Oh, for chrissake! he told his runaway imagination. Quit being so fucking ridiculous here. It’s a small town. Excitement here on a Monday night consists of doing the wash, trimming your toe nails, and getting a piece off the old lady while the kids are plugged into the tube.
He started when he saw a shadowy form slip behind a parked truck.
He kept staring, blinking his eyes, not sure if he’d seen anything at all.
His hand on the door to the Chestnut Street Café (there was one for his notebook, a Midwestern anomaly for his memoirs—a Chestnut Street), he could see the graveyard in the distance, a covetous expanse of heavy trees and marble.
The Chestnut Street Café was just a little counter joint. Places like this, Lou knew, always had the best burgers, the best breakfasts. Nobody knew this better than he did… or the expanding sack of his belly. The café was all lit up… but empty.
His heart started pounding then slowed when he saw a man in the corner, back to him, just standing by a huge coffee urn.
“Hello, there,” Lou said, flicking his ash into a tray on the green Formica counter.
There was a blackboard above the malt machine and deep fryers. In fluorescent chalk the specials were scrawled: FRESH PERCH FRY $3.99, HAM AND SCALLOP BLUE PLATE $4.99, HOT BEEF $4.50. Yeah, it all sounded good. Beat the living shit out of Taco Hell.
The guy still hadn’t turned around.
Lou was about to sit down on one of the red vinyl stools, but he didn’t. He stood there, cigarette smoldering in the corner of his drawn lips, a numb, empty feeling spreading out in his belly.
“Excuse me…” he said, lacking the breath to finish whatever might have come next.
The guy turned around.
He wore a red plaid hunting shirt. It was open to the waist. His bare chest and face were the color of graveyard marble. One eye was missing from its socket, a crusty trail of blood smeared down his cheek. The other eye was wide, unblinking, and yellow as a cat’s pupil.
Then the guy made his move.
All Lou knew was that there was some crazy, one-eyed shit coming at him with a meat cleaver. He looked frantically around for a weapon, saw a broom leaning up against a booth. It was either make a stand with the broom handle or he was going to get sliced up like a Christmas ham.
He went for the broom, knowing that a run for the door would have been suicidal at that point.
The guy kept coming, his face tight and bloodless. He was making a low gurgling sound in his throat. A tangle of foamy drool hung from his lips, swayed back and forth as he shambled forward.
Lou got his hand around the broom handle just as a small pale hand grabbed him by the ankle from under the booth. He yanked his foot and the hand pulled back.
He saw a girl hiding under there, no more than seven or eight, stark naked, her eyes yellow and faintly luminous.
She made a low growling sound and dove out at him, scampering on all fours like a mad dog, snapping at his legs. He kicked her in the head and she yelped, rolling away.
At that precise moment, the one-eyed man lunged, swinging the cleaver wildly. It slashed within two, three inches of Lou’s face. It came again and he stepped under it. The blade slit open the booth, stuffing spilling out like the guts from a road killed hound.
The girl scampered forward again and Lou cracked her on top of the head with the broom handle. There was a hollow pop and she went still.
The one-eyed man threw his cleaver and it spun end over end, just missing the crown of Lou’s skull and shattering a tower of water glasses behind the counter.
“Listen, man,” Lou found himself saying. “I don’t know what the fuck this is about here. But you need help. You and the kid. I didn’t want to hurt her, but—”
The one-eyed man, hands hooked into claws, made a sharp barking noise and threw himself at Lou. Lou got around him, cracked him on the side of the face with the broom handle. His head snapped back and came around again.
Lou hit him two, three more times.
He did not got down.
Lou slammed the tip into his belly and the one-eyed man doubled over, crying out. Lou turned and bolted out the door.
His keys were in his hand and he couldn’t remember digging them out of his coat. His shoes made slapping sounds on the wet pavement. The Grand Am was open. He fell in behind the wheel, trembling fingers fumbling the keys, trying to get them in the ignition. Click. There. They slid in.
As he made to turn the car over, he suddenly realized he wasn’t alone.
Oh, God, the backseat, the backseat…
In the grainy darkness, he heard a high, muted giggling and felt cold fingers at the nape of his neck, hot and feverish breath that stunk of sick wards at his ear. Sweat running down his forehead, he ducked forward, brought his elbow back and felt it connect with a solid thud.
He threw open the door and launched himself into the street, an obscene growling rising up from the back seat. He saw huge yellow eyes, glistening teeth—both set in the narrow, hungry face of a young woman.
He found his feet and dashed up the street.
He made it maybe a block before his wind started to give out.
He slipped behind a van and went to his hands and knees, his lungs aching, gasping for breath, more out of sheer panic than exertion. Cautiously, he peered around the bumper.
The street was empty and wet. Bits of streetlight reflected from puddles.
But he was definitely alone.
Why hadn’t they come after him? What in the name of Christ was this all about? What had happened to these people? This town?
The reels of his brain were spinning crazily, but found no answers. A guy with one eye. A naked kid. A woman. All demented, savage. Not human anymore. Animals, monsters. All they wanted to do was kill.
And those eyes, Lou thought in terror, Jesus Christ, those eyes, not right, not right at all.
Down the street, he could see his Grand Am.
It looked harmless, door wide open.
He didn’t see anyone around it. But it was hard to know, the town washed in clutching shadows.
He crouched there, unable to move. Afraid to do anything and afraid not to. His throat was full of cotton, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He needed a plan. Something. He kept trying to tell himself that those three… people were isolated cases, but if that was true, how come he hadn’t seen anyone else? Not a soul. Nothing.
Think! Goddammit, think!
All right, all right. Maybe the town had gone bad, maybe some weird pathogen or something had ravaged it. Okay. He would proceed with the assumption that they were all crazy. So, what he needed was a weapon, some way to defend himself.
And then a phone.
He would call the cops…
Oh, Jesus the fucking lines are down. This place is cut off.Even cells are useless here.
All right. No panicking. All he had to do was use his head.
He thought he’d been to Cut River maybe four, five years before. But that had been in broad daylight. Not at night and not with mental cases roaming the streets. Still, a town this size had to have some cops. What did the sign say back on the road? CUT RIVER, Pop. 2400. Yeah, there had to be a police force here, sheriff’s department, something. Somebody had to get his ass out of here. If all else failed, he’d steal a car or a truck.
But, dammit, he was getting out.
Steeling himself, he rose from his hiding place, wondering if any of those predatory, lupine eyes were even now tracking him, stalking him, waiting to get him somewhere where he could be easily brought down.