Undead (17 page)

Bert Miller had his eyes riveted to the television.

He had watched the interview with Sheriff McClellan and had scoffed at it. Now he was watching an interview with the pastor, Reverend Michaels, who, Bert thought, was speaking forcefully and intelligently. That morning, the Reverend had phoned a TV station, told them who he was, and confessed to having led a group of church members to the scene of the bus accident three days before and that it had been their intention to drive spikes into the skulls of all persons killed in the accident. He admitted that they had succeeded in spiking only thirteen of the dead before being frightened away by the arrival of police and ambulances, and it was clear, the Reverend pointed out, that those thirteen corpses must have been the ones that did not rise with the others who had risen and killed the morgue attendants.

“Yes, the dead are rising again,” Michaels was saying. “This is the work of the Devil, in his battle against God’s will. We live in a pagan society. We worship witchcraft and astrology and other forms of Satanism. Now we must call on the Lord to help us change our evil ways. No one wants to admit that what happened ten years ago is happening again. We try to hide the horrible events from our memory, finding them too terrible to accept.
But we cannot hide from the Devil
. Now he’s forcing us to face reality again. The dead must be spiked. The body must be permitted to return to dust, as the Lord intended. Only then can we rise, when the Lord calls us, on the Last Day. Only the soul is sacred—”

Sue Ellen jumped up from her chair and turned off the television.

Angrily, Bert reached for the knobs, yelling, “Now stay away from it!”

Sue Ellen stood in front of the set and confronted her father. “No…please,
please
leave it off. I can’t stand all that talk anymore. It’s all crazy. What you made us do—carrying all those dead bodies—I can’t stand it!”

Bert rushed toward his daughter, grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “Didn’t you hear what the Reverend said? It’s that plague comin’ back and we’ve all got to get ready for it. It’s the Devil’s work—and maybe we all deserve it!”

Sue Ellen began to cry. Annoyed, Bert looked around the living room, where some of the windows had been boarded up. He had been sawing and hammering and pounding all morning, while his daughters stayed in their rooms, too scared to come downstairs. Bert resented their not coming down and helping.

In a weak and hopeless voice, Sue Ellen pleaded with her father. “Daddy…please…I can’t stand all this. Why can’t we just leave the dead people alone?”

“Because they won’t leave us alone!” he bellowed. “That’s why! You didn’t see it ten years ago. I sent you away and you were lucky. But we’re not running from the Devil this time—we’re gonna stay and do our Christian duty!”

Still crying, Sue Ellen ran toward the kitchen as her two sisters entered the room and caught her in their arms. She squirmed free and ran up the stairs.

“Spoiled brat!” Bert yelled after her.

Ann shot a look at her father, begging him with her eyes to calm down.

In response Bert pointed an angry finger toward Karen. “Lookit your sister, knocked up by nobody knows who. If
she
knows, she sure ain’t tellin’. Probably some drug-crazy punk! Sometimes I’m glad your mother didn’t live to see it.”

Turning, trying to hide the tears in her eyes, Karen hung her head and moved toward the stairs. She was seventeen years old, with a plain, sad face that became almost pretty when it lit up with a smile. But there was very little to smile about these days. It was obvious that her child was due very shortly.

Ann, the eldest, was the most level-headed and the prettiest of Bert Miller’s daughters. Her hair was long and blond, carefully brushed and parted in the middle. She had deep blue eyes, a wide mouth and regular features. Many of the town’s young men were attracted to her, but she did not have a regular boyfriend because her father had succeeded in frightening away any that she liked. They rarely—if ever—asked her for a second date. Despite this, she loved her father, knew that in his strange way he loved his girls, and tried to understand him. But she knew that she would move away from him as soon as she was able.

She went over to her father and touched his arm lightly. “Daddy, please, it’s bad enough for Karen,” she said quietly.

Bert looked at Ann, not knowing what to say to her. Of all his daughters, she had always been the one most successful at getting him to do what she wanted. Rather than answering her, he let out his breath, picked up his claw-hammer from where he had left it on the seat of a chair, and went over to a barricaded window and began pounding. He drove two more nails into a heavy piece of lumber that had already been nailed to the window frame. Then he stooped to select another piece of wood, walked to another window, and began to board it up.

