Dean and Sam joined the cops.
“Now, Valdez,” Dean said. “Or he’ll come back as one of them.”
“I—I can’t...” she said and turned away from them.
Dean looked down at the bloody state cop, lying beneath the truly dead zombie’s torso. His eyes were wide open and unblinking.
“Poor bastard,” Dean said and took the shot.
More screams sounded, coming from a nearby Italian restaurant, one they had already passed, Mama Ferracci’s. Sam cast a grim look at Dean.
“The zombies are inside!” he called, running toward the restaurant.
Two bodies crashed through the plate-glass window, a Clayton Falls man, wrestling with a Nazi soldier whose jaw snapped repeatedly so hard they could hear the teeth striking each other from fifteen feet away. The soldier’s hand had clawed the man’s face, but so far he’d managed to hold the snapping teeth at bay with a firm grip on the soldier’s hair. If the soldier noticed or cared that his scalp was slowly tearing away, he showed no sign of it.
Sam strode forward and swung his booted foot at the soldier’s head, connecting just under the jaw and elevating the zombie’s torso enough to get off a clean shot through his temple. He looked down at the relieved restaurant patron.
“Were you bit?” he demanded.
The man climbed hastily to his feet, ran his hands over his arms, and gingerly touched his face and neck.
“No. No, I don’t think so. Scratched. Not bit.”
“You’re lucky,” Dean said. “Now go home.”
“My wife,” the man said. “She went to the restroom before those... those things appeared out of nowhere. She’s still in the restaurant.”
“We’ll handle it,” Sam said.
When Dean and Sam entered Mama Ferracci’s, they saw the problem. A dozen patrons were trapped in the back corner of the place, surrounded by at least as many zombies. Some civilians cowered against the wall, backs turned, whimpering in fear while another yelled hysterically for somebody to please God do something. But a few diners held chairs up, like lion tamers in a circus, jabbing the chair legs at the zombies each time they tried to grab somebody. Because the zombies were impervious to pain, they took the abuse and continued to edge closer to their intended victims.
Wild and a few other cops entered the restaurant behind the Winchesters and took in the situation.
“More than last time,” Wild observed.
“Head shots,” Dean said for the benefit of the new cops.
“Not as easy as it sounds,” Sam said softly to Dean.
The difficulty was that the restaurant patrons were behind the zombies. One miss or a through-and-through shot and they would kill or maim innocent people.
“Guess we get up close and personal,” Dean said.
He crossed the restaurant with Sam beside him. The cops followed, spreading out to avoid friendly fire, and seemingly reluctant to tangle with zombies.
Dean grabbed the first zombie soldier by the collar and yanked him backward. At his side, Sam had a clean line of fire and took it, splattering zombie brains over a watercolor map of Italy. Then Sam pulled back the zombie closest to him, and Dean took the shot from the opposite direction.
When Dean killed a third soldier, he saw a young officer in a white tunic. Dean spun the man around.
“No!”
Sam saw it too.
The loop of intestine hanging from the abdominal wound.
“Same damn zombie we killed outside!”
Dean shoved the white-clad officer onto a round table draped in a red-and-white checkered tablecloth, and shot him in the brain stem.
“You know what this means,” Sam said.
“Running on a friggin’ treadmill,” Dean responded.
The Winchesters backed away from the zombies. Dean turned to Officer Wild.
“You know what to do?”
She nodded. But instead of grabbing a zombie, she removed the extendible baton from her belt and snapped it open. Stepping forward, she whipped it across the head of the nearest zombie, the graying field marshal with the fulllength leather trench coat. The old man staggered sideways, but she’d commanded his attention. Turning to face her, he bore down on her, arms raised to grab her even as he opened his hungry maw to bite.
Cerasi moved to the side, mirroring the Winchesters’ technique, and blew the field marshal’s brains out. The other cops took out their batons and joined the fight. With the situation basically in hand, the Winchesters retreated to the front of the restaurant.
“They’re regenerating minutes after we kill them,” Dean said.. “She’s playing with us.”
