Holiday of the Dead (52 page)

It took another fifteen minutes of silent searching before they came across their father. Kneeling down in a huge puddle he may well have had his back to his children but they instantly knew it was him.

“Stay here,” Jack whispered. “I’ll check him out and be back in a second.”

“No way,” growling back she strode up alongside him. “I ain’t getting left alone again.”

Knowing that he could never change her mind Jack slowly carried on. As quietly as they could they got closer and closer but then they entered the deep puddle too. Both stepped into it at the exact same time, the sounds of the splash and the movement of water alerted the kneeling man before them.

Slowly standing their father turned and came face to face with his children again. All the love had long since disappeared from his widening eyes, and his silly smile had been taken over by a blood soaked snarl.

“Jack,” edging backwards Katie grabbed a hold of her brother’s arm. “We need to get out of here now.”

“Not yet,” Jack mumbled as he marched towards his dad, the lump of wood now held high above his head. “We can’t leave him like that.”

This time Katie did let Jack go on by himself, she even closed her eyes as the first blow was let free. She did not open them again until the crunching noises had ceased and the distant moaning had gotten louder.

“It’s done,” Jack grabbed a hold of her arm. “We can go now.”

Katie looked down at the lump of wood Jack still carried; little rivers of blood raced along its length and dropped down into the puddle. It was drops of her father’s blood.

“I said shush. Now come on, we need to keep moving.” He did not have to tell her twice, she was already pulling away from his grasp.

All around them the air was now filled with the sounds of the undead, the call was being answered and the twins were being surrounded.

Throwing the thin door open the twins scrambled back inside their faithful old holiday home and slammed and locked the flimsy door behind them.

“We need to get up on the roof,” Jack shouted as he dragged a chair over to underneath the skylight.

The second he finished talking the window blew in as an array of hands burst through the thin glass after their prize. A snarling face pushed through the curtains as the first beast got a good look at the siblings.

“Fucking move it,” Jack screamed as he set his chunk of wood to work on the intruder. Sprays of blood shot up in the air and painted the ceiling. “I’ll be up in a second.”

Perching up on the wobbly chair Katie released the two clips and pushed open the stained hatch. This allowed a few gallons of water that had settled on the roof to rush inside. Her little arms pulled with all their might and she dragged her body up and outside. Glancing down she saw that the caravan had been completely surrounded by the hungry monsters. Scores of the undead had encircled them.

“Jack … Jack,” she hollered down into the darkness. “Come on,
please
, get the fuck up here now.”

Just as she was giving him up for dead his hands appeared at the opening and he pulled himself up to join her. Right behind him a forest of hands followed as they tried in vain to pull him back down.

“What the hell are we going to do now?” she sobbed as she watched her brother scramble to his feet.

His hand rose up and he pointed to the wall behind them. “Over there, the beach is right on the other side. You should be fine once you get over there.”

“What are you on about?” she said as he turned to set his weapon on the invaders again, the wood crunching into the flesh as he fought to keep them back. “Why are you talking like it’s just me?”

Turning slightly to face her, the last of the moonlight caught his face. His cheek was a bloody mess, all ripped and torn the bite mark was still clearly visible.

“I’ll watch your back, sis,” he smiled. “Looks like I’m destined to be stuck in this shithole forever. One of those fuckers got me good and we both know how that’ll end.”

“I can’t do it! I can’t go out there alone Jack. You can come with me, you’ll be fine.”

“Sorry sis,” he shouted as he went back to his wild attacks. “You know I can’t, now fucking jump over there and get the hell out of here.” Turning back again he gave her a little smile, “Yeah, and you were right as usual, I sure am enjoying myself now.”

Katie could look at her brother no longer, blowing him a little kiss she ran towards the wall and jumped. Slamming her body into the bricks she just managed to hang on as a group of the undead eagerly waited below for her fall. Scrambling up she slumped over the other side and dropped down onto a grassy dune.

She did not try to run; she just lay down and cried. All she could hear was a heady mix of those deep undead groans and the high whoops of delight as Jack defeated yet another of the beasts. The sun beginning its rise over the horizon brought her to her senses and she too rose up and headed towards the beach.

As she was almost at the sea she saw where a child must have played the day before. A slightly collapsed sand castle became sheathed in the rapidly approaching sunlight and Katie dropped to her knees beside it. She picked up the little pink bucket and spade that were carefully placed alongside it.

She never even realised that she was not alone; her mind was oblivious to the sounds of the undead as they raced towards her from both ends of the beach. The beasts were everywhere, she would never find safety.

Patting the moist sand firmly down into the bucket she set about finishing the castle. Her mind drifted away but she no longer dreamed of those fancy foreign lands.

