Tommy laughed. “Oh, I get it, Hubb. You got this pig with to use as bait. You draw in those zombies and throw her at ‘em, take off running. The meat on her, she’d keep a dozen busy for at least an hour.”
Mitch sighed. “Tommy…”
“You’ll wanna watch that mouth of yours, you skinny-assed little piece of shit,” Hot Tamale said, ready to swing. “Else I’ll shut it for you. How’s that sound? Because if I can’t, Herb here sure as shit can.”
Herb just stood there looking dazed under the brim of his cowboy hat. “Huh?” he said.
“Oh, shut the hell up, you mother-rapers,” Hubb told them. “Mitch, Jesus, what in the fuck are you doing out here?”
So Mitch told him. It was Chrissy. Chrissy had brought them here. They thought she was being held in the orphanage. Hubb said he’d rallied his own troops after the “big flood” as he called it for an assault on that old spook house because the way he was seeing it, it had to be the epicenter of the whole mess.
“You cut off a snake’s head,” Hardy said, “and the body dies soon enough.”
They were much better provisioned than Mitch’s crew. They were all carrying 12-gauge pump shotguns and wore duck hunting vests equipped with ammo pouches. Clipped on the vests were flashlights and road flares. Hot Tamale and Herb carried duffels of gas bombs made from beer bottles with tampons shoved down the throats.
“Gonna have ourselves a wienie roast,” Herb told them.
Knucker held up her shotgun. “Rock salt. We emptied the pellets from our shells and loaded ‘em with rock salt. Them things don’t like salt. It eats ‘em right up. One good round usually does it.”
Another fully-loaded 12 gauge was slung over her back and she handed it to Tommy.
“Let’s do this,” he said.
“All right,” Hubb said, “enough of this cocksucking hen party, lets go do what we came to get done.”
They formed a skirmish line, stopping now and again so Hubb could take a pull off the little oxygen bottle he carried. Side by side, the eight of them moved slowly up the winding road to the old gates of the Sisters of the Bleeding Heart. The gates had long ago fallen down and were knotted in grasses and creepers. The orphanage rose up before them, crumbling and rotting like some medieval castle. Nobody hesitated. They slipped through the gates and re-formed their line. Mitch and Tommy were at one end with Deke, Hubb and the others spreading out in the other direction.
“We got company,” Hot Tamale said.
In the driving rain, they hadn’t seen what was in a little dip just before them. Not until they were almost on top of it. Six of the ghouls were on their hands and knees, feeding on the remains of a couple corpses sprawled before them. The bodies were so mutilated, gutted and gnawed and stripped, you could not tell if they had been men or women. The zombies just kept on feeding, tearing off bits of meat and chewing on bones. It was revolting.
“Holy oh cow,” Herb said.
The zombies looked up now, seeing they had an audience. Two of them were little girls with filthy school uniforms on and plaid skirts. Catholic schoolgirls from hell. They were white-faced and black-eyed, gore dripping from their mouths. The others were adults…or had been. The one that stood up first to challenge the intruders had been a young woman. At least, she looked like a young woman. She was naked, just as cold and white as cemetery marble. Her face was like some bubbly clot of mortician’s wax, set with holes and bulging growths. The lot of it looking like it had melted and ran…tendrils and ropes of it hanging like the strings of a dirty mop, growing right into her chest. She said something that was utterly unintelligible.
The girls kept gnawing on bones, sitting Indian-style on the muddy ground, watching what was about to take place with their huge, glistening black eyes. Transfixed like children watching a scary movie and munching popcorn.
The others stood up with the woman and started forward.
“All right,” Hubb said, “pay attention, you boys, this is how it’s done.”
He stepped forward with Hardy and Knucker. Hot Tamale and Herb stayed back.
As the dead came up out of that dip, Hubb gave the signal and the three of them opened up. They spent two shells each and the effect was devastating. The 12 gauge rounds hit their marks easily at such close range. One of the adults actually exploded in a spray of gray flesh and rubbery bones, lots of that black fluid. The others did not come apart. Pieces of them were blown off, but they still stood. At least, for about a second or two and then the rock salt did its business. What happened then was like some crafty, visceral piece of Hollywood special effects magic. The zombies moaned and cried out and literally folded right up, smoking and steaming and melting. Flopping about on the ground in the rain, their skins bursting open and letting forth a tide of black goo and worms. And that was about it.
“Shit,” Deke said, turning away.
The smell that came from them was hot and nauseating, like thousands of boiling dead fish.
“Works even better than table salt,” Tommy said.
28
Chrissy had thought that one thing was coming after Alona and her, but now she just wasn’t so sure about that. Whatever was down the hallway, it sounded as if there were more than one. She could hear the slap of bare feet, many feet, and now they had just stopped down there. Somewhere.
The waiting began.
Chrissy and Alona huddled in the dimness of that room Alona had shuttled them quickly into. It was a big room they were in. With what light came in through the rotting planks nailed over the broken windows at the far end, Chrissy could see that it must have been some sort of dormitory at one time. She could just imagine rows of metal-framed beds lined up against the peeling, mustard-colored walls. But now, it was just a long and dusty closet with cobwebs draped overhead and dust on the floors that had to be an inch deep. It was just filthy in there. The remains of broken beer bottles on the floor, cast-off cigarette butts, old leaves, rat droppings in the corners. A great hole was eaten through one of the walls. It was so big you could look into the room next door. The ceiling was drooping from water damage, many of the tiles having dropped to the floor. The air was thick and damp, stinking of plaster rot and something like old urine.
Chrissy and Alona squatted against one wall, holding onto each other. They were both sweating and shivering, tense and waiting. They were in a hell of a fix and they both knew it. Other than the crowbar Alona had, they were pretty much defenseless. The only thing in the room that could be used as a weapon were those shattered beer bottles.
But they were over near the door and Chrissy did not want to go over there.
And that was another problem: the door would not close.
Its frame was so swollen from damp rot that it simply would not shut. You could only get it partially closed before it wedged tight and even then it was still open an inch.
They were coming.
Whatever was out there, was coming. Perhaps they’d been standing around in indecision for a time, but now they were coming. Chrissy heard them with a sinking feeling in her chest. They were coming and there was no way to stop them. And, of course, she was not so naive as to believe that what was coming up that shadowy hallway were people. No, of course not. These were dead things and she could smell the earthen boxes and narrow ditches they’d crawled out from. They came on with a stink of wet soil and green mildew and decayed shrouds. Any second now they would spy the partially open door and come right in in a mist of flies and grave stench.
Alona had the crowbar in her hands. She was holding it like a batter, breathing very fast.
Out in the hallway, they could hear the sound of nails being dragged along the walls and then something very peculiar: a slapping, thumping sound as if whatever was out there were guiding themselves along like blind men…by feel. The stink grew stronger. There had to be at least four or five of them judging by the shuffle of bare feet. They were nearing the door, patting the walls as they came.
It made no sense.
Surely they could see the door cracked open.
More thumping, bumping sounds. They passed by the door and the sound of flies buzzing passed with them.
