The Damned (2 page)

The bullet… out of his head.

But what in the hell is going—

His foot wedged against something soft, and he looked down at another dead body. Whoever it was wore a dark policeman’s uniform; a thick leather belt looped its waist and an empty holster hung on the belt. Scott knelt down for a closer look, and found a mass of writhing white maggots swimming in a ragged pit that had been chewed out of the guy’s neck. A pump-action shotgun lay across his knees. Scott wondered what had happened to him, how long he’d been here. He didn’t dare touch him to find out. He picked up the gun and got the hell out of there, across the room and through a set of double doors. A sign in the front yard read:
Park
West
Rehabilitation
Center
.

Scott started down the steps and a garbled voice startled him.

“Hey, buddy,” it said. “C’mere.”

Scott looked down at a three-foot-long torso dragging two legs fused into one raw, gelatinous stump behind it. Half its face looked like dripping candle wax, the other half a crusty piece of burnt leather, its mouth a glistening red slit encasing rotten stubs of broken teeth. A webbed hand reached out for him and Scott took off running, up the street through the swirling ash, toward the distant glow. Anywhere but here.

He ran but he didn’t run far. His breath gave out and he used the shotgun as a crutch, leaning on it while he took a few deep breaths. What was that thing back there? he wondered. What in the hell happened here? Where is everybody?

Scott took one last breath, and then headed up the sidewalk. He rounded a burned-out shell of an apartment building and stopped dead in his tracks. Ten yards ahead, three huge men stood with their backs to him, behind a fourth who was turning a naked woman round and round on a spit over a roaring fire. She was tied, arms and legs to a wooden pole held off the ground by two sets of iron bars crossed in an X a couple of yards apart, fastened together with strands of twisted wire. Her skin was cracked and charred, her scorched breasts dangling just out of the fire’s reach, belly split open like an over-cooked sausage, hair singed down to her smoldering scalp. The juices running along her sides sizzled when they dropped into the flames. All four behemoths stood grunting like cavemen who had just discovered the miracle of fire… and cooked meat. Scott pumped a shell into the chamber and one of them turned, squeezed the trigger and the top of his head dissipated into a fine red mist; blood sloshing from the cratered shell that remained as his body flopped to the ground. Scott ratcheted another round and the spent plastic cartridge fell smoking to the dirt. All three turned and he fired again. Blood and bone splattered the ground; chunks of raw-red meat sailed through the flames as another body convulsed onto the dirt and the remaining two ran for cover. Scott pumped and fired, pumped and fired again. The first blast ripped a gory crater through the man’s back. The second blew a mammoth knee apart and the last creature fell shrieking to the ground. Scott stepped forward jacking a shell into place, and a smoking cartridge flipped end-over-end through the air. He walked up to the huge man, who was crawling across the dirt with nothing but a grimy pair of cut-off jeans covering his filthy body. A pistol was wedged into the waistline of his pants, but he didn’t go for it. He crawled forward, grunting and dragging the bloody stump of his leg behind him, leaving a slimy red trail as he went.

Scott touched the barrel to the back of his neck.

The guy turned and smiled.

And a roaring blast blew his head clean off.

A voice called out, “Hey, mister!”

Scott whirled, and found the shotgun barrel dead-center in the small face of a dwarf. He wore a soiled white tank top with
Come Join Us!
stenciled across the front, dirty black pants and faded grey sneakers. An inch-high growth of dirty blonde hair surrounded the back and sides of his head. The silver-handled walking stick gripped in his hand like a shepherd’s staff was bigger than he was. He threw a hand in the air and said, “Easy, pal.”

“The fuck are you?” Scott said, his wide eyes scanning the dreary landscape to either side of him.

“You gotta get outa here.
We
gotta get outa here.”

“Jesus Christ, what’s happening to me?”

“C’mon, buddy. They’ll be back, and a hell of a lot more of ‘em.”

“Who? Who’ll be back?”

“Whoever heard that goddamn thunder-stick of yours.”

Flames crackled and popped, sizzling in the background as they licked their way up the naked woman’s torso and face. Scott nodded at the fire. “What about her? We can’t just leave her like that.”

“What’re you, kidding me?”

The distant clattering of trashcans crashing to the sidewalk swiveled Scott’s head toward the noise.

“Run!” the midget called out, and Scott chased him across the street, into an alley that lay between two houses. In the darkness at the corner of a house, the midget on one knee, Scott crouching behind him, they watched five men emerge from the side of a building a ways up the street. Two carried baseball bats with long nails hammered through their thick ends; another carried a machete. Like their fallen counterparts, the two carrying bats were huge, well over six feet tall. Scott stroked his shotgun for a little high-powered reassurance as three of them broke off from the others and made their way down to the fire, whose light revealed pistols jammed into the back of two of their waistbands, just like the one he’d just killed. The two left behind carried shotguns.

The man bearing the machete looked at what was left of his headless compatriot, walked over and put a foot in the back of another, nudged him and said, “Goddamnit.” He had on a pair of black leather pants. A sleeveless black leather motorcycle jacket draped his thin shoulders. His long black hair lay flat against his head. He turned and Scott saw
The Devil’s Own
emblem adorning his back, the pistol grip protruding from his waistband. His eyes swept from house to house, settling on the slice of darkness hiding Scott for a brief moment before kneeling to relieve the headless corpse of its sidearm, scooping it up and jamming it side by side with his own weapon.

“Man, look at this shit, Dub,” the larger of the two said. “Somebody sure fucked them up.”

The other huffed out a laugh. “Blew ‘em the fuck apart is what they did.”

Dub, the apparent leader, nodded at the woman. “Look at that. Goddamnit. Turn her ass over.”

