Mark Rogers - The Dead

“Dad,” Gary cried. “Dad…”

Beyond all hope, the old man was alive. Gary knew he should be overjoyed. Something was plainly, horribly wrong with his father, but at least he wasn’t dead…Gary couldn’t think why this miracle so filled him with panic.

His father’s eyes opened. Blank white cotton flashed. For the first time Gary noticed the small popped threads on the lids, and fringing his father’s mouth. The embalmers had been at him, given him the full treatment… but why then was Max Holland Sr. still writhing and shrieking?

“ Dad! ” Gary cried.

His father only went on screaming, forcing open the lower section of the lid. Then he ripped the cotton from his sockets. As his eyelids sagged, two gleaming obsidian beads stood forth, cocking back and forth as though they were on stalks.

Linda plucked at Gary’s arm.

“Dad…” Gary said.

She dragged him backward a few steps, but he pulled free, wondering dazedly if there was anything he could do to help his father. Most of the others had already retreated, many knocking over the chairs under the canopy in their haste. The injured gravedigger was crawling away on all fours.

All at once, as if he’d been jerked up out of the grave on wires, Max Sr. bounded up onto the edge, head thrown back, arms down at his sides, fingers curved like claws, mouth still pouring forth those deafening shrieks. For a moment he stood motionless, totally rigid. Then he lowered his head. His expression changed, twitching muscle by ridged muscle into a mask of such rage and malevolence that Gary thought his brain would wither in its glare. And once the expression was established, some horrific force seemed to settle over his father’s face, stiffening it, desiccating and petrifying it as if to preserve that look forever, to render it eternal, world without end, amen… Tiny black eyes shining in their wrinkled sockets, the mummy that had been Max Holland creaked swiftly forward like a wizened robot, grinning hatred at all who stood before him.

“Dammit, Gary,” Max said. “Come on!” Together with Linda, he pulled his brother down the slope.

But they hadn’t gone far when a rakelike hand, parchment skin streaked with dirt, thrust out of the turf, tripping Linda. Gary yanked her back up.

A second hand appeared. It lashed toward Linda’s leg at the end of a long ragged coatsleeve, missed, and whipped back down into the ground like a viper’s retreating tongue.

They started forward once more. Ahead, the other mourners were dodging this way and that as they raced for their cars. Turf bulged, pounded apart by blows from below; at least a dozen heads or arms were forcing their way into view. Monuments toppled; a heavy marble angel, wings outspread, crashed across the head of a corpse struggling out of the earth like some horrible giant insect. The cadaver only screamed and hurled the monument aside, shooting to its feet, everything above its jaw a shattered husk.

Ten yards in front of Gary, the uninjured gravedigger went down as a screaming shape, blackened and tattered, burst from the ground before him in an explosion of dirt. Flinging itself onto him, fending his arms aside, the cadaver ripped the ears from his head and stuffed one into his mouth. Then it grabbed him by the throat, thrust its face down and bit off his nose.

Gary’s stomach heaved. The gravedigger looked at him imploringly, bright scarlet blood streaming across his cheek, a shiny foam of it bubbling in the empty socket in the middle of his face. His eyes were heartrending in their need.

Gary slowed.

“Keep going, shithead!” Max cried, swatting him from behind.

Grateful for the command, Gary sped back up.

Ahead, Father Ted was staggering, hand to chest. As Gary passed him, the ground erupted to the right, a thrashing arm knocking him into the priest. Both men fell, rolling a few yards down the hill together.

Desperately Gary untangled himself from the floundering clergyman. Helped up by Linda (where was Max?), he looked back toward the cadaver.

Swiping dirt from its eyes, it flung its arms wide as its saw him; suddenly it leaped, and was standing face to face with him, barely a foot away, and its filthy hands clapped onto either side of his head…

A fist shot in from the side, pounding into the thing’s temple. The corpse loosed Gary, hissing, and turned to face its assailant.

“Here I am, fucker!” Max snarled, and punched it again.

The thing was fast, but Max was faster, blocking its snatching hands, driving it back with jabs and kicks.

Gary looked to see if his father was still coming. Max Sr. had joined in on the gravedigger; all at once he looked up and started forward again at a stiff-legged run, hands bloodied and extended, a brown strip of what might’ve been scalp dropping from one.

Father Ted rose, swaying, grimacing at the pain in his chest.

“Come with us, Father,” Linda said.

A sweat-damp lock of hair trailing across his forehead, Father Ted only tottered and fell.

“It’s his heart,” Gary said, and pulled Linda forward, down the hill. “He’s done for.”

“We just can’t leave him,” Linda panted, struggling against his grip. They halted and turned.

“What do you think we’re going to do?” Gary demanded.

Even as they headed back up the slope, he got his answer; the almost-tangible wall of hatred emanating from his father stopped them in their tracks.

The priest, meanwhile, had gotten up again, facing uphill, head bowed. Gary’s father jerked to a standstill, towering in front of him.

“Max,” Gary heard Father Ted cry, “Please Max…”

With a motion almost too quick to follow, Max Sr. pointed a sharp accusing finger at the priest’s face, silencing him. A subtle change entered his expression, intensifying its malice if that were possible, diluting its torment by the barest fraction. Slight as it was, Gary read the change plainly, and knew with horrible certainty that his father was pleased to see Father Ted. The priest was perhaps the one man in the whole world that Max Sr. wanted to see most.

Father Ted tried to stumble away, but the dead man caught him and held him fast, jerking him up from the ground at arm’s length. Gary felt a renewed urge to rush to the priest’s aid, but fear rooted his feet to the earth. He wanted to beg his father to spare him, but there was no breath in his throat. He could only stand and watch, Linda sobbing beside him, as his father’s free hand swept back, then forward, smacking into the side of the priest’s face, nails ripping. Blood splashed, and Father Ted’s head whipped to one side as the claw raked past. An instant later it snapped in the other direction as the fingers came whistling back in a murderous return swipe. Another splash of blood, and something dark flew through the air, off to the right. Gary heard a sound like a plastic bag half-filled with water striking a sidewalk, and looking where the sound had come from, saw Father Ted’s face sliding down the front of a granite tombstone in a huge red smear, empty eyes sagging, mouth gaping. Peeling off the stone surface, curling forward, the face dropped to the grass like an abandoned Halloween mask.

Gary’s eyes darted back to his father and the priest. Max Sr. turned and hauled Father Ted in closer, leaning over him, staring gloatingly into the mass of bloody writhing muscles still attached to the front of Father Ted’s skull. Eyes goggling and swimming in pools of blood, the priest was still alive, gagging at the liquid running into his lipless mouth and down his throat.

Gary and Linda looked round for Max. He’d downed the corpse he’d been fighting; it was clawing after him on its belly. But another cadaver rushed up even as he retreated. Max snapped a kick into its kneecap, smashed the corpse to the grass with a spinning backfist to the head, then stamped on its other knee.