Undead (9 page)

With that, Ben turned and mounted the stairs to continue his work up there, taking it for granted that Tom would be willing and able to man the downstairs.

The cellar, with its stark gray walls and dusty clutter, was cold and damp. Cardboard cartons tied with cord and a hanging grid of pipe-work all looked dirty in the heavy shadows cast by bare light bulbs. The cartons took up much of the space; they varied in size from grocery boxes with faded brand names to large packing crates that might have contained furniture. The washing machine, an old roller type, sat off in a corner of the cellar near a makeshift shower stall. Lines for drying clothes were strung over the pipe work so low that Harry was forced to duck under them as he walked from the stairs to the other side of the confining quarters.

A pair of stationary tubs and an old metallic cabinet stood against one of the walls, where Harry’s wife, Helen, leaned over the faucet of one of the tubs, wetting a cloth with cold water. She looked up as Harry entered, but remained more interested in what she was doing at the moment; she wrung out the cloth, feeling it to ascertain that it retained the correct amount of dampness, and took it to where a young girl, their daughter, lay motionless atop a homemade worktable. On a pegboard above the table there were hanging tools and cables, and built into the table itself were drawers for smaller tools—screws and bolts, washers, and so forth.

Helen’s movements were a little stiff in the coolness of the cellar; she was wearing a dress and sweater while a warmer coat was spread on the table under the little girl, its sides flopped up and over her, covering her legs and chest. The woman bent over her daughter and wiped her head with the cool cloth.

Harry quietly walked up behind Helen as she concentrated on caring for the girl, pulling the coat more securely around her. Without bothering to look up at Harry, she said, “Karen has a bad fever now.”

Harry sighed, with concern for his daughter. Then he said, “There’s two more people upstairs.”

“Two?”

“Yeah,” Harry acknowledged. Then, half-defensively: “I wasn’t about to take any unnecessary chances.”

Helen remained silent, while Harry awaited some sign that she approved of his decision. “How did we know what was going on up there?” he said finally, flinging his arms into the air with a shrug. Then he reached nervously to his breast pocket for a cigarette, produced a pack that turned out to be empty, and crumpled it in his hand and pitched it to the floor. He stepped over to the worktable where there was another pack, snatched it up, and it, too, was empty—and with the same crumpling action Harry discarded the pack, violently this time, the action spinning him into a position facing his wife and daughter. Helen continued to quietly swab the girl’s forehead, while Harry stared at them for a moment.

“Does she seem to be all right?” Harry asked, anxiously.

Helen was silent. The daughter, Karen, motionless.

Harry was sweating to the point where beads of sweat had formed all over his face. He waited and, seeing no answer forthcoming, changed the subject.

“They’re all staying upstairs…idiots! We should stick together. It’s the safest down here.”

He went to his wife’s purse and rummaged through the contents long enough to find a pack of cigarettes. He tore the pack open, yanked a cigarette out, lit it, and dragged in the first puff deeply; it made him cough slightly.

“They don’t stand a chance up there. They can’t hold those things off forever. There’s too many ways they can get into the house up there.”

Helen remained silent, as if her respect and tolerance of her husband’s ideas had long ago been dissipated.

On the floor, next to the workbench, was a small transistor radio. Harry’s glance fell on it and he stabbed at it, scooped it up, and clicked it on.

“They had a radio on upstairs. Must’ve been Civil Defense or…I think it’s not just us, this thing is happening all over.”

The tiny radio would pick up nothing but static, try as Harry might. He spun the tuning dial back and forth, listening anxiously, but across the receiving band the transistor just continued to hiss. Harry held it up and turned it into various positions, trying for reception, spinning the tuner constantly. Still, nothing but hissing. He began pacing the room, holding the radio up and down and sideways, with no results.

“This damned thing—”

Still just static.

