He walked on and left the cabin behind, pausing at the first stand of trees. It was quiet, and he looked up between the trunks.
“I thought there’d be stars.” He sighed, smiled. “We are abandoned.” He unzipped and started pissing, watching the swirls and whorls of steam as it drifted off between the trees, lit by weak light from the cabin.
Behind him, a breaking twig.
Marty stopped in mid-stream and looked around. Just trees. He glanced left and right, remembering something about peripheral vision being better at night. Nothing moved, and there were no more sounds.
He sighed again, looking forward to getting back inside and rolling a new joint, and as he finished pissing and zipped up Curt barreled into him.
“Run! Fucking run!” He was clasping Marty’s arms too tightly, hurting, bunching up his shirt and tugging hard as they danced on the spot and Curt tried hauling him toward the cabin,
“What’s—?”
“Go!” Curt yelled again. He looked a mess—blood on his arm, head cut and bleeding somewhere, leaves, dirt, and he looked fucking terrified. As Marty was sizing him up Curt changed tactic, letting go and pushing Marty toward the cabin instead.
His panic caught, and Marty ran.
From the shadows to their right, a figure darted at them. It was… a girl, but there was something wrong. One arm was missing. And in her other arm, she carried a hatchet. Her hair was long and lank, clotted with leaves and mud, and her face was all wrong. Marty skidded to a halt, staring, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, but Curt put on a burst of speed and swung his arm across the girl’s throat. She flipped backward and sprawled, never letting out a sound.
“Dead bitch!” Curt shouted. He span around, grabbed Marty’s arm, and pulled him up onto the porch.
“Curt, your dick’s—”
“Inside.” Curt flipped the catch and booted the door open.
He’s got a husband’s bulge, Marty had said, echoing the weird language in the diary from downstairs. At the time Dana had thought it strange, but as soon as Marty had closed the door Holden had held her again, pulling her close and cupping the back of her head as he kissed her sweet and deep.
And now here she was, hand resting gently against his husband’s bulge and the night ahead of them alight with possibilities.
The door smashed open. Dana and Holden knocked teeth as they sat up, and she was about to shout at whoever was fucking around when she saw Curt. He was on his hands and knees inside the door, and she had never seen him like this before. Never seen him looking so scared. “Curt!” she gasped. She and Holden went to him, and the blood and wounds registered instantly. Blood streaming down his arm, a gash in his head. And his hands… it looked like he’d been digging.
“Jesus, what happened?” Holden asked.
Curt’s eyes rolled in his head, and he seemed unable to focus on either of them.
“Door!” Marty screamed, skidding through the door as he attempted to slow and slam it behind him. He spilled to the floor, but Curt had already turned and kicked the door closed.
What the hell is this? Dana thought. For a moment she wondered if it was a joke, and that they’d all start cracking up soon, pointing at her and Holden and rolling around on the floor. But she didn’t think that for long. Not with the way blood was pulsing from the slash in Curt’s scalp. And not from the terror in Marty’s eyes.
“Anna Patience,” he muttered. “Her. Her!”
Dana darted to Curt’s side.
“Where are you hurt? Is all this blood yours? Where’s Jules?”
Curt pushed her hands away, shaking his head. He stood slowly, shaking, glancing around as if any shadow could hold danger. He zipped his fly, and firelight reflected in his eyes, dancing shapes. Dana thought he was crying, but she wasn’t sure.
“It’s okay, Curt. You’re okay…” Holden tried to calm him, holding his upper arms and catching his eye.
“No,” Marty said, gasping for air. “We’re not okay. What’s the opposite of okay?”
“What are you talking about?” Dana said, because they were scaring the shit out of her now. “Curt, where’s Jules?”
Curt shook his head. Blood spattered his shoulder and the floorboards, but he didn’t notice. His eyes still seemed to be looking elsewhere.
“She’s gone,” he said, remembering something terrible. “We gotta get out of here!” He started toward the corridor leading to the back of the cabin. “There’s a window back here, we go through there, into the woods, run like fuck and—”
“No!” Dana said. “Wait!” This was madness. She knew she should listen to Curt and Marty, but she… wanted to open…
I need to see for myself.
She reached for the front door, turned the handle and started to pull it open.
“Dana, don’t open that!” Marty shouted. She had never heard Marty shout before, and in a way that scared her more than anything. Marty losing control was just not right.
“I’m not leaving here without Jules,” she said. And it was that simple. She swung the door open.
Standing on the porch, framed by the doorway, was the biggest, deadest man she had ever seen.
“Big-zombie,” Curt whispered, saying it like one word, as if he’d already had cause to name this thing.
The huge man—big-zombie—stared for a few seconds, and no one reacted. His eyes are rotten things, Dana thought, and then she noticed that he was holding something in his right hand. It didn’t register for a moment what it was, but perhaps that was only because of the blood. Then he threw it at Dana, she caught it, felt the wetness, the tangle of blood-and gore-knotted hair, blonde hair… and she looked down into Jules’s battered face.
Jules, her face, her head, it’s heavy, her eyes, she’s damaged… she’s bruised her eye, it’s sore, and her lovely lovely hair, very fabulous, no? No longer fabulous because of the blood and leaves and…
She screamed and dropped the head. It seemed to fall in slow motion, and if seemed as if her own scream was issuing from the grotesquely open mouth, turning as it fell so that Jules’s accusing eyes focused on the shape blocking the doorway. The head bounced from her foot and rolled back toward the door, and then big-zombie kicked it back into the room as he took a lumbering step forward.
He’s going to get in and—Dana thought, but Holden’s fear galvanized him. He dove forward, balance unsettled but using his momentum to shoulder into the door, his right foot tangling in Jules’s hair and swinging her head across the floor in a blood-smearing arc. He slammed the door shut again, falling against it just as the thing smashed into it, rattling the frame, splintering wood.
Holden slipped the bolts and fell back, kicking his foot frantically to dislodge it from the head’s hair.
Big-zombie slammed into the door again. Timber splintered and fell away from the frame, and Dana actually heard the creak of bending metal as the bolt warped under the immense pressure.
A few more like that… she thought, and then Marty was at the door with Holden, helping him throw the top and bottom bolts as well. They wouldn’t hold for long, but perhaps they’d give them some time to—
She saw her friend’s head from the corner of her eye. Jules was staring at her. Dana sucked in a few deep breaths to try and calm herself, but all they did was feed the scream building in her lungs once again. Holden and Marty leaned against the door, grimacing with each impact. The air in the room seemed to vibrate every time big-zombie struck.