The Late Night Horror Show (38 page)

Her last sight of the proud vampire was of him standing like that, watching his bride fly away into the night, forever lost to him now. It was the right thing, what had to happen, she knew that. Yet still it tore at her. Kira clutched at Monroe’s arm and buried her face against his shoulder, spilling tears of sorrow and regret.

And yet she also felt something very close to happiness.

Monroe was with her again.

Sometimes,
she thought,
we really do get the happy endings we deserve.

There hadn’t been many zombies in the area right around the cineplex in those first confused moments after their arrival in this world, and fortunately that was still the case. Brix spied a handful of staggering mobile corpses as they came screeching into the parking lot, but the living dead presence here was nowhere near as thick as what they had so narrowly eluded down by the university. In fact, it seemed as if there were significantly fewer present than she remembered from earlier. Brix suspected many of the more agile zombies in the area had attempted to pursue them and had simply not returned, because why would they? There was no more food to be had here. Well…not until now.

She spared the burned-out hulk of her truck a quick glance as she sped toward the cineplex. It again struck her as odd that it was there at all. Or that Jason’s car had been here. She and Jason were not from this world, so it made no sense. Unless they had counterparts here, natives to this world whose lives were mirror images of their own, and some reason other than seeing a movie had brought them to this place at the onset of a zombie apocalypse. Or maybe the presence of the vehicles had something to do with their proximity to the dimensional-shifting event and because of some kind of mystical link between humans and their possessions. She guessed either explanation was possible, even as tenuous as they seemed, but she pushed the question from her mind because there was a larger issue to contend with now.

She guided the Firebird to a stop at the curb outside the theater and glanced at Jason. “You ready for this?”

He grunted. “Not really. But fuck it, you’re right. What else are we gonna do?”

Brix twisted in her seat to look at Ben, whose wary expression told her he still believed he was riding with a couple of world-class whack jobs. “Good luck to you, Ben. And sorry for the detour. We wouldn’t have gotten this far without you.”

Ben’s expression turned sour again. “Still don’t get what you’re hoping to accomplish here.” He waved a hand at the boarded-up old theater. “If it’s a hideout you’re after, there’s got to be better places. Not sure you’re even gonna be able to get in there.”

“You got a tire iron or crowbar in your trunk? Anything we could maybe use to pry off those boards?”

“Yeah. And you can have it. But this is suicide. Ain’t many of those things around just now, but could be that’d change in the time it’d take you to get into that dump.”

“It’s a chance we’ll have to take.”

Ben shifted in his seat and swiveled his head side to side for a quick survey of the living dead presence in the vicinity. Still weren’t many around, but a few had turned in their direction and had drawn marginally closer, though the closest was still dozens of yards away.

Now he looked at Brix again. “We’ve got a little leeway here, looks like. A little time. So I’d like to hear the real reason behind this and all the weird shit you’ve been talking. I think you owe me some kind of explanation. And before you say a word, I don’t want to hear anything but the no-bullshit truth. I don’t care how crazy it is.”

Brix exchanged another glance with Jason. He didn’t say anything, but she felt certain his tired, resigned expression mirrored her own feelings. Ben was right. He had saved her life more than once tonight. She owed him an explanation. A true one, even if it accomplished nothing other than confirming his doubts about their sanity.

She glanced through the rear window to appraise the closest zombie. It was a female in a hospital gown and it was still moving at a pace not even a snail would envy. No real danger there. At least not yet.

She looked at Ben. “You remember me talking about my boyfriend back at the bar, right? Well…earlier tonight, like hours and hours ago, we came out here to meet some of his friends for a movie…”

Ben listened to the quickly related tale with a careful expression that betrayed nothing. When she had finished bringing him up to speed, he let out a tired breath and rubbed at his eyes before saying, “Well, that is definitely some crazy shit you just told me.”

Brix shrugged. “I told you—”

He laughed, cutting her off. “But it ain’t any crazier than zombies overrunning the whole goddamn world. Listen…let’s say you’re not crazy at all. I mean, let’s just suppose. And if what you say is true…and
if
you can get into this place and somehow figure a way back to your world…what do you think the chances are of taking me back there with you?”

Now Jason turned in his seat to look at Ben. “Slim and fucking none, brother, most likely.”

Brix didn’t say anything at all. She suspected Jason was right, but she had no way of knowing one way or the other.

Ben stared at the hands folded in his lap for a moment, nodding to himself as he mulled it all over. Then he looked at them, a small, fatalistic smile touching the edges of his mouth. “Back the car up.”

Brix frowned. “What?”

“Back the fucking car up, girl.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re rammin’ it right through the front of that fucking theater.
That’s
why.”

Now Brix was smiling, too. “Right on.”

She turned away from him and got settled behind the wheel again. She glanced at Jason. He nodded and reached for his seat belt. That struck her as a good idea, considering what they were about to attempt. She got strapped in and heard Ben doing the same in the back. Then she put the car in reverse, put the gas pedal to the floorboard, and sent the car rocketing backward halfway across the lot. There was a loud
thump
as the Firebird’s rear end sent the
 
hospital gown-clad zombie sliding across pavement.

Brix moved the gearshift to the slot marked
D
.

She looked at Jason again and reached across the seat to clasp hands with him. “Sorry about wasting your girlfriend earlier.”

Jason shook his head and clutched her hand tightly for a moment. “Sorry she wasted your boyfriend. Maybe this isn’t the right time to bring it up, but maybe if we make it through this, we could, like, go out or something.”

She smiled and gave his hand a final squeeze. “It’s a date.”