Helen stopped wiping her daughter’s forehead, neatly folded the cloth, and draped it over the prostrate girl’s brow. Gently placing her hand on her daughter’s chest, she looked over toward her husband, who was still pacing around the cellar, his cigarette dangling from his lip, waving the little radio around in the air.

The radio continued to emit nothing but static at varying volumes.

“Harry—”

He continued his fidgeting with the radio, as though it had become an obsession. He moved near the wall at the foot of the stairs, holding it high and still spinning the dial. He was breathing and perspiring heavily.

“Harry—that thing can’t pick up anything in this stinking dungeon!”

Her rising tone of voice stopped him; he turned and looked at her; about to cry, she brought her hands up to her face. Then, shaking her head, she bit her lip and just stared at the floor.

Looking at her, Harry’s anger rose and swept over him, putting him momentarily at a loss for words; his face began twitching, his emotion searching for some vehicle of expression, until he pivoted violently and flung the radio across the room, smashing it against the wall, and launched into an orgy of shouting.

“I hate you—right? I hate the kid? I wanna see you die here, right? In this stinking place! My God, Helen, do you realize what’s happening? Those things are all over the place—they’ll kill us all! I enjoy watching my kid suffer like this? I enjoy seeing all this happen?”

Helen’s head jerked toward him. She looked at him with an expression that was half anguish and half pleading.

“Karen needs help, Harry…she needs a doctor. She’s…she’s going to maybe die here. We have to get out of here, Harry. We have to.”

“Oh, yeah—let’s just walk out. We can pack up right now and get ready to go, and I’ll just say to those things—excuse me, my wife and kid are uncomfortable here, we’re going into town. For God’s sake…there’s maybe twenty of those things out there. And there’s more every minute.”

Harry’s sarcasm did not help him to make his point with Helen; rather, it increased her disgust with him and made her more bitter. But she knew shouting back at him would do no good. Attempting to reason with him was the only thing that ever stood a chance of changing his mind, once he had convinced himself of something—provided you could convince him that he had thought up the new idea himself, giving him the opportunity of backing off from his previous position gracefully.

“There’s people upstairs,” Helen said. “We should stick together, you said it yourself. Those people aren’t our enemies, are they? Upstairs, downstairs—what’s the difference? Maybe they can help us. Let’s get out of here…”

A pounding sound interrupted her.

Both she and Harry held their breath and listened. The sound repeated itself—coming from the door at the top of the stairs. They glanced anxiously at their helpless daughter. For a long moment, they were half convinced they were being attacked. But then they heard Tom’s voice.

“Harry!”

More pounding. Harry just stared up at the door and did not answer the call. He was sticking to his decision not to open the door again or have anything to do with the people upstairs. Tears welled in Helen’s eyes as her frustration and disappointment in her husband increased and swept over her. More pounding. Helen looked at Harry. She knew he was a coward. More pounding; then a pause; maybe Tom was going to give up. Helen leaped up and ran to the foot of the stairs.

“Yes…yes, Tom!”

Harry, running after her, grabbed her shoulders from behind and stopped her. She squirmed and struggled to free herself.

“Harry! Let me go! Let me go!”

She struggled violently, and the force of her determination rather than her physical strength shocked Harry and cowed him, and he stepped away from her and just stared—his wife had never defied him openly like this before.

Tom’s voice again sounded through the barricaded door:

“Harry…Helen…we have food, and some medicine and other things up here…”

Harry stared up at the door, speechlessly.

“There’s gonna be a thing on the radio in ten minutes, Harry—a Civil Defense thing—to tell us what to do!”

Looking up at the door, Helen shouted, “We’re coming up Tom! We’ll be up in a minute!”

Harry spun and glowered at her.

“You’re out of your mind, Helen. All it takes is a minute for those things to grab a hold of you and kill you. If they get in up there, it’ll be too late to change your mind don’t you see that? Can’t you see that we’re safe as long as we keep that door sealed up?”

“I don’t give a damn!” she spat at him. “I don’t care Harry—I don’t care any more; I want to get out of here—go upstairs—see if someone will help us. Maybe Karen will be okay.”

