Undead

by John Russo

  “Well, I think we ought to stick right here and wait for a rescue party,” Harry said. “That fellow on the TV said if you’re few against many, you don’t have a chance—we can’t hike seventeen miles cross-country through that army of things out there…”

  “We don’t have to tramp,” Ben said. “My truck’s right outside the door.”

  This stopped Harry. There was a long moment of silence while the fact of the truck sank into everybody’s head.

  “But I’m just about out of gas,” Ben added. “There’s a couple of gas pumps by the shed out back, but they’re both locked up.”

  “The key ought to be around somewhere,” Tom said. “There’s a big key ring in the basement. I’ll go look.”

  In his enthusiasm, now that escape seemed to be a possibility, he bolted for the cellar door and scampered down the stairs.

  Ben turned to Harry. “Is there a fruit cellar down there?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “We’re gonna need lots of jars. We can make Molotov cocktails…scare those things back…then fight our way to the pump and gas up the truck.”

  “We’re gonna need kerosene, then,” Harry said. “There’s a jug of that in the basement, too.”

  Helen said, “Judy and I can help. We can rip up sheets and things.” Then she added, in a hushed tone, “I don’t think Barbara’s going to be much help at all.”

  “How do you know her name?” Ben asked, startled.

  “She was mumbling it in her sleep—something about her brother telling her over and over—Barbara, you’re afraid. It must have happened just before he died.”

  There was a sudden clatter, and Tom came up out of the cellar. “Here’s the key ring,” he said. “The pump key is marked with a piece of tape. I talked with Judy. She’s in favor of trying to escape.”

  “Good,” Ben said. “Then nothing’s holding us back. Anybody who’s got any second thoughts better decide now. If that’s the key for sure, we’re in good shape—but we should take a crowbar anyway, in case the key doesn’t work. The crowbar can double as a weapon for whoever goes with me. But I don’t want to get all the way out there and find out we can’t get the pump open.”

  “I’ll go,” Tom said. “You and me can fight our way to the pump. The women can stay in the cellar and take care of the kid. We should have a stretcher—Helen and Judy maybe can make one.”

  Ben turned to Harry and spoke sternly, emphasizing his words.

  “Harry, you’re gonna have to guard the upstairs. Once we unboard the front door, those things can get in here easily. But it has to stay unlocked, so me and Tom can get back in after we get back here with the truck. You’ve got to guard the door, and unlock it for us right away, ’cause we’ll probably come flying on the run with a bunch of those things coming right behind us. We’ll board the door up again as fast as we can once we’re safe inside the house. If we don’t get back, well, then you’ll be able to see from upstairs, and you can barricade the door again and go to the basement—you and the rest can sit tight and hope for a rescue party.”

  Facing Ben, Harry said, “I want the gun, then. It’s the best thing for me to use. You’re not going to have time to stop and aim—”

  Ben cut him off, in no uncertain terms.

  “I’m keeping this gun. Nobody else lays a hand on it. I found it, and it’s mine.”

  Harry said, “How do we know you and Tom won’t just get the truck gassed up and cut out?”

  Ben glowered, trying to control his anger. “That’s the chance you have to take,” he said evenly and forcefully. “If we cut out, you’ll have your goddamn basement—like you’ve been crying about all along.”

  “We’re going to die here,” Helen said, pleadingly, “if we don’t all work together.”

  Ben looked at her, sizing her up. He had pretty much decided she was not a coward, like her husband. He’d almost rather have her guarding the front door—but she was not nearly as strong as Harry, provided he did not chicken out.

  Ben addressed all of them, in commanding tones.

  “Let’s get busy. More of those things are coming to surround us all the time. And we’ve got a lot to do if we’re gonna bust out of here. If everything goes right, two or three hours from now we’ll be taking a hot shower in the Willard Hotel.”

  Nobody laughed.

  They separated, each to begin his or her assigned task.

  Ben turned the radio back on. It began repeating its recorded message. The time was approximately 11:30. One half-hour to go until midnight, when there would be another regular broadcast.

  It would come in the middle of their escape preparations. They could take time out to watch it on the television, in case it contained current information that might prove helpful.

  In the meantime, there was nothing to do…but to work hard…and to hope.

  CHAPTER 7

  Helen and Harry Cooper came down into the basement and found Judy watching over the sick girl, Karen, who now seemed a little delirious. She tossed and turned, and moaned softly now and then, as she lay on the makeshift worktable.

  “Has she asked for me?” Helen asked, intently. “Has she spoken at all?”

  Harry reached down and covered his daughter, where she had shaken off the coat that was covering her, in her delirium.

