The Resurrected Compendium (29 page)

He looked at her. “Kelsey…”

“Dennis,” she said before he could say more. “Please. Take me with you. I really can’t do this on my own.”

He looked torn, his upper lip tucked against the lower as though he struggled with words. His hair, damp with sweat, feathered against his cheeks. “No. I guess you can’t.”

That’s when the first light in the parking lot went out.

33

The sound of shattering glass kept Dennis from finishing what he meant to say, not that he had any idea what that was. Even though it couldn’t be anything good, he was glad for the interruption, turning his head. All he could see was a spot of dark that had once been light. Then the shadowy shift of something at the base of the light pole. A figure, moving.
 

Dancing?

It was far enough away that he couldn’t see what the figure was, exactly, or what it was doing, only that it didn’t move like one of the dead ones. Too graceful for that. The dead ones shambled and twitched. They could move fast and with purpose, but not like this. He heard the click-tap of something on the pavement, and a low whistle. Something familiar. He strained his eyes to watch as the figure swung around the next light pole. A minute later, that light too went out, accompanied by the crash of glass.

“What is it?” Kelsey asked from behind him. She’d moved up close without him noticing, but didn’t touch him.
 

“I don’t know.”

Another up-and-down trill of notes reached them. The figure twirled and tapped toward the next light fixture, pausing to bend down. Something moved and flew. More glass shattered.

“It’s…tap dancing,” Kelsey said.

“Shit. It’s Ray Carver.”
 

Ray ran the dance studio in town. He and his “assisterant” Darlene taught everything from jazz to ballet to baton twirling, with cheerleading clinics on the side. Ray stood about six foot five and was built like a quarterback. Had been, in fact, a local football hero who’d gone on to college on a scholarship and lost it due to a knee injury that had kept him off the field. Football was where he’d learned to dance, and he’d brought that home, started his business and flourished with it.

Now he tap danced, slowly twirling, and bent every so often to lift something from the parking lot. Then throw it. He hit the target every time, and there was more shattering glass. More darkness.

“Is that a football?”

“Yes.” Dennis leaped onto the back of the truck and stretched to pull down the sliding door. He secured it tightly as he jumped back to the pavement with another glance toward Ray to make sure he was still paying more attention to breaking all the lights than them. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

“What’s he doing with it?”

“Breaking things. Come on.” Dennis put a hand under her elbow to help her toward the cab of the truck. She was so small he could easily have lifted her, but he let her limp along instead. “Before he sees us.”

“You think he’s…?”

Dennis paused as Ray’s feet went into a spasm of tapping. He was two light poles away. If Ray looked up, there was no question he’d see them. As they watched, he jumped up and grabbed hold of the pole, swinging around it like that guy in that old movie who danced in the rain. Ray jumped down, shoes clicking. He bent and picked up the football that had fallen. He threw it toward the light pole closer to Dennis and Kelsey, and it broke.

“Yes. Get in the truck.”

It was too late.
 

“Dennis! Dennnnis! Dennis!” Ray jogged a few feet to grab the football from the pavement again. He tossed it from hand to hand as he moved closer. “Hey, son. Hold up.”

“Get in the truck, Kelsey.”

She did with a little boost from him, but Dennis was too busy keeping an eye on Ray to worry about where he was putting his hands. By the time he got her settled into the truck and closed the door, Ray was just a few yards away. He wore a pair of football shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt, and he looked immense.

He cocked his head. “Hi. Dennis. Conroy, right?”

“Yeah. Dennis Conroy. Hi, Ray. Look, I gotta run —”

“No. You don’t.”

Dennis swallowed slowly. The truck behind him was still warm from the sun where it pressed his flesh. He couldn’t remember where he’d put the gun.

Never lose track of your weapon.
 

His mom had been right about that part, but even during all the drills, all those times she’d surprised him, it was the one thing Dennis had been terrible about remembering. He’d put the gun down to load the carts. And where was it now?

“You never took lessons from me, did you?”

Dennis shook his head. “No, sir.”

Anything can be used for protection, son. Your hands, feet, teeth, your own damned skull. Keep your eyes and ears open if you’re ever caught without a weapon. Find something.

