No man’s land, Ben thought wildly. Clearly marked. Do not pass go. Do not exit. This is the end of the world, their world.
“Turn ’em off,” Nancy whimpered, “for God’s sake turn those lights off!”
Joe did, speechless, afraid as he’d ever been in a life where his sheer size made terror an impossibility.
He threw the Jeep in reverse, spun it around and headed back the way they came.
“There’s other roads out,” he said in a whisper of a voice. “Other ways.”
He said nothing more and neither did anyone else.
But it was building in Nancy.
Ben could feel her shuddering next to him, not with horror, but with rage. It was only a matter of time.
“Are you—” she sucked in a dry breath “—trying to tell me that fifteen minutes ago when you came through here, you saw none of that?”
Ruby Sue turned in her seat, looked at her, then looked at Joe. “Oh, for chrissake, tell them the truth, babe. What does it matter now?”
He nodded. “We’ve been here for a couple hours.”
Silence.
Nancy licked her lips. “And you lied about it because…”
“Because,” Joe said, “the reason we were here in the first place wasn’t exactly what you’d call legal. Okay? We came to see someone. They weren’t home. So we waited around. They didn’t show, so we took a ride. Then we found you guys.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ben said.
“Hell it doesn’t,” Nancy snapped. “What else are you two lying about?”
Joe sighed. “Listen, lady. Way I see it we’re the only game in town, so why don’t you sit tight and I’ll try to get us out. How’s about that?”
She grumbled under her breath.
Ben didn’t like where any of this was going.
He managed to calm her down, but he knew it wouldn’t last. The silence in the Jeep was thick like honey, dripping with innuendo. They couldn’t afford to piss Joe off. They needed his ride. Like he pointed it out, it was the only game in town.
Through the streets again.
Joe drove slower this time, no theatrics, no NASCAR bullshit. He navigated the roads, taking his time. Maybe he knew now what was at stake here. That if he wiped the Jeep out, the story ended right here.
Nancy was suspicious of the both of them and, dammit, so was Ben now.
What bothered him at first is why they didn’t offer their last names when everyone introduced themselves. It was a small thing, yes, but the smallest of bones could choke a man. And why lie about how long they were in town? They said they were in Cut River for a reason that wasn’t exactly what you’d call legal.
Okay.
Fine.
But how bad could it be?
From the looks of Ruby Sue, Ben was figuring drugs. But from the look of Joe—and it took a while to look at Joe, he was so goddamn big—it could’ve been just about anything.
Ben massaged his temples.
He couldn’t think anymore. He was drained, emptying fast.
Next to him, Nancy was grinding her teeth. It wasn’t a good sign. It could’ve been anxiety or fear or she could’ve been pissed off, simmering like a pot of chili on the back burner.
As they drove, he swept his eyes over what he could see of Cut River.
They were driving through a part of town that had electricity: streetlights were working, shop fronts were lit, squares of light in apartment windows. It all looked so positively normal, so completely average it was frightening.
But six, seven blocks back, in the darkness… Christ, how could things change so quickly?
What bothered him the most was that he knew the psychos were around.
Maybe he didn’t see them, but he definitely felt them. The way a man could feel something hunting him in the black jungle or cold steel about to be pressed to his throat.
Yes, they were out there. Many of them.
The bad part was how they didn’t show themselves.
But then, neither does a tiger until it’s time to sink its fangs into your throat.
Ben licked his lips, his eyes wide and staring now. He had a pretty good idea he knew where Joe was taking them, out to where the country road merged with the town. The very way Nancy and Sam and he had planned coming in. More turns, more little shortcuts, then finally a main road, maybe part of Chestnut (Ben had only been in Cut River once or twice, so he couldn’t be sure).
The electricity had failed here now, lights were patchy, few and far between.
It was going to be bad and he knew it.
He didn’t think they’d be able to get out this way either. Just a feeling, but it persisted like a nasty itch. When Nancy and he had come into town earlier they had taken a footbridge up river that led into a little park. They hadn’t gone over the main bridge. Maybe that was a good thing.
As they sped down the final stretch of road and Cut River fell behind them, dread thick as tar settled into Ben’s belly.
The moon lit up the countryside pretty good.
He could see the bridge up ahead, other things, but he couldn’t be exactly sure what. Joe must’ve seen them, too, because he started slowing down, clicking his brights on.
“Whoa,” Ruby Sue said expectantly, “don’t look good, people.”
And it didn’t.
Ben and Nancy were sitting forward in their seats now, mutually shaking.
The bridge was blocked with more cars.
No real surprise. There were clearings to either side of it, meandering open meadows.
Ben could see shapes out there, indistinct but there, all right.
As Joe backed up and swung the Jeep around, the headlights turned the clearing on the left to day. Ben kept looking, so did Nancy. He felt a serious necessity to scream, but he couldn’t. His lungs were empty. He sat on the edge of his seat, that cold, gnawing feeling in his guts.
Nancy kept shaking her head. “My God,” she whispered, defeated now. “My God.”
The meadow was full of scarecrows mounted up tight and secure on crossbars, except, of course, they weren’t scarecrows at all. They were people, maybe too hideous to even be called that. Corpses, really. Some recent, others decayed and withered into gray husks. And not just a few, but fifteen or twenty within the range of the headlights and many more hunched in the darkness beyond. Some were little more than skeletons dressed in the moldering cerements of the grave. They were not crucified as such, but lashed with wire, with ropes.
Joe idled there maybe two, three minutes, enough for the morbid impact of it to take root in their minds, to find soil and grow to ghastly fruition. When he pulled away, the fleshless skulls and cadaver faces faded, but were still livid and hurtful in their minds.
Nancy started sobbing.
Ruby Sue kept shaking her head as if it was beyond belief.
It was.
“Those people,” she said bleakly, “those people… oh, man, they must’ve dug ’em up or something. You think they dug ’em up?”
“Shut up,” Ben told her.
There was no argument on that and no time for one.
The townspeople were making their appearance.
They walked straight up the road en masse towards the Jeep. Mostly men and women, a few children. There had to be thirty or more, marching in unison, although it was more of an inhuman shambling. They were organized and fixed of purpose. A wall of humanity, a throng of white faces and glaring unblinking eyes.
“I’m going through them,” Joe announced coldly. “I’m fucking plowing through them sonsabitches.”
Ben felt Nancy slump against him as the Jeep picked up speed.
He felt his flesh crawl in undulating waves as reality spun wickedly out of control, as his mind narrowed and squealed with white noise.