Dead Men (and Women) Walking (25 page)

“
See this shit?” he asked.
“One of those bastards bit my face. Came right in into my fucking
place and bit my face!” He smiled and nodded at Sam. “Come back
here, boy. I wanna show you something.”

Sam took a tentative step
closer, but his heart sank as he watched Mr. Tanner’s head jerk
spasmodically on his thick neck.

“
You okay?”

“
Hell no. Do I look okay?”
Tanner shouted. Then added more calmly, “Can’t get organized
lately. Can’t get organized... Like my head’s not working like it
was.”

Sam moved still closer, the
gun shaking but ready.

“
Look at this, Sammy,”
Tanner said. Then he motioned to a line of jars that sat along the
counter. Jars that Sam had not noticed until now. Blood had
congealed on the old wood, pooling around the base. It had run
under the register and was drying there, thick. Flies buzzed busily
here and there. The smell was sickening and Sam tried to breath
through his mouth.

The first of the jars held
what first looked like gumballs. But as Sam looked closer, he
realized that he was hugely mistaken. Not gumballs but eyeballs.
There were a couple of dozen at least, bloodshot and staring, blue
ones and brown. Some appeared healthy and others
jaundiced.

The next jar contained what
appeared to be tongues, going brown and shriveled.

Sam did not stick around
long enough to look closely at the other two jars. He spun around
and took off down the aisle and back toward the front
door.

“
Come on back, Sammy,” Mr.
Tanner called to him as he ran. “Come on back, you weak little fuck
and put me out of my misery! I ain’t man enough to do it
myself!”

***

Sam was driving up Cemetery
Road away from town when he spotted the girl walking along. She had
a deer rifle slung across her narrow back. He recognized that shape
immediately and smiling, he skidded to a stop along side
her.

“
I’d know that ass
anywhere,” he said to her through the open window.

***

It was an amazing thing,
finding Ellie out there, alive, heading back to her old homeplace
as well.

Ellie Johnson was his only
real girlfriend before Katy, and the first love of his life. She
was the girl he would have married if her parents had not been so
determined to keep them apart.

It had been almost five
years since he had last seen her, but she had not changed one bit.
A green-eyed beauty, high cheekbones and a full, expressive mouth.
Her mocha skin was flawless and still unlined.

They had gone together
through most of their high school years and into college. Until her
parents decided enough was enough and sent her to France to study
art.

Of course, he knew his own
parents were relieved when Ellie went away, though they never
allowed him to see it. He knew. All in all it was best for Ellie to
end things with him. He was barely sliding by in school and heading
to nowheresville fast.

She rode next him in the
Jeep, her rifle across her lap now. Her clothes were dirty. Her
curly hair was tangled and wild. He had never seen her looking less
than perfect, and again the awareness of the situation was forced
home once again.

“
Been to your parents
already?” he asked.

She nodded. “They were gone.
All I found was this.” She pulled a folded slip of paper from her
jeans. “Says they went up to Charlotte to check on my grandma.” She
shrugged. “I doubt they made it,” she said, a bit too
matter-of-fact for his taste. It made Sam’s heart ache, although he
knew that the Johnson’s never liked him.

“
You don’t know
that--”

“
What about your family,
Sam?” she interrupted. “Your real family. Katy wasn’t
it?”

Sam turned and pretended to
look out the side window a moment. He bit his lip and pinched back
the hot sting of tears. Saying what had happened would make it
real. It would make it final.

“
I can’t talk about that
yet,” he whispered.

Ellie touched his shoulder
gently and they drove on in silence until they reached the house
where Sam grew up.

***

Going back home for Sam had
always been sweet because his mother always ran out to greet
him.

Today, there was nobody to
greet him.

His home was a big
farmhouse, over one hundred years old. His parents had restored it
with all the modern conveniences they could afford on the modest
salaries of an elementary school principal and small town newspaper
reporter. White clapboard siding, blanketed along the front porch
railing in sweet, fragrant jasmine that was home to more than a few
snakes in the summer months. Azaleas lined the base of the house
along all sides, bloody reds, pinks like cotton candy, lacey
white.

He had always missed the
sweet smell of home as much as anything else. The shrubs, the
grass, even the dirt from the recently tilled fields of cropland
that surrounded his parents’ land.

“
Anyone here?” he called as
he climbed the front steps. Ellie followed, her rifle ready in her
hands.

The house was as silent as a
tomb, save for the drip drip of the faucet in the kitchen. It had
always dripped, even after the remodel. His mother claimed it was
their poltergeist. It only helped remind him of the horrors of the
morning back at the beach cottage.

They moved from room to
room, Sam now gripping his own gun and praying he would not have to
use it on his own his own parents. But he knew in his heart that he
had already done the most difficult thing he would ever have to do
in his life.

In through the foyer and
living room, then the kitchen. It appeared they had only gone out
to the market for a loaf of bread or some milk. The downstairs was
empty.

They then moved upstairs,
the boards creaky and lonesome under their feet. Sam moved from
room to room, growing more relieved with each passing moment. He
couldn’t begin to decide what would be worse--finding the half
devoured corpses of his parents or his parents coming to devour
him. But it was beginning to appear that his parents had fled just
as Ellie’s folks had.

Finally, he made it to his
old room. It hadn’t changed any more than Ellie had. He plopped
down on his bed and sighed, then laughed nervously.

“
They haven’t touched a
thing, have they? Looks like they were expecting you back,” Ellie
commented, stretching out next to him.

“
Then it looks like they
were right.”

