by Matt Hults
Then his eyes caught a flash of movement from the hunters beyond his wife and child, and suddenly five arrows stabbed into his legs.
The cold stone missiles punched through his aching muscles with brutal force, ravaging his flesh. Their sharp points chipped against bone.
Jacob howled in agony but lunged toward Kate as he fell, now hearing the terrible chorus of multiple knife blades as they were drawn from their sheaths.
The natives charged forward, casting up a blizzard of snow with their footsteps.
Someone dropped down on Jacob’s back, pinning him in place.
He struggled to free himself, but each twist caused him to sink farther into the icy carpet covering the valley, pressing the arrowheads deeper into his legs.
His breaths came out as a thunder of pain and rage.
The weight on his back shifted and someone snared his right arm, yanking it back. The steel edge of a blade found the joint of one finger and sliced it from his hand.
Jacob screamed.
Then again. And again.
The cold valley air struck the exposed nerves like liquid nitrogen poured into his veins. Teeth bit down on the open flesh and sucked his blood from the wounds.
“Yessss,” an ancient voice hissed with inhuman pleasure.
Jacob growled through the pain when the attacker released his arm, watching helplessly from ground level as one of the hunters seized Sadie by the leg and dragged her away, a stone tomahawk clutched in his free hand.
Kate grabbed at the man, snatching a leather strap from his boot before another native dropped to his knees behind her. He tore off her hat and clutched a fistful of her hair. With his other hand, he brought a gleaming knife to her scalp and—
The top of the man’s head exploded.
Even in his current condition of unparalleled terror, Jacob flinched at the sight. The shattered fragments of the hunter’s skull sailed through the air like confetti, soon joined by the distant report of a gunshot.
Jacob craned his head to one side and saw four muzzle flashes blink on the horizon.
The headless attacker kneeling beside Kate pushed to his feet, standing even as the bullets punched holes through his torso and exploded out his back in great plumes of dust.
The man didn’t stagger. Didn’t fall.
He disintegrated.
One moment he appeared as a solid figure standing tall; a heartbeat later he’d become a man-shaped accumulation of twigs, dirt, and leaves that blew apart in the wind.
The other natives had ceased in mid-action, and now all turned toward the wood line even as a fresh round of gunshots flashed from the shadows.
The tribesman looming over Sadie fell backward, his chest torn open to expose a hollow space filled with dried weeds and animal fur.
Another man’s shoulder erupted into a cloud of brown pine needles and feathers.
The weight on Jacob’s back suddenly lifted, and he looked up to see the old man standing over him, his eyes empty black pits, his mouth opened impossibly wide, filled with a hundred mismatched animal fangs. An inhuman shriek erupted from the cavern of his throat; then a rifle blast ripped it from his body sending his severed head rolling through the air, trailing streams of black ash.
It crashed to the snow and disintegrated into a dusty heap of crushed bones and black hair.
Several more gunshots boomed, now closer, but when Jacob glanced up again all he could see was Kate’s slumped form laying just out of reach. The heart wrenching sound of Sadie’s weeping emanated from somewhere nearby.
“Hang on, baby,” Jacob called, trying to raise himself high enough to find her. “Daddy’s coming, baby, just hang on.”
The butchered remains of his damaged hand reddened the snow when he attempted to push himself upright, and he screamed in agony when both arms sunk up to his elbows. Ice crystals stabbed at his wounds.
“Kate?” he howled. “Oh, God, Kate, answer me.”
“Jacob.”
The roar of a snowmobile engine overpowered his sob of relief at the sound of Kate’s voice, and within moments he heard the soft crunch of footfalls growing near.
He faced the sound to see another group of American Indians rush forward.
One of them lifted Sadie from the snow, gently wiping her face. Another rushed to Kate with a multi-tool, using its pliers to trim the arrow shafts. A third knelt beside her with a first aid kit.
Three others stood watch with rifles in hand, scanning the landscape with impatient glances.
