The Siege (33 page)

Donna shivered as she looked over her shoulder out on the cold night. The yellow traffic light in the center of town winked on and off. A silence seemed to fill the town. A
dead
town! Wasn’t that what she had called it ever since she could remember? A God-forsaken, wasted, dead town! And it didn’t take too much of a stretch of her imagination to picture dozens of workers from the potato fields, their eyes and brains dead, shuffling down the streets, looking for…

“What do zombies eat, supposedly?” she asked, her voice wound wire-tight. “That voice on the tape said ‘you can
feed
later.’ ”

Dale snorted. “If I remember correctly, they eat the brains of living people,” he said, his eyes shifting to follow Donna’s gaze up the dark, deserted street.

After a short pause, Donna shook her head and said, “I really think we could trust Jeff with this. I’ve known him all my life. He wouldn’t get hooked up in anything like this!”

Dale shook his head. “You haven’t known Rodgers all your life, though. You didn’t listen to what Larry said, did you? He said ‘I was at the home’…
the
home! Not home, as in his mother’s house.
The
home, as in, maybe, the
funeral
home!”

“Oh, Christ, Dale. Let’s just drop it. Look, I could move down to Augusta. I’m sure I could find a job there. We could be together. We could go pick up Angie, swing by my sister’s and get my stuff, and be a hundred miles away from here within two hours.”

“Donna…”

“It’s just—just that, I don’t want any part of this! It’s not our problem. And if it’s like you think, really organized, it’s way too big for us. Why can’t we just leave it behind?”

“You think you could do that?” Dale asked, his voice low and intense.

Donna shook her head. “No, not really,” she whispered. “But I know I’m not going to like what you’re going to say.”

Dale forced a tight smile across his face and nodded. “That’s right, babe. I think we should take a drive out to Mr. Franklin Rodgers’ Funeral Home and see if we can get in there and take a look around.”

Donna sighed, her breath a long sputter. “I think we’re making a mistake. I think we should talk to Jeff first.”

“After we have a little look around out at Rodgers’,” Dale said firmly. He popped the cassette out of the recorder, slipped it into his pocket, and started up the car.

“… graves have yawn’d; and yielded up their dead;

… and ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.”

—Shakespeare

“Back to the Home”

I

A
ll during supper and television time afterward, Lisa was unusually quiet. Her appetite, even for cheeseburgers and fries, just wasn’t there, and her grandmother repeatedly asked her if she was feeling all right. She lied every time, telling her she still had an ache where she had banged her forehead on the pavement. In truth, there was a steady pounding in her head that felt as though someone was pounding the back of her skull with a jackhammer.

“I’ve still got some homemade vanilla ice cream in the freezer,” Mrs. Appleby said, looking up from her knitting as the closing credits of
ALF
rolled.

Angie was up like a shot and already halfway to the kitchen before she turned and saw that Lisa was still sitting in the beanbag chair in front of the television.

“You want some ice cream?” Angie asked. She once had a beanbag chair and had never liked it because it made her feel like such a clod whenever she tried to get out of it.

Lisa looked over her shoulder at Angie, and when she did, a white stab of pain jabbed her behind the eyes. She wasn’t sure if it was the pain that stunned her or if it really had been a visual effect. For a flickering second, the entire living room looked as bright as if it were flooded by spotlights—million-watt spotlights.

“You all right, dear?” Mrs. Appleby said, her voice edged with concern.

Angie waited, leaning on the kitchen doorway. She was still wallowing in the guilt of having caused her new friend such pain, and it sickened her to see Lisa looking so drawn and pale.

“Of course I am,” Lisa said as she bravely struggled to get to her feet. The hammering in the back of her head puzzled and scared her.

Why in the back?
she wondered.
I hit the front of my head
.

Then she unexpectedly fell forward, reaching blindly with her hands to break her fall. Her knees hit the floor first, then her hands. She was indistinctly aware of the impact because the sparkling pain in her head was so demanding.

“
Lisa!
” Mrs. Appleby said, louder and more anxious.

“Must’ve slipped on the rug,” Lisa said as she got her feet under herself and stood up. She had to move slower than she wanted to prove to her grandmother that she was all right; but no matter how slowly she moved, the pain pierced through her body.

Angie waited in the doorway, feeling as helpless now as she had when Lisa had fallen on the street. She wished earnestly that it had been her, instead of Lisa, who had taken the fall. But she realized that there was an element of selfishness in that thought: if she had been the one hurt, at least then she would have something concrete to deal with. She wouldn’t have to stand by, watching helplessly.

