The Dark Trilogy (95 page)

Scanning the sparsely decorated room, Teddy stepped to his father’s closet. That was where the rifles were kept. When Joe and Vicky were still married, he had a nice display case in the basement for all his weapons. It was locked but had a glass front. All the rifles had trigger locks as well, something on which Teddy’s mom had insisted. Since he’d moved, Joe was forced to sell the display case to a friend and had taken each rifle and blasted the trigger locks to pieces. Teddy supposed it was his father’s way of getting back at his mother for everything she had ever done to him.

Now the few rifles that remained in his collection were buried on the bottom of the closet. The only admonition that Joe ever gave his son anymore was “don’t touch them or I’ll break your neck.” Teddy never had, until now. He sifted through the pile of dirty clothes on the floor and grabbed the Springfield Model 70. It was his father’s favorite. He had been forced to sell most of the others to pay child support and alimony. He couldn’t find steady work in construction, so the collection, which had originally consisted of upwards of thirty different weapons, had diminished to about five rifles. He’d handed over the shotguns and other rifles to some dealers and collectors, but kept the old Springfield, even though it was probably worth more than any of the other weapons he had. It was Joe’s baby, and when he’d bought it at a gun auction ten years before, he swore up and down he would never part with it. His father, Teddy’s grandfather, had one just like it, and Joe grew up using it.

Teddy held the rifle awkwardly. He had never fired it and had never really wanted to. Guns held no fascination for him.

He grabbed a box of .30 caliber rounds and noticed several other boxes labeled 7.62mm. He knew that he could use them as well—his father had taught him that much, at least. He loaded the rifle as he had seen his dad do and poured as many bullets as he could without feeling weighed down into his pockets. Moving out of the closet, Teddy glanced over at the dresser and opened one of the drawers. He grabbed a pair of balled-up socks and poured more of the stray cartridges into one of them. He wasn’t quite sure what he was doing, but filled it about halfway up and then tied the opening of the sock off into a thick knot. Swinging it around a couple of times to test its weight, he hoped it would do the job of knocking someone silly if they got too close.

Teddy watched the dresser vibrate as several fists pounded on the door behind it. There were at least three people out there with his father now, and he was sure more would be joining them.

What the hell is wrong with everyone?
The thought raced through Teddy’s mind as he stood stunned and panting inside his father’s bedroom. They were all messed up to varying degrees, with his own father the least so. He remembered his father saying that someone had bitten him. Perhaps that was what caused this. Someone with rabies or hepatitis was out there attacking everyone, turning them into homicidal maniacs.

The more his mind spun, the stranger Teddy thought it was that no one out there appeared to be attacking anyone else. They were all after him, not one another. Teddy held the rifle in front of him as he glanced furtively over to the window. No one had attacked his dad—he couldn’t hear any brawling going on outside the bedroom door—and yet they all wanted to get at him. Why?

Taking one last look around the room, Teddy cursed. No telephone. His father only had one phone, and it was next to the couch. The man refused to get a cell phone, and it damn near took a court order to get him to buy an answering machine. There weren’t too many people to whom Joe was interested in talking anyway, and that left Teddy in a bind. What the hell was he going to do? In answer to his silent query, the sound of the bedroom door cracking made Teddy take a step back, deeper into the room.

The truck! His father’s truck was parked next to the house. The dilapidated old shack didn’t have a garage. Just a cheap sheet-metal cover that served as a carport. The old, beat-up Chevy S-10 sat underneath it with the boat attached behind. Teddy had always shaken his head at the amazing luck his father displayed in driving back from the small lake where he fished. They were out in the country, so he was almost always able to avoid the cops on his drunken returns home. He was not quite as good with trees and fence posts, though. The truck had suffered some pretty nice dings and dents, and Joe spent plenty of his free time fixing neighbors’ split-rail fences. Fortunately for him, they were just as apt to get ripped and do the exact same thing, so they were more or less forgiving of his indiscretions.

But where were the keys?

