Now it was just Polk. Well, maybe Tow-Truck Eddie, too, but Polk didn’t care much about him either way.
The volume of the screams was fading now as the tide turned from the hundreds with Ruger against the thousands in town for the Festival, to the thousands with Ruger hunting the hundreds who were trying to flee. The math was working out the way Vic had planned. All of the explosions had gone off. The bridges were gone, along with the power plant, the gas lines, the cable, phone lines, cell towers, all the police cars, and the TV and radio stations. All exactly according to plan, and it was getting a bit quieter in town—not that Sergeant Polk noticed. When it had all started he’d clamped earphones over his head and waited it out with the Grateful Dead screaming in his ears. He thought the irony would amuse him, but it just made his stomach feel worse.
He sat in Gus Bernhardt’s oversize swivel chair, crossed ankles propped on the chief’s desk, a nearly empty bottle of Wild Turkey cradled against his crotch. On the computer table that jutted out from the desk, Polk’s pistol sat gleaming in the light from a pair of candles. The gun was fully loaded with hollow points and ready to hand. He’d already replaced the two rounds he’d used on Ginny. Her plump body law sprawled under the desk, but some of her was splashed all over the front of the dispatcher’s console. As for Gus, the vampires had taken him in the first minute. The fat bastard probably fed a dozen of them.
Polk looked up at the clock. 7:33 P.M. Just a little over three hours since it all started.
He took a long pull on the Wild Turkey and stared out the windows at the havoc. Some people still ran by screaming, some in Halloween costumes, some in funeral dress with horror-movie faces. In the distance, against the darkness, he could see the glow of fire molded around the soft edges of the twisting column of smoke rising from the phone company building. The front window of the chief’s office had a long jagged crack that ran crookedly from upper left to lower right. Polk had watched in fascination as the original blasts had sent that crack skittering across the glass. He was amazed that it held, even when the power station blew. It still might go, he figured, since the wind was picking up outside. He knew that he should move, that he was dangerously close to the glass, but he just sat there and took another sip of bourbon.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the doorknob jiggle, and he turned to watch Jennifer Whitelaw from the CVS down the block desperately trying to work the handle. There was a long line of blood trickling down from her scalp and it ran alongside of her nose. A few drops had splashed onto her blouse. She beat on the door and even kicked it. Polk watched as her face changed from hope to confusion to anger and then to a revelatory mask of accusation. Then she was gone. A white hand appeared out of the gloom and snatched her away. Two tiny droplets of blood had flown from her face as she was jerked back and they splattered against the glass. The splashes were head-high to the door and Polk thought they looked like red, condemning eyes.
He drank the bourbon.
By his crossed heels was the thick manila envelope Vic Wingate had dropped off that afternoon. Fifty thousand bloodstained dollars in tight bundles. Another big chunk of Ruger’s drug money. Polk had counted the money and as he turned over each bill he saw at least one drop of old, dried blood. Fifty thousand dollars, and a half-pound bag of coke to sweeten the deal. And the note: FOR SERVICES RENDERED. Vic’s little joke.
Vic has smirked as he handed it over, had given Polk a neat little bow and a sly wink, like he was giving a dollar to a kid, sending him off to the movies so he could screw his big sister. That kind of a sly wink.
The bottle was almost empty and so was Polk. He nursed the whiskey and listened to the Dead and watching the dying outside. Beside him the pistol ached to be held, it longed to be kissed. There should always be a last kiss, he reflected, after you’ve collected your blood money.
(6)
Tonight Pine Deep’s Dead End Drive-In lived up to its name. Every single car was an island of death. Shattered windows, doors standing open, upholstery splashed with blood, the gravel around the cars littered with shreds of torn clothing, cracked eyeglasses, broken cell phones.
Pine Deep’s nature made the slaughter so successful; the tourists believed what was happening was a joke, all part of the show. By the time the truth of it was impossible to deny, half of the them were dead; the rest fled and were hunted.
Perhaps because he was on a stage and had a different perspective on the events as they unfolded, or perhaps he’d been in too many movies that dealt with this exact sort of thing, Ken Foree alone managed to keep his head. He knew the difference between stunts and real violence. When he witnessed the slaughter he knew that this was no stunt. He didn’t know what it was, but it was real.
As one of the mindless Dead Heads began crawling over the edge of the stage, Foree snatched up the heavy microphone stand and swung the weighted steel base with every ounce of strength he possessed. The disk-shaped base crushed the creature’s skull. As it fell dead, he leapt down from the stage and charged the second creature.
When that one went down he started shouting for the patrons to run, and when those who could still move got into gear he led them in a mad dash to the projection booth. He was able to cram eighty people in the concrete pillbox. That’s all that could make it before he had to slam the steel door in the face of five more of the shambling killers. The projection window had metal shutters, and Foree slammed them shut and threw the slide bolts.
The creatures beat on the door and screamed in rage and hunger. The people packed inside screamed, huddling down in the dark, pressing their hands to their ears.
The person nearest him clutched his sleeve. “Can they get in?” she begged.
“No,” he said, “no, they can’t get in.” He hoped he wasn’t lying.
(7)
Crow pointed his shotgun directly at Ruger’s grinning face.
“Go ahead, hotshot—splatter me and you splatter junior here.” Ruger gave the kid a fierce shake.
Beside Crow, LaMastra braced himself against the wall and aimed down the stairs at the four vampires who clustered at the lower landing. Five others milled hungrily behind Ruger. The trap was a good one and they had walked right into it.
“Well, well,” murmured Ruger, “this is a hoot. I’m so happy to see you I could shit daffodils.”
The child, a thin boy of about nine, struggled against the white hands that held him, but he might as well have been trying to work loose from iron shackles. The killer kept one arm wrapped around the kid’s body, pinning his arms; with the other hand he traced little lines across the boy’s slender throat. The kid winced and wriggled helplessly.
“Let him go,” Crow said, twitching the barrel of the shotgun.
“Sure, I’ll get right on that.”
“Let him go and then you can have me.”
Ruger shook his head. “I already have you, asshole. Both of you. And soon as I’m done kicking your ass I’m going to go upstairs and take that broke-nose bitch of yours. Oh, don’t look surprised. You think I don’t know she’s here? I can smell that piece of farm-girl snatch a mile off.”
“I’m going to kill you,” Crow said softly.
“What…again?” Everyone laughed at that except the living. “Unless you haven’t figured it out by now, dickweed, you can’t kill me.”
“Third time’s the charm, Karl. Let the boy go, then you and me can dance a bit.”
“Or,” Ruger said, enjoying this, “we could just tear your arms off and beat you with them. Really, no joke. We’ve already done that tonight. Twice.”
“Three times, boss,” someone said, and they all cracked up again.