by Dan Padavona
Stealing Doug Masterson's truck was the worst-case scenario for Tom, but they needed a vehicle, and this was the only opportunity that had presented itself.
When Tom signaled with his hand, Jen took two steps out of the shadow and turned to watch the window for signs of Doug.
He placed his hand on the rusted door handle and carefully depressed the button with his thumb. He held his breath in his chest. At any moment, a truck alarm would blare in his ears and Doug Masterson would rush out the back door with the Winchester centered on him.
The mechanism unlatched with a pop, and Tom exhaled. He nodded toward Jen, and she bounded to the passenger side door.
“No,” Tom whispered.
Rather than risk opening another door, he motioned for her to circle around the truck to his side. Rounding the front of the truck beneath the grille, Jen climbed into the driver seat, wiggled her way past the steering wheel, and slid across cracked vinyl to the passenger seat.
Tom climbed in after her and pulled the door toward him, leaving it open a crack so that he didn't have to slam it shut.
“Are you ready?”
“Yeah.”
His hand shook as he reached for the key.
“When I flip the ignition, it's going to make a hell of a noise.”
Tom had been driving for a little over three months. He felt confident on the road, but to back an unfamiliar vehicle down a long driveway in the dark, with the likelihood that Doug Masterson would appear at the window ready to blow a hole in his head big enough for the wind to whistle through, was a far more formidable task.
“I don't know if I can do this. He's going to come fast.”
“We don't even know if he is home.”
“His truck is in the driveway, and his keys are in it. Where else would he be?”
“If he has...changed...he probably won't give a shit about his truck anymore.”
Tom drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. If he was going to do it, he would have to do it fast.
“Keep your seat belt off. If anything goes wrong and we aren't going to make it, bail out and run like hell along the side of the house so that he doesn't get a good angle on you. Don’t stop until you hit the trees. I'll be right behind you.”
“You said we were staying together.”
“We are. I promise. But if it hits the fan, I want to know that you are safe and where to find you.”
He knew Jen didn't like the thought of splitting up, even for a few moments; and the idea of being alone in the shrouded backyards sent shivers down his back.
Tom glanced over his shoulder. Glowing in the darkness, the first-story windows were awash in yellow light. Still no sign of Doug. But that didn't mean Masterson didn't watch them, poised in a darkened upstairs window like a brown recluse. He might have his rifle sighted on my head right now.
Tom’s pulse thrummed in his neck.
“Do it.”
He turned the key in the ignition. The engine rolled over twice and boomed to life. The roar from the oversized engine shook the vinyl under their legs. The sound was even louder than he had feared. Fumbling with the gear shift, he pulled it into reverse and cocked his head behind him.
Still no movement from the house, but Masterson would come.
Bathed in red tail light, the driveway gravel seemed to race toward him. He was going too fast, the back end of the truck drifting toward the house. He tapped the brakes and corrected the wheel until the vehicle was straight again, but now the tires rode over the grass between the walls and the driveway. There was no room for error. One wrong move and he would put the back of the pickup into the wall.
He caught sight of her clenched teeth and shut eyes and wanted to tell her to keep them open so that she could escape quickly, if necessary. But he had to concentrate on the precarious driveway. As the passenger-side mirror scraped the wall, the front of the house whipped past him.
The porch light was still off. They were going to make it.
The back end of the vehicle dipped at the foot of the driveway, the undercarriage scraping against the pavement. Tom was too heavy on the gas, and the vehicle descended the slope of the road until the back tires hopped over the far curb. He hit the brakes, shifted into drive, and cranked the wheel to his left. Tires squealed and caught traction, and the vehicle lurched forward down Maple Street.
The first shot blasted overhead like cannon fire. As a voice screamed in anger from the shadows, Tom slammed his foot onto the accelerator.
The empty shells of Maple Street homes blurred past him to either side as the second shot exploded through the left taillight. As he accelerated faster, the trees hurtling past his vision to either side of the road, Tom heard a third shot ring out.
Faster.
And then they were clear of Masterson's angle from the front porch. Jen finally released her breath.
Surprised by the trees that sprung out from the ground in front of him, Tom slammed the brakes at the end of Maple. He cranked the wheel left, the tires squealing once more.
He rode the curves to Blakely Hill, trees and flora pressing against the roadside amid so many shadows. Blakely straightened, and then curved left until it pointed straight down into the town center. He had gotten them out of the neighborhood. He couldn't guarantee that safety waited ahead, but anything was better than waiting for the shadows to swoop down on them on Maple Street.
A hollow sadness ate at his stomach. His parents were gone forever, and probably Jen's were, too. They were leaving everything—their homes, their families, their memories—behind forever.
Cutting through the night like sabers, the truck's headlamps penetrated the gloom. The lights of downtown glimmered like beacons of hope.
Then, like the rising sun, a white glow built from below a steep drop in the hill. It grew and glared across the windshield.
Two trucks approached in single file from the base of the hill, the lead truck slowing when their headlights reached its grille, and the trailing truck swinging into their lane as though to execute a pass. The trucks slowed in unison and came to a halt, lights on and engines running.