Calming suddenly, she stopped shouting, got control of herself, and stepped toward Harry and spoke in a softer tone.

“Harry…please…for just a minute, we’ll go up and see what’s up there. We’ll hear the radio, and maybe we can figure some way to get out of here. Maybe with all of us we can make it, Harry.”

Harry, his adamancy weakening somewhat, took the cigarette from his mouth, exhaling the last puff, and dropped it to the floor. He stepped on it to snuff it out; the smoke came in a long stream through his pursed lips.

Startlingly, Tom’s voice penetrated again.

“Harry! Hey, Harry! Ben found a television upstairs! Come on up—we’ll see the Civil Defense broadcast on TV.”

Harry wavered. Helen spoke soothingly to him, her tone an attempt to relieve the distress she thought he must feel in going against his original decision. “Come on…let’s go up. There’ll be something on TV that tells us what to do. You can tell them it was me that wanted to go up.”

“All right,” Harry said. “All right. This is your decision. We’ll go up—but don’t blame me if we all get killed.”

Her eyes fell away from him, and she began mounting the stairs, taking the lead as he fell in behind, so the people upstairs would know their coming up was her doing.

Together, she and Harry began unboarding the cellar door.

Harry lifted the last heavy timber away, and the door came away from the jamb with a creaking noise. Helen peered out into the dining area, and beyond that into the semi-darkened living room. Harry, standing behind his wife, felt tense and hostile—and angry with himself because he had reneged on his decision about the cellar. Helen, too, was overwrought, because of the emotional strain of her argument with Harry and the fact that she was about to meet strange people in an anxious circumstance.

But only Tom and Barbara were in the living room. Barbara, overcome with nervous exhaustion and shock, was sleeping fitfully on the couch, in front of the fire.

In an effort to be friendly, Tom said, “We can see the broadcast, I think—if the TV works. I have to go help Ben carry it downstairs. Judy is in the kitchen, I’ll get her, and she can take care of Karen for you while you’re up here watching the television.”

Helen managed a smile to express her thanks, and Tom immediately turned on his heels and went into the kitchen to get his girlfriend.

Helen moved over to the fire, seeking its warmth and looked down at Barbara sympathetically and brushed back her hair and pulled the overcoat around her shoulders.

“Poor thing…she must have been through a lot,” Helen said, to no one in particular.

Harry, during these moments, had been flitting all over the house, from door to window to kitchen to living room, checking out the actual degree of security, which he felt was practically non-existent, and worrying about the imminence of attack at any second.

Tom and Judy came out of the kitchen, and Tom said to Helen, “I think her brother was killed out there.” And he nodded his head toward Barbara, who moaned softly in her fitful sleep, as though she had heard his comment.

Ben came to the top of the stairs, and began shouting.

“Tom! Hey, Tom! Are you gonna give me a hand with this thing, or ain’t you?”

Tom, startled, aware of his procrastination, bolted for the upstairs to help Ben while Judy opened the cellar door and went down to watch Karen.

Harry, still pacing around in his anxiety, strode briskly over to where his wife was looking after Barbara.

“Her brother was killed,” Helen said, as if telling that to Harry might soften him and jolt him out of his self-interest.

“This place is ridiculous,” Harry said. “There’s a million weak spots up here.”

Frightened suddenly by a noise, Harry paused in his pacing long enough to listen and ascertain to his satisfaction that it was only Tom and Ben, struggling with the television, making their way down the steps.

Helen glowered at Harry. “You’re a pain in the ass,” she told him. “Why can’t you make the best of things and do something to help somebody—instead of complaining all the time?”

Harry, not really hearing her, was staring through a slat in the barricaded front window into the gloom outside.

“I can’t see a damn thing out there!” he exclaimed. “There could be fifty million of those things. I can’t see a thing—that’s how much good these windows do us!”

