direction, as far as I could tell.
“Must’ve burned ‘em here,” Mickey said. “I saw a pit like this outside Allentown.”
Texas Slim nodded. “The germs and fallout must have been very bad here. Too close to Chicago. They must have dumped them here and torched them. Judging by the ashes everywhere, I’d say it went on for some time.”
I saw that it wasn’t just bones down there, but the wrecked hulks of cars and trucks. Lots of things had been dumped down there. It was a junkyard.
“You didn’t know this was here?” Janie asked Mickey.
“No…how would I?”
“Well, you led us right to it.”
“So what?”
“So, you’re leading us to that Jeep. You know where it is. You didn’t know this was here?”
“No, I didn’t. I came out here once. But not on foot. We were on the road north of here, on the other side of the river. I-ninety.”
Janie did not look satisfied and I knew I had to get the show rolling again here or another fight would break out. My little group was getting frustrated, tired. They needed something to set their sights on. That’s why I was going after the Jeep now rather than wait until tomorrow. At least, that was one of the reasons. The need to keep moving west was getting very strong, you see.
The sun was hovering just over the horizon now. I saw that there was a trail cut through the pit and up the other side. If we tried to go around, it would probably be dark by the time we hit the river.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Down there?” Gremlin said. “I’m not going down into that cemetery.”
“Then you can stay behind.”
I started down, moving easy so I didn’t go sliding on the sand. Pebbles and loose rocks went rolling into the bone pit. The others fell in behind me without a word. Gremlin, too. It must have been a quarry or sandpit at one time that had been abandoned and then opened back up, enlarged, when thousands were dying by the day and infectious disease was burning hot through the city.
The hillsides were littered with stray skeletons wrapped in threadbare rags. They were rising from the sand, their bones so white they looked luminous. As we neared the bottom, I noticed there were great jagged slabs of slag everywhere along with sections of broken concrete that looked to have been part of sidewalks at one time. Ancient lengths of cement drainage conduits rose from the refuse along with rusted staffs of rebar and old porcelain sewer piping that must have been down there for decades and decades. Sure, first it had been a quarry, then a junk pit, then a body dump.
The shadows grew long and I felt Janie slide her hand in mine and I was glad for the feel of it. I gripped it tightly. Things rustled in pockets of spreading dark. Birds winged from one wrecked vehicle to the next. A rat stood atop a rusting engine block, watching us pass. The trail wound through the wreckage and bones, zig-zagging this way and that. Somebody had beat the trail through so it was definitely in use.
But I bet they don’t go down here after dark.
I kept going as night settled in. There were things jutting from the shadows everywhere. I tripped over a curled piece of rebar and almost went down. I dug a flashlight from my back. Working batteries were getting scarce now, but I didn’t like the idea of gutting myself on jagged metal.
“Nice place,” Texas Slim said.
“Yeah, nice place to die,” Gremlin added.
I fanned my flashlight around, picking out old refrigerators and heaps of tires, the rusted and pitted remains of an old swingset rising from the sand. And bones, of course. They were everywhere. The light glanced off ribcages and femurs and spinal columns. And skulls. Dozens and dozens of jawless skulls that had been picked clean. Bones rose up in great ramparts through which rats scurried.
When we hit dead center of the pit there was really nothing but skeletons. Some still dressed in rags and articulated, but most blackened and broken and tossed around. I started seeing a lot of small bones and skulls which must have belonged to kids. As we cut around some termite-pitted dock pilings, there was a little baby buggy with weeds growing up through it. I put the light on it out of some ghoulish curiosity and saw that the carriage was all rusted and black, the bonnet burned to flaps. Inside there was a tiny skeleton with jaws wide in a scream.
“Oh God,” Mickey said.
More derelict cars and piping, bones and shattered hills of concrete. I was moving everyone along faster now, needing to get out of there. Maybe it was nerves and maybe it was something else but I was getting very apprehensive. It felt like there were needles in my belly. I was sweating. I could feel the beat of my heart at my temples. Rats squeaked and bats winged overhead.
“We should find the trail up and out in a couple minutes,” I said, either to reassure the others or myself.
“I hope so,” Mickey said. “I don’t think we should be down here.”
“Oh, shut up,” Janie told her. “Don’t be so damn dramatic-”
But her words were cut right off…for somewhere out in the shivering darkness that filled the pit like the blackest oil, there rose up a roaring which sounded positively primeval.
“I’m guessing we’re fucked here,” Texas Slim said.
21
The roaring came again and this time it was closer.
And there was a smell on the night breeze: sharp and vile like rotting hides piled in heaps.
It became a matter then of making a run for it or standing and fighting. The beast was out there and I figured it was the same one we’d heard last night. I had the most unpleasant feeling that it had been following us, scenting us across the city. Maybe that was just my imagination working overtime, but I had the strangest feeling that it was right.
“What do you think, boss?” Carl said.
“Let’s go,” Janie said. “Please, Nash.”
There were a few other mutterings on the subject, but the one person who seemed to have no opinion was Gremlin. The first to complain, the first to bitch, the first to interject his opinion on any subject…but now he had nothing to say. Sure, maybe he was scared but I was not so sure.
“Let’s draw it in and fucking waste it,” Mickey said.
And that’s what I was leaning towards. I just didn’t like the idea of making a run for it with that thing… whatever it was…at our backs. It was stalking us. And only now had it announced its presence because it had us here in this pit and it knew we were not going to escape.
“C’mon, Nash, this is crazy,” Janie said, just riven with fear. “Let’s just-”
“Sshhh,” I told her.
Nobody spoke; they just listened now.
The beast was coming. We could all hear it picking its way towards us in the darkness. The crackling of leaves and sticks, the crunch of bones, the thudding footsteps of something very large like an ogre in a fairy story coming out of a dark wood to eat children.
Another sound now…a grunting, sniffing sound like a rooting hog.
I didn’t bother using the flashlight. Not yet. It knew where we were and it was coming. I’d wait until it got in close, close enough to shoot. I motioned the others forward to some concrete pilings. They got behind them and spread out, guns held in sweating, shaking fingers. And there we waited as that monstrosity out there edged in closer, stealthy like a jungle cat hunting its prey. There was so much junk and refuse in the pit that there were dark shapes rising all around us. Everyone watched, waiting for one that moved. I thought more than once that I saw some hunched-over shaggy form of immense proportions.
Maybe it was my imagination.
We waited for five minutes, then ten, sweating bullets. Everyone was tense. There was nothing but the sound of our breathing, the distant sound of wild dogs barking, tiny creatures rustling amongst the wreckage.