He thought back to his father’s return. The old man didn’t carry the damn things in his pocket like a normal person. If Joe remembered to get them out of the truck, he would usually toss them on a counter somewhere or into the midst of a pile of trash he had not cleaned up in months. “My cleaning lady will get to it, but this is her year off.” Some lame joke like that was always his excuse. When Teddy tried to clean up once, his father told him to leave it. He’d left the boy’s mother so he could get away from dealing with crap like that.

As the bedroom door splintered and the dresser shuddered, Teddy thought hard. He couldn’t remember his father doing much more than throwing up and passing out when he got home. That and talking about getting bitten. No keys. Were they still in the truck?

The question was rendered moot as the dresser moved and the door behind it gave way. The moaning outside grew louder, and it sounded like a lot more fists were pounding on the front door as well.

Teddy moved to the window and peeked through the blinds outside. Nothing. Just the weedy back yard that seemed to stretch for a mile. No more shambling forms. Anyone who’d been moving toward the house was probably already inside and trying to get at him through the bedroom door.

The window was fairly small and was set at chest height. Outside of the dresser and the bed, there was not much to climb on in the room. It would take too long to move the bed to a spot beneath the window. Being short was sometimes a real disadvantage. Teddy couldn’t remember how he managed, but he was able to slide the window open and pull himself up just as the dresser toppled over and crashed to the floor. He tossed the rifle outside as the sock full of cartridges swung like a pendulum from where he had tied it to his sweatpants.

Before sliding through the window, Teddy took one last glance back into the room, which was a big mistake. He froze halfway out the window as he stared into his father’s eyes.

The man was dead. They all were. Looking at Marge Chilton had not convinced Teddy of that, nor had seeing Phil, even with his guts ripped out. But looking into his father’s eyes as the man climbed over the toppled dresser made Teddy realize they were walking corpses. Every last one of them.

Teddy almost died alongside them right then and there. He continued staring at his father, stunned by his realization. His father was dead, but somehow moving toward him. The teen stood frozen in place as his father crept ever closer. Soon Joe would grab his son by the legs and pull him back inside, where everyone in the neighborhood would do unspeakable things to him. Then he would become one of them.

That was when Teddy felt the hand yanking him out the window.

He screamed as he fell to the ground, knocking down whoever had pulled him outside. His legs had been scraped up in the fall, and the bag of bullets had landed on his back, knocking the air out of him and leaving some nice gouges there as well.

Teddy rolled away, trying hard to catch his breath as the other person climbed to his feet. The boy rolled to his back so he could see what was going on. As he looked up, he discovered that his savior was one of them.

He didn’t recognize the man. One of the straps of the fellow’s denim overalls was missing. So was his right arm.

Teddy gaped at the man and once again felt as if he couldn’t move. The rifle was behind the ghoul, out of reach. Not that he could manage his first shot with the weapon anyway. There was no way in hell. The only thing he could do was run.

Teddy scooted backwards, but the man was moving faster than he could scoot. When he moved, he heard the bag of bullets making noise as the cartridges clicked together in the sock. He reached and tugged at it. He had tied it to the pull string of his sweats, and it had tried to break loose when he fell, but remained where he’d put it. Teddy had tied it tight, wanting it to remain snug against his body. Now he cursed as he struggled to get it loose.

The memory of how long it took to fumble the sock free played over and over in Teddy’s dreams for days. In reality, it took less than a couple of seconds before he was able to launch the makeshift sling at the man. In truth, he flung the sock well before the man could lunge for him. But in his dreams, it was always one second too late …

Teddy watched as the weighted sock traveled upward and smacked the stiffening corpse in the nose, causing the man to stumble. After a moment, the monster regained control of his erstwhile feet and moved toward Teddy again. By then the boy had snapped out of his trance and was on his feet, slipping backwards, away from the man. The truck was parked on the side of the house, past the pus bag in front of him. But that wasn’t the only problem: someone was stepping out the back door of his dad’s house, and others were following.

A voice inside Teddy’s head managed to cut through all the static and noise racing around in there. It whispered that he already knew that he was faster than any of these people. All he had to do was move, and move quickly, and there was no way in hell they could catch him.