Ben, who with Tom had reached the landing with the heavy television set, arrived in time to hear the last part of Harry’s remark; he glowered even as he moved with his end of the burden, but said nothing, as he and Tom dragged two chairs together and gingerly deposited the TV on them, in the center of the room. They hunted for an outlet, found it, then slid and walked the set on the two chairs until the cord was close enough to be plugged in.

As Ben knelt behind the set to plug in the cord, Harry said, “Wake that girl up. If there’s going to be a thing on the tube, she might as well know where she stands. I don’t want to be responsible for her.”

Shocked, Helen blurted, “Harry, stop acting like a child!”

Ben got to his feet, his eyes flashing anger. “I don’t want to hear any more from you, mister. If you stay up, here, you’ll take your orders from me—and that includes leaving that girl alone. She needs rest—she’s just about out of her head as it is now. Now, we’re just going to let her sleep it off. And nobody’s going to touch her unless I say so.”

Ben stared Harry down for a moment, to ascertain that he had been at least temporarily squelched; then his hand plunged immediately to the television set. As he snapped it on, the occupants of the room jockeyed for vantage points in front of it, and there were a few baited seconds of dead silence as they all waited to see if the set would actually warm up. All eyes were on the tube. A hiss began, and increased in volume. Ben twisted the volume all the way. A glowing band appeared and spread, filling the screen.

“It’s on! It’s on!” Helen shouted.

There were murmurs of excitement and anticipation—but the tube showed nothing. No picture, no sound. Just the glow and hiss of the tube. Ben’s hand raced the tuning dial through the clicks of the various stations.

Harry jumped up, fidgeting. “Play with the rabbit ears. We should be able to get something—”

Ben fussed with horizontal and vertical, with brightness and contrast. On one station, he finally got sound: he adjusted the volume. The picture tumbled; he played with it and finally brought it in. Full-screen was a commentator, in the middle of a news report.

Hushed, the people in the room settled back to watch and listen.

“…ASSIGN LITTLE CREDIBILITY TO THE THEORY THAT THIS ONSLAUGHT IS A PRODUCT OF MASS HYSTERIA…”

“Mass hysteria!” Harry snarled. “What do they think—we’re imagining all this?”

“Shut up!” Ben bellowed. “I want to hear what’s going on!”

