Eaters (38 page)

Cheryl looked around the bar thinking that these people weren’t anything like those at the JLM Mart, and yet they were. They might not be Bible toting Christians, but they were still hanging on to denial and a false sense of security. Their isolation in the desert had given them a buffer against the worst of the epidemic for now, but if bad went to worse, they were trapped out here and their supplies wouldn’t last forever. She watched them talk and drink like it was an end of the world party, noting that the room practically vibrated with bottled up fear disguised as revelry.

When he was done with his tale and had heard enough from the doubters, Aidan hopped off his barstool and took her hand. “Come on, let’s dance.”

“What?”

He leaned in and whispered, “We gotta fit in, just for a little while.”

They joined two other couples on the dance floor as an old George Strait song played on the jukebox. He put one arm around her waist and clasped her hand. His chin sunk down onto her shoulder as they swayed back and forth, not so much dancing as holding each other up. It was a pleasant diversion, and Cheryl felt her eyes grow heavy as she surrendered to the moment.

When the music changed to
Riders on the Storm
by The Doors, a fat hand sliced in between them. “‘Scuse me sir, I’m cuttin’ in.”

Cheryl’s jaw dropped when she looked up at the Mack truck with a gold tooth and tried to formulate a protest. Aidan held a hand up like a white flag and took a step back. “Just give her back when you’re done. That’s my gal.” As he walked back to the bar, he turned back and gave her a glance, urging her to play along.

The man squeezed her like a sausage and pulled her close. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead, and his dark green shirt was damp against her. As a bonus, his body odor and the smell of stale beer on his breath made her nose wrinkle. She craned her neck to look up at him and reminded herself to play nice. Maybe he’d know someone who could stitch up an ailing bike.

“What’s your name?”

“Roach.”

He didn’t ask hers.

She tried not to breathe for half of the song as he pressed a bristly cheek into hers and danced with closed eyes.

“You know any mechanics here?”

He squeezed her tighter and lowered one hand to her ass. It took a few deep smelly breaths for her to fight the urge to pull away and slap him. She looked over at Aidan to see if he was watching and saw him talking to a man at the bar. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she could read their lips.

Earl says you rolled up a bike. You’re a rider? What you got?

Sportster XL50.

Sweet…ain’t many of them made.

Aidan nodded in her direction, not seeming to notice the misplaced meat hook on her rear end. She gave him a grimaced smile back, before he returned to his conversation.

As the last seconds of rain faded from the song, Roach whispered, “One more?”

“Sorry, I need to hit the ladies room.” When she tried to pull away, he held on to her wrist.

“I’ll catch you on the way back then.” He released her with a flick of his wide fingers.

Fat chance
, she thought, heading for a sign that said
Restrooms
.

The first two stalls had clogged, disgusting toilets, so Cheryl chose the third in the corner. She didn’t really need to go. Her body was so dehydrated, she figured that it was hanging on to every drop of beer that she’d just fed it. It would be good to sit though, just to have a few minutes of rest and time alone.

She loosened Mark’s oversized camouflage pants, squatted, then buried her head in her hands and closed her eyes. There were about seven seconds of privacy before she heard the door burst open and a woman stumble in. She peed loudly then ran out without flushing. Two seconds later, the restroom door opened again, cranking up the volume on a heart-stopping song by Five Finger Death Punch.

Then, without warning, the steel door crashed into Cheryl’s head.

She was knocked backwards into the pipe behind her. The door bounced closed as she tried to right herself on the toilet. Stunned by the exploding pain on the top of her head, it took a second for her to notice Roach’s black leather boots underneath the door. She reached up and tried to lock the latch. When it wouldn’t catch, she fumbled to pull up her pants.

Roach’s hand came through the door and grabbed a fistful of her short hair. He shoved her back against the graffiti-covered sheetrock and wedged himself inside. Half naked and seeing a constellation of stars in front of her, she knew she was in trouble. Even if she managed to scream, no one in the bar would hear her.

Roach, his eyes narrow slits, moved his hand down to her throat, squeezing hard enough to prevent her from making a plea for her release, and started to undo his belt.

His tractor-sized jeans were half unzipped when her knee connected with his groin. His chokehold loosened a little as he bent forward and grunted. She screamed like a pterodactyl and kneed him again…and again. She didn’t stop until his body compacted, filling up the small stall in a hunched, deflated stance.

“Bitch!” he gasped. He fell forward and went limp, pinning her against the wall. She tried to shove him off, but the stall door had somehow decided to latch, so there was nowhere to move him. She took a deep breath and hoped that someone would come in the restroom to help her. A full minute went by, and no one came in.

She shoved his head towards the toilet and tried to push his shoulder to get his body to go in the same direction. On the third futile nudge, she noticed that his flesh was cool. The bar was hot, and like everyone else, he’d been perspiring heavily just minutes ago. Now, he felt like a slab of raw meat just out of the icebox.

She lifted his head and saw that his eyes were closed. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” Then, she yelled out loud, “Doesn’t anyone else in this joint have to pee?”

After placing two fingers on Roach’s jugular vein and feeling nothing, a new surge of adrenaline pushed all of her blood down to her toes and she felt faint.

Maybe Aidan would notice that she had been gone a while and come looking for her.

A growl rumbled out of Roach’s bluish lips.

Cheryl had no gun, no lamp base, nothing but her bare hands. She tried another hard knee to the groin, but it had no effect on him now. He lifted his head, slowly, like he was hoisting it on a crane, and revealed milky white eyes that had replaced the soulless brown eyes of a predator that had been there before. He lunged towards her face with a foul open mouth. She locked her elbows and pushed him back with all her might, knowing that he could snap her arms like twigs if he twisted them.

