“Jack was returning Beau’s truck,” Deb said, as a way of explaining my being here. But there was no need to explain, the whole day was a triumph, done perfect, and I greeted Chief Tharp with a wide grin. “I get you a beer, Chief?”
Tharp shook his head. “Deb, you mind if I take a seat?”
Deb said ’course not, and Chief Tharp tugged at his big coat and settled in. “I’ll just out and say it. Beau’s body—it’s not there anymore.”
Deb, after a moment: “What do you mean?”
“Not there,” he said, then looked up to me. “I took the others in after you left, Jack. When we got to the site, Beau’s body was gone. Simply not there.”
I felt the tooth against my skin and I said, “Black bear, maybe?”
Tharp half nodded, half shrugged. “There was a path of blood leading away, but it didn’t appear as if the body had been dragged. Some bits of skin. Deb, you don’t need to hear any of this if—”
Deb said, “It’s fine.”
“We lost the trail at the stream—”
Tharp kept talking but I didn’t hear the words anymore.
Inside, I started laughing.
More than that—I was screaming hysterically, overcome with this pure, childlike, new-day joy.
Could it be any better?
Like winning the lottery twice in the same day. Kill the man, police chief confirms it, sees how it happened, then the body up and disappears. Nothing to investigate.
Chief Tharp and Deb talked, but I only heard bits and pieces: the state police might find more, Tharp said, or maybe someone else was out hunting and found him, Deb said.
I was looking out from the porch—my blind—and began wondering if and why I even needed Deb. She was fun, but her voice was the slightest bit shrill and her hair was always dry, sort of like straw.
It’s a good thing she didn’t have a rotted snaggletooth, I thought, or I’d have blown her away right there. And that made me really laugh, out loud, and Tharp and Deb both sort of gawked at me, but I just laughed again.
Maybe I’d arrange something for Deb. And then the blind, with that damn majestic view of the high-grown grass running straight up to the forest—I’d make it mine.
And then I stopped daydreaming, and I started falling apart.
There was movement along the tree line, where the oaks thinned out.
Something coming out of the woods.
A whitetail?
No.
It was two hundred yards from the porch to the trees, and even squinting, it was hard to see much. Then the clouds shifted and that swirling, swamp gas sky shone green light on the field and I saw it was a man.
The man exited the trees, moving through the field in a staggered gait—like a buck, shot through but not killed, feet stabbing for balance.
Only I saw it. Chief Tharp was across the patio table, facing the house, and Deb beside him—only me with a view of the field.
I didn’t know what I saw, didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.
But my heart, it was picking up speed, sliding into second and then third, gears grinding as my breath became ragged.
“Jack?” Tharp was watching me. “Jack, I said, it’s too dark now, but first thing tomorrow, I’ll get together a search party. You should join.”
“Sure,” I said.
“You joining, helping, that’d go a long way to soothing any suspicions.”
“Suspicions?” I asked, but I didn’t hear the response. The clouds moved through the sky, and the yellow moon made my view clear, for a moment.
One hundred and fifty yards from the house, and I saw that neon orange vest. Couldn’t make out features, but I could see those damned toys—fresh from the Ace Hardware—bouncing off the man’s chest, reflecting in the moonlight.
It was Beau.
And I sucked in air, and I glanced from Tharp to Deb, waiting for I don’t know what—waiting to discover I was a victim of some elaborate, maddening scheme.
But they only kept on talking.
My mind, my sanity—it was suddenly a rock, skipping along a lake—Beau had flung it, one moment my rationality all there, the next it was slicing away.
But I was not mad. I knew that, for sure—but then—goddamnit, answers!—if I was not mad how was the man I had killed now lumbering through the field toward me?
Had I been wrong? Had I not killed him?
No! No! Chief Tharp had seen Beau, too, the body bled out.
I had stood over Beau and I had dug that blade into his gums and sliced out that damned snaggletooth, hadn’t I?
