A few minutes later, Erica was stepping away from the shattered cocoon, padding barefoot toward the stairs. Her bare skin was covered in grime and goosebumps. She placed one foot on the lower riser and stopped as her eye caught on something. A small pyramid of old paint cans squatted behind the stairs. At their base, a smaller can. She glanced over her shoulder. Multiple pairs of cotton eyes stared back, but made no movement. She caught the smell now: rot, sugar, slime and damp. She reached through the risers and grabbed the little can. She brushed the dust off the ancient label but her nose already told her what was inside. Paint thinner.
Erica found the kitchen empty and dark save for the single fluorescent strip over the sink. That little fucker with the gun must have left it on when he brought her here. Where was he now? She shuddered thinking of his hands on her naked skin. The house was utterly silent except for her breathing and the thunder of her pulse. She found a rag hanging over the handle of the oven door. She opened the refrigerator and found a mostly empty bottle of white wine. She smiled. It was fancy grape juice not wine. She emptied it into the sink and then poured in the paint thinner. She scowled at the rag then splashed some of the paint thinner—the fumes making her grimace—onto the rag before stuffing one end of it into the neck of the bottle. There: her very first Molotov cocktail. Wouldn’t Mama be proud?
She grabbed the box of matches (Diamond Head – Strike Anywhere!) and scratched one against the counter. The smell of sulfur flared in her nose as light flared from the single flame. It resonated with what she held in her belly. This would be for her and for George. Another smell came to her then, overpowering the match. The stink of damp rot and cold flowed over her shoulders. A riser creaked behind her. Erica spun around to find a man in his early thirties with dark, close cropped hair. He was huge, at least six and half feet tall and damn near half as much across the chest. His thick, muscular neck showed a ragged wound as if it had burst open from the inside. His eyes were blanks. He reached for her with powerful hands, grass stains on his fingers and lines of black dirt under his nails.
The match burned her finger and Erica gave the luckiest flinch of her life. She made to bat out the flame with her other hand, but it was full of Molotov cocktail. The guttering match caught the rag and it burst into bright flame. Erica let out a, “Whoa!” and backed up a step, holding the bottle out in front of her. The wasp man advanced a step, his fingers flexing. He meant to take her back into the dark.
“No! No more!” she shouted and threw the bottle at his head. It connected and shattered. Liquid flame cascaded over his face and shoulders and within seconds his entire torso was engulfed. A black column of acrid smoke pounded the ceiling and spread out. The wasp man still stood but couldn’t seem to find Erica through the flames. She grabbed a chair from the kitchen table like a lion tamer. This was her only shot. Erica screamed, roared and charged him. She powered into him and he tumbled down the stairs, a pin wheeling torch. Erica noticed the latch on the cellar door. She slammed and locked it. “Burn, you fucks!”
No more screwing around. She bolted for the front door. A slim door stood off to one side. Coat closet? She took a moment to wrench it open and there was the ubiquitous raincoat that all flashers must wear when streaking out into the haunted Appalachian night. She was just zipping it up when the paint cans at the bottom of the stairs exploded, shattering the glass in all the front windows. It felt like a giant had picked up the house a few feet and dropped it back down again. Erica grabbed the front doorknob and yanked it open. George Rhodes stood there, the real George Rhodes.
Neither of them said anything for a moment and then they both said, “Oh.”
Chapter 36
The Victorian burned and the little group of survivors watched it from across the street. The lawn was long and the street was wide, but the heat made it almost intolerable. George stood behind Erica, gently draped around her. She leaned into him, but kept watch on the house. She half expected them to come crawling out, writhing in fire, but unstoppable. There were flames in her eyes. George muttered quietly in her ear, explaining everything, holding nothing back. She listened and nodded. Nothing was impossible in this strange place, not after what she’d seen. She could feel a part of her mind ranting, counter arguing, attempting control over these insanities, but let it be. By the time George got to the part about the spider and the dragon that rational voice sounded as if it came from down a long hall.
