Night of the Living Dead (28 page)

"
Chief McClelland, how long do you think it will take you until you get the situation under control?
"

"
Well that’s pretty hard ta say, we don’t know how many of ‘em there are. We know when we find ‘em, we can kill ‘em.
"

"
Are they slow-moving, Chief?
"

"
Yeah, they’re dead, they’re ...
" the man paused, as if considering something profound, then delivered, "
... all messed up.
"

Ben shook his head.
"All messed up?" What a callous son of a bitch. How a backwards redneck like that made Chief of Police is just ludicrous, it’s ...

He stopped himself. Whether his evaluation of the chief were accurate or not, this attitude was unlike him ... as unlike him as those extra blows he had delivered onto Cooper.

Ben needed to watch himself. He didn’t like the effect Cooper was having on him — these ugly thoughts were brought on by dealing with Cooper as much as with the dead people, and the obnoxious little man wasn’t worth it.

"
Well, uh,
" the reporter asked, "
in time ... would you say you ought to be able to wrap this up in twenty-four hours?
"

"
Well ...
" McClelland considered, "
... we don’t really know. We know we’ll be into it mosta the night, probly into the early morning. We’re workin’ our way toward Willard, an we’ll team up with the National Guard over there, an then we’ll be able ta getta more definite view.
"

Ben noted the reference to Willard. So this
was
recorded in the local area, which meant from the sunlight that this was shot many hours ago, before the attack on Beekman’s had even occurred.

"
Thank you very much, Chief McClelland.
"

The chief nodded and faded back.

The reporter addressed the camera directly, "
This is Bill Cardille, WIC TV-11 news.
"

The view switched back to the studio, and the anchorman said, "
Thank you, Bill, for that report.
"

Ben glanced over his shoulder at the others. Were they noticing the discontinuity between the report and the way it was being presented as though it were "current"? Should he point it out? What would that accomplish? Barbra was too out of it, Helen was too exhausted, and he couldn’t care less about Cooper.

Besides, it didn’t really change their situation, did it?

"
Official spokesmen decline to speculate,
" the anchorman was saying, "
just how long it may take to kill off all the flesh-eaters. So long as the heavy ra—
"

And then their situation changed.

The television fell silent as the room plunged into darkness. The quartet tensed, looking up as if they might bring the lights back on by force of will.

Ben stood. Maybe —
maybe
 — this was just a God-awful coincidence. "Is the fuse box in the cellar?"

"I don’t know ..." Cooper said, his voice uneven and tentative. "I ..."

Harry Cooper hated to show his fear, especially to the son of a bitch who’d had the nerve to lay hands on him. But the fact was that the sudden darkness disturbed him even more than seeing those things outside eating what was left of Tom and Judy. He felt so ... damned ...
helpless
!

Ben strode past him toward the cellar, then disappeared from what little light there was into total blackness as he descended the stairs, probably looking for the stupid fuse box.

But Harry knew better. He could feel it. "It ... it isn’t the fuse," he whispered. "The power lines are down."

Yes, that was it. Those things weren’t as stupid as they looked — they’d cut the power! And here he stood, helpless. If he couldn’t even defend himself against Ben ...

No, this was intolerable, and he had to do something about it.

Turning, he moved over to his wife where she sat on the arm of the sofa. Keeping his voice low, he said, "Helen ... I have to get that
gun
."

His eyes were adjusting to the gloom, picking up on what little light was leaking through the boarded windows, but Helen’s face was still a phantom before him. But even though he couldn’t see her, he heard her scoff. And when she answered, the ice, the disgust, in her voice was unmistakable. "Haven’t you had
enough
?"

"Wha—?" Harry stammered, flabbergasted by her attitude. She was his wife
,
goddamn it! "Two people are dead already on account of that guy. Take a look out that window. We can’t—"

Then Ben reappeared
, and Harry shut his mouth in a hurry. He looked away, trembling as much in frustration as in fear,
as Ben strode past him.

If only those things had gotten the bastard,
he
would be in charge!

Outside, one of the dead stared down at the ground. He was nearer to the house than some of the others, and he wasn’t looking at any of the small remaining fires or pieces of Tom or Judy or even a fieldmouse. He was looking at a rock, a large jagged stone bigger than his gashed hand.

Something about that rock was tickling at what little remained of the dead man’s mind. Some association, some
use
perhaps?

