Pray To Stay Dead (49 page)

Cardo’s next bullet shattered the glass door and punched a hole in the face of the dead man that had, a second before, been smashed against the door. The lifeless thing crashed forward in a chirping rain of glass, and the dead behind it followed, tumbling and spilling, uncoordinated limbs flapping.

Pocketing the old man’s pistol, Cardo retrieved the rifle from the counter and took a few steps backward. He heard the others hammering on the back door and the sound of heavy footfalls overhead.

“
I’m okay,” he yelled at the ceiling. “Everything is okay.”

The corpse Cardo had shot lay facedown in a spreading black puddle. The three who’d tumbled in behind it had yet to regain their feet. They crawled toward the wounded old man, mouths open and eager.

“
Mother fucker,” Crate said. His left arm lay useless beneath him. His right reached, fingers clawing at the tile. He pumped his left leg, tried to find some purchase, to push himself along the floor, away from the dead, who stepped and stumbled into the store, one after another.

Five, eight, twelve, and then Cardo stopped counting. They saw the old man. In whatever strange way that they discerned the living from the dead, they saw their wounded prey and they moved in, encircled him, grabbing and tugging and biting.

The old man screamed and screamed, went from sounding like an infant to no longer sounding human at all. A dead woman with a swollen bruise for a face managed to tear away what little tissue held his right leg together at the knee, sliding the severed limb from his blood-soaked pants leg and pressing the wet stump to her lips, sucking and gnawing. The dead were the only ones who enjoyed things now.

They rolled Crate onto his stomach and tore away his shirt and pants. The old man looked at Cardo, tears streaming from his eyes. He tried to say something but managed only to scream garbled nonsense. Cardo raised the rifle, got the old man’s face in his sights. Crate looked hopeful.

Cardo lowered the rifle and watched the hope on the old man’s face twist into something else. He watched a little longer, and then he left. By the time Cardo was halfway up the stairs, the old man had stopped screaming.

“
They’re in,” Reggie said. There were maybe thirty walking corpses left outside. They clambered over the heaped dead and vanished beneath the corrugated tin overhang.

“
Oh, no,” Stacy said, standing up and looking at the door, an expression of pure terror on her face.

“
Hey,” Reggie said, walking to where she stood and taking both of her hands, leading one of them to the crystal that hung between her breasts. “Hey?”

“
Oh, God...”

“
We’re going to be okay, okay?”

There were footfalls on the stairs, slow and plodding.

“
No...”

“
Yes,” he said. It felt like a lie. “Wait here.”

Pistol raised, he stepped into the hallway and approached the stairwell. Cardo loafed toward him, head hung low. He held the old man’s rifle.

“
They’re inside,” he said, looking up at Reggie.

“
I know.”

“
Here,” Cardo said, handing the rifle to Reggie, who followed him into the bedroom. Stacy gasped and threw her arms around Cardo. He held her, and the two of them stood there for a few seconds, eyes squeezed shut, upper bodies rocking back and forth. Reggie loaded the rifle, his eyes on Cardo and the woman. Jealousy stirred in his chest, and he choked it down. It didn’t make sense, not now. Or maybe it did, more than ever, he really wasn’t sure. Whatever—it wasn’t something he had time for.

Cardo pulled away from the embrace and sat on the edge of the bed, pressed his face into his hands, and wept. Reggie stood in the doorway, listening, waiting.

“
I left him,” Cardo said, looking up at Reggie with tears running down his stubbly cheeks. “God. I let them… I let them…”

“
I know, man.” Reggie said, and he thought of the guy in Citrus Heights, the guy who’d accused him of trying to kidnap and rape the boy. “You did what you had to do. It’s okay.”

“
I don’t know about that.”

“
It is, man. It’s gotta be.”

Downstairs, in the back room, something—a broom or a mop or something—struck the floor. Cardo stared at him. His cheeks were wet with tears, but Reggie thought maybe the man was done crying for now. Stacy sat beside him, wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Yeah, for a time there it could have gone either way—she could have been his or she could have been Cardo’s, and she was Cardo’s now.

“
I’ve got this,” Reggie said and left, took his place at the top of the stairs.

“
Come on,” he yelled. “I’m up here. Come on.”

The first corpse came into view. Reggie did not miss.

It didn’t take very long. Within an hour, the last walking corpse was taken down, and as the sun dipped behind the trees and the shadows reached from within the forest to reclaim the world, they took what they needed and, carefully stepping over the heaped and fallen dead, packed the truck with supplies and left.

Thirty-Six

Colleen reached the van as the last few drops of light bled from the sky. The world around her faded into ever-darkening shades of blue. The van was unlocked. The keys dangled from the ignition. She could leave, yes, but where would she go? What would she do?

She allowed her fingertips to linger on the chrome-plated door-handle for just a few seconds more and then she faced the sprawling ranch-style house, a squat remnant from fifties suburbia utterly out of place perched here at the mouth of hell.

The front door was unlocked. She stepped into the entry room, left the door open behind her to let in what little light remained. The air was stale, same as before, but there was another scent in the air, a lingering trace of something new. She could not put her finger on it.

Her eyes adjusted, and a shape coalesced at her feet. Her heart jerked in her chest, she grew cold, and then she realized that the heaped and malformed body on the floor was merely their bags, left there just days ago.

She felt the wall, found the light switch. One functional bulb remained in the chandelier. Its glow was weak and sickly, and the ornate curls of the chandelier were furred with dust. She closed the door behind her, locked it, and stared at the travel bags at her feet.

She dropped to her knees and pulled one of the bags onto her lap, unzipped it, and pressed her nose into the clothes within. It was Kimberly’s bag, and it smelled just like her, just like her house. Crying, Colleen inhaled until the smell of her friend was no more and there was only the old and musty reek of the house and the barely-there hint of whatever it was.

