“Rocks... and clumps of dirt.”
Seconds later, more rocks fell from the sky, striking the road, the sidewalks and parked cars, breaking windows, spider-webbing windshields. Car alarms began to wail. Smaller stones pinged off the hood and roof of the Impala, while others rattled around in the wheel wells. As Dean took the second right he slammed on the brakes. The Impala pulled up several feet in front of a huge sinkhole blocking both lanes of residential traffic. A gray Ford minivan had rolled onto its side in the hole.
Shifting into reverse, Dean backed up a hundred feet, and swerved under the protective canopy of a large tree. Considering the fate of Max Barnes, he hoped it was a safe location.
“It’s not far,” he said. “Gotta hoof it.”
“You bring hardhats this time?”
“Something better,” Dean said as he climbed out of the Impala. With his forearm shielding his head, he jogged up a curved driveway to a two-door garage and took the molded plastic lids off two trashcans. As he handed the spare to Sam, he received a skeptical look in return.
“Better than hardhats?”
“More coverage,” Dean said.
“If you say so.”
With the makeshift shields over their heads, they ran along the sidewalk past the large sinkhole. Rocks occasionally thudded against the plastic lids which, for the most part, protected them from what would have been nasty scalp lacerations, if not fractured skulls. The lids weren’t foolproof, though. One rock hit Sam’s shoulder and another clipped Dean’s knee.
Dean took the first left and halted so suddenly Sam almost bowled him over. Stunned, they stared at the extent of the damage without comment. Two of the houses on adjoining one acre lots looked as if a wrecking ball had been hammering them all day. Porticos toppled, front walls destroyed, chimneys crumbled in ruins, interior rooms exposed to the night, walls leaning at untenable angles, on the verge of collapse. Dean might have blamed the tornado or earthquake activity, but the sinkhole they’d almost fallen into had the signature of one particular dreamer.
In nearby houses, neighbors pressed frightened faces to their windows but stayed indoors to avoid the falling rocks. Their houses were havens, but for how long? If the sinkholes spread, the police would need to evacuate the whole development. Scratch that. They’d better evacuate everyone regardless.
“Which one’s Sophie’s house?” Sam asked.
“The one on the left,” Dean said.
As he spoke, he heard a woman’s voice calling for help.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Dean ran across the street with Sam on his heels. The house on the right creaked and groaned, shifting toward the left, minutes from collapsing. From behind that house, a father, mother and two young children emerged. They were all in pajamas, the children, a boy and a girl, crying softly as their parents held them close.
“That’s Sophie Bessette’s house,” the mother said pointing. “She’s trapped inside.”
“I know,” Dean said. He handed the woman his trashcan lid while Sam passed his to the father. “Use those. Find cover. Under a tree. Or inside a neighbor’s house.”
As if to emphasize Dean’s warning, a series of rocks pelted the second-story roof of the family’s house, bounced and dropped with thuds onto the front lawn. Looking as if they were trying to evade sniper fire, the family sprinted for the nearest tree.
Edging past the collapsed portico, Dean tried the front door of Sophie’s house, but it was jammed in the twisted frame. First-floor windows to the right had shattered, looking like hungry maws with crystal teeth. Dean took out his handgun and ran the barrel along the edges of the window frame, clearing away the jagged glass.
Entering the development from the side opposite the sinkhole, a police cruiser rolled up, lights flashing. Senior Patrol Officer Carleen Phillips jogged across the front lawn, holding up a hand.
“Wait! I’ve called for fire and rescue units.”
Another patrol officer Dean hadn’t met joined her, hand poised on the hilt of his gun, as if he thought shooting someone might improve the situation.
The house on the right creaked again. Then a boom sounded, as if a joist had split in half.
The creaking intensified.
“No time,” Dean said. “Woman trapped inside.”
“We have gas lines here,” Phillips said. “These houses could blow.”
“This whole block’s in danger,” Sam said. “You need to evacuate everyone.”
