9 Tales Told in the Dark 18 Read online

  Twenty, thirty of them were advancing now; the ones hitherto trying to get into the houses along the left side of the street fell in line with the others.

  Robinson turned.

  Several were coming from behind.

  He looked back to the ones in front.

  He was frozen, didn’t know what to do.

  Suddenly, a horn honked. Spinning on the balls of his feet, Robinson saw a car smash into the approaching zombies, its headlights splashing across him and stinging his eyes. The ghouls were tossed left and right.

  “Sheriff Robinson!” yelled a familiar voice. “Come on!”

  The zombies were at the front end of the squad car now. Tony backed cautiously away.

  “Come on!”

  If he got back into his own car, they would overturn it in an instant.

  Making up his mind, he tucked his gun away and went to the car; Tony was just climbing into the seat behind the passenger.

  That kid...what was his name, Ian? Sat behind the wheel. The other one, the fisherman, was in the passenger seat.

  “Come on!” the fisherman said.

  Robinson got in behind Ian and slammed his door. Ian hit the gas, and the car shot backwards. He spun the wheel, bringing it around.

  “I can’t believe it,” Robinson found himself saying as they flew toward the police station. He looked at the fisherman. “They can’t really be...they can’t.”

  “They are.”

  Robinson fell back against the seat.

  Five minutes later, Ian parked the car along the curb outside the station. Across the street, storefronts sat dark and huddled.

  “Call the state police,” James said as they started up the stairs. “The National Guard. Anyone. We have to stop this.”

  Inside, the kids were sitting on a bench facing the door. When they entered, they looked up, and saw from Robinson’s expression that he’d seen.

  “They get you?” the football player asked.

  “Almost,” Tony Jensen replied.

  Robinson made a B-line for his office. Sitting heavily behind the desk, he picked up the phone and put it against his ear.

  His expression said it all. “Dead.”

  Oh no.

  Slamming the handset into the cradle, Robinson jumped up and pushed past James.

  “Does anyone have a cellphone?” he called into the bullpen.

  Several people said they did.

  “Give it to me.”

  James watched as Robinson took a small handheld device from the Negro girl and poked it several times. He then lifted it to his ear and started talking.

  Was...was that a telephone? It was no bigger than a transistor radio! Smaller, in fact.

  Robinson went outside while talking on it. Where were the wires?

  A minute later, he came back inside, his face ashen. “They’re coming up the street,” he said.

  The kids chattered excitedly, the Negro girl standing up.

  “What did the state police say?” James asked.

  Ian, holding Brandi’s arm, brushed past James and went out the door. Only when the kids started following did he realize that they were leaving.

  “They’ll be here in half an hour.” Robinson handed the Negro girl her phone. Several deputies were standing behind the counter, looking worried.

  “Listen up!” Robinson said. “We’re bugging out. Jensen come with me. You...”

  “James.”

  “James. You’re coming with us.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “The hell away from here.”

  James started. “What? We can’t do that! We have to stop this! Innocent people...”

  “I shot one of those motherfuckers in the head!” Robinson roared. “How can I stop what’s already dead?”

  With that, he and Jensen went out the door. He poked his head back in. “Come if you’re coming.”

  Then he was gone.

  The female deputy looked around, worried, and then left, disappearing down a hall that presumably led to the employee parking lot.

  James was alone.

  All alone.

  They marched slowly through the street, stretching from one end to the other, a solid rank of the living dead. James stood on the stone steps fronting the police station and watched as they passed. Their numbers had increased, it seemed.

  He wondered if they passed their condition on to their victims like vampires, and shuddered. If so, by the end of the night, there would be hundreds, and from Winslow, they would spread out, into the woods, along the highways, north, south, east, west, a black, consuming virus, growing as it went like the creature from The Blob.

  How long until they took over the world?

  Shaking his head, James decided then and there he wouldn’t let that happen. He didn’t know how he’d stop it, but he knew he would.

