But she wasn’t staying back. And you could see by looking into those eyes that there was nothing to reason with inside of her. She was just a mindless drone, a predatory thing like a hornet fixed on stinging you. She would not back off.
She brought her hands up and Mitch saw that there were no nails on her bloated fingers. There were fat green worms hanging from the undersides of her arms…they looped and squirmed, began to slide back into their holes with a sound like a child sucking up a strand of spaghetti.
Tommy uttered a little disgusted grunt and pulled the trigger of the four-ten. Maybe he had satisfied himself that this thing was no woman, that killing it was no more murder than killing a woodtick that was sucking the blood out of your balls. The sound of the four-ten was thunder in the cellar, rolling on and on. The dead woman had taken birdshot at close range. It had blown open her shirt in black tatters and opened up dozens of holes in her fish-white belly. And from them, not blood, but more of that inky black liquid and runnels of contaminated water that stank like fish rotting on a beach.
But the blast did not put her down.
She kept coming, those white hands looking for necks to snap and that gray, puckering mouth looking for wounds to leech of blood.
That did it.
They fled. The woman in the fishing hat went splashing towards the stairs and Mitch and Tommy were right behind her. They stumbled up into the light and the crowd was still there, mouths open and eyes asking questions that never made it past their lips.
“GET BACK!” Mitch hollered at them. “GET THE FUCK BACK!”
They did, almost falling over each other.
The dead woman came up the steps slowly, but not jerking and clownish like a zombie in a movie. There was nothing funny about her: there was a deadly concentration to her movements. She came up those steps with a squishing, oozing sound and stepped out into the light. In the daylight, her red hair was vibrant and orange, it hung down her white face in ropy mats. She stood there looking at everyone with those glistening black eyes, water and more of that dark fluid running from her with the sound of piss striking pavement.
Mitch figured she’d maybe been in her thirties when she died…and that was probably not days ago, but weeks.
She took a few slushy steps forward. Her shirt, which was hanging in tatters and strips from the shotgun blast, was open enough for one plump white breast to poke out. The nipple was colorless. What might have been inviting in a living woman was now merely profane.
She opened her mouth like she wanted to say something and more of that black filth ran out like crude oil.
And this is where what was nightmarish became positively surreal.
The woman in the fishing hat had clambered up out of the cellar with her bags of flour and salt. She still held them. With a cry, she tossed the bag of flour at the dead woman and it glanced off one shoulder in a ballooning cloud of white dust that dissipated quickly in the falling rain. Seeing that her first bomb had been ineffective, the fishing hat woman tossed the bag of Kosher salt with everything she had…and with the most amazing results.
It struck the dead woman straight on in the chest.
The bag was sodden to begin with and it completely ruptured with the impact. The dead woman screamed with a shrill wailing and began to writhe, her flesh steaming. Steaming and sputtering and popping like hot grease. She reacted like a salted slug. The Kosher salt burned right into her, absorbed the water she was distended with and as everyone watched, she shook and moaned, plumes of steam rolling from her, her body seeming to shrink, to collapse as she went down to her knees. That breast they all saw dried out like grape, became wizened and leathery. And that pretty much happened to her entire body. By the time she fell over into the puddles, she was dehydrated and blackened like a mummy pulled from a sandy tomb.
There was an odd, sharp smell as of spices, then nothing.
“Holy oh shit,” somebody said. “Did you see that…did you see that?”
One of the corpse’s arms snapped at its joint and fell off. Most people took that as their cue to get the hell out of Dodge, but Tommy and Mitch stood there, staring down at that parched and bloodless thing at their feet. It was curled and brown and shrunken, only that red hair remained, floating out in the water around it.
Wordlessly, they turned and splashed their way out of the alley
“What now?” Tommy said. “What the hell now, Mitch?”
“Let’s get us some fucking salt and head for home.”
It was a wise choice of action.
24
“If we were smart, we’d be thinking about getting out,” Tommy said as they drove over towards Crandon. “You know that, don’t you?”
Mitch pulled off his cigarette. “Is that what you want to do?”
“Maybe.”
It was easy for him, Mitch supposed. To just walk away. He had no family in the city anymore. Mitch himself had no relatives, either, but he did have Lily and Chrissy and they were family to him.
“Well, I can’t just run, Tommy. Not until tomorrow at the very least. Not until I’ve got Chrissy safe with me. Then, yeah, then I’d love to get the hell out but not until.”
“Yeah, we can’t leave.”
“You can…if you want.”
Tommy looked over at him and there was a sadness in his eyes. “Jesus H. Christ, Mitch, what kind of asshole do you think I am? You and me grew up together. Outside Bonny, you’re the only real family I got. At least, that’s how I look at it. You say something like that again and I’ll fucking hit you.”
Mitch smiled. “Sorry, Tommy. I should have known better.”
For, really, through all the years what was the constant? Through failed relationships and shitty jobs and frustration? What was the only constant? Tommy Kastle. He was always there with a strong shoulder, a bed if you needed it, and a beer for you. That’s how it had always been. Most men, Mitch knew, shrugged off their childhood friends long before they saw thirty. But it hadn’t been that way with them. Like a pair of twins, they were connected and those connections ran strong and very deep.
“Besides,” Tommy said, “I’m not running. This is my fucking town and I’m not about to let a bunch of zombies run me out. It’s too easy to pussy up and cover your head, go running from something like this, leave the fighting to someone else. But that’s not what I’m about and I’m pretty sure that’s not what you’re about.”
Mitch knew he was right.
Run? No, it wasn’t his way either. He’d stand and fight. The only thing that took the fight out of him was the idea of Chrissy and Lily being around. Oh, they were tough enough for the most part, but something about having your loved ones in peril really took the fight out of a guy.
“Let’s not abandon this ship yet,” Tommy said.
“At least until it sinks all the way.”
They drove through the flooded streets and as they made their way to Crandon, which sat on some of the highest ground in the city, there were only four or five inches of rain the streets. Not too much, but by tomorrow? Next week?
“Oh, shit,” Tommy said as he wheeled around a corner.
Mitch saw.
Some guy was standing dead center in their path and he was not moving. They dismissed instantly the idea that he might be an ordinary, albeit, crazy person. He did not hold his hands up for them to stop and as they got closer they saw he was just as white as poured latex. He stood his ground as if daring them to come on.
“If we’re going to fight these things,” Tommy said, pressing down on the accelerator, “then now’s a good time to begin.”
He had the Dodge up to around fifty as they bore down on the dead man who did not move. Did not even
