Pray To Stay Dead (35 page)

He fell onto his face, his wounded arm pressed to his chest, teeth clenched, his heart throbbing in his chest and in his neck and behind his eyes.

He waited for his brain to burst, and when it didn’t, he rolled onto his side, gasping. Water pattered against his face, and the air was heavy with the smell of freshly moistened earth, wet leaves.

In time, the sky lightened, and the darkness of the canopy seemed to grow darker still. Somewhere, a woodpecker did its job, and Richard’s heartbeat slowed enough. The pain in his left arm eased down, too, but not by much. He sat up, and as the world around him emerged in shades of blue, he stared at the hole in his arm. There was dirt stuck to the edge of the wound. There was dirt in the wound. Both the exit and the entry were in pretty much the same shape, and both thrummed with the promise of infection.

The gun lay nearby. He scooped it up and opened the cylinder, inspected the three remaining unfired bullets. He dropped the spent casings to the ground between his thighs. After a few seconds consideration, he dug a small hole and placed the empty shells into it, covered them. As an act, it didn’t make much sense—he’d been asleep in the open for ten, twelve hours. If they were looking for him, he’d have already been found—but it made him feel better, anyway.

His back ached and his joints hurt. His face ached from the beating he’d taken. He felt like he was coming down with a cold. There was an itch at the back of his throat and with each breath mucus bubbled in his sinus cavity. Eventually he got up and walked around in a circle, stretching his legs and getting his bearings. It was impossible for him to tell which way he’d gone yesterday, or which way he’d come. He couldn’t tell east from west. The clouds were thick, the light dim and heavy, and all around him, hills and trees, the same goddamn trees and hills in every direction.

But he had to move, and now. He had maybe twelve hours of daylight ahead of him.

He walked for a little over an hour, steadily moving downhill, climbing over massive fallen branches and lichen-covered stones. He heard the stream before he saw it, and when he reached it the water was cool around his hands and crystal clear. It rushed over rocks and pooled and churned in small, twig-choked dams.

Richard cupped both hands together—the left trembled noticeably—and brought the water to his lips. He stopped, his mind racing. What if one of those things—human or deer or some other dead animal—was dead in the waters somewhere upstream?

He had larger concerns and he was thirsty. He drank until he could drink no more and with his right hand he splashed water onto his wound, rinsing away flecks of dirt and dried blood.

Fifteen minutes later, his stomach clenched. He buckled, hands planted on his knees, and the tainted water came back up.

“
Fuck,” he said, and vomited some more. One final searing clench and nothing more would come. He tasted bile. He wandered, and his sense of time was lost alongside his sense of direction. He walked and he walked, and at some point he came across a dead squirrel or chipmunk. It lay on its side, its gaping mouth swarming with ants, its one visible eye sunken within its socket. Its stomach had been torn open, and insects trundled and raced across its innards. Its tiny little forepaws, so much like little hands, moved up and down, up and down. Its nose twitched. Its skull crunched like a walnut beneath his heel.

He stood there for a while, gazing at the sky between the towering trees. Dark clouds hung, and somewhere in the distance thunder rumbled. One direction was as good as the others, he reasoned. Choosing one, he walked.

Twenty-Five

For the first time in years they shared a bed. Crate was quick to pass out, but Misty had trouble and took an hour or more before falling asleep, the night’s bloody events repeatedly playing out in her mind. She saw Karlatos and his pals preparing to rape Stacy, their pitiful little spit-slicked dicks bobbing within their clutched fists. She saw them fall and die, pumping blood and piss, and none of it bothered her. Crate had done what needed doing, and now they were dead. As they should be.

And she saw Charles, weeping the entire time, weeping and begging, doing nothing, not a damned thing, to stop what was happening. She saw his grateful, tear-streaked face afterward, gazing up at Crate, and then she saw him go limp, a series of spasms rocking his body, blood jetting in a crimson rainbow from the top of his head and spreading in a pool on the grimy linoleum.

