The Dead

“Sure thing,” Dennis said.

Once he disappeared in one of the adjoining pipes, Dennis said: “Max, do you think we should lean on him about confessing us? I mean, really lean on him?”

“Use the third degree?” Max asked.

“I mean beg.”

“You fools,” MacAleer said lifelessly from behind them. “He has no power to help you.”

“Why don’t you let us work out our own salvation, okay?” Max answered.

“All right. I’ll wash my hands.”

“Thank you, Pontius.”

Presently Father Chuck reappeared, squinting at the flash light beam. But after a few yards, he paused, looking back over his shoulder. He remained motionless for several moments, then came crawling quickly up the passage.

“What’s going-” Dennis began, but the priest put his finger to his mouth.

“Someone’s back there,” Father Chuck whispered, slipping past him and Max. “In the main pipe. Just around that bend, I think.”

They listened in silence. Sure enough, they heard a faint crackle of leaves, and the dry scuffle of movement against concrete.

“How many, do you think?” Dennis asked.

“Three. Four maybe. Hard to tell. Douse the light.”

Dennis clicked it off.

“We’ll go up through the manhole-”

Max broke off as a bluff, big voice with a Southern accent boomed up the pipe: “Hey, up there!”

Dennis sighed with relief. “God. Live ones.”

“We don’t know that,” Max whispered.

“Those things don’t talk. Ever hear ‘em do anything but scream? “

Max hadn’t. “But they must communicate somehow-”

Out of nowhere a movie leaped into his mind. In the darkness, the images almost seemed to be floating before his eyes-Harrison Ford fighting the bald German in Raiders, Ford crouching, the German turning, his face going straight into a whirling aircraft propeller.

But just where the camera had cut away in the original, the prop in Max’s version buzz-sawed into the man’s face in a hurricane of blood and teeth and bone fragments.

In close-up.

From one angle after another.

Again and again in lascivious Technicolor slo mo-

What the fu- Max thought.

“Hey up there!” the bluff voice repeated.

The mental movie vanished.

“Just listen to him,” Dennis said. “If that’s one of those things, I’m nuts. “

Max was almost certain Dennis was right. Still…

“Come on, now,” boomed the voice. “How many folks you got up there, anyhow?” The scuffling drew steadily closer.

“Shine the light on ‘em,” Max said.

“What’s wrong?” came the voice. “You think we’re zombies? Shit! “

Dennis clicked the flashlight. Nothing. Max heard him shaking it. Then another movie illuminated his head.

This time it was a blender on a counter, blades whirling. Something was bouncing up from them, knocking violently against the plastic lid. Scarlet spattered the glass in tiny dots.

The bouncing object knocked the lid off. Out popped a human finger.

“Whatever you do, don’t shoot!” the voice cried desperately.

Max came to. What was happening to him?

“We just want to join up with you,” the voice went on. “We have guns. Lots of ammo. Give us a chance!”

Dennis rattled the flashlight, flicked the switch up and back. “What do you think, Max?” he asked.

“Start climbing,” Max whispered over his shoulder to the others. “Out the manhole.”

“Come on now!” cried the voice, the crawling sounds drawing ever nearer. “We know you’re up there! Answer me! “

“Stay where you are, or we cut loose!” Max shouted.

“Sure thing, buddy,” the voice replied. The crawling stopped.

“You have a flashlight?” Max demanded, trying to concentrate, even though he was now looking into a garbage disposal, reaching helplessly, compulsively down into it, horribly aware that someone (something?) had his (its?) hand on the switch, that any moment the disposal was going to grind to life…

“No, sorry,” answered the voice.

Max swore under his breath, shook his head. He was back in the pitch darkness.

“How about a match?” he asked. “I want a look at you.”

“Lemme see. One of us might. Hey, Frankie. You got a match? “

“Looking,” came another voice.

Max heard footsteps on the rungs to the manhole, and wondered if Father Chuck or MacAleer would have the strength to push the cover open. Manhole lids were incredibly heavy, he knew…

“Still looking,” called the second voice.

And all the while, Dennis continued his efforts with the flashlight.

“Batteries?” Max asked him.

“Just changed ‘em,” Dennis answered.

“Can’t budge the cover,” whispered Father Chuck, from above and behind.

“Fuck,” Max said. A tune was tangled in his thoughts now; he tried to ignore it, but it only entwined itself further, stubbornly resisting his efforts, that old Falco song, “Der Kommissar…”

“Got some matches!” cried the Southerner. “It’ll be just a second now.”

Max heard a rasping noise, but saw no flash. Another scrape of match on striking board. No spark.

“Hot damn. Think they’re wet.”

Several more attempts followed. Suddenly, in an almost frantically ingratiating tone, the Southerner called: “What’s your name, fella?”

“What’s yours?” Max asked, sweat beading his forehead despite the cold.

A heartbeat later, the temperature went arctic. He felt the sweat beads turn instantly to frost.

“Legion,” came the reply.

At that moment, Dennis’s flashlight came on.

Not six feet away was a huge cadaver in a state trooper’s uniform.

Max knew instantly it was the giant who’d presided over the rites in the parking lot. His jaw sagged with shock. How had the trooper gotten so close? The voice had seemed at least twenty feet away-

“Hello, Max,” said the corpse, filed teeth bared in an astounding grin. The expression embodied a hatred so unmitigated that Max thought he might faint at the mere sight of it. For sheer malevolence, it was a quantum leap beyond anything he had yet seen on the faces of the damned. There was something more than human in it, something ancient, evil so intense it could only have been distilled over aeons.

“And if you think that’s bad,” Legion said. “You should see me as I really am.”

Heart frozen in his chest, Max was dimly aware of Dennis frantically struggling to pump a shell into the Remington’s chamber.

“Back!” Max cried. “Back!”

They retreated from the mouth of the pipe, jumped to their feet.

Light flared above them. The manhole cover had been wrenched aside. Two corpses crouched over the opening.

Father Chuck and MacAleer were on the rungs. The priest loosed his hold, knocking MacAleer off as he fell.