Tim Curran - Resurrection

Miriam floated up there, malevolent and dripping with evil. As she spoke more of that black juice ran from her mouth. Her robe was open now showing not just the gray marble of her flesh and her drooping, blue-veined breasts, but something much worse. Worms. Hundreds of red worms were coming out of her belly and chest, wiggling in the air from their holes, making her look like some kind of repulsive sea anemone bursting with red tentacles.

“Kill him, Mitch! Do you hear me, you little gutless shit! Kill him! Kill him! Kill him! KILL THE MOTHERFUCKER! KILL HIM THAT HAS BEEN

And for one insane moment there, Mitch almost did. God help him, but he almost put the gun on his best friend and murdered him. A man he would never have raised a hand against in a sane moment. But he knew better. For light broke through the darkness that webbed his thoughts. Broke through with a stunning clarity and he saw Miriam for what she was…a thing, a wraith, a corruption that lived on filth and lies and hatred.

“Fuck…you,” he said and pulled the trigger of the Remington.

Twenty-gauge buckshot hit her and a split second later, Tommy fired. Then they were both shooting, buckshot biting into Miriam, knocking her back and forth, smashing her into the walls as she tried to launch herself down at them. She rose and descended like a diving bell, spraying fluid and tissue, screaming in a dozen waterlogged voices. And then, as if the helium had been bled from her, she came down. And came down hard, thudding into the steps. Then she was tumbling down and they could hear her fragile bones snapping and snapping. She landed at their feet in a fleshy, broken heap, bones thrusting out from her, worms coming out her throat and scalp like the snakes of Medusa.

They jumped back.

“Dead,” Tommy said, like he didn’t believe it.

She lay there a moment, bleeding that black goo and slithering with worms. Then her head craned up at them and she was grinning, more worms in her mouth. Black juice ran from her lips, looking like dirty transmission fluid. “Think you’ve won a great battle, do you? Think you effing sonsofbitches have put old Miriam Blake down and there’ll she’ll stay! Wrong! You’ve not won nor stilled me! You can stop me, but you won’t stop the other! The other that has come through to eat the guts out of this fucking city bite by bite!”

They kept backing away and Miriam started coming after them.

It was revolting to see. She was broken-up, shattered, infested by those looping red worms, but she was coming. Maybe her spine had broken because she could not stand. Instead, she wriggled, she crept. Like a slug she came forward with a lurching motion, raising up her ass like an angleworm and lowering it, pushing herself forward, making moist popping sounds. Her jaws opened and closed like they wanted to bite something. She left a slimy, bloody trail in her wake.

They both opened up on her again until what was left was ripped and torn and perforated, her neck broken and head twisted off to the side.

“Salt her,” Mitch said.

Tommy took out the bag and threw handful after handful at her.

It worked right away. Miriam thumped on the floor, screaming and screaming. Steam and moisture boiled out of her. She vomited a gout of that black blood onto the stairs. Her flesh yellowed, threaded out with fingers of dry rot, went brown and flaking. Her eyes filmed over and sank into her skull. She hissed and steamed and shuddered and then went still. All those worms twisting and writhing, trying to get free, then blackening and sinking into the desiccated, smoking mass that looked like a winter-dead tree.

That was it.

Mitch took Tommy by the arm and they staggered out of the door together into the rain. They both went down on their knees in the wet grass, water puddling around them.

After a time, Tommy found his voice. “They ain’t just zombies, Mitch. I been thinking on this awhile. They got power or something. They get in your head and hypnotize you or something. Like they know what scares you.”

“You saying she wasn’t floating down the stairs in there?”

Tommy shook his head. “She was. Oh, shit yes, she sure was.” He swallowed. “But in general, I mean. They can play head games with you, you know? Get in your mind and make you feel things and think things that aren’t true.”

Mitch looked at him. “I didn’t believe it, Tommy. I knew she was just lying the way those things do. I knew you and Lily would never…well, you know. Get together.”

“No way.” Tommy breathed in and out real slow. “She was in your head, though, wasn’t she? Miriam? For a minute there you almost believed her. I saw it in your eyes. They were just mad, crazy.”

“Yeah. She got in my head. But she wasn’t strong enough to make me believe crap like that. I know…knew my wife. And I know you, pal. You’re a complete asshole, but you’re loyal and trustworthy.”

“Hey, thanks, Mitch. That was real nice. It touches me, you know?”

Mitch smiled thinly. “Let’s go out to that base and see what the hell this is all about.”

As they approached Fort Providence, Mitch watched the rain falling, the roads flooding, and he couldn’t seem to remember what it was like to be dry or warm. How long had this been going on and how much longer could it possibly last? This was life in the Asian monsoon season and it would drive people mad. He was sure of it. You couldn’t sit there day after day and watch the water rising and feel it against your face and down your back without your mind coming unhinged.

Something had to give.

It just had to. Mitch was not honestly sure how he was feeling now. Too many emotions, too much guilt and horror and frustration over all this. Lily was gone and he knew it beyond a doubt. Something else was out there, maybe, living in her skin. But the Lily he’d known was dead. The pain he was feeling over that was immense, but he’d forced himself to lock it away. He would grieve later.

And Chrissy?

Mitch did not know.

Wanda could only tell him that she was alive. She was too worn out and beaten now to do any more of her “conjuring”, as she called it. She had told Tommy and he that, yes, Chrissy was alive and that, no, Harry Teal was no danger to anyone except maybe himself. Mitch badly wanted to push her about Chrissy, but she was just done in. She had come to life and made a fine farm breakfast for all concerned, but she was old and tired now. Very much feeling her age. About all she could say was that “there are others who don’t like me nosing into their business, others whose minds are very strong and very terrible.”

Which didn’t tell him much.

He’d had the feeling that going into that mannequin factory was important. But, looking back, he couldn’t see the importance of any of it. For what had come of it? They’d found Harry Teal and that had been about it. Was that what he’d been feeling? The need to find Harry that might somehow bring him to Chrissy? Christ, it seemed absurd…

Deke Ericksen was also at Wanda’s now, had come there during the night. He’d been looking high and low for Chrissy. And like Mitch himself, nothing would dissuade him that she was alive and that they would find her.

Tommy kept driving.

They were well out of Witcham now, staying off the main highway and taking the back roads towards the Army base. He seemed refreshed after his sleep. They’d all closed their eyes at dawn and had not woken until nearly 12:30 in the afternoon. Not good, in Mitch’s eyes. They’d needed the sleep, but he’d hated to waste the daylight…or what there was of it.

Tommy knew the Black River Valley about as well as a man could. Having hunted and fished the valley all his life, he knew just about every county bypass and gravel road there was. He took them on a very circuitous route, trying to stay to the high roads because all the low-lying areas were simple impassable. Mitch was glad he was driving, because it all seemed like a monotonous run of trees and fields and farmhouses to him. Not roads running through them, but rivers and creeks and streams interconnecting and forming great mires and pools. Water, water, everywhere.