  Coming down the stairs, he joined the procession, pushing past wobbling ghouls. Some of them turned to regard him as he slipped by, their mouths and chests painted with rich red blood. James looked away, loathe to consider from where it came.

  I’m one of them.

  No. He wasn’t one of them. He was different. He was...human.

  Mostly.

  From the police station, the zombies passed darkened storefronts. A few lights were on in windows above the shops, and at one James saw a dark silhouette, a worried man or woman watching the tide of death roll past.

  He wondered how much Winslow had changed since 1961. In his time, most of the residential buildings were north of the tracks, about a mile distant. There were some in the south (where he had lived) but beyond the rail line was where most people stayed.

  If the zombies got that far, it would be a massacre.

  Hurry. Stop them.

  How?

  His stomach rolled. He didn’t know.

  Less than half a block farther on, however, he saw a gas station on a corner, and suddenly he did know.

  The station, an Esso in 1961 but a 7-11 now, was squat and well-lit. Several people stood by the glass door, watching as the first zombies came into view.

  “Hey!” James shouted as loud as he could. “Look! Food!”

  He pointed toward the people in the doorway.

  The mass shifted toward them.

  Pushing past the zombies, he ran to the door. The people had backed away. One of them, a fat woman with scraggly brown hair, was holding a pistol. The other, a man, looked at her and said something.

  “Get out of here!” James screamed, slamming on the door. “Go out the back! Run!”

  The woman looked at the man.

  James tossed a glance over his shoulder. They were coming. The first rank was less than ten feet behind him.

  Inside, the woman came from behind the counter and disappeared around a wall. The man followed.

  James turned around.

  The zombies were drawing closer.

  He realized then that he didn’t have a lighter.

  Kicking himself, he turned around and tried the door.

  Locked.

  Making a fist, he slammed the glass. It shattered. He felt no pain.

  Reaching in, he unlocked the door and opened it. From a little rack by the cash register, he grabbed a red lighter.

  The first zombies were at the door.

  James went through it, pulled it closed behind him, and shoved the first ghouls out of his way.

  “Come on! They went this way!”

  He pushed through the crowd as, as one, it began to turn, following him, their leader. He realized then that he didn’t hear their thoughts, and was glad.

  At the closest gas pump, James took the hose and tried the nozzle.

  Nothing happened.

  Taking a deep breath, he took the hose in both hands and pulled.

  It separated from the pump, the sudden slack upsetting his balance.

  Gasoline shot out, spraying him and the zombies closest to him.

  At the next pump, he did the same thing. The smell of
gas was heavy on the air. It drenched everything.

  When gas was gushing from each of the twelve pumps, he grabbed a zombie, brought it close, and flicked the lighter, holding the flame against the ghoul.

  Flames engulfed it.

  The ranks were so tightly packed that within moments they were all burning. A sea of fire. Flames everywhere. All around.

  The heat was incredible, but James was beyond pain. He held up his arm and watched bemusedly as his skin began to bubble and blister.

  It was over. They couldn’t hurt anybody else. It-

  The fire reached the underground tanks then, and the world was filled with light.

  THE END.

  HOLDING ACTION by Jim Lee

  Another shell struck the already-shattered Toba village. It landed slightly to the right and to the rear of Esteban’s position. The explosion rocked him back against the curved fragment of wall he used for cover. Esteban hunched lower, clutched his old musket tighter. From a distance, two more of the enemy’s howitzers fired.

  Esteban shook his head, looked at the burning mid-January sun and then across what was once a homey village courtyard. Diego was only a few meters off, his back to his own piece of crumbling adobe. His uniform was as ragged as Esteban’s, his weapon as obsolete and his stubble as pronounced.

  Flat, fatalistic eyes met. The brothers exchanged grim smiles.

  Now Diego stole a glance upward, gauging the sun’s progress.

