Hellifax (32 page)

Scott nodded, remembering the display.

“Simple bat like you have there isn’t bad, but it isn’t balanced properly. This,” Vick gestured to the pipe with a dark hand, “was in my basement. I added the leather for extra grip and, yeah. Works fine. Well balanced. If it were a foot or so longer, I could use it as a quarterstaff.”

“Works good,” Scott agreed. Then something came to him. “What did you think of those gimps out there today?”

Vick yawned. “Just Moe. Except they were headed in the same direction we were. I think it’s a bad omen, to tell the truth.”

“I agree. Never seen a group of them do something like that before. Before I came to Halifax, I lived with a man for a few months. A friend. We had something of a mystery going on down in the Valley.”

“Yeah? What?”

“The bodies were disappearing. I mean the bodies of Moe. We’d put a deadhead down, and the next time we came across that place, the body would be gone.”

“Strange. Dogs, maybe?”

“We thought about that, but we never heard anything. Never did find out what it was. I left to come up here.”

“Ah. Well, I figure… it’s something they don’t like. Really, we don’t know anything about them. Don’t have the means to study them. And the way I figure it, even something as brainless as a slug has the instinct to sense and avoid danger.”

Scott mulled that over for a moment. He wondered if Vick had just realized what he’d said. “You think something dangerous is coming?”

“Possible. Something elemental, maybe. Fire, perhaps. Bad storm.”

“Don’t think it’s a storm. When I drove up here, it was pretty bad. Moe was standing out in it, just freezing in place.”

“Hm. That’s right. Not a blizzard, then. But… something,” Vick said softly.

“Something,” Scott agreed.

“Hey, thanks, by the way.”

“Huh? What for?”

“Exposing Tenner for what he was.” Vick took a breath. “That prick would’ve gone right on murdering us if you weren’t around.”

“Oh, well, don’t mention it. Sorry for pulling the gun when I saw him. When I heard his voice, I knew it was him. The gun thing wasn’t cool.”

“You were going to kill him, eh?”

Scott looked at his hands in the dark. “Yeah. I think so.”

“You think so?”

“Pretty certain. I mean, yeah. He killed my friends. Who knows how many others he’s done?”

“Hm,” Vick said, and neither man said anything for a while. “Y’know, I’ve taught students techniques that will put an attacker down for the count: joint locks, chokeholds, ball shots. Done it for years. Never had to use it, really.”

“Think you could?”

“Never been pushed far enough. Depends on the person, too, I guess. In times like these, it might be pretty easy to kill someone. There’re no consequences, as far as I can see. Except maybe spiritually.”

“Killing the dead is easy,” Scott said.

“It is that. But another living person?” Vick drew in a breath through clenched teeth. “I wish you well on that one.”

“You gonna tell me I gotta live with it or something? That it won’t bring back the dead?”

“Oh, fuck no. Not at all. Call Tenner crazy or whatever you want. I’m just a firm believer that evil is out there, and it ain’t just gonna go away. There’s no talking to it. Ain’t in its nature. And in this world? Where’s there’s no police, no laws, no rules, no clinics…”

“He’s gotta be stopped.”

“Yeah, he does. I understand that. And I hope that… when the time comes, you can pull the trigger.”

There was a moment of silence then, so deep that the silence itself could be heard, and Vick sat up slowly, looking to the window. “You hear that?”

“No. What?”

Vick’s face was half-covered by shadows when he turned to him. “Don’t know, but be on guard.”

He got up and grabbed his pipe. Scott stood with him. He’d never stopped to take off his Nomex coat or pants, and Vick, if he had taken the armor off upstairs, had on everything except his helmet and spiked knuckles.

Vick bent over slightly. “You sure you don’t hear that?”

Scott shook his head.

Without another word, Vick went to the door and drew back the curtain covering the large window. He looked left and right. A moment later, he unlocked the door and stepped outside. Scott followed.

Cold air cupped his face like a hand. Scott tiptoed onto the front porch, stepping over the legs of the granny zombie that Buckle had deposited just outside the front door. Vick wandered onto the front step and held onto the railing, still listening. Scott strained to hear, but as soon as he seemed to be about to detect something, it faded away, teasing him.

