Then she noticed the fresh blood on his clothes, and realized he’d been bitten. More than once.
“Oh my God, Russell. You’re hurt.”
“I’ll… be…” but he couldn’t finish the sentence. He grimaced hard, choking out a garbled cry as a spasm racked his body, cramping every muscle in hellish pain.
“You can’t drive,” Emma said calmly, forced to rally as she realized Russell had gotten them as far as he could, and it was up to her to get them to final safety. “Let me.”
Russell clutched his ringing ears. He could hear her words but they sounded distant, as if they were spoken thro
ugh a long thin tunnel. He heard a car door open and then another, and felt the cool night air waft over him.
“Russell, please.” Emma’s voice sounded tinny, a mile away. “Come on. Let me drive. We have to get you to a doctor.”
She took his arm and eased him from the car. His body felt chilly. Ice cold sweat dripped from his feverish brow. He moved jerkily, his muscles stiff, but supporting himself on the side of his beloved car he let Emma guide him around to the other side.
He paused at the rear bumper as another spasm rocked his body. Emma heard rustling in the bushes around them… and the scraping of feet on loose gravel.
“Come on, Russell, please. We have to go.”
Dizzy and delirious, Russell forced his feet to start moving. Finally they reached the passenger door. Emma steadied him against the side of the car while she opened the door. “Come on.” She reached to take his arm but he suddenly grabbed her.
His hands were cold as death. Instinctively she yanked her arm away. Russell raised his face and stared at her with a ravenous look. His eyes were like stones. The eyes of a dead thing.
Emma fought back her tears. “No… Russell... no…”
Russell lunged at her, his mouth open in a hungry snarl. She blocked him with the car door and backed away, sobbing in sorrow and fear.
Russell stumbled toward her, his feet slipping drunkenly on loose gravel. As soon as he stepped clear of the door Emma kicked it closed and raced around the front of the car.
She skidded to a halt as she reached the driver’s door. A shadowy figure was shambling around a bend… followed by another.
She yanked the door open and leapt into the drivers seat.
Russell turned clumsily and stumbled against the passenger door. Spurred by some muscle memory his fingers found the handle and yanked it open. Emma shifted into gear as he leaned in to grab her. She stomped on the gas pedal, speeding away, sending him sprawling to the side of the road.
She drove erratically, her eyes clouded with tears, her mind racing in a thousand directions. Between the fog and the untended woods hanging over the road, it was like driving through a ghostly tunnel.