“We waste time attacking the symptoms,” Sam added, “not the cause.”
They heard more screaming outside and ran back into the street. Dean looked south and north for the source of the cry. His eyes locked on a black-clad Nazi SS officer standing hunched over beside the Impala.
“No!” Dean yelled and sprinted to his car. “No!”
I’m too late, he realized with horror. Too late.
Sophie Bessette had been pulled through the broken side window and was thrashing in the SS officer’s arms, one of which looked broken in several places from punching it through the window. Behind the black-clad Nazi zombie, Sophie’s body was obscured. Dean hesitated, holding his gun extended at eye level, to make sure Sophie wouldn’t be in the line of fire. When he saw her head flop down near the zombie’s elbow, he fired a high shot, catching the undead officer in the back, between his hunched shoulder blades. The zombie straightened, twisted his head around to look back over his shoulder. Seeing the satisfied grin on the zombie’s face, with fresh blood staining his jagged teeth and dripping from his chin, Dean lost it.
Roaring in anger, Dean emptied his magazine, firing round after round into the zombie’s face until his magazine was empty. He ejected the spent magazine, slammed another into the grip, released the slide and continued to fire, so he could blast that evil grin all the way to hell.
With nothing much left above the stump of his neck, the zombie SS officer released his victim and swayed side to side. Lunging forward, Dean kicked the zombie in the chest, knocking him clear of Sophie’s prostrate form.
“No, no, no,” Dean whispered as he knelt beside her.
Gently, he turned her over—and flinched when he saw her white blouse soaked with blood. Her throat had been torn open, much of the flesh gone. Above and below her collarbone, chunks of flesh had been ripped out with such force that the clavicle itself was fractured in two places. Her dark, tousled hair was sticky and matted with blood. And her eyes were wide open, seemingly caught in a moment of terror or disbelief.
“Sophie, I’m...” Dean looked away, unable to face that accusatory stare. “I’m so sorry.”
Dean eased her body to the ground, stood up and backed away.
“Dean...” Sam was beside him.
“Sammy, I can’t... I can’t, man.”
Dean turned his back.
Sam understood. Dean heard his boot scuff against the asphalt as he took a step toward Sophie’s body. Squeezing his eyes shut, Dean waited for the sound, anticipated the sound, but the sudden crack still felt like a body blow.
“It’s done,” Sam said.
His hand fell on Dean’s shoulder and he squeezed.
“Dean, we will kill this night hag bitch,” Sam said. “Promise.”
Dean nodded. He took a tarp from the trunk and laid it over her body, while steadfastly averting his gaze from her face. When he returned to the driver’s side of the Impala, he heard a low menacing growl. Stepping to the side, he spotted the large gray wolf crouched behind the car, its snout curled back to reveal impressive fangs in a foaming mouth.
“Don’t even think about it,” Dean muttered. He pulled his gun and fired a round right between its glowing amber eyes. The wolf dropped to the ground and vanished. Other wolves approached from the left and right, slinking out from the shadows between the commercial buildings on Arc
adia.
With Sam covering the west side of the street and Dean taking the east, they brought down the wolves, one after another. To kill the wolves head shots were a luxury not a necessity. But Dean had the idea that a wounded and incapacitated rabid wolf might be better than a dead one.
“If they’re not dead, maybe they won’t regenerate,” he pointed out.
The dead ones vanished. But tonight, the truly dead zombie corpses weren’t disappearing as they had the previous night. The zombie manifestations were stronger somehow, having a permanence the wolves lacked. So far.
When an ambulance rushed down the street, Dean flagged the driver down by waving his FBI credentials and led one of the paramedics to Sophie’s body.
“Take care of her,” he instructed.
“But she’s already...”
Sam caught the man’s arm and whispered fiercely, “Get her out of the street before the wolves get her.”
The man looked down at Sam’s hand gripping his arm, and the gun held in a white-knuckled grip in the other and nodded. “Sure. No problem.”
“Good,” Sam said.
