Mark Rogers - The Dead

Gary looked round briefly, past his wife. Steve was crawling for his gun, but had a good twenty feet to go.

They reached the end, somehow getting Father Chuck down the ladder. Max’s gun echoed once more. For the first time Gary was truly struck by the knowledge that he’d probably never see his brother again.

At least not alive.

I love you, Max, he thought.

Max squeezed off shot after shot. Every slug sent a corpse to the asphalt, crippled.

But he couldn’t slow the torrent speeding toward the ladder. On the dead came, trampling the fallen, shrieking, clawing for the rungs. And almost before he realized it, the clip was spent.

He hit the release, pocketed the empty clip. Shoving a new one in, he raked the bolt back and started blasting before the first corpse got halfway up. Two bullets sent dark spurts of vaporized bone and brains spurting from its scrofulous crown, smashed the cadaver from the rungs.

Another sprang out of the mob. Max shot that one and the next. Spent shells flying from the rifle’s breech, he kept them at bay for a furious half-minute, swearing and laughing as his bullets hammered home.

The second clip went dry: two left.

A corpse almost got to the top before Max reloaded. He put a shot into either eye. Exiting through the back of its head, the bullets cracked the skull like an eggshell, the top flipping up and forward, almost swinging over the corpse’s face before dropping back.

The cadaver only scrambled up further, hands clawing at the catwalk and rails.

Max kicked it under the chin, felt its jaws crack together. The skull top jounced, matter like dried dirt flying out from under it. A second kick sent the corpse sailing down onto the horde below.

A spear hurtled toward Max. He knocked it aside with his gun. He’d been waiting for them to start that. Dozens of the sharpened poles waved above the throng. Throwing them was surely the best way to take him out. Much better than climbing up and closing with him one at a time.

But the gaunt old matron even now on the rungs seemed unaware of that. Up she came, straight toward the muzzle of the H and K, her wild shock of pure white hair flying in the wind, strings of huge yellowed pearls gleaming on her bosom.

Flames stabbed from the rifle’s barrel, one shot, two, three, transforming her face into a shredded jumble. Shattered teeth and pearls flying, she loosed her hold and fell wailing, talons stretched out over her head.

After her he blasted three more off the ladder. Once the last fell, there was a brief lull, and it occurred to him that no more spears had been hurled.

Why aren’t they-

Music blared into his mind, as though he were wearing a headset and someone had whipped the volume from zero to ten. At first the song was too deafening for him to realize what it was.

Obligingly, the volume fell sharply.

“ Der Kommissar.”

Another corpse clambered up toward him. Max’s finger tightened on the trigger, but he paused at the last instant, recognizing the dead face. One eye socket gaped, the skin was green and spotted with mold, and the mouth was a fanged slash, grinning ear to ear with filed teeth. Still, there was no mistaking it-

The corpse was Jeff Purzycki.

Trembling, Max watched him come. Up until now, they’d all been strangers, monsters pure and simple. But he’d gone to school with Jeff, gotten looped with him, dragged him out of the surf when he was drowning, and now-

Jeff was reaching for Max’s ankle, snatching at his flesh with a hand like a garden rake, the flesh of its fingertips pared away, the bones beneath sharpened to wicked curving points…

Max shrieked and fired. Jeff fell, taking the corpses beneath with him.

And that was the end of the third clip.

Max went to reload, found the last magazine caught in the lining of his coat pocket. Dropping the gun, he pulled the machete free as the next corpse clambered up.

Badly in need of a good undertaker, it was Mr. Van Nuys, head cocked crazily to one side, a metal probe buried deep in one ear, mouth sewn shut like a shrunken head’s, the words YOU’RE DEAD carved above his eyes.

A slash and a snap kick knocked him from the ladder.

Next it was Aunt Lucy, face purple and contorted. She blocked a kick with her forearm, grabbed at Max’s retreating leg; his backward dodge gave her time to bound up onto the catwalk, but he hacked her head off as she advanced, and a kick to the solar-plexus pounded her over the edge of the bridge.

Cousin Dave came then; Max wailed into him with machete blows, chopped his stubborn fingers from the rail uprights, sent him spinning.

After that, it was Jamie MacAleer.

Then Jamie’s mother.

Then Uncle Buddy; he came up the ladder gripping the rungs with his teeth, his all but severed arm whirling like a medieval war flail.

Another lull after Buddy-Father Ted had a harder time climbing, burdened as he was with Mr. MacAleer. Tied to the priest’s back with barbed wire, MacAleer had his teeth sunk in Father Ted’s scalp; jerking his head back and forth, he worried the dead flesh with pit-bull ferocity.

I have something in mind for him, Legion had said. A little bit of sculpture…

Max drove a knee into the priest’s tied-on face, hitching it halfway up the skull beneath. Father Ted rocked backward shrieking, inverted crucifix trailing behind him in the air.

Max stared down along the ladder, panting. His heart quailed as he saw the next corpse, even though he’d known this was coming, the final turn of the screw, the last stroke of Legion’s malice; Father Ted, Aunt Lucy, cousin Dave, all the rest-it hadn’t been coincidence. Der Kommissar had planned it all, Max knew.

And now the grinning monstrosity clambering up the rungs was his father.

Max Sr.’s dead hand clamped onto a rail upright, and Max lashed out with his foot, but the fingers remained locked, and his father hauled himself over the rim of the catwalk.

Max kicked again, but his father absorbed the blow, his other hand locking onto the upright on the left. Max slammed two punches into his father’s face, but couldn’t yet bring himself to use the machete on the man who’d sired him, raised him, loved him, flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood…

His father snatched at him, and Max retreated, mind an agonized turmoil. Max Sr. leaped onto the catwalk, straightening to his full height, staring at his son with his gleaming black eyes, mouth snapping. Max cocked his machete back to strike, not knowing if he had the resolve to use it.

“Don’t, Dad!” he cried. “Please don’t make me!”

Max Sr. paused for a moment, trembling-and took a mechanical step forward.

Max slashed. Fingers flew.

Max Sr. halted once more as if stung with pain. Yet Max knew it had to be more than that. Was his father’s will free enough to overcome his rage and fear?

“Don’t make me hit you again!” Max pleaded, tears blearing his eyes.

Max Sr. stood facing his son, shaking in every member; Max ached to think of the terror building inside him, the awesome compulsion, Hell bending his father to its will, struggling against what remained of his sanity. Was Legion in his mind even now, gnawing at him like a maggot?

Suddenly Max felt the tension snap. His father started forward once more.

At that moment, Max’s soul was wrenched wide open, and he hardly heard the words that came shrieking from his mouth:

“ Daddy! Please! ”

The words struck deep. For an instant a fleeting glimpse of shame and unutterable pain mingled with the rage on Max Sr.’s face; he lowered his head, and his hands went slowly down to his sides.

It was a few seconds before Max realized what had happened. Then he slid the machete back into his belt and went for the H and K, which lay at his father’s feet. Freeing the magazine from his pocket, he reloaded and stepped back, watching his father.