Tommy stepped away from the rest of them. “Well, I’m not listening to anymore of this bullshit. Halloween ain’t for over a month yet and I’m not in the mood for it. So leave me out of this crap, girls.”
“You think it’s that easy, Mr. Mouth? You think you can hide behind your big mouth?” Hot Tamale put to him and her words were sharp enough to amputate fingers. “Because that’s what you’re doing and we all know it! You’re scared yellow and you want to think we’re all crazy, eh? Well, we’re not crazy, you stupid moron, we’re not crazy at all! But, go ahead, be a big man and go out into that rain! Go ahead! I dare you! I dare you!”
“All right, that’s enough,” Mitch said before she double-dared him.
Tommy laughed. “If you don’t shut your fucking pisshole and shut it real soon, bitch, I’ll shut the fucker for you. You and that pussy boyfriend of yours.”
Mitch pulled Tommy away from the pack before things got ugly. The others stepped back farther into the store and they went over to the damaged wall. They stood there, asses up against the hood of the kid’s Intrepid. And for a long time they did not say anything.
“Soon as that rain lifts,” Tommy said, “I’m making like the sheep and getting the flock out of here.”
“I’m with you,” Mitch said.
Tommy pulled out his cigarettes and lit one. Hubb right away started reprimanding him about smoking in the store and Tommy popped him a bird. “You leave these monkeys alone long enough,” he said, blowing out a column of smoke, “and real scary shit’s going to start happening, Mitch. That pig in red hots, she’s the rotten apple in the barrel. She’ll have these stupid bastards looking for a witch to burn, you give her time.”
Mitch nodded. “I can’t wait here much longer. Lily’s probably out of her head as it is.”
“I’ll go with you when you leave. About time I stopped and said hello. Besides, your Jeep ain’t going anywhere.”
Mitch felt better. And not because he had a ride, but because maybe like the others, he wasn’t fancying the idea of being alone out there…not that he believed any of that hoodoo bullshit, of course.
Tommy pulled off his cigarette and yanked aside the flap. “There’s more…people out there, Mitch.”
Mitch saw them standing in the rain, those same gray and dire forms. Except more now, maybe five or six total. And though he did not honesty believe all that Stephen King bullshit he’d been hearing today, he knew looking at those people that there was something definitely off about them. They were standing funny, the rain running right over them, like mannequins somebody had left out in the storm. Too intense, too fixated on the store and the two men watching them. That kind of patience was disturbing.
Tommy said, “Shit.”
Those people, they were crossing the street now.
The waiting was over.
9
Mitch smelled them before they arrived.
Their odor seemed to flood the store in a vaporous stench: a weird, heady smell of rotting garbage and dank sewers, something maybe worse. Something secret and dark and vile.
“What the hell do they want?” Yellow Hat said.
“They want us,” Hot Tamale informed him.
And that was it. The floodgates of panic were opened, because even those that didn’t squeeze up to the sheet metal flap with Tommy and Mitch knew that what was about to happen was going to be really, really bad. Hardy started praying under his breath and Mindy let out a long, shrill scream. Yellow Hat ran to the back of the store and then ran right back. Hot Tamale stood there defiantly like she was enjoying it all and Herb stood there with her like he did not have a clue about any of it.
Hubb, who had gotten most of his left knee shattered in the Korean War, seemed to realize that battle was about to be joined. “Those cockfuckers want to break up this party? Well, fucking peachy, let’s tan their hides.”
He wasn’t worrying about his merchandise now. He had his baseball bat and although he did not sell firearms, he had just about everything else and with the help of Tommy and Jason and Gena Kramer, weapons were passed out: axes and hatchets, machetes and British Army police billyclubs. Mindy took the kid over behind the counter because he and she were in no shape to do anything.
But the others, they stood their ground-Mitch and Tommy, Hubb and his two elderly chums, Hot Tamale and her boyfriend, Jason and Gena Kramer, even Yellow Hat. They stood in a loose half-circle like some kind of savage gauntlet, scared but cohesive, ready to kill anyone or anything that made it through the rupture in the store’s front wall.
Mitch waited at the flap, watched those people come on.
They moved with a slow and deadly intensity, drenched and ragged things with hair hanging in their faces. Like Tamale’s boyfriend said, those faces were bleached white like floaters pulled from rivers. Even their lips were colorless. But their eyes, dear God, they were just black and glistening like glass eyes dipped in India Ink. They did not blink. They were glaring and set and merciless. You could not reason with eyes like that or the fathomless murky brains which compelled them.
“You come in my motherfucking store and you’re dead!” Hubb called out to them, not seeing them from his position, but no doubt feeling their odious presence. “You better stay out there, you cocksucking hippies!”
Mitch felt a manic laughter bubble in his throat. Hippies. Now that was rich. You could buy the whole bank with that.
Mitch pulled away from the flap when they were only feet away.
He stood there with the others, amazed at how perfectly the Intrepid had penetrated the front of the store. The sheet metal had been pushed in, bent, but it had not been torn apart really. It had just conformed itself to the intrusion of the car. And except for the piece Mitch had bent to get the door open, you could not see outside unless you yanked that flap back.
And was that a good thing or a bad thing?
There was a great thud as the things hit the front of the store. It was as if, in those last few feet, they’d decided to rush the building and see if they could simply burst through the front like the car had. They hit the outer sheet metal wall and just began to pound and scratch at it with an almost idiotic glee. Mitch had seen their eyes, had seen what was behind them, and although there was nothing in them remotely human, there was cunning and craft and a cold, almost mechanistic sort of intelligence. He had seen it there like sputtering candlelight in a dim, webby attic. The sense that while these people probably would never write a great sonnet or design a suspension bridge, they understood tactics just fine.
Of course, at that moment, they were not practicing any.
More like pissed-off children trying to force their way into the candy cupboard. To hell with subtlety and logic, let’s try brute strength here.
The sound of those fists hammering on the sheet metal exterior boomed like thunder and in combination with the rain pounding on the roof, the inside of the store was just a hive of echoing noise. But then as quickly as it had started, it stopped.
No more hammering.
No more scratching.
Just the rain and even that had lessened a bit. Somebody let out a gasp of air and somebody else cleared their throat. That silence from outside was not just loud, it was screaming. They could hear the rain dropping into puddles, an occasional finger of wind rattling the roof. Nothing else.
Tommy looked over at Mitch and Mitch just shrugged.
Had they gone? Mitch didn’t think so. They were out there, all right. He could feel them somehow and he thought he could hear one of them breathing with a gurgling sound like backed-up drainpipes. Sure, brute strength had failed, now came subtlety. They were waiting out there with an almost inhuman patience, just waiting for somebody inside to peel back that flap and then they’d grab whoever was fool enough to try it.
Tommy looked like he was considering it, but Mitch shook his head.
“Wait,” he said.
