Undead (7 page)

After completing the task of putting on both her shoes for her, he leaned back on his haunches and looked into her face. She seemed to be staring at her feet.

“That’s a real Cinderella story,” he said, in an attempt at a joke.

No response. The man reached reflexively for his sweater pocket—but he had given Barbara his sweater.

“Hey—you know you got my cigarettes?”

He tried to smile again, but still got no reaction. He reached toward her and his hand entered the pocket of the sweater he had draped over her shoulders. His action made the girl appear to be looking directly at him, and her stare made him uncomfortable.

“You got my cigarettes,” he said again, in a gentler tone, as one would try to explain some concept to a child, and as he spoke he pulled the pack of cigarettes from the pocket and leaned back on his haunches, as if he should not have ventured to touch her. He fumbled for a cigarette, put it in his mouth and lit it, trying not to look at the girl.

Her gaze still seemed to be fixed on his face.

The radio continued to drone, making her silence somehow more eerie for Ben. He would have been glad to have the metallic tones of the radio overridden by the sounds of another human voice.

“…TUNED TO THIS WAVELENGTH FOR EMERGENCY INFORMATION. YOUR LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES URGE YOU TO REMAIN IN YOUR HOMES. KEEP ALL DOORS AND WINDOWS LOCKED OR BOARDED SHUT…”

Ben inhaled his first puff of smoke and blew it through his nose. “We’re doing okay,” he repeated. “All our doors and windows are secure. Now…maybe you ought to lie down, you…Do you smoke?” Hopefully, he held up the burning cigarette. Her stare dropped from him back to the floor. He took another drag and blew the smoke out quickly.

“Maybe you—”

He cut himself short. He was getting nowhere. His time had better be spent in securing the old house against attack.

He scooped up the rifle and ammunition and sat in a chair across from Barbara and began methodically loading the shells into the chamber.

“Now, I don’t know if you’re hearing me or not—or if you’re out cold or something. But I’m going upstairs now. Okay? Now we’re safe down here. Nothing can get in here—at least not easy. I mean, they might be able to bust in, but it’s gonna take some sweat, and I could hear them and I think I could keep them out. Later on, I’m gonna fix things good, so they can’t get in nohow, but it’s good for the time being. You’re okay here.”

He continued to load the rifle as he spoke, his cigarette dangling from his lip, causing him to squint from the smoke curling around his eyes.

“Now the upstairs is the only other way something can get in here, so I’m gonna go up and fix that.”

He finished loading the last shell and was about to stand up when his glance fell on the girl again, and he tried to get through one last time.

“Okay? You gonna be all right?”

She remained silent. The man stood, tucked the rifle under his arm, grabbed up as much lumber as he could carry, and started for the stairs.

The girl looked up at him as he turned his back and he was aware of it, but he kept moving and her stare followed him.

“I’m gonna be upstairs. You’re all right now. I’ll be close by—upstairs. I’ll come running if I hear anything.”

He started up the stairs.

At the top of the landing, with a quick sucking in of his breath, he was confronted once again with the body that lay there torn and defaced. It was the corpse of a woman, probably an elderly woman, judging from the style of the remaining clothing that lay ripped into tatters and crusted in dried blood. Most of the flesh had been gnawed from the bones. The head was nearly severed from the body, the spinal column chewed through.

Ben set down his supplies and almost gagged at the sight of the corpse and tried not to look at it. The body was lying half across a blood-soaked throw rug, and a few feet away was another throw rug, with oriental patterns and a fringe sewn around its edge. The man grabbed the second rug and ripped away part of the fringe. Once the initial tear was made, the rest of the fringe peeled off easily. He freed it and, taking the rifle, tied one end of the fringe around the barrel and the other around the narrow part of the stock. This done, he slung the rifle over his shoulder, feeling more confident now that he could carry the weapon with him at all times, while he continued to work.

Then he leaned over the corpse and took hold of one end of the rug on which it lay, and began dragging it across the floor, holding his breath and gagging once or twice because of the stench of rotting flesh and the grisly appearance of the mutilated thing he had to struggle to pull down the darkened hallway, which contained several closed doors.