Tom pumped the brake pedal, and they came to a stop twenty yards shy of the unknown vehicles. The high beams blinding him, he cupped a hand over his eyes to block them out. She glanced at him with consternation.
He thought of hitting reverse and swinging the vehicle back up the hill. The obstructing vehicles' engines hummed with power, their shadowed bodies hulking like predators. He knew he couldn't outrun them.
The truck doors opened and two silhouettes approached their vehicle.
Seven
“Son of a bitch!”
Doug Masterson wheezed in the night air. As sweat poured through his beard, glistening like dew drops in the moonlight, the big man hunched over with his hands on his knees.
He had chased after the truck thieves (who he’d recognized as two neighborhood snot-nosed dillholes by the name of Tom Kingsley and Jen Barrows) until he saw the tail lights sweep around the end of Maple Street. That is what I get for leaving the keys in the ignition. He had no idea why the teenagers wanted to steal his truck, but no matter. They’d be back. And when they came back, he’d shove the Winchester straight up their asses.
He shook his head. No phone, no word of his wife who had been missing since morning, and now his truck was stolen by two brats. And where in the hell was everybody? In the last day, he had been lucky if he had seen more than three people on the street.
As the night became deathly still, the houses of Maple Street stretched away with blackened windows which seemed to watch him. Shrill and unrelenting, the sound of peepers cascaded down the hill from the pond, reminding him of how alone he was. He turned down the sidewalk toward his house.
The shadows moved, and a man stumbled around the side of a bungalow to his left. Doug raised the rifle, surprised at first to see another living soul. He lowered the rifle and cackled. It looked to him as if the man was three sheets to the wind. He stumbled,
caught himself on the house, and regained his composure.
A woman seemed to materialize out of shadow, appearing on the sidewalk across the street. Unable to put four steps together without catching herself in the shrubbery outside a darkened one-story, she appeared to be drunk as well.
Doug was beginning to enjoy this. He might have lost his truck tonight, but at least he was getting his money's worth in cheap entertainment.
“Y'all lose each other?”
The figures halted at the sound of his voice, rocking on their feet like punch-drunk fighters. Doug grinned from ear-to-ear.
“She's right over there, sport,” he said toward the man. “I think she's ready for ya now.”
As the wind rustled the leaves in ghostly whispers, a rancid odor wafted toward him, and he nearly gagged. The wind shifted and took the offending smell with it.
Two more figures sprung out of a darkened driveway two houses up Maple Street to his left, then three more on the opposite side. They glided through the grass as though walking on air, without the awkward gaits of the first two figures. The way they seemed to float forward unsettled him.
“Y'all have a party and forget to invite me?” he asked, nervous now.
They didn't answer. Had the entire town gone mad? He raised the Winchester toward the first man who was two houses away.
“That's far enough, mister. Why don't you turn around, and sleep this one off? Before we have ourselves some real trouble.”
The snap of branches swung him around. Five figures glided toward him from behind, coming fast.
He didn't like this. Not one damn bit.
“Now ya stop right there, ya hear?”
He swung the Winchester back and forth as the black figures converged on him from both sides.
“The first one who gets close gets a bullet in the head. I ain't fuckin with ya. Now back off!”
Then he saw their pallid flesh, like waxwork museum specimens come to life.
“Jesus.”
He pulled the trigger.
The bullet cut the nearest figure down, but the others stepped around it and drifted toward him. He couldn't believe they were still coming. Their eyes smoldered blood red.
He fired again and felled another member, but then both of the things he had shot rose to their feet.
This can’t be happening.
He centered the rifle on the woman.
Click.
In his panic, he had forgotten to reload. His hands fumbled for extra shells in his pocket, but the vile figures came faster and faster.
As the throng descended on him, the shadows no longer concealed the horrible truth of what they were, and he began to scream.
Talons ripped at skin. Teeth (for Christ’s sake they were biting him) tore into his flesh, and he screamed for help, for someone, for God, for anyone that would wake him from his nightmare.
Pushing and pulling until the three largest monstrosities worked their way to the front and sank razor sharp teeth into his neck, they fought amongst each other like sharks drawn to chum. Lifeblood welled out of Doug Masterson in dark pools, sending the fiends into frenzy. Flesh tore away in clumps that splattered to the sidewalk in sickening whumps. The weaker monstrosities lapped at the meat like starved dogs.
Doug Masterson no longer screamed. The pain ceased, and he felt a numbing cold travel through his body, like autumn’s killing frost.
He lost consciousness and succumbed.
Eight
Three hours after the last vestiges of daylight sunk into the western horizon, Dell Lawrence tottered out of The Watering Hole, not quite numb enough to forget everything. He would have still been seated at the bar had that fat asshole of a bartender, Mick Babson, not thrown him out.
No more than five people had been inside the establishment at a time when there were usually three times as many, and if Babson didn't want his money, he was a fool. If tonight's attendance was any indication, The Watering Hole would be out of business in a month.
