Stephen Jones - Dark Terrors 5 - The Gollancz Book of Horror

‘Mary?’ the sheriff said.

‘I… yes. Anything rather than staying here or going back to the jail… waiting for them to break in. Yes. The lighthouse.’

I think we all felt greatly cheered at having reached a decision. At least we were still in control of our own options. We moved to the nearest van.

The keys were in it.

We all got in the front, Jerry at the wheel and Mary between us. Jerry waited a few moments before he switched on the ignition but, once he did so, he started the van moving immediately.

We drove towards the ghouls.

The ghouls watched us come.

Jerry drove at them in first gear, steadily, and they made no attempt to get out of the way. They seemed fascinated by the van, by a large moving object… something of a magnitude to register on their dimmed perceptions. As we closed on the crowd, I saw Jerry’s hand lift from the wheel and hover for a moment over the horn. It was a reaction from habit and he grinned grimly as he realised he had been about to sound the hooter.

‘No way through them,’ he muttered.

‘We’ll have to force our way through…’

Mary, tight-lipped and rigid between us, said, ‘Can’t you drive faster?’

She yearned for the sanctuary of the lighthouse.

Jerry said, ‘Afraid to ram them too hard… don’t want a fender jammed into a tyre or to bend the radiator back into the fan… just try to brush them aside…’

More ghouls were moving towards us. One was hanging on the fence, swinging by one hand, as if he’d discovered a new pleasure. I saw one come out of the open door of the jail and gaze up at the sun. He didn’t blink. I wondered if they would soon be blind? I wondered if that would matter?

Jerry was saying, ‘Why, there’s Joe Wallace… used to play cards with him… Tim Carver… Ike Stanton… Hell, I know these people! Used to know them when they were people… There’s Mrs Jones. Aw, hell.. there’s the Carpenter kid.. he’s only seven years old…’

I looked where he was looking and saw the child, its face preternaturally aged by drooling madness. I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. Larsen had been right about that… the kids were the worst. I guessed there were about forty of them on the waterfront, men, women and children. I had no idea how many were in the town or how many had been killed… nor how long they would survive.

They were still individuals.

They shared the same mindless countenance, but they moved in different ways, not following a pattern, each affected differently. Some hopped and leaped like frogs, some crept along, some stood upright while others were hunched over, faces downcast as if ashamed of their condition. Most of them seemed to be injured in some way. I saw one youth whose arm had been torn off at the shoulder; perhaps he had torn it off himself, for he held the severed limb in his other hand. A woman had torn her hair out; her glabrous skull was dotted with hundreds of pinpoints of blood. One had no lower jaw. Two were naked. I stared at them in terrible fascination.

‘Why, there’s my hat!’ Jerry said, and he brought his hand to his bare head.

The white Stetson was lying in the street just outside the jail. I thought, for a second, that Jerry was going to halt the van and retrieve it. But he drove steadily on, into them. The ghouls didn’t move out of the way, but they allowed themselves to be brushed aside. They seemed quite passive and docile. I began to hope that the initial frenzy had worn off, that it had been a temporary rage that had burned itself out. That hope burned like acid in my heart.

Then they attacked the van.

A ghoulish face loomed up at my window.

Mary screamed. There was a loud banging on the side of the van, shaking it. Another bang came from the roof. Someone was hammering and pounding at the panels and the windscreen suddenly shattered in a jagged star.

Jerry cursed. He stepped on the accelerator and the tyres skidded and squealed. For a moment the van did not move; someone was holding the rear bumper. Then there was a screech of metal and the bumper peeled free from the van. We surged forward with a jolt… and the engine stalled.

Jerry snapped the ignition and it rasped. The engine didn’t catch. I feared it was flooded. I think I was shouting at Jerry, and Mary was screaming over and over. But then the engine caught and we were moving again. As the van lurched forward the door on the driver’s side was jerked completely off. A ghoul held it by the handle and he fell back as the door came free. The door sailed up like a steel kite, floating. Then we were through them and going fast. I looked back. The ghouls were coming, following after us. Jerry was hunched over the wheel and Mary and I were shouting for him to drive faster. He grunted and touched his forehead again. I figured he regretted losing his hat.

The lighthouse rose up like surging hope.

It was an ugly grey tower upon which gargoyles might have perched, but it looked beautiful to me. Jerry brought the van to a skidding halt, slewing sideways in the sand, just where the reef began. The tide was going out and the black rocks broke through the surface all the way to the lighthouse. For a moment we just sat there. Time was precious, but we had to sit for an instant as the void of our drained emotions filled.

Jerry reached into the toolbox behind the seat and came up with a tyre iron.

He said, ‘This should do it.’

I was looking out the back, but we had gone beyond the sweep of the island. If the ghouls were still coming, I couldn’t see them. I knew that their span of attention was too feeble to keep them going in pursuit of a vanished prey… but feared that, once headed in our direction, inertia would keep them moving.

Jerry jumped out from his doorless side and stood, looking back. He had his gun in one hand and the tyre iron in the other. ‘No sign of them,’ he said. ‘I reckon we made it.’

Then a hand reached down from the top of the van.

I remembered the bang I’d heard on the roof and my mouth sprang open. I shouted, leaning past Mary. The hand hovered, tilting at the wrist, delicately groping at the air. Then it descended onto Jerry’s shoulder.

Jerry didn’t react.

He had heard me shout and must have supposed it was my hand, seeking his attention. He was still looking back along our trail. Mary screamed and the sheriff looked towards us and then he looked up, just as the hand tightened on his shoulder. His face exploded with frenzy; he dropped the tyre iron and started to lift the gun; then the ghoul heaved his big body up and hauled him onto the roof of the van.

I saw the polished toe of his boot kicking wildly.

I threw open my door and rolled out, bringing the rifle up, seeming to move in slow motion. On the top of the van they were pressed together like lovers in a terrible embrace. The ghoul loomed over Jerry; Jerry was struggling, trying to throw the creature off. I didn’t fire. In my horror, I did nothing. Jerry pressed his big revolver into the ghoul’s midrift and, as I gaped at them, he began to fire into the thing. The ghoul’s body jerked as the heavy-calibre slugs went into him. Jerry was cocking and firing the gun with terrible deliberation, fast but steady, and I saw the ghoul’s spine unpeel from his back, the bony articulation coming out from his flesh like the backbone of a fish. The spine snapped in the middle and the bloody ends twanged apart. The ghoul’s arms and legs went limp.

Jerry heaved him away and rolled from the van. The ghoul spread out across the roof, one hand hanging down on either side. His face was turned to me. He was still alive and, broken in half, trying to move.