He deposited his ugly load at one of the doorways and threw open the door and jumped back with the rifle cocked, as if something might leap out at him. The door banged against the wall and squeaked as it settled down and stopped moving.

Nothing came out of the room.

Ben entered cautiously, with the rifle on the ready.

The room was vacant. Apparently it had been vacant for a long time. There were old yellowed newspapers on the floor, and a spider web in one corner.

There was a closet. Ben opened it slowly, pointing the rifle, ready to fire if necessary.

The closet contained nothing but dust, which rolled across the shelves in little balls and made Ben cough.

He stepped over to the windows and looked outside and down to the front lawn. Through the leafy overhang of the surrounding maple trees, he could make out the threatening forms of the dead things that stood there, watching and waiting, moving ever so slightly under the thick foliage. There appeared to be about six of them now, standing on the front lawn.

They moved around the truck, but they did not beat on it any more. Apparently they no longer felt threatened by it, now that the headlights had been smashed out. They took no more notice of it than if it had been a tree, or a pile of bricks. It seemed to have no meaning for them.

With a shudder, Ben realized that nothing human had any meaning for the dead things. Only the human beings themselves. The dead things were interested in human beings only to kill. Only to rip the flesh from their bodies. Only to make the human beings dead…like the dead things themselves.

Ben had a sudden impulse to smash the barrel of his rifle through the window and begin firing down on the ugly things on the lawn. But he controlled himself…calmed himself down. There was no sense in expending ammunition foolishly; all too well he knew how important it would be in the event of an all-out attack.

He withdrew from the window and returned to the corpse that lay at the threshold of the vacant room. Taking hold of the carpet and holding his breath once again, he dragged the corpse inside. And he left the room and shut the door, intending to board it up later. He thought of the closet door, which he could have removed and used to accomplish his boarding; but he did not think he would return for it; he did not want to enter that room ever again.

There were three more doors in the bloodstained hallway; one down at the end and two more opposite the vacant room with the corpse. The one down at the end was probably a bathroom; Ben tried it and found that it was. That left two more doors. They were probably bedrooms.

With his rifle cocked and ready to fire, Ben eased open the nearest of the two remaining doors. He jumped back, startled by his own reflection in a full-length mirror screwed onto the back of the door. His fingers groped and found the light switch. It turned out to be a child’s bedroom. The bedsheets were rumpled and stained with blood, as if they had been clawed loose by someone struggling to hang on while he (or she) was being dragged from the bed. But there was no body in the room. Anxiously, afraid of what he might find, Ben searched around the bed and under it—and in the closet, which contained the clothing of a boy perhaps eleven or twelve years old. There were a couple of baseball bats, and an old skinned up baseball with the cover half off, lying on the floor of the closet.

Ben guessed that the boy was dead. Probably he had been dragged out of the house by some of those things that now stood watching and waiting outside. Probably the dead lady in the hall had been the boy’s grandmother.

The thought of it renewed in Ben the terror of what was happening, which he had been able to suppress while his mind was occupied with working hard and taking defensive measures and concentrating on his own survival.

He thought of his own children—two boys, one nine and one thirteen. He did not have a wife any longer; she was dead; she had died several years ago and left him to raise the children alone. It was not easy. He loved the boys, but his job took him out of town often and much of the time he had to leave them in the care of their grandmother while he traveled and tried to earn enough money to support them all. He had been on his way home to them, but in the breakdown of communications during the present emergency his train had not arrived and he had started to hitchhike, desperate to get home. Nobody would pick him up and, walking at the outskirts of the town he had been in, he began encountering signs of destruction and murder. It puzzled him at first. He became scared. Then, in a restaurant he heard a newscast and he knew he had to get back to his family right away. He could not get a bus or cab. He even tried renting a car or just paying someone to take him where he wanted to go. Finally, hitchhiking again, a farmer picked him up and drove him a long way, but dropped him off out on the country, in the middle of nowhere it seemed. Ben got the truck on the front lawn from a dead man—a man who had been dragged from it and killed at the edge of a dirt road. He had continued listening to broadcasts on the truck radio, and he knew as much about what was happening as anyone else—which was very little. But he knew he wanted to survive and get back to his boys and their grandmother—although his reason told him that they were probably much better off in this emergency than he was himself. At least they were in a town, with other people and police protection and food and medical care if they required it. And their grandmother was a capable person. The boys would probably be all right. Ben tried to convince himself of that, but it was not easy, while he was confronted with the bloodstained sheets and mattress of the young boy who had probably been killed not so very long ago. And the old farmhouse was more a prison than it was a refuge for him and Barbara—although he did not even know her name and he could not help her, it seemed, and she was unwilling or unable to help herself.

