He pulled himself up and out.
“NOW!” he shouted to her. “COME UP NOW!”
But she didn’t move as fast as she wanted to, almost as if some grim curiosity had to see what could make such sounds.
But then she smelled them, offensive, ripe like wet dogs.
Something kicked into her throat, maybe her heart, maybe a clot of raw terror.
But it got her moving.
She clawed her way up the rungs and she could hear the rabids shrieking and snarling, feel the cold air they brought with them, smell their breath like raw, spoiled meat.
And then Johnny somehow had hold of her and hoisted her out effortlessly.
He held her to him, maybe a moment too long, but it felt good, right, necessary. Then they were on their feet and Johnny was pushing the lid back on the manhole and he almost had it, but it was too late.
A tangle of clawing, clutching hands erupted around the edges of the lid, a mutiny of dead white fingers. The lid went clattering into the street. So many hands, four or five anyway, but small, delicate.
The hands of children.
Somehow, this was worse.
Yes, Lisa thought madly, the kids still hang around down there, Johnny. It’s still their place, even now.
Then they were running again, the feel of the damp night, the chill breeze so beautiful, so refreshing after the cloistered, suffocating underworld. The moon brooded above, huge, round, the color of fresh bone. A lonely, omnipotent killing eye, it described the city in a wan glow.
A harvest moon, a hunter’s moon.
The very thing to hunt and die by, as it was in the ancient world.
Although Lisa was exhausted, her legs rubbery and knotted with pain, she kept going, trying to stay up with Johnny who, despite the fact he was nearly twice her age, was in much better condition. So it wasn’t that surprising that she didn’t see the curb that spilled her to the sidewalk, made her nose kiss the cement, brought blood.
And maybe they smelled it.
The rabids.
Because it brought them, a swarm of them.
They came crawling and leaping out of the shadows like hyenas for fresh meat. They moved with a perverse, slinking motion as if they were more snake than human, boneless and fluid. They crept from behind the hulks of cars, from the mouths of alleys, through broken windows, and, yes, from manholes.
Jesus, so many.
Hissing and slavering, they came. An inhuman throng grinning with cruel mouths slashed in red against clownwhite faces, sinister yellow eyes, huge and unblinking, fingers hooked, matted fright wigs for hair. Naked, clothed, dressed in rags and what might have been the bloodied skins of domestic animals and human beings.
And the sounds.
Chatterings and chitterings and throaty growls. Shrill pipings and congested whisperings as they advanced.
A teenage girl came hopping out on all fours, screaming, teeth snapping.
Johnny cut in her in half with the shotgun, racked it, and killed two others.
In the span of less than thirty seconds there were five bodies on the pavement, limbs still twitching, mouths still chomping, teeth still grinding.
Johnny and Lisa made their break as the rabids set on their fallen comrades.
Lisa, her brain a hive of rushing noise, looked back once and saw them.
Dozens now, tearing and feasting and fighting.
But what really wrecked her was the sight of a little girl, no more than five or six, clad in stained yellow Dr. Denton’s, ripping free a decapitated head from a strand of bloody meat. Tearing it free and clutching it to her bosom like a soccer ball and scuttling off into the shadows with it.
That’s what made Lisa start screaming.
14
Lou Frawley watched the shoes under the stall door.
They did not move, did not do anything. Like a knife in the shadows, they waited for him, waited for his soft neck to get in range.
There was something caught in his throat.
It was cold and slippery. When he swallowed it back down, it landed thick in his belly like a shivering clump of coagulated grease. It could not be digested, could not be voided. It hung there, spreading out tentacles of nausea and making him want to vomit very badly.
Terror. Yes, terror so absolute it physically manifested itself.
How long, he had to wonder, could a person live on a raw diet of such continuous horror? How long before it brought on a coronary or a stroke?
He clutched the .38 tightly in his fist and approached the stall door.
The bathroom lights buzzed overhead as if the fluorescent tubes were full of wasps. A trickle of sweat ran down his spine. Every time he thought he could know no more fear, no more trembling apprehension, this town threw something new at him. Its menu of dread lunacy was inexhaustible.
He paused a few feet away from the stall door.
Far enough back that whoever was in there wouldn’t be able to kick it open and get the jump on him. He stood there, wondering what he should do—get the hell out or look this in the face and kill it if it indeed needed killing.
He stepped around the side of the door so he was out of range.
His palms damp with perspiration, he reached out for the catch on the door.
If it was locked from the inside, he decided right then and there, he wasn’t bothering with it. No way in hell he was going under or over the walls.
Too damn dangerous.
This was bad enough.
He could smell the owner of those shoes just fine. It smelled like he’d just shit his pants. But there was another odor there, too, a sharp, lingering stink that made Lou’s flesh go tight. Eyes bulging, teeth locked together, he took hold of the latch and gave it a little pull.
Unlocked, the door swung noiselessly out.
A man was sitting on the toilet, his eyes glazed like those of a dead fish on a toxic beach, staring sightlessly. He wore a dark blue cop’s uniform, badge in place. There was a shotgun clutched in his hands, the barrel jabbed under his throat. Behind his head there was a great smear of dark, sticky material.
Lou reached out to touch him, his brain screaming, did he do it? Did he do it? Did he—
He touched the man’s arm.
It was stiff and unyielding.
Dead, yes, certainly.
Lou sighed, letting some of the terror run out of him as if somebody had pulled a drain plug somewhere in his soul. It subsided.
He jabbed a finger at the cop’s shoulder.
The shotgun and the hands that held it slid down a few inches and his face fell right off. Not just his face, but the entire front of his head slid free like ice from a roof and landed in his lap with a wet, bloody thud, a few pounds of raw hamburger.
Lou wheeled around, teeth clenched, dry heaves convulsing his belly.
Blew his head off, sure. Nothing to be afraid of.
This cop had balls. When whatever took this town settled into him as well, he’d taken his own life. That took courage, foresight. For even death was better than becoming an animal like those prowling the streets.
Lou could almost picture him coming in here, perhaps even calmly, the infection clawing at his brain. Sitting on the toilet and doing what he knew must be done.
Yes, this guy—his name badge said FRANK CONVERS—was strong.
The weak ones were outside.
Lou closed the stall door, giving Convers the only respect and privacy possible in this convoluted, primeval world that eons ago had been called Cut River. He mumbled some half-remember prayer from his childhood and left the restroom.
Out in the station, he studied the other entrance off the bullpen.