The fire licked along the old wood siding, outlining the gutters and belching windows. The intricate gingerbread and molding stood out in flickering relief. About twenty minutes after Erica and George ran from the front steps, the glowing roof collapsed with a deep fwoom! Childe Howard looked at Will and asked, “What should we do now?”
Every face turned to Will. For a moment he felt pushed at, angry. He wanted to say How the fuck should I know? Instead he let his mind run over the available data. “Erica,” he asked, “how many of those, uh, people were down there?”
George hugged her a little tighter. “I’m not sure,” she said. “There could have been almost twenty of them, but about half of those honeycomb cells were empty.”
Will nodded, considered. “Okay, to be safe we gotta assume we’re dealing with about twenty to twenty-five more of them.”
“That doesn’t add up,” George said. “Remember Will? We just talked about how there were no more than thirty-three people even left in Shard. We saw three get taken out at the Howard’s house, you took down Rick Becket over at the Jean’s and their psycho kid’s all trussed up in the movie theatre. That’s five down from thirty-three right there, leaving twenty-eight. If Erica torched close to twenty of them that leaves less than ten.”
Will shook his head. “No. I’m pretty sure that leaves more like twenty-four.”
“But—”
Will held up his hand. “You remember when I had to go out of town to help the Sheriff a little while back with those migrants? There were fourteen of them and they’d all been killed. Eyes were whited out when we found ‘em.” He looked at his Chucks and shook his head. “Jesus, one of them bust out his own throat. Trying to get the wasp, I guess.”
Erica looked up.
“Anyway,” Will continued, “they all disappeared from the morgue. My guess is they came on down here.”
Loraine got an image of fourteen souls shambling through the woods at night, making their ponderous way to Shard. “It’s so lonely,” she said.
“What?” Will asked.
“Nothing, Constable. You were saying there were closer to twenty-four of them left?”
“Right, yeah. So, what I think we need to figure out is…” He trailed off, head cocked. “You all hear that?”
Kiddo said, “Is that—?”
A motorcycle rumbled around the corner five blocks up the street. The single headlight lanced through the dark and picked them out like deer in a field.
“It’s here,” Will said. “It’s the Pompiliad.”
The engine revved, staccato and echoing off the dark houses.
George hissed, “Fuck do we do?”
“Run!” Will shouted, already moving around the front of the big Jeep. “Go! Get in your car and head to the jail. It’s the safest place. George, Erica, you’re with me.”
Loraine nodded and sprinted toward the Subaru, grabbing her son by the elbow as she went. Kiddo picked up the pace and Darwin zipped along ahead of them. The cyclopean headlight disfigured their shadows on the pavement in front of them. Loraine had her keys out and ready. No fumbling at the ignition while the monster drew down on them like those idiots in the movies. She slammed into the driver’s seat, heard Childe thunk shut his door and laid a respectable strip of rubber on the pavement. “Okay, Kiddo?” she asked as she rounded the corner and floored it.
“Yeah,” he said, panting. “Yeah, I’m okay. So’s Darwin.” Childe twisted in the seat. “I don’t think it’s behind us anymore.”
“Good.” Loraine took a left on Main.
Chi
lde looked up and down the street. Constable Will’s Jeep burst out of a side street and came to a rocking halt in front of the jail. He was just able to catch one of the doors opening before the Subaru went over a little rise in the road and he lost sight of them. “Mom, we gotta go the other way. The jail’s back there.”
Loraine’s face was lit from below by dashboard werelight. She looked as stern as a statue of a saint. “Not us, honey boy. We’re splitsville.”
“But what about George and Will and Erica? We can’t leave them!”
“We can and we are. We did more than our part by helping find Erica.” She saw the stop sign that marked the end of Main Street and the beginning of the two-lane feeder road that wound along the creek and through the mountains to civilization. They were a scant two hours from arc sodium lights and bad food. Solid things. “We’ll call the police and send them back to Shard when we get to the first real town.”
