Night of the Living Dead (19 page)

"Yes or no," Ben demanded, "this is your last chance — no beatin’ around the bush!"

Tom looked back and forth, frozen with indecision.

Cooper turned back to Ben, and he was near pleading now. "L-L-Listen, I got a
kid
down there. Sh-She can’t possib— I
couldn’t
 bring her up here, she can’t possibly take all the racket from those, those things smashing through the windows."

"Well, you’re her father," Ben answered, and disappointed himself with the venom in his voice, venom he had always managed to avoid spitting at even the most rowdy of students ... and yet, he also found himself unable to resist it. "If you’re
stupid
enough to go die in that trap, that’s your business. However, I am
not
stupid enough to follow you." He paused as though considering his next words, even though he knew damn well what he was going to say. "It is tough for the kid that her old man is so
stupid
. Now ..." He shifted his grip on the rifle — he didn’t point it directly at Cooper, but the message was clear. "Get the hell down in the cellar. You can be the boss down there ... I’m boss up here."

Cooper backed away, and the anger had returned to his eyes. No, not anger this time —
hatred
. He gripped his own weapon, holding it in front of him. "You
bastards
."

Ben pointedly turned his back on Cooper.

"You know I won’t open this door again," Cooper warned. "I mean it."

Tom took one more shot at playing peacekeeper. "Mister Cooper, with your help, we could—"

" ‘With - my -
help
’!" Cooper spat back.

"Let him go, man," Ben said to Tom. "His mind is made up. Just let him
go
!
"

Cooper glowered at them both, grinding his teeth and stopping just short of
growling
 at them, then turned on his heel and headed for the basement door.

Tom looked from Ben to Cooper, then realized that Cooper was actually going to do it, he was going to return to the basement and lock the door. "Wait a minute!" he called.

Cooper barely slowed down, so Tom reached out and grabbed him by the arm and, with surprising assertion, pulled him back. He stepped into the doorway himself and called down, "Judy? Come on up here."

Judy?
Ben thought. Since Ben could assume Tom wasn’t calling for either Cooper’s wife or daughter, that meant he was asking someone
else
to join them. How many people were down there? He hadn’t even thought to ask.

A timid young girl climbed the stairs into view — younger than Barbra; hell, she looked almost young enough to be one of Ben’s students. She wore a denim jacket and blue jeans, and sandals that weren’t much more practical than Barbra’s stockinged feet.

As she emerged from the cellar, Cooper pointed at her and said to Tom, "You’re gonna let them get
her
, too, huh?"

The timid girl — Judy — looked at Cooper, then at Ben (and his gun).

"It’s all right, hon," Tom said to her in a low voice, pushing her with a gentle hand past Cooper, "go ahead."

Ben watched as Judy floated over near Barbra and perched tentatively on the arm of the sofa, and as Cooper, without another word, disappeared into the cellar stairwell, slamming the door. A moment later, they all heard Cooper — as Ben was sure was his intention — barricading the door behind him.

Forever the optimist, Tom leaned against the outside of the door. "If we stick together, man, we can fix it up real good. There ... there’s lots of places we can run to up here." Nothing from Cooper but the sound of more boards sliding into place. "Mister Cooper, we’d all be a lot better off if all three of us were working
together
."

Silence was his only reply.

Leaving Tom to his wishful thinking, Ben crossed the room to the sofa, where Barbra had barely moved and had said nothing since he rushed downstairs to find Tom trying to reason with her.

"Hey," he said as he knelt in front of her. "Hey, kid?"

Barbra’s head raised slightly, turned just the slightest bit toward him, but that was all. She didn’t answer, wouldn’t make eye-contact with him.

Sighing, Ben reached into his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. "He’s wrong, you know," he said, mostly to Tom but also to both young women. "I’m not boxing myself in down there."

He lit up his cigarette and took a long drag. The room fell silent except for the soft droning of the radio announcer ...

Down in the cellar, Helen Cooper glanced up from her sweet, sick daughter when Harry emerged from the stairwell. She’d been on edge since hearing what sounded like gunshots, but (for better or worse) Harry was still in one piece.

She had wanted to go upstairs with the rest of them, wanted to get out of this damned, stuffy cellar they’d been cowering in for hours, but she couldn’t leave her baby. Karen had grown so quiet, lying still on the makeshift cot they’d assembled with an old door, some sheets and blankets, and two sawhorses. Helen hoped —
prayed
— that it was just shock, and not something ...
else
.

