The Dead Run Page 16

  Frantically, Sherry cast around for a weapon—a rock, a stick, anything. But there was nothing there except the sack, the terrible sack, lying forgotten between them.

  It would have to do.

  A prayer raced through her mind, unbidden, as Sherry raced forward and grabbed the sack by the neck, whipping it behind her head like a softball pitcher and charging forward.

  Forgive me, Mom.

  And then: Help me, Dad.

  Buchanan heard the footsteps, turned.

  Crack.

  Melinda Richards’s head connected with his, full-on, and the monster’s eyes rolled back into the recesses of his skull. He staggered back a pace, legs going mushy; tripped over Eric’s torso; and went down. Hit the cave floor in a dead fall, and lay there. Unconscious.

  Sherry rushed to Eric’s side and shook the boy by his shoulders.

  “Eric? Eric!”

  He woke up howling in pain.

  CHAPTER 24

  Get in the car!” Jess shouted, pinwheeling his machete at the others as he dashed toward the old station wagon. The box was tucked under his arm like a football.

  And the blitz was on.

  Thank god it was a slow one. The quintet of dead girls heading for him didn’t appear to be in any rush. Maybe the need for speed faded when your heart stopped pumping, or maybe they couldn’t grasp the possibility of an automotive getaway—hell, some of them might have been long gone before the internal combustion engine was even invented.

  Or maybe there were so many of them out there that a set of wheels was no escape at all.

  These hearts are my only sustenance, Cucuy had said. Galvan thought about that—the years, the numbers—and felt the flames of panic lick higher.

  He pushed them back, reached the car, and slid behind the wheel.

  Travel as men did in ancient times, my ass. Sorry, Cucuy, but all bets are off. The Righteous Messenger might have to go on foot, but seeing as I ain’t him no more, I’ma outpace these fuckin’ things by any means at my disposal. If that throws a monkey wrench in your plans, well, so much the better.

  Payaso claimed shotgun a moment later, slamming the door and cranking up the window.

  “Get us the fuck out of here, homes.”

  “There’s an idea.”

  Galvan fingered the key, and looked over his shoulder. Britannica was chugging toward them with the two teenagers they’d liberated in tow, one hand clamped around each girl’s wrist.

  “Hurry up, old man!” Payaso called. He squinted out the back windshield. “Those muchachas look like they’re coming back around. Drugs must be wearing off, eh?”

  He was right. The placidity on their young faces had turned to terror, and they kept twisting to look over their shoulders, gauging the distance between themselves and animated, walking death.

  Themselves, and the fate they’d narrowly avoided.

  Hell of a time to rejoin the world.

  “Here,” said Galvan, handing the machete to Payaso. “I gotta drive. Think you can use this thing?”

  Payaso weighed it in his hands, then wrapped both fists around the hilt, held the weapon out in front of him. “Claro que sí, carnal. If I have to.”

  “Muy bien.”

  Galvan could hear the heart thumping through the metal, quick and steady. Apparently, it held him to a different set of criteria than the Virgin Army did.

  Thank god for small miracles.

  Britannica and the girls neared the car, huffing and puffing, and Galvan reached back, jacked open the rear door. The priest or not-priest hustled his charges inside and dove in after them.

  “Let’s go!” he panted.

  “You’re all so full of great advice,” muttered Galvan, firing up the engine. To his shock, it turned over without protest. ’Bout time they caught a break.

  He shifted into drive, high-stepped the tear in the floor, and mashed the gas. The car belched out exhaust and bucked forward like it couldn’t wait.

  Thing might have been a shitbox, but they sure didn’t make shitboxes like this anymore.

  Detroit, baby. In the house.

  “Seat belts!” Galvan ordered, spinning the wheel and slamming the gearshift into reverse—then realizing, half a second late, that he could have just swung the boat around in a broad U-turn, saved a few crucial seconds.

  Galvan checked his mirrors before executing the final third of the maneuver—pure force of habit. And there they were, framed neatly in the pitted driver’s-side glass: the five dead girls, moving in a tight formation, as if controlled by a single brain.