She faced forward again and stared at the boarded-up building. “Here we come, motherfuckers.”

“Ready or not,” Jason chimed in.

“Yee-haw” was Ben’s contribution from the back.

It sounded sort of sarcastic, but in a good-humored way. Which was amazing in light of all they had been through. And in light of the overwhelming evidence of death, chaos, and destruction all around them. But Brix guessed that sometimes you had to laugh in the face of darkness in order to keep it from consuming you.

She let out a breath.

Tightened her grip on the steering wheel.

And put the gas pedal all the way down again.

Brix kept smiling, even as her body instinctively braced for impact. The theater’s boarded-up entrance loomed large within seconds. In another second the car’s wheels bounced over the curb, rocking them violently in their seats. And then they were all screaming as the car’s front end smashed through the entrance and into the darkness beyond.

This is it,
John thought.
My moment of truth.

Tears brimmed in his eyes as he started down the stairs to the garishly lit cellar below. But the tears weren’t for him or for his own life, which he knew for certain was in its last moments.

I’m sorry, Marie.

Sorry I killed you.

Sorry you didn’t find a man truly worthy of you.

Sorry for everything.

The immense sorrow added additional fuel to his rage as he neared the bottom of the stairs. Heidi’s face was a mask of shock as she knelt over her brother’s lifeless body.

Good.

I hope it hurts, bitch.

Hope it hurts like
hell
.

He raised the gun and started shooting.

Lashon was astounded by what Johnny had accomplished. The guts it took to have gotten himself this far was beyond comprehension. The man was a fucking hero. His dramatic reappearance reignited her hope for a single exhilarating moment.

Until he started shooting.

She couldn’t fault him for trying to take out Heidi immediately. But, thanks to his injuries, his hold on the gun was awkward at best. Heidi scampered away from him as the first few shots missed and the slugs ricocheted off the cellar’s concrete walls. One passed through the skull of the unfortunate young man in the
Basket Case
T-shirt, sending a spray of brains out the back of his head. Lashon did the only thing she could do with bullets bouncing around in the closed space—she curled into a tight, quivering ball and hoped no stray fragments of lead would come ripping through her flesh.
 

When she opened her eyes again, Heidi was over by the shelves containing the gruesome jars of pickled body parts and shriveled organs. Johnny hobbled closer to her and tried to steady his aim for a more effective shot. Heidi reached into one of the compartments and pulled out a jar containing what looked like a brain. She raised it over her head and heaved it at him just as he finally managed to squeeze off another shot. The bullet nicked her shoulder and sent her crashing backward into the shelves.

Unfortunately for Johnny, Heidi’s aim had been true as well. The big glass jar hit him square in the face and exploded on impact. He screamed and dropped the gun as he fell to his knees, swiping clumsily at his eyes with his mutilated hands. There were shards of glass embedded in his flesh, including a large fragment protruding from one of his eyes. He had been at least temporarily blinded.

Heidi unleashed a scream of rage and frustration as she braced her hands against the shelves behind her. She pushed herself away from the shelves with sufficient force to cause several more jars to come crashing to the floor, where they shattered and spilled their sickening contents. Blood was leaking from the hole gouged across the top of Heidi’s shoulder, but Lashon was crushed to realize it was nothing like a fatal wound. Poor Johnny. He had tried so hard, struggled so valiantly…all for nothing.

Lashon knew she should make a grab for the gun. But she was still too weakened and was too far away. Heidi snatched it up within seconds and started screaming again as she aimed it at Johnny’s bleeding face. The words spewing forth from her mouth were too shrill to understand. She nonetheless clearly had some choice things to tell Johnny, regardless of whether the poor bastard could understand her through her molten rage. Lashon hoped the bitch would keep up the verbal assault a while longer yet. Because though the gun was lost to her, something else was not.

Blaine’s body had landed almost within grabbing range.

She eyed the cleaver in the back of his head with an intensity of focus that cut cleanly through her pain. She coveted that goddamn cleaver. Wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything else. She summoned what remained of her strength and crawled closer to the body. Her hand closed around its handle just as Heidi’s screaming was reaching its apparent apex. She gave it a savage yank and it came loose with a grind of splintering bone. In the same instant, the boom of the gun resounded in the cellar again and Lashon didn’t need to see what had happened to know her hero was finally dead.

I’ll do her for you, Johnny,
she thought.
I fucking promise.

She got to her feet with a howl of pain and took a lurching step toward Heidi. A glance at Johnny’s supine form, dead on the floor—with a growing pool of blood spreading out around his head—enraged her enough to return her strength to near-normal levels. She took a steadier step toward Heidi and began to raise the cleaver.

Heidi laughed. “Stupid bitch. You’re done for and don’t even know it.” She raised the gun again and aimed it point-blank at Lashon’s face. “Goodbye, whore.”

She squeezed the trigger.

Click.

Her expression of insane glee slowly faded, giving way to a frown as she stared at the gun. But she kept it aimed at Lashon and squeezed the trigger again.

Click.

Click, click, click.

“Empty.” Lashon smiled. “Used your last bullet on a blind man. Who’s the stupid bitch now, you fucking cunt?”

Heidi dropped the gun.

She shook her head in dismay and held her hands up. “No. Please.”

Lashon kept smiling. “That’s right. Beg.”

Heidi whimpered and took a step backward. “Please.”

“Good, good. Keep it up. Maybe I’ll be merciful.”

With her next backward step, Heidi’s foot landed on something big and slimy that might have been some poor dead bastard’s diseased liver. Her mouth opened in a big surprised O as her feet went out from under her and she went crashing to the glass-strewn floor.