“But the Wasp Man’s going to kill them, Loraine! For fuck’s sake!”
Loraine’s shoulders dropped a little. It wasn’t his curse or that he made her feel guilty. Nothing about getting her son away from that bedlam could make her feel like anything less than mother of the year. What got her was the adultness of it. Little Childe Howard, her honey boy, had aged into something like manhood in the space of a few hours. She’d protected his physical body—he didn’t have a scratch on him—but his innocence was toast. She sighed, “Constable Will can take care of himself.”
She stopped at the intersection. Front: deep woods that plunged down to a black water stream. Right: one of the old mining roads, single lane gravel track that led into the hills, tall green weeds fringing its crown. Left: gravel bled into two-lane blacktop, the faded double yellow line stretched into the night. Loraine began to turn and stopped as the headlights pushed back the dark. Childe whispered, “Uh-oh.”
Walkers, at least six or seven of them. Loraine recognized the Dalton’s boy’s parents. Everyone called them The Pair of Jeans. They were lugging a piece of rusted pipe across the road—no, it was an old transaxle from a car or a pick-up truck. (Loraine was no engineer or mechanic but guessed that thing had to weigh five hundred pounds.) There was that nice old lady who ran Shard’s pathetic excuse for a general store, Meg Tooley. Her long gray hair swung down in her face as she bent over and dragged a fallen tree, the root ball trailing clods of fresh dirt. Jesus, had she pulled that out of the ground? It was as big as a streetlight. A few more were blocking the road with various detritus from town or the woods.
“Mom,” Kiddo whispered. “What do we do?”
Loraine was already slotting the gear selector into R. The back-up lights sprayed illumination behind them and her hopes of getting back to the jail died. Four or five more of them had already blocked the road behind her. One of them, she couldn’t tell who, was pushing an old car all by himself. There were no tires. He had his fish white hands splayed on the back bumper and his back arched so deeply that his belly nearly dragged the ground. His plaid shirt had come untucked and in the dim light Loraine made out the shine of an appendix scar.
She threw the car in D and thanked whatever gods were getting their jollies messing this hard with them that Subaru made cars with all-wheel drive. She sprayed gravel as they bounced to the right and up the mining road into the labyrinth. After about thirty yards, the trees ate the sky and the only sound was the hum of the engine, the pop of gravel under their tires and the hiss of the weedy strip caressing the undercarriage. Loraine hoped that one of these roads branched off and would lead them back to the feeder road by some other route, or even over the ridge and onto another road.
After a few minutes of quiet, Childe said, “You know they made us go this way, right?”
For about half a second, she felt like smacking those beautiful blonde curls right off the top of his head. “Yes, I know.” Loraine breathed. “There was nothing else I could have done.”
“We could have gone to the jail with everyone else.”
Loraine had the urge to laugh and say Young man, I’ll turn this car right around! but it died as they came to the first fork in the road. Loraine pulled to a stop. For a while, they just stared at the identical gravel tracks leading into more night. “In the old cartoons, you’d spit in your palm and then hit it with your index finger,” she said. “The bigger lugi-half was supposed to point the way.”
“That’s nasty, mom.”
“Okay, which way then, smart guy?”
“Left.”
“Why left?”
“Feels like it’s leading away from town.”
“Thought you wanted to go back to town.”
“I do,” he looked out the window. “But if we end up back in town, you’ll just turn around again. Saves time this way. So, left.”
“Good ‘nuff,” she said and pulled forward. She stopped again as soon as the headlights shown full on in front. A giant spider web stretched across the road. It caught the light and held it like a thousand, twinkling moths. Childe could actually see the goosebumps on his mother’s forearms. This wasn’t just some pretty, gossamer weave. Each strand was as thick around as airplane cable. There’d be no driving through that. “I guess we go right,” she whispered.
