The Dead

The splashing from behind was close now, thirty yards maybe. Looking over his shoulder, he thought he could make out shapes plowing through the water.

A shriek rang out. Other voices echoed the cry. The splashing sounds seemed to redouble. Bursting foam glimmered.

Noticed how we move, Gary thought. Shit’s hit the fan.

“Come on!” Max bellowed. “To the beach!”

The corpses ashore were pointing, the groups clustering together. Gary raked his H and K left to right. Corpses went over, toppling backward into a patch of high grass, flames trailing from their torches. The grass went up like tinder as the brands struck, flames throwing light far out over the water. Forty feet from the beach, Gary and the rest were plainly revealed.

The corpses still on their feet wailed and started out into the water. Gary and Dennis squeezed off bursts till they were out of ammo. As they fought to reload, Linda lunged in front of them. Fifteen shots crashed from her Beretta before it locked open, empty.

Max waded forward with the machete. For five furious seconds he held the corpses at bay. Then, priming their rifles, Gary and Dennis splashed up on either side of him and cut loose again, knifelike blue flames licking from their gun barrels.

“Now!” Max cried.

The group slogged desperately toward the beach, skirting the corpses floundering in the water.

Pursuit was hard behind. Gary turned and emptied his gun into a group only yards away. Water vapor puffing from their sodden riddled legs, the cadavers collapsed.

Something latched onto his belt. He looked down. Hair hanging in a wet curtain, obscuring its face, a corpse hitched itself into view, nearly yanking him over.

Gary jabbed the rifle barrel where he thought an eye might be. The head jerked out of sight, but the corpse’s hold jumped to Gary’s stomach. Nails dug. It felt like a steel trap had snapped shut in his flesh.

Jamming a new clip into her pistol, Linda rushed close, blasting down into the water, snapping off three quick shots. Foam spurted five feet in the air. The grip on his stomach opened.

They waded for shore. Gary saw his brother slash the head off a corpse that sprang up from the water in front of him; then Max was pelting up onto dry land, staggering, fringelit by the glow from the burning weeds, Father Chuck and Camille stumbling up behind him.

Gasping, Gary and Linda rushed onto the beach, clothes heavy with water. Gary looked wildly around for Steve and Sally; they weren’t too far back, but behind them, the shallows were a churning chaos of onrushing corpses.

The group started up from the beach, around the flaming grass. At first Gary thought Steve and Sally were with them. Then he saw Dennis look back, and he turned once more.

Two corpses had Steve by the water’s edge. Hands over her ears, Sally stood nearby, screams all but blotted out by the cries of the dead.

Gary wanted to go back, to try and help. But there was nothing to be done. Dozens of corpses were surging toward Steve and his captors. It was hopeless.

Hopeless or not, Dennis suddenly sprang down the slope. Gary tried to pull him back. Dennis yanked free.

Wrestling with Steve, throttling him, the corpses seemed unaware of Dennis’s approach. Two point-blank bursts tore their heads apart, and Steve was free, stumbling up the beach with Sally beside him.

And through it all, convinced Dennis was out of his mind, Gary remained rooted to the ground, gaping, impotent.

Camille rushed past him, hair streaming. Dennis was entangled with one of the headless corpses, and she flung herself onto it, toppling it and her husband, ripping into it with a pocket-knife.

Thrilled and stung by her courage, Gary started toward them. Camille had been transfigured. She was a lioness now, a valkyrie. Bits and strings of mummified flesh whirled as her knife flew. It was glorious.

Gary cheered. He began to run.

The wave of dead crested over them. He stopped. A flood of conflicting emotions rushed through him, disgust at his own cowardice, relief in knowing that he could do no good, need not act… There had been a chance to save Steve; there was none for Dennis and Camille, he was certain.

But before the clutching talons reached them, a bitter white flash bleached the night. Gary blinked, retinas stabbed by the glare. The light faded, and-

Dennis and Camille were gone.

Gary squinted, not believing it. Yet he could see no trace of his aunt and uncle. The corpses were frozen in place, as if stunned by the flash.

Gary turned and ran. Before him the sky was lightening, a dull red stain spreading in the east. The others were waiting for him, between the boat shop and the throne-platform Legion had occupied. They got a long lead before the screams of the hunters started once more.

Chapter 23: Steve’s Little Secret

The sun’s spots had gone a bilious green, its rim lurid orange. Gary thought it looked like an infected eye as it lifted into the murky sky, peering down over the ocean.

The group had taken refuge beneath the Brittany boardwalk, and was resting at the eastern end of the forest of pilings that supported the huge restaurant pavilion. The sea, a dull rusty hue under the sun’s hemorrhaged glow, muttered and growled as it chewed away at the coastline. The air was full of a cold salty stench, the waves soupy with dead weed and the bodies of fish and crabs. Huge purplish worms could be glimpsed moving in the foam; farther out, the finned spines of strange leviathans lifted against the horizon.

Gary was still panting. The dead had lost them early on, but Max had kept everyone moving.

“So,” Max began after a time, “What happened to Camille and Dennis?”

“Dennis went back to help Steve,” Gary said. “One of them got hold of him, and Camille tried to save him. But there were corpses all around…”

“So you stayed where you were,” Max said.

“Just like you would’ve,” Gary replied.

“Probably,” Max conceded.

“I didn’t think I could help. I was sure they were going to die no matter what.”

“No point getting down on yourself,” Steve said. “I appreciate what Dennis did, believe me. But it was absolutely nuts. I sure as hell wouldn’t have done it for him. He’s dead, we’re alive, so-”

“No,” Gary broke in. “He’s not dead. At least, I don’t think so.”

“What?” Steve asked.

“They disappeared. Him and Camille. There was this blinding light, and they were gone.”

Steve’s face pinched. “Gone where?”

“How should I know?”

Steve laughed sarcastically. “Did they get raptured off to Heaven, Gary?”

“Did I say that?”

“There is a way out,” Linda said. “They made it.”

“But how?” Gary asked, dumbfounded.

“Maybe-” Max began.

“I know exactly what you’re going to say,” Steve broke in. “It was being absolved, right? Then why didn’t they disappear right after they confessed?”

“Actually,” Max said, “I was going to say it was because they sacrificed themselves. Just as I should’ve. For MacAleer.”