Zipping shut her friend’s bag, she rose to her feet and moved through the bead curtain and, pressing close to the wall, into the living room. She found another light-switch, but the overhead bulbs in the living room were dead. There was a standing lamp on the other side of the room, near the television, but she did not want to pull away from the wall to cross the open space. Suddenly, she did not want to be there at all, and she cursed herself for not getting into the van and simply leaving.

The guns could be anywhere, even here in the living room, stashed beneath the large couch, but she didn’t think so. They were in the back, down the hall and past the bathroom, somewhere behind the door with the heavy padlock.

Gun raised and cocked, she reached the bathroom and realized what she had smelled: shit and piss. She turned on the light and gasped. The sink was spattered with dried blood and bloody, wadded facecloths. The toilet seat was up, and a large black curl of human waste rested at the bottom of the bowl.

Colleen reached out to flush the toilet and then pulled her hand away. Samson had been here, and he may yet still be here.

She stepped out of the bathroom, looked around, and moved down the hall, past the closed bedroom doors and to the last door on the right. The padlock was in place, but the surface of the door around it had been nicked and scratched and smeared with blood. There was a large crimson half-mask stamp where Samson had rested his battered face against the cool surface of the door. His enormous gun lay on the floor.

The door to her left was closed. There was no padlock, just a simple bloodstained doorknob that turned with ease. She raised her gun, reached across herself and beneath her right arm to flip the light-switch. Both lights burned just fine, revealing what must have been a child’s room. The walls were barren. A single model airplane hung from the ceiling above the small bed wedged into the far corner.

Samson Niebolt lay on his side atop the bed, his back to the door, his knees drawn to his chest. He looked like a kid, and Colleen realized that he had been one, not all that long ago. So had she.

She held her breath, stared at him, certain that he was dead, but no—that was the old way of things. If he was dead, he’d be on his feet. She took one step toward him and became aware of the slow and steady expansion and contraction of his ribcage.

The door eased closed behind her, and the click of the bolt engaging caused Samson to jump. He lifted his head and groaned, tried to sit up, kicked one foot over the edge of the bed and, gasping, drew it back, as if he’d dipped his feet into hot water.

“
Daddy?” he asked, and Colleen wondered if he always referred to Huff in that way, or if it were the beating and his surroundings talking. “That you?”

“
No,” she said. “I’m not your daddy.”

“
You hurt me, Dad,” he said, oblivious to her words. “Hurt me real bad. I can’t—” He grunted in pain once more and struggled to sit up, pawed at the blood-streaked wall before him. After a minute of trying and failing to sit up, he laid his head upon mattress and took a deep breath. “I can’t see.”

He rolled onto his back and faced her. His nose was bloated and crooked. A blood-crust encircled his nostrils. His right eye was swollen shut, the lid shiny and purple. His left eye had not yet swollen completely shut, but it would, and what little she could see of his eye was not white but darkest red, almost black. A line of blood ran like a tear from the corner of his eye.

“
Can’t really see you. Who is it? Evie?” He tried to smile, and Colleen was not sure what it was supposed to mean. One of his front teeth was missing, and she could feel his hands on her body, his cock inside her. His breath in her ear.

She raised the gun, got his face in her sights. Her heart raced, and she could not feel her fingertips. In sync with her heart, a hammer slammed into the inside of her skull, right between her eyes, and there was only anger and fury and the sensation of his fingers sliding into her ass.

“
I need help,” he said, blinking away blood and pawing at his battered face. He probed his lips, sucked in air, and pulled his fingers away from his face. “Thilda has drugs. This hurts so bad. My head, it feels like…”

“
You bastard,” she said, tears blurring her vision. Her hand rocked, and the gun seemed so heavy now. Her finger was taught upon the trigger. It would take so little effort to finish this, to finish him, but this isn’t what she wanted. She’d wanted to look into his eyes, wanted him to see what was coming, to know who was doing it.

She crossed the short distance between herself and the bed, climbed onto it, and straddled his chest, pinning his arms beneath her knees. She placed the gun on his chest and clutched his throat with her right hand.

“
Aaah,
” he yelped, and she tightened her grip.

“
Open your eyes, you piece of shit,” she screamed, prying open his swollen eye with the fingers of her left hand. “Look at me.”

She released his throat and he gasped, spattered her hand with blood and spit. His body rocked beneath her weight, and his eyes rolled in their sockets. She pried open both eyes now, screaming.

“
Look at me.”

His right hand slipped from beneath her knee and clawed uselessly at her hands. He stopped struggling.

“
Oh,” he said. “Is that you, Colleen?”

“
It is.”

Seizing the gun from his chest, she drove a knee into his balls. He gasped, and she did it again, and when he screamed she thrust the barrel of the gun into his mouth, shredding his bottom lip against his teeth and pressing, pressing and twisting until his teeth crumbled and Samson wretched and heaved and vomited around the intruding steel cylinder.

She squeezed the trigger and watched Samson Niebolt’s head come apart. She squeezed it again and watched what was left of his head come apart a little more. The third squeeze brought only a faint
click,
and she squeezed it four more times.

click click click click

She got up, leaving her gun where it was, jutting from the crimson ruin of Samson Niebolt’s head, leaving Samson’s cowboy cannon where it was, on the rug in the hall, and drifted out of the room and out of the house. It was fully dark now and the air was cool.

She threw up between her feet and sat with her back to the van’s rear bumper. When mosquitoes landed on her arms and sank their tiny needles into her flesh, she did not swat them away.

She sat that way for some time, until the rumble of a diesel engine broke the silence and the headlights of the great truck burned through her splayed fingers. Three people got out of the truck—two men and a woman, just silhouettes against the glare of the truck’s lights.