And right into a nest of them.
And, of course, it made sense, didn’t it?
Where else would they go but the playground? Not human, not anymore, but still the most basal of imperatives held: the need to play. Even beasts of the forests had that.
And so did the children of Cut River.
Lou felt hope and energy run out of him like water through a colander.
They were everywhere.
Their dark, waiting shapes were snipped from black paper. They were perched like vultures atop the jungle gym. Crowded on the merry-go-round and sitting on the swings—not swinging, just sitting there almost as if they’d been waiting for him.
And maybe they were.
Maybe they heard him coming, smelled him perhaps. Animals could do that and these children were animals now, weren’t they?
As if satisfied by his presence, they began to play.
They started swinging, the chains holding the swing seats rattling against their crossbars. The merry-go-round began to turn. The teeter-totter began to move up and down, groaning and creaking in the night. It was surreal, like falling into a dream… or a nightmare.
He sensed motion behind him.
A small hand grasped his wrist. Its grip was surprisingly powerful. The flesh was cold, damp, feeling much like the pebbly skin of a freshly-plucked chicken.
With a cry, Lou turned, pulling his hand free.
There was a little girl standing there.
She was no more than seven, wearing a cute little party dress that was bunched up and stained with dirt. Her face was pallid, eyes like living yellow marbles. She leered at him, lips pulling away from teeth in a depraved grin. She pulled up her skirt. She wore nothing beneath. “Hey, mister,” she seethed with that hissing voice, “you wanna fuck?”
And Lou, maybe terrified and maybe struck by the sheer profanity of it all, brought his hand back and slapped her across the face. She yelped like a kicked dog and fell over.
And that was the signal.
The others were coming now, sliding off their perches like crocodiles from the muddy banks of a jungle river.
And Lou was running.
He moved with a speed he thought had abandoned him in his twenties.
He sprinted around the front of the school and the first thing he saw were three yellow school buses parked at the curb. He turned and saw a boy making good time on him. He was older boy, maybe a sixth grader.
Without remorse, Lou went down on one knee and pulled the trigger of his shotgun. The buckshot nearly tore the kid in half.
As Lou got back to his feet, he saw that it had done just that. The kid was mewling like a sick cat. Divorced of his legs and pelvis, he was dragging his upper body across the grass, teeth still snapping.
Lou tried the door of the first bus.
Locked.
Their footfalls were pounding through the grass now.
The second bus.
Locked.
He turned and saw their ashen faces coming through the darkness.
A dead man now, he went to try the third bus and the door was standing wide open. He fell through it onto the small, mat-covered steps. He hauled himself in and threw himself towards the chrome lever by the driver’s seat. He pulled it with everything he had and the folding door snapped shut.
And then they were all around the bus, howling and shrieking, the bus rocking as they threw themselves at it.
Lou was crouched on the floor, trembling.
It was about that time that he saw the guy in the driver’s seat.
26
Ben was still alive, contrary to popular opinion.
He was still alive and he was still at the church. Yes, he was in bad shape—the rabids hadn’t gone easy on him. He was bitten, clawed, scratched, his body a map of bruises and contusions and swollen cuts.
But he was very much alive.
Soon after the final members of Rawley’s gang had been murdered, the rabids, leaving Ben for dead, had slipped back out into the night like shadows, back to the hunting grounds of Cut River.
Ben accepted certain things now.
They had bitten him and the germ, or whatever it was, was inside him now, too. He could feel it beginning to work. It didn’t waste any time.
Maybe there was a certain clarity that came with knowing your end was imminent, but he believed everything Johnny had said. He hadn’t been certain before—not one-hundred percent, even though, crazy as it sounded, it made perfect sense—but now, yes, he believed.
And conversion of faith had come at an expensive price.
This disease or what not was simply too insidious to be of natural origin or freakish mutation, it had been designed to do what it was doing… by assholes in white lab coats with no more compassion or respect for human life than terrorists planting a bomb in a hospital.
Maybe he was being too hard on them, but he didn’t think so.
Like Johnny, he had lost all respect for the power brokers of this country.
But that was over now. Soon, it wouldn’t be his problem.
He was in the dining room of the rectory of St. Thomas’ Catholic Church. On the dining table, shrouded by a white sheet, was the form of his dead wife.
It was the result of a short cut. A quicker way home from the casino. It had cost the life of his brother-in-law Sam and now his wife, too. And before long, Ben himself.
He was alone.
The rabids had abandoned the church, dragging off the dead with them.
The church was silent.
Ben sat in a chair in the corner, the chandelier burning at a low setting. It had to be that way—Ben had an aversion now to bright light. A voice of optimism kept telling him he was just tired, but he knew better. There was a numbness in his fingertips. His limbs were trembling. Spastic convulsions ripped through him now and again. He was nauseous, feverish, his head aching. His throat was dry and constricted… but the idea of water made him violently ill.
He had the germ.
He was infected with Laughing Man.
It was inside him, working its malignant magic. Soon, soon…
He went to the table, drew the sheet from Nancy’s still body.
Dear sweet Jesus my wife my wife oh God oh God oh—
He tightened his jaw, pressed his lips together. There was no time for emotional outbursts now. He would keep watch over her body until dawn, then he would kill himself. He had a big carving knife from the kitchen drawer.
Nancy’s face looked compressed, eyes sunk deep into their sockets. She had a gray, mottled pallor, lips bloodless and flaccid. He lifted her again, checking for lividity. If she was truly dead, then her blood should have settled—but it hadn’t. Rigor had not set in, either. Her limbs were supple and limp. But he could find no pulse, no heartbeat, no evidence of respiration.
And her flesh was cold.
Terribly cold like a body pulled from a frozen lake.
What did it all mean?
Is this how it happened? Some near-death coma, some bastard form of suspended animation or metabolic suspension occurred and then… and then…
He covered her.
She was dead. She had to be dead.
He sat back down, maintaining his deathwatch. There was a painting of the Last Supper on the wall. Nearby, a simple wooden crucifix. It made him think of horror movies he’d seen. Cadavers rising from the mist of death, being held at bay with religious symbols. But that was fiction, dark fantasy channeled with religious myth.
He sat in his chair, slumped forward.
Fatigue swept over him.
He kept drifting off, his limbs aching, his eyes heavy. The only thing that kept him from passing out were the convulsions that ripped through him at irregular intervals. Sweat poured in rivers from him… icy, sweet-smelling perspiration.