I ran my finger around my collar, feeling the dog-chain, tugging it slightly, causing the tooth to tap against my chest.
The snaggletooth was there, so it had all happened—not some lunatic’s dream.
But still, Beau drew closer.
I wanted to leave. I wanted to get up, go to the dead man’s truck, get in it—and drive. I’d drive until I hit the Ohio, and I’d cross, and I’d keep going—no need to ever know what in hell had happened.
Or Tharp. Could he leave. Get out. What was he still doing here?
But the chief and Deb talked more—only their voices sounded so far away. I opened my mouth again, hoping to say something that might bring the night to a quick close, but I couldn’t speak, words stuck in my throat.
Leave, Tharp, damn it. Leave. Get in your fucking car.
The night was quiet—miles from town, no houses nearby—and in the moments when Tharp and Deb would just shut up for one fucking second I could hear Beau moving through the overgrown grass.
Did they not hear his footsteps? If they could just turn, they’d see the man.
But they did not.
And he kept on coming.
Sixty yards.
Less.
I could see his mouth. Open. And there was no glimmer of that rotted snaggletooth.
A slap on my arm, bringing me back. It was Tharp. “I said, Jack, you always pick up beer when you’re visiting a widow?”
“Uh?” I said. “No. These were Deb’s. From the fridge.”
Tharp’s head, back and forth. “No. I stopped by Bull’s Tavern. Mike said you were in earlier, picking up a case.”
“Right. Sorry, my mind’s a little not right.”
Tharp’s eyes narrowed, watching, then hitting me again, “Hey, when Nancy passes, you just get me scotch, all right?” and he laughed—loud and short.
On the radio, the voices drifting out—I could only make out a bit, but one word kept popping up: Dead. Dead. Dead.
And I heard those words, and I saw the man, and my sanity was an avalanche, tumbling down, going to nothing.
But still no I was not mad, this was goddamned real!
Beau.
Shambling forward, body jerking like it had when he died. Only thirty yards now. His clothing was darker. Damp, I realized, from the stream.
I glanced to Tharp and then to Deb. They were still talking, discussing the details of what would happen next, the search, if she’d be right to make the funeral arrangements now or wait.
Looking at the pair, my brain shrieking, There! There! I murdered him! Tharp, turn and look!
A sound.
I heard Beau moan for the first time, then.
Arms were raised, out, stiff. Like he was coming for something.
The rotted snaggletooth?
Did he want it back?
Was that it?
Maybe he did, because it seemed to burn against my chest. And it all built, spinning inside me:
This awful husk staggering closer.
The radio, dead, dead, dead.
Tharp, on and on, ass glued, not leaving.
And that goddamned gray, putrefied, hideous snaggletooth against my skin.
I watched Beau, watched what was left of his mouth open up, and he moaned and I couldn’t hold it anymore, I shrieked, curdling blood, a scream from somewhere deep.
Erupting then, chair tumbling back, beer spilling, my hand
s clawing at my chest, cursing, goddamning it all, ripping the dog tags off, smacking them down onto the table like a bad beat at the card table.
The chain just sat there.
The tooth.
“You ever see that!” I barked at Tharp, hearing my voice sounding a bit like Beau’s. “Guys cutting out rotted teeth? Wearing them around their neck like a trophy?”
Silence.
Tharp’s eyes tight, Deb’s mouth a small O.
And then them both realizing—seeing that discolored thing on the table—Tharp putting up a hand to calm me while his other hand reached for his revolver.
But it was too late for that, I was snatching up the spilled bottle and swinging it, cracking it against Tharp’s face, rolling his head, and then smacking again, the bottle smashing this time, knocking him from the chair, and then jamming the bottle into his throat.
Deb screaming.
Me, diving, pawing at Tharp’s holster, pulling the revolver, then stepping to the edge of the porch.