Ben retreated from the child’s room and tried the other closed door. The old lady’s bedroom. He did not turn the light on at first. His eyes fell on the edge of the bed, with its white sheets, and he could see well enough to know that there were several large pieces of furniture in there. He flicked a switch, and the lights revealed nothing out of the ordinary—a bed and a couple of dressers. A quilt was folded and lying on top of the sheets, but the bed had not been slept in. Probably the old lady had gotten the boy to sleep and was preparing for bed herself when they were both attacked.

Ben entered the room and began to drag furniture out into the hallway. His plan was to get all the things of any possible use out of the boy’s room and the old lady’s room, and then board up the doors.

He did not know if the dead things could climb or not, or if they could think or not, or if they had any way of getting into the house through the upstairs windows. But he was not going to take any chances. Besides, when he was working, it gave him a feeling of accomplishing something and he did not worry too much or feel sorry for himself.

The noise of his work filled the old house.

Downstairs, Barbara still sat dazed on the couch.

The fire flickered on her face, and the burning wood popped loudly now and again, but she did not seem to take notice of these things. Objects in the room were silhouetted and the atmosphere was stark; if earlier Barbara would have expressed some fear of such surroundings, now she did not care. Her capacity to react had been bludgeoned out of her. She was already a victim of the dead things, because they had driven her into shock—she had lost her ability to think or feel.

“…BROADCAST FACILITIES HAVE BEEN TEMPORARILY DISCONTINUED. STAY TUNED TO THIS…”

From the radio, there was suddenly a buzzing sound and crackling static. Then, a hodgepodge of newsroom sounds (as heard earlier by Barbara’s brother, Johnny, on their car radio); but this time the sounds were coming in clearer: typewriters, ticker-tape machine, low voices talking in the background.

Barbara did not stir, as if she had failed to discern any difference in the broadcast, even though the repetitious Civil Defense message had ceased and something obviously was about to happen.

“…ER…LADIES AND GENTLEMEN…WHAT?…YEAH, YEAH…LA…. YEAH, I GOT THAT ONE…WHAT?…ANOTHER ONE?…PUT IT THROUGH CENTRAL…OKAY, CHARLIE, I’M ON THE AIR NOW…YEAH. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, LISTEN CAREFULLY, PLEASE. WE NOW HAVE THE LATEST BULLETINS FROM EMERGENCY CENTRAL…”

The voice of the newscaster sounded tired, but he began reading his report factually and unemotionally, with the air of a professional commentator who has been covering a major event for forty-eight hours and is no longer impressed with the latest developments.

“…UP-TO-THE-MINUTE REPORTS INFORM US THAT THE…SIEGE…FIRST DOCUMENTED IN THE MIDWESTERN SECTION OF THE COUNTRY IS INDEED SPREAD ACROSS THE COUNTRY, AND IS IN FACT WORLDWIDE. MEDICAL AND SCIENTIFIC ADVISORS HAVE BEEN SUMMONED TO THE WHITE HOUSE, AND REPORTERS ON THE SCENE IN WASHINGTON INFORM US THAT THE PRESIDENT IS PLANNING TO MAKE PUBLIC THE RESULTS OF THAT CONFERENCE IN AN ADDRESS TO THE NATION OVER YOUR CIVIL DEFENSE EMERGENCY NETWORK…”

None of the preceding brought any response from Barbara. She did not move. She did not get up to call Ben, in case he might hear something of value in his efforts to protect them both.

