Donna let out a strangled cry that instantly brought both Hocker and Tasha scrambling out of the car. They both got to the back of the car just as Dale was backpedalling away from the opened trunk.
“Jesus H.,” Hocker said with a whistling breath.
On the floor of the trunk, his legs curled up, clasped by his arms into a fetal position, was Jeff Winfield. One side of his face had been sheered away, exposing the milky-white bone of his skull. The dim light gave his face a cold, pale cast; his eyes were closed, and even at a safe distance, Dale knew there was no warm breath stirring.
“Well,” Dale said, “that answers one of the questions I still had,” he said, sadly regarding the corpse of the man who, in a short time, he had come to consider a good friend. Donna stared silently.
Hocker let the faintest of smiles cross his face. He was thinking it served the cop right! With Winfield out of the way, and the roll of bills in his pocket, he was starting to feel free and clear all the way. He glanced down at the road and at the woods behind the house, wondering which way would be easiest and fastest to get away. Certainly, none of these people were going to bother chasing after him. The only thing that held him back was the pain in his shoulder. He would have been fine if Tasha hadn’t hit him and reopened the wound. Now it was throbbing worse than it had when he first got it!
“What are you going to do with him?” Donna asked tightly. “You can’t just leave him there.”
Dale glanced at Hocker and then nodded toward Winfield’s body. “Come on. Help me get him up to the house at least. We’re going to have a lot of explaining to do.”
Hocker spit onto the ground, then stepped forward and reached into the trunk along with Dale. “This is it, though,” he said as he wedged his hands up under Winfield’s shoulders. “I’ll help you lug his sorry ass up to the house, but then I’m splitting.”
“Hocker,” Tasha said, almost a whine. “You’ve got to stick around until we explain what happened.”
“I’m sure you guys can handle it without me,” Hocker said. He snorted and spit again, aiming carefully over his shoulder.
Dale winced as he took hold of Winfield’s cold, stiff legs. He was surprised how thin the man’s ankles were, for such a hefty man. He was bending down, bracing himself for the lift when a scream suddenly ripped the night, shattering his nerves.
In a second of blinding panic, Dale let go of his grip and straightened up. His head slammed into the opened trunk lid, sending a jolt of pain along his nerves to complement the fear.
As soon as Hocker shifted Winfield’s body upward, he saw a subtle motion on the dead man’s face. Hocker had a fraction of a second to wonder if it had been a trick of light, but then the dead man’s eyes snapped open and, before he could react, Winfield’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the throat.
Both Donna and Tasha screamed, scrambling to get away from the cruiser as Winfield lurched upward, swung his arm around, and clamped it solidly down onto Hocker’s wounded shoulder. The scream that ripped from Hocker’s throat was a blend of perfect pain and horror as the dead man opened his mouth and started to pull him down.
“No! No!” Hocker wailed as he stared down at the gaping mouth. Wide teeth gleamed like knife blades in the night as they chomped up and down, coming closer to Hocker’s face. He could smell the man’s sickly sour breath, reeking with decay.
In the first instant of surprise, Dale reeled backward, tripping on his own foot and almost falling. He regained his balance and dove forward, not exactly sure what he could do. From experience, he knew these things of Rodgers’ were much stronger than they had been in life, and Dale was sure Winfield was no lightweight when he had been alive.
Rodgers’ last shot, Dale thought as he tried not to imagine the full strength and fury animating this corpse.
Hocker’s feet were scuffing the driveway; his screams were muffled inside the trunk as the thing that had been Winfield pulled him closer and closer. He felt the steely fingers of one hand dig like hooks into his torn flesh; the other hand clutched the side of his neck, just missing the windpipe, as it yanked him down.
“Do… something!” Hocker managed to cry out. There was an intense hammering in his ears, and his vision spun wildly.
Suddenly, out of the night, there came a huge explosion that filled his mind with thunder and lightning. Thick fumes of spent gunpowder entered his lungs, choking him; but even in his thunderstruck confusion, he sensed a slackening of the hold on his throat and shoulder. With a moaning shout, he leaned back with what little strength he had left and fell backward. He was unconscious when he hit the pavement.
