Ricky stifled a bellow, the pain so fierce it made his eyes water. Blood poured across his hand, helping the dead woman wrench herself free. She dropped to all fours, like a feral cat, eyes shimmering in the darkness. She made quick work of the chunk she’d taken out of him, swallowing it greedily and looking for more.
Ricky felt the caress of cool, pebbled flesh on his cheek. He spun to face whoever had come up behind him. Trying to staunch the flow of blood pulsing from his ruined arm, he was helpless to ward off the nightmare creature that pulled his face down, close to hers.
Once upon a time, she had been a woman. Once upon a time, she had been beautiful. But now, she was nothing but rot and bone brought to life. Her gums were the black of disease, empty sockets oozing where teeth had once been. Maggots dropped from abscess cavities when she opened wide, favoring him with a jack-o-lantern smile. Jagged shards of enamel moved over his neck, and he remembered how he’d knocked most of those teeth out. He’d started with his fists. Then moved to the tire iron.
It had happened the previous summer. She’d been working a truck stop outside Plano, across from a bar called The Oil Slick. They’d negotiated a price, and climbed into the sleeper compartment to get down to business. Things started going downhill when she laughed at him for being too drunk to get it up, and she’d started to leave. All the booze, and the pills, took over. He’d slugged her to shut her up, bloodying her lip. But she’d only laughed harder, pointing at his shriveled junk and saying something about drunk-dick. His response was to go off on her, pummeling her as if his fists were sledgehammers. When he’d grown tired of that, he’d dug into the toolbox and come out with the iron.
And then she was dead. He hadn’t planned on killing her, it had just kind of…happened. And so she’d wound up here, at Von’s. With the others.
The others…
He shoved Plano-whore back, but sure enough, the rest of his girls were coming, creeping out of the darkness, pulling themselves up the grade for a grisly reunion. The tweaker from Pensacola who’d run out of time when she’d run out of crank. The ink-slut with the lazy eye he’d met up with in Virginia. The jailbait with the big titties who he’d been sure was fifteen, at least. All of them, even the first one. The one whose hands and feet he’d sawed off…
Clawlike fingers bit into his throat. A hot geyser of blood sprayed the tweaker’s ravaged face. Nails like talons sliced him open and still, he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the shadows as one after another rose from their makeshift graves.
The door to the semi creaked open. The final verse of Jambalaya spilled out as one of the dead hunted for living flesh. Hank Williams was fading. Or was it Ricky? No matter, he knew the words.
Good-bye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh...
He heard something else now, too. It was far off, but getting louder. Getting closer.
His legs gave out and he tumbled over, face first into the crumbling blacktop. More teeth. More agony. He tried to crawl, but they were all over him now, weighing him down. Tearing him apart. He dug his fingers into a seam in the pavement, pulled himself a little further along. Someone was coming out of Von’s, heading for the group of rigs. If he could just get close enough, he might be able to call for help.
Then, he heard it. A whistle, long and mournful, cutting through the night, rolling across the countryside for miles around. His fellow driver stopped to listen. Ricky opened his mouth, but there wasn’t enough left of his voice box to make any sound.
A train was coming.
Comin’ ‘round the bend.
Coming for him, all right. Coming to take him for the long haul.
HUNTING PARTY
Ned felt his tenuous grip on consciousness begin to slip. For a dizzying moment, he was falling. Then no, he was rising, scrambling to his feet again. Had he fallen? He didn’t know. Couldn’t tell. He went over again, his foot catching on a rock. Or a root. Or perhaps nothing at all. He lurched to the right, shoulder driving hard into something he didn’t get a look at before staggering away. He felt like he was underwater, trying to decide which way was up.
Christ, how much had he drank?
No time for that now. He had to get up. Had to keep moving. Had to—
Had to what? Again, his thoughts became cloudy, like someone had wrapped gauze around his brain and the signals weren’t quite getting where they were supposed to. Not good. He needed to be putting ground behind him, needed to be moving fast because...
Because he was in trouble. Because he needed to get away.
A few more shaky steps, stumbling blindly through the woods. Though the moon was full, down here the landscape was painted black. Every bramble, every low hanging branch was a potential pitfall, an obstacle to be avoided. Ned threw his hands out and started to run. The booze...the goddamned booze!
