Nancy’s eyes were wide and unblinking.
They looked oddly hollow and empty, but they glistened wetly.
Canine eyes.
Lou didn’t dare get too close. She was no more human now than a rabid pit bull. Her eyes were stark and mad, completely insane. She was… obscene. No other word seemed to fit as she snarled and snapped and clawed at them. Snotty tangles of blood and mucus swung from her lips.
Johnny worked his way silently behind her.
Lisa and Lou slowly closed from either side to distract her. Nancy looked directly at Lou and he felt his guts go to sauce. He’d never seen such vile, mindless hatred before. A high, moaning sound came from deep in her throat.
Then Johnny had her, locking her arms behind her.
Ben darted in, “Don’t hurt her! Don’t hurt her!” he was crying, but that didn’t seem to be a worry, because she writhed and undulated in Johnny’s arms like she was made of jelly. Her face was pulled into a bestial grimace of rage.
Lou tried to get in close and her left foot kicked out and caught him in the chest. It was like being struck by a sledgehammer. He stumbled back and fell over a chair.
Joe was there now, too. As he tried to take hold of her clawing hands, her fingers scraped over his face, opening bleeding ruts.
Lisa was back-handed and dropped violently to the floor.
Ben caught her around the waist, her hands pounding at his head with meaty thuds. Strips of skin and clots of hair were torn from his scalp. But he held on and so did Johnny, trying to pull back on her with everything he had so she wouldn’t be able to bite her husband. She squirmed in their arms like a sack of vipers, contorting and slithering, moving with greased, repulsive gyrations.
Finally, she broke free from Johnny and went straight for Ben.
Johnny quickly brought the ball of his right hand down on the nape of her neck with a thud. Her eyes rolled back and she folded up limply like a lawn chair.
They all stood around staring at each other, panting, sweating.
“Un-fucking-real,” Ruby Sue said.
Ben cradled his unconscious wife in his arms. His face was wet with tears. Rioting with emotions, he stared at her, seeing blood running from the corners of her mouth. “What did you do?” he said to Johnny. “What in fuck’s name did you do to her?”
“I just put her out,” he explained, his face white. “She was going to bite you.”
Ben sat there on his knees, rocking her slack form. One of her arms fell from her lap and struck the floor, knuckles rapping.
Joe crouched down. Felt for a pulse at her wrist, her throat. He checked her eyes, put an ear to her chest. He stood up, his face striped with red welts. He shook his head. “She’s dead, man,” he muttered. “She’s gone.”
Ben covered her with his weeping form, crying out insults at Johnny. Lisa managed to insert herself, telling him it was only the disease, the germ, whatever the hell it was. That it was nobody’s fault.
But Ben shoved her out of the way.
He picked up his wife and carried her over to the dining room table in the next room. He whispered things to her and placed a blanket over her after he kissed her.
The others just stood around stupidly, wordlessly.
That’s when the door was thrown in.
21
First thing they saw was an overweight man, cradling a shotgun in his arms, step through the door. “Evening,” he said. “Name’s Earl Rawley. Pleased to meet you.”
Lou stared at him incredulously. “You don’t say?”
Rawley nodded, brought the shotgun up. “And if you make one wrong move, as they say in the cowboy flicks, I’ll spray you all over the room. Promise.”
He wasn’t alone.
A thin, sparse man with a shock of silver hair and even white teeth trailed him as did two other men, one woman, and a young girl. All dressed to kill in their Sunday finest, they carried clubs made from table legs, kitchen knives. They looked crazy.
“What the fuck is this about?” Joe said, stepping forward.
Rawley moved back a bit, intimidated by Joe’s sheer bulk. “This is about living and dying, about right and wrong,” he said, grinning with bad teeth. “It’s about doing what I say or dying.”
He was round like a barrel and not much taller, barely over five feet. He wore a straw cowboy hat with a green plastic band around it. His beady eyes were framed by black Coke bottle glasses and he looked crazier than a rat in a blender.
Johnny, of course, was carefully considering his options. As was Joe.
Ruby Sue and Lisa stood there next to Ben.
“Let’s just relax here,” Lou said. “Way I see it, the real enemy are those outside. If we join forces—”
“We will join forces.” Rawley nodded. “Yes sir, we surely will. See I came into this town with a truck full of frozen meat bound for the A&P. All the way from Texas. Just another stop. What I strolled into was this bullshit. Those crazies attacked my truck, ripped the goddamn doors off. If it wasn’t for my shotgun here, I’d be like them now. Preacher here heard me shooting, came to my rescue.”
The preacher nodded, knowing it was all too true. “Yes. The righteous are few in number now. Had we—” he swept his hand to include his little flock “—not been away the past few days, we would be among the evil ones.”
“They’re not evil,” Lou pointed out. “Not really. Just… infected.”
“Like you soon will be, friend,” Rawley said.
“What’re you, fucking nuts?” Lou heard himself ask.
“Maybe. All I know is that I intend to live.”
Johnny moved forward. “I don’t know about you folks, but I’ve had my fill of this redneck cocksucker.”
“Not one step closer, son,” Rawley said. “I swear to God I kill you plain dead.”
Johnny and Joe looked at each other and something passed between them. They both seemed to know that all that was saving Rawley’s pitiful ass was the shotgun.
“What you all dressed-up for, soldier boy?” Rawley asked him.
“The end. Armageddon. Don’t you recognize me, you peckerwood sonofabitch?” Johnny said. “How about you preacher? I’m Death riding a pale horse, motherfucker. I got the keys of hell and death and I’m gonna ram ’em up your worthless ass.”
“You blaspheme,” the preacher said.
“No, you do. Look at this guy here—you’re aligning yourself with him? The guy’s a psycho,” Johnny said.
“Easy,” Rawley said.
The preacher looked at him, looked away. Like what remained of his congregation, he desperately needed to be led. By anyone or anything. Without leadership, divine or earthly, he was without substance.
Rawley stroked the trigger of the shotgun. “Don’t listen to him, preacher. That sonofabitch’ll slit your throat quicker than a teenager fucks. And that’s the Gospel according to Earl Rawley.”
Ben said, “My wife’s dead. Now I’m dead, too,” he said and meant it, moving forward past Lou. “When he shoots me, take him down.”
Lou grabbed a shoulder, stopped him. “No, if you do that your death means nothing. Stay back.”
Rawley nodded happily. “That’s right, friend. You see, maybe I am crazy. Crazy enough that I’ve had my fill of Yankees for one lifetime. I’ll kill as many as I got to. To protect myself… and the congregation, of course.”
Lisa came forward now. “Yankees? Yankees?” she said, lit up like a flare now. “In case you haven’t noticed, you hayseed fucking yahoo, the Civil War’s been over 130 years and counting. Yankees? For the love of God, you ignorant moron. What barnyard did your mama conceive your sorry ass in?”