Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy (79 page)

“Hey, Sheriff!” Ferguson said. “We just got a call from that rescue shelter over on route nine. The neighbors say some nutjob broke into the place and hacked up all the animals with an ax. Sounds real messy.”

10.

A scarred, coffee-stained table sat in the center of the police station’s only interview room and Riverwind gestured for Jimmy to have a seat as he closed the door.

“Look,” Jimmy said once they were alone, “this is a waste of time, man. That psycho you’re after ain’t dead! He’s walking around right now, looking for me!”

Riverwind nodded his acknowledgement of Jimmy’s predicament, but didn’t reply. Rather than sit down, the man took off his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair.

“The ‘psycho’ you’re referring to is a Navajo witch,” the detective explained, now rolling his sleeves up as he talked. “My people call them Skinwalkers because they have the power to assume the shape of an animal to avoid our detection. Seven days ago I beheaded the one you encountered, trapping its spirit inside its body, but the confrontation left me severely wounded and unable to fully dispose of the remains.”

Jimmy gaped at the man’s words, looking to his ravaged face and recalling the coyote-headed corpse ripping out the bathroom wall of the motel.

“I could tell you the whole history of how they came to be,” the detective went on, “but as you said, there isn’t much time. All you need to know is that by consuming the Skinwalker’s flesh, you’ve given it the power to thwart death and seek a new body.”

“Me!” Jimmy gasped. “But how—”

“Your friend Stuart isn’t very good at keeping secrets,” Riverwind answered. “He told me about your little scheme when I questioned the morgue staff about the disappearance of the Skinwalker’s corpse. He mentioned how you’d inadvertently swallowed the creature’s finger. Now it’s using your energy, your
life force
, to stay in our world until it can transfer its spirit into your body.”

“So how the hell do we stop it?” Jimmy asked. “I mean, you can stop it, right?”

“There are two options,” the man answered. “One is to completely destroy its physical form, either by force or simply by waiting until the creature’s body decomposes to the point of being useless. The only problem is that you’re now linked to the Skinwalker by the same magical bond that reanimated it, which will allow it to follow you wherever you go. It will anticipate our moves.”

Riverwind reached behind his back and pulled out a knife large enough to reflect Jimmy’s whole face in the blade. It glinted in the light of the overhead fluorescents.

The detective slashed, and Jimmy leapt backward. He dodged death by scant millimeters, but the tip of the blade still managed to plow a red trench across the skin of his chest.

Jimmy dropped back in his chair and kicked upward as the wild-eyed detective lunged over the table. This time Jimmy was faster. His heel slammed into Riverwind’s face, popping loose a score of fresh stitches and peeling back a section of cheek.

Across the main room, past the bullpen, the Skinwalker rammed the front desk, demolishing the boards like a runaway wrecking ball. Pickett stood less than ten feet away, frantically reloading his sidearm.

The creature reared up on the hind legs of a horse, displaying the new additions it had made to its body. Jimmy recalled Vern’s mention of an attack at the nearby animal shelter, and he now knew the fate of those various creatures.

Or parts of them, anyway.

The Skinwalker had transplanted its torso onto the body of a horse, looking like a mythological Centaur out of the nightmare of a mental patient. Four new arms sprouted from its sides, each freshly skinned and glistening with red muscle. Two of those newer appendages looked to be human, but the last set clearly came from something much bigger.

The monster’s coyote head snarled, now topped with deer antlers and flanked on each side by the heads of a mountain lion and a goat. Each scanned the room independently from the other, seeking new prey.

Deputy Ferguson emerged from the rubble of the desk and squeezed off five shots from his service pistol before the creature turned and struck out with its powerful hind legs, shattering his skull. Blood sprayed the wall.

Jimmy watched it happen with a dreamlike detachment, unable to react even when the beast plunged two of its hands into the deputy’s chest and tore open his ribcage.

“Move your ass, Cooley!” Sheriff Pickett shouted.

Jimmy flinched at the force of the man’s voice, glancing over his shoulder in time to see Riverwind’s knife hack into the doorframe beside him.

The detective surrendered the knife where it imbedded in the wood and grabbed Jimmy by the hair, yanking him backwards even as his other hand drew a gun and fired three shots into Pickett’s chest.