Suddenly, a pair of hands settled on Jacob’s shoulders and rolled him onto his back. A broad-faced Indian stared into his eyes.
Jacob tensed, kicking his feet, pushing away.
“Try to relax,” the tribesman said. “We’ll get you to a hospital but we must hurry.”
It took a moment for the words to sink in, but then Jacob detected the tones of warmth and compassion. Unlike the elder, this man’s breath puffed in the cold.
Jacob tried to speak, failed, then tried again.
“My daughter. My wife.”
“Are being cared for,” the man said. He unfolded a cutting tool and quickly snipped the wood shafts jutting from Jacob’s body, setting off a dozen explosions of pain. Agony raked its claws along his nerves where the arrowheads nestled in his flesh.
“I’m sorry,” the man said. He pulled Jacob to a stand, hauling him forward. “We don’t have a choice. Time is running out. The blood makes them stronger.”
Jacob eyed him across his shoulder. “They were dead.”
The Indian nodded. “This is cursed ground, the burial place of a thousand rogue shamans who tried to stop the settlers from passing into the West. They were the drinkers of blood, and the eaters of children. They defied the Great Spirit to gain their power, and now they are trapped here, immortal but imprisoned.”
He deposited Jacob on the back of a snowmobile. Every muscle in his body seemed to disconnect from his bones, and he sagged into the seat. Several feet away Kate and Sadie were helped onto another sled.
“They’re coming,” one of the men shouted.
The broad-faced Indian spun toward the voice. Jacob followed his gaze to where one of the riflemen pointed into the black gulf of the valley.
The snow was moving.
“But you destroyed them!” Jacob cried.
“Only the sunlight can do that,” the man replied. “We must hurry!”
Sixty yards away a swell the size of a house had raised from the flat landscape, pushed upward from something beneath.
“Go,” another man yelled. The others jumped on their snowmobiles and the engines roared as the throttles cranked open. They spun and raced for the far tree line, the icy wind nipping at Jacob’s flesh like a buzzard.
He clung to his rescuer with all the strength he had left, glancing back just long enough to see the huge swell moving closer. The snow spilled away as it shifted and flexed, revealing the leathery hides of a thousand mummified corpses surging forth as a single, monstrous mound.
It was a mass-grave come to life. Chaos made flesh.
The mere sight ripped the breath from Jacob’s lungs and clawed at his sanity. He saw bone and hair and muscle and skin, teeth and eyes and dehydrated entrails. It moved with unearthly speed, closing the gap between them with the horrific pace of a nightmare.
Then they were past the trees, plowing into the forest. Evergreen boughs slapped Jacob’s head and body, folding inward behind him to block his view of the madness pursuing them. A second later they shot through another barrier of bones. Shattered skeletons rained to the ground, knocked loose from their tethers.
The snowmobiles slid to a halt, their front skis grating on hidden rocks and branches. Jacob shook his head, thinking No! Don’t stop! even as an enormous shadow darkened the thin spaces between the trees. The forest went black. Even the stars vanished from sight.
The titanic horror hit the tree line and exploded into a blizzard of snow. A huge cloud of white filled the air, blasting th
rough the branches to cover the area with an additional two feet of powder.
When Jacob looked up again, the monster was gone. Stars once again dappled the night.
He hauled himself off the snowmobile. Pain knotted his insides, but he limped to Kate and Sadie, dropping beside them and clutching them in his arms. Kate’s pants glimmered with blood, but her grip was strong when she hugged him.
Jacob’s rescuer stepped up beside him, laying a hand on his shoulder.
“We’re safe,” the man said. “The dead cannot pass the barrier.”
No, Jacob wanted to say, the dead can’t get through it, but the dying still can.
He looked down at his hand and moaned at the bony claws that had sprouted from where his fingers had been severed, watching as the muscle and tendons and skin reformed around the bite marks in his flesh.
The pain in his gut intensified. He could feel his bodily fluids turn to dust, his organs shrivel inside him. He gagged as his throat became a cracked desert and winced as sharp fangs burst from his gums.
