“Where are we gonna put… those?” Tasha asked, wrinkling her nose as she pointed down at the two headless corpses.
Winfield glanced around the kitchen, then smiled when he saw the storage closet by the cellar door. “Stuff ’em in there, I suppose,” he said. “I don’t particularly relish the thought of dragging ’em outside. First, though, I want to get that door back up and nail as many boards over it as we can. There’ll be more of them!”
Tasha shivered as she looked at the smashed down doorway. “Maybe we can put something across it, like those bars they used to block castle gates. I don’t want to get trapped in here with all the doors locked.”
Winfield looked at her, his gaze suddenly darkening. “If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell your friend Hocker about it?” Tasha smirked and, shaking her head in agreement, said, “He’s not my friend. We sorta ended up together on the road. You don’t know how many times I wanted to dump him and take off on my own.”
Winfield understood the dynamics of the situation. As crazy as Hocker was, Tasha felt secure with him, probably because he had never tried to put the make on her, and because he was nuts enough to do some fairly outrageous things. She probably thought that would translate into protection for her if worse came to worst.
But worse had come to worst, Winfield thought, and Hocker hadn’t shown any signs of untapped nobility.
“But you didn’t leave him,” he said. “And you’ve got to admit, you’re in pretty deep this time.”
Tasha had to look away, and when she did, her stomach did a quick flop over. Spread on the floor in front of her were two dead men and these weren’t the first she had helped kill. She was sure, now, that the three men who had attacked her and Hocker in the woods two nights ago had been creatures like these. She knew how lucky they were to have survived that attack. Pink paint, the color of Canada Mints, was splattered all over the walls and floor. The splintered door was wide open, an invitation to enter if there were any more of those things out there. And she knew there were more out there!
Tears welled up in her eyes, blurring her vision of the kitchen, so she kept her face turned away from Winfield. But when a deep sob shook her body, she knew she couldn’t hide it anymore, and with a shuddering groan, she fell into his arms and buried his face in the hefty warmth of his chest. “It’s okay,” Winfield said softly as he stroked her hair. He was glad she had finally broken down. He knew that’s what had to happen before she would find the courage to shake herself free of the control Hocker exercised over her. Winfield was keeping his eyes fixed on the opened doorway, positive that, as soon as he let his guard down, more of those creatures would come piling through the door and swarm all over them.
Tasha’s shoulders shook as she cried into his shoulder. Her tears were hot, and her breath caught in her throat. Sniffing, Tasha looked up at him, her face streaked with tears. He found himself imagining that she was his daughter, and that made him think about the wife he had never had and the children he would never raise.
“Over by the coal bin where Hocker kept us tied up last night, there’s a narrow tunnel way that leads out to the barn,” Winfield said. Only with great effort could he keep his voice from breaking.
Tasha started to say something, but her voice choked off.
“Dale and I have been thinking about it, and we think if things get really bad up here, the rest of you, including Hocker can easily fit through. Once you get to the barn, you can either hightail it into the woods or, if my cruiser still runs, drive on out of here.”
“What about you?” Tasha asked, sniffing loudly and running the back of her hand under her eyes.
Winfield chuckled. “A few too many sugar donuts at Kellerman’s,” he said slapping his paunch. His other hand was still resting lightly on Tasha’s shoulder.
“And then what are you gonna do?” Tasha asked, her eyes suddenly darkening.
Winfield smiled and winked at her. “I’ll be waiting for you by the back door,” he said.
“There’s just one problem I see,” Tasha said with a deep sigh. “You’ve got to tell Hocker ’cause he’s got the keys to your cruiser.”
Winfield raised his hand to his forehead and gingerly probed his scalp wound. “Well, yeah, he does… but I’d be a pretty big fool if I didn’t have my ass covered, wouldn’t I? Remember the handcuff key in my shoe?”
Tasha nodded.
