The Late Night Horror Show (11 page)

Jason hurried over to his car, keyed it open, and slid behind the wheel, leaving the door ajar as he inserted the key in the ignition. Fearing the worst, Brix held her breath as he gave the key a twist. She let the breath out as the engine rumbled to full, throaty life. He gave it the gas, revving the engine higher a moment, and then twisted in his seat to look at her. “We’re in business.”

Brix couldn’t help it—she was grinning. “Great. Let’s haul ass.”

The rest of them converged on the car as Jason leaned toward the passenger side door and thumbed its lock open. Nikki opened the door and made for the shotgun seat. An understandable instinct. Of course she’d want to ride next to her boyfriend.

Brix seized her by a bicep and held her still. “No.”

Nikki scowled. “No? What the fuck do you mean
no
?”

Brix kept her expression neutral. No sense in escalating the hostility here, if at all possible. “I’m sorry. I really am. But I’m the one with the gun and I need to ride up front. I can’t be pinned in the back if shooting becomes necessary.”

“She’s right, babe. We’ll all be safer this way.”

Jason, being the voice of reason. Again. Brix was having to revise on the fly her initial impression of the guy. She still thought he was an arrogant ass, but maybe this was a situation in which being an arrogant ass wasn’t necessarily a negative.

But Nikki was still glaring at Brix. “Let go of my arm, bitch.”

Trevor moved into position next to Brix. “Hey, she’s just trying to help.”

Nikki rolled her eyes. “More like trying to help herself to my man.”

Brix began to lose her cool. They couldn’t stand here arguing, with the zombies getting closer by the second. Nikki was being stupid. And Brix wasn’t about to die because of someone else’s stupidity. She reached past Nikki, shoved the seat forward, and pushed the suddenly screaming, indignant girl into the back. Brix stepped aside, glanced at Trevor, who gave her a nod and crawled into the back with the screeching brat.

Brix dropped into the passenger seat and pulled on the interior door handle. It closed with a resounding
thunk
. She looked at Jason. “Burn fucking rubber.”

He worked the Malibu’s gearshift. “Whatever you say, boss.”

And Brix couldn’t help it when she grinned, though she turned her face away from Jason to hide the expression. There was a world of zombies out there. A world teeming with unimaginable horrors. A world in its death throes. She had every reason to feel nothing but overwhelming despair. But she did not.
 

Now that she had some sense of her bearings and they were taking some kind of action, she was able to admit she was almost excited. A part of her was eager to face the challenge of surviving in this world overrun with animated dead. This wasn’t something she would admit to the others, not even Trevor. They would think there was something wrong with her, perhaps even be disgusted by her.

In a way, she’d been preparing herself for precisely this moment since childhood—since her first-ever illicit midnight viewing of
Night of the Living Dead
.

Jason gave the Malibu the gas again.

And the car leapt forward.

Into the night.

Toward their destiny. Toward whatever awaited them out there. Brix tightened her grip on the gun in her lap.

Chapter Eleven

John Dorsey couldn’t breathe. The masked man’s big hand was locked tight around his throat, constricting the airway down to nothing. He wheezed and clawed at the man’s hand, digging his fingernails into the rough skin and drawing thin trickles of blood. But the effort was to no avail.
 

Just as he was on the verge of succumbing to panic, he had a brainstorm. He allowed himself to go limp, feigning unconsciousness. He couldn’t match this behemoth’s strength, but maybe he could outwit him. It was a long shot. Odds were his opponent would keep the pressure on at least long enough to ensure genuine unconsciousness or even death. It was what John would do in his position. And it was the smart thing to do.

But maybe the masked psycho wasn’t so smart, because the moment John went limp the guy let go of his throat and shoved him away. John hit the ground hard and didn’t move. He desperately wanted to gasp for breath after the long seconds of excruciating deprivation, but, aside from a single big intake of oxygen as he was tossed aside, he managed to keep his mouth shut. Maintaining the illusion of unconsciousness, at least for the next several moments, was key to survival. He still wasn’t at all certain the big man was buying his performance. But he did know any kind of miscue now would seal his doom.

He heard the man get to his feet and then stand there breathing heavily behind his mask for a few moments. John didn’t know which direction the man was facing, but he pictured the masked man staring straight down at him, black eyes flicking behind the eyeholes of the mask as he watched him for signs of life. John could almost feel those eyes on him, boring into his flesh. It made his guts curdle.
 

At last, though, he heard the man moving away from him, the wet ground squelching beneath his booted feet. He then heard the man grunt and let out a big breath. It wasn’t hard to guess what he was doing. He was retrieving his fallen chainsaw.
 

John tensed at the realization. Any second now the chainsaw would roar to life. John couldn’t help it—this time he did begin to panic. He couldn’t just keep lying here in the mud, waiting to die. Still, he was scared to move. The maniac was still very close. But a moment of truth was coming. John decided that if he heard those footsteps start back in his direction, he would get off his ass and start running.

The man did start moving again…but the sound of his footsteps soon receded. He was headed in another direction. John opened one eye, risking a peek at the retreating figure’s broad back. The glimpse was enough to verify two things—that he had indeed retrieved the chainsaw, and that he was going after the girl John had at least temporarily saved. That big gap between two of the trees he disappeared through was proof of that. The girl had gone that way, John was sure of it.

And he was just as certain of something else.

The maniac would catch her.

The man likely knew these woods well. It was a reasonable assumption, anyway. He wouldn’t be randomly walking around out here with a chainsaw. But John reminded himself that this was regular-world logic. Those rules might not apply to…wherever the hell this was. The dude was like something out of a cheap slasher flick. The kind where there was no kind of real logic at all. Just a series of excuses to knock off scantily clad starlets in the most gruesome ways possible. Could be John and the girl had been sent to some twisted alternate reality governed by a similar lack of logic. Could also be the chainsaw guy’s whole reason for existence was to chase pretty girls through these damp woods.