  “She’s been moaning and crying out constantly,” Judy said, her face showing her worry and concern for the child.

  “Poor baby!” Helen sighed, and she touched her hand to Karen’s forehead and felt the increase of fever.

  “Get another damp cloth,” Harry said. “I’m going to start making a stretcher. Judy, I’ll give you the box of fruit jars over there, and you take them up to Tom. He’ll have to come down here for the kerosene. We’re going to make Molotov cocktails.”

  The idea of making something like that seemed weird to Judy, like something she had seen but only vaguely understood, from the movies. She knew a Molotov cocktail was something that caught fire when you threw it at a tank, but she had no idea how to make one. But she stood waiting patiently while Harry dug out the old, dusty box of fruit jars and loaded it into her arms. It wasn’t heavy, but she was too loaded down to carry anything else.

  “You’ll have to send Tom back down for the kerosene,” Harry repeated. “Helen and I will take care of Karen and start making the stretcher. Tell Tom to bring us some old sheets or blankets.”

  Harry watched after her, as she climbed the stairs out of the cellar, as though she would be likely not to do it right if he didn’t watch her. “We’ll be damned lucky if we make it,” he said, turning to Helen. “It would be tough enough for half a dozen men to beat their way through those things.”

  Helen looked up from where she had been applying her dampened cloth to Karen’s forehead. She didn’t say anything to combat Harry’s pessimism; she merely trembled. As her eyes looked into the fever-tossed, agonized face of her young daughter, she caught her breath and almost did not dare to hope that they would make it.

  “Lord help us,” she mumbled, when her breath came to her again.

  Over by the workbench, Harry had begun pounding on something, in his effort to fashion a crude stretcher.

  CHAPTER 8

  Ben had returned to the vacant room, which contained the mutilated corpse of the old lady who had once lived there. The vacant room was the one that looked out onto the front lawn, and Harry would have to station himself there to toss Molotov cocktails from the window.

  Ben held his breath and tried not to look at the corpse, but he knew he had to get it out of the room. Seeing a thing like that was the very thing which was likely to spook Harry and bring his cowardice trembling to the surface—and then he would panic and run, and fail to do the job that was expected of him.

  The entire room smelled of the rotting corpse, which had been closed in there for a couple of hours. Ben had to step into the hall for a while, to allow the room to air out. He went into the bathroom and lifted the window an inch or two, and suc
ked cold night air into his nostrils—but the scent of the dead things outside came to him faintly, mingled with the normal odors of dampness and freshly cut grass and plowed fields. The man closed the bathroom window and returned to the room which he hated to enter.

  He began dragging the corpse out into the hallway and toward the child’s room across the hall. On its blood-crusted carpet, it slid along fairly easily on the bare floor, but when it reached the rug in the child’s room, it balked and was harder to drag. Ben grunted, gagged with the stench of a lungful of the dead woman’s odor, and with a desperate heave got it into the room, near the bunk bed, stepped over it quickly to get out of there, and slammed the door.

  Again, he went to the bathroom and opened the window enough to suck in “fresh” air.

  When he returned to the vacant room, it still smelled bad, but not as bad as before. He went to the window, taking pains to keep his body pressed close against the wall, where he could not be seen very easily. With his hand, he rubbed a clean spot on the dirty, uncurtained window.

  There were now at least thirty of the things standing down there on the front lawn. And, in the fields beyond, several more could be seen, making their way toward the house.

  CHAPTER 9

  Barbara was sitting up, by the fire. She had a morose, almost vacant, expression on her face, as though she no longer cared whether she lived or died.

  In the corner of the room that had once been the dining area, Tom and Judy were making Molotov cocktails. Judy was using a pair of scissors to cut up an old bedsheet into strips, while Tom was filling the fruit jars with kerosene from a can. Then, together, they began soaking the cloth strips in kerosene in the bottom of a dish and forcing these makeshift fuses through holes which Tom had cut in the caps of the jars.

  They worked silently for a long time, but when Judy looked over at Barbara, sitting so inert and morbid on the sofa, with the fire flickering in her face, she felt a need to make conversation—to relieve the silence.

  “Tom…do you think we’re doing the right thing?” she asked suddenly, looking up from her task with the fuses. She stared at her hands, with the odor of kerosene coming off them.

  Tom looked at her and smiled, tensely but reassuringly. “Sure, honey. I don’t think we have a chance if we stay here. There are more and more of those things all the time. The television broadcast advised anyone who was in a situation like ours to try to escape.”

  “But—what about the rescue parties?”

  “We can’t take a chance on waiting. Nobody might ever come to help us. Think how many people must be trapped, like we are.”

  Judy fell silent as she returned to her task with the fuses.

