Horror Within : 8 Book Boxed Set Page 13

  “‘The Lady or the Tiger.’”

  “Or a remake ofPet Sematary.”

  “Might be more of them out there.”

  He grinned, despite himself. “How deep is your scientific curiosity?”

  She smiled. “As deep as my love for you.”

  He sighed. “Damn. Guess it’s our professional duty to check out Meat Camp.”

  “Either that or wait around here and see if this thing is contagious to humans and if we’re already infected.”

  “I always hoped I’d die in your arms. I just didn’t want it to be so soon.”

  “You’re so romantic.”

  “Nah. Just scared.”

  The scratching was high on the door. The dog whined in an awful snuffling way. Lewis felt bad for the dog. How could he not? They really ought to put it down.

  But wasn’t it already dead?

  The scratching stopped and Lewis started to turn the knob. Samantha touched his hand.

  THUNK. The door vibrated.

  They nodded at each other and left the door alone.

  - - -

  Sven still had his mind but it wasn’t doing much for him. He couldn’t appreciate the irony, but his mind thought only one thing over and over:Run.

  He panted for breath and sweated profusely. Branches had torn his shirt and cut him. He looked like he’d been attacked. That irony Svencould appreciate.

  He ran until a stabbing pain in his side got to be too much. He stopped, hands on his knees, and tried to listen as he sucked air. An owl hooted.

  “Fucking owls are for the birds,” he said between breaths.

  Up ahead, a battered outhouse with a crescent moon carving stood at an awkward angle, like the thing was sloping into the ground. Old Man Fraley’s shitter. Disgusting bastard.

  A twig snapped somewhere nearby. Sven stood, looked around. Another twig snap got him walking toward the outhouse. More twigs snapped and leaves crunched. He tried to look all around him simultaneously but he saw nothing. He walked faster and the snapping, crunching sounds grew louder and faster as well.

  He ran. Something pursued him. It cut through the brush, rapidly smashing through twigs and branches and over leaves and uneven ground.

  Sven’s heart thumped in his throat. He wasn’t going to make it; whatever was after him was going to get him and claw him open and eat him. He couldn’t die like that, like some defenseless animal. Like Pedro.

  Sorry, man. No hard feelings.

  The chasing footfalls came faster and faster, but he made it to the outhouse, flung open the door, stumbled in, and slammed the door shut. He fumbled with the flimsy latch and got it locked in place.

  He pressed his face against the door to peer through a knothole in the door. He didn’t see anyone out there. Whoever was chasing him had stopped somewhere just out of Sven’s sightline. Christ, he was going to have to stay in this stinking little closet indefinitely.

  Something moved behind him. He felt the presence even before he heard the slippery splash of slop falling to the floor.

  He turned slowly to face Wallace, who stood in the outhouse’s wooden toilet hole. Clumps of brown and green goo dripped down his face. His eyes shook in their sockets. The smell of feces was strong enough to make Sven cry. But maybe that wasn’t the only reason he was crying.

  Wallace reached for Sven, who couldn’t scream.

  Not even when Wallace bit off his nose.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The sheriff heard someone coming and paused in the dining hall doorway. He backed up a step and flexed his hand on his gun, still holstered. He drew it slowly, careful to conceal the whisper of steel on leather.

  He swallowed hard—chop chop—and swung out into the opening, aiming the barrel chest high.

  Eva Dean, Delphus, and Jenny stared at him for a moment. They looked like they’d been run through a car wash and scoured with wet sand. Jenny’s hair clung to her forehead in sweaty patches. She held her bow with an arrow ready to go.

  “Been there, done that,” the sheriff said.

  She lowered it. Almost reluctantly, he thought.

  He holstered his own weapon. “Saw some blood in here,” he said by way of explanation.

  “People are dying, Sherlock,” Delphus said.

  “No sign of Wallace. But there’s a good amount of blood around.”

  “Oh, my Lord,” Eva Dean said. “You’re hiding out in here when we’ve got at least two kids dead and several more missing? Not to mention one pinned to the climbing tower.”