“Do you really believe it’ll happen again?” Ann asked him. The whole thing still seemed unbelievable to her. As a child, when the thing happened ten years ago, the aunt the three girls had stayed with had sheltered them from all the news about it. They had not been permitted to go outdoors or to listen to radio or TV broadcasts. Afterward there had been laws prohibiting the rehashing of the crisis; the excuses for this, whether proper or not, were that it would be morally and emotionally damaging to subject the populace to a repetition of the experience, that it was best to try to forget it, and that it was not likely to occur again.

“It’s happening all right,” Bert said, momentariIy stopping his hammering. “It was on the television just now, before your crazy sister turned it off.”

“It’s hard to believe,” Ann said.

“Maybe it’s hard,” Bert admitted ironically, “but you’ll believe it by and by. If we don’t get this house boarded up, the dead’ll be in after us. And if there’s enough of ’em, they’ll get in—boarded up or not.”

Bert turned back to the window and began pounding nails.

Ann ran upstairs to comfort her sisters. She found Karen in Sue Ellen’s room, watching as Sue Ellen threw clothes into an opened suitcase. Karen, sitting on the bed next to the suitcase, lifted up a tear-streaked face as Ann entered. Sue Ellen did not look up but continued packing with fierce concentration.

“Sue?” Ann said tentatively.

“I’m getting out,” Sue Ellen blurted. She pushed her hair back from her eyes, red and puffy from crying. She was not crying now but was on the verge of starting again. She came over to Ann and hugged her, and the tears came.

“Where will you go?” Ann said, holding her tightly and softly running her hand down her sister’s hair.

Sue Ellen stepped back and blotted her contorted face with a handkerchief. “I don’t know,” she sobbed. “I’m scared to stay here and I’m scared to go. But I think I’d rather go. Maybe into the city somewhere.”

“Aren’t you afraid of what they’ve been saying on the TV?”

Sue Ellen sank down onto the bed wearing only her panties and bra. She had taken off her old clothes and had not yet changed into the fresh ones she wanted to wear when she left. “I’m more afraid to stay here,” she said finally, and started to cry again as memories flooded her mind. “I thought I’d die—carrying those people through the woods. I wished I was one of them, so I wouldn’t have to do it. And I’m not going to do anything like that ever again. Daddy won’t be able to
make
me do it. In the city they have protection—I can hide somewhere and not have to face any of this till it’s over.” Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Maybe we should go too,” Karen said.

“No, I don’t think it’s right to go,” Ann said to Karen. “We can’t all leave Daddy now. He’s boarding up the house to protect us. We’ll be all right. Sue Ellen can go, but we two should stay here and help him.”

“Karen,” Sue Ellen said, “I know your baby will be beautiful.” The two sisters hugged each other tightly while Ann watched. Her eyes were also glistening with tears.

“What about Billy?” Ann asked. “Aren’t you at least going to tell him?”

Billy was Sue Ellen’s boyfriend, a fellow she had dated a few times against her father’s wishes but with his grudging approval. Things were not serious between her and Billy. They had known each other too short a time. They had a good time together and she was beginning to care for him, but did not feel seriously committed yet.

“I don’t know what to tell Billy,” Sue Ellen said. “If we had a telephone I could call him. I’ve got to get out. Maybe I can write to him…or something.” Having finished her packing, she slammed shut her suitcase and went to her chest of drawers to begin putting on fresh clothes.

Her sisters watched Sue Ellen get ready. They did not like to lose her but both felt it would only be temporary and might even work out for the best.

Excerpt from a Civil Defense broadcast:

“…AUTHORITIES ADVISE UTMOST CAUTION UNTIL THE MENACE CAN BE BROUGHT UNDER ABSOLUTE CONTROL. EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS HAVE BEEN INVESTIGATED AND DOCUMENTED. CORPSES OF VANQUISHED AGGRESSORS ARE PRESENTLY BEING EXAMINED BY MEDICAL PATHOLOGISTS, BUT AUTOPSY EFFORTS HAVE BEEN HAMPERED BY THE MUTILATED CONDITION OF THE BODIES. SECURITY MEASURES INSTITUTED IN METROPOLITAN AREAS INCLUDE ENFORCED CURFEWS AND SAFETY PATROLS BY ARMED PERSONNEL.

