The bottles were soft-drink empties, their twist-on caps sealing their dangerous contents. The men now unscrewed the caps. They pulled out handkerchiefs or tore off strips of clothing and stuffed them into the open bottlenecks. A frantic man lit his, braced himself, thrust his arm back, and threw the flaming bottle. Others watched as it flipped blazing through the darkness and struck a shack. The shatter of the breaking glass was followed by a whoosh, a surge of light, and the shack was. suddenly in flames that shot skyward with stunning abruptness. Someone made a sound as if he watched fireworks. Another bottle had been lit, and after it arched toward the other slope, it struck a shack, exploded, and the street was flanked by flames now as the group huddled, gaping toward the trestle and what neared them: gimping, spastic, growling, frenzied, hairy figures, cloaked in furs, their mouths frothing, their limbs jerking. Lightning flashed in the valley. Ridges flamed in the lowlands. Winds fanned the burning shacks and spread destruction to their neighbors.
Slaughter shot and aimed and shot again as did the others near him. Burning bottles burst among the jerking figures. The things were moaning, howling, screaming. But they kept coming, relentlessly stumbling toward the gunfire. Nothing seemed to stop them. They had risen from the dead too many times. Confident of immortality, they were unafraid, ignoring the wounds that halted them a moment but didn't drop them. Some were in flames as they reached the group that shot them. The things struck with clubs. They howled. They slashed. They clawed. They kicked and bit.
Slaughter shot one, then another. As his rifle clicked on empty for the last time, he drew his handgun, aiming, shooting, aiming. Other flaming bottles burst before him. Men screamed as they fought hand-to-hand with the figures. Friends around him fell back. Those behind him tried to regroup. Half the town up here was burning, cryptic symbols gone forever, as Slaughter's handgun clicked on empty as well, and while he lurched back, attempting to reload, something struck him. It was big and solid, hairy. It was foul with stench and rot, and it was on him, slashing with its teeth and claws. He tried to push it off him, but its teeth sank into his wrist, and he was screaming.
"Jesus, no, don't bite me!"
But the thing braced its teeth and twisted, grinding, and the pain, the shock of fear was so intense that Slaughter didn't realize what he was doing. When he regained awareness, he saw how he had clubbed his handgun at the figure until fluid oozed from the figure's skull, and it was motionless on the ground beside him. Slaughter gasped, staring at his shredded wrist.
"I've got it!" he screamed. "I'm like them now! Christ, I've got it!"
That would be his most heroic moment, what in memory would be the apex of his life, the quick consideration that would save him. Thinking of the foulness creeping up his arm to reach his shoulder and his brain, thinking of the monster he would shortly be, he struck out with his handgun toward another monstrous figure, turned, saw Parsons, and ran. Parsons noticed him, Parsons who suddenly became rigid, the fear in his eyes more fierce than any emotion he'd ever displayed, for Parsons must have thought of Slaughter's anger toward him, must have assumed that Slaughter was already maddened and changed. Parsons raised his shotgun, firing blindly. Slaughter faltered as the pellets struck his side. But the image of the two kids in that grocery store returned to him, and he mustered the strength to keep running. As Parsons pumped a fresh shell into the shotgun's chamber, Slaughter reached him, knocked him flat, grabbed the shotgun, raised it to his shoulder, and he couldn't have accomplished this if he had not been large and tall the way he was, but with his great reach he could manage. Flames around him, buildings burning, lightning flashing, Slaughter pulled the trigger and blew his contaminated arm off.
ELEVEN
Dunlap huddled in the blackness of the tunnel. The sight of the gruesome battle had so unnerved him that he'd stumbled backward, tripped, and fallen. Raising his frightened gaze, he'd glimpsed the tunnel's murky entrance and raced to it for shelter, so afraid that his sphincter muscle weakened, making him void his bowels, the revolting stench humiliating him as he crouched and whimpered in the tunnel.
This at last was his great truth, the story he had worked for, and he couldn't bear to watch it. He was a loser, not because he drank too much so often or because he had that trouble with his wife or because the big investigations never came his way. He was a loser simply because he wasn't the man he thought he was. He had run in panic with the other men toward the cliff. He had been the first man to climb in a frenzy up the trestle. He had known reporters who in Vietnam had stood with soldiers in the shriek of battle. He had known other reporters, who had clambered into burning buildings or had waded into flooding rivers or had argued with a gunman holding hostages.
Not him, though. He had always said that he just never had the chance, but now he knew he didn't want the chance. When the opportunity occurred, he'd persistently avoided the chance. Now he saw the battle raging closer to the tunnel, and in fright, the stench of his voided bowels much worse, he groped backward, farther along the tunnel, fleeing. He gripped at the timbers. He felt along the clammy walls, and then he understood that, while he had befouled himself and caused this obscene stench, another stench was in here too, and despite his revulsion, he didn't understand his compulsion to fumble toward it.
From the change in sound, he realized that he was in a chamber, and he had a flashlight in the pack that Slaughter had lent him. Bringing out the light, switching it on, he scanned the chamber.
He moaned.
No! He didn't want this. He didn't want to see it. Dear God, he had fled for sanctuary to their secret place of burial. On wooden pallets along the floor, he saw their bodies, fetid, ugly, lined in neat rows, clubs beside them, rotted meat, their arms crossed gently on their fur-skinned chests. The mass of them were maggot-ridden horrors. Others were more recent, and as he lurched hard against a slimy wall, he saw that one was moving, rising from its death-like sleep, groggy, drawing breath for energy.
Dunlap screamed as the creature turned toward him. It was frowning. In a moment, it was grinning. Sure, Dunlap thought, remembering the boy who had seemed dead and then returned to life. The virus. These things didn't know what death was. Some returned and others didn't, but they all in time were laid to rest here in the expectation that they eventually would rise again. Dunlap dimly sensed the paintings on the walclass="underline" the bear, the antelope, the deer. They leapt in rampant silent beauty, clubs and rocks drawn next to them as if the animals fled from the weapons about to strike them. And the creature was kneeling, grinning, frothing, snarling, gaining strength to spring as all the tension Dunlap had been feeling clamored for release. He screamed in fury, lashing forward, striking with his flashlight, breaking teeth. He struck again and then again, feeling cheekbones snap, eyes burst. He hit until he completely lost his strength, and what had crouched before him lay still and silent.
Dunlap wept. He sank to the floor and sobbed until he thought his mind would crack. Hitting the creature, he'd broken his flashlight. He was trapped in the darkness. From outside, he heard the battle, heard the shooting and the screaming. He was torn between his need to flee this room and his determination to avoid the battle.
But he couldn't stay here in the darkness. He heard noises. Another figure rising? He groped to his knees, then his feet, and fumbled toward the tunnel. Then he found it, and he shuffled down it, bumping against the walls.
But the tunnel went on too far. In horror, he understood that by now he should have seen the flames outside. Dear Christ, he'd gone in the wrong direction. He was in a different tunnel.