All that she dreamed of now was those long ago but happier days with her father and brother. And how she wished they were back.

THE END

THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED

By

Joe McKinney

“But this changes everything,” Isaac Glassman said. “You see that, right? I mean you gotta see that. We can’t … I mean, Steve, you can’t … I mean, shit, he’s dead. Tommy Grind is dead! How can you say nothing’s changed?”

“Isaac,” I said. “Calm down. This isn’t that big of a deal.”

He huffed into the phone. “Great. You’re making fun of me now. I’m talking about the death of the biggest rock star since The Beatles, and you’re cracking jokes. I’m telling you, Steve, this is fucking tragic.”

I let out a tired sigh. I should have known Isaac was going to be a problem. Lawyers are always a problem. He’d been with us since Tommy’s first heroin possession charge back in 2002. That little imbroglio kept us in the LA courts for the better part of a year, but we got
The Cells of Los Angeles
album out of it, which went double platinum, so at least it hadn’t been a total disaster. And Tommy was so happy with Isaac Glassman that he added him to the payroll. I objected. I looked at Isaac and I saw a short, unkempt, Quasimodo-looking guy in a cheap suit in the midst of a school girl’s crush. ‘He’s in love with you,’ I told Tommy. ‘And I mean in the creepy way.’ But Tommy laughed it off. He said Isaac was just star struck. It’d wear off after a few months.

I knew he was wrong about Isaac even then.

Just like I knew Isaac was going to be trouble now.

Behind me, closed up behind the Plexiglas screen I had installed across the entrance to Tommy’s private bedroom after he’d overdosed and died from whatever the hell kind of mushroom it was he took, Tommy was finishing up on the arm of a groupie I’d brought him. The girl was a seventeen year old nobody, a runaway. I’d met her outside a club on Austin’s 6
^th
Street two nights earlier. “Hey,” I asked her, “you wanna go get high with Tommy Grind?” The girl nearly beat me to my car. And now, after two days of eating on the old long pig, Tommy was almost done with her. There’d be some cleanup, femurs, a skull, a mandible, stuff like that, but nothing a couple of trash bags and some cleaning products wouldn’t be able to handle. As long as the paparazzi didn’t go through the garbage, things’d be fine.

I turned my attention back to the phone call with Isaac.

“Look,” I said. “This isn’t a tragedy, okay? Stop being such a drama queen. And secondly, The Beatles weren’t
a
rock star. They were
four
rock stars. A group, you know? It’s a totally different thing.”

“Jesus, this really is a joke to you, isn’t it?” Now he sounded genuinely hurt.

“No, it’s not a joke.” I looked over my shoulder at Tommy. He was at the barrier, looking at me, bloody hands smearing the Plexiglas, a rope of red muscle – what was left of the girl’s triceps – hanging from the corner of his mouth. I said, “I’m deathly serious about this, Isaac.”

“So what?
So what?
Steve, I saw him last night, eating that girl. He looked horrible. People are gonna know he isn’t right when they see him.”

For the last three years or so, Tommy Grind and Tom Petty had been in a running contest to see who could be the grungiest middle aged rock star in America. Up until Tommy died and then came back as one of the living dead, I would have said Tom Petty had him beat. Now, I don’t know. They were probably tied.

“Nobody’s gonna know anything,” I said into the phone. “Look, I’ve been his manager for twenty years now, ever since he was a renegade cowboy singing the beer joints in South Houston. I sign all the checks. I make all the booking arrangements and the recording deals and handle the press and get him his groupie girls for him to work out his sexual frustrations on. I got this covered. The show’ll go on, just like it always has.”

“Yeah, except now he’s eating the groupies, Steve.” I thought I heard a wounded tone in his voice. He didn’t like to hear about Tommy’s other playthings, even before he started eating them.

I turned and watched Tommy picking the girl’s hair out of his teeth with a hand that wouldn’t quite work right. No more guitar work, that’s for sure. But then, that was no big deal. He had a cameo in
Guitar Hero XXI
. Tommy Grind’s reputation was secure, even if he never played another note.

Finally, Isaac said, “Did he finish that girl yet?”

Good boy, Isaac,
I thought.

Tommy was always prolific. He wasn’t much for turning out a polished product – that part we left to the session musicians and Autotuner people to clean up – but the man had the music in him. He’d spent fifteen hours a day playing songs and singing and just banging around in the studio we built for him in the west wing of the mansion. Just from what I’d heard walking through the house recently, I figured we had enough for three more full length albums.

It’d just be a matter of having the studio people clean it up. They were used to that. Business as usual when you work for Tommy Grind.

“And this is how he’s gonna live? I mean, I know he’s not alive, but this is how it’s gonna be?”