  Thank god that brain seemed disinclined to make them run. He tried to picture Cucuy’s wife, their puppet master. Maybe she got off on stalking her prey, making her husband’s minions suffer. They were at war, after all. Supposedly.

  Yeah, Jess. Try to get inside the mind of a woman who’s been dead five hundred years. Real helpful, you fuckin’ mope.

  “See you in hell, ladies,” Galvan grunted, throwing the car back into drive and realizing he’d neglected to factor a small, universal truth into his exit strategy.

  Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.

  A fist shattered Payaso’s window, and then the ponytailed un-girl dove through it, made a headlong grab for the box.

  Jess swerved, instinctively, and felt the car broadside the other four girls. They disappeared from sight, a tangle of limbs and dust.

  Which was of little fucking comfort, considering the monster clawing her way toward the prize.

  “Payaso! Do something!”

  Galvan jerked the wheel again, trying to toss her from the car, but this one was too strong. She kept coming. Galvan threw an errant, sightless punch, felt his fist meet the mushy flesh of her cheek, knew he wasn’t doing any good.

  “Cut her fucking head off!” Britannica bellowed, reaching forward and grabbing a fistful of ponytail. He pulled it forward, baring the back of her neck. “Do it!”

  The machete was too big for the space. Payaso’s upswing embedded the knife’s tip in the ceiling upholstery. He yanked it loose, tried again. The downstroke was awkward, foreshortened, but the blade was sharp. It disappeared into the flesh with a sickening squelch-and-crunch, but the girl kept coming like she didn’t even notice.

  Galvan pressed himself as close to the door as he could without taking his foot off the gas. “Goddamn it, Payaso! Finish her!”

  The lean muscles in Payaso’s forearms bulged as he struggled to free the blade from the girl’s spinal column so he could take another hack.

  “No, no—just push!” Britannica lunged forward, dropped the full weight of his body atop the machete.

  Off came the head, in a torrent of curdled, purple-black blood. The thing rolled beneath the brake pedal, and Galvan reached for it with his left foot, spun it toward him, tried to stomp it down through the hole she’d clawed in the floor.

  “Ah, fuck!” Galvan brought his leg up, knee banging against the underside of the wheel. “Son of a bitch. She bit me!”

  He bent, grabbed her by the ponytail. The eyes flashed, and she snarled at him. Galvan stared back for a moment, mesmerized, then came to his senses and flung the head out Payaso’s smashed-in window. It hit the ground and bounced, picking up speed as it disappeared down a low hill.

  The body, meanwhile, was still moving—flailing at the box in Galvan’s lap as if it hadn’t noticed the sudden weight loss up top.

  “Throw her out!” Galvan demanded, and Payaso complied, managing to shovel the body backward through the window. The thump it made when it hit the ground was deep and satisfying, and they drove in silence for a moment, relishing the feel of the road beneath them, the wind on their faces.

  Galvan went so far as to attempt a sigh of relief. It died in his throat.

  Everywhere he looked, across the whole breadth of the land,
more girls were emerging.

  The secret was out: a Righteous Messenger no longer protected the heart. It was open season.

  The un-girls wanted what was theirs. What had been taken from them.

  When he thought about it that way, Galvan couldn’t say he much blamed them. Which was the aggrieved party in this centuries-old dispute? The megalomaniac who’d murdered his wife, or the innocent woman who’d been his conduit to power?

  “Look out!” Payaso wailed, and Jess swerved to avoid a girl standing directly in his path, missing her by a hair. Ahead were two more, and he steeled himself to slalom between them or mow them down. What kind of impact the wagon could handle, he wasn’t sure, and didn’t want to find out. The fucking thing was built for family vacations, not carnage.

  Though, if memory served, family vacations were their own special kind of carnage.

  Galvan’s tender reminiscences were interrupted by a flying snarl of hair and limbs as an un-girl he hadn’t even seen dove across the hood, obscuring his vision. She reared back, preparing to smash the windshield, and he yelled to Payaso for help.