Jimmy grabbed for the knife when he passed it, managing to pull it from the doorframe, but Riverwind preempted his action and slammed the pistol-butt down on his wrist.

The knife clattered to the floor.

“Now we end this!” the detective declared.

A moment later, the entire forward wall of the room bowed inward, shattering the sheetrock and splintering the wall studs. A hand tipped with eagle talons punched through the door paneling, snaring a hunk of Riverwind’s skin before he got clear.

The door to the room and most of the wall had fragmented into a spider web of destruction, and Jimmy watched as a furless bear’s paw reached through one of the cracks and clutched the man’s face, instantly crushing his lower jaw into a handful of mush.

Jimmy stumbled away from the spectacle, shivering with terror when he saw that the man’s eyes still gazed with awareness. When the creature released him, Riverwind raised the gun to his head and ended the pain.

The entire building seemed to shudder as the monster pressed forward.

Ceiling tiles rained to the floor.

Jimmy edged into the corner of the room as he watched the wall crumble, knowing he only had a matter of seconds before the creature exploded inside and did whatever pervoid mystical bullshit it wanted to do with him.

Which left him only one choice.

He reversed his grip on the knife and stabbed it into his stomach.

Outside, the Skinwalker bellowed with rage. Jimmy closed his eyes, blocking it out, then suddenly saw an image of himself in his mind, viewed from the other side of the door, as he plunged his hand into the wound to search for the finger.

An alien world of pain exploded inside his abdomen, and he had to reopen his eyes to be rid of the Skinwalker’s viewpoint when a pale blob of intestine slipped out past his wrist.

Darkness began to creep into his vision as his questing fingers slid over the rubbery landscape of his insides, encountering internal juices that felt too hot to be healthy.

The Skinwalker roared again, and he looked up to see more sections of the wall and door disintegrate in front of him, torn away as if no more than—

The moment he did, the Skinwalker fell apart. The individual components of its morbid construction spilled to the ground in a horrible avalanche, splattering across the floor with a sound Jimmy knew he’d never forget.

He stood quivering in the aftermath, too fearful to move. The pain in his stomach seemed to have dulled from the shock of thwarting an unnatural death, but he knew he desperately needed to haul ass to a hospital.

He staggered forward.

A frightening numbness had crept into his body, reminding him that he didn’t have time to waste being squeamish, and despite the fact he was still barefoot, he quickly waded through the mound off spilled viscera blocking the doorway.

Tissue squished between his toes.

Harder items poked into his heels.

He slipped twice but managed to keep his balance, emerging from the pile only to collapse to his knees as the last of his strength fled from his body.

Clear of the mess, he dropped to the floor and lay there for what seemed like eternity, one hand clamped over his gut, until he saw Sheriff Pickett push to a stand not far away. Riverwind’s trio of bullets dotted the man’s bulletproof vest like medals of Honor.

“You alive, Cooley?” he asked.

Jimmy tried for a “Yes, Sir, I am,” but only uttered a grunt.

The man stepped forward, eyes widening when he beheld the full extent of Jimmy’s condition. “My, God, son ... What the hell happened to you?”

Jimmy shakily removed his hand from the wound for the Sheriff to see, only then realizing that he still clutched the thing he’d ripped out of his body.

“It’s not dead!” he cried as Pickett lifted him to his feet. “The finger’s still in me! It’s playing possum, Sheriff! It’s gonna try and get me again!”

He tried to break away, his mind racing to think of a way to burn the remains or blow up the building before it was too late, but he didn’t have the strength to resist and before he knew it Sheriff Pickett had ushered him out the front door and into a patrol car.

“Keep pressure on the wound,” Pickett told him. “We’ll get you patched up in no time.”

Jimmy wanted to tell him that was exactly what the witch wanted, why it had played dead and allowed them to escape, but the words came out as little more than mumbling that even he couldn’t decipher.

The Sheriff started the car.

Switched on the lights and siren.

And as they pulled away, Jimmy thought he saw Detective Riverwind’s corpse standing in the entryway of the building, the Skinwalker’s four-fingered hand jutting from the hole in the man’s throat, waving to him, like an old friend promising to come visit again.

Once Jimmy was healed.

ZOMBIE 2

BEST NEW

ZOMBIE

TALES

Volume Three