He gazed at his rescuers and would have wept if he could.
They’d risked their lives to save his family.
Now he only hoped they’d be enough to sate the centuries-long hunger that was boiling inside him, at least long enough for Kate and Sadie to get away.
* * *
THE FINGER
This story can be found in the anthology:
BEST NEW ZOMBIE TALES (Vol. 2)
1.
Through some ironic twist of fate, the phone call from the morgue came while Jim Cooley sat watching Frankenstein on one of the cable channels.
“It’s me,” Stuart said when Jimmy picked up the receiver. “I got one. How fast can you get down here?”
Jimmy straightened up in his seat, letting the half-eaten bag of Crispy Pork Bits fall to the trailer’s floor. “Hot damn, Stu, are you serious?” he asked. “When’d he come in? Where’d they find him—”
“I’ll fill you in on the goddamn details when you get here,” Stuart interrupted. “Harrington just went out to lunch, so we have less than an hour to do this.”
Jimmy grinned. “We’re really going through with it?”
“I guess so. Meet me at the back loading dock by twelve-thirty or the deal is off!”
He hung up.
Outside thunder rumbled across the sky like the footsteps of an angry god.
Jimmy continued to smile as he replaced the handset, then slapped his hands together with a jovial whoop of delight. “Hot shit!” he cheered. “The little bastard did it!” He jumped up from the couch and grabbed his jean jacket off the wall hook as he hurried out the door.
2.
Three inches of rainwater sloshed along the gutters and burbled around the storm drains as Jimmy guided his rusty Mustang down the alley that serviced the back side of the Hewitt County Municipal Building. The parking area at this end of the lot boasted twenty spaces, but only two other vehicles currently occupied the asphalt; Stuart Wyllie’s dented red Honda and a 1988 Ford that made up the third unit in the HCPD’s trio of squad cars.
Jimmy parked next to the sunken driveway that gave access to the lower loading bay of the building and got out. The rain continued to come down like a busted water main, soaking his shoulders and hair as he ran to the back door.
He rapped on the steel. “Yo, Stu? Open up, man!”
He knocked again when no one answered, letting his gaze flick to the old squad car as he waited. A smile crept onto his face when he thought of when he’d etched his initials in the vinyl on the rear of the driver’s seat back when the car had been new.
The door clicked and flew open.
“What the hell?” Stuart asked. “I never told you to knock!”
The kid glanced around like a mouse in a cat kennel as Jimmy stepped past him, into a green-tiled hallway outside the morgue office.
“I’m due back at the hospital as soon as Doctor Harrington returns,” Stuart reminded him. “We don’t have much time!”
“Don’t shit yourself,” Jimmy told him. “Now, what do you got for me?”
Stuart eased the door into its frame before speaking, and when he did, he kept his voice low. “Mexican male, no ID. Sheriff Picket said a trucker found the body under the I-30 overpass around four o’clock yesterday morning. He’s guessing the guy’s an illegal thumbing his way north.”
“Kick ass!” Jimmy cheered.
“Keep your voice down!” Stuart whispered, glancing up and down the corridor.
“Yeah, yeah—what else?”
Stuart ushered him inside the empty office, toward a door across the room. “We got him fresh,” he said, snatching a manila folder off the desk as they passed it. “Harrington pronounced the cause of death as heart failure two hours after they brought him in, and we just got the toxicology and blood work reports back from HCMC: negative across the board; aside from being dead, he’s as healthy as a horse.”
“Ah, man, this is friggin’ perfect!” Jimmy agreed.
Stuart pushed through the door of the autopsy room and led the way past the central operating table and body hoist. Jimmy shivered as the first drops of adrenaline hit his veins. His neck hairs prickled on end the way they did in his childhood, when his mother would drag him to the doctor’s office with an ear infection or pneumonia. Cold sweat sheathed his palms as his eyes drifted over the various items in the room: the table, the scales, the shiny stainless steel containers. The drive over had been easy enough—even a bit exciting—but now his emotions sobered as the reality of what awaited him began to sink in.
