by Tim Curran
He was right. Bedecker was vomiting almost continually now, that same red-black stinking mush. Blood came from his eyes. His ears. His nostrils. He made an obscene farting sound and more drainage ran out from under his ass. Price said that liquefying sections of his stomach and intestines were being passed now, orally and anally. Blood flowed, gushed, poured as the hot agent ran from him, hungry to find a new host.
I was sick to my stomach. I tried to turn away but Price stopped me. “He is about to crash and bleed out.”
Morse made sure this was documented.
I lit another cigarette to get the stink out of my face. I told Price that I had friends over at the dealership, that we should link up with them soon as possible.
“A wise idea,” he said. “It’ll be dark soon. The Scabs aren’t active after sunset. We’ll slip away then, though I fear there are worse things out there, much worse things by night. But we can’t stay here.”
Bedecker was thrashing around, literally sloughing apart as poisoned blood and bubbling fluids came out of every opening.
“It won’t be long now,” Price said.
6
I took the lead. Janie was right behind me with Morse. Price was in the back. I had three rounds left in my Beretta and that was about the only safety net we had. Scared? No, I was absolutely fucking terrified.
I was thinking hard about Carl and the others. I wondered what they were doing and I prayed they were still alive. But I knew Carl. It would have taken quite an assault by the Scabs to take him out. He was a survivor as they all were. I was surprised that he hadn’t tried to come after us, but maybe he had. I just wanted to link back up with them.
Des Moines by night was dark and forbidding.
The moon was still pretty bright above, but shadows were everywhere, circling, shifting, tangling in the streets. As we rounded the corner from the department store, I could see the vague hulk of the dealership in the distance. On a sunny day it was a short, pleasant hop in the old days. Now, by darkness, it was a slow, hellish crawl through no man’s land. The air was damp, acrid-smelling. Off to the west I could see a flickering red glow. I assumed parts of the city were still burning or had been ignited anew. I could smell a slight odor of smoke, other things I didn’t like to think about. We moved on very carefully. I scoped out the car lots across the way, looking for anything moving out there. I heard a brief, shrill squealing in the distance. Like the sound of an insect…only it was a big, scary sound.
Just relax, I told myself again and again. It’s really not that far.
In the phosphorescence of the moonlight, everything was forbidding and ghostly. Buildings rose like defiled tombs and haunted monoliths. Parked trucks looked like ghost ships rising from the gloom. The skin at the back of my neck was crawling, moving in subtle prickling waves. Something was out there, something was moving around us in the shadows and I new it.
“What was that?” Janie said, suddenly stopping.
The sound of her voice in the stillness made me seize up. “What? I didn’t hear anything.” I wanted it to be true, but I knew it wasn’t. There had been a sound. Something.
Price said, “I would advise a bit of haste on our part, people. Survival by night in the streets of Des Moines is rather minimal at best.”
There he went being clinical again, couching everything in his uppity verse. What he meant to say was, we don’t haul ass, motherfuckers, ain’t gonna be nothing but a stain out here come morning. I ignored him. I stood there with Janie, tensing, my hand greasy on the butt of the Beretta. I decided to start moving when I heard it very clearly this time: a squeaking sound. This was followed a strong odor of decay, of dampness and subterranean dank. The way a sewer might smell, I suppose.
I had smelled it before. I knew what we were up against.
“This is disturbing,” Price said.
“It’s okay. Nash won’t let anything happen to us,” Janie told him like he was some kid in need of reassuring.
Morse circled around us, snapping off shots.
“Knock it the fuck off,” I told him.
What we were facing, if I was right, was something that not even good old Nash could do anything about. I moved forward slowly and I made it maybe six feet before I saw the first of our visitors.
A rat.
It was about the size of a tomcat, its entire body swollen and misshapen with bulging pink cancerous growths that rose from the sparse gray-black fur like fleshy bubbles. In the moonlight I saw them moving.