In a moment of inspiration she withdrew and flung herself deeper into the corner. He fell face forward towards the toilet. She shoved his head down and pushed it into the water. Then, she slammed the toilet lid onto it. He gurgled and growled, trying to force his way out. The lid tore off. She grabbed it and smashed it over his head. When the impact didn’t seem to have any effect, she wondered if she could climb over the stall door. It was possible, but he’d take a chunk of her leg before she got out.

Keep the teeth away.

She swatted the voice in her head away like it was a gnat, ignoring it at first.

Oh hi, Mark. You finally showed up. Better late than never.

If you can’t kill the head, stop the mouth.

What? How do you…?

Stop the mouth.
Right
. That was it. She reached down and grabbed a fistful of toilet paper and shoved it in through the gnashing teeth. He spat it out, but some of it stuck on the pale tongue. She grabbed some more, wadded it up, and pushed it in. After repeating a few more times, his cheeks bulged like the Godfather, and he was unable to close his mouth.

She knew she had to move fast; it was cheap toilet paper and would start to dissolve in seconds.

Over or under?

She held him at bay with her hands, but he was still grabbing for her and trying to masticate the paper. Deciding that there wasn’t enough room on the floor to move around him and squeeze under the stall, she decided to go up.

She was at the top, trying to hoist herself up over the edge, when he pulled her back down.

“Godamnit!” she yelled as the anger and frustration exploded out of her. She was done with being trapped in this box with a monster. She shoved his head back into the toilet and stomped it with her boot. Using every fiber of muscle in her thigh and calf, she crashed into his head over and over again, slamming it into the porcelain. The water turned pink then a deep crimson.

Seconds later, his head looked like a deflated basketball, oozing out a mash of strawberry jam and gray matter.

She escaped over the top of the stall. Stopping at the mirror above the sink, she saw fresh blood splatters all over her shirt, blending in with the camouflage pattern like bright flowers. She washed the muck off of her face and walked towards the door.

A pretty woman with a button nose and a rose tattoo on her forearm came in.

“Third one’s pretty gross…” Cheryl advised, and walked out of the restroom.

* * *

Cheryl crossed her arms over her chest to hide the blood as she rushed back into the bar. Aidan was still talking to the same man when she tugged on his sleeve.

“We have to go.”

“What?”

“I killed that guy.”

“You did what?”

“I killed him. He was sick.”

Aidan looked at her like she’d lost her mind.

She started to explain what had happened in the bathroom when a loud siren sounded. It was followed by Earl’s voice screeching into a bullhorn with an ear-splitting wail. “Incoming!”

The patrons scrambled, bouncing off one another, and they were suddenly alone at the bar as chaos swirled around them.

She glanced towards the windows. They were large panes of glass, and there were no boards on them. Since the bar was out in the middle of nowhere, it was possible that they hadn’t yet had a large scale attack, so they hadn’t felt the need to reinforce the building. She closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them, she saw a dust cloud building on the horizon. From the wall of dust, figures began to emerge.

Walking, stumbling, lumbering skeletons.

It didn’t look real. It looked like some sort of CGI animation from the movie
The Mummy.

But it was real,
and they were in the middle of the desert with nowhere to run.

Guns replaced beer bottles as people started turning over tables to use as shields. No one was laughing now; they were all scared shitless. Someone pulled the plug on the jukebox, axing Blondie. Cheryl could almost hear the collective heartbeats in the room, thumping like the pitter-patter of panicked rabbits.

Instead of moans, the Eaters made screeching sounds like banshees as they approached. It wasn’t long before they heard fingernails scratching on glass and the click-clack of toes and metatarsals on the roof. Skulls pressed against the windows. There was nothing left of the rest of them but hair, bones, nails…and teeth. It made them as versatile as Swiss Army knives with tools made to claw, rip, and tear.

A man stretched as thin as a taught rubber band, wearing a sweat-soaked bandana, jumped up from behind the bar. His entire body oscillated like someone was shaking him from below. “They’re tearing apart the fucking building!” A blast from his shotgun blew out a window.

“Oh shit,” Cheryl exclaimed as the first skeletal torso started to clamber through. She and Aidan hightailed it back behind the bar.

All hell broke loose as open season was declared on the emaciated forms that began to scramble over the top of each other to get in. The room exploded into a helter-skelter of flying bullets and shards of glass.

Ducking down in a fetal position, Cheryl gagged at the horrible smell. Unlike the skunk-like, rotten scent of the infected who had decomposing necrotic tissue that was still juicy, these dried things smelled like the soot of ancient graves, and it was just as nasty.

After a few minutes, the room was filled with acrid smoke, but some of the frenzy seemed to subside. Aidan chanced a peek over the bar and reported that the battle seemed to be turning in their favor. Cheryl rose to her feet and saw that casualties were minimal though blood and brain matter were splattered from wall to wall and piles of broken bones littered the dance floor. There were whoops of victory from the crowd as if they’d just scored major points in a video game.

Cheryl wasn’t celebrating with them. She rose to her feet and looked out the broken windows, and caught sight of something unnerving in the distance. The sand was boiling up again, churning up a cauldron of dust even higher than what she’d seen before.

There were more coming.

Lots more.

The room suddenly became quiet. Many of the patrons dropped to their knees as a whoosh of air seemed to come out of all of them, from the perkiest little barfly in a mini skirt to the burliest tattooed biker in sweaty leather.