Vick walked into the icy street made blue-black by the moon. The sky overhead had cleared and a full moon blazed, a halo of such intensity that Scott momentarily forgot about everything else and stared up at it. Moons like these made him feel all was right with the world. Vick wandered cautiously into the middle of the street, alert and straining, staring off in the direction of the waterfront. No moans scratched the night. The deadheads had all moved on. Haltingly, Scott stepped off the front porch, onto the sidewalk, and took two testing steps before Vick glanced back at him and lifted a hand for silence.

Then Scott heard it.

The barest murmuring of movement, like the softest surf, glided toward them. Vick pointed down the street and Scott strained to see, hoping his night vision was good enough. The way they had come was a mess of dead traffic covered in snow, but through the main drag, straight down the middle of the road, a dark lip of viscous oil bubbled toward them, almost soundless. It covered the white road in a slow, but steady flood.

“What is…
that
?” Scott whispered, barely aware he’d spoken.

“No idea,” Vick responded, answering as if in a trance and gripping his pipe as if drawing comfort from it. “Never heard the like before. Listen.”

The darkness crept over the snowy roads like a vat of watery coffee grounds that had burst and spilled forth. It enveloped cars. It went around unmoving lumps and swallowed them whole. Bases of trees were swamped. The sound became louder, a low guttural rustling of some unknown material, like walking on a forest floor at midnight, when a person’s senses are almost achingly aware of everything.

It rooted Scott to the ground.

“Oh, my God,” Vick whispered, and Scott could almost hear the man’s jaw drop.

Then he, too, saw what was approaching.

Awash in moonlight and under a sky dimpled with stars, the blackness moving over the ground gradually took on shape, as if it were a foggy nightmare solidifying. They moved in little jerks, strangely different from what he might have expected, and he realized the subterranean humming was the sound of hair and the press of bodies rubbing against one another. A new sound perked his ears, just underneath that dreadful drone, which could only be claws clicking on patches of black ice.

There were millions of them, channeled by the street that Scott, Vick, and the others had slunk along while pretending to be dead.

Rats.

The street was alive with rats.

Scott couldn’t tear his eyes away from the horrific tsunami rushing toward him. The rats’ terrible hushed cacophony grew in his ears, freezing him with fear, willing him to just stay right there, just
wait
, and all would be settled in a few seconds.

Vick clamped a hand onto Scott’s shoulder. “Come on,” he whispered urgently.

“Those are
rats!
” Scott burst out, following the man back into the house. Vick slammed the door and locked it as Scott slipped by him. They entered the living room and went to opposite ends of the curtains, immediately peeking outside. Vick had the greater range of vision, being able to see farther down the street, while Scott had to make do with much less.

“How the hell could there be so many of the things?” Scott asked.

“I don’t know, man,” Vick muttered. “But I think it’s a good idea to just stay inside on this one. What do you say?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, shit.”

“What?” Scott could see Vick’s dismayed face lit by a beam of moonlight.

A moment later, it didn’t matter.

Rats surged in front of the house. They covered the width of the pavement, the cars across the street, and the land beyond. Across the way stood another house, painted white, with a black foundation. Rats bobbed and rose against the foundation, their wet ragged backs arched as they undulated along the concrete. As the two men watched, the vermin rose up and over the front porch’s steps in a violent deluge. They continued on past the street, but a wave of them clawed their way onto the porch and quickly located the dead granny gimp in front of the door. Rats located the unmoving heap of flesh in ones and twos, biting into toes and thighs, before a swarm swamped the area and covered the body in a frightening blink. The unmoving gimp jerked from hundreds of little bites, as if being jolted with live wires, before being pulled under the rising torrent of black backs and pale tails. The humming increased, a white noise punctuated by little cracks and pops. An arm was ripped from the body and dragged away in jerks before disappearing below the furry tide. Scott felt his guts freeze. Some of the rats were huge, the size of ferrets, with hairless tails as long as a man’s forearm. He glimpsed some with terrible wounds, deep enough to expose bone. The creatures moved with spastic twitches that spoke of something not entirely natural.

The things swarming the porch area were undead.