  The kid cleared the shards of glass from the window ledge, balanced himself on it, and hacked at her with the machete. He managed to wedge the blade into the back of her thigh and sweep her off the car.

  “Incoming!” Britannica clarioned, and then two more were on them, flanking the car on either side, Galvan hip-checking one with the bumper and sending her hurtling from the road, Payaso war-whooping and lashing out with the machete, hacking off three fingers as the other tried to grab ahold of his door. She fell beneath the car, and their heads banged against the station wagon’s ceiling as the tires rolled over her.

  “Get inside,” Galvan ordered, reaching out just in time to grab Payaso by the leg, save him from tumbling out the window.

  And here came more.

  Britannica leaned forward. “They won’t cross water,” he said, pointing ahead of them. “If we can get to the other side, we’re safe.”

  Sure enough, the great river glinted in the distance, and Galvan realized that the sound in his head wasn’t the frenzied rush of blood and adrenaline, but the rush of water.

  “Already?” he heard himself say. He looked down at the speedometer, realized he was pushing eighty.

  It was as hard to gauge the distance as the speed, impossible to know whether the water—the border—was five hundred yards away or five thousand.

  Especially with so many bodies in the way.

  They’d veered badly off the route Galvan knew; he only crossed where the water was calm, predictable. Even from here, he could tell they’d have to broach the swollen, maelstroming middle. And if anything took more lives than thirst out here, it was water.

  Water, and dead girls.

  “Incoming!” Britannica called again as two more charged at them, from the passenger side.

  Payaso climbed back onto the ledge. “I got this, homes,” he said, lifting the steel.

  He sliced the first girl throat to waist, and she spun away into the dust. Lightning-quick, he raised the blade again and with a backhand sweep thrust it through the stomach of the next attacker.

  “You don’t know who you’re fucking with!” he crowed, pulling the blood-slicked blade back out as she, too, ceased to be a threat. “Come on, who’s next? I got this!”

  And for a moment, Jess believed. For a moment possibility surged through him, and the river seemed inches away, and the image of his daughter’s face filled up his mind.

  He smiled.

  Almost home.

  Then the station wagon hit a pothole the size of Delaware, and Payaso lost his balance. The kid teetered for a moment, all four limbs flailing. Galvan reached for him, grasping at air, and they locked eyes.

  But it was too late.

  Payaso fell three and a half feet, to his death.

  CHAPTER 25

  Eric caterwauled, aflame with pain, and Sherry ran her eyes up and down his body, trying to find the source, the injury, desperate to fix it.

  Before his screams roused Buchanan.

  If the felled monster was still alive.

  She ought to march over to where he lay, Sherry thought, and finish the job. Pummel him until blood poured. Roll his body off the ledge, watch the darkness eat it whole. Get comfortable and listen as the rats sniffed out his corpse, stripped the meat from his bones. But there was Eric to think about. He hadn’t abandoned her yet, and she couldn’t walk away from him now, not even for a moment. She knew too well how that would feel.

  And she knew how stupid she was being. Every fiber of Sherry’s body screamed at her to end it, to consign Buchanan to hell or oblivion or the fucking happy hunting grounds. Anywhere but here.

  It must have been an equally powerful force, then, that held her back.

  It was more than loyalty, more than Eric. It was something inside her, and all at once, Sherry was grateful for it. This was not a weakness, but a different kind of strength. Taking Buchanan’s life would bring her no peace. Would only increase her burden. She flashed on something her father had said once when she was a little girl, seven or eight, climbing all over him like he was her personal jungle gym, scaling the heights of his shoulders and swinging from his biceps like a monkey.

  You’re so strong, Daddy! I bet you could beat anybody in a fight!

  His normally relaxed face had drawn tight around the mouth.

  I’m strong so I don’t have to fight.