She saw Charles die, Charlie, the man she’d fucked right under her husband’s nose for nearly a decade. She saw him die and the only thing she really felt bad about was the fact that she didn’t really feel bad at all.

Sleep came at last, and it was no surprise that she dreamed about the walking dead. When Crate shook her awake, it was nearly nine in the morning.

First things first, Crate drove Tasgal’s Beistle Police cruiser around back and parked it next to his one-bedroom shack. It couldn’t be seen from the road, and until Crate made room in the garage, this would have to do.

The truck out front did not belong to Karlatos. Crate found the keys in one of Baker’s pockets and moved the truck to the empty church parking lot down the road. He drove Charlie’s car to Charlie’s house.

As Misty waited for him to return, she checked on Stacy, who was still fast asleep on the couch. There were three empty beer cans on the floor—Stacy must have gotten up at some point and ventured into the store, among the bodies of her attempted rapists, to retrieve them. Her chest rose and fell. She looked peaceful.

Not wanting to venture into the store until Crate returned and they could go about the task of removing the bodies and mopping up the blood, she gently raised Stacy’s feet from the couch, sat down, and rested the woman’s calves across her thighs. She grabbed the remote control from the standing tray beside the couch and, clicking on the television, worked her way through the channels.

Channel 4 displayed only the CBS eye, and nothing else, and it was somehow terrifying in this context. On NBC, a frizzy-haired scientist in a blood-stained lab-coat pointed to a human brain, which sat limp and formless in a puddle of blood on a stainless steel surface. ABC wasn’t all that far from Mayberry: they aired an episode of
I Love Lucy.
There was no sound, only a silently scrolling ticker that informed the world in hastily-typed, mistake-laden copy that regular programming would resume as soon as possible.

She played with the control for a few seconds, pressing buttons and even slapping the bulky metal rectangle before she realized that the sound problem was not on her end.

The UHF stations were no longer on the air. They offered only a churning white snow pattern, all but WCAL, which depicted the static image of the American flag blowing in the wind accompanied by an electronic whine that reminded her of cicadas.

She turned off the television, sat in contemplation for a minute, and then eased herself from the couch. Stacy did not stir. She walked to the front door and peered through the blinds, careful not to slip in any congealed blood, careful not to look at the bodies strewn throughout her store. There was no sign of Crate; there was no sign of anyone, alive or otherwise, save the heap of charred bodies, each of which were merely dead.

She returned to the living room and, not really wanting to, opened the back door and looked around. There was nothing, no walking corpses, anyhow. The morning air was cool and damp, the sky thick with clouds that seemed frozen in place. The slumped form in Tasgal’s car made her jump, and then she remembered the body—who was it?

Clark. His name was Clark, though she could not remember if it was his first name or not.

“
Doesn’t really matter,” she said, looking away from the car and stepping up to Crate’s little shack. She fumbled with her key-ring, found the key she was looking for, and slid it home.

Tasgal lay on the floor, where they’d left him. The air inside smelled of human waste, and he’d bled onto the carpet. He lifted his head, and she opened her mouth to ask him if she wanted her to clean him up. She wasn’t sure if she’d be capable of doing that, for God’s sake, but she had to offer. She had to do something. She felt nothing regarding Crate’s murder of Charles, but she felt this. This was wrong. They’d made a mistake.

Tasgal looked at her. His eyes widened. She closed her mouth and took a single step backward. Tasgal was dead. The side of his face that had been resting upon the carpeted floor was deeply bruised, the other side deathly pale. There were dried chunks of something clinging to his nose and cheeks, and lying on the floor. At some point during the night, he’d vomited and drowned and now here he was, a living dead man bound upon the floor of her husband’s shack.

Whether or not she felt bad about his death, she hadn’t killed Charles. Eric Tasgal’s blood was on her hands.