"Well, we’re safe now," Harry said, fidgeting. "It’s ... boarded up tight."

"What about Tom and Judy?" she asked.

Harry switched from edgy to fiery in a heartbeat. "They wanna stay up there, let ’em!" He glanced down at the thin metal wedge he’d found down here, then tossed it aside to clang and clatter across the concrete floor.

Helen looked back to Karen, but her little girl didn’t react to the noise. Helen stroked her sweaty forehead.

Harry began checking his pockets. "There’re ..." He produced an empty pack of cigarettes, kept searching. "...two other people upstairs. A man and a girl."

When Helen thought "girl," she pictured someone as young or younger than Karen; coming from Harry, it could mean any female under the age of thirty. "We heard the screaming," she reminded him.

"Yeah," Harry returned as he joined them, "but I didn’t know who they were, and I wasn’t about to ... take any unnecessary chances." He kept digging into the empty pack, as though one last cigarette would appear by magic.

"Of course not, Harry," she said in a calculated, flat voice.

Harry scowled at her, but said nothing — after all these years of marriage, she knew how to
zing
him without making it obvious enough to start a fight. Frustrated, Harry crumpled the empty pack and paced away from her; he made it all of three seconds before throwing the pack to the floor and spinning around to glare at her some more.

Helen didn’t look at him, didn’t react. She kept her attention on their daughter.

After a moment, Harry deflated a bit and returned to the head of Karen’s improvised cot. He reached out to stroke her forehead, too — not as gentle or loving as Helen, of course, but she did appreciate his effort.

"Is she all right?" Harry asked. Then he opened Helen’s purse and started rummaging around.

"I don’t know what it is," Helen admitted
, ignoring his rooting through the very purse he’d been mocking her for grabbing from the car
. "She feels warm. Maybe it’s shock." But now that she’d voiced it, she realized how vague that hope was.

Harry found the cigarettes he’d been after, then kept looking for a light. "Where’d you get the bandage?"

"Some laundry in a basket. I tore a sheet."

Harry lit his (her) cigarette, tossed aside the match, then looked up toward the ceiling. He paced around slower now, enjoying his cigarette and trying to appear casual. "Let them stay upstairs. Let them. Too many ways those
monsters
can get in up there." He smirked, the ugly simper she had come to hate so much. "We’ll see who’s right. We’ll see, when they come begging me to let them in down here."

She looked at him. "That’s important, isn’t it?"

"What?" he said, startled from his masturbatory reverie.

"To be right. Everybody else to be wrong."

"What do you mean by that?" he demanded.

But she knew she’d made her point and waved him off.

For a second, she thought he might refuse to drop it, but then he looked away. He moved toward the foot of Karen’s cot, and sat down.

As he did, she asked, "Does anyone up there know
why
we’re being attacked?"

Harry released a long, tired sigh. "Whatever it is, it isn’t just happening here. It’s ... some kind of mass-murder. It’s going on everywhere. The radio said to stay insi—"

"
Radio
?" she perked up. When they’d reached the house, they had been in such a hurry, they hadn’t taken stock of their surroundings. As soon as Tom found the cellar ...

Harry glanced at her, carefully blasé. "Radio, upstairs. I heard a news bulletin."

She stood, her surprise turning to outrage. "There’s a
radio
upstairs and you boarded us in
down here
?!"

"I know what I’m doing," was his typical reply, but she wasn’t interested in his ego just now.

"What did it say?!"

"Nothing! Nothing!" He also stood, circling around the cot. "They don’t know anything yet. The ... there’s mass-murder everywhere, and ... and people are supposed to look for a safe place to hide." He ended up in the corner, his back to her.

"Take the boards off that door!"

He whirled around. "We are staying
down here
, Helen."

"Harry, that radio is at least some kind of communication. If the authorities know what’s happening, well, they’ll send people for us, tell us what to do! How are we going to know what’s going on if we lock ourselves in this dungeon?!"

He threw his cigarette to the floor and glared at her. And this time, she could tell by his body language that he wouldn’t back down easily — he was gearing up for a real fight.

Carefully, with dignity, she sat back down.

Harry, taking his cue from her, also calmed down, a bit. He paced around again, this time back toward the stairwell.