***

They locked the house well
and then returned to Sam’s room. They crashed and slept fitfully.
Sam wept in his sleep and Ellie held him and whispered into his ear
that things would be all right, though they both knew nothing was
ever going to be all right again.

It was storming when they
woke, and well into evening. The darkness of the country was
startling after being away for so long.

Sam climbed from the bed and
groped around blindly. “I can’t see a fucking thing,” he
muttered.

Then downstairs there was a
sudden THUNK, as if a door slammed. Sam stood stock still a moment
and the only sounds were the wind and rain and their frightened
breathing.

Then another THUNK. This one
was softer. It was followed by footsteps on the warped
floorboards.

“
Oh shit,” Ellie whispered.
“What do you think that was?”

Sam found the flashlight he
had taken from the kitchen and suddenly the room was illuminated
with a soft yellow glow. “Maybe the wind,” he offered, “blowing a
door shut.” Wishful thinking, but Ellie knew better. She picked up
her rifle and moved to the door. She opened it an inch or so and
peered out into the dark hallway.

There was a big window at
the far end of the hall and when lightning flashed again, she could
see the stooped silhouette walking slowly toward them.

“
My God!” Ellie whispered,
“I think it might be your father.“

“
What? Really?“ Sam quickly
yanked the door open brushed past her. “Dad?”

“
No, Sam. Wait!” Ellie
cried, grabbing at his shirt. “You don’t know--”

“
Dad? Where’s Mom? Is she
all right?”

Neil Clark moved closer. He
was bent, lumbering, his face shrouded in shadow. Sam opened his
arms to embrace his father and as Mr. Clark leaned in toward his
son lightning brightened the hallway again. Stark light touched the
man’s face only a moment, but that was all Ellie needed. Face as
pale as a blank page, dark lifeless eyes that appeared dusted over.
Dried blood crusted his lips. His clothes were stiff with gore and
Ellie could smell him, the stench of decay, the hot stink of
death.

He bared his teeth and his
dirty eyes rolled back into his skull as if he were in ecstasy as
he drew his son to him. He was going to sink his dirty teeth into
Sam’s neck.

Then BAM! BAM! Two shots and
Neil Clark’s entire head was gone.

Ellie stepped closer, her
rifle still up and still ready. Sam was sprawled on the floor on
his ass, as if he had been shot himself.

“
Goddamn!
Ellie?”

Blood misted down, putrid
and crimson-black onto Sam’s legs. It splattered the floor, the
walls behind them. The smell was of something spoiled.

Sam sat a moment, staring at
the remains of his father. Then he began to tremble violently.
Ellie kneeled beside him and cradled his head against her breasts.
“Shhh. Sam, we’re going to get through this.” He cried a while and
she cried with him, her face buried into his warm hair. She knew
Sam was identified by those he loved. He was nothing
now.

They both were nothing now
but fresh meat. And the world was starving.

***

Ellie wrapped Mr. Clark in a
sheet and comforter from the master bedroom. She had removed the
man’s belt and had clinched it tight around the covers. He was as
tightly wrapped as a Cuban cigar.

Sam watched
her--emotionless, methodical. She was stronger than he ever
realized. She would survive this if she stayed immune. If anything,
he was slowing her down, putting her in more danger.

“
Just don’t look at it,
Sam,” she told him.

Together, she and Sam
carried Neil Clark down the stairs and out to the back porch. Blood
had soaked through the covers where his head should have been,
patches like oil on cloth.

“
And don’t think of it as
your father. He wasn’t in there. You know he wasn’t.”

Sam nodded, sick to his
stomach. Ellie mentioned burying the body and at first it seemed a
good idea. But then Sam wondered if the bright glare from the
flashlight, the noise and movement might draw more like his father
to the house. They decided to leave him for the night.

***

They found nails in the
drawers of Mr. Clark’s workshop at the back of the garage and they
nailed the first floor windows closed. They nailed two-by-fours at
the base of the doors, making them impossible to open from the
outside.

Exhausted, they crawled into
Sam’s small bed. He could not bring himself to use his parent’s
room, although the bed was much larger.

Ellie found several candles
downstairs in an emergency pack, and stood them on his dresser,
nightstand and along the windowsill. She lit them and they
illuminated his old room in wavering orange and yellow.

Sam crawled across his bed
to the shelf that was braced on the wall above his headboard. “I
think I may have something here that’s fairly valuable. Unless of
course my parents discovered it.” He laughed, remembering that his
mother and father did indeed enjoy weed on occasion.

He thumbed through a stack
of old paperbacks. Horror stories--Stephen King, most of them.
Little did he know back when he first read them, he would one day
be living his own horror story. He chose
The Stand
, his favorite of the
bunch--a big fat volume, well read by the look of the split spine.
He flipped through the pages slowly.

“
Ah,” he said, smiling. He
produced a flattened, crooked joint from the center of the book.
“Look at that.” It was a pretty sad looking thing, but it would
serve the purpose. He fired it up with one of the flickering
candles and then took a long hit. Holding breath, he passed it over
to Ellie.

***

It wasn’t long before they
were pleasantly high. Ellie didn’t know if it was the exhaustion,
or just the simple need to have their minds shut down for a while,
but she could not remember ever feeling the effects of marijuana so
quickly.

“
Remember how we’d huddle
by the window and smoke, thinking how clever we were?” She laughed
and touched his chest. “You’d always stuff a t-shirt along the
bottom of the door so the smell wouldn’t seep out.”

“
I was so afraid my parents
would find out,” he told her. “Turns out they had a bigger stash
than I did. Old hippies, you know,” he whispered wistfully. Then,
sounding shy he added, “You know something? They could hear us in
here making love.”