A second hand appeared. It lashed toward Linda’s leg at the end of a long ragged coatsleeve, missed, and whipped back down into the ground like a viper’s retreating tongue.

They started forward once more. Ahead, the other mourners were dodging this way and that as they raced for their cars. Turf bulged, pounded apart by blows from below; at least a dozen heads or arms were forcing their way into view. Monuments toppled; a heavy marble angel, wings outspread, crashed across the head of a corpse struggling out of the earth like some horrible giant insect. The cadaver only screamed and hurled the monument aside, shooting to its feet, everything above its jaw a shattered husk.

Ten yards in front of Gary, the uninjured gravedigger went down as a screaming shape, blackened and tattered, burst from the ground before him in an explosion of dirt. Flinging itself onto him, fending his arms aside, the cadaver ripped the ears from his head and stuffed one into his mouth. Then it grabbed him by the throat, thrust its face down and bit off his nose.

Gary’s stomach heaved. The gravedigger looked at him imploringly, bright scarlet blood streaming across his cheek, a shiny foam of it bubbling in the empty socket in the middle of his face. His eyes were heartrending in their need.

Gary slowed.

“Keep going, shithead!” Max cried, swatting him from behind.

Grateful for the command, Gary sped back up.

Ahead, Father Ted was staggering, hand to chest. As Gary passed him, the ground erupted to the right, a thrashing arm knocking him into the priest. Both men fell, rolling a few yards down the hill together.

Desperately Gary untangled himself from the floundering clergyman. Helped up by Linda (where was Max?), he looked back toward the cadaver.

Swiping dirt from its eyes, it flung its arms wide as its saw him; suddenly it leaped, and was standing face to face with him, barely a foot away, and its filthy hands clapped onto either side of his head…

A fist shot in from the side, pounding into the thing’s temple. The corpse loosed Gary, hissing, and turned to face its assailant.

“Here I am, fucker!” Max snarled, and punched it again.

The thing was fast, but Max was faster, blocking its snatching hands, driving it back with jabs and kicks.

Gary looked to see if his father was still coming. Max Sr. had joined in on the gravedigger; all at once he looked up and started forward again at a stiff-legged run, hands bloodied and extended, a brown strip of what might’ve been scalp dropping from one.

Father Ted rose, swaying, grimacing at the pain in his chest.

“Come with us, Father,” Linda said.

A sweat-damp lock of hair trailing across his forehead, Father Ted only tottered and fell.

“It’s his heart,” Gary said, and pulled Linda forward, down the hill. “He’s done for.”

“We just can’t leave him,” Linda panted, struggling against his grip. They halted and turned.

“What do you think we’re going to do?” Gary demanded.

Even as they headed back up the slope, he got his answer; the almost-tangible wall of hatred emanating from his father stopped them in their tracks.

The priest, meanwhile, had gotten up again, facing uphill, head bowed. Gary’s father jerked to a standstill, towering in front of him.

“Max,” Gary heard Father Ted cry, “Please Max…”

With a motion almost too quick to follow, Max Sr. pointed a sharp accusing finger at the priest’s face, silencing him. A subtle change entered his expression, intensifying its malice if that were possible, diluting its torment by the barest fraction. Slight as it was, Gary read the change plainly, and knew with horrible certainty that his father was pleased to see Father Ted. The priest was perhaps the one man in the whole world that Max Sr. wanted to see most.

Father Ted tried to stumble away, but the dead man caught him and held him fast, jerking him up from the ground at arm’s length. Gary felt a renewed urge to rush to the priest’s aid, but fear rooted his feet to the earth. He wanted to beg his father to spare him, but there was no breath in his throat. He could only stand and watch, Linda sobbing beside him, as his father’s free hand swept back, then forward, smacking into the side of the priest’s face, nails ripping. Blood splashed, and Father Ted’s head whipped to one side as the claw raked past. An instant later it snapped in the other direction as the fingers came whistling back in a murderous return swipe. Another splash of blood, and something dark flew through the air, off to the right. Gary heard a sound like a plastic bag half-filled with water striking a sidewalk, and looking where the sound had come from, saw Father Ted’s face sliding down the front of a granite tombstone in a huge red smear, empty eyes sagging, mouth gaping. Peeling off the stone surface, curling forward, the face dropped to the grass like an abandoned Halloween mask.