“CITIZENS ARE URGED TO REMAIN IN THEIR HOMES. THOSE WHO IGNORE THIS WARNING EXPOSE THEMSELVES TO INTENSE DANGER, BOTH FROM THE AGGRESSORS THEMSELVES, AND FROM ARMED CITIZENRY, WHOSE IMPULSE MAY BE TO SHOOT FIRST AND ASK QUESTIONS LATER. RURAL OR OTHERWISE ISOLATED DWELLINGS HAVE MOST FREQUENTLY BEEN THE OBJECTIVE OF FRENZIED, CONCERTED ATTACK. ISOLATED FAMILES ARE IN EXTREME DANGER. EVACUATION ATTEMPTS SHOULD BE MADE IN HEAVILY ARMED GROUPS, AND BY MOTORIZED VEHICLES IF POSSIBLE.

“APPRAISE YOUR SITUATION CAREFULLY BEFORE DECIDING UPON AN ESCAPE TACTIC. FIRE IS AN EFFECTIVE WEAPON. THESE BEINGS ARE HIGHLY FLAMMABLE. EVACUEES SHOULD STRIKE OUT FOR THE NEAREST URBAN COMMUNITY. MANNED DEFENSE OUTPOSTS HAVE BEEN ESTABLISHED ON MAJOR ARTERIES LEADING INTO ALL COMMUNITIES. THESE OUTPOSTS ARE EQUIPPED TO DEFEND REFUGEES AND TO OFFER FOOD AND MEDICAL ASSISTANCE. POLICE AND VIGILANTE PATROLS ARE IN THE PROCESS OF COMBING REMOTE AREAS IN SEARCH-AND-DESTROY MISSIONS AGAINST ALL AGGRESSORS. THESE PATROLS ARE ATTEMPTING TO EVACUATE ISOLATED FAMILIES. BUT RESCUE EFFORTS ARE PROCEEDING SLOWLY, DUE TO THE INCREASED DANGER AT NIGHT AND THE SHEER ENORMITY OF THE TASK.

“RESCUE, FOR THOSE IN THE ISOLATED AREAS, IS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT. IF EVACUATION IS IMPOSSIBLE, HOWEVER, STAY IN YOUR HOME AND WAIT FOR A RESCUE TEAM. DO NOT GO OUT ALONE. IF YOU ARE FEW AGAINST MANY, YOU WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY BE OVERCOME. THE AGGRESSORS ARE IRRATIONAL AND DEMENTED. THEIR SOLE URGE IS THEIR QUEST FOR HUMAN FLESH.

“THE RANKS OF THE AGGRESSORS ARE CONSTANTLY BEING SWELLED BY FRESH VICTIMS OF THE AGGRESSORS THEMSELVES AND BY THOSE WHO HAVE DIED DURING THIS EMERGENCY, WITH ITS CATASTROPHIC RATE OF MORTALITY DUE TO CHAOS, ACCIDENT, AND THE TURNING OF PEOPLE AGAINST EACH OTHER OUT OF FEAR.

“THE CURRENT RAMPAGE OF LAWLESSNESS IS INCREASING THE NUMBERS OF THE AGGRESSORS AND HAMPERING THE EFFORTS OF LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONNEL WHO ARE TRYING TO BRING THE MENACE UNDER CONTROL…”

After a final, tearful goodbye to Karen and Ann, Sue Ellen, in stocking feet, tiptoed downstairs with her suitcase and stopped, peeking around the landing.

Bert Miller sat dozing in an armchair, his hammer, saw, and tin of nails beside him on the floor. The living-room windows, all four of them, were boarded solid and the front door was bolted shut. Bert had further secured the door by means of heavy iron brackets and wooden bars, top, bottom and center. The iron brackets were screwed into the door-frame very solidly and the wooden bars, twice as big as two-by-fours, were slotted into the brackets so they would prevent any but the most insistent force from battering down the door, but could be removed easily to permit the occupants of the house to enter or exit.