Every time I saw one I remembered that monster in the storm drains of Cleveland.
“Stay put, don’t panic,” I told the others. “This is probably a scout out scavenging ahead of the main pack.”
Click-click, went Morse.
The rat’s snakelike, scaly tail twitched on the concrete like it knew what I was saying. Its eyes were fixed, blood-red, shining like wet marbles. Its jaws were open, loops of saliva hanging from them. I knew from experience how fast these bastards were. I brought up my Beretta very slowly, very calmly, and drew a bead on old Mr. Rat.
He made a sudden high-pitched squealing sound.
I shot him in the head and he pitched forward, blood running from him in a scarlet pool. I could see the fat, grub-like parasites jumping in his hide.
I pulled Janie away and our chain was on the march again. I knew we were in terrible danger; I just didn’t know what to do about it other than continue on. Maybe, possibly, somehow, we’d make it through. We started to cross the street in the direction of the dealership which looked huge and tomblike in the moonlight, just crawling with shadows. We hadn’t gone far before the rats came out of their hides. They’d been waiting amongst the cars, the main pack, and now here they came. I heard Janie make a disgusted sound in her throat. The rats were everywhere with more arriving all the time. They were huge, absolutely huge. Some of them were the size of full-grown German Shepherds. And all of them dirty and stinking, eyes shining in the darkness, drool running from their jaws, noses twitching.
I knew then that the squealing noise the other rat made was either a cry for help or a warning to the others.
Well, they had the advantage now.
They crept out of the shadows, mutant horrors with growths and white twitching things coming out of their flesh. I did not look too closely. They had closed in on us and there was no way in hell we were going to make the dealership. Going back was out of the question, too, because more rats were filling the streets behind us. Our only avenue of escape was into the buildings behind us. But Janie and I had checked the doors pretty carefully in our run from the Scabs.
There was only one possibility and it was slim.
A narrow dead-ended alley cut between a couple buildings. I saw a fire escape hanging down. The ladder was pulled up, but if it wasn’t rusted too badly, I might be able to pull it down.
“Okay,” I said. “Price, slowly lead us into that alley. That’s where we’re going.”
He didn’t argue. I think by that point even his arrogance had somewhat paled. He led us to the fire escape and the rats moved in, taking their time, closing off any avenue of escape like soldiers in battle formation. They had us and they knew it.
The fire escape. I leaped up, grabbed it and pulled down with all my strength and weight. It slid down an inch, two, then seized. I threw everything into it, flopping and twisting, wishing I still had my beer belly. Janie jumped up and grabbed me around the waist and we swung together like a couple acrobats and I could feel my pants pulling down and I had sudden ludicrous vision of how ridiculous I’d look with my pants around my ankles when the rats feasted on me. Particularly with our crazy photographer taking pictures of my torment.
The ladder let go and let go fast. Next thing I knew we were on our asses in the alley. I got Janie onto the ladder. “Go, go, go!” I told her, the rats moving now, sensing something was terribly amiss with their midnight snack.
Morse went up it like a monkey and Price moved pretty quick and then I was climbi
ng. A rat leaped and seized the toe of my boot. I shook him free and kicked another away and I made the platform above. Two rats were climbing. I stomped one on the snout and he fell, the other was too big so I shot him in the head and down he went. And by then, the alley was a sea of mulling rats. We slid the ladder up and there wasn’t a damn they could do about it.
They were squealing and squeaking, feeding on the one I’d shot, but mostly just pissed off. A few of them tried climbing the alley wall, but only made a few feet before they fell back. I waited there until they grew bored and left the alley.
We made it.
7
We broke a window and slipped into an apartment. It was dirty and dusty and dark in there, but there was nothing waiting for us. We made a quick check of the place and the only thing we found was the mummy of a woman in bed holding onto the mummy of an infant. Both were festooned with cobwebs. Their meat was long gone, but their skin had dried to a fine, flaking parchment that clung to the bones beneath. Both had black hair.
