“That’s a fucking clown,” a voice said and then. “It’s got Chrissy!”
Chrissy was certain that her mind had run now like maple sap. For she was hearing the voice of Deke and another voice which sounded suspiciously like that of Tommy Kastle, her stepdad’s old drinking and bowling partner. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be.
But there they were.
Dressed in wet raincoats, looking haggard and tired and angry, very angry. They stormed into the room and Grimshanks shrank away, because he knew that what was in them was even worse than what had been in the mob that had beaten him earlier that day down into the grass.
Deke was on his knees, holding Chrissy against him.
Tommy stood there with a shotgun in his hands.
Grimshanks looked afraid, trapped, cornered, in dire straits.
“Hello, Pervo,” Tommy said and his voice was flat and deadly. “I heard all about you. Fruitpie the fucking Magician. I bet fruit pies aren’t the only thing that disappear when you’re around, are they? I bet a lot of kids go missing…don’t they, suck-nut?”
Grimshanks hunched over. His hands came up, his face contorted into a mask of raw animal rage, teeth sharp and bared, eyes fixed and hating. “I’ll tear your guts out, Tommy-boy, and I’ll make your friend eat them! Eat them! DO YOU HEAR ME YOU FUCKING COCKLESS GUTLESS SQUIRT
OF SHIT? I’LL MAKE HIM EAT THEMMMMMM?”
He charged at Tommy.
It was a good bluff and pretty damn frightening to see, but Tommy was not impressed. He cracked a little smile and pulled the trigger. Grimshanks took it right in the belly. He did not fold up or go down like the others, he went absolutely manic and demented. He leaped into the air, bounced off the walls. He flew up and attached himself to the ceiling like a spider. He slid down the walls and wormed over the floors, the whole time steam churning from that hole in his guts. He rushed at Tommy and Tommy fired again, this time catching him with a glancing shot that ripped most of the meat from his upper arm, the flesh there singing and blackening.
Finally, Grimshanks let out a freight train wail of noise, howling and shrieking and everyone had to cover their ears. The clown took advantage of that and hit the boards over the windows like a projectile from a cannon. Some of the boards snapped, but others held.
He hit them and went instantly liquid.
He became a blob that ran and gushed and forced its gelatinous mass between the boards and out into the night where he escaped into the wet darkness. But everyone in that room could hear him wailing and screeching. Because for the first time, Grimshanks was really hurt. He was damaged beyond repair and that screaming of his was part agony and part absolute fear.
Deke was rocking Chrissy back and forth in his arms. She was crying and so was he. Tommy brushed them both with his hands, making contact with them.
“Deke, you take care of her,” he said, heading for the door.
“Where you going?”
Tommy looked back at him, grabbing the lantern, and winked. “I’m going to kill me a motherfucking clown.”
35
There wasn’t much time.
It was full dark and the dead were coming.
Where before they had been content to wait just under the water, staring up with hollow eyes at the people on the rooftop, now their patience had worn thin. They were coming up out of the water. Coming in numbers. And by the looks of it, there would be no stopping them.
“Get ready,” Harry told Chuck. “Stand by with that salt.”
“Look how many there are!” Rita Zirblanski said.
Harry almost told her that he would not let them get her…but could he really promise that? Promise anything that seemed so utterly impossible under the circumstances? Wanda and the twins had the lantern up near the chimney. Harry moved around carefully on the wet shingles with their sole flashlight. Everywhere he played the light, nothing but dead and leering faces.
Jesus, they were everywhere.
To all sides of the house, the zombies were gathered. The water came almost up to the lip of the roof itself and it was thick with the living dead. They crowded up to the roof, five and six and sometimes seven deep, looking almost like concert-goers pressed up to the edge of a stage. White arms were resting on the shingles, faces that were distorted peering up at Harry and the others, those eyes filled with an infinite and unholy blackness. Black tears ran from huge, gelatinous eyes; black blood from the corners of grinning mouths. So many of them, so damn many. There wasn’t enough salt to turn back more than ten or fifteen at best and out there…good God, a seething, hungering graveyard of them.
Mr. Cheese, Chuck’s cat, was mewling wildly now.
“Listen!” Chuck said. “Listen!”
Harry was not listening, though. He was studying the living corpses down below, knowing that essentially only himself and a bag of salt stood in-between them and the people left in his charge. Sure, Chuck would fight hard, but he was just a boy. Just like the Zirblanksi’s were really just kids and Wanda was an old, old lady. No, he was their protector.
And he didn’t stand a chance.
You could have ran. You could have gotten away anytime.
True. True enough. And that was the really crazy, fucked-up part of it all. He, Harry Teal, felon and escaped convict and all-around bad guy, did not want to leave. He was a guy who’d ran with a pretty tough cut-throat crew in Milwaukee. He’d boosted cars to order. He made his living in the streets. He’d spent the past five years in a maximum security hellhole. In the streets, he’d beat guys bloody, he’d even shot a guy once. In Slayhoke, he’d busted metal pipes over men’s heads, he’d stabbed them and beaten them nearly to death when they got in his way or gave him trouble or just failed to show him respect. He had become an animal just like all the others animals out in the yard there. He wasn’t the sort of guy who gave a rat’s ass about anyone. With him it had always been one thing, same as any other criminal: greed. He wanted that folding green and God help you if you got in the way of him getting it.
And now? Now he was playing good Samaritan?
Yes. Yes, that was it exactly. He could have ran off anytime after they’d gotten out from behind those walls. He could have run off on Jacky Kripp. He could have run off after Jacky was killed. But he hadn’t. He’d hooked up with Tommy and Mitch and stayed…stayed when he knew things were bad. More than bad. Just plain awful. A flooding city. The living dead. He got through that gauntlet, the cops would either shoot him down on sight or throw him back in a cage. Regardless, he’d stayed and stayed because Tommy and Mitch had treated him okay. Not like a con, but like a man. Like a friend. They accepted him and gave him something he’d never had before: a good feeling inside. So he stayed to help, because he figured a guy like him was particularly suited to surviving in a clusterfuck like Witcham. Tommy and Mitch were good boys, but neither of them were like Harry. They were not natural-born predators.
And they needed somebody who was.
Somebody who would watch their back and bring hell down on anyone who gave them trouble. But it was more than that even. He liked Wanda. She was like the grandmother you never had. The Zirblanski twins were like your favorite nieces. And Chuck? Goddamn, he could have been Harry’s kid in a different world where he hadn’t come up hard in the wrong neighborhood.
