“Hello?” he said. “Can you help me?”
He took another step forward, peered closer. Yes, someone was there, just in the corner, head down. Why wouldn’t they answer? He stepped again and looked closer. Was there something wrong with their skin? It seemed overly pale in some places, weirdly bruised in others. Mottled. The hair, too, seemed to have come out in clumps.
“Hey,” he said, and reached out and touched the person’s arm.
The arm was ice-cold, the shock of that so surprising that he yanked his hand back as if he’d been stung. As he did so, the head jerked up and he cried out in horror. The skin of the face had begun to decay, in some places had fallen off to reveal stretches of bone. The lips had fallen off or had been bitten off, revealing a length of jawbone and rotted teeth. The eyes, too, were gone, in their place only two deep black holes.
He stumbled back. Holy fuck, he thought. It’s a corpse. I must have knocked it or something to make its head come up like that.
But then, as he stared at it, he saw the head turn, the empty eyes staring right at him. Its arms stretched toward him and the remnants of its face tightened in a horrific grin.
He made a break for the door, tried to open it again. It wouldn’t come. He began to pound on it, shouting and crying out. After a moment, he made the mistake of looking behind him and saw that the creature had made it halfway across the room and toward him, moving slowly but inexorably forward. Not only that, but also there were more of them now, at least three, maybe four. He began to pound harder, shouting himself hoarse.
But the door held firm and nobody came to let him out. He felt something touch his shoulder and he shook it off and then something was on his arm, too. He turned and there were six or seven of them on him, all of them dead, clawing at him, their mouths hanging open. One of them managed to press its mouth against his arm and bite it hard enough to draw blood. He screamed and shook it away and struck out and shoved and kicked and managed somehow to break free and run to the other end of the apartment where there was a window.
He tried to open it but the latch had been painted over and it wouldn’t move. The sash had been painted into the frame, too—fuck, there was no way that thing was going to open—and the window was too small. He might be able to squeeze his way out of the opening if he could get the sash raised, but no way he was getting through by just breaking the glass and trying to squeeze through the frame.
Maybe there was a bigger window in the bedroom, he thought, and turned. There were now, he saw, nearly a dozen of them, as if somehow they were able to multiply when he didn’t look at them. They were nearly upon him. He tried to skirt his way around the edge of them and make it to the open bedroom door, but one of them got its skeletal hand on his shirt and slowed him down. He wrenched himself free, but got loose too quickly and too suddenly and went skidding down to the floor. He tried to get to his feet quickly but one was already wrapped around him before he was halfway up, and then another came, and another and another. He strained his way forward, groaning under their weight and pressure, feeling them scratch at his flesh, tear his skin away, trying, he knew, to make him one of them. He swayed and slammed into the door frame hard and one of their arms fell off, but even so it kept moving, taking hold of his ankle. He shook himself, and a few of them fell off, but more quickly took its place. There, just a few yards away, was the bedroom window. It was big enough. All he had to do was get to it and then he’d be safe.
One of them sunk its teeth into his neck, making him scream. Another took hold of his ear and tried to pull it off. Others were tearing into his stomach and back with their teeth and claws, gouging and ripping, harder than they had been before, as if they grew stronger as he grew weaker.
He stared down, willing his feet to move. The floor around him was slick with blood. It took him a moment to realize it was his own. Just a little more, he told himself.
He took a step forward and collapsed under the weight of them. He tried to push up with his arms and climb to his feet again, but there were too many of them. They sunk their teeth into his arms, and one of them tore his ear off. One of them bit him in the back of the skull, and then worked its fingers into the wound and began to peel his scalp away. He roared with pain and fear, tried again to get up but he was weaker already, all the little wounds adding up. One of them dragged his hand to the side and bit off one of his fingers. Another was slowly running its broken nails up and down his back in the same spot, gradually wearing its way down to bone. All the while they gave moans of pleasure.
He made little motions like he was crawling away, but he didn’t move at all. Slowly the pain grew, eventually becoming so great that he prayed for death. Yes, death would come, but it would come very slowly. When one of them tore out one of his eyes and then the other, it felt like a mercy. And a greater mercy still when he finally lapsed into unconsciousness. But even after that, and even long after he was dead, they kept at him, slowly reducing him to a bloody pulp, making him one of them.
Chapter Fifty-three
Herman stood in the alley outside the Salem Palladium. Fucked is what it was. It looked just as deserted as ever, definitely a fire hazard, and nothing had been done to fix the place up. The windows were even boarded over, and so were the entrances, except for one in which they’d pried the boards off and leaned them against the wall next to it. Nobody taking tickets either. He’d gone in, expecting to see some sort of creepy, horror-show setup, something that’d make the most of the deserted space, but there was nothing backstage. There was just a red curtain with nothing behind it. Real amateur hour. A lot of the theater seats were still in place but the inside was also full of piles of trash and rubble, needles scattered around from where junkies had broken in, the whole place stinking of piss. Herman sighed. It was going to be a long night.
For a while he paced back and forth, smoking a cigar. And where was Whitey? Goddamn, if his car had broken down again already, that was fucking it. Plus, no Whitey meant no Heidi, and there was no way in hell he was going to handle this bullshit alone.
He puffed on the cigar a few more times, paced a little. People were coming in, but just a few, not enough to make for much of a show. What was up with that? Plus, they were all chicks. Every fucking one. Probably not a surprise, considering the way that the Smash or Trash had gone with the Lords track, but it was still one more fucked thing about an already fucked scene.
He pulled out his cell, tried to call Heidi’s number. The phone rang and just kept on ringing. Maybe that meant she was on her way. He hung up and then dialed again.
“Hello,” said a voice. “WXKB. Station manager Chip MacDonald here.”
“Chip, what exactly is going on here?” asked Herman.
“What do you mean?” asked Chip. “Is this Herman?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean?” said Herman. “Well, for starters I just looked everywhere and there’s nothing. No band. No equipment. Nothing. And for another thing, what little crowd that’s in there is one hundred percent girls.”
“Are people getting upset?” said Chip. “Are we going to have a problem there?”
“No,” admitted Herman. “They’re pretty calm so far. But I can only assume that they’re going to get mighty restless waiting for a show to happen that I highly doubt is going to go on. Eventually it’ll get ugly. There’s no way I’m sticking around when it starts to turn bad.”
Chip began to natter on, trying to calm Herman down even as he got more and more nervous himself, but Herman didn’t want to be calmed down—he just wanted things to be done right. Was that too much to ask?