“…THE STRANGE…BEINGS…THAT HAVE APPEARED IN MOST PARTS OF THE NATION SEEM TO HAVE CERTAIN PREDICTABLE PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOR. IN THE FEW HOURS FOLLOWING INITIAL REPORTS OF VIOLENCE AND DEATH, AND APPARENTLY DERANGED ATTACKS ON THE LIVES OF PEOPLE TAKEN COMPLETELY OFF GUARD, IT HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED THAT THE ALIEN BEINGS ARE HUMAN IN MANY PHYSICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ASPECTS. HYPOTHESES AS TO THEIR ORIGIN AND THEIR AIMS HAVE TO THIS POINT BEEN SO VARIED AND SO DIVERSE THAT WE MUST ONLY REPORT THESE FACTORS TO BE UNKNOWN. TEAMS OF SCIENTISTS AND PHYSICIANS PRESENTLY HAVE THE CORPSES OF SEVERAL OF THE AGGRESSORS, AND THESE CORPSES ARE BEING STUDIED FOR CLUES THAT MIGHT NEGATE OR CONFIRM EXISTING THEORIES. THE MOST…OVERWHELMING FACT…IS THAT THESE…BEINGS ARE INFILTRATING THROUGH URBAN AND RURAL AREAS THROUGHOUT THE NATION, IN FORCES OF VARYING NUMBER, AND IF THEY HAVE NOT AS YET EVIDENCED THEMSELVES IN YOUR AREA, PLEASE…TAKE EVERY AVAILABLE PRECAUTION. ATTACK MAY COME AT ANY TIME, IN ANY PLACE, WITHOUT WARNING. REPEATING THE IMPORTANT FACTS FROM OUR PREVIOUS REPORTS: THERE IS AN AGGRESSIVE FORCE…ARMY…OF UNEXPLAINED, UNIDENTIFIED…HUMANOID BEINGS…THAT HAS APPEARED…IN WORLDWIDE PROPORTIONS…AND THESE BEINGS ARE TOTALLY AGGRESSIVE…IRRATIONAL IN THEIR VIOLENCE. CIVIL DEFENSE EFFORTS ARE UNDERWAY, AND INVESTIGATIONS AS TO THE ORIGIN AND PURPOSE OF THE AGGRESSORS ARE BEING CONDUCTED. ALL CITIZENS ARE URGED TO TAKE UTMOST PRECAUTIONARY MEASURES TO DEFEND AGAINST THE…INSIDIOUS…ALIEN…FORCE. THEY ARE WEAK IN PHYSICAL STRENGTH, AND ARE EASILY DISTINGUISHABLE FROM HUMANS BY THEIR DEFORMED APPEARANCE. THEY ARE USUALLY UNARMED BUT APPEAR CAPABLE OF HANDLING WEAPONS. THEY HAVE APPEARED, NOT LIKE AN ORGANIZED ARMY. NOT WITH ANY APPARENT REASON OR PLAN…INDEED, THEY SEEMED TO BE DRIVEN BY THE URGES OF ENTRANCED…OR…OR OBSESSED MINDS. THEY APPEAR TO BE TOTALLY UNTHINKING. THEY CAN…I REPEAT: THEY CAN BE STOPPED BY IMMOBILIZATION; THAT IS, BY BLINDING OR DISMEMBERING. THEY ARE, ON THE AVERAGE, WEAKER IN STRENGTH THAN AN ADULT HUMAN, BUT THEIR STRENGTH IS IN NUMBERS, IN SURPRISE, AND IN THE FACT THAT THEY ARE BEYOND OUR NORMAL REALM OF UNDERSTANDING. THEY APPEAR TO BE IRRATIONAL, NON-COMMUNICATIVE BEINGS…AND THEY ARE DEFINITELY TO BE CONSIDERED OUR ENEMIES IN WHAT WE MUST CALL A STATE OF…NATIONAL EMERGENCY. IF ENCOUNTERED, THEY ARE TO BE AVOIDED OR DESTROYED. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU ALLOW YOURSELVES OR YOUR FAMILIES TO BE ALONE OR UNGUARDED WHILE THIS MENACE PREVAILS. THESE BEINGS ARE FLESH-EATERS. THEY ARE EATING THE FLESH OF THE PEOPLE THEY KILL. THE PRINCIPAL CHARACTERISTIC OF THEIR ONSLAUGHT IS THEIR DEPRAVED, INSANE QUEST FOR HUMAN FLESH. I REPEAT: THESE ALIEN BEINGS ARE EATING THE FLESH OF THEIR VICTIMS…”

At this Barbara bolted from the couch in wild, screaming hysteria, as though the words of the commentator had finally penetrated her numbed state and forced upon her brain a realization of what exactly had happened to her brother. She could hear the ripping sounds of his flesh and could see the specter of the thing that had killed him, and her screams struggled to obliterate these things as she hurtled across the room and crashed her body against the front door.

