Mark Rogers - The Dead

“We’ll go south,” Buddy growled, steering left onto Algonquin, away from the bridge. “Along the peninsula.”

Gary watched the dead guarding the span. The gunfire would’ve alerted them, and he was sure they must’ve spotted the van, seen it take evasive action…

Confirmation came as two police cars barreled through the cordon in pursuit, trailing huge blue clouds of oil-smoke. One stalled before long, but the other kept coming.

Gary rejoined Steve in tossing cadavers out of the van, but took up his gun again as the remaining black-and-white drew near.

A figure leaned out of the cop car’s window; a shotgun discharged with a pumpf! , and a tear gas canister hurtled toward the open back of the van, streaming vapor. To Gary’s infinite relief, the missile fell short, rolling on the pavement, sparking and fuming.

The black-and-white pressed closer, and Gary saw the corpse reloading. Crouching, he drew bead on the cop car’s right front wheel and fired. The tire came apart, rubber fragments flying, and the black-and-white spun into the side of the road, across a scorched lawn, and through the front of a half-burned building.

“Tear gas,” Steve said. “Fucking tear gas!”

“They want us alive,” Linda said. “They want to kill us face to face.”

They resumed hurling the corpses overboard. Avoiding the downtown area altogether, Buddy swung closer and closer to Route 88. They passed several small platoons of dead, outstripping them with ease, even though it sounded to Gary as though the van’s engine was running rougher and rougher. Some of the corpses leaped into cars, but didn’t seem to be able to get them started.

Gary and Steve toiled away steadily. Soon there were only five cadavers left in the van.

Then four.

Then three.

Then-

The interior of the vehicle rang with a hellish shriek, and the air seemed to chill twenty degrees. A dead arm rose as if in a Nazi salute. Directly behind Aunt Lucy, a gaunt corpse in a gas-station attendant’s uniform sat up suddenly, mouth twisted in a smile of awesome malevolence. On its chest the name Hank was embroidered with red thread.

Linda and Sally shrank back. Lucy turned and screamed, then hurled herself back against the dashboard. Steve and Gary moved forward, ready to fire.

“Aunt Lucy!” Gary shouted. “Move aside! We can’t get a clear-”

Instantly the corpse twisted around and flung itself onto the shrieking woman, sinking its fingers into her throat.

Buddy pulled out his Beretta and slammed on the brakes. The van immediately stalled out. Buddy aimed at the corpse.

Whipping one of its hands from Lucy’s throat, it batted the pistol from Buddy’s grip, then clapped its hand back on her windpipe.

Gary lunged closer, thinking to put a burst into the corpse’s head from the side. But before he could fire, Buddy leaned sideways and rammed his elbow into the corpse’s temple.

“Get back!” Gary shouted, afraid of hitting him. “I’ll-”

Buddy only cocked his elbow back for another stroke. The cadaver turned, grinning directly into his face, and squeezed tighter on Lucy’s neck. Her flesh ballooned up between its lube-greased fingers. Something popped, and Gary knew she was dead.

“Motherfucker!” Buddy cried, lashing out at the corpse again.

Like a viper distending its jaws, the corpse flung its mouth impossibly wide open and snapped Buddy’s elbow off with a resonant crunch.

Buddy howled and hurled himself back against the door. His lower arm flopped bonelessly, attached only with shreds of flesh and cloth.

Face creasing in lines of awful satisfaction, the corpse shot its hand up to pull Buddy’s crushed elbow from its mouth. That was when Gary finally cut loose.

A five-slug burst took a crescent gouge from the side of the corpse’s head. It looked as if an invisible shark had ripped out a bite.

The corpse jerked its face toward Gary, still grinning. Faint and transparent, something oozed out of the rupture in its skull, an ectoplasmic head-in stronger light it would surely have been invisible. Gelatinous and unstable, it slid down on the corpse’s shoulder and flattened there.

Gary screamed and blew off everything above the cadaver’s jaw. Swaying, the phantom head rose back into place, rearing above the decapitated body; shrieking, the corpse lifted its arms and hurled itself forward.

Steve firing beside him, Gary gave it the rest of his clip. Bloodless bullet impacts racing over its upper body, the corpse was pummeled backward, chest caved in, throat blasted apart, severed arms flying from its shoulders like snapped twigs, the window behind it vanishing in a flurry of powdered glass.

Moaning, Uncle Buddy levered his door open and flopped outside. Gary and Steve retreated from the van, leaving the corpse kicking and struggling behind them, its feet booming off the walls of the vehicle.

Linda and Sally were already outside. Linda had Buddy’s Beretta, which had flown into the back of the van.

Gary rounded the side of the van. Uncle Buddy, jacket-sleeve black with blood, was sitting on the grass near the curb, staring blankly at the ground. Gary went up to him.

Buddy raised his head slowly. His face had gone the color of frost. His breath puffed white in the cold.

“Uncle Buddy…” Gary began.

Buddy smiled. His eyes gleamed blankly. “Fuck you,” he said, drool trickling over his lip. “You’re all going to die, you cocksuckers.”

Gary stepped back.

Buddy got sluggishly, clumsily to his feet, arm swaying back and forth. Blood poured from the hole in his sleeve, rilled from his fingertips to the ground in unbroken streams. His smile widened.

“Rot in Hell,” he whispered, staggering forward, hand brushing his pant leg, a vast bloodstain creeping down through the fabric.

Gary retreated another step.

“In Helllllll-” Buddy whispered, dropping to his knees, then onto his face at Gary’s feet.

Gary bent. Buddy was still whispering, but Gary couldn’t make the words out. Gary moved nearer.

All at once Buddy turned over onto his back and grabbed him by the lapel. His eyes were no longer blank; some kind of horrible transformation had come over him, his smile like the corpses’ now. For a horrified instant Gary wondered if he might already have crossed over.

And come back…

Buddy pulled Gary’s ear next to his mouth.

“I can see Him now,” he said.

“Who?” Gary gasped.

Buddy chuckled. “You know. But He’s not really a trooper at all… I’m falling into Him. Wheels and spikes… You’ll fall into Him too, college boy. But Max first. Max and Him…”

Buddy’s hand loosed Gary’s lapel, and Gary began to rise; then Buddy jerked up at him. Gary threw himself back as Buddy’s teeth snapped shut just inches from his ear.

With a last short hissing laugh, Buddy turned back over onto his stomach, lowered his face into the grass, and lay still.

Gary waited a few moments before feeling his uncle’s throat for a pulse. There was none. He was surprised Buddy had died so quickly.

Shock, Gary told himself. And blood-loss.

“What did he say?” Steve asked him.

“It didn’t make any sense,” Gary answered. But there had been meaning there, even if he didn’t understand. Yet.

Inside the van, the corpse was still thumping madly about.

“What now?” Gary asked. “How do we get that thing out of there?”

“Good question,” Steve said.

They were still thinking when the problem solved itself.

“Look out!” Sally cried. They spun to see her retreating from the van’s back doors; the headless, armless cadaver stumbled into view, pivoted in a drunken circle, and staggered off down the street.