Stuart unlocked another door, and they stepped into the cooler. Six stainless steel storage lockers took up the far wall, but only one displayed an information card in the holder on the exterior of the door.
“This him?” Jimmy asked.
Stuart gestured to the locker’s handle. “Be my guest.”
Jimmy reached for the handle but stopped short before his fingers touched the metal. He glanced to Stuart, to the purple latex gloves he wore, and with a smirk of self-admiration, he slipped the cuff of his jacket over his hand. “Can’t be too careful.”
He opened the door and rolled out the retractable table.
The corpse had already been packaged in a black body bag for its trip to the Hewitt County Medical Center, where it would await cremation if nothing came up on a fingerprint check, or if nobody claimed the body.
Still using his jacket cuff, Jimmy took hold of the zipper and opened the top third. With a final glance at Stuart, he reached up with both hands and parted the two halves of the bag to reveal a bloodless stump where the man’s head should’ve been.
“Holy Christ!” he yelled.
He snapped his hands back and leapt away.
“Son of a bitch!”
When Jimmy looked up, he saw that Stuart had cracked a grin for the first time since their meeting.
“Real hilarious, asshole! I thought you said his ticker crapped out?”
“It did,” Stuart laughed. “After he got hit by a truck.”
“Damn!”
“Hey, at least we don’t need to wait for the dental x-rays.”
Jimmy shook his head, still squirming from the surprise like a snake trying to work itself out of an old skin.
Stuart’s smile faded as he glanced at his watch, then to the door. “Okay, let’s get this over with. We’re pushing the limit here.”
He placed the manila folder he’d grabbed on the dead man’s chest, flipping it open. A second later, he produced an ink tray from the pocket of his lab coat.
Jimmy lingered at a distance for another moment, then moved forward again. He gave a fleeting glance to the shredded mess of torn muscle and broken bones in the bag—all that remained of the cadaver’s neck—then refocused his attention on Stuart as he held up the man’s right arm and dabbed his blue-gray fingers on the ink-soaked felt of the tray. The top form in the stack of papers Stuart had opened contained two rows of sequential square boxes,
each labeled for the digits of the human hand. Starting with the row marked “Right,” he pressed the man’s fingers into the appropriate spaces one at a time, rolling them from side to side to transfer their impressions. He then repeated the procedure for the left hand, all except for the smallest finger.
For that box, he dabbed his own left pinky in the ink and rolled it on the paper.
He took the original fingerprinting sheet out of the file—the one Doc. Harrington had done when the Sheriff first brought the corpse in, Jimmy guessed—and crumpled it into a wad, using it to wipe away the excess ink from his hand. Once finished, he stuffed the soiled paper in his pocket, slipped the new form into the file, and gathered up the folder.
“I still say it should be your print on that paper,” he commented. “This was your plan, after all.”
“I got a record,” Jimmy said. “You don’t.”
“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that’s my end of it… Your turn.”
Jimmy reached into his back pocket, extracting a sandwich-size Zip-Loc baggy and a dirt-flecked pair of pruning sheers.
He met Stuart’s eyes… then looked to the cadaver’s left hand.
To the smallest finger.
His heart hesitated in his chest as his hands moved forward, positioning the tool’s cutting edge between the first and middle knuckle. Then, after one last glance at Stuart, he squeezed down on the sheer’s handle with both hands as hard and as fast as he could.
Shick!
Stuart grimaced as Jimmy lifted the severed digit from the table, holding it between thumb and forefinger.
“You really gonna eat that thing?” Stuart asked.
“I ain’t gonna eat it,” Jimmy corrected as he slipped the finger into the Zip-Loc bag. “I’m going to do like we talked about and just ... chew it a little.”
“This is nuts,” Stuart said.
Jimmy eyed him. “Hey, we’re in this together, man. Don’t start getting fidgety on me! Just keep thinking about that old lady who burned herself with the coffee from McDonalds. What’d she get for her lawsuit ... a million? Two million?”