We decided we weren’t comfortable in there and went to another apartment. No bones, no nothing. We sat in the darkness and waited. The minutes ticked by. I had two bullets left and I was painfully aware of the fact.
“I would think the cautious thing to do would be to wait until sunup,” Price said.
And as he said it, I heard a sound from the floor above us. Something large and weighty had shifted up there, sliding its bulk across the floor.
“No,” I said. “I don’t think that would be a good idea at all. Let’s give it an hour or so.”
I knew the rats well by that point. They were industrious, cunning, relentless, but not the most patient creatures in the world. If their prey escaped as we had, they would move on to greener pastures. So we waited in the dusty darkness while Morse got a few shots for Better Homes and Gardens. We were silent. I could smell the perspiration coming off the others, feel their warmth, hear their slow breathing. They were counting on me to deliver them from this mess. I considered our options. The only logical thing to do was to make another try for the dealership, link up with the others.
After about thirty minutes, I said, “Let’s scope out the downstairs.”
We moved down the dim hallway, guiding ourselves by the moonlight that spilled through a narrow window at the end. I found the stairs and down we went. The bottom floor was occupied by a health food store which appeared to be untouched for the most part. I guess tofu and shirataki noodles weren’t a big draw when the world ended. It was damnably dark in there. Peering out the plate glass windows, I saw that the streets were empty.
Looking around, I saw that the store was not as untouched as I first thought. Something had happened here. There bones scattered over the floor, unarticulated skeletons of human beings and various animals, all just heaped and tossed around in no particular order. It was too dark to see properly, but I was guessing there were the remains of dozens.
“Why would this be here?” Janie asked. “Why here? Why dumped like this?”
Price shrugged. “Who can say? We might have stumbled upon somebody’s private ossuary.”
But I wasn’t buying that either. I kicked a skull out of the way and grabbed up a long bone. A human femur, I thought. I brought it to the next aisle amongst the moldered, crumbling organic pasta. I examined it in a stray patch of moonlight. It was scratched up, gnawed, riddled with minute punctures. Something had been chewing on it and I was guessing the same went for all the bones.
“What is it?” Janie said when I came back and tossed the bone into the heap.
I was about to tell her that the bone had been nibbled on by rats, though I honestly didn’t believe it was anything as prosaic as mutant rats. I opened my mouth to do so and I heard a shifting, leathery sound from somewhere overhead and then Price cried out and Janie screamed.
“Look out!” I shouted.
Something had Price. Something twisting and undulant had looped around his throat. I threw myself at him and tried to peel it off his throat. It was scabby and pulsing and felt almost like braided rope. But it was no rope. It was alive. I pulled my gun and fired up at the black bulk above Price. In the muzzle flash I saw a series of tendrils or tentacles, black and oily, squirming and writhing. And mouths. Something with two or three mouths that were vibrantly pink with fine sharp teeth like fish bones.
Morse was trying to take its picture. I knocked him out of the way.
It made a weird squealing sound when I shot it.
But it dropped Price right away.
I could feel a sickening, feverish heat coming from the thing as it rustled and slithered above, a rank stink like decaying hides. It was a dark shape in constant motion. I took aim and fired again and it made that shrill squealing again. In the muzzle flash I saw…I think I saw…something like a huge bat retreating into an oval cavity in the ceiling. I saw something like membranous wings unfolding, shiny flesh like greased vinyl set with a tiny hairs, mouths, and more than two beady, bulbous eyes. It moved quickly and was gone, in-between the floors.
I couldn’t even guess what it might have been.
I was only glad it wasn’t in the mood for a fight.
I got Price to his feet and got him over by the doorway. There was a circular burn around his throat like something that might be left by a hangman’s noose. But he was all right. The streets were empty and I opened the door.
“Everyone hold hands,” I said. “We’re going on a run.”