* * *
Will almost smashed the jeep into his motorcycle as he screeched to a stop outside of the jail. For one icy second he was sure it wasn’t his bike but the low-slung chopper The Pompiliad was riding. Will had only gotten a look at the headlight when the chopper rumbled around the corner a minute or so ago, but he remember what it looked like from his dream—black, cinch-waisted, a machine version of its rider’s true face. But the Indian Chief, his father’s bike now his, was white and gleamed like pearl in the headlights from the jeep. Calm gelled over his thoughts. He glanced in the rearview mirror. The chopper’s single glowing eye burned a few blocks back.
“Go, go, go,” he said, piling George and Erica out of the jeep. He slapped them both on the butts like a couple of wayward calves, but they were already moving like, well, a wasp was after them. They shoved inside. Will turned the key in the steel door and slid a bolt as thick as a big man’s thumb. He took a few steps back and unholstered Smaug. George unslung his M16.
“Look at you, Rambo,” Erica said. “Got one of those for me?”
George raised his eyebrows. “Will?”
Will kept his eyes on the night outside, but said, “Sorry, guys. We had a shotgun but Loraine’s got it. Did you guys see her and Kiddo?”
“Yeah,” George said. “They were hauling ass up Main when we came ‘round the corner. I think she’s making a break for it.”
“Can’t blame her,” Erica said. “Maybe that’s what we should have done.”
“I don’t think they’re gonna get very far,” Will said. “That thing out there and its little militia won’t let them.”
Erica nodded at the windows. “Can it, they, you know, get in here?”
Will threw a little half smile at her. “Not without a rocket launcher. This old jail was built before the unions got any real hold in this part of the world. Coal town uprisings were common and violent back in the day. There’s double thick wire mesh on all the windows, the walls are cinder block and the roof’s fireproof. The front and back doors are solid steel. I’ve even got a little food stockpiled in the pantry.” His eyes went away as he remembered cooking hotplate omelets for him and George too many nights to count. They’d eat and play chess while George sobered up. “We should be okay in here for a while.”
“What happens when the food runs out?” Erica asked.
Will turned around and poked his best friend in the shoulder, “We eat George.”
George grinned and gave him the finger.
Erica walked over to the window, her arms crossed over her chest. It was a warm night but she was a little cold in just the raincoat. George asked, “Will, we got any clothes for Erica? I’m not feeling very southern or gentlemanly making her walk around in just that coat.”
“Matter of fact, we do. I got some spare stuff in back. Least a pair a jeans and a t-shirt. I’ll go look in a minute.” He walked over and stood next to Erica. “He out there?”
“I don’t see him, but that’s doesn’t mean he’s not there.” She squinted hard into the night, as if her will could be a flare against the dark. “He was right on top of us, right?”
George joined them. “Maybe he broke off and went after Kiddo and Loraine.” He shook his shaggy head. “Man, I hope they made it out.”
Will set his teeth and backed into the room. “Okay, class, let’s take stock.”
Erica and George turned around. Will took a good long look at them: dirty, tired, hurt and standing. He suppressed smile. “Okay, we got two guns and plenty of ammo. We got food and water.”
He sat down at his desk and clunked the big pistol down on the blotter. He loved them; that’s why it pained him to lie like this. He had no intention of staying put in this little fortress for any longer that it would take for them to get their act together. They still had work to do. The fight was outside and he had a feeling that eventually it would be underground. His job now was to manipulate them both around to helping him. It was the right thing to do in the bigger picture, but it made him feel like his skin was covered in oil. Right now their eyes were still showing a little too much white, but after he got them to back down a notch or two, they could start planning together. For one evil second, he wished he had a little something for George to drink.
“Georgie? How you feeling?”
“Like my foot was half cut off and I haven’t had a drink in eight days, nine hours and forty-three minutes.” Erica put her arms around him and squeezed. George got a whiff of her hair, and past the mingled smells of stale earth and paint thinner he could still smell her. “I’m doing okay, though.”