Startled, unslinging his gun, Ben leaped down the stairs. The girl was clawing at the barricades, trying to break out of the house, sobbing in wild desperation. Ben rushed toward her, but she writhed out of his reach, ran across the room—toward the maze of heaped-up furniture in front of the door in the dining area which Ben had found locked.

Suddenly that door flew open and—from out of the maze of furniture—strong hands grabbed Barbara. She screamed in terror, as Ben leaped and began swinging the butt of his rifle.

Whoever it was who had gotten hold of Barbara, he let go of the girl and ducked, and the rifle butt missed him and crashed against a piece of furniture. Quickly, Ben brought it up, and almost squeezed the trigger.

“No! Don’t shoot!” a voice yelled, and Ben narrowly stopped himself from firing.

“We’re from town—we’re not—” the man said.

“We’re not some of those things!” a second voice said, and Ben saw another man step out from behind the partially opened door, which he had thought to be locked.

The man hiding behind the furniture stood up, slowly as though he thought Ben might still shoot him. He was not a full-grown man. He was a boy, maybe sixteen years old, in blue jeans and denim jacket. The man behind him was about forty years old, bald, wearing a white shirt and loosened tie—and carrying a heavy pipe in his hand.

“We’re not some of those things,” the bald man repeated. “We’re in the same fix you’re in.”

Barbara had flung herself onto the couch, and was sobbing sporadically. All three men glanced at her, as though she were an object of common concern that would convince each of them of the other’s good intentions. The boy finally went over to her and looked at her sympathetically.

Ben stared, dumbfounded at the presence of the strangers.

The radio voice continued with its information about the emergency.

The bald man backed away from Ben nervously, not taking his eyes off of Ben’s rifle, and crouched beside the radio to listen, still holding his length of pipe.

“…PERIODIC REPORTS, AS INFORMATION REACHES THIS NEWSROOM, AS WELL AS SURVIVAL INFORMATION AND A LISTING OF RED CROSS RESCUE POINTS, WHERE PICK-UPS WILL BE MADE AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE WITH THE EQUIPMENT AND STAFF PRESENTLY AVAILABLE…”

Ben still stood staring at the two new people. He exuded, despite himself, an air of resentment, as though they had intruded on his private little fortress. He did not resent their presence as much as he resented the fact that they had obviously been in the house all this time without coming up to help him or Barbara. He was not sure of their motive in revealing themselves now, and he did not know how completely he should trust them.

The bald man looked up from the radio. “There’s no need to stare at us that way,” he said to Ben.

“We’re not dead, like those things out there. My name is Harry Cooper. The boy’s name is Tom. We’ve been holed up in the cellar.”

“Man, I could’ve used some help,” Ben said, barely controlling his anger. “How long you guys been down there?”

“That’s the cellar. It’s the safest place,” Harry Cooper said, with a tone in his voice to convey the idea that anybody who wouldn’t hole up in the cellar in such an emergency must be an idiot.

The boy, Tom, got up from beside the couch, where he had been trying to think of a way to comfort Barbara, and came over to join in the ensuing discussion.

“Looks like you got things pretty secure up here,” Tom said to Ben, in a friendly way.

Ben pounced on him.

“Man, you mean you couldn’t hear the racket we were making up here?”

Cooper pulled himself to his feet. “How were we supposed to know what was going on?” he said, defensively. “It could have been those things trying to get in here, for all we knew.”

“That girl was screaming,” Ben said, angrily. “Surely you must know what a girl’s screaming sounds like. Those things don’t make that kind of noise. Anybody decent would know somebody was up here that could use some help.”

Tom said, “You can’t really tell what’s going on from down there. The walls are thick. You can’t hear.”