Dale was almost as surprised as Hocker was by the sudden report of the gun. He thought for an instant that he himself had been shot. He believed his body just needed another second or two to register the lead that had ripped through it, then he would drop to the ground, a lifeless heap. After another second, though, his mind registered what had happened: Tasha had fired point-blank into Winfield’s face.
The zombie hadn’t been hurt. He couldn’t be hurt. Maybe the shock of the gunshot startled him for an instant; maybe because he had just recently been transformed into one of Rodgers’ zombies, he still had a living reflex and remembered that bullets could hurt him. Regardless, in the instant the thing that had been Winfield cringed back and released his hold on Hocker, Dale acted. His hand clamped down on the tire jack, then he raised it over his head and brought it down as hard as he could onto Winfield’s upturned face.
The first impact sent a bone-deep shudder through Dale’s arms, but Dale knew one hit wouldn’t be enough. He knew he had to disconnect the brain from the body, so body and brain could die alone.
Dale was surprised by the power he felt zinging through him as he repeatedly raised the jack up and brought it down on Winfield’s head again and again. Each hit made a sickening thumping sound. The creature that had been Winfield scrambled to protect itself, as a low, pained moan issued from its throat. Dale had to tell himself, over and over, that the man he had known as Winfield was already dead: he was putting an unnatural and ungodly thing to rest.
In spite of Winfield’s superior strength, Dale had the advantage. Unable to stand or even to avoid the successive hits, Winfield thrashed on the trunk floor as Dale hacked away at him. Finally, with a fortunately placed shot, the metal edge of the jack split the creature’s spine. All strength went out of the creature’s limbs, and with one feeble grunt, the zombie collapsed back into the trunk, truly dead.
Dale dropped the jack, oddly bloodless, to the ground. When it hit, it rang like a bell. Until now, killing these things hadn’t been easy, but it certainly was necessary, even when he had had to disconnect Larry Cole’s brain from his zombie body. But having to do this to Winfield left Dale feeling weak and hollow himself, as if he, now, was nothing more than a re-animated corpse. All feeling and emotion had been twisted so horribly out of shape, he wondered if he could ever feel truly human again. His stomach suddenly revolted, and before he knew what was happening, he was on his knees beside the cruiser, vomiting. He dimly suspected that once he found Angie, he would be all right, but right now, all he could think was: You can only take so much death before you start feeling dead yourself!
III
As it turned out, there had been no one in Mrs. Appleby’s house, and no message left behind to let him know where anyone was. Dale and Donna loaded the unconscious Hocker into the cruiser and, with Winfield’s body still in the trunk, drove back to the police station. There they had found Chief Bates, and after showing him the body and giving only the briefest of explanations, enough so Bates could dispatch an ambulance and a fire truck to the accident site, they drove to the hospital in Houlton where Bates assured Dale he would find his daughter safe and sound. Still, before they left the station, Dale called the hospital just to hear Angie’s voice to confirm it.
Tasha rode in the ambulance with Hocker, whose torn shoulder, seen in the harsh glare of the ambulance, looked more like raw hambu
rger than human flesh. Dale and Donna accompanied Bates in his cruiser, thankful for small things, such as car windows that rolled up to shut out the cold night air and two headlights, clearly illuminating the road ahead.
On the way to the hospital, Dale and Donna tried to fill Bates in on what had happened. He listened to their story in disbelief, interrupting them several times to question them on certain points that didn’t make sense and probably never would. Several times, Dale had to tell him not to worry, none of it made sense in the way he was trying to understand it; he was going to have to see the basement of Rodgers’ Funeral Home in order to begin to accept what had been going on. Dale wished he still had the tape from Larry’s dictating machine, but it had been destroyed in the fire at Donna’s homestead.
When Dale and Donna burst into Lisa’s room, Angie shot up out of the chair where she had been dozing. Lisa, who had been contentedly watching TV, looked up and smiled as Angie and her father embraced and wouldn’t let go.
