“That they’re straight out of Hell.”
Although he couldn’t swallow MacAleer’s theory, Gary knew all too well what she meant. Just looking at them was like being stabbed in the eyes. Even in the thick of combat, even while
“They’re ugly all right,” Steve admitted, with a glibness that Gary found almost idiotically shallow. How could Steve trivialize the threat in such a fashion? Even if they weren’t in Hell, they were clearly experiencing a side of reality that would do for a stand-in.
“
“Downright hideous, okay?” Steve said. “But what does that tell us? That they’re the damned? That the whole Christian world-view is true? Come on.”
“I dreamed I was at the Last Judgment,” Linda said. “And then the world ended.”
Steve laughed. “So
“I have eyes,” Linda said.
“So why don’t you just give up right now?” Steve asked.
“Maybe there’s a way out,” Linda said.
Please Linda, not God…
“What’s that?” Steve asked. “Religion?”
“You said it, not me.”
Oh Linda, ugh…
“Sure hasn’t done you any good so far, has it?” Steve asked.
“I’m kind of new at it.”
“Well, good luck,” Steve said. “But I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you. God’s a fantasy, mere wishful thinking. Made in our own image, because we can’t stand to face the facts.”
“What facts?”
“That we’re the source of everything that’s really divine. That we can’t rely on anyone or anything else to save ourselves.”
“If we’re so godlike,” Linda said, “why
“Because of guilt-trips laid on us by people who want to control us. That’s all religion is. A chain to keep you down.”
“Some people should be shackled,” Linda said.
“Folks like MacAleer? Maybe. But who’s to say what’s right for someone else? Nobody’s going to tell
“Because you’re God, right?”
“We’re all God. Or might as well be.”
“You really shouldn’t try to argue with him,” Gary said. “You just better hope he’s right.”
Linda slipped her hand from his. “Our only hope is if he’s
“Then why don’t you stop arguing and start praying?” Gary asked.
At that, Linda muttered something and left him, disappearing into the darkness below.
“Besides, you should
There was no more conversation after that; but Gary thought he could hear Linda crying quietly.
Chapter 15: Recruits
Max watched the van speed off into the distance and for a maddened instant thought of blasting the tires with his Remington. He even brought the gun up to fire, but there was no point in shooting. At least Gary and Linda might escape.
He lowered the gun.
He looked north, then west and south. Scores of dead were coming. The tightening cordon seemed thinnest to the south.
“That way!” he cried. “Dennis, reload! We go first!”
They started south across the front lawns of leveled lakeside houses. A half-dozen corpses approached rapidly along Carter, veering off the street toward them.
“Just cripple ‘em!” Max shouted to Dennis, shoving cartridges into his shotgun. “All we have to do is break through!”
He looked back briefly. The others had somehow kept from falling too far behind, though MacAleer and his wife were plainly struggling.
Ahead, the six were drawing near, the first barely twenty feet away. Max blew its left leg off at the hip.
Two blasts from Dennis. A corpse’s kneecap vanished. The ragged figure toppled to the grass on its chin.
Max and Dennis pressed past the fallen corpses, who were already crawling to grab them. A few moments later Max heard MacAleer’s Beretta roar three times-the crippled cadavers had turned their attention elsewhere.
The other four corpses closed in. Two had baseball bats, but a barehanded one was already so near that Max went for the headshot, blowing its face in. He sprayed another’s leg all over the grass; then a bat was whistling at Max’s shoulder.
He twisted aside and jerked backward, pump-BLAST. The bat shattered in a shower of splinters. Dropping the ruined shaft, the corpse followed him eagerly, licking its lips with a dried leathery strip of a tongue and clutching with bony fingers.
Max’s foot came down on a lawn ornament, tilting it over. He fell, landing hard on his back, breath bursting from his lips.
The corpse hurled itself headlong at him. He barely had time to pump and lift his gun, the dead man’s ribcage jolted against the barrel just as Max pulled the trigger. Gunsmoke belched out of the weapon’s mouth and the corpse shot backward as though jerked by a rope.
Somehow it landed on its feet. It swayed, staggered. Max heard a crackling sound. The top half of the cadaver’s torso flopped over as the spine broke, and the whole body fell.
Max started to get up, but all at once two hands locked on his throat, and he was hurled back to the grass by one of the corpses he’d crippled; she leered down at him with a grin that seemed half a foot wide, a mummified dark-haired woman, squinting through a pair of silver wire-rimmed glasses, face spotted with purplish mold. Her fingers tightened horribly, and Max felt things shifting in his throat, blood veins swelling in his temple…
Then her head jerked up, she hissed as if in surprise-and the muzzle of Dennis’s Remington went flush against her brow and roared, injecting her skull with the full fury of a twelve-gauge discharge, force, heat, gas, pellets, sabot. Her head bulged and broke, parting into two straps of burning meat that flapped sideways against her shoulders.
The grip on Max’s throat slackened. Knowing he wouldn’t get a second chance, he dropped his shotgun and yanked the hands from his neck. The butt of Dennis’s gun thumped into the decapitated horror, knocking her aside. Max grabbed his weapon again and leaped to his feet, ears still ringing from Dennis’s blast.
A glance revealed that Dennis had downed the fourth corpse.
But more were speeding their way.
MacAleer appeared, panting. Taking careful aim with his Beretta, he kneecapped one of the advancing corpses. The others came on howling.
Max, Dennis and the others withdrew toward the scorch-marked facade of a white-shingled house, MacAleer bringing up the rear, blasting away with his pistol. Max and his uncle reloaded feverishly, then fell back with