  “I should get back to my radio and call for back-up.”

  “The radio’s out, remember?” Eva Dean said.

  Jenny stared around at them in something like distaste and stiffened. She made a move to enter the dining hall, but Hightower grabbed her arm. She batted it away easily. “Somebody’s got to take charge.”

  “You don’t want to see,” he said.

  She stared at him with surprising fierceness. “I know what I can handle.” She snatched the flashlight from him and pushed past him into the dining hall.

  “Sheriff?” Eva Dean asked, pointing to his gun. “You packing heat or does that thing fire blanks?”

  Just call me Firewood, his thoughts mocked.

  “We don’t know what we’re dealing with here, Eva Dean.”

  “I say we beat it back to the farmhouse,” Delphus said. “Wait it out there. It won’t be long until morning. At least there’s a gun that’ll actually get used.”

  Hightower opened his mouth and Jenny screamed from inside the dining hall.

  - - -

  The thing that was once Wallace ate greedily with hot entrails slopping all over his face and coating his body. Some pieces were slimy and some were chunky but everything tasted so sweet.

  Eat. Eat. Eat.

  The Wallace-thing chuckled.

  He didn’t remember his father at all. He didn’t remember much of anything. He even seemed to forget each bite as it went down, because the hunger didn’t go away.

  - - -

  Jenny had found Gregory’s mutilated corpse. She’d looked away immediately, dropping the flashlight in the process, but images of eviscerated flesh flashed through her head and she screamed again to try to push them away. It was almost as bad as what had happened to Mark.

  Eva Dean took the young woman in her arms and the sheriff grabbed the flashlight. So much for being a girl who knew what she could stand, he thought. But who could know something like this? Even after training and experience, he still could barely endure it.

  “Still think it’s animals, sheriff?” Eva Dean asked.

  From the kitchen, Booger called, “You folks want some sausage biscuits?”

  “I’m in,” Delphus said and moved toward the kitchen.

  “How can you eat after seeing something like that?” Jenny asked.

  “On the farm, we slaughter our own meat. Just like you folks seem to be doing over here.”

  “I better go call for an ambulance,” the sheriff said.

  “We’ll have to go back to the farmhouse,” Eva Dean said. “It’s the closest phone.”

  Delphus stopped in the kitchen doorway. “Hell yeah! Make that biscuit to go, my man.”

  - - -

  Robert swung a fireplace poker like a warrior testing the balance of a newly made sword.

  What a waste when there were guns. Stupid coward. Max held a loaded shotgun in his hands. He’d never fired a gun before but he wasn’t retarded. Point and shoot. Just like in business: get your target in your sights and take it down.

  Glass smashed outside. Max parted the curtain and looked out the window. Three boys were out there. One was smashing the windows on the old truck in the driveway. The other two fought over a headless, bleeding chicken. One of them was small and he appeared to have deep wounds in his abdomen.

  “Little sons of bitches,” Max said. “Vandalizing property that’s soon going to be mine.”

  “Looks like something is wrong with them.”
<
br />   “Great. Maybe they’re rabid like the goat is.”

  The goat was still out there, too. It walked the perimeter of the house and occasionally made its braying sound and galloped across the porch. It seemed to ignore the boys. Like birds of a feather.

  Max went to the front door. “Enough is enough.” That might not be his original phrasing, but it would sure as hell work as a Maxim.

  “Wait,” Robert said. He had moved to another window. “One of the boys is coming.”

  The little one with the bleeding stomach was walking up the porch steps. He’d left the other kid to ravage the chicken. Blood splattered as the kid walked, marking his path. One of his eyes had been gouged. A jelly clump stuck to his cheek.

  “Holy hell,” Max said. “These little bastards are zombies.”

  “But zombies aren’t real,” Robert said.

  “Tell that to the kid who’s eating his own fingers.”

  The goat suddenly came around the corner. It snarled and bleated and charged at the kid. Instead of being knocked down the steps, the kid snarled right back at the goat and tackled it. Boy and goat wrestled on the porch in an awkward, thumping mess.

  “How am I ever going to work this into my book?” Max whispered.