“…AUTHORITIES ADVISE UTMOST CAUTION UNTIL THE MENACE CAN BE BROUGHT UNDER ABSOLUTE CONTROL. EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS HAVE BEEN INVESTIGATED AND DOCUMENTED. CORPSES OF VANQUISHED AGGRESSORS ARE PRESENTLY BEING EXAMINED BY MEDICAL PATHOLOGISTS, BUT AUTOPSY EFFORTS HAVE BEEN HAMPERED BY THE MUTILATED CONDITION OF THESE CORPSES. SECURITY MEASURES INSTITUTED IN METROPOLITAN AREAS INCLUDE ENFORCED CURFEWS AND SAFETY PATROLS BY ARMED PERSONNEL. CITIZENS ARE URGED TO REMAIN IN THEIR HOMES. THOSE WHO IGNORE THIS WARNING EXPOSE THEMSELVES TO INTENSE DANGER—FROM THE AGGRESSORS THEMSELVES, AND FROM ARMED CITIZENRY WHOSE IMPULSE MAY BE TO SHOOT FIRST AND ASK QUESTIONS LATER. RURAL OR OTHERWISE ISOLATED DWELLINGS HAVE MOST FREQUENTLY BEEN THE OBJECTIVE OF FRENZIED, CONCERTED ATTACK. ISOLATED FAMILIES ARE IN EXTREME DANGER. ESCAPE ATTEMPTS SHOULD BE MADE IN HEAVILY ARMED GROUPS, AND BY MOTOR VEHICLE IF POSSIBLE. APPRAISE YOUR SITUATION CAREFULLY BEFORE DECIDING ON AN ESCAPE TACTIC. FIRE IS AN EFFECTIVE WEAPON. THESE BEINGS ARE HIGHLY FLAMMABLE. ESCAPE GROUPS SHOULD STRIKE OUT FOR THE NEAREST URBAN COMMUNITY. MANNED DEFENSE OUTPOSTS HAVE BEEN ESTABLISHED ON MAJOR ARTERIES LEADING INTO ALL COMMUNITIES. THESE OUTPOSTS ARE EQUIPPED TO DEFEND REFUGEES AND TO OFFER MEDICAL AND SURGICAL ASSISTANCE. POLICE AND VIGILANTE PATROLS ARE IN THE PROCESS OF COMBING REMOTE AREAS IN SEARCH AND DESTROY MISSIONS AGAINST ALL AGGRESSORS. THESE PATROLS ARE ATTEMPTING TO EVACUATE ISOLATED FAMILIES. BUT RESCUE EFFORTS ARE PROCEEDING SLOWLY, DUE TO THE INCREASED DANGER OF NIGHT AND THE SHEER ENORMITY OF THE TASK. RESCUE, FOR THOSE IN ISOLATED CIRCUMSTANCES, IS HIGHLY UNDEPENDABLE. YOU SHOULD NOT WAIT FOR A RESCUE PARTY UNLESS THERE IS NO POSSIBILITY OF ESCAPE. IF YOU ARE FEW AGAINST MANY, YOU WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY BE OVERCOME IF YOU REMAIN IN ONE SPOT. THE AGGRESSORS ARE IRRATIONAL AND DEMENTED. THEIR SOLE URGE IS THEIR QUEST FOR HUMAN FLESH. SHERIFF CONAN W. MCCLELLAN, OF THE COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC PROTECTION, WAS INTERVIEWED MINUTES AFTER HE AND HIS VIGILANTE PATROL HAD VANQUISHED SEVERAL OF THE AGGRESSORS. WE BRING YOU NOW THE RESULTS OF THAT INTERVIEW…”

On the TV screen, the image of the commentator was replaced by newsreel footage, taken earlier that night. The footage showed dense woods, a dirt road, searchlights dancing among the trees, while men moved around peering into the darkness and shouting at one another. Sporadic distant gunfire could be heard over all this. Then the news camera showed footage of posted guards maintaining the periphery of a small clearing. Still, gunfire could be heard in the distance. Some of the men were smoking, others drinking coffee from paper containers or talking in small groups. The area was illuminated by a large bonfire. A closer shot revealed Sheriff McClellan, the central figure of the scene, shouting commands, supervising defensive measures, and at the same time trying to answer the reporter’s questions as he paced around not straying too far—because of the cord and microphone hanging around his neck.

McClellan was a big man, gruff and used to commanding men and making them do what they were told in some semblance of order. He was dressed in civilian clothes, but carried a big rifle with scope and a belt of ammunition of heavy caliber.

At the moment, he had some of his men engaged in dragging bodies to the bonfire and throwing them on it to burn. The crackle of the bonfire, the shouts and bustle of activity, formed a constant background for McClellan’s commentary as he did his best to answer what he was asked—while his primary concerns were his efforts in dealing with the aggressors and controlling his search party.

“Things ain’t going too badly,” McClellan said. “The men are taking it pretty well. We killed nineteen of those things today, right around this general area. These last three we found trying to claw their way into an abandoned mine shed—nobody was in there—but these things just pounding and clawing, trying to bust their way in. They must’ve thought there was people in there. We heard the racket and sneaked up on them and blasted them down.”

“What’s your opinion, then Sheriff? Can we defeat these things?”

“There ain’t no problem—except just getting to them in time, before they kill off all the people that are trapped. But me and my men can handle them okay. We ain’t lost nobody or suffered any casualties. All you gotta do is shoot for the brain. You can tell anybody out there—all you gotta do is draw a sharp bead and shoot for the brain—or beat ’em down and lop their heads off. They don’t go anywhere once you chop their heads off. Then you gotta burn ’em.”