“Probably a good idea,” Phillips said. She flinched as a rock dropped inches from her face. “C’mon, Callahan. Let’s go knock on some doors.”
Dean ducked through the window and found himself inside a house that looked as if a giant’s hand was in the process of crushing it. The walls were split, wood bursting through drywall. The hardwood floor had buckled upward in some places, sagged in others. In the middle of the living room, a hole had opened up and swallowed a coffee table and an entertainment center.
“Sophie!” he shouted.
“Upstairs,” she yelled. “I’m stuck.”
Dean mounted the staircase carefully. The banister railing was split in two places and several steps and risers had shattered from lateral pressure. He skipped those that looked unable to bear any weight.
Sam climbed through the window after him and looked around.
The house trembled and support beams groaned. The ceiling above the living room had sagged, raining bits of debris down in a hazy dust cloud that made breathing difficult.
“Dean, this place is right over a sinkhole,” Sam said.
“I noticed,” Dean said. “Warn me if anything... bad happens.”
“Like a natural gas explosion?”
“Yeah. Like that.”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
If the downstairs looked bad, the upstairs was worse. Dean found Sophie lying on her side in a doorway. The door had shattered into several pieces and was wedged into the collapsing doorjamb, pinning Sophie’s ankle even as it propped up the weight that would otherwise come crashing down on top of her.
“You came,” she said, the look of relief on her face palpable.
“You called,” Dean said. Her white blouse was smeared with dust and dirt but not blood. “Hurt anywhere? Besides the ankle.”
“Don’t think so,” she said. “Are you here to amputate my foot?”
“I’d like to avoid that if possible.”
“Makes two of us.”
“But we don’t have time to wait for the Jaws of Life to pry you out of there.”
“Suppose not.”
“Do you have a golf club?”
“No.”
Dean called down the stairs. “Sam, we need a crowbar!”
“I have a baseball bat,” Sophie said.
“Baseball?”
“For protection,” she said. “I dislike guns.”
“Might work,” Dean said.
A few seconds later he’d navigated the distorted perspective of her twisted bedroom and retrieved the baseball bat from her closet. He worked the thin end of the bat under a gap near where her ankle was trapped.
“On three, I want you to pull your foot out. Move as far from this doorway as you can. And cover your face.”
“Pull, move, cover,” she said. “Got it.”
“One... two... three!”
Dean pressed upward, pushing a section of the doorway up. For a second, the pressure on Sophie’s bloody ankle was released and she scrambled out of the way. Pieces of the shattered door cracked and split and vanished under the collapsing wall. A loud rumble filled the house and the wall continued to twist and fall. The floor beneath them began to heave like the deck of a storm-tossed ship.
“We gotta move!” Dean cried.
He grabbed Sophie’s hand, pulled her up, and helped her to the top of the stairs. The banister railing was gone and the stairs had tilted at a thirty-degree angle. All around them wood cracked and split, window glass crashed, drywall broke and shattered
, creating more plumes of suffocating dust.
“C’mon!” Dean encouraged Sophie.
Dean helped support the limping Sophie along the twisting staircase. It was like running along a rotating balance beam. The living-room sofa had fallen lengthwise into the expanding sinkhole. A series of crashes sounded from the back of the house. Dean guessed the kitchen cabinets had opened and disgorged their contents. They both fell on the stairs, but continued to scramble down, on hands and knees, and finally reached the bottom where Sam waited, holding a crowbar. Dean was about to help Sophie through the slowly collapsing broken window, when Sam caught his arm.
“Wait,” he said and wedged the crowbar in the window. “This should buy us a few seconds.”
Sophie slipped through first, then Dean, and finally Sam. He yanked the crowbar out and jumped back as the window frame disintegrated under the weight of the wall. They raced away from the ruined house, Sophie favoring her ankle.
“Looks like the rocks have stopped falling,” Sam commented.
Lights flashing, a fire truck arrived, tooting its horn. A steady stream of cars flowed around the emergency vehicles as Phillips and Callahan routed them away from the huge sinkhole.