A shape, blacker-than-black, suddenly appeared before him. Instinctively, Ned sidestepped. The ragged stump of a broken branch carved a trio of deep cuts in his cheek. He reeled, but couldn’t stop. He didn’t dare slow down. Didn’t dare look back.
The ground beneath his left foot disappeared. He pitched forward, tumbling out of control down a steep hillside. How far he fell, he didn’t know. Only when he was brought up short by a moss-covered log did he have time to think about what was happening. And, what had happened before.
He remembered some of it, and gradually, more was coming back to him. Still, the memories were jumpy, like they were scenes from a movie being shown out of sequence. He tried to clear the cobwebs, to shake them loose the way you shook dirt out of a doormat. He’d been drinking, that much was clear. Quite a bit, too, judging by the way his tongue was sticking to his gummy teeth. Throwing ‘em back with Cobb and Bellview. Cobb had brought the hooch, and Ned felt like cursing him straight to the devil for it. Then a thought snuck through the veil, like Ned was fiddling with the radio antennae and had just found the perfect spot for reception. The moonshine. That had been Bellview’s request. Cobbie had just brought the stuff. And why wouldn’t he? Cobbie and Ned would have agreed to anything Bellview wanted this time around. He and Cobbie would have dressed up in pink tutus and ballet slippers had Bellview only said the word. Nathan Bellview, after all, was dying.
Friends since childhood, they knew the score. This would be the last hunting party they’d ever share. Accordingly, what Bellview asked for...Bellview got.
Though Bellview was only fifty-six, late-stage cirrhosis had cut his liver function down to somewhere between next to nothing and less than nothing. In just the past couple of days, Ned had seen it in Bellview’s face. The sunken cheeks, the bad breath, his skin the color of piss now that the organ responsible for filtering toxins had given notice.
Knowing time was short, Bellview—nobody dared call him Nathan, he thought the name was for sissies—had decided to go out the best way he knew how. With his two oldest friends, doing what they enjoyed most. Hunting. Well, and drinking, of course. Bellview hadn’t contracted cirrhosis from some sleazy piece of trim the way they’d all gotten the clap when they’d been in the service. No, Bellview had been a hard drinker all his life, and it had finally caught up with him. Tuesday, they’d made the decision. Fuck the season, they agreed. They’d make Bellview’s last hunt one he’d be swapping stories about with fellow hunters in all the best nudie bars in heaven. Ned was sure heaven had nudie bars, despite what all the preacher men on TV said. After all, wasn’t heaven supposed to be your reward? And shouldn’t your reward embody what you loved best about life? Ned and Cobbie and Bellview loved cold beer, hard liquor and naked women with great big hooters. In his little piece of heaven, he’d have a no-cutoff tab and there would be double-D boobies as far as the eye could see. It would always be happy hour, with top-shelf two-for-one shots.
Shots. There had been shots, Ned remembered, getting his feet back under him. Somebody had screamed—Ned wasn’t sure who—and then one of the double barrels went off. The boom had been deafening. He’d seen the muzzle flash, and he’d known instantly that
something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
He flashed back to Cobb, joking around while they’d been setting up camp, telling Bellview that if he wanted to shoot a fucking bear, there wasn’t nobody going to stop him. Not on this trip. Bellview had laughed, sitting on the tailgate of Ned’s old Bronco with a beer. He’d wanted to help, but Cobb and Ned would have none of it. Deep down, they knew the truth. Bellview didn’t have it in him to hammer tent spikes or unroll the four-man Coleman Cobb had bought special, just for this outing. They were going to bunk in style this time, Cobb had promised, and he’d been as good as his word.
Except for the moonshine, Ned thought, the tuner knob in his head shifting of its own accord. Static crackled between his temples, filling his skull with white noise.