The other two lay down their bats. Manning opposite ends of the spit, they tugged and twisted and a fresh wave of juices sizzled, popping as they sluiced over the fire. Dub grabbed a handful of blackened breast, sliced off a nipple and tossed it into his mouth. “Mmm,” he said, crunching it between his teeth as he sawed the entire breast away. The steaming hunk of meat looked like a piece of barbequed pork as he tossed it to his counterpart, who snatched it out of the air like a rabid dog, crammed it in his mouth and said, “Tasty!”

“I want her lips!”

“Fuck you,” Dub said. “Grab her goddamn feet.”

“Am I dead?” Scott whispered. “Are we in Hell?”

“Well on our way if you don’t shut up,” the midget whispered back.

Dub walked down a few feet, swung his machete until blade met wire and her feet came free. He did the same at the opposite end and the two behemoths shuffled sideways with the burned and blackened corpse.

“We should do something.”

“Like what, shoot ‘em? That’s what they want. They want you to give your position away so they can come get your ass. No telling how many of those cocksuckers are fanned out along these houses.”

“Who are they?”

The midget shushed him.

“Who are
you?
”

Shushed him again.

Dub turned and led the grisly procession back up the street. Moments later they joined their companions, and all five disappeared into the murky grey landscape from whence they had come.

“Whew!” The midget sat back against the side of the house, sighed and smiled.

“The fuck is wrong with your teeth?” Scott asked him—they were filed down to fine sharp points, like something out of a cheesy horror flick, or a nightmare, one Scott was not entirely sure he wasn’t having. “Am I even awake here?”

The midget laughed. “I’m
Warren
the Rat Boy. I come from a long line of sideshow performers—notice I didn’t say freaks. I’ve worked the Carny circuit most of my life, finally made my way up to the Big Top a couple of years before the shit hit the fan.”

“What do you mean, the shit hit the—”

“What happened to your
head?
”

“Somebody shot me.”

Warren
snickered. “
What?
When?”

“I’m… not sure.”

“Because I’m sensing you really don’t understand what’s going on here.”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that, because I keep asking you WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?”

“Keep your voice down, dumbass. Those big bastards could be anywhere.”
Warren
paused for a moment, then, “Look, what’s the last thing you remember?”

Scott sat down, relaxed and crossed his legs. He laid the shotgun beside him, took a deep breath and let it out. “Just… pulling up to a red light. Somebody tapped on my window… a gun was there and it went off. I woke up a little while ago down the street in that rehabilitation center.”

“That means you’ve been out seven weeks.”

“What?”

“About the same time that crazy fucker came on the
Tee
Vee—radio too, I’ve been told.”

Crazy fucker.

“What do you mean?”

“Seven weeks ago some crazy bastard broke through the airwaves: television, radio, even the movie theatre screens winked out into a staticky buncha noise, and a voice came outa that jumbled mess proclaiming the end of the world. Black clouds will gather, he said.”

Scott gasped.

Black clouds will gather.

“The sun will leave the sky!”

The sun will leave the sky.

“He was right about that shit; fucking sun ain’t shone around here for seven goddamn weeks. Look at that smoky grey shit up there.”

“
What?
”

“Yeah, it’s the middle of the friggin’ day. Bet you thought it was night, didn’t you? I would too if I didn’t know better.”
Warren
laughed. “Fire will pour from the Heavens and—”

“The damned shall walk the earth. I remember now. I was chasing some prick down the expressway and the radio cut off, and some… I thought I’d jumped stations and some crazy preacher was spouting off a bunch of bullshit. Next thing I know the gun’s in my face and… a swirling mass of black clouds raced across the sky and the gun went off.”

“You don’t know the half of it, pal. I was onstage, dead in the middle of a performance, and half the audience vanished, just up and disappeared like some kinda crazy
Twilight Zone
episode. The rest of ‘em started going at each other like a pack of jackals, beatin’ and tearin’ and rippin’ the shit outa each other. The roof of the tent caught fire and I got the hell outa there. The sky was fallin’, just like the man said. Great balls of fire falling outa the sky as far as the eye could see, cities burning, forests set ablaze until not a tree was left un-scorched. The Rapture came on a Friday afternoon but the Bible was wrong, wasn’t no seven years of prosperity following it, just Hell on earth, seven weeks and counting, until all that’s left are bands of brutes and nightmarish creatures slithering about the landscape.”

Warren
snapped his fingers. “Just like that, the lights winked out and the sun went away, and damn near half the world went with it.
All the decent folks, anyway.
I ain’t run across a straight-shootin’ son of a bitch since it happened.
Just a buncha evil doing bastards.
Like that preachin’ cocksucker said: the damned are walkin’ the earth and it’s dog eat dog, and you’d better watch your nuts or one of those big behemoth motherfuckers’ll be gnawin’ on ‘em. God knows they ate everything else they could get their mitts on.”

“God Almighty,” Scott said. “This can’t be happening.”

Warren
laughed. “Pinch yourself… what’d you say your name was?”

“Scott.”

“Pinch yourself, Scott, and pray to God you can’t feel it.”

And Scott did. He pinched his forearm hard, but it wasn’t pain that brought the tears streaming from his eyes. “Jesus, where’s my wife?”

Warren
shrugged. “Gone to Heaven if she was righteous, I’d guess.
On a spit if she wasn’t, or being fucked to death by
those
pricks—if she looked halfway decent.
They ain’t got the highest of standards, you know.” He got to his feet, and Scott, placing a hand on his stomach, said, “Jesus, I’m hungry.”

“Got some rusty old cans of Spam at my place.
Better than dirt, I guess.”

“Spam?”

“Ain’t no meat. When the sky fell, the power winked out. The meat went fast—those big bastards seen to that. Next thing you know they’re runnin’ around barbequing
people;
men, women, don’t make no difference to them. They’ll eat anything.”