A huge smile stretching across my face then, knowing I’d finally get that moment—hunting from that back porch blind. A grin so wide, like it was carved from my lips with a bowie knife, sawed ear to ear.
Hunt to kill a man I’d already killed once that day. This lurching, possessed thing, just twenty yards from the house.
The gun bucked in my hand as I fired, the bullet punching Beau’s chest.
He staggered but continued.
I fired twice more, but he kept coming, and my brain was on fire then, erupting, volcanic, nightmarish thoughts sluicing through my skull. I stomped out, down the steps, across the grass, to meet the man, to see how he could still live.
Or not live.
Flies buzzed about him. He moved like a drunk struggling to make it home. His face and skin all melting plastic.
Dead.
Dead as he was when I left him.
He had no throat. The fire ants had taken much of his skin, and they were there still, picking at the flesh of his face, covering it, so I saw more crawling red than anything else.
Beau moaned and his lip pulled back and I saw the purple-red hole, where I had ripped out the snaggletooth.
I raised the revolver and trained it on his chest and I fired, blowing open a dangling compass, putting a fist-sized hole through his heart, but he only moaned louder and shuffled closer.
Footsteps on the patio, Deb running. A car door opening, her escaping, I guessed.
I put the final two rounds into his chest, but he kept on, and his hands were on me, cold and clammy and waxy, and I saw his remaining teeth bearing down on me.
I hit the grass, Beau on top of me, saliva and blood dripping onto my face. Clawing. This inhuman, unholy thing trying to gnaw into me.
And then, suddenly, a reverberating boom and his face shattering, skull exploding.
Shrieking, sobbing, I pushed the thing off. I rolled and gasped and got to my feet.
Head still spinning, wondering, sincerely, if this was a dream and I’d soon be slapped awake.
Turning, I saw Deb there, on the porch, Tharp’s cruiser beyond, door open. Deb holding Beau’s rifle, the barrel and stock still gore-splattered from the morning’s hunt.
And I started to say thank god, started to ask what madness had overcome us, when the gun leapt in Deb’s hand and a shot ripped through me and I was knocked back, falling beside Beau’s diseased husk.
Deb coming down the steps, striding through the grass, then standing over us both. Her sort of smirking, curious, like she was catching some insanity herself, asking out loud, “Christ almighty, I wonder just what in hell will the insurance man have to say about this?”
THE BURNING DAYS
by Carrie Ryan
We all know the fire will burn out eventually. There’s only so much fuel left and the rain that’s been threatening for days has to fall at some point. It’s just a matter of when.
But not a question of what’ll happen after that. We’ll be dead—all of us. If we’re lucky, it’ll happen quick. If we’re unlucky … I swallow the bile eating its way up my throat.
If we’re unlucky we’ll end up like them. Broken. Shambling.
Dead.
At night they’re nothing more than shadows lurching in the darkness beyond the flickering flames. In the day, though—in the day we can see them. Their wounds glisten in the heat of the sun, gaping red and raw.
When Henry’s car blew early on we figured out they were afraid of fire. We realized all we had to do was keep the perimeter around the cabin burning. We started with the easy stuff: dusty drapes, tattered blankets, clothes long stored in mildewed drawers. We piled it on, forcing the flames higher until we realized we were burning through our fuel too fast.
After that we took a more measured approach. Breaking the furniture into kindling and spreading it out. Since then it’s just been about keeping things steady. We take turns, an ever constant rotation. When there were six of us, it was enough that a couple of us could get sleep, even if a few hours at a time. But now that there are only four of us, we’re spread thinner.
I’ve slept maybe five hours in the past three and a half days. But I can’t really blame the work. It’s impossible to sleep with them out there. The dead.
The inevitability that we all have only so much time left before we join their ranks.
And with each room we burn, the closer we come to that inevitability. We’ve already cannibalized most of the first floor and as much of the second floor as we can without compromising the integrity of the structure. We’ve torn it all out—the drywall, the floors, the subfloors, the framing—and fed it to the flames.