His mom would’ve been ashamed of him for losing sight of the gun, but maybe she’d have found some pride in the way Dennis reached out casually and found the slim metal rod of the antenna. His fingers curled around it, but he didn’t snap it. Not yet. Ray was still a few feet away, still tossing the ball back and forth.
 

Ray’s grin got wider. “Why not?”

“I just…I guess I never had the money.”

“Bullshit. I offered discounts to families who needed them.” Ray moved closer. “Saw you around town, though. Haven’t I? You went to Clarkson High, right?”

“Yeah. Few years behind you though.” Dennis took slow, careful breaths. He widened his stance, centering himself. “Never was much of a dancer.”

Ray gave him another tilted-head look. “You got the body for a dancer. Wiry, like. You work out?”

“Some.” Dennis tightened his grip on the antenna.

Ray shuddered and stopped moving the ball from hand to hand. He pressed it against his gut as he bent a little with a groan. His giant shoulders heaved. When he looked up, his face gleamed with sweat and his teeth were bared.

Dennis snapped off the antenna. Ray straightened, eyes going to the thin metal rod. Then to Dennis’ face.

“What’s that?”

“I think you should step back, Ray. Just step on back.”

Ray’s expression turned dark, yet somehow gleeful. He did a swift tapping shuffle, his shoes making rapid-fire clicks on the pavement. When he stopped with one hand out to Dennis, it seemed for a moment he was going to back away. But just for a moment.

Instead, he opened his mouth wide and wider, his jaw stretching impossibly as his throat worked with horrible laughter. Then he stood and snapped the ball right at Dennis’ head. The only reason he missed was because Dennis had taken a step to the right to give himself more room to swing the antenna. The football hit and dented the truck hood inches from where Dennis’s head had been seconds before. From inside the cab came a muffled scream.

Kelsey.

Dennis might’ve given up and run, counting on Ray’s fancy tap shoes to slow him down. Tried to get him far enough away from the truck to lose him, then double back. But with Kelsey in the cab, he was not going to run. Ray had always been rumored to have a taste for blondes.
 

“Who’s that?” Ray tipped his face to the air like he was sniffing it. “Betty Richards? Maybe Heather from the diner? Who’s that in your truck, Conroy?”

“Nobody. Step on back, Ray. I mean it.”

“Naw. Couldn’t be Heather from the diner. She’s kind of a whore, but even she has standards. And you, son, even a whore might have a hard time taking you on. Am I right?”

The insult shouldn’t have stung, not coming from someone so clearly out of his mind. Ray had never so much as said more than a word or two to him before this. He didn’t know anything about Dennis. But still, the laughter and the look on Ray’s face was familiar.
 

“I’m going to get in the truck now, Ray.”

“What’s in that truck, son? You stealing stuff from the Costclub?” Ray made an exaggerated show of looking over his shoulder at the open doors. “Nobody’s there to operate the registers. So that means you must be stealing it. Right? I’m right. Am I right, Conroy? You fucking lowlife thief? You fucking crazy ass?”

Dennis eased around the front of the truck, but before he could get more than a step, Ray was on him. Huge ham fists clutching at the front of Dennis’s shirt. His breath, stinking of something rancid and coppery. His eyes rolled. The sweat rolled down his temples and pooled in the corners of his lips, like tears. His mouth yawned wide again, his teeth bared. He bent his face to Dennis’s throat, sniffing.
 

Dennis kneed him in the groin. When Ray bent, Dennis slammed his knee upward, into Ray’s face. The bigger man stumbled back, blood spouting from his nose and mouth, his teeth lined with it. He growled. Then roared. He launched himself toward Dennis with his teeth snapping, crazy like a rabid dog.
 

The world filled with thunder and the stink of gunpowder. Ray’s shoulder and half of his chest disintegrated. Bits of blood and bone and things Dennis didn’t want to think about splashed him. Ray stumbled back, went to his knees, then hit the ground, face first. He didn’t move.
 

Dennis turned. Kelsey hung out of the cab, the gun in her hand. She smiled.
 

“You’re welcome,” she said. “Now. Let’s get out of here.”

