It’s too late for him, he thought. He’s dead already. He’s become one of them.
It’s too late for him, Tommy thought as he veered away from the Buick and started running to the west. Those things are going to tear him to pieces and eat his fucking brains. Fuck him. Fuck his car. I can make it on my own. I don’t need him. I don’t need anyone.
Pain shot through his chest and Tommy dropped to his knees, gasping. The ribs. Those goddamned ribs. He could hear the creatures gaining on him. “No! I’m not going to let you fuckers get me! No fucking way!” He continued on his hands and knees, but the cracked ribs only made crawling even more painful. He couldn’t get a full breath.
One of the things pounced on his back, another started biting into one of his legs. Tommy tried rolling over, but they had him pinned on his stomach against the ground. He cried out as he felt the flesh being torn from his back. They’re eating me! They’re fucking eating me alive!
A bloated grey face appeared in front of him, snapping its teeth and salivating black slime onto the earth. It started flowing along the dirt towards Tommy. It crawled up onto his cheek and slithered into his mouth. He tried spitting it out, but more flowed in. It plugged up his nostrils and crawled into his eyes. Tommy could feel it entering in through both ears.
Make it stop. Make the pain stop.
The pain didn’t end. It only got worse. The black stuff worked its way down his throat, like a monstrous fist, spreading into his lungs and collecting around his heart. Something was biting into the top of his head. It was tearing hair and skin away from his skull, but Tommy could hardly feel it. The vision in his right eye cleared just enough to see his arm being torn out of its socket. He watched the thing as it began eating the muscle of his bicep away. I know him, Tommy thought dully. We were in the tank together. We laughed like hell when we shot that fucking horse.
Chapter 36
Joanna had made a promise to herself at the age of twelve that she would one be the Prime Minister of Canada one day. She would’ve preferred being president of the United States, but she hadn’t been born in any of the fifty states, so Canada would have to do. She had made this promise because of her shitty up-bringing. Her father had beaten her mom regularly, and the bastard had molested Joanna every night from the time she was old enough to remember. The beatings and molestations stopped shortly after Joanna’s tenth birthday when a tramp he’d been screwing around with at work planted a pair of scissors into the side of his neck. Joanna had always regretted not having the guts to do it herself.
She had hated men for a long time after that, but eventually Joanna learned to live and work with them again. She never became Prime Minister, but she did become the first female mayor of Brayburne at the age of forty-four. Not too bad considering the crap she had gone through. A lot of people in Brayburne said she had done a terrible job running the town, and when elections were held again, she would be booted out after only one four year term. That didn’t happen either—a few hundred nuclear bombs dropping across the surface of the earth had kept her in office.
And now it was time for Joanna Hensky to release that old hatred for men once again. She wasn’t the weak-willed, overweight dunder-head all the men in town accused her of being. She didn’t appreciate having her office overrun by the military, and seeing her position diminished. Men had been responsible for that, and the single man rushing at her in the tunnel was going to pay for it.
The corpse of Corporal Adam Stevens charged, and Joanna swung the axe upward in a vertical arc. It caught in his distended throat and sliced his lower jaw into two pieces. It split his tongue down the middle, and finally lodged up into the roof of his mouth. She tugged the axe out and a spray of black blood followed, coating her face and splashing across her heavy bosom. She took the axe blade in her hands and drove the sharp end between Adam’s empty eye sockets. He made a wet grunting noise as she pushed it in deep.
They said I was a coward—said I was afraid to get my hands dirty. How’s this for dirty?
She pushed the axe harder and Adam fell back into the tunnel wall. His skull cracked against rock and dirt. Joanna twisted the axe’s blunt end and she heard the cartilage in his nose begin to break. The corporal’s hands found her throat and started to squeeze. His shattered, wet face leaned forward and he tried biting her nose off. Joanna stepped back and Adam pushed her against the other side of the tunnel. Something fell from the belt of his uniform and rolled off into the dark.
Joanna started to feel light-headed. The soldier’s cold, fat fingers were filled with incredible strength, and she was close to passing out. She thought she could feel something else as well—an itching sensation crawling behind her eyeballs and reaching down her throat. Fortunately, Joanna passed out before the ticks could reach her internal organs. It was the last lucky break of her life.
Fred could hear the two struggling less than twenty feet away, but he couldn’t see a thing in the pitch blackness. A rock, or something similarly round in shape, rolled up against the doctor’s ankle. He reached down and felt for it. My God, is this what I think it is? His fingers touched the cool, pitted surface, and his thumb found the release pin. A grenade. He didn’t waste any more time. Joanna would be dead in a few more seconds, and Fred would be right behind her. May as well put Adam out of his misery at the same time. Maybe if Fred and Joanna were blown to bits, they would be spared the awful transformation that had claimed the humanity of so many others.
Fred tried pulling the safety pin, but the thing wouldn’t budge. It remained firmly attached to the grenade. He explored the grenade’s parts with the fingers of his left hand while his right hand kept the lever pressed down against the body of the explosive device. How can it be so complicated? I’ve seen them go off a million times in the movies! He discovered a safety clip holding the safety pin in place. Fred removed the clip and pulled the pin. How much of a delay do these things have? It didn’t much matter, he supposed. Three seconds or thirty, they would all be shredded meat and bone soon enough. Fred threw the grenade down the tunnel shaft. He turned away, fell onto his stomach, and covered his head with his arms.
Hayden’s sense of direction had returned. He was heading north, and the Trans Canada highway was dead ahead, slicing its way west. There was less than a hundred yards of dirt field left to cross before he would be on the black asphalt, speeding away from Brayburne for the last time. He looked in the rear view mirror and saw the horde of swollen bodies falling away. He was going to make it.
And then the earth in front of him blew up.
He saw a flash of orange, and then a hail of dirt and rocks rained down on the Buick. The cracked windshield collapsed in, coating him with glass and soil. Hayden slammed on the brake and swerved hard to the left. The car’s back end rocked to a complete halt narrowly avoiding a fall into a six-foot deep hole. Hayden exited the car wondering if the army had set land mines around the town.
He looked down into the smoking crater and saw something moving. A shaking hand coated with blood and dust reached up. A feeble voice called out. “Are you… are you one of them? Have you changed?”