The house next to Sophie’s shifted too far off center and large sections splintered and broke away, until the left side was a shattered ruin. Light flashed and an explosion roared, engulfing both homes. The concussion wave shattered windows in adjacent houses and blasted debris into the street, pelting cars and emergency vehicles. Callahan and Phillips dropped to the ground defensively.
Dean, Sam, and Sophie staggered from the force of the explosion. Waves of heat flashed over them, instantly evaporating perspiration. Chunks of burning wood and charred bricks and siding fell much too close for comfort. As they jogged to the Impala, Dean’s ears were ringing. Felt like he had earplugs stuffed in both ears. In the distance, another explosion lit the night sky and the ground trembled.
The tree above the Impala was leaning over the street, some of its branches low enough to brush the roof of the car. Roots on the far side of the tree had risen up between broken slabs of sidewalk. They jumped in the car and Dean swung it around in a sweeping 180-degree turn to exit the development before the rest of the street dropped out from under them.
“My house,” Sophie said from the backseat, her voice a soft monotone. “My home... is gone.”
“You’re alive,” Dean said.
“Am I? This feels like a dream.”
“It’s somebody’s dream,” Sam said. “But not yours.”
Sam’s cell phone rang.
“Jeffries,” he told Dean and took the call. “Okay. We’re on our way.”
“What now?” Dean asked after Sam ended the call.
“Nazi zombies are back.”
The one who dreamed of the collapsing underground would never dream again.
Old before she first claimed him, he had little more to give her. She left his withered remains and moved to the next victim in her familiar path. This one was young, with enough vital energy to feed her for days before expiring. She slipped into his home, as insubstantial as an errant breeze, and flowed into his room, nudging him toward sleep so she could slip into his fertile subconscious...
Trevor Deetz hunched over the student desk in his bedroom. His mom had warned him not to wait until the last minute again to work on his latest project, a World War II book report due Monday morning. Peeved, he had retreated to his bedroom and slammed his door. Fine. He would finish the damn thing before Sunday morning even if he stayed awake all night to complete it. Then maybe she’d get off his freakin’ case for once.
Unfortunately, the reading assignment was a boring book written by some old geezer with a fondness for dates and statistics that made Trevor roll his eyes. Instead of finishing the book, he sat hunched over his desk reading the end of the Hitler’s Zombie Force graphic novel. Now this guy knew how to tell a story. The Allies were winning the war, so a desperate Hitler decided to zombify his entire army. Any soldier unwilling to make the undead sacrifice for the Fatherland was summarily shot.
More Nazi zombies than ever, he thought. How cool is that?
Despite the rising excitement in the final pages of the graphic novel, Trevor couldn’t help yawning. He closed his eyes and rested his head on the desk, falling asleep in seconds.
TWENTY-NINE
Dean followed Bell Street eastward with a sense of déjà vu, passing the intersection where they’d witnessed a pack of Velociraptors hunt a Honda Civic driven by Paul Hanes. The downed utility pole had been patched to restore the lines but was still a repair in progress. And when Dean turned onto Arcadia Boulevard, he once again saw police cars in the middle of the street and Nazi zombies looking for meals on legs. A full block short of the nearest zombie, Dean swung the Impala onto the shoulder of the road to allow enough time to raid the trunk of the car for extra ammo.
Twisting around to face Sophie in the back seat, Dean said, “Stay in the car. Lock the doors.”
“My ankle has swelled like a balloon,” she said. “Don’t think I’m going anywhere under my own power.”
“Just as well,” Sam said. “This will get messy.”
As Dean and Sam circled to the back of the Impala, Sophie double-checked the locks. Inside the trunk, Dean opened a case with spare magazines for their guns and handed two to Sam, taking two more for himself. In the distance, he heard the staccato pops of gunshots mingled with hysterical screams.