  Neither of them bothered to shout a comment over the sounds of the Argentine bombardment—there was no need. As steady veterans, they knew the pattern. It was almost ten o’clock and if the enemy was going to move before the burning afternoon, it would be now. Otherwise, the artillery barrage would be wasted, the assault delayed till the comparative cool of late afternoon or twilight.

  Diego rechecked his weapon, his cartridge bag and supply of musket balls. Esteban nodded and did likewise. Somewhere to the southwest, three more cannon roared.

  Between the concussive thuds of the shells impacting and the murderous shudder of secondary explosions, Esteban clearly heard a scream of pain and the beginnings of an agonized, separate moan—sounds that, five years before, would’ve shocked and sickened him.

  But this was January, 1870. By now, he took most any horror as a basic part of life.

  Esteban looked up, brushed a bit of the choking dry-season dust of the Gran Chaco from a threadbare shoulder. His brother grimaced, chewed his lower lip.

  Diego did that on the verge of every battle—a nervous habit. Chewed and chewed, till his lip was bloody. And these days, the flesh never had the chance to fully heal.

  “The other powder cache?” Esteban called out, just to distract his brother from that infernal chewing.

  Diego nodded, tapped his powder bag. “Got ‘em both. So it’s down to what we’ve got handy, huh?” Then again, he chewed his lip.

  The Argentine howitzers went silent. It was quiet enough to again hear the distant moan for help. Then the tramp of slow heavy feet on the grit—from behind! Esteban and Diego wheeled as one, brought up the muzzles of their Enfields. But it was only young Lt. Gaspar, the company’s latest commander. He held a rusty sword upright in one hand and gestured the men with him into position, using a revolver that seemed as much a part of him as his dirty fingers. The front of Gaspar’s tunic was torn and of course he wore no undergarment, so Esteban could see the rivulets of sweat that left muddy traces down the sunken, bony surface of the man’s chest.

  He recognized Luis and Cesar and Mario among the Regulars, but there were also several Home Guards—the Tobas who called this place home. Esteban averted his head, tried hard not to think.

  His men deployed, Gaspar sprinted incautiously across the open courtyard. Perhaps to inspire the men with bravado?

  Esteban shrugged to himself then nodded a greeting.

  Gaspar whistled, gestured for Diego to join them.

  He did, though moving with his head down and ducking from one relatively safe point to the next. Esteban grinned, glad to know his brother had more sense than their officer. The brothers shifted their eyes as one—toward Lt. Gaspar’s haggard face and then quickly down, in respect.

  Up close the man’s sweat reminded Esteban even more of muddy streams. He thought about the local wet-season—the downpours and the overflowing, intermittent rivers, the blissfully sucking mud that made military action almost impossible during winter. It was such times when the region’s nickname as “The Green Hell” actually made sense.

  But now it was January, the fifth summer of the War. There would not be a sixth, Esteban knew. Behind them a few hours’ marching distance and across the river was Asuncion. Somewhere between this shattered village and the Capitol, what was left of the army was forming for yet another hopeless stand.

  Esteban closed his eyes then opened them on the man assigned to buy the Paraguayan High Command the required time.

  Gaspar spoke a few clipped, meaningless words of encouragement and mumbled vaguely of promised reinforcements. But then—as if out of nowhere—came the savage whoops of the enemy cavalry and three Argentines appeared on the opposing side of the courtyard. All had their reins in their teeth in the typical fashion, freeing both hands to aim and fire their short, repeating carbines.

  They sighted the invitingly bunched targets Gaspar, Diego and Esteban presented. They aimed and fired, even as Esteban began his duck and roll. He came up on his knees, raising and firing the musket on sheer reflex.

  The nearest Gaucho’s horse shied then spun to escape. But it was Esteban’s ball that sent the Argentine sprawling backwards from his saddle. The other two were already dismounted and rushing for cover as more defenders fired on them.

  Esteban knew he should get behind fresh cover himself and reload. But he had perhaps a moment. He used it to look around.

