The Dead

And come back…

Buddy pulled Gary’s ear next to his mouth.

“I can see Him now,” he said.

“Who?” Gary gasped.

Buddy chuckled. “You know. But He’s not really a trooper at all… I’m falling into Him. Wheels and spikes… You’ll fall into Him too, college boy. But Max first. Max and Him…”

Buddy’s hand loosed Gary’s lapel, and Gary began to rise; then Buddy jerked up at him. Gary threw himself back as Buddy’s teeth snapped shut just inches from his ear.

With a last short hissing laugh, Buddy turned back over onto his stomach, lowered his face into the grass, and lay still.

Gary waited a few moments before feeling his uncle’s throat for a pulse. There was none. He was surprised Buddy had died so quickly.

Shock, Gary told himself. And blood-loss.

“What did he say?” Steve asked him.

“It didn’t make any sense,” Gary answered. But there had been meaning there, even if he didn’t understand. Yet.

Inside the van, the corpse was still thumping madly about.

“What now?” Gary asked. “How do we get that thing out of there?”

“Good question,” Steve said.

They were still thinking when the problem solved itself.

“Look out!” Sally cried. They spun to see her retreating from the van’s back doors; the headless, armless cadaver stumbled into view, pivoted in a drunken circle, and staggered off down the street.

“Get your aunt and that last body out of the van,” Steve said. “I’ll see if I can start the motor back up.”

Gary and the women hauled the bodies out. Steve tried the key again and again, but the engine refused to turn over.

“Shit,” Steve said, giving the key one last twist. Nothing. “Hopeless. We’d better take off.”

“On foot?” Sally demanded.

“Better than sitting here till we get company. That gunfire must’ve carried pretty far.”

They piled back out.

“Which way now?” Gary asked.

“South, I guess,” Steve said. “Try to find ourselves someplace to hide till nightfall, then start moving again. Maybe those things can’t see any better than us in the dark. Might be easier dodging ‘em.”

They started on their way. This had once been the wealthiest neighborhood in Bayside Point; some very snotty families had lived here, old resort money. Now their fine big houses were nothing but wreckage, and who knew what had become of the inhabitants? In spite of everything, Gary smiled at the thought of the rich laid low. He’d always had a leveling streak.

But us peasants are getting collectivized too, snapped a voice in his head, sounding suspiciously like Max’s. Being turned into a living corpse is a pretty high price to pay for equality.

No arguing with that.

Go ahead, Gary thought. Shatter my idealism.

Crossing a broad lawn, the group rounded the corner of a gutted mansion. Looking through the windows in the ruin’s tall brick wall, they saw that the first floor had collapsed completely into the cellar; no hiding place there.

“Too close to the van anyway,” Steve said. “One of the first places they’ll search.”

Cutting across the block, they pushed steadily southward, keeping what cover they could. They approached streets with tremendous caution, waited endlessly to cross, watching, listening, screwing up their nerve; but once they decided to move, they shot from concealment like racehorses from chutes.

For the first three blocks, they saw no corpses, walking or otherwise. Then, as they neared a fourth street, they heard the tubercular sound of a diseased engine, and hid behind a charred facade.

Gary looked out through a doorway as a blue Thunderbird convertible rolled past, driven by a blonde female corpse, her hair blowing in the wind. A pickax over one shoulder, a huge dead man was kneeling on the seat beside her, looking backward. The car was doing about fifteen miles an hour; stumbling along behind it, clinking chains linking their wrists to the rear bumper, were two flabby, naked middle-aged men, hands tied behind their backs.

One fell and was dragged along on his stomach gasping and coughing, his flesh making a dry sandpapery sound on the asphalt. The other man seemed to get his second wind after that.

Once the T-Bird turned the corner, Gary and the others started out toward the street. Looking in the direction the car had come from, one block down, he saw dozens of bodies sprawled in the street, with several more strung from telephone poles. One of the hanged, facing away from Gary’s group, was kicking strenuously at the end of his rope like some monstrous jumping-jack. Was the man in his death-throes, or had he just been resurrected?

As they headed into the wreckage on the other side of the street, Gary glanced back at the kicking figure. The man wrenched free of the bonds on his arms and reached up to grab at the noose around his neck. Pressing forward, Gary didn’t need to see the corpse drop to the street.

Free at last, free at last, Gary couldn’t help himself thinking. Thank God Almighty, he’s free at last…

Strung along both sides of the next block southward were more corpses, hanging head-down from the telephone poles, swinging stiffly in the wind, dusted with snow, mouths apparently stuffed with turf. From one’s neck hung a lawn figure of the Virgin Mary, dangling by a chain.

Eventually they reached the fringe of one the town’s undeveloped areas, a couple of acres of woodland, much of which had escaped the flames. Gary knew the place from his Junior High days; he and his friends had sometimes gone there after school. The paths hadn’t changed much, and if memory served him right, there was an abandoned foundry in the middle of the woods. They reached the building before long, an ivy-covered brick shell with the remains of a corrugated steel roof.

“There’s a cellar,” he said as they went inside, feet crunching on broken bottles, high grass swishing about their legs. The opening was partially covered with a large piece of plywood; Steve started to lift the sheet, but Gary plucked at his arm.

“What if there are some down there?” heGary asked.

“Doing what?” Steve asked. “Waiting for someone to blunder into them?”

With a grunt he hauled the plywood aside. Gary trained his H and K into the revealed rectangle of shadow, but if anything was stirring, he couldn’t see it. He started forward, Steve following him down the concrete steps. Somewhere in the gloom, water dripped; the air was cold and damp.

“Wish we had one of those flashlights,” Gary said.

Slowly their eyes adjusted to the darkness. The cellar was about twenty by twenty, and empty except for garbage, mostly old newspapers, scattered over the floor. There were no exits except for the stairway.

Sally and Linda came slowly down the steps.

“I’ll pull the plywood back over the opening,” Gary said.

“But it’ll get dark down here!” Sally protested.

Gary looked at Steve. Steve shrugged, and whispered in his ear: “Don’t love her for her brain, pal.”

Gary nodded. Going back up, he covered the hole, then cautiously made his way down.

“Wonder how long it’ll take for us to start freezing?” Linda asked.

“A while,” Gary said. “My heart’s still beating like mad. I feel like I just drank about twenty cups of coffee.”

“Sun’ll be down pretty soon,” Steve said. “Then we can get moving again. Besides, we’re all dressed pretty warmly.”

“We might be able to do better than that,” Gary said.

“What do you mean?”