Jesus, it made his head hurt just thinking about it. All he really knew was he had to help that girl. He thought of Marie, lying there butchered and nude on their bed. Brutally murdered by some other psycho motherfucker while he’d been passed out drunk. He would never forgive himself for that. Marie was dead because he had failed her.

He wouldn’t fail this time.

Or if he did, he would die trying to do the right thing. For once.

He got to his feet and took off running.

Darkness swallowed her. It was as if instead of running into the woods she had run straight into the enormous mouth of some great beast. A beast that had now closed its mouth and soon would suck her down its gullet to its stomach. It was an easy enough thing to believe, thanks to how all of existence seemed to have been replaced by a formless, endless black void.
 

The impression was unsettling, but she didn’t allow it to slow her down. Though she couldn’t see anything, she could still feel the ground beneath her feet. That was enough to keep her anchored to reality—or to what was passing for reality now. And the still-stark memory of what she was running from was more than enough to keep her in motion.
 

Unfortunately, she couldn’t go nearly as fast as she wished. The darkness was impeding her speed, of course, but so were the stylish shoes she was wearing. They simply weren’t designed for running blindly in the dark. She kept slipping on the wet ground, but she mostly managed to remain upright by flailing for—and grabbing on to—the abundant low-hanging branches of the many tall trees around her.
 

Sometimes, though, her hands grabbed nothing but air and she would go tumbling to her hands and knees. But every time she was able to claw her way back to her feet and get moving again. She was even able to establish a decent half-running pace after a while. She was moving fast enough that for the first time she began to feel the first real ray of hope. If she could just stay focused and keep moving, she might survive this insane night after all.

Then she ran into the tree.

The blackness was so complete she never saw it looming in front her. She ran right into its wide base at a pace just short of an all-out run. The collision blasted the breath from her lungs and sent her tumbling backward to the ground. The impact when her body hit the ground was painful enough, but it was made worse by the sharp rock that gouged the small of her back. An edge of the rock cut through the lacy fabric of her camisole top and sliced into her flesh. Blood from the wound stained the ground beneath her as she cried out in agony and rolled onto her side to escape the sensation of the rock digging into her flesh. The movement was too soon after so hard a blow, though, and triggered another jolt of even more intense pain. This time it brought tears to her eyes and she cried out again, louder than before.

Stupid,
she thought.
So stupid.

You have to be quiet.

He might hear you.

She didn’t know whether the masked man was still after her. It was possible the stranger who had come to her rescue had subdued him. Or even killed him. The latter didn’t seem likely. The stranger was kind of beefy, but the clear overall strength advantage belonged to the muscular masked man. She recalled how, in the last moment before her dash into the woods, the man’s big hand had clamped hard around the stranger’s throat. No, she had to assume the stranger was dead and that the psycho in the mask was on her trail again. And that meant she had to keep as quiet as possible, even when she felt like screaming from hurting so much.

So Lashon set her jaw and bit back the next scream as she again struggled to her feet. Once she was upright, that sense of directionless disorientation was worse than ever. But she couldn’t just stand there, so she held out a hand and took a few cautious, exploratory steps straight ahead. The palm of her hand soon touched the rough texture of tree bark. She moved her hand over the bark, enough to discern that it was a
very
big tree. She was certain it was the one that had knocked her to the ground. So she felt her way around the tree and got moving again, this time at a slower, more cautious pace. She still detected no sounds of pursuit, so it was probably okay to move a bit more deliberately now. She hoped so, anyway.

After a few more minutes of blind groping and forward motion, a thing that felt nearly like a miracle occurred. The thick canopy of leafy tree branches overhead began to thin out some, letting in a bit of diffused moonlight. The downside to this was that more rain began to patter her head again, but that was okay because at least she could fucking
see
now. Just a little, it was true, but it was better than nothing.

As she kept moving, her thoughts returned to her rescuer. She knew nothing about him. Who he was. What his name was. Not a damn thing. And he knew the same nothing about her. She was just a stranger to him as well. And yet he hadn’t hesitated to put himself in harm’s way to help her. It was even possible he had given his own life to save hers. Which was really brave and admirable and all, but it was also kind of fucked up, because if she survived this she would always feel guilt for the sacrifice he had made. Didn’t mean she’d change anything about what had happened, even if she could. She wanted to live, even at the expense of someone else’s life or safety. She didn’t much like what that said about her, but not liking it didn’t make it any less true.

The trees continued to thin out as she pressed ahead. The rain also tapered off and soon stopped altogether. She glanced upward now and then and was pleased to note that the sky seemed to be clearing. It was warm and humid, now that the rain had passed. But the still-damp camisole top felt plastered to her skin. A change of clothes would be one of the first items on her agenda should she manage to escape this place. She was still hearing no evidence of pursuit. The cautious optimism she had felt before began to return. The feeling intensified significantly when she began to discern noises from somewhere ahead.

Boisterous voices.

Music.

Laughter.

All very faint, but getting louder with each few steps forward. The sounds were heartening. They were like signals from the normal world, that wonderful place where chainsaw-wielding masked men existed only in movies. She couldn’t make out anything being said yet, but something in the timbre of the voices made it very plain these were young people in good spirits, a family or group of friends partying a bit and…having a good time…in the woods. Which struck her as sort of strange, considering how nasty the weather had been until just a few minutes ago, and for other, murkier reasons she couldn’t quite pinpoint.