“
I’m sorry,” Misty said. She shut the door and locked it. She went inside and stepped over Charles, grabbed a beer from the cooler, and sat at one of the tables, drinking her beer and staring into space until the bell above the door jingled and Crate stepped into the store, Bilbo Baggins at his heel.

“
Why the hell are you sitting in the dark, woman?” Crate asked, snapping on the light. The fluorescents flickered to life. “We got work to do.”

They started with Karlatos, the smallest of the bunch. Holding his hands and his feet, they were actually able to drag him out of the store and lay him beside the burn pile. By that point both of them were already winded. Bilbo Baggins yelped and sniffed at Karlatos’s crotch. Crate yelped back and kicked the dog away from the corpse.

“
What are we going to do about that fat one?” Crate asked, and it was obvious from his tone that he wasn’t really asking her. He was asking the air, or asking himself, and when his eyes widened beneath his bushy eyebrows she knew he had his answer.

“
A chainsaw,” he said, and Misty winced, looking away.

They rested for a few minutes and were in the process of carrying Baker over the threshold when they heard the car.

“
Here we go,” Crate said, dropping Baker’s feet onto the porch and grabbing his rifle from the bench. Baker’s corpse lay across the threshold in its stolen California State Trooper uniform, half of its face a gaping dark hole, the other frozen in slack-jawed surprise.

The car pulled into the parking lot, tires crunching. Misty did not move. She watched it all, every single moment, from her place just within the entrance to her store. The car came to a stop, an old Ford rust-bucket with a rattling muffler. Leaving the engine running, the driver stepped out, arms raised, palms outward, an uncertain smile on his face.

“
Hey, there,” the black man said, standing behind the shield of the driver side door, and Misty recognized him. He lived up the road a bit, past the Niebolt property, and had been in the store on a few occasions over the past year. He worked in Beistle, at a furniture store, or something like that, and he mostly kept to himself.

“
Hey yourself,” Crate said, raising his rifle and squeezing the trigger. The window on the driver side door shattered, and the black man fell to the ground in a graceless heap. Crate stepped forward and put another shot through his head, and Misty moved before she realized she was going to move. She stepped over Baker’s corpse, across the porch, and onto the gravel, stomping toward Crate, who barely had time to turn before she was upon him, pushing him with both hands.

He fell to the ground, dropping his rifle. Bilbo Baggins yelped and barked and circled his fallen master.

“
What the hell are you doing?” She screamed, picking up the rifle and throwing it over the burn pile. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

“
I’m protecting us, you stupid bitch.” Crate said, sitting up and wincing. He massaged his left elbow.

“
Protecting us? He didn’t even have a gun.”

“
I didn’t know what he had.”

“
He probably wanted food.”

“
Yeah,” Crate said, struggling to his knees. His fingertips were stained red with blood from his elbow. “And we’ve got an endless supply of food, right? Let’s just set up a table out here and give ham sandwiches to everyone who drives by.”

“
You didn’t have to kill him.”

“
It’s our food and there isn’t much.” He got to his feet, leaned against the dead man’s car, and eyed Misty, frowning. “We have to make it last, and we need to do whatever it takes.”

She stared at him, gasping, her heart pounding.

“
You know I’m right,” Crate said, leaning into the car, killing the engine, and pocketing the keys. He walked over to his rifle and picked it up.

His words rang true, and the blood on her hands suddenly felt thicker.

“
Tasgal is dead,” she said.

“
Good,” Crate said, nodding. He frowned, seemed to be thinking, and then he looked at her, his eyes wild. “He come back?”

“
Yeah,” Misty said. “Of course.”

“
Huh,” Crate said.

“
What’s going on?”

Misty turned to see Stacy standing upon the porch, squinting, shielding her eyes from the morning light with one raised hand.

“
Everything is okay, honey,” Misty said. “Go inside.”

“
Oh, God,” Stacy said. “That’s Clarence.”