“We thought we could hear screams,” Cooper added. “But that might have meant those things were in the house after her.”

“And you wouldn’t come up and help?” Ben turned his back on them, contemptuously.

The boy seemed to be ashamed of himself, but Cooper remained undaunted by Ben’s contempt, probably accustomed to a lifetime of rationalizing his cowardice.

“Well…I…if…there was more of us…” the boy said. But he turned away, and did not have the gumption to continue his excuses.

Cooper persisted.

“That racket sounded like the place was being ripped apart. How were we supposed—”

But Ben cut him off.

“You just said it was hard to hear down there. Now you say it sounded like the place was being ripped apart. You’d better get your story straight, mister.”

Cooper exploded.

“Bullshit! I don’t have to take any crap from you. Or any insults. We’ve got a safe place in that cellar. And you or nobody else is going to tell me to risk my life when I’ve got a safe place.”

“All right…why don’t we settle—” Tom began. But Cooper did not allow him to continue. He went on talking, but in a calmer voice, espousing his own point of view.

“All right. We came up. Okay? We’re here. Now I suggest we all go back downstairs before any of these things find out we’re in here.”

“They can’t get in here,” Ben said, as though it were a certainty. He had plenty of doubts in his own mind, but he did not feel like discussing them for the benefit of those two strangers who were, as far as he could see, one boy and one coward.

“You got the whole place boarded up?” Tom asked. He was a bit skeptical, but he was willing to submerge his skepticism in favor of group harmony.

“Most of it,” Ben replied, keeping his voice in an even, analytical tone. “All but the upstairs. It’s weak in places, but it won’t be hard to fix it up good. I got the stuff and I—”

Cooper broke in, his voice at a high pitch again.

“You’re insane! You can’t make it secure up here. The cellar’s the safest place in the damned house!”

“I’m tellin’ you they can’t get in here.” Ben shouted at him.

“And I’m telling you those things turned over our car! We were damned lucky to get away in one piece—now you’re trying to tell me they can’t get through a lousy pile of wood?”

Ben stared for a moment, and did not know what to say. He knew the cellar had certain advantages, but he could not abide being told about it by someone like Cooper, who was obviously a coward. Ben knew he had managed to do pretty well so far, and he did not want to throw in his lot entirely with someone who might panic or run, in an emergency.

Tom took advantage of the lull to throw in an additional fact, which he thought might soften Ben and stop the argument between him and Cooper:

“Harry’s wife and kid are downstairs. The kid’s been hurt, pretty badly. Harry doesn’t want to leave them anywhere where they might be threatened, or subjected to any more attacks by those things.”

The statement took Ben by surprise. He softened, and exhaled a deep breath. Nobody said anything for a long moment, until finally he swallowed, and made his point again.

“Well…I…I think we’re better off up here.”

Glancing around at the barricades, Tom said, “We could strengthen all this stuff up, Mr. Cooper.” And he eyed the bald man hopefully, looking to him to cooperate with Ben at least a little, so that they might be safer and make the best of the circumstances.

Ben continued, emphasizing the strong points of his argument. “With all of us working, we can fix this place up so nothing can get in here. And we have food. The stove. The refrigerator. A warm fire. And we have the radio.”

Cooper merely glowered, in a new burst of anger. “Man, you’re crazy. Everything that’s up here, we can bring downstairs with us. You’ve got a million windows up here. All these windows—you’re gonna make them strong enough to keep those things out?”

“Those things don’t have any strength,” Ben said, with controlled anger. “I smashed three of them and pushed another one out the door.”

“I’m telling you they turned our car over on its roof!” Cooper spat.

“Oh, hell, any good five men can do that,” Ben said.

“That’s my point! Only there’s not going to be five—there’s going to be twenty…thirty…maybe a hundred of those things! Once they all know we’re in here, this place will be crawling with them!”

Calmly, Ben said, “Well, if there’s that many, they’re gonna get us no matter where we are.”

“We fixed the cellar door so it locks and boards from the inside,” Tom said. “It’s really strong. I don’t think anything could get in there.”

“It’d be the only door we’d have to protect,” Cooper added, in a slightly less hysterical tone. “But all these doors and windows—why, we’d never know where they were going to hit us next.”