  “What’s wrong?” Sherry asked now, pulling her friend into her lap. If somebody had told her this morning that she’d be rocking Eric Lansing like a baby by midafternoon . . .

  Sherry dismissed the thought. It was meaningless, the musing of a girl she no longer was, could never be again. “Where does it hurt?”

  The sound of her voice seemed to punch through his suffering. “My shoulder,” Eric gasped, tears streaming past his cheeks. “It feels like it’s broken or something.” He lifted his head slightly, peered down the length of his body, fumbled vaguely toward his leg. “Something’s wrong with my knee, too.”

  The sound of approaching footfalls froze them both. They were coming loud and fast—two people, running. Maybe three. Sherry caught Eric’s eye, lifted a finger to her lips, and crept into the shadows bracketing the mouth of the cave.

  Then she thought again and darted out to grab the sack that had felled Buchanan. The sack she refused to think about in any other terms. It was a weapon now. That was all. She twisted the fabric around her knuckles, like a boxer’s wraps, and waited for whatever came. The sound of her own breath was loud in Sherry’s ears. The sound of Eric’s, sharp and shallow as he fought the pain, was deafening.

  Anybody could be coming, she told herself, Cub Scout to killer. It could be Aaron fucking Seth himself, swinging on over to find out what was taking so long. She gripped the sack even tighter, edged forward until she was inches from the shaft of light angling into the cavern, muscles tensing as the steps drew closer.

  “Leave me,” Eric whispered, shattering her focus. “Go now, Sherry. I’m just gonna slow you down.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she hissed.

  “I’m hurt. And you’re the one in danger. Get out of this fucking place, while the getting’s still good. Here.”

  He winced and jammed his left hand into his right pocket. Hooked his key ring with his longest finger, slid it free, dropped it atop his chest. Exhaled a shuddery draft of air, sapped by the effort.

  Sherry watched the metal glint in the pale light, rising and falling with his breath.

  “We’re leaving together,” she said.

  Then, for the second time in half an hour, the voice of an unknown man called Sherry’s name.

  And for the second time in an hour, her bones turned to ice.

  “Sherry Richards! Can you hear me? This is Sheriff Bob Nichols. A
re you here?”

  She managed to turn her head, to look at Eric. He shook his, violently, a convert to Sherry’s way of thinking.

  We can’t trust cops.

  She looked down at the sack and doubled up her grip. Gritted her teeth and got ready to go down swinging.

  The air thickened, and then it thickened some more. And then the most wonderful sound in the world cut through it, like the bow of a ship easing into warm home waters.

  “Sherry, it’s Ruth! Where are you, sweetheart?”

  “Ruth!” The name jumped from her like a sob, and Sherry threw herself into the light, toward the voice, with an abandon, a carefreedom, she could have sworn she’d never feel again.

  The next thing Sherry knew, she was wrapped in Ruth’s arms, her body gone slack as a puppet whose strings have been cut. She barely took in the handsome, care-lined face of the man standing beside the psychiatrist, Sheriff Whatshisname.

  Ruth pulled back and took stock, pressing her hands to Sherry’s face, her arms. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, but he is.” Sherry pointed behind her, the sweep of her arm taking in not just Eric but Buchanan, behind him. The sheriff was already walking toward them, arm crooked and elbow cocked, fingers just brushing the handle of the gun in his holster. He looked from one to the other—trying to decide what had happened, maybe. Or whom to tend to first.

  “I hit him,” Sherry heard herself blurt. The sack slipped from her fingers, and the tears were falling now, hot, stinging her cheeks. “He, he . . . tried to . . .” She gave it up, squeezed her eyes shut as Ruth’s glance roved over the sack, took in the bloodstain seeping through the burlap.

  “I’m here now, baby. You’re safe.” Ruth embraced her again, and this time Sherry felt her legs go rubbery and eased down to the cold stone floor, bringing Ruth with her. She buried her face in her friend’s neck and wailed, not caring how she sounded or what any of them thought.

  She’d never have enough tears for this. Never be able to cry her way to any kind of peace.