Lisa was standing up straight, smiling widely in spite of the pain in her head. But then, just as she turned to follow Angie in the kitchen, the white light came again, and this time, there was no doubt about it: it was as though a brilliant white bolt of lightning flashed across the room right in front of her. She staggered, turned, and walked straight into the wall.

The impact shook the wall and knocked one of her grandmother’s oil paintings askew. Lisa bounced off the wall like a basketball and, arms waving wildly, fell backwards. Luckily, she landed on her back in the beanbag chair, but she didn’t know it. All she knew was that the insides of her eyes stung from the jolt of light, and her ears were ringing as though a concussion of thunder had erupted right beside her.

“Oh my God!” Mrs. Appleby said, throwing her knitting aside and rushing over to Lisa. Crouching beside her, she felt her granddaughter’s face. It was cold and clammy, almost like touching someone’s who’s… Mrs. Appleby couldn’t finish the thought.

“Angie!” she shouted as she wiggled her hand under Lisa’s head and cradled it gently. “Call the doctor. The number is next to the phone!”

Only for another split second was Angie frozen in horror and guilt as she looked at her friend. Then she rushed to the antique phone and dialed the emergency number, waiting for an eternity for the old-fashioned black rotary dial to spin around.

Mrs. Appleby, meanwhile, was leaning over Lisa, looking down at her face. Lisa wasn’t unconscious; her eyes were open, and there was even—
still smiling, God love her!
—a faint smile on her lips. But her face was so pasty white, Mrs. Appleby had the impression there was a thin layer of translucent wax over it.

Lisa’s eyes looked like glazed sky-blue pottery as she looked up at her grandmother. She opened her mouth and tried to speak, but her grandmother hushed her and gently stroked her cheek.

In her mind, Mrs. Appleby was doing two things: she was reciting every prayer she had ever learned or said in church, and she was thinking about all the loved ones she had seen die: her mother, her father, two uncles and an aunt, her husband, and worst of all, one of her own children. She tried to turn away from those thoughts, and only send her ardent prayers upward, but the light in Lisa’s eyes looked as though it was fading. She seemed to be trying to focus on her grandmother’s face, but her pupils kept rolling back and forth with a sludgy motion. The whites were sharply veined with red.

“You just relax, honey,” Mrs. Appleby cooed, not even sure if Lisa was hearing her nor not. “You just relax and take it easy. The doctor’s on his way.”

Angie suddenly appeared in the living room. She came and knelt down on the other side of Lisa. Her hands were folded in her lap, and she was squeezing her hands so hard, the knuckles were aching and turning white.

“Is she okay?” Angie said.

“She’ll be fine, I’m sure,” Mrs. Appleby said, although really she felt no such assurance. “Did you reach the doctor’s office?”

Angie nodded. “Doctor LaChance wasn’t in, but he has a helper working for him. He said he was a physician’s associate or assistant, something like that. Anyway, his name’s Stephen Wayne, and he said he’d be right over.”

“Good,” Mrs. Appleby said, never bothering to look up from her granddaughter’s waxy, pale face. “The doctor’s helper is coming, honey. He’ll take care of you.”

II

“T
here’s a place we can leave the car, in the woods just past the funeral home. At least it was there when I was a kid,” Donna said as Dale took the right turn onto Mayall Road. “It’s on the left, a place that’s always been called Coffin Bog locally.”

“Any connection with the funeral home across the street from it?” Dale asked, but even to his own ears his attempted joke sounded flat.

He made a conscious effort not to slow down and stare at the funeral home as they drove past it. He did notice there was a light on around back, and two of the cellar windows glowed with dull yellow.

“It’s getting past nine o’clock,” Donna said. “Any traffic on Main Street after nine o’clock will probably be noticed.”

“Especially if Rodgers knows we’re on to him, huh?” Dale added.

Donna shivered. “I don’t like to think about it,” she said tightly. “And I still say we should just go find Winfield and tell him what we think. We shouldn’t be fooling around like this!”

“I’m not fooling,” Dale said as he shook his head and slowed to turn off into the narrow dirt road Donna had pointed out to him up ahead. He was beginning to think like a true paranoid, he noted, with only slight amusement, as he doused the headlights and turned the car around so he could back into the road.

“Wait a second,” Donna said. “Let me get out and direct you in. There’s no sense scraping up your car.”

Dale smiled, thinking if all they got tonight was a few scratches on his car, they’d be lucky… damned lucky!