  The goat kicked and snapped its jaws but the kid knocked the goat’s head away and buried his teeth into the animal’s jugular. The goat howled and the kid tore out a chunk of tissue. Blood geysered across the windows.

  “It’s kids from the camp,’ Robert said. “They must have gone crazy.”

  “I don’t…,” Max said again. The shotgun felt very heavy.

  “Jenny is out there somewhere,” Robert said. “I have to go.”

  “I thought you weren’t porking her.”

  “It’s called ‘feelings’. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Damn right I wouldn’t.”Feelings only get in the way had been a Maxim for a long time.

  “Neither would your son.”

  How dare he say anything about Wallace? Before Max could put this little bootlicker in his place, Robert was past him and opening the door.

  “No, you fool,” Max yelled. “They’ll get in.”

  The crazy kid was gone from the porch and only the goat carcass remained. The one eating the chicken looked up. The chicken head glared out from his mouth. The other kid, probably older and definitely bigger, abandoned the truck and came toward them.

  “Got that shotgun ready?” Robert asked.

  Max tried to speak and couldn’t. The shotgun felt like it weighed three-hundred pounds. It sagged in his arms and he felt immediately, near-violently, like he was going to soil his tailored trousers.

  Robert stepped over the goat corpse and held the fire poker before him in both hands. The two boys approached.

  “You coming, Max?” Robert yelled, his voice quavering a little.

  Max stepped out on the porch as though he feared the whole structure would collapse beneath him. He hesitated before the goat and stepped over it. The thing bleated to life and chomped down on Max’s right foot.

  Max screamed, stumbled back, and fell. The goat snatched off Max’s shoe and chewed on it greedily. Its eye whirled in its socket. Its legs galloped through the air, seeking purchase.

  “Shoot it,” came a distant voice, and he realized it was Robert.

  “I . . . I . . .”

  One of the boys was almost at Robert, but Max couldn’t even yell a warning. But the footsteps gave the attack away, sneakers flapping on wood.

  Robert turned just in time as the kid lunged forward. Robert swung the fire poker andTWANKEDthe kid across the head. The kid’s head cracked sideways and he stumbled but he recovered easily. Before he could try to attack again, Robert drove the poker through the kid’s head. It pierced skull and brain in one quickthwonk.

  Robert yanked the poker free with an equally vilesloosh and the boy crumbled to the ground. The other kid hesitated, cocked its head sideways like a confused dog.

  “Come on, zombie scuzzballs,” Robert taunted. “You want some of this?”

  Though the kid showed no sign of fear or worry, he backed off and staggered around the side of the house. Max managed to get up and hobble down the steps on one unshod foot.

  “Damn, Robert. Where’d you learn that?”

  “Tarantino movies.”

  “Glad I hired you,” Max said. “I haven’t been impressed up to now, but I like a man who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty when there’s dirty work to be done. Maybe you should get the shotgun that’s in the truck.”

  “Oh yeah?” Robert said. “Didn’t seem to do you much good. I thought you didn’t like anyone messing with your Guccis.”

  Max couldn’t respond. He didn’t have the strength.

  Robert pointed. “They’re coming for us. Let’s get to the camp.”

  Robert started running down the driveway. Around the side of the house came the boy who had fled and the one who had torn out the goat’s throat. The mutants moved in tandem with a horrifying sense of determination about them. One of them trailed intestines behind, gleaming in the moonlight and the lights from the house. Bits of dirt and leaves stuck to the greasy coils.

  On the porch, the goat bleated and gnawed at the Gucci.

  Max ran after Robert. After a few steps, he dropped the shotgun and that helped him run faster, even with only one shoe.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  As they walked through the woods, Delphus tossed the biscuit back and forth between his hands. Hightower had told him to throw it away but Delphus wasn’t one to take kindly to authority. They were headed back to the farmhouse, to safe refuge, but he was the sheriff. He couldn’t be running scared like this. What would his buddies up north say?Chop chop. That’s what they’d say.You got castrated.

  Firewood’s lost his balls.