  “I think we’re going to make it,” Tom said. “We’re not all that far from the gas pumps. And Ben said he beat down three of those things before. And now we have the gun.”

  He looked at her intently, noticing the worried look on her face, which he had never before seen in the short time they had been going together.

  “But…why do you have to be the one to go out there?” she said finally.

  “Honey, you’re talking like Harry Cooper now. Somebody has to go. We can’t just sit here and wait for those things to kill us. Besides, we’re gonna be all right—you wait and see. We’re gonna make it.”

  She leaned forward and put her arms around him, awkwardly, trying to touch him with her kerosened hands.

  About to kiss, they were startled by the loud sound of Harry’s footsteps, coming up out of the basement. A tense look on his face, he entered the room and said angrily, “What’s the matter? Doesn’t anybody keep their head around here? It’s almost time for another broadcast.”

  “Five more minutes,” Tom said, looking at his wristwatch.

  “Well, we’ve got to get the damned thing warmed up,” Harry said, and he stepped over to the television and turned it on just as Ben came down from the upstairs.

  “What’s going on?” Ben said.

  “Another broadcast,” Tom answered, and to show Ben he had not been loafing he continued working with the fuses, dipping them and forcing them into the bottles.

  Ben moved over to Barbara and looked at her, shaking his head sadly.

  “Goddamn this television,” Harry said. “It takes half a century to warm up. We could all die waiting for it.”

  He nervously struck a match and lit a cigarette, while the picture tube began to glow and the sound came on.

  “We’ve got to get that girl down into the basement,” Harry added, with a glance in Barbara’s direction. “She’s no good to herself or anyone else up here.”

  Nobody made a reply to Harry’s comment, and they all fell silent as the news broadcast came on. It was a different commentator, but the newsroom was the same, with its multitude of clocks on the wall showing what time it was in various parts of the nation, and its background of ticker-tape sounds and blurred human voices.

  “GOOD EVENING, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. IT IS NOW MIDNIGHT, EASTERN TIME. THIS IS YOUR CIVIL DEFENSE NETWORK, WITH REPORTS EVERY HOUR ON THE HOUR FOR THE DURATION OF THIS…EMERGENCY. STAY TUNED TO THIS WAVELENGTH FOR SURVIVAL INFORMATION.

  “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN…INCREDIBLE AS IT MAY SEEM…THE LATEST REPORT FROM THE PRESIDENT’S RESEARCH TEAM AT WALTER READE HOSPITAL CONFIRMS WHAT MANY OF US HAVE ACCEPTED AS FACT WITHOUT BOTHERING TO WAIT FOR OFFICIAL CONFIRMATION. THE ARMY OF AGGRESSORS WHICH HAS BESIEGED MANY OF THE EASTERN AND MIDWESTERN SECTIONS OF OUR COUNTRY IS MADE UP OF DEAD HUMAN BEINGS.”

  Judy shuddered as the announcer paused, allowing time for his statement to sink in. The expression on his face showed that he hardly believed it himself.

  “I didn’t need him to tell me that,” Ben said.

  “Quiet!” Harry yelled.

  “THE RECENTLY DEAD HAVE BEEN RETURNING TO LIFE AND FEASTING ON HUMAN FLESH. DEAD PEOPLE FROM MORGUES, HOSPITALS, FUNERAL PARLORS…AS WELL AS MANY OF THOSE KILLED DURING OR AS A RESULT OF THE CHAOS CREATED DURING THIS EMERGENCY…HAVE BEEN RETURNED TO LIFE IN A DEPRAVED, INCOMPLETE FORM…WITH AN URGE TO KILL OTHER HUMANS AND DEVOUR THEIR FLESH.

  “EXPLANATIONS FOR THE CAUSES OF THIS INCREDIBLE PHENOMENON HAVE NOT BEEN FORTHCOMING FROM THE WHITE HOUSE OR FROM POSITIONS OF AUTHORITY, BUT SPECULATION CENTERS ON THE RECENT VENUS PROBE, WHICH WAS UNSUCCESSFUL. THAT ROCKET SHIP, YOU REMEMBER, STARTED FOR VENUS MORE THAN A WEEK AGO—BUT NEVER GOT THERE. INSTEAD, IT RETURNED TO EARTH, CARRYING A MYSTERIOUS HIGH-LEVEL RADIATION WITH IT. COULD THAT RADIATION HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THE WHOLESALE MURDER WE ARE NOW WITNESSING? SPECULATION ON THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION HAS RUN RAMPANT HERE IN WASHINGTON AND ELSEWHERE, WHILE THE WHITE HOUSE HAS MAINTAINED A CURTAIN OF SILENCE AND HAS ATTEMPTED TO DEAL WITH THIS EMERGENCY BY PHYSICAL MEANS—THAT IS, BY ORGANIZING RESISTANCE AND SEARCH AND DESTROY MISSIONS AGAINST THE…AGGRESSORS. MEETINGS AT THE PENTAGON AND THE WHITE HOUSE HAVE REMAINED CLOSED TO REPORTERS, AND MEMBERS OF THE MILITARY AND CIVILIAN ADVISORS HAVE REFUSED TO CONDUCT INTERVIEWS OR TO ANSWER QUESTIONS THRUST AT THEM BY REPORTERS, ON THE WAY TO OR FROM SUCH MEETINGS.