Dean drove in silence back to the diner, jaw clenched, hands tight on the steering wheel.
No more chasing symptoms, he thought. We will find you and end you.
THIRTY
The life energy of the fourteen-year-old boy flowed into the nocnitsa.
While Trevor Deetz slept hunched over his desk, she perched on his back and shoulders, like a bird of prey. But instead of plucking his eyes from their sockets, she wrapped the elongated fingers of her hands around his forehead and snatched the nightmare images from his mind and gave them shape in the real world. And all the while, his energy flowed into her, giving her shadowy body form and substance and heightening her powers. Those within her sphere of influence, which encompassed the whole town, bled fear into the air. Their night terror would take shape and plague them, a vicious circle of darkness from which none would escape. Soon she wouldn’t need to feed directly from them to become more powerful. She would reach into any mind she chose and unspool the darkness within. Their power would flow to her, first one-to-one and then many-to-one, until only shriveled husks remained.
As she absorbed more power from the boy, his body trembled beneath her gripping hands and feet, resisting the draw—and failing. In a few moments his legs jittered up and down and his head bucked, thumping repeatedly against the books and papers piled on his desk. His mind was attempting to throw off the psychic yoke, to rouse him from the dream state which fed her, but she was too powerful now and the energy was so delicious...
Sam watched Dean behind the wheel out of the corner of his eye. His brother hadn’t known Sophie Bessette long, but he was taking her loss hard. He knew that Dean felt guilty, that he felt he’d broken his promise to keep her safe. Couple that with abandoning the zombie battle and having no idea how to locate the nocnitsa and the night was adding up to one big loss. But they had no choice but to leave. The battle couldn’t be won because the deck was stacked against them. Sooner or later they would fall to the regenerating zombies and the war would be lost as well. The only way to win the night was to attack the night hag directly.
As they neared the diner, several fire trucks roared past, horns blaring and emergency lights pulsing, followed by two ambulances with wailing sirens. Judging from the names on the sides of the emergency vehicles, assistance was arriving from nearby towns. No matter which direction Sam looked, he could spot one or two house fires burning. In light of the garment factory tragedy and its human cost, Sam imagined a lot of the town’s residents had nightmares about fire.
The parking lot of C.J.’s Diner was at half capacity. Alarmed faces stared out the windows rather than at their plates or dining companions. Parked in the walking lane near the diner’s entrance was the police chief ’s cruiser. Sam guessed the man was checking on his daughter and couldn’t blame him. The rhythmic thumping of helicopters reached a crescendo overhead then faded as they angled toward distant fires and their blinking lights receded in the night sky.
“Medical choppers,” Sam noted.
“Or press,” Dean said cynically.
Dean paused on the metal stairs leading up to the diner’s front entrance and pointed downward. Sam looked and saw the spots. Blood.
They entered the diner and angled toward the booth where they’d left Lucy Quinn. Sitting opposite her was Millie, the police receptionist and a distinguished-looking man with silvering hair, wearing a white dress shirt under a charcoalgray suit jacket.
“Is that...?”
“Dr. Gruesome,” Dean said. “Cleans up well.”
Standing in front of the booth, cradling his left arm, Chief Quinn was talking urgently to his daughter. When Sam reached the man’s side, he saw the problem with his arm and indicated the wound to Dean with a slight nod of his head.
The dark sleeve of the chief ’s uniform shirt was torn to shreds at the forearm and soaked with blood. Through the gaps in the cloth, Sam saw the man’s flesh had been ravaged by deep, jagged lacerations.
Bite wounds.
“What happened?” Sam asked.
From the dark look Dean gave him, Sam knew he was wondering which of them would have to put the chief down before he became one of the undead.
“Wolf bit me,” Quinn said. “Right outside the municipal building. I put it down, but not before he took a chunk out of my arm and nearly knocked me senseless.”
“You’ll need rabies shots,” Dean said, relief in his voice.
“I’ll have its brain tissue tested.”
“Did you wound it or kill it?”