He took the voice at its word and ran straight at the man. This seemed to take the slug off guard a bit, and it nearly toppled over. Teddy feigned another move, and the klutz did fall over this time. Moving past the wriggling form, he snatched up his father’s rifle and then darted around the other dead figures pouring from the house as he ran to the truck.

The keys weren’t in the ignition.

Teddy slammed his fist against the window and was tempted to shoot the damn thing out of frustration. That was when he saw the keys. They were on the floorboards beside a discarded fast food bag. Yelping with glee, Teddy tugged on the door handle and got into the truck. He crammed the key in the ignition and tried to start it. The engine wouldn’t turn over.

The wretched thing was fifteen years old and holding on for dear life. It had some hard miles on it and had been a good truck for many years, but it was well past its expiration date. Teddy, who had never driven before, was winging it. Thankfully it was not a standard transmission, or he would have been forced to run instead. He was reasonably sure he could handle an automatic.

When the first fist slammed against the glass, Teddy nearly wet himself. He stomped on the gas pedal and twisted the key again. Nothing. He remembered his father cursing the old beast a time or two and bitching about having flooded it. About how temperamental she was, almost as bad as his mother. Teddy cursed himself and brought the rifle up. There were more monsters coming.

He saw the first one moving its fist down toward the door handle, and he locked it, wondering in amazement why he hadn’t done that in the first place. After another few moments of staring at the man close up, he leaned over to click the passenger-side lock down as well.

For the next few minutes, Teddy Schmidts felt like he had been condemned to hell as punishment for not playing football as his father wished. Joe Schmidts became a drunken loser because his son was a great disappointment, but that wasn’t punishment enough for Teddy. No, he was going to be surrounded by his father’s disgusting neighbors so they could drag him down to the fiery pits, kicking and screaming.

That was when Teddy saw his father again. Having failed to follow his son through the window, the old man had come through the back door. The other neighbors in the room had followed and were out on the lawn, making for the truck. There were ten or more, and Teddy was certain he recognized at least half of them.

Later, Teddy thought a great deal about the seemingly endless time he spent behind the wheel of the idle truck. Perhaps he should have died then. Maybe it would have been easier. He considered putting the rifle in his mouth and pulling the trigger. Contemplated it, but never took the idea seriously. It was no more a viable option to his way of thinking than shooting out the window and trying to blow away all those dead people. Maybe shooting one would scare the others off, but Teddy had a sneaking suspicion they wouldn’t be bothered by such an effort. Half already looked like they had been mauled by wild dogs or worse. A mere rifle blast would probably just get them more excited.

After forcing himself to wait the necessary amount of time (based on the number of curses his father usually got out when he dealt with the flooded engine), Teddy was able to get the engine to turn over. When it started up, the rotters became even more agitated and slammed their fists into the truck even harder. Teddy flipped it into drive and lurched out of the carport. The boat tagged along for the ride, at least until he turned his first corner and it flipped off its carrier. Apparently his father hadn’t done a good job of securing it on his return trip from the lake, so the ten-foot-long fishing boat ended up in a ditch.

Teddy, who had been bound and determined to make it home to his mother’s after fleeing his father’s place, ended up crashing into a tree a couple of miles down the road when he attempted to avoid hitting an elderly man who he recognized from town. The old codger had been infected like all the rest. Fortunately, Teddy was able to escape the truck before Russell Torrance could attack him. Russell was the oldest citizen in Ellington and had a gold-plated plaque to prove it. It had even been signed by the mayor. Now he was just the oldest ghoul in town.

Teddy spent the entire night trying to find a way past the infected so he could get to his mother’s, but had no luck. After a sleepless night hiding out in the woods near town, he realized he had to leave Ellington. The area was swarming with those bastards. There had to be someone, somewhere, who would know what to do. Teddy hoped that his mom had escaped, but it was hard to believe that she had gotten out past the mess their town had become. She lived near the center of town, and the entire area was toast. Several fires had been started, and he could hear gunfire and sirens off in the distance. He prayed for her, but was already beginning to accept that she was gone for good.