Afraid to risk tiptoeing past her father and not wanting to disturb the barred door, Sue Ellen looked toward the kitchen. Its two windows and one door had been permanently boarded shut by heavy nails driven into thick wooden planks. The kitchen offered no exit, and the house had no basement. Sue Ellen realized that her father had done much toward making the downstairs impregnable. She thought he probably figured he could defend the upstairs against the slim chance that any aggressors could find a way to get in up there; or else he planned to board the upstairs windows later.

Sue Ellen thought of going upstairs and asking one of her sisters to follow her back down and bolt the front door after she’d left. She wondered if they could do it quietly enough. Just then, Bert stirred on the chair, and Sue Ellen was afraid of losing her opportunity to escape by not taking immediate advantage of her father’s being asleep. She knew she’d have to risk letting herself out, somehow, and besides, she did not want to get either of her sisters in trouble. She knew her father would be furious at her leaving, and she didn’t want to make things even more difficult for Ann and Karen. She waited on the landing until her father was snoring loudly once again, then she crept softly to the door and, holding her breath and terrified of dropping the heavy beams as she lifted each one from its bracket, unbolted it. She considered it a miracle that her father did not awaken, and quickly stepped onto the porch. She pulled the door shut carefully, pulling slowly and praying with all her heart that it wouldn’t creak. Finally, the metal tongue clicked into its slot and she let out her breath in relief. Still afraid that the click had awakened him, she ran down the front stairs, took her shoes from her bag, slipped them on, and ran across the front yard to the dirt road. Her father seemed to be sleeping very soundly and she hoped she would have a good head start before he woke and noticed the beams stacked on the floor next to the door if the girls hadn’t replaced them. Panting, she kept running until she rounded a bend in the road and could no longer see the house.

It was near dusk. In less than an hour it would probably be dark—pitch dark—Sue figured, because the sky was overcast and the air smelled damp. She tried to remember what she had heard about the expected weather. She felt terribly alone suddenly, as the weight of the decision to leave home washed over her. For just a moment, as she walked down the dusty road, she considered changing her mind and going home. She kept thinking of Karen’s expected baby. But then she had the image of her father waking up as she returned to the house with her suitcase, and that scream fest was too terrible to think about. Fighting back tears she kept walking.

It was about a mile hike from the Miller farm to the highway, and Sue Ellen guessed she would try to flag down a bus or, if she got lucky, maybe she’d catch a ride into town with someone who knew her. The town, Willard, was six miles northeast of the intersection of the dirt road with the two-lane blacktop highway. Now that Sue Ellen considered it, her chances of getting a ride into Willard did not seem good, especially with the rapid approach of darkness. The thought of walking the six miles on the highway by herself panicked her, though she had done it several times in the daylight with her sisters. Once again, she considered going back and could not keep her thoughts from the farmhouse. But she kept going.

Stretching down the long valley away from the house was a six-acre field where Bert Miller had planted corn. Trampling and breaking the young cornstalks in their awkwardness and single-mindedness, three humanoid forms made their way toward the house, attracted by the faint slashes of light from the boarded-up windows and—perhaps—the smell of live flesh emanating from within.

In the cornfield, the obsessed creatures stopped moving, as if they found it painful to move and difficult to sustain any rapid movement. In the pale light of dusk their skin appeared greenish-white, almost luminescent. They were ragged, disheveled, their clothing torn and caked with blood. Each had been wounded gravely enough to have caused his death. They appeared to have been victims of an automobile accident. Two had faces smashed and disfigured, foreheads gashed, bits of glass embedded in their cheeks as would be the result of having been thrown against or through an automobile windshield; the third had a large hole in his chest and a shirtfront bloody and oozing secretions from internal organs, the probable result of sudden impact against a steering column. These were dead beings, who had been human, animated now by a force beyond normal comprehension, driven by a lust for live human flesh.

As they stood silently, one of the creatures turned its body, slowly, painfully, to look behind the group.

Three more humanoids were approaching, catching up, making their way through the cornfield. They moved stiffly, awkwardly. One had an arm and part of its face missing, and seemed to be grinning through teeth stained with blood. It stumbled and fell suddenly, smashing cornstalks to the ground with a horrible crackling noise, then flailed around and made a hissing, groaning sound until it pulled itself to its feet. Its companions had gone ahead, moving with great effort and seeming concentration, toward the Bert Miller farmhouse, its lights showing in the distance.