“Good God, Almighty, I thought I’d never see you again,” Dale said as tears streamed down his face. He held her back at arm’s length, looked at her, then hugged her tightly to him again, patting his hands on her shoulders as if in disbelief.
“You don’t look so hot, Dad,” Angie said. “Why didn’t you call and tell me where you were? God, I was wicked worried!”
Dale glanced at Donna and gave her a feeble smile. “Well, you see, we were kind of in a place where we couldn’t get to a phone. I’ll tell you all about it later,” he said. In the back of his mind, though, he was already wondering exactly how much he would tell her. He certainly couldn’t tell her he had had to kill Larry… a second time!
“Have a seat, Mr. Harmon,” Lisa said, her voice bright and chipper from the bed. “I’ve got some ginger ale here you can have. Haven’t even touched it. I’m still waiting for the nurse to bring me that hamburger I asked her for.”
Dale smiled. Lisa looked thinner than he remembered. He took the clear plastic cup from her. Dale considered for a moment, then took it and handed it to Donna, who eagerly gulped down half of it before handing it back to him.
“So,” Angie said, eyeing him with a slight smirk and a suspicious gleam in her eye. “You two haven’t been…” She waved one hand back and forth in front of her face, as if she had just burned it on a hot stove.
“No… no, nothing of the sort,” Dale said after taking a sip of ginger ale. The carbonation exploded on the back of his throat like a string of firecrackers. “I only got part of the story from Chief Bates. What’s Lisa in here for?”
Angie and Lisa exchanged glances. At last, Angie cast her eyes downward and said, “I guess it was my fault, kind of.”
“It was not,” Lisa said, shifting forward on the bed. A magazine slid off the side and fell to the floor. “It was my own stupid fault. I fell off my bicycle and banged my head on the sidewalk.”
“But you wouldn’t have if I hadn’t surprised you from behind,” Angie protested.
Lisa waved her to silence. “I would too have!”
In the course of the next fifteen minutes, the girls filled Dale and Donna in on what had happened. They explained Lisa’s biting of Officer Brook’s arm as simply a hysterical reaction, brought about by her head injury. What they left out, by mutual and silent agreement, was any mention of Lisa’s hamburger “snack” in the hospital refrigerator.
When it was Dale’s turn to tell Angie and Lisa about his last twenty-four hours, he also conveniently left certain details out of the picture. Some, he knew, he would eventually tell her; others, she would never hear from him. When he was finished, he and Donna left to see how Mrs. Appleby was faring.
He gasped when he saw her. If he had thought Lisa looked worse than he remembered, there was no doubt Mrs. Appleby had been through a lot. He and Donna both smiled cheerful greetings at her as they entered the room and sat down at her bedside, but both of them were instantly worried about her.
“Chief Bates told me what had happened out at your place,” Dale said. Police Chief Bates had told him Mrs. Appleby said Franklin Rodgers had done this to her.
Mrs. Appleby’s eyes fluttered and shifted to the side to look up at him, but she didn’t—or couldn’t—turn her head. Her mumbled greeting was just barely louder than the bubbling glucose solution in her IV bottle.
As soon as Dale heard that Rodgers had been to Mrs. Appleby’s house, his suspicions were confirmed: Rodgers had been looking for Angie and, not finding her, had made Mrs. Appleby suffer for his bad luck. He was chilled by the thought that, had she died, she wouldn’t have even been allowed the luxury of finally resting. It gave him another reason to be happy about Rodgers’ death.
“I’m… feeling… better,” Mrs. Appleby said, her voice a strangled caw. With each word, her eyelids flickered, and her pupils jerked back and forth. If Dale hadn’t also seen the flickering smile on her face, he would have been very concerned; but he knew what a determined woman she was, and he suspected she’d be on the mend soon enough.
“I don’t want to tire you out,” Dale said softly, “but I did want you to know that, if you’d like, we could have Lisa stay with us until you’re up and about.”
Mrs. Appleby smiled. Her lips opened with a papery smack. “If it’s… no… problem.”
“It’s no problem at all,” Dale said. His eyes were beginning to sting, and he knew it wasn’t from lack of sleep. “I feel like I owe you a lot.” His unvoiced thought was that she had almost died, essentially protecting Angie; he owed her more than his life!
