Undead. John Russo

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СКАЧАТЬ and her fingers found a light switch. The light at the top of the stairs came on, and she ascended the staircase, clinging to the banister for support and hoping desperately to be able to find a place to hide. She tiptoed…tiptoed…keeping a firm grip on the handle of her knife, and then, as she reached the top of the landing, she screamed—an ear-shattering scream that ripped through her lungs and echoed through the old house—because, there, on the floor at the top of the landing, under the glow of the naked light bulb in the hall, was a corpse with the flesh ripped from its bones and its eyes missing from their sockets and the white teeth and cheekbones bared and no longer covered by skin, as if the corpse had been eaten by rats, as it lay there in its pool of dried blood.

      Screaming in absolute horror, Barbara dropped her knife and ran and tumbled down the stairs. In full flight now, gagging and almost vomiting, with her brain leaping at the edge of sheer madness, she wanted to get out of that house—and she broke for the door and unlocked it and flung herself out into the night, completely unmindful of the consequences.

      Suddenly she was bathed in light that almost blinded her—and as she threw her arms up to protect herself, there was a loud screeching sound, and as she struggled to run, a man jumped in front of her.

      “Are you one of them?” the man shouted.

      She stared, frozen.

      The man standing in front of her had leaped out of a pick-up truck that he had driven onto the lawn and stopped with a screech of brakes and a jounce of glaring headlights.

      Barbara stared at him, but no words would come to her lips.

      “Are you one of them?” he yelled again. “I seen ’em to look like you!”

      Barbara shuddered. He had his arm raised, about to strike her, and she could not make out his features because he was silhouetted against the bright headlights of the truck.

      Behind the truck driver, the man under the tree took a few steps forward. Barbara screamed and stepped back, and the truck driver turned to face the advancing man—who stopped and watched and did not resume his advance.

      Finally the truck driver grabbed Barbara and shoved her back into the living room so forcefully that she fell down with his body on top of her, and she closed her eyes and prepared to accept her death.

      But he got off of her and slammed the door shut and locked it. And he lifted the curtains and peered out. He did not seem to be very much concerned about her, so she finally opened her eyes and stared at him.

      He was carrying a tire iron in his hand. He was a black man, perhaps thirty years old, dressed in slacks and a sweater. He did not at all resemble her attacker. In fact, though his face bore an intense look, it was friendly and handsome. He appeared to be a strong man, well over six feet tall.

      Barbara got to her feet and continued to stare at him.

      “It’s all right,” he said, soothingly. “It’s all right. I ain’t one of those creeps. My name is Ben. I ain’t going to hurt you.”

      She sank into a chair and began to cry softly, while he concerned himself with his surroundings. He moved into the next room and checked the locks on the windows. He turned on a lamp; it worked; and he turned it back off.

      He called to Barbara from the kitchen.

      “Don’t you be afraid of that creep outside! I can handle him all right. There’s probably gonna be lots more of them, though, soon as they find out we’re here. I’m out of gas, and the gasoline pumps out back are locked. Do you have the key?”

      Barbara did not reply.

      “Do you have the key?” Ben repeated, trying to control his anger.

      Again, Barbara said nothing. Her experiences of the past couple of hours had brought her to a state of near-catatonia.

      Ben thought maybe she did not hear, so he came into the living room and addressed her directly.

      “I said the gas pumps out back are locked. Is there food around here? I’ll get us some food, then we can beat off that creep out there and try to make it somewhere where there is gas.”

      Barbara merely held her face in her hands and continued to cry.

      “I guess you tried the phone,” Ben said, no longer expecting an answer. And he picked it up and fiddled with it but could not get anything but dead silence, so he slammed it down into its cradle. He looked at Barbara and saw she was shivering.

      “Phone’s no good,” he said. “We might as well have two tin cans and a string. You live here?”

      She remained silent, her gaze directed toward the top of the stairs. Ben followed her stare and started toward the stairs, but halfway up he saw the corpse—and stared for a moment and slowly backed down into the living room.

      His eyes fell on Barbara, and he knew she was shivering with shock, but there was nothing for him to do but force himself back into action.

      “We’ve got to bust out of here,” he said. “We’ve got to find some other people—somebody with guns or something.”

      He went into the kitchen and started rummaging, flinging open the refrigerator and the cupboards. He began filling a shopping bag with things from the refrigerator, and because he was in a hurry he literally hurled the things into the bag.

      Suddenly, to his surprise, he looked up and Barbara was standing beside him.

      “What’s happening?” she said, in a weak whisper, so weak that Ben almost did not hear. And she stood there wide-eyed, like a child waiting for an answer.

      Amazed, he stared at her.

      “What’s happening?” she repeated, weakly, shaking her head in fright and bewilderment.

      Suddenly they were both startled by a shattering crash. Ben dropped the groceries, seized his jack-handle, and ran to the front door and looked out through the curtained window. Another shattering sound. The first attacker had joined the second man at the old pick-up truck, and with rocks the two had smashed out the headlights.

      “Two of them,” Ben muttered to himself, and as he watched, the two men outside started to beat with their rocks at the body of the truck—but their beating seemed to have no purpose; it seemed to be just mindless destruction. In fact, outside of smashing the headlights, they were not harming the old truck very much.

      But Ben spun around with a worried look on his face.

      “They’re liable to wreak the engine,” he said to Barbara. “How many of them are out there? Do you know?”

      She backed away from him, and he lunged at her and grabbed her by the wrists and shook her, in an effort to make her understand.

      “How many? Come on, now—I know you’re scared. But I can handle the two that are out there now. Now, how many are there? That truck is our only chance to get out of here. How many? How many?”

      “I don’t know! I don’t know!” she screamed. “What’s happening? I don’t know what’s happening!”

      As she struggled to break his hold on her wrists, she burst into hysterical sobbing.

      Ben СКАЧАТЬ