34

Dennis hadn’t wanted to stop, but Kelsey had insisted she at least help him clean up a little before they went inside. Now, parked in his mother’s driveway and backed up immediately against the garage, she’d opened one of the packages of baby wipes he’d taken from the Costclub. He sat patiently, if awkwardly, while she used them to wipe away the gore on his face and throat.

“You should take your shirt off,” she said. “Your mom won’t like to see you like this.”

“My mom can handle it.”

Kelsey peeked into the side view mirror to catch a glimpse of the Victorian-looking house. A woman who lived in a house like that, she imagined, would be dainty and gray-haired, prone to lacy blouses and long skirts. She’d play the piano and garden. She certainly wouldn’t like seeing her son show up covered in a dead man’s spatter.

“Hush,” she told him, and he did. When he shrugged out of his shirt, she bit her lower lip and kept herself focused on her self-appointed task. It didn’t matter, she reminded herself, if his chest was tight with muscle, his skin tanned from the sun. If his biceps bulged when he moved to give her better access. If his nipples were pointed under her palms when she swiped the cloth across them…

His hand gripped her wrist. “That’s…enough. I’m clean enough.”

“Right. Right, sure.” She bobbed her head and, mindful of how tidy he’d been in the past, crumpled up the filthy wipes and shoved them into a stray plastic bag instead of tossing them all to the floor. She used a fresh one to clean off her hands. She looked at him. “Ray. He was sick. But not dead. And he didn’t…”

Dennis looked at her. “Didn’t what?”

“It’s just that I saw things.” Kelsey paused, but before she could answer, Dennis had bent to look through the windshield with a low mutter. “What? Is it your mother?”

“Could be. We need to get inside.”

He helped her down from the truck and they both stood for a minute on the gravel drive. It was far darker out here than it had been in town. She heard the whisper of a breeze in the trees lining the back of the property, and she shivered, wishing for a sweatshirt. An ornate metal fence about knee-high cut off the front of the house from the driveway, each piece tipped with a sharp spike. She could see no gate or opening, but when she made to lift her leg over it, Dennis pulled her back.

“Don’t.”
 

She didn’t ask more questions, just held back as Dennis looked up at the house with his hands on his hips. He didn’t look at her as he added, “No lights on inside.”

“You think she’s gone?”

He shook his head. “No. She’s definitely not gone. But she’s got the shutters down.”

Kelsey could see decorative shutters on the outside of the windows, but clearly he meant something different. “What kind of shutters? Like hurricane shutters?”

They were a hundred miles from any ocean, but Dennis nodded. “Yes. Something like that.”

She waited another minute for him to speak, but he didn’t. Kelsey shivered and rubbed her arms against the gooseflesh there. Her foot ached. Her wrist, thankfully, felt better. Her stomach rumbled. She was suddenly so exhausted she didn’t think she’d be able to keep her eyes open. She also had to pee.

“But she’s in there for sure?”

In reply, Dennis went around to the back of the truck and opened the door. He climbed inside and hopped down again within minutes, carrying a metal baseball bat which he swung experimentally hard enough to make a whoosh. He tapped it against his palm. Swung it again.

Kelsey rubbed her arms again and fought a yawn. “So. Can’t we go in?”

Dennis let the metal bat arc through the air, slowly, slowly, until it came down a few inches from the top of one of the fence’s metal spikes. In the next second, the entire fence erupted upward, going from knee-high to at least six feet. It impaled the bat, which wrenched from Dennis’s hand and hung, clanging against the metal.

Kelsey stared, so stunned she couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. All she could was stare at the fence, the bat, and imagine what it would’ve felt like had she indeed swung her leg over it the way she’d planned.

“No,” Dennis said quietly. “Not just yet.”

SEVEN

35

"You don't wanna do that." Dennis gestured at the fence toward which Kelsey was tentatively reaching.

She pulled her hand back at once. "Is it electric?"

He gave her a look that was at first solemn, then assessing, then a little amused. "I don't think so. But it could be. Good thinking."

Kelsey was more than used to men who thought because she had blonde hair and big tits that she also lacked a brain, so at first she was ready to be annoyed. Resigned, but annoyed. A second glance at Dennis showed her he was also looking admiring, and not at the way her ass bulged out of her too-tight skirt. He nodded at her, then gestured at the house.