Running again. Had there been a bear? It wasn’t unheard of. They’d encountered their fair share over the years. But Ned couldn’t find a bear in the picture that had formed—blurry though it was—in his mind. He could hear the echoes of those screams even now, and the shotgun’s thunderous report. He didn’t like this. Hated it, in fact. Running away. Leaving his friends behind. But what else could he do? Bellview wasn’t long for this world. Ned was unarmed. He’d stepped out to take a leak and was on his way back to the tent when—
Like lightning, another memory blazed to life. He’d been standing outside the tent when the first high-pitched shriek pierced the night. It was followed almost immediately by the gunshot. He’d been halfway through the flap when he’d seen...
Light. Just up ahead, a lantern glowed. By the look of it, a Stansport hurricane twelve-inch. He knew the model well, owning a pair himself. He caught a whiff of the kerosene smoke. Definitely a Stansport, he’d bet his right nut on it. He wanted to rejoice. Though he knew these woods like the back of his hand, in his panic to escape, he’d lost his bearings. He’d have worked it out soon enough, true. And, this time of year, hunting season or not, there were plenty of outdoorsmen around. Fishermen, nature lovers, hikers. Still, finding a tent, finding other campers… He didn’t quite know why it excited him so, but it did.
He smelled something else now. Something sweet and moist. Ned couldn’t place it, but it made his mouth water.
Hungry. He hadn’t noticed how hungry he was. It felt like he hadn’t eaten in days. Maybe because they’d been drinking so much. Had they even bothered to cook dinner? They’d sure as shit brought enough food. He’d seen to the meat himself. Rib eyes, Bellview’s favorite. That bourbon steak sauce from the hole-in-the-wall barbecue joint in Cammataqua. Spicy cut potatoes and fist-sized onion rings. And, that was just what they’d brought for tonight.
Moving closer, he became aware of something else. The teenagers occupying the tent had left the flap open, probably to take advantage of the cool night air. It offered him a clear view of the couple, who were heatedly pawing at one another and peeling off articles of clothing.
Ned broke through some low brush and stood there, panting. The lovers didn’t notice him. In the dim lantern light, Ned examined himself, appraising his wounds. He ran his fingers across his face, where the three deep gouges had already stopped bleeding. He took in the shredded thigh of his camouflage sweatpants. Saw the dark stain that ran the length of his right leg. Blood...so much blood. He tore the fabric open to get a better look.
The size of the wound stunned him. Bare muscle glistened, raw and wet where a wedge of flesh had been brutally excised. Despite how fresh it was—it couldn’t be more than twenty minutes old—it wasn’t bleeding. He probed the shredded muscle fibers with a trembling finger. He felt no pain. Felt nothing at all.
He remembered what he’d seen back at the tent. What had sent him screaming into the night, frightened in a way he hadn’t been since he was a child. Bellview, hunched over Cobb, holding the big buck knife in one hand, a slab hacked from Cobbie’s gut in the other, his chin, cheeks and teeth stained with blood and gristle. He turned to regard Ned, calm as a bow hunter preparing to launch an arrow at a whitetail. But it wasn’t Bellview. Oh, it looked like him, and that was sure as shit Belleview’s big-ass blade in his hand, but Bellview, like Elvis, had left the building. What remained in his place worked his jaws, chewing a mouthful of human flesh. Cobbie, drenched in a spreading pool of blood, looked like he was in the process of being field-dressed. Even wide-open like that, he wasn’t ready to give up the fight. Ned remembered him fumbling around, probably reaching for his Winchester. It had been so hideous, so repugnant.
Had been, at least.
Ned closed on the tent with a hunter’s grace, then lunged through the flap, grabbing hold of the scantily-clad girl and wrenching her from her boyfriend’s embrace. For the second time in less than an hour, the night was filled with shrieks of terror and anguish. Ned ignored them. All he cared about was his hunger. The need to satisfy it overwhelming.
The startled boy grabbed for him, but Ned tossed him aside with a strength he didn’t know he possessed. The girl continued to howl, her firm breasts heaving as she struggled to get free. Now, lips parting and teeth bared, ready to tear her to pieces, Ned was able to put a name to what he’d scented earlier.
Life. Hot, pulsing life, coursing through her veins and beating wildly in her chest.
Ned bit down. Gnashed his teeth until molar touched molar. Coppery blood washed down his gullet. He shut his eyes, savoring her taste. Sweet, red meat.