As Dell stumbled onto East Avenue, his trailer park at the end of the road appeared pallid in the moonglow, the rectangular homes like distant gravestones. The trouble was, the trailers kept moving on him. First they drifted to his left, and when he ambled toward their new location, they shot back to the right like a moving target in the crosshairs of a fighter plane.
“Stand...the fuck...still.”
Stones scuffled underfoot as his feet dragged along the buckled sidewalk. A small boy watched him with amused interest from a front yard to his right, until the mother rushed down the porch steps and dragged the boy inside.
“I ain't gonna hurt nobody. Don't choo worry none, lady.”
It occurred to him that the boy and the overprotective bitch were the only two people he had seen outside tonight. Even the fat bartender, while he allowed Dell to drink, had mentioned to another man that it seemed the entire town had vanished.
He stumbled, and the beer bottle in his hand fell to the pavement. The glass shattered, and somewhere behind him a dog began to bark. He cussed again.
“See how ya handle the real world...without Daddy to fix yer shit...”
The moving trailers kept taunting him, sometimes rising into the air or shooting off to either side of the road. But he was gaining on them. By hell he was gaining on them.
“Sit still...why don't ya...ya stupid bastards....”
He fell to the pavement, vaguely aware of two scraped knees. He laughed in amusement and propped himself up on his elbows. The dog barked louder, and he barked back, pulling himself up to totter forward again.
The trailers could taunt him no longer, for he had arrived. As he stumbled into the dirt lot, he found the park to be deserted. His shoulder bounced off the back edge of the first trailer with a loud whomp. Pain shot down his arm, and he swore at the night. Pins and needles spread down his shoulder to his fingers in a numbing electrical current. The trailer lights did not turn on.
No one is alive in this frigging town.
His trailer stood next in the lot, glowing gray in the moonlight, solitary and uncaring.
Before he could reach the two steps to the front door, the lot began to spin. For a moment he had a queer recollection of riding something called the Round Up at the county fair when he was 11 or 12. He remembered how dizzy it had made him and how he had run behind the haunted house to puke afterward.
A gurgling roar pushed up from his chest, and he vomited against the side of a garbage can. Like a swarm of locusts, black dots sparkled across his vision, and he collapsed to his hands and knees.
He expelled an unsettling amount of fluid, which seemed to emerge from the lowest depths of his body. He heaved out the remnants of his stomach, and when he thought he had finally rid himself of all of it, another surge exploded out of him like a busted wellhead. He gagged on the acrid bile, believing the nausea would never end.
Finally the sickness relented, and he coughed and spit while a string of purplish drool extended from his lower lip to a vile pool in the mud.
“Jesus.”
Moaning, he was shocked at the amount of fluid he had expelled and wondered how a body could carry so much without collapsing.
Unconcerned that his right hand was sinking into the spreading puddle, he stayed on his hands and knees for a few minutes. He just wanted his body to stop shaking. As his chest heaved, his body quivered like he was naked in the middle of winter.
The sickness passed. He raised himself up to his knees and slung the rancid mess off his hand. He just wanted the dizziness to end so he could sleep, but first he would have to shower the smell off of him and change out of his clothes, or he'd never get the stench out of the trailer.
He stared at the front door and windows of the trailer, its white siding stained with rust streaks and neglect. The empty windows stared back at him, passing their own judgment.
His shoulders shook, and then he cried his daughter's name.
The grief came at him from nowhere and from everywhere. Tears
blurred his vision, making the empty home appear to stretch across the horizon. What remained inside of him made him sicker still. He had driven away his wife, and now his daughter.
It wasn't fair that his wife had left without a word of explanation, but he had made his own choices. There had been time to turn his life around.
I still can, he thought, if I were given one more chance.
He wanted another drink, but he pushed the thought out of his mind. He would sleep it off, clean himself up, and find Katy. If she were still in town, he'd find her. He had an inkling that she had headed for his sister’s house in Hopewell. When he showed Katy that he could change, she would come home to him.
The meadow behind the trailer park was silver in the glow of the moon, tall grass swaying in the breeze. A hundred yards behind the meadow stood a thicket of spruce and ash, and beyond that stretched several miles of wilderness and farmland.
As he turned toward the front steps, he caught movement in the thicket. A branch snapped within the concealment of the trees.
“Now who the hell would be—”
All went still. Another branch cracked.
A lone figure stumbled out of the trees, looking lost and confused. Seeming to drift ethereally on the wind, the figure floated left and right through obstructions, and then it stopped with a gaze fixed on the trailer.
He was curious as to what the person was up to, stalking through the thicket in the dark, but not curious enough to watch any longer. He turned toward the steps again, just as the entity strode toward him with purpose.
He could tell that it was a woman from a hundred yards away. Fanned out behind her like a kite, her hair drifted on the wind. The gap between them closed.
She seemed to come faster than her walking pace could allow, as though she were striding forward on a moving walkway.
Seventy yards.
Sixty yards.
The figure transfixed him. An chill settled over his spine, urging him to escape to the safety of the locked trailer, but he couldn't look away.
