What in the Lord’s last lament is going on here?
He stared at them as they stared back, unable to quite believe what he was seeing. It was something out of a horror movie, not real life. They couldn’t be what they looked like — dead folk didn’t walk. The flesh looked like it was rotting, practically falling away from the bone in places, but still he couldn’t process it.
Finally, after the long silence, he locked onto the one idea that made some modicum of sense.
Poor bastards must have been exposed to some bad radiation. That’s the only thing that might do this and leave them walking for a time.
That sickening thought did little to ease his mind, however, as Leland lowered his weapon and began pawing the blood and gore from his face.
“Goddamn it! What the hell did you lot get exposed to? Is it safe in here?” he muttered, still trying to clean himself off.
No one spoke to him as he backed toward the door in an effort to put some distance between himself and the contamination that had to be filling the shop. He held up his hand as calmingly as he could, his strained brain missing the fact that he was the only one in the place who was panicking.
“Just remain where you are, and I’ll radio for help from town,” he said as he continued to edge himself backward.
“No,” said a dry and rasping yet distinctly female voice as a hand clamped onto his shoulder like iron. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”
Leland half turned, screamed again as he wondered how many more shocks he could take. How did she get behind me?
The woman at least looked marginally better than the rest, but her skin was still leathery dry, and it was pulled back on her face like she was the victim of a botched facelift. Her teeth were yellow and aged behind the rictus of her lips, looking like they’d been exposed to air for years. It made a bizarre bit of sense to him, however, as he didn’t suppose she could close her mouth with her skin pulled back so tightly.
He tried to wrest himself from her, but the iron grip just tightened, and he found that he couldn’t move at all. She looked from him to the corpse on the floor, one thin dark eyebrow lifting almost casually before she shook her head.
“Idiot. Couldn’t control the hunger.”
Leland blinked, finally taking in her accent. She wasn’t from Barrow, that was for sure, but in all fairness, there weren’t many who were. Still, he’d heard all sorts of accents over the years, from all places on the map, and hers wasn’t one he knew. It sounded foreign, ancient even, and it was the oddest he’d heard before.
He was still puzzling it out, trying to ignore the throbbing and stabbing pain from his left arm, when the woman turned her dark eyes on him with a casual, almost indifferent air.
“I do not know if you will be of any use, but waste not, want not, as the saying goes,” she told him, confusing Leland even more. “You took one of mine, so you will replace him.”
“What the fuck?…”
She seemed to smile wider, her lips pulling impossibly far back from her teeth in such a way that, for all his confusion, Leland was completely confident in saying that she meant to do him some serious harm. He tried to pull away as she leaned in closer to him, the putrid air from her mouth bathing his face. Her breath was…indescribable. He could smell some kind of mouthwash, peppermint unless he was gravely mistaken, but beneath it the smell of death was still present.
The mixture turned his stomach even more than the pervasive smell of rot and decay alone.
“God, lady, what the hell have you been eating?” He gagged.
She chuckled darkly at him. “It’s funny you should ask — I was just starting to feel a little peckish. Shall I show you what I like to eat?”
“I’ll pass,” he said, twisting his grip on the shotgun so that it was jammed in between them. “Let me go, lady, or—”
“Or what?” she snarled, grabbing the barrel of the shotgun with her free hand.
Fuck this.
Leland squeezed the trigger.
The Remington roared, blowing the woman’s leg out from under her. In that instant, as she was torn away from him and driven to the ground by shock and gravity, Leland found himself fascinated by the expression of sheer annoyance on the woman’s leathery face. He twisted, tearing himself loose, and threw the door open so he could stumble out into the cold fresh air of the darkening night.
Behind him he could hear her swearing, her voice disturbingly free of any sound of pain.
“Get him!”
He didn’t turn around as he staggered over to his Tahoe, slamming his injured arm into the side of the truck hard enough to draw a whimper from his throat. He tried to grab the door handle with his left hand, fumbling against the pain, but couldn’t get his fingers to curl around the handle.
“Fuck!” he swore, slamming the shotgun down on the roof of the Tahoe so he could yank at the door with his good right hand.
He could hear the sound of slush being kicked around behind him, but didn’t look back. He dropped into the driver’s seat, pulling the shotgun in after him, and wrenched the door shut, his injured arm screaming at him the whole time.
Leland swore near constantly, fumbling with his key as a body hit the door, hammering at the window with bare fists. He didn’t know how the window was holding, but as the Tahoe roared to life he sent up a silent prayer of thanks for small miracles before gunning the engine and dropping it into drive, the gas pedal already heading for the floor.
The wheels spun for traction against the slush and ice, but then the studs hit the gravel underneath, and the Tahoe lurched forward. He felt, more than heard, a thump as the vehicle struck something, or rather someone. He was headed in the wrong direction, however, and he had to spin around when he reached a fence at the far side of the compound.
They were all out of the machine shop by then, and he was both shocked and dismayed by their sheer numbers.
God, there’s got to be dozens of them.
They were arrayed out in front of him like a human barricade, or a nearly human barricade. His mind rebelled as he sat there in his Tahoe, staring at them. He couldn’t believe he was seeing what he was seeing.
All the figures were milling about, seemingly without purpose — other, that is, than a few who were stumbling along in his general direction. They looked sick, frankly. Deathly ill or, more honestly, like the walking dead. He couldn’t help but think of all the damned zombie movies he’d seen over the years, and the throb from his arm hurt all the more.
That was just insanity, though. A fantastical nightmare, nothing more.
In the real world, the dead didn’t rise. In the real world, zombies didn’t exist.
Leland gripped the steering wheel nervously.
Right?
He laid on the horn and the gas at the same time, determined to get himself out of whatever the hell he’d gotten himself into, no matter what it took. The Tahoe leapt forward, charging the mob ahead of him, but the figures didn’t so much as flinch. As he roared into them, Leland saw no sign of them tensing to move, no hint of fear, and he realized then that he was about to mow down a whole pack of people when he’d only been attacked by two.
He lost his determination, throwing the wheel hard to the left at the last second, putting the truck into a spin on the slush-and-ice-covered ground. Honestly, it was the only thing he could have done, he realized as the Tahoe spun toward the derrick rig, which was pumping serenely in its path. The Tahoe struck the pump, whiplash snapping Leland Griffin’s neck as the vehicle came to a jarring stop with enough force to snap the derrick and send black oil gushing skyward.
It rained down all around the car as the rotting crowd watched silently from a distance.