Gary’s eyes darted back to his father and the priest. Max Sr. turned and hauled Father Ted in closer, leaning over him, staring gloatingly into the mass of bloody writhing muscles still attached to the front of Father Ted’s skull. Eyes goggling and swimming in pools of blood, the priest was still alive, gagging at the liquid running into his lipless mouth and down his throat.

Gary and Linda looked round for Max. He’d downed the corpse he’d been fighting; it was clawing after him on its belly. But another cadaver rushed up even as he retreated. Max snapped a kick into its kneecap, smashed the corpse to the grass with a spinning backfist to the head, then stamped on its other knee.

The first corpse dragged itself close, tried to grab him; Max kicked it so powerfully in the side of the skull that the cadaver flipped completely over, onto its back. Then he rushed to rejoin Gary and Linda. Gary saw that his brother’s clothes were torn in a half-dozen places; blood oozed from a laceration on Max’s cheek.

They ran down the slope. The other mourners had already escaped; Gary’s Pinto was the only car left at the bottom. Dodging corpses still caught in the earth, leaping over clutching hands, they reached the car, ducked inside and slammed the doors. Gary fished his keys out and jammed them into the ignition. The engine turned over a few times, backfired, and stalled.

“Start, Goddammit!” Gary snarled, trying again. He looked out the window. They were coming, draggled emaciated figures, male and female, clothes hanging in rags, the earth of their graves still dropping from their limbs, their parchmented faces twisted into grinning masks of hate.

“They’ll tear the tires out!” Max cried.

Gary turned the key a third time. The motor growled and turned over. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the corpses closing, and knowing he had no choice, floored the pedal, fully expecting the engine’s fragile life to cough itself out.

The car lurched forward instead, bashing a tall female mummy in a ragged white dress to the pavement and jouncing over her.

Another corpse sprang in from the left, grabbing the door handle on Gary’s side. The car picked up speed, but the corpse hung on tenaciously, running alongside. It managed to keep pace for a dozen yards or so, then fell, but its bony grip remained locked on the handle. Dragging beside the car, it hauled itself forward with one hand, trying to latch the other onto the side-view mirror, its shrieks shrill torment to Gary even through the glass.

Gary veered toward a mausoleum, up onto the grass, sweeping in close to the granite facade. Just managing to snag the mirror, the corpse held on stubbornly as the building loomed near; then its head and shoulder met the stone blocks at forty miles an hour. There was a dull crack, and the shrieks were cut off. The mausoleum blurred past. The corpse was gone, the mirror with it. Gary steered back onto the road.

There was a bend up ahead. Rounding it, Gary saw an overturned car surrounded by the walking dead. He had no time to stop, even to swerve. With a dull crump! The Pinto’s front end slammed into the overturned vehicle’s underside near the tail. There was a burst of red and saffron fire as the wrecked car’s tank ruptured; trailing sheets of flame, the vehicle was hurled aside by the impact, and the Pinto drove ahead, hood splattered with burning gas.

But one of the front tires had been cut by a crumpled fender, and Gary lost control. The Pinto veered to the left, skidded as he slammed on the brakes, and smashed into a tree. The hood buckled in a burst of steam and Gary rocked forward, chipping a tooth on the steering-wheel.

Max grabbed at him from the rear seat.

Gary slumped back. “I’m all right,” he said, hand to his mouth. He turned to Linda. “Okay, babe?”

“Yeah,” she answered.

The engine had died. Gary tried the key. The starter didn’t even click.

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