A pair of shadows materialized at the edge of the clearing. One carried a bloody buck knife, a gaping hole in his right side. Ned saw where the shotgun blast had erased all traces of Bellview’s diseased liver. Cobbie approached, something foul dangling from the wound in his gut. Ned held out the shrieking girl, and smiled.
He hadn’t abandoned his friends after all. They were here together, reveling in the spoils of a successful hunt. He thrust the blubbering doe into Bellview’s outstretched arms.
The man hadn’t looked so good in months.
And still, there remained a buck for the taking.
WALKERS
We were camped out again, this time on a bluff overlooking a small box canyon. According to Franco, the locals referred to it as The ‘Sistine Cesspool.’ One look was all you needed to understand why. It wasn't much of a canyon. Narrow, with shallow walls and the overhang we’d staked claim to. During rainy season, the small tributary where we’d filled our canteens would flood it, carrying all sorts of flotsam dumped into it from the small towns to the North. The canyon walls were smeared with a greasy, brown sludge. It looked like a child had been finger-painting with residue from his diaper. Right now, though, the cesspool was dry, and there were no more locals to speak of.
Best I could tell, we were about 18 miles south of a little shantytown whose name I couldn't remember and didn't want to. Benny, one of Franco's ex-Federale cohorts, had pushed our tiny caravan there in the hopes we’d be able to scrounge some supplies. It hadn't worked out that way. Since Dallas, nothing had.
We hit the run-down village about two, praying the heat would keep the dead at bay long enough for us to salvage anything worthwhile, and to see if anybody had made it. I wasn’t holding out much hope. Hope hadn't been easy to come by the past eight days.
Nine of us had gone on the raid, packed like sardines into Ernesto's suburban. We were armed to the teeth, passing around a flask of liquid courage as we barreled over an unpaved two-track. The stench of rot and waste hit us long before we reached town. I knew without having to get out that nobody had survived.
We moved on Benny's signal, the engine grumbling, the noisy shocks squealing as we piled out. Benny eyeballed our surroundings before taking a few tentative steps towards a boarded-up storefront, shotgun at the ready. On his hip rode a large caliber Colt. Across his chest, a pair of bandoliers held enough ammo to lay waste to anything that might get in his way. Behind the wheel, Westfield kept one hand on the gearshift. The other fondled the stock of an Uzi submachine gun tucked into a handmade door holster. I’d seen Westfield draw the Uzi once already. The door mount may have been c
rude, but it was efficient. Franco was alive largely due to Westfield's ingenuity. Nestor, though… Well, he hadn’t been so lucky.
Benny whistled, short and harsh. It rasped out across dry lips and dry pavement, echoing through dry alleys. We fanned out in a semi-circle, eight foot spread, a rag-tag group of foot soldiers without an army or commander.
Or rather, without direction. There was no doubt, in those first few days after Greg and I had linked up with Westfield and his motley group, that Westfield was in charge. Even Franco, who had been in a position of authority before going AWOL from the Federales, had ceded power to the former mercenary. According to Westfield, he’d done work in the Balkans and South America, and I had no reason to doubt him. Your typical eat-steel and shit-nails soldier for hire, he was leather-skinned and deceptively muscular, like a couple of guys I knew who’d been to Iraq. Special Forces guys. Bad-ass motherfuckers. Clothed, he didn’t look like much, thin and wiry. But when he took off his shirt to grab a shower, you could see he was raw muscle and sinew, the kind of guy fat was afraid of.
I didn't hate Westfield. Not then, at least. Not after he’d bailed out Franco in Caberas three days earlier. Not that Westfield—the one who’d launched himself out of the Suburban with the Uzi practically jumping into his hand, eyes so focused he could’ve beaten a man with no eyelids in a staring contest. The Westfield who’d been spraying short, accurate bursts from the Uzi all around Franco, who was reeling, staggering back in retreat, his own machine pistol jammed and no fewer than eight walking corpses intent on turning him into human refried beans.
"Down!" Westfield barked, and Franco had fallen to the ground without hesitation. It took Westfield only seconds to send this group of walkers back into the hereafter, their heads turned into flying pulp. He hadn’t missed a shot, triple-tapping each one in the skull, destroying the nerve centers that controlled the things.
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