“See that?” Scott whispered.

“I do,” Vick replied pensively.

The gimp’s arm popped back into view, bare of flesh and gnawed to the gleaming bone. A human skull bobbed above the mass of flesh, teeth smirking, before disappearing underneath the rats once more. The creatures scurried over each other, layer upon twisting, teeming layer. Hairless tails, white and ghoulish, dragged over the frenzy.

In the road, the rats had risen to shin level—if one were brave enough to walk amongst them.

“Jesus Christ,” Scott breathed, snarling in both fright and loathing.

Then the front door shivered.

The two men scrambled to the entryway and saw the wood tremble. It only rattled softly at first, but then it thrummed as if suffering a violent seizure. Claws raked the outer wood, deep and penetrating. The scratching intensified.

“What’s up with that?” Vick said, aghast.

“They know we’re in here.”

“How do they know
that?
”

“They can smell.”

“Smell?”

“Rats have a great sense of smell. If they got the virus, God knows what it did to them,” Scott said.

“Shit, the virus sure as fuck’s in them. You saw the street.”

“Hey,” Amy called out from the top of the stairs, making both men jump. “What’s going on?” Her shadow bent over to see.

“We have a problem,” Scott informed her, stepping out of the way to give her a view.

Her outline froze against the dark of the house. “What the fuck is
that
?”

“Rats,” Vick reported.

A second shadow joined Amy at the top of the stairs. “D’fuck is that?”

The door bucked as if convulsing. Scott edged around Vick and peeked outside, pulling back the curtain.

Rats were scrambling at the sill. Little white claws lashed the wood, seeking purchase. Some even rapped their snouts against the glass.

Scott let the curtain fall back. “They’re crawling on the backs of each other. Is that normal?”

A horrified Vick shrugged.

“I don’t know anything about rats,” Amy said from the stairs.

“You studied every other fucking thing in university!” Scott protested.

The scratching intensified at the door, rattling the wood in the frame and capturing the attention of the people inside.

Buckle bounded down the steps. “I’ll look for something to brace the door.”

Brace the door?
Scott thought, looking back at the shuddering slab of wood and glass as the rats tried to work their way through. From the kitchen, Buckle manhandled a large table cloaked in darkness. Vick pulled Scott out of the entryway to allow Buckle to dump the heavy table and press it firmly against the door.

“Some furniture,” Vick said, grabbing a sofa chair and shoving it against the table, adding its weight to the barricade. Buckle and Scott wrestled the sofa over so one end pressed up against the chair.

“Where did they come from?” Amy asked from the stairs.

“Looked like from the waterfront,” Vick answered her. “That’s why Moe was marching away from the area. They knew what was up.”

“They knew?”

“Sensed it somehow,” Scott added. “Not so dead after all.”

“Get your gear on, Amy!” Vick yelled, turning at the creaks coming from the front of the house.

Buckle took two steps at a time to the second floor, following Amy’s dark outline into the gloom.

Scott and Vick stood in the center of the almost empty living room. Scott passed Vick his hood and helmet and quickly donned his own. The sides of the house groaned like a ship’s timbers at sea. On impulse, Scott headed to the kitchen.

“Where you goin’?” Vick shouted.

“Checking out the back yard!” Scott yelled. He hurried into the kitchen and saw a door with white curtains covering the window. He hauled back the material and peered outside.

The land dipped somewhat in the backyard, but rats teemed over everything. Scott saw the outside top step to the back door disappear under the rising tide of undead vermin. Claws worked furiously at the base of the door.

“Jesus,” Scott muttered, and stepped back. The kitchen had nothing to brace the door with. There were two bolt locks and he secured them both, but he knew that it wouldn’t last long before…

Before what?

He remembered his time in Saint John, when the doughnut shop had a problem with rats. The night’s garbage bags were stowed in a wooden shed, secured by padlocks, where they would sit until pick-up. The shed was there to deter people from looking for the stale leftovers and, as such, made only out of sheets of cheap wood. It was enough to keep the homeless out, but not the rats. In fact, the rats had slowly worked their way into the shed, ravaging a garbage bag before their hole by the back corner was discovered.