Stephen Gallagher - Valley of lights

Michaels.

His body hadn't been anywhere in the house, and I hadn't even thought to notice the fact. Not even up in Georgie's loft, when I'd had to step over the video recorder that had most probably been looted from his den. I'd been starting to wonder whether I'd have the nerve, if a suitably big truck should appear heading toward us in the other lane, to swing us across into its path; but with a zombie still in reserve somewhere, it would be a wasted sacrifice. The bird would fly, the cycle would start again.

As it always had.

I said, 'I can't listen to much more of this. Why don't you kill me here, and get it over with?'

'I wasn't planning to kill you,' he said, making himself comfortable in the angle between the seat and the door. He was too far away for me to reach. 'I've got a much better use for you than that.'

I was turning from the highway onto the dirt drive when she did it, impulsively and without any warning; she grabbed at the wheel and gave it a hard wrench so that it spun out of my hands, and the pickup suddenly veered over to the right. I could see the mailbox coming, but I couldn't correct in time; the front of the truck simply smashed the post from under it as if it was so much matchwood, while the box bounced once on the hood and came straight up through the windshield and into the cab. I lost it completely then, because Angela had thrown herself over against me and the truck was onto the rugged ground beyond the shoulder, but I could see the mailbox behind her jammed into the cab at an angle like an unexploded rocket. Then we must have hit an even deeper rut, because the nose of the pickup dropped violently and I felt myself being pitched forward; and that was all that I knew for a while, until Angela was shaking me awake and I opened my eyes to that fierce and painful desert sky.

I was out of the truck, and flat on my back. I struggled up onto my elbows and said, 'Where did he go?'

'He's a mess, Alex,' Angela said. Her face was marked with little flecks of blood, probably flying cuts from the imploding windshield. 'His head's all messed up, he won't get far.'

'Which way?' I said.

'Up toward the house.' She tried to hold me down, 'What are you doing?'

'Got to finish it,' I said.

'Alex!' she insisted, as I managed to get on the move, seeing the house an impossible distance away across the field before me, 'For God's sake, let's go and get some help! The little girl's safe in my car!'

'Nobody's safe,' I said as I stumbled onto the dirt road that we'd left, but I don't think she heard.

About twenty yards further on I found my gun, lying where he'd dropped it. There was a gory smear on the ground close by, so perhaps he'd fallen. He had to be in quite a state, because he'd been right in the path of the mailbox. But thank God it hadn't quite killed him. I picked up the Colt and, with my other hand, wiped my eyes. I was feeling better, or I was kidding myself that I did; either way, I now felt more able to go on.

'Alex,' Angela said from beside me, 'you hardly know what you're doing. I'm coming in with you.'

'Whatever you like,' I said. 'But don't interfere.'

And she didn't; she stayed just behind my shoulder as we walked up to the front of the house and stopped under its blind, shuttered gaze. It must have looked good at one time, almost colonial, but someone had been letting it go for at least ten years, possibly more. The shape of the Colt was now feeling strange in my hand, as if it had been charged with the lives that it had taken and was hungry for more. How many, now? I'd actually lost count… but in a way it was none of my business, it was something between the gun and the ghoul, and I was simply a hapless intermediary who happened to have walked off the street and into the Paradise at the wrong time.

The main door of the house was now half-open, and I had a definite memory of pulling it closed behind me so that Angela wouldn't see the bodies inside. Well, she was going to see them now.

'Holy Jesus Christ on a bicycle,' I heard her say from the threshold behind me as I stood in the middle of the twilit hall and looked around.

'There's plenty more where they came from,' I said, waving her toward the sitting room as I tried to work out which way he'd gone from here. Not up the stairs, because the stuff of Georgie's that I'd dropped off at the bottom was undisturbed. Angela picked her way past me, stepping over the stick-legs of the outstretched dead like someone crossing subway rails, and put her head into the sitting-room. There was no arguing with it, she had nerve. I heard her breathe some expression of shock, but didn't make out what it was.

My guess was that he was making for the inert body of Michaels, his last refuge, but I couldn't think where he might have been keeping it. I'd searched the house pretty thoroughly, all the rooms and the cupboards and the closets, and if there had been any evidence of a cellar I'd have searched that, too.

'You already knew about this,' Angela said. 'And you didn't tell me!'

'I was saving the best for the last,' I said. I'd seen a bloody smudge just by the handle of the door which led through into the kitchen, so now I went over and, with the Colt at the ready, gave it a gentle push. It swung open onto a shaft of daylight, bumping on something behind. The far door of the kitchen, which gave out onto the back of the house, had been thrown wide. The heads of the four small bodies which lay under the table were only just into the light.

Angela said, with just a faint trace of shame that she'd probably get over, 'Do you think I can use the phone?'

'Try it and see,' I said.

I wasn't entirely unhappy that she was along, providing that she didn't get in the way. Right now her mind was probably racing, taking in this new information and hammering it out into a pattern which would include Bobby Winter and the man in the pickup and which would make more sense to an outsider than anything that I could invent. As for me, I only had one thing on my mind. I crossed the kitchen and went to take a look out the back.

And there he was.

He was down in the dust and making about three yards a minute at his current speed. He'd lost the use of his legs now and was scrabbling along like some badly chopped-about worm with a definite destination in mind. Ahead of him lay a big ramshackle barn or garage with a couple of outhouses tacked onto its sides, but he still had a way to go before he got there. In all my career, I don't think I've ever seen anyone so badly injured. A good piece of his head had to be missing.

I could hear Angela dialling when I stepped back into the house, and knew that she'd be tied up for a few minutes at least. At the foot of the stairs I picked up Georgie's pet-store box and said, 'C'mon, Hector, I've got a little job for you,' and the bird inside scuttled around a little. He didn't have much space in the box, but she'd probably let him out to fly around the room. When I returned to the outside the ghoul had put on a spurt and covered half of the remaining distance to the barn, but the futility of his best efforts must have been apparent to him as I overtook him and, with a show of what must have looked like sadistic courtesy, swung out the barn doors.

It was then that I saw that he hadn't only been stockpiling bodies, but vehicles as well; there were five cars crammed tightly into the big shed, and foremost amongst them was a white police department St Regis, unmarked.

Michaels was in the driving seat with his head back against the rest, looking as if he'd dozed off on duty.

So this was the ghoul's hole card, set up and ready for a getaway. I set the bird-box on its hood and looked in each of the other cars, but this was the only one with an occupant. The others looked as if they'd taken a few bumps and scrapes as he was hiding them away; the dents showed up as new scars except on Winter's Toyota, the one he'd called Joshua, where they simply blended in.