“Gut shot,” Quinn said. “If it wasn’t dead when I left, it is now.”
“The dead wolves vanish,” Dean said. “Nothing to test. Besides, testing would be a waste of time. They’re all rabid.”
“You’ve seen more of these wolves?”
“Killed or maimed seven on Arcadia,” Sam said. “All rabid.”
“How can you know?”
“Because,” Jozef Wieczorek said, “I’ve seen the movie.”
“You too?” Chief Quinn asked Wieczorek, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Dad, whether you want to believe it or not,” Lucy said, impatiently. “Weird stuff is really happening.”
“I don’t know how any of this is happening,” Quinn said. “But I know when I need help. I’ve asked the governor to mobilize the National Guard.”
“How long?” Sam asked.
“Day. Maybe two.”
Sam exchanged a look with Dean. Not soon enough.
Quinn squeezed Lucy’s shoulder with his good hand and kissed her on the cheek.
“Stay here,” he said. “You need an escort home, call me.”
“Okay, Dad. Be careful.”
Chief Quinn nodded gravely to Sam and Dean, almost as if he were putting his daughter in their care, and walked toward the exit.
“Rabies shots!” Dean called after him.
Quinn nodded before he left. One way or another, the man would get treated for rabies. If the animal isn’t caught and tested, you get the shots as soon as possible, because the prospect of contracting rabies is too terrible. Assuming he survived the night. Assuming the town survived the night. At the moment, the odds weren’t looking good.
THIRTY-ONE
“Okay,” Dean said. “What have you got?”
Lucy slid across the booth, making room for Dean and Sam to sit.
A large map of Clayton Falls covered the table. Red X marks with scribbled notations were scattered in a dozen locations. Millie had a stack of papers under her arm. Details of the emergency calls placed over the last two nights, Sam assumed.
“We went through Millie’s logs and put an X wherever something was reported,” Wieczorek said.
Millie nodded. “Plus, Wanda, the overnight dispatcher, has been calling us whenever she has a free minute with information on the calls coming in tonight.”
“What about the nam
es next to the X marks and incident descriptions?” Sam asked.
“That’s who called in the incident,” Lucy said.
Dean saw the problem. “We have the nightmares and the witnesses, but we don’t know who is having each nightmare.”
“That’s simple,” Betsy, the smiling server said as she stepped up to the table with a coffee pot in one hand and two mugs dangling from the other. Her ubiquitous smile had become frayed, more habit now than anything else, and her hands trembled. “Everybody’s having nightmares. That’s all anyone is talking about.” She placed the mugs down at the edge of the table, next to the map. “Normally, I’d offer decaff, but under the circumstances...”
“You know who is having nightmares?” Sam asked.
“Yes, mostly,” she said, slightly taken aback by Sam’s intensity.
“The type of nightmares?”
“If I haven’t heard directly, Clara or Paige from the morning shift or Jesse—”
“Grab a chair,” Sam said.
Betsy pursed her lips and shook her head. “I’m on duty.”
“C.J. won’t mind,” Dean said.
Lucy smiled. “There is no C.J. Those initials are from Charles Clayton and Jeremiah Falls, the town founders.”
“Whoever, then,” Dean said. “This is important.”
“Okay,” Betsy said. “I’ll do what I can.”
While she returned the coffee pot to the coffee station and grabbed a chair to bring to the table, Sam picked up the red marker.
“Let’s start with what we know.” He found Olga Kucharski’s house in the south section of town and circled it. “Olga Kucharski had dreams about the Charger and the Nightmare Theater monsters.”
“Others are watching Doc’s show,” Dean said. “We got wolves after she was drained.”
“But the night hag fed directly off Olga.”
“Fed? Eww,” Lucy said, tucking her chin down with a visible shudder.
“This night hag—a real monster—it’s bringing the nightmares to life?” Wieczorek asked.
“Yes,” Sam said. “I’ve seen it.”
“Incredible,” he said, shaking his head grimly.
Supernatural: Night Terror Page 26