They ran south along Arcadia. Dean tracked left and right for concealed zombies. He didn’t want a repeat of his last close encounter. Behind a chalk-smeared sandwich board, a young Nazi officer in a white summer tunic turned toward them, staggering into their path. A loop of intestines dangled from a nasty abdominal wound. Dean raised his arm, braced his hand and put a round through the zombie’s forehead.
Adding to the chaos, several people slipped out of stores and restaurants, yelling and screaming as they raced away from the undead abominations. A shrieking woman picked up her young, crying daughter and lumbered awkwardly down the street on a broken heel. An overweight man wearing a business suit and gripping a briefcase in both hands tripped and fell, breaking the briefcase and barely managing to escape from a zombie soldier’s clutching fingers. The man scrambled away on hands and knees until he could regain his feet and flee. Papers fluttered in his wake.
In the middle of the street, an older field marshal in a fulllength leather trench coat spotted them and lumbered into their path. Sam drilled a round through his eye.
“Dean,” Sam said. “These aren’t just Nazi zombies...”
Dean nodded. “They’re the same Nazi zombies we already killed.”
“Regenerated,” Sam said. “Like the Charger each night.”
“Night hag’s playing her golden oldies.”
“Until she burns out the dreamer.”
Three soldiers in green helmets and uniforms rose from behind the cover of an open police-cruiser door with blood and gobbets of flesh dripping from their cracked and jagged teeth. Dean shot one under the chin. Sam caught the other two with headshots. As they passed the police cruiser, they stopped. The zombies hadn’t taken cover behind the cruiser. They had been feeding.
The ravaged body of Darren Nash, the portly Fremont Ledger reporter who’d been interviewing people in C.J.’s Diner, lay sprawled on the ground, missing half his throat and large portions of his upper arms and thighs. One of his eyes was missing, along with part of his cheek. The other eye stared lifelessly into the night sky. His notebook, now spattered with drops of blood, was clutched in his hand. Several pages flapped in the breeze, flashing the details of a story he hadn’t lived to tell.
“I did not need to see that,” Dean said and turned away from the corpse.
“Wait a minute, Dean,” Sam said, catching his brother’s arm.
Dean looked back. “What—?”
Then he saw.
The fingers of the empty hand twitched. Then the hea
d lolled to the side. The remaining eye moved slowly in its socket until it located them. Moaning, the reporter pushed himself up with his bloody arms and slowly climbed to his feet. His head hung to the side from his ruined throat. Uttering a wet grunt, he staggered one step toward Dean, then another, reaching out with straining fingers.
“Seriously?”
“Perception is—”
“Reality,” Dean said. “Yeah, I know.”
He aimed his gun, the end of the barrel less than a yard from the man’s forehead. Without a second thought, he pulled the trigger, blasting half the reporter’s brain and the back of his skull from his head.
“Hey! They shot Nash!” a voice called.
Dean turned.
A Hispanic Colorado State Patrol officer pointed from him to Sam with the barrel of his gun.
“Drop your weapons!” he commanded.
“They’re FBI, Valdez,” Officer Wild said. “Watch—!”
“Look out!” Sam called.
Valdez turned around and stood face to face with a ravenous SS officer in a black uniform, peaked cap, and swastika armband. They stood too close together for the others to take a clear shot. The state cop shoved his firearm into the gut of the Nazi zombie and fired round after round to no effect. The zombie ignored the abdominal wounds and ripped a chunk out of Valdez’s throat. Blood sprayed from a torn artery but Valdez continued firing until he exhausted his magazine. The zombie clutched Valdez by the shoulders and continued to tear into his flesh, even as his own midsection separated above his hips, his legs falling sideways. The upper torso of the zombie rode the state cop to the ground, continuing to eat long after the light had faded from Valdez’s eyes.
Officer Cerasi, gun drawn, ran up beside Wild and looked down.
“Oh, God...”
Spinning away he bent over and vomited.
Wild walked up to the feeding zombie, aimed her weapon at the back of his head, but averted her gaze from Valdez’s remains as she pulled the trigger.
Supernatural: Night Terror Page 25