  “HOWEVER, THE LATEST OFFICIAL COMMUNIQUÉ FROM THE PENTAGON HAS CONFIRMED THAT THE AGGRESSORS ARE DEAD. THEY ARE NOT INVADERS FROM ANOTHER PLANET. THEY ARE THE RECENTLY DEAD FROM RIGHT HERE ON EARTH. NOT ALL OF THE RECENTLY DEAD HAVE RETURNED TO LIFE—BUT IN CERTAIN AREAS OF THE COUNTRY, THE EAST AND MIDWEST IN PARTICULAR, THE PHENOMENON IS MORE WIDESPREAD THAN ELSEWHERE. WHY THE MIDWEST SHOULD BE AN AREA SO GREATLY AFFLICTED IS NOT EASILY EXPLAINED, EVEN BY THE MOST CALCULATED SPECULATION. THE VENUS PROBE, YOU REMEMBER, CRASHED IN THE ATLANTIC OCEAN, JUST OFF THE EASTERN SEABOARD.

  “PERHAPS WE SHALL NEVER KNOW THE EXACT REASONS FOR THE TERRIBLE PHENOMENON WE ARE NOW WITNESSING.

  “THERE IS SOME HOPE, HOWEVER, THAT THE MENACE WILL BE BROUGHT UNDER CONTROL…PERHAPS IN A MATTER OF SEVERAL DAYS OR WEEKS. THE…AGGRESSORS…CAN BE KILLED BY GUNSHOT OR A HEAVY BLOW TO THE HEAD. THEY ARE AFRAID OF FIRE, AND THEY BURN EASILY. THEY HAVE ALL THE CHARACTERISTICS OF DEAD PEOPLE…EXCEPT THEY ARE NOT DEAD—FOR REASONS WE DO NO
T AS YET UNDERSTAND, THEIR BRAINS HAVE BEEN ACTIVATED AND THEY ARE CANNIBALS.

  “IN ADDITION, ANYONE WHO DIES FROM A WOUND INFLICTED BY THE FLESH-EATERS MAY HIMSELF COME BACK TO LIFE IN THE SAME FORM AS THE AGGRESSORS THEMSELVES. THE DISEASE THAT THESE THINGS CARRY IS COMMUNICABLE THROUGH OPEN FLESH WOUNDS OR SCRATCHES, AND TAKES EFFECT MINUTES AFTER THE APPARENT DEATH OF THE WOUNDED PERSON. ANYONE WHO DIES DURING THIS EMERGENCY SHOULD BE IMMEDIATELY DECAPITATED OR CREMATED. SURVIVORS WILL FIND THESE MEASURES DIFFICULT TO UNDERTAKE, BUT THEY MUST BE UNDERTAKEN ANYWAY, OR ELSE THE AUTHORITIES MUST BE ALERTED TO UNDERTAKE IT FOR YOU. THOSE WHO DIE DURING THIS EMERGENCY ARE NOT CORPSES IN THE USUAL SENSE, THEY ARE DEAD FLESH—BUT HIGHLY DANGEROUS AND A THREAT TO ALL LIFE ON OUR PLANET. I REPEAT, THEY MUST BE BURNED OR DECAPITATED…”

  A shudder went through Harry, and all the eyes in the room turned on him.

  “How did your kid get hurt?” Ben asked.

  “One of those things grabbed her, while we were all trying to run. I’m not sure—but I think she was bitten on the arm.”

  They all stared at Harry, feeling sorry for him, but realizing at the same time the threat Karen would be to them, if she died.

  “You or Helen had better stay with her at all times,” Ben warned. “If she doesn’t pull through…well…”

  His voice trailed off.

  Harry covered his face with his hands, as he tried to accept the thought of what he would have to do. Knowing his daughter might die had been bad enough but now—

  Another shudder went through him.

  The people in the living room had their eyes glued to the tube and were avoiding looking in Harry’s direction.