If Ben or Cooper had observed this behavior, they would likely have found it confusing, but
Barbra
might have been able to explain it to them — it was a reaction she had seen before, albeit at a much faster, more instinctive pace.

And then the dead man had it. Bending slowly, his stiff muscles and grinding bones creaking and popping, he reached down and picked up the rock. He hefted it once, twice, then moved toward the house, the rock held ready.

His example triggered an instant reaction in one of the others. He, too, bent over, in his case near the still-smoldering chair Ben had pushed outside hours earlier. He grabbed the end of Ben’s first makeshift torch and, dragging the discarded table leg behind him, he shambled up onto the front porch. As he approached the front door, moving more on instinct than actual thought, he heaved the table leg up so that he could close both bluish hands around it ...

... then swung it around and slammed it against the front door.

In the house, it all seemed to start happening at once. A loud, sharp
thunk
 came from the front door, but before Ben could do much more than turn his head toward the sound, another bang came from further down the porch, and then another on the heels of that. Far too fast and too far apart to be coming from the same creature. Nothing had been happening a moment ago, and now it sounded as though a whole group of them had figured out how to use objects as tools, as
weapons
.

Ben’s assumption wasn’t far off. As if the first dead man’s picking up the rock had triggered an inexplicable burst of evolution — an insidious "Ah-ha!" moment — many of the dead grabbed rocks and branches and whatever they could find close at hand and began assaulting the house in earnest. They weren’t even sure
why
they were doing it, not exactly, but they knew that prey was inside, and this suddenly struck them as the right thing to do to get at what they wanted.

The din grew at a frightening rate. They all looked around, speechless, unsure what to do — even Barbra absorbed that some critical conversion had taken place, and though she said nothing to the others, she
did
, in fact, think back to that first dead man’s picking up the rock and breaking through Johnny’s car window.

Barbra’s recollection was almost prophetic — right on its heels, the dead man who had started the current ruckus by picking up the rock got close enough to a window to pitch his burden through the glass. The stone not only shattered the bottom window panes, it knocked some of Ben’s handiwork askew, jarring the lumber loose on its nails.

Ben raced forward, holding the rifle crossways against the planks of wood as the thing outside followed up on its assault. Another joined it, and Ben struggled to keep the barricade in place.

Harry Cooper watched from across the room, licking his lips in excitement in spite of his fear. If the bastard happened to lose his grip, to
drop
that gun ...

Helen Cooper, on the other hand, was thinking of survival in a different light. She had leaned against the front door, to support the barricade there, but the pounding kicked up a notch, and the whole structure began to tremble and shake. Gasping, she turned toward it, trying to place her hands in the best positions possible, to brace the door wherever she could. She didn’t know exactly
why
Ben had to break the lock to get back into the house earlier, but she suspected Harry had something to do with it, and now she cursed her husband for his shortsightedness!

Ben could see the dead people staring at him through the gaps in the barricade. All through the evening, they had rarely seemed aware of his looking out through the windows, but they were now. Their eyes widened and their teeth gnashed as they practically drooled over the sight of him. It reminded him of a wasp he’d seen outside his bedroom window as a child — young Ben had placed his hand against the glass where the insect was bumping around, and it kept attacking the pane on the other side of his fingers, trying to sting him, repeatedly, even though he was beyond its reach.

The big difference here was, Ben wasn’t sure how much longer he would
remain
beyond the dead’s reach. Their hands snaked through the broken panes, heedless of the jagged glass which tore deep trenches into their graying flesh. Ben twisted away from those grasping hands while still trying to brace the barricade as best he could — it was a dance he would not be able to keep up for much longer.

Helen saw his dilemma from her
own
struggle at the front door, but she could do nothing to help him without abandoning her
post. She sympathized with his plight — God, if one of those things laid a hand on her ...

Where the
hell
was
HARRY
?!

She glanced over her shoulder to see her idiot husband just standing there across the room. What was wrong with him?! Couldn’t he see they needed
help
?!

Ben was wondering the same thing. He twisted around and yelled, "Get over here, man!"

Cooper
still
hesitated.

"Come
on
!" Ben bellowed. And the distraction cost him.

Too many hands — Ben hadn’t heard it, but the upper panes must have broken or been ripped loose, too, because now the dead were reaching through the boards at all points of the window. One of the diagonal boards bulged outward in spite of his weight and the nails, and threatened to tear loose altogether. He couldn’t manage this with only one free hand anymore and he couldn’t shoot at them under these circumstances, so he dropped the rifle to the floor beside him.