We raced across the street and nothing came loping out of the shadows to stop us. We crossed first to one car lot and then another and came around the side of the dealership. We went in there and made the first showroom and a blinding light hit me in the face.
“It’s about fucking time,” Carl said, lowering his flashlight.
8
The morning dawned gray and pale like the blood had been sucked from it. The dark pulled away and vanished into holes and cellars for the day. After crashing for a few hours, I was awake with Carl and Texas Slim to greet the new day.
“Tell me something,” Texas said as the others stretched and yawned and got their stuff together. “You think this is why came here? For this Price fellow? You think that’s it?”
“Yes, I have a feeling it is.”
“But why?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s just a feeling. Take it or leave it.”
He looked like he wanted to leave it and I did not argue the point.
“I say we ditch that Morse guy,” Carl said. “He takes another picture of me and I’m drilling him.”
“Go easy,” I said. “He’s just confused.”
The Jeep was untouched and we were thankful for that. Texas and Carl carried plastic jerry cans of gas out to it that they had siphoned from other vehicles and set about filling it up. Janie was off packing up our stuff with Morse. I stood there, leaning up against a Chevy Cobalt, pulling off a cigarette. Mickey was there. She was watching me but not speaking.
After a time, I said, “Go ahead. Say it. Say what’s on your mind.”
I looked over at her, expecting to see the fire in her eyes. She quite often gave me the impression that she was in heat. “I was never much in the old days,” she said. “I was the kind of person you probably think I was. I made a living getting my picture taken, if you catch my drift. Sometimes I wore a bikini or something equally as scanty, sometimes I didn’t wear a thing. No porno, though. Believe me, I was offered, but it wasn’t my thing. You’d be surprised at how many calendars I did.”
I smiled. “No, I wouldn’t be surprised at all,” I told her, wondering what the sudden need for confession was all about.
She gave me a smile, threw her hair back. She knew I liked to look at her. What sexy woman doesn’t know men like to look at her?
“Bottom line is, Nash, is that I was never much. I considered myself a model. My mother considered me a whore. But I made good money posing with motorcycles and trucks and ATVs, wearing tool belts and hardhats and no
thing much else.” She shrugged. “But I never felt like I was part of anything. Not until now.”
“Now?”
“You’ll probably think it’s crazy. Now that I’m with you guys I feel…needed, part of something. It makes no sense, I know. But it’s true. You make me feel safe, protected. This world is fucked up and dangerous, but I feel secure with you, Nash. I felt it right away. There’s a power coming off you. An energy. We all feel it. It’s what draws us to you.”
“I’m nothing special, trust me,” I told her.
“Oh, yes you are.”
She told me the secure feeling came from me, not the others. They had nothing to do with it. She said that when Gremlin was with us he just gave her the creeps because he was like the men she always assumed salivated over her calendars. The sort that would have fucked a toilet seat if they thought her ass had touched it. Gremlin had been like that.
“A small mind with surging hormones,” she said. “A walking idiot penis.”
I started laughing. Yeah, she had that asshole pegged, all right.
“I study people, Nash,” she told me. “I always have. People and their relationships interest me.”
“And what do you think of the relationships in my little posse?”
“I think they’re tight, solid. You have a good group,” she admitted. “Carl’s okay. He’s like your obedient watchdog. He’d never betray you. Texas Slim? Oh boy, how do you categorize him. He’s weird, but loyal. He sure likes to talk about mortuaries and embalming bodies. I have to think his interest in corpses is not purely professional. Then again, he’s about ninety percent bullshit. Underneath he’s okay.”
Mickey admitted that Janie intimidated her a bit. Probably because Janie didn’t like her and felt threatened by her presence. But there was no reason for that, Mickey said, because Janie herself was pretty, features finely-sculpted and perfectly Nordic from her blue eyes to her high cheekbones and the blonde hair that was not so much yellow as silver.