  “You run along,” the sheriff said. “I want to check something.”

  “Hmm,” Delphus said. “You got a pistol and this little lady’s got a bow and arrow. Which one would I put my chips on? Later, sheriff.”

  “Be careful,” Eva Dean said to him.

  “I’d be careful of that biscuit,” he said to Delphus. “Seriously. We don’t know where the infection came from.”

  “I wasn’t planning on living forever,” Delphus said. “Just till morning, if I’m lucky.”

  “We’re going to cut across the lake,” Eva Dean said. “It’ll be faster.”

  “Safer, too,” Hightower said. “Unless those red-eyed mucus midgets have grown fins.”

  “The canoes are by the dock.”

  Delphus finally took a good whiff of the biscuit and cringed. “Smells like mushrooms.”

  He flung it into the brush where a raccoon had been wobbling along. The animal investigated the biscuit.

  Ought to shoot it now, Hightower thought. The infection might be spreading into town already.

  “I’ll catch up soon.” Hightower kept his gun holstered and hurried on back to the camp’s bunkhouses.

  He made it back to Jenny’s cabin only to find Mark’s corpse was missing, save for a few scattered organs and blood splotches around the soiled blanket. Blood seemed to be everywhere. He should be documenting this. It was a crime scene, after all.

  “Damn, Hightower,” he said to himself. “You couldn’t find your diddler in the dark with both hands and a flashlight.”

  Outside, he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Hello! Anybody left on the premises who is not a flesh-eating nut case?”

  There was no response. Even so, he drew his revolver.

  Chop chop.

  - - -

  The reddish-gold sun was beginning its ascent somewhere behind the black ridges. The night had gone so quickly, like a dream. At least they’d be safe out on the water, even if they would be exposed. Jenny stood guard with bow and arrow ready as Delphus and Eva Dean slid a canoe into the water. Delphus waded into the water as Eva Dean and Jenny boarded. None of them spoke, as if speaking might somehow
invite danger.

  Once they were all three floating across the lake, with Delphus and Eva Dean working the paddles, it seemed safe to speak again.

  “There were twenty-two boys in camp,” Eva Dean said. “Not counting you and Mark.”

  “All the boys I seen are crazier than shithouse rats, only they got a taste for blood,” Delphus said. “Some kind of infection, I’d say. Like mad cow or rabies or that there chicken flu.”

  “But Mark and I didn’t go crazy.”

  “Something in the water, maybe?” Eva Dean asked.

  “Now you tell me, after I went and got wet.”

  “Food,” Jenny said. “Mark and I didn’t eat in the dining hall. All the boys did.”

  “Diseased biscuits?” Delphus said, thinking of the one he’d tossed to a raccoon. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  “Some say the Salem witch trials were caused by contaminated rye. Mass hallucinations.”

  “Hallucinations don’t bite,” Delphus said. He stopped paddling and rolled up one sleeve. Red bite marks swelled his flesh. “Hurts like a son of a bitch.”

  “Daddy. I hope it’s not infected.”

  “What if I turn into one of them?”

  Jenny held up the four arrows. “I’ll save one for you.”

  “That’s a comfort.”

  Delphus returned to paddling.

  - - -

  They couldn’t think, not rationally, yet they weren’t mindless, nomadic zombies. And they weren’t uncoordinated. They didn’t quite process what they were doing but they acted with apparent logic, though it was nothing more sophisticated than a clever predator stalking its prey.

  Pack mentality. Surround and kill.

  The Jamal-thing and the Billy-thing stood on the shore for a moment, shadows concealing them, and then they waded into the water and began to swim toward the canoe. Another boy, his name Boston, which was not a nickname but a real name given from druggy parents who, amusingly, had never been to Boston, worked with the Benny-thing to push a canoe into the water.

  Jamal was the only African-American kid in the camp, and ironically had been the horseshoe champ. Jamal had thought horseshoes was the whitest sport on Earth, except maybe polo. Even golf had been conquered by Tiger Woods, but it was hard to picture a similar cross-racial dominance in a sport largely associated with lots of cheap Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.