“On the cruiser, inside the rear wheel well on the passenger’s side, if you reach way up inside there, you’ll find a small metal box, stuck up there by a magnet. Inside is a set of keys to the cruiser. I haven’t even told Dale this, yet, so I’m trusting you to keep my secret, just in case we get the keys back from Hocker.”
“But why won’t you tell him about your plans?” Tasha said. She couldn’t deny that she felt quite a bit better, now that she had gained Winfield’s confidence; but she still felt some shreds of loyalty to Hocker. He had, after all, stuck with her all the way from North Carolina to Maine!
“We’ll tell him when we’re ready to tell him,” Winfield said. “He’s not exactly number one on my list of favorite people, and there’s no guarantee he won’t take off by himself.”
Tasha smiled and snickered. “He’s not exactly tops on mine, either,” she said.
“Well—uh, we have some work to get done here,” he stammered, rubbing his hands together. Tasha was smiling, but he could see the fear, the jacked-deer nervousness, returning to her eyes. “Come on, give me a hand with this.”
She helped him lift up a corner of the broken-down door, and together they wrestled the remains of the door back into place. They got the ball-peen hammer from Dale and some nails, and while Tasha held crossing boards in place, Winfield started banging in the nails.
By the time they had the door barricaded again and the two headless corpses crammed into the closet, the sun was high in the sky, hammering down with a last burst of summer heat. It was still hours until sunset, and everyone in the house knew they had to come up with some kind of plan, soon!
VI
After the first wave of zombies at the doors, things quieted down for a while in the yard. Through the slats of wood, Dale and Winfield kept watch over the limo parked in the driveway, but there was no sign of either Rodgers or his army of zombies.
The supply of food Tasha had bought in town was nearly exhausted, and so were the defenders. The lack of sleep the night before and the strain of watching and waiting in the darkened farm house were starting to wear on everyone’s nerves, especially whenever Winfield and Hocker were in the same room. While one person watched in the living room and another guarded the kitchen door, the others tried to catch a few minutes of sleep, but it didn’t do much good for anyone.
At three o’clock that afternoon, Dale, unable to sleep, came into the kitchen where Donna was on watch. Her face was drawn and pale from lack of sleep, but underneath it all, he could still see her beauty shining through. He tried, not very successfully, not to think what she would look like if she became one of Rodgers’ creatures.
“You know, sometimes I just can’t help but think this is still just some wild nightmare I’m having,” Donna said. “It’s like all the bad things I ever said about this town and this house have come back to destroy me. I keep wondering, too, if, when I wake up, will I even have returned to Dyer.” She looked at Dale, and he didn’t like the darkness he saw reflected in her eyes like storm clouds. “I keep wondering if, when I wake up, I’ll even have met you yet.”
“Don’t be silly,” Dale said softly. He touched her lightly on the cheek, and she kissed his fingertips when they brushed her mouth.
“But that’s all life is, isn’t it?” she said, her eyes darkening even more. “Just one big dream and then—poof!—it’s over.” She chuckled and shook her head. “I remember, even when I was a little girl that song, ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat,’ used to scare the shit out of me sometimes.”
Dale smiled widely. “Now I know the strain’s getting
to you.”
“It was always that last line in the song,” Donna said.
“ ‘Merrily, merrily, merrily; life is but a dream.’ I remember, sometimes we’d be singing it in kindergarten or first grade, and I’d get this chill. I’d get so freaked, thinking, Oh my God! This is all just a dream! … Crazy, huh?”
Dale shrugged. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I never thought ‘Row Your Boat’ was particularly scary, but everybody has things that unnerve them.”
“I wonder what it’s like for them,” Donna said, her voice distant, as though she had barely registered what Dale had said.
“Who?” he asked.
“For those things Rodgers is sending after us,” Donna said, looking at him with a cold, hard stare filled with unspoken fright.
Life may be just a dream, he thought, but ours sure as shit is turning into a nightmare!
“I wonder if they even know they’re alive, or dead, or whatever!” Dale said. “Are they in some kind of zombie twilight zone, where they know they’re neither alive nor dead?”