It’s nauseating how fast it goes. How little is left.
How quickly our options have dwindled.
“We should have gone with Ruth and Andy.” Lainey sits on the porch with her back against the stairs, a shotgun cradled loosely in her lap. She’s staring at a patch of red dirt, her eyes unfocused and tear tracks cutting through the soot staining her cheeks. “They’ve probably already made it to the guard station.”
I look up and catch Robert’s eye. He’s standing on the ladder I’m bracing, prying siding from the house. Neither of us has told her that we saw Ruth early this morning. Half of her face was stripped away and her arm was missing, but I still knew it was her.
She’d borrowed my jacket before leaving. In case it got cold at night down the mountain. “You won’t need it up here. You’ll have the fire to keep you warm,” she’d reminded me.
I’d let her take it and that’s how I’d recognized her. She still wore it, though it hung on tatters from her shoulders. It was the kind of detail Lainey would never notice—that Ruth had left wearing my jacket.
Not that Lainey would have remembered what my jacket looks like in the first place.
I keep waiting for her to spot Ruth, shuffling along the edge of the crowd with the others, but she never looks at them that closely.
To her they aren’t people.
Maybe that’s the smart approach. Maybe that’s why she’s able to actually sleep during her off shift. Because so far as she’s concerned, her best friend and her best friend’s boyfriend are still alive—are probably even safe.
According to Lainey, they were the smart ones.
And we’re to blame for arguing against going with them.
I wait to see if Robert’s going to say anything to her, but he just clenches his teeth and shoves the claw end of the hammer underneath another nail to pry it free. He’s already stripped away most of the siding along the porch. It burns fast, sending up great clouds of billowing black smoke that catches in the wind and tangles in the branches of nearby trees.
He and Lainey had had a massive blowup late the night before that had ended with her screaming that he didn’t love her and him finally snapping and announcing in front of everyone that he was done with her and would have broken up with her at the start of the trip if the whole world hadn’t fallen apart first. Ever since then,
they’ve been treading warily around each other, the tension between them thick.
“We can still go, you know,” Lainey continues from her perch on the steps. “Try to make it to the guard station tonight. I think they’re slower in the darkness.”
“No they’re not.” Henry punctuates the statement by throwing a piece of siding on the fire along the right of the house. Sweat glistens across his forehead and he swipes at it with a bare arm, leaving a trail of ash in its wake.
“Then let’s just go now,” Lainey proposes. When no one says anything she adds, “I’m serious. The longer we wait, the more of them there are going to be.”
“It’s already too late, Lainey.” Robert rips free the hunk of siding and drops it toward me. I carry it out to the waiting pile in the yard.
“You said that yesterday,” she shouts. “And the day before!” She throws up a hand in frustration. “We’re not going to have a choice pretty soon, you know. If you haven’t noticed, we’re running low on fuel.”
“Thanks for pointing out the obvious,” Robert grumbles.
“That’s the problem,” Lainey says through clenched teeth. “If it really was that obvious you’d agree with me that we have to leave.”
“There’s still half of the upstairs and then the attic,” Henry points out.
“And how long’s that going to last us?” she demands. “Another two days? Three at the most?”
Her question hangs in the air.
“At least we’re safe here,” I offer, still thinking about Ruth and her torn face.
Lainey usually ignores me, but she pins me with a crooked eyebrow. “Really? You call this safe?”
I glance out at the line of fire and the shambling bodies beyond. I remember that first night when they came for us. There were only a few—enough that we could knock them back as we struggled to understand what was happening. This was before we’d found the emergency radio and cranked it up.
Before we knew they were risen dead. And that they were everywhere.
The cities were the worst, we learned. Most people hadn’t survived that first night. The only reason we’d made it was because the population this far in the country was low.
But the dead were still able to find us, even out here. And every day more and more of them find their way through the trees to crowd the clearing beyond the fire.
Nights of the Living Dead Page 16
