whatever shape it might take.
There was a thumping from beneath the waterline.
Muffled, sure, but he heard it and so did the others.
“Oh, no,” Rhonda said. “Oh, no.”
“Hush,” Wanda told her.
Chuck made ready with the salt.
Mr. Cheese growled.
“We’re okay,” Harry said to them. “We’re all okay.”
Wanda looked over at him, didn’t seem to believe it for a minute.
And then he saw her eyes, staring at something behind him, her lips attempting to say something. He swung around, bringing up Tommy’s shotgun. A yellow, leprous hand was reaching from the water, fingers clutching madly. And then another hand and still another. They clawed along the lip of the roof, trying to find something they could pull themselves up with.
Rita or Rhonda, or maybe both of them, let out a muted scream. He took up the shotgun. The hands were everywhere now, some bloated and fleshy, others scabrous and decayed, scratching at the roof and yanking off shingles. He saw faces emerging from the black water. Ruined and wrecked faces, collapsed from going to soft rot in the water.
Harry started shooting.
All there was was the sound of Rita and Rhonda whimpering and Harry jerking that trigger. He kept shooting until he had no more shells left. He blasted faces from skulls and fingers from hands and still they kept coming, the legions of the grave.
And then Wanda said, “The salt, boy! The salt!”
Chuck seemed to remember then.
He took up the five-pound bag of Morton’s and fumbled it in his hands, nearly dropping it. Then he had it open. He dug out handfuls and tossed them at the advancing dead. They began to smoke and blister, screaming as the salt burned into them. Chuck kept throwing and they slid back into the water.
“Harry…help us,” Wanda said.
One of the things had come over the other side of the roof. It had Rita by the hair with a gray, flaking hand. Rhonda was punching at the thing, but with little effect. Harry went over there and threw salt in the zombie’s face. Right away, it began to steam, the flesh going to wax. It lost its balance and tumbled down the roof incline and into the water, losing pieces of itself in the process.
But they weren’t gone.
They were still out there. Harry could see them just under the surface, maybe a dozen or more. Just watching and watching with those black, watery eyes.
Those that had eyes.
26
Here’s what Chrissy said to Alona: “That’s a stupid idea. I’m sorry, but that’s just stupid.”
“Listen, honey, and listen good. Because we don’t have much time,” Alona said after they had left Gail’s corpse in the clearing and the newly-resurrected Grimshanks had drifted away like a balloon. “This hill, Crooked Hill, do you know what it is now? It’s an island. A stinking, pissing little island. What’s here? The orphanage. A falling- down church. A little old graveyard. Some woods and fields. Not squat else, honey. Those other idiots ran off and this after I had a hell of a time corralling them together in the first place. Now it’s just me and you. Again, I say, Crooked Hill is an island now. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. That fucking clown will hunt us like rabbits out in the open. We have to use our heads. We have to hide somewhere defensible, all right? We have hide in plain sight.”
“But the orphanage?”
“Yes, the orphanage for chrissake.”
Chrissy didn’t bother arguing after that, because, really, what was there to argue about? Alona was right. Alona was not Gail who wandered in circles out of sheer panic. She was different. She was tough. She had attitude and balls. People like her made a habit of surviving because they were essentially militaristic by nature.
“Okay, okay.”
Alona grabbed her and they broke from the treeline and made for the orphanage, which looked like the mother of all haunted houses. The prototype that artists used when they painted spook houses for Halloween decorations: tall and dark and craggy, a rambling pile of brick that seemed to lean out over the overgrown lawn at you like it wanted to catch you in its shadow. It must have had a hundred boarded windows, jagged gables, lots of tall crumbling chimneys and towers and crooked weathervanes. Weathered and water-stained and sagging, you could not get past the idea that there was something impossibly sinister about it.
Jesus.
Chrissy stopped. Looking up at it made her seize up inside. How could you possibly expect to find sanctuary in a tomb like that? She didn’t honestly know if she could do this. Every terror from childhood had suddenly leaped into her belly fully-formed with a terrible, black weight. She could feel them in there, unfurling their spidery legs and reminding her of everything she had been scared of as a little girl.
The rain started again, falling in gray sheets, hammering down and then lessening a bit. It stirred up the mold on the ground and gave everything a dank, rotten smell.
“Move!” Alona said, shoving her along.
They were coming at it from the front now, along the overgrown drive, the grounds wild with shrubs and bushes and gnarled dead trees. The grasses were up past their knees and Chrissy kept expecting to find bones twisted in them. Everything around that malefic building was dead. There was no avoiding that. As if the orphanage itself were poisoned and year by year, that poison seeped farther out, contaminating more of the earth.
On the porch overhang, there were letters chiseled from stone: MANUAL TRAINING ACADEMY, they read.
That’s nice, Chrissy though. Very homey.
Finally, they stood at the bottom of the steps that led up to the entrance. The orphanage rose up above them, rotting boards barely concealing the darkness behind those ancient windows. The feeling Chrissy got looking up at it against that gray, overcast sky was not good. This place was filled with death and she could not convince herself otherwise.
The steps before them were wide and warped, heaved-up in spots from frost. Weeds grew from cracks in them. The railings were rusted, the porch itself wide and long, its boards warped and feathered with mold.
“Watch your step,” Alona said.
She led the way up to the massive double doors. One of them stood straight and tall, the other had fallen in. Gaining entrance then would be no problem at all. A smell came wafting out and it described the interior just fine: wood rot and wetness and yellowed bones.
“C’mon,” Alona said, ducking through the door with apparently no fear whatsoever.
Inside the stench increased. It was almost gagging, like sticking your head down an old, poisoned well and breathing deep. Just mephitic and cloying. They were in some sort of lobby. Corridors ran off in either direction. A massive staircase set before them. The walls were bowed, the ceilings rotting right through in places from water damage. The wainscoting was wormholed and chewed as if mice had been at it. Everywhere, threading cobwebs and abandoned bird’s nest poking from holes in the walls. The floor was tiled in pink and green, dead leaves blown everywhere, many floating in standing pools of water. Shadows spilled from doorways, thick and spreading. Dust was settled over everything, but much of it had been disturbed as if many feet had trod through it.
“Well?” Chrissy said. “What now?”
Alona looked around, saw something leaning in a corner that interested her. A crowbar. “Ha!” she said. “I bet somebody pried that door open and then ran off when they got inside. Probably scared to death.”
“I don’t blame them.”
They passed an old office that was empty save for a pile of rotting wood against one wall and an old calendar