“So, what do we do now?” Donna asked once Dale shut off the engine. Through the screen of trees, they could still make out the lights in Rodgers’ Funeral Home. Dale sat there, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as he tried to remember what he had seen of the home when he went there with Winfield. He hadn’t had the chance to see much more than the front office and visiting rooms.

He was also running over in his mind how Winfield had acted during that visit. The more he considered it, the more he thought the policeman hadn’t been very aggressive in asking Rodgers about why they couldn’t view Larry’s body. As he recalled now, Winfield had just sat there and let him do all the talking. If he had any doubts, he sure as hell didn’t express them!

Did that mean Winfield might be in with Rodgers on whatever the hell was going on? Dale wasn’t sure.

Maybe the little bit he had already told Winfield had already gotten back to Rodgers. Maybe Winfield knew damned right well that it was Rodgers’ limo that had tried to force them off the road. Christ! Maybe Winfield had been driving the damn car! He sure seemed anxious to give them Rodgers’ alibi for the time when they were being chased.

If you think about it like this
, he warned himself,
you will end up totally paranoid!

“This is your town,” Dale said, taking a deep breath. “What do you know about what’s around the house here.”

Donna shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, Dyer isn’t exactly the development capital of the world. I think things have stayed pretty much the same since I was a kid. I think this stretch of woods runs up beside the house on the left as we look at it. It may even curve around behind it. I never really played around here as a kid but I do remember there used to be an old barn somewhere out there.” She pointed towards the woods. “The kids used to hang out there, drinking and stuff.”

“Is that all kids do around here, drink and fool around?”

Donna shrugged. “Well, if you’re not into high school basketball, there’s not much else going on.”

Dale grunted and turned to look again at Rodgers’ Funeral Home. “Well, I suppose, as long as we keep to the woods, we can try to get a look around the whole yard. We should be safe. Maybe we’ll see something out back that’ll tell us what we want.”

“And what exactly do we want?” Donna asked. She had her hand on the door latch but couldn’t quite get up the nerve to open the door.

“Beats the shit out of me,” Dale said.

He pocketed the car keys and opened his door. As soon as he stepped out into the cool night, he ran his jacket zipper right up under his chin. His breath came out in small white puffs, and he couldn’t help but think it wasn’t this damned close to autumn back home—Thomaston!

Donna got out and came around the car, standing close to him and winding one arm around his waist. Pulling him close, she whispered into his ear, “Don’t you think this is just a bit ridiculous? I mean, we’re two grown adults, right?”

“Theoretically,” Dale said with a half-chuckle.

“And here we are, out on a cold night, about to go spying around a funeral home to see if the funeral director is turning the townspeople into zombies. Doesn’t that strike you as just a bit over the edge?”

Dale smiled and almost laughed aloud, but before he could stop it, the voice of Larry Cole, speaking into his dictating recorder, spoke as clearly in his mind as if he was standing on the other side of him.

“…
He’s turning them into zombies!
”

And then, almost as clearly, but with an icy tone that sent shock waves of chills up his spine, Dale remembered another voice, that of Franklin Rodgers, caught unawares by the Sony as it lay in the dirt by the side of the road, still running.

“
Don’t touch this one. I have something special planned for him!
”

“I just want to have a look around,” Dale said, his voice tight and sounding as if he was talking with his mouth closed. “Do you remember Rodgers having a security fence around his house?”

Donna shook her head. “How the hell should I know? I make it a point not to come home unless I have to. And when I was a kid, Rodgers didn’t even own the place.”

Dale pulled her close, wishing her warmth could drive away the chill he felt winding like cold, dead fingers around his heart. “Yes,” he said, “and for two of those trips home, you had funerals to attend.”

He could feel Donna tense in his embrace.

“Did either of those funerals take place here?” he asked, indicating Rodgers’ Funeral Home with a wave of his free arm.

“Both,” she said, sounding as if someone had tight fingers around her throat.

Dale didn’t say the obvious:
What if even back then he was experimenting? What if he did something to your parents, too? What if they aren’t even in those caskets you saw lowered into the ground?

They stood in the dark woods for several seconds, considering how best they might approach the house, but at last, as amateur spies, Dale opted for the simplest approach.

“Look,” he said, holding Donna back at arm’s length, “we’ll just stroll up along the margin of the woods, making sure we keep our eyes and ears open for anything that might indicate Rodgers is on to us. If we see anything like a burglar alarm or hear guard dogs or anything, we’ll just turn around and get the hell out of here. All right?”

Donna nodded. She thought it best not to say what she was thinking, that as soon as they crossed the street they would hear a chorus of barking, and she and Dale would just pivot on their heels and get back into the car and drive the hell away from there.