David Morrell - The Totem

When he heard the scream, he looked down, and one man slipped. Falling, the man struck two beams and thudded in the darkness, where he didn't seem to move. Around the man, grotesque figures swirled. Can't look down, Slaughter told himself. I have to keep climbing. He was worried that it had been Lucas or Hammel who had fallen, but as he glanced toward the beams across from him, he saw Lucas and Hammel climbing. Still puzzled about where Dunlap and Parsons were, Slaughter strained and reached and kneed and stretched.

Peering over the top, he saw the group waiting. In the moonlight and the glow from the fires below, their expressions were unnervingly stark. Slaughter clutched for a handhold, crawled up from the final beam, and limped across the railroad ties toward solid rock. The trestle never should have held. He knew that. He never understood why it had. The fire that scoured this area of mountains eventually burned the trestle, so nobody had the chance to examine it in the daylight and understand the miracle of its construction. But meanwhile the wind intensified, funneling toward them from the lowland, surging up the draw that they were in, and pushed by it, they followed its urging. One thing favored them. Whatever had attacked them was below them. Granted, the figures were no doubt climbing the trestle, pursuing, but for the moment, Slaughter and his group were safe. They struggled up the narrow pass, the glint of snow on each peak flanking them. The wind howled at their backs. They worked onward, too exhausted to run.

"We have to find cover before they catch us," someone said.

"No," another man objected. "We have to keep going. If we reach the other entrance to the pass, we can get the hell away from here."

"That's stupid. They'll be waiting for us."

"They're behind us."

"Maybe."

They plodded forward without energy or reason.

Slaughter squinted back toward the burning lowland. As he turned ahead, the wind propelled him like a fist, and at last he saw Dunlap, Parsons, other men he recognized. But many others were missing. Some men moaned while others cursed. Still others were too weak even to murmur. They stumbled, limping, spread out through this narrow draw like refugees or soldiers in confused retreat. Then Slaughter heard the howling close behind him.

"They're up here now," he said. "They'll be coming."

"Look for cover."

But there wasn't any. There was just the narrow draw, the steep wind-scoured rocky slopes on each side leading toward the snow-capped peaks, and they kept moving.

Then they saw it.

"What?"

"The town. We've reached the town."

One of the men had a flashlight. He scanned its beam toward a dangling weathered sign that told them motherlode. Then other men fumbled for flashlights, turning them on. They saw listing shacks, tumbled sheds, crumbled walls, toppled roofs, sagging doorways. There were slogans on them in a language no one understood and no one ever would, stark cryptic signs and scrawls and symbols, and the streets were like a midden heap, the garbage from the mining town and from the culture that had been invented up here, a sprawling mass of junk and worn-out objects which as everyone approached turned out to be huge piles of bones, some human, others unidentifiable. The curses of the men combined with the roar of the wind and the howling that approached them.

"Okay, then, damn it, if they want a fight-!"

The flashlights lanced across the darkness. In the lowland, everything was burning. From the valley far across, the night sky was pierced by lightning. Thunder rumbled toward them. It was madness. The first man who reached in his pack to pull out a bottle filled with gasoline inspired all the others. Parsons had instructed them well. They'd come prepared.

The bottles were soft-drink empties, their twist-on caps sealing their dangerous contents. The men now unscrewed the caps. They pulled out handkerchiefs or tore off strips of clothing and stuffed them into the open bottlenecks. A frantic man lit his, braced himself, thrust his arm back, and threw the flaming bottle. Others watched as it flipped blazing through the darkness and struck a shack. The shatter of the breaking glass was followed by a whoosh, a surge of light, and the shack was. suddenly in flames that shot skyward with stunning abruptness. Someone made a sound as if he watched fireworks. Another bottle had been lit, and after it arched toward the other slope, it struck a shack, exploded, and the street was flanked by flames now as the group huddled, gaping toward the trestle and what neared them: gimping, spastic, growling, frenzied, hairy figures, cloaked in furs, their mouths frothing, their limbs jerking. Lightning flashed in the valley. Ridges flamed in the lowlands. Winds fanned the burning shacks and spread destruction to their neighbors.

Slaughter shot and aimed and shot again as did the others near him. Burning bottles burst among the jerking figures. The things were moaning, howling, screaming. But they kept coming, relentlessly stumbling toward the gunfire. Nothing seemed to stop them. They had risen from the dead too many times. Confident of immortality, they were unafraid, ignoring the wounds that halted them a moment but didn't drop them. Some were in flames as they reached the group that shot them. The things struck with clubs. They howled. They slashed. They clawed. They kicked and bit.

Slaughter shot one, then another. As his rifle clicked on empty for the last time, he drew his handgun, aiming, shooting, aiming. Other flaming bottles burst before him. Men screamed as they fought hand-to-hand with the figures. Friends around him fell back. Those behind him tried to regroup. Half the town up here was burning, cryptic symbols gone forever, as Slaughter's handgun clicked on empty as well, and while he lurched back, attempting to reload, something struck him. It was big and solid, hairy. It was foul with stench and rot, and it was on him, slashing with its teeth and claws. He tried to push it off him, but its teeth sank into his wrist, and he was screaming.

"Jesus, no, don't bite me!"

But the thing braced its teeth and twisted, grinding, and the pain, the shock of fear was so intense that Slaughter didn't realize what he was doing. When he regained awareness, he saw how he had clubbed his handgun at the figure until fluid oozed from the figure's skull, and it was motionless on the ground beside him. Slaughter gasped, staring at his shredded wrist.

"I've got it!" he screamed. "I'm like them now! Christ, I've got it!"

That would be his most heroic moment, what in memory would be the apex of his life, the quick consideration that would save him. Thinking of the foulness creeping up his arm to reach his shoulder and his brain, thinking of the monster he would shortly be, he struck out with his handgun toward another monstrous figure, turned, saw Parsons, and ran. Parsons noticed him, Parsons who suddenly became rigid, the fear in his eyes more fierce than any emotion he'd ever displayed, for Parsons must have thought of Slaughter's anger toward him, must have assumed that Slaughter was already maddened and changed. Parsons raised his shotgun, firing blindly. Slaughter faltered as the pellets struck his side. But the image of the two kids in that grocery store returned to him, and he mustered the strength to keep running. As Parsons pumped a fresh shell into the shotgun's chamber, Slaughter reached him, knocked him flat, grabbed the shotgun, raised it to his shoulder, and he couldn't have accomplished this if he had not been large and tall the way he was, but with his great reach he could manage. Flames around him, buildings burning, lightning flashing, Slaughter pulled the trigger and blew his contaminated arm off.

Dunlap huddled in the blackness of the tunnel. The sight of the gruesome battle had so unnerved him that he'd stumbled backward, tripped, and fallen. Raising his frightened gaze, he'd glimpsed the tunnel's murky entrance and raced to it for shelter, so afraid that his sphincter muscle weakened, making him void his bowels, the revolting stench humiliating him as he crouched and whimpered in the tunnel.