The Dead

“We’ll just have to trust to luck.”

“We could do it in one of those boatbuilding shops a mile back,” Gary said. “They’d have everything we need.”

Back out of the pines they went, heading north. Recrossing into Brittany, following the shoreline, they went into the first of the boat shops, a large Quonset hut surrounded by a gravel parking-lot. Inside they found a cabin cruiser with huge holes smashed into either side of the hull; there were several similarly damaged craft in the lot outside.

Max ran his flashlight over a stack of lumber. “Plenty of planks,” he said. “We could nail them together with crosspieces, then take some of those fuel drums outside, empty them, and fasten them under the raft. That would give us all the flotation we’d need.”

“Then just paddle across?” Gary asked.

“With those.” Max darted his beam toward a bunch of long oars leaning in the corner.

“When are we going to put this thing together?” Steve asked.

“Could start tonight,” Max answered.

“Flashlights would be real obvious.”

“Good point,” Max said, and switched his off. “We’ll work in the daytime, in shifts.”

“That’s if we get the chance,” Dennis called, from over by the front door.

“What’s wrong?” Max asked.

“Take a look for yourself.”

They went over with him, peering out through the glass. Scores of bobbing, tiny red lights were approaching in the distance, coming down a street leading directly to the shop.

“Torches,” Gary said.

“Quite a parade,” Steve said.

“I bet they don’t know we’re here,” said Max, peering briefly through his binoculars. “Let’s just stay put.”

The column crept closer. Waving on the ends of poles, things which might’ve been standards appeared around the corner, followed by some kind of huge juggernaut-like vehicle.

“What if Legion’s with them, Max?” Gary asked suddenly. “What if he’s coming for you?”

Max said nothing.

“Max,” Steve said, “Maybe, just to be sure, you should take off…”

“What?” Max asked.

“Lead them away from us. If they’re not after you, you’ll be all right. But if they are…”

“I’m dead meat anyway? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“If Legion’s with them,” Dennis answered, “he could be coming for any of us.”

“Or none,” Max said.

“You mean maybe God hasn’t been talking to him lately?” Steve asked.

“No way of telling, is there? And what if I took off and he was really coming for you? Wouldn’t that be something, Steve?”

“I was just thinking of the group,” Steve said.

“Sure,” Max answered.

On and on came the army of the dead, torches guttering in the wind. The standards waved with a lazy seasick rhythm, inverted crosses, dead animals, crude gigantic skull-masks, wheels with spikes along the outer rim. Limned in fire and darkness, it was like a scene out of Bosch or Goya.

Or Nuremberg.

“How long are we going to wait?” Linda demanded.

“Until I say different,” Max answered.

The corpses neared the intersection with the street that fronted the lot.

“Max…” Linda said.

“If they don’t know we’re here,” Max replied, “they’re probably not coming here. If they do know, we’re in big trouble no matter what. They’ll turn aside, you watch.”

But the dead weren’t listening. The column pushed across the street and onto the gravel.

“Out the back,” Max said. As they made for the small exit beside the main sliding-door, he said to Linda, “next time I don’t listen to you, shoot me.”

“You bet,” she answered, slipping outside. He followed.

“Which way now?” Gary asked.

“South,” Max answered, leading them along the back of the boatshop, figuring they could cross over into the pine-wooded patch that bordered the parking lot. But looking around the corner, he saw that it was too late for that; the column was approaching along the side of the boatshop, the torches already so close that fleeing across the corpses’ path was suicide.

Max turned. Looking in one of the shop’s rear windows, he could see the windows on the north side; there were torches outside those too. The column had split. Flight northward was also impossible.

The only way now was west.

“Out to the water,” Max said. “Now.”

They turned and ran, reaching the shore before the torchlight could fall on them, footbeats drowned out by the rush of the wind.

“Don’t stop,” Max said. “We’ve got the drysuits. We’ll make it.”

Out into the bay they splashed. The tide was low, the water only ankle-high. A shingle of clamshells shifted and cracked beneath their feet. The water deepened after a hundred yards or so, but only to their shins.

Gary glanced back over his shoulder. They’d left the torches far behind. The corpses had stopped on the beach.

“Watch out,” Max said. “There’s a slope.”

The water deepened to mid-thigh.

“I see something,” Dennis puffed.

There was a darker shadow in the darkness ahead, a long low ridge rising from the water, surmounted by what looked like a beached boat.

“Make for the island,” Max said.

Panting, they staggered up a slippery weed-grown bank and onto the ridge. There, hidden in the darkness and the tall wind-tossed reeds, they halted. Gary and Linda threw themselves to the ground, the rest falling or crouching around them. The boat loomed nearby, a large cabin-cruiser that had evidently crashed into the island at high speed, plowing up onto the slope on momentum.

“Are they coming, Max?” Gary gasped.

His brother was on one knee in front of him, staring back toward the shore, not even breathing hard. He rose slightly and lifted his binoculars.

“They’re still on the beach, spreading out along the water,” he said. “More coming up all the time, though. God, there must be a couple thousand of them on that street.”

Once he caught his breath, Gary got up beside him, peering through the night toward the wind-whipped torches. The firebrands blazed along the shore in a line four hundred yards long.

The juggernaut-like vehicle came up alongside the boatshop. Gary guessed it was being drawn, but with the throng between him and it, he couldn’t see who, or what was pulling it. The vehicle came to a halt some distance before reaching the waterside, yet close enough for him to make out some details. A single corpse sat enthroned on the huge platform. Behind the cadaver was a crazily leaning mountain of what appeared to be planks, with a makeshift Golgotha of inverted crosses on top, the tallest of which was crowned by an immense spiked wheel. To the throne’s right was one of those giant skull masks, mounted on a pole. On the left a wriggling body hung upside down on another shaft. At first Gary assumed it must be a live captive. Then he noticed that the pole seemed to be coming up through the belly, not behind.