His voice disintegrated into sobs.
Grey adjusted his hand on his pistol grip and had no idea what to do.
“Why are you attacking these people?”
The undead looked surprised. “Attacking? I didn’t… I mean… I… I…”
“You ran in here and tried to kill that old man.”
The thing cut a look sideways at the old man crawling along the hall toward the kitchen. A deep frown of confusion grooved his brow.
“Mr. Chalmers? Is that you? It’s me. It’s Bobby Sandoval. You know me. I used to work at the sawmill with Tommy. You know me. I… I… I swear it’s me.”
Grey glanced over at the old man to see how he was reacting.
It was the wrong thing to do.
With the speed of a snake, the monster’s left hand flashed out and slapped the pistol from Grey’s grip. The expression on its face changed from confusion and horror to malice in a heartbeat.
But it was a long heartbeat, and even as everything became crazy, Grey’s mind pulled apart what he had just seen. The hand moved, and the thing attacked, but the face registered what looked like genuine surprise at what its body was doing. It was like a horseman who was reacting to a mount suddenly stumbling. The expression did not match. Not at once. Only after the creature reached for Grey did the confusion melt away to be replaced by that malicious leer. The undead kicked up with both feet, catching Grey in the thigh and chest and sending him staggering backward. Then the dead man — Sandoval — arched backward and reverse-jackknifed forward so that he flipped onto his feet like a circus tumbler. The azure fires in his eyes flared as he rushed Grey.
Grey hit the edge of the sofa and sat down hard, but as Sandoval threw himself at him, Grey flung himself sideways. Sandoval hit the backrest and the whole sofa rocked onto its back legs and crashed over. By the time it hit, Grey and Sandoval were already locked in a deadly struggle.
Unlike Riley Jones and the dead members of the posse, this monster was a skilled and tricky fighter. There was none of the vacuous blankness in Sandoval’s eyes. There was hate, there was malice, but there was also sly cunning. And the son of a bitch could fight.
Sandoval tried to knee Grey in the crotch, head-butt him, box his ears, and bite. He fought like someone who had been in more than his fair share of big-ticket scuffles. It was like fighting three people at once. The man attacked with total commitment and ferocity.
But Grey Torrance knew a few tricks of his own.
He turned his hip inward to take the knee thrust on his thigh instead. It hurt, but not nearly as much. Grey ducked his head to take the head-butt on the forehead instead of the nose. That hurt, too, but he caught Sandoval exactly as he didn’t want to be caught, and the lights momentarily flickered in the killer’s eyes. That spoiled the creature’s attempts to box his ears, too, and as Sandoval tried to recover and bite, Grey hit him across the chin with the heel of his palm. He put a lot of heart into the hit. A lot of muscle and fear, too. And he twisted his hip as he connected.
He got it just right and he followed through with a scream and all his rage.
Sandoval’s jaw slewed sideways amid an audible crunch of cartilage and bone. Grey pulled his hand back six inches and hit him again. Same place. Twice as hard.
The jaw lost all shape and nearly tore loose from the tendon and muscle that held it to his face. It sagged down, flopping against Sandoval’s chest. Fear ignited in those strange eyes.
Grey liked to see it there.
He wanted to see more.
With a grunt, he hip-bucked and turned, throwing the man off of him. As Sandoval fell flat on his back, Grey rolled over and knelt on him, pinning one knee into the undead’s crotch and bracing his other foot against the floor for stability. From that vantage point he schooled Sandoval — and the demon inside of him — about the niceties of gutter-fighting done right.
He short-punched the man in the nose, the throat, both eyes. Grey knew how to punch with snaps instead of powerhouse thrusts so that he didn’t bust up his own knuckles. He grabbed the dead man’s lank hair, picked his head up, and slammed it against the floorboards again and again. That knocked all of the fight out of the thing and it lay there, twitching and terrified. Grey did not understand that fear but now wasn’t the moment to try and sort it out. Instead he reached into his boot, removed a short knife, held the monster’s head down with a flat palm against his forehead, and drove the point of the blade deep into the thing’s eye socket.
The blue light in its other eye — and the glow deep in the heart of the stone lodged in its breast — flared and then went out.
Grey sagged back, gasping.
No blood welled from the punctured eye socket, and Grey wasn’t sure if he was relieved or even more disgusted. It was proof of how unnatural this truly was.
He turned to the old man. What was his name? Chalmers?
“Chalmers,” he barked and the sound of his voice made the man’s head snap up, “are there any more of them in here?”
“M-more—?”
“Is anyone else here?”
“No.”
Grey got to his feet and picked up his gun. He immediately began reloading. “Lock yourself in a closet and don’t come out until you know it’s safe.”
“H-how will I know?”
Grey left without answering because he had no answer to give.
He dashed outside and saw Jenny Pearl standing guard over a small knot of townsfolk. Brother Joe crouched over the huddling mass of old folks, women, and children. Jenny stood wide legged, shotgun raised, as three of the walking dead circled her. The monsters faked right and left, trying to make her spoil her next shot. If she did, they would all fall on her and the people she was trying to protect. Looks Away was nowhere in sight.
“Jenny!” he cried as he ran into the street. “On your left. Now!”
She whirled and fired at a corpse who was running in, sneaky and low, on her blindside, a pitchfork clutched in its dead hands. The thing was so close that she almost died right there. The pitchfork stabbed in at the moment she fired. The deer slug punched between the tines and caught the undead on the right cheek and blew half his face off.
Grey began firing from twenty feet away. He put three slugs each into the other two creatures. His first shot hit the chest of the closest one, which effectively jolted the creature in place. That steadied his target so he could put the next two into its brainpan. Then he whirled and repeated it with the final fiend, who had already abandoned the attack and was trying to run. The bodies crumpled to the ground and Grey turned to see Jenny use the stock of her shotgun to crush what was left of the first corpse’s shattered skull.
“Reload,” he ordered, and they both did. Grey realized with horror that he only had four bullets left in his belt. Four rounds and there were screams coming from everywhere in town. His heart turned to ice in his chest.
“Where’s Looks Away?”
“I don’t know. I think he went over to Doctor Saint’s place.”
“Now? What the hell good is that?”
“I don’t know,” she said tightly. “Wasn’t really the time to chat about it, was it?”
Blue lightning flashed overhead. The storm seemed to be building again.
“Jenny — get everyone into the Chalmers place. Bar the windows and block the doors.”
“What are you—?” she began, then snapped her mouth shut, gave him a terse nod, and ran to herd the people to safety.
Grey lingered for one moment, watching her. She hadn’t panicked, hadn’t fallen apart, and hadn’t wasted time with useless questions. Lucky Bob Pearl had raised himself one hell of a daughter.
She caught his eye and damn if there wasn’t a flicker of a smile on her lips.
Yeah, he thought, this Jenny Pearl is one hell of a woman.