She tacked the note to the outside of the door as she left the house.
Before locking the door behind her, Joana looked carefully around the brushy yard that lay between her and the street. This was no time to get careless. Nothing moved in the heat. Even Bandido lay, prostrate and panting in the shade of an oleander bush.
Overhead the sky was a relentless blue-white. The heat was a palpable weight on her head and shoulders. On a day like this no one would expect to see dead men walk.
She hurried down the path to the street and got into the Datsun. It was like a furnace, but when she got both front windows lowered and the car moving, that provided some ventilation.
She drove up Laurel Canyon to Peter's street and found it deserted. Sheltered by the hills from the desert wind, the trees there hung limp and dejected in the stagnant heat.
Joana parked the Datsun and got out. She stood for a moment on the sidewalk looking up at Peter's house. It was closed up tight, the blinds drawn down on the windows. She felt a tiny pang of apprehension. The empty, airless street oppressed her.
Then the door of the house opened and Peter stood there looking down at her. He did not come forward, but stayed in the shadows. Nevertheless, Joana recognized that it was Peter. He seemed to have something around his neck. A bandage, she guessed, over the injury he told her about.
"Hi," she called.
Peter said nothing, but beckoned her to him.
Joana started up the rickety flight of wooden stairs. Peter vanished back into the house. She continued up onto the porch, then paused at the doorway.
"Peter?"
"In here," his queer, flat voice called to her from somewhere inside.
Joana stepped over the threshold into the dim living room. A blast of stale, sweltering air hit her like a physical blow. Unlike the arid heat outside, the interior of the house was damp and steamy. It felt as though the windows had not been opened for days. Even worse than the soggy heat was the overpowering sweet smell of incense. When Joana was here before she had detected a trace of strawberry in the air, but nothing like this. The haze of gray smoke made her gag.
"Peter, where are you? What's the matter here?"
She walked across the carpet to the beaded curtain that hung between the living room and the small dining room. Beyond it she could see the kitchen and a short hallway that would lead to the bedrooms and bath. The beads of the curtain had an unpleasant clammy feel.
Something was wrong. Something was most terribly wrong in this house. Under the heavy smell of incense there was another odor. It reminded Joana of the dead rat Bandido had dragged behind the refrigerator and left. It had taken her three days to find the rotting corpse.
She felt a powerful need to get out of there. Letting the bead3 rattle back into place, she turned toward the front door. It slammed shut. Peter stood facing her with his back pressed against the panel.
Joana stared at him through the gloom and the layers of smoke from the incense. He wore an open-collared shirt, but there was a necktie knotted around his throat. It was too tight. Much too tight. And his face. Oh, God!
Peter's eyes were dusty and lifeless. The swollen flesh of his face was mottled purple. The tip of his tongue protruded from between cracked lips. His body gave off putrescence in waves.
"You're one of them!" she said.
Peter made no reply, but raised his arms and came toward her.
Joana whirled and fought her way through the bead curtain and ran toward the rear of the house. There had to be another way out.
She ran down the hallway to a bedroom. A king-size bed, freshly made and unslept-in, took up most of the floor space. There was a window, but steel burglar bars on the outside made escape that way impossible. Out in the dining room beads clattered and bounced on the floor as Peter tore through the curtain.
Joana flew out of the bedroom and almost ran into Peter in the hall. He reached for her, and she felt the cold, doughy touch of his hand on her bare arm before she pulled free.
The next door she came to was the bathroom. Without hesitating, Joana flung herself inside, slammed the door, and rolled the bolt into place. There was a soft thump as Peter hit the door on the outside.
For a moment she cowered back against the wall, breathing hard, staring fearfully at the locked door. As she watched, the panel shook under a booming blow from the other side. Joana flinched. She looked wildly about the room for a means of escape.
Boom!
She swept aside the shower curtain. There was a window at eye level, but it was only eight inches from top to bottom. She could never get through that.
Boom! Something gave in the door with a loud crack.
Joana tore open the wall cabinet, searching for anything that could help her. A weapon. Anything. Electric shaver, talc, cologne, aspirin, toothpaste, hair spray. No good. Nothing she could use. And what good were weapons against the walkers, anyway? She remembered Glen hitting and hitting the man back behind her house until his skull was jellied, and still he came on.
Boom! A long vertical crack split the door panel.
Joana dropped to her knees and yanked open the door to the cabinet under the sink. Toilet paper, cleanser, brushes, a sponge, a bottle of pills, rubbing alcohol.
Boom! The crack widened. Splinters of wood peppered the bathroom floor.
Joana seized the bottle of alcohol. On the label in black capitals was printed flammable. Would fire mean anything to a walker? Effective or not, it was the only thing available to her, and it might distract the creature long enough for her to get past it and out of the house.
Boom! A big chunk of the door smashed inward. For an instant Joana was frozen where she stood. As she watched, the panel shuddered again, more wood broke away, and a fist came through. The flesh of the hand, pulpy from decay, hung loose and torn from the battering. Bones and wire like tendons were clearly visible.
Boom! The hole in the door grew. The swollen, mindless face that had been Peter Landau's was there looking at her. The ruined hand reached in through the broken door and fumbled for the bolt.
Fighting for control, Joana unscrewed the cap from the bottle of alcohol. She took a drinking glass from a holder next to the sink and poured it full of the clear liquid. The pungent odor of the alcohol squeezed tears from her eyes.
Peter had found the bolt now, but the mangled hand could not manipulate it. The hand withdrew, and the other, the good one, came through the hole.
Joana set the bottle and the glass of alcohol down long enough to search through her pockets.
Dear God, let there be matches.
At the instant Peter rattled the bolt back into the door Joana's fingers closed over a book of paper matches. The doorknob turned. The shattered door was knocked inward. For a fraction of a second the dead creature was framed in the doorway. Joana took up the full glass and dashed the alcohol into the purpled face, wetting down the front of the shirt at the same time. She dropped the glass and, as it crashed on the tile floor, struck a match. She threw the match at Peter. It bounced off his shoulder and went out.
A scream rose in Joana's throat. She fought it down. The thing was in the bathroom with her now with its hands reaching for her, one of them whole, the other a shattered wreck of bone and tendon. The reek of alcohol was strong, but the odor of death was stronger. Joana struck another match. Gripping it between thumb and forefinger, she reached out and forced herself to hold the flame against the alcohol-soaked shirt.
She held it there one second, two seconds. Abruptly the shirt and the swollen head whopped into light blue flame. The creature reacted with what remained of human instinct. It staggered backward, arms beating at the flames that licked across the chest.