In her upstairs bedroom, Ann was comforting Karen, trying to convince both herself and her sister that Sue Ellen would do all right on her own, that the farmhouse would be safe, that the baby would be born and everything would work out somehow.

“I’m
the one who should have left,” Karen said, crying. “Me with a baby! I should be some place close to a hospital!”

“You
are
close to a hospital,” Ann insisted. “Ten minutes away. When the labor pains begin, Daddy will drive you into Willard in the pick-up truck. Maybe we’ll
all
go if it’s not safe here. Daddy won’t want the baby to be in danger.”

“I think he’d rather see the baby dead!” Karen said, and began to cry again.

“That’s not true!” Ann retorted. “You’ll see, Karen. When the baby is born, Daddy will be a proud grandfather.”

“I hope the baby comes soon,” Karen sobbed, seeing its birth as a way to escape the farmhouse.

Suddenly there was a noise from outside, the sound of footsteps on the front porch.

The two girls listened. They heard the door open.

“Sue Ellen’s back!” Karen cried happily, her face suddenly brightening through her tears.

Ann jumped up smiling, but the smile froze on her face and her eyes caught her sister’s as terrible screams echoed from the downstairs.

“Karen! You stay here! Lock the door after I leave!” Ann yelled, and left her sister, almost paralyzed with fear, cowering in the bedroom as she slammed the door and ran down the stairs.

She reached the landing in time to see her father being torn apart. Three ghoulish figures were on him. His screams had stopped. The hideous things were chewing at his face, his arms, tearing and digging at the soft flesh of his stomach to get at the organs inside. One of Bert Miller’s eyes stared wide at the ceiling; the socket of the other eye was empty, gushing fluid and blood.

Ann’s scream stuck in her throat. A ghoul chewing a mouthful of flesh looked up at her, almost with an air of curiosity, as she staggered backward, loosing the earsplitting scream that at first had refused to come out. The ghoul got to its feet and started after Ann as she got her weak legs moving. Legs feeling like jelly, she scrambled and fell up the stairs, threw herself against the bedroom door and found it locked.

“Karen!
Karennn!”

The blood covered creature reached the landing, its face hideous in the glare of light from a naked bulb in the hallway.

Karen got the door unbolted and Ann rushed inside. She bolted the door, stood panicked for a moment then flung herself to the other side of the room to try and move a heavy dresser against the door. She looked at Karen, almost ready to ask her to help before realizing through her terror that she could expect almost no help from the pregnant girl. The dresser refused to budge. Outside, the flesh-hungry thing had begun beating with its fists against the bedroom walls. And there were the sounds of more footsteps on the stairs.

Ann tugged and struggled even harder vvith the heavy dresser; it moved a few inches. Karen came over, her face numbed and contorted, and weakly took hold of a corner of the dresser, going through the motions of trying to help. Ann began tearing out the dresser drawers, throwing them on the bed, trying to lighten the task of sliding the piece of furniture across the floor.

The bedroom door was beginning to give. Strangely, horrifyingly, the heavy steel bolt was holding, but the door itself was beginning to come apart, its wood splintering under the hail of blows from the creatures outside. The increasing force of the hammering and battering of many fists was destroying the door itself.

The dresser began to slide again, moving a few more inches, then slammed into a wall. Ann could not angle it around the bed.

Karen screamed, throwing herself to the floor, trying to force her swollen body under the bed. The thought leaped into her head that the ghouls might drag Ann away and leave her alone so that she and her baby might survive—a terrible nightmarish idea that she was instantly ashamed of having thought. But all she wanted to do was survive. She could not keep her body from shaking as she crawled further and further under the bed.

Ann backed herself against the jammed dresser, trying to force herself between it and the back wall, as the incessant pounding continued against the splintered door. Through the din Ann thought she heard the loud crack of a gunshot. Then a flurry of gunshots. And the distant wailing of a police siren and the churning of tires on dirt and gravel, getting louder as the siren died. Tears streamed down her face. Perhaps they would live through this hell on earth.