“I wonder if, Larry…” her voice cut off, but she forced herself to continue. “I wonder if he recognized you. If somewhere a tiny, little spark in the back of his mind registered that you had once been his best friend long ago, like in another life, or something.”
“You know what I think?” Dale said, suddenly very firmly. “I think if you keep wondering things like that, you’re going to screw up your mind. What we have to deal with is getting out of here! We don’t have to figure anything out about these things! We just have to get away from them!” In his mind, he added—And find Angie!
“And how are we going to do that?” Donna snapped. “Are we just going to sit here and wait for him to send more? How many more do you think he has? He may have been doing this for years and have a whole Goddamn army of them. He’ll wear us down. And even if he doesn’t have many more, as soon as it’s dark he’ll finish us off. If we don’t get out of here before sunset, we’ve had it!”
“Maybe not,” Dale said. He paced across the kitchen floor, slapping the axe head repeatedly into the flat of his hand. “But I think I can’t help but think that it’s run its course for Rodgers. Winfield is missing, and you didn’t show up at your sister’s, and I never returned to Mrs. Appleby’s. By now, Angie’s got to be wondering where I am. She’ll call the State Police, the National Guard, and the FBI to find me!”
Donna looked at him and felt a deep ache of longing. She didn’t want to remind him that Rodgers had threatened to visit Angie first. If Dale believed they had a realistic chance to get out of here, then so what? Let him be.
“I’ve been thinking, though,” Donna said, “that maybe we should try to get out through the tunnel. I’ll make myself go down there if I really have to.”
“Go down where?” Hocker said, entering the kitchen. His mouth spread into a thin, wicked smile as he walked over to them. “What tunnel are you talking about?”
Chapter Eleven
“A Narrow Escape”
I
The afternoon slowly slipped away. There was a gradual lessening of light in the house. Only a few bars of light made it through the gaps between the wooden slats. The living room faded grayer and grayer, until only a dim duskiness remained.
Winfield spent most of the day sitting in the living room, talking with Donna and Dale. He seemed to be particularly avoiding Hocker, although it seemed to Dale that as though he was waiting for an excuse to nail Hocker a good one. Hocker, for his part, realized how Winfield felt about him because he made a point of avoiding the cop, too.
Tasha talked with Donna because, she said, she was sick of being around Hocker. She seemed interested in Donna’s childhood, growing up in this house, it was so different from the world she had known growing up in Florida. When Tasha mentioned how foolish she had been to hook up with Hocker in the first place, Donna told her about her own foolish attachment to Bradley Phillips.
When they had gotten trapped in the house, Donna had only half a pack of cigarettes in her purse, and throughout the day she smoked them all. Now that she needed cigarettes, she told Dale jokingly that they’d better get out of there real soon. But the zombies milling around in the yard, waiting for the word to attack the house again, convinced them not to try anything rash.
At four o’clock, Winfield and Dale cornered Hocker in the kitchen and demanded the keys to the police cruiser.
“What makes you think I want to give them to you?” Hocker asked, his upper lip snarling back.
Trying to keep his voice as even as possible, Winfield said simply, “Because if you don’t, I’ll kick your ass so hard your sphincter is gonna pop out your mouth. That’s why.”
Hocker wasn’t quite sure what a “sphincter” was, so to cover his ignorance, he laughed and spat onto the floor. He stood with his arms folded defiantly across his chest.
“Look, Hocker,” Dale said, playing the pacifist, “we’re all in this together. If we can get to the cruiser, we’re home free. We’ll be able to nail Rodgers before he gets anyone else.”
“You’ll also be able to nail my ass,” Hocker said, staring harshly at Winfield. Again he spit, this time at the wall. The glob of spit slid slowly down to the baseboard.
“Listen, asshole,” Winfield said, taking a threatening step toward Hocker. “That’s my cruiser, state property, and if you don’t cooperate, you can bet your last ass-hair I’m gonna hang you out to dry. I don’t know what you’ve done on your way up here, but I’ve got you on enough counts so by the time you get out of jail, your clothes will be long out of style.”