“Then I’d have a decent chance, even if I was surrounded by two or three of them?”

“If you had yourself a club, or a good torch, you could hold ’em off or burn ’em to death. They catch fire like nothin’—go up like wax paper. But the best thing is to shoot for the brain. You don’t want to get too close, unless you have to. Don’t wait for us to rescue you, because if they get you too far outnumbered, you’ve had it. Their strength is in numbers. We’re doin’ our best—but we only got so many men and a whole lot of open country to comb.”

“But you think you can bring the situation under control?”

“At least in our county. We got things in our favor now. It’s only a question of time. We don’t know for certain how many of them there are…but we know when we find ’em we’re able to kill ’em. So it’s a matter of time. They are weak—but there’s pretty many of ’em. Don’t wait for no rescue party. Arm yourself to the teeth, get together in a group, and try to make it to a rescue station—that’s the best way. But if you’re alone, you have to sit still and wait for help…and we’ll try like hell to get you before they do.”

“What are these things, Sheriff? In your opinion, what are they?”

“They’re…they’re dead. They’re dead humans. That’s all they are. Whatever brought ’em back and made ’em this way, I wish to God I knew—”

The television coverage had switched back to the live announcer, who resumed speaking in his matter-of-fact tone.

“…YOU HAVE HEARD SHERIFF CONAN W. MCCLELLAN, OF THE COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC PROTECTION. THIS IS YOUR CIVIL DEFENSE EMERGENCY NETWORK, WITH REPORTS EVERY HOUR ON THE HOUR, FOR THE DURATION OF THIS EMERGENCY. REMAIN IN YOUR HOMES. KEEP ALL DOORS AND WINDOWS LOCKED. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRC—”

Ben reached over and clicked off the television.

Excited, Tom said, “Why’d you shut it off for?”

Ben shrugged. “The man said the reports only come on every hour. We heard all we need to know. We have to try and get out of here.”

Helen agreed. “He said the rescue stations have doctors and medical supplies…if we could get there, they could help my daughter.”

Harry laughed, scornfully. “How are we gonna bust out of here? We have a sick girl, a woman out of her head—and this place is crawling with those things.”

“Willard is the nearest town,” Tom said, ignoring Harry’s objections. “They’d have a checkpoint there—about seventeen miles from here.”

“You from here? You know the area?” Ben asked, excitedly.

“Sure,” Tom replied, confidently. “Judy and I were going swimming up the road. We heard the news on her portable radio, and we came in here and found the lady dead upstairs. Not too long after, Harry and his wife and kid fought their way in here—I was scared, but I opened the basement door and let them in.”

“Well, I think we ought to stick right here and wait for a rescue party,” Harry said. “That fellow on the TV said if you’re few against many, you don’t have a chance—we can’t hike seventeen miles cross-country through that army of things out there…”

“We don’t have to tramp,” Ben said. “My truck’s right outside the door.”

This stopped Harry. There was a long moment of silence while the fact of the truck sank into everybody’s head.

“But I’m just about out of gas,” Ben added. “There’s a couple of gas pumps by the shed out back, but they’re both locked up.”

“The key ought to be around somewhere,” Tom said. “There’s a big key ring in the basement. I’ll go look.”

In his enthusiasm, now that escape seemed to be a possibility, he bolted for the cellar door and scampered down the stairs.

Ben turned to Harry. “Is there a fruit cellar down there?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“We’re gonna need lots of jars. We can make Molotov cocktails…scare those things back…then fight our way to the pump and gas up the truck.”

“We’re gonna need kerosene, then,” Harry said. “There’s a jug of that in the basement, too.”

Helen said, “Judy and I can help. We can rip up sheets and things.” Then she added, in a hushed tone, “I don’t think Barbara’s going to be much help at all.”

“How do you know her name?” Ben asked, startled.