  Gaspar was on his side, his back to Esteban—unmoving, silent.

  Diego was neither. On his back, Esteban’s last surviving relative alternately screamed and quivered, clawed at the spreading, pulsing red spot on his abdomen.

  There was no time to think—and in any case Esteban was not inclined to reason clearly at that particular moment. His weapon in one hand, he grabbed Diego’s shoulder with the other and dragged him through the nearest break in the courtyard wall. He vaguely heard the crack, crack, crack of gunfire on all sides of them, but he simply kept going.

  Diego, his brother, had been shot! He was bleeding! He was screaming, jerking and thrashing about in his grasp! Diego was in agony!

  That was all that mattered—all that was real, just then.

  Esteban dragged Diego down the dark, cramped alleyway. They went around one corner then another, and then through the open doorway of a shelled-out adobe house. Rays of sunlight darted through two gaping holes in the partially collapsed roof. Clumps of rubble lined the dirt floor.

  He kicked large chunks of adobe and bits of shattered pottery and a rumpled carry-bag of woven cactus fiber aside. That cleared a space wide enough to lay his quivering brother out in the shaded area between the shafts of light. Esteban knelt and put aside his musket to examine Diego’s injury.

  It was hopeless. To be belly-shot, even in the best of circumstances, was almost always a death sentence. But here and now, it was doubly so. There were no doctors here; no effective system for getting Diego to a hospital remained—not even any medicine to kill the pain.

  No food. No clean water, either.

  Paraguay was one vast corpse, each of the remaining ciphers within only in their own personal stage of decay, following their own timetable to its end.

  Esteban Navarro cried out, balled his fists over Diego’s bright red wound. He shook, uncontrolled.

  The musket and carbine fire went on. Crack. Crack. Crack, crack, crack.

  No-one was safe; no-one would survive this!

  Not the children—Esteban thought of the 4-year-old two winters’ previous, in the Guarani farming village just north of where the River Paragua
y met the Parana. A bright little boy, he’d been when their unit marched through. Then—the next day—a battery of Uruguayan horse artillery shelled the place.

  Three days later, when the company passed through again, redeploying past the ruins in route to another of the endless battles, the small corpse was still where he fell—cut cleanly in half by a cannonball and with nobody left to bury him before the remains started to stink.

  And certainly not the women, either. Esteban allowed himself the morbid luxury of recalling his home village and the pre-war days. And Ana, smiling as she did chores; wrinkling her pretty nose at an upland flower; promising him . . . profound and lovely things, indeed.

  Then the War of the Triple Alliance began.

  This time it was Brazilian troops, for Esteban and his village were Ache foresters in the extreme northeast, not too far from Iguazu Falls. Esteban still remembered the falls. He bowed his head now, held his semi-conscious brother’s hand.

  That hand was weak and going pale under the grime. It trembled slightly, it twitched only on occasion. But the blood kept coming—pulsing and flowing out below Diego’s navel.

  The Brazilians drove the defenders back in confusion, held the village four days and nights. There was burning and looting, raping. Every woman who fell into their hands was abused—some more than once.

  Esteban had always fancied Ana the most attractive girl of their village. Evidently, the Brazilians agreed.

  She was beaten and raped, again and again. And before the village was reclaimed, virtually the entire invading force, from a balding Lt. Colonel down, had his turn with her.

  They all left their mark, one way or another.

  Ana was never the same, never regained her strength. A fever took her within six months. Within another six, the village fell for good.

  Crack. Crack.

  The fighting was near—now going street to street, house to house.

  Crack. Crack. Crack.

  The Argentines were rooting out the last defenders, one by one.

  Crack.

  Now they’d almost reached the ruined shack’s nonexistent door.

  Crack, crack, crack. Crack.

  ‘Let it end,’ Esteban thought without any hope, but with a surge of anger—a powerful, flaring anger. ‘Stop it! For the Love of God and the Virgin, just Fucking STOP IT!’