Hocker pointed at Dale, his forefinger shaking, but whether from nervousness or anger, Dale wasn’t sure. “I still want to know what he was talking about with his woman.”
“Donna isn’t my woman,” Dale said, finding it difficult not to detest this guy. The thought of leaving Hocker behind as an appetizer for Rodgers’ creatures arose in his mind as an attractive option.
“Whatever,” Hocker said. “I want to know what she meant about this tunnel.”
Dale and Winfield exchanged glances, then Winfield spoke. “You just hand over the keys to the cruiser, and we’ll let you know.” He fell silent when Tasha wandered into the living room and sat down beside him.
Now, Winfield thought, is the test. Will she tell Hocker about the spare key under the wheel well?
“We’re all going to get out of here if any one of us does,” Hocker said. “And I ain’t giving you the keys until I know what the hell you guy’s’ve been planning.”
Tasha opened her mouth, started to say something, but then shook her head and walked away.
“All right,” Winfield whispered softly to himself. He then turned to Hocker and, holding out his hand, keeping his voice as friendly as he could, said, “Hand over those keys, and I’ll forget all about the charges I could press against you.”
“Yeah… sure,” Hocker said, studying him in the gloom of the living room. He had fought hand-to-hand with two of those things out there. The last thing he wanted was to be left behind when everyone else made a break for it.
“What about other stuff I might have done, laws I might have broken?”
“Give me the keys and we’ll talk about it,” Winfield said, bringing his hand closer to Hocker. He fought the urge to grab his shirt, curl it into a tight-fisted ball, and shake the living shit out of him.
“You don’t need to know shit about what I’ve done,” Hocker said angrily. “Get me off the hook, and I’ll…” He dropped his hand down. For a flickering instant, Winfield was sure he was going for the gun stuck into the top of his pants. Winfield’s hand snapped down to his service revolver but then stopped when he saw Hocker’s hand slide into his pocket. He slowly withdrew and held up the ring of keys, sparkling unnaturally bright in the dim room.
“Thanks, boy.” Winfield said as he snatched the keys from Hocker’s hand. He bounced them reassuringly in his hand a few times, then slipped them into his
own pants pocket.
Hocker took one threatening step closer to Winfield, his face contorted with anger.
“Don’t you ever call me boy again!” he said, his voice low and gravelly. “You understand?”
Winfield smiled, completely unfazed.
“Sure thing,” he said, his smile widening. “No problem, boy.”
II
Half an hour later, Hocker was sleeping soundly. He had probably missed more sleep than anyone else, and after his confrontation with Winfield, he went upstairs, explaining he needed to get some rest away from their senseless chit-chat.
Leaving Tasha at the foot of the stairs to guard against Hocker or the creatures, Dale, Donna, and Winfield went into the kitchen to plan their next move. Donna was convinced Rodgers hadn’t called things off. She believed he was waiting until dark, when darkness would handicap them enough so he could finish them off. Dale and Winfield agreed with her.
“What we need first of all is something for light,” Dale said.
“Let’s call up Northern Maine Power and ask them to hook us up,” Donna said. Her attempted humor fell flat.
“I have a tank of gasoline and a package of roadside flares in the trunk of my cruiser, if Ass-face didn’t dump them out when he trashed my car,” Winfield said. “We could wrap some cloth around a couple of two-by-fours and use them for torches.”
“The problem there is getting the damned gas,” Dale said. Glancing at Donna to gauge her reaction, he asked her, “Think you could hack it?”
“Hack what?” Donna asked.
“Going down the tunnel to the barn, to see if there’s anything left in the cruiser we can use. I don’t want to bring Hocker in on this yet. I don’t trust him.”
Donna shook her head. “I know I sound like a wimp, but I just don’t think I could do it.”
Taking a deep breath, Dale held his hand out to Winfield and said, “Let me have the keys. I’ll give it a try, but I’ve got an idea. It might be kind of crazy.”
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