Donna was standing by the door. The accumulated strain of the past few nights was beginning to tell on her; she felt she was going to collapse if she didn’t sit down soon.
“You saw… his… eye,” Mrs. Appleby said. Her voice dropped to no more than a low moan. “Didn’t you… His… eye!”
The mere mention of Rodgers’ eye sent chills racing through Dale, but he knew he couldn’t let her see his true reaction; he couldn’t allow any chinks in the armor.
“His… eye!” Mrs. Appleby, her voice winding upward, bordering on a scream that she didn’t have the strength to produce.
Dale nodded and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “Yes,” he said. “I saw it. And I saw a lot of other things I’d just as soon not remember. Right now, you have to worry about getting better.”
He patted the back of her hand and stepped back from the bed. It saddened him to realize how small and frail she looked in the hospital bed; it was difficult to see her as anything but the robust, life-filled woman in her house on Main Street.
“Let’s let her rest now,” Donna said softly.
“Don’t worry about Lisa,” Dale said. “We’ll get her discharged, and she can come to Thomaston with us. He glanced over his shoulder at Donna, standing in the doorway. “I’m pretty sure we’ll be coming up to Dyer on weekends quite a bit this fall.” He almost laughed aloud at the understatement.
“Thank… you,” Mrs. Appleby said. Her eyelids fluttered and sank down, staying shut this time. As Dale and Donna walked out into the corridor, they were unaware that the old woman had drifted off to a warm, dark, “centerless” place where her words glowed with purple and blue light. She knew she would find her way back eventually, but for now, at least, she wanted just to stay there a little while longer.
IV
While Dale and Donna were visiting Mrs. Appleby, Tasha was down the corridor, visiting with Hocker. He had remained unconscious through most of the drive to the hospital, and by the time he realized what was happening, he didn’t have the strength to resist. They admitted him, stuck his arms full of needles, and wheeled him into this room before he could say, “Boo!”
The pain in his shoulder convinced him to stay right where he was rather than try to leave. After the nurse and doctor washed and dressed the wound, he was content, for now, to float along with the roller-coaster ride of pain killers they had given him.
But that had been a couple of hours ago. Now, once his mind
cleared, he was royally pissed! Because Tasha was the only one there at the time, he lashed out at her as soon as she walked into the room.
“Why the Christ’d you let them bring me here?” he shouted. His face was nearly purple, and saliva flew from his mouth. “You know what they’re gonna do? Huh? They’ve got me now!”
“Hock,” Tasha said as tears filled her eyes. She was angry at herself for feeling anything about this man; this was her chance to head home and be done with him! But no matter how much she wanted to, she just couldn’t leave until she knew he was going to be all right.
“Jesus Christ, Tasha! They’ve got me! They’re going to check me out now. Hell, that friggin’ cop probably already has my face and name out on the wire. They’re gonna find out that I escaped from that mental hospital down south. They’re gonna find out about the truck we stole, that old man and those three guys in the woods.”
As soon as he reminded her of the woods, Tasha’s face went cold. The back of her head suddenly started to tingle. In the frenzy of fighting their way out of the farmhouse, she had forgotten all about the three men who had attacked them in the woods. If they hadn’t been some of Rodgers’ zombies, if they had been real, living men, then both Hocker and she were… Her mind formed word and denied it simultaneously:
Murderers!
The creatures they had killed in the farmhouse were one thing. It hadn’t been like killing real people. Bates had assured her that the authorities wouldn’t press charges against any of them for that. Then again, it was going to take Bates and the authorities a big leap into the irrational to believe that there actually had been zombies out there.
But there still was those three men in the woods! They had killed them!
“They’re gonna connect me to thirty or more fires from here to Georgia,” Hocker said. “They’re gonna put my ass away forever!”
“What?” Tasha said, almost a bark.
Hocker looked at her, his eyes skimmed with pain like thin ice now that his first jolt of pain killers was wearing off. One corner of his mouth twitched into a smile.
The Siege Page 45
